Premiere on WPT March 24, 2010

Announcer:
Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories is a partnership of the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs, the Wisconsin Historical Society and Wisconsin Public Television.

ADVISE AND ASSIST

James Daley:
I just remember the first time we got assigned to B Company. I was convinced that they were all criminals. Just the way they acted, the things they were doing. I wasn't in contact with anybody I served with until about 1990. I got a call from a fellow. He was one of my former lieutenants. I asked what he was doing. He told me. He said, “Well, what are you doing now?” And I said, “Well, I'm circuit court judge.” He said, “Oh, that’s -- I wouldn't have thought that.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “I would've thought you'd be in prison.” He got there late in my tour. (laughs)

Larry Miller:
You might have to ask 15 people what day it is. You just don't know. You lose track of that. So I called back to the ship and said, “What's the date today?” They said like August 16. “Lt. Cole,” I said, “I have to be back in the states August 20.” “Holy--! Okay.” Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh.

I flew back to the ship, grabbed my gear. Flew to Danang. I grabbed a flight, come home. In a matter of three days, I'm sitting at home with my mom and dad. Three days. They should've never turned me loose on the civilian population in three days from when I left there. You just can't. You know. It'd take the rest of your life to even try to come to terms with this, let alone, here you go. You're gone. That's a bite.

Narrator:
Their country asked them to serve, and they answered the call. But when the men and women of Wisconsin went to fight in Southeast Asia, they had no idea that the Vietnam War would be part of them for the rest of their lives. Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories.

Announcer:
Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories was made possible bylead gifts from Don and Roxanne Weber and from Associated Bank; with major support from the Ho-Chunk Nation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; and from Wisconsin Public Service Foundation, Kwik Trip, the Forest County Potawatomi Foundation, Oshkosh Defense, the General Motors Dealers of Northeast Wisconsin, the Oneida Nation; and these Wisconsin individuals and companies who believe that it is long overdue, but never too late to honor the service and sacrifice of our Vietnam Veterans; with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

John Brogan:
I was drafted in 1954. And I wound up, the better part of a year, assigned to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 1955. And it was an interesting time in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, which were the three constituent nations that made up French IndoChina in 1950.

We were providing military assistance, and supplies, and arms, and training to the French army, already at war with the Communists in the north. By 1954, they were good and truly equipped in Dien Bien Phu.

John Mielke:
I was in the reserve military, rather than the regular Army as a physician. Then one day, I got the information that I was going to Vietnam. And I was going to take care of helicopter pilots.

In 1962, we didn't have any military over in Vietnam at that time, other than the MAAG units, Military Assistance and Advisory Group, that took over when the French were defeated.

John Brogan:
Dien Bien Phu was more than just a major defeat. It was a major wake-up call to the West. The Vietnamese captured the fire base, the best troops the French Army had. Then they let them go. And the pictures of these French soldiers and the nurses that came out of Vietnam were just horrendous.

You have to look at it like this. The world, at that time, had certain images of people of color. It came as a terrible cultural shock to see all these little North Vietnamese as the victors, against this bunch of mechanized Westerners.

And within a short period of time, we had taken over the colonial cloak that the French had dropped on the ground.

John Mielke:
We sailed up the Saigon River, and we hit Saigon about 6:00 at night. I'll never forget the view. It was absolutely gorgeous, this French city, with its wide boulevards. And to add to the beauty of it was the Vietnam women.

This is my first experience of the military not knowing what they're doing. These guys have been on the ship for 24 days. They gave them all $75 and let them go. I'll tell you who knew what to do. It was those girls down there. They had it all figured out, and the taxi drivers, and they just cleaned them out of their money. These guys came back, and drunk, and every other which way. I thought that was kind of sad. How were we supposed to act in their country, that we didn't know anything about?

John Brogan:
I got in and out of Saigon regularly, carrying messages and communications. We were out one night to a night club. And the place erupted. It was like a movie set. Boom! Bang! Dancing, argument, wham! The first thing I see is somebody takes one of these things, smashes it on a table, and slices the guy across from him.

And the only guy who knew just exactly what to do, said "Run!” He jumped up, smashed a beer bottle to get himself armed, and then ran through a window, retreating as fast as we could. I wrote home to my mom and said, "Boy, wow!” 20 years old, DePere, Wisconsin, and wow.

John Mielke:
And our job was to transport Vietnamese soldiers, to transport them out into the field, or wherever they were going to fight, or what needed to be done. It was between the Communists and the non-Communists. We chose one side in a civil war.

John Brogan:
At the end of Peace Treaty of Paris, after Dien Bien Phu, they separated Vietnam, North and South. Ho Chi Minh was running the North. And Diem was running the South, and we were backing him. We picked a guy and we got him elected. And then he did what we told him to do. And then, we couldn't understand why everybody else hated us.

John Mielke:
The warrant officers who flew these helicopters were very worried. They had no machine guns. And the first couple weeks of their flying, the Vietnamese weren't shooting them down. Well, they weren't leading them enough.

Then they were taking a few hits. I remember when the machine guns went in. The crew of the helicopters were really happy. But then one day, toward the end of my stay, they said that the Signal Corps was coming in, and the engineers. Then you knew that we were going to escalate big time.

I can't believe the amount of equipment and men that came in. They replaced my little quarters with a field hospital.

John Brogan:
The French were sour. They were bitter about the Americans with all this hubris coming in to take up where they failed. Twenty years later, we failed. They had Dien Bien Phu and we had the helicopters off the Embassy.

NAVAL PRESENCE

William Moore:
A buddy of mine came over and said, “Wow, we can get all this good schooling by going in the Navy.” I still have the flyer, showing the outline of the Nautilus, which was the cutting edge nuclear submarine back then. And I got a hold of a recruiter. August 8, 1961, we went like this, and off we went for our Navy career. I wanted to get into submarines, obviously, so that was the whole deal.

Wayne Jensen:
I had just finished my junior year in high school when I turned 17. And I always felt that I wanted to make a career of the Navy. I remember it well, because my mom and dad got into a big argument. My mom didn't want me going in the service. The deciding factor was my dad telling her, look, he's going to go when he's 18, and he's going to be bitter at you for the year that you wasted of his life. So she finally consented.

Daniel Schaller:
I'd been in college, and I joined the Navy. They were looking at my records, and they thought I should go to electronics school. My dad was a mechanic, and I'd worked in a garage in high school, you know, in a service station. I didn't really know electronics, but I learned. I found out I had a pretty good affinity for learning that and working with it. I can't remember if I knew about Vietnam at the time or not.

William Moore:
I came on board the Perch over in Subic Bay, in the Philippines. Come along around the month of August, 1964, everything kind of changed. They were coming down the middle of the streets in Olongapo shagging everybody back to the base, that war had broken out. We didn't know what they were talking about. “War?” They said, “Yeah, the Viet Cong fired on the Maddox.” And we said, "Who are the Viet Cong and what's the Maddox?”

Wayne Jensen:
I remember it was at night, off the coast of Vietnam. I was a radarman at that time, on watch, in what they called CIC, Combat Information Center. So we had about seven different radio frequencies that we would be monitoring at any time. And I do recall pandemonium.

Turner Joy and Maddox, the North Vietnamese gunboats were attacking them, and they were taking them under fire. Hectic. Everybody went to general quarters.

But so far as being the catalyst for our active involvement in Vietnam, the conspiracy theories as to whether or not they were actually attacked, I don't know to this day.

William Moore:
So that was the beginning of it. We went right over to the fuel piers, and once again, bullets, beans and black oil. We took on fuel, food and ammunition and headed over. We started operating with a SEAL Team, Green Berets, UDT, Frogmen, ROK Special Forces.

Daniel Schaller:
We started doing surveillance and electronic counter measures. It was basically receivers that were picking up radars, and track radars in Russia and Red China. They'd fly off of carriers. We had a twin engine Douglas A-3. And in the back was electronic equipment and the seats for four of us.

When we were flying up along Russia, you know, we'd come right up alongside of a MiG-21, which was their best fighter aircraft at the time. They'd have their missiles. We could see them. You'd sit and go up there and wave at 'em. Once in a while, one of the guys would give them the international signal, you know.

William Moore:
The operations with the Special Forces is what we did. Those were our torpedoes, so to speak. And what these guys would do, beach recon, sabotage, whatever their mission was, our job was to get 'em there. Of course, we were hoping there wasn't anybody there waiting for us.

I was bridge phone talker with a lot of the battle stations, so I was very fortunate to be up there. The enginemen, and a lot of the guys that never got topside would not get a chance to see anything.

Daniel Schaller:
There was a lot of accidents, you know, in the couple years I was over there onboard carriers, too. In fact, I sat up front once, just for one landing on the carriers. And you come in, looking at it, and it looks so much like a postage stamp there. And you wonder how in the world can a guy be trained to land on that thing.

As soon as you touched down, you gave it full speed, because if the cable snapped, you wanted to have the power to get back off again. Usually, you didn't find people when they went over.

You did it so much, twice a day, for a long period of time. And you always thought that, my goodness, that next time, it might be your time.

Wayne Jensen:
All of a sudden one morning, I got a shoe thrown at my head. I woke up, and I was ranting and raving, “What the heck was going on?” And I looked over and there my younger brother was.

Bruce Jensen:
I walked into the barracks, just as Reveille was going off. And the first guy that woke up, I asked him, "Can you tell me where I can find Jensen?” He says, "Well, hand me my shoes.” So I gave him his shoes. And he turned around and he whipped one, and he hit Wayne in the head.

That was Wayne's first idea that I was going to be stationed with him. "What the hell are you doing here?” I said, "Well, we got duty together.”

Wayne Jensen:
Bruce and I, we reported down to San Diego. We picked up the 3rd Marines, spent two or three trips going back and forth into Vietnam. The first, and it was the biggest amphibious operation since the Korean War.

And my term of enlistment was due to come up. So Bruce carried my sea bag off. And I watched the ship pull out with my brother, going to Vietnam.

William Moore:
Several of the guys that we did operate had gotten killed over there. And it just brought it home that it was a real war. You're with 'em. You're out drinking with them on the beach. You're having fun. You're out there going to war with 'em. And they are my closest friends. Sorry. Gosh. Oh.

Daniel Schaller:
I think that's the way most people in the service get through this, by joking around, by doing stupid things, you know, to take your mind off of the real. And what was real was that you had a chance to die any time you went on one of those. We knew it. We all knew that. We were very young. But after you'd been flying there for a year, you know, you feel like an old man.

SEND IN THE MARINES

Roy Rogers:
We were actually the first troops that went to Vietnam as combat. March 10, 1965, in the middle of the night, they woke us up and said we had two hours to pack up our things, and we had to be on the parade ground at 3:00 in the morning. They put us in the trucks. Never told us where we were going.

Took us to Pearl Harbor and put us on a troop carrier. And 15 days later, we were in Okinawa. Then we went to Vietnam. We went down the nets on the side of the ship. We had all of our gear. We got off of the landing craft. When we got on the beach, there was all kinds of women and kids there. They had bottles of Coca-Cola for us, and flowers. It was, “Where are we?” We didn't know where we were.

John Dederich:
The first full unit went ashore at Red Beach, just north of Danang. And I followed shortly after that in April. For three or four months, all we did was expand the perimeter. And yeah, we would take a little sniper fire here and there, but it really wasn't a full fledged combat situation when we first got there.

First, you had to find them before you could fight them. That's what the sweeping operations were. That you would go through the valleys, hoping to find a unit large enough.

Richard Erck:
Our motto with Recon: Swift-Silent-Deadly. And I chose that over being in the regular infantry, just because it was a lead outfit. I thought I would enjoy it more. And I did. I don't regret that decision. I met some really hardcore soldiers, guys that knew why they were there, and knew what to do.

I had that John Wayne syndrome. I wanted to get out and stop 'em right there. Fight like a man. It didn't happen. You didn't see 'em. You walked into traps, and you were fired on by snipers that you didn't see. And it was a completely different mind-set then. And it took us quite a while to learn to fight them, to give 'em back some of what they gave us.

Roy Rogers:
My father sent me over a 16mm camera. And I hung that around my neck with a shoestring and carried it around. And one of the things I filmed was kind of like a play-acting firefight on top of one of the hills with a fox hole. They made believe they were shot and falling back. You know, this was pretty early in the time that we were over there, so it was easy to play-act. Now I see the films, and it bothers me, because it wasn't funny anymore after I realized what it was like.

John Dederich:
I mean, we were with the same unit, the same people now for a year, year and a half. These were the closest people you knew in the world. And all of a sudden, they started to take injuries and deaths. That was really hard. So I had a great deal of anger. And eventually, it would subside. And then you would just realize that fear and anger, neither one of those were going to help you in the situation.

Somewhere in the middle of it, you'd lose track of what day it is, or what month it is. You really don't care. But you resign yourself. I had never thought, after maybe that six or seven months, that I was ever going to come out of that country alive. You pretty well knew that.

Richard Erck:
Every second, every day, every night, back-to-back. Doc Nichol, he and I sat back-to-back many a night. When he first came to my platoon, we didn't want to take him. I told him I wouldn't go on patrol with no green corpsman. And he told me, if he could whip my butt, then would I let him go? I said, “Sure, come on,” you know. We went around and around. We rolled around the concertina and down the ditches. After that little fight, I said, “Okay, Doc, you can go with us.” I gave in. He says, “Well, you're a tough little 17-year-old punk,” he says, 'cause he was 20, an old man. “Come on, old man, I'll kill ya.” We were Siamese twins after that. We stuck together.

Roy Rogers:
Four days before I was due to be sent home to the states, I volunteered to go out on patrol. I was singing a song, Handy-Man, I think. I was weaving back and forth. And all of a sudden, there was a big explosion. I looked down and there was blood shooting out of my hand, just like a bubbler. Then someone was yelling, "Corpsman!”

John Dederich:
Of the original unit, or at least our platoon, three of us that either hadn't been killed or wounded. We were coming down out of the mountains. I rounded a building and stepped on a landmine, and went 50-60 feet in the air. Then, you know, the right leg went one way, the left leg went the other way. I got a little bit charred. The first thing I thought when I came back down, "Where's my rifle?” You know, crawling for your rifle.

I moved a little bit, then a corpsman came and stopped me. I had brought the unit partially into a landmine area. But the corpsman stayed with me.

Richard Erck:
Under fire, Doc was tough. He was quite the guy. We were patching up our platoon sergeant, wrapping around his chest because he'd been shot in the chest. And he was sitting up on a log. There was fire going everywhere. He handed me the bandage, and I saw the round hit him in the hand, and the bones came right out of the palm of his hand, and then it hit-- The sarge somehow got his arm, he had his arm up here, hit his arm. And he fell on the ground, he's holding it. And he's hollering and cussing and carrying on. I told him, “Well, I suppose you're done now, right?” "No, I ain't done!” he says. And he jumps up and tries to finish with one hand. And I wrapped him up. And we moved up the hill, trying to get everybody out of the ambush we were in.

Roy Rogers:
When I was wounded, I figured God had a reason for me to live, 'cause the Bouncing Betty that I stepped on is meant to make a wishbone out of you. But my rifle took the blunt of the force of the explosion. They tell me they never found any of my rifle. They couldn't put me back together like Humpty Dumpty, but they did the best they could.

John Dederich:
I didn't think I was going to live anyway, 'cause I could look down. I could see the mess I was. Almost everything was black. And I was kind of happy, because they had morphine, and they put tourniquets on the legs, and stuff like that. They put me on a stretcher, and this guy's running alongside of me, saying, "Can I say a few words for you, son?” And I said, "Yeah, but hurry up!” I mean, I was hedging my bets at that time. I mean, I didn't think there was any way as heck I was going to make it. And I never did figure out what he was.

Richard Ercke:
I was covered in blood, head to toe. It wasn't mine. It was the guys that were bleeding. And the helicopter prop wash is blowing it down on me. And I was the last guy off. When I got back to the back area by the helicopter after getting everybody evacuated, they said, "Oh, he's dead. He went in a body bag back to Danang. He went in a body bag to Danang.” I said, "Oh, my God,” you know, “Doc was only shot in the hand.” And they said, "Well, he must've got hit going up to the helicopter.” I had a hard time coping with those losses. These guys were the Toughest of my outfit. They were the best. And I lost 'em all in one shot. And you didn't want to get close to 'em. You get too tight with a guy and you lose 'em. It hurts every time, you know.

DROPPING BOMBS

Lowell Peterson:
There was a draft program for doctors. You either had to go in after your training was over, or risk that you were going to be drafted. I decided I didn't want to be drafted into the Army, and I liked to fly. So, I signed up for the Air Force.

I went to Flight Surgeon School. They tried to teach a bunch of dumb doctors how to march. We took turns marching the squad around. I marched my squad right into a fence.

Alvin Whitaker:
My dad was a Tuskegee Airman. And my earliest recollections are of being at and on airbases and around airplanes. And the only thing I ever wanted to do was to fly airplanes, and fly in the Air Force, and to fly fighters. That was my one goal in life. And it turned out that I'm heterozygous for the sickle cell. That eliminated me from the program to become an Air Force pilot.

But I knew about Vietnam. I can recall listening to reports about the domino effect, that we had to stop the Communists. And that if we didn't, the North would sweep down and engulf the South, and the South would fall. I bought it. Tradition of service, the country calls you, you respond, so I joined.

Lowell Peterson:
President Johnson decided he needed to eliminate some of the flow of supplies from North Vietnam to South Vietnam. He decided to start a bombing campaign against the North, Operation Rolling Thunder.

But it was done with the pilot's hands tied behind their back, in that they were limited as to what they could hit and what they couldn't. There were airfields full of MiG fighters sitting in North Vietnam that were off limits. We might hit a Russian and drag the Russians into the war. But nevertheless, they still sent my pilots up there to bomb and get shot at.

Alvin Whitaker:
I personally never dropped a bomb. But I was dedicated to doing everything I could to keep the weapons systems going, which I did. The unit went on Temporary Duty to Thailand, the Royal Thai airbase at Korat. So I volunteered to go.

And this was a time when we were not officially there. We were not allowed to take any photographs in the flatland. We were not allowed to talk about what was going on. “Training missions.” These training missions were anything but. We were bombing as early as the spring of 1965.

Meanwhile, the Chinese and the Soviets helped the Vietnamese put together very good defenses.

Lowell Peterson:
A flight of four F4-C fighters had been attacked by a SAM missile for the first time. Knocked two of them out of the sky, damaged the third one severely, and the fourth one was able to return to base.

Well, when this happened, President Johnson and Secretary of Defense, McNamara, Johnson said, "Bob, can we get rid of those?” McNamara said, "Sure, we can get rid of them.”

So what they did was programmed a mass gaggle, 48 airplanes, to go after one SAM missile site, and just show the North Vietnamese that, you know, who was boss.

Alvin Whitaker:
1965, we had a lot of losses, just a lot of losses. I mean, the pilots' situation involved flying 100 missions, or a year, whichever came first, then rotating. And I can remember one friend Carl Richter. Carl completed his 100 missions, and he volunteered to go a second 100. Volunteered. Didn't have to.

Lowell Peterson:
All the airplanes we had were in the air. As it turned out, it was a sting operation by the North Vietnamese. They set up a bunch of white painted telephone poles, and an active radar site, and that's what we sent 48 airplanes after. They had every gun in North Vietnam pointed at us.

One of my pilots said it looked like a fourth of July celebration gone bad. We only lost six airplanes. But six airplanes is six airplanes. And it's six pilots.

