TRANSCRIPT – Transcript and Subtitles are generated automatically by YouTube and may contain errors.
good evening vietnam and welcome to lz
bunker
this is ronnie ambrose your host and
this is veterans live
show today we have a very special guest
lieutenant
colonel warren officer john mills he was
a helicopter pilot in vietnam
but first talking about the 101st
airborne division
we’re going to show you a video about a
reenactment jump in normandy
and then get into some other things
thank you
hi this is ronnie embrass author of
fallen never forgotten
vietnam memorials in the usa i don’t
know if you’ve ever heard of
seen or taken part in a bad exit from an
airplane or a bad landing
in a parachute jump but have i got one
for you
i was in normandy france on d-day in
2015
for a re-enactment jump the city was
filled with people
festivals carnivals many visitors
people from england bringing jeeps in
and world war ii apparatus
and vehicles and weapons on the first
airborne
and the 82nd airborne took part in the
jumps and the people in normandy just
love
the paratroopers then and now
about the parachute jump the bad exit a
bad landing
the morning of the jump we did a brief
exit from a mock-up airplane
landings rollings falling
anything we had to do relearning about
our
emergency landings high tension wires
rooftops trees water things like that
so from there we drove about 50 miles up
to the coast
and boarded up c-47s there was two
planes
two sticks in each plane that’s about
ten jumpers on each side of the plane
as the first tick went out another
gentleman from sweden
jumped a little far back hit his butt on
the floor of the plane
then fell one way hit his head
and then back this way and hit his ribs
we didn’t know all that until later oh
yeah
the trip i’ll come down over there
right there from the stunt landed right
in between all those little trees
look over here we came down and i was
looking around seeing rooftops trees
backyards
high tension wires swimming pools
thinking of all the
early landings i had to take ready get
ready for
so as i landed thankfully
in the backyard the trees were cut low
about four feet high with just some
little saplings
raising up over them i looked up and i
saw another jumper
about 40 yards away
i yelled to him hey buddy we made it
hallelujah
and i started to take off my shoe as i
did and looked up again
he hadn’t moved i ran over and the man
was unconscious
yeah he was just fine he was up he was
unconscious
i started seeing a medic medic but no
one came
fortunately we had the international
calling plan and i called my son matthew
and he got in touch with the jump master
he called the medics and the etms came
the medics came
the police came the firemen came it was
amazing
the only problem i had we had is that we
needed a doctor who spoke both
swedish and french fortunately
the man did recover he had a concussion
and some broken ribs but he’s fine now
back in sweden and thanks again for
supporting my book
fallen never forgotten vietnam memorials
in the usa a tribute to the men who
never came home
from vietnam
okay headlines from vietnam ready
in missouri a vietnam veteran reportedly
killed an intruder who broke into his
home
a neighbor said he’s already a hero
because he’s a vietnam veteran
now he’s even bigger he’s a bigger hero
because he saved his family
the greene county deputy said the
suspect attacked the homeowner and the
homeowner was able to defend himself
and as a result the suspect is deceased
okay let’s go on to the this date in
vietnam
[Music]
okay this day in vietnam february 3rd
1967
operation gadsden was an operation
conducted by the 196th infantry brigade
and the third brigade fourth infantry
division against the pavin
221st regiment in tanin province
the operation resulted in 160 pavin
and 29 united states soldiers were
regrettably killed the number one song
on february 3rd 1967
all right who’s gonna come on it was by
the monkeys ready
i’m a believer i hope you are okay
this state in the vietnam war february
3rd 1970
the senate foreign relations committee
opens hearings on the conduct of the war
by the nixon administration senator
charles goodall
republican from new york and said that
the vietnamization
that president nixon’s program
transferred raw responsibility to the
south vietnamese
have been a great public relations
success
okay in the number one song february 3rd
1970
this is going to be easy by shocking
blue they only made one song in one hit
you remember that venus okay i’m not
going to sing all right
let’s go to the photo section
[Music]
all right oh boy here we go this is from
one of my newspapers that i brought home
