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.
Veterans Archives is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Please visit our website for more information. www.veteransarchives.org
Veterans Archives: Preserving the Stories of our Nations Heroes
From Jersey Boy to Warrior: Dale Throneberry's Military Odyssey
Dale Throneberry's life reads like an American odyssey—from carefree days on the Jersey Shore to the perilous skies above Vietnam and eventually to the broadcast booth where he helps fellow veterans find their voices. Born in 1946 to a World War II veteran father, Dale's journey weaves through the defining moments of late 20th century America with remarkable candor and insight.
With refreshing humor, Throneberry recounts his transition from a distracted student whose teacher noted his attention span was "that of a gnat" to an Army helicopter pilot flying combat missions. When facing the draft in 1968, he chose the warrant officer flight program over infantry assignment—a decision that would define the next chapter of his life. His vivid descriptions of learning to fly the OH-23 Hiller helicopter transport listeners into the cockpit: "A helicopter requires you to use all four extremities at the same time while you're talking."
The heart of Dale's story unfolds during his year in Vietnam with the 195th Assault Helicopter Company. Through harrowing accounts of being shot down in a rice paddy, conducting dangerous special operations missions into Cambodia, and witnessing the deaths of fellow pilots, we experience both the terror and camaraderie of combat. One particular mission on October 9, 1970, when a command helicopter exploded before his eyes, remains etched in his memory decades later: "That was the first time I cried while I was there."
Like many Vietnam veterans, Throneberry struggled to find his footing after returning home. His path wound through college degrees, teaching positions, and an unfulfilling insurance career before a chance conversation in 2003 led to co-founding Veterans Radio—a platform dedicated to sharing veterans' stories. This work became his most profound mission, creating space for veterans to be heard while processing his own experiences through helping others.
Throughout his remarkable life story, Dale's resilience shines through, culminating in the wisdom he hopes to pass on: "If you get knocked down, get up. You're never defeated until you don't get up." His journey reminds us that healing often comes through serving others, and that every veteran has a story worth telling—especially their own.
Today is Friday, March 7, 2025. We're talking with Dale Throneberry, who served in the United States Army. So good morning, Dale.
Speaker 2:Good morning, how are you?
Speaker 1:Good, good to see you this morning.
Speaker 2:It's good to be anywhere, right.
Speaker 1:Right. What do they say? Every day above ground is a good day.
Speaker 2:Right, yes, I subscribe to that. I do, too, on a daily basis.
Speaker 1:So we're going to start out really simple. You know when and where were you born.
Speaker 2:You know when? Oh okay, I was born September 15th 1946, Spring Lake Heights, New Jersey. Okay, Down on the shore, Jersey Shore, and I am an original Jersey boy.
Speaker 1:Are you? Did you have your own show at some point?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:But you could have.
Speaker 2:Probably yes. It was an interesting place to grow up. As I said, I was born in Spring Lake Heights, which is, for those familiar with the Jersey Shorts around Point Pleasant, manasquan area, and it's a good place to grow up. I lived there until I was about five and then we moved up to northern Jersey, a place place to grow up. I lived there until I was about five and then we moved up to northern Jersey, a place called Cranford, lived there for another four years and then I moved up into an area called Warren Township which is in Somerset County, and I was there in the fourth grade all the way through high school.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, tell us a little bit about what it was like growing up for you. Did you have brothers and sisters?
Speaker 2:Well, I don't. I have a sister who's 10 years older than I was, so I was pretty much an only child, which worked out well for me. But no, it was a typical 1950s 60s type of growing up Boy Scouts, all those things, ice skating on the rivers. I didn't do any hunting, but we did a lot of hiking through the woods and so forth. It was a good time, it was great. I wasn't aware of anything that was going on in the world. So I was born. I was part of the generation that you know left after breakfast and came back just before dark.
Speaker 1:Right, as long as you got home before the streetlights, right, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, before they started yelling for you.
Speaker 1:Right, and no one really cared where you were at.
Speaker 2:No, nobody even knew where you were, that's true.
Speaker 1:That's true.
Speaker 2:You know, once you got to the bicycle stage, you could go miles and miles away, as long as you were home as you said so, yeah, it was fun and we had good memories from that time period.
Speaker 1:Well, good, so you know. Talk to me a little bit about school. What was school like for you? Did you enjoy school or not so much, or somewhere in between?
Speaker 2:I enjoyed school. Mostly I was a talker. I can remember a teacher sending home a note to my family saying you know, dale talks a whole lot. You know he's not paying attention to everything and my dad, in his infinite wisdom, just said where is he sitting? And she said, you know, by the window. He says move him away from the window. She says his attention span is that of a gnat. So I kind of felt like you know, I was part of Calvin and Hobbes or something like that.
Speaker 2:So yeah so she moved me up next to the desk. School was never really that difficult for me. When I got to high school I kind of goofed off a little bit so I had to go to summer school one summer and that was my lesson there. So after that I did fine. Yeah, I enjoyed school. I enjoyed history as really kind of my forte. As far as school is concerned and growing up in New Jersey. People don't realize this, but the vast majority of New Jersey is close to New York City so we would go into New York City. Quite often it was a 10-minute, 15-minute ride on the commuter train, so we would go into the city, go to baseball games when the Dodgers and the Giants and the Yankees were all there. My dad was a Yankee fan so of course I had to be a Dodger fan, because you never support that stuff.
Speaker 1:Well, so tell me a little bit about your dad. You mentioned him a couple of times. It seems like he knew you pretty well because he knew you didn't need to be next to the window.
Speaker 2:Right, what are some?
Speaker 1:of your memories of your dad.
Speaker 2:This is where it gets emotional, right. My dad is originally from Tennessee, a little tiny town called Normandy, tennessee, which is about 60 miles, I think, southeast of Nashville, near a place called Tallahoma, manchester, that area the town had 104 people. His dad owned a general store. His grandfather was there. His great-grandfather was in Normandy as well.
Speaker 2:The story is that after he got out of high school, he was visiting with another friend of his who was going to go to Middle Tennessee State University now it was Middle Tennessee State University, now it was Middle Tennessee State Normal at the time and he was walking across the campus and the football coach was coming the other way, and so he was talking to my dad's friend who went by the name of Sally, which is another story. So he says Sally, are you going to be coming out to practice and all this other stuff to play football? And he goes oh, yeah, coach. And he looked at my dad and he says Sally, you're going to be coming out to practice and all this other stuff to play football? And he goes oh, yeah, coach.
Speaker 2:And he looked at my dad and he goes oh, you're going to college. And he goes no, we can't afford to go to college. He says how'd you like to go to college? And he goes well, you know what do you mean. He says well, do you play football? And he goes okay, we can do this. He told his dad. He says guess what, I'm going to college. So he went to Middle Tennessee State and he worked his way through. Their scholarships were different than they are now. It wasn't a free ride Grounds, crews and everything else.
Speaker 2:But he played football, basketball and baseball in college, got his degree in chemistry of all things, decided he didn't want to go back to Little Normandy and he ended up teaching. I think he started off in Haram in Tennessee. He was a football coach, principal and chemistry teacher for $120 a month and he did that for a couple of years. Then he moved to Springfield, tennessee. He was a football coach same thing. He was very successful as a coach. We have pictures of him and his teams and had a winning record.
Speaker 2:So he taught school for about five years and evidently there was some sort of altercation with a student and he ended up getting hit with a hammer in his jaw right here and so he had a scar from there forever and he says, okay, I'm done with this, and ended up in New Jersey working for Standard Oil of New Jersey as a chemical engineer. I'm not really sure exactly what his title was with him, but so he ended up in New Jersey and he lived in this place called the Southern Club in Elizabeth. New Jersey, which was made up was a place where all these guys came from the southern states and lived and worked in the New York area and these were his friends, probably for his whole life, which unfortunately was not that long. So he was there. He's kind of quiet. He'd been in World War II. He was in the Coast Guard in World War II and he was older. He enlisted when he was 39 years old because they were drafting up until 40.
