Captain Mike Lavin

The Mid-America Veterans Museum is a nonprofit sharing veterans' stories. The podcast covers historical and educational topics. Captain Mike Lavin discusses his military service and family history. He was an Eagle Scout and excelled at hiking. His family has a long military history dating back to the Revolutionary War. He talks about his parents, grandmother, and upbringing, highlighting his mother's education and grandmother's successful florist business. 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 mavm.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 the Operation Insight Podcast from the Mid-America Veterans Museum with your hosts, Jason Galvin and Sergeant Ethan Gross. Welcome back, family. We are really excited to bring this show to you tonight. You know, it just continues to get better and better, Ethan. And I'm so proud of the guests that we've had and the current guests that we're going to have tonight. So why don't you introduce us to our guest tonight? I'd be happy to. Tonight we have Captain Mike Lavin, U.S. Army, November 1967 to April 1971. Another name that Captain Lavin goes by is Spec 4 Smith. We'll discuss that part later with Mike here. Mike, thanks for being here. I want to talk a little bit about your early life, and then we'll get into your college years and military experience and career. The first question I have, how does a boy who doesn't like to sweat do so well as an Eagle Scout? I like to go camping, and I like to do hiking and walking. In fact, at the time when I was 15, 16, 17, I did an extensive amount of walking, and that was really during a time when no one walked. We didn't have the malls or as many of them that people go walking in, and kids certainly didn't do it. I wasn't a good basketball or football player, but I could go on 5 and 15 and 20-mile hikes on a regular basis pretty frequently around town, or sometimes I'd go out of state with our scout group. In fact, you would take 11.3-mile hikes to your father's toy store. Yes, there were times when we lived in Brentwood by Tillis Park. My dad had a toy store out at Ball and Plaza at a time when Don S. and Chevrolet was the only car dealers on the road out at Manchester. Past Manchester Drive-In, which is now West County Shopping Center, there was nothing until you got to Ellisville. But I'd walk to work sometimes just to have warm-up hikes, and that is from my house there near Tillis Park in Brentwood. Out west past Ferrato's there on Manchester, and going all the way out on Manchester was exactly 11.3 miles. My comment, the other warm-up hikes you'd take would be on eastbound Highway 40 going out to Wolfe's Estate, which is that lake north on Highway 40, and now it has a bunch of houses around it. We've all walked back into Brentwood on the eastbound traffic because the highway ended at Brentwood Boulevard. It didn't go any further, so we'd get off at McKnight and thereby just disperse their home, and that was a five-mile warm-up hike. I'll be thinking about this now as I take that route. Tell me to drive around. I'm like, oh, my goodness. Michael's pumping rounds. For gas vehicles. A question I had for you, Mike, with regards to your hiking and your love of being out in what seems to be being out in nature, what types of things would you think about as you hiked? Well, I don't know. I was a very introverted person, and also the other thing that I look back on, I wish my parents held me back a year because I was 17 years old as a senior, and three days after I turned 18, I graduated. And I think that was, being the oldest of three kids, I think that was kind of like I wasn't good in the sports, and that's where I kind of not liked the sweat, and I liked camping, and I was a really good cook. You never had raw chicken with me, even if I was only 12 or 13 years old. I just knew how to do those things. And I just don't think, I just was not like one of the guys normally were, and I was also a very avid and very skilled scratch builder. I had big train layouts in my basement. We had two of them at different times, and I scratch built everything, again, at a very high standard. So between Boy Scouts and scratch building, I was a pretty introverted kid. You were also a stagehand for your school's drama club. Is that correct? Correct. I did all the lighting at Brentwood High School for about, I'm going to say, five of the six years that I was there because I got involved with a guy by the name of Steve York. And what was funny about it, I'd get to go work on all the senior plays that we had at the old gym at Brentwood. On the lighting crew, I'd get passes to get out when I was even ninth, tenth, and eleventh grade and go work on things during school because I was the only one, along with Steve York, to work on the lighting. Even for the proms, which we held in the old gym at that time, I'd go to proms in junior and seniors, and I'd be a ninth and tenth grader, but I'd be working the lights and all the stuff for the prom kids. So I got to work on prom when I was in middle school. Kind of the man, by all means. It was kind of a funny thing, yeah. What family history in the military did you have? Our family in the military goes back to about 1714, 1715 from Coburg, Germany. They came over and lighted in North Carolina. And during the Revolutionary War, I had cousins who fought with Nathaniel Green at the Battle of the Cowpens. Wow. And so we had Red War and then, of course, Civil War and the Catawba Rifles, which is around the Asheville area over in Hickory, over in the west side of the Carolinas. I had two cousins there. One of them, Leroy Whitener, was wounded twice, once in Cold Harbor, taken as a POW, actually on a POW ship in New York City, and released and exited the Confederate Army as a sergeant. His picture is, because I had one, I gave it to the Civil War Museum down at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis so that it could be enjoyed by other people. Is that where your family originates from in terms of the United States, North Carolina? Yeah, I'd have to say that because my dad, I've got an Irish last name, and we can only go one generation past my father, and we were from Ireland, and he was an only child. So it's just kind of limited on that side of the family. Did your father serve? No, he did not, and this is kind of humorous. He was determined to be 4F because he had something wrong with his testicles, and there couldn't have been anything wrong because he had three kids. Yeah, I was about to say. Yeah, yeah, and he graduated from City High School and University City High School, also in that area, and went off to a college over in Kansas, and he flunked the first year because he liked to dance and party. And my mom and dad were dancers. I listened to all that big band music back in the 50s on our record players and stuff, and they danced. What did you learn from your parents? Well, I was very fortunate. My mom was college educated, as her mother was, and she was a teacher by trade, K through 8, but she was a stay-at-home mom, and she was actually two years ahead of her peers and graduated from the University of Missouri at age 24 a month. Wow. So she had me. Yeah, that's very rare. That's incredible. Well, it's incredible to have two great-grandmother and mother college graduates. Yeah. My dad, I think, always suffered a little bit from low self-esteem and all this stuff because he was a product of a divorce, and it was a moneyed divorce. It's a little bickering and things going on back, but he always supported the kids. And I just think with always having consistency of two parents, and they were involved with everything. I mean, as I was in scouts, my dad was in scouts. When my younger brother was in scouts, he was involved with him. When my brother went to dismet, my dad played on the chain gang on the side and stuff, so he was always participatory with us. And I think I had a sister and a brother, and my mom always did stuff with the sister, but so did the dad. I think it was just that togetherness, and they were good spiritually people, too. I want us to sit just a little bit longer on your grandmother and her story because oftentimes, and Jason might feel this way, oftentimes I feel as though I'm very heavy on the father's story. Some of that's just the way it is because at that point, a lot of the military women weren't. But since you do have this pretty incredible grandmother who sounds like college-educated, at that point in time, it was pretty rare. This would have been very early 1900s. Correct. Tell us a little bit about your grandmother. It was interesting. She lived down in Fredericktown, Missouri, and that's where my mom grew up. And another kind of interesting thing about my mom and the dad, they got married in her house by a Catholic priest because they were building St. Michael's, and it's all St. Michael's down there. It's built with all red granite, so it wasn't exactly a quick build-up through a wood-framed church. And they had official permission from the Archdiocese of St. Louis to do that. But she went in business for herself at age 57 and went in as a florist for 26 years and worked six days a week and died at the age of 101. Wow. Yeah, wow. And the home that she grew up in and that I'd go down and visit her in Fredericktown still exists and it's been restored to its 1890 status, which is unusual for that town because that town's a lot less than I remember back as a kid because we had the dirt races with the cars on Saturday night, and the lead mine was operating just on the other side of the racetrack. Yeah, you're right. And I hung around with the country boys down there. Oh, and another thing. I never thought this. I would come down there in the summer in a white T-shirt, Bermuda shorts, and my white tennis shoes like everybody else. And, of course, they were all wearing blue jeans, and I'd be ridiculed out of hell with them. But I'd hop in my uncle's next door to my grandmother, and he had the Chevrolet dealership down there, and I had a car always accessible. And I'd go out on the nights with the boys, and we'd go driving around town and picking up our six-pack of beer for $1.25 at Robert's Liquor and Sports Store there on Court Street. I'd drive through Northtown, and they'd go around the restaurant out on 61. It was called The Pig. It was just a concrete block place. It is still in existence. Wow. It's got to be over 100 years old, but consider, because my mom did the same thing. But the thing we did that no one would do nowadays is we'd also go skinny dipping in silver mines and slime pond and places like that. And I didn't do that with the city boys. And I wanted to protect my, I