Special Forces Colonel Survives Assassination Attempt & Vietnam! 😱

uh two days later i'm sitting writing up a report about all this what had happened and i get a call don't come into work today from my but for my assistant i said what's the problem he says there's a lebanese force that's out ready to assassinate you and i said oh jesus i got to go through this now how you doing sarah just finishing yourself good thank you for being here let's just start off tell us your name branch of service you served with the years and the rank you got out as yeah my name is ray james or ray j vehar known as jim i joined the u.s army in [Music] 1962 and got out in 1989 i retired as a full colonel my branch was special forces and armor thank you for your service sir just talk to me a little bit about uh where you're from where you're born and raised and what your upbringing was like i uh was born and raised in uh santa monica california uh as an eighth generation californian so we owned uh one of the major spanish land grants in southern california my grandmother was mayor of the city for a while back in the 30s as also vice president of the bank my dad and i and my grandmother all went to santa monica high school uh i graduated from my dad graduated from southwark high school many years ago and he was went to ucla and then he was a uh track individual and uh held the record for uh decathlon and won the decathlon for the u.s three years in a row wow and then i went to university california davis uh i played football and and ran track and uh graduated in 1962 and went right into the service rotc wow um what inspired you to go into the military um many number things i guess back when i was a kid i always wanted to be in the army you know that was the big thing or the marine corps a matter of fact when i got out as a senior in high school i was given an appointment to the air force academy which would admit put me like number three or number four class or something like that i remember anyway i found out that my eyes weren't that good so they volunteered to change the appointment to west point and i said wow the air force won't take me the army shoes hell doesn't want me so i won't do that either so i guess i went through rotc and then we had a little thing called a draft and if you were in rotc and locked in you managed to graduate a lot of my friends didn't graduate because of that or what they would do is have their draft notice sent back as the wrong address and use their uh college address and that would always delay in about a year and but any case that was my whole thing was to beat the draft basically going as an officer and uh go from there yeah wow is that so um what what um did you did you end up going in as an officer yeah i went in a second lieutenant uh went uh armor branch uh and then from there i uh my first three years were spent in germany so i had on the east-west german border uh i was in a place called fulda germany 14th armored cavalry regiment i guess the most exciting thing that happened to us then we used to have border crossings all the time with soviet equipment and different people like that but when president kennedy was assassinated uh we rolled out and went to our battle positions of course over there at that time all the vehicles everything was combat loaded you had you know all the means to go to war right then and there and within uh you had 20 minutes to get from this concern and get encampment out to our battle positions and so we took off i was really shocked because we were sitting there at home getting ready dinner and my boss called and he said hey you listen to the radio and i said no he said well kennedy's been assassinated turn the radio on and we had afn uh armed forces network and that's what we found out about and then next thing you know it was a siren went off and we were scampering around getting our gear together and heading the vehicles out going to the ideas wow but it was uh it was an interesting i guess that was probably the highlight if you will of that particular three-year tour we had a lot of little things that went on uh and of course we kept our training going and so on um i think the other the only other exciting thing was that when they had a fellow from the second armored division he was a s2 captain that defected and had gone across and i guess he gave all the information he could and they would send him back and i was set up to make the run down the audubon uh to pick him up at the exchange point and bring him back up and we just came up over the top of the hill and then down on that hill there was a i like hell i know a thousand people down there waiting for this guy i just drove up and put him out and got in the jeep and kept right on going down down the highway home but uh so you said you were in the special forces right when did that uh well after the after the armor career course i went to airborne school special forces uh acquisition especially the school and then uh one other i can't remember which oh language school and then i was sent off to visit vietnam and so i spent a little over a year and a half about a year getting there and so it was about 67 when i got there i also had the whole year basically 67 and just the beginning of 68 in vietnam wow and then uh there uh i was in the play coup which was in the central highlands where the mountain yards were and we uh used to do all the training and uh advising the molten yard units that were up there also as the assistant operations or as the operations officer really i was responsible for clearing all fires at the fourth entry division which was stationed in our area for their free fire zones and that sort of thing and then