All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
This is Veterans Radio.
And now, your host for today's program, Dale Throneberry.
And welcome to the radio. My name is Dale Throneberry.
I was a CW-2 helicopter pilot in Vietnam in 1969.
We want to welcome you to our program today.
I'm really excited because we're going to be talking helicopters and helicopter rescues and all sorts of stories about helicopters.
So all you rotor heads out there, tune in, notify all your friends.
We're going to be talking with Phil Marshall, who was a Medevac pilot in Vietnam, and about his series of books.
He's got about 12 of them, at least, that talk about helicopter rescues in Vietnam.
So we're really excited to talk with Phil later on and make sure that you all tune in.
Right now, I want to make sure that we thank everybody that supports Veterans Radio.
We couldn't do it without you.
Number one would be Legal Help for Veterans.
Legal Help for Veterans is a law firm specializing in Veterans disability claims.
For more information, go to their website. That's legalhelpforveterans.com, or you can give them a call at 800-6934800.
We also want to thank the National Veterans Business Development Council, or NVBDC.
The NVBDC's main purpose is to certify that a veteran-owned business is actually that, veteran-owned.
This can be very important for veteran-owned businesses and companies that want to do business with the government and with veteran-friendly corporations.
So to find out more information about becoming a member of the NVBDC, give them a call at 888-237-8434.
That's 888-237-8434, or you can go to their website. That's NVBDC.org.
We also want to thank the Eisenhower Center here in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The Eisenhower Center is an in-house facility for treatment of veterans and anyone else who has suffered from a post-traumatic syndrome,
any sort of traumatic brain injury, concussion, anxiety, depression, or suspected CTE.
They have a special program that they started a while ago called After the Impact Program that provides rehab for veterans, first responders, and professional athletes
through a 30- to 90-day evidence-based treatment program.
For more information, you can contact them at eisenhowercenter.com.
You should be noted that Eisenhower Center is hiring right now, and so we encourage you to go to that website, eisenhowercenter.com, and see if there's something that you might be able to do, or some way you can help them out.
Or you could give them a call at 734-677-0070.
That's the Eisenhower Center, and then last is our Vet Biz Central, and this is a part of the Veteran Business Outreach Center division, I guess you could say,
of the United States Small Business Administration, specializing in helping out veterans' businesses.
And they are located up in Flint, and they handle the Vet Biz Central is from Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana.
They put on all types of webinars and seminars for veterans who are attempting to start their businesses or to grow their businesses.
They have entrepreneurial training, education, mentoring, counseling, how to write a business plan, how to go find funding, all sorts of things.
So we encourage you to check them out, that's eisenhowercenter.com, and their phone number is 810-767-8387.
And I would be very remiss if I did not mention our local Veterans Service Organizations that also help us out here at Veterans Radio.
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Thank you men and women of those organizations, we could not do our job without you.
Well, it's that time of year again, it's October, and October means the beginning of Toys for Tots.
And Toys for Tots is in their 73rd year, which I think is awesome.
The Toys for Tots program is sponsored by the United States Marine Corps.
I can't do the huyau because I'm not a Marine.
Created in 1947 and expanded nationwide in 1948, the United States Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots program is an official activity of the United States Marine Corps.
And it is the Marine Corps' premier community action program from 1947 through 2019.
The United States Marines have distributed over 584 million toys to over 265 million less fortunate children.
Today, Toys for Tots is the nation's flagship Christmas charitable cause with local Toys for Tots campaign conducted from October 1 through December each year in over 800 local communities throughout the nation.
We encourage you to go to ToysforTots.org.
It is a IRS recognized 501C3 non-for-profit charity.
And find out more information.
And I've got an interview with the president.
I guess he is right now.
He's the head of the Toys for Tots organization.
And this is a currently United States Marine Corps retired Ted Migg Sylvester.
So Derek, if you could play that interview, that would be great right now.
This Christmas, Toys for Tots celebrates over 70 years of delivering a message of hope to America's less fortunate children.
In 1947, one Marine unit delivered 5,000 toys.
Today, Marines will provide toys and books to 7 million children in over 800 communities nationwide.
Over 15 million children live in poverty in the United States.
And nearly all risk waking up Christmas morning without a gift under their tree.
Thousands of Marines and volunteers aim to change that.
Lieutenant General Pete Osman, president and CEO of the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation, has more.
Folks, Marine Toys for Tots really need your support this year.
Through the gift of a new toy or a cash donation, you can help bring the joy of Christmas and send that message of hope to our nation's less fortunate children.
Simply drop your favorite toy in a Toys for Tots collection bin or make an online donation.
Please go to www.toysfortots.org for more information.
Okay, that's Toys for Tots.org. We encourage you to go to their website.
They will be starting to collect toys again. They're also looking for donations, of course, and during a pandemic, it's kind of going to be a more difficult situation to get to their collection boxes.
But we encourage you to find out all that you can.
We're hoping that over the next couple of months, we will have representatives from the Marine Corps Reserves to be on the program to give us kind of an update of what is going on with their Toys for Tots program this year.
Okay, we're going to start getting our rotors going. We're going to start pulling pitch and taking off here pretty quickly.
