Not just me.

Here comes Steve.

You two together then?

There we go.

It's a chance to put a close to things.

I think it'll just being there, will be our closure.

Just to, have some closure.

Hopefully, see where this one bat battle was.

It's probably one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.

And even though it was dangerous, I mean, it just it was just a beautiful country.

I'm hoping that we get a chance maybe to meet with Vietnamese veterans.

I don't know if we will or not.

I just said sometime I would like to go back and see what I did.

I just always said to myself, one day I'd like to go back to see it when they're not shooting at me.

There was a little bit of an apprehension how everybody would kind of react.

Andy and Steve particularly, they were frontline.

Very different.

Ray as a medic at Khe Sanh, that was frontline as well.

You had Ben, who was a pilot.

So I mean, he had a totally different perspective.

In my case, security police, I mean, that was nobody understood what we did.

And then you had Lou, who was an officer and an advisor, and that being an advisor is a totally different kind of a reaction as well.

But the 6 Vietnam vets, that bond just became so instantaneous.

Number one green.

There was nothing.

Andy.

Nice to meet you.

Graham, Larry.

Nice to meet you.

Don Kirby.

Larry Wood.

How many of you guys came?

Were Army.

6 Vietnam vets one Vietnam era vet.

What year?

I was ‘71-72.

‘71-72.

‘67-68.

Yeah, but I was 13 when I came.

You tended not not to run into very many Vietnam vets when you came home.

Guys just didn't talk about it.

Took a while before I felt comfortable talking.

And especially after seeing other guys that have been there who didn't want to say anything about it.

It probably.

Probably 20 years, 25 years, even.

The general public was usually against it.

They were, in fact calling people baby killers.

At one instance, when I first went to Pa Train, I remember a brand new butter bar and this guy called me a baby killer.

I remember being whenever I came back and being spit on, you were being told by your own other veterans, you know, of World War Two and Korea that you were somehow inferior.

You didn't win your war, so you didn't you didn't really interact with each other very often.

It's only been later that we now get to talk.

On this part of what we're working with, Veterans Breakfast Club, is that now we're talking about less than 1% of the US population is directly involved, you know, with with the military.

And so this military civilian divide is really it's it's getting greater all the time.

That was one of the reasons why I got involved in working in the veterans community, because, you know, I, I've scratched my head why some people come home and they just never get adjusted.

The several times that I've been to Washington, and you see people at the wall and some people they've never gotten past 1965 or 69.

They're still there.

There's guys there that are still in Vietnam.

You know, there they are still there.

And they they haven't left for a minute.

You know, being able to discuss it, to talk about it, to share it at that matters a lot.

It really helps just to, I don't know, cleanse the soul if you will.

Oh that's great.

From the first day we go out there to the day we left, I found the whole trip just fascinating.

I just really did.

I got to know the people better because when I was there 50 years ago, because it was the war, I didn't trust them.

And now I got to know how really nice they are.

Oh, no.

See you!

Thank you.

Bye!

A little bit.

Thank you.

All right.

Come on.

Next time.

Right.

And then.

There you go.

Yeah.

General military always has plans to knock out.

And so this was dug later, right?

These trenches here, these are all fake.

Phony.

This is Disney.

Yeah.

Well, no, I always just double double blades, right?

Yeah.

I always thought they were going to fall out of the sky because they look like pieces of shit, and they were flying them back then.

Well, I mean, I was there for from the time I got there till I, till I broke up, this is what Vietnam looked like.

This was Khe Sanh, it was all this red dirt and that's that's what it looked like.

See stuff blown up and just junk laying everywhere.

But, you know, remembering how it was when I was there and then seeing that big grassy field, it just blew me away, you know, just was so pretty and so peaceful.

And that's a coffee plantation now.

Although I'm wondering what's in that coffee?

You know?

All of a sudden you'd be looking out at one of these hills and all of a sudden the whole hill would explode.

You know, it would be out there and you wouldn't hear it because it was the B-52's dropping all the ordnance and just the whole hill would explode.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I thought this was one of these suckers was going to come right down on my head.

You know, you had this all filled up with dirt, and you build it up, and we were in a trench line and you can see.

Yeah.

That's it.

All right, stand in front, Ray.

Right.

Yeah.

You don't have to smile unless you want to, I can smile.

It's a shame a lot of guys can't do that after 50 years.

You wish they could.

