First Lieutenant Repps Hudson

The Mid-America Veterans Museum is a nonprofit organization aiming to share and preserve veterans' stories through donations. The podcast features educational content about historical events and military service. First Lieutenant Reps Hudson, an Army veteran, discusses his life story, including his time at Westminster College and experiences during historical events like JFK's assassination. The conversation also covers Reps' upbringing, his interest in history, and connections to notable figures like Winston Churchill. Reps reflects on his past experiences and influences while emphasizing the importance of learning about history. The Mid-America Veterans Museum is a 501c3 nonprofit business. Your donations serve to further the museum's mission of sharing and preserving the stories of our veterans. To donate, visit mavn.org and click on Donate. The content covered in this podcast is for general informational, historical, and educational purposes only. Discussions about historical events, military service, personal experiences, or sensitive topics are presented for educational and archival purposes. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by the host and or guest do not necessarily reflect the official policy or endorsement of the Mid-America Veterans Museum. Neither the organization, host, director, nor the guest shall at any time be liable for the content covered, causing offense, distress, or any other reaction. ♪♪♪ Welcome to Operation Inside from the Mid-America Veterans Museum with your hosts, Jason Galvin and Sergeant Ethan Rose. Welcome back, family. We're at the museum tonight with an extreme special guest. It is our honor to host First Lieutenant Reps Hudson. Ethan, go ahead and kick us off. Sure. Thank you, Jason. First Lieutenant Reps Hudson, U.S. Army, November 1965 until January 1969. Reps was discharged honorably after having been awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. Reps, it's a true pleasure to have you here with us tonight. I'm excited to talk about it. Pleasure being here. Good. Well, I'm excited to talk about a lot of things in your life. You have quite the life story. There's a lot of material there. Let's start from the very beginning. Do you think it's fair to say that you have a special place in your heart for Carrollton, Missouri? Yeah, I do. It's where I went to high school. It's over on the other side of the state. And I lived on a farm outside of town. Sure. You worked on the farm. I'm a farm boy. And it was family land, if I understand correctly. Right. It's been the family since before the Civil War. Oh, wow. Awesome. We were talking earlier, Reps, so I can say this pretty confidently. You're a historian. You're someone who enjoys learning about history and reading about history. Does the name Lieutenant General John C. McQueen ring a bell? No. So Lieutenant General John C. McQueen is from Carrollton or was from Carrollton. He's passed away now. He served with distinction in World War II. He was actually the director of the Marine Corps Intel Corps. He helped select Camp Pendleton as a new Marine training facility and area. And he also fought in the Battle of Okinawa. So anyway, I was looking up Carrollton and was looking up famous people from Carrollton. And I would recommend checking him out sometimes. McQueen, M-C-Q-E-E-N. That's right, John C. McQueen, Lieutenant General. Okay. Marine Corps. Second only to Lieutenant Reps. Yeah. That's right. So since you have such an interesting life story and there is so much material to go through, we're going to kind of breeze through your childhood and breeze through your early life. I want to start with your time at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. Okay. So you spent a year there. Tell us about that year at Westminster. I was miserable at Westminster. I had never been away from home like that. I'd gone to boys' camp a couple of times, but nothing like this. So the way the upperclassmen were built, if that's the right word, was in fraternities. There were six or eight. I can't remember how many. I think it was eight. And as a freshman, you go in and they have rush week. So you visit all these different fraternity houses. And I ended up at Sigma Chi, which was okay. They had gold water with the Sigma Chi, and that comes up a little bit in a minute. But I didn't like having to go down there, down to the house, on a Friday afternoon and clean toilets where the active members had made them as filthy as they could. Sure, for the pledges. For the pledges, yeah. So I was there. JFK, John F. Kennedy, was killed on a Friday, November 22, 1963. And I was down at the house, like the other guys, and some of the upperclassmen were cheering and were so happy that Kennedy had been shot. I was totally traumatized by that. I was traumatized by the fact that the president was killed, but then people cheering about it. The reason they did was they were a bunch of spoiled brats, and they were all kind of young conservatives. I was learning about myself, and I'm not one of them. And they liked the fact they wanted Goldwater to be running against Kennedy. Since he was a brother, Sigma Chi. He was Sigma Chi, right. And that's Barry Goldwater. He was the senator from Arizona, very conservative. And I just got, I said, I want to get out of here. So I got initiated. I went through that process, and then I decided to go to the house, see if I could help it. I'm glad you brought this up about JFK's assassination in 1963. What I find interesting is you were at that time, you said you were kind of discovering yourself, starting to understand more about yourself. If I understand correctly, you were an atheist at that point in time. How are you doing in your research? Would that be fair to characterize you? Yeah. Okay. I am again. And Westminster was a Presbyterian school at that point until 69. Ah, okay. Well, I mean, they weren't real holy about it, but the truth of the matter is that I was reading a lot of Ayn Rand. Sure. The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, all that stuff. I was really into that. And at one point, I think I was at Mizzou at the time, University of Missouri. Next year, I drove all the way to Kansas City, Kansas to some record recording of Ayn Rand talking about her philosophy. Sure. And I look back on that now and think how stupid I was. But that was just what I was doing. Yeah. I looked at the guys at Westminster, and I thought, I don't understand people like this. They had been spoiled. They were just entitled. One of the guys was from Omaha, Nebraska. He drove a red 68 or 69 Corvette. And I thought, oh, God. You know, we didn't have new cars in that share. They were all used. And it's just that I don't think they were used to physical labor. I was used to feeding cattle, feeding silage. Building fence, all that kind of outdoor work that you do on a farm. It's funny you mention the vehicle thing, perhaps because you all had an old World War II Army Jeep on the farm. Is that right? That's correct. Yeah, that was when I lived down there at Mountain View, Missouri. But I would say that was a different location. But we moved down to the Ozarks in 1951, I think. My dad had a wild hair, and he wanted to have a ranch, and so we bought a ranch. He lost a lot of money, and I had a great time. I was a driver, too. But, you know, I learned to be alone, and I learned to read. And I was told by my sister the other day, you know, if you put me down, I will just start reading. My wife gets mad at me because I read too much on my phone. I'm not looking at trash. I'm reading the New York Times or the Guardian or, you know, the Wall Street Journal on my phone. And it's pretty good stuff to read. But I also learned to really appreciate the National Geographic and Life Magazine. Our family, we had a big portfolio-sized book. Life Magazine's pictures of World War II. And I spent hours and hours and hours with them. We didn't have TV, and we didn't have a phone. I grew up down at Tulsa. I was 13 or 14. So, you know, you learn to do other things. I went hunting, and I read a lot. That leads to something I want to bring up just a little bit. It's a funny connection you're mentioning to your reps. But before I do that, I just want to very quickly, I told you I was going to bring this up just momentarily. So Westminster, this is for our listening audience. This is an interesting tidbit of history. I mention this because reps attended Westminster, and this particular historical event happened in the year of reps' birth, 1946. Westminster College was the site of Winston Churchill's famous Iron Curtain speech. Something I didn't know before preparing for this interview with reps was that that speech was officially titled the Sinews of Peace speech, which is something I don't think a lot of people know. And it's sort of interesting when you think about the official title and what it's commonly known as now. Well, there's a quote. I can't remember exactly, but something in the Baltic, from Trieste in the Baltic, I think it is, to someplace in the Adriatic or something like that. And, you know, an Iron Curtain has descended. Think about that vision. That's right. And, of course, within a year or two, we had the Berlin Airlift because, you know, Berlin is being cut off. West Berlin is being cut off by the Soviets. And then Truman, who I really like, stood up to them. Another Missouri boy. Yeah. Independence. Yeah, Missouri, you know, a lot of interesting people have come from this state. Oh, yeah, for sure. There's a General Maxwell Taylor, I believe it was, who as a kid grew up in a place called, oh, I can't remember. It wasn't far from where I went to high school. Now, later on, he changed. I mean, he didn't come back, and he became a pretty high-ranking general. He was an ambassador to Vietnam at one point early on in the war. So, you know, then there's John J. Pershing. Sure. And people like that. There's Walt Disney, of course. Yeah. Absolutely. Can't forget him. So there are important people who come from the state. Well, thank you for letting me mention that thing about Westminster. I find that really interesting. You and I were speaking briefly about Winston Churchill, him as a leader. He was the right man at the right time for the Allied powers. I recommend that people go to Fulton just to see the museum. There's a museum there in