My second visit to the Vietnam Wall in Washington was a week before the USS Seattle's third reunion in Norfolk, 2011.  I was paying tribute to my fallen Commanding Officer and another riverboat sailor, both killed on an operation that I was also on along the rivers of the U Minh Forest of Vietnam in January of 1971.  I was looking up at panel 5 West to the names of Lt. Bill Vasey and BM2 Bob Paynter with tears running down my face.  At the time, I was wearing a Navy Vietnam Veteran ball cap and my leather vest with my Navy and Vietnam patches covering it, including a large Vietnam Veterans of America patch on the back.  This young man who had been watching me slowly approached me and said, "Excuse me, sir, are you a Market Time sailor?"

Technically I wasn't a Market Time sailor, that was a 8 1/2 year coastal blockade campaign, I was deep in the Mekong Delta.  But I believed he was asking me if I was a Vietnam Riverboat sailor.   I wiped my eyes, got my composure, and after a deep breath answered him that I was.   He asked if he could have his picture taken with me against The Wall.  With me?  Yea, sure, but why?  His girlfriend snapped several photos of us.   Noticing that he had short hair, I asked him if he was in the military, he answered that he was in the Navy.   "Riverboats is what I do, too, sir."   Turns out that he was on weekend liberty from Little Creek, Virginia.  He had recently passed his GMG3 test, and was attending school to learn about becoming a combat crew member of the new riverboats at SWCCC.  He, too, was a crew member of a riverine combat craft, and I was his "forefather".  That choked me up.  Amazing how he picked me out of the hundreds of visitors there at The Wall!

I had been transfered off the USS Seattle in 1970 and reassigned to the NIOTC (Naval Inshore Operations Training Center) for 17 weeks of riverboat training at Mare Island, Ca.  It's modern and updated course today is known as SWCCC (Special Warfare Combat Craft Crewman).  There are 3 SWCCC schools across America: one school is in Little Creek, one on Coronado Island, California, and one at the John Stennis Space Center, Mississippi.  This is also where the Navy SEALs train for riverine landings, assaults, and extractions, similiar to what we did in Vietnam...except their boats and weapons are a thousand times better than what we had in the 1970s.  (Really fast boats, 40+ knots with mini-guns).  Some of our boats had a top speed of 8 knots.