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Thank you in advance, and now for today's Veterans Radio.
All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
And now, your host for today's program, Dale Throneberry.
My name is Dale Throneberry, I was a CW-2 helicopter pilot in Vietnam in 1969. I want to welcome you to our kind of a special Memorial Day program.
I've got two guests on our program today.
And the first is Melissa Youngblood, and Melissa is the founder and CEO of Therapia Counseling.
And Melissa has helped veterans for, I don't know, many, many years.
She's a good friend of Veterans Radio, and I look forward to talking to her.
We're going to be talking with Melissa about grief, and now we handle some of the things that are going to be bothering so many veterans over this Memorial Day weekend.
And then we're going to follow that up with another short interview with Doug Bradley.
And Doug is an author. You've heard about him on Veterans Radio before.
He's written a number of books about Vietnam. He is a Vietnam veteran, and he's got one called We Got to Get Out of This Place, Dero's Vietnam.
He's written a story about Hulestop the Rain, about clearance, clear water revival.
And he's written a story about the loss of one of his friends from Vietnam, or actually who was killed in Vietnam, and how he's trying to deal with that and how he's trying to honor that friend.
And also we're going to be talking about some other people that unfortunately were killed during their time of service.
And so we're going to read those periodically as we go through today's program.
Now I want to give you a couple of tidbits about Memorial Day, so let's start this off with some.
Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day, and the name Memorial Day only became more common after World War II and was officially adopted in 1967.
The first widely recognized observance of Memorial Day was in 1868, when General John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic declared May 30th as a day to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers.
Waterloo, New York, is officially recognized as a birthplace of Memorial Day. By the federal government, it held its first community-wide event on May 5th, 1866.
Memorial Day was moved from its traditional date of May 30th to the last Monday in May in 1971 as part of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which aimed to provide workers with more three-day weekends.
In 2000, Congress established the National Moment of Remembrance, which asked Americans to pause for one minute at 3 p.m. local time to remember and honor those who have died in military service.
The tradition of wearing red poppies on Memorial Day originated from the World War I poem in Flanders Fields by John McCrae.
Moina Michael was inspired by the poem and began the practice of wearing red poppies to honor the fallen soldiers.
Memorial Day specifically honors those who have died in military service, whereas Veterans Day, which is observed on November 11th, honors all those who have served in U.S. Armed Forces.
That's an important thing to remember. Memorial Day is for those who died during their service. Veterans Day is to honor all military veterans.
Memorial Day is often associated with National Cemetery like Arlington National Cemetery where the graves are adorned with American flags.
However, many local cemeteries across the country also hold ceremonies and place flags on Veterans Graves.
And of course, there's probably going to be a Memorial Day parade in your town, picnics and so forth, which are fine.
Which are fine. Reminds people that they're still alive.
You know, the old the Annapolis 500 car race, one of the most famous automobile races in the world has been held on Memorial Day weekend since 1911.
The race includes a moment of silence for fallen soldiers.
Memorial Day is commonly considered the unofficial start of summer in the United States.
Many people celebrate the long weekend with barbecues, picnics and outdoor activities, often overshadowing the day's original intent.
But I think it's important to remember that these men and women, they died to protect and preserve our freedoms.
And one of our freedoms is to celebrate our military. And here is this is an opportunity to do this. So don't feel bad. Try not to feel bad.
Okay. Remember, I was talking about that, that national moment of remembrance that encourages all members to pause wherever they are at 3pm local time.
I know here in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at 3pm on Memorial Day, there is going to be a brass concert.
I think it is a brass concert at the Vietnam Veteran Memorial in Ypsilanti Township at 3pm. They are going to be playing taps.
So you may be hearing taps. A lot of areas around the country around 3pm on Memorial Day.
So let's get into our first interview. And that is with Melissa Ledin. Melissa, as I said, she's a terrific counselor, mental health expert par excellence.
And we're going to be talking a little bit about how do veterans handle some of the grief, some of the memories, some of the trauma that they solved, especially on Memorial Day.
So here is Melissa Youngblood. Welcome back to Veterans Radio.
And I'm going to be giving you a little bit of a quick summary of what I thought would be really important today for Memorial Day.
And as Melissa Youngblood, and Melissa is the president of Therapia, and that's a clinical counseling program that's in the state of Michigan.
She is a licensed professional mental health counselor. She's master certified accelerator resolution training, ARTs, and is licensed in Michigan and provide counseling and clinical supervision and private practice mentoring.
And she's a licensed dog sailor. So I wanted to bring her on to talk about some of the issues that many of you are going to be dealing with, especially this Memorial Day.
