Veterans Archives: Preserving the Stories of our Nations Heroes
In a world where storytelling has been our link to the past since the days of cave drawings, there exists a timeless tradition. It's the art of passing down knowledge, and for Military Veterans, it's a crucial piece of their legacy. Join us on the Veterans Archives Podcast, where we dive deep into the heartwarming and awe-inspiring stories of those who served, no matter when or where.
Here, Veterans get the chance to be the authors of their own narratives. Through guided interviews in a relaxed and safe environment, they paint their experiences with their own words and unique voices. The result? A memory card in a presentation box, a precious gift they can share however they please.
But that's not all. These stories find a secure home in our archive, a treasure chest of experiences for future generations to explore. The best part? It's all a gift to the Veteran – our way of saying thank you for their service.
Tune in to the Veterans Archives Podcast, where history, heroism, and heartwarming tales come to life.
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Veterans Archives: Preserving the Stories of our Nations Heroes
From Glitz to Grit: The Life of Jeffrey Alpert
Good afternoon. Today is Thursday, january 16th 2025. We're speaking with Jeffrey Alpert, who served in the United States Army. So good afternoon, jeff.
Speaker 2:Good afternoon Bill. How are you?
Speaker 1:Great, how about yourself?
Speaker 2:Not bad for a Thursday, thank you.
Speaker 1:There you go, so we're going to start out pretty simple, I think. When and where were you born?
Speaker 2:I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:When and where were you born? I'm sorry, when and where were you born?
Speaker 2:I was born on June 4th 1948, in Hollywood, california.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm not going to disclose your email address, but is that where your address comes from? Your email address? Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:Okay, you'll notice that there's a G instead of a J, because the address version with the J was already taken.
Speaker 1:Oh, I got you. So how long did you live in Hollywood, California?
Speaker 2:It was my home of record for my whole life, until maybe 2012.
Speaker 1:Okay, and so talk to us a little bit about what it was like, uh, growing up, uh, little Jeff Albert, in Hollywood, california. What are some of your first memories of being a kid?
Speaker 2:Some of my earliest memories of being a kid were my mother's fixation with movies and movie stars, and we lived not too far from a tourist area in Los Angeles called the Farmer's Market. It was one of these exclusive fresh produce truck farm markets the only one you would find in that part of the city, and so we would constantly see celebrities every Saturday morning when we went to the market and she'd jab me in the ribs and say that's so-and-so, that's so-and-so, that's Leonard Turner, that's Leonard Nimoy, blah, blah, blah. And I'm a little kid going. Okay, mom, cool, mom, cool mom, yeah, okay, can we go home now so I can play with my army toys? That was kind of it.
Speaker 1:So you weren't really into the celebrities, but your mom was.
Speaker 2:Not at all, Although that will change later in my life, as I hope I remember to uh to share with you.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's make sure that we uh, let's make sure that we do. We do talk about that. Um so, did you have brothers and sisters?
Speaker 2:I had a brother. He was a year younger, uh, his name was Dennis. He was a lot, uh, a lot larger than me. Did I just lose a camera? No, I can see you fine. Okay, okay, I lost you.
Speaker 1:Oh, you can't. Can you see me or hear me? Hold, on Hold on, there you are. Okay, I won't touch anything again, I promise Okay.
Speaker 2:Good deal.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you. So you had a brother, Dennis.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and he was complete opposite me. I was uh kind of dark haired and kind of natural height. He was uh from from babyhood he was more chunkier and taller and as we became adults he would would be about 6'2", 6'3" and maybe weigh 240. And I would come out to about 5'8", weigh 160.
Speaker 1:And how did you guys get along?
Speaker 2:Not well.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:And the reason for that is the stars, I'm afraid. My brother was a first deacon cancer, a moon child. Okay, I was a second deacon Gemini. Geminis and cancers are like this. And lo and behold, that was our relationship. We would fight at the drop of a hanky, at the sound of a word, at a shared look. It usually ended up with us tickling each other into laughing sprees, losing, you know, not being able to breathe, laughing so hard. But we, it's like a cat walking into a room with a dog.
Speaker 1:So are these good memories, though? Oh yes.
Speaker 2:There's lots of good memories. In the late 50s and early 60s there were some TV shows on kind of militaristic shows. One of them was called Mosby's Raiders. You're probably not old enough to remember but it was a TV show about a Confederate cavalry unit that snuck around the Union lines and caused the Union supply lines grief, took prisoners, blah, blah, blah typical Western drama set in the Civil War. Well, I became fixated on that and I made my mom and dad go buy me a gray uniform made out of Dickey work clothes, Made my brother go get a gray uniform made out of Dickey work clothes and somehow we managed to get sabers and fake muskets and hats and feathers and we would play civil war and I would slay him in the first two minutes of every battle. So he became frustrated at this and he, uh, he developed different interests. He started to do he would get into be more interested in cars and motorcycles and girls, and I just kept my interest in military and military history okay and so how did this go, for he was murdered.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, he was murdered in 1982. Oh, he was at that point in his life. He had a lucrative income and he lived in the hills above Hollywood and he went to purchase drugs for a typical 80s party. Only you know, he went to get recreational drugs, but he attempted to buy them from a non-recreational drug dealer. They got into an argument. My brother claimed he had a gun turned to a chest of drawers and that's just all the headway this dealer was going to give him.
Speaker 1:And took out a hunting knife and put it between his shoulder blades. So they caught the person that did this.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, he got two years. Wow, there were a couple of girls in the room money honeys, you know what I mean who ended up with the choice of testifying as to what happened over a dead guy or testify what happened with the killer alive and free. So they basically told the killer's story. I see, and he got two years for aggravated manslaughter and probation for blah blah.
Speaker 1:Wow, years for aggravated manslaughter and probation for blah blah. Wow, 80s were kind of a crazy time, especially for drugs and cocaine and things like that yeah, they were for sure. So let's, uh, let's back up a little bit. Uh, back to your childhood there. Um, what was school like for you?
Speaker 2:I was a mediocre student, except in the classes I enjoyed. I would get A's and B's in English and history, or social studies, as they called it. I would get D's and F's in math, science, chemistry, pe anything that I was not interested in I just didn't pay any attention to. My mother thought there was something wrong with me, so she had me and my brother, my brother and I had our IQs tested I think that's what they called it then and they found out that, no, that wasn't the problem. Nothing wrong with the brains Wasn't the problem. Nothing wrong with the brains. So that's pretty much my track record all the way through high school.
Speaker 2:Okay, Now did you play any sports or any of that in school? No, In high school I played one season with the baseball team. I was a relief pitcher. I think I played in three games out of the season. I faced maybe four batters. I think I did well. I don't remember, I was too nervous. But then for the rest of high school I was in the JROTC, a little soldier in the making.
Speaker 1:So you turned in your gray uniform for a green one.
Speaker 2:That's right, that's right. And I ended up being the battalion commander, which is high as you can go in JROTC, my high school, and I commanded the drill team and the honor guard and the blah, blah blah. Not bad for a goofy little kid with glasses.
Speaker 1:No, that's very true. Now we talked about your mom a little bit. What about your dad?
Speaker 2:My dad was preoccupied with work and his business. He was a salesman. He sold restaurant supplies to all the restaurants in town from a local company and he would leave before we got up in the morning and come back for dinner and go immediately do his book work what we call daddy's homework. So five days a week. I never saw him.
Speaker 1:Okay, five days a week. I never saw him.
Speaker 2:Okay, and on the weekends he'd take us to the YMCA and try and get us interested in something. But neither my brother nor I had any particular interest in swimming or badminton or volleyball or whatever else they had there. Although my brother was good at what he tried, he had no interest in it either. So my dad stopped taking us to the YMCA and started taking us to an enlightened mind organization called the Science of Mind.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you're familiar with that I am not tell me a little bit about that the science of mind was a, a semi-religious uh, a semi-religious group of people who specialized in finding the goodness of life, the positivity of life, and I don't know if they went on to merge with another some of these groups, but there were a lot of these fringe groups science of mind, scientologists, some of the quasi-religious groups that were kind of cult-like. But he started dragging us to these things and these were cool because all we had to do is sit there and listen for an hour to these guys tell some pretty interesting stories about their lives.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:And how adopting the science of mind helped them, and I believe you would call this agnostic. So it wasn't about any sort of religion.
Speaker 1:It was more of a.
Speaker 2:No, no, the literature had a cross on it, but that's the only time in years I ever heard them preach anything about Christianity, knew anything that was related to Christianity with them. What they did and what they professed to be not exactly the same thing. This was. It made him a optimist for the rest of his life, which allowed him to live to be about 101 in a good mood. My brother didn't take the messages so well and we know what happened to him. I just took it for what it was worth.
Speaker 2:At the same time, my mother being Catholic, my father was maybe Jewish, by the way, okay, never quite determined that, because, while his father was Jewish undoubtedly because his father's family was all here in Los Angeles they still are my grandmother, his mother there's no proof that she was Jewish from the old country. She came from an area, but she didn't dress. There were just some things that caused some people to say that she's Polish or she's Ukrainian, she's not Jewish. I don't know where that came from, okay, and it was always left out of the conversation. So he may or may not be legally Jewish, because I don't know if you know, but to be a Jew, your mother has to be a Jew. That's how it works. It doesn't make any difference what your father is. If your mother wasn't a Jew, you're not a Jew, oh Okay.
Speaker 1:I had no idea. I had no idea. Now you know.
Speaker 2:So my mother wanted to get her religious beliefs so I became a Catholic, went to church every Friday, went to get my baptism and first communication and I became an altar boy and learned to speak Latin and there's a lot of hoot watching the priests get little sips of the wine before Mass and little sips afterwards.
Speaker 1:So you did the whole Catholic experience then.
Speaker 2:Yes, it was hard to keep a straight face at some of the faces that people made when they went to receive the Eucharist. Are you familiar with that?
Speaker 1:I am. I am because actually my mother and my stepfather were Catholic, so I'm very familiar with that.
Speaker 2:So they stick your tongue out and they put the little thing on there. You're supposed to allow it to melt. You can't eat it. But I was right there next to the priest holding the the cloth and I see people chomp on it. The second they got in their mouth. I see people break it in half with their tongue and play with it. I see people keep it stuck halfway out of their mouth and go back. It was.
Speaker 2:It was interesting everyone sort of did what they wanted to do yeah, sounds like yeah, yeah and when I was about 16 or 17, I just gave up on that too. I did not believe. I, uh, I wasn't agnostic. I believe in a god, but not necessarily their god.
Speaker 1:Right yeah.
Speaker 2:It's like not necessarily the science of mind guy's God, not necessarily the Jewish God. There's just one God.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and so that most of the I think a lot of kids go through kind of that with their, with their family's religion. You know, like as you start to think for yourself, um, you start to question things um, which I think, like my parents probably questioned things um when they were, you know, 16 or 17 and they figured out what worked for them as they got older. But I know it was probably frustrating for your parents, maybe that you weren't really like on board with any of it.
Speaker 2:It was. It was, um, it turns out, bill, that I was, pretty much, in almost all facets of life, a late bloomer. Okay, when I was 18, 17, 18, I wasn't obsessed with girls that would come later. I wasn't obsessed with sports that would not come later. I wasn't obsessed with cars and machines and technology that would change later. I was only interested in what I was interested in, and that was history writing and war.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about that. You're in high school. You're in JROTC. I'm assuming you graduated high school.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And so what happens after high school?
