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My friends in my unit, my troops, those who died there and those who died from disease -- I remember I didn't want to live anymore.

I lost all my troops.

I lost all my associates.

I felt betrayed by my own country for the fact that I went and fought, I went and fought for the country, I fought for ideals.

If you want my true opinion, America had won the war, we won the war.

It didn't matter that you didn't know them, had never met them, didn't know their race, religion, ethnicity or the color of their skin, you went and you went to them because you know they would do the same for you.

♪♪ (applause) Susan Moritz: It's my honor and my pleasure today to introduce Ambassador Quinn.

Ambassador Quinn's involvement in the Vietnam War and its aftermath spans nearly two decades.

Though a civilian in his role as district senior advisor with the MACVCORDS Team 65, he participated in more than 200 hours of helicopter combat operations with the 71st Air Cavalry during the war.

In the years since the fall of Saigon, Ambassador Quinn was responsible for bringing the remains of U.S.

servicemen home from Vietnam.

He was responsible for searching for U.S.

POWs and soldiers classified as MIA and helping to save the lives of countless refugees.

Ambassador Quinn has the distinction of being the only civilian to ever receive the U.S.

Army Air Medal for his participation in helicopter combat operations in Vietnam and the distinction of being the only Foreign Service Officer ever to have received the American Foreign Service Association Rivkin and Herter Awards for intellectual courage in challenging policy times, three times.

And just this past week, Ambassador Quinn received the International Leadership Award in New Delhi.

Fresh off an international flight, please help me welcome Ambassador Kenneth Quinn.

(applause) Quinn: Thank you, Susan, for the very kind introduction.

First I just want to say a word to the Vietnamese who are here.

(speaking in Vietnamese) (speaking in Vietnamese) Quinn: So I just asked permission if I could give my remarks in English.

Time is short and we can discuss things later.

So I want to begin by telling you about a U.S.

naval officer who was on a special assignment on a ship just off the coast of Saigon in the South China Sea.

And he was writing notes and he wrote in there that the Vietnamese people seemed to him to be engaged very often in "frequent civil and foreign wars".

Now, that doesn't seem like a very unusual statement that would be made, except that it was made by Dr.

William Ruchenber in 1836 on the first mission sent by President Andrew Jackson to assess American interests in Southeast Asia.

I guess if people had listened to his warnings and his report we might not have Ken Burns' program to be watching and America's engagement in Vietnam would have been different.

But he wasn't even the earliest one.

Thomas Jefferson, when he was Minister to France in the 1790s, endeavored to be in contact with Vietnamese princes and emissaries to try to get rice plants that he could bring back to Virginia and North Carolina.

Quinn: One of the earliest American visitors to Vietnam and Cambodia was a woman.

Isabella Stewart Gardner, you may recognize her name, she has a very famous art museum in Boston.

She arrived in 1883 in Saigon and then ventured up the Mekong River to Phnom Penh and was perhaps the first American ever to see the ruins at Angkor Wat.

And, of special interest to Iowans, the first official American ever to serve in Saigon who arrived in 1907 was an Iowan from Mount Pleasant named Jacob Elon Conner.

Now, 60 years later in 1967 when I came to Washington to become a U.S.

Foreign Service Officer, there were about 500,000 Americans in Vietnam.

But I didn't expect that I was going to be one of them.

I was a kid from Dubuque and my vision of being an American diplomat was I'd be going to fancy parties in London, Paris, Vienna if I had to.

But then I was reminded I was 25, I hadn't been in the military, except three years of high school ROTC at Wahlert High School.

I was single and before I knew what happened I was assigned to a year of Vietnamese language training and in November of 1968 I was in a single engine plane landing on a dirt road in Sa Dec Province.

The pilot pulled over, didn't even shut the engines off, they opened the door, told me to get out, threw my bag after me and said, we'll be back in 18 months and if you're still alive we'll take you onto your regular State Department career.

Quinn: So, here I was, not at the embassy, not in the regional capital, not even in the provincial capital, I was assigned to a district, the lowest level of American advisors and I was a rural development advisor and I saw firsthand how building roads and bringing in new miracle rice could actually undercut and defeat the insurgency.

And I learned my first lesson in Vietnam.

And then I was made district senior advisor.

So here I am a civilian, I didn't wear my pinstriped suit and my tie there, but I was out in my khakis and short sleeved shirt and I became the head of a U.S.

Army advisory team.

My call sign was Delta 6 and I went out on those operations, one sergeant and me along with Vietnamese troops, walking through the rice paddies or in the back of a Huey helicopter with the 71st Air Cav of the Vinh Long Army Airfield looking for the Viet Cong who might be going to attack the airfield at night.

And I saw, experienced and learned all the things that U.S.

military personnel experienced.

Quinn: I should add here that there's not one experience in Vietnam.

Those pilots who flew off aircraft carriers or flew in from Thailand, Americans who were part of Army or Marine units up in the northern part of South Vietnam, all had a different kind of experience than helicopter pilots or the Brownwater Navy, PBRs and swiftboats or us advisors at the provincial level, not that one is better or different, they're just all different and everyone has a different experience from the Vietnam War.

But what I learned was that underneath all of this that it was the bond among Americans in combat that was the underlying reality, that when you heard on the radio that a uniformed sierra, which is how we always referred to each other, was in trouble, needed to be rescued, it didn't matter that you didn't know them, had never met them, didn't know their race, religion, ethnicity or the color of their skin, you went and you went to them because you know they would do the same for you.

And it was that bond that sustained us.

I remember once we were going through these mangrove swamps, I got separated from my unit and all of a sudden I'm here sitting in water up to my waist, the forest just nearby, eight, nine feet away there could be Viet Cong in there going to shoot me and then black sergeant, African-American sergeant came back for me.

I remember that black hand coming down and grabbing me and pulling me up, just as I remember those helicopter pilots flying into dangerous situations to assist troops on the ground no matter what the color of their skin was.