the basement of the Wren Chapel, which they moved from England, which went through World War II. And they moved it from London. It was in London. And they barred over a big fundraising effort. They were talking about it when I was there, but they hadn't done it. And then they put this chapel together. And it's where people go to get married. It's really a great place to go. It's an interesting place. And even the Interstate Highway has a sign that says, you know, the Churchill Memorial is there. I've seen the signage now. Yeah. Yeah, so it's worth it. It is a very cool site. And to know that Winston Churchill was on that platform giving that very famous speech, consequential speech, and President Truman was there as well. It's an interesting way that things work. Yeah. Well, so you had mentioned something that I want to tie together. You had talked about your love of reading. And you had mentioned this World War II book of pictures. And then also you talked about the effect that JFK's assassination had on you personally. What I find interesting is, correct me if I'm wrong, Reps, but at this point in your life, you didn't have an interest in joining the military. That wasn't yet part of your trajectory. I never thought of it as a trajectory. Excuse me for coughing. Okay. There's one other thing to add. Oh, sure. My father was in World War I. He was 56 when I was born. Oh, wow. He was born in 1891. I had missed that in my research. I'm glad you're mentioning it. And so Daddy was hard on me. He used his belt on me when I did things he didn't like. And I worked for him, and he never paid me very much. We didn't have much money in my family at that time. But I look back on that, and I think I mentioned this in another interview, but when I went to the Army, one of my goals was to break away, to make something of myself. And I wanted to show my father that I could do it. And I wanted to be – that's why I went into combat. That's why I went in the infantry. I'm an 11 Alpha, I think it's called, officer. 11 Bravos or something. But it never occurred to me to do anything less than that. I wanted to be where the action was, to be honest with you. I wanted to have the adventure. And I nearly lost my life, but I didn't. And I was a big fan of Ernst anyway and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, if you've gone through it and you survive it and you've got some good stuff to tell, it makes you feel like you've accomplished something. I have a question. So, Reps, thank you for sharing that. One of the questions I have for you is, how did you reconcile that desire for adventure, for the breaking away, with the other side of you that you mentioned earlier in the interview, if you know what I mean, the philosophies that you went to listen to and the different books that you've read and the readings that you did? How did you reconcile and did you even think about that in relation to the political environment that Vietnam was? I didn't think about the political environment. That came later. Okay. That came when I got home. But I just wanted to have an adventure. This is very common. I think it's common today and I think it was common 200 years ago. People just want to go out and see the world. They want to go out and do things. I think the military is one of the best things that ever happened to me. Almost everything I've got in my life comes from my experience in the military. Because I got to go back to school, graduate school, undergraduate school under G.I. Bill. I learned a lot about people. And I think that's really important. I'm always surprised today when I'm around people who have not done anything near the military. They don't know anything about it. They don't know what a captain is doing when he's running a company or any of that kind of stuff or a pilot. I have a really good friend who was a medevac pilot in Vietnam. And we've been together quite a bit. And he's had to reckon with all the difficulties he's had because when he rotated home, he left his crew behind. And then two of them were killed when the chopper went down and the blades hit the ground and that kind of thing. And that only left two others on the crew, the pilots and co-pilots. And he was torturing himself for years and years and years about the fact that he had neglected his crew. Well, of course he didn't neglect his crew. He went home. But it took him forever to go to the wall. The Vietnam veterans were warring in Washington, D.C. Because there were names on the wall that he knew about. And it was a real struggle for him. But he's kind of healed up a little bit, and I've been part of that. Excellent. Because I wrote about him for the St. Louis Jewish Light and that kind of stuff. The other thing is he's Jewish, and I'm Jewish, and that's rare in the military. Then it's much rarer now. But he had a hard time. Jewish representation in the military? Yeah. I mean, there just aren't many Jews in the military. I mean, it's not unheard of, but it's a little bit rare. Sure. And, you know, these are people of achievement. They don't stop. They just keep on doing something. We've noticed. In fact, Ethan always brings up the fact that, you know, the community leaders that we interview, well, we only interview veterans, and they're all community leaders. Yeah. I mean, it's worth stepping up and doing the job. Right. Reps, you had mentioned, you're getting ahead of me with this, I mean, as a journalist. I'm pretty respectful of your research. You mentioned Ernest Hemingway, and that was exactly a name I was going to reference. So you transfer out of Westminster College. You had started at the University of Missouri-Mizzou. And I'm a sophomore. As a sophomore. As a sophomore. Right. You continue on ROTC, the path of ROTC. Yes. There's a defining moment for you in November of 1965. And I'm relating this to Ernest Hemingway because, if I understand correctly, there is sort of that feeling of swashbuckling that you got from reading this article about the Battle of Ia Drang in November of 65. Right. Would that be fair to say that you kind of referenced that, compared that to Ernest Hemingway? Yes. This is really foolish. It sounds foolish. But I was inspired by that battle. Reading about it, it was pretty amazing. And it became a movie. We were soldiers. Mel Gibson played the part of one of the senior officers there. I can't think. Hall Moore. Hall Moore. Hall Moore. Hall Moore for a while until the other guys came in and changed it back. But I thought, damn, I wouldn't do that. Isn't that crazy? I mean, I'm just a kid. I'm 20, 19 years old. And I want to go to war? That doesn't make any sense. As I was talking about my dad earlier, he would talk about the fact he was in the quartermaster corps in World War I. And he took care of horses and mules. He grew up with the same farm I did. And a lot of mules came from northwestern Missouri, went overseas. And that's how you move things around, guns and all sorts of things. At that point in time. So Daddy was in World War I. And he would talk about it. But he never got shot. And you never had shots fired and anger at him. I mean, he saw the trenches. He talked about you walk into the trenches and sometimes you'd find the heads, the tops of people's heads would be there because they would cut a hole in them and stick them in. And that kind of thing. But, you know, I heard all that. Which is kind of rare. Jason and I have both experienced this. And I think you mentioned this in your interview with Larry and the VHP. There was a shift between World War II era, Korean War era, and Vietnam era in terms of how much you talked about your service and how much you talked about your experience in war. So it's kind of surprising your dad would even talk about those types of things. Well, you know, he would smoke his pipe and bang it on an ashtray that was made out of an artillery shell. It's true. And that kind of thing. So I wanted to have something to talk about. So you read this article about the Battle of the Edirne. I like that. I wanted to have something to talk about. Sorry, go ahead. No, you're good. I want to be able to tell a story. You read this article about the battle. It's inspiring to you. You want to be in the fight. You want that excitement. You also want to have something to talk about, something to kind of prove yourself. And, you know, I didn't care at all about the politics of it. I didn't care about stopping the communists. I just wanted to have the adventure of being in a platoon. Well, it's funny you say that. And I think, Jason, what you were getting at earlier is exactly what I want to talk about later on. But we'll just touch on it right now just for a moment. I might have got ahead of us. It's okay. It's okay. And I think I'm pretty sure I'm on the same page as you. You're not much into authority. Nope. How did you know that? So I think what Jason was getting at, he's exactly right. How do you configure someone who is fairly anti-authority, and then you compare that to someone who wants to fight for their country? I didn't think of it that way. How did you think of it? Fighting for my platoon. Very interesting. Very, very local. Yeah. I didn't think of myself as fighting for my country. I was trying to keep my men alive. To be honest with you, they were children. We were all children. I was 21 years old running a platoon. Can you imagine that? It's hard to believe. I've seen my son go through his 20s, and he's about done. I mean, he would never be able to pull that off. But, you know, you grow up pretty quickly. And you see this all the time as you read stories. I read a lot of guys flying helicopters, doing this, doing that. They were in their early 20s. So in 1968, which was the year of the 10th offensive and the year I got shot, I was 22. Just a kid. And I hadn't finished college, et cetera. So what I'm hearing, correct me if I'm wrong, is it was either less about or non-existent about ideals and more about just straight ahead. I had no ideals. It was adventure. It was to see the world. Hell, I got to go to Hong Kong on R&R. Can you beat that? No. Farm boy to Hong Kong. See, that's the thing. The military does this for a lot of people. Right. It opens them up to the world, opens your eyes to the world. Correct. And you say, oh, so that's how these people live. Now, not everybody reacts that way. If you go online and you look at what veterans have to say, some of them say, you know, how sneaky it was, the color of Vietnam, the food was bad, the people they called the people gooks, all that kind of stuff. I never did that. Never. In fact, I told my men in my platoon I didn't want to hear that word out of their mouths. There's more to this because my first marriage was to a Vietnamese woman. Okay, awesome. We'll definitely get into that. Let's get into that. And just a quick note, Reps, this is something I wanted to mention. It really struck me when I was researching your story and watching a previous interview, even though you were a young person, a young man, it seems to me, and I'm going to give you a compliment here, so I'm sorry in advance, but it seems to me that you were extremely mature for your age. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. And you sort of understood kind of reality at that point. I never thought of it that way. God, thanks for the compliment. Well, to me, it certainly comes off that way. Well, I did research on this. I've written a lot about that for the Kansas City Star and the Post-Match. The thing is that we were such a young cohort. There were people in our teams. I look at this now and I look at these war pictures and documentaries. We were all kids. We were just children. In World War II, you had people who were the average ages around 23, 24, 25. You had older people in the platoons who had experience and everything else, and they helped to keep the other people alive. In Vietnam, we didn't have that. You just had a bunch of kids with powerful weapons and, you know, all that kind of stuff. I want to be respectful of our time, so I'm going to speak a little. No, you're okay. Believe me, refs. So the speed in which you decide to enlist is incredible to me. You see this article about Battle of Viet Drang. This is around November 14th or so when that battle started. By Thanksgiving, you've decided you want to enlist. And so soon after that, you enlist. You enlist as an E1 and by the lowest possible, exactly. And the next thing you know, by the next year, early next year, you're shipped off to Fort Leonard Wood for basic training. Correct. After basic training, you attend AIT at Fort Ord. So fast individual training at Fort Ord, California, a glorious place. While you're there, this was interesting to me. I don't want to sit on this for too long, but you got to test the Stoner 63 assault rifle weapon system, which, funny enough, became the M16. Oh, I didn't know that. Okay. Well, what I had seen was the Army never adopted the Stoner 63 as it was. No. The Marines and SEALs did, and they used it for a short time. But it became the M16. I wasn't aware of that. 5.6. So they modified it and it became the M16. Right. 5.56 was the size of the round. It's very small. What do you remember about testing that at AIT? Well, they would take us out to the range, and maybe with different conditions, maybe it was nighttime, maybe it was daytime, maybe it was raining. They were just having us use it to see if it worked. And to see the wear and tear and how that affected it. Yeah, and I remember by that time there were stories in the paper or in the news about how these weapons would jam and people were killed and so on and so forth because of that. It made me, when I was a team leader, it made me think very hard about how clean I wanted my weapons to be, my men's weapons. Sure. Sometimes you have to sit on their shoulders and make them clean, you know, because that's really important. That leads to malfunctions if you don't clean it up. Yeah. I mean, you know a gun is locked up. Yeah. I carried an M16 as well, but it was a different kind. It had a full collapsible stock. Gotcha. And it's the same round, but I never used it. I never fired it. It was just very interesting to me that you were probably one of the first soldiers in the Army to test that weapon system. Yeah. Again, because I want to get to your Vietnam experience, but as someone who also attended school in California, give us maybe one or two stories about your time in California, what you enjoyed about it and maybe an interesting story. Well, there was a guy from the United States of Missouri. He and I got along pretty well. I can't remember his name. I don't know what to tell this call now. But we decided we wanted to go to San Francisco. In 1966, the commercial buses were like really old buses. They weren't anything like they are today. And we went out to see what we could see. And he knew a guy who was an officer, second lieutenant, first lieutenant, at the fort. We got to go because he had this friend. We got to go to the officer's club. Now, if you're an enlisted man, you're eating in barracks or you're eating in a mess hall or something like that. But if you're an officer, you're eating at a little different kind of place. And I said, damn, I like this. This is for me. And that was a motive. That was something I kept in my mind when I was going through officer cadet school because that was pretty rough at times, a lot of harassment and stuff. But I really wanted to do it. I didn't want to be on the bottom. That was not me. I didn't grow up that way. I wanted to be something that was more respected than that, I guess. I'm not saying anything against people who enlisted as an officer. But I liked the deference that people would pay to an officer, particularly more than a second lieutenant, which is nobody. But a first lieutenant or captain or a major or something like that, they get treated pretty well. You knew what you wanted. I did. I knew I wanted to do it. That was part of what I wanted to do. Now, at that point in time, you hadn't yet applied for OCS. Is that correct? No, I had applied, I think, when I was in basics at Fort Leonard Wood. Gotcha. We had a sergeant who we were in formation one day, and he said something to the effect that you guys, some of you guys are pretty smart. You could be my boss someday. And if you want to, you can apply for officer training school. I applied, and I got interviewed, and I got passed. I graduated 13th in my class out of 165 or 170, and a lot of them had dropped out. So I was in the top 10%. So let's move on to that. When you go to the officer club up in San Francisco, you say this is the life for me, and then you are then transferred for OCS to Fort Benning in August of 1966. We'll go through this kind of quickly as well. But an interesting point, you already mentioned you graduated 13th in your class. That is a great way to preface the fact that, at first, you were not a good officer candidate, and you had to understand how to play the game in order to get by. Tell us about that. Well, I didn't like standing in formation and being yelled at by a guy. He was the second lieutenant or first lieutenant. He was my training officer, attack officer. We called him tactical officer. Lieutenant Smart was his name, and he was tall, and he had kind of reddish hair and blue eyes, and he would harass the hell out of us, which is what you're supposed to be or what I'm with. And I remember one time they were trying to get us to give money to, I don't know, some fund, and we were all in a leaning rest position, push-up position, and I refused to do it. I thought, damn, I'm putting my life on the line, and you want me to give money too? That's a little much. Eventually I gave up, and I did. But I was the last one in my platoon to surrender to the attack officer, and I think he respected me for that because some people would quit right away. Sure. I would get up real early in the morning in the barracks. I'd get up before anybody else so I could go into the bathroom, latrine, sorry, and go into the latrine and take a shower and shave and not have to be hassled by other people. I like that, you know. I don't know if that's anti-authoritarian or not. Like I said, I was a farm boy. I had an older sister, but she wasn't around. So I was kind of like this only child, and I was used to doing things my way. And you get in the Army, you don't get to do that anymore, and you shouldn't. I mean, I agree with the training, but I didn't want to be – I still wanted to be special in my way, and that's why I did it. Did things click for you at OCS? Is that what I'm understanding? You sort of understood you had to behave a certain way to get by. Oh, yeah. I loved OCS. I really did. I mean, I loved almost all of the Army. Sure, sure. I thought OCS was really good. I would get out, and I would have people salute me. And all that kind of stuff. But, you know, I liked the idea of having responsibility. I wanted that. I wanted to see if I could do it, but if I could do it, I wanted to do it. So you graduate 13th in your class. You graduate with honors and distinction. You are assigned to the Big Red One next. Is that correct? Is that your first base station? No, I went to Fort Gordon, Georgia. Oh, that's right. And I was a training officer there. That's right, Fort Gordon. I got in trouble there, too. Tell us about that. Well, yeah. Again, it goes back to the religion thing. They wanted, I don't know, the battalion commander or something, wanted us to support. What was it he wanted us to do? He wanted us to go to a church service. And I was assigned to be there. I never read my officer's efficiency report because I'm scared. But I was supposed to go to this ceremony, and it was my company. And I was the officer in charge, to be the officer in charge. And I didn't go because I didn't think the Army had any business pushing a religion down my throat. And as I said, I think, in the interview, I was really ahead of my time, ahead of things. Because I don't know that they'd do it today. They might, but I don't know that they would be as harsh about it. So that was on a Sunday. So word came down to the company that I needed to be at the battalion headquarters to meet the colonel, lieutenant colonel. And he was going to read me out, and he did. And you're a fresh lieutenant at this point. Yeah, second lieutenant. And I reported to him, and I was standing there at attention, and he just chews me out, right and left. And he said, Lieutenant, if I were out in the field and, you know, I needed to have you run my flank with your platoon, you wouldn't do it. And I said, Yes, I would, sir. That's different. That's what I'm here to do, not this other stuff. You had this distinction between what's necessary and what's unnecessary. I thought so. No BS, just straight work. Yeah. Boring. So after Gordon, that's when you go over to the 1st Infantry Division, and that's when you're told if you're going to be one, be a big red one, which you didn't like to hear very much. You found that kind of corny. Yeah, I found it terribly corny. And I think I said in the interview with Larry, God, is this the sense that you really got about me? But, yeah, I didn't know what grace that was to go there because, you know, you read about the 101st doing this and somebody else and Marines get a lot of attention. But we got a lot of action and we were a good team. I think I loved being in the 1st Division. So when did you deploy to Vietnam? I didn't go directly. I had to go down to Panama first for general training. So I did two weeks in Panama. So I told my parents goodbye twice. I went to Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina and then down to Panama for general training. That was just to learn how to walk around in the jungle and shake your boots out in case there was a snake or a spider inside and eat the stuff that they had. Get used to the climate. Get used to the climate. And I did. And then I went back home and I had to go. Then I had, I don't know, I had a few days of leave. And then I went back and got on a plane and flew to San Francisco. And then I got to, I don't know what the Air Force Base is, Travis, I think. I arrived outside of San Francisco and got on a plane and off I went. Can you remember when you arrived? It was before the Tet Offensive began. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, Tet was the last. January 68th. January 31st. Yeah. And this was October 67th. October 67th. Okay. So you arrive in Vietnam. Two things specifically that I wanted to bring up. What I think is probably your most, well, actually you quoted it, your most invigorating moment, but also your scariest moment in Vietnam. Let's start with the scariest. The scariest was a mortar attack. Tell us about the mortar attack you experienced. Well, I have to give a background first. We were out in the OP operation. Sure. And we had 205, 105 howitzers in our base. And I think it was the same time that the mess hall back at our base camp sent us a Thanksgiving meal. So they put the tables out, put the turkeys out, stuffing, and all that kind of stuff, and we had a nice meal. And then we all went back to our foxholes, and pretty soon here come the mortars. And mortar attacks are really scary because you can't hear them coming. They just land on you and there you are. And the thing I realized later was that while we were there in that position, there was a Vietnamese guy who came in and cut hair. He was a barber. And then I'm pretty sure that he marked off, he stepped off the distance to us because they didn't have to adjust their fire. They were right on top of us. And nobody was hurt. That was so crazy. Within a day or two, we went out of patrol at night. I think we started out about 4 o'clock in the morning and walked over to a place in a rubber plantation, a seal village, and we got it pretty well set up. And, bam, the shit hit the fan. It was really interesting because that was a fight that was my very first one. And I think it lasted, I'm guessing it lasted a couple hours. I didn't know. I'm glad you're mentioning this. I didn't realize those were so closely connected, the scariest moment and then the invigorating moment. Well, yeah. I mean, I loved it in a way. I mean, I thought this is pretty cool. But if you're standing there trying to direct your platoon or lying there trying to direct your platoon and you're in a rubber plantation and the bullets are hitting the rubber trees and knocking, you know, putting holes in them. Sure. And sap, rubber sap, which is white, comes dripping down. That was interesting. And I thought, well, this is really something. This is what war is all about. It really did. You know, and we had several people killed in that battle. First sergeant was killed. There was a crazy platoon leader, a lieutenant. Who ran towards the front lines. Who ran out by the front lines. And he had an RTO radio telephone operator with him who had to follow him wherever he went. Sure. And that guy got shot in the head. The lieutenant, yeah. The lieutenant got him. He didn't get hurt. Oh, the radio operator got shot. Oh, wow. Yeah, the RTO got hit. And that struck me as really unfair. Yeah. Because you get kind of nihilistic about all this stuff after a while because you think, you know, there's no sense to this. Sure. I mean, my friend Eric wonders why was he allowed to survive but his buddies from his. The survivor's guilt. Yes. Survivor's guilt is the only strong thing for people who've been in combat. You're being kind of modest. I want to get into this a little bit more. In the interview that I watched of yours to prepare for this, there were two things that were incredibly impactful when I heard them, one of which was that you stood up in the middle of this firefight and instead of feeling terrified, you felt invigorated. Right, exactly. Tell us about that feeling. Well, again, I challenge authority. The battalion commander came to me and he wanted to take one of my machine guns. We had two of them. And I argued with him. Can you imagine that? I mean, this guy's a lieutenant. This guy's a lieutenant colonel, we're under fire, and he wants to take my gun, and I argued with him. I didn't want him to take it. Now, he did, and I didn't get punished for that or anything like that. But I found the firefight to be stimulating, invigorating, et cetera, et cetera. And then I was kind of a feisty smart-ass. But I made it all right. The other thing I wanted you to speak on, because I think you have a very interesting perspective on this, and it's almost the feeling I got from hearing you describe it in a previous interview, it almost seemed like you could make time stand still and you could observe all these things as they were happening. You talked about being able to watch the order of battle as it occurred. Both Chase and I would be very interested in hearing your perspective of what you saw, when you saw it, and how you processed it in real time. Yeah, for sure. So that fight began. We established a perimeter around this village, and then we were fired upon. A small, small arms fire. The other side didn't have artillery on this particular case, but I thought it was interesting to watch how the firefight unfolded. So we had small arms fire back and forth, and then my lieutenant colonel, battalion commander or somebody, called in for air support and artillery support. And then you could see this thing taking shape. And I found that to be really, really interesting, because we often don't think about that. And, you know, you do what you can do and hope that it works. They broke it off, and they broke off, and we stopped. And that was it. Was that a moment? It's kind of funny. It seems like you have these moments where things click for you, Reps. Was that another moment where things clicked when you realized, oh, now I understand why there's levels of authority? Yeah. Now I understand why there are orders given and they should be followed, because there's a pattern to battle. Well, yes. I mean, you've got to have people do what they're told to do. They've got to stand fast and be steadfast and that kind of thing. You can't have people, you know, the way we live and talk about these kinds of things today, it's like there's something wrong with this. It's not. The key is the training of the officers and the sergeants. And those are the people who make it work. And, you know, if you're given an order to go do something, you can't, like a colonel said to me, you wouldn't take care of my flight. Well, of course I would take care of his flight because that would be different. But, you know, you've got to do those kinds of things. Somebody above you, we hope, has better perspective on it than you do. Sure. And they know where you should go. I read a fair amount about World War II and all these other things. And, you know, you've got to outtake the other side. And you've got to stand fast. Your rifle has to work. You have to be with your buddies and take care of your buddies, all that kind of stuff. This segues into another story I was hoping you would tell us, almost perfectly actually because you're talking about the discipline it takes to be a good soldier and the discipline it takes to survive combat. There was a soldier of yours, if I understand correctly, who was not a picture of perfection when it comes to being a soldier, Segura. Michael Segura. Tell us about that experience. Well, he's my one regret. I couldn't reach him. I wasn't smart enough and mature enough to reach him. He was a Hispanic guy from Santa Fe, New Mexico. And he was angry and he had a chip on his shoulder. He was a draftee. He was a draftee. I think this is what I learned. I don't like working with draftees. You don't know what you're getting. So, anyway, Manuel Segura was a guy I couldn't talk to. He just didn't like it. And I don't blame him because he'd been drafted. He didn't want to be there. He didn't want to be there and he deserved to be there, but there he was. And I got mad at him and I put him on a machine gun and made him carry ammo. And, of course, that was punishment right there because it was heavy, in addition to the other things he had to carry. And when we got our second big firefight in our company, I sent him out and a couple other people out on what we call a co-relief, small, you're in a line like this. Technical movements. Yeah, yeah. And he got shot. Nobody else was shot, but he was. That was really a scary fight because I was down in the dirt and I could see bullets hitting him right in front of my face. And that's when I said, you know, I survived this. I'm going to go back to college and make something out of myself. That's what I said. I'd still say it. Anyway, his body started to burn. The clothes on his body started to burn. And it was such an ignoble thing to happen to him. I mean, I'm going to go off track a little bit here. I've had four people whose deaths I feel was also four. And Cigars was first. And I had thought about going to find his family and say that I regretted what happened. And I changed my mind about that. I said, they've accepted his death. Why go back and do it? Reopen wounds. Why go back