Speaker 1: Ah Beat Force. If it doesn't work, you're just not
Speaker 1: using enough. You're listening to Software a Gradio Special Operations,
Speaker 1: military news and straight talk with the guys and the
Speaker 1: community Software Radio on Time on Target. Excited to have
Speaker 1: Mickey Winn joining us this episode to talk about his father,
Speaker 1: Bob Win. His story was covered by Mickey in Oscar
Speaker 1: nominated film Last Days in Vietnam. I've been watching some
Speaker 1: of the footage they captured of his father and it
Speaker 1: truly is a remarkable story. You guys are gonna like it.
Speaker 1: Before we get into all that, I wanted to mention
Speaker 1: that Big Mountain Heroes is now available on YouTube for free.
Speaker 1: If you've been listening to the podcast, you've heard so
Speaker 1: much about Big Mountain Heroes over the past year, and
Speaker 1: you have the guys decided now that it's won an award,
Speaker 1: which was really cool to give that footage to you
Speaker 1: for free, even if you're not a subscriber to the
Speaker 1: spec ops channel, which we hope you join uh. And
Speaker 1: it features a lot of guys you've heard on this podcast,
Speaker 1: Nick Bets, Isaiah Burkhardt, Leo jenk Ins, Brandon Webb, of course,
Speaker 1: Nick k Hill, and several other guys. I'm probably missing,
Speaker 1: but it's it's very well done. Great footage that these
Speaker 1: guys captured of them skiing, uh in the well really
Speaker 1: several Alps, right, I think it's France, Italy, the Alps
Speaker 1: cut through a few countries, yeah, but I think they
Speaker 1: were in the Swiss Alps where they actually filmed it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so check that out Big Mountain Heroes. All you gotta
Speaker 1: do is go on YouTube. I mean, I'll start promoting
Speaker 1: it as well on my Twitter, well the Twitter say
Speaker 1: for software radio, the Instagram for software Radio and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. But if you go on YouTube, just look
Speaker 1: up Big Mountain Heroes you'll see the full documentary. It's
Speaker 1: a short documentary, so we're not talking um, you know,
Speaker 1: like a ninety minute film or anything. It's shorter, but
Speaker 1: it's very well done and I think you guys will
Speaker 1: like it. Um into some news. I figured I would
Speaker 1: mention for you this is really in your realm, but
Speaker 1: I just heard about it earlier today. The Punisher, which
Speaker 1: you've covered before, has been canceled by Netflix. Yeah, I'd
Speaker 1: say it had it coming. You know. John Burnthall was
Speaker 1: pretty good. Is Frank Castle. You know, he's a good actor.
Speaker 1: But the show itself is just honestly boring, Like it
Speaker 1: bored me to tears and a lot of parts. I
Speaker 1: heard of a lot of complaints, uh from you know,
Speaker 1: from for example, Sean the Butcher has been on the
Speaker 1: show about this season in particular. People liked the last season.
Speaker 1: I mean, I thought the first season is probably a
Speaker 1: little bit worse if anything. You know, the thing is like,
Speaker 1: there's this other show on Netflix, because I so I get.
Speaker 1: I guess a lot of this has to do with
Speaker 1: like Netflix having some blow up with Marvel that Netflix
Speaker 1: wants to do their own exclusive like their own properties,
Speaker 1: their own I p s and so forth, um, rather
Speaker 1: than licensed characters from you, Marvel or whoever. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I was watching this one with my wife yesterday. It's
Speaker 1: called like the The Umbrella Society or something like that,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of like a it's sort of the
Speaker 1: same theme as The X Men. It's like these superpowered
Speaker 1: kids who grew up in a big mansion and etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But you know, it strikes me to that show has
Speaker 1: the same problem that The Punisher had, um, the same
Speaker 1: problem that Daredevil had, even though Daredevil was actually a
Speaker 1: pretty good show is that, like, bro, nobody wants to
Speaker 1: watch TV shows about superheroes being sad all the time,
Speaker 1: like just like moping about feeling sorry for themselves. It's
Speaker 1: like you are literally a super empowered person. You have
Speaker 1: damn near or literally magical abilities to go out and
Speaker 1: affect change in the world. Is like no one wants
Speaker 1: to see you just like sitting around like all poopy face.