That was, here we have 1968, '69, one of the most tumultuous periods of civil rights and race relations, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Washington burning and yet here in this divisive war on the battlefield you found those moments when race disappeared and your American heritage and citizenship and that bond persevered and overcame everything.

Quinn: I was stayed and my 18 months were up, the State Department said, we have good news, you're going to go to Harvard and study labor relations and then we're going to assign you to Western Europe, we're fulfilling your dreams, those diplomatic sugar plums that danced in your head when you first signed up, it's all going to come true.

And I wrote back to the State Department and said, I don't want to go Harvard, I don't want to be trained in labor relations, I don't want to go to Western Europe, I want to stay in Vietnam.

Now, I have to tell you, usually when there's such clear evidence of mental instability the State Department brings you right home, but they were desperate for people to stay in Vietnam and so it was approved and I was there six years and I was there when 1973 and the Paris Agreement came and all the military left and I was out on the Cambodian border, just a couple of us reporting on the situation.

I reported on the first time ever the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian genocidal mass murderers, the worst genocidal terrorists of the second half of the 20th century, and nobody in the government believed my reporting.

Out there suddenly one day a plane landed, gave me my orders, you're assigned to the White House, the National Security Council and I'm on the plane back to Washington there working at the NSC.

I had gone from about as far away from our capital as you could to the heart of it.

I was there when Nixon resigned.

I was in the East Room and Gerry Ford became President.

And I was there as South Vietnam started to fall.

And in March of '75 I was in the cabinet room acting as interpreter for the President as he was dealing with the delegation sent from Saigon.

How could South Vietnam be saved?

And then I went with General Weyand and I'm there less than 30 days before the end in Saigon.

My brother, my wife is from Vietnam, my brother-in-law was an ARVN Ranger, had been killed trying to defend Saigon against the North Vietnamese Army, another brother, officer was lost in the Highlands.

And the devastation was everywhere and it became clear to me that the fate of South Vietnam had been sealed with the Paris Agreement because the South Vietnamese Army had been built and aided and shaped by us to deal with the Viet Cong insurgency but not with the North Vietnamese Army.

The North Vietnamese Army had twice as many divisions as the South.

They had field guns that would fire farther than the field guns we gave the South.

Their anti-aircraft weapons could take down all of the planes we had given the South Vietnamese Air Force.

Without the U.S.

air power, that juggernaut could not be stopped, that was why the war ended up the way it did.

Quinn: And I saw that, I reported it back, I knew there were only a few weeks left for South Vietnam and the ambassador was not doing anything to evacuate people.

And so I got a couple of officers aside and we said, we have to plan our own secret evacuation to have as many Vietnamese there together as we could rescue and support as possible because I had formed a bond with the South Vietnamese officers going out with them in combat.

They became brothers to me as did American military personnel that I operated with.

One night an outpost had been overrun, there was nobody, a South Vietnamese outpost, no way to get in.

The American medivac helicopter came and they said, we have no contact, we can't go to rescue them.

I said, I know where it is.

I got on the helicopter, guided it into the South Vietnamese outpost in the dark of night and we pulled out 30 South Vietnamese troops.

That was the bond I felt to them, it was the bond I felt in 1975 as everything was crashing down.

How could we save those Vietnamese whose loyalty, who had fought side-by-side with us deserved to be helped.

And we did and I went back to Washington and got it approved and we were able to save thousands of Vietnamese refugees in that first tranche.

Quinn: The war came to an end on April 30th.

April 29th the American ambassador, the man who inherited the mantle of Jacob Elon Conner had to flee off the top of the embassy in a helicopter, I think the most ignominious moment of American foreign policy in the history of our country.

The aftermath of the war, 1977, President Carter sent the Woodcock delegation to go to Hanoi to begin the accounting of POW/MIA.

And I remember standing at the airport when the Vietnamese brought up ten caskets of the remains of ten American servicemen.

The North Vietnamese were always respectful.

They placed the caskets on a long table and withdrew.

And then the American crew on our plane came out and placed an American flag on the top of each one.

And as we stood, my hand over my heart, serving as an honor guard, they were carried one-by-one onto the plane.

We were keeping faith with American servicemen whose name I never knew, who I had never met, with whom I had nothing in common other than that bond that said, we will never leave you behind, we will always come for you.

That was the Vietnam experience.

Quinn: But our bond to the South Vietnamese continued as well.

I was loaned to Governor Robert Ray and in 1979 when the Vietnamese boat people started escaping from Vietnam, desperate to live lives of freedom and they would arrive at islands in Southeast Asia and be pushed back out to sea because no country in the world, including the United States of America, was accepting any more refugees.

We had done our part.

And to his everlasting credit, Governor Ray wrote to President Carter and said, Iowa will double the number of refugees from Vietnam that we have already accepted if you, Mr.

President, will only reopen America's doors.

And he went to Washington with a democratic governor, another republican governor and lobbied until in 1979 at the Boat People Conference in Geneva, the United States announced it would take 168,000 refugees from Indochina a year.

And so now there are a million Vietnamese refugees, refugees from Indochina in our country.

But it was the Governor of Iowa who was the first and only governing official in the world who reached out that hand to accept those refugees, to pay back our obligation to them from the war.

Quinn: I was Deputy Assistant Secretary in 1990.

I went to Vietnam and negotiated the first ever entry into a Vietnamese prison.

I was there another time with Senator McCain.

I negotiated the first entry into Cambodia at all, the first information ever given to us by China and I was part of the team who got in the first prison ever in Russia looking for information about our POWs.

And I was part of the effort to normalize relations, to rebuild a relationship with Vietnam and Cambodia at the end of all of this.

I sent a few officers to Hanoi at the beginning and I held the Bible when Pete Peterson, POW/MIA Air Force pilot, was sworn in as first U.S.

Ambassador to Vietnam.

So I learned a lot of lessons along the way, that bond among Americans, the bond that we could feel with our allies and I had one other last lesson I learned from a battle that I call the last battle of the Vietnam War, but it wasn't even really in the Vietnam War, it was the Mayaguez.

