COMBAT STORIES FROM Vietnam

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Showing : Vietnam Videos

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  Frank Farrell - Army +7 Total Videos

  4th Infantry Division

  Frank Farrell grew up in an 'army family' with a father who served in the military as an artillery officer, which inspired him to do something similar with his own military career. He went to West Point before going off to Ranger school, then to Airborne school, and finally to artillery school.

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  Zach Johnson - Marines +10 Total Videos

  1st Force Reconnaissance Company

  The Marines have evolved, with new technology and weapons that make them more capable than ever. Vietnam Recon Marine Zach Johnson would love to have had a laser spotter when he was there. He has some pointed observations about the management of the war and some advice for young recruits.

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  Bruce Hojnacki - Army +9 Total Videos

  504th Military Police Battalion

  Everyone in Vietnam was marking off days on a calendar. When Bruce Hojnacki got to thirty days left in country he started to get a little antsy. He made it out but, when he got home, he had to deal with a situation that many a returning soldier has faced.

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  Frank Heiny - Army +10 Total Videos

  15th Public Information Detachment, 25th Infantry Division, 2nd Brigade

  The conditions in Vietnam did not make for an easy time being a photographer. Frank Heiny describes having to go out during monsoon season, Colonel Lynch, and his efforts to find a water buffalo.

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  Bill Knowlton - Army +11 Total Videos

  5th Special Forces Group

  Growing up with polio could have meant Bill Knowlton would’ve been unlikely to ever serve in the military, but in his favor he was able to join the Army after he got fed up working on Wall Street. Being placed in Airborne really gave him a love for the Army so he decided to take on more responsibility and go to Officer Candidate School. (Interview conducted at, and with the assistance of, The Veterans History Museum of the Carolinas.- https://theveteransmuseum.org/)

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  Hubert Yoshida - Marines +8 Total Videos

  2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment

  Hubert Yoshida's platoon had just come in from a big operation when they got the bad news. They had to leave the next day on a bigger one. Operation Utah was an effort to engage an NVA regiment that was reported nearby. Only one thousand Marines and ARVN troops went up against three thousand NVA and VC. It was to be the young platoon leader's bloodiest battle.

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  Bernardo Lopez - Marines +11 Total Videos

  2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment

  It was straight up urban warfare as the Marines struggled to retake Hue. They were hampered by the inability to use air support or artillery because of the damage they might cause to the historical city. Bernardo Lopez describes the desperate fight to reclaim government buildings and how he wound up with a radio on his back. Part 3 of 4.

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  Jim Smith - Army +9 Total Videos

  Multiple Units

  Jim Smith and his wife wrote each other every day while he was in Vietnam. A few times they spoke over the MARS ham radio system, which was always comical when they expressed personal feelings followed by, "Over." When he returned after his tour, he was spit on in the San Francisco airport. Twenty four hours earlier, there would have been a different outcome.

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  John Overcash - Army +11 Total Videos

  Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG)

  The Special Forces recon team was looking for an ammo and supply dump in Laos. John Overcash was the team leader and, after they found a huge rice cache, he split off to look for the ammo dump. Almost immediately, he heard gunfire back with the main group. The mission was now compromised. Part 2 of 2.

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  Larry Washington - Army +10 Total Videos

  D Troop, 1st Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment

  The dangers were many. Sappers could sneak in and blow up your helicopters. Your own illumination rounds could kill you. The most dangerous missions for the Huey pilots were the LRRP missions, inserting and extracting long range reconnaissance patrols. Pilot Larry Washington remembers them well.

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  Gary Lawrence - Navy +11 Total Videos

  SEAL Team One

  Gary Lawrence decided that, if he was going to go into the military, he was going to be a frogman. He'd been an excellent swimmer on his high school team and that sounded like the place for him. He nearly was washed out at the first screening because of a problem with the grading on punch cards.

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  Ron Schuh - Air Force +12 Total Videos

  13th Tactical Fighter Squadron

  F-4 pilot Ron Schuh was either working air strikes or flying low looking for targets of opportunity. He took hits from AK-47's and every kind of anti-aircraft fire. There were a lot of close calls but he was never shot down. He did suffer weight loss from the stress and the environment until he was almost grounded.

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  Tony Nadal - Army +16 Total Videos

  2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment

  Tony Nadal was on a recon flight when it suddenly got real quiet. The helicopter's engine had stopped. The pilot was autorotating down when he spotted what looked like a clearing in the jungle. As the crippled ship came down, it became clear that it wasn't grass down there. It was forty foot tall bamboo.

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  Dan Swiger - Air Force +2 Total Videos

  21st Tactical Air Support Squadron

  Dan Swiger joined the Air Force, thinking he could be a crew chief, but it turned out he was color blind, so the maintenance field was out. His ham radio hobby led to training and assignment as a radio operator and forward air controller. It was 1969, so naturally, he eventually wound up in Vietnam where, on his very first duty shift, the unthinkable happened. Part 1 of 3.

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  Mike DiRocco - Army +4 Total Videos

  5th Special Forces Group

  Born into a family of Italian immigrants, Mike DiRocco had a strong, familial upbringing in New Jersey. His mother thought he should go to culinary school instead of joining the military, but he had already made up his mind. (Interview conducted at, and with the assistance of, The Veterans History Museum of the Carolinas.- https://theveteransmuseum.org/)

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  Tom Seybold +5 Total Videos

  Air America

  After his time in Vietnam, Seybold went back to the US to Hunter Army Airfield to help teach ground school. At one point he was prompted by a man named Harry Dawson to get his commercial pilot license to join Air America. Through Air America, he mainly flew UH-34 Helicopters and had really good civilian interaction when on his missions in Southeast Asia.

