Les Dykema, Veterans Oral History Project, Vietnam War

we're talking today with let's tie him up a Vietnam veteran the interviewer is James Miller of the Grand Valley State University veterans history project alright last can you start us off with some background on yourself we get to begin with where and when were you born it's born in Grand Rapids Michigan in 1949 July 18th and where did you grow up in Hudsonville that my life there all right and what did your family do for a living my dad was a truck driver and my my mom was a maid and did a little bit of farming when I went to through the Christian high school and then spent a year in junior college because Calvin wouldn't take me and I'm surprised JC dead after the first year I had a 1.5 mic two friends had a 1.3 and 1.2 so they weren't coming back and the Vietnam War was heating up at that time you know what year was this this is 68 ok that's that's pretty hot by then yeah it was heating up really really well and we figured we'd all go in together because they were going to get drafted anyway I didn't want to go by myself so we went into the military police court all right now when did you actually go sign up we signed up on the six-month delay program ok ok which means that we would we would after six months we could do what we wanted to and then we had a going that was November 15th of 1968 where we had to had a report had a report okay and then to Fort Knox and then on to Fort Gordon all right talk a little bit about the experience at Fort Knox first of all you had to go to for a physical at some point right yeah that's right that was in Detroit and when we got to Fort Knox right I volunteered for three years I was not drafted and I knew I had made a huge mistake I hate it I absolutely hated it and then I got called into the office probably three weeks into training my commander called me in and and said that my dad had died in a car accident and that I was going to go home and then I had to be the man of the family take care of business and come back and so I did I left and went home and got home and and I was coming into the that we grew up in an old farmhouse my dad was there and I'll crap my pants but it turns out it was my aunt Charlotte that had died in a car accident somebody got it all screwed up so I was there I was pallbearer from my aunt Charlotte and three four days went by and my dad says well don't you think you shouldn't be going back no hurry okay well a week went by I got a call from my one of my friends I enlisted with he said you better get back here talk to the commander and I let him know that it was your aunt not your dad he's very upset so my dad truck driver he loves to drive he drove me back to Fort Knox and I it wasn't good okay it wasn't good he was very very angry and so after training me and there's a few others we'd have to get our brooms and we march out to the tank training areas and we'd sweep but the sand to get the tracks you know it was harassment thing and then we come back and we did this for a while and it wasn't pleasant but I made it through and then we went to Fort Gordon yeah did you have to restart the training cycle because you missed a week adjust you just went back and went in there went right back and joined in huh we're the drill sergeants any better than the commander or was it all pretty much the sergeant's a whole different breed but I think I embarrassed my commander you know I think he looked like an idiot and that did not bode well for me at all you know and did you have any trouble sort of physically with the training or couldn't handle that no 19 years old wasn't bad but you didn't like it it's cold winter in Fort Knox just cold everything's cold and um were you still an Old World War two barracks or did you have better ones or World War two bearings same way at Fort Gordon when we got down there and they're now they're all gone yeah but they had to be at with coal well military police training they get you up very very early they don't give you a lot of sleep and you wait in line to eat and informations and it's constantly at parade rest straight two steps forward parade rest and it can take take an hour and a half before you can get in and get any child in you have minutes to eat it and you're back in formation well it's dark at 4:30 in the morning and me and a friend being that they were World War two barracks there was an opening underneath the buildings like this and then it went where the steps would come in well underneath the steps is somewhat secluded so I thought it'd be a good idea we have an alarm clock it's dark nobody notice us gone let's just go on in there set the alarm will sleep another hour hour and a half and then get back in line and have breakfast and you know this works so well so well for about two weeks crawl out nobody see us crawl down in there alarm and then one day I heard steps I could look up through the slots and they were really polished boots and just about that time the alarm went on and there was four or five drill Sarge they came right around we were busted okay what we got we got busted and my job their fort to the end was to remove coal from a big coal bin over here to run over there in a wheelbarrow and so that that type of punishment they didn't didn't care for what I did but you know I got a lot of rest and got to do it you got a couple weeks more asleep aren't you what does the MP training actually consist of a lack of sleep a lot of discipline a lot of discipline never knowing they do stuff they come in with a white glove and they looked around they found any dirt everything had to be GI they come in the middle of night wake you up with pots and pans and get up in formation they check your boots everything had to be perfect everything had to be just exactly perfect you know but were they teaching you anything that you'd use on the job mm-hmm well you go to the typical start you know you train where you're 45 okay you trained how to deal with people what's expected what not to do and yeah they it's hard to say you know a lot of it is classroom stuff I don't even remember what they talked about the military law maybe what the real are yeah yep what what what's expected and so you know it went through it's it's eight weeks and yeah I hardly have any sleep but I'll tell you at the end of at the end of that eight weeks I think any of one of us they could have put us on a roof of a building and said jump and we would have done it that simple would have done it so you know the training yet it breaks you down and then we'll jump and here's the product but I've never liked authoritative problem with authority and still do today and it has not fit me well but you managed to get through that round of training without getting yourself kicked out or so back with the infantry years I lost over there and myself kicked open that wasn't gonna happen at that time right okay and you got into the MPS in the first place because you were willing to sign up for three years was no my dad was a MP mm-hmm so father like son I didn't know what I wanted I knew I didn't want to do what Mike did I didn't want to go into the infantry that was dangerous mm-hmm you know but they were giving you the option but when you enlisted you were able to pick your MOS at that point and was that in exchange for going for three years or yeah okay so yeah you still have that because that's different people have different levels of control of what they do at different phases Vietnam so that places where you way were drafted we would have probably ended up in the infantry yep if we go to another year maybe we can pick something that you know stay out of that area mm-hmm all right so when did you finish AIT no that was November December January 15th we headed to Georgia and February March but in the March okay and what do they do with you at that point we got we got orders and I remember my friend I enlisted what came running up and said hey leader we got orders we know where we're going I said where are we going he got quiet and I said well he said well I'm going to Alaska and Jimmy D is going to Alaska I look at it you're not going here you're staying here oh okay I like Georgia but that was only temporary cuz there anybody who did stay there was set after six months I was the oldest the longest there before they sent me to which was fine with me because Jamie was going to hook me up which didn't happen now you so you basically spend six months on active duty at Fort Gordon after training what were you doing there I was fortunate enough to to be stationed at a military recreation area and I had three large connecting lakes one for officers went for sergeants and for the public in regular GIS and it was a wonderful period of duty we had patrol boats you know we lived we lived on the compound in the woods I mean it was it was a very very nice tour of duty okay now you're living in Georgia at that time did you were you aware at all of any of the kind of racial or civil rights things that were going on to that effect life in that capital way I heard about the riots in the Detroit and that that was about it that was about it there was there was one situation where we went swimming and the sergeant area lake and they had a dock and we had one black guy that lived with us okay and we swam out to the dock where he was not a good swimmer and we came in and he dove down and he like just kind of went to the bottom which was about maybe only ten feet to the bottom and I came after him and I and I went down there and here here he was doing well these numbers he was good drown and I took him by the legs and I kept pushing them up he could get air and the other guys came and brought him in now what was interesting about that was everybody in that house that we lived in there was probably about six of us who lived in there everybody had gotten something stolen everybody except me yeah I think I know who was doing the stealing and I think I know why I'm the only guy that didn't get anything stolen from okay but other than that no he you know it was I never noticed any of that now did you get to go off the base much yeah we lived off the pace you could you could do that it's like a job once you're done with training you you're done you go yeah right now while you're there then our other people getting called and set off to Vietnam or other places and new guys are always coming in and yeah and I got my orders and you have to take a bunch of shots and I went sick for about dry he's for about two days three days just terrible but then you know you're ready to go went home and then you know all right now you said well once you go home then from home do you go to the point of debarkation earning and where did you go out of where did I fly on it I think I flew out of Oakland California yeah and did you fly out of the airport or there's an Air Force Base there is Travis you know don't die I know it was Oakland we left there and stopped to refuel and I believe what was angry deep and then went across and I think we stopped at Wake Island and refuel and then went on that what I've been over twice so one time we stopped in Japan to refuel probably and the normal route would have been Anchorage and then Japan because the wake would have been kind of out of your way well if you go via Hawaii you might stop and wait maybe it was Japan there's a an island the second time there's an island there somewhere when we stopped yeah a real small of dinky plays one building on it yeah wakin Midway like that and they're both really small yeah really small and they had a thing to the Marines there mm-hmm and yeah that's probably wake it could have been was they defended awake at the beginning world war two yeah I'd go nuts if I was stationed there mm-hmm it's beautiful but we were in the middle of nowhere anyway okay so when did you actually arrive in Vietnam for the first time about three o'clock this in terms of date terms a date I got there in October October of 69 okay so three o'clock in the morning oh yeah you've seen the in Vietnam Coast didn't you know everybody everybody in the aircraft yes we're all 18 19 20 year olds we're all curious you know everybody's pure and I'll trying to see what what you know it's a it's a new gonna be a new experience some of you guys aren't coming back you know so everybody's pretty curious pretty quiet and yeah it looked like a normal Coast all lit up and stuff and then we got down three o'clock we were all assigned where did you land well landed I believe at consignee airbase so Saigon yes right now it's like that Saigon all right you land at 3 o'clock in the morning now what was suppose to happen what was your plan at that point I just mrs. your assignment I just assumed that Jaime would have my name set aside that you know I would be called and he'd be there and you know take me aside and assign me some cush job somewhere so who was Jaime janakiramaiah was a friend before I went into service we did a lot of hunting together and uh great guy but it didn't work out that way you know where he was sleeping and I I got there so what was his job there he assigned all new coming military police to their units throughout the country there I dice icon and where whoever needed what he just sang mm-hmm so he was gonna sign me next to Saigon that would have worked out well but it didn't so what happens instead but there was somebody else that worked at shift that night shift and assigned me to the first cap all right okay and that was they assigned me to a place called a food bin now did you stay at tonsil neut for a while or how did you stay around that area or did you go straight out it doesn't stay very long got you something to eat you know and then you got into different lines they put you in different lines and took you from there and a boss comes and picks you up and you know get you to your new units okay and then how did you get out to foot pin that was that on a helicopter or a truck or no it was just a bus take that bus dropped us off and then of course the new commander comes out introduces himself and your sergeant will take you and show you where here's your car here's your spot you know here's Charles you'd have to be up at this time and we'll give you your duties sometime today or tomorrow and they show you what you're gonna do now did they give you any the the combat guys coming in for infantry artillery things like that joining the first cab at this time they went through what they call the first team Academy and kind of a week-long welcome to the UNAM course did you get something like that a little bit but I think that's mainly for infantry hmm you know cuz they're the guys are gonna be humping out there yeah and they're but I don't remember much of it other than yeah you got a welcome to Vietnam and they just go over stuff that you need to know all right yeah I know what were your first duties that month were they're assigned me to a gate I had a checkoff trucks coming in