September 27, 2023 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, we learn about the Senator who started out as a forward air controller in The Vietnam War
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American stories, and we tell stories about
everything here on this show. Up next, another story on
Hank Brown, one of the greatest and most humble statesmen
of our era. Hank volunteered to serve in Vietnam, served
in the US House of Representatives and the US Senate,
served as president of three different universities, including having a
(00:33):
unanimous bipartisan support to lead the University of Colorado out
of a number of scandals. Let's get into the story
of his military service.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I was in grad school and found it boring to
the point of the distraction. So I joined the Navy,
went through Officers Candidate School in Newport, and then volunteered
for the UDT training underwater demolition training. Unfortunately, my eyes
weren't good enough. I was twenty thirty in one eye.
(01:05):
So when I got turned down for that, I applied
for flight training. You could with correctable vision, you could
become a navigator, cut into a VR squadron. And when
Linda Johnson asked for volunteers for Vietnam to serve in Vietnam.
I remember it was a Thursday afternoon. He was on television.
(01:25):
I was in the reading room working on some paperwork.
And he came on television and asked for volunteers, and
I went and called my detailer in the Navy. They
have people in Washington to follow your expertise and handle assignments,
and I called my detailer and volunteered filled out the
paperwork that afternoon. Early in the morning, I had orders
(01:47):
to leave before my commanding officer had even seen my paperwork.
I guess I'd hit it just right, and they were
trying to get people over to Vietnam. So I left
the next day, went to San Diego for training, and
then got to Danang, Vietnam, and sixty five early on
when they were just starting to build up. There were
(02:10):
no planes in Danang for the Navy. They had planes, obviously,
but they were Air Force and Army planes. So I
tried to get assigned to a combat area because Danang
was kind of an administrative area for the Navy. So
I talked the Army into let me fly with them
as a Ford air controller. It was great fun. It
(02:32):
was a little L nineteen, which is like a Piper
cub almost little small light plane. We flew basically the
area of icors. You'd spot enemy activity. You had to
get them to fire on you first to be able
to call in an air strike, So you'd circle lower
and lower until they'd fire on you, and then you
could call in naval gunfire or aircraft to strike. The
(02:59):
rules of engagement were insane because sometimes you then after
they fired on you, you had to get permission from
the American command for the core the ICREPS area, and
the Vietnamese command for the ICREPS areas well. Sometimes it
would take an hour to get permission to return fire.
(03:19):
Sometimes it took twenty four hours. I remember we came
across at one point a unit of a North Vietnamese
military of a battalion level size. They fired on us.
We waited hours to get permission to return fire. By
the time the permission came through, they'd gone off into
(03:41):
the jungle. The rules that McNamara had set down for
our engagement and Vietnam guaranteed that we would lose. He
did such disservice for Americans and the Vietnamese. I think
McNamara to this day bears responsibility for the loss of
(04:04):
freedom for the South Vietnamese. Just insanity. We should never
ever get involved in a conflict like that again, where
we don't have a determination to win. One of the
things that most people don't understand is that first year
and sixty five, the North Vietnamese murdered over forty thousand
(04:29):
local officials in South Vietnam. I remember the Kennedys talking
about how Teddy Kennedy, I think in the Senate at
the time, was saying that we shouldn't support South Vietnam
because they don't have a viable democracy. Well, what had
happened is, if you think about it, it's like taking
(04:51):
California and murdering every county commissioner, every board of supervisors,
every city councilman, every legislator, every governor, every mayor, every
local official in California. And if you do that, no,
you don't have a viable democracy. People are afraid to
run for office because they get killed. That's what happened
(05:13):
in South Vietnam. But I found the training in the
Navy to be the best NBA program ever offered in
the country. Harvard NBA doesn't have anything on the Navy.
It's much better. It was a total change from college.
(05:35):
In college, you kind of trained to learn by excuses.
If you're not ready for an exam, you invent an
excuse to avoid the midterm. You know, universities are empathetic
with the kids and want to help them out, but
you kind of get trained. If you don't get something done,
you can get by with an excuse for a while.
(05:57):
All of a sudden you were in an atmosphere where
there was no excuse. You either succeeded or failed. I mean,
for example, in the navy, if your ship ever goes
aground or has a collision, your career is over. It
doesn't matter if it wasn't your fault. It doesn't matter
if someone that you didn't see it had made a
(06:19):
mistake on the bridge. And it's a culture that says
you have to perform period and there's no excuses for
not doing it. And so what it does is fosters
an attitude where you go out of your way to
make sure you accomplish your mission. Giving things a good
try isn't good enough, And if you think about life,
(06:40):
that's way life is. Giving an effort a good try
isn't adequate. You've got to succeed and it's up to you.
