Transcript of Oral History Interview with Tim Kirk

Oral history interviews of the Vietnam Era Oral History Project

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Version 3 August 20, 2018 Tim Kirk Narrator

Douglas Bekke Interviewer

January 15, 2018 Minneapolis, Minnesota

Tim Kirk -TK Douglas Bekke -DB

DB: Minnesota Historical Society, Vietnam Oral History Project, interview with Tim Kirk, in Minneapolis, Minnesota on 15 January, 2018. Tim, can you please say and spell your name? TK: My name is Tim Kirk, T-I-M K-I-R-K. DB: And your birth date? TK: 12/13/1947. DB: And your place of birth? TK: Minneapolis, Minnesota. DB: What do you know about your ancestry? Some people’s ancestors came over on the Mayflower, some came over one generation ahead of you, some are Native Americans, and they’ve been here for ten thousand years. So what do you know about your ancestry?

TK: The little bit that I do know, my ancestors were originally from Scotland, and then they moved to Ireland. And then from there, they came over through Nova Scotia, across the upper part of the United States, and settled into the little town of Dayton, Minnesota, on the Mississippi River.

DB: And when was that, about? Could’ve been in the 1920s, could’ve been in the— TK: No, it was in the 1800s, middle 1800s. DB: So around the Civil War, probably. TK: Right. DB: And did you have relatives that fought in the Civil War? TK: Not that I’m aware of. DB: Okay. You mentioned that you had a grandfather who served in World War I.

TK: Yes, my grandfather’s name was Walter Kirk. And he was an infantryman in World War I.

DB: Do you know which unit he served in? Was he in the Minnesota Guard? TK: I don’t know the unit. He suffered from, they called it “shell shock” then. But what we would call now, post-traumatic stress.

DB: And did you know him? TK: Yes, I knew my grandfather. DB: And what kind of—how did that experience manifest itself in your relations? Were you aware of it? What was he like?

TK: He was very quiet and separated. His wife, my grandmother, died in a fire. And after that, he kind of just left on his own, and we would occasionally—every five or six years—until he became old—and then my father went and got him out in San Francisco and brought him back. And he lived in a nursing home in St. Michael, Minnesota, until he died.

DB: So you didn’t really have any kind of a relationship with him? TK: We did, but except it was like I said, every five or six years we’d see him for a few weeks, or a month, or two months, and then he would be gone again.

DB: Okay. And you had another relative in World War II, who was lost? TK: Yes, my mother’s only brother, James Bistodeau, was a navy pilot. He was lost over the island of Formosa, and just disappeared. His aircraft never returned.

DB: Was your father in the service? TK: My father was in the Merchant Marines. DB: Did you grow up listening to these stories, or was the military an important aspect in your family?

TK: Yeah, the military and the—just our country, the United States of America—was very important to my family, my grandparents, through many generations.

DB: And you’re from Dayton, you said you grew up in Dayton, Minnesota. TK: Yes, that’s correct. DB: On a farm, in the town? TK: A small town. Dayton was a town of about three hundred people, located on the Mississippi River, at the junction of the Mississippi and Crow River. Just a small town, everybody knew everybody.

DB: And how would you describe your economic situation growing up, was your father employed all the time?

TK: Yeah, my father was employed. We had very little money. I think we didn’t have a car until I was probably ten years old.

DB: What did your father do? TK: He originally, when I was very small, was an ice man. He delivered ice. And then he went to work for Honeywell. He started out working on the docks at Honeywell, and eventually ended up being a general manager before his retirement.

DB: And where for Honeywell, what plant? TK: He worked at several plants in Minneapolis, but Roseville was the last plant that he was general manager at.

DB: And your mother, what did she do? TK: My mother was a housekeeper. At some point when I was small, she worked at Honeywell for a short period of time, but basically she was a housewife. She took care of the five kids, and then after we were grown, then she went to work for the University of Minnesota, home extension service.

DB: And you had five kids in the family, where did you fit in the mix, and what was the mix? TK: There were three boys, and two girls. I have an older brother and an older sister, and a younger brother and a younger sister. I was the middle child.

DB: And can you describe your home? TK: We lived in a small home, in Dayton. We had a cow and chickens and pigs. It wasn’t a farm, but we were on the edge of town, so we had our big garden, and vegetables, and did a lot of canning.

DB: Your mother did the canning? TK: Yes. DB: And did the kids help out with that stuff? TK: When we got older, everybody— DB: You all pitched in? TK: We all pitched in. The boys did chores, the girls did—you know—their chores, so pretty normal. Certainly not—I don’t know if—not poverty income, but probably below middle income.

DB: And the animals you had, these were not pets, this wasn’t a hobby farm, they were there to be consumed at some point?

TK: Correct. We had cattle, we had a cow that we milked, produced all of our milk and butter and cheese and everything. Pigs and chickens and everything were for food, they weren’t pets.

DB: And how would you describe your neighborhood, the people around you? Similar circumstances?

TK: Pretty much similar circumstances. You know, a lot of Dayton itself is kind of a French- Irish town. Mostly Catholic. And everybody was about the same, income-wise.

DB: Did you have a lot of friends in the neighborhood, a lot of kids around to play with? TK: Yeah, there were about fifteen boys probably, that were around the same age group. We lived and played on the river pretty much all the time: lots of farm, lots of woods, and lots of islands on the river.

DB: Sometimes, you hear about people today, talking about how they hover over their kids and guard them and protect them all the time. Would you say that you had a long leash?

TK: We had a very long leash. However, when the leash was pulled on by Mother, by any of me or my friends, then that meant it was time to come home.

DB: You better toe the line, then. TK: Yes. DB: And you talked a little bit about the things you did with your friends, you went exploring on the river, you went to check out the islands. Can you talk a little bit more about the activities that you were involved with? This is in the ‘50s.

TK: Yeah, we did a lot of fishing and hunting and trapping. Just swimming and playing in the river, and in the wintertime we had snowball fights. We still explored the islands, sometimes to the dismay of our parents, because of the danger of ice on the river. But that didn’t keep us away, usually.

DB: In summer, you made rafts, or did anybody have a canoe or anything? TK: We made rafts, we built small homemade boats, and we did pretty much a lot. We stretched the leash.

DB: For the most part, you made your own fun. You made your own toys and equipment that you needed?

TK: Right. We played baseball, you know. We had a lot of baseball we played. DB: Sandlot games, just making it up on your own? TK: Yeah. DB: And in your community, was there scouting? Were you involved in Boy Scouts? TK: There was Boy Scouts. Actually my father was a scout leader for some time, for a few years. But it never really took off as well, there were just too many other things going on.

DB: School. Can you describe your grade school?

TK: Well, we went to a Catholic parochial grade school, up through grade eight. And then we went from there to Elk River High School, or St. Michael High School, one of the two.

DB: And can you describe the school situation, did you have nuns and priests, and lay teachers? How was that experience?

TK: The parochial school was all nuns. There was one nun for each two grades. And there was no nonsense in the school. The nuns were very strict, especially with the boys.

DB: And what kind of a student were you? TK: I was probably, well of all of the boys—grade-wise I was a very good student, but I managed to get into mischief quite often.

DB: And mischief consisted of? TK: Basically not following the rules, not doing what you were supposed to be doing at the time.

DB: And the punishment was? TK: The punishment was anything from a swat on the wrist, to being kept after school, writing on the black board five hundred times, “I will not disobey the rules.” There was no expelling or anything like that.

DB: And did the school have extracurricular activities? Were there sports, were there school plays? Was there music or anything that you were involved with in the school?

TK: Not at that time. Of course during recess, they had baseball and kickball, and different things like that. But there were no sports activities, other than what we did ourselves.

DB: Okay. So in ninth grade, you start high school. TK: Ninth grade, I started high school at Elk River High School. DB: And what was that experience? You’re at a much bigger school, a lot more kids around, and a lot of strangers around. You don’t know them, from a smaller, tighter community. What was that experience for you?

TK: I had a lot of friends that were at the high school with me. Some of them had been going to Elk River High School, so we knew several. The kids that were from the town I grew up in, of course, kind of stuck more together than the Elk River kids. And we managed to get in quite a bit of mischief there, also.

DB: And the repercussions there were? TK: They were much more stringent—you know, there was stay after school, you could get kicked out of school. There were sports there, and if you were involved in one of the sports teams, you could be removed from the team.

DB: And were you involved in any of those sports or extracurricular activities?

TK: I played hockey in high school for a couple of years, until I had my first girlfriend, and then practice—my girlfriend became more important than practice.

DB: And you were sixteen years old then? TK: Probably sixteen. And my hockey coach let me know, on no uncertain terms, that that was not going to work for him.

DB: So you were off the team? TK: So I was off the team. DB: And you were ok with that? TK: At the time I was more interested in the girls. DB: And what did you do for a date? Did you have a car? TK: No, I did not have a car. DB: And how close did the girl live to you? TK: She lived in Elk River. DB: So you’ve got some distance? TK: So we had some distance to cover. I did have friends, some of them, as we got a little older, who had cars. We would double and triple date. It consisted of going to a movie. It was a dancehall over in St. Michael, Minnesota, that we went to a lot. They had dances on Friday nights. We spent a lot of time over there.

DB: This was the early ‘60s. What kind of music did they play? TK: Rock n’ Roll! DB: And who was your favorite bands, you favorite music? TK: Well, there was kind of a famous band from Minnesota called the Trashmen. They were always a big hit.

DB: So you’d have live bands. TK: Live bands, yeah, and a lot of dancing. There was usually scuffling going on now and then with the guys from different communities. There was—as they got a little older, there was drinking involved.

DB: Did that exacerbate the scuffling? TK: That probably did exacerbate the scuffling. DB: But you could hold your own?

TK: Yeah, I could hold my own. I was pretty small in stature, so I kind of carried a big attitude with me.

DB: In your home, what were birthdays like? Were they a big deal? You had five kids, your parents are working hard. Was there much attention paid to anybody on birthdays, or did you get a cake?

TK: We had a pretty close family. We had a lot of cousins around, we got together on holidays a lot with my mother’s parents. And birthdays, there was usually always a cake. My younger brother was born on my second birthday. So, we always joked that he was my second birthday present, which I tried to turn in and trade many times.

DB: And Christmas, did you expect to get a tree full of presents, or? TK: Not a tree full of presents. We usually got presents. My mother’s dad, my grandfather, owned a grocery store, and one of the big things—and I remember this very well because there was no such thing as all the different fruits and everything that you see in the store nowadays— we would always get a case of oranges, which nobody in the entire town had, except us. So that was a really big deal. And then we usually got at least one nice present, maybe a brand new sled.

DB: A toy of some type? TK: A toy of some type, or a bicycle. DB: Not just practical gifts? TK: No, not practical. DB: A new pair of shoes or something, not so much? TK: No, no. We got new shoes at the beginning of every school year. DB: Okay. But under the Christmas tree, you could look for hopefully something fun. TK: Yeah, something fun. DB: When did you learn to drive? TK: Well, I learned to drive farm equipment first: tractors. DB: With a stick, so? TK: Yeah, with a stick. DB: You learned the tough one first. TK: Yeah, pretty much everything had a stick. My father had a ’39 Packard. And that was just like driving a truck. It of course was a stick.

DB: And that was the family car? TK: That was the family car.

DB: And did he ever let you borrow it? TK: No. The first car, I was probably, I think I was in the military the first time I ever drove my father’s car. My older brother had car privileges for a while, and he took advantage of them, and so none of the rest of the kids ever drove our father’s car.

DB: And do you remember getting your driver’s license, what the process was? TK: Well, there was no driver’s education. DB: Nothing through the schools? TK: Nothing through the schools at all. You went and took your permit test, and I don’t remember the exact waiting period, but then you took your driver’s exam.

DB: And what car did you use for that? TK: I actually used my father’s friend’s car, which was a ’60 Chevy station wagon. DB: And he let you borrow it, he was agreeable to that? TK: Yeah, he took me. My father was at work, so his friend Ralph took me, and the car, to take the driver’s test.

DB: And did you pass the first time, how did that go? TK: No, I did not pass the first time. I got caught at an intersection at a red light, and I was informed by the instructor that that was not allowed, even though everybody else did it. So my test ended right there, and then about two weeks later I took the test again, and passed it.

DB: No issues with the red light, you learned your lesson? TK: I learned my lesson. DB: You mentioned that you went to a Catholic school. Was church an important factor in your family’s life?

TK: That’s somewhat difficult. We went to church every day, with the school. My mother always went to church. My father went a lot, not every Sunday. There were some issues with— could we stop a minute? Break in recording

DB: Are you ready? TK: My father had some issues with the priest at our church, so he sort of quit going to church for quite a long period of time, until actually I was an adult man.

DB: But your activities at church, did you have to go to Sunday school?

TK: They didn’t have Sunday school, they had—of course, being in a parochial school, we had Catechism classes. We went to church on a daily basis, like I said. There was Confirmation classes, as you got a little bit older. So we were in church quite often.

DB: Events that would happen, like the Fourth of July, was that a big deal in Dayton, any events around that?

TK: Yeah, there was a town baseball team, which back then, which back then was very important. It was kind of the highlight of the week, in the summer, during baseball season. There was a parade. There was always a big parade on Memorial Day. My older brother, Michael, was born on Memorial Day, so he always thought the parade was for his birthday. But they always had a big huge parade, and then a community picnic, on one of the farms of the residents of Dayton.

DB: Potluck? TK: Big giant potluck and barbeque, and the whole town, after the parade, would go out there for a big giant picnic.

DB: So the town had significant events that brought people together? TK: Yes. The community was very close. All the moms had control over pretty much all the kids.

DB: So this is coming into the mid ‘60s now. And there were a lot of things going on in the world. In the early ‘60s, you had the Berlin Crisis, and you had the Cuban Missile Crisis. Did you pay attention to politics, or did you have any focus on that, were you watching the news, did you pay attention to world events?

TK: No, I really didn’t. You know, at sixteen years old, I was mostly concerned with my girlfriend. My older brother was in the air force, so I did pay attention to the Cuban Missile Crisis, because that involved him. He was stationed down in the southern part of the United States, and was quite involved in what was going on.

DB: And how did your family feel about having him in the service? TK: There was never any question about being in the service. Of course, my mother having lost her only brother, was always somewhat concerned, but I never realized until I was older.

DB: She didn’t talk about it much? TK: No. DB: And as you’re in high school, what plans did you have for the future? Did you plan to go to college, were you looking for adventure? What did you want to do? What did you see in your future?

TK: I did not have plans to go to college. I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do. I ended up getting in quite a bit of trouble in high school, and eventually—actually, I left high school in March of my senior year. That’s when I joined the military.

DB: And do you want to—was it prankster kind of trouble, or girl trouble, car trouble? TK: Ah, school trouble, nothing serious, legally serious. It was serious as far as the school was concerned, and it was serious as far as my father was concerned.

DB: So, you dropped out of high school? TK: I dropped out of high school. DB: Two months before graduation? TK: Two months before graduation. DB: Did they give you a certificate or anything, or you just got nothing? TK: No. When I came back from my first tour in Vietnam, they gave me my high school diploma.