guess, naiveness and everything. I didn't go drinking with them, and I didn't go out driving, and I did a normal amount of light dating. I'd go to football games. I wasn't like these kids are now. It was way more reserved. I'm really happy you've mentioned this, Mike, and I'm happy I asked about your grandmother in this experience because it's so funny to me, and this isn't something that we had planned when we were preparing for the interview. So you have your city life, Mike, and then you have your rural life, Mike, and it sounds like they're pretty different. They're very different. And I think as you're going to hear going on, I think this plays in my time in the military. Very much. There was a yin and yang going on right there, and I think it felt comfortable and it's involving something else that I think we're going to hit on later on and the thing about how I affect other people's lives. Exactly. So I'm glad we've already started that comparison here. Okay, so let's move on to your college years. I want to talk about this specifically because we've had at least one other guest. He wasn't a graduate of Westminster, and he told us all about why he decided not to stay there and transfer instead. But you are a graduate of Westminster. Yes, the class of 67. Tell us about your time there. Westminster at that time was an all-boys school. It had enrollment of about 600 to 620 kids, which is about what the enrollment is now, unfortunately. It was mostly fraternities there, and there were some of us that did not join a fraternity. My class of 120 freshmen ended up in being a class of about 90 by the time it came to graduation, and the independent house at the school by the time I left had about 100 people in it. So the fraternities were going down a little bit at that time. And since I wasn't in a fraternity and I wasn't obligated very much and I was very active in boy scouting, I actually got hooked up with Boy Scout Troop 53 in Fulton, and I got to know a lot of the townies, the kids in town that call us at Westminster cake eaters. Was the reason for that—I'm going to make a jump of an assumption here— was the reason for that nickname because many of the students there came from well-to-do families? Oh, yeah. No, no. At that time, Westminster for a semester cost $1,100. Now, that doesn't sound like a lot of money, but Mizzou was only about $480 a semester. And then you compare it to a cost of a Corvette, which is only $6,000, I think you begin to understand how much it costs to go there. And most of the kids when I went there were there for pre-law and pre-med. I have a BA in economics from there. But I spent—I'd go off and I'd study down at the Presbyterian Church on Court Street because it was quiet, and a bunch of us would gather down there and we'd go to Renner's Market and buy steaks and cook it on the gas stoves in there. And the church didn't mind because they didn't have anybody else messing with the building while we were there. And I just was more involved in the city's community and towns. I'd go to the Presbyterian Church because even though I was a Catholic, the Catholic Church was way out in the country then. I didn't have a way to get there. So my dog tags say, and even I claimed to be a Presbyterian while I was at school there. You mentioned there was an independent house at Westminster. Yes. If I understand correctly, and help me understand this, you were the vice president of Alpha Phi Omega. APO was a Boy Scout service fraternity. Oh, I see. I did that and there was a bunch of us at that time. And this is an interesting thing, and I mentioned it the other day when I was up on campus. At that time, the application to go to college, at least that one, was one sheet of paper on two sides. Question number 14 on the back side says this. Are you an Eagle Scout? Yes or no? It didn't say, were you in scouting? It says, are you an Eagle Scout? And I could say yes. I thought that was funny. But then if you think about it on the adult side or you get a little older in this, is what they really were asking, do you complete tasks that you start? Right. I was just proud to put yes on that. I bet you were. And we did stuff on there. We sold sandwiches to the fraternity houses. We did stuff that was service and then scout. I was the only one, to my knowledge, that actually went out and worked with the kids in the Fulton community. Nice. So another example, the way I'm understanding your story, Mike, is this is another example of you are finding your niche in the places that you end up and you're finding a way to self-identify in a place where maybe you don't quite jive with the rest of the population. Yeah. I never thought about that. But that plays out in what I know I'm going to pass later on here tonight. Yeah. So the Boy Scout and Eagle Scout thing is going to come back into play as well, as will several things in your life, Mike. Tell us about being commissioned from Westminster and that process. Well, at that time, since it was a land-grant college-type thing, we had to have the ROTC program there. It is still going there to this day. There's only about eight or ten kids, and they're with Lincoln University because there's not enough just on our campus. But during your freshman and sophomore year, it was required, Friday afternoon drills at 1 o'clock. Now, junior and senior year, if you wanted to be in ROTC, you signed up to be in the Army, and you were paid $50 a month. I was also paid $50 a month to clean up the ROTC office. So that $100 a month that I got actually paid more than what I needed for my living expenses at school. And my grandmother paid all of my college tuition because I helped her out down at the thing. So I didn't have to worry about college tuition. But, yes, I don't think there was as many cars there as you would see today or you would think possibly because it was a ritzier school. Sure. It's a walk around campus. It is still today. You could get by there without a car. So what was the ROTC detachment? Do you know what the detachment name was? No, I don't. I know we had two cadres that were there full time and an NCO and E6. And it was Major Binky and Captain Ramsey. And that was all at that campus at the time you were there? Yes, and they were both U.S. Army Rangers. And by the time I'd met them, they'd already had two tours in Vietnam as Army Rangers. So I'm glad you brought that up. That's a great transition, Mike. Give our audience an understanding of what was at play nationally at this point in time while you were at Westminster. Things were going on, obviously. There was little protests and everything else. It really didn't affect us at that school at that time. There was nothing going on. And, yeah, we watched television, and we could see the war being brought on, and I think most of us, including me, thought, well, it'll be over by the time I get out because it was considered a police action, which is probably a word I don't think any of us has said for many years. That's interesting. And I think because Fulton was a small town, it just didn't affect there anywhere. And, obviously, being out in the community and out at the school, I don't think it was ever. I didn't even think about it. The thing that's also interesting about my time, see, I went there in the school year 63-67, which means I was there when the year Kennedy was assassinated. Got it. And I remember ROTC drill that day and all that stuff. It wasn't until the other people were assassinated, like Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, I was already in Europe. And I knew about the hippies and that, but it was more when I was in the Army or leaving town. So since you mentioned it, I was sort of conflicted whether or not I wanted to bring it up. But since you have, I want to reference Reps Hudson, Lieutenant Reps Hudson. He was the individual I was referencing earlier. He had gone to Westminster originally and then transferred to Mizzou. And you've just stepped into why he transferred, actually. Well, a big reason why he transferred. He sort of involuntarily joined a fraternity, very similar to what you were saying. A lot of the folks were in fraternities and sororities, or fraternities, Greek life at that point in time at Westminster. He related to us a story of when JFK was shot in November of 63, and he could recall his fraternity brothers cheering at the announcement of Kennedy's assassination. So since we now know that you were there at that same time, not in Greek life, but on campus, do you remember anything about this population's reaction to JFK's assassination? I really can't at all. I just remember that day really vividly. In fact, again, you don't know this, but in my photo scrapbook, I have the actual bulletin that the school posted on Westminster Hall. The classes would only be half on Monday and blah, blah, blah. And I've still got the thumbtack marks. I mean, I've got the originals with the picture of the flag at half-mast of on that day and that page in my photo album. And since you were at that point in time a practicing Catholic, how did it affect you personally? I don't think I was that much. I just remember that I could tell that was something that really wasn't appropriate or something. It was a changing thing, like some of the current things that have happened recently. Sure. It felt like a national moment. Yes. No, no, I clearly saw it as a national moment because I even remember it was raining that morning, and we went to change into our fatigues. And because it was raining, we went up to the old gym, which is where Churchill made his Iron Curtain speech on the 6th of March in 46. And I remember walking with all those moist tennis shoes on the gym floor, the sneak it made, and when they came in and announced that the president had died, they dismissed the battalion and the companies were called to attention and then yelled dismiss. And I can remember no one was talking, but we all, as we made the about face this week on the floor, and everyone went back to their room and wherever they were going, it was dead silence. That I clearly, I'm not in doubt of that. What a strange moment. We all glued to the TV for two days. Let's go back to what you said earlier because I'm really interested in digging into what you can remember. You felt as though the Vietnam War, since it was a police action at that point in time, would not last long. So how did you feel when you get deployed to Vietnam? Well, first I've got to say something. When I went to Aberdeen Proving Grounds to become an ordinance officer, but maintenance-wise, not the bomb side, the ammo side, I spent six months at Aberdeen Proving Grounds. I was connected with the scouts