Jack Smith was a veteran ABC News correspondent, as well as a media consultant. During his 26 years with ABC, he won two national Emmys, a Peabody and numerous other awards. He was the host for TLC’s award-winning series on the Vietnam War, The Soldiers’ Story. A decorated Vietnam combat veteran (Bronze Star and Purple Heart), Smith did extensive reporting and speaking on the Vietnam War and its aftermath, and has received wide recognition from the veterans’ community. Jack’s father was Howard K. Smith of ABC News.
April 7, 2004: It is with heavy hearts that we at Military.com say farewell to Jack Smith, who passed away today. Jack was one of Military.com’s Advisors, a decorated Vietnam combat veteran, a great American, a close friend, and a true patriot. Although best known as a network journalist with ABC, his greatest legacy might just be his support of Vietnam Veterans. Wherever I would go with Jack, Veterans would stop him, give him a hug and thank him for helping them deal with the emotional experience of coming home from Vietnam. Like many others, I am thankful to have known Jack and blessed to call him a friend. All will miss him.
— Christopher Michel, Founder and President, Military Advantage
[Editor’s note: The text of this essay is taken from a speech given by Jack Smith at the Marin Breakfast Club on October 17, 2002.]
Jack Smith: Vietnam Memories
I served in Vietnam. And what follows is the story of my personal journey home from that war, a journey that has taken most of the last 37 years.
*****
If Vietnam had been a nuclear bomb it could scarcely have had more impact on America. The war tore our country in two and left deep wounds that still have not entirely healed. For those who fought it, as I did, and for those who demonstrated against it, as many of my friends did, Vietnam remains the formative experience of a generation.
For right or wrong nearly 3 million Americans went off to serve in Vietnam. 58,000 were killed, another 153,000 were injured of crippled by bullets, shrapnel or disease. But there were no parades for those who came home. Instead, we were pushed under the rug along with the unpopular and divisive war we served in. Vietnam veterans became bitter, angry, truly the lost Americans.
I was wounded. But I was lucky. I was not crippled. I am well-employed. I have adjusted. However, for many years I shared the same bitterness as those veterans who were less fortunate than I towards the country that we all served so well, but which afterwards served us so poorly. It may sound silly, but war veterans need a parade…some sort of public acceptance so they can put the war behind them and get on with life. Vietnam veterans never got that, and that’s why so many of them for so long walked around carrying the war on their shoulders. A lot of Vietnam veterans never really left Vietnam, they never really came home.
I fought in the bloodiest part of the bloodiest battle of the whole war, the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley. It was also the first encounter between North Vietnamese Regular Army troops and US soldiers, and it fixed the war-fighting tactics used by both sides for the remainder of the war. On the 17th of November, 1965, a day that is burned into my memory, my battalion (about 500 men) was walking away from a place called “Landing Zone X-Ray” in South Vietnam’s Central Highlands, a few miles from the Cambodian border. Along with other units of the 1st Air Cav Division, we had just fought in a major 3-day battle there and had decisively defeated 2 regiments of the North Vietnamese army.
It’s the battle that was depicted in the recent Mel Gibson Hollywood movie, “We Were Soldiers Once and Young.” Don’t look for me. I ended up on the cutting room floor. Anyway, the movie only depicts what happened in the first part of the fight. What happened afterwards was much worse. More men died in one more day of fighting than had in the previous 3 … and fewer men were engaged.
As we slipped through the jungle into another clearing called L-Z Albany, we were jumped by a North Vietnamese formation. Like us, about 500-strong, and like us, made up mostly of boys 18 or 19 years old. But they had been in-country for a year, and so they were greatly more skilled at fighting and killing. Hearing us coming, they quietly tied themselves up into the trees, uncoiled bandoleers of ammunition and snuck close in the chest-high razor grass.
Minutes after the guns opened up, we 500 were overwhelmed and fighting for our lives. Men rolled in the grass and stabbed at each other, gouged and punched, or blazed away at enemy soldiers just a few feet from them. I was lying so close to a North Vietnamese machine-gunner that I simply reached out and stuck my rifle into his face, pulled the trigger and blew his head off.
At one point in that awful afternoon as my battalion was being cut to pieces, a small group of enemy came upon me, and thinking I had been killed (I was covered in other people’s blood), proceeded to use me as a sandbag for their machine gun. I closed my eyes and pretended to be dead. I remember the gunner had bony knees that pressed against my sides. He didn’t discover I was alive because he was trembling more than I was. He was, like me, just a teenager. The gunner began firing into the remnants of my company. My buddies began firing back with rifle grenades–M-79s, to those of you who know about them. I remember thinking, oh, my God, if I stand up, the North Vietnamese will kill me, and if I stay lying down my buddies will get me…. Before I went completely mad, a volley of grenades exploded all around and on top of me, killing the enemy boy and injuring me.
It went on like this all day and much of the night. I was wounded twice and thought myself dead. My company suffered 93% casualties.
I watched all the friends I had in the world die. It is not the sort of thing you forget. The battlefield was covered with blood and littered with body parts, and it reeked of gunpowder and vomit. I discovered with a shock, as other soldiers have, that the only thing separating me from meat hanging in a butcher’s shop was a thin piece of skin.
This sort of experience leaves scars. I had nightmares, and for years afterwards I was sour on life, by turns angry, cynical and alienated.
Then one day I woke up and saw the world as I believe it really is, a bright and warm place. I looked afresh at my scars and marveled, not at the frailty of human flesh, my flesh, but at the indomitable strength of the human spirit. In spite of bullets, in spite of hot metal fragments, the spirit lives on. This is the miracle of life. Like other Vietnam veterans, I began to put my personal hurt behind me and started to examine the war itself.
A footnote on the battle: As I mentioned when I began, it was a seminal event and the first encounter between the regular troops of both sides. It was how we developed the technique of search-and-destroy… essentially the same technique that George Custer used in the Great Plains… Have US forces troll for the bad guys, and when they attacked, kill them 10 to one with our superior firepower. And the North Vietnamese went along. Basically, both sides in the Vietnam War drew the identical conclusion from this first and terrible battle: that they could win by using attrition. What we didn’t understand then was that they were willing to pay a far higher price in lives than we were. More about this in a moment.
*****
When I went back to Vietnam a few years ago I met General Vo Nguyen Giap, the man who engineered the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu and then commanded North Vietnamese forces in the war with South Vietnam — and us. He conceded that because of the Ia Drang his plans to cut Vietnam in half and take the capital had been delayed ten years. But then, he chuckled, it didn’t make a difference, did it?
We won every battle, but the North Vietnamese in the end took Saigon. What on earth had we been doing there? Was all that pain and suffering worth it, or was it just a terrible waste? This is why Vietnam veterans don’t really let go, why many can’t get on with their lives, what sets them apart from veterans of other wars.
