Vietnam LRRP Veteran; Capt.William J. Miller. Bronze Star "V" and Purple Heart

thank you for tuning in and welcome back to lest we forget a section of 110 SAS actuals Channel dedicated to U.S Veterans of Foreign Wars today you will meet Captain William J Miller a veteran of the Vietnam War Captain Miller served throughout the 1960s in the Army starting as an infantry unit office sir and ended his time at in the conflict as a lerp alert is an elite fighting force which stands for long-range reconnaissance Patrol the lerp teams were rigorously trained and inserted into some of the most dangerous hostile areas in Vietnam where they were tasked with Gathering Intel on enemy strength positions movements capturing and neutralizing high value targets and being the eyes and ears of larger units often operating in teams of four to six these soldiers conducted over 23 000 long-range patrols during the war what you were about to hear is Captain Miller's story of extraordinary bravery under extraordinary stress Mr Miller tell us what you did in the army well I did several things uh I joined the army and was a private E1 and made sixty seven dollars a month and and had plenty of money you never never was hurting for money um I went to basic training and Fort Knox I went to Advanced individual training AIT in Fort Sill Oklahoma and then back to back to Fort Knox and I went to ACS and became a lieutenant and went to Fort Hood and did some temporary Duty in Europe and back to Fort Hood and Vietnam and um we'll start out with the with d company 38th Infantry and um stayed with them for a while and then went went to the lerps out of that company and worked with them and uh long range root lerps long range Recon Patrol and we worked in three and four and five man teams behind the lines they would fly airplanes over them areas in Vietnam at night with a what what they call a slower unit the sideway looking Airborne radar is what it is and they had thermography uh things on the plane that pick up heat sensors and your body's 98 or 97.8 degrees and so they they could tell that there was people on the ground but a triple canopy jungle they couldn't see them but they knew they were there but they didn't know if they were on the March if they were dug in if it was a an infantry unit or a mess Kit Repair outfit or who it was so they would send teams of us they'd come in in the morning and they'd have a brigade debriefing and they talked to the Brigade commander and they said well we picked up readings here and here and here and a brigade Commander would look to me and I was a platoon leader of the lurps and they'd say how soon can you get a team here here you want to check this out too and I'd give him that information and then I would go back to my unit and assemble the teams and there was two officers in in the in the lerps and one of us would be out in the field all the time and the other one would be on the radios back in the rear so I got time in both places monitoring teams when I wasn't in the field and and upgrading the teams that I was with and um there's always the team leader because I always had the rank and everything but it was uh exciting we used to use the word salute to radio Back Essential Elements and information when we when we'd spot an enemy you know and and which was our job what we were doing we were out there we were at the eyes and the years of the the division and when we would have contact with you I mean I mean visual contact not physical we would use the word salute and each letter the word salute stood for an element of information was s was the size what size the unit are you looking at a was the activity what are they doing are they dug in are they on the March or what L was their location U was your uniform T was the time of day it is and E was equipment what kind of equipment did they have they have mortars and base plates did they have a 51 caliber machine guns and uh what was what were they doing and then the next requirement that we had is what are we going to do about it are we going to adjust the air strike on them or we're going to adjust some artillery I want to put some gun ships on or we're going to try to snag a prisoner um what what what what what what are you going to do and we've radiated that back and more often than not we'd call in some artillery and then then we'd get out of there we we did we did our mission and we looked for a landing Zone where we could get out uh if we could find one where the helicopters would land that would be that'd be excellent um if we didn't sometimes they'd drop a rope lighter down and um you got to be careful when you run up them rope Ladders because the helicopters are blowing that air down and you got a 80 pound rucksack on your back and you're you're upside down on the rope ladder so we always carry the 12 foot length of rope with us and we would tie a Swiss seat you bring the bring the 12th you you get even even ends on on a 12 foot rope and you you tie them like you're starting to see your shoes and then we run it down between your legs and back up here and then tie a square knot and then take a D-Link and snap that in there and you run up the ladder as far as you can so your buddies can can get up behind you and any snap yourself into the to one of the rungs of the ladder that'll that way your hands are free and you can lean back and if if it's a hot LZ can fire yeah you know just keep shooting and until you get out of there and that works well and unless the helicopter Pilots get spooked and they catch a round up there and then they just take off and they drag you through the trees and when you're on the road platter and that's not very fun but uh that's pretty much what I what I what I did and I I caught around one time in the leg and and they uh it went went through a tree or something before it hit me because it stopped down on my femur and it didn't shatter the bone and I got sent back to I got back as far as Camp Zama Japan and I was there for about a week and I thought I went to the Surgeon General at the hospital I said you guys got my orders to go back to the States and he started laughing I was really laughing at I said well he said if you're an officer you're supposed to set the example for your man you'll be back in nam for the weeks out oh so you can recent hell man you're going back I thought I was hurt I had about 178 stitches in my leg and I said what about the extensions he said oh the tune medical take them out don't worry about it so all right man I thought I was hurt yeah so back to Nam and it was on radio watch for another couple months and then back out in the field again I was born in Cincinnati Ohio at Jewish Hospital on December 21st 1947. and uh four days before Christmas December 21st and I grew up in a little town called miamiville and I was the oldest of six kids in the family I went to Milford High School went to Moeller for I went to Parochial School of St Andrews for eight years and I went to Moeller my freshman year and then the folks really couldn't afford to send me there so I went from Mueller to Milford and graduated from Milford and went in the Army shortly after that were you drafted he said no I was I I wanted to marry my high school sweetheart so I I was working at a gas station and I was making like a dollar and a quarter an hour and uh which is all right when you're in high school what gave me enough spending money to go out on dates and do things but I needed a career opportunity and so I went to Ford General Motors Procter Gamble General Electric milacron uh leblanc's any place in Cincinnati that had a career opportunity and all said you're 1A for the draft and and to be a lot more was going on they said well we train you and then and we hire you to train you and then you get drafted and we've wasted a lot of time and and money on you and then we may never see you again so they said take care of your military obligation then come back and talk to us so I went ahead and joined and we weren't allowed to call home for three weeks from boot camp so I called home after three weeks and was talking to my mom and she said you'll never guess what we got in the mail yesterday I said what was that Mom she said we got your draft notice I said well call him up tell him I'm already here you know so they had my number coming and going you know I was I was going one way or another when you when you uh enlisted did you choose your MOS no no they uh they they took a series of tests downtown and before you were sworn in and then you go back to the recruiter and based on your scores they tell you what your what you can do what what the Army can has to offer and I took these I did really good on these test scores and uh I came back to the recruiter the next day and he says you can do anything harms God and so my dad was a paratrooper in second world war and jumped into Normandy and that kind of stuff and so I said I want to be a paratrooper and he said no problem we'll send you the basic and I went to Fort Knox and went to basic training there and and then uh little do I know if you had an IQ at least your belt size you could go to jump school so it's just only two things to fall out of the air bird [ __ ] and paratroopers so anyway uh we did all that and uh yeah so what was your time in basic life um it was an experience it was uh they definitely taught you how to get up in the morning and he taught you how to make your beds and they taught you self-discipline and how to keep your self-organized and you're you know you're property organized and protected [Music] um it was good yeah I think everybody should I think every person in the United States male and female should do at least two years in the military it would teach you uh some it would teach you some personal responsibility for yourself and it would teach you some self-discipline and realize you can do things you didn't think you could do