{"id":23839,"date":"2011-06-10T13:02:53","date_gmt":"2011-06-10T17:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=23839"},"modified":"2011-06-10T13:52:59","modified_gmt":"2011-06-10T17:52:59","slug":"billy-w-adamson-the-guitar-strumming-hero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=23839","title":{"rendered":"Billy W. Adamson; the guitar-strumming hero"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of you sent me this scan of an article in the Western North Carolina Mountaineer<\/a>, but I’ll be dipped if I can remember who it was. Sorry. <\/p>\n

Apparently they ran the article in the print edition and it never made it to the internet edition. But apparently, it’s about this poor down-trodden fellow who joined the Army during the Vietnam War, became an infantryman, airborne then a Ranger and made Sergeant all before he was 18. Then the Army shipped his studly ass straight to Vietnam on his 18th birthday, February 20, 1969 and he didn’t leave until November 5, 1973 – that’s one long-ass tour, brother. He said he was assigned to the 5th SFG and attached to 173rd. (Sorry you guys from 1st Cav, I guess he didn’t think enough of you to make his story include you).<\/p>\n

He goes on about how he was strumming his guitar one night and some sergeant major drafted him into MACV because I guess they were understrength guitar players.<\/p>\n

Anyhow he was captured and held as a POW in Laos for three months. he doesn’t say how he became a non-POW. But I guess the Army screwed him for his POW time when he refused to re-enlist and said he’d been AWOL and dishonorably discharged him. Here’s the scan of his story;
\n
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course, not much of his story jibes with his records. He was a sergeant, but unless Special Forces had artillerymen in those days, I don’t think they had a slot for him;<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And there’s no mention of his Ranger School or Airborne School, or Camp Mackall. He did go to Vietnam for a year from Nov ’67- Nov ’68, but he was with an arty unit in the 9th Division and returned to serve at Fort Sill until his discharge in ’69. No assignment to MACV, though.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Why would someone with a service record like that feel a need to lie? He also claimed in the article that the American Legion and POW Network<\/a> was helping him straighten out his records. POW Network sent me these records, so I guess he won’t get any help there.<\/p>\n

I also don’t see any time counted for AWOL or MIA.<\/p>\n

Here’s the other half of the scan in case you’re interested;<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of you sent me this scan of an article in the Western North Carolina Mountaineer, … Billy W. Adamson; the guitar-strumming hero<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-phony-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}