Vietnam Veteran Lyle Bowes Extended Interview

[Music] i just pretty much refused to let the vietnam war identify me you know i mean it was an experience of experience i had no control over all i could do is experience it and go on and that's pretty much what i did my name is lyle bose and i was a sergeant e5 in the u.s army served in vietnam the reason why i was in vietnam was because i started college and as they were all we were all told you know if you're going to amount to anything you should go to college raised on a farm and i started college and i was in there for three months and i didn't i never liked school school was easy for me it was actually kind of boring and i never really liked it but i knew that if i didn't go to college i was going to be drafted and go to vietnam so i sat in college for three months and i looked out the window one day and sun was shining in and i thought what in the world am i doing here and i lived my whole life growing up outside and you know i was i was very good in math but i wanted to be outside and i only think i could think of as math as i was either going to be an engineer or an accountant and i couldn't i didn't want to be either one so i just chose to go volunteer for the draft because i knew if i didn't if i went and got a job and started with my life i was 18 years old they would draft me out away from my job anyway so just well get this thing over with and at that time i never really understood what all was going on in vietnam and at that time it wasn't near as severe as it got after i got there gene murphy we met the night either afternoon i got on a bus in brookings south dakota where i live now and we came to the induction station where we were inducted into the military took our oath and we spent the day filling out our papers getting shots and getting our clothes military issue all for three four days and then we got taken to our basic training station and so they the second day we were there they made me a squad leader in the platoon then they needed a what they called a weapons guide somebody to take care of the rifles and the bayonets so i talked him into giving gene that job so then he was in my squad bay room with me so we spent basic training in the same room together and then after we got out of there they took us to their advanced infantry training and then he got put on a top bunk there and i got put on the bottom bunk and so we spent every day there too and we spent every day together except when we came home on leave after training we had a 15-day leave and jean went to white and i went to d smat to our homes and so we didn't see each other during excuse me we did meet each other's families during that leave and then we both met down in the airport here in sioux falls our parents brought us down to get on the plane to fly back to fort lewis where we were leaving for vietnam our order our name was on the same on the same set of orders and uh which that just followed us all the way through i mean it we got to vietnam we were at cameron bay and with orders we waited for two days for our orders come down to see where we were going and we both were on the same set of orders to go to fourth infantry division and got to the fourth infantry division and then they sent us to the same battalion and the same company and and so then we we got our weapons and our jungle gear and everything at that company area then they put us on a truck and i think we went to what they call the trains area which is i think is the same area that gene was taken to after he was wounded so they trucked us out to the trains area and we were there for about two days and then they put us on this huey chopper and they flew us out to the field and when they landed we landed in a little whenever we stopped whenever our company stopped we'd have to find a place where we could cut the jungle down to make a landing lz a landing zone and this landing zone was cut the bamboo was cut down and so the bamboo is only about 18 to 2 feet tall 18 inches two feet and i got out of that chopper well we would hang it out there's no doors on it you wrote on it with your feet hanging out of the chopper all the time we landed there and i got out of there and i looked up the little bitty hill not much of a hill i looked around and i seen this what we call a little hooch we'd take our shelter halves and snap them together and put cut a tree and build a tent and we call it a hooch and i looked up there and i could see about the top half of one of them hooches and i thought to myself oh no because i knew where i was going to be for the next year and i thought we are in a lot of trouble and so that's that's how we got to the jungle of vietnam and then we didn't come out of the jungle i came out of the jungle out of 12 months i spent 10 and a half months in the jungle i got to go on r r and we had stand downs a couple times but you know it took me a week or week and a half to get to the jungle it took me a few days to get back but other than that it was ten and a half months in the jungle on guard 24 hours a day very little water very little food never took your clothes off it was that was it was and you were you didn't know what was going to happen any morning you got up you got up and you we had our work to do you know whether the whole company was moving or a four-man patrol was moving you had no idea what that day was going to be you had no idea if you were going to get into a battle or if you weren't but you had a job to do and if you lost focus on that job there was a good chance you were going to be in trouble and so that's what we did that was our job was to patrol the jungles and and complete the mission and we were never told what the mission was we were told you four guys go there and observe or your platoon goes there and observe or the whole company moved and we went in and our packs our gear that we were carrying was about 110 pounds and uh so about 100 degrees and we were in triple canopy which means that you had the trees the tall trees then you had another level of vegetation that was probably not quite as half the height of them trees and then