So two weeks after Saigon fell, the Khmer Rouge seized an American ship named the Mayaguez off the coast of Cambodia.

And they were holding the crew hostage.

President Ford ordered an assault on an island where we thought they were held and it was a fierce battle and there were 18 American servicemen who lost their life in that battle.

The crew was freed but those bodies were never recovered.

Quinn: 1996 I'm the U.S.

Ambassador, the Khmer Rouge have been dispersed and we're out on Tang Island looking for the remains of those servicemen and we were finding some.

And then a young Army captain came over to me and he said, sir, some of the Khmer Rouge veterans who are here helping us now have told me a story.

And the story was that somehow in that battle in 1975, three American Marines were left alive on this island and somehow in the fog of war no one realized that and no one ever went back for them.

And there they were on this island, no way out, and anyone might have thought they reasonably would have surrendered and become prisoners of war.

But those three men, Joseph Hargrove, Gary Hall and Danny Williams, didn't surrender.

They never gave up.

They evaded as long as they could until one-by-one they were captured and executed.

I thought their sacrifice deserved to be recognized and so I built my own wall, a marble plaque, at the Ambassador's residence, now at the Embassy, with their names on it.

They were the last casualties of the Vietnam War.

But they gave through their actions the truest possible meaning of the model of the Marine Corp and really which was the motto of everyone who served in Vietnam, Semper Fi.

Thank you very much.

(applause) (applause) ♪♪ Hello, I'm Dean Borg.

The United States involvement in South Vietnam was a time of intensity.

Of course, the intensity of war, but also the intensity of emotions for and against this nation's involvement in a Southeast Asian war.

Now, a half century later, we're still trying to understand it.

Perhaps no other memorial, for example, evokes as much emotion, visitors standing silently trying to comprehend the immensity of sacrifice depicted on that Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.

We're convening a panel of men who experienced that war firsthand, individuals whose lives were forever changed by what happened a half century ago in Vietnam.

Borg: Panelists Caesar Smith, career Army officer now living in Iowa, two tours of duty in South Vietnam, 1964 and 1968.

Dan Gannon, Marine Corp Captain serving in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970 but more than 300 days in combat.

He currently chairs the Iowa Commission of Veterans Affairs.

Hien Van Le, 21 years in the military, Lieutenant Colonel hitting military intelligence in the South Vietnamese Marine Corp from 1970 until Saigon fell in April of 1975, then imprisoned for 10 years, eventually resettling in Des Moines, part of the re-education center detainee resettlement program.

That was a program that now Senator from Arizona John McCain was sponsoring.

Another guest, Bao Cam Lo, Lieutenant Colonel in the South Vietnamese Army.

He was a chief and sector commander for Fu Bahn Province.

He participated in several battles against the Viet Cong.

North Vietnamese prisoner also for more than 13 years.

And also Vinh Nguyen who will be acting as an interpreter.

Vinh is now President of the Vietnamese-American community in Iowa.

Gentlemen, welcome.

Borg: And I might say too, I've told these gentlemen that we're going to dispense with formality and I want them and I want you to understand who are watching and listening that this is going to be an informal conversation.

I want to back out of it as a moderator and I want your emotions and your experiences to be shared firsthand.

And it's important I think to understand, Hien and Bao, the French were involved before the Americans arrived.

So what was the reason the French were involved and defeated in South Vietnam before Americans even came?

(Bao Cam Lo speaking) After World War II the French government came back to Vietnam in 1945 to recolonize Vietnam but also to stop the spread of Communism at that time.

When the French came back to Vietnam the American government actually supported the French by supplying them with weapons and ammunition.

Borg: And Hien, what was your role at that time when the French were back in South Vietnam?

(Hien Van Le speaking) I joined the Army in 1954.

When I graduated from the Vietnam Military Academy I was sent to North Vietnam to participate in the battlefield of Dien Bien Phu.

When we got to Hanoi the fighting was so intense therefore we could not get close to the battlefield.

Borg: The famous battle where the French finally decided it's time to get out of Vietnam was Dien Bien Phu.

What happened?

And why did the French leave?

(Bao Cam Lo speaking) When the French first engaged the Viet Minh in the Dien Bien Phu battle they underestimated the Viet Minh.

In the beginning, the French sent five battalions of paratroopers into Dien Bien Phu to fight one division of the Viet Minh.

But Dien Bien Phu is a valley and the French were surrounded.

The French would never imagine that the Viet Minh would be able to receive food and supplies in the mountains surrounding Dien Bien Phu.

The French never imagined the Viet Minh would be able to pull heavy artillery up there.

They pulled 105 millimeter canons up there.

The Viet Minh was strongly supported by the Chinese and the Russians because of the spread of Communism at that time.

Borg: So to summarize, the French just vastly underestimated the strength of the opposition.

And that brings you, Caesar, in because America then, President John F. Kennedy at the time that you were going into South Vietnam, American sentiment was we cannot let this portion of Southeast Asia fall to Communism.

And so we began to send in advisors to South Vietnam, you among them, Caesar.

Tell us about your first experiences there trying to help the South Vietnamese resist the North Vietnamese, the Viet Cong.

Smith: Let me, I hope my voice is loud enough.

Let me start off by saying, if you see me shaking, I'm not cold, I've got Parkinson's and so from good old Agent Orange and so when I get excited I shake a lot.

And so if you get excited you can shake with me.

(laughter) (applause) Borg: There may be some who are watching who weren't a part of that generation at that time to know that that Agent Orange you were exposed to in Vietnam because Agent Orange was sprayed by the United States in the jungle area to defoliate and try to expose hiding places for the enemy.

The resulting Parkinson's is a result of being in South Vietnam.

Now, go ahead.

Smith: The training and classes we got before we went about what happened -- Ho Chi Minh was Communist and after World War II, this is what we received in terms of information, after World War II Ho Chi Minh wanted everybody out if you weren't Vietnamese.

It was time for the country to be Vietnam.

And the French wanted to come in and colonize again.

And so what the other powers to be in not wanting Communism they went back.

