All across America and around the world.
This is veterans radio.
And now your host for today's program, Dale Throneberry.
And welcome to veterans radio.
My name is Dale Throneberry, a CW2 helicopter pilot in Vietnam 1969.
Welcome to veterans radio.
I think we've got a just a great program going today.
We've got a we've got authors.
We've got the the the subject of the book with us joining us.
So I'm really excited.
The book is titled in the shadows of Vietnam, the Gallant Life of Father Philip Salwa.
And we've got their authors, Julian and a yacht and Paul currency with us.
So stick around.
This story is amazing.
It's one of those stories where for those of you that were in in the service anywhere,
you know, where you get in rocketed and all this other stuff and you say, you know, God,
if you get me out of this, I'll do whatever you want.
This is a story about that.
So I want you to make sure you stick around for that.
We are going to be, as I say, talking with them.
If you have a question or maybe you know, you want to, you know, that you want to ask
our guests, you can do that.
Just give us a call.
The number is 734-822-1600.
That's 734-822-1600.
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Number one coming up next week for those of you in southeastern Michigan.
And that's our vet fest.
And the vet fest is on Saturday, August 3rd.
And it's running, it's going to be at Washtenaw Community College.
And it runs from 10 until 3.
And that's the Washtenaw County Vet Fest Saturday, August 3rd, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Washtenaw
Community College.
All kinds of service organizations are going to be there.
The VA will be there.
There will be veteran service officers there to answer your questions about benefits, anything
that you want to know, and all kinds of activities for the family.
So come on out, live music, everything else.
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Now, today's program, here we go.
All right.
As I mentioned, the book is titled In the Shadows of Vietnam and it's a story of Father
Philip Tsila.
And obviously I'm going to bring them all on here.
So we've got a Father Tsila.
Can I call you Father Phil?
Yes.
Okay, that will work.
So first of all, I want to introduce the hero of our story.
Here is a Father Philip Tsila.
So Father Phil, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Thank you.
And I've also got the other two authors of the book and that is Julian Alliat and Paul
Karansi, I'm getting these names correct as we go along here.
So Julian and Paul, welcome to the program.
Thank you.
All right.
So let's go back in time a little bit.
And Father Phil, I'm going to ask you this.
What happened on that day in 1970 where you had to answer to God?
Well, we were on a mission to search out an NVA bunker complex and we were two platoons
and the command control with us.
And on February 28th of 1970, the day before that happened, we were the second platoon
was my platoon.
We were in the rear and the first platoon was in the front.
So we found it was kind of late in the afternoon to lay a siege and it was triple canopy jungle.
And if anybody is familiar with that, it gets very dark early in triple canopy jungle.
It was maybe like 435, I was already getting dark.
So we decided we had to go about a click, a thousand meters in the opposite direction
to find a resting area for us to camp out for the night.
So we did it and the next morning, opportune was the one designated to go out.
And meanwhile, no one slept that night because it was, you know, everybody was on edge because
we knew that the Vietnamese could smell us.
They knew that we were there.
But unfortunately, nothing happened that night.
The next morning we went up, got up and we were the ones leading out.
It was our turn to lead out the company, the two platoons.
So we went out there and in single file and make big mistake that the company commander
made was telling us to go back down the same trail so that we wouldn't waste any time blazing
a new trail.
And going down the same trail is a death march.
So we went down and we obeyed and we went down the same trail and I was in the fourth
squad so I was in the rear of the platoon and we got maybe about 15 minutes in.
We're getting close and all of a sudden I hear all hell breakers and we're receiving
fire from all sides.
And so we're looking for cover.
We're trying to get behind trees.
We're trying to get behind rocks or whatever we can hide behind until we can form a defensive
perimeter.
Then we were successful in performing that task and no one was injured at that.
Well we had injuries but we no one was, there were no KIA casualties at that point.
We also discovered that the first six people of our platoon were alienated.
They were separated from the rest of our platoon by a 40-year, 20-year yard clearance.
And they were the ones carrying the platoon radio.
So we had to bring the radio up for command or the first platoon to try to get a hold
of them.
But every time we tried to reach them they weren't responding.
