AMERICAN UNIVERSITY

ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Oral History Interview with

Tim Brady

By Connor Mitchell

TheirStory.io

October 7, 2020 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY: ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

NARRATOR: Tim Brady DATE: 10/7/2020 INTERVIEWER: Connor Mitchell PLACE: Internet via TheirStory.io

NARRATOR’S PERSONAL DATA Branch of Service: United States Navy Ship: USS Hugh Purvis DD709 Occupation: Radarman (Operation Specialists) Years of Service: 1965-1969

SUMMARY OF INTERVIEW

An overview of pre-war life before the Vietnam War alongside a summary of Mr. Tim Brady’s actions on the USS Hugh Purvis, DD-709, which was stationed off of the coast of North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin.

INTERVIEWER'S COMMENTS

Mr. Tim Brady is a Rockville, Maryland native who enlisted in the Navy right out of high school. He was stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin from 1968 until 1969. There is a background journal available for this interview.

COPYRIGHT STATUS

Rights belong to the Humanities Truck at American University’s Library. Please contact Professor Dan Kerr for more information: [email protected]

INDEX TERMS

Navy, Vietnam, Destroyer, USS Hugh Purvis, Gulf of Tonkin, Viet Cong, Naval, Artillery, Bombardment, Agent Orange, Aircraft Carrier, Minesweeper, Radarman Oral History Project

Transcription of Interview with Tim Brady on October 7th, 2020 Over TheirStory.io

Connor Mitchell: Interviewer Tim Brady: Interviewee

00:00:01 Connor Mitchell All righty. This is an oral history with Tim Brady current time is 3:04 p.m. On Wednesday, October 7th, 2020. Do I have your permission to record and archive this conversation?

00:00:26 Tim Brady Yes, you do.

00:00:28 Connor Mitchell Wonderful. Thank you for your time and I guess your service so essentially what I hope to accomplish by kind of collecting as many stories as I can from Vietnam veterans is to kind of I guess complete the picture of the Vietnam War. Many people when they think of the Vietnam War kind of think back to essentially the civilian perception of it.

00:01:01 Connor Mitchell It clouds the overall, the bigger story perhaps of the Vietnam War and kind of devalues stories from actual veterans that were there and it just becomes one giant jumbled mess of civilians think it's this, actual veterans think it's that and we have a lot of Civilian stories, but we don't really have that many veterans’ stories.

00:01:43 Connor Mitchell I guess just to get right into the questions. Before US Involvement in Vietnam, I guess what was everyday life like?

00:01:59 Tim Brady Well, it was like, you're probably too young to know the reference to Ozzie and Harriet maybe or Leave it to Beaver TV shows. It was a very white America. White Bread is what we used to call it. White Bread America. It was very plain and easy. It was a great job market if you were a white guy. Super strong middle class starting to come out after the World War Two vets came back. The middle class started to Surge in opportunities whether you were going to college and going on like my father did on the GI Bill or you were going Union, perhaps. The advice you would get as a kid, if you weren't going in the military and you weren't going to college, you're going to graduate and get a job as either job with the phone company the gas company or the post office. I mean, these are what those were good, secure, you'll be there forever with a great pension, great pay, union benefits. Couldn't do any better than that. That's what the advice given to everybody.

00:02:59 Tim Brady I grew up in Montgomery County. I grew up in Rockville. My parents moved down here from Buffalo, New York where I was born, but I've lived in Maryland since I was three years old and most of my life, from 8 to 18. I was in Rockville. I went to Richard Montgomery High School graduated from there with the Ocean City for a week and then off to boot camp, so I didn't stick around. I was in kind of in a hurry to get out. But it was very idyllic. We look back on our Facebook sites, from you know, You Know You Grew Up in Rockville If and those kinds of things.

00:03:34 Tim Brady You'd find kids would go out in the morning, assuming you weren't in school, and you wouldn't have to be home until dinner time. And travel in packs on bicycles, five, six, twelve, kids at a time and zoom all over Rockville and all over Montgomery County. Neighborhoods were tight. Hungerford Towne was a neighborhood I grew up in, there was Twinbrook which was outside Rockville, there was Aspen Hill. There's the Potomac anywhere any they're all very very close. It was an idyllic time if you were a kid, especially if you're a white kid and growing up, until say '65 '66. Pretty idyllic. I mean it was classic. Have you ever seen Mayberry RFD or The Andy Griffith Show or any of those shows? It was, and I'm not kidding you, no hyperbole, it was just like that. It was just like that.

00:04:26 Tim Brady We had the candy store that everybody went to, we had the one movie theater, we had the statue of the confederate soldier right in the Town Square across movie theater and the courthouse. Memorial Day Parade every year. I marched it as a Boy Scout, I marched in it as safety patrol, and marched in it as a Richard Montgomery High School band member. We used to go to Ann's kitchen on a Saturday or Sunday morning put our rifles behind the door to eat breakfast because we're going squirrel hunting over where 270 is now. That's just the way things were. You also had the volunteer fire department.

00:05:05 Tim Brady I mean that everybody was in something, you know. You knew that everybody knew everybody. The pool hall was in the basement underneath that Montgomery County Sentinel newspaper building which was right next to Roy's Place which was a Bar with sawdust on the floor. I mean it could've been a movie set. I was a movie set for a movie called Lilith which starred Warren Beatty in 1966-67 something like that. I wasn't there, I was gone then when they filmed it in Rockville.

00:05:34 Tim Brady And a lot of people go back for nostalgia and you can see downtown Rockville and what it would look like. It was you know, a small southern town at that time on the verge of becoming what it is now but wasn't there yet. And it was just amazing now when we are all in our 70's we all look at each other and go we had it, we were in heaven. We were in a kid's Heaven, you know, it really was. You had the creek and went got tadpoles I mean I can go on and on and on. Places to build tree forts it's right down the street.

00:06:05 Tim Brady just incredible. I was very lucky. You'll find this out the older you get you'll find this to be true as you move along, the luckier you're going to see how you were. You appreciate it more when you're behind, you know?

00:06:15 Connor Mitchell Yeah, and I understand that. So, I guess as you kind of grew older in Rockville, closer to when Vietnam was on everyone's radar. How was the community’s response to war in Vietnam?

00:06:42 Tim Brady Well, when I was there, I left Rockville in '65 and they had the incident with the Turner Joy, and an incident where the supposedly these Patrol Boats from North Vietnam came and shot at our destroyers. But any rate, that was '64 and truthfully it didn't even show up on my radar. I'm 17. I'm looking for beer, and I'm looking for girls and that's about it. You know, that's what's on my radar and I had never heard the adults talking about it hardly at all. But the generation ahead of me, my parents’ generation, was very close lip when it came to World War Two. As just saying it was horrible, and the rationing was bad. And my old man, he was a World War Two vet. My uncles were all World War Two vets, all combat guys.

00:07:30 Tim Brady And they never talked about it in front of us, their kids, or anything. They were depression era kids and that you know, they felt suck it up move on with it, you know? It didn't really pop up on the radar around here where I grew up. But we were, you ever heard the term greasers? You know what that means?

00:07:52 Connor Mitchell Yep.