You should be happy that you're here.

Yeah, exactly.

We've even got a wedding party greeting your turn at Khe Sanh.

A couple wedding.

Look at that.

From the memory of what, it was, from what I know that it was to what I saw that day.

It was just totally different.

It was like two different experiences, you know?

I think that it's kind of cool.

You know?

No, no, no.

Not really.

Doesn't know where he is, but he's still thinks, but he thinks it's cool.

If you tell me this is where Khe Sanh was, I guess I know where it is, you know.

Okay.

What makes me happy is seeing him.

Being able to live.

Yeah.

That's why you fought here.

Exactly.

It didn't end up the way we wanted to, but it makes me happy.

They've been through a lot worse.

Stiff, stiff, I think.

All right.

Thank you.

Steve.

Look here though, somebody was there.

I mean, he put those 6000 Marines there to be a target, to be bait, to try and tempt the North Vietnamese to surround it and lay siege.

He got, Westmoreland got what he wanted.

And he did blow them out of the hills.

And he did.

You know, he was able to defeat the siege.

But what the point is, like what?

What does that victory mean in terms of the larger strategy of the war?

It didn't mean much of anything.

Which I always knew.

When I came home, I told my buddies, I said, I'm going to tell you a little secret.

This is not not a little secret.

It's not a secret at all.

I said, there's no way we're winning this thing.

I said, because there's no way we're fighting it to win.

In some instances, they fought on a hill, people got hurt, they moved back, and maybe six weeks later they were fighting in that same millisecond time and people were getting hurt again.

That's what bothered me because, you know, that's when I started saying to myself, what the hell are we doing here?

What are we doing here?

Because it didn't make sense.

After probably two months of my unit, what we did was we determined we were no longer here Yeah.

As a as military from the United States.

We were not defending the United States of America.

We were here for one reason only and that was to take care of each other.

And get home.

Thats right.

And all of you felt that way?

Every one of us.

The only thing that I did think about is how many people got killed there.

You know, how many guys died there and all the agony and how many guys got wounded.

You know?

If you understand what triage is, sorting out those that are really, really mortally wounded, you put to the side and keep them comfortable, and then you take care of the ones that you know you could treat.

You sorted it out, and youd say this person is not going to make it.

And so, Andy, you were one of those selected as not going to make it.

They called it a bleeder.

Yes, yes.

A bleeder?

Thats what it was called?

Ray would know it much better than I. All I could remember is just all hell broke loose.

Many getting killed, many wounded.

Then an RPG landed and that's when I got hit.

All I remember is I got hit.

I thought my body just flew the air.

When I landed, I was still conscious.

And I laid there and I was panicking because I couldn't breathe.

And what was brought to my airway was bone from my job and teeth.

So you lost most of your jaw through your bottom jaw.

Lost 80% of my jaw, 24 teeth, lower lip, 20% of my tongue.

I think the Hanoi Hilton.

The power to make sure it turns off after a while.

Because you think about those guys that for however many years and most of them were years, the conditions that they were in and what they had to go through.

It's broken glass in there so that they crawled up there.

They get.

Theyd get cut.

For a minute I thought it was flowers.

But now I look at all the edges are smooth now because it's been up there so long.

Wow.

And Andy getting so emotional that, you know, feeling guilty that, you know, we should have gone after them.

Who would signal, oh when the, when the pilots.

The downed pilots they had they activated their signals.

Their indicators.

Most of them were shot down over the north.

We were never going to get to them.

You know?

And then we just left.

We just left them.

Oh god, can you imagine that feeling?

I mean I don't know.

You're not being in a gift shop in the Hanoi Hilton.

It's just about.

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

You know.

That's right.

We didn't respond to them as we said quickly, as we said it, you know, for those of us out in the bush, that's on us.

Andy felt like we maybe didn't do enough to get guys out whenever they were captured.

How do you feel about that?

I think the higher ups may not have done enough.

Guys on the on the ground did everything they could.

But if you don't send the resources.

There are a lot of things they could have done better.

And normally with air superiority, you take out the airfields, so they cant use them anymore.

And you take out the surface to air missiles, so they cant u them.

That's why so many U.S.

pilots got shot over North Vietnam.

Because the S.A.M.S were not targeted.

Ben, why didn't we deal with surface their missiles?

Because the they had Soviet advisors there.

