SPEAKER_01 1:00

The altitude that the scouts flew was four to six feet above the highest obstacle. So we're flying around ten, twelve feet off the ground. We were close enough to see the whites of the eyes of the guys that we were engaging. We could smell the guys on the ground in concentration. My instinct was always if if a guy fires on you, you turn and attack him. That's the way I was trained as an infantryman. You bust an ambush by counter ambush training. You turn, you engage the ambush, and you charge him. That's the inclination that I brought to the scouts. An M134 at 25 meters slant range from a guy that's shooting at you gives you one hell of an advantage over a guy with an AK-47. It also gets their attention very quickly. Speed is life. If you come back over a target three, four, five times and get slow, you're gonna get popped. So we took the sights out and simply took a hands width above the lateral cross member on the canopy and made a grease pencil mark. That was our gun sight. And once you fire, 2,000 rounds or 4,000 had two rates of fire. It's spewing straight red tracers. Again, we're very close. We're 25, 30, 40 meters from people when we engage them. The minigun was devastating. All of a sudden, the uh guys quit shooting at us. I think they learned to a degree that when you shoot at this little bird, the little bird's gonna shoot back. The number of them who said to me in the club at night, you're gonna get your ass blown off was significant. But again, as as experience took me further into the realm of scouting, you learn when you got to get out of there, when you got to fish and when you got a cut bait. The vibration started, and it was the most severe vibration I ever felt in an aircraft in my career. The round had penetrated the spar, the leading edge of the blade, and split it completely open. We took 19 rounds to the back end of the aircraft. I thought we were done. They're gonna get us because they're they're close. There was a whole bunch of them. I tried to counter with left pedal, and I've got the stick pulled all the way back into my crotch, and all of a sudden I hear an explosion. And what had happened is that burning rocket set the other rocket motors, the other five that are still in the pod. They exploded. The aircraft starts to spin. I'm holding the stick back for everything I'm worth. Bob Smith is coming down behind me. Lou Brewer is in his front seat, and Lou keys the mic and he goes, pull it now, pull it. The aircraft rolled on its right side and went through the top of the trees, and we had another 150 feet to go. The world goes black. John had a busted back and a busted neck. He was still in the aircraft. He was terribly twisted. Several times before the Rangers got to us, he said to me, he said, shoot me and evade. I said, John, I'm not going anywhere. I got a busted leg. I'm not going anywhere.

Host 4:14

And then, you know, Coker had told me that you had a book, Low Level Hell, which we're going to get all into. And it'd been a long time since I read a book, but I grew up reading books about Vietnam. And so Coker said, Hey, you you got to talk to this guy. He's a legend in the aviation community. And his book was mandatory reading when I was at the 160th of Flying Little Birds. So I said, All right. And uh, you know, we we got busy for a while. And I think I had reached out to you and we talked. And then I don't know, time passed. I think it was the holidays maybe. And then I got that. I ordered your book and it kind of sat around. And I I remember, I remember like it was yesterday. I opened up and read that first chapter, and I I suddenly was a kid again. And I think I read the first 10 chapters in in a day. And again, I don't read a lot of books, I don't have a lot of time. So I remember, I think I I read it. We did your first initial podcast prepped, and you know, you were nonchalant talking about the stories, and then I I read that first chapter. I'm like, ah, son of a bitch, man. I was like, every single chapter was like a piece of a movie. So and uh then I think you know, when I we when you and I talked again, I realized that you know you had done three tours in Vietnam and that book was only the first the first tour.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

So we were Yeah, 1969, yeah.

Host 5:23

And I think we were talking last night, and you're working on um a second book.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

I am. I'm I'm working on a sequel that would uh that would encompass the the second and third tours, the the uh tour with the 101st flying cobras, and then I extended in country uh when that unit stood down, and instead of going home, I went down to the Delta and flew with Dark Horse again. I was Dark Horse 16 for a second time. Uh the uh probably the only guy that I know of that served in the same unit is the same platoon, same call sign for two different tours.

Host 5:57

I think we spent maybe a total of six hours prepping, and then I picked you up at the airport yesterday and we had some time to kill, and I think we we sat in that Airbnb and we talked for another six hours and time passed. I finally looked at my watch, and uh, you know, I there's no way that this podcast is gonna do the the justice for all your stories, but uh I I've been looking forward to to this for a while. So before we we dive in, um, for all those that that don't know, Hugh Mills, um a retired colonel from the army, uh retired, you were the under-sheriff? Colonel, under sheriff, yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

Jackson County, Missouri.

Host 6:33

Yeah, Kansas City uh reserve deputy for forever. Um, it was your career has just been unbelievable. And you have a memory for names like nobody I've ever met. Um, but before we dive in, I I want to give Hugh a proper introduction. Hugh Mills was born in Memphis, Tennessee on April 8th, 1948. He grew up in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where his next door neighbor on Circle Drive was a kid two years older than him named Bill Clinton. He enlisted in the U.S. Army on the 1st of February, 1967, airborne infantry at a moment when he knew exactly where the Army was sending him. He landed in country, Vietnam on January 1st, 1969. He'd been awarded his Army Aviator Wings two months earlier. He was posted to the 1st Squadron, 4th Cav, the Big Red One. He wanted Aero Scouts. There was no slot, so they put him on the aero lift first, where he flew combat assaults and downed air crew rescues for two months until a scout platoon leader asked to be relieved. Hugh got the job he came for. The first thing he did was take a man out of the OH-6 Loach and bolt an XM27 minigun. Two-man crew, pilot front right, door gunner, rear right. The little bird suddenly fought back, casualties dropped, enemy kills went up. By the end of his first tour, the commanding general of the 1st Infantry Division, Major General Albert Malloy, described Hugh as quote, the most courageous small unit leader in the division with the highest kill ratio of any combat unit in the Big Red One. In one year of combat, Hugh Mills earned three silver stars, four distinguished flying crosses, and a bronze star with the V for valor in ground combat. For the day Hugh got out of an 086 in the middle of a rice paddy and arrested an NVA major at gunpoint. The major bolted. Hugh chased him through deep mud and body armor, signaled to his other pilot to block the route, and brought him back. The commanding general, Major General Albert Malloy again, chewed Hugh out for that stunt, then pinned the medal on him. That was his first tour. He came home, took a tank company, commanded in Germany, and in June of 1970 married Margaret, a junior high girlfriend from Hot Springs, who had moved to Memphis and started riding him in country. In October of that year in Germany, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. They were sent to Fort Sam Houston for treatment. She died on the 1st of February in 1971. She was 22 years old. They had been married seven months. Hugh chose to go back to Vietnam twice more. On a second tour, he flew an AH1G Cobra at 600 feet over the scout below, the low gun, drawing fire to keep the smaller aircraft alive. On January 30th, 1972, in an 80-degree vertical attack on an anti-aircraft site near the Laotian border, a hangfire rocket cooked off in his right inboard pod. The 90, the 42, and the 60-degree gearboxes separated. The tail boom left the airframe. His wingman, first Lieutenant Lou Brewer, screamed, pull it on the radio. Hugh polled. The cobra hit the trees on the side of a mountain. His co-pilot, Warren Officer John Bryant, landed with a broken back and neck. Hugh got out, set up a one-man defensive position with a rifle and a pistol, and held until three rangers from the deactivated 101st Ranger Company repelled in to cover them. Air Force AH-53 Jolly Greens lifted them out, saves number 700 and 701 on that air rescue service ledger. Three months later, in April, Lou Brewer was killed in action. By the end of three tours, Hugh Mills had been shot down 16 times, his final decoration count from 25 years of active service. Three Silver Stars, the Legion of Merit, four distinguished flying crosses, three bronze stars with the V, three Purple Hearts, the Meritorious Service Medal with three oak leaf clusters, the air medal, six with valor, and sixty-eight oak leaf clusters for combat flight hours. The Army Commendation Medal with V for Valor and six Oak League clusters. The Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry was with Silver Star and Palm, the Vietnamese Honor Medal, first class, Master Army Aviator, over 9,000 rotary wing combat hours and 3,000 fixed wing, 12,000 flight hours combined. When he retired from active service in 1993, he didn't slow down. For 26 years, he served with the Kansas City Missouri Police Department as a reserve reserve officer, reserve patrol officer, patrol sergeant, working one night a week in an inner city sector and a police helicopter pilot. He worked corporate security for Cedar Fair Corporation in Kansas City for 15 years. He served as a national lever instructor in defensive tactics and firearms. He authored the Kansas City Missouri Police Department's Use of Force Continuum, now used by National Law Enforcement Training Center and Kansas City Regional Police Academy. With Jim Lindell, he co-authored the textbooks Power Handcuffing and Knife Defense, now in use at the Los Angeles Police Department, Dallas, PD, Fort Worth, Memphis, Portland, Las Vegas, and a bunch of others. In 2008, the Metropolitan Chiefs of Police awarded him their Medal of Valor for a night helicopter rescue of two kayakers swept down the Blue River in a storm. He then served 10 years as the Undersheriff and a colonel of the Jackson County Missouri Sheriff's Office and five and a half years as Chief of Transit Security and Safety for the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority. He has been inducted into five halls of fame: the U.S. Army Aviation Hall of Fame, the Army OCS Hall of Fame, the Arkansas Military Veterans Hall of Fame, the Arkansas Aviation Hall of Fame. And in 1995, the Air War College Hall of Fame inducted three men into his gathering of Eagles: Brigadier General Charles Yeager, the test pilot who broke the sound barrier, Senator John Glenn, the Marine and astronaut who orbited the Earth, and Hugh Mills. He still flies Vietnam Air helicopters. And this is retired Colonel Hugh Mills. Welcome to the Vanguard Wall Podcast, Hugh.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Well, thanks. That's a mouthful.

Host 12:05

That's probably the longest introduction I've done. And you know, I was gonna make it shorter, but it's just I, you know, that doesn't even touch some of the conversations we have. So hey, one quick ass before we dive in. Month after month, 95% of the people who watch our content aren't even subscribed to the YouTube channel. If that's you, you can seriously help us out today by just subscribing. It costs nothing. It takes two seconds, and it can make a huge impact on everything we're building here. There's no podcasting agency behind us. We have no corporate backing. It's just me, a small team and an audience that really cares. Subscribing is the simplest way to tell the algorithm that this content is worth spreading. And it's the simplest way to support the mission directly. So hit the button and join the community. We appreciate all of you. Now let's get to this podcast. Let's start at the kind of the beginning, what you can remember from the early years, which is quite a bit. Take us back to Hot Springs, Arkansas in late 1940s and early 50s. What kind of town was it? Set that picture for somebody who has never been to that part of the country.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Well, I'm going to back up just a bit. Actually, I I wasn't, I didn't get to Hot Springs until 1959. My dad was a high school principal in Monticello, Arkansas, in Drew County, Southeast Arkansas. I was born in Memphis because that's where my grandmother lived, and mom and dad uh were there when I was delivered. We then moved to Monticella, Arkansas. Little bitty town uh uh of of about uh 4,501 was the population when I lived there. I was there first through the fifth grade, formative years, still deal with the folks that I was in elementary school with. I still go to their reunions going to one September the second. For elementary school? Yeah. Well, actually it's their uh class of 66, uh Monticella High School go hillbillies. Uh I'm sorry, not hillbillies, billy goats. Uh but those are the guys that I grew up with. And so they've adopted me into the 66th class and I go to those reunions uh w when I'm able to do so. In 59, Dad took the job as superintendent of schools in Hot Springs, and we moved to Hot Springs. Interesting town. Um there was a mob connection in Hot Springs that most people are aware of. The the mob would go to Hot Springs from the gangster years from the 1920s and 30s because Hot Springs was considered neutral turf. Capone uh vacationed there, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly, all those guys came to Hot Springs. And the guy that ran Hot Springs for the mob was a fellow named Oni Madden. Uh he was called the English Don. The gangster guys basically ran their own businesses and were not really a problem for any anybody local, but it has always been considered a uh uh kind of a neutral turf for for gangster folks. Uh Quiet Earp came through there at one point in time. Uh but it was a great, a great place to grow up. You mentioned Bill Clinton. Bill lived next door to us. He was class of 64, I was class of 66. Good guy. I liked him, still like him. My my father was very dear friends with uh Bill.

Host 15:29

That was the only time you told me that you ever voted Democrat as a Clinton.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

I probably shouldn't say that on a podcast, but yes, the only time I ever voted for a Democrat was was Bill Clinton because I I think the world of him personally. Uh we we may not share exactly the political uh thoughts, but uh uh good man, good family. I I I liked him very much, and my father was very attached to Bill.

Host 15:54

I remember you told me like you were an athlete and he was kind of in the Bill was a band guy.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

He he played the saxophone in the uh in the in the band. Uh he played in a dance group called the Stardusters, and then a a little trio that they had called Three Blind Mice, and they wore sunglasses and and Bill was the uh was the saxophone player in that. But Bill's friends were the older brothers and sisters of my friends. So even though he was in the band, uh very popular guy in in in school. Um the only election that I recall Bill losing was uh senior class president or student council, one of those he lost to to uh a gal named uh Linda Yeldell, and he was upset over his entire l years that he lost that election to Linda. Um I reminded him on a couple of occasions that I was actually the class president for 66. So I was president before he was ever president. That's funny. Mine was just the class of 66.

Host 17:02

What was uh what was high school like for you? Were you uh athlete, reader, fighter?

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Uh yeah, all those. Um I I was a basketball player of moderate ability. I was a uh football player of less than adequate size. Um I played football with a with a little skinny guy named Cliff Harris. Um Cliff Harris was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame three years ago. Dallas Cowboys, number 43 on Stallback's uh Super Bowl team. Cliff uh wonderful guy, lives lives down in uh well we're in Texas, so uh he lives in Arlington. Um growing up in Hot Springs was was really a great place. We had the lakes, Lake Washitaw, Lake Hamilton. I spent summers at Mountain Harbor Resort and Spa, which is a uh run by Bill Barnes, a dear personal friend of mine, high school classmate. But uh Hot Springs was uh and and is a resort, and so a lot of tourism there. Uh Oaklawn Park, the horse racing park, is in is in Hot Springs and during race season, I think it starts in February, runs through April or so. That place is packed with uh horse racing fans. So it was good. I enjoyed it. Uh hunting, fishing, shooting. Um sports was always a big a big thing for me. Uh moderately successful student, uh not not a scholar, I wouldn't use that term at all. Uh which is probably what got me into the army in in the first place, was uh after high school I went off to college for a semester and and I did really well in uh ROTC and the Sport Parachute Club. Everything else was was kind of an abject failure.

Host 18:57

Uh and that's really what motivated me to join the army. Yeah, we were talking about the other morning at breakfast. There was two guys, I think, that had kind of run your skydiving program that kind of really kind of shaped your ideas on the military.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

Two two special forces veterans, uh J. Scott Hamilton, who would go on to be the president of the Parachute Club of America, and now is one of America's preeminent aviation lawyers, and Richard Clark, uh who I believe lives out in the Grand Canyon area now, but but both these guys were Halo instructors uh at Fort Bragg when I was a young collegiate skydiver. Um they took me from a 7TU elliptical cut into a paracommander uh rig. Uh they introduced me to a uh a a golden knight uh that came to Clarksville, Arkansas one uh one weekend named Ray Duffy. Ray Duffy would later become the first sergeant of uh Lima 75th Rangers, uh and that's where the guys came from that rescued me on the 30th of January, it was Lima 75th, had just stood down, and a number of those those LERPs had come over to our unit. Um so that that's that's kind of how I got to the Army. I was I was interested in all things infantry and all things parachute. And and that was the motivation to to join as an airborne infantryman.

Host 20:24

Did your family have a military history? Sort of.

SPEAKER_01 20:27

Um my dad is the only uh you have to go back to my uh maternal great-grandfather uh uh uh noble James McBride, served with the 2nd Arkansas Cavalry Union troops. Cersei County in in the Civil War did not leave the Union, they stayed with the Union. Most folks think everybody in Arkansas was a Confederate, not so. Three regiments of cavalry were formed, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Arkansas Cavalry Union troops, and he served with with them. And not till World War II do we have another veteran. That was my dad. Uh my dad was a medical administrative corps uh second lieutenant, went through OCS at Carlisle Barracks and served at Kryle Army Hospital in Cleveland. Very proud of that service uh and and would tell people for years that not one German soldier got past Cleveland while he was in the medical administrative corps. Uh but I was the first one uh really to serve in active duty for any period of time.

Host 21:34

By the time you were in high school, the war in Vietnam was was on the news. Were you watching it? And did you see yourself or were you young enough to where it's like that was distant?

SPEAKER_01 21:42

Well of course we all watched it. Uh Walter Cronkite was the news in in those days, six o'clock. Um I I I would watch the reels that they would show, but it but as far as putting myself mentally uh in a position of being there and experiencing it, the answer the answer is no. I really I really didn't. And when I joined, I really didn't uh I was 18 years old when I enlisted. Um you don't really look forward a great deal when you're 18 because you're really not that smart. And and I didn't. Uh I was looking forward to jumping out of airplanes and being a paratrooper. The fact that paratroopers were all going to Vietnam was was lost on me. And frankly, the only thing that kept me out of that progression uh was was getting selected for OCS and then flight school.

Host 22:35

So you kind of had an interesting um path. You you graduate high school, you go to college. Uh tell us a little bit about about that, what changed and and how did you enlist?

SPEAKER_01 22:45

Well, I went to Arkansas Tech. Um Arkansas Tech uh at Russellville, Arkansas, uh was a land grant college, and land grant colleges in the South all had mandatory ROTC for the first two years. All major. Students had to do uh freshman and and uh uh uh the the the first two years he had to take ROTC. I really enjoyed that. I liked the classes. We had active army instructors that taught it. We we drilled, we marched, we had uh M1 Grands for practice rifles, and I really enjoyed that, and I enjoyed the Sport Parachute Club. I started jumping in in college. The association with ROTC, with Scott Hamilton and Dick Clark were the things that kind of uh motivated me to look at the Army because I really didn't like college. I took geo I think I passed English and geology, and all the others were were less than stellar. And so I made the decision at Christmas to go down and talk to an Army recruiter in Hot Springs when I was home for Christmas break. And they had a pamphlet which I remember distinctly that uh had a picture of a green beret, and it said, What does it take to rate a beret? And the folder was about special forces. So the the the uh recruiter said, you know, what you gotta do is you gotta go in as an airborne infantry guy in order to get to special forces, but he said, your scores are great. He said, you can do anything in the army you want to do. Uh uh are you sure 11 B10 is what you want? And I said, Absolutely, that's what I want. And signed me up, and and uh on the first of February I went out to Adams Field in uh Little Rock, Arkansas, got on a Trans-Texas DC three, went to Texarkana, picked up some people, flew directly into Fort Polk, and uh stepped off the airplane into basic training at about 2 30 in the morning.

Host 24:52

Yeah, I remember you telling me yesterday just how much you liked it, and you know how you know you um well tell the shooting story because that's uh what led you to OCS.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

Well, yeah, yeah. Uh the basic uh uh objective in basic training uh in the Army is rifle marksmanship. That's that's the whole reason you're there. Basic skills, uh skills of the soldier, and rifle qualification. And we we had the M14 uh service rifle when I went through. And I've been a shooter my my whole life. Um and on the qualification day, I probably had the best shooting day of my life because I just blasted every target, uh, as I recall out to 450 meters. And at the end of the day, I had the high score for the company, and the drill sergeant, senior drill sergeant, let me ride in from the range in the backseat of his Mustang convertible, 65 Mustang convertible. I couldn't talk to anybody, couldn't talk to the other drill sergeants in the car, and I had my M14 with me. All the other guys were riding back in a cattle car. But as the week went on, my score became the high score for the 5th Battalion, uh, and then the high score for the brigade. So I shot the high rifle score for a whole bunch of people, and that that caught the attention of the company commander, who was a, I don't recall his name, but he was a first lieutenant of infantry. And he called me in one day. I thought I was in trouble for something. Uh, and he called me in one day and he says, uh, have you ever considered officer candidate school? I didn't I didn't even know what that was. And he said, We would we would like you to consider officer candidate school. You have a GT score of 125 and and an OCT officer candidate uh score was was very high. I I think the part that he overlooked is I was I was 18 years old.

Host 26:52

Um were you were you more mature back then? I mean, or were you mature, I guess, for your age? That somebody saw something in you.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Well, I other people would probably have to answer that. I I thought I was an average guy. I thought I had average maturity. Um, I had not seen hardship in life, so I I think I had uh uh you know probably the same background as everybody where where I came from. We all were pretty much alike, but um my dad told me, I I called and asked him, I said, What's this OCS thing? And he says, Oh yeah, you're you're going. You're gonna do that.

Host 27:27

Was your dad enlisted? I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

Was your dad an enlisted man? No, he was an officer. Uh he he uh he went in in World War II and went through OCS at Carlisle Barracks. Uh so he was a second lieutenant. But he said, Yeah, if you're gonna be in the Army, you you need to be an officer. So I agreed, and and they uh went on to finish basic training. And just before we graduated at Fort Polk, I got a set of orders to go to advanced infantry training, 11B uh skill qualification, uh AIT, uh at Fort Lewis, Washington. And I it it puzzled me because directly across the street from where I went to basic training was Tiger Land, infantry, AIT for all those guys going to Vietnam. I could have walked across the street and gone to AIT, but no, the Army, in its infinite wisdom, sent me to Fort Lewis, Washington.

Host 28:23

Can you tell the difference? Uh I mean, can you can you just tell the the listeners just the difference? You explained it yesterday.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

There was Well, the thing that that surprised me is that everybody in in uh Tiger Land was Vietnam oriented. M16, uh light anti-tank weapon, uh law, M60 machine gun. The when I get to Fort Lewis, I find out that we were still using the M14. I never saw an M16 until I got to Vietnam. Never fired one until I got to Vietnam. Um but we were using M14's 3.5-inch rocket launcher, the the old bazooka. Uh never saw a law till I got to Vietnam. And then, of course, the M60 machine gun. But the AIT at Fort Lewis was geared to Europe. It was while I was in the AIT at Fort Lewis, uh uh wonderful place. Uh uh Ant Hills, six feet tall. Every Monday it rained. Mount Rainier, we could see out the out the wind of our of our barracks. Um very little grass and a whole lot of rocks. That's that's Fort Lewis. But I got a set of orders for Armor OCS.

Host 29:35

Before we dive into that, I just I'm really curious. When you were going through basic training and and you know, later OCS, the Vietnam War is going in the background. What what were you hearing either from drill sergeants? Uh were you running into service members that were coming back from Vietnam or all of our drill sergeants were Vietnam veterans that I recall.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

We had uh I had a Puerto Rican senior drill sergeant in basic training, um, kind of a funny guy, uh Sergeant Rivera, and he punctuated every preparatory command with God damn it. He he spoke very limited English, and he would he would be marching the column and he'd go, column right, goddammit, poor. Everything was punctuated with goddamn it. I don't know how he did that, but he wore number 10 cans with the ends cut out of them inside his pants to blouse them. So they were perfectly round around the the Cochrane jump boots. Uh these are the things you remember about people. Um the um uh basic training for me was was a lot of fun. The only thing I didn't like about basic training, and uh one event that I think shaped my opinion uh for down the road is I had to do, I had to do KP twice. The first time I did KP, I was the outside man. And that's the guy that does pots and pans and peels potatoes.

Host 31:07

For all you listeners out there don't know KP, it's Kitchen Patrol. It sucks.

SPEAKER_01 31:11

Kitchen patrol sucks. You go to the mess hall, which is the dining facility. Uh uh and I was the outside guy. I was washing pots and pans all day, and then peeling, hand peeling potatoes. These days, the Army has machines, you pour potatoes in, they peel themselves. But the second time I had KP, I was the DRO, which is a dining room orderly. And what I had to do was stand in that portion of the mess hall that was the officer's mess. And I had to take the orders of these second lieutenant training officers and go get their tray and fill it up and bring it to them. I didn't like that. And I will tell you, for the next 26 years, I never once asked an enlisted man to do a personal service for me. Don't go get me a cup of coffee. Certainly uh don't get me a tray of food. I never busted a chow line, ever. Um having been an enlisted man to me was it was a foundational start to being an officer. I understand how they live. Uh, I understand the background that enlisted guys came from. Some officers uh were equally good at that, some less uh accepting, perhaps, of enlisted men, uh less understanding. But uh I think the fact that I was a Mustang up from the ranks.

Host 32:36

Oh, yeah, and that's gonna be super evident in your story later on. Um so as we go back to OCS, so you you went to infantry AIT, and did you go to OCS after that?

SPEAKER_01 32:46

Yeah, right after right after infantry uh AIT, I got a week's leave, went home to Hot Springs, uh jumped on a bus, went to Fort Knox, Kentucky. The um the OCS barracks were in the old cavalry barracks that that uh are in a big long line at at Fort Knox. They're three stories high, red brick building. We called them the beehive. Um but on the day that OCS started, we were standing in the quadrangle behind uh uh uh my company, and uh we had a black helmet on the ground in front of us with the OCS decal on it, and we were all in in formation. And the company commander uh came out and he said uh you all know what you're about to embark on. If you still uh desire to do that which is required to become an army officer, uh reach down and put your helmet on. And so we reached down, we picked up this black uh helmet liner with OCS decal, and we put it on our head. The minute that happened from behind us on the third floor, a cavalry charge was sounded on the bugle, and out of all the openings of that building swarmed the senior cadets from all the other OCS companies, and they descended on us like the locusts upon Egypt. I wound up inside a dumpster with a with a broom as a rifle at parade rest marching while guys beat on the outside of the dumpster with baseball bats. I I did that for hours. Um of our guys didn't get past that day, uh the the first day, um, because there was a lot of harassment. It was intent to see what you were made of, what you could take. Uh I thought it was great fun. I thought it was really stupid. You know, I I marched in a dumpster for hours. Uh and every every time they'd open the door, you know, I'd say, yes, sir, yes, sir, give me some more, and they'd slam the door and beat on the dumpster with a baseball bat. Um three phases in OCS, the basic phase, then you go to intermediate cadet where they put a green stripe on your helmet. And then as a senior cadet, the green stripe is replaced with a gold stripe. And we went from I was an I was I was a private E2 when I went to OCS. I was I was uh $98 a month is what I was. Um they paid us as E5s, uh mainly to uh compensate for the laundry requirements. I had 10 sets of of uh standard OG fatigues, three pairs of Cochrane jump boots, and we broke starts four or five times every single day. So the the laundry fees alone required uh a sergeant's pay, which wasn't very much. I think my sergeant E5 pay was maybe 250, 275 bucks or something.

Host 36:00

So for all you youngsters out there back then, and even when I came in, you would start your uniforms. Well, these guys were expected to look a certain way, so you had to send your laundry off. And you said the laundry folks would arrive like twice a day.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

Every day, several times a day. We had uh if I recall correctly, we had about 50 or 60 guys in my platoon, second platoon. There were three platoons, uh, and and uh each of us had 10 sets of fatigue. So you had probably five in the wall locker and five in the laundry all the time.

Host 36:34

And that's just like so if you were doing stuff in your uniform and you know the starch would start falling off, you would go back and put another uniform on?

SPEAKER_01 36:40

Absolutely. We'd we'd get up in the morning and and uh you'd you'd break starch and uh uh do breakfast and then off to classes, and then in the middle of the day, uh uh they'd have you doing something where you'd get the uniform all messed up and you'd have to go back to barracks, break starch again, change your boots. Uh I went through a couple of pairs of boots a day uh because of the uh the spit shining requirement. But uh we spent all day and all night in the barracks. We didn't go anywhere. We had to wax and and spit shine the floor. We only walked down the edges of the outside of the building. We didn't walk down the center walkway because that we had a buffer, and and every night somebody had to buff the barracks. You know, you put a towel down and you put the wax and you do the buffer.

Host 37:28

Um brasso, the door handles.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

But I I enjoyed it. My my initial thought when I when I was sent to armor says, uh, what are you guys doing to me? I I'm an infantry guy. How did you end up armor? The luck of the draw. The Army said we need X number of guys to be tankers, and X number of guys uh, you know, went to artillery, um, infantry, artillery. Some went to transportation. We had a few went to chemical. Um, but I was picked for armor, and initially I was I was uh taken aback by that because I thought I was sheep-dipped infantry and I should have gone to infantry OCS. Once I got there, and once I got associated with tanks, I really enjoyed that. Uh we trained on the M60 main battle tank. Uh we were introduced to the Sheridan, the M551 uh uh air delivery tank. Um M113s, uh personnel carriers, M114s, little reconnaissance tracks. But I I really got to enjoy that. And we we would uh we learned all the mechanical stuff, the radio stuff. Excellent map reading class, which got me through flight school because the hardest, believe it or not, the hardest course for me in flight school was map reading. Uh at Fort Walters, the first uh one of the first uh long segments was map reading, military maps. Very tough course. Oh, I bet.

Host 38:58

That that map reading course was tough. So how did how did you go from uh you know armored calf to flight school?

SPEAKER_01 39:06

At at the end of OCS, uh we were in the barracks uh one day, and and uh uh my buddy John Field uh and I look at the bulletin board, and there was a bulletin board that said uh if you're interested in Army aviation, contact so-and-so. Uh and I said, you know, that might be cool. I didn't know anything about helicopters. I'd never been in a helicopter. I'd never been in an airplane other than that DC-3. Every other airplane I'd ever been in, I jumped out of. So I really had no great affinity for aircraft. But you had to go and do an orientation ride in an Army aircraft. So we went down to Godman Army Airfield, and sitting out in front of the hangar was a brand new uh Hughes Helicopter Company 086A Cayuse. Very small, the the newest aircraft in the Army inventory at the time. Not much bigger than a pickup truck compared to the Huey, which was much bigger. And on that first orientation ride, I rode in the back seat, which is very cramped, very uncomfortable. And we flew from Godman to Lexington Bluegrass Army Depot. Had a cup of coffee, turned around, I got to ride back in the front seat and actually got to fly it, you know, to maneuver the controls a little bit. And I loved that aircraft. I just thought that was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. I I think the objective is uh are you scared of it? Does it make you sick? Does it make you uncomfortable? Uh and it didn't do any of those things to me. So off uh uh off I go as a brand new second lieutenant. I spent my first three months at Fort Knox as a training officer at Disney Barracks, uh training uh 19 Deltas uh scout crews, and uh then I got a set of orders for uh flight school, and it was a it was a unique set of orders. It was one piece of paper that said um Second Lieutenant Hugh L. Mills will proceed to uh U.S. Army Primary Helicopter School, Fort Walters, Texas, thence to U.S. Army Advanced Helicopter School, Fort Uh Rucker, Alabama, thence U.S. Army uh uh Vietnam, Military Assistance Command Vietnam. One piece of paper carried me for a year. But the fun part was that that special instruction down at the bottom that said subject members shall receive per diem in the amount of $25 a day. We were second lieutenants who made, I don't know, maybe $360, $370 a month, but we were getting $25 a day per diem. We were making what a lieutenant colonel made. So all of my peers were driving Corvettes and Jaguars and uh chargers, and I had a 390 Mustang GT. The money was great. Um, but we had to pay for our own quarters. I lived uh at primary, I lived in Weatherford, Texas, with two other guys in a building we rented. Um and at Fort Rucker, I lived in a trailer park outside uh uh the post there. But uh living was was good uh in flight school because it was a lot of money.

Host 42:28

Yeah, a lot of people don't realize that flight school, Army Flight School used to be in Mineral Wells, Texas, right?

SPEAKER_01 42:33

It well it was. Uh it was Camp Walters, Texas, in World War II, and then they they chose it to be the Army primary school. Uh there were three kinds of helicopters there, the the uh uh Hughes TH-55. Primarily the warrant officer pilots flew those. My class was an all-officer class. All of us were second lieutenants. I think we had four Iranians in the class, but everybody else was an American officer. And we flew the Hiller uh H-23 um uh recip engine, uh, not not a all the aircraft in primary were recip engines, no turbines. Uh the H-23 was a 50s vintage helicopter. Uh and it wasn't until we got to Rucker that we we got into the turbine in the Huey, which was the the primary aircraft. I flew uh B models and D models in flight school and then got into the H model when I got to Vietnam.

Host 43:34

Flight School, 1968. What did Army aviation training look like when the war was demanding pilots faster than the schoolhouse could produce them?

SPEAKER_01 43:42

We had a whole lot of guys in the uh in the system. The thing that that I remember the most is the officer club at Fort Rucker had bingo every Saturday night. The bingo prizes that were given away when I was in flight school included a Cadillac Coupe de Ville, a Jaguar XKE, a Cessna 152 Aerobat. There were so many guys in the system that the bingo prizes at the officers club would stagger you. There were thousands of us going through at any one time. Um and everybody was going to the same place. So if you wanted a really good deal on a car, you go around the officers club and you look on the bulletin board. I remember specifically a Shelby, uh Shelby uh 427 uh was on the bulletin board for sale for a guy that was getting ready to go to Vietnam, 6,800 bucks. That's a million dollar car today. 427 Shelby Cobra, 6,800 bucks. Um we were the the the basic function of flight school in primary was to learn how to fly helicopters. You you get to uh Fort Rucker and you you got into a bigger aircraft. With a more complicated system, and you started to learn tactics, formation flying, instrument flying. I flew instrument training in a Bell 13, a TH-13T, which was a supercharged reship with very, very basic navigation equipment, basically automatic direction finders, ADF. We didn't have TACAN, we didn't have VORs, we didn't have any of that hot stuff. But we were flying around on radio beacons. That was a short, uh, a short stint. But most of what we did was formation flying, um landing and takeoff in restricted areas. We'd fly from Fort Rucker to Eglin Air Force Base and fly rangers around that were in the ranger school, which was a lot of fun. The guys going through ranger school have a rough, a rough road. And one of the things that the air the uh aircraft uh students would do is we'd fill our helmet bags with pogey bait, uh Snickers, Butterfinger, baby roof, uh potato chips. And if you if you had an airlift that had all rangers and no ranger instructors, you just throw in the bag and say, eat up, guys, and they would eat everything they could eat. If there was an instructor on the aircraft, you're screwed because they didn't they didn't get any of that. And the minute they landed in a landing zone at Eglin, the instructors would always pull them together and start, you know, trying to get the pogy bait that they did. If you didn't eat it, you were you were screwed. But when when that was over, uh November the 18th of 68, I was I was uh uh able to pin my wings on as a as an Army aviator. Then I had 30 days uh leave and then I was headed to Vietnam.

Host 46:51

How many uh how many flight hours did you actually get in? 221. Did was there a moment in flight training when you're like, man, I'm a pilot, or was it just kind of like a slow accumulation?

SPEAKER_01 47:02

I can tell you there was a moment in flight school where I thought you are a uh dumb shit. Uh in uh primary at Fort Walters, one of the things that we did was confined area uh landings and takeoffs. And we go out uh around Fort Walters Mineral Wells, and there were these little mountaintops with open uh linear open areas, and we would land in that, and then we would have to back up. And in order to back up, when you can't see behind you, we would land in the landing zone surrounded by mesquite, and we'd friction the aircraft down, still running, and we would get out and lay a pattern of rocks and sticks out the right door, backwards to the end, and at the point where you would want to come to a stop, uh, you'd you'd make a distinctive uh pattern on the ground. And you'd get back in the aircraft and pick it up to hover, and then you would back up looking at your sticks out the right, and you'd know where to stop so you wouldn't put your tail rudder into a tree. So I do that uh this one particular time, and and I lay my sticks out and take off, and it sounded different to me. I thought uh uh something's different. I can't figure out what it is. And I kind of looked to my left and I had taken my helmet off when I landed and put it on the hook behind me, and I forgot to put my helmet back on and I took off. Well, the you're you're not good enough, and the aircraft's not stable enough uh to do it hands-free. So I went all the way back around and landed in the same landing zone, put my helmet back on, backed up using the same sticks I had just laid out, uh, and took off this time with my helmet on. That's the stupidest thing I ever did as a as a as a helicopter student. But we we graduated, uh, the average guys had uh I think they wanted you to solo by 10 or 12 or 14 hours. If it took longer than that, you you washed out. Um I don't recall the exact number, but my my solo was nine or ten hours. Hardest thing to do in primary is learn to hover the aircraft. Uh because if you do something with your feet, you got to do something with this hand, and you do something with that hand, you gotta do something with this hand. So it's a very coordinated uh dance, if you will.

Host 49:30

I think the average person, and I didn't really know until I met uh Coker and talked to him, has no idea how hard it is to fly a helicopter because you have two foot pedals, you have I don't even know what they're called, but then you'll have your a collective and a cyclic, a stick and a and a collective and two foot pedals.

SPEAKER_01 49:46

Yeah, and it's just this constant dance, right? You're talking Gravy Coker, the great night stalker pilot, who who's uh was never pretty enough to be a scout pilot. He was a great night stalker, but I don't think he's quite pretty enough to be a scout pilot. But it's a it's it's like a orchestrated dance. If you do one, you gotta do another, and to learn to hover is the hardest thing. And it takes you nine, ten, twelve hours. And then at some point, about 15, 16 hours or so, the instructor pilot, you come into one of the stage fields and you land, and the instructor pilot gets out and looks at you and says, take it around the pattern three times. It's your first solo. Uh and you got to take off, circuit the traffic pattern, come to a hover, take off. You do that three times. Uh, and at that point in time, you are considered soloed. You can now fly the aircraft alone. And at the end of that day, we would go to the Holiday Inn at Mineral Wells, which had a swimming pool. And at the end of the swimming pool were two crossed Huey rotor blades. And there was a plaque on them that said, through these blades past the best helicopter pilots in the world. And your classmates would throw you in the pool at the uh at the Mineral Wells holiday inn. Those rotor blades survive today, and they're at the uh uh National Museum of the Vietnam War, which is located in Mineral Wells. And those blades were saved. The holiday inn's gone, the pool's gone, but the blades were saved.

