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Welcome to the America’s Veterans Stories podcast.
Kim Monson is your host.
Michael Keller graduated from high school in 1966, right in the middle of the draft. He eventually enlisted in the Air Force. Keller served in a medical civic engagement unit and was sent to Vietnam where they went into the countryside to give medical attention to Vietnamese who suffered from war injuries or malaria. Memories of the suffering of the children are particularly difficult for Keller and after many years, Keller is addressing his PTSD with help from the VA.
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America’s Veteran’s Stories
SPEAKER 07 :
World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and her other wars and conflicts. America’s fighting men and women strapped on their boots and picked up their guns to fight tyranny and stand for liberty. We must never forget them. Welcome to America’s veteran stories with Kim Munson. These stories will touch your heart, inspire you and give you courage. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Here’s Kim Munson.
SPEAKER 10 :
And welcome to America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteransStories.com. And the show comes to you because of a trip that I took in 2016 where we accompanied four D-Day veterans back to Normandy, France for the 72nd anniversary of of the D-Day landings, returned stateside realizing that we need to record these stories, broadcast them, archive them, hence America’s Veterans Stories. I’m so pleased to have in studio with me Michael Keller. Michael, you were in the Air Force. I was. Served during the Vietnam War. Correct. So let’s start, though, at the beginning. Where did you grow up?
SPEAKER 05 :
I grew up in a town about 80 miles west of Omaha in Nebraska.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 05 :
And my grandfather owned a very large ranch in southwest Nebraska, so I spent my summers there. So I kind of lived a dual life growing up, I guess.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay. So were you a cowboy? Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
I love riding horses, and I did a lot of that. Probably harder than working for my grandfather like I should have.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay. Well, I grew up in western Kansas, and so I understand farming and ranching, and it’s long hours. It is.
SPEAKER 05 :
And early mornings, which I never was a big fan of, and once I got in the military, I had to live that life anyway. Yeah.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, it is early mornings there. So you grew up outside of Omaha, or about 80 miles outside of Omaha, and then summers on the ranch. How did you end up getting into the Air Force?
SPEAKER 05 :
It’s kind of an embarrassing story in a way, but I was right in the middle of the draft, and I graduated high school in 1966. And I went to the University of Nebraska in Lincoln University, And unfortunately for me, anyway, I majored in fraternity. And it didn’t end well, I’ll put it that way. And I came back home after my freshman year. And my father was a very good friend of the postmaster in town. So he got me a job unloading semis at the post office, which was supposed to be a, I guess they called it a critical job. and would keep me from getting drafted again. And I worked there for about four months, and I got my second draft notice because they had hooked me up as a temporary employee instead of a permanent employee. And at that time, I said, well, I don’t think I want to go to Vietnam, so I’ll join the Air Force.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay, so you joined the Air Force, and what happened after that?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well… I went to basic training in San Antonio, which is where everybody goes, and still today even, and I got into the medical field, what’s called medical materiel, which is basically managing all of the medical facilities, the drugs, the whole nine yards, ordering it, getting distributed, and they assigned me to this air mobility unit, and I ended up in… forbes air force base which no longer exists just south of topeka kansas and i got there and after about seven months they and they sent me to jump school because everybody that was going to be in this this situation was going to have to be jump qualified because you may have to jump out of the c-130 I get back from jump school, and a month later, I get notice I’m going to be assigned to Vietnam. So I was there less than a year in Kansas, and so I ended up going to Vietnam. They obviously didn’t have that situation going on, so I was assigned to the 12th Tactical Air Force Hospital that was at Cameron Bay, and I was in there. The facilities… And we sent out all of the supplies and materiel to all of the Air Force medical facilities all over the country from there. And I was put on a team that went out TDY or temporary duty and visited all of these. And we were doing inventory and the process of kind of winding down the war. I got to Vietnam in December of 69. And in 70, they were starting to… pull back, I guess, a little bit. And so I ended up probably at eight or nine different Air Force facilities in Vietnam and in northern Thailand.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, graduating in 1966, things were hot, really hot over there at that time.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, 69. I got there five days before. Actually, I probably should have said 1970. I got there five days before New Year’s of 69. But technically, it’s when I was assigned. And As I worked, I got more and more involved in what they called medical civic action program, MedCap, and that’s where we would volunteer with medical experience, and we would go out into the villages and into the different parts of Vietnam, and we would treat people. for malaria we treat for napalm burns a lot of things like that that they just didn’t have the ability to handle so i probably did 16 or 17 of those over my year and i did it all over so when i’d go tdy like if i went to play coup we’d go up into the for the Montagnards who were kind of our allies and treat them. And I did it outside of Cam Ranh Bay and also outside of Nha Trang and Vung Tau and probably a few other places that I don’t remember. And it hit me pretty hard after I got home thinking back about seeing these small children and the other villagers with I mean gruesome stepping on landmines napalm burns I mean all of this and at the point it told me I never wanted to have children did you have children I did but it was later on okay so I came back Actually, I got very fortunate in a way. My mother got ill, and I was supposed to leave on the 29th of December to come back to the States. And my squadron commander got notice that my mother was ill, and he was able to get me out of the country. So I got home before Christmas and got to see my mother.
