Echo Company Two-Seven Tooter
 
Echo Company 2/7
Vietnam Veterans Chapter
 
Two-Seven Tooter
 
Two-Seven Tooter
Message Board
 
New Chapter Member
WELCOME!!
A warm welcome to our newest chapter member: Lewis Waters
Lewis Waters is one hell of a combat Marine. Lewis served with Echo Company 2/7 in 1967-1968 during the Vietnam War.
It's never too early to start planning for the 2010 Reunion in San Antonio Texas.
THE ALAMO CHAPTER WELCOMES THE 63RD ANNUAL
1ST MARINE DIVISION ASSOCIATION REUNION AUGUST 23-29, 2010
Click on the link below to access the Reunion Schedule and Registration Form
MARK YOUR CALENDAR
1st Marine Division Association
Golf Tournament
Once a Marine, always a Marine!!
Mark your calendar for 20 February 2010!!
First Marine Division Association Golf Tournament
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Hosted by:
First Marine Division Association
Contact Jerry Bakke at:
623-535-0064. email: BDEBONAIR@aol.com
Famous Quotes
"The Continental ship Providence, now lying at Boston, is bound on a short cruise, immediately; a few good men are wanted to make up her complement."
~ Captain William Jones, USMC,
Providence Gazette, 20 March 1779

"The Marines have landed and have the situation well in hand."  
~ Attributed to many sources and popularized by the correspondent Richard Harding Davis during the late nineteenth-century.
"They are in front of us, behind us, and we are flanked on both sides by an enemy that outnumbers us 29:1. They can't get away from us this time!"
~ Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller, USMC
When the Marines were cut off behind enemy lines the Army had written
the 1st Marine Division off as being lost because they were surrounded by 22
enemy divisions. The Marines made it out inflicting the highest casualty ratio on an enemy in the history of warfare destroying 7 entire enemy divisions in the process. An enemy division is 16500+ men while a Marine division is 12500 men.
Echo Company 2/7 
Memorial Monument

88 Fallen Hero's of E 2/7

The Memorial Fund has made great progress again this month and now totals over $30,000!! We are very close to achieving our goal. To everyone that has contributed we thank you. It's an extraordinary feeling to see Marines making this commitment to our fallen brothers.

Semper Fi,
The Monument Committee 
Donate & More Info Here!!
 
We would like to announce the Grand Opening of a new E-commerce website, www.usmarine-onceandalways.com.   
USMarine-OnceandAlways.com provides pride apparel and a growing catalog of products for Marines.  
1/5 Vietnam Veterans, Echo 2/7 Vietnam Veterans, and members of BOC Class 5-67 can find their custom logo products here and support the group's fundraising with your purchases.  
Semper Fidelis!
Nicholas Warr
U. S. Marine - Once & Always
 
Marines in Haiti
Some videos of what we don't see in the news.
Here are some links to video of 22nd MEU helping Haiti. They are tops.
Marine Headlines
Pentagon Channel Report 
Ever Thought About Going Back?
Above: 2/7 Marines move along rice paddy dikes in pursuit of the VC in the agricultural areas of South Vietnam, 1965.
 
Here is a web link to see the schedule for 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines return to Vietnam tour planned for 9-22 May 2010.
The deadline for registration and full payment is 75 days before departure, which is February 23, 2010.
2nd Battalion 7th Marines Vietnam Battlefield Tours
 
Enter your email address below to sign up for our mailing list.
Join Our Mailing List 
 We look forward to keeping you informed. Semper Fidelis! 
 
Join Our Chapter
Enroll Online Here!!
  
"Ready for Anything 
Counting on Nothing"
 		01 February 2010 
   
The Propaganda's In The Mail
During the war, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong used postage stamps as a highly visible and effective tool of political warfare.
 
 
The National Liberation Front stamp, above, commemorated the 1963 Viet Cong victory at Ap Bac and appeared on Life magazine's cover in 1965. 
 
As the war in Vietnam progressed in the 1960's, the distinction between the North Vietnamese military and the National Liberation Front, or Viet Cong, became increasingly blurred, undercutting the illusion of a South Vietnamese war of liberation. In an effort to influence domestic and world opinion, the Communist propaganda machine promoted the fiction of distinct northern and southern Communist movements in Vietnam.
 <CLICK ON ANY STAMP TO ENLARGE>
The North Vietnamese had several objectives with their propaganda 
stamps. The North Vietnamese Army used the stamps to promote and validate Communist solidarity with other nations that provided support to Hanoi. In fact, many Communist nations issued their own stamps supporting the North Vietnamese and the VC, including The People's Republic of China, The Soviet Union, North Korea, and Albania. It is almost certain that all the Communist stamps were printed in Hanoi, however, some may have been printed at the Central Printing Factory in Shanghai, China, which also printed currency for the National Liberation Front. 
<CLICK ON ANY STAMP TO ENLARGE> 
A 1966 North Vietnamese stamp, right, celebrates the inflated claim of 1,500 U.S. planes shot down to date.
 
