Funding was provided by The National Museum of Military Vehicles Wyoming Public Television Production Endowment Rita Meyer The Wyoming Veterans Commission And the Marna M. Kuehne Foundation There's some things that go on war that are not pretty.

And I've seen it, and it doesn't make you proud.

But it's war.

As soon as that first shot's fired, I had no fear.

It's almost like an out-of-body experience.

It wasn't me.

It was somebody els taking over my body in my mind.

I don't kno if that makes any sense or not.

After the battle, I can remember just sitting.

Sometime I would just sit for an hour and the adrenaline's gone.

Your mind is numb, you can't move.

And it's just like you just sit there and you just stare at the open space try to make sense of what just happened.

Because I was a recon platoon leader I wrote the after action reports You do it very quickly after the battle but the longer you look in an after action report, you start to question yourself.

Did I record it accurately I mean, you think about thi nearly every day of your life.

And you're thinking, did I make that up?

There's been times in my life when I have been afraid of myself I was afraid of what I was capable of doing because that wasn't me.

I can't even imagine that I would jump up and start killing people and be nominated for the Medal of Honor.

That's not me.

I'm Lee Alley.

I'm a sheep herder's son.

You can only lock your memories away for so long.

What a lot of people don't understand is you can control the daytime.

Because you can keep your mind busy during the day.

You can become workaholic or alcoholic.

But the enemy still controls the night.

One of the battles I was in wa at two o'clock in the morning, and I guarantee you I still wake up at two o'clock every night.

I was just sitting ther writing one night and I wrote, "I would really like to know who Lee Alley is, to understand that that guy."

I know I would have to go back to Vietnam.

At the same time, I don't want to meet that guy that was in war because he became very cruel and he became very vicious.

But I need to confront him.

Maybe I'll make a friend out of myself.

Today, into this interdependent world has come a threatening force the force of aggressive communism.

Dien Bien Phu is a human dam trying to stem the red tide that threatens to engulf Southeast Asia.

Faced with a very difficult problem in South Vietnam, both in the military and the political side.

Men have different views about what actions we should take.

Hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today required me to order the military forces of the United States.

They destroy everything in the village, houses, schools, hospitals.

That the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy.

The ceasefire will take effect at 2400 Greenwich Mean Time, January 27, 1973.

The United States and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam express the hope that this agreement will ensure stable peace in Vietnam.

The histories of our two nations are deeply intertwined in ways that are both a source of pain for generations that came before and a source of promise for generations yet to come.

One of the beautiful things about nature is that nature has a way of healing itself.

I've been a Wyoming guy all my life.

My dad ran a big sheep outfit i the Rock Springs area of Wyoming So as a young man, I grew up chasing wild horses o the Red Desert and herding sheep and I thought that that was what life was all about.

One day, my dad just out for no reason, he just walked in and he said, "I quit my job today.

We're moving to Laramie, Wyoming."

And I said "Why would you move to a city?"

He said, "Because that's where the university is."

I went right out of high schoo into the University of Wyoming.

I thought college was just a wonderful place because you could drink all the beer you wanted and chase women.

I thought, holy heck this is like the motherlode.

And I really could have cared less what was going on politically.

I mean you know, as an 18, 19, 20-year-old kid, and you're thinking, "Am I going to go over there and die because somebody wants to take over South Vietnam?"

I really don't care whether they take over South Vietnam or not.

That's a spot on a map.

Vietnam became the American key to the security of Southeast Asia soon after the end of French colonial rule there in 1954, the country was split in half at the 17th parallel.

The North fell under communist rule.

The South was turned free.

Since then, the story of South Vietna has been the story of this man.

Ngo Dinh Diem, the son of a noble Mandarin family that turned Roman Catholic back in the 17th century.

Diem came to power in 1955.

His country had been split in two a year earlier, and with a multibillion dollar USAID program, Diem built a powerful army as a bulwark against the Communist guerrillas in the North.

The beginning of the end came with a grave warning from President Kennedy.

In this interview with Walter Cronkite.

I don't think that, unless a greater effort is made by the government to win popular support, the war can be won out there.

In the final analysis, it's their war.

They're the ones who have to win it or lose it.

South Vietnam was a democratic society, and North Vietnam was communist.

And North Vietnam always thought We're going to kill all the leaders, we're going to get rid of 'em, and then it'll be a communist country.

And that was the goal of North Vietnam.

And they succeeded.

And in my opinion, in the last two months, the government has gotten out of touch with the people.

The repressions against the Buddhists, we felt, were very unwise.

Now, all we can do is to make it very clear.

We don't think this is the way to win.

It's my hope that this will become increasingly obvious to the government, that they will take steps to try to bring back popular support for this very essential struggle.

This is Saturday in Saigon.

The battle for the city went on for 18 hours, and most of it was centered on the presidential palace, where two men stubbornly held out until the end.

This is the palace.

Now there is a lull in the fighting.

Just after 630 in the morning Saturday, Saigon time, a white flag fluttered out a window of the presidential palace and the shooting ceased.

No one has said officially what happened to the two men who held out there so long.

President Diem and his brother, an advisor.

The story in Saigon is that they escaped from this palace through a tunnel.

Perhaps dressed as Catholic priests, and then were seized by soldiers three hours later, in a Catholic church.

President Diem killed by gunfire his brother killed by stabbing.

This evening, voice circuits were reopened to Saigon, and correspondent Peter Kalischer said that he has now learned beyond a doubt that Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Nhu were assassinated.

They did not commit suicide as the rebels had claimed.

And North Vietnam always thought, like Korea, for example, it should be a united country.

Our country at one time was United Vietnam, and now the country is split at the DMZ.

We want to get our country back and we think it should be communist.

So we understood that political threat.

