This week’s America’s Veteran Stories takes you on a journey of bravery and healing through the voices of Vietnam veterans, guided by Colonel Robert Fisher. With discussions spanning battles such as the Tet Offensive to the significance of treaties which drew the U.S. into Southeast Asian conflicts, listeners gain a comprehensive understanding of the era. Discover the commitment to preserving these narratives in ‘Echoes of Our War’, ensuring future generations grasp the full scope of the sacrifices made. Kim Munson highlights not only the powerful stories of valor but also crucial initiatives like the hyperbaric treatment helping veterans today.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 11 :
World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and our 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 09 :
Welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteranStories.com. Thank you so much for joining us. These shows are so important. This basically precipitated from a trip that I took in 2016 with a group that accompanied four D-Day veterans back to Normandy, France for the anniversary, the 72nd anniversary of the Allies’ D-Day landings. to ultimately free Western Europe, free Europe from Hitler and his evil regime of Nazism, and came back, realized that each person’s, each individual story is unique. They might be right next to each other, and each story is unique. They need to be told. So in a way, this is checking out our ancestry of our country, our history of our country. And in studio with me is Paula Sarles. She is a friend. She is also a hero and a patriot. She’s a Vietnam-era Marine veteran. Her husband, well, she’s a Gold Star wife, so her husband passed on basically from Would you say it’s injuries? Agent Orange. Yeah, Agent Orange. And it’s on your heart to remodel and refurbish the Marine Memorial out here in Golden, which is the largest one west of the Mississippi, correct?
SPEAKER 10 :
It’s the only one dedicated by a commandant of the Marine Corps. It is the largest Marine-type memorial west of the Mississippi.
SPEAKER 09 :
And you’re raising money for this, and we’ve talked about this. People can buy a brick to honor one of the family member or a loved one or a friend.
SPEAKER 10 :
And in any service, there’s a walkway for all services, too.
SPEAKER 09 :
But now we’re doing something really special. We’re going to be doing probably five shows regarding the Vietnam veterans that are noted in this book, Echoes of Our War. And what’s going to happen with that, Paula?
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, the proceeds from this book have been dedicated to half of them to the Memorial Foundation and half of them to the Hyperbaric Chamber. And so what we’re doing for this series is whoever donates the most money will get a hardback copy of the book signed by all of the authors, plus Kim.
SPEAKER 09 :
We just added that one in, huh?
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, just added that in. And… That’s a collector’s item because only 100 of these hardback copies were printed. So it’ll be a collector’s item, and it’s a great gift. So we encourage people to donate at usmcmemorialfoundation.org. And note in the donation block, book, so we know that you’re participating in this promotion.
SPEAKER 09 :
And we need to have these books in our Freedom Library, most important, for sure. So on the line with us is the author, and that is Colonel Robert Fisher, United States Marine Corps, retired. Colonel Fisher, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER 13 :
Thank you, Kim. I’m not the author, Kim. I’m the sponsor and supporter of the book. and I’ll explain how that happened.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay. Thank you for correcting me. We like to get it right, Colonel Fisher, so you put this thing together. Tell us about it.
SPEAKER 13 :
Okay. You know that Brady and I have been on your show before, and we spoke about Cooper’s Troopers, which is a group we started. Well, I started with just two members back in 1997 with Ed Cooper, and it turned out to be 165 members. Of that 165 members, half were in Fort Logan, But the 10 veterans who are writing in the book, their chapters are all Cooper’s Troopers. And Paula also is a member of this group. It began with, I would say, in February of 2017, I was working on my Kovan book. It’s a book about my advisor experience and all. And it dawned on me that I had been on the Ho Chi Minh Trail 50 years earlier, back in that February, and I began to discuss the idea for another book with Dan Benter, who’s an exceptional supporter of my book. What I was thinking about is I wanted to write something, and originally I called it Echoes of My War, and there would have been a couple of other veterans from the Coopers in that book at that time. It turns out, in discussing with Dan, and then all of a sudden, Grady, thank God, you know my right arm, my full support, he’s got my back all the time. Those two gentlemen, plus Mark Hardcastle, literally were the anchors of the book. They did all the legwork, all the coordination, all the spacing, all the whatever. The whole thing of the book, as the book comes into being, What I contributed was the original title, Echoes of My War, because at that time I had already written three chapters about Vietnam, and I’ll just give you a little background briefly. I was in Vietnam, and almost all the countries in Southeast Asia from 1961 to 1962. I was captain of the Marines on the 73rd Flagship. My admiral lived there because we had We had the emerging wars of liberation supported by the Chinese and Russians. And I got firsthand looked by going into ports of Saigon in Thailand and you name it in the Southeast Asian countries, wherever there’s a port. So the thought came to me, why don’t I write a book about that? And those three chapters were the beginnings, starting with that time of 6162. As it evolved, it began to dawn on me that, Whoops, I got six veterans now. Now I got seven. And all of a sudden, I have 10. And it became obvious to me that it was their book. And we changed the title to Echoes of Our War. And I became the advocate and sponsor for the book.