clearing their uh fires and uh setting up their operations uh getting the pro the land for them to use basically wow that was uh it was different um i think one of the funniest things that ever happened there was uh the uh fourth armor division or fourth history division tried to move the mountain yards into a given area where they built these homes for them the only trouble is the mountain yards built their homes up on stilts and the basic reason for it is they kept their cattle and their sheep and all that underneath the house also the circulation kept the house cool and then they lived above it well they they couldn't figure out how they could live on the ground you know we built these little uh shacks for them and sheds and the other thing we didn't do we didn't bring their cattle in they had these look like brahma bulls almost uh that that was their their live livelihood that's what they ate and their livestock so what they did is they designed a theory where they would take a chinook helicopter which we you've probably seen them flying around here the two bladed jobs and landed out there and then try to entice the cattle into the chinook by using tranquilizers well when they woke up of course they just the air was in the air just destroyed the aircraft oh so then they decided that uh perhaps what we ought to do is get some horses and we can round them up and then we'll move them that way and their s5 which is a civil affairs officer got the idea of going to philippines and buying the horses which he did because they figured that in the fourth division they would have cowboys you know guys that's what they did so anyway the horses came in and they were about this tall and everybody's legs drove on the ground and so on so it became a useless proposition and uh they had to drop it finally the military went back out into the area where they were and uh that ended that particular beautiful idea that somebody came up with wow without thinking it through but anyway those are then of course uh i'd combat operations i got wounded when i was over there in that trip oh yeah tell me about that no just i was got messed up i got shot in the shoulder we got we got hit with an ambush when we were moving out and i happened to be with a u.s unit at the time which is strange normally i was just with mountain yards and they evacuated me as a 12th cav they evacuated me back and had got squared away then i went back over and finished up my tour but uh it was that's but you know that and you know combat operations it's hard to remember you'd have to start yeah there i was you know surrounded by 10 000 bc after my button hand grenade pins type thing you know and you never know there's there's just all kinds of stories but until you get about half a snoot and somebody else has added one you got one batter and you know one up one up one up that thing yeah that's the only way you remember what happened and that is tainted a little bit too right right right but uh yeah um and i just left uh in placo area just before ten a matter of fact it was the week of tet that i had flown out of country then from there let's see where did i go i went to combat developments command out in fort ord california where i was headquarters in hitler's company commander we had 450 enlisted men 150 officers in my company and all that was a admin headache keeping everything alive uh paying all the troops everything everybody by then in those days was paid by cash oh really oh yeah so you go with that i had about a half a million dollar payroll and so i'd have to go to the finance officer about four in the morning 3 30 in the morning and count all the money to make sure it was all present then you take it back to the unit and break it out in individual packets and then each so you counted it again and then each individual soldier came up reported in and you gave him his pay sheet and counted off the money tonight wow so in those days payday was an all-day job because i had three other locations i or two other locations i had to go to one was a hundred light military reservation and the other was fort roberts or camp roberts in those days camp roberts down in california further down in california so how the um how'd the money get to you guys well it came from the finance uh office in fort ord uh there was a finance officer there yeah and i had a clerk that would go with me and he'd wear a 45 and i'd wear a 45. of course his question to me is what do you do if they want the money i said we're going to give it to them the car and the guns and everything because it didn't work my life to lose it for half a million dollars worth of worth of somebody else's money so hey it worked out but it was uh it was a different assignment and then from there after i uh turned over the command i stayed in the there and went to the support groups and [Music] we did a lot of the experimentation one of the biggest ones that we set at the time was a tow missile system which is was originally accepted by versus uh some of the other missile systems ssdns11 and uh you we had a shoot-off to determine which was the best of that and then how to train the crews to accept that weapon system and so on so that was a project that i had i think it was one other but i can't remember what it was then from there i went to language school again and uh with the foreign service institute in washington dc for uh i don't know five months i guess it was what language were you learning vietnamese guess where i was on my way to back to vietnam again wow so i went over this time and spent a little over two years almost two years rather so it was a little over a year first time in almost two years the second time this time