So we figured they were either all dead or they had killed the radio.
And we had formed a defensive perimeter at that point.
We were returning fire.
And it was about a half an hour it seems, maybe less, maybe more.
Never know what time it is over there.
That nothing was being done to try to rescue our guys.
So I got very angry about this whole thing and I said to God, I said, Lord I'm going
out there to rescue those guys.
I don't care, nobody else seems to be going, I'm going out there.
If you get me back out safe and sound and when I was scratched I'll do anything you
want.
It was a crazy thing to do because I wasn't carrying an M16.
I was carrying an M79 grenade launcher.
And grenade launchers in the jungles of Vietnam are almost totally useless in battle.
You have to shoot them almost at a 45 degree angle up so they don't hit a tree in front
of you to come back and ricochet on you.
So one guy came up and said to me, well if you're going to do this crazy thing I'll go
with you.
And his name was Herbert Klug from Dayton, Ohio.
He was a sergeant and a spec 4 like me.
And he carried an M16.
So I said, okay, we'll go out there.
We low crawled, we found this big boulder that we could hide behind to give us cover.
And we just blasted the whole right flank with all the firepower we had.
I was lobbing those grenades as fast as I could.
And one by one, one guy came back.
Another guy came back.
I could see them running back to safety.
And so four of them run back.
And we knew that there were six guys out there.
So Herb said, well it doesn't look like the other two are moving.
We better make a move for ourselves to go back.
We'll go out and get them later.
So we low crawled back and I got back over to my line and I looked over my shoulder and
Herb wasn't there.
So I said, what's going on?
I said, he's in come back.
I looked over the berm and he was halfway out there on this stomach.
So without even thinking, I went back out there still receiving fire, tried to drag
him in but I couldn't even move him an inch.
And that was my first experience of what dead man, dead alive or whatever.
Dead weight.
Yeah, dead weight.
I'm getting old.
I'm going to forget it.
Dead weight was all about.
And so a couple of guys went out there.
We helped drag him in.
We turned him over after we brought him in and he had received him around the chin and
went out the top of his head.
He was dead immediately and never knew who had hit him.
So there was darting a dust off people and they asked me, the red merman, asked me to
go out there to try to locate the other two.
I said, I'll go but I can't go by myself.
I can't carry those guys by myself.
So a couple of guys came with me, three, four guys.
We went out there and found the one guy was very injured and found out later he had an
eye blown out.
So he was the point man.
So they brought him back and the other man was our lieutenant and he was killed.
We carried his body back and they all dusted off.
At the beginning of that endeavor, we had 27 of platoon, 20 people were killed and the
rest wounded in actual action and seven of us never received a scratch.
So I was one of seven people left in our second platoon and that's about the story.
And we went, it was pretty much all day we were there and by the time we were finished,
it was getting close to almost dark again.
So we had to go and find another place to camp out for the night.
And that was the night that was more frightful than the other night because I figured they
were going to come back and finish us off.
And we were all, all of us were on guard all night and fortunately none of us, they didn't
come back.
Apparently we got them all and they, they, they chased, we chased them away.
And the next day we broke camp and we went out finding another LZ and they dropped off
12 new guys for us with a new lieutenant.
And we weren't finished our mission.
We had seven more days to go.
So I immediately became a squad leader at a private first class.
I was a squad leader because I was six months in.
I was the expert at war, at jungle warfare.
Talk about a joke.
Yeah, yeah, we, we, we were all talked about, we talked about that a little bit before we
went on the air.
And you know, it's that we, you know, we all went in early, you know, by ourselves.
And then, you know, you're, you're flying along, in my case, I'm flying along with these
guys who had been there for a whole three months.
And you know, they're the experts and you know, something happens to them.
And then you become, you know, the head of the platoon or squad or whatever it is.
And you just have to, you know, have to do what you can do.
And I, and I appreciate it.
You know, the thing for my audience to know is that you received a silver star for this
little action that you went into and carried the,
Herb Kled got this, this thing was service cross.
Right.
Which is number two on the list of awards.
And I think that the, I was going to read the award, but you've already told us what
happened there.
And I think that, you know, I, I, my audience knows, you know, that, you know, I was a helicopter
pilot.
