Rally Point 87

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Rally pointers fall in. Good morning everyone, justin Ledford here
along with Paul Pleshi. Good morning, and this morning we
have our monthly Honor Flight segment with Naomi Copeland.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Good morning, and.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
We have a very special guest with us this morning,
mister Mike Hirsch. He was actually on the last honor
flight we went on and he is a Vietnam veteran. So, Naomi,
what is going on in the world of honor flight.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yeah, so good morning. We are gearing up for our
fall flight in October from Sarasota International Airport, the first
time we will have ever taken an honor flight out
of SRQ, so we're really excited about that. But with that,

(00:59):
because we're flying out of a new airport for the
first time, is a lot of logistics behind the scene
because we you know, have now flown five flights out
upon Agorda Airport, so it's really smooth and we can't
think that airport staff from the COO all the way

(01:20):
down to ground crew. But you know, we're learning new
things that you know with the staff that we're in,
you know, meeting at Sarasota Airport and we're super excited.
So we are in the fix of calling veterans and
guardians to come on and be some honored veterans and

(01:41):
guardians for our flight, and then just flight day logistics,
everything behind the scenes that make our flight day perfect
and amazing for our veterans we're honoring.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
Okay, awesome, So do you need more support? I know,
like you said, you were moving. Everyone was getting used
to doing the welcome home ceremonies and all those sorts
of things that Punta Gorda are. Are you having a
good you're having a good feeling about this flight going

(02:15):
into Sarasota.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
You need to yeah, yeah, well, you know, and I
just want to make it really clear. We're not leaving
Puntagorda Airport. We are fortunate in our hub that we
have two really large airports that cover the seven counties
you know that we cover in Florida, and so we're

(02:39):
going to continue to fly out of Punta Gorda. We're
just you know, about three years ago, this will be
the third year that we have been blessed and fortunate
to be able to take two flights a year, and
we just wanted to, you know, have one of those
come from Sarasota. We're making phone calls to you know, veterans,

(03:03):
some of the Bradenton, Ellington Parish, Anna, Maria Island, Sarasota, Englewood,
Liaquood Ranch people say, yeah, I keep me on the list.
I'll fly when you go out of Sarasota. And so
we're finally doing that. But you know that also means
we have you know, a whole bunch of volunteers now

(03:25):
that we need to come help us up here in Bradenton, Sarasota,
lake Wood Ranch, Venice Parish, Ellington, Palmetto. And then you know,
the community is always welcome to come see us, come
home and land and say hi to our veterans. And

(03:46):
so we're looking for all of the Sarasota, Manatee County
and beyond. This doesn't mean, you know, Charlotte County, Highlands,
Henry DeSoto, Hardy that you can't come out to the
airport either whether we're at Pontagorda or at Sarasota. We
need it does It takes a community and in our case,

(04:08):
seven communities to help us honor our veterans. So we're
looking for volunteers. You can go to our website s
w s L Honor Flight dot org you can fill
out the contact me form there, put in you know
how you'd like to help us, and we'll get in

(04:30):
touch with you. So we're always looking for volunteers. We're
always looking for partners in the community, whether it's families
or businesses or organizations for us to come out and
share information about Honor Fly with you. We're always happy

(04:51):
to share some of the ways that you can help
us fund a flight from you know, just helping us
with some of you know, the little expenses that are
small to you know, maybe you're you're hoping to be
able to sponsor a veteran and that would be about

(05:12):
a five hundred and fifty dollars donation. So contact us
off of our website s w f L Honor Flight
dot org and we'll be in touch with you and
share some information about Honor Flight and you know, maybe
have you partner and collaborate and come along with us.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
So, how's it going with finding veterans for this flight?
I know that there's normally a wait list. Are we
looking pretty good or yeah?

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Yeah? So you know, a really good Honor Flight has
several hundreds of people on a wait list. We are
only able to do two flights a year. I'm hoping,
you know, eventually we'll be able to add three. Where
I come from, and you know some of the bigger hubs,

(06:02):
you know, the Tampa Bay Hub, they take four flights
a year. I come from Honor Flight to the Quad Cities,
which is on the Iowa, Illinois Mississippi River, they fly
four times a year. We have here in Southwest Florida,
definitely one hundred plus thousand veterans that live in our

(06:23):
seven counties that Southwest Florida Honor Flight serves. So we
definitely have the veterans. And the thing is, we are
always taking applications for guardians and for veterans, and we
need veterans and guardians to submit their application. You're hearing
my voice. Go on to the website and fill out

(06:48):
your veteran application. And people think, sometimes, oh, I want
to go on the Spring flight, so I'm going to
apply so that I can go on the Spring flight.
And that's not necessarily how it works. We have had
several hundred on our wait list. We're making our way through,
We're making phone calls. I think I just handed off