SPEAKER 10 :
Wow.
SPEAKER 09 :
So how did you then start? So you now have 10 veterans, and actually I highly recommend that people get the book because each of these stories is so important. So did you reach out and interview each of them, or how did you come up with these chapters?
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, the chapters had begun where I’d ask Dan Gunther, Brady, and – Who else did I get in? Mark Hardcastle. Oh. No, Mark was the editor. Mark is an exceptional editor. I don’t know if anyone knows the background. Mark’s part of our Colorado Publishers, Independent Publishers Group also. And I just want to say kudos to him because he is a superb editor, a taskmaster. He’s the content guy. He’s an airline pilot, veteran editor. musical conductor, and he’s the author of Symphony of Your Life, Restoring Harmony in Your Life, a phenomenal book. Grady, as you know, was with me on Miracle Workers, and he’s the integrator on Bud’s Month, you name it. Got my back. And Dan, who is from the Iowa Workshop, of all things, he’s the author of China Wind, Dog City Blues. They were the crutch that I had to use to get those 10 veterans In the beginning, I only had three or four when I called it Echoes of My War. It was Grady and Dan who reached out and became the coordinators and the pacemakers for the rest of the book and the other authors that were in there.
SPEAKER 09 :
As I look at the book, Colonel Fisher, I’m also one of those that goes to the pictures first. I guess I shouldn’t admit that. But the pictures are all powerful here as well. And it is a beautiful, beautiful book. I’m so excited that we’re doing this series as well as this very, very cool promotion on this. So let’s talk about, you said that you were in Vietnam 1961, 1962. Yes. And things were happening. Things were heating up. What should our listeners know about the very beginning of this war?
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, I’m glad you asked that question. Actually, I was the captain of Marines aboard the 7th Fleet flagship. And my Admiral, Griffin, made sure he was in Southeast Asia because it was a hot spot. I had the opportunity at that time to go ashore in Malaya. and study the emergency in its last year. They had a 12-year fight against the communist terrorists there. The Philippines had their own war of liberation, communist-inspired. Vietnam already had the dead teachers and the North Vietnamese cadres there in 62 when we pulled the ship into Saigon. And then you had Thailand, the 1962 intervention with the Pathlet Lao supported by North Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh and Jop had the Pathlet Lao encroachment into northeast Thailand, which is very fertile Mekong River country. And it was JFK, right at the same time as he was taking cruise ship on in 1962, who ordered the Marine Brigade off Okinawa to counter that. And my future boss, General Simpson, was the brigade commander who went into Thailand. And I was in the port watching the offloading of this Marine Brigade. And they immediately went up to the border and the path that Lao ran for, like the college they were, and never came back again. That was attributed to JFK. A few people would know that happened. Now, the other side of it is we were there because of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization that we were charter members of. Many people forget that we went into Vietnam and South Korea in those wars because we had treaties, Asian protective treaties. And that’s why my 10 veterans… hold their heads high today, but as volunteer young Marines, we went to war. We were ordered to war to help an ally.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay, Colonel Fisher, and at the end of this series, we’re going to really delve into your story. But I think this is important to understand that coming out of World War II, there was this concern about the spread of communism. And so is that where the Southeast Asia treaties, is that where that precipitated from?
SPEAKER 13 :
Absolutely. The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization came into being right after the North Vietnamese had defeated the French. One of the major land armies in the world was defeated in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu, and that’s when France lost its colonies and exited Southeast Asia, the Indo-Chinese colonies. Now, that’s amazing because I would hope to cover at some time one of the most amazing Marines that I had met in 1962 on the flagship, Colonel Victor Coyzaf, He was our alpha and omega of the whole 14 years’ involvement in Vietnam. And I’m writing about that in my Sovan book that I’m rewriting about. What was going on in Southeast Asia at that time is we had a military advisory group in Saigon, General O’Daniels. Victor was in the MAG, and he was also the interpreter for Polyseum. He had been to the Côte d’Ivoire in France, where Napoleon actually went to school, and Wittner was sent to Vietnam to not only monitor the partitioning of the two Vietnams in 1954, where one million refugees were allowed to leave the North because they were Catholic and Buddhist, and very few went from the South back to the North. Wittner orchestrated the entire move because he was a veteran of five amphibious landings in World War II. And he knew naval maritime shipping. He got with the French, and they pulled half a million of those refugees came out on ships that Victor coordinated and put to the south. One of those units that came out at that time were the famous dinosaurs who Bernard Fall called the most famous and most successful fighting force in the Vietnam War. And those were the Catholic and Buddhist dinosaurs. who Victor spotted as the first Vietnamese Marine battalion, pulled himself to the track and set up the first Vietnamese Marine battalion, and I became a Vietnamese Marine advisor many years later. And he was the first advisor. So I saw all that happen, too, in those days. But I wasn’t there in 54. Victor was.
