Live from the Veterans Radio Studio and the Ave
Maria Network, this is Veterans Radio. And now
here's your host, Gary Lilley. And good morning
to everybody. Welcome to Veterans Radio. To all
you folks listening to us around the globe, and
there are people listening around the globe.
Thank you for listening in. Welcome to Veterans
Radio. I'm Gary Lilley, CB2Live, Vietnam Republic
of... 1966 and sitting over here at the broadcast
booth with me is Dale Throneberry. Good morning,
Gary, and welcome to the Veterans Radio again
to all of our listeners out there. We're so grateful
and thankful that you tune in and listen to us.
I just want to point out that we are attempting
to webcast again today. We've got the, looks
like the pictures are up. And we didn't have
time to load in all of the pictures that we normally
put in there, but we're going to try it again
today. So if you want to watch and see how ugly
we really are, you can go to the Veterans Radio
and click on watch us live. And over in the control
room is Matt Durer. Good morning, Matt. Good
morning, guys. How are you doing? I'm great.
He's a student at Washtenaw Community College.
I see him there every now and then because I'm
taking a class myself, the history of the United
States since 1877. Well, you've been there for
all of it. I laugh because I remember over half
of it. Also, Kai, where are you, Kai? Good morning
to you. Good morning. How's it going over there?
Real good. There's a guy that holds his age.
I thought he was barely 20 years old. He's 40.
Kai, you're going to look young to the end, I
swear. Yeah, thanks. But that was a secret. You
wasn't supposed to tell anybody. Oh, OK. I won't
tell them then. And so also the... student at
Washtenaw Community College. I see Kai over there
every now and then too. This is great. Good school.
Today's going to be a very good program. We're
going to get into it real fast. It's going to
be about the things that those who have been
to war or have been in the military and not at
war but have had things happen that we laugh
at and I guarantee you some of them the civilians
are going to sit back and they're going to say,
what? How can you laugh at that? I just want
to give you an example of it. This happened to
me. I was at Chulai Air Base. Now, we weren't
at the air base itself. When I arrived in Chulai,
it was sand dunes and rice paddies. They had
a 3 ,500 -foot metal airstrip that they actually
had arrestor hooks on there for the A -4 attack
aircraft to hook onto, just like on a helicopter,
because it was long enough for them to take off,
but not long enough for them to land. the and
everybody was living in tents and on the ground
and there was a jungle and The scrub jungle I
guess like best way to describe it. So my fire
team of four guys Scotty Baird fat Willie and
Joe what was his name Jeff from Texas? We're
we're all working on building the drainage system
with you know, you'd have culverts under the
road and you'd have wing cement wings out there
to keep them from washing away. We were doing
the cement wings. One of them, we always had
to worry about the forms bursting and the cement
going all over the place. Then a heck of a cleanup
mess trying to clean it up with a sledgehammer
and do it all over again. So we poured one real
late one night, one evening. It was, let's see,
we had about half an hour before the chow hall
closed. And I said, okay, let's go. We'll get
some chow before it closes. Scotty Baird says,
no, I'm going to sit here and see if the farms
hold. Willie says, I'm going to do the same thing.
Gun from Texas. Nobody used the first name. So
Gun says, I'm going to stay too. I said, OK,
I'll stay. So he sat there for 15 minutes, and
not a creak out of the farms. And I said, all
right, those farms are going to hold. Let's go
get something to eat. I'm starving. Scotty says,
no, I'm going to wait. Willie says, I'll wait.
gun says I'll wait and I said why not I got I
want to go get something to eat. I'll take the
shovels and you guys can carry the rest of the
tools. So I start walking down this road that
was about like a forest trail you know it was
it was not a road it was a forest trail through
the jungles I could reach out just about from
the edge of the road and touch the jungle and
I was walking down and I had a pair of pants
on that were ripped to shreds from working. with
a belt and I had my boots on and a radio pair
of socks that was it we never wore anything else
and I've got four shovels over my shoulder and
it's dark and I'm thinking wait a minute should
I be making noise so one of the Marines doesn't
shoot me or should I be real quiet so some bad
guy doesn't shoot me and while I'm contemplating
that there's a turn in the road that made a sharp
turn to the left and as I got very very close
to it I heard the loudest sound in the world.
It was the bolt of an M60 racking it around.
