John Nusbaum

John Nusbaum joined the Air Force in 1965 and earned his beret in PJ class 65-5.  After being stationed in Spain, he volunteered for a tour in Southeast Asia.  We delve into the missions John conducted in Da Nang, most notably when John earned a Silver Star during an extremely hazardous extraction of a Special Forces team.  

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Transcript

John: 0:04

My name is John Nusbaum. I was born and raised in the Green Bay metropolitan area. My parents were started out in life, both as teachers. One was a college professor, one taught elementary school in high school. My father went on to resigned from teaching at the university of Wisconsin, and joined the cheese company that he later left and started pm Two other individuals started a cheese company about in the mid forties right after the war ended. And five years later they bought a farm and we moved out. And so I grew up from nine years of age onward on a farm that raised beef cattle. So I had a. Early childhood city background teen years was farming joined four h went to high school. I was a normal B student hardly ever studied. Didn't have to, was smart enough to not have to read or study a lot. The script was all the kids. I was the second oldest. You guys, we have eight children in our family, and everyone was expected to go on to college. I graduated from high school in 62 and started college that fall at the university. And after two semesters I was dropped for grades, so flunked out. Got a letter from the dean that I had to be out for a minimum of one year before I could reenter. I came back after working a year and paying rent to my parents for also working on the farm, but for room and board and went back one semester and promptly plunked out a second time. Two weeks after my grades came out, I got a letter from the dean saying, don't it was worded something to the effect, perhaps you should consider some other vocation besides academic for your future endeavors. I almost memorized that line. Yeah. And then two weeks after that, I got the, there really is a letter that comes, that starts out, greetings from the president, and it's your draft notice. And so I was told to report to the Milwaukee Induction Center on the 12th of July 1965. And enclosed was a bus ticket and a chip for a one night stay at the Antler Hotel. Which was worth$4 and 95 cents for a single room one night, and turned out the room, had a bed and a sink in it, and the diffy was down the hall as, as well as a room with a shower

Nick: 3:44

as the government rates under five bucks.

John: 3:47

Under five bucks. Yeah. This was 1965 worth every

Nick: 3:50

penny,

John: 3:51

five worth, every penny. I was 21 at the time in my life. And single nobody special at least that I knew of. And I reported when I got up that following morning and walked across the street, the induction center was actually a building that had all branches of the service, a door for each branch that you went into a separate part of the building. And the Air Force was right next to the army door. And I was about 10 minutes early. I, from eight o'clock in the morning. So I walked in the Air Force door and there was. Somebody, a sergeant that was in a uniform Air Force uniform. And I said, Hey, are you guys looking for somebody ready to go right now? This minute, sign up for the Air Force? And they said, we sure are. And I said I've only got one little problem, otherwise I'm ready to go. And that is, I'm supposed to report next door in about five minutes. And they said, oh, that was to the

Nick: 5:05

Marine

John: 5:05

Corps? No, army.

Nick: 5:07

Army, yeah.

John: 5:08

Okay. I, no, it was the Army that I was drafted into. Yeah. Okay. But I had walked into the Air Force store and so I, I told the Air Force sergeant that that I was supposed to report next door.'cause I had a draft notice. I pulled out and they said, oh, we can take care of those guys and we'll sign you up in the Air Force. And they said, that's for four years. And I said that's why I'm picking the Air Force. I needed something longer than three. And I knew the Army was only two years and three months. So you had the

Nick: 5:40

opportunity to possibly go back to college. Yeah.

John: 5:43

Yeah. And I figured if I got out of the Army on time, why I'd have to find a job for a while and I figured I might as well get my obligation all finished and out of the way and then reapply. So that's how I got in the Air Force. I, it. At the time, all males had to go through an ROTC for the first two years. So I had a brush with the different branches of the service, and I knew a little bit about that, but not anything to just enough to know. I probably preferred one over the other. The army guys seemed to march a lot more than the Air Force got did.

Nick: 6:27

So

John: 6:28

University of Wisconsin

Nick: 6:30

mandated at Madison, they mandated that you do two years, two years of

John: 6:35

Roxy. Oh, really? I didn't even know that.

Nick: 6:37

Wow.

John: 6:37

All males did. I didn't know if all colleges did that or universities, but it was it was a requirement for the UW and the university, I don't know if at that time probably had 10 or 12 campuses. They have somewhere in the teens now throughout the state of Wisconsin. Okay. Yeah, there's a large campus in Milwaukee and there's one in Green Bay here. That was my entrance into into the Air Force. It was motivated by the fact that I had no, no motivation to study and buckle down to classwork. I headed off to Lackland Air Force Base that night where it turned out all of these, I think there were five branches. They had everything including the Coast Guard in this big front building, but everybody went back in this giant room. That was huge. And they did everything there from physicals to giving shots to and then we all took the oath of office for joining the military. The same oath. Then we went out the back door and we all got on buses and ours went to the airport and some took a bus to Great Lakes. Others went to a post down south someplace. The Marines went to Harris Island. So it it was all pretty well handled and this was 65, so there were a lot of people going in the service being drafted. At that time then basic training started for me not knowing what I was going to do. We were eventually after about the third day of getting closed and shaved and everyone and Bewilder had started training and we looking around, but the first thing we had to do is start cleaning the barracks, which was already pretty clean, but it was all part of the training and on the bulletin board in our barracks. And as I later discovered it, they, this poster was not in every barracks, but it was a re recruiting poster for going into Terror Rescue. And it just started out it was about poster that was about a foot wide and two feet tall and very big letters in the top third it said earn extra pay. And then it said, be on flying status, learn how to scuba dive learn how to parachute all overseas assignments. That was the big come on. And then the fine print it, it just said ask your career day sergeant. About volunteering to go into terror rescue. And that's pretty much all it said. And I had learned how to scuba dive. A friend had two sets of equipment that he and his brother we're scuba diving. And he taught me how to scuba dive in one of the numerous lakes that we have in Wisconsin. And I thought it was really a gas. It was great. And I thought, oh, this all sounded like fun. More money. I hadn't learned, but when I got our first paycheck and saw it was$29 a month, I thought we really could use the extra pay. Yeah, there you go. And I get

Nick: 10:37

five nights in the base housing

John: 10:41

it. So career day finally came about the fifth, fourth or fifth week of our six weeks basic training. And they when I asked about Tara Rescue, the sergeant looked me up and down and he said, he said you don't wanna go in that. And I said, why not? It sounds like, I'd enjoy it. And he said they're all animals. They, who you wouldn't like them? And I said after chewing and throwing back and forth with him I finally said I think you have to accept what I want. If even if you say I won't like it. I want to try it out. And he said you'll never make it and you'll end up cooking for four years. Is that what you wanna do? Be a cook and cook for four years and peel potatoes and all that's tough. And I said I'll take my chances. He said I know you're gonna plunk out. And I said, why? And he said you first of all, you're too fat. He said, you're you'd never be able to do the physical part of it. And that really says a guy that hadn't done it yet upset me. That upset me a lot.'cause I of all my brothers and I had five brothers, why I could probably outrun and, i'll do all of them. So anyway, I he had to sign me up and that was part of the motivation and inspiration, remembering what he said, that I'd never make it. So that was motivation enough when I finished basic training and actually just went across to the other side of the base where the para rescue barracks were, they had two barracks of which very rarely did we ever spill over into the second barracks. It was mostly whatever number came in, the same number usually went out every day. And there were people coming in almost daily from either prior service that were transitioning in, or graduation from they seemed to have graduation every every week during the week because there was a rare day that there weren't people coming into the Fair Rescue barracks to trying out, and every day there were. The same number of people quitting or sometimes more, sometimes less. But it was, yeah.

Nick: 13:25

I had a question on that. So the structure of the para rescue program back then, you had to wait at Lackland and almost limbo until you got to a full class to start training.

John: 13:39

We were training every day. There was there was one or two instructors that came by the barracks. Roused everyone out. The first thing we did was calisthenics. Then we went for a run. Then we came back and ate. Then we went for another run. Everybody threw up. Then we went to the pool mid-morning swam laps. Got harassed in the water. Went went and had lunch. Very short time period. Went for a run after lunch. Swam in the afternoon, more calisthenics. Had dinner and usually after dinner was, we were left alone. But we're in the barracks. We, there was cleaning, we had cleaning times that we had to do just redo the floors and stuff. Barracks sounds like things haven't changed that much. Yeah. And so it was that and some of the it was a self discipline where the guys that had been there longer usually harassed the new people there. And everyone was in a trainee status. This was I don't know I'm not sure there was an official word for it other than this was the indoctrination prior to the pipeline of eight schools that you had to do the official schools. This was just get in shape so that you could pass your swimming and

Nick: 15:35

yeah, I think they call that nowadays you just, you're in like a casual status and you're just awaiting training, but. For the pipeline. So you, did you go through basic with anyone that you went through the whole pipeline with too? Who were some of your classmates as you went through