And so President Lyndon Johnson's fear was that you killed the Soviets and get the Soviets mad at you, because the normal thing is to establish air superiority.

And you take out the surface to air missiles, you take out the airfield so they can't launch MiG interceptors.

But he was so afraid that we would offend the Russians if we killed Russians, which we would have done, and that's why so many airplanes got shot down over North Vietnam, because we didn't establish air superiority.

So what were the thought of the pilots in Vietnam that were flying, knowing that they, you know, it was, oh, my, you know, and every morning to get up and fly to the Red River and say, oh, my.

Do you know, people that?

Yeah, I know quite a few.

I met quite a few.

In fact, one of the former prisoners of war was my commander at one point in time, you know?

They all make it home?

No.

You know, there were ones that died here.

And some that came home were not very good shape.

And it was disastrous for their families.

There's a lot of a lot of sadness that goes with prisoners of war.

It was very difficult.

Very difficult in trying to envision the torture, the pain and suffering that they endured.

You know, and they just seem to be abandoned.

My question is, did we ever do enough even after they were captured to rescue them?

And then and then starting tomorrow, we get we get back into the back to back into our trip.

That's right.

Back into the war.

This is R&R.

This is the.

This is our natural.

There you go.

Today's today's R&R.

Now we go back.

We go back into.

Yeah, that's a good way of putting it right.

That.

That's a good way of putting it.

I like that you're impressive.

That was.

Well, I don't know about.

I don't know about impressive.

But he but he's pretty good.

He's pretty good.

What was the hardest part about seeing the Hanoi Hilton yesterday?

Just knowing what those guys went through.

And, you know, Andy was saying, oh, we should have done more.

Well, maybe the higher up should have done more.

The guys, they did everything they could, but the fact that those guys had to go through what they went through was just incredible.

Just incredible.

No, it's their museum.

It's their museum.

It's their perspective.

I think it was important for us to see it from that perspective.

I mean, if we would have a museum that showed Guantanamo Bay today, how would you show it?

We're not going to show that.

I mean, that's just human nature.

So, you know, the fact that they think of themselves as treating the Americans well, it was war and torture was part of what they did.

It's just hell for us to see what they went through.

So this area has a big kind of legend in Vietnamese history, as in stopping the invaders, you know, always able to kind of get a vantage on the invaders, always be able to trap invaders, evade invaders.

And not not far from here is where the legendary Battle of Bch ng River, which empties out right into here.

It was that big battle that finally achieved Vietnamese independence in the year 938, and I noticed it's interesting when you see the statues and images of the great Vietnamese heroes of the past.

They all have an incredibly fierce look on their face, like, very much unlike our, you know, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, who also fought a war.

But you do get a sense that this is a warrior culture.

You know, this is this is a place that that survives by being really good at war.

Yeah.

I think they've been underestimated for thousands of years.

Yeah.

Jim Mahoney.

Yes.

Yes, exactly.

We've been talking about that.

Arrogance.

Yeah.

Paying you respect?

Yeah, yeah.

And then just being tough.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A lot of soldier died on the way.

So for my father, it was a very bad memory.

He could not forget.

So I asked him.

So now I'm running a group of the American.

How do you feel, Dad?

He told me that the war is over, Kan.

We were all the loser.

Millions of people die.

The communist government said that they were the winner.

But my father said, No, Kan, We are all the losers.

The mother in the north lost their son.

Same story to the mother in the south.

And same story to the mother in America.

They lost their son.

I had no clue what we were doing.

And I think that's what was frustrating, you know, why did 58,000 people get killed?

You figure we lost 58,000?

They lost 2.5 million.

Our military advisors, the generals, as well as the civilian authority, never wanted to acknowledge that they would be able to match what we had in terms of our technology and firepower.

I hope we learned a lesson that fast forward 50 years, it doesn't seem we have.

It really doesn't seem we have.

As an example, what's going on in the Middle East today.

And the same thing is happening today in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

It's just it's mind boggling and it's disturbing.

The only thing I tell young people is if people are going to commit you to a war, you better ask the question, why are we doing this?

When you're you're starting to commit young people to put on uniforms and to start shooting at each other, you better have a real reason for doing it, you know?

Because life's too precious.

Just is.

You've seen the photos?

Thích Qung c who was a monk who in May or June 1963 to protest the Ngô ình Dim regime.

Parked his car on a street in Saigon.