you had the ground cover that was probably five to six foot high so you very seldom ever seen the sun the sun was always out but you you were soaking wet all day long every day because if it wasn't raining and you were soaking wet from raining you were soaking wet from sweating and so and you stop they when they brought meals they brought cases of c rations whereas 12 different meals in a case of c rations so that was your choice for three meals a day without of 12. well everybody had their favorites when they started out well after about a week of that then they were getting sick of that and so you know as time went on you got sick of all of them and then it became hard to eat because it just did not taste good and so in the end there i would take and find these sea rations or whatever if we were set up someplace and i would make a stew in my steel pot and dump a whole bunch of sea rations together and stir them up and heat them up in my steel pot and dish them out to the squad and different ones so you know it was a it was a terrible environment snakes monkeys hogs bugs the kind of bugs there were was there was centipedes leeches mosquitoes the mosquitoes were so big that they would a attack right through your poncho liners and they just it was the jungle is a very harsh environment every plant had a spike on it the trees had depending on the size of the tree they had these spikes sticking out of them that if it was a two inch tree that spike probably stuck out an inch and a half it was a three inch tree that spike stuck out by about three four inches if it was a six inch tree it was i mean so you couldn't lean up against a tree because there were spikes and they had these wait a minute vines these weeds they called them weight a bit of vines because they were a kind of like a creeping jenny only a little bit bigger stem and all the the thorns grew down towards ground so when you walk through that it was just ripping at your clothes all the time or your skin uh you know the snakes one time we sat down and we were taking a break and there was this bull constrictor sit hanging in the tree right above us we didn't see him until after we sat down so this bowl constrictor was probably about six eight inches across you know and we sat there and we talked about what should we shoot him or should we not or and we decided not to shoot him because we didn't want to make any noise you know because we never knew where we were or who was around and he didn't do anything he did not drop down and eat one of us so i mean that's you know there was cats we never seen much for cats but they were around there was rats you know the rats we would if we were someplace where we ate you know for a few days we would dump our sea ration cans and what we call the sump you know and burn our our cardboard and stuff like that that they came out of and [Music] then the rats at night would get in there and rustle around in the cans you know trying to eat something out of the cans and so you had to try to stop that because you didn't want anybody hearing that so when we moved as a company when we left where we were uh when we first got to the jungle we so we all you have to pack everything you have everything there has got to be packed up so you got to take your sleeping gear your food your ammunition your rifle we the company squad would have a shovel and a pick and your water your steel pot the radio machine gun ammo everything and so you get plus all your ammo plus all you want everything and so it's got to be like around 100 pounds and and so then you would go and move all day long through the jungle if it was thick some somebody would have to break through them wait a minute vines and all the underbrush and then at night you come to your night location and you would build the same thing that you left that morning you would dig your foxhole for three people you would cut trees down so you could fill your sandbags which you were carrying and then you would take your trip flares which you were carrying and put them out and you would cut the field of fire you know probably 40 50 feet out cut everything down so if something happened you could see and when you got all that done and you got your hooch built then you sit down and you'd heat up a can of sea rations and have your supper or whatever then you would go to bed at nine o'clock from nine to six every night there's three guys on guard and you would get up three hours and pull guard that night every night they would do the same thing at the command center they would have to watch the radios they would have then we'd send three people out on listening post and they would sit out there in the jungle they would go past that field of fire that would come down and they would set down probably i would say 75 yards out in front of us and that was a listening post and those guys had to sit out there and listen with the radio every 20 minutes they would call them and ask for a sit rep and then if everything was okay they would hit the squelch button twice now when this guy's turn was over he'd tap the guy next to you and he would sit up and then he had to sit there whatever amount of time you decided you could do two one and a half hour gigs three one hour gigs or one three hour usually it was two one and a half hour gigs and you'd sit there so you come out of a sleep that's whatever kind of sleep you were in and sit up and you got to stay awake and sit there and then if you did not answer when they called you and said rip if you did not answer then they'd come out and try to wake us up or something or you know they'd come down and we'll have to figure out first what deal was but anyway it and you were tired you were tired because that was how every night was it didn't matter whether you were out there on lp or sitting on your bunkers you were sitting up three hours out of that nine hours so that was kind of how we met and then we lived for a year when gene got hit you know that was that was the nightmare that we hoped would never happen and i was leading the company that day my squad was on point and we had a night location a destination and and