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Tango 16 Papa Interview
96 Plays2 years ago
Vietnam War Veteran, Nathan Jones, my Papa, is the guest today on Alpha Whiskey Tango. I am so very thankful for the conversation with this 2 time Purple Heart recipient. I hope the audio is ok, we recorded in his garage. Please let us know if you have any questions, I will try to convince him to do a part 2. Thank you all. MUCH LOVE.
Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Okay. We'll see. This might work. We'll see. I don't know.
Introduction to Papaw's Military Service
00:00:05
Speaker
Okay. Welcome back to Alpha Whiskey Tango. This is the third time I'm trying to do this right now.
00:00:09
Speaker
And Papaw's getting tired. OK, we're going to see. It keeps cutting us off at two minutes, but we're going to try this again. And this is our last try. So if it doesn't work, then whatever. OK. They'll just have to wonder, won't they? They'll just have to wonder. You'll have to read God in a foxhole if you want to know anything about Papaw. OK, so this is my Papaw, Vietnam veteran. He joined the Marine Corps right after he graduated.
00:00:39
Speaker
Like when did you go to bootcamp? How many days after graduating? Graduated high school 17th of May and was in bootcamp the 21st of May. Okay.
Transition to Machine Gunner Role
00:00:48
Speaker
And you went to the infantry training and you were, if your initial job was 0351. Yeah. But that's not what, that's not what he ended up doing. Went to Vietnam, got on the job training to be an 0331 machine gunner.
00:01:08
Speaker
And I think that's basically as far as we've gotten so far. Okay. Yeah. That's, that's, that's basic. Okay. All
Service with 1st Battalion, 9th Marines
00:01:20
Speaker
right. And then you, you served with first battalion, ninth Marine. Yes. Third Marine division Delta company. Yeah. We called ourselves death, the fine Delta and everybody else called us dying Delta.
00:01:37
Speaker
And then you guys were also referred to as the walking dead. When I got to the fleet, I think the first training I got in the Marine Corps, they sent me to basic machine gunners course.
Legacy and Student Paper
00:01:55
Speaker
And about halfway through the course,
00:01:58
Speaker
the instructors learned that I had a grandpa who served with one nine. And at the time I had no idea what that meant. I just knew Papaw served with one nine. And they were like, you're an idiot. Your homework is no longer over machine guns that we're learning. Your homework tonight is now going to be to write a paper over 1st Battalion, 9th Marines.
00:02:23
Speaker
and what exactly your papaw went through. So I think that was the first time that I realized what you did in the Marine Corps. And do you remember them? They called you, they were like, call him right now. They wanted to speak to the legend. So yeah, that was a fun experience. That course sucked, but it was fun. I liked learning about
00:02:54
Speaker
Machine guns, that was fun. I think that was my favorite thing to do in the Marine Corps, shoot those weapons. It was a fun weapon. But you shot the M60. Yeah. Which was, when I was in, we shot the M240 Bravo, which was basically the updated version of the M60. Yeah.
Promotion Challenges in the Marine Corps
00:03:15
Speaker
What was your rank when you got to Vietnam? When I got to Vietnam, I was a private. Mm-hmm.
00:03:23
Speaker
We got to Vietnam and as soon as we got there, it was PFC. Six months later, I picked up Lance Corporal. You didn't get ranked very quick in the Marine Corps back then. If you went eight years and you as a sergeant, you was doing real good.
00:03:46
Speaker
And now I think you have to be a staff sergeant within eight years or they put you out. Yeah. You're not, you're not doing what you need to be doing. Yeah. Lollygagging. Well, they, a lot of tests nowadays that said they don't care how, how, Oh, what's the word I'm looking for?
00:04:10
Speaker
how tough you are or anything. You just gotta be smart nowadays. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely a lot of testing. Yeah. Online stuff. I know. Yeah. I was a Lance Corporal for 16 months before I got promoted to a Corporal, but that was because I was lollygagging on doing all the online testing.
Insights from 'Matterhorn'
00:04:28
Speaker
I was too focused on just doing my job. That's all you have to do as well. I look at it. So I've been reading this book.