John: 15:52

My my classmates, I'd have to look. First of all our class I estimated that we had well over a thousand coming through. And we were close to the previous class, to ours. And I, there was no one in my basic training class that, that went into care Rescue. So all of my classmates I got to know the couple Dean Cas beer, who I later was on missions with and John Eldridge. Those were the two I was very close with. They were in the our classes I believe, were designated the year that you started your pipeline and had a, was assigned a class number, so that would've been 65 was the first two digits. Then we were the fifth and final class to be organized in 1965. So we were. 65 dash five was our class number, and the class prior to us was 65 dash four. And that had Dean and Dean Casar and John Elridge, my class. We ultimately started we only started with I believe, 22. We could never get to 25 where we had, I think we almost had 25. And then one of the guys didn't get his security clearance. And so he was pulled out at the last second he later got that straightened out and became a pj. That was Cole Strand. And he came with a, the a 66 dash one or two. But my class we had Dwayne Hackney was a graduate. He was a 17-year-old kid that went into the Air Force on his birthday. And his grandmother, I think as was his guardian and had the co-sign for him. He went on. He wanted to go to Vietnam. He graduated about the middle of our class, and he wanted to go to Vietnam. He was probably one of the few that really wanted to do that. He is an interesting guy. He had a real, he looked like a chubby little 14-year-old, and he was really the strongest guy in our class. He could do an unlimited number of one arm pushups, either hand. He could jump from hand to hand while he was doing them. And we used to that other service teams that were going through like the seals or green Beret, we usually went as a team. And when we when we were at key West or bragged airborne school, I remember those too. Dwayne had a lot of baby fat all over his body, but underneath he was just like steel. And we used to go over, I go over and grab his stomach fat and wave it up and down. When we were betting who had, who could do the most one arm pushups and they'd be standing next to, gary Elms was one of our graduates, and he had a very chiseled physique. He had a six pack or eight pack or whatever. He had nothing but muscles. And then Dwayne would be kinda standing in the background off to the side. We had this all choreographed so that they, we'd say, pick your guy out. And they took some guy that, had 18 inch pipes or something on him, and he'd they'd pick him out. And then we'd look at that guy and we'd all start laughing and they said, oh, and we'd say, Gary, you can sit down. You're not gonna have do this. And I'd go over to Dwayne, drive stomach, come on up, fla, flap it up and down a couple of times and says, here's our guy. And the guys said, look at him and look. And then the more money would come out

Nick: 20:30

As you were mentioning, Dwayne Hackney. This is a guy that obviously we would've loved to interview him. Fortunately he passed in the nineties. But if you just read his history, so he was the most decorated enlisted man in, in Air Force history, recipient of 28 decorations for valor in a combat zone in more than 70 awards and decorations and all. Served in the Air Force for 26 years. And yeah, recipient of the Air Force Cross was the first living enlisted man to receive the medal at the time. He was the youngest recipient. Just an absolute legend and it's great that you know him so well too, that you can give us a story about. Yeah. I thought his baby fat, I thought he was a stud, so I wouldn't mess with him.

John: 21:11

You'd enjoy that? Just because he was and he knowing I knew a lot of the guys that'cause I had graduated first in Mark files, and so I had my first pick of assignment which at the time, the 67th was in Scotland. And when after I we had all graduated and went home on leave before going to our assignments, I got a telegram saying the the squadron had moved to Spain. I instead of went to Scotland and I went to Spain, but Dwayne went to De Nang which was the same, the 37th. And I was actually following his career because he was in the stars and stripes about every. Every month for something that he had done. And some, distinction, as you mentioned, the first live recipient of the Air Force Cross. And he was quite known for whatever missions he was flying. He, it always seemed to be his missions that got pickups. I think another famous thing that he did he made a non-combat say where he and a group of PJs were going to orphanages and giving shots and doing medical care for them. And while he was at one of the orphanages, there was a one of the tile had wandered into a field that was recently planted with mines. And he was into the minefield and they didn't quite know where the mines were to go and get'em. But they told him. To sit down and don't move. And so plane got the right idea to call a helicopter from the squadron and come and pick him up. And he they said from what I read about that mission, he hung upside down from the hoist and the helicopter was up to length of the hoist and lowered down to where Dwayne could grab the kid hanging upside down and picked the kid out of the main pine field and pulled him to safety.

Speaker 3: 23:47

And I think that

John: 23:48

was the airman medal that he got for that for Okay. A non-combat save.

Nick: 23:53

Yeah. Yeah.

John: 23:54

Wow. So just another story about was that was an

Nick: 23:58

awesome story about him. To circle back about your experience in the pipeline, did you have any notable things that you wanted to talk about through the pipeline before you got to Spain?

John: 24:10

The class we were following, the one that had Cas and Eldridge and Baker and all those guys, it seemed like they they trashed the PJ reputation virtually in every school they went. And when we got to that school, they said, oh, you guys again, we know all about you. And so we always were immediately assigned KP duty or it was always we finally had to figure out that we weren't gonna escape that, but yeah. And we didn't always, no one went through the schools in the same order. Our first school was medical school, and as I recall, we that was a school we didn't lose anyone at. But the next school was the and the medical school was at Gunther Air Force Base, Alabama. Next school we went to directly was the Underwaters Swimmer School in Key West, which is our hardest school. And I believe that school counted a lot for the, points or however, the scaling system that designated what your rank would be in graduation if you made it through all of the schools. So I believe all the schools were weighted somewhat, but this was the most important and carried the most points for going towards graduation. And we lost at least two of our classmates there. One later retook the cl the school at Key West and graduated and became a p pj That was Gunther Berg. He was a German German American guy, but he I think his parents lived in Germany. And he just knew that he spoke German and was a real good, but he ruptured an eardrum in school and had to get that fixed and then come back through it. The next school we went to was the Survival School at Stead, and we went through in the wintertime. So it was all snow shoes. And this was a school that also had the POW experience. They, you spent about a week in a mock POW camp that had been built, and there was, they had all actors, train guards and prisoners, and you had to escape from that. And the escape then you went out through a tunnel and you were given pieces of information that you had to retain for as long as you could before you gave it up. Or try not to give it up, but they, part of the schooling taught you that everyone gives it up and it's you don't wanna get yourself maimed so that it would detract from your ability to survive. And so it was pretty good training. It just about anyone going to a combat zone had to go through this DOW school. And as I recall we were always chased with people that were riding in Snowcats. We were in the Sierra Nevada Mountains outside of Reno. And we, our destination was about 35 miles from where we came out of the tunnel. And. They had it set up. So there was a shed that had snowshoes in it, and there was one knife for every pair of persons. And I, I can't remember if that was anything else. I think we scrounged some parachute cord. We had that, but there's nothing else in there. A valued, no, there weren't any matches or anything like that. And of course, the snow cover on the ground was about 10 feet, so you couldn't go any place without watching with snow shoes. But we I think on the third day we we were always able to find water. All of the valleys generally had water running under the snow and you could find where you could eventually get water and so we really water and nothing else to eat until we got to the place where a rendezvous was. It was supposed to be a friendly camp, which we were there for not more than an hour and a half. Everyone I think was given one orange which everyone ate their orange and said That's it. And then the camp was invaded by the guards that had been chasing us with the snowcat. So everyone took off. And so another three or four days of running, we did manage to come across a porcupine that was in the top of a tree that the last 15 or 20 feet of the tree was sticking out of the snow. The porch of pin had climbed up to the top of the tree and no one seemed to want to go up after. And I said I'll go up and shake the top of the tree. And he guys finds some sticks and beat it to death as soon as it falls on the snow. So we did that, shook'em out of the tree and somebody pulled out matches. I don't know where the hell he got'em, but he had matches on them and we got a fire started. And cooked the porcupine and it was very, it was all red meat and it had these like Turkey legs have these real thin bony bones. Yeah. Yeah. And the whole olive of meat had those stringy bones in it. So it was either charred black or blood red raw. And that was probably tasted

Nick: 30:46

pretty good still though, right?

John: 30:48

It did taste pretty good. So we had a couple of mouths of Turkey.'cause by that time we had gathered quite a crowd and we knew that it'd only be minutes before we'd get chased again. Yeah. Yeah. Gotta get it down quick. It was eat and run. There you go. So anyway, we made it through there and then we I think we, we were held at the stead Air Force base for quite a while after graduation, almost a month.'cause our next school wasn't ready, which was Airborne School. And and so we got, the deal of the day was we had, we were getting per diem of something. Four or$5 a day, and a round trip air ticket from the Reno airport to San Francisco was$29. So we flew, that was a united flight, so we went to San Francisco every weekend for four weeks and spent the weekend there and came back broke, and we'd have to, our next per diem money would come in. And so we'd go to Harris Club or one of the clubs downtown and see if we could ga gamble enough to buy a round trip ticket. And anything else we could scrounge we usually tried to find somebody that would help us out with meals or something, but, so we got to know San Francisco a little bit. The month that we got held up at Reno.

Nick: 32:25

What was so good in San Francisco? You guys having fun out there? I remember trying not to destroy the reputation, like the class before you,

John: 32:33

it was a time where Carol Doda as I remember, she was a woman that had I don't know, She had a big chest and dance topless on the North Beach area because I later we, my wife and I were there.'Cause I, she, one of her cousins lives in San Francisco, and when I mentioned Carol Dotas name, she said, oh, building's still there, and there's a plaque on the side of the building.'cause she was quite famous as a topless dancer Okay. Back in the sixties. And we went and saw the plaque and says, this is where Carol Doka dance. So just piece of privia,

Nick: 33:20

you guys just going out having fun. You can find a little bit more fun than Reno, Nevada. I did, I did six weeks there east of Reno and Fallon with the Navy for a training block. And I left every single weekend. So I get it.

