We're back on Veterans Radio and I want to welcome
all those troops that are listening overseas.
You know, that thin green and blue line that's
preserving our freedom. Us older troops really,
really admire the job you're doing. You're very
good at your craft. To our veteran brothers and
sisters, welcome home. And to the folks down
under in both continents, the Australian and
the South American continent. We know we've got
listeners in South America now, too. Welcome
to Veterans Radio. And also, Joe Galloway, welcome
to Veterans Radio. You guys make me push the
buttons, and you've got to teach me to be a technician
here. Joe Galloway, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Thanks, Gary. Always good to talk to you. Oh,
it's fun. It's my pleasure. Joe, you've covered
more than the Vietnam War. You've covered a lot
of them. How did you start in as a journalist?
Did you take training, or is this something that
you just jumped into? Oh, no. I think I must
have been born one. I worked on the school newspaper
in high school. Helped start a competition weekly
in my hometown this summer. got out of high school
and went off briefly to college and I was driven
out by an 8 a .m. class in the German language
taught by a portly lady with badly fitting dentures.
She would come in in the morning and say Guten
tag and spray the first three rows. I couldn't
bear it any longer and I was on my way to join
the army. I was 17. I had browbeat my mother
into agreeing to sign for me. And we were two
blocks from the recruiting office in Victoria,
Texas when we passed the newspaper. And Mom,
God rest her, said, Joe, what about your journalism?
And I said, good call, Mom. Stop the car. And
I had been their campus stringer for those few
weeks. And I walked in. asked the editor if he
had a job and he did and he hired me on the spot
for 35 bucks a week and a free subscription to
the paper and I was on my way. One single line
changed your life. That's it. Isn't that amazing?
Who knows what might have happened if you had
finished the trip and gone in the army. I'd have
probably been killed in Vietnam. Well, glad you
weren't. You volunteered for Vietnam. In fact,
you sent a letter a week. I was doing the same
thing. I was stationed in a California base,
and I just hounded the personnel office to get
me orders to a battalion going to Vietnam, which
shows you how insane you can be at times. Absolutely.
It's a good thing we were young. That's why they
like young people in the military. That's right.
So you were a journalist elsewhere, but then
you did hound to get over to Vietnam and then
finally got your wish ended up in Vietnam. Give
us a little bit of a history on your first, what,
48, 72 hours in country. Well, I landed about
two weeks after the Marines, 1st Battalion, 9th
Marines landed in Da Nang. In March of 1965,
I landed in April coming from Tokyo. I'd sort
of made a stop there for six months, but I always
knew where I was going and knew I would get there.
got to, got to Saigon on a flight. My seat mate
was a little Buddhist monk in orange robes and
he, the closer we got to Saigon, the more he
was talking about sticking to me like glue. And
I wondered what the hell was going on and we
landed and they told everybody to remain in their
seats at a squad of White mice, the Saigon police,
got aboard and yanked that guy, that Buddhist
monk out of his seat and drug him down the aisle
and down the stairs. He was one of those exiles
that was trying to slip back in the country and
he failed utterly. They put him on the next plane
back out. And that was my arrival in Vietnam.
Welcome to democracy. Welcome to democracy. I
reported in to the old United Press International
Bureau and had a day or two in Saigon to get
my press card from MACV and then I got on the
mail run C123 that ran from Saigon, Tanzanut.
Oh, it landed in Pleiku, and then it went to
Phu Bai, and then it came back to Da Nang. That's
that little twin engine? Is it a Caribou, the
123? No, the 123 is a bit bigger than the Caribou.
The Caribou was operated by the Army. The 123
was the workhorse, the pre -C -130. And they
carried the mail and carried people around. They
ran two or three of these flights a day. The
FedEx of the military. It took forever to get
there, but eventually I made it to Da Nang and
by then the Marines had... had taken over a former
Merchant Marine brothel on the banks of the Da
Nang River and turned it into a press center.
I suppose someone thought that was appropriate.