SPEAKER 10 :
So you were there about a year?
SPEAKER 05 :
I was there short four days of a year. Okay, okay. And… I went on R&R halfway through or seven months after I got there to Hawaii to see my wife, and I met these two. Australian combat engineers. And we ended up going to downtown Saigon and we drank all night and got back about half an hour before our plane for R&R was supposed to go. And they told me they were going to Hawaii when they said, why aren’t you going to Australia to meet the Australian women? And I said, well, I’m going to meet my wife. And they said, well, we’re going to Hawaii to meet American girls. And I actually met them on my way back. We were on the same plane, and they snuck a bottle of alcohol on the flight, and we drank all the way back to Cameroon. So they were your buds, huh? They were for about, you know, off and on about a week, and I saw them again a little bit later. But they told me at that point, or at least they figured out, that they could drink almost any American under the table without even working at it very hard. That’s so funny.
SPEAKER 10 :
And it sounds like they were somewhat successful, huh?
SPEAKER 05 :
They were very successful. And they told me they got in a fight in Hawaii when I guess they were trying to talk to a couple ladies that had boyfriends or husbands. And they took the husband or boyfriends out pretty easily, I guess. Oh, my gosh. Pretty tough guys then. They were, yes.
SPEAKER 10 :
I didn’t realize the Australians were in Vietnam as well. I did not realize that.
SPEAKER 05 :
Australians, New Zealand, and what they call ROKS, which are Republic of Korea, soldiers were over there, too. And those were mean motor scooters. They didn’t follow any of the… laws of the land, if you will. If they decided that there was a bad guy somewhere, they’d take them out without asking permission.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, and it probably was really in Australia and New Zealand’s best interest to prevent the success of the North Vietnamese.
SPEAKER 05 :
Exactly. And We were a member of, I don’t know if it still exists or not, of an organization called ANZUS, which was Australia, New Zealand, and U.S., kind of like NATO is for the South Pacific.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 05 :
Or Southeast Asia, I guess, yeah.
SPEAKER 10 :
So let’s see, how old were you then when you joined the Air Force?
SPEAKER 05 :
I would have been 19, I guess, just before 20, before I hit 20. Okay.
SPEAKER 10 :
So you didn’t end up at any, would it be called combat hospitals or anything?
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, yeah. In fact, the hospital in Cameron Bay was the largest medical facility in the whole country. So we had Marine, we had Army, we had Navy, we had Air Force. I mean, anyone that was on our side and even a few, like, prisoners, they would end up at that hospital. And then we had medical facilities at almost all of the air bases in Vietnam.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay. In treating all of these… South Vietnamese, and these injuries, it had to be really tough. Do you feel that they appreciated the Americans being there?
SPEAKER 05 :
They appreciated the medical help that we gave them, and then I did some other volunteer where we’d go out and we’d build a church and we’d build an orphanage for them. But I got to talking to some of the Locals, obviously, when we were out there, they didn’t look at us as so much there to help them. They felt like we kind of took over their country. Just like here in this country, there were many sides to every story. And some of them were very happy for us to be there. And then, of course, the ones that got into trouble physically or medically, they tended to blame us for that. And the government in South Vietnam was corrupt before we got there, and it was corrupt right up until 1975 when the North Vietnamese took it over. So have you been back to Vietnam? No, I was scheduled to go back about eight years ago with a group. And I ended up, because of a work situation, I ended up not going. And I’m not sure now, at my age and everything, if it’s something I probably should do. I would like to see it, and I’ve talked to people who have been back, and they said you wouldn’t recognize it. It’s not even the same country that you were in. It’s economically much better off right now. They’ve got a lot of international investments in hotels and resorts and a lot of businesses there. They’re kind of taking over a lot of the Chinese manufacturing that have moved from China into Vietnam.