Speaker 2:And he figured well, I can't do infantry kind of a thing and he said you know, guard the coast, coast Guard sounds like a good idea. Well, for our viewers the Coast Guard came under the control of the Navy during World War II and so my dad ended up on an LST landing ship tank. I think is what it was 884. There's a website for them. If you look it up LST 884, you'll find out more about him. But the short part of this story is that he ended up in the Pacific. He was on Imojima. We have a picture of his ship on the beaches of Imojima. From there they went up to Okinawawa and they were attacked by kamikaze, caught their ship on fire and they had to abandon the ship. So he's in the Pacific Ocean. He volunteered to go back on to see what they could do and unfortunately there was a company of Marines in the bottom of the ship and they all died.
Speaker 2:And I think this affected him the rest of his life Because, talking to the family, he was happy, lucky, funny uncle, you know, and he was with me. He was mostly quiet. He's a good guy though. He's a good guy, though he was a good guy. I thought my mom was kind of the same way. I mean they were both athletic. It was very interesting because when I did start doing athletics and playing baseball and all this stuff, my mom was the one that would play catch with me because my dad said I threw the ball too hard.
Speaker 2:Really Well, you've got to remember, he was 42 when I was born.
Speaker 1:That's true.
Speaker 2:My mom was 35, and he was kind of an old 42. I think the war just really wore him down and I know there were issues that he never really talked about and I never really learned that much about him. Unfortunately he died when I was 15, a heart attack. So I finished that with my junior and senior year without him. But he did well in school there and then I went down. I got an offer to play baseball at Ohio Wesleyan University in Ohio. It was kind of a partial scholarship. I went there but I forgot to go to class.
Speaker 1:Somebody put you next to the window when they shouldn't have there.
Speaker 2:They gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted.
Speaker 1:Big mistake. It sounds like.
Speaker 2:Big mistake.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I should have stayed closer to home, I think, at that time, because all my buddies went to Rutgers. But anyhow, it didn't work out well. So I went back to New Jersey. Actually, my mom had moved after my dad died and after I got out of high school my mom moved to Florida to be around her relatives. My dad died and after I got out of high school my mom moved to Florida to be around her relatives. So I went down to Florida and it was North Palm Beach is where they were living. My grandfather and grandmother were all there aunts, uncles, all this other stuff. Quick flashback to New Jersey when we were living at the Jersey Shore, my aunts both of my aunts lived there. My grandfather lived there, all my cousins, they all lived within five miles of each other. So it was kind of that great thing, you know, you could get on your bike and ride to each aunt's house, you know, kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:You really got to know your family that way too right. Oh, I got to know that side of the family really well.
Speaker 2:Anyway, so I left Ohio, wesleyan, went down to Florida and got my draft notice, first draft notice. So I had to go down to Miami and get in line for the physical. So I got down to Miami and I'm in line, this huge line, you know, there's everybody in the Western world, it seemed like is there. Everybody in the Western world, it seemed like, is there. And this sergeant, big sergeant, comes up and he stops the line like five people in front of me. He says OK, this is the end, you guys go home, we'll call you again. And I was gone.
Speaker 1:Didn't have to tell you twice, right Didn't?
Speaker 2:have to tell me twice. In fact, I found out about a school in Iowa called Parsons College. I ended up at Parsons College in Iowa.
Speaker 2:I figured that was pretty far away from Miami. Unfortunately, I probably did about the same thing that I did at the other school. I had a little bit too much fun and kind of came to the real conclusion that I'm just wasting time and I'm wasting money. So I went home and within six weeks I got another draft notice Went down. My mother would move back to New Jersey by this time. So I'm back in New Jersey. I went down to Newark, took my pre-induction physical, passed the damn thing and I asked him. I said how much time have I got? Sort of like a disease. He says well, you've got six weeks.
Speaker 2:We'll probably call you up in six weeks.
Speaker 1:What's the prognosis? Right yeah.
Speaker 2:And I said, oh crap. So I went down to the recruiters and I went down the road Back then all the recruiters seemed to be in a post office. And so I went down to the recruiters and the Air Force and the Navy had a six-month waiting period. I said that doesn't work. I only got six weeks.
Speaker 2:I talked to the Marine guy. The Marine guy says how'd you like it? I see you have some college. And I kind of went sort of I went, yeah, I went, yeah, I went to college, kind of like Animal House, never mind that.
Speaker 2:So he said how'd you like to be an officer? I said, well, officer, well, that's kind of cool, you know. And they got the great uniforms. And he says, yeah, why don't you report back tomorrow and we can send you off to boot camp. I said, well, I got a date tonight, let me think about this. So I went well, I got a date tonight, let me think about this.
Speaker 2:So I went in the next cubicle was the army guy and he looks at me oh, I see you got some college. Same question and I said he says how'd you like to be a pilot? I said, of what he says, helicopters? And I said, oh, I've seen a couple of those. He says well, you know, we got this warrant officer flight program here you go in. It's a two-year obligation initially. If you make it through flight school, it's another three years, so it ends up being a five-year total, or it could be a five-year total.
Speaker 2:I said, well, yeah, that sounds cool. He says, yeah, come on back tomorrow We'll do the aptitude test. So I went back and there was a whole classroom full of guys. We're taking these aptitude tests, I guess math skills and all this other stuff. And the best part I can remember is they gave us this book, they opened it up and had pictures, like you're looking at the cockpit of an airplane, and they wanted to know what direction you were going in. Were you going up, were you going down, going left, going right, you know, not east-west, but just where were you in relationships? So you know, people are picking this up and they're going like this, you know and doing this, and the guy in the back of the room goes yeah, you know, and it kind of sounds like a jet plane and he had to leave.
Speaker 1:Right, they weren't picking him, were they no it?
Speaker 2:worked with him so I passed. I don't know how. He says, well, this is going to be tough for you, but you passed this exam. I said okay. I said where do I go next? He says, well, you're going to do basic training, just like everybody else, and then you'll go out to flight school. I, just like everybody else, and then you go out to flight school. Okay, so New Jersey, fort Dix. I figured you know basic training. No, dale gets to go to Fort Polk, louisiana, birthplace of the combat infantry man in Vietnam. Big sign over the thing.
Speaker 2:So I had to fly down there, so my mother in her infinite wisdom this is the first time I've ever been on an airplane. Were you nervous about this? Not the plane ride, I wasn't nervous about that.
Speaker 1:I was nervous about going to Louisiana. What time of year was?
Speaker 2:this October. Okay, so it was still hotter than heck in Fort Polk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was warm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I have to go down to Newark again and report in. And I said okay, we're going to put, you're going to get on flight, go down, so on and so forth. And I called my mom and I said okay, mom, I'm going to be going to flying down to Louisiana, because we didn't know if it was bus or train or how I was going to get there. She says you're going on an airplane. I said yes. She says you have to wear a suit. I said no, I don't have to wear a suit, mom. So she drives down to Newark with a suit, makes me put the suit on. So I'm flying down. I got this suit on. You can't tell your mom. No, I didn't know it at the time, but she'd already been through this with my dad.
Speaker 2:Oh, you know he'd gone off for two years, so I'm sure she was a wreck.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I don't think we give our moms credit. You know enough credit for what they have to put up with us.
Speaker 1:It's because they don't moms don't like, let you know what they're going through, they just go through it and then I don't know. Sometimes they let you know later on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, can you imagine the anxiety that? She had to be going through. Plus, I was an idiot, so you know.
Speaker 1:She had that to worry about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, anyway. So we flew down to New Orleans and then we got on this little puddle jumper that never got above the trees and we landed in this place called Leesville, louisiana, better known as Fleesville for those that are near the area.
Speaker 2:And so it's the middle of the night and we drive in a bus and all these bunch of guys get on the bus and we drive into Fort Polk and, as I said, the big sign over the entrance to the whole thing, it says birthplace of the combat infantryman from Vietnam. And I'm going whoa, wait a minute, there's a mistake here. The best part is, I get off the bus and the biggest drill sergeants you've ever seen, of course, and he just looks at me and he goes, and he looks at a bunch of other guy drill sergeants over there and goes hey guys, we got a suit.
Speaker 1:So they've seen this before.
Speaker 2:I think so. And so the next thing I know is he's asking that's a very nice suit. You know, why are you wearing that suit? And I said, well, because my mom wanted me to. You know, dress up, because I was going to be on an airplane. Well, that's really nice. How many push-ups can you do in a suit? I said, I don't know, start trying. So the next thing, you know I'm doing push-ups. And then, for those of you who went to basic training in the Army, everybody has this huge parking lot with numbers in rows and he says go out there and stand on number 73. I'm all by myself. So I'm standing out there, and you know what else could happen wrong, right, rain.