Host 51:31

Yeah, I I bring the I bring that up about flying because I think it's gonna be very crucial to your story later on. I think just people don't understand what goes into flying a helicopter and and and and how much skill it takes. Um, and that's gonna be really evident later on in your story as we go. So you you graduate flight school. Um again, what were you hearing about Vietnam? How were you getting prepared? Or were you young enough to where you're just like, man, I'm this sounds like an adventure.

SPEAKER_01 52:00

At the point that I'm in flight school, I turned, I turned 19 uh in basic training. Uh, went in at 18, turned 19 uh in basic training. I was 20. Uh in April uh when I went to flight school, I was 20. All of our instructors were Vietnam veterans, those that were not civilians. We we had uh Southern Airways uh uh instructors in some cases that were civilians. My instructor, Jim Charlson, was a uh was a civilian, had never served in the military, had flown helicopters in South America. Um, but all the guys around us in the in the command group and so on were returning Vietnam helicopter pilots. So these are the guys that are telling you, you know, what it's like, what's going on. And uh especially Fort Rucker, all of those guys. Um everything we did was oriented toward combat flying in Vietnam. Formations, ground fire, uh, emergencies, everything was was oriented toward Vietnam. So we we had a good idea. We knew kind of what was going on, but I I wouldn't say that we had a profound understanding of combat because we hadn't seen it yet.

Host 53:15

That was yet to come. Did you go home in between flight school and and and going to Vietnam?

SPEAKER_01 53:20

I did. I I had uh uh had a 30-day leave after uh after flight school, and I went home. I was to be in country on the first of January. So on 15 December, which was my one year in grade as a second lieutenant, I'm on I'm on home uh uh leave on vacation. I said I got a set of orders in the mail promoting me to first lieutenant. So I promoted myself. There wasn't anybody around to promote me. My dilemma was in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in December of 1968, where do you get a set of first lieutenant bars? No PX, no military activity. I got second lieutenant bars. I don't have first lieutenant bars, and I wasn't smart enough or forward-thinking enough to grab first lieutenant bars when I was at Rucker and take them home with me. So I went I went down to Crawford Drugstore in Freeman Center Shopping Center and went to the pharmacy and got me a little vial of liquid mercury. And I took my second lieutenant bars, put liquid mercury on my finger, which might account for a lot of issues later on. But I just rubbed it on my second lieutenant bars and turned them silver, and that's how I became a first lieutenant. So uh I actually still have those, those, uh, that second lieutenant bar. Um but uh I I hopped uh hopped an airplane, went to San Francisco, San Francisco to to uh Japan, Japan to Vietnam, and I arrived in Vietnam on the 1st of January 1969.

Host 55:03

How were your folks when you were leaving?

SPEAKER_01 55:06

They were they were fine. I've I my family has always been very supportive. My my dad, finest man I've ever known, uh very stoic, very quiet. My mother's the other way. My mother's kind of a uh she's a hard charger and and and and and a lot more uh demonstrative than my my dad was to was a stoic guy. Um they were supportive, uh no gnashing of teeth and crying and all that sort of thing. I preferred in those days to be taken to the airport and dropped off. Don't sit around and wait on me. That just makes things tough on everybody. And so that's that's how I went. And and uh wound up in in Vietnam in Saigon at Ton Sanud Air Base on the on the first of January.

Host 56:00

Walk us through that that day. You're getting off um the aircraft, sight, sound, smells. What was that like to a young kid going into a war zone? But also like a foreign country. It's the first time probably out of the U.S.

SPEAKER_01 56:12

Oh goodness. That that's uh yeah, that's uh it's the first time I'd ever been on a jet aircraft. Uh it's the first time I'd ever been on an airliner, um, other than that DC three, which I don't think really counts as an airliner. Um the first thing that hitches the heat. When the door opens and you walk out, the heat and the humidity hits you like a blast furnace. The second thing that hitches the smell. The smell is is is awful. It just the whole place smelled bad. Um the the smell that permeated the air the entire time I was there was uh was burning feces. Um plumbing didn't have it. Everything was above ground latrines, uh, and and every day uh guys had to pull the buckets out of the latrines, fill them with diesel or mogas, and and light them and burn that stuff. And that smell every day, all day, all over Vietnam. And you never you never lose sight of that. They took us to the uh 90th Replacement Battalion in a bus, and the first thing I remember was the bus had mesh welded all over the windows, and that was so that the bad guys, if they chose to uh uh infiltrators or saboteurs, couldn't throw a grenade into the bus with all the all the guys. But the officers section of the 90th repo was just tense, tense with uh with regular army cots.

Host 57:48

Was your whole aircraft going over um from Japan to Japan?

SPEAKER_01 57:51

It was all all military.

Host 57:53

Was it all kinds of different people, or was it all aviation?

SPEAKER_01 57:56

Yeah, I'm uh uh I'm headed over to be a helicopter pilot, and I'm sitting next to this enlisted guy. And I at some point I said, uh I said, uh, what are you going to Vietnam to do? And he he said, I'm Graves registration. He's a mortuary specialist, and I'm sitting next to that guy all the way to uh Tokyo. Um but yeah, there were, oh, I don't know, uh I I don't remember the exact number, largely enlisted guys, largely uh private E2s, private first class, uh a few officers, not very many, but but a few. And so when we when we got to the 90th, uh they they took us over to um this tent section, and we had regular cots um with a with a blanket and a pillow. And uh they said there's a bulletin board out here, and every day we will post the assignments, uh, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. Oh, so you had no idea where you were going to start. Oh, I have no, we were we were uh duties unassigned. And uh you'd go out and check the uh the bulletin board, and and uh it would say uh 1st Infantry Division Mills, you know, 1st Cav, 82nd Airborne, 11th Armored Cav. I really wanted, and I was I I I told this assignment specialist when I got there, I said, you know, I'm I'm an armored guy, I'd really like the 11th Armored Cav regiment, uh Black Horse. And uh he looked at me like he did every other second lieutenant and said, Okay, sir, I'll take care of that. Um But the first the first day uh the the next morning when the first uh assignments were posted, I went out, all these units, um, and my name wasn't on the list. So back back to the hooch. And then in the afternoon you go and do the same thing. They post another list. Explain why you wanted to go to East uh I'm an armor officer. The the best, the most storied uh cavalry regiment in the Army at that at that time was the 11th Armored Cav Regiment. Uh to this day, it's it's it's you know it's a terrific unit. They had a terrific reputation in Vietnam, and that's where I wanted to go. Uh they they were commanded at the time by Colonel George Patton, the son of the World War II Patton. Um so I that's where I wanted to go.

Host 1:00:33

And you wanted to be a scout pilot, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:36

Oh, yeah. I wanted I wanted to get back in that loach that I'd flown in at Godman Army Airfield.

Host 1:00:41

Can you explain kind of the different airframes, helicopters that you could have getting assigned to?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:45

There were there were essentially five airframes in the Army at that point in time. The the ubiquitous aircraft was the UH-1. Uh there were several models. The the UH-1D and H. H was an upgraded engine. Um the troop carriers, the general utility aircraft of Vietnam, the most prevalent of the airframe series, the most lost in combat, the most pilots kill were Huey guys. Um there were also the uh C model, the gunship version, but by the time I got there, the D model had been retired, and the C model, which had an upgraded uh rotor and engine system, were the gunships. They had twin mini-guns on the side, rocket pods. Uh, very, very, very sexy aircraft. They flew generally lower level uh attack missions, but they had gunners on both sides, door gunners, and and that was that was a cool mission. Uh so that was the Huey series. And then the the newest gunship in the Army was the Cobra. The Cobra came out in mid-68, uh, designed from the ground up, about 80% Huey parts, but a new rotor system, uh fuselage 36 inches at the waist, 42 inches at the at the canopy. Um sexy as hell, uh uh designed ground up as a gunship. Um the third airframe was was the uh the scout ship, the OH-6. OH-6 replaced essentially the Bell 13, uh the MASH helicopter, and the Hiller. Um and those were flown in the air cav units and some of the Ashen Trash units also had had OH6s. Uh then you had the Chinook, which was the heavy hauler, uh, and the Big Bird, the biggest thing the Army had at that point in time, in very small numbers, was the CH54 Sky Crane. Uh Sky Crane had a tail rotor about the size of an OH-6 main rotor. Uh big, huge, big, huge thing. But I was going over, I was rated at that point in time as a Huey pilot. That's I had not been to any other school. OH6 transitions were generally done in the unit. So I I had hoped to be able to get to a unit with OH6s and then I could do an in-unit transition for about 10 hours. Um But the I think the second day came and went, I said, okay, if I can't go to the 11th Armored Cav, then I'll go to the 1st Cav, you know, the uh uh the air mobile division, uh cavalry division, uh brand new concept in the army. Uh that'd be okay. I wouldn't mind doing that. And uh here come all these assignments for the first cav division, nothing. Uh my name's not on the list again. It was on day three on uh the the afternoon session. I was I was beginning to give up. I was thinking I don't know where they're gonna send me, but all the good units are already gone. And I went out one o'clock in the afternoon, and it said 1st Infantry Division, and boom, 1st Lieutenant Hugh Mills, 1st Infantry Division. I thought, oh my God, I'm an armor officer going to an infantry division. This is gonna be awful. And the the uh uh the clerk said, you know, there's a truck coming by later this afternoon, and it's gonna pick you and and uh Lieutenant Fields, who went over with me. Uh I'm gonna pick you guys up and take you up the road to Xeon, uh, which was the rear area for the first division. And so after a bit they came and got us, and we got our duffel bag. We didn't have guns at that point in time. We had our stateside uniform and and uh uh duffel bag, but uh we we go out and it's a it's a damn dump truck, and the dump truck's full of dirty laundry, and they're going to Xeon, and this spec four said, okay, sirs, jump in the back. So John and I climb in the back of this dump truck with our duffel bag and helmet bag, and and there was a uh PFC back there with an M16. We didn't have any guns at all. I was a little concerned about that. We drove from Tonsanut to uh to Xeon up a dirt road. And uh when we got to the rear, uh we were we were there for maybe two, three hours, and they sent us on up to Fu Loi, which was the first division's main aviation base, uh home of the 1st Aviation Battalion. Uh and we got there and and met with the the uh uh S1 of the battalion, the personnel officer, and he sent us in to uh see the commander, the lieutenant colonel, and he said, Lieutenant Fields, you're an infantry officer, you're gonna stay here with the 1st Aviation Battalion, you're gonna fly with the Bulldogs. And uh Lieutenant Mills, we're gonna send you across the runway to our cavalry troop, the uh 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry D troop, air. And I was I was ecstatic. I said, Oh gosh, I'm a Cav officer, I'm going to a Cav troop. I didn't 100% understand what a CAV troop was, uh, but I knew I was going to a cavalry unit. And Jeep came and got me and took me over, and I signed in to uh D-Troop first of the fourth Cav, the quarter calve. Met with uh Major Willie Cummings, who was the troop commander, and and uh he asked me, he said, What are you qualified in? I said, Well, I'm I'm just qualified in a Huey like most of the other guys, but I really want to fly scouts. And I I'd seen the scouts out on the flight line. I knew they had 086ers, they had cobras, and they had Hueys. I said, I really want to fly scouts. And he said, You know, we don't have any slots in the scouts right now. Um, we're gonna assign you to the to the clowns, the the lift platoon. And uh I'll take your desires under advisement. And that's how I wound up the first two months flying as a uh section leader for the uh aero lift platoon. There are four platoons in an aircraft troop. There's a lift platoon, uh, the second platoon that that had uh nine Hueys, uh there was a scout platoon, nine OH6s, uh, and there was a gun platoon with nine uh cobras. But the fourth platoon, which is what really made the aircraft troop uh a significant uh organization, was an infantry arrow rifle platoon. Twenty-eight infantrymen organic to an aviation unit. They lived with us, they they trained with us, they flew into combat on the Hueys. The scouts would go find a target, the Cobras would protect the scout, the Hueys would come out, they'd put the infantry guys on the ground. Everything from ground reconnaissance to air crew recovery. We did a lot of uh downed aircraft recovery, uh, ground reconnaissance all done by that uh rifle platoon, but anytime they're on the ground, they are the responsibility of the scouts who flew directly above them.

Host 1:08:15

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SPEAKER_01 1:08:50

It was 4:30, 5 o'clock in the morning. Um I was I was up. I remember I had on I had on pants and flip-flops and a t-shirt, and I heard a grenade go off. I I didn't know what it was, an explosion. Uh, but it was just a couple of buildings down, and uh I had I had drawn my weapons uh the the day before. Um I had an M16 and I had a 45 uh uh Colt 1911. And I went to the door, I had my 45 in my hand, and I opened the door, and uh here's a Vietnamese guy right in front of me, and he's he's he's uh injured, wounded. I almost shot him. I mean, I mean, I'm point blank getting ready to shoot this guy, and he just collapses and goes down. And uh Bob Harris, the the first lieutenant that commanded the aero rifle platoon, came running down the road and and uh he didn't know me from Adam, I'm brand new. Uh and I said, Who's this guy? And he goes, This is this is one of my Kit Carsons, uh Vietnamese former NVA who had come over to the American Society. Some idiot, um not an enemy, an American soldier, uh had thrown a grenade into the housing area where the ARPs were, and they were all out washing up for breakfast, and that grenade went off and and uh injured one of our kit Carsons. Closest I ever came to killing a guy that I didn't kill. Why did they throw the grenade? We don't know. Most likely I won't disparage the we had a unit, uh a big unit neighbor, and I'm not gonna disparage them on a podcast, but most likely their guys in from the field, uh jealousy, uh arguments at the enlisted club overnight, whatever it was, somebody threw a grenade into an area where guys were cleaning up. Nobody was killed. Uh the Kit Carson was wounded. Um But uh that was my that was my introduction to uh into Vietnam and how uncertain things could be.

Host 1:11:51

Yeah, what did that split second teach you about the war you had just landed in?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:55

I had a lot to learn. I didn't know anything. Um the the I'd never seen a Vietnamese soldier before, and then the first one I ever I ever see is a former NVA soldier that came over on the Chu Hoy program, open arms, um, and they served as the scouts and and uh uh jungle experts that were on there. We had four of them, and we had an Arvin staff sergeant named Sergeant Wynne. And uh Sergeant Wynne was the interpreter, he spoke English, fluent English. Um and he was the interpreter between the Chewhoys, the Kit Carsons, and uh and the ARPS. Uh but I I knew right then that there was a whole lot more going on than I knew a lot about. And uh so I settled in to to uh uh uh to become a good Huey pilot until another opportunity arose.

Host 1:12:54

What were you doing those first few months in Vietnam as you were um you know flying that aero lift, guys?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:01

We we flew the ARPS wherever the ARPs went. Um we'd get up in the morning uh and and get four of the aircraft out. We had nine. Uh four of them would be positioned on the on our uh ready pad. Uh the ARPs would get up in the morning and put their gear aboard, and the only thing they kept on them was their weapon. And uh they would be on strip alert until we went out. We put up two scramble teams and four VR teams uh every morning. A VR team was a cobra and a loach, a scramble team was a cobra and a loach, generically called a hunter-killer team. The hunter was the scout, the killer was the cobra. The VR teams would launch early in the morning and go to assigned areas to do ground reconnaissance with the scouts to see if there was a target of opportunity or a target of interest that we could put the ARPS on. If they found something, uh they'd call to the rear and say, scramble the ARPS out here, and the, and then of course the Hueys would load up and off they'd go.

Host 1:14:05

That's the platoon of infantry you talked about, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:07

Yeah, our own infantry guys. Uh super guys. Most of them were, and they were a mixture of 11Bs and 19 D's, uh, scout guys and infantry guys, but they were they were hard charging. Um all they carried on the ground was water and ammunition. They didn't have to carry any of the things to sustain them because they came back every night. It was good living for an infantry guy on the positive side, but on the negative side, these guys went to the worst situations the division could offer. They were the division's crack response unit. If an aircraft went down, if a unit was under siege, um if it was really sticky and and uh uh and dangerous, the first guys on the ground were the ARPS. If we had a Ranger uh LERP team that was compromised and under assault, it's the ARPS that went to get them.

Host 1:15:03

I kind of want to set the stage um just so our our listeners kind of understand, because I kind of had to learn it myself. Uh Vietnam was kind of situated, I think we we kind of described it best, kind of like the size of Florida. And it was split into cores, right? And so there was demarcation lines of what, first I Corps, um I Corps, II Corps, III Corps, and IV Cor.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:24

I Corps uh was was astride the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam. On the left flank of I Corps was Laos. Uh the mountain region was II Corps, uh Kantum, Plaikou. Uh III Corps was uh was generally the Saigon region, north to the Cambodian border, uh South China Sea on the right, Cambodia on the left. Uh, and then IV core was the breadbasket of Indochina, was uh the Mekong Delta, where most of the rice was grown. It was the stable, staple crop of Vietnam is rice.

Host 1:16:02

And then within these uh these core areas, you had you know sections that divisions were responsible for. Is that the best way to put it?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:09

Yeah, they had uh they were called TAORs, tactical area of operational responsibility. Um Three Corps, where where I was on my first tour, had some interesting areas uh inside our TAOR. One of them was called the Iron Triangle. And the Iron Triangle was simply a geometric area uh that contained a very large plot of ground that had been roam-plowed because it was heavy, heavy jungle that gave the enemy opportunities to hide and and uh and maintain uh clandestine facilities. So they went in with big, huge tractors and they and they just they roam-plowed the thing to the ground. Of course, in in Vietnam, the jungle grows back very, very quickly. But the Iron Triangle was one of the really hot areas north and and uh uh west of Saigon, and then due north of Saigon, uh uh near the base at Daotiang uh was the Michelin rubber plantation. And everybody knows Michelin, that's where the tires come from. Uh French companies have uh have uh cultivated and run the rubber trees in the Michelin for decades. And uh it was the only area that I encountered when I first got there that we were not allowed to go into. Political restrictions placed on the rubber because of the relationship between America and France. And so we we couldn't go in there, we couldn't shoot artillery in there, we couldn't shoot uh uh airstrikes and that sort of thing. But no such restriction placed on the enemy. The Michelin was full of NVA troops. Yeah, because we you you talk a lot about that area in your that place was crawling with NVA guys who who would maintain bunkers and do their daily uh uh uh preparations uh as French uh conscripted Vietnamese would maintain the rubber trees. They just coexisted. We had uh the Razorbacks was a was a mountain ridge above the Mislin rubber plantation. Uh Highway 13 was the general north-south. It was bounded on the west side by a 10-gauge railroad that was not active, but the railroad was there. But Highway 13 ran from Xeon to Like, the division operational headquarters, and then up to uh Quanloi and then Loch Nin and then Cambodia. Uh and along Highway 13 were fire bases. Uh they were called Thunder, uh, was the was the name of the base, Thunder 1, Thunder Two, Thunder Three, Thunder Four. And these were fire support bases, largely called Thunder because they were artillery outposts. 105s, 8 inch, uh, 155 howitzers, that sort of thing. Um and we would go out every every morning with these VR teams to recon. If we got into a fight, then we would respond with scramble teams. That was a loach and a cobra that were on standby to immediately respond out to relieve that VR team or to help the ARPS when they're on the ground, the scramble teams would do that. Uh but for the Huey guys, you know, the for us, there was a lot of waiting in the morning, and then we'd fly the ARP out and put them in a landing zone, then we'd go somewhere else, normally one of the fire bases, and land on the outer perimeter, and then just sit there.

Host 1:19:40

So you're almost like a transport. The 100 care teams would go out. They would find uh fresh tracks or whatever. You guys would go in there, land the ARPS, and then you would just wait to go pick the ARPs.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:49

We'd go somewhere secure and wait, uh uh sit with a we had a prick 25 PRC 25 radio, and we'd put the antenna up and we'd sit there on the ground and listen to the ARPS and and uh of course the the Cobra could call us back out to pick the ARPS up. In January I was learning, I was learning to fly the Huey. And about the first of February, the uh the new platoon leader was Wayne McAdoo, a senior first lieutenant. And Wayne went on RR to visit his wife in Hawaii. So for seven days in February, in my second month in Vietnam, I became the platoon leader of the of the aero lift platoon. And a smart commissioned officer in those days who had about a grand total by then of a I think 280 hours of flight time. Uh, I picked the best warrant officer I had to be my pilot while I was the lead uh uh aircraft commander. That's a guy named Bob Holmes. And for a week, Bob flew the aircraft, and I sat in the left seat and did the radio calls and the map reading and all that sort of thing. And in that, I believe the 2nd of February, we had a uh a uh LERP team from F Company, 52nd Infantry, long-range patrol. They got torn up pretty bad. Three of the of the five guys were uh uh desperately injured. And we were gonna go out and put the ARPS in. The ARPs were gonna maneuver in to save those guys to rescue them. Were they sitting out there on a recon like Elpiopia or they were out on a long-range patrol, they got compromised, they were shot up, three guys were hurt. Excellent book, by the way, uh uh called War Paint, written by Bill Goshen. Bill Goshen was one of those first division F-52nd, who transitioned in in February of '69 to uh India, 75th Rangers. That was our ranger company that did long-range patrol.

Host 1:21:58

That was for the division, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:21:59

That was for the division. And and that this story is from his perspective is in war paint. The LERPS had been shot up badly. They were in very serious trouble. Only two guys were functional. One of them was Goshen, who himself was wounded. And so we got a scramble mission. I was at Fulloy, and the uh the aircraft were already positioned. And uh the runner came and got me and said, go to flight operations. We got a scramble mission. The Cobras and Loaches were already forward. They were already up there protecting that team, uh, but they needed the ARPS on the ground to make a physical link up and uh rescue the guys. And so I went into Flight Ops and and uh the uh uh the operations officer said uh uh need you put the ARPS on the ground. This is the landing zone. It's about 600 meters from where they're engaged with this North Vietnamese force. And uh the cobras are already forward, and they're protecting the LERPS with gr with rocket fire, so you're gonna have to prep your own LZ. Uh usually when we put the the guys in, we had cobras with us that would, if necessary, shoot up the LZ with with rockets to prep it for our insertion. And um he said, uh here here's division artillery's frequency, and you need to work up an artillery prep plan because it's a very hot area, it's full of bad guys. So I worked up a quick uh schematic in my head on where I would want artillery in that landing zone. Um and I prepared it so that the last round in the LZ was a white phosphorus round, which would go off, and you knew that was the last round. It was it was clear. So jumped in the aircraft with with Holmes and the ARPs get aboard, and we take off, and we're we're flying uh up toward the trapezoid where where uh this this event was going on. And I get up on the frequency with uh uh our cobras and I tell them uh uh clowns are off. Our call sign for the platoon at that point in time was the the clowns. And we used uh it was the clowns, the mustangs, and the outcasts. The the lift, the guns, and the scouts were the outcasts. And I said uh uh we we call ourselves the flying circus. I said, the circus is off Fulloi and route the uh the the IP, which was the initial point. And I'm talking on on one frequency on FM to the division artillery, and like Hay is shooting the artillery 105s. And uh and I'm talking to them and I'm I'm asking them to shoot the first rounds, and and um way out in the distance I can see artillery hitting the ground, and and uh they already had the prep uh positioned. And we hit the initial point and we turn inbound to the landing zone and went from echelon left to trail formation. That's one Huey after the other, and we're approaching, we're we're 900 to 1,000 meters out, and artillery's landing in the in the uh in the landing zone. We're getting closer and closer, and I'm in the left seat with my map talking on the radio, and Bob Holmes is sitting next to me, and he he look kind of looks at me, and you know, artillery is going off, and we're going toward it, and he's chugging along, and he'd turn and look at me, and I'm shooting artillery, and and uh we're like, I don't know, four or five hundred meters out of the landing zone. All of a sudden, a white phosphorus round goes off. That's the last round on target. And uh we we zip in through that smoke and put the ARPS on the ground, and we take off, break right, and we're headed back over to a fire base to set down. And uh and Bob says, Wow, that was cool. How many times have you done that? And I looked at him and I said, Once. First time I ever adjusted artillery live in my life, and it was it was a live, it was a live mission.

Host 1:26:12

While you're flying in a helicopter, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:14

Using an old map. You're giving them gun target line, you're giving them grid coordinates, you're giving them rounds on target, battery adjust, and all that sort of thing. It was pre-planned fire. I I did a couple of adjustments, uh uh left 5-0, add 100, fire for effect, boom, and and they're shooting.

Host 1:26:32

Was there any eyes already pre-designated on the map when you guys were flying different places?

SPEAKER_01 1:26:37

No, we we did all our own artillery. Um there were concentrations that maybe infantry units uh would have if they were uh in a night defensive position, but for from the air, my cobras shot artillery a lot. They were really good about shooting artillery. Uh every base had artillery tubes. Um scouts didn't shoot artillery. We we were not in a position to, we carried maps, but we didn't uh physically handle them. My map stayed in a map case uh the whole time I was there because it's hard to fly an 086 single pilot and maneuver a map. One to 50,000 maps, huge. There's a trick that we used to know about folding maps and being able to maneuver them around, but the cobras did all that. Um I adjusted artillery fire one time in in uh in Vietnam while I was flying Huey's, and it was that mission right there. And you were 20 years old? Uh at that point in time I was 20, yeah. That's wild. And uh had a flight of four. We put the ARPS on the ground. The ARPS got in there and and uh and rescued uh Goshen and his guys, got them out of there. Um and he refers to the ARPS. He refers in his book to an the division inserted an aero rifle platoon. Well, there was only one. He apparently thought there were multiple arrow rifle platoons, there was only one, and that was the arrow rifle platoon of of uh Dark Horse call sign 46. Um But he refers to them in his book as the helmets, because the ARPS wore camouflage uniforms and steel helmets, or the LERPs wore bandanas and flop hats. But he refers to them as the the helmets were coming to rescue him. Um so that was the that was the first time I ever did uh an insertion uh in combat as the flight lead, and that was a month a month in.

Host 1:28:40

Um did you grasp the gravity at that time of what you were doing, or was that just what everybody was doing?

SPEAKER_01 1:28:47

I I think fairly, I think it's what everybody was doing. Um Strategically, um we weren't strategic thinkers, we were tactical thinkers. We we had a good grasp of what was going on in the division, but I I couldn't tell you what was going on in two field force. I couldn't tell you what was going on or what the objectives were of the 25th division, uh which was to our west, or the first cav division, which was to our north. But I had a good idea of what was going on in the first division. We worked with all three brigades. Um we we worked from the water plant in Saigon north all the way to Loch Nin. And up and down Thunder Road up the T Ten River Valley. Um the the low level hell has a pretty good map. That we put in the front of it that shows all the terrain features that were the features we navigated on. The Colosseum, the onion, the onion stem, the mushroom, the testicles, a big turn in the river that looked looked like testicles. But we navigated off of terrain features. And once you fly an AO every day, like we did, you didn't fly necessarily to grid coordinates. You went to terrain features and then two specific grid coordinates to do whatever you got to do.

Host 1:30:15

March 1969, the scout platoon leader requests relief. You get the job. How did that come about?

SPEAKER_01 1:30:22

The uh John Herkert was uh was Dark Horse 1-6, the Scout platoon leader. He was getting ready to de-roast in in July. And uh a lot of the scout pilots would fly six months in scouts and then go back to Huey's. Uh John had an opportunity to become the operations officer for uh the troop. And so he he requests relief, and and Willie Cummings, Major Cummings, uh called me in one day and he said uh uh Captain Herkert is gonna go take the operations slot. Uh I'm gonna give you the scout platoon. Yay, this this is gonna be cool. So he hooked me up with Bill Hayes, who I refer to in the book as Buff. Most people know what that means. Bill was a big full back body uh African American guy who was our Loach instructor pilot. And he's the guy that actually taught me to fly the OH6 unit transition in the unit, which took about, I don't know, a week, five days, uh, ten hours. A lot of prep work, a lot of book work, a lot of groundwork. Um spent about five hours or so doing auto rotations. The key with an OH6 compared to other aircraft is if you don't level the skids when you touch down on an auto rotation, you chop the tail boom off. Blades will flex and it'll chop the tail boom off. With a Huey, you land skids first on the heels, the back of the skids. But on a loach, the very last thing you do before you pull a pitch is push that cyclic forward uh to come in skids level. I had about four, maybe five hours left to go, and Bill said, okay, go fly around. So I was flying around the AO by myself, unarmed, um largely in the traffic pattern at at Foo Loi, but you know, you make you make six or eight circuits of the traffic pattern and you look at your watch and it's been 22 minutes, and you got to do that for five hours. Um so after after 10 hours, I was I was uh uh signed off in the in the logbook as a uh as a uh transitioned into the 086. Then it really started. That's when you really start to learn. So I'm the platoon leader, um but I got to learn how to do what we do. And so I had I had guys, I had a guy named Jim Morrison, um, I had a guy named Bill Jones, uh strangest call sign you'd ever come up with. They called him Birdie Numb Numb. Why they called him Birdie Numb Numb, I don't know, but that's that's what they called him. And Bill's the guy that taught me to scout. We we started, at that point in time, we flew three people in the aircraft. We had an observer in the front left seat, pilot in the right seat, and a gunner in the back. The problem with that configuration from my perspective was that a scout pilot is always making uh concentric right hand turns. You're not flying straight and level, you're you're you're flying in a straight line, but you're circling in a straight line as you go forward. So the guy in the left seat's always up in the air. The OH-6 was historic for making guys in the left seat sick. You're up in the air, it's an unusual attitude. The pilot is looking down and to the right, the gunner's looking down to the right. Well, the guy in the left seat's looking up in the air. It's very hard to see. So I'm in that left seat, and and uh Bill takes me out and he's teaching me how to scout. And the things you're looking for, um uh anything that's in the jungle that didn't grow there is the first thing that you gotta learn to discern. Uh what's the shape? What's the the glint? Does it uh reflect uh light? Is it a is it a rectangular shape? Is it a regular angle that doesn't occur in nature? Um the altitude that the scouts flew was four to six feet above the highest obstacle. So we're flying around 10, 12 feet off the ground. We followed footprints. We were close enough to see the whites of the eyes of the guys that we were engaging. We could smell the guys on the ground in concentration. The um field hygiene and the diet of the Vietnamese soldier uh was such that that uh in large concentrations you could physically smell them.

Host 1:35:10

Yeah, they would eat they would make like that fish head uh soup or like a sauce or something. Nookmom. Yeah. Nook nasty.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:16

Just nasty. I tried nook mom once. It's like kimchi in Korea, but worse. Um but yeah, you could you could smell them. Um we we were very close. The the uh obstacles that we faced uh not only were the the the guys on the ground shooting at us, but also dead trees. We ran into trees all the time. You're you're looking to the right and circling, and you don't see a dead tree sticking up, and you fly through the top of it and rip the landing gear off the aircraft. I'll I'll have some pictures for you that'll show you that. But the the the objective of a new scout pilot is to learn to see what you your brain tells you is there, but perhaps your your visual capacity hasn't yet caught up to your brain. Um at 40 to 60 knots, it's hard to see right below you. And you've got to learn to do that. You've got to learn to stay fast. Uh, speed is life. Uh if if you if you come back over a target three, four, five times and get slow, you're gonna get popped. And so the ability to see something and and and trust your instincts. I grew up in the country. I grew up as a hunter, I grew up in the woods. Um I developed, or at least I recognized uh an instinct. When the hair on the back of my head and back of my neck stood up, I trusted it. Uh because it it came to tell me that uh that something's not right. I may not know exactly what I'm looking at, but my senses are telling me this is not gonna be good. You have to learn to trust that. Um you don't want to come back into an area the same exact direction. Uh we would later lose one of our guys for precisely that reason. A guy from across the runway that was training with us uh was killed, uh, kept going in the same direction. One of our crew chiefs was in the back trying to help train him, kept saying, Sir, don't do that, don't do that, come in a different direction. And he didn't. And he took a 50 right through the groin up through the top of him, killed him. Um But the the ability to scout and fly at the same time was learned. It was not inherent. You had to learn to do it. And some guys were really good at it, and some guys were terrible, and the guys that were terrible very quickly left the scouts.

Host 1:37:50

So were you learning to do that as you were learning to get your 10 hours or to get your you know, your checkpad done?

SPEAKER_01 1:37:55

The 10 hours was totally uh airport traffic area, no combat, no nothing. Once you got qualified in the aircraft, then you went out and learned to scout. And you started as an observer and you scouted for a time with veteran scout pilots as an observer watching what they're doing. Um there was a period of time you would move to the backseat and actually fly as door gunner. Uh and when I was training scouts, there there was a period of time when I would, once I was comfortable with them, uh I'd let them fly the mission and I flew door gunner for them. And you got you got to trust a guy before you do that. Um But the the ability to fly and scout at the same time took time. The average, I think the average scout pilot, by the time you had six or seven months, you were really good. And by the time you had 10 or 12 months, you were really dangerous. Uh there comes a time when you you gotta learn to back off a little bit. Um I had a tendency to hang it out perhaps a little more than I should have a lot of times. I was very fortunate uh to survive a year of that and then to come back and do it a second year.

Host 1:39:13

But when you got there, the the 086s, they weren't armed. I mean, other they had a door gunner.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:18

We we had door gunners, uh, but but the the the principal opinion was that a scout pilot was to find the target, and once they're engaged, you come to altitude and let the Cobras work on them. Then you went home. We didn't go back down. How did that sit with you? I didn't like that. It made no sense to me. Um my instinct was always if if a guy fires on you, you turn and attack him. That's the way I was trained as an infantryman. Uh you uh you you you bust an ambush by counter ambush training. You you turn, you engage the ambush and you and you charge them. Um that's the the inclination that I brought to the scouts. Other guys believe that the minute you're fired on, boom, you come to altitude, let the cobras do it, and then everybody go home. So once I became the pet leader, each each loach came with an XM27E1 gun system. It was an ammo box and a mount, and it it uh it had the uh uh D-linker feeder and the electric motor and the M134 minigun all in one package that bolted into the back of the uh OH6. And I wanted to use the the darn gun because it occurred to me that that an M134 at 25 meters slant range from a guy that's shooting at you gives you one hell of an advantage over a guy with an AK-47. Uh it also gets their attention very quickly. Um so I put the I put the gun back on it. We had a sight system that came with it that mounted on the bulkhead behind us, and it was a rod that stuck out and it had a little Persperex plastic uh uh device. You pulled it over in front of you, and it it uh it displayed a uh pipper onto that little glass target, and so that was your target. But it was in your way. It blocked your vision. If you went down, you're gonna eat that thing, it's right in front of your face. So we took the sights out and simply took a hands width above the lateral cross member on the on the canopy and made a grease pencil mark. And that was our gun sight. And you raised the M134, there you it would only elevate and depress with your with your uh uh stick control. Your lateral movement was with pedals. So you'd raise the M134 till you could see the top barrel over the empty left seat, uh, and and it was aimed at a right distance, and then with your uh hands width above the uh the lateral cross member, and you make a grease pencil, and there you go. That's that's your target. And once you fire, 2,000 rounds or 4,000, had two rates of fire, two and 4,000, and it's spewing straight red tracers and up and back with the stick, left and right with the pedals. Um again, we're very close. We're 25, 30, 40 meters from people when we engage them. And it was the minigun was devastating.

Host 1:42:34

It was a game changer. Talk to us about the first time you got to employ it. I know the cobra pilots weren't super happy.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:39

So Well, they no, they when we first when we first started doing that, the Cobra pilots said, You guys are gonna get yourselves in trouble, you're gonna stay too long. Um the the the first time that I really employed one was was on a sampan. Uh I I had I had I had found a sampan up uh up a little tributary on the T10 River. It's a uh essentially a junk. Like a boat. It's a boat. Yeah. Um the area we flew in was all all in. I mean, there were no friendlies of any kind where we worked. And I was coming up the T10 River one morning, and I looked to my right and I saw the back end of a boat, and I came back around, and when I came back around, the guys on the boat who were hiding up in this uh little tributary fired on me. And uh I just that scared me. Uh and I I dumped the nose, and the minute I dumped the nose, I pulled the trigger, and that minigun went right across the uh the back of the sandpan and it started to sink. Crew chief was was shooting like crazy with the M60. We came around a couple of times, dropped a couple of grenades on it. Um, but it it cut that sandpan, the back end of the sandpan in half, and it kind of broke apart and and sank. And that's the first time I ever fired a minigun in combat. It impressed the hell out of the crew chief, and it certainly impressed the heck out of me, and it absolutely got the attention of the guys on that sandpan. Oh, for sure. Um But we, you know, the the key to the successful use of a minigun on a loach, you gotta understand when you're decisively engaged, and that's when you break contact and give it to the gun. As long as you're putting out more than they're putting on you, uh you're good. But you if you lose fire superiority, uh if you lose flexibility, then you gotta get out of there and let the cobra in. And we would do that simply by dumping a smoke, red smoke, uh, and say one six is out to the right. And once we're out, the cobra's cleared in. Um they watched every move we made. They flew at 1,500 feet, we flew at 15 feet. And and of course, the guy in the backseat, the aircraft commander, never takes his eyes off the scout. Because if I get shot at, the minute he sees my tail pop up, even before I key the mic and say, take and fire, as that nose goes down and the tail goes up, Cobra pilots can see that and they've already started to roll. And the minute I say I'm out, boom, they hit the switch and in go the rockets. So it's a fine balance between aggression and discretion. You know, you got to know when to get out and when you're about to lose fire superiority and become decisively engaged, you got to get out of there.