I really tried not to get hung up on the political aspect because it can turn you sour.

You can say, man, this isn't right.

We shouldn't be here.

Or yeah, it is, right.

My mindset was, I don't care.

I was very close to my older brother.

When they were ramping up Vietnam, he was going through a divorce.

And so as soon as his divorce papers were filed, he got the note from Uncle Sam saying, "We want you."

So just out of a whim, I went down to the draft office And I said, "I want to volunteer for the draft."

When I came back in 1968, the switch had been flipped.

Anti-war demonstrators protest US involvement in the Vietnam War in mass marches, rallies, and demonstrations.

Central Park is the starting point.

I was headed back to Laramie, Wyoming and we got into Oakland, California, and the first thing they told us was to ditch your uniform, get in your civilian clothes because you're going to be heckled at the airport.

You're going to be spit on, you're everything else.

And life on campus for me as a Vietnam veteran was very uncomfortable.

Because if it became known, all of a sudden they weren't talking about anthropology, they were talking about you and the war.

And so all of the Vietnam veterans that I got to know, we basically run and hid.

I met Lee in 1972 at the University of Wyoming.

I didn't know he was a veteran.

He was a friend of one of my very good friends.

I do remember going to one of his friend's houses one night, a big beer party, and he brought out a army shirt and I wore his army shirt and we all walked around th block and went, hup, two, three, and walked around.

I don't even know if it registered then.

Oh, he was in Vietnam.

Never said, and I never asked.

There were some things that were very difficult to understand.

When we were first married, if I rolled over and touched him at night, he might scream.

And I remember one time waking up and he was crouched on the ground by the bed.

And when I very, very first asked Lee, "Tell me about Vietnam," he said, "No, because the only way to survive in this world is to leave that one behind."

My wife, Ellen, of 50 some years now she is my biggest supporter and she has sacrificed a lot.

I thought silence was strength for many years.

It was a part of my history that I did not want to relive and I did not want to share it with anybody.

First of all, we don't think anybody will understand because how do you explain the carnage and something that goes on in war to somebody who's never experienced it?

There's some times that I have thought maybe I was the crazy one.

I wondered why sometimes he would just leave when we were at the ranch on horseback.

The first that I ever heard about any in detail of his service was when he did the talk in th talk around at the Army reunion.

When people come to our reunion, we like them to put a pin in of where they live.

I'm very proud of this one right because this is my home state of Wyoming.

This is a picture of Binh Phuoc.

This is our base camp and the joke was if you've ever been there, you "Binh..." First reunion, I was terrified to go into the room because when I opened that door, I didn't know what I was going to see.

The Vietnam veteran had been painted as the druggie, the alcoholic, the down and the out.

When I opened the door and walked in and they were just like me, they were normal people.

First of all, thank you very much for... And so the first thing I did is I got up and I said, "I'll bet you nobody in this room has ever been asked to tell their story."

You know, that's what it was all about.

Give them a chance to talk.

You just need to tell your story.

With his eyes nearly swollen shut from the beating, he quietly picked up the needle he had fashioned from a piece of bamboo and began sewing a new flag.

They had inserted us between a minefield and that machine gun nest, and Jimmy took about nine rounds from the chest up.

Just that period of time.

We went through a lot, a lot of men.

Well there's a very real thing out there and I suffer from it a lot and it's called survivor's guilt I'm in that foxhole.

Three of my guys are kille and sitting here talking to you.

Why?

How do I make sense of it?

Were we here for the right reasons?

I mean all that stuff comes into your mind.

I never in my life imagined how good this would be for everybody to get together.

Once I was old enough to realize US soldiers came home and were disrespected.

I said, "How can it be?

They were heroes."

I said that because I experienced it.

I said that because I experienced it.

I was a kid living in Da Nang.

Overnight, you would hear the whistling sound of the North Vietnamese rockets coming in, mortars.

We were just anticipating as t when would be our turn to die.

When we left, we had nothing.

We ran, with nothing.

We exited the airplane.

I was freezing cold.

The Marines gave us their field jackets.

It looked like a prom dress on me because it was humongous.

The picture that a whole family had taken in front of a tent, that's where we lived.

Everything I had on in that picture was donated from the American people.

We were sponsored by a church.

It was taken, I believe, on June 5th of 1975, the day we departed Camp Pendleton, starting our new life in the United States.

Once we came to America, my father said, "You always remember those men who fought for your life because without them, you wouldn't be here today."

So I would search for these Vietnam veterans with databases available to private investigators like myself.

And one of them that stood out to me the most was Lee Alley.

He said, "My goal in life is to find every Vietnam veteran that I can and thank them for what they did for my country.

And I'm just like in shock.

Finally, I said, “John... how would you like to tell that to 300 veterans?"

I was a bit intimidated because I didn't know how they would feel about having a Vietnamese in the room.

As a kid I was surrounded by US soldiers.

Your mission was not for nothing You fought for me.

You fought for millions of people, and I'm sorry that you came home unwelcome.

The day that he called Lee and came into Lee's life, I think that has been very important.

Knowing that they actually mad a difference in somebody's life, I think that's something that every Vietnam veteran needs to hear.

You know our government's put them there, but it's the little John that suffers from the war there.

My dad said it's time to leave the country, because he knew at that time that we're done.

Because the Americans had pulled out in 1973.

The North's goal was always to reunite the country under the communist regime.

You know of course, Ho Chi Minh died in September or November of 1969, but they carried on his dream to reunite the country and they kept going.

And that's one thing that I admire about the enemies was that they're very tenacious.

They had their own agenda and they kept it, and that's how they won the war.

My last memory of Da Nang was chaos in the city.

March of 1975 my father said, "We don't get out of here.

We're all going to be killed."