Nothing is so precious to a nation as its youth. And so, to squander the lives of the young in a war that, depending on one’s point of view, either should never have been fought, or we were never prepared to win, seems crazy. Yet, that’s exactly what happened in Vietnam. However justified the war seemed in 1964 and 1965 — and, remember, almost all Americans then thought it was — it no longer seemed that way after 1968. And no matter what you may remember of the war, we never really fought it to win.
When I was wounded it caused a minor sensation at home. My father is Howard K Smith, the former anchorman and TV news commentator, who was then at the peak of his career. That the son of a famous person should get shot in Vietnam was, in 1965, news. When I returned to the US after my tour in Vietnam, President Johnson, who was a friend of my father’s, invited me to a dinner party at the White House. I remember a tall, smiling man who thanked me for my service and sacrifice. I liked him then, I still do today. Yet, no one bears as much responsibility for the conduct of the war as he.
In the Gulf War we took 6 months to put half a million troops into the war zone. We were too timid to carry the fight to the enemy until the end, and we tried to keep the war contained to South Vietnam.
The result was that our enemy, a small country waging total war — that is, using all its resources — saw a super-power fighting a limited war, and concluded that if it could just sustain the 10-to-1 casualties we were inflicting for a while, then we would tire and leave, and it would win. After all, North Vietnam produced babies faster than we could kill its soldiers. Of course, Ho Chi Minh was right. After the Tet Offensive in 1968 we quit and began the longest and bloodiest retreat in US history. Dean Rusk, the then-Secretary of State, many years later ruefully told me, “They outlasted us.” And with the Sino-Soviet split and Vietnam’s success playing China and Russia against each other, the war also began to change its complexion and to look less and less like a Cold War proxy struggle. The fact is democracies don’t fight inconclusive wars for remote goals in distant places for very long.
Pham van Dong, Ho’s successor, said that. Lyndon B, Johnson harnessed his generals to a basically civilian policy — fighting the war piecemeal in the vain hope no one in the US would notice! As for the enemy, he treated Ho Chi Minh like a member of the congressional opposition: show him the US was tougher, and he’d give up. But Ho saw the incrementalism that resulted as a sign of weakness and hung on. Tens of thousands of young Americans died needlessly.
Whether the war was right or whether it was wrong, it was fought in such a way it could never have been brought to a conclusion. That now seems clear with time. What a waste. It’s why so many veterans of Vietnam feel bitter.
Well, we finally did get our parades and we finally did build our memorial on the Mall in Washington. These helped. But so many veterans were still haunted by the war, and I was, too.
13 Years ago, I watched the Berlin Wall come down and, as an ABC News correspondent, I witnessed firsthand on a number of trips the collapse of communism. The policy of containment worked! We won the Cold War. And however meaningless Vietnam seemed at the time, it contributed to the fall of communism. That was something to hold onto. Pretty thin and not wholly satisfying as a justification for what many of my friends and I went through in Vietnam. But at least it was something.
Then 9 years ago came an event that changed me; I had an opportunity to go back to Vietnam for ABC with ten other Ia Drang veterans, I traveled back to the jungle in the Central Highlands and walked the Ia Drang battlefield for several days in the company of some of the same North Vietnamese we had fought against nearly 30 years earlier. Did I find the answer to my question about the futility of the war? No, I don’t know if what we did in the war ultimately was worth it…We can talk about that afterwards… But what I did find surprised me.
North Vietnam may have conquered the South, but it is losing the peace. A country that two decades ago had the 4th strongest army in the world, has squandered its wealth on quarreling with, and fighting wars against, most of its neighbors and is poor and bankrupt as a result. In Vietnam today, communism is dying. Unfortunately very slowly – but it is dying. You look at Vietnam today with its eager entrepreneurs and its frightened party bosses, and you wonder why they fought the war. Many North Vietnamese wonder the same thing.
More importantly, Vietnam is a country profoundly at peace. Because the North Vietnamese feel they won, they are not haunted by the same ghosts that we are. The memorials and cemeteries that dot the Vietnamese countryside, to most people we met, were just artifacts from another time. And people could not understand what our little group of gray-haired, middle-aged Americans was doing there, what demons were trying to exorcise, because they did not have those demons.
What struck me was the overwhelming peacefulness of the place, even in the clearing where I had fought. I broke down several times. I wanted to bring back some shrapnel, or shell casings, some physical manifestation of the battle to lay at the wall of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington…under the black granite of panel number three, where all my army buddies’ names are carved, more than 200 of them. But, do you know, search as I did, I could not find any battle debris. The forces of nature had simply erased it. And where once the grass had been slippery with blood, there were flowers blooming in that place of death. It was beautiful and still, and so I pressed some flowers and brought them back to lay at the foot of panel three. That is all that I could find in that jungle clearing that once held terror, and now held beauty.
*****
What I discovered with time may seem obvious, but it had really escaped me all those years on my journey home from Vietnam: the war is over. It certain is for Vietnam and the Vietnamese. As I said on a Nightline broadcast when I came back, “This land is at peace, and so should we be, so should we.” For me, Vietnam has become a place again, not a war, and I have begun letting go.
I have discovered that wounds heal. That the friendship of old comrades breathes meaning into life… We meet every year in Washington to read the names of the dead at the Vietnam Memorial… And even the most disjointed events can begin to make sense with the passage of time. This has allowed me, on days like this, to step forward and take pride in the service I gave my country, never forgetting what was, and will always be, the worst day of my life. The day I escaped death in the tall grass of the Ia Drang Valley. Thank you.
Rest in Peace Mr. Jack Smith!
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11B40 7th cavalry 1st air cav RTO class of 69;…………………. the combat we were in still visits me…… wake up wiping red clay off my face….. when I walk thru my woods in NE wash state I still scan about 3′ off the ground … just looking … there are only about 800,000 of us left …. we will be just a memory soon… the best army this country ever put in the field and they just threw us all away… a damn Greek tragedy
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Can’t seam to write anything this morning, the tears will not stop. 67/ 68 .
lost my youth and my first cousin, he is on a wall in a couple of places.. can’t come up with a reason except our government betrayed us .. now full of agent orange. It doesn’t end..RIP
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Hello,
Thank you. This post utters so many of my own sentiments and I wasn’t there after I read the book, Cherries, by John Podlaski.
Shalom shalom
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Well written and very true. I was in Hue during 1968 tet offensive. I have fully recovered, and am very proud of my service. I was a huey pilot.
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Place sucked, the worst year of my life ! Saw pain and death like no man should. I was shocked that I got home alive with only two purple hearts. Agent Orange has ruined my heart. Now i’m 100% VA.
Place should be a nuclear test site !!