Host 1:45:38

When you took over the platoon, you actually removed the observer, added the mini-gun. Um, and and how how was that a game changer? Was it something that you saw when you were doing your observer training that you know the observer, as you said, was in the air, maybe didn't have a good vision? Did you feel like it was a waste of position?

SPEAKER_01 1:45:53

I thought precisely, I thought it was a waste of a position. Uh a lot of guys got sick. Um, not fun to fly around on a loach, full of vomit. Um I I just I didn't see it uh as uh as uh uh as a tactical necessity to have a guy that really could do nothing for you. He only carried an M16. 20-round magazine M16 at a distance from a helicopter is not not terribly decisive for a weapon. I like the minigun. Um I thought the minigun was a game changer on the 086, and so that's that's what we did. And all of a sudden, the uh the the the guys quit shooting at us. Uh I th I think they learned to a degree that when you shoot at this little bird, the little bird's gonna shoot back. And uh I will say it took uh there was some consternation on the part of my gunship guardians uh who the number of them who said to me in the club at night, you're gonna get your ass blown off, was uh was significant. Um but again, as as experience uh took me further into the realm of scouting, I I uh you you learn when you got to get out of there, when you got to fish and when you got to cut bait.

Host 1:47:16

Yeah, it was super interesting. As I was reading the book, one of the things that you talk about in the book is you know, after you got your first um minigun shoot, uh I think your your crew chief was Joe Crockett, and you guys popped a red smoke on the way in.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:29

Yeah, the the the crew chiefs would uh uh on the carrying handle of the M60, uh it was attached to a bungee cord, and the bungee cord was attached to the the uh uh a position on the door. And so that M60 was called a free gun. It didn't have a mount, it was a free gun. Um and they would attach, they'd take the the um the the pin, the ring on a white or correction, uh a red uh smoke grenade, and they'd slip it over the carry handle of an M60. So it's just laying right there on the side. And whenever he's shooting back, people shooting at us, he could reach down and just pull that grenade, it would pull the pin and he'd just throw it. So we'd get we'd be able to say smoke's out. Uh either hit the smoke or left of the smoke, whatever. But when we uh when we came back in after our first my first kill, um he wired a uh smoke grenade to the to the uh front side of his M60 and pulled the pin. And when we're downwind at Fulloy, uh we're trailing red smoke. He's holding his M60 out, and he's got a red smoke grenade wired to the end of the barrel, and and of course the smoke's trailing behind the aircraft. Look kind of like the Blue Angels a little bit, but uh uh What was the significance of that?

Host 1:48:55

Where did that ritual come?

SPEAKER_01 1:48:56

I told the guys on the ground that we're coming home and and we had been successful. Uh submarines come home World War II, they got the broom hanging from the periscope clean sweep. Um we trailed smoke when we came back with uh kills. Uh and it was kind of exciting on occasion to see a big formation flight coming back, uh especially in on my third tour with the in the Delta with Dark Horse. Uh, we'd come back with four scouts and um and and four cobras, and we'd have all four scouts trailing red smoke. Um sometimes we'd we'd kind of hot dog it. We'd fly right down the middle of the runway, trailing red smoke, and then do a break to the right on the downwind down to base and then and then land. That was all Hollywood stuff. That was for show, largely for the guys on the ground, the crew chiefs, the maintenance guys, the guys in the tower. They loved that stuff, you know, uh in the control tower. And we'd we'd fly right down the middle of the runway at four feet, trailing four trails of red smoke. Um it was an esprit de corps thing. Uh esprit and the cavalry um tradition, the the cavalry mentality go hand in hand. And in order to get guys charged up and and keep them fired up, things like that were good for morale.

Host 1:50:29

You gave a speech when you took over the Arrow Scout platoon. You called the guys together and and you told them, and it's and it's in the book, you know, the mission of this unit is to fly and fight, and don't you ever forget that. Um, and that was kind of right after you had you had pinned the mini guns. What was that about? What was that mindset and what were you trying to instill?

SPEAKER_01 1:50:47

There was a little consternation on the part of some of the scouts about becoming mini gunships rather than scout ships. And I understood that. Uh I I had some very experienced 10-month scouts. Bill Jones was one of them, uh, Jim Morrison, um, really good guys, but they had flown most of their missions with an observer, and they were not all that necessarily all that supportive of the concept of of now we're a mini gunship down low and we're gonna stay longer than they stayed before. Um uh it was a way to say, okay, this is now our orientation. This is how we're gonna do business. And uh everybody fell in the line. Uh, there was that. Not a problem. I didn't loot nobody walked off the job. I had some long conversations with Bill Jones and Morrison. Those are two really good scout pilots. Both warrant officers. Both had almost a year experience. And I learned a lot from those guys. You know, we uh Jim rotated out okay. Uh Jones was later seriously, seriously uh burned. He was shot down. Uh Jimmy Potter, his his crew chief, staff sergeant was our platoon sergeant. He was killed in that event. Uh Tom Chambers and Mike Woods landed a Cobra to rescue Jones, and uh ultimately he was he was sent back. It's it it's in the book, you know. The the uh the the things that you've never seen before largely shape your perceptions and your personality. And one of the things I wanted to do the day after Jones was shot down and burned, his aircraft crashed onto a stump, which which penetrated the fuel cell, which hit the engine and it burned. It uh Potter was consumed in the fire. Um Jones was badly burned, but he was rescued by these two crazy cobra pilots that land in the middle of the jungle and then get a Chinook into to uh hoist uh hoist Jones out. The next day, perhaps uh two days later, uh we flew down to the 93rd Avac Hospital in uh in Saigon to visit Jones, and I I landed on the pad, and uh there were five or six of us in a Huey, and we went down to see him. And and I went to the nursery station and I said, Where's uh where's Mr. Jones from the quarter cabin? She said it's fifth, fifth bunk down on the right. And I walked down there and looked, and it's it's it's not Jones, it's a it's a black soldier. And uh I go back to the nursery station and I said, That's not Mr. Jones, that that guy's African American. And she looked at me with this straight in your eyes uh look, and she said, No, that's Mr. Jones. He was burned that badly. I thought he was I thought he was African American. Um his shoulder was was was swelled up the size of a basketball. The whole side of him was was burned. Bill Jones survived that. Bill Jones went on to fly PHI helicopters. Um uh he he he became a major in the Army Reserve at Fort Carson, Colorado. He's gone, he's gone now, but um that's the first guy I ever saw that was grievously injured. And even though we were wearing flame retardant uniforms, the Nomex uniform, uh burning jet fuel on your body is is uh is gonna do a terrible job. And uh that's the first guy I ever saw that was burned. And I I never wanted that to happen to me. It was pretty awful.

Host 1:54:42

Take us to uh Operation Atlas Wedge. Um Bolo Woods, Thunder Run, Michelin Rubber, um the four fourth cav, uh March of '69, I I think.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:53

March March of 1969. Uh, you know, I mentioned before that the Michelin was off limits. Um the um commanding officer of the quarter cav was was Lieutenant Colonel William Hoponsky, West Point, had come from the 11th Armored Cav Regiment, where he was Patton's regimental ops officer, came over to command the quarter cav. Um I liked Bill Hoponsky. He was he was a handful. Not a big guy, a little guy. Uh, but he carried an M79 grenade launcher, which I thought was kind of weird for a for a squadron commander. But I flew him a number of times in February in January, February on CNC missions. And so that's how I got to know Colonel Hoponski. And Bill has written a number of books. He's he's gone now, too, but he he wrote uh Dangerous Dragoons, and he wrote one hell of a ride, and these are William Hoponsky, H-A-P-O-N-S-K-I. Um, and I'm I'm mentioned a number of times in his books because he knew me from flying C and C for him. But he devised a plan to attack the Michelin rubber plantation using the 25th Division on the on the west as a blocking force, the 1st Cavalry on the north as a blocking force, the 1st Infantry on the right, uh, and then um Task Force Hoponsky, which was the quarter cav and some attached Mech infantry units, would uh would enter the uh uh the rubber from the south. And and finally uh unentrench, detrench, is that a word? Detrench the North Vietnamese. Um and on that particular mission, I was the first scout into the Michelin at uh at about six o'clock in the morning. It was the sun was just coming up, it was dusk uh uh or dawn, I guess. Uh uh and we hit the Michelin rubber plantation just as the tank started moving in. And I made a turn and looked, and I saw it looked like ants. There were hundreds of North Vietnamese guys in there, and they all had uh they looked like the ground was moving because they were all wearing camouflage capes that that uh uh cascaded down over their back, and when they ran, they kind of looked like Superman with a camouflage cape. They're all running around uh in all kinds of directions because here come the tanks from the south, M48s, uh main battle tanks that the quarter calf had. And when they we're in there with the with the scouts giving direction to the cobras, and and the cobras are shooting, and we're shooting, and guys going every which way. And and um that was the first major operation I was ever in. I mean, that was a large task force size operation, um which also revolved around the attacks on firebase Rita Dot and Julie. Those were three very big engagements in the March timeframe, uh, with large attempts of North Vietnamese to overrun the Americans that had now started to camp out in the Michelin.

Host 1:58:10

Could you could you talk about that day? I mean, I think that was like a wasn't that like a 16-hour day for you?

SPEAKER_01 1:58:15

Oh, yeah, fifth 15 hours uh on on that day. Um 15 hours is the longest that I've ever flown in an aircraft without ever getting out of it. Uh hot refueling was relatively new in those days, uh, meaning that we'd continue to run while we're on the pad. Um if you've if you've got to relieve yourself, you friction everything out, uh, friction the aircraft controls down, and then just step out of the aircraft and relieve yourself on the ground. Uh hopefully, number one, not a lot of number, number two on the refueling point. But uh your butt is numb. Uh the the seat on the OH6 was mesh, and it was surrounded by ceramic uh uh carbide with a tungsten core uh that was armor plate, but very very little protection for the pilot. But the seat itself was really uncomfortable. There was no back padding. We had a little small pad, about six or eight inches in a square, which was a foam pad that fit on the back of the armor plate on Velcro. So you just adjusted that to hit the smaller back, and that was the seat. Very uncomfortable for long periods, and that was the first time I ever flew 15 point something in a day. What were you doing that whole day? Uh continually in the Michelin. Where are the bad guys? Where are they moving? Where can we block them? Uh, who comes from the north, east, west, artillery, tack air. We we used some tack air on the north side to to convince them that they don't want to go that way. Um it was it was 15 hours of straight combat, uh uh very fast. Didn't do a lot of slow flight on that particular day. Um, but uh it was the first major operation I'd ever been in. And and you're you're coordinating. I I was not coordinating artillery or attack air, the cobras were doing that. Uh, but I was relaying what I saw bunkers, bunker size, um activity, traffic, people, anti-aircraft guns, 50 cal was the big was the big uh nemesis for helicopters. Um but that was the first we went into the Michelin plantation, and that that lasted uh well over a month, and it was called Operation Atlas Wedge. Uh but Bill Hoponsky wrote uh uh uh significantly about that in his two books, One Hell of a Ride and Uh Dangerous Dragoons.

Host 2:00:51

You got your engine shot out, I think, that day too, didn't you?

SPEAKER_01 2:00:54

Yeah, we did. We we we took around through the uh compressor section of the engine and went back over to Firebase Rita and sat down and had to have that aircraft pipe smoked out. Huey would come in and take the blades off a loach, um, put them on the inside of the Huey and then pick up to a hover, and they'd put a strap around the head and pick that thing up, and a Huey could carry a loach easily. In order to pipe smoke a Huey, it took a Chinook. And in order to pipe smoke a Chinook, it took a sky crane. But the the littlest of the bunch was the loach and a Huey could haul it.

Host 2:01:31

There's another chapter in the book, I think it's chapter five. Um, you took out your crew chief Al Ferrar, and you guys were flying, and he said, I mean, he was yelling at you on the radio, like, Lieutenant, I I can smell them. Um, don't get too don't don't go too slow. Can you talk a little bit about that day and and kind of what was going on?

SPEAKER_01 2:01:50

Yeah, you know, the the Ferrar was was uh was already a seasoned um scout crew chief. And the the thing that that you learn to do, that the the crew in a scout ship is very special. Uh you depend on each other. If the scout pilot gets shot down, crew chief's going with him. The crew chief can't do anything about flying that airplane from the backseat. Uh conversely, if the if the crew chief gunner is not good with that M60, uh then the guy on the ground shooting at you is gonna win. We depended on them with the M60. Um they also were the guys that delivered our ordinance. In the back end of the OH6, we carried uh all color of smoke grenades: green, red, yellow, purple, HC, which was corrosive smoke. Uh we carried Willie Pete grenades, white phosphorus, we carried uh uh CS grenades, gas, um, M60 machine gun, a couple of spare barrels, 3,000 rounds of ammo, frag grenades. And in order to deliver a hand ordinance, uh, I'd say, gimme a smoke. He would get, I'd I'd say, for example, give me a red. He'd get a red grenade, put it in his hand, he'd pull the pin and he'd stick it straight out. So I could look over my right shoulder and I could see the top of the grenade, which was red corresponding to the cover. And I'd fly inbound to the target, and when I wanted him to drop, I'd say, drop it, and he would throw it straight down. Forward flight is a factor, and uh with a little practice, you can get that smoke right where you want it to go. We would deliver grenades that way, we would deliver uh gas that way. Willie Pete, Willie Pete was the big one. That one you had to be careful with because that was a big, huge grenade. Uh but in order for fast movers to see a target very quickly, it took the Willie Pete grenade, a small smoke grenade they couldn't see from altitude. Um but uh Ferrar's in the back seat, and and he's saying, Sir, I can smell them, I can smell him, I can smell him. He was really getting tense. Uh Al Ferrar is uh still with us, by the way. I just saw him a couple months ago. Uh Al is is uh is an easterner and he has an accent. And and uh I'm a southerner with an accent. And we were we were kind of a uh a crew together. Uh Jimmy Parker was from Calhoun, Georgia, a Southerner. Uh they called Jimmy the Reverend because he was very quiet. He didn't he didn't say much. Very stoic. Ken Stormer, a Texan, uh big cowboy type, uh very, very aggressive, very vocal. The the uh atomic divot, the platoon sergeant. All the guys had personalities, and I flew with all my different guys. Uh Jim Downing, uh, who I would fly with a number of times, was from Green City, Missouri. Uh he was ultimately killed on the 6th of November with scout pilot Joe Vadd. But all the scout crew chiefs were different. As the platoon leader, I like to fly with all of them. But my principal, my principal uh gunner was Jimmy Parker from Calhoun, Georgia, and we flew most of the missions. I flew with Jimmy more than any other crew chief, and he was he was uh I owe him my life a number of times. His ability with an M60 machine gun unparalleled. Um Ferrar, excellent shot. Stormer, excellent shot. These guys from the backseat of a moving helicopter could hit a running man. Takes experience. You're not shooting right at him, you're actually shooting behind him as you go forward, and the rounds will arc in. Um the the ability to see, to react, uh, to maintain under uh uh uh serious, serious pressure, uh, and these guys were just terrific. The outcast were an all-volunteer unit. You didn't get assigned to the outcast. You you you agreed to go to the scouts. We had no married men uh in the scouts because of the danger. Of the guys that started with me in in March of 69, there were two of us left alive in December. Wounded, deroast, killed, in in the case of Jones and Vad and Potter and and others. Um it was a volunteer unit. The only married guy we had was Joe Vad. And and we made an exception. Joe was a former Marine who who uh wanted to fly scouts, and we made an exception. He was a he was a tremendous soldier. And then he was he was killed on the 6th of November, leaving a a widow and a and a little girl named Lisa, um who who still is part of our group. She comes to our reunions and uh is is a very dear part of our organization. But um scouting was was tough. You know, I I believe the number 842 086s uh were sent to Vietnam, and uh the vast majority, 80% of those, were destroyed in combat. More Huey pilots died than scout pilots, but there were thousands more Huey's than there were scouts. Statistically, the most dangerous job in Vietnam was uh 086 scout pilot.

Host 2:07:33

October 28th, 1969, you're skimming the Saigon River at three feet of altitude, 100 knots between the banks. You smelled a cooking fire charcoal from a mile away because morning fog was holding the smoke down kind of at river level. You pop up over the trees and found 10 NVA regulars sitting around a black cooking pot. Walk us through that morning.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:53

Yeah. Yeah, that was an early morning VR flight on the on the river. And exactly as you said, their their morning smoke was going up into the fog along the river, and it was held. And as I'm coming up the uh the river body itself at about three feet, uh I could smell cooking fire, uh a smoke fire. And uh no friendlies at all anywhere in that area. So we knew we knew somebody was close, and I popped up over a nippa palm line and looked down, and here these guys are. Their AKs are stacked. Parker opens up. He didn't, I didn't say a word as I did a flare. He saw him, he opens up, they scatter, they open up. Turning, burning gunfight for a few minutes, and then we got we got uh ten guys on the ground. And uh I told the cobra, I said, this is what we got. If we want to come back and put the harps on the ground, uh you might get some intel, you know, but here's here's uh there's some some dead guys down here. And um I started to head back on up the river, and Parker says to me, Um he said, sir, if it's okay, I I need to go to the hospital. And I turned around and looked, there's a small opening behind the head of the scout where you can see into the back compartment. And Parker is back in his chair and he's holding himself, and there's blood coming out between his fingers. He'd been shot through the neck by an AK-47. I never knew he was hit until he told me. I immediately peeled off and uh and and told the cobra, I said, I got to go to second surge, the surgical hospital. I said, gunner's hit, I got to go to second surge. And and the uh the cobra came back immediately and said uh negative, negative, we got fire coming out of Lycay, artillery fire coming out. Uh and I said, negative, negative, I'm going, I'm going low level. And I didn't have to worry about artillery fire if I stayed under it. So I took off down through the north part of the Iron Triangle on the trees, I mean, literally on the ground. And the Cobra went around the uh 25th Division AO to get around the artillery, but I went low level right across the middle of the Iron Triangle at 10 feet because Jimmy's Jimmy's hurt, and uh that's where I had to get him to save him. So we came screaming into the uh second surge pad and shut down, and I'd uh I'd already called ahead on on FM, and they had some guys on the pad there with a with a gurney, and they grabbed Parker and put him on it and wheeled him into the uh the emergency room, just like MASH, just exactly like MASH. Um so I shut the bird down, I hovered it off to the side so I wouldn't block Medevax coming in, shut it down, and I walked over to uh uh to the hospital, and and I kind of opened the door and walked in. They got Jimmy on the table, and they're working on him, blood's everywhere. And uh two, three minutes later, the doors burst open again, and in come five or six guys that had been in an M113 that got hit with an RPG, a rocket propelled grenade, and they were all blown up and burned up, and they're uh throw those guys into the various beds. I would I was just I was overcome. I was I was distraught about Jimmy Parker. Um and then they bring in these guys that were all blown up, and I I had to get out of there, so I just turned around, walked back outside, and sat down and uh popped open a cigarette. I'd started smoking in Vietnam and I popped open a cigarette and I said, Oh my god, Lord, please save save Jimmy. He did. Uh Parker's still with us. He's still the Reverend. Uh he still doesn't have much to say. But uh he went off for R and uh and came back uh uh from that. He had he had already uh there was previously we had actually gone down, we got shot down on Thunder Road, and he got hit he he landed on the uh front side of his M60 and booked.

Host 2:12:16

That's a wild story. Will you tell that whole story?

SPEAKER_01 2:12:18

Yeah, we were we were working Thunder Road um uh up and down, we'd we'd had a couple of engagements, we'd have found some areas uh uh that the cobra had shot up for me, didn't get a lot going. And just as we went up the highway uh north of uh Thunder II, there was a creek that crossed the river, and the highway ran north and south, and there was a roam-plowed area on both sides of the highway, about 200 yards, which was uh had been plowed, but the jungle grows up again. So we had eight or ten foot scruffy jungle all over and big pounds of uh uh piles of dirt. And um, all of a sudden I take fire from the west side of the tree line. It's heavy fire. And so I turn into it. And that day were you guys escorting? We were we were working ahead of a ground convoy, a convoy of trucks that was going north to Quanloy. And we were maybe a mile ahead of them, kind of clearing the road. And this was an ambush that was set to happen. But when I got there, they decided to shoot at us. And and so I turned into the fire and I I let go with the with the minigun, and all of a sudden, just slightly to my right, these big orange basketballs. All started flying at me, and it was a it was a 51 cal uh anti-aircraft gun that was set up in the trees to my right. And the first burst, one of the rounds, went through my rotor system. The first I knew I was hit was the vibration started, and it was it was uh it was the most severe vibration I ever felt in an aircraft in my career. The round had penetrated the spar, the leading edge of the blade, and split it completely open. And uh and that created an imbalance in the rotor system that was I I couldn't see. I mean, everything was a blur. I just chopped the throttle and went straight in. Uh, and and I was about 10 feet off the ground, uh, and and so it was a pretty short descent, but we hit the ground, I killed the throttle, reached down, pulled the fuel cut off, and I bailed out. Parker had eaten his M60, uh, the front sight had hit him in the chin, he was split open. I thought he was shot, but uh he was he actually split it open with his with his M60. So I bail out with my car 15, and Jimmy bails out with his M60 and about an eight-foot length of M60 ammo dragging behind him, and we get down behind a rice dike in front of us, it's about a foot, foot and a half high. So we're laying in the stinky stuff with a little old berm in front of us. And Dean Shiner was my cobra. And Dean started immediately, he saw where the fire was coming from, and he starts hitting it with the cobra. And uh he's making run after run after run, putting cobra fire in the 50s, shooting at him, and the guys with the AKs are shooting at us, and the ground's popping up, and all of a sudden I noticed that Dean is making runs, but he's not putting out rockets. And it occurred to me he's out of ammo. And he's uh he's right making runs on an anti-aircraft gun with no weapons, uh, and he's doing that to keep them off of me. But at the same time, what I didn't realize is he was on the radio calling for any aircraft, vicinity Thunder II, we got a downed aircraft. And uh uh Colonel Haldane, the 2nd Brigade Commander, 1st Infantry Division, happened to be coming south uh in a Huey at about 1,500 feet, and his pilot took it down right on the road. I looked to my right, and here comes a Huey right down the road, about Loach altitude, and they come zipping in and land beside us. And uh I run over and jump in. I'm grabbing Jimmy by the pants and I'm pulling him in. And uh he never let go of his M60. He brought his M60 out of there. But you guys were engaged the entire time you were on the ground, weren't you? Yeah, there was a it was a it was a firefight. Uh I had a Claymore bag with 30 round magazines in it, and I shot all of those. I shot every round I had, but it was there were no friendlies on the ground. There was no reaction force. I was maybe uh the the guys with the AKs the closest was less than a hundred yards. The 50 was about 250 yards to the right in a tree line. Um but uh the when the cobra was out of ammo, there wasn't anything Cobra could do. Uh but bless uh Bob Haldane and his Huey crew came in and got the two of us. I think that's a good one.

Host 2:17:05

Yeah, and I think I read in your book, like you generally believe that that was that was gonna be your day.

SPEAKER_01 2:17:09

Oh, I I thought we were done. I I I thought uh we're they're gonna get us because they're they're close. There was a whole bunch of them. Uh enough guys on both sides of the highway. There were guys on the other side of the highway behind me that never engaged us, but they were set to hit that convoy. So there there had to be several hundred uh in order to take on an armored convoy. Uh yeah, they'd have gotten they'd have gotten us.

Host 2:17:35

You guys pretty much saved that armored convoy too, didn't you?

SPEAKER_01 2:17:38

Well, we we sprung that we sprung the ambush on them, uh, which which saved those guys. But um uh again, brigade commanders, 06s, and helicopters don't generally come down and do air crew rescue, but uh Colonel Hal Dane did, and that's why Jimmy and I, you know, uh lived to fight another day.

Host 2:17:58

That's awesome. Uh talk to us about the NVA officer the next day, because the next day we're in the same exact area.

SPEAKER_01 2:18:08

Uh the the uh escort for that convoy had come forward, they came charging forward after we were rescued, and they fought a fairly sustained battle in the in the Rome ploughed area, just north of Thunder, too. Well, the next day we were given a VR mission to go back out and VR the visual recon, the same area. And uh we're we're flying up the road, and uh Jimmy's flying, he's he's his little chin is all stitched and bandaged up, but he's flying with me. And we we fly around a mound of dirt, and he goes, Come around, come around, come around. So I came back around and he goes, I got a guy down here. There's a there's a guy. And I look and there's an NVA soldier leaning on a on a pile of dirt, and he's obviously hurt. He's been he's been injured. And um I looked at him and I could see over over his shoulder a um uh like a message pouch or or or a uh uh a map case and it was uh it was green in color. And I told the cobra, I said, this this guy's dead down here and he's got a map case on him. Um I'm gonna land and get it. That was the first thought, probably not the brightest thing I ever did, but I said, we're gonna land and grab that. So I came in and landed in an area. Uh I had to land uh with with some uh foliage around me and that big pile of dirt. I couldn't quite see him the way I had landed, and Parker got out of the right and was gonna walk over and get that map case off the guy. And as he got to beside me, as Jimmy got behind uh beside me, I just reached over and grabbed my car 15 and I said, Here, take this. His 60 was strapped in the back. All he had was a pistol. I said, Here, take my car 15. He goes around the dirt, and all of a sudden, the first thing I know, that car 15 goes off at full auto, and Jimmy comes running around that pile of dirt and dives in the back of the load. He didn't have to say a word. I pulled pitch, did a hard left out of there, and he plugs in and he goes, He ain't dead. He ain't dead, he's alive. Uh and he said he's got an RPG, he was trying to uh detonate the RPG. Well, he he was dead because Parker had hit him with 30 rounds at point-blank range, but it scared Jimmy to death. It just scared him to death. But we went back around and and uh we made sure he was gone. Uh Jimmy did that. Uh and we did we did uh Jimmy didn't really want to get off the helicopter get him. He didn't want to get off again, but he did. He he did. Uh and we got a we got a map.

Host 2:20:59

She covers that story in great detail in the book. It's it's it's definitely one worth reading. What was in the map case?

SPEAKER_01 2:21:05

Uh unit designations, uh uh ambush locations. Uh he turned out it was an officer. You you couldn't really tell the officer from the enlisted with the North Vietnamese. They all dressed exactly alike. Uh usually the officers carried pistols. Uh Tokarev K-54s uh were were usually found on officers. Uh but uh I ran into two officers in in my time over there.

Host 2:21:31

That guy who who ultimately was dead, and then the guy we captured uh when I got out was uh I think that guy had the overlays that showed the entire 7th NBA's division's he had a bunch of stuff that uh They were trying to reoccupy the Michelin, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:21:46

Yes. Exactly. That was uh that was uh uh valuable G2. And you know, we worked for the G2. Uh you you you look at roles and missions, and and uh uh the the air cav troop was not tasked by the G3, the operations of the division. We were tasked by G2, the Intel side of the division. They told us where they wanted us to go and work, and our after action reports went back to G2, and G2 fed that to G3, which drove the the operations side of planning for the division. But we were a reconnaissance and security organization, and largely intelligence is what we were after. And that was a that was a big one. That uh that had a lot of information in that map case. Um took a little time before I could uh ask Jimmy to get out of the airplane again. He didn't he didn't like that.

Host 2:22:39

Yeah, Hugh's been super nice, but the the the exchange is well documented in the book. Yes, it is. It's a great story. Most supplements are built for guys who work out three times a week and want to look good at the beach. That's cool, but that's not who I build hoplight for. Hoplite is built for people who run towards operators, performers, people who choose the hard thing when everyone else opts out. Four products creatine, hydration, pre-workout, and a cognitive mushroom supplement that'll make you question why you ever settle for caffeine alone. Stack them or run them solo. We've got bundled options built around how you actually perform, not how a marketing team thinks you should. If that's you, go to hoplightnutrition.com and join the tribe. Get 15% off your first order, hoplite, for those who run towards. Um May 6, 1969. We gotta get at least one semi-funny story in here. Uh, you're on a scramble. Um talk to us about what happened to your knife.

SPEAKER_01 2:23:35

Oh, I was I was uh I was on scramble duty, and on scramble duty, your your aircraft is pre-flighted, ready to go, but it's sitting in the revetment. I was in the hooch, uh, I don't know, doing something, reading a book, playing my Pakai 360D tape player. But we we had a siren in the troop area, and uh on a scramble mission, they would hit that siren in the command bunker and it would go off, and everybody ran to their assigned areas for takeoff, except the Cobra aircraft commander. The uh aircraft commander would go over to operations and get the map coordinates, you know, whatever the quick details were. But the scouts would would run out and get an airplane, we'd fire it up, and we'd be ready to go by the time. We could start much faster than a cobra, but we'd be ready to go by the time the cobra was ready to go. And I was running to the aircraft and and the Loach revetments were closest to the unit uh buildings across a little bitty uh drainage ditch. And I jumped the drainage ditch, and when I did my Gerber Mark I commando knife, which was strapped to my survival vest upside down, the little snap came loose and the Gerber flipped out, and just as I was jumping the ditch, the Gerber went down and went through the top of my jungle boot, uh right between my toe and my uh big toe and my fur my first toe. And it it let literally between the the the uh what are those metatarsals uh sharp knife, it was razor sharp, and it stuck through my foot, and I reached down, I said, damn, that hurts a lot. I pulled it back, I put it back in my in my uh survival vest, and I went on and got in the aircraft, fired it up and and and and went and flew. It wasn't a big mission, I don't recall exactly where we were, but it wasn't a very big deal. But by the time we got back, my foot had swollen inside the boot, the boot was full of blood, it was now throbbing, uh, and and I had to have the boot cut off and go over to the flight surgeon. He had to stitch up my foot, but that that that wound was self-inflicted. And the moral of that story is don't carry your knife upside down in your in your survival vest or you're gonna stick it through your foot. Did you have to get stitches? I'm sorry? Did you get stitches? Oh yeah, yeah, a couple. Uh it was uh they didn't do they didn't do staples in those days, they didn't do the bandages in those days. Um couple of stitches, and and I didn't, I was off of it for a while. Uh hurt like crazy, though. I didn't enjoy that.

Host 2:26:25

May 13th, 1969, FSB Gela. You guys found a mass grave site. Uh I think a fire support base was hit by 82mm mortars and an NBA ground assault. You flew the the BDA at first light. Um there was body drag marks. Can you talk a little bit about it?

SPEAKER_01 2:26:41

Yeah, the the uh the NVA would generally hit night defensive positions uh and fire bases at night. They were masters of the dark. Um but they'd hit at night, and then the next morning when we would show up to do the the uh uh reconnaissance uh forward away from the uh the the fire bases, uh essentially to track the enemy, um you'd find blood trails, drag marks. Um it was fire support based gala. And uh as I moved forward uh uh uh there was uh an obvious very very hastily constructed uh mass grave. I I don't know how many people were in it, but it was a lot. And they they had very quickly piled up their bodies and thrown stuff on top, but uh didn't normally do that. Normally the NVA took their bodies with them if they could. I don't know how they were buried in the field or or uh certainly they were not repatriated, they didn't bring the bodies home, they always buried them. But this is the first mass grave I'd ever seen.

Host 2:27:51

It was big. What did those graves tell you about how the war was changing uh in May of 69?

SPEAKER_01 2:27:58

What it was telling us is they the enemy was more willing and more able to commit large forces where in the past they largely avoided main combat face to face with superior American forces. When you attack a fire base at night, you're attacking circled up ACAVs, armored calves assault vehicles, 50 caliber machine guns, 30 caliber machine guns, uh, usually artillery at a at a fire support base who could come down and fire direct fire with beehive. Uh uh all the guys on the perimeter are armed. Uh you've got artillery support coming from outside the fire base on the outside. Uh, and to do that much damage to that many people was uh was a change. Basically, the the introduction of a larger number of enemy soldiers into our area that were willing to stand and fight in large numbers, and this was post-Michelin. Um the the NVA, in my opinion, were trying to reintroduce themselves uh into the area of third corps where we were. The principal opponent that we had was called the Dong Nai Regiment, and they were the elusive regiment that ran all over III Corps, and they were destroyed several times over. But uh May, June, and July were really heavy assault. Uh, the the the attack on fire base Gala, the attack on firebases Rita Dot and Julie, the uh multiple attacks on fire base Mahome was an indication that the enemy was stepping up their operations. And generally speaking, the Tet offensive, the Christmas offensive, is what they were leading up to. That was their lunar new year. Uh there was a religious context, there was a political context to it. Uh, and these guys were now coming in larger numbers out of Cambodia into our operational area, and they were willing to stand and fight. These were good soldiers. These were not Viet Cong, these were North Vietnamese regulars.

Host 2:30:02

Yeah, will you explain the difference? We and you and I were talking about this at dinner yesterday.

SPEAKER_01 2:30:06

The Viet Cong is an indigenous South Vietnamese whose political uh interests lie with the opposition, and they were insurgents, if you will. And uh they were they were less well equipped and less well organized, less able to stand and fight in numbers than were the North Vietnamese army. The army of North Vietnam was a was a standing army, um, well equipped, well disciplined. Uh I had great respect for North Vietnamese soldiers. They they were they were not slouches. They would stand and fight. Um they were well equipped, not as equipped as we were, and and uh at some disadvantage with their chain of command being spread out and their logistical tail very difficult to maintain in the field compared to us. Um if an army unit was in the field and needed ammo, we could resupply them with a Huey like right now. Uh food, uniforms, uh medical supplies, uh medical evacuation, big big thing. We could get guys out in 20 minutes and they're in a field hospital. A Vietnamese soldier that's shot is in the jungle with rudimentary tools and he's shot. Uh not a good thing. But the North Vietnamese soldier was well disciplined, well equipped. They knew how to use their weapons, and they were they were good soldiers. I had great respect for them.

Host 2:31:38

May 26, 1969, you guys took 19 bullet holes. You and Al Farrar found an NVA radio antenna strung across a valley. Talk to me about that.

SPEAKER_01 2:31:49

Yeah, I'd never seen this before. It's the strangest thing I'd ever seen. We're flying up the uh T10 River Valley, and I look out in front of me, and and as we we zip over um a bend in the river, uh across the top of me, this wire went zip across the top of me. Didn't hit it, but it was above my rotor system. I was actually below it. And I thought, what the heck was that? And we turned around. My first impulse is that this was a helicopter trap. Something strung across the valley to catch us. And the more I looked at it, I said, that's that's not that's not capable of taking a helicopter down. That's like comma wire. But I went over to this side and and took a look, and it was uh it turns out it was a uh field improvised antenna uh uh which indicated very quickly to us that we had a command post down there somewhere, and uh and and the ARPs were brought in. There were some ground reconnaissance, but it's the first time I'd ever seen an antenna spread across uh uh uh a field expedient aerial antenna used by the by the enemy. Um immediate indication that there was a higher headquarters there.

Host 2:33:07

What uh what happened that day? You know?

SPEAKER_01 2:33:10

We put the ARPS on the ground, and the ARPS, as I recall, they went into one side first. This thing was spread several hundred yards long. It was like combo wire. WD-1 spread uh spread across uh one side of a valley to another a fairly short span, but we put the ARPS on the ground on one side, I was on the other end of that antenna taking a look, and all of a sudden they opened up on us and and uh I was a little too slow. Um I hadn't been fired on, I was not anticipating as I should have been. Uh and we took and took 19 rounds through the back end of the aircraft. Typically with with enemy soldiers, they they were not really great about leading the aircraft, uh, which is of course moving. If you shoot at a point in time and the aircraft's moving, where the bullets hit is somewhere left or right of that, depending on which way you're going. And most of those rounds uh impacted in the doghouse area below the blades and in the tail. But uh Ferrar was not was not pleased with that either. Um But the uh uh my recollection of that day is is the significance of that uh uh that radio antenna. The the the elusive element that we faced the entire time I was there was the the uh Kozvan headquarters was somewhere in Cambodia. We knew that. We didn't go to Cambodia in in 1969. But the the command post for the Army of North Vietnam in the south was located, it's called Kozvin, and it was located in Cambodia, but to find a large field expedient um antenna like that indicated that that was at least a a uh uh regimental-sized command post. And of course, we would go in first with the ARPS, the ARPS would would uh look look around an area, hold it, and then the division would bring in uh for the for example, they'd insert a a rifle company. And if the rifle company developed uh uh activity, they would uh put in a reaction force. And now you got a battalion in there. And that's how we got uh uh troops into contact was leading with the ARPS uh uh Relieved in place by a reactionary company, uh relieved in place by their reactionary battalions. And uh, and that's how major operations started. The May-June timeframe started um much heavier engagements with larger numbers of enemy, enemy soldiers.

Host 2:35:58

Yeah, before we dive into that, let's just take a quick break. Sure. This is kind of another funny story, and this is we'll end up talking about him again later on, but June 5th, 1969, you uh you blew the you blew the tent off of somebody's uh command vehicle track. Tell me that story.