Before my father passed away, he said, "Promise me you'll never go back."

And I made him that promise.

But he also said, "If you're given an opportunity to give back what you have received from the country, you take that."

I wish the people who were trying to hunt my father down are either dead or they have let go of the hatred I still don't trust them.

I wanted John Nguyen to come to Vietnam because you always look back and you think to yourself, why was I there?

He's standing right here by me, people like him.

But I was very apprehensive because this is going to take a toll on me.

I just did not know.

But I mean, you think about this nearly every day of your life.

I would like to see the countr through a different set of eyes.

All I could see there was the ugly, the death and the destruction.

I went to Vietnam July of 1967.

For let it never be forgotten, peace will come along because America has sent her sons to help secure it and to sacrifice for it and to die for it.

When I arrived in country, they blacked the windows out because they don't want the lights because this is a war zone.

And I'll never forget when the opened the door on that airplane I almost went to my knees.

I can still smell the country, the humidity, machine guns everywhere.

And it was hot, I mean, oppressively hot.

As a Wyoming kid, I thought, how in the world can you survive in this?

And the whole way there, it's just me and this gu in a Jeep and we get in a convoy and we head down to the Mekong Delta and I'm just in shock.

I'm looking at the terrain.

I'm thinking, I'm a fish out of water.

This is not good.

Saigon was probably two and a half hours north of our base camp.

When I first got into country, I will never forget the look of the guys coming in that had just been hit pretty hard.

And they would all walk through base camp and I looked into their eyes and I thought, "Holy crap, they've changed."

I'm thinking to myself, "This is a real deal."

They say that war is days and days and hours of boredom, and then all of a sudden that boredom is shattered.

And so it's the anticipation.

You know it's going to come.

When it does come, how am I going to react?

You don't know until the first shot's fired.

I've seen every side of it.

I've seen people cry like a little baby.

Now this guy's a West Point guy.

I mean he's supposed to be the crème de la creme.

Was I ever afraid in Vietnam?

I was always afraid.

But there was something in me that it's like a switch went off in my head.

It wasn't me.

Once that shot's fired, it's all hell.

I don't care.

I'm going to kill you.

I'm going to do whatever it takes, and you are not getting my men.

And that was my goal was to get them guys home.

And I didn't always succeed.

I failed, and some of them... Because I was a recon platoon leader, I wrote the after action reports Going from man to man, the stories aren't the same.

Same battle, same number of men killed, but the stories differ.

You start to question yourself, and that's one of the reasons I want to go back, almost to relive the battles.

When I stepped off the plane, the first thing I saw was the communist star, and I thought, holy sh- excuse me.

I have never had any animosity toward the Vietnamese people, but you have somebody who has fought against them and somebody who escaped and ran away from them.

So we ha two strikes against us going in.

We landed on the same runway that I left on back in 1975.

On the streets, there were plenty of propaganda signs, man holding an AK-47 with the flag of victory, celebrating the 50-year anniversary of the reunification of Vietnam.

Seeing that flag displayed everywhere we went made me very uncomfortable.

As a kid, that flag represents death.

[John speaking Vietnamese] - Yeah, Tiger.

- Okay, Tiger Growing up in Da Nang?

Yes.

And your father, as a young man, did you know what he did?

No, I did not.

It was kept from all of us.

We knew he was a colonel in the National Police, a high ranking official.

We never knew what he did.

When I was that young all I knew was that our lives was always being threatened.

Americans would come to visit with my father and disappear in the study.

All I would ever hear is Phoenix, Phoenix.

Later on, I learned wha Operation Phoenix was all about.

He would go out and extract the infiltrators from the Ho Chi Minh trail bring them back for interrogation to disrupt the infiltration of the North Vietnamese into the South.

Apparently the sympathizers around the neighborhoo knew everything about my father.

So they provided the North and the VC intelligence about my father, when he would go to work, what time he would come home.

I remember my mom playing the radio at night and they would read my father's name and they would explain the graphic details, if caught, this is what we're going to do to do to him and the members of his family.

In my father's mind, the Americans were there to help Vietnamese.

We never saw the American a the imperialist there to extract natural resources from Vietnam, much like the French did.

They were there to preserve democracy.

I remember the men would put me on their shoulders and they would walk me.

and I felt like on top of the world.

Troops would stop on the roadside and would treat sick people.

I used to have, you know, rashes and an American came over to my dad and gave him a jar.

I still can smell that pill to this day.

The skin rashes went away but it was penicillin from the Americans.

My dad came home from work one day and I heard him talking to my mom about how the Americans had decided to pull out of Vietnam.

He knew at that time that we're done.

So you had to escape?

We had to go.

But ho did you get out of Da Nang then?

Oh, well, at the Da Nang Airport and there was a DC3 there that was reserved for us, but the pilot never showed up.

Planes at Da Nang Airbase are one result of a long range rocket shelling attack by Viet Cong.

The North Army was trying to destroy the runway in Da Nang.

No one can escape.

We could see that in the middle of the Han River was a cargo ship and people were approaching it in their little dinghies.

My dad commandeered a little boat got us out in the middle of the river.

It was my two sisters, an older brother, an uncle.

We climbed these cargo nets to get on this giant cargo ship.

He went back in to get my mom and brother.

We were waiting for my dad to come back and all of a sudden I heard a lot of clanking noise.

They were pulling up anchors.

I mean, we were saying to each other, "Why is it leaving?

Our parents aren't here yet?"

Three days later, we landed in Saigon and we had no idea where to go.

Eventually, and I don't know how, but there was an uncle there in Saigon.

We made it to his house.

So one day we saw this taxi driving up and before it could stop, my mom was already out and she just grabbed us and held us all.

She was told that the shi that we were on were torpedoed.

