Medal of Honor Pilot Bruce Crandall, 1st Cavalry Veteran of Ia Drang (Full Interview)

we didn't keep count we didn't really give her ancestor one thing we knew is that our little mind clearing wasn't going to have a hell of a lot of impact and pretty quick they'd figure out maybe we had to clear more and maybe mind clearing would become more important than mapping where were you born and raised let's start there born and raised in olympia washington uh it was a great place to be raised when i was in my pre-teens the second world war was on and everybody was uh doing their part for the war effort and so a very patriotic community did that give you some indication that when you became old enough you wanted to serve in the military well my dad served my uncles all served i had one great uncle who lost both his sons at the beginning of the war and he lived with us for the last part of the war but i don't know if that did it or i joined a guard when i was 15 uh because they had a basketball court and uh and they were they were shooting artillery at uh at the targets in the air and this was all interesting to me but guard was a social organization as well as as a military but uh i was a an all-american baseball player and i graduated from high school at five six and 145 pounds i was the smallest guy on the all-american team and i was the cleanup hitter and so i in the army i thought i could play ball because there's a lot of great ball players in the army in those days ted williams was an aviator so i i thought i'd get to play ball in the military and of course i got stupid trying to throw a hand grenade far enough away so the noise didn't bother me uh i thought the rotator cuff of my shoulder and that oh no they didn't did any baseball thoughts wow so how old were you when you joined i i i didn't join i accepted a draft because i don't i only served two years for the draft and so i was 19 when when i came in obviously something changed and we'll get to that in a minute uh it lasted a lot longer than two years so where did you go for for basic training and how did it progress from there i went they sent me 12 miles from home for basic that's pretty stupid if you draft somebody if i was a reluctant draftee that was not the distance to do that and i told everybody i was going in the army and going to korea because that's what everybody did i went to fort lewis and then they sent me to fort ward in washington which was 47 miles from home and i was running boats uh m boats and i was learning how to do assaults with a from from from like the inchon invasion i think that's what we were training for right but uh i had a first sergeant that called my buddy and i and he said we're too screwed up to to be in the army and we might make corporal someday and he didn't want that on his conscience but we'd make good second lieutenants and he had us sign the paperwork get the hell out of his unit to go to ocs and we went to leadership school and then ocs and then both of us got through good i figured that given the rest of the story but where did you go from there well i went to engineer ocs at belfort here and as soon as i got through that they wanted all of us that graduated and were healthy to go to flight school because the corps of engineers had the two largest aviation outfits in the world they had over 100 aviators stationed in out of san francisco and then well over 100 out of panama and they were in mapping and toppo all over the world i flew in the arctic floats skis the wheels on the airplanes i flew in the desert in libya all sam we had the same aircraft the same equipment and arctic sleeping bags arctic tents float skis and wheels for the aircraft and the army was really showing how smart it was sending us over there to clear minds at the same time we're trying to map there's three million live mines in the ground in libya in 1956. we got 7 000 of them my first year and then the army decided we should have a mine report we should fill out a form and tell them how many mines we cleared we suddenly couldn't find the forum anymore we didn't keep count we didn't really give a rat's ass one thing we knew is that our little mind clearing wasn't going to have a hell of a lot of impact and pretty quick they'd figure out maybe we ought to clear more and maybe mind clearing had become more important than mapping and mapping was the key and if you didn't map that desert they wouldn't have the oil getting out right now and that's what we were doing oil companies followed us across the damn desert so it uh they also had air-conditioned trailers they were sleeping they had uh freezers they had frozen steaks they had all the good stuff and we eaten 5-1 rations and living in arctic tents those guys didn't clear the minefields we did they followed us at what point did you realize that this wasn't going to be a short term part of your life that it was going to it was in 19 50 9. i got married in 56 and 59 i was in fort lewis and i was getting ready to be assigned to south america and you had to make a choice then and that's basically when guys do that they have a certain rank in a certain time frame in the family and my wife was very supportive and she knew i loved to fly and if i got out i would have gone with an airline but i've been a student pilot more or less for the airline then you go as a co-pilot and then you finally work your way up the captain but uh but we made the decision the two of us we accepted the assignment to south america and then i flew all over