SPEAKER 10 :
it is rather remarkable all these years later how things do change. I’m talking with Michael Keller, and he was in the Air Force in the Medical Air Mobility Unit. And we’ll continue the discussion, but first I wanted to mention the Center for American Values, which is located in Pueblo, Colorado. Pueblo is known as the home of heroes because there’s four Medal of Honor recipients. I’ve been to it. Yeah, it’s a special place, isn’t it, Michael? Yes. It’s so reverent to stand in front of the portraits of each of these Medal of Honor recipients and see their quotes. And it’s been my honor to become involved with the center. And if people want more information, they can go to AmericanValueCenter.org. That’s AmericanValueCenter.org. And we’ll be right back with Michael Keller.
SPEAKER 08 :
RE-MAX realtor Karen Levine helps bring to life the individual stories of our servicemen and women. With her sponsorship of America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson, Karen honors the sacrifices of our military and is grateful for our freedom. As a member of the National Association of Realtors Board of Directors, Karen works to protect private property rights for all of us. Karen has a heart for our active duty military and veterans and is honored to help you buy or sell your home. Call Karen Levine at 303-877-7516 to help you navigate buying or selling your home. That’s 303-877-7516.
SPEAKER 04 :
All of Kim’s sponsors are an inclusive partnership with Kim and are not affiliated with or in partnership with KLZ or Crawford Broadcasting. If you would like to support the work of The Kim Munson Show and grow your business, contact Kim at her website, kimmunson.com. That’s kimmunson, M-O-N-S-O-N dot com.
SPEAKER 10 :
Welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. I’m talking with Michael Keller. He is a Vietnam veteran. You were in the Air Force. And you were saying during the break that you had kind of an interesting experience after you returned back from Vietnam.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes, they didn’t quite know what to do with me because the original part of the train I had was a group that no longer existed. And I didn’t have enough time probably to either retrain or they wanted me to reenlist, which I wasn’t real interested in doing. So they sent me out to Andrews. air force base in outside of dc and i was assigned to the malcolm crow medical hospital and i did what they i was head of local purchasing where we bought equipment that was not standard military equipment and that was quite interesting getting involved in some of the politics around that as well
SPEAKER 10 :
I bet, because it’s always been lucrative for businesses to sell to the government, correct?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes, and they… wanted to make sure they got very friendly with a lot of the officers that were involved in acquiring, whether they were doctors, dentists, or even just high up into the procurement side of the government. And I got to see it from a small view because I saw I had to make the purchases, but I saw some of the ramifications leading up to that final decision on purchases. And And as I think I told you, I happened to be in D.C. then during a lot of those anti-war demonstrations that were going on. So what year was that probably? That was 71.
SPEAKER 1 :
1971.
SPEAKER 10 :
What went through your mind as you saw these protesters?
SPEAKER 05 :
I will admit… I was having my own questions about the validity, I guess, of the war itself. I mean, I went over as a, I guess I call myself a vanilla wafer Protestant, grew up in the Midwest in very, you know, Republican families. But I started to question myself, you know, we weren’t fighting the war to win it. We were, just seemed like we were marking time. I would never have joined the anti-war. Obviously, I would have gone to jail if I did. But after talking to some of them, I could see why they felt it was wrong. But again, I was in the military. I’d been there. And a lot of the people that were demonstrating had no idea what… what we American soldiers had to go through. And I thought it was a little presumptuous, I guess, of them to go out and protest against people that, you know, I happened to enlist, but it was basically I enlist or get drafted. So it was very confusing for me. And I
SPEAKER 10 :
It was a confusing time for America.
SPEAKER 05 :
It was. And my sister, who was three years younger than me, was a total hippie. And she was, I mean, so anti-war that my father basically refused to have conversation with her for about five years.
SPEAKER 10 :
Our soldiers, our military, our young boys, young, 19 years old, did what they were asked to do. Yes. And to learn that what you just said, that we were over there not fighting to win the war.
SPEAKER 05 :
At least that was my feeling. Yes.
SPEAKER 10 :
And you’re not alone in that as well. Right. Michael, I find it really frustrating that we would send our blood and treasure over there, put our young men and women in harm’s way, and many lost their lives. And from what I’m learning, there was so many politics up at the upper level that And I’m frustrated about that regarding the Vietnam War. But our military, our young men did what they were asked to do. And my understanding is that we were winning the war, but then politics pulled it back. And I find that a travesty.
SPEAKER 05 :
It was, you know, push hard and then pull back, push hard, pull back, push hard. I wasn’t the first to say it, but my experience is, and I even saw it with Iraq and Afghanistan, and that’s usually old white men make a lot of money off wars by sending young men that aren’t their children or their brothers or sisters.