and out of there out of that area and did a pretty good job but I did notice this moped would come in and this interpreter and leave and he'd go by me and he'd just wave and this went on for about four or five days and I stopped him wondered what was in the bags and it turned out to be military food pants is Bryce selling the village making money and I stopped him and he said maybe you you're you know I was taking somebody else's you you get a little bit too you know so there there was a red or a black market thing going on and I refused because I know trying to be a good soldier and I'm glad I had my 16 because he started put his hand on his 45 and I brought my 16 up Ian radioed and they brought some more MPs and you know they've confiscated and they took him away and I thought wow this is I did a good thing but then the commander brought me in and instead of saying hey you did a good thing he says I want to ask you something he said you know how hard it is to get good Vietnamese interpreters so I was taken off the gate at that point okay and that started that that downward trend and that Military Police Corps for me and uh you know it one thing led to the other and I got sick of burning [ __ ] sick of it I got sick of getting up in the morning that sick of being harassed by this sergeant Jackson and I woke up one morning and decided I've had it and I went outside the area and it was pretty early six o'clock and the infantry unit next door was in the field so they had a picnic table there and I laid down on that picnic table woman went to sleep and but it's their get gets hot and it wasn't long a couple of hours to three hours and it was pretty hot and I got up and went back into the military police compound went back to my Cod and here comes this sergeant and you know just getting angry just just irate enraged and he start yelling at me screaming at me no why was he mad at you because I need to show up for revelry okay and he had been harassing me and I'm not conforming and I just had it you know what you can do it you're not gonna shoot me so that his screaming and yelling and break and but then it's like I didn't hear him anymore it's like I could hear him but my mind just shut off and I grabbed my m16 rifle and I loaded it and as I was turning around he was already running like hell out out the building okay and I go right behind him I'm not gonna work I'm not gonna kill mm-hmm I have no intention of killing him but this man is [ __ ] with me for quite a while and now I'm gonna [ __ ] with him and I did and he'd run between these tents of these lines he tripled these lines and every time he turned around and looked at me as his eyes were about this damn big every time he did I put that rifle on him and he'd squeal like a little girl crawl and start running again and I chased him I wasn't gonna kill him I just want to really [ __ ] him over and he went into the command bunker and then I retreated into a inner perimeter bunker unloaded it you know set the rifle here any ammunition Aaron may be that much water at the bottom of this area and I'm sitting there in it it wasn't gonna be good I was going to go to LBJ long bin jail most of that is black troops I'm 19 military police kid I'm gonna stand a chance and long been jail ain't gonna stand a chance and so you try and figure out your way what you gonna do now and I stood up and I looked out the firing halls and I'm surrounded by other MPs with rifles you know god I'm not going anywhere and you can sit back said well okay obviously know where I'm at by if I come out of here with this rifle and get stupid they're gonna shoot if I don't do something soon they're gonna gas me out of here I'll just simply throw in a CS gas container and they're gonna gas my ass out of here and then this sergeant Jackson appears at the top of these steps going down because the Sun was behind him so it cast a shadow down these steps and the m16 when you take it out and you pull it back it just charges around you put this it's got a button where you can hit it and they'll chamber another round but there was no clip in it but it was ready to do that and he starts coming in and he starts saying they're coming down I take that rifle away and you're coming out of here with me which would have been perfect mm-hmm for for me just okay let him play the hero but you know I reach the I I watched the the light come up to about his middle of his back and I reached over on the m60 and hit that button and he heard it chambering but it wasn't chambering around it just he thought it was and I never seen a guy turn around fall on his knees and crawl out of there so fast in my life and I'm thinking there was your opportunity there was your opportunity and then I heard from my commander he says uh you know private died coma man may I enter was it yes sir he came on down you seen the rifle the clips and I'm sitting there he sits down next to me so what's problem my says I've had enough just harassment I don't know I'm gonna do it he said well what if sometimes when somebody like you and what am i sorry still get along well would you like to leave the unit go or further to the front I see yeah I would and what you said fine we'll make that happen and he leaves yeah I pecan there's no mozzarella by anybody and uh take my rifle on his clips and I walked out hitting it back to the head you know and I go in and sit down on my cot and um nothing like it never happened and about a week went behind I found the commander of this in a d7 Jackson I said sir you were saying that I was gonna go get out of here he said well we've talked and you're a problem and we're not gonna give another commander one of our problems you're gonna spend your year with me in seventh Jackson hearing he's gonna have a full duty for you and that's where I started to have to burn shut again then mm-hmm and then they finally kicked me out the the the commanders list for toilet paper pretty well did it can you explain that because you explained it off camera job not on basically you had a process by which you you got yourself moved out so what did you do well you know my job was as a punishment was to what they call burn shet and it was a half a barrel and you could put these big gloves on and you pull it out then you go to a VAT and you pour it in there and then you'd pour diesel fuel in there and stir it around like a witch's brew and lighter and I'm fire mm-hmm not difficult got to be careful though when you move that because it tends to okay get out of control you learned real quick and you burn it you do that twice a day okay and after I wasn't gonna be leaving I started my own little thing where I would harass them and I go in I take my glove and I pick out a turd for a better word mmm what I was and like during the day when isse Evan was there first time I put it under his pillow that it all set how he made his bed of stuff just put her in his pillow and the next morning he had found it he was irate I mean irate I was suspect but anybody could have been doing it hmm and I never told anybody I did that so even when they offered you know vacation at vung tau for three days anybody who gives us a name and even when I the commander when I three o'clock went into his command bunker and sat behind his desk and put his head on it open the drawer and found the list of problem soldiers and you know being I'm on the top three so you went into his office yeah he's sleeping he's not in that area he's sleeping and he never heard it's three o'clock in the morning it nobody's up so you read it you sat in his desk put his hat on his head on and looked around and open his dress drawers and stuff looking round yeah oh hey he didn't do to me I'm already burning [ __ ] okay lean a little bit and found this list and then I went into his private John and used it as toilet paper and left it there for undefined so this was a list of of what there were the top three all three of us ended up get being removed at the same time one gentleman was on there because he had two grenades one with a 17 a minor one with the commander's name on it they found in his footlocker so you know obviously he was going to be gone and there was one other one that just can't just start shooting up no they didn't hit anybody just start shooting up between the tents just taking it so that the three of us there were two incidents I would have been the third I think that's what saved me from going too long in jail because the unit would have been investigated at that time and yeah we came in one day and said pack your stuff up we're out of here and so I did and went to headquarters and there's the other two guys on the list with their stuff and you know you throw your stuff out and they go through your shoes looking for drugs or whatever and stepping all on your clothes the dirt and then you put it all back in and they go through the same thing with the other two and they're right on you you know they're they're intimidating mm-hmm 19 but they're they're intimidating they always are and drop me off the combat engineers unit and you know that that commander told me I was going to be a problem for him and show me my job with the generators eight generators a little milk stool and that's where you set one of them stops fill it up check the oil fill up the fuel starter you think you can do that yeah I can do that well you sit on a milk stool between eight generators all day with a tin roof over you you go nuts you know like I said was I sabotage two of them put dirt in a gas container and they died how long had you put up with it before you did that week then okay so week was enough I'm not gonna have my sanity after that I had had it it's time to time to make change the dynamics of the situation and that would have done it and it did it and a couple of sections went black and they needed those generators and obvious finally obvious suspect obviously and so boom they took man it was 12 hours on 12 hours off from 7:00 to 7:00 and when in this underground like a tube and I had a switchboard and some place to set and then I had a door and it lit lit down there but it I thought hey this is really cool and they said well we figure while we're sleeping you'll be awake and why we're awake you'll be sleeping you'll be down here from 7:00 in the evening till 7:00 in the morning okay yeah this is cool this is fine for a couple nights and saying here at 3:30 I go in there and I wake up the Kochs and at 4 o'clock I wake up the commander and then everybody had a set schedule that I had to wake up other than that you don't get a lot of calls in Vietnam hmm okay it's dead no books mm-hmm oh my god after after three days huh boring you know after a week that changed the dynamics again okay and so I figured well I'll let the cook sleep in I'll get to command her up at 3 o'clock I'll get that first sergeant up that quartered it yeah I just up their whole schedule and then waited for for the thing to change what you did and man can't pull me in his office with two other sergeants and to get your [ __ ] together you're going a song Bay as a dude to do what he said you're gonna be part of a demolition team listen or not I don't have an MMO s for that you'll learn on the job job will be here shortly and that did flew me out to song Bay and introduced me to my new unit and I should have just stayed comfortable burning shed and then that's that's what we're I started working with them all right now demolition team what kind of work were you actually doing with them we were you know I never wanted to be a part of the if we were attached to the infantry we were attached to tank units for minesweeping in front of them we did go into tunnels but we didn't find the tunnels like they found in the central highlight right you know most of tunnels we found were empty they still made you go in hmm and I never worried about you know finding anybody there I was more worried about snakes because it's down is cool down there and even to go in one you know I was 165 pounds at that time 6-2 everybody says well only the shirt guys do it but if you're part of a team they're gonna get real sick of saying I go in that tunnel yep but your shirt and I am you go every time now you draw straws trust rows and short straw goes in and then you have a dilemma if I draw right away it's one a chance tenth chance I draw the short or I can wait and there's a good chance somebody else is gonna draw it before I do but then as they draw these long straws out your odds get very grand break until there's two straws left eeny meeny miny moe and how you how we always did we took a flashlight in a 45 and it's dark and we'd hold on to each other's legs like this and I would always first take the flashlight and do this because obviously anybody who's in there knows they're not gonna get out of life it's probably quick to shoot mm-hmm okay shoot my hand I don't care and in this case I took my 45 and I slowly moved through where I was going to put my face and chest and see if anything moved on it there anyone not see moved but no shot then you slowly lower yourself in and you know you look around and ceiling talking about this high you can't stand up and then you see another dark hole from about through that wall and there's some things there you know there was bandages and different stuff but nothing of much better and then again you crawl in and you don't get in front of the hole and do this okay you get next door but put your flashlight on again and see if anybody's you know soon if not then you crawl through there yep then you can see there's an opening on the other side you crawl out there and nothing's in there and we blow it up take take me initially they blow it up we collapse it so these are not big complexes of things but just little spider holes that might have a little tunnel on a couple of exits there was there was tunnels that other soldiers found that had hospitals and all that stuff we never were we were we never found any of that stuff thank God okay okay and we do a lot of wiring we do a lot of bang at Bangalore torpedoes but we when they bring in usually what we would do is they were going to start a new LZ they and they needed an area for choppers to get in our unit would rappel down with with a c4 and we blow an area quickly why the other birds were just circling waiting to drop their troops in we did that and then once we did that we had a clear an area once we had security and then we put in the lair okay we'd set up a perimeter and we do the Bangalore torpedoes or Bangalore torpedoes probably a foot piece of pipe that fit it fits into each other and we've wired that with det cord and it blow okay and it cleans everything level give yourself a field of fire so is that so that yours are clearing out the brush or whatever's around the meals outside the perimeter yeah wherever and we hook a bunch of these in so they they'd be long lines and then two feet over again and again and again and then we've wire them