00:07:52 Tim Brady That's a group of kids. Well Richard Montgomery was like 90% Greaser. we couldn't have cared. You know, all we cared about was the cars, and the girls, and going out on Friday and Saturday night, and having a cool car. That was the most important thing. And really good clothes because the girls wouldn't go out with you if you didn't dress right. So yeah, that was it. I mean, it didn't really pop up on our radar. Now I've talked to other kids from Richard Montgomery we get together. Well until the virus, we would get together once a month, it's called the 60s Group. Anybody who graduated in the 60's would get together at a restaurant or someplace and tell stories. 00:08:29 Tim Brady And it seemed later on by '68 '69 it changed and became more aware and more politically aware and definitely swinging against the war. But these are stories from kids that graduated five and six years after I did. I don't think anybody caught on. I mean this was still a small, small town, you know, and a lot of kids went in the military. All right after high school because then you can get your GI bill, or you could learn a trade.

00:08:55 Tim Brady And so, the custom was when you were in the military, if you went to boot camp in the summer, you came back to the high school when you got out of boot. And when you graduated you had usually week or two leave. When you came home. you went to the school one day and visited, walked around the halls, and visit all your old teachers in your uniform and it was a very big deal in September and October in Richard Montgomery and Wheaton High School and everything around here. It was not usual to see 10 or 12 guys, usually guys, walking around in their uniforms saying hi to all the younger classmates and to their teachers and that was a very traditional thing to do. I don't think they did it starting in '67 or '68. It wasn’t a very smart thing to be in your uniform when out in the civilian life. You changed into your civvies as soon as you could, but your haircut always gave you away anyway. It was kind of silly because everybody else was having longer hair. You would have what was considered as short hair. Now you can imagine what a military haircut must have been and how you stood out like a big fat red light, you know? Tough to get a date too.

00:10:10 Connor Mitchell you volunteered out of high school is that correct?

00:10:13 Tim Brady Yeah. I volunteered to enlist in this thing called Early In and I actually enlisted in April and delayed entry until after I graduated. So, I graduated in the middle of June and did the obligatory Ocean City for a week after graduation, and then I left for boot camp the next day.

00:10:34 Connor Mitchell Why did you pick the Navy of all branches?

00:10:40 Tim Brady Two reasons, one you always do the opposite of what your father did. He was a flyer in the Army Air Corp. I'm a big fan of gravity. I can swim, I can't fly. So, second thing was to get as far away as fast as a way as I could, and I figured the Navy would take me places where I wouldn't be stuck at a base. I would be on a ship. This is my thinking, but it doesn't always work that way, but I would be on a ship and it would be going places and I'd been going with it. You know, join the Navy, the world. It was true then and is still true now if you get on the right ships. That was it. Just itchy feet. I've been in Rockville all my life, you know, and I'm ready to go. I'm ready to fly. I knew I wouldn't stick with college. I didn't have the self-discipline to do that. So, I probably needed a little shot in the arm of that too. But it was time for me to fly, I got to go.

00:11:32 Connor Mitchell So how did your family and friends react to your decision to go with the Navy?

00:11:39 Tim Brady The day I came home with my enlistment papers. I was walking up the porch to the front door and my mother opened up and said Guess what! Guess what! You got your acceptance to Maryland and I said Guess what! Guess what! I've got my acceptance to Great Lakes Naval Training Center. I leave July 1st. And my parents are both college graduates, I mean we're expected to go another step ahead of that. I mean my brother's a doctor, brother's a lawyer, sister's a doctor, and on, and on. So, they were just dumbfounded. Just dumbfounded. I'm the oldest of six, I'm supposed to set the good example. I'm supposed to lead the way. Get good grades, go to school, keep moving up, and I just went the total opposite way. And to say they were shocked was an understatement. They didn't try to talk me out of it. They couldn't. I was 18. I'd already signed the papers. So, they knew. Yeah, it caused a rumpus in the Brady family, That's for sure.

00:12:42 Connor Mitchell Did your father at least sympathize with you because he was a flyer in World War II?

00:12:47 Tim Brady He could have. I guess he kind of understood the need to go. I mean he went because there was a war on, and he quit two and a half years into college. He quit that to join the Army Air Corps. There's a war on and in his case, they needed all hands-on deck. But for me, there wasn't a war on, there's no need. There was a draft. We still had the draft, and I was a 1-A but if you end up going to college and you get the deferral and continue your way through college and on and on. So he just shook his head and he thought it was kind of funny going in the Navy but you know I said listen, you know, you know what the Navy's motto is? We don't camp. Sleep Outdoors? What are you nuts? That's why God made central heating. What are you nuts?

00:13:36 Tim Brady He might have been a little more sympathetic, but I don't think you could show it front of my mother. I mean, we are talking about an Irish Catholic Family. I mean my grandparents were right off the boat. So, my mother spoke half Gaelic and had a big accent. So, you didn't you didn't mess around with her, all five foot two of her. So, he walked the line. I think you live longer that way.

00:14:04 Connor Mitchell Yeah, I understand that. I also come from a big Irish Catholic family.

00:14:07 Tim Brady Yeah “Connor.” Yeah, I bet you do.

00:14:08 Connor Mitchell Yeah. No one disrespects my mother or grandmother.

00:14:12 Tim Brady No, you do not go there.

00:14:16 Connor Mitchell So, when you finally enlisted in the Navy, where did you do your training for the Navy?

00:14:27 Tim Brady Back then there were two places you went. The Army calls its basic, and for the Navy and Marines it's called boot camp. It was either San Diego or Great Lakes Naval Training Center. Great Lakes is still there. It's the only one now that they said recruits to, so you go up there and it's about a 12-week period where you start learning how to be a sailor. What they do in a boot camp or basic training is psychologically, they break you down to build you back up. Because no sane human being wants to take a weapon and charge up that hill and bayonet somebody. You got to be taught how to do that. And to be able to teach you, not just the technique, but to actually, when they say go, get up and go. They have to break you down and bring you back up. So, they say left its left and right is right, and you don't question, you don't ask, you just go you do it. Orders is Orders as they say. So, it takes about 12-week process.

00:15:26 Connor Mitchell And what was the physical training like? Did you have to do anything extreme?

00:15:34 Tim Brady Yeah, we did a lot of, as you might imagine, a lot of push-ups, sit-ups, that kind of thing. Ran obstacle courses, but the Navy was kind of different and they're not going to be out like the Army of the Marine Corps putting packs on and a rifle and marching down the road for 10 miles and stuff like that. What we are doing, since we were in the Navy, is you better learn how to swim.

00:15:56 Tim Brady And you're going to have to learn how to swim if it's not the most idyllic conditions. By that I mean, they would have you in the swimming pool where you do your basic swimming test. And then you have a part where you have to jump off a platform, like a dive platform, that's probably 12 meters up, simulating the deck of a ship and dive into the water, swim under a burning patch of oil, come up in the middle of it, grab some more air because you don't know how big that patch is and be under there for a long time, and swim out from under it. And there's a trick to it. When you come up and just splash your hands in the air it will disperse the oil out of the way for long enough for you to go up, get air, and go back down, and slip underneath it. But they're training you for what you're really going to be getting into. I mean ships sink, fires happened. Fire's the worst thing you can have on a ship. That's the scariest thing for a sailor, is a fire. So necessary training. The same as the Marine Corps and the Army's got how to set up a bivouac how to set up an ambush. How to enfilade fire and all the tricks and tips they learned, we had to learn different tips and tricks. We're in a whole different environment. We're in a water environment.

00:17:05 Connor Mitchell Okay, and I guess more so of the organization of boot camp, did you go through boot camp with the same folks you would end up serving with?