on we we traveled on topographical maps all the time is what and i had to lead the company to the night location next night location all geared up but to go in a straight line meant we had to go up a very steep hill which i knew we couldn't do because it was ra it was a wet it was wet time of the year and so it'd be muddy we couldn't do that so i had to elect to go around that and you go up the fingers what we call fingers was you know and different terrain that you could travel so i turned and went in the direction that i felt was the best and we ran into steps cut into the hill and i thought this isn't good but i had really no choice i talked to the captain and we really had no choice so we took the steps and went up the hill well come around this tree and these guys took off and i knew we were in trouble so i called the captain and let them know and then they we put part of the company on sweep and they had me go chase this guy that run off with this other group and we got you know then the gunfire started a little bit there was and we got up and i was i went up to find my squad after i had did some organizing here and there and they were they had they had danks up there with them and i helped him with them and then i ended up back with the captain and the lieutenant and of course we were just sitting in a little spot out in the jungle there was we hadn't we had no we we just this is where we are on a flat spot and uh then a lieutenant said well they had they wanted somebody to go make this sweep and they decided that gene would take one of his fire teams each squad had two fire teams and and the other squad leader would take his fire team and they would go sweep that area and they took off and i stayed there at and the next thing i know they call up and say we've got 6wi i listened to the captain call talk to battalion and he's got 6 wi8 i wow we do yeah we do so at that time says i had another one of them from my platoon was there and were two of them one was an rto a radio telephone operator and the other one was just a lying troop i says can i go down and help get them out and they said yeah if you want to and so i said come on guys and we headed down the trail and there was a trail we didn't really know what we were into at that time but we had run into an nva hospital and we got down so i'm going down the trail and here's his sergeant coming up the trail and he's got his arm severely wounded and i stopped and talked to him and i said where are all these wias and he said down there and i said who are they and he said you know he named murphy murph and i said gene murphy he said i don't know it's murphy so i knew that was gene was wounded at that time so i took off with the two guys and moving down the trail and i went and followed the trail and i come to a rto i was hiding behind a tree and i said where's murphy because he says he's back there so i'd already went by him and then so then i started back and they were having their gun battle going on up here so i noise discipline was not an issue so i just started hollering gene's name murphy murphy and when i got close enough to him he hollered at me and that bo was over here and so then i found him and i would have never seen him had he been unconscious because he was over there in the jungle so i went over there and and he says i can't feel my legs i had no idea how he was wounded i couldn't see any blood or anything and so i really didn't know they had put a patch on him his wounded dressing and and so we were there now i got to get him out of here and had no machete but he had i don't know where i come up with the poncho somebody had a poncho so but i i had no machetes so i grabbed these two trees there and busted them and made a stretcher out of these two trees and uh this poncho so you just take two sticks and snap the poncho together and then take it you know that so i did that and uh we picked him up and carried him up out of there and when we were carrying him up out of there his lieutenant was shot up and everything there was six wounded and we got him up there and and we're seeing a chopper come in to get him out of there and and when he was he had one guy up in the chopper i didn't know all this i've learned all this in the last three years he had one guy in a chopper and one guy because he had to let a cable down on a jungle penetrator to get him up and this other guy was 20 feet off the ground and he says i've it's too hot down there i'll see you in the morning and of course that was devastating news for us because the first thing yeah we know it's hot down here anyway he took off and so then you know i i dug that small hole or whatever a whole long as jean one put him down so if we took incoming that he wouldn't get any wounded anymore but what had happened is while he was loading them trying to load them two guys on a chopper he they he counted the next day he counted 360 bullet holes in that chopper what happened was is it the electrical systems on his chopper were starting to fail and he had to get out of there and so he flew to an area probably three quarters of a mile away that he knew and he sat that chopper down and of course he still got this guy hanging on the string out here and so he goes out he sets that chopper down and then he gets down so far and he slides over so he doesn't set on that guy and he set it down and the chopper quit so anyway we had to go the night we knew it and the worst you know gene was hurting you know and he wanted water you know when you get wounded you you go into shock and then you get real thirsty you know and of course he wanted water my training was give him a cap pull don't you can't give them very much because you're afraid if it's infected water that it could infect and make things worse so so so i gave him a cap of water every time he'd ask and uh anyway this this other guy was kind of screaming all night long and and had he got out that night he would have been just fine my understanding is he was from pennsylvania psy but he didn't he died shortly before the chopper got there hour maybe so we laid there and everything and then when he when the