Full Keith Plancich Audio

Operation Kailin was a mission where they were supposed to draw enemy troops away from another operation. Their job was to make noise and draw large forces away. They encountered enemy fire before landing and had firefights while patrolling. They found a large enemy supply depot and destroyed it. The depot had roads, pits, and supplies. They also found important documents and maps. They had several firefights, including an all-night grenade fight. The enemy troops were well-equipped and trained. They fought against the 66th NVA Regiment, who were professional soldiers. One of their soldiers was 70 years old and had been fighting for 60 years. Can you please talk about Operation Kailin? What was that mission, what was your job on that mission? Well I was a squad leader, I was a Sergeant E-5, I was a squad leader for 2nd Platoon B Company Strike Force. And the primary mission for that was that we were supposed to go in and simply draw a large amount of enemy troops away from a smaller operation in another area. And that was basically the whole format, was to go into an area, make sure that the enemy troops knew we were there, and to draw them away from a smaller operation. And it was actually a very simple operation. The conception of it didn't turn out that way. Finding anything wouldn't have really, you know, that was a big bonus. But the main thing was simply to draw large forces away. That particular area of Laos they thought had from 20,000 to 30,000 troops in that region. And so this smaller operation, in order to get it functioning right and be successful, we needed to go in and make some noise so that they would all start coming over to where we were at. And basically that's what happened. Take us through some of the highlights of that mission, if you remember. Well, we started taking enemy fire before we landed. Some of the, actually we took enemy fire before we left South Vietnam. We had a little airstrip called Dok To, we were mortared and there were several aircraft that were damaged. And one was, a Cobra was burned up completely. But when we got on the ground, they knew we were there already, you know. A lot of our operations were going to what they call a hot LZ. And we got in on the ground, got our organization set up, and just started patrolling the area. And eventually, we made enemy ground contact, got in some firefights, and then as we were searching through the jungles, in between firefights, we found a pretty good sized enemy supply depot. And we went about our business destroying that. Can you describe the size of the depot and how it was set up? Well, it was large enough to have roads and sidewalks. It had these large pits, square pits, that had thatched roofs over the top of them. And they were loaded up pretty good, there was a lot of supplies in there. There were a half a dozen to a dozen of these large pits, I think it was about a dozen of them. And there was a regular supply office. We went through that and took all the documentation out of that office. We ended up with, I believe it was somewhere around 270 pounds of written documentation, maps, just about everything you could think of that you would find in a military depot or anything like that. Supply sheets, maps of where other depots were at, radio equipment, radio stuff, you know, information. Those maps and documents and personnel reports and things like that ended up being a big deal at the end, didn't it? Well, yes, because the map, what it actually did is it located and identified and actually gave the locations of their entire supply system in Laos and showed where all their demolition, where all of their supply depots were at. And the map showed where all their roads, this depot had bulldozed large roads coming in one side of it and then going out the other. So they had been in there with a bulldozer and there were drums of fuel and crates, rockets and AK-47s and grenades and I saw some bicycles and it was just a general supply depot where their troops could come and resupply themselves. Before we hit the depot, we went to an area that they had set it up like a classroom. It was a hillside but it had been stepped and there was a large empty frame where obviously somebody had put up a sheet or a blackboard or something like that. But it was a training area for their troops. When you were going through the depot area, were you involved in the demolition of the area? Some of it, yes. Who was in charge of that? Just a second. You know, if I could get a cough drop or something like that. My throat. I guess there's a bag of them in there. Do you want a menthol lipstick or one that's honey and lemon? No, a menthol lipstick will be fine, yeah. Sorry about this. Not a problem. Well, this stuff here makes your throat like sandpaper. What it does is in the stuff that I take, a lot of my medication I take my liquid so it has to go into a nebulizer. And it helps, it evaporates the water. So it evaporates all of the water, all the way down to your lungs. That's why it's like your throat turns to sandpaper. You know, stuff tastes like turpentine anyway. Can you tell us what you did in the demolition of that area? Well, we made charges. We made explosive charges and stuff. One of the other platoons did most of it, but everybody pitched in to help. Something like that. It was large enough to where you needed a lot of teamwork. And some areas were set on fire. We were told by the Air Force weeks afterwards that it burned for like a week. You could hear secondary explosions because there were 122mm rockets. Cases of B-40 rockets and mortar rounds. Once they were set on fire, you had a lot of secondary explosions. There was a large plume of smoke going up in the air. We realized from the map that these depots were... We were in a region where there were these small mounds, these hills. Maybe they were 200 or 300 feet high, who knows. Maybe even higher. And every one of those had these depots on them. Because the lowland area probably flooded during the rainy season. But they had a whole network of depots through this whole area. Did you remember any firefights going on during the mission as it progressed? Well, we had several firefights. We had short ones, had long ones. One evening we had an all-night grenade fight. Tell me about it. Well, when we went into our R.O.N. that night, it was nice lush jungles all the way around us. And all night, I have no idea how many grenades were thrown back and forth, but a lot. And in the morning time it looked like a World War I landscape. Everything was all blown down. It was pretty scary that you don't get any sleep because you have no idea if you're going to get hit in the head with a grenade as it comes in. But it was a pretty fierce fight. Can you describe just really what it was like to be in a place where you can't see but you have feet in front of you and you can't see anything coming at you? Can you describe why you can't fire your weapon? Well, you never fire your weapon at night anyway. Because at night time, well, if you absolutely had to, you would. But in a grenade fight, when it's pitch dark, you don't fire your weapon because of the muzzle blast. Then they've got a marker there where they can actually lob in more grenades. At night, with grenades, they may or may not know exactly how far away they are from you or us from them. When you start firing your weapons, it's very obvious where you're located. So there was no automatic weapons fire or anything that night. Do you remember how close the enemy got to you? Pretty close. It was one of those. You could reach out and touch somebody if you were inclined to. The jungles are very thick. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and they're like our woods out there. People have no idea how, you know, a lot of the jungles in Vietnam, you could only see 10 to 20 feet. You know, you have heavy growth and then you have open areas, then heavy growth. In a lot of areas, the canopy is so full that it's dark inside there, even in the daytime, because the light can't penetrate the trees. That particular area was pretty dense jungles. Let's move ahead to some of the moments you remember from this mission. The grenade battle was one you just mentioned. What's another moment that you remember? Well, we were in several ferocious firefights. Take me through one, please. It's hard to really pick one out, but they tried to come back in when they realized that we had the depot and take the depot back. We had a firefight to prevent that and we prevailed. It's hard to remember exactly how many firefights there were, but there were several. Some of them can become pretty ferocious. I mean, they were heavily armed troops. We were heavily armed and they were heavily armed. We had some pretty good firefights. It's hard to describe a firefight because you might be shooting at a guy or a guy might shoot at you and he might only be 10 feet from you in the brush. You can walk right up on somebody and not realize they're there. That's how thick some of this foliage is sometimes. I guess you could call a firefight organized chaos because in the long run that's what it is. You've got guns going off everywhere, bullets flying everywhere, grenades going off, people getting hit, and it happens very rapidly. The sound when you have hundreds of guys on both sides firing their weapons is unbelievable. It's pretty scary, but you have to learn to control your fear. If you don't, you'll end up being a casualty. You had a very different enemy than what Pajama BC in itself described. Well, I fought for DC before too, but most of the time we used to go up against elements of the 66th NVA Regiment, and they are professional, hardcore North Vietnamese soldiers. They wear uniforms with pith helmets, and they're using Chinese and Soviet equipment, and that equipment is excellent. They had excellent assault rifles. They had light and heavy machine guns, grenades, B-40 rocket launchers. They're not shy about using them. I mean, they're well-trained troops. They've been doing that business for a long time. Unlike American soldiers that were over there for a while and then came back, those boys were there all the time. I had one other man in my company or in my platoon named Zhu who at that particular time he was 70 years old. Zhu was on tailwind. He had been a soldier for 60 years. He fought the French. He fought the Japanese during World War II. He fought the French again after World War II. He's fought the Chinese. He fought in a lot of the little skirmishes that the Laotians and Cambodians and Vietnamese had sporadically, you know, and then he was fighting the North Vietnamese. He was a motion yard. So they had a lot of experienced men over there. You mentioned something I thought was very intriguing. The term Charlie or whatever, and you have a different way of mentioning the enemy. Well, Charlie was just an abbreviation. Charlie started out as Vietnamese communist. Americans always like to shorten things and give people nicknames. Vietnamese communist, VC, ended up just being Charlie. That's how that came about. Just young guys just abbreviate. It's like IHOP. So the International House of Pancakes, you know. But there's another term you mentioned to me, and it had to do with the respect that you guys had for the NVA regulars. You changed that word. Well, I, you know, there were American soldiers over there that called them, you know, slopeheads, gooks, all this stuff, and I never looked at it that way. I always usually referred to them as either VC or NVA. It might be just the fact that most of the people in Special Forces are a lot more professional about things, and they don't get involved in a lot of nonsense. I was referring to Mr. Charles. Mr. Charles. You never called him Mr. Charles. Oh, I know guys did. I could have, but I don't remember. Okay. You know, you're talking about something that happened 32 years ago. Okay. Here is, you're talking about the professional soldier in the conversation we had had one time. There was a dialogue that came up as far as helping medically North Vietnamese soldiers, not until, but that you weren't just there to kill them all, but you actually remembered an incident where an NVA was perhaps up against a tree with an ID. Could you recount that story, please? Well, that was Gary Verose. Our medic was involved in that. There was a wounded NVA soldier nearby him, and he crawled over during the firefight and patched the guy up. I mean, what can you say about medics? Verose was a very good medic. He was a great guy, still is a great guy. But, you know, this running over and shooting a wounded man, I don't think that most, I don't know any, most of the guys I know wouldn't do it. If you could save him, you might take him back as a POW or something like that, but if he's down and out and can't affect you, you know, do anything to you, that might have happened other places, but anybody I know in Special Forces always prided themselves as being a lot more professional, and we had our own unwritten code of conduct of how we conducted ourselves because the guys, you know, you have a lot of pride in yourself, and a lot of other people have a lot of stake in you, you know. I don't know of any incidences where any of the guys on any operations would go out of their way to, like, kill a wounded man that was basically, you know, incapacitated or anything like that. I've never heard of anybody doing it. The mission that Gary Verose went over and patched up one of the North Vietnamese soldiers. That was before Tailwind. I think, actually, I believe he did it a couple of times, so you'd have to ask him, but it wouldn't surprise me if he did it more than just once because he was a very compassionate individual and a very good medic. At least you knew in the field that if you were injured, that Verose would be there. I mean, I was with Verose one day when he was trying to patch up one of our mountain yards, and I was holding some stuff for him, and a B-40 rocket came in, and believe it or not, it landed right between us, and it exploded, but it was not a, I think they had an anti-tank round in it. It hit the ground, and the wounded mountain yard he was patching up got tore up real bad, and it tore Gary Verose's foot up pretty