Acknowledgments

I am extremely grateful to have met kind knowledgeable and helpful people as I prepared the text.

Special thanks to James, my friend, an American collector, for his kindliness, his patience and his help about technical information concerning engravings done in Vietnam and his erudition about the first engraved zippos during the French colonial period. Gentleman, you are number one. It is nice to be important but is more important to be nice.

Thanks to you Dan, for the long summer evenings spent to listen to your Vietnam with your old faithful buddies, and for all the cans of beer to recreate the ambiance.

I wish to extend many thanks to my friends Miss Beauty and Mr Luck from Saigon for the help during the visit of the craftsman workshop in south Vietnam.

Also thanks to my colleagues from Pittsburgh for taking time to answer my request for information.

Without each of them, this web site would not have come to the light.

All errors in this page are my own. If you have any correction, addition or photos, please contact me.

I would like to apologize for my English, it was a lot of job to translate and nobody could help me for this part. I had to use a dictionary and some French was translated word by word.

Since the first release, Mike, in a friendly way, translated my poor text into intelligible document. Thanks for you Mike.

© R. Munoz Paris le 8 Decembre 2004.

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Berto,
My first Zippos were purchased while was a G.I. in Vietnam and I bought them on the Vietnamese market, and they probably got them from some G.I. who got it at the PX.
I remember vividly having two Zippos engraved while I was in service with the 101st Airborne Division's 1st Brigade "The Nomads of Vietnam" Consequently both were lost in the jungles of Vietnam, never to have been found again… Believe me I did indeed look. Many G.I. had their lighters "taken" while at brothels in country… The bar girls always wanted them as souvenirs "You souvenir me G.I." and they could not pronounce the word zippo it came out "shippo"… I am eager to see your web page.
James

Hi Bob,
Here is the information I gathered from my husband, Andy, who was in the Marines from 1969 to 1973. He was in Da Nang (Vietnam) in 1971 for about 13 months. He did not get his lighter until he was out of Da Nang. He bought his Zippo in 1972 in Subic Bay, Philippines. He bought it off a street vendor and had it engraved with the following: "We die at the hands of those who smile at war". He made that up. He said he was angry about being there and tired of all the human suffering. They used machines to engrave the lighters but Andy does not know what kind they used. He did not have the city, date or Vietnam engraved on his lighter.

I hope this information helps you. Good luck Cindy

Bob,
Some answers to your questions about Zippo Lighters & VietNam.The Zippo Lighter I purchased in VietNam was bought in a PX (Post Exchange) which is like a department store. It was very rare for a Marine to get to a place like that. I was there twice in a 6 month period. My lighter was engraved by the same means that they engrave lighters now. I just told them what I wanted written on it. Another means was to buy it on the Black Market in one of the large cities of VietNam such as DaNang, where they were already engraved. There were a number of sayings that were very popular at that time, e.g. "If you're not with the one you love, love the one you're with"-----"Candy is dandy, but sex doesn't rot your teeth"------"Napalm sticks to kids"-------"Kill them all, let God sort them out" etc.-------**My lighter only ad my name on it. I hope some of these answers were of help to you.
Sincerely, Jack.

Hi Robert,
Sorry for the delay I am getting back to you, I wanted to check a few things before.
The only true way to be confident, is with the acid etched zippo's, these can't be reproduced, although they are trying. The new style of fakes are currently appearing on the web, they appear to acid etched but with closer inspection they are actually machined engraved, these can be identified by very fine lines in the engraving (there is two up at the moment - but because of the quality of the photos you cant see the engraving, unless you have seen them before), and they tend to stuff up their dates on the lighters.
Note: TF-116 River Patrol Force was established in Apr 66.
Hope this helps, all the best Ian.