SPEAKER_01 2:36:15

Yeah, I did. We were we were working uh along the Song Bay Road, which went uh uh in the northeast corner of our of our tactical area, and we were we were fragged out to the uh 11th Armored Cav Regiment, and we were directed, my hunter killer team, uh Chuck Carrando was the was the Cobra, and we uh we were fragged out to the 11th Cav and we were supposed to meet them at their uh their base area. And when we got there, what we saw was a whole bunch of of uh uh Sheridans, uh M551 uh essentially tanks with ACAVs and and they were all in a big circle right off the side of the road. And they had a very small area that uh that we could land, we were supposed to land and get some direction. And so I told a cobra, I said, You go on in and land. He was much bigger than me and and could uh would take up the the largest part of the landing zone. So he goes in and shuts down, and once he had secured his blade, then I decided to come in, and the area he left me was pretty close to an M577 uh command track, much bigger uh uh M113. And it had the tent section extended uh off the back of it. And so when I came in it had kind of a flare, my rotor wash hit that tent section, which was not secure, and it blew up uh and map pieces and paper and stuff went all over the place, and I went, oh God, that's gonna make somebody mad. So I'm I'm just shutting down and and getting out of the aircraft, and I see this senior NCO walking toward me, and the first thing I see is a scar on his face that went from the top of his head down to his chin. And I instantly knew this guy. Um when I was a brand new second lieutenant, I was assigned to the the 5th Recon training squadron at Fort Knox for a couple of months before flight school. And the first sergeant of that troop was was first sergeant Wolf. And he had uh fought in Korea and had a bayonet scar from a North Korean soldier that ran across the whole face. And he's walking toward me, and uh uh the the first thing I said, oh, sir first Sergeant Wolf. And then I looked at his collar, and now it's Sergeant Major Wolf. It's Command Sergeant Major Wolf. He's the Sergeant Major of the 11th Armored Calf. I said, Oh, excuse me, Sergeant Major Wolf. And he looks at me and he goes, Lieutenant Mills. Uh he said, You have just blown over Colonel Patton's command tent. George Patton, the son of the World War II Patton, is a regimental commander. And I just kind of flippantly said, I said, Well, Sergeant Major, you ought not park the Colonel's command post in the middle of our helipad. And he just kind of laughed. He had a big mustache and that bayonet scar. And he said, You want me to tell the regimental commander that he parked his uh track in the middle of your helipad? I said, No, no, let's let's not do that. Um But that's uh Patton was the regimental commander, and and later I would run into him a number of times in my career. He he went on to become one of the few um non-rated combat arms senior officers, 06s, that would be sent to flight school to become more familiar with the operations of aviation. So they sent them through what we call a shake and bake course for for senior aviators. They came away with wings, they were they were rated aviators. You wouldn't want to let them perhaps go fly by themselves, and there was no intention for that. They would always fly with a senior officer. But I ran into Patton uh in Germany after my first tour in Vietnam, he was coming in as a brigadier general. I went to the same in-country uh aviation orientation at Swabish Hall with him. And then later, when I served at as a uh Cobra Patoon leader and a and a ground troop commander with the second of the first Cav, 2nd Armored Division, General Patton was the division commander, and uh Brigadier General Cavazos, after whom Fort Hood was renamed, was the assistant division commander. So I I had uh had a couple of interactions with Patton, and I I really uh everybody liked him.

Host 2:40:53

He was we're gonna tell some of those later on. Yeah, okay. There's a great one that had me rolling at dinner last night.

SPEAKER_03 2:40:59

Yeah.

Host 2:40:59

Um, I kind of want to just um I mean, I I don't want to overcover your first tour because I don't want to give too much of the book away. The book is such a phenomenal read. There's no way we'll ever be able to do it any sort of justice on this podcast. I really hope uh that folks take the time, uh especially if you have any interest in learning about Vietnam from a history standpoint or a warfighting standpoint. I mean, Hugh did a ton of research um uh just uh to make that book. It's so excellently uh written. It was one of the few books that I've read in the last five years where I just I couldn't put it down. But I do want to uh talk about kind of some of the impact awards you got. You you I was joking with you uh yesterday that I mean you've got so many awards, you probably look like a Libyan dictator put your uniform on. But uh one of the bronze stars you got was um you got it for something that you did on the ground. Um you were co-pilot of a loach uh on I think it was 7 July 1969. You guys were northwest of Li C. Um and you know, you uh Walla, you tell the story.

SPEAKER_01 2:42:01

I was not really co-pilot. I was actually the aircraft commander, but I was training a new scout pilot. I'm flying in the left seat. I've got a new scout pilot.

Host 2:42:11

Um Yeah, that's my non-aviator.

SPEAKER_01 2:42:14

Uh he's in the right seat, he's flying the airplane, and and what we had decided to do was go out to an area that was uh relatively uh uh pacified. I was not terribly concerned. I had a cobra with me, uh, and we were basically uh out uh teaching him to uh scout. And while he's practicing that which he has been taught, I'm just kind of chilling in the left seat. And off to our right, we were working on a little riverbank, and off to my right, I see a group of Vietnamese, and they're planting rice chutes. And the way they they plant, they get in a formation, almost a square, and they've got these big uh uh uh carrying bags on the back of their their shoulders, and they've got rice chutes, and they reach out and they pull a rice chute out and they stick it down in the muck of the of the rice patty. Rice paddy's got six, eight, ten inches of water in it, and they stick the chute down in the ground in the mud, and that plants the the rice chute. And they were, I don't know, eight or ten uh across in about five uh columns, and they're all moving in unison like a little square through this this rice patty. And I'm I'm watching them, and just something in my mind said something's not right, and I'm I'm watching them closer. And uh I said, give me the aircraft a minute. So I take the controls and I ease over toward those guys and I look down, and there's one guy right in the middle of a bunch of women and kids that are planting rice chutes, and I've got one military-age male right in the middle. And as as they're moving, they're all moving in one, they're paying me no attention whatsoever. They're moving in one direction. And this guy kept looking over his shoulder and he's looking at me. Very unusual. And as they're moving in one direction, he's trying to go kind of uh at an angle away from the group, but he's still in the middle of them, but he's not going the same way they're going. He's over, he's in over to the side. And I told my partner, I said, nah, this isn't right. So I call a cobra. I said, see if we've got a unit in the vicinity, come over and grab this guy. I said, I got a bad guy down here. I know he's a bad guy. Um I don't see a weapon, but we need to grab this guy. And the cobra reaches out. Uh, there's an Arvin unit maybe uh some distance away that could have somebody come grab him. And he calls me back and he said, No, I can't get anybody, I don't have anybody that can grab him. So I said, Okay, I'm gonna grab him. And the cobra says, uh, yeah, but let's let's talk about that. And I said, No, I grab him. I'm on land and and uh uh my partner can fly the airplane, I'll grab him, I'll put him in the backseat with me, and we'll fly him somewhere to somebody. And the cobra was not uh enthralled about that, but it seemed like a good thing to me. I uh it seemed reasonable, and so we landed about oh, I don't know, 20, 30 yards away from this group. The group totally ignored me. He comes up and he's looking at me, and I get out of the aircraft uh with an M-16, and I go around the front, and I'm standing on the rice dike, and I'm pointing at him, you know, you come here, and he's just looking at me. He's uh he's he's being relatively defiant. I point the M-16 at him, I said, You come here. And so uh ultimately he starts to walk toward me, and we walk around the front of the aircraft, and I'm maneuvering him toward the back door, and I hand the M-16 into the loach pilot. And when my attention was diverted, he broke and ran under the tail boom and right out the back of the aircraft uh, just missed the tail. Tail rotor's turning. If he'd have run in the tail rotor, it'd have chopped his head off and torn up the helicopter, but he takes off across the right rice paddy, and I just back up and I point to the scout, go get him. He takes off, goes over there and kind of cuts the guy off. He's running through the rice patty. I'm wearing a uh chicken plate, which is uh body armor, tungsten carbide body armor. Uh I got a bunch of, I got my survival vest, I got my helmet, I'm, you know, flight suit, boots, all that, pistol belt. I step into the rice paddy and I sink almost to my knees, and I'm trying to maneuver in this stuff. And um my student pilot is doing a great job. He's flying circles around this guy and he's hitting him with the skids and knocking him down and ultimately knocked the guy down and lands the uh helicopter with the skids across his back and he can't get up. That allowed me to get over to where the bad guy was, and just as I got to where he was, something out of my periphery, I didn't hear anything, but out of my periphery, the water bounces up beside me, and then I'll turn and look to my right and it bounces up again. That's a bullet hitting right close to where we were. And I looked back over my shoulder toward the toward the riverbank, and there were obviously some bad guys in the woods that were now shooting at us. And uh so so I uh we picked the aircraft up and move it over, and I reached down and pull him out, and and uh I clocked him just as hard as I could, and his eyes roll back, and I throw him in the backseat of the aircraft. I jump in the back and plug my helmet in real quick in the in the uh uh the door gunner's uh uh plug that's in the back seat, and I tell a cobra above me, I said, Hey, there's bad guys on the river. Hit that, hit the river bed. And when the cobras came in and started to hit over there, all those guys planting rice, they took off. They're headed for the village. Um but we flew down the road to an Arvin Army of the Republic of Vietnam base, and and we got out, and I dragged in this guy's smells like swamp water. And uh I turned him over to the Arvins, and and none of them spoke English, and I don't speak Vietnamese, so I just give him this guy, and we get back to base after a while, and then later on, the ops officer gets a hold of me and says, you know, that was a North Vietnamese major. He was a tax collector, and he was out arranging to collect taxes with these people when you guys jumped him, and he integrated with this group of uh rice planters. And uh uh as a result of that, they g they gave me a bronze star for valor in ground combat. I I didn't do a lot of ground combat, um to to be honest with you. All I did was wade in the mud and hit a guy in the head. But um I I did get a little consternation when that when that award came to put it through, General Malloy uh pinned that on me. What did he tell you? Well, he he basically said uh I don't essentially what he said was I don't need my scout platoon leader running around rice patties capturing guys at pistol point. And I wanted to say, sir, I it I didn't have a pistol, I had a rifle. But I I uh I chose not to correct the commanding general. And I said, no, sir, I uh I'll try not to do that again. Uh Malloy was a great division commander. I I uh uh I really thought a lot of him. He was a terrific guy. And and uh General Malloy wrote the foreword to low level hell. I was able to contact him uh years after his military service and during the end of mine and and ask him if he would write the foreword to low-level hell, and he was most gracious to do that. But he did, he did enjoin me not to get out of the airplane anymore and go running around on the ground.

Host 2:50:35

What did your what did your uh your trainee that you were training? What did how was that how did he take that?

SPEAKER_01 2:50:41

You know, I I thought he did a great job. He was he was trained in the airplane. He was he was qualified to fly the airplane. He was training as a scout, much, much the way that Bill Jones was training me when I was new. Uh, but he did a terrific job. His airmanship uh to be able to hit a guy with the skids of the aircraft and not tear him in two, and and ultimately when he fell down to land on with a skidge across his legs where he couldn't get up, um, I thought it was pretty savvy flying.

Host 2:51:10

You got a couple medals. There's no way I'm gonna cover all of them, but there's there's a couple that were very unique. You and I were talking yesterday. I know some of them um mean more to you than others, um, and that's you know, that's just kind of who you are. But um you got a silver star, I think, for something that happened on 28 July 1969, uh, where you hovered the the loach directly above an uh enemy positions and placed devastating suppressive minigun fire on an aggressor uh in placements while Finley troops withdrew. Uh you then found out that you know there were four soldiers that were missing. Can you really tell the story of that day? Because this is a very unique story. Um, and and you and I were talking about it for a while.

SPEAKER_01 2:51:50

The 28th July is probably the most to me, it's the most significant mission. Uh the the the the the Silver Star is you know, that's not the big deal to be. The big deal to me is is the the event itself. But um I was again uh uh about to do a training mission for a brand new warrant officer. We had a warrant officer named Jim Bruton, and Bruton was a uh trained 086 pilot who had been with the 82nd Airborne Division, 3rd Brigade, and they were located right next door to us at Fuloy. Jim did something to irritate the aviation brigade or aviation section commander, a major. And the major essentially threw him out of his unit, and and he was sent over to us because he was a loach pilot. He wasn't a scout, he was an ash and trash liaison guy that flew loaches, but they sent him to me because he was a loach guy. And so it was on his first day of training, it was gonna be uh Jim Downing was the crew chief, it was his aircraft, and we were gonna go out and do some training to kind of get him from an ashen trash driver into being a scout pilot. And we're we're literally, I'm in my hooch with Jim, and I'm we're just talking, we're talking philosophy and all that sort of thing. And and uh the day before, uh the same scout pilot who had uh that I had flown with uh that that had captured the NVA major, this is now July, uh that same scout pilot had found uh an NVA um base camp that was a previously occupied base camp that had gone empty, and there were now signs that it was occupied again. So that report went up to division, and division sent down a mission for the next day. They wanted to put the ARPS on the ground to go into that base area to check it and see what kind of activity was was uh being generated there. And so the the the same scout, uh uh uh relatively inexperienced, but uh uh because he was new, was out there in the same area he'd been in the day before, and they put the uh the uh ARP on the ground. The minute the ARPS went on the ground, the Chewhoys, the Kit Carsons, started saying, Oh no, lots of people, lots of people here. They're telling Sergeant Gwen, there's a lot of people in here, we don't need to be going in here. Gwen tells Bob Harris, the platoon leader, uh, we the two hoys don't think we need to go in there. So the the CO is is out there in the command and control and divisions telling him have the ARPs do it. So he said, nope, go ahead. So they they requested, Bob Harris requested to recon by fire as they went in, and that was declined. I don't know why. But again, I'm in the rear, I'm doing something else. And as the platoon moves into the base area, which was heavily occupied by a company plus of NVA regulars, they kind of opened up and let the platoon move in, and then they kind of closed the shoulders around and then hit them with an ambush. The ARPS worked in four squads. They moved in a diamond formation. The 4-1 squad, the 4-3 squad, the 4-2 squad, and the 4-4 squad with the headquarters element, Bob Harris, his RTO, and uh Doc Morgan in the middle. And all of a sudden, they're they're hit from all directions, and um uh one of our soldiers goes down, hit in the head, another soldier's hit in the leg, he goes down. 4-3 squad, commanded by Sergeant Jim Grattan, immediately uh goes to the ground, and they're right in front of a machine gun bunker. Uh Terry Hauk was the 4-3 Alpha, the uh radio operator. He could reach out and touch this bunker that had a machine gun in it, shooting right over the top of his head. The platoon, the the other three squads in the headquarters element pull back a little bit, and there's a huge B-52 crater. And they take uh they take cover in that crater, and they've got a wounded man with a head wound in the base of the crater, and uh uh Harris all of a sudden can't find the 4-3 squad. He's got the other three squads, but he doesn't know where 4-3 is. All of this is going over the radio, and the CQ, the runner in the command bunker, runs over to where I am and he says, uh, uh Lieutenant Mills, the uh ops officer thinks you need to come over and hear this. I told Bruton to, you know, sit tight, uh, read the book, whatever we were doing. And I went over to the command bunker, and I'm sitting there listening, and I'm hearing gunfire. I'm hearing the cobra saying, I can't shoot, you're right in the middle of them. Um I'm hearing the scout pilot going, they're all over the place, they're completely surrounded. It was very, very hectic. And so I told, I told uh John Herkert, who was the the ops officer at the time. My predecessor is one six. I said, John, I'm going up there. And so I just headed back over to the hooch and I grabbed Bruton and said, Get in the airplane, work. Going. I didn't have a minigun. I just had uh it was configured for three people, so they had taken the minigun off. And uh Jim Downing was the crew chief. We got loaded up, we we took off out there. And uh when I arrived, I got on the I came in and went on the tail of the uh the scout that was there, and he's showing me what's going on, and then he departs for fuel. So I'm talking to Bob Harris on the on the radio. We had three radios in the aircraft, UHF, VHF, and two FMs. And I'm talking to Harris on his platoon frequency, and he says, I can't find 4-3. I don't have contact with 4-3, which is Sergeant Grattan. Um I said, okay, so I spread out and started doing circles around where he was. There was bullets going every which way. Uh I'm very fast, I'm doing about 60 knots. And um I'm looking for Sergeant Gratt's squad. And all of a sudden, Downing behind me goes, he's below us, he's below us. And I turned and looked, and I see a glint of purple. And what that was was Sergeant Grattan was laying on his back and he had his identification uh placard. It was a cloth that was orange on one side, purple on one side. They carried him inside their helmet, uh, and they'd used that for identification when the Hueys were coming in to get them. And I made another turnaround, and he's still on his back, but now on top of this purple cloth laying on his shoulder, uh, he had an M16 magazine and he's pointing to it. And it occurred to me very quickly he's out of ammo. He needs bullets. And so I told uh Downing, Spec 4 Downing behind me, I said, uh, grab a couple of bandoliers. We carried three, four, five bandoliers of M16 ammo in the aircraft anyway. And I said, I'm gonna come around and go to a hover, drop, drop your bandoliers to Sergeant Grattan. So we did that, dropped three bandoliers of 20 round magazines. Took off again, came back around another time, and uh he's he's got a frag grenade, and he's pointing to the frag grenade. I said, He he won't Grattan was great with hand grenades. He used to carry all kinds of hand grenades in his jungle fatigue, and everybody'd be shooting machine guns, and Gratt would be throwing hand grenades. So we had a Claymore bag with hand grenades in it, and we dropped those to him. And um then Terry Houck comes back up on the radio. He got his radio going in, and he was 4'3 Alpha, and he said, We got one man wounded. We're right at the base of a machine gun bunker, we're flat on the ground, we can't even raise our heads, that machine gun's directly above us. And I said, Okay, I said, I can't, I can't shoot for fear of hitting you. Uh, but just keep your head down, stay, stay low, and we'll we'll figure out how to get you guys out of here. So Harris comes up on the radio to me again, and he goes, Doc, Roscoe Morgan, our medic, uh he said, Doc says he's got to have blood or we're gonna lose the head wound. Um The guys all carried blood expander, blood kits in their in their rucksack uh gear, and they had gone through all the blood expander uh apparently uh to try to keep our head wound alive. So I told the Cobra, I said, see if you can get Dust off to get in here, and maybe we can maybe we can get Dust off in close enough to get this kid out of there. So Cobra gets a hold of division, division gets a hold of the air evacuation guys, dust-off, uh super, super people, they will go to the edge of the earth to get the wounded out. After a bit, a dust-off shows up, tries to go in and land, and there's no real place they can land. So their second objective is to drop blood expander to uh Doc Morgan. And I told the dust-off pilot, I said, okay, let's do this low. I said, I'll lead you in. You get right behind me, I'll lead you in as I go over the platoon. I'll I'll say mark mark on the radio, and you'll know that's where you need to drop the blood. The minute we started in, and I said mark mark, all I could hear was gunfire behind me. They were shooting the poop out of that dust officer. He didn't even attempt it. He he just kept going straight. And he said, uh he said, I'm gonna go find a fire base and shut down. He said, I can't do it, it's too heavy. Uh and it just occurred to me uh very quickly, I said, Well, you know, I'm I'm saying to myself, I'm quicker than you are, I'm more maneuverable than you are. Uh so I keyed up the bike, I said, land on the road over here to the west. I'm gonna land behind you. My crew chief is gonna come to the aircraft, give him your blood kit. It's a big box with the blood expander in it. I said, give it give uh give my crew chief the blood kit, and we're gonna see if we can't get in there and deliver it. So he lands, I land, and while I'm landed, I tell Bruton, I said, Jimmy, I said, you don't have to be here. There's no real reason. There's not much you can do. I said, it's no foul if you want to go get on that dust off. I said, I don't know what's about to happen, but it ain't gonna be good. Uh I said, I got no beef if you want to get in the dust off. To his credit, he said, no, he said, I'll I'll stay with you. And I said, okay. I said, uh, that's good because you can fly the airplane. If I get hit, you got to get us out of here. Um if you get hit, I'll get you out of here. Whatever works. So Downing gets back in the aircraft and I call Harris again on the radio. I said, okay, I'm inbound. I said, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to come to a hover over the top of you, and Downing's going to just drop the blood and I'll be gone. That's the plan. Should have enough blood expander to last a while. And uh and he says, okay. And as I came around and started to slow down, I trimmed the aircraft completely forward, as far forward as the cyclic trim would go, so that if I got hit, the cyclic would go forward if I let go of it, and the tail would come up and the aircraft would crash forward, not on top of the of the ARPS. And Downing is hanging out of the airplane now. He's not on his M60. He's hanging out of the airplane with this big box of blood expander, and he's using the foot switch on the floor, and he's saying, forward, forward, right, hold it, hold it. And he's going to drop the blood to Morgan. And just as he said, hold it, I'm looking right between my feet. My feet are on the pedals, and there's a, we're about 10, 12 feet off the ground, and there's there's a uh trench line in the base area, and right between my pedals is a North Vietnamese soldier, and he's aimed an AK-47 directly at me. That's all I can see is the muzzle there of the gun aiming toward me. And my first thought was, this is it. This is this is the end. Uh, but he doesn't shoot. And all of a sudden, Downing says, go, go, go. He's dropped the blood to Doc Morgan. And uh so I go, and when I go, as the nose goes forward and the tail comes up, the guy opens up, but all these bullets went in the underside of the aircraft and into the into the tail boom area. We get out of there, uh, ease up to Dao Tiang. That the aircraft was shot up pretty good, and I had warning lights coming on, and so we go to Dao Tiang and we had other aircraft brought forward. But we went through three aircraft that day. And finally, uh I was talking to the troop commander on the air. I said, boss, you gotta we gotta have armor. We're not gonna get these guys out. They had they had inserted a reactionary company early in the fight. They were hit in an ambush and they were pinned down several thousand meters away. Uh so I got a surrounded platoon, I got a uh a dislocated squad, I got several guys wounded, one critical. Um, and so Major Moore gets on the horn and gets a hold of division, and from somewhere uh he he calls and says, Okay, I got armor coming down the road, and this was hours later. He said, get out and uh you get out and and pick up the tanks and bring them in and show them where everybody is. So I reached, I reached down and and flipped up the uh number two FM to the frequency that he gave me for the for the tank guys, and I keyed, and all I got was squelch. It was I had a bullet through the radio, didn't even know it. And so my FM doesn't work. I can't talk to the tanks. The tanks had to know where the guys were, because they can't come in there with canister around, 90 millimeter canister around if you got friendlies. So I'm talking to the cobra on UHF. The Cobra is talking to the tanks on FM, and I'm saying, okay, bring the lead tank in, turn the turret to the left, that big old bunker, you can shoot that. The ARPs are off to the right. So I'm talking on UHF, the Cobra's talking on FM, the tank guy's listening. I'm hovering right over the top of the first tank. Ultimately, that's what cleared, that's what cleared the ambush, the tanks. Uh M48 main battle tanks blowing the roof off of these bunkers. And at the end of the day, when when the tanks had gotten the platoon uh surrounded and covered, uh when I cleared the the landing zone, it was 8.1 hours of uninterrupted flight uh for myself, Bruton and uh and uh and Downing. That was the 28th of July, 69, and sometime in September or so uh of 69, they they gave uh uh Silver Star to Downing, the Silver Star to me, and for reasons I've never understood, they didn't give Bruton didn't get anything. I suspect that uh the the guy who wrote that narrative for the award was Bob Harris, the platoon leader. Um I don't know that today to be a fact because Bob died of Parkinson's disease years ago. He's in Arlington. But he probably didn't know Bruton was even in the airplane. Bruton was a new guy being trained, so he never mentioned him in his narrative. I never knew the narrative had been written. We didn't know people put us in for awards. The awards didn't come till months later. So uh over the years I've I've tried, I've actually sent up uh a correspondence to see if I couldn't get Bruton. Bruton should have gotten the same thing we got. He was there with me, he did exactly what I needed him to do, and and uh but he he never got the award. And he and I talk, he's he's still with us. Tragically, uh Jim Downing was killed on the 6th of November with Joe Vadd. He was he was shot down and and killed, so so we don't have Downing is not with us. Um But that was the that was the 28th of July. That is the the most significant fight I was ever in for the longest period of time. It's not the longest I ever flew in a day, but it's the most concentrated, stressful fight I was ever in because there was so little we could do. We could shoot door gun, but we had to be very sparing with that because uh initially because we didn't know where 4.3 was.

Host 3:09:41

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SPEAKER_01 3:10:20

Yeah, that's uh uh the chapter of the book is called Bad Day for the ARPS. Um as I said before, the ARPS were considered an elite response force. Uh when things had gone terribly wrong in the first division, uh routinely the ARPs were the guys that were the immediate responding policemen. An NVA regiment had hit an American unit just south of a massed area, a terrain feature called the Razorbacks. And they they had hit this unit and they were moving north, and the division inserted the ARPS into a channelized area as a blocking force. The ARPS were a platoon. The retreating enemy force was a regiment. And this regiment, as they're moving north to get away from the responding Americans, all of a sudden we we insert a ground platoon, four M60 machine guns and M16s is what they carried.

Host 3:11:25

Tell our listeners how big a regiment is.

SPEAKER_01 3:11:27

A regiment is is essentially uh uh a battalion or larger. Um the the regiment uh wasn't the Dog Nye Regiment. The Dog Nye Regiment was four companies of North Vietnamese regulars. And these guys are moving north. They had not been terribly torn up by their engagement with the Americans, and sitting right in the middle of their escape route was the aero rifle platoon was inserted to block them. So a platoon comes face to face with a regiment, and uh uh uh Stu Harrell at that point in time had taken command of the of the ARPS. Stu came to us from the 82nd Airborne Division, uh, where he'd spent six months in the field as a platoon leader with the the 82nd, and Bob Harris had gone uh to operations after John Herkert deroast. Um so Harris, the former platoon leader, is now in operations and Harold has the platoon. And uh we were saying, buddy, there's a bunch of people coming your way. Dig in. The ARPs never dug in. And I was telling them on the radio, you you gotta dig in. There's a whole bunch of people coming your way. And when the forces finally met, it was I I don't describe many things as a shit fight, but this was a shit fight of all shit fights. Twenty-eight guys against a regiment, and they were our our guys were dropping. Um, hence the chapter name Bad Day for the Arps. We we we we started having KIAs. Um Rod Willis, my dear friend, uh, was uh was part of that operation. He flew with me. He got a silver star that day, as did uh Ken Stormer, his crew chief, hovering over the top of the ARP, shooting everything they had to try to stop this regimental advance. Um the fight went on for a long time, and and we went through several fuel loads, and in one of the fuel loads, I responded back to Fulloid to uh uh top off with gas and then get right back out there. And the uh the XO, Joe Perkins, came out and said, I'm going with you. And I'm thinking the XO, our administrative number two, all of a sudden wants to get in the back of my loach and go with me, leaving my door gunner on the ground. I was not thrilled with with that. But he was my superior. I was a lieutenant, he was a captain, and I said, Okay, sir, get in. And so off we go with Perkins in the back seat. Truly he felt a responsibility for the ARPS, but truly he was not the right guy at that time to do that. But I took him out. I told him, I said, look, when I said, when I'm gonna show you where the ARPs are, do not shoot the ARPS. Do not shoot unless you're going south and and and and uh you you know what you're shooting at. He was not a combat guy. He had served uh uh only in an administrative capacity. But I don't think Joe Perkins was ready for what he saw. Joe Perkins essentially didn't, I don't think he ever fired around. He he was petrified in the back seat with with what he saw. But the uh the ARPs stood their ground uh and and uh they were essentially overrun and passed through by the Dong Nye Regiment. If you ever if you ever saw the old uh John Wayne movie, the um uh Fort Apache, uh and you got uh Henry Fonda as the as the commander who was kind of a hard-nosed commander, and they tell him don't go into that valley, and yeah, he went in the valley, made John Wayne go to the rear, and and he took his regiment into the valley, and the Apaches were waiting for him, and and at the very end, he's standing there with his pistol, and the Apaches come driving in in large numbers and just override the cavalry troop and kill them all. That's the way it was. Uh that was the bad day for the ARP. Stu Harrell survived, most of his guys survived, but I thought we had lost them all. Um and and Stu got a silver star that day. Bless his heart. You know, the funny funny thing about Stu, the things you remember, Stu hated to wear his helmet. And the entire time he was the art platoon leader, for the most part, he carried his helmet under his arm. He didn't wear it. And every time they would stop, Stu would put his hair his helmet on the ground. And so his camouflaged helmet on the top had a big round brown circle from dirt. He always had it on the ground. And, you know, when you think about all this years later, all I think about is Stu Harrell carrying his helmet all the way through his tour in Vietnam because he didn't like to wear it. Um but that's the worst day the ARPS ever had, and to their credit, they stood their ground. Uh they were overrun. They took massive casualties, but they uh they survived to fight another day.

Host 3:17:12

The last medal I want to talk to you about, um, at least for now, is you said it's your favorite medal. That's your uh distinguished flying cross that you got for 26th April 1969. You were the the pilot of a gunship, but you were also the team leader uh of an aerial insertion. Um and then immediately after the ground elements went in, um it was all chaos. Will you talk to us a little bit about that, Dave?

SPEAKER_01 3:17:35

Yeah, that was uh uh there was a there was an infantry company of the 16th Infantry uh in the uh in an area that the terrain feature was called the onion stem. It was a little valley that uh that moved up into a uh a larger bulbous area that was called the onion. And that little valley below it was called the onion stem. And this infantry company had inserted in there in a vertical clear area, several thousand meters long, and as they moved toward the tree line, they were immediately hit. They were walking right into a base area that was occupied. And it was very similar to 28th July in that the lead element was suddenly detached as the infantry withdrew to regroup. Uh, they had three or four of their guys that were missing, and they couldn't they couldn't contact them. They assumed they were down. Uh, and I was a scramble team. Uh, I was a scout lead in a in a scramble team, and we responded up there, and uh, and of course, the first thing we started to do was to try to find the the guys that they were missing, and they fell back, and I asked the guy on the ground, I said, Hold your fire because I'm gonna be out in front of you. I'll I'll try to find your guys. And we worked and worked and worked. Finally, we found them. Um two had been killed, and one was laying there wounded. And we were able to maneuver the infantry in such a way uh I was able to shoot the cobra behind the enemy uh to give them something to think about as they moved the infantry in uh at an angle to grab those two KIA and the WIA and extract those guys and get them out of there. And at that point in time, we were we were kind of done with it. The infantry would ultimately move into that base area and they remained overnight. That was the end of it as far as far as I was concerned. Well, the next day we were out and we were working way up highway 13. And uh my Cobra gets a call from operations. Uh basically it said, uh, have 1-6 return to base ASAP. And uh I that had never happened to me. Single pilot uh uh uh in a team, detached from the team and go home. I didn't know what the heck was going on, all kinds of things. Went through my mind. But I detached and went back to Fulloy. My Cobra attached to another team and became two cobras over one scout. But I I reported into operations and and uh uh to to uh Harrison I said, Wait, what you got? And he goes, You need to go to Firebase Mahomes. Uh and I said, Why? He goes, I don't know. Division headquarters called uh 16th Infantry's Firebase Mahomes, you got to go there and you got to be there at 11. And I my first thought was, oh shit, I hit somebody. The only reason I could think of that they would uh uh want me up there is is I hit a friendly uh with our fire. I said, Oh, okay. Uh so I jumped back in the aircraft uh with with my crew chief, Jimmy Parker, and we fly to Firebase Mahomes. Well, when I get there, there wasn't anybody, nobody said anything to me. I landed on the little helipad, and I'm standing around and and uh you know waiting for somebody. I ask a couple of guys, you is something going on here? They didn't know. Um so after a little bit, a group of soldiers uh comes out out of their little housing area there, and they start making a formation, a couple of ranks of guys, and um I hear a Huey come in, and the Huey comes in and lands, and it's the assistant division commander for maneuver, General Brigadier General uh Smith. And with him was an 06. I didn't know who he was, but he was wearing sunglasses. I thought that was odd. Um they get out, and the general's aide walks right up to me. I'm standing there like a fish out of water, and he goes, You're Lieutenant Mills. I said, Yeah. And he said, he says, You need to come around here and stand right here. I thought, oh, geez, what is what in the world's about to happen? And I said, What the heck's going on? And and uh he said the unit uh petitioned or or or uh uh demanded of their chain of command to give you an award for getting their guys. And I I'd never even heard of an impact award. This was the next day. Um that unit had gone through their chain of command and gone through division headquarters to get a DFC, Distinguished Flying Cross, uh, which was uh which was awarded the next day, and it was called an Impact Award, and that's the chapter of that book. Um so I stood there and General Smith pinned the DFC on me. Uh, and then I got to meet and talk to you know those guys. It was moving.

Host 3:22:51

It was very moving. Um I can tell even to this day you're impacted. We talked about it last night at dinner. It was it was impactful. You even though I mean you were always I can I can tell even to this day you consider all those people that you flew with, the maintenance guys, the door gunners, the guys on the ground, like you you considered yourself one of all of them, which is just Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:23:13

You know, when when the guys are on the ground, our our job, our responsibility, our contract, if you will, was to protect the guys on the ground. Army uh aviation's motto is above the best. We are above the best, the best of the guys on the ground. And so when I had guys on the ground that were part of a mission I was on, especially the ARPS, every time the ARPs went on the ground and I went in over the top of them, my job was to keep them safe, keep them from being ambushed, keep them informed, keep them supported by fire, whatever I needed to do. But they were my responsibility. If you could see, if you could visualize walking in elephant grass that was over your head, imagine that that's what a point man faces when he's moving through an area. If they're on the ground moving to a target that I've picked out for them to recon on the ground, I can see better in the air looking straight down than they can see forward. So my job, I couldn't see tripwires, things like that, but I could see machine gun positions, I could see bunkers, I could see enemy soldiers. So my responsibility was to keep those guys safe. Uh whether it's my guys or not, and this infantry company was my uh responsibility that day. And I was profoundly moved, I'm profoundly moved as we sit here, um, that they did that. I've never seen another impact award.

Host 3:24:43

Uh and that's for those of you guys that don't know, to get an a silver star for valor uh in one day. I mean it that it was a DFC. Or I'm sorry, uh a DFC, which is even it's one below the Medal of Honor, which could easily get upgraded, and there's a rumor that No, it's the DFC is below the Silver Star. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:25:02

DSC Distinguished Service Cross is right under the Medal of Honor.

Host 3:25:06

But anyway, to get an impact award, it it it it's got to be signed off by a general.

SPEAKER_01 3:25:10

Yeah, that was uh that's my favorite award. I don't I don't care. Um you you don't classify awards, I don't pay much attention to them, but but that award, uh I've still got the three by five card that the uh general's aide read when they presented it. And uh I thought that was really cool. And then to get to meet the guys that the day before I was shooting for, uh I didn't get to see I found out then that two of the guys had passed and and uh one was uh uh one was recovered wounded. Uh but to get to talk to those guys and and and just kind of shoot the shit with guys that lived in the bush, we we lived way better than they did. You know, the the pilots went home to clean sheets and officers' clubs and and uh uh reel-to-reels and and uh ice cold Pepsi Cola and uh and a fan, uh house girls that did our laundry and our you know our cleaning. We we lived pretty dang good. We had a lot more contact than they did. Our our um uh instances of of heavy combat were far greater than the average guy on the ground because of the speed and distance that we moved. But uh they, you know, living in a mud puddle out in the middle of the jungle for 30 days in your uniform literally rots off your back before you get a new one. Those guys lived way harder than we did, and that's why we took such a profound interest in their welfare.

Host 3:26:42

You got multiple proper holes on that uh that tour. August 29th, 1969, AK round up through the cockpit floor, hit inside of your seat armor, ricocheted into your right hip, went through both cheeks of your backside, came out through the floor.

SPEAKER_01 3:26:57

Yeah, if you if you remember Forrest Gump when he said I was shot in the buttocks. Well, I was shot in the buttocks. The uh the round came in between the uh came in right between the the uh rudder pedals, went under my right uh leg, hit the seat armor on my right, ricocheted through the right hip, hit the back plate, ricocheted through the left hip. Um flesh wounds in and out all the way, but gosh dang, that burns. It burns like crazy. That was uh that was very painful. That took a little time to convalesce and to clean up, and it was hard to sit on for when you want to spend all day standing up, you know you've been shot in the butt.

Host 3:27:38

October 7th, 1969, you're hovering over an enemy bunker trying to gas Charlie out. The CS blew back in your face. You took your eyes off the bunker for a fleeting second. What happened?

