Show Transcript

0:00:01 - (Kevin Lowe): How much do you know about the Vietnam War? Have you ever had the opportunity to sit down with somebody who served in Vietnam? I haven't, until I met Robin Bartlett. Robin is the author of a book called Vietnam Combat, firefights and writing history. 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.

0:00:37 - (Kevin Lowe): 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.

0:01:11 - (Kevin Lowe): 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 going to laugh. You're going to be mesmerized, you're going to be left in awe at his stories that he has to share. But the most meaningful thing comes at the end.

0:01:45 - (Kevin Lowe): 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.

0:02:19 - (Kevin Lowe): My friend, I welcome you to episode 264. What's up, my friend? And welcome at Degrit, grace and inspiration. I am your host, Kevin Lowe. 20 years ago, I awoke from a life saving surgery, only to find that I was left completely blind. And since that day, I've learned a lot about life, a lot about living, and a lot about myself. And here on this podcast, I want to share those insights with you. Because, friend, if you are still searching for your purpose, still trying to understand why, or still left searching for that next right path to take, we'll consider this to be your stepping stone to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

0:03:03 - (Kevin Lowe): Have you ever been on a sailboat when there is no wind? If so, well, then you know you are not getting anywhere fast. That is for sure. Well, the same is said for a life without purpose. A life without purpose is like a sailboat 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.

0:03:36 - (Kevin Lowe): I invite you to text the word discover to 5544. Again, text the word discover to 5544, and I'm going to get you information into how I can help you to finally discover your purpose and get that wind in your sails.

0:04:00 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 build up of the Vietnam war. My classmates and I were actually getting reclassified during the summers to be drafted. And I said, well, that can't happen. I've got to serve my obligation as an officer, and I'm not going to be drafted.

0:04:41 - (Robin Bartlet): So I went into the ROTC program 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 for my entire life.

0:04:55 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. Now, out of curiosity, was your family upset with your decision to not go to West Point?

0:05:03 - (Robin Bartlet): I would say that my father was a little bit 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 when I graduated from college, I had just done 180 deg 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.

0:05:35 - (Robin Bartlet): I decided, you know, I'm going to choose the toughest thing that I can think of. Never been challenged in my life, really. So I volunteered for airborne ranger and assignment to the 82nd Airborne Division, and I got everything I volunteered for and more.

0:05:54 - (Kevin Lowe): I can imagine that. Oh, my gosh. Now, for those of us who don't know the lingo, talk to me about what your position was.

0:06:05 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 a month and then received orders sending me down to Fort Benning, Georgia. By the way, all these military posts now have been changed. So Fort Bragg is now Fort liberty, and Fort Benning is Fort Moore.

0:06:43 - (Robin Bartlet): They've changed all those names from the confederate generals that they were named after and went through the airborne course, jumped out of airplanes, went through the basic officers training course, and then through ranger school. And ranger training was, and still is the toughest training program that the army has to offer. It was a nine week course, and it was the best insurance policy and training one could have for assignment to Vietnam. So all infantry officers had to go through that course.

0:07:18 - (Robin Bartlet): 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'd put you on a truck and you were out.

0:07:27 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes. 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?

0:07:39 - (Robin Bartlet): So this was 1960. I graduated in 67, and 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.

0:08:13 - (Robin Bartlet): There were more american soldiers in Vietnam in that year, 1968, and there were more casualties in that year than any other year during the war.

0:08:26 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. And so at the height is when you show up.

0:08:31 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 three core. South Vietnam was divided into four parts. I core, two core, three core, and four core. And Benoit was located in three core near Saigon and now called Ho Chi Minh City. When I arrived, I was informed that because of the extensive officer casualties, because of the Ted offensive of January and February 1968, all orders were canceled and to stand by, they'd let me know where I was going.

0:09:14 - (Robin Bartlet): And about three days later, at 04:00 in the morning, I was awakened and said, get ready to go. You're going to the first cavalry division. And my brother, who served a tour in Vietnam before me, had been assigned to the first 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.

0:09:40 - (Robin Bartlet): And so the first 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 the air mobile concept, to identify, find the enemy and engage them and then bring these tremendous air mobile resources to bear on the enemy.

0:10:16 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes, yes. Talk to me. What it was like first landing in Vietnam, getting to the base. Walk me through that.