I was on his flu, you guys in and brought you back out.
Never really appreciating what you all had to go through.
And this mutual admiration society that has come about after the war has been very helpful.
And I'm going to go into what you did after the war in just a second.
But I want to bring on, I want to bring on Julian and Paul to find out how did you guys
get involved with this story?
And Julian, we talked about this earlier on.
This is a Julian, last name is pronounced a yacht and he is a writer as well.
He writes murder mysteries, historical novels.
I'm going to give you guys a little credit here.
So there's a couple of books that were titled one is the flowers of heaven, dangerous blood
lines a life before disappearance, code named Lily.
That's the historical novel about a woman in Belgium.
Wasn't it?
Yes, correct.
I see.
And then a couple of books by Paul is scoundrels, the hanging in redemption of John Gordon,
the promise of Fatima.
I am the immaculate conception and darkness at Dachau.
You guys are very prolific in what you've been writing about.
So let's now let's go in there and say, okay, how did you find out about Father Phil?
Well, I guess I'm the guy who's responsible for that.
I saw an article in the Providence Journal in April of last year, not this past year,
but in 2023.
And it was written by a guy named Frank Lennon who writes a column on veterans for the Providence
Journal once a week.
And this particular column was about Father Phil and his exploits.
Now what is ironic about it is that Father Phil was born in Winsocket, Rhode Island.
My brother was the former mayor of Winsocket, Rhode Island.
I now live in Lincoln.
He lives in North Smithfield about 15 minutes away.
I never heard of him.
I said, who is this guy?
How come I never heard of him?
Which is typical of Father Phil.
He doesn't need for you to know who he is to do the work that he does.
But it was a story, as he mentioned, about his heroism in the jungles of Vietnam and
then how he later accepted the call that a lot of people make a promise about in combat,
but they never follow it.
And he did.
This touched me.
And I said, I'm going to try to find his email address, which took me about six hours.
And then I find this email address that's got one lock in it.
And I'm saying, what the heck is this guy talking about?
So I said, this is for real because that sounds like a Vietnam name to me.
And so I sent him an email and address.
I introduced myself and said, I just read the article in the journal about you.
And I was wondering if you'd be interested in my writing your story in the book.
And I might get an historian to help me out in the form of Paul Carrancy, who has written
many historical books along the way.
So he answered that he had often thought about writing his autobiography, but he didn't
have the patience, is what he said.
I don't have the patience to spend that much time sitting there writing and proofreading.
And I said, well, that's what we do in our retirement years.
That's what we do.
We do.
We write and we rewrite and we do things like that.
So the long story short is he agreed.
And then we decided to meet to see how we were going to do this.
And that's where I got Paul involved.
So we can pick it up from here.
Paul, tell me about how you got involved in this project.
Well, I was just sitting at home, minding my own business, working on a different book
that I was writing at the time.
And Julian called and asked me if I had ever heard about Father Phil.
And I said, no, when he said there's a story in the Providence Journal today, take a look
at it and give me a call back.
So I did that.
Incredibly impressed with the story.
Paul, Julian back and he said, I want to write his biography.
I was in contact with him.
He agreed that I could do that.
Would you work with me on it?
Because you write biographies and history and Julian is primarily a novelist.
So there was an invitation and a story I just could not pass up.
So I put the book I was working on aside and I worked with Julian on this.
The interesting thing about it was I had just finished working on a biography of a cover
band out of Georgia where there are eight band members all alive and well.
And usually I write history and the subjects that I write about have been dead for hundreds
of years.
That was my first experience writing a biography about living people.
And it was the most difficult thing I've ever done because the story is conflicted and everybody
has a different understanding of the events.
So I swore when I finished it, it took over 18 months.
And I said, I'll never write about another living person again.
And it wasn't more than a month later that Julian called with this offer.
But the story was just so good that even though Father Phil is alive and well, I couldn't
pass it up.
So I agreed and we went to work on it.
Can you tell me about the first time that you met Father Phil?
What was your impression?
Which one of us?
Paul, you'll go first.
Yeah.
Actually, it was quite interesting because Father Phil was a priest like none other than
I had met in the past.