(07:13):
three folders of applications to my database manager of veterans
and guardians that we have already confirmed for our October flight.
We will fill the flight one hundred and seventy seven
veterans and guardians. That's the number of seats on our
chartered Allegiant aircraft that we fly. We're now flying in

(07:39):
the dulles. That helps with some of the time and
gives our veterans more time at their memorials and more
time for us to be able to honor them. And
so we've made some little changes. I'm always trying to
squeak out from Allegiance just a few more seats so

(08:01):
that we can get as many veterans. We'll have about
ninety five veterans on our aircraft. The rest of the
seats are filled with guardians who a company and come
alongside the veterans, not because they're not capable of traveling.
It's because our veterans are, and I know Micha will

(08:23):
share some of this, are in such awe of the
day that they don't see the crack in the sidewalk
that they could perhaps trip and fall on. We make
sure our guardians make sure that our veterans are hydrated
with water, and you know, and you know, pop along

(08:44):
the way, we make our guardians make sure that our
veterans are getting their medications when you know they're supposed
to take their medicines, and their food when you know,
and encouraging them to eat because they're in awe of
the day that they forget.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
To do all of that.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Actually, and Mike, I know we'll share more.

Speaker 4 (09:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
No, it is a very well oiled machine because I know,
like when we were getting off the buses and we say, oh, well,
you have twenty minutes at this stop, I'm like, there's
no way that all these people are going to be
off the bus in twenty minutes, but yeah.

Speaker 5 (09:16):
We would.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
We got off, we saw the sites wherever we were at,
and we were back on the bus in twenty minutes,
and like it was a seamless process.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah. Yeah, we you know, we know that there's some
veterans that take a little time walking and you know,
getting some of the wheelchairs out from underneath the bus
and set up and then getting those veterans that need
the wheelchair. And sometimes it's not because there they need

(09:49):
a wheelchair. Sometimes, for example, our stop at the Vietnam,
Korea and Lincoln Memorials, it's so it's so spread apart,
if you will that just the you know, the distances
to get up to the Korean and then get to

(10:10):
the Lincoln and then get over to the wall. Sometimes
we just want our you know, a couple of the
veterans to be in wheelchairs because we would like to
return them home as well as we got them in
the morning. And we don't want our veterans being exhausted
at the first couple stops of the day and then
not be able to go to the Vietnam Wall. And

(10:33):
they are a Vietnam veterans. So we have seventy lightweight
wheelchairs that we take with us for every honor flight,
and we use most of them most of the time,
because our veterans are our greatest treasures, and we want
our treasures to be as shiny and pretty and in

(10:54):
you know, good spirits and good health and not exhausted
early on in the day. And so we have, yes,
a well oiled machine. We know how much time it
takes usually to get off the bus and get loaded
back on, and we always buffer a little bit of
time in there too. But we've got a jam filled

(11:17):
day that is full of honoring our veterans they the veterans. Afterwards,
we'll say, you know, wow, that was seamless. We didn't
see anything, And I'm thinking, WHOA, like, thank you you
didn't see like this happened, and this happened, and this happened.
Because there's always something that happens during an honor flight
and I'm glad that we absorb it and buffer it.

(11:42):
We do take eight medics with us. We have a
couple of doctors usually along with us, there's always nurses
on our flight. So everyone's just always willing to help
out wherever it's needed.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
So how about like you're not criteria necessarily, but for
the next flight, are you looking for women veterans? Are
you looking for Korean War veterans? How are we looking
on numbers? Who do you specifically need to be reaching
out to right now?

Speaker 2 (12:17):
World War two veterans. April twenty five flight was I
think the first flight of five flights that we have
not had a World War Two veteran. I know, you know,
we know that as a world, the United States of
America are World War two veterans. The greatest generation are

(12:40):
falling off, we're losing them. But we know that there's
some World War two veterans out there that we would
love to have come along and want to honor them
before it's too late. So our priority when we make
our phone calls to confirm veterans and invite them to
come be with with us is obviously World War Two.

(13:04):
You know, I will give up my seat on the
aircraft the day before a fly if a World War
two veteran comes to me and says I would like
to fly, I hear your going tomorrow, I give up.
I will give up my seat. That World War two
veteran is going to get on the plane and we're

(13:24):
going to honor him at the memorial. So we were
looking for World War two veterans, Korean veterans. Absolutely, those
are our number one and number two priorities. Our third
top priority is veteran with a life limiting illness. We

(13:44):
can't have everyone saying, oh, I have a life limiting illness,
so that they will get, you know, to the top
of the list, if you will, because we look at
a lot of that criteria. But those are our top three, one,
two threes. My fours is female veterans. I have a niece,

(14:08):
my only niece in the United States Navy and my
sons were in the Navy. Also, she just made chief
last week justin We're so proud of her. But are
isn't that cool?

Speaker 5 (14:24):
So cool?