SPEAKER 06 :
I know.
SPEAKER 05 :
And that still to this day bothers me. I just, I don’t, and I… You may get into this later, but I did volunteer work at the VA with a lot of returning Afghan and Iraq patients, particularly around PTSD. And to hear their stories was very disheartening for me, too.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, because the rules of engagement really puts our military in harm’s way, I think.
SPEAKER 05 :
I mean, we took probably 30 rockets outside of Pleiku when I was up there, and we could not fire back. We could see the flashpoints of where they took off, but we couldn’t fire back until we got the okay from the village elders who were basically getting paid by both us and the North Vietnamese. I mean, it just— It just doesn’t make sense, does it? No, it doesn’t. And I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but that was just one of those things that just made me shake my head. And quite frankly, it’s one of the reasons that I decided I didn’t want to reenlist. I had a really good opportunity. I had made staff sergeant before I went to— Before I even got back from Vietnam and probably would have made E6 if I would have stayed in or reenlisted. But I just said, you know, I want to go on with my life and do something else.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, and so you went to Washington, D.C., Andrews Air Force Base. And it sounds to me that like you had conversations, though, with many of these protesters. I find that interesting because I’m not sure there was a lot of conversation going on.
SPEAKER 05 :
Even though I wasn’t in uniform, they could tell by my haircut and everything that I was not one of them. And some of them I had very deep conversations with, and they tended to listen to my side, and others basically thought I was the enemy. So I was very careful about where I went and who I talked to.
SPEAKER 10 :
Did you ever feel really threatened?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, a couple times. Because I think involved in just probably any of those kind of very large situations, there are people that are in it for different reasons. I think they’re there if they like the power or they want to show that by physical force that they are right and we’re wrong. And I felt some of that.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, let’s go back to Vietnam a bit. You’re there for a year. You went out and helped people. You said 16 or 17 different missions. Is that right?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. I hit probably just about all but maybe two of the Air Force medical facilities. And some of those were just very small dispensaries. I mean, they just weren’t very large. They didn’t have hospital beds. But… They were a lot of times the one that would, they would see a lot, even Army and Marine casualties, that was the closest place where there was any kind of medical help. So it was not just an Air Force facility, literally anywhere there was medical help in Vietnam. First place, closest place would tend to get, and they’d do what they could do, and then they’d send them on. Okay.
SPEAKER 10 :
Did you ever have to jump out of the C-130, ever?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, when I went through jump school at Fort Benning, but never had to do it after that. I always said, once you jump out of an airplane that’s perfectly running, you don’t really want to do it again. So you only had to do it once? No, no, we had, what did I do, five jumps, six jumps at that point, yeah. I did some cabling down off of helicopters, but that was… That had to be thrilling. Yeah, it was, I guess, especially when they’re shooting at you. So you did come under, and you were in combat then. Yeah, and I got wounded in my leg, and also a shell hit our helicopter. I wasn’t even supposed to be in combat. I was going from one point to another, and a piece of the side of the helicopter hit me in the mouth, and I knocked. One tooth off, knocked five loose, and I had like 35 stitches in my mouth. And to this point, I have a very bad dental situation, and thank God the VA’s taking care of me.
SPEAKER 10 :
You’ve had a good experience with the VA?
SPEAKER 05 :
Good and bad. My current experience has been very good.
SPEAKER 10 :
And then you said your leg was injured as well?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, I got a piece of shrapnel in my leg. And is it still there? No, but it chipped a bone, and I’ve had some infections that came out of it.
SPEAKER 10 :
You know, Michael, I think that civilians, particularly here in America now, we don’t understand the sacrifices that our military has given. And on a personal level— You’re probably reminded every day. Dental work, you might still have pain in your leg. I don’t think that civilians understand just the sacrifice. And pain, if you have pain, it can be chronic pain is kind of exhausting sometimes. And there’s many of our veterans that I think have pain from their injuries.
SPEAKER 05 :
My last jump at jump school, I landed sideways a little bit, and it turns out later on I have too compressed vertebrae in my back, and I get sciatic. It runs all the way down sometime below my knee, and luckily I’m getting good treatment. Actually, I’m getting treatment through UC Health because there’s a relationship between the VA and UC Health. And I also was diagnosed when I was 43 years old with prostate cancer.
SPEAKER 10 :
Do you think that that had anything to do with Agent Orange and all that?
SPEAKER 05 :
Being diagnosed that young tended to be one of the triggers. They told me I would be lucky to live to be 60. Okay. So I’m on house money now. I’m 76.