Knowing the reputation of correspondence, right?
Yeah. So that was it. I had a rented Jeep and
I lived in Da Nang for six, seven months, I guess.
I would be up there for two, three months at
a time before I would even get back to Saigon.
They packaged up mail and sent me bundles of
piasters to pay my bills with. I went on every
operation the Marines made. You weren't one of
those correspondents that reported the war by
sitting back in an air conditioned building and
listening to news releases. You were out there
on the field with the grunts. When I was younger,
I had read the collected works of Ernie Pyle
in World War II. And I decided then, if there
was a war during my generation, I wanted to cover
it. And if I covered it, I wanted to cover it
like Pyle covered his generation. That's up front
with the troops and that's precisely what I did.
You did a little diagonal of surviving than Ernie
Pyle. I didn't like Saigon and I didn't like
the politics of the situation. And you know,
I would get to Saigon once in a while and most
of the 500 plus accredited correspondents spent
their time in Saigon and they went to the daily
briefings. We called them the five o 'clock follies.
And they would complain to me, you know, they're
lying to us. And my answer was always the same.
You know, no one lies to you within the sound
of the guns. You come out with me and people
will tell you the truth. Of course you may get
killed. Tell us about your first time that you
went out with the troops. Well, it was on the
day I arrived. I got off that plane and there
was a... A fellow came running up to me and said,
you are Michoud Galloway? And I said, yes. And
he said, I am already UA. I work for UPI. There
is big trouble. Come with me. And I was carrying
a Samsonite suitcase and still wearing chinos
and loafers. I hadn't even gotten a set of fatigue
yet. And I said, what about my suitcase? And
he... said something rude about it and threw
it in the 8th Aerial Transport Squadron hooch
there at Da Nang and drug me onto a C -130 that
was spinning up on the ramp and I didn't know
where I was going or what was going on and we
made a short flight and we landed in a place
called Kuang Nai City and we got off and it was
like someone had stirred an anthill. They were
under serious attack and serious pressure in
that area. And it was an early attempt by the
Viet Cong to cut the country in half. And I got
off and there's confusion all around, planes
and choppers coming and going and people running
around. And this little photographer ran off
to a a Marine H -34 old titanium magnesium based
skinned aircraft helicopter and he talked to
the crew chief and then he waved at me and the
next thing I know I'm on this bird and we're
flying out low level across the paddies and I
still don't know where I am, and I still don't
know where I'm going. And this helicopter finally
comes upon a hill. It rises out of the rice paddies,
and it's circled around this hill. And I'm trying
to look out the door, and I can see that there
are a lot of people on top of this hill. And
we land there, and they shut down. And there
is dead silence. And I mean that literally. I
got out of the bird, and then I was told why
they were giving us this ride. They needed our
help. A battalion of South Vietnamese had been
overrun and killed to the last man. And we were
there to help them find and bring back the bodies
of the two American advisors. They had only time
to just sort of scratch out a little body depression
in the ground. And every man was laying where
he had made his last stand, hands out like he
was holding a rifle, but the rifle was gone.
And we went hole to hole until we found the two
Americans. carried them back to the helicopter.
It was a very sobering welcome to Vietnam. That
was on your first day? Yeah. It teaches you what
war is real fast. I can't imagine that. I remember
my first day when they had to stop firing the
artillery at either end of the Chulai airstrip
to let a plane in and then they'd start again
and then when the plane was taking off they'd
stop firing and you know we've got 105's barrels
pointed up in the air and blasting away on all
three sides and I thought this is a war. This
is for real. Yes it is. You had a little bit
more of an awakening. You've spent so much time
in war that when the troops were getting ready
to go into Iraq in the invasion, Knight Ridder
newspapers asked you to write a memo to the correspondents
that would be traveling along with them and to
give them advice. In reading your memo, it was
amazing, down to the simple things, a big neckerchief.
Tell us why they would want a big neckerchief.
Well, you need to bathe in it for one thing.
