Sky Soldiers - 173rd, Vietnam. Link to audio fix version in description.

[Music] a nation who forgets his defenders itself shall be forgotten [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] mercy of god and there's a lot of bloodshed and a lot of wounded soldiers we didn't know which one of us was gonna die next the bodies were laying there and we wanted to get them back and everybody that's caught in their circle they're going to kill so kill as many as you can [Applause] so back in the 50s it was like when my son grows up he's going to the military he's going to he's going to be somebody quit school and joined the army so i could be a paratrooper and i said well that sounds pretty cool you got actually 55 dollars a month i said well i'll do that i was tired of being a kid i wouldn't have missed it for anything and there's no amount of money in this world that could have bought that adventure for me well i was standing on the corner one night there was no one there but me it was cold i thought this is crazy i'm going home i went home and i sort of made up my mind then it was time to join the army i'll be darned if i was going to read about the book later to see what happened that was one reason so i went home i told my mother i said i joined the army she started crying would you sign up for and i said airborne she started crying again what do you what what job i said airborne infantry and she started crying even louder she says when do you leave i said tomorrow and she started crying even louder so the next day i was on my way so [Music] as we arrived in san francisco [Music] young people were coming they had flowers in their homes [Music] but for me the hippie sing was not meant to be [Music] for in november of 1967 i was airborne [Music] it was for me it seemed so far [Music] very [Music] to good and patrol the best as we could [Music] we were good we were good we were proud we were proud we were the best that could ever be patrolling the hills of that coal we were able to infantry [Music] home is [Music] is jesse salcedo i was born in st joseph missouri i went to a tough high school learned how to fight in high school and i was a golden glove boxer in the missouri and kansas golden gloves [Music] i enjoyed boxing when i was in school i couldn't get anybody to fight me and there were plenty of them out there in the golden globes when i got out of high school i i joined the service i didn't go to vietnam for patriotic reasons it was a test the mental and physical trials of climbing mountains and combat living in the jungle i remember when i was over there that i was going through hell i remember how terrible things were i said man this is hell but i volunteered for it so i will get through it well i went to fort gordon georgia fort dix new jersey jump school vietnam my name is george mink i grew up in philadelphia pennsylvania i was working i wasn't crazy about the job i'd forgotten about college [Music] when you're 19 you're invincible you're not going to get killed every one of us went into harm's way to take care of our friends i don't remember anyone who had ever seen their friends killed having any regrets about killing enemy soldiers except maybe there weren't enough of them i shipped it all inside my rut sack every single thing they gave me i shoved inside there [Music] some guy grabbed me before he went over those man you can't carry all that you don't need all that you don't this you don't need that you don't need this you don't need that you need more of this ammo you don't need this and he threw all kinds of stuff away and he says now you're ready to go vic marciano born bronx new york november 17 1948. catholic school alderboy um played little league summertime there were always big picnics with the family you know pig roasts and things like that i told my mother i was gonna listen to service and i needed her signature because i was 17. and she felt the need to call my father my father says there's a war going on and that's the first i heard of i didn't know there was a war going on but at that time you know i said well you know can't be that bad of a warrior or anything about it i arrived in vietnam in late may 1967. well that first day off the plane was pretty scary you know that he hit you the first time you already catch your breath and you say oh man i'm not going to be able to do this this is terrible the ride from tun sanud air force base where we landed in vietnam up to long been was a strange ride nothing clicks for me i can't believe how naive sometimes i was somebody has to tell me somebody's allowed to throw a grenade through the window and that's why they're caged up and i said oh really you know cool and the smells which i can't even describe you know things i've never smelled before or since vietnam certain smells that just immediately were burned into you [Music] when i stepped off that commercial airliner in benoit the fragrance of south vietnam hit me my name is larry speed and i was born in des moines iowa i attended valley high school graduating in 1964 and um had a motorcycle had the toys that uh the other guys had i i didn't know how serious vietnam was my mother and dad took me to the airport and it was uh it wasn't pleasant i i think i had one photo that i took when i left the airport and my dad was proud of me being in the service and being airborne but he had the saddest look on his face [Music] the day that i arrived in vietnam i had a friend take a picture of me in the 70th replacement center i was so proud because i was loaded down with my rut sack and holding an m16 and it was a good picture and i looked like a little boy [Music] i think i probably had a little bit of anxiety there it hadn't uh registered with me yet what vietnam was all about that wouldn't register until my very first combat experience his eyes are the same his voice is the same and he speaks exactly the same way as he did then well you know you know my voice right and has kind of talked slow right i was tall and all you had to do is erase a b and put a l and that that may lurch some of them spelled at alley a r c h ernest benton birch i was born in southern maryland and i lived on a farm two older sisters and a younger brother on five years [Music] my brother and i were here apart so we were best of friends i was in uh fort bragg been there i don't know how long and a little bit of trouble and i thought if i took that little short that they would forget about things and i'll be out of sight now of mine so i took a short from vietnam [Music] you