00:04:39
Speaker
It is called Matterhorn. It's a novel of the Vietnam War. It's written by Carl Marlantes. I cannot pronounce his last name. M-A-R-L-A-N-T-E-S. And the last time I was here visiting with you guys, we realized that it's written in the point of view, mostly in the point of view of Lieutenant Melis. And then we realized that that is Carl Marlantes or Marlantes.
00:05:07
Speaker
he was writing it in his point of view and just changed his name and probably everybody else's name in the book. But yeah, so he writes it from his point of view when he first gets to Vietnam. And that's basically these, most of these questions is going to be from the first part
Supply Struggles and Survival Tactics
00:05:28
Speaker
of the book. And this is going to guide my interview. So on page 30,
00:05:35
Speaker
Three, they talk about being short on water, short on maps, and basically just low on supplies and everything in Vietnam. So that was a big issue you guys had. Yeah, always. Always. They had a hard time keeping resupplies to us. It's either rainy, foggy, because we was way up north. We was up in the mountains. We wasn't down in the lowlands.
00:06:05
Speaker
You know, so it was, there's always issues. Yeah. Every once in a while we get back to a rear area, which was Camp Carroll or Camp Evans. And it was just a little outpost is all it was. A place where we could get cigarettes and some pokey bait. Oh, that's what it was. Personnel other than grunt. That's what we were called. That's what I was thinking earlier. But it's, uh,
00:06:34
Speaker
But we never, never did without, except one time that I can remember, and that's when we was up in the DMZ and they couldn't get nothing into us. No child, no nothing. We was only supposed to have been up there three days. We took three days to supply a child and we got up there and we spent
00:06:57
Speaker
21 days and we went from three days all the way to 21 without eating. We didn't have nothing to eat. They couldn't get supplies in for 21 days. Yeah. And it was monsoon season and rain and fog and choppers just couldn't get in as it was too dangerous for them to fly through that fog. Yeah. But they was, there's a lot of times that, you know, they just, the,
00:07:27
Speaker
Hot LZs couldn't get in.
Risks of Hot Landing Zones
00:07:31
Speaker
So it wasn't a picnic per se, but it wasn't all bad either. I mean, we had some times that we had fun and laughed and played lots of cards. Some of the guys played chess. They tried to teach me chess and it didn't work. Just couldn't learn chess. So play checkers.
00:07:56
Speaker
Checkers. Oh, yeah. OK. That's fun. Marbles? No, no. Didn't have no marbles. Way to throw them at people. Yeah. OK. Yeah. That's what I was in the book. They talk a lot about the hot LZs, which if anybody listening doesn't know what that means, it means the landing zone. There's enemy in the area and they're going to shoot the bird down so that that bird, those pilots refuse. They're not going into that that hot LZ.
00:08:26
Speaker
Well, some of them would. Some of them. But those pilots were heros. Yeah. Big time. Yeah. So the food in this book, they talk a lot about mixing the food, the MREs up. No, they're sea rations. The sea rations. We didn't have MREs. Yeah, we call them MREs. Well, that's two different, complete. Yeah. MREs is not bad. And sea rations wasn't bad. I mean, if you
00:08:55
Speaker
could heat them up. And like I said, you can take your cheese can and put in your ham and limas, or you could take your, your pound cake and mix with your, uh, peaches, uh, even their fruit cocktail cake. It was good. Of course we wasn't, we wasn't too picky about what we ate. Yeah. Especially
00:09:22
Speaker
Yeah, when there's times you don't know when the next time you're going to eat it. Well, up in the DMZ, we cooked grass and chewed on tree bark. Oh, no. But it was cooked grass. You would think it would kind of taste like spinach, but it don't. It tastes like cooked grass. Yeah. Like I said, I can remember one time,
00:09:51
Speaker
Me and the other team leader of the other gun, we was playing chicken.