And the sooner you realize that in life, the better
off you're going to be. Because a lot of us
live our lives based on finding excuses for our failures
in life. Maybe it's a way we protect our own ego.
(07:01):
It was a wonderful lesson for life and helped you
understand how the world works. It was the first introduction
I'd had to a bias in the press that astounded me.
(07:23):
Let me give you an example. When I would come
back from a mission, I would take my photos to
there was a Marine Corps photo analysis shop in d Nang,
and I'd take the photos I'd taken of the enemy
activity to there to be developed. Obviously, they'd share them
with the command. On one of the visits. Just across
(07:47):
the street, they had an open sewer in Da Nang
where all the sewage kind of went down the side
of the street like a gut or only a bigger thing.
A Vietnamese boy had fallen into this open sewer line
and was drownding. One of the Marines jumped up, ran over,
(08:10):
and dove in to all of this sewage and saved
the little boy's life. The press, the the Press Corps
had a uh A set up there because they also
used the facility to develop their photos. All of the
press just sat there, None of 'em reported on the event.
(08:32):
None of them took a picture of it. None of
them interviewed the marine that had saved this little boy's life.
None of them interviewed the little boy. It was a
total non event. I was shocked by that. How could
an event like that not be news? And yet what
was obvious is the reporters were there to only report
(08:53):
what was bad about our time in Vietnam, not to
report what was going on. I was shocked from that. Obviously,
there were a lot of instances after that that confirmed
that was the view of the press, but at the
time it was a shock to me that people in
the press could be so biased. I see the people
(09:16):
who volunteered to serve in Vietnam and see their service degraded,
people spitting on them when they came home, and I
find it strange that people who enjoy the freedoms that
they def are so willing to degrade the people who
sacrifice for them. Perhaps it's a fact that we haven't
(09:39):
told the story of America's heritage or the American sacrifices.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And you've been listening to Hank Brown and his military service,
the stories about it. He got more out of it
and learn more about leadership, and so much more than
he would have having gone to let us say, Harvard
for an MBA. And he's right about that last point
about storytelling, and indeed it's what we do here every day.
(10:11):
He's try and tell the story of America to Americans.
It's really that simple, and with Americans because so many
of our stories are from ordinary folks or let's just
say not celebrities and singers and actors and the usual
folks who comment. And we also like to tell the
historical context of when and why and how things happen.
(10:32):
Too bese to not know a context and the story
is to know just about nothing. Hank Brown's story a
remarkable life here on our American Story
This is our American stories, and we tell stories about
everything here on this show. Up next, another story on
Hank Brown, one of the greatest and most humble statesmen
of our era. Hank volunteered to serve in Vietnam, served
in the US House of Representatives and the US Senate,
served as president of three different universities, including having a
(00:33):
unanimous bipartisan support to lead the University of Colorado out
of a number of scandals. Let's get into the story
of his military service.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I was in grad school and found it boring to
the point of the distraction. So I joined the Navy,
went through Officers Candidate School in Newport, and then volunteered
for the UDT training underwater demolition training. Unfortunately, my eyes
weren't good enough. I was twenty thirty in one eye.
(01:05):
So when I got turned down for that, I applied
for flight training. You could with correctable vision, you could
become a navigator, cut into a VR squadron. And when
Linda Johnson asked for volunteers for Vietnam to serve in Vietnam.
I remember it was a Thursday afternoon. He was on television.
(01:25):
I was in the reading room working on some paperwork.
And he came on television and asked for volunteers, and
I went and called my detailer in the Navy. They
have people in Washington to follow your expertise and handle assignments,
and I called my detailer and volunteered filled out the
paperwork that afternoon. Early in the morning, I had orders
(01:47):
to leave before my commanding officer had even seen my paperwork.
I guess I'd hit it just right, and they were
trying to get people over to Vietnam. So I left
the next day, went to San Diego for training, and
then got to Danang, Vietnam, and sixty five early on
when they were just starting to build up. There were
(02:10):
no planes in Danang for the Navy. They had planes, obviously,
but they were Air Force and Army planes. So I
tried to get assigned to a combat area because Danang
was kind of an administrative area for the Navy. So
I talked the Army into let me fly with them
as a Ford air controller. It was great fun. It
(02:32):
was a little L nineteen, which is like a Piper
cub almost little small light plane. We flew basically the
area of icors. You'd spot enemy activity. You had to
get them to fire on you first to be able
to call in an air strike, So you'd circle lower
and lower until they'd fire on you, and then you
could call in naval gunfire or aircraft to strike. The
(02:59):
rules of engagement were insane because sometimes you then after
they fired on you, you had to get permission from
the American command for the core the ICREPS area, and
the Vietnamese command for the ICREPS areas well. Sometimes it
would take an hour to get permission to return fire.