bad, and I got blown backwards. I ended up with some stuff in one of my legs, but Gary wrapped his foot up and kept going, and he hopped. In fact, that was on Tailwind. He hobbled around on that leg for several more days. No complaints. He was a hell of a good man. Gary Verose received the Distinguished Service Cross, but he's been nominated for the Medal of Honor. Would you like to comment on this? Well, I'd like to see him get it. Would you put the Medal of Honor in your answer? I want to see Gary receive it. Yeah, I would like to see Gary Verose receive the Medal of Honor. I like him. He's a terrific guy. I think for all of the stuff that he did over there and the person that he was, he endangered himself, even wounded a lot of times, crawling from foxhole to foxhole. I would say that if anybody deserves it, he deserves it. If he got the Medal of Honor, it would be 30 years too late, but I'd like that a lot. I really would. Let's talk about, at this moment, your commander, Team McCarley. Yes. Tell me about this man and how you felt him as a leader. Well, back in those days when we were young, we called him Captain Mac, or just Mac. As far as I'm concerned, he was then, he is now. He was one hell of a guy. He was a very disciplined officer. He let you get away with a few things, but when it came to the point where you were going a little bit overboard, then he was a no-nonsense. When he told you he wanted something done, you did it. I've always had a lot of respect for him. Quite frankly, I was lucky enough to be able to work with him over there. But as far as military officers that I've met, and I've met a lot of them, he's still one of the best in my book. He was a compassionate individual. If you had a problem, you could go talk to him. He liked to get to know his men and knew what their capabilities were. He was a good leader. Out in the field, he was always a real common-sense guy. He used common sense, where he'd look at what was going on and make the right decisions. But I've always had a lot of respect for him. I think that everybody else did, too. You mentioned an incident with Doc Rose and you helping him out on Tailwind where he takes a round in the foot. That's the first time I'd heard that. Well, it wasn't a round. It was grenade fragments from the explosion. Gary had a blue about half his shoe off and half of his jungle boot off, and he picked out most of the fragments by himself. But believe me, it was a wound that hurt quite badly. He hobbled around on it for a couple extra days. He gave himself whatever he could. Then he just kept on going, just kept on. We ended up using safety pins on the mountain yard. The guy was split from one ankle all the way around and down to the other ankle. Gary took such good care of him that when I left Vietnam, I saw that mountain yard, he was playing volleyball. It shows you what Gary was capable of. I trusted him with my life, and I believe the other guys did, too. I mean, if you had a bad wound out there, regardless of what they tell you, medics can do and not do. He was the closest doctor we had, and he's the man that's going to keep you alive. We had some pretty bad gunshot wounds and other wounds. He was extremely competent, very knowledgeable, and you trusted him. You had to. You know that if you got shot and you were in a foxhole, Gary would be coming along there sooner or later to patch you up, and he did. Can you recall any humorous stories with Dr. Rose during this mission? I know there was a couple of incidences, but it's been, like I say, it's been 32 years. My memory starts to fade on it. Gary was a pretty good guy. We've gone through the grenade now. We've gone through Dr. Rose. We've gone through your appreciation of Gene McCarley. Tell us about some of the other people that you fought with, Pete Landon, Mike Bacon. Yeah. Well, all of us got along real well. Lieutenant Landon was our platoon leader, or second platoon, and he was a great guy. He was a great guy. He was a good officer. We had already been there for quite some time before Lieutenant or Pete Landon came. Everybody's got to learn stuff, and he would listen to people's ideas, and we worked together as a team, and he was great about that. Just because you're an officer doesn't mean, especially a young one, doesn't mean you know everything, and what you don't know has gotten a lot of guys killed. The great thing about most of the guys that we had with us is everybody worked as a team. When you had a problem, everybody sat down and figured out the best way to do it. The best way might not have come from an officer or a high-ranking sergeant. If somebody came up with a little bit better idea, it would be incorporated. Everybody had a say-so, and all the NCOs, everybody knew absolutely what was taking place, and we worked as a team. Ego and rank, then, in special ops, where you were in special forces and so on, that wasn't the key thing. Well, it has to be left on the wayside, especially if you get in bad firefights, because the enemy doesn't care if you're a general or a private, and the bullets certainly don't care. You have to work as a team to survive those type of things. An officer or NCO has to learn to get to know the guys he's working with. Same thing with we knew how the Montagnards would react to things. You have to be able to look at somebody and you know what they're thinking, or you just nod your head and they know what you're trying to convey. And that's the way you work. A lot of special forces, that's what it is. You've got a group of men, and it's a team, it's teamwork. Tell me about the Montagnards and how you feel about them. Oh, the Montagnards are wonderful people. They're not oriental. They have round eyes. They're more like a small version of the American Indian. They have totem poles, except their totem poles have animals which are known to them. They have elephants on them and monkeys and birds and stuff. They live in villages. Most of their villages or their buildings are like five to eight feet above the ground. They're on stilts. They're a wonderful, wonderful people. Some have decent education. Some of them don't. But most of them are very talented. Cough. Cough. Cough. Cough. Cough. Cough. Cough. Cough. Cough. Cough. Cough. Cough. Cough. But education's a funny thing. We base somebody's education on the way we look at things. And you take a Harvard man out in the jungles and he'd get lost, that'd be it for him. But these villagers, even though they might not have a lot of formal school-type education, they're educated to their environment. They're very, very, very talented people. They can pick up stuff and make things out of it that you wouldn't believe. I had a lot of respect for them. They had a lot of respect for us, and I had a lot of respect for them. I mean, I trusted them with my life, and they trusted me with their lives. Tell me about your Montagnards as fighting men. They were good. Some of the older ones were a lot better. Some of the Montagnards we had in B Company were only 14, 15 years old. And maybe their father was there or their uncles were there with them. They had a very deep loyalty to