Games and Camaraderie
00:09:58
Speaker
I don't know if you know what chicken was, but that's when you took a knife and you threw it at each other's foot. And you had to move your foot over to the knife and move to get the closest. An old price kept telling me, he says, John, you better move your foot. I'm going to get close. I said, I ain't moving my foot. He said, I'm going to get close. And I said, I ain't moving my foot. He threw the bayonet.
00:10:20
Speaker
And the bayonet went down through my boot between the big toe and the toe next to it. Just perfect. All the way down. Stuck into one of the pallets that we're standing on and said, but anyway, we laughed about that. So was your boot round? I'm sure I kept it. That's the ones when I got sent back to the rear.
00:10:45
Speaker
Cause I really wanted to keep them boots, but when I caught Malaria and they sent me to the rear, they took all your clothes, your boots, your everything, you know, destroyed them. So, but I was going to take them boots and have them bronzed. Oh yeah. Is it the hole right through it? Yeah. Yeah. Malaria was a huge issue. Yeah. That's, that's what got me out. But I,
00:11:10
Speaker
I just don't think I could have took anymore. I was 13 months over there all together and my last month was hospitalship in the rear area and then come home. Yeah. And that was all, you got malaria then after getting shrapnel. Oh yeah. Yeah. That was my last, we'd just come out of, well, we'd come out of, I can't remember, we was on that operation up in the DMZ and I can't remember the name of that operation. Hmm.
Malaria and Return Home
00:11:40
Speaker
Anyway, I wasn't feeling good while we was up there. That's where it was. We was so wet, so cold, but I started coming down with the fever and the chills. And anyway, our corpsman kept telling me that I'd have to go see the senior corpsman to get out of the field. And I said, I don't need out of the field. And he said, Jones, you got malaria. I'm afraid. So anyway,
00:12:10
Speaker
After a while, you get tired and you say, I'm going to go see the senior quack. So anyway, sure enough, I had malaria. They sent me back to the rear. I went to Delta Med. Delta Med, they sent me out on the hospital ship, USS Repos. I was out there for probably 10 days.
00:12:37
Speaker
That's when I really got to eat. Them Navy guys knowed how to eat. Yeah, that's funny. I'm sure they were, they stayed, they stayed, they kept their bellies full. Yeah. I'm sure. Yeah. A lot of this book, well, a lot of the beginning of the book, you know, it's, you, you watch the carrot, you read the character development of Lieutenant Melis, but in the beginning of the book, he's kind of like, he, he is doing this.
00:13:07
Speaker
in hopes of, you know, getting a medal and then maybe becoming a politician someday. But, you know, we read his Wikipedia and found out that he did eventually. What was it? The Navy Cross that he was awarded? Yeah. So I got to finish the book and see what happened to him. But yeah.
Refusing the Purple Heart
00:13:28
Speaker
You refused your Purple Heart, right? Yeah. Mom's got it. Well, or mom went and got it. Yeah.
00:13:37
Speaker
I never, I didn't want to be tagged. That's what they called it when I was over there. The corpsman would tag you and it go in your record book. And plus your parents got a letter or telegram stating that you was wounded in combat. And my mom, she had, they was two of my brother and me was over there at the same time. He was in the army down south and I was in the Marine Corps up north.
00:14:05
Speaker
So I didn't want her knowing anything about getting hit. So anyway, I didn't keep the heart or didn't ask for it. Okay, we can pause this one. You ain't going nowhere, don't look like. We'll resume, we'll resume. I don't know if I said it in this recording, but we're in the garage. So it might be loud for a moment.
00:14:33
Speaker
So yeah, okay. Well, was it a grenade? Yes. Yeah. It was up in the DMCs when they got that one. It was hitting the chin. They threw a grenade over it. That's trying to knock the machine gun out. And they, they threw a grenade and it landed probably, and it was a dame.
00:15:01
Speaker
Chinese Chaikom is what they're called. And they wouldn't as deadly as our hand grenades. But anyway, they depended on them things, just picking up a lot of debris, rock and what little metal was in them and just anything to put you down. But I told my gunner to get down. He got down, put his head down, and I just leaned back on my elbow.
