LEE ALLEY, VIETNAM - 1st Lieutenant, Recon Platoon, 5th Battalion, 60th Infantry, 9th Infantry Div.

[Music] lee alley vietnam 1967-1968 lee ali served with the 5th battalion of the 60th infantry division under the 9th infantry as a first lieutenant of a reconnaissance platoon they were the reactionary forces of battalion lee's story is one of my favorite stories out of all the interviews i've done and i'm proud to bring it to you today on the national military history online museum bless they be forgotten lee received the silver star in vietnam and he's just a great american and i love his story it's a very gripping story and i think you'll really be blessed by it and this story is being made possible by stan von feld and the bonfeld family so if you'd like to sponsor one of these stories i would welcome your support of the work that i'm doing my goal is to get all these stories online so i would ask you to just share this story with others and contact me if you're interested in sponsoring and supporting this work so i'm proud to bring you one of my friends one of my american heroes lee ali god bless you [Music] okay and uh we're just going to talk a little bit about vietnam today all right what years were you over there again 1967 and 68. and you're with the army i was with the army ninth infantry okay what battalion regiment uh ninth infantry division and within that 9th infantry i was in the 5th battalion of the 60th infantry within the 9th yeah what was your rank at that time i was first lieutenant and were you over a platoon when i originally went over i commanded a platoon and they moved me on to commanding the reconnaissance platoon which was 35 men we were reactionary force the battalion and i stayed with them for about six months and then they took me off the line and put me in the battalion headquarters as the assistant as three operating operations orders but because of the casualty rate within among officers i i very soon found myself back on the line commanding an infantry company the next time i went back so give me a little bit now when you went to vietnam had you had combat before been in combat before was this your first experience in combat uh first experience and not only first experience in combat i had only been in the military probably two years at the time and and though the military felt i had the training necessary basically my training was through my officers candidate schools where i got my commission and then i went through airborne jump school and then i went through jungle warfare school in panama so they felt that i was trained but you don't know if you're trained or not until the first shot's fired good point can you take me into vietnam a little bit i mean when you first got there was it what you thought it would be what the country i mean what do you remember about arriving in vietnam well i think one of the things that sticks in my mind more than anything else is when i stepped off that plane i thought i was going to die from the humidity and the heat and you know a wyoming boy where we don't witness that stuff and of course i had been in georgia and some places to military schools but when you stepped off that plane in humanity the the smell and the humidity was just overwhelming that's one of the first things i remember i think one of the second things that has always stuck in my mind all my training was in the armor i was to be an armor officer in in a tank battalion and to go to the 11th cavs where i was supposed to go and once i got processed and was in country uh you're laying down in the tent sweating waiting for your ride to come and then the little courier runs down and says lieutenant ally your ride is here uh jump in that jeep over there you're going to ben fuch with the ninth infantry division and i said there must be some mistake i'm not an infantry officer i'm an armor officer i'm supposed to go to the 11th cav and i'll never forget his response was the only mistake is if you don't get on that jeep you're going to miss your ride and you may have to walk to manfuck so getting in country was quite a shock because the first thing they did they completely changed my assignment in country and that was uh that was interesting why were we in vietnam why were we in vietnam that's it i know the answer but tell me why why were we over vietnam i mean you hear stories about they didn't know what we were fighting for in vietnam or what all this but you know there was there was a purpose there well you know if you uh read the history books and everything else of course um the big threat was the spread of communism throughout and they were worried that if the north vietnamese actually got in and took over the south vietnamese it would obviously become a communistic country they bordered china and that would be a very strong foothold for communism within the southeast asia area so you have a struggling countries like south vietnam that wanted to remain independent and want to have a quasi-democratic type society where do you turn you turn to big brother the united states and we're going to come in and we're going to help you defend uh your democracy and we're going to keep the communism out that's that's and of course the french had been in and they got their butts kicked and and uh and and left so there was a real void in that country and the united states decided to go in and fill that void tell me about did you work at all with the helicopters the huey's in and out of lz's and all that can you give me some uh maybe just take me on a combat mission a little bit about the huey flight over into an lc this game what do you remember about internet well i uh the helicopter was a huge part of our operation we were a mechanized unit in that we had armored personnel carriers m113 the armored personnel carriers we were a mechanized unit but probably at least 50 of our operations were airborne or air mobile operations with the huey helicopters and i think the thing that i still cannot get over today is the sound of the blades of that helicopter that is that is a sound that if a helicopter flies over today and i hear that sound i think i get two immediate reactions number one i love the helicopter in that when it was coming to get you out that was the most wonderful sound you could ever hear but on the other hand when you're standing on the tarmac waiting for the helicopters to pick you up and you're all lined up by about five to six men in a group because that's how many they would haul you know that the only way you're getting off that helicopter is probably going to be in a hot zone or in a combat situation because they don't like just dropping you off so once you boarded the helicopter you knew when you get off generally it's not going to be good uh and so i had a very uh a love-hate relationship with the helicopter i love to see them coming in to pick us up but one of the