central and south america for two years then i went to costa rica and i was in costa rica for two and a half years our youngest son was born there the only place outside the united states that that would let that happen it's a great country great place to live yeah very very much a democracy at what point did you this is obviously a few years later but at what point did you get an inkling that you would probably end up going to vietnam uh that was in 65 i was down there dom rep people forget we went down there we'd already trained as the air assault division at 11th airsoft and uh while i was in a dom rep uh one of the wifes indicated to her as a sergeant as she called him an sob over the radio that we were going to vietnam and we didn't get the word from the pentagon until somewhat later and uh you know we had to bring our aircraft home and bring our people home i had 12 days to get my family to seattle for me to get back get my unit on a carrier going to vietnam excuse me they sent they sent us commanders over by air so that we'd get the experience before truce got to flying in country and working with the assaults the way they they were doing them what was your bird of choice what was my what what was your plane what did you fly huey's we were flying d models when we went to vietnam then we got h's and the gun companies were seized and somebody who was not obviously an aviator decided that the c-model gunship should be replaced by the cobra and that was a dumbest move as far as an aviation unit could go the cobra has two people once it's right behind the other it's enclosed so it's air conditioned that's very nice for the body you can't hear people shooting at you you the the healing the pilots are alongside each other one's got the left front one's got the right front there's a door gunner and a kerchief back there then they got m-60s and they pick up most of the ground fire because people don't shoot at the front of a gunship not smart people don't living people don't either because if you shoot at the front of me i got many guns and rockets and we can raise all sorts of i got a cannon and a and a c model huey but uh the cobra has all those but they've only got the two pilots like this so they could fly over the same point of ground three or four times and be being fired on every time and not knowing until they're hit i prefer to know it and having those two guys in the back and the pilots up front to look this made really good sense that somebody sold us on the cobra that was a bad buy bad boy of course we've got now the marines have something that tilts and they're supposed to be a great aircraft it's over in afghanistan if you ever heard of them doing anything at all in afghanistan the bird that was the most effective in vietnam besides the huey on assault was the next bigger bird that could carry in the cargo and stuff and and that is the bird that's doing all the work in afghanistan it's uh the chinook and it it can work high levels and it can do the things that need to be done uh it's a bird in at fort lewis for example that can go up on mount rainier to do rescue award okay no comment about that damn we're just setting the stage for your deployment to vietnam we talked a little bit about that already uh what were you told would be your essential function your essential mission during your deployment well we we knew the air mobilities by then we had a couple years of training in the carolinas and at fort benning so we knew the concept and uh and of course you have to develop it further once you start getting shot at it becomes a different ball game not that different but enough so that you you better learn as you go along when we first arrived in country we spent a lot of time doing building a base camp that was wasted effort my crew cheese and and my clerks and my cooks all had to be cutting brush and clearing area and we'd go out on assault supporting the infantry unit and we'd have to take those people with us because we didn't have door gunners yet i was short 20 people i had 20 helicopters one jeep and they didn't give me the door gunners to to take with me to vietnam so i have to get door gunners and that means that my cooks and clerks and majors from the staff were all find that door gunner slot until i finally got people assigned and uh by the time i was getting people assigned our division went over as a division we came home as individuals now what that did was i had to lose half of my unit by the time we had been there six months i had to send them to other units and i would get people in from them and by the time the year was up i would be the only one left and that's why it was there was no division back in the state all of us had been sent back there but we went to panama we were the engineers went to overseas to turbo units that were mapping or they'd go to the ground jobs and then corps of engineers but there was no division there were no assets no one had any control over where the hell we were so we couldn't be brought back together it was an impossible task so it was stupid and we don't do that anymore we don't send a unit and break them up over there we send them and we bring them back home because then you still have a unit and you replace them with a unit the cavity didn't do that and so we ended up with inexperienced people in the cav division leading in in those positions and they weren't that effective for the next couple years and they finally rotated the whole thing out of there but those are kind of dumb things