and dig it up and hurt them again? I thought, in one way, it's an honorable thing to do. In another way, it's very selfish. It would have helped you close a chapter. It would have helped me, but it wouldn't have helped them. And I feel that way about three other guys, too. If you don't mind speaking on the other three, tell us their stories and what happened. Well, there were two guys who were in our company who were driving a three-quarter ton truck. It was not very big. And we were on Highway 13, which runs north and south from Saigon up to Cambodia. And my platoon was supposed to clear the road with mines. And I think we got a late start that morning, and we hurried. And I think we missed the mine. So here come my two guys from my company, Socrata and I can't remember the other guys' names. But they were just, you know, moseying along up there. And they got on the side of the road because there was a convoy coming the other way. And they hit a mine. And it blew such a huge hole in the ground. And it blew a suit of truck way up in the air and down again. And I feel responsible for that. The fourth guy is when I was back in the rear. He came to me because I was the executive officer in the company. And he wanted me not to send him back to the field because in a month or so he was going to rotate home. And he just kind of begged me. And I said, I can't do that. I've got to send you back. Next time I saw him was when I identified his body. That's the hardest one. And I remember there was this picture in my mind of the helicopter coming in to the base camp under his seat. His legs were hanging out because there was a lady made cross-eyes. So why is that the hardest one for you? Because I feel responsible for it. It feels more direct. He had come and asked you and you had said I can't do anything about it. I think that's it. If you're going to be in the infantry and you're going to be an officer or a senior NCO, a noncommissioned officer, you're going to have to do things like this. That's going to be part of it. You know, you tell somebody to go do something and they get hit, that's it. Sure. You have to walk away from that, but you can't. At least I couldn't. I wanted to go. He's the one I really wanted to track down and go visit his family. But, again, there wasn't anything to be gained by that. Sure. Now one of the two guys who died in the 3-quarter ton truck, one of the guys had a sister. And I ended up talking to her on the phone and telling her what I did. And I said, I feel so bad about this. And she said, It's okay. It's in the past. We put it away. There was a guy who was doing research on veterans in his area in Virginia, and he came across this guy. So we got together over the phone. And she was completely forgiving. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I don't know. I'm wondering if family members of people that go to war almost reconcile that before their family member goes over to battle or, you know, at some level mentally, subconsciously or not. I think you had to in Vietnam. That would be my feeling. Right. Because, I mean, it put you through torture almost if you hadn't almost subconsciously committed yourself to the. And you stayed hopeful. Yeah, you stayed hopeful, yeah. I hope I didn't overspeak there. I talked about this with my mother when I got back. And she said, I prayed for you every day. She was a very religious person. And she said, I just prayed and prayed and prayed. She said, I brought you home. And I said, very unkindly, what about all these other mothers who prayed and didn't come home alive? Shouldn't have said that. But you touched on something. How do you have a relative overseas in a dangerous situation? You have to try to figure out how to deal with that. There's a scene in a movie, I can't remember what it was now, but I think it might have been a private run or something like that, where these cars, this car that's a military, it's an official car, pulls up in the driveway. And the mother looks out and sees the car and sees the officers getting out of the car. And she just falls on the floor. I think that's realistic. It's very realistic. I can attest. Yeah, you can. You know, that's war. So we either bury it or we deal with it. Sure. And that's where a lot of alcoholism comes from and a lot of misbehavior comes from veterans because they've got things that they did that are unresolved. Yeah, and they wish they hadn't done it or what. So this is really interesting to me. I'm glad you mentioned this earlier. You have a bookend sort of in your military career in a certain way. November of 1963, JFK is assassinated. That's not quite, if I'm understanding correctly, that's not quite a moment where you feel this calling, but it's a moment where you feel sort of this weight of a national event, really an international event. It had a lot of different consequences globally, JFK's assassination. And then the day before MLK's assassination, you are shot. Right. April 3rd of 1968. Tell us about that experience of being shot. Well, I had rotated off the line and I was assigned to the rear, to my company base. And I got to go on R&R, rest and recreation, to Hong Kong for five days. So I did that and it was fun and all that kind of stuff. And I get back to my company area and within, I think, within a day or two, we learned that we had lost some leaders, some platoon leaders, and I had to go back out in the field. So I went from third platoon to first platoon. And we were out hiking around, doing something, I don't know, on a patrol, and I was with people I didn't really know very well because it was a different platoon. And my medic was brand new and he was – medics are really important people in these battles because they're the ones that are going to save your life if anyone can. And they have dangerous work to do. You need them to have nerves of steel. Well, you need to have something. You've got to get going. You can't just sit around and think about it. Yeah. So we were walking along, ditty bopping along, and suddenly all hell broke loose and we get in a firefight. And we were getting hit. Some people were getting hit. One guy got shot in the finger, off the finger. And I look over and my medic is hunkered down behind the anthill. Anthills in Vietnam are big structures, if you will, solid dirt. And I thought, damn, I've got to get him moving. So I ran over to him – tried to run over – to get him to go, get out there and start taking care of people and it was like his first or second day in the field. He was scared to death. I mean, he was just trembling. I don't blame him, but I can't let that stop me. Sure. And as I got up and ran toward him, I got hit in the chest on the right side. And that knocked me down. My old medic from my other platoon came to take care of me and he said later that I was just white as a sheet. I didn't know that. I guess I went into shock for a little while. So that was that firefight. I only hit three. That was enough. Enough adventure. Well, when you come close to getting killed, you have a lot of respect for that. Yeah, for sure. And that was it. What did you remember about the next day, or maybe it was a few days later, in terms of the news about Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination? How did that strike you? Well, I wasn't as well informed in my mind. I hadn't made up my mind about Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement like I have now. But I thought, Jesus, what is this? Here you have JFK in 1963 and then King in 68. And you have Bobby Kennedy. And you have Bobby Kennedy. But I did something that most people didn't do. I ordered a subscription to Time Magazine so I had something to read. And I would get that. It would come in the mail, the mail call, and I would get that and I could kind of keep up with world events. Most of the people in my platoon or my company didn't give a shit about that. They didn't care about that. I did. I guess that distinguished me a little bit. But I really didn't understand what was going on on the home front. That came later. That came when I went back to college and stuff like that. I began to understand that. But you did, if I understand correctly, Reps, you did at some point see how the war was going to go. Oh, yeah. I'd love to hear your perspective on the Vietnam War. Me too. Well, I didn't know anything about it when I went over there. I met a Vietnamese woman, which I kind of fell for, and eventually married. We have a daughter who's now 50 years old, but we're not married any longer. But I kind of became sympathetic to the Vietnamese people. That's a really old history. China occupied it for 1,000 years. I have a lot of affection for the Vietnamese people and the food. Oh, yeah. I love the Vietnamese food. But what was your question? I'll ask it again. You just reminded me of something I wanted to mention. It's a really interesting tie-in with your father, actually. Not directly, but in general. You probably know this. He was a Vietnamese representative who went to the League of Nations after World War I and was pleading. Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh, exactly. I think he went by a different name at this point in time, but that's how he became Ho Chi Minh. He was pleading with U.S. representatives, I think British representatives, French representatives, the victors of World War I. He was pleading for representation and, I think, in some way, resources and service for Vietnam at that point. Well, his pleas went unheard. No one took a meeting with him. The French weren't going to handle that. They were the colonial power. So, yeah, that's true. I became sympathetic to the Vietnamese. I really did. The longer I lived, the more I respected them, especially the guys who were in the field fighting and the commanders and stuff like that. They endured a lot. And they didn't have a lot to throw back at us. I mean, they had, later on, artillery and tanks and stuff. Sure. But in the early years, they didn't have that. I'm reading a book right now by a journalist from Britain named Max Hastings. The title is Vietnam. It's like 600 pages long, and I'm about halfway through it. I read a chapter every so often. But it makes those kind of points fit, you know, and it made me very sympathetic to the Vietnamese people. And when you say Vietnamese people, there are a whole bunch of different kinds. Sure. There are those who like Ho Chi Minh. There are those who like the South, you know, and that kind of stuff. The question I had asked, what you're saying is perfectly fine. This is addressing it in a way. Was there a point in time that you can remember when you knew the U.S. was not going to win the war? Again, I think I said this in my interview with Larry. I could see pretty quickly that we weren't doing very well. What led you to believe that? I don't know. You know, small unit fights. This is something Jason and I have heard from other Vietnam vets. The strategy of entering a village, killing the Viet Cong, killing who you think is your enemy, and then you exit that village and that village is just filled up again with your enemy. That's the nature of guerrilla warfare. I mean, we didn't understand what we were doing. I look back on this and I think we threw so much artillery and bodies and 15,000 names on a wall, Vietnam, and all that kind of stuff. They lost millions of people. The North lost 2 or 3 million. Wow. I'm not a South signatory here. No, I've never heard that myself. People over-look at it. They don't look at it from one point of view. The South lost a lot and the North lost a lot, and I admire them, the North communist tour, trying to gain control of their own country in their own way and not have it be – I mean, honestly, we were neocolonialists. We didn't say ourselves that. That's what we were. We were foreigners. We didn't belong there. You know, I remember coming back home after I got out and I was walking around the square in Carrollton where I went to high school, and one guy came up to me. He said, Mom, what are we doing over there? I said, I really don't know. You know, because my perspective was small unit stuff. I wasn't looking at the big picture. But when I began reading about it and learning more about it and following more, I realized the signs were everywhere. And if you look at the Pentagon Papers and read them, you know, there it is. It was very important that we knew that. But people in the home, they didn't want the home pets to know that. So you get out January of 69. As I said again, I want to re-mention it because it was worth mentioning, you had been awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star with the Fowler. Not long after that, you go back to Vietnam at this time as a civilian. So just give us a taste of you going back to get married. Well, I don't think she knew what I was up to. But I remember getting a letter from her, but she didn't say it was her. She said she wrote, and I recognize her handwriting, but she said that Young has died. That was her name, N-H-U-N-G. And I didn't believe it because I recognized her handwriting. She had written and said, you know, don't come back. At this point, you had fallen in love with her essentially. Yeah, yeah, sure. And so I wanted to go back. So as quickly as I could, I got out. I was at a little base, a reserve training camp base in Seattle, Washington. Nice place to be, by the way. Anyway, I was there as an advisor to reservists who were meeting like twice a month or something like that. Sure, you can get warriors. Yeah, right. And I decided that I wanted to go back to seeing Young. And I wanted to go back and get her. So somehow I snaggled the money out of my parents, and I bought a ticket, and I got on a plane. And I believe the airline was brass because it doesn't exist any longer, but it had multi-colored tourist work funny-looking uniforms and all sorts of stuff. Anyway, I'm flying in, flying back to Vietnam. I get back there, and I track her down. And she's got a place for us to stay. And I need to make money a little bit, anyway. So I started looking around for a job. Saigon in 1969 was really hopping. There were a lot of journalists there, that kind of thing. And I had an English teacher in high school who told me I could write. So I applied for it. I went to various places that needed reporters. And I went to the Agence France-Presse, French. And the guy, the bureau chief, spoke English, thank goodness. And he said, you should go to see George MacArthur over at the Associated Press. Well, I hardly knew what the Associated Press was. I didn't study journalism. I just knew I kind of liked it. Even though you'd gone to Mizzou, funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I was studying agriculture when I was at Mizzou. But anyway, I went to the AP, Associated Press's bureau, in the heart of Saigon, right downtown. And I talked to George MacArthur. He was from Georgia. He'd gone to school in Georgia. He had been in World War II. He was, I don't know, involved in some of the Southeast Asian fighting. Sure. And he'd been in Korea. I mean, he was really kind of an old hand. And he had a bureau there of really good— Pulitzer Prize winning journalists. Yeah, I mean, Peter Arnett was there. George Horst Foss was there. He was the photo chief. Nicolette, who took the picture of the burning girl. The napalm girl. The napalm girl. Yeah. Those were the people in the bureau. That was heavy company. That's incredible. So he hired me for $100 a week in American dollars, which he showed me how to convert that into casters, I think they were. There was a guy from India, a couple floors down, who was a money changer, which was illegal, but I did it anyway. He showed me how to do it. So that's how I lived. That's how Lynn and I—my son, American name now, Lynn, and that's how Lynn and I lived. We lived in a cold water flat, literally cold water flat, out near the top of the river. How did you reckon with the fact that Lynn had sent you a letter announcing her death, which you were pretty dubious of, and then you arrive and she has a flat for you to live in? Was it, welcome, open arms, I'm glad you're alive, or was there an argument about why did you send that letter? No, what would I argue? I understood. Was it her way of trying to get you to come back for her? No, I think it was her way not to protect herself from a broken heart. I see. I think that was it. She was trying to close a chapter in her life. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I just didn't want that to happen. Eventually you get her visa and you return to the United States, is that right? Correct. Is that within a year of arriving in Vietnam? Yeah. I arrived in March, I think it was, or late February, and she and I left in July, late July. So I was there about five months or six months. I just want to reference this, or I want this to be clear to the audience. The war was still raging on at that point. Oh, yeah. So nothing was changing. It's just fascinating. I read stories from the correspondence from the AP you were writing. You know, there's a real art to this. They go out in the field, they get hooked up with some company and they're just hanging out, stuff like that. It's much different today because you have better communications, but they were working with, you know, if they took pictures, they were using film. They had to write captions, what we call cut lines, captions with each picture if they felt they were good, and they would send those by somebody who could take it back to somebody who could get it back to the office. It was a little old machine. Well, yeah, and also it was iffy, you know. Do you remember the picture of the guy you shot in the head? Yes. Okay, so that was taken by Eddie Adams. Eddie was not a – he didn't want to be that way. He was kind of a nice guy who liked to take, you know, beautiful pictures and stuff like that. That was during the Tennessean season in Saigon, and he just happened to be in the right place at the right time and shot the picture, which won a Pulitzer Prize, if I remember. And it was interesting because the AP had files of developed film, and you could hold them up to the light or something and see. So I watched – I looked at all this one day, at Eddie Adams' pictures of the guys kind of going up. Sure, the different frames of it. Yeah, I loved it. There was a guy who came in the office one day named Sean Flynn, Errol Flynn's son, an actor. Oh, wow, how about that? Yeah, very handsome guy, very suave, all that kind of stuff. He disappeared in Cambodia. Nobody knew what happened to him. To this day? Yeah. I mean, I read somebody just the other day. Wow. You know, people would go up to Laos or Cambodia to buy, I don't know, drugs of one kind or another, bring them back. So some of these reporters and photographers were doing things like that. Most of them were not. I was fortunate enough to work with a guy named George Esper, E-S-P-E-R. I think he's a relative of the guy who was Mark Esper. Oh, yes, sir. He was the Secretary of Defense. And George was just a compulsive worker. Oh, my God. He had to write an afternoon roundup for the AP's clients. So he'd sit down around 11 o'clock in the morning and write the best he could, what's been going on. And he had this ability to tell the story. It was gripping. And I was able to look at other things like that. It was a really interesting place to be. What's funny about your journalism career, if I understand correctly, Reps, is I heard in your previous interview you say that you had previously thought that there's no more authoritarian place in the military. And then you entered the newsroom. Well, yeah, you don't mess around in the newsroom, I've heard. Yeah, that's true. I didn't know deadlines could be that deadly. Well, deadlines and the editors depends on who it is. Sure, yeah. But a newspaper, particularly Kids and Stars and that kind of paper, you learn a lot. I'm sure. About not making mistakes, about making deadlines, about finding stories. And we all knew that Hemingway started out there. That was lore. But it was a really interesting place to be. And I'd never had to do that before. I want to bounce around with a few things, and there's a story I want to end on. But you've gotten to be adjacent to some really fascinating historical moments in time, one of which is the Watergate scandal. You were not far from the Watergate Hotel when, you didn't know it at the time, no one did, the break-in occurred and then the subsequent fallout from that. You were also present for the dedication of the Vietnam War memorial. I was. Tell us about that ceremony. You got to meet the designer, the Chinese student who designed it. Right. What do you remember about that? Well, I was an editorial writer at the Star