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This well written article touches me, as I honor the memory of my late 3/27 Marine Sniper fiancé, Steve Young. On 5-17-68, he lay his 6’4″ body down in Vietnam over his shorter, married platoon leader’s, giving his life to save a family man’s during the Allenbrookaction. 🇺🇸🏅🪖❤️
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I got there in January of 68 , with the 3/47 ,9th Div. By the attrition of war I made Sargent by March and weapons platoon Sargent. Couldn’t use the mortar because the base plate would sink , so we were just another line platoon. Found some good friends, lost some good buddies, what a waste. I still don’t trust our government they let us down once and will probably do so again. Rest In Peace ! Rudy,Dennis, Charles, and all the fallen warriors,our brothers and sisters in arms. Amen !!!!!
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I Corps, 11 Bravo, 68-69, 101st Airborne. 130% disability, buddies’ names on The Wall. The Nam never takes a break – every day, somehow.
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I’m 100% disabled draw the max in disability compensation from a tour in Vietnam as a Marine infantry 0311. However it took 45 years for them to admit they are responsible for everything from nerve disorders and cancer to flashbacks and nightmares that destroyed lives. I hear you brother, they should have done better by us. When I came home to a country that treated me like I had a disease, don’t know the number of fights I got into defending Vietnam vets. We killed no baby’s, made friends in the villages we were there to defend. Landed in DaNang and was on a chopper to Hill 52 where I remained my entire tour. No big cities just villages. Wish Jane Fonda would have come on a patrol and seen the villages we protected and the greeting we got from the villages.
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I served in company b, 2nd 7th, 1966 and remaining platoon members from LZ Albany shared with me the experience, most were injured and described in derail the close in combat. Yikes!
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One of the best commentaries I have read about Vietnam Nam experience
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Sadly I must admit that I have all but forgotten of Jack’s incredible story. As I reread this story I remember identifying with his experiences though my tour was no walk in the park nothing as traumatic as the Ia Drang paid me a visit. I also served as a grunt in the 1st Air Cav and was actually spirited off to Vietnam following jump school at Ft. Benning in November of 1965 as a replacement but ended up with a less hard-luck outfit than the 1/7 or 2/5 Cav. I was more fortunate however, as I served with the 1/8 Cav, airborne. No need to relive my experiences or try to compare them but suffice it to say us grunts have stories to tell as stated both in country and post Vietnam life.
John, I have read and reviewed your excellent book and you have done mine as well. I believe you are doing a vital service to both us veterans and the public by giving insight and information to what was seen, done and experienced by the participants in our shared endeavors
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I still vividly picture the first dead body I seen over there. What a shame that the government would not let us win. Hence the lost lives needlessly!
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Gives me some peace. WIA 6 4 70, DONG HA VALLEY, NORTHERN I CORPS. I also have suffered two different types of lung cancer in my lungs. The VA has treated me well, so far. I continue my battle today. That, that is, is.
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A great story and reflections by Jack Smith.
I served with the 7th cavalry in 1968-69, long after the battles of LZ Xray and LZ Albany.
During the time my comrades and I were on the field of battle we were just holding the line and buying time that eventually ran out.
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It is very good i to servied in country and it is still hard to get out of my head.the dreams at time are very real. Its hard to see the reasoning that the dreams keep coming. By the way thank you for your service and welcome home. DDD
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JOE LEE GALLOWAY’S TRUE FEELING ABOUT THE VIETNAM VETERAN.” Damed if I’d want to go for a walk in the sun with them.””Black GI’s going thru long involved black power identification rituals.””THE REST ARE JUST COMMITTING SUICIDE.”
We Were Soldiers Once and Young is Fiction.
Joe Lee Galloway was not at Plei Me,l but did fly over the camp on the 24 Oct.1965
Joe Lee Galloway did not rescue Jimmy D. Nakayama or James Clark, they walked to the aid station under their own power, aided by other troops.
Joe Lee Galloway did load two troops on the Huey when he was ask to help by a Medic.
Joe Lee Galloway “I would later learn his name was Jimmy D. Nakayama.”
in some of Joe Lee Galloway’s stories, he would write that Cathy was Jimmy’s wife, when her name was Trudy.
Jimmy Nakayma died in flight,3 degree burns no other injuries. ie Crushed ankle.
FALSE;I pulled him up his boots crumbled and the skin over his ankle bones sloughed off. I could
feel those bones in the palms of my hands. [The soldier, Jim Nakayama, died two days
later.] For years I was haunted.
https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/history/info-2015/vietnam.html
“For years, I was haunted.”
Joe Galloway, UPI Reporter, Vietnam: The War That Changed Everything
U.S. NAVY/COURTESY JOE GALLOWAY
“A U.S. Air Force plane dropped two cans of napalm on us.
I felt the fire on my face immediately. I looked and there were two guys dancing in the fire, screaming.
FICTION: I don’t know what got into me, but I ran into the fire.
I grabbed the feet of this kid, and as I pulled him up his boots crumbled and the skin over
his ankle bones sloughed off.
I could feel those bones in the palms of my hands.
[The soldier, Jim Nakayama, died two days later.] For years I was haunted. How can I explain it to somebody who hasn’t been there? You live with it. You carry so many ghosts. I thought for a while they’d drive me crazy.”
— UPI war reporter Joe Galloway witnessed the four-day Battle of Ia Drang in November 1965. Galloway was awarded a Bronze Star for valor as a civilian. He’s also the coauthor of We Were Soldiers Once … and Young.
http://www.oanow.com/news/the-battle-of-ia-drang-joe-galloway-s-first-hand/article_057448d7-57e4-5fe5-89ac-cacd37ecc574.html
The Troops who did help Jimmy D. Nakayama and James Clark, Not Joe Lee Galloway!
Arturo Villarreal · Sidney Lanier High School
Sp4 James Clark was not given any morphine by the medics. He came running towards my foxhole with
his clothes on fire. I helped putting the fire out and I just gave him some saline solution. I took him to the
CP and ask the doctor to give him something for the terrible pain, but the doctor told that they didn’t have
anything to give him and he just told me to just keep giving him the saline solution.
++After some time pass, some helicopters landed and I put him aboard one of them.
https://www.victoriaadvocate.com/counties/calhoun/ia-drang-veterans-recall-bloody-battle/article_c7f979ea-4bd8-5260-88ca-1776a88f03cb.html
Nov. 14-18, 1965< this would be LZ X-Ray's battle
Robert Saucedo should have been leaving the war. Instead, he was riding in the 16th helicopter in a formation high above the jungle on its way to the Ia Drang Valley.
Jimmy Nakayma died in flight,3 degree burns no other injuries. ie Crushed ankle.
"On the second day, they dropped a couple of napalms in the (landing zone), and a couple of guys bringing in choppers – the engineers – they got burned," he said with eyes distant.
++"They ran to our foxholes. We treated them for burns."
++"We treated him for burns. His face was on fire. His weapon was on fire," he said. "It was bad."
Joe Lee Galloway no DEGREE, in Journalism.
In a letter to Hal G. Moore, Joe Lee Galloway wrote.
from Hal Moore A Soldier ……Once and Always by MIKE GUARDIA page 171-172
BUT, JOE LEE GALLOWAY'S TRUE FEELING ABOUT THE VIETNAM VETERAN.
