Staff Sergeant Tom Bommarito

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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 host, Jason Galvin, and Sergeant Ethan Gross. Welcome back, family. We are in the museum in our studio with a very special guest tonight, Sergeant Tom Bomarito. I will let Ethan go ahead and formally introduce our guest. Ethan, go ahead and take it away, man. I'm Staff Sergeant Tom Bomarito, United States Army, November 1968 until October of 1970. Tom, we really appreciate you taking your time to be here and join us this evening. I appreciate you asking me, and I'm glad to be here. So for someone born on Friday the 13th, you've had quite a lot of luck in your life. Most of it's been bad. I'm going to go through a few points in your life, Tom, and then I'm going to ask you to comment on it. But if I understand correctly, you were born in the Furman Deluge Hospital not far from Forest Park. Is that right? That's correct. Well, I did some research because this is how my mind works. So Furman Deluge, you might know this, actually. The namesake for the hospital was actually the son-in-law of a Confederate colonel. It was Colonel William Davis. William Davis, during the Civil War, was quartermaster to General Sterling Price. I don't know if you knew this or not, the connection. No clue. Whenever I can make a military connection, I try to do it. This is one of those scenarios. Well, so you may or may not know, Sterling Price was actually governor of Missouri a few years before the Civil War. As the Civil War broke out, Price became a Confederate conspirator. And, in fact, Price was part of the plot to capture St. Louis for the Confederacy and its arsenal. The other reason that this is of interest to me is because that arsenal is now the home to the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, which is where my wife works. It all comes back to my wife. I told you it was good, Tom. I told you it was good. Wow. So, anyway, the hospital in which you were born has all that history. Nice. But that's no longer a hospital. I think it has a different use. Does SLU own that building now? Is that correct? The university? Yes. I believe they do. I think they do, and I'm mentioning that because I understand you come from a very strong Catholic family. So I want to pay homage to your parents. I want to do that by asking this first. Just how different were the Barmeritos from the McLaughlins? Oh, ouch. That's a really good question. The Barmeritos were the quieter of the two families. They were steadfast and straight ahead. The McLaughlins, as I tell people, thank God for the McLaughlins, because I don't know if I'd have any personality whatsoever. We decided early on that we would never have a party without my mother attending, because my mother was very famous for drinking half beers. She never had a whole beer, but she could drink quite a few half beers, and she was a character and loud and proud. My second question is how did your sister survive your family? She was right in the middle, right? She was a saint. There were seven kids, three boys, and my sister and three more boys. How about that? A rose among thorns. She is tough. We were talking off air. She was the one that forced me to go on the honor flight. That was in November 2023. Correct. She's pretty special. It sounds like it. Thanks for going through your family history a little bit with us, Tom. Do you have military in your family lineage at all? Not a whole lot. My father was in World War II, and he was drafted into World War II and was already married and had a child or two and ended up in like munitions or in the rear. They didn't give him a gun. Maybe for good reason. Right. But he served, and he served until D-Day, and so we had that, but he very seldom discussed it or talked about it. But, no, unlike Jason, I don't have a background of military. I might be the least military person you've ever had sitting here. Well, we'll test that theory. All right. That's funny that you mentioned that about your father. I'm glad you said that, Tom, because as we're speaking, I'm making a correlation between your father's military experience and yours. It sounds like both of you were of a more mature age when you entered. Correct. You were both married. Yeah. Do you know how old your dad was when he got drafted? He got married at the age of 30, so he probably got drafted at 33 or 34. And what was his career before he got drafted? He worked for a famous bar before and after and forever. He was a retail sales guy. Okay. And he was good at it, and that's what he did. He drove a soda truck at 14. So he wasn't looking to get in the military. He probably had no military inclination at all. No. And was he in St. Louis at the time he was drafted? Yeah. Okay. Which famous bar location? Just out of curiosity. He spent most of his time at what we referred to as Southtown. Okay. And then he went to Clayton. Maybe a lot of time at Clayton. I have a lot of famous bar stories I can tell you later. The famous bar has a special place in St. Louis in its heart. Oh, absolutely. There was a really famous one, I say famous famous bar, but there was a really popular one downtown that went defunct a long time ago, but I still hear stories about it. Oh, yeah. They had the Christmas things in the front windows. It was a destination for families to take a bus or drive down there and walk, that whole thing. But my dad sold radios and televisions, and he taught us quietly a lot about people and how they behave and what you can expect from them and what you can't expect from them. And he did it in a quiet, simple way, but he understood people. What did your mother teach you out of curiosity? Everything else. Everything else. The good and the bad. She was a crazy people person. She taught us that you have one mouth and two ears, and there's a reason for it. I like that. And to ask questions and to care about the other guy. There's a lot. Tell us about your time at Benedictine, Atchison, Kansas. Well, my older brother, Vince, who was a Vietnam vet, as it turned out, he went there. And we were inspired by a state representative who we knew who went there, and his name was Jack Beecher, and he was from Kirkwood. We grew up in Kirkwood, right on Oregon, between the train station and Kirkwood Park. And my brother went there, so I thought I'd go there. Sure. Some of the farms were filled out. It was a lot easier. So I went there, and it was just a wonderful environment. The environment is a really small school and very nurturing. Catholic-minded school. It's much more so now. It's where somebody who is a Catholic of the first order thinks to go immediately to Benedictine. I see. Yeah. At the time, we weren't quite as holy. But it's a really close-knit school, and quite a few people are from St. Louis and Chicago. We have huge alumni get-togethers and the like. It was just a great place to go to school. Speaking of alumni, it's a great transition, Tom. Thank you for that. I'm here for you. One famous alumni of Benedictine College is Lieutenant General Arthur Gregg. He was a 1964 graduate. If that name sounds familiar, it's because he was one half of the name that took over Fort Lee when they changed Fort Lee's title for that Army post. Lieutenant General Gregg was the first African American to achieve the rank of Lieutenant General in the United States Army. Benedictine graduate from 1964. Since we're on the topic of the Army and the military, something I wanted to ask you about related to Benedictine is the bootstrappers program. The reason I'm asking about that is for anyone who doesn't know, Atchison, Kansas is just up the road. It's a bit of an extreme exaggeration, but it's up the road from Fort Leavenworth. So there is an Army presence in that area. So the reason I'm asking about the bootstrappers program is I'm curious if that had any effect on you when you saw soldiers coming onto your campus for an education. Wow, good question. Yeah, that's an excellent question. What happened is they recognized Benedictine. There was some kind of a relationship, and Benedictine or St. Benedict said, yeah, come on and get classes that you need and so forth. As upperclassmen, as soon as I glanced over and saw we had bootstrappers, I went, there goes the curve. These guys are going to study. When I go out, they're going to be at home studying or in the billet setting. I didn't know a lot of them well. They were in a different category than we were. We were there to have fun and do those kinds of things, and they were there working. Did you have interactions that you talked about? Oh, yeah, sitting having coffee in the morning. When you're 19 and 20 and somebody's 32, they're really old. I happened to play soccer, and our coach was like 28 years old, and he was scary old to me. But I think they influenced us in that Vietnam was going on or it's receding, and here are a bunch of college kids and here are a bunch of military specialists, so to speak. They behaved differently than we did, but they were impressive, very impressive. I'm glad you used the word influence because that leads to my next question here, Tom. Contrasting that influence you had, seeing those bootstrappers, seeing those dedicated soldiers there on campus trying to further their education, your friend Flynn was the opposite of a good influence, if I understand correctly. Flynn led you astray in terms of enlisting and the reason for enlisting at that time. Tell us that story about your friend Flynn. Well, it seemed like a really good idea at the time. He and I went out one evening and we concocted this idea. Mine was in concert with my soon-to-be wife, but we wanted to have a direction. We knew that we had graduated. Back then when you