VOICES OF HISTORY PRESENTS - Mike Hotz, Huey Pilot Vietnam, 116th Assault Helicopter Company 1968

[Music] mike holtz united states army vietnam mike served with 116th assault helicopter company in vietnam in 1968 as a first lieutenant he was a helicopter pilot with the huey helicopter gunships in and out of landing zones remarkable story he's featured in my film vietnam remembered mike was severely wounded in vietnam and came home to tell his story i'd like to thank todd niswinder for sponsoring this story todd thank you for your support of my work and getting this story out there so many people can hear what mike went through my vietnam film by the way focuses on the air mobile division and todd you're helping others to learn more about the helicopter warfare in vietnam so god bless you for sponsoring this story okay folks i interviewed mike almost 17 years ago fruit of colorado just west of where i live here in grand junction and it was january 23 2006 so i hope you enjoy this share these stories subscribe to this channel let's keep this thing going folks freedom is not free freedom is earned we're fighting for the same freedoms in our own country today that our veterans fought for very very important that people hear these stories so let's get them out there and share them and i thank you for the support that you've given me uh your encouragement your words of encouragement i appreciate that so god bless you for it so enjoy mike's story [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] let's just start out now you were with the army and what year did you go to vietnam b68 okay and give me your your group your division your regiment company and all that that you're within vietnam okay i went over in august of 68 and i was with the 116th assault helicopter company and that was stationed at kuchi which was uh west of saigon and our sister company was staying in so we flew missions back and forth along that area between tainan and uh we supported a lot of ground troops like the 25th 101st 82nd we were just an assault helicopter and we had selects which were the uh they had the door gunners and some armament but they were troop carriers okay tell me um give me your rank and your mls at the time i was a combat engineer and i went to flight school so i was uh sent over as a lieutenant after i went through aviation school i had a short stationed up at watertown new york as a arranged maintenance waiting for a shipment overseas and actually ended up with one of my classmates in gucci at the same uh company okay so you were uh what was your rank uh when i get got to vietnam i was a first lieutenant okay and again your mos would be first combat engineer but aviation okay gotcha okay let's just we're going to talk about 45 minutes and i'm just learning more about vietnam i've heard a lot of things but can you tell were you ever in combat before you went to vietnam in this particular area no okay can you just start telling me what it was like when you first got to vietnam what you saw what it smelled like i mean what was vietnam like for you well of course in in the army we had a lot of training classes and we were at fort rucker and people talked about some of the instructors that the climate maybe was similar you know a human and hot and what to expect when you got to vietnam and and i suppose we had movies and talk to people but you're never really ready until you get there i mean it just there's no way to be prepared for what you actually feel or see when you get there we flew in on a commercial airline and that it's been a long time ago but i think it was brenef of course we had stewardesses and then we had meals and it was a you know like this is first class treatment but as we approached in country i guess we landed in saigon they put out a warning on the radio that there might be ground fire and we were actually flying into a you know hostile territory but nothing really happened there and then we uh our orders are all cut ahead of time so i ended up in kuchi which was a a helicopter base i started out flying out slicks because i was brand new in the country brand new in the company some of the pilots have been there one tour maybe even two tours warren officers and uh you know they start you right now you just go in and start flying we were doing uh hauling troops into lz's it'd be six eight to a ship or if they were vietnamese south vietnamese or whatever there'd be more maybe nine or ten and we were flying a hotel model huey's and uh of course we had our our flag jackets and our seats were bulletproof we had our helmets but it didn't take very many days to find out that we were really into in the hot country you know what uh hot combat area we were getting shot at as we come into the lz's and i remember my first real awareness of what was going on was getting up and looking and i could see bullets hitting the water and i thought it was our guy shooting out and i think my pilot said get your head down oates those are incoming you know they were right out in front of us it was like real awareness like this thing is real were you a pilot yeah okay so you're flying a huey yeah at that time i was a coal ponder that was brand new you know i might have got on the sticker a little bit but how old were you then uh i actually got commissioned it at 18 out of ocs and i got in there in august my birthday was in september so i probably still was 18. maybe 19. so you're you're do like remember your first missions into the hot did you do the hot houses you're going into i wouldn't say that was the very first i mean i really don't i remember we were flying [ __ ] and flying but i remember that being my first it might have been the third day or the tenth day but i remember the incoming you know the bullets and then you know i was very short time it was like two and a half three months so we were flying a lot of hours per day seemed like from morning to night and even night missions and we'd eat in the planer sea rations and uh you know i was getting a lot of air time i was getting logging up a lot of flight time which was good and i had some other duties i was a payroll officer i was in charge of recreation uh that was kind of a fluke that was a funny little story they found out i was a combat engineer and the ceo or the executive officer wanted a swimming pool so he said holt you're in charge of making this company a swimming pool so so on one of our missions that we were down at funk cow i found some concrete that was belong to the navy called in for eight or ten slicks we loaded it up took it back and used that to make the swimming pool i had a neighboring company come over and engineer company and they dug out a big trench like an inch latch pet like we'd do back on the farm and then we had the vietnamese that came into work we'd had them square off the ends and then we got a bladder rubber bladder and we put the concrete i never saw it finished i uh had some people send me pictures of it but it was an olympic sized swimming pool i guess it was finished to that size and i got hit before i saw the finished product tell me about the the huey as far as as a workhorse in vietnam and the missions and