"Vietnam Veteran SEAL Unveils Shocking Story of His Biggest Battle." The Conclusion

one of the biggest firefights we got in when we were in Vietnam wasn't even an OP we uh had talked my boss into letting us go on a picnic commandeered some big T-bone steaks and of course we had our beer and stuff and we had did some searching out in the South China Sea we found these little bitty Islands out there that were desolate that's where we wanted to go have our picnic well not everybody went I think there was seven or eight of us that went Mr Marsh didn't go he had told us that gave us our rules you know not to get totally drunk we had to say we had to take all of our Gear with us and we took the big boat that would hold 14 people and uh so we left that morning and the only way to get is that get out into the South China Sea was going into this big tributary that dumped out into the South China Sea and it was probably you know 15 20 clicks away from base camp we went through some of the smaller little rivers to get to the big one and of course you know there's Vietnamese all over the place during the daytime that's what they do they fish they Farm the rice so we were in contact with Vietnamese all the way through there's the economy there along with them and here they see this American boat going down to the tributaries and you know they know all of South Vietnam and they know where some of these tributaries that we took where it took you to and if they're Viet Cong they're going to watch what you do because very soundly they see us in the daylight anyway along the way I guess I don't I don't know really how they communicated because we didn't have cell phones back then but I imagine they had their own type of radio system well they let it be known that Americans were going this way going out towards South China Sea and the only way you get back is the same way so they knew eventually we was going to have to come back well I guess while we was out doing our thing and we made it to this little bitty Island we searched it out made sure nobody was on it and we started having our barbecue and drinking beer and having a pretty good time you know it's almost like being at home except you know we're still in the war zone in the South China Sea is full of Viet cotton so you know we met a few sand pans going out you know we don't do anything to them during the daytime because that's their livelihood I mean you could search the same pan all you want during the day they look like Vietnamese you know we didn't pull over sand pans during the day to check them out but anyway we're on the island and of course time got away from us and by the time we realized that we needed to be heading back it was starting to get dark and you know I was oh man miss Marshall is going to kill us and uh because he wanted us back before dark of course we went back the same way we went back up the Big River and we're probably over over halfway home to get back to the base camp but we were on the the bigger River and it was probably about I don't know maybe 75 foot wide maybe a little less maybe a little more but anyway we're in the middle of the river and we're just putting along we're not going fast so in Vietnam when the Viet Cong were going to attack you there was a warning it's pitched quieter than our boat doing this little humming with us we had two twin 47s on it and we heard a shot in the air you know that piqued our interest and we go when we look at each other and we go a little bit farther you hear a second shot well when you hear the second shot you know something's going to happen so we were getting ready I got over there where my M60 was and I put my put it on my I had it on my rucksack it's when I had my 1500 rounds everybody else got to their guns and I mean by time me here the third third shot that's when the firefight would start oh we heard that shirt third third shot go up in the air let it known the ones that were going to Ambush us that we were in the zone so first thing we see b-40 Rockets coming at us and they were coming from both sides of the river and they went over the boat and went over on the other side and hit where they were by time they hit we'd opened up because when they shot those before the Rockers we had pop-up flares which lights up the sky and it was probably to me it looked like they had about a hundred yards of Vietcong along the river and they were shooting at us with their acre of 47s and shooting rockets at us for some reason every time they would shoot them Rockets they'd miss the boat now there was probably eight P-40 rocket shot at us none of them hit the boat they were hitting the banks they were hitting their own people you know and I'm over there laying down line of fire with my M60 the other guys are shooting their Stoners and their M16s and they're shooting their 40 bike bikes grenades out of the bottom of the M16s and and we could see the bodies hitting the water and I had a a friend of mine named Ron queer he was on the right hand side of me and and you could the what the water was just getting peppered with AK-47 rounds but hitting the boat but none of us were getting hit