and uh it's a good thing there are a lot of funny stuff and uh you it pushed you you know to beyond what you thought your limits were and it was it's a good thing and I think everybody should do that this is a great country uh it's got its it's got its faults but I've been I've been to a lot of places in this whole world and and uh it's the best place I've known you know you always think when you grow up in your hometown I can't wait to get out of here you know and then you get out and you see some of the world and you know I've been to Europe I've been uh over the South East Asia and Japan and all over the country and you know ain't no place like home man it's you know that's where it's at you know when for me anyway what year did you go into Bay City uh 66 January 66. yeah when did you know that you were here's some advice if you want to go join the military try to join in the spring you know I joined in the middle of the winter in January and uh man it was brutal it was cold I mean it was snow on the ground and you're out there laying on the ground shooting at the rifle ranges and uh uh it was it was rough because of the cold and I would it would be a lot nicer if it was a little warmer looking yeah but it was basic training was like a picnic compared to Officer school Officer school was was brutal I mean they tried to make you crack up and lose your cool there in the school so you don't do it in the heat of combat they want to stress you out as much as they can and they and they aggravate you and torment you what kind of things would they do to you oh well your floors had to be absolutely spit shined you had you could you could take your fingers like this and you had to see them in the floor you know they had to be that clean and the Tactical officers would come in with muddy boots and stuff and do spirals you know with their boots and stuff and and everything all the Foot Lockers had to be lined up perfect we had pulled strings on them and everything in the Foot Locker had to be lined up all the toothbrushes had to be the same way all the Shavers had to be the same way all the bars of soap had to be the same way everything perfect and if it wasn't they'd dump them all and then and then and then they tell you you got an hour to get this place straightened up we're having an inspection and nobody's getting out of here on the weekend or getting any kind of passes unless this place passes inspection well this went on for something like 13 weeks because we didn't get out of the company area because we couldn't pass inspection and we finally got it down where we thought we had it perfect everything was perfect I mean we used baby blankets to polish the floors and bowling alley wax and the floors were perfect everything was lined up everything was clean and and the Tactical officer comes in and he's wearing white gloves and he says y'all's ready for inspection yes sir and everybody else yes sir and so he said well if you pass the section you can have uh you can get off off the out of the company area and go to the PX this weekend or go to the enlisted man's club and he takes the white gloves off and the springs that are on the bed that hold the mattresses up he takes them twist it twist that white glove and goes down through the springs hey oh look at the spill I can't believe you're living in filth like this oh my God you're not going anyplace this week and yeah everybody's like oh man yeah what else could there be you know and uh that was one one of their and every week it was something else you know up underneath a locker and on the on the rim of the metal of the Locker on the bottom side of um it just uh pick up a pick up a bunk and rub underneath where the leg is you know oh look at that's disgusting how can you live like this you know and that was some of the stuff and then around Christmas time you have a yeah you got you it was it was about 2 30 in the morning and it was close to Christmas and Here Comes This tactical officer in tweeting this whistle just as loud as you can oh man you know get up get up get up well what a fort once you standing by your box of attention everybody's standard butter bunks in their underwear and he said now I want you to strip your beds down and over top of your mattress you got a mattress cover which is like a big bag so you take that out and they said I'll take everything in your Foot Locker and dump it into your mattress cover so you can take all the soap and the razors and everything you got in there you dump that in there he said now I want everybody to grab a handful of cotton balls and grab a handful of compost and we're going to March down the hole here and we're going to throw the cotton bowls up in here and act like it's snow and it's Christmas time and you're delivering packages and so uh this is 2 30 3 o'clock in the morning yeah and so you do all that and you get everything's a mess of cotton balls all over and uh you're you're a whole Foot Locker displays in in your mattress covers now once you stand back in front of your boats or stand back for your bus and we're going to have an inspection here in in an hour and a half and I want to make sure everything's ready and so maybe it'll take all of us back to have to set all this up pull all them strings make your boat back up polish your floors and uh hope you can pass inspection let's do stuff like that just messing with you yeah just just to mess with you foreign class had more people killed in Vietnam than any other uh class that went through there we had about my bookmate got killed in Vietnam he was a good guy too man you're one of the nicest fell as you ever want to be yeah yeah when uh what did you know about Vietnam during like before you enlisted there was just a war going on and so you didn't know much about it it was a war you've seen some stuff on the TV at the newsman you know those I was too much chasing my my girlfriend around he had been thinking about too much of anything else in high school and I played music too I played in the band in high school when did you find out that you were going to Vietnam right after I graduated from uh Officer school ultimate assignment Vietnam it said on my orders and uh after I graduated from a officer school I went and bought a new Corvette and I had a big chunk of money in there don't buy me a bet it's all the hot stuff man I was I was still 18 I had another two weeks to go before I turned 19 when I bought it and I'll never forget it it was a it was a Fastback you know what it was a 65 that and the payment was 102 a month and the insurance payment was 120 a month I paid more for the insurance than I did the car so uh but that's hot stuff man young Lieutenant man driving around a new quarterback sure I enjoyed that so tell me about your trip to Vietnam you're for like uh getting there uh getting there well I went to uh I said all my goodbyes here at home they had to do a little party for me going away party and uh said all my goodbyes and everything uh I been living with this German girl this is I don't think you want to hear this I was living with this German girl out at Fort Hood for a year and we're sitting in the airport and I'm getting ready to go to Vietnam and I'm getting ready to catch a plane to go go to California and then we're gonna leave out of California so she says bills there's there's something I'm just telling you I thought she was going to tell me she was pregnant and she said I'm married I said I've been living with you for a year I said where's your husband I said well he's in Germany she said I just came over to visit my sister here in Fort Hood she's married to a soldier and I met up with you and you know uh who's having so much fun I just stayed here and I said well I don't know what to tell you man I'm going to Vietnam and she's living in my house that I had driving my Corvette and I'm leaving everything there with her you know and uh oh yeah that was a mine that was on the mind-blowing events in my life so anyway I go out to California and I've got 700 cash which was a lot of money at the time and I thought yeah I don't know if I'll ever be coming back here you know I don't know if I'll make a tune on I might also have is fun so I hooked up with a couple hookers [Music] and I had a real good time for about three days before I got on a plane to go to Vietnam yeah and uh uh on where we're standing on the street corner on Market Street in San Francisco and talking to these three hookers and I said well which one of you guys is the best he said honey I'll bounce your ass off the ceiling and and the other one said that ain't nothing you get for what I'll do and and the other one says come on let's all go with him and I had three women there for about three days and um of course uh that pretty much did in my 700 but I'll never forget it then so I get over to Vietnam and I'm I'm flying in the plane over there and there was a guy was going back for another tour and he's telling all these he was a sergeant and he's telling all these stories and he says yeah I remember the first time I came over here they opened the door up the first guy I got shot right in the head yeah I'm thinking I wonder if that's true or if he's just messing with us and I thought to myself well I'm going to be the first one out the door so we get there and uh landed a Cameron Bay and this place was you weren't even allowed to carry magazines in your in your weapons there you know uh it was that secure and I thought well this place ain't so bad you know and uh yeah you had to have your boots polished and everything and they wanted you to be oh uh distracted stuff it was a and that was pretty neat and then you get to the Repo Depot replacement Depot where they farmed me out to different places and um and they sent me up there to the fourth division there for a while and anyway what'd you do in the fourth division Fort lerp that's what I was alert lurks