Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans

COMBAT STORIES FROM Vietnam

A Kim | 5th Marine Regiment

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Showing : Vietnam Videos

Dennis Haines - Army +15 Total Videos

C Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, 199th Light Infantry Brigade

The M-16 made every Army rifleman an automatic rifleman, explains Dennis Haines, who gave his up to become the M-60 gunner in his squad. The M-60 machine gun was the primary heavy weapon on patrols and ambushes.
Bill Person - Air Force +8 Total Videos

553rd Reconnaissance Wing

Bill Person and his driver stopped when they saw something in the road. To his amazement, a King cobra reared up to the height of a man.
Ernest Banasau - Army +17 Total Videos

A Company, 4th Infantry Division

Banasau came home to a different country than the one he left, and figured out to adjust - while others were not so lucky. Years later, he took a journey to meet the family of a fallen brother, and offered words of comfort.
Bob Atkinson - Marines +17 Total Videos

K Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment

First he had to jump off the Amtrac in a frenzy with extra ammo and full gear on his back. That busted up his knee. The vehicle was repaired and under way again, when he was hit with incoming and knocked off the vehicle in flames. Still, Bob Atkinson wasn't sure he was really hurt.
Al Flory - Army +9 Total Videos

54th Medical Detachment

The difference in climate in various regions of Vietnam affected Al Flory and his detachment as they tried to navigate the changing landscapes. After most missions, they found different ways to pass the time back on base in Chu Lai.
Grayson Roulston - Army +7 Total Videos

187th Assault Helicopter Company, 1st Aviation Brigade

After leaving Vietnam, Grayson Roulston stayed in the military on multiple different tours of duty before retiring in Germany. He stayed on staff with the military working at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas to be closer to home.
Marshall Carter - Marines +16 Total Videos

1st Marine Division

New Marine rifle company commander Marshall Carter was anxious to try and improve on the French experience in Vietnam. He thought they never employed proper counter insurgency tactics in their war, and he had just been drilled in them as one of the few Marines to attend Green Beret school.
Richard Hawes - Marines +6 Total Videos

Multiple Units

He was a platoon leader in Korea but after his tour, Richard Hawes became a Marine Aviator. He was part of the first qualified Marine nuclear delivery squadron, training to drop early weapons from fighter planes. He was headed to deployment in Japan when the flight made an abrupt left turn. The new destination? Vietnam.
Marshall Carter - Marines +16 Total Videos

1st Marine Division

There were four levels of enemy in Vietnam, according to Marine Captain Marshall Carter, ranging from the North Vietnamese Army at the top to the VCI, or Viet Cong Infrastructure, at the informal level. Gen. Westmoreland dismissed the worth of the VCI and famously omitted their numbers from official counts. Still, they caused a third of the American casualties.
Bill Cunningham - Marines +24 Total Videos

Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 364 (HMM 364)

Bill Cunningham was based in Da Nang during his first tour of Vietnam. He recalls ferrying South Vietnamese troops and their livestock, which caused the crew chiefs to spend a lot of time cleaning the aircraft.
COL Jack Jacobs (ret.) - Army +5 Total Videos

9th Infantry Division

COL Jack Jacobs (ret.) remembers his first real combat experience in Vietnam
Laurie Druyor - Navy +4 Total Videos

USS Sanctuary

Druyor talks about what it was like working aboard a sizable hospital ship rather than a hospital on land, and expands on seeing the awful effects of war on the children. At a few instances she would go into Da Nang to operate remotely on patients, but those times were few and far in between. Fortunately, she and the other medical personnel experienced no close calls while they were doing their jobs. (Interview conducted at, and with the assistance of, the Military Heritage Museum- https://freedomisntfree.org/.)
Bud Alley - Army +13 Total Videos

2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry

While setting up base camp, communications officer Bud Alley had to take on extra duty as mess officer, taking over from his friend John Howard. When the commander heard that Alley was asking to go out on combat patrols, he told him to assemble a squad from all the headquarters and support personnel and give the cooks a taste of life outside the wire. He also accompanied medics making sick calls to the local civilians.
Barry Howard - Air Force +3 Total Videos

13th Tactical Fighter Squadron

Fighter pilot Barry Howard finally got the assignment in Vietnam he wanted, flying out of Udorn in Thailand. After receiving a DFC for blowing up an ammo tunnel, he went on to receive a Silver Star & Bronze Star (pinned on him by Admiral John S. McCain, Jr.) for disabling some 37mm guns that were causing trouble for reconnaissance aircraft.
Bill Acebes - Army +8 Total Videos