Speaker 1:So it starts raining In your suit. In the suit right.
Speaker 2:So we end up in the barracks, and you know the barracks. There are people from all over the South mostly, so I couldn't understand anybody Like they were speaking a different language, right, they were and I had a pretty good Jersey accent going at the time, so they didn't know what I was saying either.
Speaker 1:I don't want to interrupt you, but something really important here is that your mom wanting to wear a suit on the airplane wasn't crazy, because when people flew during that time you got dressed up it was like a big deal to get on a plane right.
Speaker 2:It was a very big deal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So I just want people to know that that's what you did.
Speaker 2:You dressed up, it was normal. It wasn't normal where you went, but it was normal getting there, I mean and it wasn't like I was wearing, you know today's world of shorts and flip-flops and a t-shirt I mean, I was dressed, you were presentable, presentable. I probably didn't even have jeans on. I probably was wearing khakis because you couldn't wear jeans in school at the time, right?
Speaker 1:So, anyway, you're in the barracks.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, I get in the barracks and the rumors are starting to fly oh, people are going to be killing themselves and all this other stuff. You know, a guy hung himself over in the other barracks last night, jeez really. So then we went down and we got the haircut, you know, and the barbers are sadistic SOBs, you know how would you like it. And of course they ran the thing right down the center of your head, kind of a reverse mohawk, and you went through and got all your uniforms and stuff like that, and then they threw you on cattle trucks, drove you out to your company area Company B-5-2 was what I was in in Fort Polk and then they got more big, giant people. General Sargent, sargent Steele real name, I promise.
Speaker 1:Sounds like you're making it up.
Speaker 2:I know I can show you the yearbook if you want to see it. They gave us a yearbook in basic, which I thought was funny at the time. So Sargent Steele gets us all gathered around. We're not in any kind of formation or anything, we're just kind of gathered around. He started talking about what we're going to be doing in basic training and all this other stuff and he says I need a couple of volunteers. And you know, in the back of the head and everybody's going don't volunteer, don't volunteer, don't volunteer. He says you, he just pointed at me and he goes you're the platoon leader, I'm going. What do you mean? I'm the platoon leader, he said because you're the biggest. I said okay, I'm only 6'2". I wasn't the biggest guy in the thing. He says you're the platoon leader and this guy are the three squad leaders, so you're responsible for all 60 of these guys. I said okay. So that night, you know, he moved us into the barracks. I did get my own room, which wasn't too bad.
Speaker 1:So there was a perk.
Speaker 2:There was a perk I didn't have to do KP, I didn't have to do all that other stuff, but I was responsible for these idiots, right. So that night I had to go to the sergeant's area, wherever they were, and learn the manual of arms and learn all this stuff marching and all this other junk. So I knew theoretically what I was talking about with these other guys. So the next morning we come out, get all lined up and start doing Army stuff. Nobody can touch the company area with your feet. They had this ladder that went across the thing, so every time you went across it you had to do this, ended up with open blisters on your fingers and this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:Good old Army training oh yeah, Well, you know I got to break it down before they build you up. Yeah, I found basic training to be like going to Boy Scout camp. In all honesty, it was fun.
Speaker 2:I thought I didn't realize what was happening to me. Right, you know, I got in shape. I was in the best shape I'd ever been in. I had to do a lot of push-ups because my guys would screw up like everybody else did. You know they would.
Speaker 2:A couple of stories, I guess, real quick, are that? One night we had guard duty and I was leaning against the tree and Drill Sergeant Carr I remember him, he was a little short guy, kind of a Napoleonic attitude and he says you know what are you doing? And I braced against the tree and I said you know, drill Sergeant, I'm guarding this tree. And he says you think you're guarding it from down here? And I said yes, drill Sergeant. And he says you think you're guarding it from down here? And I said yes, drill sergeant, and he says I want you up at the top of the tree. So he made me climb the tree and I had to stand up there and say you know, I guarded the tree, learned how to use the M14, all the fun stuff throwing hand grenades, running everywhere, confidence courses, which I found to be really a challenge and really fun. The gas chamber I did not enjoy, and getting the shots did not be fun, because what they did with the shots at the time was you would. We got shots for everything.
Speaker 2:I think it seemed like yellow fever and everything and you would walk down between the corpsmen and they had these pneumatic needle things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the air guns, they were like air guns yeah.
Speaker 2:And what they did is they just inject you. And so they said you know, as you go down here, they're going to give you these things, don't move when they give you a shot.
Speaker 2:Well, of course people moved and what happened is a guy's coming out and there's blood coming down their arms and fingers and you went directly from the shot line into the picture home place. And so you go into this place and you're going to take your picture to send it home and give you a uniform with no back on it. You just stick your arms through the sleeves and pull it back up and it's got a tie and everything already on it. So my picture home looks like Mom, please come and get me out of here.
Speaker 1:Save me from these people. This is crazy.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it was crazy, anyway. So our basic training was cut short because we started in October October 16th is when it started and it ran into the Christmas holidays, so we only had a seven-week basic training, so we got to cram everything in there. But I met some amazing people. I had never been around as many different ethnic groups in my life. It was a real learning experience. One quick learning experience was I got to go to one of my squad leaders was from Houston, texas, and so when we got to leave he took me home with him. Oh, it was only about an hour and a half ride, I think. And so we went to Houston and we went to a place called Gilly's which was this big country music place with the Bulls and all this other stuff and Lone Star beer and everything else, and so that was an awakening for me as well. But his mom made us dinner. She said, oh, we're going to fix a traditional Texas dinner and she made a chicken fried steak. I had never seen it.
Speaker 1:Really I said why are you doing?
Speaker 2:this to a steak? She says oh the way they say, oh dial, they added extra letters to my name.
Speaker 1:Right, they added extra syllables and my name. Right, they added extra syllables and everything. Right, yeah?
Speaker 2:everything got stretched out. It was fun, so anyway yeah.
Speaker 2:There were guys in my platoon that had an eighth-grade education or maybe didn't even get to eighth grade, and I had another guy who already had a PhD from Harvard or something and all kinds of different mental capacities and physical capacities. One guy didn't even know his right from his left. So I put rocks in his pocket, right-hand pocket, and I said right, rocks, rocks, rocks. You know, it was like an Abbott and Costello movie, our first movement, and I'm trying to move them as a formation and doing I think it was a you know an about face type of thing and go the other way, or column left, column right thing, we're going this way, he's going that way, you know, and I'm going like this because the drill sergeant's going to blame me for everything that happens wrong well, a couple of things about your story too, is that I don't think a lot of people know that the military has been doing diversity for a long time.
Speaker 2:That's always been that. Yeah, this was after Truman desegregated the military.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is when.
Speaker 2:So I mean half of the platoon were black.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And it wasn't a big deal because you were all there doing the same thing. Yeah, the other. I do have a question for you, though. This is very important. Did you like the chicken fried steak?
Speaker 2:I'm just curious, it turned out to be okay. Okay, but everything we ate the whole weekend was fried.
Speaker 1:Well, it's the South. Well, it's Texas.
Speaker 2:Tennessee we had fried foods. They had sorghum in Tennessee. I don't know if you've ever. Sorghum is like tar. It's really, really thick molasses and my dad and my grandfather would put that on their biscuits.
Speaker 1:Is that what they make whorehound candy out of? Is that sorghum? I think it is.
Speaker 2:I don't know, it could be. They had some strange food groups too, yeah.
Speaker 1:So anyway, you're back at basic training and you're trying to teach these guys how to march.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to march and all this other stuff. And you know some guys had attitude problems and you know they would have an attitude adjustment unbeknownst to me, because what would happen is, you know, if one guy got out of line, the whole platoon suffered for him sometimes, and I can remember one time the drill sergeant, I guess, was trying to send a message and we we were out standing in the formation. We heard all the noise in our barracks. He's throwing every mattress out the window because we couldn't make the beds right.
Speaker 1:Yep Good times.
Speaker 2:Yep, so anyway. So yeah, graduated from there. Next destination is Fort Walters, texas primary basic flight school. Fort Walters is in a town called Mineral Wells, better known as Miserable Wells.
Speaker 1:I'm sensing a theme here. There's a nickname for every place that you're going, isn't there, I think?