next morning came i went down and told the captain that jeans first one out he said okay i went back to get him because the chopper was coming and got him down there and got him in there and got him up and got him gone and that's all i could do so i went back and i was thirsty i hadn't drank any water because i wasn't gonna drink any water until i knew that gene was okay he had all the water he needed and then i reached over and picked up my canteen to get that drink of water because i'm the one that laid it back down there i knew how much water was in that and there was no water in that oh i was i was hot but not what i could but what you gotta do you just don't have any water and over there i was offered 20 bucks for a quart of water can you imagine that in 1969 and i would not sell it after i put gene murphy on a chopper i knew that i would not know whether he was alive or dead until i heard from home and so immediately i wrote home to my folks and his folks and told him that gene had been wounded and i think he was going to be okay you know and i got a letter back probably two weeks later that told me that gene had made it so that was the only way i knew we never knew and we go look at records today you try to look at records the only records there are are the killed in action kias that day that we lost all in people all we know is the kias they don't have any record of wias that day so that information was there was no information but i was sure glad to hear that she was alive three days later we had we we moved from that position up to the location where i was supposed to end up the night the night before and then three days later they decide they're gonna we're gonna take my platoon and go check out the nba hospital you know this is just over the hill and we take off to go check that out and we run into a machine gunner right and we hadn't went very far but we were going up a narrow little finger and so we ran into a machine gunner and my machine gunner was laying he was on the top of the ridge with the company commander and the platoon leader and they killed our point man right away and he laid down and he so i got now we've got these two machine guns shooting at each other and the captain was laying there up there and we had a forward observer which caught was to call in artillery and stuff and he's up there and he said the captain said okay when i give the word we're going to charge in a forward observer who's going to charge anyway it's a sad story the captain jumps up and is going to charge and he gets shot through the heart drops dead my lieutenant had 13 days left before he was coming home got all nervous jumped up and hollered medic and got his head blowed off and he fell over the side of the mountain and i had to go down and get him and he was straddling a 250 pound dud bomb so we're having this little gun fight on top of a 250-pound bomb i ended at that point i became a top-ranking individual and so then i pulled everybody off the hill and uh tough day you know but that's how gene and i lived but there again you know you just had to do what you're doing you know i mean you had you had you had to stay focused you know with all of this carnage i had a friend this friend was with me the whole year uh we were going into a wet lz one day and it was supposed to be hot wet meant how wet we had no idea how wet it was wet you're gonna get your feet wet we're wet all the time no big deal hot how hot is it is there machine guns going or what you know don't know so we go in and we're cam that's combat assault and that's what they called when you went in on a helicopter and they pull in and and so we go in there and the helicopter and they take like four or five helicopter loads at a time and we go in there and the helicopter stops and i looked down and there's this elephant grass but it looked like grass you know just why isn't this chopper sitting down and uh pretty soon boosh i get shoved out the helicopter the i think it was uh either the pilot or the co-pilot shoved me out and so i fell into the water and the elephant grass wrapped up in my feet so i went clear to the bottom on my knees with my pack on and everything and i thought they weren't kidding when they said wet and so i get down i gather myself up and stand up and the water is up to my shoulders and my neck and i thought holy smokes and i lurk around and there's this steel pot helmet sticking out of the water behind me and i thought was i'll bet he's short of air and i reached over and i grabbed him and i picked him up and uh he comes up and uh the water's coming down off his helmet and everything and all he can see is that dirty chunky and i i couldn't help but laugh but anyway there's another friend of mine or another one in my squad come and grabbed a hold of him and helped him and and he had nowhere to go he was going to stand there and drown if i hadn't seen him now to give you an idea of what it was like i seen that guy in the late night well it would have been in the in the 2000s maybe 2002 or 2003 i went to see him in massachusetts and he sat there and he says do you remember who saved my life that day they pulled me out of that water and i said that was me he said well you and i said yes can you imagine being in a situation that you're going to die and you can't remember who saved you but it was just those things that just happened so we went to the shore that time and won a little antidote we got to the shore and that water was plumb full of leeches so we got in there and so we're all pulling our pants down and taking our shorts off or we don't have underwear we just fatigues and we have cigarettes that we light up to burn the leeches off because they'll drop off if you touch them with a cigarette and i often thought how did we have dry matches and cigarettes after jumping into five feet of water but we did i just pretty much refused to let the vietnam war identify me you know i mean it was an experience experience i had no control over all i could do is experience it and go on and that's pretty much what i did although there's you know i mean when i see gene hurting like he does that's