graduated, you lost something special, which was your deferment. So we said on November the 3rd or 4th, let's just go do it. So we went down and we joined the Army. Was that kind of a biting the bullet moment? What was going through your mind in terms of enlisting besides waiting, other than waiting for your draft notice? What was the benefit? I've explained this to friends of mine and they don't get it, so maybe our logic wasn't that good. But the benefit was you had, good or bad, a direction. There's no waiting involved. You're taking action. Exactly. I see. The Army actually taught me it's better to do something than nothing, even if it's wrong. But don't do nothing. Maybe I was ahead of my time. So we just thought it just made sense. Let's just do something and we know what the next two years holds for us. So not only was November 5th, 1968, the night of the presidential election, which Richard Milhous Nixon won the presidency and would go on to completely reshape the war in which, in just a matter of a year and a half, you would be fighting, but that was also the date in which you enlisted in the United States Army. How ironic. How ironic, yeah. What was going on in terms of your conversations with, at that time, your girlfriend and you? What were her thoughts? Well, they were similar. She still had a year to go in school, and there was no question that we were going to get married. The question was when. Sure. And she agreed that it sort of made sense. It was a dangerous move. But there was a lot of me that felt like it was the right thing to do. I certainly wouldn't have done it on a whim, as I claim. Do you normally take calculator risks in other parts of your life, and have you taken calculator risks? I have taken. I'm a gambler. But risk and reward I weigh, and I did that at the time, and I felt like a direction was better than being wayward. I mean, it makes sense to me. Taking the reins, you know. Yeah, it made a lot of sense to me back then. Just, you know, let's do this, and then we'll get married, and then let the chips fall where they may. And I've heard this question be asked of you, and off air we were talking about it, just so I understood exactly what was going through your mind. You were college educated, and so I think a lot of our listeners are going to wonder, well, heck, why didn't the guy just become an officer? You get a lot more control in that respect in some ways anyway. If I'm understanding correctly, the reason you didn't want to do that is there was an extra year commitment if you commissioned. And so part of your calculator risk was, well, I'm going to just do two years. Come what may, wherever they send me, at least I won't have an extra year dedicated to the Army. Correct, yeah. It was my intention going in that I'll go in, I'll weigh the circumstances, I'll see everything so clearly in 48 hours or so, and then I'll ask to go to OCS and become an officer. That was the plan, and it was a great plan. However, when I got to Fort Leonard Wood, and I was yelled at for about 36 straight hours and screamed at by people I never met before, I altered my master plan and I decided, I think what I'll do is give them two years. If they get me in two years, then I made a bad decision. But they're getting two years and no more. So I'm glad you moved us into basic training. I don't want to linger on this too much, but there is one particular story I'm hoping you can share with us. I always find it interesting, and I think Jason would agree, when we speak to guests who talk about the jail or military problem, and I've always been kind of curious about how that actually works. But you actually have a story that demonstrates how true that really was. I'd love to hear about the taxi cab bandit from your basic training. That actually happened on the next person. Oh, okay, that was at Fort Polk. It was at Fort Polk. Gotcha. Yeah, so we had quite a few people in our companies, and I happened to be with the flame guy you alluded to earlier. And we had quite a few people really from the Chicago area, and they were in the military because they had a choice, much like I did. But their choice was a little different in that it was either go to the military or go to jail. So we had those people with us. And, golly, we had things missing all the time. It was really perplexing. So there was a radio stolen, and I had become buddies with a guy named Glenn Small, and he came to me and he went, my radio is gone. And I go, well, do you have any clue where it is? He goes, yeah, I know Williams has it. And I go, well, why don't you go get it from him? He said, I'm afraid of him. So I had guard duty that night, or a couple nights later, and the radio, which was then confiscated, was in the captain's office. So I had access to the office. I went in and copied the serial number of the radio, gave it to my buddy, had him send it to his mother. His mother sent back the serial number, and he got his radio back. Because he could prove that it was his radio. And it was his radio. But anyway, so we got curious, and we were cleaning one day, and you could actually climb underneath the building itself. And there's like 30 radios and different things of value. And they caught one of the guys after we trained all day, and it was a long day. He decided to go on cab rides, and he robbed the cab drivers. So we had some crazy stories. You can take the boy out of the town, but not the town out of the boy. Thank you for correcting me. That was at Fort Polk, more commonly known as Tiger Country. Correct. Tell me how it got that name. I'm not familiar with that. It got Tiger Country because its similarity in weather was not unlike Vietnam. Gotcha. It was dank and humid, and you couldn't take a shirt and dry it out because it would never dry out. It was just sort of a nasty environment. It had snakes. And they called it Tiger Country because your next step, for sure, was Vietnam. So, yeah, it was not a pleasant place to be. So was it there at Fort Polk when you received orders for Korea? Is it Fort Polk? Okay. And a quote I have of yours that I just love it so much, and so I want to read it. You and Flynn had gone through basic training together and also Fort Polk for your AIT. You were both 11 Charlie mortar men? Yeah. Okay. Well, so you get orders for Korea, as does Flynn. You guys are going all the way in this thing, this whole concoction, this plan you made. And then you come to find out Flynn had egged someone's car, been arrested for that, which is kind of crazy to think of now, but I guess back then the police had nothing else to do. So he gets arrested for egging someone's car, and he gets told basically last minute, he will go to Korea, but you will not. And the quote I have, I hope this doesn't offend Flynn if he's out there, but Flynn got to go to Korea that dumb and happy, whereas you were given an assignment for what you call Shake and Bake School at Fort Benning. Now I'm really excited to get into this because I wish the Army still did it. I'm sitting on E5. I would love to hit E6. It's easy, no disrespect, but as easy as you got E6, I would love it if we went back to that promotion style. Tell us about Shake and Bake School at Fort Benning. Okay. First of all, I'll back up just a little bit. The reason we got Korean orders is we happened to know somebody in the headquarters from St. Louis, and he made sure that he slid our orders over to the Korean side. That's how we got them. And so we're all giddy, and a guy walks in. He goes, you lost your Korean hours. You're both going to Nam. So we marched down to the headquarters and started complaining. And I go, you know, we don't want to be leaders. They looked at both of us, and they go, who's Flynn? And, of course, he raised his hand. They go, you keep your Korean orders. You've got arrested for just, as you said, and his father, John has since passed away, Flynn. His father happened to be a lawyer in Clayton, and the police called him. He said, we got your son from throwing eggs. What do you want us to do? He said, leave him in jail all night. So he actually got arrested. There was no felony or anything. Sure, sure. But a night in the jail still counted for something for the Army. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it did. Okay, shake and bake school. The correct terminology for it is noncommissioned officer's training, like OCS. And the reason it existed was because that far along in the conflict, we were running out of platoon leaders. Sure. And as you know, second lieutenant is a platoon leader. So the assumption is in a company you have four platoon leaders. You have the martyr platoon leader and then the three 11 Bravo infantry platoon leaders. And they were running out. They just didn't have enough officers. So they came up with this idea to expedite the process. Exactly. Just make some leaders quick. Yes. And so they sent me to this school in Fort Benning, Georgia. And they've changed a lot of the names of these camps. But anyway, I went to Fort Benning, Georgia. And it was a really, I tell you what, I got really good training. I knew how to fire martyrs, and I was good at it. And I applaud, you know, the Army because they knew how to train you. And it was the numbers of firing martyrs requires. I'm not very smart at all. But I understand numbers and angles and that kind of thing. Tell us about the 4.2-inch mortar and the 81-millimeter. Yeah, and they trained us in firing both those. By the way, that 4.2-inch used to be an artillery piece that the artillery gave to the infantry. And so we inherited it and needed to know how to fire it. A 4.2-inch is obviously a much bigger round. It can fire a much longer distance. I don't think quite as accurately, but it is assigned to a battalion