We're going to take a real quick break. And when we come back, our guest is going to be Phil Marshall. And Phil was a medevac pilot in Vietnam in 1969.
His call sign was DMZ-Dustoff711. It was based out of Camp Evans and Quang Trie with a 237th Medical Detachment Helicopter Ambulance.
This was the northernmost Dustoff unit.
Phil has written, I've lost count already, but at least 14 or 15 books that I can find about being a Dustoff pilot and also about all of the various rescues that occurred in Vietnam.
His latest volume, number 12, is helicopter rescues in Vietnam. The true stories of daring helicopter rescues as told by the men who flew them.
So stay tuned, put on your headsets, get some popcorn, whatever it is that you need, and we'll be right back with Phil Marshall right here.
If you have a VA claim denied by the Board of Veterans Appeals, contact Legal Help for Veterans at 1-800-693-4800.
They're experts in handling cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. Their number again, 1-800-693-4800.
The joy of living is in the giving.
Hello there, this is Nat King Cole, wishing you all a happy and a merry Christmas and asking that you remember our less fortunate children by giving toys for tots.
We can fly as high as it has as needed to stay out of the range of small arms fire.
This is Dale Thromber again with Veterans Radio, and as I mentioned earlier on, we're really excited to have Phil Marshall on our program today.
He was a war officer, helicopter pilot, as was I, and we're in country at the same time, just at different ends of the country.
So Phil, I want to welcome you to Veterans Radio.
Thanks very much, Dale.
Well, it's a pleasure to talk to you finally. We want to thank our friend Dwight Zimmerman for connecting us.
Dwight is with the Military Writer Society of America, and he knew that I would be really interested in these books, and I'm so shocked that I hadn't heard about them before.
How did you get involved in writing all these stories?
I wanted to honor the 15 men in my unit that didn't make it home to their families, and I knew that we had some rather unusual and memorable rescue missions in the 237th.
So I put the book together. Not knowing if I would even sell 14 copies, let alone have 14 volumes.
But long copies of the book to friends who always had enjoyed hearing the stories, non-Vietnam veterans, and they said, wow, these are cool. You got any more?
And I get, well, yeah, there's thousands of them out there.
And it just started the snowball rolling, and I'm working on the 15th book.
But all the books have at least 20 missions. They're all true. Some of them are just absolutely incredible.
I sent a copy of a book to an acquaintance that flew Chinooks in Afghanistan, and his comment was, if I didn't pry in combat myself, I wouldn't believe half these stories.
But they're all absolutely true. They're not embellished, and they're either told by the people who actually participated or for the stories with unhappy endings, those that were there and can provide me with the details,
and allows me to honor the men, the other men, who didn't make it back, not only the ones in my unit.
Right. Well, as you mentioned, some of these stories are just so mind-boggling, and even though I was there and you were there, and you wonder how they got out of the messes that they would get into periodically.
One of the mantras of being a helicopter pilot, I think probably anywhere when you're in the military, if that was one of our people who were hurt, we went to get them.
We didn't even think twice. In fact, there's a really kind of cute little article about the idiots in the front of the entire...
I have guys contribute stuff to me that just comes out of the blue. Yeah, if you want to talk about that one a little bit, that's pretty funny.
It was. I have to find it again. I can't remember what page it was on.
It was clear in the back. Clear in the back of 12.
Okay. I will look at it. But anyway, it just talks about that these poor, the door gunners and crew chiefs that were in the back of the aircraft, you know, kind of...
Unfortunately, they were on the... It's like being a kid in your parents' car on vacation. They didn't have any choice.
I shouldn't say they didn't, but sometimes, as you well know, things would come up for a vote, so to speak.
What do you think, guys? Should we do it? And it was always, yes. Go. Go.
Right. And they talk about in this about the pilots and about them making those decisions.
And it's, as I mentioned earlier on, I just thought it was so important that we all... I think we all had the mentality was...
Yeah, here it is. The two crazy bastards up front.
I'm glad you could say the word.
Yeah. I don't know. I'm looking at my controller here to say, don't do that.
I think it's lightened up a little bit here.
It was written by Mike Vaughn, and I'm assuming he must have been a crew chief for a door gunner.
He was a crew chief, yes.
Okay. And he says, I remember times when our crew would be flying along just minding our own business on some ash and trash mission.
That meant just a regular resupply mission.
And suddenly there was a call for a dust offer. Somebody needed to be picked up in a hot LZ.
And, you know, do we continue flying along on a relatively safe ash and trash mission?
Well, no, because the two crazy people up front have volunteered our crew for the dust offer, you know, the extraction.
And that was kind of the way that it was.
You know, it was...
That was our job.
Yeah. I mean, that's exactly what it was. It was our job was.
And one of your other stories, you had a... It was the Charles Simmons story.
And I want to talk about that in a little bit later.
But here, you know, the motto of being in Vietnam is you either de-roast or you died.
And the de-roast was that the date of estimated return to stateside.
And of course, we know what the other one meant.
But let's do get into these stories a little bit.
I wanted to talk about the ones at the beginning.
I was going to say it was mission number two in this volume.
And it talks about the Aydrang Valley.
And some of the misconceptions of what actually occurred there.
And I'm going to let you tell a little bit of that story.