yet well there was so much fire that was coming from the banks and he had a stoner and he had his head down below the bow and when he was shooting he was just shooting the water in front of the boat trying to keep his head down and I kept hitting him and I said Ron I said point at the bank and said you're hitting all the water in front of the boat he said you're not hitting nobody he'd run out of his ammo and he'd reload it and he'd put it back up and by then I was close to being empty on my M60 my Barrel was hot in fact I was starting to you know after you shoot so many times through a barrel and you don't give it a break it starts glowing red and you could actually see the rounds going out the barrel and I knew sooner or later that my gun was going to be shot once they go out the barrel and that Barrel is hot it get a little bit of Bend to it they're gonna they just they don't go straight well I ran out and before I run out Ron was still over there spraying the water in front of us the guy had the boat on step and I laid my barrel of my M60 on his arm to snap him out he was just like in a in a he couldn't get out of his mode and I lay that belt on and it burned his arm and he looked up and I said man the bank shoot at the bank well my I ran out of M60 rounds so I got on the guns boats they had a M60 mounted on the in the middle of the boat they just had and plus we had the many many gun on the back end of the boat and every time then the the boat guy would take the boat and swing it to where we could take the back of the boat and just in this minigun shot 4 000 rounds a minute and we would just rake that bank and then he'd flip it around and do the other side and that's we sort of doing Swan Dives back and forth through the river and we finally ran out of ammo we had a little bit left and and we finally got out of the fire zone it's pitched dark and we're going we're we're not going to make it back to base because I said we you know we couldn't get in another fight not all of us were never got a neck on us I don't know how many Vietcong would kill but you could just see him falling over into the river and normally you know when we get in a firefight you do a body count well we weren't doing a body count because we didn't have any ammo to continue we went about five or six more clicks up into the river and we pulled off into a tributary and that's where we sat for the night waiting for daylight and of course we got back to base the boss chewed us out left and right you know weren't allowed to do any of that again either he was he was sort of like a dad you know we we didn't get vehicles over in Vietnam we sold our vehicles and uh I wrecked every vehicle that I drove over there and and he and he had we got a Jeep for him and of course he that was his Jeep he knew it was stolen every now and then I'd ask to use it and he would give me the ride act you know because I wrecked our state truck I wrecked the six by uh we had a weapons carry I wrecked so he wanted to keep the Jeep so he could have something to go back and forth to rock jaw or Rock soy and it was strange that Navy Seals didn't get vehicles it'd be a dog yeah they just wanted you to operate out of your base and that's it then once you're running all over the place I don't know if I told you we got caught with the vehicles and uh that happened about about six weeks after we had gotten them they were Army we painted them gray with some fake the military numbers in the Navy started off with a b and it would have like six numbers on it and we put the numbers up on the the hood and we just drove them like they were you know who going to check a military vehicle you know and besides they weren't that many American time where we at there wasn't nobody looking for own Vehicles we stole them out of bantui which was about a three hour drive away anyway we were going to town me and three other guys and I was driving they had this curve and I was doing probably 45 50 mile an hour and when we hit this curve there was a six by coming the other way and they had a a guy with three guys on his Honda 50 trying to make it around that curve to pass up that six by the roads over there there was no shoulders had that little spot that you drove on and I didn't hit them they hit the rear of my tire of course when they hit the back of the tire of the Jeep they fell all over the road and you know and I slammed all my brakes and we was going to stop and get out but we've seen them all getting up because they were only probably doing the 30 mile an hour or whatever the Honda 50 do with three guys on it and I've seen more than three people on 150 over there anyway we and we were just hatching a Vietnamese Outpost when I stopped and we seen that they were all right I said man let's just go ahead and go into town well when I started to take off that a Vietnam I suppose started shooting at first they were just shooting in the air trying to get us to stay and I go man I said we're going they took a couple pot shots at us and we were going to shoot back because it they were never the Vietnamese Army and uh we went into town and we was at a bar and we're all