up and we at that time we use electrical blasting caps and you're supposed to have a crimpers and crimpers is a little piece of equipment that you take the electrical blasting cap and you put the det cord in and you crimp it down we didn't have crimper so we used our teeth which looking back was really stupid with electrical blasting cap but nobody did nothing hat we were very very lucky and and then we had this all wired up to him I'm sitting among it with two of my friends and you know we're getting ready to blow everything set and the the infantry loved this ship because they loved to fire they'd love to see this [ __ ] and I said I'm thirsty I could go up the hill and get some water we had water up there and so I left and I probably walked about 50 yards and here right over the trees you could hear this something helicopter came in and came right over the top of us and the gunner had lashed himself and was hanging out like this given the peace signal as they came through a Mazdas and it you know I don't know if that's what how it happened but it triggered our munitions and I think it was somebody said it was a CDC battery on the aircraft I don't know if that's possible or not but the electrical yet it went and munitions goes very fast you don't really have time to you know it just you know and dust and just just and and then through the dust my two friends they come out like they're dazed and you could they look okay and then all of a sudden you look at their pants and they be starting to turn dark red or red that you could see something was bleeding and their shirt so start bleeding and their face was starting to bleed and you know it just backs and everything and they came out and collapsed and medevac game got him out I don't know if they survived or not the very fine shrapnel I have no idea what damage it caused but it wasn't was it pretty mm-hmm and I'd start thinking you know there's a lot of these types of accidents happen and I was probably a week later where chopper came in and they were looking for door Gunners volunteers for Charlie Company two to seventh Ghost Rider saw helicopter battalion and so I talked to my at that time it was another minor accident that we lost two more guys and we're down to maybe six and we've only been doing this two months mm-hmm and we got a lot of time and I'd looked at that I mean you know what I'm gonna volunteer and they all said why are you not sit are you nuts you like sleeping out here you like doing this and so I put my name in and I I didn't hear much and then we were sent out to a place called um LZ defiance and at first the tank units were there and every so many hours it was another tank it was a small small area and we were sent there to mine sweep as they patrol and yeah we find a lot of minds okay at they weren't hard to find because they buried him that night so in the daylight you could see where the ground had been disturbed you know we never missed one and they were around like so around with a big nipple on the top for Annie tanks and we dig him out and put him in an APC behind us and we always clean him out we never hit him and we sweep and I hated sweeping I wasn't too afraid of an ambush because these are tanks that goofy guy up there on top of that tank on that 50 with that big hole you know you know they were you're gonna ambush a tank column for Christ's sake I wasn't worried about it was just the heat and the sweeping and your there were three of us and every so many feet one guy one m16 and then another guy out further one m16 and the guy out further where the head said sweeping he's moving for mines and we'd rotate every 15 minutes and LZ defiance it was just that with this right on the border and a lot of b-52s had come through there it was part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail mm-hmm and a lot of their markers where they check had been blown out so you could hear activity and they started doing what we call mad minutes and during the period so I mean in the evening you'll get a call that tank commander well only 50s and they'll just for one minute fire into the dark might be m16 it might me am 79 it might be MSTAR the m60 machine gun you own something m79 grenade launchers it only be one weapon indiscriminately bad minute keep the enemy off-balance and it must have been about three o'clock in the morning and I'm awake I can't I can't sleep and I'm talking to a friend and factory ride it's quiet night it's pitch pitch pitch black there's no light and also mierda and we looked yeah alright 50 yards out they NVA soldier head hit our trip flares and it let here I know right here and it just lit him up and you know it was like slow it was so real because we all seen him and he was like stun he was realizing what had happened he had bumped into our line and he was totally lit up and it was like we are shot about the same time and it probably happened like this fast but it did seem like it and you know the man was dead before it hit the ground and then they go out and everybody gets pitch black again man there wait wait for the Sun to come up again and we'll go out there see what we got and yeah he was definitely dead didn't have anything on him we figured he must have got lost he didn't have a rifle on him he would just stumble around didn't even have a rifle just trying to probably God trying to find his unit and then a chopper came in to to pick up our our guys and take us back to song Bay I was glad to get up get out of LZ defiance just glad to get out of there during the day where the b-52 is it was still smoldering and it was hot and you could see the heat waves and a smoke and it was like the trip to hell could you could you hear or feel the blast from b-52s when they bombed an area oh yeah well if they were nuf way you could hear that boom boom boom okay beef it was pretty awesome I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end send us back to song Bay and we wondered why why we're hearing they are major said well the water truck goes down about three miles in the bend in this river and they're pumping water out sill and distilling it so we have water and somebody's taking potshots at them up in that rich and they don't want to go unless they get some protection and so they drew our guys back and said tomorrow morning going up there get up in that rich catch that guy coming in okay if you can take care of it no that was great better than LZ defiance so we ended up there and it's getting light and we cross this little river and abandon went up in the red one guy drops off and our guy drops off and there was kind of an open metal area coming up and I looked I'm a deer hunter and I could see something had come up here by an animal I wasn't sure and at Eid where this huge tree had been struck by lightning years ago and a big ol hallo Aryan side and all the big leaves had grown over it and I took my a barrel and I looked in there so I crawled in there bigger and I had the best spot I had this I was all geek man I was just really geeked I figured I had the right spot I'm gonna watch him come up you're never gonna see me I wait until he's 10 feet away I'll put two rounds in his chest and I'm claiming that rifle I was all geek this is gonna work out really well I got the best spot and then you know a nine o'clock game nothing 10 o'clock came started getting hot 11 o'clock the bugs are on me them inside this tree chicken him off me all the time I'm listening I'm birds are chirpin you know like no nobody's out there he's on to us you know he ain't coming up he's not that stupid play some doofus from that village down there and about 2 o'clock it got so miserable hot and when we first got there I noticed this old tree where the roots going into the bend in the river hung over and there was a long rope there and I figured the village kids must get up on that Ridge and swim I peek out I see nothing I step out I see nothing and I went and got the guys see if they want to go for swim they all greet so y'all went out there and went up on this Ridge got this rope and stripped buck naked I was the first one and they were big not at the end you'd sit on and I said it and bleep and it was a good ride but there's a rock that came up you had to lift your ass up he'd hit the rock and then went out to the mill or over I'd let myself go oh oh great a little muddy but felt really great and I'd swim and crawl up these big rut ruts of this tree and go up the next guy next getting next it's my turn again and just as it was too late to stop my eyes on the far bank picked up movement my brain wasn't seeing up a figure of a man but there was movement there but it wasn't picking up what it was but there were seem open but it was too late and I'm going down and I'm looking at that far bank and I lift my ass up so I didn't hit the rock and as I went out and just got ready to let go I seen it it was there like a huge body of a large anaconda and a big old black point went them into the water no pretty soon I'm like this and the water was about this far below my feet and there's they're up there they're saying what's the matter it's matter so there's a snake a big [ __ ] snake and they start laughing he said well we'll throw a concussion grenade don't worry about it you know some had three-second fuses they're supposed to have five and you know you make a quick do the math you know you're up there one two and don't don't don't no don't throw nothing and then they're laughing he said well swim for it we'll cover you and about that time I look below my feet and top of the water starts to move and I see this big head come up and it's small caught with the teeth in I looked into those eyes those yellow eyes and there's a difference between terror and fear I felt terror go out my back that snake might have a brain like that but he communicated to me very clearly what the deal was very very clearly in fact so clearly I almost lost my grip on the role and then the big head went down and everything in my being says climb and I reached as high as I couldn't I yanked myself up and this thing came out of the water with my leg would have been his mouth snapped about that fire underneath my ass he went back in I look up on the Reagan era I climbed straight up down there by time I got down there they had their boots and everything on and we went back up into that Ridge until close to darkman came back you know I guess my point that story is it doesn't take the enemy mm-hmm - oh yeah yeah you can't you can die from your own stupidity and it's an environment that you're not necessarily on the top of the food chain and this stuff you know a song BAE was our little area where we come back where we operated out of it I remember Sunday morning we were we came back and I was going to build this thing where we could shave you know it's I got some wood and stuff and I it was sunny morning about ten o'clock and I had the Stars and Stripes military magazine you know telling us how we went into war and went in the [ __ ] and there was about eight eight holes cut there okay I spray in there half an hour get a state yeah but nothing to do okay so I'm reading and reading it I got done and someone I walk down I walk out of the [ __ ] and I walk maybe two steps down and walk up here far as that wall and I look up and I see these soldiers just dropping out like they've been hit with nerve gas yeah lamb hit the floor and things seemed to slow again they slow and you realize that they're hearing something that I'm not and it you realize this was probably one of these Russian 122's they constantly harassed us rockets yeah rockets you know Cambodia was six miles away Rockets have ranges of eight miles and they tried always to hit the fuel depot right next to where we live or that little airstrip and am I you can't pick my eyes never picked but I knew it was between them and me and I wasn't hearing it and just about that time the blew up the pieces behind me and I think the concussion landed I fell flat on my ass wasn't hurt because the that I was lucky because the 122 Russian rocket when it hits it hits and blows if that had been a 120 mortar it would have been a different thing and I take it I cut slides of it yeah I turned on it I I was amazed that it was just and then they must had a fuel line that ran underneath it because that also started on fire and you know you think is it you know if you spend another freaking 10 seconds in there 15 seconds they'd be picking the [ __ ] out of your remains as at home you know and you think oh these little weird thinks didn't happen and then about that time same thing about the time about a week later fuke band was getting so there was there was a village and it was everyone Swann be popping in there and so they sent the infantry and the South Vietnamese they kind of what they held up in their area they were not interested in seeking anything out okay and first cab went in there and we got called because they start hitting booby traps it was an old French rubber plantation some old French homes and so our squad was sent in there to take care of the booby traps and when you're careful we we always carry these little half pound blocks of TNT for that and then we don't use c4 on that you just these little blocks of TNT it worked pretty pretty effectively and we spent three days there and and we hit first we brought a bulldozer in because as you got into this old French rubber plantation you know that's where the infantry start hitting stuff as they went so they brought in a bulldozer and it took its blade down and we were following that until we could get into this meadow and you and got Lakes start coming up and arms and stuff turned out to be a pauper's grave where you could buried there so bold doors are backed up cover them up and sat down and then we march we marched in ourselves and yeah you know that you had a look you got if you're not looking for it that's when you don't see it okay if you're looking for it you can see the stuff that you're doing and it must have been noon we had covered a section of this rubber plantation here and we're in the shade and we're cooking some food and stuff and we had behind us where we just come from we hear this bang was that and so we ran we had a couple of tanks that gave us support and come okay so we're not exposed and ran back during you could look at there and yeah I heard this moaning and we went in there my lieutenant me and a kick Carson Scout Kit Carson Scout is a North Vietnamese soldier of Yukon that now works for us okay they know a lot about booby traps okay it's nice to have a kick cursus go with you and we went in there and here's this old Vietnamese farmer tapping these trees that have been tapped in a while okay because of the war just trying to act out a living and he hit a any personnel mine and he was just he was moaning there he was bleeding badly and it had blown off the back of his heel and part of his foot and blown off and so a lieutenant said we got to