when that came along. So the memorial was dedicated to November 100th day, 1982. That was pretty controversial. It was very controversial among a number of people because it was, you know, if you're familiar with it, it goes down into the ground, and then it comes back up on the other side. It's not a man or horseback or, you know, private jet or something like that, looking like everybody's a hero. It's down. And that bothered people. Subconsciously, they hated it. Many of them did. Mylin, who was a senior at Yale, I believe, in a design course, submitted that, submitted her drawing. It was a contest, a nationwide contest. Yeah, and there's a documentary about this. And she was chosen, and she was about 18 or 19. She's 20 years old. She's done a number of other things since. But that was her original work. And I told my editor, I said, I was on the editorial page, and I was writing about the war and veterans and the stuff we had suffered and all that kind of stuff. And his name was Jim. He was a veteran of World War II. And I said, I want to go back to Washington for the dedication of the Vietnam War. And he said, I'm going to go pay for that. So I said, okay. So I took five days of vacation and went back there and went to the dedication. I'm so proud of the fact I got to do that. It meant a lot to me. I'm sure it did. When I got there, I got there a day or two ahead. I was down walking along the area. I was walking along the wall that points toward the Capitol. And I looked at it, and I saw the name of a guy. It was from the fraternity I was in at Westminster. Well. Harbinger III. And I thought, damn, I didn't really think that counted. It was interesting. What a strange moment that must have been, having been at Westminster, having this negative experience, feeling that all your peers were these just rich white kids that didn't understand the gravity of the situation, and you see a name of a Sigma Chi brother on the wall. Right, right. When you first saw the wall, what was your opinion of it? I was very somber, very sober about that. When you look at all those names, if you start at the one end or the other, as you walk down, the names rise up beside you. One of them told me that this is what she wanted. Your reaction is, oh, my god. We lost so many people. 68,000 losses here. And my reaction was, I don't know. I just felt overwhelmed by it. And again, it's like, Vietnam, how do you understand that? It's more about our society and our leaders at that time than it was about anything else. But anyway, I was walking down, and I saw his name. And one thing veterans say to each other from that period, how many people do you know on the wall? Well, I have several people. And a high school classmate of mine, some other people like that. But I'm very proud of the fact that it's there. I'm sure we'll get past the point where people will even know or care about it. But right now, it's the most visited site in Washington, I think. I've been back several times. One time I was back, and some tourists from Germany or someplace came in. They kind of walked down one side and back up the other side. And that was it. I mean, they'd seen the wall. But I got antsy about this. I wanted to go home back there and volunteer. So somehow I found out who to go to. And I volunteered. I went back there. I signed up as a volunteer. And I carried that big book around. It had all the names in it, where they're located, where the people are located. And one thing I learned, we were advised not to say is, may I help you? Don't use the word help. They don't want help. Are you looking for anything? What name are you looking for? You do it that way. And that was just something that didn't dawn on me. But that's what it is. But that same time that dedication occurred, we had probably the biggest gathering of Vietnam veterans ever. And there were all kinds of people there. And we had parades. And we had this. And all the hotels were full of vets. And people were just talking about. They were meeting people they'd known, meeting people they didn't know. And that kind of stuff. Then they marched down Constitution Avenue. And I'm doing a story. And there's General Westmoreland, who had been the Supreme Commander before Abrams took over. So Westmoreland is walking along. And I go up and start interviewing. I don't even remember what he said. And I don't remember what I asked him. But the thing is, I had to write a story. And that was something that was important. You just have to do that. How did he react to you coming up to him? Oh, guys like that, they've talked to so many people. They know how to deal with it. I don't know. He had a couple of handy lines he used. But I will tell you that one time I went back there. This was later. I went back. And whenever I go to Washington, I always go to the Wall. So I went to the Wall. And there I look over. And there's my old battalion commander in Sydney, in civilian clothes. And I just watched him. And I'm thinking, what are you looking for? When he came on, we had a battalion commander who didn't push us too hard. And therefore, we didn't have too many casualties. When this guy took over, our casualties went up. We got into more situations, which, of course, is what you should do if you're running an infantry outfit. But what did they die for? They seemed more reckless once he took command. And there he was looking at the Wall and names. And I thought, well, I guess that's a reckoning for him. I hope it is. You know what I've heard about the Wall? Have you been there? I've been several times. Good for you. And it truly is a somber. It doesn't matter what time of the day you go. I think the best time is either dawn or dusk, just for that kind of ambiance. But it doesn't matter what time of the day you go. It's an extremely impactful monument. Something I've heard about it that I think really sums up the design that she was going for is it represents a deep wound. It's a cut, because it cuts into the earth quite literally. But it also is what I've read as an interpretation of it, is that it represents a wound in the United States, a wound in America. I think that's a good point. I hadn't thought of that. This is probably a whole story we could do a whole episode on, but you returned in 1988. You took your daughter. She got to meet her grandparents. Her grandmother. Her grandmother. So she got to meet her grandmother and a few other relatives. I'm just going to hit some of the highlights of this. She was 13 years old. She was a 13-year-old at that point. She was a kid. I can't help but ask this. Just a few statements from you about the impact of returning in 1988 with your daughter, who was essentially a product of you having been there as a soldier. What was the impact of that on you, that trip? Well, that's one of the most important things we've done in our family. I consider that. I don't think we'll say that or not. She's the daughter. But I'm extremely proud of the fact that we were able to do that because we're traveling around, we're going to Vietnam. We first went to Hanoi up north, and we stayed in the hotel, which is really a mess, and it's now a luxury hotel again. You know, she got to see her mother's country. I thought that was very important. And I got to go places I'd never been. And I remember at one point we were staying in some place that had been a BLQ, Bachelor officer's quarters for Americans. And she got up to go to the bathroom in Hanoi, and she came back, and there was a big cockroach in front of her, and she just flipped out. But it's just a different world. You get to really get to know it. There's a story that I heard in your previous interview. It's sort of a humorous story, but it's also, in a weird way, a very emotional story about you and your father. You took a road trip at one point. I don't know which year this was. Going up to San Washington. And it's you and your father. You convinced them to join you. What year was this, just so I know? I was 69. Soon after you got back. Yeah, and I had saved enough money while I was in the Army that I could buy a brand-new MG GT. It was a British race car. You know, I was so proud of that car. It didn't run very well, but I was really proud of it. So Daddy and I got in this car. We're down kind of low, right? You go by a big truck and you're looking up a lot. And we drive off, and he's not very happy to be with me. I mean, we were never close, and we didn't talk a lot. But at some point, we stopped at a gas station to fill up. He said to me, you need to use the bathroom. And I just blew up. I thought, good Lord, all the things I've done, and my dad is asking me if I need to use the bathroom. I just lost it. I mean, I got it back, real fast. But I mean, that stayed with me. And now I wish I had him back because there are a lot of things I want to talk to him about. You know what I mean? It's just a lot. I mean, that's life, but it was a lot. Would you mind sharing something that you would say to your father now if you had him back? I would want to talk about his experiences in World War I more. He always thought I asked too many questions and I talked too much. He was one of these people who kept a lot of things to himself. But I would have the knowledge now to ask. I have the understanding to be able to ask him questions, and I think that's important. I hope you agree with my representation of that story, both humorous but also sort of emotional in this father-son kind of capacity. It's just, to me, it's sort of a beautiful picture of parents never stop being parents. You had gone through war. You had gone through hell and back. You had been an infantry officer in the Vietnam War. You get back. You take a road trip with your dad, and he feels the need to ask you if you need to take a potty break before you get back in the car. Right. You know, he never stopped being a dad. Yeah. But he wasn't what I needed sometimes. That's the difference. And I look at the situation. I have three children. My oldest one was my first wife, and we adopted two children with my second wife. So I try to don't do a very good job sometimes, but I try to think how would I want it to be. Sure. What can I say to my child that's helpful? It made me more aware of that, I think. The last thing I wanted to ask, I want to give the due deference here of your service as a volunteer with the Missouri Veterans History Project, which