Speaker 2:everybody in the Army has that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Wait Fort Lawson Wait till.
Speaker 2:I get to Army Aviation School.
Speaker 1:Fort Lawson in the woods. That's another one, right? What are we doing here, right? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:So it's about 30 miles outside of Dallas-Fort Worth. So this is where I met my best friend ever. So I get into Fort Walters again late at night and I get thrown into this barracks and the guy comes in. He says okay, you got the bottom bunk. So I throw my stuff into the bottom bunk and this guy leans over the top bunk and he goes what the hell is going on, what are you doing? You know Robert De Niro imitation. I don't do it as well as I used to do it. He says what are you doing? I said what do you mean? What am I doing? I'm putting my stuff here. I tell you, you know what is it. And he goes where are you from, the big from? And I said I'm from New York. I corner from my grandfather. This is my best friend, ray Schrader. Wow. So now we're joined at the hip because nobody can understand us.
Speaker 1:You can understand each other, right, you can't understand anybody else.
Speaker 2:So the first part of primary flight school is you learn how to be an officer, because we were going to be warrant officers and so we had to eat the square meals, and this is where we learned all about the code of justice and all this other stuff and started learning, uh, some of the things that we needed for flight school, like meteorology and um, engines and all these other stuff. We were called snowbirds because snowbirds can't fly, so for the four weeks we were snowbirds and then we quote moved up to the hill, and up on the hill were all the barracks for all the different flight classes. Every flight class had a different colored hat, and so we were the red hats at the time. So from there we are introduced to the helicopter. So my training was the OH-23 Hiller and it sort of looked like the helicopters from MASH.
Speaker 2:Okay, we didn't fly the little. They had little teeny tiny ones. They called it the TH-55, which we called the Mattel Messerschmitt because it was just a little two-seater. So we go out to the flight line and a helicopter requires you to use all four extremities at the same time while you're talking.
Speaker 1:Like playing the drums.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, Very similar to that actually. So when we're learning to fly, Mr Boyd he was a civilian instructor takes us out and when you're trying to fly, he would take it up to a hover. And then he would say, okay, now you hold the cyclic with me, Keep your feet off of stuff, Don't touch anything. And you'd hold the cyclic with him and you have a tendency to overcorrect. So I'd say, okay, you've got the cyclic.
Speaker 2:And the next thing you know is the helicopter is going like this the cyclic does forward-backward cyclings and so this thing is going, waving up and down, back and forth, and all this other stuff. And so this thing's going waving up and down, back and forth, and all this other stuff. Boom, he'd take the cyclic and stop, Level again. And then you do it with the collective, and the collective is what takes you up and down, Because what it does is it tilts the blade of the helicopter and while you're tilting the blade and you're doing all this other stuff, the back of the helicopter wants to spin around under the main blade. You know the physics thing, you know equal to opposite reaction. So you have pedals…I'm doing pedals.
Speaker 1:You can't see it, but he's doing pedals, folks. He's doing pedals for us.
Speaker 2:And so as you increase or decrease the power, the tail wants to go the opposite way, and so you have to use pedals for the little propeller in the back to keep you straight and level. And then you do this for a couple of it was like a it was the funniest thing I've ever seen, I think they take you out to these big fields and the instructor would give you, you know, this control, that control, and you would see these guys going up. Really, you know, like whoa, like this and whoa like that, even one was spinning around, it's like a big square dance kind of thing. And then, of course, the instructor would take controls and it would stop. You know perfectly level.
Speaker 2:So we did this for three weeks, I think something like that. And then one day we're doing our practice landing, takeoffs, auto rotations, all these other auto rotations when the engine quits, and so one day we get into the field and we've done our practice things with him and all that stuff, and Ray was my stick mate. So I would fly with the instructor for half the day and Ray would fly with him the other half of the morning.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And one day we landed, he gets out, where are you going? And he goes okay, take it around three times. Who? No, you go ahead, take it around. Okay, I can do this. So you know you Go ahead, take it around. Okay, I can do this.
Speaker 2:So you know, you call the tower and you say you know Army helicopter's number or whatever it was, and he goes for a takeoff and he goes. You are clear for a takeoff. So you get on the landing pad and off you go and you go around and do the traffic pattern three times, come back in line. You know you go. Man, I didn't kill myself. He goes okay, take it back to the main heliport, Aren't you coming? He goes no, you take it back, all right. So you got to take it back to the main heliport. The main heliport has got 600 helicopters in this thing and you are all coming in from all the different training spots at the same time and so you can see this line of helicopters starting to approach this thing and you can tell who's solo, because they're going like this.
Speaker 1:Right, they're not really smooth. Right, they're flying like this.
Speaker 2:The other thing that I'll tell you is you've got to change your radio frequency. So that means that you have to let go of something, reach up and change the frequency to talk to the main heliport. So you have to take the cyclic and you pinch it between your knees and you reach up and turn stuff as you get to the right frequency. You know, and you go, oh, heliport, you know, army helicopter center for landing. Oh, you are clear for a straight-in landing. Okay, meanwhile there's four approaches going in, four lines of helicopters going in at the same time, separated. Well, it seemed like they were only separated by about two feet, but probably by 100 yards each. So these things are going in your tax dollars at work here. So they're going in and guys are, you know, coming in hot. They almost hit the ground and bounce up over another one.
Speaker 2:There are people that are stalled like way back here, because it's like a daisy chain kind of thing. So they're at a 500-foot hover waiting to get their turn to come down. And once you get down, then there's a guy doing the paddles. Okay, go this way, go that way. So you put it down on your pad to find the number of your pad where your helicopter goes. You get down there, shut it down, get out, kiss the ground. You survive this whole thing, get on the bus with everybody. And then they used to take you down to the local Holiday Inn and they would throw you in the pool. And at the Holiday Inn they had two rotor blades that were stacked up like a teepee and it said under these rotors are the best pilots and blah, blah, blah yeah so, and so I have a great picture of me hitting the water there.
Speaker 2:So for the next 12 weeks after that, we learned about cross-country flying, pinnacle landings, running landings, all kinds of stuff. Meanwhile we're taking weather course and meanwhile people are disappearing along the way because they're just, you know, they're not cutting it, unfortunately.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're washing out then right A lot of a pretty high washout rate. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I graduated from there and the next thing I know I'm going to Fort Rucker, alabama.
Speaker 1:So before you get to Fort Rucker, I want to ask a question. So you struggled in school, right? Because you couldn't sit next to the window. You had all this energy, all this other stuff. It sounds like you really kind of sort of excelled at this school.
Speaker 2:Well, I didn't excel.
Speaker 1:You did not excel.
Speaker 2:But I did it Right, I committed to doing this and that was kind of different, you know, because you had an ultimate goal. I think for so many kids even today, you know, going to college was an expectation and even though you know and you didn't know what the hell you wanted to do anyway, you weren't sure you didn't know. I mean, all I knew was that, you know, I was having fun but I didn't know what I wanted to do and this kind of gave me a mission. I mean I really I thought it was pretty cool and it changed. Just going to flight school changed many people's perceptions of who I was. You know, I wasn't just a goofball. I can do something.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I thought I was pretty good. I mean, I wasn't the first guy to solo, you know, and all this other stuff and I didn't get the highest grades. But you know, I made it through. And then I got married. I got married between flight schools. I mean I met my wife in ninth grade, algebra, and you know we were going along. And then we figured well, what if you get killed?
Speaker 1:That's a pleasant thought. I said, well, I could.
Speaker 2:I mean the numbers and everybody on TV and everything is just going.
Speaker 1:The Tet.
Speaker 2:Offensive had just occurred and all these other things, and so I'm going over there and I said, well, we can get married. If you know, let's get married. So we got married between flight schools, between primary and advanced. So on your way to Rucker you, On my way to Fort Rucker, I made a detour to New Jersey, got married in my father-in-law's church, which is kind of an interesting story in itself, because he told his parishioners they don't need any gifts.
Speaker 1:So they didn't give us any. What a nice guy.
Speaker 2:And we got a church of hundreds and hundreds of people. You know we're sitting there going, wow, a dollar each. We're all you know what I mean. So we hop in a truck and drive down to Fort Rucker, Alabama, better known as Mother Rucker, and moved into a trailer.