Speaker 1: Like even if Frank Castle, you know, the Punisher is
Speaker 1: a normal guy, but like the character is not like
Speaker 1: some emo bro just like sitting around in hotel rooms
Speaker 1: getting drunk, feeling starting. No, he's like going out and
Speaker 1: like taking the fight to criminals and like gunning down
Speaker 1: mob bosses. Like he's a very much like active, engaged
Speaker 1: participant in the world around him, kicking some ass um
Speaker 1: you know. Even this is even the same problem I
Speaker 1: have with some of a more recent Batman comics that
Speaker 1: you know, I I uh, you know, we had the
Speaker 1: author Tom King on here for an interview, and I
Speaker 1: do overall enjoy his work. I think he's a terrific writer,
Speaker 1: but like some of his Batman comics, more recent ones especially,
Speaker 1: it's just like Batman, like feeling sad. Do you think
Speaker 1: this is because I'm very outside this world. But do
Speaker 1: you think it's maybe to appeal to a more female
Speaker 1: demo because you hear about gamer Gate and this type
Speaker 1: of stuff where they feel like females are being discriminated again.
Speaker 1: I don't know that they're trying to appeal to a
Speaker 1: female demographic. I mean, I I sense a little bit
Speaker 1: of that in the comic book world sometimes that it's
Speaker 1: like trying to fit around peg in a square hole,
Speaker 1: because like if you're trying to write the Punisher to
Speaker 1: appeal to a female demographic, I mean, you're just wasting
Speaker 1: your time, like you're barking up the wrong tree there.
Speaker 1: But it's almost like the thing that I would compare
Speaker 1: it to. It's you know the super Bowl. You already
Speaker 1: have the male demographics, so when they have the halftime show,
Speaker 1: they have Adam Levine with his shirt off. Who does
Speaker 1: that appeal doesn' appeal to us? I don't know if
Speaker 1: it like deliberately trying to appeal to a female audience.
Speaker 1: I think it's just there's, um there's a need to
Speaker 1: interject melo drama into these storylines. Um, they feel like
Speaker 1: that's what they have to do to like appeal to
Speaker 1: the audience and like ratchet up the drama as opposed
Speaker 1: to if it's you know, Batman or the Punisher, and
Speaker 1: like they understand who they are as a person and
Speaker 1: then they're just going out and executing their mission. I
Speaker 1: think that that could be seen by a lot of
Speaker 1: viewers is like kind of stale, Like you go from
Speaker 1: this mission and then to this mission, and then there's
Speaker 1: some hiccups and the bad guy fights back, and then
Speaker 1: you go on to this mission you defeat him. So
Speaker 1: they feel they need to interject some of this melo drama,
Speaker 1: which I get, but at the same time, it's like, dude,
Speaker 1: no one wants to sit there and watch an hour
Speaker 1: of Frank Castle fucking feeling sorry for himself, Like, no
Speaker 1: one wants to watch that. Well, it apparently, uh, you're correct,
Speaker 1: because it is being canceled from that. I think it
Speaker 1: was gonna be canceled anyway, Like like um, Daredevil and
Speaker 1: some of those other shows did pretty well and they
Speaker 1: got canceled too, And I don't think it's because of
Speaker 1: like the ratings. I think it's because of whatever the
Speaker 1: corporate agenda was between Netflix and uh in Marvel Comics,
Speaker 1: it's funny because before I recorded this, I had to
Speaker 1: get a sneak peek since it just came out today
Speaker 1: of The Motley Crew, the dirt movie that's gonna be
Speaker 1: on Netflix, and I'm the biggest Motley Crew fan. If
Speaker 1: anybody was going to be disappointed by this trailer, it
Speaker 1: would be me because I'm very specific about yeah. Like,
Speaker 1: for example, I liked Straight at the Compton, but I
Speaker 1: was like, ah, this was innaccurate, this is inaccurate. The
Speaker 1: trailer itself, I'm gonna say, looked incredible. I I really
Speaker 1: am excited for this movie. I'm definitely gonna watch it.