the things you did with the uae helicopters and then just tell me about uh you know the sound of the huey but tell me about the the helicopters in general what was what you guys use it for well like say we were an assault company 116th assault so our mission was really to uh drop in troops in an lz and we even come by sort of accident a smoky ship that would circle the lz and throw up a smoke screen and then the gun ships would do a pre-run and hit the perimeters or the brush lines or whatever in case there was a hostile fire trying to uh you know watch for the ships to come in so they didn't draw a fire you know and it uh they wised up to it pretty quick i mean they they learned how to lead the helicopters and you're always getting shot at and hit in the helicopter and saw a helicopter right next to me a guy went to aviation school got hit right in the head you know and that was his end right there and uh every day you know we're just about every day come back there'd be somebody that it was a casualty or sent back home and ironic enough even though my chopper been hit sometimes uh i never got any injuries whatsoever except in base camp and the night that i got hit a rocket came through my uh hooch my barracks and it had a galvanized roof and it just splattered that and so between the fragments and the shrapnel is what splattered me and my roommate was gone luckily it blew his bed completely apart can you describe that we kind of jumped ahead a bit go ahead and describe what actually happened to you physically where you were hitting all that describe the incident again well it was late at night it was i've been the the officers club it was like nine or ten and i'd went back to the barracks and just caught an incoming round there were other rounds came into the base camp and i don't know how many casualties were done that night because i was pretty much in shock it i was laying down sleeping and it just knocked me basically out of bed and i uh was bleeding bad in the throat so i sort of remember sticking my finger into trying to get air my windpipe was cut and i had a piece of shrapnel about the size of a pack of cigarettes stuck right there and i sort of limped or walked down the boardwalk to another hooch and there was another major that saw me grab me wrapped me in a sheet and luckily we had a medical team right there on base camp so i don't know how long it's no way of knowing the amount of time that passed if i'd been out in the field i probably wouldn't have made it but luckily he had quick medical attention and i remember him starting to work on me and now seemed like i was kind of up above looking down at him but you know that many years i guess you don't know but i ended up with a lot of shrapnel i had like 40 pieces it just splattered me and uh they were able to stabilize me and several days later i think they put me on a stretcher and i went to saigon into tokyo spent some time there and then went to travis air force base and then ended up in fit simmons for several years until i did a lot of reconstructive surgery back in vietnam mike now the huey helicopters did you use them for medevacs or just taking troops in when you pulled troops out were they wounded tell me about just walk me through that take me back and walk me through everything they needed for a helicopter it could be anything it'd be just taking supplies out or dropping in troops or the gun realms or medevac out i mean they were the workhorse they did you know the the troops that i talked to later in the hospital the platoon leaders and and guys were on the ground when i stationed fit simmons they just really depended on us and here i mean we were at the time we knew we were doing what we were supposed to be doing but they really i mean when they heard that waffles like their savior or their rescue or their help or whatever i mean we were jack of all trades i guess except recreation i mean you didn't have time for any recreation can you describe to me a a a situation where there was combat and where you went in and did you did you drop down did you hover did where wounded put a board the huey tell me about some of those times have you seen that a typical mission would be like say we do the gun run ahead of time if we thought it was needed and then five six seven choppers would drop in the troops six seven eight to a ship and they would do the landing they would do a fast approach and uh come into an lz everybody would unload and then the choppers would take out and it depends on how far we where we were we'd go back to camp and get fuel or maybe go get other troops and bring them in depends on what their mission was or how many troops they needed on that particular mission and then of course if there were wounded they would call back and they were regular medevac but a lot of times there weren't enough ships for medevac so they would again call the slicks back in to carry out the wounded and then take him to the closest base camp for medical attention do you remember that or was it like a surrealistic type of situation i mean when you're actually in combat and and they're shooting and there's wounded and people getting wounded or dying i mean are they shooting at the wounded as they're getting on board the huey's i mean what's going on well yeah it's it's going so fast and i don't say you get used to it but like say when you're first there it's just you're blown away by what's going on but after you've done it a while it's uh you know what's expected and what you're going to do i mean you're going to go into that lz it didn't take me very long to realize that i wanted to be in gunships rather than just the hueys so i put in for it and because i did have commission grade i think they needed a platoon leader so i was assigned to the gunships maybe even ahead of some more officer had more time in there but i felt better about if i was going to be in the war at least i was in a gunship able to do something back and a lot of our gun runs you know we just hit a perimeter and fire off the grenade launchers or the rockets or the machine gun and prepped the air you know so that our troops wouldn't get hammered any worse than they had to be but usually those you know the vietnamese wised up they knew that we were coming to do that so maybe we wouldn't draw any fire and they would wait till slicks came in and i mentioned the smoky ship i don't know that was actually our company that did it but there was a ship that was not running well well that was throwing out a lot of smoke had a bad injector or something and we ended up doing other ships that would go in and make a round circle around the lz and throw up a smoke screen which was kind of a suicide run you actually even drew straws to get it because it would draw fire i mean they when they found out what it was doing they'd try to put it out of commission sure um now you may you mentioned the huey making a whop-whop sound i mean one blade is that what it is well no it's two blades but when you change it it's wobble pop-pop-pop-up and then the air density changes like at noon or one or two o'clock you would get a lower density and we'd have to maybe go get fuel and and try to be