uh we used to go on a lot of what they call eagle flights which basically they would pick you up and because of my reconnaissance units there was 35 of us a very highly trained great guys we were so small we were very mobile so it was a one of the missions we went on a lot was they would just pick my 35 unit my 35 man reconnaissance unit up not necessarily having a game plan in mind thinking we're going to keep these 35 guys airborne until we can either pick up fire from the ground or some other unit picks up contact and then these guys are going in so those kind of missions i hated because you knew when they were going to let you out you might stand all day in that helicopter and if they did drop you it was going to be in a hot zone and uh well you know lee as i listen to you and as i've talked to other vietnam veterans that were part of the air mobile division you know and all that um my mind thinks about that it thinks about the movies you know listening to credence clearwater revival and going into combat i mean was it like that at all or was there adrenaline rush i mean you're going into combat like you said you get on the huey's can you just walk me into getting on flying over what's happening and if they're receiving rounds coming into an lcd so just i think as i walk you through it the first thing that comes into my mind is you receive the orders you go out to the pickup area wherever that me in our particular situation we were in a little place called ben fuch which was about 30 miles south of saigon and the pick area pickup area was just a dirt road out behind the compound so we would walk out to the dirt road and in preparation for the helicopters to come in and in that area of course we would all uh you go through your equipment continuously you want to make sure you have that right as much ammunition as you can carry and you're going through your uh preparation as an officer that time waiting for the pickup i spent a lot of time studying my men you look at the facial expressions of your men typically it was not uncommon for somebody to walk over to the edge of the paddy dyke and throw up because of the nervousness uh some people would uh go to the bathroom you know to take a leak because you know a lot of nervous you know you would see people that are saying silent prayers to themselves and crossing themselves because the anticipation of the pickup was what it was uh you don't know you do know one thing that when they pick you up ninety percent of the time they're going to drop you into a hot zone so the pickup and the anticipation is is kind of the hardest part once they the helicopters come in in formation pick up then you're each like five to six guys on a helicopter so in the 35 men group there would be uh six or seven helicopters in our formation and once you're picked up then there's almost a moment or a little time of reflection where okay we're in the air it's always cooler up there it feels good and i never and the scenery was always beautiful i mean you can look out the helicopter and the rice fields and it was there was a few moments there where it was almost peaceful uh as the commanding officer i tried to be very alert with my maps trying to figure out because a lot of times we didn't know exactly where we were going so i would try to be following the contour lines and things like that trying to figure out exactly when we did drop where we would be so i always kind of enjoyed that pickup time that flight time because it was cool [Music] generally they wouldn't drop you down unless they wanted to put you into an area where you were going to receive uh small arms fire or whatever the case may be um once they decided to insert you and those orders generally came from headquarters or somebody on the ground would say we're in trouble we need people inserted here or the headquarters a vast majority of the time you would have another helicopter in accompanying you which would be the loh the light observation helicopter that the battalion commander would be flying in and he would decide where to insert the troops uh the insertion was always the worst because uh if you are if you are ever more vulnerable this is the time because the helicopters are coming in they're coming in low they're basically sitting ducks i've always uh the courage of these helicopter pilots and stuff the places they put you in [Music] pretty amazing and of course as soon as you come in and you cart start to land the firing begins immediately because the helicopters will have the m-60s on each side the gunners the helicopter gunners and they're going to start firing as soon as you start coming in so if there is anything there make them get their head down long enough to get you in and out so as soon as you start getting close the the sound intensifies 100 percent the firing begins not from my men because you've got to jump and get ready to get off but from the helicopters they're taken and then generally speaking they'll have the gun ships in a company the what we used to call the slicks what we rode on but the gunships would be accompanying them and they would begin strafing the areas both sides of the again giving you time if if if they can get you if they can get you three or four minutes of getting those guys heads down they'll get you off and you'll be on your own generally speaking when you come in you come in two or three feet off the ground you know they they're not gonna land and say okay everybody out it's basically a run and get out and everybody bails out both sides of the helicopters and then again the the big emotion is you go from full bore machine guns firing everything's firing to get you in once you get off the helicopters are gone you don't move you just lay steel if you have some kind of cover and again there's a huge change because all of a sudden the silence and then you begin your advance into the tree line or against the enemy or whatever it is so it was uh those insertions were sure were uh you know a few minutes of pure hail and and then depending on what you went into would be so if there's 35 guys six or seven helicopters you get in are you the first one the first ship in generally speaking not i i always had my uh the way i divided my men up is i always had a point group which were the first guys in and and i was generally the second and third helicopter in and that's just the way i you know and i don't know how other outfits did theirs and that's just the way i always was about the third second or third helicopter in and then once we get out and land and then then again i would probably not be one of the first ones to move because i my point element i would start talking to them immediately and and then moving them into the direction i wanted and then that the command group is what i call that i always had with me a medic my radio operators uh generally i would have an interpreter with