us. And believe me, if they could do something to help, they would do it. Nobody seems to forget that wars are the end result when politicians don't do their job. That's basically what it is. Nobody likes to go to war. Nobody likes fighting in wars, that's for sure. Every time we told them when they knew they had to do something, they did it. Can you describe them as trackers? They're wonderful out in the jungles. They can see things in the jungles that you can't until you start getting used to your environment. They used to pick out all the different plants and show me that you can eat. But there's a weird green leaf plant with a white stem that when you boil it up, you swear to God it's a potato that you're eating. They would dig up tubers in the jungles. Out in the jungles in Asia you have wild chickens. I mean, they wouldn't starve to death. They eat a lot of bugs too, which I've tried, but I wouldn't make my main diet out of it. You're not going to starve out in the jungles with a montagnard. They come up with some of the darndest things. They know where to look. They don't want plants to eat. They taught me a lot of stuff. I've gone to their villages. I have a lot of respect for the people there. They're a very caring, giving people. I've helped deliver babies over there a couple of times. When Zoo, I was talking about him earlier, he was in his seventies. They have multiple wives, some of them do. When his youngest wife had a baby, she had a little boy. We were invited to his house to have some water buffalo meat. I brought a blanket as a gift for the baby and the mother and all that. He was a very proud man. But I had a lot of respect for him to spend all his life as a soldier and the hardships and stuff that he went through. You've got to have respect for somebody like that. You've got to remember that I was 19, 20, and 21 when I was there. He's old enough to be a grandfather. The guys I worked with, we were all like brothers. When you're fighting out in the jungles and you almost die and you're injured along with these guys, you actually become closer than your living relatives. For one, I worked with a lot of great guys. It was a privilege to meet them and know them. We lost some very, very good men that were killed over there. It was a sad thing, but you have to go on. You can't stop. But even in our company or A Company or the recon teams, I was proud to be over there and I was glad. I would have stayed longer. I extended my time over there because I wanted to continue working with the Montagnards and the guys that I knew. A lot of those men had stayed over there for quite some time. It wasn't just go over there for a year and go someplace else. For the most part, Special Forces doesn't operate that way. And I was proud to be involved with all of those guys. There's an emotional connection between Special Forces and the Montagnards. Yes. The Montagnard people up in North Carolina. Yes. Can you explain that to the audience? Well, it's hard. We have a kinship with them. Special Forces always worked with the Montagnards, more so than with the Vietnamese. In 1975, when the thing ended and the United States pulled out, a lot of those Montagnard families were left there. Sadly, a tremendous amount of them suffered gravely in the hands of the Vietnamese. I've always felt that we let them down. It's a heartbreaking thing. They tried to bring a lot of them over, but I wish we could have brought all of them over. It's always bothered me all my life that we couldn't have brought more of them over. It's hard to describe. Unless you were there and working with those people in that environment, it's hard to explain to somebody who wasn't there how it really was because you don't see it on a lot of these war movies they have on television. I see some of those things, and I thought, if I did that, you'd be dead in five minutes. You don't play radios in the jungles. You don't walk around and talk loud. You don't smoke. A lot of these Hollywood producers, I don't know where they get their ideas, but it's not reality. Let's go ahead and move back into the mission. On the 13th, there was an attempt to evacuate the wounded because 2nd Platoon was beginning to accumulate quite a few wounded people. Yes. I think almost everybody was wounded at one time or another. I think in that whole operation, I was wounded about six times. Everybody was wounded just about every day from either bullet wounds or fragments. When you have explosions, you've got rocks and splinters from trees. It sounds funny, but people have been spraying their ankles and stuff for fall down, cracked your knee open. So everybody was in pretty bad shape. Did you see that helicopter come in on the 13th, the one that couldn't make it, had the tree strike and crash? Yes. Tell me how you felt about that helicopter coming in and why it couldn't stop, why it couldn't help when it went off and it itself became a casualty. Can you comment? Well, I was more concerned about the crew. I can take care of myself on the ground. It would have been nice to have gotten those people out of there. Some of them needed medical attention pretty badly, but I was worried about the crew of the helicopter. Those guys are putting their lives on the line trying to do stuff for us, and they become casualties. It's pretty heartbreaking. I've been in three helicopter crashes, one before tailwind on a C-34 and then a Jolly Green Giant during tailwind and then what everybody used to call a slick after tailwind. It's pretty scary. It's not like a car wreck. But the guys on the ground were worried about the helicopter crew. I mean, you have to. You're human. And it's a tense, emotional situation. I'm going to take you back just a little bit. Just when we were leaving for the break, you mentioned to me in passing as far as Doc Rose, which I've called wounded, so it brought me back to what we just said. You mentioned that Doc Rose, it was getting so bad with so many wounded that he was patching up a martyr yard with safety pins. Can you tell us that story again, please? Well, the wound was such that it was so gaping that you had to do something with it. I mean, using safety pins is not uncommon. Medics carry a lot of them. You know what I mean? This man was split from his ankle. I mean, we're talking right to the bone all the way around down to his other ankle. He was the one that took the brunt of the B-40 rocket. It was a martyr yard. I believe he was actually in the South Vietnamese Army, but he was a martyr yard. Very nice guy. He was later wrapped in banana leaves, and you let the magnets get in there and keep the wound cleaned. That's what you do. Rose had a lot of people to check on and take care of, plus himself. He had an assistant, a martyr yard assistant. Tell me about Cooch. Cooch always wanted to be an X-ray technician, and I think he ended up actually becoming an X-ray technician. He was a little short, kind of a homely little guy. He was always grinning, always laughing, very dedicated to Rose. And being a medic was very important to him. Anything in the medical field was very important to him. He told me once that he wanted