up in the air because it's harder to stay up you don't have the hover factor and you're loaded heavy and it you know 12 1 2 o'clock it just you don't want to be on the ground anymore and you have to be so it's harder to make your approaches now you were a co-pilot at first and then you were you became a pilot then i was a co-pilot for on the slicks and then went uh and into the guns and then actually was copied on the guns with somebody been in more time but by the time i got the gunships i was actually doing a lot of flight time a lot of stick time there's two of you in the front and you know one's doing the flying ones doing a lot of the talk and you got you know earphones on you're listening to several different channels trying to uh you know keep up with what you're doing and another channel maybe uh what's going on on the ground or can you can you remember and tell me what some of the radio communications was i mean you're using codes or names or colors i mean what are you what are you saying joe bob i mean how you guys talking oh boy that's been a long time to go out identifying yourself uh pretty much just talk about what you're doing like uh squad leader some people had nicknames or you know like wasp 68 or a hornet i think uh my ship had a what was it hornets i had a plaque around here was horn at 66 maybe or something so you would have a call sign or a name and you would talk to other ships under those same so now as a tell me about the the crew on the ship who if there's a gunner tell me about the crew on the on these well on the slicks you had a gunner on each side in the back door gunners a crew chief and a door gunner and then on the gun ships usually you would have that too but sometimes i think that we probably only had one or two in the back because we had a lot of other armament we had rockets uh machine guns grenade launchers you know if you were completely full with everything which it made you fairly fairly heavy you know you try to get out early in the morning and and then coming in i remember when we first started we um there was a tank or something out in there we'd practice rounds at it to come in and you know uh like it in the evening or the afternoon to you know decide in i know this is a kind of a foolish question but just because a lot of people don't know um a lot about vietnam but tell me who we're fighting in vietnam well the south vietnamese were our allies and then we were fighting the north vietnamese or the vietcong the viet cong were uh you know the local rebels or whatever they uh i don't know you when you're at that age going over there like say you're not prepared what's going on it's just kind of what you're sent there to do your job and really i don't think anybody's aware of what was going on until maybe even after it was over with uh i know there were times that i felt and i'm sure other people did too that we were kind of well i used to play basketball like we were fighting half court you know we'd uh hit supply lines have three or four days of of hitting accuvaries and maybe they would call us back for a day it was almost like giving them a chance to regroup or some of us felt that way maybe it was you know they had their own reasons for doing things but uh and then some of the people been there a long time said well we could win this thing in a week we'll just blow it up and blacktop it and no doubt we had the arm and stuff to do that but that wasn't the way the war was being fought and uh it was a different kind of war i don't know what the actual number came out after it was all over but i remember hear my dad talk about hundreds of thousands of troops being killed in world war ii and i think basically vietnam we probably lost what 50 60 70 000 so it's a different kind of war but it was very extreme at the time i mean the 10 offensive was in 68 and uh the people on the ground you know they really had it tough some of them i mean they were right out in the middle of the action uh even though we were vulnerable in the air it was some safety margin we weren't in the hand-to-hand combat combatter and the muck and the dirt and the heat and we had a as nice job as i guess you could get being as you were there none of it was good but it was better than being in the other place i'm very intrigued by the huey helicopter in world war ii they used the higgins landing boats that took the troops into the beaches and stuff and that was the transportation for the troops and you flying into an lz um in and out i mean to me the huey is a counterpart to what those higgins boats were doing so um what was the mood of some of these troops going into these areas were they scared were they gung-ho invincible what do you think how did you describe that well both i mean the ones where gung-ho had probably had some time there or maybe it was a little bit of a facade but a lot of them were scared to death i mean they were brand new young country and you know especially on their first few missions i mean you can imagine coming in the flight probably scared them and then to drop into an lz and being fired up on probably being my age at 18 or 19 years old i mean it was petrifying they had you know they were dropped into a hot lz anybody would react the same way and maybe the gungle ones you know just to become accustomed to it after a month or six months or some of them were on second tours was there's this feeling like without some of the world war ii guys they felt invincible until they started shooting at them then they realized this is real i mean is that kind of baptism in a fire type thing well you saw people next to you being injured or killed and i i think everybody even nowadays human nature is it happens to the next guy it won't happen to me it was real eye-opening to me when i woke up in the hospital a month later realized that i was well i was alive but that i'd been hit because you always think it's going to happen to the next guy you know i'm like i even woke up probably you know it could have been the end of the whole show so uh you realize real quick that you're not invincible you just your number's up you know and i uh thank god it wasn't because i've sure enjoyed life since that but uh it was real close either way tell me about anybody you knew you mentioned maybe your friends or people you knew that were actual friends or people you knew killed or wounded in in combat while you're going in and out do you remember any incidents classmates yeah i could say you know as much as friends you can get with a classmate you spend time with them in the in flight school of course there's maybe 100 or 200 other ones but you become friends with half a dozen are a dozen real good ones and the others are acquaintances and i don't remember the names now i probably shut it out of my mind but we started out in fort bliss flying the hiller which was pretty much mechanical but at the time we were in training so it seemed like a great little helicopter and then we went into the bell which was in fort rocker for advanced training so the huey by the time we got to the ue it was what a ship it was hydraulic it was big turbine i mean what a piece of equipment matter of fact when i