Speaker 2:Well, in the neighborhood I lived in at the time, are you familiar with Los Angeles at all?
Speaker 1:I've been there.
Speaker 2:I used to live in San Diego, but I'm not real like 100 familiar with los angeles okay, I lived in hancock park, which is a an affluent neighborhood of uh doctors, lawyers, uh investment brokers, but it's right in the middle of the city. A lot of those people chose to live in the suburbs. They built all these suburbs, like Calabasas and Woodland Hills and West Hills and Beverly Hills and all these other hills. I forgot what I was talking about.
Speaker 1:Are we talking about where you lived?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, yes, yes. And because of that, because of the prevalence of so many doctors, dentists and lawyers, my high school was about 90% Jewish. So every Jewish holiday there'd be about 200 kids in the school of 3,000. And of course, there were no classes. We had a lot of fun, teachers had a lot of fun, but they all went to college. They all took the SAT and they all went to college. Well, I'm there, all my friends are like them, so I took the SAT. Didn't do too good, so I went to state college. Well, they went to universities. I good, so I went to state college. Well, they went to universities. I did very poorly. In the first semester of college I gained a bad attitude when a music teacher accused me of cheating One of the early assignments in that class.
Speaker 2:He taught us rhythm and he allowed us to use things like anything that went ding, cling, clunk, like an empty ashtray, a piece of metal, a wood block, anything like that. And he taught us rhythm and counts and he gave us the assignment to go home and make like a 20-second rhythm thing with these available instruments. Tambourine was another one, triangle was another one. Okay, I thought this was cool, so I went home and I did just that. A rhythm came into my head Another instrument coming in, another instrument coming in, another instrument coming in and finally, one at a time, all eight instruments came in, kind of a crescendo, and that was it. And the students went crazy. They were piling and shunning because a couple not so good ones had gone before me and the professor walks right up to me and says you didn't write that. And my heart went from here to the bottom of my stomach and my hand reached for a pocket knife that I wasn't wearing at the time, without a thought in my head and I said, yes, I did. And he said, no, you couldn't have. I've heard that before In this class, yeah, yes, in this class. I just went back to my seat and I wrote off. I blew off the rest of that semester, all six subjects. So I wrote off, I blew off the rest of that semester, all six subjects. So I was on probation, academic probation.
Speaker 2:Well, in the spring of 67, that was fall of 68, 66, I'm sorry In the spring of 67, a bunch of my Jewish friends wanted to go to visit Israel for the spring break and so we begged our parents and worked. I had part time jobs and I was probably one of LA's last corner paper boys selling papers on the corner two bits and sometimes we had both the Herald and the Times so I'd get double the customers. It was fun really. Made up headlines to shout Jimmy Hoffa found buried in Lithuania, things like that. People just kind of what they were driving by. They didn't catch it all but we did good business.
Speaker 2:So I started the second semester in academic probation and here comes spring break, very early in that spring semester and off we go to Israel. I think we went to France first, maybe got to Italy and maybe got to Israel, kind of, you know, playing tourist that we were. We didn't have much time. So we get there, and when was spring break? March, march, april, and we had a nice vacation. But Israel was not interested in entertaining us. They were getting ready for a war that we didn't catch. We didn't pick up on that while we were there, despite seeing 5,000 army trucks go by every day. We just thought that's what they do in Israel.
Speaker 2:The night we were leaving, his family, our friend's family, held a nice dinner for us. They spotlighted all the good Israeli foods like falafel and hummus and touching chicken, and they went out of their way. This town is a little town and it's also full of Arabs and it was very confusing to us, because to a Jew you say shalom aleichem, but to an Arab you say salam aleikum, shalom aleikum, salam aleikum. What, what? We finally figured out what to say to each person. Uh, so at this dinner at their house, there's these two, what I thought were like ROTC cadets. There were these two Israeli soldiers, a boy and a girl. Couldn't have been more than 20, 21. But just from my military knowledge and the lack of stripes on their arms I realized very quickly they were officers and they were apparently cousins, friends of cousins of our hosts and stuff like that. They happened to be in town, make a long story short at the cousins of friends, cousins of our hosts and stuff like that. They happened to be in town To make a long story short.
Speaker 2:At the end of dinner, all my friend's family left the room and it was just the two of them and my friend and me and they very flatly asked us, told us very shortly there's going to be a war with Israel against all our Arab neighbors. Okay, he says, can you drive a truck? I said, what kind of truck, a stick shift truck, four or five speed truck? I said, yeah, everybody in America can drive a stick shift. He asked my friend the same thing.
Speaker 2:Apparently, bill, israel was full of the dysphoria from all of Europe after the war and Israel was full of these immigrants who never had a car and never learned to drive a car. There was an extreme shortage of people who knew how to drive in Israel and he asked us if we would be willing for a couple weeks to drive a two and a half ton truck from the town where we lived to different locations, and then you'd be given a Jeep ride back to home and I would sure, being an 18, 19-year-old kid, a million questions would go through your head. The first words out of our mouths were yes, and that's what I did for eight days of a six-day war, a war in Israeli uniform, with no rank, and at my guard on my truck was this gorgeous little blonde Polish girl, blue eyes, blonde hair and an Uzi and no sense of humor, and she'd chain smoke, galois cigarettes. Do you know what Galois are? I?
Speaker 2:do not, they're French cigarettes with no filter, they're strong Turkish tobacco and she would chain smoke those in the cab of the truck and I'd be choking and trying to stay on the road. And once I tried to talk to her and I, just in friendly conversation right next to me, put my hand on her leg and she hit me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, probably not the right thing to do.
Speaker 2:No, so that was probably in day four or five and for the next couple days I didn't. I didn't say a word to her. I just gagged about four hours a day. She did say thank you at the end. The Israelis I don't know if I should admit this right here. Let's just say the Israelis did something with our passport. They made everything. As far as the US was concerned, kosher.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you're able to get back home.
Speaker 2:Yes, we will get back home.
Speaker 1:That's a pretty exciting spring break.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not over.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:When it was all over in June, it was time to go home. Only, having had a kind of a fake taste of war and loving it despite the galawas, I decided that I wanted to stay in the army. Well, I couldn't be in the Israeli army. I wasn't Jewish. So I took a flight to Marseille, france, and I joined La Légion des Transgères, the French foreign legion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what was that like?
Speaker 2:The training was hellacious. I failed out at least half the training subjects but they figured out I was smart. So I was given a lot of bookkeeping things to do, list making and stuff. I went through the weapons training, everything but the physical training and running with a thousand pound log, three guys carrying it. I just fall on my face and, fortunately, or unfortunately, my parents knew this. I would call them and they would yell at me and they sent to me, by the will of Allah, the grace of God, my draft notice. I had failed out of college, I had lost my 1A, I was draftable.
Speaker 2:And there, par avion airmail to this little location in part of France, and the French, to make a long story short, said we don't do this, this is bullshit. You've signed up for six years. And then the colonel calls him into and they blah, blah, blah, blah. And the next day they call me in and I'm standing at the end of my little ball-shaped head, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and it says because your country is at war with the Indochine, with the North Vietnamese, and because you will probably serve in that conflict, which means a lot to the people of France, we are going to let you go home and honor the Snowders, and that's what happened?
Speaker 1:Well, and maybe a lot of people don't know, the French were in Vietnam before we were.
Speaker 2:That's why.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and a lot of bad stuff happened to them too.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, yes, before they. They wanted me to go there, they wanted me to fight. They knew I wasn't going to make it as a Legionnaire.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you, so you, uh, you get on a plane, you head home. Is that what happens?
Speaker 2:And then in May of next year May of 78, no, no, january, february, march of 68, I get a report to blah, blah blah for your physical exam and everything. And I did. And on May 28, 1968, I joined the US Army, Shipped off to Fort Ord, california, for basic training After three and a half four weeks in the Foreign Legion. I could ace that thing. That was nothing to me.
Speaker 1:I was going to say was gonna. I was gonna say that probably made boot camp a little bit easier for you, didn't it?
Speaker 2:yeah I mean, your head was already shaved the physical part, easy, yeah, the monotony and the boredom and the bullshit of the drill instructors, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, it's day before graduation and the lieutenant of the training company comes out pulling a sheaf of papers like this he says ladies and gentlemen, I've gotten your orders here, we know where all of you are going and I can tell you right now that you are all being assigned to training at Fort Blah Blah's 11th Bravo Infantrymen, and then you will be sent to join a unit in the Republic of Vietnam.
Speaker 1:You can imagine how that went over. Yeah, at this point in the war, though, they need the guys over there, like that's what happened. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's what happens, except 70% of the people who fought in Vietnam were enlistees, 70%. They only sent 30% of crafties to Vietnam. Most of them went to Germany. Oh Anyway, he says. But for some of you that are still interested in serving your country, if you volunteer to join, to enlist in the Army for just a three-year term and here came the biggest lie I have ever heard in my life we will take you out of the infantry and put you in one of the other three or four combat arms Armor, artillery, combat engineering, bullshit. You listen, you get to pick any MOS, any. Have a list of 120 jobs, any. That's not what he said.
Speaker 1:No, they're just going to let you pick one of three.
Speaker 2:Huh.
Speaker 1:They were just going to let you pick one of three, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I picked armor because I wasn't going to walk anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And engineers. I just knew they do things with minds and I had developed an aversion to mines. So I was re-enlisted and on May 29th or 30th I became an RA, with orders to Fort Knox, kentucky, to be trained as a tank crewman.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:That's how that all started. All right, okay, that's how that all started.
Speaker 1:All right, so did you, did you go?
Speaker 2:home at all in between, uh, boot camp and ait. Then yes, okay, what was that?
Speaker 1:like because I, if I'm doing, if I'm doing all my math right. Your family hasn't seen you in a while because actually you went on spring break. You never came home yeah yeah, so then you finally get home they haven't seen me for about 18 months yeah 19, 20 months.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I came home and my mom, bless her heart, started to do everything she could to get me out of the army, up to up to going to washington to see our congressman to get an appointment to West Point. Oh, but it was too late. She might have done it while I was still a high school student, right, but I was regular Army now.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So then she decided, since I'm surely going to Vietnam after an advanced training, she's going to break one of my bones and get her good friend, the doctor, to say it's a permanent disability. So she went to this Donald Trump kind of doctor and it just so happened I had met a new girl. She had a motor scooter. I was driving her on this Vespa, I hit a bump, I fell into the street and I broke my shoulder bone. You have never seen a happier woman than my mother.
Speaker 1:Oh, because she didn't have to break a bone. You did it yourself.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, yeah, basically yeah. So I went to the doctor. They did something to it. It was a fracture, it wasn't a clean break, and the bottom line is there's no way the doctor could have goosed this up to a deferment, right.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:She once said she'd even like me to go back to France and rejoin the Legion. No, no, no, thank you. So that was it. That was that took me through my first 19 years of life.
Speaker 1:Okay, an exciting 19 years, by the way. That's a lot of stuff. That's a lot of stuff to pack into 19 years.
Speaker 2:You ain't heard shit.
Speaker 1:So you get to Fort Knox.
Speaker 2:I get to Fort Knox, yeah, what happens there.