Alvin Whitaker:
It's kind of difficult, 'cause it brings-- It was when Carl Richter was lost. And I can remember, we were in the shack. And we were getting reports on the radio, because he was shot down. And they were trying to hold off the Vietnamese soldiers while they tried to pick him up. And they did pick him up. I can remember we were just elated. Everybody just went crazy. Unfortunately, he had suffered really severe injuries. He had ejected at very a high speed, and he went into shock and died in the helicopter on the way back.

Lowell Peterson:
Frank Tullo was shot down that day, and was able to be extracted from the jungle, picked up by a Jolly Green Giant helicopter. They got out of there while they were being shot at. He came back to Korat the next day. The whole squadron was out there to meet him.

I took him to my dispensary. He had a laceration over his eye, and I sewed that up for him, and examined him, and didn't find anything else other than a whole lot of North Vietnamese sweat and dirt. I sent him to the Officer's Club. Everybody got drunk that night.

ELUSIVE ENEMY

Will William:
Coming out of Mississippi, I was prepared, anyway, for survival. When I started getting higher in school and learning about the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, I couldn't square it. I couldn't understand how this could be true. We're created equal, and I'm seeing people being lynched. But it was easier for me to fight. And on January 3, we boarded ship and left for Vietnam.

Jim Kurtz:
But the people who went as replacements went by air. We flew directly to Vietnam and to Tan-Son-Nhut, which is the main airport in Saigon. The plane lands and they open the door up. And it was just like walking into a blast furnace. This was at 3:00 in the morning. It was probably about 90 or so. And then, the tremendous noise of aircraft taking off on missions, helicopters going all over the place. And the smell. It just knocked your socks off.

Well, I go down the steps, and there’s a sergeant down there with a clipboard. And he said, “All the lieutenants but Lt. Kurtz, follow me.” And I said to him, "What did I do wrong?”

Dan Hinkle:
I landed at Ton-Son-Nhut, got off the airplane, and went to 90th replacement depot. Within a half an hour, I was assigned to the 4th Infantry Division. The next day, I was on a chopper and we flew out to the base camp. I was assigned to a company and given a platoon. I was in-country 48 hours, and I was an Infantry Platoon Leader with a combat mission.

Thirty days after I arrived, I was crawling through tunnels in Cu Chi-- with a flashlight and a .45, and I didn't care.

Will Williams
In Cu Chi, we built our base camp, right above the tunnels. I don't know why the military didn't know they were there. They had intelligence people, and those tunnels were old. People within the perimeter was getting wounded or killed, and the perimeter hadn't been breached. No one had gotten in. We couldn't understand it. We took a lot of casualties from people in the tunnels.

Dan Hinkle:
The tunnels were already in place, way before we got there. They were used against the French. There was entire little communities down underground, ammunition storage, food storage, hospitals, and hundreds of firing perches.

Will Williams:
We had what we called tunnel rats. They’re usually the smallest people in the outfit, were the ones that would go into the tunnels and search. Johnny H. Johnson was our tunnel rat. And he had gotten shot. I went in and brought him out. And my curiosity made me go back in to see what's beyond where he was hit.

When you first go in, you would go around the corner or down and up again. And it protected them from explosives and from bombs. They had kitchens there where they cooked. It's basically where they lived and fought, right beneath us. That was their staging area.

Jim Kurtz:
Later, I was up at a place called Loc Ninh, which is an old rubber plantation. And it turned out that we were up there to provide security for the French, so that they could make some money.

Will Williams:
It was the heart of the rubber plantations. We saw the Firestone, Michelin and GoodYear plantations. The rubber trees, you know, that we were fighting for, I think. That's part of why I was there, was protecting our corporate interests.

Dan Hinkle:
And I was in a mechanized battalion. So we had tanks and armored personnel carriers. The thunder of us moving, you could hear it for miles. There were things that fell by the wayside, like trees.

We had a representative, a Frenchman, attached to the battalion that would follow along behind us and count the number of rubber trees, so the United States could reimburse these people for the trees we destroyed.

Jim Kurtz:
The rubber plantations that were still operating, they were paying off the VC to not bother them. Then, when we'd come in there, if we got into a firefight, we would have to pay for any tree that we shot.

After I got promoted to Captain, and they didn't really know what to do with me, one of my jobs would be to go out with the plantation manager, and we would count trees with bullets in them. I had taken some French in college. I knew a little French, but not much. And I never made an effort to communicate with him. I mean, if they wanted Uncle Sam's money, they could talk in Uncle Sam's language, as far as I was concerned.

Will Williams:
At times, we did get hit pretty hard. I know right outside our base camp, at Ho Bo Woods, I couldn't understand why we kept going in there. We would go this week, lose a lot of people. A week or two later, we would go right back, and the same thing would happen.

Dan Hinkle:
We would take the same ground, over and over and over. And I didn't know until 20 years later that it was a war of attrition. Isn't that a term? A war of attrition. It's acceptable to us if we only lose one guy to your six. Our victory amounts to a body count.

Jim Kurtz:
I was in a G-1 Section, and one of my jobs was to deal with body count. And this General walks in, and he says, "Captain, uh, I don't like these numbers.” And then I said, "Sir, I agree with you.” We’d had a bad day. The 1st Division had a bad day. We took some bad casualties. He said, "I don't think you understand. I don't like these numbers.” And what he was suggesting was that the body count wasn’t high enough. And I said, "Sir, here's a grease pencil and a rag. You do what you want to do.” And then he blew up. And he said, "Captain, you're insubordinate, and your career is over.” And I said, "I'm not going to do anything like that, because it's wrong.” And he stormed out of there. He was really, really very unhappy with me.

Will Williams:
I don't know. I don't know how you can make anyone understand it, what it means to lose someone, if it's not you getting hit, but someone you've known, to see them die.

Dan Hinkle:
I got wounded, right about Christmas and New Year's. I was reassigned, because I wasn't able to continue as a platoon leader. I went from tunnels in the jungle to having a hot meal in the Officer's Club at Ton-Son-Nhut Airbase. Two or three days later, my platoon was caught in an ambush. I should've been there. (sobs)

AIRMOBILE

Kerry Denson:
Flying with the 1st Cav Division, we were the first Airmobile Division in the Army, a wholly new concept. Here we had the capability with this Huey, UH-1, to completely support a soldier with aircraft. Put soldiers in by air. Supply 'em by air. Reinforce 'em by air. Medevac 'em by air. Give 'em fire support. Close air support by air. And the stars just lined up for that type of warfare.

William Rettenmund:
I was not much for flying. I didn't like heights. When I went over in a boat, I said to myself, "Self, you've never really committed yourself, and the Army wants you to be a helicopter mechanic, and a crew chief that flies all the time. You've got to get your butt off of this being afraid of heights stuff and stick it out.” That's kind of what I did.

Gary Wetzel:
Some people told me I was the number one gunner in the outfit. I was flattered about that. But it was scary to me up and to the point, it's like when I would pull that trigger. Then it's like, when you pull that trigger, that fear would kind of go out of you.

Then when you come back in and you're picking up the wounded, some guys are holding their guts inside, or some guy is hanging onto his leg, because he doesn't want to leave his leg in the LZ. And you try to not let that interfere with what your job is, or what you're trying to do.

War is horrifying. It's not glorifying.

Kerry Denson:
I was flying the UH-1, the Huey, and we had a crew of four, a pilot in command, a co-pilot, a crew chief and a gunner. Armament, all we carried was an M-60 machine gun on each side that the crew chief and the gunner each had to keep everybody's head down while we inserted our infantry.

They liked riding in a helicopter. Sat with legs dangling out the side of the aircraft, completely unrestrained, flying along at 1500 feet and 90-100 knots. I don't ever recall, ever, anybody falling out. Getting in close, they were standing on the skid. As soon as we got close enough, they were on the ground and gone.

This thing was a well-oiled machine. It's just unbelievable. Everybody knew what to do, and did it.

William Rettenmund:
We usually went in from 1500 feet, and went into the LZ, ten of us. And ahead of us, the gun ships were shooting. And ahead of them, the artillery was hitting, trying to soften up the landing zone for us. Usually, we tried to land all ten of us at the same time. And the faster you can get down, the harder it is for them to hit you.

It was a wild ride. Coming off of 1500 feet is like riding a rollercoaster. We came in at about a couple hundred feet, they would say, "Door gunners, open up!” So we would just, whatever looked like would hide somebody, we shot at.

Gary Wetzel:
We just hit the treetops and then we got nailed with an RPG, just blew the front of the ship apart. And we kind of come to a skidding halt. And the crossfire was horrendous. The first 30 seconds, like 50 of the guys got killed. Just so bad. They were waiting for us.

All this banging, and yelling and screaming. And I've got to get Timmy out, my pilot. Damn near ripped the door off. And I just kind of lift him up, and then I had my hand, which is on the airframe over here, but then all this got blown out. I took my arm here, and tucked it inside my pants. And then I got the Thompson and then skid around the chin of the chopper. And you can hear 'em chattering. They're trying to take my 60 off. I yelled at them. They looked at me, and, end of that story.

I went back by Timmy. He said, "Tell Jane I love her,” which is his wife. I go, "Shut up,” you know. “You tell your old lady you love her.” That was the third time him and I got shot down.

Kerry Denson:
You could look out there, and you could just see a sea of red tracers. The sergeant running the pad, he says, we've got a couple guys out there that are hit, and we're not getting ammunition out there to the guys on the end. Would you hover out there and kick off ammunition. I says, “Let me talk to the crew.”

I told them what they asked us to do. The crew chief made the decision. He said, "Well, if I was out there, not getting ammunition, and some candy ass helicopter pilot wouldn't bring it out, I'd be pretty pissed. Saddle up, boys.”

William Rettenmund:
Then I turned and looked over, and I could see the pilot was looking back at me. I could see the red dots on the visor. And he finally said the door gunner's hit. I unhooked my belt and climbed over the seat. He had a field jacket on, and the blood was coming out of the field jacket, out of the cuff on the bottom. We've got to get out of here. He's hit pretty good. And there was blood all over the helicopter. The blood comes from the back and flies forward.

Gary Wetzel:
That's when I got hit in the leg. And there was a period from when I went down to the one knee, till I got back in the gunwell. How I got there, I have no idea. I knew I had to get back to my 60. Then you could see the VC were kind of gathering up, making a human wave attack. They started coming, raking back and forth. They were dropping four or five feet right in front. They'd do that a couple times. They couldn't penetrate. I ran out of ammo. I had my .45.

Just then something out of my peripheral, I jumped back. I go, whoo, you know. So instead of sticking me in the guts, he stuck me in the leg. I eliminated the elements and had to pull a bayonet out.

Then finally, they dropped troops about half a click from us. They worked their way towards us, then to one side. That's how we got help.

Kerry Denson:
And we took ground fire, small arms. It shot the engine out, came up through the floor and hit me in the leg. We were going down. The aircraft tumbled through the trees. And luckily, it landed right side up. But we were all in bad shape. I remember very little of this, but I jettisoned my door. I jumped out and I fell down. And I don't remember anything after that. And they said when I jumped out, the bones of my left leg were sticking through my flight suit. That was the last time I saw Vietnam.

William Rettenmund:
I remember one time we called out into the jungle. We got there and there was seven bodies laying out there. Ponchos don't like to stay closed in the air at 100 miles an hour. There were a lot of gray faces and blue faces. They don't really teach you much about that in helicopter school.

The worst one for me, KIA picking up. It was the first one. A. Gonzalez, his name was. Never forgot it. I forgot my roommate's name, the pilots' names, all that. But I never forgot his name.

Gary Wetzel:
Should I have been dead? Probably. That's what they tell me. And here I am. You know, just blown to smithereens, and shot, and stabbed, and bayonetted. I still function. Guys I fought with, some of them, I don't know who they are, are the ones that put me in for this.

I wear it for the guys that aren't here. I wear it for you. I'm just a caretaker, that's all I am. I'm just a soldier trying to do a job.

ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE

James Daley:
I went to UW-Whitewater for a year, majoring in football and beer. As a result, they invited me to leave. In those years, not a whole lot of options. I figured I'd enlist in the one service that would get me out of the country quicker, before my dad found out. So I joined the Marine Corps. And they're the only ones that promised they'd have me out of town the next day.

Dan Pierce:
I got in a little trouble when I was a youth. And my probation officer was a Naval Reserve Officer. And he thought it would make a man out of me if I joined the Navy Reserves. So I thought I'd fool him, and instead of getting a tan in the Gulf of Tonkin on a two-year Navy stint, I joined the Marine Corps for four years.

Don Weber:
I had a hard time in school. I was always the one that got the lowest score on any spelling test, or math. And I grew up thinking that just, I'm a loser. I'd been told that. And you know, you're not a good student. You're not going to make it. And so, you know, I would get in fights. The Marine Corps turned my life around.

Larry Miller:
My older brother was in the Marine Corps right after Korea. And I had an uncle that was World War II Marines, you know, the islands, Guadalcanal, Palalua, and Okinawa. So I just figured, it's the thing to do. So I joined.

Then after that, it was Vietnam. Naval Gunfire Forward Observer. We went out with the battalion search and destroys. They put us on OPs at night, just me and the radio operator. Whenever we really got up against the enemy, I had a ship on call, and I'd call in Naval gunfire and try to take care of them, get 'em off us, kill 'em. Basically, that's what we did.

James Daley:
Our job was essentially to respond to where the North Vietnamese would make an assault on one battalion. You'd stick a battalion out in a field someplace as bait. Their job was to engage and stay engaged. And we'd come in behind them and squeeze in between the two of them. Hammer and anvil tactics, they called it in those years. The Marines were in the north. Marine Infantrymen were assigned to a line company.

Your chance was one in one to be killed or wounded. That was the statistics. And they were pretty accurate.

Dan Pierce:
Quang Tri, Phu Bai, Dong Ha. Everything was just thrown together into one mass blur, which was 90% boring and 10% chaotic. I guess chaotic might be putting it a little blandly.

Don Weber:
Gosh, you know, here you are. You're trained, but this is for real. They came and said you're going to be reporting up on an outpost called Con Thien. I wasn't quite sure where that was. But it was the very northern tip of South Vietnam, the demilitarized zone.

Larry Miller:
There was no color. Everything was blown apart, because they had Agent Oranged it all. They had burnt it all. I mean, we walked out of this greenery, and your whole world went black and white. I remember it just like we're sitting there today. I went, what is this about.

James Daley:
The DMZ was a line on a map, six miles south of the Ben Hai River and six miles north of the the Ben Hai River. It's six miles on their side of the line, six miles on our side of the line, which were demilitarized. (laughs)

Don Weber:
They kept dropping mortar rounds. That went on for hours. And we knew we were in for a long night. Then they started with the ground forces. They just kept coming and coming.

Larry Miller:
That's when it turned into a different war. Because the North Vietnamese, they basically wanted to come down across the DMZ. They did not want to do the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And the Marine Corps wasn't going to let 'em. You know, it was multi, multi troops. I mean, 4,000 or 5,000 at a time would come down across the river. And we were up there trying to stop 'em.

Don Weber:
My squad leader, he'd been there for almost ten months. I made up my mind when I got over there, to do whatever he told me, because he had survived. We called him Sergeant Rock. He came out to get me out of my fox hole, because they were going to be over-running the area. And as we were running back inside the perimeter, you know, a mortar round came in-- (voice breaking) And killed him.

Dan Pierce:
When you're in a firefight, and someone is injured or killed, you don't have the time or the capacity to grieve, or to cradle them, or give comfort. But then when it's over, is when everything hits you. The adrenaline starts to wear off, and the reality sets in. The pain that you've seen on your fellow Marine's face, or the vision of a Vietnamese's head exploding, because you shot him in the eye. No time during the firefight, but afterwards, much reflection. Much reflection.

Don Weber:
I survived the night. Most of the rest didn't. I have no idea why. You know, those things change you forever.

Larry Miller:
Uh, that was it. That was the real stuff up there. It was just horrific. If that's a word that even describes it. It had every aspect that there was to have. The body mutilation, the trench warfare, the artillery. It had it all. Thousands against thousands. You know, it was just.

James Daley:
We got over-run. It was an interesting night. But it's the next morning, where you, I just remember sitting there having a cigarette, and the sun was coming up. And I had a C-ration can, made a cup of coffee, instant coffee. I just remember, I started to pick up the coffee and my hand was shaking so bad it splashed. I put the other hand up to take a drag off the cigarette, and I could hardly find the cigarette. I still have this dream about that morning, smoking that first cigarette and that first cup of coffee, and how it felt so good to be alive. It's one of those things that will always be with me, and will come back at the strangest of times.

Narrator:
They had gone through hell and survived. But they had lost too many along the way, along with a part of themselves. And what they received for their sacrifice was a nation that had turned its back on them.

Don Weber:
Most of those men and women were pretty healthy, physically and mentally, before they went through this. And when they came back, and particularly the time we came back, it was really sad. I remember when I landed, coming home, I had to take my uniform off in the airport, because people would spit at you. That's the thing that I find really hard to cope with.

Dan Pierce:
Still a lot of guys that haven't found their way home, I don't think.

A lot of Vets try to justify, rationalize, for all the death and dying. But there's really no explanation to it. Figuring it out is a waste of time. It's just another war that's started by old men and fought by young boys.

Richard Erck:
I thought he was killed in, you know, one of our ambushes. I never saw him again. And the service never tells you where these guys go or what happens to 'em. Nobody knows where they're at. Someone called me and I answered the phone. "Yeah?” He says, "Erck, you know who this is?” And that voice sent chills, you know. "Doc?” "Yeah!” he says, "You knew it was me?” I said, "Yeah.” You never forget that voice, you know. And you know, the tears flow.

I said, "They told me you got killed up there at Phu Bai.” He said, "They told me you went, too.” And then he told me that Sergeant Meyers had survived, too, and he was in Minnesota. The guy had been driving past my house, within a mile, to go fishing on Lake Michigan, every year. And I had thought he was dead all these years. In my mind, they were all dead. We get together every year, or even more than once a year, we get together. But, you form a bond that's tighter than brothers. They had my back for me.

Announcer:
Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories was made possible bylead gifts from Don and Roxanne Weber and from Associated Bank; with major support from the Ho-Chunk Nation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; and from Wisconsin Public Service Foundation, Kwik Trip, the Forest County Potawatomi Foundation, Oshkosh Defense, the General Motors Dealers of Northeast Wisconsin, the Oneida Nation; and these Wisconsin individuals and companies who believe that it is long overdue, but never too late to honor the service and sacrifice of our Vietnam Veterans; with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Premiere on WPT March 25, 2010

Announcer:
Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories is a partnership of the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs, the Wisconsin Historical Society and Wisconsin Public Television. 

Ken McGwin:
The Vietnam War was a horrible, horrible weight to put on the backs of teenagers.  What did you do to a generation of people?  Boy. 

Linda McClenahan:
I think it's important for everybody to tell their story.  The only thing we can truly give each other is our stories.  We need to share those.  This attitude that men aren't supposed to cry.  There's plenty to cry about, so what's the issue here?  Anyway.  But see, I didn't cry myself.  Or, I didn't have any emotions except anger.  I was either numb or pissed off, you know, for years and years and years. 

Charlie Wolden:
One thing about combat, is that you don't have a choice to learn, to live through it.  And also, you don't have a choice when you come home, to learn new ways.  You're different.  You've changed.  One of the tragedies of Vietnam, and I mean, it's a tragedy, is that even today, there are a lot of people, including a lot of the veterans that fought over there, who don't fully comprehend that it's hard to come back out of it.  I mean, it's just too big.  (sighs)

Narrator:
The war was entering its bloodiest year, 1968.  Predictions that the fighting would soon be over proved misguided, when in fact, it had not reached the halfway point of America's longest war.  And the stories of Wisconsin's men and women who survived that war and that pivotal year, are haunting.  "Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories." 

