Helicopter Assaults to Writing History: The Vietnam War from a Veteran's Perspective

Through his experience talking to others who served in Vietnam, he realized something kind of unique is that a lot of his stories were different than most.

And most people encouraged him to put it into a book.

And that's what he finally did some 50 years after serving in Vietnam.

Now, I'll be honest.

When I first heard Robin's story, I wasn't sure if it would be the perfect fit for this podcast.

Because, well, it's a little bit different than most.

Most of the guests on here, as you know, if you've been listening for a while, they've had something happen in their life, a life-changing event, a disability, a diagnosis.

And they've overcome that to get them to where they are today.

Robin, his story is different because his life-changing event, well, it was a war.

It was the Vietnam War.

And once I met Robin and I realized how amazing this guy is, I knew it was indeed a perfect fit.

Now, here's the important thing.

In this conversation with Robin, you're gonna laugh, you're gonna be mesmerized, you're gonna be left in awe at his stories that he has to share.

But the most meaningful thing comes at the end.

I always want this podcast to mean something to you, to impact your life.

And well, at the end of our conversation, Robin shares the most powerful thing ever.

It's two simple words that he asks you to say to a Vietnam vet.

And he said, most likely, you'll bring a tear to their eye.

I hope you'll stay till the end so you can find out what that is, so that this episode can mean more to you in your life.

My friend, I welcome you to episode 264.

What's up, my friend, and welcome to Grit Grace of Inspiration.

I'm your host, Kevin Low.

Twenty years ago, I awoke from a life-saving surgery only to find that I was left 55.

And since that day, I've learned a lot about life, a lot about living, and a lot about myself.

And if you're on this podcast, I want to share those insight with you.

Because, friends, if you are still searching for your purpose, still trying to understand why.

Or still left searching for that next right path to take.

That is for sure.

Well, the same instead for a life without purpose.

A life without purpose is like a tailbow without wind.

You have nothing to push you forward.

My friend, I encourage you, at whatever stage of life you're in, if you are not crystal clear on your reason why your life's purpose, well, it's time for you to discover.

I invite you to text the word discover to 5-5-4-4-4.

Again, text the word discover to 5-5-4-4-4.

And I'm gonna get you information into how I can help you to finally discover your purpose and get that win in your sale.

SPEAKER_00: I come from a military family, and my grandfather went to West Point, my father went to West Point, my brother went to West Point.

I turned down an appointment to West Point.

I said, enough is enough.

I went to 13 elementary and middle schools, four different high schools, and I said, I don't want any more of this army life.

But when I started college, it was the buildup of the Vietnam War.

My classmates and I were actually getting reclassified during the summers to be drafted.

And I said, Well, that that can't happen.

I've got to serve my obligation as an officer, and so and I'm not going to be drafted.

So I went into the ROTC program uh at my college, and that was really second nature to me.

It was very easy for me to adjust, having literally been raised in a military family uh for my entire life.

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02: Now, out of curiosity, was your family upset with your decision to not go to West Point?

SPEAKER_00: I would say that my father was a little bit uh uh concerned, a little bit upset, but ultimately I think he recognized that I was different from my brother, had a different attitude and mentality.

But, you know, when I graduated from college, I had just done a 180-degree turn.

I was a brilliant college graduate, right?

Having learned everything there was to learn and having a college degree.

I was a distinguished military graduate.

I decided, you know, I'm gonna choose the toughest thing that I can think of.

Never been challenged in my life, really.

So I volunteered for uh airborne ranger and uh assignment to the 82nd Airborne Division, and I got everything I volunteered for and more.

SPEAKER_02: I can imagine that.

Oh my gosh.

Now, for those of us who don't know the lingo, talk to me about that, what your position was.

SPEAKER_00: So I was commissioned on the same day as I got my college degree as a second lieutenant in the infantry.

That was my branch of service.

I was in the army.

Four days later, I had everything packed in my car, driving across the United States, reporting in to the famous 82nd Airborne Division in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

I was there for about uh a month and then received orders sending me down to Fort Benning, Georgia.

By the way, all the these military posts now have been changed.

So Fort Bragg is now Fort Liberty, and Fort Benning is Fort Moore.

They've changed all those names from the Confederate generals that they were named after.

And uh went through the airborne course, jumped out of airplanes, uh, went through the basic officers training course, and then through ranger school.

And ranger training was uh was and still is the toughest training program that the Army has to offer.

It was a nine-week course, and it was the it was the best insurance policy and training one could have for assignment to Vietnam.

So all the infantry officers had to go through that course.

It was it was pretty much mandatory, although it was voluntary once you got there.

And if you said, you know what, I've had enough of this, they put you on a truck and you are out.

SPEAKER_02: Yes, yeah, yeah.

They they only want those who are in it.

Yeah.

So now when you actually were finally deployed to Vietnam, how long had the war already been going on?

SPEAKER_00: So this was 1960.

I graduated in 67, and uh after my training, I went back to the 82nd Airborne Division.

I was there about six months and was deployed to Vietnam to the 101st Airborne Division initially, arriving in Vietnam in May 1968, which was just after the major Tet Offensive of 1968.

And that was really the political and psychological turning point of the Vietnam War.

It was the height of the war.

There were more American soldiers in Vietnam in that in that year, 1968, and there were more casualties in that year than any other year uh during the war.

Wow.

Wow, wow, wow.

And so at the height is when you show up.

Yes.

So I received orders and they wanted to try and keep airborne officers in airborne units.

So I was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division, arrived in Vietnam, went to the in Benoit, which is in III Corps.