00:15:31
Speaker
and was watching it cause it was on a slight hill and I didn't want the grenade rolling down on us. So it went off. I raised up and told Ed, I seen where the grenade was coming from and I told him to shoot the bush. There's a big old bush in front of us and that's where the little gook was at. So anyway, I raised up and I seen blood on Ed's hand and I tell Ed your head,
00:16:00
Speaker
And Ed started wiping the blood off and he looked up at me and said, that ain't me, that's you. And by then blood had run down in my eye. So I wiped it out and I kept telling him shoot the bush, shoot the bush. But he did and the Chycom's quit coming anyway. So Ed got them. But that was the first Purple Heart. I got two really. The second one is right before
00:16:29
Speaker
I can't even remember the area we was in. I didn't know about the second one. Well, you know, the bad thing about this was the older you get, the 21st of May, and that's what's funny, it was the same day that I graduated or went in the boot camp. May, I got hit. That was my first one. The second one was up in the DMZ.
00:16:57
Speaker
The first one was when I got hit in the chin was at the Camelot. Oh, okay. Outside the village. I think it was outside of Camp Evans. I think it was either Camp Evans or Camp Carl. Okay. So, and then that second one, of course, never, never did get hit. But the first one is what your mom, uh, she got a hold of the corpsman that doctored me. Okay.
00:17:27
Speaker
And a doc Baxter remembered me. Okay. And anyway, he put in for the purple heart and I got it and then I give it to your mom. Okay. Cause she's the one that got it. That's yeah. That's so crazy. So was this, there was the first one in your chin and the second one was the side of the head.
Spiritual Experience in Combat
00:17:52
Speaker
Next one, uh,
00:17:54
Speaker
We finally got out of there. That's when we was up in the DMZ. And I just, God had promised me that on the 21st of May that I was going to be all right. If you want to know that whole story, like Brooke said, get the... Get the God in the foxhole. God in the foxhole. And mine's the first story in there. It's the first story in that book? Yeah. Okay. I need to read that story. That was the ambush.
00:18:24
Speaker
Yeah, you shake the ambush. But anyway, God told me I'd be all right. Anyway, the one up in the DMZ, I'd started doubting God. I know this, when God tells you something, he's not like we are. When he tells you that you can take it to the bank, you're gonna be all right.
00:18:50
Speaker
So anyway, I started doubting him up in the DMZ and finally the fog lifted. We got the chopper started coming in to get us out and my gun was always seemed to be the last one on the last chopper cause guns had to set up security. So anyway, we got on the last chopper and it started lifting off and the
00:19:19
Speaker
jungle just started getting smaller, you know, and of course the back doors, they didn't have doors on them things. They just had a ramp, but you could see out the back voice come up out of that jungle and said, I told you you was going to be all right. And that's when I got malaria and didn't have to go back out in the field anymore. And I was so happy because I just don't think I could have done any more combat. Combat is not what
00:19:50
Speaker
what most people think or what television shows. There ought to be a law against war. Yeah, absolutely. If people want to fight, let the presidents fight. That's what I think too. We wouldn't have any more wars. But I would do it all over again if I had to, just for the country. Right, yeah.
00:20:16
Speaker
It's something that I stew on a lot, and I talk about on the podcast a lot, because yeah, when I joined at 18 years old, I didn't know what I
Reflections on Military Enlistment
00:20:30
Speaker
was doing. I knew I had family in the Marine Corps, and I knew I wouldn't watch Shayla graduate, and thought that was the coolest thing I've ever seen. And it is. It is, but I don't... Still yet, there's a bunch of crap you gotta... Yeah.
00:20:45
Speaker
Yeah. After all the glory stuff, it's all the crap that comes along with it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, yeah, Zack, Zack Brian, he's a music artist. He was in the Navy, but he, uh, we won't hold that against him. He has a song. Uh, um, I can't remember what the title of it is, but a line in the songs is, um, uh, it's,
00:21:15
Speaker
Man, I think it's East Side of Sorrow is the song title, but he talks about, what does he say? He says, they ship me off in something. And I don't know, basically he says, you don't even know what you're fighting for. It's like, yeah, yeah. It's just young men just going to serve their country and not really understanding
00:21:42
Speaker
The whole point of everything. And when it's all said and done, what have you accomplished? A bunch of blowed up buildings, a bunch of dead civilians, dead good men, because the military won't take sorry men. So we just lost thousands of good men. And it's still happening today. Oh yeah, because the presidents don't have to fight.