me sometimes uh an artillery person and that's just what i call the command group and we would be the second or third one in did you see the movie we were soldiers with mel gibson yes they did turtle more and all that yes um what did you think of that movie as far as was it like that at all anything in that movie remind you of what vietnam was was maybe really like or yeah i i i thought that as far as the the use of the helicopters and the way they used them and going in and out i thought that was pretty realistic yeah i uh i generally speaking have avoided vietnam movies but uh i was talked into going to that one and and uh and i enjoyed it i thought it was fairly realistic and uh so you're the commander i mean you get all these guys in the ground the helicopters take off you guys are there you get your radio man your medic i mean were there cases where it was rougher than other times i mean you know i mean as far as combat what can you share with me about combat the vietnamese that they're using ak-47s just encountering the enemy i guess and then as you would lose man how that how you felt and how you acted well uh yeah every landing is different we've we've had landings where they would drop us into a situation because they'd been receiving fire from a tree line for example and they would drop us in well that fire that they were receiving maybe one or two snipers and as soon as he sees six or seven helicopters come in and 35 guys they're gone and it's quiet we get up we move into the tree line we never do get contact never do find them and in that situation they would never leave us in there for more than 30 or 40 minutes if you don't find them they say okay come on out pop some smoke so we can see what color it is we're going to send them in we're picking you up and you're going somewhere else [Applause] well popping the smoke uh you wanted to the helicopter to identify the smoke that you had because uh it didn't take the vietcong and the north vietnamese very long to figure out that they could bring the helicopters in with smoke also so there was a wide range of colors and generally you would pop the smoke and and not say what color it is and the the helicopter pilot would come back in and say roger i see yellow smoke and if that's what you in fact if you he said roger i have purple smoke no don't go in that's not you know so that was the colors of the smoke was to bring them into your location and not into traps but that was one end of the spectrum was often you know nothing would happen and they would pull you out the one particular probably the worst air marble insertion that i ever went on that i would tell you about was november 17 1967 i can tell you exactly when it was and we had reports it was in the kailay area of south vietnam again about 40 miles south of side going over towards the plane of reeds they called it and they had a very strong intelligent intelligence that at least the two battalion size nva were working in that area so they picked our unit the fifth of the 60th to go in and take care of this situation and so they flew us down to dongtam or we drove down to dongtam on trucks and then they flew us in to the area from dongtam and with the reconnaissance unit generally speaking i was the first one in to draw the fire and figure out where ever once else or i was the last one in my unit a lot of times they would insert the company the larger units first and then depending on where they were receiving the worst fire would draw use the smaller unit my reconnaissance unit to try to flank or or something like that and i'll never forget this day because uh we sat on the tarmac and uh they said okay recon get ready you're going in we've got we've got we've got visuals we can see them running they're there and you're going in and so uh all 35 million we get on the helicopters and uh you know the adrenaline and you're just thinking oh my god and we just got on the helicopter and the radio comes over and says recon get off you're not going in there's too many we're sending in the companies first this thing is huge so we unloaded the companies went in uh recon get on you're going recon get off and i i mean your your your emotions you're just going from you're so high and then you're down and you're thinking my god what are they going to do with us and uh finally about what two o'clock in the afternoon they said recon you are going in this time and uh they said we've got three companies we have three infantry companies pinned down nobody can move this thing is huge uh they were we were already taking casualties within the companies uh and i'm thinking what the hell are my 35 guys going to do and they said we want you to flank the enemy so they picked us up and when they dropped us in it was what we would call a hot lz the helicopters were receiving massive amounts of fire and you could hear the bullets pinging off the helicopters i mean you could hear and and i could see from the air you could see the other companies where they had been deployed and they were pinned down everybody was flat they couldn't move this area uh was notorious for no dry land water everywhere and um one good thing about it the reeds in that area were about four feet high so once you did get down and you laid you were laying in water but at least with four feet of reeds over your head they couldn't tell exactly where you were and so when my 35 men finally got in we did not take any casualties coming in which was was a blessing because it was it was hot one helicopter went down they did shoot a helicopter down and then we were just laying flat in the mud we couldn't move and when you talked about the ak-47 you get very attuned your ears become very attuned to the different sounds of the weapons you can tell if it's an m16 or an m60 or an ak-47 by the by the sound of the of the firing and the bullets going over my head were obviously ak-47s we could hear them chattering into the woodlines and we did we had no visual you could not see one foot in front of you because of the reeds and so we're laying in the mud not knowing what's in front of us i don't know if the tree line is 50 feet in front of me five feet in front of me but i can see the tracers going over my head and i can hear the rattling of the shales going over my head and the colonel comes on he's up flying above in his little loh helicopter and uh my call sign was romeo six and he said romeo six i know you can't see i'm gonna direct you you start crawling and so he would he could see us crawling through the reeds and he would say okay start crawling 100 and i need you to crawl 100 meters [Music] there to your right you know and 35 men are like 35 little water snakes going through the reeds and and i know we were getting close because the clatter of the bullets was getting louder and louder and louder and uh we i knew we had to be within 10 feet of the tree