actually from vietnam imagine this
this is a republic of korea soldier who
was shot through the heart and lives
these guys were some soldiers they were
like real real
really good in hardcore son of a guns
nexus next picture okay ed cult thank
you ed
may 13 1969
from firebase erskine firing a gun pit
caused the entire position to blow up
taking out six
105’s oh my goodness three one five
fives were
back back down the hill for four days
had a bad day photo with two days prior
to operation apache snow
oh my goodness next picture
tom mosher looking good tom this is
tom and his m60
sounds like he’s a battalion three to
third sounds like he’s a marine
uh just like the donghae area who’s up
there too tom
thank you very much for that picture
welcome home
next picture from lewis walls the
mountain yards really did use crossbows
as this one did in
on k uh mountain yards were unbelievable
the indigenous people
in the north part of the eastern western
part of vietnam
tremendous help to us and they got
slaughtered after the war
sad next photo
jimmy walls wow jimmy you got some
firepower there
this is the kind of thing door gunners
dream of
two gatling guns yeah i’d say pretty
pretty good dad oh boy thanks jimmy
next picture william beck
first of may 1967. you’re in front
in front of your squad and you was
ambushed oh my god
we were in long ben hospital near long
bend junction
terrible hope your guys recovered next
picture
oh yeah here we go i have this uh i’ll
show you after this picture goes off
and i did i do shows to sell the book
and uh and one of the here in paterson
new york
they had a you know like a gun show they
had this
box of vietnamese like trading cards
they’re crazy it’s like it tells you
all about helicopters
these are throwing helicopters off the
deck of an aircraft carrier
after the war like they did and they
give you a big description on the back
amazing here’s one of the ue obviously a
lot of different
classifications of yui tells you all
about it there you go
you’ll call it the workhorse that was
this was the
helicopter war for sure we’ll talk about
that later
okay they call it the workhorse so
versatile and important was its role
that it came to symbolize the vietnam
war
the uh series helicopter called the ue
cruised at 120 miles an hour
it was armed with a variety of machine
guns grenade launchers and rockets
most important it saved thousands of
lives by bringing home wounded men
he meant to that sure did
john mills how you doing lieutenant
colonel warren officer helicopter pilot
of ue
john mills hey welcome to the bunker
john oh it’s good to be in the bunker
always good to see another screaming
eagle amen
brother amen there you go
tell me what phoenix is up on your hat
there first of all oh
i flew for uh charlie company the 158th
aviation battalion out of camp evans
which was up in high court
right and uh so i was flying uh-ones
which are slicks
they’re the long body hueys and we did
mostly insertion work up there i got to
be attached to the uh
third recon battalion uh for you know a
couple months
uh hauling recon troops recon
troops liked having huey’s because
they’re smaller than the
marine corps ch-46 when you get them
into a smaller
landing zone since they are operating uh
far behind uh enemy lines there right
so uh where were you i see that you
trained at fort walters and fort rucker
what where’s fort walters
walters is uh in texas it’s about
wells texas it’s a old army base uh
where they uh
you know they trained in world war ii
and then they did their
primary flight training there with the
real small helicopters
and then uh when you got graduated from
that part of the training you go to fort
rucker alabama
where you trained on huey’s um and did
your tactical training
great okay and you served an i-corps
with the uh
158a yes and
what what’s with all this marine
operations that you did
working with the marines yeah marine
recon
uh first i have to thank all the people
all the people in the recon battalions
because they’re some of the bravest
people i ever met
uh we would pick up uh six
recon troops out of quantry which was a
marine base
and we would haul them somewhere west of
there
and put them out in a
little hole in the jungle and uh
they’d stay out there four or five days
usually uh calling
artillery in uh
you know on uh ho chi minh trail and you
know
other concentrations of uh north
vietnamese troops
and then we’d have to go get them so
maybe we’d put in
one or two groups a day and then take
out one or two groups a day
and usually we refueled and re-armed at
vandergriff
which is over by the rock pile so it was
uh a lot of people didn’t like flying a
mission because you got shot at almost