" Damed if I'd want to go for a walk in the sun with them."
"Black GI's going thru long involved black power identification rituals."
"THE REST ARE JUST COMMITTING SUICIDE."
Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
from which we sprung
Life to be sure
Joe Lee Galloway
Joe Lee Galloway did not rescue Jimmy Nakayama! Joe Lee Galloway did help load a w burned trooper into the Huey.
But only after Joe Lee Galloway, was ask to help, by a Medic.
No crushed ankle,torn skin! Joe Lee Galloway was one of 4 persons to carry a burned troop to the Huey.
https://www.historynet.com/ia-drang-where-battlefield-losses-convinced-ho-giap-and-mcnamara-the-u-s-could-never-win.htm
Ia Drang – The Battle That Convinced Ho Chi Minh He Could Win
Joseph L. Galloway
So, even before Ia Drang, you were having doubts?
"No, it didn’t take Ia Drang to convince me that we didn’t have enough force to counter a
guerrilla force the size of the Viet Cong, never mind the NVA."
Joe Lee Galloway "I speak for the Vietnam Veteran."
Joe Lee Galloway " THIS WAR WE CAN'T WIN" March 1965 with the Marines ,I was(disabused )
of that notion pretty early on with the( Marines.)
disabuse = Free from Error, Fallacy or Misconception.
++JOE LEE GALLOWAY two faced.
You thought that, but couldn’t say it in your reporting?
++Joe Lee Galloway " This war we can’t win."
worked for UPI. We were not paid to have an opinion and if we did we were to keep it to ourselves.
++I And for me, there was the other thing. I thought, “ This war we can’t win."
http://www.historynet.com/interview-joe-galloway-soldiers-reporter-speaks-his-mind.htm
Interview with Joe Galloway: Soldier’s Reporter Speaks His Mind
Just months after 23-year-old reporter Joe Galloway got to Vietnam, he found himself with Lt. Col. Hal Moore and his beleaguered 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment at Ia Drang. The epic Nov. 1965 battle, where Galloway took up arms to save soldiers’ lives—for which he received a Bronze Star with V Device—forged a deep friendship between the two men.
You were born just before Pearl Harbor. Did WWII have an impression on you?
I did not meet my father until the end of 1945. He was gone to war, as were five of his brothers and four of my mother’s brothers.
———-plagiarized from Ernie Pyle works
Joe Lee Galloway So my earliest memories are of living in houses full of frightened women, peering out the
window for the telegram man. It kind of sensitizes you to that stuff. I was young,
but I followed the Korean War too.
I well remember a local boy, a Marine killed in Korea, coming home to a hero’s funeral.
————————————————————————-
From Ernie Pyle's War page 10
Thad Hooker permited to leave school early in 1918 to join up, At the high school commencement that
spring, a flag-draped chair took Thad's place among the graduating seniors.
———————————–
Were you destined to be a war reporter?
I had read Ernie Pyle’s columns and his collected work and I thought if a war comes along in my generation,
I want to cover it. And preferably as Pyle covered his war.
How does a kid reporter in the Midwest get to cover Vietnam?
I thought it was be a big war and I’ve got to see and experience this. I thought, it’s coming, and it’s my
generation’s war and I’m going to be there, come hell or high water.
I’d actually been working to get there since 1963.
I just started writing a letter each week to my bosses, explaining why they should send me to Vietnam.
Well, you know, right after the 1964 election was over, I got a call from my boss asking if you have a trench coat. I didn’t know what he was talking about and I said no. He said, “Well you better buy one, because you’ve been transferred to Tokyo.” It was the UPI Asia headquarters, so at least I was propositioned for Vietnam. So I got out there in November 1964, and the first thing I did was put in for a transfer to Saigon. The chief laughed at me and said “I just sent a second man to Saigon. There’s no way in the world we’ll need any more than that.” I said, “Well, we’ll see.”
Your wish didn’t take long to come true?
The Marines landed in March 1965, and they had to start shuffling people in, and I came along a few weeks
later, in April. They shipped me in and I had two days in Saigon and then I was off to cover the Marines.
I cut my teeth on the Marines and made every operation in I Corps—I even made a combat amphibious
assault landing.
How long before reality set in?
I was disabused of that notion pretty early on with the Marines.
————–From Ernie Pyle's book brave Men
I could see concentric rings of fighting holes and people in them.
So we dropped down and landed, and the guy shut down the engine.
When he did, there was literally dead silence on that hill and there was a battalion of South Vietnamese all
dead.
These guys hadn’t had time to dig a proper foxhole, but just to scrape out a little depression.
Their hands were out like they were still holding rifles, but all the rifles were gone.
———————–
We were there to pick up the bodies of the two American advisers.
I then began to wonder just how long this might war might take. It didn’t seem to be going our way
But, you were confident we could defeat the Viet Cong?
Well, at that moment I knew they were damn good local guerrilla boys.( Joe Lee Galloway praising the
enemy.)
Joseph Lee Galloway, According to the Geneva Convention, Knew as a Reporter, he was classed, As a
NONCOMBATANT, and not allowed to carry a weapon of any kind
You also had to be a soldier.
Joe Lee Galloway, Only on occasion, when it got so intense that I thought my helping would make a
difference.
And I have no apologies.
It really pissed me off to have people shooting at me.
You know, they gave reporters these lovely little ID cards, and in the tiniest print it said that I was a civilian
noncombatant with the equivalent rank of major in the U.S. Army, and if I fall into the hands of the enemies
of the U.S. I’m to be afforded all the privileges they would afford a major in the army.
You know your chances of waving that card at some guy with a bayonet on his AK coming at you are not
very good at all.( I figured, they didn’t sign up for the Geneva Convention and I didn’t either. )
SERIAL KILLER IN VIETNAM, JOE LEE GALLOWAY
Joe Lee Galloway with STOLEN Army Gear, Weapon, Ammo,Jungle Boots,Fatigues. He also stole C Rations
to eat.
More stolen Army gear
I had my new M-16 rifle on my shoulder,
20 full magazines in my pack.
I also carried these things: two full canteens on a pistol belt. A sheathed bayonet.
My pack contained the magazines for the rifle.
C-rations for a couple of days.
A fist-sized lump of C-4 plastic explosive,
Strapped beneath my pack
was a nylon poncho liner rolled inside an Army rubber coated poncho;
on its side man entrenching tool.
Joe Lee Galloway did not rescue Jimmy Nakayama. He was ask to help load Jimmy in the Huey.
Joe Lee Galloway was with Gen Knowles on the 14 Nov 1965. that means he wasn't at Catecha with Brown.
Joe Lee Galloway wasn't with Brown when the Sky Raider crashed.
Brig. Gen. Richard Knowles, deputy commander of the air cavalry division, OFFERED ME A RIDE IN HIS
HELICOPTER.
