How I Survived 14 Months in Vietnam

How I Survived 14 Months in Vietnam

So, but it was initially it was a little bit difficult to be pulling a trigger and shooting at somebody instead of a target or something like that, you know, like you learned in basic NIT in the very first time of fire at somebody was. Yeah, it was difficult because your objective is to take their life and that’s not, you know, nobody really wants to do that or most people don’t.

There were people over there that were there on several tours and they enjoyed it. Yeah. Upset about that. You know what I mean? “Well, uh can you talk about the uh Asa Valley in uh Asa?” Yeah. And all day long I could probably I don’t know. Actually, I can’t remember. I I couldn’t talk about it all day long, but I could I You fly We were air mobile.

The 100 first was air mobile. That means we had like 500 helicopters. or 300 or whatever it turned out to be. But we had a lot of helicopters and we’d load up a company which would be if we were at full strength would be 120 guys. But sometimes we’d only we wouldn’t take the whole company. We’d take 30 guys or so. and depends and we all, you know, put five, six guys in a helicopter.

They send you to an area. Well, you’re leaving the lowlands, the base, and you’re going up into the mountains in the jungle cuz the jungle was in the mountains. and you get up to and doing flying all over and you land at a a mountain base sometimes. Uh they all they all had names to them and I’m having a hard time remembering some of them right now.

Um, but not always. Sometimes you’d go on a mission and uh sometimes it’d be what they call a hot LZ, whereas the helicopter wouldn’t even land. He’d hoover out of the over the ground and everybody bail out instantly and it was gone just like that because he didn’t want to get shot at either. And we didn’t either.

As soon as we were on the ground, we were better off. I remember one time we were hoovering over the grass in a hot LZ and we all jumped and the grass was about 15 ft tall and that was a long fall with a pack that weighed 100 lb and a 24 lb gun. Yeah, that was something. But when you sometimes when you go into an area and you’re reinforcing somebody, they would pop a kind of a colored smoke and the pilot would identify it and he says and then the person on the ground say, “Yes, that’s it.” And you land and jump out and go go on your mission. “Well, go ahead. Did you have something more?” No. Wait for questions. “Okay. Well, when you uh you talked about that one patrol where they sent 350 guys out.” That wasn’t a patrol. That was a campaign to help out down in the middle part of the country. We took 350 guys on a mission.

Um to and we come up across this mountain 435 or something. It was reinforced with bunkers on the top. It was it was highly reinforced enemy position. And over the course of 10 days, 300 out of those 350 were either killed or wounded. I when I got medevaced out of there, I was there like 3 or 4 days. A grenade hit me, killed the guy I was next to, and and another guy got 120 stitches. I heard he was tore up bad.

I was wounded, but not seriously. I was helping wounded people and and trying to attack the enemy and all kinds of stuff. And this helicopter come in and they put six bodies on it and five wounded on a helicopter which was highly way overloaded. And then they met medevaced us and we were like 3,000 ft in the air and took around in the engine compartment and the plane sputtered and I thought, “Oh man, here we go.” But it kept on going. We landed in Cameron Bay where I was operated on by the future doctor for President Kennedy. She operated on me and got the most of the shrapnel out. Not all of it. I still have some of it. But um there’s a book called Courage Under Fire that details that whole campaign. It’s available on Amazon written about written by my captain that was with us.

He wrote this book like a year ago. Took him a long time to put it all together. And I’m in there. He talks about me and everything in there and a lot of other people that are in this book, whole book is just about those 10 days. We even had a deserter. This guy, he’s out there and everybody’s getting shot. And so he takes off.

He’s running through the jungles and and they got him and killed him. The North Vietnamese, not we didn’t. Yeah. “Did you know this guy?” This guy? Yeah, I knew him. “Did you peg him as a guy that would run or…” No. No, we didn’t know. He just up and did it one time. Yeah. Just got tired of it and took off. “Did you ever feel like you were getting to the end of your rope like that guy probably did?” No. No.

I was steadfast in my duty to my country and and uh I would have never done anything like that. You know, that’s that’s a serious deal. You know, he probably could have been gone to jail or even shot for that. Maybe I don’t know the statute on that but you know deserting under fire is serious thing. Yeah. “In those uh three or four days that you were fighting on that hill, were you guys making progress or were you getting beat up?” No, we weren’t.