that if i was to write a book and that would be part of it don't don't send a unit and bring it home individually because it kills the commander it's i had to take guys that had been in my unit two and a half years that i loved i knew their whites i knew their kids i knew them and i had to send them away from me to other units to get their trash and i'd have done it to them if i'd had that chance you know you if you're a commander and you got a drunk warrant officer that's a problem send him to me because you're going to get somebody better than that as a replacement and that's that's tough duty you should never send units like that and come bring a moment because you're hurting that the unit you're hitting the command structure you're hurting the future and anyone who can't figure that out has never been in that situation because it looks okay right looks good on paper my unit when it went over looked good on paper because somebody in the pentagon required us to have a designation that was already on the rolls of approved units in the military so any unit that had a 2-2 on it at seven two two eight 226-227-2228 two nine those were all brand new units so my battalion was the two two nine i'm a company the two tonight i have the most command time of anybody i've led 756 combat missions in the lead helicopter i had had that unit for two years off and on in the carolinas or in the dom or back in the states so i i was the most experienced leader in the army at the time i couldn't command my battalion i couldn't move up because it was it was a combat units only could command it plus i had two designations when i went over because i wasn't a regular army unit my my unit was a company and seven special forces first special forces group and a company of two tonight now i get somebody wounded i gotta look for them under those two designations because i don't know how the hell they got medevaced out whether they were medevac i was 229 a company or whether aviation company 7 special force so those those are stupid things that should have been handled in the pentagon we shouldn't have been burdened with that kind of nonsense but that's what happened and if i write a book it's going to be called dads that's acronym for dumb ass decisions that i didn't make sir let's go to that time in 1965 still fairly early on in the major combat operations in vietnam at aya drang and you were well tell the story you were obviously a helicopter pilot and there were major casualties happening i was the commander of the aviation support for that battle and uh we we were planning on lifting that unit it was the first or seventh and and then i'd lift two other battalions put them on blocking positions on a cambodian border to keep the people that had been assaulting our in-country special forces camps we were trying to keep them getting out of the country we wanted to wipe them up before they could get out of the country and come back and do it again anyhow that the fighting was planned to the east and they ended up the major fighting went to the west it was coming off the mountain and we it was we lost i think 301 dead total in those few days that this went on it wasn't just an x-ray it was the whole thing and that was the most casual any unit had lost since the korean war i think pork chop hill i think lost more but we we set the high standard for battlefield casualties uh in in vietnam by that date and we learned a lot of lessons uh in in that battle uh some of them were still relearning you know we got to trust the resources that and the people that are in the field trust them to do the job turn them loose if if you get attacked from the from your right you can shoot back to the right you don't care where it's from and we still have a little problem with allowing that kind of freedom but we have to allow it because what happened in x-ray was that those people came off the supposedly out of cambodia came down on them and just beat the hell out of those two units the second of the seventh lost more people that did in when custer uh hit him and the first the seventh was was the first ones in that in the battle they were the ones that carried in into x-ray but the second of the seventh went cross-country on the 16th from x-ray to to albany to come back to to secure the landing zone after after the b-52 strike and uh at the time that second and seventh arrived in albany a b-52 strike hit x-ray and then we were going to have the second of the seventh and the first the fifth come back and clean up the battlefield because his second seventh got wiped out i think they lost 155 dead 125 wounded and that did it that triggered everybody to get the hell out of that area we can't afford to do that any further we got to figure out another way of doing this because you can't lose that many people and and the division commander brought us back to re reorganize and get get ready to do a different manner so we uh we ended up the lessons learned that you've got to you've got to let them go because if we'd have been turned loose to hit those people coming down off that hill we could reach him with the artillery the artillery that was firing on on x-ray could reach those people and we could hit him with bombers we could hit him with everything if the argument over whether it was in country or not was settled and the argument was settled as far as it our division was concerned is they were not in vietnam they were in cambodia i'm a map where i've been doing it for 10 years before i went to