Interview with Herbert Lee Granis III-Vietnam Veteran

what was your highest rank lieutenant colonel and what General locations did you serve in Vietnam served in Vietnam I was first to her I was in chula which is an I Corps Americal division 1st battalion 6th Infantry 198th light infantry brigade I was there for six about six or eight months and then I got pulled out and sent to the in twin province this very south tip of South Vietnam as a mobile advisory team member and eventually kept ran that 66 most mobile advisory team 66 in for core and what year were you in for that that was a 68 to 69 and then you had another tour yeah and then I went to Germany for a year and then after that I went back to Vietnam to the Americal division same Brigade 198 fire brigades and then went to the first to 52nd infantry braiding off LZ Stenson that's the northern part of I Corps southern part of I court excuse me okay were you drafted or did you enlist neither I was commissioned through ROTC from Eastern Kentucky University where were you living at the time I had just graduated from Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond Kentucky and mmm you know and went home for a few days and then went on active duty do you recall the day it was around July 4th 1967 why did you join well at that time Vietnam was going on and I'd always want to be an aviator but I just my eyes would not allow it so I decided yes going the army and and tri infantry see what that was like I had a pretty good idea from talking to my relatives what it was gonna be dark why did you pick the branch of service you joining well that seemed to be the if you're gonna stay in the military which I thought I might that was the branch to be in if you were going to get promoted and if you survived the war it had a pretty decent promotion rate and I just I guess I read to me sergeant Rock comic books I don't know you remember anything about the first days and service first days are down fort benning going through an empty officer basic course being an ROTC graduate that's where you went at that time you know the Benning it's like basically it's advanced a training officer style because I had gone to ROTC summer camp two years prior and an InTown gap and so that's like basic and then they call people out from there and then afterwards you're commissioned you go to the Advanced Course at Benning and you learn all your infantry skills and get your infantry specialty which was 1542 at that time and it which is one it infantry special day was 1542 now it's all eleven do you remember your any training experiences when you were in any it was hot and it was you know it was about everything you expected you know you're you're doing a lot of patrols and classroom work and infantry haul had just opened up then building forward Fort Benning and so we were one of the I believe one of the first classes or at least not too many classes have been through there before and yeah you just you learn tactics you learn unit is basically small unit tactics and and what's expected of you to be an officer and and physical conditioning and all that sort of thing you remember any of your instructors not really from from that time I probably remember more from ROTC than I do from dating because you're only there I don't know I can't remember about four months three months I'm like that not that long from there I went to Fort Knox to the fourth of the 54th infantry which was an infantry battalion there was school support for the armored school so it was a forced comm unit that supported TRADOC training and Doctrine Command at Fort Knox and we did the infantry side of the training for armored officers and same thing that I went through it in Fort Benning I supported the armored schools training for their new second lieutenants and then scores graduates thanks course members at Fort Knox let's see a little look around a year then there are the orders to go to Vietnam and also at the same time than Martin Luther King got killed just before that and so at the I was on orders and we had to deploy to the Washington DC area to stop the looting and all the stuff that was going on then and then when they pulled the our battalion out from doing that went back to Knox and then pcs from Knox and went to I had orders to go to jungle school in Panama enroute to Vietnam so I went to Panama a jungle school for two weeks and then went to Vietnam came home for a few days after jungle school right times the noon Air Force Base and went through all the processing there after I think the name of the minute of the location but you go you're in processing and they decide what unit you're going to go to and you're you stay there for about you know two or three days and then they shipped and then they call you out and say you're going to lesson such a unit and I got I got on us probably a c-130 I think it flew to Chula what your was that that was 68 I think it was around September I got there and I was went to the first thing you do even when you got the division you go through the training center there and combat center I think they called I can't remember exactly and they they do all the in-country training all the specificity of operating in that area of operation in southern a core show you about booby traps and you're you go through some weapons firing and you know quite a few little odds and ends and then basically get used to looking for looking at enemy weaponry to you get a chance to see what they were using against you and then I shipped out from there to to the unit which was a at its rear at you rear area and then from there I got on a helicopter and flew out to the firebase I'm sorry the firebase for that tour was actually there in July so I actually flew from there to the field and join my company took over my platoon in the field oh is there heed at the low part I probably had 20 guys into I was probably about 35 supposed to have 44 I don't know if we were ever at full tyranny so you were a platoon leader yes do what did your company and actually do or what did your we did basically we did night ambush patrols all the time we were constantly trying to find where the VC were infiltrating the area so we would go and set up night ambush sites the whole company