lerp training was was strenuous we had to do six miles every morning before breakfast but we do the daily dozen uh exercise and then we we had to run every place we went and uh in the lure Comcast and he did did the six miles to do six miles and less than 90 minutes and you had to uh do 78 rungs on the ladder bars and 10 chin UPS then you could eat breakfast and that was pretty uh I was in good shape then man uh how did you become a how did you the opportunity arise and become that um I was survived this fire fight and uh the Brigade Commander said son I'm gonna get you out of this outfit I said thank you sir because I was I was just pick up a lot of stuff and uh he said we're singing lerps and I thought to myself am I jumping from the skillet to the fire or what it is but you know we were just a lot of times just sit on Hills and wait to get attacked along the border and you know and they wouldn't attack you unless they thought they could completely overrun you and be back in a neutral country by Daybreak because they could never occupy any land if they did we'd pulverize it with B-52 strikes so they could never really hold any territory they it was always hit and run stuff and they wouldn't attack you unless they thought they could overrun you so so if you and you always knew a little bit ahead of time when you were going to get attacked because they would they would mortar you first they would zero in the landing Zone where you're bringing in the beans and bullets and the mail and stuff and um they dropped mortars you know every day maybe first ones would land Way South of the Hill the second would land over the other side of the hill and they started walking them in and they boom then they started landing on the LZ and then it also try to zero in to talk the Tactical operations center where the antennas were the radiative combo is and when they had both of them screwed in it was just a matter of time before they were going to hit you with a ground assault and so we would have like a mad minute every every other day or every you know once every two or three days the mad minute is around dust you everybody on the perimeter shoots your guns and and they're out there they're out there with a with a piece of pencil and a paper and pencil and they're they're saying okay well they got an automatic weapon here they got a a quad 50 here they got machine guns here and they're mapping up our perimeter so as soon as it got dark you switch everything around so they they don't know where everything is and uh but but then you get hit you know and you better hope you got all your stuff together but they would always when you set up your defensive perimeter they would give you anything you wanted I mean I had barbed wire stacked 12 feet high and probably 20 feet deep and inside the barbed wire I'd put frag core this that frag cord was about the size of your thumb and it was plastic explosive but it was like rope and it had like valve springs on it and I would lace that inside the the barbed wire and else I had razor wire and you twist that up and put that inside the barbed wire too and put what they call a German tangle foot that's that razor wire you pull it tight and you twist it so if they cut it it'll coil up on them and cut them anyway you put that in in inside the barbed wire you lace it in there and stake it down really tight and then you put frag cord back you put a couple rows of frag cord now these are this is a plastic explosive and and has like valve springs on it and and uh you see them if they get up into the barbed wire you you detonate one of them and that'll that'll blow them off of away from The Wire temporarily and then um you have different different rows of Defense you know you got another one of those yet in the middle of the barbed wire and one behind the barbed wire and then you got Claymores in there too and you got them about every eight feet and then stagger them back about 10 feet behind each other but they're staggered because the back blast will blow them over if you and you Gotta Be You got to be really alert because they'll sneak up on you and pick the Claymores up and turn them backwards on you you know if you're not really careful but you know we never had that happen to us because I heard cases of that going on yeah so you're um when you first got in you were attached to or assigned to the fourth ID yeah I was tacitive to Fourth uh D company third of the eighth infantry was a straight leg outfit and they what do you mean by straight leg uh they weren't paratroopers or anything ah just straight leg outfit and uh we I remember my first firefight it was we were moving Search and Destroy Mission and first platoon took the point second platoon was over here third tombs over here and fourth platoon was dragged and then headquarters platoons in the middle and you just and you walked through the jungle and until the point hit somebody and or you know somebody started shooting and and somebody started shooting and of course you hit the deck and somebody got hit and they were yelling for medic and they they pulled him back from the front and I remember seeing it seeing this guy that got hit by holy [ __ ] man it's just a real deal here and uh They're Playing for Keeps man this is you know uh they never told us that they shot back you know when you're going through all this training I was trying to get the buttons off of my shirt so I could get lower to the ground I was I was uh I was thinking uh wow I got I got a year of this to go man I hope I make it through this brown what was that mission uh Search and Destroy yes without patrolling looking looking for trouble and uh and we ran into something it was a sniper he killed two two people and wounded one we never did find a sniper called in some artillery and stuff and it got quiet and and then we moved out again for a couple days didn't have anything after that and went back to the Firebase you what they would do is they would occupy hilltops we would say our our Battalion would large hilltops and a company would take this quarter of or sector of area and they would run patrols off of it off of the mountain her off the hill it was Hills and cleared out there was nothing they didn't have anything and they'd come back in and be company go out and see company and D company and and and if the area was all cleared then they just pick you up and take you to another Hill and do the same thing over and over but then uh easier on one of you are sitting on a Hilltop also you get sniper fire and that's not good we at cyberfire you can't get out of your trenches all day um if you got a [ __ ] you got a [ __ ] in your steel pot and throw it over the out of the trenches where wait till it gets dark and then we'd always had a four or at least a four roller on the hills with that many people he always had had rats too on these a lot of these fire bases um because you know we were eating sea rations everybody everything's eating you know cans and stuff but nobody really liked the ham and lima beans yeah was one of the favorite things so uh you got a dump where you dump all the stuff you know tin cans of stuff of course rats would find it and you had to do something to amuse yourself on these hilltops you're gonna be up there for a couple weeks maybe and so we would have the big rat contest see who could shoot the biggest rat now you can't just shoot the rat with a I guess M16 because then if it's at night everybody's up because they think it might be a sniper so we make soap rounds and you had to be out on the front to know about a soap round you take the the the bullet out and you pour all the gun powder out there you put soap in there and we used to get these SP packs were called special packs once a week it had writing paper in it and soap and some razors and pencils and paper and it had Chuckles candy bars and it had craft candy caramels and it had Hershey's tropical bars so uh that that was in cigarettes had cigarettes in there too that was the SP pack so if you make one of these soap rounds you take the bullet out and you take it the Luxe soapy I remember it was Lux and you cram out in there and then you put the bullet back in then you put that in your gun and you put one of them craft candy caramels up in the window of your bunker and you wait for the rat to come get that and when you did it when he does you pop in with that soap around and soap Brown sounds a lot different than a regular round off so as soon as you do have a Supra Sovereign if you think it's big enough to to enter into big rag contest he'd take it up to this board and you put him up there and you put your name on him and they put your name on the board so so at the end of the week if you got the biggest right you win the money yeah so that's that was one of the things we did for Grims and Giggles yeah and played cards a lot um and it always worked out to whoever was going to go on r r would go with a bundle of money I mean every every pot that you played had six seven hundred dollars in it you know because we had we had a bunch of twenty dollar bills no place to spend the money when you're out in the field you know so what the heck so whoever was going to learn Army I want to make sure they had a good time so they they go on our arm a couple thousand dollars you know we'd play till whoever was going on our would win you know that's some of the humorous part of it all when you got there you were issued an M14 or M16 M16 yeah and they're all right in a fire fight but you run about four or five mag suit on rock and roll man they'll start cooking off you know and so you got to be got to be careful with your once you've gone you gotta shoot short bursts and in a firefight you want to be careful don't just waste the ammunition man make sure you got something you do shooting at tell me about your gear setup oh wow uh hit a rucksack it weighed about 85 pounds and in that