And a guy yells out, it was not free fire, a
guy yells out, halt, who goes there? And my mind
froze and I couldn't think of who goes there.
My mind is racing and I'm waiting for that flash
that's gonna be the last thing I ever see. And
finally I shouted out, don't shoot, don't shoot,
I'll think of it in a minute. And of course,
see me, see me, friend, friend. And they started
laughing. And so, come on, let's go. Well, when
I got up there, I said, where did you guys come
from? They said, well, we set up an ambush. And
I said, oh, geez, don't shoot. I got some buddies,
I got some buddies following behind me. Don't
shoot them either. And they laughed like crazy
when I went by. And it was totally, well, I ended
up laughing about it. But at that time, I was
tense. You never knew what was going to happen
over there. Anytime that you were out after hours,
let's put it that way, and in a place that you
probably didn't belong, they were told to challenge.
If you didn't come up with the right password,
they were supposed to nail you. I can imagine
your mind freezing. I was within 50 feet of them,
40 feet of them. It's not like it was long distance.
Well, we have somebody on the line that's got
his own funny story, Jim Shepard. Is that who
we have? Okay. Jim Shepard, good morning. Welcome
to Veterans Radio. Oh, push the button. I'm going
to put a big sign on my nose, push the button.
Jim, good morning. Welcome to Veterans Radio.
Hey, you got the button this time, Gary. Good
morning, Gary. You got the button this time,
right. You're on. What were you in? What branch
of the service were you in and where were you,
Jim? Well, I was in the Air Force, and spent
three and a half years in Southeast Asia, Vietnam,
Okinawa, Thailand. I was just listening to your
story, and I was, Yuri, if someday I'm on your
station, you're going to have to tell a story,
because only Steveys would have to tell a story
about picking up an aircraft hangar and turning
it 90 degrees. Oh, geez, yes. I got photographs
to prove it. We might talk about it later on.
What happened to you that has you laughing after
all these years? Well, it's not a particular
type of story, but it's only a story that probably
would come out of a series of events, being in
the military, being in a war zone, and having
spent more than two years of your life living
with the same guy that gets one of those friendships
that's bound forever. Anyway, we had just left
Okinawa after 18 months. We worked in the 400th
MMS there. We got transferred down to Cameron
Bay, working the 412th munitions maintenance
squadron. And, you know, I've heard all the Air
Force, all the Air Force stuff, you know, the
country club stories that we always heard from
the guys who were in the bush. Right, right.
I admit, we had fun, had a really nice cop to
go to and felt very privileged for that. Hopefully,
some of those hot rocks or napalm or whatever
we built. got some of our friends home, that's
all I can bring. Anyway, it was early 68, the
story you asked me to tell, it was, I don't know
what day it was, it was between hot and damn
hot. I remember that day. Yeah, yeah, it was
like the day before. Anyway, I was linked up
with Nick Darrell. We got together when we were
in tech school in Denver, Colorado. And he became
my best friend. I even named my son after him.
Big Darrell? Yeah, well, yeah, he is Big Darrell.
He got the name Lumberjack because of his Norwegian
descent that stuck with him. And he spent a lot
of Lumberjack for the last 40 plus years. Everybody
in my family knows him by that. You guys know
him by that. You met him when we got together
in Washington. He's a great guy. And I can't
wait for the story. Go ahead and let him know.
Yeah, well, anyway, we got back from the bombs
of a stupid hour in the morning, and Lumberjack
was in one of his normal positions, and that
was laying on his rack in his skivvies with his
big old headphones on, listening to country music
on a reel -to -reel tape deck that he bought
from the VX. You know how that was going at the
time. And what kind of skivvies were they? Well,
I'll tell you right now, they were just green,
okay? I'll get to the punchline here in a second.
But they were his favorite ones because his girlfriend
had sent them to him So that was our that was
his normal attire when we were in the barracks
anyway, he was like really really early in the
morning and Writing a letter home and he was
laying on his rack reading the Mickey Spillane
novel or something and First concussion came
in the bad guys were I know just lobbing mortars
in or Rockets, whatever they were at the time
and In course, it's like the first clap of thunder
you go to the window to see what's going on,
you know what I feel Okay. Well anyway, yeah,
anyway They were they were banging them up on
the base pretty good and they knocked out our
generator I was gonna be this hero and so we
had two story barracks. Okay, I'm gonna run Yeah,
I was gonna run through the barracks and try
to wake some of these guys up because I tried
to wake some of them up before and If they spent
too much time at the EM club, they were kind
of tough to get up, you know? I did it myself.