So Melissa, welcome back to Veterans Radio.
Thank you. It's good to be back.
All right, so we'll jump right into this. It's as we talked about earlier.
Memorial Day is sometimes such an emotional day for veterans and their families, because when you're as you go to the various ceremonies that are going to be held around the country, you know, they're saluting the flags, there's taps being played and so many of us start having these flashbacks of seeing our
veterans and comrades and so forth that were there one second and then they're gone another. It's not like they're dying of a disease. It's just that they're blown up, whatever happens.
And so it seems like Memorial Day is such a difficult time for many veterans. And so I just wanted to ask you to kind of address this issue if you could a little bit about how can, what can we do to cope with some of these things a little easier.
Well, Dale, grief is the unifying human experience. It's something that we all go through. And in that sentiment, I think it's important for us to realize how critical it is for us to grieve with our brothers and sisters who've experienced these losses, although it may be painful to go to a
Memorial Day service. And those images may come up and those memories may flood you. Those are things that really can't be completely avoided because of the love that was there for the people that are gone.
Being able to take part in a community ritual or service or acknowledgement is a really important way of not grieving alone. I think that what we do sometimes with our pain is we sit with it by ourselves. We don't express it.
We don't connect with it. And we try to avoid it because there are so many uncomfortable and distressing feelings that can be anger, sadness, shock, confusion, and despair.
And what I've known about grief in my own life is that the burden can be lessened when we give it to each other, when we can show up for each other. So even though it may be difficult to hear taps, and it may be hard, you know, to go to one of those national
communities, we want to just do barbecues and parades and think about the good things, but it's really important to spend some time acknowledging the impact, the value, the meaning of those lives that have been lost and honor those sacrifices.
And that means we're going to have to sit with that loss for those periods of time. They're coming anyways, but Memorial Day is a time where we can kind of go towards it, rather than trying to avoid it.
And we can strengthen a person and being able to sit with that, that loss is the support of their community. It's a really important time to check on your brothers and sisters, make those buddy calls.
One of the things that a veteran I was working with recently dedicated himself to doing is on Memorial Day, he calls everyone he has contact information for and just does a buddy check.
And that's his way of doing something with that grief that he has by connecting with the people who we served with he can say hey, I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you made it.
And what do you need. How can I show up for you.
And the really important aspect of managing our grief is finding something useful out of it. Many people are familiar with Elizabeth Kubler Ross and her five stages of grief and the bargaining and the shock and the denial and all the anger sadness that comes with grief.
But as we move through grief, there's this beautiful six stage, which we call post traumatic growth. And that is where you take something bad, like the loss and the death of someone close to you, and you turn it into something useful or helpful or beneficial to
yourself or to someone else.
So, when we get to that point of growth, what that looks like is that tending to others is that planting a garden is making a donation to a veteran's organization that's helping the wounded helping the survivors helping the families.
I think that grief makes us want to do nothing at times, but freeze. And so it's important to do something with that grief that feels active that feels useful to yourself and to others.
So turning it into showing up. I remember when I was a little girl, my grandfather was a World War Two veteran, and he would take me to the Memorial Day Parade and he'd be very serious and he'd say, This looks like a party this looks like a fun time.
But this is a solemn day. This is a day where we honor the people that I served with that are gone. And I want you to understand the sacrifices that people made for you to have a day like today.
So, what he did with his grief is he made sure that the younger generations in his family understood his service and the service and the sacrifice of the men and women that he served with that brought me up in a way to understand to respect to a knowledge and to appreciate the
service of my military family.
So, you know, there might be younger people in your family that you can reach out to and connect with and say, Hey, this is a really important day for me. And this is a really hard day for me.
I'd like to be with you. I'd like to spend time with you. I'd like to take you to the ceremony or I'd like to talk about the people who I lost and what they meant to me.
One of the important things about grief is that your bodies don't want to be remembered by the way that they died. They want to be remembered by the way that they lived their lives.
And one of the most meaningful things that we can do is we can sort of carry that torch for them.
And I'll give you an example of this in my own life. I had a one of my best friends die of his service connected injuries due to suicide last year through his post traumatic stress disorder.
And that first Memorial Day was pretty hard.
But he would run every year for Memorial Day to raise awareness for suicide prevention.
So, in honor of him, I did an event and I carried his badge and I carried a pin for suicide awareness.
And it was a really beautiful opportunity to honor him to remember him and to connect with him when I was there running, sweating, about to die.
And I could hear him in my in my head saying like you got this don't give up you can do this doing it for him made it more meaningful made it more special for me.