there, too, through 426. And then I was sent for two years to live in West Germany in a concern there right outside, the old artillery concern right outside. Was it Cornwestheim? Yeah, it was in Cornwestheim. And I lived in a small town between Heilbronn and Cornwestheim called Erlichheim. And during those two years, I drove two brand-new Ford Mustang Fastbacks. And I was again connected with the scouts. So Vietnam was like, yeah, it'll be over for sure. And I wasn't married or anything, so I got connected with some locals who I still keep in touch with. And I did stuff for the Boy Scouts, but I was also connected with the French military dependents, several German scout troops, and American Boy Scout Troop 3 in Stuttgart. And we'd go on camping trips and doing things together. And I also participated in various community things like, you know, going to some of the wine places and that kind of thing. So I pretty much was living the life. Yeah, after 5 o'clock, I was German. And I learned German earlier in the early 60s. And when I was there in that part of Germany, they speak Swabish. That's the dialect. Well, that's the dialect I speak now. Swabish? Swabish. If you're German, you'd even laugh because that's hillbilly German. But it's correct. Yeah. Okay. So funny enough, and I know I'm hopping around a little bit here. So you're stationed with the 7th Corps in Kornwestheim, Germany. Like you said, just north of Stuttgart. You were there as an ordinance officer. By May of 68, you received notice that you were to deploy to Vietnam as part of the 515th Transportation Company. It was no. I was deployed to Vietnam, given orders to go to Vietnam in December 60. Wait, December 70. Okay. Is that right? No, December 69. December 69. I got it. Orders December 69 for an April 70 thing. Gotcha. And so funny enough, and I want to make sure we mention this, the same year in which you receive orders that you're to deploy to Vietnam, Westminster Campus, oddly enough, has its first of several student demonstrations of protest against the war. Correct. Would you give us a rundown? I know you were able to speak to a historian on campus recently. Yes, and I didn't get any specific detail. But I remember we looked in a book on what was going on because I knew I was going to get hit with this question. And in the fall of 69, the Vietnam protest started at the school. There was a group called Community for Peace, and they had a one-hour break of time or quiet time. One of those silence times. And it was held also in October. Chapters of the SDS were formed. Young Americans for Freedom were formed on April 15th of 70. Both William Woods College and Westminster College had 100 students made a protest. And weeks later, the protest during the invasion of Cambodia, the classes struck, they went on protest on May 11th of 1970. And they invaded the Science Center, and they were demanding that the faculties endorse the resolution condemning the action. And the faculty refused to do so. And that's the information that I got during that time. But I was not being informed at all about any of that stuff. That was something that was. Did you see a tide turn at any point that you were there at school from maybe support of some sort at any level or were this tide turned of demonstration? I'm going to say I really don't, guys. I mean, it was very basic still with the parties going on and a little bit of the drinking and the stuff. And I think everybody – I was there with my college deferment, and as long as I got good grades, I wasn't going to be messed with. And I don't think I was that politically aware. But I don't think a lot of us were because not everybody went into ROTC, and they still graduated, and no one grabbed them because we had that deferment. It was like an old warsome country club being old money. And even when I lived here in the 50s and 60s, that was a coat-and-tie place. And it still is. I mean, I go there occasionally with friends, but it's like that. It was not common man at all. Sure. I got you. And oddly enough, this will come up later in Mike's story, but Westminster has since those days of protests and demonstrations, they've had sort of their own reckoning with the Vietnam War, primarily because of the Westminster Seven in their memory. And we'll talk later about Mike's visit to Vietnam and his return to Vietnam through Westminster with some students as well. Okay, so let's go back to you finding out that you were to deploy to Vietnam, and this is something we've heard from other veterans. You didn't know until you arrived to Vietnam that you were going to be with the 515th. Is that correct? Correct. I was at a repo depot down in Da Nang for a full week, and it's the only time I went swimming in the South China Sea. And, yeah, I've got a picture of me with my Hawaiian flower, like Bermuda swimsuit, in the South China Sea. It was pretty cool. I thought this could be pretty good life. So I'm glad you just mentioned that because it gets me into your state of mind at that point. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds as if the reality still hasn't set in for you. Oh, no, the reality didn't set in for me. I figured it was pretty good, the good office club there and everything else. I mean, it was nice. Yeah. Tell us about when you first meet the 515th. Well, my very first part of my tour was I was sent up to Camp Eagle, home of the 101st Airborne, and I was in the 39th Transportation Battalion as an S1. So I was a paper pusher at the very first. And I had an air-conditioned office, worked 12 hours on and 12 hours off. I slept in a hooch that had a steel-framed bed, a regular mattress, a metal locker to put my clothes in. We had hooch maids that would do our laundry on two pieces of plywood that were down at ground level. That was their washboard. And I would turn in all my fatigues to them to be washed, and they'd be brought back to me in the room. I could go see movies at night, local bands from the Philippines and sometimes like in Okinawa or Japan. Very rarely you've got an American band, but it was usually somebody from the Pacific Rim. And, I mean, it was almost like stateside, and Camp Eagle was ginormous. And we had the responsibility of two bunkers on the outpost, and each of the bunkers had chain-link fence around them to keep the grenades from coming in. And there were no trees, no brush or anything, because everything all around our perimeters was nothing but clay, soil, and just nothing grew there. And it was— Was it by design? Well, I think— Or that was the terrain. That was the terrain. Gotcha. Okay. And that. Interesting. And I could go on Sundays. Since I had a connection with scouts, I took care of that before I left the States. And when I arrived in Vietnam, I had contacts in Hue talk to me, and on Sundays I'd go spend—not every Sunday, but when I could get away— go up and attend Boy Scout meetings in the citadel, downtown Hue City. And they're very organized. I remember the guy in charge was a pharmacist, and the two assistant leaders also had responsible jobs. The kids were all fully uniformed. It looked like you were downtown St. Louis Boy Scouting. They were playing games. They had this—everything is exactly like stateside. But I'm sure that was all the money parts of the thing, because when I would go out on the street to local markets and stuff, that wasn't supplies. Yeah. The interesting thing, and I did notice it when I came back to Vietnam, that if women had to urinate, they would just squat on the side of the road and pull their clothing apart, and it was— Almost third world. And it still is a little bit over there, but very third world. Yeah. Very third world. So for that first half of my tour, it was not very much. The only thing kind of funny there was it did happen on that. When I arrived at Vietnam, I went to my battalion commander, and I said, I can go to this Boy Scout Jamboree in Japan instead of R&R if I could manage that. And he said, you won't be able to do that because you won't be here long enough to even get an R&R. And he said, if you can figure out how to get out of here, I'm all for it. So I applied for administrative leave from a combat zone, which meant I would have had to pay for this, and I technically could only be gone 11 days. And everyone laughed when I applied for this because I had an invitation from my buddy in Okinawa that if I was in Japan for August of 70, I could go to this event maybe. So we put off the request, and the request came back, sixth endorsement approved by the Secretary of the Army. Fellow Eagle Scout, you think? I know. Maybe. No, no. I've got it in print at home. If anyone doubts it, I can bring it and show it to you. So I called my mother for the Boy Scout uniform. The American Scouts in Okinawa sent me the patches and a Korean tailor put my uniform together, and I did what the order said, report to Da Nang, to the airport. I was put on a plane. The plane landed at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa. I was the only person to get off. The rest of the guys were all returning to the States. I walked into the terminal. Boy Scout troops in full uniform waiting for Mike. I put on my Boy Scout uniform. We walked out to an awaiting C-130, all hopped in the plane, flew up to Yokota or Tachikawa Airport, I don't remember which, four days in Tokyo. We camped at the base of Mount Fujiyama, and during that week the Japanese treated us like kings. Oh, and my battalion commander said, I won't believe you're in Japan with the Boy Scouts unless I see your picture in a paper, and I achieved that twice, once in the Jamboree newspaper all by myself, and the second one was a full-color blowup in the middle of a Japanese newspaper. You can clearly see it's me and the Scout troops I was with with the American flags and stuff. And then we left the camp at an adult, and about three or four of the older boys and climbed Mount Fujiyama volcano, spent the night up there to watch the sun come up because that's where the Japs get their battle flag. Then we spent two days in Osaka at the World's Fair, flew back down to Saigon where I got onto a Chinook helicopter that had 101st airborne on the high fin, flew all the way up to Fubai, and he landed me right by my hooch. Literally, I walked maybe 100 feet from the helicopter. I was about four days late, and I still got to go to R&R in Hong Kong for Chinese New Year. So I've got three weeks of play out of Vietnam on this thing. So it's funny you mention this story because we've had another veteran on who, when he took his R&R, it was after he had already seen combat, and he had just about as opposite as you can get of an experience during his R&R. As