sitting there drinking beer we've been there for about an hour or so and we call them white mice they were in the Vietnamese police and they dressed in white but we call them the white Vice anyway they came in and I you know I still I understood Vietnamese and they were asking whose jeep was that outside I don't know I said it's I said it's my son he they started talking to me they were doing some in Vietnamese and then some in American and they finally understood and I said yeah I said they hit my Jeep I said I didn't hit them they hit my Jeep and I said uh but we kept on going and they said well we gotta arrest you they're injured I said oh good night but anyway we didn't make it back to home that day so Mr Morrison next morning went looking for us when we were in jail I mean there's three other guys I think it was uh Ron Tim stodmeyer Chuck holler were the other three guys you know truck Hall just passed away from about two months ago from cancer anyway they weren't going to let us go Mr Marsh went there and he tried to talk him [ __ ] no no we had to see a judge and we did injury to the Vietnamese and so forth and so on and we're going to talk to Mr Marsh you know he said man I said I don't want to spend the rest of my time in Vietnamese jail in Vietnam you know we had a commander that was over our section of Vietnam he got wind of it of course he came and he was talking to the Vietnamese police officer that ran that police station and it was strange we could have broke out of that jail anytime we wanted it it was ridiculously built just cheap iron bars that we could have pulled them up out of the ground you know it was already in enough trouble and anyway this Commander came down he started talking to us and and when he goes up as deep as hell came like a land is it I'm going to ours he said no I said he goes whose Jeep is that uh he says look he said I run this section of Vietnam he said you sales don't have vehicles he goes well whose Jeep is it and so I go well it's a it was a two-star general's Jeep out of bintui and he looked at us and he goes what else do you got we go what do you mean he said is that the only vehicle you have he said I'm going to check your base and so yes and we know we got a weapons carrier and we got a state truck and a six by in the Jeep and they said we're painting them gray they look like on the Navy and he just shook his head and he said well you know what he said they had to give money to these Vietnamese drop the charges even though we didn't hit them you know but he and he goes he said you know he said we're going to let you keep them Vehicles he said but if you get caught said you're going to go down stealing military vehicles he was a cool guy anyway after that I didn't I didn't drive a whole lot more after that I would I would keep the for some reason I was good mechanic and I grew up building car engines and so forth and so I kept the vehicles running except for the ones that were direct to drive anymore you know Vietnam was a strange place you know I never really had any fear of going anywhere in Vietnam I knew places that I went I shouldn't go but it was it was a bunch of the guys were the same way it was just in our nature we would just we go places that were off limits to Americans well that's where we wanted to go you know and sometimes we got in trouble and most times we we did fine but that that fire fight I never got off the m60s I I liked firefights and don't don't know why the way they made the adrenaline run in yeah I just enjoyed being in firefights I didn't tell my mother I went to Vietnam or my father they really didn't know anything about Seal Team I just told them it was a special unit in the Navy well they thought I'd be on a ship somewhere and be safe so when I went to Vietnam and my mother had already went through a Year my brother Tom being in Vietnam and he came back a total wreck I never got over the war and she wanted none of us to go over there my brother Bob was over there at the same time I was over there I never wanted to go see him and I told him don't come and see me my mother was hounding field team in Coronado because I always talked to my mother I talked to her about once a week ain't no way to talk to anybody in Vietnam but he didn't have pay phones besides I didn't tell her I was there and I'd already been there about three months and my mother was constantly contacting seals he wasn't know where I was at they don't they don't tell people where we're at but word got to my lieutenant Marsh that my mother was looking for me wasn't know why I hadn't been calling and so forth that Mr Marsh was all over my case states that you need to write your mother a letter and I looked in and I go let I said I wrote a letter in my life I said what was I write to my mother and I'm in Vietnam and he said you just write your mother a letter and he said that's an order he said you need to tell your mother where you're at and that you're okay and all that kind of stuff you know what mothers want to hear and of course I didn't write her that I wrote her about firefights I don't know how much I liked something that I was doing great and