We were getting killed left and right. I remember they brought in this flamethrower and we thought that was going to do the trick. We crawl up this hill and it’s a it’s not a huge hill, but it’s fairly tall. And so we’re climbing up it and I was with this guy close to him and he had this flamethrower and we’re going to get up there close enough to burn them out of these bunkers.

And they threw a grenade. It hit that flamethrower tanks and that was the end of the flamethrower. So we pulled back down the hill and brought in four jets. I think it was four. might have been more. They kept circling around this hill dropping bombs on this bunker. Four of them. And after that was over and I was still there at that time.

After that was over, they were still there. It didn’t it didn’t stop them. So, we had a hell of a time. I think if I remember correctly, after I’ve been gone, they couldn’t actually take that hill, so they brought in a B-52. Well, a B-52, you got to get many, many miles away. You got to pull out of the area.

And they bring in a B-52 with hundreds of bombs on it and just saturated it. Yeah, I think that’s what I heard happened after those 10 days or so. “How did you feel about the NVA? They are obviously tough tough people. They put up with that.” At first, um, at first I didn’t know really how what to think of them, but then after being there for a while and seeing some of the stuff that they pulled, I wanted to kill every one of them, you know.

And uh there were some things done to captured ones that not proud of but I I personally was not a part of but they were some of them were tortured and and done some pretty nasty things to um but because of my upbringing and stuff I would never be a part of that sort of thing. “Go ahead. Did it bother you to see when you’d see like maybe a dead soldier, dead NBA, just to see that cuz you were so young when this was all going on?”

Oh, yeah. I was Well, when the first in country, yeah, later on you were glad to see a dead one cuz he couldn’t shoot you no more. Um, I remember we were going through this jungle. There was a trail, a dirt trail through this jungle that NBA used and we come across two of them talking and they never heard us coming.

Well, I got my machine gun out. I cut one in half, completely in half. And this other guy with me, he shot a a grenade from a grenade launcher up in the air and it come down, hit the other guy in the head, blew his head off. So we kicked him off to the side of the trail and went about our business. Then we come back by there like 2 or 3 days later and that was the most god awful smell you ever did smell.

They were all rotten and it was terrible. And that was that was one of the things that my PTSD counselor struggled with to help me get over it. So I could even say that to you right now that a year a few years ago I would not have been able to tell you that. And there’s a lot of things throughout that period of time that I found really difficult to talk about and couldn’t and some things I didn’t even remember.

I had blocked them out of my brain and this counselor after being with me for years was able to get me to talk about it. So yeah, I was I for 9 months I shot at every day. Didn’t know if I was going to make it till dinner time. Yeah, it was terrible. “Does talking about it now help with those memories or…” Well, I don’t No, I don’t think it helps.

It did when I was in counseling because of how the counseling was done. It did help. The counseling is over. I can still I can talk about it now. I could if I really delved into it, I’d probably start balling my head off. But I’m not going to do that. Um, you know, there’s there’s things that still bother me and there’s things that don’t bother me anymore.

Like the sound of a Huey. Once in a while you hear them flying over. I can hear them miles away. I know what a Huey sounds like. And I can hear them coming a long ways away. And in Vietnam, usually that meant one of two things. You’re either getting resupplied or they’re coming to get you, take you out of there, which is, you know, all that was good.

So that that part doesn’t bother me. Although there were some of them that were gunships, you know. Um, what else? I can tell you other stories. “That uh time you were wounded on that hill, that was the first time you were wounded. The first time?” Yeah, I was wounded twice. “So, they sent you back after getting peppered with shrapnel like that. They sent you back…” after I spent 30 days in a convolescent hospital in Cameron Bay where I was operated on. They got most of the shrapnel out. I got to roam around, do whatever I want. We went to shows, we went to the beach, we did, you know, was it was almost like a vacation. And then when they sent me back the same unit, you know, and um there was other occasions where I was in base camp.

They had to deworm me. Had to take medicine and get dewormed. Another time I was there for the Bob Ho show and they thought I had malaria so they put me in the hospital the night before. Didn’t get to see him. Then they let me out because I didn’t have malaria. I was mad. But most of the time I spent out in the jungle for the first nine months I was there up and down ashaw valley mostly.