Announcer:
Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories was made possible by lead gifts from Don and Roxanne Weber and from Associated Bank; with major support from the Ho-Chunk Nation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; and from Wisconsin Public Service Foundation, Kwik Trip, the Forest County Potawatomi Foundation, Oshkosh Defense, the General Motors Dealers of Northeast Wisconsin, the Oneida Nation; and these Wisconsin individuals and companies who believe that it is long overdue, but never too late to honor the service and sacrifice of our Vietnam Veterans; with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. 

 

WALKING POINT

Owen Mike:
As a Ho-Chunk, from the day I was born, my destiny was to go to war.  I showed no fear, 'cause going to war is a blessing.  And being a warrior is a blessing.  But the most sacred is to die on a battle ground.  Their nationality, it made no difference.  We were like a team.  We worked together.  And they found out that it was going to be good to accept me.  It was the most important part of my life, because that's the first time in my lifetime that people respected me. 

Cletus Ninham:
Being Indian is, well-- Why don't we make this guy a fight man, and a flanker.  That's the guy that goes out 25 yards of the company, and a flanker is the one that goes on the left or right side of the company.  That's what I did, mainly.  I don't know why it didn't freak out the Indians.  Your nerves better hold up, because you don't know what's going to happen.  And you live one day at a time.  They only knew me by "Chief," they didn't know my first name.  It didn't bother me at all.  Because like I told one guy, it's okay to call me Chief.  But on a reservation, I'm just a brave. 

Mick Lyons:
So I got to the 2nd -- Marines.  Instantly, I was made point man.  There was only one problem with that.  I was a better point man than most of the guys they had before, because I could see the mushrooms.  We would go out in the spring and find morel mushrooms.  My step-daddy taught me how to do that.  He taught me how to see through the shrubbery, and the growth, and be able to discern what I was looking at.  I could see the booby traps.  And I could see the trip lines.  And I could see the stuff that might be in front of us, the NVA bunkers, or whatever.  And I'm very proud of the fact that nobody ever died when I was on point. 

Owen Mike:
Walking point ain't the easiest job.  A lot of 'em don't want it, 'cause the life expectancy is very short.  And my CO asked me if I want that job.  I said, "Yes, sir." For the rest of my tour, I was a point man.  And I know I have saved many Marines life, because I knew what I was doing.  I'm like a cat, a tiger in the mountain.  I was cunning.  I was deadly.  I became a killer. 

Cletus Ninham:
You look for booby traps, anything that looks out of place.  I learned that from hunting.  You know, you look around your environment, and you see what's out of place, any movement, and you know, if something's wrong.  You see the birds take off, you know something's there.  We never got hit while I was on point or flank.  Soon as I got off, we got hit, we'd get hit by a sniper.  Shot, small fire would come upon us. 

Mick Lyons:
When you're in the situation where you can die within the next three seconds, at any given time.  Your ears, your sense of smell, your sense of touch, your eyesight, everything just explodes. 

Owen Mike:
When I was walking point, all a sudden, all hell broke loose.  All kinds of noise.  I hit the ground.  Boy, my hair stood up.  We ran into a band of pigs.  Running here and there.  We were all laughing, you know.  I said, "No, no, no.  Leave 'em alone," I said.  They're not part of the war. 

Mick Lyons:
I enjoyed the night, because they couldn't see me any better than I could see them.  The smell is what gave each other away.  We could literally smell each other in the jungle at night.  The jungle came alive at night.  I used to like night patrols.  And my buddies didn't.  Most of them were city kids.  Poor city kids. 

Cletus Ninham:
All of a sudden, I just heard a big explosion.  It was like I was falling down in slow motion.  It was burning like somebody just put a hot fire in my body.  I looked down, I seen the holes in me, you know.  And I could stick my fists through 'em.  They were trying to get us out.  They couldn't.  The wind was too strong.  And they're pulling me up in a hoist.  They couldn't get me up, 'cause I was going like Tarzan through the bamboo.  And I was going to be crushed to death.  So, they had to drop me from treetop high.  They pushed the button and dropped me.  And they'd run out of morphine.  And they couldn't understand, with that many holes in me, why I wasn't screaming.  The medic, all night, was slapping me, thinking that I was dying.  He'd say, "You got to stay awake." And so, I told him, "You hit me one more time, I'm going to hit you back."

Mick Lyons:
You're doing everything you can to keep your buddies alive, and yourself alive.  The gooks were surrounding us.  And I'm sorry for using that word.  It's a dehumanization.  These were people that we respected.  They were full-blown North Vietnamese Army regulars, in uniform.  And they were fighting for their country.  And we thought we were fighting for ours.  And it's taken 40 years for me to finally understand that. 

Owen Mike:
We showed our utmost respect to the enemy.  'Cause we look at 'em as-- (speaking native language) It means a brave soldier.  And I'm one.  We're on equal terms.  He respects me, and I respect him. 

Cletus Ninham:
I came back from Vietnam, I was a mess.  People just seen medals on me.  You can't look inside of a person and see what's going on.  But that person is hurting bad.  A young guy, see that many people die, you know, that's not natural.  Just put me back the way I was before I went over there. 

Owen Mike:
We called it a playground.  Not a battle field.  It's a playground.  'Cause my spirit was playing with the enemy’s spirits, like children's, in the spirit world. 

 

MONTAGNARDS

Jack Boers:
I came back from Korea, the bloody ridge, heartbreak ridge, got out of the military.  Very bored.  Come by the Post Office about 10:00 in the morning, an old Uncle Sam picture, "We Need You!" And I said, you know, I'm going to go back.  I went back.  And about five or six guys in line.  They said, "You're an ex-serviceman?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "What were you in?" I said, "Infantry." He says, "You're in the Army as of today." And then I joined Special Forces.  And I stayed '59 to '71, in Special Forces. 

Howard Sherpe:
We had what I called the interview.  I had put down all kinds of things that I thought I could be in the Army, including combat photographer, and combat artist, because these are things I had training in.  I had driven trucks.  I'd been a truck driver.  And he just looked through it, and said, "I'm putting you down for medic." I just kind of sat there, like, "What?" You know, I'd never had a First-Aid course.  I hated the sight of blood.  He says, "Oh, we need a lot of medics in Vietnam.  Next!" 

John Plaster:
Because I was Special Forces, what was referred to generically as a Green Beret, I'd heard whispers about something called SOG.  And whenever I'd ask someone, "What is that SOG thing?" they'd all hush up or give me stern looks, because these were men who'd already served.  A friend of mine, who'd already deployed to Vietnam, and was serving in SOG, though I didn't know it, told me, "Sign up for CCN." Later, we used to refer to that kind of invitation as flattery of death.  We lost a great many men. 

Jack Boers:
We set up bases.  We started training the montegnards, or the civilians.  They got paid a little bit, you know.  To them, it was quite a bit.  We issued uniforms.  We issued weapons.  Trained them in American tactics, and so forth, recon patrolling, security.  And A-team, with a bunch of your company montegnards, then we'd operate out of there.  It was more or less kind of an eyes and ears for intelligence, of the movement of the enemy. 

John Plaster:
Working with the montegnards, it helped give me a lot of insights on the American Indian, because they were basically the American Indians of Southeast Asia.  Pushed to be the mountain people.  And montegnard means, in French, "mountain people." I was flown by C-13 to a SOG base in the central highlands.  Adjacent to the northern-most provinces of Cambodia and the southern-most provinces of Laos.  From the first time, it struck me, my god, that's what the big secret is.  We're operating in Laos.  We're running missions along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.  These were very, very dangerous missions, where literally, you have two Americans and some indigenous soldiers, montegnards.  And you're 20, 30, 40 miles behind enemy lines.  If you don't have someone you really want to rely on and trust virtually with your life, you don't want them on your team. 

Howard Sherpe:
They said that if anyone wanted to volunteer, we could go into the montegnard villages and treat the montegnards.  It was such a different culture.  It was getting in a time machine and taking a trip back, almost to the stone age.  I just found it enjoyable to go out there and work with them.  I couldn't talk to them.  But we treated everything you can imagine. 

Jack Boers:
In camp, a lot of times they had their celebrations.  They'd set up a row of jugs of rice wine.  You'd be in command, honored, you've got to sit there and you've got to drink with them.  Oh, man.  Sometimes, when they were going to have it, you'd like to hide.  But you can't.  Boy, I'll tell you. 

Howard Sherpe:
This isn't the only reason that I kept wanting to go back to their villages, but as soon as you're all done treating everybody, then you can get to the --, which is rice wine.  I do have to admit, it gave you a pretty good buzz by the time you headed out of the camp. 

John Plaster:
They loved American movies, especially the cowboy movies.  And it was funny, because if it was a cowboy and Indian movie, they would identify with the Indians. 

Jack Boers:
They liked Westerns.  Oh, boy, they would holler and scream.  It would tickle you to death.  Yeah, they were all right. 

Howard Sherpe:
I really believe they kind of looked out for us.  We'd patrol in some of the same areas.  And one time, there were a bunch of montegnards that were coming up, and they kind of cowered over to the other side.  And then somebody must've recognized me.  And all at once, they get up and they come running over, and shaking hands, and bowing.  So I knew that they knew who I was.  And I think when they know that you're with that patrol, I think maybe you're a little safer. 

John Plaster:
The montegnards worked really well, meshed really well with Special Forces and these operations, because they'd grown up in the jungle.  We brought the sophistication of modern warfare, communications, air support, and so on.  And working together, it made a very effective team.  And operating behind enemy lines was a very unforgiving environment.  In fact, of the 22 missions that I ran in SOG, 19 of them, we had to shoot our way out. 

Jack Boers:
They were very good fighters.  I mean, you really relied on them.  You had to figure ten percent that you were training were Viet Cong, but you didn't know who.  You just had to kind of watch.  There were some bad times.  You forget the bad times and remember the good times. 

Howard Sherpe:
We came back to one village one time.  It was deserted.  Nobody was out.  The chief finally came out.  His face looked like somebody had taken a baseball bat to it.  The VC had come in, and in front of all the other villagers, had beat him, as an example of what'll happen if you let the Americans treat you.  Even though we were trying to help them, I think they were caught in the middle.  I think a lot of times, they probably didn't have a choice of who they supported, if they wanted to stay alive. 

John Plaster:
I have a recurring dream, where I go back to Vietnam, my team's still there.  And they have all my gear.  They're so happy to see me back there.  And it's all the old guys.  And I don't know, maybe it's like an old dog ready to go hunting again, or something, but they're ready to go do it again.

 

KHE SANH, JANUARY 1968

Ray Stubbe:
The Navy, at the time, was asking for chaplains, because of the buildup in Vietnam.  When I went through chaplain school, I found people were saluting me.  I found that very troubling.  I just didn't like it.  I didn't want it.  It wasn't that I had a low self-esteem, or anything.  It wasn't that.  It was just that I felt chaplains shouldn't be officers.  So, anyway, they assigned me to 3rd Shell Party, and I went to Khe Sanh.  We were close to the Laotian border, under the demilitarized zone, North Vietnamese.  And the signal intelligence people had determined that two divisions were coming down Laos, and were coming toward Khe Sanh.  We knew we were going to be attacked.  It was a decision whether to abandon Khe Sanh because of this, or to reinforce.  And the decision was made to reinforce. 

Lance Larson:
I was in communications.  And the war was really picking up.  There was a lot of casualties, especially in the Marine Corps.  All of a sudden, everyone is buzzing and screaming, you know, "Get your gear together!" They said we're going to Khe Sanh.  Nobody knew where it was.  I remember all this activity.  There was just men.  You're talking 900 men running around, screaming, yelling, filling canteens, getting ammunition.  Then sergeants yelling, you know, "This platoon over here..." Getting them in heli teams, and how they're going to go, and everything.  Then all these helicopters came and we just started loading on.  You know, there was like long lines of men. 

Ray Stubbe:
Sunday, the 21st of January, and I was going over my sermon notes.  And all at once, explosions, you wouldn't believe.  And on one side of us, was what we call a POL dump, petroleum oil lubricants.  That was on fire.  Further on, was the ammo dump, which was cooking off, spewing off all sorts of rounds, itself, while we were taking rockets and mortars.  I remember seeing from a distance, a man on a stretcher whose abdominal wall was missing.  You could see the intestines.  And knowing what I know now, obviously, I would've run to him to try to comfort, do something.  But I just stood there.  To my shame, I just stood there.  And the reason is that the emotions become frozen. 

Lance Larson:
The day we arrived, is the day after all this had happened.  And I remember everything was just shot up.  All these trucks with the windows all smashed, and the tires were flat.  They were blown up, and helicopters wrecked.  They took my battalion to what they called the rock quarry.  The NVA were kind of coming in this valley west of there, putting mortars there, and mortaring the base.  And they figured they could launch a ground attack from that position.  They could sneak up, and from that rock quarry, just swarm that one corner of the base.  So, they wanted at least one more battalion, us, out there.  We used to say we were just mortar bait, you know. 

Ray Stubbe:
Then now we had four infantry battalions with attachments and everyone else, about 6,000 people.  During the siege, we were surrounded by at least 40,000 North Vietnamese.  Our base was a little under a mile long, mainly an airstrip.  About a half mile wide.  Khe Sanh sat on an extinct volcano.  So the area was born under heat and violence.  And it sort of, the spirit sort of lingered there, I think. 

Lance Larson:
Before it was dark, they launched another, you know, heavy artillery attack.  I don't know how many rounds, 500 or 1,000.  Nobody's lived unless they've been in an artillery barrage, 'cause artillery is nasty stuff.  It's like the loudest train roaring right by your head.  That's the noise, you know?  The ground shakes, it's terrifying.  It was at that moment I said, "This is not the war they talked about when I was in training." I'm sitting there with a reinforced regiment of Marines, you're talking 6,000 Marines, fully armed with tanks.  And we're all worried about getting overrun.  This is like Korea, this is like World War II. 

Ray Stubbe:
Probably the most bloodiest battle of the whole Vietnam War.  There were some days that we would take up to 1300 incoming rounds a day, despite all our bombing.  B-52 strikes, saturation bombing.  The ground was rocking constantly.  There's many passages in the book of Isaiah, talking about the earth being shaken and mountains trembling.  Words from the Bible suddenly became very, very real. 

Lance Larson:
President Johnson swore he wasn't going to lose Khe Sanh.  Those B-52s were incredible, they bombed every day.  You had to get in your hole because you wouldn't hear the planes.  Then, suddenly, the earth is shaking and you'd see these huge mountains and geysers of smoke and destruction, and big chunks of metal flying through the air, even though it's 2,000 meters away.  And we'd say, how can anything live through that?  But they did. 

Ray Stubbe:
We all got to the point where we knew we were all going to die.  I guess because we knew we were going to die, we were so much freer to live.  You didn't have to worry about getting wounded, or worry about dying, 'cause you know you're going to die anyway.  So, if some guy's out there by himself, wounded, and the rounds are going off, well, just go out, run out, dash out, and drag him in. 

Lance Larson:
It went on until the end of March, until Operation Pegasus.  It was over two months.  It was starting to wear us out.  We were really tired, wore out.  Ron was a radio man, one of my best friends, he was killed.  My other buddy, Saxon, was really hurt and medivac-ed out.  The major I was the radio man for was all messed up, he was medivac-ed.  The colonel was hit.  His aide was hit.  Everybody was pretty much hit, except for me.  I spent all my time with them.  They were my, like, sense of humor.  They were my strength.  Then like that, a man's killed or even wounded.  Even if he's wounded, it's the same thing.  He's gone, just like that.  Just-- It's very hard, it's very hard.  It was very hard. 

Ray Stubbe:
When I was evacuated, I ended up at the Naval Support Activity, which is a medical facility at Danang.  I arrived there around lunchtime, and they had white tablecloths.  And here I was, I must have stunk terribly.  Gaunt, emaciated, full of mud that had impregnated my skin, and you couldn't wash it off.  Wearing a helmet, flak jacket, and here are all these officers, these doctors, in their starched utilities, with creases down their trousers, you know, sitting like civilized people, eating their lunch.  And here I walk in.  And it was quiet, and no one would-- No one sat with me. 

 

TET 1968

Roger Treece:
I was assigned to Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron 1.  I had a top secret crypto clearance.  That's just about as high as you can go without being the president.  I wasn't allowed to leave base without two armed escorts.  And I wasn't allowed to carry a weapon, because of my security clearance.  The instructions to my escorts were to kill me, rather than let me be captured. 

Ted Fetting:
And of course, word had gotten round that there were build-ups all over the place.  That was -- in a delta, leading into Tet.  I don't think anybody had any idea it was going to be that bad.  Because I think they would've been better prepared, and dealt with it better.  We were incredulous, areas that we could go through normally, you know, all of a sudden, there were all kinds of enemy. 

Don Jones:
I was an advisor to the Vietnamese.  Pretty impressed with the corps staff.  Very well-grounded in what they were doing.  Things were looking pretty good in November.  Things got a little tight in December.  And in the Danang area, we started seeing a lot of activity to our west.  It kept building and building during January.  It was clear that something was going to happen, somewhere along the way. 

Thomas Baertsch:
The South Vietnamese, untold by people that know now, were pretty much wise to what was going to go on.  They knew that this wasn't going to be what the Americans thought it was going to be, there was going to be a cease-fire for that holiday.  They had fully intended to try and overrun as many places as they could. 

Miles Wilkins:
I was assigned as the X-O for a special forces camp.  We were a relatively small camp, a few hundred indigenous troops.  But they sent like a battalion along with, I think, as many as 17 tanks to attack our camp.  And we lost that one. 

Thomas Baertsch:
I was asleep in a bunker, and all of a sudden I hear this, "Any station this net, any station this net.  We're being overrun, we've got gooks on the wire." And I looked into where the radio operator was, and he was sleeping.  So I got up, I went over, and I got on the radio.  I just said, "This is 7-4-3 Charlie, can I get any assistance?" And the guy keys the mic again, and you can just hear this horrific battle raging. 

Don Jones:
The morning of Tet, we got awakened at about 4:30.  The first thing that I noticed when I got to the compound was that there were South Vietnamese army forces up on the back wall.  And they were firing off the back wall with rifles and machine guns.  And I figured that probably was not something that they were doing for practice. 

Miles Wilkins:
And there was a tank that was probably 15-20 yards away from us, just sitting there pointed.  And then he fired at us with his main gun.  I got hit in the hip, and it was like I was paralyzed, I was down on all fours.  In fact, the colonel said, "I think Wilkens has had it." And I can't-- It's probably just a matter of seconds, but I'm wanting to say, "No, I haven't!" And the colonel helped me.  And actually, we went underneath the dispensary building.  Now it's in the middle of the night, and they've pretty much gained control of the hill by then.  The NVA troops were in, going through the dispensary.  They were basically walking like six inches over our head. 

Ted Fetting:
It was bedlam.  And a lot of people killed, a lot of people killed.  When I was hit twice, they came in with choppers and got me out of there.  Here I am, being taken to this aid station.  We get down there, we get inside, and we're told it's too hot, we've got to get out of here.  So you've got to lift out of an area like that.  And we did, and I was convinced that was it, this is Waterloo. 

Roger Treece:
Sirens went off.  We went in the bunker.  Between our barracks and the flight line was the ammo dump.  They hit the ammo dump.  And it was burning, so it lit everything up like a torch.  And the bunker's shaking, and no weapon.  Knowing that if the Marines fall back, they're going to blow our bunker on the way through, because we're all expendable in here.  And you're sitting in there in the dark, and the rats are running over your legs, in your skivvies.  "Get me out of here." Didn't think I'd make it through that night. 