got the army i bought a bell turbo and my ranch and gunness just because i had such a love for the for the helicopter tried to fight fixed wing a little bit and just never got the feel for it and my mind didn't work in the right direction fly fixed wings so i thought i better stay with the helicopter but the ue i was actually going to go into culver's at the first year taking a couple uh flights in them and i got hit and the first part of november so i didn't make it to the cobra i would have loved to flown that machine more it was just two pilots pilot gopi lined up really a hard assault machine and then later they had some other helicopters really got advanced even nowadays but you know no way to go back and i see them at flight shows or uh air shows or whatever but never really had a chance to fly those so you lost some friends yeah i remember after being there maybe only a month like i say just one of the ships off to my left i got it we got it on the radio that lieutenant uh if i thought about i could probably think had been hit and come to find out he'd been shot right in the head and then i've met a guy in uh that simmons had been hit with a 50 caliber in a jaw and he was i didn't know him at the time but i met him in fitzsimmons i some of my better friends i met when i was actually stationed at fitzsimmons you know we got stationed there for six months to a year to get repaired and some of my best friends i still keep contact with that i met in fitzsimmons had one visit me here last summer captain joel main and had another captain wagger coming up my ranch in gunnison some years back did you see the movie we were soldiers with mel gibson yeah i believe so but the eye drain valley battle in 65 helicopters the first time they really used helicopters in vietnam was vietnam anything like that i mean i know hollywood glamorizes it but was there any any part of that movie that maybe you could say that was realistic as far as the helicopter part yeah they were um you know there's a lot of movies come out after vietnam there was hamburger hill and they uh we were soldiers and uh uh the deer hunter or some of those any of them do justice to what life was really like or yeah they may have been hollywood up a little bit but then maybe in a lot of cases they weren't they probably didn't really get into as deep as it was i remember the kelly accident and that was that was probably a real thing that was going on you know but he got caught on the on the pedestal and they probably made an example in but the real war was going on there were people being killed there would be people being shot and there was like see a lot more action on the ground that we never even got to see you're up a couple hundred feet and you're firing into the brush you know somebody's gonna get wounded or killed but when you're on the ground you're hand to hand or 15 or 20 feet you know what's really happening does anything today trigger or remind you of vietnam what if you hear a the saint mary's helicopter does anything remind you of what do you think about any helicopter i can hear at any time helicopter goes by a seismograph saint mary's yeah it's it's instantly that's whoop up and like say i was hit sleeping so a loud noise like a backfire or shot it's sudden alertness i still don't sleep very well and i don't know whether to blame that on it but i'm up two or three times during the middle of night any noise i'm a very light sleeper i don't dwell on those movies i've seen them i don't go back and see them more than once uh took me a while to get to where i wanted to see them still don't really want to see them i just kind of accident upped on a couple of them so i wouldn't seek out and go rent one on purpose yeah were you shooting at firing as a pilot or co-pilot were you yeah it's actually in your joystick you actually had the trigger and you fired and had a grenade launcher and fired off your rockets yeah you actually fired did you have to do that oh yeah coming in to an llc or whatever well that's yeah i've got pictures over my album where it shows it's coming in and the rockets are coming out off both sides hitting the brush line or the tree line or the river bank and then you had your machine gun where you could trigger it and your door gunners if they were there they were you know shooting from the sides yeah actually we'd uh one you could be flying and shooting both or you could be uh the other guy could be flying and you did do the shooting or you know he did both did you ever see the vietcong or when you're shooting at him or did you see him at all during your time oh yeah you'd see him yeah a lot of times uh you didn't really know who they were i mean you see people on the ground and if they saw you coming they might drop what they were doing like in a field drop a [ __ ] or rake or whatever they had or shovel and then grab a gun and i remember one instance we had a new field commander coming in and he was in my ship in the back and that must have been when i was flying slicks and i had a senior warrant officer with me i believe he said we're in the friendly territory now and that one of us is no so we're not we had fire here a couple days ago and he said no according to my records i think the warrant officer kind of winked back at the crew chief and he threw out a sea ration peanut butter can or cheesecan and they saw that coming down probably thinking it was a grenade or something or whatever i don't know man they grabbed their rifles and started firing and we got out of there and the field commander was upset about that saying that i was led to believe this is a friendly territory and we're getting fired up but i think they were every place i mean they just there were hostels right in with scattered throughout maybe even the people on the ground didn't know sometimes who they were describe the the lz in a hot lz um if you touch down if the troops jump off just this is take me in on a landing on is it hot lz do they have to clear the path or is it already cleared out or what do you have well you tried to clear the path i mean it was picked out by the people on the ground and sent up a smoke signal you know red or blue or yellow and then you would land and a lot of times it'd be in water and so maybe you wouldn't completely sit down uh you know the water i'd see him jump out the water maybe would be six inches to a foot a foot and a half deep and uh then other times it'd be on just regular regular ground but right around the area we had a lot of it was flat land and uh and water the rice paddies and if you went further north uh we did support some other areas but they were kind of vague i remember going on some of them but basically we went between coochie and tayden is it a tense moment when you're landing in a hot lc well yeah and you sometimes you really never know it's gonna be hot until you get into it i mean you're hoping everyone is not and maybe two or three or four in a row will be it's kind of like the lotto you don't know which what's when you're gonna get the number is it like a pink pink pink when they're hitting the side of their helicopter how many pink pinks can a helicopter tape before it's