I said uh you know I only wrote her that one letter the whole time I was over there I wasn't I wasn't much for writing in their letters but uh I wish I could find that later my mom was passed away since then because I figured she would have kept it but I just never come across it after she passed away 50 years ago so I ain't no telling uh last operation we did in Vietnam it was right before Christmas and uh my lieutenant wanted to go out to Sam pants you know he was uh just recently his wife was pregnant when we went over and they had the baby well he was on Vietnam and we had a Vietnam on January the 10th through the 11th this is about a week before Christmas and he wanted to do an OP when you come up with an operation uh we had the right to say no it's too risky well this operation that he wanted to do he wanted to check sand pans in South China Sea and we're going at night and we go well he said the only ones are out at night are to be a calm and uh we go we're not made for sandpans not Americans anyway in South China Sea is not no smooth you know it's choppy and so forth and we're going carrying all gear and being in you know because we did a lot of Ops in the rivers and canals which was bad enough but I said you know it doesn't sound like a good thing to do you know we've got three doing a half weeks left to go I said didn't sound like a good op you know the Intel there's no Intel I said you're going to find VIA column sooner or later if you pull over enough sandpans but we go no so we're all sitting down and the only one that said yes was PK Barnes and he was the new guy he replaced one of our guys that went back back home out of our platoon and he'd only been there for oh I don't know a month and a half or so came out and uh came from the states to replace one of our guys we always tried to keep 14 in the in the platoon no he was green he said he said ah he goes I'll go it was Mr Marsh and PK and four of our ldnns went in the sandpan to check for vehicle into South China Sea well we were back at the base listening on the radio if anything came about we were in contact with our big boat because the big boat followed them out and if anything happened the big boats will go out there and get them and uh the first I think the first Sampan that they lied ate they were coming at the sand pan they were coming out straight on and the sand pan was doing the same way well before Mr Marshall's Sampan got tuned they're the same pan turned sideways well when it turned sideways and Mr Marsh was close enough they could see that they had AK-47s so Mr Marsh and first I don't know why we had a 45 Burke gun from World War II and that's what he picked up to shoot at the Vietcong they jammed on the first round if Mr Marsh would there was uh I think there was three Vietcong in the same pan that if Mr Marsh would open up he probably would have got them all but it lost that first second of a fire fight when it jammed the Vietcong opened up Mr Mar Scott hit first because he got hit right across his forehead and then he got hit down in the back where you got hit in the spine because it was paralyzed for life he didn't die and uh but the other ldnance stood up and everybody had stood up got hit to him got hit in the head and the other one got hit here and they were killed instantly the only Mr long and PK didn't stand up well PK opened up with that Stoner had a 50 round drum on it wiped him out and the bad thing about it when PK went to put the stoner down his hand was still on the trigger and he blew a hole in the sand pan well the sandpan started seeking well PK went into the water because everybody that got hit fell out of the boat PK went in the water to grab Mr Morris he was still alive and grabbed the other ones Mr long was helped Mr long got shot he got shot in the leg and they sort of tried to tie them all together and in the meantime with the boat sank all the pop-up flares and everything went down and luckily the part of the South China Sea they were in it was only about five foot of water so PPA would go down and search for stuff in the boat because he was looking for the pop-up players because when you do a pop-up player the big boat guys knew something of course they knew something was wrong because they were close enough to hear the shooting but they didn't know exactly where they were at we finally got some pop-up flares and popped them gave their position and the boat you know came in and at the same time we was hearing all this when they got in the power fight the boat was trying to communicate with Mr Marsh so he was here it on the radio and at that time we would we called Ben Tui for support for hilovac and of course they were all hit and the big boat had made it to PKS and they had got them all out of the water and they laid the three ldnns on the back of the boat and won these ldnns I was I was just super good friends with them he had just gotten married he was a chief in the Vietnamese Navy he was assigned to us to help us go on Ops and so forth we went to his wedding you think he'd been married for about three weeks you know he was in his 30s great guy and uh but he got hit in the