Makes a great gift for Vietnam Veterans
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fall in troops welcome to lz bunker this is our next
edition of veterans live show coming you from down
in that bunker tonight me and
a special guest a warrant officer who flew rescue missions in vietnam
we’ll be talking to you i was served with 100 first airborne division
b company first of the 502nd infantry from december 67 to december 68 during a
ted offensive now our next guest is going to be
warrant officer phil marshall from dayton ohio
he we both were lz sally a few times together not knowing it but
we were there so in the meantime i’m going to have
phil come on board here and introduce himself to you
there he is nick good evening okay phil tell him what you’ve done
where you are phil what who are you with well 237th medical detachment better
known as dustoff uh we were the northernmost dust off
unit so we called ourselves dmz dust off but uh we i was there from
4th of july 69 and only spent 4 and a half months in country
but it was pretty incredible experience for sure
flew over lz sally all the time if i’d have known you were there i would have
waved to you thank you dropped a couple of six packs
yeah yeah well no no those are ours those are ours
you can get your own yeah but we did bring stuff out to you on the
ground though yeah i appreciate it very much the mail the ammo
the reinforcements the medical stuff okay tell us what happened to you
four and a half months into uh service there
well um we had a uh insecure night dust off mission we had three
seriously wounded uh hunter and first guys 502nd i’m if
i’m not mistaken and uh real close to the dmz and
we were able to uh get him out but as we were lifting out of the
lz a bad guy opened up on us with his ak-47
uh last round came through my door uh i was hitting the arm
knocked my hand off the controls so we started falling out of the sky
uh yelled it didn’t yell but very distinctly said the co-pilot pilot
i’m hit i’m hit he grabbed the controls uh i got out the
mayday and next thing i know he’s flying us right
into the ground he flew he froze on the controls
so uh with no feeling in my hand on my arm i just grabbed where i knew the
control was and pulled us out and uh everybody uh
was okay except we did lose one of those three on the way back to the hospital
that was the only guy that i that i lost tell us about the photo up there phil
well that uh that aircraft is the exact aircraft that i
was flying in the night i was hit uh that was taken
uh the day after i made aircraft commander which was the epitome of
flying in vietnam so single ship missions single-engine
aircraft uh forty percent of our missions were at
night and uh uh that uh
like i say that picture was taken uh just like three days
before i was wounded in that exact aircraft
because there was nerve damage in my arm i was sent back to the states
to have that repaired and uh at that time of the war in 69 late 69
once you were sent home that was it they didn’t make you come back
i never knew that most of the missions were flowing at night
at all at night flying oh it uh it got pretty dark there
uh out in the jungle for sure a lot of mountains
you know uh yeah it could get scary at times
you got a little story about three days and two battles
yeah i i i put together a bunch of books uh documenting our
uh rescue missions and um one in particular story not mine i didn’t
fly the mission but uh you know you you guys were depending on
us and and we knew that if we needed the you we could
depend on you guys on the ground but uh this aircraft was on a resupply
mission they they were shot up so badly they tried to
make it back to base but they only made it about a mile or so away from the
landing zone uh so the guys on the ground uh ponied
up and went out after the crew uh it took them three days and two
battles with the bad guys to get to the crew and get them back to the
landing zone so that’s that that’s just typical like i say we knew we could
depend on you and you knew you could depend on us
never leave a buddy behind no no amen to that
yeah talk about the survival rate about the ue in vietnam
compared to world war ii sure um of course i flew dust off those that
don’t know what dustoff is medevac helicopter
we carried an onboard medic he had the exact same course that the guys on the
ground had knew all the same things and uh
if you were seriously wounded in world war ii you only had about a 40 percent
chance of surviving it could be days before you got to
proper medical treatment but because of the huey and because of our onboard
medic uh we could often have you in
the hospital emergency room well within an hour
of being wounded sometimes much less than that
uh the medics we had were just incredible the crew chiefs that flew
along with us uh they had a lot of on-the-job training
from the medics they were they were right in there
getting getting bloody uh hands and everything right along with the crew