DB: The school did, they just gave it to you? TK: Yeah. DB: So this is March, I think you said, of sixty— TK: Nineteen sixty-five. DB: And you’re out of school, you don’t really have a plan. What do you think you want to do?

TK: Well my father—it did not take my father long to let me know, in no uncertain terms, that I needed to go to work, or I needed to go in the military. I was not going to be sitting around.

DB: And? TK: And I decided to join the military. DB: And what was the process of joining the military? TK: You just went down to Minneapolis and talked to a recruiter. DB: What did you tell the recruiter what you wanted to do, and what kind of questions did he ask, or what kind of promises did he make?

TK: Well I was seventeen years old, so my parents had to sign for me to join. They didn’t really offer you many different things at that time. The Vietnam War was, you know, getting wound up then. And they were just looking for bodies. After I joined the military, then came the battery of tests.

DB: Aptitude, intelligence, all that sort of thing? TK: Yes. DB: So you didn’t go to enlist with any particular requests or options for your service? 33

TK: No I did not. DB: Okay, so you were going to take what they gave you, pretty much? TK: Pretty much. DB: Or did you not even know enough to ask, because you are pretty young— TK: Yeah, I didn’t really know enough to ask. I wanted to be helicopter pilot, but I didn’t know how that happened.

DB: Did you bring that up to the recruiter, did they tell you anything about what was required in that?

TK: Yes I did, actually. I was tested, I took all the tests, and I had a very high aptitude, so there were many different possibilities, and I told them I wanted to go to flight school. And so they said Yeah, that was fine, and they signed me up to do that. And then one of the things you had to do was take your eye exam. At that time, you could only have twenty-twenty vision. You couldn’t have twenty-twenty corrected. And I failed the vision test, so they told me I couldn’t be a pilot.

DB: But now you’re signed up. TK: So now I’m in the army. DB: So, (Laughs) what are they going to do with you? Are you on your way to basic training? TK: On my way to basic training. DB: You came down to Minneapolis. You have to go to the induction center on Washington Avenue?

TK: Right. DB: And how did that go, what was your experience in there? TK: You know, you went into a big line, and followed the yellow footsteps, to get your physical, and all that.

DB: Was it a rigorous physical? TK: Well, pretty rigorous for when you weren’t really used to being in a room full of half- dressed men, and you know, kind of being pushed around.

DB: But you did it? TK: But yeah, I did it, like everyone else. DB: From the induction center, you have to go to basic training. And what was that process? TK: Right, we got on a train in Minneapolis.

DB: First train ride? TK: First train ride, to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. I don’t remember where the train stopped, but we got off the train, and we got onto busses, and pulled into Fort Leonard Wood at about two o’clock in the morning. And that’s where things began to get interesting.

DB: How did things get interesting, what happened? TK: Well, we got off the bus, and there was a huge man with corporal sleeves on, screaming at everybody at the top of his lungs. He was pointing at us, and pushing everybody around. Everybody was a little nervous about what was happening. They ushered us off the busses, and into a big building, where they started separating everybody out. They told you what company you were in.

DB: This was in April, ’65, probably? TK: No, in March. DB: Still in March. So it’s cool down there? TK: Yeah. Weather was much colder than I had thought it would be. Because it seemed like it was down south, but it really was Missouri.

DB: Kind of half-way down, wasn’t it? TK: Half-way down. So it snowed there, and it was damp and cold. DB: And when you first get there, you go to the reception station. TK: Right. DB: And they take your clothes away, and they give you new clothes. TK: Take your clothes away. They cut your hair, everybody’s hair. DB: They cut it real close. TK: Very close. DB: And all of the sudden, you thought you knew everybody from the reception station, and now everybody’s got the same haircut and the same clothes?

TK: You couldn’t recognize anybody. And there was always somebody yelling at you, telling you to get somewhere. It was—at the time, I don’t want to use the word terrifying, but it was scary. First time away, really, from home. With nowhere to go, nowhere to turn, nowhere to change your mind and decide you don’t want to do it. It was scary.

DB: Into the unknown. TK: Correct.

DB: You grew up in a small town, in a tight-knit community. Everybody’s a lot like you. And now you’re at Fort Leonard Wood. You’re a stranger among strangers. And people are from all over the region, and all over the country. You’ve got people from everywhere.

TK: Yes. DB: And some are drafted, some are enlisted, some are national guard. How did you get along?

TK: Right away, everybody was too afraid to really do much of anything. I had never really been around people of color, never been around people from the South, never been around people from the East Coast. So it was very interesting. The one thing everybody had in common was, we just wanted to survive the day. (Laughs)

DB: And so that helped you bond together. TK: That helped us bond together. There was one man that I became pretty close friends with, and he ended up being our acting platoon sergeant.

DB: Wearing the dark blue arm band with the stripes on it? TK: Wearing the dark blue arm band, with the three stripes on it. DB: Do you remember why he was selected to be the sergeant? TK: He was a little bit older. He carried himself very well. I think he had a couple of years of college. He just had more experience than the rest of us.

DB: Some of you were draftees, some were enlistees. TK: Correct. DB: Some were enlistees into the national guard. Do you remember anyone, or significant numbers of people, who were drafted, that were upset about it, that had an attitude about it?

TK: There actually were very few differences, at that level. The people who had been drafted, more or less accepted the fact that they had been drafted. At that time, in the sixties, it was very common, pretty much, when you were in high school, you knew that when you got out, that there was probably a pretty good chance that you were going to be in the military of some sort.

DB: So there weren’t any rebellions of the trainees or anything like that. People just accepted that they were going to be—

TK: Not really. There was always some, but very few. DB: Meeting your drill sergeants, after the reception station. How did that go? TK: That went about as well as meeting our acting sergeants at the reception compound. The sergeants were very forceful, loud. They wanted to make sure everybody knew exactly who was in charge, and explain very clearly to everyone what to do, and when to do it.

DB: And you’d been a little rebellious in high school. Did you have a problem with that, or how did you adapt?

TK: To be real honest, I was too scared to be very rebellious, at first. And then when I saw how the rebellious people were treated, compared to the quiet people, I decided that I would rather be quiet.

DB: Do you remember your barracks, what were they like? TK: The barracks back then were all wooden, two story— DB: World War II barracks? TK: World War II barracks, with coal furnaces: cold, not very friendly. DB: Did you have to keep the windows open all the time? TK: I think probably some. There was always some airflow. You always had to have fire guards, watching the furnaces.

DB: Did you have open bays, with twenty-some guys on the floor? TK: Open bays, with double-bunks. I’m thinking maybe closer to forty on a floor. DB: And a wall locker and a foot locker? TK: No wall lockers, just foot lockers. DB: And any problem with barrack thefts or anything like that? TK: Not in basic. Further on in the military, there were some problems with it, but in basic, I don’t recall anybody really having much time to be alone, or a way to get in to very much trouble.

DB: And once training got going, did you start enjoying that, or how did it go? You got on the rifle range. Did you get any bayonet training?

TK: I was small in stature, so the physical aspect of the training came quite easily for me. I was in good shape. Growing up, we ran around, and ran all the time. So I was in pretty good shape, physically. I recall some of the heavier men had difficulty with the monkey bars and the rings and the different exercises that they would do. I had it fairly easy.

DB: If you come in heavy, they work to make you lose weight. TK: They work to make sure you lost some weight, and build some muscle mostly. DB: And if you come in too skinny, they work to pump you up. TK: Yeah. I was skinny. (Laughs)

DB: So, you get through basic training, and you graduated. And you have a graduation ceremony, and everybody goes every which way, to their individual training courses. And what were you programmed into?

TK: At that point, I was programmed into infantry. So I went to infantry AIT out in Fort Ord, California.

DB: Okay. And how did you get out to Fort Ord, did you have a leave in between? TK: Yes, we had a leave. I think it was thirty days, thirty day leave. DB: And you went home? TK: I went home to Minnesota. DB: And how did that go? TK: It went real well, except the day that we arrived back in Minnesota was the day of the huge tornado in Fridley, which flattened Fridley. And one of the guys that I came home with was from Fridley, so his parents’ home was completely destroyed. So that was—

DB: An adventurous homecoming. TK: Yeah. We drove in a car from Fort Leonard Wood. DB: Somebody had a car? TK: No, his parents had a car. And so they didn’t know about the tornado either. We didn’t know anything about the tornado until we got here.

DB: So what a welcome home. TK: Yes. So then we got on a plane after leave, and flew out to Fort Ord, California. DB: And how were people treating you as a young soldier? People in the airport and on the planes?

TK: They generally treated us pretty well. The Vietnam War had not really wound up a lot yet. It was still early, 1965. The first major units had not been in, so people were very supportive, I would say.

DB: And you arrive at Fort Ord, and you have to find your unit? How did you get from the airport to the unit, how did all that go?

TK: I can’t remember exactly, but I believe we took a taxi from the airport to Fort Ord. And when we got there, we had shown the guards at the gate our orders, and they gave us directions to our AIT Company. At that point, as things began to be a little bit easier in the military, you were treated a little bit differently. You were no longer in boot camp. You were now actually a soldier, so you had some idea of what was going on, and what the expectations were.

DB: It’s more about imparting knowledge than harassing and terrorizing you.

TK: Correct, although there was always some of that going on. DB: Who were your training NCOs within the company, did you have the shake-n-bakes, the NCO Academy NCOs that were in the unit with you, who was doing a lot of the training or the organizing? Did you have professional drill sergeants that were steering you around?

TK: We had professional drill sergeants. There weren’t a lot of real young NCOs. Most of them had been in the military for some time.

DB: And the quality of the training that you were getting, did that seem like it was pretty good?

TK: Quality of the training was pretty good. Infantry training, we did a lot of work in the field: a lot of marching, a lot of rifle training, and a lot of more intense training.

DB: As your infantry training began, you’ve got the draftees and the enlistees. Were people getting along okay, you’re not seeing any problems from bad morale from the draftees or anything like that?

TK: No, I would have to say that the morale was quite good with everybody. There was really no difference. Jokingly, sometimes there would be, because the regular enlisted would have a different serial number than the ones who were drafted, who had a US number, and then regular army enlisted would have an RA number. But very little difference, you know, I had friends who were drafted, I had a lot of good friends who were regular enlisted.

DB: Everybody was just in it together? TK: Yes. DB: And you’re in infantry training. Did you have any options that were made available to you, further training that you could go into, or other things that you might be able to do?

TK: Yeah, at that time of course, they still pushed you hard. And we did a lot of marching, a lot of running. We were on a run one day, and there was a second lieutenant in the company, that ran up alongside of me, and tried to push me to drop out. You know, to give up. And I wasn’t going to do that. So eventually, he said to me, “You might be able to do this okay, but don’t ever think about going to jump school, because you’d never make it there.”

DB: And? TK: Well of course, being who I was, I signed up for jump school immediately, just to prove him wrong.

DB: You’re going to show him. And what was the process for signing up for jump school? TK: If they had people who were interested, they called you in, to explain what jump school was, what it would involve. And if you were willing to go for it, and of course I said yes, I was.

DB: Did you really know what it was, parachuting?

TK: No. Well, I knew what parachuting was, but—well, I thought I knew what parachuting was. I didn’t really know what parachuting was, and I certainly didn’t know what jump school was. But I signed up anyway because I wanted to prove the lieutenant wrong.

DB: And you had to take a PT test or something? TK: I don’t recall that. DB: So there was no—you don’t recall any special training, qualifications or anything to get into jump school?

TK: I don’t recall that. There may have been, but I don’t remember, because I didn’t have a lot of difficulty with the PT tests.

DB: So you’re in Advanced Individual Training for infantry at Fort Ord, you graduate from AIT. And now you’re off to—

TK: Fort Benning, Georgia. DB: How did the trip to Fort Benning go, was there a group of you, did you go individually? TK: Yeah, there was a group of twenty to twenty-five of us from the AIT Company that went. DB: And you enlisted for three years? TK: Right. DB: So you didn’t have any further requirements to go to jump school, no further demands on your enlistment?

TK: No. DB: So you arrive at Fort Benning. TK: Yep, we arrived at Fort Benning, and once again, we’re marched off of a bus. The drill sergeants came out and started screaming again.

DB: Are they drill sergeants, or the black hats? TK: Well, they were black hats. But— DB: It’s the airborne training. TK: The airborne cadre. All of them were in extremely good shape, physically. Everything you did required moving at a rapid pace. It was August in 1965, in Georgia.

DB: It’s hot and muggy. TK: Really hot, really muggy. We had to go through these—when it got to a certain temperature, I think it was ninety—once any hour they’d run you through to the showers, with all your clothes on, out in the field. Just so nobody got heatstroke.

DB: The training had to go on. TK: And the training continued. DB: And the black hats never seemed to sweat, did they? TK: They never seemed to sweat at all, and their uniforms always seemed crisp. We could never figure that out. I found out later, that what would happen is they would switch cadre. So someone else with one of the five or six or however many they were, they would switch them out so you would never really notice. But you’d have somebody who was fresh.

DB: You’d be there all day, but they’d get a break. TK: (Laughs) You would be there! DB: So, describe jump school, the three phases. TK: Well, ground training. You know, it was—what’s the word—over and over and over. DB: PLFs? TK: Yeah, ground training. Repetitious, very repetitious on the landings, exits, you know. Hours upon hours, it seemed like.

DB: Repetition. TK: Long days. DB: I want to clarify, PLF is a— TK: Parachute landing fall. DB: Teaches you how to roll. TK: Teaches you how to roll, and not land or hit or push any of your bones, but use the meat part of your bodies.

DB: So you got your ground week, and then? TK: Ground week, and then tower week. They have 250 foot towers, which are still there to this day.

DB: They came from a New Jersey amusement park in 1940. TK: And so they did tower training there, they had a thirty-four foot tower, that you would now practice jumping out of.

DB: With a mock-up of an airplane door on the thirty-four foot tower. TK: Right. Yeah, you would, like you were exiting an aircraft, you wore your parachute harness and everything. And you’d run these cables, and if you didn’t have your parachute

41 harness on tight enough, you had some extreme pressure on your male genital organs. So you learned how to make sure everything was tight, when you went out.

DB: Did you have any trouble exiting the thirty-four foot tower? The army determined that thirty-four feet was the optimum height for fear of height.

TK: Right. I remember the first time, it was pretty scary. After that, it just became more repetitious. When you jumped out, and you slid down on the end of the cable, then you had to report to one of the black hat cadre, and they would critique you on your exit, and how you carried yourself. You had to make at least three exits that were perfect, before you could get out of the thirty-four foot tower phase.

DB: And did you have any trouble with that? TK: I went pretty well. I would say probably average. Maybe a little ahead of average. If you did something really bad, then they would make you do deep squats with your parachute harness on, or duck walk with your parachute harness on. So that really encouraged you to make sure you were doing it correctly.

DB: And the third week? TK: Jump week was exciting. It was pretty scary. We did have a day off, somewhere in there, a Sunday. It was a holiday of some sort. Might have been Labor Day. So we had a day off, and we got to go up to this pool. We did have a bunch of Navy SEALs. SEAL Team 1 was going through jump school at the same time. So we went up to the pool. They had a big pool there at Fort Benning, and we got to spend the day up there relaxing, which I don’t think all of the classes did, we just happened to hit it lucky. But then jump week started. We got our harnesses on, we got our chutes on, and we got everything packed. Checked how we loaded the aircraft. There was a lot of tension, a lot of nervousness.