0:10:26 - (Robin Bartlet): So as we got off the first thing and we went over on a commercial flight. I went over on a commercial flight with mostly other 1st 2nd lieutenants. We were all what we call butter bar lieutenants. The 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.

0:10:53 - (Robin Bartlet): 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, the average daily temperature was 105 degrees. And it was not uncommon, especially in some of the areas that we went into deep three canopy jungle, to have the humidity take us up to 110, 115.

0:11:32 - (Robin Bartlet): Had to be very cautious about heat stroke 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 smelled like a sewer, to be honest with you, it was pretty horrendous. It was terrible introduction to the country, I guess.

0:11:53 - (Kevin Lowe): So. Wow. Now, after landing, how soon did you go out on your first mission?

0:12:01 - (Robin Bartlet): So, again, I spent three days at the repo depot, replacement depot, and then was assigned to the first cavalry division. And 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 were transported to the division rear, which was in two core. So I went from three core to two core to a base camp called Enkey. 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.

0:12:38 - (Robin Bartlet): We did get to sight in our rifles and 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 Kwantri. And that's where the first cavalry division had been assigned to operate along the demilitarized zone. So the terrain was the Gulf of Tonkin on the east. And 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.

0:13:20 - (Robin Bartlet): And then as you progressed to the west, you got into hills and mountainous. And then finally, as you got close to the Laochan border, three canopy jungle and mountains. So you might be in the beach one day and in the jungle the next. It all depended upon where the intelligence of the enemy locations might be.

0:13:45 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes. Now, with your position, were you leading a troop of soldiers when you guys went into battle?

0:13:56 - (Robin Bartlet): Yes. So when I reported into my battalion, the first battalion, Fifth Cavalry division, I had served about 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 08:00 at night. And this poor man was just dead on his feet. I don't think he'd slept in about three days.

0:14:29 - (Robin Bartlet): He gave us a two minutes. We went in in alphabetical order. And 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 s one, who is the personnel officer in the unit? Where do we need these officers? And the s one 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.

0:15:07 - (Robin Bartlet): 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.

0:15:22 - (Kevin Lowe): It pays to go first, I guess.

0:15:24 - (Robin Bartlet): Sometimes it does.

0:15:25 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, sometimes.

0:15:26 - (Robin Bartlet): And then after that, I was assigned to a company, and I was the first platoon leader of a company, and I had between 28 and 32 men in my command of this platoon, most of them draftees. I would say 90% of them were draftees. And we did what was called humping the boonies. That's what we did. We humped the boonies.

0:15:51 - (Kevin Lowe): And what does that mean?

0:15:52 - (Robin Bartlet): Means we were looking for Charlie. We were looking for the enemy. Both VC and north vietnamese regular soldiers and 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 to bear. And that included helicopter gunships, Cobra helicopters, jets.

0:16:42 - (Robin Bartlet): We even had some naval bombardment if we were close to the beach, and B 52 strikes if we had encountered a very large north vietnamese enemy force.

0:16:52 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. Before I ask you anymore 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?

0:17:04 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 what they call a sergeant. E six, has about ten years of experience.

0:17:35 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 strong and good soldiers.

0:18:00 - (Kevin Lowe): 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.

0:18:11 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 sites, because you got up in the air and it was nice, the sweat would dry.

0:18:46 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 3000 rounds per minute and 76 rockets.

0:19:29 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 m 79 grenade launcher, rifleman, ammo bearer, squad leader, radio operator, and myself.

0:20:05 - (Robin Bartlet): 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.

0:20:36 - (Robin Bartlet): They wouldn't risk the additional helicopters to come in. 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 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?

0:21:08 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. Did the training you received prepare you at all for landing?

0:21:14 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 have a plan.

0:21:47 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 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.

0:22:19 - (Robin Bartlet): So there was a great incentive to achieve each day's objective. I lost about 20 pounds 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.

0:22:41 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank goodness. And, I mean, 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 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 this terrain, the jungle, not really knowing what's coming, could you speak to that?

0:23:25 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 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.

0:23:58 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 Laochan 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 coverman that's 5 meters behind him. But those two men are at tremendous risk from ambush or from booby traps.