Jason remembers, he couldn't enjoy any aspect of that week he had in Hawaii. He wanted to get back to his guys. And he wanted to get back into the fight, exactly. You have this experience, it sounds like early on during your deployment, and no combat had been experienced yet. Am I understanding that correctly? Yeah. In fact, as you just said that, my body just flushed. I felt that way years later, but as the story will progress, you'll find out that I'm glad I went to Hong Kong for the week I did. And that's where I bought my stereo system, but I had it all shipped home, listening to the Beatles as I walked into the music place. And the only reason I make that comparison, Mike, is there's no shame in what you did. It's just the comparison is so striking to me. You haven't, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like reality still hasn't set in that you're in a combat zone yet. And that all changes very quickly once you arrive at the 515th. A little back chain on this. When I arrived on the 515th as a CO on 1st December 1970, and I inherited two heroin addicts, a bunch of potheads and juicers, and Spec 4 Larry Simon was acting as a pimp and delivered a baby in my motor pool. During that time I gave out 13 Article 15s for the guys that were screwing up. In the first month. In the first month. And my life was threatened with a hand grenade over the field phone. I took that somewhat seriously because I was shaking some boats. And what was good on that that most managers that say I get that was all of a sudden the NCOs could look and say to the guys, you either do what I say or you know what the CO is going to do to you. Because I would take maximum money and rank if I could take it. I did not mess around. You backed them up. And I remember Christmas and New Year's there too. Christmas the guys were playing, they had some Vietnamese there, and I don't know how they were there because it was a closed post, but they were. And they were singing Christmas carols and playing guitars. And we were sharing some things that the people had sent us. And I remember I was sharing a bottle of wine from Germany that the guys that I lived with sent me. And some salami and stuff that the parents had sent home and cookies with some of the officers and just the guys. The New Year's thing was a bit of humor. There wasn't an officer club there, but there was an NCO club up at Triple Six. And I go in there and the guys are already drinking. And they wanted me to come and sit up with them. And we had a beer and everything. And all of a sudden Major Bean, Billy Bean was our major. He looked like Porky Pig. Wait a minute. I forget what I used to say. He looked like Porky Pig and talked like so-and-so. But anyway, he was kind of goofy. He came in and bought us a whole bunch of beer. And it was beer that was brewed in Carlin, Black Label. It was brewed over here in Belleville. Oh, wow. And they're all in steel cans. And in a club you have to open them. But he bought everybody around a beer. Now this play is laid on here. This guy sitting next to me definitely was from the Mafia in New Jersey. And he had a hole in his T-shirt. And I reached over and I took and made the hole bigger. And everybody goes, ooh. Well, and then part of that time, when it became New Year's, we all did bong, bong, bong, bong that. And then the guy sitting to my right said, everybody wants to hear something from you. I said, they don't give a shit. Yeah, yeah. So I get up and say something. And with that, I feel one of these cold Carlin beers being poured on my head. Oh, man. It was silence. Oh, it gets better. I looked at him, picked up the Carlin by me. He didn't move. And I poured a beer over his head. That started a food fight in the entire place. And that's all what the guys did was spread beer everywhere. And then Sergeant Warren, the NCO, NCO, came in. And he was in a clean uniform. And I go, look, there's Sergeant Ward. And with that, all the bottles of ketchup and everything went right to Ward. Wow. And then Jonathan Benedict, who's a West Point grad, was the first lieutenant. And he was officer on that night duty. He came in after we well trashed the places at Cap'n Lavin. I think you guys are going to have to go home. And I said, okay, and we all left. But that was New Year's Eve. For our audience, and also just for my own edification here, Mike, help us understand the importance and the significance of the 515th Transportation Company and its role in LOMSUN 719. All right. The battalion had different trucking units that served different purposes. The 666 had deuce and a halves, took men to the fire bases of the 101st. The 515th had five-ton flatbeds, and they took ammunition and foodstuffs to the fire bases. I had 67 five-ton truck drivers. Wow. We changed, in a regular day, 20 tires a day on the trucks. And we had a papasan that worked with us in our water pool. So it wasn't one guy, but we didn't have any machines. This was all manually with split rings and everything else. So I went on that R&R in January, and I came back to the company, and they were gone. And I found out that they were moved up to a quang tree, and they were in the process of moving out to a fire base along QL9, just west of what's called the Rock Pile. It's a fire base called Vandergriff. It was a Marine fire base in 1968. I moved my butt up there, and my first sergeant stayed in quang tree, and little old Mike went out to live with the guys in a hole. And we built our own bunker, and we had all the big logs and stuff was pre-done, and we had to fill all the sandbags, set up our tent on the outside, and all this kind of stuff. Our job would be to run cargo up to the Quezon plain for use in Laos on an 18-mile, one-way curving dirt road with about a dozen bridges that were about 20 feet long, and the concrete on the bridge was just as wide as a truck. It was only westbound in the morning, eastbound in the afternoon. The first time we went up there, it took us about two-and-a-half days to get up there and back. And we didn't expect this, and we had to find stuff along the road to eat and to sustain ourselves until we got up there and got our cargo offloaded. This was an 18-mile stretch? Yes, and very curvy. Two days for 18 miles, incredible. Two days, and then to get back because it was all that beginning stuff. It later on happened that we could do it in a day safely. I found myself useless in doing this. I only had one gun truck. It was called the Babysitter, a modified five-ton truck with plate steel with mattresses we put down in the middle to absorb some of the bullets. Sure. Half-inch steel plate on the outsides. I went to the junkyard, and I obtained an M113 armored personnel carrier. I went to the armored calve guys that were in Quang Tri, and I got some road wheels, some new road wheels, and they gave me a pair of track jacks so I could drop my tracks, put on the road wheels. We also had a salvage yard out at Vandergrift that was there from 1968 where we would salvage some parts that we needed. I was gone four days, and I ended up uparmoring this thing with two M60 machine guns on the back, held on with sandbags, a Maudeuse on the turret ring, and I would fuel and drive this thing myself. Not all the time, but I nonetheless got the thing to the field, and I would drive it with the convoy into Khe Sanh and back home by myself. We have a picture of that actually. Oh, yeah. There's a lot of pictures. Yeah. But you were tactically acquiring a lot of this equipment, let's say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were not real nice guys out in there. Really, and I didn't learn this until I kind of felt it, but the core historian in later years when he wrote that book about LOMSOM 719 said to me, you guys were totally abandoned for the time you were from that fire base to Khe Sanh because there was just no one to protect us, and we couldn't go or do anything other than that little dog bone drive. And what did I want to say? If you would, I want to jump in here because whenever we can educate our audience and bring history into context, Chase and I want to do that. If I understand correctly, now you're going to be the expert in this, not me. If I understand correctly, Operation LOMSOM 719 was an operation that became necessary because the Ho Chi Minh Trail had become such a stalwart for the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. They were essentially allowed to freely go up and down the Ho Chi Minh Trail and there wasn't much stopping them. So Operation LOMSOM 719 was an attempt to break up the Ho Chi Minh Trail and break up that supply chain. Yes, it was. And it actually sounded good, but it turned out to be pretty much of a failure. And that's how, again, when we were functioning by ourselves, that's how we picked up an Arvin Jeep. We found an Arvin Jeep with a bullet hole and a radiator and figured those guys abandoned their guys. We stole a five-ton truck, we stole power washers, and we'd steal anything from you if you weren't watching your stuff. We would steal it from you with no questions asked. And the behavior of us got very similar to that movie The Lord of Flies. Sure, every man for himself. Yes, but we watched each other's back because we couldn't abandon us. Sure. The closeness of the guys was crazy, and we had no racial problems. I don't care if you were a Latino or you were a black guy. It had no matter. I watched your back and you watched mine, and if you have to hug or kiss me, that's what you're going to do to survive. It sounds goofy, but when you're in those, there's no such thing as fair. Our mission was accomplished 100%. Because I had one vehicle that I didn't account for that ran back and bought us repair parts for our trucks and brought the alcohol and the soda to the guys, and it fed the field mess there, ice. And we had a deal with the field mess. If we bring you, I'm making this up, but you get my point, 200 pounds of ice, 100 pounds of it is ours. That's right. Otherwise, there's just no deal. That's the bargain. That's the bargain. Because we were risking us getting in trouble on the ice, and we had a refrigerator buried in the ground that wasn't on electric because we can't make the noise, so we put our beer and soda in there and threw the ice on top of the refrigerator. All right. So you mentioned, I'm glad you've gotten into this, you mentioned how tight-knit of a group that you had with your company, with your men, but there were occasions for mutinies too strong of a word. Tell us about the time you had to hog-tie a soldier. Well, that was a time. We had went down to our company area to retrieve stuff, and this is really interesting. And we got what we needed, and