i was in a place called tam key which was up by chulai and the major unit in that area was the americal division or 23rd entry and i was a district senior advisor providing support each time i tried to get back to special forces but you had to remember in those days special forces didn't have a branch for officers it had it for enlisted men later on but it didn't have a branch for officers so what you had that said you were qualified was a qualifier you had like your mos might have been mine was 12 which meant tanker 0 or 12 alpha and then from there it would be your specialty such as reconnaissance or tanks but in front of that they had prefixes and a 3 prefix three was uh uh airborne that's right so i had airborne then five was nuclear weapons and seven was special forces so i had three five seven twelve alpha and then uh later on it became a 4-8 which was a foreign area specialist so when they were looking for special forces officers they could never find it because the computer would only take the 12 a 4 8. and finally they in the 1980s they came up with this the branch so it wasn't until the 1980s that i finally got a special forces assignment oh wow then anyway after that tour in vietnam and tamke uh kwangtin province um and we did a lot of special projects there and and of course the same idea of combat with this time with vietnamese we had some special operations that we ran quite a bit and i came out unscathed on that after almost two years so i was happy about that wow is it um it's it's not common to to do two tours in vietnam is it oh sometimes it is if you're a regular army officer it is uh because of the fact that you know your tour if they still had the war going on you went i mean it didn't matter when was going on i went what was you know happening so i yes it was common a lot of guys i had two tours i thought i was going to end up with the third tour so i but i didn't when i came back this time i went to the 82nd airborne division and uh was in the tank battalion now airborne tanks everybody says oh there's this thing there is it was called a sheridan it was an m551 it was a 152 millimeter gun that shot a rocket as well as a main gun round same crew of four in the tank we had i was the executive officer for the battalion started out as a three the operations officer operation training and uh we went wrong with all the airborne jumps we had uh we airdropped or heavy dropped the actual vehicle itself took uh eight really g11a parachutes massive parachutes or we did what was called a low air low altitude parachute extraction or leap system what they did is they use the c130 or 141 mostly c-130s put the sheridan inside on a skid and strapped it all down and then the airplane would fly in uh six feet above the ground a parachute would extract and pull the tank out the back end and it would slide in wow and we would do that quite often and then go on our exercises open them up the troops themselves would all jump in and gather and put the unit back together again and take off on what our mission was one of the most striking things about that was we had a mission down in eglin air force base which is down in florida and uh i was called up by uh then called a thing was called strike command or something like that uh and they said would you take your battalion and support the seventh entry division which they were going to come ashore in in lsts and uh lca lcns and i said yeah i would go down there so what they said is we'll provide you all the aircraft we'll try to jump and uh and we'll provide you a train to get we can only afford uh enough to send one company down so we that's by air so with those 17 tanks went down in c-130s then the rest of them were put on trains and then uh all our wheel vehicles were convoyed down with the fort benning spent the night down there and then on down into eglin air force base and homestead area in florida we ran a two-week exercise about almost three week exercise down there with the seventh entry division where we came in on parachutes and collected up the tanks they met up with us coming ashore on in light [Music] vehicles and uh met up with us and then we had uh went into the attack mode against uh a brigade from uh fort benning 197th entry brigade so uh we were there uh ran that exercise it was a it was a lot of fun it was interesting yeah and then uh see what happened after after that and i see uh um go ahead i'm just trying to think where i went from benning to no that's all right i'm you know i'm curious uh you know what what's it like you know i just want to back up a little bit what's it like going into the army or what was it like for you going in as uh you know a young lieutenant as an officer um you know i i was always curious um because you're going in there and you're immediately becoming in charge of maybe a a sergeant a sergeant major somebody who's maybe been in 15 you know years 20 you know what's happening in that particular case what you i was in charge of a platoon sergeant which was an e7 been there a number of years now you go in if you're smart you go in with the idea of look we're working together as a team and therefore the more you can keep me out of trouble and keep me straight the better off i am i don't have to go around trying to figure out what's going to happen next so you if you had a good nco and i happen to have a good nco um sergeant uh mayhall but uh the the individuals in the tanks you have an nco on the commander's tank which there are five tanks in a platoon in the commander's tank you had a gunner which was a sergeant uh buck sergeant and then a spec five as a driver and a pfc to spec for is a loader so that individual was a expert on his on