0:24:52 - (Robin Bartlet): 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.

0:25:27 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 speak. But 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 ambush or enemy problems from the enemy.

0:25:50 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. I definitely don't blame you for doing as much of that as you possibly could. You talked about earlier 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?

0:26:09 - (Robin Bartlet): Now, this was in ranger school. If you didn't complete the day'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 sea rations for that day. But in Vietnam, 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 sea rations to us.

0:26:45 - (Robin Bartlet): 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, had to be 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 I had to be very careful about men just literally keeling over from heat stroke or heat exhaustion.

0:27:14 - (Robin Bartlet): 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've seen that on television where they drop a cable and 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 an easy thing to deal with because there was no gps and the helicopters had a hard time finding.

0:27:39 - (Kevin Lowe): You in deep course of wow. Wow. When you kind of look back on it today, the time that you spent in Vietnam, was there a particular moment that you could say was your lowest, your scariest, the worst moment of that time?

0:27:58 - (Robin Bartlet): Well, the answer to that question is yes. We were very cautious. We knew that the enemy, especially the VC, Vietcong, were watching us all the time. They were masters at camouflage, and occasionally we would spot them and engage them. This would be one in two man teams who would be monitoring where we were. And so each platoon would send out an ambush every night. I'd lead it one night, my platoon sergeant would lead it the next.

0:28:29 - (Robin Bartlet): And the ambush would consist of a reinforced squad, about ten men, and 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 patty field.

0:29:03 - (Robin Bartlet): And the standard protocol is to send two men across the rice patty, check out the opposite side, and then they give you. This was dusk. They give you two blinks on the flashlight with a red lens on it. And so my reinforced squad began to cross this rice patty next to a rice patty dike. And the enemy had actually sighted in that rice patty dike. So they waited until we were completely exposed, and then they started dropping mortars on us and engaged us with machine gun fire. And I had three men killed immediately and two others wounded.

0:29:41 - (Robin Bartlet): This rice paddy dike is like concrete. So we hunted down behind the rice paddy dike, and I called for artillery. As I mentioned, that was my favorite. My weapon of choice was artillery. 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 shoulder, and it knocked me backwards.

0:30:11 - (Robin Bartlet): My helmet came off, and 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 rice patty, and this mortar round penetrated into the mud and exploded. So I just got splashed with mud and water, and a piece of shrapnel did catch me in the groin, knocked me backwards, and I hit my head on the rice patty dike.

0:30:47 - (Robin Bartlet): So 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 treeline, set up a return fire, directed the artillery, 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 I fainted. So the second time I woke up, I moaned and somebody said, hey, he's not dead. So then they came over and they put pressure bandage on me. But this happened now at 10:00 at night, so there's no way that they could get a medevac in. So I laid on the ground from about 10:00 at night until six the next morning when they could get helicopters in.

0:31:42 - (Robin Bartlet): And that was a real turning point for me because, of course, they kept slapping me in the face to make me stay awake. 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 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 evaluate the value of this effort, my own personal effort, as well as the effort that America was exerting.

0:32:24 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. Would you mind diving in a little bit deeper into that topic?

0:32:29 - (Robin Bartlet): Well, this was the height of the Vietnam War, as I mentioned before, and up until the Ted 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 Wesmoreland, too, who was the commanding general in Vietnam. We're winning the war.

0:33:08 - (Robin Bartlet): I know we have half a million troops in Vietnam. We need more. We need 10,000 more. And even Walter Cronkite, who 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 Ted 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.

0:33:40 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 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.

0:34:21 - (Robin Bartlet): 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. 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's my opinion.

0:34:52 - (Robin Bartlet): Those are my feelings.

0:34:53 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. What was the feeling when you were there amongst the soldiers about the war?

0:35:00 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 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.

0:35:31 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 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.

0:36:00 - (Kevin Lowe): 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.

0:36:13 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 s one, as the personnel officer of the battalion. So when I joined my battalion, I talked to the s one, 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.

0:36:43 - (Robin Bartlet): And if you survive your tour, we'll make you the s one. So I did survive my tour, and I came out of the field and I was understudying the s one, 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.

0:37:11 - (Robin Bartlet): 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.

0:37:45 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 at division headquarters with this 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 know, they got paid, and they went into San Francisco, and they were spit upon.