Speaker 1:You get to Fort Knox, I get to Fort Knox.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what happens there? First thing I was there for the first two months I was fleeced of all my money by these New York Sharpie streetwise kids who came up with the greatest scams you ever heard to borrow my money and then lose it for her mom's operation. It cost more than they thought. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's the first thing. I learned the rest of it well.
Speaker 2:Between 43 years of ROTC and loving reading literature about armies and wars and weapons system, I knew more than any other recruit about the M48 tank, which is what we had at the time. I'd never seen one, but I knew some things about it. First day we're training on the main gun, some drill sergeants. Anybody know the maximum range of that 90 millimeter gun? Yes, sir, it's 1,800 meters, or better known as 2,000 yards. That's right, very good Shroop. That immediately got me hated by everybody else in my platoon Right, so I kept my mouth shut.
Speaker 2:After that, went through AIT, came home for another leave. This was a long leave. This was a 30-day leave. Ah, some uncomfortable things happened during that leave. Personal things I got my mom to loan money to a family whose daughter I was in love with and they lost it all. Israeli family, as it turns out, and my brother had been arrested for the first time for possession of stolen property, had broken his leg on a motorcycle so badly that he was deferred from military service, and things like that. That's all I remember of that leave, pretty much.
Speaker 2:Then I reported to I guess it was Fort Lewis Washington for a trip over the Big Pond and I didn't know what to think. I didn't know what to think. I theoretically, intellectually kind of knew what might happen, what could happen, but physically, emotionally, I was as dumb as a box of old hammers. And the second that we landed in the Thompson I forget the Longbin, wherever the big airfield is and they opened that door, the airplane door, and that heat and smell hit me. I knew I had made the biggest mistake of my life by joining a combat branch branch. So we went through. Usually you're there for three or four days and they ship you out to your unit. The unit sends somebody down for you, if they're close to Saigon, or they'll fly you to the nearest big town and then truck you, or whatever little plane you, to where you're going. I got orders to report to the 9th Riverine Squadron in three corps river gunboats, me a tanker.
Speaker 1:Right, how did that happen?
Speaker 2:There was a time, a year or two before, where the 9th Infantry Division did run a river reinforce.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:But the 9th Division had left Vietnam. In total, they were the only unit that went to Namza Division and left Namza Division. Ah, and all the stupid lieutenant personnel S-1 could figure out was well, this was transition. This was when we were going to Vietnamization of the war, starting to turn over our weapons equipments and responsibilities to the Army of South Vietnam. To make a long story short, I ended up on a PB boat with six Vietnamese sailors and me, none of who spoke English, none of who spoke English. And I asked the. I went back to the escort and said what am I supposed to do? He said don't worry. Don't worry, all you got to do is you're the captain and you have to eat. You're the one that operates the radio. That's it. I'm the captain and I operate the radio, but I can't talk to my crew. They know what to do. They've been doing this for months.
Speaker 1:How much faith did you have that they knew what to do? I mean yeah. Did any of them speak French?
Speaker 2:I can't swim Right. One thing Anyway every time we got back to the base there I can't remember if it was a ship or it was a Vietnamese camp. Anyway, we all cleaned up the boat, we fueled it da-da-da, checked the engine oil, ba-ba-ba, we loaded ammo, if we shot up any. I think maybe seven, eight days into that, when I threatened to go to the IG, I got new orders. I had been shot at by BC and NVA on that boat exactly this many times in a week.
Speaker 1:So there was nothing going on.
Speaker 2:There was nothing going on. Yeah, so they decided to send me to Northern I-Corps, where 50% of all US deaths occurred during the Vietnam War. Hello, i-corps. And I was assigned to a cavalry squadron, b Troop, 3rd Cavalry, b Troop, 3rd Squadron, 5th Cavalry, temporarily assigned to I think it was the 5th Infantry Division, the Red Diamonds, the Red Devils.
Speaker 2:We were their cavalry squadron, but we were organizationally we were part of the 9th Division. We were the cavalry squadron of the 3rd Battalion of the 9th Division. So, and that never changed, so while everybody's going on wearing red diamonds, we've got the cookie cutter, the red white, the white dot, in the center patch of the 9th Division, which causes all kinds of confusion. To make another long story short, we call ourselves the bastard cap. In the six months, in the 12 months that I was there, we probably were assigned to six or seven different units 25th Intruder Division, americal, 101st Airborne, 5th Mechanized, I think, 3rd Marines and I think even an Army unit we were assigned to once Because our home division was gone. So who needs an armored cavalry squadron? I do, I do. Okay, off we went.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. They always want the resources over. There is what it is.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:I said, they always want the resources, like you had vehicles or you had ammunition or you had bodies and they needed them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we had a lot, A lot of that. So finally, things were normal. I was back where I was supposed to be and I ended up in a tank crew in a base camp called Dong Ha, about 17 miles from the DMZ, within artillery range of North Vietnam, a place whose ammo dump had been blown up at least three times in the past four years. It gets fuzzy here.
Speaker 2:I was a new guy, some practical jokes were played on me and I had another one of these reactions. I had another one of these reactions. I had another one of these reactions like I had with the music professor, with some of my buddies, crew of another tank. They said you know, you haven't had your salt pill today and it's going to set your stomach. But you're a buck, sergeant, here I'm ordering you to take these salt pills and the best thing to take it with is a Coke. So I said, oh, thank you, sergeant, I appreciate it, man. So I take my salt pills, take my Coke, my Pepsi, whatever it was, and they explode in my stomach and I start foaming at the mouth.
Speaker 1:Oh boy.
Speaker 2:And I go down on my knees barfing and they're all standing around laughing and I get to my knees again and I wore a .45 caliber pistol this time in my shoulder holster, but I just thought about it, I didn't do anything. That was my first reaction.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That was my first reaction, so I think there's something psychologically wrong with me. Anyway turned out to be a great group of people and, there I am in Vietnam, made some friends. There were three tanks in a cavalry platoon and seven or eight armored personnel carriers 113s. I got there but I end up being the tank commander of that tank very often because, being the platoon sergeant, he was always jumping off the tank to go take care of a problem. You know he was responsible for every man in the platoon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he had a lot of other things to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So I said Alfred, get on the 50. Take. You know da, da, da Take charge. I'd been there a month and I'm taking charge. Well, I knew the basics. You sit up there with 50 Cal and wait for something bad to happen.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So I learned a lot from him. I learned a lot from this guy. I love this guy. He was a character. There was nothing about that tank he did not know. There was nothing he could not fix in his sleep. If a tank threw a track, he'd jump off the tank, give me his helmet and he'd be over there and by himself, barefoot, sweating like a pig, get that track on. Yeah, 15 minutes. It'd take a tank crew two hours to do it normally. He was just awesome. He was just awesome. Anyway, that was my introduction to Vietnam. Was just awesome. Anyway, that's what was my introduction to Vietnam.
Speaker 1:When you finally got with this group? Is this where you stayed then with them, and what was your mission there?
Speaker 2:What was our mission?
Speaker 1:Yeah, what was your mission in your part of the world there?
Speaker 2:We basically performed two major functions that of convoy escort to places like Khe Sanh, because you couldn't get a group of trucks, and PCs would never make it to Khe Sanh alive if they didn't have tanks and cavalry with them. Okay, we also provided the support for the morning engineer mine sweep and after what I saw happened to those guys and I thought about almost joining the engineers, uh-uh.
Speaker 1:So that's cool, yeah, that's a rough job, um, for people don't know. The engineers don't just build bridges, they go out and they look for explosives every morning on the routes right, and a lot of times they get blown up when they're doing it one morning I'll never forget, there were six of them out in front of us.
Speaker 2:We were on Highway 9 heading towards. This convoy was for Quezon and as you come down Highway 9, you have to make a left turn and off to the right across this huge valley is a huge little mountain called the Rock Pile, which talked to any Marine that was in town about the Rock Pile and you'll hear stories. And there were six Marines, I mean six engineers, two with sweepers, two with them with security and two more with some other contraption, and they were about 50 yards ahead of us. I think. The lead vehicle was a tank and they made the left-hand turn and the road widened there a little bit. The engineers had built a thing to make that turn so the tracks and stuff wouldn't slip off the edge, and the NDA had zeroed it with mortars already and in 30 seconds they were all dead and there were pieces of them all over the place, on the rocks, on the road, some with their clothes blown off. Needless to say, we didn't complete the convoy that day.
Speaker 1:Right, and this is right in front of you, you, okay.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:I said this is right in front of you. Yeah, but for 10 seconds. That would have been you. I'm sorry. I said this is right in front of you. Yeah, but for 10 seconds.
Speaker 2:That would have been you, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:Had it not been for them but for like 10 or 15 seconds, that would have been you coming around that corner then.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, but we were in armor review, right, they were walking.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah.
Speaker 2:It was for them. The mortar ambush was set up specifically for them. They must have fired four or five rounds. Boom boom, boom boom. It was all over well, and how, how?
Speaker 1:how did that impact you while you were there?
Speaker 2:you know what I'm asking like not as much as it impresses me now right, right.
Speaker 1:I don't think people understand that, like when it happens, when you're there, you just deal with it, but you don't really deal with it till you come home.
Speaker 2:No yeah.
Speaker 1:And how much longer were you there after that incident?
Speaker 2:Seven months.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so for seven months you just kind of stuffed it away, right Did you have other incidents like that happen while you were there, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, um, twice my platoon was attacked when. I wasn't there and that's my biggest regret of the whole war. I know I could have changed the outcome. I know I could have. I know I could have, but once they were guarding a convoy. Now wait a minute. I'm getting some things confused here. I think I'm mixing up two events.
Speaker 2:That's fine, take your time. Okay, this may be the same day, the same convoy, as the mortar incident, or it may have been a different convoy. I was in the rear with a broken tank. I come out that day tank had hit a mine, there had been snipers. A platoon sergeant was killed, shot in the head by a sniper, and they did not proceed with the convoy.
Speaker 2:The night of that action my tank was fixed and I brought it out to join them and they told me Al Albert, whatever you do, I know it's dark, but for God's sake, four eyes, don't throw a fucking track. Yeah, so I get within 60 yards of the Ronsite and I saw a track. I couldn't see what was there. The driver couldn't see what was there, it was muddy as hell and we threw a track. I couldn't see what was there, the driver couldn't see what was there, it was muddy as hell and we threw a track and Wonder, first Sergeant came out and fixed it in a half hour, with me sitting on the 50 for being a bad tank man. Anyway, the platoon sergeant, the platoon leader asshole West Point guy, he calls a platoon meeting of all the vehicle command. At that point I was the tank commander of the platoon sergeant's tank. Because the platoon sergeant couldn't ride tanks anymore, he couldn't control his unit. He went to a PC to ride on a PC. So now the platoon leader and platoon sergeant were both on PCs, leaving the platoons. In the cavalry platoon the lieutenant rides in a track and the platoon sergeant rides in the tank. But the platoon sergeant didn't want to ride in the tank, so I was his gunner. They made a track commander and I was for the rest of my tour in Vietnam. Okay, so I was in that status when I came out that night through a track and put it on. They call a meeting, a late meeting, unusual, and they're all squatting down and he tells us. He tells us they've decided to continue this convoy in the morning.