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  John Overcash - Army +11 Total Videos

  Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG)

  After his first tour in Vietnam, Green Beret John Overcash went though a grueling underwater demolition course run by the Navy. Then he was sent back to the war as part of a new top secret outfit that aimed to disrupt enemy activity in neighboring countries.

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  Ron Schuh - Air Force +12 Total Videos

  13th Tactical Fighter Squadron

  Ron Schuh served two tours in the skies over Southeast Asia and he has some pointed words of advice for our political leaders. He says we learned from our lessons in Vietnam for a while, but we have slipped back into a strategic dysfunction. He remembers a mission briefing which exposed a major shortcoming, the training for combat.

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  Tom Seybold - Army +5 Total Videos

  582nd Aviation Company, 57th Medical Detachment

  Tom Seybold is originally from Stony Brook on Long Island, New York. Although his father died when he was five, his mother took on the role of single parent. He never actually graduated from high school, and instead went straight to basic training when he was old enough. He had orders to go to Fort Bragg to be in the 82nd Airborne, but quickly transferred to Fort Wolters. After that he had orders to join the 582nd Aviation Company in France, and was then sent near Soc Trang Vietnam for the war.

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  Walt Lineberger - Navy +11 Total Videos

  River Assault Division 91

  With his sea bag over his shoulder, Walt Lineberger came to the Mobile Riverine Force and was sent out right away. He didn't even have time to find his bunk. The Mekong and the Bassac rivers were huge rivers, like the Mississippi, and the delta they formed was his area of operations.

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  Jim Smith - Army +9 Total Videos

  Multiple Units

  Jim Smith was part of the last group of helicopter units remaining in Vietnam. He was flying missions out of Cam Ranh Bay for MACV, the Military Assistance Command. He met the delightful Montagnard people on these missions and had a brief billet in the mountain resort town of Da Lat.

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  Carl Fedde - Army +6 Total Videos

  1st Aviation Battalion, 1st Infantry Division

  When his first tour in Vietnam came to a close, Fedde had no choice but to leave behind his scout dog, Charlie Brown. When he returned home, he became a drill sergeant at Fort Dix. Afterwards he went to flight school at Fort Wolters and Fort Rucker, and started his second tour in Vietnam flying missions in helicopters.

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  John Overcash - Army +11 Total Videos

  Multiple Units

  John Overcash describes the weaponry and gear used by the Special Forces in Vietnam. Stealth was their main tactic. Their movement had to be silent and invisible. He knew a little Vietnamese but he always had interpreters on hand, both for the Vietnamese and for his Chinese mercenaries. He trusted the Chinese. The Vietnamese, not so much.

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  Mike Leonard - Air Force +14 Total Videos

  Multiple Units

  Air Force pilot and FAC Mike Leonard offers his thoughts on the debate over the justification of the Vietnam war. His experiences in his combat tours, especially one incident in which he helped rescue some downed airmen, led him to write his book, An American Combat Bird Dog Pilot: From the Battlefield of Vietnam and Beyond.

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  Sar Phouthasack +12 Total Videos

  Royal Lao Army, Special Guerrilla Unit (SGU)

  Since he was recruited by the CIA for the secret war in Laos, Sar Phouthasack, and the thousands of others who had to flee to the United States, are not eligible for health care from the VA. One excuse is that they lack a simple piece of paperwork.

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  Jim Littig - Army +14 Total Videos

  Multiple Units

  His father told him, you will take ROTC in college because there's going to be another war. Jim Littig was a football player just like the old man and he took his talents to the University of Utah. As his graduation neared in 1967, he and his fellow officers in training naively worried that the war might be over before they could get there.

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  Mike DiRocco - Army +4 Total Videos

  5th Special Forces Group

  Mike DiRocco joined the Army specifically to join Special Forces, and if they weren’t going to take him, he didn’t want to stick around. As expected, they were looking for only the most serious individuals to fill their ranks, and the standards were set high. (Interview conducted at, and with the assistance of, The Veterans History Museum of the Carolinas.- https://theveteransmuseum.org/)

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  Fred Behrens - Army +10 Total Videos

  Eagle Dust Off

  Fred Behrens was extracting a wounded man with a hoist up through the forest canopy and it was time to turn on the lights so the other chopper pilots could see him. That meant the NVA could see him, too, and as the tracers flew he got out of there quick. After dropping off the wounded and refueling, he returned to the site of the battle where he got a second load of wounded and watched as an RPG bounced off one of the skids. Part 2 of 2.

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  Ron Schuh - Air Force +12 Total Videos

  13th Tactical Fighter Squadron

  You were supposed to get your choice of assignments during a second tour. That's what F-4 pilot Ron Schuh kept telling the sergeant on the other end of the phone. He finally got his assignment to Thailand, but it wasn't his old squadron, so he figured out a way to get there. The wing commander at the time was not very good so the guys harassed him.

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  Kevin Hathaway - Army +11 Total Videos

  Multiple Units

  Kevin Hathaway was only seventeen but he was serving with the mechanized infantry in Germany. He knew he would be going to Vietnam once he turned eighteen, but he figured out a way to get reclassified as a door gunner on a helicopter. He would fly over rice paddies instead of slogging through them.