SPEAKER_01 3:27:48

Yeah, with the with a shot in the leg. Yeah, the um a guy sticks his head out of the bunker. We had thrown a CS grenade in the in the uh bunker to try to smoke a guy out. Um if you if you blow up the bunker and the bunker collapses, you you don't know what's in there. And you're certainly not, in most cases, you're not gonna land and inspect it. Um most pilots wouldn't. Most no, and I'd learned my lesson. I wasn't gonna do that. Uh that would that would happen maybe my third tour a couple of times. But the um the guy sticks his head out and and fires around and and it it goes through my uh my right uh calf. And uh the the impact took my foot out the door. When we flew, we flew with our feet on the rudder pedals and we had an open door. And the impact through the right calf throws my leg out. And when I look down, all I can see is my left leg and my right knee. And my first impression was my God, he shot my leg off. That's when I figured out that my leg was actually outside the aircraft, banging on the side of the aircraft. It was completely numb from the round. But first it was pressure. The pain, the pain was delayed. Um and then all of a sudden I figured out that no, my whole leg is still here. And I reached down and grabbed my pants and pulled my leg back in. It was uh it was essentially non-functional. But the beauty of the 086, there's a bungee on the tail rotor. And if you take your feet off of the pedals of an 086, the the left pedal was come right back toward you. So you can fly a loach with one foot. And uh a significant amount of the time that I flew, I would I would fly with pushing forward and letting off and pushing forward and letting off. And a lot of times I flew with my right foot out the door, just relaxing. Um so it was not a it was not a problem to fly. I flew to an aid station in the field and landed and then uh had to be evacuated from the road.

Host 3:30:00

Did your crew chief come, didn't he come into the front cabin?

SPEAKER_01 3:30:03

Yeah, he climbed over the minigun and got in the front seat with me. Uh I slowed down for him so he could do that. But um we had a couple of instances. Uh Ken Stormer climbed over Rod Willis' minigun and got in the fly uh got in the front seat with him after Rod was shot in the face. Um it actually uh went through his his lip and shot the microphone off of his helmet. And so when he was transmitting it, it was just a gurgling sound. It wasn't really Rod, it was the radio. The bike was shot up. And Stormer thought that Rod was uh closer to death than he was, um and actually climbed out over the minigun and got in the left seat. And again, you can fly from the left seat, and all of our all our scout pilots had a lot of stick time. When we would get up in the morning and go left, uh left to right, uh wherever in the AO we were going, uh, we'd go off and point A to point B, land, refuel, and then mission from there. And a lot of those days, the point A to point B flights, the crew chiefs would fly up front with us because they got to fly their aircraft. I'd sit there, tune up AFVN radio on the automatic direction finder. We could hit the monitor switch and we could listen to uh Vietnam radio on the you know, Good Morning Vietnam, uh Robin Williams, that that stuff. We could listen to music through our headsets if we turned the monitor switch on. And I'd I'd sit there and listen to Eric Burden and the animals and smoke a cigarette and uh Parker's in the front seat flying the airplane. But if you ever got hit and if you're ever in bad trouble, the ability for them to get up there and do that was at least there. It wasn't didn't happen that often, but it was a it was a potential.

Host 3:31:55

Well, he jumped in your front seat because you were bleeding out. I'm pretty sure he was trying to stop you from bleeding. Um man, we covered a lot a lot of ground on your on your first tour. I mean, it's hard to believe like the stories you just told all happen in one year. We we didn't even cover all of them. I don't know that it's possible. Is there anything else from that first tour um that really sits with you that that I missed or I didn't ask?

SPEAKER_01 3:32:20

You know, the uh the the the thing that really sits with me, the the loss of uh the loss of Jim Amy and uh Jimmy Slater was a real profound thing to me. Uh can you tell us what happened? Yeah, we were we were up on Thunder Road, end of the day. Uh it was it was two hunter killer teams that had joined together. We were coming back to base. It was dusk. Um I'm flying at about 500 feet, lights off. Jim Amy, Dark Horse 1-4, was flying on my wing, but behind me. Mike Woods was my Cobra pilot. He was above me at about 1,500 feet, and I don't remember who Amy's um Cobra was. But I had a I had a new guy in the unit named Dwight Cheek. Cheek was flying with me. We had no minigun, it was it was a door gunner. Uh I was flying the aircraft, and Cheek was in the left seat. He had come through the instructor pilot's course on the 086, so he was an experienced instructor pilot. He was a new scout. So Dwight's flying with me, and we're we're headed back to base. And just about the time we got astride uh lyque along Highway 13, uh, Mike Woods says to me, I'm having a hard time seeing you flip your lights on. That's Roger. So we we had always disconnected the lower beacon on the aircraft. They wouldn't light up anyway. But my possession lights and my upper anti-collision light, I flipped a switch, these things came on, and now the Cobra could see me. And uh then I heard him say, uh one four, flip your lights on. 1-4, flip your lights on. I keyed up, I said, Where are you, 1-4? No answer. I did an immediate right-hand turn, I'm looking, he's gone. We don't know where he is. Uh a scout ship had disappeared, completely disappeared. So I I I told Mike uh uh Woods, uh my gun lead, I said, I don't see him. You see him? He said, No. So I start flying orbits and I'm going lower, and all of a sudden I see a smoke trail coming up out of the trees uh several hundred yards over uh to the southeast. And when I when I headed over there, the first thing I noticed it wasn't smoke, it was CS. I flew right through the middle of it and I got a big whiff of the CS, and I said, Oh heck, what's that? And I looked down, and and uh as I looked down into the jungle, it's now getting really dark. I could see the 086, it was down, it was on its right side. Um it the blades were all gone, uh, and for some reason had gone down. And I suspected that what happened, one of the CS grenades had gone off, and that's the smoke that I could see. As luck would have it, the 2nd Squadron, 11th ACR, had a troop just up the road at Thunder 3, and Mike Woods was able to get a hold of them and say, hey, we got a downed aircraft about 600 yards south on the highway. Can you get somebody over there? So they busted out some Sheridans and APCs, came out of the fire base and came down the highway, and they started busting in the jungle. The tanks go first, bust the jungle, and they got ACAVs coming behind them. And they get over where they are, and I'm flying circles around. I'm up a little bit because it's getting dark. And um the guys come up on the radio and they said, This engine's running. This aircraft's running, but it doesn't have any blades on it, and the guys are inside and we don't know how to turn the engine off. So I said uh to the guy on the ground, I said, Bust me a landing zone. Do a neutral steer with the Sheridan, tear down some jungle big enough where I can land, and I'll get out. Um so I told Dwight, I said, here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna I'm gonna go down and get out. Um you just hold it. He's good pilot, good loach pilot. And basically they they they cleared a little landing zone uh with the with the tank tracks and they landed on this brush. It was really unstable, but Dwight's holding it. I jump out, get over to where the aircraft is, and the first thing I do is try to figure out how to cut the engine off. The left engine door is gone, the aircraft's up on its side, and the turbine is just screaming. And I reach into the fuel control that has the uh switch that actually, it's kind of like the accelerator pedal, and I pull it down and the engine stops. Uh and then I reach into the cockpit and find the fuel cutoff, and I cut the fuel cutoff. The aircraft is is up on its side. I reach into the back where Jimmy Slater was, the crew chief, and he's hanging upside down in his straps, and I go for a pulse. I got nothing. I I think Jimmy's dead. Um, I get up in the front where Jim Amy, the pilot, is, and I I've got to climb up in the these 11th calf guys are helping me push the airplane, and then I kind of uh tunnel up inside it, and I same thing on Amy, and I got a pulse. Amy's alive. So I I I pop the seatbelt. He comes down and I asked these guys, I said, grab him. I said, I gotta move this loach. So I get back to the loach and I tell I tell uh Cheek, I said, Hey, tell Woods, get us a dust-off in here. Uh Amy's alive, Slater's dead, uh, but get me a dust-off. But to get in here, you're gonna have to move. And I said, I want you to go up and get on Woods' tail and stay with him. I'll be here, I'll go with the dust-off. Uh, but you you take off, you get up on the gunship's tail and do whatever they tell you to do. So after a bit, um they they call for dust off, and actually we got a first calve dust-off call sign was was Medevac. And the first calf came in and and uh uh hovered a Huey down in the hole, and we put Amy aboard, we put Slater aboard, I climbed aboard and took off and just jumped over the highway to Lycay to the second surge. And um Amy died on the table. Um but Woods tells uh Cheek, he's still circling the guys on the ground to kind of cover them a little bit. Um he tells Cheek, you see it, the lights off in the distance, that's Foo Lloyd. Um go go over there and and and just go back to base and shut the bird down. And so Dwight says, okay, and and off he goes. Um the Huey from our command element finally came up to the to the second surge to pick me up, but Slater had delivered KIA and Amy died on the table. Um So I went back out on the pad and waited for the Huey to come pick me up, and when they did, took me back to Fulloy and Mike Woods met me on the flight line, and I said, uh, where's treat horse cheek? And he says, I don't know. He's we can't find him. We started looking and looking and looking. Finally called the tower and said, Did did uh uh uh 16's aircraft come back in? They go, No, we haven't had any loaches come back in. Frickin' Cheek's lost, he's gone. Come to find out, Dwight Cheek, and uh brand new in our unit, is looking off into the distance, and they say, You see those lights? That's Fulloi. Well, yeah, that's Fuloy, but these lights are uh are uh Song Bay, and he's looking at a different area, and he flies to the Song Bay first cav uh flight detachment and enters the pattern on Fulloi's frequency. They can't even talk to him because he's on a different frequency. Nobody answers him, so he just lands and uh ultimately they won't let him take off. He he spends the night with the first cav division, flies back the next day. But it took a little bit before they called us and told us that Chica's at Song Bay, he's not at Fuloy, but he's okay. Who was Amy to you? Amy Amy Jim Amy was a was a great guy. He was he was from St. Louis, Missouri. I uh his brother is is a is a friend of mine. Uh we've maintained a relationship over the years. Um his brother comes to Vietnam Helicopter Pilots and uh comes to our reunions. But Amy, Amy to me was my first combat loss. First friend of mine that I ever lost. And uh when I got back to base, Bob Davis, one of my roommate, along with Rod Willis. Uh Rod wasn't there yet in June, but Bob Davis meets me on the flight line and says, How's Amy? And I said, Amy's dead. Bob looked at me, I I just I I crushed him. He he didn't expect that. I said, We lost Slater too. And of course the guys at the rear didn't know any of this had gone on until we got back. But he was my first loss, uh, Amy and Slater together. Jimmy was from Indianola, Iowa, and Slater was or or crushing, uh Jim Amy was from from Missouri. Um But, you know, we would go on to lose Bill Jones, badly burned, we'd lose Potter, we'd lose Vad, we'd lose Downing. Uh, but but Jim was my first loss. Jim was the first reality that I had that uh guys you know can could go down. Um and it it was painful. It's still painful. Um the the picture I have a picture of Jim Amy, uh which is which is uh it's kind of a uh it's kind of an odd way to remember Jim, but he's walking down the unit street toward the officers club, he's wearing fatigue pants and a green t-shirt, and he's looking back over his shoulder. And when you look at the picture, he's walking away from you. And and I've never forgotten that picture. I think about it a lot, and it's it's uh into the afterlife is kind of the way it it looks a little bit. But uh it it brings you into the realization that that uh life is fleeting. Um the the guys that were scout pilots were young, they were aggressive, they were volunteers. We considered ourselves to be invisible and bulletproof. Um we thought we could fly a whole lot better than sometimes we could. Um but that's why young men go to war. You know, if I if if I today had to go and do what I did then, I I don't know that I would. Um I I wouldn't fly the way and the missions I flew then if I had a wife. I wouldn't put my wife through that. When you're 19 or 20, hold my beer, you know. Uh and that's the way the scouts flew. We didn't have any old scouts, they were all young scouts. And uh and I think the the uh the realization that your your life was in the balance was not foremost in your mind. If it is, you make mistakes, you fly cautiously. Uh I think you you hasten your own demise when you worry about it. You're you're better off when it's an afterthought.

Host 3:44:22

Aaron Powell How were combat losses handled at the unit level? I mean, I know the war didn't stop and it kept go go on.

SPEAKER_01 3:44:29

Like we we had memorial ceremonies. Uh we did the the typical ceremonies. We had a unit chapel. Um we would we would do the the the spit shine boots with the up uh upturned rifle with the helmet on top. We would do these these ceremonies uh uh whether we lost ARPS or whether we lost um scouts, or in the rare instance, we we didn't lose many Huey guys. We we had one Huey crash uh where lead aircraft into the LZ landed on a trip mine with a tilt rod uh detonator, and it it uh severely injured uh Jim Casey, the platoon leader, and and uh killed the the crew chief in the lead Huey. He was blown out of the aircraft. But um, you know, to me, the the the guys when I lost my own scouts, these were guys I lived with, uh I palled with. Um we were all tight, all the scouts were were tight. You have to understand the concept of the of the outcast and how they came to be. And I think that's important. The when the troop came with the division to Vietnam in 1965, all they had was B model Hueys. They didn't have any scouts, they didn't have any cobras, cobra hadn't even been introduced or developed yet. So when they came to Vietnam, they had two, essentially two platoons. They had a lift platoon of B-models called the Rodeo Clowns, and they had a platoon of gunships uh called the Mustangs. And about 1968, well, back up a little bit. In 66 or 67, uh they said, you know, we need a dimension to be able to get low and slow and uh seek out the enemy. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna bring together all these H-13 Dimash helicopter. Uh, we're gonna grab those from various assets around the country, and we're gonna give you a scout platoon. So the scout guys didn't come over from Fort Riley. They were they were infused from different units all over Vietnam. Uh and, you know, they uh they they grabbed a bunch of H-13s and a bunch of pilots and they stuck them in the unit. And because they weren't original Dark Horse, they didn't deploy with the troop and the squadron. Uh they were sitting around one night at the club, and one of the guys uh uh allegedly said, We're nothing but a bunch of freaking outcasts. He didn't say freaking. But but uh that's where the name came from. And they said, Wow, that's a great name. We'll call ourselves the outcasts. So we had we had the Mustangs, we had the Clowns, and we had the Outcasts. In mid-69, Wayne McAdoo is the platoon leader for the for the clowns, didn't like that name. He didn't like these guys being called clowns. So they changed the platoon name in in uh uh July of 69 to the Four Horsemen. And they became the Mustangs, the Four Horsemen, and the Outcasts. And, you know, to today the the Outcast patch, um, this one is the most copied replica patch of the of the Vietnam aviation period. You'll see them all over eBay. They're all fakes. I can spot a real one in a heartbeat. And uh and the the patch we used uh third tour uh when when uh the troop went to the Delta and the division went home. Um slight differences in the way that that patch looks, but it's only ten guys, ten guys at a time, and ten crew chiefs and ten aircraft, and yet they were there from essentially 66 to 72. And the last uh air cav unit to depart Vietnam at the end of the war was Dark Horse. And uh the outcasts, uh the last guys uh killed in in our uh experience there were outcast scouts.

Host 3:48:49

Major General Albu Albert Malloy called you the most courageous small unit leader in the division with the highest kill ratio of any combat unit in the Big Red One. Has the way that quote sits with you changed in 56 years? He wrote your forward to low-level high.

SPEAKER_01 3:49:03

I was I was so profoundly honored to have General Malloy write that. That those are his words. He came up with that. I just said, sir, here's my book. Uh this is the manuscript form, if you would please. Uh he he penned all the awards on me when I was there, and so he knew me. Uh he also chewed my ass a couple of times about being too aggressive, but um those were his words. He came up with that, and I'm so profoundly honored that he he thought that. The the outcasts were there to protect the guys on the ground. And and uh the kill ratio had a lot to do with the missions that we were given to either protect or to save soldiers on the ground. The killing part was part of it. To get to what we needed to do, sometimes we had to do that. But I I put a lot more store in any commendation I got for saving people rather than just killing people. Um I didn't keep score, I couldn't tell you. I don't know how many. Um, it's a lot, but I didn't keep score. Some guys did. Uh Rod Willis kept score. He wrote it on the side of his airplane. The the killing part didn't mean two wits to me, but I can tell you every guy we saved. Um, whether it was a downed crewman. We saved a Vietnamese pilot one time. This little guy was flying a sky raider and got hit and landed out in the middle of the uh of the Iron Triangle in a marsh um by himself, and he's sitting on top of a sky raider, and uh they couldn't figure out how to get to him because he was literally half submerged in the water. And we we flew out there in the loach and landed literally on his left wing. And and I looked at him, I said, Come on, he came over and got in the in the front seat with me. And uh I said, You want to ride? Of course, all the VNF pilots spoke English. They were trained in the United States. Uh, but he was real happy to get a ride home. And and uh things like that mean a lot to me. You know, you you you save a guy to fight another day, or you prevent a guy from dying. That's that's what it's all about. That's that's the fun part.

Host 3:51:26

You just had some tenacious people in your unit. I mean, you you just brought up Rod Willis, one of the stories I I forgot. Um, I mean, Rod Willis was shot down three times in one day on the same L one LZ. We had three aircraft parked out there. Um Yeah, it was it was I think he was with Ken Stormer. Yeah. Yeah, I mean he got shot down, came back again.

SPEAKER_01 3:51:48

Bob Davis, Bob Davis gets on the air that day and makes a comment. He says, Leave him down there, we're running out of aircraft. Uh uh Rod uh Rod was my dear Rod was my roommate. I got I gotta tell you the important the important thing to me is the day I met Rod Willis, very, very dear to me. I was out flying. This is July of '69. I come back to the unit and I walk into my hooch with my chicken plate and my helmet. And I walk through the little beaded curtain we had that split our hooch in half. And um there's a guy sitting on my bunk, and he's reading a Playboy magazine. He's eating a chocolate chip cookie. And I said, hello. And he goes, hi. I said, uh, who are you? And he goes, I'm Lieutenant Willis. I'm a new scout pilot. I'm a replacement. I said, Well, hello, I'm your platoon leader, and you're sitting on my bunk. And he goes, Oh, I'm sorry. He goes, Well, then this is your Playboy magazine because it was in this box, and this is your cookie. He had opened a box from my mother, which had a Playboy magazine and a box of homemade cookies, and he was sitting there eating one of my cookies and putting his greasy fingers on my Playboy magazine. Um, and that's how I met Rod Willis, and we we flew the rest of that tour together. Uh, he was from Del Rio, Texas, son of a career uh chief master sergeant for the Air Force. Um terrific scout pilot, very aggressive, a leadership challenge to a petalier uh to get him to. Sounds like it. Yeah, Rod's a character. Rod's always been a character. But you need guys like that. And uh you do need guys like that. Rod never, he didn't like to get a haircut. He's very proud of his long flowing hair. I wrote it in OER one time. Uh, you know, when you're a young officer and you're writing OERs, you're very full of yourself and you you want to do it the way you're supposed to. And I wrote in there that he was a hair sooth individual. I it took a lot of time to figure out what that word meant. No idea what that means. It means you got a lot of hair. So uh ultimately he would he would go back to uh Savannah to Hunter Army Airfield, and he was there when I lost my first wife. And I basically called him and said, Hey, I'm coming to Savannah to go to Cobra School. I need to I need to sleep on your couch for six weeks. And he goes, Yeah, come on. And once I left uh Cobra School for the go back to my second tour, um six months later, Rod volunteered and came back, and we wound up in Dark Horse again together, and we're roommates again together. And um then he later wound up coming to Fort Leavenworth when I was the deputy chief of staff there and um retired, uh uh worked in the computer trade there for a long time, and then uh tragically, Rod Rod has been taken by Alzheimer's. He's in the Missouri Veterans Home now, and I go and see him several times a month, but he's checked out. Um uh he's he's safe and secure and well cared for, but he's checked out of the net. And um uh that's tough. I mean, this is a guy. This to this guy, a a long-term relationship was a three-day weekend. And that was his entire life was like that. And uh stories that I cannot even tell on this podcast were were are are are well known with with Rod, but uh uh callsign was rock. They called him Rock. Uh, but he was a terrific guy. He uh we have saved each other several times over our career. I he uh he picked me up on second tour when I was down uh in the Plain of Reeds, and uh on the first tour, he uh he goes down with Stormer one day, gets his engine shot out, and I'm flying around, and and uh the the ARPs were delayed and delayed, and finally I said, I'm gonna go get him. I'm uh I don't want to leave him down there. So I went in and flared to land, and this piece of uh concertina wire lifts up out of the ground with my rotor wash like a snake, like a cobra snake coming up, and just with a whip, it hits my rotor blades and wraps around the head. I'm now down. So I downed myself with concertina wire trying to pick up Rod. And he starts giving me a line of crap about how can I rescue him if I'm crashing on top of him. And that's just the way he was. And and uh terrific guy, terrific soldier, terrific career, retired as a lieutenant colonel at Fort Leavenworth, and and uh uh clearly the closest friend I've ever had.

Host 3:57:01

You know, I I think a lot of people, young and old, that haven't served in a in a in a combat zone really don't understand how much you feel life. It's crazy for me to listen to you tell your stories with such detail so many years later. But it's obviously because those memories are so cemented because you live life at a hundred miles an hour, but at an extremely slow pace because death is forever present. And so, do you think that you remember a lot of those things just because you you felt it in so many different times? And it just sounds like you're with such great human beings. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:57:40

You know, the the the guys that I served with remain my dear friends to I you know I talked to some of them last night when I was here. Um we get together every year. Dark Horse tends not to go to the Vietnam Helicopter Pilot reunions. We tend to go to the Vietnam Crew Members Association, which are the crew chiefs. Yeah. The reason we go is that VHPA will not allow our door gunners or our ARPS to go to the VHPA reunion. So I'm why would I want to go to a request that the guys that run VHPA are friends of mine, and we'll we'll just say that that's their decision. However, um uh why would I want to go to a reunion with hundreds of helicopter pilots I don't know versus go to a reunion with the guys I actually fought with? So Dark Horse routinely gets a room at the crew members association reunion, uh, and our Cobra pilots and our Huey guys and our scouts and our scout crew chiefs and our ARPs come. We're dwindling in numbers. We're uh, you know, uh half of my scouts are gone now. Um crew chiefs, too. I've lost crew chiefs and uh just lost Tim Kohlberg, one of my third tour uh guys. Uh uh three of those scout pilots for my third tour are now gone, and and uh half of my scouts that survived Vietnam are now gone. Uh I was the youngest of the bunch, and I'm 78. Um when when uh when you consider that most of the scouts were a year or two years older than me, even as warrant officers, I was 20, most of them were 22, 23. Wes Reesh was older, Joe Vad was older, and and those guys are all gone. Our numbers are dwindling, and I I uh the time I get to spend with them is precious to me. And uh we just lost John Loftus this Saturday, uh Cobra pilot 69, terrific guy. Um flew with the World Helicopter team for the United States Army and and tripped in the lavatory of his RV and broke his neck in West Virginia this last Saturday and and uh lost uh brain function and they had to disconnect life support. Um about once a quarter we lose a guy. And uh, you know, when there's only 10 guys or 20 Cobra pilots with you in 69, and we've already lost half of them, about every quarter we lose one. And um so it's you know, it's it's uh reality is fleeting. Uh, we're all gonna go sooner or later.

Host 4:00:35

And you and I were talking about that yesterday on the car. Um well, as we end your your your first tour, um, let's take a quick break and then we'll kind of pick up your life after that. That's okay. Coming back from the break, and you're kind of, you know, we just ended your first tour in Vietnam. What was it like to come home back to America? But also, you know, you're away from all the dudes you just spent a good portion of your life with.

SPEAKER_01 4:00:58

My departure was a little faster than I anticipated. Uh the last couple of weeks, um uh instead of flying scouts, I was flying command and control with the with the Huey. And I came back in on the 21st of December. My D-Roast was one January. Okay, what is D-Ros? Date estimated to return from overseas. So that was your one-year tour in Vietnam? That's the one-year tour. So I was I was expecting to go back on the 1st of January. For the last couple of weeks, the boss was was letting me fly command and control and run the uh air mission commander. And so I got back from a mission on the 21st of December. The the operations kid came running up to me and goes, Hey, uh uh Captain Mills, I had made captain on the 15th of December. So a week before I had become a new captain. Uh one year as a second lieutenant, one year as a first lieutenant, then you're a captain. He said, Hey, Captain Mills, uh, you you just got a drop. And I said, What's a drop? And he goes, Well, you're going home early. You got a Christmas drop. So they gave me essentially a week early to be able to go home for Christmas. So I had to, quick like a bunny rabbit, go get my stuff packed. And they gave me a set of orders, uh, you know, catch a flight. My scouts flew me down to to uh tonsanut. You go through the out processing, it takes a day or so. And then all of a sudden you're on an airplane, and 20 hours later, you're in San Francisco. And when uh I'm gonna back up a little bit to June or so of 69. My mother and dad had moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas. Dad was a dean with the University of Arkansas, having been superintendent in Hot Springs. And my old girlfriend from junior high school, Margaret Wilson, uh, had moved away in high school. At the end of the ninth grade, her dad, who worked for Chevrolet, uh, moved over to Germantown, Tennessee, outside of Memphis. And so we kind of uh went our separate ways. And in June of 69, my mother happened to be back in Hot Springs for something. I don't know why she was there. Uh, and Margaret Wilson happened to be in Hot Springs visiting her grandmother, who lived in Hot Springs. And they ran into each other at the Kroger store, just happenstance. She grew up one street over from me, first street, we lived on second. And so she runs into my mother and she goes, you know, where's Hugh? How's he doing? And mother goes, Well, he's in the army, he's in Vietnam. And uh she said, Oh gosh, would it be okay to write him? And mother said, sure, gave her my mailing address, and all of a sudden, totally unburnised to me, I get a letter from Margaret Wilson, and she's living in Germantown, she's going. To school at Lambeth University in Jackson, Tennessee. So she starts writing. She had been a cheerleader in the ninth grade, and we were, you know, junior high romance thing.

Host 4:04:20

I feel like we were just talking about that on break.

SPEAKER_01 4:04:22

Yeah, we were. And uh and so she starts writing, and that's June, and she writes me religiously through the remainder of my tour, sends a couple of pictures, and she's changed. She's not a junior high girl anymore. And and so my plan was to go home, and and and I told her, I said, I'll do Christmas with my parents, and then I'll come to Hot Springs. You go to your grandmother's and I'll I'll I'll meet you there, and we can get back to you, we can get to know each other again. And and she wanted to do that. So that that's exactly what happened. Um I did Christmas. You know, the hard thing about Vietnam is you go from rocket attacks and daily combat to now you're in a room in Fayetteville, Arkansas, sleeping in a bed and there's no noise.

Host 4:05:16

Nobody understands what you just went through.

SPEAKER_01 4:05:18

No. No, they they didn't. Uh we slept through outgoing artillery fire every night, 105 battery. We didn't bother us a bit. It's going out. We're sleeping. Rockets coming in. Um, you had two options go get in the bunker or just continue to sleep. Most of us just continue to sleep. Um, but I I get home, I do, I do Christmas, and and I go to uh to uh Hot Springs, and I've got a month, I've got 30 days of leave. And uh so I got home, I was due to go out on the 21st of January uh to Germany. Remember, I'm a I'm an armor aviator, and my initial set of orders coming out of Vietnam were to go to Fort Rucker and be a flight instructor. I got those orders in like November of 69, and I didn't want to do that. I thought that's not really a good career move. So I wrote Armor Branch and I said, hey, uh, let me go to Europe. Let me get a chance to get a tank command. Because a well-rounded army officer of that time would have both ground experience and air experience. This is before aviation branch existed.

Host 4:06:33

And this is what you and I were talking. This was so crazy for me to understand because you know, at the beginning of the story, we talked about how you, you know, you're an armor officer, but you were also the air cav is is part of, you know, the Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:06:45

So my my first major uh uh uh assignment, three years, was uh was aviation. You know, I'm I'm off in Vietnam, I'm in flight school and all that sort of thing. So Armor Branch wrote me a uh a quick letter back and they said, good plan, not enough time to get you assigned to a unit, but we'll send you unassigned, and I'm sure that you will find your way into a command.

Host 4:07:09

Trevor Burrus, Jr. And I think you just hit it, but there was no aviation. Like aviation's a whole career path, but there was no Army aviation. There was no separate branch.

SPEAKER_01 4:07:16

Uh you were an infantry, artillery, uh transportation, MI, whatever you were, armor. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: What about the warrant officers? Different for warrant officers. Warrant officers are professional pilots. That's what they do. Uh W-1 through W-4 at the time, now we have W 5, but W1 through W-4 was the rank structure, and all they did was fly. Commissioned officers, if all you did was fly, you didn't last long. The reductions in force, which came after the end of the Vietnam War, grabbed all of those guys and they're gone. I had gotten to the point where I really liked the Army and I wanted to stay, but two things, uh, two things were in play here. I didn't have a degree. I had two years of college, I didn't have a degree, and uh all I'd done is fly. So I figured if I can go to Germany and get a tank command, that would be good career-wise. So Branch agreed, and Branch said, okay, we'll give you a set of orders. You're you're going to Germany, and they'll assign you once you get to Fifth Corps or VII Corps, wherever you go. So while I was, while I was home, uh in Hot Springs, I stayed with my buddy Ned Schug, who was a high school friend. He had a lake house out on Lake Hamilton, and I stayed out there. And um Margaret came from from Memphis and she was there for a week, and we had a whirlwind uh romance, and uh and I proposed. Uh that quick, huh? I was sober. Uh I didn't have a drop of alcohol. Yes, when you know, you know, huh? I I knew, and and honestly, she knew. And um and she accepted, and so I was gonna go off to Germany and come back in June of uh 70. We would get married and then go back to Germany. So I get to Germany and I'm assigned to the 1st Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, Rock of the Marne. And um I'm the assistant S3. And every unit I went to, from checking into Germany to getting to the 1st Brigade, they'd look at my orders and they'd go, Oh, we we thought you were going to be a first lieutenant. You know, yeah, two weeks ago I was. Now I'm a captain. Um but here I am in Germany. I spent about uh three weeks or so in the uh S3 division, and then I went off to Grafenvere to be a lane grader on tank gunnery. Uh I'm I'm a I'm a new armor captain. I'm at tank gunnery for the brigade, and I'm grading uh uh tank gunnery, and then at night I'm reading the gunnery scores for the brigade commander and the battalion commanders. So I'm in a I'm in a briefing one night and I'm briefing the scores, and I briefed this score for B Company 264 armor. They had 17 tanks and they'd only caught they only qualified like seven or eight. It was not good. That was not a good show. And the brigade commander, John Wickham, who later would be Chief of Staff of the Army, uh turns to the battalion commander, Bob Mooney, and says, What's the problem with B Company? And Mooney says, Well, we got a young first lieutenant command in the company, and he's a reservist, and he's not uh the best suited, and I'm probably gonna have to relieve him of his command. And Mooney says to Colonel Wickham, he says, You don't happen to have a spare armor officer around, do you? And I'm standing on the podium uh doing this briefing, and I just I said, sir, I'm available. I blurted it out. And the brigade commander in 06 and the battalion commander in 05 both turn and look at me, and Colonel Wickham, wonderful guy, uh turns to Mooney and goes, If you want Mills, you can have him. And so that night I actually rode back to the B-264 compound at Graffenvere in the back of Colonel Mooney's Jeep. And I just moved my stuff from one area to the other and ultimately would take command of B Company 264. Uh that lieutenant was relieved of his command, and he was happy he didn't want to be there. And here I am now, I'm a I'm an aviator, and my armor experience is really OCS. It's what I'd done at the armor school. Great NCOs, had great NCOs in that particular unit. The first sergeant uh one day early in the command, he said, he said, I need you to go down to the motor pool and supervise motor maintenance. And he reached in his desk and he pulled out a stack of three by five cards. Go to the tank, open the left sponsor, this is the filter unit, check items number one, two, three. Uh and he'd give me these cards to tell me how to inspect maintenance on tanks without letting all the subordinates know that I didn't know shit from Shinola about tanks. But I had great NCOs. So we we uh we ultimately get through tank gunnery, we get everybody qualified, and we're back at Schweinfurt, wonderful place, Con Barracks. And uh I go home in in June, we get married, and then come right back to Germany. And so, you know, the days in Germany, Germany in the 70s was different than the Army is now. Saturday was a work day. Uh we would work, we was the only day off was Sunday, and usually Saturdays we'd leave about four. But every other day in a tank company, in a in a tank uh battalion, uh uh six days a week.

Host 4:13:19

And the 70s were definitely the Cold War, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:13:22

Yeah, our mission, our mission was border patrol against East Germany. We were arrayed against the Fold-de-Gap. Uh we had M60 A1 main battle tanks, 105mm main gun. Um we had a GDP general defense plan rollout where we would go uh uh uh in the middle of the full de gap if the Russians came as the great horde. And we were we were doing fine. And one night in in early October, Margaret was uh was awakened in a great deal of pain, uh severe pain, and I happened to have made a contact while I was at Grafenvere with the S3 section with the division surgeon who had also been at Grafenvere, and his name was Dr. Forrest Tennant. And I happened to know him. He was he was down at Kitchigan. So I called him in the middle of the night, and I said, Dr. Tennant, I said, I don't know what's going on. My wife's in a lot of pain. He goes, put her in the car, bring her to Kitchigan, bring her to me. So we took her down there. She spent the whole night in the hospital. I slept in the lobby, and and he came to me the next day and he says, Your wife has ovarian cancer. Um he says, it's not good. You gotta go. We got to get you back to the state.

Host 4:14:42

How long had you guys been in Germany?

SPEAKER_01 4:14:44

We had well, June. June, July, August, September, October, so five months.

Host 4:14:51

Um she had been with you the whole five months?

SPEAKER_01 4:14:53

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Um We lived in the little town of Brebersdorf, which was just outside of Schweinfurt. We had the top floor of a German house, very typical of the time they would build a house two-story, rent the top story to an American family, and then over the period of time that would pay for the uh upgrade of the house. But very quickly they decided to send us to uh Brook Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, and she was going to be a patient there, and they didn't know what to do with me. So um Armor Branch basically just sent me there and they assigned me to the Fourth Recruiting District, which had a headquarters at Fort Sam Houston, and they made me a recruiting officer, a district operations recruiting officer. But the understanding was that I had all the time that I really needed to be at the hospital. And we were there for a month. We lived in an apartment, uh Tyrollian village apartments on Harry Warzbach. And um for a month she was there and going to appointments, and then um in in in uh December, first of December, uh it got worse, and so she became an inpatient at Bamsey at the the old hospital right there on the end of the parade field. And uh it got worse and worse, and and uh I went to the doctor one day and and uh I I sat down with him, I said, Tell me the straight poop, how bad is this? And he goes, It's terminal terminal. I didn't expect that. Uh I I didn't have a great appreciation because nobody had ever told me that this thing was gonna be terminal. So uh he said the he said the best thing you can do is is make sure she's as comfortable as can be and be there with her. So, in order to really take care of her, my mother uh and her mother both came to San Antonio. They lived in my apartment. Um, I stayed in a B.O.Q room. And somebody was with her all the time. She was on the ward and the cancer ward.

Host 4:17:11

Was her family there as well?

SPEAKER_01 4:17:13

Her her just her mother. Her mother, her dad was still working, her little brother uh was with her dad. And uh on the first of February, uh I had just left at 9 30 at night to go home and and get some sleep. And no no sooner than I walked in the door, my mother called and said, You need to come back. And uh she's gone. So uh essentially two two things happened that really motivated my decision. The minute she passed, I was uh uh we we we took her to Memphis, she's buried in in uh uh same cemetery with my grandmother. And Armor Branch was very, very understanding, uh, you know, take what time you need, you know, do what you need to do. But when I got back, I'm still assigned to the recruiting command. They took away they took away my off-post housing immediately, uh very, very caring of the army. But it's the way things work, you know, and and so they put me in a BOQ room, which view out the window faced the room where she died. And I I just was not, I didn't, I didn't think I was doing anything worthwhile. And frankly, every day all I looked at was a remembrance of all that that had gone on. So I got on the phone one day and I called, I called Branch and I said, Hey, I want to go back to Vietnam. A lot of guys weren't doing that. They were a little surprised. I can Bo Bergeron was my assignment officer, major. He goes, Okay. He said, uh, uh, would you like a school? And I said, How about Cobra? Let me go to Cobra School and I'll go back as a Cobra pilot this time. Were you well known in the aviation community? No, no more than anybody else. No. So I get a set of orders to Fort uh or to Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, where my buddy Rod Willis is assigned. He's a he's a Vietnamese company commander. He's training Vietnamese pilots. And this is the fun thing. I I've I've kidded Rod for years about this. Rod cannot pronounce the word Vietnamese. He calls them Vietnamese. He cannot say Vietnamese. And I've kitted him about that for years and years. But I called Rod and he's rooming with Bob Davis, another one of my scouts that's at Hunter, as a flight instructor. And I said, Hey, I'm coming to Hunter to go to Cobra School. I need to sleep on your couch for six weeks. And he goes, Come on. So I get in my car, load everything I own into a car, and uh I had to Hunter Army Airfield, uh, check in with Rod at the Red Lion apartments. We're all living in the same, and almost everybody living in that apartment complex was an aviator working at the at Hunter Army Airfield.

Host 4:20:12

Did you know other people that were there before?