00:17:20 Tim Brady No. They were bringing nine hundred people a day, every seven days a week, together at boot camp. It took a week before they form you up. You get formed into a company of roughly 80 to 100 men and that's your company and go through the whole training cycle together. When you get to the end of it, you have your graduation. I signed up to get Electronic Training. Other people were Aviation, some were in engineering, some didn't take a particular thing at all and let the Navy choose where they thought they might do the best based on all these tests they give you. So, everybody just scattered, you scattered to the wind for the most part. Now I did wind up with a couple of guys from my boot camp at the first couple places at because they had a program called Pre- School Indoctrination, PSI and reason they have that is to delay you. I was going to go to radar. It's called A-School, so the very first school, but there's so many guys coming after so you had to wait your turn for the class to form up because there's so many guys ahead of you. So, what do we do with these people? The Navy asked themselves, well we'll put them out in the fleet, and they can maybe work around what they'll be getting their training for later once they get to school. Well, that's great in theory, but when you get to fleet, they see a brand-new recruit doesn't know anything and they're going to put you on a deck force. You're going to be learning how to be a boatswain's mate, you're going to learn how to paint, you’re going to learn how to tie knots, you're going to learn. They're going to put you where they want you. They could care less about that. So, I learned. I was on PBI River Patrol Boat staff for about eight weeks. I was ambushing students up in trees at two o'clock in the morning. I was running cranes on a repair ship I was assault boat coxswain training so the guys who drive the Marines into the beach. That's that guy that drives them with the boat called an assault boat. I was doing all kinds of things. Sometimes I did nothing. sometimes all I did all day was make coffee for nine chiefs. It was the Mobile technical unit. These are chief electronic technician guys. They are working on super-secret stuff and they were all in this one place and I sat outside there, kind of like security, mostly just making coffee. That's all I did all day. Day after day and that was it.

00:19:34 Tim Brady Finally, almost a year after I got out of boot. It was time for me to go to A-School. So I've essentially lost a year of my career in the Navy doing nothing waiting for the slots to open up and I wasn't the only one that's happened to a lot of so sonarmen, radarman, any kind of Technical Training. It was the way it was.

00:19:56 Connor Mitchell Wow, so when did you eventually get on a boat and head off for Vietnam?

00:20:05 Tim Brady Okay I finally got to A-School, took A-School. It was a year after I went in when in '65. So, this was the fall of '66 when I got out of school when I was a radarman. I was assigned to my first ship which was a guided missile frigate in Mayport, Florida an almost brand-new ship.

00:20:26 Tim Brady So, I got very lucky there and I was on that for almost two years. We took a cruise. We did a lot of stuff down the Caribbean and then we took a cruise called a NATO cruise and a Mediterranean. So, we went up the east coast of America, took a right at Halifax, and went over to Norway. And we were in Norway and Finland and Denmark and England and then around into Spain and into the Mediterranean and then Naples and all over the place.

00:20:56 Tim Brady Then we finally came home and when we got back there had problems with the engine design on these particular ships, even though they were new, so that what they do is they take them off to Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and decommission them and then so I had to be there for a year or so while they fix them. So, the crew is all scattered to other ships. That's when I got my ship to go to Vietnam and I was assigned the USS Hugh Purvis. It was a destroyer in Newport, Rhode Island. It was a World War Two destroyer.

00:21:27 Tim Brady And I went from like a brand-new, air conditioned, top-of-the-line. fighting ship to a ship built in 1945. It was not brand-new by any sense of the imagination or anything like that. It was rude and crude. But you know, that was my job. So, I reported there in May of '68 and came across the Quarterdeck. And the first thing he told me was we're going to Vietnam. Okay got one more for you lift on my hitch. I'll go ahead, it's not like I got a choice. Yeah, you raised your hand and swore an oath, that's the deal. So I left we left for Vietnam in August 1968 from Newport Rhode Island all the way around the world over to Vietnam, which always confused me because I figured you know, the Navy had a few ships and like Pearl Harbor, San Diego, Long Beach. They were a lot closer than traveling all the way around the world through the Panama Canal only to get over to Vietnam.

00:22:29 Tim Brady Cry we may but go we must, that's a lesson in the Navy.

(Internet connection is interrupted)

00:22:35 Tim Brady You just froze up on me. You still there?

00:22:44 Connor Mitchell Yep. Can you hear me?

00:22:45 Tim Brady Yeah,

00:22:46 Connor Mitchell My bad

(Internet connection is restored)

00:22:48 Tim Brady No worries. We didn't get there till September until about late in September before we finally got to Vietnam. Numerous stops along the way, to say the least.

00:23:02 Connor Mitchell I'm just curious. What was the trip from Rhode Island all the way to Vietnam like?

00:23:10 Tim Brady Long. And they gave you way too much time to think about what you were headed into. I mean, it was interesting and important from the standpoint once we got clear the US. That, all these places we never seen before like going through the Panama Canal stopping and Manzanillo, Mexico for fuel. We never, or most of us, had never been to San Diego or Long Beach. We stopped there. Pearl Harbor, we stopped there, Pago Pago stopped there and Samoa. We stopped in Midway, stopped at Guam. I mean it was a small ship. Almost of this was for fueling then we got to the Philippines in Subic Bay, which was the big Naval Base. That's when we got armed up with all the shells and all the ammunition. Everything with small arms machine guns and all that stuff, getting ready. Similar to a soldier getting to Vietnam by getting off the plane to go to reception Depot to get issued your fatigues and your weapons and all that stuff you need.

00:24:05 Tim Brady So, then we left Subic and headed to our First. We formed up with a few more destroyers and formed a destroyer group off the coast of Vietnam off of What's called I Corps, all the way up by the DMZ and that's what we started our tour there.

00:24:24 Connor Mitchell Okay, and this the Destroyer group, what was their mission in Vietnam?

00:24:35 Tim Brady Okay, so a Destroyer by its very Nature has a lot of a lot of different missions. Naval gunfire support, anti-submarine warfare, air Warfare. There's a there's a job you do which we did at out in the Tonkin Gulf on carriers when carriers are launching or recovering the aircraft, if an aircraft crashes or has an accent, or something that, the aircraft carrier does not stop going, they can't stop because planes behind you are landing that have just taken off in combat, but there is a destroyer 2,000 yards behind it. And that's the designated escort to pick up any pilot or somebody who's in the water. That's what gets the job done. It got tricky at night I could tell you, but that's one of the jobs. So anyway, my first assignment was Naval gunfire support north of I Corps which means the Marines or the Army or anybody, Republic of Korea troops. We work with them too, Australians too, they need us to open up before they start their march, maybe they're in serious trouble and they need serious Firepower now and we're the closest ones to them. There's screaming in your ears. They're getting overrun. It's not pretty. Sometimes you're six miles out. Sometimes you're as close as eighteen hundred yards from the beach. It depends on the mission and what they need. My guns from World War Two had an effective range of maybe seven or eight miles effective.

00:26:05 Tim Brady It's not like it's over the horizon like a big Battleship. You got to get in close, but we were very good Gunners and we can lay it right there right there on a dime's head, but we got to get close to do it if you're too far out.

00:26:18 Tim Brady Another mission would be, I described the one about the aircraft carrier. You might do that for a week or two and another the other biggest Mission we had was going up North Vietnam and going against their Coastal Gun batteries. And essentially what you do is you run at them and you're firing all your guns and they're firing all their guns and you go around a circle and go you do it again and you do it again and do it again until somebody doesn't shoot anymore.