get him out of here stamp down this stuff which stupidest thing you've ever said we're stamping down and I hear click and everybody the kick Carson's go started jabbering it and he took off lieutenant they got the guy out they took off and they said I'm what you're gonna do it I don't know first time I started to cry I started to cry couldn't believe this the scenario had happened and they called for a medevac and I was waiting for the medevac before I lifted up my leg okay I was just gonna wait till they had that meds they're right back there cuz I fully believed if I wasn't gonna lose my life certain going to lose one or two of both of my legs and I cry and then you know they were maybe 50 yards away and you know the rest of my my group you know they're just standing there staring lieutenants just standing there staring get person scout they're just staring at me wandering waiting for me to make it make a decision and when this is going to happen and you know I'm 20 this does I can't believe this is happening and then sure enough I knew it was decision time was coming closer because and I could hear this don't thumb thumb thumb thumb thumb thumb thumb thumb from helicopter coming and as it got closer I'd look up and I could see I had to medevac it's a matter of that and it came when it sat down and just kept running and they're looking at me and uh okay take a big breath count down to from ten to one okay I'm gonna do this about ten you know they're sweating yeah I've got two one and I couldn't do it no they're not hassling me at all they're just waiting training because they know strike that's right it got down to wanna do it and you know your mouth just try okay let's do it [ __ ] down from five five and I leap to one side and it didn't go on and we found it and it was that I I wouldn't blast the bad got off it was that large and uh took a little block of TNT and put it on there and we blew it and I left a hole this round bottomless beam and so even there you know you think everything's under control then it's not and then we went into Cambodia for the u.s. invaded Cambodia then unless early I think it was March 1970 yeah okay and our units we were ready ready to go in I remember that day got up early hit this big area in there was just a ton of helicopters coming just and it was like the more helicopter and they slowly started to rise with with troops and and prior to that too is a lot of new ammunition came in you know all that kind of stuff to start to get stuck Parliament then we thought we were going into Cambodia into their sanctuaries but we weren't sure but we thought so but then as we got you could look behind the aircraft and you'd see this long line like geese and they got higher and higher got about five six thousand feet in the air and started to head towards the coast mm-hmm well we're not going to Cambodia we're heading towards the coast and then they got above this cloud bank and then you could look out front we out there the lead ship started turn mm-hmm we're going to Cambodia in their sanctuaries and when we got there we were not the first flying in and when we got there a chopper took us in dropped us off on this little hill and I remember looking and there was like eight body bags USG ice that had been killed and the the bags weren't dark they were green but they were kind of see-through you could tell whether it was a black man or point man and being that on the hill of course their body fluids were moving to the end of the bag and as we got off and I noticed when we got on that there looked like there was blood and stuff on on the okay but you sit down let's go let's do this and then as we got off they're piling bodies on and they're there radio operator have been killed and I was a radio operator for a squad so the infantry grabbed me and took it and it's got this big old thing hanging above yeah it's not a good thing to have that okay antenna no antenna up there you know it just it's just Here I am okay and but you do what do what you're told and as we went into this it's Twilight under the jungle even mmm middle of day it's Twilight and I see seen this first MV a body and he was laying face down and uh I wanted his shoes his Ho Chi Minh shoes and so I went to the body and then I grabbed his foot you know I was gonna take them shoes and lieutenant came up said don't you touch that body anything on that Bunny's mind okay he went again and I came back didn't take the shoes but I flipped them over and he had been shot in the back and he had bled a perfect heart on his chest so I flipped them over and I took that ammo carrier and put it in my pack and we moved on would start getting dark and like my team we got we did stay together I don't have to go on patrol I don't have to do ambushes I'm not in the infantry okay I'll beat your radio operator but it's nighttime fell I'll do that so I got back with my squad and we found this pretty level area covered by kind of pushes us to but it was kind of a clearing and said this appeared to be a good place for a sleep tonight you know and so we went in there and there's another dead end ba laying in okay just kidding doc you know everybody gets that's bad luck that's bad luck can't sleep with a dead man come on man when we could do with him drag him out you know other GIS say what the [ __ ] you doing man so we got shovels as barium barium here so we did we not very deep we dug in covered gaya okay then everybody felt more comfortable going asleep I use the guy as a pillow I know there's a difference you give it you gotta understand that you change it's different it's you can't applied the values because you there aren't any everything you've been taught is right is wrong everything that's wrong no it's right and then it was amazing these caches their size of garages with tarps on them and you know we rip them open and we got her I got her SKS still packed in cosmoline I got a Sikh cks a Chinese samaya bolt-action um I got [ __ ] at home that I got out of this cachet and we just clean him out clean him out and then we would draw to a perimeter again and you could hear them having trucks turning on you know trying to get this stuff out and I think it was a third day we started to find these um this holsters for nine millimeters okay so we knew we were close to nine millimeters that would be a thing that I want okay and that third day we're coming back and there's that there's this opening kind of a metal and they had like it looked like six nice new Chinese green Doosan halves trunks and we went over there and we just shot the [ __ ] off just shot the [ __ ] on them in war you can actually be a top vandalism and you never have to worry about it and we just shot the [ __ ] out of man then retired and it started getting dark and like I said we didn't have to do any perimeter and then they they picked us up in before and they moved us to this these were three roads that came in and we're set going to set up a perimeter there and the Air Force had knocked the [ __ ] out of all the all the buildings in there and so we set up there and it was nice it was pleasant and they're sitting there one night yeah I never did get the pistol but we're sitting there one night and about three o'clock in the morning it's light but like God took a camera about an hour later same thing and the next day choppers came in they start kicking off sandbags and stuff the more ammunition and stuff that we needed because what that was was a picture of the land and then an hour later of the same land and they had analyzed it and they found a large North Vietnamese Army units moving towards one of the three of us it could be LZ ly LZ Betty or our LZ but because we covered each other with our Tillery okay but it they're definitely and they had they had artillery pieces with them and so they say you guys can't sleep on sleep on the floor and on the ground anymore yeah they again build yourself bunkers this is what's going on and so we did and there there was enough buildings blowing up where we took the wood and stuff and brought bunkers sandbags up to here and then put sandbags on and there was room for three of us to fit in there and we're waiting we know they were an area we'll wait and wear our unit was that part of the perimeter some valleys came in and it wasn't too far for them to go we had a lot of wire down we had food gas we had claymores all set up you know it just because I'm sitting there and I hear this whistle first round came in from our our artillery what they do is they figure if they're going to get attacked or I can get decked so they zero their guns in just over us which makes you feel terrible because why am i gotta be on this particular section mm-hmm okay it's late and then just dark they shut their guns off so that if we need him and they're coming through there all they gotta do is fire they'll be right on target so first night no I'm sorry I'm nervous I got the Starlight scope I'm young and I remember thank you know there's a stump there between that you know that's just a stone well I I had 10 to 12 and guys pretty good pretty well we're sleeping in their little areas and I keep turning that on and a starlight scope it wasn't the best technology but you could see shadows and then fog came in no fog came in fog comes in I I can't say that I can't I can't what a perfect night all right and I swear to God that stump it was getting closer it wasn't but your mind starts playing tricks on you and finally at midnight I woke up next guy he went I crawled in on an air mattress I kind of on a hill and start a rain that started a poor and pretty soon being on the hill across the back of our little bunker start filling up with water so you're from your feets doin Essen there was a Mexican further down he start cussing and next you know and I took my flashlight I looked and the water was coming through hitting them and then it hit the gun and then it hit me okay but once you're wet you're wet you go to sleep I went sound asleep and I never knew what hit me I felt like somebody came up and hit me with a ball bat across the head and kind of pushed me out of the bunker but my arms I couldn't get get off and you know I'm tasting a lot of blood and everybody's hustling to the perimeter and I'm afraid that we get go yeah if we get overrun all they're gonna do is shoot me in the head you know and I'm screaming help me help me help me and soldier can't because everybody's got to get on that perimeter he came over and flashed his lights Oh God and laughs what didn't make me feel very good I figured half my head well that wasn't the case but hid was bleed doesn't mean they're bad they bleed and I couldn't see out of my right eye and I seen sparkles everywhere and just tons of blood and it was like an ice pick in my head because it was raining and I wasn't and it was just heading and they didn't hit us they hit they what they did is hit LZ Brown was dumbest thing I ever did because LZ Brown was totally flat and they just Britain slaughtered them suckers and they got me and they medevac medevac me Oh what hit you was it a mortar I know you know I don't know if it was a round that came in all I know is that whole thing collapsed and hit me in the head don't know I was sound asleep and I don't have a good idea what that was I assumed it was but I don't know all right so I ended up being medevac dough but not right away and we had dug down underground we had a med station okay but when they took me and I wasn't the only one in there there was like two other guys as well and they had us on these cots that were about this high and the water was about this high was filling up for the rain okay and the doctor came Ron his eyes were like this big he looked like he had lost it literally I looked at him and his eyes were that big and he he put some but uh gonna be doing my arm and tapes it moves in the next guy and you know it's raining now it's light raining and it's it's middle of the night god bless these medivac plus them I hear this medevac in the mountains in the middle of the night in a rainstorm mm-hmm come down they put me in these other two guys on the floor of the chopper and then it started to rise I'm thinking go go get it you know because we're vulnerable if somebody has a p40 would blow us out here cold climb climb and climb climb pretty soon we popped out on top of the cloud bank and it's beautiful starry night and hit it towards Vietnam and the first way station was there and they brought us off there and they looked at us and of course he had missed my vein so my arm was all puffed up and they put one in here sent me to the hospital there outside of Saigon yeah I I think I might have had I don't know maybe a nervous but III don't know what it was but I was in there and I still had my boots and stuff on and I was laying in this bed and I had a knife in my boot like I looked in the nursing staff looked like Vietnamese like took my knife out and the next thing I know these four gorillas in white comes around disarmed me like I'm a [ __ ] grabs me throws me on my my uh my stomach holds me down rips my pants off and I fightin it one more time and I was sleep okay and I woke up and I was in this nut Ward mm-hmm and I'm thinking oh this is bizarre and getting ready to go be shipped to Japan to the 249th General Hospital and so went to Japan and got there and it gave me a cot and I looked around and it was different nothing was loose everything was firmly attached and I asked if I could have my my shaver and they gave it to me and I went into the bathroom and you knowing oh wow this is going easy and never cut anything they took the razor blade out okay I think I know where I'm at and came out and initially I could not speak I tried this couldn't be okay I just kept was it coming it was weird weird thing I her experience could not speak and but there was this guy from the hundred and first Airborne and he had his the jammas on it blouse combat boots and he he had this record called leap Ely little arrows and he play it any plant and he plant I think I'm gonna lose my mind I'm either gonna stuff that up your ass or that's not gonna play anymore and so I took it and I broke it and dropped up and waited see what was what he was gonna do and you know he didn't come after me he start chirping and jumping up and down on his cot jumping up and down his cot and I got up and I was I was gonna hit the [ __ ] in the face and here's these guys again you know they they grabbed me boom take me away and we talked and at that time I had got and got my voice back and I said I don't belong there well you're going back to the States okay great then the army doctors came down and it says you look like you're fit for duty well no I'm going back to states you go back to States you got 13 months left will real ever you for another year or this is what we can do let you go home for months see your family will let you out five months early you can get any unit you want okay I did