Took a five gallon jerry can of gasoline.

Fellow monks poured it over him.

He was lit on fire, and he didn't flinch as he burned to death.

And Buddhist monks are not political.

They do not get involved in politics, ever.

Except when they feel that the community is threatened to extinction.

This was the pagoda he was from.

Yeah.

He traveled from Hanoi to Saigon to explicitly for that act.

I mean, he was meditating as he was burning and he he was 10,000 miles away, you know.

It's stunning to talk to the Marines who served around here, because you get a sense that, like, there wasnt a day when they weren't engaged in combat.

No a day that they're not under fire, just the worst of the war.

Day after day after day.

Tet offensive is usually seen by American historians as a as a massive military victory for the U.S.. I mean, every inch of ground that the, the NL left and the AVN took during the Tet Offensive was taken back.

It was a military tactical victory for the US, but a larger strategic defeat for the United States because public opinion turned against the war.

They knew that the war was lost by the protests here.

You know, people just had had it They dont want it anymore.

And the politicians reacted.

We had been told, as the American people had been told throughout 1967, that we were winning the light at the end of the tunnel.

And then people, then people were watching on the news, chaos in their cities, sitting there.

They remember the term credibility gap.

Yeah, I think that's what it really that gap just became a chasm.

And nobody trusted what the government was saying about the war.

Did the Americans ever try to cross the DMZ?

You know, John, that's so interesting.

You asked that because just recently I asked that same question to some Marines, and they said we were there every day.

We were really in the DMZ every day.

We fought in the DMZ every day.

We weren't supposed to.

But that was, you know, we would get shot at and then they would go like that.

Yeah.

And they would would chase them over.

I mean, they didn't have a white line painted.

They didn't have a white line painted.

Defecting.

An experience that I had there that that really.

Gave me some fulfillment and enjoyment, when we were at the DMZ.

And there's a young lady from Saigon, We have some people that want to get a picture with you guys.

They want to get a picture with American Vets.

Come on.

Come on.

They are from Saigon.

Came up and introduced herself to all of us, thanked us for participating in the war.

And this was 50 years after Tet and she was only about 30 years old.

But she said, we thank you very, very much for what you did for us.

Oh, yeah.

Thank you.

We were here in 1968.

Was it very different?

Much different.

yeah.

Only took 50 years.

I was very, very close with the Vietnamese.

I think when we left the Vietnam, we did leave the people, at least in the Mekong Delta.

Whenever I was there, meto where I was stationed had a population of about 62 or 74,000, something in that area.

Today it's 1.2 million people.

Okay.

And places that we were being sniped at from okay are now are high rise buildings, factories, just absolutely bustling city.

Where I was there were a lot of people relocated from north North Vietnam to the Mekong Delta.

They were basically Catholics who became disenchanted with Ho Chi Minh.

And they're they're the ones that they're the people I loved and really felt bad about as I felt we really left them down.

The people I was advising were protecting their hamlets and their villages, and they they had skin in the game and they fought like they had skin in the game.

I had an awful lot of anger with the United States, after the war, when the boat people came out and the U.S.

Navy, Navy failed to pick them up and allowed them to drown.

I was very angry with the country at that time.

Yeah.

He was Tony was very, very, very, very funny.

Here.

This way, this way.

This way.

Being in Arvin, he was alright.

Yeah.

They don't like.

Is that an ostrich?

Yeah.

This used to be just nothing but a dust bowl.

Yes.

Never had anything growing on it.

It was just dredged up sand.

Yes.

And barracks.

Does it feel recognizable at all?

The only thing is the canal where the air boats would come in.

Okay, now we say goodbye.

Goodbye, snakes.

Yes, sir.

The third night of Tet in meto.

We were absolutely scared to death because we knew that there were the VC were massing on the other side of the canal.

We had very limited resources.

Our ammunition was running low, and we we weren't looking forward to the next morning.

I have many, many nightmares about that particular night that we went through and didn't know what the dawn was going to bring.

What was that?

okay, now.

Tony told him that I was there for the night of Tet.

We turned around and then went back up the back channel.

He took us back up there, and when I saw the choke bridge, that's when he told Tony that that is where his father and grandfather were killed.

The third night of Tet.

No, no.

Well, no.

He said it took him.

He was 12 years old when it happened.

It took him 25 years, something like that.

Evidently, he's having a good life right now.