WE CIRCLED OVER THE BATTLE GROUND. Air strikes went in below us. An American A1E skyraider was hit on a low- level bombing run, and the pilot had no chance to bail out. The plane crashed and
exploded in a cluster of trees.
lzalbny65@aol.com
IF YOU WANT A GOOD FIGHT… Original story of Vietnam . By Joe Lee Galloway
Which became We Were Soldiers Once and Young.
https://docplayer.net/51922376-If-you-want-a-good-fight.html
Jimmy D. Nakayama's casualty report no crushed ankles!
Joe Lee Galloway
FICTION: "I don’t know what got into me, but I ran into the fire.
I grabbed the feet of this kid, and as I pulled him up his boots crumbled and the skin over
his ankle bones sloughed off.
I could feel those bones in the palms of my hands."
Jimmy D. Nakayama's casualty report no Crushed ankles
IF YOU WANT A GOOD FIGHT… Original story of Vietnam . By Joe Lee Galloway
Which became We Were Soldiers Once and Young.
https://docplayer.net/51922376-If-you-want-a-good-fight.html
From Brian Siddall airborne in normandy
Contact BN Siddall @
Tel: (315) 567-4542
Airborne In Normandy Research
PO Box 3897
Ithaca, NY 14852
Send an e-mail atresearcher@airborneinnormandy.com
Click to access galloway_101_and_napalm_1965_01_16.pdf
http://www.airborneinnormandy.com/galloway_fraudulent_bronze_star.htm
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Joseph Lee Galloway’s original story of Landing Zone X-RAY Nov,14-16, 1965
Twenty JAMESTOWN ( N.Y. ) POST- JOURNAL- Wednesday Evening,November 17,1965
WOUNDED SOLDIER LOSES HALF HIS PLATOON IN BITTER CHU PONG FRAY
By JOSEPH GALLOWAY
Chu Pong Mountain, South Viet Nam ( UPI )—- The soldiers eyes were red from loss of sleep, and maybe a bit from crying too, now that it was all over.
A three-day growth of beard stubbled his cheeks. But was hard to see because of the dirt. He was hurt, in terrible pain, but you’d never know it. Slivers of shrapnel had ripped his chest and spared his leg.
He sat on the landing zone below the Chu Pong mountain where more Americans had died than ever before in a battle against Communists in a war over Viet Nam. He had gone through hell — three days of it— and still a bit dazed, more from lack of sleep then his wounds, though. When I walked up to him, he spoke, But not to me in particular, nor to the other guys sitting around sipping the first hot cup of coffee they had since the fight began.
Loses a Friend
” I took care of 14 of ’em myself,” He said. “They were tough little bastards. You had to shoot them to pieces before they quit coming . . . just rip them apart.”
I squatted on my heels waiting for him to say more, But he didn’t. Somebody told me he had lost half of his platoon, including a friend he had served with for more than eight years. “What is his name?” I ask.
” It’s not important,” the sergeant slouching nearby said. “He’s just one of us and he did a damn good job.”
Everyone did a damn good job. And nobody knew it better than Gen. Knowles, task force commander and deputy commander of the 1st Air Cavalry.
“These men were just great,” he told me. “They were absolutely tremendous. I’ve never seen a better job anywhere, anytime,”
Back From Battle
Monday another American soldier walked out of the jungle into the valley of death. Bullets whizzed over his head and kicked up dirt at his feet.
” Get down you fool!” We shouted.
The GI kept walking, He carried no weapon, He walked straight and tall.
A mortar shell exploded nearby, He didn’t waver, Shrapnel chopped off branches above my head. But the American out there in the open came on until he was within a few feet of the battalion command bunker. He looked funny, dazed.
Then we knew, he was shell shocked. He paused for a moment and looked around. He recognized the aid station set up under the trees and walked toward it.
Just as the soldier reached the station he slumped to his knees, then pitched forward on his face, That is when we saw his back for the first time.
It wasn’t pretty, It had been blown open by a communist mortar.
Medics were unable to reach the soldier because of the almost solid wall of communist bullets and jagged steel fragments coming from the jungle. So he walked out, The bullets and mortar did not bother him anymore, He had his.
Veterans Cried
The men of the U.S. 1st Air Cavalry fought like heroes. They died the same way, Some took their wounds without a whimper. Seasoned Veterans cried.
Col. Hal Moore of Bardstown, Ky., the commanding officer of the 7th Battalion, 1st cavalry, Came over to me,
tears streaming down his face, His men were catching from the slopes of this mountain range less than five miles from the Cambodian border.
I’m kind of emotional about this, so excuse me,” Moore said to me. “But I want you to tell the American people that these men are fighters.
“Look at them.”
Moore pointed to a Negro soldier lying in the shade of a tree. A Communist bullet had torn a huge hole in his stomach. The soldier had his hands over the wound. You could see him bite his lip. He was in terrific pain, But he made no whimper as he waited for a medical helicopter.
” Look at them,” Moore said again. ” They’re great and the American people ought to know it.”
Joe Lee Galloway di not rescue Jimmy D. Nakayama!!
WAR “ACCIDENT”
It was shortly after 8:30 a.m. Monday when one of those terrible accidents of war happened.
I was sitting in the command bunker, A mound of dirt screening us from the communist snipers, looking at the wounded in the aid station just a few yards away.
Suddenly, I felt a searing heat on my face.
An American fighter-bomber had misjudged the Communist positions, and dropped a load of napalm. The flaming jelly gasoline, impossible to shake or scrape off once it hits skin, splashed along the ground in a huge dragon’s tail of fire less then 25 yards away.
Screams penetrated the roar of the flames. two Americans stumbled out of the inferno. Their hair burned off in an instant. their clothes were incinerated.
” Good God!” Moore cried. Another plane was making a run over the same area. The colonel grabbed a radio.
” You’re dropping napalm on us!” he shouted. ” Stop those damn planes.”
At almost the last second, the second plane pulled up and away, its napalm tanks still hanging from the wings.
It was an hour before a medical helicopter could get into the area and tend to the two burned men. One GI was a huge mass of blisters, the other not quite so bad. Somehow his legs had escaped the flames. But he had breathed fire into his lungs and he wheezed for air.
Joe Lee Galloway
“A MEDIC ASK ME TO HELP GET THE MEN INTO THE HELICOPTER WHEN IT ARRIVED.
“THERE WERE NO LITTERS. TENDERLY, WE PICKED THE SOLDIERS UP. I HELD A LEG OF THE
MOST SERIOUSLY BURNED MAN. I WASN’T TENDER ENOUGH. A BIG PATCH OF BURNED
SKIN CAME OFF IN MY HAND.
VC BATTALIONS
Chu Pong Mountain rises 2,500 feet from the valley below. From the top, you could almost lob a mortar shell into Cambodia. The mountain slope were heavily jungled. And they hid at least two battalions of North Vietnamese Army regulars—- possibly the same troops who pinned down two companies of air cavalrymen not far away about a week ago.