Speaker 2 (14:26):
She's been in fourteen years, So I see, I've witnessed
how the women in the military. Uh, And it's not
an easy road for anyone serving our nation. I understand that,
but I know, especially especially for those Vietnam women veterans,

(14:51):
we need to honor them and we need to tell
them thank you. So they are like my fourth top priority.
I think we've got at least a dozen so that
we've called so far. We're about half full on our flight.
I think when my database manager comes back with the numbers,
we're gonna there's a whole bunch of more calls we're

(15:12):
going to make. And I know that there's some women
from the April flight that couldn't go that we're going
to be calling to come along with us for our
October flight. So female veterans, please, if you're hearing my
voice and you're a female veteran of whatever era, submit

(15:34):
your application to us. We're going to get you on
the flight and honor you. We stop at the Military
Women's Memorial, which is right at the entrance of Arlington
and we honor our female veterans. It's and I know Amanda,
if she was here with us today would say, it's

(15:58):
a room of these when and looking out at the
men veterans and there are the military. Women's memorial goes
over a brief synopsis of what that female veteran that
they're honoring at that moment did in the military, and
we hear the whispers in the crowd from the men

(16:21):
saying she did that, Yeah, yeah, she did that. And
I've just finished reading the book The Women, and I
have always I grew up in the Vietnam era, so
I've been so thankful for those veterans. I really understand

(16:44):
it now after reading that book The Women, So I
really encourage everyone read The Women by I think her
name is Kristin Walker. I think is her name, or
Kristin Mooren. I don't recall the author. Fantastic book, but
it's gonna in October when we go to the Vietnam
Wall and also see that statue of those three nurses

(17:06):
there next to the Vietnam Wall. It's a whole nother
level for me. And when we're honoring those women at
the Military Women's Memorial. It's going to be a whole
nother level for me. So please, if you're hearing our
voice and you are a veteran, wherever you are hearing
my voice, go to Honor Flight Network and look up

(17:30):
the hub that's closest to you. If you haven't been
on your Honor flight, please send your application in. We
want to honor you. That is our whole entire mission,
to honor our veterans at no cost to you on
a one day, one time, I should say, because in

(17:50):
other parts of the country it's some some are two
day flights, some are three day flights. We want to
honor you and tell you, thank you, thank you for
your service, and we want to give you the welcome
home you deserved, and so money never received.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
Absolutely, justin absolutely, And speaking of Vietnam, we have a
Vietnam veteran in the studio with us right now, Mike
Hirsh who was on the last Honor flight with us.
So I'm going to let I'm gonna let Paul, who
is also a Vietnam veteran. I'm gonna let Paul and

(18:27):
Mike take it over a little bit.

Speaker 4 (18:29):
Here, Nayoli, before I start why don't you give us
one more information about volunteering, give one more call out
for volunteers.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
Yes, please go to our website SWFL Honor Flight dot
org and from there just submit a contact me form
with your name and your phone number and your email
and I'll be in touch with you or one of
my board members will give you a g go. We're

(19:00):
looking for welcome home folks to come to Sarasota International
Airport on Tuesday, October fourteenth. You'll want to be there by,
you know, probably eight fifteen pm. Our plane should land
at about eight point fifty. It takes a little bit
of time for us to be plane, but I know

(19:21):
you all want to come out and say hi to
our veterans. And then we have our monthly Hub meetings.
They are the fourth Wednesday of every month at seven pm.
They are virtually on Zoom, so if you sign up,
I can send you the zoom link or in person

(19:42):
at Kingsgate Golf Club in Port Charlotte. It's about an
hour and fifteen minutes. I promise you it's worth your time,
it's informational, and most of all, I know it's an
hour you cannot get back of your life. So I
make them fun right.

Speaker 4 (19:57):
Justin absolutely Okay, thank you, Nailmi.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
Thanks Paul, thanks Justin, Thank you, Mike.

Speaker 5 (20:05):
Bye bye.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
I'm Staff Sergeant Mark Athem.

Speaker 6 (20:07):
A staff Sergeant Samantha Cash, staff sergeant, our.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
Staff Sergeant William Lewis, and I am proud to defend
my family and our nation.

Speaker 6 (20:14):
The Air Force Reserve is part of the story of
this great nation.

Speaker 4 (20:18):
Grateful that I have a chance to wear.

Speaker 5 (20:20):
The uniform of the heroes.

Speaker 4 (20:21):
That weren't before me.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
I'm proud to be part of a team that helps.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
Make a difference in the world.

Speaker 6 (20:25):
Every day, men and women from communities across this nation
serve as Reserve citizen airmen. Even as technology evolves and changes,
our commitment to defend and protect this nation remains steadfast.
We celebrate those who have served and those who are

(20:46):
proudly serving. We celebrate our proud history and look towards
an exciting and uniting future. Our mission is to fly, fight,
and win in air space and cyber space.

