28 May 2012

Chapter 52 I lied to my mates!

I know you are going to find this hard to believe, but I lied to my mates.

I didn't mean it, honest.  But the stress of war made me do it.  It wasn't my fault.

You see a couple of my mates were writing to me every now and then and I was probably telling them how much of a hero I wuz.

But that wasn't the lie I'm talking about.

This is the lie....


I wrote and told my mates that I met this girl in Vung Tau, that she was a nurse; and guess what?  They believed me!  What idiots!

Actually I was experimenting with my new Canon EXEE SLR camera.  I framed up to a picture in a magazine and I took the shot you see here.  It was on a slide and I may have got my mates to run a picture off it, I can't recall.  But they thought she was great.  I did too, whoever she is.

The whole platoon knew about the joke and following a platoon reunion about ten years ago we produced a book about our adventures in Vietnam.  The photo appears in the book.


The caption reads, "Caucasian dreams.  A picture Ian Cavanough took from a magazine early in the tour and sent it home to his mates telling them how he met this nurse in Vung Tau... the rest of the platoon had pictures of the real thing but told Ian they cut it out of a Pix Mag... and of course Ian believed them."

Hmmm, I think they are having a go at me here.

This is the actual magazine.
Life Magazine July 1970


The girl's name is Katie O'Pace McCauliff

http://www.facebook.com/katie.mccauliff




2 comments:

1735099 said...

That was a long time ago Cav. I wonder what she looks like now.....

cav said...

Just for you 1735099 I managed to track down some more information about the girl.

One of my Army mates Dave spotted the picture while reading about Life Magazine 50 years or something.

He put me onto a website where I can buy the magazine - so I did - it should arrive in a couple of weeks

Isn't the internet amazing?