The cavalry were looking for them, spoiling for a fight. They found the Communist Monday and dropped by helicopter into a small landing zone about the size of a football field at the base of the mountain on the valley floor.
One platoon got about 300 yards up the mountain before the Communist opened up. From Behind, cut it off and fired on the main cavalry force from three sides with small arms, heavy machine-guns, and mortars.
Time and again, the cavalrymen tried to move in and help the platoon’ pull back, It was futile. The fire was to heavy. The platoon spent the night on the mountainside. Their losses were heavy, but the damage to the Communist was said to be heavier.
“We got 70 communist bodies stacked up in front of our positions,” the platoon leader radioed back Monday.
Men Dying
It was shortly before noon Sunday when the cavalrymen swept down in the area about 12 miles west of Pleiku.
Ever since the nine day battle around the Special Forces camp at Plei Me, the cavalrymen have been sweeping the jungles and running into sporadic contact with hard-core Communist units.
Joe Lee Galloway Nov 14,1965 over LZ XRay
Brig. Gen. Richard Knowles, deputy commander of the air cavalry division, OFFERED ME A RIDE
IN HIS HELICOPTER.
WE CIRCLED OVER THE BATTLE GROUND.
Air strikes went in below us. An American A1E skyraider was hit on a low- level bombing run, and the pilot had no chance to bail out. The plane crashed and exploded in a cluster of trees.
Men are dying down there, but they are doing their job. “This is good,” Knowles said.” This is what we came for.
We’ve got a U.S. battalion well -equipped down there.”
Many Dead
I got my chance to join the men on the ground about 8 P.M. I went with a helicopter loaded with supplies and ammunition.
we were level with the middle of the mountain and in the darkness we could see the muzzle flashes of rifles and machine-gun spitting bullets at us. I said a prayer.
Sgt.Maj. Basil Plumley of Columbus, Ga., met us at the landing zone, and led me back to Col. Moore’s command bunker.
” Watch your step,” Plumley said, ” There were dead people, all over here.” They were dead Americans many wrapped in ponchos.
At Day break Monday, Medical helicopters began landing and taking off again with the wounded.
A detail was assign the job of collecting weapons and ammunition from the wounded before they were evacuated.
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I have been back in the world 50 years and still fight most nights in my dreams and flashbacks during the day. I go to the PTSD clinic at the local VA hospital, they want me to tell them what haunts me, I can’t, the combat was one thing but the treatment I received filled me with rage something that remains to this day. Since the wars in the desert some thank me for my service but is to little to late, I cannot forget. I have a wife, she is my only friend. She knows I need help but doesn’t know how. She gives me space when she sees I’m struggling. I could go on but it’s pointless but I enjoyed your story.
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Good read. I was an Infantryman/interpreter in the 25th ID in 1965-66. I only had one bad experience with a person when they asked me how many babies I had killed. I told her no more than I could eat.
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outstanding
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India Co 3rd Bn 26th USMC 0311 Class of ‘68 Graduation was a B***H Aye Aye Semper Fi
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Still Humping…I was with India 3/26 USMC Gruenwald J E 2*****4 0311 1968…Only two ways oFF this hill Cherry Blown oFF or Flown OFF
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If you were in the sh*t, you know the saying, “For those who have to fight for it, Life has a flavor the Protected never know”. Things is, the Protected know little or nothing about what it was – I understand their ignorance and also “give them a pass” – but, it is not always easy. I do not think there will ever be any “reconciliation”. We Viet(combat)Vets have only one another….
Aaron 2
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despite we share the same name, I am not the earlier “Aaron” posting…
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I completely agree with and embrace Aaron’s posts (re-read them above/below). I was an infantry squad leader with the 101st, ’69-69. Our youth and innocence were ripped from us with nothing in exchange, except perhaps, derision and loathing from our own peers. If you were in the sh+t, you know it never goes away. Anger & bitterness is completely understandable. And, I too, will no longer stand for the “National Anthem” – what an insulting facade, given what our country did to us.
I agree with the “thank you for your service” comments. At Sturgis, I met the mother of the 1st Seal killed in the Gulf. She thanked me for my service – I told her I did not “serve”. She said, “at least you came home”…..I do not think any VietVet who was in combat, ever “comes home”. Like many, she has no idea. Her son rests in peace – something Viet combat vets will never have. Thanks, USA.
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I never “engaged” Vietnam and, therefore, never really knew anything about it. I did not accept it, and had no substantive proof of why I was there. I was committed to service there, but made to acceptance of it.
I’m making up for lost time, trying to get what’s in my head in sync with my current way of living. I don’t want to be a victim, and I don’t want to by alienated and left behind.
The comment, “Vietnam is a place, not a war!”, is sensible and practical. It is a thought I must focus on and adhere to.
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Peace only comes through victory. Truman never wanted victory in Korea, and lbj never wanted victory in Vietnam. Fighting for “peace” only kills and mames more than winning the war would make.
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Very informative.
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reading Warner (above)
yes, when it comes out I am a DAV from VietNam, folks “thank me for my service”. I did not serve – I was forced to become a “gladiator – kill or be killed:” I DID NOT “SERVE” – I was forced to become an infantry squad leader in I corps (and being in the 101st, I’ve “war stories” to match those of most) before wounds retired me from “service”.
I suspect the phrase “thanx for your service” is used as much as a guilt-lessening phrase for the public, who did not dirty their hands, as it is used to be “complimentary”. If “service” is such a great thing, why did they not “Serve” ? I am nearly insulted, except I believe the motive of those (ignorant) persons who say that to me, is meant as a “compliment” in their twisted view. I “let them off”, but they know not of what they speak. It would be a revelation if they truly knew what happened….
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it goes on and on…..and I doubt it will ever change. What Greg said, about drafted Vets rings true. We had our youth and innocence stolen and we received nothing in return for those precious things, except, derision and disdain by those who were not there. My anger is boundless – for my country which did such a thing to its young men, for those who aided the cause, and, less, for those who simply are “ignorant”. it goes one and on….and I doubt it will ever change. We drafted (and those who signed up to avoid the draft) vets, know, but we are few and even fewer care…
Wars should only be fought by men over 50 – I suspect there would be many fewer.
As an aside, I applaud the NFL player for his “knee” during the anthem – he may be wise beyond his years, unlike those of us who “served” (forced labor = slavery = draft).
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My personal venom is reserved for the vocal war protesters. At the time (USMC Veteran in Country from 11/67 to 12/68) I took the attitude it was their right to protest that War for reasons of personality morality. Years later, the smartest man I knew pointed out to me when President Nixon ended the draft, all college campus anti-war demonstrations evaporated over night even though the war continued until 1975. As long as there was no draft, it was no longer their personal problem, so back to sex, drugs, and rock and roll. The problem I have with some fellow Veterans is when I tell them Vietnam was the easiest war the USA ever fought. From 1958 to 1975 you had 58,000 casualties but in 20 below Korea with your 8 round M-1 you had hoards of Human Waves of Chinese coming at you. In that 3 year War the casualties were 55,000, so which war do you think was the most ferocious.