And his language was a bit rough.
And he tells the story, he was very animated and fascinating at the same time.
But I said to him at some point along the way, you don't speak like priests that I know.
You swear occasionally and you throw in a rough word.
And he said, well, that's because to relate to the people that he was relating to, the
veterans.
He needed to be one of them and he needed to speak like one of them so they would trust
him.
And he apparently, he'll tell you the story about that in a little bit, but apparently
was able to do that to perfection and had gained a trust of all of these veterans to
the point where they would open up to him and he was able to work on their problems with
them because of that.
I found Father Phil to be an absolutely fascinating person, an extraordinary priest.
And just every story that he told us, every aspect of his life was absolutely astounding
and extraordinary.
Yeah.
Julian, tell me how you finally hooked up with him.
Well, I actually contacted Father Phil by email and said that I think that we should
meet for breakfast.
That's always an icebreaker and we'll decide at breakfast exactly how we're going to proceed.
And when we did meet at an IHOP for breakfast, we found out that he has quite an appetite
and he enjoyed the breakfast meetings more than anything.
So we decided that because there were going to be so many events to discuss and the chronological
order of these events was going to be complicated and we would have to go back and look at them
several times.
As Father Phil has indicated at 75 years old, sometimes the dates get a little confused
or mixed up and so we had to go back and make sure and verify all the dates.
So what we did is we taped every single meeting for about an hour and a half and the extent
of the meetings was limited to about an hour and a half because that's a lot of relating
of skills and history and stuff like that.
And we did this, Paul, I think for about five or six times at least.
And then we had all the information we needed and we started drafting one chapter at a time.
I would do the initial draft and Paul would come in and he would edit it and then we'd
send it to Father Phil to look at and inevitably he'd have changes because it's his story.
So we had the prerogative of having changes and so we made the corrections and then moved
on.
And in the process we started to realize that he knew so many people out there, so many important
people, you know, congressmen.
I mean, he gave the opening prayer of the U.S. Congress one year at the invitation of
Representative David Cicillini here from Rhode Island and he did this in Washington, D.C.
And he spoke at the Vietnam Veterans Wall one year to promote his minister's organization.
He said to us very clearly, he says, you know, I'm entrusted with counseling people with
post-traumatic stress disorder, but who counsels the counselor?
Who do we pour our souls out to?
And so it was very important for him to establish a group of people like him, counselors, you
know, in the ministry who do the same kind of work he does with post-traumatic stress
disorder.
And so he was invited, you know, by the founder of the Vietnam Wall to speak at their November
11th Veterans Day presentation, and boy, did he jump on that opportunity and I don't blame
him.
It was a captive audience.
And that really was the beginning of his mission for the next 30 or 40 years.
So it's an amazing story and there's so many stories that I wouldn't know where to begin.
I know, it's very difficult.
For our audience, we are talking with the authors and the subject of the book titled
In the Shadows of Vietnam, the Gallant Life of Father Philip So-Wa, and Father Phil, and
I, of course, I found this story just resonated with me and it's not that I'm religious or
anything like that, but just the explanation of post-traumatic stress and the way that
you went through your own journey, you know, to come out the other side.
Could you tell us a little bit about that because I know that when you got back, you
were kind of lost like many of us were.
When I came back, actually, I got my job back from an insurance company I worked for before
I got drafted.
So they were very good.
They had to take me back because it was the law, you know, which got drafted out of an
employment, you know, they had to take you back when you got out.
And it was the employers insurance of Warsaw had just opened up a branch in Los Angeles,
which they only were there about four years, and I was working for them and they were very
patriotic people and they were lovely, lovely, a lot of Polish background, a lot of Eastern
European background.
And so when I came back, they welcomed me with open arms.
But when I started talking a little bit about Vietnam, they kept saying, oh, don't talk
about that.
That's painful.
We don't need to hear that.
We just wish just glad that you're here.
So okay, so I swallowed it and I said, okay, I won't talk about it.
And that was the beginning of going into my Vietnam closet because after that, nobody,
none of my friends in classmates wanted to hear about it.
Nobody, nobody wanted to talk about it.