chief i’m sorry the medic but again one of the stories i’ve been
able to document uh of course the crew is listening on
the radio they’re monitoring all the calls
uh they’re going in and out of the aircraft
and um of course kia killed in action wia wounded in action
as they’re approaching the the landing zone to pick up the wounded
the ground radio guy says hey dust off never mind our wia is a kia now
and of course the medic hearing this gets on the intercom
he says sir get me in there and they did of course they went ahead and landed
got the dead guy uh on the aircraft and the medic was able to bring him
around so uh that was yeah that’s great yeah
yeah we’ve always said if you were breathing when uh when we got to you
with that dust-off huey you had a 98 chance of surviving and
those numbers uh have been borne out after the war so
it but again you didn’t even have to be breathing our medics were that good
that uh but you had it you know you might be missing a limb or two
but you survived the war if you were breathing when we got to you with that
dust-off ewing with that medevac okay that’s why that’s that’s that’s one
one of the better things we heard about the war
um yeah tell us about the uh only armor inside the plane
in the yeah the plane in the helicopter it’s a plane it’s a problem i remember
i remember in the hamburger hill movie which was a true reenactment of the guys
that i did serve with and when we flew in us on
combat assaults some of the guys took their helmets off
in case that bullet came through the floor
into their butt so yeah tell us about that do you want to tell about the only
armor in the plane as well protect the jewels huh protect the
family ghouls uh helicopter is very weight sensitive
uh so the only armor in the aircraft anywhere are the two pilot seats
uh the army figured we were kind of important to operating the aircraft
so uh but like i say weight is critical in fact as
dust-off we only flew with a half a tank of fuel uh
a full tank is 1400 pounds uh so we would fly with seven or eight hundred
pounds that’s another two three four guys we can get on the aircraft if we
have to absolutely we want to get everybody out
the first time we don’t want to have to keep going back and forth
sometimes you had to but uh usually uh fine with a half a tank of fuel we
could we could get everybody out the first time
and so the rumor is for the third seat in the cockpit wasn’t true
when uh pharmacy for the balls when uh when i was in the hospital uh
just so happened this kid in the next bed was
one of the guys that i had picked up the day before
and oh you you were the pilot that picked me up and i said yeah
and he said oh he says you guys must have three seats in the front of that
huey and i looked at him real funny and i said
what do you mean three seats and he said well you gotta have another seat up
there just for your balls so i you know i i didn’t deny it i
didn’t deny it i know the secret’s out okay okay
let’s get to this one here for a moment please what’s that
the center part tell us what’s about the forty five hundred pirates and crewmen
on that wall well uh statistically uh what we’ve been
able to determine is out of the 58 000 plus names on the wall 4 500
are dust off in medevac which first cav uh went by medevac everybody else went
by desktop but uh 4 500 pilots and crewmen
on the wall in dc and if you do the math that’s one out of every 11 or 12
uh names on the wall in the helicopter crewman
that’s really sad yeah and uh how about the patients logged off in the in the
medevacs how many uh guys got how many medevac trips
uh occurred in vienna the the numbers that i’ve seen
is over 900 000 people uh flew uh on a medevac on a dust-off
helicopter but that would be patient transfers you
know we might take patients out to the hospital ship for an
eye exam that couldn’t be done at our hospital there where we were assigned or
or for whatever reason taking them to another hospital taking them to uh
the name for their flight to japan whatever through the hospital system
so 900 000 seems kind of high but again that would be wounded in patient
transfers so uh but in that number as a dog we picked
up a guard dog one night that had a trip to birmingham
we yeah we went out at night picked up the handler and the dog and when we got
back uh after we dropped them off the guys in
the back turned the lights on inside the cargo area to get everything
ready for the next mission and here the these little buddy paw prints all over
the deck of the aircraft but uh but he gone on and off on his own so
he couldn’t have been too bad but i felt so sorry for that dog but he was
doing his job i guess well i’ll tell you thank god for that
because he would have been in some vietnamese kitchen
being cooked never eat a vietnamese dress
yeah never eaten a vietnamese restaurant next to a dog pen that’s for sure
exactly i didn’t say that i didn’t say that no
it’s okay we’re past what do they call that uh
politically correct and yeah