Thomas Baertsch:
He was in such dire straits that he gave me the coordinates to the center of his compound.  And he said, "Start dropping them in and walking them out to the wire." I knew it was at Ca Mau.  Their main communication got knocked out, and they were on a jerry-rigged antenna from the back of a Jeep.  And just because we were on top of that hill, that's why we heard them.  So I was relaying.  Called for artillery support.  "This is --7-4-3 Charlie, give me some battery, one round, on this coordinate."

Don Jones:
The general walked over to a map and took his swagger stick and he pointed to the village behind us.  He just said, "They're in there.  We need to get rid of 'em." So for the better part of a couple hours, the planes at Danang would just take off, make a left turn, fly behind the compound, drop their bombs, circle around, land, get more.  That was the end of the threat to Danang. 

Miles Wilkins:
To the best of my knowledge, the first and one of the only times that they ever used the tanks in the entire conflict in Vietnam.  There were 24 Americans in camp.  14 got out, 13 were wounded, and ten were missing.  The A-team at -- was the most decorated A-team in United States history. 

Ted Fetting:
The whole place was chaos.  Saigon itself was chaos.  Being taken by bus from the hospital to the plane, I don't think any of us were confident that we were out of it yet.  Got on that plane and the old plane took off.  Then, we're thinking, we're going to get shot down at the end of the runway.  Oh, man.  When we lifted off and we were out of range, it was just an incredible, incredible feeling.  I guess I'm going to see tomorrow after all. 

Don Jones:
There was praise, I think, for General Lam, in terms of inside the Vietnamese circles, nationally and locally, for having saved Danang.  But there were other parts of the country where it stayed hot for a long, long time.  For the South Vietnamese, it was a very tough time.  They just got hammered. 

Miles Wilkins:
This was a very organized military type of attack.  There's nothing amateurish about it.  And in fact, the entire Tet Offensive, how many places they hit with such force at one time?  It was really probably a turning point in terms of, if nothing else, respect for the degree of military force that they were able to employ. 

Thomas Baertsch:
Ca Mau was this provincial headquarters.  There was only 50 guys there.  Overrun, 100% causalities, 23 of them dead.  35 years later, Christmas Eve, I get an email that simply said that he was Captain McMaken, and he was the one that was on the radio that night.  And that if it wasn't for --7-4-3 Charlie, that there wouldn't be anybody left.  That's heavy, you know.  And it's not for me, it's for them.  There were a lot of guys that didn't make it. 

Roger Treece:
After Tet, I didn't go back in a bunker.  I'd find a ditch.  I'd find anything.  I would not go back in a bunker.  I didn't want to be trapped again.  I'd made my peace.  I was ready to die, you know.  And unfortunately, I felt that way for 28 years.  Just waiting to die. 

 

HUE CITY , FEBRUARY 1968

Sam King:
We'd been on patrols and been in a little bit, but nothing till Hue City.  Tet, New Year, in '68, the Viet Cong overran Hue City, took it and dug in.  And we had to go in and dig 'em out.  I mean, literally, you know, dig 'em out.  Out of holes, out of little bunkers.  I went into Hue City, low man on the totem pole, you know, PFC.  It was a full squad.  Came out with a full squad, I think it was 14 days later.  But it was me and one other guy, were the only two from the original ones that went in.  The rest were either killed or wounded. 

Charlie Wolden:
They formed up a large group of people, and they issued us new weapons and gear, and put us on trucks headed to Hue.  The trucks we had, had boxes of ammo.  Crates and mortar rounds.  We’re sitting on top of it.  So we're all sitting on top of it.  As we were going into Hue, people were coming out of Hue, just streaming.  It was like the parting of the Red Sea, people just getting out of our way and we were smoking into Hue.  First thing I saw was a tank jammed up into a building that was all burned out.  There was a Jeep that was all burned out with a body hanging out of it.  And the billows of dust coming up, you couldn't see in front of you.  And then the shooting started.  Just deafening.  And I'd see flashes coming out of the buildings around us, I didn't know if anybody was shot or what.  The next thing I remember, I'm laying on the ground, boxes of ammo all over the place.  Those mortar rounds we were sitting on.  And the truck was on its side, hit a bomb crater.  And it just went over, okay?  And a "ping, ping." When a bullet goes near you, it's like "snap." But it was hitting the ground, it was like, "crack, crack, crack, crack!" And they're hitting.  Dust all around me.  I thought, I'll just lay here, they'll think I'm dead.  And the other thing that became really apparent right then, there was no background music, man, this is real.  As simple as that is.  This is real. 

Sam King:
Well, the guys that had been there a long time had never been in something like that, Hue City.  Sometimes, the bullets would be flying, tracers.  It almost looked like you could walk on 'em.  I was totally baptized in all aspects of it, from seeing my friend die to seeing an enemy die at my hands.  It changed me forever. 

Charlie Wolden:
Nobody knew how big a unit it was or anything.  They started sending Marine companies in there and they just-- They were just too little.  The NVA were all over the place.  They were on streets, or in alleys, or in buildings.  They were all over the place.  And it was every day.  Every day we were making contact.  Every day we're taking casualties.  Every day we're going through houses.  Every day we're running across streets that had snipers block by block. 

Sam King:
It would take us sometimes a day to go 100 yards, if you were lucky.  And the heat and smell.  The smell was something else, smell in combat, smell in war, after a battle that's went on for a few days, it's just something else.  Blood has its own smell.  It smells like hot copper. 

Charlie Wolden:
We were down from a squad of maybe a dozen people down to five.  And they sent our squad out on kind of a recon.  And all of a sudden, all hell broke loose.  I mean, it was just shoot, shoot, shoot! All over us, okay?  I had a sharp pain right here, right underneath my arm.  I said, "I think I was hit!" And Cole looks at me.  Cole, over the top of Dunham, he says, "On count of three, we're out of here! One, two, three!" We got up, I got up, Dunham got up, and just, poof, out of his back.  I mean, it was instantaneous.  It's entrenched in my mind.  Poof, and he fell forward, right through the shoulder blades. 

Sam King:
Guys, you know, run through fire, I think some of the bravest people who did the bravest acts I've ever seen, never ever got any credit.  Didn't really want any. 

Charlie Wolden:
Yeah, I ran out and got that guy.  And I did it because I was terrified.  But my definition of being a hero as a child was, you're John Wayne, you're fearless, okay?  I was terrified over there.  The definition is overcoming your fear to do your job.  And I don't think much of the word "hero" any way you look at it. 

Sam King:
You never knew where they were going to spring up from.  You couldn't call in the air strikes, because it was the ancient capital, and the Vietnamese government didn't want any air strikes.  That citadel wall, it was a castle.  So they knew we were going to come through these particular gates into the inner city into the citadel itself.  They were just set up there with machine guns. 

Charlie Wolden:
We were only allowed to have, in Hue, on the south side, direct fire weapons.  That means, we didn't have any mortars or artillery.  They didn't want to destroy the city.  Ancient courtyards.  These things are hundreds of years old.  Don't wreck the courtyards, okay?  And the irony of it is, before we were done, the city was in rubble, just what you had to do, because it was every damn house. 

Sam King:
But it wasn't till late in the battle that they actually let two planes, they had to be Vietnamese pilots, come in and knock out a section of the wall.  When we finally took the citadel, it was kind of over.  It was mopping up.  Got through that unscratched, which amazes me to this day.  Come home.  And the war was, after the Tet in '68, it got terribly unpopular among the people.  That was a hard thing to go through, screaming the standard "Baby killer," and "You should've died in Vietnam." For doing what we considered our duty.  All us 18, 19, 20-year-old Marines, soldiers, airmen, Navy guys, we didn't know about the damn politics of the thing.  Most of us hadn't been old enough to vote, hardly, you know?  I hate to say it about my country, but at that time, it was not a good place to be if you were in the military.  So I asked for orders back to Vietnam. 

Charlie Wolden:
They had a saying, "Don't mean nothing, don't mean a goddamn thing." Suck it up.  Don't mean nothing, don't mean a damn thing.  Don't put a meaning on it.  You put a meaning on it, you start thinking about it.  You start thinking on it, you start feeling.  Suck it up and move out.  And the purpose was to get us through.  To emotionally and physically survive it.  We called it "the 'Nam." The 'Nam.  And "the world." That was the real world, this was the surreal world.  This was not real.  This isn't the world.  This is not the world that I want to live in.  That's the world.  But I just didn't fit. 

 

BROWN WATER NAVY: MOBILE RIVERINE FORCE

Michael Hoks:
I was the first one to put my hand up when he asked for volunteers for Vietnam.  We were the first River Division over there, which was something I didn't hear of.  And apparently, that's what I volunteered for.  In World War II, most people remember the boats going up on the beach, dropping a ramp, and the army guys running off.  That's exactly what we were on.  However, this boat was totally re-fitted.  It was our job to get the army where we knew there was heavy concentration of North Vietnamese.  And then we would go in and drop 'em off, give 'em gun support and medical evacuation.  Complete evacuation when the operation was over, or if something went wrong. 

Bruce Jensen:
The boats that I was on, we went up some rivers where the boats were longer than the river was wide.  And we had to pull up onto the beach and back down just to turn around.  But my boat, being equipped with a helicopter pad, we were the medical aid boat for the division.  And my job, when we brought in the helicopters, I'd have to get out of my gun mount, go up and stand on the corner of the flight deck, and wave the pilot in to set down.  He couldn't actually see, because the nose of the helicopter was over the edge. 

Mike Demske:
I got orders for swiftboats.  The delta area where I was stationed, there was no highways.  To get from village to village, you had to go by boat.  And we were supposed to patrol and prevent any infiltration of supplies, medical supplies, food, ammunition, to the VC.  They would try to sneak it in via the ocean.  And our job was to stop that.  And then Admiral Zumwalt took over as head of the Navy in Vietnam, and we became river runners. 

Ken McGwin:
Went to the Westchester County.  We had about 120 in the ship's company, and the LSTs had that unusual mission, you know, of being able to navigate the waters of the Mekong.  Far up into the delta, where other Navy ships could not go.  The armored gunboats, the tangos, would tie up alongside the LST, refuel, meals, try to repair.  And at night they would circle, drop grenades in the water to try to keep the Viet Cong from being able to swim out there and do damage with mines or explosive charges. 

Michael Hoks:
We helped each other.  It wasn't Army, Navy.  It was Riverine Force.  If the Army was still on the boats, they'd get their guns out there.  And one side or the other side, sometimes both sides of the boat, we had shooting.  We worked together with them very, very closely.  I have a high regard for the 9th Infantry.  Because at a top speed of less than ten miles an hour, we had to fight our way out of any situation. 

Bruce Jensen:
Very few missions that we went on, did we go in and out without receiving fire.  One time, something out of the corner of my eye just caught my attention.  I look up, and here was a mortar shell going up, and I was just mesmerized by it.  And then it started coming down.  And then it dawned on me, exactly what was going on.  I thought, "Oh, hell." I ran and I dove.  I went right through the opening of the gun mount! And back up, firing away. 

Mike Demske:
Once you started running the rivers, invariably you were going to get ambushed someplace.  For a while there, I think 75% of the people that were on the boats were killed or wounded.  Everybody on my crew was wounded at least twice.  I mean, the jungle was right up to the riverbanks.  That's when Admiral Zumwalt ordered the use of Agent Orange.  After they had sprayed it, you swore you were on the moon.  There was nothing alive, just incredible.  But it did move the VC back further. 

Ken McGwin:
Early morning hours, two tremendous explosions, and they had managed to get out there.  Frogmen fastened targets on both sides of the ship.  The worst damage of any Navy ship in the war.  Many, many people dead.  Many, many people hurt.  It was just, try to find them and get the ones that were alive out of there if we could.  We couldn't use torches to cut people out because of the diesel fuel, and it was vaporized in the air.  Just choking.  You could hear people struggling to get out.  They died, I suppose.  We just couldn't get to them in time.  Everybody fought back with everything they had, and...  (voice breaks) It was a hard thing to do. 

Michael Hoks:
We'd drop them off at first light, help them off the boat.  And then we would just stay in the area.  And when they confronted any enemy action, they would radio back to us.  And if we could help with the machine guns or the mortars, that was our immediate duty.  Otherwise, they'd give us coordinates and we would have the howitzers or the flyboys come in.  Then there were times where the Viet Cong resistance was bigger than what we expected.  And they knew they could not cross the river because of the boats.  Then they would fight back through the Army.  And it was always a very depressing day when you knew that you were supposed to...  pick up 40 guys and only 20 show up. 

Bruce Jensen:
Being the medical aid boat, we had it somewhat cushy compared to the rest.  But we still had our fire fights.  And we got to deal with the wounded.  Some of it bad, but we were part of the getting them out, and getting them to safety.  I've seen enough blood and gore to last me a lifetime. 

Mike Demske:
I remember talking to Admiral Zumwalt at one of our reunions.  His son was on swiftboats, and he ended up dying from cancer from exposure to Agent Orange.  He said if he had to do it all over again, he'd still do it, because it gave us 30 more years to live, even though a lot of us suffer from exposure to it.  We were young and dumb, and we didn't know what the effects would be of it.  I don't think the Navy knew what they were.  We would tie our clothes on a rope, and throw them in the prop wash when we were running.  It's the only way we had of cleaning our clothes.  Here, the river was full of Agent Orange, the riverbanks were, and it just, we didn't know it. 

Ken McGwin:
All my memories of Vietnam just focus right back on that one night.  And I had thought that when I got older, it wouldn't bother me anymore.  But it does, it gets worse.  And no matter how hard I try, I can't shake that guilt.  I've had the chance to have a good life.  And they never did.  They never had a chance. 

 

THE PRICE: CASUALTIES OF WAR

Andrew Thundercloud:
Some of the religious things that we have, have a lot to do with warriors.  And there were certain times that I had heard these warriors tell their stories.  I often listened to them, and I never, ever really gave it much of a thought.  It was something that I accepted, that perhaps one of these days I was going to be doing that.  And I know my mother always wanted to have a doctor in the family, so I became a corpsman.  My father had been a Marine during World War II.  He'd go around and tell people, "My son is a corpsman with the United States Marine Corps." 

Linda McLenahan:
It was actually my intention to become a sister when I graduated from high school.  But in 1967, the Vietnam War was hot and heavy, protests were hot and heavy.  It moved me to a point of, I was tired of the people in the street telling me how to think, or the government telling me how to think.  So at that moment I decided, before I give my life to God, I'd give three years of my life to my country.  So when I graduated in June, I joined the army. 

Mike Weaver:
I signed up into the medical corps.  And the flight going over was terrible.  It was the most gut wrenching, unnerving thing you've ever sat in, because everybody in that plane knew where you were going.  Everybody knew that not everybody in that plane was going to come back alive, or not injured.  It was surreal.  Civilian stewardesses, cute gals, very friendly, trying to give you some water, or a pop, or a snack, knowing that not everybody would come back. 

Sue Haack:
I worked for a two-star general, General Burba.  He said, "Your job in Vietnam is only going to be six months.  Because the guy that had it before you had ten days left in 'Nam, and went outside the hooch and shot himself.  He couldn't deal with the job anymore." And there was only two of us women and 26 guys in the office.  But I was picked to do that, handling of the dead.  How they were killed, when they were killed.  And send the letters home. 

Andrew Thundercloud:
And I never really talk about the first six months that I was in Vietnam.  I refuse, you know, I just absolutely refuse to talk about that.  All I'll say is, I survived.  One of the chief hospital corpsman from MAAG 16 came to our unit, and was looking for corpsmen to volunteer to go fly medevacs.  That was the only time in my entire military career that I volunteered for anything. 

Linda McLenahan:
Got to the WAC detachment on Long Binh post.  Now, the WAC detachment, there were about 7,500 or 8,000 women in Vietnam.  Most of them were nurses.  The rest of us were enlisted women or officers who worked in administration, finance, communications.  I was at the Com Center, the communications facility there, the US Army in the Republic of Vietnam.  All the casualty reports went out of our office. 

Mike Weaver:
One day, we were assigned to a remains unit, for deploying some of the fallen.  They had not been, if I can use the term, processed yet.  So they were still, many of them were in body bags.  It was an old French factory building.  And the first time I saw the first Indiana Jones movie, where you get to the end of the movie, and the ark is being hauled down this huge aisle, and then the camera pans back and you see how large this building is, and you see all these other crates that look the same as that crate?  That's the same feeling I had. 

Sue Haack:
It was a daily, basically, all-day thing.  It never ended, the letters going home, having to send those.  There was nothing warm about a form letter on my typewriter, and I just added the name.  "Mr.  and Mrs.  John Doe," and "your son." They were signed by the government.  So you just-- It was a cold feeling.  I mean, you hated it, but somebody had to do it. 

Andrew Thundercloud:
When we would fly medevac, we'd fly from 6:00 in the morning till 6:00 in the evening, then another corpsman would come in and fly from 6:00pm to 6:00 in the morning.  Once we landed and we started picking up the WIAs or KIAs, I got busy taking care of the wounded.  There were hundreds, hundreds, of wounded Marines that I picked up.  I saw everything imaginable. 

Linda McLenahan:
One day on the radio, we picked up a squad that was under attack, that was asking for help.  And...  They didn't get it.  To helplessly listen...  was kind of tough.  I lost God over there.  So my idea of being a sister after I got out was out the window.  Of course, years later, I was able to put all that in the proper perspective. 

Mike Weaver:
You try to dehumanize it as much as you can, because if you don't, you just can't get through it.  And then it revisits you again, and again, and again.  I call it the "demons." And it will destroy you.  It will literally destroy you. 

Sue Haack:
"Haack the WAC," "Suzie with the Oozy." We were silly girls in 'Nam.  You had to be.  You had to keep the morale up of the men, even if you didn't feel it.  You had to be there for them.  I was a soldier.  I couldn't do anything about protecting them there, but all the ones that I had to put away, I guess the rest alive are mine.  I was just very protective of them.  And I've always said, "My soldiers, my buddies." Always been.  I've said that ever since I came home from Vietnam.  It's just me. 
Andrew Thundercloud:
There were 15 of us that went over to Vietnam at the same time.  And there were only three of us that came back.  I guess to be honest with you, I really didn't want to come home.  Because I was thinking, "Who can take care of these guys better than I can?" The thing I wanted to be remembered, was that I was a good corpsman.  And I'd, you know, hope that somebody would say, "Well, Doc Thundercloud." "Oh yeah, I remember him! Damn good corpsman." That's all I wanted. 

Linda McLenahan:
It would get to the point where a lot of choppers would be coming in, and they'd say, "It's going to be a busy day tomorrow.  We're going to have a lot of casualty reports," and think of the people coming in as work rather than people, because it got too hard.  It got too hard.  That was what hit me about the wall actually.  I processed names all the time, and here are all these names.  That's when I lost it the first time. 

Mike Weaver:
I lost 18 schoolmates from Janesville.  The year I was in Vietnam, over 16,000 American military personnel were lost.  It is staggering to me.  I think that works out to about 40 or 50 a day. 

Linda McLenahan:
You want my poem?  Okay, all right, you ready?  War is hell, a wise man said.  And those who knew so nodded.  War is hell, a young voice cried and with his friends he plotted to lead his troops of neighbor chums against imagined foes.  To charge and die a thousand deaths, up and down he goes.  Charging bushes tall and green around his father's yard, collapsing upon the soft green grass after fighting brave and hard.  Then gather round and re-choose sides, new strategies to form.  Then charge and fall and rise again, no losses do they mourn.  But suddenly, the boys grow up and the game's no longer fun.  Their friends, they die and don't get up, and they're not sure just what they've won.  And the neighbor girls who couldn't play with little boys at war, become nurses and support troops who give them care and more.  And soon they find what others know.  They learned the lesson well.  It's just the way the wise man said.  Truly, war is hell. 