I was sitting in the shotgun of the truck, and I had the driver, and you have that little canvas flap, and we had a hot grenade sitting on our thing. And we had just come up from Fubai. We were crossing the Hui Bridge, which was shared with trucks and a train, and we were just on the other side of this bridge, and this dude kept trying to grab through that canvas window over to the dash, and I said, that ain't going to happen. So I stopped the truck, and there was probably five people altogether on that truck, and I said, I want everybody to get off the truck. I'm about to give you what's probably in illegal order, but I want you to follow it because of our safety, because everyone understands. And then I did, the guys on the radio can't see this. I said, hog-tie this guy, and I pointed to this one kid, and we hog-tied him with our belts because that's all we had. Oh, my goodness. And threw him in the back of the truck. He was high on dope, and as we were going through Hui, he was taking a .45 and dry cocking it, and I thought we'd get shot. And that's what caused that and grabbing the grenade. I wanted to get him to the MPs up in the quang tree, and no one wanted him. Then we went to the mess hall to eat, and I said, are you okay now? You can come in and eat with us. But he made another fatal mistake. As we were leaving the mess hall, he started to fight with me, and it was being witnessed by like two or three bull colonels. He got in trouble, and my colonel wanted to give the guy a general courts martial, and when the paperwork came out to me, I remember tearing it up. I don't know whatever happened to him. You know what I'm saying. It never happened. We weren't keeping any paper records out in the middle of nowhere. I mean, no logs on the trucks, nothing, nothing. If you would, because both Jason and I find this really interesting. We haven't had a guest as of yet who saw this side of the Vietnam War and what I would assume. I know in a previous interview, Mike, you had said you were not positive if a lot of the soldiers in your company were drafted. I would think the assumption is probably a lot of them were, especially a soldier like that. Help us understand, where are these soldiers getting these illicit drugs? How does that happen? You could buy the drugs on the street, and a little capsule of heroin would only cost about three bucks. In other words, the size of a number two lead pencil, the metal part that holds the eraser, three bucks. Pot, I don't even remember what pot was. It was ridiculously cheap. I have never in my life smoked pot. I can definitely smell it. The guys acted up out in the bush with the drugs. Usually the guys would say to me, Lavin, we're having trouble with Joe. Will you take care of him because we don't trust him online tonight? Because when we were out at that fire base, our guys were on the line. Oh, wow. We're ordinance people and truck drivers. We're not infantry. You didn't want someone that was high or loaded. You did the same way with the alcohol. I would deal with it. It would be a little bit of either me or a little bit of kangaroo court type of thing. We were ambushed more than once, but one time, and one of the B-40 rockets hit this one guy's truck and ricocheted up, but it didn't explode. He felt this or what was going on, so he gets out of his truck, throws his M-16 against the tandem, walks around the truck, gets back in the truck, then rolls over his 16. We took care of him, too. He also was claiming that he couldn't hear real well, and the guys would test him, and we didn't trust him. He literally, one time, he just literally disappeared. I really don't know what happened to the dude, and I never reported to Matson because there's no morning report going in. Who gives a shit? I mean, everything was real casual. Guys could carry any weapons they wanted or anything, and I have pictures of where guys got shot in the windshield or later on when they were needing help for medical purposes. I have the picture of the truck, and I have the original mimeograph of my roster with everyone's Social Security and the names, and all I have to do is show that to the VA, and all of a sudden they're 100% of whatever it was. I've helped four guys like that. So I'm just saying a combination of the photographs and stuff that I took and this kind of stuff, we were able to, I'd say cover our ass might be the phrase. What we were doing was a little shady all the way around. This is really funny to me, Mike. A lot of the things you've told us have been really fascinating. You know, there's a common adage, I can't remember exactly, but it's something like, has the manners or the characteristics of a Boy Scout, you know, as clean as a Boy Scout. And we have an example here in front of us in Captain Levin here, a man who was a, I think devout might be the right word, a devout Boy Scout turned Eagle Scout, in charge of a company that has about the most opposite of a Boy Scout as you can find. These guys are just kind of running wild, doing whatever they want. How did you configure that as an officer when you arrived there? Did you sort of have to just make sort of a balance of, I'm going to be as best an officer I can in the situation that I'm in? To be honest with you, I just wanted to go home and I didn't care about it. All I wanted to do was get us home alive. And as far as that Boy Scout, yeah, trustworthy, loyal, helpful. Yeah. Yeah, I know all that. I think a lot of that goes out the window. A lot of it goes out of the window, and I could get way off base here. I know in some other wars where an E-4 ended up in saving the life of his lieutenant, and he was the driver of the Humvee, and he acted like me in many cases. I think where we were a lot of times, we didn't wear our shirts. Sure. The picture I've got, I think you've seen it. Superman. Well, not that one. That's another one. But I'm sitting at the wheels of my 16 right next to a PV-2, last man on my roster, Richard Hanesik, and I'm the O-3, the number one guy. And we're like crazy hair. Yeah. We were shaving, but no shirt and pants that were glued onto us, sitting in the filth together. How long were those guys there before you came to be their leader? Were they battle-tested already? Were they worn out and tired? No, no, no. Everything during the Vietnam era, they'd bring you in, they'd take you in and bring you in as a replacement. And that's why, like I was there during my little window, and every week I probably had three or four guys, five guys rotate out of the unit, and the next week I'd get four or five guys in, and you'd have to train them and everything. And that was after Vietnam, the government stopped that because of what happened in the 9th Infantry Division, which I won't get way off the thing, but they were recruited together, drafted together on a train to San Diego, a boat to Vietnam, and then within two years 80% of them were decimated in the Mekong because they never trusted the guys in the back. And you see, when we were, we acted more stateside crazy, Chicago, south side, west side gang, when we were in civilian back at Camp Eagle. When we were out in the bush, it was more like Lord of Flies. And it was like less graded, but we really were tight with each other. I got you. And I'm going to add one thing there that might get skipped. I had a reunion with my guys that I put together in 2013, and I was gathering the data. I got hold of my jeep driver, and he was talking. He and I hadn't talked since war. At the very end of our conversation, he said to me, I love you. And I think you get that if you haven't talked to somebody in 42 years, and two guys, you say that too. You really get that we're close. Yeah. Well, you're trusting each other with your life and your health. And we're not infantry. I mean, the bond, a bunch of truck drivers and people, we were not accustomed to that. Now, how often were you guys engaged, if at all? They'd be engaged only when they were in convoy. And back at the fire base Vandergrift, not every day but often at about 4.30 and 5 o'clock we'd get some B-40 rockets fly over. I was only rocketed one time when I was driving the 113, and we were trapped. I couldn't get out of that little gathering place, and I could hear those things sizzle over me. And the further away the sizzle and the boom came, you knew you were okay. It's when that sizzle was real short and you heard a boom. You sweated it. And I just remember that scared the hell out of me because on an M113, it'll burn and melt like a Christmas candle. It's made out of a 5038 aluminum-magnesium alloy, and it just burns and melts, and your body just gets fused with the stuff. There's no at 1,038 degrees. Was it small arms at all, or was it major? Small arms and stuff. Usually we get hit with small arms, like I said, a bunch of truck drivers. 1D2D and stuff like that? Yeah, yeah. And what they want to do is block you from going anywhere, ruin one of your trucks. And that road, there's no sideways to it. So that was scary. It wasn't every day all the time, and the rockets weren't every day all the time. It's just you couldn't do shit about it to get out of the way. There's no turning around. There's no turning around. There's no turn around. There's no ramps going down that you could pull off. No, no, no. You were sitting noises, and I got little stories. We could go off. I don't want to. Jason's question actually leads me to something I wanted to mention. It ties in pretty well to asking about different types of attacks you guys received. I've heard you say that the winter of 1970 was the most challenging for your unit. Why? That was just because of where we were during that winter. That's the winter months over there. And when we were back in our regular place, everything was almost like stateside truck delivery. If the guys didn't get home, they'd stay up at the fire base, but they'd have to go out on the line with the guys. The guys said, no, no, no, you're not sleeping here. You're coming out with us. So some of my guys had minor infantry experience. I just think it was just in combat when it was really, because I had no idea. We had two or three guys staying back at Camp Eagle. My first sergeant and, like, one guy were at Quantry. We didn't even call them up or talk to them. I had no idea what was going on. Not typically how it's supposed to work. And when we were out at the fire base, now occasionally if I'd go to Quantry someplace, I could take a shower, but I don't even know where I put my clothes, who did our laundry, how I washed it. I remember swimming twice in the river. And even eating while we had a field mess, I wasn't always there. So we'd eat our C-rations. But