Go ahead. Well, anyway, we had a sandbag bunker
between our barracks and our sister barracks.
And so everybody was screaming, get in the bunker,
get in the bunker. And it was probably like a
scene out of Keystone Cops. You know, the guys
are ricocheting off each other. And it was probably
chaotic. Seemed like it lasts forever. It was
probably 45 seconds. I come back downstairs and
I thought, and I had yelled at Lumberjack before
I'd gone upstairs to go to the bunker. So I came
back down, just before I went out the back door
to go to the bunker, I said, I better check on
him. So, and the other thing I gotta say is,
his lumberjack is like 6 '3", 245, no neck, got
hands as big as first face and gloves. And we've
been rolling iron bombs for two and a half years,
so he was in pretty good shape. But the Kodak
moment that I'll forever have embedded in my
brain is sitting in there, yelling at him to
make sure he's in the bunker, and here's this
giant of a man with his combat boots on, his
helmet on, his black vest on, and he's attempting
to put his wet pistol belt on, but all else he's
got on is these green silk boxer shorts that
his girlfriend sent him. And I had this vision
of waking up at 10 in the morning next to a guy
with silk boxer shorts in the bunker. And I told
him, I yelled at him, I would not go to the bunker
with him unless he put his pants on. And that
had stuck forever. Well, what I remember you
saying is, if you think I'm going to be found
dead in a bunker with a guy wearing silk underwear,
you're crazy. That's exactly what flashed through
my mind. It was like the sixth That's enough
to give you a traumatic stress syndrome right
there. Hey Jim, thanks a lot for being on and
sharing that story with us. I did the same thing,
I have to admit, but it wasn't a mortar attack.
They thought it was a mortar attack and what
happened was we had a guy in security that ran
security in our battalion that everybody despised
and with good cause. At night, our showers were
wooden platforms with the canvas around them
and right next to the bank that went down to
the South China Sea. This guy went in real late,
so all the guys that actually worked for a living
had taken their showers, and he was by himself.
Two of our guys thought that they would play
a practical joke, give them a warning, teach
them a lesson, whatever, and they dropped a couple
of grenades over the edge of the bank right next
to the shower. One of the great grenades went
off, the gravel went shooting up in the air and
scattering down on him and everything. He went
running out of the shower stark naked, yelling,
incoming, incoming, ran to the security bunker
stark naked where everybody was just, it was
a great story afterwards. He was totally humiliated
and we all had a lot of fun with that. It's a
great moment, that's for sure, right out of mash.
Right out of mash, exactly. And so some of the
people are probably saying, you what? You dropped
hand grenades there? Well, I didn't, but a couple
of the guys with better sense of humor than me
did. The more courageous ones, right? Right.
So you've had a couple of funny things that happened
to you, did you? I had one. I was just thinking
of when he was talking about the, you know, running
to the bunker. And I think I mentioned this one
at breakfast. We were up in Dao Tieng. I was
in Vietnam in 1969. and with the 195th Assault
Helicopter Company. So I'll kind of give you
what we're doing. We were guests at Daotian with
a pretty big fire base in this three -corner.
Anyway, we were sitting there and they had this
mansion building in the middle of the compound
and we started receiving incoming. So we all
ran into the bunker that was near our tents.
And we're sitting in this tubular bunker and
it's got a little... wall at the front, we're
all standing up watching the war as it's going
on, and the BC were coming, they were streaming
out of this mansion, and we're going, this is
not good, this is very definitely not good, and
a mortar, and I can't remember what the name
of them are, but those of you that are out there
old enough, remember those little darts that
we used to have with the caps that we would stick
on the end, and we would throw the dart, and
it would, you know, make the boom sound. The
pop sound. Well, this thing, these had little
points on them, like regular darts, and this
thing came in, One of them came in and hit the
ground right next to a guy's foot, but it didn't
go off and we all saw this thing land and we
ran to the back of the bunker and he just looked
down at it and you could see him close his eyes
and scrunch up his face like this is really going
to hurt and it didn't go off and he just fainted.