SPEAKER 09 :
Oh, my gosh, that is very fascinating, Colonel Fisher. We’re going to go to break. We are setting this whole series up, Echoes of Our War, Vietnam Veterans Reflect 50 Years Later. And Colonel Fisher is really the guy that kind of pulled this whole thing together. Paula Sarles is in studio with me, and we’ve got a really special offering going on. So stay tuned. We’ll be right back with Colonel Bob Fisher and Paula Sarles.
SPEAKER 02 :
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 14 :
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 09 :
Welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson, and be sure and check out my website. That is AmericasVeteranStories.com. We are creating an amazing series, and it is Echoes of Our War, Vietnam Veterans Reflect 50 Years Later. The coordinator, the guy that really put this together, is Colonel Robert Fisher, Colonel Bob Fisher, retired United States Marine Corps. And in studio with me is Paula Sarles. She is a Vietnam-era veteran. Marine veteran as well as a Gold Star wife. And as we’re going through this first segment here with Colonel Fisher, we’re going to actually do at least another interview at the end of this. It’s going to be a four or five week series. I can’t wait. I’m on the edge of my chair right now. But a friend of mine, Helen Raleigh, has really recommended that we have freedom libraries. I love books. I love to hold them in my hand. With what’s happening in America today, I think it’s more important than ever. And this echoes of our war. We’re doing something very special on this, Paula.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yes, we are. Whoever donates the most money during this series of shows will receive a signed hard copy collector’s copy of the book. and it will be signed by all the authors. And how can people? And they can donate at usmcmemorialfoundation.org and put in the notations book so we know you’re participating in this promo.
SPEAKER 09 :
And Colonel Fisher is the one that you write a number of different books, Colonel Fisher, correct?
SPEAKER 13 :
That was my seventh book.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay. I think that actually in your Freedom Library, you need all of these different books. But Colonel Fisher, what you were talking about, we only have really gotten to 1961-62 when you were over in Southeast Asia. But as you were talking about this, I don’t know. I don’t know about all of this, but you mentioned something about the dead teachers. What was that exactly?
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, the armed forces, Stars and Stripes, and the military police, publication of the time when we pulled into Saigon. Actually, St. Paul had to be beached, the bow had to be beached on the Longtao-Sairoff rivers to get it up into Saigon. And at that time, there was no MAG. I’m sorry, there was a MAG at that time, military advisory group. But in that start of the strike, they had an article that I cut out called The Dead Teachers, and it was where since 1950… Joseph Stalin called a meeting of Mao Zedong, who had been just one year as the new premier of China, and Ho Chi Minh, who planned not only what was happening in the Korean War, but what was going to happen in South Vietnam in the Vietnam War. And that included the Vietnam War. So the origins go way back of how all this began. Our book then details much of that leading up to how we did get in the war. and why we got into the war, and then my biggest point I’m trying to make in the book is the lessons of the war. That would be an entire interview in itself. We didn’t learn any lessons. We were totally untrained for the war. I wrote an article to the Marine Corps Gazette called The Forgotten Subject in 1962 and had it shoved back down my throat by the editor. who told me I was walking off base when I said Marines were totally untrained to go into the emerging guerrilla wars that were coming. The dead teachers were the cadres sent by Ho Chi Minh and Yop into the villages, and they were massacring village chiefs, and they were taking over whole segments of the population. Now, here I go again. It was a people’s war written by Mao Zedong and Yop, General Jopp, and you could buy those books written by them in the Hong Kong and Taiwan libraries. Nobody read those books in the earliest days. I did, and I also got the Moya Dundall school syllabus, so I knew more about the war than anybody out there at the time, I think, and I tried to write the article in the Marine Corps Gazette. That’s what provoked me to get ECHOS, because ECHOS is to try to show the lessons and the false lessons the false presentation of so many that have interpreted the Vietnam War wrong.
SPEAKER 09 :
Colonel Fisher, I remember in one of the interviews that you and I have done together that you had mentioned you were one of the first guys out there that realized that we were going to be looking at a different kind of warfare, guerrilla warfare. And as you mentioned, we were unprepared. That’s why this book that you’ve put together, Echoes of Our War is so important so that people can understand what happened. I really think I actually had been talking to a young college student that was talking about the Vietnam War, and I just knew enough to know that she is being told just a few pieces of truth and then a lot of propaganda. So as I’m reflecting on this, this book is becoming even more important in my mind, just as we’re talking about it in this initial interview. Colonel Fisher, we’ve got about four minutes left. So where would you like to go in this last three to four minutes?
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, there’s some truth telling. The reason I supported this book so much and what Grady and the rest of us put together is we began to see the truth telling that was coming out that the people have not known for 50 years. For example, the hypocrisy of Walter Cronkite is a whole story in itself. He gave one speech in Saigon a week after, in which he stated unequivocally, and Victor Croizet heard this speech, was there at the time, in the night, America just won this war. The Gek Kong were 80% decimated. Two weeks later, after Fonda and Kerry got a hold of him and the anti-war types back in the States, it was the famous speech, we’ve just lost the war, and LBJ quit because of that. We’re correcting a lot of this falsity that went in in the earliest days. The Ken Burns documentary has a brilliant part on the French brutality and the colonialism, but it goes off into liberal interpretation of our war. The war is a different war, a completely different war than people understand. That’s why we did the book.