know it's just like a family you were doing a job that you were trained to do i didn't have a wife didn't have kids no reason to be scared the 173rd airborne brigade 173rd 173rd airborne in jump school i heard about the 173. they went in there in 1965 i had a great reputation for being the best the 173rd we're volunteers we've been out there and volunteered to put our life on the line [Music] i had an older brother while he was airborne that was a tradition that i wanted to follow i wanted to uh um be like my brother always looked up to him i knew very little about the 173 like i said there was a couple guys that came back you know and i saw the patches of 173rd still didn't know anything about their history or anything about the unit itself it wasn't until i finally got with the 173rd that i realized what a great unit they were i'm proud to serve with these great men that are here today and the ones that died [Music] i was a paratrooper recon platoon recon recon recon at the time i thought that was kind of a neat sounding term recon [Music] when i extended i said i would wanted to go to recompense we spent our days on search and destroy operations anything that the enemy could use we would destroy they had a recon patch over the airborne patch in the 173rd patch and they already had a reputation they were very proud and very good at what they did i figured that they were elite even more than the regular airborne soldier right at the time i was graduating from jump school the 173rd was moving into dark toe and they were having so many casualties that they had to be reinforced they had to be replaced charles spencer they call me chuck i don't know i was young and crazy and it didn't bother me that much i was 18 i turned 19 in december after i got there i ended up turning 19 20 and 21 spending three birthdays and november together before it was over i was uh an acting platoon leader for a while acting platoon sergeant for a while and a squad leader i had missed most of the real heavy stuff in doctor doctor doctor doctor doctor doctor nacho the battle of dakto was was [Music] extremely intense it was more than 30 some days of fighting it was constant fighting firefights before were very small compared to to taking on the north vietnamese in full force and fighting an enemy that was very good and very brave the day of november 11th of 67 it was just uh an accident waiting to happen the nva were entrenched on these hills and we'd had contact with them the days prior to this there were smaller skirmishes we we found bodies and we found where 500 pound bombs had struck it was a terrible firefight because i don't even remember the details but i remember the aftermath in the aftermath was that six recon guys were killed and three bodies were missing the captain at the time was determined to say we will find the bodies will not leave here i think we search for three days for the bodies i counted 142 bodies that day of north vietnamese and i counted them over and over and over again all day long looking for one more body to try to make up for my sixth recon friends we humped up 875 on the last day and that's where they were bringing us in thanksgiving dinner and this is a terrible day the one that sticks in my mind jesse's mind and a lot of other guys minds too [Music] the bodies were still up on 875. as they brought into hot food for us we had to load the bodies onto the chinooks take them out of there where they set the hot food line up and then we were supposed to go eat our thanksgiving dinner that was near impossible to do because we're talking 100 bodies and body bags and some non-body bags that need to be put in body bags to put them on helicopters to to remove them from that area and that wasn't uh that's the most dead people i've ever seen at one time and i don't ever want to see that yet [Music] who wins the battle you know is by how many is dead or by taking the hill i felt very bad it was very difficult for me to see so many americans do that because i've never seen so many americans dead before [Music] i remember this stink of the um bodies i remember stuff like that yeah i remember the hueys and they would be uh full of dead bodies and body bags and they were bringing them to our hill and there would be one body bag swaying under the chopper on a on a rope and and you can see that in the distance and that and the the chopper is flying even and at a steady pace and this this body bag is swaying back and forth like that just a little bit i thought to myself there's another family that doesn't know that their son has been killed in vietnam yet they used recon and then they took 15 guys from each rifle company and i think a few rear echelon other guys and say all the misfits they could find and they formed delta company delta company delta company delta company delta company in september of 67. we were still in recon platoon and we came back from an overnight patrol when we went out there wasn't a delta company when we came back there wasn't a recon platoon the first thing they did was put recon platoon into delta company [Music] so tom has only impressed me as somebody brave and eager it intrigued me now i'm going to learn how to do this i'm going now i'm going to learn how to kill people terence lee joseph thomazoli and i'm from nakomas illinois i was a third generation coal miner my grandfather and my father both died of black lung i wasn't doing very well in school but i was going to become a senior and i said nah you know what i i got better things to do i got to go fight a war because i volunteered i said i want to be airborne infantry and i want to go fight the war in vietnam they said well all right come on in so that's how it started the chances of us surviving is uh not good the infantry has to go out and kill the enemy so your chances are probably 50 50. that's not very good [Music] me and lieutenant jones landed in the jungle and with delta company and terry jones became first platoon leader he graduated the top of the class and now he's gonna lead a hole between the men bottom line was my country was at war you know there was americans over there on the ground getting killed that time is not the time to debate my opinion the reason why i'm terry jones grew up in the midwest i wrestled four years in high school i went to the university of missouri it's an engineering school i had a student deferment where i didn't have to go into the army during the service but at that time the vietnam war was heating up i was brought up to believe that i was not