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Vietnam vet who rescued dozens of US soldiers awarded Medal of Honor

:thumbsup:

My neighbor is a Vietnam vet with 2 purple hearts. Listening to his stories are incredible. Luckily he's one who actually talks about it, so it's very cool to hear. Every new story is crazier than the last it seems - talking about the booby traps, being pinned by gunfire for hours and hours, not being able to see a 3 feet in front of you because of how thick it was, and then him being hit in the thigh with shrapnel. He just had to get a wheelchair about 5 years ago I guess... due to the wound. I guess he was fortunate enough to make it that long. I help him out with whatever I can - shoveling snow, cleaning snow off his van, changing light bulbs, etc. His family appreciates it because they don't have to make a trip to his apartment to change a light bulb 😀 I buy him his favorite bottle of wine every Christmas, which also happens to be his birthday. Good guy.
 
That's pretty cool. I love hearing war stories from vets. The shit they have gone through. When I was in JROTC my instructor was in Nam as a Green Beret. The stories he had, wow! In fact, some of the shit he did I guess is still classified to this day. Makes you wonder just WTF they did. He can speak Vietnamese. All Green Berets learn a language for the region they are assigned I guess.

The Green Berets were formed by JFK during Nam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5WJJVSE_BE

Thought about going into the Army and being one. Then latter try my hand out at Delta force or 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta. The book Inside Delta Force is a good read.

C-130 rolling down the strip. Airborne Ranger on a one way trip. Mission unspoken destination unknown. Airborne Ranger ain't never coming home.

I think I have that right. I read that in the book. 😀

BTW- Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler has a crazy life story!
 
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CraKaJaX said:
:thumbsup:

My neighbor is a Vietnam vet with 2 purple hearts. Listening to his stories are incredible. Luckily he's one who actually talks about it, so it's very cool to hear. Every new story is crazier than the last it seems - talking about the booby traps, being pinned by gunfire for hours and hours, not being able to see a 3 feet in front of you because of how thick it was, and then him being hit in the thigh with shrapnel. He just had to get a wheelchair about 5 years ago I guess... due to the wound. I guess he was fortunate enough to make it that long. I help him out with whatever I can - shoveling snow, cleaning snow off his van, changing light bulbs, etc. His family appreciates it because they don't have to make a trip to his apartment to change a light bulb 😀 I buy him his favorite bottle of wine every Christmas, which also happens to be his birthday. Good guy.
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Whenever I hear people's war stories IRL, it always makes me feel like crap for complaining about anything ever. They had to leave their wives & kids at home for years sometimes, see bloody messes, deal with PTSD without knowing what it was, come back & try to re-acclimate...and here I am whining that McDonalds got my order wrong 😛
 
CraKaJaX said:
:thumbsup:

My neighbor is a Vietnam vet with 2 purple hearts. Listening to his stories are incredible. Luckily he's one who actually talks about it, so it's very cool to hear. Every new story is crazier than the last it seems - talking about the booby traps, being pinned by gunfire for hours and hours, not being able to see a 3 feet in front of you because of how thick it was, and then him being hit in the thigh with shrapnel. He just had to get a wheelchair about 5 years ago I guess... due to the wound. I guess he was fortunate enough to make it that long. I help him out with whatever I can - shoveling snow, cleaning snow off his van, changing light bulbs, etc. His family appreciates it because they don't have to make a trip to his apartment to change a light bulb 😀 I buy him his favorite bottle of wine every Christmas, which also happens to be his birthday. Good guy.
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Thanks for that. :thumbsup:
 
I do not know of one of my fellow vets who doesn't have a story of how some "crazy" Huey pilot dropped off, or extracted them from a hot LZ.
The warrant officers were the craziest, they could turn a mundane resupply run into a scary ride, far beyond that of any amusement park. It's an eerie feeling when you are looking straight down to the ground through the open door, and nothing is stopping you from falling out but pure inertia holding you against the bench.
My older brother went to Nam 3 times starting around '66 as a corpsman, and then as a nurse. I can only imagine the true horrors of war that he saw. He doesn't talk about it, and I don't ask. I spent 4 years, my brother spent 24 and retired command master sergeant, secretary division surgeon, 4th infantry
John Kerry gets a splinter and goes home with a purple heart. My bother spent nearly 30 months in the arena trying to patch kids back together, and a lot didn't make it, others were maimed for life. I do not know what your definition of what a hero is, but here is an example of two.
 
In acquaintance/friend in the goat business moved to my area a few years ago. We helped them out quite a bit; donated a bunch of stuff to them to help get their own little farm going good. Heard quite a few stories about Nam from him - he had shrapnel to the knee, had it removed, and kept on going. He's been on disability for a number of years - I presume it's not from the knee injury, but rather because he's not quite right in the head all the time. PTSD is a bitch.
 
neighbor Pete had two hueys shot out from under him, got messed up pretty bad in the hard landings. He's had both knees and hips done, but the Agent Orange bothers him the most. He has these unexplained skin rashes on his legs that defy diagnosis. The VA tried ot call it many things that it was not. Finally they are doing different treatments.
 