During that period -- and once they got the French out the fear of the Communists under Ho Chi Minh taking over the country, our idea was initially to send over advisors to assist with advising the Vietnamese Army and fighting the war.

Borg: Caesar, how did that go?

Was that a popular thing?

Were you accepted well as an American advisor?

And were you able to help the South Vietnamese?

Or what went wrong?

Smith: Good question.

(laughter) Smith: I wish I knew what went wrong.

But I think in terms of acceptance I've always struggled with I wasn't sure whether the Vietnamese wanted the Americans in but they did want their country back and if it was going to help get everybody out.

Then you've got to realize too at the same time we were coming in to advise and help, I'm sure in the back of some's minds they were going to end up being under Americans instead of under French.

And so in terms of how much acceptance I'm not sure which way it would go but I never felt like I wasn't accepted.

I felt like the soldiers I worked with, the people in the country were as open as they could be.

Borg: But the things went downhill.

Smith: I don't know if they went downhill, they hadn't gone up the hill yet.

(laughter) (applause) Smith: Remember, once they got the French out, and I'm not Vietnamese by any means, but once they got the French out I'm sure in most of their minds now it's going to be our country, and yet they didn't want the Communists, they wanted to be free.

And they saw us as coming in to help them get it free but in terms of where they were at that particular time, the power was with Ho Chi Minh and the North Vietnamese Army more so than the South.

Borg: Hien, you were there at that time when American advisors were coming in.

Were they welcome?

And were they helpful?

(Hien Van Le speaking) I was in the battlefield when the U.S.

advisor was sent to us.

They were very welcome with open hands and open heart.

The U.S.

advisor treated us very well also.

Borg: If that was true, Hien, then why did America have to commit actual combat troops?

If they were there and helpful to you advising why were you not strong enough to resist the North Vietnamese?

(Hien Van Le speaking) The U.S.

advisors were welcome and were treated very well in Vietnam.

But it doesn't mean that the South Vietnam did not need more support.

We needed more support to fight Communism.

Borg: Go ahead, Caesar.

Smith: I was never comfortable at any time thinking the battalion, I worked for the Vietnamese battalion in Ca Mau Peninsula in South Vietnam when I first got there in '64 and the battalion commander of the Vietnamese battalion had fought in World War II against the Japanese and then he fought against the French.

Now, you've got to realize the next thing around we're telling him he's got to fight against his own people and I'm not sure in his mind it made much sense.

But this is just me taking from my perspective.

It would be very difficult to say we've finally got everybody out of the country, now I've got to fight my own people and I'm not sure the Communists, the strength of Communism as we saw it was as strong with every soldier that was fighting.

But they did, I was never fighting with them and I didn't feel that they were not trying to do the best they could.

But at the same time, I'll say this, at the same time I know there were times when we were going out on operation and there would be part of the field in front of the jungle we were supposed to go through and the battalion commander said, no we're not going to go that way, we're going to go a different way.

Why?

Because the forces in there were stronger than what he had and he wasn't stupid.

And he said, I know you want us to go that way but we're going to survive if we don't go that way.

I wasn't going to argue with that kind of logic.

Borg: You were smart.

That's why you're sitting here today.

But let me say, there were thousands of more Americans when you got back there in 1968 -- Smith: I think there were 500,000.

Borg: Yes, the war -- Smith: There were 30 when I went in, 30,000 when I got there in '64, 500,000 when I went back.

It was worse in '68 than it was in '64.

Borg: And when you went back the second time what was your mindset as to how things had changed?

Smith: You're asking some hard questions.

Well, one thing for sure I think Ho Chi Minh and the North Vietnamese felt they could win.

They felt that from the beginning because they could outlast I think what we were doing.

When you're in another world, another country fighting their war they don't have to worry about going home, they're already home.

And I think they felt no matter how long or what it was going to take, for once and for all he was going to get everybody out of his country.

That's a strong sentiment to feel and you're going to fight it a lot harder than an American coming in to help you get Communism out of your country, that's one thing.

But we went in and knowing what our mission was we still did what we could do in terms of that mission.

But 500,000 or 5 million are not going to run people out of their own country if they decided to stay.

If they don't fight an all-out strong war they're going to go behind lines but continue to fight.

That was obvious.

Borg: Did you volunteer to return to South Vietnam for the second tour?

Were you so committed at what you had seen as an advisor earlier that now you knew what was going on in South Vietnam, did you want to get back there and say, now America has resources, I'm no longer an advisor, we are fighting this war on our own?

Smith: Well, let me put it into perspective.

I was a second lieutenant when I got a call from the Pentagon to go the first time.

They said, you've got orders for Korea but you can volunteer for Vietnam.

I'm a career soldier and at that time not ever having been in a war I figured it would be better for my career if I go where the war is as opposed to Korea.

So I volunteered to go to Vietnam.

The second time I had been there already, been there, done it, was not sure I wanted to do it again.

So when I got orders, they didn't ask me the second time whether I wanted to go, they sent me orders.

Borg: But when you got those orders you of course went because you were a career officer.

But what was your mindset?

I may not return?

Smith: No, my mindset was I know I'm going to have a unit, we're going to do the best we can, I'm going to do the best I can to get everybody back home without losing anyone.

Borg: Dan Gannon, now we're to about 1969, we're past the intense Tet Offensive and you went back just after that massive show of power by the North Vietnamese.

What did you encounter at that time?

And did you go willingly?

Gannon: I don't know if I have the same humor that Caesar has, but did I go willingly?

Well, I graduated from Iowa State.

Iowa State, everybody an Iowa State fan?

(applause) Go Hawks!

Smith: See that's another war we don't want to fight.

Gannon: I graduated in 1968, I was going to the service, I was going to be drafted.

I had a brother that was shot, severely wounded in Vietnam and I figure, I've got to go get those suckers, you know, I've got to do something about that.

Borg: The reason that I'm saying, did you go willingly, is that you had by that time the intensity of protest in the United States was at a fever pitch.

And I want to know, did you go willingly because you felt that patriotism?