this wonderful idea of building a new museum
with three restored vietnam nuis back to flight
and finishing a fourth tell us well well i’m a member of american huey 369
organization in peru indiana which is about an hour’s drive north of
indianapolis and uh an organization founded by a
marine captain john walker who did not serve in vietnam he was still in
high school but uh he’s got the bug he loves the vietnam
vets he loves the hueys he trained in huey’s
when he was in flight school and we have restored three vietnam
hueys back to flight and uh we’re working on a fourth
uh it’s flyable right now but we have to do uh some maintenance things before the
faa will approve it but uh if you come to uh the american
huey 369 museum near peru indiana you can go
for a flight again in a vietnam huey and we do fly with the doors open
uh you’ll have to sit on a seat uh with the seat belts you can’t see it on
sit on the floor with your feet hanging out anymore but
uh we’re we’re a 501c3 charitable organization
uh for a hundred dollar donation you get a flight on a vietnam huey again
we have a dust-off bird a slick uh we got a b-model gunship
and we’ll have another slick uh soon here
that’s that’s really great all right now we’re going to play a video about that
all right great with our vietnam friend and buddy from all time the best guy in
the world gary sinise hey folks gary sinise here
i’m thrilled to inform you that the american huey 369 organization
is fundraising to support not only the logistics to provide
fully restored and functioning bell uh-1 huey helicopters to events throughout
the year but they are also working to build the
national american huey history museum this museum will share the great history
of the huey’s role in the defense of freedom as well as
house eight static hueys and one ah one cobra
to support these efforts please visit
www.americanhuey369.com and i can’t wait to visit this museum
myself in the future hopefully i’ll see you there thank you
you know i’m really happy about this you know it’s just like the regular
every day story about the vietnam veteran it’s better late than never
but we’ve been out of war for 50 years you know what i mean
50 years yeah it’s like hello and we’re still here we ain’t going away
well we are but you didn’t get welcome home parades till
30 years later yeah what do you mean now we’re finally building a huey museum
hello looks like yeah okay yeah well this uh this is the
only this is the only huey museum in the
country uh and you would think bell helicopter would
would help us out uh since we’re building a museum to
their their helicopter uh but they won’t give us not one thin
dime not an o-ring not nothing to restore these aircraft uh so
we’re relying on vietnam veterans and other
uh patriots to uh to help us build this museum
we’ll get that gold phil we’ll get that going we’ll put some some notices up on
our websites and on facebook pages things like that um
tell us about the uh helicopter pilots association
well it’s uh uh guys over uh i don’t know 10
12 000 members strong active members uh we’ve determined that about 40
000 helicopter pilots were trained at one time or another during the vietnam
war i thought that sounded kind of high but
that’s what the numbers have have shown but i know when i went through the
program in 68 and 69 every two weeks the army was training
450 pilots about 250 warrant officer candidates
which is what i was about 150 officer
officer students lieutenants captains majors whatever
and about 50 vietnamese students so do the math
every two weeks uh 450 helicopter pods now not everybody graduated
but still a pretty pretty large number okay um another little question here for
you what’s the difference between a slick
and there’s dust off or a medevac sorry sure sure it’s the
same aircraft yeah it’s the same aircraft but uh as
dustoff or or first cab medevac we had the red cross
painted all over the aircraft and no guns except again for uh for
medevac for the first cab they uh they called it
preventive medicine the door guns but according to the
geneva convention we cannot carry uh offensive weapons right now those
there are those who would argue the door guns were offensive but
most of the time the door gunners they’re just shooting to keep the
enemy’s heads down they may or may not have a target
sometimes they did sometimes they did most of the time they didn’t
but then uh but a slick is a uh is a huey with the door guns and that was
the one that you saw most the time being on the ground uh you know resupplying
you taking you into battle let me give you some of this oh okay
yeah there you go yeah yeah yeah that’s great picture yeah
and m60 yeah there you go
yeah m6 machine gun in stowed position yeah
but the uh our first combat assault bee company first of the five oh deuce
out of couche that’s our first combat assault
thank you that’s great that’s a great photo yeah thank you
photos and uh but the slicks were the guys that