head the boat brought everybody back besides PK and uh Mr Morris he wouldn't he got on the helicopter and went up flew the bantua with Mr Marsh Beau came in and long was on the boat and the other three LDN ends and we went down there and picked him up and of course we didn't have any place to really put him we had a like a little shop next to our concert and we went and put them in there until the Vietnamese would come and get him and so forth but we wanted to Revenge so we made up this was after Christmas we had another op before we left and we knew where vehicle and Hamlet was and it was 90 Vietcong we made an opt to go take out that Hamlet and we did and uh it was our last op that we did in Vietnam was a Revenge off and after that we had about another week or so to go and the same plane that flew us to Vietnam that's what picked us up in Saigon airport and it's a new airport and I didn't want to get back on that plane and the same thing in the meantime Clint's platoon x-ray was getting annihilated every off they go on they would get wounded or one or two would get killed and next off they would go on they wherever they went to be a congress waiting for them and uh they wanted look they were looking for Replacements and me and Tim's admire and PK PK went because you had to do your whole tour even if your platoon was going back home and you went didn't do your whole tour you they would send you over to another platoon in Vietnam well he volunteered to go to x-ray platoon and me and Tim stodmar Tim was one of my best friends he carried them16 in his Squad and I carried mine we wanted to go but we tried and tried and let to go and command and Cornell said no he said you got to come home before you can ever go back he said you got to be home for 30 days and then you can volunteer to go back by the time we got home and before that 30 days was up the Clinton platoon was decommissioned because it was just Clinton one other guy left they weren't going to send any more Replacements they didn't get do there for a full tour because they they decommissioned it because they were all wounded or dead and plus the ones that would PK lost his legs over there in Clint platoon right towards the end in fact I think that was the last hop that Clint went on in a happy Baker started off in my platoon in Vietnam but he got dysentery so bad he was a toothpick in it so they sent me they couldn't get rid of the dysentery and they sent him home and when he he got uh better well they sent him back to Vietnam he was in Clint's platoon that end of my my tour in Vietnam so when I got back to the States I went to some Advanced Cadre schools where they're teaching more about Espionage because we would do stuff that I wasn't military I was just in regular civilian clothes with a Thomas Island attract people and Trail them and not be seen and it was pretty unique I liked it and the head of a civilian scientists were wanting to have guinea pigs to see how long you can live in cold water they couldn't find enough civilians that would because they would tell you what the conditions were going to be we knew a place out in China Lake California that they had put this swimming pool off of the military base there and put a big metal building over it and they would try to give it to Arctic temperatures water was somewhere between 34 36 degrees and they wanted to know how long you could live in that water without losing all your body functions when we first started doing it they did it you know in 70 degree water and even 70 degrees water you stay in it long enough your thermal temperature is going to drop and once you get down to a certain temperature the Corby body you pass out and then you drown well then they would we do it in 50 degree water and then we finally got down the 40s and when it got down into you know even in the 40s if you just jump in that water at 40 degrees in about five six minutes you don't have no function not necessarily that you're drowning yet but you don't have the control of your arms or your legs because cold water does weird stuff to the body and it's like you really couldn't swim because your arms you know you might swim but it was a choppy sloppy swimming you're not going to go very far and so they knew that you know some of us could last five minutes someone's last seven eight minutes but after that and then when we got down into the 30s you last about three or four minutes and you start losing your body function so then they said well now we're going to test you in wetsuits we did tests in your wetsuits but in the wetsuit and that we had a two-man sub we call them stvs we had them in Seal Team they're two men sub and you breathe on oxygen with scuba tanks but you got like 10 scuba tanks on it so you can stay down long time well they would take then lower the sdv down in the water and it was hooked up to a computer we swallowed these pills at Radio transmitters that gave all our core temperatures and our heart rate and all that kind of stuff and so they can log it all well you'd be in we'd be in that water for three hours and then they would took us they would crank the sdv up had these fans