SPEAKER_01 4:20:14

Oh, yeah, yeah. I I had several friends that were there. And so um I check in to Hunter, and day one, I go over to Cobra Hall, which is the Cobra conversion uh uh complex, and and I go down to the room assigned, and and I get in there, and there's three other guys in the room, total of four. Larry Massman, a captain, Bob Hartley, a CW2, and Ken Shreiber, a CW2, and me, a captain. And I thought to myself, this is kind of a small cobra class. And um anyway, the the flight instructor comes in after a bit and we go out on the flight line. There's a cobra out there, it's all unbuttoned, and and he's going around the aircraft asking questions. Uh Mr. Hartley, what is this? Well, that's the intervalometers that cycle the rockets. And uh, Mr. Mr. Hartley, what's this? Well, that's the control motion transducers for the SCAS system. Uh uh Captain Massman, what's that? That's 42-degree gearbox. Uh uh this thing on the side. Captain Mills, what's that? I have no idea what that is. Well, after about four, I have no ideas, and they're all spouting all this information out. The uh chief warrant looks at me and he goes, How many hours you got in a cobra? I said, I don't have any hours in a cobra. I'm here for conversion. And he kind of looks at me with this delayed look and he said, This is the Cobra instructor pilot's course. You're not qualified in the aircraft? I said, Of course I'm not qualified in the aircraft. Armor Branch had made a mistake. They had sent an unqualified Cobra guy to the Cobra instructor pilot's course. And all of a sudden there was a great gnashing of teeth. What do we do? What do we do? There was no class in residence for regular conversion. And they were looking at my flight records that same morning, and they said, Well, you're an instructor pilot in the 086, yeah. You've got an IP rating in the Huey. Yeah. Got that in Germany. Um you just don't you don't have any time in a Cobra. No, I I have no qualification in a Cobra. So MOI is methods of instruction, it's how you actually conduct training. And and he said, you know, MOI's not going to be your problem. You already know how to do that. You're just the skills in the aircraft. So what they decided to do was teach me the maneuvers in the aircraft in the morning, and then in the afternoon I would switch seats and teach back what I had learned in the morning session. While the other guys were doing methods of instruction for the Cobra and then gunnery. Uh, it was a six-week course. Took me a week longer because by the time I finished the course, they had graduated and gone on. And and so I'm still I still got to go through gunnery. Uh how to shoot the 20 millimeter and the rockets and the turret and all that. So it's just me and a warrant officer and a cobra.

Host 4:23:34

Just so the listeners can understand, how uncommon is this to happen?

SPEAKER_01 4:23:38

It's the only I'm the only person that I know that has ever done that.

Host 4:23:41

Yeah, that's what I figured.

SPEAKER_01 4:23:42

It's that uncommon. So I I get out of Cobra school with 45 hours in the Cobra, and I'm an instructor pilot. Now I got 1,500 hours combat in the OH6, but I got 45 hours in a in a cobra and maybe 200, 300 hours in a Huey and H13, but but nothing 45 hours in a Cobra. I get to uh I get to Vietnam and I'm assigned a D-Troop 3rd of the 5th Cav uh up at Quang Tree.

Host 4:24:16

What did were your orders uh for that school en route to Vietnam?

SPEAKER_01 4:24:20

Yeah, yeah. Well, that was the deal. I was going to go to Cobra School and then to Vietnam. And so when I got there, we second tour, I went into Cameron Bay, and um we we arrived, we arrived at Cameron Bay at 2.30 in the morning in a C-141, spent the night, got up the next night, and flew to Danang at night, got into Danang early, early in the morning in a C-130. And there's, I don't know, there's 40 or 50 guys on the aircraft, and we come uh uh filing off in the middle of the night, and it's it's uh there's an old grizzly captain and and me, and there was a great big hulk of a guy, first lieutenant, and there was a young warrant officer, and everybody else was enlisted. And the staff sergeant in the middle of the night, as the ramp comes down and everybody's walking off, he goes, fall in. All these guys start up falling into formation. I fell into formation. You know, I got my duffel bag and my stuff. And the the big first lieutenant falls in beside me, and the young warrant officer falls in beside him, and the young grisly captain is standing over here. And once the formation gets going, he yells out in this gravelly, rough voice. He said, You officers, get out of that goddamn NCO's formation. It's three o'clock in the morning. You know, I said, okay, so I go over there. The captain turns out to be a guy named Jimmy Dobbs, Jimmy V. Dobbs. Prior to her on the ground as an infantry company commander, now coming back as an aviator. Turns out the lieutenant's an aviator, turns out the warrant officer's an aviator. We're all four aviators. As luck would have it, we're all going to the same place. Dobbs is going to be the platoon commander of Delta 3rd of the Fifth Cav Cobra. I'm going to be the section commander, number two to Dobbs. The lieutenant is a replacement pilot, and the warrant officer is a replacement pilot. The warrant is Dwayne Hartwick, who was a prior Huey crew chief, became a warrant officer. The lieutenant is Lewis Carl Brewer IV, Texas Tech All-American. Huge guy. And we wind up going to Third of the Fifth Cav together and start flying together. We were at Quang Tree.

Host 4:26:53

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SPEAKER_01 4:27:49

Um I I did it specifically because of that personal loss. I figured, you know, uh uh this will give me a focus that I don't need to worry about the downside. Uh I Corps uh in in 1971, totally different than III Corps in '69. It's very mountainous. It's very weathery. It's it's uh bad weather, overcast rain, storms. We didn't have that in III Corps. Um what did it feel like to be back? It was different. It was darker. Uh the the the American side in in the very end, we got there in September 71. The American side was standing down. Vietnamization was taking place. American units were placed in the field by Vietnamese units. The major unit where we were and that we were assigned to was the 101st Airborne Division Air Mobile. And they were at Camp Eagle. We were up at Quang Tree, which is an old Marine base. We were the Cobra platoon. There was a scout platoon that had 086s and a Huey platoon. The ARPs were different then. The ARPs were no longer an on-the-ground force. The ARPS were largely composed of the remnants of India, I'm sorry, Lima 75th Ranger that had stood down. They were in the process of standing down. And they took all these LERP Ranger guys and they sent them over to us, and they would now ride in the Hueys. Generally, three or four of them would ride in the Hueys as the immediate reaction force if we lost an aircraft. They were prepared to repel in, hook us up, drag us out. But the ARPS did not go on the ground as a maneuver unit because of Vietnamization.

Host 4:29:44

What was the culture like in 101st versus where you had been before with the big red line?

SPEAKER_01 4:29:50

It gets complicated and it's not all that important to the average person, but Lamzon 719 was the incursion into Laos. D-Troop 3rd of the 5th, detached out of the 9th Infantry Division, came up north for the Lampson 719, as did Charlie Troop 3rd of the 17th Air Cav, calls Charlie Horse. When Lamzon was over, because of a reorganization of forces in Vietnam, the 9th Division went home. The air cav troop of the 9th Division, D-Troop 3rd of the 5th, stayed in country. But they redesignated us as D-Troop 3rd of the 5th Cav, quote, Charlie Horse. We were we were we took the call sign from 3rd of the 17th and we stayed 3rd of the 5th. We wore the 9th Division patch on our left shoulder when I first got there and the 1st division or 101st above our uh name tag, uh, which was kind of convoluted to be a D troop, but the call sign was Charlie Horse, which is weird. Um But we were we were attached for command and control to the to the 2nd of the 17th Air Cav squadron of the 101st Airborne. So that's who we got our missions from. And uh initially we started out at Quangtree. We were at Quang Tree for a month or so. Uh the most notable thing about the Quang Tree period uh was we had a little little Vietnamese house girl in the gun platoon, uh, and we had a water cooler that we had stolen from the Danang Air Force Officers Club. It's one of those vertical big blue glass bottles you put in there and it would cool the water. Our house girl stayed home uh one period to have a baby. They'd take like a day or two and have a baby, then they'd be back. But on the day that she was home having her baby, she sent her daughter to work in her place. And the daughter, most of the house girls spoke pigeon English. The daughter didn't speak a word of English. And the water ran out in our in our water cooler, and we we showed her the we had a wagon that we carried the little water bottle in, and we showed her where the potable water point was down the end of the street and asked her to, you know, go fill that with and bring it back. So she goes down there to the water point. Unfortunately, uh not only did she not speak English, she didn't read English and didn't know the difference between potable and non-potable water. So she filled it up with non-potable water which came out of the Quang Tree River. We couldn't tell the difference, and so we're drinking this for like a week, and all of a sudden, everybody in the Cobra platoon has amoebic dysentery. A more distasteful condition to have 20 guys fly an aircraft with amoebic dysentery. We were all taking uh di uh uh diarrhea medicine the flight surgeon had given us. And uh everybody took to wearing the one-piece K2B flight suit, which we could unzip real quick uh when bad things happen. And uh you'd be out in the aircraft and you'd pull out of a, you'd you'd shoot a target and you'd pull out of a dive, and oh my god, there it goes down your pant leg. So the crew chiefs were mad at us because the aircraft were nasty. The hooch maids were mad at us because the flight suits were disgusting. Uh, and it took several weeks to get everybody cured from amoebic dysentery. Then we moved to Camp Evans. We moved south just a little bit to Camp Evans, and we moved into a thing called the Search Museum. Screaming Eagles Replacement Training Center Museum. It had been emptied out. It was just a tropical hooch directly across the street from the old uh uh Lima 75th Rangers. As they stood down, they started to send us their Rangers to be rescue guys. And so we flew out of uh during the monsoon season, uh, December, really crappy weather. We didn't fly a lot.

Host 4:34:08

Hey, one quick ass before we dive in. Month after month, 95% of the people who watch our content aren't even subscribed to the YouTube channel. If that's you, you can seriously help us out today by just subscribing. It costs nothing, it takes two seconds, and it can make a huge impact on everything we're building here. There's no podcasting agency behind us. We have no corporate backing. It's just me, a small team and an audience that really cares. Subscribing is the simplest way to tell the algorithm that this content is worth spreading. And it's the simplest way to support the mission directly. So hit the button and join the community. We appreciate all of you. Now let's get to this podcast. What was the what was the mission that you guys were doing as a co-propilant?

SPEAKER_01 4:34:49

Our principal mission was a raid against the DMZ, directly the bottom of North Vietnam, the demilitarized zone, which separated north and south. And to the west, the buffer area with Laos, which was called the Aschau Valley. That had been the principal AO for the 101st Airborne Division for years. Worst place I've ever been. It took your breath away. It was dangerous. It was chock full of everything from radar-directed guns to man portable SA-7 shoulder-fired uh anti-aircraft missiles. Um, lots and lots of bad guys, major infiltration route into South Vietnam for years. So we were flying what was called air cavalry raids into the Ashau, and our reaction force was either us, what we could do with the guys in the back, or the reconnaissance company of the 1st Arvin Division were called the Hokbow, H O C B A O. They were very elite uh reconnaissance company for the 1st Division. They were hardcore dudes. And if we got in trouble, trouble, uh, we could always get the Hokbow to come out and they would go on the ground, kind of like the ARPS. Um but on the 31st of December, we had a team that was going out to the ashau, and the weather was really bad. We we would fly out up the Balong River Valley, and often the uh clouds would be down to the mountains on both sides of the river valley. It's like flying up a tunnel. And on occasion, you'd get out into the ashow and the clouds would close it out, and you'd have a way to get home. So we were climbing above the mountain IFR and flying back to do a ground-controlled radar approach to get home. Dicey stuff in those days. But on the 31st of December, we had a we had a calf pack, uh, two cobras, a Huey, and a scout that were going out to the Ashow, and the scout was leading, then the two Cobras, and the Huey was the last aircraft. And as they flew over the top of a mountain, they had about, I don't know, five, six hundred feet between the top of the mountain and the bottom of the clouds, and the Huey was right in the middle. And sitting just by chance on top of that mountain was a 14.5 anti-aircraft gun. And they let the cobras pass and the scout, and when the the Huey came along, they lit him up. So the uh the the Huey goes down, uh and it lands in the middle of a jungle area, I mean, right into the jungle. Everybody's okay, except the gunner, Ronnie Mickle, uh, is hit in the head with 14.5. Glancing blow, it's the only reason he wasn't killed. Glancing blow, he's out of the fight when he hits the ground. He's he's out. The uh Like a knocked him out or knocked him out, yeah. He was he was unconscious, still strapped in his seat. Big round. The uh uh the crew chief on the left side uh bails out of the aircraft with his gun and goes about six feet, and an NVA soldier stands up and kills him. He's dead where he falls. Uh I've got uh three Rangers ab aboard that uh about that uh aircraft. The squad leader was uh Fernando Figueroa, a former LERP who had had a previous tour with the 173rd Airborne, and uh there were uh two other guys, two other on the aircraft, a lieutenant named Flynn, who's the Peter pilot, and and uh uh and and uh Captain Harvey, who's the platoon leader of the lift platoon, a former infantry captain in a previous tour. These guys are now on the ground. The are you flying in the Cobra? I'm at home. Oh, okay. I'm still in the base. Um the scout pilot turns around, comes back, tries to land and throw munitions and survival gear to the crew. Bad guy comes up out of the bush, shoots up the loach, it's flown by a warrant officer. His name, his given name is Major Hartley. First name Major, last name Hartley. He's a he's a CW-2. Um we used to use Major as a way to get stuff out of the 101st because he could call across the runway and say, This is Major Hartley, and they'd think he's a major. You know, get me a case of steaks, I'm gonna send some guys to get it. But uh Hartley comes in, comes to a hover, he's immediately shot up. Uh his crew chief is is killed. Uh his aircraft shot up, he maneuvers over to Quezon Strip, which is just north of where they went down, and he crashes. So now we got two downed aircraft. I'm in the rear, and we get scrambled. Uh very rare troop scramble. Everybody go. So there were two cobras out there. Uh I launched with five or six cobras, and uh I head out there.

Host 4:40:21

And uh What's that scramble time? Uh I mean, does it take a while? Or did you did the did the helicopter stay gassed up and armed up?

SPEAKER_01 4:40:28

We're we're uh we're up and armed, ready to go. You had to you had to run out. Um a reasonable scramble is if you've got guys on the on the location, you don't need to get information. You just run out, get an aircraft, crank it up, and go. You contact your other team on the radio and you go to where they are. Uh and that's what we did. We had five aircraft, and and we're out there with cobras, and we're now flying orbits around these guys to keep the bad guys off of them. Immediately, the the immediate need is understood that we got to get the Air Force involved in this because the Army didn't have assets with hoists, uh, and it didn't have an aircraft that could get eight guys off the ground. And so the mission is passed to the 37th Air Rescue Squadron at Danang, which had Jolly Green Giant HH-53Cs on strip alert along with their escort, which were A-1H model sky raiders. And uh the the over the FAC forward air controller is the immediate on-scene commander, and he came out, he's dealing with a with a uh airborne command and control, ABCC-C call.

Host 4:41:46

Is he flying an OV-10?

SPEAKER_01 4:41:47

He's in an OV-10. And he's dealing with an Air Force uh uh command and control center call sign was king.

Host 4:41:54

So you got a bunch of air assets.

SPEAKER_01 4:41:55

Got a bunch of air assets. The fact could bring fast movers, the fact could get the jolly greens going, the fact is is getting all this stuff going. So the Sandy's launch first. Sandy one is the lead, he's the rescue coordinator, and Sandy two is his wingman. And then they launch the Jollies, and you got a Jolly low and you got a Jolly high. That's the way they come out. Each jolly comes with two Sky Raiders. So Sandy's five and six are with Jolly Two. Sandy's one and two are with Jolly One. They get out to where we are and they're holding the jollies at altitude. They're above the clouds, holding at altitude. The skyraters come down between breaks in the clouds, and once they're on scene, we subordinate to them. I'm talking, I was Cobra lead, and I was talking to uh Skyraider's a fast mover? No, it's an A1 prop.

Host 4:42:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:42:51

Uh Korean War vintage uh Navy carrier prop fighter. They're huge. They carry a bomb load greater than a B-17.

Host 4:43:01

Damn.

SPEAKER_01 4:43:01

Um so they're trolling around. They're carrying cluster bombs, they're carrying miniguns, they got 20 millimeter wing guns, they got Mark 47 smoke bombs, they got uh uh all kinds of soft ordnance that are made to protect the pilot and until the jolly can get in.

Host 4:43:18

Where are all the helicopters? Because they were there was originally two cobras that were in the flight, and then you guys all scrambled.

SPEAKER_01 4:43:24

There are now about seven cobras flying an outer circle around the inner circle that has uh four sky raiders in it. And above the clouds are two jolly green giants that are holding it about seven or eight thousand feet. And who's the C2 that's making sure you guys don't crash into each other? Sandy One. Sandy One's in control. So we we're uh we're we're we're softening the area up. We would go in, we were asked asked to hit assets that were on the road just to the north. He was concerned about some movement and some ground fire from the north, and he said, Charlie Horse, can you take the road and soften that up? I said, Roger. He said, I've got the survivors. So we're up on the road, we're shooting people on the road and vehicles and things. And and after a bit in time, he says, uh, okay, he says, I'm ready, I'm ready to bring Jolly One in. And so Jolly actually has to go offshore and come down through the clouds offshore and then come back under the cloud layer. And he gets up to where the guys are down. Uh Jolly Green's a huge airplane. It's like a Winnebago with wings.

Host 4:44:35

And I'm sorry to keep interrupting you, but what was the in, I mean, you guys, they got a 14.5 shot shot him down. Was there a lot, was there a bunch of other NVA or VC soldiers in that area?

SPEAKER_01 4:44:44

We didn't know because we we we were not getting a lot of ground fire. Uh the ground fire that had occurred had been on the ground against the guys on the ground, and then the 14.5 went silent. It it quit shooting. So Sandy decided that this was the time to get in and hoist the crew. And they came in and came to a hover and started the penetrator down, and the guys on the ground then opened up on the Jolly Green. And he takes a lot of ground fire. They've got the two PJs, one on the rear ramp, one on the left window, have got miniguns and they're shooting up the bad guys. But he starts to limp off and he's trailing smoke. That jolly goes to Quang Tree and puts it on the ground. He's now out of the action. And when that jolly leaves, the high jolly comes down and goes with him. In case he goes down, that jolly will now get the first jolly. So so all of a sudden now we got a Loach down, we got a Huey down, we got Jolly down, uh, and we got nobody to get anybody. So we had a unit uh Huey come out from our outfit that landed at Quezon and picked up uh uh Major uh uh the the the scout crew that was down. We picked him up. And um uh the next thing we gotta worry about is how do we get the guys out on the ground? So we gotta soften them up some more. So the Jolly guys get a hold of their higher headquarters at uh NKP, not Com Phenom, and they ask for more Sky Raiders, and a bunch of four or five Sky Raiders come out of Thailand, and their call sign was smoke. They were loaded down with Mark 47 smoke bombs, and they were dropping smoke all around to basically shield the guys on the ground and the aircraft from from ground fire. And they worked and worked and worked uh oh for another three or four hours. Um and then they uh bring out another set of jollies and they decide they're gonna hoist them. And and so that's that's how they got them out. The the third jolly that was uh employed came to a hover over the the Huey and they uh nobody went on the ground. They put down a penetrator uh with a with a uh Stokes litter on it. And the the they put the dead uh uh gunner from the Huey on the Stokes, and then they put one of the Rangers on top of him to hold the body. They hoisted them up, and then they put Ronnie Mickle on, who was wounded, and they put another guy on top of him to hold him and hoisted him up. Uh they hoisted up uh uh Noel Harvey, the aircraft commander, and Flynn together. I've got some great pictures of that for for you. Um and then the last two guys, uh the last guy off the ground was Sergeant Figueroa uh with another lerp on the jungle penetrator. So that was December 31st. We we lost uh a dead creature. Chief off the 086. We lost a dead uh gunner off the the Huey and a wounded uh gunner off the Huey. But everybody else made it out. Um We considered it an anomaly based on weather. We we probably shouldn't have flown that close to the ground, uh, but it was a necessity caused by weather. I mean, you can't you can't fly around the mountains in the clouds because you're gonna run into a mountain. So we were flying where we could see, but we only had, you know, the ceiling was like 800 feet. Uh Army flies in weather like that. Air Force doesn't fly in weather like that, but the Army does. And so on the 21st, uh, I'm sorry, the uh 25th of January. Correction, on the 20th of January, Charlie Horse 25 is out on a mission as part of a CAV team. Uh two CAV packs are out on the north and south of the Ashau. I'm in one of those cobras. And we're headed back to Quang Tree, and we get a call on guard from the Air Force that a Air Force Fast Fac in an F-4 has been shot down in Laos just west of Quezon. Uh call sign was stormy 0-5, and both guys had punched out. And Air Force Fact wanted to know if Army could get there as quick as possible to put a cap on him. So we diverted. We were on the way back, uh, we had just passed Quezon, headed to Quangtree for fuel, and so we diverted and turned and headed toward um Laos. We probably were 15 minutes into the flight. We had just crossed into Laos and we're headed to where these guys were last seen when we got a uh we got a call from ABCC uh on guard that says disregard Charlie Horse Air America, apparently just grabbed these two guys. And we said, okay, so the survivors are are are good. So we turned around. It's now dark. We turned around and we're headed toward uh Quang Tree. So the the scout was in the lead. There were there were uh four cobras and there were two Hueys. And as we crossed over Quezon, the last Huey was taken under fire from the high ground, just like December 31st. The Huey was hit and it burst into flames at altitude, and it's now descending out of the uh out of the formation. And uh the the uh aircraft commander of of that particular mission was the scout platoon leader who was flying in a Huey that day and a chief warner officer named Frank Angotti. And uh Bill Allen was the aircraft commander, Frank Angotti was the co-pilot. The Huey that went after those guys, the number two Huey that wasn't hit, starts to descend behind the Huey on fire. The Huey on fire is about a hundred feet off the ground, and a figure jumps from the aircraft to get away from the fire. Aircraft lands in the stream, rolls over on its side, and continues to burn. Huey number two, flown by Joe Hogg, uh captain, lands. His crew chiefs jump out, jump into the little river. It's about two feet deep, uh, and they pull out Walter Morris, who's the gunner. Uh, he has lost his leg, his uh foot and leg on the right foot, I believe, is is gone. Uh he gets, and Gotti and Alan both out, they're both burned, but but not terribly so. But everybody else in the aircraft, uh the the um the gunner on the right side of the aircraft, and uh two of the ARPs uh are not recovered. One of those guys is Sergeant Fernando Figueroa, who had just saved everybody on the ground on the 31st of December. He's now uh he's consumed in the fire. And uh with him was was a young ranger named Walter C.B. Moran. And Moran was from Nevada, Missouri, just south of where I live, and uh also a second tour ranger. So they load those guys up in the Huey, and and they they start for Quang Tree. At the same time they're heading for Quangtree, the Jolly Greens, which had launched in Danang, that were headed to Laos, but were diverted because Air America got the two pilots. We get those guys on guard and we say divert to Quangtree, we got burned aboard. We got Figueroa aboard and Walter C.B. Moran aboard, horribly burned. Uh Angotti's burned and Bill Allen's burned. Walter Morris is not terribly burned, but he's lost his foot.

Host 4:53:25

What happened to the dude that jumped out?

SPEAKER_01 4:53:28

We're getting to that. We're getting to that. Sorry, you. When Joe turned around to depart the landing zone, this is dark. It's pitch black now. And you guys don't have night vision back then. Oh, no, night vision didn't exist. He turns on his landing light as he takes off to keep from hitting a tree, and his crew chief happens to look out into the river and sees a guy waving. Uh his name was Dennis Trimble. He was one of the ARPs. And to avoid the fire as he got he got it got into the cockpit where he was, he just said, Screw it, I'm jumping. And he jumped, but he hit the river. Broke both his legs and his pelvis because it's only two feet deep, but it didn't kill him. And so Joe turns back around, lands, they get down in the river, they get tremble, they put him aboard. Now we have everybody accounted for. Um we have one uh Lerp that's missing, still in the aircraft, and the crew chief on the on the right side of the aircraft, the gunner on the Huey is uh is never recovered. So two guys are not recovered. So as we're flying to Quang Tree, we get the Jollies to divert to Quangtree, and we tell them, look, we got we got that we need blood, and we got guys aboard that uh that are burned. Dust off for the 101st area also is airborne, and they come to Quangtree. So they put the burn patients aboard the Jollies because those guys, the para the PJs, para jumpers, wonderfully trained medics.

Host 4:55:13

We just released a PJ episode there in love.

SPEAKER_01 4:55:15

Those guys, those guys are great guys. And and so the uh they come to Quangtree and the dust-off comes to Quangtree, and the Dust Off takes Walter Morris, who's lost his foot, and the PJs take the burn guys and off they go to the 85th of VAC. We shut down. We are back to base. We we just shut down. The Cobras are now out of the mission. Everybody else goes to the 85th Avac, both Dust off and Jolly, and offload their people. So the result of that mission, Walter Morris um lost his foot but survived. Um the the the two are the two rangers that were burned, Figaroa and and Moran, live for a day or so each and then they they uh expire. Uh we've lost two, an African-American and a white uh soldier that are still in the wreckage. The wreckage burns to the to the ground, uh, and they are never recovered. Um now fast forward to the 30th of January, and I'm out in a uh Cobra team. It's myself uh uh with Blue Brewer uh flying on my wing with Bob Smith. And in my front seat is a brand new, relatively new, a guy with about three months or so experience with us, named John Bryant, young warrant officer. And we're out flying in the uh in the south end of the Aschow, and a fact comes on the radio and says, Any aircraft vicinity, the Ashau, your radio. And I pop up on guard and say, This is Charlie Horse 3.8 with a flight of three. And he goes, Are you gunships? And I said, Roger, two of us are gunships. And he says, I got uh uh I got a uh uh anti-aircraft gun on the side of a mountain that's shooting at me, and I don't have any fast movers to put on him. So I said, Okay, Roger that. I said, we'll come to altitude and and uh my gunships will join you and we'll service that target for you. So I bring everybody to altitude, and Bob, Bob Smith and I uh launch off. Uh uh Lou Brewer's in the front seat with Bob and John's in the front seat with me. And we get over there and the and the covey is uh covey fac is flying around, and he goes, if you look down on the side of this mountain over here, uh there's a 14.5 on a tripod, and every time I make a circuit, he shoots at me with these great big tracers. I'm looking, I got a real good idea. I can see where I'm pretty sure the gun is. So I told Bob, I said, what we're gonna do, I said, I'm gonna I'm gonna zero out my airspeed and I'm gonna roll over on my back and I'm gonna come in vertically. The more vertical you are, the more uh constricted your your circular error probable CEP is, the closer together your rounds are gonna hit. If you shoot at an angle, they're gonna spread out uh in an oval. Uh but I wanted to concentrate on one point. And I said, uh when I break, you come in behind me and cover me with fire. He said, Roger. So I'm at about 5,000 feet, and I rolled it over on its back, zero airspeed, and uh uh head down and roll out, and I'm at about an 80-degree dive, and I'm in a 20-ship. I've got a Vulcan cannon on my left wing, uh six-barrel 20 millimeter Gatling gun, 950 shots a minute, rotary fire. And my pipper settles in on the target of the aircraft gun. I hit the trigger switch and I got 20 millimeter dancing all over him. And as I passed through about 3,000 feet, I reached down and flipped the weapon system to uh wing store. And on my right inboard pod, I had a seven-shot pod with flushettes. And my intent was to each time I pull the trigger, it was set on single fire, and each time I pulled a trigger, it would shoot a rocket. And a flat rocket leaves the tube, goes a certain distance, arms, and then it blows open, and we got thousands of darts, little steel darts come out of that. So as I'm passing from 5,000 through 3,000, I go to a wing store, uh, I arm that, I hit a rocket, flat goes out, bursts right on top of the gun, nailed them. I then fired the second rocket, and that's when the world went very, very, very bad for us. The rocket fired in the pod, but it did not leave the pod. It was called a hangfire. I'd never even heard of a hangfire before. I'd certainly never seen one. And all of a sudden, I'm in an 80-degree dive at like 170 or 80 knots, pointed almost straight down, and I've got a rocket assist now on my right wing. That rocket is burning, but it's still in the pod. So the aircraft tilted severely to the left. I tried to counter with left pedal, and I've got the stick pulled all the way back into my into my uh crotch, and all of a sudden I hear an explosion, and what had happened is that burning rocket motor set the other rocket motors, the other five that are still in the pod, they exploded. The debris went through my tail rotor. So the tail rotor left the aircraft, which took the 90-degree gearbox, which took the 42-degree gearbox, which took the 60-degree gearbox, and that then tears the tail off. So everything aft of the uh the exhaust is torn off the aircraft in an 80-degree dive at 180 now 90 knots. So I lose all tail rotor authority. Um, the aircraft starts to spin. I'm holding the stick back for everything I'm worth because my fear was if I roll over on my back, we're done. We're dead. I had no control. I was spinning. I was now below the mountains on my horizon, so I had no horizon that I could maintain. It was all spinning green. And Bob Smith is coming down behind me. Lou Brewer is in his front seat, and Lou keys the mic and he goes, pull it now, pull it. I figured that was for me. And so I pulled collective and the rotation stopped just as I hit the trees. The aircraft rolled on its right side and went through the top of the trees, and we had another 150 feet to go through triple canopy jungle. The world goes black. A period of time later, I come to I'm in excruciating pain. My leg is absolutely killing me, and something is impacting on my face. And I reach up to feel my face, and it's my it's my uh it's my right boot. And my foot is completely twisted up and it's in front. Uh the instrument panel has come forward and it's now on top of me. And my instinct was was to reach down and pop my seatbelt to get out, not realizing I was in the aircraft about four feet off the ground, upside down. And I hit my seatbelt and fell out of the aircraft. And the pain was blinding at that point in time. So I'm laying on the ground and I start to take, you know, evaluation of myself. And I look up and there's the scout ship above me. Um the scout had come down and was hovering over the top of me, and it was it was a kid named Mike Deedy. And his crew chief, young Spec 4 named Rip Smith. Uh Rip Smith was the son of an Army Major General, and yet he flew as a scout gunner in the 101st Airborne. Uh, but Rip Smith is holding up his survival radio, PRC-10, for me to see. And I went, oh yeah, I've got one of those. And I get out my survival radio and I turn it on. Uh 243 zip was the frequency, and I'm I'm talking to Dee Dee, and he goes, Uh, are you guys okay? And I said, Well, Bryant's trapped in the airplane. He's in excruciating pain. I've got a busted leg, um, head injury, I'm going in and out of consciousness. And he says, Okay, we got guys coming. His Huey came down, dropped their ropes, and the ropes weren't long enough to get to us. So they had to rethink and they said, okay, we can't. There was about a 100-foot drop beyond their rope capacity. So they call for another bird to come from the rear with longer ropes. Is that because of the terrain they couldn't get it? Yeah, we were on the side of a mountain with 150-foot trees, and so the the distance they could get down was 100 feet too short. You can't free fall 100 feet and walk away from. So in the rear, all of a sudden they get a Huey together with longer ropes, but they got no rangers. So they're scouring around the troop area to try to find a reaction force, and they find two rangers, and in the open in the orderly room is the brand new medic that's checking into the unit for first day. And he'd never repelled from a helicopter in his life. The two rangers were very capable guys. So they grab him and his aid bag and the two rangers, throw them on the Huey, bring them out there, and they're trying to teach Woods, the medic, how to repel in the aircraft on the way to repel. He'd never repelled a day in his life. So he's got an M-16 and his med bag on his back. The two Rangers got their gear and their M16s, and they get to the uh they get to the point, throw the ropes out, the ropes are long enough. And they're they're trying to tell him, okay, lean back. This is your brake hand, your brake hand's behind your back, release it, go when you're ready to break, put it in your back, you'll stop. He had everything right except you've got to hold on the whole time to the rope. He leaned back on the rope. I'm laying there on the ground looking up at this guy. He kicks off and throws both hands up in the air. He's not on the rope at all and just free falls right down the rope, goes through the top of a tree, and is the first man to me. The only thing saved his life was he went through the top of a tree. And this little, short little pudgy medic comes crawling up the hill to the side of the aircraft where I am, and then here come the two Rangers. That kid didn't get like break a back? Didn't hurt him at all. It's the most amazing thing you've ever seen. So I'm laying there, and the the Rangers knew what they were doing. They they uh two of them went uphill, one to the right, one to the left, and set up a position. The gun I was shooting at, the gun was on the top of the same mountain. So we knew they're gonna come down the hill toward us. I wasn't entirely sure how far up the mountain the gun was, but but I knew I was on the same terrain feature with the with the enemy gun. So they they basically the same thing that we had done on the on the uh the 31st of December, they call for the Jollies. And out come two Jollies and four Sky Raiders, and uh the two Rangers are up on the up on the uh the side of the mountain, uh about forty, fifty feet away from me, and the medic is trying to get uh John Bryant in some deal of comfort. John had a busted back and a busted neck. He was still in the aircraft, he was terribly twisted. Um several times before the Rangers got to us, he he said to me, He said, he said, shoot me and evade. I said, I John, I'm not going anywhere. I got a busted leg. So uh I'm I'm not going anywhere. And I'm laying beside him with my car 15 and and uh Did you get him out of the helicopter? No, I couldn't. I got a busted leg. I can't even stand up.

Host 5:08:10

Um but the helicopters it came through the trees and was on the ground. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:08:14

Yeah, I got pictures of it. I can show you what it looked like. But but he uh he kept saying, shoot me and evade. Uh save yourself. And I'm trying to say, John, I I can't I can't go anywhere. It's you and me. We're here, this is it. Um finally, about the third time he said, shoot me and evade, I said, God damn it, John, I'm gonna shoot you if you don't shut up. I was worried. He was making a lot of noise. And and um anyway, about about that time the the other Huey got out there and the the other guys got on the ground. Eventually out comes Jolly uh 364. Uh they come to a to a hover over the top of us. I had never really appreciated how big a Jolly Green was until it comes to a hover on top of you. And I look up, I'm laying on the ground, and I look up and I can see the hoist operator, the flight engineer, with his head out the right door, and he's got his hand on the uh cable for the rescue hoist. And the next thing I see is a guy steps out onto the jungle penetrator. He's wearing camouflage fatigues, and he gets on the penetrator and he starts down. And as he got close to me, the things you remember are unique. Spit shine jump boots, first thing I saw, camouflage fatigues, and as the body comes down, I look on his waist and he's got a beautiful bright blue Smith and Wesson Model 39, nine millimeter pistol. I saw it, I said, wow, that's cool. And it it's the PJ, and his name was was Sergeant Harvey J. Pickle Simer. Um and he unhooks from from the uh uh the the The litter. I'm laying by my cockpit, and I point to John and I said, Get him out. He's talking to the aircraft, they lower him some equipment, he's bending stuff. I'm in and out of consciousness. And uh he gets John out of the aircraft along with the army medic, and they lower a Stokes and they put John in the Stokes litter and they take him up. It's now my turn. So a couple of times when he was working on John, I tried to stand up and help, and he kept saying, Captain, sit down. Captain, sit down. The third time he said, if you don't sit down, I'm gonna put you down. So I sat down. Well, when it was my turn to get in the Stokes, it occurred to me that my KY28 crypto gear was still in the aircraft and the control head, which had our frequencies in it, was in the cockpit. And so I stand up and I pull my 45 out, and I'm gonna shoot holes in my KY28. That's what my brain is telling me. The PJ hollers, no, no, no, because I haven't realized that the area is saturated with JP4 jet fuel. I didn't realize it because of the head injury. And I said, I gotta have that, I gotta have that. And he uh he reached down with his knife and popped the four Zeus fasteners and pulled the head of the KY28 out and gave it to me. They put me in the litter, and uh I've got my I put my flight helmet back on and they start to hoist me up. And so when you look at the picture of, I think you've you've seen that. If not, I've got it. As I'm hoisted up, I happen to look up, and there is a guy's head sticking out from under the hoist operator's legs, and he's got a camera, single lens reflex. And he's taking pictures of me coming up the hoist. Under my left arm, my crooked left arm is the KY28 head. I've got my car 15 across my shoulders, I've got my my uh helmet on with the visor down, and uh I'm getting lifted into the jolly green. Uh they pull me in, they pull the Stokes on the inside, they put the the uh penetrator down now without the Stokes, and they pull up uh the medic and uh and one of the rangers, pull them into the aircraft. Now on the ground, we got Johnny Saletto, the last ranger on the ground, and Sergeant Pickelsheimer. They both step onto the penetrator and they pull them up and off they go. I go out at that point. Uh I'm I'm out of it. I remember the acceleration of the jolly taking off, but I've got a I've got a head injury. They call it TBI now. I had a concussion, clearly. And I wake up on the exam table of the 85th Avac hospital, they pull me in on a gurney and they throw me up on the table, and they start to make you naked quickly with scissors. They're cutting everything off. And it occurs to me that I'm wearing a pair of Australian flight boots that I got from a guy at Vungtau, and they're the coolest boots in the world, and I'm hollering at the nurses, don't cut my boots. Don't cut my boots. And they reached down with those shears and they sheared the laces, but they didn't cut the boots. They pull my boots off. But my flight suit was cut completely off, and I'm laying there starkers on the bed while they're checking me and looking at this and looking at that, and come to find out I got a green stick fracture of my leg. And um they give me a painkiller and I'm out. I wake up in the in the ward and I'm in a bed, and I've got an IV in my right arm, and I have an overbearing need to have a bowel movement. And so I reached down and I hit my little button on the bed. The nurses were all the way at the end of the ward watching what I later found out was gun smoke on AFV, and they were all down there watching TV. And the nurse came to me and she said, What can I do? And I said, I gotta I gotta go to the bathroom. And she said, one or two. I said, two. She comes back with a bedpan and puts a bedpan with me. And I said, I'm I'm not going in a bedpan. I've never been in a bedpan in my life. And she just basically said, Well, suit yourself and turn around and walk back to the end of the ward. And I looked at the bedpan and I looked at my IV stand and I said, I can make it, I can make it to the bathroom. The bathroom is about 40 feet to the right. My leg is splintered but not cast. And so I swing over in the bed and I wear the hospital gown and I put my hand on the IV stand and I push and hop, and I get over to the men's room. I go inside, go to a stall, and there's a cross member on the top of the stall, which is lower than the height of the IV stand. So I think about that for a second, and I just take the IV bottle off and go in, sit down on the stool, and I put the IV bottle on the floor. Filled up full of blood, really. I do what I gotta do. I'm very proud of myself. I get I get back in the in the uh in the bed, I hook my IV back up, and I'm very happy. Four or five minutes later, my arm starts to pound. It's hurting, and I look down and the whole IV line is full of blood. I'd put the put it below the heart. So I hit the button again, and here comes the here comes the nurse. And she's not very happy with me, and had to clear the line and all that sort of thing. So I'm there overnight, and the next day they came in in the morning and they said, You're going to Okinawa. Uh I said, How's John Bryant? Well, he's already been evacuated. He's gone to Okinawa. But you're going to Okinawa today, and so you'll be evacuated out. And I said, I ain't going to Okinawa. I said, I got a unit, I got to get back to the unit. And the nurse again suits herself and went back to doing whatever she was doing. So I'm thinking, I got to do something quick or they're going to put me on an airplane and get me out of there. So basically, I did my bathroom trick again. I went back into the bathroom, but this time I took the IV off, took it out of my arm, left the stand and the IV in the bathroom, and I kind of peeked out. And when the nurses weren't looking, here I am in a gown and barefooted. I skinny out the door real quick and go down the hallway to find the quartermaster that has all my gear. And so I walk up, I find the quartermaster guy, and I said, I'm checking out. I need my gear. And he said something about the order, the discharge order, and I said, I don't know, that's coming, but I got to get dressed. And he hands me my stuff, and I'm looking at my flight suit, which is the two-piece Nomex, but it's been cut to shreds. And I said, Have you got anything I can do to help put this back together? And he goes, Well, I got these big safety pins. We safety pin my pants and my shirt. So I've got safety pinned Nomex pants and shirt. I've got my gun belt with a 45 in it. I've got my Car 15. I've got my flight helmet, but I don't have a hat. I'd lost my hat in the crash. And so I put all that stuff on and I hobble out the front of the of the hospital, which is right in front of 24th Corps headquarters. And across the street from where the bus stop is is 24th Corps Headquarters. And I'm standing out there trying to figure out how to get a bus over to the Jolly Green base and get a ride home. So while I'm standing there, uh these two Army MPs, jackasses, you know how MPRPs are, they're standing there watching me and they're looking at me and they're taking a lot of time to examine me. And finally one of them comes across the street and walks up to me, and he doesn't know what I am. I've got my survival vest on over my uh uh uh safety pen to close. And he walks up to me, and the first thing he said to me is, Where's your hat? And I looked at him and I said, My hat is somewhere in Laos. It's inside my aircraft, which is somewhere in Laos. And I'm leaving to go to the airfield to catch a ride home. And he starts to tell me all the violations of military protocol that I've uh I've committed. And when thank God the bus drives up and I just said, and I whipped out my collar and I said, It's Captain, by the way. And I got on the bus and said, See ya. And the bus took me over to the Jolly Green pad, who put me in a jolly and took me back to uh to our base and let me off. I laid in bed in the base for almost four days. My my leg hurt bad.