I had the privilege of talking with Hal Moore about his book and with Joe Galloway.
And, you know, got another version of some of these stories.
So let's talk about the misconceptions.
Sure. Sure.
Well, of course, the battle of the Aydrang Valley was the basis of the movie.
We were soldiers once with Mel Gibson.
And all of us dust off pilots, Medevac, 15th Cav, or 15th, first Cav, 15th Medical Battalion,
first Cav, Medevac, we were all upset at the way that the dust off was portrayed in the movie,
that the dust off refused to go in.
Well, as it turns out with a lot of research from the 15th Med historian, Terry Mccarle,
that higher ups pulled dust off for Medevac in this case that you won't go in.
They didn't have hardly any extra aircraft, any extra crew.
The mission was almost surely going to end in disaster.
And so a higher up said you won't go in.
So Medevac had to refuse the mission.
Well, not knowing where that came from, the ground troops, Hal Moore in particular,
thought that the dust off was just refusing to go in.
So the slick, guys, names are escaping me right now, the one, the Medal of Honor Freeman and who else was it?
The Freeman and Crandall.
Yeah, yeah, Bruce Crandall.
They went in and picked out, pulled out like close to 100 wounded under intense enemy fire,
both awarded the Medal of Honor, which they absolutely earned.
But again, the basis was that the dust off, the Medevac refused, which we never did.
I never refused a mission.
Whether I was co-pilot or pilot, it was you go.
And so again, with a lot of research from Karen Maccarle and a lot of input from Medevac pilots,
15th Medevac pilots during that battle and in the unit at the time, said,
no, we weren't allowed to.
We were specifically pulled.
You will not fly that mission.
So that was where that came from.
And again, it's really, really been upsetting to see the popularity of the moving in the book and that's come off in a bad light.
Well, I think it should also be pointed out to our audience that this occurred in 1965, right?
Right, yep.
And this was, I mean, this was...
There weren't that many helicopters in Vietnam.
Well, we might use that now.
Am I right?
Yeah, I'm sorry.
I think you cut out.
I said there weren't that many helicopters in Vietnam.
Had maintenance problems and were hard to keep in the air.
Right.
I mean, they hadn't gotten into the...
We weren't even up to a half a million men yet serving in Vietnam.
So I mean, that's just another thing.
And later on, as the battle continued, because this was not just a one-day battle.
This thing went on for three or four days.
Metavacs were flying in and out of there eventually.
Yes, yep.
Yeah, they... once things calmed down a little bit,
then they didn't have to land under intensively fire.
So higher up said, yeah, go ahead.
Well, I think it's interesting, and I want to tell our audience this,
that maybe you're not familiar with Metavacs,
is that you guys, you didn't have any weapons on board.
No, no.
No, no, no, 15th Med, Metavac, they eventually put door guns on.
But when they were... had to refuse the mission, they did not have door guns.
But then about a year later, they put them on.
But of course, the Geneva Convention says that we couldn't carry offensive weapons as air ambulance.
Metavac said, though, we're going to put them in, and it's preventive medicine.
So, you know, you can take that as you want.
But my understanding is that the North Vietnam Viet Cong did not sign the Geneva Convention.
So they were shooting at the Red Cross.
They got my understanding, they had a medal and a $500 reward, piazzas, whatever,
for shooting down any American helicopter.
Right, and you guys had such a nice big target on it anyway.
Yeah, yeah, they did pretty good sometimes.
What the helicopter itself...
My understanding that we were three times as more vulnerable than the average helicopter in Vietnam.
But, you know, why are we more vulnerable?
Well, we're going in, somebody's wounded, we're going in to pick them up.
That means there's bad guys there.
Right, there are bad guys.
And a lot of times you didn't have gun support going into you.
You had some planning before most of your missions.
The horn goes off and we're gone.
And if we can marry up with some guns, great, if they're already there, great.
But I flew for four and a half months.
I was wounded on a night in secure medevac.
But in those days, I was in a very good position.
I was wounded for four and a half months.
I was wounded on a night in secure medevac.
But in those four and a half months, I can count on one hand the number of times we had guns.
Yeah.
Well, you mentioned that your tour was cut short.
What happened with you?
We had three seriously wounded 101st troopers, just a couple of clicks south of the DMZ.
We had a second chest wound. We knew that he'd not make it till morning.
So of course we went. No question.
And the bad guys let me get in, let me get my three wounded on board.
And then they opened up on me as we came out of the LZ.
And I took one round in the arm, which severed some nerves.
And that was enough to send me home.
But I was an aircraft commander for four days.
It proved my worth, but I didn't have a chance to use it very much.
Oh, that's a sad story after only four days.
Because the aircraft commander was the goal of all pilots.
Oh, the epitome. Once you made aircraft commander, you were hot stuff for sure.
At least for a little while.
And then you came home and nobody cared.
But you came home and you were a attack officer.
Yeah, how'd you know that?
I read. I read. I don't know.
I was already out of flight school when you came back.
But to our audience, I have to explain.
Attack officer is sort of like a drill sergeant for the Warren officer candidate.
So walks.
Drill sergeant with bars. I loved every minute of it.
What color were you up there?
What color were you up there for, Walters?