00:26:46 Connor Mitchell What was that like?

00:26:47 Tim Brady That’s exciting. It's called a high pucker factor. It's like the engine is cranked up to what’s called flank speed. It’s as fast as these engine Engineers guys down in the hole can get them to go. The guns are firing as fast as the guys going to load them all of us are firing and everybody's trying not to get hit, knock on wood.

00:27:15 Tim Brady There was times that we learned it reunions were some shells came right between the stacks is like, you know the stacks with the steam would come out on a ship couple of guys are on the bridge. So, incoming shells go through there. I've listened to them to the rear. Always have a lookout. In the Navy have a forward look out, an aft look out, port look out, and start looking guys with binoculars physically looking at not just relying on radar and I could hear the aft look out report, “Splash hundred yards, Splash 75 yards, Splash 50 yards.” In other words. They're walking that thing right up our butts so we better make a move here or it's the next one's going to be splashing on top of us.

00:28:01 Tim Brady So yeah, they don't they don't get your adrenaline going and you don't get a lot of sleep. You don't get a lot of sleep because your dear General quarters a lot or you're sleeping right there at your posts. I'm sleeping on the stack of flak jackets eating bologna and check a ketchup sandwiches Kool-Aid, you know, it was like it's wet. And so, what's the way it was essentially? Those are the two biggest mission’s gunfire support for the troops and then going against North Vietnam Coastal Gun batteries and such.

00:28:32 Tim Brady It was really dangerous doing the part. One of the most dangerous was doing that carrier escort because I'll tell you what happened six months after we left for home. There is a carrier called the Evans that was doing that job at night with an Australian carrier. And when the carrier goes to turn they tell you they don't use nautical terms that keep it as simple as possible by Rudder is right or my Rudder is left and if you can imagine the carrier's here and escort guys behind you and if they turn, you better turn the same way and at the same time. Well, somebody got it wrong and he turned like that the carrier slice of the Destroyer right in half and everything from the bridge including the bridge forward sheared off and sank right in the ocean. Gone. They managed to get that tin can back to Subic Bay. I mean with almost half of it gone unbelievable piece of damage control from those guys but every radarman, every sonarman, everybody on the bridge, everybody sleeping at forward, and reverse, dead. Gone in an instant. It was nighttime and somebody got the wrong the wrong message. So dangerous business on a ship, especially a fighting at warship or a fighting ship is a very dangerous place and at night it's even more dangerous. You have to be aware all the time of where you are and what you are doing, where you are in relation to this, and what if this? or what if that? What if this ship takes a roll? What if a rogue wave hits right about now? what if they start coming around quick while I'm standing out here? Always looking for handholds and always looking for a hidey hole, always paying attention because if you don’t, you'll get you dead in a hurry.

00:30:16 Tim Brady That's true today, they have kids out there. They're those on those destroyers and guided missile frigates and that it's the same for them. There's a lot little more, you don't have to travel so much above outside decks to get from say it from forward aft the more inside passages would still keep it somewhat safe, but it's still a ship at Sea. It's very dangerous and it's your home. And you can't build a foxhole. You can't build a bunker. You stand or die on that deck, if you don't handle it, everybody dies. It's pretty much that simple. So, once you realize that, and it doesn't take long, you're out at sea. You don't have to be in combat. Just the sheer fact that being at sea at night and hearing stories or talking to a chief or bosun's mate, you know. It was their way of saying pay attention.

00:31:20 Connor Mitchell Wow, so, aside from like these combat missions, did you get much R&R on the ship?

00:31:35 Tim Brady No, you don't get R&R the Navy you have Liberty. It's called Liberty and like R&R you might get a week to go to Thailand or maybe to Hong Kong. You'll have Liberty. You'll pull into a port, maybe Hong Kong, for only a day or two. So, you might have 12 hours. So, we had Liberty in Sasebo, Japan. Hong Kong, Subic Bay. It was Liberty, but we were just going back there to rearm really. It's like you got some time off this vacation at the Exxon station, you know, and it's just about as clean anyway. So, you didn't really get too much to speak of, not like the Army or the Corps, those guys to get out and go to Hawaii or something. But then again, we're not walking around in the jungle either. So, it's a trade-off. Six of one-half dozen of the other. I'd rather take the ship truthfully. Well, here's the thing about a ship that I want to really get across to you. The Army, the Corps, whoever they carry their weapon on their shoulders they get back to their LZ or their base or wherever they are. Well, it goes in the rack and they go about their business or doing whatever they're going to do. On the Navy warship. You live in the weapon, you are the weapon. I'm living in the weapon. The weapon is me. I am the weapon. There's nothing else, it's a floating artillery platform. That's all it is. And we never take it off. Stuff can happen even when you're not in combat because you're loaded down with a whole lot of gunpowder, ammunition, shells, not to mention the fuel and oil, all kinds of that. And then the water, the sea doesn't forgive, you know, you have to respect it, you don't fear it, but you respect it, and it is very unforgiving. You don't get too many Second Chances out there in the ocean.

00:33:34 Tim Brady But somebody explained this to me years ago and I said they're really right. I mean I am the weapon is me. I'm part of the ship, I'm part of the weapon I never take the weapon off the weapons roaring and ready to go, cocked and locked anytime. There is no putting it away.

00:33:53 Connor Mitchell Wow, so I suppose there wasn't much free time on the ship.

00:33:58 Tim Brady Well, when you get on the gun line, when you go on that kind of status you go on what's called port and starboard Duty 12 on 12 off. 12 on you were on the 12 off you could sleep, write a letter, get something to eat, get your laundry done, use the bathroom, get a shower if there's any water, hardly ever, you have to do all that in the 12 hours. Mostly, all you want to do is sleep and there's no guarantee that once your head hits the rack, they're not going to sound General quarters on you and back you go right up back again. So no, if you're transiting or you're not in that kind of situation. Usually it's three Section 3 section watches, you know, eight hours, eight hours, and eight hours, and sometimes in Port, if you're in a friendly Port like here in America it might be four Section Duty, you know, so that's even better, only six hours. When you're in port you just work maintenance on the ship. It's a steel ship in the water. So there is a lot of Maintenance to go on between the rust and what not. Any electronics and keeping the guns and weapons and missiles clean and functioning and there's always something. Like a car there's always updates and new things coming along that have to be installed and training and then you got run the training for the guys that run the new stuff, you know, so there's always something. So, in Port, you can have some good free time, you get regular stuff like, paid leave weekend passes. As we call it Liberty but weekends off. If you're in Mayport, Florida at the Naval Base there. Yeah, but not if you're in the Western Pacific in combat status. You do what you got to do. You learn to sleep anywhere in any situation. My wife is just astounded and it's true for most anybody that's been in the military is that you can learn to sleep through anything. The ammunition handling room was at most eight feet from my rack and I could sleep through it. I'd to smell the cordite. Floating around and watching your shower shoes float by on some little leak somebody had somewhere in a condenser. you learn to eat fast too because you don't know. You take your time with eating, and they might sound GQ on you. Then. You're never going to get an idea of when you're going to eat again. You don't know because you don't know what that General quarters alarm is all about. Could be a fire, could be going against North Vietnamese, could be this, could be that, but you don't know. One thing you do know is that you're going to be hungry as hell. You'll notice if you see Vets or hang around vets, you'll notice these guys for the most part if they're eating fast, they've probably been in combat, I guarantee you.