(03:19):
Sometimes it took twenty four hours. I remember we came
across at one point a unit of a North Vietnamese
military of a battalion level size. They fired on us.
We waited hours to get permission to return fire. By
the time the permission came through, they'd gone off into
(03:41):
the jungle. The rules that McNamara had set down for
our engagement and Vietnam guaranteed that we would lose. He
did such disservice for Americans and the Vietnamese. I think
McNamara to this day bears responsibility for the loss of
(04:04):
freedom for the South Vietnamese. Just insanity. We should never
ever get involved in a conflict like that again, where
we don't have a determination to win. One of the
things that most people don't understand is that first year
and sixty five, the North Vietnamese murdered over forty thousand
(04:29):
local officials in South Vietnam. I remember the Kennedys talking
about how Teddy Kennedy, I think in the Senate at
the time, was saying that we shouldn't support South Vietnam
because they don't have a viable democracy. Well, what had
happened is, if you think about it, it's like taking
(04:51):
California and murdering every county commissioner, every board of supervisors,
every city councilman, every legislator, every governor, every mayor, every
local official in California. And if you do that, no,
you don't have a viable democracy. People are afraid to
run for office because they get killed. That's what happened
(05:13):
in South Vietnam. But I found the training in the
Navy to be the best NBA program ever offered in
the country. Harvard NBA doesn't have anything on the Navy.
It's much better. It was a total change from college.
(05:35):
In college, you kind of trained to learn by excuses.
If you're not ready for an exam, you invent an
excuse to avoid the midterm. You know, universities are empathetic
with the kids and want to help them out, but
you kind of get trained. If you don't get something done,
you can get by with an excuse for a while.
(05:57):
All of a sudden you were in an atmosphere where
there was no excuse. You either succeeded or failed. I mean,
for example, in the navy, if your ship ever goes
aground or has a collision, your career is over. It
doesn't matter if it wasn't your fault. It doesn't matter
if someone that you didn't see it had made a
(06:19):
mistake on the bridge. And it's a culture that says
you have to perform period and there's no excuses for
not doing it. And so what it does is fosters
an attitude where you go out of your way to
make sure you accomplish your mission. Giving things a good
try isn't good enough, And if you think about life,
(06:40):
that's way life is. Giving an effort a good try
isn't adequate. You've got to succeed and it's up to you.
And the sooner you realize that in life, the better
off you're going to be. Because a lot of us
live our lives based on finding excuses for our failures
in life. Maybe it's a way we protect our own ego.
(07:01):
It was a wonderful lesson for life and helped you
understand how the world works. It was the first introduction
I'd had to a bias in the press that astounded me.
(07:23):
Let me give you an example. When I would come
back from a mission, I would take my photos to
there was a Marine Corps photo analysis shop in d Nang,
and I'd take the photos I'd taken of the enemy
activity to there to be developed. Obviously, they'd share them
with the command. On one of the visits. Just across
(07:47):
the street, they had an open sewer in Da Nang
where all the sewage kind of went down the side
of the street like a gut or only a bigger thing.
A Vietnamese boy had fallen into this open sewer line
and was drownding. One of the Marines jumped up, ran over,
(08:10):
and dove in to all of this sewage and saved
the little boy's life. The press, the the Press Corps
had a uh A set up there because they also
used the facility to develop their photos. All of the
press just sat there, None of 'em reported on the event.
(08:32):
None of them took a picture of it. None of
them interviewed the marine that had saved this little boy's life.
None of them interviewed the little boy. It was a
total non event. I was shocked by that. How could
an event like that not be news? And yet what
was obvious is the reporters were there to only report
(08:53):
what was bad about our time in Vietnam, not to
report what was going on. I was shocked from that. Obviously,
there were a lot of instances after that that confirmed
that was the view of the press, but at the
time it was a shock to me that people in
the press could be so biased. I see the people
(09:16):
who volunteered to serve in Vietnam and see their service degraded,
people spitting on them when they came home, and I
find it strange that people who enjoy the freedoms that
they def are so willing to degrade the people who
sacrifice for them. Perhaps it's a fact that we haven't
(09:39):
told the story of America's heritage or the American sacrifices.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And you've been listening to Hank Brown and his military service,
the stories about it. He got more out of it
and learn more about leadership, and so much more than
he would have having gone to let us say, Harvard
for an MBA. And he's right about that last point
about storytelling, and indeed it's what we do here every day.
(10:11):
He's try and tell the story of America to Americans.
It's really that simple, and with Americans because so many
of our stories are from ordinary folks or let's just
say not celebrities and singers and actors and the usual
folks who comment. And we also like to tell the
historical context of when and why and how things happen.
(10:32):
Too bese to not know a context and the story
is to know just about nothing. Hank Brown's story a
remarkable life here on our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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