you had two canteens of water plus two canteens on your web build you had two ammo pouches with with eight uh each one had four magazines in it that's eight eight magazines plus two magazines in your gun one taped upside down so you can just uh flip it over and if you need ammunition real quick I always carry two bandoliers across my chest and they had about uh seven like seven or eight magazines uh carried two of them across my chest three or five or got hit in the chest and might stop around or slow it down anyway um carried forehand grenades on my web built and two on my web gear and then I also a lot of times with carry a Satchel full of hand grenatched a variety in the variety I would have see us uh uh gas and I had white phosphorus and I had a thermite grenade which would melt my radio so they would get frequencies if it was going to get compromised or we were getting overrun or something and uh yeah it's all the last thing you want to do in a firefight is shoot your gun because it makes a distinct sound and they can home in on it you know and you don't want to keep shooting from the same position either because somebody's out there maybe behind a log looking and they'll see a flash here and they'll see another flash there and then maybe one more Flash and then by then they got a bead on you and and they open up with a spray there in that area so you want to shoot and Scoot or grenades grenades they they can't tell where they come from they just something lands there they don't know if it's going up over there over there or where it's coming from so that that kind of conceals your position and and uh there's little things like that to keep you alive in these firefighters and stuff some of the alert missions are pretty uh exciting uh so when you um how long were you with the the fourth before you were most of the time most of my time yeah it was it was in their area the two-core area which was the responsibility of the fourth infantry division and tell me the story about how you were approached to become alert well it was we went through a firefight and it was a pretty bad fire fight and I can't remember the hilltop number I was the only officer in the company that survived it and Brigade Commander came by and I was 20 years old ahead and it might have been like or we had 20 because I turned 21 over there uh the gay Commander said you're the only officer that survived this he says I want me to get you out of this afternoon son I said thank you sir I appreciate it because we were we had we were getting a lot of casualties on a regular basis and so um uh they sent me alerts long range Recon so I had to go to Loop School down in the track why to get a pre-loop school back in the fourth infantry division and I had to go to lerp school down in the trang it was ran by his special forces that's when I was attached to the fifth Special Forces and then I went back up to the fourth division after graduating from the recondo school they called it and we had we had four people killed in a final exam at the condo School we started out with I think 99 people and I think 14 of us graduated what was uh at school like that school was tough you had you had to run the the six miles every day in training it was just just run it six miles in 90 minutes or less you had to be real proficient at map Reading adjusting artillery air strikes um you learned a quick disconnect methods for when you if you run into contact them you say when you're in forming a team and you're following a company of 130 people you know it's not your job to make contacts your job to observe and keep an eye on them and if you get compromised if they know you're there and they started chasing you then uh you got to have ways of breaking contact and and we have quick quick fire drills to to do that that's uh explain how they work there before the first man shoots his mag and the second man and he turns to the rear the second man shoots his mag third man throws the grenade fourth man takes up and then you get out of there and while that's going on the radio man's get dialing in the Forward Air controller the fact and to get some air support or he's got Justin the frequencies on his radio to get artillery support and fire some artillery and get to cover the withdrawal and we were all well trained to do this I mean it was like boom boom boom I mean just everything went off without a hitch and the only problem with lurp is when you get inserted when you you go out on a mission you run the risk of dropping yourself right in the middle of them and that happened a time or two and you hear a bunch of gunfire over the radio and then silence nothing and we figured that they bought the farm or or got captured and uh and they would usually wait a couple of weeks and then send an arrow rifle platoon out to that location to see what they could find sometimes they find some pretty grotesque stuff they found one guy with a cleaning Rod driven through his head and hanging in the fork of a tree like that they found another guy who was buried head first and just had his feet and ankles up out of the ground and uh he had some found some guys with their penises cut off and shoved in their mouths and stuff like that and yes uh and that that turns you into some kind of monster because you you when you see that and and if you knew the people man it's that's even makes you more of a uh I don't know how to explain it it just it turns a switch off or it switched on inside you that makes you uh a stone cold killer you know somebody's going to pay for this and they're going to pay for it just like they you know they want to get some of their own medicine so you turn into some kind of homicidal maniac and then it's I don't know I don't know how to I don't know how to explain this um when you get back when you get back to the compound in the rear and you're with all your buddies and in your outfit and they're all going through the same stuff you know then it it you gotta lighten up a little bit so it becomes a game and you start competing on confirmed kills how many confirmed kills you got you know and it's like a comment it's like a football game it's like you're going hunting when you go out in the field man if you don't find it's like going hunting it's it is the ultimate hunt man against man where the game shoots back it's the ultimate hunt and if you go out and you don't bag anything and it's like um as a bum Mission you know but uh and you start thinking like that and with all the training that you've had and all the skills that you have you you kind of feel like you're Bulletproof and especially at that age I guess and had something to do with it but um I don't know where I'm going with this wow and then I remember this we we ambushed a point element my alert team did and we killed four guys but when they moved through the jungle they would have a point element 15 minutes behind him would be maybe the main body and then maybe 15 minutes behind that would be the drag Gap element and the point element was supposed to spring any ambushes or something to keep the main element from getting involved in some but we try to wipe out a point element but we'd carry sweetie skate nine millimeter submachine guns with silencers on them and would wipe out the point element and go up there and and see if they had any kind of intelligence you know laundry list or what outfit they were in wallets and stuff we'd take them back and we worked out this point element and we got back and got got away and the main element didn't even didn't know that we had done this and they just came on them but the trail and we we beat them up pretty bad and they started freaking out and then by then I had the artillery coming in and started adjusting artillery on them and then we got out of there but I snatched this one guy's wallet and we're we're in the helicopter we got extracted we're in the helicopter giving each other high fives and knowing we wreaked a lot of Havoc with them and and uh the one guy had a belt buckle we have a star on it he'd have an award trophy and uh another guy had an AK-47 and I had to swallow it and I opened the swallow it up and there was a heart Red Heart cut out of construction paper with a picture of his wife and kids and yeah that guy got to me and I got you know it it got to me a little bit there but it really got to me a lot after I got out of the war and been back to a safe area in the United States where I could unwind all this I think I think lerps was safer because you're with more well-trained men and you you you pick the terms to fight whereas when you're with a regular combat unit you're you've got 120 men and you're sitting on a hill just waiting to be attacked and they're not going to come after you unless they can they think they can completely overrun you and uh when you do get attacked you know you're in for a hell of a night they're gonna try to be gone before Daybreak because they know they can't hold the hill because it will annihilate it but I got a funny alert story what they uh they were flying the airplanes over at night they've seen as well used trail on top of this Ridge line and they wanted the team to go in there so I mean me and three other guys when it was four Man team so we got inserted about uh a mile away from from there we stand we're going to sort of down the Valley now we need inserted you make the plane the helicopter will make three or four different stops in different places so if the helicopter is observed they know they might be dropping a team off but we don't know where at which place they dropped them off at so you got a little bit of element of surprise and while the helicopters there and you're you're exiting it you run as far and as fast as you can away from it because your your noise is covered by the noise of the helicopter and then you wait and you shouldn't listen for about two hours to see if anything's