that tank so he would make sure that you were taken care of on the tank in those days it was an old m48 a1 tank and then uh our a2 tank and then and the other the second tank was an e6 in charge of it basic same crew and the third tank was the platoon sergeant's tank and he was an e7 which is uh sergeant first class and platoon sergeant and so first class and then in the the fourth tank was a sergeant a staff sergeant and a normal crew and the fifth tank the same thing so what you had was a heavy section of three tanks and a light section of two and you split them up and the way your platoon sergeant uh would would run perhaps the light section and you'd take the heavy and then you'd overwatch these tanks as they moved around and move around the battlefield and that's how you maneuvered uh or you set up the defense the same way so but anyway learning as a lieutenant if you were smart you would listen to you know the clues that he would provide you and if you were you know going to be a wise ass one he'd leads you right down the wrong path and i saw a lot of guys led that way you know guys i'm the lieutenant you know you're i'm gonna do this and the only time i ever uh pulled that was we were in uh i was in the regimental headquarters and i worked for a sergeant major by the name of sayre and we got a discussion and i said well i said i disagree with you sergeant major we ought to do it this way and he said well you know he says i'm a sergeant major and i said we've got to do it this way and i said you know sergeant major oh he said and i have 18 years experience and i said you know sergeant major i'm a first lieutenant i had 18 months experience and we're going to do it my way i thought he was going to fall out he just it broke him up and but anyway that's the only time and it was kind of an adjust but it was still it was a management situation and i had pretty much had it under control yeah but uh that's how you learn you learn from them and you do and as you accept responsibility and it shows that you have leadership capability then your boss in this particular case a captain who is the troop commander would make sure that you got the next jobs and when you got promoted after 18 months the first lieutenant you automatically if you were eligible uh leadership wise and and knowledge wise you got into the next step and at that time i was put in as the assistant s3 which is the operations section of the squadron and one of my secondary assignments was a thing called the davy crockett platoon leader davy crockett was a nuclear weapon that was launched out of a personnel carrier and it had a big tube that a titanium tube that ran down the length of this looked like a big bazooka if you will on on a tripod and then the size of a watermelon or bigger was this nuclear warhead and so what it was meant to do was bunker bust but it was a line of sight weapon now if you can imagine a nuclear weapon being line of sight and you got to fire this thing there you are with all the blow back and the radiation and everything but anyway this this was the idea behind it you had a spotting rifle on the bottom of it which was oh i don't know i can't remember the caliber of it but it gave out a puff of smoke so you would come in hit the target with that and then push the button and this tube would launch and break away from the uh actual weapon assist them so now you've got a big football going out and uh well actually a watermelon i mean it was giant it was about this big around and uh hit the target what you didn't the wind would affect it everything would affect it but remember it's a nuclear weapon so if it just comes close you're going to wipe out the target and you could never get people to understand that and of course the other thing was you know what do you do once you think you fired the thing well you piled back in the personnel carrier and hopefully the driver was moving ready to take it close it all up and seal it so that you when you took off why all that radiation and stuff came back it was a joke basically and it was known as davy crockett and uh of course it disappeared out of the system yeah then the other the other systems that we had in that particular capability were nuclear explosive systems for rolling up bridges and stuff you had what they were called as atomic demolitions munitions and you had a medium size and a small size that would go out and they had these germans had in their system when they built the bridges they had a lockdown area where it was a big enough to put one of these weapons in then you lock it and set the timer on it and take off and of course it would destroy the bridge but they had those all over germany wow but anyway getting back to what we were talking about you get responsibility as you progressed and if you fit the bill you got the promotion and you got the the next bit of responsibility right right uh the only thing that you got automatically basically was the promotion of the first lieutenant it was 18 months after that it was all based on efficiency reports whether you got promoted to captain major lieutenant colonel or colonel but [Music] yeah you learned and i i enjoyed it i had many assignments that were kind of off the wall i was uh in greece for three years as uh advisor of the greek military where i learned to speak greek and enjoyed that assignment i was an advisor to the liberian army liberian uh that created a whole new problem that was almost a combat zone what had happened was uh president doe had come in and assassinated the president of liberia and as a master sergeant and his group cohorts in crime took over the country and dope found himself as being the president so he automatically put