We were white hats. Tenth walk was where I was attacked.
Okay. I was in the first one. I was a red hat.
Okay.
Nobody, unfortunately, nobody liked attack officers because it was their goal to make sure that we could actually become pilots and officers.
And so they did everything they could to seem like to discourage us in that goal.
But what it was, what I learned later, of course, I knew it going in, but towards the end of the first class that I had,
Thelma says, can I speak to you frankly, sir?
And I said, yeah, what do you want?
And he said, we know you can't touch this. We know you can't hurt us or anything.
But why do you have to yell at us? Why do you have to do this and that and the other?
And I said, because when somebody's shooting at you, you better make the right decision instantly without even thinking.
And you can't do that with me knowing that I can't touch you, that I can't hurt you.
You're not going to be a helicopter pilot.
And he says, I never thought of that. And I said, that's why you're you and I'm me.
That is very true. I think if we had taken the time to learn what our attack officers had done,
it's like when I came back and became an instructor pilot and I found out that all the instructor pilots that I had had one, two, three tours and so on and so forth.
In their background, it was so helpful, of course, at that time.
Well, I'm glad that you were able to come back and you continued working in aviation, didn't you?
Well, I was in the Ohio Guard for about four years, but now my career was motorcycle.
Motorcycle dealership. But then once I retired, I became involved with American Huey 369 in Perot, Indiana,
and where we restored three Vietnam Hueys back to flight and we're finishing up on a fourth one.
Well, while we've got you on that topic, let's talk a little bit more about the American Huey 369 organization.
You mentioned that you've restored three Hueys so far. Are they all D-models or gunships? What have you got?
Well, we've got an H-model dust off bird that flew with the 498 dust off in Southern Icore.
Then we've got a slick with the door guns that was with the Thunderbirds Warrior 11.
And then our real pride and joy is a B-model gunship that flew for six years in Vietnam when the average Huey only lasted six months,
and it escorted Crandall and Freeman into the Iodran Valley when they were awarded their medal upon it.
So that aircraft has an incredible history. We were told it wasn't feasible, financially feasible to restore it,
but when we realized the history of it, we said, no, we're going to restore it.
And then ironically, the slick, Warrior 11 was a medevac where 15th med during the Iodran Valley.
So we've got two very historic aircraft just simply by chance. So it's just been incredible and an honor to be flying this aircraft again.
And then we've got another H-model that will be our VIP bird. It was donated to us in perfectly good, viable condition.
We just got to make sure the FAA puts a blessing on it.
Yes. And people can, you go around the country, I know you're around the Midwest quite a bit, giving rides to people,
different veterans outings and events and so forth. Where is American Huey 369 located?
Well, we're in Peru, Indiana, which is about an hour drive north of Indianapolis.
Normally, we're in Indiana and surrounding states, but we've flown to Las Vegas, we've flown to Louisiana, Connecticut and Canada,
but one time or another. But mostly, we're in the Midwest. We usually do 15 to 18 events every summer.
And we're a 501C3 charitable organization. So for $100 donation, you get a flight in Huey with the doors open.
Now, you can't sit on the floor anymore. We've got to put your seats and seatbelts.
Oh, no.
Yeah, but it's an incredible flight. Everybody gets off the aircraft with a big smile on their face.
A lot of Vietnam veterans are crew. So it's pretty amazing and a lot of healing.
But we're there to educate the public, especially the youth. And it's just an incredible feeling to know how many people appreciate those Hueys.
Well, I know, I witnessed you guys up in Hamburg, Michigan. I think it was just last year.
Yeah, we've been there a few times.
I got there too late to get the ride.
And then St. Joe on the coast, north W.
No, so it's great. And hopefully maybe this maybe next summer, you guys will be able to get out there again and start offering the rides and do the whole thing.
And this year was cut short, obviously.
Yeah, obviously, I would say so. I'm going to take a real quick break right now. And when we come back, we're talking with Phil Marshall, his book is helicopter rescues in Vietnam.
And we're going to start talking about some of those incredible rescues. So I want to make sure that you all stay tuned. You're listening to Veteran Radio and we will be right back.
Crandall made several routine flights into the I-Triang Valley in November of 1965, transporting a battalion of troops.
Suddenly, the ground troops came under a massive attack from the NVA. On Crandall's next flight, three soldiers on board were killed and three wounded.
But he remained on the line of fire so four wounded men could be loaded on his chopper.
Crandall, along with Captain Ed Freeman, continued to make supply runs into the battle zone and airlift wounded out.
During the course of the day, he flew three different choppers, with two of them so badly damaged they could no longer fly.
At the end of the day, it evacuated 70 wounded men and brought in supplies which helped the battalion to survive.
Freeman was awarded the Medal of Honor in July of 2001. President Bush awarded the Medal of Honor to Crandall on February 26, 2007.
The Medal of Honor series is a production of Veterans Radio.
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They are one of 20 centers nationwide devoted to veteran business development through the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Veteran Business Development.
If you have a VA claim denied by the Board of Veterans Appeals, contact Legal Help for Veterans at 1-800-693-4800.
They're experts in handling cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. Their number again, 1-800-693-4800.
And we're back here on Veterans Radio and we are talking with Phil Marshall, the author of a series of books.