South Vietnam was divided into four parts I-Corps, II Corps, III Corps, and IV Corps.

And uh Benoit was located in III Corps, near Saigon, and now called Ho Chi Minh City.

When I arrived, they I was informed that because of the extensive officer casualties, because of the Tet offensive of January and February 1968, uh, all orders were canceled and to stand by.

They'd let me know where I was going.

And about three days later, at four o'clock in the morning, I was awakened and said, get ready to go, you're going to the 1st Cavalry Division.

And my brother, who served a tour in Vietnam before me, had been assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division.

And this was an air mobile division, meaning the air mobile concept was to transport combat troops to the battlefield via helicopter, as opposed to having them march to battle.

And so the 1st Cab Division had more helicopters in it than in all of Vietnam.

And we literally flew everywhere.

And the good news was that allowed us to carry lighter weight packs, more water, more ammunition.

But it also meant that sometimes we were assaulted into hot LZs, landing zones.

That was the nature of our of the air mobile concept to identify, find the enemy and and uh engage them and then bring these tremendous air mobile resources to bear on the enemy force.

SPEAKER_02: Yes.

Yes.

Talk to me what it was like first landing in Vietnam, getting to the base.

SPEAKER_00: Walk me through that.

So as we got off, well, the first thing the uh and we went over on a commercial flight.

I went over on a commercial flight with mostly other first second lieutenants.

We were all what we call butter bar lieutenants.

The uh flight attendants asked us to pull the shades down to keep the interior aircraft as cool as possible because departing troops were going to load right after we got off.

And that was the case.

As we got off, here were a bunch of straggly soldiers in fatigues.

We were wearing khaki uniforms with jump boots, and here were all these other soldiers who'd spent a year in Vietnam who were loading up to take our places on this plane.

But what I remember most is this intense heat.

I mean, uh the average daily temperature was 105 degrees.

And it was it was not uncommon, especially w in some of the areas that we went into, deep three-canopy jungle, to have the humidity take us up to 110, 115.

Uh had to be very cautious about heat stroke and uh and heat exhaustion.

I remember that, and I remember the smell.

The smell, I don't know what it was, but the smell in that area, you got used to it after a while, but it was just a horrendous it was smelled like a sewer, to be honest with you.

It was pretty horrendous.

It was a terrible introduction to the country.

SPEAKER_02: I guess so.

Wow.

Now, after landing, how soon did you go out on your first mission?

SPEAKER_00: So again, I spent three days at the Repo depot, replacement depot, and then was assigned to the first cavalry division.

And they they had by this point in time learned that it really took about three weeks to get soldiers and officers adjusted to the heat.

So we we were transported to the division rear, which was in two corps.

So I went from three corps to two corps to a base camp called Inan K.

And that's where we drew our uniforms and rifles and equipment and everything except ammunition.

They didn't trust us enough to have ammunition at that point.

Uh, we did get to site in our rifles and uh hung around there for about three or four days, and then we were shipped again by helicopter up to ICOR to a new base camp called Camp Evans, which was near the city of Quantri.

And that's where the 1st Cavalry Division had been assigned to operate along the demilitarized zone.

So the terrain was the Gulf of Tonkin on the east, and then as you came further west along the demilitarized zone border between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, you had kind of sandy soil, tumbleweed, no overhead cover.

And then as you progressed to the west, you got into um hills and mountainous, and then finally, as you got close to the Laocean border, three canopy jungle and mountains.

So you might be in the beach one day and in the jungle the next.

It it all depended upon where uh the intelligence of the enemy locations might be.

SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.

So now with your position, were you leading a troop of soldiers when you guys went in to battle?

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

So when I reported into my battalion, the 1st Battalion 5th Cavalry Division, I had served by this point in time one year in the army.

And I was instantaneously promoted to first lieutenant from second lieutenant.

And I joined the unit with four other officers, and five of us were all promoted to first lieutenant on the same day, and ushered into the battalion commander's bunker at about eight o'clock at night.

And this poor man was just dead on his feet.

I don't think he'd slept in about three days.

He gave us a two-minute, we went in in alphabetical order, and uh I was first.

I happened to be there was no A's, so I was a B.

And we saluted, stood at attention, and he gave us about a two-minute speech, of which I have absolutely no memory whatsoever.

And he said to the S1, who is the personnel officer in the unit, where do we need these officers?

And the S1 said, Well, we need one in A, two in B, one in C, and one in D.

And so he said, Well, I guess it doesn't make any difference.

And he pointed at me, he says, You go to A, you and you go to B, you go to C, and you go to D.

And as it turned out, I was the only officer to complete his tour.

The other four officers were either killed or wounded.

So I call that the luck of alphabetical order.

SPEAKER_02: It pays to go first, I guess.

Sometimes it is.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sometimes and then after that I was assigned to A Company, and I was a uh I was the first platoon leader of A Company, and I had between 28 and 32 men uh in my command of this platoon.

Most of them draftees.

I would say 90% of them were draftees.

And we we did what was called humping the boonies.

That's what we did.

We humped the boonies.

And what does that mean?

It means we were looking for Charlie.

We were looking for the enemy, both VC and North Vietnamese regular soldiers.

And it battalion intelligence and division intelligence would identify areas where they thought the enemy might be concentrated, and we would be combat assaulted by helicopter into a landing zone that was near that area.

And for an average of four weeks at a time, we would be in the field conducting daily patrols, trying to find and locate the enemy, fix them and engage them in battle, and then hopefully try to find a very large enemy force that we could bring these tremendous air assets uh to bear.