line where the firing was coming from and you're thinking i this is bad this is going to be bad and i will never forget we were so close we could hear them talking and we could feel the heat i mean the bullets were going over her head but because of the right the reeds and stuff nobody could see anybody we didn't and it came over my radio and he said romeo 6 we just had another helicopter we've got three helicopters now they had two helicopters down and they're trying to get the machine guns off those helicopters i need you to turn around and get to those helicopters before the viet cong and i thought that's fine with me i'd rather turn around than uh and so they turned us around and sent us crawling again back to try to get to the down helicopters and uh we got to the down helicopters before they did and we spent the rest of that day an entire night in a canal it was the only cover we could get in we found a canal that we could drop into and the water was up to our necks and but we could fire out over the bank and we spent that rest of that day and that night to protecting the downed helicopters that they were trying to get to for the armament and that's what you call a hot lz it was pretty pretty tough so what's a group of 35 men called uh a platoon yeah is it 35 yeah that was a platoon you have one medic and one radio man well i had one medic and two radio man i had one radio man that i caught talked to my platoon with and then i had the other radio that i would talk to battalion with okay yeah so i would have two radio men and you're romeo six yes that's all you're calling up i mean as you talk again i'm thinking you know what i see in the movies what i hear it's just it's amazing the things that you guys have gone through um how old are you now uh 60 be 60 this month lieutenant 21 years old wow on your you're taking charge or your men had your men been in combat did you have replacements through this time or did you ever lose anybody uh the reconnaissance unit that i took over was the colonel's boys in other words because we were the reactionary force of the battalion anytime anything happened to the battalion this reconnaissance unit was either the first one in our last one out and because of that the colonel took very good care of us in fact anybody that came this is kind of unusual in the combat situation but nobody came into the reconnaissance unit without me interviewing and have my blessing because of what we did we wouldn't just take anybody we were a pretty uh select unit now having said that i took over the reconnaissance platoon from one of the i think one of the greatest soldiers i ever met in my life and that was lieutenant bob beechner from sac from uh california and bob had had a reputation of probably being one of the best field commanders in the battalion and so when he was getting ready to rotate home and i took over his unit i basically lived out of his shirt pocket for a week is all they gave me and and i was blessed in that i took over his men that had had a lot of combat experience and these guys were great so as we lost men or as men rotated out they were rotating into a unit that had a lot of good experience and so that was a very comforting thing because i had some of the best men it was a i've always felt blessed that i took over that unit because i have never i have never taken any credit for what those guys do that i took over a unit that it was a good unit a good unit to take over the other side of that the unit the battle that i was just telling you about where we were pinned down in that canal the next day the enemy was gone they broke we couldn't find them so they picked us up again and they dropped us seven or eight times again during the next day now that's bad because we know there's at least two battalions in there somewhere and they're taking my 35 million and they're dropping us here no combat pick us up drops picks up drop us they're trying to make me find those guys we didn't find them that day so they picked me up and dropped me over uh they they flew in the artillery because we were getting we were so far away from uh any air artillery support that they would actually fly the guns in and put them up on the platforms to fire off of because everything was wet so they took my unit to my 35 minute men and flew me to this very hastily set up artillery base out in the middle of nowhere to provide help provide night security for that unit we were overrun that night i had four men killed the next morning of the 35 men there was eight of us left and when you talk about replacing men and the units that you were in within four days we were operating again and we were flying again with a new 35 men eight of which have had combat experience and and so i have seen both sides of this i've had the pleasure of taking over a unit that was hardcore and ready to fight and then being required to do the same operations when you just had to completely rebuild your unit within three days what do you say to these people i mean i mean to come in you got to encourage him i mean it's not like you know keep your head down you're gonna get killed i mean what are you telling these new guys uh we just lost half the yeah and you guys might die too you don't tell them that no no when you're building a unit like that it's tough because they know what you've been through and they know the reputation and when they're when they look around and there's 35 guys and there's uh 20 of them are brand new they're thinking holy moly uh what have i gotten myself into the only thing that i ever told my man is i had a job to do in vietnam and politics wasn't anywhere in my vocabulary my job is to get these guys home and that was my job and i just told them first of all because of the unit that i was in in recon it changed after i took over the company that that whole thing changed but uh most of the guys were in recon because they wanted to be they did not have to be they could stay in other units so there was a desire to be in this kind of a unit so they knew what they were getting into when they came over and the only thing that i ask of them is if you will trust me i will try to make the best decisions to get you home and that's and that's what i was fighting for and those kids knew kids we were all the same age some of them older than me but anybody in my unit knew that i didn't talk politics in my unit i talked we're going to go out and we're going to do whatever they tell us but our mission my friends is to get you home and and that's that's how i spent my year in vietnam was trying to get as many guys home as i could if i can ask when you lost you know two-thirds of your platoon or whatever i mean is there an initial remorse or does it come later i mean when you're alone i mean at what point do you grieve over this or lament i mean is it do you go through that or is it just that's just part of war i