level. At the battalion level, you have a 4.2-inch mortar. At a company level, you have this small 81-millimeter. And I don't know how to describe 81-millimeter in terms of girth, but basically I can palm it quite easily and I don't have big hands. But you could take it with one hand, drop it into this tube, make sure your hand gets out of the way, and it hits the firing pin down below and, you know, goes out. You actually can fire them by sight if necessary. And when you say by sight, I want to make sure not only for our audience but also just for me. When you say that, do you mean that calculations are necessary? You're kind of eyeballing it? You can eyeball it, yes. You can fire it. Interesting. You can almost fire them on yourself. You can. It's not a good idea, but you can take an 81-millimeter tube and aim it in such a way that it fires 300 yards and then just bring it back until you walk your rounds into where you want them. Let's see, I want to back up a little bit on noncommissioned officer school. Please. Shake and bake. So they sent me to this school. I got a really great education. I found out about halfway through it that if you studied real hard, and I hope I'm not jumping ahead. No, you're fine. But if you studied real hard and did real well on exams as well as the physical part of it, they would take the top five people out of 200, make them staff sergeants, which I wasn't particularly interested in. What I was interested in is they would allow you to stay another 12 weeks and train the next group. Nice. So as soon as I heard that, I got very serious. You're looking at your two-year contract. How can I diminish this and decrease as much as possible? I'll tell you. I did everything legally that I could do to shorten. I knew I was going to go to NOM. Eventually. But I thought if you're there for nine months versus 12 months. You're bettering your chances. Right. So I did. I studied. I got out of there as a staff sergeant, and I swear I looked like I was 14 years old. But that was their rule. Well, I'm glad you mentioned it. And, no, you're not getting ahead of me at all. That was actually perfect. Because you go from you and your friend, Flynn, saying, well, we don't want to be leaders. How do we get out of this? To being put into a leadership school and graduating in the top of your class and becoming an East Texas staff sergeant. As you know, when you're in the military, you inherit some of. It starts to seep into you. It sure does. It sure does. And I became, it shocked me, but I became quite military. And I was better at it than a lot of people. I have no idea why. But there are parts of it I liked. Yeah. And I liked the leadership part. And raising a family, I did the exact same thing. I coached. Because if I coached, then somebody not qualified would not coach my kids. So I coached every one of them and everything I could. You would prefer to be in control of that position. Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm really happy that you mentioned that. And I was kind of, I had a hunch that might have been the case, Tom. Was that a trait or an attribute of yours that you did not know that you possessed until the Army? Yes, you're right. So you had the Army to thank for that. I do. I do. And I went backwards some years later. And some of this I might have trouble with. But I had a soccer coach that I alluded to earlier. And he was young. And I played golf with him some years later. I was probably 26 years old, 27. And we played in a Benedictine golf tournament. And I had occasion to tell him and thank him for things he made me do that I didn't know that I could do. So that was sort of the genesis of starting to understand your capabilities. And I thanked him. And he said, had it not been for you, I don't know if I could have done some of the things I ended up doing. We've had a guest on before who spoke about his experience as a wrestler and a football player in high school. And I think I can correlate this with your story, Tom. As frivolous as that may seem to some people, you learn things through sports and through being an athlete that very much so relate to being a soldier, Marine, sailor, airman, whatever it is, being a service member. A lot of it is going that extra mile that you don't think that you have in you, but you really have no choice but to run that extra mile. You're being told by a superior or a higher authority to go that extra mile and keep going and don't stop, don't quit. And you find it in yourself that you have that capability and that power. Well said. Later on, we're going to hear more about the 81 millimeter. If I understand correctly, it's thanks to an 81 millimeter and your precision as a mortarman that you received the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. Yes. Okay, we'll talk about that later. So you finish Shake and Bake, you're an E6, you go through one extra cycle as an instructor, and then your luck starts to run out. Yeah. Tell us about that. Well, so I think it was after, I'll get in trouble for not knowing this, but I think it was after I became a sergeant, and then it was after the training that we got some kind of special dispensation to have two weeks off so we could get married because we wanted to get married before I went to NASA. Sure. I don't know what our logic was there, but at the time, again, it seemed like a really good idea. Yeah. And so we did that, and I actually was illegally AWOL for a while because there was a lieutenant colonel that got us this time off and didn't get communicated to the right people. So we got married, went on our little honeymoon, came back, and, you know. I thought you were AWOL. The U.S. Army is looking for Tom Bomarito. And, by the way, I digress, but it's important to tell you this, that we've been married, don't get this wrong, 56 years, I think. But the name Bomarito back centuries ago when men in Sicily could be called what they wanted to be known as, Bomarito became a big name, and it literally means voluntary being good. Marito means husband, so Bomarito literally means good husband. So I got that going. Yeah. You have a wife who will love you. It's funny, Jason, I just as an aside, Tom, we were talking about how popular of a name Bomarito is. I mean, I hear that name, and I think of my car dealership. Sure. Two years ago I got to go to Rome, Italy, and Siena, and areas like that for a week with my youngest son and my only daughter, Joe and Sally, and he's a world traveler, so it was real easy for him. He speaks a bunch of languages. But the week that was so near and dear to me is we got to spend a week in Sicily. We went to Palermo, and about 20 minutes away is a little town called Terracini where I got to see where my grandparents were married, and it's where all the Bomaritos are from. And they moved to the United States. They moved to two cities, St. Louis and Detroit. How about that? And I was in a wedding after the service, and the mother of the bride came up to me, and she said, I'm sorry that I didn't put your name. You know, everything was in the paper back then. Sure. And I said, it doesn't matter to me. I don't care. And she goes, because I just got back from Rome. I'm just glad to be here. And she said, well, your last name's a problem. And in Detroit, Bomarito, they are more connected, quite connected. And this was in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and she just couldn't do it. So I forgave her and moved on. You might have saved your life that day. I didn't want to give her any trouble. That's a very interesting assignment. Well, so take us back to finding out you're deploying to Vietnam. Yeah, that was so real. Part of the training, I remember, in any one of the places, and just for audience's purposes, it's basic training. AIT. AIT, and then you could do a specialty or something, but basically basic training and AIT, and then off you go. And one of the things I remember, I remember the answer as much as a question. Anybody going on a dangerous endeavor of any kind, they want to know what it feels like, what is it, how do you survive it. And I remember that question being asked in Fort Polk, I think, and I remember the answer was so good. We were in like an outdoor overhead picnic area, so to speak, and the instructor said, well, let me tell you something. Are you worried about this roof collapsing in on you? And the answer from the questionnaire guy was no. And he said, well, it's the same in Vietnam. You don't worry all the time. I mean, there are times you need to worry and you worry, but you can't worry 24 hours a day. You won't survive it. Right. It's impossible. It's the mind's way of trying, asking that question is the mind's way of trying to regulate the emotion within you so you can prepare like an internal preparation. So I do get the question. Oh, me too. But the answer I thought was so telling, and that is just relax. You know, you'll figure it out. Did it help you? Did the answer help you? Oh, yeah, because I really quit worrying about it. I told my wife this about six months ago, and she was shocked. I said it never crossed my mind that I would get killed in Vietnam. Never. I thought there's a chance I'd get wounded, and I didn't know what Vietnam was like. But when I got over there, I did. And it just never occurred to me to die, you know. That's probably partially the thing for surviving. I think it's a... That mentality is half the battle. Yeah. I don't believe it. So funny enough, I just want to mention this because we've had at least one other guest say this to us, and it was like an epiphany to me because I hadn't thought about it before, but it made so much sense when I think about the news reels I've seen and different types of media. Vietnam, probably like