to become a, I believe it was an X-ray technician, and I think eventually he did. But he helped match up a lot of people. Did he ever get out of the country? To be honest, I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think so. There were a lot of the guys that I wish could have come out of there, but I don't believe they did. Did you see one in the North Vietnamese that killed these guys after you left? It's my understanding that they did a lot of purging. There's always been a traditional and cultural difference between the martyr yards and the Vietnamese. You see, originally Vietnam, way back when, was a martyr yard country. The Vietnamese are actually southern Chinese that were pushed south way back when, and there was no love between them. The martyr yards had been persecuted by the Vietnamese for a very long time, going back hundreds of years from what I understand. It's my understanding that there was a lot of, I'll just say purging at the end. I doubt that a lot of our guys survived any of that, which is a shame. I don't think anybody will ever really know how many people lost their lives after that conflict was over. Let's go to the 14th. At the time of the final extraction, you're getting low on food. You're all injured. You've been wounded multiple times. Like I said, everybody had been wounded multiple times. Low on ammunition. Tired. Nobody had any sleep. In most of the operation, we were in actually enemy contact a lot. There was never any time where you could actually lay down and sleep for any length of time. It was an exhausting thing. I think they were bringing in more and more troops because we had blown up this one dump, and they assumed that we knew where all of them were at. The operation was based on the premise that when you took such a large unit into that area, the North Vietnamese would believe that you did know exactly where all of their supply depots and stuff were, and that's what had them coming down on us. We were outnumbered in that thing right from the very beginning, and it was a little rough. Tell me about the extraction. Well, the first aircraft came in, and all of the aircraft were under fire. I believe it was the, I think it was the, maybe the third platoon went out first, and then parts of the, and a portion of the first platoon, or it could have been opposite, but a lot of the second platoon and a portion of one of the other platoons ended up being on the third aircraft. And so it was Pete Landon, Bernard Bright, Captain McCarley, and myself, Gary Rose, Jim Lucas, and I'm not sure, a couple other guys were on the last aircraft. And everybody got on board, and Captain McCarley and I were the last two to step on board. Matt was actually the last man off the ground, which is his right as the commanding officer. He was going to make sure that everybody is out, you know, everybody there is gone. And so the captain and I and Gary Rose were sitting on the very tail of the aircraft, and there was a couple other guys there too, but, you know, at the time you don't think you're going to have to ever remember all of this stuff. So we're all exhausted, we're all wounded, and Gary was working on one of our mountain yards, and I was helping him. I was giving this guy mouth-to-mouth, and I had my hand on the back of his head, and I realized that the whole back of his head was gone. So I tapped Gary on the shoulder, you know. But we were taking hits, and I believe one of the Marine Corps gunners was hit, and Gary was working on these people inside the aircraft as we were taking off, and you could hear the bullets striking the aircraft. And some of them would come right up to the floor. And we got up at a pretty good altitude, and you kept hearing the hits, and then the engines started sounding funny. And then, you know, they can tell you what they want about helicopters auto-rotating. Well, they auto-rotate about the same speed as a rock does. And I knew we were going down, and I turned to Matt, who was sitting right there, and I turned to him and I said, I'll see you in hell. And he smiled at me and nodded his head, and we waited to hit the ground. It seemed like an eternity. You know, it's hard to tell the time lapses there, but we hit the ground, and she rolled. Came to a dead stop, and I remember everybody was like being inside of a kaleidoscope. You know what a kaleidoscope is. Arms and legs and rifles and everything flying through the air. And the aircraft buckled when it came to a stop, and Matt had struck his face so bad it had knocked all his teeth out. And he was like semi-conscious. And when everybody came to their senses, we started trying to get these guys out of the aircraft. Well, we had several bodies on board. We had a lot of casualties. Jimmy Lucas and I, I think Jimmy Lucas and I were the first two out, because he was right there on the end. So we got out and got some of these other people out, and I reached out and got Captain McCarley and pulled him out. And when we got control of ourselves, Jimmy Lucas got back into the top of the aircraft, and I couldn't reach, so we stacked the... Give me a minute here. We stacked the dead mutton yards up, and I stood on top of them so that I could reach the aircraft to pull the other people out. Excuse me. Let's take a short break. Sorry. Steve? Is it rolling? You'll have to forgive me for losing my composure, but that was one of the things about that wreck, the crash, that really bothered me, that I tried to forget for all those years that I was standing on top of those dead bodies, because they were my friends, to help get the other guys out. People don't understand that I had not been involved in something like that, but I think of all the guys, you look back, I think they'd all agree it was nothing short of a miracle that that aircraft didn't go up in flames. Everybody was drenched, and there was aircraft fuel that was running out everywhere, and we were all packed in that thing like sardines, arms and legs all twisted up, and it's only by the grace of God that thing didn't blow up on impact. Only one man was killed in the actual crash. One of the Montagnards had his head crushed when it buckled. But we got everybody out of there, all the bodies, all the equipment, everything, and it was unbelievable, but this second aircraft came in, and there was no place to land, so he turned around, he backed up to the bank, and as he hovered over the river, dropped the tailgate, and that's how we loaded the aircraft. We were taking incoming rounds through this whole thing. It was quite a thing, but we didn't leave anybody behind. What did you think of the piloting skills of Bill Doughty and Don Fossey? It was pretty hard landing, but the Marines that were on that operation with us had helped us. I've got nothing bad to say about them boys at all. They were great. Like I say, it was a miracle that he was able to get that. The C-53 is a very large aircraft, and at the rate, the speed that thing was coming down, I don't know how much control over that aircraft he had, but probably not a lot. It was amazing. The guy worked a miracle. When you have a crash like that and you walk