John: 33:39

Yeah. So then then we went through the Airborne School. I, we made a lot of money there. I remember one of the thing, it ended up in a big fight and one of the, one of the guys ended up with a tooth that we had to pull it out of his his wrist or his fist. He had a tooth knots locked standing after I think they were disappointed or disgruntled over, hackney's win on the one arm pushup thing. But we left Fort Benning and we didn't lose anyone. We went through Army Ranger School. Oh, we did lose a guy at Stead. I forgot. We had a, one of the guys that was pretty good. The CID or whoever the air Force John Dames were came and arrested him one day and took him away. And we later found out he had gotten into trouble at a previous base. He was a prior service guy that had been embedded with us, with our class right when he started the school. So he had successfully gone through medical school and underwater swimmer school. And this was at stead when they arrested him. And we never heard from him again other than he was charged for something, some offense, and they decided to arrest him and that they didn't want him going. So we had, then when we got to school with school, we had two more guys that were added to our class and just repeated that school and then left again. And then we went to Eglin for the finishing school. And by this time they had given us a preliminary of where everyone was standing with the class. And I think we were down to our 13 when we went to ranger school in Dahlonega. And we all successfully got through that. I thought that was the most fun school we had. I really enjoyed the rope knowledge of climbing ropes, tying knots building a suspension traverse. And the only thing that of note that happened at that school is that Hackney almost died. One of our guys was on Vallay, on a suspension traverse, and he didn't have his g gloves on properly. And Hackney was a fairly heavy guy. Because he hadn't lost his baby cat yet. And the ropes pulled the guy's glove off'cause he hadn't put it on properly. And the rope started burning through his palms and he let the rope go and Hackney hit the safety knot of the suspension Traverse doing about mark two. And he slammed through the knot and into the tree that it was attached, that the rope had been tied around After, I don't know he had fallen about 200 feet and then hit this tree and he was, he hit the tree and was on the ground, totally not moving. And we were up on the other side of the gorge on, so it took us about a half hour to get down and come to him. And by then he was awake and everything and wasn't, hadn't been injured. He checked for concussion and all the protocols and he'd just been knocked cold.

Nick: 37:48

That's all. Wow. Yeah. It just goes to show, it's a young mans scam. I, he was 17 when he joined. If you were in your thirties, you'd never survived that.

Speaker 3: 37:56

Oh, you wouldn't?

John: 38:00

Yeah. Damn crazy. Then the only thing that I screwed up on when we started doing our transition, parachute jumping with scuba tanks, but prior to that, we started with just jumping with a wetsuit and fins and masks and snorkel. And the first water jump that I did with that I, we were jumping s tens that had sliding risers and the protocol was put their elbow through the the sliding riser and then open the cape well, so that you're, when you feel your butt hit the water, you, all you have to do is put your arm up in the air. The riser will come off, spill the air outta your chute. I and they said, don't look down.'cause then you have a tendency to misjudge the height above the water. Yeah, yeah. I was, did everything correctly except then I started watching the water. And when I thought I was at the waters level, I was really about t dpd up. And I missed the pickup boat by about this much. Oh man. When smoking in the water. Yeah, there you go. And that'll make your heart race a little bit. It made the guys boat. One, one of the instructors jumped on the boat and he he wasn't in swim gear or anything, so he was pretty well pissed off at me. Yeah. Yeah, that was probably the biggest screw up I had. And I drove we had pins the big navy duck feet that does have a strap on the back. And I drove a fin so far up my,'cause I had the fins on and I drove it so far up my leg. It was like a tourniquet and they couldn't get it off. They had to cut it off my thigh.'cause I had driven it all the way up to the top of my crotch. And it was just like a tourniquet on my leg. And they couldn't get it out without cutting. So I

Nick: 40:17

to they changed those CTPs. So we will pop our cape wells as soon as you hit the water. This time you get drunk. You get, if you don't pop'em, you get drug in the water and you don't want that. How long were you a PJ for? I'm sorry. The

John: 40:30

entire four years from Okay. I went from basic training into the PJ Barracks. Just about one year. We did the eight schools in the first year to besides the pipeline, there's altitude chamber and we went through something called the goat cha goat Lab, which was in the middle of the ever place, someplace where we practiced on anesthetized live goats and that had received various wounds and how well we repaired them. And I don't know if they do that anymore or not.

Nick: 41:11

Yeah, we do some it's definitely come under scrutiny with peta and our other animal rights organizations, but it's in very discreet, unmarked buildings and or field conditions. But there is a veterinarian with, everything being administered to the animal before. Yeah. You were able to go hands on to it. It's as humane as you could imagine. Yeah

John: 41:39

ours, ours was same way. The goats were an ssis and then whatever, and they have befall'em. Why they, they were ansis. We were, after they were either shot or broken. Why? We worked on setting bones and doing things. Yeah. But that was upon our completion. As I said, we graduated 13, I think seven went to Vietnam. Six were assigned non Vietnam portals. And I, and Vietnam included the. Assignments. Okay. But at the time I knew where all the guys went and I, the only one that I knew our we had Mike Wines went to the Philippines, I think, and he came down with some kind of a disease that caused him to leave the Air Force eventually. So he was probably the shortest lived. But Luther Davis, he's another fairly well-known pj. He was in our class. But our duties in Spain we covered Europe and Africa, and I'm we had a team in Tripoli that also covered Africa. Predominantly there was usually a search and rescue almost every day that we were out looking for somebody that. Was trying to make a crossing from the states to Europe with an airplane that didn't have the enough instrumentation to safely do that kind of a trip. And usually they'd get lost, start to run outta gas yell, mayday, and then we'd get scrambled out to look for if we could find them. I can't recall that we ever had any successful findings of those. Those were the most common things. They typically didn't even have the necessary equipment to survive at sea if the plane went down. I was on search patterns for some that another rescue vehicle. Usually a boat of some type would find whoever the person was or persons. The second most common thing we did was a classified mission that we flew from Spain up to a little. A Norwegian town above the Arctic Circle called Bodo that had a NATO base there inside of a mountain. And we had trained on what was called the Ful Recovery System that the Air Force had modified our one thirties for snatch and recovery. Yeah. People or space hardware. And we had trained on that in Spain, gone through the school so that in case we had U twos that were taking off from Kevi entering from Norwegian aerospace into Russia, if you're familiar with how Norway carves around Finland and Sweden. And comes very close to Russia. Yeah. And so coming from international waters across Norway and then into Russia, the U twos actually were flying in outer space, so they were quite a bit higher than the tactical RA range of the Russian missiles. I think. They could do 89,000 and the U twos could do quite a bit higher than that. So the missiles couldn't reach them. And the only reason, the only the famous U2 flight of Francis Gary Towers actually was not shot down. It didn't get a relight.'cause the re U2 is a predominantly a glider that has a single engine that takes it up in the outer space turns the engine off, and then glides down to a hundred thousand feet re lights, and then goes back up into space. And it's got the elongated wings so that the rare air that it does catch, it can glide and it has a fairly good LD ratio so that it can do thousands of miles on, on a single tank of fuel with like the engine shut off like the engine. And it says porus flying, that allows it to cover great distances. And so they were the sixties was all about keeping track of what Russia was doing. And the U twos then would land in Turkey. At a base that we also were using at the time. And so we'd go up to Norway and we'd sit for a week and fly duck butts every time. I think they over flew about every third day. So we'd usually stay up long for two of the over flights. We'd fly land at a civilian airport that had a portal that the side of the mountain opened up and we'd taxi right inside the mountain with the, with our one 30 that had the ful system on it. And the side of the mountain would close behind us and we'd inside the NATO base, we'd change into, sew close, come out a passageway that had a small house. It was just like a James Bond movie. Yeah. Wow. Coming through the back end of the house and the, and it was built right up against the side of the mountain, and we'd come out on a civilian street with a taxi waiting for us, and we'd get in the taxi and go into the town of Bodo. We had we even had our own hotel rooms. That we'd stay there and then whenever the over flight was occurring, why we'd be out flying. And we had gotten to where we could from the time we exited the aircraft no. Our time started when we were on the ground from the time we were on the ground with our kit bag and launched the balloon with the nylon stretch rope, and it snagged the balloon. That timing would be under five minutes was our wow. What our standard was. So we could, by the time we'd hit the ground, the clock started running. And from the, when the cut came on, the one 30 where it cut the balloon loose, that was under five minutes.

Nick: 49:22

When you were training out of Fulton, did anyone go up on that recovery system? Not live during training? Not live. We

John: 49:30

always, we always put two, two dummy, two Oscars. Yeah, in, in the double harness. So we put one and put

Nick: 49:39

the other and buckle'em up. Was there any part of you that wanted to do that?

John: 49:45

Yeah. It because it if it's going this way, you sit with your feet backward and you actually get lifted off the ground backwards.'cause there's a big parabolic curve. And as soon as the aircraft hits going that way the tendency is the rope. It goes backwards. So you actually, with your feet out backward, you're actually being picked up that way and then pulled in backward into the ramp of the one 30 on the winch. And it the only time we'd use the same equipment until we'd have a rope failure and then we'd start with a fresh rope again. And we'd do that for all the pickups until, till it broke again. And then we'd start with a fresh one.'cause it had about a third stretch factor in it. Yeah. And that's what, so it, you'd lift just very slowly and then it would start multiplying double every second. Till you were, at the, about it was about a hundred knots is what he hit the rope at. Yeah, that's pretty

Nick: 51:01

pretty fast. But but it's just crazy that you would, you guys, when, it's not crazy, it's realistic for not having a ton of equipment at your disposal. But hey, we're gonna go to failure and then we're gonna re and then we'll get another one because what if the time it failed was the time you actually needed on the YouTube pilot or something like that. But, you gotta take chances.