resupplied you and took you into battle pulled you out uh and oftentimes they
would pull them neater back too i mean but they didn’t have the onboard
medic yeah they didn’t have the onboard medic
for some reason uh they brought ammo reinforcements replacements
whatever it was uh um the food mail somebody
was sick or got wounded lightly but then developed something they took them out
yeah absolutely besides heavy duty stuff
the b model to yui i’m here and had a little get a little
assist from the crew to get off the ground
yeah yeah we uh the b model was the second version of the huey
and it’s the one that had the shorter had the shorter cabin and um
it was way overloaded with fuel and ammo and and you get the crew in there um and
it was uh it when when that happened
the uh the guys in the back would have to run alongside the aircraft
down the runway until they had to jump on
just to try to get some air speed to get that puppy in the air
yeah you asked any anybody and the b model gunship is one that we
have restored at american huey uh as far as far as i
know it’s the only flying v-model huey with
the rockets and miniguns on it that’s great thank you okay but yeah it
was it was a little underpowered here we go with the yui
and the vietnam veteran and most of the guys who served in the bush
or in the rice paddy or in the jungle or in the mountains wherever it was
whenever they hear that
we look up some guys run away because they can still have that ptsd
you know thing yeah ptsd thing another i just you know for myself
well i i still look up i still look up i wake up and smile
when i wear it because it where is it it was like
yeah it did so so much good for us it’s incredible
so well that what you told me the best sound in the world for a grunt
was a ue but you call it the cone of sound well
we yeah it was a sound of hope was what we call
it now in american huey 369 but uh the helicopter
puts out a cone of sound so when we’re at altitude you
can hear you can hear it coming from way off but
this this cone uh when you get close to the ground then
it’s very small and so that was why we could sneak up on
the enemy that we’re flying 120 knots 124 knots maximum
speed of a huey uh right over the trees and you don’t
hear us until we’re right on top of you uh and unless you’ve got a weapon
pointed up at us uh you ain’t gonna you ain’t gonna get us
but that was how we would get into hot lz
was come in opposite the direction of the enemy
but come in uh like i say fast as we can go treetop level
literally skimming the tops of the trees and then when we get to
the landing zone then we just put it up on its side
and use that rotor system as a break and then drop down into your landing zone
get our wounded and get out yeah i mean i can testify to that sound
and i’m trying to just in my own mind to judge what the best sound i heard be
i think it’s the ue but the f4 phantom pretty good sound too well when you guys
heard those blades you knew that your day was going to get just a little bit
better yeah they’ve been into that you’re right yeah
yeah so uh phil i know you’ve got a couple of
stories here so tell us about being 21 years old yeah vietnam
well if you remember uh at the time you couldn’t vote
until you were 21 you couldn’t drink couldn’t buy alcohol until you were 21
in the states uh the nice thing about the warren
officer flight program was that you could go in right out of high school
so you graduate high school at 18 a year later you graduate flight school
at 19 and you’re flying helicopters in vietnam and
and i hate to tell you this ronnie but most of those guys were flying you
around were 19 20 21 year old kids we couldn’t tell
because they had helmets and they had little microphones in their face though
well and we would grow mustaches so we would look older too
so yeah but uh where was i i lost my train of thought
um wait no we we knew that you guys were were
depending on us but this this fellow told me and again this is another
story that i’ve been able to document in my books
that uh he was a cobra pilot from southern california
he gets home and he realizes that his driver’s license has expired
so he goes to the dmv he says i got my uniform on
all my all my medals and my wings and i’m in my dress screen uniform
and uh the lady wouldn’t let him renew his license because he wasn’t 21 yet
he had to go home and get his mom to sign for him true story
absolutely true story okay i hear that but but because because our good friends
in congress one of the few things that made common
sense ever was to lower the voting age if you are
old enough to fight for your country then you should be
old enough to vote for who sends you there so that’s that’s
that’s why 18 year olds can vote today because of the vietnam veterans
yeah i hear you actually got a little plug-in for my son
joshua he’s with uh he’s overseas with the army now
and he went in the infantry and they for some reason because he’s
kind of a brainiac uh want him to go to warren officer school