And that included helicopter gunships, cobra helicopters, jets.

We even had some naval bombardment if we were close to the beach, and B-52 strikes if if we had encountered a very large North Vietnamese enemy force.

SPEAKER_02: Wow.

Before I ask you any more about the mission, just to get a little bit of context, at this point, how old were you and what was the average age of the soldiers you were in charge of?

SPEAKER_00: So I was 22 years old.

I was the second oldest man in my platoon.

We had one old man who was 24.

My soldiers, as I mentioned, 90% of them were drafted, but they were all very, very good soldiers and dedicated.

Average age was 17 and 18.

My platoon sergeant, who was supposed to be the most experienced man in the unit, usually that platoon sergeant is uh what they call a sergeant E6, has about 10 years of experience.

Mine had gone through what they called an instant NCO training program, and after six months came out as a platoon sergeant, and he had his 18th birthday in Vietnam.

So he and I had roughly the same amount of training and experience together.

So I was dealing with 17 and 18-year-olds for the most part.

But they were they were strong and good soldiers.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.

So walk me through what a mission would look like, especially with you guys flying in via helicopter.

Walk me through what that looks like.

SPEAKER_00: So I made more than 50 helicopter combat assaults.

We called them Charlie Alpha, CA for combat assault.

And when it was my platoon's turn to lead the assault, I was always in the first helicopter.

So we rotated the responsibility of being in the lead helicopter among the three platoons in our company.

And it was the only time that you got to cool off was when you made one of these helicopter asights.

Because you got up in the air and it was nice.

The sweat would dry.

So as you came in on one of these about five minutes out from landing, there would be an artillery barrage.

And they would open up with 105 millimeter howitzers on the landing zone and the surrounding area.

And you would swear that absolutely nothing could survive a barrage like that.

And the last round fired was a white phosphorus round, and then that was the signal for the Cobra helicopters.

These were two Cobra helicopters that would come in, and they had miniguns that could fire at a rate of 3,000 rounds per minute and 76 rockets, and they would fire around the edge of the perimeter, and they would remain overhead as the lead helicopters came in to support the landing.

The first helicopter, the door gunners on either side of the Huey helicopter, and we carried eight men on that helicopter, would also open up and fire at the perimeter.

When it was my turn to lead the assault, I always went heavy, meaning I took extra reinforcements.

I had my machine gunner, my M79 grenade launcher, uh rifleman, ammo bearer, squad leader, radio operator, and myself.

It was amazing how the enemy could survive that barrage, but often they did.

And they would wait until the second helicopter came in.

Not the first, but the second.

So the first one had offloaded, and the report had been given back to the command and control helicopter flying overhead that the landing zone was clear.

And then they would pop up and fire rocket-propelled grenade at the second helicopter and take it out.

And so the men on the ground, they wouldn't risk the additional helicopters to come in if that when the second helicopter crashed.

And the men on the ground basically had to fight it out on their own.

There was always an alternate landing zone, and the rest of the helicopters would land in the alternate landing zone and then rush to try to uh relieve the men from the first and the second, if anybody survived the second.

So that was the typical scenario of a helicopter combat assault when you were in the first helicopter, anyway.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.

Did the training you received prepare you at all for landing?

SPEAKER_00: It really did.

I mentioned that Ranger School was the best insurance policy any platoon leader could have.

That training was so arduous, although I think Navy SEAL training is probably physically more demanding.

At least that's what I have seen and understand to be the case.

But Ranger School not only was physically demanding, but mentally demanding as well.

And they taught you how to prepare yourself to go on a patrol, lead a patrol, lead a combat mission, and um have a plan.

There really was never once in my experiences in Vietnam when I did not feel in control of the situation because of that training.

Now I was plenty scared.

There were many.

Many times that I was afraid.

It didn't take away the fear, but it gave you a tremendous sense of confidence because this training took you to the point of mental and physical exhaustion.

And also, if you didn't make it to your objective at the end of the day, you didn't get any food.

So there was a great incentive to achieve each day's objective.

I lost about 20 pounds in in ranger school.

But again, it gave you this tremendous sense of confidence that you could handle any situation and prepared you to be able to lead men in combat and under crisis types of situations.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.

Well, thank goodness.

And I mean, you know, as brutal as the training was, I mean, thank goodness that you had that to be prepared for something that I would think there's no way that you could be prepared for for such a thing.

So that I mean, hats off to the training 100%.

I listened to a little bit of audio on your website, and I believe it's maybe taken from your book.

And it was talking about the significance of the trail.

And I was wondering if you could expand on that a little bit.

I'm assuming the trail referring to as you and your men are making your way through through this terrain, the jungle, not really knowing what's coming.

SPEAKER_00: Could you speak to that?

There were three things that I did that I think helped me to have a successful tour in Vietnam.

The first thing was that I sat down with my platoon sergeant and squad leaders, and I said, listen, you guys have had more field experience than I.

I'm still the leader here, but if if you see me doing something wrong, I want you to tell me.

And that kind of set the tone for my platoon.

The second thing I worked very hard at doing or not doing was not to do stupid stuff.

Now that may sound funny, but there were occasions where officers did stupid stuff and it cost lives.

So just trying to be smart, trying to be intelligent, trying to be cautious.

And then the third thing I did is to trust my point man.

I always walked fourth in line.

And when we were out in the jungles near the Laotian border, as I mentioned before, it was mountainous, three-canopy jungle.

And often you had to cut your way with a machete.

So the point man who is out 25, 30 meters in front of you, he's cutting his way with a machete often, or following an animal trail.