coming for you ever or whatever you know and then and then you only move at certain times you don't move between 11 and one because people are eating and they're sitting down being quiet and you don't want to be crashing Through the Jungle or or you know and walk upon them because they'll hear you coming because they're sitting down being quiet and um do different things like that anyway uh uh we were supposed to observe this Trail we got inserted and humping up to there and we're in Triple Canopy jungle and at the bottom of this Ridgeline is another Trail that's well used that they didn't know about and so I said well let's let's set up between the two Trails so we can kind of monitor both of them and in real thick brush and stuff so you know they can't see us for the trails but we can you know see what they can see things moving so first night was quiet second night we hear some movement on one side I was so I'm dial my radio in for the artillery and now we got movement in backups we've got movement on the side I was moving on this side we got movement on three sides of something we're gonna get [ __ ] surrounded if we get careful so I get on the radio and I got my poncho liner wrapped around my head so I could and I'm speaking I'll get I'll get the artillery red leg red leg right I guess it's two Fox we got a condition red fire concentration Delta hotel 302 and so they drop around there I know she did Direction with my compass to where it landed I gave him that direction I say left 200 meters dropped 100 meters and now I got it coming in pretty close I'll drop it another 50 meters and we got stuff tingling through the through the trees it's that close and I'm walking it all the way around us and hear some screams and and then and then I'll give them a check fire and check fire and he stopped firing and we don't hear anything so it just went on all night uh this one went seemed like oh it seemed like eternity at the time and it was probably probably three or four hours so uh Daybreak comes and things are quiet and the artillery people said we want wanted we want a BDA bomb damage assessment we want to know what we hit there you fired up almost a half a million dollars worth of our tour last night yeah got a little bit to eat we went out to do the small damage assessment so you never walk on Trails when you're a Recon team you know walk beside them so you don't leave Footprints or any you know just you were there and we started seeing all this red fur and apparently we wiped out a community of orangutans that night and they had us they had us scared to death you know this stuff uh and it was orangutans it wasn't even north of Vietnamese it was animals so I said they want a BDA man we fired up on this a half a million dollars three quarters of a million dollars worth of artillery last night they want a body count how many of these Critters you think we killed well he's five I called back in for the body counts and we got at least five bodies and it looks like they dragged a bunch of more off that's all we got here so I can't really tell you how many we got you guys got at least five that we we know of and like I said there's drag marks and blood stains where they dragged off some other people so and that's all I got for you it was we never really say anything else for the rest of the time over there so we're going back in and that was the end of the mission wasn't a typical lerp Mission look like the Brigade Commander would have a briefing in the morning from these airplanes flew overnight and they'd talk about what they've seen or what they picked up um the helicopter people every Base Camp Unit was there the helicopter pilots and stuff it was represented the Infantry people were represented everybody's with alerts were represented and uh if somebody's seen a Pilots well we've seen a trail over here or whatever they plotted on the map and Brigade commanders sit back and look at it all and he he he's the one that made the decisions and you know I wanna I wanna check this out a little further so that they either have an arrow rifle platoon dropped in or a lerp team it's usually alert team goes in to developers since we see what's going on and uh develop a situation and [Music] a lot of times if we're teams is at least a company a man and they they pull alert team out then they send an arrow rifle platoon or a company an infantry company you know land them in there and they'll try to develop the situation and Search and Destroy you know whatever's there would would be what the mission would be was there ever a Time and and you're alert you know being alert that you were just uh you just like this is it this is it for me no but it was when I was with the Infantry outfit yeah we're getting overrun that's what the newspaper article was about yes tell me about the newspaper article well we were huh we were the thing was Doc Peck a place there was altitude was out up there on his Hilltop and we got we got attacked and we were getting overrun and it was to the point where it was it's every man for yourself just to save yourself do whatever you got to do to save yourself so I was told my guys to pull off the hill and I'm gonna adjust an airstrike or our toner strike on top of the hill where we're at right where we're at and so I didn't I didn't I didn't want to say you you and you stay here and cover our withdrawal so I told him I said give me give me some hand grenades and give us give me a couple boxes of uh or give me give me a couple magazines and and you guys take off get off the side Hill I'm gonna um didn't radio man you stay with him and make sure it doesn't have that radio and I'll hold them off like as long as I can while you're getting out of here and so that's what I did and I I flashed back on Fess Parker is Davy Crockett at the Alamo and I was that went that went through my mind I said well you're going down like David Crocker did man you know yeah they're gonna get you but you're gonna take a bunch of them with you so that was my mindset and uh I laid down with a lot of fire and I'd move and I'd shoot and Scoot and then I threw a bunch of hair grenades and I kept them off our background then I caught around in a leg but it went through a sandbag or a piece of wood or overhead I was firing from behind a bunker and I was just kind of laying on top of the bunker but behind it and most of the time and I'd go from bumper to Bunker in in this little in this certain sector just keeping them because that kept them off our backs those guys get off the side of the Hill you know I got off the side of the hill and got artillery and I pulled poured the artillery on top of the hill but I didn't think I was gonna make it out of that one but I did okay I'm sure I get fired up emotionally better thinking about it uh that was a rough night yeah I didn't think I was going to get it I didn't think I was going to make it through that much but I did and then there's another time I was not sure if we was going to make it through our mission was to there were there was a regiment coming down the Ho Chi Minh trail and was getting ready to cross into Vietnam and we were sitting right on the border and our mission was to who let let them know when they when they crossed the border to come into Vietnam and as soon as they did we had a B-52 strike waiting for him and they came through and we they wanted to know their location and they wanted to know our location and they said you need to get the hell out of there you're not out of the safety range you have to be at least a mile away from them when we dropped this stuff or you know you're not you know so they said get it get the hell out of there as far and as fast as you can and so we dropped our rucksacks and we've still got that web Gear with you know we still got one meal in your pocket and you've still got a couple meals in your in your butt pack and you still got ammunition and Hand Grenades and um but you'd weigh a lot less because you drop the rucksack so we got out of there and they wanted to know our location and we told them they said I don't know you're right on the border so we got we got two minutes till Splash time that's when the stuff's coming down and they said get behind the biggest tree you can find lay on your back and open your mouth keep your mouth open and uh and uh because the concussion and she said all right so they dropped the [ __ ] and um they called us back after there's three plane lives of them and I mean it reaped it reeked destruction then and they called us back after the after it was over and they said too foxy or you still with us I said yes sir we're still here and it's so good uh once you get us some PDA bomb damage assessment and I said Roger uh um we'll get we'll get we'll get right at it we went over there and this this looked like another planet where they dropped these 500 pound bombs I mean they put craters in the ground that you parked cars and and smoke coming up from the center of them but it smelled like cordite and gunpowder and I mean bodies everywhere equipment everywhere things and trees things I mean wiped out the whole bunch of them and they wouldn't and there wasn't anything left I said you know and so I called it back and I said I think he worked a whole unit out and they said all right we'll come and extract it so all right so we went to a place where an LG where they could get us out of there we left out of there um about six months later they captured a prisoner somebody somebody one of the units did and they they I was at the debriefing in the morning at the Brigade headquarters and they said we captured this prisoner that was with the whatever group it was that came across the border and he said there is less than 12 survivors out of the whole regiment he got to be one of them how many people's in a resume oh 1300 oh wow I mean he just annihilated a whole bunch of them I mean it was um it it I