to fly helicopters now so hopefully good for him i’ll get a little recommendation
from you okay yeah yeah cool um
you’re going to tell us one big story again tell us about that
and since in cincinnati three rivers stadium no that’s not three rivers what
is it uh the american great american ball park
now it’s a great american boat book right
yeah at the cincinnati red stadium yeah we we um have a sponsored art
we’re building the museum and we don’t have all the money yet that we need
we’re going to start this spring because we’re losing our
temporary hangar uh but we have some great friends in
cincinnati the cincinnati reds and some of their sponsors
and uh took a couple years to put it together but last fourth of july
uh we did two flyovers uh fourth of july weekend
and then uh the middle day between those two games the reds had
their 150th anniversary celebration the oldest team in major league baseball
and we flew all three of our viewers down there we landed in the outfield
it was just an absolutely incredible feeling i uh
had been going to the reds game since i was a little kid
and uh here i am flying a helicopter a huey
you know vietnam huey and landing in left field
uh i’m in the uh i’m in the medevac helicopter
uh so uh but um it was a great fun uh great exposure for us and uh the reds
made a very sizable donation to the museum but uh we still need help
we’re uh not not quite to our goal yet but i’ll tell you what talking about a
little kid you have the energy exuberance and
uh get-go for a little kid now we’re gonna
we’re gonna take a little moment here at two ladies and gentlemen
to uh watch a video about that landing at cincinnati ballpark
hold on
how
yes so you got to go up in that thing yesterday
there you go that was great that was an amazing uh
three days there the uh the reds told us as far as they knew that was the only
time military helicopters have ever landed in a major league ballpark
they meant that they fly over a lot you know now the blackhawks do
but they still have yeah that’s great yeah yeah but we uh we
we spent the day in the outfield of the great american ball park that was pretty
cool uh i think they said like 20 000 people
were there to visit i mean kids are running the bases
and it was a veteran’s day uh extravaganza the reds put on and uh
very well received by the fans for sure yeah maybe we could
you know something maybe we’ll send this video around to all the regular
ballparks everywhere and everything yeah there you go hey
we’re available even in hockey when they play that game
outdoors somewhere in the winter time they play that one game
okay well it’s about the wings of vietnam
worn by a pilot in afghanistan um yeah i i’ve been known to play video
games online even us old guys do that and uh i met
this guy who was uh still in flight school one officer flight school we got
to talking uh became friends and uh he wound up
flying chinook helicopters in afghanistan
so uh knowing that he was going to be doing that
i sent him a pair of wings that i wore in vietnam
and uh he said i can’t put him on my uniform justin lane is his name
he said i can’t put him on my uniform but he uh he sewed it on the inside of
his collar so that when he put his collar up to fly
the other pilot would see them so i i was
pleased that he could do that well he survived his tour in afghanistan
and after he got back i got a package in the mail
and it was a pair of wings and an american flag that he wore on his
uniform in afghanistan so those wings and that
flag are on my helmet so every time i fly
huey those those afghanistan wings and and
flag go along that’s great phil tell us about
uh finding a dates and location of extractions
and all medevacs or stuff like that sure sure um you know the the uh the mission
would be called into our base in the clear uh all the dust off
helicopters use the same radio frequency anytime you guys got in trouble you
could go to that frequency and you would either get an aircraft in the air or you
would get our base and so we would have a mission sheet if
if we got it from from our operations hooch but
we knew about where you were we knew about how long it was going to take to
get there so we would head off in that direction
and as we’re going out to to pick you up we would
give you a call on the radio hey i’m about 10 minutes out
whatever and give me a call when you can hear me
well we have a homing uh device in in the aircraft and it’s a needle that will
go left or right depending on where you are from me when
you transmit so i can center that needle and now i
know i’m heading right for you so so now when you can hear me remember
that cone of sound and the sound to hope
you call me and you say okay i can hear you so that’s when i drop down to the
deck tell you to pop your smoke i’ll identify the color because the bad
guys were monitoring the radios and uh and then we would go right to the
smoke we didn’t do any flying around looking for
you oh there’s a good place to land you pop that smoke that’s where we’re going