SPEAKER 09 :
And it is so important, and we definitely have a whole bunch more of information to talk about on this. This book, Echoes of Our War, Vietnam Veterans Reflect 50 Years Later. We’re going to be talking with Grady Birdsong in this next segment. And quickly, you, Colonel Fisher, and Grady Birdsong have been… have done something very important to try to help our young guys coming back from the Middle East with this hyperbolic chamber. You’ve had some great success regarding treating PTSD. Tell us quickly about that.
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, our book, Miracle Work of the South Boulder Road, tells how Gary and I became involved back in 2010 as veteran advocates for that clinic. When we saw the miracles being worked, we brought the basket case kids in, IED damaged, brain damaged, PTSD, and we put together the only integrated PTSD TBI program in the world, and that’s supported by the Israelis. It’s an integrated 40-day program, and you know we’ve successfully, Paula, put out 450 successful recoveries in there, and three are in med school today. They were basket cases when we got them.
SPEAKER 09 :
I tell you what, that is amazing. And that’s the Miracle Workers of South Boulder Road. Yeah, Miracle Workers.
SPEAKER 13 :
It’s on Amazon. Okay. It’s on Amazon.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay. We’re going to go to break here in just a minute. And I’ll be talking with Grady Birdsong in segments three and four. This is a series that we will be doing. regarding this echoes of our war, Vietnam veterans reflect 50 years later. It is time to set the record straight. Paula Sarles, for so many years, our Vietnam veterans came back. They served valiantly, came back to a country. I think Colonel Fisher just mentioned, you mentioned it was Jane Fonda and you said Kerry. Was that John Kerry that you were referring to?
SPEAKER 13 :
Many people do not know that in the Hall of Honor in Hanoi today, There is in the center of the Hall of Heroes and the Hall of Honor that the North Vietnamese pay tribute to are the photos of Jane Fonda and John Kerry right in the center of the Hall of Heroes, the North Vietnamese Hall of Heroes.
SPEAKER 09 :
And now that guy is in charge of climate change here in America. Astounding to me. We’re going to go to break. Before we do that, though, to tell these stories, I have many great sponsors. And one of my great sponsors is on the line with me. And that is Hal Van Herke. He is the owner of Castlegate Knife and Tool. It’s a family-owned business. located right here in Sedalia, Colorado. Hal, I so appreciate you. You keep our independent voice live and out there and also these stories of these veterans. You are a valued partner of both of my shows. Castlegate Knife and Tool has knives from the best blade makers from throughout the world.
SPEAKER 12 :
Thank you very much, Kim. We’re proud to be part of all the work that you do. We also support our veterans community and first responder community One of the things we do is we provide a 10% discount on everything we sell all day, every day at Castlegate Knife and Tool to veterans, active duty service personnel, and first responders. A couple of the other things that we have going on is that we support directly through financial contributions and participation in the National Honor Tour. And the National Honor Tour is an organization that’s designed to make sure that, first and foremost, no service member that’s laid to rest has to be… has to go without having taps played at their memorial service. So we make sure that there’s a live bugler there for the service, along with a couple of other national organizations. The National Honor Tour is also in the process of going to the gravesite of each Medal of Honor recipient in the United States and playing taps and recording that next to their gravesite. And coming up on Memorial Day weekend at Fort Logan Cemetery in Colorado, We’re having a second annual event that we will play taps live at the gravesite if anybody buried there, including spouses, et cetera. And all you have to do is go to the National Honor Tour Facebook page and mention the name of who you would like to have played for on Memorial Day. We do it over a three-day period, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Last year we played taps over 500 times. This year we expect that we will exceed that. And we provide, and again, Castle Gate Nightingale is a very proud sponsor of the National Honor Tour. And I participate personally by assisting in playing taps when necessary.
SPEAKER 09 :
Hal Van Herke, I just got chills just how important this is and honoring those that have put it all on the line and their family members that have put it all on the line to protect our freedoms, to stand against tyranny. And this is a really noble thing that you’re doing with the National Honor Tour on this, Hal.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, we’re very pleased to be part of it and pleased to be part of everything that you do for our veterans community on a regular basis, Kim. Thank you.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, it’s my honor to get to do this. And the Castlegate Knife and Tool, the website, it has a lot of information there because you have a lot going on. And so you’ll have this on your website very soon as well, right?
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah. You can learn about the National Honor Tool on our website at castlegate.com. as well as other programs that we support and products that we have in stock at any given time. We have over 3,000 different types of knives in stock. We also do custom-made rifles here in Colorado, and we sell U.S.-made watches and a number of other things that are of interest to our customers.