173rd Airborne Brigade

Still believing he was going to study electronics, Bill Acebes arrived at Ft. Gordon for the next stage of training. When he asked about radar, he was informed that this was the infantry and he was the radar beam. The last stop was jump training, where the sergeants "all came from hell. You could see it in their eyes."
Franklin Mendez - Marines +4 Total Videos

1st Amtrac Battalion, B Company

Growing up in Texas in a military extended family, Franklin Mendez found himself enlisting in the Marine Corps when he was 18. Training at Fort Pendleton was a good experience for him, where he learned all the intricacies of AMTRAC operation.
Dennis Haines - Army +15 Total Videos

C Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, 199th Light Infantry Brigade

During Advanced Infantry Training, Dennis Haines remembers a problem with the bolt on the M-16 rifle. It would swell and stick. Fortunately, the problem was fixed before the rifles were deployed in the field.
Rody Conway - Army +14 Total Videos

Military Assistance Command Vietnam

In the field, a deer ran through the camp and was shot, dressed, and eaten by Rody Conway’s unit. Much later, this would become a sore point with his wife. There was also the incident in which a Vietnamese woman had an unusual complaint.
Bill Crossley - Army +15 Total Videos

6th Artillery Battalion, 27th Field Artillery Regiment

It was all peace and quiet during the Tet armistice, but Bill Crossley's artillery battery was getting a request for fire from a remote unit. They didn't know it but that was the first rumbling of the Tet Offensive. The wave of attacks across Vietnam actually relieved some frustration on the part of American forces. They had been searching in vain for enemy to engage.
Gary Campbell - Army +5 Total Videos

196th Light Infantry Brigade, Americal Div.

Gary Campbell survives his helicopter losing power, making a forced landing in a rice paddy as Vietnamese farmers watch.
Bennie Koon - Army +6 Total Videos

HHC 1st Battalion 5th Cavalry Regiment 1st Cavalry Division Air Mobile

After heading to Phu Bai, Bennie Koon and his company went to Camp Evans to be stationed. Facing mortar fire, he remembers feeling terrified and not knowing when it would pass. Bennie explains the defenses they had set up to defend them from the Viet Cong.
Armand Chapeau - Coast Guard +7 Total Videos

USCGC Point Ellis (WPB-82330)

Patrolling the coast near Da Nang, Armand Chapeau was hit with small arms fire while at the helm. Told he would never walk again, he said, “No, I don’t think so,” and got up and walked down the hospital corridor.
Jack LeCroy - Navy +3 Total Videos

USS Cone (DD-866)

After a nice cruise to Saint Thomas, the men of the destroyer USS Cone got orders to Vietnam. The mission was offshore bombardment and interdiction fire. Jack LeCroy was a gunner's mate on one of the five inch guns and he describes the workings of the weapon.
Bob Ballagh - Army +9 Total Videos

2nd Battalion, 19th Field Artillery, 1st Cavalry Division

Poor leadership from above kept confronting battery commander Bob Ballagh in Vietnam. This time, his battery was accused of friendly fire on a Marine base, even though it was far beyond the range of his guns.
Frank Cox - Marines +23 Total Videos

F Company, 2nd Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division

The large mortars attached to his artillery battalion were always down and needing spare parts, recalls Frank Cox. Other equipment problems plagued the Marines in Vietnam including inadequate boots and balky radios.
Fred Mills - Army +8 Total Videos

Air Ambulance Unit, 498th Medical Command

After flying relief missions in Iran, Fred Mills was soon back in the states in medical operations. But Vietnam was heating up and he went for his first tour, flying medical evacuations and even finding himself in command of a Special Forces camp.
Earl Simms - Army +8 Total Videos

Adjutant General

Vietnam veteran Earl Simms ascended all the way to the Pentagon as Adjutant General. He was able to travel back to Vietnam with teams searching for remains and was struck by the changes in the country. He advises all war veterans to return and see.
Greg Camp - Army +9 Total Videos

1st Cavalry Division

His first assignment as a new platoon leader was to guard the base at Tan Son Nhut. This gave Greg Camp a chance to get to know his men. On his first foray into the field at night, he was positive he heard somebody crawling up to his position. All night long.
Rick Bates - Air Force +5 Total Videos

8th Tactical Fighter Wing, 433rd Tactical Fighter Squadron

After several months as a POW, Rick Bates remembers being released and feeling relieved after they flew to a base in the Philippines. Returning home and getting some leave, he decided to stay in the Air Force and finished out his career flying the F-4.
A.R. McCahan - Army +24 Total Videos

Defense Communications Agency

"We don't want your equipment!" Communications engineer Mac McCahan was trying to improve military telephone service in Vietnam and he had to repeatedly reassure units that he wasn't tying to take over, just trying to make the system work better.