And we were in a generation where we were not very welcome back.
And it was not a good topic to talk about anyway, to get any respect.
So I just swallowed it up.
And I stayed in my Vietnam closet for 13 years until it finally came out.
I was in the religious order.
And how did you decide to go into the priesthood?
Well it was not my choice.
God forbid.
It was about four years after I got back from Vietnam.
I was back at work.
I was very happy and I had my own apartment.
And all of a sudden an article in the newspaper was talking about the great shortage of priests
that were happening and the churches were being in big trouble and all that.
And I was raised a Roman Catholic.
I've always been very religious.
A Sunday, Sunday alone Catholic.
So I said, Jesus, I kept going back to that article.
I kept going back to that article.
It was almost like saying God was trying to tell me something.
So one day I called the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
I was living in LA at the time.
I grew up in Los Angeles.
So all that stuff happens out in the West Coast.
I called up the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and said, I think I may have a vocation.
So they had me connected with the vocation director.
He said, this is his number.
Give him a call.
I called him.
He said, okay, come on down.
Such and such a date.
So I went down.
And I said, I think I have a vocation to the priesthood.
He said, why?
He said, because I told him about the Vietnam story and all that and the promise I made.
He said, well, he said, how often do you go to Mass?
I said, well, every week, Father.
I said, how often do you pray outside of Mass?
I said, well, not very often.
How often do you go to confession?
Oh, Jesus, it's been many years since I've been a confession.
I said, well, how about the rosary?
I said, no, I don't say the rosary.
But he says, it doesn't sound like much of a vocation to me.
But if you want to go to the seminary, you know, the education won't be wasted on you.
When you, you know, something might change.
So they got me enrolled.
I passed the exam and all that.
And I was, I started that following September and I was the oldest one in my class because
most of them were coming out of high school.
They were coming out.
They were first year right out of high school.
I was already 22, 23 years old.
So I was a slow learner.
So anyway, I, I, in my second, in my second year of seminary in the fall of 75, I think
it was, yeah, 75, I was saying my rosary.
I was walking in the woods and I said, geez, God, I think, thank you for bringing me here
because I really feel a lot of peace.
I really feel I belong here.
It's the first time in my life I really enjoyed studying.
And so I heard this inner voice say to me, he said, well, do you remember that promise
you made to me four years ago?
I said, oh my God, yeah.
It was the first time I remembered it.
I said, if I, if I do, if you get me out of the safe and sound, I'll do anything you
want.
I said, they wouldn't become, I did say I'd become a priest.
I just said, do anything you want.
I said, well, this is what I want for you.
We said, and then that was the end of it.
There it is.
I knew that was where I was supposed to be.
I never heard from him again.
Not, not, I mean, I did, but not in that.
Oh, here I am.
Many years later, doing the work of Vietnam veterans, which I love.
I've been a national chapter for Vietnam as America for over 35 years.
I gotta, I gotta, I gotta take a break here.
But when we come back, I want to talk to Father Phil and the authors again about what you
have been doing since then.
And I know it's been very involved in how, what an advocate you have been for veterans'
healthcare, especially mental health care.
And so we're going to take a break here real quick.
We've been, we're talking about the book in the shadows of Vietnam, The Gallant Life of
Father Philip Tsawah.
And it's great story.
You gotta go buy it.
Go buy the book.
Anyway, you're listening to Veteran Radio.
We'll be right back.
The Medal of Honor is the highest award for valor in combat given a member of the armed
forces of the United States.
There have been over 3,400 recipients of the nation's highest award.
This is one of them.
Born Osir Frederick Ferguson led a force ship helicopter formation into a South Vietnamese
army compound under heavy fire.
Details after this.
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.
After completing a hitch on the Navy, Ferguson got his commercial pilot's license and then
joined the army to fly helicopters.
Two weeks after graduating from helicopter school, he was in Vietnam.
On January 31, 1968, Ferguson heard that a first cavalry helicopter had gone down in
way and another had been badly shot up trying to rescue them.
Ferguson and his crew agreed to go get them.
While refueling, he asked three Huey gunships if they wanted to accompany him.
They did.
The GIs and the compound reported they were under heavy fire.