John: 51:24

We did. There was a there was a single parachute for the harness. There was a parachute that went back up again. So we, when we practiced jumping with the kit bag we jumped with that come down. And so that was something to get that unpacked and get the balloon up and have and coordinate so that when the balloon was coming up the aircraft already, the jump master would have the aircraft on the right T and everything so that he could be coming. For the snatching the rope. Yeah. Below the balloon. And it was it took we, we practiced on that quite a bit and there was usually two or three sets of people that, that practice that a lot that'cause it take, took a pretty good jump master to, to have that lined up correctly. So that you were coming down very close to where the target was. And we did a lot of that training in Spain. I don't remember that we ever went to Libya to do any training in the desert with that. Yeah. Because we were, we also, there was a, I can't remember what the dimension, what it was, but we could clear a hundred foot obstacle in very short order. It was usually, yeah. Seemed like it was about 75 feet of the radius of a circle. So 150 foot seat circle, we could easily clear a hundred foot tree or tower or whatever Okay. With the pickup. And to my knowledge, I don't know if that was ever used. At least I never received any rumors that it was successfully used for pickups. I know it did pick up a lot of hardware, but I don't know if we did live pickups other than General Brooks and an airman went up as a tandem bear when they initially authorized it. And that was, those are the only two guys I know officially took a ride, leaving

Nick: 53:55

from the front. So you were in Spain and then where'd you go afterwards? From

John: 54:00

Spain. They wanted to increase the from whatever they had in Libya. I believe they had 12 and they wanted to increase it to 18. And I was the lowest ranking. I was a Airman first class then E four. And they wanted to send me to Olivia and I said I didn't wanna do that. I'll put in a volunteer statement for Vietnam rather than go to Olivia. I've been there enough times and I said, there can't be any place worse than being PCs than Olivia. Yeah.

Nick: 54:39

Yeah. You mentioned to me that there was like a situation where you guys had a dive recovery, there was tons of people on the dock. Oh, yeah. That

John: 54:49

was in the Tripoli Harbor. Yeah. That was another reason. Everything you, the moment you stepped off base you were, if anything happened you needed to be well armed. And that wasn't that wasn't good. You needed to have almost police escorts, air police. Yeah. You needed aps for whatever you did off base. And yeah, we had a we've had a couple of things. One was we did our I was on two space shots during the time in Spain, the Gemini 12 recovery, which we went to the car, but to do our capsule work. We did that all in the harbor and Tripoli, and I think I mentioned you, that was like diving in your septic tank. There

Nick: 55:43

couldn't find water in between Tripoli and Spain. I'm not a geography expert, but there's a big sea in the middle.

John: 55:52

Yeah. Could've done it anywhere else. Yeah. We could've done it at the, we kept our Boston whaler at Rhoda and Yeah. Where the sub base there, and a lot of places would know, they hauled this capsule into the harbor and Tripoli and said, this is it was the last Gemini 12 shot. And it was this was the shot that was going to the moon and circle the moon a couple times, and then sling shot back to the earth. It was not a landing. So it was 70 12. And I remember that was one time that we because we had so much equipment and we were NASA was calling all the shots and I think they originally had four aps with us just to watch things. And when the crowd got over a hundred and they said, we need to get more security here. We're not gonna have anything, because they're just standing there around, watching what was happening. But we didn't have enough people to keep an eye on the, all the equipment we had out. Yeah,

Nick: 57:05

no, I don't like having call'em looky-loo. I don't like a lot of looky lose around. And so Tripoli obviously is not a friendly city, or Libya is not a friendly country these days. It's crazy that you guys were there and how times change?

John: 57:21

It was a sac base. They had B 58 hustlers that carried nukes for Russia in case the balloon went up and the flight line was five miles long on the base. The base was about 40 miles square. And it had its own city and everything inside the base line and everything. Nobody, the civilians that were the families that were all there never went off base. Nobody went any place. And of course we, anything we were doing if we had to the only other, it was a mission where an aircraft can remember what it was went into the harbor and they wanted an instrument out of the. Before they could get the aircraft off, make arrangements to do that. And then I think they decided that they weren't even gonna bother getting the aircraft. They just wanted this one instrument out of the panel side that it flamed out. And pilot ejected got picked up and the aircraft was on the bottom. And we had to get the instrument out. But those, it just, triply wasn't a good Yeah. Good spot to go to. How

Nick: 58:42

deep was the aircraft?

John: 58:43

I don't really remember. Oh, no worries.

Nick: 58:48

It was I was just getting, maybe trying to get a picture of obviously when you go down at depth, but you're also probably dealing with a ton of silt. You're just feeling around, you can't see anything. Yeah.

John: 58:59

It, They I remember when it was there, they had a a marker boy where it was. And I'm not sure even what, that, it wasn't even anchored to the aircraft. Yeah. But it was, those are the only two things that I remember of going there. And that was instrumental in my decision to go to Southeast Asia rather than

Nick: 59:25

take the truthfully assignment. That's a good segue. So where did you end up landing out there?

John: 59:31

I had to once I put in my c volunteer statement why they Assign me to go through the HH three E School at Eglin. And that started, I think the 1st of May. And my, I think I had put my assignment thing in April. So I went straight from Spain to to Egland in 68 and went through that school that was mainly flying around in the mountains of Georgia. And there were, I met a bunch of other people that were all training on the three Es. They were replacing the 40 threes and the 40 threes had replaced the, combination of the 18 sixteens that were initially used in the Gulfton and for any of the water pickups. But it was after the 40 threes that, in fact, the 40 threes still holds the record for the longest search or the longest recovery flight went from Ang and they actually made a pickup. It was really in China, but it was just across the border into China

Speaker 3: 1:00:48

oh,

John: 1:00:49

we went through the TE school. I, that was when I've been writing Nancy about and said, why don't you come to Spain for my last year in the Air Force in, for the summer of 69. And or the 68, actually she was coming because I was getting out in July of 69, or, that was the, my plan at least that's when my term was up. So when she had gotten all her shots and was. Then when I called her or wrote her and said I guess I called her because I, every time we flew we had the communications ability could call any place in the world and through Mars network. So I usually talked to her when we were just doing duck butts or something. It was not no big deal. And she got, got a kick out of,'cause sometimes there'd be four or five people in the lake before somebody called from the local area network of Wisconsin that would ring her phone and then they'd have to sit and toggle back and forth. And she had to learn how to say over and so that everyone sitting there listening with

Nick: 1:02:15

she's got all the brevity down. Yeah. Yeah.

John: 1:02:18

So anyway they after the she came down and I remember we used to run on the Fort Walden beach three miles up and three miles back. And about the second day she saw us doing that, she said. Do you mind if I would run with you guys? And I said, no they'd probably love it. Yeah. Because there was half a dozen of us that usually ran every afternoon if we weren't flying. And so she she started running with us and she ran kept up with the troops and never never looked back and that her ability to run, and she could, but she was a good Wisconsin gal. She could probably out drink three quarters of the guys that were,

Nick: 1:03:07

that were PJs. There we go.

John: 1:03:11

That also was a quite a big plus. So amazing. A lot of guys fell in love with her. But you got her and yeah, I still I stay in touch with a couple of them that we ended up best friends and bill said he told Nancy, he said, if ever you get tired of John, I'll be waiting. That's hilarious. He lives out in ville. He's out in Washington. Okay. The state. But. Yeah, he's, he and Debbie are real close friends. His wife, they she's a Cubs fan and Nancy's a Brewer fan. Okay. Yeah, that was quite a thing. So anyway, after the three E school, I had to also attend another survival school. I'd been through, that was another thing we did when I was in Spain. We had to spend one month every year at where we went is a large hospital in B spot in Germany. We spent two weeks in, or one week in OB and one week in surgery for the month. And we I went there in 66 and 67 and the two months that I spent there combined for the both years, I as assisted delivering 34 babies and Wow. Wow. We, I in, or it was mostly, they were always having Jeep rollovers that they, the first thing they seemed to do in Germany with the Jeeps they had over there is remove the governor off the the, that restricted the speed to 45 miles an hour. And when they removed whatever the device was that restricted the speed, the Jeep could do 89 miles an hour, and it had hit a Popsicle stick or something on the auto bond and go as over T kettle. And then the ambulance had come, scrape'em all up, throw'em on a litter and bring em into the hospital at then

Nick: 1:05:35

Got you're at the or? Yeah. Those were clinicals at the, OR did you when they were, like, when there's a physician in surgery at the or did you help with like suturing and ev everything, shut all that stuff after they were done or?

John: 1:05:51

No we sutured in, or it was usually the doctors there day or night would allow us to suture anything below the neck. Yeah. And they did facial suturing. Yeah. In, in the in the or, but they, the surgery was more to learn anatomy. I, looked at opening a skull and I observed, yeah, everything from brain surgery to we did one cesarean that which I, that's the only thing I hope I ever came across because I knew that.

Nick: 1:06:31

I can't think of a better way to, to get exposure to some serious mechanical injuries than being at an, or at least for trauma. So it's cool that you guys did that. Yeah. So you just did, you did the Lin in Germany, and then you finally got out to Vietnam and got

John: 1:06:47

to Vietnam. We had to go through the I did one other set of schools that a lot of the guys did. That was the Burg Wat mountain Climbing School went through the summer and the Alps of climbing and Winter Alpine Rescue School. Rescuing on skis, and both of those schools were a month long. So those were the other two schools I did while I was in Spain.

Nick: 1:07:15

Yeah, I actually That's a German mountain warfare school. Yes. I sent guys to that when I was stationed in Aviana. Yeah,

John: 1:07:23

hor.