We did go down to help out the Marrael division down in the central part of the that’s where that 300 guys were hurt and killed but most of the time up in the north in the eye core. Um anyway, “Is it hard after you’ve been hit like that to go back out into the jungle cuz you know what can happen now or…” No. I didn’t like it, but it it wasn’t any harder to go out than anytime else. Maybe even easier.

Um because I was experienced. I wasn’t there was some amazing times where I was practically ripping buttons off my shirt just to get closer to the ground. You know, I was under fire. I was stuck behind this little hill one time and getting shot at and I ran out of ammo and my assistant gunner wasn’t there with me by the gun.

He was over in the bushes and uh I said, “Bring me some ammo.” And he give me the “Yeah, not not happening.” But he did throw it to me. So I was able to keep on firing, save my own life that I didn’t get wounded that time. The time I got wounded was assaulting that hill and they threw a hand grenade. The gooks did and it come down and landed behind my radio operator and uh killed him and some of that same shrapnel hit me and the other guy.

And then uh actually my second time I was wounded was in the lowlands at at the camp. We were trying to they were trying to overrun our camp and I got hit again. Um anyway, “Where were you hit that time?” In right there in the head. You can see that scar. It’s still there. Was what? “Yeah. What were you doing when that happened?” I was um defending uh the camp.

Yeah. They were It was night time and they were coming up trying to overrun our base camp and they were getting like right up on you. They were getting Oh, yeah. Well, they threw a grenade. That’s close enough. Yeah. “Did that end your time in Vietnam then after you got hit the second?” Oh, heck no. “Really?” No, that didn’t even come close.

That was first time I got over to Vietnam around the 1st of March 1969. I was wounded in June on that hill and November, December I got hit again. I was attacked by Never mind. I don’t want to talk about that. Um, what else do you want to talk about? “Well, uh, maybe we should step away. You’ve given a good account of your your time in combat. What was it like when you got back to the United States? How were you received by the American public? How was it?”

Um, I stayed in Vietnam 2 months longer than I had to when the army had a policy cuz I had signed up for two years. The army had a policy that when you left Vietnam and you had 150 days left in the service, if you wanted out, you could get out.

Well, at the end of my year, I had 7 months left. So I had to I stayed an extra two months so that I had the 150 days, 5 months. So that when I left Vietnam, I was out of the service. My best friend, he didn’t do that. So he came home. We went to Vietnam together. He came home. He got two weeks leave and then he had to go to fort down in Texas somewhere to an armored unit and spent 7 months.

Well, I didn’t want to do that. So, I took my chances in Vietnam, stayed 14 months, and then I got off the plane over and Air Force Base in Tacoma. What do they call that now? Oh, the Louiswis McCord or Yeah. McCord. Mccord Air Force Base. It wasn’t Lewis McCord then. It was just McCord and Lewis.

They were separated anyway. So I got off the plane in my cord and had to go talk to the reup guy and tell him I didn’t want to reup. And then I changed into civilian clothes because I had heard stories of protesters throwing eggs and calling them names and all this other stuff. So I wasn’t in my I was in civilian clothes when I left the base.

And then when I got to my home up in San Point, Idaho, people ask me where I’ve been. And I just say at that time, I would just say, “Well, I was just traveling around the world,” and uh let it go at that because Vietnam they called us baby killers and they called us every name in the book and did some we weren’t treated good.

It wasn’t until one of those Middle East skirmishes we had over there that people started getting patriotic and and accepting the Vietnam people. Yeah. We weren’t treated well at all. And part of that because of that it contributed to our well-being and contributed to PTSD. And like I say, it took years of counseling.

Well, uh, cuz I was I was in some really really bad stuff for years. Well, I mean, for months. I mean, really. I mean, people dying left and right and your buddies are all getting killed and and uh, it was terrible. “Well, I’m curious. You have these memories obviously, and there’s memories that you don’t want to get into cuz they’re still too…” Well, not on camera. I tell you if you turn that off. Yeah. “Do you think it’s important that people who have never served in the military, people maybe my age, know about those kind of events or is it better to keep those stories off camera or…” No, no. No.

Um, everybody should know about it. people your age, people that weren’t part of it, never been in the service in any conflict. It’s good that you’re doing that. I think the more people know about especially Vietnam and Iraqi stuff too where people were I mean we lost 55,000 guys over there. Of course now we’re losing a lot more because of the damn drugs out of Mexico. But um yeah, I think everybody ought to know about it and that’s why we’re talking cuz uh I think they Good.