mean you're a human being you know i mean uh the worst part of the the worst part of any battle and and i've i was in another uh outfits where we were overrun a second time and that night between the two companies was there we had over 25 men killed and 70 men of act we lost 100 guys at night during combat and i don't i don't know how you explain this but to people but during the battle there's no fear and i don't know that doesn't make any sense but as soon as the first shot's fired it's all it's you're 100 adrenaline there's no fear you just know what you have to do and you do it conversely the next day when combat is broke you're pleasing up the wounded the adrenaline is gone there is such a terrible let down you you can't believe it you just you just you just sit and you can't it's like you can't move and you're drained emotionally you're drained physically and of all the battles that i was in the thing i hated the next was the next day and then the next night after that because as a commander one of the things that i did i made sure that anybody that was killed in my unit got a letter home from me and as a young 21 year old lieutenant going into my tent or my track wherever we were and sitting down and having to write 10 or 15 in that one case 20 letters at night and trying to make some sense and trying to give some comfort to the people at home who have lost these is uh that's something that i'm sure i probably failed at because i don't know how i could ever give them any comfort the days after the nights after are hideous can i ask just what you wrote i mean dear mr and mrs smith i'm sorry to regret to inform you that your son was killed in the line of action was it a formality or did you put some personal thoughts into that generally speaking um the lot the the letters uh in the beginning were all pretty specific coming you know and army regulations and everything else you you're you're bound to the things that you can say you can't say we were on a mission so and so and because of that so uh generally pretty spec pretty uh standard things you know your son has been killed in action and everything else but then i i really tried to end on a personal side because i was so close to all my men that every one of those guys had something that was unique to them that i loved about them and liked about them and i tried to bring those into the letter to let these parents or wives or whoever it may be that i was writing to know how special they had been to me and that and that's the one thing i wanted to to leave with them is that even though they were gone they would have they would never leave me and um and they still haven't you know they're still there well that's just going to ask you know 1967 almost 40 years ago i mean you live your life you've had a good life you come home did you ever wonder why you made it and they didn't did i ever crush because i've talked to some world war ii guys and they went through a guilt process absolutely have you ever felt that lady i i've i have talked a lot around the country i've given talks at different places and and i've written a book and i was asked to do a couple of purple heart ceremonies on some purple heart things and one of the things that i talk about whether it's at the purple heart ceremony is there is definitely a thing that i call guilt of survivorship and it is real i don't care what anybody says and there's always the question in your mind the night we were overrun when i lost all but eight of my men they weren't all killed but they were wounded the point they had to be medevaced in the bunker with me was two radio operators an artillery man uh there was five of us in the bunker uh of the five in that bunker two were killed one was medevac to the point that he would never come back two of us survived out of that bunker to fight the next day we're all in the same bunker within five feet of each other and then it goes why i don't know and i've never been able to answer that question but one of the things when i talk to other veterans and stuff guilty survivorship is a real thing why why could i not save my friend and boy these guys that i talked to they would give their lives for the guy next to him and why was i not able i don't i don't have those answers but guilt of survivorship is uh you know i i uh you know and i tell a lot of people the purple heart comes with a price sometimes you can see the price when you look at somebody physically you can see the physical dis disfigurements but sometimes they don't see the price that they're paying inside for wondering why in the world would i get this purple heart i never survived and the guy next to me he got a purple heart but he's on the wall in washington dc did you ever get a letter back from one of these families personally to you saying thank you for writing me or just any any feedback at all from any of these letters that you wrote did you remember uh it's it's kind of interesting that you said that i i never got a letter back personally but since uh i have come out and been talking about this and doing a lot of this stuff with the veterans the unit that i was in is the 5th of the 60th infantry and we have since put an association together and we're getting ready next week i'm flying to to send it to st louis for our fourth reunion and right now we have over 250 veterans signed up i'm president of that association i put those things on and i'm picky about what goes on at that thing because i want the best for these guys and i did not know that this is even existed until our last reunion was in dallas texas and when i was in the reconnaissance unit i answered straight to the colonel i didn't but i did have a company commander basically he was my company commander but i never answered to him i answered to battalion but i asked my old company commander to be a speaker at the banquet that night and he got up and chose to read a letter that he had had for over 35 years from a father back asking about how his son had died and the kind of unit he was in and so he read that letter and boy you talk about an emotional time so in answering your question i there were some letters going back and forth that i never did see but 35 years later i have i have found out that there were some letters back and forth and and i've used that letter a lot in some of the speeches i give because uh every name on the wall has a story i'm going to jump ahead just a bit because of the wall but have you ever been back to washington uh well i i went three years ago i i was not anxious to do it but i finally did go can you just share up just a moment for me what you sure experienced when you came up and maybe saw some of the names i uh i had always i had always told myself i'm not going to the ball i'm just not going to do it to me the call the wall was a cold miserable black chunk of granite that i didn't want anything to do with