better than anybody else if i didn't go to be somebody else over there so i didn't see why i should not go so a young man i volunteered [Music] i came in and took over this platoon right around the first second of december the guys that were there all just survived the big battles up in doctor been through a lot of lieutenants by then he was smart he was smart enough to to listen to the old guys i had first platoon and first platoon when they farmed delta company they had a what they call a recon platoon and then they took them and made them first platoon and these guys all knew what they were doing and uh i was very very impressed and he asked for my advice on something should we take a trail or should we cut through the jungle [Music] for a few minutes i would feel the pressure of what it was like being responsible for 30 or 40 men oh jonesy was a niece tomazole came out with him they were the two new guys together two new guys you can take care of if they sent us a squad of new guys that would have been a serious problem because you can't take care of that many people at once they uh give me supplies and uh rucksack and everything you know an m16 and threw me on a helicopter and i went out to the company the jungle was a very horrible place to live in [Music] [ __ ] hot and sweaty you have [ __ ] leeches clothes are dirty you don't get a bath your hair is matted together you're sweating all the time you're stinking you get lousy food the terrain the the snakes the cold icy ground and the food is terrible you know the sea rations suck at half the time you know you see rice as they sent you out we're all the bad ones [ __ ] in the rear are still in the good shape the only thing that made you feel better was a care package from home you know mom send you some kool-aid and cookies or cake take the kool-aid throw it in your canteen to kind of kill the taste of that nasty ass water fng [ __ ] new guy i didn't know squad i wasn't prepared for this that was a [ __ ] new guy very green lieutenant whenever the shooting would start everybody would look at me what do you want us to do that was from square one it's a different world when you're brand new you're just scared it took me three or four firefights before i could function before i could see the enemy think about what i'm doing we'd shoot back but we didn't know what we were shooting at all i know is these guys were there they had dirty nasty looking boots and dirty nasty looking fatigues and everything i had was nice and shiny i looked at them as if they're dirty and nasty then they must have been here for a while [Music] if they're green and shiny then they must have just got here nobody warms up to anybody right away hey welcome to the club it takes a couple days for them to see you know whether you got your stuff together you know whether you know you're gonna be some babbling idiot it was my first experience with combat and it scared me i made it to the wounded soldier i just had a handful of dressings and bandages and i realized then i didn't have enough it was just overwhelming i said can we move him out of here and about that time there were some enemy rounds that rang out pretty much answered my question first actual firefight a mortar attack uh early in the morning trying to shave and all of a sudden i heard the thumps and somebody yells incoming and i remember freezing at first you know like that's the first time i'd heard this incoming but it was enough to open my eyes to the fact that there are people out there trying to kill us there's somebody out there that wants to kill you and he's going to do his best to get the job done that changes your whole perspective about everything [Music] depending on what unit you were in if you were there a month you were an old guy everybody that came in to the brigade in the end of october was an old guy by the end of november if they were still alive lurch had been there for a couple years you know you've been there since 65. my first fire fight yeah i know it's getting shot at but it didn't didn't really scare me like a building block of the 173 he was always there ernest birch we called him lurch it's just like a story you know it just it was happening but you just didn't think it was happening [Music] it was 1967 when i got there so he was already there two years two years in the 173rd airborne on the line just an amazing thing because of all the combat the 173 was in have you ran into someone who spent three years in saigon or danae or tamron bay an exotic tour of duty that's all they had lurch was in the jungle all the time i liked the excitement i liked the adrenaline rush a guy was a soldier and uh he mentored a lot of soldiers a lot of young soldiers he learned from the leaders jesse salcedo and lurch were the old guys people felt safe i feel like um i could get them through something maybe it's just that they saw i had a lot of time in vietnam [Music] but then it registered then i knew it was all about even though i was still green making contact with the enemy vc nva in ohio we rabbit hunter what it was the same thing except these rabbits had a rifle because they were going to kill me i would have to kill them just like you're going deer hunting it was nice they were shooting back find engage and kill the enemy that was our we're not going to find them if we don't uh get out and look for them that was our purpose here you have to pull back then you pull back you hear you have to move forward you move forward you hear you got the flanking flank you continue to fire you look for the enemy and and you just do the best you can check that mountaintop right there on the map kill them okay kill all them mark it on a map we kill so many next day we'll try that other mountain kill them too go over there and kill all them kill them all people would say afterwards how can you kill somebody and i said well if you see your friends that were people a couple minutes ago and now they're not anything more than a piece of meat laying in the jungle it gets very easy to kill somebody you want to get even for the people that killed your friends so he he was talented with a machine gun when the machine gun started firing the enemy would put their head down it was an extremely powerful weapon he was a heavyweight golden glove champ in kansas city one member of his machine gun team went out in the middle of the night to drain his kidneys and did it right on jesse you're in the middle of the jungle and everything's quiet except for the jungle sounds then you hear this string of