himself to general and all his other cronies were all generals and when i got over there it was already been established that frame uh so uh i you had to fit into that and these guys were actors i mean they were on between the two of them i don't think they had one cell of brains and what they would do is you know they come to you and ask for money and ask for ammunition and ask for all this support and you kind of had to sort through what you know what would you push through and so on and so forth and as the chief of military mission over there um i worked directly for the ambassador well uh about november time frame i got there in july november time frame i flew to a place called sierra leone which is the next country up which was also one of my responsibilities and got a chance to meet their crew and so on as i when i did i ran into a lebanese that i knew from [Music] monrovia liberia and he wanted to know if i knew a general by the name of thomas kiwampa and i said no i didn't know him i had never met him but i'd heard of him because he was one of the original generals that helped overthrow the government so the next day i flew back to monrovia and the morning after that thomas q upper brought a crew in and over and staged a coup so everything was locked down we had no weapons i was called into the embassy the ambassador had left the country so the charges was in charge and he said i've got to get all these uh peace corps people in there's a couple hundred peace corps people out there you know young college kids and young and some adults older individuals so i had to send out my team out into the hinderlands to through the rebels with no weapons to bring all these people together and then bring them in to the central area among uh in monrovia and bring them back through the lines again wow well all of that was uh done well i mean it was and it was done a lot at night uh we had yeah we had to use force that we didn't have because we didn't have any weapons these were just guys in military uniforms americans and all he had to do is give your forces give the idea that you're an american and you're going to have all this american support and don't mess with me while i get this stuff done we're not having to do with your coup or anything else anyway we got through got through the couple of days of that a lot of people were killed i mean wholesale they declared a curfew and if you found anybody walking around at night they shot them they just wow there were bodies all over the highways and and they had central places where they were hauling truckloads of bodies to burn them and what happened after about two and about three days is one of the battalions got organized out it was out it was located out by the airport and came in and put the poo put the coup down well then out of the shadows comes the leadership president doe and all his cohorts came out of the leadership and meanwhile our ambassador finally got back in was a week later and when it came all about why the president called us in and he started chewing us out went down the line and he turned to me and he says and you meaning me caused this coup and i'm holding you personally responsible for the whole coup and of course me being a wise ass and i was i just turned around to him and i said sir if it caught me that created this coup i'd be sitting behind that desk today and you wouldn't be here well he gave me a week to get out of country so from there i was shipped back to to [Music] our headquarters which was in stuttgart germany and had to present a briefing there and explain to him what was going on and so on and you know and why did i embarrass the united states government and all this kind of stuff you know you went you go through all that crap right right and then i flew from there to washington dc to brief the pentagon and sat went down with them and explained to them what was really going on they listened and saw the pieces and how it fit together and we had actually done a pretty fine job we got nobody injured nobody killed all of them rescued and brought in and uh done with the seven seven people that i had oh nice so uh then the state department started putting pressure on president dos and if you don't bring him back in the country we're not giving you any money you saved money or any uh support money they wanted you to go back so you know because he threw us out and anyway they were just putting the force on him so he said okay bring him on back so i all my merry way went back in and uh two days later i'm sitting writing up a report about all this what had happened and i get a call don't come into work today from my but for my assistant and i said what's the problem he says there's a lebanese force that's out ready to assassinate you i said oh jesus i got to go through this now. so what they did is they brought the cia in and a bunch of other groups found this lebanese force and put the put this portion of the coup down that had been started by dough himself president doe himself but it was so then i was they confirmed it and they were they're getting raised there yeah well the guy had a good weigh-in the guy was already it was already in my office he was waiting in the office with a gun really and so i and i was on my getting on my way to drive in i had i was at the house trying to finish up these reports and stuff and so uh you know that no weapons on our once again we had no weapons we had nothing to fight them with they had what they had at all and i and they're lebanese um africa on the west coast is divided amongst all the lebanese they are the big business people they control all the businesses or did in that time frame sierra leone ivory coast uh liberia