And he has a cover man that's five meters behind him.

But those two men are at tremendous risk from ambush or from booby traps.

And I trusted their instinct and their concern.

So if they stopped and called me forward and they just said, I just don't feel right about where we are.

I don't hear any monkeys.

I don't hear any birds chirping.

We would pull back and I would fire artillery out in front of us.

This was called a technique called reconnaissance by fire.

And I fired a lot of artillery.

In fact, I fired so much artillery that the battery got to know my call sign very well.

My call sign was foggy day one six.

And I fired so much artillery that they put a budget on me of 25 rounds.

That's all I can see.

But you know, when you put 25 rounds of artillery out in front of what you're going to walk through, you have a much higher degree of confidence of not encountering enemy uh ambush or enemy problems from the enemy.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, no, I I definitely don't blame you for uh for for doing as much of that as you possibly could.

Where you talked about earlier that that you hoped that you would make it to your destination so you could have dinner.

Were there some days that you didn't make it to that destination?

SPEAKER_00: Now, this was in Ranger School, where if you didn't complete today's mission in ranger school, that's where the food was at the end of the mission.

And if you didn't get there, you didn't get your you didn't get your sea rations for that day.

But uh in Vietnam, uh we carried sea rations with us, and as I mentioned before, we had this tremendous helicopter support.

So even in dense jungle, if we could cut down enough trees and open a hole in the canopy, they could fly over, hover, and kick out uh sea rations to us.

We weren't allowed to drink the water from streams because of Agent Orange poisoning.

So when the helicopter could land, they brought water into us.

I had to be very, very cautious and conserve water on a daily basis.

And in deep jungle, that's difficult because the humidity is high, temperature is 105, 110, and we had to be very careful about men uh just literally keeling over from heat stroke or heat exhaustion.

And when that happens in deep jungle like that, the only way to get them out is via jungle penetrator, which is the cable, you know, that you've seen that on television, I'm where they drop a cable and a man sits on a seat, they strap him into a seat and haul him up.

And that happened a few times, and it's not a it's not an easy thing to deal with because there was no GPS.

And the helicopters had a hard time finding you in deep jungle.

SPEAKER_02: Of course, of course.

Wow, wow, wow.

When you kind of look back on it today, the the time that you spent in Vietnam, was there a particular like moment that you could say was your lowest, your scariest, the the worst moment of that time?

SPEAKER_00: Well, the answer to that question is yes.

We were very cautious.

We knew that the enemy, especially the VC, Viet Cong, were watching us all the time.

They were masters at uh camouflage.

And occasionally we would spot them and engage them.

This would be one and two man teams who would be monitoring where we were.

And so we would send each platoon would send out an ambush every night.

I'd lead it one night, my platoon sergeant would lead it the next.

And the ambush would consist of a reinforced squad, about ten men, and uh they would set up on a trail network.

But we wanted to make sure that we weren't ambushed as we went out to our ambush locations.

So we made a big fuss over two or three different ambush locations.

So hopefully the enemy that was watching us wouldn't know which one we chose.

But on one occasion, I did everything by the book, and perhaps that's why we got ambushed, I got ambushed near a rice paddy field.

And the standard protocol is to send two men across the rice paddy, check out the opposite side, and then they give you this was dusk, uh, they give you two blinks on the flashlight with a red lens on it.

And so my my reinforced squad began to cross this rice paddy next to a rice paddy dike, and the enemy had actually sighted in that rice paddy dike.

So they waited until we were completely exposed, and then they started dropping mortars on us and engaged us with uh machine gun fire.

And I had uh three men killed immediately and two others wounded.

This rice patty dike is like concrete.

So we hunkered down behind the rice patty dike, and I called for artillery.

As I mentioned, that was my favorite.

My weapon of choice was artillery.

Yes.

And as the first rounds came over, and I put my arm up on top of the rice paddy dike to see where the rounds would land so I could adjust them, a mortar round went off and a piece of shrapnel caught me in the in the shoulder and it knocked me backwards, my helmet came off, and um I ended up on my knees with my back to the engagement.

And about that time another mortar round went off in front of me.

And the only thing that really saved my life was the fact that we were in a muddy uh rice patty, and this mortar round penetrated into the mud and exploded.

So I just got splashed with mud and water and a and a piece of shrapnel, did catch me in the groin, knocked me backwards, and I hit my head on the rice paddy dike.

So I was I was out of it.

I was literally knocked cold.

And my squad leader saved the day.

He pulled all the dead and the wounded back to the tree line, set up a return fire, directed the artillery, and and he pulled me back to the tree line.

Because I had blood on my shirt and on my pants, and I was out, they thought I was dead.

So they put me in the dead pile.

I woke up after a while and I sat up, but by this time I had lost a lot of blood and uh I fainted.

So the second time I woke up, I moaned, and they somebody said, Hey, he's not dead.

So then they came over and and they put uh pressure bandage on on me.

But this happened now at 10 o'clock at night.

So there's there's no way that they could get a Medevac in.

So I laid on the ground from about 10 o'clock at night until six the next morning when they could get helicopters in.

And that was a a real turning point for me because I, of course, they kept slapping me in the face to make me stay awake.

My my wounds were not that severe, but I had lost a lot of blood, and we had nothing that they could do to prevent that.

But I I went through quite a catharsis at that point in time evaluating whether or not it would have been worth it for me to have died at that point in time.

And it really changed my opinion about the war, about what I was doing, and really caused me to uh to evaluate the value of this effort.

My my own personal effort as well as the effort that uh America was exerting.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.