and about three years ago uh you know a lot of strange things have happened in my life it's like people have been reaching out to me and i got a phone call from a uh lieutenant sweet john sweet lives up in upstate new york and he said lee there was four of us lieutenants over there that were real close kind of hung around together lieutenant sweet lieutenant sharp lieutenant uh schlie and myself and he said we've decided it's time we meet in washington dc and go to the wall and he's they we want you there and i said ah man i don't know and they said come on lee let's go so my wife and i flew to washington dc and the four of us lieutenants met at the wall that morning early we wanted to go early for there was no people around and uh not having been to the wall for sure i wasn't exactly i i i didn't really want to be there but i thought maybe it's time we do this and so if you go there you can go over to the rosters and you can start looking up the name and it tells you what panel and and where to look at so it was kind of interesting there was no talk there was no plan but it was interesting how the four lieutenants met at the wall but then we just all separated and went to the book individually looking for somebody specifically not telling i'm not telling him who i i'm looking for and then as we found the names we were looking for and found we each individually begin our walk down the ramps to the wall and it's almost as of the wall as i made that walk down that ramp that wall became alive and it and it's like the wall wanted to reach out to me because as i passed those 58 000 names i started thinking back and every one of those 58 000 names there's a story there and there's somebody on the end of that 58 000 names who have grieved terribly over the loss of those men and we went our way individually down the wall nobody talked to each other and when everybody had found what they wanted to find on the wall or come to peace or whatever however you want to say it then we met back up at the top and the four of us just stood there and wept and hugged and it was it was a great experience i'm glad i went and it took out all of the fear i've had of the wall and i would encourage other people to visit it it was it was a small part of my healing process as a lieutenant do you with the camaraderie you already told me the camaraderie between the men is is pretty good and it's nice to hear that because i get the idea sometimes it's not like that it's just like well i'm above that but you're nobody's above that you know if you think you're above that you better you're in the wrong business i have always considered myself blessed in that i don't know i've done a lot of things in my life and i don't know anything that i'm really good at that i can say boy i'm good at that but i've always had the talent to put good people around me and any successes or anything that i did in vietnam i have never felt as a consequence of what i did as i had good people around me and i give them all the credit but another side of that story when we decided to or another side of that question when we decided the association got together and i didn't know anything about the association they had a website they had everything and i didn't know anything about it because i had basically just hid for 30 years i didn't i didn't want to talk about it i didn't they're not very many vietnam veterans i've met that i like i can't stand these guys walk around in their fatigues and they're like some professional vietnam veteran for the rest of their entire life i've avoided that and when i stumbled onto that website i just simply answered one little email and i said something like this is lee alley i was lieutenant such and such there so and so years very short email the next day i had 37 responses and it basically is where in the hell have you been we've been looking for you and within four weeks of it i was president of the association and what the hat what had happened the association had found they had bylaws they had all these things but they were missing somebody to take them to the next step and the next step was getting together and going to a reunion and let's get face to face and i think they've brought me on simply because they thought that i would take him to the next step and we did that we went to our first reunion in in denver colorado but i will never forget sitting in my motel room waiting to go down to address the reunion that first morning giving them a welcome speech as an officer i don't know that you're ever sure in your mind where your men placed you i don't know if you're ever sure in your mind that you think you did the very best job or are you the son of a that they just as soon shoot in the back you know uh and facing my men after 35 years for the first time was very difficult because i had i had completely separated myself from vietnam and from vietnam and all the memories and i did not correspond and so it was a it was a interesting time because i didn't know what uh the other side of that story is uh to them still lieutenant ali i'm still their leader and that kind of surprises me after all these years they still call me sir they still call me lieutenant ali they still look to me as their leader and uh and and that's that's very heartwarming to me but you don't know oh boy lee a story you're telling me um being a vietnam veteran and an american citizen lee what does freedom mean to you well uh you know you know freedom to me is just i just love my country and i love my life and i know that when i get up in the morning i know i'm going to go to work and i know i'm going to do a b c and d but i think in the back recesses of my mind i thought it's always there that if i want to get up in the morning and say screw you i'm going to go down to the courthouse and i'm going to pick at the courthouse and i'm going to do this and i'm going to do that i have that freedom to do that i don't i exercise a very few of my freedoms as far as freedom of speech and free i mean you know i i talk all the time but i talk and i guess the freedom to me is the comfort i know i know what those freedoms are and even though i may not exercise a lot of them boy it's a comfort to know that they're there and there's it's a comfort to know that that next vehicle down the road is not going to be a vehicle full of armed people saying it's time to vote or this is the way you're going to vote or guess what your son is going to be inscripted into the military or in its comfort to when you you know that that next vehicle down the road isn't going to be the one with the guns coming in telling you what to do and and i just love those freedoms it's it's they're there just because you don't take them so what they're they're there i could if i wanted to lee tell me about the price of freedom you saw the price of freedom in vietnam and you know what would you tell