00:22:12
Speaker
You know, they just send, send kids to do their job. Exactly. Yeah. Another artist I really like, uh, it's a metal band king eight 10, and he has a line of his song where he says, um, the poor men, you know, poor men fight the war man. Now I, my brain's not working, but poor men fight the war. And, uh, it's, it's young men for, or old men for counsel and young men for war. That's what he says. Yeah.
00:22:41
Speaker
Yeah. And if it was, you're right. If it's just the old, if you just gave the old men swords on the council, put the, okay, you guys go sword fight if that's what you want to do. And like my dad always said, let old men fight them wars. They tell them generals to go to hell. They ain't going nowhere. So
00:23:05
Speaker
That's, that's the only reason they use young kids is because the kids won't say anything against them. Right. And say, but old man would tell them to go off. Yeah. Yeah. There's a part in the book too, that I wanted to bring up where they're on patrol and it's Lieutenant
Leadership Challenges in 'Matterhorn'
00:23:23
Speaker
Melis. It's like his first kind of in contact with the enemy. And he's, it's, he's having to choose who to send up to go.
00:23:34
Speaker
like what gunners to go forward and be the ones kind of on the front lines to go, they're taking incoming fire and he's like, well, who do I pick to go up there? And then he's talking to, yeah, he's talking to the radio operator and he's like, to hell with him, send a fire team around to the left, we'll cover with mole if they get into the shit, who do you want to go? And so, yeah, he was talking to con man,
00:24:05
Speaker
radio. Yeah. And he says, well, now it's con man's turn to play God at age, at age 19. And he just, the kid shuts his eyes and he's just like rider. He just has to, you know, pick somebody to go either die or. Well, that's where, you know, something I don't know. You know, like I said, you could talk to any battalion, any company, any, any squad, and it's all going to be different.
00:24:35
Speaker
I know when the shit hit the fan on us, it was guns up. We was always called on to get up to the front. And without the gun, you ain't going nowhere. But that was, I don't know why he was having that, unless his guns got knocked out. And that's very possible because the Gooks didn't want them guns around.
00:25:02
Speaker
Well, that was, yeah, that's what he said. Gun up, he whispered, scosh, scosh, scosh, scosh was the, was the radio operator. Yeah. So he's telling, put Vancouver with his machine gun 180 from it. And then it was, yeah. So yeah. 19 year olds are over there having to pick their buddies to go forward. Yeah. It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Um, another part of the book, they were,
00:25:33
Speaker
They, well, it was that same part, actually. It was just after the firefight, they thought that they had maybe gotten two of the Vietcong. Is that what they were called? Well, we thought NVA. Oh, NVA. Vietcong was down south. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, they thought it was two of them that they got, but after just radioing with the
00:26:04
Speaker
the guys back in the rear and they had also called for fire. And so they're basically, long story short, they ended up with 10 kills confirmed. And they're like, that was not 10 kills. Well, you had to have a big body count. Yeah. And sometimes you would, I know my gun and no prices gun in one day, we was credited for 365 dead NVA. Oh really? So yeah.
00:26:34
Speaker
All together. Yeah. Both guns. Okay. Yeah. Cause we didn't do the little three round bursts. When, when you opened up, you opened up with belts of ammo. That barrel was high. Yeah. Very, very high. So it's a, you cover a lot of territory. Oh yeah.