In the summer of 1972, during the intense American bombing campaign against the North, the North Vietnamese Army produced a series of stamps showing the destruction of American war planes and celebrating exaggerated claims of thousands of U.S. aircraft shot down.
  
The NLF went as far as to glorify the practice of assassination. In 1965 the NFL issued a stamp bearing the image of Nguyen Van Troi, a Viet Cong who was executed in 1964 by South Vietnam for attempting to assassinate American Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge.
 
This famous 1972 North Vietnamese stamp shows American POW behind bars.
  <CLICK ON ANY STAMP TO ENLARGE>
 
1965 North Vietnamese stamp depicts the United States as a poisonous snake being strangled by the people of Africa and Asia.
 
And soon after an American burned himself alive at the Pentagon in 1965, his image appeared above a sign-waving group of protesters on a North Vietnamese stamp. American Norman Morrison was honored by North Vietnam for his self-immolation at the Pentagon in 1965 with this stamp which also featured American protesters.
  
 Claimed victories over vastly superior U.S. naval and air forces was key to sustaining the populace. Fighters attack off-shore Navy ships and bring down a fighter.
 
For the Viet Cong, it was imperative to constantly nurture the nation of a people's war of liberation, thus the depiction of selfless and heroic guerilla fighters was paramount.
 
Since 1975, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has rarely portrayed a VC or NFL symbols on its national stamps.
 
Many of these stamps issued by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese during the war depicted scenes far removed from reality. It was propaganda at it's best.
 
The postage stamps of Vietnam were issued by a variety of states and administrations. Stamps were first introduced by the French colonial administration in 1862. Stamps specifically for Vietnam were first issued in 1945. During the decades of conflict and partitioning, stamps were issued by mutually hostile governments. The reunification of Vietnam in 1976 brought about a unified postal service.
 
Letters Home from Vietnam
The truly amazing thing was you could receive and send mail while out in the bush.  CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE 
We didn't need stamps. We just wrote "free" on the upper right corner of the envelope. We were allowed to simply write "FREE" in the upper right corner of our envelopes to mail letters home from Vietnam. Out in the field, we would get a couple of big orange nylon bags delivered by helicopter with all of the mail for a week or so to our unit. When we mailed letters out, we simply passed them along to the company clerk who got them to the FPO, or Fleet Post Office. All Marine unit return addresses in Vietnam contained the line "FPO San Francisco 9xxxx" and were turned over from the postal system to the military at Travis Air Force Base for mail going to Vietnam, and delivered to the same facility from Vietnam to be entered into the U.S. Postal system for stateside delivery.
 
In every American war from the Revolution to the Persian Gulf War, military men and women captured the horror, pathos and intensity of warfare by writing letters home. Many of them were still teenagers at the time.
Indians Of The Air
When The U.S. Army christened the Bell H-13A helicopter "Sioux" in 1948, it established a tradition that was formalized in the Department of Defense regulation on naming weapons systems, all helicopters would be named after prominent Native Americans and their nations.
American servicemen, however, have an ongoing way for coining their own terms for their equipment and the protracted Vietnam War gave birth to a rich alternative vocabulary from which helicopters were hardly immune. The U.S. Navy and Air Force did not adopt the Army's policy and used other official terminology for their helicopters. 
 
 
During the Vietnam War about half of the war's choppers were constantly flying and about half of them got shot down.
A Grunt's Best Friend
The sound of a Huey on it's way was a welcome one, whether it was ferrying in reinforcements, rushing the wounded to life-saving aid, or laying a screen of smoke to provide cover for troops on the ground. Using helicopters for rapid insertions of landing forces to pursue an elusive enemy was among the Vietnam War's hallmark achievements.
For all of us who fought on the ground in Vietnam, we rode to war in the Huey, and that 'whup, whup, whup' is burned into our brains. Indeed, Vietnam is rightly regarded as "the helicopter war" and the lessons learned have changed the way war is waged forever.
Semper Fi,
Echo Company 2/7 Vietnam Veterans Chapter