She thought we were dead.

We thought they were dead.

We were scared to death in Saigon I could hear a lot of rumbling, and I do recall an incident where a Vietnamese pilot tried to bomb the presidential palac and I could hear the explosion.

My dad said, "We have to do something to get out of here."

And I don't know what he did.

He got us in a taxi and the taxi drove us to the US Embassy in Saigon.

It was complete chaos.

People were trying to get in, trying to find a piece of paper, whatever it is to say that I work for the government, I'm going to be killed.

But we were so lucky and we got into this cargo airplane.

I remember the cargo gate closed the engine roar, the airplane kept climbing.

Maybe half an hour later, everything was calm and my father said we made it.

Safety, freedom at last.

My past was one thing but John was on edge and very apprehensive.

I kind of wanted to keep my eye I'm not sure how he was goin to react to a lot of this stuff.

When my unit went through Saigon I could never get through it quick enough.

Too many bad things happen in the city, so I really had very little desire to stay there.

They would send us wherever the action was.

one of the very big battles i Vietnam during the Tet Offensive was in Saigon.

Standing here today, how do you feel in terms of memories?

Well, standing here today is very difficult for me.

War is a horrific thing and you can fight like crazy all day long and all of a sudden night comes and the enemy disappears and it's like it never happened except that in reality it did happen and somebody has died.

We were in Saigon within five hours of the Tet Offensive hitting.

During their lunar holiday because everybody's celebrating and partying that's when the North Vietnamese thought we are going to take over Saigon.

The North Vietnamese they thought they would do the big push and come down into South Vietnam and basically take over the nation.

So it was a mass invasion from the North.

During that battle, my role, by that time, I was no longer on the line so I was back in the command track on the radio.

So my job at that time was I was talking to the artillery guys of where to fire.

I was talking to the fighter pilot I was a radio operator at that time coordinating the attack and listening what was going on.

The Y Bridge was a very important strategic location, the commerce and also the flow of people because it was mass exodus.

The bridge would just be full of people trying to get out of Saigon.

I was on the radios and I was talking to them when they were coming on to the bridge and in retrospect maybe I should have told them not to pull onto the bridge.

Maybe my communications on the radio with them that day... Those are questions that are just so hard to answer, and I don't know there is an answer, but a good friend of mine Captain Scarborough was coming on to the bridge with his mechanized M113s and it was hit by a rocket.

So when the battle was going on I was listening and I was talking to him.

And when he was killed I heard every, every bit of it.

And I think in some way, my job wa to get them out of that bridge and get them out of that.

And I failed.

You did your job.

You did your job.

In Saigon.

I noticed that everyone is pretty much on a brand new motorbik and a lot of expensive vehicles on the, on the street, you know, parked, moving taxi, modern cars.

Overall people don't ride bicycles anymore.

Seeing that flag displayed everywhere we went the first few days, it made me very uncomfortable.

I was, greeted by the film crew, and they were all Vietnamese.

Be honest with you.

I did not expect anything because I had no idea of who these people were.

Perhaps before I went one thought that crossed my mind was that they probably would mistreat me because I fled the country to live elsewhere.

What am I doing comin back to a country that I left?

The biggest battles I was i were down in the Mekong Delta.

Cudgel was down in that area.

Jaeger was down in that area.

That's what I wanted to find.

But I felt that we needed to see Saigon Because of Mr.

Tu and his Vietnamese film crew were so gracious.

I felt, I can do this and I can trust them.

And the other thing is they weren't wearing a uniform.

Hello, hello.

Mr.

Tu!

Hello, Mr.

Lee.

How are you?

[Speaking Vietnamese] I am always willing to look at the other side.

I'm always willing to do that.

Okay.

Just look right at the lens.

Lee and John, they have a lot of painful memories.

From our point of view.

we want this journey to have their life to become better.

And also, for John, Vietnamese people we are one blood.

And you are still welcome here.

Our tour guide.

Hi, how are you?

Hello, oh my goodness When I first learned I'm going on a trip with, Vietnamese American and a former GI.

At first, I was a bit concerned.

Yeah, I would be very honest, Because, how to put this, more than a tour guide, I'm presenting my country as a new generation.

To tell him that the country is no longer in war.

Yeah, just.

I think that's my only concer whether I can bring that to him.

Ben Thanh Market reminded me of my childhood.

Especially the fabric, because I used to watch my mom select fabric.

She would say, touch it.

So you feel it.

When you get older, you know what to look for when you go shoppin for your wife or whatever it is.

So anyway, what color in particular that you're looking for?

I called my daughter Emil because she is getting married, and eventually we ended up with something.

It was fulfilling for me based on the experience that I had with my mom when I was young.

I saw him a bit emotional.

Even he lives abroad for a very long time.

But the Vietnam, a tradition in him still there.

[Multiple people speaking Vietnamese] As we were waiting to go inside to greet my family.

A lot of emotion were going through me.

Like a starting gate for the horses to run.

You know, I just had to wait for you guys to say run.

Hello.

Hello, how are you?

Am I your sister?

[Speaking Vietnamese] So these are my cousins from my mother's side.

On the mother's side?

Yes.

So we're all first cousins here.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Two of my cousins were very reluctant to be involved in the project because they fear retribution from the government.

However, Mr.

Tu did some wonder and, he convinced them.

I want to introduce you to - my cousin's family.

- My family - Yeah.

- Oh, yes.

- Let me get my glasses.

- Yeah.

This is Hue, right there in the yellow.

- Beautiful.

- Yes.

Her husband was a dentist in the military.

So when the war ended, they found out who he was, ordered him to show up at the, reeducation camp.

She passed away in 1968.

- Pleiku.

- In Pleiku?

Yes, and her children also perished with her.

My cousins.

