I Came By The Name Honestly

I'm sure everyone out there already knows, but for the 2 or 3 of you that might NOT........my blogname "Bazookaman", comes from my Marine Corps days.

"So there I was"  in 1967, a 19-year old Lance Corporal at Camp Pendleton with an M-14, minding my own business, not bothering anybody, when the First Sergeant forms everybody up, then dismisses the first 3 squads, leaving the 4th squad still standing.  I was in that 4th squad.

In the usual "high-tech procedure" of matching the "right dude for the right job", Our "1st Shirt" does the typical Marine Corps thing of........YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU and YOU!

A third of us in that 4th squad are gonna train to be machine gunners, a third will be in mortars and the last third of us will go to rocket school and learn to handle a bazooka,  THAT was the "third" I was in.....this was in addition of course to being riflemen.

So, after a couple of weeks in "rocket school" just outside of Camp Las Pulgas, it was back to Mainside to rejoin my training unit, and we shipped out to 'Nam in that fall of '67.

I'd no sooner gotten into DaNang, when I was trucked out to Camp Evans to join "K'" Company and the bazooka team I would be with for the next 13 months.  In the darker photo on the right:  Standing---Randy Moe, John Snowder and Octavio Aceves.  Kneeling:---Me, Isaac Walker and John Bosch................(Bosch was killed  on Hai Van Pass, with about 3 months left to go).

We'd all been trained on the old M-20, (a big 90mm rocket launcher that had been around since the Korean War), and the newer, smaller 66mm LAAW (Light Anti-tank Assault Weapon).  in the right-hand photo here.

OK.......FAST-FORWARD to 2002.....an old military surplus M-20 rocket launcher becomes available for sale...........being the old "nostalgiast" I am....I "needed to have it."  I bid on it.  I GOT it!

NOW.....before any of you out there start to PANIC...and I KNOW of a few who WOULD,,,,,,,,,the ATF has to personally inspect and CERTIFY that old war weapons like this have been "de-activated", and this one HAS, or I couldn't have bought it.  What you're looking at here is the muzzle of the 5-ft M-20....and in the 2nd photo is the fire control box, mounted atop the breech, where the rocket is inserted.

If I'd been a druglord with a Mexican drug cartel, I could have gotten an OPERATIONAL one!--------(you KNOW I had to throw that one in there!).

But HONEST guys only get "wall hangers."  Still, as an old bazookaman, THIS was a NECESSARY purchase.

I'd squeezed one of these triggers a few times over there.  In the 2nd photo is the flip-out sight.

The old M-20 "stovepipe" as we called it, is 5 feet in length, weighs 13 lbs, and could shoot a 90mm----9-pound rocket 850-900 yards.

A 9-lb "blue practice rocket" (The H.E.'s----High Explosive rockets, were painted olive drab with yellow bands).   This one's already been fired and is now inert.  The M-20 was phased out after Vietnam, and I doubt you could even find rockets in a warehouse anymore.

It's obsolete now............maybe like old "bazookaman" here is...........but anyway........if you're new to the blog-world here, and wondered why they call me "Zook"........now ya know.

That was my "line of work" 43 years ago.