00:36:41 Tim Brady You do everything fast shower bath everything fast because you don't know. And it gets so drilled into you and youre 19, you're 18 or 20 years old and it goes in and it stays in.

00:36:58 Connor Mitchell So how did like your fellow Shipmates or even just your friends on board try to keep themselves entertained or just maintain their sanity?

00:37:17 Tim Brady I played the drums before I went in the Navy, but I couldn't get a big drum kit on a little destroyer. But I figured I really knew how to play Rhythm. So, I had a rhythm and some guys from the south were in there. They taught me how to play guitar. I learned how to play guitar. I'm an adequate Rhythm player, but I did learn how to play, not read music, but I can do it, so I learned how to do that. Over there in Vietnam I didn't I didn't really care about doing anything maybe write a letter to a girlfriend or my folks. You know, they don't know everything's Jake with me right now, but I just wanted mostly just want to sleep. First you want to get something in your stomach if you haven't had it and then you want to sleep and you're going to need it because the adrenaline only takes you so far in a my job as a radarman. I don't know if you've seen movies about the Navy where there's a big place behind the bridge where all the electronics are in radar scopes are going and that's called the combat information center. That's where I worked. We would recommend courses, speeds. We would tell them Bogies are coming. We be talking to the guys on the ground gunfire support, you know up 300 back 300 very busy place in you're responsible for the lives of all your Shipmates when you're on duty up there because if you make the wrong course recommendation and you run aground or worse, you know, it's in your hands and those hands are the hands of the 20 year old kid lot of times.

00:38:44 Tim Brady It's a very serious responsibility and same for most other jobs on that small Destroyer. There's no doctor. There's a corpsman. But yeah 280 guys. There's no doctor, other people had to be cross trained. If everybody didn't do their job something bad was going to happen. If you were down in the engine room, if you're running quartermaster who's doing all the plotting and actual seamanship if you're steering the ship, whatever you're doing. As a gunner's mate you could blow the whole Mount up and take the ship down. Everybody was super aware and super dependent on everyone else to get home alive. And it's the way it is on the ship. Even if you're a cook their cross trained. If you're a cook you cook but then if we went to general quarters, they're in the ammunition handling room. They're running powder and shells up, then when it's over they go back to the galley and cook. Yeah. That's the way it was.

00:39:45 Connor Mitchell How did I guess you prevent your crew mates or even yourself from being I guess almost running on autopilot like complacent and just doing your tasks. Like how did you stay Sharp?

00:40:05 Tim Brady Well the way the Navy taught you to stay sharp is before you deployed over anywhere, this is true in the Atlantic and the Pacific, you go out and, you call a rehearsal you can call it war games, whatever you call it, and you find out then who's going to cut it and those people are out on that ship when you leave. You find out then, you grind it out, you go to GQ, you don't get sleep, that's how you find out who's going to who's going to keep you alive and who might get you killed. They got them the hell out of there. We never had anybody. We had one person crack up and it was on the way home in Pearl Harbor. That was a Navy Chief who been in the Navy in World War Two and we were coming home and we're pulling into Pearl and at that time we didn't know it but they were filming that movie Tora Tora Tora. It's about Pearl Harbor. This is 1969. We're coming home. We didn't know that and he's up on the wing of the bridge. We still have a couple of 50 calibers on each side. He's headed towards the bridge and he sees these Japanese zeros come rolling in into Pearl and he flashes right back to World War II and he starts running for that 50 caliber. Pearl Harbor's here Waikiki's there, I mean, he's headed for that 50. He's going to open up on these planes and we have been told, we the combat information room because we get to see sensitive material, Eyes Only shit. They're filming the movie is going to be smudge pots simulating smoke on over the side stuff like that, but they didn't tell us some planes would be coming over that day. And somebody, wasn't me. I was in the combat information center, but somebody on Deck tackled the chief and they had to take them off and we never saw him again. He was so distraught.

00:41:50 Tim Brady Other than that, guys held it together. However, you could. I did have one guy who, he's married, and he wanted to make extra money. So instead of going on Liberty, he would stand the watches for you and you pay them, you know, 10 20 bucks and he'd take your watch so you can go on Liberty because you're covered. And we got about, not quite to Hawaii. And he had been sending all this money home in it, and he found out that she was leaving him for another guy, his wife, after all this time, you know, and he just went bananas. He picked up a great big rod. These are the things, I'll call them sticks, you push off if you get a small boat that comes alongside. You push it off there about 15 20 feet long and he started in with it and that has a hook at the end, and just started going after just going batshit right in the middle of the deck and somebody had to go in a couple of threesomes had to grab that stick and grab him and put him down and he stayed with us, but he wasn't the same guy. He did his job, and he was good with that. But anything else you didn't talk to him He didn't want to socialize didn't do nothing. He was like shattered just totally shattered. I just felt like man, I felt so sorry for him. So sorry for him. Because he worked so hard to take all those watches, he wanted that money, you know got to get it home to my girl. But his wife, already had married and had a kid. There's some news for you on your way back. Have you made it through all that?

00:43:17 Tim Brady Not good, not good. But mostly you stayed you stayed on track you had your job to do or be trying to Gallows humor is kind of like homicide cops, I guess, you know and then you make fun of it, you know Sat Cong that's Vietnamese for Kill Cong because that's our job, it's called a destroyer for a reason we were there to destroy things and people and we're damn good at it. We took a lot of pride in it. I mean we'd heard about stuff going on at home but didn't we didn't question why we I signed up to do this. This is my job. You know, Uncle Sam's paying me to do this tonight. So those people can sleep and their beds. So that's the same attitude I had in the Mediterranean, in the North Atlantic, you know, you see rushing Ships coming, tracking them around and stuff. Yeah, I mean that's the thing you signed up for.

00:44:11 Connor Mitchell Wow, I just dang, both of those fellows I can't.

00:44:19 Tim Brady Yeah, it's like you can't even imagine it. I mean I was there and I still want to don't want to imagine how you know and but as a human as a guy who had a girlfriend and as someone who knows what it was like to be at Sea and be out for seven eight months and get news like that, you know. Three weeks before you get home. Are you kidding me? It's like there's Dear John letters and there's Dear John letters and they're not all the same and that was very different. Yeah. Sad sad sad.

00:44:54 Connor Mitchell Just out of curiosity just so I make sure I have all my dates, correct your ship arrived off the coast of Vietnam after the Tet Offensive?

00:45:12 Tim Brady Yeah. Okay that was in the spring of 68. We got there September 68.

00:45:21 Connor Mitchell One thing that just instantly comes back to mind with the Tet Offensive is Walter Cronkite going. This war is unwinnable and stuff like that did that affect your crew mates or you? Did that affect the ship in any way?

00:45:42 Tim Brady No, no, we never even saw that. I mean we didn't have television, we didn’t have anything. You know, we're snail mail was all it was all there was until eight months later off the coast of Hatteras off Carolina and we had radio telephone Communications. We could speak for two minutes to our family. Let them know what day we were coming into Port if they ever happened to be want to be there to meet us which to let them know but not until we're only a day or two away from the Home Port for security reasons among other things. But yeah, there's little communication to speak of and when you want to shore, I mean, all you wanted to do was just you know, meet a girl have a drink, you know just R&R yourself as fast as you can because you only got 12 hours if that.

00:46:29 Connor Mitchell Did you hear that the whole Tet ceasefire was broken?