every day
okay tell me about the ho chi minh trail
ho chi minh trail was primarily in laos
up in
you know where i-corps was because uh
the u.s the politicians
had prohibited us from doing a lot of uh
bombing uh in leo so most of their
you could there’s pictures on the
internet of these large
dirt roads coming down from north
vietnam yeah
yeah with your big troops and
artillery shells rockets yellow politics
yeah and they were probably and uh
you know trying to kill american troops
with it and you could see
from the different maps where they have
fatalities
that most of the fatalities were up in
i-corps yeah absolutely
yeah i was up there i was up there for a
while we got in country in december 67
and went to kuchi outside of benoit
northwest of benoit and then uh
trained for a month up there with the
25th and the 11th cav
uh great soldiers and then uh middle of
uh
january we all flew up two brigades to
uh
cranktree and don ha camp lz sally lz
jane
and then eventually camp evans and they
knew this stuff was going to hit the fan
so uh yeah it was a high core experience
after that
so let me ask you what the 117th
aviation assault company did
what were you doing with them well uh
i deployed over to vietnam and the whole
company of helicopter pilots because
although i am jump qualified you know
it’s not the other side yeah the wings
are on your left side
yeah yeah i am
i am jump qualifying uh because i did
pull a jump assignment later in my
career
but uh when the 101st went air mobile
uh kind of building on the
work and the tactical development that
the first calve laid down in front of us
right all the pilots had the same derose
date
so after about five months they started
shuffling pilots to other
units so the whole unit wouldn’t go
non-functional in 12 months
so i got sent down to the 117th which
was uh
out of a long bin which is close to
saigon
and i was a trained gun pilot and so
they put me in a gun platoon there and
the gun platoon there really had about
the worst mission i can imagine
because we were we sent a heavy gun team
out to the cambodian border
out by the angels wing the parrot’s beak
and that area to block uh
the north vietnamese from bringing sand
pants full of artillery shells and
anti-aircraft barrels and 50 caliber
ammunition
right order every night from cambodia
and you could actually look over into
cambodia when you’re working on the
border at night and see these large
military compounds
you know like five miles away from the
border
you know that we’re going virtually
untouched for political reasons
oh yeah exactly i was going to say who
left who did that nixon told him the
bomb cambodia right
uh well you know finally i think they
got angry enough they
they uh yeah one of us do something
about it
i hear that um so uh tell me about the
angel wing there in the parapeek
uh it was this very swampy land and so
they had
uh canals cut through it
right and so there’s uh it was like what
they call a plane of reeds and they
would have these
large canals and the air force would do
recon work
during the day and we would come up we
would come on
a station at sundown we’re doing what
they call
a firefly and or nighthawk
you know depending on what you want to
call it and uh they’d say hey we’ve got
a bunch of sandpans loading ammunition
and we expect them to run the bobo canal
you know at two in the morning
okay so one of our ships had a million
candle power
uh searchlight on it and we were flying
charlie model gunships
which had mini guns and rockets
and uh we would come down these canals
at you know maximum speed in the middle
of the night
and catch catch these sandpan convoys
full of
ammunition and uh we had dorm on a 50
cal
because if you shoot these solid wood
sandpans
just a m60 which is a 7.62 round
uh it would just go right through it and
north vietnamese could just yes
yeah with some tar refloated yeah
if you hit it with a 50 cal you could
turn it into toothpicks gotcha
okay yeah the uh
well i it’s amazing the helicopter war
which vietnam was called
um 12 000 helicopters ventured into
vietnam
and only six thousand came home
that’s crazy uh it was
um well 46 percent
destroyed not 50 but for you know that’s
a lot of
a lot of guys getting shot as well
well uh the the tragic part of it which
nobody speaks about
really is that when the pows came home i
think there was only a couple dozen
helicopter pilots
so right yeah most of the helicopter
pilots who survived
uh crashes behind enemy lines and were
not extracted
pretty much tell the whole the same
story they were thrown out of the
helicopter
helicopter rolled down the hill north
vietnamese