to land and uh you better have your wounded
ready because we don’t want to stick around we’re a very very vulnerable
vulnerable type i can’t even talk very vulnerable target
sitting on the ground i’m going to quit drinking in the mornings i can see that
okay my my doctor my doctor told me to quit drinking alone so now i wait till
the grandkids get home that’s a good idea for school at least
it’s four three or four o’clock you know yeah yeah yeah so anyway yeah that was
that was how we found you you know give me your coordinates in the clear the bad
guys know where you’re at you know they just shot your butt don’t
make me look up on the soi to find out the code numbers and everything just
tell me where you’re at pop your smoke what’s soa uh standard operating
uh instructions okay there you go good yeah a little code sheet where you
encrypted all your locations and everything like sop
uh no that’s standard operating procedure i think soi is standing here
construction’s the same thing oh come on another one instructions i
got you okay come on it’s been 50 years dude
okay i have to ask another question here about uh
when when
when you got a call and you got to a place
and they forgot to tell you it wasn’t a rice paddy
or a farming yard or something it was triple canopy
what was the big difference in deal one word the hoist right and
the hoist was absolutely the most dangerous the most
uh high pucker factor uh thing that we ever did flying huey’s in
vietnam of course you know what high pucker factor is right
yes ma’am yes sir that’s when the cheeks fuck your butt we don’t even you don’t
need a seat belt to keep yourself in the seat
well yeah i would normally bring that up but you’re a nice guy you bring all my
bathrooms but i’m not saying that you are yeah now
that it’s to extract the wounded by the hoist
uh the cable was up to 250 feet long and we would settle down into the trees
and and i’ve got to to stay perfectly still so that cable
can go down through the trees not get hung up
and of course you know how much noise that helicopter makes
and the bad guys don’t even have to see you they just shoot with noise
and it it can take 10 15 20 30 minutes to get all the wounded
up on on the hoist and i mean you’re sweating
it and the the other pilot is right there next
to the controls uh in case you become physically unable
to fly the aircraft if you know what i mean
yeah and a lot of aircraft were lost a lot of guys died
uh flying hoist missions that was absolutely the worst thing but
that’s what we had to do to get you guys out it’s hear that or uh
as as a friend put it you either d-roast or you die you either come home or you
die yeah i had one experience with the uh
with the hoist actually probably two no maybe no i
think just one yeah the other one i think i got taken
out to a rice paddy from the tree line the point was though we were
in triple canopy and you guys dropped down chainsaws and
stuff well okay yeah that would be the slicks
yeah yeah yeah and tough ones yeah right okay
yep the guy and if you got time to do that that’s
that’s better yeah we actually had guys hanging on some saplings
you know just four or five six inch trees at the bottom
you climb up and just try to bend them and break them just
get the huey closer to the to get the yeah that was not too good i don’t want
to talk too much about that stuff so uh well we we adapted we adapted
and uh the uh about your books you have 15 booked out uh 14 working on
15. uh each book each book has at least 20
helicopter rescue missions in it and um they’re all absolutely true uh
unembellished uh most are told by the the crews that
actually flew them sometimes the crews didn’t make it so
other guys in the unit would give me the details
uh so not all the stories have a good ending but
it allows me to honor those that as we put it in dust off so that others
may live uh just for instance one of the stories
uh was the the lerp team the long range patrol
team uh they were they were in big trouble
the enemy was was all around them and uh the slick is
saying you know hey i can’t come in it’s too hot and the uh
the guys on the ground said if you’ve got any
gonads you’ll come down and get us so they did
uh the helicopter crew went down picked them up got everybody in the aircraft
and as they’re taking off they got hit by a rocket-propelled grenade
uh just a ball of fire and of course everybody died
but uh but those are the things we did and and the reason it’s in there is not
to be gory or anything but that’s what we did and and again it
allows me to tell their story because they can’t
and it allows me to honor them by name uh you know how they died but there’s
some humor in there too the books have some humor and and uh
there’s a lot of good outcome missions too it’s just um
they’re the the similarity is that it’s a helicopter trying to save somebody’s
life it’s uh it’s just been an amazing
experience for me i started off with one book documenting