Speaker 7 (21:01):
And I'm proud to be a member.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
And I'm proud to serve in the United and I
am proud to protect our country.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
Proud to serve in the US Air Force.

Speaker 6 (21:08):
Reserve afreserve dot com.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
Our veterans risked it all to protect our freedom. One
of the best ways to say thank you is to
volunteer to support them at a time and history where
kindness is a virtue. Volunteering at a therapy bag event,
teaching a craft class, or simply helping veterans at a
hospital means a lot. For over forty seven years, Help

(21:34):
Heal Veterans are not for profit organization, with the support
of citizens like you, has created manufactured and distributed therapeutic
art and crafts projects for our veterans and military at
no charge to them. As a National Veteran service organization,
Help Heal Veterans supports VA hospitals, patients at home, and

(21:57):
our active military. Together, Help You Veterans and volunteers like
you have delivered over thirty two million therapy kits too
injured and recovering veterans. To a volunteer or learn more,
visit hel vets dot org. That's heel vets dot org.

Speaker 4 (22:18):
Okay, we're going to go right into Mike's story. Mike,
can you tell us a little bit before your military experience,
where you came from, how you got there.

Speaker 5 (22:31):
Sure, I grew up in Chicago. I was actually out
in Los Angeles going to school, and I used to
run around at night with a police and fire radio
in the car, taking pictures and selling them to the
LA Times and the other newspapers there. I've actually been

(22:53):
a journalist since sixth grade.

Speaker 6 (22:55):
Oh wow.

Speaker 5 (22:56):
So eventually I kept running into one of the newsmen
from KNX, the CBS radio station there, and he invited
me to ride with them, since he says, you're showing
up everywhere we are anyhow, And eventually I ended up
getting a job in the newsroom at the CBS radio

(23:18):
station there as the newsroom gopher, and eventually got promoted
to them doing all the research and reporting for their editorials.
But I made a conscious decision to work full time
and go to school part time because I was learning
a whole lot more on the job than I was

(23:40):
majoring in journalism at what was then called LA State
University really State College. Then I got my draft notice.
A couple of the guys in the newsroom sent me
to meet with the colonel who was head of Armed
Forces radio out there, and also the colonel who was
liaison to the movie industry, and they interviewed me, and

(24:04):
they wrote letters to the Chief of Information Office at
the Pentagon about me. So they didn't want me to
get you know, because I could type. They didn't want
me to end up as a clerk typist or frankly
worse riflemen. So all through basic training I was getting
a you know, like a weekly or bi weekly letter
from the Pentagon, which didn't make me very popular with

(24:28):
the company commander. But eventually they asked me in one
of the letters where I'd like to be assigned, and
I said, well, I'd like to go to Europe, and
they said, sorry, we're not sending draftees to Europe. So
it turned out they actually sent me home. I went
to Chicago. I became the editor of the newspaper at

(24:51):
for Shared in Illinois, and I was doing that for
several months, and I was also on the fifth Army
Honor Guard. We would fly all over the Midwest on
the General's plane doing funerals. I was exposed to that
very early. I mean I knew what the consequences of
war were firsthand. And eventually I told my parents that

(25:19):
I'm going to volunteer for Vietnam. And my father had
been an Army doctor on board troop transport in World
War Two, a draftee doctor, of course, and we never
talked about it, but that was sweetly sort of the
example in my house, you know. And they said, well,

(25:40):
why would you want to go to Vietnam? And I said,
because someday I assume I'm going to have kids and
I don't want to tell them that our country was
at war and I fought the Battle of Ford shared.
They weren't happy about that decision.

Speaker 4 (25:53):
But I going to understand that, Yes.

Speaker 5 (25:55):
I didn't have to make it because the Army began
looking for experienced journalists, however experienced you could be at
the age of twenty one or twenty two. This put
together the first public information detachment to go into combat
since World War Two. So I got levied for that.

(26:18):
So it was me, a guy from the San Francisco Chronicle,
a guy from one of the neighborhood newspapers chains in Chicago,
and two ROTC lieutenants. I don't want to disparage oro
OTC lieutenants, but let's just say the three enlisted guys

(26:38):
knew what we were doing, and we ended up going
to Vietnam. I'm on a troop ship twenty eight days
at sea.

Speaker 4 (26:51):
That's right. Did you stop in Okinawa?

Speaker 5 (26:54):
No, we didn't stop anywhere.

Speaker 4 (26:55):
Oh, we stopped in Okinawa. We got no stories.

Speaker 5 (27:00):
The good news for us is is we put out
the ship's newspapers, so we were able to use the
chaplain's office. Even better news for me, my father had
told me. He says, he says, get to know the
doctors and the medics on the ship. So once we
got started, I went up and did a story about them.