It's your towel, it's your neck rag, but mainly
in the desert you wear it across your face like
a bank robber to keep the sand out of your mouth.
Okay. A good set of earplugs. Well, you know,
you ride helicopters a lot in a combat operation
and they're bad on your ears. probably half deaf
anyway, if not three -quarters, and it's all
because of loud noises in my youth. You said,
do not stand near an Abrams tank or 155 millimeter
howitzers. You may hurt yourself jumping when
they go off. Absolutely. And believe me, I did
that the first time a 155 fired over my head.
I wasn't ready for it. You said if things start
happening, if someone, anyone, tells you to move
out or run or dig a hole, do so with vigor. Yes,
indeed. And if stuff starts coming in and things
start blowing up and you don't know what to do,
find someone with stripes on his arm and do what
he does. One of the things you said in combat,
you may find that they need a helping hand. You've
done this a lot. You said carry water or ammo
or the dead if needed. That's correct. And I've
done all of those things. You've got to make
yourself of some use, besides standing around
like a bump on the log. When you first got to
Vietnam, you were also carrying a weapon. How
did that happen? Well, not when I first got there,
but not long after. There were battalion commanders
who would tell you straight up, look here, I
don't have the spare bodies to give you your
personal bodyguard. You've got to take care of
yourself. If you're not carrying a weapon, you
can't march with my outfit. Second of all, in
spite of the fact that you carried a press card
and it had real fine print on the back of it
that said that you were to be treated with all
the privileges afforded. a major in the U .S.
Army if you were captured by enemies of the United
States. I didn't recall that they were very kind
to anyone of any rank if you fell into the hands
of our enemies in that place. And besides, they
were shooting at me. And I felt obliged on occasion
to shoot back. We're just coming up on a break
and we're going to pick that up again. the people
that you met and the ones that had you firing
weapons. You're listening to Veterans Radio,
you're listening to Joe Galloway, war correspondent.
We'll be back right after this break. And we're
back on Veterans Radio with Joe Galloway who
is absolutely the Ernie Pyle of our generation
and that's quite a compliment. Joe Galloway was
the correspondent that covered wars and was a
friend to the grunt. He was a friend to the infantrymen
and to all military. Joe, we left you the last
half hour at getting your first weapon and after
that you went to play me a special forces camp
and met up with a major Beckwith and got an even
more powerful weapon. Can you tell us about that?
Oh, that, Gary, was an interesting time. It was
the third week of October, 1965, and the Plamy
camp was under siege by a regiment of North Vietnamese,
and they were kind of holding the camp hostage.
dangling bait to draw South Vietnamese armored
column up the road to rescue them, and then they
had another regiment standing by to ambush them.
And I wanted to get in there, and the airspace
was closed. A couple of Hueys had been shot down,
a Sky Raider and a Canberra bomber. The place
was ringed with those .51 caliber Chinese anti
-aircraft machine guns on tripods and they were
looking down our throats and I was stomping up
and down the flight line at Camp Holloway saying
rude words and things and I ran across an old
Texas Aggie helicopter pilot, a UA pilot with
the 119th helicopter company And he said, what's
the matter, Joe? And I said, well, I'm trying
to get in to play me camp, and there's no way
to go. And he said, let me get the clipboard.
He took a look. He said, well, he said, the reason
you can't get in there is the airspace is closed.
And I said, I know that, dummy, but I still want
in there. And he said, well, I wouldn't mind
taking a look, so I'll give you a ride. And Ray
Burns flew me in there. He hit the ground. I
took a picture. You know, we were sort of corkscrewing,
if you can do that in a Huey, to avoid those
machine guns and dropping in as fast as he could.
And I shot a picture out the open doorway and
you can see the triangular -shaped camp filling
that doorway in that picture. And you can see
the smoke from the mortar bombs. Going off and
that's where we were headed. I've seen that photograph.
It's exactly as you describe it exactly You know,
there's no what it is right mind would want to
go there. But who said I was in my right mind?