um senegal all of these countries the lebanese were the primary force war on the east coast it was all the indians indians controlled all of the businesses and that sort of thing on the east coast so the east coast and west coast was divided between lebanese and the indians and everything else so there was a number of people and you had no idea which ones were the guys that were you know uh contracted before to to take care yeah so when it got quieted down uh and and they found the guy a couple of the guys and the cia took care of it i don't know i didn't get involved how or why just that it was done and then my tour came to an end and i had to pack everything up and leave and so uh from that tour uh where did i go well who made that phone call to you to tell you not to come my deputy uh he was he was a lieutenant colonel i was a full colonel at the time he was a lieutenant colonel as my deputy and was in what they call the pentagon where we worked and uh up upstairs and uh he knew the two guys that were there with the guns oh so he was in the same building with these oh yeah but they were there not for him uh colonel harrington they were there for me waiting for you wait for me and uh one of them was a guy who was a friend of the guy if you remember i told you that i met a man in liberia or in sierra leone who asked me if i knew thomas q wamper right and i said i didn't know tom's q up i hadn't met him or anything he's the guy that created the coup and all that information got the doe that said that i was in sierra leone preparing this coup so when they came down the border that's how i got accused of of having something to do with the coup course i had no idea who any of these people were that it was going to go on but the lebanese that i met there is one of the guys that he contracted with to have me assassinated oh wow so it was kind of touch and go i had to leave the country and went back to stuttgart and that's that phone call saved your life yep basically um what was it like for you transitioning back into civilian life it was difficult because i did you do everything at once first of all i had to take the uniform off you know and go to civilian okay and all this did happen in 89 i got divorced in 89 i got remarried in 89 i got a new job in 89. so you talk about you know living on the edge that was living on the edge because you never knew from one day to the next what i was going to be doing right you know and uh i you know trying to explain that to a new wife who came from scotland yeah and uh i was born and raised there and it was actually scottish citizen and the two kids were born and raised in england and i met them in liberia so that was a whole other ballgame but anyway they their only contact with the military was uh when i was in the inspector general and you know with the national guard and of course that wasn't really the real army yeah and so you know trying to explain all of this is uh was going through it but i i i tell you uh you're a better person for it if you can get through it if it you know i hear all these guys [Music] have ptsd and things like that and i can see where they could get but i also remember you know the guy telling me at one time when when things got tough and he said just put it you know put your hand in your pocket and get a firm grip on yourself and move out you know and damn with it you know just get the positive attitude leave the negativity behind yeah and it was hard to do but yeah that's the only thing you could do to keep it going i was going to ask you know did uh did any of it any anything that you saw like from your two tours of vietnam uh you know attempted assassination uh like any of that ever catch up to you uh be honest with you yeah it did but i i like i said i i had some guys that i fought the world of and they had just as many troubles as i did just as many problems just as many things has happened to him and the whole idea behind it was hey you know drive on you can't let yourself go if you do you're going to end up you know um i i the best thing i say to you is it's like like thinking you could be a wimp you know just no good to anybody and i couldn't afford it i had kids i had wives you know i had i had all of that and you know and trying to make a lifestyle and uh you just don't quit you just nothing you can do i've enjoyed it i got out of course i joined all this i belong to this post here military way i belong to forty and eight i belong to uh 660 viet um i don't i belong to the vietnam veterans of america the uh vfw veterans of foreign wars belong to uh well we did we do work with uso uh i'm the senior vice for the chatham council been doing that for 16 years i've been either junior or senior vice for the chatham veterans council and you know just it's just those things keep you together and get your wife and family involved in it uh yeah i feel like it gives you a uh you know it gives you a purpose gives you a purpose in life and everybody needs to have a purpose yeah well that yeah and also what it did was it got people of like background and like uh similarities and things and and allowed you to see how they handled it you know and you know i always used to say when i went to airborne school and with the special forces and i went to all these different schools that were really tough i picked the weakest guy out there and say if that guy can do it damn it i can do it you know yeah it was the same way of playing football or whatever if that guy can do it i can do it you know and and that's your your whole attitude is is that if you ever drop that you might as well just you know hang it up right and yeah it's the same way now you know it's keeping alive a lot of