Every year at this time, reunions are held across the nation, with former high school chums reuniting to talk about the good old days when they were at Zappa Zappa High School.

This summer, the classes of 1957, '67, '77, '82 and '97 have convened to page through old yearbooks, eat dinner, have a drink, dance, and reminisce about high school flings, touchdowns, who's doing what now, and much, much more.

Earl Watters of Rio Rancho was at his reunion last week. It wasn't a high school reunion, nor was it something he does every five or 10 years.

This time, the reunion for the 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry from A Company, was in Albuquerque.

Watters and his surviving buddies congregate at a different place each year, and this was the Duke City's first time to serve as host. Last year, the guys convened in Las Vegas; in 2005, they were in San Diego.

Next year, the battalion will meet in Myrtle Beach, S.C.; in 2009, the members head to Minot, N.D., which would never be considered as a garden spot or a destination, but that doesn't matter to these guys.

They've been to a much-worse place: Vietnam.

Lt. Col. Ted Danielsen, who now lives in Myrtle Beach, S.C., led these men into battle.

Many of them said they'd follow him anywhere even today, four decades later.

Former B Co. Major Roy Martin said there was a good reason for the men's loyalty and confidence, even today: "He was a hell of a soldier. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, our second-highest decoration."

"I commanded A Company, the 8th Cavalry, and the Army decided to make our brigade a parachute brigade, so all of a sudden my company had to be all volunteers - and not all the people in the company volunteered," Danielsen recalled. "These guys started coming in and I was linking them up with good sergeants out of the 82nd Airborne Division. This was in 1965.

"They changed us from the old 11th Air Assault Division to the 1st Cavalry Division, and then they put us on a boat for 30 days," he explained. "Now, most people would think a 30-day cruise to get to Vietnam was bad.

"But these guys slept that far (about 18 inches) from each other, and you can't do that for 30 days without really becoming closely bonded," he said. "There was a great deal of taking care of each other.

"Like Earl: He promised a kid named Canales that if anything happened to one of them, the other would visit their family. He was killed in 1966 and Earl went down to his grave about 20 years later - but he did do his promise."

"He's buried down in Benson, Ariz.," Watters said. "I went down there and met the sisters, went down to the grave and put some flowers and flags on the grave and had a little service. It was Memorial Day. I told them how he had died and where it was at - they didn't know the true story of how he got killed. They're wonderful people -they're all cowboys."

Danielsen said he was last in Albuquerque in 1962, when he was driving west en route to language school in Monterey, Calif., and from there to Oakland and ultimately to Vietnam.

"I was in Vietnam in '62 and '63, then I came back to Ft. Benning. We tested the helicopter concept in a test division. They changed it to the 1st Cavalry Division," he continued. "My brigade commander asked if I'd go back; I said not unless I commanded a rifle company, which is what we were."

As for the war, or conflict, itself, Danielsen said, "Ho Chi Minh had been brainwashed in Russia and he made (North Vietnam) a Communist country and he wanted to take over the South."

The U.S. got involved to prevent that.

Watters, a Rio Rancho plumber nicknamed "Fingers" for his steady work with the machine gun, was "famous for getting peaches and stuff like that out of the general's mess," Danielsen said.

But he didn't know Watters was the culprit until stories were told at a reunion in Biloxi about eight years ago.

"We were hungry, that's why we took the general's peaches... I didn't know they were the general's peaches for 40 years," Watters said.

But snagging fruit - Watters and his buddies got sick from over-imbibing on the peaches, Danielsen recalled - was only one of Watters' attributes.

According to some of his buddies - a man confined to a wheelchair (he lost the use of his legs in a helicopter crash during a mission) who survived Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, plus soldiers from Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Alabama and Mississippi - Danielsen fondly remembered Watters, and not only for his famous peaches raid.

Forty-two years ago, Danielsen said, "When an American unit was surrounded in the Ia Drang Valley. They had called in and said they wouldn't be there the next morning if they weren't reinforced," he said. "It was after dark. So my company got the mission to fly into this (landing zone) that was about 100 yards across, flat, and the North Vietnamese had the tree line.