And it also gave me a chance to talk to people who I didn't even know who wanted to know hey, who shall, why is he on your, why is he on your vest.
Right. And I got to tell stories of who he was, and what he meant to me, and, and the kind of person that he was.
And so that's another way that we can try to not go from our grief, but go towards our grief to lean into it to say, you know, if this person sacrificed, and they lost their life so I could have this freedom.
What am I doing with my freedom. How am I honoring them.
I recently was talking to a gold star mom.
And on Memorial Day, as you can imagine, it's a quite a difficult time for her.
And so about six or seven guys from her son's unit will come over every Memorial Day and cook her food and, you know, just spend the day with her and they tell her stories stories that sometimes she's heard 100 times, she loves to hear over again.
And occasionally there'll be a new story that she hasn't heard about her son, and not feeling forgotten, not feeling left behind, not feeling invisible is so important for our military connected families.
I think which I'm sitting here mesmerized by what you are saying because it sounds so true that the idea of of Memorial Day is to really remember those men and women that you served with, especially those that didn't make it home.
And to gather with other members of, if you're fortunate enough to know where they are, but you know members of your unit or just sitting around with them for our veteran audience is sitting around with a bunch of veterans and just telling the stories.
And, you know, about the zip, or you know, most of us didn't know that their full names anyway.
And the idea of remembering that part of them. And there was another gentleman I'm going to have on the program later he talks about one of his buddies who died in Vietnam and it was it came back to that song of he ain't heavy he's my brother.
And, you know, why this person, you know, was was killed instead of him and, you know, the survivors guilt and everything else comes flying out. I think, especially on Memorial Day.
And I like the idea of you mentioning that to to gather at these ceremonies and so forth and tell the stories.
Tell the stories of those that are missing, tell the ones that are so important to you. Because if we don't tell their stories, then they disappear.
And that's the worst thing I can think of. It's, you know, if we don't. And it's like your grandfather, a World War two veteran, I'm sure that, you know, if he's, I'm guessing that he probably has not survived this long.
And it's, but you that that experience was so important to you.
And I was thinking as you're telling that I'm trying to think of my dad taking me to these parades. And I was going on the parade, you know, this is really kind of cool. I never knew the background of it.
You know, he would stand with me with the, you know, and the flags would go by and he would salute the flags and the tears would kind of start coming down his cheeks and I would wonder, you know, why are you crying.
And he's just always just thinking of somebody.
And I think that, you know, if we can provide that support for our comrades that are still around, and that are still having so many difficulties of, like I said, that the survivors are more certain.
All the things that they seem to pile on you in a very short period of your life, but it continues on through your life.
And the idea of trying to make it better, not only for yourself, but for others. And I think that's why we see so many veterans organizations that are out there that are doing so many things that they can, especially for this
new generation of veterans, because we don't want them to have to go through the neglect.
I don't want to use the term but you know just nobody wanted to talk to us.
Nobody wanted to hear our stories. Not Memorial Day is the opportunity for us to tell these stories.
And that's an important thing that you tell these stories to the people who were there and also to the people who weren't.
We can't understand your service your sacrifice, if we don't know what happened, if we don't know what you went through, if we don't understand the cost of war on human beings.
It's a lifetime thing. You don't think of, oh that was so long ago, I'm done, I'm over it and all this other stuff and then something will trigger it.
You know, it's a smell, it's a sound, it's a piece of music, it's the flag, it's whatever it is. And I like the idea too of providing the opportunity for people to gather their families and have the barbecues and so forth and
maybe tell your story to your family for the 100th time.
It's okay, they can listen to it over and over again.
They'll say oh grandpa, you really did that? You know he's told this story 100 times. But it's important for you to tell that story as well.
It is and you'll see that that story changes over time as you tell it anyways, right? When we reflect that act as we change certain details become more important.
We get to be better at storytelling. But also what we do when we're telling our story to other people is we're telling it to ourselves.
It might sound like not a significant thing, but to hear yourself say those words of this is what happened, this is where I was, and this is how it impacted me, is a way of reminding yourself what you've survived.
You know, you brought up survivor's guilt and I want to talk a little bit about that briefly because that is an ongoing area of struggle for many veterans.
I'd like to do an exercise with people when they talk about their survivor's guilt. And so I'll say something like close your eyes and imagine that it was you and not them.
And imagine they go home in 10, 20, 50 years from now.
Do you want them to take responsibility for what happened to you? No, I don't.
Do you want them to not live their life, not be happy, not move forward? No, I died so that they could do those things.
Okay.
Then let's reverse that. What do you think Brian or Bobby or Sal would want you to be doing right now?