did and you know we would move from about a thousand meters a couple thousand meters each day to a new site during the day we slap at night we were up oh well just before evening we would move so they wouldn't think we were there all night and we've moved to a new location that company commander had basically told us to go to and we would then set up mechanical ambushes usually these were a form of claymore mines that were there were booby-trapped so if somebody came along a trail they would trip or trip him and put out flares and no way the other thing we did would we would call in night defensive fires locations so basically worthy if we needed artillery fire they were pre-plotted back in the fire Direction centre so we would call those into the company the company would get them all together and then call it into the fire Direction Center the of the Support Battalion artillery battalion yeah we into fire fights I guess I know one thing we did when we moved we did not move on trails we moved through the through the jungle because moving on a trail VC would catch on to you real quick and they would because they were they use the trails and you can ambush and so we basically moved cross-country and we get into little skirmishes quite often we captured some VC you know I'm trying to remember we did have one mission for a while to guard a bridge outside a Jew live which was a little different so basically that was a security mission versus an ambush patrol type thing but basically yeah ever so often we get into a firefight now this that nothing super big that first tour yeah we had some first tour I think we had several people that were wounded but I don't really remember anybody any K is the first tour it wasn't quite as bad as a second tour okay after you were in your unit for how long seven months seven or eight months yes then they sent you well they McVie and which was the advisors they got to be a really hot area and they wanted to sow theatre and to south vietnamese up and they had advisors at the Regular Army level and then they had advisors down at their regional forces level and I ended up being an advisor to the regional forces like the National Guard so to speak oh this was down in Kemal which is a southernmost province of South Vietnam and swing province and so I got sent down and trying to remember if I took over the yeah I took over the team when I first got there was about three or four I was and what we would do is we will go out with the South the the Vietnamese South Vietnamese and you know advise them and we were there to call in air support or artillery or anything if they had a problem and my bosses were back at Kemal province headquarters yeah sure Moni yeah we did let me go back a little bit there was a little bit of action there in my I had a guy come in to be my boss of the team later and he got killed right in front of me and on a night ambush we were out with the South Vietnamese walking across an open rice paddies at dark and they started shooting as from about a thousand meters away and basically it got lucky and they hit him and killed him so that was probably my first real heavy duty combat also one day I didn't go out with the team I said why my NCO is out and they got ambushed and killed the the company commander of the unit I was with because we operated on boats up and down the this is all water down there mangrove swamp and so we operated up and down the river and so anyway then I left Vietnam went to Germany for a year it was yeah well let me back up and I went to Germany command a rifle company there and that was not that was a learning process it was the May I went from a light injury unit to a mechanised infantry battalion and that was quite a quite a change because we really hadn't had a lot of training on on hit on mechanized infantry and I learned all it was a quick learning thing but anyway I didn't I didn't stay there that long I ended up going back to Vietnam and when went back to the same brigade different battalion well I got on the hill the fire I went to help LZ Stenson went through the same process that did the first time and I went to LZ Stenson and I was initially the battalion commander didn't have a rifle company for me I didn't last long the they made me the echo company commander which was responsible for a recon platoon the hill secure firebase security and all our trying stuff and more evident than anything and so I was there for like two days I think and the B company had been on a night logger position and they were set up and then they set up right on top of a daisy chain one five five pounder booby trap and thing went off and killed about seven people to include the chaplain who happened to be with him the company commander who had been a company commander in that battalion previous tour and medics and radio operator operator wounded the XO who happened to be in the field with him and who normally stayed back at the firebase so I immediately got a rifle company I it's just a rough guess I don't know five or six most most of our killed if you've ever seen the movie footlocker and you saw in the footlocker where they had those daisy chain one five five so those are one five five suit these are 105 probably instead of one five five that's basically what they set up on top of and it took everybody out so you were you became a rifle company commander as my second company that's six months that was normal company commander stayed in six months were rotated out and took over as staff officers usually well we did basically the same thing I did the secretory first or but we did it a little bit more sophisticated we had instead of 30 20 round magazines for m16s we had 30 round magazines we had first or parents were sending 30 round magazines that are kids because you could army would an issue because they thought it would overload the springs on the magazine system on the weapon and so second Torrey they got wise and so we had 30 round magazines when machine guns that were just terrible shape because they were they had all kind of cracks and stuff in them the we hit a much more hostile force that we were facing and and sometimes I was one of my platoons many days was in a fire at least one was in a firefight and I