"So we flew in on two helicopters at a time - it'd never been done at night into a hot L.Z. (We) reinforced the perimeter, held on until morning, when the North Vietnamese left. So they saved another unit (of about 135 men) from annihilation," Danielsen said. "What happened was one of their platoons sprang an ambush on a greater force; it turned out to be either a North Vietnamese heavy weapons company or a battalion, and when they pulled back to their perimeter, which is the one we reinforced, the North Vietnamese followed them in (and surrounded them)."

That battle is considered by most scholars to be the first conventional battle of the Vietnam war. Using its newly enhanced technique of aerial reconnaissance, the 1st Cavalry and NVA suffered heavy casualties by the time the battle ended.

"I was carrying some wounded, carrying some dead - it's just what you did for your buddies," Watters said. "There wasn't a man in our company who wouldn't put his life on the line for a buddy. Our medic got hit six times, finally passed out after six shots. He did survive; they gave him the Distinguished Service Cross."

The annual get-together is cathartic for Watters and his buddies.

"They're a bunch of good guys; I love them all," he said.

"Soldiers are trained to obey lawful orders, and soldiers are going to do what they're told to do," Danielsen, a veteran of 27 years in the military, said. "The political realm? Personal opinions: We were asked to go to Vietnam to prevent the government of North Vietnam for imposing its government on South Vietnam. South Vietnam was a Democracy; North Vietnam was Communist. That, to me, is why we went. ... We could have won easily, I believe, by invading North Vietnam with ground troops."

What about the War in Iraq?

"Iraq is a theocracy; everything is controlled by religion," he said. "The divine speaks more than the people ... and we're trying to make it into a Democracy, which is the will of the people. Well, the people have got to come together to show what that will is. That's not happening in Iraq.

"The nation is not mobilized, which it needs to do to support that big a force where it is," he said, offering his take. "My opinion: We need a draft, we need a bigger army, we don't need to listen to anybody ... We're too polarized: Either we're going to get everybody to support it and declare war and all of that or we're just - excuse my expression - urinating up a rope and it doesn't work.

"I think we're in a mess; this could be a hard time to get out," he concluded.

But if Danielsen were handed the reins of a unit again, watch out.

"If he needed us right now, even Perry in the wheelchair, said the same thing if he was going to Iraq right now, all of us would follow him - even if it meant we'd all die," Watters said. "There isn't a man in A Company that wouldn't follow him."

Danielsen, who spent 10 years teaching high school math and algebra after his military service, said this the reunion is the highlight of his year - and he wouldn't be surprised to see these guys heed his orders again.

"These are wonderful people and they are loyal to each other; that loyalty comes from camaraderie of hardship, call it," he said. "These guys developed it in that ship; that was the biggest loyalty thing I'd ever seen."

Watters worked hard to make this year's event a success.

Held at the Nativo Lodge in Albuquerque, Watters made sure the men got to ride the Tram, visit the Vietnam Memorial at Angel Fire, shop at Old Town, gamble at the casinos, be entertained by mariachis and Santo Domingo Pueblo dancers, and participate in a memorial service Saturday evening that'll be hard to forget.

"The High Desert Drum and Bagpipes - the whole crew. They played 'Amazing Grace' and there wasn't a dry eye in the house," he said.

"Everything was great here, they told me - all of them - this was the best reunion they'd had in 22 years," Watters said. "I had them busy for four days."

It wasn't about having fun.

"We pay tribute to our buddies - that's why we do it," he said. "It's not really to have a good time; it's to reminisce about the ones you lost. Half of them in my unit had been wounded; one guy had five Purple Hearts. Me and the captain (Danielsen) were the only ones that weren't wounded."

By the numbers, Watters said, "331 men in my battalion were killed and we had one (Missing In Action); we never did find out what happened to him. We had about 110 show up for at least part of the event."

"The medals don't count," Danielsen concluded. "What counts is the bravery of the troops. They did a terrific job."