the the rescue missions that we flew in my dust-off unit
and it just snowballed uh every time a book would be done
somebody would read it and say oh let me tell you about this or let me tell you
about that and i couldn’t not tell their story
because some of these missions are just absolutely incredible
uh in fact the guy i was telling you about uh the chinook pilot in
afghanistan i sent him a book and his comment was if
if i hadn’t flown in combat myself i wouldn’t believe half these missions
but they are all absolutely true uh missions
um and and they just keep coming they just keep coming crazy yeah
actually my first mission in vietnam out of couche my friend last week harry
adams and i were talking about a a slick was just blown out of the air
uh yeah a hundred feet above our heads and
we had to go back to the crashed about you know a couple of hundred feet
outside about where where we got hit and uh
the next day we had to go back and recover the bodies it’s like
it’s crazy yeah and we knew that could happen any day
we were all volunteers all all the air crews in vietnam were volunteers we
could have quit at any time i know of one guy
i know one guy that quit but in fact that’s something else you may not know
uh in world war ii two-thirds of the uh the troops in world war ii were
drafted in vietnam two-thirds were volunteers
yes yeah yeah yeah i do recall that so but i say uh we all volunteered for
flight school uh the our medics and crew chiefs and
and door gunners were all volunteers uh they didn’t have to fly nobody was
making them right and uh yeah i went the other way
with that with the book thing i uh i because of our uh friendly fire
mission that killed 13 guys and wounded 22
in my company and mostly for my second platoon
and uh second squad got wiped out we lost six seven guys seven guys i think
seven seven guys in our squad and uh ten guys in our platoon
uh i promised the guys that i would i promised myself when i
got home i would go to the families and friends of all these people and uh
tell them how what great people and what great soldiers they were in fact one guy
my squad leader uh phil crack had twins and he never got to see them
and his wife didn’t obviously and uh 50 years later
i decided to write the book well i i’ve seen it when i got home i wanted
to go and it took me 50 years to get to the
point of doing something well it took me 40 years to start
documenting these helicopter missions about the time we came out of the woods
you know what i mean after the parade they had in manhattan
and i think at 91 or 92. uh it started to change a few things
plus the fact there was no such thing as ptsd i think to 1988.
yeah somewhere in the 80s the late 80s and
the va started to help guys out and that’s when
i might came out of my shell in 2007 40 years
later that was like who knows what you know but yeah
thank you so much and uh we’re gonna get my pleasure right yeah i
i have no regrets it was incredible if you
you can imagine giving a 19 year old 20 year old kid a new corvette
yeah with no rules that was us flying those helicopters
really there you go yeah that’s great everybody’s i thought you were a bunch
of old men give us your website you can buy where
you can buy your book at oh okay hang on hold that up for a
second right there uh i carry them in stock right there
that’s my email address uh i asked twenty dollars each copy of
the book you got it um the tax and and
uh shipping and everything is included notice there’s a dot
after dmz dmz dot dust off but uh check or cash or paypal and uh i
carry a supply on hand and of course i will will sign it and
dedicate it but uh you probably got a stick full of
books i i got one or two 15. in fact there are
nine of them holding up the camera right now
god bless you
yeah but i had no kidding it it had been incredible
uh i couldn’t tell you how many hours but i have met so many guys that i would
have never met otherwise yeah like yourself your research and
your research yeah yeah and and met guys like you that i
would have never met otherwise oh yeah it’s uh it’s been an incredible
experience for me absolutely from the well you got it from
the facebook page right uh oh yeah i found you on yeah facebook
yeah yeah i i i that’s uh where i get a lot of my stories is i see a guy with a
vietnam hat on hey you know you’ve got a rescue mission
you’d like to share with me and uh yeah that was how i found you
yeah it took me uh about six months to get all the research
for our book um oh it’s a beautiful
point was um i started at six o’clock on the east coast because
everybody would have to go to work or go to the american legion post or va or
whatever i mean the vfw and so i started calling six
o’clock at the post to find out who knew something about the memorial
that i went through volumes and volumes of uh trying to get
pictures of what their memorial looked like and yeah
i would call on the east coast from six to nine
and then i would move to the central time zone from seven to ten