a lot of wars even before Vietnam, when you go over for your deployment, you're not going over with a unit. You're going over with just a bunch of random guys, and then you get assigned to a unit once your boot's on the ground. That's just completely foreign to my ears. Yeah, very foreign to our knowledge. Very different. Very different now. It was even different back in the Gulf War. Yeah. So tell us about that experience, arriving in Vietnam and meeting your unit for the first time. Yeah. Actually, to be honest with you, until you just mentioned it, it never occurred to me because it was my first war, and I thought they ran them all that way, but apparently they didn't, and obviously they went over as whole units in the European theater and so forth. But yeah, you're on a plane, and I knew four or five guys on the same plane that I had gone to school with, and here we go. Basically, you land, and it's really uncomfortable. You have fatigues on. I think we actually wore fatigues, or we got them when we arrived, and they're all brand new fatigues. And that makes you FNG, they called it, a new guy. Yeah. You got a target on your back. You're the new guy. Pretty quickly. Yeah. And then you have whatever you are, a sergeant or whatever your rank happens to be, and then basically, as you said, you get plucked right out, and you go over here in this line because you're going to be in the 25th Infantry Division. And I remember being there, to give you an idea, I mentioned looking young, that I tried to go to a noncommissioned officer's club to get a beer, and the gal wouldn't let me in because she didn't believe I was a staff sergeant. And she was right. I mean, I looked like I stole the uniform. But anyway, they did assign you to, I guess, a division. You're in the 25th, you're in the 82nd Airborne or whatever it is, and off you go. Tell us about the location of where the 25th Infantry, the Tropic Lightning was one of their nicknames. Is that right? Well, people would visually know it as an electric strawberry. Electric strawberry. How about that? You see that, that's the 25th Infantry. And that logo, I'm sure I'm telling you something you already know, but I looked up and it's just, I was very interested in this. That logo, and I never knew this before until preparing for your interview, Tom, it's the silhouette of a taro leaf, which signifies Hawaii, which is where Schofield Barracks is located. I did. I had heard that, but I... But electric strawberry sounds much better. Good job. Yeah, that's, to me, more identifiable. In Nam, Cu Chi was the headquarters. And Cu Chi is located, I'm going to say, south and west, generally, in South Vietnam. Okay. And right on near the Cambodian border. Gotcha. Border. Yeah. Real frankly, I was over there. I only knew some of this when I got home, because I didn't know where I was, nor did I particularly care. No, it's the truth. I know I was in Cu Chi, but I didn't know what that... The first thing I got to see was Bob Hope. Oh, that's right. We came with all these gals and stuff, and all these battered war veteran guys with their dirty uniforms and stuff were whistling and yelling. And I had this brand new green stuff on. I just basically hid in the background. So that was one of Bob Hope's USO shows? Yes. Okay. Well, thank you for bringing this up, because I love it whenever we can get a story about seeing one of these famous, with Bob Hope. I mean, they are truly famous USO shows. Tell us what you remember about Bob Hope's show. Well, it was... Everything stopped. Everything was frozen, because Bob Hope was on campus, so to speak, or at Cu Chi. And then he was littered with women all about, and these are guys that have been... You have to remember, there's a couple of things. One, a lot of people listening to this podcast, they don't know who Bob Hope is. He's been mentioned. But the other thing is, back then, there was no calling home, or emailing, or texting. That didn't exist. I mean, I talked to my wife once in 12 months. And so these guys are brought in from out in the field. Cu Chi's not out in the field. Cu Chi's like a Hilton. It's very nice, and pretty safe. And these guys are brought in, and they're animals. They've lived outside for the last, whatever, three, however long it's been. A lot of times, you just didn't get a chance to get back. And they're hardened, and they're wound up. There's no alcohol, typically, involved. And you put them in front of this vaudeville-type show. Exactly. What a contrast. And it's really epic. And their reactions are very real. You know, here's a bunch of guys. Especially with the women on stage. I can only imagine. Yeah, of course. Yeah. And I remember it vividly. What was Bob Hope's act? What did he do? Did he do, like, a stand-up? Did he do kind of skits? What did he do exactly? Basically, I think he just lent his name to it, and stood up there on stage, and paraded the women about. I mean, yeah, because these guys aren't going to listen to stand-up. Yeah. You know, or anything. Yeah. It requires a whole lot of effort. He knew what the troops wanted to see. Exactly. It wasn't him. Definitely wasn't him. I just want to say, to close off the topic of USO shows, there is a video while we're on this topic, Tom, I hope you don't mind. There's a video of Robin Williams from, it had to have been probably 2006, 2007, something like that. And he was at Camp Arifjan, which is in Kuwait, and he was doing a USO show for troops who had just come back from a deployment and were getting some R&R there in Kuwait at Camp AJ, and retreat plays during his performance. Of course, no one has prepped Robin Williams for this, but God love him, and, you know, he's one of my favorite comedians and actors. He stops his show on the dime, he reads the room, and he takes his cap off and renders, it doesn't render a salute, but renders honors to the flag, with the troops anyway. Those USO shows, I think those are such incredible things to witness. I've never been fortunate enough to see one, but I've heard fantastic stories about, you know, the hope that those shows bring to troops, for lack of a better term. Well, I know who Bob Hope is, and I appreciate Bob Hope. I love his movies and I love his comedy. Okay, so, wow, what a way to be welcome to Vietnam. You get this great kind of pony show with Bob Hope and the USO, and then, if I understand correctly, pretty quickly you see just how real combat is. If you would, Tom, I'd like you to tell us about Woody. Oh, I didn't even realize you knew about that. Yeah, I just told my family about Woody. And sometimes it's a bit tough. It's getting a little easier. But I'm at a battalion level at that time, and I real frankly think I was the only one that had been trained to fire a 4.2-inch mortar. You know, it's kind of like I have this thing, I just don't know how to shoot it. And so I showed up fresh from the United States and freshly educated, and I knew how to fire this thing. And Woody and I were of equal rank. I got to know him quite well, and I had spent, in a battalion level, I had spent January and February. And it wasn't until I read an Internet encapsulation of the 25th Infantry Division that I knew the date that this happened. And the Bobcats. Exactly. And it happened on February 28, 1970. And we spoke off air about how small things can alter your world or your life. Well, when you're at this battalion level, and we were out a ways. But still, the battalion, if you think about it, is like the center of the universe, and then there are four or five companies that they support. Sure. And it was about every three or four days we went in to get mail, and ostensibly to pick up stuff and bring it back, but in reality it was a chance to go drink some beer and get out of the front. And it was my turn as a ranking noncommissioned officer to take the three tracks. And Woody, his name is Woodward, Douglas Woodward, and I just received his name off of the Washington Vietnam Wall. I didn't have a life-size version of it. But anyway, he was what we call a lifer. He was a staff sergeant. He'd been in the service, I think, seven or eight years. He was married. He was the nicest guy in the world. And it was my turn to take the group in, but I was kind of a little bit of a new guy. And, you know, he had been around. And he came to me and he said, would you mind if I went instead of you because I'm short and my papers, I think, are back there, and if I can get my papers I can get out of here. And I said, sure. I mean, fine with me. I'll go next time. And about ten minutes, so he took off with the three armored personnel carriers down this road. And about ten minutes later, he and eight other guys were dead because the Viet Cong found a 500-pound bomb that didn't detonate. He rolled it under a culvert. We had to cross over. And they ran a wire. There was no Bluetooth back then. A literal wire that was far enough to be safe and waited for this moment. And detonated it. And there wasn't a piece bigger than a grapefruit left. Wow. And I wouldn't have, you know, they even kept us away from it because there was nothing anybody could do. But I wouldn't have known the date. I didn't realize that we'd lost that many men. I knew, of course, Woody was among them. And so that was, you know, obviously changed my life. You probably know this, but just to pay homage and due respect to Woody, he was given the rank of Sergeant First Class after his death as one of his honors. Thank you for sharing that story. Yeah, thank you so much. If you would, Tom, I'd love to hear about June 18, 1970. I'll back up a little bit and lighten it up before I tell that story. I told you I got two Purple Hearts, which is the truth. June 18, I got a Purple Heart. And it's somewhat deserved. You