profanity that would make a drill sergeant blush that's when jesse realized what was happened to him in combat i was determined to be the longest lasting machine gunner in my company i had four people on a team of set of three i shot six round bursts the other three men would open up with an m16 and there would always be automatic fire going on [Music] the enemy didn't have time to shoot at me and try to kill me so i see this the best machine gun i ever seen i sent a lot of i never saw him by any braver than him tom azoli was with me the north vietnamese were out in front of us like this walking through the forest we could see them they're easy to see i mean they were easy to kill that day i yelled for ammunition and nobody would move not even my gun team thomas ellie got up ran outside the perimeter under fire he came back with two two boxes of ammunition 200 rounds each i can hear bullets i'm in a clearing who can't who can't pick me off right to me it looked like he did a somersault did a tumble he said he tripped you know flipped through the air and feeding jesse the ammo belt run off a burst of incredible firepower mowing everything down [Music] my tomazoli was gone i was out of ammunition i took the m79 grenade launcher i started shooting m-79s [Music] then i took out my 45 and started shooting and laughing i did it to raise the morale he saved us they must have thought that they ran into a big number of americans so they backed off they made a bad mistake that day and they paid for it they just left their dead in a split [Music] my imagination was so good that i could visualize death a shadow of me next to me a soldier and i could look on the corner of my eye and he would be there and be my companion my friend try to understand not being afraid of death i mean if you overcome the fear of death everything else is easy i'd heard later that on march 3rd after he was reinforced with a machine gun from another company they got an argument over who was going to back out who was going to stay there so i was shot in the right arm couldn't buy the machine gun was firing a picked up m16 with his left hand and told the other guy you're shorter than i am go that's so caesar i was training communication not infantry and when i went there i knew everything i knew all the tactics i knew what the enemy was going to do i knew everything i was walking through the jungle and this voice came to my head but you've been in a thousand wars this is your last war and i looked down at my feet and i saw sandals i looked to both sides of me and i saw soldiers with spears and swords went home and i found that those visions that i saw were actually roman legions the way they looked about 2 000 years ago i know it was my last war [Music] cold front was killed march 19th lieutenant pharaoh [Music] holmes brown nakadil ducker latin don latman was right there in the cp group you know we were very close [Music] when his helmet he wrote machine gun made [Music] or fire team leader sergeant tori swish [Music] killed tom raymie tommy pope larry sane john gunther henry chester harry ellis ernie young [Music] and then ernie madrid staff sergeant ronald ducker didn't come back [Music] lieutenant serum was killed i took over his platoon [Music] march 15th john gunther henry chester harry ellis ernie young tommy pope and patrick lacero some of these guys were the new guys they haven't even been in the jungle a couple weeks as sniper got him girlfriend tom ramey merchant and tommy mabe killed march 19th [Music] lieutenant fair he jumped over the log to go behind a tree he got shot about on i guess he was probably five or six feet away from me [Music] when he got kills like losing the sun i was asked to go on point i didn't feel comfortable you know i kind of was still in r r mode that's where my head was my head was not on the trail stay ernie madrid said he'd take point ernie and i were tight we're best friends hernias toward navajo and mexican he used to say to me every morning i see him get the head there what she told me man hello my friend and uh [Music] so anyways we moved out of patrol ernie took point firefight broke out [Music] towards the left side um and ford was where ernie was and last thing i heard him say was you know lt i can see him they're just beyond this um little embankment there i can toss a grenade in there and i heard the lt tell him to toss the grenade uh he tossed the grenade but it must apparently stepped up behind the tree and when he did he caught a full burst in the chest and he was dead after march 3rd learning the fact that your best friend had been killed two three four five of your best friends are now dead that changed my whole life and now there's a number today is it your day another day goes by today's your day no another day the other day you never knew [Music] you just never knew i have no qualms in killing those who are trying to kill me or kill my friends as ugly and grotesque as it may sound that's war [Music] you deal with it and you go on and you survive or you die he's dead don't mean nothing put him in a poncho liner carry him up the hills call a topper get him out of here if you dwell on it you're going to be the next man in the poncho line don't mean nothing all right guys to say that staff sergeant ronald ducker he probably taught me more than three months than the army did in three years i ended up taking his place and uh that was hard kenny boss uh an extendy i mean had his time in and extended from california young buck sergeant he really knew his [ __ ] he was a good man carl merchant was tall skinny a jewish kid from new york he looked less like you'd picture an airborne paratrooper looking and he was a hell of a paratrooper he was a good man he knew his job he knew his stuff he wasn't afraid if we got pulled a railroad or a fire support base or something where the chaplain can come out they would hold a memorial for the guys we had lost just like you see in the movies the upright rifle and the empty paratroopers boots and that have a service form in the field you did the best you could they had the bodies on on a lz we cut out and they didn't take the bodies out till the next day they took the wounded out it got dark they left the bodies overnight and the platoon one two at a time would go up in paris respects everybody took a turn i cried when i counted those 142 bodies and and looked for my buddies for three days and did those things because we were we were very very close i did my morning then we were actually in combat like in a lull at