a young person today about the price of freedom who knows nothing about war and was born in a free country well uh you know freedom isn't free let's you know yeah and that's a cliche you hear it all the time freedom isn't free but you know what i i'm not sure that i want these kids to worry about that you know i'm not sure that i see here here to me it's such a strange thing i think every generation does this i would go out and i would do anything that my country asked me to do i would go back to vietnam in a heartbeat i just don't want my kids to go and i think probably every generation you worry about your kids more than you do yourself and i don't know that i want our youth to become paranoid and worry i mean i don't know if i'm making any sense but i i'm willing to fight for the freedoms and i'm willing to do that so they don't have to and probably that younger generation if i were to talk to my son he would probably say i will go on a heartbeat but i wouldn't want my kid to do it and that's i think it's kind of a generational thing and i want these kids just to know that uh i i don't want those kids to go through what i went through i i don't want that if i talk to a lot of parents that say you know if i had to send my kid to this dad i i would move to canada i would do this and that i said would you ever ask your kid you know it's kind of funny because a parent would take their kid maybe and run to canada but if you ask the kid hey let's go i'll do it you know and i guess that's why they send young men to war if they send old guys like us we're going to have a committee meeting and we're going to decide and we're going to vote and we're going to say we don't want to do that today but uh freedom isn't free but uh gosh darn it i don't want i don't want these next generations to go through what we did but it seems like it's a generational thing isn't it every generation it happens what does the american flag mean and represent to you well uh the american flag to me is just a symbol of freedom uh we've got the greatest nation in the world and uh and i fi i fly a flag at my house every day of the year my wife flies a flag at her office every day of the year and i just want if nothing else i just want people to know that i'm i'm damn proud and that flag to me is just a symbol of that pride and i think everybody ought to have a flag on their house i think everybody ought to have and i'm proud of it by god i'm just i just want people to know that i'm proud to be an american and if flying that little flag is such a small thing i'll do it the rest of my life one i'm going to backtrack just for a moment because we're almost out of time but the human was used as a medevac i mean i mean there were medevac units but sometimes you know in a war zone were you ever involved with any of the medevac you need to describe the scene and what you actually witnessed during one of these attacks again i you know boy these helicopter pilots and particularly on these medevacs when you when you call for a medevac you got a guy who goes down bam and i had guys go down from booby traps whatever and instantly the first call is to a medevac well the first call is to your medic medic you know and he's there and then the next call is medevac get those medevacs in and i i maybe there's some figures i don't know what they would be but i it would be staggering how many lives i'm sure were saved by how quick those medevac guys came in and when they came in it was not always the best situation but boy your thought is get that guy out and get him out of here and get him into the reserve and get him on that operating table and your next call is for a medevac and bless those guys hearts they came now that one night we couldn't get medevacs in that night when we were overrun and i understood that because first place nobody could see anything and it was so bad they couldn't get in but the second the second medevacs get in they were there and within uh within that country within 20 to 30 minutes those guys were on an operating table somewhere and boy those medevac helicopters were just uh the uh and the helicopter and being able to get those guys out of the field that quick was uh i got a funny story about a medevac you have time for that i the medevacs were the you know these guys were so great and i loved them this true story it's in the book uh we were supposed to go in and sweep a tree line uh we we took our mechanized units up to the tree line dismount go into the woods into the tree line and i had just sent the point element in and we the rest of us were getting ready to come in and i heard an immediate heard of an explosion your ears are attuned i knew it was a hanger nade i knew as a booby trap and first words out of my mouth i said what's matter who's down they said damn it damn it it's bad and i said i know it's bad but who's down and they said damn it's down well we had a dog that was not allowed to go on he was a base camp dog that we called dammit because he wouldn't listen to you we just called him damn it well dammit had got on the tracks that day unbeknownst to me went into the woods with the point element and tripped the booby trap and damn it was hurt the next thing i knew i hear the rotor blades on this helicopter coming in and i'm thinking what's going on and i looked at my radio man and i said what's going on he said i called in a medevac and i said it's a dog and he said sir you told me to follow my instincts well the helicopter lands and here comes the point element running out of the tree and they put this dog on the helicopter and that pilot looked right at me and he said who in the hell's in charge he said you called a male back in for a dog he said you are you're going to hear about this and he took my name rank and serial number and off he went with that dog and i and i just looked at my men i said hey what in the hell is going on my career is over you guys just killed me and they're all looking at each other end of the story is about three weeks later i get a call on the radio and it was the medevac helicopter he said i'm coming into your unit i need to meet you out on the tarmac and i thought oh here's the end gate and i walked out to the tarmac and these guys brought our dog off the helicopter had two casts on both bag legs and he said you know after i flew off i got to thinking you know you guys really love this dog and he seems to be a little part of home least we could do is bring him back to you so they i met evac the dog behind that story so that's that's i'm glad you shared that with me um we are about out of time but you guys what you lost men i mean are you are you losing them to small arms fire artillery or is it is it is it a charge i mean i mean what's the tactics you're using and what are you seeing up close hand to hand what are you doing i mean at the enemy uh probably the biggest loss i mean was