Luckily the Marines and the Army and everybody
that was there, thank you all very much fought
them off and drove them away, but I can never
forget Jim's face on that one. Passing out. It's
just going to hurt. If you were looking at television,
it would look like a prune. A friend of mine
was up on a mountain, a marine. There was a big
hill overlooking the base. They put two guys
up there just to watch what's going on down below.
and they got a new lieutenant and everybody forgot
that the two of them were up there so they stayed
up there for a week just waiting like when is
somebody going to come and get us but they really
didn't care because they didn't want to be in
the base they just wanted some food and they
get resupplied well they got to the point that
they were pretty casual about it half the time
they weren't even wearing any clothes they were
just getting sun tans and so he was squatted
down watching the valley where the bad guys could
approach with binoculars and his friend was or
his mate whatever was laying in the bunk and
he wasn't wearing any clothes either and they
had a dog and the dog was laying there sound
asleep next to his friend on the it wasn't a
bunk it was whatever they slept on. All of a
sudden, you know those big dragons, like a kimono
dragon? One of them had come walking along looking
for something to eat and climbed over the sandbags
and was looking down at them. Well, his back
was to it. His partner woke up and screamed because
they were about a foot apart, their faces, and
the dog looked up and saw it, and the dog fainted.
Shortly after that, the new lieutenant found
out that they had a couple men up on the hill
and he came walking up and looked at these guys
both of them you know looking like jungle men
with sounds like Tarzan yes and he turned to
the sergeant he said sergeant i think these men
have been up here too long they don't have a
sense of humor right we got Del Mays on the line
Del welcome to veterans radio tell us what do
i have to do kind of push the button Oh, okay.
I didn't know you had to do it more than once.
Del, are you there? Hello, yes, I'm here. Okay,
good morning, Del. Can you hear me all right?
Good morning. You're great, you're great. You've
got a great story that you tell on yourself.
Tell us what it is. Tell us what happened, Del.
Okay, well, we were on our... out there recently
and we were on our way to our first job site.
I'm a heavy equipment operator so I'm heading
for a bulldozer or a front motor or whatever
it might be that they want us to do. So we climbed
into this douche and a half and we're on our
way to the job site wherever it is. So we are
going along and we're on this rice paddy trail
type thing just about room enough for one truck.
And we came upon a load of lumber that had overturned
into the rice paddy, and we couldn't get around
it. And the sergeant in charge of the lumber
and the construction said, good. He said, I've
got some help. I sure could use it. He said,
you can all stay here until another truck comes
by to reload the lumber. So we talked to each
other for a while, and it took a... a few minutes,
and I says, ah, I'm going to get out of this
douche and a half and go for a walk. I'm tired
of sitting here and not doing anything. So I
says, I'm going to go for a stroll down this
trail and put things over. So I'm walking along
the rice paddies, sort of like it was in Thailand,
nothing exciting. The rice paddies are all the
same. And then I see, I noticed or four twigs
of rice just jumped right up out of the water.
And I said, my goodness, what in the world is
causing that? There's something out there. There's
got to be these fish or something out there causing
that rice to jump up. So I watched it for a little
bit later, and whatever it was, apparently it's
moving. It came a little bit closer and jumped
up again, three or four twigs of rice, all about
a foot and a half. I said, my goodness, there's
got to be some kind of a crater down in there,
maybe four -legged, maybe like a muskrat or something,
or maybe it's a chemical reaction or what's going
on. It was quite hot. And so I said, I watched
it a little bit more. And whatever it is, it's
not afraid of me because it's coming closer,
you know? And so I said, well, I'm going to get
a look at this. Trader and then it won again
rice went up quite Out there a little bit, but
the class closer and the rice jumped up And I
said well I am going to go and stand on the edge
of this rice paddies, and then I thought you
know I Think it's up to me and knowing the rice
paddies It's going to be all mucky and muddy
and no we're not going to be able to see what
it is anyway So I says, maybe I'll go back and
ask somebody that's been around here and has
noticed these things out there, will tell me
what it is. So I walked back, excuse me, to the
Dersen house and I asked, I said, hey Sarge,
look at that, watch this rice paddy, there's
something out there causing this rice. to jump
up or something disturbing out there in that
rice paddy. So he said, OK. He says, well, we're
watching it. It happened again, going quite close.