Nick: 1:07:24

Yeah. Oh, and they went from they went from learning how to ski.'cause there was two guys actually getting how to ski. And I was told basically, it's going to make you the best skier on the team

Speaker 3: 1:07:35

because they go

Nick: 1:07:36

from downhill skiing and then you go up and you start skinning and doing at, and then you're doing everything with rucks and weapons uhhuh. So I heard it's, it was pretty good for that. It,

John: 1:07:49

oh we were I just have one, one story on that. We were free climbing and we were, they were teaching us the free climb and we were going around around a bend and we were on a ledge about eight inches. And it was all about handling your weight and moving your feet, and you had to, this was about a 30 foot distance that curved. And everyone was going around with their body looking at the vertical. It was just almost vertical. And so you had a very slight inward lean as you were shuffling sideways going around this bend. And so as we were going it by and moving, there was this silver cross embedded in the stone, and it was right about eye level so you couldn't miss it. And so we got past that and where the where the path widened out was in between a split that opened up, and then there was a little plateau that we all had. We all stopped there and had lunch and they, there was one instructor leading us and one instructor, at least one behind us. And so we waited till everyone got there. And then of course everyone asked what was the Silver Cross all about? And he said that's where haunts fell. And they said, who is Hans? And they said Hans was the second highest rated mountain climber in Austria. And to this day, I don't know, any of us that went through that school ever knew if that was bullshit or not. But it sure made everyone believe.'cause it was about a 3000 foot drop straight down. Yeah. And it was, it was to teach confidence, obviously. Yeah. But,

Nick: 1:10:18

That Superman school, yeah. That's crazy because you, it definitely does give you compliment confidence.

John: 1:10:24

So that was that was the ot. Yeah. Like you, you graduated, got a little eight little ice white flower, a porcelain pin with a Red Cross in the center. That was, so anyway, got to after the survival school, I got to the PI and had just missed the school. And they said the next school didn't start for two weeks. And there were two other guys that were waiting there that were. Not PJs, but they were waiting for the next school to start. And he said we've got, now that we have three of you, I'm gonna send out you three guys with three instructors for three days, and we'll teach you everything you need to know about surviving in the jungle. So that's what we did for the jungle survival. It just basically learned what vines contained water and what vines were edible, and basically what pictures of, what snakes do you wanna stay away from, because they had the same snakes in Vietnam that were quite lethal. So that was at school. Then I got we hooked, I hooked a ride, got as far as Saigon, and then I, again, I missed, they have shuttles going both directions, doing a loop all the way around Vietnam, one's going clockwise, one counterclockwise. And I had missed the. One going clockwise that would've gone up the coast. And the other one was coming around and that was to come in two days. And he said, that'll get you there faster, even though it'll take longer. So I went there and he said, no he had to get something fixed, so he was gonna be delayed for a couple days. So I got on a, I got on a not a shuttle, but somebody that was flying directly to Ang. So I got on that. And so I finally arrived somewhere around the 1st of September finally into Ang. And I remember the day I got off whatever the transport was that I was on they had a runway emergency where there was an aircraft had come in with a shot or a faulty landing gear. And it collapsed while he was landing. And he ejected right on the runway and the plane veered off and went into a hangar and blew up, hit a bunch of aircraft that was inside the hangar. And and I was just standing on the runway looking at all this. That was my first day in Vietnam. Wow. And I, that was very impressive. Yeah, because I, whoever was working in the hangar couldn't have survived. I I don't know if anyone was killed, but there were obviously people hurt. When, so when

Nick: 1:14:03

you got there, what was the squadron like in Danang and who were some of your teammates there?

John: 1:14:09

I saw the people that had gone through the applying school bill Jennings, Tom Winters Dwayne De and Dean Casper were all there. Al Avery, they were all the PJs that I'd been with through the Fi flying school because. I had to do the extra school they were, had been there for a couple of weeks and it had taken me the the extra time of being at the the school at Clark Survival School. The first two weeks, I everyone had to go through the flight in flight instructor, had to check out all the PJs and Fes and copilots, and we had a mixed bag of pilots and copilots because they were, a lot of the older lieutenant colonels and colonels were co-pilots and captains and majors were the best pilots. And of course, the trees had, were air to air refueling and a lot of the refueling was at night. When you're coming back dark. Darkness gets early in Vietnam during certain parts of the year. I remember the first two weeks I spent just doing Czech rides and, learning the hoist major Olsen was the the flight instructor and he he gave me all my check rides, which proved to be quite prophetic. Since the first assignment I got were, was LVR land-based rescue on the 43. I had to get checked out on that, trained on that as a PJ fireman or assistant to the fireman. And the LVR run runway land emergencies. Danang had two parallel 10,000 foot runways. And then flight aprons on both sides. And I had just been on my first week ever on the LVR for the runway emergencies, which was a seven day. Time period where you're on 24 hours a day and you're sleeping and staying in a tent right at the end of the runway or halfway down kinda where the, so that the helicopter pad, that the 43 with a suppression fire extinguisher that it carries, it's a big ball about five or six feet in diameter that has a hose nozzle that's in the cabin and there's a four person crew pilot co-pilot, the firemen that operates the fire extinguisher and that shoots foam. And then the PJ where the PJ can go on the ground or be lowered on a lanyard and we can hover over a open cockpit and snap a carabiner into the harness of the pilot and pull'em out of the cockpit before the plane catches on fire. Even if it is on fire, the firemen can suppress it with rotor was and foam. So it's a, you practice doing various, very versions of. Calamities that can occur on the runaway emergencies. And at the time when I got there, Ang was averaging about three runway emergencies a day. It was the takeoffs and landings by measurement was about five times busier than O'Hare. Yeah. That'll keep you

Nick: 1:18:32

busy. Yeah.

John: 1:18:34

It was all exciting work. Yeah. But Major Olson had checked me out on all of these at things that I'd be doing at at the Nang and he had passed me even. It was the first time I ever flew a three e, wanted all the PJs to have at least 30 minutes of stick time. So when I got to the end of my time and was flying it for 30 minutes. So I think I can't remember who the FE was, but he was definitely not feeling well in the back because he finally called up and he said, is done making me sick. And they just said, I think, boy, have you had enough? He said he could. He said, I want him to learn how to fly it without the autopilots on.'cause I recall there was at least three of'em that kept the aircraft stable and he started out with everything on a autopilot, which is like sitting in a remote control car. And and one by one he'd take one off and five minutes and then take another one off finally, when he took the third one off by then, had to try hard to keep from flying upside down. Yeah. So that was it.

Nick: 1:20:03

What, when, so you were certified and then I know you had some missions that you wanted to talk about. What were some of those ones that were happening in Vietnam?