I was 23 years old and I thought I was immortal
and bulletproof Apparently a helicopter pilot
did too. Yeah. Well, he was the same way he was
Texas Aggie and an old buddy and a We played
poker and drank whiskey together, and he didn't
mind putting it on the line. So he dropped that
thing in, I bailed out, they threw some wounded
aboard, and off he went. This Master Sergeant
Special Forces came running up to me and he said,
sir, I don't know who the hell you are, but Major
Beckwith wants to... speak to you right away
and i said which one is he and he said it's that
big guy over there jumping up and down on his
act and i thought that doesn't bode well but
i went over and he said a lot of rude words we
can't say on this network but he said who are
you and i said well i'm a reporter And he said,
you know, I need everything in the whole blankety
-blank world. I need medevac. I need food. I
could use reinforcements. I need ammo. He said,
I need everything. I could use a bottle of Jim
Beam and a box of cigars. And what has the Army
in its wisdom sent me but a blankety -blank reporter?
He said, I got to tell you, son. I have no vacancy
for a reporter. But I'm in desperate need of
a corner machine gunner and you're it. And my
mouth was hanging open by then. Geneva Convention,
Geneva Convention. Well, that was not going to
work with Sergeant Charlie Beckwith, who was
later the founder of the Delta Force. And he
hauled me over to a position and there was an
air -cooled .30 caliber machine gun sitting there.
He showed me how to load it, how to clear a jam,
and he gave me my instructions, which was, I
should shoot all the little brown men outside
the wire, but not the ones inside the wire. They
belonged to him. And he said, while you're at
it, he said, keep one eye always on that machine
gun position down in the other corner of the
camp, because it's It's manned by a South Vietnamese
CIDG. They're infiltrated. I don't trust them
as far as I can throw them. And if you see them
turn that machine gun around, take them out.
And those things happened quite a bit in those
days, all throughout the war, didn't they? They
did. They did. And so I spent, I think, three
days and three nights on that machine gun. And
it was what you call sporting times. Finally,
the armored column made it through the ambush
thanks to the first cab hopscotching artillery
batteries slung beneath Chinooks. This was something
new in this war. The North Vietnamese didn't
know about it, and when they snapped their ambush,
they got hammered by precise artillery fire and
they got hammered by a whole world of air. Well
these were tactics that they used against the
French quite successfully, setting up a bait
like the Plémi camp, not taking it on purpose
and setting up ambushes to wipe out the column.
You bet. And the one thing that was different
here was that the 1st Cavalry Division had arrived.
They had 435 helicopters in their T -O -N -E
and they could do this. They could guarantee
that South Vietnamese armor commander was refusing
to leave Pleiku until the CAV guaranteed he would
be under an umbrella of artillery protection
every mile of the way. So they pulled in and
About then a battalion of the 1st Cav did an
air assault landing there and were marching off
to clear the hills around the camp. Who was in
command of that unit? I don't remember which
battalion it was. But I went to Major Beckwith
and said my goodbyes and he said, he said son
you're you're not here in the peace and i said
well you know technically speaking i'm a i'm
a civilian non -combat under the geneva conventions
and uh... in spite of the use you made of me
these last three days right he said there's no
such thing in these mountains son he said The
Master Sergeant gets the man a rifle and a bag
of magazines. So I marched out of there with
an M16 on my shoulder and a sack of magazines,
fully loaded. And three weeks later I would thank
my lucky stars and thank Charlie Beckwith, who
was a friend of mine to his last days, for that
rifle. And when you got off into the hills, what
did you find? Oh, incredible. The hills were
stripped of vegetation. There were a few trees
still standing, most of the branches gone, all
of the leaves gone. The soil looked like it had
been plowed by a giant plow or something. Nothing
was left unturned, untouched. And we found North
Vietnamese machine gunners' bodies with a leg
chained to the tripod of their gun. And later
I had occasion to interview General An, who was
the tactical commander at X -ray and in this
fight too. And I asked him about that and he
said, well... General, I'm commanded the other
side, the North Vietnamese. The other side, yeah,
the North Vietnamese. So, first chance I got,
we interviewed him three times. I asked him about
that and he, you know, he tried to sort of avoid
the question, but I pushed, I tend to do that.