So it was it was probably the highlight of my tour.

My my trip.

Going back to where I had a big battle.

Because I think thing about about that all the time.

I mean, it was like being in a movie, like watching a movie.

It seemed like it wasn't going to stop that.

That was the thing.

It just it just didn't stop.

We kept calling and reinforcement kept calling and more reinforcement.

My my life path before me.

I mean, it's like a movie reel.

You see everything that you've been through from like day, day one.

I have to survive.

And that was pretty much, you know, my my thought, thought pattern.

Yeah, yeah, I felt that I could feel that that presence, although it didn't look the same because, you know, 50 years.

But still I could feel that presence.

Yeah.

It seems like the place.

I felt numb, I don't know, I got numb.

It feels like the spot.

Everything.

Yeah.

I'm done.

Yeah, yeah.

Can you describe that?

Well, it's like the door close.

That's pretty much it.

The the the door closed like a big wall.

That's okay.

You're done.

All right.

It's all over now.

I can, like, rest.

Glad you made the trip?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, this is good.

This is good.

52.

Wow.

They're all along here.

Holy hell.

Hey, we'll get you a rope and crawl down there.

Others do we have that?

How deep?

How deep is this one?

Oh my God!

60ft.

60 to 70ft.

60.

70ft.

There's no way I'm going.

I'm only going so far.

And I'm turning it around.

Coming up and having a beer straight ahead.

I watch your head.

Could you imagine giving birth in there?

Its 17 kids born in those towns.

And this is just one tunnel group Yeah.

The devastation.

Yeah.

How can someplace be so beautiful?

How can someplace, so beautiful be so deadly?

It wasn't this beautiful for many years.

Oh, we destroyed with B-52 bombing.

And the Agent Orange.

We.

The dioxins.

There was no vegetation, no trees.

No, we gutted everything.

Yeah, yeah.

And we just tore the crap out of that country.

I mean, we did things and, well, remember, we went to the museum where all the explosives were.

We saw all that and we saw the museum where we saw all of the people with Agent Orange.

Not only it devastated us, it's troops, but I don't think that we had anything like they were those people experienced.

And it's four generations later and they're still having issues.

Think of it is we did all that stuff, and then we didn't have a plan to win the war anyway.

And we did all of those things.

And I'm wondering to myself why, you know.

There's 667 happy.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh.

We were just this talking, you know, the high you know.

Yeah.

I'm from the.

But whenever I said I was a soldier too.

And then he says, yeah I got because he's looking at Andys face soldier.

It was like nothing happened.

Okay.

We're okay now I can shake your hand.

How did that feel Andy?

Not sure right now.

I don't know.

There was no animosity.

It wasn't no hatred or anything.

And that, you know, as pretty powerful.

Yeah, yeah.

I want to sit down.

That.

How does it feel?

Good, or not good?

Or conflicted?

I mean, just sad.

I want to sit down and a laptop get up Google map.

And we're going to find where you were in where we should where we should go tomorrow.

Okay.

To kind of retrace your steps as closely as we can okay.

That's fine I appreciate that okay.

How much?

Little happy you too little.

How much, how much you hate This is.

This is where they're.

You know, Thats not the point though.

Even from my vantage point, When 5:30?

5:30?

right in the parking lot, we're not allowed on the grass.

On the grass.

No need to make that.

That's walking on the grass.

It doesn't say you can't stand on.

You have one takeaway of going back there after 50 years.

What do you think it would be?

Closure.

Just ending the cycle.

I think it gave me some healing, made me stronger, made me see life a lot, a lot differently and a lot better.

It helped with my.

P.T.S.D.

If you know, any other veterans who are thinking about maybe going back, what would you say them?

I'd tell them to go.

I would say go back.

It's a very cathartic experience.

I tell them all the time, go.

Oh, I aint going back there.

I don't know.

Just go.

You'll you'll love it.

I've learned so much.

So much.

Not just about the war.

Our experiences have been universal.

About half people say no.

They don't want to go back, but when you consider it.

The other half may consider it, but there may or may not go people that talk about.

I encourage them to.

I says you'll be pleased how much, how the place is healed and how well the people are doing.

Thats good.

It was one of the best things that I had done, and I was glad I did it with my wife because as she told me, she got to smell the smell, feel the heat, see what we talked about.

But she also was able to step back and just watch it through our eyes.