probably the toughest time of my life is is witnessing that well i think him and boy i both agree that we feel pretty fortunate that we have it you know gene is a guy that when you meet gene you want to be his friend forever and he anybody that he doesn't know is a friend that he doesn't know but as soon as he just hasn't met him yet you know and that's the way gene is and he's uh he is a real person there is no doubt about what gene is thinking or what he will do because if there is ask him and that's what you will get and a pretty good rendition too but it's you know i mean it's he's my brother you know and it's i stop here a lot now especially when i'm retired and i've got time i i stop here quite often because i know where he'll be he'll be here and then we can sit and give each other a hard time or do whatever catch up but matter of fact that's what happened yesterday i stopped here and then he said you were coming and asked if i would come and take part if gene wants me to do that that's what i'll do it's been a little bit of an up and down thing when i first come home you know when we were over in vietnam we would sit around in the junk we were in the jungle because that's where that's the only place we ever were and talk about how when we got home we would never talk about vietnam we didn't want to remember any part of it and when i got home i went about two weeks without talking about it and it was tearing me up and so i started sharing a little bit of it with my dad i was real close to my dad and so as time as went along i went we went to washington dc when the the one statue that faces the wall the three guys that face the wall was dedicated by ronald reagan that was a real hard time for me because i looked around and here were all these guys with fatigues on missing legs missing arms all this stuff and my life had been had been good been successful you know and i hadn't spent any time thinking about and i had a guilt trip i thought i i forgot all about these guys i left these guys and so i had to spend a little time working through that a lieutenant was a salesman that stopped one time and asked me how it was going i told him i said i was doing pretty good until i went out there and he you know and he says if you read any books and he suggested a book to me that i read and and it was a big thick book and it was about a about vietnam and in the jungles of vietnam and by the time i was done with that book i was sick of vietnam again so i put it down and then went back to my life and so it's you know and then they you know we as as a group we were not welcomed home we were baby killers and there was a group when they started pulling out of vietnam they were they brought a group of soldiers home and they marched them down through seattle for a homecoming and they threw eggs and tomatoes at them and it didn't matter that they was just those guys out there it was all of us was out there and that's we got eggs and tomatoes and so we were young we were strong and we'd been battled hardened and we had a chip on our shoulder and that's how we lived in alcohol was a problem marijuana was a problem you know probably not as much of a problem as the alcohol but i think in my i think half of the carnage of the vietnam veterans that we suffered after we come home was because of the way we were treated when we got home and it was a terrible time for the nation and there was lots of suicides lots of alcoholism you know i even forget the statistics that the mental problems that they were going in to address every year for years and years there was just as many vietnam veterans going in for treatment as the year before and so i have no personally i have no guilt feelings because i had no choice in the matter i had to do what i had to do to survive and help as many survive as i could and that's what i did but the trauma of just you know the battles were bad but when you just go and you are hungry all day every day you're thirsty all day every day and you're tired all day every day and you are working hard it was just that alone was traumatic well i asked the question one day i was with in gene's town hall meeting up in brookings and they were they had representatives from all the va hospitals and our legislators i said you know i said the va i said you guys have got your nice big buildings and you got your nice payroll and everybody's happy and every once in a while you get together with gene and his buddies here and you talk about bennies and all that stuff and it's all real come then i said uh i gotta watch the television and on comes the commercial give to the wounded warriors so he says what what's the deal there when do you decide to send them out to the curb when you get tired of looking at them or how was that work and needless to say i never got an answer meeting was over it is totally unconscionable that our politicians will send our young men into battle and they go out of patriotism and we are a bunch of patriotists and i would go again if my freedom was jeopardized but you know when they come out and i have sat and listened and they try to figure out a way how not to take care of the veteran rather than figuring out how to take care of the veteran when that individual is to the point where he needs the type of care that the wounded warriors or the tunnels the towers or whatever need to take over why is that why aren't we making sure that he's taken care of and so the dav gene murphy i don't know what he all told you but that guy i used to talk to him talk to him in the frame of mr va of south dakota but i don't do that anymore he is mr va of the united states of america i would challenge anyone to bring somebody to me that's did more for the veterans of america than gene murphy i mean i can go on and on and he has did it without receiving one dime he's did it out of pure patriotism and love for the veteran so why can't more of us be like that why can't we see that you

Channel: Postcards | Pioneer PBS

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Id: 1ly7K2q1NuQ

Length: 49min 37sec (2977 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 04 2022