Ferguson circled until the fire abated, then began a low-level high-speed run into the
compound.
He descended blindly in a dust storm from his rotors.
When he touched down, he saw there was only one-foot clearance on each side of his blades.
The GIs jumped aboard and Ferguson pulled up.
A mortar shell exploded under his aircraft, spinning it 180 degrees.
One of the Hueys was shot down and the crew rescued.
The other two were so badly shot up by the time they landed, they were no longer able
to fly.
Ferguson received his Medal of Honor from President Nixon on May 17, 1969.
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.
We're back here on Veterans Radio and our guest is Father Philip Sohoi.
The book is in the shadows of Vietnam and the authors are joining us are Julian Ayat
and Paul Carronsi.
And so Father Philip, you know, you answered the call.
It took you 13 years to finally get your own act together.
It sounds like from what I read.
And in 1984, you became a priest.
And from there, you went on your next mission.
And that next mission was to help veterans with their own problems with post-traumatic
stress.
How did that go?
That was a realization that I could not be the only priest or minister who served Vietnam
as a soldier that could be suffering from this PTSD stuff.
There must be others in the country that did the same thing.
So I said, and I had just finished reading the book Out of the Night by William P. Mahade,
who was an Augustinian chaplain in the army in Vietnam.
And when he got out and he worked with veterans for a while and he wrote this book Out of
the Night.
It's a spiritual journey for Vietnam veterans.
I read that and I said, oh my God, it really clicked with me.
And I wanted to, and so I called him, followed up his number and I called him.
And I said, you know, Bill, I said, I think there must be other people like me and you
in the country who have taken the call to ministry after their experience in Vietnam,
who are maybe suffering internally, but have no way to talk to them about their problems
or their suffering.
I said, I think it'd be a great idea to start a conference and to reach out to them, all
denominations.
So he said, I was hoping he was going to take up the idea and do it.
He says, Phil, I think that's a great idea.
I'm glad, I hope you can, your success when doing that.
So he threw it right back at my lap.
So I said, oh my God, how am I going to do this?
So I ended up finding addresses and of all the different denominations, Protestant denominations,
Catholic dioceses, and Archdiocese, and sent out a cover letter to everybody, introducing
myself, telling them who I was, and what I'd basically, I was a Vietnam combat veteran,
who had become a priest and was suffering from PTSD and was looking for other people
who might be also in that same district, we could get together for a conference.
That's when I went to Washington at November 11, 1969, no, 1979, excuse me, or is it 1989?
I don't remember.
It's one of those years anyway.
And Jan Scruggs invited me to present my idea because he thought it was a great idea.
And so he gave me five minutes to talk about it, and at the end of the program, some people
came up with pieces of paper with names of ministers that they knew and Vietnamese,
for me to contact them and all that.
And that was my head start.
And then from then on, I started writing those letters and got a lot of responses.
So the following year, it was our first meeting in Washington at the Marian Retreat House,
and we had 23 ministers show up for this first conference.
I was really surprised.
I didn't think anybody would show up, but we had 23, and two of them were priests,
were chaplains over there, and one was a Protestant minister.
Well, most of them were Protestant, and they were all Protestant ministers,
besides the two priests and myself.
And so we were there for a week.
And we started this with everybody, one by one took turns telling their story.
And some of us, many of us took about an hour, or maybe 30 minutes.
And there was never a dry eye in the place.
There was one person that said he was on the verge of suicide.
And then when he got hold of my letter, he got a little bit of hope, decided to come
over, and we're still in touch.
So it was a beautiful, we met every year for 25 years.
And from that, we started retreats, and weekend retreats for veteran couples.
And we didn't want just the guys that come, we wanted the wives to come,
because the wives are the ones that suffer the most.
The guys don't tell their wives anything.
And so they feel it's their problem or it's their fault.
So we don't call it post-traumatic stress disorder.
One of our members, Alan Cutter, as he's in the book, referred to it as post-traumatic
spiritual disorder.
So that's how we refer to it from then on, which is really a wounding of the soul.
And that's what we started.
And it's been, we've retired the group now because we've gotten too old and nobody
wants to travel anymore.