(27:22):
And it was a seventeen or eighteen year old kid
who was permanent party on the ship. And he says,
he says, I have a problem. I said, what's the problem.
He says, well, all the guys who are permanent party
on the ship have a racket going. You know, they
sell booze. They so on patches that do this, they
do that. He says, I don't know what to do.

(27:43):
And I looked at him and I says, you got
the best deal in the world going. He says, what's that?
I said, you have air conditioning. So I said, once
we get to the tropics, I'll pay you two bucks
a night to sleep in the hospital. And so once
we hit the tropics. You know, I'd go up there
after the doctors left off to ten at night, and
and I'd get a real bed as opposed to sleeping

(28:04):
four or five monks high with somebody's butt hanging into.

Speaker 4 (28:09):
Your face six six high in the hall.

Speaker 5 (28:12):
Yeah, and uh, you know at night he'd bring me
a snack from the crew galley.

Speaker 4 (28:17):
I mean it was you know, so you had the
cruise ship.

Speaker 5 (28:21):
I guess I had the cruise ship. Yes, the military
version of the love boat. But we we got to Vietnam.
Our stop to get off was the last one at
Vung Tau.

Speaker 4 (28:34):
When was this year sixty six? Do you remember what months.

Speaker 5 (28:40):
We got off the ship in late February?

Speaker 4 (28:44):
Oh, okay, you were there much earlier than me then. Yeah,
we were there.

Speaker 5 (28:48):
We were there early, but I mean we we we
get the Vung Tao and they say, okay, you know,
they give us their weapons back, and you know you're
going to go on shore in landing craft, you know
with d D landing crafts. The front that pops open

(29:10):
and and we had to climb down, you know, rope
nuts down the side of the ship, you know, and
we're wearing our steel pots and We're scared to death,
you know, this is suddenly war. You know. We get
into the landing craft and it runs up on the
shore and front flops open, and we're getting off and
we're all hesitant, and sudden we look around and we

(29:33):
realize there's women here in bikinis. There's there's people water skiing.
What is this? It was the in country r in
our center.

Speaker 4 (29:43):
Oh okay, I was gonna say, I didn't see any
of that. One we went ashore, it.

Speaker 5 (29:47):
Was the in country are in our center. So that
that was my introduction to being on land in Vietnam.
And then ultimately they flew us to continue. We spent
three days there and then by helicopter to the base
camp at Kouchie that was being built by the second

(30:07):
Brigade of twenty fifth Division. And I was a combat
correspondent and I was assigned to cover the wolf wounds
first and second twenty seventh two in Frey battalions. I
did that for the first five or six months I
was there, and then they pulled me back. They had

(30:28):
created a division magazine called a monthly magazine called Ambush,
and they made me the editor of it, and so
then I got to sign myself all sorts of stories
and started doing any stupid stuff. I mean I flew.
I flew five or six missions in the o ne

(30:49):
bird dog, you know the piper cub that flies around
waiting to get shot at and then calling the jets.
And then I said, well, I got to get the
other side of the story. So I flew a bombing
and strafing mission and the back seat of an F
one hundred and then began doing combat assaults that I
didn't have to do, and mostly because I think I

(31:09):
was probably nuts by then.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
So were you assigned to a specific unit or it
seems like you had pretty much free reign to just
guil do whatever you want.

Speaker 5 (31:18):
We were in the Public Information office of the twenty
fifth and Division, and there were a number of us,
and we were split up depending on what our assignment was,
covering various battalions and doing various things.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
So you had but it sounds that you had free
reign because you could say I'm going where the story is, yes, right.

Speaker 5 (31:41):
Yeah, I mean that was the interesting thing. Not all
of us, but many of us were I said, experienced journalists,
and that was our motivation was to get the story.
There was no discipline issues, no nothing. I mean it
was we did our job right, you know, and the
job was interesting. It ultimately played into the career I

(32:04):
would had life. But we got do what we could
do to tell the story of combat in Vietnam. I
did the first story about a conscientious objector medic in
combat that ultimately macvie released as macvee had and Time

(32:28):
magazine actually picked it up and they ultimately did a
rewrite and ran it with a picture I took of
a PFC medic named Paul Witchvielle who by the time
the story came out, and it was gratifying to see
your work get out that way. Obviously there were limits
on what as military board on, but the job was

(32:49):
to tell the story of the men and sometimes who
were in combat.

Speaker 4 (32:52):
So what was your tour d to there? How long
did you stay?

Speaker 5 (32:55):
I was there for about just under eleven months. I
got a three week early out to get back to
Chicago so I could finish my final five quarters. And
it was about three months after I left. I'm at
home living parents and I get a call from one
of the guys VC had rocketed the base camp, the

(33:18):
bunker right outside the hooch where most of IO got
Remember my mother telling me years later two months you've
never forgotten.