SPEAKER 10 :
I love that. And I think that’s so important for people to hear your story, that they say you won’t live past the age of 60, and here you are, 76. I think that gives people hope.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes, and that’s one of the things I’ve tried to do. COVID really screwed up a lot of that, but I was spending a lot of time volunteering out at the VA, as I said, with these PTSD patients. There were women, too, in there that their PTSD came from sexual, not just harassment, but they were sexually assaulted. And usually by their sergeants or whoever were above them. Yes. There were at least four of them that I remember going through the year and a half that I did that. And those stories, that’s not discussed very often either. No, it’s not. That’s kind of pushed under the rug.
SPEAKER 10 :
This is the second time in this week that somebody has mentioned about rape in our military. And up until this time, I hadn’t really realized that.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, I think… When I was in it, there wasn’t a lot of it because we had really the only combat, if you will, military females were nurses in the hospitals or the dispensaries. And now, of course, we’ve got 11Bs. We’ve got them out in the field. They’re flying helicopters. They’re flying jet aircraft. I mean, there’s so many more of them right now, I think, and it’s just – the opportunity maybe has grown because of the percentage of women that are involved in the military. And the ones I’ve talked to were incredible. I mean, they fight right along with their male counterparts. One I talked to was an A-10 pilot, and just listening to her stories and stuff, I mean, she probably was a better pilot than 80% of the males in her squadron, so…
SPEAKER 10 :
We’ll talk about that when we come back. I’ve meandered, I know. That triggered something that made me think of something. I’m talking with Michael Keller. And as you all know, another nonprofit that I dearly love is the USMC Memorial Foundation. And the Marine Memorial is located right here in Colorado at the… in Golden, in the corner of 6th and Colfax. It was dedicated in 1977. And my friend, Paula Sarle, she’s a Gold Star wife, a Marine veteran, and she’s the president of the USMC Memorial Foundation. And she and her team are working diligently to raise money for the Marine Memorial remodel. And you can help them and get more information by going to usmcmemorialfoundation.org. That is usmcmemorialfoundation.org. We’ll be right back with Michael Keller.
SPEAKER 03 :
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SPEAKER 09 :
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SPEAKER 10 :
And welcome back to America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteransStories.com. And as you know, a sponsor of the show is Hooters Restaurants and how I got to know them. It’s a really interesting story about when I was on city council. And it’s a question really about freedom and free markets and capitalism. And I call them PBIs, politicians, bureaucrats, and interested parties that like to kind of control things. But Hooters Restaurants is a great sponsor of the show. They have five locations, Loveland, Aurora, Lone Tree, Westminster, and Colorado Springs. And great specials for lunch and for happy hour. And, of course, a great place to get together with friends to watch all the sporting events. Michael Keller, during the break you said that you had traveled all over the world. So tell me a little bit about that.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, after I got back and got out of the military, I realized I probably didn’t want to go back to school and become a fraternity soldier.
SPEAKER 10 :
You had your experience with all that.
SPEAKER 05 :
I did that. I decided it was time to settle down and do something.
SPEAKER 10 :
So you were married, though, when you were in Vietnam? You said you went over to see your wife in Hawaii?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes. Unfortunately, I got married right before I went to Vietnam. Okay. Without getting too far into it, it was a relationship I’d had in high school that kind of changed. And then when I went back home on leave, we reconnected.
SPEAKER 10 :
So, Michael, you said that you reconnected and you got married right before you went to Vietnam. There was a lot of that going on. That’s tough. Yeah. And it was on both sides. On both sides. Exactly. And so but I wanted to continue on. You said that you ended up coming back and you. You ended up traveling the world, so tell me about that.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, I got back. I went back to school. I wanted to go into—I got involved in a scuba diving club while I was at Cameron Bay. And when I was back there, we were actually—I got my certificate, diving certificate, by the Navy SEAL group that was there. And we would go diving there. Anytime we could get off, and I decided I wanted to be a marine biologist. So when I got discharged, I had to go to a junior college for one semester because in order for me to get an early release from the service, I got out four months early. I had to have had acceptance into it. institution of higher learning so that I could get out because my last four months were just would have been wasted time as far as I was concerned. And then I just applied and had marginal acceptance because I’d taken some correspondence classes to Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California. And I was literally driving cross-country, stopped and saw one of my old high school football teammates who lived in Boulder. And we went backpacking up in Rocky Mountain National Park. And he convinced me I didn’t want to go to California. I wanted to stay in Colorado. And they didn’t have a marine biology program.
SPEAKER 10 :
Because we don’t have any oceans here.