don't even know how to describe what it looked like it was it was um I'm just glad it wasn't dropped on us you know you look at you know the mindset you have in combat the unless I had in top battles I wasn't killing people I was saving people for every one of them I killed one of our guys is going to get to go back home and that's that's how that's how I rationalized it and that's what kept my sanity I think well most of it that's what was it like being that close to that blast scary it it rumbled it shook the ground it picked us up off the ground a little bit and and I I kept my mouth open and then uh it was scary it was scary because you you know you think well maybe one of the fins on one of them bombs is gonna go wacko in a stray one will come over here you know and uh yeah uh napalm's a scary thing too I've seen it dropped and it just sucks the air right out of the oxygen right out of the air when you grasping for breath yeah yeah we we don't I can't remember what hill was on and they've dropped it it was at night too because so it had we're getting attacked it was somewhere around dock two and the company Commander said everybody take a trip flare and a trip flare as soon as you pop it it lights up everybody throw a trip flare out in front of your position so everybody throws one out and then they see a white circle uh the aircraft do the Forward Air controller and the Jets they see a white circle that they know that's your perimeter and then you take a shoot a compass Azimuth to the enemy and then they know what size of the circle to come in on and and drop their stuff and I'm I'm watching these Jets and they let go of this this napalm and they like we're right we're right here and they're letting go and stuff back here and it's tumbling over right over top of us I'm thinking oh man I hope I hope that clears us and it landed about uh 50 yards out in front of us and and man if if they were like this when they were running that's the way you found them on the ground they look like crisper crispy Critters it was and it was a mess yeah I can't remember what Firebase that was though but you know would you like being in a firefight well I was an officer so I always had men under my command um in a combat unit is the platoon leader you have a sector on a perimeter that you're in charge of and you want to make sure that you keep your sector secure and safe and so when the shooting starts you want to make sure that your men stay alive but whatever you know there's little there's little things you can do to increase your odds keep your head down um don't expose yourself and shoot and Scoot don't keep shooting from the same position all the time you know and use your hand grenades use your weapon as your rifle was the last resort in combat only only I think it's only was it 12 I think I used to know is stats only 12 percent of people are killed with small arms fire everything else is artillery grenades uh air strikes that kind of thing but um and also rank ranked the battlefield if you shoot a guy who drops you know five feet in front of you or for five yards in front of you put a couple more rounds in them just make sure that you know make sure they're dead if they got a enough life left in them if they can pull a pin on a grenade or something they might just lay there and play dead and until they have opportunity to do that or some of them will they had Tricom grenades but sometimes if they had American grenades they would pull a pin on them and just lay on them and so you know with their last dying effort and just lay there and then the next morning when you're policeing the battlefield you know a lot of times they'll turn the bodies around and you hear ping you know uh you can outrun a hand grenade you you can stand here and pull a pin on it sit at that table and outrun it um I've done that before we did that as an exercise and loops I don't know why we did that but we did that we had about seven seconds you covered a lot of ground and so because they have a 30 mil 30 meter bursting area um what my in a firefight I was more concerned with keeping my men alive and safe and I was I had all these extraordinary um devices Claymores frag cord um and things and booby traps I had I had I had a there was ah when setting up a defensive position I would go out and likely Avenues of approach where if I was the enemy and I was attacking this position I would do this and this and this and there was a big and when you clear these hilltops they just take they'd drop in a backhoe and they'd you know clear out an area and then on the outside of the cleared areas big trees and stuff uh well you know if I was going to attack us I'd get behind this big big tree log here it's about this big around and I'd use that for a fighting position so I go out there and I put two pounds of C4 underneath of it this tree and then and then run my deck cord up there and I got I got this thing to look at all right that's my tree booby trap and I've got um some stuff over here like like that that's number two this is my frag gourd going through here this is uh this is my clay mowers my first row of Claymores this is my second row of Claymores so we get attacked I'm kind of watching this and I'm watching my guys and I'm making sure that they have enough ammo if they don't I'll I'll locate a central ammunition point where they can they can get some more ammo if they run out and I'm gonna I'm gonna blow this up when I if I see a muzzle flash come from behind that log where I got the C4 I'm gonna pop that thing and I did man the thing jumped up and got two of them I got pictures of that and and and those pictures there's two guys laying up underneath of that thing um and I'm I'm doing I'm doing that I'm I'm making sure that that we're keeping them in the wire or out of the wire with all the other defensive uh items that I have available and I'm yelling and I'm I'm yelling at guys too you know one guy was standing up you know why are you standing up man I was looking for the Hammerhead you trying to get killed man and get down yeah we're in a fire there's you know and uh it's like like a mother hen and in a lerp that's one situation in a firefight as an officer you know and and then there's situations where it's every man for herself if you if you get into a situation like that then it's the mindset is stay alive whatever it takes to stay alive you might be getting overwhelmed here you might be getting overrun but maybe next week you'll have the advantage and uh but you got to stay alive to do that so so whatever it takes to stay alive stay alive and that's the mindset um you know I have time to to worry about it until it's all over when it's all over then you guys as an officer you guys are looking to you for wisdom and guidance and you have to be there for them you don't have time for yourself and then when I when you do have time yourself you're out of the army the war is over you're back in the States then it hits you and that's what happened to me and you know I would like I said it was a lot of changes for about a dozen years when I came back I finally got through all that it has stages at the time when you're being attacked it's like I killed him but he because if I didn't he would kill me and he was getting close to where he could do that and so uh I just saved myself or I saved one of my buddies that's fighting right alongside of me and uh when he goes down if there isn't something behind him I'm gonna pump a couple more rounds in him make sure he's gone I don't have to worry about that and uh I'm doing my job I'm I I just saved a couple of Americans by doing this I and this is you really don't have time at the instant it's happening you know it's survival is you're in a survival mode you know I got to survive this these these people are for for real they're trying to kill me they're trying to take my life they're trying to just to kill me and once you've had the baptism of fire and you've seen casualties of your own men and and you realize hey this is for Real this this ain't no game man this is these people are actually trying to kill me and they will if they if they get the opportunity and and uh you know you're in survival mode it's just you don't even think about it it's just boom boom boom and and in that situation if you're under under attack um other situations if you're on a sniper Mission or something like that that's a whole different it's a whole different mindset then it's like hunting you carry the M14 with the optic yeah and carry the Weatherby and Weatherby is good point and um then it's hunting it's like you're going deer hunting boy it's a uh it's challenged you got you gotta shoot and Scoot you gotta you gotta nail your Target and get out of there if it's a you're trying to assassinate a provincial leader or something like that or whatever the mission is um that that's that's a whole different that's a whole different thing that's um each firefight has its own personality or tone set of circumstances but it's all basically the same it's you're you're you're you're caught up in an ultimate hunt where where the game shoots back and it's for real and and [Music] um when it really starts affecting you is after it's all done and you're in a safe place where you can catch your breath and you're back in the United States and you start going back through your memory banks and you think about this and you think about that man you realize what the hell have you just been through and you realize what the hell you just did and um and then then like like I said to the Survivor guilt comes comes to haunt you some of the people that you killed comes back to haunt you the guy with the wallet and the construction paper heart and his wife and kids and he started having some a different mindset about it about certain things but but on the whole you know you're you're in survival mode and it's there's nothing glorious