SPEAKER 09 :
You talk about an entrepreneur. Hal and Linnea Van Herke, you are the American spirit to me. So thank you so much, and I so appreciate your partnership on both the shows. Thank you very much. And we’ll be right back with Paula Sarles and Grady Birdsong.
SPEAKER 01 :
In tumultuous times, it is necessary that we each have a freedom library to know and understand our history. Bury Him! A Memoir of the Vietnam War by Captain Doug Chamberlain is a must for your personal library. In this honest and gripping memoir, Captain Chamberlain recounts the chilling events that took place during his command of a company of young Marines at the height of the Vietnam War. Chamberlain painfully recalls the unspeakable order he and his Marines were forced to obey and the cover-up which followed. Purchase the book at marinedougchamberlain.com That’s marinedougchamberlain.com so that you gain perspective on this time in our history.
SPEAKER 08 :
Eyes peeled and moving quickly, Lance Corporal Jack Swan led 164 of his fellow U.S. Marines from Mike Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines over the face of a bare rocky knoll to rescue an isolated company of fellow Leathernecks besieged by the Communist North Vietnamese Army. then all hell broke loose instead of rescuing their fellow comrades the marines now faced complete annihilation author doyle glass tells their story in swift sword a true vietnam war story of epic courage and brotherhood in the face of insurmountable odds order swift sword by doyle glass now they never gave up we should never forget god bless america
SPEAKER 05 :
that I
SPEAKER 09 :
And welcome back to America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Munson. This is such an important show. I’m so excited to have in studio with me Paula Sarles. You know her. She is a Vietnam-era Marine veteran as well as a Gold Star wife doing all this great work on the Marine Memorial out here in Golden, Colorado. Paula, these shows are so rich with content. It’s just so fantastic.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yes, they’re very exciting to hear the stories and touching – Too many words to describe him. But I’m very excited to be part of it.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, and this book, Echoes of Our War, by Colonel Robert Fisher, who we just talked with, has told the stories of several of our Vietnam Marine veterans. And what is so exciting, we mentioned it, is for people during this time, it’ll probably be about four or five weeks as we’re going through all these stories, the one that contributes the most gets what?
SPEAKER 10 :
They get a signed hardback copy of the book. Autographed by all of the authors. And that’s a great collector item because there were only 100 books printed in hardback copy. The rest are paperback. And all the proceeds from the sales of these books go to… Half of the proceeds go to the foundation, the U.S. Marine Corps Memorial Foundation, and… The other half goes to the hyperbaric chamber.
SPEAKER 09 :
Which is something that is really near and dear on the hearts of both Colonel Fisher and our next guest, and that is Grady Birdsong. Grady Birdsong, welcome to the show. I feel so connected with you because of Cooper’s Troopers, which is this group of Marines that meets on a regular basis up in North Denver. And I consider you my friend, Grady Birdsong.
SPEAKER 15 :
Well, thank you very much. Thank you and your audience for having Paula and myself today. Thank you.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, let’s talk about your story. You are one of the stories in this book, Echoes of Our War. And where do you want to start with this, Grady?
SPEAKER 15 :
Well, let me start this way. Colonel Fisher, God bless him. Colonel Fisher is an accomplished colonel of Marines. He’s a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, class of 1955. And his best friend was my battalion aide. executive officer in vietnam in 1968 and that’s how kind of i got connected with him colonel fisher was a covan uh which is in vietnamese that meant he’s a friend of trusted friend covan means trusted friend he was an advisor to the vietnamese marine corps in the early days of the war and he shot the azimuth he set the compass course in other words for this book this project, and he kind of asked me to pull it all together, which I did. And all of these men that are in the book, with the exception of one, are Cooper’s Troopers members. So I kind of served as the chief editor, and I wrote my chapter, along with the others, and Three of us contributed to the editing process. Dan Gunther, he was over in Vietnam at the same time I was. He’s an accomplished author himself. He’s written a number of books. And he formulated all of the questions that we would answer in this book, which, well, one of them are thoughts and feelings that we have today about the war 50 years afterwards. And so I went through and pulled everything together, did all of the developmental, or most of the developmental and content editing, and helped some of the authors enhance their narratives in their chapters. Some of them didn’t need help, some of them did. Mark Hardcastle, a closer in the mind, Air Force Academy graduate combat pilot. He’s now a United Airlines pilot and an award-winning author. Asked if he could participate, and he did all the fine-tuning. He knows the English language very well. He knows the finer points of grammar, and so he went through and fine-tuned it after we got it all put together. But our intended audience on this book, Echoes of Our War, are Vietnam veterans, Marines, corpsmen, historians, anybody that’s interested in the war, and the current-day military. And it’s a book about the lessons we learned as kids in a war in a place that nobody had ever heard of. And each of us served different aspects of the theater. Denny Sedlak, the first chapter, he was a corpsman in the Grants. That’s what you call the infantry, or the Marine Corps calls the infantry. Denny’s chapter will sober you up