Phil, you're on volume 12 right now, Helicopter Rescues in Vietnam, True Stories of Daring Helicopter Rescues, as told by the men who flew them.
I don't even know where to start, Phil. So many of these.
Can I finish with one thing real quick, please?
Sure.
Talking about American Huey 369, we are building a Huey Museum. It's not a Vietnam Museum. As far as we know, the only Huey Museum in the world.
And Bell Helicopter is not giving us not one cent of assistance. It's all grassroots.
So if your audience would go to AmericanHuey369.com, tell you everything you need to know about the organization, about the museum that we're building.
But right now we're in donated temporary housing, a hangar, and they tell us they're going to be tearing the building down here in the next year or two.
We're starting before we were really ready on building our Huey Museum.
So donations are needed to complete it.
And anyone that's interested in preserving our history and the history of the Huey, and of course, what says Vietnam more than a Huey helicopter, it's really needed and much appreciated.
Absolutely. And we will do everything we can to help that out.
We'll put a link on our website so that people can go and look about there on the website.
There on the AmericanHuey369.com.
We need to preserve these aircraft and as well as the museum and the talking about, you know, we got to go.
I got to talk to Bell Helicopter.
That's ridiculous. I mean, considering how many of those things that we, well, we did break a couple, but other than that,
anyway, well, maybe we'll, somebody listening may know somebody at Bell Helicopter and maybe we can get the word out to those people to help out.
We don't have a corporate sponsor yet, and we're willing to name and include a corporate sponsor's name in the museum.
So, yeah, like I say, we're going to build it and we're breaking ground next spring, but it won't be complete.
It's just going to be enough to house the current aircraft.
Well, like I said, Phil, we'll do what we can to raise some funds for you.
I'm sure you will.
I'm sure I will too. So I want to talk, I have a friend who was, I want to talk about one of your stories and one of them when I thought was really interesting was about the Chinooks.
Now, I never ran into too many Chinooks, luckily.
And actually, the quick version of the story is the only place I ran into a Chinook was at a naval base called Nabe down in Fort Worth.
Nabe down in Fort Core where people would sometimes go for lunch because the Navy always had the best food.
It's not like we worked a regular job, but when they say go away, come back in half an hour.
Anyway, we went down there and there were Chinooks lined up and there were gunships and there were Hueys and there were Navy sea wolves and all this other stuff all lined up to eat at this chow hall for the Navy.
Now that one of the Chinooks came my tack officer.
Okay.
Yeah.
CW3 at the time, Berger just looked at me, sort of recognized me and I said, oh, Chief Berger, how are you doing?
He goes, oh, you're still alive.
Yeah, some of them we had doubts about, didn't we?
Yes, we did.
And I said, well, it's good to see you too.
Moving right along.
But anyhow, so I do, I have a friend who was a crew chief on a Chinook and one of your stories in here was about a Chinook.
And I wondered if you could share that with our audience.
Okay.
Now, which one, which one are we talking about now?
Oh, which one?
I knew you'd ask that question as I go through all of them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I've done a lot of Chinook stories.
Okay.
I'll find it here as we talk.
Okay.
Because I'm looking too.
There's an escape and evasion in Vietnam.
I took a round through the helmet.
Getting one over.
All right, I'm, you know, radio can never have silence.
Oh, here we go.
All right.
So it's a sea night and it is Mission 18, Marine ASRT flight February 5th, 1969.
Yeah, Mr. Pratt.
Fred Pratt, correct.
Yeah, yeah.
He was a Marine pilot, I believe, when they, that make a difference.
But they did some, some new tech radar and that is ASRT guys trying to remember what
it stood for.
Anyway, they were able to put them over a besieged Arvin base.
They were able to drop supplies to them.
They didn't see them.
They didn't, they didn't, but this new fangled radar was able to put them miles away over
this, believe your beleaguered Arvin base and resupply them and they were able to defend
off the enemy long enough to be rescued.
But it was just something that had never been done before.
And as a pilot, I don't know if I would want to trust something like that or not.
They just put them right over the, and they were in the mountains, by the way, too.
They just put them right over the drop zone.
They dropped the supplies to them and they were able to survive the war, at least that
battle.
It was called the Air Support Radar Teams and it would guide bombers for pinpoint ordinance
delivery.
Yeah.
And maybe you can tell the audience how much instrument training that we had as pilots.
We didn't have to get ourselves killed.
Yeah, we, I don't know, what was it, four weeks of instrument training and...
And there was four weeks we would fly under, you know, we had this hood over our head that
we couldn't see the ground, couldn't see outside the aircraft.
Yep.
And it was enough to give you a little bit of confidence, but unless we practiced it
often in country, which a lot of us rarely did, you would lose that skill and you could
very easily get vertigo and both pilots could get vertigo and it's all over when you get
in that position.
Right.
And you mentioned in the book that there were a lot of, unfortunately, helicopter crashes
where people did get into IFR, that's instrument flying, situations where they did end up,
you know, flying into a mountain or into each other even, unfortunately.
Yeah, your inner ear tells you one thing and the instruments tell you another and you have
to believe those instruments, but you know, for all your life, you've believed your inner
ear and when that conflict sets in, I could say you're, as you well know, you're in big
trouble because you just, you're so used to trusting your inner ear and the instruments
are telling you something different, you don't want to believe it.