away from it, it's really something. At the crash, you're out of the aircraft. Yes. You've taken some of the dead bodies out. Yes. Now you've got a bunch of injured people inside. Yes. You're on your side. Yes. How did you help get everybody out? What do you remember? Jimmy Lucas got up first and started just grabbing people, grabbing by the collar and dragging them and throwing them out. There was no gentle handling whatsoever. We couldn't. Then we got Captain McCarley out. Eventually, I got back up into the aircraft because we had more people on the ground to pass people down to. It was just grab them and throw them out and hope that somebody outside broke their fall because the thing was smoking. It was a miracle that it just didn't go up at any second. We just went in and out of that thing and threw as many people each time as we could. We had live grenades laying around on the floors. The Marine gunners were injured. It was just like a bunch of guys packed in a sardine can. I don't think anybody really knows how long we were at the crash site, but it was something. Everyone got out and got in the lab and got in the aircraft? Yes. Everybody got out. Everybody. The dead, wounded, everybody. We didn't leave anybody behind. We wouldn't do that. We didn't get shot down because they were coming after us. They watered those aircraft down. If they had gotten a chance, they would have. It was a miracle that the guy was even able to get in to pick us all up. There was no place to land. We ended up on the edge of a river bank. There was tall trees around things. He hovered and turned that thing around, hovered it, and back ramped down onto the river bank. That's how we got on. There's one humorous type story that comes out of this crash. It's Pete Landon. He said he was knocked unconscious and ended up being a stepladder. Can you recount what you know of this? Well, I know that he was drug out and thrown on the ground. I mean, you couldn't. Even the wounded were drug out and thrown right out the back door. It was the only thing he could do. So I'm sure that he ended up in the same pile. The next guy would have been right down on top of him. For all I know, I probably walked over him a couple times. But it couldn't be helped. I mean, even Captain McCarley was lucky he had a face lift. He struck his head so hard. It was just one of those things where you had to have been there. It's hard to describe. It was just amazing that we survived that thing. A very successful mission when you look back at it. Yes, when you look at all the information that we ended up bringing back, yes. It was successful in two points. It was successful to the fact that we did draw all the enemy troops away from the other operation and successful about all the materials we brought back. This room was very close in here. A little closer. You can hang out a little longer? Yeah, but not too much longer, please. Tell me when you're set. Pardon me? Tell me when you're set. Okay, I'm all right now. You're very proud of your service. Oh, yes. Proud of the men you served with. Yes, it's like a brotherhood. I even still remember the ones that we lost. Somebody has to remember them. Yeah, those guys are like my brother. It's hard to explain to anyone else. But when you live with people and you've almost died with them and everything else, you have a different relationship. We're all like blood kin, I guess you could say. I have a lot of respect for all of them. If they needed my help, even tomorrow, I would do whatever I could to help them. And I'm sure that they would do the same thing for me. Do you have any thoughts or opinions on Robert Van Boster? I was hoping you wouldn't ask me that. If you'd like not to answer, you don't have to. Well, it broke my heart when I saw him on television and heard the things that came out of his mouth. I actually, and I hate to say this, but I always had a bad feeling about Lieutenant Van Boster. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I was always wary of him. He did some very rash things that I thought were very irresponsible. But I was just shocked. I mean, there was nothing that he said that was true. What his motives were behind it and stuff, I had no idea. I spoke to him once on the telephone for about five minutes in the last 32 years. I don't know. I would rather wait and tell him what I think if he was in person. But it turned out to be a very big disappointment. Mike Fagan, a very good friend of yours. Yes, Michael and I have known each other for over 30 years. I'm the godfather of his children. During the CNN tailing thing, there were some things that he said. I want to take it out of context. Do you have any information to provide about that, any perspective? Well, I know that Michael was in pretty bad shape medically and then most likely emotionally. I think that, well, it's my profound opinion that the people in CNN took great advantage of the fact that he was under heavy medication and I think he was coerced into saying the things that he did. What's Mike told you? Basically about the same thing. I mean, I've forgiven Michael. Michael's like my brother. I love him to death. It wasn't the Michael that I know that was on that television. I know him that well. I think that he was coerced or tricked into making all the statements that he did. I blame that on the CNN. To me, it looks like they were intentionally out to take advantage of him for their own reasons. Let's talk about that broadcast. When is the first time you've ever heard about CNN's Operation Tail in the Time Magazine story? I was never contacted by anybody. The first time I knew anything about this was one night. There was an advertisement about a brand-new magazine show called CNN Newsstand, and I thought, well, I'll turn it on and watch it. It was either on 8 or 9 o'clock, and I turned it on, and the announcer said that they had a big sensational breaking story and all this, and talked about secrets kept for over 30 years and things. I just couldn't believe it. The guy said when he said, this Valley of Death Operation Tailwind. Then the next thing I know, a photograph of me is on the television screen. There was nobody with me except my dog, so I don't know what my face looked like, but I was just astounded. I was just shocked that anybody even remembered it, let alone had something on television. The more I watched it, the worse it got. There was nothing in that entire broadcast that was true. Then Michael ends up on there and Van Buskirk, and I just couldn't believe it. It shocked me at first, and then I ended up being just enraged about it. I think after I calmed down, I was just very deeply hurt about the whole thing. I knew, and they said, well, we had extensive interviews with all these people. Nobody ever contacted me. I knew absolutely nothing about this story, because if they had asked me, I would have told them that no, their entire story was untrue. You were one of 16 Native Americans on the mission, and you were contacted. Yes. Out of hundreds that were interviewed. Yes, I was never contacted. In fact, none of the other guys, nobody even called me and told me that