Speaker 2:But this time we're not going to take it at mind-clearing pace, we're going to thunder run it. Thunder run it means everybody driving as fast as you can, and if anybody stops, the first vehicle behind them that can do it just pushes them off the road Tank. Pushes a truck off the road Tank. Pushes a PC off the road Tank. Pushes another tank off the road Tank. Pushes a truck off the road Tank. Pushes a PC off the road Tank pushes another tank off the road, nothing stops it. And what our platoon is going to do was Okay, here's the road, it makes the curve. This is where the mine thing was.
Speaker 2:And at this curve we had to slow down to make the curve okay. And the vehicles had to slow down and the platoon leader said okay, who wants to lead the convoy? It has to be from our platoon. And because I had been in the rear the day before when all the shit happened, every eye turned straight to me and nobody had to say anything because I knew what they were all saying you missed yesterday's shit, boy, you're not going to miss today's shit. Yeah, it's your turn 3-4-0-0. Sir. He said okay, shit, boy, you're not going to miss today's shit. What's your turn? 3-4-0, sir. He said okay, we're going to thunder on it, but this time it's going to be different.
Speaker 2:As we make that turn, as you get about 100 yards past the turn, I want you to turn out and aim to the right towards the rock pile, and every 100 or 150 yards the next vehicle will turn out. So there could be no attack as the convoy of trucks went behind us. So the traffic was like and the trucks behind us were going. He said but one thing, sergeant Alpert I expect us to be ambushed tomorrow. They couldn't do what they did today and not be ready for an ambush tomorrow. So when you get to this curve, you just start shooting the shit out of the bushes to your right, your coax, your .50 cal and your main gun, if you want. Now, at this time and that's another story we didn't have nice big steel M48s. We had little piece of shit, aluminum tanks called M551 Sheridan, which a armor-piercing rifle bullet could penetrate Tank.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, tank yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So next day I woke four in the morning, I see the second. The sun came up, we started going and I went there and I got to where he said and I didn't, it didn't look like an ambush, the brush wasn't taking up, I was going to save my ammo. He says start shooting, start shooting. And I said negative, negative, stand by, I wait out. I just ignored him. He said 34, start shooting.
Speaker 2:I waited until I couldn't see through the bushes, I couldn't see through the trees, and I started shooting. And I started shooting and we stopped in the main gun, kaboom, and the coax, which was a mechanical piece of shit that cost so many soldiers their lives, the M73, because the ordnance people modified the machine gun after it had been designed and approved for production and the modification caused the gun to jam after every three rounds. Oh, a gun to jam after every three rounds. Oh, for everybody In Germany, in Vietnam, everybody who had a tank with an M-17 machine gun could never get that son of a bitch to fire, or in a few rounds, a few bursts, it would just stop. Because to make the angle of the feed from the feeding chute where the ammunition was stored they had to cut about an inch off the back of the receiver to line up the in part of the machine gun with the ammunition belt coming in. That won't hurt anything, yeah, so I didn't depend on our COAX for anything. Anyway, we still got a few bursts out of it and I pulled in my position and sitting there ready for something to happen. And, sure enough, here comes behind me and the trucks are rolling and down the road. A PC turns out 100 yards away and the trucks keep going by by, by by. After maybe 15, 10 minutes the trucks are all through. Everybody made it and so everybody went on kind of standby, stay on your weapons. But we didn't get attacked, turns out I'm the reason we didn't get attacked. I was a little nervous but nothing happened. So I got out of my tank. I had my gunner come up, which the Army murdered a few months later. I'll tell you about that.
Speaker 2:To get on the 50, I went on the back deck. I was taking a piss and I was looking down and I was pissing on a pile of RPG and RPG launchers, brand new, maybe 15, 20 rockets, maybe 10, 12 launchers. And I look up and I see these little spider holes back in the woods. I see little rattan woven baskets with Chaikon grenades these little foxholes. I see empty ammo boxes. We had broken up that ambush and they let you see these little foxholes. I see empty ammo boxes. We had broken up that ambush by firing. I never knew it. They just digged them out and ran. We started shooting at them. They didn't expect that. They thought it was going to be like the day before.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:They didn't expect a tank to stop right in front of them and start shooting at them. They left their weapons, they left. What's that song about 1812? They ran through the brambles and they ran through the briars. They ran through the places where a rabbit couldn't go.
Speaker 1:They sure did yeah.
Speaker 2:And then I started. I called the lieutenant to come over fast. I said bring the. A Cav platoon doesn't have grunts. The lieutenant to come over fast. I said bring the. A Cavs platoon doesn't have grunts. It has these things called the 11 Delpsys, which are armored scouts. And our scouts had an attitude. They wouldn't do infantry work, they wouldn't dig foxhole at night, they wouldn't go on patrol by themselves. They were scouts, not grunts. Anyway, I called him to get some of those scouts to get into that complex and secure it. You could probably see the NBA running away. They could probably call RDA right on it to get to the edge of the dropover into the valley Negative, negative. He probably knew it was a waste of time. Dropover into the valley Negative, negative. He probably knew it was a waste of time ordering him to do that. As stupid as he was, he figured that out.
Speaker 2:So the lieutenant comes down, sees all this goes oh my God, Picks up an RPG and a launcher, Takes it back to the troop. Co Comes back and says Alford, move your tank about 100 yards to the left. I said why, Lieutenant, I'm securing this ambush site, Don't worry about it, it's secured. Okay, Just move. And that's the last I heard about that.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:No medals, no congratulations, no souvenirs.
Speaker 1:Not even a handshake.
Speaker 2:Not even a handshake.
Speaker 1:Oh, so how did the rest of that convoy go then?
Speaker 2:They got through fine, good, good they got through fine Good Good. They got through fine.
Speaker 1:So you were in Vietnam for a whole year then.
Speaker 2:A couple weeks shy, except for my tour with the Vietnamese Navy the whole time of a year.
Speaker 1:Right, I forgot about that. The Vietnamese Navy. Did you get any Navy awards while you were doing that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I should get a little anchor stem and anchor there, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2:So how did the rest of the tour go.
Speaker 2:Badly. The worst was yet to come. I'm trying to put this in chronological order. Shortly after that incident, my R&R came up. Oh, that's another story to tell. Right there, my R&R came up and my parents my mother of course researched R&Rs and knew all about them and told me that I was going to Hong Kong and that they were going to meet me there during my R&R, To which I said that means no fun for this guy. No girls, no bar. No girls, no bar. Lo and behold, that's exactly what happened. Now there's two stories. I'll stop the Nam story and tell you the R&R story.
Speaker 2:I was there waiting for them in the Mandarin, which is the most luxurious hotel. The first night I had to go, where the army sent me, to, this like hostel or motel where the girls were lined up waiting for us and waving and hugging us as we came in. But no, not me. I couldn't get a girl because I was moving to the Mandarin and I moved to the Mandarin and at that time one of the big things for GI going to Hong Kong for R&R was to get silk suits. It was a dime on a dollar and they had all that downstairs and they had all this money. You know you only get paid like $40 in cash amounts in Vietnam. They save all the rest for you, or maybe $20 in cash and funny money. These vouchers like funny monopoly money that you can only spend in U and funny money these vouchers like funny monopoly money that you can only spend in US facilities.
Speaker 1:We had the same thing in Iraq.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, Funny money.
Speaker 1:PX money. Basically they were cardboard pogs and funny money. So anyway you go to the Mandarin. You want to get a silk suit.
Speaker 2:Oh boy, you should have saved a couple and minutes to set out of them. Yeah, I'll send you mine. I don't know where they are anymore, anyway. So that's all I had to do. So I spent two and a half days of my seven-day R&R getting fitted for suits. Finally they arrived the third day of my R&R. They're in the same hotel. They check in I my R&R. They're in the same hotel. They check in.
Speaker 2:I was just coming back from downstairs from the tailors with the first of my two or three suits. I got ten suits made and had them shipped home. I couldn't get into any one of them right now, not a one, in fact. It wasn't long after the Army I could not get into them, but anyway.
Speaker 2:So I put on the one I liked the most, with my silk tie and everything, my solid silver cufflinks and everything, and I go down to the floor and the door to the room's cracked a little bit and I knock on the door and I hear my father scream like he just seen me get shot or something. He didn't know what to expect and I pushed the door open and he's standing there, big guy, with tears coming down his eyes, looking at me in this three-piece tailored suit and he starts crying and he runs up and hugs me. Turns out he was expecting to see me in combat gear, with mud on my face and C-rations in my helmet and an M-16, and worn clothes and a bandage on my thing and a bayonet in my belt and torn up boots. Was he in for a surprise? That was the biggest shock of his life.
Speaker 1:Not on R&R Right, you're not going to see that on R&R.
Speaker 2:But he was World War II. So you tell him combat's coming to see you. That's what he pictured. Yeah, he was World War II. So you tell him combats will come to see you. That's what he pictured. Yeah, he'd seen it. So that was a hoot. I also got hepatitis A from eating the restaurant's food. Oh, that was fun. So I went through about that in my seven days Oof. And then my mother talks about getting my R&R extended, and the next day I just dropped by their room and said bye mom, bye dad, love you. I went back. No one was going to extend my R&R. R&r sucked as far as I was concerned, except for the suits. Yeah, r&r sucked as far as I was concerned, except for the suits.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you get back from your R&R. That wasn't really R&R, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, who mits their parents on R&R.
Speaker 1:WTF. You do, jeff, you do yeah.
Speaker 2:Then I get back. You do, jeff, you do so, then I get back. And while I was gone on this fantastic R&R, my unit was hit one night, my platoon and they blew the shit out of it. Yeah, we medevaced four guys, two with their legs blown off the platoon sergeant was hit.
Speaker 2:The new platoon sergeant was hit. One track caught on fire. It's hard to make aluminum burn, but it burns. It burns like wax when you get it hot enough. One PC burned to the ground. My tank had bullet holes in the containers on the bustle rack where it carried our personal stuff.
Speaker 2:None of the deltas manned the foxholes in between the tracks for protection. That night Nobody went out on ambush patrols to protect the perimeter. That night they got creamed. They ended up all hiding in the mortar pit for the rest of the night. Every vehicle was abandoned and all 30 of them 40 of them ended up hiding.
Speaker 2:When the mortar pit sets up, it builds a little dirt berm about this high around its track to keep rolling fire stuff away from the charges. Because you've got open gunpowder on a mortar with little packets of powder that are connected to everyone. That's how you adjust the range. You leave on or pull off some powder packets that are already on the mortar shell and you throw them in a pile and you don't want sparks. So you have a berm about this high. That's the only kind of protection that was left. There were everybody from every track Deltas, scouts, tank crews, everybody Except one tanker, one tanker who ended up being my gunner.
Speaker 2:He stayed in his tank, this piece of shit, sheridan, firing at the enemy where you thought they would be with the main gun. Now, the Sheridan piece of shit doesn't have a gun like any other tank in the world that fires a fixed round. You know there's a shell and a brass casing. No, it fires a shell-less round with a projectile with a nylon bag sewn around it and in that bag is the propellant for the shell. And if you accidentally poke a hole in the bag propellant, the gunpowder pieces fall over your turret and under your turret and around the ammo and you never find them. That's another story. And you never find them. That's another story.