DB: Do you remember the aircraft, was it a C-119? TK: It was a C-119. DB: Alabama National Guard, probably. TK: Yeah. It took off, and suddenly the reality of, you’re going to jump out of an airplane, became real. But there was, you know, there wasn’t any turning back. Everybody who was there had already been through all the training, so we were pretty much convinced that we were going to go out. My first jump, I was probably halfway in the middle of the string, and I remember coming to the door, but not really—you didn’t really have an opportunity to hesitate. When you made the turn and got into the door, you were out.

DB: It’s like a freight train, going out. TK: Yeah. They had somebody in the back of the string, pushing. And there was no stopping until he was the last one out.

DB: Did you ever see anyone not jump?

TK: No. DB: It would have been pretty hard to. TK: Pretty hard for you to not be able to jump. I did hear that there was one person who just sat down. But I never saw anybody.

DB: What was your experience on the first jump? TK: Terror. (Laughs) You felt the chute open, your eyes are closed, and you felt the jerk of the chute opening, and you looked, and all of the sudden, the fear factor was gone and it was just an exhilaration, hard to describe.

DB: It worked, I’m going to live. TK: It worked. You’re floating down, kind of really enjoying it, looking around, and then all of the sudden, the ground was there, before you could really think of it, or get ready. So you tried your best to do a parachute landing fall. Get your chute turned in the proper direction, and do your landing. You hit pretty hard, much harder than in training. And that was it.

DB: And the subsequent jumps, in jump school? TK: Jump school, yeah they all went well. I don’t remember a lot about them. DB: You have to do five jumps in jump school. TK: Five jumps, one each day. We went through all five, no problem. There was one guy who had hurt his leg, one of the SEALs. So his leg was all swelled up. But we decided as a group that we weren’t going to let him not graduate with us. So on the runs between jumps, as the training continued, we took turns kind of carrying him along with us. And he graduated along with everybody else.

DB: And the army guys then obviously got along very well with the navy guys, everybody was in it together, and worked together?

TK: Yeah, pretty good. Jump school is jump school. It didn’t matter where you came from. We had an older staff sergeant who was in jump school with us, who came from the 101st Airborne. But he wasn’t qualified.

DB: So, by older you mean twenty-five, or thirty? TK: Yeah, probably late twenties. DB: Looks pretty good nowadays, doesn’t it. But in those days, he’s an old guy. TK: He was one of the first KIAs [Killed in Action] that I saw in Vietnam. DB: So you continued with him, in the service? TK: Yeah.

DB: At some point, you volunteered for Special Forces training. What was the process for that? When did that happen?

TK: How it went was, after jump school, I had an opportunity to go to rigger school. DB: At Fort Benning? TK: No. At Fort Lee, Virginia. That’s where rigger school was. DB: Quartermaster school. TK: I did not want to have someone else packing my chutes that I was jumping. So I decided to sign up for rigger school, to at least make sure I could pack my own chutes.

DB: Was that difficult to get into? TK: I don’t recall it being difficult to get in to. All of my aptitude tests were quite high, so it really wasn’t any problem. So I went to rigger school which was three months long, and I was assigned to the 101st Airborne.

DB: At? TK: At Campbell, Fort Campbell. DB: Kentucky. TK: Kentucky. So I was there for just a couple of months. DB: So the 101st, at this point, did they already have one brigade in Vietnam? TK: I don’t think so. DB: So they were all there, then. TK: They were all there. DB: And they were still a jumping unit, at that point. TK: Right. DB: Did you enjoy being a rigger? TK: Yeah, it was okay. DB: Did you get to jump very often? TK: We got to jump a lot. For a while, I was actually on a jump team. So we jumped every day.

DB: A sky diving team, or regular military jumps? TK: Regular military jumps, because they were testing out jumping out of C-141, jet aircraft.

DB: And how was that experience? TK: It was very interesting, because your exit strategy is completely different than out of a prop plane. You know, no forceful exit. All of the training that we were taught in jump school, none of it applied when we were jumping out of a jet. And we tail-gate jumped out of C-130s.

DB: What was that experience? Clarify, they lower the back ramp, and you step off the ramp on the back?

TK: Yeah, they lower the back ramp. That’s probably—I always thought it was the most fun jump to make, because there’s no prop blast, no banging the side of the plane. You just kind of jumped up in the air, and the plane left. And you were still there.

DB: (Laughs) On your way down though. TK: On your way down, yeah! Lot of fun. I had a lot of fun doing that. DB: So how many jumps did you get in when you were at Fort Campbell? TK: You know, I have the log somewhere, but I think over forty. DB: Lots of jumps. TK: Lots of jumps. DB: Were they going to send you to jump master school? TK: Eventually they will. So I was nearing my first year, completion in the army. And I had already been, at some point in there, I don’t remember exactly, talking about Special Forces, and what it took to get into Special Forces.

DB: You’re talking with who? TK: Some Special Forces guys, first that we saw. In jump school, there was a Special Forces recruiter. But I was too young, at the time. I was still only seventeen. They just said they couldn’t do it, so. But now I was eighteen, and I was nearing the end of my first year enlistment, and I talked to someone, some type of recruiting person. And found out that if I would reenlist, that they would give me a waiver to go to Special Forces.

DB: An age waiver? TK: An age waiver. DB: And what would reenlisting entail, another three years? TK: Another three years. DB: In addition to the three you’d signed up for? TK: No, my first enlistment would end on the one year, and then I would reenlist for three years. And basically start my three years over. And so I thought about that, and it was just something I wanted to do. So I signed it.

DB: Sounded like a good adventure? TK: Yes. DB: What did you know about Special Forces at this point? TK: I didn’t know a real lot, except that they were cool. You know, I was a scrappy, young guy who—

DB: Eighteen year old. TK: —thought I knew everything. Thought, Well, I can do this. I can be cool like all these other guys.

DB: So, in addition to having to do another enlistment, were there any tests or qualifications that you had to go through, did you have to go before a board or anything like that?

TK: No, I originally went to the Third Special Forces group as a rigger. DB: And where were they? TK: At Fort Bragg. So when I got down there, under the advice of the Special Forces recruiter, I went there as a rigger. Talked to the sergeant major, told him I was interested in Special Forces training. So I could train in a training group, while I was in the Third Special Forces.

DB: So you wore a beret and a candy stripe, at this point? TK: Candy stripe. The old hated candy stripe. (Laughs) DB: Which is, to clarify, a small stripe, about a quarter of an inch high, and about the width of a normal unit flash. You wear that on your beret, under the crest, it means that you’re assigned to a group—

TK: That you’re assigned to Special Forces, but you’re not Special Forces qualified. So I went to weapons training. I already had an infantry MOS. And slowly but surely made my way through. I was awarded my S in January, 1967.

DB: Discuss the training a little bit. What kind of, you had a weapons MOS, a weapons specialty, and what did that training involve? Was it a lot of physical training, was it more making just sure you had the knowledge you needed?

TK: No, it was a lot more knowledge than physical. Course, there’s always physical in any military training, but it was much more intense than regular infantry training. You did individual weapons.

DB: Which included what? TK: Well, everything from an 11B, everything from a 45 up to a 106. DB: And a recoilless rifle.

TK: A lot of repetition, a lot of training on the weapons, a lot of statistics and ballistics, nomenclature, tear-down.

DB: Did you get a lot of range time, did you actually get to shoot the weapons? TK: Yeah, you got range time quite a bit. Especially more towards the end. Just very intense training. Handling the weapons.

DB: Foreign weapons too? TK: Yeah, foreign weapons, AKs, SKSs, Swedish Ks, Thompsons, I’m trying to think. DB: The older weapons, M1s, all of that? TK: Yeah. DB: Do you think that the quality of the people giving you the training was very high, they knew what they were doing, and they were very professional?

TK: Yes. Yeah, they were very good. All the harassment part that occurred when you first go into the military was pretty much finished. It was more teaching you how to be comfortable with pretty much any weapon you picked up, even if you had never seen it before. They taught us how to build a zip gun, two or three different ways of doing that.

DB: A zip gun is a homemade gun. The people that you were going through the training with, were motivated?

TK: Very motivated. Much more intense on being really qualified, than when I got into the regular army unit. At Fort Campbell, there was a lot of slough off people, people who didn’t—

DB: Earlier on you mean? TK: Yeah, earlier on, in the regular army. And there was none of that during Special Forces training.

DB: So, you complete the training. TK: Completed the training. DB: You had a graduation ceremony? TK: Had a graduation, yes. DB: And now you’ve got a full flash. TK: Now I’ve got a full flash. DB: And that was a big deal? TK: That was a really big deal. Me and my buddy, Jimmy Salaga was his name, pranced around like we were king of the hill. We had never been anywhere or done anything, but we were, pardon the phrase, but “Badass Special Forces guys.”

DB: And where did you take your badass attitude, you didn’t take it to Fayetteville, did you? TK: Yeah well, we tried, but that didn’t work very well because there really was some bad guys there. So, from there, I contacted a lady, I don’t know if you know her, Mrs. Alexander. I was given a phone number to call in Washington DC.

DB: You’re still in the third group, now? TK: Still in the third group. DB: And you’ve just graduated? TK: Just graduated. So I called Mrs. Alexander and told her I wanted to go to Vietnam. DB: And what had you heard about Vietnam, there must have been a lot of—your trainers, who had been over there, a lot of people—

TK: Yeah, you know, they said it was an exciting place. A lot of things going on. You know, jungle, completely different, a good place to use all of this training you had, a place to just be everything you heard about. Be assigned to a Special Forces A-team, just doing the dream.

DB: So you call up your personnel manager at the Pentagon? TK: Yep, at the Pentagon. Her name was Mrs. Alexander, and she asked me a few questions, not much. And I just told her I wanted to go to Vietnam, and she said, “Well, I can take care of that.” So about six days later, I had orders to report to fifth Special Forces group, and to head to Nha Trang, Vietnam.

DB: Did you go home before that? TK: Yeah, I went home. DB: This is ‘66? TK: Sixty-seven. DB: When, early in the year, wintertime? TK: April. April of ‘67. DB: And how did your flight home go? Or your trip home? TK: The trip home went good. We actually drove. I drove and I think I got as far as Chicago, and then I ended up getting in an airplane.

DB: You drove up with someone else from your class? TK: I drove up with another friend who was going up that way. DB: And so the flight, no issues, everything went well? TK: No, I had only flown in one other airplane that landed in my life.

DB: (Laughs) That was a new experience? TK: Yeah, that was kind of a new experience. We joked— DB: What was scarier, jumping out of a plane or finally having to land? TK: It was sort of fine, because we told the stewardesses of course. DB: Are you in uniform now? TK: Oh yes, in uniform. They thought that was pretty strange. But it was a different feeling, the wheels hitting the runway, than when you’re exiting the aircraft.

DB: And so how did things go at home? TK: It went real good. DB: What did your parents think of the new Green Beret? TK: My mom was very quiet about it. My dad was very encouraging and very proud of me. DB: Was your brother still in the air force? TK: My brother was still in the air force. DB: And where was he? TK: Well, he was in Mississippi at that time. Eventually, he was stationed in Duluth, at the airbase in Duluth. He finished the last two years of his enlistment in Duluth.

DB: Did he go to Vietnam? TK: No, he never went. DB: So, you’re home on leave. You’re reconnecting with your friends. TK: Home on leave, reconnecting with my friends. Some of them had been in Vietnam, and were back. Some of them had been in some pretty hellacious situations.

DB: And what kind of stories did they tell you about that? TK: Some were good. A couple of them had been in the marines. One of them had been with the First Cav, in the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley. They were pretty quiet, they were different. Their personalities were different.

DB: But they knew that you were going. And how did they interact with you, based on that? TK: Well, they knew I was in Special Forces, too. So they knew I was a little better trained than most. At least a little better trained. You know, they gave me some ideas on things to do, to not do. Of course, they were in line units. I was going to be on an A-team. So our scenarios were set up to be different. Or thought they were.

DB: You said you had some friends who had been in the Ashau Valley with the First Cav. Were they there—

TK: No, in the Ia Drang. DB: Oh, the Ia Drang Valley. And was that the Colonel Moore story that had been on? TK: Yeah, one of my good friends was there. He was pretty traumatized. He was real quiet, drank quite a bit.

DB: Do you still see him? Is he still around? TK: He died. He died pretty young. DB: As a result of some of that? TK: Well, you know. He was wounded a couple of times. But he had real severe PTSD issues. DB: Was that sobering for you, to see these guys when you’re home on leave? TK: Well, I was young, so I didn’t really notice it as much. DB: Didn’t think that much of it? TK: Didn’t think that much of it. And I didn’t see him a lot, I spent a lot of time with my girlfriend, with my family.

DB: And what’s she thinking about you being in the service? TK: Well, I’m not sure. (Laughs) DB: Maybe it didn’t come up that much. TK: Yeah, she was worried. Concerned. I just told her, “Well, you don’t have to worry.” DB: And this was the same girl you’d been seeing in high school? TK: It was—she was my first serious girlfriend. Yeah. So I finished my leave and said my goodbyes. And my buddies, a couple of my buddies, took me down to the airport.

DB: Now, you’re wearing your green beret and your jump boots? TK: Oh yeah. DB: Feeling pretty cocky, or how are you feeling? TK: Yeah, still feeling pretty cocky. I’m the king of the hill, I’m thinking. So, flew out of there with a little sad goodbye to my girlfriend. So I was off.

DB: Where were you going to? San Francisco, or Seattle? TK: Seattle.

DB: And how much time did you spend at Fort Lewis? TK: Not a real lot of time, I think we were there about four or five days. DB: Were you doing processing to go overseas, or were you— TK: Processing to go overseas. I was with a bunch of Special Forces guys. I was the youngest. DB: Did you know any of them? TK: Oh yeah. DB: You had been in training with them? TK: Right. And Robbie, my best friend, was a medic in the Third. He’s the one who gave me all my shots and everything, you know, processing out of Bragg. So we met up there, I was a Spec 4. He was a staff sergeant.

DB: So you didn’t make sergeant, once you were qualified into group? TK: I’m trying to think, I didn’t, because I first made sergeant when I first got to the Fifth. Well, what had happened was that I had gotten an Article 15.

DB: At Fort Bragg? TK: At Fort Bragg. And lost one of my grades. DB: Ah, okay. So that’s why you were a Spec 4. TK: So that’s why I was a Spec 4. DB: What did you do to lose your stripe? TK: I’d rather not discuss that. DB: Okay, you failed to demonstrate the maturity that was necessary to be a sergeant— TK: —that was required to be a sergeant. DB: So, you get to Seattle, you do your processing, you get on an airplane. TK: Ah, it was an airplane, it was a charter. It was a Continental charter, I think. To Cam Ranh Bay.

DB: The route that you took, did you go to Hawaii, did you go to Japan? TK: We went to Hawaii, and then we went to Guam. And from Guam, I think we went into Cam Ranh Bay.

DB: What was the attitude on the plane as you were flying over? TK: It was good, there was some apprehension. I was with NCOs, Special Forces NCOs who had been there before. So it was quiet, reserved for the most part.