And he finally, he said, look, it was a... the
32nd regiment and they were fairly green and
we knew they were going to be subject to heavy
heavy air attack and we were afraid they would
run so we just fixed it so they couldn't and
those guys stayed with their guns and died with
their guns. Well that's something of course you'll
never see in the military the American military
but We covered the battle of Elsie X -Ray before,
but I've had a lot of requests, and we've got
about a minute and a half for this. In the movie,
Sergeant Major Plumlee came up to you when you
were hugging the ground under fire, and what
did he do? People have asked me, did that really
happen? Absolutely. Just as it was in the movie.
I'm laying there feathering out at the edges,
staying real low. There's a world of fire coming
right through the the command post area and uh...
i can't get low enough and about then i feel
a stomp in my ribs and i carefully turn my head
without lifting it to see what it is and what
it is is a size twelve combat boot on the foot
of sergeant major plumbly bear of a man out of
west virginia and uh... three war man too been
over at the waist and over this den of battle
he shouted down at me he said can't take no pictures
laying there on the ground sonny and that and
that was portrayed in the movie and I I wondered
it myself did it really happen and you say it
did absolutely and you know I lay there and I
thought well he's right later on I would learn
that sergeants major are always right and like
a fool I got up and I thought You know, it seems
to me maybe we're all going to die here today
and if I'm going to get mine, I'd rather take
it standing alongside a man like Basil Plumb.
We'll be right back. War correspondent recently
retired, but Joe, you covered more wars and more
battles, and who was it said you have more time
in combat than any infantryman? I think that
was General Barry McCaffrey. And he's right,
correct? I don't know, you know, there's a lot
of guys with a lot of time in combat now, with
three, four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, so
I don't know if that stands or not. I'm happy
to let that record go to somebody else. You're
in the top 10 % and I understand why you're happy
to let somebody else have that record. So you
did some more tours of Vietnam after that first
tour with, not the highlight, but whatever you
want to call it, the Battle of LZ X -Ray or were
there other battles in that first tour that equaled
it? None that ever equaled it, not in that tour
or three other tours that I pulled in Vietnam,
not in half a dozen other wars I've covered.
That was a high water mark and it was the bloodiest
battles of the Vietnam War. Right then, right
there, 305 American boys killed in that campaign.
Hundreds and hundreds wounded, just a ferocious
collision between the two finest light infantry
outfits operating in the world, the Vietnamese
Army and the 1st Cavalry Division. And I've heard
many grunts say that the North Vietnamese Army,
their troops were very good. Very good at what
they did. Well -trained, well -armed, well -equipped,
and dedicated. Absolutely. And, you know, they
weren't afraid to die. You know, they had to
walk to work through a firestorm just to get
to us. And they didn't flinch. They were superb
infantry fighters and anyone who didn't respect
that enemy in Vietnam was an absolute fool. Or
dead. Or dead. Or both. Or both. Politics aside,
when you left Vietnam for the last time, what
was your What was your impression of the American
soldier? Oh, my impression of the American soldier
in Vietnam in 1965, 71, 73, of the American soldier
in the Gulf War in Haiti, in two tours in Iraq,
I have the highest respect for. And, you know,
there's a difference. between soldiers who fought
in Vietnam, the draftee army, and those who fight
today in Iraq and Afghanistan, the volunteer
army. You know, these kids are more sophisticated,
they're better educated, they're better trained,
and certainly better armed. But, you know, soldiering
comes down to a matter of the heart. And that's
unchanging. I think it's never changed from the
first day a guy picked up a rock to defend his
cave and his wife and his kids 10 ,000 years
ago. There is a sense about the soldier of selfless
sacrifice. You know, he ain't in it for the glory.