usually moves my company CP with a different platoon every time we went to the field so I go a couple weeks with one a couple weeks with another sometimes we stayed at we stayed out the field about 30 days sometimes basically go back to the fire base and take our clothes off and throw it in the trash because they dried it off of us and then it's not like what they went through now we stayed in the field and dropped our see rashes through the trees to us and we you know it's just much more hostile force and we went through monsoons where troops feet got all messed up and stuff so we had a situation where we set up with surgeon on the fire base that we would take him to the end right close to a merchant and send him up to the fire base until their feet healed up and then back of the field again like I said I had a platoon in combat in contact with the VC usually sometimes every day I think I lost three or four killed and about 10 15 wounded during that period after you were there for six months yes I moved up to BTS for the battalion that's a logistics officer and that was for six months yes yes and the total tour was from one to one it was again it was September till something around September a 70 71 and during that period that was when Nixon decided we were going to pull out of Vietnam so my but my commander wanted me to stay it helps stay in the battalion down I said that's I think I'm ready to go home my time is up so I'm and I would have had to extend to do that and I was you know I had a baby born my I got married between tours and a brand-new baby at home and I was just kind of ready to go well you wanted any medals or citations but over both tours right okay I have one Bronze Star for valor three Bronze Stars for military for meritorious service and Air Medal for combat basically for combat assaults and helicopters about three meritorious service medals about three our Army Commendation medals Vietnamese Cross of gallantry with palm and several of the I was there medals Vietnam service and campaign medals so I had 24 months in in-country counting the two tours when your first tour you was a you were a lieutenant yes the second lieutenant starting out and then a first lieutenant yes in your second tour you are captain yes I made captain when I left Vietnam the first time just right after that I made captain because at that time you went from lieutenant to captain in two years unless you screwed up did you plan any battles not really it I was at the tactical level so you know you're talking about operational level type things that we would you know we would give Intel we'd catch bad guys and send them back and they would be Tara gated and stuff but you know our area of operation was given to us by the battalion which was given to the battalion by brigade and so forth but anyway one thing I didn't mention is my first tour I actually knew lieutenant Calley he was the s5 of of our battalion he had come up from the 21st Infantry and were all the stuff took place in melee and on my second tour actually operated a couple times near me life I knew rusty Calley I didn't have a clue what he'd done and it all was after he did it this was after he did yeah yeah and and then my second tour one of my lieutenants came in he only lasted a week and hit a booby trap and went home but he is was dating the daughter of the judge who was trying lieutenant Calley that was my second Tori you didn't you didn't sustain any injuries no no I got lucky what Oh the Lovell each bites one thing too is when I was an adviser my first tour I had I was on the ground there was a guy by name of Nick Rowe who was a West pointer who had been captured in 1963 by the VC diner he was Special Forces officer and he'd been held in South Vietnam for five years and we were there had been a lot of b-52 attacks down in the Delta and we even had a SEAL team down in the south tip of South Vietnam and the southernmost town and the the pressure they put on and caused the VC to move Nick and he beat up his captor one time when they were moving him and he jumped out in the middle of the field and flagged down helicopter that was flowers and h6 I believe it was actually the guy that was in it was Dutch master six without use the day before with my vien of South Vietnamese and they've swooped in and picked him up and he was one of the only people that know that captured they had gotten away from the VC this was intercept this was not in the north this was south part of South Vietnam so anyway I heard the whole thing on the Provence radio listen to it when they picked him up and he identified himself and everything and there's a book out called five years to freedom and you can some of the doctors and people that are pictured in there are guys I used to work with sorry I read the book this yeah while I was up I was on the ground when it when he got away I mean the first time you were there there send letters to your parents or something girlfriends our first order of communications with family and friends was primarily by letter sometimes we would do audio tapes and send those back and then occasionally if you got back to a location man Marsh station set up and which were shortwave radios and so I think on both tours I talked to my parents first tour of a Mars call and second tour I talked to my wife and my parents on a Mars call but and and then we sent pictures back and forth you know to her what was the food like it was all right in the rear but if you're in the field you were eating we had sea Russians first tour primarily and we would use which they didn't like it but we'd use c4 wanted up to make the little heat tablets out of because the heat tablets they supplied would when it's fix eh if in a closed area so I think everybody was in Vietnam you see for to heat their coffee and and they had their favorite type of C rations the second tour they had gotten better and they had these things called MRE are nine Marty's but they called them in flight rations which actually was a precursor to the MRE was a free stride food and so we had those plus C rations so some of those C rations were left over from the Korean War and our older but in the rare the food wasn't bad it was pretty good if you got back there yeah basically quality