Announcer:
Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories was made possible by lead gifts from Don and Roxanne Weber and from Associated Bank; with major support from the Ho-Chunk Nation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; and from Wisconsin Public Service Foundation, Kwik Trip, the Forest County Potawatomi Foundation, Oshkosh Defense, the General Motors Dealers of Northeast Wisconsin, the Oneida Nation; and these Wisconsin individuals and companies who believe that it is long overdue, but never too late to honor the service and sacrifice of our Vietnam Veterans; with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. 

Premiere on WPT March 26, 2010

Announcer:
Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories is a partnership of the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs, the Wisconsin Historical Society and Wisconsin Public Television. 

Don Heiliger:
It was on the 15th of May. It was a night mission. We were heading-- 30 miles northeast of Hanoi. Just about ten seconds before bombs away. Got a little tug on the back of the airplane. And all the lights starting coming on right away. The fire light. We got our bombs off. And then, immediately started to climb. There's an old adage, the air above you doesn't do you any good when you're bailing out. You want a lot of air below you. So we got to 5,000 then 10,000. By that time, we were watching the fire creeping forward in the airplane. Then Ben says, the fire's gotten to my cockpit, I've got to get out. And he ejected. I got to about 23,000 feet and the fire got to my cockpit. What you do, is you pull up the handles. That just arms the system. You squeeze the triggers. It blows the canopy. Point-three seconds later, you shoot out. A lot of interrogations. A lot of tough ones, people beating you up. Good guards, bad guards. For six years.

Narrator:
When Don Heiliger became a prisoner of the North Vietnamese in 1967, he thought the war would be won in six months. When he was released more than six years later, it had been decided that Vietnam was a war the United States would never win. And while Don waited for freedom, tens of thousands of men and women from Wisconsin served in Southeast Asia, living new stories every day. "Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories."

Announcer:
Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories was made possible by lead gifts from Don and Roxanne Weber and from Associated Bank; with major support from the Ho-Chunk Nation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; and from Wisconsin Public Service Foundation, Kwik Trip, the Forest County Potawatomi Foundation, Oshkosh Defense, the General Motors Dealers of Northeast Wisconsin, the Oneida Nation; and these Wisconsin individuals and companies who believe that it is long overdue, but never too late to honor the service and sacrifice of our Vietnam Veterans; with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

 

BROKEN BODIES: FOREVER

David Kies:
At 7:20 in the morning, along the river, we were policing up our equipment and boom, the thing went off. I still don't know what happened exactly, how it went off. The guy I was with, Eric, was killed. And we both lost both our legs. He died and I didn't. And the third guy who was with us, I never knew his name, got both his eardrums broken. There was always a medic very close. He shoved a cigarette in my mouth and he gave me a shot of morphine. I said, "Give me another one." He said, "I can't. It's against regulation." But he did. That's probably why I didn't pass out. They took me to the helicopter. One of the guys that I met at my first reunion said, "I've been holding this back for 33 years." But he said, "I threw your legs on the helicopter." (laughs)

John Dederich:
You wake up, you've got tubes coming out of you every which direction. You look around. And you say, well, "I really don't want to live anyway." Then I flew back to the field hospital in Danang. Thrown into just a huge area, where wounded people are coming in and out, and they're doing surgery on 'em, and putting them on a stretcher, hosing off the cement area where they're doing it, and bringing on another one. You're laying there, just kind of watching it, trying to get the hell out of there. I remember turning to once side so I wouldn't have to watch the constant traffic. You think the only war that's going on is the one that you're fighting. When I was in that field hospital, I realized that there's thousands of them just like us, and they're getting wounded every day.

Alice Plautz:
Sometimes we'd work 18, 20, 24 hours straight, just getting everybody off the table. We had neurosurgeons. We had chest surgeons. Orthopedics. All the different specialties, so that like, if they were wounded, and they went to a surgical hospital, which was just immediate, you know, get him breathing and keeping him alive, then they would come to us. But a lot of times, we would get the fresh wounded. There were many nights that we would get 300 to 350 in about an eight hour period. And sometimes, they'd be on our operating table a half-hour after they were wounded. There would be blood all over the place. The floor, you know, they would wash it in between. But you could be standing in blood through the whole case. And when you've watched them cut the arms, the legs, and then take out the eyes of a 19-year-old, you want to go, "Ah, get me out of here!"

David Kies:
Came back to Walter Reed. That was a great place, unlike what you hear today. A ward with about 40 beds on it. It was an amputee ward. Some guys, by that time, were hooked on morphine. It was a lot of screaming. If you didn't know, you'd swear you were in a crazy house someplace, just like a mental ward. But I had a doctor, he came to me and he said, "I know what they're going to do to you." They wanted to give me a knee disarticulation, in other words, take my knee apart. He said, "Don't let them do it. I know where you're going. You're going to Madison when you get out of here. There's some really good doctors in Madison."

John Dederich:
When I went from Danang to the Philippines, that's where I met probably the smartest or cruelest doctor in my life. He yanked the bandages off of my raw wounds on both of my legs. And he said, "Son, you're just a mess. You're going to cost us a lot of money to put back together. You better go get a good job and pay a lot of taxes." (laughs) You know, at the time, I thought it was a pretty good statement. I thought it was funny.

Alice Plautz:
One of the things I still haven't figured out how they did it, is they always had their records with them. And I would open the records and I would say, this is Johnny Brown from Cincinnati, Ohio. And he's got two sisters and three brothers. And I realized, this was making it more difficult. And one night, one of the surgeons said, "Alice, you haven't read us a chart in a long time, or one of the records." I said, "No, and I'm never going to do it again." And he started to laugh. He says, "Yeah, I know what you're thinking." Because it was-- They became your younger brothers.

David Kies:
I did come back to Madison, the hospital. Wheeled me into the back. They just left me there on a gurney with a sheet over me. This guy walked up to me in a three-piece suit, and whipped the covers back and started poking me. Well, he had a cigarette in his mouth with an ash about two inches long. I thought it was going to fall on me. That was my doctor. (laughs)

John Dederich:
I flew into a Naval hospital. Amputees, as a group, there was one, two, three wards of them, which would've been about 60 amputees. Just from Vietnam at the time. You know, we're in a wheelchair for six or seven months. One of the funniest things you ever see in your life is two amputees in wheelchairs, you know, trying to-- One guy says, "I'll kick your ass." Then the other guy says, "With what?!" You know, it just can't happen. But yeah, we would practice, you know, balancing on the back wheels of the wheelchair, going down the hills of San Francisco.

David Kies:
I had a Corvair at the time. I used to drive it with my hands, totally illegal. 'Cause they were so small, I could just reach down and brake. And for the gas, I'd use my cane. I remember going to my dentist. And he was on the second story of an old hospital building. I'd throw my wheelchair up as far as I could get it, then climb up on my knees, get it, throw it up some more. I went two flights of stairs that way. (laughs) But there were barriers everywhere. There were no disabled plates for the car. There were no hang tags for the mirror. There was never a ramp anywhere. But it was because of the Vietnam thing, that it all came about.

Alice Plautz:
We had a room where people could come in and sit down. We had television. And we used to watch. At the end of the week, they would give you the statistics of what happened that week, 50 people wounded, three people killed. And we'd say, "Isn't that fascinating that in this whole country, they're saying only 50 people were injured? Do you think they counted those 300 that they brought to us a couple days ago?" Even then, they weren't telling the truth about how many people were wounded.

John Dederich:
I think learning to walk with the artificial legs was probably the biggest challenge. We had people that just would throw their meals. They wouldn't take any treatment. They would refuse to wear an artificial limb or leg, and all those kinds of things. And I felt the same way, when I didn't want to live, or when I didn't want anybody to see me the way I was. You know, am I fortunate that I was 19? Yeah, kind of, because I didn't have a choice. The other choice was not to. You know, so I had my whole life ahead of me. I spent ten months in a country that determined how I was going to live the rest of my life. So, yeah, I was going to either feel sorry for myself, or get on and make some doctor in the Philippines really happy.

 

HAMBURGER HILL: MAY 1969

Cletus Hardy:
The way I actually got in there was a judge by the name of Orthouse in Lancaster, Wisconsin, telling me that I better pray that I passed my physical. He had decided that the military was probably a better place for me than the streets around Fennimore, Wisconsin. So that's basically how I got in. I think me called me Mr. Hardy at the time. When he said that, I was pretty sure he was serious.

Roger Harrison:
March of '69, when I got to Cam Ranh Bay, they gave me my orders for 101st Airborne Division. And I went to the First Sergeant and I said, "You can't put me in the 101st Airborne Division. I've never jumped out of an airplane. I'm not jump qualified." He said, "I don't give a
(---), that's where you're going." (laughs) They don't care. I was only with my company a month when they sent us into the A Shau Valley.

Cletus Hardy:
The A Shau Valley, when Hamburger Hill came around, Battalion Commander Hunnicut, he got it in his head that he was going to take that mountain come hell or high water. Terrifically mountainous terrain. They, the Vietnamese, who had a hell of a base camp coming into the backside of that, they're actually driving trucks and tanks into that base camp up there. And he decides he's going to come up the front side and take it away from them.

 

Roger Harrison:
Around May 10, they sent us up on Hamburger Hill. Dropped off on the west end of the hill, one of the ridge lines going into Hamburger Hill. We fought every day, sometimes two and three times a day. They'd pull back. They might make a hundred yards, or so. Make contact again. And one day, our point man got killed. I don't think he made ten yards. We stayed there for two days and never moved.

Cletus Hardy:
You've got a sister battalion in trouble, you go into high alert. Well, as luck would have it, all of the people that could've gone back up there, he only needed one more company to take this mountain, as he was saying it. That company happened to be A Company, the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry. And our claim to fame, we were the Band of Brothers. They flew us back up there. And we were there for four assaults on the mountain. And I never, never, never did understand it.

Roger Harrison:
I was just coming out of the thick stuff. I was the first guy to move up, and all of a sudden, seeing white shrapnel. I never heard the explosion. When I hit the dirt, the ground, then all hell broke loose. They were coming close. I could feel the dirt hitting my helmet and my back. And I couldn't get a shot off. I was pinned down. The rest of my guys had to come up, lay down a base of fire so I could get up. I took about two steps and dove, and just started doing the whole crawl. I got back into the middle of the company, grabbed an M-60 machine gun, grabbed as much ammunition as I could carry, 'cause all of a sudden I heard my guys hollering for the medic. I went up there and helped them guys out. We lost everybody in my squad but two guys and me.

Cletus Hardy:
And I don't think anybody will ever know how many died up there. It was hang onto tree roots to pull yourself as you went up that damn thing. It was so slick and so, you know, it rained. And if it weren't raining, it would be hard to go up it. Plus, you've got, I don't even know how many Vietnamese up there, that are trying to kill you. And they're dug in. And when you think it can't get no worse than this, it would get worse than that. I never had any respect for that man afterwards, Hunnicut. I can remember him coming across the radio. People were going, "You're going to get us all killed. You've got to get us the hell out of here." And he said, "You're getting paid to fight a war, not make decisions." He's up there right now in a helicopter, for Christ sakes, 2,000 or 3,000 feet above us.

Roger Harrison:
It was either one or two days before we took the hill that we moved off the ridge and we tied into another company. Because we were short of people, we had to tie into somebody else to get some strength up. On the 19th, we had some fighting. And on the 20th, it was all over with.

Cletus Hardy:
On the top, it happened that we ended up getting up there first. Hunnicut could see what was going on from the air, and it wasn't his unit. A third of the 187, I think, was called Rakkasans. And the Rakkasans, he said had given so much for that hill that they had to be the ones to take it. It's raining, and mud slides, and there's dead bodies everywhere. I've got to think that's what Hell must look like. He wanted our company to hold up so he could get a company moved up so they could pass us to go up to the top of that mountain. And I'll never forget that. I thought what the hell kind of game are we playing here, with all these lives?

Roger Harrison:
In my company, we started out with 115 guys. And after we took the hill, there was 37 of us left.

Cletus Hardy:
We were up there, but I can't ever say we took it, 'cause I don't think we spent ten minutes up there the whole damn time. We went down and they started airlifting people out. That was the end of it. It was for nought. It's a terrible, terrible thing that happened there.

Roger Harrison:
A lot of people weren't happy that we had to leave it. I mean, why spend all that time? Why didn't you pull us off and B-52 it after the first couple of days? You know, why did we have get all these guys hurt, then leave it, then B-52 it?

Cletus Hardy:
The things that the veterans have been through, the Vietnam Vets, we all came home and depending on what your buddies were doing, smoked pot and drank beer, and self-medicated for a lot of years. For a lot of guys, the nightmares, the cold sweats, they're still there to this day, and they'll never go away. I know they'll never go away. My mother was telling us when we first came home, how scared they were. They just didn't know what the hell was going to happen. I'd just tear out of bed at night, go flying outside, and just gone. Just running in my sleep. Gone.

Roger Harrison:
For, I don't know, maybe eight or ten years, getting up screaming, in a cold sweat. Just jumping off the bed and hitting the floor, all kinds of different things. But yeah, you still have them.

 

FIREPOWER: AIR SUPERIORITY

James Overman:
The first day of pilot training, we were standing at attention, and this guy walks up and he said, "What the hell are you?" I said, "My dad is from Germany and my mother is 100% Native American." "I want to tell you something, Indian. There are no Indians who are ever going to fly my (---) airplanes." Wow. My dream was to take anything to be a pilot. And this guy's insulting me. And once in my lifetime, I knew enough to keep quiet, because the goal was bigger than this dummy. My dad and my mother, they came to my graduation. I'm very proud of that moment, and I think about it all the time.

Ray Boland:
There were two units in Vietnam called Aerial Rocket Artillery. Cobra Gunships. We were flying helicopters, but everything we did was managed by the Field Artillery Fire Control System. So, typically, when we took off, it was in response to a Forward Observer on the ground with the Infantry, calling for a fire mission, where the enemy was so close, they could no longer use cannon fire. Typically, we were firing within 25 meters of the friendlies, both day and night.

Dave Van Dyke:
The Forward Air Controller, the FAC was in charge of the air war. There wasn't a bomb dropped in-country that didn't have a FAC in control of it. And the FAC was in contact with the ground, and had got clearance. Politically, we knew what the situation was, and we reacted with it. Being the FAC there, I think was the best job I ever had. The meaningfulness of what your decisions and what your skill produced could be really important.

Gene Hunter:
The AC-130 was pretty secret. They really didn't want people to know the platform existed. It was called SPECTRE. You notice the way SPECTRE is spelled. What it is, it's a skeleton that rides a horse at night and swings a sword of death. And that's what gunships do. They ride at night and swing a sword of death. No way would I want to be on the ground. It's just so dead-accurate. And just a short burst with the 20s, I mean, you're looking at 3,000-6,000 rounds a minute coming out of those things. And it just-- (imitates explosion) I would not want to be on the ground.

James Overman:
I called out to Military Assignments, Classified. I said, "Sir, what do you have? I want to get back over there." And they said, well, have you ever heard of the AC-130? I said, "No. We've got a gunship?" "Yeah." "That's what I want!" Our assignment was to destroy trucks on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. When you're flying over enemy territory, the sensors will light, infrared, Black Crow. We're immediately looking for trucks. The Black Crow was the most magic of all of them. And they never figured it out. The Vietnamese, the Chinese or the Russians. We would fly in a thunderstorm, or complete overcast, where we couldn't see the ground, and they couldn't see up to shoot at us, and zap a truck right through the clouds. You'd get that red flash. Yes!

Ray Boland:
The pilot in the backseat was typically the pilot in command and firing the rockets. We had four rocket pods on our aircraft, each with 19 firing tubes. So, a total of 76 rockets if you were fully loaded. You'd fire the rockets. The co-pilot in the front would suppress, with the mini-gun and grenade launcher in the turret, rake before a small arms fire was reaching you. And we would return to base, re-arm, re-load, and get ready to go out again.

Dave Van Dyke:
A company size unit had gotten surrounded. He's getting ready to put in the hard bombs. And as I rolled in, about six guys on the ground started shooting at me. I'm talking a fighter now. And you see the rocket fire, you drop the bomb on the smoke. Just shoot a rocket right back at 'em. And the lead fighter was coming down the pike already. Rocket hits, smoke, boom. And that put an end to it. That's why we didn't get into too many gun fights with the FACs. They usually tried to hide and shoot behind you. 'Cause if I saw 'em, I killed 'em, you know. That was all there was to it.

Gene Hunter:
When the AC-130 gunship flies with the rear cargo door open and the rear ramp up, we would lay off the back ramp, from about our waist up, into the slip stream, scanning for AAA, Anti-Aircraft Artillery, and call the evasive action to break right, break left, or whatever. The pilots always said they could tell how severe it was by the pitch of the IO's voice when he was yelling.

James Overman:
If this is the ramp, right here, and he's laying on there, he is down about like this, so that he can see up ahead and out to the sides. If he sees it in time, he could tell me to break to the right, and it'll go right on by, and I go back into the firing circle.

Gene Hunter:
I remember one night that we snapped so hard and dove so quick that the negative Gs came in and it lifted me up off the ramp. It was like being in outerspace.
James Overman:
Well, this one we had, his name was Humphrey, his depth perception was perfect, because he never took a hit. They came so close, the smoke actually came in the cockpit. And I looked up through the glass and I saw all five of 'em. One, two, three, four, five. My god, we've got to talk! (laughs)

Ray Boland:
You're talking intercom with your co-pilot. You're talking one radio with your wing ship. You're talking another radio with the Air Force. Another radio with the people on the ground. Another frequency with other Hueys, if they were involved. And trying to keep all of that straight, and who was who, and who was talking to who, and which one is coming from which direction. Occasionally, people literally screaming on the radio. And the guys on the ground are popping smoke right by their position, and they're saying, "Hit the smoke." The situation was that desperate. Trying to picture being down there, and 20 meters away are all these guys coming at you. And you're not going to, after you shoot, turn around and go back to the base camp. They were still there. It was very, very tough.

Dave Van Dyke:
You got to remember, the guy on the ground, he's the same age as you are, and he's a young lieutenant. And you can tell when somebody is getting shot at, 'cause you're listening to 'em on the radio, and their voice is up an octave or ten. And he's got himself a platoon or something out there in the woods, and somebody's trying to kill them, and he doesn't know what to do about it. So, you'd calm him down and put some Napalm on those guys, or something like that. Or you'd get a guy that gets hurt, and now you're covering the dust-off. The guys are shooting at the dust-off. You'd shoot at the guys. The bad guys crawl in a hole and hide for a while, until you get your guy out of there. It's, you know, it's a good feeling.

Gene Hunter:
The adrenaline that pumps through you every single night, you would just sweat off pounds. But I didn't have to live it 24/7 like the guys on the ground. I never had to face my enemy face-to-face. I think that's one reason that I haven't had a lot of the trouble that some of the other vets have had.

 

REAR ECHELON: STILL A WAR

Doug Bradley:
It's the end of Basic Training, and we're finding out where we're going to go next. And I was one of about five people that was called out of the formation to go to this office. And they're sending me to the Army Hometown News Center in Kansas City, Missouri, because my MOS is 71-220. I'm an Information Specialist. I'm an Army Reporter and a writer. Well, I mean, I was just-- I was shaking, I was so excited. I just thought, this is great, I'm not carrying a gun. I go back to the formation, where just about everybody in my unit was being assigned to Advanced Infantry Training, and within a matter of two or three months, they were going to be in Vietnam. I couldn't share my joy for myself with anybody, because I felt so terrible. These guys were just totally bummed out.

