Helping Fellow Gamers Connect with Their Past.

By Andy Allcock

Greetings, today I want to talk about how sometimes historical gaming can help others to discover more about their past.

Mid-February a new gamer to our group reached out to me for assistance. He hoped that my being prior service, would give me some insight to assisting in find out what unit his grandfather served in during Vietnam. Lucky for him it did.

It started with a Facebook message and asking if I would help.  Who am I to reject the pleas of help from a newbie gamer? with that out of the way he sent me what little information he had. Most of that information came in the forms of photographs.    At first, he sent me what he thought were unit photos, unfortunately, they were photos from basic and advanced training.

With further investigation, he sent me photos from Vietnam.

With this photo, I knew I was looking for field Artillery.   Unfortunately, I still didn’t have much to go on.  I knew it was an M110, one of the biggest (203mm) guns the US Army ever put on a mobile platform.   I then asked if he had photos with the front identification numbers.  With these numbers, id be able to finally figure out a unit.

He then sent this.

Finally, I could identify the unit as the 32nd Field Artillery.   with a quick google search I was able to identify that the 2nd Battalion, 32nd Field Artillery had indeed served in Vietnam.   Now to dig deeper.   I asked for more photos.

These two photos were the last pieces of the puzzle I needed.  I now knew the name of the gun as well as the possible Company he served in.   With this information in hand, I wanted to confirm my findings.   I PM’d U.S Army W.T.F! moments.  (a fantastic group site on Facebook for US Army Veterans) one of the admins confirmed that I had read the unit identification correctly and even informed me that a book had been written about that particular gun’s name and story!

In conclusion, a historical gamer’s knowledge of the minute details of their miniatures can sometimes help others, especially those new to the hobby, find out more about their past.  Sometimes being a rivet counter isn’t a bad thing.