John: 1:20:13

The first one was actually the most traumatic. I had just finished my first week of LBR duty. And as I said, you were on 24 hours a day for seven days. But you only are averaging three a night, which meant some nights you did nothing or days and nights and some days and nights you had as many as half a dozen. It was a real busy one, but they averaged about three a day. And I had just. Transitioned off of that, I think it was sometime in the morning seven or eight o'clock. I've got the mission reports. I got these about these are all declassified from the October 5th mission that and basically what happened there was a Special Forces team inserted into a location in Laos that was west and south of Dene. In about 20 miles wasn't that, it was probably 20 kilometers from the Esau Valley that where the Hoi Min Trail was running up and down. And the team originally was thought to be nine members. They were inserted because the they had picked up some IR photography that showed there was a huge, heat sink of people there that were not animals or anything. So I had, they had sent the team in to investigate what it was. So they were inserted in the middle of the night by helicopter unknown to anyone at the time. There was a significantly large NVA underground base that was at least 600 soldiers that were permanently stationed there. And it was a connected to an underground network of tunnels and cities and factories all built underground that were supplied by the personnel coming from Hanoi down the Po Chi Min Trail and going into the northern part of South Vietnam, all the way down to the southern part past Saigon. And the insertion helicopter, which I think was a 34 right after it. Released the personnel. And there were, as it turned out, there were seven of which there were three Americans and four what are called kit Carson Scouts. These are Reconverted, north Vietnamese army personnel that have been captured and have elected to work for the US government, mainly embedded with special forces units to help them with their missions. So they I believe they had a captain and two sergeants that were the Americans, and then four kit Carson Scouts. Indigenous personnel, I think is what they, they refer to. And the insertion helicopter was shot down immediately after they had discharged them. And the hybrid backup helicopter picked up the crew that had been shot down and then left. And that's when they called the Air Force and said, we. Need an extraction of our team.'Cause we don't have any anyone that can go in and do that. There were SPADs in the area. Those are a one E that are usually from the Vietnam side. And as the mission wore on, there were Sandys, which are a one east coming from Thailand. So the mission reports when they refer to as spas and Sandys, it's say same aircraft, distant different origin. There were eventually there were fast movers, which probably were f fours coming in. Crown birds are one thirties. I think we had two, two crown birds that are our flying command posts on the mission. Anyway, they danang scrambled two helicopters right away, hybrid and low bird. And it was about close to an hour flight from Ang to where the pickup point was in Laos. And when the air, when the aircraft got on site and the. I think they had six scads by this time and a couple of Sandys there for that first pickup. And then they, ang immediately started looking to send another crew jolly Green crew to supplement the two that were there. And that's when I just got back to the PJ Hooch had the name and the guys said we're all going down to the flight line and listen to the radio there because of the extraction that's going on. And I had knew enough of the lingo by now that this was a rare event. They may have one extraction per year that usually involves anywhere up to a hundred aircraft because it's multi personnel that are in trouble. And it's a pretty big deal. So even though I think I had been up two or three times in the night and had, and was gonna catch a couple of hours of sleep and then go to the NCO Club.'cause I had the day off, I went down to the flight line. Major Olson was the officer in charge and he by this time the squadron commander had come down for the flight line. And he was calling the shots on we had a helicopter. They had a co-pilot who was a lieutenant colonel I believe and a PJ Al Avery, but they didn't have a flight engineer. And they said we don't have any flight engineers on base right now. And so immediately Major Olson said Nussbaum just came in country and he's fresh out of school as a pj. And I checked him out on the flight engineer's duties, so I'll qualify him as a flight engineer if he wants to go. And he looked at me and I thought, I don't know how much of that is true, but I said, yeah, I'll go. Yeah, let's go. So you took off. That's how I got on. It was an hour flight to get there. It was about an hour flight there. We were probably more than 20 minutes out yet when I, we heard over our radio flying there that the high-end low bird, the low bird was going in for an attempted pickup. And we listened as the low bird went in and took heavy gunfire that ruptured their internal fuel pumps. And they immediately had two to four inches of fuel inside the helicopter floor. And they had to pull out. And and they said he was setting down all his radios and trying to turn the booster pumps off so that the fuel stopped. He said, I got him off. Now the fuel is stopped and draining out and I'm gonna try and make it back to Danang with the fuel that I have. And so that aircraft with its crew we met about 10 minutes later, going back towards Danang. We just passed and the it was being escorted by a Spad and one, and that Spad turned around and said you follow him? Told us to follow him back and we said we told him he can go and if he has to put down, there's another helicopter coming behind us that they can pick him up if that's necessary. But we, there was a argument. Yeah, you gotta get following back site, get to the site. So we kept on going and the spat turned around and went back. And by this time there were more SPADs and more Sandys coming from all over. There were forward air controllers. There was at least two fact planes on the, I think they were Army, oh ones or something like that that were also on the scene that were directing. They were usually the on scene commander. And they were, they had basically smoke rockets that they can point to where the enemy fire is coming from and the spas. And they carry all kinds of gathering. Yeah. Get after it. Yeah, you get after it. Then there was another stretch stretching the reality of the situation. They said we were five minutes out and we were really. Still a little more than 20 minutes out from where the landing zone was. And they told the the landing zone people were surrounded now. And and so they had called for more spas to, to strength the perimeter of the landing zone, which they started doing. And they said, okay, we've got we were still, as I said, more than 20 minutes out when the decision was made for the now lowberg, the remaining jolly to go in and try to make the pickup.'cause they said there was no more fire coming coming up from the hostels. And they, there was at least, I think there they were called hostage. Anyway, there were Huey Gunships that were there. They had joined and so there was getting to be quite a armada of aircraft in the area in Laos. And they so they jolly Green went in for a pickup and that was the one that had the PJ was Cas beer on it. And it. Went in into what was like a box canyon where the pickup was to be, and went in, turned around. And just as it turned around and was trying to make the pickup, I took an RPT and took it down and it crashed. And we were still, I don't know, probably 10 to 15 minutes out at that time from reaching. And we could see the within a few minutes we could see the smoke rising and the distance from where the crash site was. So we had a real good. And we stopped about a mile from where the smoke was coming up and just we hadn't been stationary for more than a couple minutes. And we were talking, they were talking on the radio what to do next, and were there any survivors? And initially they said he didn't think there were any survivors from the crash. Jolly. And just then we took our first round that, that was our clue because it came from above. We exited out below. We were at a, we were, the LZ was about 6,000 a DL and there was about 2000 ridge that went up, another 2000 feet higher than us. And that's where the bad guys were on top of that ridge looking down. And so they, that's how they saw the insertion helicopter and saw us arrive. And they must have radioed to the ground parties that they were coming out of the ground because their, he, their entrance into their camp was all underground and the entrances were in the ground.

Nick: 1:34:38

And then, and that's what did they put the spas on them.

John: 1:34:43

So then they were sanitizing the area with that. And they eventually made radio contact with CAS beer, the PJ that was on the shot down helicopter. And he said the flight engineer and the copilot were both dead. And the pilot had a broken back and he had. He said he wasn't wounded, but he had burns. Turned out he had about 30%, 30 degree burns on him from the fire. The fe had been impaled on the M 60 when the dolly green went in and the copilot had crushed into and partially through the window of the left seat. The right seat is a piloting command that's a seat over the refueling probe. And Casper found the pilot and picked him up. The clearing that the LZ was in was very small and they radioed the cashier to coordinates that was up over the ridge and down the other side, which was only about a two or three kilometer walk, but would take at least four hours for him to move because it was. A double and in some areas a triple canopy, jungle, and so dense you couldn't see more than a few feet ahead of you with the vines and the grass and everything and going up the ridge and then down the other side was like going into another valley. They eventually they had radio contact with the ground party and they said that all four of the six ground party were wounded at that time, and they were given the same coordinates to rendezvous with the two the remainder of the Jolly Green crew. And yeah, so that's what happened. We kept getting refueled we, they sent in another tanker crowned in and and we moved far enough away. We could still see the plume of. Smoke, but we were we were at about 12,000 feet and quite a ways away and just waited until they got all the aircraft in. They brought in fast movers. They the, they had another fact show up and they were putting smoke wherever they saw a hostile fire. So they were pretty much posing down the entire area, but they didn't have anything one ridge over. We, except that's where the both parties now were maneuvering, and they never did link up together until it was made a decision was made that we were, if we didn't pick them up before darkness we wouldn't be able to get them until the next day. And with the hosts in the area and the number of hosts, it must've been there. They didn't feel that they'd survive the night, so we had to make a final pickup right at dusk. Also they had isolated that there were some 50 cal. Had been set up'cause they were getting returned fire from heavy weapons as well as it was obvious it was more than just more than just rifle fire coming at them. So we waited around till everything was set. And then major Olson briefed us that we'd be going in, but he was gonna come down from a different angle so that he'd be coming through another ridge line and flying and enter the the ridge at a lower level and go around a bend so that he wouldn't be seen from the ridge where we felt all the observers were on. And he actually, he said he's gonna fly into the into the, in between the second and the first canopy level in through the jungle. And he wanted me to get out on the probe of the on the right side probe. And straddle the probe so I could give directions if there were trees that were bigger than four inches in diameter. He said I'll cut through anything that's three inches and if it looks like it's bigger than three inches, have me back up and I'll make a decision whether to go right or left around it after I've backed up.

Nick: 1:40:17

Now it's getting sporty. It's telling you to climb on the probe. All right, so I got out on the

John: 1:40:22

probe.

Nick: 1:40:23

You already got shot one, so it's already been sporty, but

John: 1:40:26

I, I had a harness on and I thought, this is crazy. I got nothing to hold onto. I got my ar 15 on a strap on my back.'cause I can't, I, there's, I couldn't shoot if I had to. Yeah, if I let go of both hands, I'm gonna be dangling from a 10 foot lanyard that's hooked on the floor inside the helicopter. So I told Olson that I told the major that I can see just as well from the door, standing in the door what's on the right side of the aircraft. And he had callan was back on the ramp. He had opened the ramp up and if he had to back up, he wanted him to tell him if the tail rotor was any danger of backing into anything. And and then the copilot, of course, taking, handling the left side. So we maneuvered through the jungle. We probably were about a hundred feet above the ground. It's my estimate. And we had a a full canopy plus sometimes even a third canopy above us. And so we had big trees and smaller trees that we were maneuvering around. And we didn't have any hostile gunfire at all till we got close to where the where the pickup plate was. And then then we started getting we could see the gunfire winking at us. And we could hear occasionally the bullets hitting the helicopter. But shooting through the dense grass and leaves and tree branches and everything, all the bullets were shattering and hitting randomly. They weren't doing any damage. The three e are pretty well pretty well armored around the, the universal joints and the rotors can take quite a bit of damage also as far as bullet holes and everything. But the major Olsen spotted the people first and maneuvered so that he could see where they were coming from straight down. His rotor wash was blowing the grasses and everything apart, and right when he maneuvered right under where there were no trees and stopped, and he said, I'm right over where I think they should be, and. It was about 30 seconds. And then there was the first person that I could see looking straight down in the rotor wash on the ground was a Vietnamese. And he had his M 16 on his back. He wasn't carrying it and he was just with his hands open and he was looking up and it was the M 16 that I figured if he was carrying that, he probably was one of the indigenous. So then he stepped back. As I started lowering the hoist, he stepped back outta sight.'cause all I saw was about a five foot diameter hole right to the ground. And there was, everything was blown'cause of the air coming down and hitting the ground and moving away. It made a, just like you had a perfect hole cut out of the grass and trees. And the next thing I saw was cave with the colonel. He had a fireman's carry and he had he had one, a single weapon, which he didn't bring up. He left and he said it was, he didn't have any ammo for it. But he came up with Casre on the first twice and they came in the door. The cord that was connected to my helmet with my boom mic. And then the overhead door of the three E is where it plugged into the aircraft. And so every time people coming in off the penetrator, they pulled the cord out of the socket that was directly overhead, so we'd lose communication. And so when that happened, we had to replug and reestablish and go through that. So it took a, an extra 30 seconds sometimes to get that re-plugged in. And while we were doing that, then lowering the hoist back down to the ground, the second one had three people on it. And by this time we were taking heavier fire. And Casper put the the pilot grandier, his name was. On the on the floor. And he picked up one of the oh, we had done, that was the other thing we had done. We had thrown out all the sea, everything of weight because of our altitude and weight. And we knew we were picking up eight people that, and we had dumped our tip tanks and just had internal. And so we had we had we said everything that we can throughout. So I think we had kept the M 60 ammo cans, but we had thrown out all the strapping that kept them stable. And we threw those out. And that was a mistake because as we were jing around trying to get to that spot, all the ammo cans fell over and the ammo came out of the can. And so it messed up the Fra m And both of us, both Avery, the pj, and myself, grabbed the wrong end of the, when our M 60 needed to be reloaded. We grabbed the wrong end, put it in upside down and jammed the gun. And so after our first. Canister of ammo ran out. We couldn't fire the m sixties anymore. Both were jammed with when you put the wrong end of the ammo belt in the clips are upside down instead of right side up. Yeah. And so that was that was a coly mistake. But you guys we immediately Casper started firing back. At first he was firing from behind me and out the door. And I had to stop with a heist because I thought he was gonna shoot me in the back. And then I moved him down to the next window down. But we were taking heavy fire and it was shooting through the jungle. All the bullets were being ricocheted. So it was just about everything coming through was pieces of lead, not the bullets themselves.'cause they'd gone through sticks and trunks and tree trunks and all kinds of stuff. Yeah. And then, so you