Would you mind diving in a little bit deeper into that topic?

SPEAKER_00: Well, this was the height of the Vietnam War, as I mentioned before.

And up until the Tet Offensive of 1968, in which the North Vietnamese were able to successfully attack more than 200 cities throughout South Vietnam and really have a tremendous impact on the psychological conduct of the war.

And up to that point in time, McNamara and Johnson were saying, oh, we were winning the war.

And Westmoreland II, who was the commanding general in Vietnam, we're winning the war.

I know we have half a million troops in Vietnam.

We need more, we need 10,000 more.

And even Walter Cronkite, who uh at that point in time was the voice of American political thought on TV, newscaster, famous newscaster, he said we were winning the war.

But after this Tet Offensive, which was a brilliant psychological move on the part of the North Vietnam, he said, I have changed my opinion.

We're no longer winning the war.

The most we could hope for is a stalemate.

And it was true because we were fighting a committed North Vietnamese enemy or soldiers who were fighting for their homeland.

And they would fight till the very last man, until we killed every single person.

So the war for them was never going to end.

And that was something that I don't think America came to understand.

We kept thinking that we could beat them back, and that was not the case.

So unfortunately, the the war was prolonged, and it was prolonged unnecessarily by Johnson and especially by Nixon, who kept thinking that, well, we'll just bomb them to hell.

And they did.

We bombed and bombed and bombed, and we killed a tremendous number of civilians, but we were never going to win that war, and we kept losing American lives, in my opinion, unnecessarily.

Now, my point of view was a boots on the ground point of view.

You know, I was not in the higher ups, never was.

Always I was a platoon leader on the ground, and then I worked on the division as a division staff officer.

So I don't have a very high political view, but that that's my opinion.

That's my feeling those are my feelings.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.

What was the feeling when you were there amongst the soldiers about the war?

SPEAKER_00: So we didn't have any news.

There was no TV, there were no newspapers, there were no magazines.

We were out in the boonies, and we stayed out in the boonies for four to five weeks at a time.

The longest I stayed out was six weeks, and you got pretty ripe after that period of time without any, you know, I mean, you had enough water to brush your teeth and maybe wipe the sweat off your face, but that was it.

And you wore the same clothes for that period of time.

When you got new soldiers in, occasionally they would bring some news from the home front, but at that period of time, we just didn't know what was going on in the United States.

Didn't know about protests, didn't know how about draft burning, draft card burning, protests on campus.

None of that reached us.

We read The Stars and Stripes, which was an American newspaper.

Everything's going well.

We're doing so well.

SPEAKER_02: Oh, wow.

Well, talk to me then about returning home, because I know from what I've heard that many of our soldiers were not welcomed home.

SPEAKER_00: Yes, you're right.

They were not welcomed home.

An officer spent six to seven months in the field and then received a transfer to a staff job.

And my staff specialty was as the S1, as the personnel officer of the battalion.

So when I joined my battalion, I talked to the S1 and I let him know that that was my secondary specialty.

And he said, Well, that's good because you'll be coming out of the field about the same time as I'm ready to go home.

And if you survive your tour, we'll make you the S1.

So I did survive my tour, and I came out of the field and I was understudying the S1, getting ready to take his job.

And he came to me one morning and he said, Well, did you apply for a job at division headquarters?

And I said, No.

And he said, Well, I have orders here that you're to go to division headquarters for an interview with the 14th MHD.

And I said, What is the 14th MHD?

He said, I don't know.

Get on a helicopter and go find out.

So literally, I flew to division headquarters and I started asking around, where's the 14th MHD?

And nobody knew.

Finally, one soldier said, Well, I think they're down that road about a mile.

This was within a large division base camp.

So I walked down the road and I came to a tent that said 14th Military History Detachment.

The motto, you fight it, we write it.

So I was interviewed by a captain and I looked around this office, it was a tent office, and he had a television set, he had a refrigerator, they had cots to sleep on, and they had a shower off the back.

I was offered the job and I said, I'll take it.

The last five months of my tour were spent uh at division headquarters with this uh 14th military history detachment.

But in answer to your question, when I returned back to the United States, I was still a regular Army officer.

So unlike many of the soldiers who, when we arrived in Travis Air Force Base in California on the return flight, they went into San Francisco, you know, they got paid and they went into San Francisco and they were spit upon, they were trashed, they were called baby killers, and they were not welcomed home.

I was fortunate in that my my parents uh actually met me at Travis Air Force Base in California.

And uh went to my our home in Monterey, and I spent about two weeks at home on bacon on leave and getting ready for my my next assignment with the Army.

So I didn't encounter any of that negativism.

And and I think my parents had the foresight to prevent me from encountering that.

And then I s I continued to be in the military and within the military community, lived in a military community, so I never really encountered that kind of uh reaction by the general public.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

Well, I mean, thank goodness, because I mean, it's disgusting.

When you hear those stories, it's just disgusting because the men coming home, they had nothing to do with anything.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

And they were held responsible for losing the war.

Nobody wanted to be the last man to die, to die for a tie.

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02: So I have to go back real quick, though, before we talk about life back at home, is you got to explain to me about the uh historical division that you got assigned to.

What in the world was that?

What did you do?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so this was a separate small little detachment, little unit that was responsible for preparing a quarterly report called the Operational Readiness and Lessons Learned report.

And every quarter, each battalion was required to follow a certain specific format and send a report to us on battle actions that had occurred during the last uh quarter and any unusual things that had happened to them and any field expediences.

Engineers always had discovered something, created something, done something that was unusual, and they always loved to report uh on that activity.

