When I was in VietNam with the Marine Corps,  I was the diving  
supervisor of 1st Recon in addition to being a bush rat. I was issued  
a diving watch made by Blancpain that had Tritium on the dial  
markings. I got shot up and blown up  down near Thuong Duc and  
medevaced to a hospital ship. When my CO came to visit me his first  
question was "Where's the watch?" the second was, "How was I  
feeling?" It wasn't a surprise though, a month or two before that,  
one of my divers was taking a VC equivalent of an IED off a bridge,  
having removed the initiator from the main charge it went off   
messing up his hand some, but shredding the watch band, the watch was  
lost, though we looked for it for hours. It must have cost me 20  
hours of paper work! The watch I was wearing had two pieces of wire  
from the explosion nailed straight through the crystal and through  
the face ... It didn't work too well any more. I am glad the Colonel  
go to do the paperwork on that one ... sigh ... the memories!


---
cheers ... 73 de brian  riley,  n1bq , underhill center, vermont
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On Sep 25, 2006, at 11:05 AM, Alan B. Pearce wrote:

> When I worked at the DSIR in NZ they were doing a mortar ranging  
> calculator
> as a project, and to illuminate the display has some little glass  
> vials
> filled with a tritium based radio active source IIRC, that caused a
> fluorescent coating on the inside of the tube to glow pale green.  
> Apparently
> these are only available to the military because of the radio  
> active content

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