Peter Finnegan:
I ended up in the hospital in Chu Lai. And this re-enlistment officer came around. He was going from bed to bed, talking to people. And he said, "You know, if you re-enlist, right now, I can get you out of the Infantry and get you into an entirely different place." And I said, "Well, what have you got?" He said, "Cook, mechanic, photographer." And I thought, there you go. But it turns out that I saw more on regular basis, as a photographer. So I didn't really buy myself a lot of security.

Robert Spencer:
Our unit, the 570, supplied mail to five other base camps in the Mekong Delta. My basic job was to help sort the mail, break it down, and get it out to the different areas. And to check in these different areas, to make sure that the mail had gotten there, and it was distributed properly. After 18 months, when I was sent back to the states, very, very depressed. Having problems eating, having problems sleeping. Some of the guys I played ball with were saying things like, "He stayed in Vietnam too long. Something's happened. He's not the same." After about three or four months at home, I just saved enough money to buy a one-way ticket back to Vietnam.

Doug Bradley:
They called it the air conditioned jungle, because we worked in air conditioned offices. Probably in one of the least dangerous places in Vietnam. And we had a lot of guys writing and editing for the paper, which was called The Army Reporter. It was probably the largest Army newspaper in the world, because Long Binh was the largest Army base in the world. We had about 25,000 or 30,000 GIs, and 10,000 or 15,000 Vietnamese working on that base. And we also had a magazine, and it was sort of this glossy publication about being in Vietnam.

Peter Finnegan:
The magazine, "The Hurricane" magazine, that I worked for, they wanted all color transparencies. And so, we had an unlimited supply of 35mm film. You could trade film for anything. We spent a lot of time in Saigon, at massage parlors, the bars, the cat houses. And in Vietnam, the potency of the marijuana was incredible. The opium was there. And you'd just give them some film. At that time, Saigon was a great place for a 21-year-old guy to be.

Robert Spencer:
When I stepped off of that airplane, it was like being liberated. I pulled up where I had worked, and lived with a Cambodian family. I started to learn Vietnamese, fluently, by asking questions. "How do you say, I want some water?" (speaking Vietnamese) "I'm hungry." (speaking Vietnamese) "How to count?" (speaking Vietnamese) And so, I was learning the language in a way I was being sensitive to their culture. And they reciprocated by really embracing me, and sharing some things with me that reflected back on what was happening in the United States.

Doug Bradley:
So here it is, '70 and '71 in Vietnam. What was going on? Well, you know, with Vietnamization, it had basically changed the war from a ground war to an air war. So we were bombing the hell out of the place, but we didn't have enough ground troops. And we were trying to turn the war over to the South Vietnamese. I mean, nobody wanted to be the last GI killed in Vietnam. So the Army was breaking down. Because you take everything that was happening back home, race, generational, drugs, etc., that was personified in the Army, especially in Vietnam.

Peter Finnegan:
When the peace and quiet is just shattered by an explosion, everything shakes, including the guts, you don't know if it's you shaking or not. I would do the, "Dear God, you get me out of this, and I will give up that whore house run to Saigon. I will never smoke opium again." And all of a sudden, it was all over with, and you'd be, well, look at the time. So I still owe him, big time.

Robert Spencer:
Now, some of them were speaking English quite well, so I could tell, you know, that they weren't just peasants. One of them, he said, "What this war's all about is like the war you had, the north and the south was fighting." "Oh, the Civil War." He says, "Yeah, that's what we have here, is a civil war. We don't need any American presence. We didn't need the French here. We didn't need the Chinese here." He said, "We will work this out."

Doug Bradley:
I was seeing pretty discouraging stuff, but I couldn't report discouraging stuff. My job was to put on a happy face, and that things were fine. When I saw a story that I needed to write, I didn't write it. When I saw something that needed to be exposed, I didn't expose it. You know, I was part of it. I was a GI in Vietnam.

Peter Finnegan:
I just got so wrapped up in what we were doing, and taking pictures, and thinking I was some kind of Soldier of Fortune, and I'm never going to die. Finally, after my second extension, it was wearing down on me. I was a mess. And it got to the point where my friends went to my commanding officer and said, "Pete is not going to live." You know, it was pretty obvious that there was something wrong. So they denied me to extend another six months.

Robert Spencer:
Living in the United States, in one state, one neighborhood, for 21 years of my life. I didn't realize the impact that it had on me, until I was able to go to a different culture. I experienced a form of liberation, a form of self-identity. Not according to someone else's definition. I experienced some things about Vietnam that were outside of daily combat in the swamps, and in the rice paddies. And to share a different perspective of Vietnam, the way I saw it.

Doug Bradley:
I was one of the fortunate ones. And it was painful to go out and do stories, and talk to guys, when you had those moments when all of a sudden they would look at you and say, "Why do you have a pen and I've got the rifle? How did this happen to you, and why didn't it happen to me?" What do you say? There's no answer for that. I'm lucky, and I know it. And I'm sorry. That's about the best I could do.

Peter Finnegan:
I'll never step over that line again. I know that there's a lot of Vietnam veterans that struggle, and don't always do so well. I feel for them. I know that I've got this addictive personality, that I don't think I've got another come-back.

 

FIREBASES 1970: HENDERSON AND RIPCORD

George Banda:
There was a lot of battles that we'd gone through. And we had lost a number of people. And the powers that be said, hey, these guys need some R&R. Let's put them up here at Eagle Beach. Let them relax. We were there for about a day or two. And from right there, after all that relaxing, and good times, they flew us out to Henderson. I never had heard of Henderson. When we landed there, one of the worst firebases I had ever seen. The jungle was right there. I mean, I looked around and I went, there's no protection here. Anybody could sneak up here real quick. You wouldn't see 'em till it was too late. You know, and that's exactly what happened.

Steve Manthei:
Ripcord was big time. Big time. We'd push up this hill. I know two. It was in view of Ripcord. It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. A lot of activity. I mean, you really saw it. What I expected, we were-- out of there, 'cause I know we were going to be ticked. And a lot of the old guys did, too. There was only a few of us, what I call "old guys," that had been there for quite a while, you know. And then we had a bunch of new guys. Our leader, at that time, was a new guy, too. We totally expected a booby trap, and we've move out that night. But then they said we were saying, which kind of upset us. I went down and dug my hole, more deeper and bigger.

Charles Lieb:
Fire Support Base Ripcord, 53 days we had incoming fire, whether it'd be mortar rounds, recoilless rifle. A lot of artillery rounds being fired in support. And this is at the time they had hatched the plan that as the monsoons let up, they wanted to attack the North Vietnamese supply camps in the A Shau Valley. This was their territory. Nobody had been in the A Shau Valley since Hamburger Hill. The Companies we had out in the field started taking significant casualties and meeting significant enemy opposition.

George Banda:
I turned and I yelled. I said, "Hey, you guys better wake up! Something is happening." And an instant later, I saw a flash. RPG hit five feet away from me. It exploded. I went up flying in the air. I was upside down. I landed on my head, rolled over, got up real quick. I was deaf. I could see tracers flying through the air. I could see explosions, but I couldn't hear anything.

Steve Manthei:
All hell broke loose. A wave of RPGs hit the command post on the top. And I mean, it was, it knocked me off my feet. There they were, right with us. It was eyeball to eyeball. They had broken through. Screaming, hollering, cussing. All kinds of noise. Machine gun fire. Everybody opened up. I mean, it was a fight. I popped that hand flare. And what I saw coming up from the east side up that saddle, nothing but heads.

Charles Lieb:
They attacked on Hill 902, at 4:00am. Because you'd been in the defensive positions. You hadn't seen anything, heard anything. Things were quiet. People were lulled, not paying as close attention. They crawled in under the cover of darkness with satchel charges and weapons. And were above the perimeter, and came pouring into the holes while others were coming up the trails and the hillside into 'em.

George Banda:
Doc was just laying there on his back. It looked like he was asleep. In fact, I thought he was. I said, "Hey, Doc, get up." And I tried to pick him up, and the back of his head was gone. His head was full of sand, which was just-- it freaked me out. I caught a round on the left side of my head, which severed an artery. I mean, it just squirt for about five feet. And being a medic, knowing that an artery had been severed, you know, I'm bleeding to death here. I couldn't stop it. Trying to take care of the guys. The Lieutenant was dead. Sergeant Steiner was dead. And I looked for Ed Vesser, my friend. "Where the hell is Ed?" I said, "I can't see him." And he was blown, maybe 100 feet down there, or he walked down there. I'm not sure how he got down there. But there he was down there, laying there.

Steve Manthei:
I heard Cooper. I believe he was on Ripcord at that time, calling on the radio. Nobody answered. Well, I knew that the CP had been eliminated. So I got on the radio. And I told him we needed Cobras now. And the Cobras finally did show up, and I was happy as heck about that. But I wasn't real happy about what I saw afterwards. Radcliffe, a good friend of mine, was gone. Hewitt, Zoler, --, Lentz, you know, Herndon, Harbor.

Charles Lieb:
I led the combat assault out there to see what had happened and evacuate the wounded and dead. And one of the soldiers who had been in my platoon, all you could find was his boot with his dog tag on it. It was pretty brutal. And we had the unenviable task of trying to police up what was left, and identifying what was left.

George Banda:
I don't think I ever told this to anybody. But I hesitated to go down there. People are shooting at us. You get so scared that every cell in your body is just terrified. But he was my friend. So, I crawled down there. I got to Ed. And the thing that I'll always remember is he said to me, "I knew you'd come." Terrible. I feel guilty about that. Still do.

Steve Manthei:
I don't consider it a loss. We kicked their hind ends, compared to what they did to us. It seemed surreal to me. When we took off from the LZ with the wounded, I looked down, and there was bodies of NVAs all up and down that saddle. I'm proud of my service. I'm proud of the guys that were there, definitely. I guess we all left something on that hill.

Charles Lieb:
It turns out that the battle for Fire Support Base Ripcord was actually the last large battle that the US was involved in, in the Vietnam War. There's a lot of pressure on the homefront to reduce the American casualties. Commanders became reluctant to go to places where they knew there were heavy enemy concentrations. It's a shame, because we never really fought to win. We fought not to lose. And I think most of us who were there thought we should fight to win. Because that's what we went over there to do.

George Banda:
Dragged him up the hill. Got him up to the sandbags, and laid him down. I said, "Ed, Medevac will be coming soon, just hang on," you know. He died at 7:40am. He didn't make it. But that's war.

 

RESCUE: SAVING LIVES

Robert Curry:
I saw a poster in high school, and it said, High School Graduate, You too can fly." I enlisted, and ended up flying what they call right seats in an OV-1 Mohawk It was a two-crew. It had ejection seats. It was pretty fast. And the Army and the Air Force had been in an argument over who should have it, because it was used as a close air support aircraft. The Air Force argued that anything with weapons on it should be an Air Force plane. The Army could keep the planes, but they'd have to fly them unarmed. We flew recon missions, 24 hours a day in North Vietnam, monitoring their traffic coming down to the DMZ, so we could determine if there was a build-up or a move.

Steven Schofield:
I was a real Special Forces Trooper. I tell ya, I wasn't in Vietnam very long before I said, "This is a waste." And I think when I got the offer to go to Laos, that was in the back of my mind. Then they pulled me aside and said, "Well, this is what you're really going to be doing in Laos. Your cover story is that you will be a public health advisor for Military Region 2. But your Top Secret duties are you're going to run search and rescue for American crews that were shot down in Laos.

Nhia Thong Lor:
My name, Nhia Thong Lor. I lived in the north of Laos, close to North Vietnam. My father, older brother, they were soldier. They all got killed when I was 12 years old. My family was killed. And I'm mad. I wanted to do something to protect my family and country. And that's why I joined the Army.

Steven Schofield:
Laos was a war done by the US on the cheap. And what the CIA had done was organized the Hmong tribal people to fight North Vietnamese encroachment into Laos. When I first when to Long Chen, which was the secret CIA base, it was just amazing. An asphalt air strip in the middle of nowhere, not on any map. A town of probably 15,000 or 20,000 at the time. Non-stop aircraft flying in and out of there. And then these Hmong, dressed in every kind of uniform you can think of, carrying any kind of weapon you could ever imagine. I had no idea. No one had any idea it was there. And it was all Top Secret.

Robert Curry:
This is '71, so the war "was on it's way to some kind of resolution." So the United States was pulling back. The Air Force stopped flying F4 cover up there, because they didn't have any more jets. And North Vietnam used to start launching MiGs at us. We'd get the radio call, "Spud, we got bandits at a bullseye heading." And bandits meant MiGs. And bullseye was code for Hanoi. So of course, we'd have the plane cranked around, and throttles to the wall, and you know, the thing just about shaking apart, trying to get back. Then it would be the count to when you died. "Spud, ten minutes to your position." "Nine minutes to your position." "Eight minutes to your position." So you had a lot of time for thinking. And it was, is this how it's going to end, because we had nothing to fight them with. I mean, they would just take us out.

Nhia Thong Lor:
At the beginning, you know, you're like a kid. You don't know. You're not scared of anything at all. You're just willing to fight, you know. A couple years later, all my friends in my group, they got killed, and not even know it. You had to be careful.

Steven Schofield:
I'd only been in San Tong probably a month or two. And I saw this little guy walking by. And I stopped him, and I said, I'm going to take your picture. I posed him over by the jeep, so I could see how tall he was.

Nhia Thong Lor:
He see me with my friend. Back then, he's young. And I'm a little kid, too. He's like tall. I watched him, like this.

Steven Schofield:
When I took that picture in Nha Tong in 1969, it was because he was unique, a small, young soldier. There weren't that many of them in the Army then. But by the time '72 or '73 came around, there were whole platoons full of ten- and 12-year-olds, because the Hmong were just wiped out.

Nhia Thong Lor:
A lot of people died that time. My uncle, my older brother, he died that time. And I almost died, too, because I cannot walk. My brother-in-law carried me like a baby, on the shoulder, and take me to area, and the helicopter come picked me up.

Robert Curry:
We took a blast and flew for a little bit, and went down over Laos. Out of any of the POWs, not one was ever returned from Laos. So you knew this was pretty dire. When I was on the ground, there was a fire fight, so I just thought, this is it. And then, it took me some amount of time to realize that no, these are two groups shooting at each other. There was a North Vietnamese group coming in. And by the luck of the draw, there was a small Hmong squad, about a dozen guys, on a hilltop, just watching traffic. And they held them off, and got the choppers in, and got us out.
Steven Schofield:
And then in '73, the Peace Accords were signed. And the CIA, Air America left, Air Support left. The Hmong were hunted like animals by the North Vietnamese Army, because they had done such an effective job working for the US government against them. So they were hunted down.

Nhia Thong Lor:
So, at that time, the United States, they had a program to help people. One American, he know me right away, you know, so he say, "You want to go to United States?" I say, "Yes."

Robert Curry:
Here, I'm complaining about being there for a year. And these people are there until they die or they get rescued. And they were there with their families and their children. A third of their population was totally wiped off the earth. How do you pluck a people off a mountaintop and put them in Wisconsin, a half a world away, and expect that they're going to exist at all? But if you look at the generations that come after them, the young kids in school today. They're becoming doctors, leaders of society. Thank God, you know, because of what they had within them, but not by anything that we gave them.

Steven Schofield:
A very primitive society. No knowledge of science. No knowledge of how things worked in the most sophisticated western society in the world. I just have tremendous respect for these guys that have come over her and made it in this country. And they're Americans, as much as I am. And they're doing well. And they will do well.

Nhia Thong Lor:
Still dreamed like you were fighting, and try to get out of Laos to the United States. I still dream it. Sometimes I have nightmare. Scary.

 

THE END: WAR AND COUNTRY

Don Heiliger:
May, 1967, when I was shot down. It was the second heaviest month of airplanes shot down. The fun began when we got to Hanoi, right to the Hanoi Hilton. That's when the torture started. Before you lose your mental, particularly your mental faculties, lie, cheat and steal to get rid of the pain. Anything to get rid of that pain. As soon as they get it off, and they find you in another lie, they put it back on. But you've gained time. After about three or four times of the heavy application, and a long time waiting, and all that, they say, okay, okay. They stopped. There's nothing better than to meet your first POW, and you realize you weren't the only guy.

John Pieper:
I enlisted right out of high school. I was 17 at the time. That was 1973. For me, the Navy was an opportunity to go into helicopters. Having grown up with the nightly news, that was something that we as a family did. I was very much aware of what was happening in Vietnam. I had an uncle that served in Vietnam. There were still some US forces on the ground, but very few. Just the idea that it was winding down. I knew there was still a possibility of at least getting up in that part of the world.

Don Heiliger:
In November, 1970, they took everybody. We moved into 50-man rooms. People that had been solo for four years, were finally with somebody. That's when I call the renaissance period. Shortly after we moved in there was Christmas. And we weren't allowed to have Christmas. That was against the camp rules. We said screw it, we're going to do it. We made our version of the Christmas Carol. And I was Mrs. Cratchit. Nobody ever gave me any awards for it, but they thought I was really good as Mrs. Cratchit.

John Pieper:
We were off the coast of South Vietnam. We were there to pull out civilians, and the Embassy, if South Vietnam began to fall. April 28, 1975, was when Ton Sun Nhut Air Force Base was attacked. That was at night. We could hear C-130 pilots on the runway. A lot of tension and anxiety in their voices. Lined up, trying to get off. And just the idea of history, really in the making, even at that point, I had a sense of the magnitude of what was happening.

Don Heiliger:
Four nights a week were movie nights. Somebody told a movie. The art of storytelling came back. And we could make a good movie last two hours. The only problem we had, we had the purists who wanted the movie exactly like it was. And we had the other people who wanted every bit of X-rated material you could put into it. We formed classes. We taught everything we could think of. I taught music appreciation. I taught accounting. We learned languages. That was the thing that probably helped me the most. I learned French, Spanish and German up there.

John Pieper:
The 29th was when they started with the evacuation of the Embassy in Saigon. That's where we had the Air America helicopters coming out. They were bringing out Embassy staff, higher echelon South Vietnamese, government officials, and families. And then the helicopters would take off again and go back in for another load, and come back out. From horizon to horizon, it literally was covered with ships.

Don Heiliger:
November to Christmas, 1972, the bombing had reached Hanoi. With the B-52s. We had become a political football back here. And with the negotiations, Kissinger, in trying to make sure he got us released, from the fifth day after the negotiations were signed, which was the January 27, 1973, five days later, they brought us all into the courtyard. They read the Accords. You could see the movie cameras up above. I think they expected huge pandemonium to break out. So we already put out the word, nothing. When they read anything, walk back in the room. And we did. And the Vietnamese would grab us, the guards that could speak English, and they'd say, "Did you hear what that is?" "Yes, we're going home," and walk back in the room. Our little victory.

John Pieper:
The third day, April 30, that's when the South Vietnamese Army helicopters started coming out. They were basically loading up their families and trying to escape, get away. They were afraid of what was going to happen to them. Rightly so. We would guide them in. They would land. We would get the people off, shut the helicopter down, and we'd push those helicopters to the edge of the deck and off the side, because for each one that we threw overboard, there was another one lining up ready to come in.

Don Heiliger:
500-and-some of us came back. That's all. That's all there is. And we arrived back. And in the Philippines, they announced with our group, a little group of 20, because the first one, there were 100-some. There were all kinds of reporters out there for that first group. God Bless America group, and all that kind of stuff. And so, we were only 20. There's not going to be many there. The whole air field was filled. And the people were there, even for our group of 20. It was unbelievable.

John Pieper:
And then, the Vietnamese refugee ships started coming out, in preparation for escorting them to the Philippines. One flight, where we took an ABC News crew, and we were filming from up above. You know, different sights and the different ships, what was going on. A cargo ship, with its decks loaded with people, literally, from one end to the other, the desperation was just incredible. We did hear stories about the North Vietnamese coming into villages and rounding up the people that had supported the US. You know, when you talk about human tragedy, what it must've been like for those people. So many people, who were trying to get away. Trying to find a place that was safe.