this was going on. I knew absolutely nothing until I turned on the television set that day, and I just couldn't believe it. A week goes by. Operation Tailwind, new voices. Yeah, well, what they were doing was they were having these little sound bites every day, every couple hours on TV about this Tailwind Valley of Death thing and then showing mine. It was like an advertisement, and I just couldn't believe it. I think it was about three days after this started, I called CNN in Atlanta, and the phone rang, and I asked them. I said, I guess they have some kind of a central operator, and I said, I need to get a hold of someone who is the producer of this Valley of Death thing, this CNN newsstand program, and I told the young lady who I was and why I needed to get a hold of somebody. I said, this story is completely false, and I want it stopped. I said, I need to speak to, I said, Bernard Shaw, anybody, or the producer. The girl said, well, sorry, they don't take phone calls. I said, well, please put me on to somebody, and she ended up hanging up on me. So about two more days went by, and on one of the noon broadcasts on TV, Secretary of Defense William Cohen was on, and reporters were asking him about this Operation Tailwind Valley of Death thing, and he said, well, this happened a long time ago. We're not quite sure yet what this is actually all about. Nobody has told us. So I got on the telephone, and I called the Pentagon, and I asked for the Secretary of Defense, and they put me through, and one of his assistants answered, and I said, I need to speak to the Secretary of Defense William Cohen. I didn't give them enough time to get back there. They said, well, he's at a big news conference. I gave him my name, address, phone number, everything, and I explained to him who I was and that I was on this Operation Tailwind. I gave them as much information as I could on the phone, and I flat told the person who was a woman, I said, the story that CNN has is completely false. I said there was gas used in that operation during the extraction, but it was CS gas, and they thanked me and all that, and that was it. When did you decide to move forward with the lawsuit, and why? They kept showing these programs, and I guess it was about a week after that. I was so upset about the whole thing, I went down to a law firm, and then I realized that Time Magazine had gotten a hold of this thing too, and I went down to an attorney's office, and I explained that I was the person they kept showing on TV, and what could I do about it? And it started from there. It's been going on for six years now. It's heartbreaking in a way because these large organizations like CNN, they can blatantly come in and just accuse, they were accusing me and my fellow soldiers of war crimes, of all these heinous murders and using weapons of mass destruction, which syrin gas is classified as, and it's hard to fight back against them. They ruin your life if they don't care what they've done to you, and then when you try to take some kind of action against them, they intentionally victimize you again. They treat people very badly. So I've been fighting this thing now for six years. What would you like to see as, at the end of this courtroom, defendants leave the case, what would you like to see? I would like to see all of us vindicated that it was not a true story. I would like to see them admit that they made the story up. They intentionally made it up for their own benefits. I'd like an apology. I'd like them to spend as much time on an apology, a real apology, as they did on this program. I don't realize how vicious the people at CNN could be until I myself ended up being involved in this kind of stuff. They have absolutely no respect for anyone, and it's pretty pathetic. It's real sad. Are you talking about the attorneys or the journalists? You know, the journalists and everything from CNN and the attorneys that they hired to get them out of their troubles. All along, everybody at CNN knew that this was a completely made-up story. I mean, they had to have known. When you look back at how it was done, it was very obvious that there was a lot of stuff that wasn't right. But I believe they did it to bolster the newsstand program, to knock 60 Minutes off the air, and I believe that several of the news personnel thought they'd probably get a Pulitzer Prize out of this thing, and they didn't care how they did it to get it. They devastate people's lives. It's messed my life up very badly for the last six years, and it's damaged my health very badly. Do you suffer from ailments that are related to your service in Vietnam? Yes. Can you explain some of what you're suffering from? Well, exposure to—no one ever likes to admit that it's Agent Orange, so they'll say exposed to herbicides. I have that problem. It's caused me to have COPD. I have something wrong with my nervous system. I'm only about—I'm deaf in this ear, half deaf in this ear. This one is damaged in an explosion. I have half my rib cage gone on my left side, and the parts of the ribs that are there are very sharp, and so my left lung has a massive scar tissue all the way down the side of it, and it's always been very painful. Can you explain how you had those ribs damaged? Well, they were broken in the first helicopter crash that I was in in 1970. They were re-injured in the tailwind helicopter crash, and then they were injured again in the third helicopter crash after tailwind, so for 33 years I've had this very painful—they puncture my lung, and I cough up a lot of blood. Do you think you'll live to see the end of this? I don't know. I hope so, but I don't know. I would like to, but I don't think my doctor would want to bet on it. Who knows? The CNN people, they know that I have a lot of medical problems, and they've intentionally drugged this out as much as they can. Maybe one day I'll get my justice. If I don't, if I'm not alive when it comes, well, at least my friends will know. It's pretty sad, but most people don't realize that these large corporations can do this to anybody they feel like. They can ruin a person's life, and they don't care. They make money, or they get prizes, and they care less what they do to an individual. And they resent you for trying to—you fight back and try and clear your name and your honor, and they try and intimidate you and actually try and turn you into a horrible person. You know, and they make a lot of innuendos. Well, you're no good anyway, so we don't care kind of thing. They've been doing that to me for six years. Who is Keith Plankett? Well— If you put your name in the answer, too. I'm just—I was a young man that went into the service. I fought for my country like a lot of young men did, and then after that I've done various things. I'm simply—I'm getting older now, I'm ill, and I'm just simply trying to live some kind of a peaceful, quiet life before my end. You know, it's just amazing that for— that operation was classified top secret. I never spoke about it for all these years, and it's amazing to me that CNN would even find out about this thing. How they did, I have no idea. You know, I think that Robert