of some of the things were not good like what the soldiers have you know now when I was there we had the some of the first secure radios at KY thirty-eight and we had the first starlight scopes which are night-vision devices mounted you know for though those came into being at that time they were actually classified confidential and then the radios were you know the PRC 25 first or PRC 77 the second tour with the KY 38 secure set well yeah you were scared a lot of times those if you call that pressure being scared I guess that was the biggest thing you you know when you could relax you didn't be relaxed because you were tired all the time you didn't get a lot of sleep when we go back to firebase I had a bunk in his 110th it was right next to a 155 out sir and it would go all fire all night long firing H&I fire and you know it was it was not easy to sleep with that actually I could sleep through that they he raised about two inches off the ground when I thing went off but I mean it wasn't far away did you do anything special for good luck you have a good luck charm or is there anything you did for a good locker there was no good luck no I wasn't really superstitious I didn't I didn't have any good luck charms some people did but you know but I did well you know we had USO shows come I sent second tour I sent one of my platoons to see Bob old but the name and but we would get them in the firebase occasionally and then we'd have movies when that when we were back on you know back in for a little R&R we'd stand down for a couple three days then go back to the field but here we had time you know the guys got to see some stuff or they they could go and get some have beer and you know and violations and the sometimes I go back to the officer's club back at you la when I was back there first tour our rear exit was in July second tour we did have a small rear back there also first tour with Australia yes I was that was interesting it was really nice went down to Sydney spent five days came home second tour they had first tour didn't have trips back to the States second tour was they start letting you go back so I went home met my new daughter and yeah spent a few days there so yeah that was basically it you know that the guys had lots of things to read and stuff the books and things and their parents you know there's all kinds of good stuff that gets sent from the states and the problem with that was we get too much in the field sometimes we kick look like it was a mess the time we got to you remember any humorous incidents oh yeah a couple three is the one of my of my second tour we had a medic and he was not the head medic by rank but he I made him the head medic by experience because he had about three years of medical school and we were going into a larger position on a dried-up stream bed that went up went up in elevation and he fell and smashed his glasses and bruised himself up pretty good it was dark over getting in there so I called in a medivac to get him out of there and the bird came in and couple Cobras came in for security around it and they we hosts hoisted him up with a jungle penetrator and the thing got about three-quarters of the way up and know half the way up and it hung did wouldn't wouldn't go any further so he was strapped in so they said we're just gonna take him and going back to the back hospital of Chula so they started flying back and the medic says he's on there and he he's he figured out what they were doing but he couldn't see very well if I didn't have his glasses he had blood all over him and he says he looked out and he saw this big dark thing coming to him and it was this was after dark and they had misjudged the altitude that they needed to be to make sure he cleared everything so he he hit this hill they had elephant grass on it which was cushioned to blow and he goes bouncing over the top of it boom boom boom and then they that's oh my god we got it getting off there so they they find the closest army the public of Vietnam or arvin firebase which is up on this little hill so they land him and he dropping right down in the concertina wire came off and they get him in the helicopter and then they flew him back to that luckily he wasn't hurt he was back with us in a couple days but the whole crew came the next day I apologize for almost killing me and then we had one other one which was it didn't happen to me but there was a when we walked point you had a point guy and you have a slack guy he's the guy that follows up behind covers the sixth or the back behind part of the point guy they were walking along and all of a sudden this boa constrictor fell off a tree on him because we had a lot of boys in that area and the guy the guy was yelling and screaming oh my god and the the slack guy came up behind him and he had a m79 grenade launcher a shotgun round at it is it hard on the fire the guy said you shot something called the dust off in he wasn't hurt but sneaking all went back to the evac Hospital I haven't know them but that's ok let me see what was the other one oh yeah I guess first no I shouldn't tell that one no that's okay go ahead did you make many friendships what did you think of the officers and your fellow in-service fellow servicemen well that was that was the interesting time that was most of my troops are all draftees and I had guys in the company who were told either join the army or go to jail for violating some infractions especially in the south and then towards ena Vietnam we had officers who were coming in that really were not real I'm real happy about taking on a rifle company that that happened I didn't know I didn't really see that happening and then there was some other stuff some officers did that did not go over very well with me but I mean by and large it was you know there everybody was very professional this is we had West pointers that came in and did what I did sauce it didn't matter what we had our own TC we had OCS and we have West Point officers so we had combinations of everything doing the job you know it all depended on the person it didn't really matter where you were commissioned it was the person and in the way what how they were brought up basically did you keep a journal only uh I kept a notebook of