SPEAKER 05 :
No, and lakes don’t count. Sorry. So I ended up actually at Northern Colorado in Greeley, and they didn’t have a marine biology program, but I got into their what’s called human ecology environmental science program. And human ecology is effectively how we humans affect the world. And back in the mid to late 70s, that wasn’t a very popular conversation to have. So I decided I better get a second opinion on life, so I took a second major in information systems in the business department, and that’s what I spent my first career in. And I worked for a fairly large, a couple of very large Fortune 200 companies, and a couple of smaller ones, and then I got into consulting, and And the laws in IT consulting are pretty much you never find work in your backyard. They, for some reason, don’t think you’re that good if you’re local. So I would do contract work in San Francisco, and people from San Francisco would come to Denver and do work. But I was the rainmaker in my last two consulting groups, and that meant I was the one that went out and found contracts. And they came from all over. I’ve been to… 49 of the 50 states, and I’ve been to probably 50 countries. Wow. Not all in work. It was probably 80, 20 work to just personal travel.
SPEAKER 10 :
I’ve not traveled that much like that. Of course, you had the experience at Vietnam, but we really have it very good here in America.
SPEAKER 05 :
And that’s why I wish I sent both my children or gave them opportunities to get out of the country when they were younger just to see we’re not the center of the universe like they think we are.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah. But this concept of personal freedom is a pretty unique thing really out there, yes?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes. Yes. I remember during the Bush II re-election, people would ask me, I think I was taking a taxi from the airport to downtown Prague, and the driver said, are you a Yank or a Canadian? I said, I’m a Yank. And he said, then we got into political conversation. I swear to God, almost everywhere I’ve been, especially in Europe, people know more about our government than we do. It really woke me up after the first three or four times that happened that we just don’t do a very good job of what I call civic education. I mean, college students know less about our government than an 11-year-old might in Zurich, Switzerland.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, and Michael, so I’m from western Kansas. You’re from Nebraska? Yeah. Okay. I can’t quite remember how close Omaha is to Iowa. But so Nebraska boy, Kansas girl. And it’s – now I lost my train of thought. It’s catching.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 10 :
Hold on here. Let me think about it. Oh, I know what I was going to say. Okay, here we go. And I’d come across the eighth grade exam to graduate from eighth grade back in 1895 in Saline County, Kansas. Whoa. And I am sure that there are kids with doctorates that can’t answer those questions. Probably me, too. It’s amazing. Yeah. And back then they had questions about civics and all these different things. And we’re doing a terrible job on teaching our kids about this. And another thing, I didn’t know that much about the Vietnam War because we don’t really teach that. And World War II, my understanding, there’s not much in history about that. These are important stories that we need to know.
SPEAKER 05 :
My father was in the South Pacific in World War II in the Army. And I was fascinated by, I shouldn’t say by war, but by, I guess, my father, my uncle was in the Navy and the South Pacific as well, his brother. And it just, it fascinates me how little even my sisters don’t know about even my experiences and their relative experiences in the service. It just almost is like, you know, that’s old history. You know, I want to know what’s going on right now. I want instant gratification and something that will keep me informed. I mean, keep me involved, but not necessarily informed.
SPEAKER 10 :
There’s a lot of that going around these days, Michael. Did your father talk at all about his experience in World War II?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes and no. I would ask him questions, and when I was younger, he didn’t. But as he got older, he started opening up more, I guess kind of like I have with my kids. They knew I was in Vietnam, but I don’t think they – I never talked to them about what I did or what I saw until maybe this last four or five years. My father got a lung disease in, he was in, where was he, one of the islands New Guinea, I guess. And they sent him home, and he had asthma to begin with, which he tried to get in the Navy so he could be offshore. And the Navy said, we can’t take you because you have asthma. But the Army said, you’re good to go. And they sent him home on a hospital ship, said they had to resuscitate him twice on the way home and didn’t think he’d live to get back here. And he died at 95 of a stroke. Yeah.
SPEAKER 10 :
I love that, that in your family, when you’re told that you’re going to pass on early, you’re like, watch this.
SPEAKER 06 :
Show me, right?
SPEAKER 10 :
Show me. Definitely. So he’s in the South Pacific, but he didn’t really talk about it in any combat.
SPEAKER 05 :
Not much until he got— As he got older, he would share a little bit. But he was in the field artillery, and so they were firing these 155-millimeter, they called them long toms, over this mountain range. And that mountain range divided the Japanese from the Americans. There were some Australians, he said, there with him. And so they just fire over. He said, we fire over the hill, and then they’d fire back. And he never saw… direct hand-to-hand combat, but they did go out on several missions checking on damage or whatever, and he could see the results of his 155 millimeter shells, and I think that shocked him to see what pulling a lanyard could do to other people.