Speaker 4 (33:25):
Oh you can't. So now, what kind of equipment did
you take with you when you went out in the field.

Speaker 5 (33:29):
Well, caseet tape recorders, believe it or not, had not
been invented yet.

Speaker 4 (33:35):
There's a lot of that invented yet.

Speaker 5 (33:37):
So I had a you were, reel to reel tape recorder,
five inch reel to rate sixteen, and I had too,
like a thirty five millimeters. Eventually, once I got to
go on icon so I was, I was shooting film
and doing audio.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
So did you have a rifle or epistol or anything?

Speaker 5 (33:56):
I had? I had an M fourteen rifle that eventually
I left back in the base camp because if there
was a circumstance in which I needed.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
A rifle, somebody else had one.

Speaker 5 (34:08):
There was gonna be one one around that wasn't you know,
my job to be doing that. And I did carry
a pistol, which I only, this is gonna be silly.
I only learned recently that it was illegal for me
to have a personal firearm. I had no idea, but

(34:29):
somebody just said recently, us in the UCMJ. You can't
have personal weapons. My father had given me this, you know,
thirty eight snubbed a shoulder holster, hiding it, you know,
but with the tape recorder and the camera and two
hands busy, right, there's no room for a rife.

Speaker 4 (34:46):
So, yeah, it's eleven I'm fourteen. It's another eleven pounds.

Speaker 5 (34:50):
Yeah, And and nobody ever said anything to me. I
mean the one time. Okay, stupid stories, how heroes are made.
We're I actually with the first of the fifth mech
and we're going across rice patties and actually one track
hit a mine and some guys were badly her ours

(35:13):
went nose up into her, nose down into a creek
bed and I ended up flitting my lip open whatever.
And we stopped for lunch, and we're eating lunch and
somebody yells, there's three VC let's get them now. I
want you to know I'd never handled an M sixteen.
I jump up and there's a stack of rifles and
I grab one. No idea how many bullets were in it.

(35:35):
And I go off with these other two guys and
we're chasing these sea and we run. I don't know
quiv a little New City and suddenly we get creaked
and they've disappeared. But there's like a dugout canoe there,
and so the three of us get into the dugout
and I'm in the bow with an M sixteen that
I don't know ten, and we're paddling down there looking

(35:58):
for them, and it's like suddenly it dawns on these
three Americans that these vc are probably doing the Lone
Ranger trick and breathing through a read, you know, and
we all have the same vision of a hand coming
out of the water and drop an aid in the boat.
You never saw three guys turn a canoe around. So
but but I've spoken about this a lot, and I said,

(36:20):
what you have to understand is that's how heroes get made.
It's a spontaneous reaction to something. If if I had
been killed doing that, you know, my folks would have
gotten a purple heart and I probably would have gotten
a bronze star and I'd be a hero. But it's
nothing that I did intentionally. It's just do it automatically, right,

(36:40):
And you.

Speaker 4 (36:41):
Know, it's adrenaline flow.

Speaker 5 (36:43):
Yeah, it's adrenaline flow. And and if you stop and
think about it, you wouldn't do it.

Speaker 4 (36:49):
Well, that's why we don't send fifty year old men,
that is true. We send nineteen and twenty year olds
or less or less.

Speaker 5 (36:57):
Yeah. Yeah, So, but that was Vietnam for me. Eventually
I began we had a transmitter that cut into the
Iron Forces radio radio frequently and so in the evening
night we were ten minute local brought based on the stories.
So I had a pretty good all round experience in Vietnam.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
So when you left Vietnam, did you stay in the
military or no.

Speaker 5 (37:25):
I got out, went back to the unit, got my
degree in mass in communication, and then went back to
work for SEA, this time at the Chicago State worked there.
I was on the streets of Chicago for all the
nineteen sixty eight King s n As riots that eventually
went to FM station news director, talk show and then
got caught in the CBS layoffs and ended up in

(37:47):
public television.

Speaker 4 (37:48):
But you also had another interesting thing. It had to
do with the television program series called Mash called Mesh.

Speaker 5 (37:56):
Yeah. One of the one of the documentaries I did
for PBS was called Making Mesh, And I mean when
the match movie came out, it was after I had
been in and I remember going to the theater with
my wife and falling out of the seat laughing. It
was just I just related to it so much. And

(38:18):
eventually the TV show came out and I thought it
was one of the best shows ever. And I had
done another program, another documentary about the network censorship of
entertainment programming and doing that when I got to meet
Larry Gelbart, who created Matt and I said, someday I
want to come back to LA and in the ninth

(38:38):
season event and did this and was quite successful for
PBS when it aired. The PBS stations in New York
and Los Angeles and Chicago beat the CBS station never happened.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
There's a show called It's a New Dennis Larry Show.
It may have only went one season, but it was
called Going Dutch. It was on Fox like last year.
But a lot of people think like Mash and Go
and Dutch or like all satire, But those are the
shows that are like closest to real life of like

(39:16):
how things actually are. Like people don't think that you
know that there's all these funny moments and different situations
that happened, but yeah, it is.