And it could be various different strategies that were being tried and either successful or unsuccessful.

And as I mentioned, lessons learned.

But it was basically a battle report and then these unusual lessons learned.

But we had no copying machines, and so these reports would come in from each of the battalions, and they had to be edited because they a lot of the folks were not great writers.

They had to be edited and then retyped into this specific format.

But with carbon paper, you were we only got six copies out of uh one typing, and we had to generate 18 copies to be distributed army wide.

So that necessitated retyping the report three times.

That was our primary mission, but a secondary mission was that we would attend the division briefing every night.

And if the first cav division had been engaged in a major undertaking, a major combat undertaking, this would be like a two to three day battle, often occurring at night, most often occurring at night.

The division operations officer, that was called the G three, would assign me to go out to the battle site after the action was over, interview the battalion commander, the operations, the S3, the battalion operations officer, the platoon leaders, the company commander, and to piece together what had happened.

Because a lot of these battles would occur at nighttime, and it was very, very difficult to figure out what had happened.

So we would go out there and draw maps, talk to the NCOs, non-commissioned officers, and platoon leaders and company commander, anybody we could talk to who was still alive or not wounded, and try to rewrite the battle or at least write up the battle and to determine uh what had transpired.

SPEAKER_02: Well, so one question I have is how was it talking to these soldiers?

Because I mean, after they just went through pure hell, and now they have a reporter, they are wanting to get all the facts.

Were they hesitant to open up and talk?

Or was it was it easier than maybe I think?

SPEAKER_00: No, on on one particular battle occasion, a company, American company, and and a company usually was about 90 to 110 men, had literally been decimated.

Out of the hundred, out of the ninety to a hundred, I can't remember exactly how many, I'm gonna say 120 men, there were 80 killed and wounded.

80 killed and wounded.

So it literally decimated this company.

And all of the platoon leaders had been caught killed, all of the platoon sergeants had been killed.

So I went out and the company commander had not been killed.

He was he was still alive.

And I interviewed, I was able to interview him, and I spent a good two hours with him taking notes.

That was the best uh analysis of what had happened uh over this three day period of combat that he'd been in.

And I tried to interview the battalion commander, I tried to interview the S3, the operations officer, they refused to talk to me because they're Careers were on the line.

You don't just lose, have an American company decimated.

They had to take this company offline and re-equip them, bring in new replacements, retrain them.

So I wrote up the report, and the company commander placed the blame on the battalion commander who was flying overhead, uh, directing the battle by looking down.

Again, this was at night.

Yes.

And he's he's flying overhead, trying to direct the battle based upon seeing the rifle flashes and you know the uh tracer rounds that were coming from the enemy versus the Americans.

American tracer rounds were red and enemy tracer rounds were green.

So he's trying to make decisions based upon seeing these tracer rounds.

And anyway, long story short, when I wrote up the report, the other reality was when the enemy left the field, they took all their dead and wounded with them.

So this was an enemy, North Vietnamese enemy unit that had attacked an American company.

And they took their dead and wounded with them.

So there was no body count.

And body count was the metric by which American battles were measured, American success was measured, careers were determined based on body count.

So I I put in my report that while they were able to see blood trails and body parts, there was there were no there was no body count.

And the Division G3, the division operations officer, threw the report back at me and said, this is ridiculous.

You are to hold the company commander responsible for the loss of his men.

He failed to follow the orders given to him by the battalion commander and put 450 enemy killed.

And I said to myself, where did that number come from?

And it was just manufactured.

But I had to follow his orders, rewrite the report, hold the company commander responsible, and say that we killed 450, 460 North Vietnamese soldiers.

So that that was the sham that I was involved with.

Wow.

That had to be really tough.

It was.

I because I felt like what I was trying to do was accurately portray, you know, this incredible battle.

The enemy was incredible night fighters, far superior to Americans.

They were always better at night fighting than we were.

They owned the night.

And uh, you know, this poor company commander, he was like about 24 years old, captain.

He lost his career.

And that was the end of his career.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

Yeah.

So back home, how did this honestly affect kind of the rest of your life?

SPEAKER_00: So, as I mentioned, I was a career officer at this point in time.

An officer fills out a form as you get close to leaving your assignment.

It's called a dream sheet, and you put down where you would like to be assigned.

And I put down, well, I'd like to be assigned to the West Coast of the United States.

And for me, that meant either Fort Ord, California or Fort Lewis, Washington.

Those are the two big bases on the West Coast at the time.

And I didn't get orders, and I didn't get orders, and I talked my boss into sending me to Saigon for three days to buy art supplies.

We needed, we had combat artists as part of our group, and we needed, they needed art supplies, and I needed to find out what my orders were.

So we this sergeant and I got in a convoy and we went to Saigon and we had a great time.

Did a lot of sightseeing and ate some good food.

And uh so finally on the third day I said, Well, you know, I better find out what my orders are.

And I kept asking questions, and I was ushered into uh Mac V Headquarters, that's Military Assistance Command Vietnam.

This is the big headquarters in South Vietnam, South Vietnam in Saigon, and uh was ushered into an actual gymnasium with the basketball hoops pulled up.

And on the floor of this gymnasium were these low wooden trays, and and the computer processing of the day were Fortran punch cards.

And there was a card for every soldier in Vietnam.

So there were 500,000 cards in these trays.

And we went down the line alphabetically, of course, A to B to BA to Bartlett to Bartlett John to Bartlett Peter, Bartlett Robin, pulled the card and said, Oh, you're going to Seattle, Washington.