Those were just kids, you know, leaving and getting separated.

Their families had suffered.

They didn't want to in the beginning, but they started talking then.

Yeah so, after the war of like for, a couple of years, they still lived in hardship.

Even though and I fought here, I have always hoped and prayed that, have you had a good life?

Is life good to you and your children?

[Speaking Vietnamese] She's basically saying that, the war ended 50 years ago.

Yes.

[Speaking Vietnamese] After the reconciliation between Vietnam and US, life has been better here.

Materialistically and, mentally.

- Mentally, yeah.

- Yeah.

[Speaking Vietnamese] And the scars have faded away day by day.

Wonderful.

I'm happy.

Yeah.

So, they are very happy now.

Thank you, thank you.

And can we see some more pictures?

Yes.

Now who's the other sister?

There's me.

- Who's the other sister?

- Yeah, it's a dog.

I think they were more interested in Lee than they were with me.

No more horses.

So there's no more racing.

Yeah.

My one cousin contacted me later on.

She said, John in my lifetime, I held two men.

One is my husband, the other one was Lee.

She said I held him so tight.

I felt as if I had connected with Lee before.

And I thought that was amazing, what she said.

Holy smoke.

That's a chinook.

Yes.

Oh, look here, it's like an M113.

Yeah, no kidding.

Oh, my gosh.

The whole thing is made out of aluminum.

They burn.

- Yeah - They do burn.

I took over a reconnaissance unit of thirty-five men.

Recon was the tip of the spear.

We can do whatever is necessary.

If you were not in base camp, that was your home away from home.

The UH1.

The UH1 is the sound of Vietnam.

We did a lot of insertions with the Huey helicopter.

We were looking for action.

That's what we were looking for.

Sometimes they would just fly over the tree lines trying to draw fire.

And if we would draw fire, then in you go.

That was your job.

And you either take them ou or hold fire until they can get reinforcements in.

The thing that tried to instill in my men was, you're in this unit for a reason.

I interviewed everybody that came into that unit, and if they didn't fit my mold, you didn't get in.

I had a deal with my platoon sergeant.

When we're out there an they send on a resupply chopper, I want a box on there that says recon only, and I don't care what's in it.

It might be a pair of socks.

It might be a can of beer.

I don't care, because I want every son of a bi... out there to look and say, who does recon think they are?

And that' what I tried to instill in them.

You're not the average deal and that's what makes you good.

What you have to understand, those Vietnamese they've been at war their whole life.

They fought the French, they fought the Chinese, they fought the Japanese.

They're fighting Americans.

They are soldiers to send these draftees over there and to face them.

You got to be proud of these young kids.

What they did and how they stood up.

I didn't want to go to the War Museum, because to me, it was going to tell a story that I did not necessarily believe in.

And there's some things that go on war that are not pretty.

And I've seen, I've seen it.

Agent orange effects.

- Yeah, let's look.

- Want to go in there Lee?

We can do it.

I really don't care to stay in here.

Let's go outside.

You know, they talk about the guns and the bullets and the bombs, and that's all horrific.

But this is something that's directly affected the war.

And I know the Vietnames people have suffered severely.

And, and we have too and you have John I'm convinced that your cancer is a result of Agent Orang because you were in the country when they were spraying that.

I used to watch the C-130 spraying.

As a child, I always lived in fear.

I did not know why we were fighting, and I did not know why they're Vietnamese and we're Vietnamese.

But yet we were killing each other.

And is that like what you would get out into?

Yup, just like that.

Because when we were there was no jungle, no anything there.

Hey, you okay?

You know, it just brings back a lot of memories.

These are innocent people.

I've been holding back.

I know, yeah.

He went into Vietnam, I feel, with a chip on his shoulder.

He was not happ that it was a communist country.

He was not happy that his family had to flee.

And going back and meeting these people, all of a sudden, John started to come around.

[John speaking Vietnamese] Before I went, one thought that crossed my mind was tha they probably would mistreat me But they were kind.

Mr.

Tu said, am from a generation that I did not see war.

So whatever happened then was then.

This is now.

I loved them for that.

John and myself, we are ambassadors now for your country.

Okay, thank you.

I get a hug?

Yeah, okay.

You want to steal my hat?

No, no, I do, but I'm not going to.

You like it too much.

[Speaking Vietnamese] Ben Luc This is more like the Mekong Delta that I remember.

Oh, yeah.

Look here.

See all the tree lines?

That beautiful country.

Look at the canals.

The big canals.

Yes, I remember the canals.

This is what I remember right here.

And I used to feel so sorry for the farmers sitting there begging and crying.

Don't come in and ruin our rice That's the only way we're going to go.

We're not going to go on the road because the roads are booby-trapped and mined.

It was very difficult to watch.

We're approaching the Ben Luc bridge now.

Oh, yes.

Yes yes yes yes.

This is all brand new.

It was not four lane.

It was just very narrow.

And it was a death trap.

If you got stuck on that bridge.

One of the things that you never get over.

I know that I should but, even at home, I never take a walk through the forest or anything.

Is this an ambush site?

I mean, you you get so attuned to that, And I'm not stupid.

I mean, there' nobody attacked me for 50 years.

So the fear factor kicked in practically everywhere you went.

Just kind of unbelievable.

When we came in on the highway, which used to be Highway 4, nothing looked the same.

But when you get to somewhere like this and you can see the panoramic view of the bridge, it brings back so much memories.

The unit that I was in convoyed every single day across this bridge, you were always sweating an sweating and sweating and think if I can just get across the bridge without getting hit, we can make it home to Binh Phuoc because it was a serious choke point.

You would see the bridge coming.

My only thought was, if something happens on that bridge, I will die on that bridge.

But you guys get the hell out of here.

