I’ll try to explain the picture you see on the left.   It should give you an idea of how things were early on in the life of the 221st.  It’s a Christmas Card.  

 

I joined the 221st in Vietnam as a lab man, 84G20, between the 1st and 2nd Packets.   Soon I found myself on TDY with the 69th Signal at Tan Son Nhat.  

One night we were all having a few drinks and decided that we needed to make some kind of statement.   This was sometime around early Oct  1967.  We decided that we had to get a picture.   So we all started looking for everything we needed: some paper to print it on, and chemicals to process the prints.    We already had the color enlarger. To get things going we decided to have a photo shoot and then pick out  the best shot for what we wanted to do.  The shot on the left that you see is what we decided on.   It was taken in Saigon along the river by the Saigon Zoo.  

We found some color print paper.  I must repeat the word FOUND.  We were good at FINDING things in those early days.  We experimented with chemicals from the E3 and E4 process and from the C-10 negative process and came up with the print you see.

Then our plan really went into action.  We contacted a friend we worked with who was in Crypto Communications.   We asked him if he could get us a list of all US Congressmen and Senators and their mailing addresses.  Do you see where this going?  No problem, he said, he’d.have them to us in the morning.

After we had the list we made as many of these prints as we could. Anyone living in the same state worked together to save paper.   We covered all the states for everyone involved.  Then we took a few prints for our ourselves (which is why I still have mine) and then we had another meeting.

We sat around with a few beers and had a good laugh.  We had made our statement from Vietnam.   We weren’t sure what it meant, but we did it anyway.        

I hope this gives everybody an idea of what it was like in those early days with the guys of the 1st packet.   We started in tents and built our company from the ground.   We were family. This is how we worked......together.

I got on the Facebook group  to find some of the old guys and none that I know are there......hope ya'll can enjoy what I have written and wish you would help me find my old family.

      - Sp4 Leslie Cutright