And jumped up, and boy, he hit me across the
chest, and I lost my air. I'm flying through
the air, and I hit the dirt. And he's hotter,
and everybody said, just take cover under that
lumber. I couldn't even get my air. I couldn't
breathe. I couldn't move. I could hear everything,
but I couldn't do anything about it. But I finally
got myself around and got over there on the lumber.
They said, you idiot, we're taking fire from
the sniper. I said, OK. That was my first experience
with sniper fire. Well, it's one that you can
remember and look back at and laugh. Oh, yes.
Now I can laugh. And I wonder, my goodness, the
good Lord had to... It's a good thing he couldn't
hit or he had to take so long zeroing in or whatever
it was, but he didn't fire after that. He either
ran out of ammunition or he didn't figure it
was worth it. He figured somebody out there was
smart enough to know what he was doing, Del.
I could just see that guy on the other end, you
know, and he'd rack a new chute and miss you
and put in another round chute, miss you, but
you're still standing there. I'm glad I didn't
stay out there to see what it really was. I decided
that it was going to be too muddy to see it anyway,
so I walked on back. Okay, thanks a lot, Bill.
We've got to go to a break. We've got to go to
a break. Thanks for being on the Veterans Radio
with us. Are we going to do that Marine Scholars
break right now or wait? Okay, we're going to
do it now. Marine Scholars Fund. That was the
politically correct version of the song. I almost
fainted when you said you wanted to play that
because I was thinking of the politically incorrect.
That was a great song and it was, I guess, a
protest song but it was picked up by all the
GIs who had a lot of fun with it and a lot of
those songs that we sang were misinterpreted
by the general public. That's true. We would
also write our own verses. Unfortunately, we
can't sing them here. I doubt there's a single
verse that could be sung over here. There are
an awful lot of doo -wop groups over there that
would get together and sing. It was really interesting
because most of us don't have any singing talent
at all, but we certainly would sing along with
what was ever playing. The Fish Cheer was certainly
one of them. There was some good... music that
came out of the Vietnam War. But you know what's
interesting? In World War II, there was Bill
Malden, and he wrote cartoons, new cartoons that
were, they were the G .I.'s cartoons. In fact,
George Patton, they would appear in Stars and
Stripes, and George Patton ordered them to stop
doing it, but there was a guy above George Patton
who was a big fan of Bill Malden, and that was
General Eisenhower, and he told General Patton,
mind your own business, keep going Bill. However,
generals, they'd talk to generals. But Bill Malden,
Willie and Joe, oh, geez, and I've got a funny
story for me about Willie and Joe. Willie and
Joe were the two grunts that went from Africa
to Italy to Europe, and it was always the GI
humor that you look at. In fact, on the flyer,
there was one of them, you know, Joe, you saved
my life yesterday, and I swore I'd pay you back.
Here's my last pair of dry socks. Well, that
happened to me. I didn't save anybody's life,
but the last pair of dry socks, the guy got a
package in the mail and I offered him $10 for
them. What were we making, about eight bucks?
I had one pair of socks with no toes, no heels,
and were always soaking wet. I had to be careful
how I pulled my boots on so the socks didn't
come up around my ankle. And when he got these
socks in, I offered him $10 for a pair, and he
gave me a pair. And, you know, I almost teared
up. Well, that certainly is understandable. You
know, socks were very important. It's like, you
know, it's interesting that we weren't able to
get those supplies because we would look around.
We had to go down to Saigon or send somebody
to Saigon to buy flight gloves and socks, boots
sometimes. I'm not sure how they got diverted.
Well years later when we were home I was talking
to my folks and however it came up I don't know
my dad said well we always wanted to send you
something but you never needed anything and I
said well that's not true every letter I asked
you to send me socks and he said yeah we saw
that but we figured if you needed socks why don't
you just go buy some. My mother sent me a case
of Chef Boyardee ravioli I put the cans of Chef
Boyardee ravioli I was able to get five bucks
a can for those. You sold them? Oh, you capitalists.
All right, you're listening to Veterans Radio,
humor in war, and we'll be back right after this
message. Their hearts is the reason for they
did it. Okay, we're going to go to who we got
on line one. Let me ask, who do we have here
on line one? Jonathan? Yes. Good morning, Jonathan.