I'm the guy I'll stay behind.

I don't care.

My only goal was I got to get them home.

Just look at all the commerce going up and down the river.

This is, this is the heartbeat of South Vietnam right here.

It's beautiful.

When Mr.

Tu and his crew tried to find these battle sites as a military officer I'm thinking, here's the coordinates.

Here's the town.

This is where we were.

Go find them.

Can we have quiet?

[Speaking Vietnamese] Something that I thought was going to b the easiest thing in the world.

Turned out to be very difficult.

Okay, so from the beginning, the only thing that we really had of information about where you were was this map, which was the 9th Infantry Division area of operation.

Correct.

Yeah All these things are gone now.

And there's some other changes too.

Like, is this called Highway 4 still?

So that is also another difficulty for us.

There is no Highway 4 on the Vietnamese modern map.

Right.

Once the mission started then we were air mobiled in by helicopter.

So exactly how far we wen and where you don't really know.

You're just dropped in a field.

We were just dropped in a battlefield.

I remember the canals very specifically.

This is a Cudgel?

This is Cudgel and this is the canal.

Yeah so we went on a second scout trip here and the canal there match exactly the description you send us and... - The Google Map.

- Map?

Yeah.

We found this monument.

You found a monument?

Yeah.

And it said that here on the night of 18th November 1967.

And I thought that's exactly the date.

And so I thought, they've got it.

They figured it out.

I think you have done an excellent job.

Thank you.

The first location was a little bit harder.

For Jaeger.

We had three scout trips, and the first one was completely a failure.

The locals told us that there was no like US military firebase, but we collected pieces o information from many sources.

Uh Linh, Tu and Phuong found this location And we believe this is the former base of Jaeger.

This way Lee, to the back of the base.

Does it look like it used to be?

When I was at, what we called Firebase Jaeger.

It did not look anything like this.

It was all very confusing to me because there was no coconut groves or anything around where the firebase was at that time.

Just open rice fields.

I'll, I'll ask okay.

[Speaking Vietnamese] [Speaking Vietnamese] So he said that he was drinking with the elderly.

They said that this used to be the base where the US troops were fighting.

[Speaking Vietnamese] He said one of them is right here.

Oh, this is an elder.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, can I come up and shake your hand?

I remember this is all rice fields.

Have they changed what they grow here?

[Speaking Vietnamese] Yeah, they changed.

They changed.

So it was rice.

Yeah.

[Speaking Vietnamese] Yes, yes.

Yeah, it was rice paddies.

[Speaking Vietnamese] Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Yes yes, yes.

There were, artillery, debris there.

Yes.

The US troops was over there.

In looking around, I, this could be it.

This could be it.

Because tree lines all around us, our base camp would have been over here, just like he said.

And then, if my directions are correct, that would be west.

And that's the tree lin that they came from that night.

A lot of times you don't know things in your mind, but you have an extra feeling, and I can, I can feel it.

We're very close.

Yeah, I just feel it.

If there's ever a time in your life that you measure every day from.

It's the battle of Firebase Jaeger.

At Firebase Jaeger I've gone from a recon platoon to commanding 200 men in an infantry company.

It was right on Highway 4.

They were messing with the transportation corridor.

The main highways went right through there in and out of the Mekong Delta.

So the food supply was huge too.

And we were to keep Highway 4 open.

On a lot of the missions, we would be getting so far from the artillery that support was not available.

They would hook them up to the bottom of a big Chinook helicopter, and they would fly wherever you were.

And we put the concertina wire around, and then you just set up perimeter to protect the artillery.

And that's what we were there for.

It was terribly, terribly hot, dry season, dust everywhere.

Intel said there was some hug forces operating in that area.

And we got hit that night.

And I mean, when they hit us, it was a full all out attack.

An RPG rocket hit my track head on blew that track to pieces and burned it to the ground.

Threw me out into the dirt.

I had a 45 pistol.

I had a steel pot and I had on boot on, and that's all I had.

No communication.

I have no radio.

By this time.

They're penetrating.

They're in the wire.

And they said, what are we going to do?

Well, let me go see what's going on in the rest of the camp.

So I took off.

I could see them trying to get the artillery guns.

They were everywhere.

I didn't want to shoot my 45, cause I didn't want anybody to know where I was.

And I ran around.

Got to the B company track and that company commander was laying there.

They had shot him dead point blank.

I thought, I've got to get to the command track.

I went back in and I said, I don't thin we're going to get out of this.

They're on the guns.

We've got dead peopl and wounded people everywhere.

Hand-to-hand fighting inside the wire.

We were going down and we felt the only way we could survive this battle was to call i artillery on our own position.

I think we got to do it.

And I said, give me 15 minutes.

And so I took off and I ran.

I found everybody I could, and I said, in 15 minute this place is going to light up, get under something, get somewhere safe.

It just became daylight.

Everything was echoing.

The airburs just tore the place to pieces.

But it broke the attack.

It was over.

But by that time, we had 20 Americans killed.

We had over 60 medevacked and we had 150 Vietnamese to bury.

As horrifi as that battle was that night, the next day was worse.

I was sitting on the back of my new vehicle.

My other vehicle had been blown up.

The battle's over, they're burying bodies.

It's smoldering, burned up, but it's like in slow motion.

And the call came in.

They said, Bandido Six.

We've got some movement over in the tree line out here.

Find out what it is.

One of my best lieutenants, Lieutenant Barr.

I'll never forget him.

I said, Lieutenant Barr, load up, go find out what that was.

It was a set up.

He was only gone minutes.

And I hear one of the most huge explosions.

So I just started running.

And I just remember, so specifically, the commander kept calling over the radio and said, what's the casualties?

Bandido Six.

What's the casualties?