these things that we get involved in and it's uh you know you never don't want to quit you don't want to quit you just want to keep it going right and i've enjoyed it i gosh i had 28 years and [Music] went from nothing to something anyway yeah awesome i enjoyed it well would i do it again yeah i would i would do it again all over again yeah awesome well we're getting ready to wrap it up um you know before i cut tape though you have any last words i mean those are some i don't know if you could get better than what you just said right now but yeah no i i if i had anything to say my biggest thing is for a young guy the military is a good thing i would i would like to see everybody have to serve for their country whether it's peace corps military some type of thing where they had to volunteer or work for their their country so that they feel that they're a part of their country half the people today don't feel they are part of their country this is something a joke you know it's like why do we have to have that flag you know i heard president obama's wife say that wall is for a flag you know yeah all that for a flag that flag has been through hell it's been you know from this point to this point and it'll keep going if you allow it so you know we need to get these young guys behind it and of course um you know we're at the age of the everybody's got a telephone everybody's got this and everybody's got that you know and all that and that's their life and yeah i don't personally understand it i really don't i have a hell of a time just figuring out where my phone is i don't want the damn thing with me i'm serious i don't want you know i i could have a hundred messages on it never know my wife complains bitterly about it you know why don't you answer your phone yeah did i have it with me oh yeah i did i was on silence there was but anyway and trying to get these guys to like when they even come out of the military today to get them to want to belong to an organization we have a bad reputation legions do all they are is old men sitting around smoking and drinking telling war stories that's not what we do i mean sure there's a bar in there but three quarters of them are filled with scad students it's not you know our guys we come in we have a party we'll go we'll have a drink or two and that'll be it they have a meeting you know and we try to get things done yeah um and so try to get that point across to him it's hard it's really hard it is i think one of the things that happened for me that was great is a guy named joe mark while we're grabbing the holy one day and he says i've been trying to get a world war ii monument built in this town for years now he said i'm not getting anywhere he says how about you taking that project over yeah we've got a world war ii monument and that that was it just you know getting the guys together getting the designer together getting all these people together getting it uh and uh getting the money we're still owe on it but it's hey it's there have you seen it no it's on river street the big globe is uh half the size of this building i guess i have to go get some footage and it's it's called the world apart a world apart one half is the japanese theater and the other half is the european theater and there's bricks all around it if people's names dedicated to it and it was designed by a guy named eric meyerhoff and it was built and brought in here these big spheres were built and brought in here it looks and they all have the you know the map of the world on it it's uh you ought to go see it yeah we'll check it out but uh that was my major project that got me in with all the people because i mean i was nasty about it come on get behind this thing yeah matter of fact i had to throw two guys out of my off of the committee i said look you're sitting here throwing all this negative crap do you want it if you do step in let's make it happen it took seven years but we got it yeah and why because the city wouldn't give us the property then they gave us the land and they put it out on at hunter gate well that what's gonna who's gonna go out the hunter gate to see this thing so we fought and we got the city manager and he helped us out and got us the property down there but then they made us take away i had statues uh replicas of each of the branches of service which would be they were six feet tall in uh on pedestals and so on that were going to be the guard around it uh they poo pooed all that so uh i don't know it just that like got us going though and yeah you know that kind of hey that was my thing yeah just keep pushing forward and uh guys there's some really some good folks around here too that yeah they do the same thing they're guys that you can count on you can look behind you and they're they're behind you and they're not yeah putting you down in any way shape or form that's that's the whole thing anyway i yeah i get wound up i guess anyways hey thank you for being here thank you for taking a seat sir and uh uh thank you for your service oh appreciate it thank [Music] yeah i'm you back home [Music]

Channel: Urban Valor

Views: 13,869

Keywords: vietnam war, us army, vietnam, vietnam war documentary, vietnam war stories, vietnam war interview, vietnam combat stories, combat veteran, vietnam veteran, war veteran, veteran shot, veteran survive, what he saw in vietnam, soldier vietnam, soldier vietnam war, vietnam war veteran, urban valor, Jim Vejar, Army Special Forces, Special Forces, vietnam war doc, Josh Gutierrez, UrbanValor, Military vietnam, cnn, fox news, military stories, combat war, in vietnam

Id: 3OzKEbhocTo

Length: 46min 47sec (2807 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 23 2022