No.
Yeah, when I went through the, that was the hardest part of flight school for me was that
instrument flying.
Yeah, I would agree.
I would agree.
Yeah.
And they told me that, you know, even when we did the, well, what was it, simulator, you
know.
Oh yeah, I hated that.
Where they would put us in this little shoe box type of thing with all the instruments
in the aircraft and then they would, you know, go this way and go that way and stuff.
I flew right off the edge of the earth, the link trainer and it was left over from World
War II.
Right.
Yes.
Yeah.
So, but they needed pilots and so this is what they, this is what they got.
Um, talk a little, I want to talk about, I don't want to run out of time here for sure.
I want to talk about Charles Simmons.
This is story number, number 22.
Yeah.
And the reason I wanted to talk about this just real quickly is that there was another
example that we had on Veterans Radio back in, oh boy, this is a long time ago now.
We had a program called Left for Dead.
And in this story we had, it was actually a member of my company, but it was before
I got there and it was Wendell Skinner.
And Wendell Skinner on the night of 29 January, right around the same time of 1968, when they,
uh, aircraft crashed and the aircraft rolled over on Wendell and he, unfortunately he was
left out there and they all, you know, they went back because there was all kinds of gunfire
and all this other stuff and smoke and ash and so on.
Got back to the company area and the company commander who was a major Earl Carlson found
out about that and he just went through the roof and he said, you know, you never leave
anybody out on the field, whether they're dead or alive, you go and get them.
And he went out and got, and went out with a brand new Peter pilot, um, and got Wendell.
I mean, they were able to lift the aircraft off of him and, uh, bring him back and they
never saw each other ever again after that.
Yeah.
So that's the reason for the preface to this story of Charles Simmons.
So go your turn.
All right.
First day of Tet, uh, another B model gunship, uh, Charles Simmons is a trained, uh, crew
chief and, uh, his first day in the unit, they say, you're flying tomorrow.
And so they put him as a door gunner, uh, in, in the B model and it was the first day
of Tet.
They get shot down.
Um, the, uh, the enemy was about 40 or 50 troops were, uh, where they landed.
It was an emergency auto rotation, put the aircraft on the ground.
No problem.
Uh, jumped into a bomb crater of the four crewmen and held off the enemy as long as
they could until they just finally ran out of ammunition.
So they gave up the enemy, um, set fire to the aircraft, the rocket start, uh, going
off ammunition.
So everybody scatters the co-pilot and the crew chief what with one group of about half
of that 40 or 50, the aircraft commander and the first day door gunner goes off with another
group when, uh, the, the cavalry shows up, uh, another gunship from their platoon about
30 minutes an hour after they, uh, they crashed, uh, they, uh, see the bad guys and they start
shooting at them.
And, uh, the group of enemy that had the, the co-pilot and the, uh, crew chief executed
them, the group that had the aircraft commander and the door gunner scattered while those
two, uh, Americans dove into another bomb crater, put their hands over their head.
So the, the gunships would know not to shoot at them.
And in the meantime, uh, they're, they're taking out, uh, the gunships are taking out
as many of the enemy as they can.
They land to pick up the two survivors and they take them back.
There's minor injuries.
So they're separated and, uh, everybody forgets about this brand new guy that was the, his
first day and only day of flying in Vietnam.
He was relegated to the maintenance hangar.
He said he worked on loaches his whole tour at night in the, in the maintenance hangar.
And so when the aircraft commander gets assigned to another unit, like you say, he never sees
his, his door gunner.
And after many, many years, uh, a lady by the name of Kathy Cox, who, uh, is an officer
in the daughters of the American revolution found out about Charles Simmons, the door
gunner.
And, um, they helped get him a prisoner of war medal because they were prisoners of war
for about an hour.
And so, uh, Kathy heard about me and she asked me if I was interested in his story.
And of course I was because they were rescued by helicopters and, uh, American Huey 369
again, uh, we had an event in August where we officially presented Mr. Simmons with
his POW medal because he just received it in the mail.
And those citation, the letter, no nothing just up, you know, here's your medal, you
know, where, where, you know, whatever.
And we made sure that there were about 30 men in uniform to salute him, uh, and honor
him for his, uh, for his, um, being a POW.
Well, the story is, is much, you're going to have to get the book folks.
I'm not more involved story.
There's so much more to what I would I told you.
He couldn't talk about it to his family because he couldn't prove it.
I was, I was POW for an hour.
I can't prove it.
So he just, he just, he just, he just, he just, he just, he just, he just, he just
had a problem.
But you had involved, you got, uh, I think his name is Captain Bob, uh, Babcock.
Yeah.
Captain Bob Cack, Bob Babcock was the aircraft commander and, uh, I asked him, uh, he's
living in Indonesia.
I asked him, I said, do you know who the crew was that picked you up?
And he goes, oh yeah.
He says it was Wonder Warthog, Bob, uh, Tom Merrilline.
And I said, oh, do you know how to get ahold of him?
And he says, well, he was killed during, during the second tour.
And I go, well, crap, maybe I can find the, the co-pilot.