to the realities of the war right off the bat. It’s the first chapter. He went right into the fire. He and I participated in the same operation in summer of 68, Operation Ellenbrook, a big operation. And on to the house-to-house fighting in the Tet Offensive of 1968 at Hue City. Bill Purcell and Gary Eichler, they were both involved and put to the test there. And not since Korea or World War II had the Marines been even involved in a house-to-house warfare. It had all been rice paddy, hedgerow, jungle warfare up to that point. And they got thrown into the big battle there at Hue City. They had 10,000 North Vietnamese troops waiting on them. When Bill and Gary walked into it, the first day, January 31st, actually February 1st, Bill, I think, lasted 13, 14 days before he was grievously wounded. And then they sent him back to the States, took him. a long time to recover from his wounds. Gary made it through the battle without any wounds. He was one of the very few. Dan Gunther’s chapter, he relates about the Amtraks. Those are the 40-ton behemoths that are designed to land troops shipped ashore or across the wide, deep rivers. Dan came up with some excellent lessons learned in utilizing the M-Tracks in that kind of a topographical arena. Bob Averill’s chapter, he talks about the Combined Action Program. That’s basically the Marine Corps’ equivalent of the Peace Corps, but with rifles. What Bob and his men did, they helped develop the community during the day and provided the security at night. And he’s got a great chapter in there, and he talks about some of the Vietnamese that he came to know and worked with there. Master Sergeant John Decker, USMC retired, gives everyone a glimpse of what it was like to stay in the Corps back in the 70s. John not only did two combat tours, but he went on to serve in Italy, took his wife to Italy right after Vietnam, and provided security for some installations over there. And then he went on to do a tour of the drill fields. He became a respected Marine Corps drill instructor. He’s probably one of them. Well, it is the most important job in the Marine Corps. And that drill instructor billet is the actual foundation and formative backbone of the entire organization. Then we go on to Mike Frazier in his chapter. He’s one of the grunts who got over there early in Vietnam, and he learned to walk point, and he did it quite well. He became really good at it, but he finally was seriously wounded. Not many people make it physically. too long walking point and he was evacuated back statesides and he reflects on his his time grady what what is walking what is that i guess you have to read the book to find out right you walk you they they’re the first man down the trail or first man into an unknown territory uh there’s there’s a lot to it uh you learn to look for booby traps you learn to look for trip wires uh You don’t know if you’re going to get ambushed. If you walk into a village and all of the little children are quiet, well, you know something’s going on. Things like that. It’s a dangerous, dangerous, dangerous occupation. And not everybody’s cut out for it. Mike was.
SPEAKER 04 :
Wow.
SPEAKER 15 :
Tom Jacobs, he, God bless him, he walked Point into a, well, he was in the Point platoon when they walked into a battalion-sized ambush in 67 in the jungle west of Camp Evans up on the DMZ. And he survived that. I think 23 Marines were killed and 105 received real serious wounds. Tom was wounded three times, he tells about it, and he ended up being evacuated out, and it took him a long time. Tom’s a successful businessman now, and got a couple of restaurants here in town, Takabi’s, American Indian Cuisine. We love that place.
SPEAKER 04 :
Wow.
SPEAKER 15 :
And then Captain, finally Captain, well, Captain at the time, C.R. Cusack, he tells in his chapter what it was like to fly F-4s on support missions for us Marines on the ground. And he got shot down by a machine gun position on Hill 310 west and a little south of Devang. And I found the guy that… I found the story. I found the fellow that wrote the story about the Marines that went up and captured that weapon and put it in the book.
SPEAKER 09 :
You know, Grady, this particular book, Echoes of Our War, I’ve been talking with my friend Helen Raleigh, who she immigrated from China. She is a true patriot. She’s also an author. But she has really floated this idea initially, and I totally agree with her that each of us needs to start to have the actual copies of books and create our freedom library and our history library. And Echoes of Our War is certainly a good place to start with that. And I would highly recommend that people do that, Grady. Thank you.
SPEAKER 15 :
Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there’s a lot of things that went on. Colonel Fisher will talk about the lessons learned. Well, and that is what is so important. So, Grady, we’re going to go to break.
SPEAKER 09 :
And when we come back, we want to hear, start with your story. I have a feeling that maybe one segment is not going to be enough for that as well. Paula Sarles is in studio with me. She is a Vietnam-era Marine veteran and really excited about this book giveaway. Paula? Yes.
SPEAKER 10 :
The USMC Memorial Foundation was formed to remodel the Marine Corps Memorial in Golden. And Colonel Fisher has been a part of that memorial for many years. And he has dedicated part of the proceeds of this book to our efforts to remodel the memorial. And the other part goes to the hyperbaric chamber, which we all love.
SPEAKER 09 :
Right. And while we’re doing this series, whoever during this series, and it’ll probably be four or five shows for sure, contributes the most, they will get a hard copy, signed copy of the book by all of the people. Every one of the authors.
SPEAKER 10 :
Oh, my gosh. How can people contribute? And they can donate by going to usmcmemorialfoundation.org. And when you contribute, put in the comments book so we know that your contribution goes towards the effort on this project to raise money.