vietnam you can't tell me where that border is that's jungle there is nothing up there that gives you a landmark of any sort the top of the mountain might you could you could say okay the top of that mountain this side is in vietnam that side of cambodia but to say that in that jungle you can tell where it is just no you can't and that's why you have a lot of arguments between brazil and and uh venezuela between venezuela and french guiana between venezuela and colombia venezuela shares a lot of border and jungle and they have a lot of disagreements with their border countries because you have a hard time telling where that border is and if you let's say it's a river wherever it changes its banks so it's it's the arguments are valid um i'm not saying that venezuela is wrong that brazil is right nobody knows you you just don't know where that damn border was when they first established it sir when those casualties came down there were i i believe initial efforts to to medevac the wounded out but eventually there were orders that came down that said the fire's too hot at the back didn't do any medevac their commander gave them a directive they would not do medevac in an lc that was hot and an lz that is red a green landing zone was one that for five minutes there was no fire they didn't get that i led two of their birds in and it offended that commander quite highly he looked me up that night and choked me off a cot and threatened me and i thought he was an enemy and i came up with a pistol on him i put it in a movie but he showed it when i got out of the helicopter but he he came after me for leading his people into a hot landing zone and he should never been in command if you just told his guys to do what you what you think is right they've done what we were doing and we'd have been twice as much medevac or half the time and taken up in medevac and we've if i finally took all the seats out of my helicopter that were in the cargo bay because i i couldn't do medevac and have i couldn't lay them in there with the seats in there and the general says why'd you do that and i said you don't think the infantry's sitting in those seats when we go on an attack anyhow do you they're not seat belted in and sitting there like they're back in the states they're in the doors and they got their feet on the skids and when we level off they're gone i don't have to tell them to get off and i'm not going to sit on the ground wait for them take their seat belts off and just check around their seats to see that they've left anything if i'm getting shot at i want them off so we have an agreement they can sit in the doors of my helicopter all day long and i'll i'll take the wounded out on the deck and not too long ago it required a general officer's signature to take a seat out of the helicopter talk about that a little more you went back into a hot zone time after time after time you and my wingman ed freeman both got the medal that's right talk about how you communicated with each other how you decided that this this had to be done there was no other choice when the fifth left in i had six people shot off my aircraft three killed and three wounded my crew chief shot through the throat the radio operator for the infantry company was killed anyhow i on the way back and i knew that that lz had really gone to hell because there were people shooting at me from just outside of my aircraft it seemed like they were just close as the trees and i was pretty damn close to the trees because it was only an eight ship lc at the time we later enlarged it to 20 some but i had to land pretty close to the trees and these guys are shooting people off my aircraft with head hits so they're pretty accurate shooting anyhow on the way back in i i i called ahead and i said i wanted all my commanders each aircraft commander at my aircraft when i hit the ground and i canceled the second aid aircraft and sent them back and when we arrived back i didn't mean i sent two helicopters back to to play me because uh no play coup could play me didn't have any more ammo i had already taken it all so we had to go back to play coup to get ammo to carry in and i figured two helicopters was all i was going to need well of course that was way too hell short and when i got back i the commanders came forward and i asked for volunteers to go with me i said i want someone to fly my cover so there's two birds are going to be up there instead of one because if something happens you need to know where it happened at and if a guy goes down the jungle you want to be able to get him out of there as fast as possible and another helicopter can provide suppressive fire and do all the things that you need anyhow ed freeman volunteered now ed had been my boss in panama and he uh wanted to do the mission he didn't want me to go he said no you stay i'll take it i said no i'm the commander i'm gonna go i'm gonna find out what the hell is going on in there and uh he says well you should stay here and i said look you're no longer my boss said i'm in the commander here because he'd been my boss in panama he didn't get promoted and i did and he didn't have to serve for me we had a great relationship nobody in my outfit ever knew that he had been my boss at one time or that he had been passed over for promotion but he volunteered to serve so he finally got the picture that i'm going to lead it and he says i'm going in and i shouldn't have taken him because he was a senior guy back with the rest of him so that took my third in command