shot well it depends on what hits if it's a hydraulic hose or something like that or you know it's it take you right down uh i remember coming back and not even knowing we'd been hit until we got out back to base camp and seeing bullet holes in the tail section through the sheet metal so uh and actually i don't ever remember having anything come through the bubble when i was flying so like i said you always think it's gonna happen next guy so really i never had anybody hit in the back of my ship or in the bubble but we did have those bull holes in the uh tail section that were was was there ever an incident where anybody on the actual helicopter was shot while you were taking off or landing that was actually in the helicopter do you remember anything like that that the classmate i said he was hit we were going into an lz yeah i got the radio report right there and never saw him after that i mean he was killed right then shot right in the head what kind of weapons are firing back at you ak-47s ah probably our troops had m16s but uh they are ar-15 223 and so the south vietnamese sometimes had you know there'd be more of them they would have the same weapons that our troops had and they were they didn't weigh as much so we could carry more of them but a lot of times it'd be mixed partly them and partly the american troops with them and uh we even got up towards you know the cambodian border and uh seems like one time remember a ship went down must have been right at the border so we were sent back with the gold white phosphorus or willy peter rounds and destroyed it on ground because it was unfeasible to get it out it was in such a bad area that we just didn't want them to get it so it was destroyed on the ground tell me about the camaraderie with the other guys was there a camaraderie that you guys shared a bond yeah uh some guys i remember one of the warren officer it seemed like he was always just halfway out of it he was probably just petrified in his whole soul and he'd been there for a while and i think you know he probably smoked marijuana a lot and uh he was a good pilot but i think he was just kind of out there all the time probably just trying to handle the situation basically everybody was pretty straight and scared enough that you paid a lot of attention to detail you didn't want any mistakes uh and when you come back of course we flew so many hours usually didn't have much time for social events or recreation i mean you just ate went back to bed you might go to the old club for a little bit or i remember twice going to ncl club with my uh some of my crews you know they had a show in from korea or something but you just didn't have a lot of time you just had too many hours too many duties and which is good it kept you busy time went fast tell me about the drug uses in vietnam what you know and how that affected the war that you were in uh on the ground i just heard from other people saying that you know it was probably more used flying i only remember those couple incidents where those guys they uh you're in control of a half million dollar piece of equipment first of all and you're going out there in the air you don't want to make a mistake so unless it was heading a lot nobody that i would fly next to or whatever i saw but i do think that one little warrant officer was probably a little out of it at times he just he'd be late to the flight line didn't want to go uh probably didn't get on the stick for the first hour or two maybe the other guy would know that something's wrong with him but i'm sure he was just petrified how did you feel as a pilot on a huey going into combat was there any glamour or glory to that or was it just a job or was it an adventure like the army makes it look like or what were your thoughts then about all that what was happening around you did you think someday you'd be you know what do you think i wanted to become a warrant officer and fly and that's why i went to the army uh i'd looked at the air force but that would have been a long haul when i got to ait i'd qualified where i could go to ocs and they that would take longer to go in country and i'd get probably more money and get some ranks i tried i did that still wanting to fly and so i i wanted to fly the helicopter you know i'd originally i thought i'd just become a warrant officer but when i got the commission it was a little more money but yeah i had a real desire to fly the helicopter it wasn't something that they made me do i mean i put in for it and worked to get it were you ever conscious of the fact that i'm serving my country i'm fighting for the flag and people's freedoms do you ever think like that well yeah we thought we were doing a good thing and we were gung-ho as far as getting over there and fighting you know i had other friends that their big brother come back and be in vietnam so it was like i enlisted uh sounds foolish now that i would want to go to vietnam but i was 17 unless with two other friends and and knew that i would go to vietnam and i knew i wanted to fly so uh and once you got there like you said it was i'm up here and and i'm flying the helicopter and we're going to protect those guys on the ground and we're going to do our job and sure glad i'm up here instead of down there and yeah we're doing you know we're doing a good thing here we're doing what we're supposed to do and let's do it the best we can tell me about the homecoming you had when you came back was there a homecoming explain tell me what happened i'm gonna hear it well no i it was there was no homecoming first of all was in the hospital uh i've heard other people talk about that that there was nobody to meet him off the plane and no parades but that was the kind of war it was i remember a guy in gunnison sobbing over the over a beer that nobody came to the airport and he was actually in supply or something i said let's get it out of your system because just kind of where it was but no i am my folks lived in the back so i think they were probably there when i got to fed simmons in denver my mom was just you know bewildered the fact that i was i lost a lot of weight i weigh about 2 10 now and i weighed 2 10 or 2 15 when i got out ait and i was all muscle then unfortunately it's not muscle now but when i got hit i couldn't uh eat i'd take everything through tubes in my nose so on my first leave i remember going to a basketball game in my hometown and i weighed 128 pounds from from 215 pounds and i had a trach so i couldn't talk i was just skin and bones but i was alive uh there's a a period when bitterness sets in i mean i guess that you're the one that got hit or whatever but eventually you know you figure that there's a blessing in that too because you could have been dead or a lot worse often i saw some real bad cases in the hospital and i consider myself real lucky but uh when you're actually over there doing it yeah it was i'm sure the guys went for the second tour must have felt more of that or they wouldn't put in for the second tour and like i said some of them probably weren't just young whole but the the short amount of time that i was there i was intrigued by it thought i was doing what i was supposed