00:26:56
Speaker
I want to, I remember you telling the story about there was this one machine gun team, this NVA machine gun team that you guys just kept coming into contact with. I was up in the DMZ. Yeah. And finally, was it two Marines of yours on patrol? Yeah. You want to tell that story? Yeah, they, they just, every day was getting hit by that same dang machine gun. And, and you know, it was up there, you know, like 25, 26 days. Okay. But,
00:27:25
Speaker
Anyway, getting hit by that same thing day after day, and those two grunts, they just got tired. And we was all tired. I think we had all been happy if we had all been killed. But they said the next time he opens up, we're gonna end this. We're gonna just jump up and let him shoot us. Anyway, sure enough, out on patrol, that machine gun opened up again, and them two guys threw their rifles down
00:27:54
Speaker
jumped up, went to running right towards the gun, jumping up and down, hollering and screaming and waving their arms. The gooks jumped up and ran off, left the machine gun, left their grenades, left everything. And just, I couldn't believe it. I said, yes, but. They were scared too. Well, that's it, you know. And yeah, I think that's where, isn't it in World War II,
00:28:22
Speaker
World War II with Germany. That's where we got the nickname, Devil Dogs. No, that's one. Oh, World War I. Okay, okay. In the Bollywood. Yes, but... Yeah, so... Just scary. Yeah, they just... German said they fought like devil dogs. But yeah, that's what I imagined. These two just come and run and out, just scream and holler and I'd be scared of them. Yeah, I mean, it's...
Friendship and Loss in War
00:28:50
Speaker
You do stupid stuff. Did they get medals for that? The last I knew, they was put up for the Silver Star. But whether they got that or not, because after we got back to the rear and I got malaria and sent out of the bush, I never went back. So I never knew anything.
00:29:20
Speaker
Yeah. You never talked to them again? No. No wonder. Well, I never did talk to them. I mean, that was just what you seen. Yeah. Yeah. Because that was one thing. You didn't make friends over there. Because boy, you talk about hurt when you had a friend that was killed or wounded hits. So you just didn't. You didn't get too close. Yeah. Yeah. I had that one.
00:29:47
Speaker
We went through bootcamp, ITR, base battalion, went over, got assigned to the same battalion, put in machine guns. He was on one team and I was on the other team and we was up at Kaeson and, you know, hadn't seen him. I knew he got hit that day, but it was 35 years later.
00:30:12
Speaker
I finally met back up with him. I belonged to the one night newspaper. And I've seen his name in that paper. So I called him and sure enough, it was old Greenwood. And we visited, you know, two or three times. And I didn't know it, but he got hit coming over to see me. He was just gonna come over and visit. He got hit.
00:30:41
Speaker
got a million dollar win. Oh, wow. So he sent back to the States and okay. And that's where he stayed until 35 years later. Yeah. Wow. And yeah, I guess it's completely different times. You didn't have texting, you know, Facebook and what not. So yeah, you just didn't talk. You just didn't know what happened to him. Wow. You would have never known that he was trying to come
00:31:03
Speaker
Yeah, well, the first time we met, we was talking. He said, well, John, do you know that's why I got hit? I was coming to see you. Oh, wow. I said, well, make me feel good, Greenwood. Yeah. God, I would bow my eyes. I don't know. Yeah, we got a lot of guys hurt that day. Really? That was bad. Our platoon commander was killed. Really? He got the whole CP, really. I mean, they was dropping 81 mortars in on us. And old Greenwood said,
00:31:33
Speaker
He said, when I started to cross the open area, and he said, I heard that helicopter coming over because they told you not to ever get me out in the open when the, you know, cause the sound, you couldn't hear the tube pop. So anyway, he said, I heard that helicopter and I thought, Oh God. And he said, wasn't two seconds later in that round hit. Right. That was the day that you, I think I barely remember you talking about that day where it was just nonstop.
00:32:03
Speaker
Well, that was, uh, now that was a couple of days before. That's when they didn't ready to make a big, didn't been few. They was going to, they threw in 5,000 artillery rounds, one right after another boy, just constant, just, and talk about working on your nerves. Yeah. That's, that is scary. They put, uh, sea ration cans on the end of the round. I don't know if you ever seen a one side five round.
00:32:33
Speaker
It's got a loop where the crane would pick them up. Okay. You know, it had a man, a sea ration can would fit right down over there. And you talk about scream. Boy, that thing would scream and sound like a thousand women screaming to high heaven. And just 5,000 of them just coming in. At the end of the day, it was going to be a little. Jesus.