about it at all it's a Time when you start competing with your buddies for body counts and stuff where it's where it almost becomes a game [Music] I think you're I think that's your not ego defense mechanism I think it's your self-defense mechanism that keeps you from uh losing your mind it it's a balance um but there's nothing glorious about it at all after it's all after it's all said and done you know you've taken somebody's life and you don't know you know you don't know anything about them you don't even know what the voice sounds like you know um community and everybody's got a story I mean everybody everybody's somebody's son somebody's brother somebody's dad somebody's uncle everybody's somebody but you don't think about that it's it in Wartime and you're you're young you've been trained to you know to kill and the things that he learned in in your and your training is become automatic and you do what you got to do to survive and accomplish the mission whatever the mission is if you're the last person standing you know to accomplish this Mission you keep going you know and and the sergeants always telling us you know like save one bullet for yourself you know if it gets down to that you know you don't want to be captured against save one for yourself and then they are the the training if you're in a fight with a Bayonet and you get ran through you got a band that running through you grab a hold of the barrel and spit in his face and give him your war cry and you think about that man and that's that's like all the way you know you you're the last the last bit of fighting Spirit you got man he's spitting this guy's face it's killing you you know and uh I don't know man it's uh don't you remember the first the first one yeah yeah I just I just remember a silhouette coming at us you know I'm cheating and I got it on rock and roll and popped a couple rounds in them and they dropped they ran about another five yards after I shot him uh I I remember shooting a bunch of them in a wire anywhere and everybody behind the barbed wire or in the barbed wire it was just like shooting Silhouettes you know I didn't look at it like there were people uh I was uh kind of proud of myself after it was all said and done you know even mentioned you kept it kind of was you know a score if you will well that was in the lerps yeah that was yeah the lerb deal was we'd go out and like I'd tell them we wiped out a point on them and afford people and I know we had four we're back at the debriefing now we're back here and there I said what happened what happened on the mission so well we've seen what we've seen a point element coming down the trail and would decide that we were gonna we'd take them out and and so what you do is you've got these plans before before anything goes on so you've got four men you put three men on this side of the trail and one man over here and this guy here he's watching the trail and this way and this guy's watching Trail this way this guy's just kind of keep keep listening and keeping an eye on things you say this guy sees four people coming down so he Taps this guy he goes and then this guy go there you go and then the team leader will say uh let's get him so this guy over here when they get he's he's alerted that you know there's four coming down and he'll get over here behind the biggest tree he can find him hey and it'll immediately turn to that direction and then now they've got their back to you you just jump up and nail them with the nine millimeter Swedish case with the silencers and then go up and see if you can find any kind of Intel stuff from them and if you go back into the breathing and you get far enough away that you can get on your radio and adjust artillery on the main element and then you just get out of there to get extracted and go back in for your debriefing and you got some major who made all his Rank and peace time wanting to know what happened so you start telling them so what we killed four and you killed four yes sir um did you bring back any weapons or anything yes sir and you know trying to travel light but you're going for it right and you're like being like in disbelief you know so I always start getting pissed they'll get back to the compound and I said man you're debriefing just a major uh you see uh he acted like that with you guys too when you had to do breathing and you tell them what you know what's going on he said yeah kind of like you know I said I'll tell you what man let's start bringing back some let's bring back some ears but you only takes 26 pounds of pressure to rip an ear off you can rip an air off somebody and so uh Morgan got to take advantage and just or your k-bar and just however you want to do it so we started bringing back ears and I we were at a different debrief I guess so funny and he says uh what happened on a mission as well we went to the point element there was there was a five of them you killed five people yes sir and it's just a team leader and doing the debriefing was just um getting weapons and no sir they're too heavy you see you got proof of your you ain't got to prove that you killed five people I said yeah so here count these years he looked at me and he kind of freaked out like you know figure out your mind you're some kind of homicidal maniac you know and I said well it's it's not it's a lot easier doing that than carrying back a gun and I said I'll tell you something they didn't give these ears up easy and he just he thought we were [ __ ] crazy in which which we were but uh and that was kind of a funny thing to happen um the mountain yards there cooking the heads that was I was that was an amusing afternoon um and then head to the mountain guards uh would cut their balls off a lot of times and our our bar you know some bars used to have pickled pig's feet we had about this deep in scrotums sitting on the bar and we had a couple skulls on the foot rest on it and then they said that well you know the Inspector General is going to come over and and inspect your compound and say oh [ __ ] man yeah you rid the balls and get rid of the skulls and stuff you know they don't appreciate that kind of stuff they're not real Warriors yeah yeah but oh that was a different time it was a different mindset and yeah and here's some funny stories too man as a LARP our deal was for every day you spent out in the field you got a day off in the rear which didn't always happen because yeah I mean it's they're having they're having a condition right up north man we need to get a team up here uh we got sometimes you just come in and regroup and go over the debriefing and and go right back out again [Music] um but a lot of times you get some time off in the rear and so you get into the local Bordello and and get taken care of and and the girls will tell you say yeah you don't come here don't come here tomorrow yeah they'll tell you when you know when when something's going on it ain't right the gear that you carried and how you customize it and tell us your experience you know with your M14 your M16 and the other weapons you've used and then the Vietnamese weapons um as a LARP we were allowed to carry anything we wanted to carry we carry uh I a lot of times would carry an AK-47 alert missions because in AK-47 and an M16 have a completely different sound ones that burnt the others uh [Music] M16 held 20 rounds AK-47 held 30 rounds um if you if you're going to shoot somebody with an M16 you aim at their right foot and pull the trigger and if you've got automatic it'll ride up across them uh AK-47 you can fire from the shoulder and it'll and it won't ride up on you so it was a better weapon I I felt like it was a better weapon and there's a lerp if you're behind the lines and and you fire off an M16 though and there's enemy around someplace and they hear that burp they know exactly what's going on so but if they hear it quack quack quack you know they they don't pay much attention to it and one of the ways we would Recon an area is we'd have a helicopter fly close to our position and we take an AK-47 and fire it up in the air if there was any North Vietnamese around there they're thinking oh there's a helicopter we should shoot at it and so they they start shooting up in the air so they okay we know where they're at you know and and Swedish cave carried on some blurp missions uh carried M1 carbine sometimes I carried a shotgun a 12 gauge shotgun sometimes depending on where we were at and what kind of terrain we were in um M14 we used for sniper rifle I only had a couple sniper missions and um the enemy I like their AK-47 better than our M16 also we had 80 [Music] one millimeter mortars and they had 82 millimeter mortars so if they captured our ammunition the 81 would work in the 82 tubes but if we captured their ammunition the 82 was too big to fit in the 81s we had 50 caliber machine guns they had 51 caliber machine guns our ammo would work in their 50s 51s but 51 was too big to fit in in our 50s they were smart they had their bayonets had a had a hole in them and they're Scabbard had a little tint on it so they could take and put the the knife over top of that and use them to cut through barbed wire and stuff use them as wire cutters I thought that was pretty cool and um if we would have had to fight them with just what they had they would have annihilated us the thing that gave us fire superiority was was uh aircraft and artillery and um they were a formidable enemy they had regular I never seen a VC the whole time I was over there I was always fighting North Vietnamese regulars and they had uniforms and pith helmets and uh AK-47s and they had 12 20 Rockets uh they had uh RPGs uh which is a takeoff of the old German World War II Panzer Faust they so use them a lot today there's RPGs and stuff how did you uh you customized your M16 you know oh I didn't just you know they give they give us a camo tape yeah you just tape it up