DB: But, you’re not alone. TK: No, I was not alone. I was with friends. DB: So, the plane lands at Cam Ranh? TK: The plane landed at Cam Ranh Bay. The gates open, we came down the stairs, and it was hot. It was hotter than it was in Georgia in August.

DB: Did you remember what time of day it was? TK: It must have been midday. It was really hot. DB: What month was this, now? TK: May. First of May. DB: Okay, of 1967? TK: Yeah. So, we came down the stairs, and one of the things that really stuck with me through all the years, was how hot it was. We got off the plane, and I kept thinking, well— because I’ve jumped out of a lot of airplanes, I’m thinking—as soon as we get away from the prop blast of the aircraft—

DB: The engine heat? TK: The engine heat. And as we moved away for a few minutes, then suddenly I realized it was still just as hot. And we were no longer near the aircraft. So. They brought us into the processing place, in Cam Ranh Bay. Assigned us to a barracks. One of the senior NCOs made a call to Nha Trang, because they had a habit of grabbing Special Forces guys when they came in the country, and sending them to other units. And he was aware of that. So they made a call to Nha Trang and sent trucks down, immediately. Took all the Special Forces guys. So, we went up to Nha Trang.

DB: What were your thoughts about Vietnam, did you have to drive up Highway 1? TK: We had to drive up the highway, and we didn’t have any weapons. DB: And you didn’t have any weapons, and you’re on these trucks, and it’s daytime? TK: It was daytime. It was a little scary, because I wasn’t quite sure what to look forward to. The jungle along the highway in certain areas, and the people, and the smell, were all so much different than what we were used to seeing. Or from what I was used to seeing. I was a little scared because I didn’t have a weapon, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do, if we had gotten into trouble. But we made it up there okay, no problem.

DB: And when you got to group headquarters in Nha Trang? TK: Well, we were brought in to Personnel. We were broke down and people were sent to different units, different teams all over the place, some on C-teams, A-teams, and all the different—

DB: Did they give you a choice, did they ask you what you were interested in doing? TK: No, nobody asked. DB: You just go where you’re needed. TK: Just go where you’re told. So me and Robbie, my friend the medic, and a couple of other guys—well there were several other guys—were sent down to the Delta compound. We asked, “Why are we going down there?” And they said, Well, your assignment isn’t here yet, but it will probably be here in a day or two. So we went down there.

DB: Did you know what your assignment was yet? TK: No, then the unit we ended up in—no, they didn’t— DB: So you’re just kind of on hold? TK: On hold. They said that within a couple of days, we should know where we’d be assigned. So we went down to the Delta compound, hung out there, went to the local bar.

DB: You got into town? TK: Got into town. DB: What were your impressions going into town for the first time? TK: Again, I was with senior NCOs who had already been there, so I knew some of the expectations. It was a little crazy. It was a little wild.

DB: How so? TK: Seeing the bar girls and the drinking. All the things were available, the food on the street vendors, the people, the three wheel bike taxis, the bikes, and the smell. The smell was very memorable. It was one of the things that always stuck with me. It was a—just a smell. Garbage smell. So after a few days, we got called, and they said, You’re going to fly up to Da Nang, to this place called C & C [Command and Control]. And from there, they’ll tell you where you’re going.

DB: Did you know anything about Command and Control? TK: No. So we asked what Command and Control was, and they said, Well, they’ll tell you when you get there. And I thought, Okay.

DB: The other NCOs you were with, did they give you any clues? TK: No, nobody knew. So we got on an aircraft and flew up to Da Nang, and they picked us up at the airport.

DB: With a truck, with a vehicle?

TK: I think it was a truck. And we were brought over to the—actually, to the naval compound on Monkey Mountain. And brought in there, and brought in through a very secure gate, into a very secure area. Then, at that point was when we started thinking, “Okay.”

DB: This is something special? TK: “This is something special. Why are we here?” (Laughs) So they ushered us into a room and explained to us that we had been chosen to be members of Command and Control North. They called it CNC.

DB: Any explanation as to why you were chosen, in particular? TK: No, no explanation as to why we were chosen. DB: But was it made to seem like it was a special deal that you were chosen? TK: Yeah, it was a special deal, but they didn’t say why we were the ones who were chosen. Then they brought us into a very secure room. They uncovered these maps, the maps on the wall. We were looking at the maps, waiting for someone to come in, and we notice that most of the area of the map wasn’t even in Vietnam. It was all right on the border, and it showed Laos and Cambodia and North Vietnam and the DMZ. And just like the western half of Vietnam itself. An officer came in, a captain, and started explaining that we were now working for a secret organization called MACVSOG: Military Assistance Command in Vietnam, Special Studies and Observation Group. We were all like, “What?”

DB: This doesn’t sound so tough, sounds academic, right? TK: Yeah. And then they explain that there were secret operational teams that were running missions into Laos and into North Vietnam and into Cambodia. Reconnaissance teams. And that we were assigned to Operational Base 1, which was in Phu Bai. They made us sign a whole bunch of documents saying that we would not disclose anything we saw or did, to anyone ever. Under penalty of—severe penalty. Imprisonment. We signed probably twenty documents, you know, all saying that you couldn’t keep any photographs, you couldn’t keep anything. Couldn’t discuss it with anybody. So now we were—I was getting a little nervous then, because all of a sudden, I didn’t feel quite as badass as I thought I was.

DB: Not so cocky anymore. TK: No. So they put us out, there was a safe house in Da Nang, and they took us over to the safe house. We stayed there a couple of days, and then there was some very grisly looking characters who would come in at night. No uniforms, or sterile uniforms.

DB: Tiger stripes or something? TK: Yeah, tiger stripes, or just OD [Olive Drab] uniforms, but no markings on them, no rank, no unit insignias, no anything. Nothing.

DB: But these were pretty weathered looking guys?

TK: Very rough looking characters. And then after a couple of days, they send us up to Phu Bai. By now, we’re—at least I am—starting to get a little nervous about what exactly are we doing. You know, maybe this isn’t exactly what I thought it was going to be like. Because it wasn’t like the A-teams that I had heard about. And so we took off for Phu Bai, and on the way up there, there was just a tremendous amount of chatter on the radio. The radio was going, and something was wrong. You know, you could just hear the chatter back and forth. Some frantic-type voices. All kinds of different stuff. So we landed at Phu Bai, and what happened that day was they had launched a large force into Ashau Valley, into an area known as Oscar Eight, which was an alleged Bin Tram, the main headquarters of the North Vietnamese Army, supply depot. And everything that could have went wrong, went wrong. I think there were something like twenty-six aircraft shot down. Fast movers, helicopters, troop ships, gunships, two platoons of hatchet force pretty much wiped out.

DB: Hatchet force consisted of? TK: About forty men. DB: Montagnards? TK: Montagnards or Nungs, with two or three NCOs each. DB: American, American NCOs. TK: And they were still on the ground, they were still trying to get people out, find people. It was just complete chaos. And I was really terrified. (Laughs)

DB: Welcome to your new assignment. Now these rough looking guys that came to pick you up, were they young guys, or were they older NCOs?

TK: They were a mix. There were young guys, I was the youngest. DB: But I mean these tough looking guys that came to get you. TK: No, they weren’t old. They were maybe mid-twenties. Some younger, some a little older. Nobody over thirty.

DB: These are young guys. TK: They’re young. Yeah. And so it seemed like about half of the camp was gone. Was dead. DB: Based off this mission in the Ashau Valley. TK: Based off this mission in the Ashau Valley. Yeah, and at that time, there was really no way to explain the terror in my mind. I figured I was not going to be alive for even the rest of the week.

DB: And these guys that came to pick you up, did they have anything to say about it? Or did you ask them any questions?

TK: They were all scared too.

DB: They might have to go out and be a relief force or something. TK: Right. They were still trying to mount relief at the time. It was winding down at that time, but nobody was sure. Because they were still trying to get people out. And it stayed that way for about a week. There was always radios all over camp. Every team had their own radios. There was a radio in the club.

DB: And everybody’s listening in to what’s going on? TK: Everybody’s listening to what’s going on. Because it involved everybody, and you never knew when they were going to say, “Grab your stuff and go.” I was assigned to a hatchet force, which is a heavily-weighted platoon, heavily armed. And that was what was on the ground.

DB: Potentially a relief force generally? Or just a heavy recon element? TK: No, they were used for relief or they were used to expose or to hit a target, with a lot more force than a recon team could. You know, expose a cache, an ambush, a larger fighting element.

DB: So you’re the newbie on the team. TK: Yes. DB: And how were you integrated into the team, so that they trusted you? TK: Well, the hatchet force that I was assigned to, there was one master sergeant, and myself. DB: Do you remember his name, the master sergeant? TK: Yeah, Grant. Master Sergeant Grant. And he had been on the Oscar Eight mission, and had really suffered—at the time I didn’t know why he was very standoffish. He didn’t really want to talk to anybody. It was almost like he was afraid. And I didn’t know why. I realized later what was wrong, what had happened.

DB: So he and how many people had been extracted off that mission? TK: Not very many. Just a few. They had lost like sixty people, plus all the aircraft and all the pilots and copilots and gunners. Really a lot of loss of life. It was the worst loss at that time that SOG had ever had, of both men and equipment. And this master sergeant was just scared. He was done, he didn’t want anything more to do with it. Me being a young, inexperienced guy, I didn’t really understand it at first, at the time. And I didn’t realize it for a couple of years, actually. Until I experienced it myself.

DB: So how were you integrated into the team, did they have a training program for you? TK: No, you just jumped right in. SOG teams trained every day, hatchet forces trained every day. You were right back to tactics, platoon tactics and movement, x-fills and in-fills, repelling, going in and out on strings, ropes—

DB: In and out of helicopters?

TK: In and out of LZs. They did not have—a little bit later on, a year or two later, they had a school, right in the United States they had recon school. But at that time, they didn’t have that.

DB: They didn’t have the recon training at the school at this point? TK: No. DB: So it’s all on-the-job training? TK: On-the-job training. And there were a lot of senior NCOs, Korean vets, and original Special Forces guys. So there was a lot of experience in the camp. So we just started training. It took a while to get used to being in the compound, and what was going on, and things kind of settled down after Oscar Eight. They were bringing new people in, reinforcing the teams and stuff. It quieted down for about a month. There really wasn’t a lot going on. And then in July of ’67, we had a recon team that was hit, again in Ashau. And two of the senior NCOs were killed, Samuel Almendarez and Robert Sullivan, both master sergeants. And a guy named Harry Brown. There were three Americans on the team, and six indigenous. They were ambushed. Sullivan and Almendarez were killed immediately. Harry Brown x-filled and was picked up, separated from the Nungs.

DB: Did the Nungs get out? TK: The Nungs got out. My hatchet force was sent in the next day. That was my very first mission, into Ashau.

DB: Now, you talked about all the training that you went through beforehand. That’s with your Vietnamese?

TK: Yeah, so you were getting used to them, you were learning how to communicate with them, you’re learning a little bit of the Vietnamese, but mostly everything’s done with hand signals, just motions. So everybody knew what was going on.

DB: So you’re going in on your first real mission. TK: That was my first real mission, into Ashau. DB: Into a notorious place. And, how did that go? TK: Well, we came over the—Ashau Valley was a big valley that ran northwest and southeast. And we came over the ridgeline, and I was really surprised to see that there was bunkers along the road.

DB: North Vietnamese bunkers? TK: North Vietnamese bunkers. Not American bunkers. DB: Right out in the open. TK: Right out in the open, with North Vietnamese soldiers sitting on them. DB: And you’re flying over them.

TK: And we’re flying right over them. And I’m thinking, what the heck? DB: They know you’re coming. TK: Oh yeah, they know we’re coming. I’m looking down, and I said to my buddy Robbie, I go, “Look, those dumb bastards don’t even look like they’re scared.” And Robbie looked over at me and said, “That’s because they ain’t, boy. They’re waiting for us.” So we landed with the hatchet force.

DB: Going in on Hueys? TK: Yes. Slicks. And we got on this opposing ridgeline from where the ambush had taken place. And we started moving up the ridgeline. It’s hot, the jungle is just thick. All these “wait a minute” vines, you’re tangled up in vines.

DB: And you’re going cross-country, you’re not on trails? TK: No, there ain’t no trails. We’re going right up this ridge, up, steep ridgeline. And all of the sudden, shooting in the front. I was probably in midway down. And all of the sudden, the place, everything just erupted. So I got down behind a log, and all the leaves and trees and branches are falling, and everybody’s shooting. It’s just complete chaos. Robbie’s screaming on the radio, somebody else is screaming on the radio. I couldn’t really tell what was going on. We never got up to where the bodies were, even. You know, we had four or five wounded guys, and then all of the sudden, everything just stopped. Just like, nothing. It just stopped.

DB: Do you think the North Vietnamese were leaving the bodies there because they knew the Americans would come and try to recover them?

TK: Well, we didn’t know if the bodies were there. They just knew that’s where the bodies were last seen. But we never got to it. We never got to where the bodies were. We couldn’t go, we couldn’t proceed any further. It was too much fire. So they brought in airstrikes, gunships, and like I said, finally everything just stopped. And helicopters came back in, loaded us up. I got on the helicopter, and as we’re flying, one of the Nungs pointed at me, and I looked, and I was bleeding, pretty severely. The whole side of my uniform was blood. Blood on the floor of the aircraft. I thought, Oh my God, I’m shot. So Robbie, the medic, came over and pulled up my shirt, and here I’d scratched my side on something, and there was about two hundred leaches and a big gob on my side. So my whole side, it bled for about a week. The chemical that the leeches release makes your blood not coagulate. So I just had this seeping wound in my side for about a week. They all laughed at me. But we never got Sullivan and Almendarez out. That was my first mission.

DB: What are you thinking now, what have you gotten yourself into? TK: By then, yeah I’m already past the “What have I gotten myself into?” I was— DB: Now you’re just doing it? TK: Yeah. I’m thinking, I’m probably never going to live through this. I was really terrified at first, but then at some point, you just get kind of numb to everything. Because I didn’t figure I

58 was probably ever going to live a whole year. Anyways, so then it didn’t matter. So then you get kind of crazy.

DB: What are your relations with the Vietnamese? Did you have Vietnamese Special Forces in the camp too, or just Montagnards and Nungs?

TK: No, we had both. We had LLDB [Army of the Republic of Vietnam Special Forces]. DB: The Vietnamese Special Forces. And how were they, what was your relationship with them?

TK: They weren’t really liked by the Nungs. Or the Montagnards, very much. DB: What about the Americans? TK: They were okay. It was okay. They weren’t completely trusted, but depending on some of them. I had a good friend who had an all-Vietnamese team. He was the only American. Lieutenant Bob Green, grew up in St. Paul. He had a very good relationship with them. I didn’t work directly with them very much.

DB: The Vietnamese were the lowland people, and then the Montagnards and the Nungs were the ethnic minorities.

TK: Yeah. And the Vietnamese in general I think are a little more arrogant. At least towards the Montagnards.

DB: And on your team, did you have Montagnards, Nungs? TK: Nungs. DB: And how was your relation with them? TK: Early in the war, there were more Nungs than were Montagnards, in SOG. As the years progressed, the Nungs were killed off, until there wasn’t hardly any left. And then the teams became pretty much all Montagnard.