and then the mountain time zone i’d be calling at twelve o’clock in california
and i had to wait till the next day to call alaska and hawaii to get there
it took me about four or five months to get all this stuff down because i wanted
to get it right you know i researched the uh
research is important because yeah no i say you did a great
you did a great job with it it was like they would tell me something and i would
find something on the internet and you’re not going to believe that stuff
obviously right or well you’re going to check it out and
then i would call the post or or a museum or even a chamber of
commerce in town depending on who called back or whatever
and asked them about their memorial and they would tell me and then i would
call back somebody else to verify it i would you
know what i mean and i would speak to them uh hey where’d
you get that granite from the xyz granite company
and they say no no no the abc granite company just to check
me yeah good for you yeah the person who knew the most about
everything in town was the barmaid really absolutely i
wouldn’t know i wouldn’t know i don’t i don’t give a
fuck no they know the whole deal with everybody
they they have women in the bars they have women in the bars i didn’t know
that
well the american legion post that we called had a couple of
women yeah and she’s documented in the back i have
historians i have uh the set you know people who are in charge of the
tennessee war memorial the virginia war memorial i mean
these big famous like kind of people in town
but i do have some mermaids listed in the
in the credits do you notice do you notice uh nobody’s trying to tear
down vietnam memorials i don’t think they would have too much
luck with that you know you don’t want to upset a bunch
of vietnam guys that’s for sure yeah though they say we’re still over we
still got some fire in the pants or something like that
yeah something like that yeah you i haven’t seen any of them trying to tear
down a vietnam memorial hey can i can i mention something about
the uh american ewing museum real quick oh absolutely um
my understanding is they’re taking books about vietnam off the library shelves
uh they’re they’re either only giving a couple of paragraphs in the in the
school history books about it if anything um if we don’t tell these
stories if we don’t support this uh huey museum
uh all of our uh all of our stories are gone uh our
all of our efforts um for for a minimum thousand dollar
donation you can help build this museum and
become a founder of the museum and get your name on a
bronze plaque that’ll be in the main entrance
uh when you become a founder you get a founder’s cap
and you become a part of the organization you become a part of
the museum how do we get in touch how do they get
in touch with you uh american suzuki american suzuki i used to have a
motorcycle i keep doing that it’s american huey
american ue369.com there we go okay and uh that’s suzuki uh but like i
say for a minimum you get that uh for a
minimum donation of a thousand dollars you get your name
on the plaque anything you want to put on there
your name a buddy who died in vietnam or realizing that not everybody has a
thousand dollars to donate we are a 501c3 so it’s
it’s tax deductible so every time for a hundred dollars every 10 and 20
helps yeah but for a hundred dollars you buy a brick we have a brick walkway
that’s going from the flagpole through the museum out to the landing
area and each brick will have at minimum the 58 000 names on the wall
but also for that hundred dollars you can also put a brick for your your name
your company name honor somebody i mean joe blow a vietnam veteran that was kia
he might have 10 bricks there because they had 10 buddies that want to buy a
brick with his name there’s no limit to how many uh you can
you can have but but my point is that if you don’t
have the thousand dollars to help us build the museum and become a founder
then uh for a minimum of a hundred dollars or even twenty bucks
but for a hundred dollars you get the brick and you can put uh four by eight
brick and you can somebody’s name on but again this is the
only huey museum in the world and we’re building it and
uh it’s it’s yeah what what says vietnam
more than a huey so it’s not a vietnam museum it’s a
healing museum but but that’s us that’s us well thank you so much
warrant officer phil marshall from dayton ohio appreciate this
a lot of education here a lot of history a lot of memories
and some sad but thank you for your service
thank you thank you thank you welcome home carry on
ready to wrap this up here at the bunker from veterans live show we’ll see you
next week same time same station but i have a little gift
here for somebody anybody who served with the 502nd
recon let me know text me or email us or whatever
and then we’ll send you this patch okay you got it
message us go on a page call whatever recon 502 thank you 101st
airborne division goodnight god bless you and see you next
week