There's no glory in combat. There's no glory
in war. It's a hard, bloody task that will leave
you carrying the burden of memories of things
that no one should see, especially when you're
18 or 19 years old. The soldiers are the same.
I have counted it a privilege to have been allowed
to stand beside them. then, to stand beside them
today, and they're my brothers. What can I say?
Joe, you've got a blog, you write a column, I
don't know if it's weekly or daily, on the Internet.
And I'm going to ask you to do something. In
these interviews that I do, as I'm doing with
you, and I'm talking with grunts, and I'm talking
with docs, I hear this phrase over and over again,
and I've got to tell you, it messes with my mind.
They say, I was just doing my job. I can't process
that. Is there any way that you can put it down
in words that will allow me and others that I
know to process that? I was just doing my job.
Well, what they're saying is the training took
over. In the heat of battle, in the worst of
combat, your training is what will save your
life. You start doing things automatically because
it's almost impossible to think. I've heard that
many times. In the battle, in the smoke, in the
confusion of men dying all around you, people
screaming for their mother. It is just that.
The training and a modesty. You know I can't
tell you how many times I've interviewed soldiers,
fighter pilots. They will sit there for hours
and tell you what the guy on their left did,
what the guy on their right did. And they don't
want to tell you what they did. And that goes
in my position of trying to get guys to be interviewed.
And I have to try to persuade them, look, you're
not going to talk about yourself because you're
not the only guy that did these things. You're
going to represent a whole bunch of other people.
And that's the only way I get some of them to
agree to come on the air. Not only you do that
or else you find the guy on the left to tell
you what the guy on the right did. That's it,
right? That's it. That's it. I've had that. You
know, they are modest heroes. Our soldiers, our
marines, our airmen, our sailors. Our Coast Guard
guys. Our own Dale Throneberry was a helicopter
pilot over there and he did something that was
just remarkable and I wanted to do a program
on slicks, the helicopter pilots. And I said,
Dale, you don't get to do this interview. You're
going to be one of the guests. I'm going to interview
you. And I wanted him to tell a story about what
he did, how he got his helicopter down through
triple canopy jungle. having to go from hole
to hole in the canopies to get a wounded grunt
off the ground. And he said, well, he jiggled
it around a little bit and went down and got
this guy. I almost dove across this table and
grabbed them by the throat. I mean, so. Helicopter
pilots are not necessarily the most modest of
men, and I've heard some tales from them that
you have to take with a grain of salt. But they're
great, great soldiers. They always came when
you called. Down to those green tracers. You
call, we haul. They used to have cards printed
with that on them. and i love them you know i
hated them when they dropped me off in some god
-awful place where people were trying to kill
me but they would come back to get you when it
was all over and i loved them when they gave
me a ride out They were heroes, there's no two
ways about it. The guys that went in there like
the guy that took you in to play me and the guy
that took you in to LZ X -Ray. Bruce Crandall
earned a righteous medal of honor. I rode in
his chopper into X -Ray and three days later
I rode in his chopper out. How many choppers
did he go through in that first night? I think
he went through three. Isn't that something?
Any tips? Bruce and I are still best friends
today. You make friends in a situation like that
on a battlefield. And if you can find them after
the war is over, you've got a friend for life.
You've shared something that others have not
shared, others will never understand. We're winding
this down. You've got about 30 seconds to give
a last thought of your own if you wish. It's
only that that I am so thankful that one I was
allowed to survive To write the stories to tell
the stories to try to tell the truth About the
American soldier no no finer More noble creature
in my view than just your plain ordinary grunt
Existing in a in a hell that is combat and somehow
making it through, taking care of his brothers
on his right and left, never worrying about himself,
willing to stand up and go to certain death,
trying to save a friend, a buddy, somebody he
doesn't even know. Joe, thank you very much for
all the time you've given us on Veterans Radio.
I'm going to be coming back in the future and
asking for more time. You're listening to Veterans
Radio. Join us again. See you next program.