So I'm, I'm writing the story for the book and I decide, well, wonder what the story
is on, on Merrilline being killed the second tour.
I looked him up in the, uh, Vietnam helicopter pilots directory and the guys living in New
Jersey.
Uh, the, uh, the, uh, the account of his demise was, was exaggerated.
And so I was able to get, uh, part of the story, uh, how they were picked up or how
they picked up, uh, the POWs.
And it's just an absolutely incredible story.
Uh, when you get all the details, how everything just happened to fit together.
Right.
And I wanted to, uh, I really wanted to congratulate you on this story because you track down, uh,
the relatives of the, uh, crew chief, uh, Delgado and also a Warren Arsler Lee, the
ones that were executed by the other group of East North.
Yeah.
Well, Kathy Cox did a lot of that.
She did a lot of that.
And, and I was able to put it together and put it in print.
Uh, Charles Simmons asked Kathy, you know, could you help me tell my story?
And when she heard about me, she says, yeah, you, I found somebody that'll tell your story.
So, uh, uh, yeah, it was a lot of research on my part on, but mostly on Kathy's part.
She, uh, she, she laid the groundwork and I was able to put the finishing touches on
it.
Well, it, it, it's a great story.
And I, again, I encourage people to go out and get these books.
You can start going backward with volume 12.
You can start anywhere, just like Rear's Digest, but there's no, there's no advertising
in it.
Uh, no, and I don't know what's for it.
If you want, uh, and if you like it, you'll like all of them.
And I think, I think that you will.
I wanted to, uh, go back to one of my, um, I don't know what my attraction is with Chinooks
today.
Um, this would, this would be mission nine.
This is called mission into Laos.
Okay.
This is a kind of a, a weather story as, as, as we mentioned before where they were setting
up, they were attempting to, uh, I don't even know how big a Chinook is.
I think it's huge.
That's big.
Um, and they were, they were sent on this mission to, to pick up, uh, actually, I think
it was to resupply.
Pick up some Marines.
Right.
Yeah.
And if you wouldn't tell them where they were, they just said, go to these coordinates
and you'll have some Marine gunships escort you.
And, uh, uh, as it turns out, uh, they were in Laos and, uh, what, uh, in, in the very
first book that I did, one of my medics, uh, told me about a pickup they made in Laos.
Uh, he said, there was no billboard saying, welcome to Laos.
We just knew that was where the down crew was and they went after them.
And when they, it was an Air Force, uh, a four F four.
And when they got back, the Air Force threw them a party and the army was going to give
them an article 15 for going into Laos.
Now go figure.
Well, I can understand that.
There was another instance where, where they just followed blindly, followed the Marine
gunships, uh, into Laos and, uh, had to drop down through a hole in the clouds to, uh, to
get their, their wounded.
I was, I was thinking about that.
I just, uh, a quick example was that we would, uh, many of the missions of, of my company
was to take, um, uh, we worked with Lerps and so forth with McVease, so we would head
off across the fences I used to, we used to call it.
Yep.
And as we would approach the fence, it seemed like almost daily, some Air Force guy would
come over guard radio, which was Paris control.
Yeah.
And they would say aircraft heading west out of, or north out of Bouddop, be advised
you're crossing the fence.
Yeah.
And we're going, well, why don't you just tell them we're coming?
Yeah.
Because the bad guy, bad guys did monitor our frequencies for sure.
And you know, and anyway, that's the type of thing.
You know, and as you, as this story goes on, because they were going in and there were,
there were cloud cover, there was everything and it kind of got in there somehow by going
down through a hole in the clouds and we're able to fit this gigantic double wide trailer
into this landing zone.
Yep.
It's as big as the semi trailer.
And then after they picked those guys up, they thought the Marines were going to escort
them back and they said, oh wait, we got another one for you.
We need you to pick up some more.
Yeah, but they don't, and they didn't have any guns on the second one.
I'm sorry.
I said they didn't have any guns on one of those.
No.
Because they ran out of fuel.
Yep.
Yeah.
As much as I love the guns, they always seem to run out of fuel in opportune times.
Yeah.
Well, it was getting close to half an hour, you know.
I don't know anything about that.
Yeah.
None of us know anything about that.
No.
I thought that the mission in Laos was, was, was quite the story and, and some of the other
ones in here where you've got loaches flying around and again for our audience, a loach
is, is, it looks like an egg and, but the thing could go fast and it was almost indestructible.
It was incredibly maneuverable.
Yeah.
And I had a friend of, that's been one of the nice things about the books.
It's not just Huey, it's everything.
There's a Pedro, Air Force Pedro story, a couple of those in there.
Loach rescues the, the Chinooks, the Cobras.
You can imagine Cobras pulling one of the guys out.
Oh, I know.
We did a story about a Cobra guy whose tail boom was blown off.
Yeah.
A missile missile.
Yep.
They got hit by a missile.
That, that spoiler alert, that story will be in book number 15.
Oh, okay.
And I think it's, if you go to veteransradio.net and you go, go get in the search thing, you
might find the interview we did with the guy.
Yeah.
Brown, is that his name?
I believe, I believe so.
I believe so.
Yeah.