And it was a few, but because other organizations are doing similar things with a younger
federation.
So we thought there was time for us to quit.
But the other thing that's important to me was the fact that I got very interested in
going overseas and doing this study with foreign veterans of other wars in other countries.
And so I was invited to go to the Republic of Georgia, to Tbilisi, for the Peaceful
Caucuses Conference, which was a conference for veterans who served in the Soviet war
in Afghanistan and in Vietnam before we got there.
And it was the Chechens were there, the Azerbaijanis were there, the Azeris, the
Armenians were there.
And it was a group of veterans from all those countries.
And I did my program and it was simultaneously translated to them.
And I invited them to come out the following year and went back the following year.
I was supposed to go to Bosnia in 2001 to do the same thing for their veterans.
But what happened was that 9-11 happened, I put a kibosh on all the travel and that
kind of put a kibosh on my overseas ministry.
But that's my story.
He's not done.
There's a lot more to this story that, you know, and we only have, you know, what, another
10 minutes or so to talk about this whole thing.
I'm going to have to have you back on.
There's no doubt about that.
Excuse me.
In that time, I know that you were the national chaplain of the Vietnam veterans of America
for 40 years.
You've been the national chaplain of the American Legion.
You worked for many, many years at the VA in Boston and in Northeastern New England for
all that time period.
Are you still actively involved with any of that?
I'm the department chaplain for Vietnam, but for BFW in Rhode Island.
I'm the department chaplain for DAV in Rhode Island.
And I'm the local chaplain to all the DAVs, VFW and VVA, which I'm still a president.
I've been the president of my chapter for the last 20 years, which I can't get rid of
that job because nobody wants it.
I can relate to that.
I understand that.
So there's not any organization I'm not involved in.
No, but you're really, you know, your mission is ongoing.
And there are probably so many veterans out there that are still around because of what
you've been able to accomplish with that mission.
And I just want, personally, from, you know, from the veteran community, I want to thank
you so much for everything that you've done because of people like you, people like me,
who were able to open up and finally get this future stuff that was inside of us out and,
you know, then finally be able to deal with it.
I wanted to ask our authors, again, the book is in the shadows of Vietnam.
You can find it anywhere, folks, Amazon, wherever you want it to go.
But giving them a little lead up, I would like each one of you to tell one story that
you think kind of identifies Father Phil to you.
So we've got, what do we got, 10 minutes?
Less than 10 minutes, about eight minutes.
So let's see.
Julian, I'll start with you.
Well, I wrote in the book in the preface that I had been introduced to Father Phil by an
article in the province journal.
And you know, I said to myself, I've, I'm disappointed in myself for not having known
Father Phil until now.
And that it, I felt it was my obligation.
And I think Paul feels the same way.
I have to write this story.
Because I can't let it sit.
This is something that so many people need to hear about because it's going to help them.
Father Phil has helped a number of people in his lifetime.
And he can help more without even knowing it by people reading this book because they'll
be enlightened by what he has to say and what he did.
And he's, he's well worth knowing, trust me.
I wrote in the book and I compared him to someone that St. John Henry Newman, a British
cardinal in the 1800s, who was a theologian and a writer and a poet.
And he was canonized as a saint by Pope Francis in 2019, not that long ago.
And he once said that it's almost the definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never
inflicts pain.
And that's Father Phil.
That's what he does.
And so, you know, I have, I could talk always about him, but the summarizes what I think
he has done in his lifetime, and he's not done.
He's not done yet.
There's still a lot of fight left in that guy.
And so watch yourself.
He's there.
He doesn't think so, but there is.
So he's a friend, and I'm happy to call him my friend.
Thank you.
Paul, how about you?
Well, you know, awards are not just an eagle boos to something that's self-serving.
Awards are given because other people recognize an amazing or extraordinary contribution that
you've made in the lives of other people.
Father Phil has gotten so many awards in his career that Julian and I struggled with
how we would list them in the book.
And we finally ended up just having to have three appendices in the back of the book to
list all of his awards and accomplishments.
You know, we mentioned that he was a Silver Star recipient in Vietnam, but he also received
several other awards from the military.