night in in the battle of dakto and some of these other places we could be talking to each other and talking you know really how much we love each other and how much we we would die for each other and cry and it was because of the great respect and great regard and great love we had for each other i'm sure everybody that's been in combat feels the same way about the people that were there were comrades in arms they went through things together and survived that normal people couldn't fathom in the least [Music] we all had jobs to do and and my job and the other medic's job was to take care of these guys and their job was to take care of everyone else [Music] kenny buys can he buy can he buy us kitty buys kitty buys [Music] point man that was killed at it was kenny byes just a california surfer kid tan very good looking kenny was one of the first guys that came up to me when i was new in country and said hey don't worry about this this is how you do this this is how you do that and that's how i knew kenny buys [Music] kenny buys is my best friend in vietnam kenny buys as a soldier soldier [Music] with him lurching jesse salcedo they were the backbone and all of a sudden he's gone he was a sharp-looking soldier when he put his gear on he looked good everything was in place [Music] kenny bye has always carried a silver spoon in his pocket doc speed had the silver spoon with blood on it he said that belonged to kenny vice it was just one of those things everybody knew kenny had a silver spoon and he always carried a he always had a drive on rag it's a triangular bandage that the medics carried they're good for head wounds because of the way they're shaped he was unique he had a little style had a little class to him bottom of that triangle is the tail on this tail it said mize and it means in cave eyes i'm not sure but it's advised and so um they were a hot commodity so the medics were always asked hey doc you gotta drive on riding and yeah we had drive on rides if you had to have a profile of a soldier in vietnam it would be kenny byes there was nobody better than vietnam walking point every time his fire team had point he himself would walk point he could put one of his men on it to be on point you got to be pretty sharp you have to listen point man was the first man that was out on patrol or taking the platoon or the squad or the the company through the the jungle kenny bye's full point that day [Music] on march 3rd march 3rd march 3rd march 3rd march 3rd march 3rd of 68 i started recording the names of soldiers in the company that were killed died of wounds and wounded in action i remember all of them ducker nakadel doc latman brown buys i never got over that i never got over that day [Music] it was a certainty that i was going to get killed or wounded that day i didn't have a good feeling out that day that day i was begging god to let me live through the day [Music] [Music] i had no idea where we were other than maybe we were in canton private they took us out dropped us on a hill [Music] there was all this smoke that had settled from the artillery and the bombs and as the helicopters came in the rotors would swirl the smoke and the smoke would rise up we dropped in a helicopter at a time and the helicopter was here and the hill was almost like a 45 degree angle we had to jump off the helicopter as soon as i touched the ground i had a bad feeling i immediately put the word out to everybody i went to them face to face everybody i could do i yelled at even this place reminds me of doctor be careful her squad was going past me and there were six of them that went past me it nakadil ducker latman holmes brown kenny vice when i saw him i knew that they were going to die [Music] anybody find something he report to me dog alert found blood on the trail i call it coming commander and i got the same message you know continue on continue on [Music] so that's the message i give kenny drive on the ridgeline got very narrow it fell down steeply on both sides very steep there was an intersecting trail in fact i believe it's on this map right here the trail is still even on this map and uh kenny can you call me on the radio look like uh at least a hundred men who used this trail this intersecting trail in the last 24 hours i didn't see what was that important to go up and just look at this trail and i said i'll see it when i cross it and told him to drive on well right after that i heard nem-16 open up i had a big camera he was on top of him and they waited for him [Music] and there was a lot of gunfire but there was a separation now i had separated captain needham from his rto the rto was to my my left flank and cap needham was to my right flank and there was just a short distance between i could have almost reached out and touched the rto but his radio was between us there probably wasn't 36 inches separating the rto on me and the bamboo was was going like this and the fire was right between us i was too scared to be scared but i thought if it shifts one way or the other the rto is going to get it or i'm going to get it the firefight started [Music] and the bullets were coming in so i started shooting machine gun when you get shot after you fire back one of the bullets hit uh captain needham shot him in the leg i still joke about it now i said when you see needham tell him that bullet was meant for me [Music] everybody in front of me straight ahead was hit i ordered jesse to crawl up to the point element so i immediately took my machine gun and started going up front warmer he was in a battle that i missed and he said i had to crawl over my buddy's bodies and the thought went through my head to thought only i haven't done that brown and homes are two guys that stuck together like this all the time and brown was still alive and i saw his eyes and the last person he saw was me and i crawled over both of their bodies anyway i had a like i said of a bad situation on my hand i had he's been in front of me no contact six man dead or wounded didn't know my medic crawled past me that was don latman on his own before we even had any security up there i call when we've got firefighter i call that security crawled all the way up to where kenny buys was [Music] died on him [Music] so we were engaged in this firefight for quite some time 20-30 minutes we started getting hit with some uh indirect fire this other gun team they run back to the rear because of the mortars coming in and i yelled at them to stop and i was an officer united states army you know and they heard me and they continued