know, I'll take it. I didn't get broken or anything. But I got another Purple Heart. And that Purple Heart, I'll tell you how I got it. We were in a firefight or there was martyrs, and I took a bunch of shrapnel in my back and a little bit up in here. And it was not a big deal, trust me. But I happened to be in the rear where I could access a doctor. And I went and I said, could you take these things out of my back because they really hurt. And he said, sure. So I laid down on my stomach, and I could hear him clunking these little pieces of steel out. And, again, I was fine. Minor back pain to you. Right at that age, you know. And I just prefer their baby out. But I thanked them and went back to my unit or whatever. And so, like, a month and a half later, I get a letter from my wife. What happened? They sent her a Purple Heart. Oh, man. With no explanation? No. We're not going to tell if he lost a leg or he lost a leg and an arm. They just sent a Purple Heart. It's so typical. It is. So typical of the military. Military. No context. Yeah. No context. And, hey, we sent it, didn't we? That was one of my Purple Hearts. Gotcha. Okay. It was that. Anyway, June 18th, we were, oh, I think they're called the Bolloy Woods, but I'm not sure. We were a significant company and a significant fighting machine because we were pretty good at what we did. And we were wanted in a way, which, you know, is a double-edged sword. Sure. So on June 18th, 40 Army regulars from North Vietnam. Now, think about that. These are not Viet Cong and these are not village people. These are uniformed military opponents, and they crossed the river to get to us. I mean, somebody wanted us. They were determined. Yeah. So I never remember if they had eight groups of five or five groups of eight, but basically what they did, back to the 500-pound bombs, they created craters that were as deep as the ceiling here, so you could get into them. And they carried their ammo. Probably everybody had an 81-millimeter mortar strapped to them. And they got into these craters, and it was just a regular night. We fired what they call H&Is, harassing and interdicting fire. So, you know, I'd have done to just walk up and drop a round. I didn't have to tell them. They knew. Sure. And they were just indiscriminate, you know, live rounds, you know, not elimination. So we're firing them, and our guns are in a row. We parked nearly in a row. And they used the flare of those, our firing, to line up their little mortars. To your location. Yeah, so they got into that, their little tunnel or crater. Yeah. And they started just walking around. Wow. And then all heck broke loose. And there were a lot of them, and they had a ground group. And they got into our— They actually infiltrated your camp. Yeah, yeah. And you go through all this hand-to-hand combat stuff, and you laugh, and you go, If I'm ever in hand-to-hand combat, you know, that can happen. Yeah. But it isn't—you know, when you—AGVs, for people who don't know, is a big old tank-like thing. And we parked in a circle just like you saw in Western. And you created your own defense out there with wire as best you could and so forth. Yeah. And we had—I can't think of the name of them. It said, Decide toward the Enemy. Mines. Yeah, right. And you walked them out, and you put them out there. So that bad guy didn't win. Well, anyway, they got inside our— Wow. They took two or three. And when that happens, it's really harsh because, you know, you disclose to each other across the table, and you can't tell what team he's on. Yeah. And one of my real close friends lost an eye that night, one of my guys. But we didn't have a casualty. Amazing. Incredibly. That is incredible. And we had a lieutenant that got a Silver Star and deserved it. He was out directing traffic and so forth. I was doing my mortars, but they fired at sight. You know, they could see where it was coming from. And we did a real good job of eliminating the problem because we were able to drop. It's the only way to get to them. It's from directly above. And so the next morning, we found quite a few of them in those craters. I think they had two guns. Something people don't realize is that the—they're very smart. We had 81 millimeters, okay? They had 82 millimeters. So they could use—if they found our rounds that weren't detonated, they could use them in their guns. Interesting. Yeah, and we couldn't do the reverse. You had extra rounds in play. Right, right. And that was very important. Were there times that they didn't detonate? Oh, yeah. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. This Mac that I just mentioned, he told me a story that I don't remember, and that is we fired some rounds, a similar type thing one night, and they didn't detonate. We knew they didn't, and we knew where they were. And I had to go. We didn't have a demolition—we didn't have an explosive guy with us, so you had to kind of go do your own thing. You put C-4 around it and backed up. Controlled detonation. Right. Yeah. And he said that I said, Hey, anybody want to go out there with me? Nope. Well, he went with me, according to him. I don't remember the story. I think they blocked it out. But apparently we went out there, put C-4 near them, and I think there were three or four rounds. Well, the enemy would pick them up, huh? Oh, yeah. And we were using them. That's scary. And we were the worst. As the war wound down, the leadership felt like it would be a good idea if we tricked them and we wouldn't move during daylight hours. We would move at 3 in the morning. Well, that's a good idea, except that Americans leave stuff laying around when they can see everything. Yeah. And at 3 in the morning, they really leave stuff lying around. Yeah. So we spent a lot of time in dry areas like rubber plantations where we could run up and down them. And they loved when we did that because they would just sit up in rubber trees and shoot at us as we drove by in Chrysler engines. So it was a lesson perfect. You give me a whole treasure trove here of things I want to touch on. The first, I don't want us to bury the lead. And if I'm not understanding something correctly, just tell me. But from my understanding, you called in an artillery strike on essentially your own position. No, that is not true. I called artillery near our position. Gotcha. Because it wasn't a critical enough thing to kill all of our own men because it just wasn't in my opinion. But I got it really, really close. Close. So that was good. It just goes to show the precision you had as a mortar man. As you said earlier, the Army trained you well. They did. You knew how to shoot a mortar in the right direction in the right place. And to call a mortar. That's an easy art to tell them where you want things to land. Could you walk us through that? I'm really curious about that. It sounds like a difficult task. I'd love to hear how you go about doing it. Well, the Army, like they did everything else, they made a complicated thing quite simple. And the way it works is you drop a round. Okay. We really didn't use northeast, west, south, all that, as much as you had to know the origin of the round. So you had to know where it began. And so you have to be that guy that fired it from the Gulf or wherever it was. So you became that guy, and you did it with a device that basically was a clear plastic. Okay. And then so you become him. You sit in his chair or in his spot or at his gun. And then you say, from that point, I want you to go forward 100 meters and right 200 meters. And if you're halfway decent at knowing your distances, and I don't have any depth perception, but I got lucky in some cases, but if you're halfway decent, then you can land the second round virtually where you want it. The first one is sort of a test or trial run. Right, right. To get your distance. You have to use maps or something to get the first one to drop, yeah. But the Army had it figured out. Yeah. Thanks for going through that. And I bought off on it. The other thing that you mentioned that is sparking my curiosity, and this will get towards the end of your deployment in Vietnam, there's a point in time while you were there that you recognized the war was unwinnable for the United States. And something I've heard you say is U.S. intelligence was so bad, they didn't even understand the complexity of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And there was another point in time in which you came to this decision that this is not about winning a war. This is about getting home alive and getting my men home alive. Take us back, if you would, at your mentality during that time frame. Yeah. I have to give props to a book that I recently read called The Women. And it was the impetus for the recent honor flight of all women. Back in June? Yes. Do you know somebody on there? We knew the ambassador for that, Helen Kevrick, a fantastic lady. Yes. And it was in reading that book that I believe it's the first time I saw in print exactly what I felt in life, in real life. Yeah. The book is about nurses in Vietnam. Yeah. She is reading The Stars and Stripes. And it was the only – back then, again, no email, no internet, no nothing. You read The Stars and Stripes and kind of know what's going on. And every day we're winning the war more than the day before. And they list – yesterday we had no casualties. And she says, yesterday I put four people in body bags. So somebody's lying to somebody. Somebody. Yeah, and it wasn't like, oh, there's a dwell time and we missed a day, we were wrong. No. We had no casualties yesterday. So if she put four people in body bags, what did the rest of the country do? Yeah. And so it dawned on me – wait, prior to the book. It dawned on me that one of two things was