You want to be yourself up or living your life, being in your community, showing up and talking about how brave, how courageous, and how amazing their sacrifices were.
We owe them our appreciation and we owe them our gratitude. And that requires expression.
It's one thing to be thankful. It's another thing to express that.
It's something to be critical that as individuals and as a community, we ask how we're doing. We check in with each other.
We offer support. And if you do nothing this Memorial Day, then call an old buddy or make a post or talk to your grandkids about it.
And you're still doing something and you need to do something for Memorial Day because what you went through and what they died for is one of the most meaningful things anyone can do is sacrifice themselves for another.
And we can all feel unworthy of that sacrifice and I think maybe we all are unworthy of that sacrifice in some way, but we should strive to be worthy of it.
Absolutely. I think I'm going to end it on that.
Thank you Melissa.
Such a good perception and ideas of what people are going through. It seems like it must be something that's just, I don't know, automatic in your head that you know how to relate to people.
Sure. I mean, I'm going through the grief myself, like I said, with the losses. I miss my grandfather dearly.
I miss my friends who've passed. And, and I sit every day with veterans in my office who shed tears over those losses. Their hearts are broken.
And grief is the equalizer among us all.
Right. We have to end on a positive note. So if we do that, if we think about these things, we can get, we can do this, we can get through Memorial Day again.
And I think to have to see the wonderful memories of what who these men and women were that, you know, that that attracted us to them.
And that, you know, that made us smile and you know, the crazy things that we might have done together and so forth. I think if we can try to remember those things and think about their family, even reach out and tell them a story.
Absolutely. You don't know what that could mean to somebody and celebrate their life. They want to be remembered by their life, by their humor, by their courage, by, you know, their incredible experiences.
And those stories need to live on.
Okay, we've been talking with Melissa Youngwood. She is the president of Therapia counseling, and you can find more information about Melissa and her company, her services and so forth.
Online at Therapia, counseling.com and that's T H E R A P E I A counseling.com. Right. Good job. Thank you.
Thank you very much. See you again.
Thank you.
Hall was the pilot of a scouting plane in action against enemy Japanese forces in the Coral Sea. In a determined attack on 7th of May, 1942, Hall dove his plane at an enemy Japanese aircraft carrier contributing materially to the destruction of that vessel.
On the 8th of May, facing heavy and fierce fighter opposition, he again displayed extraordinary skill as an airman and the aggressive spirit of a fighter in repeated and effective counterattacks against the superior number of enemy planes in which three enemy aircraft were destroyed.
Those seriously wounded in this engagement, Hall succeeded in landing his plane safe.
The Medal of Honor series is a production of Veterans Radio.
Military veterans touch everyone's life. I'm guessing right now you're thinking of a veteran, a close friend, relative, maybe it's you.
Even the toughest of us sometimes need help, but don't know where to turn for support. You don't need special training to help a veteran in your life. We can all help someone going through a difficult time.
Learn how you can be there for veterans. Visit veteranscrisisline.net. Veteranscrisisline.net. A message from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
And we're back here on Veterans Radio. And just continuing on with our program, we received a few emails this week asking that we remember family or friends who lost their lives in the service of our country.
So starting off with an email from Sabrina Williams, and she wanted to know if we could add Sergeant Sean Williams, United States Army, served in September 2010 until his death of December 23, 2017.
Sabrina, we are so sorry for your loss and we're so proud that we are able to help remember your husband, Sean.
Tammy Bethion asked me to say, I would like to have you read Andrew Becker's name. He is known as Andy by his friends and family.
He was a graduate of Novi High School class of 2002 and a classmate of my daughter.
He's also a youth leader at the First United Methodist Church of Northville, Michigan.
There were two other airmen with Andy when their aircraft went down. Another Novi resident, a U.S. Air Force Major Andrew Becker, who was commissioned out of Embry Riddles Air Force ROTC unit, died on March 14, 2017, in a crash of a reconnaissance and surveillance aircraft during a training flight in New Mexico.
The 33-year-old married pilot from Novi, Michigan was one of three service members killed when the single-engine U-28A near the Covis Municipal Airport, co-pilot, first lieutenant Frederick Delacre, 26, and Captain Kenneth Delaga, 29, were also killed.
All three were assigned to the 318th Special Operations Squadron at Cannon Air Force Base.
As we go into our second part of the program, we have an interview, as I mentioned, with Doug Bradley.
Doug had contacted me earlier in the week asking that I remember his colleague in Vietnam, Steve Warner.
Steve was killed on February 14, 1971.