everything was totally irregular, and I honestly don't remember those things despite pictures I've taken. I have no clue how some of that was done, no clue. So funny enough to bring in the dichotomy of your experience with the 515th, I'd love for you to relate the story about picking up Bob Hope. Well, we just waited for him at the Phu Bai Airport. And while we were waiting for him, an Air Vietnam plane came in and off walked Nguyen Cao Khi, who was then the vice president of Vietnam. And we saw him get into his helicopter. I got a good close picture of him. And when Hope's stuff came in, we picked up all his equipment. And he was with our convoy going back into Camp Eagle. And we got front row seats. And I talked with Hope and a bunch of the people afterwards, pictures and stuff. It was pretty anticlimactic. I mean, there wasn't just closeness. And you never thought you'd even get to see him yet. He was with you when you pick him up, and you took his stuff. We had another guest on who also got to witness a Bob Hope USO show. I was surprised to hear this. Maybe I shouldn't have, and I don't know. But his recollection of the show was that Bob Hope was just basically propped up on stage. It was mostly girls, sort of just a dancing show, and Bob Hope was just there. Well, he did his usual funny stuff. I mean, we grew up with Bob Hope in the 50s. And I think everybody knew who he was. It was very genius. It was Lola Folana and Miss Universe and that. I agree that it might be called that. But he had good skits and stuff. The guys liked him. So he did a little bit of a comedy show. Yeah. I can't say it was. Probably depended on what show you went to, too. Yeah. He, at the end of the tour, he was probably tired. Bring out the girls. Yeah, no, I think he did a lot. I'm being serious. Yeah. He's definitely known for that. Well, it was much better than having the Filipino bands come and try to sing Beatles music. Oh, man. I mean, some of it was pretty rough. It sounds pretty rough. Filipino Beatles tribute band. It sounds to me like there's just so many different angles for this war, depending on where you were, what you were assigned to, what you got to participate in. And I mean, the stuff that we see on TV or in movies portrayed, you hardly ever get stuff portrayed like this. You know what I mean? So maybe little bits of it. But I guess one of my questions is on this. Do you have any feedback of why you were assigned to this? Was it just random? Yeah, I didn't do anything special. I'm not like they do SEAL teams or anything like that. I think my whole experience in the military, and you can say that on life, is just some of this gets pretty just roll of the dice and you go. Because when I left Vietnam, I didn't want anything to do with the United States. I wanted to just leave and go back to Germany. And I did, and I went to Finland, up to the town of Liexe. That's where they filmed Dr. Zhivago. Spent three weeks in Liexe and came back home. Worked with a bunch of guys from Sarajevo, Yugoslavia for a year building homes. I remember one of the times they were building a nine-family house. I would go up to the Catholic church and say a couple prayers. But I never went up to that Catholic church during the Sunday Mass, even though I had a car and everything. And if I'd have met a German girl, I probably wouldn't have been here. None of this life happens. And I think all of us have made 50 things like that in our life. We just did this or this. You just can't. Let's close out your Vietnam stage before we move into your post-military career. We've talked about Tim O'Brien and his book, The Things They Carried. And this is a book that I've referenced before as well because it's a great read. There's a quote that I want to get your thoughts on. In many cases, a true war story cannot be believed. Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn't because the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness. What are your thoughts on that? Yes, I've said that many times when I've talked to high school kids, if we're doing something from the book. Well, just crazy stuff that we would do that we haven't even talked about is that I would wear a Superman T-shirt under my fatigue sometimes in combat. And I didn't do it blatantly, but I would do it sometimes. And like the party that I said about the New Year's thing. Sure. That's crazy. I would tie in that guy. It's crazy. Identifying a Spec 4 Smith is crazy. You've been nagging me on that one. On R&R, I met a Marine friend. He worked at the mail, M-A-I-L facility. You have to be careful nowadays with that. Mail facility in Da Nang. And I went down to see him because we were going over to the Navy Seabees place to pick up some stuff. We had stuff to trade. So I told my Jeep driver, let me out here and you can go do something. And when I walked in there, he said, oh, Lavin, you can't be here with that Army uniform. Here, take my other, he's out of town or whatever he's on, and put his uniform on. And it had Smith on the name. And I've got a picture of me dressed up before enlisted Marine in a frog uniform and everything. My hair was longer than theirs. They said, and I don't remember what the guys told me to say. They said if you're from this unit, blah, blah, blah, blah, no one will ask you anything. Because they were from M-A-I-L. See, they knew how I should speak this thing. And I had the audacity to go to eat mess with this guy. So any time I saw an officer, I just saluted. Afternoon, sir, and everything else. And I don't think anyone knew any different. And as soon as my Jeep driver came back, I switched into my clothes and drove home with our goodies. That's awesome. It's just little things like that. And other guys did other things like that. You had to connect. The bigger question I have, I hope you'll indulge me, Mike. The bigger question I have about that Tim O'Brien quote from his book relates actually to your post-military career and getting out and back into civilian life. What difficulties have you had as a Vietnam War veteran relating with American people who just don't have the faintest idea of what it was like there? That's got a couple. I know where you're going on this. When I came back to the States after a year of over in Germany, I didn't do anything that had anything to do with the military because I don't think people understood what the deal was. And I have been diagnosed with PTSD. And I definitely have it, but not to the max. And it wasn't until the mid-'90s that I would watch a war movie. And I watched the movie Platoon. And I could see, well, Oliver Stone has some points. I see the drug thing. I see the girl thing. I see some of the little things that I've lost thought of. And then one time I got the rented video of Born on the Fourth of July. I watched it very early on the New Year's Day because I knew it was violent. And I watched it three times in that day. And I violently sobbed all three times. It got less. But after I watched it one time, I jammed it in for another time. And later that day I jammed it in another time and it took the damn video back. What did I do? When they were playing guns in a creek bed going bang, bang, you're dead, I used to do that with Jimmy Willingham in the creek down by the Mid-County YMCA here in St. Louis. And we used his father's, they were really SS helmets and clothing that his dad had brought home. He had like multiple helmets and stuff. And we were playing with Real World War II stuff down in that creek. And then when I saw in a parade there was a man wearing a brown flannel shirt and a wheelchair and he was flitching at the firecrackers. And the music changes from the bang, bang of the Fourth of July and his eyes focused in on that. I really lost it. I called up my buddy John Benedict, the guy I met in Vietnam, visited in Mineola, New York at that time. And I go, John, did you see that movie? And he said, yeah, I did. I said, I started crying really bad at that one point in the movie where that guy was in the flannel shirt. And he said, well, so did I. And we talked and discussed that. And I didn't do much for a few years after that is when I thought, I need to look up my guys. You see, when I became company commander, I took the top sheet of my roster. And that mimeographed picture of my gun truck kind of doing a thing like a lion or something, getting ready to pounce. Ken Persons used to draw for Hot Rod magazine. And it's a really good print. And I turned it over and put it in my IBM Selectmatic typewriter and I typed a letter to my parents. And I folded up and kept the roster and brought it home. So I wondered, how in the hell am I going to find everybody's name, where they are? But I had everyone social. And through a friend that lived down the street who did sneaky Pete stuff, working for the Treasury Department in the military, he said, Mike, give me the names. And he found about 80% of my guys. And the rest of the data, other than the phone number and that, he struck out all the original stuff from him. And then my brother, who's in a business that can access that but for a fee, found me the rest of them. So then in 2012, I wrote a letter to all. I found that the 155 guys that I had in the company on that date, that 50 of them were dead. And I know why. When I saw who it was, it was druggies and some – there was good guys, but there was some druggies, which means they all died less than 60 years older than the 50th. Yeah. And I invited every one of them to my house in June of 2013. And of the 70 that responded, I would call them up when the letter came back, would you like a reunion and all that stuff. And my jeep driver and my favorite pothead would answer it on the same day. And I found out a lot of them didn't have emails, but they used their wife's emails. At least four or five of them cried openly with me on the phone. And like I said earlier, my jeep driver at the end of his thing said, I love you. And it just set me back horribly. And when they all showed up, 38 of them showed up, that's when the Army showed up too. And that's how other things progressed. I did not start talking to kids in school until probably early 00s. I did a huge display twice for St. Mary's High School in the city, but that's where my kids went to school. And, of course, I knew some super people there, even German vets that I invited. One of them was a survivor of the battleship Bismarck sinking. Oh, my gosh. I had him flown in from Chicago. I mean, you get my point. This thing with Germany, it's crazy who I've hudged with because I know. Tell us about the Westminster 7 while we're on this topic of remembering and reckoning with these things. First of all, I get positive