Speaker 5 (39:26):
Well, I mean, they did a lot of story research. Eventually,
I ended up moving out to Los Angeles to work
on the Mash sequel, which wasn't such a great show,
but it was a great experience and I did all
the story research. It was it was like the only
sitcom in Los Angeles staff documentarian. So my job was
to track down Korean War veterans, people who were in

(39:49):
the VA you know, after the Korean War, patients and
administrators and doctors and nurses, and interview them and bring
their stories back and we described them and writers would
say they'd read them and then developed the scripts for
the show based on interviews.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
That oh wow.

Speaker 5 (40:07):
And that's also how MASH was done. Initially created it,
Larry Galbart and gen Reynolds did most of those things.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
So after that or somewhere in there, you wrote three books.

Speaker 5 (40:18):
I've written nine or ten books.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
Oh wow, okay.

Speaker 5 (40:23):
I was after MASH. I was freelancing in Los Angeles.
One of the things I did in the early eighties.
It was coming up on the ten year anniversary of
the end of the war, and I was still working
on Aftermash at the time, and I noticed that on
the local TV news programs that were trying to interview,

(40:44):
and what I saw they were doing is basically say well,
tell us your story in ninety minutes and tell us
how many women and children you killed, and then break
down and cry. That'd be good. And I said, there's
got to be a better use of tell us. One
of the reasons that is television's too valuable resource to crap.
And so one of my jobs with the show was

(41:06):
I was a liaison to the v and so I
called the Subulvita Va and lost listen and asked to
meet with a couple of the psych staff. And I
went out and met with forget if there were psychiatrist psychologists,
and I said, this is what I see going on.
I said, I have access to PB done enough, sh
if I come in, it will get on the air.
What can I do that will help? And they said

(41:28):
you need to show vets out that it's now.

Speaker 4 (41:32):
Say listen, we still can't do it.

Speaker 5 (41:34):
Yeah you can.

Speaker 4 (41:35):
It's hard to get them to go back the vet.

Speaker 5 (41:39):
Yes, well yeah, that's a separate issue. But the point
was to say it's safe. So I literally took out
a piece of paper and I said, so if we
do this and shoot it in the round and you
see you always see people watching this vet men, women
whatever talking. He said that would help. So what we
ended up doing was bringing eight vets men women, Adona Dolly,

(42:03):
Air Force, Navy, Marines, Army back to the University of
Wisconsin and Madison and we shot it and their livestock
Arene had shoot it and there was an audience of
about twenty three hundred and I had gotten help finding
the right vets to have gotten help from some VET centers.
I asked them to stand up and talk a little

(42:24):
bit about what being in Vietnam was like, but mostly
what it was like, and they did that, and as
a television producer, it's the first time I ever brought
a towel to it. Cried my Way and it was
hosted by an actronym Charlie Hayde was on Hill Street Blues,
who was a Navy submariner in the Vietnam era, and

(42:46):
it aired on PBS. We cut it down to a
ninety minute show and eventually it was used in VET
centers all around the country to show family members to
show vets try and get them to So then there
was that and then I'm still out in LA doing
other things and I hit a point where I was

(43:06):
too old to pitch ideas the twenty six year old
Network vice presidents, you knew everything right and it was
time to do something different. And that's when I The
first book I wrote was called Para Rescue story of
an incredible rescue at sea in the Heroes Off. It
was about Air Force pjs who are the Air Force

(43:28):
special forces, and that served get me into the club
of you know, writers who published by Major America. And
then the next book I wrote was called None Braver.
I got myself embedded the age of sixty with Air
Force Prayer rescue guys in Afghanistan. Oh So, I flew
on a C one thirty from Moody Air Force Base

(43:51):
to Jacoba a Bad Pakistan and Babad in Kandahar and
then up to Karshi Kana Baden, Who's Bekistan. Spent six
weeks over there right on the Air Force. The Air
Force pjs of selfless I have ever met. I mean,
their motto is these things we do.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
So as a combat correspondent in Vietnam and going in
basically as a combat correspondent in Afghanistan, did did you
have expectations that it would be sort of the same
or was it completely different? Did you have no expectations whatsoever?