blowing and the deal was that we were going to set explosives assimilate setting explosives on a radar Tower in Antarctica and uh so they make us get on the bicycle and they had these fans blown on you and and that's when you got cold you thought that water was cold and that wind blowing on you and your wetsuit's wet and your body temperature starts really dropping but they had us ride these bicycles like we climbed a mountain and then we would got to the radar station they would have a fake expose his horse that see if we can put the explosives on the radar station wired up set the timers with your hands just Frozen and then get back on the bike because you're on the water for about an hour and ride the bike back down to where your sub was which is supposed to be in the ocean get back in the sub for three hours to go back to the Mothership well we proved to them that it could be done and we also proved and sometimes you died because when our car temperatures drop down I think 89 was where you passed out and a lot of us went to 89. I don't know why sometimes we made it and sometimes we didn't but when your core tensor dropped like that they would jerk you out of the water and they throw you in a hot water tub and you thought it was bonding man that water was hot but it wasn't hot it was I think it was 104 degrees or 110 degrees something like that plus you still had your wetsuit on but it heated up your temperature and it would havoc on you I mean you would you thought you hadn't went to bed for uh three weeks after that six or seven hours of doing that and uh they let you recuperate for three or four days we did it for a little over five months and uh about every third fourth day you get back in the water and there was 14 of us doing it so we were all taking turns but about every fourth day sometimes fifth day it'd be your turn to go back it was sort of like uh like going through hell week over and over again you go because you knew what it was going to be like but they needed more data because they wanted to know why sometimes you live and sometimes you didn't but it was it was unique I've never been the same I don't get cold me and my wife we've been together going to be 50 years next year and she's hot natured and I'm called natured I like it 50 degrees and she likes it 90 degrees and but you know she understands this it's just the way I am I don't wear coats I ride my motorcycle in the winter time with no coat on I just don't get cold I think they messed up my thermostat but we're jump qualified when you're a Navy SEAL you're diving qualified junk qualified you always got to do diving to keep qualified you always got to jump to stay qualified and plus they paid you more money and our well when you're in Vietnam you don't jump out of nothing in Vietnam normally you jump every month and so I didn't jump the whole time I was in uh Vietnam and when I first got back boots off for a month they gave us 30 days to do whatever you want go home and so forth and I spent one of my weeks I flew flew home and bought my first car we're up in Ohio and I drove it back to California so I hadn't probably jumped in about 10 11 months and they said you know hey there's a bunch of you guys you you need to qualify again for your jumps or we're going to quit giving you junk pay you know I like jumping on airplanes if you ain't never done it you need to try it as long as your shoot's open it's all good anyway we I think there was 29 of us on a chinook that's one of the ones where they open up the back door and you just walk off and we were going up 5000 feet and we're all going to jump do our jump and we was all lined up waiting for the jump Master towels to walk off the back of the plane and we've got the helicopter do a little bit of a shake which you know it's like an airplane you hit tournaments on helicopter it does the same thing you know but the red light popped up right at the end of the Chinook before you go out the door and it really light popped open the junk matter looked at that and he goes back to the seats sit down strap in so before we got back to the seat you can it was like you felt like he was a little bit lighter because the helicopter was falling and we get back and didn't realize that the helicopter is falling and we're looking at each other and in my mind I'm going to man I made all through Vietnam not a scratch on me and I said I'm going to die in a helicopter crash back in the States I said what a way to go we could feel the helicopter was falling and then somehow or another the helicopter pilot got it to auto rotate back and what it was the helicopter had lost its hydraulic there the transmission fluid or the hydraulic blades quit working but somehow he got to auto rotate while we were going down and it slowed us down instead of splatting at 200 mile an hour they estimate that we hit the ground and it was soft ground because we always jumped in these fields that were plowed you know the dirt was two three foot deep we probably hit it doing 35 40 mile an hour when that hit it was just a gigantic slam down and the struts came up through the floor and you know went we're still just