Speaker 1:Nothing like it. You're living large now.
Speaker 2:Living large Three bedroom trailer no less, and Ray's going along with it because he's kind of like my brother now.
Speaker 1:He didn't get married, though, did he no?
Speaker 2:he did not get married.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:No, he's the guy when we were in Fort Walters who went out and bought an was it an Austin Healy? And when we left Texas he just drove it back on the used car lot and left it.
Speaker 1:We all need that friend Dale. We all need that friend yeah.
Speaker 2:Ray was 6'6" too, and he just barely fit into the helicopter.
Speaker 1:But it looked cool.
Speaker 2:But anyway. So we ended up in Fort Rucker. In Fort Rucker we went through instrument training, which was the hardest training I've ever been through, because you had to—we were still flying helicopters, but you flew it with a hood so you couldn't see out of the thing at all, and so you had to go by the instruments, not by the seat of your pants, because the seat of your pants was telling you you're going upside down, but it wasn't. So that was really hard. We lost a lot of people in instrument training. Again, I made it through, I don't know. So I thought that was a pretty good accomplishment. Then we went to tactical training, where they started teaching us how to do low level flying, formation flying again, pinnacles, all kinds of things. It was kind of cool. The instructors would do most of the flying because we would fly down riverbanks and all that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But they let us do it sometimes. And then we did. The last two weeks was advanced tactical training, where we did escape and evasion and we had to go out in the woods in the middle of the night and try to get from point A to point B. And we had to go out in the woods in the middle of the night and try to get from point A to point B and you know, they taught us how to eat snakes.
Speaker 2:I was just going to ask did you eat bugs and snakes? I didn't eat bugs. Okay, I did take a bite of snake. It did not taste like chicken.
Speaker 1:You draw the line at bugs, though, right.
Speaker 2:Well, the guy told us showed us how to kill a chicken and that was it. And oh, and the other thing. I wish my wife would have been here. She said they took them out to the thing and showed them how to kill a chicken and how to eat a snake. And she's still traumatized by that whole thing.
Speaker 1:Not her thing. Huh, I don't think so.
Speaker 2:Well, she had trouble with the officer's club because she couldn't play bridge.
Speaker 2:Oh, oh, oh, and he had to wear white gloves and all this other stuff. You've got to remember this. We were children of the 60s. Yeah, this is how it was. It was hard playing by the rules, anyway. So once we got done with Fort Rucker they had the big flyby and we got our wings and we got our bars and the drill sergeant from Fort Rucker. The tradition is that the first person to salute you you give them a silver dollar guy standing outside the graduation thing, you know like this.
Speaker 2:So as we were driving away from grad, my mom was at graduation, so she's very pleased that I had survived, and I mean we all knew where we were going. There wasn't any question about that, right. I mean, the Army came down and says you know, where would you like to go? You know, everybody's putting down Germany and all that. We had one guy go to Germany only because he'd been in Vietnam already. So with that we went to, yeah, to a huge formation of I don't know how many, maybe 50, 75 helicopters fly over the main parade grounds. It was kind of cool. That'd be something to see.
Speaker 2:All student pilots flying straight and level, now getting there perfectly Flying straight and level, now Getting there perfectly. From there I went home for about three weeks, I think it was. And then the next thing, you know, ray and I now are going to Vietnam. So we flew from. This is in December. So now we're in December, so we're in New Jersey. It's freezing, it's cold and all that sort of stuff. We flew to San Francisco, to Travis Air Force Base. We get to Travis Air Force Base and they say oh well, we're backed up a little bit. All officers, why don't you guys go off and come back in three days, and they gave us 300 bucks, I think.
Speaker 1:Three days, 300 bucks. I think Three days, 300 bucks Right.
Speaker 2:So we went to San Francisco, of course, and ended up in Haight-Ashbury, and I can't go into all the details.
Speaker 1:Is that story still classified? Yes, it's classified.
Speaker 2:I do remember waking up in Hawaii. Let's put it that way.
Speaker 2:Wow so yeah, I got to the right place and I think Ray dragged me along, make sure I got there. So we went, we went to yeah, we got to Hawaii and then we flew into Tonsinu and ended up at the 90th Replacement Company and from there we got split up and Ray went north, he went up to Pleiku and I actually I stayed right there in Longbin with the 195th Assault Helicopter Company, so I had to get. I got to ride in a jeep, just go up there and there's our place to live. And now we're there and it was hot and it was muggy and it scared the hell out of me because when you got off of the airplane it was muggy and it scared the hell out of me because when you got off of the airplane it was like opening an oven door. I know probably every Vietnam veteran that you've ever interviewed says it was hot and you're going down the gangway and there are guys leaving and they're just get the hell out of our way because we're getting out of here as fast as possible.
Speaker 2:And they put us on a school bus to take us to the 90th replacement and had chicken wire all around all of the windows and we drove through the town of Benoit and we had a Rambo guy at the front of the bus and a Rambo guy at the back of the bus. I'd never seen that much. You know bandoleros and stuff and it was eerie. I mean I can see where the guy got the scenes from Apocalypse Now, just the light shining and people are staring at you as you're driving through this village and you're just going. This has been a big mistake. What am I doing here? So I get to the 195th the Sky Chiefs it's their call sign and I'm all decked out in my all starched up, brand new fatigues and ready to spend a year there. I don't know what you want to go into details of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if we want to just kind of talk about maybe some of the highlights of your time in Vietnam, that would be great.
Speaker 2:I can talk about the highlights and lowlights, yeah yeah, basically whatever you want.
Speaker 1:I don't think we need a day-by-day like color commentary We'd be here all night. But I think, yeah, just like some of the things that really stick out in your mind about your time there.
Speaker 2:I think the first thing that sticks out in my mind is the first time we went for a flight. I was flying with an older pilot and the interesting thing about this is that there were warrant officer pilots and there were real-life officer pilots, lieutenants and stuff, and everybody stayed in their own clique and the enlisted guys were over there. We had real hoochies, I mean, they had roofs on them and stuff, and the enlisted guys they slept in the big giant tents which was one of the first things that I noticed that I thought was a little off here.
Speaker 2:So anyway, so I flew down with another warrant officer who had been there about a year, and so all we did was we flew down to Saigon and back again, which was about less than an hour mission kind of thing. We came back and shut the thing down and we went around and the crew chief goes we got a bullet hole here In the main blade. There was a bullet hole. I'm going. We got a shot going there. And the other thing that occurred that was really mind-boggling to me was I was in the company area and there was a crash, a helicopter crash takeoff, and they said I was the only officer that was available, so they sent me over to the crash site for as the crash officer investigator, I guess it was what happened. And so I got to the crash site and the only thing left were two bodies leaning over the deck, the dashboard of the helicopter. The helicopter was all gone. It was all burned to a crisp because there was a lot of magnesium in the skin of it and everything.
Speaker 2:So everything was gone, but they were still strapped into their seats and leaning over and they were like ash If you touched them, they would have disintegrated. And that was like ash If you touched them, they would have disintegrated. And that was another thing. I said this is not a place where I want to be, but that was like the first week.
Speaker 1:You got a long time to go.
Speaker 2:I got a long time to go.
Speaker 2:But most of the time there wasn't too bad. I mean, I flew an awful lot of what they called ash and trash missions where we would resupply, take ammo out, take food out, all kinds of things I didn't do a lot of. I didn't do any of those giant insertions of companies like 20 ship insertions and stuff. I only did when we did get to do that stuff. It was all single ship stuff Worked a lot with the Royal Thai Army in a place called Bearcat, which was southeast east of Longbin.
Speaker 2:We did some things for them, a lot of things for them. We sprayed Agent Orange for them. It was nice, that was fun. We didn't know it at the time, but we did that. One of the dumbest things we did was they had this thing called a people sniffer and what the people sniffer did was they would arrange all this stuff in the cargo area of the helicopter and what it did was it measured ammonia in the air and so we would fly low level and slow over these trails and they were picking up where guys had taken a leak and the ammonia would register on this and go oh, there's bad guys down there, and then the troops would go into that area.
Speaker 1:And I just said okay, how accurate was this system I?