0:38:35 - (Robin Bartlet): They were trashed. They were called baby killers, and they were not welcomed home. I was fortunate in that my parents actually met me at Travis Air Force Base in California, and I went to our home in Monterey, and I spent about two weeks at home on leave and getting ready for my next assignment with the army. So I didn't encounter any of that negativism. And I think my parents had the foresight to prevent me from encountering that. And then 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 reaction by the general public.

0:39:22 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, well, thank goodness, because it's disgusting when you hear those stories. It's just disgusting because the men coming home, they had nothing to do with anything.

0:39:35 - (Robin Bartlet): Yeah. And they were held responsible for losing the war. Nobody wanted to be the last man to die, to die for a tie.

0:39:43 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. 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 historical division that you got assigned to. What in the world was that? What did you do?

0:40:00 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 quarter, and any unusual things that had happened to them and any field expediences.

0:40:34 - (Robin Bartlet): Engineers always had discovered something, created something, done something that was unusual, and they always loved to report 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 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, we only got six copies out of one typing, and we had to generate 18 copies to be distributed army wide. So that necessitated retyping the report three times.

0:41:28 - (Robin Bartlet): That was our primary mission. But a secondary mission was that we would attend the division briefing every night. And if the first cab 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 s three, 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.

0:42:19 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 what had transpired.

0:42:38 - (Kevin Lowe): Well, so one question I have is, how was it talking to these soldiers? Because 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 easier than maybe, I think no.

0:43:03 - (Robin Bartlet): On one particular battle occasion, a company, american company, and a company usually was about 90 to 110 men, had literally been decimated. Out of the 90 to 100, I can't remember exactly how many. I'm going to 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.

0:43:32 - (Robin Bartlet): So I went out and the company commander had not been killed. He was still alive. And I was able to interview him, and I spent a good 2 hours with him taking notes. That was the best analysis of what had happened over this three day period of combat that he'd been in. I tried to interview the battalion commander. I tried to interview the s three, the operations officer. They refused to talk to me because their careers were on the line. You don't just lose, have an american company decimated.

0:44:05 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 directing the battle by looking down. Again, this was at night, and he's flying overhead trying to direct the battle based upon seeing the rifle flashes and the Tracer rounds that were coming from the enemy versus Americans. American tracer rounds were red and enemy tracer rounds were green.

0:44:41 - (Robin Bartlet): So he's trying to make decisions based upon seeing these trace arounds. 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.

0:45:18 - (Robin Bartlet): Careers were determined based on body count. So I put in my report that while they were able to see blood trails and body parts, there was no body count. And the division g three, 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 400 and 5460 north vietnamese soldiers.

0:46:11 - (Robin Bartlet): So that was the sham that I was involved with.

0:46:15 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow, that had to be really tough.

0:46:19 - (Robin Bartlet): It was because I felt like what I was trying to do was accurately portray this incredible battle. The enemy was credible nightfighters, far superior to Americans. They were always better at night fighting than we were. They owned the night. And this poor company commander, he was like, about 24 years old. Captain, he lost his career. That was the end of his career.

0:46:44 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. So back home, how did this honestly affect kind of the rest of your life?

0:46:54 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 Orde, California, or Fort Louis, Washington. Those are the two big bases on the west coast at the time.

0:47:19 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 had combat artists as part of our group, and they needed art supplies, and I needed to find out what my orders were. So 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. And so finally, on the third day, I said, well, you know, I better find out what my orders are.

0:47:49 - (Robin Bartlet): And I kept asking questions. And I was ushered into MACV headquarters. That's military assistance command, Vietnam. This is the big headquarters in South Vietnam in Saigon. And 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 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.

0:48:26 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 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 coast. Hey, I got the west coast.

0:49:17 - (Kevin Lowe): Oh, my gosh.

0:49:19 - (Robin Bartlet): After two weeks in Monterey, California, after 105 degree heat in 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 -20 -30 -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.

0:50:02 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. So what did you do during this time in Alaska?

0:50:08 - (Robin Bartlet): 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.

0:50:37 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 would have so many of our vehicles redlined, meaning inoperable. We would go on maneuvers, and within the first 5 miles, we'd lose 50% of our vehicles. Just overheating, no parts.