DB: And how was your relationship with your locals? TK: It was good. I was young, like they were. Most of them were my age. Some of them were younger. I had the opportunity to prove myself to them in combat. And after that, once you did that, you could do no wrong. They trusted you with their lives.

DB: Now, you’ve been on one mission. You kind of know what you’re getting into now, you’ve been through a month or so of training. How did you prepare yourself for another mission, what kind of equipment did you carry?

TK: Oh boy. Well, I could give you—typically, I carried a CAR-15, which is a modified M16. DB: Shorter one.

TK: Shorter. I carried thirty magazines in canteen pouches. So I carried six hundred rounds of M16, five fire grenades, usually fourteen mini-grenades, a Claymore, a sawed-off M79 grenade launcher, and a pistol, forty-five. You were loaded for bear. We carried a poncho, but no sleeping gear. Depending on where you were going, when you were on the hatchet force, you’d carry one canteen. When you’re on recon, you’d carry two canteens.

DB: Food? TK: Not much for food. You were usually too scared to eat. But you know, you could carry a can of C-ration chicken, or something. Lot of times, myself, I carried the indigenous rations, which was basically a bag of rice, with some leek in it, and a little salt and some seasonings. And you could just put water on it, tie it on your backpack, your rucksack, or on your belt, and just the heat of the day would soften the rice up. Carried radio. I carried—I was what you’d call a one-two. A one-zero was a team leader on a recon team. One-one was a team sergeant, a one-two was a radio operator. If there was three guys on the team. If there was only two Americans going, then usually the one-zero carried the radio. So, I was a one-one and a one-two.

DB: You carried a lot of equipment. TK: A lot of equipment. DB: You were a small, skinny guy. TK: Probably close to eighty pounds. And I weighed a hundred and twenty. (Laughs) DB: And you just did it. Got used to it and just did it. TK: Yeah. You were tired, you were hot, you were scared, but you just did it. You wanted to make sure you had plenty of ammo, for sure.

DB: So you’ve had your mission. You’ve had your first mission. And you’re getting subsequent missions now.

TK: Yeah, well in between that, I came home. My girlfriend was pregnant, I was sent back home to deal with it. Ended up getting married.

DB: Emergency leave? TK: Emergency leave. We ended up getting married. I was home about twenty days. Ended up married and when back.

DB: And was it hard to go back? TK: It was hard to go back. DB: Now you knew what you were getting into. TK: Now I knew what I was getting into. But I knew I had a job. I couldn’t not go back. So yeah, I went back, and when I went back, I was assigned to a recon team.

DB: And how was the recon team constituted?

TK: Much smaller. The recon team was typically two or three Americans, and from six to ten indigenous, either Montagnards or Nungs. As I said before, one-zero was the team leader, one- one was the team sergeant, and a one-two was a radio operator.

DB: All NCOs, no officers? TK: All NCOs, no officers. No officers typically. Very few officers were allowed on the ground in Laos.

DB: So you’re starting to run recon missions. Are you getting additional training now, for these small teams?

TK: Yeah, the recon teams—the one-zero runs all the training on the team. And the one-zero, whatever he says goes. The one-zero has rank over everybody. No matter what grade or rank he is, and no matter what grade or rank you are, he’s in charge of that team. So you do a lot of drills.

DB: Battle drills? TK: Interaction, you know, action drills. DB: What do you do if this happens, what do you do if that happens? TK: Battle drills. And you just train, train, train, train, every day, eight hours a day. You live together, you sleep together. Everybody knows exactly what everybody’s doing. What everybody’s idiosyncrasies are. Typically your point-man was someone with very highly skilled sense of hearing, seeing.

DB: Usually a Montagnard or a Nung? TK: Yeah, usually a Montagnard or a Nung—always a Montagnard or a Nung, Americans were never on point. The indigenous team sergeants were usually older. They brought up the rear of the team, covered the trail. Covered the tracks. Covered up your back trail, so nobody could tell you’d been there.

DB: Put the grass and the twigs back up? TK: Plant mines. DB: So you’re going on a recon mission now. TK: Yes. DB: How were you prepared for the mission, and how were you inserted? TK: Well, you’d get an alert that there was a mission, that your team had been chosen. A few days before the mission, you’d get called in to S2, and briefed. They’d show you where your mission was. Then typically the one-zero, sometimes two Americans, would fly a visual reconnaissance with an aircraft, over the area where you were going to be inserted in. You’d try and pick out several different landing zones, which might work for you to be put in. You looked for enemy movement, anti-aircraft, anything that might alert you to an issue: topography of the area, triple canopy, more open plain, elephant grass, you know. Then the one-zero would pick

61 out the landing zone, and then usually a couple of alternate landing zones. You’d come back in, they’d have another briefing, they would say, “Okay, this is where you’re going to land. This is what you’re looking for: you’re looking for troop movement, you’re looking for roads, you’re looking for certain vegetation,” whatever it was.

DB: Typically, in a given AO, there’d only be so many landing zones. TK: Correct. DB: And wouldn’t the North Vietnamese be watching all of them? TK: Correct. DB: Well, how do you deal with that, they’re going to know you’re coming. They’re going to know you’ve landed.

TK: Well, you’d try and do what they called false inserts. That’s why you have alternate landing zones. You’d come in, the gunships would—sometimes they would prep the landing zones.

DB: Rockets, machine gun fire? TK: Rockets, machine gun fire, A180s would come in and bomb the area, but you know, they would hit two or three, and so they’d never know exactly which one you were going in on. And you’d come in and you might do false inserts, where they would appear to drop you off, and then lift up, and fly over, and either drop you off or pretend to drop you off on another one. So they would do that two or three times. The longer I was in Vietnam, the harder it became to do inserts.

DB: Because the Vietnamese were watching everything. TK: They were getting better at it. We were getting better at it, they were getting better at it. So it became harder. They used devices. They had a device they called “Nightingale,” that was like a big giant fireworks display, that would simulate a fire fight. One of the fire fighters would drop a nightingale device on one ridgeline, to simulate a fire fight going on, to distract the LZ watchers, or any NVA [North Vietnamese Army] elements that were in the area, while you landed at a different spot. So they did a lot of different, secret things. Sometimes they would— and this was a little more difficult—there were smaller LZs [Landing Zones], they might drop you in on ropes. Or repel—

DB: Repel down. TK: Yeah, repel in. Which was—well, all of them were pretty scary, but inserts were always really scary. Because you never knew what was going to be there.

DB: Daytime? TK: No, dusk. They preferred dusk, which was another plus and minus. At dusk, you could get away in a hurry. But also, if you get hit, it was dark. So then they couldn’t extract you either.

DB: So, the helicopter comes in, you do your mock-insertions, whatever you have to do. You do your inceptions, you do get off, hit the ground—

TK: Hit the ground running. Try and get to the tree line and disappear as quickly as you can. Move in different directions. Say you wanted to move northwest, you might take off southeast just to get the North Vietnamese confused about where to look for you, get off the LZ and then turn around and go a different direction. You know, all different kinds and ways they did it.

DB: So how often did you run a recon mission? TK: It varied a lot, depending on how your last mission went. If you had a relatively easy mission, where you got in and got out without too much trouble, you might get another mission within four or five days. If you were in a mission where there was a lot of shooting, and a lot of people hurt, and just a mess, then they gave you a little longer to recover. Sometimes you had to pick up some new team members, and you’d have to work through some of the training and make sure everyone was on the same page all of the time.

DB: Integrating them into the team. TK: Right. They always said, they never put the full team in. There was always extra indigenous that were members of the team who didn’t go.

DB: That were sort of rotated. TK: You could rotate, yeah. DB: When you come back in, in your garrison area, team area, were you integrated with your Vietnamese at that point, your Montagnards and Nungs? Did you live together, or were the Americans here and the Nungs close by?

TK: At Phu Bai, where I was, the Americans had their own barracks. It was a relatively small camp, so you’re in pretty close proximity. And the indigenous lived in a separate area. Later on, at CCN, when they changed the nomenclature of the teams, the teams all lived together. The Americans lived right with their counterparts.

DB: How often are you running missions at this point? TK: Probably for sure every ten days. DB: And how are you feeling now, you’re a pretty tight team? TK: Yeah, Idaho was, we became pretty tight. DB: The teams were named after states? TK: Teams were named after states, our team was Idaho, which means probably the first person who was the one-zero of Idaho was from Idaho. That’s kind of how it went. Because no one, when I was on, no one was from Idaho. Glen Lane was a senior NCO, he was in the Korean War. He was a Private, Ranger in the Korean War, so he was an experienced combat senior NCO. Very highly skilled.

DB: Cool, calm, professional?

TK: Very cool and calm. When the shit hit the fan, he was just in charge. Never wavering. He was a mentor to me and Steve Perry.

DB: When you come in off a mission, what did you do to unwind? TK: Well, when you landed in your aircraft, the whole camp would usually be out there to meet you on your landing zone, on the helicopter pad, with cold beer and hugs, and you know, just a huge welcome home. Typically you were exhausted. You hadn’t eaten or slept or went to the bathroom maybe for several days. So they’d bring you in, once you got off the pad, you’d go to your hooch. You’d get cleaned up, and then they’d always have a special meal for you, depending on—because you never knew what time of the day—they would have a special meal for you, usually steak, or whatever you wanted. They’d give you a little bit of time to unwind. And then you’d go for debriefing. You’d go back into S2, they’d debrief you as to what you’d run across. Photographs, we call carried cameras.

DB: PEN EEs? TK: PEN EEs. (Laughs) DB: Took 35mm half frame pictures. TK: So you could take—you know, if you found any roads or trails—as you went you’d mark them on your maps, so you’d be able to explain what you saw. Sometimes I had—you’d gather vegetation, soil samples. Of course they wanted to know if you saw any NVA units, if you’d noticed any markings on their uniforms or anything, that were different. Basically anything you saw that was out of the ordinary.

DB: Did you ever participate in a POW snatch, any of that? TK: Well, you were always trying to get POWs. One time, we inserted I think it was, let me think here—it was in Ashau—the target areas were designated different names: Oscar Eight, Hotel Six. This particular mission was Tango Four.

DB: That designated an area of operations? TK: That designated an area of operation. So we had a recon area, Steve Perry was the one- one, Glen Lane was the one-zero, they had reconned the area by air, a couple of days prior to insert. We had inserted and gotten off the LZ with no problem. I radioed in, “All clear.” We moved off, and it was at dusk. As we were moving off the LZ, we ran across a very well-used trail—like, a highway.

DB: Foot trail? TK: Foot trail, but a heavily-used foot trail. And we had crossed it, and there was a big bend in the trail where the direction had turned, so we crossed the trail and then covered our back trail. Then we came back around and set up an ambush, hoping to maybe snatch a prisoner. So what you would do is you’d set Claymores on both directions on the trail, so that you could isolate something in the middle. And then we just tucked in and waited. And nothing came by. So we stayed there about an hour. We moved off up onto this ridge, and we found kind of a flat spot where we could set up our overnight.

DB: In deep underbrush? TK: Yeah, real deep underbrush, thick as you could possibly find it. Got tucked in there, put Claymores out. You’d typically put the Claymores really tight on you.

DB: You mean, as close to you as you dared, or you’d put the Claymores in a cluster, close together.

TK: No, we put the Claymores way closer than you should ever put, to you. DB: Because of the danger of the back blast. TK: Yeah, you’d try to get them in front of a tree or something that would protect you from the back blast, but it was more important to protect you from the NVA than the back blast. But anyway, we’d set up our RON [Remain Overnight], we put the Claymores out, tucked in, everything was cool. During the night, we could hear voices. We assumed they were voices of NVA moving along that trail. Then at one point, we could see lanterns, kind of across this little valley, sort of moving towards us. We couldn’t tell if they were on the line or not, but moving. And then all of the sudden in the middle of the night—I had forgotten all about this, a guy reminded me about it—about three o’clock in the morning or something like that, one of the Claymores went off.

DB: Accidentally? TK: We never figured out if it went off because of static electricity, or someone hit the wire. We don’t know. Just a claymore in the middle of the night went off. Of course everybody—we never took our backpacks off. You’d unhook them, but they’d always be on your shoulders. You’d sit back, so that if you had to move quickly—

DB: It was your backrest, too. TK: Yeah. So we blew right out of there, our RON. You know, Glen had us blow right out of there. We took off, moving at a much faster pace than you ever moved—you know, during the day, you moved kind of like a snail. This is more like a jackrabbit: “Let’s get out of here.”

DB: Pitch black. TK: Pitch black. And hoping you’re not going to run—anyway we were running away from where the landings were. So we get up out of there, went several hundred yards, and we found another spot where we could tuck in, and spent the rest of the night there. But if you could catch a prisoner, live, and get him back, they would pay a bonus to each one of your indigenous team members, and they would also give you a five-day trip to Penang, Malaysia something like that.

DB: R&R. TK: R&R. Free R&R. So everybody was always trying to get prisoners. There was only a couple of guys who were good at it. I’m trying to remember, I think only one team ever got more than one guy.

DB: How would they control them when they got them, were they pretty docile most of the time, once they grabbed them?

TK: No, they were not docile. DB: You got a real problem? TK: Yeah, they’d drug him, give him a shot of morphine, or two. Try not to kill him. Usually, they’d use concussion grenades and try and catch them. Catching them was easier than keeping them alive, and getting them out. The Montagnards and the Nungs hated them, so you had to protect them from them as well as everybody else. The Montagnards didn’t really care about money, so they didn’t really mean much to them. Offering them a reward was—we lost some prisoners that way.

DB: To the Montagnards? TK: To the Montagnards. DB: You had an incident where you saw some North Vietnamese going into a hut. And you thought you’d try to take one prisoner.

TK: Yeah, that was with the hatchet force, up in Khe Sanh. The marine base at Khe Sanh was under siege during the Tet Offensive. What they did was they took several recon teams and put them together to create a hatchet force, and then they sent us up there as a relief force.

DB: A relief force for? TK: For the Special Forces compound. DB: At Lang Vei? TK: At Khe Sanh. Khe Sanh had a SOG launch site there, prior to the marines even being there. But anyway, we were in Khe Sanh. We went out on a bigger recon, a force recon mission, with a hatchet force. Approximately forty guys. It was real foggy early in the morning, you had to work your way out to the minefield. We had a trail that went through the minefield that we could follow out, and we were trying to set up an ambush to catch the North Vietnamese coming up this one ravine.

DB: You’re going out at night, so they can’t see you? TK: Yeah, going out real early in the morning. So they can’t see us leave, or can’t see where we’re going. And we tried to set up in this ravine. As it became light, it was super foggy. Foggy enough where you couldn’t see more than three feet. And we actually had North Vietnamese walk right by us, within probably five feet, that didn’t know we were there. As the fog started to lift a little bit, I took a smaller reconnaissance unit from the hatchet force and went up into Khe Sanh village. And we spotted some North Vietnamese going into a hut. So I radioed back, and I told them that I was going to try and snatch a prisoner. So I had my team sergeant, the indigenous team sergeant, and I had my point man with me. So we crawled up fairly close to the hut. And my plan was to just throw a grenade into the hut, and whoever came out, we would

66 shoot him in the lower extremities, grab him, and take off before anybody knew what happened. So we hid behind a burial mound.