We're going to learn a lot more about Steve and Doug in just a moment as we play the interview that I did with Doug.
One more death over the last couple of weeks that I need to talk about just briefly.
That is Mickey Sugars.
Mickey Sugars was a private in the United States Army from 1933 to 1938.
After he was discharged, he joined the United States Marine Corps from 1938 to 1943.
During World War II, when he earned the rank of platoon sergeant, he served as a China Marine before being stationed in the Philippines where he was captured on Corregidor.
Mickey Sugars survived the death march in Baton and died as a prisoner of war in Japan in 1943.
He has mentioned in the United States Marine Corps National Archives where a witness stated that he was beaten every day for three months.
When he was no longer able to work, he was hospitalized and later died.
The statement was made as a result of Japanese officers being investigated for cruelty to POWs by the war tribunal.
His remains were returned to the United States in 1949 where he was buried in Arlington Cemetery.
Thank you all for submitting these names of these great American heroes.
Coming up next is our interview with Doug Bradley.
And I think you're going to really like this one.
So here we go.
Here we are back here on Veterans Radio and joining me is a good friend of Veterans Radio, Doug Bradley.
And Doug has written a number of books, as I mentioned in his intro, that talk about the music of Vietnam.
He talks about clearance, clear order revival.
He talks about heroes, all those favorite words that we all remember so well and love.
This Memorial Day, you know, with the idea of this program was to honor those, those friends and colleagues and comrades that we lost during our time in service and Doug had had written an article about his good friend evidently in the service with Stephen Warner.
So Doug, first of all, welcome to Veterans Radio.
They'll always a pleasure to be with you. Thanks for the good work you do.
And welcome home.
Thank you. Same to you.
So what is it that that kind of motivated you to write about Stephen this year.
You know, it's, it's really kind of interesting. He's never far from my mind Dale because he was the only information specialist slash combat correspondent in our office.
And I was killed in hostile fire. We were a lucky bunch, if you will, as all of us who survived Vietnam, and Steve would go out and do the harder stories, the tougher stories, the hometown interviews with guys, the working class kids that were doing the fighting and dying.
And so he's never far from my mind. But I think this year in particular two things. One, I was at Texas Tech University and you probably are familiar with the folks down there and Ron Milam and Steve Maxner and the good work they're doing.
They have probably the best archive of veteran testimonies, oral histories of anybody in the country. And they've done a great job of expanding that to include South Vietnamese, Arvin soldiers, Hmong soldiers, mountain yards.
It's really pretty incredible. I was down there at their conference this year and every year they have a conference that focuses on the year of the war. So this year was about 1974.
This is three years after I've been home and three years after Steve was killed. But a lot of the conversation didn't stay in 1974 talked about our tours of duty and our time there.
And people remembered our contributions for the ultimate sacrifice. So that got me thinking and remembering Steve. And then this year, given what's happened on college campuses around Gaza and October 7 and Hamas had me thinking about, I remember we would have some types of arguments.
And we are a bunch of guys in Vietnam. We're lucky we have creature comforts where information specialists were writers. Some of us going out in the field. Some of us not or did more later.
But we would have these conversations about, you know, how did we end up here? You know, did some of us were protesters, some of us like Steve, who was in graduate school and law school.
And we would have conversations about the politics of the war. And, and then of course later, the Pentagon paper revelation, which unfortunately Steve wasn't.
But an Ellsberg's death. So there was so many, there was a confluence of a number of things that made me get back to Steve and his wanting to be the Vietnam Wars Ernie Pott that he wanted the average soldier to know that even though he Steve and guys like me,
were not willing, we weren't thrilled about the war and about how we were waging it and then finding out some of that was built on lies.
But that we respected the guys like us who were there. You know what credence Clearwater did with their music. You can dislike the war, but you can support the soldier, because they're making the ultimate commitment and and sometimes sacrifice.
And I think all of that just percolating up, remit made me think about him again. And then what I had forgotten in other pieces I had written about Steve and other remembrances was music, because that as you pointed out that's so essential to me and my story and the stories I've written.
And I started to think back on, yeah, what did we listen to when we got the news about Steve and I was pretty sure it was the Holly song. But then I remembered that the Elton John stuff had come out then and border song for me was something that resonated more.
So there, there it is there was that's how it happened. It's, it's the way memory and reflection and sometimes music work.
I know it's all intertwined when you think about it, you know, we talked to veterans, you know, and what reminds you of, of things you know it's the smells it's the sounds it's the food it's the it's it's a word but many, many times it's a song.
And I can't imagine you know all of the pre karaoke stars that were born in the military.
