Chapter 50

Nick Longo

HM2 Nicolas Longo was from Pennsylvania. He was assigned to BAS 3/3 on June 2 and claimed he was half Italian and half Tunisian. Nick served as an infantryman in the army in Korea. After his army tour was up, Nick joined the navy and became a corpsman. Dr. Miller met Nick when he was with 2/26. When he was transferred to 3/3 on May 5, he requested that Longo be reassigned to 3/3 also.

Nick stood about five foot five and was considerably overweight compared to the rest of us. He was so out of shape that I wondered how he got through FMF training. Nick was a naturally friendly and jolly individual who possessed the rare talent as a “cumshaw artist,” which is a term used in the navy to describe someone who does well in negotiating trade. A cumshaw artist is usually appreciated within a unit for the ability to provide items obtained usually outside normal channels through unofficial means (whether deviously or simply ingeniously). His main job was to find and acquire items needed by Dr. Miller for the BAS.

Dr. Miller would periodically send Nick to Da Nang and Phu Bai after items he needed for the BAS. Longo took with him the wooden statues of the Playboy centerfolds carved by Dr. Miller. On one such trip to Da Nang, Nick returned with a portable diesel generator and a refrigerator. We then had electricity in not only the BAS, but lines were run to the corpsmen’s bunkers as well. The refrigerator was used in the BAS to preserve our antibiotics, but most of the space inside the fridge was filled with beer and sodas.

On Operation Cimarron, Nick took a canteen full of scotch whiskey. Unfortunately that left him with only one canteen of water. He hadn’t been out in the mountains for more than two days when he was medevaced back with heat exhaustion.