Well, I had gone to high school, I had finished high school in Seattle, and I said, Oh, I'm going to Fort Ord.

And the officer I was with said, No, says here Fort Wainwright.

And I said, Well, wait a minute.

I lived in Seattle.

There is no Fort Wainwright in Seattle.

And he says, Well, oh, this says APO, Army Post Office Seattle.

We had to get a directory to look up that Fort Wainwright was located in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Oh no.

Oh yes.

Oh no.

Oh yes.

So I went.

I got the West Coast.

Hey, I got the West Coast.

Oh my gosh.

After two weeks in Monterey, California, after 105 degree heat in uh Vietnam, I went to Fairbanks, Alaska.

Fortunately, during the summer, so the temperature was about 65.

But during the two years I spent there, I saw minus 20, minus 30, minus 40.

It doesn't snow when it's that cold, but you have incredible ice and you have to plug your car in every day and every night, or it freezes.

You have to have a battery blanket, a circulating water heater, and a dipstick heater.

And if you don't have those things plugged in to the electrical post in front of every parking space, your car is dead.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

So what do you do during this time in Alaska?

SPEAKER_00: So I was assigned by this time I had spent two years in the Army and I was promoted to captain.

So here I was at the age of 24, and I was a captain, and I was put in charge of headquarters and headquarters company.

And this was the company, the support company for the line companies.

And we had all the support vehicles, ambulances, two and a half ton trucks, armored personnel recovery vehicles, armored personnel carriers.

We were a mechanized unit at that point in time.

And I knew absolutely nothing about vehicles, engines, motor pools, nothing.

And here I was in charge of more than$25 million worth of equipment and all World War II equipment.

This was old, antiquated, and the priority for parts all went to Vietnam.

So we we would have so many of our vehicles redlined, meaning inoperable, uh, we would go on maneuvers and within the first five miles we'd lose 50% of our vehicles, just overheating, no parts.

And finally, finally, somebody in their brilliance decided we should not be a mechanized unit.

We should be a light infantry unit.

So we put all these vehicles on a railhead, on a railroad, and sent them down to the National Guard, and everybody strapped on skis and snowshoes and learned how to ski, and we became the well, this unit in Fairbanks was the first line of defense in the event the Russians ever came across the Bering Strait.

And and our philosophy was we could we could fire one shot and then turn around and run.

That's that was it was it was a brigade.

It was a brigade of about 1,200 men.

Well, more than that.

It was like um about 1,500 men.

It was just an outpost, if you will.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

Wow.

So how long did you stay in the service?

SPEAKER_00: I stayed for six years.

I I spent two years in Alaska, and then was uh assigned to go to the career course back to Fort Benning, Georgia.

And on the way, I stopped at the Office of Personnel Operations, and I met with a major who was supposed to be my advisor.

And this major was an armor officer, and I thought it was meaning mechanized tanks.

And I thought it was unusual for an armor officer to be counseling an infantry officer, and he had never been in battle.

You could tell that by the uniform, you know, by the by his ribbons.

He had never been in combat.

And he told me that the Army had me programmed to go to the career course and then to the Monterey Language Institute to learn how to speak Vietnamese and send me back to Vietnam for a second tour as a Vietnamese unit advisor.

And there was only one job that was worse, had a had a had a shorter life expectancy than the platoon leader in Vietnam, and that was the Vietnamese unit advisor.

And I said, No, I don't want to do that.

That's not what I have in mind.

I I've got two purple hearts.

The last thing I want to do if I have to go back to Vietnam is be a Vietnamese unit advisor.

And he said, Well, this is what we have you programmed for.

And I said, Well, unprogram me.

He says, Well, catch 22.

Here, you have accepted orders transferring you from Alaska to Georgia.

Therefore, you're obligated for an additional year.

If you choose not to go to the career course, which was voluntary, we would have no choice but to send you back to Vietnam right now.

Take the weekend and think it over.

So I took the weekend and I called my father, and I just said, you know, I am not going to be programmed.

That is that is not the life for me.

And I came back on Monday morning and I met with this same major and I said, Okay, go ahead and reassign me to Vietnam right now, but I want my resignation on file for 365 days from today's date.

And so then this major goes and huddles with two other majors, comes back, and he says, Well, let's not be hasty.

Here, the Army has spent all this money to move you and your family from Alaska to Georgia.

And I knew right then he'd never looked at my file because I was a bachelor and everything I owned fit in my car.

But for the first time in my life, I decided to keep my mouth shut.

And he said, We're gonna go ahead and send you down to Georgia, to Fort Benning, and they'll find a job for you.

You can be an instructor or something.

And if you change your mind, we will reprogram you.

So that's what I did.

I went to back to Fort Benning.

I was assigned to the leadership department of the infantry school, which is like the management department of a college.

And I had a wonderful final assignment in the military.

We I was assigned to a special group that was responsible for putting together a course of instruction that was implemented army-wide called Leadership for Professionals.

And we brought in an officer and a NCO, non-commissioned officer from every military unit in the world and trained them.

And we put together a book of readings, course outline.

This was before PowerPoint, overhead transparencies.

And my job as the operations officer was to oversee the entire project and put all these supplies together and equip each of the officer NCO teams that came in.

We trained the trainers and to equip them with the things that they would need to uh carry out the instruction implemented army wide.

So that actually got me into my uh civilian career, which was in publishing.

SPEAKER_02: Oh, wow.

Okay.

Wow, wow, wow.

Gotta love the seamless transition.

That is too cool.

Now, before we proceed, I want to ask you about it.

And I don't even know that back then they had the term of PTSD.