SPEAKER 09 :
Most definitely. So we’re going to go to break. Before we do that, though, I have so many great sponsors that I get to work with. And one of those sponsors is Hooters Restaurants. They have five locations here in the metro area, Westminster, Aurora, Lone Tree, Loveland, and Colorado Springs. And they have all kinds of different specials, whether or not it’s dine-in, to-go. They have party packs, all kinds of great specials. And to get all the details on that, go to my website, kimmunson.com. Click on the Sponsor tab. That’ll drop down, and then click on the Hooters icon, and that will bring up all the specials that they have. It is time for us to get together with friends and family, and to get together over some of those delicious Hooters wings is a great thing to do. We’re going to go to break. We’ll be right back with Grady Birdsong.
SPEAKER 06 :
We’ll be right back. If you’d like to explore what a reverse mortgage can do for you, call Lauren Levy at 303-880-8881. That’s 303-880-8881.
SPEAKER 07 :
Call now. You’d like to get in touch with one of the sponsors of The Kim Monson Show, but you can’t remember their phone contact or website information. Find a full list of advertising partners on Kim’s website, kimmonson.com. That’s Kim, M-O-N-S-O-N dot com.
SPEAKER 09 :
Welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. And be sure and check out my website. That is AmericasVeteranStories.com. And we are starting a series, a really important series, based on this book by Colonel Robert Fisher, a retired U.S. Marine Corps. It’s Echoes of Our War, Vietnam Veterans Reflect 50 Years Later. And Paula Sarles is in studio with me. She is a Vietnam-era Marine veteran as well as a Gold Star wife and is really working diligently to remodel, refurbish the Marine Memorial out here in Golden. And Paula, if people, during this time when we’re doing this series, the person that donates the most will actually get what? They get a hardback copy of the book signed by all of the authors. Something to add to your Freedom Library. And on the line with me is Grady Birdsong. During the last segment, he went through how he worked with Colonel Fisher and the other authors in creating this book. And I have a feeling, Grady, we’re not going to have enough time. just in this segment. So I think we’ll probably record you next week as well. So where do you want to start regarding your experience in Vietnam and what you’ve contributed to this book?
SPEAKER 15 :
Well, okay, let me begin with this. And I speak for a lot of Vietnam veterans. There’s not a day that doesn’t go by that I don’t think back about the time that I spent in Vietnam. I spent 20 months over there, almost two tours, two full tours. And one of the things that comes to mind when I first got there, I was pretty naive, a new troop.
SPEAKER 09 :
How old were you, Grady?
SPEAKER 15 :
I was 20 years old. I had already had two years of college, and I had enlisted in the Marine Corps and then went right over.
SPEAKER 09 :
And what year was that?
SPEAKER 15 :
That was in 1968 when we got there. The Tet Offensive had broken out. We were in staging battalion in Camp Pendleton, and the Tet Offensive broke out. Bill Purcell and Gary Eichler were already over there involved in the battle for Hue.
SPEAKER 09 :
Grady, what was the Tet Offensive?
SPEAKER 15 :
The Tet Offensive, Tet means the Lunar New Year. Every year the Oriental people, especially the Vietnamese people, they call it Tet, T-E-T. They celebrate the, it’s kind of like our Christmas celebration. They celebrate the good happenings that are going to happen in the coming year. And everybody was on vacation the end of January of 1968. Well, every year they do this. And there was a lull in the fighting. And what had happened is the North Vietnamese had infiltrated most of the major cities in South Vietnam below the DMZ. Hue City, the old… capital of Vietnam. It’s what Boston is to us in our revolutionary history. There was probably anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 NBA soldiers infiltrated into Hue City. They did so in Saigon. They did so in Da Nang. They were up at Khe Sanh. And they staged a major push, major offensive to come in and crush us, the military, the United States military. Marines were all in the northern I-Corps area. And when the battle for Hue City broke out, why, a platoon—well, actually, it was a company. It was a couple platoons, a couple, three platoons— knew that there was a disturbance going on in way city and bill purcell and gary eichler were the two gentlemen that i talked about that uh marines that uh they were in the point uh they went up there they were the first ones in there and there was ten thousand nba waiting on them and they started fighting house to house uh And after that, after the Marines, the 5th Marines and the 1st Marines regiments secured the citadel inside the city of Huey, why, my battalion was rushed up there, 1st Battalion, 27 Marines, and they had pushed all of the NVA out into the canal area. The canal area was the rice paddy area out to the coast. And we… Our mission was to go after them and curtail them. And the reason they were out there is that was the rice-producing area. That was their food supply. And it took us almost three months to secure that area out there. And then we went back down to south of Da Nang on Operation Allenbrook, which was a major operation that year. All this time, caisson’s going on up on the DMC area. And they were, in the case of the Marines up there, the 26 Marines were surrounded by probably 20,000 NVA coming in from Laos. It was the peak year of the war, the Tet Offensive. Does that give you a good idea?