You know, in some of the, you know, enlisted clubs and officers clubs and so on when people would just get up and at the top of their lungs, sing out a song ours.
ours happened to be the ghost writers is a sky and that's a nice calm song. And, you know, and obviously the clearance clear out a revival all that music, you know, and he ain't heavy he's my brother and it.
I read that article I'm gone. Well, of course.
You know, all of those men that were there, you know, with us were our brothers.
Exactly. And, you know, even though we, we, we went in and out of each other's lives so often during the year that you're there.
I mean, sometimes you didn't even bother to learn the names of the newer guys because you knew you were going to be gone. You know, hopefully shortly after they got there which is really kind of disturbing when I was thinking about it so I did kind of the same thing I was going back.
Actually looking at some photographs and going, what are their names. Yes. Yes.
And it's like our stories, you know, that we always tell you know if we don't say their names, then they're forgotten.
Absolutely. And, you know, the interesting thing is that a lot of the guys I've interviewed who are combat that's at the army Marines.
They talk about everybody having a nickname they didn't want to know some of the guys names because they didn't want to find it later on the wall and remember it that way.
And some of these guys have been struggling for years like, you know, he was Doc, you know, and, you know, all the medics and, you know, he was Spitfire and he was, you know, Yankee and he was, you know, dog and he was, I mean, it's just it's amazing when you think about it and it's a way, it's a fondness and a bond,
but it's also a way to give yourself a little bit of distance and relief because you don't want to remember all that you don't remember that they're gone.
And I think you're right. You know, we were lucky to do that we had our names we had by lines on our stories I remember more guys from my office, because I've been able to go back and find old copies of the army reporter or uptight magazine.
And so, and I've connected with some of them. Unfortunately, as we know from our demographic and our age and, and the stress and trauma and Agent Orange, a lot of them weren't around anymore.
But I do know those some of those names are not going to be on the wall. It's a different wall for that.
But yeah, I think it's, it's that kind of thing. It's we, you know, we, some guys, some gave all as I said in that article and Steve was one of them and I'm sure you have you have friends colleagues brothers that did the same.
Yeah, I do and you know, I think everybody has some body that they knew that's, you know, that that that guy killed.
And even if you were in the rear echelon as you mentioned, but still, even though you were in the rear echelon there was, there was always that innate fear that somebody's going to drop a rocket on you.
Yep.
You know, and periodically just to remind us that they were there they would drop a rocket on you may only be one. But it was enough to send you to the bunkers and
Well, you know, we used to joke that because we were the long been then which at the time was the largest army base in the world. You know, 35,000 troops. I mean, we had, we had everything there was it was the be all and end all.
And we had a lot of Vietnamese that worked on the base they, they were our hooch maids. They worked at the clubs they worked at the PX is they worked at the.
You know, where, where, you know, where we ate the barracks and mess halls.
And, you know, when 25,000 people were calling sick and not show up because they had a network and they knew it's like, okay, today's the day the hooch maids aren't here.
The driver, the colonel's driver is not here. The barbers not here. Some something's going down. Something's going down. And honestly, three or four times I remember it that it happened and we were, you know, the alarms went off and we had to go
get our weapons and we were out on the bunker line we were on alert was days like that when it happened. You know, the, the other side just wanted to remind us hey we're still here. And, you know, we're waiting on you to leave but we're still here.
I know we were I was in Long Bend I mean I was stationed in Long Bend a place called Plantation.
Sure. And the end of our runway was the 90th replacement company, which was really distressing to fly over that every day.
And not go yet.
And not be able to get out. Yeah. And it was when I first got there. I remember taking off for the very first time as a Peter pilot idiot, you know, in charge.
And we just went around in a traffic circle getting checked out in the aircraft, came back and landed and he said okay let's do a quick post flight and so forth. And there was a bullet hole in the in the rotor blade.
Where did that come from. Oh, there's this guy is crazy old Vietnamese guys out the end of the runway. He takes a pot shot at us every once in a while.
And I just, you know, this is not going to be good.
No, I, that's exactly I mean it sounds like it's, it's like a crazy story or an anecdote and it's a one off and it's like, but, you know, that could have created some real.
I mean, you could get killed that way.
And I remember the story when I came back and I missed the bus back when I took, I had to leave and I went to Australia, and I missed the bus after the plane to get back to the base and you know you don't want to go up highway one in the dark you know and I had no.
So there was a chopper pilot there and he said look I'm going up the long belt give you a lift this way you won't be a wall you'll be okay.
And I went up and I saw a flying back from, you know, Thompson nut up to long been quick, quick helicopter flight, and I see these flashes and these sparks.