would come up to the helicopter and
shoot everybody on board
yeah and see flying helicopters not like
flying phantom
jets you know if you get shot down
you’re right in the middle of the people
you were machine gun
right you know you know the other thing
was uh
our first patrol out of coochie
uh we had a huey go down and we had to
go down
back and uh get to get the guys out
after that really that was a rude
awakening to what war was all about
uh let me ask you another question about
the nba tomatoes
oh yeah
when we insert these recon troops you
know we’d be so far behind enemy lines
we’d go into some little lz
and and the north vietnamese be growing
tomatoes and vegetables
in these little open areas where they
could get some sunlight maybe
we’d be crushing their tomatoes with our
skids
i guess they didn’t make it too happy
right well
yeah well if you landed in one of those
lz’s and everybody was there it got
it got kind of hot you know so yeah
and the recon outfits they were calling
in fire missions
and you had to go pull them up yeah
they’re doing fire missions they you
know may have done some sniper work
and stuff uh but the
the real problem usually was not
dropping them off
you know because you know we you know we
would come in at low level
and just duck into some place and be
gone
um but after they’ve been calling uh
fire missions in on the north vietnamese
uh usually they had north vietnamese
infantry trace
you know chasing them when we were
extracting them so they were in close
contact and that that was always kind of
rugged uh now
i will tell you that those missions uh
one reason
i never flinched from flying those
missions
was that the marine corps usually had a
bronco
you know like a ov10 or something on
station we had a couple marine corps
gunships
and so if we’d go into one of these and
just
receive a lot of small arms fire we
would just
abort and uh tell a bronco say hey
we got ak fire at two o’clock
and uh these broncos had
were in direct contact with some f4s and
they they tell us you clear out
you know a mile yeah and then
the the phantoms would come right
through the clouds
and drop you know like 20 100 pound
bombs on the lz and then we go back in
of course yeah i love those phantoms
coming in man and
even more than that those 16-inch guns
from the new jersey was
very helpful at times too a little bit
of a morale booster
tell me about the uh weaponry on uh
and what’s what was that a uh one what c
d what that what they came in yeah
charlie we had
miniguns which uh are you know electric
powered gatling guns which you know fire
7.62
they could fire up to 6 000 rounds a
minute
uh the the problem is only after
you know maybe after 10 seconds or so
the barrels would start heating up
so you you had to fire in short bursts
because once the barrels turn red hot
now the
bullets start going everywhere because
they’ve lost their bright line
and the other problem was that he had
these uh
metal trays in the back of a helicopter
where you had to
lay out layer upon layer of 7.62
the bandeliers and it was very difficult
to reload those in the dark right
so you had to be very uh judicious about
using the
miniguns and so a lot of times rockets
you know
2.75 inch folding phone aerial rockets
those were easy to reload we could
reload those while we were
hot refueling you know and go back out
and you know if they were you know
troops were in close contact we could go
out and
and dump a load of rocks rockets go back
get another set of rockets and just
you know because each one of those
rockets about like a 105 shell
you know the big ones yeah and so we
could we could
we could pinpoint them and uh the other
thing
i might mention is that we were the only
knight
uh unit up in that part of vietnam you
know on the cambodian border
and so we covered all the night medevacs
out there
and in six months no medevac we covered
ever took one bullet
wow so you did do other things beside
gunship work well gunships see the
medevacs would call
and call out call up and they’d be
coming in from the 45th back or
wherever long been and they would say
we’re coming they’d give us coordinates
and we’d beat them out there
you know because we were already up you
know we are out west of saigon
and so what we do is we get all the
local you know
commander and say if you get a free fire
zone around
where this wounded person is you know
what i’m saying and i’d say yeah
you know they give us an azimuth say you
know uh
you know up at you know 350 degrees from
our position there’s no friendlies you
can fire there
and and we would dump some rockets show
them a little bit of minigun
maybe show them a little bit of doormon
at 50. just