00:46:43 Tim Brady I knew about that. We had Marines Come Aboard that we had planned operations ahead. Marines would come aboard the ship and plan it and I knew about it because I was in the combat information center, the CIC so stuff that came our way regular crew wouldn't see, couldn't allowed to be seen, and we had to keep our mouths shut. I mean, I wasn't allowed to travel to any communist or Eastern Bloc Nation for like years after I got out until the stuff I knew became so obsolete it didn't really matter anymore.

00:47:13 Tim Brady But the FBI came around when I was in boot camp the interview my teachers, my neighbors and stuff in my neighborhood because they knew I was going to go to one of those schools. So, I sent the neighborhood chatting my mother said, she said the FBI's here because of Tim, he must be doing some really weird shit. Yeah, more than I ever bargained for let me tell you I when you're young and dumb be careful what you wish for, it could come true.

00:47:43 Connor Mitchell So, towards the ends of your time in Vietnam. How I guess did you change perspective, or did you feel differently about the war once you got there and did all this action and then when going home?

00:48:10 Tim Brady Yeah, we're just we're winding down. We still we don't want all we wanted was letters when we could get them from home and just to go and through Section Duty and get those extra eight hours in a sleep or whatever and the officers and the chiefs were easy on us. They weren't you know, okay now it's time to in the Navy when I say go to work phrases turn to and they took it easy. Yeah, we had to do some maintenance stuff, but nobody Road your background because we were just like we were fried, you know just absolutely fried and wasn't a pleasure cruise, but it was a they took it look pretty light on us because we and they had been through the same stuff the Chiefs the officers to everybody been in like are all in it together. We're all the same ship going to the same thing. So yeah, it was good in a way and I did get on a plane Townsend you dare Basin and fly next thing, you know, I'm landing in Oakland, California is like shaking your head like what the heck just happened it time to decompress. I'm wet but I'm still on a warship. It's still dangerous even doing that. But I was thankful for that.

00:49:17 Connor Mitchell Around what time were you heading back home?

00:49:22 Tim Brady We left. Let's see in March of 69. Because we got home about towards the end April and 69. So it had to be at least a month or so.

00:49:32 Connor Mitchell And what was that return trip like going back through the Panama Canal the rest of the world.

00:49:41 Tim Brady Well, they gave us that as we got a Navy unit Commendation because we did some other, we did were the only Destroyer on record to be mortared from the beach there. Yeah, there was a leave a Minesweeper. They got stuck on a reef by the beach and way up North right near the DMZ and essentially, I'll try not to use nautical terms. What we did was you can imagine a car stuck in a muddy road we did with pull up in front of it back up. So what some lines and pull it out like a tow truck, but it took about nine hours to get that because you got to get they'll how do you get the lines over there where you got to get guys a little boats with a line over there hook it all up make sure you and test things out and meanwhile, it's getting dark.

00:50:33 Tim Brady Charlie, the VC, they own the night, and you hear that [imitation of mortar fire]. That's the mortars going off. They come in and then we can't bring our guns to bear. We've got great big 5-inch 38, but I've got the ship behind me. I can't shoot through that ship we're trying to tow. We don't have mortars on a Navy ship. We've got machine guns and small arms, rifles and pistols and that's it. You can't shoot them because they’re behind the other side of a dune. We couldn't shoot through the sand dune. So, we had to sit there and take it, keep those lines coming and get the hell out of there and they gave us a new Navy unit Commendation for it. So, to make it a little sweeter. They sent us home in a little roundabout way. Our first stop after leaving the gun line for the last time was, we went to became shellbacks. That's when you cross the Equator and you go through an initiation ceremony was actually you get the crap beat out of you and go through garbage, shoes, and stuff, but it's a badge of honor in the Navy. You know, I'm glad I did it and glad I was there. Anyway, stop in Brisbane, Australia and then they sent us to New Plymouth, New Zealand. And if you're taking it in, it was the first “round eyes,” we called Caucasians, we've seen in about eight months or so.

00:51:48 Tim Brady Then we leave there and then we go Pago Pago and American Samoa, you know and a few other stop necessary stops for fuel that Naval stations and then Purl and then back around the usual way. So, but time, we got the Pearl and we'd already we have some time a couple of days. So we went and saw the Arizona Memorial and that triggered a lot of emotions for us seeing the don't know if you've ever been there but it straddles across the Battleship Arizona platform does and the Arizona to this day is still leaking oil to the surface and if you stand there as a destroyer recalled tin-can Sailors because we bought around like a tin can it's see that oil coming up and know all too. Well, you know with what those guys went through, and we easily could have been could be us, you know, it's a very emotional thing for a sailor especially US Navy sailor. And now back again to the Panama Canal for the second time. It wasn't of course as interesting. We've already seen and watched all how cool it was the locks and all that stuff, and by that time we just wanted to get home as fast as we can. Everybody's the same, Skipper was the same, everybody wanted to get home. So yeah, it was it was easygoing just decompress take a deep breath. Don't think about what you were doing or who you did it to or you know, you were lucky they weren't move on.

00:53:14 Connor Mitchell So, when you did arrive back stateside like what were your first impressions of the place?

00:53:25 Tim Brady When we pulled into a naval base, we pulled into Newport Rhode Island. So, it's not like coming into a civilian airport or something. There was a little teeny band plan, and my parents were there they decided to fly up from Maryland and meet the ship with my sisters and quite a few guys parents were there. A lot of them from New England anyway. So, it was like kind of like wow, we're back in her home Port we’re back at our birth. It's the same but it's not the same, I look up at the bridge, and on Navy Bridges is where they paint your medals and awards. In the Navy a lot of most of the time the ship gets the award. You don't get the award the ship gets the award and you earn it by simply because you're a ship's company. You were part of the ship so that the ship is rewarded these metal things. I've been by that token. So you look up and see what there's only a couple things there when we left and now there's three rows of this and that and all that kind of stuff in a flashback and I felt good to be home, but I didn't want to go home. I didn't go home after I got discharged about a month. No, two months later. I didn't go home. I was not in the mood and I knew it would not be very good company for lack of a better word. So, I stayed in Newport and worked. The thing I knew how to do was bounce a bar or tend a bar so I did that for a while before I had after I did that for about six months and then I did finally wandered my way back south and finally got back home to Rockville over started college than on a GI Bill and try to be normal but there was really no normal. I was started in Montgomery College over there in Rockville, and there's a wall still there by their Humanities Building at and that's where the Vets would sit, you know, you know of that when you see one if you're a vet especially one in combat, you just look them in the eye.

00:55:20 Tim Brady Yeah, you know, and we would be sitting there, and nobody would come near us. I mean we didn't want them to and that was cool. But both sides were cool with that. We were different we were yeah, I was 22 and I'm a lot older than 22, you know, and so these guys the same way so we had each other it's company. That was cool. Like that a lot made it easier for us to transition and you know, okay if I can suck it up for 45 minutes to go to a math class, you know, you know psych 101 or something, but, you know don't want to be any place for 2 or 3 hours or participated in extracurricular activities or any of that stuff. We were grown and going to Montgomery College.

00:56:12 Connor Mitchell Were there, you mentioned this with those who were older than 22. Did that different level of maturity per se impact how like other people saw you or you saw other people?