Nick: 1:48:23

had, at this point you had gotten a couple people up, but we had two had the whole rest of the,

John: 1:48:28

we had two, then three. And the last three, they crawled out of the brush. And the third guy was a indigenous and he had vines wrapped around his torso. And it pulled him as I was lifting him up, the vines were wrapped around him and pulled him off the penetrator. And so I put the penetrator back on the ground so he could unwrap the vines. They seemed to be all twisted around his body and his legs. And got, he undid it and we were still taking quite a bit of heavy fire and I picked him up and he, he couldn't get onto his seat, so he just dangled from his strap. He had the strap around him which is just a loop around him. And so the two, the three were on the third and final pickup. So it was two, three and three was the eight. We got up and then once we, again, when we brought'em through the door, they pulled the strap, the microphone cord out of the socket overhead, which. They later wrote up after the mission report that had to be re Yeah, we gotta

Nick: 1:49:51

change this up,

John: 1:49:53

rechanged. And they wrote a number of things that, that, but that was probably the most critical one. Yeah. And then we just once we established communication, I went back around and talked. They Crown wanted everyone to reiterate that there were no living people on the ground left. Which, and he said, he told me I have to go to every single person we picked up and questioned him, including the pilot with a broken back. And so we talked to everyone and they all affirmed that everyone was dead. That was behind on the ground. Which there were three.

Nick: 1:50:40

Yeah.

John: 1:50:42

That's a tough day. So we had a revert back to the entrance where we had gone, which. Meant flying about 70 to a hundred feet near the ground and then coming back up over, I don't know, somewhere between 102 hundred feet before we cleared the top trees coming out of the jungle. So it's probably the first time a helicopter flew that distance inside a jungle. I don't know of any other rescue. We wouldn't have been able to do it without the skill that Major Olson had for his flying ability.

Nick: 1:51:27

Crazy. Smart guy in, in that mission you got a silver star on.

John: 1:51:32

That's correct. We all did, including CAS, we got a silver star for carrying the rescuing the Colonel Grande. Wow. His pilot. And that was a pretty amazing hump because of the thickness of the jungle. You I couldn't imagine carrying and ca we, as he is about the same physique I have, but the major Grandier was a fairly big nude.

Nick: 1:52:05

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:52:07

Yeah,

Nick: 1:52:07

it does. It's the human body can get through a lot and especially when there's somebody chasing you through the jungle. Yeah. There's,

John: 1:52:14

there's a lot of incentives on that. Yeah.

Nick: 1:52:17

I sometimes can't even remember what I ate yesterday. And the fact that you had that with such crazy detail I could completely understand some of the challenges you had on the hoist and, just being able to find the survivors and stuff.

John: 1:52:32

It was interesting. There hasn't been a single day go by that something doesn't remind me of that day. Yeah. And of course every year October 5th comes around, but I've got another mission that was quite humorous. I always anytime I wanna think of something light and good that happened was the mission at Marble Mountain. I was on LVR Duty again. I think we had to rotate through. So every PJ there took his week and then you recycled and you'd go 10 weeks or so before you had it again. And so LBR as I earlier talked about your in a tent next to, you're about 30 from. This 43, which is a very small helicopter that has two rotor blades that are on two different stalks on top, that each one goes the opposite way around. And it's they're, they were referred to as Pedro's, which there's a different Pedro now that is in the air rescue service. But anyway, the, this was your in direct contact with the tower and the tower can activate a alarm bell that goes off right outside the tent. There's a 24 hour person that is at the A PU that starts the 43, and it's cocked and locked ready to start. And Dave is bringing up the full power and he'll get start the helicopter up. And we the pilot, the co-pilot, the firemen and the PJ. Get dressed if we have some of our clothes off, and get out and get in the helicopter. And the helicopter lifts off within 60 seconds of when the alarm bell goes off. And we, first thing you do is put your helmet on and make sure that your communications are working. Because the next thing that comes is the tower briefing. And it briefs all four of us simultaneously from the tower on what was happening. And the briefing was, there was a DC eight stretch jet that was attempting to land on the 3000 foot PSP run that the Marines had around Marble Mountain. And it, the topography of Ang is that there are two parallel 10,000 foot runways and there are aprons on the each side and off to one side. And about a half mile away is Marble Mountain. And this is a 300 foot Onyx rock, that's about a hundred yards wide and about 350 yards long. And it's got straight vertical sides and a very flat top. And it's all Onyx. It's something that pushed up out of the ground a few million years ago, and it's been there ever since. And the Marines had built their helicopter base right at the foot of Marble Mountain. So the vision I had as a PE day, this is probably gonna be the worst thing I ever encountered in Vietnam. And the aircraft they gave us, the had 294 people on it. And all I could say is how the hell can they mistake? A 10 3000 foot PSP runway for a well lit 10,000 foot dual

Nick: 1:57:04

runway. I'm looking at, I'm looking at marble Mountain right now. On the beach. Yeah, it's right on China Beach. I can't even find this airstrip that's been taken over by. Oh yeah, no clue. It didn't look like it would fit.

John: 1:57:21

What happened, and later we found out is that this was a contract airline Tiger Airlines. It was a DCH stretch stretched jet, which just means they, they cut the middle of the fuselage out and weld in another 20 feet of fuselage and then put the plane back together so they can haul a, a, an extra a hundred passengers or whatever it is. Yeah. But it had, it's a single row aircraft with three seats of rest, and it's very long. And the the later mission report said that they had landed and refueled in Hawaii took off from Hawaii, and their next landing was at Ang. So they had been flying most of the part of the day and most of the night. And it was about four in the morning when this alarm went off that they were landing. And the. Pilot or the had landed and taken off from Hawaii and the co-pilot suddenly realized that the pilot was landing again. And he or the pilot did. And he said, it's really your land, your turn to land. And the copilot had just poured a cup of coffee. And so he set that down and took his visual off outside the aircraft and then reengaged outside the aircraft and said, I have the controls. And he picked up the lights that were on, all the lights are on, and the, they the aircraft was in the process of turning from base to final. And when he picked up the turn, had brought into view the distant marble mountain. And if he'd have kept turning, he would've seen the actual danang lighting strip. But he reoriented everything onto the Marble Mountain lighting. When he got close enough, they both realized they were on a heading directly into Marble Mountain and they couldn't go around it, and they didn't have enough power to go over it. And so they immediately cut their engines and there's some kind of safety device that until the landing gear receives pressure, the engines won't reverse. But he timed it just so that he could, the engines reversed the second they landed which blew out a number of his tires. But he ended up the nose of the DCH stretch when we arrived was by actual measurement 18 inches from the vertical and edge of Marble Mountain and Wow. And he had blown he had blown a majority of this landing tires under each wing, but every, no one other than a hard landing. The next day they took all the all the passengers got out and were trucked over to Ang and they then took all the seats and refueled it down to 30 minutes. And they jacked, they put new tires on it. Turned the plane around, jacked it up, turned it around, backed it up to the catch of Marble Mountain, and they actually flew it off the next day with us watching same pilots.

Nick: 2:01:44

Same pilots. You guys gotta pay the price.

John: 2:01:49

That was one of the luckiest landings. Yeah. Yeah. And happiest. And believe it or not, there was the landing was done in the middle of the night, but that takeoff, somebody had a 16 millimeter camera and captured the takeoff and the actual the stewardess and that they had wearing these pillbox hat hats and the whole thing. Were standing around. All the miscellaneous crew, except for the pilot and copilot were standing on the edge of the runway. And watch it take off, and it just went up a couple hundred feet and landed, they held all the traffic at the Nang and plopped down on the Nang and put the seats back in and checked it all out and it took off.

Nick: 2:02:44

That is a pretty funny story. It's a happy ending.

Speaker 3: 2:02:47

Yeah.