let the people know we’re there that’s a
serious gunship man all those weapons
god good
goodness gracious uh what what what’d
you do with the second three two seven
of the hunter first oh well we that was
one of my favorite units to resupply
uh second three two seventh uh
and you can see it on my uh jacket here
it says nose black that’s their water
and they’re really
nice from them yeah yeah and they they
say they’re the best unit in the army
of course every unit does
so when we go out to their uh fire
support base and resupply them
uh the funny thing about the second
327th their commander this lieutenant
colonel
uh had a call sign of court cobb six
and uh so i was hauling some
ammunition out to his fire support base
one day
and uh you know it’s on a mountain of
course the top of the mountain’s leveled
off and that’s what the fire support
bases were you know out towards the
oshawa valley
we’re shaped like and so i’m landing
there
and this lieutenant colonel corncob 6
comes up to me and says you get this
damn ammunition off that ship i got more
birds coming in there you go and what i
gotta say about that is that’s the only
lieutenant colonel i ever saw at a
forward fire support base
amen because of that
anytime i had extra time i’d call up the
second of the three two
seven say you need something haul you
know i’ll work
extra hour today and haul you some extra
stuff because
i like to see among the troops is i like
to see the leadership
forward not the leadership back and some
bunker
lead from the front i hear you lead from
the front let me ask you
i mean beside uh gunships
obviously i i would believe the fire
support
the medevac was the most important thing
and yet
there was also other things that the the
helicopter did all the time
was mail which was very important for
morale
to food they used to drop off a hot meal
once every week maybe
if they did three was uh
ammunition a resupply of ammunition and
replacements
so everybody just thinks about the
little things like
fire support and and uh ammo
and you know but other things really
matter to the troops in the field
it was great yeah every every troop in
the f
field requires about five gallons of
water a day
yep for you know planning and
you know uh most of the time when i was
in vietnam i was eating c
rations you know yeah yeah for sure yeah
from korea
yeah they said korea 1952 53 on the can
but a lot of the fresh food man it was
it was kind of questionable
refrigeration up there in my core
so i’m more than happy to have some
canned food
hey let me tell you john if if it wasn’t
the food it’d be the leaches or the step
and a half snake
or a bullet or a trip wire for a booby
trap
something’s going to get you so and even
a dear john letter
that used to come in on the helicopters
right so there you go
you guys you brought every piece of the
war to us
and every piece of the outside world to
us which was wonderful
yeah well you know you know when i was
training
you know i got to be an aircraft
commander
right after i turned 21 years old and
the young guys had come in from the
states and they would still have all
their body fat
and you know you know look like healthy
human beings not like helicopter pilots
and uh i would tell them i said
i said if you’re ever worried about
going out to a fire support base that
needs to be
resupplied i says you’ve got to
understand one thing
the guy on the ground the grunt
levin bush has it a hundred times worse
than you’ll ever have it
and so don’t even worry about it
don’t worry about it and and the way you
became a successful helicopter pilot
flying out to those fire support bases
you only thought of one thing when you
were coming into that fire support base
and that is what’s it what’s you know
where the bad guys
what’s my approach got to get it down
fast get the crew chief to dump
everything off there before they can
mortar you
and get out of there and never use the
same approach
path twice because they’ll have some guy
down there with a machining gun that’s
all ready for
waiting for you the second time yeah it
was like kind of it was
uh you know you guys it was a crazy war
they adapted
everybody you know we thought we adapted
with the helicopter but they adapted
of how to bring the helicopter down you
know like
things you haven’t adapted yeah they
have regular classes on how to lean
helicopters you know they
you know i mean it’s all about hollywood
like you see in movies
i mean hollywood could only do so much
to depict what went on but
i’ll tell you the real life thing about
helicopters in that war
was tremendous so
any uh we’re gonna wrap this up soon any
other highlights you want to bring up