Or did you go because you were ordered and you knew the ferment that was back in this country already at a fever pitch against that war?

Gannon: Well, I knew I was going to go because of the draft situation because once I graduated from Iowa State they were going to draft you within two weeks and that's where I signed up for the officer program at Quantico.

Did I go willingly and did I get involved with any of that?

No.

When I was at Iowa State, that's the thing that is kind of bothersome to me, I didn't run into a lot of the protesting at that time in the first part of '68.

It was there.

I guess I wasn't as concerned about that.

I guess I was more concerned if I have to go I want to go do my job as my parents had raised me.

So I went to go serve my country.

I was a patriotic person.

I felt that I was needed there.

And that's why I went.

Borg: Did that patriotism erode at all while you were in South Vietnam?

Gannon: No.

I think that it became even stronger as far as me wanting to do my job because -- Borg: What did you see there that made it stronger?

Gannon: My fellow soldiers, the troops that were in my unit.

I think there's an indelible mark that is placed on you when you go to combat.

And if you've never been there it's hard to explain, if you've never been in a fire fight.

But it's a camaraderieship of a job that has to be done and the teamwork that we fought to get that job done.

And I think it was just we wanted to win the battle.

And I never had any doubts about what we were doing, I never had any questions about what we were doing and at that same time we were kind of buffered in Vietnam based on what was going on at home I think.

Borg: You mentioned fire fight, were you in a fire fight?

Gannon: I was in many fire fights and sometimes they'd last a few seconds, sometimes they could last two or three days.

For those that have never been in a fire fight I can call it controlled chaos because that's what it feels like you are, like everything it out of control.

Part of that has to do with it is so noisy and there is so much activity going on.

But within at least I can say for the Marine Corp within your training, based on subordinance, a platoon leader, squad leaders, fire team leaders, it was a very controlled situation.

Of course those goals may not come out exactly the way you want them.

In other words, a fire fight you might have it planned a certain way, it just doesn't come out that way.

But the overall mission was to be successful.

And I can say to all of you here that every fire fight that we were in, we were successful and we were very proud of what we did for our country.

Borg: Caesar and Dan, when we talk about fire fights, as I saw South Vietnam it wasn't a battle of tanks, we see tanks today in Iraq and in Afghanistan and so on and mobile vehicles and so on, the terrain in South Vietnam was not like that.

It was going through jungle paths.

Paint that picture for me, Caesar, and Dan you fill in too.

I want you to tell me what it was like in South Vietnam going through rice paddies and jungle where there were trip wires and land mines.

Go ahead.

Gannon: Go ahead.

Smith: Well, I'll give you a quick part of a mission, I probably won't go too far because I'll get too emotional about it.

But you've got to realize you're fighting in 102, 103 degree weather.

It's always hot.

You're getting off a helicopter in a clearing that may be 100 yard clearing before you hit the tree line, it may be 50 yard clearing before you hit the tree line.

But you've got to realize going in you're already nervous, upset, you're shaking like you've got Parkinson's because you're getting ready to get off a plane and then enemy might be right in that tree line and is going to shoot at you and you don't know.

So your adrenaline is up and you're already sweating, you've got a 70 pound bag on your back, about 10 canteens of water you want to carry with you, your weapon and ammunition.

You hop off the helicopter, sometimes they land it, sometimes it hovers, you jump off and you start running.

Now you're running to the tree line in the heat.

Now, fortunately if they're not shooting at you, you get to that tree line but then you've still got to keep moving.

So all that alone, we haven't even talked about nobody shooting at you, we're just talking about getting off a helicopter and getting to the woods.

Then if you get into a fire fight down in there at that particular time as Dan was saying then it's, well you said it was organized chaos, I think at times it was just chaos.

I had a radio man talking to the artillery to bring in artillery fire and talking to gunships to bring in fire from helicopters, anybody that could shoot you're trying to get to shoot at the enemy wherever they were located, trying to get the fire off of you.

Sometimes it was so heavy you stayed there and fought but you weren't moving forward.

And of course your commander, mine was Colonel Bolling and I was the 3rd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne.

I wasn't a Marine but I was airborne.

(applause) Smith: Our commander, Colonel Bolling, General Bolling at the time was in the helicopter way up there, his call sign was Knight Rider, mine was Apache 6.

Apache 6, this is Knight Rider, how's it going?

Now I'm thinking, I'm down here ducking and trying to talk to somebody about getting out of this fight and I've got a general up there asking me how's it going.

But anyway, there's no way really to describe, you're contacting your platoons.

If they're under fire how many casualties do they have?

How many wounded do they got?

Anybody killed?

And if anybody dies you can't get them out during that fight, if they're wounded the medical ships will always come in to get a wounded but they're not going to sacrifice themselves if the person is already dead.

They're going to wait until you get out of there.

One time we had to carry -- Borg: It's alright, it's okay.

Dan, why don't you take over here for a minute.

Gannon: He said it all.

Smith: We had to carry three days to get out.

Gannon: It's okay, fella.

Just to talk about the controlled chaos and the whole issue of the fire fight, there's so many things going on.

For example, I was a platoon leader, I wasn't a company commander that Caesar was, so I was answering to a company commander and my platoon had anywhere from 40, 30 up to about 50 depending on how many casualties.

And in a fire fight I never fired a weapon.

And someone said, well you never fired a weapon?

Well, if I was firing a weapon I wasn't doing my job.

Platoon leader it's not their job to fire a weapon.

My principle weapon was a .45.

Did I carry an M16 once in a while?

Yes, if we were on small fire team ambush sites.

But your job is to control it.

So you've got three squad leaders in a platoon, they've each got radios, you've got a company commander that is talking to you, do you need close air support or do you need artillery and all this stuff is planned.

I talk about chaos and planned, when you go out on a patrol and you're going to make contact you have taken the time ahead of time to go to the artillery, to go to the air and you pre-plan on call targets so you're pretty much set up to run the battle.

Now, you have to be able to adjust.