to be doing for my country uncle sam and sent me over there and i wanted to do it the best i could and i wouldn't say i was eager to do it but i got up knowing i was going to do it and it wasn't dragging my feet you're anxious probably in a good sense and a bad sense you're anxious because of what might happen but you're also anxious to get in to start doing it i asked all the world war ii guys this question and i'm going to ask you as a vietnam veteran but and kind of follow up to some of the questions i've asked you about you know what does freedom mean to you i mean having fought in vietnam been injured what does freedom mean to you mike well i don't know if we accomplished everything we were supposed to in that particular war but other wars that's what we you know that's what we're fighting for and i think a lot of people may take that for granted uh unless you're there firsthand experience there's a lot of sacrifices that are put out for that word of freedom which is a uh it's a cause and then over eons and all the history you know it's it's been there we are a free country and then in world war ii like i said there were so many killed in that same sense of freedom but every war is fought differently you know even desert storm so as long as we gotta keep doing it but uh i do think a lot of people do take it for granted i don't think the veterans do i mean i don't care what aspect they're at maybe they don't see the action but they they're there putting in their tally in their day and they're making their sacrifices they're away from their families they're out of society for that period of time i think a lot of times they're under underappreciated there's a lot of good things coming out now i think there's a lot of good programs and there's retraining there's good medical and that are for the benefit of the veterans which i'm glad to see not for myself but just for the the whole much people out there that do need it what you were wounded you saw others wounded and killed mike what does what tell me about the price for freedom well when i was more conscious in fit simmons is where i really saw the uh the tally of the war i mean it was young husband and wife and he would be amputated or amputated and tore up inside or die on the bed next to me and that was where you really saw the cost of war the destruction of what it did to the human lives and you know that was only just a tinge of it because there was so much more that that was just one hospital that was fit simmons in denver which was a big hospital and i became friends with some of those guys but even after they got out if i look back half of those guys are dead right now they just never did readjust they uh they had a lot of divorces they had a lot of financial problems a lot of drinking uh drugs suicides i mean it just a lot of them just didn't didn't come out of it right you know a lot of psychological problems but what's the cause of that did they not get the help they wanted i mean why why did why did some of them come back messed up well different reasons some of them i guess every individual adjusts to the situation differently and it's just hard to put it all behind you and a lot of them were crying over like say the guy crying over his beer about no homecoming or or maybe they maybe they got a wrong attitude towards other people by being in the military i don't know it's there's i don't think there's any one one or two things you can say on that they just it's hard to adjust when you get back and they just probably aren't enough programs or enough knowledge on how to get them to adjust i know a lot of officers that were wounded that just over the last 20 years that i found out that just didn't make it they died of alcoholism or suicides or or bad medical problems you think there was such a difference between world war ii and vietnam to where the vietnam vets did suffer like that they did commit suicide and all the drinking problems i mean it seems like there was a different generation i think world war ii was you know maybe the whole country dived into it more so there wasn't the conflict of whether it was right or wrong so maybe they didn't have that adjustment i mean there probably were more flag waving ceremony parades for the world war ii veterans but i wouldn't blame that completely on it like say the uh the mass of destruction and death in the world war ii was so much more than vietnam but percentage-wise it i don't think the vietnam guys adjusted as well but uh do you think the drugs had anything to do with why a lot of them are messed up am i yeah i might have been drugs i don't know if they come in contact with it in the military or that was the error that when they got out i mean marijuana was a big thing back in that era and maybe it wasn't world war ii and alcohol probably was both so i don't know maybe it's our society i don't know there's no way to i try not to get too deep into it i just try to do a soul survivorship and maybe that's the wrong way to look at it but you kind of gotta do it on your own and tell me why vietnam's referred to as an unpopular war what does that mean well there was a lot of peace movements back in that time and you know if i had looked back at it again i mean some people avoided the draft and they went to canada and if i'd had a son i mean at this point looking back out with wood would you would you tell your son to go to vietnam if you had that way to look back or would you time to go to canada i mean it there's a lot of things i didn't agree with the war either but it was a war and that's we got ourselves into it that's what we were so i don't know it'd be a tough decision it's a it was an unpopular war it probably still is it's uh you know the public it was probably a mixed reaction you didn't know somebody would shake your hand or punch you because you were there uh yeah it was it was a different different kind of war i'm glad i was young so i didn't probably know any better at 18 or 19 you really don't know that much you just kind of do what you're told to do mike tell me what does the american flag mean to you today oh it's it's a symbol of what we stand for i mean there's been a lot of sacrifices for it it's uh i'm glad i'm here and not in a different country there's a lot of other areas over there that they don't have even a chance of what we appreciate here i mean to live in this society and to walk out and get in your car and drive and go pretty much where you want i go to mexico a couple times a year and that's somewhat limited compared here there's border patrols and they have a different attitude i mean we really are free here people don't maybe know it all the time we have more freedom here than any place i've ever been i've been in new zealand and australia and canada mexico and there are the free parts of the world but we really have the best of everything here and uh if that's what it took to get that then everything was worth it maybe not to the families that suffered more but you know i consider myself very lucky to be here so it's it's behind me why do you think you survived and lived through vietnam a lot of men didn't i mean you ever did does that ever bother you