or I get feedback or rather than taking meds and stuff for the PTSD by writing and talking. And in the fall of 2018, I get an alumni magazine from the school, and those son of a guns went to Vietnam as a class. And every place they went, I went. So I wrote a letter to Dr. Bolton, head of the Social Studies Department. A page and a half took me three days to write, but it was one of those letters you write, as you cross the high band pass, did you see me at the top? I was over on the east side there parked in the shade. Did you see me? And then I said, when you were up by Firebase Boundary along 209, just west of the rock pile, did you see me there? Did you stop to buy a cold beer or soda from me? Don't ask me about the ice. It was one of those letters. He wrote me back and said, we'll go in 20 or 21, but then COVID came, but the school finally went last year, in two weeks in May. And during the second semester, I would attend school up there with the kids that were taking the class. And it was always about the Westminster Seven, the seven guys during the Vietnam War that lost their life that were ROTCs for Westminster. I knew two of them. One of them was Ross Livermore from Germantown, Tennessee. I did everything that the kids did. I did all the stuff on Canvas. I read the material. I spoke up in class. It was all about the whole French colonization, the whole history of Vietnam from like 1,000 years of stuff. It wasn't just the Vietnam War. And the only thing I didn't do was take tests or write any papers. I'd lived it. I got very close to the kids that were going. And when we went, we went to exact GPS locations of the seven Westminster kids that were killed. And what's funny, the one I knew, Ross, the school did not have the exact location. And there's a whole story of me finding that. I won't bother you with that, but I was able to find it. And so we got on a boat because there was no bridge to the island, got on golf carts, went to the exact GPS location. And I'll admit, when the kid by the name of Cooper Thompson read about Ross, and I read something, I emotionally just lost it because I was at the exact place. And every place we visited was exact. And I think the kids understood it because what a vet is going to talk to you about is stories like I'm doing. But what we didn't talk about, and I can't explain, are the smells and touch. See, we did a bit on the touch. But if I wanted to find somebody that wanted to steal valor, I could start talking about smells. And you'll know. And I'll lose you in a heartbeat. I'll lose you in a heartbeat. Give us an example of what that conversation sounded like. Well, when we were over there, as far as smells, I would always smell wood fires. I could tell you what my M113 smelled like, warm aluminum. And on the touch around my hatch, I could tell you the layers I had. I could feel the welds. And when they were building the thing, there were little marks on the things that looked like tic-tac-toe boards. They were round. It's where the clamps and things would move the aluminum. I had those located. I remember the foot pedal. It's got two sides on it to keep your shoe on it. It's got sort of a sculpture-cut hole down there. And there's holes in it so that it takes a little less weight. Because an M113 weighs 12 1⁄2 tons. And I could tell you how my sticks were in that thing. I could describe the off-white color on the walls. I could tell you where my shelves were. It was essentially your home for those months. Because I lived in that thing enough to touch it. The word that comes to my mind, essentially the only word that I can think of that is describing it to me is intimacy. Intimacy with your surroundings. To a man, the sense of smell, the touch, the surroundings, everything that's going on. Am I right about that, Mike? Yeah, no, you're doing it. If you don't have an answer, you can say what it is, but you can't talk specific. I can't tell you how many nuts are on the road wheels or why you'd exchange them. Do you know what a track jack is? They're a set of one-left-and-right drive screw things that you fix with a wrench that pull the track together enough for you to remove the pin so that you can drop a track and then drive off of it to change the wheel or whatever. So I could use terms that are peculiar to that vehicle. I want to go back, if I can, just a little bit back here. When you talk about these reunions or finding your guys, I think a theme that I hear quite often in these conversations, it's thematic, you know what I mean? So I try to ponder to myself and think, okay, so without being in that experience myself, I've never been in anything like that, you get these guys that 50, 60 years later can recall these things and can put themselves right back there, do these experiences where, you know, like you mentioned, Mike, in the same part of a movie it's the same experience or similar experience that you're having of emotion. And so if you can, Mike, and you may not be able to, so we won't hold you to it and I won't hold you to it, what do you think that thing is that brings veterans so uniquely that have experienced these things back together to a place where they're right back there or they can be with each other like they were at the time? Well, easy to answer. How many people have maybe you heard or talked to? I hear it since I do kids and stuff. Grandpa never talks about it. One of the guys that was in the 196 that I went to school with was out of Herman, Missouri, or Washington, Missouri, and his name was Craig Duncan, and he died in 2014. But before he died, he and his son, Craig Jr., came to my house, and Craig and I were talking. And I turned to his son and I said, Craig, have you ever heard any of these stories? And he whispered back to me, no, I have not. And I looked at Craig and I said, Craig, you need to share these experiences. And I think the reason most people don't is because it starts bringing back too much, and the people like my wife, they don't understand it because it's a true shared experience. And unless you feel the experience, you don't understand it. Now, PTSD doesn't have to be military. It could be somebody, if you witness somebody shooting somebody, I guarantee you the person that witnessed it will remember. I have a member, I'm not going to mention his name. I know he suffers PTSD. I've tried to get him to come talk with me, but he had to shoot a child in Iraq for asking his dad. He said that. All he said to me one time was, Mike, I had to kill a child. And he shuts up. Now, I know he only told me that because he knows what I did. Would he tell you to? Why would I tell you? Is he going to tell you no? Right. And you've got to get that out of you. That's why I used to write a lot. That's why even when I do stuff at the school, I've got outlines. The school knows what I'm going to say or do. And if you're talking to, like, ninth and tenth grader kids, it's like talking to a ballpoint pen or a bottle. You get junior and senior, you can get intellectual stuff, like where we're going right now. And that's why I draw them right into me being a kid and share the things that I share with them that I was in high school with, my draft card and my notice and my grade cards. You get on their level a little bit. I get on their level, and then I bring them to me 25, and it's an easy draw. Easy-peasy draw. Yeah. And my wife, she'd go, why do you always talk about Vietnam? Or why are you always going to these things? And I just simply look at her and say, she says, stop living in the past. And I said, you will never understand. And she doesn't understand why I even go into the prisons. No one in my family understands why I go into the prison. So I'm glad you mentioned that. There's two really quick things I want to say, and then I want to get into my final question and a really poignant and impactful story that Mike has for us, which will be really special. But taking your transition there, Mike works with the Cairo's Prison Ministry International. He works through the Bonne Terre Prison in Missouri and the Chester, Illinois Prison, and was just there, I think, just a few weeks ago, in fact. Yeah, both places I've been within the last eight, nine days. So just very quickly, Mike, tell us a little bit about the impact that has on you. It's interesting because I acted like a gang leader in Vietnam. I can associate with the guys over in Menard and Chester. We have certain talks we make, and we follow an outline, but we inject our story into that outlet, supports that framework that we do the talk. And I've gotten some very interesting conversations just on that topic. And because of the suicide situation, I have found that a lot of these guys have attempted suicide. So all of a sudden I'm a shit guy for suicide. I mean, I don't know why. I seem to collect it like flies. And Bonne Terre has happened. Sometimes the placements, in that case, out of 42 guys, two guys talk to me after we introduce, I get introduced to them, and because of where one lives, I talk to him first. All of a sudden those two guys are placed at my table, and I don't do the placement. It's somebody else that doesn't even know me or the guys. So I'm thinking, why me? Why me on this stuff? And often we in the prison ministry, I think all the guys will say this, you think you're getting something out of it because you're giving. No. They'll argue with you that they're getting it out because you're giving. Because in the prison we can only talk to them in the prison, and we can have no connection with them on the outside. So it gets – I mean, I could go in there and say, I've robbed 10 banks and I got away with it. I didn't, but you hear what I'm saying, and I ain't worried about it. So both parties can be very honest. And vulnerable. Yes, very open. Good point, yeah. Some of them in there, I don't have time to tell you here, but even on – you wouldn't believe some of the shit I've heard. I'm sure. And it's been honest stuff, and both of us work out on it. And that's the whole purpose. The general purpose of the Kairos ministry is forgiveness of yourself and others. That's the end target when you're in there for four long days being extracted at night. But that's the ribbon that those talks are done on. I want to commend you for your service through Kairos. It's really a fantastic thing that you and your fellow volunteers do, Mike. The other thing I wanted to say, just collectively, I'll say this. If you're interested in hearing more about the 515th and other transportation companies, there's a fantastic book that Mike has shared with us, Alonson 719, The Cargo Must Get Through. That's by Richard E. Kilbane. And coupled with that, I