Narrator:
America's endless war had come to an end. It was time for the country to leave it behind and move on. The majority of Wisconsin's Vietnam Veterans preceded to build productive and successful lives. But they had all brought the war home with them. And it lives vividly on in their memories, and their nightmares. For that, and for their service, we will forever owe them our deepest gratitude. For that, they deserve our undying support.

Butch Soetenga:
I wanted a South Vietnamese flag, not one that you just go buy one, you know. So I decided, when these victory ships come into the bay, they have to fly that country's flag. These are big, beautiful flags. And so, working nightshift one time, I climbed up onto the superstructure. And then, on top of that is a big, like mast kind of thing. I climbed all the way up there. But the flag that they're flying is locked with a padlock, so you can't bring it down off the flag pole. So then I shimmied all the way up the flag pole and managed to unhook the flag, bring it on down, tuck it inside my jungle shirt, continuing my shift of work and get off that ship before the captain woke up that next morning. Oh, he was ticked that that flag was gone. He wanted to know what crew was on there. They searched our barracks. I managed to hide it someplace. I don't even remember where. But like the next day, I sent it home. It's a very cool, all-cloth, South Vietnamese flag. When I look at that, I think, you know, it's not a flag for any country. Here's this flag that so many guys gave their lives for, and the country doesn't exist anymore.

Announcer:
Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories was made possible by lead gifts from Don and Roxanne Weber and from Associated Bank; with major support from the Ho-Chunk Nation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; and from Wisconsin Public Service Foundation, Kwik Trip, the Forest County Potawatomi Foundation, Oshkosh Defense, the General Motors Dealers of Northeast Wisconsin, the Oneida Nation; and these Wisconsin individuals and companies who believe that it is long overdue, but never too late to honor the service and sacrifice of our Vietnam Veterans; with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Premiere on PBS November 2011

Ken McGwin:
The Vietnam War was a horrible, horrible weight to put on the backs of teenagers.  What did you do to a generation of people?  Boy. 

Linda McClenahan:
I think it's important for everybody to tell their story.  The only thing we can truly give each other is our stories.  We need to share those.  This attitude that men aren't supposed to cry.  There's plenty to cry about, so what's the issue here?  Anyway.  But see, I didn't cry myself.  Or, I didn't have any emotions except anger.  I was either numb or pissed off, you know, for years and years and years. 

Charlie Wolden:
One thing about combat, is that you don't have a choice to learn, to live through it.  And also, you don't have a choice when you come home, to learn new ways.  You're different.  You've changed.  One of the tragedies of Vietnam, and I mean, it's a tragedy, is that even today, there are a lot of people, including a lot of the veterans that fought over there, who don't fully comprehend that it's hard to come back out of it.  I mean, it's just too big.  (sighs)

Narrator:
It was a divisive war that some said America could never win, while others insisted we were much too powerful to lose. This is not the story of the Vietnam Warbut of the the men and women who went to Southeast Asia to serve their country. In the voices of a few, resonate the stories each unique, each profound, of the three million who served, the ones who didn't return, and those who have passed before their stories could be told. Vietnam War Stories.

Announcer:
Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories was made possible by lead gifts from Associated Bank; the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; and Don and Roxanne Weber with major support from the Ho-Chunk Nation; the Elizabeth E. Doolittle Charitable Trust, Oshkosh Defense; and from Wisconsin Public Service Foundation, Kwik Trip, the Forest County Potawatomi Foundation, the Oneida Nation, Ron and Colleen Weyers, Philip J. and Elizabeth B. Hendrickson; with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and others – a complete list is available from PBS -and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. 

 

DROPPING BOMBS: THE AIR WAR

Lowell Peterson:
There was a draft program for doctors.  You either had to go in after your training was over, or risk that you were going to be drafted.  I decided I didn't want to be drafted into the Army, and I liked to fly.  So, I signed up for the Air Force. 

I went to Flight Surgeon School.  They tried to teach a bunch of dumb doctors how to march.   We took turns marching the squad around.  I marched my squad right into a fence.  

Alvin Whitaker:
My dad was a Tuskegee Airman.  And my earliest recollections are of being at and on airbases and around airplanes.  And the only thing I ever wanted to do was to fly airplanes, and fly in the Air Force, and to fly fighters.  That was my one goal in life.  And it turned out that I'm heterozygous for the sickle cell.  That eliminated me from the program to become an Air Force pilot.  

But I knew about Vietnam.  I can recall listening to reports about the domino effect, that we had to stop the Communists.  And that if we didn't, the North would sweep down and engulf the South, and the South would fall.   I bought it.  Tradition of service, the country calls you, you respond, so I joined.  

Lowell Peterson:
President Johnson decided he needed to eliminate some of the flow of supplies from North Vietnam to South Vietnam.  He decided to start a bombing campaign against the North, Operation Rolling Thunder. 

But it was done with the pilot's hands tied behind their back, in that they were limited as to what they could hit and what they couldn't. We might hit a Russian and drag the Russians into the war.

Alvin Whitaker:
I personally never dropped a bomb.  But I was dedicated to doing everything I could to keep the weapons systems going, which I did.  The unit went on Temporary Duty to Thailand, the Royal Thai airbase at Korat.  So I volunteered to go. 

And this was a time when we were not officially there.   We were not allowed to take any photographs in the flatland.  We were not allowed to talk about what was going on.  “Training missions.”  These training missions were anything but.  We were bombing as early as the spring of 1965. 

Meanwhile, the Chinese and the Soviets helped the Vietnamese put together very good defenses.  

Lowell Peterson:
A flight of four F4-C fighters had been attacked by a SAM missile for the first time.  Knocked two of them out of the sky, damaged the third one severely, and the fourth one was able to return to base. 

So what they did was programmed a mass gaggle, 48 airplanes, to go after one SAM missile site, and just show the North Vietnamese that, you know, who was boss.  

Alvin Whitaker:
1965, we had a lot of losses, just a lot of losses.  I mean, the pilots' situation involved flying 100 missions, or a year, whichever came first, then rotating.   And I can remember one friend Carl Richter.  Carl completed his 100 missions, and he volunteered to go a second 100.  Volunteered.   Didn't have to.  

Lowell Peterson:
All the airplanes we had were in the air.  As it turned out, it was a sting operation by the North Vietnamese.  They set up a bunch of white painted telephone poles, and an active radar site, and that's what we sent 48 airplanes after.  They had every gun in North Vietnam pointed at us.  

One of my pilots said it looked like a fourth of July celebration gone bad.   We only lost six airplanes.  But six airplanes is six airplanes.  And it's six pilots.  

Alvin Whitaker:
It's kind of difficult, 'cause it brings--  It was when Carl Richter was lost.  And I can remember, we were in the shack.  And we were getting reports on the radio, because he was shot down.  And they were trying to hold off the Vietnamese soldiers while they tried to pick him up.   And they did pick him up.  I can remember we were just elated.  Everybody just went crazy.  Unfortunately, he had suffered really severe injuries.  He had ejected at very a high speed, and he went into shock and died in the helicopter on the way back.  

Lowell Peterson:
Frank Tullo was shot down that day, and was able to be extracted from the jungle, picked up by a Jolly Green Giant helicopter.  They got out of there while they were being shot at.  He came back to Korat the next day.  The whole squadron was out there to meet him. 

I took him to my dispensary.  He had a laceration over his eye, and I sewed that up for him, and examined him, and didn't find anything else other than a whole lot of North Vietnamese sweat and dirt.  I sent him to the Officer's Club.  Everybody got drunk that night.    

 

ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE

James Daley:
I went to UW-Whitewater for a year, majoring in football and beer.  As a result, they invited me to leave.  In those years, not a whole lot of options.  I figured I'd enlist in the one service that would get me out of the country quickly, before my dad found out.  So I joined the Marine Corps.  And they're the only ones that promised they'd have me out of town the next day.  

Dan Pierce:
I got in a little trouble when I was a youth.  And my probation officer was a Naval Reserve Officer.  And he thought it would make a man out of me if I joined the Navy Reserves.  So I thought I'd fool him, and instead of getting a tan in the Gulf of Tonkin on a two-year Navy stint, I joined the Marine Corps for four years. 

Don Weber:
I had a hard time in school.  I was always the one that got the lowest score on any spelling test, or math.  And I grew up thinking that just, I'm a loser.  I'd been told that.  And you know, you're not a good student.  You're not going to make it.  And so, you know, I would get in fights.  But the Marine Corps turned my life around.  

Larry Miller:
My older brother was in the Marine Corps right after Korea.  And I had an uncle that was World War II Marines, you know, the islands, Guadalcanal, Palalua, and Okinawa.   So I just figured, it's the thing to do.   So I joined. 

Then after that, it was Vietnam.  Naval Gunfire Forward Observer. They put us on OPs at night, just me and the radio operator.  Whenever we really got up against the enemy, I had a ship on call, and I'd call in Naval gunfire and try to take care of them, get 'em off us, kill 'em.   Basically, that's what we did.  

James Daley:
Our job was essentially to respond to where the North Vietnamese would make an assault on one battalion.  You'd stick a battalion out in a field someplace as bait.  Their job was to engage and stay engaged.  And we'd come in behind them and squeeze in between the two of them.   Hammer and anvil tactics, they called it in those years.   The Marines were in the north.  Marine Infantrymen were assigned to a line company. 

Your chance was one in one to be killed or wounded.  That was the statistics.  And they were pretty accurate.  

Dan Pierce:
Quang Tri, Phu Bai, Dong Ha.  Everything was just thrown together into one mass blur, which was 90% boring and 10% chaotic.  I guess chaotic might be putting it a little blandly.  

Don Weber:
Gosh, you know, here you are.  You're trained, but this is for real.  They said you're going to be reporting up on an outpost called Con Thien. The very northern tip of South Vietnam, the demilitarized zone.

Larry Miller:
There was no color.  Everything was blown apart, because they had Agent Oranged it all.  They had burnt it all.  I mean, we walked out of this greenery, and your whole world went black and white.  I remember it just like we're sitting there today.  I went, what is this about.  

James Daley:
The DMZ was a line on a map, six miles south of the Ben Hai River and six miles north of the the Ben Hai River.   It's six miles on their side of the line, six miles on our side of the line, which were demilitarized.   (laughs) 

Don Weber:
They kept dropping mortar rounds.  That went on for hours.  And we knew we were in for a long night.  Then they started with the ground forces.  They just kept coming and coming. 

Larry Miller:
That's when it turned into a different war.  Because the North Vietnamese, they basically wanted to come down across the DMZ.  They did not want to do the Ho Chi Minh Trail.  And the Marine Corps wasn't going to let 'em. You know, it was multi, multi troops.  I mean, 4,000 or 5,000 at a time would come down across the river.   And we were up there trying to stop 'em.  

Don Weber:
My squad leader, he'd been there for almost ten months.  I made up my mind when I got over there, to do whatever he told me, because he had survived.  We called him Sergeant Rock.  He came out to get me out of my fox hole, because they were going to be over-running the area.  And as we were running back inside the perimeter, you know, a mortar round came in--  (voice breaking)  And killed him.  

Dan Pierce:
When you're in a firefight, and someone is injured or killed, you don't have the time or the capacity to grieve, or to cradle them, or give comfort.  But then when it's over, is when everything hits you.  The adrenaline starts to wear off, and the reality sets in.  The pain that you've seen on your fellow Marine's face, or the vision of a Vietnamese's head exploding, because you shot him in the eye.  No time during the firefight, but afterwards, much reflection.   Much reflection.   

Don Weber:
I survived the night.  Most of the rest didn't.  I have no idea why. You know, those things change you forever.  

Larry Miller:
Uh, that was it.  That was the real stuff up there.  It was just horrific.  If that's a word that even describes it.  It had every aspect that there was to have.  The body mutilation, the trench warfare, the artillery.  It had it all.  Thousands against thousands.  You know, it was just.  

James Daley:
We got over-run. It was an interesting night.  But it's the next morning, where you, I just remember sitting there having a cigarette, and the sun was coming up.  And I had a C-ration can, made a cup of coffee, instant coffee.  I just remember, I started to pick up the coffee and my hand was shaking so bad it splashed.   I put the other hand up to take a drag off the cigarette, and I could hardly find the cigarette.   I still have this dream about that morning, smoking that first cigarette and that first cup of coffee, and how it felt so good to be alive.   It's one of those things that will always be with me, and will come back at the strangest of times.    

 

AIRMOBILE:  THE NEW CALVARY

Kerry Denson:
Flying with the 1st Cav Division, we were the first Airmobile Division in the Army, a wholly new concept.  Here we had the capability with this Huey, UH-1, to completely support a soldier with aircraft.  Put soldiers in by air.  Supply 'em by air.  Reinforce 'em by air.  Medevac 'em by air.  Give 'em fire support.  Close air support by air.   And the stars just lined up for that type of warfare.  

William Rettenmund:
I was not much for flying.  I didn't like heights.  When I went over in a boat, I said to myself, "Self, you've never really committed yourself, and the Army wants you to be a helicopter mechanic, and a crew chief that flies all the time.  You've got to get your butt off of this being afraid of heights stuff and stick it out.”  That's kind of what I did.  

Gary Wetzel:
Some people told me I was the number one gunner in the outfit.  I was flattered about that.  But it was scary to me up and to the point, it's like when I would pull that trigger.  Then it's like, when you pull that trigger, that fear would kind of go out of you.  

Then when you come back in and you're picking up the wounded, some guys are holding their guts inside, or some guy is hanging onto his leg, because he doesn't want to leave his leg in the LZ.  And you try to not let that interfere with what your job is, or what you're trying to do.  

War is horrifying.  It's not glorifying.  

Kerry Denson:
I was flying the UH-1, the Huey, and we had a crew of four, a pilot in command, a co-pilot, a crew chief and a gunner.  Armament, all we carried was an M-60 machine gun on each side that the crew chief and the gunner each had to keep everybody's head down while we inserted our infantry.  

They liked riding in a helicopter.  Sat with legs dangling out the side of the aircraft, completely unrestrained, flying along at 1500 feet and  90-100 knots.   I don't ever recall, ever, anybody falling out.   Getting in close, they were standing on the skid.  As soon as we got close enough, they were on the ground and gone. 

This thing was a well-oiled machine.   It's just unbelievable.  Everybody knew what to do, and did it.  

William Rettenmund:
We usually went in from 1500 feet, and went into the LZ, ten of us tried to land all ten of us at the same time.  And the faster you can get down, the harder it is for them to hit you. 

It was a wild ride.   Coming off of 1500 feet is like riding a rollercoaster.  We came in at about a couple hundred feet, they would say, "Door gunners, open up!”   So we would just, whatever looked like would hide somebody, we shot at.  

Gary Wetzel:
We just hit the treetops and then we got nailed with an RPG, just blew the front of the ship apart.  And we kind of come to a skidding halt.  And the crossfire was horrendous.   The first 30 seconds, like 50 of the guys got killed.   Just so bad.  They were waiting for us.  

All this banging, and yelling and screaming.  And I've got to get Timmy out, my pilot.   Damn near ripped the door off.  And I just kind of lift him up, and then I had my hand, which is on the airframe over here, but then all this got blown out.  I took my arm here, and tucked it inside my pants.   And then I got the Thompson and then skid around the chin of the chopper.  And you can hear 'em chattering.  They're trying to take my 60 off.  I yelled at them.  They looked at me, and, end of that story.  

Kerry Denson:
You could look out there, and you could just see a sea of red tracers.  The sergeant running the pad, he says, we've got a couple guys out there that are hit, and we're not getting ammunition out there to the guys on the end.  Would you hover out there and kick off ammunition.  I says, “Let me talk to the crew.” 

I told them what they asked us to do.  The crew chief made the decision.  He said, "Well, if I was out there, not getting ammunition, and some candy ass helicopter pilot wouldn't bring it out, I'd be pretty pissed.  Saddle up, boys.”   

William Rettenmund:
Then I turned and looked over, and I could see the pilot was looking back at me.  I could see the red dots on the visor.  And he finally said the door gunner's hit.  I unhooked my belt and climbed over the seat. And there was blood all over the helicopter.  The blood comes from the back and flies forward.  

Gary Wetzel:
That's when I got hit in the leg.  And there was a period from when I went down to the one knee, till I got back in the gunwell.  How I got there, I have no idea.  I knew I had to get back to my 60.  Then you could see the VC were kind of gathering up, making a human wave attack.  They started coming, raking back and forth.  They were dropping four or five feet right in front.  They'd do that a couple times.  They couldn't penetrate.  I ran out of ammo.   I had my .45. 

Just then something out of my peripheral, I jumped back.  I go, whoo, you know.  So instead of sticking me in the guts, he stuck me in the leg.   I eliminated the elements and had to pull a bayonet out. 

Then finally, they dropped troops about half a click from us.  They worked their way towards us, then to one side.  That's how we got help.  

Kerry Denson:
And we took ground fire, small arms.  It shot the engine out, came up through the floor and hit me in the leg.  We were going down.  The aircraft tumbled through the trees.  And luckily, it landed right side up.  But we were all in bad shape.  I remember very little of this, but I jettisoned my door.  I jumped out and I fell down.  And I don't remember anything after that.  And they said when I jumped out, the bones of my left leg were sticking through my flight suit.  That was the last time I saw Vietnam.  

William Rettenmund:
I remember one time we called out into the jungle.  We got there and there was seven bodies laying out there.  Ponchos don't like to stay closed in the air at 100 miles an hour.  There were a lot of gray faces and blue faces.  They don't really teach you much about that in helicopter school. 

The worst one for me, KIA picking up.  It was the first one.   Amino Gonzalez, his name was.  Never forgot it.  I forgot my roommate's name, the pilots' names, all that.  But I never forgot his name.  

Gary Wetzel:
Should I have been dead?  Probably.  That's what they tell me.  And here I am.  You know, just blown to smithereens, and shot, and stabbed, and bayonetted.  I still function.  Guys I fought with, some of them, I don't know who they are, are the ones that put me in for this. 

I wear it for the guys that aren't here.  I wear it for you.  I'm just a caretaker, that's all I am.  I'm just a soldier trying to do a job.    

 

BROWN WATER NAVY: MOBILE RIVERINE FORCE

Michael Hoks:
I was the first one to put my hand up when he asked for volunteers for Vietnam.  We were the first River Division over there, which was something I didn't hear of.  And apparently, that's what I volunteered for.  In World War II, most people remember the boats going up on the beach, dropping a ramp, and the army guys running off.  That's exactly what we were on.  However, this boat was totally re-fitted.  It was our job to get the army where we knew there was heavy concentration of North Vietnamese. Give 'em gun support and medical evacuation.  Complete evacuation when the operation was over, or if something went wrong. 

Bruce Jensen:
The boats that I was on, we went up some rivers where the boats were longer than the river was wide.  And we had to pull up onto the beach and back down just to turn around.  But my boat, being equipped with a helicopter pad, we were the medical aid boat for the division.  And my job, when we brought in the helicopters, I'd have to get out of my gun mount, go up and stand on the corner of the flight deck, and wave the pilot in to set down.  He couldn't actually see, because the nose of the helicopter was over the edge. 

Mike Demske:
I got orders for swiftboats.  The delta area where I was stationed, there was no highways.  To get from village to village, you had to go by boat.  And we were supposed to patrol and prevent any infiltration of supplies, medical supplies, food, ammunition, to the VC.  They would try to sneak it in via the ocean.  And our job was to stop that.