How are you? Jonathan Meyer, you were a fact
pilot over there, and you had a couple, you've
got some music that tells your funny stories,
but... There's a couple that we couldn't use
unfortunately because of the difference in quality
for our purposes today. However, you've got a
funny story to tell us about the pink elephant
polka. Right. The way it starts is I was flying
along on a dawn patrol as bored as I could be
up in the tri -border area where nothing could
I see. Then I happened to spot a jungle trail,
gave the bird a jink. I saw two elephants ambling
along and both of them were pink. So it sort
of goes downhill from there. I took a shot at
them with my rocket, missed. They must have heard
something coming and so I swung around to try
again and all of a sudden my airplane sort of
took a jolt and I thought, what? What the heck?
I couldn't have flown through my own prop wash.
Well, I figured I'd get a bit spooked, and I
started for home. And when I reported all this,
the Intel people just laughed at me when I told
them I saw pink elephants. Of course, with Johnny
Walker Black at about four bucks a fifth of beer,
practically free, it's not surprising that they
figured I was still under the influence. A couple
of days later, I was flying again with an army
guy, a Gary Wine -tier, and we went to the same
area and he said, by golly, they certainly are
pink. So I had a witness and I've had it confirmed
back in 2000. And more, once more, when I put
this story on the FACnet, several other facts
had seen pink elephants. And it was basically
because they must have rolled in the red mud
that was on the side of the river and it dried
pink on them. And many of them, as far as we
know, were used as VC pack animals. And that
was the reason you shot at them. And when you
told me that story, me being an animal lover,
when I watched B -52 Arclight strikes out in
the hills a couple miles away, I thought, oh,
the poor animals. Well, that's true. The bad
guys. You can't expect losses in a big operation.
War is rotten and you have to do stuff like that
because it means saving lives. Were there any
other kinds of things that you did up there that
got people to sort of think, you've been a little
too long here? Very quickly, before I left, I
wrote and recorded a song that I called The Fack
and the Green Beret. It's sort of a two -part
song where the Green Beret radio man on the ground
is calling for help and the Fack is being a bit
snotty about it. But they do get in and get together.
It's all based on a series of little true stories.
And call in the fighters and do your best. And
it finishes up by saying... just bomb the general
area, and when the smoke clears out, we'll count
up all the bodies and try to sort them out. Well,
that's something the civilians will have a hard
time finding the humor in, but all of your songs,
you had some very tough experiences over there,
but you managed to put a very funny twist on
your music. I've got your CDs and playlists,
and they are funny. Some of them we cannot play
on the air, but Jonathan... Is there a place
where they can find them? Are they available
to the public? How can people find your CD so
that they can purchase them? Well, if I try to
give you my email address, it gets a bit complicated,
so here's a short one. Soba at errols .com That
stands for Society of Old Bold Aviators at Arrows,
the defunct ISP. That can reach me. Society of
Old Bold Aviators, there are very few. That's
one. If you're bold, you don't get to be old
usually. Well, that's the classic, but one of
my military flying song compatriots said, well,
we are old and we were bold and now we're busy
talking about it. So we become proof of the pudding
that yes, you can become old and bold. Well,
good for you and thanks for being on Veterans
Radio. It's always a delight to hear you. I saw
you first at the wall with the Memorial Day Writers
Project and you and your sidekick singing your
songs. and every one of your songs tells a story.
Thanks a lot Jonathan. Thank you very much. Bye
now. Bye bye. We've got a break coming up and
then we're going to have Bill Fite and Dave Martin
on the... I can't believe how fast it's going
but in this last segment you had something that
you wanted to talk about. Well there's two things
I wanted to talk about. He just reminded me of
the pink elephants but and you had mentioned
the story about the not the Gila monster but
whatever they're called, in Kwan Loy. The first
time I went up to Kwan Loy, which is a base up
in northwestern III Corps, I was the new guy
there. We slept in tents and we would take special
forces other places. So the first night there,
I was sleeping and I slept, you have to understand,
I was getting a little paranoid. I was getting
short at the time. So I'm sleeping with a chicken
plate on my hand. I've got a pistol in my hand
and a knife in my other hand. And in the middle
of the night I felt this incredible weight on
me. And I thought, God, what the heck is that?