Speaker 2:Anyway, by him and the gun tube was cleared of burning material left by it from the cartridge by forced air. They had a compressor on board that a few seconds after shooting it closed up the breech and blew air through the tube which blew the burning residue out. Only then did the breech open up again and ready for another round. That whole procedure took about 20 to 25 seconds. You could fire two rounds a minute with that tank. Two rounds a minute. You know how many rounds in an M90 we could fire in one minute. I could fire 50 rounds in a minute in an M48.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that time between shooting.
Speaker 2:Not only that he had no loader, he had to crawl in to be the loader. He had to crawl to be the TC to aim and fire. He had to crawl back down to load the gun. They didn't give him shit because admitting to what he did would raise the question well, why was he the only one doing that?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And then everyone looks at everybody else and goes duh, the same lieutenant. Okay, I feel guilty for that and I still do. A few weeks later we're in a big ronsai. Ronsai is tanks curled up to the night for protection. It's like you know, several wagons, all the guns pointed out and supposedly foxholes filled with infantrymen in between tanks, so you can't sneak by the tank and throw grenades in it, which our deltas never did.
Speaker 2:A buck sergeant, a shaking pick. I was a spec five, he was a buck sergeant, so technically he outranked me. He says we need to borrow your gunner. Some generals are here to see how the Sheridan works and we don't have a loader for this tank. So let me borrow Vernon for this demonstration. I said no, he's my gunner, my loader, I'm not letting him go play games with you. And he said well, if you want, I'll bring the lieutenant over here and make an order. Vernon went willingly. Well, I hear the Sheridan fire around. Then I hear the Sheridan fire around and then I don't hear anything. And I'm waiting, and I'm waiting and suddenly I see people running towards the other side of the wrong side, the berm, and I hear a slick coming in Whacka, whacka, whacka. It's a dust-off slick, it's got the red cross on the nose.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:What the fuck. So I jumped out of my tank the hell, with anybody up there. And I ran up there and I went to have blood in my eyes because some of the guys in my team ran up and grabbed me. I had my .45 not only on me in my hand and cocked, carrying it by my side, because I just knew something had happened to Vernon and something had happened to Vernon Due to a technical fault of the system that nobody else ever fucking had.
Speaker 2:While he was loading the third round, the gun went off in his face and he took the recoil of the gun in his forehead. Now on the back operating handle of that piece of shit. Sheridan, it's not a lever, a metal lever like a regular tank, it's a little wound wooden knob that you use to turn the breech open. It's a screw breech Got that right between the eyes, right through the helmet. He had a tanker's helmet on a CBC helmet and they took my gun away and the XO of the troop took me to his tent or his PC it's a headquarters PC and just sat there with me and just talked about things for a while till the chopper left and finally I went and asked the tc what happened. Well, I don't know.
Speaker 2:As soon as the breach closed, it fired. The second the breach started to close, it fired. I said maybe you didn't take your finger off the trigger from the last round. No, no, no, I didn't, I couldn't do that and I was ready to punch his lights out and they jumped me again, dragged me away. I'm just a little bitty. Five foot fake fart with glasses I could split his guts out and I looked for a chance to kill him for the rest of my tour. That tank man Never had it.
Speaker 1:Never had the opportunity, and this is just one more time where you've got to go to work every day and basically suck it up, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like, each one of these incidents builds on the builds on the next, and, and you know if you, if you think about it like you know, the the first incident that you had before you even went overseas, you didn't have a knife on you. Uh, the second incident, you just thought about pulling your gun out. And the third one, you actually pulled it out because you're was it getting to the point where you just had enough? I'm sorry was it getting to the point where you just had enough, like, like what else could happen?
Speaker 2:no okay it was. It was situation specific okay it wasn't that I'm aware of. It wasn't a general feeling. I've had enough. I'm going to shoot myself with somebody. No, no, no.
Speaker 1:It was just, each incident was like that.
Speaker 2:Separately Each incident. Somebody wronged me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And for some reason, that's how I respond now. So how much I don't carry a gun, even though I can Well how much carry a gun, even though I can well how much? Florida, in florida, anybody over 21 can carry a concealed weapon. No registration, no training, nothing, just sticking your belt on the way out to the market. But I don't.
Speaker 1:That's the reason I don't how much, how much longer did you have left on your tour after this incident?
Speaker 2:The last couple months were Lord. It started to rain.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:It was the rainy season, this was like September, uh, oh yeah, the other time my unit got messed up and I wasn't there. I wasn't there because my tank he said shit had broken down again and I was in the rear and they were up by a, an observation post called charlie c, right on the dmz. You can see in these buildings, you know you almost saw a rock across it and it's been that that way since 1954.
Speaker 1:nobody knows how many mines are planted on that board or where.
Speaker 2:Anyway, we had two, three tracks hit mines the first day. They were up there and they ran for their lives. Basically they went back to Dung Ha under no specific orders and they ran for their lives. Basically they went back to Dungha Under no specific orders I'm aware of. Once again, I wasn't there to save the day.
Speaker 2:The thing with mines is you don't know whether it's a mine that they just left for a laugh or whether it was an ambush mine where it was a command detonated. In other words, rolling over it didn't set the mine off. They had a little electric switch that set the mine off and they would wait till like the first or second vehicle of a convoy came by and they'd blow it. Blowing up that vehicle blocked the front of the convoy. Then they hit RPGs the last vehicle of the convoy and then they just worked their way in toward the middle. And since we knew that's exactly what happened here, we're not going to wait around for that. So they just left and even though it might have been cowards in the face of the enemy, it's the only logical and reasonable action they could have taken. I don't think bad for doing that, Except I wish they'd killed a couple of scouts but that was the other thing.
Speaker 1:I feel bad about not being there for that. Well, and another point to bring up is you know, when we fought in Iraq, you heard a lot about IEDs and provided explosive devices, right, and Vietnam vets know that that stuff's been around for a long time. That wasn't, that wasn't new. For for the enemy to do this, that's a standard tactic, um, but we seemed surprised 40 years later when we were seeing the same thing, uh, in iraq, and we in and reacting the same way well, in, in for all intents and purposes, pretending like it was new, like oh well, this is something different, we've never seen this before, and uh, so yeah.
Speaker 1:So I just I want the audience to understand, you know, when you're talking about a command detonated mind.
Speaker 2:It's what we called an ied, but it's the same damn thing with the same yeah the same intended purpose yes, yes, now I think about it's exactly the same thing, except instead of remote, it's done by wire.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or a cell phone. He used cell phones where I was at.
Speaker 2:You didn't have cell phones then?
Speaker 1:Yeah, there were no cell phones, but I know we didn't even have pagers.
Speaker 1:I'm with you, brother, a hundred percent with you. Um, so you know, I just I hear you say, you've said several times, like you know, I wish I would have been there, or you know there was something you could have done, and I know we're going to continue talking through this but have you ever gotten to the point where you realized that there really wasn't anything you could have done even if you would have been there, that there really wasn't anything you could have done, even if you?
Speaker 2:would have been there.
Speaker 1:I can't, I can't go there Because shit's going to happen whether we're there or not, especially the night ambush Right.
Speaker 2:If I admit that to myself, then I would have run like the rest of them and jumped into the berm and hid, or I would have went up on my tank firing, like Vernon was, but I'll never know what I would have done, so I don't think of me being there in that case. I was not there to share the grief.
Speaker 1:Right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because at the end of the day, we don't get the benefit of knowing what would have happened if we would have done something different. Right, we only know what happened because it happened. We don't ever get to know if I had turned right instead of left, what would have happened. We don't ever get to know that. But we can make up in our head what might've happened, but we just don't ever get to know that and that that can be, uh, self-destructive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely so. You, uh, you were. You were telling me that towards the end of your tour, it started it started raining. Was it like the rainy season then Is? You were telling me that towards the end of your tour, it started raining.
Speaker 2:Was it like the rainy season then? Yeah, but a lot of times you would get mist.
Speaker 1:Occasionally, when they knew there were NVA in the area.
Speaker 2:They gave us this ground radar. It's only about that tall and there's an operator with it and it could see through the rain and mist. And the night they were hit they saw a movement out there, but it was so inexact they couldn't tell from where it was. Somewhere in this 180-degree circle there's something out there that wasn't there when we set up. Okay, and I think that's when some people thought it'd be a good time to go visit the mortar crew.
Speaker 1:Right, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I think Vernon died in 1986. I'm in the process of contacting his family. I haven't had the guts yet to contact his family and tell them who I am, uh, and what happened to him. He was only have been 36 years old. I I'm to me. It's even money. He died from his injuries so I want to go.
Speaker 1:Okay, I want to go back because I didn't catch this when we first started talking about it. But he survived his.
Speaker 2:He survived that traumatic injury no one told us that I found out on my own.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:After the war, after after the army.
Speaker 1:Right yeah.
Speaker 2:We had computers then.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I would, I would um, we're not done with our conversation yet, but I just want to put this in your head I would do everything you can to talk to his family, and the reason is, in my experience, is that it's so helpful for the family. It's also really super helpful for you. It's also really super helpful for you, and I can tell you that from my experience, there's a lot of fear about going and talking to these families, or how is that going to impact me, or how are they going to react? Almost always, the reaction is like relief, like they get to talk to someone who knew their son before all this stuff happened to them.
Speaker 1:And you want your badly and you, jeff, get to talk to them and that's going to help you because you're going to make that connection and I think I think Vern deserves it, I think you deserve it and I think that family deserves it. There's no way that you nobody loses in that situation. You know what I mean. That's a win for everybody, but it's hard as hell to do because it's scary.
Speaker 2:Well, I still have research to do. The one to go on was their last known phone number. But, I'll hunt them down, I'll find them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's ways to do it, and when we get done talking, I can tell you some of those ways that I've done this. But there are ways to make that happen. So I want to go back a little bit. Then you finished out your tour in Vietnam. Is there anything else there that you wanted to share before you end your tour in Vietnam?
Speaker 2:Yes, okay, when you come home, your flight scheduling is always flaky, just like your arrival is. That's how I ended up in the Navy and by the time I find out that I've been at the at Thompson or Van War, wherever the base is that flies you home. I've been there for a long time, like five, six days already but I finally found out my flight. It was too late to contact my parents, so I was arriving home unannounced. Well, I got home on a Saturday night and at the airport I met another guy who I went to Vietnam with, who was on the same flight and was with me in the thing before he went off to join his unit and I went off to join the Vietnamese Navy and he got home that same night. So we were sitting in the bar and we started to get shit faced and he could hold his liquor better than me and the waitress. There. It was about 10 to 2, closing at 2, and the waitress kind of made it clear that she was willing to go home with one of us or take one of us home. So then we both got into this pathetic act, but he won just as well as he did. So, half drunk, I caught a taxi to home.
Speaker 2:I get home it might have been earlier than that, it might have been about 1 in the morning and nobody's home. I ring the doorbell, I knock on the door and all I hear is the dog barking Bobo, my mother's poodle. He knew who was home, so I just threw my duffel bag on the front steps under the light, sat down, threw my saucer cap away and started smoking cigarettes. And I see a car pull up next door, our neighbor's home, and the neighbor walks over. And the neighbor walks over and he says what's wrong with you? You look like you swallowed a snake. I said I just swallowed 365 snakes. And he said come over, I'll give you a drink. You need a drink. I don't know if you watched TV in the 80s and 90s, but did you ever watch a TV show called Barney Miller? Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You remember the Asian cop, the straight-faced cop who always came out with one-liners.