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I was there in the summer of 1965, I was a Chicken Man, Screaming Eagle of the 101st! Spent time in that jungle, wondering when I was going to die too, firefights, engaging enemy’s in those trenches, (I’ll never forget those damn trenches) listening when we could to “We got to get out of this place” by the Animals, me and my brothers fighting together, dying together, after being wounded and sent back to Schofield Barracks, I couldn’t shake it, I couldn’t get over it, even in civilian life, every night I closed my eyes I was still there. This article captured what I, as well as all my brothers experienced, when he mentions the smell of vomit, I also remember the smell of urine and human feces. I had nightmares for years even now at 72 I still close my eyes and hear the choppers, and the gun fire, but my wife and the birth of my son in 1973 helped me to realize that there was life out side of Vietnam, those nightmares are less and less with the passing of time. For those who were never there will never know, those that were there will never forget! God Bless all my brothers that made it home, and we will meet again to all those who have been taken home!!!
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This man knows what it’s like to come home & be stuck in “RSVN” for so long ! ( in a dark place , no joy ) .
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Aco. 2/7th Cav. nov 69 yo nov 70…Cambodian invasion, FSB Jay and numerous other battles. Combat medic. We were sprayed and betrayed. I have had a liver transplant and the the VA was gonna let me die so I had go outside I have diabetes. and several other illnesses. I am sure are related to agent orange. I will die from one but my family will not receive my service insurance. Even though I will die as a result of the war?????
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There seems to always be articles like this even though there are less people around these days to accurately describe very much about them that hasn’t already been said and misinterpreted.. As long as wealthy people are prospering from wars, there is going to be young men of lesser financial means being flown off somewhere to kill others like him and being thanked for their service as if what they did did something other than cause death for others like them and huge off shore accounts for the men in business suits that haven’t a conscience or care for anything other their personal accumulation of wealth… Let the bastards send those of the same ilk as them too kill and die and quit trying to sound sincere when thanking me for my service.
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Welcome home all that served, many of us still carry the horrors of Vietnam. We should make sure that today’s veterans are truly welcomed home. All veterans that served in war should have the support of the citizens of the U.S.A. We should never sacrifice another American’s life for the wishes of a politician that won’t fight a war to win.
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Great article, expresses how I feel to this date.
USMC Vietnam Vet.Chu Lai 1965 to July 66. Operation Starlite, Piranha. I would do it all again, in a heart beat, the same way, with the same outcome. I found brothers that I will love to the day I die, and hope to meet them in whatever place we will go to after death. I looked into the eyes of the grim reaper, and he turned away from me and said “not today, you are worthy of an extended life”, and he floated away. I was never afraid after that, and knew that all would be OK for me. I still have nightmares, and can’t seem to lose them.
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Welcome Home Brothers!
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Sometime’s Vietnam,seem just like yesterday,I served there from 6/28/68 to 7/16/69.I don’t think i’ll ever get over Vietnam. G.L.Hines, U.S.M.C.
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WE WERE LIED INTO NAM BY OUR GOV THERE ARE TONS OF INFO NAM WAS NEVER A THREAT TO US IN ANY WAY JUST LOOK AT IT TODAY OUR GOV LIED ROBERT VANN WILSON SGT 1ST BN 9TH MARINES DELTA CO JAN68-69+ WAIST OF FINE MEN FOR WHAT
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Thanks for sharing. I was one of those soldiers in the Vietnam War. I to have tried to move on but the thoughts are always there in the back on my mind. 1967. I’m trying to move on but it are bad someday, especially when I hear and see many of our young warriors of todays war. I was 17 years old when I was there. Again thanks for sharing
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I can surely understand your feelings. My wife (now deceased) would wake me up when I hit her in my sleep. She understood that I was fighting. My current wife taps me when I am running in my sleep to bring me back to reality. Some things stay with forever. Every time see my grand children I think back to my buddies that will never experience that.
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I am retired Master Sergeant USA and served as an Interpreter/FO in the infantry an was wounded 3X. I say the he was a good man who understood the Vietnamese people as I did. When learning the language I also studied the history of Viet Nam. My good friend Bill Bell was head of the JCRC for 20 years and he will say the same thing. They are a peaceful people.
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My life there was an experience that I never want to see anymore,
I killed enemy that I see today, and I dream of the Kill, and I can
not understand why I made it trough. only God can sort that out.
I see my friends that did not make it. and I do miss them. I hope
that their families are at rest with all that went on.
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I came in right after Ia Drang Valley in fact my orders were for the Big Red One Division but all orders were cancelled to replace the troops lost in the battle and I ended up with Hq Company 2/5th lst Cav in Nov of 65 to Nov 66. It was a part of my life that I tried to forget but it’s not easy to do, so many friends lost, so close to death. The story you gave hit home with me, so many memories. But like Most of the troops there I gave it all I had and have been able to live my life the best I can.
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My grandfather used to speak of his grandfather’s service in the Civil War. The older man had fought from Vicksburg to the Shenandoah to the Carolinas and said it made him part of a greater family of men from north and south had survived the thing and were thus closer to each other than to any other persons. Every war seems to have that affect I think, but because we who went to Vietnam came back to such negativity I believe it has warped our souls like no other conflict. Even the troops who fought in the “forgotten-war” of Korea were respected upon their return. Many of us were simply considered fools for ever having been caught up in the thing so we said as little as possible about something we wanted so desperately to be proud of…but couldn’t. Today’s troops really face something almost worse than ridicule, they are told in effect that they shouldn’t complain, they ASKED to go to war and should live (or die) with the consequences. My grandson has just joined the Army and I pray that he will never have to face the emotional and social dislocation that has tainted the veterans of Vietnam and of the wars since.
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Jack had a great view… many of us never were able to get there until, later, or not ever, and way too late.
Today we have another generation of warriors…dying too often at their own hands. Please, let us find a way to help them all…
I’m old, and it took me over 40 years to figure out that I was damaged…my ex-wife and my son took much of the heart-wrought damage I had inside. And for that I am deeply sorry. But, please, let’s find some better way to take care of our young warriors. They need our help. Whatever way, whatever means, do what you can.
This past weekend we hosted Sgt. Timothy Hall as our “One hero at a Time” in Mesquite Nevada. This young man was blown in half in Afghanistan, and he was not expected to live. However he lives today , no legs, pulverized, but alive, to inspire us and lead us to helping those who need it most, … our wounded, body and mind, who sacrificed on the battlefield for you, for me, for our beloved country.
Thank you, Bob Barquist, USN/USMC Hospital Corpsman, CAP 222, 2nd Combined Action Group, III MAF, I Corps, Vietnam 1970-71. Semper Fi, Marines! The “Docs” love ya!