He received so many awards from organizations, the Knights of Columbus, Golden Lantan Award,
the highest award given by that organization.
And so many others, like I say, it took three appendices to list them and explain them.
So that's one of the things that I find so amazing about Father Phil.
But there is another story that I can relate to in a sense, and it's not about Father Phil.
It's about his parents and the amazing love story that resulted in their wedding, their
marriage that Julian so eloquently wrote about at the beginning of the book.
And I think that just deserves a mention because it's extraordinary.
And I know that you, Father Phil, you're still living in New Rhode Island, aren't you?
Yeah.
All of you are from Rhode Island.
I know you live 15 minutes from each other.
Nice.
Around the corner.
We didn't have time to talk, but I just want to mention that one of the important parts
of my life was going back to Vietnam and adopting that Vietnamese family.
That'll be for another show.
I did want to ask you if you had ever gone back because many of my friends have gone
back.
I don't know if I'm quite ready for that, but you adopted a Vietnamese family while
you were there?
Yeah.
They're living in Santa Ana, California now.
In fact, the mother just died.
She was 86 and the father of the group is 97 years old.
This is back in 1990.
So they were young then, which teenaged kids and now the teenage kids are in their 60s.
I know that goes all of us.
They're all American citizens now.
They all became citizens.
And very hardworking, I'm sure.
Yes.
I mean, these are the people that unfortunately, in today's world, they appreciate being in
America more than we do sometimes.
And I think that that's a message that I'm sure that you're going to continue delivering
to everybody that you talk to.
Yeah, I would like to have you back on again to just to talk about maybe some of the techniques
and things that you used while you were working with VA with the patients that were there.
I mean, I know it's really hard.
It's hard for all veterans, but it seems especially hard for Vietnam veterans to open up.
I mean, even now, 50 years later, we have people that come to our meetings and you go,
hey, tell us what you did.
Well, I don't talk about that.
You know what was the icebreaker going into a patient's room, a veteran's patient's room,
is the CIB I was wearing on my suit coat.
Oh, that.
That was the icebreaker.
Otherwise, they would have kicked me out because a lot of them just didn't want anything
to do with religion.
Well, it wasn't just a religion.
I can remember just a personal thing of the first therapist I talked to was about 12, I
was in the hospital, and I had not been in the service.
And I walked out of that.
I didn't go back for 20 years.
So it's unfortunate that happens.
Anyhow, we're coming up to the end of the program.
I want to thank all three of you for being on Veterans Radio.
It's such a pleasure to meet all of you.
Father Phil, I really do want to have you back on again at some point in the future.
So now that I've got your emails and everything like that, we will do.
If you don't mind.
And the other two guys, Julian and Paul, any books that you want me to talk about, let
me know if you're talking about veterans in any way, especially that story about Lily,
I thought was really interesting.
And we'll get back to you all.
So thank you very much for being on Veterans Radio.
Pleasure.
Thank you.
Okay.
All right, we're coming up to the end of the program.
Next week is our monthly benefits program.
So if you have any questions about benefits, whether it's hospitalization or disability
benefits or anything like that, you can, you know, our staff will be on our experts will
be on the air with us.
And I want you to make sure that you contact us, send us an email at info at veterans radio
dot org, or you can call the program next week when we're on the air.
And I'll get out that number next Sunday when we're on the air so that you can do that.
A couple of other things are also to remember is that the radio of the river is coming up
on September 22nd.
We really appreciate anybody that could come out and support that.
This is our major fundraiser of the year.
And this is where we make up enough money to pay for being on the stations and so forth
that we're on.
So we're hoping that you will do that again, go to veterans radio dot Oregon.
There's much more information on there.
Let me see what else.
So the vet fest coming up next Saturday, hopefully you'll be there.
This is for southeastern Michigan, Washington Community College from 10 to three.
We will be there on veterans radio.
I hope you'll join us there.
So the book again today was in the shadows of Vietnam, the Gala Life of Father Philip
Sywa.
Great story, Silver Star, all those things.
This guy went through everything that every one of you veterans out there has gone through.
So until next week, this is Dale Throneberry for all of us here at veterans radio.
You are dismissed.