booby traps hand grenades punji pits any of those booby trap type things because uh uh it's so hot in human even a puncture wound from a punji pit or something like that in instant infection and a large a lot of the medevac type stuff was booby trap type stuff uh on the other thing uh because i was in two situations where we were actually overrun where they got into the perimeter i have been in situations where it is very up close and personal and those medevacs and those things were gunshot wounds up close range um so i i've seen all part of it but how about the offensive of you are you visually shooting at the enemy are you what are you shooting at can you see him up that closer uh yeah yeah you can uh and i keep going back to that one night in fact uh they were in the bunkers i mean they got that closes they were actually in the bunkers and there was a lot of hand to hand in that situation but you know there's the other side of the battle where you fight an unseen enemy i mean i mean and that's the frustrating part of the battle you know the snipers and they'll snipe at you and pick at you and they'll hit one guy and you'll have a guy go down and you'll enter the tree line and you'll never find that enemy and uh and that's a very frustrating part of that the is the unseen enemy is very difficult to fight and then of course uh the firepower from the united states you know we had airstrikes we had gunships we had artillery and one of the things about the 78-79 i mean 68-69 67-68 period it was during the peak of the war where if we asked for it it came we had all the support we wanted and unfortunately that towards 69 70 some of that they had problems in the war that we did not have real quickly what about the homecoming for the vietnam vets what did you experience i heard a lot of horror stories was there anything for you guys when you came home or well i i had heard these stories from men who had gone home before me and writing back and saying how bad it is and so i i just decided that i'm not going to place myself in a situation to face that and so when i landed in oakland california as soon as i got through clearance my uniform went away i got into civilian clothes i went from being a soldier right to being a student at the university of wyoming and there was a lot of protests and things going on at that time and uh and i basically hid because i didn't want to be a part of that because i didn't know what i would do and uh there was a long period of my time life that nobody knew i was a vietnam veteran and i did not want anybody to know because if i was confronted with some of that stuff i just wasn't sure when you're when you're in combat you find out what you can do and then you take that back to civilian life and you know in your mind what you're capable of doing i i think you have to find a way not to cross that line and the only way i could cross not cross that line was to stay hid was it hard to transition back i mean you had just been turned back and now you're back home and you're not in the jungles and no one's shooting at you and you lost all these men and how do you resume life haven't resumed life and that's one of the reasons i wrote the book and the title of my book is back from war searching for life after death because how in the world you do that how do you turn the switch off and i don't know how you turn the switch off and i've told a lot of people i was a very serious college student by day and a drunk by night i mean and i didn't go to the bar to socialize i went to the bar to get drunk because the nights are the worst you know the nights are when you have all of the big attacks and everything else is at night and you can survive in the daytime and you can go to school and you can study and util but sooner or later it's going to get dark and when it gets dark the nights come out and and when you go to bed you you can't turn that switch off and that's when the nightmares and so i've told a lot of people i was a good student by day and a drunk by night and a lot of people haven't faced that yet and that's one of the reasons that i have decided to come out and talk to somebody like yourself and i really appreciate what you're doing because this is uh when i talk to these people on a daily basis and they say i have a brother was in vietnam but he won't tell me one thing about it i'm thinking we've got to try to reach this guy because he has not dealt with it yet well maybe you and i can work together it'd be great with this documentary with your book with your what you just said i just i'm really drawn to your story lee i've heard a lot of stories and uh done over 250 interviews um but yours is right up there man i mean i'm just like i'm very i'm at all listening to you um i'm i guess i'm overwhelmed with your story well i'm almost to tears and i just and it's not me it's just it was the guys that i served with i mean that's just i i i just the country boy put in a situation where i had some good guys around me and they damn sure took care of me they're still taking care of me today but it took me 30 years to find him because you see i was afraid to look for him you know you know why i was afraid i knew where i'd find him because you see i had bought into what hollywood was telling us and i had bought into what the anti-war and i knew that if i wanted to find my men all i had to do was go down to larimer square and find the drunks and the bums because that's where i was going to find us because we were the baby killers we were the drunks we were the heroin addicts and i would not look for my men because i knew where i could find them and i didn't want to find them there and when finally it started to sink in and when i finally started looking for them you know where i found them their doctors their lawyers they're businessmen one of my very best friends in vietnam is lieutenant tommy franks he's running central command all that all commanding all the troops in afghanistan he's not in the gutter but i didn't want to look for my men because i was afraid of where i was going to find them because i bought into this crap they were telling us about us and so i had to go through the mindset that's not where they are and that's when i started looking for them and i'm finding them and they're not in the gutter they're the backbone of america let's end on that now i'm going to ask you to do one more thing if it's okay sure i've asked all my veterans i'd like to have you give me a salute into the camera when i ask you i know you're sitting down you better would you do that oh absolutely okay lee right into the camera great thank you okay i'm gonna take a picture of us [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Voices of History

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Id: jhbsDx6oVgQ

Length: 67min 8sec (4028 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 19 2021