COMBAT STORIES FROM Vietnam

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Showing : Vietnam Videos

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  Tom Grissom - Army +4 Total Videos

  Finance Corps

  It was over a hundred degrees and there was a garbage strike when Tom Grissom arrived in Saigon. After he got used to the aroma, he had to get used to a new kind of war, a war in which there were no battle lines and anyone could be an enemy. He had a desk job, but even in the compound where high ranking officers lived, there were booby traps.

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  Bill Gessner - Navy +9 Total Videos

  1st Battalion, 9th Marines (Attached)

  He didn't hold onto a lot of names from way back then, but Bill Gessner did serve in Vietnam with a few men who made an indelible impression on him, both Corpsmen and Marines.

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  BG Robert L. Stewart - Army +16 Total Videos

  336th Assault Helicopter Company

  It was a ragtag army, fighting the world's largest superpower, on their land for their land. Helicopter pilot Bob Stewart had to put aside those observations because he had a job to do. Besides, the Viet Cong were brutal.

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  Tom Pemberton - Army +10 Total Videos

  Multiple Units

  His father was career Navy and Tom Pemberton was in the Naval Reserve, planning to follow in his footsteps. But he was derailed due to poor eyesight, so he wound up in the Army, which cost him five bucks every year on the Army-Navy game.

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  Bernardo Lopez - Marines +11 Total Videos

  2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment

  Bernardo Lopez got more than he bargained for when he joined the Marines. He wanted excitement and he sure got it. At boot camp, it was traumatic for him to see the abuse heaped on unprepared recruits, but it was nothing to him. Coming from a large family of migrant farm workers, he was super fit and immune to the DI's intimidation.

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  Nat Robb - Army +9 Total Videos

  Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV)

  Nat Robb carried a can of his favorite food for six months in Vietnam until the anticipation was just too much and he ate it. He should have just kept looking at it.

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  Lee Ellis - Air Force +23 Total Videos

  390th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 366th Tactical Fighter Wing

  Lee Ellis concludes his vast amount of stories from Vietnam to share all the things he learned from being held captive in a prisoner of war camp for so long. He describes what leadership is to him, and how you can still have influence on the people around you even if you aren't the one in charge.

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  Quincy Collins - Air Force +18 Total Videos

  80th Tactical Fighter Squadron

  Collins went to military school at The Citadel. Upon being admitted, he immediately sought out the school's band and auditioned for that. He talks about the types of tests he had to take to get into the Air Force, and how he was instructed to report to Sampson Air Force Base in New York afterwards.

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  Jesse Tamayo - Army +5 Total Videos

  MAC-V, Advisory Team 32, Advisory Team 84

  After spending about two years as a medic in Germany, Tamayo took it upon himself to volunteer to go back to Vietnam. It was around this time that the Tet Offensive broke out about a month beforehand, and he arrived back to the country to help aid the countless amounts of wounded soldiers. A year later, he would join MAC-V as an advisor.

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  Sammy Davis - Army +9 Total Videos

  2nd Battalion, 4th Artillery Regiment, 9th Infantry Division

  The sergeant was only 27 years old, but he was a mean, old sergeant to Sammy Davis and the crew in the artillery battery. His mom had sent some fishing gear and he and his buddies caught fish in the Mekong and traded them in town for whatever young men go looking for in town.

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  Carolyn Pike - Army +5 Total Videos

  45th Surgical Hospital, Army Nurse Corps

  There were protestors waiting when she came home from Vietnam but Army nurse Carolyn Pike just ignored them. What was hard to ignore was the portrayal of nurses in the movie MASH.

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  Ray Fairman - Marines +10 Total Videos

  Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 314 (VMFA-314)

  After enduring plenty of training at different schools and camps, Fairman finally was able to get into flying school where he flew plane simulations. It was during this time that he learned an unfortunate truth about his sight.

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  Mike Kenney - Army +8 Total Videos

  Multiple Units

  Finding a little humor kept you sane. Mike Kenney recalls a joke he played on his grandfather, who sent him grass seed and received pictures of tall elephant grass. When somebody figured out all the helicopter pilots would rotate out at the same time, they were split up and he was sent south to the Mekong Delta, a whole different situation.

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  John Johnson - Army +5 Total Videos

  2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Air Cavalry Division

  John Johnson reflects on the lessons learned in Vietnam and explains why the great leaders he knew were the way they were.

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  LTG (Ret) Lawson W. Magruder III - Army +14 Total Videos

  Multiple Units

  Lawson Magruder tells the story of Nguyen Cong Luan, an ARVN officer he befriended at Fort Benning. He was here for training when it became apparent that South Vietnam would fall. He was offered asylum, but returned home to fight for his country and reunite with his family.