SPEAKER_00: Did you suffer from that?

I did suffer from PTSD.

I about interestingly, it wasn't right away.

The hardest thing, one of the hardest things that I had to do in Vietnam was take care of the dead.

And my men didn't want that responsibility.

I don't know if it was superstition or what.

But my job as the platoon leader, as the officer, was to go through the pockets of any of our dead soldiers, make sure there was nothing in there, and take out any personal items that were ultimately communicated back to the family through a private separate channel.

It didn't go through the graves registration part.

And I had to fill out what what we called a death card, which was basically a 305 card with a hole punched in it and a piece of string.

And for the first time, the officer actually wrote down the coordinates as close as possible to where the soldier was killed.

And they they began at that point in time to really record the locations of the death as as close as you could make it.

And that death card was tied to the boot of the soldier along with a dog tag, and then the other dog tag remained around the soldier's neck.

And then we didn't have body bags, but we had ponchos.

And we didn't want these ponchos to be flapping around in the rotor wash when the helicopter came in to take the dead.

So I had a ball of twine and I would tie the poncho around the head, around the waist, and around the feet to keep it secure.

And that was pretty much the hardest job that I had to do.

And it and it was tough.

The first one was the toughest, but there were others that followed.

And a lot of that often created PTSD for me, as well as some of the other events that happened to me.

And about interesting, about 10 years after Vietnam is when I started.

I put these memories and these thoughts in what I called my titanium steel trunk in the back of my mind, and I just locked it down.

And I wouldn't allow it to affect me.

It couldn't affect, I would not allow it to affect my performance.

But after about 10 years, some of this stuff started to leak out.

And I would not have nightmares.

I had daydreams.

I had daydreams where some of these events that happened to me, and some of them were funny and some of them were horrific, where they started to come back.

And I had met a psychiatrist who I had helped to get her book published.

And I I happened to be traveling quite a bit.

And I said, Listen, I like to take you to dinner, and then tomorrow I want to have a professional session with you.

And and I did.

And I met with her for about two hours.

And I let all this stuff come out.

I talked about it.

And I said, I'm having these daydreams, and it feels like I'm losing control.

That's what that was the scary part.

I I couldn't control it.

And she said, Well, I have a very simple solution for you to solve this problem.

And I said, Really?

What is it?

She said, Well, picture the soldier that you killed and speak to him and tell him you're sorry that you killed them and this was your job.

This is, you know, you're sorry it happened, but and to please leave you alone and stop bothering you.

And I said, You're kidding.

It's that simple.

She said, Yep, it's that simple.

So I practiced that repeatedly.

And it while they didn't completely go away, uh, it didn't bother me as much as it had before.

So that was that was my experience with PTSD.

Although in writing the book, I thought it would be a good catharsis for me that I would really be able to, once I wrote these stories down, once I wrote these events down, they would be forever out of my titanium steel trunk.

Well, that didn't happen.

In fact, uh in writing them, it all came back to me.

But I've done a lot of podcasts and a lot of personal appearances, and and I've wanted to do that because I wanted, first of all, to teach people more about what it's like to be in combat and about my experience.

And I find that by talking about it, that's been the best catharsis.

That has helped me soften the edges of some of these experiences.

They haven't gone away, but at least I I I'm can confront them and I can talk about them.

Most of them.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.

Well, kind of coming full circle to where we began our conversation today.

Talk to me, tell my audience about your book.

SPEAKER_00: Right.

So the title of the book is Vietnam Combat, Firefights and Writing History.

There's a lot of information on my website, which can be found at www.robinbartletauthor.com, or you can just Google Robin Bartlett, it'll come up.

And um I have uh videos on the site, I have a lot of photographs, I have some blogs.

I'm very proud of the site.

I've uh got clips of to many of my podcasts, all of my podcasts that I've done.

You can purchase the book at Amazon, but if you buy it on my website, you can get a substantial discount, and I'll autograph the book for you.

There's an audio book and there's an ebook available on Amazon as well.

But that uh website is going to be the best source of uh more information about me, reviews of the book, and some great uh resource material.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, fantastic.

Well, I will be positive that the link to your website is left in the the show notes today for easy access.

And uh Robin, man, what a pleasure to to meet you and to have the opportunity to hear your story.

I really thank you so much for for sitting down with me today and sharing it with me.

It's a fascinating story, a heartfelt story, and I believe a story that's important to tell.

So thank you.

SPEAKER_00: So, Kevin, thank you.

I I have one last uh uh notice for all your listeners, and that has to do with uh the fact that you know Vietnam veterans now are starting to walk in the boots of Korean War and World War II veterans.

Uh World War II veterans are dying off uh like about 150 a day.

They're all up in their late 90s and hundreds, so Vietnam veterans are the ones that are going to be seen, and and we they're the ones wearing their Vietnam veteran caps.

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with saying thank you for your service to these soldiers.

But if you really want to uh make an impression, try saying welcome home.

Those are the key words, those are the code words that will impact a Vietnam veteran, stop him in his tracks, bring lumps to our throats and tears to our eyes.

It's a game changer.

And I encourage uh your listeners to to give it a try and and watch the reaction.

SPEAKER_02: So powerful, so powerful.

Welcome home.

Robin, thank you again so much.

I appreciate you being here.

Thanks for having me.

Absolutely.

For you today, I hope you've enjoyed this conversation with Robin as much as I have.

As I said, so of course entertaining, but so heartbreaking at the same time.

Yeah, again, the thought that even today, all these years later, that maybe you could have an impact in a culture's life is a good thing to work.