that I went home for a month down love went to my doctor and Hammond tato take out my tonsils that got me another month and then I went back to him I said take out my appendix he said I'm gonna do that your tonsils need to be taken out your pendeks don't I've done everything I can for you and so I end up going back and when I got back I was arrested for being a wall because they never got to Doc's instructions that you know that extra month and then they just shipped me out to my old unit well my old unit was back in the field and me at my old commander I got back there but first I was at constant air base waiting for a helicopter ride and here's the old supply sergeant and say are you doing your to pack my [ __ ] up incentive and instead he said well we never thought you'd be back I said yeah he said look at some of this stuff and the doofus pulls out this ammo carrier that I taken off then dead and NVA were the perfect Grayson look at this [ __ ] that's my [ __ ] you [ __ ] I didn't care about that I said I wanted my rifles I said where are my rifles he says your rifles are I think the commander took those rifles and gave them to some higher ranking people in Saigon we never figured you'd be back mm-hmm boom I get up there and I says uh you know I my unit I picked was the two to seven Charlie Company that was a deal that's why I'm back here I I'm being I'm gonna be a dork and I'm not going on the ground anymore he said listen we lost some people you draw your pack you draw a rifle when you be on that freakin hillock path tomorrow morning you're going down to a place called LZ god I forget what it was and so yeah they took me in there and these guys were digging in in this side of the hill they were doing straightening below the hill and they were working with Bangalore torpedoes in the bomb they held fires had started so they're working their way up towards the torpedoes and it's just a bad situation none of those guys liked it it was it wasn't an area I want to stand this is not to deal I made and then just before dark I see this chopper coming and really fast and as he came in I dropped everything and as they were kicking mail and stuff off to one side I crawl in on the other side and that Gunners looked at me and I don't give a [ __ ] pilots didn't know about it and they went back and they had a stop in song Bay my own unit to refuel and so when they stopped I slid off and I went into a perimeter and I'll sleep on top of a bunker I took Rene's here it's kind of funny I woke up in the morning the grenades had rolled off but there was a big rat curled up sleeping up in these rats you left him alone it's almost like oh you're getting up now he got up and walked away and I waited to get the next ride I kept him where you going where you going Saigon can I get a ride get on I went to the I think he called the edge into general he represents he takes care of us I didn't go to my commander I went didn't use a chain of command went right to the edge of two general and I explained told him the whole story so you go back to your unit and I'll look into this okay right so I go back to the unit course my commander was absolutely irate that I went over his head absolutely irate he said draw a pack draw a rifle and be on the helipad and he brought me up to a mountain called Mui bara and the NVA had dressed up in south burmese there's only one way it was communication communication center I'm there one way there otherwise just sheer drop off and there was I think a couple of GIS were killed but I was there with one of their replacements and the NVA did not get up there they didn't didn't you know but there was some there were some casualties so and that was good duty I went up there we were on top of the mountain I'd see Jessica I love on clouds would drift by and there was song Bay underneath there we could see them Russian 122 Rockets coming in at night they had this little tail hitting that airstrip well we're safe up here and that was about two weeks it was nice and then boom chopper came in and asked for me and I got on the aircraft and it's just leveled on this ledge and it just tilted the helicopter I just fell and I almost crapped my pants and he's right on back there and sat down and went into my commanders unit he said apparently he says I can't go home until you're satisfied and he said what's gonna make you satisfied I said I had a Russian SKS still packed and cosmoline that you gave away sucking ass in Saigon and he tried to intimidate me he's a commander you know it just stop it just [ __ ] stop it and he said what's gonna make you happy I said that 9-millimeter you got out of Cambodia will make me happy he said I'm not gonna give you that [ __ ] revolver I'm not gonna do it so then you ain't going home Arya that's gonna make me happy is that 9-millimeter there you gave away my two rifles I want your 9-millimeter they got real quiet and real nice just listen I just want I don't want to give you the night but I'll tell you what I can do right I've got a British thrill three that was taken will you take that we stared stared at each other I said yes gave it to me he said you're also leaving here you're going to two to seven Charlotte company ghostwriters good luck and I went there and when I got there you know I've been in country a long time man and it's like it's a net good these Gunners they're like real close and when I first got there they looked at me and said would you smoke or drink what is this a trick question smoke flight one which we're all pockets light two was all drinkers and so I went in there and they said listen we can't yep you're gonna have to sleep down at the end on this 4x8 plywood lights up off the ground and we'll get you all settled tomorrow okay okay okay so I met these guys we talked and getting to know each other and about 2:00 2:30 in the morning I took my boots off I never wore socks or underwear and the boots were real soft and even in the field like use them as a pillow so I took my boots off and wrapped my one of my t-shirts around him crawl up on this four by eight piece of ply when I'm sitting there I look up and I see in the rafters I see rats yes yeah I see right yeah yeah start going sleeping I felt something on my toes and I took my flashlight here are these three rats chewing on my toenails freaked me out it just freaked me out and I hit it if they screamed and hustled away and they kept coming a whole night long I got my insect repellent and I'd wait until they got to my toes I'd spray them in the eyes and they scream and they this went on all night well it was an initiation this is where they put some marijuana and stuff to keep the rats on that side of the building the rats were simply coming to their feeding area that's all they were doing very funny guys very funny they said you're in the first room on the right okay right so I walk in here there's a bunk bed but if painted white and it's got these black this Sun like this it has some very nasty things about white people honky so who's my new roommate and then I meet him he comes in and hey big guy bigger than me he was big like that and in pain it really never said much did he hated me because I was white and now I had yet to live with me and he said listen I'm sleeping alone you're sleeping hi so I said and so went up there yeah but the problem with him is he had this 8-track Marvin Gaye I can't stand the song did I hurt her by the grapevine and with an eight-track back then you put it in it just plays and plays someplace someplace someplace just play someplace well then this thing started between us you know every time he got up before I did he put it in I get up and pull it out at night before he go to bed he put it in I climb down pull it out this went on for about a week we got to change the dynamic here I am sick of this he laughed one morning I pull it out I took my boot and I smashed it on a cement floor and left went out to my aircraft I'm sitting in the Gunners well m60 is not loaded I'm sitting in the Gunners well and I look in here comes this dude around the building he has found Marvin Gaye I am the obvious suspect and he is pissed off and he started coming towards me and as he came toward me he pulls a knife out of his boot and I'm thinking you dumb [ __ ] and I let put the round of ammunition my m60 and I loaded that sucker I brought that barrel down on his chest and at every m60 that the the pressure point the firing is different you get to know your weapon okay some fire right away some you got a pullback and then they they fire okay mine you had to kind of pull back a little bit how I liked it set and I start squeezing that trigger and he got probably from here that long way and it was right there I would kill him he would kill me I think I can't up guys too powerful you kill me and I was gonna take the chance I would have killed him and it was right there and I decided I'm gonna do this then he stops he looks at me and I he knew I would do this and he takes the knife he puts it back in his bull and he looks at and gives me a smile says you gotta sleep sometime general works where I'm thinking you know you dumb [ __ ] why don't you just leave his Marvin Gaye thing alone why don't you just leave yes freakin Marvin Gaye thing alone and for the rest of day I'm covered I am always looking behind me and stuff where is this sucker am I gonna go around the building hey pal how are you doing you know and but he's right I got sleep and yeah he'll cut my throat in the night you know we should thought of this before well now what do you good and I went I went to my commander and just told him what happened I said I'm scared for my life and what they did was that nobody wanted to live with this guy this guy intimidated the good door Gunners for crying out he intimidated them all this was one one nasty [ __ ] okay and my : what's gonna happen and and boom he went took him out got his stuff put him on an aircraft he was gone and then I got this room all to myself I was the new gunner with the room all to himself I did a little redecorating and painting okay and that that's how I started be a door gunner and as a time went by I remember one one morning it was a Sunday morning that the US Army had heard and I did I knew this after the fact that the NVA had put in at a large military unit and where would somebody hide that many meant that many many equipment the jungle okay but this rubber plantation called the chump rubber plantations of French rubber plantation it's you can't see it from the top and it's clear on the bottom perfect place to be back lots of men at high lots of it and so they figured that being that way it can't we were in a triangle we patrol the triangle and that's where the Ho Chi Minh Trail miles came in that the chap might be the spot now I get know this that the pilots didn't say hey it's a beautiful Sunday morning let's go see if we can find some trouble they just didn't tell me what we're gonna do so we lift it off sure enough we went up and headed towards the Cambodian border which wasn't unusual but then we start gaining altitude y de el titude 5,000 feet we're used to 5,000 feet 85 knots which is about 105 miles an hour cruising that's what we did you may look like that helicopter stationary but we're moving that's why most of shots go way behind our Cale 5,000 feets pretty safe small arms fire forget it anything bigger watch out but we kept going higher and it got cold I remember that it got so cold and I took I was on the right side was the right side gunner and looked out because we took our doors off and stuff I look in the distance I could see this beautiful green area like God had a yard and it was a manicure beautiful shimmering green at Sunday morning and we kept getting higher and I'm thinking you know why are we going so high we never go to sign it's cold and we kept climbing as we got towards the Chuck rubber plantation she picked climbing and I thought well everything's pretty safe so I dial into Saigon my headset there's only one radio station Saigon okay there wasn't a lot of choice but it was good rock and roll station and I dial in and it's Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven now I crank that sucker up and I leaned back in my Gunners well we're way up in here and just where that guitar pick starts I hear this beep beep well if I had known what was happening I would have seatbelt on and what it was was that we we we've been picked up we found him and it they have an anti-aircraft gun we've been locked on and by the third beep he'll blow you out of the air you got to be falling they shut the aircraft off and all of a sudden that it just there was no gravity and that bird slowly went on its side my side and I floated to the ceiling now I had a 50 caliber I could have engaged that 51 I couldn't get down that gun it was an invisible hand there was no gravity I was plastered right there just going down towards the ground oh yeah I could see where it was in those trees oh yeah because there was these clumps of green going just missing us that gun we're fall and here's that gun trying to catch us and I'm thinking y'all the grounds coming up I thought to myself get mom I'm so sorry I'm so sorry and I thought well you won't feel thing won't feel thing you won't feel thing and it's coming up they slow the aircraft with [ __ ] they don't slow the aircraft or [ __ ] we're done we're done it was okay it was okay and then a mazy thing happened as we're getting closer to the horizon the tops of those trees looked like God took a lawnmower went because they just started splitting everywhere and I'm watching this I'm thinking holy [ __ ] and then also eat it stopped because all now they were just shooting the tops of trees not at us anymore the pilots when they righted the aircraft I fell hard I mean I fell on this this piece of steel plate and I was amazed how when they went like that how hard it what it and I fell back like this and that's the that's the only time that it had to happen because well I don't know what caliber was came right through the floor right between my legs through the top and hit a blade I didn't know what tell later late the army 12 attend and the blades were going back collect I'm thinking we've got to tear the blades we're good but I could feel the aircraft starting to slow and that noise that m8y those blades were taking stress I think oh they're gonna rip they're gonna rip they're gonna rip and then hey look down I've never seen so many NBA in my life and they're all like this and I'm thinking holy [ __ ] I look at the skill plate underneath me and it's moving but I'm looking at the floor of the aircraft an amazing thing it's like holes just materializing okay yeah they were hitting us all over the place I thought well I started to scream I got on that 50 and I just started firing and I'm screaming and I'm fire and I'm screwed I'm not even aiming at anything there was it was a target-rich I figured I had hit something and