DB: Three feet high, about? TK: Yeah, three feet, three to four feet high. And got all ready, explained what we were going to do and everything. So I took a frag grenade, and I pulled the pin on it, and I was going to stand up, throw the grenade into the hut. I had my point man and my team sergeant, one on each side of me. As I stood up to throw my grenade, a North Vietnamese soldier stood up on the other side of the burial mound, probably eight feet from me. When he stood up, it startled me, so when I threw the grenade, I didn’t throw it hard, or as hard as I would have. So it bounced in front of the hut, didn’t make it all the way to the hut. The team sergeant shot the North Vietnamese, killed him. The grenade went off, and a whole bunch of guys came running out of the hut. About ten North Vietnamese, shooting. We took off and we ran, headlong back into our perimeter, while the whole rest of the hatchet force opened fire. And I got all the way back, got under cover, only to realize that my point man wasn’t with me. About that time, he started hollering my name. "Trung Si Tim, help me! Trung Si Tim, help me!” My buddy Robbie, the medic, said “You’ve got to go get him.” So I jumped up—and it certainly wasn’t anything I wanted to do, but I knew I had to—I jumped back up and ran back out through the fire about forty yards, picked him up, threw him over my shoulder, and ran back into the perimeter somehow, without getting hit. (Laughs)

DB: Are there more North Vietnamese coming now, or is it still the ones that were in the hut? TK: Oh no, there were more, there were more coming. So it was a big fire fight. Point man was hit in the thigh, and he was okay. He was a young guy, he recovered pretty quickly.

DB: Flesh wound. No bones. TK: Yeah. We managed to get out of there and get back into the main perimeter, without any further issues. But I became an instant hero with the Montagnards, then. Because they had all seen me run out, under fire, and save their buddy. After that, I was always the go-to sergeant that they trusted. It turned out to be a very big advantage to me.

DB: And you got a Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry to that, too. TK: Yes, I was awarded the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry for that action. DB: Now was this before or after you went into Lang Vei? TK: That was actually after. DB: It’s Christmas of ’67. Did that mean anything over there? TK: No, not really. DB: Another day? Keep doing your missions? TK: Just another day, yeah. At Christmastime, we were still at Phu Bai, running recon. In January was when we went up to Khe Sanh.

DB: Well, the end of January, beginning of February, Tet starts. TK: Right. DB: And, did that affect you in Phu Bai? Were they hitting anything around there? TK: Well, I was already gone. We had already went up to Khe Sanh by then. DB: Before Tet started? TK: Before Tet started. DB: So how many Americans are in Khe Sanh now roughly, how many of your indigenous? TK: Well, we had a hatchet force. FOB3 was there, I’m guessing somewhere around seventy- five Special Forces guys.

DB: Americans? TK: Americans. DB: That’s a big force, for what you’re doing, for the kind of unit you’ve got. TK: Yeah. Well, people were being brought in as reinforcements. You know, there was the hatchet force, and then there was two other, a couple of other recon teams.

DB: And how many indigenous troops were there then too? TK: You know, well our hatchet force had forty. DB: But if you had seventy Americans, how many indigenous did you have, hundreds? TK: Yeah, yeah. A couple of hundred. There was a Vietnamese Ranger battalion. There was the FOB3. Maybe not seventy-five Americans, maybe fifty, all total. With command and everything.

DB: Still a pretty good size Special Forces force. TK: Yeah. And then the five thousand marines. DB: So, what are you supposed to be doing there, it’s just a forward reconnaissance base? TK: We were supposed to—that’s what FOB3 was, a launch site for a forward reconnaissance base.

DB: And what did you think of the marines, what kind of relationship did you have with them?

TK: Uh, kind of mixed. We had reasonably good relationship with the grunts. The command element, we didn’t get along as well with.

DB: Why was that?

TK: Differences in the military esprit de corps. The marine colonel was all about being a marine, and the Special Forces teams were all about getting information.

DB: Did you coordinate your reconnaissance missions with the marines? TK: Oh yeah. DB: I mean, I knew there had to be a certain amount of coordination, but were you running recon for the marines?

TK: Sometimes. DB: Were you working with their recon teams, too? TK: No. DB: Okay, because they had their own— TK: They had their own recon. However, as the siege progressed, they went outside less and less. They didn’t want them outside. Where we kept running.

DB: From that position, would you insert with helicopters, or did you usually go out on foot? TK: Both. We walked out quite a bit. DB: Did you have dedicated helicopter assets? TK: No. DB: So you pretty much got whoever you got? TK: You got whoever you got. DB: So you might get the green, new helicopter pilot and you’ve got to essentially train them in, too.

TK: Uh, yeah. But typically when they sent a flight, they knew why they were—if they sent a flight to support SOG, they knew what they were doing.

DB: But on your insertions, did you— TK: Same thing. DB: You didn’t have dedicated pilots? TK: No. Only the Vietnamese, only the KingBee pilots. Vietnamese pilots. DB: They were dedicated. TK: Yes. DB: And were they good?

TK: They were very good. They flew without instruments, because they couldn’t read the instruments. (Laughs)

DB: They flew on sense. TK: On scent and sight. And they were extremely brave and courageous. There could never be enough said for how courageous they were.

DB: And competent, and good. TK: Yes. DB: So, early February, there’s a Special Forces camp, towards the Laotian border, Lang Vei. And that’s under attack.

TK: Yeah, it was about seven miles from us. They came under attack on February 7th. DB: You’re listening to everything on the radio? TK: On the radio, and you could hear it, you know, in the distance. DB: Oh okay, you could hear the firing. TK: Yes. Hear—all night long—plus all the radio chatter. DB: And what was the radio chatter you were listening to? TK: Well, that they were being overrun. DB: And this is the typical A-site, you’ve got a dozen Americans? TK: There was twenty-four Americans, the A-team, plus there was MIKE Force Company. DB: That was the mobile reaction force. TK: Yes. DB: So how many indigenous troops do you think there were? TK: I think there was like about 150 Montagnards from one tribe, and about three hundred from another tribe.

DB: And did the two tribes get along, did they work together? TK: Um, so-so. We could hear the fire going all night long. DB: And the North Vietnamese brought tanks in. TK: Brought tanks. It was the first time that tanks were used in the Vietnam War. DB: Were they talking about that on the radio, did you hear that? TK: Not me personally. They were aware that there were tanks.

DB: Did they have any tank weapons? TK: They had LAWs, which were supposed to be anti-tank weapons, but they didn’t work correctly. Half of them didn’t go off when they were fired. There were some issues with the LAWs. They had two 106s, but there was only one operator. And he was taken out relatively— he took out a couple tanks, before they took his gun out. And him. And then—there was a lot of chaos. We were told that they had been overrun. Sometime before dawn, it was still dark.

DB: The first night? TK: The first night, yeah, that they had been overrun. And they didn’t know, nobody knew. There was no communication. Nobody knew if they were alive, if they were all dead. Just that it was really bad.

DB: So, what’s the plan? TK: Originally, the marines were supposed to have a battalion in reserve. DB: A reaction force? TK: A reaction force that would come to the rescue of Lang Vei. Of course, I’m a sergeant, so I don’t know what’s going on at the higher levels.

DB: But you’re not a team leader. You’re a team member, or you’re a team leader now? TK: No, no. DB: Team member? TK. Yeah. I’m just a platoon sergeant. Our commander got called down to the bunker in the morning. There was some discussion because the marines decided that they couldn’t afford to send a battalion of marines down the road, because there were several divisions of North Vietnamese in the area. And they just said, “No, we’re not sending one.” Later on now, years and years now, it was apparent why they didn’t do it, but at that time, we didn’t know why. We just knew that they weren’t sending anybody. So the Special Forces Commander, Major Cuomo, George Cuomo, said that he wanted to send a force in. But we had no aircraft. So they were coordinating with the marines to get aircraft, to get helicopters, CH46s, gunships, to put a rescue force out. Sometime that morning, they made communication with the survivors. There were fourteen survivors—

DB: Americans. TK: —Americans, that were trapped in a command bunker. There was an NVA tank that was sitting on top of the command bunker. There were several others that had been taken out, on the road and around the camp. There was the old Special Forces camp that had been overrun two years before that, had a contingency of Royal Laotian forces there. But they refused to act with the Americans that were there with them, to counter attack. The Americans that were in the old camp tried to counter attack, several times, with a certain number of troops. But they couldn’t break through. Eventually, the one leading the attacks, Eugene Ashley, was killed on about the third counter-attack that they tried. Meanwhile, they had made radio communication back with

Khe Sanh. Our commander, Lieutenant Chip Fleming, was called down to the bunkers. They said they were going to try and launch a force, to go in and rescue. They called it “volunteers,” but me and Robbie don’t ever remember anyone ever saying “volunteers.” (Laughs)

DB: You’re just, you’re going. TK: It was, “Grab your shit, you’re going.” Of course, we were willing to do anything to help the guys that were there. So at about sometime around three in the afternoon—they took all day long—they finally got aircraft. And we launched two CH46s, the troops.

DB: Chinooks. TK: Chinooks. And gunships. And there wasn’t enough room for my squad. They ran out of room, so I got on a trail ship, a medivac helicopter.

DB: A Huey. TK: A Huey, a slick with my squad. We were a couple minutes behind on taking off. We get out over Lang Vei, which was like seven miles away. The helicopters were all circling, so as I pulled, as our aircraft came up to them, circling, I looked down, I can see people all over the place, in the old camp. So I motion for the pilot to go down. He looked at me real strange, and I said, “Take it down.” And he said, “Okay.” So he peeled off, and unbeknownst to me, the other people hadn’t landed, and those were all bad guys on the ground that I was looking at. So the medivac came in, so I was the first one on the ground. The survivors were in a bunker, and a couple of them that were still mobile came out of the bunker. I jumped off the helicopter, and started running towards them.

DB: Still had the tank on top of the bunker? TK: This was in the old camp. They had escaped out of the— DB: This is a different bunker. TK: This is a different bunker. There was just a tremendous amount of fire, I can’t remember what they said. Something like 140 rounds of artillery and mortars a minute.

DB: You’ve got all kinds of heavy fire coming on. TK: Heavy fire, yeah. DB: Not just AK-47s. TK: Yeah, heavy weapon, and machine gun fire, mortars, artillery. DB: Going off all around you. TK: Yes. DB: And did the helicopter drop you off and take off again? TK: No, he stayed there.

DB: So he was a pretty brave pilot too. TK: Yeah, he stayed on the ground. (Laughs) I ran over and a couple of the guys came out, they were helping people. The team sergeant was about twice as big as me, but I was really adrenaline juiced-up, so I grabbed him, threw him over my shoulder, and went running back to the helicopter. I mean, the only thing—I mean, just to be honest, I’m not—I’m thinking, the helicopter’s not going to leave until we get everybody on the helicopter. This isn’t because I’m a hero, I’m doing this. I want out of there. But I grabbed him and I threw him over my shoulder, and ran out, dropped him. Somehow by then, soon as our helicopter came in, the others started coming in, behind us. And you know, it was just, it was pretty chaotic. A lot of fire going from everybody, the gunships are streaming in from, you know, the perimeters. We were getting a lot of fire from the Southwest corner of the camp. Machine gun and mortar. So Chip Fleming told me to take my squad and suppress that fire. We just took off running, full tilt, right at them. There was literally hundreds of bodies lying around. We were hiding behind piles of bodies.

DB: North Vietnamese, or the Montagnards, or? TK: Montagnards, North Vietnamese, everybody. There were just bodies everywhere. You know, like bodies, everywhere. Hundreds. So, I’m running, I remember, there was lots of fire, and so I dove down behind this, almost like a sand-bag thing—it wasn’t sand bags, it was bodies. So we get up on the edge, and started firing. The guy took the machine gun out, and then once the machine gun quit, the mortar crew started running. I took my M79, I fired a round, and as they were moving, I hit the middle guy right in the back with an M79. And so that whole crew just—they were done. What I didn’t know at the time, that the rest of them who had ran back over the hill, ran into Dennis Thompson, who was coming up, to try and get rescued.

DB: So he was one of the original defenders. TK: Yeah. DB: By himself? All by himself? TK: No, he had Montagnards with him. They killed all of his Montagnards and grabbed him. And that was where he was captured. Anyway, after we took the mortar crew out, we turned around. By then, they were loaded—they had all of the survivors out of the bunker, and they were gone. Now we were just trying to x-fill ourselves.

DB: Your helicopters gone, are you going to try and get to a Chinook? TK: Yeah. Eventually, I went back and the last Chinook was there, the others were already gone.

DB: And you still got all this artillery fire coming in, mortars and everything? TK: No, most of it had been suppressed by then. DB: It’s kind of amazing that none of the helicopters got hit, though. TK: Oh, they did. A lot of them got hit.

DB: They took a lot of hits. But, they were able to keep going? TK: Yeah. One of the helicopter pilots in his report, he said “I knew they were lying about the LZ being safe when the first rocket went through my windshield.” (Laughs)

DB: It just went through, it didn’t detonate? TK: Went right through. (Laughs) So we get on the Chinook. Sometime in the midst of all the stuff that was going on, all these Laotian soldiers who had refused to fight came running out, of the jungle, trying to climb on the Chinook. The Chinook couldn’t even take off. Couldn’t lift off the ground. There was people hanging on the webbing, people hanging on the doorways, on the wheels. You know, so Lieutenant Fleming said, “Get them off, get them off.” So we did pretty much everything we could. Pounded, hit people with rifle butts. Fired in the air. Did everything.

DB: Eventually you were able to take off. TK: Eventually we were able to take off. There was people falling, we were told, still falling off the aircraft when it was a hundred feet in the air. So that was the last ship out of there, and then the marine gunships actually turned around, and came back to try and help Dennis Thompson. Both of those gunships got shot up really bad.

DB: But made it back? TK: But they made it back to Khe Sanh. But all four, both pilots and both copilots, were shot up pretty bad. So about forty-five minutes from the time we launched until we set back down. And we got all—everybody who was still alive—out.

DB: And you got a Bronze Star for this? TK: Yeah. DB: Sounds more like a Distinguished Service Cross to me, did anybody—what did the other people get?

TK: No, there was—all the A-team, all of the people in the camp got the Silver Star. Major Cuomo got a DSC.

DB: Did he actually—was he, tell me again, was he the camp commander? TK: Yeah, he was the FOB commander. But he was on the ground. Yeah, he was there. And then Eugene Ashley was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, posthumously. SOG was kind of known for not getting a lot of medals. Or not getting medals they deserved to get, I guess.

DB: Was there bitterness about that, did people talk about it? TK: No, not really. DB: Just glad to be alive? TK: Yeah.

DB: Just doing your job? TK: Yeah. I never considered—you know, you’re never considering a medal. You’re just trying to survive. Usually.

DB: So you went back to Khe Sanh? TK: Went back to Khe Sanh. DB: Patched up the wounded? Evacuated them? TK: Patched up the wounded, evacuated—yeah. Eventually, just went back to living in the bunkers, being hit with fifteen hundred rounds of artillery a day.

