Ancient Web: The 227th Helicopter Battalion Preserved Its Vietnam Memory by Company

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

A military unit can be remembered by its number. The people who served in it tend to remember a much more specific place: their company, their aircraft, their crew, and the names on the roster.

Visit the 227th Assault Helicopter Battalion web hub.

The homepage for the 227th Assault Helicopter Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), is notably spare. Beneath the unit's insignia it sends readers to four company websites, A through D. Each has its own identity and address, rather than disappearing into one interchangeable unit history.

The surviving Company B page asks visitors to help document its Vietnam heritage. It specifically invites photographs, orders, news articles, incident reports, after-action reports, rosters, and stories. The Company C site repeats the request and encourages visitors to sign or read its flight log.

The website as a reunion table

That request is more significant than it first appears. Official military history can preserve operations and command structures, but individual memory is likely to reside in shoeboxes, private albums, correspondence, and stories told among former comrades.

A page asking veterans to send the webmaster their materials is a form of grassroots archival collection. It gives visitors both an address and a reason to contribute, without requiring them to learn a content-management system.

The pages themselves are time capsules. The B and C company sites show December 2016 updates and copyright notices extending back to 2003. The Company D page still describes itself as under construction, with a July 2018 update and a request for more information. Some sections are thin; that unevenness is part of the record.

The public landing pages do not by themselves establish the completeness of the archive or verify every recollection it may eventually contain. They show something more direct: an effort to keep the battalion's history connected to the people who lived it.

The old Web was particularly well suited to this kind of project. A shared purpose, a few domain names, and volunteers willing to maintain them could become a meeting point lasting decades.

Explore the battalion and its company pages.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.