to and i thought about shooting them i thought about doing it now that we're many years beyond that i am tickled to death no i mean i won't want to no i'm particular that i didn't do it but back then i'm talking about the way i was back then as a 21 year old combat platoon leader you know this is the thoughts i had so i came up with this plan i told ducker i says we'll throw smoke a lot of smoke up there so they can't see you we'll put a high volume of fire you drag them back told jesse what was going on he kept on the gun spurs moving around and i saw him in the smoke i saw him pulling back the bodies and so i was covering him with machine gun fire and mink was george mink was one of us you have to form a perimeter and we would bring them back to the center of the perimeter and we i made six or eight trips this was a lot of the old recon platoon we were bringing back date [Music] fellas i thought would never die [Music] this sounds incredible but this firefight took place probably at 35 40 feet they picked a place to fight and they picked one to start to fight they went these guys waited to buy us on top of them that's where we ended up fighting he saw something and opened up that's when they opened up [Music] i start going back up to see if anyone else was going to need help and i ended up lying on the trail next to lieutenant jones i was on his left side sergeant ducker was kneeling on the right uh we had our bodies back there was nobody in front of me so i got on the radio net and called in artillery from the fourth century division i called it on top of the hill and i walked it right down to us [Music] [Applause] [Music] when you say fire for effect you get a barrage from the six guns and when i said fire for a fact a round came in awfully close to us one of their guns was off that day i went like this it's what they train you to do cross your legs excuse me and you're on the ground you do that to protect your neck from any shrapnel a round hit to the left of us and it came in through my shoulder which was raised a little bit on the ground and hit me in the hip that's how much the strap was coming across the ground anything that was just a little bit up got hit george mink was right on my left side but again this this ridge line was so narrow it started tapering immediately he was just a little bit lower than me and i got hit he didn't we had incoming rounds i just buried my face into the dirt and lieutenant jones started screaming and squirming and i looked around and saw a large hole in his back tremendous pain i just had blood just gushing out of my mouth immediately and i started squirming around trying to get away from the pain and george grabbed me to take it easy lieutenant so i screamed for a medic and i start cutting the suspenders on his web gear off and pulling out his first aid bandage and patching them up the medic got there looked over to our right and said sergeant ducker stayed [Music] even though i expected to get around in the forehead crawling up that hill and guys all around me were dead this is what i actually thought i thought somebody up there made a big mistake i thought it was a mistake for me to get hit because i knew it probably would it could possibly be a fatal wound here and i was shocked surprised it doesn't doesn't make a lot of sense because i expected to be killed crawling up there [Music] and then right away there was a medic there um i think his name was santos and him and mink managed me up brought me up against a tree and uh i was laying there and after a while i noticed uh a stinging down here why they got hit down here and they hadn't this wound was so bad that they hadn't noticed this other one that's where all this blood come from was running down my leg and there was another guy there on the perimeter you know that was helping take care of the wounded i so told him he went to get doc speed by now i was somewhat seasoned in vietnam because i've been through doc toe now i carried a battle bag and it was an old c4 bag that they carry plastic explosives in and in that bag i had scissors and i had battle dressings i had battle bandages and i had serum of album and that's all i didn't have any medicine i didn't need morphine at the time i didn't need any penicillin i didn't need any tetracycline because you didn't use that in a battle you used dressings and bandages and scissors i remember him coming over and he looked at me and goes oh my god and he had a gaping frag wound in his shoulder big enough for me to stick my hand in it and i wrote him off her dead and i thought that he would uh surely die [Music] i thought what's your problem i mean what's why you so shook up you know it's just a wound managing i guess because i was bleeding to death i prayed i prayed for forgiveness of any and all sins i've ever done that i did that immediately right after that i got real calm and objective about my chances i wasn't afraid of dying after that i was kind of thinking well let's see uh we're relieved by charlie company now you know we'll get back to the perimeter you know if they can you know the helicopters are pretty fast i wasn't scared at all dying after i was hit i ended up on the trail the last place i wanted to be because that's where everybody was getting killed and i was thinking oh man i'm on the trail i tried to get off the trail and the jungle was like a wall it was solid and i couldn't even do it i couldn't even lean on the side i couldn't do anything so i made a decision to be on my knees and to fire my machine gun and nurse said there's two right there and there was a bush in front of me and i thought i shot where he was pointing but he said you missed and a few seconds afterwards on my left hand side a volley of bullets came in and about six bullets from between my legs on both sides of my legs and then one of them bounced off the ground and hit me in the arm shot me in the arm that's the scar yeah next thing i know the machine gun's over there and i'm back here and i'd then like eight feet away from the machine gun and i didn't know how i got that far away from the machine gun from a gunshot wound but it blew me back about eight feet i said i'm hit even when you're all the battles that i've been to and everything and death is all around you when you actually get shot it surprises you and i was surprised and i said i was hit and i picked up the machine gun and i continued firing until i ran out of ammunition we're all afraid of dying i'm sure he was too that was not the highest motivation for him high's motivation