Host 5:19:44

What did your unit say when you showed up?

SPEAKER_01 5:19:47

I didn't I didn't really tell them I'd left against medical advice. I was AWOL from the hospital. They didn't know where I went. They had no idea where I went. And you had a full-on fractured leg. Yeah, I had a green stick fracture of the leg. Oh, God. And so I had this splint, uh, this air splint on it. Uh, and I left that on there for three or four days, and I basically lay in bed for three days and moaned and was miserable.

Host 5:20:13

Um pain meds or anything, huh?

SPEAKER_01 5:20:16

No, we didn't no, we didn't have anything. Uh we had we didn't we didn't have any medics at that point. And uh so I started flying again after three or four days. I flew for about a week. Um nothing heavy, nothing exciting. And then we got the order to stand down. And and uh I went to see Major Seary, the troop commander, and he said, You're a second tour guy, so you're going home. And the other guys will be split between units here and and country. He knew why I had come back, and I said, Boss, I said, I'd I'm not going home, I'd just soon stay. And he he looked at me and he goes, Well, go find a job. Best order I was ever given in the Army. Uh go find a job. And so with that, I called, I got on the phone, I called Dark Horse that was now down in the Delta, and got a hold of Rod Willis, my buddy from Savannah in my first tour. And he put me in touch with Tom Woods, the troop commander, and I told him, I said, Look, I'm looking for a job. I can do cobras, I can do scouts. And he goes, Well, the scout patent leader got shot three days ago. I could use a scout patent leader. And I said, I said, I'm on the way.

Host 5:21:34

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SPEAKER_01 5:22:04

Again, yes. Uh recently after that, no. John was evacuated. His military career ended. Uh I would later talk to John in about 19. I could I could tell you because it's the date of my of my third Purple Heart. Um, I got a hold of John and found out much later. I'm I'm uh trying to find John for years, had no idea where he was. And ultimately, as as the ability to check for people on computers got better, I ultimately found him. And I said, uh I said, How did it turn out? And he said, Well, I lost my military career. And I said, Well, at least you got a purple heart for it. And he goes, Well, no, I didn't get anything. I said, You were medevaced out to Okinawa and you never got a purple heart. No, I never got anything. So I wrote Department of the Army and wrote up a uh uh request or a recommendation for the Board for Correction of Military Records to get John Bryant a Purple Heart, and they wound up giving me one too. And and so we went to Fort Rucker and uh and I met John, and uh in the audience was the PJ, the uh combat photographer from the aircraft that shot that picture, and he gave me an 8x10 glossy of my rescue picture. That's how I got it. And it was me, John Bryant, and the and the photographer from that mission. Um years later, I was invited to go to the PJ reunion that was in Herman, Georgia, a German kind of village north of Atlanta. And uh I had reached out to them and said, you know, I'd really like to find Randy Pickelsheimer and thank him for saving me. And they said, Well, Randy's gonna be at this reunion at Herman, why don't you come? So I did. I found out when I got there that Randy through injury and illness had had lost his sight. Um he was he was older at the time. He was he was old when he rescued me. It was the first time he went on the ground in combat to rescue somebody, but he was older, he was he was hard of hearing, and and he was blind. Um and he's sitting on the front row, and they said, We have a we have one of our survivors that's gonna tell us a story. He had no idea it was me. And I started describing this rescue mission when he uh is telling me to sit down or he's gonna put me down. And he turns to his wife. I'm right in front of him, but he can't see me. And he turns to his wife and he goes, That sounds like a rescue I did. Uh and I said, Randy, it is. Uh I'm 701. So Bryant was the first one hosted. He was rescue number 700 for the 37th. I was rescue number 701. And so I got to spend that weekend with with my PJ. Tragically, he lived about two more years and passed away. John Bryant's still alive. He he lives in uh Brazil, I think Brazil or Argentina most of the year. It comes back and forth to uh Alabama. Uh so John survived. All the guys that uh rescued me from the Ranger group are gone. Uh the only person from my jolly crew that is still alive uh is uh is the hoist operator. Uh who's I've never been able to find him, but I suspect he's probably still alive. Um but that's the guy I've never been able to. What's his name to your mind? Yeah, it's in my it's on the picture. I got a I've got a picture of the of the crew.

Host 5:26:01

We'll find it. We'll make sure we put it up because the internet, when we put these things out, you'd be surprised about that.

SPEAKER_01 5:26:05

I've I've got uh I've got his name in the in the uh the air crew picture of the rescue.

Host 5:26:11

Well, if you're listening to this and you hear the story, make sure you uh you check the description. We'll have we'll have his his name, and if somebody could post it.

SPEAKER_01 5:26:19

The aircraft commander, it was his first rescue as an aircraft commander. Uh his co-pilot was and he was a captain. His co-pilot that day was a major named Jackson Scott. Captain Chapman was my rescue operator. Uh the PJ was uh was uh Pickelsheimer. The assist the number two PJ, the guy that lost the the coin toss and stayed aboard the aircraft to man the minigun. I've got his name too, but uh he was aboard the Jolly Green that went in to rescue Bat 21 and that huge well-known rescue, and they were shot down and killed. So he lived another um this was January, he was shot down in April, and so he was killed. Uh so everybody on my rescue group is dead except I think the uh the hoist operator, who I've never been able to contact.

Host 5:27:23

So you get told go find a new job, and and you said the best thing that ever happened to me.

SPEAKER_01 5:27:28

I I uh we we had turned in our aircraft at China Beach, and all the guys were dispersing. And so uh I packed up my gear and my car 15 and I said uh see you guys. And I went down to the airfield and I got a I got a uh C-7 caribou ride to Danang and uh or Cameron Bay, I think it was Cameron Bay, and then I hooked up with a C-130, went to Saigon, and got to Saigon. I was at a big army helipad there called Hotel Alpha, and I was trying to find an aircraft that was going to Canto, which is the unit I was going to, was located at Canto on the Mekong River. And I'm sitting there for an hour or two, and I see this loach come flying in, and it's got shark's teeth on the front of it. And I said, Wow, that looks like a dark horse bird. And when he came in and turned sideways, I saw the outcast patch on the on the engine cowl. And uh the kid shut down and came over. It was a young warrant officer named Rusty Rice. And I said, Are you going back to Dark Horse or Canto? And he goes, Yeah, I got a parch run, but in a couple hours I'm gonna be headed back. If you need a ride, you'd be glad to go with me. So I stowed my gear in his aircraft and I waited until he came back. And um we take off and we're I don't know, we're 1,500, 2,000 feet flying back to Canto from Saigon. And he goes, What brings you to Canto? And I said, You're you're in the outcasts. And he goes, Yeah, I'm the maintenance officer for the scout platoon. I said, Well, I'm your new platoon leader. And uh Bob Todd had been shot before that, and so he was gone. And that's how Rusty Rice Medi's new platoon leader was in the aircraft, and he goes, Oh, that's cool. You want to fly? I said, Yeah, I've been flying Cobras. I hadn't flown a loach in a long time. So that was my first loach ride back in country on what would be my third tour. And uh uh roomed with Rod Willis.

Host 5:29:36

You did tour two and three back to back?

SPEAKER_01 5:29:38

Back to back, yeah. And so we we we get to Canto, and after about two weeks, a Cobra pilot from the 101st transferred in, and it's Bob Hartley, one of those W-2s that was in my Cobra class.

Host 5:29:58

That's funny.

SPEAKER_01 5:29:59

He shows up and he's rooming with Rod and me, and then a week later, another group of pilots is infused, and one of them is Ken Shriver, who was the other warrant officer in my in my Cobra class. And both of those came in to fly Cobras when I was back as the scout platoon leader again. So it started all over. Uh uh I was the scout platoon leader for the second time, same call sign, Dark Horse 1-6, and we flew in the four-core tactical region, primarily in the uh in the Yemen Forest and the Cambodian region. We did a lot of operations in Cambodia uh escorting river convoys from Saigon all the way up to Namph, uh, Cambodia. So we did a lot of flying out country and the rest of it. The Yomen Forest was another very, very bad area. Not as bad as the Ashau, in my opinion, but equally formidable.

Host 5:31:01

Your third tour in '72, you guys had really transitioned to the Vietnamese Vietnamization. Yeah. Uh no more real Americans on the ground except advisors. Um what was that tour like?

SPEAKER_01 5:31:13

The the Vietnamization was in full force. There were no American ground units in IV Corps. The only people we ran into uh uh up at Chilang on the Cambodian border, there was a New Zealander training battalion that had New Zealand NCOs and officers training Arvans in infantry tactics. And we had uh the various Arvin units around the Delta had one or two American advisors with them. And it was totally different. The the it in the Delta, my experience was different than the Arvins and I Corps. The Arvins and I Corps were pretty hardcore guys. They'd hit the ground running and they would attack. They were good soldiers. In the Delta, time after time after time, we would insert the Arvin in an operation, and the minute they're on the ground, they whip out their cooking pots and they start making supper. So they would sit a cynic would say they were giving the enemy time to move away. They didn't have the same uh they didn't have the same operational objective that perhaps I had. Um so we supported the Arvin to a degree. We we did the same scout missions, we did a lot of BDAs, bomb damage assessments for B-52s. Uh we'd we'd go and scout an area and say, you know, we got a lot of bad guys here. The next day they would obliterate the area with B-52s, and then we'd come back in and do bomb damage assessment. The Delta was wide open, tactics were totally different in the Delta. It was like flying on a pool table. There were huge open rice patties uh cut by uh uh dike lines that had nipple palm trees in it. And the enemy would build the bunkers down in these nippopoms, they're very hard to see. And uh we worked with the Navy Riverine guys, the PBRs and the Swift boats uh up and down the Mekong River. A lot of those were also Arvin. Um but because it was so wide open, we started flying with a wing scout. The lead scout did the scouting, and the wing scout was trailing behind him to cover us. If we broke from fire, you're immediately covered by your wingman who's now behind you. So it was two scouts, two cobras, and a Huey. The Huey had no rescue force aboard, but we did have an Arvin officer who was our clearance to fire and our coordinator with the guys on the ground. They spoke English, they coordinated with the guys on the ground, gave us clear the fire when we could or couldn't. Um but the Wing Scout was a it was a new thing for me because you're basically trailing behind the lead, you know, kind of S turning behind him, and if the lead broke, then you attacked his source of fire and then broke inside him. Uh so that's the way we worked. And we we did the same thing we'd been doing. We were scouting uh for enemy units. If they'd uh if they'd hit a base, we'd move in and track them back to wherever they came from, usually Cambodia. Um we did a lot of operations uh in Cambodia as deep as 25, 30 kilometers. Uh that was not advertised. Uh there were officially we were we were not supposed to land. Uh we could go in 30 kilometers and work, but we we came back out to Chilang or uh Mukwa or the 44th Special Tactical Zone before we touched down. So theoretically, we were never in Cambodia. We were kind of over Cambodia. But when we'd land and take off, we were always in South Vietnam.

Host 5:35:20

You told me some interesting stories yesterday that you know you ended up there was a commander that you had in Vietnam. I think that you had two different like I think one time you you shot the garrison flag and then the other time you went into that was in Cobras. Yeah. That you gotta you gotta tell those stories because you end up running into that general later on in an aircraft.

SPEAKER_01 5:35:40

Yeah, you know, I wouldn't tell that story except he has passed, and so I can safely safely do that. Um this is back third of the fifth calve when I was I was flying Cobras. We were out by Quezon one day, and and uh Covey comes up on the air. Um there's a there's a frequency in aircraft called guard, and it's a common frequency, and you tune your radio to transmit and receive plus guard. And then whatever frequency you're on, if somebody transmits on guard 243 zip, uh, you can hear it in your head zone, and you can turn your radio over to guard, transmit, and talk back on the same frequency to them. So we're flying around in the area southeast of Quezon one afternoon, and this Covey Fack, who's over in Laos, comes up and says, any Army aircraft vicinity Quezon, your radio. I pop it over to transmit and receive plus guard and said, This Charlie Horse 3. With a flight of four, what do you got? He goes, Well, I got a bunch of trucks on the road over here, and they got some anti-aircraft guns. They're shooting at me, and I don't have any more fast movers. I'm about 17 clicks inside Laos. Can you come service the target? I said, Yeah, stand by. So I gave, I got the I got the grid from him, the map grid, and I pop up on uh troop uniform and I call back to Bob Fairchild, who was our operations officer back at Quang Tree, and uh I said, uh, hey, I got a I got a mission request from the Air Force. I need to go attack a target grid, X-ray Tango 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Uh I need approval for that. And he looks at it on a map and he sees that it's 17 clicks into Laos, and he he comes back on the radio, and all Bob said was, check your grid. I knew what he meant. What he meant was give me a grid inside Vietnam and then go shoot in Laos. So I did. I said, Oh, correction, X-ray tango, this, which was just inside Vietnam. And I left my Huey and my scout over Quezon at altitude. And uh Bob Smith and I penetrated Laos and we went over and found the fact, and uh he showed us where these trucks were pulled over under the road, and we're shooting the poop out of them. And we got trucks burning and we got guys running everywhere. And when we're expended, he said, Thanks a bunch, see you next time, and we turn and head back into Vietnam. And as we're coming out of Laos into Vietnam, my my Huey is up about 5,000 feet with my uh loach following him, and um off in the distance, I see a Huey coming toward us, also about 5,000 feet, not one of us. And as I come out of Laos with a flight of two, I grab my Huey and my loats, and we're headed back toward Quang Tree, and this Huey passes us at altitude. And all of a sudden, on our troop frequency, this voice comes up and said, Uh, Charlie Horse 3-8, this is uh Red Devil 5. What's your status? And I said, uh, it's Charlie Horse 38, we're expended. Um troops in the open, we're headed back to to Quangtree. Roger. That's all, that's all he said. So we headed back to to Quangtree and landed. I'm sitting in the revetment, and I flip over to VHF, our troop internal VHF frequency, and I'm talking to my wingman, and I said, Hey, who's Red Devil 5? I never heard that call sign. I said, Who is that? Before Bob could say a word, this voice comes out of my troop VHF, my frequency, and says, I am your assistant division commander. Oh shit. It's General John Hill. Brigadier General, had commanded the 5th Brigade during Lamson 719. He gave up command of 5th Brigade to become Deputy Commanding General of the 101st. And uh when I got to operations, Fairchild said, General Hill's office call in. You need to go see him. So, so I did. I went over to the other side of the runway where General Hill's office was. And they made me made me sit in the hall for about 30 minutes and think about all the transgressions I'd made. And so I reported in to him, you know, very snappy salute, sir, Captain Mills. And he goes, uh, why were you in Laos? He said, I saw your flight leave Laos. You're not supposed to be in Laos. I said, Well, sir, I got a mutual aid uh request from the Air Force. He was being fired upon, uh defensive mission. I went in to uh do a defense mission on trucks in the open. He was not terribly impressed with my my explanation, but he was not overtly uh cynical about it. Uh and he said, uh you don't need to be, you don't need to be violating international airspace. Yes, sir, three bags full. And and back I go over to the unit. Well, probably a month later, I'm up I'm up north on the DMZ. I'm flying with a W-4 named Mac Cockrell, who was clearly one of the best Cobra pilots we had. He's in another ship. We're flying together as a flight of two. And all along the DMZ, there were four uh Marine Corps bases, Charlie 1, 2, 3, and 4, that were Marines posted on the DMZ. And this was in uh uh well, this was in December of uh either December or early January of 71 into 72. And I'm up there and the North Vietnamese had a flag in the middle of the DMZ that it was a huge thousand-foot flagpole with a huge North Vietnamese flag on it. And it always irritated us that they would fly that thing, but it was fairly well covered by anti-aircraft fire from the ground. So you didn't want to get over there and get close to that flag because they'd shoot you up. And I came up on Victor, our internal frequency for the Cobra platoon, and I told Mac, I said, What if we went around the rock pile, which was a terrain feature to the west? What if we went around the rock pile and went low level and then came back around through North Vietnam and attacked the garrison flag from the north? They'd never know we're coming from the north. He was up for that. So we we penetrated North Vietnam, went low level, came around the road, and we're hell bent for election down the road southbound. We get to the vicinity of the flag, pop up, nose over, and salvo on the garrison flag, and then just keep going. Both of you guys shoot? Both of us, yeah. Uh and we kept going. Shoot rockets? Oh, yeah, all rockets. Like, like each pod was uh each uh interior pod was 19, and the exterior pods were seven each, so 38, boom, gone. Uh 14, boom, gone. We just kept going. And at that point in time, we were we were at Camp Uh uh Evans.

Host 5:43:13

Did you guys take everything out? The flag and the bunker?

SPEAKER_01 5:43:17

The bunker, the I don't know. The flag didn't come down, but but but the whole area around the bunker was blown up. And we just kept going and back to Evans and shut down. And uh I walk into flight operations, and Bob Fairchild is looking at me and he goes, What have you done? I said, What do you mean? And he goes, Well, division just called and General Hill's office called and said, When Captain Mills gets back, have him come back to my office. And I'll be danged. The Marines at Charlie II, which is closest to that flag, called 101st Airborne and said, Hey, two Cobras just attacked the garrison flag out of North Vietnam and skinnyd out to the south. What's going on? He assumed it was me, and he was right, it was me. And so I had to go back over there. This time he was a bit more verbal. Um a brigadier general ask you in of a captain is is not something you want to I've I figured I'm probably in serious trouble over this, but uh truly never heard another word. He he chewed my ass pretty bad uh about penetrating international airspace again. And years later, the war's over. I'm I've gone through the advanced course, I've gone through two years of degree completion to get a degree. The Army gave me two years to finish my degree on degree completion, and I've gotten married again, and I'm I'm headed to Fort Hood, and I'm at Fort Hood, I'm the I'm the uh uh troop commander with the second of the first cav. And um I'd I'd been somewhere, it was official because I was wearing greens, but I don't remember why I was away from Hood, but I was coming back into Hood on Rio Airways. And as we're making the approach into Kleen, I happened to look over, and there's a guy sitting in the aisle next to me, older gentleman, civilian clothes, and he's he's looking at me, and there was a moment of recognition, but I couldn't place him. I thought maybe I'd seen him before, didn't know him. We get into the terminal at Colleen, and I'm waiting for the baggage to come off the aircraft. My wife is standing with me, and this uh this gentleman walks up to me and very clearly looks around to see my name tag. And when he does, he starts to smile and he said, Captain Mills. I said, sir. And he goes, Lieutenant General John Hill. I said, Sir, it's been a long time. How you know how are you? And he goes, Well, I'm coming into Fort Hood for some some function, and and uh he said, What are you doing now? I said, Sir, I'm commanding a calf troop here at Fort Hood. And he looks me straight in the eye and he goes, Can I trust you this close to the Mexican border? And I laughed. My wife didn't know what was going on. She didn't know any of this. And and I I laughed and said, I promise you, sir, I'm not going to Mexico. Uh, but that was the last time I saw General Hill. That's uh that's wild.

Host 5:46:33

Back on your third tour, the Easter invasion, April 1972, the SA 7 Strela arrives. It's a heat-seeking shoulder-file-fired um anti-aircraft missile, Soviet-made. No heat suppression kits available. Walk us through the moment you understood what that threat was.

SPEAKER_01 5:46:49

Well, you know, they they uh we knew the Strela was out there because we'd lost a couple of uh VNAF aircraft and actually a couple of fast movers to the to the Strela down in the Delta. So essentially they basically said, everybody go low level. Uh uh Altitude is the killer now. It used to be the the the defensive realm from the 50, but now standoff is the killer, so get low. Um and they called they called us all into the cafeteria at Canto one day, and this special group was there to talk to us about counter-strella tactics. They they said this is what's coming, and they showed a picture of the back end of the Huey with the toilet bowl diffuser system that would diffuse your exhaust up into the uh rotor wash. And then they showed a picture of the toilet bowl diffuser for the cobra up into the rotor wash. And then he started talking about counter-strella tactics, and I raised my hand, I said, excuse me, what about the loaches? He said, Well, we don't have the fix for the loach is not yet concluded. However, we uh are providing you guys with uh very pistols and green and white star clusters, and you're gonna carry it in the back end, and when you see the Strella launched, uh you take your very pistol, cock it, stick it out the door, and shoot a pistol to divert the uh missile. And I raised my hand again. I said, You just told me that the missile was supersonic. And he said, Well, yeah, it is. And I said, So by the time I see it, it's already hit me. And he didn't say anything to that. There was no real comment. So they gave us these Mark 19 or so uh big, huge very pistols uh from the Navy, I think, that uh had green and white star clusters, U.S. Ordinance 1943. And we were up at Mukwa one day, and and that very pistol was sitting in the back where the crew chief was, and I just picked it up. I just wanted to see what they look like, and so I cocked it and I aimed it up in the air, and I pulled the trigger and it goes pop and doesn't fire. I take the second one out of the box and put it in there and pop, it doesn't fire. The third one did fire, green and white star cluster. I said, this ain't gonna work. Uh but ultimately what we were given they came in with a mod kit for the OH-6 that basically uh diverted the tail exhaust up through the engine cowling, pointed straight up uh not from the exhaust, but but diverted back up through the top of the engine compartment, uh, which gave us uh diverted exhaust up into the rotor system. What it also gave us uh was a cracker jack way to make jiffy pop popcorn. Because those exhausts were were sitting at about four feet off the ground, and we could get jiffy pop at the PX, and you could take it out and put it on top of that exhaust in the field and shake it, and it would make Jiffy pop. Uh, but we never lost, we never lost an aircraft to um to the Strela. However, toward the very, very end of the war, a bunch of our area guys were were uh flying up to Saigon to uh rotate home, and they were in a Chinook, and that Chinook was hit by a Strela and went and killed everybody on board. But uh while I was there, we lost no aircraft to the Strela, but we captured some and turned them into intelligence for evaluation. But uh everybody at that point in time, uh October, November of uh of 72, everybody was an app of the earth. Everybody was low. Chinooks were low, cobras were low, Hueys were low, scouts were low because of the danger of the missile. And that was the first dedicated Russian SA-7, uh heat-seeking, shoulder-fired aerial missile, copy of the red eye. Uh, and that was the first dedicated missile threat that we ever faced.

Host 5:51:18

Eric Air America, Ed and Ebby and the Swedish K. On your first tour, uh, scout pilot Ed and Ebby uh turned up on your third tour flying for Air America. Yeah. The CIA's unarmed supply outfit. Uh their pilots couldn't even carry weapons. You uh you met with Ed and you ended up giving him either a Swedish K or an M2 carbine.

SPEAKER_01 5:51:37

Yeah. The the uh Ed Enibo was was uh Dark Horse 1-9 on my first tour. And if you read about him in the book, we refer to him as Weird Eddie. Uh he made Rod Willis look like Mother Teresa. He was that guy. Uh and of course, at the end of the first tour, we lost track of him. I didn't know where he went. And then on third tour, he shows up at Canto, this Air America Huey Silver with blue trim, lands on our pad and shuts down, and we walk out to see who it is. It's Ed Innbo. And he says, Hey guys, he said, I didn't know you two were here talking to me and Rod. He said, I need guns. I need some guns. They won't let us have guns. We had a lot of guns. We had a connects full of all kinds of guns. I said, What do you want? We got we got Thompson's, we got Swedish K's, we got M2s. Um he said, uh uh Swedish K's 9mm M2 is 30 caliber. The Vietnamese have a lot of 30 calibers, uh 30 caliber carbines. Let me have an M2, fully automatic M2 carbine. So he stayed, partied with us for a while, and then back in his uh Huey and off he went. Theoretically, Air America was the aviation asset of the Central Intelligence Agency. Um there were other organizations uh um that that flew in the Vietnam area that were that worked for CIA. But Ed is the only guy that I personally knew that flew for Air America, and they flew all over Laos, Cambodia. Um they they did a lot of uh clandestine stuff. But they were essentially a civilian airline. They weren't allowed to carry weapons, they weren't protected as combatants, but uh I was uh I was led to believe that most of their guys had access to weapons if they needed them.

Host 5:53:38

You and I had talked as we kind of uh bounced the interview plan back and forth. One of the questions I'd asked you if there was, you know, anybody that you you had never talked about publicly. And what one of the names that came up was Bruce Gibson. Um and it's something I know that you wanted to talk about.

SPEAKER_01 5:53:56

Yeah, it it's been a long time, and and uh I'm comfortable doing that now. Bruce Gibson was the the load. Coach Patoon Leader for B Company 1st Aviation Battalion. 1st Aviation was the organic aviation battalion for the 1st Infantry Division. And they had uh Cobras and Charlie model gunships, and their call sign was rebel. Terrific gun pilots, just absolutely terrific gun pilots. Whether it was the Charlie model uh Huey's with the low combat uh profile or the Cobras, the higher combat profile, the rebels were great guys. Their sister platoon uh and and the uh called the ponies flew 086s, but they weren't scout pilots. They flew brigade commanders around, they did ash and trash command and control. They weren't scouts. The division figured if they could take the pony platoon and train them as scout pilots and team them up with rebel gunships, we could have another air cav asset like dark horse. And the concept was called light horse. And so the first step of that was to uh to train the platoon commander of the pony platoon in scouting techniques. And that guy was Lieutenant Bruce S. Gibson, infantry guy, good guy. I liked Bruce, I knew him for some time, and he came over and was flying with us, and I gave him one of my most experienced crew chiefs to fly with him. He essentially was flying with dark horse gunships to learn the scout mission. And I gave him a gunner named Red Hayes, and Bruce was out flying one day and had a target, and he kind of got fixated on it, and he kept going back in the same way. And Hayes was saying, hey sir, change your change your azimuth. Don't go back in the same way. Don't get slow. Don't you're slowing down, don't get slow. And and several times he he didn't immediately react. I was not there, but this is what I was told. He didn't immediately react to Hayes' guidance and suddenly groundfire uh 50 caliber uh through the groin and out through the top of his uh body. He's killed instantly, and the plane crashes with Brad Hayes in it. And uh big big mission to rescue Hayes, and thank God we got we got read out, but uh Bruce was killed. And when I wrote Low Level Hell, 1992, I did not want to write Bruce Gibson got killed because he didn't listen to what people told him to do. And so in uh in writing the book, uh there is a memorial page uh to all the guys that died in Dark Horse while I was there on that tour in '69. And one of the names in the memorial list is First Lieutenant Bruce S. Gibson. But when you read the body of the book, you never see the name Bruce Gibson. What you see is Pony One Six. So what I've always used as kind of a uh uh a mind twister thing with folks. I always tell them I got once you read the book, I've got one question for you. Who was Pony 16? Uh and people go all over that book trying to find who Pony 16 was. Very few people have been sharp enough to come up to cross-reference. They see Pony 16 is killed in the book, but they don't go back to the memorial page to see a name that's there that was never mentioned in the book, and that was Bruce Gibson. Bruce was inducted into the U.S. Infantry Officer OCS Hall of Fame at Fort Benning. His flight suit from flight school is there. Um I just didn't want the family to see a reference that would make them feel badly about how their loved one was killed. So I didn't put his name in the book for that reason and that reason alone. But he's he is memorialized uh on that page. And that's that's the story of Bruce Gibson.

Host 5:58:27

Yeah, I just it's one thing as I've gotten to know you, you just have like this you're just a very respectful person about all the people you serve with. Um there's things we've talked about off camera that you know we decided what we weren't gonna say on camera just because you you have this, just I don't know how to explain it. You just really care about all the people that you serve with.

SPEAKER_01 5:58:46

It's yeah, I mean you you don't want to you don't want to read a book that, hey, your relative got killed because he didn't follow simple instructions, which is an oversimplification of what happened. But my attempt to protect the family was to simply not put his name and in in the in the chapter on how Gibson was killed, I referred to him only as Pony 16 from across the runway. Um Hayes survived it. Uh we were able to rescue him. The ARPS went in and got got Hayes out and recovered Bruce's body. Um, but I I was not comfortable describing and how he died is exactly how he died in the in the book, but I just wasn't comfortable putting his name in there, which might cause some negative impact on the family, and I think it's been long enough now that uh that probably is not an issue I have to worry about.

Host 5:59:43

Thanks for sharing that. What was your call sign? I don't think I've ever asked you. Did you have like a nickname?

SPEAKER_01 5:59:48

Well, I mean, you had obviously your call sign when you flew, but did you Yeah, the call sign, the call sign was was Dark Horse 16. In Cobras, it was Charlie Horse 38. Um but as far as a personal uh call sign, it was it was Captain America. I had a warrant officer on my my second tour uh when I was flying Cobras. I had a warrant officer named Ron Dybella, who was a first, I'm sorry, a a uh first lieutenant named Ron Dybella. He was kind of an irreverent little shit. Um good Cobra pilot, short, uh curly black hair, good-looking kid, but he was a little too irreverent for me. And we were in the club one night, and uh he had been drinking, and he made a couple of comments. He was wearing a pair of cutoff jeans shorts with an American flag sewn on the butt.

Host 6:00:50

Is this the O Club in Vietnam?

SPEAKER_01 6:00:52

Nah, it wasn't the major, it was our little club. It was it was the troop club. Um and it it offended me. It it offended me that he was wearing the American flag on the on the butt of his shorts. And I said, Diabella, you got to get that flag off your shorts. And he looked at me, he was intoxicated, he'd been drinking it. He made some flippant comment, won't you take it off of me? And so I did. I I slammed him down on top of our pool table, and I reached down and grabbed his American flag patch with my teeth, and I ripped it off his shorts with my teeth. And uh my guys were shocked, they didn't know what to think when I did that. Dibella was equally shocked, and when he kind of sobered up a little bit, uh he said, I didn't think Captain America would do that to me, and well, boom, that stuck. And so uh as kind of a uh uh as kind of an acknowledgement of my straiter than some guys, depending on on the activity, perhaps flying outside the country was not one of them. But but uh I I I I was a teetotaler, I didn't drink, I don't I never have been a drinker. And uh and so uh as kind of an acknowledgement of my rather straight-laced nature as a as a young captain, they call me Captain America. And that stuck, that stayed with me my whole career.

Host 6:02:22

You had a Captain America helmet, like your first time.

SPEAKER_01 6:02:24

Yeah, I did, yeah. I had a I had a and interestingly, Ron Dibella is the guy that painted that helmet. Um I had a green SPH 4, and and I've I've always had a little bit of a sarcastic sense of humor. And and uh I told Dybella, who was a who's an artist, I said, uh, I want war, great big letters across the visor of my helmet in gold. And on the left side, I want you to write in text, smaller letters, is hazardous to your health. And then on the right side was the Captain America logo, the Captain America with the shield and all that. So in the picture of me getting hoisted into the jolly green, what you see is the visor on my helmet that says war in great big letters. And everybody says, gosh, that's a testimony of aggression. War. No, it was a fallacious statement that, you know, uh war is hazardous to your health. Nobody has ever seen that side of the helmet. Um and then you can see the uh in a couple of pictures later on on my third tour, you can see uh the Captain America figure on the side. But Ron Di Bella uh painted that helmet for me. He got out very quickly after the war was over and was tragically killed in a um in an automobile accident. So we lost Ron. Ron was probably one of our first guys that went, uh all because of a of an accident in a car. Where can people see that helmet today? Uh people can see that helmet today in in uh the uh library of my uh uh outbuilding in Kansas City, but it's a replica. It's not the real one. The real one's long gone. Uh and there's another replica that that resides in the MacArthur Military Museum in Little Rock, my home, yeah, uh Arkansas. And there's a little display down there that's got a fl uh some of my awards and and a uh flight suit and a calf hat and a replica, a perfect rec replica of that helmet is down there in Arkansas. Super cool. Yeah, that's what I was alluding to.

Host 6:04:51

Yeah. Um anything else from your Vietnam tours we haven't covered? I've taken you for a jog through all kinds of stuff. I didn't want to pull out every story from the book because I really want people to go read that book. It's such a great book.

SPEAKER_01 6:05:04

Um, you know, the uh when when I left Vietnam uh uh I I was uh I left in September of 72 to go to the Armor Advanced Course, the captain's course for armor officers. And I left there and went to went to Fort Knox, had a great, had a great year. Um uh my table mate in the advanced course was King Hussein of Jordan's nephew, and his name was Prince Ali bin Nayf. Uh not the crown prince who was uh uh Adullah, but uh the the the uh nephew of King Hussein and he was he was my table mate and had a great had a great year with him uh a lot of extracurricular time off the clock traveling with with Ali who went all over the country and and area around Fort Knox buying stuff in large measure, complete water wells, complete various kinds of cars, pickup trucks. He loved pickup trucks. And all this stuff was shipped somewhere and sent back to Jordan. I I enjoyed, I enjoyed very much the Armor Advanced Course. My roommate that particular year, we shared an apartment in Elizabethtown, was a guy named Carl Sitkovich. Carl had been a company commander at Conn Barracks in Schweinfort, where I had gone to command my tank company. I commanded B Company 264, he commanded C Company 364, uh, and we knew each other in Germany, and so when we got to the advanced course, we hooked up together and got an apartment in Etown, and we we both uh were there for the course. At the very end of the course, um, I think we had a week maybe before graduation, the Army made an announcement, and they said all officers uh uh on the posted list shall be in Boudinot Hall at 1500 for a briefing. And we went down and looked at the bulletin board, and there was a big list of guys, and my name wasn't on it, but Carl's was, and my friend David Knee uh was. And this was the first big riff reduction in force. The war was over, the army was oversized, and this was the first notice that all you guys thank you for your service, but you're gone. You're done. Um I at that point in time I had no degree. I had a two-year socialist degree. Um, but the thing that saved my career, I mean, clear clearly, I I full well accept it, my awards saved my career. And the Army did not riff me. I didn't have the education I needed, but I had awards that had bought me a consideration, I think. And so my dear friend Carl and my dear friend David, boom, gone. You know, your your careers are gone. Um one of my scout pilots, a captain from from Vietnam, Mac V. Sog guy, boom, gone, out. Um But it was at that point that the Army reached out to me and said, uh, uh there's a program called degree completion, and we will give you two years to go back to school, all expenses paid by the VA, full pay and allowances for your military pay, but you're gonna be a student for two years to finish your degree. Uh and you've got three options. Uh uh as an armor aviator, you can go to University of Mississippi, Hattiesburg, you can go to University of Nebraska, Omaha, or you can go to Embry Riddle University in Daytona Beach, Florida. And I immediately suspected a trap. I said, that cannot be possibly where they would go. But I cautiously said, How about Daytona Beach? And sure enough, they they sent me to Daytona Beach. Um VA paid tuition fees and books. Uh the Army paid my full salary, flight pay, regular salary, the whole thing, quarters allowance. All that was paid. I lived in an apartment on the St. John River in Daytona Beach, joined the Sigma Chi fraternity, had a great uh experience with those guys, uh, which endures to today. Um I was at my apartment one one Saturday, and I happened to be standing on the railing of second floor apartments, very nice apartments on the St. John. And uh these two good-looking young girls are walking down through the parking lot, and I zero in on one of them. She is gorgeous. Um and I basically say, Hey guys, where are you going? And and they said, We're looking for the manager's office. And I said, Oh, it's right down here. Go through that little archway, and his is the apartment on the left. And I said, uh, if you want some more information on a place, come on up. I got I got a pot of coffee on. And I went back in my apartment. They were talking to the manager about an apartment they couldn't afford where I was living. And so uh essentially they started to leave, and and uh one of them, uh the the other than the gorgeous one, said to the manager, Who's that guy up there in apartment 31? And uh the manager said, Oh, that's that's Captain Mills, he's a pilot. They thought Captain Mills pilot airline. And so the the gal, whose name I won't mention, um, said, Let's go up and see him. Well, the other girl, the really good-looking one, said, Nah, yeah, I'm not really interested. But she went. And they came up to the apartment, we met, we we drank coffee, uh talked about Daytona a little bit, you know, some of the places to go, found out they had just come from Florida State. They were both uh speech pathologists who had come out of Florida State and were assigned to Daytona Beach as their first job in the in the school district. And I had no interest whatsoever in the one that had some interest in me, apparently. And um the other girl, the one that I really thought was uh was something else, had a boyfriend uh back at Florida State. And after a while, we hung around for a month or more, and it didn't seem to be going anywhere for me, so I just kind of stopped going over there. And then one day she comes over to the place without the other girls, just her. And uh she's my wife of 52 years. Yeah. So uh yeah, we we got married uh uh that was June of of of uh 73. We got married in April of 74 and then um took off and went to Fort Hood for our first assignment together.

