Gerhard Grieb was born into a refugee family from Eastern Europe, emigrating into Germany in 1946, the year he was born, and into the US in 1956. After completing public education in the Philadelphia suburbs, he attended college for 2 years when he was drafted into the Army. He served 1 year in Vietnam and then returned to finish his BA. He went on to get a Master's at U of Md. and dropped out of the PhD program in 1977 to begin working for the Postal Service. He served as VP and editor of the Letter Carrier's local until then switched to become an Electronic Technician. He was married in 1970, divorced in 1980 then remarried to the same woman in 1982 to the present. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2009 and retired at that time. He lived in Takoma Park from 1973 until 1987 and has lived in Sandy Spring since.
Check out Gerhard's extensive website detailing many documents, letters home, stories, photos, videos, and other essays related to the war.
https://coredawg.tripod.com/
A snippet from Thoughts on Viet Nam:
"We were forced out of the area under pressure and set up a perimeter around the area and spent the night there as artillery pounded the area through- out the night. As a fighterbomber flew over the area at dawn, a sole machine-gunner opened up on it. The rest of the unit, to our surprise, had managed to slip away during the night, under cover of the nipa palms which hung over the river to their back. When we swept through the abandoned camp we found that the dead we had seen there the previous day had been buried by their comrades, despite the massive artillery fire of the night. I kept the flag and turned in the rest of the pack to S-2 when we returned to camp."
How Sesame Street is helping Ukrainian children traumatized by war
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