DB: What was that experience, what’s expected of you there? Just sit it out, or? TK: Yeah. DB: Are you still going out on recon missions? TK: Ah, we did. Not as much. Artillery is just terrifying, you know. It was way less terrifying to go into Lang Vei, and land in the middle of a division of North Vietnamese troops, than it was to sit there and have them fire artillery at you.

DB: Because you’re helpless, because you can’t respond? TK: Completely helpless, you can’t hide, you can’t—I mean, if it hits next to you, you’re dead.

DB: But sometimes it does funny things, too. It’s unpredictable. You had some stories about a close call, that nobody was hit?

TK: Yeah. That was—we were all in a trench line, and an artillery round hit very close to us. It actually blew a couple of the guys right out of the trench, onto the ground above. Everybody got up and shook themselves off, and looked at each other, trying to figure out, “Wow, I can’t believe it. Nobody’s dead.” And down the trench line about fifty yards, we saw this piece of plywood fall over. And we were like, “What the heck was that?” And somebody went down there to investigate. Here there was a guy inside the hole in the trench line, so he was completely covered, with a half-inch piece of plywood over the door. And a piece of shrapnel had gone through the plywood and hit him in the heart, and killed him.

DB: It’s all about luck. TK: All about luck. DB: So, how long were you at Khe Sanh? TK: Seventy-seven days. DB: Mostly sitting, waiting it out with the marines, occasionally doing reconnaissance missions?

TK: Yeah. DB: Did it get harder and harder to go out, just because the North Vietnamese knew where to watch?

TK: No, they just didn’t go out as much. They kept defoliating, and with all the artillery, it looked kind of like a desert, by the time they were done. There was very little vegetation left, anywhere. So it was hard to get out—you couldn’t hide if you got out. And the North Vietnamese were squeezing in closer, all the time. They had a trench line about less than a hundred yards from our main trench line. They dropped—they had an Arc Light—I think at that time it was the closest—

DB: That’s a B52 strike. TK: Yeah, with two thousand pounders, that they dropped. DB: How close in? TK: I think about a thousand meters. And it— DB: What was that experience? TK: Well, it caved in half of our bunkers. DB: Just the vibrations? TK: Just the concussion, shock wave. Everybody had bloody noses and bloody ears, and eyeballs. But it killed all the North Vietnamese a hundred yards away, in the trench.

DB: You said they dropped them a thousand yards out. Bombs hit a thousand yards out. But nine hundred yards from that, the North Vietnamese in the trenches died from concussion?

TK: Yeah. Hundreds of them. DB: And so, while you’re there, did you have to go out and check those trenches, or? TK: Well you couldn’t get out to check them until after that. They sent—teams went out. DB: That’s what I mean, after the B52s came— TK: Yeah, they went out, because they weren’t getting sniper fire. So they sent teams—my team, we didn’t go out—one of the other teams went out, and they discovered that they were all dead in the trench, just sitting there holding their weapons. So eventually, it became our time to leave Khe Sanh. And they were still receiving artillery fire, off of Co Roc Mountain. The aircraft would come in, and do like a quick landing, turn around, low-level extraction basically. They’d come in just right off the runway, and they’d kick their cargo out. And then once and a while, they would land to pick up bodies, or whatever. So we got out on one of the body ships, flew back to Nha Trang. We got off the aircraft in Nha Trang, and we’re walking back up and we were still—we hadn’t shaved or hardly washed in seventy-seven days—we were pretty grody. One of the things I remember pretty clearly, as we came into the Fifth Special Forces group headquarters area in Nha Trang: the year before, when I had been there, there was these guys that

76 were walking down the boardwalk, and everybody said, “Yeah, that’s them crazy guys from SOG.”

DB: Now that’s you. TK: And as me and Robbie were walking down the boardwalk, I heard this guy say, “Yeah, that’s them crazy guys from SOG.”

DB: Did it make you proud? TK: It did. Break in recording

DB: Okay, start. TK: Yeah, let’s go back and talk a little bit about before Khe Sanh. Some of the other recon missions that I was on. One of them was what they called a Bright Light mission, which is typically either a reconnaissance team that was in trouble, and you’re going to help, or a pilot recovery, or a pilot’s been shot down in North Vietnam or Laos, or somewhere, and you’re going in to try and recover them. We did Bright Light into North Vietnam, pilot had been shot down, fairly close to Hanoi. So what they had was, they had teams that were on Bright Light duty. We happened to be on duty when this mission came in. They flew us from Phu Bai, Vietnam, over to Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, where you were briefed, and loaded onto air force Jolly Green Giants, and flown across northern Laos, into North Vietnam, to try and rescue the pilots before they were captured. One such mission we were on, we were sent over, launched out of Phu Bai, flew to Nakhon Phanom, were briefed there, and then we were sent out over northern Laos. We ended up having some mechanical difficulties with one of the helicopters, and crash landed in the jungle in northern Laos. After some repair, we managed to get out of there, and continue on our flight. Just as we came into the northern Laos, North Vietnam border, there was a CIA site, called Lima Site 36, where they had some CIA agents. And we stopped there to refuel our helicopters. It was a very unique place. It sat on top of a real high, steep mountain, all four sides, so that the North Vietnamese couldn’t really get up to or at them. So we stopped there and refueled. There was a biplane, an old-fashioned biplane that the CIA agents had shot down with a helicopter. It had mortar tubes in it, and the—

DB: This was a North Vietnamese plane, the biplane? TK: Yeah. Yeah, there’s pictures of it. Anyway, the plane was set up with these mortar tubes so they could just fly over and drop mortar rounds on top of the CIA camp or some other— anyway, that was very interesting. But we flew—we ended up flying into North Vietnam. We were briefly chased by a MIG21, so the helicopters had to evade until US fighter aircraft could intercept the MIG. We got up and started looking for the pilots in the area they had went down, and right at the last minute, we were informed that they had been—the mission was called off. They had been captured. So that was very disappointing. We were unable to get them out.

Another part of what we did was, at the Khe Sanh Marine base, there was a hill called Hickory Hill, Hill 950. And SOG had a radio relay site on top of it. At night, when the covey aircraft weren’t flying, the teams on the ground in the DMZ or in North Vietnam, or wherever they were, could keep in contact through the radio relay site. We could relay information, and so we took turns, usually two guys would be up there on the radio relay. And then they had a platoon, a rifle platoon of marines as security. And that was usually like a two week at a time duty. I ended up there a couple of times. And we were probed every night by North Vietnamese, but again, it sat right on the peak of a mountain, and it was very difficult for them to get up there and get at us. We could always call in airstrikes or something on them.

DB: How was the platoon of marines that was supporting you? TK: They were okay. We didn’t always get along, but we’d get along good enough. DB: Did they have a lieutenant with them? TK: Yeah, they had a lieutenant. DB: But you’re in charge? TK: We were in charge of any of the radio communications. They had snipers up there. DB: The North Vietnamese, or the marines? TK: No, the marines did, had a sniper unit. And they would—they were very good, the snipers were very good. They were capable of taking anything out, to a thousand yards. So they were up there making life miserable for the NVA as well. Later on, as the war progressed, Hickory became an NSA relay radio site. Eventually, it was overrun, and John Cavaiani, a SOG guy, was captured and later given the Congressional Medal of Honor.

DB: Did he survive? TK: Yeah. They didn’t know he was alive until the end of the war. You know, when they released the prisoners, they released him. They didn’t know he was alive until then. Break in recording

DB: Here we go. TK: Another mission prior to the siege of Khe Sanh was on top of a mountain, called Co Roc Mountain. We launched out of Phu Bai, FOB1, up in the area of Co Roc Mountain, which was kind of a famous mountain west of Khe Sanh combat base, and the Lang Vei camp. We did an air reconnaissance, and picked several different LZs, and then we tried to launch into them. One idea was to possibly walk across the river, from the Lang Vei Special Forces camp, into Laos, and go in that way. Unfortunately—

DB: Lang Vei is just abandoned now. TK: No, this is before— DB: This is before the siege?

TK: Before the siege, shortly before the siege. We tried to cross the river. Unfortunately, the river was very high, and we almost lost our point man, and we almost drowned him. So we gave up on that, and they decided to insert us by helicopter. So we took off, and they couldn’t insert us in the original LZs that we had picked. So we went further out, and they placed us into an LZ that we were not familiar with. They told us that they would give us our coordinates, once we were on the ground. So that we could tell where we were, and where we were going to go from there. So they inserted us, just before dark. We moved off, this is LZ, quite a bit west and south of Co Roc Mountain. And we started moving. We’d normally move maybe five hundred meters in a day, because you’re moving very slow and being pretty careful. On our second day, we finally ended up on top of this mountain, and we took our coordinates, and the 1-0 told me to call, and give them our coordinates, our location.

DB: You’re working on 1:25,000 maps? TK: Yeah. So, I called in and gave him our coordinates, and the radio came back and said, “I’m sorry, but you must have given us the wrong coordinates.” So I gave him our coordinates again. And they said, No, you can’t be there. That’s too far. I said, “Well, that’s where we are.” What had happened was, they had given us the wrong coordinates when they dropped us. So, we were on top of this mountain called Co Roc Mountain.

DB: This is in Laos? TK: In Laos, yeah. So we were finding a lot of different things that were very nerve wracking. One of the things we found was spider holes, which were very common along the trails the North Vietnamese used. As aircraft or something came over, they would jump into the spider holes and hide so that the aircraft couldn’t see any movement on the trails. Only these spider holes were augured by heavy equipment. We had never seen anything like that. We also found tracks from tracked vehicles, which suggested that there were tanks in the area. We called in that, we told them that, and they said, No, there are no tanks.

DB: You think these are the tanks that went into Lang Vei? TK: Yeah. Anyway, as we were standing there, discussing our situation on top of the mountain, a platoon of North Vietnamese walked up on us. I didn’t realize they were there until the shooting started. Because I was on the radio. All of the sudden, our Nung team sergeant opened fire. He screamed and opened fire. Everybody turned, and one of the things we did with our immediate action drills was to try and put out as much fire as possible in a very short period of time. Trying to break contact.

DB: Did you do it in volleys, did you have a procedure, so that everybody didn’t empty their magazine and reload at the same time?

TK: The first magazines all went. And then you tried to stutter the next ones. Anyway, we knocked down a bunch of North Vietnamese soldiers, not quite sure how many, but a bunch. And we bailed over the side of this real steep mountain cliff. Actually, as I went over the side, I got my foot caught on a root, so I was hanging upside down, talking on the radio, trying to get loose. Everybody’s shooting, pretty chaotic of course, in a fire fight. I kept screaming, “Get some cover,” you know, cover on top of that mountain. The other person on the radio, this captain, reminded me that I was supposed to be using my codebook. And in the excitement of the

79 moment, I screamed back at him, I said, “Every son of a bitch in the world knows where we are except you! Give us some fire on top of the mountain!” So immediately, the gunships came and they started firing, while we ran down—quickly worked our way down the mountain. On our way down, we were planting toe-popper mines, small anti-personnel mines behind us, to slow the NVA who were surely coming after us.

DB: You’re actually digging them in? TK: Just barely. Well, they’re only that big. DB: But still, it’s still something that slows you down, too. TK: Yeah. Yeah, we were. So we got down on the bottom, broke contact, there was no more firing going on. So we call for extraction, and they came back and they said, Well, are you still receiving fire? And we said, “No.” And they said, Well, we really don’t want to extract you. We want more information. And so, 1-0 said, “Okay.” They said, We’re going to send you reinforcements in. So we thought they would send a hatchet force in behind us. What they did was they sent another reconnaissance team. And they got there just before dark. So they told us we had to RON. So we tucked in, of course terrified because now, we’d just been in a fire fight, and they knew where we were. However, they didn’t come after us that night. So the next morning, they told us, “We want you to go back up the mountain, see if you can catch a prisoner.” We said, “Well, we mined the trail coming off the mountain.” And they said, We don’t care. We want you to work your way back up there. So the two recon team leaders got together, and we worked our way back up. We found maybe a dozen blood trails, but no bodies. No wounded. So we were following a couple of the trails back into this elephant grass, and all of a sudden, we started smelling smoke. And we discovered from the cubby above us, that they had started a fire upwind from us, and were trying to burn the elephant grass. So he gave us a direction, the covey would always give you a direction to move, if he could see what was going on, so he gave us a direction to move. We started moving that way, and pretty soon, another fire started. So now we got fire burning on two sides of us, and covey aircraft reported that there’s troops, enemy moving towards you, on the third side. So, the gunships came in, and they started strafing and firing. At about that time, they hit us. But we had—I think we had like sixteen guys. So we had a lot of firepower. So we knocked that fire down. They stopped for a minute. They said, “We want to come in, but we can’t land, there’s a tree on the LZ.” There was a tree, about a sixteen-inch diameter tree, in the LZ. They said, “Somehow we need to get the tree down.” So, “OK, we’ll shoot it down with an M79.” Well, it was too close to us. We couldn’t get the M79 to arm, you know, it would just bounce off the tree. Then we got hit again from two sides. And they said, You know, we’re going to come in, but we’ve got to have the tree down. So we said, “Well, we’ll cut it down.” So we took our knives, I think it was four of us, and we started hacking on this tree. And you know, the choppers are on their way in.

DB: What kind of knives did you have? TK: Like a Randall knife, just a hunting knife. We chopped this sixteen inch tree down, tipped it over in about two minutes.

DB: Chopping on adrenaline. TK: Yeah. And it fell just as the first helicopter came over the trees. DB: Was it a Chinook, you’ve got sixteen guys, how did— TK: No, no it was huge. There was like— DB: Couple of Hueys— TK: Three or four Hueys, yeah. So, somehow miraculously through all that, we never lost— we never even had anybody who was wounded. We’d been in two fire fights, in you know, about twelve hours, and nobody had even been wounded. And we got on there and we got out of there. And then when we came back, we were debriefed, and we told them about the spider holes. We had pictures of them. And they said, Well, they must’ve had a tractor with an auger or something. We said, “No.” We kept trying to tell them we saw tracked vehicles, and they kept saying no. They denied it. And less than a month later—less than three weeks later, tanks came across the river.

DB: Into Lang Vei. And then you had to go relieve them. TK: Yeah. That kind of—going back to Khe Sanh—after we left Khe Sanh and went back to Na Trang and we got back up to Phu Bai, was nearing the end of my tour of duty that year. The last couple weeks, we just did—kind of the way they would do it is, they would take you off the team and kind of let you wind down more in camp. They didn’t really want you out, because they didn’t want somebody making mistakes because they were thinking about home rather than thinking about what they were supposed to be doing. So I ended up driving the water truck for the last couple of weeks I was there. During that period, my team Idaho launched into Ashau, and gave the all clear on their landing on the LZ, and were never heard from again.

DB: These are your friends. TK: Yeah. All of them. My whole team: Glenn, my 1-0, 1-1, and all of the indigenous. So that was a real heartbreaker. And it was hard for me to leave. That pretty much ended my first year.

DB: So now you’ve got to come home. TK: Yeah. DB: You’ve been through all these intense experiences, really intense. You’ve suffered significant losses, of your friends.

TK: Yeah. DB: And what are you coming home to? You’ve got a baby that you haven’t seen yet. You’ve got a wife.

TK: I had a baby and I didn’t know what her name was. DB: So you come into—you go to the placement depot at Cam Ranh Bay.