want to say if you're enjoying this conversation with Mike just as much as Jason and I are, Mike, as he mentioned earlier, he's a prolific writer. He's also been interviewed multiple times. Give us a quick synopsis of where we can find other stories about your service, Mike. St. Louis Post-Dispatch. There's a couple blogs out of Columbia, Missouri. I'd have to let you know or you'd have to say. And the Kirkwood Webster Times. Exactly two years ago this had a whole front page article on me. And it's crazy. If you just Google Michael Lavin, Vietnam combat veteran, 515th, you know, a few vague things. I do no social media, but you'll see videos of me being interviewed and enough comes up. Yes, I'm glad you mentioned that, Mike. There's specifically, I don't know if it's a podcast exactly, what this gentleman does. It's like a radio show. Someone that you know, I think, I can't remember the title of the show, but you were on his show I think maybe two years ago or so. Do you remember? Well, it's, what is it, in Columbia. He's a gentleman that has known you. Tim, I'm trying to blank. I wish I had written down the title of his show. But he is one that you've done a two-part series of you with. Thank you for giving us a synopsis of where else we can find information on your service, Mike. This is my last question. And this is something I've been really excited for our audience to hear from you, Mike. Right now you're wearing dog tags around your neck. And they play a very significant role in your life. Yes. Tell us about that. My dog tags are the most valuable material thing that I own, and you just don't screw with my dog tags, period. I used to hire college kids to work for me in the summertime, and I'd pay them cash. And one of these kids happened to be the son of a lady who babysat my oldest kid when we were little because his grandparents just lived down the street from me. And it was between the summer between his junior and senior year at the University of Missouri at Rolla S&T. And I read body language, and I knew something was crazy. And I said, when you come home at Christmas, let's get together. So we did that, and on the night of January 16th of 2017, he was getting ready to go back to Rolla. He and I met back in my hobby space. And we had some conversations, and I looked at him and I said, Nathan, if you ever need to talk to me about anything, scream the word peanut butter, and I will come to your aid. I said, would you do that? And he said, yes, I will. I said, it works two ways. If I scream peanut butter to you, would you come to mine? And he said, I would. Now, Nathan is a touch person. He'd either shake your hand, touch your shoulder, or if my wife, he'd come up and say, how are you doing, Joyce, and kind of give her a pat on the back or something. I'm not. My idea of an intimate hug is placing both of my elbows right at my rib cage and flapping my forearms out like they're little seal flaps. You guys aren't the first to laugh. I get razzed about it from the church groups, everybody. I'm not that much now, but usually people ask me, oh, can I give you a hug? And I go, oh, okay. But it comes from combat. You don't want to get close to people, because I lost a guy over there, and I felt like I should have been there, and you know I couldn't have been there. So I'm leaving the garage. This kid's getting ready to drive back to Rolla for his first day last semester, senior year. I'm trying to figure out how in the hell am I going to not get a hug. I walk right out of my garage. I think I'll walk around the truck a little bit. If he goes this way, he'll be closer to his car. I'll get in and get one of those little quickies before he goes. All of a sudden he taps me on the back, and I turn around, and he gives me his big-ass hug. And three words come out of my mouth, I love you. And I go, what the, did you just say to this 22-year-old, nice-looking, six-foot-plus tall guy? And I thought, crap. We get to the car, and we get a quick hug, and he's off, and I'm thinking, what have I done? So for almost two months I didn't know, and during that time I thought, what can I do? And I thought I'd mail him a mailbox from one of our customers that everybody knew that worked for me. And he painted it, and I replaced it at the end. I was going to fill it with junk food and send it down to school, because he knew the customer and knew the story of this particular customer. And he could certainly use some junk food. And I contacted him and said, what's your mailing address? And I got no response. And I emailed or texted his mother and got no response. And I thought, you really did screw up, bud. Well, my grandson had lived with me for his first five years of his life because the daughter decided to have a child instead of being a freshman at Westminster College. He had been living with us. And I taught him longhand and taught him German before he was five years old and gave him an iPad at age two, which was a mistake because he's a nut on computer stuff now. And when he was turned in this three-page book report in longhand, the kindergarten teacher said, or not three page, three sentence, the kindergarten teacher said, you didn't do your own homework or your work. He said, I did, and just said, fuck, who cares. She was silly enough not to. I did question the kid assistioners. So I said, wait. He and my grandson were sitting at tables eating together, kiddie tables. I thought, I'll tell you what, I'll mail him this paper and tell him the story and we'll see if that does something. All of a sudden, one night at 9 o'clock, I get this little boop, and it was him going to Montauk this weekend with my family. Then a long e-mail came up. And, oh, I've been a coward. I don't know how to say this at all. I had been home all second semester and checked myself in St. John Behavioral Health. Well, I knew what that meant. And he and I got together, and I said in the returning mail, let's get together, let's talk. I'm not a judge of human frailties, and let's set up something. So at his request, and my sort of this is what we were going to do, we started journaling each other. The journal is about three-quarters of an inch thick, and I would write letters early in the morning, put them in a white number 10 envelope and mark CC6 on the outside, go place it on his car windshield, and he would return pages to me or we'd get together and have breakfast at a local place and share the journal. During a writing class given by Ron Capps of the Veterans Writing Program out of D.C., Ron came to St. Louis at the St. Louis City Library and had some of us vets there, and I said, Buddy, why don't you come with me to this writing class? And in the middle of the writing class, he sends me a four-page beautiful handwritten longhand letter. In the middle of one of the pages, the fear of hurting you and those that I loved is what saved my life. So then at one of the breakfasts that we were having, I reached in my hand and I put my dog tags on the table, and I said, I want you to keep these when I'm not using them, and when I need them, I'll come and get them, and when I'm finished, I'll return the dog tags to you because I want to keep them safe. I don't want to lose them. I treasure them so much. But every time we would have a breakfast or a short draw, a beer or anything, whatever, we got together, we didn't always talk about something negative as just what's going on, but it was a touch, and at the end of the touch, there would be a hug and an I love you. There was one time even in front of my wife at Schnucks, and, you know, that was okay. Then I said, in case of my demise, I gave him a letter, which I have copies in our trust, and I've got copies at home and a copy in the journal, that when I'm deceased that the dog tags don't belong to me. They belong to him and or his dependents. He argued with me, and I said, they're my tags. This is the way they're going to be because I have a decorated, nationally known marine son, and he's got his own dog tags, and the other kids, they've got stuff that they don't need my dog tags. So what's really cool, within the next two weeks, is I believe a daughter is going to be born. He has a house, and he's married to a girl, and what I'm going to do while I have my dog tags with me right now, I'm not returning them to him when I'm finished. When I hold that baby in my arms, my dog tags are going to be in my hand when I return the child to him because that's to whom the tags belong. Yeah, that's awesome. What a sentimental story. That's amazing. Mike, I really appreciate you sharing that with us. What a special relationship you guys have. Thank you. Amazing story. I'm glad we were able to capture it. Long after everybody's gone, hopefully this story will live on, and maybe that young lady that's going to be born soon will be able to listen to this and be able to put that two and two together. Mike, is there anything else you want to leave our listeners with before we sign off? I appreciate doing this because really talking about some of this stuff really is how veterans get over it. You never get over it, but, I mean, it's less. You cannot box this stuff up in your mind. The more I look at pictures and the more I have conversation with you guys, there's always another story that comes out, and I'm sure you've heard that from other guys. And some of the intimate, intimate stuff only will come out if you talk with one of your original guys, and that's when it gets close. Because even the delivery of the baby in our motor pool that time, when I got together for the reunion, I heard more of the stories, more of the people who were involved in it and what they did after the baby was born. So it's bottled up in some of these people, and it needs to be out. It probably goes without saying, Jason, because you and I have talked about this offline, but it is always, never fails, it is always an honor for Jason and I to interview individuals such as yourself because we recognize how vulnerable you have to be to share some of those stories, some of those anecdotes with us. And what Jason and I try to do and strive to do is to create a safe environment for our veteran guests. So I certainly hope we've achieved that tonight. I think we have. Mike, it was an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. We're going to go ahead and sign off of the Operation Inside podcast from the MidAmerica Veterans Museum. Operation Insight is brought to you by the MidAmerica Veterans Museum, where we believe every veteran has a story. If you agree and you enjoyed today's program, please click the Like button and leave a comment. And don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.