where I was at each day things like you know grid locations and if something happened that stuff like that I think I have one of them still at home somewhere but it's probably a little hard to decipher the my last tour there is a there is a group of people who formed an internet group it's on Facebook and they keep track of everybody that was in that company wet from the time they company deployed from Fort Hood Texas to Vietnam until they've stood down and they keep track of everybody that was killed and they keep track in every anniversary of the death of one of the servicemen they have a little little thing pops up on Facebook and talks about it so they they keep track of all the soldiers these are these are some NCOs that did this I did not know them in Vietnam but I've since met them and they have a reunion every year it's a very efficient organization did you ever go see the wall yes more than once I have several people on the wall 23 years 67 to 1990 well officially from Fort Dix New Jersey I left my resignation or my retirement started when I you know was in the Netherlands at allied forces Central Europe NATO assignment and officially was I guess mustered out so to speak from Fort Dix a little bit I ran a security did the I didn't run the company I ran several locations for a security company were they did physical security and there was some armed security in that to their dad I sold cars actually got into where I sold alternative fuel cars to so some of the first sold in this area and I did that for several years and then I then I started the Green Haven Clean Cities coalition which is the US Department of Energy program no while I was on active duty I got a master's degree from Central Michigan University while I was at Fort Leavenworth its Cabana John Staff College used the GI Bill to do it yeah several of them I you know kept up with there was friends actually one gaff my hometown there's a different of my brothers was when um when we were down in Fort Sam Houston stationed there the but I would see people from time to time from one assignment to another and some of my bosses to st. bosses how did the military experience influence your thinking about war or the military well it was quite a shock to go from being on active duty for 23 years from the time you're out of college until you're in your 40s and to experience what goes on in the civilian world military is mission based and civilian world is profit based and sometimes there's a clash between the two leaves a lot of leads to a lot of moral ambiguities to put it lightly so it took a while to get used to that but you can use your military thought process and how you get things done and don't don't stand for half way you know results type thing as you go forward oh yeah I'm a member of whole bunch of the MOAA the Association United States Army the VFW American Legion and I guess those are the big the main ones I did I didn't attend one reunion from my battalion or the rifle company just happened to be in Washington DC when it was going on and and I attended it now when they actually all went to the wall that day too one day while I was there and then MOAA I got that I go there that's the MOA stands for it used to be the retired officer Association and anyway I go to their meetings about once a month my wife is a member also she's a veteran yeah she was the army nurse she did not go in a combat zone but she was was at the Burn Center at Fort Sam Houston for two years and then I met her in Germany at 132 General Hospital between Vietnam tours and Nuremberg how would you say your service experience affected your life oh it basically it sets the course for your life I think and it sure makes it easier when you get to be made to have that all the benefits you get from the military the retirement TRICARE for life military retirement access to px commissary space a flying that those are very beneficial it allows me to do what I'm doing today which I do I guess you could call it part-time it's not really that's been full-time hours doing it but I wouldn't been able to do it if I didn't have military retirement is there anything you'd like to add that was no well let's see yeah I can we come from a kind of a long line of military background my this is not bragging but just my mother's father and mother met on Iwo Jima in World War two she was an Army nurse he was a CV and they were there when the fighting was going on my mother went to school with Franklin Southie Franklin southies one of the people who is on the race of the flag on Iwo Jima sort Mount Suribachi his just recently I just saw where is where he was supposed to be in the in the picture was changed to the image the second guy from the got putting the flag in the ground so that was really interesting he's buried about fifty feet from where my parents are buried in Kentucky I was the s for the second brigade of the 25th Infantry Division and Hugh Shelton who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at one time especially during 9/11 was the s-1 so we knew each other pretty well and worked together for several couple years and let's see what else and I had several other you know people that went on to be generals and very successful careers and stuff I kind of like to think I helped him along the way I know I did one especially so the last part of my two of my last part of my time in the military I got out of the infantry cycles within the army they allowed us to get it specialties now I went from being an eleven which is an entry officer which I still kept but the last half of my time the military I was a logistics officer so I did a lot of logistics work which helped me when I got out and taught me quite a few lessons I did met major military movements planned reporter exercises was a standardization officer for NATO Allied Force of Central Europe to help build hardened aircraft bunkers and down links from satellites and you know those types of things I'd like to thank you for your service and also for taking the time today thank you [Music] you

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Keywords: U.S. Army, Vietnam War, Vietnam

Id: 6MSEDh0mWEQ

Length: 45min 53sec (2753 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 24 2017