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  Tom Buchan - Army +11 Total Videos

  3rd Battalion, 4th Cavalry Regiment

  Tom Buchan learned a lot in Vietnam, a lot about combat, third world countries, politics, poverty and a lot about himself. When he got off the plane after it was all over, some anti-war protestors taunted him with hateful speech. He nearly lost it.

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  Bob Hyatt - Army +9 Total Videos

  5th Special Forces Group

  The Special Forces camp was prone to mortar fire directed by Viet Cong sympathizers within the camp. Bob Hyatt points out how that problem mirrored the problems of the South Vietnamese government at large. The French educated Catholics at the top were directing people who had a completely different culture.

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  Clebe McClary - Marines +10 Total Videos

  1st Reconnaissance Battalion

  Recon was a dangerous business when you were moving through the bush in Vietnam. Clebe McClary and his men once got caught in a crossfire between the enemy and their own side. Another time, he became separated from his men for three days.

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  Roye Wilson - Army +9 Total Videos

  2nd Battalion, 138th Field Artillery

  As the years went by after the war, Roye Wilson began to notice how many of his fellow Vietnam veterans were suffering from cancer. He had recovered from two different bouts with the disease himself, and the question was always there. Did this have anything to do with Agent Orange?

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  David Samuels - Army +12 Total Videos

  135th Assault Helicopter Company, 145th Combat Aviation Battalion

  Vietnam was a real culture shock for David Samuels. First, the heat and humidity was unbearable. How could anyone live in it, much less fight in it? Then, the undeveloped nature of the country was stark, definitely not like his native New Jersey. As a new helicopter pilot, he had to take a check ride and on it he had a helping of humble pie.

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  BG Robert L. Stewart - Army +16 Total Videos

  336th Assault Helicopter Company

  Helicopter pilot Bob Stewart pays tribute to the Dustoff pilots, who flew the Medevac flights. He felt emboldened in his combat flying because he knew they were there to get him out if something happened.

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  Harold Sterrett - Air Force +13 Total Videos

  7th Air Force Headquarters

  The rules of engagement in Vietnam were frustrating, and the fact that it took 36 hours to get a target approved by the White House and precious few of them were approved, meant that we were fighting the war with our arms tied. That is the observation of Rollie Sterrett, who was there trying to get targets approved.

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  Tom Seybold +5 Total Videos

  Air America

  Seybold talks about Vang Pao, a major general in the Royal Lao Army. There were a few uncommon missions he flew for non-political reasons, such as flying a soccer team over from one place to another. After some time working for Air America, he decided to come back home, and he describes the process he went through to do that.

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  Lee Ellis - Air Force +23 Total Videos

  390th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 366th Tactical Fighter Wing

  Lee Ellis talks about the few months leading up to his final release from the POW camps in Vietnam. He talks about how he felt when he was released, and how he was finally able to eat all the food he dreamed about while in prison.

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  Harold Sterrett - Air Force +13 Total Videos

  Multiple Units

  Rollie Sterrett was vaguely aware of the war in Vietnam, which was really just beginning. At the Air Intelligence Training Center, he learned photo interpretation using photos from the Cuban missile crisis. Upon graduation, the entire class was informed they were all going to Vietnam

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  Bill Gessner - Navy +9 Total Videos

  1st Battalion, 9th Marines (Attached)

  During the long series of battles around Khe Sanh, Navy Corpsman Bill Gessner treated many wounded Marines. In one operation, after assaulting a hill, they found an enemy supply complex, with ammunition and medical supplies used to support the enemy attempts to evict the Americans.

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  Lee Ellis - Air Force +23 Total Videos

  390th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 366th Tactical Fighter Wing

  Ellis recalls the first impressions that American society had made on him when he finally got back to the states. He was shocked at how much culture around him had changed in the span of five years.

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  Jim Bolan - Army +13 Total Videos

  1st Special Forces Group

  Special Forces officer Jim Bolan was in command of a B-Team but he was also the senior MACV advisor in his area. That meant he had monthly meetings in Saigon and at one of these, he met Gen. William Westmoreland, who became a very valuable contact when he had a problem.

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  Ron Schuh - Air Force +12 Total Videos

  13th Tactical Fighter Squadron

  It was an intense three day search and rescue operation. A downed American pilot survived by crawling into a river bank, remembers F-4 pilot Ron Schuh. His own missions carried a high risk of being shot down. He describes one in which the radio was crackling with three emergency situations, all happening at the same time.

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  Bob Hayes - Marines +8 Total Videos

  1st Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment

  He was blessed with a foster mother who took care of him, but Bob Hayes was a rebel who dropped out of high school to join the Air Force. That didn't work out, but he did join the Marines, which straightened him right out.