00:33:03
Speaker
Yeah. I can't, I can't even imagine that, but yeah, I think another point in the book that this guy's met really, really exposing is how the higher ups, the kernels, and they just didn't really care for the young Marines.
Disconnect Between Officers and Soldiers
00:33:24
Speaker
Well, I, I don't, you know, like I said, I think there was a random, right? And,
00:33:32
Speaker
I know, uh, I met our division general at one time and, and he seemed like, uh, that he was, he was intent on, he wanted that war to end too. And by George, we went up and that's why we was up in the DMZ. Nobody is supposed to have been up there, but that's how we wound up there. He took the whole division and.
00:33:57
Speaker
Okay. And it was, I mean, we blew up ammo dump after ammo dump after ammo dump. They wasn't supposed to be up there either, but they would stop piling. Yeah. To sweep down and kick our butts. They talk about that in this book too. Yeah. It's, uh, didn't do them any good. We blew all their shit up. Yeah. So. Good. It's, uh, but yeah, it's, uh. Yeah. I think in this book, he's, he's kind of just making the point that
00:34:28
Speaker
At least I think it's Colonel Simpson. He just sounds like he's just, he's trying to get promoted. He wants to go on. We had, we had a captain of our company and he was a glory ham, you know, but he got killed up the case on too. So did he? Yeah. Man, a cap captain. Captain Chafer. Well, they'd got the captain. He got the gunny. He's got a radio man. Hmm. Uh,
00:34:56
Speaker
because they all come out of their bunker, you know, when our lieutenant got hit, everybody was, and that's when you're supposed to stay in your home is when they're incoming. I know you got to get to the wounded, but the way I looked at that, that's Corbin's job. That's not my job. It's that Ed Sexton be you, doc.
00:35:21
Speaker
That's crazy. But yeah, there's a lot of wanted medals. It's like when my machine gun was caught in that U-shaped ambush and our lieutenant wrote my gun team up for a Bronze Star. And the captain said that was our job, you know.
00:35:48
Speaker
I just told our lieutenant, I said, Lieutenant, I'll never do my job again. Because that was not, they ran off and left us out there. Oh, really? Yeah. And that wasn't a machine gun's job. Our machine gun's job is to set up a base of fire while they pull back. And then they set up a base of fire for the gun. Well, so much for that, they just kept going to the back.
00:36:15
Speaker
So we was, we was trapped like rats. Geez. And said, but anyway. Was that the ambush? Yeah. That was. Yeah. Yeah. We was, we was trapped. So anyway, like I said, the grace of God, that's what got us out because it wasn't, cause we was out of ammo. I had one hand grenade and 75 rounds of gun ammo and that was it. Right.
00:36:44
Speaker
So and I was about to end it all for me anyway. And that's when God spoke to me. He said, I'll get you out of here. Yeah. He said, don't worry my son. He said, you're going to be all right. Yeah. And then, and got out. Yeah. So, and that's why, you know, people shouldn't worry about anything. Well, if you got God in your life, you shouldn't worry about anything.
00:37:13
Speaker
I just can't picture not having him involved in my life. When I was younger, I would do things that I knew I shouldn't be doing. Because we're human. He made me a promise and he don't break promises like we do. I said, well, so I got a lot to make up to him.
00:37:42
Speaker
I think you've done. I think you've done enough. Well, that's it. Well, yeah. Is that it? I think so. I mean... Have you got enough? I think that's good enough for me right now. Well, I know probably most people will say, what is it you're talking about? Well, if they have any... I'm going to tell you, Vietnam veterans will know what to talk about. Right, yeah. Well, if anyone does have any questions, I have an email. Most of you all know how to contact me anyway.
00:38:11
Speaker
And if there are questions, then I might be able to talk him into a part two where we just ask him questions, clear some of this up. But yeah, I think for the most part, that's what I wanted to talk about. So do you have to say this is Bruce West signing off? No, but I will. This is Papal and Brooks with signing off. Thank you all for listening. We love you. We'll talk to you soon and goodbye.