Van Buskirk must have had something to do with it, but I don't know. I haven't spoken to him about this. What would you like to say to the people who are watching this who may not understand the Vietnam War and just take these news stories at face value? What do you want to say to the audience about this mission, about what you guys were accused of, and what you guys really stand for? Well, it's sad that, you know, you're a young man and you're in the service of your country. You're trying to do your job. You're getting injured, and a lot of men are killed during your job. And for the sake of money, a news organization wants to make it into a dirty, terrible thing and turn you into some vicious, you know, war criminal when none of it was true. I mean, I'm proud of the medals that I got in the service and all that, but I'm more proud of the men that I got to serve with. And a lot of people, the average American, they believe a lot of the news media. Even our Constitution, it was put in there. The media is so important. It's like a free press, guaranteed by the Constitution. But the Constitution doesn't say anything about intentionally libeling people and putting out false stories. People rely on the news media. Our government conveys their wishes through the news media. And to have a few people turned into their own little, you know, unjust thing is sad. It's sad. A lot of people were against the Vietnam War, and that's very understandable. They probably should not have been fought. I don't think it accomplished anything in the long run, except for a lot of young men losing their lives. I don't know, you'd have had to have been there to understand, I guess. But since this thing happened to me, and then you had the Dan Rather thing just recently, it makes you wonder what to believe when you watch these programs on television. I mean, I watch them in greater detail now, and I see things a lot of times in the news that doesn't make any sense. They use a lot of fill-in things that just, if you look at the entire story in its entirety, the sequence is not right. I think the American public ought to be very wary of these large media corporations and what they are actually doing to people. I mean, if it wouldn't have been me on this, it's going to be somebody else on some other story. You had the phony papers on the President of the United States. I want CNN to vindicate and to apologize, not only to me and the men that were on that operation and the Marines, but to all the men and women who were in the United States Armed Forces that have put their lives on the line, and in some cases lost them, so that the American people live the quality of life that we do. If it wasn't for the American servicemen, the American people wouldn't have what they have to this day. And I think a lot of people have a tendency to forget that. And I don't know. How much time did this take? Switch out. You're going to roll. I want one more question with you. Changing tape. Nobody moved. Quick tape change. I was thinking I got two of them on that and one of them on another operation. I don't remember now. How many decorations did you receive in your service? How many silver stars? Well, I have one silver star, and I have for gallantry and action, and my bronze star is for heroism. Let's go ahead and roll. My bronze star is for heroism and combat. I have the Army Commendation Medal, Army Air Medals, Purple Hearts. I received a silver star on Operation Tailwind. And there's several other ones too. I just can't recall them all. Who is the Vietnam veteran? Talk to the public at large. Talk to kids today. Who is the Vietnam veteran? Well. Is it these people that CNN talked about, the war criminals, the peregrinators, the baby killers and women killers? No. Who is the Vietnam veteran? Well, most of the young men that I knew did their job with pride, and they came back. Now they're my age, either a little bit younger or a little bit older, but they're family men that have families and care about their children. A lot of the stories that came out of Vietnam by the news media of the cutting off of years and atrocities and all that, a lot of that was embellished by the reporters, either to bring more life to their story or they had their own personal gains or their political motives. I personally never saw any, not even the guys in my company, my malting yards, or any of the other guys in any company or recon teams ever commit any kind of an atrocity or cut off ears or all that, just all the stories you hear. I don't know any man over there that would have done that. I don't know any man over there that would have lost so much, had so much disrespect for himself that he would have done something like that. And the other guys wouldn't have let him anyway. We were professional soldiers, regardless of what our age was, whether we were as old as Sergeant Adair or Captain McCarley or, you know, I'm 19 years old. But I was proud to be with the men that I was with, and I was proud to work with them. I was proud to work with the malting yards. I wouldn't have disgraced myself to do some of the things that you hear about that they claim other soldiers did. No, I don't know anybody that worked there that would have disgraced themselves doing it. Is there anything else you want to say in closing that we haven't covered that you would like to get off your chest as far as this legal case, Operation Tailwind, the real story, how you feel about it, what your hopes and dreams are? I just want all of us to be vindicated of this. I want all of this cleared up. I would like to have CNN face up and admit to all the horrible things that they did, and they did them intentionally. They just happened to get caught. If I do get anything out of this, I'm going to put it into an educational foundation for children that can't afford to go to college and stuff. Your education is the foundation you build your life on. And if you don't have a good education, your life's going to be a lot harder. But I want them for once in their lives as people at CNN to stand up and really look at their conscience and see what they had actually done, how vicious they were. I think that the American public needs to stand up and demand that all of these news media organizations be responsible for what they're doing and they're called to task when they're not. It's a vital role in American daily life. The news media has been a vital role. Communications has been a vital role in the American history. And it's much too important to let individuals contaminate it for their own jealous reasons. And I hope the American public watch all of these agencies a lot more so prevent them from ruining somebody else's life. It's just, I don't know. Thank you very much. All right, thank you for having me. Let's turn off the light. Let me ask Mitch if there's anything that he knows that we should cover. But you've done a fantastic job. Well, we can always do it Sunday, right? Well, hopefully. If he has one question, I'd rather get it out. You did a great job. Are you going to try some barbecue? Huh? Are you going to go eat some barbecue? We're done, that's a wrap.