yeah you always think about it you always wonder why you know your number's up or why it's not up i mean i have friends every day or people i know acquaintances that either have heart attacks or cancer or die seems like at my age now there's more funerals and more death you really don't think about when you're 20 30 and 40. now you're more aware of it but you also know that you're vulnerable and that uh especially after being in a situation like that that you know if i had a heart attack tomorrow uh that's just the way it goes but i would also consider myself that i was dead back then so i've had a blessing of a what 30 40 years that was 68 so a little shy of 40 years so i for some odd miracle i got blessed with that other 40 years i got a second chance and a lot of guys didn't and maybe they were wounded worse or not wounded or dead whatever but you know i would hope that they would realize what just being able to breathe that they uh that's why it's such a shame that once they came back that had the opportunity that didn't make it just because of an adjustment that's that's a sadness that's almost as bad as the actual happening over there if they're put together through a lot of expense a lot of doctors at a military base and they go three or four years of retrain they're getting disability and pension and they still can't make it that's a that's seems like a waste it seemed like a human waste it was a price of war over there that they didn't but it's a shame to see it happen after the you know after the game's called mike are you proud that you're a vietnam veteran your service to our country i don't gloat on it i don't usually don't talk about it but i'm not ashamed of it yeah i'm proud but i very few people know about it it doesn't come up in normal conversations uh why i don't think our society just really wants to deal with it or it's not like i said it wasn't a popular war but you know the people that do know once a while they'll even like this it's i didn't have a reluctance to do it but i didn't seek it out to have it done because it's something that you do want to put behind you but at the same time no i'm proud of it i'm glad that i was it's hard to say i'm glad i was there because maybe things would have been a lot different but i was there so i'm glad that i am here now in the shape that i'm in and i'm not ashamed that i did it i uh i have remorse about maybe some of the things that i had to do there don't even know to some extent what i did do being in the air and firing rounds i mean i'm sure there was damages done i saw hooches and villages destroyed so i'm sure there were you know there was a cost of that i i don't like to think or remember that part of it but that's that's part of the war that's what we were called to do what's one thing about the army i mean you do what you're told to do right wrong and different you do it if it's wrong you deal with it later and i remember the old saying it's better to make a wrong decision quick than it was the right one too late so that's especially true in combat do you don't want do you want people to know you're a vietnam veteran uh i don't think it makes any difference one way or the other it's if they do that's fine but you know i wouldn't go out and publicize it but at the same time it's i don't think it would cost me any uh embarrassment or uh bad feelings or i mean i would hope if people knew about it they wouldn't come and burn my house or throw rocks at me but i think it's way past that i think i think we're 40 years down the road maybe the first five years it would have been a lot more unpopular but a lot of people my age and the people i know they were in the military so that you know they're appreciative they probably have the same feelings has anybody ever thanked you for your service in vietnam well no probably not exactly like that not just come up and shake your hand there are some appreciation functions and stuff but and the fruit has a new center out here that's got the the chopper i'm glad i'm in the town that has it that's nice to see that huey come in and there's been some appreciation done on that so yeah i am like i said i'm very intrigued by your story and you sharing why do you think you you're talking to me today i mean what what kind of prompted you why why why are you talking to me today well i there was a a guy that i knew that you also knew that was really intrigued by it he's always been intrigued by it and he probably has talked to me about as much as anybody has bobby telford and so when he asked me i said well sure you know if it if it goes someplace and helps somebody and people want to know about it i'd be willing to talk about it you know and he was always every time i would get together he wouldn't know a bar about he just had an intrigue with it which the common people out there don't they probably don't think any more about it than watching a an hour a movie on tv what do you hope comes from your interview today and who do you want this to reach i think the biggest thing i would like to see it help or see come out of it would be like say the misfortunate ones that actually got back that couldn't make it later on and then maybe the higher echelons to know that the next time we get into a situation like that that maybe some things could be done different i mean maybe a different i don't know like say i'm glad i was young because even at this age i don't i was just i was told to do a certain thing that's what you did but if it was wrong at that time when we did it whose fault is out i mean maybe somebody up a little higher up should have known different do you think it's important that we remember and our young people remember about war i mean things that happen well yeah because you don't want all the young people to say that because of that war that my kid's not going or i'm not joining up or i'm not going to military you can't have a breakdown like that but when we went in call it immaturity or stupid or whatever or just ignorance but we wanted to go i mean my dad was in the world war ii he was a paratrooper so it was a commendable honorable thing to do was to go to the military even though there was a lot of people at that time that felt that was wrong my upbringing stuff it was commendable and you got to have that feeling because we don't want to have a breakdown in the uh military strength or we won't have our freedom forever we don't want to be taken over by a third power i mean some people say we are anyway through finances and whatever i mean we're getting bought up but we sure don't want to have a hostile takeover so i think it's important for the youth to know that not everyone has to go to the army or the draft but if a situation arises not to have a bad feeling i think they need to know that the veterans that were actually in these wars don't all have a bad feeling for it even if they weren't all done exactly maybe perfect did you know what was going on in the home front when you guys were in vietnam not so much you know maybe through some songs or music or attitudes but we really didn't have a lot of contact with the civilians we went at 17 it was all military contact and if there were