John: 2:02:49

And that was I already talked about the our being on for the Norway missions. Yeah. And I lost count how many of those I had, but because we trained a lot on that on the phone system we were sent quite frequently to Norway and that was a kind of a test the time. The other thing another mission I had that again, was a fun, we were coming back from our alert station was at Kwang Tree in right below the DMZ right off the China Sea. The Gulf of Tonkin rather. And we were coming back. It was as I recall, it was about four in the afternoon when daylight hours, we probably had another two, two or three hours of daylight time. And when we got a alert from headquarters that said a swift boat had left Camron Bay and the 50 miles or whatever it was between Camron Bay and the Ang Harbor, where it was heaven, that it arrived at the harbor at Ang and one of the crewmen was missing. And it was last seen. The crew member had been sunbathing on the roof of the swift boat and apparently had been bounced off and was somewhere in the in the water between Camron Bay and Dane. So we got the coordinates of Karon Bay. And then we got weather reports on where the what the sea drift current and everything was. And so we quickly figured out a path of drift along where he might be. And we figured we probably had one, one pass if we went slow from Danang and backtracked all the way to Camron Bay. We'd find if we could, that would be the only hope of finding the guy. And they said, what was he wearing? And they said he just had his shorts on his underwear shorts which were white, which turned out to be good. Because we actually about an hour into the trip back going very slow and from an altitude that we could still see the water and see between what were white caps and what was a white pair of shorts. We found the guy and he was just about done in oh my

Nick: 2:05:54

gosh, from hypothermia. I was gonna say, how cold was the water? It,

John: 2:06:00

Was probably somewhere in the fifties. Yeah. Yeah. That far out.'Cause Cameron Bay goes in quite a ways and that we just, we brought'em in and brought him back to brought'em back to the hospital at the Nang and he checked out. And that was quite a, I was happy to see you guys quite a good recovery. Yeah. Yeah. The the other the other time we were called to Camron Bay was not as good. We had a we were again, coming back from We were coming back from we had picked up a medevac, it was army no, they were Marines, marines had taken some hills south of Ang and we had picked them up and dropped them off on one of the hospital ships. The repose or the sanctuary. And we were, when we got a emergency notification that a plane had crashed outside of Camron Bay, and we were 10 minutes from there. And it was a 1 23 transport that had 34 people on board. And when we arrived, why? There was it was about a half mile from the runway at Camron Bay, and by this time it was dark or merely dark. And evidently what had happened the 1 23 has reciprocal engines that take AGAs and someone had put JP four I in refueling the engines. So when it started up by the, it burned just the gas, the have gas it had in the lines. And when it got to the kerosene being pumped into the engines, both engines died. And and the plane went down and caught on fire. And the tower notified us'cause it knew we were in the area immediately as it was crashing. And they sent the fire trucks out. So they, when we arrived on scene the fire trucks were spraying foam on the burning aircraft and there were bodies on the ground. The aircraft had split open and I think the front cockpit had broken open. And the pilot and copilot had been rejected out on fire. And we landed near where they were, and they were the first bodies that we came across. And they had been, they had, their flight suits were completely burned off. It wasn't, other than checking for Pulse and noting that they were dead while we went towards the aircraft.

Speaker 3: 2:09:15

Mainly it was just helping

John: 2:09:21

load the, we had half a dozen ambulances that had just arrived and helped put those that were alive into the ambulances.

Speaker 3: 2:09:39

But think

John: 2:09:42

that was a. That was a tough one. There were, yeah, 16 dead of the 34.

Nick: 2:09:53

It's hard to look back on some of those the ones that are so traumatic. But at the end of the day, the 16 people who perished, you're still giving their family the closure they need by, returning'em in a way, and I think that's, yeah, that's one of the most important jobs of PJ's is just being ready for it all and, and giving a family exactly what they need on the,

John: 2:10:23

yeah.

Nick: 2:10:23

On the backside of such a tragedy.

John: 2:10:27

The only other tough time that I had I would send TDY to and kp had put in a request for help with their medevacs and they just said they had been assigned, this was in. Early in 69, probably in February. So I, again I think they picked on me this time because they said, oh, had enough missions he can do the medevac missions. Anyway, they sent me there for a week and at first they told me I'd be flying the North missions on the 50 threes. MKP had just gotten 50 threes and I thought that'd be an exciting thing. But when I got there they said, no, we don't wanna take the time to train you on a 53.'cause I'd had three ling guns. That the mini guns shot 600 rounds a second or something like that. It was a rotating eight barrel gun that was electronic. And that was quite a bit more firepower than an M 60. Anyway we could handle 15 litter patients with a very narrow aisle between them. And we would go in at the time they, the military had converted 20 foot steel cargo containers into a mini surgical unit where they put doors on both ends and so that they could take a sky crane which was a helicopter that had real long stilt legs and it could straddle one of these containers and pick it up. And they had it set up where you could triage at one end of the container and bring them inside, had some operating tables, and then go out the other end into a medevac helicopter one of our three E and we could take them to a hospital. So we could do little more than just combat medic type surgery or what, or basically that's just putting wound dressings and tourniquets is when you're, what the Marines specialize in when they have when they're in combat. And so it was taking this first tier of wounded that had enough to keep them alive and get them direct from the combat zone into a hospital. And a lot of times we'd be picking up just everybody that was there and there'd be Vietnamese soldiers mixed in with American Marines usually. And occasionally there were little kids. And the most common thing that what I saw was there was always a lot of Nepal used, especially when things got outta hand. And one of the times there were these two kids had to be around four or five, a girl and a boy, and they had 60% 30 degree burns on them and

Speaker 3: 2:14:32

they were alive,

John: 2:14:33

but I knew that

Speaker 3: 2:14:38

it

John: 2:14:38

was only a matter of days.

Speaker 3: 2:14:46

And I still think of that.

Nick: 2:14:52

What do you do as best she can for'em? Yeah.

John: 2:14:59

So those are The good, the bad and the ugly. Yeah.

Nick: 2:15:08

I can't thank you enough for your service, and you've definitely made an impact on the community. We talk to people with 26 years of experience and all the way down to three or four years, and it's just man the time you had as a pj, it changes your life. And I think, everyone speaking to everyone, it changes your life for the better. There's no higher calling in my opinion, than being able to do the job that we do.

John: 2:15:37

But I wouldn't have given any of it up for anything because it changed my life. I I came back I got decided I would come back, ask Nancy to marry me and go back to school for the third time, which I did. I enrolled this time in the School of Business in Madison, which is one of their toughest schools. Even though I had an existing grade point of below one and I had to, in order to graduate from the school of business, I had to bring my overall up to a three point, which I did. Went to school for four years from the fall of 69. First. I got married in September and started school the following week. And Nancy and I have been together for 56 years, and it's one of the things that I did notice in my four years in the military is that it takes a amazing person to be able to stay married to someone that's in the military. And it also is almost not compatible on the person that is in the military. Probably about the only thing that is compatible is if you're both in the military. But I only knew of one family that was a PJ Dave Wheeler. Oh yeah. He he was he was with me in Spain. He was, had been in Vietnam. He had a tremendous family, kids. But he had a killer of a wife. She was amazingly good. She took me under her wing and Dave liked me a lot. So it was pretty good. There were a couple of things that I just quickly wrap up. One of the things that I kept because we carried, and I don't know if they do that today at all, we carried what was called a bloodshed so that if any time we were on the ground and had to be left behind this was a some a, it was a bar of BARTing token. Yeah. A bartering token. I don't know if they still have that.

Nick: 2:18:18

We do, yeah. We still have blood Chis

John: 2:18:21

and the they never asked for it back from me, so it went home with me. That's about every couple years I take that out and read it. It's funny reading it. I don't know if it's. Back then it was worth$10,000 for exchanging it. And the other thing that is a funny story real quick, is that Vietnam was a a barter society that if you needed something, you bar bartered for it. And if you couldn't barter for it, you stole it. And we ended up trying to find a first we had a, we found an island out in the Gulf of Tonkin that was not too far from Ang that we could easily fly to. And this was an island about three miles in circumference around the beach. So if you went for a jog around it, it was about three miles to jog all the way around the beach in the center of the island there, it went up to a a toll that had some kind of a military beacon on it for, but what its purpose was I, no one ever knew, but so it, it was some kind of a communication beacon and on one end of the island, and it was pretty much round. There was a village that probably had 10 or 12 families that lived there, and there was just a fishing village and they fished in the gulf and they had boats and spears and stuff like that. And we would go there was a cove that had a larger sandy beach that was, I don't know, 50 yards into a up to a cliff that was probably 30 or 40 feet tall that sloped down. And we used to go there just to sometimes we'd keep in practice for some of our scuba just we had our scuba gear with us and we'd do some scuba diving or just lay on the beach and not have anybody bothering us. Anyway somebody got the bright idea. What we really needed was a Jeep to go around. Spend time in the village and all of that. Long story short we tried to barter for a Jeep and weren't successful. So finally we there was a group that went down to Camron Bay and found a jeep that was unattended except for the chain that went through the steering wheel and the eye bolt that was in the floor and had a padlock on it, which was quickly compromised. NA Jeep was driven into one of our helicopters and flown out to the Tulare Island. There we go. And so every time we went out there, we'd take a Jerry can of just keep everything going. And it, we had a camouflage tarp that went over it when we weren't there, and it was kind tucked in under the ledge and you it was in the shade and it looked. Look just like mossy rocks.

Nick: 2:22:08

That's amazing.

John: 2:22:09

That was that was the poor man's

Nick: 2:22:12

r and r. Thank you for your time today. It's been awesome to hear your stories.

John: 2:22:18

It's it's been great and I, as I said, I wouldn't have missed this part of being a pj. I I knew I, I probably wouldn't be as successful a second time around. I know a lot of guys that I knew that stayed in, went back, went some of them went to school and then went back to NAM for a second tour, which anybody that had two tours of Agent Orange, they were doomed for a short life. One, one tour is bad enough. They spent a lot of my time just seeing doctors that tell me I'm coming down with a lot of exotic, very rare type. Conditions, but it's pricey pay and it's, I don't mind that a bit. I feel very fortunate that the VA is as good as it is still currently today, so I'm, yeah happy for that.

Nick: 2:23:26

Special shout out to Becky for setting this up.

John: 2:23:29

Yeah. She's she's our, she's a doll.