Speaker 2:don't think it was very accurate, but we did that a couple of times. We did a lot of things with them. We did a lot of medevacs with them because I kept running into VC mostly North Vietnamese weren't down that far in three-core so they would get attacked. We would do a lot of medevacs with them and pick them up and screeching. One medevac I remember specifically is we went in and they said it was a hot LZ. One medevac I remember specifically as we went in and they said it was a hot LZ.
Speaker 2:So the door gunner and crew chief on the helicopter, they had the M60 machine guns and so they're firing. I said don't shoot until somebody shoots at us. So we started to take a little fire on that one and we got down to the ground and we threw these four Thai Army guys in and took the hell out and got out of there in a hurry and turned around and somebody grabbed onto the seatbelt, my harness and pulled me back into my seat. Oh no, like that, and I'm going. What the hell is that? And I turned around and there was a guy with about half his face was missing and his rifle was pointed at my head. It was just like leaning in there and was missing and his rifle was pointed at my head. It was just like leaning in there and I said you know, move him out, get him out of the way. So we took him to the hospital, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:One of my favorite stories, I guess you could say, is we did do an insert with a couple of other ships from another company and we were on the ground. We were getting shot at a lot but they weren't hitting us. It was like really weird. I could see the shooting. I mean, I saw this guy behind a tree and he's doing this. And you know, when I would get shot at, my voice would go up. I would kind of freak out a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, who wouldn't?
Speaker 2:And I'm just saying you know taking fire, you know taking fire 11 o'clock, 75 meters, and the next thing you know the guy's gone, the tree's gone, everything's gone. And this guy comes over the radio, one of the gunships, and he goes like a pirate. He goes that better.
Speaker 1:And I, yes, thank you very much and he goes.
Speaker 2:You're welcome. I better and he goes. Thank you very much, he goes. You're welcome.
Speaker 2:I had no idea who he was what happened, but he saved my life that day. We did missions over the border in Cambodia. We worked with Mathis Sog's Special Observation Group, 5th Special Forces. We would go up into Northwestern III Corps, up at a place called Kwadloy, and then went up to another smaller fire base called Budap, and from Budap we would go into Cambodia. We'd go north into Cambodia and take these teams in. I never really knew what we were doing because they didn't share their information with me. I just took them from point A to point B. Inevitably, every time we would go over the border, the Air Force in their infinite wisdom would come across on-guard radio, which is where you can talk to everybody in the world and say aircraft heading north out of Budapest, be advised, you're crossing the fence. So we'd come back on our guard and say why don't you just tell them that we're coming?
Speaker 1:Just announce it for us, please. Yes.
Speaker 2:So that was always exciting because when we were doing the special forces things we would take those guys out and drop them off and inevitably they would run into contact and we would have to go get them, usually at night, it seemed like. And on this one particular mission we were going out to get them at night and you know, they were under fire, they were taking hits and they're wounded and all this other stuff. And so I'm a co-pilot on this thing and the aircraft commander is heading to the air because he's more familiar with it. So we were homing in on them heading to the air because he's more familiar with it. So we were homing in on them.
Speaker 2:And on the FM radio you had a directional finder and it would beep. So when the mic was keyed we would hear beep, beep, beep, beep, and as we got pointed in the right direction it would go to a solid tone if we were heading right. So it would go beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, like that. But they had to key the mic and so we found these guys oh, we're on you, we got you, we're coming. That way. He said oh, you're right on top of us. We said key the mic. He was like I can't. And they were whispering we go speak up, we can't hear you, I can't. They're right here and they were. The bad guys were here and our guys were here, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, they were able to move to a landing site where we dropped ladders down and they came up. The ladders Got the hell out of there, but that gets your heart beating.
Speaker 1:It's all about.
Speaker 2:And that happened more than once. We also had McGuire rigs, which were these about 50 to 75 feet long wires that the guys would. We would drop in a jungle penetrator, get them into the jungle and then the guys would hold on to these wires. They had a little seat at the bottom and you would take off dragging them through the trees. But hey, you got them out of there and they made us do that one time, so we knew what it was like and they took me up and all this other stuff and flew around with me hanging below the helicopter and they came down to get me off and they said okay, you can let go. Now they had to pry my fingers off the rope. There wasn't any way I was going to let go of this thing.
Speaker 1:It sounds terrifying. It was yeah, so you were in country for a whole year, then a whole 12 months.
Speaker 2:Exactly 12 months. The other thing I do need to bring up was the worst day and this is again. We're flying into Cambodia. Before it was popular, nobody knew we were there. We signed these things, that said we'd never tell anybody what our mission was and all this other stuff. But we were flying in one day at 1,500 feet and flying in a trail.
Speaker 2:The command and control ship was up here. We were back here, we had the troops with us to insert, and as we were flying in, the command and control ship got hit by some sort of rocket I still never figured it out and it just exploded, it just poof and it went down. And we did evasive action and we went down to try and find them and see the smoke where the ship had landed, and we tried to get as close as we could, and so they were down in the jungle and so we hovered over the top and we could see down and we could see the two pilots were leaning against, again, the dashboard. We couldn't see the door gunner, but the crew chief was trying to reach up. You could see him looking up at us and the flames just came right over the top of him. Oh, and so we quickly found a place where we could land and the troops we had on board went over.
Speaker 2:Now it's a recovery thing. I didn't realize that the two pilots one was another guy from New Jersey, john Brennan, his co-pilot that day had gotten back that morning from R&R and they were going to take off and they were all set. And the guy comes up and he says no, I got this mission. And the other guy got out and he got in. Can you imagine what the hell that did to that guy's brain?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, so anyway, you don't realize how small body bags are. I mean, these guys were big guys, but the body bags were not that big.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So they threw them down on our helicopter and we had to take them back to the Moor in Benoit.
Speaker 1:So kind of a long flight for you coming back.
Speaker 2:That was a really long flight, yeah, and that's when I really broke back. That was a really long flight. That's when I really helped out. That was in October. I only had two months to go October 9th. That was the first time I cried while I was there.
Speaker 1:I do remember that. You find it interesting that those are the dates we remember, like I can tell you the date we took our first casualty. I might not remember my anniversary sometimes, but I remember those dates.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there are certain dates that you remember Absolutely. I had my own little adventure with getting shot down and we were flying along and I broke one of the main rules never fly over the same flight path twice, kind of thing.
Speaker 1:There's a reason for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we flew over a village and we were doing this kind of a low-level reconnaissance and the doorbell said there's a guy by that building. I saw him right there. So I went up and I came back down like that, and as I came back down he just opened up and just shot the bottom out of the aircraft and went up as high as I could, as fast as I could go, and I go, everybody okay. We had a couple of bullet holes, the windshield had gotten a hole in it and Everybody okay. We had a couple of bullet holes, the windshield had gotten a hole in it and the chin bubble had gotten a hole in it. Evidently a piece of plexiglass had hit me in the nose and it was kind of bleeding. And the copilot goes, you're hit.
Speaker 1:Oh no.
Speaker 2:I'm going what he says no, you're bleeding. I'm going, oh, I'm bleeding, and he goes yeah, you are.
Speaker 2:And I look down and there's, you know, like blood on my chicken plate, and I go, oh crap, where am I bleeding from your nose? And I think it's gone. So I was going to read you know I'm doing do I want to really find out if it's gone or not? And so I read oh, there was a little piece of glass and I pulled it out and did that. And next time the crew chief comes over the ready and goes, he says T, he says we got a fuel leak. And I go, oh crap, how bad. And he goes Niagara Falls and it just quit, it just went poof, and I never, ever heard anything so quiet in my whole life. And we're going now. What do we do?