Host 6:12:36

Did she know your background?

SPEAKER_01 6:12:37

Did she know like Nah she didn't well she figured it out, I mean, after um, but did she know everything you'd been through in Vietnam? No, no, no, she didn't know. She knew I was I was up front. Uh I told her, look, I've been married, I'm widowed. Uh didn't seem to bother her, but I figured she had a right to know that. She knew I was in the Army, she knew I'd been in Vietnam, but I didn't talk a lot about it. I didn't uh uh certainly not in the detail of that I've talked in this in this uh interview. But uh uh you get lucky twice. And uh 52 years uh this last April will be 53 next April.

Host 6:13:20

And um give us those of us that haven't been married 52 years, you know, there's a lot of divorce in the military community. What do you think are, other than your wife putting up with you, uh what do you think are some of the secrets to staying married for that long? What are things you think that you guys have done, or or what how that's a long time and it's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 6:13:41

The thing that I think was most important for us in the beginning, two very independent people. She was a she was a very independent, headstrong uh Sharon, my wife. Um independent, headstrong, self-confident, uh, had her own career, uh, didn't depend on me for everything in her life. Um if I was facetious, I would say give up early and just say yes, dear, and and do whatever they say, which is really kind of the truth. Um we we we just got along great. And uh uh she didn't mind going to the army. She could take her career wherever I went, which hurts a lot of military guys if their wife is a career person. Um often in the Army, the military wife, especially of a commissioned officer, is expected to be the go-between, if you will, for all the other wives. And and you know, back in the older days, the wives club did all these things like like white glove teas and all. My wife was not into that stuff. Uh my wife's idea of a fun outing was to get a bus for all the girls and put a keg of beer on it and go to a pottery factory. Uh white cotillion teas never ever once did that. Yeah, some officers' wives are really into that. A lot of them, candidly, in the older days, the the some of the wives who had very little to stand on on their own personal merits wore their husband's rank. Well, that's still a thing today. And I can tell you that never happened with my wife, who was far more into being fun and friendly and and uh whatever she could do for the the other women, she she would do, but but she didn't worry about all this. You've got to spend so much time working at the at the community, this or that, and you've got to go to she didn't do any of that. She just, let's go, let's go drink beer and and uh and and visit a pottery factory, or let's go on a tour, and let's go to Amsterdam, or let's go to Paris, or whatever. Um but She always had her own career up until uh up until she retired about uh 2023. Um speech pathology law enforcement. She was a vice detective with Kansas City, uh, undercover for many years. Very capable, self-sufficient woman, and not one that that sat at home and worried while I was in the field. And that, you know, so many military families have to be self-sufficient because sometimes the guys are gone or the the military spouse is gone. Um that was that's never been an issue. But thank God I didn't have to do that in combat. I would, I would not have done the things I'd done if I had to worry about her at home. Yeah.

Host 6:17:25

Kind of going back coming out of Vietnam, what was that transition like that, you know, on twofold. One, the war's over, and that kind of life is, you know, somewhat

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Host 6:17:35

left behind. You stayed in the military, so you didn't get completely away from it. But I mean, war is a very adrenaline-filled, especially the job that you did. Um, you know, just being up close and personal with the enemy, tons of engagements over three years. How do you balance that to go back to like a more mundane lifestyle? Or did you crave that and were you done with it?

SPEAKER_01 6:17:56

Uh I left, I left combat to go to the armor advanced course. That consumed me for a year. That was that was not a walk in the park. That was uh that was an academic struggle. Uh not struggle. Uh it was an academic uh objective, but it but it focused me. Um after that, I went

(Cont.) The Most Dangerous Flying Job in Vietnam | Hugh Mills

SPEAKER_01 6:18:18

I went two years uh and I was totally absent from the Army for two years. I was a captain on active duty, draw and pay, but nobody around me really knew that. You couldn't tell. I didn't wear a uniform. Um it was a period of decompression for me. I I really I loved Sigma Chi. Sigma Chai was a great fraternity. You know, you hear today um so many of the problems uh male fraternities have with hazing. Half of my fraternity were veterans. We didn't haze anybody. Everything about the initiation into Sigma Chai is far more mental than it is physical or hazing. Can you imagine hazing a combat vet? You draw back a bloody stub. Good luck. Never happened in Sigma Chai. There was a process, you had to follow it. Uh, it was not necessarily easy. There was some commitment required and some uh uh philosophical challenges, if you will. Um but uh uh I I really enjoyed Sigma Chi and still do today. I still am associated with the fraternity and and some of my fraternity brothers. The the guy who was the director of photography and one of the people that went back on the the uh trip to Vietnam in 2015 was Ambry Riddle fraternity brother, who who was uh is a professional uh photography guy now, retired captain from American Airlines. Um so all all of all of those things allowed me to decompress a little bit for for a couple of years, and then in January of 75, we head back to Fort Hood. Uh Sharon's first exposure to the Army. That was kind of fun. Bless your heart, Sharon.

Host 6:20:12

Killeen's a tough place.

SPEAKER_01 6:20:13

Kleene, Texas. Uh, and and she was a uh speech pathologist with the school system, and I was uh gun platoon leader in an aircraft troop for for a year, exo of an aircraft troop for for a year, and then commanded a ground cavalry troop, all in the same squadron, uh, for a year, went off to Canada for an exchange tour, um, came back and and uh from uh from Fort Hood uh we we formed uh an attack helicopter company at Fort Hood within the 6th Cav Brigade in in uh late 77 and took it to Germany with the new S model Cobra. Uh and I was the exo of that outfit. Um and we took that to Germany to form the basis of the 8th Aviation Battalion at Fenton Army Airfield in Mainz, Germany. So now Sharon's going with me. We're now overseas and never been to Germany. I think she had a great deal of fun with that. We lived on base at Fenton, where I worked. I could walk through the woods and I'm in my unit. Uh she still did uh speech pathology. She taught in the in the University of Maryland School District, speech communications and uh other other skills that she was able to teach soldiers. She became a world-class racquetball player. Uh women weren't playing racquetball. She loved it. So she only played with men. And uh she got really good. I mean, I mean, uh her skill level was far better than mine. But we enjoyed Germany. We had a great time, and then we left Germany after command of an attack company to go to the Command and General Staff College. We were at Leavenworth for a year, and then off to uh three years of ROTC duty, which I was not terribly fond of. It was it had its moments, uh, but I was not really uh all that excited about Rotsi. I taught at a military junior college, Wentworth Military Academy. And uh it was a good assignment. I enjoyed it. It was one of the requirements. You had three options when you came out of uh command and general staff in those days. Uh you were going to ROTC, readiness region, or recruiting. And of the three, uh probably ROTC is the is the best. Uh recruiting is not something I wanted to do again. And readiness region was work with the reserves, and I didn't really want to do that. Uh so all things considered, it was it was a no, it was a it was a sacrifice I had to make for three years uh in order to go somewhere else. And I wound up back at Leavenworth, uh promoted to lieutenant colonel, and and uh was a deputy chief of staff for operations for Fort Leavenworth, and then after that, um six years uh as the Army representative to the FAA, uh based in Kansas City, but a wide range that covered most of the United States uh and and uh requirements. How was that job? That's cool. That uh I basically handled special operations in the national airspace system, uh, had a lot of tangential connection with the uh uh then Task Force 160, a couple of other units that were a little darker than 160. Uh but wherever they would go, we would go ahead to prepare the National Airspace System to accept them, uh either through air traffic control requirements or after they the special ops guys would do what they did. Uh occasionally we had to go back around behind them and pay for the damage that to facilitate the payment of damage. Um when a flight of MH6s overfly a mink farm at whelping time, um, and the mamas get crazy and start eating all the babies, there's there's a price to be paid for that. When a cow kicks down the barn door because a special op Chinook flies over the building at night. Um I enjoyed it. I had a great time. Worked uh in the Central Region headquarters. I had an office in Kansas City, I had an office in Chicago. Uh, but it was a good assignment. And I retired from that assignment. Um and uh and we decided to stay in Kansas City, and that's where we are today.

Host 6:24:49

You know, you and I have talked a bunch off camera. I think I've probably asked you a couple questions about it, you know, and there's this kind of thing with Vietnam vets, at least the ones that I've met so far, is you guys haven't been eaten up with the suicide rate that we've seen from my generation. And there's a common theme that I've I kind of picked up as we've been talking and through our prep. And you get together a lot often with the guys that you served with, and you you found this fraternity when you went to college, and you know, I know I noticed a theme that you never really worked hard to isolate yourself. Do you think that contributes to some of the reason? Or is it just a gener different generation and you guys were more resilient? I I find it super fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 6:25:31

I'm not a hundred percent sure, but here's here's my thoughts on that. When I came out of Vietnam, I stayed in the Army. Everybody that was in the Army that did what I did had had the same commonality of experience that I had. Um I've always thought if you're the and I've I've I've used this exact analogy, if you're the only kid from Toadsuck Ferry, Arkansas, that went to Vietnam and you came home and there was no commonality of experience, nobody to talk to, then you wall that up inside you and it festers, and sometimes that's a problem. When everybody in your environment has the same experience you had, if there's a need to talk or a need to share, you are comfortable sharing with a guy who's done exactly what you've done. When we formed that unit at Fort Hood to go to Germany, we had 38 pilots. 37 of them were Vietnam veterans. One poor W1 lead chambers was assigned to our unit when one of our guys couldn't make the transition because of a medical issue. And so we had 37 combat veterans and one poor W1 that that had 200 hours of flight time. Everybody else had 1,500 to 3,000 hours of time. But I have never had an acquaintance that committed suicide. I've never had an acquaintance that had PTSD debilitating issues. Some, I'm sure, had concerns and and and worked through it, but uh our group didn't commit suicide. Um we have stayed close. The the Dark Horse pilots and crew chiefs and ARPs, we get together every year. Um as I said before, not necessarily at VHPA, but at the crew members association. We want to be with the guys we flew with, our gunners, uh our our pilots, our Hueys, our our Cobras, our Loach guys. Um we take care of each other. Um my friend John Loftus, who just was uh tragically killed by accident, um, is gonna be buried at Arlington in the near months, and I guarantee you a slug of guys are gonna be there. It's what we do. Um we we take care of each other, we're we're all I mean, everybody in that group now, at 78, I'm probably the baby of a lot of the guys. I was very young, most of the warrants were older than me. Most of the guys that I that I commanded are at least two years older than me. Uh but we take care of each other, we look out after each other, we stay in touch with each other. Um we know within a day, when we lost John, within a day, everybody in my circle knew about it. Uh I was getting side letters, side texts from people going, did you hear? Did you hear? Did you hear? Um that started with one phone call from one of my dear friends who's in Alaska, called me after the widow called him. He called me, I called some guys in Dallas, boom, the word was out. Crew chiefs know, ARPs know, Cobra pilots, scout pilots, Huey pilots, we all know. And that I think that degree of of love and compassion for each other. Um you know, I I had a guy ask me one time in a in a public setting. He he was a jackass. He um he said, Why do you guys wear those hats so you want me to know you're a Vietnam veteran? And I said, Pardon, we don't wear the hat for you. We wear the hat for each other. I don't care whether you know I'm a Vietnam veteran, but I want to know where the other Vietnam veterans are. And we wear the hat for each other. But when I was coming down here on this trip, uh getting on the airplane, uh, there was a Marine Corps veteran, Vietnam, that was on the airplane. Uh, there was another guy with him that I have no idea what this is, I'm ashamed to say. His ball cap said Baltic War Veteran. I don't even know what that is. I don't know if that's Kosovo or whatever that is. Maybe. But uh I've never seen that. I don't know. Baltic War. Uh we don't wear it so you know we're Vietnam vets. We want it to know who the other Vietnam vets are. We're we're proud of our service. Nobody ever called me a baby killer, nobody ever spit in my eye, nobody ever did any of that stuff uh to me. I think that's overly hyped. Um But we are proud of what we did. We're we I I have no uh I have no regrets about what I did. Um I have regrets that I lost guys that I truly cared for. But I don't have any regrets about the way I conducted myself. You know, the the the in uh the enduring the enduring negatives of the Vietnam War include the Me Lai massacre, uh, where a lieutenant named Rusty Cali had no control over his men and he allowed them to commit atrocities against men, women, and children. I would never, ever have tolerated that had I been present at such an event. And neither did a neither did uh Hugh Thompson, a helicopter pilot, who saw what was going on and he landed. He was flying a 23, I believe, and he landed and and basically uh directed Cali and his men to quit killing civilians and told his told him if his crew chief would fire on them if if if they didn't stop what they were doing. The real hero of the mini line massacre was was Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot who saw fit to stop it. Um the company commander Medina, the the the platoon commander Cali, uh they got off easy. I would never have tolerated uh massacre of civilians. Not then, not now, not ever. But you don't know who Hugh Thompson is. You know who Rusty Cali is. He survived his court martial. He opened a jewelry store in Columbus, Georgia, and he lived a good life. Uh the people that he killed lost their life. Nobody knows, for the most part, who Hugh Thompson was. That was the hero of Me Lai. 99% of the Americans that went to Vietnam conducted themselves as professional soldiers. Anytime you got a war, you got guys that do stupid things. And and I I wouldn't tolerate it, and God bless you if you don't tolerate it either.

Host 6:32:41

You know, and that's a that's a that's a that's a great segue too, because you and I both spent a lot of time in law enforcement as well. And you know, we we talked about yesterday at length um, you know, the the George Floyd uh incident and and some of the other incidents, and it's like, you know, a couple cops, um, and I'm not even referring to those cops, just a couple bad cops, you know, throughout the years have done one or two things, and you know, you you see a national outrage, whereas 99% of the police officers are working hard, doing the right thing.

SPEAKER_01 6:33:11

Um you you cannot paint with a broad brush.

Host 6:33:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:33:15

Uh you I think you need to police your own ranks. 100%. When you got guys that are out outside the reservation, you need to fix that. Uh but but certainly uh 99% of the military guys conduct themselves honorably. Um same thing with law enforcement. Uh but you've got to police your own ranks. Yeah, you have to do that.

Host 6:33:37

You know, you you you talked about a couple things, and I'm just gonna weave these in kind of broad arcs because they kind of go back to different parts. Um, I think I, you know, you and I were talking yesterday, and I was trying to take notes in my phone because there was just there's no way I can fully capture your life story. Um, but I've tried to pick highlights that I think one are interesting or talk about things that maybe people didn't know. There's I learned so much for you. I've I learned while as I was doing the the research, and we've had another MACB SOG. I learned a lot about Vietnam, and I was, I don't know, fascinated as a word, but I grew up. That was the thing that I looked, you know, looked into and read about, and um, and that's what pushed me into my military service. Um, but you you had a couple interesting things that that um that we talked about, one of which was um Ho Chi Minh. There's a lot of things I didn't know about Vietnam that you that you taught me. Um, you know, his his origin story, why why we were there. Could you explain just a little bit of that?

SPEAKER_01 6:34:32

Yeah, it was an eye-opening experience to me as well. Um when I returned when I was working on the sequel, I'm still working on the sequel to Low Level Hell, which I can't to cover two and three. Um I was talking about the the shootdowns that occurred the 31st, the uh 20th, and the 30th. And I called an acquaintance of mine who's a well-known Vietnam author and a former translator for the Central Intelligence Agency. And his name is Merle Pibinau. And excellent, excellent book on the Easter invasion that he wrote. So I got a hold of Merle and I said, Hey, this is what I'm doing. Is there any way you can help me identify the unit we were fighting at this particular time at this particular place? He said, Give me a little time. Calls me back in about three days and says, um, the the unit that you were fighting was the 10th Company, 8th Battalion, 241st NVA anti-aircraft regiment, and the guy that shot down Charlie Horse 26 was named Fam Knock On. I thought, holy mackerel, how do you know that? And he kind of laughed and he said, Well, I translated uh I translated their unit history for the CIA. Here it is, by the way, in English, and he sent me all that. There's a picture of Fam Nock On, who was awarded the hero killer of American helicopters for shooting down Charlie Horse 26. But as I as I went back to Vietnam, we reached out to through through another expatriate CIA guy who lives in Hanoi. We reached out to him, hired him, contacted uh uh these uh members, the survivors of the 241st anti-aircraft, uh, all of whom lived up kind of close to the Chinese border. And uh we we we had a film crew and we flew to Vietnam and Hanoi, and we met these guys in a in a uh cafe one night. And the first thing they wanted to know, I had a little interpreter who went with me to interpret, and and um they wanted to know how old were you when we fought? And I said, I was 24 uh when when I fought your group. And uh and I said, How old were you then? And they all said, Well, I we were about 18. So I was older than them, and there is an appreciation for that in the Vietnamese culture. Um and they treated me with absolute uh honor and respect. They were overtly respectful to my wife. They called her madame. Uh, when we were walking, and and many times in the three weeks we were there, they would actually flag down a moped and put her on the back seat, side saddle, and ride her so she didn't have to walk. Um, many of them uh were married in several of the functions we went to. They brought their wives and, you know, all their wives are about four feet tall, max. My wife is is is uh is 5'7, 5'8. And John Bruno, the the the Academy Award winner who went with us to ramrod this uh uh this documentary, uh, which is yet to be finished. But anyway, John Bruno's wife is about six feet tall, gorgeous, blonde. The Vietnamese don't know what to think about about Lori Bruno, uh because they're four feet tall and she's two feet taller. And one kid walked up to us and made a comment in front of Zoe, my little interpreter. And I asked her, I said, What did that kid just say? He was looking at Lori Bruno, and he said, That's the tallest white woman I have ever seen. Um they're friendly, they're inquisitive, there is no animal. Vietnam veterans that have not been to Vietnam should not be afraid to go back. They have forgotten the war. The veterans want to be friends with each other. And we went up to the camp, the area close to the Chinese border where Ho Chi men had been fighting the Japanese. The Japanese occupied what was then called Cochin, China. We now call it Vietnam. But the Japanese occupied and ran the French out. The French fought the Japanese in Indochina and they were essentially run out. And Ho Chi Minh was assisting the United States and the British through uh assistance from the uh uh Office of Strategic Services, the OSS, in recovering downed air crewmen in Indochina, Co Chen China. And so we sent a deer team, uh uh uh essentially a special forces team early in their existence um to to link up with Ho Chi Minh. Um the guy that commanded that team was named Archimedes Patty, and he wrote a wonderful book years ago called Why Vietnam. And and and a lot of this I learned from that book. But Ho Chi Minh was stricken with malaria or dengue fever or some terrible disease, and was near death in his camp up on the Chinese border, and the medic from that deer team gave him sulfur drugs and quinine and whatever, and actually saved Ho Chi Minh's life. Uh, had he had he not been there and Ho Chi Minh had died, would the communist revolution have occurred? Uh would the French have been triumphant in Southeast Asia? But when the Japanese capitulated, Ho Chi Minh rode into Hanoi on a horse with the deer team, right with him, uh, and basically declared uh uh Vietnam an independent country, which didn't fit with the political objectives of the United States. Roosevelt uh was was uh uh and and Truman uh were were more interested in re-establishing the French and control of Indochina. And so we returned the French to Vietnam in American Liberty ships. And of course, that set in motion what I believe was the the the communist revolution in Indochina, which would ultimately culminate in the in the wars in Vietnam, which went from 45 all the way to 1973, almost unending. Uh and and I think about what would have happened if the if the deer team hadn't been there and and Ho had died.

Host 6:41:41

Well, it's funny because when you you told me when when Ho Chi Minh retook Hanoi, he was wearing uh a shoulder booster.

SPEAKER_01 6:41:48

Yeah, he had uh he uh he was enamored of of uh Major Patty's uh and the team's 45 pistols. He wanted a 45 pistol. And Patty uh describes in his in his work that he wired his headquarters in India and had an aircraft come in and drop a parachute with a a pair of uh pair of 45 pistols that were sent by the president for Ho Chi Minh. And that's what he was wearing when he went back to Hanoi. But we were pulled out very quickly. The Americans were pulled out, the French were reinserted, the Viet Minh, uh the insurgency was was essentially established, and we may have missed an opportunity there, but he was a communist, he was a revolutionary, and our objectives lay with France. And and so uh years later, we fought a war there against Ho Chi Minh.

Host 6:42:47

I I uh I'd love to get your thoughts because you know a lot of Afghan and uh Iraq vets, but especially Afghanistan vets, you know, those of us that went and fought in Afghanistan, and then we watched, you know, what happened and Biden's handing the country back and the and the way he did. What was it like for you to watch um what happened in Vietnam um towards the end and our pull-out and it all kind of I don't want to say it's all for naught because I don't think that's fair to people that sound like that.

SPEAKER_01 6:43:09

You know, we left in in 73, early 73. The International Peace Commission came in and and basically negotiated the truce and uh they released prisoners, we released prisoners, and then Vietnam was on its own for you know from 73 on till the fall in 75. And and uh the American government did not, in my opinion, did not support the Vietnamese uh to the degree that I think perhaps they should have or could have. I see some parallel perhaps with Ukraine. Um we're not fighting Russians. Ukrainians are, and they have exposed what I consider to be the great uh fallacy of of the prowess of the Russian force. The Ukrainians have said, no, not here, not today, not on my watch, and the Russians uh have have largely been unsuccessful in Ukraine. I spent a career in in Europe as a as a border kind of guard uh uh uh preparing for when the Russian horde came down the fold a gap. Uh I had a totally different opinion of the Russian army than I do today. Um as much Russia as it is other uh large communist countries. But um I I I think politically people make concessions that sometimes don't hold water and are maybe are not uh well thought out. America has has a problem with continuity of obligation. Yeah, that's a great point.

Host 6:44:58

Um especially because we're only thinking four-year cycles.

SPEAKER_01 6:45:01

I I I I look at uh we left the Vietnamese high and dry. Um left the Kurds, too. Well, hadn't got to the Kurds yet, but but you got the uh you got the Hmong, the mountain people, the indigenous people uh who were who were so deeply embedded in our SOG operations, uh Montagnards, uh Brew and and uh uh uh Hmong and uh Nung uh mercenaries, we left those guys high and dry. Um we did it to the Afghans, we did it to the Kurds, uh all folks that had had had uh supported us. And I think you've got to consider what's what's the worth of an American promise. We've got to have continuity in our government, and and you're right, every four years our word changes. Yeah. That which we will support theoretically changes every four years, and and that's that's very bothersome to me. And our adversaries know that as well. Oh, of course they do. Of course they do. The the uh countries like Persia, Iran, have been around for thousands and thousands of years. They were a civilized country before we existed. Um I think they're perfectly willing to wait us out. Uh I I I everything I know about foreign policy right now is what I watch on on uh television. But if they know they can wait out for four years to them in a in a thousand-year dynasty is is infantesimally small. Same with China. I mean, uh Yeah, you said that. I didn't say that. The enemy knows that they can wait us out and they're prepared to wait for perhaps an administration that's willing to look the other way. And that's, you know, I I look back, I count America's word in the names of the guys that I personally know that gave their life for American freedom and the American objective. Um when when you lost all those guys in in Vietnam, 52,000, uh, and and then you look at a country that's willing to turn their back on them and let the ultimate demise of of Vietnam be the collapse of government and the onset of uh a communist takeover. Exactly the same thing in Afghanistan.

Host 6:47:30

Um What do you want people to know about the Vietnam War and those who served?

SPEAKER_01 6:47:36

You know, all of us, I I think for the most part, uh those that that went willingly um believed truthfully that we were fighting communism uh at our back door. And there was this thing called the domino principle that if one country fell to communism, if we lost Vietnam, then we lose the Philippines. If we lose the Philippines, we lose Indonesia, we lose Thailand, we lose Laos. And the the domino falling in all of uh Southeast Asia would become a communist uh uh empire. Uh that was a worthy fight. But when you when you look at the end of the Vietnam War, the the uh I believe it was called the Case Church Agreement that that basically cut off all support to the Vietnamese government. What do you do? We we've supported them. The the the bulwark of American defense in Southeast Asia was air power. And when you take away the air power, uh the fledgling Vietnamese army, which was still very young in its infancy, is not capable of defending themselves against the the much more aggressive and and well-structured North Vietnamese army. We turned our backs on them and we left them defend for themselves. We did it to the Kurds, we did it to the Montyards. Um we've still got people in Afghanistan, I'm confident, that need to and want to come out, and we have not done right by them. Um I would like to see government with some continuity of integrity and objective uh and foreign policy. That's that's where we can disagree about social issues, Democrat, Republican, independent. But when it comes to the national objectives of the United States, I think we need to speak with one voice.

Host 6:49:33

Aaron Powell What is it like for you to see um like air power, air cav, you know, it's completely changing. I mean, the the helicopters, you and I were talking, they've just deactivated, I think, the entire Air cavalry is gone.

SPEAKER_01 6:49:48

It's dead. Um largely and again, uh the the last thing the current leadership of the Army needs is a bunch of retired guys sitting in the backyard talking about how they ought to be doing things. But from that perspective, um uh air cavalry uh has been eclipsed by the drone uh uh uh evolution. Um Yeah, you Ukraine has changed the face of my Ukraine and the and their total stalemate with the Russian forces has totally changed the way we look at warfare. Uh air cavalry is now defunct in the United States Army. It's gone. It was gone in December. Every air cavalry squadron is gone. The way I fought a war is gone, will never be again. Um scout aircraft, there aren't any. We've got gunships, we've got blackhawks, blackhawks being replaced by M-75, uh MV-75 uh Cheyenne II, which is essentially a bell tilt rotor. Umsked my opinion, but I think it's too big, I think it's too complex. It's fast, it goes a long way, but the Army lives in the field. The Army lives like the Marine Corps, not like the Navy and the Air Force. Um I am not convinced that that's particularly the way to go. But the integration of the attack helicopter and drones, uh semi-autonomous drones that can be controlled from an attack helicopter like the Apache, uh, has a lot of reasonability to me. And I can I can see why they did what they did, but it breaks my heart to see that the cavalry is gone. If it's not ground calf, it ain't cal because air cav is gone. And that really is painful to me.

Host 6:51:40

Sure. Especially as somebody who you know helped revolutionize the platform and moved it forward. But I mean, the other part of, you know, I think you and I talked about it at some point. If we can send a drone and not have to risk a pilot, yeah. Um, I mean, I I think to a certain end.

SPEAKER_01 6:51:56

How would you like to be the guy shot down on the battlefield and the drone that arrives to pick you up is autonomous? It's unmanned. And, you know, the door opens and there's nobody in there. You're supposed to get in. Yeah, they're doing it.

Host 6:52:08

They're sending out uh, I mean, land drones. I haven't seen an air drone, but they've sending out, you know, land drones and coppers to rescue Ukrainians where they're not.

SPEAKER_01 6:52:16

We've got uh we've got OH-58 platforms, the Bell Ranger platform and Blackhawk platforms that are autonomous aircraft. They're flying around unmanned. Um I don't know. There's a lot that remains to be seen. I will not see that uh in its culmination, but you know, I I worry about things like do you give DFCs to drone operators sitting in a trailer in Nevada? Is there is there valor in that? Is there courage in that? I don't think so. I think all of that goes away. Um courage and valor are synonymous with honor and honorable, and uh it's very easy to send a drone over and blow up a bunch of guys in a car. Little different to face them head on and and uh and and uh mutual combat. That's great. So to to a degree, I wait to be convinced.

Host 6:53:16

The last thing I kind of wanted to bring up, and it's completely off this topic we were just talking about, but I it was interesting to me, and I thought it was interesting enough to bring up on this podcast. You know, during the Biden administration, they changed a lot of the the names of bases in my generation, uh, me especially, was like, that sucks. You know, there was politics involved, and you know, we all know that's a whole nother conversation. But taking the politics aside, there were some names that were changed, um, and there were people that you know personally, one of them was Fort Hood. I I was stationed at Fort Hood at one point in my career. Um, and I thought it was horrible. Why would they do that? Because, you know, that was the base that I knew. But tell me about General Cavasas.

SPEAKER_01 6:53:54

Well, backing up just a little bit, at the end of the Civil War, as a part of uh uh reintegration of the Confederate States back into the Union, um military posts across the South were named for Confederate generals. Hood, uh uh Rucker, Polk, all these were were Confederate generals, where posts in the North in the Union territories were named uh uh were were named in uh for for Union generals. And that the that was from 1865 on. And then for for whatever reason, certain administrations uh saw fit to change the names uh of those posts. But these, you know, Fort Hood has always been Fort Hood to me. Uh John Bell Hood was the was the Texas Brigade commander in the Confederate forces. But um they they changed the name of of Hood to Cavazos. Dick Cavazzos, as a brigadier general, was the deputy commanding general, 2nd Armored Division when General Patton, my favorite Patton, uh, was the was the commanding general and I was a troop commander there. Um I I thought the world of General Cavazzos. He he hung the moon as far as I was concerned. And so to name Fort Hood away from John Bell Hood to Dick Cavazzos, I thought, sure, go right ahead. That's that's a that's a super American. Same thing at Fort Rucker. Fort Rucker became Fort Novicell. And I had the very great honor to personally know Mike Novacell, Medal of Honor recipient who who was a dust-off pilot. And to to name Rucker Novicell is just fine with me. To change Bragg to Liberty did not make a lot of sense to me. I didn't quite understand that one. To change Polk to Johnson, I never did quite understand that. Um I understand the political imperative of why certain people do certain things. But as an individual, I s I I would ask folks to consider the value of renorming history. History is what it was, and you learn from history uh both the good and the bad, and you you don't want to repeat those mistakes. But to change it for the sake of changing it uh for no apparent objective didn't make much sense to me. But I had no problem with Gavazos and Novasell.

Host 6:56:42

Those were the Medal of Honor?

SPEAKER_01 6:56:44

I believe so. Yeah I believe so. Uh wonderful guy. He was also in Vietnam, was he not? Oh, yeah. All the generals uh that I worked for were all Vietnam guys. You know, when just before I got to Vietnam, what a lot of people don't remember in the first division, we lost General Ware. I want to say it was early December of 68. The commanding general 1st Infantry Division was shot down over Kwanloy. Uh we lost uh the aide, the general, the sergeant major, the general's dog, a German Shepherd was on the aircraft, and all those guys were killed. And uh that that was General Keith Ware, a great also Medal of Honor recipient from World War II and Korea. And and that's when we got General Tabor, and then we got General Malloy. And I I truly worship the ground that General Malloy walked on. He was a great soldier. Um he took time to talk to troops. When when Malloy would come to a uh award ceremony at our troop at Fulloy, all of us noticed that he took time after the ceremony, he didn't get back on his Huey and fly off. He took the troop commander and said, Let's take a walk. And they'd go into the troop barracks, they'd talk to guys, they'd go into the mess hall, they'd talk to guys, kids working on the on the flight line, he'd walk up to them, and you know, here's a here's a PFC that just got to Vietnam. He's never seen a lieutenant colonel, much less a major general. And and here's uh General Malloy walking around shaking hands with guys, how you doing? Where are you from? That's an American general. That's the kind of general that I gravitated to. Um that that's the kind of officer that I tried to be. Uh and uh uh taking care of the troops is the is the fundamental function of an American officer and an American NCO. If you can't do that, you're not doing your job.

unknown 6:58:50

Amen.

Host 6:58:51

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SPEAKER_01 6:59:40

So um they'll definitely There is nobody on earth that wants to listen to you and me talk for eight hours.

Host 6:59:44

I'm convinced that that I agree. So um I think this is probably there definitely will be a part two coming if we can drag you back out here again. But from the bottom of my heart, man, it it has been, you know, I in a society where we glorify, you know, sports athletes and actors, and you know, I I've always laughed. I've never really been into the sports, and um, you know, there's some people follow religiously. Um, you know, you're you're you're kind of one of those personal heroes to me, not to make you feel uncomfortable, but it's just been uh, you know, I just feel like a kid in a candy store. I could have talked. We talked yesterday for hours and hours, and you know, even this conversation, this day is uh this time has passed very quickly. I just want to thank you. Thank you for this service to the nation. Uh, thank you for for being who you are. Um, and and just thank you for really being open and honest. You know, I think there's this misnomer that my generation felt for a long time that we were kind of scared to talk to Vietnam vets, right? Like, you know, that's fair. And there was a period where it Wasn't a cool thing to talk about it. Um, but it's such a piece of our history, even if there are a little bit of black eyes, but you know, there were so many heroic things that happened, and so many, you know, you just in the time that we shared, you shared so many different stories. And you know, that the most of your stories, even though I was asking you about your part in it, you were always just very quick to point out who was around and and who did what. And and and your your your memory of names has just been awesome. Um, and it's just a testament to who you are. And and I know you're you represent your community well, and I know there's a lot of other guys like you. I know you've and I have talked off camera. I'm I'm gonna try to snag as many of these stories as humanly possible. Um, because it's just it is, it's a part of our history, and it's it's uh it's good to memorialize that um so that we we we don't forget the sacrifice to this nation um that that your generation made um and those that came before you as well. Um and you know, we I I didn't get to spend too many time, too much time in in my lifetime with World War II vets, my grandfather served in World War II. And my only regret is I didn't ask them more questions because there was this thing where you know you you don't want to talk about it and you can't talk about it. So it's just been amazing to learn and for you to just be just open and and just really uh I mean, even when we were preparing, you you you left nothing. Um I mean, you basically told me I could ask you whatever I wanted, minus a few Bill Clinton stories we couldn't tell on on the podcast, which were just just as fun. But just thank you.

SPEAKER_01 7:02:05

Thank you for your time. And I gotta I gotta say, I I uh one of the great pleasures of my life is to be able to say I grew up across the street from Bill Clinton. I went to school with Bill Clinton, I was in the same uh high school with Bill Clinton, and and I have I have met him, I know him, he's very close to my family, uh, and I think the world of Bill Clinton. And uh that's as political as I get. I I am not a political person, but but uh I I I vote my conscience, and I think that's what every American ought to do. And uh if you can live with it, uh vote for it. If you can't live with it, don't don't vote for it. But uh I I appreciate I appreciate the forum, I appreciate the ability to talk about Vietnam. Um 52,000 plus Americans gave their life there, and they did it with an objective to stop communism. And today we're still fighting communism. Our our principal objective, our principal adversary is communism. And communism is more alive in this country today than it ever was when I was when I was a young guy coming up. And when when you hear folks in in the American political structure say that that the need in America is for revolution, communist revolution, social revolution in the American government. Uh long as I'm here, they're gonna have a problem with me because I swore to defend the nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Uh and and I think uh I think we don't need communism, we don't need socialism, and those who would endorse it have never lived under it and have no idea what they're talking about.

Host 7:03:59

Yeah, amen. Well, on that, uh thanks for your time. It's I think our more our our most precious commodity, um, and and thanks for for spending some with us. Um if if you're out there and this helped you, uh the best way you can support the podcast is to just send this to a couple people. If you're listening to this on the audio platforms, it's the place that we're hurting the most. So if you could leave us a review on Spotify or iTunes, that would really help our our algorithm. Sometimes we wonder if we're gonna continue to push these audio platforms, but um, that would really help us. Leave us a review, um, whatever you think. Uh thanks for all the support out there. Um, you know, we started the new nutrition line, Hop Light Nutrition. That uh 100% of those proceeds are um to support the podcast and also uh the nonprofit coast to coast that we've partnered with. So um anyway, stay safe out there, guys. And if you can't be safe, be violent out here.