was to do what was required he got right up there to the front and stayed there for two hours laying down a good base of fire to keep the enemy down got shot through the arm knocked back away from the gun came back to the gun continued to fight [Music] m16 appeared next to me like it was just right there in front of me with a with a bandolier of ammunition with the you know with the clips in it yeah it's the first time i saw it so i picked it up and uh i sat there and waited i was not told to withdraw yet and i heard noises in front of me and i sat there and i waited as long as i could possibly wait and i thought the noise was right on top of me and when that happened i opened up the m16 with the whole clip and everything got quiet the noises weren't there anymore then i tried to reload and this arm was stiff and it couldn't move anymore and i was in pain and i pulled out a clip and i dropped this clip out of the m16 i used my knee to put another clip in pulled the thing back and i sat there and waited [Music] then they told us to pull back the short round of artillery already came in and killed ducker and wounded lieutenant jones and they said pull back so i pulled back and as i was coming back i saw lieutenant jones against the tree and it was white as a sheet and it was full of hoes and he looked like he was gonna die and i stooped down and i said how are you are you gonna be okay he said don't worry about me he says how are the men and i thought that was an extremely unselfish thing to say at that time several things i remember i was propped up there against that tree one was jesse sausage gunting came by and i remember uh one of his guys got right in my face about that far away and just stared at my eyes then standing moved on and i thought well you son of a gun you just want to take a good look at me before i die jesse was concerned and he asked me you know about how it was doing i responded to that the thing that uh that really moved me was the company commander's rto uh radio telephone operator was a big guy and uh he wanted to come to my platoon real bad and he came by and i had all this blood still coming out of my mouth nose and he had a a green bandana like that he wore around his neck and there was no px out there we didn't have any supplies you couldn't get resupplied with anything so what few personal items you had were important to you he took it off he wiped the blood off my mouth and nose and stuck at my hand and i really i thought what a kind act it really impressed me you know i really appreciated that for him to give that up and so the couple guys real quick uh chopped some sticks and somebody had a punch when they made a litter uh when i got to the battalion perimeter there was all kinds of help guys that were there ran over got the litter the guy's looking down one and said look he's not breathing and i wanted to say i'm okay i could see and hear i couldn't speak my face was fading in and out i remember when the helicopter came in uh one of the a big black soldier was standing there and uh he took whatever he had is his shirt whatever he tried to shield me from all the debris from the helicopter coming in and i thought to myself how ironic this was just a few minutes ago people i didn't know were doing everything they could in this world to kill me and here's people that i don't know doing everything they can to be kind to me and save my life a chopper came in i guess i must been the only casualty left because they put me on it by myself it was not a medevac chopper it was just a regular huey pilot co-pilot two door gunners and i might as well been a carton of sea rations i mean they were not medic saved norm they did their job they flew the helicopter and the door gunners looked out the doors i just laid there i remember after working on lieutenant jones and finding kenny buys that day that just tore me up it just tore my heart out because he had a complete evisceration he'd been shot once in the stomach that i remember and his intestines were on the outside of his his abdomen and i knew he was dead i knew there was there was not anything i could do for him and um i took it very hard and i was really angry i did something stupid they go back to old recon very close when they brought bis back and he was dead he'd been gut shot doc speed had grabbed his weapon and tried to run forward and somebody had to pull him down keep them down [Music] and then the next thing i knew they brought kenny buys his body back from the ridge down from the ridge and i remember being at kenny's side and it was kind of just all over with for me at that point you know i wasn't injured but seeing kenny did then it was to me it was all over with i uh reached in his his fatigue pocket where he kept that silver spoon and i pulled the silver spoon out and i stuck it in my pocket charlie was the only one that made it i was the only other one and i was gone but now there's two left tucked spencer he would do anything that was required he dug the holes he did he had guardrail he'd be awake uh anything he had to do after surviving a whole year in vietnam got back to state side and he volunteered went back for another year now that speaks for itself um march 30 didn't go up the hill with us he stayed back to dig the holes that day i don't know why but it was my turn that's one of the guys was left back in that area dig holes and the platoon got aid up all i got to see was results later i got off the chopper and i was walking through the compound and i run in to one of the guys i know and he says well he says i i better tell you uh first squad didn't make it first squad was gone and if i hadn't been on rnr i would have went too and i just lost it i i went back to the barracks and i just lost it i went ballistic i tore up my bed i broke windows was fighting other guys i couldn't get over it it was such a shock to me you know that your whole squad is not there no more they tied me up and they locked me in in one of the supply rooms and they left me there for a while the captain asked me how i felt and why i was feeling so much anger and bitterness and i told him about kenny byes and ronald ducker and knockadel and the guys that i knew very well i lost control even with my fellow soldiers i was fighting them too i just wanted to kill somebody because of my love and camaraderie i had for these men he says what you want to do [Music] i says put me on the first chopper send me back to the jungle [Music] he put me back in the jungle the next day so i was pretty i was ready that's