I'm just screaming and I fire and I'm screaming at fire and I hear the other gunner doing the same thing fire and fire and and it would they spun our aircraft out and Wow ways away the South Vietnamese were moving up to engage at that time we set that aircraft down I got out got the pilots off because they can't get out without your help snapped his door on snapped this harness took the steel plates so he could get up and we're all sitting there and we're looking at a bird it's just shot up both pilots were fine I was flying the other gunner was flying course he should have been because he was facing god I was facing down during that time fly hang on for dear life where he'd float out of the aircraft and that was in the Stars and Stripes okay and they took bird came in pick up her aircrew another bird came into lift because they didn't dare fly it brought it back to fook ven and I went in to my place where I sleep and I'm sitting on the on my bed my hands were just just shaking just just shaken just shaken and he came in said did you see your Gunners weapon what he's come on here take a look at this and they had this lead wire that they put up where the where the bullet came and through where and it or the hole above my head and I had hit the blade and if I had been anywhere on that gun it would have killed me instantly the only time I wasn't was when they write it cuz sideways are not gonna hit the floor you had a right now I think the only time that could have happened well killing me was when we hit hard and I fell back because after that I was on the gun and I think that millisecond right good luck it's just good luck just good luck and that was in the Stars and Stripes in fact that aircraft shot four holes at a picture of it you know but we got a different aircraft you know it wasn't that long we after that was we had to bring a black lieutenant into the mountains to an infantry unit I mean to take a right here for a moment switch the mic off all right so you were talking about having to take a black and Tenant someplace yes and you know we did a lot of these type submissions but before I want to go back because we were always told as door Gunners that guys if you're taking prisoner your gunner Gunners they're gonna [ __ ] shoot your ass you know just like they would a sniper yeah you're not gonna make it only pilots are taken prisoner so I had come up with a plan B and the plan B was to put Warrant Officer pins I got from one of the pilots and put them in my pocket and the idea that if we're shot down I can take those pins on and I'm gonna snap them on my collar and I will just become an officer and maybe get get by those frontline troops that have been waiting so long to get their hands around my throat but I also thought you know typical army you know they're gonna suspend this [ __ ] so you fight to the death because you don't want to be executed okay that's a bunch of [ __ ] and then we're on patrol one time and we hear this fook fook Mayday Mayday fook that's it and the radio starts to crack on I'm listening what's going on and and they directed our ship in the where it last went down they go over there there we go you know they feel the aircraft they change direction fast with as fast as we could it still took time to get there and when we sit down we could see the aircraft had been shot down and they'd been shot up really bad I think they shot it up after it was on the ground and wiped [ __ ] all over it they're just [ __ ] it up real good and nobody was there and we're looking around and and first you go make this circle okay you want to make this circle you don't just don't want to land gonna make this circle okay and you're looking as a dork guy we're right above the trees I can see everything I can see everything that moves man anything [ __ ] moves is going to get hole in it you know and you tighten tighten until you're comfortable sitting down and pilots were gone and I looked and there were these two lumps in the field so I ran over there and sure enough there was these two cutters and they had their hands not tied but wired thank behind him and it looks like they were set on your knees shot in the back of the head both of them were face down so we we would cover those bodies okay and laughed and then after that I always kept them pins mm-hmm I do not want to go like that but didn't some nightmares started to I just have a nightmare find out there now I'm looking that can haunt the other gunner and I see footsteps and bangs then I feel those footsteps behind me every cop don't just stupid [ __ ] like it's just stupid [ __ ] like anyway we I take this black lieutenant and uh and we have to leave in the morning because the monsoon season is starting when the monsoon season start you see a cloud bank in the distance and then I'll be there it's gone it's over yeah that rings like how where we were going monsoon was started we had a lead in the morning before the cloud bank came up over the mountains us how we lose aircrews mountain not from the enemy Nessa is from gliding was shut right and sure enough [ __ ] guy gets there at like 2:00 o'clock in the afternoon you know I can already see this doesn't feel right I get this really bad feeling about this whole thing and I was getting pretty superstitious at that point I'd been there a long time I was getting superstitious in our aircraft which was a good aircraft four to eight was a strong aircraft we lift it off with this guy and we always when we went up we usually look for what we call stairway to heaven big lights coming through the clouds and a big one was like God's goal in it my pilots flew up into it and I'm looking over the edge of it I could see it everything just pull close and then felt it going as far as you could see was nothing but white cotton bat my heart say I could see we started in that direction and would probably about 20 minutes into the flight and I look in amazing there was this Alice in Wonderland mushroom cat big as buildings a bob so there was a storm below and it was huge some of these stems were size of homes and DP big caps we were like that small and I'm going through and I had my camera I never took a picture and he's maneuvering through and I'm looking at it I just felt so smart but I was amazed at the beauty of this and he'd go right through a stem you couldn't even see your hand we pop out the other side and keep going it was amazing and then that forest of mushrooms was behind us hey hey that was very cool that's that's that's why I'm here just to experience that right there and another twenty minutes or so and I'm looking over the side of the aircraft they don't look good I don't know where the mountains are I have no idea how these pilots gonna know where the mountains are okay I figure we'll turn around we'll come back with this jerk-off tomorrow okay let's not do the anything stupid and then my my headset starts to crackle I'm listening I only made contact they are down below us somewhere but where NOLA welcome back tomorrow and if kena pilots come on says hang on we're going down cool down are you gotta get [ __ ] mine are you out of your [ __ ] mind I'm along for the ride mom beam me out of here way up you can't you're long this is it man yeah totally out of control what's gonna happen and considering that you got two pilots they're probably 21 years old you know and so they started this circle and we started a circle and I'm watching this thick piece will come up I can't see my hand and we're down can't see nothing it's like you're a peaceful and and I'm getting like we're gonna [ __ ] die we're gonna [ __ ] die where are the mountains where were and we're moving down and all of a sudden what had happened as a mount was here and we were coming down and a wind shear grabbed our blades and if turned the helicopter my face down and just world us guard the ground and no gravity bang I went up to the ceiling again and all I can see is it this great us hitting me in the face and I'm thinking keep your eyes open it won't hurt they'll be quick be quick it'll be quick and I'm waiting for my death meanwhile that guy he just screaming his head off he's just screaming and screaming and I remember thinking I'll shut up die like a man just shut up you know and he screaming poor guy you know this and I'm waiting and I'm waiting and I'm waiting and the pilots got back control and we popped out of that cloud Bank but we were level and the ground was really close and boom we hit at level nose blades when I got out immediately open the door unsnapped his harness move that steel plate away so he could get out the other gunner does the same we're sitting in front of the aircraft all of us one of the pilots has his hands on the nose of the aircraft saying Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jenny just kept saying this over a Jesus Christ Jesus Christ so I knew it was it was close mm-hmm and then I looked in it I see this poor black guy he's he's full of barf barf tall though himself barked on the other gunner okay cuz if the wind blew it and he gets up he tries to walk he can't walk he's so terrorized his legs give out and he falls and and then I see movement in the trees and my heart starts to race and I reach in my pocket for those pins and I rush back to that I had a fifty I rush back to that fifty and was US troops and they just blended right out of junk they came on picked up this poor [ __ ] which it was head still having a hard time walking yeah I wish I got in his name a number I'd love to call him today I would love to call him today and say hey no Jerry this is a don't call me again I okay one of those deals and they came in and AC our aircraft commander was talking to their Lee there Lou Canada yes and they said yeah we got to move you to come with us now or leave pilots got back in the aircraft and we snapped a minute stuff and they brought the aircraft up about this high off the ground and we're just sitting outside on the on the skids and the aircraft seemed okay you know just floating floating floating set it back down and I could hear the command we're leaving hang on and they did what they call a hammerhead you can't hammerhead you're not supposed to it's very hard on the aircraft but what it is is they they get that bleh it's really really moving and then they take the collective and they pull it up which immediately grabs there and you just fly mm-hm and hang out hang on and I could see I knew that what they were going to do this is gonna be a fun ride man I like I leaned back and my Gunners want to wait for the right and sure enough we shot off that ground and we just went through this piece of I'm you know it was a great ride man it was a great ride and we boom popped out of the top and went maybe a couple thousand yards up in the air and then the aircraft started to choke and started to fall and the pilots are they got it and it got it running again and it just settled in a little bit and we went home and uh yeah I'd love to have known that wear that black guy today I like to call him and you know only other thing as I was getting close they moved our units to the coast from from the triangle and that's when us was moving out so we took over for another helicopter unit that went north to the DMZ zone we took over their area and I was getting short at that time maybe had two more months left and I was finally going home my nerves are shot and at that time we're doing a lot of heroin the Gunners were we were doing a lot of heroin and I remember coming out of this room and everybody take a pee right there a little two-foot sigh every take Peter I came out of the room and it's like I I passed out I went black face down in this stuff I don't know how long I was there couldn't been too long so Mila follow me woke up took a shower and he had these big container barrels that would heat up the Sun would heat up in the morning and during the day and I washed up at I never blacked out before okay don't worry about it too much two months to go two months to go yeah and then one day we had to go are they took our bird for to eight and so you got to go to a place called the lot go up there and I don't know why we were going to the lot pilots didn't let us know we were going to the lot it was up in the mountains and the only way to get there was through what we called the soup me pass and they said this is the only way we can get up through here so stay on your toes okay we're leaving so okay so we left and we took off we started to gain some altitude and I looked in front of the bird and sure enough it's kind of opened up then that must be the past and it was and they went and we went up and we were going in and you could look down and way down there you could see a little blue ribbon was which was a river and we can't pass this here Mountain it's like God took a saw and cut this mountain sheer it was black just beautiful black so close and course with that there's a lot of turbulence that comes up next to that and it seemed like we're from here to that wall away the blades you know work and like I could almost it was so massive and we were so high like I could almost touch it and I'm thinking to myself you know and aircraft is moving back and forth you know I'm thinking get the [ __ ] away from the side of the mountain do you know you don't have to fly this we got plenty of sky we were thinking it to myself sitting back and it's like everything went black not right away I seen this balls everything went black and I fell forward and I went outside the aircraft and I went into the gun when the triggers caught me underneath my chin as soon as I broke that barrier that high it was cold and the wind was great and it's like when I hit bang my arms went around but I was awake and I hung on or I that would have been a long time long way down playing time think about it I'm hanging on for dear life my communications snapped and I'm screaming pilots can't hear me they're just you know back of their heads that's okay do the back of their heads are just they don't hear me the other Gunners on the other side of that turbine he don't hear me I'm screaming and screaming I'm looking down my legs are flying in the air at 105 miles an hour and I'm hanging on for dear life and I'm looking at so far down it about that time I see the the cotter pin that holds a gun in its mount doing this and all I can think is that it goes and me and the gun are gonna watch the bottom of that aircraft get smaller and smaller and smaller and what will they think happen he went nuts he took his gun to jump but that wasn't the truth you know they'd never really know the truth and I'm hanging on but at the tip of a barrel there's a piece of steel for a firing pin okay and my boot was able to get on that and I grabbed I was able to swing back and I put the seat belt on right away and it's cold up there I'm sweating I'm just shaking just just shaking and then we finally got to the lot it was a beautiful it's like a university