the case. Either we didn't want to win the war or we didn't know how to win the war. Because as a very good friend of mine says, you would take a hill at great casualties and own that hill and then walk away from it and need to take it back a month later or three weeks later. We've heard that same thing from multiple times. Yeah, we have. Yeah. Demoralizing for the guys too. Yeah, to what end? To what end? It's kind of like police today arrest a guy and they let him out. The system lets him out. Sure. And he does the same thing tomorrow. What do you expect? Yeah, it's not good. So anyway, I took a different approach to how I fought the war, if you will, and that was, again, the outcome's probably the same. Diminish or kill as many of the enemy as you can. Sure. But primarily I wanted to get all my guys home. I felt like I had some kind of unwritten contract with their family that if I could do anything to keep them from being a casualty in that nasty country, I was going to do it. And to that end, I'll tell you a real quick story that I could be in jail for, but it's probably too late for it. So one night late, over time when you work with a company, I was referred to as 4-6. I slept in a hammock in a track with my ear right on a radio because the three other platoons went out at night. Not all three of them. One or two of them would go out every night, 200 yards, 300 yards, or at some demarcation. And remember, we used maps made by the French decades before. So what we had wasn't perfect. And we had a meeting every night, and quite often I went up in a loach to see the surrounding area because it's kind of important that I know as much as possible. Sure. And those guys were crazy that flew those, but that's another story. So again, it's winding down in terms of my world, and we have our meeting. And I knew where they wanted one of these patrols to go. And basically a patrol, they go out at night, they get in some kind of formation and lie down and wait for enemy or whatever. Well, when I heard where they were going, I just knew. We knew that was a real nasty hot spot. It's one thing if you see two or three of the enemy. Anybody you see after dark is a bad guy. But we knew that there was very heavy activity. In fact, maybe even company size are bigger. And that's a death wish. You go there and you open fire. You better not be noticed if they march by you because your firepower won't equal theirs. So sure enough, the head of the platoon came to me, and he said, you know we're not going. I go, I knew you wouldn't. But I want to know where you're going, and you better be right. And so we came up with a plan. He kind of had mapped it out, and I kind of corrected him a little bit. And I said, how about going here because I'm kind of comfortable with that area or spot. Sure. Okay, so if anything were to happen. You'll know where to direct fire. Yeah, that's what I thought. So me and this guy had this master plan. Another master plan. They were disobeying direct orders and all that stuff. But then again, I'd like us guys to go home alive and well. So they do what I just suggested. And lo and behold, he goes, for sex. He goes, we got movement, and pretty much movement. I go, okay, what do you want me to do? He said, they're right on us. He said, I need live rounds. So a lot of times if you had the luxury, you could fire illumination rounds. And then, oh, I see the five of them out there. But there were more than that, and they were like on them. You need the element of surprise in a way. Oh, yeah. Somebody's going to die. And so I have three guns. I fired three live rounds at where I prayed he was, right in front of him. And the next thing I hear is, stop, stop, you're killing us, you're killing us. And I thought, oh, my God, I landed the rounds on him. As it turned out, they were just getting some scrap small stuff that I didn't mention of earlier. And everything worked out just fine, thank God. Amazing. I wanted to mention this. The 25th Infantry Division, and this is probably something you know, Tom, that division lost over 4,500 soldiers in Vietnam. So, you know, I think that number and your survival and your troop survival is a testament to your leadership, Tom. And so as an American and as a veteran myself, I want to thank you for the leadership you've shown to your troops while deployed in a very dangerous combat zone. Thank you. One last thing I wanted to ask about that's regarding your deployment actually happened outside of Vietnam. You were given two different R&R leaves. One of those was spent in Southeast Asia, I think Indonesia? Taiwan. Okay. It's the other one that I want to focus on just momentarily. You spent a week in Hawaii with your wife. She met you in Hawaii. This story I'm hoping that we can talk about briefly here, Tom, it can be led into by a quote that I've heard you say. Meeting your wife in Hawaii for that one week was almost like meeting a stranger. Tell us about that. Yeah, that is the truth. We wanted to get married before Vietnam so that we could spend time in bed before Vietnam. Sure. We only had a short honeymoon. Then you take somebody and you plop them into this. I guess it was about eight months, I think. It was August. I do remember that. You run them through this Vietnam place for eight months and then send them to Hawaii to meet his new wife, so to speak. It was really uncomfortable. I know it was for her. The first thing I did, and most of us did, if you were in combat, was there were noises on the street. Well, you get off a plane and they put lace on your neck. Sure. It turns out I bought a pair of striped pants and checkered shirt. I wasn't the king of fashion then, nor am I now. Then some loud noise happens, and you see about one out of ten guys on the ground, and I was among them because that's what you did, especially then. Even to this day, I have something real loud unexpected, I react to it. I don't get on the ground. It's too hard to get up. Diesel fuel is another thing. Yeah. General diesel fuel. We went to our little room and kind of had to start over because who she put on the plane eight months earlier wasn't who came back. That's so unfair to, not to me, but it's so unfair to the wives of anybody that's gone away for that long. I don't want to pry too much, but I think your experience in this story in particular is probably, like you're saying, a fairly common experience that Vietnam veterans had. If you would, if you would just give us maybe one story. You mentioned how uncomfortable it was and how strange it was. Is there a particular moment that you recall from that R&R Hawaii with your wife that was extremely uncomfortable? You know, I actually already sort of mentioned the one that's unexplainable. It wasn't a particular thing as much as it was A married B, and then eight months later A's in a hotel room with B, and they're not the same two people. But I think what caught her off guard, and there's no way to prepare for it, was we were in some kind of line. We had, I think, gotten away from the maddening crowd, and a car backfired or something, and she looked over at me, and I was on the ground. And I think she found that very shocking. You know, I had trouble explaining it. I didn't know how to explain it. It was your training. It's just what you do to survive. Right, right. How do you tell someone who's living at that time? Jeff Siddy, is that where she's living? Yes, exactly. Good research. About as far away from combat as you can imagine. But she did all the right things. She prayed every night and did what she could and joined a Vietnam Wives group and so forth. But there's no way to prepare for a changed human being. And to that end, one other thing, if I may, and that is the people that came home from Vietnam. Well, I have this podcast platform. I have become almost psychotic about making sure that my grandkids make sure to tell anybody with any indicators to thank them for their service. And if they're of my age bracket at all, or if they have a Vietnam hat, to make sure to say to them, welcome home. Because these guys didn't get welcomed home. And that's what I carry with me more than anything. And I was so lucky. I lived a normal life up until maybe 10, 15 years ago. None of this brought – I was able to put it away until I raised a family and did all the right things that you're supposed to do. But a lot of my kids that I got over there – and remember, they're 18. Think of an 18-year-old, you know, and hand them an M16 and tell them the cause is good. The chances of him doing well mentally aren't good. And so my granddaughter – one of my granddaughters works at Grant's Farm. And she sells milk for the goats or something. And she sent me a text this summer, and she said, Papa, I saw this guy with a Vietnam hat, and she's a quiet kid. And I was so proud of her. She said, so I said, thank you for your service. And then I said, welcome home. And he gave me the biggest hug I've ever had in my life. And I said, Clara, you might be the first person that ever said that to me. That's quite possible. You might have changed his life. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. That's beautiful. There's two stories related to being welcomed home that I wanted to go over with you, Tom. Your transitions are fantastic. I'm here for it. He's an expert, man. So funny enough, I didn't realize this, but this happened to you twice. You got denied a beer when you came back to the States. Tell us that story real quick. I thought I started to look older. Sure. You would think. Grizzled look or something. Exactly. Tan or something. And I was in California. I think they flew us into Oakland. Sure. And they threatened you. I actually cried telling this story not too long ago. I wore a compass, like a wristwatch. I mean, it wasn't a wristwatch. It was a compass. Sure. But I wore it. And it was important to me. It's kind of a token for you. Yeah. But it also saved my life and men's lives. Sure. And so forth. And they threatened me into dropping it into their bag of... They told you they would find out if you kept it. Oh, yeah. They'll say that. And I thought, you know, for this thing, I'm not... Did you sign for it? That's the question. I don't know. You could have kept it. But it was mine. But anyway, so I did go to try to get a... Well, I tried to buy a six-pack at a liquor store. And, you know, I guess I was 23 or so at the time. Whatever, 23. And nope. How about that? And I was really angry. But, you know, I had no bullets. But, you know, it's just one of those little stories that, like, it's so... Like my men, they couldn't vote, you know. I mean, and they couldn't buy a beer legally when they got back. Wow. There's a certain feeling of indignity almost. Yeah. But who do you tell? So you had relatives up in Napa Valley. I did. I might be speaking out of turn, but I honestly can't think of a better place to come back to the States and just kind of chill forever. That sounds perfect to me. I love that area, and I love California in general. That's something that we've talked about on the podcast before. Tell us about when you got back to your home, what that experience was like. Oh, yeah. First, I'll tell you that Napa Valley, they weren't just relatives in that area. I had an aunt and uncle who lived on the Christian Brothers Winery, and he was the general manager of the Christian Brothers Winery. And so I got this. And I did it by design. I said, boy, if I could spend three or four years. I want to go home. Sure. If I could spend three or four years kind of a daze here. Yeah, yeah. Decompressing. Decompressing, yeah. It'll be really healthy for me, I think. And it was. Yeah. Anyway, what was the question? It was when you got back to Missouri. Oh, well. Back to your home. When you first brought up a couple incidents, I laughed, because my friend Flynn, he's one of these favored sons. My family loved the guy. We went to Benedict's together. That's where the plane was concocted originally. Right. Right. So he goes to Korea, and he gets in early out. So what do my parents do? The whole world comes to Flynn's welcome home party. It's the biggest. I got home and heard major stories about the blowout that the Bombereros had on Argonne Drive for John Flynn, who arrived back safely from Korea. Safely from Korea, yeah. Korean War was a little bit ago. And I know what he did while he was over there, and among the things he did was not fight. So I heard these stories, and they were just awesome. So I get home. Margie and I met, and then we went to my house on Argonne. It was kind of a famous house because there's so many people, so many Bombereros, and we were so involved in Kirkwood, and the world knew that I was gone. So we get out of probably, I guess, a car or a cab. I don't know how we got there. And I looked at my house, and about the size of an 8 1⁄2 by 11 piece of paper is taped on the front window. Welcome home, Tom. It was like. That's all you get. Oh, is he here? Last minute. I mean, I swear I had to get real close to it to read it. Oh, my goodness. I couldn't find flair to tens or something, but I had to laugh. Was Flynn there at least to welcome you back? He was that evening. Okay, okay. They spent all their party on Flynn. Yeah, yeah. I have one question to ask you about Napa when you got back. It was the first time back, right, to the States, correct? Do you remember, and it's kind of an odd question, I'm just interested to know, do you remember what it smelled like there, and do you still smell that? I don't recall. Well, I take it back. It didn't smell like anything, and that was good. Earlier, Ethan, you mentioned creosote or diesel fuel. To this day, I have a real problem with diesel fuel because we drove Chrysler diesel engines and we had to have some backup, and there's something about it that throws me. So that was in my olfactory system the whole time. And then when I got back, sometimes you don't notice the absence of something. That's what I was getting at. Did you realize that you, with all those smells that you had in Vietnam, do you remember realizing that you didn't smell those things at home? No, and that's why I hesitated in answering it. I smelled nothing except wine and magnolias and flowers. Was that a trick to your senses? Was that part of the decompression process? I'm trying to get into your head kind of what it was like to be home. You were there one day, and then you're not, right? Right, yeah. It was so relieving more than anything. Thank God that I'm not still there. Yeah, and in fact, a good friend of mine who I went through MCOC school with and so forth, a guy named Page Gifford, he's no longer with us, he called me 10 years ago, and he says, hey, you want to go on a trip with me to Vietnam? You know, one of those things. I stopped him immediately. I said, Page, why would you want to go back there? You got out once somehow, and you want to go back and see if you can get out again? I'm not going to Vietnam with you. There's no way. The place smelled of something bad all the time. Mostly it was gunpowder and diesel and burning things. Yeah, it smelled bad. And when I got home, it didn't smell. One of the questions I had when you guys were talking about being in Hawaii and things of that nature is that's a very beautiful place. Yeah, I've seen pictures. But I can only imagine the flowers that are smelling good and all that. And so when you get to Hawaii, I know we've already passed this point, but I'm really interested in this, is you get to Hawaii, you know your wife's going to be there. And just as an aside, knowing myself, whenever I'm going on a vacation, which this isn't a vacation, it's an R&R, it takes me a couple days to wind down to be able to be in that mode. And it sounds like you only had a week. Right. How did you, if you did, and how long did it take for you at all to allow yourself to be in the moment? I know you probably couldn't be yourself all the way because you were still in a war, but was there a time when you allowed yourself to be in the moment? To be in the moment, how long did that take? I don't think I got in the moment in Hawaii. To everyone's chagrin, I just didn't feel it in the words of young people. The vibe wasn't there. I was there. My wife was there, Margie. And in theory, everything was perfect. But in reality, you know what I wanted to do? Get back. That was primary. I was there, and I wanted to be there, but more than anything, I wanted to get back because I couldn't even imagine how my guys made it a whole week without me. Who directed fire? Who was taking care of them? And I still had some months to go. I put it off as long as I could on purpose because I wanted to get most of it behind me, but I wanted to get back there because I still had a job to do. It was weird. A lot of this you don't think about until somebody sort of brings it up. I don't think it's weird. That's why I'm asking it because it occurs to me in my finite brain that, based on all the interviews we've done, is that the veteran, they didn't want to be away from their guys. And even the thing of beauty of being with your wife in this beautiful place, it's hard to rest and relax is what R&R means. And I think it's more of a, I would assume, and you guys correct me if I'm wrong, it's more of a mental game because you probably got the physical rest, but the mental rest maybe never came. I couldn't say it better. I mean, that's exactly the case. Well, you really don't get the rest physically either because that's disrupted and not as it should be. Because if you try to go to sleep one night when you've got something real important to do the next morning, it's on your mind and you don't sleep well. And so their intentions are good and they did everything right. Here, go on and on and on and meet your wife or girlfriend or whatever. Not that it backfired, but I wasn't finished. And so until I got finished, I couldn't really relax. And in my understanding you correctly, and that's why you needed that time in Napa so that you could decompress enough so that you could separate yourself from where you were to where you were going to be next. As best I could. It seemed like a logical use of a few days. Now people might say, why would you not rush home? Well, you don't rush home because it's not you. Well, thank you for sharing that and letting me ask that. I'm grateful that you asked it, Jason, because that was about a thousand times better of a way to ask what I tried pathetically to ask earlier of Tom. So I really appreciate that question. And Tom's answer leads me to an aside I want to make real quickly. Off air before we started, Tom, as you know, we were talking about why it's important to capture and record American veteran stories. And what you've just related to us fits perfectly into that reason. You told us earlier this humorous story of you and Flynn running down the hall saying, we don't want to be leaders. How do we escape being leaders? And the story you just related to us is you had a week's worth of a dream vacation in many cases. Many Americans would consider that a dream vacation. And you couldn't enjoy a millisecond of it because you wanted to get back to your men in Vietnam. That's the power of an American veteran story. The change that you experienced and the change that occurred in your person, in your personhood, saying 180 does not capture it at all. Right. It was a complete transformation. Am I wrong when I say that, or am I right? You're right. At the time, of course, I didn't