And I opened my eyes and looked down and it was
a snake crawling across my chest. And I'm trying
to figure out, I can't shoot it and I can't stab
it because, you know, even though I had a chicken
plate on it, I killed myself. So I just jumped
up yelling. And meanwhile, the other guys in
the tent are all standing watching this unfold
and a snake just crawled over me and went on
out the door. And they thought it was very funny.
I did not at the time. I think it was very amusing.
Where did this think come from, real quick? It
just wandered in. It was hungry. Oh my gosh.
All right. You're listening to Veterans Radio.
Humor and war. We'll be right back after this
message. Dave Martin from California has been
patiently hanging on for the entire program.
And then we've got Bill Fight from South Lyon
who's hanging on. And we're going to go first
to Dave Martin. who got up awfully early to give
us a phone call or to take our phone call, and
I want to say, Dave, welcome to Veterans Radio.
You were a CB over in Vietnam. That's correct.
Dave Walker here, by the way. What did I say,
Dave? Oh, that's Dave Walker. Sorry, there's
Dave Martin back there. We're thinking of Michael
or something. Right, right, right. Well, you've
got a story about incoming and a fellow that
stuttered. Tell us about that story first. Yeah,
we first tour over with MCB3, a unit you were
with in July. And we greened to what goes on
and retrospect did the wrong thing. We were coming
down the side of a hill, no cover, and got hit
with a mortar attack. And so the only cover we
could see was down at the bottom of the hill.
There was a culvert going underneath the road.
So we all ran down there, started punching in
there like a bunch of rats. pipe, and I'm not
sure who the first or second guy is, but I was
in, about third guy in, another guy came in behind
me, and then back behind him was a guy named
DX, and DX stuttered really bad. The guy in between
us, after we got in there and had settled down
a little bit, realized he's clopped phobic, thought
he couldn't breathe, and started panicking. So
as he's kicking and screaming for all of us to
get out of the way and get out of there, and
of course we weren't going to scoot out to the
other ends. We knew he would probably get hit
out there. Anyway, DX is behind him getting kicked
in the head going, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh We had a monkey that
we had trained to use a cigarette lighter. It
was a pretty cute trick. Teach them how to light
cigarettes. Until one day he took the cigarette
lighter, or she did, and took the cigarette lighter
next door and burned the neighbor's hooch down.
So that wasn't too funny. Anyway, during the
second tour, I was down in Mekong Delta and was
attached to UDT -11. We scooped these rivers,
and then off the rivers would be these little
canals. We didn't have names for them, so we
just used alphas such as Delta Canal, that kind
of thing. And this one point we used to go past
was a Vietnamese outpost out there. And they
would shoot out across Darbala, which is pretty
unnerving. You're on patrol, getting ready to
head out. Your mindset is into combat mode. And
so we weren't obviously allowed to shoot out.
Supposed to be friendly. So the debate went on,
and we needed some protocols. So the protocol
was this. In fact, the question was this. How
do we know not bad guys? And we were told, well,
they're not hitting you, are they? And we said,
okay. And so if we take rounds, well, you can
assume that you're under, you know, under attack
and can return fire. So anyway, this one morning,
I can't remember the exact date, but it was around
7 .15 in the morning. We're heading upriver.
It is September of, I'm trying to think, 1968.
And anyway, we're heading upriver. And they start
shooting out across the bow again. and we took
a bunch of rounds right through the side of the
boat. I don't know if they, whatever they did,
we took rounds. And so we cranked it up. We had
two PBRs and a mic boat. Mic boat was Phyllis
and my army guys who were escorting in. And then
for air support, we had these two Sea Wolves
flying over us. So as soon as we took rounds,
the mic boat went up channel a little bit further,
waited for us there. We cranked up, first boat
came in, laid fire. down on the outpost, banked
right, and went to the right. Next boat came
in behind it, laid down fire, turned around and
went off to the left, and circled around out
the main channel there. And then the Sea Wolves
came down and just hammered this thing. So in
the after action report, which became kind of
a little minor legend, and you know, you get
these people, you make... 15 hours, receive friendly
fire, return same. When you told me that, I broke
out laughing. I thought, boy, some of the civilians
are going to be gasping at that one. But the
young guys do dumb things, and it might have
been some Arvins that were doing dumb things,
but there's a whole lot of other possibilities
too. There really are. There was also trail watchers
that would give signals like that when somebody
was coming along and that was the warning or
the signal to the ambush that you were going
to hit next. So there's a lot of justification
for it. Oh yeah, so we never knew. We just went
on with the rest of the mission. Probably never
got shot at again from that point. No, we did
not. Dave, thank you so much for being on Veterans
Radio and thanks for holding. You're welcome.