But not only you're talking to the company commander, you're talking to your squad leaders, you're talking to a medivac helicopter coming in, you might be talking to a cobra gunship that is above you.

All this stuff is going on at once and you have to be able to control it and that's where I call it controlled chaos.

But it's very orchestrated, it runs well, not always come out with the same result but that's the life of the platoon leader in combat.

Borg: One of the things that became unpopular was the president and the woman who represented the female side of the Vietnamese government and her name was Madame Nhu.

Madame Nhu was often called the Dragon Lady too.

And one of the things because there were Buddhist monks in South Vietnam who in protest against the war and in support of peace perhaps, she described the immolation, the self-immolation of some of those monks setting themselves on fire, she dismissed it as barbeques.

(Hien Van Le speaking) I did want to mention the fact of the matter is when King Bao Dai left Vietnam, Premier Ngo Dinh Diem was elected to be the first President of the Republic of South Vietnam.

Mr.

Nhu was the new President's brother.

He became the President's advisor.

Madame Nhu, Mr.

Nhu's wife, was called the Dragon Lady.

The President and his family were a Catholic family and they ran the government very strictly.

But the fact of the matter is at the time Viet Cong had been disguised as monks.

They could be friend during the day and enemy during the night.

They were a Catholic run government and therefore the Viet Cong knew that.

They used the monks and Buddhism to push their agenda.

So many times they actually doing it because anything else but being pushed by the Viet Cong to do so.

Borg: Another incident that had worldwide publicity, in Saigon, that is now Ho Chi Minh City, but it was Saigon at that time, there was a photograph of an execution of a suspected Viet Cong person who had, a young man, just looked like a teenager, who had been arrested and a gun was being held to his head and then the photograph was taken right at the time the trigger was pulled and you could see the impact.

That photograph was instrumental also in turning U.S.

opinion against our involvement with a government that would allow such a thing to happen.

(Hien Van Le speaking) I would like to share a few details that few people know about that incident.

General Nguyen Ngoc Loan who executed that young man was my supervisor at the time.

Nobody knows that earlier that day the man who was executed, Bay Lop, had killed six people in one family.

The head of that family was a South Vietnamese officer.

The officer, his wife and four of their children were killed by that man before he was brought to General Nguyen Ngoc Loan.

The fifth child was not killed by Bay Lop because he was at a festival.

The fifth child now serves in the U.S.

Army.

Borg: I want to go back now to Dan and Caesar.

As you came back to this nation, Caesar, you said you had a great deal of patriotism as you went over for these two tours.

As you came back and witnessed this nation, what was the reception?

Smith: I think it's very difficult for an American and in terms of patriotism I don't think any soldier, I don't think any American questions their own patriotism, it's there.

They don't talk about it but it's there.

So whether you're in a war or not it's there if you're truly an American.

But one of the difficult things for our country and the people in our country is to separate three things, patriotism of being an American, politics and war.

Soldiers go to war to do the job they were asked to do, everybody should support that soldier no matter what your politics are.

But politics get involved and mess up the whole thing.

(applause) Smith: I think part of the problem we were running into -- I never understood now some of my guys when they got back home they got spit on.

I wore my uniform all the time, I was not there trying to dare somebody to spit on me, but nobody ever did, which I'm glad because I'm not sure whether or not I'd be sitting here or in jail at this particular time.

But we weren't accepted back, my radio man lives in Florida and I'm worried about him right now, but when he came back he got spit on.

But, again, it's back to if you really pinpoint the person down and ask them why, what are they upset about that that soldier did, I'm not sure they could give you a true answer.

But we were -- after World War II we went into Korea, this country is fed up just like it is now with Afghanistan.

We were fed up with war.

But you don't take it out on the military, the military is there to do the job that the country is asking them to do.

If you want to change that then you're getting away from, you're getting into politics.

But no one should ever treat a soldier the way we were treated when we came back from Vietnam.

(applause) Gannon: I'll tag onto what Caesar said.

I believe the same thing so I don't need to repeat that.

But when I came home from Vietnam I think we were flown into, I don't even know where we came into because you were kind of numb from your involvement in the war, you were kind of in a third person position because you're going from a hostile environment into a peaceful environment and you aren't sure whether you're going to get there or not.

And we flew into California, again I don't know where we landed, we came in the middle of the night and I think that was designed for that reason so we wouldn't have that kind of treatment.

I had one year left in the Marine Corp out at Twentynine Palms.

Now, I had to go back out there so that kind of kept me buffered from some of the stuff because I was on a military base.

But I had to, on Friday before they went on, we had as part of our safety briefing we had to make sure we told the Marines, do not wear your uniform when you're out and about because you're just going to create problems.

Now, it's kind of hard to disguise a Marine who has got a high and tight haircut.

In other words, they know you are but don't make it worse.

So I think we had more issues then.

But as far as coming home didn't have any issues, I think it's how I came home and where I went after I came home.

Borg: I want to explore with you, Hien, your time of imprisonment in North Vietnam, it was being termed as a re-education time for you.

What was that like?

How much was re-education and how much of that was physical abuse?

And did you feel abandoned?

(Hien Van Le speaking) When you say re-education camp that's the term the Communist government used.

For us it was truly a prison.

In 1973 when the Americans withdrew from Vietnam we were in the battlefield.

We already felt abandoned by our ally, we already felt that we didn't have enough artillery to fight the war, we didn't have enough supplies.

We didn't have the support of the American government anymore.

So when we got captured and sent to prison that validated our feeling about being betrayed.

Suddenly, your ally withdrew from the war and now you are captured, you're in prison.

The Communist government were not going to kill hundreds and hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese soldiers.

They wanted to kill us slowly.

The Americans signed the Paris Agreement with North Vietnam and South Vietnam signed it with the Viet Cong.

The Communist government wanted us to die slowly in the prison camps.

So that is why we felt very much betrayed by the American government at the time.

We had to do hard labor, hard labor every single day for many hours.

What did we have for breakfast?

Corn, I counted 90 kernels for breakfast at one time.

And we had to do hard labor for the Communist government days in and days out.