Speaker 1:Jack Su? Yeah, that was him. That was my neighbor. So you get back from Vietnam and you're having drinks with an actor.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's pretty interesting. Yeah, it was a great show, by the way, I really enjoyed watching it.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, it was Him and Abe Fagota, him and Abe Fagota, yeah, yeah, Anyway, so he took care of me until my parents got home. They were out at a private club partying and the next morning, when I woke up, my mom came in to wake me up and I turned on her with a knife in my hand. Yeah, I stepped with a knife under my pillow. I didn't have any guns. Well, I was going to dig out my old rifle, honey rifle, and that taught her not to wake me up like that, by shaking me and talking, yelling at me, and I stopped sleeping with something under my pillow about 20 years ago old habits die hard right I still sleep with a gun next to the bed yeah, well, you, you, so you left.
Speaker 1:You left vietnam and you came right home. I.
Speaker 2:I came home an alcoholic sorry.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, my point is, there was no like decompression zone where you took a month or whatever, you just came right home.
Speaker 2:No, they give you a month.
Speaker 1:Oh, do they Okay.
Speaker 2:But most of you sleep.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Most of that month you sleep. But most of you sleep, yeah, most of that month you sleep. Then by then, came time to leave the Army. I'm in no condition to leave the Army. I'm a pretty good sergeant during the day, but I'm drinking with the other alcoholic sergeants every night and I said I can't go home like this. So I just signed up for six more years, and that's how long it took me to stop doing that. And by the end of year nine I was under control and sick of the Army Because I was stuck in tanks. That was my primary MOS, although I had done a million wonderful jobs in those six years.
Speaker 2:I had been a community liaison representative. I had been a DOD pimp for soldiers in Germany. I had been a chemical instructor. I had a drill sergeant. I had some great duties in those last six years.
Speaker 2:All of them as good as that. Vietnam was bad, yeah. And why I left? Why I left is because the day before my first platoon was going to graduate basic training, the colonel of my home battalion receives a message from the general division oh, the Israelis started to use our tactics in the Yom Kippur War and they got their asses kicked. We've got to change our tactics right now. Right now, tomorrow night, your whole battalion is going to the firing range and you've got to be able to engage your target to get a first-round kill. And they called me back. He would not listen to anybody. And they called me back and I went through the range. I probably got a D+, but I did it. I also missed my platoon's graduation. I also resigned two months later when my re-enlistment date came up. Fuck you, adios boy.
Speaker 1:So you had enough of the army by then you, you said that you um, you signed up for six more years and it took you that long to to stop drinking, um stop everything. Yeah, so with gun yeah, so what, like what, prompted you to know that you needed to quit doing that stuff?
Speaker 2:the night I was on cq duty. You know what cq is I do yeah, okay, and I was bored and I had just gotten these, this set of Civil War muzzle-loading pistols, and a friend of mine brought in a bottle and a paper bag and the next thing I knew I was out shooting out speed lamps in the battalion courtyard there with my 1854 Navy Colt 36 caliber. I lived to survive that.
Speaker 1:Everybody covered for me, but that was my wake-up call. Yeah, that's a career-ender right there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or at least a one-way ticket to the shrink.
Speaker 1:Right, right, you would sit on a couch for a long time after doing that.
Speaker 2:So do you still not drink? No, I can drink occasionally when I want to, but I don't let it control me. I'm also on meds that respond very poorly to alcohol. I take two different opiates for my particular injuries.
Speaker 1:And you can't take opiates and take alcohol.
Speaker 2:You wake up on the floor.
Speaker 1:You can, but it's not a good idea.
Speaker 2:Oh. Right the time or two. I tried it. I ended up on the floor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I hear you. So you got out of the Army. What did you do after the Army? What was that next step?
Speaker 2:Okay, I kind of fell back into a routine. I got a job with a security company West Tech Security, a derivative of Westinghouse Security Systems, and I got to work at their central station where the people who had alarms that reported in at their homes it was manned 24 hours and we'd call the police or tell them how to reset their alarm and stuff. I had some run-ins with celebrities too in that job. I just had Jacqueline Smith call me a lying motherfucker. I once had Don Meredith throw a swing at me.
Speaker 1:I get Don Meredith, but Jacqueline Smith called you a lying motherfucker. What's that all about? Can you tell me that story?
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, sometimes I rode into the field, especially on weekends, with the guys, because we always had a two man team or two person team go out to respond to a call, especially when there was a guest there, and they didn't know how to turn off the alarm and the owner didn't tell them the code word. We didn't know who they were. So weekends they'd call me to go with whatever service guy was going out there. So we went out there to his house or was it Dinah Shore's house? It was somebody's house. They had a little putting green, a sand on the beach, malibu. That had a little putting green, the sand on the beach, malleable.
Speaker 2:And we, we, we accept the law and went back in the truck and he comes out of the house and the alarms ring and he starts yelling at you, we set the law, we didn't do it right. This went on for three times and finally I said to him, standing in front of him, and said Mr, whatever your name is, you have to explain to you you're setting these alarms off. But you, it's not me, you little. And he spins himself around and falls on his face.
Speaker 1:Oh no.
Speaker 2:And I leave him there and I go set the alarm again, me and John. He went back to the office. I went home. We had a lot of run-ins with celebrities who were sitting their own alarms off and they couldn't, or for company, for needing company from desperate loneliness, set their alarms off on purpose to have somebody talk to you.
Speaker 1:I could see that. I could see that happening. So how long did you do that?
Speaker 2:About a year while I was going to college, I went back to the same college I failed at.
Speaker 1:And when. So this is like 1976 or 1980? Okay.
Speaker 2:Well, I got an early out, so I got out in 77. 78, I started going back to school.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:My school? No, this is a different school Santa Monica College, a two-year college.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:And I was going to major in journalism and I did and I got like on the Dean's Honor List I got all A's all the time. Of course I'm 20 years older than any other student in the class, but Right.
Speaker 2:And then I transferred to the college I failed out of in 1966, 67. San Fernando Valley, california State University, but back then it was San Fernando Valley State College. And for the next two and a half years, at the end of every semester I would get an envelope from the school and in the envelope were two little letters and I would take out the first letter and read congratulations, you're a great point average and allowed me to put you on my dean's honor list for the semester of blah blah, blah blah. Take out the second letter. Be advised, you are still on academic probation. You cannot, you will not be a district, you will not until further notice. For the next six semesters. I got that double letter.
Speaker 1:I want to share something with you. I know we're telling your stories, but I got to tell you this. Frigging colleges have a long memory because I did the same thing that you did with college. I went to the local college here when I graduated high school. I was not a stellar student. I was there for about 10 minutes and I managed to fail every class I took right. So I left and I joined the Navy. So fast forward, like 35 fricking years later, I'm going back, I'm going to get my degree, but I want to finish up. I can go to this local college to do the stuff cheaper. I get there and they put me on academic probation. I'm like dude, that was 35. How the hell do you guys know this stuff? It was 35 years ago. Most of the people there are probably dead by now, right? So anyway, I didn't mean to step on your story, but when you said that, I'm like god, I'm not the only one, I am not the only one.
Speaker 1:No, I couldn't believe it either yeah, so you're on academic probation over there I one day I I went into that and I bought them this.
Speaker 2:This is my from old Hollywood. This is my American Legion cap. By the way, this is the thank you the Army gave me. If you can see them.
Speaker 1:I can, I can. My boy has his CIB as well.
Speaker 2:He has his what.
Speaker 1:He has his uh combat infantry badge as well. His cib he uh.
Speaker 1:He served in iraq the year after I got back okay, you okay yeah, you know, the good thing is is that he and I talk, uh, and we have these shared experiences, and so we have a way to, when we start feeling a certain way, we can call one another and and help each other out. I do that with my fellow veterans too, uh, but it's unique when it's your own son and he went to almost the same place. You went just as you were getting back, so it was a very strange I can imagine that but anyway very proud of uh him and his CIB.
Speaker 1:He doesn't like to talk about it.
Speaker 2:That's the big thing. Once they get started talking, they'll talk. They'll talk their heads off, absolutely. I didn't talk to anybody for 30 years. I didn't join this. I didn't even go to the VA until 35 years after now. I didn't know there were new benefits. I didn't know Agent Orange benefits were available. Yeah, there's some good stuff out there for veterans. Now I'm 100% disabled.
Speaker 1:There's some good stuff out there for veterans now that we just didn't. You tell me it sucked years ago, but it doesn't suck anymore as far as I'm concerned. No, it doesn't suck anymore as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 2:Maybe I'm wrong. No, it doesn't suck anymore. I like the VA, I'm proud of them, but when I got out, they checked my teeth for 10 minutes and that was it. It was sharp.
Speaker 1:Yeah, check your blood pressure. Look at your teeth and, by the way, my teeth were horrible. We won't get into that.
Speaker 2:So were mine.
Speaker 1:It took me about. Take a look, yeah, it took me about two years to get them back.
Speaker 2:I don't have any bottom teeth? Wow, that's for an implant.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's all that's left down there. I did not take care of my teeth in the Army. And I knew better Anyway.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so anyway, you're back at school.
Speaker 2:I'm back Anyway, yeah. So anyway, you're back at school, I'm back to school, I'm doing very well, I'm having fun, I'm the editor of the school newspaper and, since I'm older and have gone through a lot of bullshit, the people I talk to for stories like faculty administrators they can't intimidate me, they can't bark me down, I'll bark right back at them. So, according to you, you're not interested in the students' wealth. No, I didn't say well, you did say Well, no. So I was a popular editor with the supervisor, with the sponsor of the paper and the students, and I did that on purpose. I don't know why, but I did it on purpose and okay. So then I transferred to my. You're on probation, you're on a devonilist college and I just wish that music teacher had still been there. I would have killed him.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's a good thing he wasn't there, Jeff, I didn't even that didn't really bother me until long, long afterwards. Yeah, that thing with him didn't stay until about until long, long afterwards. That thing with him didn't start until about 15 years ago with me. I don't know why.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you clearly have not let go of it yet. No, no.
Speaker 2:I have not. I understand Anyway my brother during this time. He has a good job, he's successful, he's on drugs, he gives away drugs. So he comes home from the rock clubs at night with these hot little 15, 16-year-olds, but he's so full of drugs he's impotent so he just hasn't slept with me. I get drunk after work every day, enough to go to sleep. Six-pack of beer and I'm not going to touch a 14-year-old.
Speaker 1:He's fucking crazy, right you know.
Speaker 2:So I just got out. He gave me a place to live and everything I wanted. But I can't survive here. Something will happen. One of those little girls will go tell a lie or something and you know I go to prison. So I got my own place and I met one of his girlfriends at one of the parties. He was having later than that and he was having later than that and he came to the party with another girlfriend just to. This is how he got gets rid of old girlfriends, he brings in the new girlfriend.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:He's an asshole. Yeah, and that's how I met the wife. I married 16 months later, my brother's ex-girlfriend. I was a dental assistant and did a lot of work to get me fixed up. But too late, too late, okay, uh are you still married, by the way?
Speaker 1:yeah, second wife okay, all right, so yeah, so you uh so she just died last Friday. What.
