(no rating)
I bought and read this book in order to provide the men of the 6/31st the ability to provide a review of Urban’s Vietnam experience. Over the last 5 years we have been very upset with the fabricated Vietnam experience that he has been telling at his numerous paid speaking engagements. To my surprise I found the Vietnam experience described in this book much more believable than the tales that he usually provides at his speaking engagements. Please understand that we Vietnam vets congratulate Urban on his outstanding accomplishments as a disabled Vietnam vet. We simply have a problem with his fabricated Vietnam experience.
You will find my inputs below. First a couple of corrections for Urban: (1) NCOC training was at Ft Benning not Ft Polk. You did your OJT at Polk (check your military records...we did), (2) Doubt you did an air combat assault in the Delta in a Chinook. It was probably a Huey. I did a hundred or more...all in Huey’s...not one in a Chinook. Additional note: Per Urban’s military records, again, which we have, Urban spent less than a month in Vietnam. Per his own inputs he spent the first 2 weeks on sick call and only 2 days in the field. He spent the remaining week in a hospital in Saigon before being shipped out of Vietnam.
FYI: My review inputs below were provided to the men of the 6/31st via our 6/31st Facebook page.
Well guys, Urban still got his body bag into the story which we know is BS. He also mentioned his lack of knowledge as to what happened to his platoon...based on the 6/31st KIA records it's clear.....nothing happened to them..not one man lost during the 2 days that Urban says that he was in the field (8-11/8-12). He also got his medic buddy Brian Leets mentioned as the medic who "might" have saved him from that body bag. Again, we know that there was no way in hell that a man from the 6/31st would have been shipped out of IV Corp all the way to III Corp where Brian was stationed. In addition there is no way that a man in a diabetic coma could have survived 2 days in a body bag in the Delta.
If he had left out the body bag, the medic and the possibility that his platoon lost alot/all of its men.....it wouldn't have been too bad a tale. I do wonder, however, how he could have experienced so much in the one week or less that he wasn't either on sick call or in the Saigon hospital.
Another point to remember. Urban doesn’t remember the name of a single person with whom he served in Vietnam and not a single man on our present 6/31st roster (2,000+ men) remembers Urban.
On the last couple of pages of the book can be found the following statement from Urban: "After email communications with Jerry, and a few others from the 9th Infantry Division sending uncomplimentary emails about my pretending to be in the same outfit as they were, and my statement of (being) found alive (in a body bag) being false, the pride of serving with the 9th Infantry Division and in Vietnam was gone. Not a battle I wanted or was able to fight."
How sad....he divorced us.
Delta75
(reviewed the day of purchase)