a few that were older me that had different viewpoints they really didn't get a chance to you were so busy i mean you were basic training ait ocs was six months it was the hardest training i ever imagined i mean it was daylight the dark night time it was everything they ever said it was you know their marine boot camp probably was worse or a navy seal training but ocs was a tough training and uh probably had a lot of reasons for it being tough but uh you just didn't have time it was eat if you had a chance to eat sleep and next day do it all over again and they wanted to be ready for that when you got in country i guess which was good you didn't want to be sitting there thinking about what might happen tomorrow or waiting out the week for what might happen or seeing somebody that didn't come back i mean you just hit the deck running and did it and that's probably a good way to do it did you guys listen to creighton's clear water revival going into battle would like to do in the movies we had a uh what is it the uh robin williams uh good morning um yeah we had a channel we could get on and hear uh mr chicken and good morning vietnam and stuff but you usually were so busy with other radio contacts that you didn't usually get to listen to that i remember a few times but maybe just coming back in i've been intrigued by what this troops in world war ii were doing on the landing craft before they landed you know were they looking where they ducked down what were these troops on your helicopters doing before they landed were they sitting were they hanging their feet outside what were they doing i mean well i don't know we just picked them up wherever we pick them up at and they uh i don't know what they did the 10 minutes or the hour before they just jumped in you they got in uh yeah sometimes they'd have their feet hanging out or whatever but usually there's seating back where it's set so everybody was inside the chopper you know it wasn't wasn't maybe as casual as you see in some of these uh movies where you're just hanging out the side it's not quite that casual and uh like i say some of them are brand new so it was just you could see the look in their face it was just uh i don't know if anybody can imagine 18 or 19 and have a rifle in your hand and jumping out into a rice paddy where you know well you can hear you can hear shooting whether it's outgoing your income you don't know i mean it's it's the real thing right then i mean i can't fathom any individual uh i guess everybody's gonna react differently or maybe everybody reacts the same i don't know it's gotta be petrifying were you scared for your life when you were being shot at or was it kind of like we're gonna be okay or i mean are you just focused on your mission i think you're focused on the mission and you're probably i was probably more conscious of what they were feeling than what i was feeling i mean i had that initial sensation when i saw it but after that when you kind of did it every day i think you became more aware of what they were feeling did you ever medevac and he wounded out yeah we went yeah we'd get called in and bring out uh two or three or four i mean it was just you look in the back and they're on the stretcher and get them out of there i mean it's everything your concentrate is forward and getting out you know it's not you don't do a lot of talking in the back you might get a glass back like that but you're it's all straightforward attention it wasn't like you're wanting to see what was happening or who was hurt and what happened were they screaming or were they were they mobilized or what i mean usually uh no usually not screaming usually pretty much out of it by that time if they're badly wounded they've been given morphine or something they're out of it and they've probably there's probably a medic on the ground so they've been wrapped up and managed and like i say thank god i wasn't on the field i don't believe i would have made it it's kind of like our flight for life helicopters today they're going around picking up wounded with their car wrecks or whatever that whole thing probably was birth in vietnam i mean that air mobile division all that they had an opening for a helicopter pilot up here at st mary's and i actually was going to go put in for it and uh due to them by injuring my voice i didn't think i would make it so but i think probably vietnam uh pilots were probably some of the more qualified i don't know who actually who's flying it now but what a beautiful ship it is it's a big pleasure to fly it but be the same instances that there's been a couple of them lost you know wrecked some years back [Music] but that's a you know it's a they're a great machine they're expensive but they're they're fast and they're they were really the workhorse over there they had a puff of magic dragon they had some big fixed wings and had the loaches the observation but the the huey was really the the dog of the whole thing i think it really i'd like to feel that way anyway because i was there doing it but the little loaches were real quick to the leg beaters they were great for observationary gunships but the uae is a great ship for that war have you ever been anywhere recently where huey's flew overhead i mean vietnam era who has i've seen them in air shows that come over like military uh they'll fly formation right across over here they'll be six or eight yeah it's a it's real interesting i mean my boy will run out and look at it flying formation that's quite the feeling and that was that was a great feeling when you did it i mean you you had everything had to be just perfect you had to lock into a focus point on a runner or a blade and stay in perfect formation you really become quite good you're flying enough hours every day it just becomes second nature and i by the time i was in or just two or three months i consider myself you know a really good pilot you could just ever ship out a little different feel but you can set them down so light take them off so easy knew the characteristics of what would take off at one o'clock with certain weight you could just make them almost do anything just almost dance for you do you miss flying today well i do i really love to fly and i uh bought the bell and never got a lot of chance to fly it it was too expensive and my insurance actually cost more per month than my payment was on it if i remember my insurance was thirteen hundred a month my payment was twelve hundred but yeah i do miss the rotary flying i'd love to have the money time just to go on fly every day you know under a comfortable situation i'm gonna have you do one more thing i've asked all the veterans to do this all 200 of them i want you to give me a salute into the camera could you do that when i tell you from right there you want me to stand no i want you sitting down for the camera's sake i know it's more appropriate to stand but let me just get focused in here okay sir right into the camera great thank you [Music] um [Music] you

Channel: Voices of History

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Id: Xb8n110rmms

Length: 61min 5sec (3665 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 10 2022