It's been a story for years, but it, it wasn't really a helicopter rescue, except they were
rescued.
So I guess that's it.
Oh, because it was so unbelievable.
Again, to our audience, to understand how these aircraft stayed in the air sometimes
with missing parts.
I mean, the whole tail boom's gone.
You know, you would end up with so many bullet holes in the aircraft, but it would miss everything
and missed all the crew and, and everything else and you'd land.
And it was almost like a, you know, a Laurel and Hardy comedy where you'd land and almost
the blades would just fall off.
Yeah.
Well, we lost half the helicopters that were in Vietnam.
Yes, true.
Yeah.
Half of them.
Again, six months was the average Huey.
Wow.
Six months.
Yeah.
Over, over 3000 helicopters were lost during the, during the war.
I think I've gotten, I've got that number around here somewhere too.
Yeah.
My claw and Gary Roush from the VHPA have compiled all those numbers.
Right.
They did.
And I do, I do have that.
I think it's a, I just want our audience to understand that these pilots that, that Phil
is talking about the average age was 22.
Well, if you remember, most of us were 1920 and 21.
Right.
That was the old guys who brought that average up.
The guys were the officers, the, the real live officers, the lieutenants and captains
and majors that had some more training than, than what we had as far as the army was concerned.
Give me 60 seconds real quick.
Tell you a story.
Okay.
You got it.
Okay.
One of the 19 year old pilots, you could go into flight school right out of high school.
A year later, you're, you're flying helicopters in Vietnam.
This guy was from Southern California, 19 years old, 20 when he got back and he says,
I got my greens, my dress greens on all my medals, my wings and everything.
And he says, I realized my driver's license has expired.
So he goes down to the DMV to get his driver's license renewed and they wouldn't renew it
because he wasn't 21.
He had to go home and get his mother to sign for him.
Oh, that doesn't surprise me.
Can you believe that?
But things like that are why 18 year olds can vote today because as you know, we couldn't
vote while we were in Vietnam unless we were 21.
You had to be 21 to vote.
But finally, Congress, one of the few right things they've done is if you're old enough
to fight for your country, you should be old enough to vote.
So that's why 18 year olds can vote today because we couldn't vote in Vietnam.
I was, I was an older guy.
I was 20.
How old was I?
Six.
I was 22.
I was 21 because I had a couple of years of college.
Yes.
Yeah.
We won't go there.
Now, those two years of college weren't all all A's and B's.
I didn't have the grades to go back.
They said, maybe perhaps you should pursue another career.
So you decided that you were going to become a helicopter pilot.
And I know there are many similar stories out there.
Exactly that same thing.
And if you were like some of them, you probably might have sent a letter back to your school
that wouldn't let you continue and say, yeah, yeah, here, this is what I did.
Yeah.
I finally got my degree.
It just doesn't say I'll have state on it.
Oh, well.
Yeah.
Well, I won't go there either since we live in Michigan now.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
Yeah, I shouldn't have mentioned that.
No, that's all right.
I live in a house that is represented by both schools.
Oh, OK.
All right.
That sounds like a personal problem.
We are coming up on the top of the hour now, Phil.
And I want to make sure, again, that people understand that this is just one book of 20
approximate stories.
And each one is more exciting than the other.
And I would encourage our audience to go out and get these.
And I'm assuming they are they available on Amazon and Amazon if you just no special
spelling still Marshall Vietnam.
If you search Phil Marshall Vietnam, all the books will come up and just pick one out.
And if you like it, you'll like all the others to guarantee it.
I think they will.
And again, I encourage people to read these stories because these are these are amazing.
I mean, the one of the things that the military taught me and probably taught Phil and so
many of the others that the mutual respect we have for each other.
Yeah.
Whether you're on the ground or you're in the air, everybody had your six.
I mean, everybody had your back.
And it was all for one and one for all.
And we never let anybody down if it could be avoided.
And if we went down, they'd come and get us.
And if they had ran into trouble, we would go and get them.
And so I want to make sure our audience is aware of that.
And some of the stories in there, too, and it's it's actually trying to say here, many
of the stories that I've been able to document have never been printed anywhere else.
We just started doing a program here in the Ann Arbor called There I Was.
And we're trying to record as many stories as we can get these guys.
Because suddenly we're the oldest generation now.
And we got to make sure that we don't let these guys get away.
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
Yeah.
So I want to thank you very much for being on our program, Phil.
And I can't wait to have you back on again after I get a whole supply of my other books
that will up to 11.
I'll fix you up.
Okay.
And we'll figure that out.
But thanks very much for being on Veterans Radio.
And maybe I'll see you down in Indiana soon.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you.
All right, folks, we'll come up to the end of another Veterans Radio program.
And I hope you enjoyed it.
If you have any suggestions for programming, please give us a call or send me an email
at dalevetrendradio.net.
And we will try to get them on.
We want to thank you all very much for listening.
We want to thank our sponsors, of course.
And if you have any comments, please go to veteransradio.net and put them down there.
And we will try to improve the program if you think it needs improving.
Or just let us know what you want us to do.
Next week, Jim Fousone will be on.
He's got two stories about women veterans.
And I think that you'll find very interesting.
So until next week, this is Dale Throneberry.
You are dismissed.