And finally, I'd had enough of it and I said, don't call me back.

I'll tell you how many people were killed after I gather up the arms and divide by two, because that's the biggest piece I can find.

And about that time, one of my men came running up t me and said, Lieutenant Alley, we found a detonating wire, and they followed the detonating cord to a farmer's house.

And there was a young man in that house, and they brought him to me.

And I knocked him down onto his knees.

And I said you, are going to die, one miserable, long frickin death, because I'm going to cut you to pieces.

And I took out my knife.

And about that time my interpreter grabbed me by the ar and he said, Lieutenant Alley, don't do that.

He said, you are much, much better person.

That will haunt you for the rest of your life.

He said you let him live.

We will take care of him.

And so I told him to get him out of my sight.

And he lived, what they did with him I don't know and I don't want to know, but, as bad as the battle was, and as much as we lost, that was, even worse.

This is the location.

I know where we are.

Yeah, I know where we are.

How do you think of this?

Like, now it's coconut tree, like no more battlefield?

When I stand here today.

And what I see is what a resilient population can do to reclaim their land, 50 year can go by in a blink of an eye, and 50 years can change horrific battlefield where many, many people died into a very beautiful coconut plantation.

[Speaking Vietnamese] He asked if you want to, try.

Yes, yes.

Okay, let's go.

[Speaking Vietnamese] For him to see Vietnam, like with a different eyes, different landscape.

Like it's a remnant from the war But now it's a beautiful place.

So something very ugly i the past can be very beautiful at the present.

Even me like I didn't live that period.

But I can feel it.

A peace came over me.

From the chaotic night that night to see that, the land had healed.

Mother Nature had made herself back beautiful again.

And tell him thank you for telling us everything that he did.

Thank him so much.

[Speaking Vietnamese] When the orders came down to go to Firebase Cudgel, we looked at the Intel report of the Vietnamese units that were operating in that area.

The hair on your neck stood up.

When we were around Binh Phuoc where the base camp was you're fighting a guerrilla force, you know, might be seven, eight, nine, ten.

You're pretty superior in firepower.

But then the big battle comes and then, everything goes out the window.

Everything is changed.

They got Inte that there is a North Vietnamese battalion operating in this area.

Now, those guys are hard core.

You're fighting a whole different enemy.

So they sent our whole battalion in three companies, 200 men apiece.

And my recon unit.

We've already been fighting for a day and a half easy and we looked like a bunch of misfits.

We were mud from head to toe.

Nobody had slept.

You're rung out.

And then the call comes and says, Romeo, we're picking you up.

They picked my thirty-five men up and they flew us to Firebase Cudgel.

Now when I say Firebase Cudgel, it was just some artillery out there in the middle of the rice fields, but there was no protectio on the other side of the canal.

That was the most vulnerable point.

That's where the attac was probably going to come from.

So me and my thirty-five men, we crossed the river.

Look at this.

My gosh, it's even bigger and deeper than I can remember.

It's funny how things stick with you.

Do you see that same vegetation?

That's an obstacle.

They use it and they could float in that.

They could stick up a littl tube to where they can breathe.

There could be 8 or 10 people just waiting for somebody to come along, ambush it.

It's something that you had to be aware of.

Initially, how did you cross the river?

Well, I called it a bridge, but it was basically like some bamboo poles tied together.

One person could go across it at a time.

I've talked to a lot of people about that bridge and people would say, no are you sure there was a bridge?

You began wondering, did it really happen?

How did it happen?

See that little chicken over there?

Yeah.

That's about right where my bunker was.

I was right there.

I knew they were there.

I could feel them.

I knew they were there.

I just didn't know at what time the attack would come.

And I told all my men, please stay alert.

Please stay alert.

Tonight's going to be the night.

And it was.

Once I got across the river they told us to dig in.

You're in the Mekong Delta, we never dug a foxhole in our life.

Soon as you got down two or three feet it filled with water.

When I say digging in, I mean just enough to get our heads down.

And then we basically, settled in for the night.

Everybody's on edg because we know they're there.

And then about, two-thirty or three o'clock in the morning all hell broke loose.

They started the attack with mortars.

They were so close, I could hear them drop into the tube.

Thump.

And I get on the radio and I tell my guys, get in your bunker.

Stay down.

I think we're going to be okay because these mortars are so thick.

There's no way in heck they're going to attack.

But I was wrong.

Here they came.

You could hear them screaming.

You can see the bodies exploding because they were coming right through it.

I had one bunker that was hit directly with a mortar.

My two radio operators are shot.

I was taking casualties very quickly.

I've got to get my men out of here.

Let's get back into the artillery and maybe we can hold them off from there.

And I said, listen, do not get on the bridge.

They will shoot you off that bridge like ducks.

You got to get the wounded to cross.

Get under the bridge.

Hang on one hand, human chain.

Get them across the river.

Every third guy.

Give me your weapon and give me all your hand grenades.

I'll hold them off.

Over the top of my bunker.

Just start spraying.

As soon as that M16 was out of bullets, I would throw it in the river.

I knew I was going down and I didn't want them to get the weapons.

I'd picked up another weapon.

Fire it, throw it in the river.

All the weapons are gone.

I'm out of ammunition.

So then I go to the hand grenades, and I know that I've got to make every one of these count.

And the craziest thing of it is they were screaming, GI you die.

GI, we kill you tonight.

They were screaming that at the top of their lungs.

And I'm thinking you might be right.

This might be the end.

Guns are gone.

Grenades are gone.

Dove into the river.

First thing I did is I ran to the artillery.

They're going to come across the river.

They're in our bunkers.

They've got my radio.

The only way we're going to be saved is to lower your guns.

Then it's like a lot of the battles.

All of a sudden it's over.