town couldnt believe but we came up over the trees and i'm looking at all these red brick buildings and these ponds and green and sidewalks it's like we were is this a Twilight Zone is totally unscratched by the war it's a beautiful University time the lot it was gorgeous and they sat down and they said we're gonna goodtime night boys rated by I'm not interested them what happened they laughed about okay to do what you want to do I'm staying here at the birth okay you stay here word I slept on the floor of the bird it's not a comfortable sleep because the bird the floor of a bird heads all these little steel nipples okay just they're not comfortable asleep and neither is that chair for that and I slept there that night and then they came back yeah they were treated very very well and we lifted off and we went back through the suit and he passed but this time I kept the seatbelt down I was very scared this gonna happen again if it does I'm not gonna be so lucky I will not be so lucky next time and as soon as I got back to the unit we set the bird down my job as the right side gunner was it take the two m60 machine guns break him down clean him up and get him ready for them for the next day you know the crew chief and I had to keep the glass underneath the pilots feet clean too so they could see how close the ground was when we were landing that's really all I had the Charlie pop are the crew chief ETF to take oil samples from underneath to see if there's fine metal shavings didn't want to transmissions seized up and and go over certain safety things on the aircraft every time so my job pretty easy to take the m60 break them down cleaning them up put him back together get ready for the next day and I went to the doctor Cooper well Cooper and me were good friends and we smoked a lot of pot together he made a bowl surgical equipment okay and when they moved us to the coast we were part of the Korean white horse division at that under the 150 of us okay and they treated us like we're special for first time the Koreans had helicopter to get their wounded out helicopters bring him in okay they were good truth and and I went to coop and I said this is what's happened I said two months I'm out of here this happens again and could be so lucky my nerves are shot I've done my part and you said you know what he said I'm going to take it off flight status and we all contributed a couple bucks each 300 bucks total and we rented on our own little whorehouse in a town called Ninh wah okay well doc had to go there almost every day to check the girls mmm okay and he put me in the back of his the same car that you see on mash the ambulance the same tightening turn he put me beat in the back and then we go through these Korean checkpoints and then I come up in the front and we'd be smoking marijuana all the way down to the nan waffle house okay they let us in close the gate and ahead tall walls and barbed wire all the way around compound a house in there and we go in there and I always enjoyed being with this French Vietnamese very pretty and I always just took her there six or seven can choose from five bucks I thought the price is pretty reasonable you know so we go there together and that's basically what I did but even as a door gunner those that year I was ten months I was a door gunner I think we were unique in the respect that our commander allowed women into us the cooks didn't get these privileges okay no mechanics didn't get these privileges nobody did but Gunners and pilots and that was five bucks but there was never more than four Gunners and four pilots at any point not flying one was on standby case we needed him the other one was down mm-hmm they didn't have to fly so he always had those two birds down so you know had four Gunners we played cards we had the girl down it was okay but there was a lot of pilots they were married they had one nothing doing it there was no other soldier I know they do that and you know I'm bearing it I wouldn't do that I was one that said I'm good with this you know so that was kind of a special thing so anyway um I start going there with him all the time and things started to disappear I had some stuff stolen you don't want to do that with Gunnar do you just don't want to do that and I remember and what's a black guy and we would smoke it or weed snorted but we never used needles mm-hmm he was using needles and I remember we'd be sitting in the group what was his name I don't remember but he would literally be sitting there he'd be drooling on himself a piss his pants we say Jesus come on come on like we're better than that yeah I'm right okay yeah they're no better than that he's just hardcore and what he was doing was he was stealing from different Gunners to get to have it it wasn't hard to find this stuff okay and uh guys Newt got found out about it and he barricaded himself into his little room and wouldn't come on in and there was Gunners I would certainly have killed him and they would go up to the door all the time and hey Jerry Jerry come on oh no we went talk to you come on man you know and harass this man three days he didn't come up for days he didn't come out and I passed his door one time and I could hear inside him moaning like he's in a lot of pain and you know something had that the day that the dynamic had a change here okay and so unbeknown to any other guys I live with that I went up on Hill there and I talked to the doctor I says hey cool here's what's going on I don't like going on but he's moaning if something's going on and if he goes out especially these guys a good killer or they're gonna hurt him so bad you know they're pissed and do something and so he came down with a couple of officers and pilots and knocked on the door guy let him in and they took him took him up to the Med station aboard his little area there I know because I was watching some of them Gunners and they were just staring at him as he walked by see a little later you know type of stuff you know and later day he never they wouldn't let him come back down they took it they had these houses on the coast for drug and it took him down there i sooo get him cleaned up before it goes home and coop socked me later he said yeah thanks a lot for that loss he said you know what I had her doing no well the man was impacted he hadn't taken a crap in so long he became impacted no he couldn't and he is he could have died he said you know how I said which two weeks I had to take a club and I had dig it out that's are cool now were the men of the unit hostile to him because he sort of crossed a line across he cross a line and me it wasn't used to be that way but once you find a thief among you especially these guys I mean it they're a different breed of cat but these Gunners are a different breed of cat my Ken ha was my where's my crew chief the other gunner on the left side and consummate warrior every mission before we would leave he throw a duffel bag on the floor of that aircraft they had a couple revolvers in it had some pin flares and I had a radio at food and ammunition it had bandages okay he's a consummate warrior but he also loved killing and he Lee he was the best there was and he had balls so big you know give me the stuff that I would just not do we had a new what we call Charlie pop knew not the aircraft commander but they break these new guys coming in and that was the right seat and you know he can comes around and he crawls on the outside of the aircraft where 5,000 feet in air and there's these things to get up on him and he crawls up he's underneath the blade and he crawls and he looks down it's a Charlie pop and smiles huh then crawls back I wouldn't dare do that I wouldn't dare do that but can even when we did I'll give you an example there was a French rubber plantation this is before we went to the coast and after Cambodia we do what they call purple team and that was a Cobra and then us if we had to pick up any survivor and then the Loberg okay low bird was a little too man aircraft gunner and they and our job was make sure you recover them or engage if the situation is right but that guy up there is going to cover you and we're on a typical patron we go in as inside Cambodia and here's this French compound okay and as we come over I'm looking and I don't see anything different and I look up and then I see it and it's the second level and it had the old French fur on it and then if there was machine-gun there and we're hitting right towards it well the the I love these guys this this Cobra pilot seen it and was just like out of Hollywood two missiles and it's like it just exploded and blew those guys through those big doors just blew him through and and then all [ __ ] started to go there there were generally green troops and I it was chaos it was that's where I got my first error metal actually we're shooting it was pretty target-rich these there was this one NVA soldier in his pack and his rifle and we came around and I seen him and I took I was going to come into the low burden got in front of me so I I didn't fire and I'm watching this and we're kind of low burns here and we're just kind of doing this Cobra is doing his thing and must have been a kid he throws his rifle down and runs he throws his path down and his run he keeps looking at the low bird course the gunner is doing it behind him and just terrorizing and he's just running his eyes are about this big and he runs to this big tree and he does the old squirrel thing he gets trying to keep the tree between him and that gunner okay and we're watching this and I'm thinking myself you know just in this you don't need to do this you know they're [ __ ] with them they're going around you know they're just laugh and have a good time just just stop this stuff and then they finally got to the top of the tree like that and no sooner did he do that and here comes this notepad yeah with another one on taking off Arthur Lal bird gets behind him and there's a right degree turn in the road he doesn't want slow up you can't slow up he's not gonna make that turn and just before the turn just brought that machine gun up and hit him and it again it's just like on Hollywood yeah and that bring that moped went they went into a field then we go back and we're we're going around the low bird is going around this section of woods and there was this this grass hot I get no what was there yet because I did it in a few minutes but we're following the Lowell bird too long ok but we're following him and the low bird and also looper blows up yeah and fire into food he got hit by something and and we're coming around and I didn't know what he got hit but what he got hit by inside this little grass pot thing they have machine guns set up so when the Lord low bird came around they just blasted him and now we're coming behind that same way on my side I wouldn't have noticed that we would have went there we would have got blasted ok and just yeah I still didn't mind but still didn't know what was happening and also in this grass hot just blows to pieces and we fly through this mud and straw and that boy up there seen him he's seen everything and he also seen us come around nobody ended my life there you know he would have caught me with my pants now and I would never have known to tell this too late and but that boy up there saved my life and saved our lives the low craft hit went up and landed in a field and we flew right behind what set down and we ran and I grabbed this guy and he screams and the other gonna grab we can't get out of here man we got get out of here we can't be on the ground like this you know and so we just grabbed him he screaming everybody put him on the floor of the aircraft and the other guy instead of coming with us he crawls on this this missile pod on the Cobra hangs on let's go and so we're lifting off and here's this guy hanging on for dear life on this missile pod this guy what happened was soon as we kind of back you know we we helped him and we cut cut his no mask because you had to wear no max and I noticed on their sleeves on it was like somebody taking a white cloth on both hands and what it was was inside the Nomad the skin that cooked and that was all skin that just peeled down and it looked like that and I assumed that when we grabbed him by the legs probably the same thing that happened I don't know what his back and stuff looked like I don't I doubt whether he survived those kinds of burns okay the other guy wasn't hurt nearly as badly as he's hanging on to this octopod and we went back with him that was it bird was down crash that's it we're out of here you know yeah just like just like I died just like out of Hollywood but it's a real thing is it just heard of a very strange experience to go from being sort of at the relative comforts of home you get up in the morning you're on a base maybe a regular schedule and then you can be suddenly in the situation where all of the stuff is blowing up around you you know what UK war is something you love worse something you hate or something that scares the living [ __ ] out of you but at the same time it gives you an adrenaline okay it's a hard thing to say it's a love-hate relationship because you're playing the ultimate game man hunting another man okay it's the ultimate game because if you lose you lose your life and all the emotions that pair with that are involved okay when I first came home it was weird you know I I come home my folks picked me up at at the airport and can't go I've been gone a long time and my family come on pick me up took me home me remember sitting in the car looking out the window and seeing the buildings go by and but you're not here you're there that makes any sense so I moved in with my parents temporarily and Linda I had some of the dreams hey you know your hands wired behind you and Ken Hoff he'd be on his knees over there and I'd be on my knees over here and we'd be waiting and you could see somebody behind them all Sun in front of his forehead and he'd go down and then I feel that same guy behind me and I wake up and my dad would wake me up he'd come in and say yes let's wake up wake up and and the only other really you have dreams the other dream is here I'm in my underwear in my bed upstairs this old farm wells and I know it's hallucination but I look I looked towards the floor and I see the tops of trees flying by and I'm thinking there's a machine gun m60 on my mattress I don't think to myself this is hallucinating there is no m16 on your freakin mattress and those are not trees that's real and I get up on the gun I just start shooting the next thing I know my dad's grabbed me last class wake up wake up so I had to get out of there so I went got myself a place I haven't been home since your parents know yeah that's my story I'd like to if I can't go back and kind of follow up and on a few other dimensions of this when you were serving as a ador gunner the what we're sort of what kind of physical facilities that you