it's going to take george hill he was a major i have any problem with that so ed was only a captain he was my first platoon commander and ed wong jim wall was my second platoon commander anyhow we we get airborne and i give a call to moore when i'm out there a couple miles i i'm listening on his radios all this time i know what the hell's going on i hear his people yelling i'm out of ammo i need ammo and i need more infantry i need support and i can't do anything i'm not going to bring troops in there when they're shooting out of the eight aircraft that i started with i i had four that were still flyable and i was flying them if they were shot up they were just shot up bad enough so they were leaking fuel where they were binding controls or something that kept me from flying them again if they didn't have that leaking field or binding controls duct tape so we'd know where the new holes were and we'd fly them i flew the same aircraft three times i think that day the first aircraft i flew i flew twice and i ended up with 22 flights on it and i'd i had logged in on that bird in the morning so my name was in the book and i think that's how they find out how many flights i made but we made a lot more than that was only five miles at that's at two and a half minutes and here we go 120. so you're talking seven minutes round trip eight minutes depending how long you take in the landing zone so you're not you're not spending a whole lot of time and we we ended up uh getting 70 some people lived out of the people he took medivac and i think we'd had a hell of a lot more than that if we'd had the medevac unit doing it too and my second tour we took care of that medevac policy they no longer had a green landing zone requirement we we've got a commander down there that let his people do what they they should be doing that's a shame that you find out in combat what what can go wrong in combat that's pretty late to be finding it out and you can't train for it and find it out uh i don't care what you do down in the training base it's not the same thing and we shouldn't be making this it's just as tough on the troops as we can in the training because you don't get anything from that you wear them out you take them away from being interested in the military but what do you gain just from busting their butts uh working them all night and all day and in the jungle training or in desert training whatever you don't gain that much you should train in the desert you should train in the jungle but train for that facility that type of setup but don't make it just as tough on the troops as you can make it and that's what we do we we teach the troops that hardship got no hardship nonsense teach them how to scrounge electrical equipment generators teach them how to know where the air force supply depots are get get equipment that that they can use in a when they get there they should have told us what where we were going because chainsaws would have been my i'd have bought chainsaws and electric generators and home depot i just spent ten thousand dollars my own money by knowing because i i would have sold that stuff to get my money back and then i would still have a lot of it left over because that's what we needed and we didn't have it we weren't allowed to take chainsaws into into the base camp and cut down all those trees we had to do that by axes and uh machetes the machete was the biggest tool we had at my level that's the wrong way to do business it uh teach the troops how to live right well you showed them how to live right and uh your heroism was rewarded whatever many years later but rewarded nonetheless yeah that's a better way to do it it's it's the same as we got some commanders to think killing the enemy soldiers is the key that's nonsense body count shouldn't even be it shouldn't even be considered anymore because you're doing body count for whom somebody in the pentagon wants a body count somebody at the upper level that that's that proves we're doing something that proves we're being effective back crap when we went into afghanistan into iraq we had all those iraqi soldiers and tanks and equipment lined up on the road and we just wiped them out what did we gain from it probably a million arabs hated us more because it was shown on their tv as well as ours for what purpose all we had to do was haul us and bypass them and then they would have still been there soldiers in the military are not people that you need to kill it's saddams you need to kill it's people like that but you don't have to be killing everybody that you're facing you need those people to take over when you get in in command of it when you take charge in the country you need those soldiers to be your security forces and stuff we did it in germany george c marshall general marshall said they're no longer our enemy the italians are no longer our enemy they're we're going to build the economies we're going to build europe back up and he took and did that and that's what you have to do you have to plan to convert them don't kill them killing them just makes you kill my kids i'm going to be pissed at you you

Channel: American Veterans Center

Views: 1,400,126

Keywords: AVC, American Veterans Center, veteran, veterans, history, army, navy, air force, marines, coast guard, military, navy seal, vietnam war, aviation, ia drang, hal moore, we were soldiers, hero, wwii, world war ii, korean war

Id: v4Tnz-3in5s

Length: 36min 52sec (2212 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 20 2020