Speaker 2:My first wife just died last Friday in Escondido.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:She was in the MCI. You know what MCI is.
Speaker 1:I do not.
Speaker 2:Mild Cognitive Impairment.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Home. It's like pre-Alzheimer's, pre-dementia, and I had just re-established contact with her a month before that, two months ago, and we started texting and talking on the phone. She sounded happy as a clam and she dies in her sleep by Friday with the same massive heart attack that killed her brother, her father and her grandfather Runs in the family, and her niece was the one that notified me Saturday morning About Saturday morning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how long were you married to her? 10 years Okay.
Speaker 2:We were married on Valentine's day she likes to say yes and divorced on veterans day, both apropos.
Speaker 1:Yes, very, very fitting, I would imagine, did you have kids with her?
Speaker 2:I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:Did you have children with her?
Speaker 2:No. Okay, she uh, she was a hippie in her younger ages. She had a lot of sex with a lot of men and she had fibroid tumors in her uterus that they could have operated on and gotten out, but she refused to do it. So she was infertile, right, so no, and as it turned turned out I'm glad we didn't. Yeah, uh, well, so so you?
Speaker 1:so you meet this girl um your brother's ex-girlfriend. You get married. You did you finish school at this point?
Speaker 2:yes okay I finished school not summa cum laude or magna cum laude, just cum laude. That's like the third one down.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I finished college cum laude, with a bachelor's degree in journalism and a letter from the dean's department saying you are still on academic probation.
Speaker 1:You gotta be shitting me, this department has been informed by the admissions office, you will still on academic probation. You got to be shitting me.
Speaker 2:Until this department has been informed by the admissions office, you will remain on academic probation.
Speaker 1:Even though they conferred your baccalaureate degree on you, they still said that.
Speaker 2:Now I keep getting fundraising things from the bastards.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not enough that you paid to go there. Now they want you to give them more money. Who knows?
Speaker 2:After I graduated, my wife and I bought a little house. I was still doing part-time jobs and I answered an ad in the paper from the local transit authority, the Metropolitan Transit Authority, asking for anyone experiencing journalism or public affairs to work on a project that was designed to bring rapid transit to Los Angeles County. So I said what the hell, I'll put on a suit and go down there. 20 minutes after I was down there, I had the job and I was down there. I had the job and I was a lobbyist for what at that time was called the Southern California Rapid Transit System. It was the bus company and they became and we built, we sold. Our job was to sell the concept of Metrorail to all the 52 cities in the county, to the city itself, to the county, to the state. We were lobbyists.
Speaker 2:That's what I did for three and a half four years. And then I went to a private company, hired me as a consultant and did the same thing for another three and a half four years and right around 1988, I did that for the 80s. Okay, I did that for the 80s. My marriage was getting shaky, she joined AA and it made her a different person. It made her a different person, a still very nice person, but not not the person I married. So I also had developed ID then no ED Erectile dysfunction, but they didn't have meds for it then they didn't have the little it then.
Speaker 1:They didn't have the little blue pill.
Speaker 2:They didn't have any blue pills.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no.
Speaker 2:They had testosterone which I started on, and hair started to grow out of the back of my knees and no, I can't do this.
Speaker 2:I can't be shaving the back of my knees every day. I'm not going to do this. I have my nose and stuff. I look like a witch. So I didn't go the testosterone route, as it turns out, a very wise choice. And then once a month in Los Angeles a biggie-big in the United States, biggie-big world of politicians, billionaires, corporate CEOs, all that came to LA and in one of the meeting rooms of like Arco Oil or Southern California Edison, one of the huge, big auditoriums, they'd come out and it was free to the public and they gave you some coffee and a wrapped up sandwich and you're listening to these guys talk. I went to this one and it was who was president in 1988? Reagan?
Speaker 1:Reagan was in the 80s. It was Reagan or Bush.
Speaker 2:Or Bush, it wasn't.
Speaker 1:Bush Must have been Reagan Hold it?
Speaker 2:Where's my, my brain? I'm no historian, I am middle school anyway right, I remember that you liked history who was president 1988? Reagan was president.
Speaker 1:There you go for for any for anybody listening to this right now if you're not watching the video? Uh, jeff just pulled out his phone and asked his phone who the president was. That's where we're at today, anyway.
Speaker 2:So 1980 reagan's president and you're drinking coffee eating a sandwich yeah, and he sent his secretary of education. He was a speaker for that day and he gave a very, very profound speak and it really registered with a lot of people and basically what he said to us hot shot, high paid consultants and CEOs and executives was lock the door to your office tonight and don't come back, and tomorrow morning you walk into a public school and you start teaching. And I did.
Speaker 1:Wow, how'd you like that? I had to join the school district for the test and everything I get that I must have liked it, I stayed in it for the next 25 years. Yeah, what grades did you teach? Stayed in it for the next 25 years?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what grades did you teach? I taught from 1989 to 2009 in the Los Angeles Unified School District and I taught from 2014 to 2019. I was a professor of English at a technical college in Thailand.
Speaker 1:Wow, well, tell me about the first day walking into a classroom teaching. Now, were you teaching high school or middle school or grade school? This was middle school, okay.
Speaker 2:This was middle school.
Speaker 1:Okay, so yeah.
Speaker 2:My temporary credential was only good for secondary, middle school, high school.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, so I, they tore me a new asshole. Yeah, they did these 12, 13-year-olds.
Speaker 1:They're good at it too, aren't they? Yeah, I substitute teach, so I yeah.
Speaker 2:My hat is off to you, amigo.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love those kids. They are not fun. I love it.
Speaker 2:I love those kids, they are not fun. I love them now too.
Speaker 1:They are not fun, but I love them, anyway. So, yeah, so they ripped you up, didn't they?
Speaker 2:I can walk into any high school junior high classroom and have that class eating my hands out of my hands in 10 minutes.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because first I make them afraid that I'll hit them If I convince them I will, and that takes care of the boys. And then I start flattering the girls, and that take care of the girls I don't physically hit them, I just intimidate them, I just stand next to them glaring down at them, and it worked, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:No, I don't think you have to threaten kids, they know yeah and some level they know you're not going to hit them, but they just don't know for sure that's right that's right, but weeks and weeks of this went on and one day my wife said to me, dear ruthie, who passed away this week.
Speaker 2:She said you know what your trouble is, jeff? I said no, what he said you look like a businessman who made a wrong turn and walked into a classroom instead of an office because I was still wearing my business suit, a three-piece suit and ties. He said tomorrow I'm going to work with jeans and your dress shirts, no tie and roll up your sleeves. And it changed like that. The kids just went into this. Oh, he's a real teacher mode Like that In one day, like that, one day Like a twilight zone, that's where I kept teaching. I had that problem solved.
Speaker 1:And then you could get down to the business of actually educating kids which is the coolest damn thing on the planet, by the way.
Speaker 2:They soak it up like a sponge. Yeah, you can't teach them enough. It bothers me that sometimes I cannot teach them enough.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:There's so much detail, especially in history, there's so much nuance, especially in writing and literature, and they have the capacity to accept it. They have the capacity to get it, but not in their life. Their life doesn't allow to happen that way. Until they're about 11th graders. Then I make progress, yeah, but junior high school is daycare as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 1:That can feel. It can definitely feel that way Sometimes. My daughter is actually a full-time teacher in a small school district here in Michigan, so, yeah, she's a God. God bless her. That's what she always wanted to do, um, so she did it, but it sounds like you were very successful at like you found this thing and it really worked for you because you did it for a long time it was fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had fun with the kids well in the midst I'm sorry oh no, no, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Every class to me. Every day I walked into a classroom. I spent the time going to school thinking of a gimmick to pull on them and who I was going to pull it on. By the time the bell rang and they came in, I had my opening strategy ready and in the first 10 minutes sometime in the first 10 minutes to clap I'd launch it. And it was usually a joke. Sometimes it's at their expense, but they laughed at that too.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, it showed them that you were a human too, right?
Speaker 2:I became very popular with the principal of the first school that gave me a full-time job. For the first three years I had an emergency permit. Okay, I was going to school to become a teacher. I had to get another degree. I had to get another credential Okay, I was on a temporary credential. And the last junior high school I worked at, the teacher really liked me and I really liked her the principal, and we're still lifelong friends and she brought me to her school, which happened to be the junior high school I attended as a child Wow, my junior high school school. I attended as a child, wow, my junior high school. Before I stepped into that school, the first day of working, I knew where every bathroom was, where every stairwell was, where every bush was, where every trash can was, where all the places to hide and smoke are. In five years then she got a high school. She brought me with her and that was the next. The other 15 years, the other 15 years, the next 15 years.
Speaker 1:You ever find yourself telling the kids at some point like you know whatever you are thinking about doing right now, I've thought about it and done it Twice, yeah. And they look at you like what? And like, yeah, I know what you're about to do and just don't do it because it's not going to turn out well.
Speaker 2:That's exactly mine.
Speaker 1:I know what you're thinking, I know what you want to do and I've done it already twice yes, learn from my experience, please they don't, they won't right well, and so in the midst point, in the midst of all of this, you got divorced and you got remarried. Right? Tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:The next chapter in my book, Jeffrey joins the transsexual world. I'm sorry, were you waiting for something?
Speaker 1:You can't just stop there, sir. You have to keep talking. Tell me about this.
Speaker 2:Okay, there, sir, you have to keep talking. Tell me about this, okay. When, while I was a consultant in the 80s um, hold on, hold on. I have to get my years right when did I 90? I'm blanking on the exact years. I'll tell you without dates, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's fine. We don't have to have dates, just kind of be general, we're good.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay. I stopped at my favorite bar four days out of the week because I was living alone. I was single from the time I divorced my first wife to the time I married my second wife. I was single for about 20-something years.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, I to the time I married my second wife. I was single for about 20-something years. Oh, okay, I was a single man, okay, yeah. And so I got very friendly with one of the servers there. Okay, she was just a little different than the rest of them and more friendly, and she'd tell me her personal problems and everything. And about two years into that relationship it struck me why she is the way she is, because never in a million years could you tell by looking at her that she was a he. And that kind of threw me for a loop. And while my head was spinning from that, there are several doctors. Back up there is a big medical tourism business in Thailand.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Huge. These doctors all come to America and are trained at Harvard, yale, princeton, and they come back to practice in Thailand. But you pay a dime on the dollar in Thailand for what they know, what their training is. Okay, this is the biggest deal in town. Anyway, she found a doctor who does SRS sexual reassignment surgery- Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Anyway, she was saving the money. She had made an open appointment with a surgeon there to have the operation done. But you cannot go there alone. You have to have a companion, because the second week you're there while you're recuperation, you live in a hotel room and you can't be there alone. You have to have someone with you, a member of your family, somebody, a friend. And she could not find anybody to go with her and I volunteered.
Speaker 1:So that's how you ended up in Thailand yes, teaching.
Speaker 2:Okay, the first time. Okay, no, I ended up teaching in Thailand because of my wife.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:All right, not because of this girl.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to get ahead of myself.