have I mean you had that there was a door Gunners slept together and you divided it into sort of the two groups and so forth what else was on the base what you know you had your child area for instance my job as a door gunner I was up at probably five o'clock and I would I go out bring the bring the guns okay go onto the aircraft snap them on and wait there for what we call the the the animal deep would come along stop what do you need well I need so many rounds of this I want some smokes on this you know you tell them what you need they ain't you got it mmm with we need smokes I get everything set and ready to go and then I wait and it gets start getting light and the pilots come and they get in the aircraft you untie the blade because you got tie the blades down and where you park these aircraft it's like two walls maybe eight feet high just straight open on both ends and you put the aircraft in there that way you bet it down there and then tie down with a snap on the blades so the wind can't damage okay you wait for the pilots they come on out and they get in and we just stand on on the skid outside and they bring it up check the dial maybe bring it up hover about like so just hover back and forth inside there and then they set it down and we go get breakfast we'll go down to child house you know they'll eggs always never you know it's always dehydrated eggs cold toes greasy bacon it tasted wonderful coffee today good good deal and then we go back and start up and whatever mission we run he back that aircraft up just like a car and then you go through what you call transition and that says it cuts through the wind there's a shaking as it goes where it has to go and it call it transition and I remember I had a little bag of marijuana it's really light and it was because I'd smoke a lot in the area of smokes gone you know who cares it relaxed me they never interfered it just relaxed me you know I wanted to get so hyper and we went through transition next thing I know that little bag of marijuana floats up like this and then as we went through and dropped between the two pots and take that this yours thanks sir you know a lot of the pilots smoke they did things but there were kids you know we looked up to these guys because they our lives were in their hands and they would say their lives were in our hands and so you did you became very close you know you'd be because you're gonna live or die together period they're all in this thing together we're not going anywhere and then prior to that also a new development a new dynamic started to change the situation in Vietnam and that was probably four months before I was going to go and they introduced H I think it was a Chinese shoulder-fired rocket that would be a little bit heat-seeking and they'd fire it after the chopper went by on your big turbines okay and the the unit that we took their place here was moved up there and they were just getting slaughtered they were losing aircraft and so they were starting to strip our units to take their places you know every day you know you wonder where you're gonna go you if you talk to each other and says you know for 2/8 going north that was our bird okay you're going north don't want to go north you know yeah a sticker you know you see which birds have to go there and take their place and do the job get troops in get ammo in whatever it was and that was started to really wear wear on me because you know everything was seen to come that I wasn't ever gonna get home mm-hmm I was lucky falling out of you're very lucky okay I was lucky in these other things too very lucky and now this field but I could just taste hey and so you know Cooper he did me a real favor and finally went on an R&R when I came back this time to go home where'd you go on the R&R Bangkok Thailand wonderful place me and Jimmy Parker youngest youngest door gunner in the first cab he was like 17 lied mm-hmm and you never had any luck his dad was killed early his mother was murdered by a stepfather his stepfather almost beat him to death so he his granny raised him mm-hmm and Jimmy and I were real good friends but Jimmy my heroin addict mm-hmm and I had tickets to Australia that was really one and all that was left was Bangkok and so I gave up my ticket to Australian I went to Bangkok with Jimmy and we get into our hotels just like a nice hotel here and we check into our rooms and I wasn't in my room three minutes and there was a knock on the door and that's what the hotel manager comes in with six girls so you pet they take good care of you pick and I said now we're going down to the happy happy because other troops a good unhappy at the girl down there and uh then they went out and knock knock knock same thing Jimmy so we rented a taxi for the week and he was always on call he took us down the happy-happy and we go in there and at behind us there's a couple of GIS who met their wives there that's very cool you know and we're sitting at this big bar and I'm looking through a mirror I can see into this next room and I are some of the most beautiful women I've ever seen there's little numbers here and oh yeah 25 beautiful and uh so I called the taxi crab driver over I said I want one that likes a smoked pot number 50 waiting for a bartender so instead of being discreet they get on this loud microphone and I look turn around I look in it these women are just staring at me you know I feel like say what your husband's in the motor pool a Sai guy give me a break leave me alone you know and so she comes out she speaks fairly good English and we got talking and she shows me a medical card okay she says it's $25 first day $15 every day after that I take good care you know show you a good time so we agree and then we get back to the hotel later and you know she's about this high on mutton Jeff and I'm checking in and I kind of like these daggers are pointing at my back and turning around here's the same two couples be staring at me as a cook come on give me a break you know come on you know what do you think I'm gonna do go meet my mother in Hawaii come on come on leave me alone leave me alone don't try to guilt me on this okay and she did she is she did her job yeah it was wonderful the best five days ever she actually had me thinking she cared which of course they don't but that's not what a professional she was it was a wonderful wonderful wonderful reprieve fact I ran out of money after three days I'd gotten into a poker game before I went saikhan it got skinned about 300 bucks and so I was low on cash when I got there and she picked up the tab and then I thought had this woman I I'm in love and I'm sitting in the aircraft and wait to go back to Vietnam I met the window and I'm waving to her okay yeah we're waiting everyone and I look again he's hustling a couple other guys just got to boy you know is it good job you gave me the best time in my life you actually made me feel like I was special they're just what you should have done you'll love me to pieces you took care of me god bless you time to go home and then when I got back it was time to within two days I refused to fly I was gonna fly anymore no no go home I'm not flying and then it came time to say goodbye and it was one of the hardest things I ever did say goodbye to those guys it was it was a low bird came and picked me up and I didn't want to leave I think at that moment if somebody said you want to extend your tour another year I probably done it because that was my life that was my home mm-hmm homeless it was a long time ago this is my family I'm gonna miss this you don't think so good attitude I'm gonna miss this think you could also die okay but these are my family man and you could see that leaving and I seen it with other guys that left that it was a hard choice and even in the low bird picked me up and to goodbye and then they flew around again and buddies saying goodbye good luck okay and and laughs before we left all there was another group that came in and wanted to know since I was going home Jimmy Park was going home Louis P dudas from Detroit was going home to all three of us yes if we were interested in being door Gunners out of Bangkok into Laos for 100 bucks a day what sounded pretty good for 100 bucks a day I've been doing this on the inner triangle mm-hmm for 365 bucks a month okay hunter bucks a day that's three grand a month you know if I could last a year and what's what's Louis compared to freaking Ho Chi Minh NBA Army if I could do a year $36,000 and go home and so we talked about it and so when we got back yeah I went and got my um my passport Louis P dude is dead he went and got his and Jimmy Parker got his we got all set to go back and Jimmy Parker was killed and only Illinois's you know where a bus has to stop at a railroad tracks he wasn't even driving he pulled in his pickup truck and it couldn't see and he came went across and got hit by a freight train both were killed instantly and me I bought a motorcycle and trying to eluded the police hit a pole then ended up going out into a field they did they didn't know where I went they went they were in low part they came out I was gone and I thought I was going to die out there grass weak that stuff was this iron I could taste a lot of blood in my mouth lots of blood lots of blood I'm thinking I just [ __ ] you cracked your ribs or they hit your puncture of your lungs you're gonna drown in your own blood this is real good laughs this is real good come home and this is what what happens real good real good and so I laid back I laid down I mean there's nothing you could do it's 2:30 in the morning I could see through the grass this barn and house over there with a merc relight that was lit but lots of blood I was coughing up a lot of blood and my arm hurt every time I move it and that leg was really hurting every time I movement movement so I lay back and waited I waited waited five minutes goes by said I should've been dead by now maybe I'm not and so I had one good arm one good leg I kicked my way to this farmhouse the only firewalls who didn't have a phone and banging my helmet on the door thank God he came and he takes off almost rode me over in the driveway and to get an ambulance constantly the ambulance came to pick me up bike was gone you know my helmet had a gouge on it you don't think got a had a helmet on it would kill me instantly and I ended up in the hospital for for a while cracked my spine almost lost a kidney some cracked ribs no broken ribs just [ __ ] screwed up and that's where I met my first wife she was a nurse but kind of put paid to finished off the plan to go off the louse hey Dan because I didn't have medical insurance and what I did have left I end up paying my medical bills I was broke and Jimmy Parker was dead and Louis P dudas ended up going to you P and to this day doesn't talk to anybody I tried to reach him he just married and my second wife contact finally found him you know talk to his wife and she says you know just he won't talk about it he doesn't want to talk to anybody he doesn't want to see anybody he just wants to be left alone okay yeah so be it you know no big deal you know I don't think you did enough to go be a hermit somewhere mm-hmm it's not like you survive the from a death camp you know you can't deal with thanks though yeah well it's a pretty intense experience doing what you guys did and it's got a play out in different ways just in their heads or how they do it does you know I can't seem to attach to anybody first get normal feelings I just don't know I didn't married twice divorced twice I tend to self-medicate I used to have a quick temper I don't anymore not much anyway yeah but sometimes I talk to my brother and thinking jeez what would I be like if I never gone in a thermos I grew up in Hudsonville and went to church everyday or Sundays twice graduated from a good high school had a job was supposed to pool company I probably would have married somebody from my high school I probably worked for John Spoelstra I probably would never thought I'd ever drank I never was affiliated with any kind of drugs or anything all through high school I probably would have been a totally different person probably would have bought my little house in Wyoming you know it's supposed to pool companies Network it doesn't good pay I don't know who my wife would have been probably work to raise our kids whoever they might be and yeah they've been different now I don't go to church I don't like being at church gives me creeps I don't know why I don't know why what no it does make for a remarkable story okay you know my good friend Mike says it's unique I don't know if it's so unique is we putting myself in situations that should never have happened you know but then surviving it - mm-hmm but a day doesn't go by I don't think about it now I am truly sick of that Giuliana I'm sick uh you know listening to music now if it's sick of listening music but then these memory flashes come back you know I'm sick of it I'm sick of thinking about it before I go to bed when I get up during the day for no reason and this been going on but it's like my uncle Chet said he's passed away he lost his home he was in the army in second world war fighting the Germans hmm and his whole unit was wiped out by 88 he he had dysentery so he wasn't there at the time but I talked to him and he said you know what listen he says uh to this day I can hear what they tank with that 88 sounds like when they put it into gear you know when writing long whirly instictively thinking it's a mushroom he said I remember that like yesterday today he said and I always will the fear that the sound of it and you know anything with high impact like I told my brother Lee I said if you're in an accident in five bad automobile crashes guess what the time you get a car you're gonna think about stuff every time you hear a horn or a screeching of a tire you don't think about stuff this is really no different my brother Lee had a freak accident Wayne was 41 at the Gus Macker tree branch storm came and crushed his back they say you don't think about that every day yeah because it's high impact mm-hmm and when it's high impact it seats itself and your subconscious and just going doesn't move me and that's fine I'm proud of my duty at do it again I met some really great guys I had some very interesting experiences that I survived stuff that I would never have had if I had grown up and lived in Hudsonville and just worked for John Spoelstra all right well listen thank you very much for coming in telling story thanks for taking your time

Channel: Veterans Oral History Project

Views: 25,046

Rating: 4.7204299 out of 5

Keywords: Veterans History Project, Veterans Oral History Project, Conflict, War, Veterans, Army, Vietnam Conflict, Veterans Oral History, Vietnam War, Door Gunner, War History, Oral History, US Army, Oral Histories

Id: rN_dS7LuOVc

Length: 145min 27sec (8727 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 25 2020