0:51:11 - (Robin Bartlet): And 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.

0:51:41 - (Robin Bartlet): And our philosophy well is we could fire one shot and then turn around and run. It was a brigade. It was a brigade of about 1200 men. Well, more than that. It was, like, about 1500 men. It was just an outpost, if you will.

0:51:57 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Wow. So how long did you stay in the service?

0:52:01 - (Robin Bartlet): I stayed for six years. I spent two years in Alaska and then was 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.

0:52:31 - (Robin Bartlet): And he had never been in battle. You could tell that by the uniform, 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 shorter life expectancy than the platoon leader in Vietnam, and that was the vietnamese unit advisor.

0:53:07 - (Robin Bartlet): And I said, no, I don't want to do that. That's not what I have in mind. 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.

0:53:32 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 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.

0:54:08 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 going to 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.

0:54:50 - (Robin Bartlet): So that's what I did. I went 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. 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 an NCO, non commissioned officer from every military unit in the world and trained them.

0:55:26 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 equipped them with the things that they would need to carry out. The instruction implemented army wide. So that actually got me into my civilian career, which was in publishing.

0:56:01 - (Kevin Lowe): Oh, wow. Okay. Wow. Got to 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. Did you suffer from that?

0:56:18 - (Robin Bartlet): I did suffer from PTSD. Interestingly, it wasn't right 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.

0:56:57 - (Robin Bartlet): It didn't go through the graves registration part, and I had to fill out 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 began at that point in time to really record the locations of the death as close as you could make it. And that death card was tied to the boot of the soldier along with a dog tag.

0:57:31 - (Robin Bartlet): 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.

0:57:57 - (Robin Bartlet): And it was tough. The first one was the toughest. But there were others that followed and that often created PTSD for me, as well as some of the other events that happened to me. And about interesting about ten 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.

0:58:26 - (Robin Bartlet): I would not allow it to affect my performance. But after about ten 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 happened to be traveling quite a bit.

0:58:53 - (Robin Bartlet): And I said, listen, I like to take you to dinner, and then tomorrow I want to have a professional session with you. And I did, and I met with her for about 2 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 was the scary part. 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?

0:59:23 - (Robin Bartlet): 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, you're sorry it happened, and please leave you alone and stop bothering you. And I said, you're kidding, it's that simple? She said, yes, it's that simple. So I practiced that repeatedly. And while they didn't completely go away, it didn't bother me as much as it had before.

0:59:55 - (Robin Bartlet): 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, in writing them, it all came back to me. But I've done a lot of podcasts and a lot of personal appearances, 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.

1:00:33 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 can confront them and I can talk about them. Most of them.

1:00:50 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. Well, kind of coming full circle to where we began our conversation today. Talk to me. Tell my audience about your book.

1:01:00 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 ww robinbartletauthor.com. Or you can just Google Robinbartlett. It'll come up. And I have videos on the site. I have a lot of photographs, I have some blogs. I'm very proud of the site. I've got clips to many of my podcasts, all of my podcasts that I've done.

1:01:32 - (Robin Bartlet): 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 audiobook and there's an ebook available on Amazon as well. But that website is going to be the best source of more information about me, reviews of the book, and some great resource material.

1:01:55 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Fantastic. Well, I will be positive that the link to your website is left in the show notes today for easy access. And Robin, man, what a pleasure to meet you and to have the opportunity to hear your story. I really thank you so much 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.

1:02:24 - (Robin Bartlet): So, Kevin, thank you. I have one last notice for all your listeners, and that has to do with the fact that Vietnam veterans now are starting to walk in the boots of Korean War and World War II veterans. World War II veterans are dying off about 150 a day. They're all up in their late ninety s and hundreds. So Vietnam veterans are the ones that are going to be seen, and 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.

1:03:03 - (Robin Bartlet): But if you really want to 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 your listeners to give it a try and watch the reaction.

1:03:27 - (Kevin Lowe): So powerful. So powerful. Welcome home, Robin. Thank you again so much. I appreciate you being here.

1:03:34 - (Robin Bartlet): Thanks for having me.

1:03:36 - (Kevin Lowe): 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. Yet again, the thought that even today, all these years later, that maybe you could have the impact in a soldier's life by simply saying two words, welcome home.