Speaker 2:So I saved enough money. I was kind of well-to-do at the time. My father had passed away and left me a nice bequest and so I chipped in to the amount. She was short for airfare and I paid for my airfare and we went there to the doctor's town and there were lots of old American men there it was the freakiest thing you ever saw in your life. Lots of 60, 70-year-old men who were there to become women. Wow, hundreds, wow. And Brits and French and Australians this guy was the best. Um, and French and Australian this guy was the best. While we were there, each patient was assigned a patient liaison member from the doctor's clinic, a staff member that would check vital signs a couple times a day before and after surgery. I would report back to the doctor what they saw, what they thought the condition was. There was a part where the patient had to train and observe the patient using a set of crystal dildo so that certain orifice new orifices didn't close up, grow together Right, and that certain orifices new orifices didn't close up grow together Right.
Speaker 2:And the girl that came to us that was assigned to my friend. Her name was Nam and she was a sweetheart and a half. Her smile was this wide and still is, and she was funny and she was smart. And my friend had two more days to stay there but she was healing so well that nobody made me stay with her. She didn't need a companion anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I left two days before they released her to come home. And that day Nong came over to do a check on her. Okay, we were going over daily checks and she checks her and she checks her and they do their little do a thing. And I tell her I'm leaving today, Bye, bye, and she hugged me and she leaves the room and as soon as that door closes I turned to my friend and said I'm going to marry that girl. 18 months later, I did.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's. That's quite a way to get to that point, yeah, Wow.
Speaker 2:And she had a four-and-a-half-year-old son that was a little jerk but grew up to be a great man, young man.
Speaker 1:So I'm guessing he's there at the house now.
Speaker 2:Somebody is. It's either him or the cats. Yeah, oh, he just came back for lunch. He's at work now. Okay, oh God, okay.
Speaker 1:We've been talking for a little while here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have.
Speaker 1:So you got married. She had a son. Did you have any other children with her? No, got married, did you she?
Speaker 2:had her. She had a son. Did you have any other children with her? No, okay, no, okay.
Speaker 2:For a variety of reasons mostly medical reasons and her age was another reason, and it was at this time no, it 10 years before that. I had learned about the birth defects caused by Agent Orner. Yeah, and I would not. I went out of my way, even made up medical conditions to avoid it, because I have a terrifying fear that a child sired by me would have a birth defect, as thousands of men have discovered. Veterans of Vietnam have discovered.
Speaker 1:Okay, and that makes sense. So how? How was teaching in Thailand? What was that like for you?
Speaker 2:Okay, insert something here.
Speaker 2:The reason we went to Thailand. My wife spent her first six months in LA with me. It was too cold for her. She couldn't survive in LA. She said I hear we moved north. There's a lot of Thai people they say the weather's fine. So I had a rental house in Davis, california, uc Davis, up there north of Oakland, san Francisco, and so we kicked the students out there and we moved in there and the first winter came and she was too cold. Okay, so I moved to Florida and the first winter came and she was too cold. Okay, so I moved to Florida. It wasn't too cold there, but all these moves had killed my finance and could not afford for too long the house we got in Florida. I had bought a brand new house when we got married in Thailand. So we moved back to Thailand and it was during that stay there that I got hooked up with this teaching job at this college there. Okay, my students, have you ever seen Asian female college students?
Speaker 1:I mean, I live right by Michigan State. So yeah, I do, I see them all the time.
Speaker 2:You see what they wear.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:I had 20 to 30 of those four hours a day for five years. It was heaven.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It was heaven. Yeah, it was heaven on all counts. They cried an ocean of tears when I left. I still get emails and Christmas cards saying please come back. They're not even in school anymore.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But I loved them and the few boys that were there, and they loved me and the owner of the school loved me. But, uh, I had been away from America long enough. That was my limit, as much fun as I was having, I was tired of living in a land where I don't speak the language I have. I'm partially deaf and Thai is a tonal language and if you can't hear the little nuances between the uh, uh, eh, you can't understand the words and I cannot hear them. So I was not having fun living in Thailand. So we came back in January of 19, spent six months looking for a house, bought this house here in Lake Worth and retired.
Speaker 1:And then COVID hit right, yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:Then COVID hit and we went into lockdown and I did not handle lockdown very well. Well, I'll take that back. The lockdown very well. Well, I'll take that back. Physically, I handled it very well. I did everything exactly right that they told us to do, everything Okay and in the process became an anti-social hermit and a Trump hater.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I still live with those results of being a hermit. I have no friends, I go to no social activities. I go with my wife to her Thai temple Buddhist here once a week. It's more of a social thing than a religious thing. Right temple Buddhist here once a week. It's more of a social thing than a religious thing. Right, I'm just waiting to die. I didn't think I'd live this long. I've been waiting to die since 1971.
Speaker 1:I didn't think I'd make it through now, do you think?
Speaker 2:maybe there's something that you're supposed to accomplish.
Speaker 1:I think I've done it, you do I think teaching, was it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, when my father died, he left me a million dollars, tax free, in cash. I left it in his stock market account and ran it up to 1.78 million, and then I proceeded to spend three years giving it away. I gave away a penny. I don't know why I'm crying. How did you penny? I don't know why I'm crying.
Speaker 1:How did you give it away? You just gave it away.
Speaker 2:I helped thousands of students who were in hard times, thousands of veterans who were in hard times, thousands of bums who were in hard times, thousands of students' families who were in hard times, dozens of transsexuals who were in hard times, thousands of students' families who are in hard times, dozens of transsexuals who are in hard times. It's all gone. I just live on my income now. I did buy this house and a very nice house in Thailand. Those are my non-liquid assets.
Speaker 1:Right. So do you think you'll be going back to Thailand anytime soon to visit?
Speaker 2:Too many friends there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Not to live for five years, not to live for five years Right right, Maybe a year. Maybe a year. It's hot in Thailand. I never saw the thermometer go below 80 in five years.
Speaker 1:Isn't it humid there as well? Am I wrong?
Speaker 2:It's like Florida. It's no different than Florida.
Speaker 1:Okay Well, florida's humid to me.
Speaker 2:Florida's humid to me, I don't even notice the humidity, yeah, except my car windshield.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have a lot of friends there and a few other zingers to throw in there. I'm trying to get my son to join the Navy. Academically he's lost. I mean, he takes the classes, he advances, he matriculates, as we say in the business, but he has no focus. He's just like I was and I'm going to get him in the Navy. What's the basic? A four-year stint.
Speaker 1:You could do. Okay, it's been a while, so I actually served in the Navy before I served in the Army, and at that time you could do a two-year stint.
Speaker 2:No, I don't think I can do that anymore.
Speaker 1:Well, I would check, and the reason I say that is because right now recruiting is struggling to hit their numbers and so they. They will come up with these um programs and a lot of times they'll have like a two-year program where you can go in for two years non-designated, so they don't guarantee you a job, you just go in.
Speaker 2:I don't want him in for two years. I want him in for two or four years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and there's those as well, but definitely talk to a recruiter.
Speaker 1:But you know, I think the Navy is what saved me from going nowhere, because that's where I was headed and thankfully, so did the Army Saved me from going nowhere, in a way well and if you know, if I think about it, I I left the navy and went to work in in the utility industry, but I missed the military, so I joined the army national guard here in michigan, um, and that had a whole bunch of other um things that helped me out, um, with my life. It had a lot of consequences that I don't appreciate PTSD and and mental issues and suicide attempts and things like that but overall my time in service made me who I am right now, and so I don't I can't say it was a bad decision, but there were a lot of things that happened.
Speaker 2:It saved your life.
Speaker 1:It did, it did.
Speaker 2:As we say in Buddhism, I just blessed you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, you're welcome. So you are, you do, you are. You. Are you a practicing Buddhist then?
Speaker 2:I'm a Buddhist now Okay, cause they don't have a God, they just have a teacher. His name is Buddha.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:There's no God.
Speaker 1:It's very calming too, isn't it? I mean it's like can help with a lot of things.
Speaker 2:If you could get yourself to meditate just 10 minutes every day. Even if you couldn't get into it, in that 10 minutes you clock right out on it. If you try to meditate 10 minutes every single day, you will be a new person. At some point down the line you will be enlightened about yourself, about your family and about others. You will have no more hate. You will have no fears. You will have no more hate. You will have no fears. You will. You're impossible. People will make you mad. I'm not there yet.
Speaker 1:Believe me, right, you know, the interesting thing about about meditation to me is that I had this idea of what meditation was. That's the big problem in America. But meditation is really. It's like the movie Fight Club. Right, the first rule of Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club when you're meditating. You're not really, you're not thinking about at least the meditation that I've done. You're not thinking about anything. That's the purpose is to not think and process and do all these things. The purpose is to get in touch with yourself and to clear your mind and to pop those bubbles of thoughts. Yeah, so there's this whole thing about oh well, I'm meditating, so I've got to think about something and I've got to do this.
Speaker 2:No, that's the exact opposite of what meditation is?
Speaker 1:Yes, and it's so hard. Once you figure it out, it's great. But it's so hard at first to like do that, like, oh, here comes a thought, push it, you know, let it drift through and go away, let it drift through and go away. But so often I would catch myself like grabbing onto that thought and running with it and then realizing that's not what I'm supposed to be, that's I wouldn't even say, not what I'm supposed to be doing, that's not, that's not going to be helpful in my meditative journey, no.
Speaker 2:So put a finger in your belly button. Just put a finger in your belly button okay right behind there is a sphere. It's a highly charged crystal sphere and when it's cooking, the sparks it makes like flame from a fire. That's all you want to see when you meditate that and nothing else. And the second your brain starts to go someplace else, drag it back, yeah, until the alarm goes ding. And then do it the next day. Find that ball and you will be enlightened and you'll wonder how it happened so easy.
Speaker 1:Do you think that that's going to help you? I mean, you said something that is kind of stuck in my head that you're just kind of waiting to die. Do you think that in? Do you think that that's going to help you get out of that state of mind?
Speaker 2:yes, I do because you're not.
Speaker 1:I mean, you're not that old. I've got relatives that are a lot older than you, um, and they're not waiting to die. So yeah, I was just wondering if you think that's going to help you get out of that state of mind.
Speaker 2:I don't doubt it. Do you want to get out of it? I've seen it with too many people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you want to get out of that state of mind.
Speaker 2:I want to stop wanting to kill.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I just have this imaginary hit list of people. If I saw today they walk in this room, I don't know what I'd do For some of them. I just reached for this letter opener and put it through their throat. I wouldn't have to think a thought. Others, why bother? Why bother?
Speaker 1:Right, anyway, yeah, yes, I recommend it, okay, all right. Well, we've talked about a lot of stuff. We've actually been talking for almost two and a half hours, which it doesn't even seem like that long, to be honest with you, jeff, but I think, as we kind of wrap up our conversation today, um, I've learned a lot about you and it's been a great conversation, but before we go, I always ask the same question, and the question is you know when you and I are gone, because someday we will be what is it that you want people to take away from your life and from our conversation today?
Speaker 2:It's a phrase that's been used by the world for 10,000 years, but it's also a lyric in a Steppenwolf song, and it says it's never too late to start all over again.
Speaker 1:I think you're absolutely right. By the way, I used to listen to Steppenwolf Gold. It was a great album. It had all their good stuff on it. Anyway, well, thanks for sharing that with us. I like that.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Bill.
Speaker 1:Never too late to start over again. What's that?
Speaker 2:It did a lot for me.
Speaker 1:I'm glad. I'm glad that helped. That's one of the reasons we do this.