realize it or verbalize it or recognize it, but, yeah, I did. That's really incredible. One thing I wanted to ask, and then, Jason, I always want to get into what you did after and your life after because there's so much more after war. One last thing. We've had a veteran on who has a very compelling story and is a really intelligent guy. I made a comment to him about the Vietnam War being lost. Yes, I think you know his reaction. He bristled at that. He was very respectful and kind about his response, and he educated me that that is a phrase that no Vietnam veteran wants to hear because they don't see it as we lost. Explain what that means. Yeah, I spoke of it earlier, and that is we could have won the war. I, in a left-handed way, agree that we didn't win the war. First of all, they refused to call it a war. There's 50,000 casualties that didn't die in a war. But they didn't put us in a, like any leadership role, you put people in a position to succeed or to advance, and we weren't put in a position to win the war. And as I said earlier, either we didn't know how to win the war, and that was a lot of it, or we didn't care to win the war. And, yeah, it was a bad move on the United States part. I love this country, but, you know, it was just not a good way to handle. It was misguided leadership. Big time. It became very political. I don't think there's anyone arguing that. Oh, yeah. You were speaking about President Nixon earlier. Oh, yeah. And then Johnson had very different directives for how the world was going to go. Right. And my heart goes out when this subject comes up to the, I think they're called silver star or gold star families. Yeah. You know, then why did my son die? Yeah. Yeah. And that's a complicated question and a complicated answer. And I know we're not here for political purposes, but it's brutal, and we've made similar since. Sure. Right on the heels of it, we've made similar bad decisions, if you will. Absolutely. And, you know, here's to our leadership that pays attention to what we're doing to our young men and so forth. And that goes back to when you talk about being with your men. That's what every veteran we've interviewed and that I've come across. At that point in time when they're in that conflict, battle, war, it's about fighting for the guy next to you, regardless of who's giving the order. Yeah. Exactly. Tom, you've been more than generous with talking about your experience in combat and your experience in Vietnam. Tell us about your life afterwards. Oh, yeah, that's a lot lighter. Yeah, nothing too heroic. As I explained to my wife, it makes me sad that a lot of the perception of Vietnam veterans is that they're wayward or homeless, and a lot of them are, and that's a sad situation, and it breaks my heart. But I believe that I was granted some kind of, like, ability to decompartmentalize my life post-Vietnam and to do it in such a way that it enabled me to be married, stay married, have children, raise those children, and be a good citizen, and I was lucky. A lot of people aren't that lucky. We live, all my kids, I have four children, Tony, Sally, Nick, and Joe, and the best thing you can say about your kids is that they're good kids, and all my kids are good kids. So I was fortunate. I sold my whole life. I own a company now that I've had for about almost 30 years called Bomberito Industrial. I didn't mean to give it a plug, but we sell shelving and pallet racks. We are all about promoting our veterans, so do not hesitate. That's okay. Yeah, and lockers and the like. There was a time it was a pretty nice-sized company, but five or six years ago, I basically brought the world headquarters into my basement. But I still sell to people like Metropolitan Sewer District, Ameren UE. They've been buying the stuff from me for 30 years, and they don't know where. Well, even before that, I worked for another company. So, you know, I've been just so blessed. We're a lucky group, and when we think, oh, our life's imperfect, we just look around, and it is imperfect, but by golly, it's pretty good. Pretty close to perfect. Yeah, we don't have any complaints at all. I wish I walked faster. I heard you mention something, and this isn't in my notes. See, my research isn't infallible. You said 10 to 15 years ago there was a moment in which you began thinking about your service. What was that? Yeah. You know what? That might be the best question I've heard tonight because that did happen to me, and I think, getting back to this compartmentalizing your world, I think, and I never thought about the amount of time, but let's say it was 15 years ago. Fifteen years ago, I had everybody cleared. All my kids were in a functional occupation. Nobody was in jail. It was just wonderful, and, you know, we were having grandkids, and life was good, and I think I did my due diligence, and then I had a little bit of time that I never had before to sort of look back a little bit, and I did. You know, it's funny, too, that I never recently we did a little interview with the Honor Flight at Annie Gunn, and I told this story, and I kind of broke down telling it, and it wasn't at 15 years ago I never would have gone on an Honor Flight. No way, and even when my sister asked me to go, I said, no, I'm not going on an Honor Flight. I'm not, like, that honored guy, and then she, you know, God love and press the issue, and I went on the Honor Flight, and the Honor Flight kind of did a weird kind of closure for me. When I say closure, I mean I don't think I would have done this pre-Honor Flight. You know, all of a sudden, I got to think about it, and the story I told, my son was with me, my youngest son, and I said pre-Honor Flight, and actually even after it, but pre-Honor Flight, the word Vietnam never came out of my mouth. I had a friend come over one time, and he wandered into our, like, dining room that we never go into, and he walked out of it, and he goes, I didn't know you were in the service, and there's all these purple, I didn't put them up, but my wife found medals and stuff, and there's these big, you know, it's like a grotto to me. But it's just funny how those things unfold, and I never talked or have told any of my kids or my wife almost anything we spoke of tonight, but some of it has become epic, like the Woody story. They didn't know about it until a year or two ago. Tom, I think it bears repeating. Jason and I are always so appreciative and feel such a sense of honor and gratitude whenever we have a veteran like yourself on our program sharing stories with such honesty, with such frankness. You have allowed Jason and I to reach into depths, I feel, of your soul and your psyche, and I just want to let you know that I'm very grateful that you allowed us to go to those places with you. Can I say one more? Please. I have a friend of mine that taught me this, and it's tied to, it talks of veterans, but it's tied to combat or not combat and so forth. His theory, and I completely agree with it, is that all veterans, and I don't care what they did or what their MOS was, Military Occupational Specialty, is that what I remember? It doesn't matter. They left their homes, they left their girlfriends or wives, they left their families, and they turned their back on all that. And regardless if they were stationed in New Jersey or California or Vietnam or Korea or wherever, they spent three or four years on a ship. They served our country. And for every infantryman in Vietnam, there were nine or ten people supporting them in Vietnam. And, hey, without them, I wouldn't be sitting here telling this story. So I don't care what a veteran did. If he's a veteran, he's a veteran. I agree with you wholeheartedly. And I just remembered, I would be remiss if I didn't ask this question. Would you tell us just briefly about your brother Vince? Oh, yeah. He's a great guy, and he passed away. But he was the guy I looked up to quite a bit. He preceded me at St. Benedict's. He preceded me in the Army. And he went to OCS and became a second lieutenant. And he went over to Vietnam, you know, very dutifully. He was in the first Air Cav. And he was in Nams or in the Tet Offensive. My dad always was upset because it was only after he'd been there, I think, and I'd been there, he said, I always worried at night. But he said, I realized I had it backwards. I should have been worrying during the day. But my brother Vince was just this great guy that survived Vietnam and did a great job raising a family and so forth. So, in a way, he was kind of my leader and a very good man. And there aren't enough of them. Thanks for sharing the story of your brother. Thank you, Tom. Well, I feel very privileged to be in your presence, Tom, and to hear your story. And like Ethan said, it doesn't fall on deaf ears or feelings for us that we get the opportunity to do this. And I took away quite a few notes that I'm going to go back and look at that you mentioned. One thing you mentioned that I've been chewing on this for about 20 or 30 minutes now, on the other side of this Hawaii thing is your wife. And you mentioned the book, The Women, and I'm going to read that book. And I would be remiss if we didn't remember your wife because she did a lot of this too, and she did a lot without you. And she's still here with you, which is amazing. A lot of these stories that we hear, there's a break in those relationships because of the hardships. And I want to honor her too. And I appreciate you for sharing her with us. And I just want to say thank you. And we're going to go ahead and sign off of the Operation Insight 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 want to share your story, please visit our website at www.operationinsight.org. 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.