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I served with the Marines in Vietnam 1966-67. My twp younger brothers Ernie and Bill also served in the Marines in Vietnam. We all were wounded but made it home with all limbs. Mr. Smith’s essay really covered the experiences of all Vietnam veterans in a way I had not heard before. I regret that I did not have the chance to meet him in his writings and his speeches before his death. God bless him.
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God bless you and keep you. See my reply following to the essay. /Bob Barquist Cap 222, 2nd CAG, III MAF 1970-71
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The Vietnam war put such a crack in me because of the impossibility of finding an untainted response to the war.
From the tunnels of Cu Chi to the borders of Cambodia the deepest fissures are still within me.
If there is a war that passeth all understanding, the Vietnam war may be the war that passeth all understanding.
Jim Riley 25th I D ,68-69
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God Bless You James Riley
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A great story and reflections by Jack Smith.
I served with the 7th cavalry in 1968-69, long after the battles of LZ Xray and LZ Albany.
During the time my comrades and I were on the field of battle we were just holding the line and buying time that eventually ran out.
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I was an 11C4L/interpreter. Wounded 2x within seconds. They did not have adult Depends back then.
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Thanks for your service my friend.
I to was in the 25th infantry division. 70-71
Great soldiers, gutless politicians!!!!
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Great images! Quang Tri combat base, 7/13/70-7/12/71. 1/77 Armor Tank Battalion, 1/5 Infantry Div (Mech). Operation Lam Som 719 and Dewey Canyon 2. Radio operator. Quang tri to Dong Ha, to Vandergrift to Mai Loc to Khe Sanh and back and forth and back and forth. The biggest combat operation in Vietnam’s history.
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Welcome home, brother! Have a great Memorial Day weekend!
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It felt great coming home, I’ll never forget it. May you also have a great holiday weekend. Eat hearty!
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You know, one time when I was in Khe Sanh, we were receiving incoming when I turned to run toward a bunker and I glanced to my right while I ran, and the guy to my right was running too and he had an ABC LOGO on his camera he was carrying. Just remembering tidbits….
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Camau – 1968 – USAF O-1 FAC Crew Chief
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The memories of strangers coming together into a family, Standing together to face the violence, horror pain as brothers , as men, living and dying for each other, that is what I remember. It is our job to make their sacrifice matter. We , the survivors and witness to their loss
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l.raymond
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I just remember flying out of Quang Tri on CH-46s with HMM-262 Balls to the wall to Khe Sanh, Dong Ha . Con Tien, Rockpile, Hills 881 , 861, 568, 689, 950 and every LZ in Northern I corps only 381 missions but enough for my butt. LOL! Back in the world ,it would have been a big deal to see a dead body at that age that wasn`t all dressed-up and in a box. But the first emergencey med-evac with all the chaos and gunfire and screaming, people flinging the dead on while others carry the wounded aboard. From clean to covered in blood in less than 2 min..I will not Ever be void of that day!!. Yea there were many like it after that. But there is only 1 first time. We are different because, since 1965 until we RTB we will only ever trust each other . Life is bitch- then ya die. Semper Fi A couple pics back shows one of HMM-262s helos. dropping troops in a rocky LZ. I hope you guys enjoyed the ride.
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This is really good stuff. To me The Vietnam Vet was the 20th Century equivalent of slavery. Forced to serve and hated when freed. All Races included..
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Reminds me of the Civil war where the Irish immigrants getting off the boat here were immediately pressed into service unless they had $800 to give them like the wealthy people paid to keep their own sons out and send the poor instead. $800 then would be equivalent to hiring a doctor and a lawyer for about $20,000 to get out during the Vietnam conflict.
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To be specific, it was the DRAFTED Vietnam Vet who was abused the most. These Drafted Vets got to witness the very government that drafted them, give amnesty to those who ran from the draft, without even acknowledging the service of those who answered the call! Talk about dying in vain, for those who didn’t make it!! That’s why in my opinion without a doubt, the DRAFTED VN Vet is peerless as a member of the most abused and mal treated military force ever put to field by the United States of America. ..
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Sad !! But so true
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AMEN
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Vietnam took our youth away from us and gave us many memories that we live with daily. As you enter Nam for the first time off the plane you see coffins of US soldiers and when you leave, the same thing. My father fought in WW2 and we carried on the tradition of seving our country. I am proud to have served.
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My grandfathers served in WWI, my father and uncles served in WWII,I served only so that my baby brothers might not have to go and I saw what a devious trick it was to send troops to war in Korea and Vietnam as they did not meet the four points of a just war and we did not belong there just as we did not belong in Iraq nor Afghanistan. The lies and deceipt seem to never end.
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65-66 2nd 19th art 1st cav, I remember our time I remember our losses, I will never forget. My purple Heart is in the Canada Viet Nam Veterans Memorial – I left my deams there.
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Thanks for telling your story. As it seems we went into war alone and came out alone it is important to tell it. Every one of us who experienced close combat has learned above all the bond that Viet Nam veterans have. USMC Lima 3/3.. Delta 1/7…H&S S2 1st Mar Div Zulu Patrol all Nam Northern I Corps.
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Great read, Jack Smith endured the horrors of was and went on to make the most of life before he was taken too soon. I survived the Tet Offensive of 1968 as a member of B Troop 3rd Sqd 4th US Cavalry 25th Inf Div.
Rest in Peace brother until we meet at Fiddlers Green.
Halfway down the trail to Hell
In a shady meadow green
Are the souls of all dead troopers camped near a good old time canteen
And this eternal resting place is known as Fiddlers Green.
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It is amazing how few of us Vietnam Veterans are still alive and how many we lose every day. I think we lose more than WWII and Korea veterans every day and I believe it is Agent Orange that is doing it.
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Last I read that we are losing 900 Vietnam Veterans a day compared to 800 WWII a day.
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What a great article. I am a cancer survivor of agent orange. From those statistics I guess I’m lucky and glad to be here.
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I know of many from my unit they have died since coming home. The one thing that sets the VietNam Vet apart is We have each other!
Welcome back to the World Bro!!
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I am 81 years old. I survived three GSW and spent a year in an Army hospital. I was a PV2 when I went to Viet Nam and made SSG in 11 months. I was offered SGM when I was in an SGM billet when assigned to a major command. I chose to retire rather than accept the promotion. War affects everyone in a different way. I am a West Virginian. West Virginia had more casualties and KIA per capita than any other state. My County received two MOH. I am very proud of my State. My brother died from complications of Agent Orange and he also was proud of his service. In-country I was an FO Infantryman/interpreter. I have never considered myself a wacko. I was once accosted by a woman in NYC and she asked “How many babies did you kill?’ That was in 1969. I responded with “No more than I could eat!!!” She ran away to the next subway car. I have never been affected by people’s crap about my life. The most trite statement made to me is “Welcome home”. I have been home since I retired in 1984.
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