My teacher in JROTC told me they wanted to just make Nam a freaking parking lot. I believe it. We bombed the ever lived shit out of them. We may have lost the war, but by God we won ever single battle!
 
It's always nice to see a hero honored properly. What he did was heroic in every sense of the word.

My dad was in Vietnam in 1968. He did two tours there in the Army. He never talks about any of it. The only thing he's shared with me are pictures he took over there which included weapon caches they seized and lots of scenic photos. But yeah it's one of those topics I know not to bring up.
 
John Connor said:
My teacher in JROTC told me they wanted to just make Nam a freaking parking lot. I believe it. We bombed the ever lived shit out of them. We may have lost the war, but by God we won ever single battle!
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More bombs were dropped during just the Tet offensive than all of the bombs we dropped on Germany in WWII.
 
I'm gonna be that guy, but considering that the US invaded Vietnam, and what the soldiers got up to...I dunno if that's too worthy o' praise.

http://www.genocidewatch.org/images...apersShowU.S.AtrocitiesWentFarBeyondMyLai.pdf

http://links.org.au/node/3343

When we went through the villages and searched people the women would have all their clothes taken off and the men would use their penises to probe them to make sure they didn't have anything hidden anywhere and this was raping but it was done as searching… The main thing was that if an operation was covered by the press there were certain things we weren't supposed to do, but if there was no press there, it was okay. I saw one case where a woman was shot by a sniper, one of our snipers. When we got up to her she was asking for water. And the Lt. said to kill her. So he ripped off her clothes, they stabbed her in both breasts, they spread-eagled her and shoved an E- tool up her vagina, an entrenching tool, and she was still asking for water. And then they took that out and they used a tree limb and then she was shot.
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Y'know, shit like that.

Have there been any Vietnam soldiers that were prosecuted for the rape and slaughter? Also, what about the commanders 'n' shit that allowed this stuff ta happen? Genuine question, lads.

Edit: This testimony is also worthy of quoting.
We moved into a small hamlet, 19 women and children were rounded up as VCS--Viet Cong Suspects -- and the lieutenant that rounded them up called the captain on the radio and he asked what should be done with them. The captain simply repeated the order that came down from the colonel that morning. The order that came down from the colonel that morning was to kill anything that moves, which you can take anyway you want to take it… I turned, and I looked in the area. I looked toward where the supposed VCS were, and two men were leading a young girl, approximately 19 years old, very pretty, out of a hootch. She had no clothes on so I assumed she had been raped, which was pretty SOP [Standard Operating Procedure], and she was thrown onto the pile of the 19 women and children, and five men, around the circle, opened up on full automatic with their M-16s. And that was the end of that.


​
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Evil well and true.

And it gets worse.

http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/04/09/the-scars-of-war-vietnam-comfort-women/

What do you know, the American military also partook in fashionable sex slavery.

Many of the thousands of women working as prostitutes during the Vietnam War were held against their will by pimps and lured with the promise of good-paying, respectable jobs so they could support their families in a country torn apart by war. They would never see most of the money, if any, paid to their pimps or the bar owners by the American soldiers. In some cases women were injected with silicone to make them more shapely so that the American soldiers would feel more “at home” with the Asian women.


While the U.S. military did not officially condone the practice of prostitution around military bases, they didn’t do anything to stop it, either. In many cases, soldiers on leave would go to surrounding countries where a similar set-up existed, such as in Thailand. Many of these hubs of prostitution were referred to as ‘rest & recreation’ sites. So even among the U.S. military, the practice was unofficially encouraged. If the men were kept happy, they followed orders and stayed in line.


And there were many instances of rape by soldiers during the war, among the other atrocities committed against the civilian population. It seems there has always been the misguided perception that allowing prostitution or establishing comfort stations would reduce rape, but that is a fallacy, as is the idea that the spread of sexually transmitted disease can somehow be controlled.
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Props to Mr. Kettles...

My question is...why did this take so long to take place...I mean, hearing that story, that seems like a slam dunk on what represents the Medal of Honor...to have to wait that long to receive that award seems ridiculous.

That was an awesome story!
 
Glad he finally got what he deserved. My cousin was a scout. He came back pretty messed up. When he tried to explain things to my uncle, my uncle threw him out. He turned out (mostly) ok. On his rare trips home, he tried to spend some time with my dad, who was a Marine in WW2. Dad was one of the few people my cousin could talk about what he experienced. My dad never talked much about what he went through either.
 
I'm English but SOG is my favourite book.

Not sure if this guy is mentioned (lent and not got back yet) but this made me warm inside.
 
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