And I said to him I said, he says, oh they're shooting that he says, I go high they just they can't hit me.
You know, I'm high enough, but it's like your buddy, you know, the crazy. I mean, but wait a minute, I go down this highway two or three times a week I'm inside God and I'm up and down this road.
I'm down there that are shooting that it's like, what the hell.
You just have not was the kind of war it was she just never knew.
No, you didn't know and this is this is these are, these are some of the things that that come out on days like Memorial Day.
And you know because many times, we're going to be amongst other veterans. And hopefully for those of you that are, you know, that don't go out often.
And they'd go see these in our case these old guys.
Yeah, they would love to talk to you they want to hear your stories they want somebody that they can talk to their families don't necessarily want to hear the stories anymore.
That's right.
And they don't care if you tell it over 100 times.
Because it validates what you did.
Yep.
I mean, what was the other word I'm looking for you know it's, it's like, oh, that really did happen then. Okay.
I didn't make it up. You know, all right.
And they get better as we get older because we get better at storytelling.
I think so. And, and, you know, we've, we sort of made a joke in a way out of Memorial Day in this country, you know, you know, we've gotten better about veterans day when we move that date around but we still move Memorial Day around.
And it's a three day weekend it's the start of the summer there's the sales. I mean, I think you're right. Take a moment to have, you know, pay homage, you know, give somebody the respect that they're due.
And then, you know, if sure if there's a parade, you know, if there's, there's an event, you know, we're going to hold something here in Madison it's 50 years of the founding of vets house which is something that some of us did, because we weren't getting any help a bunch of us
that volunteered, we were going to help out our brothers and sisters who are struggling.
And we're going to have an event for the guys that are no longer with us that helped us to establish that. It's another way of remembering those that those that we lost there and then like the Steve Warners, but also that we've lost since who wanted to help bring
us back and get us home. You know, it's still that's the difficulty of a veteran, you know, having to deal with it still is that getting back and Memorial Day is one of those times and remember the ones that paid the ultimate price.
That's how we're in the country we're in, you know, that's that's just what I said I think in the intro of the program I recorded was that you know it's because of many of these men and women that died to protect our
freedoms. And we have to realize that I mean, you know, you say you you know remember you would you would sit around with with Steve and argue politics and policy and all this, and we all did that.
And we did.
And we unconsciously knew that, you know, Vietnam was probably not the best use of our power. Let's put it that way. And but we would we had signed that line we had agreed to the contract we said okay we're going to go.
What am I thinking, here we go. And, you know, and you did the best that you can for that year and you just wanted to get out.
And I think that that's what we have to remember on on Memorial Day, that the people that are not here anymore.
You know, we're doing the same thing we did and we were just so lucky that we turned left instead of right, or, you know, we went up and said, in my case, when a higher instead of lower.
And it could have been that and I was talking to my other guest on today's program as a counselor and she's she made the idea of dealing with survivors guilt is, what would that person in your case let's say what would Steve do if you had died.
And did he want you to mope, you know, did he want you to, you know, did you want him to mope around and, you know, feel terrible and, you know, never get on with his life and, you know, have the family and all the other things that he has.
And when she said that I said, I had never thought of it that way.
Yeah, that's a good that's a good way to turn around because yeah, we've got you guys like us have survivor guilt, you know, I mean how did I get to be a journalist and.
And somebody else didn't, you know, why is somebody, you know, out there in the central Highlands, you know, dodging bullets and I'm back in an air conditioned office writing press releases. Yeah, I mean, yeah, exactly.
That's that's a really good way to put it. Couldn't say it better and then you do that every week with the voices the stories, you know, the interviews the conversations it's important because, you know, we can't forget this and and we also can't forget.
We also can't forget that it's it, you know, it's not easy to do that and also to get back and we need we need support we need one another we need conversation we need to listen.
Mm hmm. Yeah. And we got to reach out.
Yep. We got to remember that, you know, we can't do all this stuff by ourselves. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Well, that's why it's what you do is much appreciated folks like me and others.
That's why I do the writing I do and, you know, go out and make the presentations I do because it still has to happen. It's it's it's an ongoing process.
Quickly done after me quickly but tell me a little bit more about Steve was let's let's really get into a little bit of his personality.
Yeah.
You know what I know is what I knew just, you know, I got there in November we lost him in February, but he, and you know, it's again what you were talking about before we didn't go over his units, and we didn't come back.
I went over with 200 strangers. You know, I mean, we're all going the same but I didn't know anybody on that plane. And I came back with 200 strangers. We were a lot more joyous that day.