Borg: The same question to Bao.

(Bao Cam Lo speaking) So let's go back to the pressure that Caesar is talking about here.

He talks about politics, the Paris Peace Talks had put South Vietnam at a disadvantage.

The pressure from the people in America forbade the President to support the Vietnam War.

The Congress forbade the U.S.

government from continuing to supply the South Vietnamese government because of all of the demonstrations in America.

The people in America were protesting, they didn't want the war any more.

Yes, so here we are with our hands tied by many things right after the Paris Agreement was signed in 1973.

South Vietnam was the outpost of fighting Communism at the time.

You have to remember many countries in Southeast Asia had the Communist Party, but during the 20 years of fighting against Communism, the Communist Party was suppressed from Indonesia, from the Philippines, from Malaysia and also in Thailand.

Borg: Caesar and Dan, you have just heard the Vietnamese colleagues that you spent part of your lives defending felt betrayed and abandoned.

Did you feel that you did not, were you able to do what you were setting out to do, Caesar, initially as an advisor and then later as an actual combatant in fire fights?

Do you feel that America pulled out and your commitment, your experiences in Vietnam were for naught?

Smith: I think you've got to look at it from more than one perspective.

War is not the answer to anything, never has been.

(applause) Smith: When we were in Korea and we pushed North Korea all the way up, MacArthur wanted to keep going and he had to think about China and it got into politics and whether or not you can keep fighting.

When you think about it, how long could we have fought?

And how many lives would have been lost?

We don't have the numbers that China has in terms of people to give up and we're not willing to do that.

Do I feel that I betrayed them?

I feel there's no one answer to that question.

I could understand if I was a Vietnamese soldier fighting with an American soldier against the Communists and then I turn around and the American soldier is gone and I'm still here fighting, yeah I could see where you could feel betrayed.

I don't think that's the question.

The unfortunate situation was we couldn't continue to do what we do and lose more American lives.

I kept asking myself in the south, when are the troops going to go north?

We weren't going north.

We weren't going to win the war in the South just like we didn't win the war in Korea.

So no, I understand them feeling betrayed, it was a shame, but we were not the answer to that problem.

Borg: Dan, that brings up a question that many Americans and military people at that time were complaining about, including perhaps General Westmoreland, who was in charge of American forces in South Vietnam, is that America was not allowed to do politically what military advisors said was necessary to win in South Vietnam.

In other words, some say we fought with one hand tied behind our back, we were not allowed to bomb certain bridges in Hanoi, for example.

Go ahead.

Gannon: I don't know if I looked at it so much politically.

It was a painful thing for me when I got home when the North Vietnamese went south, it was extremely painful, it was a painful experience for me, I had a lot of depression and a lot of issues over that because we fought for so many days and we lost so many of our great warriors for what?

Borg: Well did you feel then betrayed by your own country?

Gannon: I felt betrayed by my own country for the fact that I went and fought, I went and fought for the country, I fought for ideals and you've got to remember back in those times you thought we have to stop Communism, that's how we drew up, ever since the end of World War II, the Communism, the Truman Doctrine, the domino theory, if we don't stop it, it's going to keep growing and growing.

So when we went there, at least when I went there, one of the reasons I went that I felt strong about, we're going to go and we're going to stop Communism.

I always felt we fought the war on the wrong, in the wrong country.

You've got to remember South Vietnam or Vietnam is not much bigger than Iowa.

We had 500,000 troops there.

Why can't we win that?

Well, I just felt like we didn't fight it to win it and I think that's where the politics got involved.

If we would have went north of the DMZ and fought up there I think it would have been ended and ended quite quickly but there was a lot more going on in the war than what the soldier was doing.

Nguyen: Can I translate to you?

(translating) (applause) Gannon: I want to say just one other thing.

Because of that we get ourselves into war for what reasons?

Is it politics?

Is it folks to make money?

Whatever it is we don't take a look at why we go there.

And if we go there do the people want it?

You can't impose Americanism on everybody and the reason you can't do that -- (applause) Gannon: They have their life, maybe they want Communism, I don't know, but to go impose that will on them and we want you to be like Americans, that might not be what they want.

That's the same problem that's going on in the Middle East and the same quagmire we were in Vietnam, we're over there trying to impose something on them and if they don't want it and the will of the people don't want it, we're not going to win the war, it's that simple.

Borg: Let me ask then to Bao, America came in and dictated your war.

Did you feel that you were overwhelmed and your advice was not followed?

Apparently you felt differently about how the war should be conducted.

Did you feel that it was America's war and you were being used and ordered, given orders by Americans in your own country?

(Bao Cam Lo speaking) I received a lot of training from the U.S.

Army.

I was at Fort Pendleton for training many times in the Army.

One thing we had to follow is the total leadership, uniform leadership from the top to the bottom.

Borg: I want to ask if they all were aware that America was withdrawing and being forced out of its embassy in Saigon?

What was their feeling?

And then I'd like to have Caesar answer first.

What was your feeling when America was withdrawing in haste trying to escape from Saigon?

Smith: I wish I could tell you exactly what I was feeling at the time.

Borg: Why can't you?

Smith: It's hard to draw, go back to -- I was home, I was watching it on television like everyone else at that time, I came back in '69.

And after I got back and I looked back at everything that had happened I knew we were about ready to cash in and get on out of there.

And the fact that it was happening after everything had been done I had an emotion of I'm glad we're not going to lose any more of our soldiers over there, but at the same time this is a terrible way to have to leave the country.

Borg: You were saying really, let's cut our losses.

Smith: Well, yeah.

Borg: Cut bait and get out.

Smith: If you're going to go, go and the longer you wait and you know that the North Vietnam Army is going to keep coming forward, you're either going to have to fight and fight, they weren't going to stop fighting and let you plan for the next year to strategically withdraw.

That wasn't going to happen.

We knew that wasn't going to happen, at least I don't think it was going to happen.

They were going to continue to fight and push so we had to make a decision and make it and get out.

Now remember, I was just a lonely little soldier.