Speaker 5 (44:27):
I had. I didn't know what to expect. I found
a lot of, you know, Vietnam deja vu, especially at
nights sitting around a campfire, smoking a cigar and talking
talking to guys. I used to be real clear. I

(44:48):
made it clear to the Air Force that I was
not asking to go out on OPERATIONSJS. I would before
they went out, and when I said, the Air Force
too old, too slow, too fat and too smart to
know that I should be out there running around with pjs.
So but it was an interesting experience, I mean, and

(45:10):
my Vietnam experience certainly helped. I mean. We did a
tactical landing into Jacoba, a by Pakistan, you know where
the sea one thirty line, and then you're twisting and
turning and suddenly your pancake on the ground and we
get off. And they had given me, just out of college,
female second Lieutenant quart Off. I had asked for this,

(45:32):
this E eight, you know, pair of rescue guys said no, no,
you can't, got to be this officer. And I met
with her before we went over there, and I said,
you realize for this mission to succeed. You have to
learn how to lie, cheat and steel. And she said,
oh no, no, no, I believe in the Air Force's corbette. First,
I said, we're in so much. But by the end

(45:56):
of the six weeks she came over to the dark
side because we got there and at one point we
got a note saying the plane we're supposed to go
home on is being sent in a different direction. This
was the build up, and we had to figure out
a way, and my orders said that I could only

(46:18):
lie with the Seestar Unit, Combat Stations and Rescue Unit.
And so it was a question of how is she
going to talk or was he seventeen going, you know,
first to insul Lake and Landsdorfe And as I said,
she learned. So do you do.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
You remember her? Do you keep in contact with her
by chance? Because I feel like you probably changed the
trajectory of her career.

Speaker 5 (46:41):
I haven't talked to her in many years, although I
did get a call from her about three years after
the book came out. None Braver. These are all available,
and interestingly none Braver is still selling. I actually still
get royalties from the only book I get royalties from.
It's still selling and it came out, but I got
a call from her, She says, I got a call

(47:03):
from AFT SoC or Special Operations. They want to know
the source of your information about Operation Anna Khon. Operation
Anaconda was where the first PGA to die in Khan killed.
He should never have been killed, but it was because
general officers and maybe some colonels didn't want to risk
anything to their and so they refused to allow rescue

(47:26):
helen crews and I had the store down pretty and
af Soock wanted no reason to give. They didn't challenge
the accuracy, right, I assume they just wanted to Yeah,
military neverage.

Speaker 1 (47:37):
It does not so when we went to the honor flight,
when we went on the honor flight to DC, when
we came back, I know that you had a pretty
emotional experience. When we were at the hub meeting after
that you had said, because I remember you saying that

(47:59):
that experience, that there were things that happened at the
welcome home ceremony, that those memories are going to take
the place of other memories that you didn't want to have.
Can you tell us a little bit about that.

Speaker 5 (48:16):
Sure, the honor flight was ever really special day. I mean,
I've been through the wall, but been to Washington, never
with as guide as we and and so that was
that was a very very good experience. But on the
flight home, they passed out letters that had been sung
by friends and family members by the honor flight, and

(48:39):
some just from people, and that sort of set the state.
We land in Puntagorda Airport at about ten forty five
at night, and I was being pushed around in a wheelchair.
Thank you agents, and they lined us up to be
pushed out into the terminal and eventually they said go,

(49:01):
and I think I was the first or second guy
out and they opened the door. We come out in
the terminal and there's I don't know, three hundred eleven
o'clock at night, and I looked to my right and
there's two older women, white hair, looking at me and
saying thank you and welcome home. And it just had

(49:22):
such an impact. I can't forget the image of their faces.
And I don't know what happened. I mean, from that
point they pushed us through this cordon of hundreds of
people in the in the Charlotte County Sheriff's bagpiper band playing,

(49:42):
and I don't know how I got from that door
out into the parking lot all blank, and I get
out there and I realized this image is now burned
into my memory, and when bad stuff comes up, I
don't know how I'm able to just see that instead.

(50:03):
And it's extremely helpful. But the one thing I don't
want to forget this, and this is for anybody who's
a VET out there and hasn't gone on that I
don't think you need to go on, is that it
took me about a week after it was over to
suddenly have this relation. I didn't know I needed, right,
no idea, but.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
Obviously those closure validation.

Speaker 5 (50:26):
Things like that.

Speaker 1 (50:27):
Yeah, yeah, no, thank you very much Mike for coming
on and telling some of your story. I would definitely
love to have you on again to talk more about
all the amazing things that you've done, but you know,
we're almost out of time, so we're gonna wrap it up.
But yeah, thank you very much for telling your story.

(50:47):
And like Michae was saying, if you haven't been on
an honor flight, sign up, go on to SWFL honor
flight dot org get that information. And I went and
it was an amazing experience. Hopefully I can go again
soon as a guardian, but definitely get out there and volunteer,

(51:11):
go to the welcome home ceremony, whatever you got to
do to get involved. But it's very important, like Mike
was saying, closure, validation, just being able to get that experience.

Speaker 4 (51:26):
So with that for Paul, thanks Mike, I really appreciate it.

Speaker 5 (51:32):
You're welcome.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
You and Mike kirsh rally pointers all out.

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