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, I think that’s it. Paula, anything else to add to that right now? No? Okay, good. Okay, let’s continue on then, Grady.
SPEAKER 15 :
Okay. When I first got there, right before we went up to Hue City, we knew that there was a lot going on. And we were staging. We were being snapped in, so to speak. We were being trained by the unit that was already there south of Da Nang, getting us ready to take over that area. And I remember in the chow line, I had… We had trays go through the line buffet style, get your food, eat it. Then you go out to a boiling trash can, boiling water trash can with a heat unit on it. And you dip your tray in there and wash it off with a brush. And as I walked up to that washing station, another Marine had a rifle trained on me. And he says, get out of the way. with an expletive. And I knew that he was serious, and I moved out of the way, and he shot the man right behind me, right in the stomach. Miraculously, the fellow lived. We wrestled this guy down. His rifle jammed, and another quick-thinking sergeant Started wrestling with him, wrestling the rifle away with him, and a bunch of us jumped in and took it away. I wasn’t ready for that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Nobody is.
SPEAKER 15 :
I had been there probably three or four days, and another Marine shooting another Marine, and these guys had been in the field forever, I think. They had the 1,000 yards there, and they were best friends. And miraculously, the other Marine lived. But the Marine that shot him, he went to prison over that. And I just wasn’t ready for that. And I didn’t tell anybody about that for a long time. At a reunion about two years ago, I related that to another friend of mine at the reunion. And he says, I was in the line. He said, I saw that. I never told anybody about that because I was ashamed of it. I thought nobody would believe me.
SPEAKER 09 :
A couple of things on that, Grady. I remember the first time I heard the term 1,000-foot stair was from one of the World War II veterans that I interviewed that had served in the Pacific Theater. Tell our listeners what that is exactly.
SPEAKER 15 :
Well, it’s post-traumatic stress. It’s the beginning of post-traumatic stress. A thousand yards there, that came from World War II. Everybody was just numb. Obviously, these two friends had an argument and they got mad at each other. It was normal to have a rifle and take care of the situation out in the field. I’m just speculating.
SPEAKER 09 :
I don’t know. It’s hard to know.
SPEAKER 15 :
It’s hard to know. It really shook me up. I didn’t really tell anybody about it for all my life. My wife didn’t even know about it. But I thought it was crazy.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, it really is. And, again, I think I said 1,000 foot. I meant 1,000-yard stare. And my understanding also is that looking out to always be watching what is going on out there also is kind of a contributor to that 1,000-yard stare as well, Grady.
SPEAKER 15 :
Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, I would become numb myself later on as we got into the war, as we went up to – uh… to hawaii city out in the canal area uh… we’ve we’ve met some pretty heavy resistance out there it was it was no cakewalk uh… we lost a lot of marines uh… and uh… then we went back down on operation allenbrook and we lost even more uh… denny uh… denny uh… describes it well in his chapter denny’s a close friend of mine he was the corpsman anyway that that Things like that in the book we reflect back on. That’s why Colonel Fisher got me involved in the hyperbaric oxygen situation, healing our heroes. All these kids coming back from the Middle Eastern wars, I wanted to help them. I got to come back. I got to live. So the least I can do is help others. Some didn’t get to come back.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, Grady, we are actually just about out of time. So clearly this is going to be the cliffhanger for next week because we will get you scheduled to continue with your story. And it seems interesting to me, Paula, that so many people in America today are so interested in their personal ancestry. But we also have to be interested in our American ancestry as well, our American history. And that’s why this is such an important series that we’re doing.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yes, it is. And it’s very important because these guys didn’t get to tell their story when they got out of the Marine Corps in the 70s. And I know my husband and I, neither one, talked about any of this until 1999.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, and Grady, that is why Cooper’s Troopers is this group of Marines that meets in North Denver. And it’s very supportive of each other because you’ve each… Seeing different things, but in a lot of ways the same things. And that has been such a healing organization for so many people. And you’re very humble about this, but you’ve done a lot to help a lot of different Marines and service men and women in this. So thank you so much for what you do.
SPEAKER 15 :
Well, thank you. Thank your audience for listening.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay, so we are going to schedule Grady for next week, Paula. All right. We’ll get that done.
SPEAKER 10 :
And again, let’s see, how can people… They can contribute to the foundation, usmcmemorialfoundation.org.
SPEAKER 09 :
and write a notebook there. And the person that contributes the most after we do this series will receive a hardback copy with the autograph of all of our heroes here. So Grady Birdsong, we will talk to you next week.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you again, Paula.
SPEAKER 09 :
Thank you, Greg.
SPEAKER 03 :
And Kim.
SPEAKER 09 :
Most definitely. My friends, you can see that we as Americans stand on the shoulders of giants. And it is our time to step forward into this as well. We are in an ideological battle right now for the heart and soul of our country. And I so thank each and every one of these servicemen and women for my freedom. And all I can say is, my friends, God bless you and God bless America.
SPEAKER 11 :
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.