Hold on. I just wanted to talk about the friendly
fire thing. Sometimes when you would go pick
up the Arvin Army for an insert or something
along those lines, they would all come out every
morning with a different colored bandana on.
So whatever the day might be, they either wore
blue or they wore red or whatever. And we went
up to pick this platoon up one day and there
were five guys with a blue bandana on, one guy
with a red bandana on. The guy with the red bandana
was taken away. We're not sure what happened
to him. Oh, okay. So the bad guys were in and
amongst the good guys. They were. Indeed they
were. Dave, thank you very much again. And we're
going to go to Bill Fight next. Bill's from South
Lyon, Michigan. He's been waiting since the beginning
of the program. Bill, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Give us your short version, I guess. We've got
about three or four minutes for you. So just
to warn you. Yeah, this comes into two stories
because... Dell reminded me the first time I
got shot at it and it was the same time. We'd
been on a patrol and I had went, got some, we
were breaking for lunch and I set the radio down
on a big rock and went around behind a rock.
You were an RTO, a radio operator. Right. A target.
Yeah, a target. Anyhow, I heard the radio going
off a couple times. So I ran back around the
rock and sat down and picked it up and the rock
kind of disappeared between me and the radio
about where my knee was. And it took me a second
and I stood up and I said, hey, Sergeant Walker,
somebody's shooting at me. And he said, grab
that radio and get back here and we'll see what's
going on. Well, it had been... We had sniper
fire, and 26 India, that guy on the second platoon,
had got shot. And he'd called in. And that's
when all the radio antennas went down. Anyhow,
we were looking for this guy that was shooting
at us. And we were walking through these, like
an orchard, bunch of trees and stuff along the
river. And the guy that doesn't live too far
from here is still alive, probably listening.
With an m79 operator. I'm not going to tell you
his name, but Anyhow everybody's looking and
trying to find the guy that's shooting at us
and this guy finds him And he looks up Sees the
guy in the tree And he's under this tree and
just flips his m79 up and from the hip shoots
him well an m79 is and grenades going off And
I got calling Charlie. It went off when it hit
the guy. And obviously the tree and the guy and
everything else kind of disappeared around it.
And it wasn't supposed to go off that soon. But
it did. And Charlie almost killed himself. It
was even funny at the time. A guy shooting an
M79 right above his head. That was a 40 millimeter
and you could shoot it out at 400 yards, but
you didn't want to shoot it too close because
you would become part of the casualties then.
I imagine it made a bit of a mess too. Oh, it
made a big mess. Okay. Barely got evacuated out.
Okay. Bill, thank you very much and thanks for
hanging on and appreciate you being on Veterans
Radio. We're cranking down, Dale, the stories
that we've told. I know I meet some civilians
later on today that listen to the program and
some ladies and they're going to be asking me
a couple of them, you know, what was funny about
that? But what do you do? You laugh. Well, you
know, you can't cry at the time and you can't,
you know, scream and all these other things.
You have to control your emotions. And then when
you go back and look at it, first of all, you're
amazed that you survived it, whatever it was.
And then you say, wow, you know, how did this,
you know, you just look at it and you go, how
in the world did I survive that? Or if somebody,
you know, like shooting an M79 at close range,
you just do it. Well, you shoot from the hip.
I want to say that this is the value to all of
you that don't belong to a veterans unit, Vietnam
Veterans of America, VFW, whatever, or go to
the reunions, do it because... Sometimes you
doubt your memory, and it's only by listening
to other guys tell the same kind of stories that
you think to yourself, wow, that really could
have happened. That really did happen. It really
did happen. That's the thing. Coming up next
week, I want to do that real quick. I don't know.
We've got five seconds. Coming up next week,
the last day, the last flight out of Saigon.
We've got the pilot. We've got the Marines that
were there. Tune into Veterans Radio. Until then,
you are dismissed. Not all views and opinions
expressed on Veterans Radio reflect the views
of Veterans Radio or your local station. Veterans
Radio, the production of Veterans Radio, LLC.