Speaker 2:Well, everything kicked in. You know, all that training that we hated kicked in. So we did an auto rotation down to the ground, yelling out over the radio I mean the co-pilots going. You know, mayday, mayday, mayday going down. A list of other stuff Came down and landed in a rice paddy, sunk halfway up in the thing, jumped out, grabbed all of our radio frequencies, standard operating procedures, guns, jumped into the stuff in the water up to our chest and the guys kept shooting at us. All I had was this stupid .38 caliber pistol that you couldn't hit anything with, and I think we were probably on the ground for maybe five minutes, if that it seemed like five days. But another couple of gunships came from I don't know where, and another helicopter came in and pulled us out. This is all in the morning. This is and this is all in the morning. This is before 9 o'clock in the
Speaker 2:morning. So we get back to the company area and my major commanding officer says why don't you take the rest of the day off? Okay, so I went to the officers club and on this particular day, my friend Ray he's always around when you need him he came down from wherever he was up in Pleiku to pick up an aircraft and he stopped off to see me. And he says he comes around the corner of the officers club and I'm sitting around the deck like you know what the hell am I doing here? He goes hey, how was your day? And at that exact moment I'm not making this up a Chinook came by hanging beneath it was my helicopter. I said, well, that was my morning, so we got out. So then I come
Speaker 2:home. I did leave. I got to Vietnam. December 12th. I left Vietnam on December 11th the following year and I landed back in Newark, new Jersey. I left Vietnam 100 degrees, 100% humidity. I landed in Newark it was 12 degrees snowing. I was freezing my ass off and my brother-in-law picked me up with my wife at the airport and he had this like a GTO or something like that. I don't think it had any windows in it. But he pulled me into this thing and we drive back to my wife's family home and there's a big sign says welcome home, dale. That was cool. My, my first mission that night was I called um john brennan's parents yeah, they lived in summit, which was two towns over from where I grew up, and I because john uh, he had. They hadn't been told anything. He was missing in action because it was in Cambodia.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Where he got shot down. So therefore he was. They didn't tell him what happened. So I called and told him exactly what had happened and they were so grateful and then I kind of said, made it.
Speaker 1:That's hard though, isn't it? Isn't it hard to not be in that once you've been in it? Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, and it was funny I kind of thought I was protecting myself. Once I got out of the service and disavowed and that never happened to me, didn't tell anybody where I'd been or anything like that, because they didn't. It's not that they didn't care, it's that they were busy with their own lives more than anything else, and so Well, they didn't understand.
Speaker 2:Well, you can tell the story to your parents or to your family and that's it. Okay, you don't need to hear it again. I didn't. Until I got involved with the VVA, I met a guy named John Kinzinger and he said you've got to come to one of our meetings and I'm going. Oh, I don't want to go to our meetings. It's going to be a bunch of old guys telling war stories and all this other stuff. And I said, okay, I'll come. And so I walked into the very first meeting and I looked around Jesus, we all looked alike, we all had beards, we all you know all this stuff, and it was so cathartic to finally just tell the stories you know to an audience that understood them. And you know, if you used an acronym or something like that, they would understand it. About the same time, a teacher over in Plymouth asked me to come and talk to her history class.
Speaker 1:And so I did that. So you know it did help quite a bit.
Speaker 2:But you know we all had issues over time and it was kind of surprising that to me, that they really didn't manifest themselves until I was much older.
Speaker 1:Well, what did you do when you got out of the Army? When you came back?
Speaker 2:Did you go right to work. Oh, I tried the college thing again.
Speaker 1:Was the third time the charm deal I got to ask it was the charm.
Speaker 2:It was the charm, but I didn't know what I was doing. Yeah, this is a…I'm sorry it would go on for long. We didn't want to go home. All right, my wife and I did not want to go back to New Jersey, because who wants to be under your parents' control almost again when you're married and you have a kid now? My son was born at Fort Rucker, enterprise, alabama. It says on his birth certificate oh, awesome.
Speaker 2:For about two months. So I had the Army was doing a riff at the time. They were getting rid of pilots because the war was coming down and they didn't need us anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so they said, okay, how would you like to get out early? And I said, oh, how early.
Speaker 1:And so they wanted me to go out even earlier.
Speaker 2:I said well, let's wait till my son is born at your expense and we'll take care of this. So I got out in May of 1971. Prior to that we decided we'd come to Michigan because we'd been to Michigan one time. And then Ann Arbor. My brother, my sister-in-law and brother-in-law lived in Ann Arbor and we came to visit before I went to Vietnam and just you know it was right out of.
Speaker 2:It's a Wonderful Life type of thing. We're walking down Main Street in Ann Arbor, the snow is coming down and it's just. You know, this is cool this. So this is cool, this is. Let's go, come back here.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I applied to Eastern Michigan and got rejected Well.
Speaker 2:That was like, oh geez, now what the hell am I going to do? And they said well, you know, we've got this community college down the street. You may want to check it out. I didn't have any idea what a community college was at the time, so I applied to Washtenaw Community College, not knowing that it was open admissions. So I sweated that out, thinking God, if I get rejected by them, then what am I going to do? So I got in there and, lo and behold, you go to class, you do the work. It's kind of simple really, and I had a great time there. But I couldn't stay there because they said Dale, you can't take any more classes, you have to leave now. I said, oh God, where am I going to go?
Speaker 1:I can't go there.
Speaker 2:I have a tendency to hold a grudge. I won't even use Michelin tires Because the Michelin rubber plant keeps shooting at me. My son says I need to get over that.
Speaker 1:Someday you will.
Speaker 2:Maybe, so I wasn't going to go. I'm pointing in the direction of where Eastern is, so I applied to U of M and got in somehow.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And well, I was going to save the world. I went in to get a degree in elementary education because I figured I'd seen all this poverty, all this other stuff. I was going to save the world and I did. I found I'd go to class and do all that other stuff. I didn't talk about being in the military or anything like that. I mean, ann Arbor was not probably the best town to do that in. I did find a couple of guys that would wear their own, you know that were wearing their fatigue jacket or something like that. I remember a kid coming up to me when I was wearing my jacket and he goes wow, that's a cool jacket, where'd you get it? I, I was wearing one, my jacket and he goes wow, that's a cool jacket, where'd you get it? I goes my uncle gave it to me. He's like yeah, but it's got your own name on it. I said yeah, well, he threw that in as a bonus?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because we used to talk about our service. I mean, people didn't talk about their service at that time.
Speaker 2:No, we didn't. No, people are going to be well at image was pretty prevalent at the time. I got all these just whacked out movies and every movie had just a crazy Vietnam vet doing weird things and stuff, so anyway, so I did my elementary education and in the meantime I started taking as an elective. I was taking some speech courses and radio TV production classes, and I mean real and we didn't have videotape at the time.
Speaker 1:Right, like regular film. That was it.
Speaker 2:So I did that and then I did my student teaching in the third grade and found out that it probably wasn't the best thing for me because they thought I was a piece of gym equipment and I had no classroom management skills because you couldn't hit them.
Speaker 1:Right, you still can't, by the way, Dale. No, I know that Well there's more to that story. Okay.
Speaker 2:So anyway. So I went to talk to my advisor. I said I don't think I can do this. This is crazy. And he said well, you know, you've done really well in your communication classes. Have you ever thought about getting a master's in that? And I go, I still had money left from GI Bill, oh yeah. And I said well, I thought about it. How do I do that? And he says well, you know, you just apply. You probably need a letter from somebody. And I said well, where am I going to get a letter from? Well, he says you can probably get one from me, because I'm head of the department.
Speaker 2:Meanwhile he was a cool guy, and Professor Austin Stashev and all these guys, they had all grown up in the birth of radio and TV. And back to one guy, garrison, I think it's no, what was his name, I just forgot the name. Anyway, he had worked in Detroit on the Lone Ranger program, oh, and been a director of the radio show there. So I mean, these guys had experience, they were cool, anyway. So he said, yeah, so I got in. Anyway, the short part of this story if we can ever get to the short part is that I ended up getting a degree in radio, tv and film, master's in communication. First job out was with the University Hospital, postgraduate medicine, making instructional tapes and slide programs and so forth for them. But that was a grant. The grant ran out, so what did I do? I ended up teaching middle school.
Speaker 1:That's way better than third grade, right.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know. I told people it was more like being in Vietnam. I'll bet. In South Lyon, going back to your can't hit them open the desk drawer the first day and there's a paddle in there. I said what's this for? He says you can hit us with it. I said what I can Never did. But I said oh.
Speaker 1:You had the option and they knew it.
Speaker 2:I had the option and they knew it. I said, okay, this was 1977 or something like that. So, yeah. So I taught middle school for five years. Then I went into millages in Michigan, go up and down. Millage went down.
Speaker 2:I got laid off and I thought I'd start this great business called Take One where I would do video, weddings and so forth. And of course I didn't have any money to back that up, so that didn't work so well. And of course I didn't have any money to back that up, so that didn't work so well. And I ended up in insurance and investments and stuff for about 20 years. I hated it the whole time, mainly because I never really believed in a product. That's a problem when you're trying to sell stuff. That's true, that's very true. But I got.