But and we shared some uplift, but I again, I didn't know these people. And so, you know, when the computer in Washington came out with my mos and said to go, I was lucky the guy I replaced in my office was a guy that basically stayed in the office,
rather than had Steve's Steve replace somebody who was a guy out in the field doing doing that kind of work. Again, just this just the way this war worked and that, and that substitution, you know, power and and you know, McNamara is, you know, algorithm
worked in replacement, not a good way to fight a war, especially if you're out in the infantry unit and you got somebody new coming in, you know, and you've just lost the guys that knew the most about the terrain and the enemy, etc.
But, you know, I could I could have Steve's up now I think Steve would have volunteered anyway because I, as I mentioned, went to small college in Pennsylvania, Gettysburg.
He was, you know, a good student, a smart guy. And he got was in law school at Yale when he got drafted, but people don't remember about the draft was for those of us who got drafted and it wasn't the lottery that you could keep your two S deferment which was a student deferment.
And up until 68 that you could hold that deferment for grad school eventually they were going to make you one a and make you go.
But Johnson in 68 when he made that announcement about not running for reelection. He also canceled draft deferments for everybody but doctors and dentists so Steve graduated a year ahead of me.
I was going to law school and I got drafted a year later. And Steve wasn't it wasn't law school he so you can tell he had to be a bright guy, a good student, smart.
And I think he wanted to use the law to make it do the right things to make it be make the country be what the promise of the country was.
And that was, and he was he was kind of, you know, cerebral in that way. I, you know, he was that he thought a lot.
He, he may he questioned a lot of orders and decisions. And, you know, for me one of those moments was we had great photographers in our office two guys that have put out books of amazing photography.
There were a lot of good for war photographers in Vietnam.
We had some in our office, but Steve was so good that he didn't get because we had assigned photographer he didn't want a photographer when he went out and did his stories he wanted to shoot his own photographs because he felt he could, having talked to the, to the guys and been there with them.
He could capture the moment best of who they were and what that image would portray fatigue relief, you know, boredom, excitement, fear. He could do that.
And one of the times he went out and again, this is what was happening in 71 you know I mean, we're leaving. We've said, we're leaving. We're starting to replace troops.
We're turning the ground war over to the South Vietnamese army, escalating the air war but eventually there's an exit strategy of some sort, and troops are now we're not.
There's not going to be 550,000 of us anymore. You know, we were under 400,000 when I got there. We were way under we were we were like under 200,000 when I left so we're.
And so guys are writing stuff on their on their helmets and they're wearing bracelets and they've got love beads on and they're flashing the peace sign. I mean, I this I saw this I did this.
And Steve was capturing this and he came back one time and the officers told him when he developed this photograph to accompany the story he had written to take to wanted him. You couldn't Photoshop in those days and but they wanted them to find a way to take the beads out of the around the
neck and some of the peace symbols they had other photographs he took and he refused. He said, this is what I saw this is who they are. This is what they're doing. And I'm not, I'm not taking this out.
It's got nothing to do with we're not this guy is a good from my estimation, a good soldier and a good trip. He's this is how he's represented. And you know they got threatened with an article 15 and maybe a court martial but stood his ground.
And that's when a lot of us said, you know, this quiet guy who seemed to be principled, but was always out doing covering stories of guys that were doing the really tough work that were in the, you know, out in the bush, that he was principled, and he stood his ground and they
went to eventually and then publish some of those photographs to accompany his story. So, I mean that was the, and like I said he was out more than he was in he was gone, more than he was there.
So I didn't have a lot of conversations but I had a lot of respect. This guy was principled he had a lot of integrity, and he stood by the guys that were doing the very hard part of war which is killing.
Doug, I want to thank you very much for sharing this story about your friends Steve Warner, Steven H. Warner for anybody out there maybe recognizes the name.
And thank you for sharing this time with me I greatly appreciate it. Welcome home. Thank you same deal welcome home. I want to thank our guest today, Doug Bradley and Melissa young blood for being on veterans radio we have one one more death
and one more chance, unfortunately to to announce and that was the passing of Medal of Honor recipient Clarence sassar, who received his medal in 1969 for going above and beyond the call of duty.
During the Vietnam War.
Next week is our benefits program. So I encourage you if you have any questions to send us the information.
them for you. We're going to go out today since it's a Memorial Day we are going to go out on taps
and the taps version we're going to be using is from the United States Coast Guard Band.
So until next week this is Dale Throneberry for all of us here at Veterans Radio. Go out and enjoy
your Memorial Day but don't forget and until then you are dismissed.
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