is a project that the museum is now housing, but you're an interviewer for them. You've done very many interviews. Yes. We were trying to figure out the number earlier. I was thinking around 25 or 30. Sounds like it's in the hundreds. I don't think that's that many. There are quite a few. Well, my question is, it's just very simple. What impact has that had on you, being an interviewer for VHP? Well, it's what I can do. It's what I can do. I'm pretty good at it. You're pretty good at it too, by the way. I'm pretty good at it. I don't gawk at people. I don't ask them how many people they killed. I never do stuff like that. I try to treat them with respect. Anyone who's gone through basic training, whether it's one service or the other, you know, you've been through some stuff. And I try to be respectful of that. And, you know, I'm not one of these people. People say it so often now, thank you for your service. I blow that off because that's just such an easy one to say. I want to hear more. So I like to talk to people and try to get them to talk to me. It doesn't always work, but I try to do that. Try to bring out their feelings, their emotions, et cetera, et cetera. Is welcome home an important phrase for you? Not particularly. Tell me about that. It's too easy, too good. That's it. I would rather sit around and drink a beer or have a meal or just talk. Share a moment. Yeah, just to say welcome home. You know, that's something else I wanted to add. I came back by myself. We all did, pretty much. My parents picked me up. We went out. We were in Kansas City. And they wanted to show me this place that was really pretty good. It was called Pizza Hut. So we went to Pizza Hut in Independence, Missouri or something like that. And the thing I wanted to say, which I don't know what I want to say to you, is that when people go to war, it doesn't make any difference if they're on the front lines or in rear, doing support, whatever. They have to come back and live in this world that we're in now. That's hard to do. I think I still deal with it all the time. You know, I still learn as you're driving out here. I still think about this stuff all the time. I can't get it out of my head. Some people bury it. Some people seal it up and don't talk about anything. I'm not like that. But I am really – I think the one thing I wish people understood is when people go off and put on a uniform, they are changing everything about their lives in many ways. And they deserve to be treated with respect and understanding. And our society, I don't think, does a really good job. Maybe you see a movie. That's not the same thing, you know. Because I think it can create a chasm between those who served and those who didn't. I don't think sacrifice is well understood by our society. And I don't think it's really valued any longer. Well, it's not. And, you know, I've read a lot about World War II and one. And, you know, everybody understood the sacrifices that those people were putting out. But, you know, Vietnam in the context of the protests and the things about the war, against the war, the people who went to war and came home, you know, what do you do about that? Well, I went back to college. And I was in touch with one of my history teachers. I went to University of Missouri-Kansas City for my bachelor's degree. And I thought about this. Sitting in a classroom, I was 22, 23 years old. I'd done my time in Vietnam. I'd seen people killed. And then I'm sitting in a classroom with kids who are 18 years old. That's a generational gap right there. And, you know, what do I say to them? What do they say to me? And I made them. I had a fatigue jacket. It was an Army uniform, fatigue jacket. I wore that all the time. I think I took my bars off because I didn't want that. But, you know, I wore that all the time. And I wanted everybody to know that I was a veteran. And I didn't care about the rest of it. It was a real interesting time to be alive, I think. I feel so fortunate to have gone through that. Rex, it's been an incredible honor to be in your presence this evening. It's been an incredible honor. No one's ever said that to me before. It's true. It really is true. I feel that way. And it's been an incredible honor to be able to hear your story directly from you. Thank you. Thank you for your time. As another veteran, I'm going to say thank you for your service. And I hope it really means something. That's all the questions I have, Jason. Thank you. I'm going to do a little bit of reflection here before we end and go back just a little bit to the wall. My dad actually took me to the wall on a road trip visiting battlefields from the Civil War all the way through the mall in D.C. and all the different things. And my dad was a huge studier of Vietnam. He had a full library on Vietnam and was a battle technician and tactical warrior. And the thing that I can remember the most is standing in front of the statue of the soldiers at the monument there and then also the reflection that the wall gives back, that you see the people standing by the wall around you and that reflection. And I don't know if that designer meant for that reflection to be there. I don't know because I've never really studied that. But I can remember seeing my dad's reflection and my reflection. I can picture that. And so when I think about reflection and what that means to me in my life is that I had an extraordinary neighbor when I lived in Florida. His name was Steve Tuthill, and he was a Vietnam veteran, very close to my dad. They would talk all the time. Of course, my dad was in the military at the time, and Steve was a veteran. In the middle of the night, Steve would be in his driveway in his lawn chair just staring into space, you know. And my dad would go over and talk to him, you know, and kind of knew not the same experiences but was able to see that. And Steve spoke a lot into my life as a young person even before my dad died and then after. But Steve and his family were rescuers of race dogs, of greyhounds. They rescued greyhounds. And the compassion when I reflect on this through my visual or reflecting in the wall is Steve's name wasn't on the wall because he didn't die in Vietnam, but Vietnam took his life, so to speak. And the way he gave back was through these rescue animals and his compassion to people. And when I think about Vietnam veterans or Vietnam, the story of Vietnam, I think through the lens of people like Lieutenant Henry and then also Steve Tudhill. It reminds me of a book, The Things We Carried, authored by a Vietnam veteran. It speaks on, you know, Reps had mentioned the survivor's guilt earlier. It speaks on the moral injury of combat. You know, we have Lieutenant Hudson here, Purple Heart recipient. There's no visible wounds that I can see from you right now, yet you have those wounds. You have a physical wound from your gunshot wound, but you also have moral wounds from your time in combat. And so, Jason, I really appreciate you mentioning that. It's a perfect picture of the toll that the Vietnam War took on everyone. Well, I would think it also would take a note for anything, any war you're in. I just got in the mail John Hersey's book, Hiroshima. Are you familiar with that? Yes. So I'm starting to read that because I have this goal to read as many good books as I can before I check out. And so I'm starting to read Hiroshima. And, you know, all you have to do, really, is start reading about individuals and get down in the dirt. Don't get up high. You know, get down there where it really happens. That's what matters. I would love to be able to get back together with the members of my platoon, but I had a couple. My point man, Ed Lee, who was down in Louisiana, he dropped by here every once in a while. We would talk. And as I think I said in the other interview, I don't think people who don't like you are going to be in touch with you so we can get together. I don't think that's going to happen, you know. So it meant a lot to me that this guy got in touch with me. The medic who took care of me, he's extremely conservative, and, you know, he kind of does a lot of trumpy things. So we don't keep in touch as much. But I would do anything for him. I would do anything for Ed. I would do anything for anybody in my platoon if I could. I'm just not in touch with him anymore. You learn so much from being people from other backgrounds. I'm white. My dad didn't think he called them darkies. He didn't think darkies and white people should be together. My radio telephone operator was a black guy from the south named Coleman. There's what I wish I could go back to and talk. If he would talk to me about his experiences in the war and after, I would love to hear what he had to say. Does that make sense? Yes. I mean, that's really, really important to me. So these recordings that you're making where we lay down where people put down what people had to say and the way they feel, it's really important for the future for people to know. I agree wholeheartedly. I agree as well. Thank you for allowing us to reflect. I feel a little bit lighter myself being able to say what I just said a few minutes ago. Russ, it's been an amazing journey with you. Thank you for sharing your story with us, for your perspective. I just find it fascinating that your dad was born in the 1890s. That's awesome. 1891. That's amazing. My mother was born in 1906. That's incredible. Well, you know, we're these young whippersnappers over here. But I'm sure we could probably do this over and over again with all the different things you've experienced. But we're going to go ahead and sign off of the Operation Inside podcast from the Mid-America Veterans Museum. Operation Insight is brought to you by the Mid-America Veterans Museum, where we believe every veteran has a story. If you agree and you enjoy our content, please share it with your friends and family. And don't forget to like and subscribe. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Operation Insight is brought to you by the Mid-America Veterans Museum, where we believe every veteran has a story. If you agree and you enjoy today's podcast, please take a moment to like, subscribe, and leave a review on whichever platform you listen. Don't forget, sharing this episode with friends and family is a great way to support the museum and our mission of sharing veterans' stories. Thank you for listening.