Small World
or
How I found Vito
by Dan King
One of my jobs in the S-1 was casualty reported. This was not a good job. Each one of those little pieces of paper represented a 1/1 Marine who had a hole in him, multiple holes, parts missing or was dead. In addition to the Marine that got choppered out, it also represented that Marine's unit. When he go hit, he was with people that cared about him. It might have been his own fault he got hit, or somebody else screwed up, or everybody did everything right and he still got hit. It didn't matter. Marines were hurt or killed and that hurt us all.
The casualty reporting followed a strict procedure. I think there were nine points on it, 1)Name, 2)Serial number, 3)WIA or KIA, etc. Each day I had to call this in to 1st Marine Division CRC (Casualty Reporting Center). One day I was talking to someone at Division CRC, when he said, "Hold on". He then said to someone there, "Hey Vito, what about...<don't remember the rest.".
While I was in college, pledging Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, one of the older guys was named Vito Mangogna. I knew that he joined the Marine Corps after graduation, but hadn't really thought about him since. I asked the CRC guy to put Vito on the phone on the off chance that this was my Vito. I said the secret fraternity recognition words. Even though he did not respond with the correct words, I recognized his voice when he said, "Who the f**k is this?".
I was able (I don't remember how) to wangle an overnight trip to 1st Marine Division. We went to the eclub up some giant mountain, laughed, talked and got real drunk on a bottlle of ouzo, some kind of greek liquor. I've been drunk several times since then, but never again on ouzo. It was a very pleasant evening in Viet Nam. Kind of like a RVN timeout.