All the things that was going on the political side of the war I have no idea why they said get out and get out now.

But if we had decided to go we had to go and there was no easy way out.

Borg: Dan?

Gannon: Well, because of the pressure at home Congress just cut the funds.

With no funds we couldn't stay there and they literally had no money to stay there.

It was still very painful for me for all the sacrifices and all the loss of my soldiers to see us leave that way.

I wish we could have left some other way.

Before they cut the funds the North Vietnamese hadn't moved south but once the funds were done, and they knew that, so we basically told them we're going to leave.

And they were at the gates ready to come south and once the decision was made in the U.S.

and we started pulling everybody out then they just came south.

It was still a very painful day for me when that happened, when that tank went through the fence there at the embassy and how we left the whole thing, it was a very painful day for me to do that.

Borg: In fact, what you're really saying is, we weren't allowed to withdraw with dignity.

Gannon: And we could have.

(Bao Cam Lo speaking) I was in despair at the time.

I was in Saigon near the end of the war.

We had to stay in somebody's house.

I remember I didn't want to live anymore.

I lost all my troops, I lost all of my associates but I still had a gun with me to protect myself.

I remember my wife and eight of our children, we didn't have a bed to sleep on so they were laying on the floor of somebody's house.

The thought came to me that I actually wanted to commit suicide, to kill myself and my entire family.

But when I decided to do that I looked at the children laying on the floor.

I couldn't handle the emotions.

I decided to throw my gun away.

I experienced total despair.

I was totally out of it at the time.

Smith: I still don't know whether or not we had a choice on withdrawing.

I have no idea, no vision of what withdrawing with dignity would even look like in Vietnam.

How long would it take?

What kind of agreements do you have to have with the north?

Are they willing to go to those agreements?

And even if they did and we did it with dignity I guess you'd call after World War II what the Japanese did was end the war with dignity but I'm not sure that would have been okay either.

I don't think there was an answer.

Gannon: It would have been a tough answer.

The difficult thing, we're back in the same thing again, we didn't learn from it.

We're back in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, how are we going to get out of that?

And how are we going to get out of that with any type of dignity or what we really want out of it and that is peace in that part of the world?

But the people there have to want it, they have to fight for their own country and stand up and fight the terrorism, fight ISIS, it can't be just the U.S.

doing this all over the world.

The other countries and the rest of the world have to step forward to help us with that.

(applause) Borg: I just want to clarify, are you saying that America was doing everything in South Vietnam that it could have and that South Vietnam was not contributing and that South Vietnamese people did not really want you there?

You've just heard just the opposite here, they felt abandoned, these two people, but South Vietnamese people in general?

Gannon: I don't think they did not want us there and I think they wanted their country back but the problem is you've got to remember what was going on there.

It wasn't just the NVA, it was the Viet Cong, the Viet Cong they're the folks that infiltrated the south and they had to deal with that, they had to deal with that too.

But I don't know if they had the will to do that.

And you've got to remember, you've got a lot of very rural agricultural parts of that country, they really want to be just left alone, let's raise my rice, let's feed my family and there was a lot of pressure being placed throughout the country, through the VC, on those families whether it was taxation, whether we take your kids and they go north.

So you had a lot of internal things going on.

But it goes back to the fact, if we wanted to win the war, as small as that place was, we were fighting in the wrong country.

Once we started to bomb Hanoi, now we're talking about war here, if we go to war we've got to go to win the war, not go to sort of win the war, we've got to go win the war.

If you're going to win the war, with the power we had, if we would have went to North Vietnam instead of South Vietnam, fought our way through then we would have ended it, ended it with dignity and it would have ended eight or nine years earlier because it was a small country.

But we didn't do that, we set up all these games, we set up all these rules of engagement, it's just like Hanoi, the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Where was the Ho Chi Minh trail?

It wasn't in Vietnam, it was in the other country, so we couldn't even go do that and do it by what the rules of engagement were.

And a lot of us in Vietnam, soldiers were not happy about that.

If we're going to stop this let us go do that.

Borg: Hien has already told us that he felt abandoned.

If he were to return now to South Vietnam or if he had remained there would his life, would he even be alive?

Is there a ransom, is there a price on his head?

(Hien Van Le speaking) When the North Vietnamese advanced to the South they were considered to be the winner of the war and the South Vietnamese were the losers.

We were treated very differently.

We were the second class citizens.

Nobody in South Vietnam wanted to live in a Communist system.

There was a saying at the time, if the telephone poles knew how to walk they would have left Vietnam.

Borg: Was it worth it?

Should this war have ever have been fought?

Was there anything gained?

(Hien Van Le speaking) If you want my true opinion, America won the war, we won the war.

If you look at all the Communist countries and counted them right now, how many are left?

All of Eastern Europe rejected Communism, Cuba is asking for help.

Where else does Communism exist?

Only in a few places.

So if you consider the purpose of the Vietnam War was to stop the spread of Communism, America had truly won the war.

(applause) Borg: Caesar, last question, last comment from anyone, you have the final word.

As you stand in front of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., as you stand in front of the Vietnam Memorial at the Iowa Statehouse grounds, what word describes how you feel?

Smith: I can't put it into a word, I can't give you a word.

The emotions that brings when I think about my unit and my troops and those who died there and those who died from disease caused by Vietnam, when I think of what the Vietnamese people have gone through, you can't -- you can ask me for a word but I can't give you a word.

I think the Vietnamese people were wonderful, I think their country was a wonderful country.

It's sad that we had what we had and all of us that came back and everybody came back suffering, you don't go to a war and not come back suffering.

There is no one word, not for me.

Borg: Thank you for putting it into many words and for putting it so beautifully.

Thank you.

(applause) Borg: Thank you to all of our panelists for sharing their experiences.

They have certainly added to my insight and understanding and I hope for yours too.

This important part of our nation's history is important for us to understand and we have certainly enjoyed hearing, as painful as it has been, the recounting of these experiences today.

For all of us here at Iowa Public Television, thank you for joining us.

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