Speaker 2:I was had an office across the street from the Washtenaw Community College and they had an ad in the newspaper looking for communication instructors, part-timers. So I went down and interviewed and they said, oh, this is great, we got one section available. I said, oh, that'd be cool, I could teach that. Go back to my office and do a real job. So I said, okay, so we're getting to the end, folks, don't worry. She said well, the class is not really on campus and I said okay. She said well, maybe it's in Dexter or Chelsea or something.
Speaker 2:Well it's up on 36. It's Maxie Boys School maximum prison for young men. I'm going okay, all right, I've been shot at before I can do this.
Speaker 1:How bad can it be?
Speaker 2:Yeah, how bad can it be? So I went up there and I had to go through security, security and they're patting me down and all this other stuff and going through my books and end up in a classroom typical looking classroom and the next thing I do is I hear these poor kids coming down the hallway and they got chains on. I can hear the chains. They're stopped outside, the thing dropped. The chains come into the class filled up three rows and three guards came in with him. I said where were you when I was teaching middle school? Take him out. So I taught that class. It went really well, I enjoyed it. I said this is something I really like. So I ended up part-time at Washtenaw and part-time at Schoolcraft and I've been doing that since 2001.
Speaker 2:2003, I was still doing part-time insurance and all this other stuff. And I was at this meeting for one of the companies and they cut commissions. And I was at this meeting for one of the companies and they cut commissions. So I'm sitting in this bar in a hotel and I meet this guy named Bob Gould. Bob had been in the Army himself and I knew him on the periphery of insurance stuff, and so I'm sitting there and he's going damn, god damn it.
Speaker 2:Now, what am I going to do? And I said I don't know. I said I got this idea. I said what if we started a radio program for veterans? And he goes well, tell me more. I said you know, tell stories and we can talk about benefits and we can. You know, we got a market here. We know a whole bunch of people who can do this.
Speaker 2:And he goes he just reached across. He says I'm with you and I go. What do you mean? He says no, I'm a veteran too. I didn't know this. He goes no, I'm a veteran, and he graduated from U of M with a degree in radio, tv and film a couple of years after I did. And he says let's try this. So he's the go-getter, right? So we put the word out about this and we found out that Ken Rogge had worked for Armed Forces Radio in Thailand during Vietnam and had been in Germany and all this other stuff. So he came on as our expert in this thing. And then Gary Lilly, who had nothing to do with radio but he had some money, but he was a veteran advocate like crazy.
Speaker 1:Had a lot of issues with his service.
Speaker 2:He had been a Navy CB. His story was he was on a roof putting a roof on a house, kept hearing all this pinging going on, couldn't figure out what it was and the guy said get off the roof, you're getting shot at. So anyway. So Gary was the heart and soul of this whole thing, really. I think Just from the emotional standpoint. So the next thing I know Bob's out there trying to find some place where we can do the program.
Speaker 2:So over on SDS, as I mentioned, a small, tiny little radio station in Ypsilanti that played country music and stuff, and a guy laid us on the air. He sold us an hour, 75 bucks an hour Saturday mornings, which I thought was cool. So we went in there. First show, of course, was a disaster. You know, hey, is this thing working? Can anybody hear me? But it stuck and we just said this is kind of cool. The need for this thing really came out, and I didn't know this until quite many years later. It came out of what was going on in 2003 with the Iraq-Afghanistan thing, and I know that when we went into Iraq so many Vietnam veterans had just a hard time. I mean, it was just flashing back to the what in the hell are we doing? This has nothing to do with saving the world from anything, and I know I was having a really hard time. Just ask my wife.
Speaker 1:I know one Vietnam vet that I talked to as I was getting ready to deploy in 2006 made the comment we haven't learned anything in 50 years. No, the same stuff Is that kind of how you were feeling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. Well, first of all, I could understand going to Afghanistan. That's where the bad guys came from. Okay, Take care of them. What is this over here? This had nothing to do with it that I could see and I just I was angry all the time and anyway. So we got this radio thing going and it turned out to be fun. Bob and Ken were the same, which is always a problem, so they'd gotten arguments all the time about who was writing stuff. I had to break them up. They'd almost get into fistfights. You know creative energy, I think.
Speaker 1:Right what they would call it going on Right exactly.
Speaker 2:So it went from there. We were there for a while. He sold the station so we moved over to WAM, which had quote a bigger audience. We were there for I think four years and they were sold and somebody in Texas who decided they were going to go in a different direction so we were out and then Bob was calling all around and he called I think he just went through the phone book and he called WDEO, which is a Catholic radio station here in Ann Arbor, and it turns out that the station manager's son was in the Air Force and he just loved the idea. So he pitched the idea to Tom Monaghan of Domino's Pizza fame. But Tom Monaghan is a Marine. And the next thing I know is we got a spot on their station for about six years I think, until we had a little verbal malfunction One time on a hot mic.
Speaker 2:You know hot mics can always get you into trouble. Well, certain words were said on the hot mic and the next thing you know we were not on WDEL anymore. But it really helped us expand our audience because they had 120 affiliates and they could play the program if they wanted. Many of them were Spanish-speaking stations, but that's okay. And we were also on a couple of stations in Louisiana.
Speaker 2:That guy kept getting wiped out by hurricanes, so anyway, so we left there and then we went back to Wham because Wham had been bought by a husband and wife team and the wife really liked what we were doing and she kept us on the air for a number of years because we couldn't pay anything. And then Mr Falzon on the other side of the room got more involved and was able to help us out, bail us out and kept us going and then found that he kind of liked the idea of telling stories himself and got more involved in producing the program. Unfortunately, ken had retired at this point. Gary unfortunately got killed by a drunk driver walking down the road by his house, and so it was just Bob and myself at that point. And then, excuse me, I still go by the mantra of what we Gary do when we think about programs that we want to do, kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sounds like he meant a lot yeah he did. He meant a lot more than I even imagined, and so then, COVID hit Some of the best stories start with, and then COVID hit and then COVID hit.
Speaker 2:Now what do we do? So we started doing the program on Zoom and we're still there, we're still going, we're still growing and we're still alive. That's the best part of it. So that's pretty much me. Wow, that's where I am today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's not a nutshell, but that's you.
Speaker 2:I told you.
Speaker 1:Well, so there's one thing that I do want to ask you. I didn't have to do really any interviewing here. Your story is great. I really, really enjoyed it. I do want to ask you this, and I ask everyone this at the end of an interview and that is for someone who's listening to this story years from now, when neither you or I are around what message do you want to leave them with? What do you want them to take away from, not just this interview, but how you've lived your life?
Speaker 2:Go to class and do the homework, rest of all. The second thing and this is something that I learned from talking to all these Medal of Honor recipients I mean it's been such a privilege I mean that's probably one of the things, of course it's been a privilege to talk to all these men and women that have really been willing to sacrifice their lives for stuff, and one of them is a guy named Sammy Davis not the entertainer, sammy Davis received his Medal of Honor in Vietnam and he's just a character, but he wrote a book and it talks about the idea of never giving up, and he says, every time I think our parents probably said this to us, hopefully to us if you get knocked down, get up. He says you're never defeated until you don't get up. And so I think that would be the message I want to give people. If you get knocked down, get up. He says you're never defeated until you don't get up. And so I think that would be the message I want to give people. He says, no matter how you get knocked around, just keep going, keep going, because if you give up, then you're done.
Speaker 2:And I think even at my age now, I don't feel like I'm 78 years old, I feel like I'm still in my 50s, sometimes until I try to do stuff and then I realize no, I can't do that anymore. But the idea is, I think that's it. I can't remember the movie, it's one of those things. But you know, never give up, never surrender. I think that's the main thing that we all have to live with those things. But you know, it's never give up, never surrender. I think that's the main thing that we all have to live with. And you know, whatever's going on in the world, this too shall pass. You know, if you don't agree with what's happening out there, you got to let people know that you don't agree. You just can't sit back and not tell people how you feel about things. So if you're not happy, let them know. You know peaceful protesting Martin Luther King had it right If you get the numbers up there, politicians will start paying attention to you. So yeah, if you get knocked down, get up.
Speaker 1:All right, well, thanks for that, dale. Thanks for taking the time out to sit and talk with me today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, it was my pleasure. I didn't plan on doing this at all.