The next morning, when everything cleared up, I had four men killed.

I had twenty-three medevacked.

Out of the thirty-five of us, there was only eight of us left.

My then battalion commander, General Steele.

He and I were very, very close.

The next morning, things settle down.

He kept hugging me and holding me, and he said, Lee, I can't believe you're alive.

And I said, what do you mean?

He said your radio was all Vietnamese.

They were talking to me in Vietnamese on the radio.

Lee, I thought you were dead.

So I stand here looking at this today, and how they brought themselves and handed the wounded back across this body of water is a testament to the to my guys.

What what great soldiers they were.

And one of the things that I think that the army is still looking at me for, you know, if you lose something, they make you pay for it.

There's probably, eight or ten M16s down there in the bottom wher we could probably go still find and then I would be off the hook with the U.S government.

This canal is exactly the way I remember it in my mind.

You're absolutely sure this is where it was?

In my heart, I am sure.

They have found it.

I think it's a tribute not only to the Vietnamese.

It's a tribute to my men who fought here.

I think it's a tribute to both.

That's the way I look at it.

Oh, look here.

So this is Ms.

Truc.

She's the caretaker of the monument here.

It is gorgeous.

I am very thankful for what she does.

[Speaking Vietnamese] [Praying in Vietnamese] Follow John.

[Speaking Vietnamese] She said that her husband's father was the commander of the unit who fought in this battle, and he used to like, hide under the floating vegetable to get from the other side of the canal to this side of the canal.

Yeah.

I knew, I knew.

So if you want to meet them.

Ms.

Truc, will contact them for you.

Wouldn't you like to meet them?

Yes, yes, very much.

To have a monument this size in a foreign country, in a battle that I was in, I don't even know how to.

I don't know what to say.

I had no idea that that battle could be so important to them.

It is really important to me.

It's really important to me.

We found the members of battalion 261 who fought in the same battle against Lee.

When they meet the veterans.

That was something we like was very worried about because we couldn't know exactly how they would react to each other.

I'm hearing that three or four guys wanted to come and meet me, and so it was going to be a very informal lunch.

And here they come off that bus.

It was scary.

Oh my.

There had to be thirty guys get off that thing.

And they're all in full uniform.

I mean, the uniform that we fought against and I'm looking at them like, holy crap.

Here we go again.

And all they wanted to do was hug.

I mean, it was the most surreal thing in the world.

They all talk to each other as if they were only soldiers.

They're not soldier from any side.

For me, as a young people to see all of that, I understand that it was no one's fault they were given a jo and they just following command.

[Speaking Vietnamese] He's asking if the description on this was correct.

The battle is over.

That what it says makes no difference to me.

Okay.

Yeah.

Makes no difference.

I wasn't born in the war.

The only things that I knew about war was from history books.

They told us that weused to fight against each other a lot, and the fight was disastrous for everyone involved.

So when I see them sit together and have a beer and drink and talk, you know, that's a kind of a happy moment for me.

Lee believe that nothing will haunt him anymore.

Yes.

I crossed the bridge.

Americans, Americans, Americans.

But me over here by myself.

[Speaking Vietnamese] He laid the map down on the table and it took my breath away.

It was as if I had drawn the map.

The bridge was there, the canals were there.

And so there's always been a question on my mind.

Did I record it accurately?

Because I still have friends that were in those battles and I talked to them.

Their story is a little bit different than mine.

He was there because he knew.

Yes.

They know about the Prick-25.

That they got?

- They do?

- Yeah.

You had my radio?

What!

Give it back!

When I was young, I used to go to the library to read about histories.

And I kept wondering, was that, like, true?

This trip give me a pause.

Just to look at a different perspective, and I feel like I'm reading the book and that's the book that I would keep forever.

That's beautiful.

That's it.

Yeah so he wants to give that to you as a gift.

[Speaking Vietnamese] Holy sh... Lee always said that he wondere if the things that he had done and the choices that he made were right.

I think overall, to see that the country has changed and that the people are going on with their lives, I think that that was very impactful.

But I think the change in him came the day that we were at cudgel, and I think that probably all of us that were there saw that.

He's mentioned a nagging ache.

If your memory is really good because some people will say things differently, Lee was his only witness.

He sent his men across the river and shot the rifles and threw him in the river.

Well, nobody saw that except two of the Vietnamese guys that were there that day saw it To Lee was like, this is real.

And I think that his life changed, changed that day.

Looking back on this trip, I completely let go of whatever animosity that I had because once I saw how welcoming they were, all that went out the window.

During our time in Vietnam, I saw John change.

I felt a great connection with motherland.

When I went to Vietnam, I had no intentio of becoming a different person or seeing the light.

But when you meet the enemy face to face and you hug, it was powerful In their last words to me were that I hope after today you have no more nightmares.

Please have no more nightmares.

It's almost like something' been lifted off of my shoulders.

I told you that there was a time that I was afraid of myself.

I struggled with, who am I?

Where am I in this order?

I know who I am.

Yeah, and I'm pretty good friends with that guy.

This was written by one of the soldiers at the battle o Firebase Cudgel that I fought.

And Hi interpreted it for me.

And this is his writing.

This is his words, and it says, "Old hatreds have now turned into friendships.

Hand in hand, we walk with deeper understanding through wounds and sorrows, long enduring.

A bright future, welcomes peaceful days.

From now on, our friendship shall endure.

Vietnam and the United States stride forward, bond strengthened and future vast and radiant ties light ahead.

Peace, warm and happiness in the heart of a Vietnam."

And that's what the soldiers wanted me to know.

Funding was provided by The National Museum of Military Vehicles Wyoming Public Television Production Endowment Rita Meyer The Wyoming Veterans Commission And the Marna M. Kuehne Foundation