TK: Yeah. DB: And you’re alone, coming home alone? TK: No, I was with Robbie, my buddy. Me and him were the only two that survived out of the twenty-four we went with. So we flew back, we flew into San Francisco, Oakland terminal. And Robbie had already been in Vietnam, and when we got off the aircraft, they were herding everybody like cattle, like they usually do. And we were both NCOs. He was a senior NCO. So we just walked right past everybody, and went and got in a cab. You say we can’t do that, we just did it.

DB: You had your orders anyway. TK: We had our orders. Robbie was going back to Fort Bragg, I was assigned to Fort Devens, Massachusetts, Tenth Special Forces Group. Which turned out to not even be there yet. So I flew home to Minneapolis—to you know, a big homecoming from my family. My mom was pretty much overwhelmed. I got a little bit of a taste of what had been going on with her, which being a young guy, didn’t really pay any attention to. It was always about me, rather than about everybody else.

DB: She had a rough time while you were gone? TK: Yeah, she had a very rough time. I was going to try and surprise her, and my father thought she might have a heart attack. So he wouldn’t let me go anywhere near her until he had talked to her. But it was—yeah, it was a very rough, very rough time. It was hard to know how to act. It was hard to talk to people. It was difficult.

DB: You get home, you’re about three days out of Vietnam. TK: Yeah. DB: And you’re home for a month? TK: I was home for a month. Went to—took off with my new wife and baby to Fort Devens, Massachusetts. We drove our old car out there. When I got there, they had never heard of the Tenth Special Forces Group. (Laughs)

DB: You’re the first one. TK: Yeah. In the middle of the night, I ended up staying in the guest quarters. A few days later, a couple of other guys showed up. Then we finally found out that the main group—the main part of the Tenth, was still in Bad Tölz, Germany. So our job was to kind of set up quarters—you know, for the families coming—and get things ready. Get the whole group set up.

DB: Mentally, are you still in Vietnam? TK: Mentally, still in Vietnam. DB: Was it a let-down to be home, emotionally and—some guys talk about missing the adrenaline of it, missing the experience?

TK: Yeah, it was very—you know, it was relieving. It was very relaxing to be home, but at the same time, it felt so strange. It was like you were separate from everybody else.

DB: Something’s missing. TK: Yeah. And all of your friends were still in Vietnam. So it was very difficult. I drank a lot, every day. And did a lot of crazy, stupid stuff.

DB: How did your wife react to all this, could you talk to her at all? TK: I couldn’t really talk to her, because she didn’t have any understanding. She was terrified of me. My reactions to any kind of threat were very harsh and very immediate. I scared a lot of people.

DB: Other guys in the Tenth had been in Vietnam. Did you talk to them? TK: Yeah. It was difficult when the small group that was at Devens—most of them were Vietnam vets—when the main body of the Tenth came, there were a lot of older NCOs, with families, who were what they call “lifers.” And a lot of them had never even been to Vietnam, had no desire to go to Vietnam.

DB: Had been doing the European missions. TK: Had been doing the European missions for so long, that was their life. DB: That was their specialty. TK: Yeah. So there became quite a bit of animosity between the two groups. Yeah, we didn’t get along well. Not everybody, but as a whole, they didn’t get along as well. The Vietnam vets all understood each other, and the older members, who would only—you know, had only been in Germany—we just didn’t get along. So I was there from I think July, sometime in July, until November, and had more and more trouble. Alcohol, you know with drinking, and uh—just getting in trouble. So I eventually called Mrs. Alexander again, and told her I wanted to go back to Vietnam. Everybody was happy about that! (Laughs) I did not treat my wife very good, I’m very ashamed of that.

DB: But you’re dealing with a lot. TK: Yeah. I really didn’t know how to be a good husband. I loved my wife, but I didn’t know how to be a father, and I didn’t know how to be a husband.

DB: You knew how to be a good recon team member. TK: I knew how to be a good stone-cold killer. That’s the only thing I really knew how to do good.

DB: And you’re twenty-one years old? TK: Twenty-one years old. So they sent me right back to Vietnam. When I went back, I thought I would be assigned right back to FOB1, but FOB1 had closed down by then, and what they called CCN, Command and Control North, which was in Da Nang, all the teams from FOB1

83 had went to Da Nang. Which was fine, you know—I knew a lot of people there. When I got there, they told me that I wasn’t going to Command and Control North, I was going to go to Command and Control South, which was down in Ban Me Thuot.

DB: Into Cambodia. TK: The Cambodian side. Well, we ran missions in Cambodia. But, yeah, they were strictly Cambodia. I didn’t know anybody there. And they didn’t know me. So we didn’t start out real good. Because of my experiences and stuff, I wasn’t really taking any crap from anybody. So that caused some issues. But they assigned me to a hatchet force there. They actually made me the acting Company Commander of a hatchet force company. So we did some missions there.

DB: Did you start to feel at home? TK: I never felt at home there. Ever. DB: Not like you’d felt in the North? TK: No. And then I was wounded in a mortar attack. DB: And what was that circumstance, how did that happen? TK: We got hit— DB: In the base? TK: Yeah. We got hit in the base. I was coming out of a doorway of a building, and a round hit alongside of me, threw me, and I broke my arm, got a bunch of shrapnel. I ended up spending a few days in the hospital, there. Got patched up. Well, then I had a cast on my arm. And so I couldn’t go out on missions for a while. So I stayed around, and eventually it came time, my enlistment was about to be up, so I had went back, they flew me back to Nha Trang to reenlist, me and another guy. And they just assumed I was going to reenlist because I had already reenlisted once. And I was planning on reenlisting, and then when I got there and started looking around and seeing that basically all of these—my whole attitude changed. I just saw that there was a lot of people who weren’t really doing much of anything, were just sitting around, and there was a bunch of young guys who were all dying. Something clicked in my head and said—I knew if I stayed there, I would die. I was 100% convinced.

DB: You would die from—if you stayed in Vietnam? TK: If I stayed in Vietnam, in SOG DB: Because your time had just run out? TK: I saw eventually my time would just run out. Because everybody did. They all died. So the day came for me to reenlist, and the guy said, “Well, you know, you want to take a leave now? Do you want to take a leave later?” I said, “Well, I don’t think I’m going to reenlist.” And he was just like, “What?” (Laughs) I said, “I think I’m going to go home.” I was just—I don’t know. I was over it.

DB: And when was this?

TK: This was April, 1969. DB: So how was the trip home this time? Was it—you were pretty much glad to leave Vietnam at this point, you were ready to leave?

TK: Yeah, I was ready to leave. The first time, I wasn’t sure. But this time I was ready to leave.

DB: You didn’t have the connections this time that you had the last time? TK: Yeah, I had very few friends there, I knew a couple of people. I knew a lot of people up north, but I didn’t know a lot of people where I was. And a lot of the people that I knew were dead, so. They put me in—I was the senior NCO on the aircraft of two hundred and forty passengers.

DB: Were you a staff sergeant? TK: Yeah. DB: Out of Cam Ranh, or Bien Hoa? TK: Cam Ranh. No—Bien Hoa. Yeah. DB: Okay. And any trouble on the plane? TK: There was a lot of withdrawal, drug withdrawals. Heroin users, on the plane. DB: And they’re freaking out. TK: They were freaking out, I was freaking out. Well, I wasn’t freaking out, but it was very disturbing to see that many.

DB: How were the stewardesses handling it all? TK: They seemed to do pretty good with it. DB: They’d probably seen it before. TK: Yeah. They did better with it than me. I had one guy come up and hand me a jar full of ears, wanted me to get them off the plane for him. I said, “No, I can’t do that.” But they flew us into Fort Lewis. We landed, got—I had all these troops to get moved, it was the middle of the night, so they put us in these barracks, and locked everybody’s stuff up in a big cage, because they were having trouble with people stealing stuff. Which had never happened before. And I had my own room, because I was a senior NCO. And so they came in and they said, Okay, if you can get over to the pay master in fifteen minutes, we can get you out of here in two hours, and blah-blah-blah. So I ran out, got everybody moving, and locked everybody’s stuff up except mine. I locked my room, and went over to the pay master, came back, and all my stuff was gone. Door was kicked in. A bunch of mementos that I had. A couple of Montagnard—you know, they made these little pipes out of ivory and silver. Had a bunch of stuff that was stolen. All my medals.

DB: Welcome home. TK: Welcome home. DB: Probably some junkie threw your mementos away and looked for money. TK: Yeah. So I had a briefcase, I walked around the airport looking for that briefcase. It’s probably a good thing I never found it.

DB: Did you have a copy of your orders with you, so you could at least get home? TK: I don’t think I had anything. I know I got home, but I don’t remember what happened. Well, maybe I did, because maybe I had to have them for pay.

DB: So you finished your out-processing, they give you a ticket back to Minneapolis, had your wife moved back to Minneapolis, to Minnesota?

TK: Yeah, I had moved her back when I was in the process of leaving. We had moved back. She had—you know, we had a little—we actually had a little kind of apartment out on a farm, a little farmhouse.

DB: In Dayton? TK: Outside of Dayton. DB: So now you’ve really got an adjustment. Now you’re back in the civilian world, you’re not even on an army base.

TK: Well, I came home, got together with my buddies, went and got drunk, of course. DB: And your wife’s saying, “Oh no, not this again.” TK: Yeah. She eventually—eventually we went, it was easy to get jobs then. I went to work for Controlled Data Corporation.

DB: Doing? TK: Driving a fork truck. And things went okay, except for way too much drinking and stuff. Eventually after a couple of years, I decided I wanted to go to college, so I started going to college on the GI Bill. Always drinking—drinking, smoking pot. It was always—drinking was always on the table.

DB: What was—why were you drinking? TK: Well— DB: Did you ever think about what was going on in your head at the time? TK: Mostly I just wanted to be left alone. I just wanted nobody to bother me. I didn’t want to be bothered.

DB: You’re drinking by yourself.

TK: No, I drank with my friends. But I always just wanted to have that buzz all the time. And I didn’t want to think about all the stuff that I’d seen and done. There was a period of time when I first came home that I couldn’t sleep in the house at night, because of the lights, I couldn’t stand the lights. Because of—you know, if the lights were on, and you couldn’t see out, everybody could see in. And I just couldn’t stand it.

DB: You felt vulnerable. TK: So I would get drunk and go and sleep under a tree outside. For a long time. My wife would get upset. My dad would tell her, “Just leave him alone. He’ll be alright, just leave him alone.”

DB: Could you talk to your dad? Was there anybody in the family that you could talk to? TK: No. I talked to some of my buddies. I talked to my dad some. They were—my family was supportive of me, I just didn’t recognize that. And didn’t take advantage of it. I just didn’t want to be bugged. I didn’t want to be bugged by anybody.

DB: And it probably didn’t take much to bug you at the time. TK: No. And I was pretty volatile. DB: Did that affect school and work, your volatility? TK: Yeah, yeah. I knocked a couple of guys out at work for playing stupid games that normally wouldn’t be that big of a deal.

DB: You mean, messing with you? Playing games? TK: Yeah. Sneaking up on you. Trying to jump out and scare you. DB: You’re a crazy veteran, we’re going to make you jump, that kind of stuff? You made them jump instead?

TK: Yeah. It was the wrong thing to do. So I got in trouble for that. So I got to school, school was alright. But then I had to listen to the protesters. Although they didn’t bother me personally.

DB: Where were you going to school? TK: I went to North Hennepin Community College, at first. Then I quit school, I was working nights and going to school during the day. And then I became so overwhelmed and tired by that, I quit both school and work. Moved out in the little farm house out in Paynesville, Minnesota. Lived out there for a couple of years.

DB: With your wife? TK: With my wife and kids. DB: How did you support yourself? TK: Just lived off the land. Hunted, fished, traded stuff.

DB: Was there something that helped you settle down? TK: Well, me and my wife eventually started growing further apart. You know, we moved after a couple of years, we moved back to Dayton, and continued to grow further apart. And then I was drinking more, which is hard to believe because it’s hard to drink more than all the time. My wife filed for divorce from me. That kind of changed my—that changed everything. I lost my family, everything I cared about. Woke up one morning, and went, “I can’t do this anymore.” So I kind of—I renewed my relationship with God. Asked for help. Went through drug alcohol rehab. I was thinking I would get my wife back and everything would be happier ever after. But that didn’t happen. But something happened during that period, where it changed my whole life. You know, I started to be in recovery. And I’ve been recovering ever since!

DB: This started when you’re what, twenty-nine, thirty years old, at the most? TK: I was thirty-two. DB: Thirty-two, so you’re still a really young guy. TK: Yup. Yeah. I quit drinking, drugs, everything at thirty-four. DB: And at some point, did you start getting involved in veteran’s groups? TK: Yeah, they tried to get me involved when I got out of alcohol drug rehab, but I didn’t care for it. Or I couldn’t make a connection with the—I couldn’t make a connection with the regular line troops. It was just too different. And I didn’t know of the Special Forces Association or anything like that.

DB: You needed to find people who shared you experience to talk to. TK: Yeah. But over a period of time, I got involved in church, met some other vets who had been through rehab and got involved in church. We became friends, and were associated more and more with each other. We used each other for support a lot.

DB: What do you think would have helped guys like you, or guys with other combat experiences when they come home? What was missing from the homecoming?

TK: Well, we didn’t get a real, you know, great homecoming, like they do now. Although, I mean I was pretty well received by the people in Dayton, that I grew up with. We all were. I think some of the down time and some of the forced—I hate to call it forced, but now when troops reenter society, there’s a lot more things that they get help with. They go through a period of transition, a transition period. One of the times I came back from Vietnam, I still had my jungle fatigues on. (Laughs) Just walked right out. Plus, the way that society was, at the time, was so—you know—anti-military. And you know, they blamed the soldiers instead of the political establishment for—

DB: Feeling alienated from a society that couldn’t grasp what you’d been through. And seemingly in many ways didn’t care?

TK: They didn’t care.

DB: They couldn’t understand it, they couldn’t relate to it, nothing in their field of experience was in any way similar.

TK: Yeah. DB: So, eventually, you remarried? TK: Yeah, eventually in 1985, I remarried my wife, current wife, Sheila. I worked construction, which coincidentally puts you outside of the normal realm of having to deal with a lot of people. And continued working on my relationship with God. Through that, I met other veterans, more and more veterans. Eventually I ran across some guys from the Special Forces Association, who put me in contact with some guys in MACVSOG who I actually served with. Then actually, through some contacts there, was able to make contact with some of my long lost friends, from Vietnam.

DB: Those were good reunions for you? TK: It was very good, very good. DB: Now you’re active in lots of different veterans’ activities? TK: Yeah, now I’m active in a lot of different veterans’ associations. DB: Nationally, locally? TK: Yes. DB: Any closing thoughts? TK: Um, you know of course I’m very proud of my military service. You know, my thoughts on Vietnam, I truly believe that we made a difference in a lot of people’s lives. And if you look around our United States now, there are a lot of Vietnamese nationality people who have done extremely well, and I’m very proud that we were able to help those people. And I’m proud of my service to our country.

DB: With good reason. Well, thank you very much. You’ve done a good interview. TK: (Laughs) Okay, thank you!

End of interview