what i wanted to do after march 3rd well my last 12 days in the field we made contact 11 times [Music] i knew i didn't have any left i was getting short so i wanted to get in all of my goods [Music] after march 3rd i was never the same that changed my whole life do i remember names and in my pictures but a lot of these these guys i wouldn't remember i know him now spencer and and mink and jones [Music] marciano and thomas zoe birch salcido [Music] as individuals i do not remember them but uh i know i had contact with every one of those guys i met some guy in the vfw told me about this society of the 173rd airborne brigade and i said no way you know they forgot about us man they didn't you know no man there's a bunch of us out there [Music] this has been great it's unreal it's 33 years and what is it eight people and there wasn't that many that i served with that's left a lot of them were killed yeah it's not that it's not painful when we get together and it's not stressful let me start to remember some of these things this is a stressful thing it's not a you know there's there's a mixture of stress and and happiness at the same time these things only happen once a year so sometimes i'm very happy it only happens once a year because it takes me a year to get over it you know once i leave once we leave each other because then then there's a there's periods of time that i don't want to talk to another vietnam vet you know and there's times that i really feel like i need to talk to them or they need to talk to me sometimes i call guys up and just say i just need to hear your voice man i know you're alive i used to always say i could count my friends on one hand have fingers left over i meant that these guys as i find them again after all these years i'm going to run out of fingers i mean i trust these guys with my life i trust them with anything now anything i had i could never have this relationship with somebody i met that wasn't over there with us because they didn't prove themselves the way these guys have the people that come to these reunions are the people that you could rely on they have nothing to be ashamed of what they did over there everybody here was a was a good soldier we are like family and it's a very special family and not everybody's allowed into that type of family and what you have to do to get into it you really if you had any sense you wouldn't want to do [Music] there's a thing called platoon loyalty and you can call two loyalty if it's not too long it's platoon love is what it is back when you're 19 years old you don't dare say you love another man that's basically what it was and when we got these engagements that was the biggest motivation was trying to help the guys you love when a lot of fellows came back they were looked upon as war criminals baby killers people would spit on them if you told them you found the long-range reconnaissance patrol tied to trees and skinned alive by the north vietnamese they wouldn't believe it it was a it was a female probably 20 years old probably a college kid spit on my unicorn there must have been 20 30 protesters at the airport one of them spit on me and called me a baby killer i expected to come home and just fit in and it didn't happen that's the last thing i was expecting to be called a baby killer i don't believe the vietnam war was a wrong war but what i do believe is that the way they treated the veteran when they came back is a wrong thing to do you need to support the people that that are fighting for your country think about this you know the kent state university when four students were killed by the national guard the people raised so much commotion about those four students at that time there were a thousand americans young americans that were dying every week in vietnam during the same time young boys that didn't know any better don't know about the politics don't even know why they were there sometime and who mourned for them and who wrote them a song [Music] nothing you're not going to do for the next guy over there's nothing he's not going to do for you you don't have to know him you don't have to know his name you don't have to have ever seen him before i even know he's got an american uniform on and it puts you in a situation that you might die in you know that's that's your job you don't do your job everybody's gonna die [Music] i was a soldier and that was my job to kill the enemy i wasn't a cook or a driver i was put in the jungle to kill the enemy i took that with the perspective of doing what i had to do that was my job ward taught me about death we live in a body the real us is a is a soul that lives in a body the body comes and goes everybody dies nobody gets out of this world a lot some die sooner some die later i have no remorse for killing the enemy in vietnam none whatsoever it was uh it was my duty when they started killing my friends then it became more like vengeance because they took my friends away it became personal after a while [Music] the most important thing in my life was to went to vietnam and to be with these men the ones that died the ones that are here they didn't die in vain they died for us they died for jesse south sailor they died for me that's not in vain you say they died for uh lyndon johnson i died for american flag you're cheaper than it they died for the greatest thing you can die for someone else these guys are laying down their lives for for the other men [Music] the only reason we're putting kenny byes ronald ducker donald lapman donald knockadel frank brown harold holmes tommy may merchant on a pedestal because the law of physics they do things can occupy the same space at one time they took a bullet into a vital organ shrapnel the vital organ you know and even though they're gone they experienced this so i don't think their life was in vain experienced the same love the same experiences that we had they didn't miss out on that they didn't get to experience life afterwards but to be honestly life afterwards is nothing compared to the life we had [Music] there 173 airborne brigade [Music] hey [Music] [Music] now we're done [Music] 43 started by [Music] is [Music] still alive [Music] three [Music] next thing they kill both the enemy jump status is still intact 82nd airborne sees to that [Music] they call us the herd you

Channel: Mark Joyner

Views: 1,802,370

Keywords: Vietnam, 173rd, Airborne, Dak To, Hill 875, Machine Gunner, M60, Reunion

Id: KCoaVvPm_H4

Length: 88min 2sec (5282 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 06 2018