SPEAKER 10 :
I had three uncles that served in World War II in the European theater. And one of them, Kansas farm boy, and left when he was 18 and came back as, I think, a second lieutenant at the age of 22. But he was a bombardier. And he said – my father said that it really did affect my uncle is the bomb had gotten – jammed and so he had to and i guess they had armed it so they had to get rid of it obviously and so he had to kick it out of the bombay and um it hit a farmhouse and he doesn’t know if there were people that were in the farmhouse or not but he carried that around in his heart i did get to now i can’t remember which one it was but one of the One of the bombers, I actually, the World War II bombers up in Loveland, I got to fly in one of them. And I don’t know why I thought that these planes were like as big as, you know, what we fly on now. They were small. Yes, they were. And to get around with that, with the bomb bay open, it’s amazing what these guys did.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, and you think about, especially in Europe, They weren’t pressurized until the B-29 came along. So they were flying at 14,000, 15,000 feet and tied with an oxygen mask. And obviously they weren’t temperature controlled. So, you know, you’d be below freezing the whole time you were above probably 8,000 feet.
SPEAKER 10 :
I guess they had these electric suits.
SPEAKER 05 :
But I’d heard tales, too, of people, especially the gunners, that they’d literally lose ends of their fingers in things that would freeze after so many times of holding the guns. I bet that’s true.
SPEAKER 10 :
I hadn’t thought of that. So, yeah, we’re going to continue this discussion. Super fascinating. Michael Keller, he is a Vietnam veteran and veteran. Really, I’m learning so much. I really appreciate it. So we will be right back with Michael Keller.
SPEAKER 11 :
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SPEAKER 02 :
From the mountains to the prairies,
SPEAKER 10 :
And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Check out the website. That’s AmericasVeteranStories.com. I’m talking with Air Force veteran, Vietnam veteran, Michael Keller. And, Michael, during the break, you mentioned that you were diagnosed with PTSD. So tell me about that.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, unfortunately, it was pretty late in my life. But I think the ones that hit me the hardest were the— Looking back after going out into the villages and doing work, especially with the children and some of the ungodly things that happened, stepping on mines, napalm burns, malaria, I mean, just true third world situations. And I didn’t realize at the time how much that kind of hit me until I had my first child, my son. and i started comparing notes and saying oh my god i’m glad it didn’t happen to my son but the fact that it did happen to all these other just somebody else’s children but people and it really got to the point where i was having nightmares and reliving parts of that and i So I would get up and walk around, and I probably went 10, 12 years of my life, maybe not getting more than four or five hours of sleep. That was just kind of my pattern. And as I mentioned, I started self-medicating, some with alcohol, but mainly working. I worked 60-some hours a week for probably 20-some years of my life. And in that period of time, I also… I eliminated my time with my own children because I just was focused on everything but the rest of my life. And I got involved in the USSA Master Ski Program and got into ski racing when I was in my mid-50s and did that until my second knee operation. And I decided I probably ought to get out of that when I was 63, I think. Oh, my gosh.
SPEAKER 10 :
You’re ski racing after you’ve been told the age that you would pass on. I love that.
SPEAKER 05 :
And I got into big wall rock climbing. We did the Grand Teton up in Wyoming. And we did… You were serious. Yeah, we did the east face of Long’s Peak a couple times and tried to do… El Capitan out in Yosemite, and we got lightning, snowed, and rained off twice in three days. So anyway, and my psychiatrist at the VA, as we went through all these things, she said, when you were doing that, your focus on that wall was three foot by five feet, and your focus on this ski hill was to set two gates down in front of you. And I went, yeah. Well, that was just another way of you bringing in your own focus so everything else in your life was out for that period of time, and it was a release, and worked the same way. And it cost me a marriage. It cost me time with my children, and now that they’re adults, we’ve reconnected. But they were told by their mother that I really didn’t care enough about them, so that’s why I was always gone or doing something else. And so that guilt was pretty heavy. And then, like I told you, I started volunteering at the VA with some group, mostly Iraq and Afghan PTSD students, or patients, I should say. I told them, if you wait like I did 35 years, you’re literally losing a period of your life physically, mentally, socially, And you can’t get it back. It’s burned up. It’s gone. And I said, it’s kind of like a compost pile. You keep pushing it down and pushing it down. And then when it flames, it can get real ugly. And I have gotten incredible care. I had terrible care. I went out to Walter Reed back in the early 2000s. And after my second visit, I swore I’d never go back to a VA hospital again. And fortunately, another veteran told me about Denver. And I found my psychiatrist here. I found my real good treatment for my prostate cancer. And then I ended up with lymph node cancer, and they took out 57 of my lymph nodes robotically over at UC Health, but interacted through the VA. And I’ve had nothing but incredible care. That’s good to know. Every one of my doctors, they don’t treat you like… a number. They treated me at least like a human being. They cared about me. They would check up on me. I know this isn’t a paid political announcement for the VA, but for all those veterans out there that haven’t gone or won’t go, or their significant others, convince them to go because it is an incredible hospital.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, that’s really good to know. What can you tell me? How did your psychiatrist unlock this PTSD and help you?