Ken McGwin:
Went to the Westchester County.  We had about 120 in the ship's company, and the LSTs had that unusual mission, you know, of being able to navigate the waters of the Mekong.  Far up into the delta, where other Navy ships could not go.  The armored gunboats, the tangos, would tie up alongside the LST, refuel, meals, try to repair.  And at night they would circle, drop grenades in the water to try to keep the Viet Cong from being able to swim out there and do damage with mines or explosive charges. 

Michael Hoks:
We helped each other.  It wasn't Army, Navy.  It was Riverine Force.  If the Army was still on the boats, they'd get their guns out there.  And one side or the other side, sometimes both sides of the boat, we had shooting. Because at a top speed of less than ten miles an hour, we had to fight our way out of any situation. 

Bruce Jensen:
Very few missions that we went on, did we go in and out without receiving fire.  One time, something out of the corner of my eye just caught my attention.  I look up, and here was a mortar shell going up, and I was just mesmerized by it.  And then it started coming down.  And then it dawned on me, exactly what was going on.  I thought, "Oh, hell." I ran and I dove.  I went right through the opening of the gun mount! And back up, firing away. 

Mike Demske:
Once you started running the rivers, invariably you were going to get ambushed someplace.  For a while there, I think 75% of the people that were on the boats were killed or wounded.  Everybody on my crew was wounded at least twice.  I mean, the jungle was right up to the riverbanks.  That's when Admiral Zumwalt ordered the use of Agent Orange.  After they had sprayed it, you swore you were on the moon.  There was nothing alive, just incredible.  But it did move the VC back further. 

Ken McGwin:
Early morning hours, two tremendous explosions, and they had managed to get out there.  Frogmen fastened targets on both sides of the ship.  The worst damage of any Navy ship in the war.  Many, many people dead.  Many, many people hurt.  It was just, try to find them and get the ones that were alive out of there if we could. You could hear people struggling to get out.  They died, I suppose.  We just couldn't get to them in time.  Everybody fought back with everything they had, and ...  (voice breaks) It was a hard thing to do. 

Michael Hoks:
We'd drop them off at first light, help them off the boat.  And then we would just stay in the area.  And when they confronted any enemy action, they would radio back to us.  And if we could help with the machine guns or the mortars, that was our immediate duty. Then there were times where the Viet Cong resistance was bigger than what we expected.  And they knew they could not cross the river because of the boats.  Then they would fight back through the Army.  And it was always a very depressing day when you knew that you were supposed to...  pick up 40 guys and only 20 show up. 

Bruce Jensen:
Being the medical aid boat - we still had our fire fights.  And we got to deal with the wounded.  Some of it bad, but we were part of the getting them out, and getting them to safety.  I've seen enough blood and gore to last me a lifetime. 

Mike Demske:
I remember talking to Admiral Zumwalt at one of our reunions.  His son was on swiftboats, and he ended up dying from cancer from exposure to Agent Orange.  He said if he had to do it all over again, he'd still do it, because it gave us 30 more years to live, even though a lot of us suffer from exposure to it.  We were young and dumb, and we didn't know what the effects would be of it. We would tie our clothes on a rope, and throw them in the prop wash when we were running.  It's the only way we had of cleaning our clothes.  Here, the river was full of Agent Orange, the riverbanks were, and it just, we didn't know it. 

Ken McGwin:
All my memories of Vietnam just focus right back on that one night.  And I had thought that when I got older, it wouldn't bother me anymore.  But it does, it gets worse.  And no matter how hard I try, I can't shake that guilt.  I've had the chance to have a good life.  And they never did.  They never had a chance. 

 

TET 1968: VIETNAMESE NEW YEAR

Ted Fetting:
And of course, word had gotten round that there were build-ups all over the place.  That was -- in a delta, leading into Tet.  I don't think anybody had any idea it was going to be that bad.  Because I think they would've been better prepared, and dealt with it better.  We were incredulous, areas that we could go through normally, you know, all of a sudden, there were all kinds of enemy. 

Don Jones:
I was an advisor to the Vietnamese.  Pretty impressed with the corps staff.  Very well-grounded in what they were doing.  Things were looking pretty good in November.  Things got a little tight in December.  And in the Danang area, we started seeing a lot of activity to our west.  It kept building and building during January.  It was clear that something was going to happen, somewhere along the way. 

Thomas Baertsch:
The South Vietnamese, I’m told by people that know now, were pretty much wise to what was going to go on.  They knew that this wasn't going to be what the Americans thought it was going to be, there was going to be a cease-fire for that holiday.  They had fully intended on trying to overrun as many places as they could. 

Miles Wilkins:
I was assigned as the X-O for a special forces camp at Long Bay.  We were a relatively small camp, a few hundred indigenous troops.  But they sent like a battalion along with, I think, as many as 17 tanks to attack our camp.  And we lost that one. 

Thomas Baertsch:
I was asleep in a bunker, and all of a sudden I hear this, "Any station this net, any station this net.  We're being overrun, we've got gooks on the wire." And I looked into where the radio operator was, and he was sleeping.  So I got up, I went over, and I got on the radio.  I just said, "This is 7-4-3 Charlie, can I get any assistance?" And the guy keys the mic again, and you can just hear this horrific battle raging. 

Don Jones:
The morning of Tet, we got awakened at about 4:30.  The first thing that I noticed when I got to the compound was that there were South Vietnamese army forces up on the back wall.  And they were firing off the back wall with rifles and machine guns.  And I figured that probably was not something that they were doing for practice. 

Miles Wilkins:
And there was a tank that was probably 15-20 yards away from us, just sitting there pointed.  And then he fired at us with his main gun.  I got hit in the hip, and it was like I was paralyzed, I was down on all fours.  In fact, the colonel said, "I think Wilkens has had it." And I can't-- It's probably just a matter of seconds, but I'm wanting to say, "No, I haven't!" And the colonel helped me.  And actually, we went underneath the dispensary building.  Now it's in the middle of the night, and they've pretty much gained control of the hill by then.  The NVA troops were in, going through the dispensary.  They were basically walking like six inches over our head. 

Ted Fetting:
It was bedlam.  And a lot of people killed, a lot of people killed.  When I was hit twice, they came in with choppers and got me out of there.  Here I am, being taken to this aid station.  We get down there, we get inside, and we're told it's too hot, we've got to get out of here.  So you've got to lift out of an area like that.  And we did, and I was convinced that was it, this is Waterloo. 

Thomas Baertsch:
He was in such dire straits that he gave me the coordinates to the center of his compound.  And he said, "Start dropping them in and walking them out to the wire." I knew it was at Ca Mau.  Their main communication got knocked out, and they were on a jerry-rigged antenna from the back of a Jeep.  And just because we were on top of that hill, that's why we heard them.  So I was relaying.  Called for artillery support.  "This is --7-4-3 Charlie, give me some battery, one round, on this coordinate."

Don Jones:
The general walked over to a map and took his swagger stick and he pointed to the village behind us.  He just said, "They're in there.  We need to get rid of 'em." So for the better part of a couple hours, the planes at Danang would just take off, make a left turn, fly behind the compound, drop their bombs, circle around, land, get more.  That was the end of the threat to Danang. 

Miles Wilkins:
To the best of my knowledge, the first and one of the only times that they ever used the tanks in the entire conflict in Vietnam.  There were 24 Americans in camp.  14 got out, 13 were wounded, and ten were missing.  The A-team at Long Bay was the most decorated A-team in in United States history. 

Ted Fetting:
The whole place was chaos.  Saigon itself was chaos.  Being taken by bus from the hospital to the plane, I don't think any of us were confident that we were out of it yet.  Got on that plane and the old plane took off.  Then, we're thinking, we're going to get shot down at the end of the runway.  Oh, man.  When we lifted off and we were out of range, it was just an incredible, incredible feeling.  I guess I'm going to see tomorrow after all. 

Don Jones:
There was praise, I think, for General Lam, in terms of inside the Vietnamese circles, nationally and locally, for having saved Danang.  But there were other parts of the country where it stayed hot for a long, long time.  For the South Vietnamese, it was a very tough time.  They just got hammered. 

Miles Wilkins:
This was a very organized military type of attack.  There's nothing amateurish about it.  And in fact, the entire Tet Offensive, how many places they hit with such force at one time?  It was really probably a turning point in terms of, if nothing else, respect for the degree of military force that they were able to employ. 

Thomas Baertsch:
Ca Mau was this provincial headquarters.  There was only 50 guys there.  Overrun, 100% causalities, 23 of them dead.  35 years later, Christmas Eve, I get an email that simply said that he was Captain McMaken, and he was the one that was on the radio that night.  And that if it wasn't for --7-4-3 Charlie, that there wouldn't be anybody left.  That's heavy, you know.  And it's not for me, it's for them.  There were a lot of guys that didn't make it. 

 

THE PRICE: CASUALTIES OF WAR

Andrew Thundercloud:
Some of the religious things that we have, have a lot to do with warriors.  And there were certain times that I had heard these warriors tell their stories.  I often listened to them, and I never, ever really gave it much of a thought.  It was something that I accepted, that perhaps one of these days I was going to be doing that.  And I know my mother always wanted to have a doctor in the family, so I became a corpsman with the United States Marine Corps. 

Linda McLenahan:
It was actually my intention to become a sister when I graduated from high school.  But in 1967, the Vietnam War was hot and heavy, protests were hot and heavy.  It moved me to a point of, I was tired of the people in the street telling me how to think, or the government telling me how to think.  So at that moment I decided, before I give my life to God, I'd give three years of my life to my country.  So when I graduated in June, I joined the army. 

Mike Weaver:
I signed up into the medical corps.  And the flight going over was terrible.  It was the most gut wrenching, unnerving thing you've ever sat in, because everybody in that plane knew where you were going.  Everybody knew that not everybody in that plane was going to come back alive, or not injured.  It was surreal.  Civilian stewardesses, cute gals, very friendly, trying to give you some water, or a pop, or a snack, knowing that not everybody would come back. 

Sue Haack:
I worked for a two-star general. He said, "Your job in Vietnam is only going to be six months.  Because the guy that had it before you had ten days left in 'Nam, and went outside the hooch and shot himself.  He couldn't deal with the job anymore." And there was only two of us women and 26 guys in the office.  But I was picked to do that, handling of the dead.  How they were killed, when they were killed.  And send the letters home. 

Andrew Thundercloud:
And I never really talk about the first six months that I was in Vietnam.  I refuse.  All I'll say is, I survived.  One of the chief hospital corpsman from MAAG 16 came to our unit, and was looking for corpsmen to volunteer to go fly medevacs.  That was the only time in my entire military career that I volunteered for anything. 

Linda McLenahan:
Got to the WAC detachment on Long Binh post.  Now, the WAC detachment, there were about 7,500 or 8,000 women in Vietnam.  Most of them were nurses.  The rest of us were enlisted women or officers who worked in administration, finance, communications.  I was at the Com Center, the communications facility. All the casualty reports went out of our office. 

Mike Weaver:
One day, we were assigned to a remains unit, for deploying some of the fallen.  They had not been, if I can use the term, processed yet.  So they were still, many of them were in body bags.  It was an old French factory building.  And the first time I saw the first Indiana Jones movie, where you get to the end of the movie, and the ark is being hauled down this huge aisle, and then the camera pans back and you see how large this building is, and you see all these other crates that look the same as that crate?  That's the same feeling I had. 

Sue Haack:
It was a daily, basically, all-day thing.  It never ended, the letters going home, having to send those.  There was nothing warm about a form letter on my typewriter, and I just added the name.  "Mr.  and Mrs.  John Doe," and "your son." They were signed by the government.  So you just-- It was a cold feeling.  I mean, you hated it, but somebody had to do it. 

Andrew Thundercloud:
When we would fly medevac, we'd fly from 6:00 in the morning till 6:00 in the evening, then another corpsman would come in and fly from 6:00pm to 6:00 in the morning. There were hundreds, hundreds, of wounded Marines that I picked up.  I saw everything imaginable. 

Linda McLenahan:
One day on the radio, we picked up a squad that was under attack, that was asking for help.  And ...  They didn't get it.  To helplessly listen ...  was kind of tough.  I lost God over there.  So my idea of being a sister after I got out was out the window.  Of course, years later, I was able to put all that in the proper perspective. 

Mike Weaver:
You try to dehumanize it as much as you can, because if you don't, you just can't get through it.  And then it revisits you again, and again, and again.  I call it the "demons." And it will destroy you.  It will literally destroy you. 

Sue Haack:
You had to keep the morale up of the men, even if you didn't feel it.  You had to be there for them. I couldn't do anything about protecting them there, but all the ones that I had to put away, I guess the rest are mine.  I was just very protective of them.  And I've always said, "My soldiers, my buddies." Always been.  I've said that ever since I came home from Vietnam.  It's just me. 

Andrew Thundercloud:
There were 15 of us that went over to Vietnam at the same time.  And there were only three of us that came back.  I guess to be honest with you, I really didn't want to come home.  Because I was thinking, "Who can take care of these guys better than I can?" The thing I wanted to be remembered, was that I was a good corpsman.  And I'd, you know, hope that somebody would say, "Well, Doc Thundercloud." "Oh yeah, I remember him! Damn good corpsman." That's all I wanted. 

Linda McLenahan:
It would get to the point where a lot of choppers would be coming in, and they'd say, "It's going to be a busy day tomorrow.  We're going to have a lot of casualty reports," and think of the people coming in as work rather than people, because it got too hard.  It got too hard.  That was what hit me about the wall actually.  I processed names all the time, and here are all these names.  That's when I lost it the first time. 

Mike Weaver:
The year I was in Vietnam, over 16,000 American military personnel were lost.  It is staggering to me.  I think that works out to about 40 or 50 a day. 

 

FIREBASES 1970: HENDERSON & RIPCORD

George Banda:
There was a lot of battles that we'd gone through. And we had lost a number of people. And the powers that be said, hey, these guys need some R&R. Let's put them up here at Eagle Beach. Let them relax. We were there for about a day or two. And from right there, after all that relaxing, and good times, they flew us out to Henderson. I never had heard of Henderson. When we landed there, one of the worst firebases I had ever seen. The jungle was right there. I mean, I looked around and I went, there's no protection here. Anybody could sneak up here real quick. You wouldn't see 'em till it was too late. You know, and that's exactly what happened.

Steve Manthei:
Ripcord was big time. Big time. We'd push up this hill. I know two. It was in view of Ripcord. It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. A lot of activity. I mean, you really saw it. What I expected, we were-- out of there, 'cause I know we were going to be ticked. And a lot of the old guys did, too. There was only a few of us, what I call "old guys," that had been there for quite a while, you know. And then we had a bunch of new guys. Our leader, at that time, was a new guy, too. We totally expected a booby trap, and we've move out that night. But then they said we were saying, which kind of upset us. I went down and dug my hole, more deeper and bigger.

Charles Lieb:
Fire Support Base Ripcord, 53 days we had incoming fire, whether it'd be mortar rounds, recoilless rifle. A lot of artillery rounds being fired in support. And this is at the time they had hatched the plan that as the monsoons let up, they wanted to attack the North Vietnamese supply camps in the A Shau Valley. This was their territory. The Companies we had out in the field started taking significant casualties and meeting significant enemy opposition.

George Banda:
I turned and I yelled. I said, "Hey, you guys better wake up! Something is happening." And an instant later, I saw a flash. RPG hit five feet away from me. It exploded. I went up flying in the air. I was upside down. I landed on my head, rolled over, got up real quick. I was deaf. I could see tracers flying through the air. I could see explosions, but I couldn't hear anything.

Steve Manthei:
All hell broke loose. A wave of RPGs hit the command post on the top. And I mean, it was, it knocked me off my feet. There they were, right with us. It was eyeball to eyeball. They had broken through. Screaming, hollering, cussing. Machine gun fire. Everybody opened up. I mean, it was a fight. I popped that hand flare. And what I saw coming up from the east side up that saddle, nothing but heads.

Charles Lieb:
They attacked on Hill 902, at 4:00am in the morning. They had crawled in under the cover of darkness with satchel charges and weapons. And were above the perimeter, and firing down into the holes while others were coming up the trails and the hillside into 'em.

George Banda:
Doc Diller was just laying there on his back. It looked like he was asleep. In fact, I thought he was. I said, "Hey, Doc, get up." And I tried to pick him up, and the back of his head was gone. I caught a round on the left side of my head, which severed an artery. I mean, it just squirt for about five feet. And being a medic, knowing that an artery had been severed, you know, I'm bleeding to death here. I couldn't stop it. Trying to take care of the guys. Lieutenant --- was dead. Sergeant Steiner was dead. And I looked for Ed Vesser, my friend. "Where the hell is Ed?" I said, "I can't see him." And he was blown, maybe 100 feet down there, or he walked down there. I'm not sure how he got down there. But there he was down there, laying there.

Steve Manthei:
I heard Cooper. I believe he was on Ripcord at that time, calling on the radio. Nobody answered. Well, I knew that the CP had been eliminated. So I got on the radio. And I told him we needed Cobras now. And the Cobras did finally did show up, and I was happy as heck about that. But I wasn't real happy about what I saw afterwards. Radcliffe, a good friend of mine, was gone. Hewitt, Zoler, --, Lentz, you know, Herndon, Harbor.

Charles Lieb:
I led the combat assault out there to see what had happened and evacuate the wounded and dead. And one of the soldiers who had been in my platoon, all you could find was his boot with his dog tag on it. It was pretty brutal. And we had the unenviable task of trying to police up what was left, and identifying what was left up there.

George Banda:
I don't think I ever told this to anybody. But I hesitated to go down there. People are shooting at us. You get so scared that every cell in your body is just terrified. But he was my friend. So, I crawled down there. I got to Ed. And the thing that I'll always remember is he said to me, "I knew you'd come." Terrible. I feel guilty about that. Still do.

Steve Manthei:
I don't consider it a loss. We kicked their hind ends, compared to what they did to us. When we took off from the LZ with the wounded, I looked down, and there was bodies of NVAs all up and down that saddle. I'm proud of my service. I'm proud of the guys that were there, definitely. I guess we all left something on that hill.

Charles Lieb:
It turns out that the battle for Fire Support Base Ripcord was actually the last large battle that the US was involved in, in the Vietnam War. There's a lot of pressure on the home front to reduce the American casualties. Commanders became reluctant to go to places where they knew there were heavy enemy concentrations. It's a shame, because we never really fought to win. We fought not to lose. And I think most of us who were there thought we should fight to win. Because that's what we went over there to do.

George Banda:
Dragged him up the hill. Got him up to the sandbags, and laid him down. I said, "Ed, medevac will be coming soon, just hang on," you know. He died at 7:40am. He didn't make it. But that's war.

Narrator:
America's endless war had come to an end. It was time for the country to leave it behind and move on. The majority of  our Vietnam Veterans preceded to build productive and successful lives. But they had all brought the war home with them. And it lives vividly on in their memories, and their nightmares. And for those who are able to share with us, it lives vividly on in their stories.

 

CREDITS

Butch Soetenga:
I wanted a South Vietnamese flag, not one that you just go buy one, you know. So I decided, when these victory ships come into the bay, they have to fly that country's flag. These are big, beautiful flags. And so, working nightshift one time, I climbed up onto the superstructure. But the flag that they're flying is locked with a padlock, so you can't bring it down off the flagpole. So then I shimmied all the way up the flag pole and managed to unhook the flag, bring it on down, tuck it inside my jungle shirt, continuing my shift of work and get off that ship before the captain woke up that next morning. Oh, he was ticked that that flag was gone. He wanted to know what crew was on there. They searched our barracks. It's a very cool, all-cloth, South Vietnamese flag. When I look at that, I think, you know, it's not a flag for any country. Here's this flag that so many guys gave their lives for, and the country doesn't exist anymore.