00:56:42 Tim Brady Yeah, well, you know if you're 18, you know, you can tell somebody who's 22 is older than you, you know, and then you see a lot of guys still were their fatigue jackets or something piece of apparel. They knew if we're this age and we're here these guys got to be vets. You know, for sure. Nobody starts college 22, unless you're a vet. Pretty much was it being over there, and they leave us alone, but we'd interact together. We interact in class we make friends with kids who you know, were in the military and I met a girl and help me through for the math class that I needed really bad and we became a couple three or four years. She yeah and she understood to the best that she could you know, and I just didn't try to bring it home. So, speak I try to you know, do what we always did we learn from our fathers you bury it, you know talk about it. You leave it. Leave it be put it back in the sea bag and don't touch it again. Not the healthiest thing, but that's the way they were and that's where we took our cue from until we started learning, you know, because are learning about PTSD and things like that and started coming out and wasn't to be ashamed of and more classes and more understanding and be a started getting a little better a little better. And so, it's completely different now for the Vets now, but from Vietnam Vets, we had a knocked out a lot of damn doors, a lot of doors and that's okay. I'm glad we're glad to have done it. You know, I'm really glad when I see the kids, I mean people in the military today that they don't have to go through all these things for stuff open for them and opportunities are all here for them. That's wonderful, you know love to go back and have it happen for us, but that's not that's not the cards you get dealt and so you play the ones you're dealt. I'm sure my father would have loved to go on back and fly in a jet fighter in Vietnam with a lot more guns on it and stuff too.

00:58:46 Connor Mitchell So as American involvement in the Vietnam war came to an end in the 70s under Nixon how I guess did you feel about the withdrawal of US troops and the growing peace movement?

00:59:11 Tim Brady Well as after I got out when I was it was a started going to college, you know, and we all started seeing you know, for what it was put the politics of it and all that and our attitude pretty much was at least a most of the guys I need well, we're winning when I left. That's all I know, you know and they if they said they're going to go down that road peace. Don't be drawing this crap out to get the hell out. If you're going to go, go if you’re going to stay, stay, but don't dilly-dally around with this half-assed thing or punish him for this by bombing that. Get out if you’re going to get out. And that's what bugged most of us is all the dilly-dallying. I'm still waiting for Nixon’s secret plan to end the war, I still haven't seen that. That's what our attitude was, just “Why are you screwing around? Don't beat around the bush. If you remove a battalion here and there it’s just Death by A Thousand Cuts” and that's crazy, pull out, pull out just that simple. So that made us kind of mad. Back, then the VA was horrible, and attitudes of the American Legion and The VFW, they didn't want us as members. “You weren't in a real war” well did you know that American infantrymen in Vietnam spent 260 days in combat with the average one of World War II spit 48, you know, and we knew that, but they didn’t. I'm sorry it wasn't Iwo Jima dude, but I raised my hand and went same as you, and those bullets didn't really give a damn, they don't really care who's the bullet catcher. So, you think those guys be sympathetic, but nope. We just kept our mouths shut about being Vietnam Vets, pretty much stopped wearing gear and nobody asked. I'm not telling them. You don't put it on the resume unless they asked “where were you for four years?” and I was in the Navy that helped a bit. If you're in the Navy is that doesn't actually mean you were in Vietnam or you’re a combat vet that could have been floating around the Mediterranean or maybe you're at a radar station down in the Caribbean somewhere. You could be out in Iceland at a IT in Iceland running secure communications. So, it means a lot in the Navy. They didn't associate you as quickly as if you were in the army, they instantly thought you were running Huey's to hot L Z's. Same if you're in the Marine Corps. You know kind of thing so it's very different very different for that in that respect. It was a little easier on me. But the assumption was made instantly. But it got better, it took a long time. When the wall got built, that's when it really started to turn. We had our parade that's when civilians really started saying, “you know, I think we did them a disservice.” Because first they were all down on us, and then they kind of forgot about us, and then after the wall and a controversy of it being built and designed, and then when it finally came to fruition as like, “maybe we did screw up, maybe these guys need a little more than the average vet”. Because they weren't spitting on the guys coming back from landings at Iwo Jima or Normandy. Korea they just kind of forgot about that. It was just antipathy wasn't any good or bad against it. But us, yeah. My attitude still “you can't help it, I'm human,” I mean get a chance to do right by me, and you didn't, and then you want to do it now and that's cool. I understand, you re-examine it. God knows I'm no saint but still. You ask people to go and die for you so, you can sleep at night but they need a little more than what you're giving, a lot more really but we took whatever we could get but it's better now.

01:03:39 Connor Mitchell One question that I've been dying to kind of ask is what's something that people just get wrong about the Vietnam War?

01:03:44 Tim Brady I think sometimes people think that the soldiers didn't really want to fight it because a lot of them are draftees and lot of them were poor and inner city. You could get out of it one way or another if you're middle class or a rich white guy. There's a lot of avenues, College being the number one way to get out of it. I think that there were so many warning signs and now there's so much material out there that’s just been Declassified and stuff seeing that they knew we were starting to walk into quicksand, and they went anyway. Just for pride, just for like “jeez I went this far. I can’t go back now” Yeah, you could yeah, you’d look like an idiot. Yeah it hurt but there wouldn't be, you know fifty- five thousand names on a wall if we had done that you know, there might be twelve hundred, but you didn't. They just kept right on going. And lied about it. Completely lied about it to the troops, to the civilians, to anybody who listened and try to believe it. Yeah, that's the kicker. If you're going to turn that dog loose, turn him lose you can't leave him on a leash. Like I said we're on a destroyer. We're here to destroy things. We're not here for PR reasons or to look sharp or to watch the signal flags. We're here to kill people and destroy installations. That's our job. We are the weapon. If you don't want us, then don't put us there.

01:05:30 Connor Mitchell Yeah, that makes sense, I understand.

01:05:58 Tim Brady Good, I'm glad. Please pay it forward and tell everyone you know. If you’re going to turn them loose, understand what they trained to do. And as these days all volunteers, I mean a lot of guys could say well, “I didn't ask for this but I got dragged in,” well not anymore. Everybody out there raised their hand on purpose.

01:06:12 Connor Mitchell Finally, are there any questions I should have asked you?

01:06:16 Tim Brady You kind of asked something like how do we feel about the war while we're in the war? We knew about it, guys get Hometown papers and stuff and we knew about people demonstrating and stuff like that and our attitude was just you know, well, that's why I'm here so they could do that. So they have the freedom to do that. I mean it's that's the whole point of the exercise, isn't it? Isn't it democracy? Yeah, you could be mad at them or get mad because they're getting all the girls. But we’re over here, we signed up for it, and that's the deal and we’ll be getting home. You always try to keep that in your head. You'll be getting home. I've spoken at high schools and stuff. I even spoke to a group of British schoolgirls and come over every two years and somehow got lined up with a couple of Vietnam Vets like me to talk about the war and you get the usual questions. “well did you kill anybody?” and yeah. Yep. Sure did and I said. “well, what does it feel like?” I said, depending on who it was “what do you mean?” I said well if it's Charlie or NVA all in. But sometimes when a unit’s getting overrun and you get a screaming call on your radio, and it's not going to be any top sergeants not going to be an officer because they're dead, this is probably a lance corporal maybe a sergeant and he's calling in coordinates and you stop. For just a nano second, because you know those coordinates are where he's standing and he's calling it on himself because he's getting overrun and he knows if he doesn't bring it down on them now, they're going to go past him and into the next position. And so, he calls it in himself, and quite often and this could be a marine sometimes Army, 101st, we worked with them, sometimes “ROK” troops Republic of Korea called “Rock troops” they were badass soldiers’ bad boys. And so, you’ll shoot one shell and he'll see where it lands, and he'll just say “down 300 up 100, fire for effect” and then my answer back to him is “shot” to let him know that stuff's on its way and that’s quite possibly the last thing he ever heard.