SPEAKER 05 :
By taking me back and forcing me to some extent to relive or to revisit those experiences that I was having. and also with some drugs that help me sleep. And I’m still on an anti-anxiety drug, but it’s about a third of the strength it was seven or eight years ago. But she also got me, she was, got her MD in India and she got her psychiatric treatment, or license at, what’s the big hospital out in Baltimore? Johns Hopkins. And she got me into meditation. And it took me about a year to, as she said, break the ice and let my mind open up to it. And once it did, my heart rate went down. I mean, my blood pressure went down. I just literally became almost a different human being after getting into meditation. And I wear a bracelet that says breathe on it. Even if things get tight, I’ll just Sit five minutes, breathe, and if my blood pressure’s up when I get it tested, I say give me five minutes, and I can drop it by eight or ten points. So I guess good news, bad news. The good news is I was diagnosed properly. I was treated. And the bad news was I just waited too long. And God knows what could have been different in my life. But I guess you could say that about anything.
SPEAKER 10 :
That’s true. That’s certain. But it’s important to learn and to share that knowledge with our younger veterans. I think that’s really important as well. And we’ve got about four minutes left, Michael. And this helping younger veterans with this PTSD, this has been something that’s been very important to you, yes? Very much so.
SPEAKER 05 :
In fact, Dr. Mukherjee, who was my psychiatrist, is the one that asked if I wanted to join this other group. And at first I said no. I said I’m kind of, you know… That’s their generation. I’m my generation. But then I start thinking about it and we got involved and it got I could start seeing some improvement. And then when COVID hit, it got shut off. And that’s terrible. We tried to do it with, you know, videos and that. And I can’t do that. I’m very three dimensional and I want to be face to face.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, that was a real travesty during that time. I look back on that. It’s almost like it was a dream that our country went through that.
SPEAKER 05 :
It was surreal. That’s kind of the way I put it.
SPEAKER 10 :
I know. Really, it was surreal. So, Michael. Pretty amazing life experiences. And, you know, what would you like our listeners to kind of what’s kind of your final thought you’d like to leave with our listeners?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, I think for me, having not been a very good father, a very good husband as far as being away all the time. to not let your military experience get in the way of your life, get in the way of your families. I mean, it’s always gonna be there, but, Accept it and kind of, I won’t say compartmentalize it, but at least put it aside long enough so that you can focus on what’s really most important, and that’s your life, your family’s life, your friend’s life, and what you can do for the world, whether it’s pick up a piece of trash on the street or go on a mission to South America, just focus. I always feel like if you can give something back somewhere, you get a lot more comes back to you than what you put out.
SPEAKER 10 :
So, Michael, we have a duty as human beings to work to pass on something better. And I take that seriously. And so you just mentioned it’s picking up a piece of trash or just little things every day to pass on something good to the next generation. I really thank you for agreeing to do the interview. I felt like that when I initially asked you, you seemed just a little reticent.
SPEAKER 05 :
I was going to refuse. I think this is only like the second time I’ve really opened up very much about this. It’s been a hit and miss with my family, hit and miss with some friends and things. But this has been good for me to actually talk about it in a little bit of a string. So instead of just being a piece here, a piece there, it kind of has put all my experience back together. told me how fortunate I am, I guess, one, to be an American citizen, but two, to still be alive after things have happened. And I embrace that life every day. I get up, I have a, I see the whole front range off my deck and I go out every morning with my coffee and just thank everybody for me, one, being able to still be here, but be able to experience that in Colorado and put a smile on my face and go to work.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, Michael Keller, thank you so much. And my friends, indeed, it is apparent that we stand on the shoulders of giants. So God bless you and God bless America.
SPEAKER 07 :
Thank you for listening to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure to tune in again next Sunday, 3 to 4 p.m. here on KLZ 560 and KLZ 100.7.
SPEAKER 01 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
