Helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson speaks with reporters at the Pentagon on Dec. 4, 1969, after testifying about the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam. (Associated Press)

Everybody’s heard of the My Lai massacre — March 16, 1968, 50 years ago today — but not many know about the man who stopped it: Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot. When he arrived, American soldiers had already killed 504 Vietnamese civilians (that’s the Vietnamese count; the U.S. Army said 347). They were going to kill more, but they didn’t — because of what Thompson did. Continue reading →

Fifty years ago, a Dillard High School teenager was drafted into the Marines, and on the Fourth of July, his tour of duty in Vietnam began. He was 19, a young father.

Gregory Carter’s new marker at Sunset Memorial Gardens in Fort Lauderdale. Carter, a Dillard High School graduate, finally has a marked grave, 50 years after he was killed in battle with North Vietnamese Army forces in Quang Ngai Province in South Vietnam. (Taimy Alvarez / South Florida Sun Sentinel)

His service lasted three months. Pfc. Gregory Carter was killed in action in October of 1969, and his body was brought home to Fort Lauderdale, where he is buried near his mother. But for all these years, Carter lay in an unmarked grave.

Carter’s anonymous status in the city cemetery was discovered recently by the Vietnam Veterans of America, and his new headstone will be dedicated in a ceremony later this month.
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… Choppers Got Shot up so Bad he Had to Use 3 Different Ones

Editor’s NOTE: There are days in this land of ours today that I look back to other days. Yes – I have shared some of my story on this site before, and you can find them if you so desire. Singer Charlie Daniels told one hell of a story with his song, “Still in Saigon,” but his direction was different than the one which I chose in life. Yes – I feel much the same way in America in 2019 – but look back on that experience with different feelings than that which the song portrayed. I spent 21 months with the 498th Dust Off (Med-Evac) Group – and have never regretted one day of that service. Then I read the stories of Bruce Crandall and his Co-Pilot, Ed “Too Tall” Freeman – and I am home once again – yeah, “Still in Saigon.” ~ Ed.

Most fans of war films have probably seen the movie We Were Soldiers, but did you know that hidden in that movie is a Medal of Honor-winning event? Greg Kinnear plays a hard-charging helicopter pilot named Bruce Crandall. For his actions during that battle, Crandall would be awarded the USA’s highest decoration.

“The officer commanding the medevacs looked me up to chew me out for having led his people into a hot LZ, and warned me never to do it again. I couldn’t understand how he had the balls to face me when he was so reluctant to face the enemy.”

Born in Olympia. Washington in 1933, Bruce Crandall was drafted sometime around his 20th birthday and then commissioned out of Engineer OCS the following year. Continue reading →

NOTE: The following was originally re-published by Kettle Moraine Publications in late June of 2018, however during our purge of the site, this column was accidentally lost. We are excited to have found it once more. For those of my Brothers and Sisters who walked (or flew) in my boots… I’ll see you at Sundown. ~ JB

A young US Marine Corps corporal directs modern history’s largest Naval bombardment in support of ground forces, wiping out an entire Viet Cong battalion augmented by Red Chinese regular soldiers.*

28-29 July 1965

Where the hell are you, Charlie? You’re out there. I feel it.

Corporal Karl Lippard (left) and Lance Corporal Arturo Nunez, one of Lippard’s machine gun team members.

A rawboned, lanky U.S. Marine strained to detect movement in the inky darkness, a starless space made blacker by a rain squall that suppressed the sounds of soldiers creeping toward their objective. A few feet away, a South Vietnamese Ranger, Sergeant Thi, also patrolled, straining to spot a large Viet Cong force they knew was approaching. An attack was imminent.

As he scouted the area, Corporal Karl Lippard mentally took inventory of his dicey situation and limited assets. He was armed with an M14 rifle and four 20-round magazines. Sgt. Thi carried a .30-caliber M1 carbine, and a Colt 1911 semiautomatic pistol was tucked in his M9 shoulder holster. The Marine had stowed his map case, helmet, poncho and pack in an old French bunker near the Ca De River bridge’s north approach. A telephone land line linked the abandoned bunker to roughly 20 other Marines dug-in on the south side. All were “Raiders”, a company of U.S. Marines that had received specialized training—“rubber boat” operations and submarine insertion, for example. Raiders were elite forces, the handpicked best of each U. S. Marine Corps battalion. Continue reading →

According to reports from the Army Aviation Heritage Foundation, the Michigan Heroes Museum, and others, Lt. Col. Charles Kettles — the Vietnam war hero and Army pilot who received the Medal of Honor in 2016 for his resupply and rescue efforts in 1967 — died Jan. 21, 2019, at his home in Michigan. Continue reading →

You’re a 19 year old kid. You are critically wounded and dying in the jungle somewhere in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam .

Its November 11, 1965. LZ X-ray, Vietnam.

Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8-1 and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 or 200 yards away, that your own Infantry Commander has ordered the MediVac helicopters to stop coming in. You’re lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns and you know you’re not getting out. Your family is half-way around the world, 12,000 miles away, and you’ll never see them again. Continue reading →