and any way you want to I have I taped like a daisy flower on the on the back side of the stock you know in mind just you know because back then the flower power was a big deal and then there was the ninth Infantry Division they're they're uh unit emblem is looks like a flower tube and um yeah uh that was just for Grins and Giggles right you know but uh alert missions always put the war paint on and painted my face up and sometimes that was uh yeah might have saved my life once we're we got inserted in a in a low-lying area and first thing you want to do after the helicopters leaves establish radio communication because if you're out there without any any communication you're that that's that's dangerous so we had I said we need to get to some High Ground uh we haven't we don't have any comment we can't get we can't get to our radio relay a lot of times we'd have radio relays you did you know the base camping me back here radio relaying and you're way out in the front there so we couldn't get any comments so I said we better better get The High Ground as quick as we can well there was a trail there as well get on the trail we'd go up it and so we're helping up this Trail and and I'm always looking where I'm where I got my gun pointed and we walked into a um it's a small element never did see how many it was but I I looked at him and he had his gun like this and I I'm up there I mean I mailed him I had it on rock and roll I got him the guy behind him I don't know if I got the third one or not and then we went through the quick fire and release you know break contact and we got out of there it just still didn't have a car and finally got up to some High Ground got some combo and they they wanted to stick around to see if there was you know how many teeth there was more people up in there and what was going on I remember that mission I'm back to the weapons so that's about all I know about the weapons that we um hand grenades had a tear gas grenade CS grenades were a lot of times man that that uh that was a lifesaver like if they can't see in their eyes or water and then then they can't shoot at you and sometimes um you use them to break contact with me it's uh um throw one of them out there you know and and they didn't carry a gas mask or anything so you know you could always get away with with a CS grenade that helps yeah what else uh and the white phosphorus grenades those are always good for breaking contact and we carried thermite grenades to melt the radio we usually tape them on top of the rear tape them to the side of the radio or on top of the radio so I had to just pull the pin on and it would melt all the internal parts so they can get any uh information off your radio it's like your frequencies and stuff what'd you think of your M14 with the out there um for what it was it's a good it's a 7.62 as as opposed to the 223 I had more stopping power I thought because it's a bigger projectile um heavier is a heavier weapon it's a good weapon [Music] it I think it was more reliable than the M16s that we had at the time M16 you burned four magazines through on rock and roll and and you don't have problems with it it'll either cook off or jam up the ones that we had so we had to be really careful we got shoot shoot short bursts and three round bursts four round burst and shoot and Scoot that's about all I know about the weapons yeah oh I had to m79 too m79 had a shotgun around it was pretty cool I shot tell the chat about the size of your little finger about as big around as your little finger uh and sexy M60 M60 was a good weapon um my machine gunner in my platoon said uh we're getting ready to go by the first time I was out in the first firefighter you know we're going through the through the jungle and we're got the first tune up here second Team 13 14 15 headquarters between the middle so if you hit contact everybody squats and you got your circle already you know perimeter set up so my radio man says where you want me at sir I want you about four ahead of me and the machine guns I got her in my petition where you want to answer so I want you about 10 behind me he driven I said what if I get a call for it so you can relay the message back yeah and I never wore an absolute tenant so I never wore any rank in the field and if you were a sniper and you were trying to pick out the lieutenant in this platoon you would have never guessed me I carried a d handle shovel and everything yeah like and everybody carried 200 rounds of machine gun ammo too on a line company and um every other man carried a battery extra battery for the radios and we had prc25 radios and you could you could manufacture an antenna that would double the range of it I think it had a 25 mile range and keep cobbled together with some combo wire and a plastic spoon you could make an antenna that would almost double that range yeah and then when you get back to the states after all this is over then he's truck then you you go through a some kind of metamorphosis where you you gotta you gotta figure all this out you gotta like why didn't I get killed why why did so-and-so get killed and I didn't get killed you know and why did Sergeant so-and-so get killed who had a wife of three kids and I ain't got any kids or anything you know I would have traded places with him if I had choice you know just because she had family and stuff and you start having survivors built and then then and then you think about some of the people that get killed and stuff you know it was wartime you know anything I went crazy for about 10 years man I was strung out on drugs did a lot of Meth um uh just just sorting through all this and I didn't really realize why I was doing it and I finally went down to the VA and went through their uh post-traumatic stress disorder Clinic and that really helped me a lot to sort through all this stuff and and I finally took it took about 10 to 12 years just to get through it you know it I just look at it now like it's a chapter in my life you know I've got a lot of chapters in my life I got my high school chapter I got my military chapter I raced cars for about 12 years sprint cars and that's a chapter my music's a chapter but I survived it and I made it home um got promoted the captain along the way and did another year and at Fort Hood and then uh I wanted to go to flight school and it was time to get out or re-enlist and so I called officers assignments in Washington DC and I said what can I expect as a if I sign on again if I re-enlist and they said what do you want to do I said well I want to go to Flight School and they said well you got to pass the entrance exam so they said we said we'll we'll send the exam to your Brigade headquarters and and detect the test and we'll go from there and so all right so the max score was 500 on the test I got a 485 and um I called him back and they said you did real well on your test you got a 485 out of 500 and uh I had some bootleg time in Vietnam before so I'd fly there's an aerial Observer before our teams went in to see what kind of terrain and stuff we'd be operating in and a lot of times they're they have dual controls in the helicopters and I'd say that the pilots hey man let me fly this thing he said it's all yours you know and I learned how to fly those things you know I was while I was there I'd call it bootleg time but uh they recorded it and I got my air metal for 25 hours of flight time in the combat zone so that was cool so uh they said well well you did really good on your test said what year did you uh graduate from West Point I said I didn't they said you didn't you're awful young to be a captain I said yes sir I saw we made it in combat and stuff and he said well he said there's only two allocations a year for uh captains in flight school and if you're not a West Point grad you can pretty well forget it because I'm gonna snatch it up and they want to learn to fly so I said well what can I expect for a duty assignment then he said well because of your critical MLS we're going to send you back Vietnam and says all right all right let me think about it I was done with it at that time you know I'll just get out of it so I got out went crazy for about 10 years after that trying to sort through everything that happened to me and got strung out on drugs for a while uh went down some dark roads and finally got out of all that stuff and started having children and that snapped me out of being wild and crazy so that's my story and I'm sticking to it that's it was a big adventure yeah the lucky to have survived it the government now takes pretty good care of anything send me a check every month and I don't have to pay for license tags anymore from a cars things that are locked in my mind like how to adjust airstrikes it's all there still there you know it's like wasted knowledge now you know I went dead Procter and Gamble to get a job and they said what'd you do in the military I said well I was I was alert I said well what what kind of training do you have I said well I adjust the airstrikes artillery strikes I could set up a hasty Ambush I can snatch prisoners he said well we don't need anything like that around here and they said you're too qualified just to be in the guard shack I don't know man that's uh I guess I could sum all this up with uh I wouldn't sell the experience for a million dollars but I wouldn't pay a penny to go through it again that's that's my whole take on my military experience yeah

Channel: 110 SASS Actual

Views: 193,528

Keywords: vet, veteran, Veterans Day, combat, ww2, wwII, vietnam, Vietnam, Combat veteran, interview, combat story, special forces, green beret, LRRP, lrrp, Vietnam special forces, vietnam LRRP, combat stories, vietnam war, army, marines, navy, ranger, war veteran, war, action footage, vietnam voices, Vietnam voices

Id: squdnj2TRFI

Length: 107min 33sec (6453 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 01 2022