01:08:34 Tim Brady Sometimes the radio might still be on and I don't hear anything and that's kind of good. Sometimes. I'll hear him. Maybe he’ll come back up and I'll be “oh great it worked” or maybe he’s screaming for his mother, but the worst thing you can hear is Vietnamese, which means he's dead and they're still alive and we had to bring it all in again quick.

01:08:58 Tim Brady So that’s being on the gun line. It's not just blowing up ammunition dumps or a little spot in the map on the hillside. Sometimes it's your own people. They know it, you know it and again they signed up for it and they know full well what they're doing.

(Pause in conversation)

01:09:21 Connor Mitchell [Sigh] Wow

01:09:27 Tim Brady Yeah, it's not like on Popeye, you know.

01:09:33 Tim Brady And I don't even know if you get a chance to talk to the guys run carriers. It's the most dangerous workplace in the world is a carrier deck and those guys will have all kinds of interesting stories to tell for sure.

01:09:43 Connor Mitchell Yeah, I'll be sure to keep my eye out for that if I come across it.

01:10:10 Tim Brady Yeah and try to touch on agent orange stuff too. that's a very heavy-duty thing with us these days. Especially the Navy, they just got that bill passed last year where ships up to 12 miles out of Vietnam. If you have you have symptoms of Agent Orange, you’ll be able to be covered by the VA with it, but that's still not good enough because Agent Orange, when it gets into water, it increases potency by 10 times, but Navy ship distills the water it's sitting on, so that’s how you get water. The Gulf of Tonkin water is coming up through your distillery. So, guys on Navy ships are drinking it, brushing their teeth with it, bathing in it. This water that's got that agent orange with 10 times strength in it. Cooking with it. Yeah, so there's that.

01:10:41 Tim Brady And I've lost almost half my crew to it. We were eligible because we were in so close so we're eligible early because actually we went up a river. [laughs] Another one, Charlie wasn't expecting a destroyer to come around the bend in the river he was expecting maybe a river Patrol boat or a swift boat or something. He wasn't expecting a Navy destroyer. It was the Nha Trang river it was very deep. Very wide. It’s a lot bigger than the Potomac let me put it that way. That was interesting. So probably a lot more interesting for him than me.

01:11:10 Connor Mitchell So, your Destroyer was this going upriver to destroy some installation?

01:11:35 Tim Brady Yeah, PBR’s were getting ambushed. Yeah, they're getting ambushed about maybe I don't know 10 clicks that's ten kilometers of the river. So, we had a skipper who was the guy that always said “my men will be glad to do it, sir.” Always volunteering. He's bucking for Admiral. He got it too eventually but we found out later. That's why we're actually there because we you know, we need some destroyers from east coast to get some combat experience. “My men will be glad to go.” It's like yeah, so that's where we that's why we went and got that that Minesweeper off the beach and towed them out. Yeah. “My men will be glad to go.” It's like we're in combat information really the captain's in there half the time. He's on the bridge or he’s with us. And so, you know all this stuff going on. “God try not to roll your eyes or he can see us,” here we go again, you know off and running. Yeah, we went up and then back down so we took care of business and that was the one and only time we did that. We heard other ships had done stuff like that in other rivers that were big enough to hold them. Just to put a bug in their head saying “Hey, listen, it's always not going to be a little teeny PBR boot with 50 calibers coming around the bend on you, it could be a naval destroyer with 6 5-inch 38’s locked and loaded and you and everything you ever knew is going to be vaporized.

01:12:45 Connor Mitchell Darn, that didn’t even cross my mind that that was even an option.

01:12:52 Tim Brady Well, they're out there protecting the carriers and they were laying mines in Haiphong harbor and they were in some engagements the Navy destroyers were engaged with MiG Jets and stuff and battles up there because naturally the Vietnamese wouldn’t want you to mine their harbor. That's where the ships from China were coming with their supplies. But yeah, they’ve seen pictures of the guns firing way out there, you know, maybe they're showing the battleship New Jersey. Well, the New Jersey has a range of 21 miles. That's past the Horizon. They shoot a shell. It's a freight train, it’s a 16-inch shell and they got nine of those guns. When that comes it's the apocalypse when they start shooting from broadsides. We were in action with them, too. I saw it sink an island once. A small little island in North Vietnam. We were going against it and finally somebody, I don't know who, the commander of the Destroyer Squadron maybe, but there were four of us going against it. I guess he got tired of it and just called up the New Jersey who was on the other side of the horizon and ask them to bring their stuff in and so they brought it in and my radar is sweeping, it's going around and I can see the island and the Jersey Fire opens up and sweeps and pieces are going sweeps again and by the third sweep. It's not there anymore. It's gone. They obliterated it.

01:14:22 Tim Brady We're out there for two hours playing games with those guys and we could have called up that Battleship and just knock him right out now look, Skipper wanted to get some more battle action ribbons. Yeah, who knows why? Maybe he took it personal, “damn it. I'm going to take care of business here” didn't really care, I was just glad to see that happen. Boom. Excellent. Let's go. Get out of here.We're done here.

01:14:52 Connor Mitchell Also, just out of curiosity, what was the most memorable mission for you on the boat?

01:15:10 Tim Brady I’d say the most memorable was getting those guys off the beach. The stuck Minesweeper. They were dead if we didn't get them out. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, they’re in enemy territory we had to pull it off, you know. I didn't have a lot to do Communications wise right then because it was mostly just communication but all these bosons mates and stuff hauling lines and splicing lines and hooking this all up in the engine guys. We’d never done it before nobody's ever done it before. Is this going to work? Who knows? Are we just going to tear our stuff up? Are we going to be stuck sitting here when night falls with Charlie and we can’t bring guns to bear and try to defend the ship with small arms fire. We don't have enough weapons for everybody and it's like all these things in your head and in and process it. But we pulled it off and very proud of that. I'm very proud of that, and the usual stuff about saving Marines before they got overrun, you know, taking care of business for them. So, they live to fight another day or go home for that in some cases. Yeah, it's funny, the name of that ship was the USS Safeguard go figure.

01:16:32 Connor Mitchell Well, I just can't begin to thank you for giving me your time and allowing me to record and archive this. I know, personally, as a big military historian nerd, this is just beyond amazing for me to have the chance to talk to you. But it's going to help out future folks who are curious about the subject.

01:17:02 Tim Brady Absolutely. Yeah. I wish I'd wish I was able to talk to my father about stuff before, just but they never would. Especially when I got back and you know, he still didn't want to open up too much. But yeah it is. I think it's important to get this down, here's somebody who was there, this is what he felt. This is what they did. It wasn't all this what on the news reels or what's on TV or what you see on YouTube now. No, every little story is unique. If you interviewed another member of my crew. They would have a whole different perspective. Even though we did the exact same situations all the time from their job and what they were doing at the time, you know, it’s very important, get as many people as you can. Yeah, absolutely it’s like living history, you know generations from now. Hopefully it'll still be archived somewhere. Somebody wants to look it up like getting the Civil War to us exactly, you know

01:17:56 Connor Mitchell Yeah, exactly. All right, so I'll just stop the recording.