well i have i mean um
yeah it’s not something i talk about
much you know
but uh when i was up in i-corps
uh i was out west of the rock pile
bringing a recon team back
because the weather was so bad we
couldn’t get him we were trying trying
to get in a
landing zone right where laos meets
north vietnam and south vietnam
because being lz they’re called black
beauty and we couldn’t get in there
you know it was up in the mountains the
weather is raining and stuff and i’m i’m
coming back i got six
combat loaded marines on board and uh
i’m trail we got two gun ships they’re
in front we’re flying quarter-mile trail
third chip’s the back-up ship in case i
get shot down
i’m for ship i’m coming down a valley at
like 500 feet just below the clouds
and uh marine ch-46 flew right through
me had a blade to blade mid-air
500 feet really yes
and killed all the marines on the ch-46
it flips up flipped upside down
to this day i can look out my right
window
and wow this marine lieutenant a white
helmet and sunglasses looking right back
at me and uh fortunately for me
that you know we lost part of the we
lost a hunk of rotor blade
mass was bent frame was bent and it’s
all in
it you know if you will ever look up the
history of charlie company with 158
on the vh vietnam helicopter pilots
association website
it’s all in history but fortunately i
was able to land
the ship on a like a small flat area
where they had a because this mountain
valley and then it must have had an
ambush point there
and flatten it out a little bit and had
some old foxholes that landed there
right
crashed split the skids and then
i’m the senior guy i’m 21 year old guy
and i’m the senior guy
and the recon goes you know most these
recon sites
are mine i hope thanks
yeah we had two marines on board and had
strata wounds in their legs
from the blades exploding
the closest they could get a rescue ship
in was about
uh 150 200 yards away
through the brush and so we had all the
guns and the radio stripped out of the
huey
and i just told the corporal that was in
charge of the recon
team and says i’m gonna fire my mans
carry this wounded guy out the worst
one and uh i can’t
follow any of these paths because i’m
sure they got mines on them i’m just
gonna go straight through the brush and
if i don’t blow up follow me and
we all got out of there that’s great
let’s see
you did what you could do man that’s
really crazy
well it haunted me for years oh it’s
still it
still will yeah i understand that
believe me we’re uh
we are working on some kind of situation
so
um thank you very much for coming into
this to the bunker
we appreciate it so much we’re gonna go
to our question and answer
the session now so stick around you
might be able to answer a question
thank you oh you’re
[Music]
okay
first show yeah first question from kilo
19
high respect for chopper pilots and the
whole crew
very good thank you kilo next thank you
would love to have would love to have a
fighter pilot
on the show soon okay well thank you
very much
we’re talking well pilots are pilots i
guess
not really but q19 a1 skyraider pilot
would be
yeah that was an interesting plane
remind me a world with two uh
p47s or whatever p51s
next thank you for your service and
welcome home from karen
soblo rudolph thank you karen
it’s an honor next question
or yes good evening brothers thank you
jeffrey
next gino jeffries why
was there no mini series on the 82nd
during world war
ii okay
um you can’t go for that answer john i
have
no i didn’t probably answer that
probably all the good-looking guys were
in the 101st
yeah that’s how it is man it’s like
that’s sorry
i was with the 82nd too for seven months
and uh
then we all got shipped out to go to
vietnam with 101st
but yeah that’s how it goes there’s a
big rivalry there but
the all-american guys are tremendous
troopers thank you
next greatest respect for the 82nd
airborne
amen favorite never yeah
uh is respect for chopper pilots yeah
chopper yeah well the pirates crew the
whole deal
what was your most fun flying story
uh in combat or just in general
in general let’s go with general yeah oh
oh well um i
i flew with this guy my name is roy
miller
and uh he’s one of the bravest people
i’ve ever met and uh
actually that’s pretty good friends with
mike novosel who
has now passed away but he was a medal
of honor
winner in vietnam as a medevac pilot
great gentleman
great gentleman and so this guy
mike novosel and if you go to fort
rucker the main
avenue in fort rucker is called nova
sill boulevard
that’s what a great man he was sure and
so
well mike was a
bomber pilot in world war ii he blew
he flew like b uh 29 over the
surrender of the japanese on the uss