looking at it like but you know whenever you you hear about plane crashes how helicopter crashes they explode well the engines weren't running it didn't catch on fire and it didn't explode the back door was still open even though it was crunched up some we can still get out so after it hit that jump Master said out you know man we was out there and 20 I think 10 less than 10 seconds we're all out of that plane because we still had our shoots on and it was about 15 minutes later ambulances came by they had us sitting down on the ground ambulance came by and the Coleman's come out and they're coming by checking each one of us and of course you know our adrenaline was so high I probably wouldn't have felt nothing I didn't feel nothing I said oh man I feel good I'm fine everybody else was saying the same thing the helicopter Pilots they weren't hurt nobody was hurt and we're going looking at the helicopter when it hit the blades snapped off because you know those he was those those blades run out there 30 feet and when they're not spinning they hang low well when we hit those blades hitting that snapped them off and I don't know how nobody got a scratch on them I think God was always looking out for us for some reason and there was stuff we'd go through that when he's supposed to live about 45 minutes after the crash we see a another Chinook in the air coming towards us and then he lands and the jump Master says uh because we're all still sitting on the ground you know just having chit chat you know waiting for them to do whatever we thought they was going to bring a bus and take us back and that Chinook landed and that jump Master looked at us and said everybody on the helicopter we looked and do what he said get on the helicopter we're going back up to do the jump because y'all are okay yeah well he said if you don't get on that helicopter today he said you'll never get on one he said you'll be too afraid he said well we're going to go do a jump and we all look at each other and we go what's the chance of the helicopter crashing twice in the same day you know so and it was a it was a beautiful jump I liked it after that I did some more training they were always training him we still play war games but Vietnam was winding down uh because I got back in 71 and uh for my next two years I was just going to different schools learning in different trades and grow Warfare and so forth and I was going to re-up for two more years they were going to give eight thousand dollars and I was gonna I was a E5 when I got out and uh I was a good e-6 rank plus eight thousand dollars for two more years and um I was going to get to go to Halo school and they were going to send me off to ski school and I mean he learned to do everything if you went and Seal Team it's it's because you were supposed to be able to go anywhere but desert fighting I don't know about desert fighting ain't no place to hide they trained uh seals to be able to go anywhere any type of terrain you would go to learn how to fight in Alaska look like a snow bunny but all in all you know I did four years to the day and I wouldn't trade that for nothing you know I got some body issues now that children have probably been taking care of 30 40 years ago and it's showing up now the older I get it the worse my bones are now I tell you military is a good way to find out who you are maybe one of these days I'll talk about some other stuff but for that for that that's that's it Dave Perry uh I'd like to have a new day when I first checked in at training we remain friends he went over to Vietnam about three months before I did and then I followed with my platoon and once we got back stateside we became massive friends and roommates and partners for life as he married to my first cousin now and like I told Don the earlier days one of them type of people that he wasn't carrying a gun and I had a shotgun I still wouldn't fight him he uh got in a fight One Night in a little basically all-night Diner we went into and he needed to go to the bathroom and these bikers were in the way and they told him to walk around he said no they told him to step over their legs he said no they told him to crawl over crawled under their legs he said nothing about this time I started to get up off of my stool and Dave told me to sit down so I did and I watched one window he's a couple of them out to play the last one that broke legs and arms on the others they filed charges in the civilian Court of Colorado we had to put on Navy blues and show up for court and I was there as a witness they read the charges off against Dave and there's about pirate thugs sitting over with cast on black ice and broken legs and broken arms and judges listening to the guy read off the prop uh charges against Dave and judge looks at him he says that sounds like a case of self-defense to me and it's missed the case I got mad at Dave because I had to get dressed up just to go to court

Channel: True Stories from the Vietnam War

Views: 272,212

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Id: VHLXzk1x1h4

Length: 39min 36sec (2376 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 11 2022