missouri
and so he flies in uh korea
and he’s in the air force reserve well
vietnam cranks up
and he volunteers to go to vietnam and
he’s an air force lieutenant colonel
okay and so the air force makes
one of the most tragic mistakes they’ve
ever made for
ever and they tell mike he’s too old to
go into combat
okay mike gets angry resigns his
commission
and becomes a warrant officer helicopter
pilot in the arm
[Laughter]
and
and he’s wearing his dress uniform and
he’s got all these medals
yeah because he’s world war ii career
you know been in reserves forever
and some lieutenant walks up to him and
says
you must have made somebody very angry
because he’s a w-1
i got you very good yeah it’s okay
well thank you and thanks a lot man i
appreciate it very much
uh wait a second here what did dave
schifflin last thing says 6972 christmas
and two birthdays
thanks for thank you for reminding us
glad i made it back me too david thank
you
zach what’d you say more questions oh we
got more questions
okay what about the pathfinder support
being helpful did that help you out
the recon guys did they uh
well the pathfinders
um see a lot of these
landing zones the pathfinder’s job would
be to
get first into the landing zone and
market
you know and and
i remember one famous landing zone on
the 101st airborne
they had they must have had
30 helicopters lined up to go into this
one landing zone
well they made the landing zone using
a 10 000 pound bomb
that had a you know like a six foot rod
welded to the the uh igniter
on it you know and
so they had a big helicopter come up you
know high altitude just drop
it and uh blew out this
massive landing zone that’s a daisy
carter
yeah yeah just blew all the trees down
but the problem was they cut them all
off about four foot high which would
touch
the bottom of huey so the first
flight in all the guys had mcculloch
chainsaws
they didn’t even have their guns you
know their guns were slung and they were
down there with miguel
mcculloch they’re trying to you know you
know and they don’t have to worry about
anybody shooting you
and when the monkey bomb there’s nobody
who’s in any kind of condition to shoot
you within rifle distance
amen to that good for that next question
any experiences with the arvin or the uh
mountain yards oh yeah uh
i was hauling some arvin’s one day
and uh we’d gone out and extracted them
out of the jungle
so there’s two helicopter loads of
arvin’s
and uh i was the senior aircraft
commander of the
bunch and we’re taking them back to this
arvind compound when we get ready to
land
and i’m letting the co-pilot land and
turn around look
look back and one of arvin’s is wearing
gold ball earrings
yeah look i go that’s a woman i said
what’s a woman doing out here in a
battle zone
so i says you don’t let any of these
irons off i’m going to find out who’s in
charge of this
that says you know what are these women
doing on the battlefield you know
hey the nva and the viet cong had them
oh yeah so i find the major who’s in
charge of this bunch and i asked him
what was going on
and he said it was the platoon leader’s
wife it was lieutenant’s wife
she was afraid that in this guy’s squad
there was an nva and so she went to the
field with him
and carried a 45 and she stayed awake
all night so
nobody would assassinate her husband i
was
i was just blown away there you go oh by
the way the audience
arvind means the army of the republic of
vietnam that was the south vietnamese
army
the nvas was the north vietnamese army
okay
next question last question from
jeffrey cleland thank you gentlemen for
your service
and also welcome home well thank you
very much
john we appreciate it we’re going to
send you a book
our book is called fallen never
forgotten we’re going to sign
we’re going to sign this and send it to
you it’s all about the vietnam memorials
around the
united states one in each state and it
gives you a profile on
how the memorial was built how they got
the funds and what happened here and
there
got the granite whatever and then it
lists all the guys
from that state that never came home and
the book is uh supplied to us or
sponsored by
simplify simplified home loans it helps
you veterans get a
good deal on a home loan so simplified
home loans is
the place to go if you’re shopping for
either a refinance or
a initial mortgage thank you very much
john
it’s always an honor i always like to
talk to a mighty airborne warrior
amen brother thank you same here welcome
home
thank you and thank you very much for
watching tonight we appreciate it thanks
for stopping in
and we’re going to sign off from l.z
bunker right now god bless you
and welcome home