Speaker 1: I love the book that it's based off of. I
Speaker 1: personally have met Nikki six a couple of times. Couldn't
Speaker 1: have been a cooler guy. Oh if you ever met
Speaker 1: Tommy No, never met Tommy, just just Nikki six. I
Speaker 1: mean my original story I think I've told you was
Speaker 1: when I got kicked out of Yeah yeah, yeah, oh
Speaker 1: yeah that was him, Yeah, and he got me back
Speaker 1: into the show. I got kicked out for drinking because
Speaker 1: you know, at the age of like, at the age
Speaker 1: of seventeen, I looked like I was fourteen. They kicked
Speaker 1: me out and he got me back in. And then
Speaker 1: the cool thing was I got to tell him that
Speaker 1: when I met him at serious years later, and I
Speaker 1: was saying, like, if anybody talks about you online, I
Speaker 1: got your back then, and he was like, yeah, that's awesome,
Speaker 1: and picture with him that's super cool. Yeah. But because
Speaker 1: I've met from my time in radio, a lot of
Speaker 1: rock stars and you know a lot of guys will
Speaker 1: take a picture of you or sign something. But that's
Speaker 1: a whole another level to get you back into a
Speaker 1: show for someone that you've never met, that could do
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing for Yeah. Yeah, yeah, No, he was doing
Speaker 1: something to take care of the fans because he you know,
Speaker 1: he probably likes you guys, you know, and respects you. So,
Speaker 1: I mean that is really that's a really cool story, Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially because he's had this reputation of a lot of
Speaker 1: people thinking he's a dick. Alright, Yeah, I could tell
Speaker 1: you he's not. I mean maybe at some other point
Speaker 1: when he was on drugs and all that, but he's
Speaker 1: definitely not now. Uh So, yeah, I'm looking forward to
Speaker 1: ing that when it comes out. All right. Well, before
Speaker 1: we get to Mickey, I actually usually read emails from
Speaker 1: you guys the fans sent to soft Rep dot Radio
Speaker 1: at softrep dot com. But this isn't actually an email
Speaker 1: from a recent guest. Mark you Blanca, author of Vietnam VOUCHI,
Speaker 1: and he wrote us about another recent guest, So here
Speaker 1: it is. Greetings, Ian and Jack just wanted to know.
Speaker 1: I want you to know I listened to my Max
Speaker 1: Martinizs episode last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. Through his
Speaker 1: brother Chris, who's a friend I met when I was
Speaker 1: a member of the Military Writer Society of America. A
Speaker 1: few years back, I got an invite to a screening
Speaker 1: of Sergeant Will Gardner. Great film with a powerful message
Speaker 1: that needs to get out there, so I was glad
Speaker 1: to hear you guys doing that. Max was kind enough
Speaker 1: to indulge a fans request for a photo, which I
Speaker 1: included here photo both of them. I'll probably put that
Speaker 1: up on Instagram sometime during the week. Uh. Just as
Speaker 1: he and co star Michael Irby were back when he
Speaker 1: was starring in the Unit and came to the Joint
Speaker 1: Forces Training Base in law Los Ala Alamitos, California on
Speaker 1: Soldier Appreciation Day. Best Mark PS mailed him a copy
Speaker 1: of Vietnam Vouchi in the days following the screening. So
Speaker 1: that's cool to hear two different UM recent guests with
Speaker 1: each other. That was really cool. I didn't know any
Speaker 1: of that. Um as a cool email to get. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and by the way, for those who checked out
Speaker 1: that episode or didn't, Sergeant Will Gardner's available now on
Speaker 1: Blue Ray on DVD. So and now is the time
Speaker 1: listening to that excerpt you posted of Max Martini interview.
Speaker 1: That's that's really funny. Yeah, or you're saying if the
Speaker 1: protagonist was a transgender was transgender would be a popular movie. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And by the way, you can only post a minute
Speaker 1: clip on Instagram, So I didn't want to take it
Speaker 1: out of context because I could already see someone, you
Speaker 1: know how people are these days, outreach by everything. The
Speaker 1: following uh part of that interview, he does say, not
Speaker 1: that I have anything wrong with transgender people or there's
Speaker 1: anything wrong with him. So he wasn't taking a cheap
Speaker 1: shot or anything. He was us talking about what's currently trendy, um,
Speaker 1: you know, in Hollywood or in the media. And I
Speaker 1: mean it definitely is a trend. I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 1: this is one of those comments that's going to come
Speaker 1: back to bite me. But right right now, there there
Speaker 1: is a the media is looking for an aesthetic um
Speaker 1: rather than a value um, which is problematic for me.
Speaker 1: They're looking for the aesthetic of you know, this is
Speaker 1: the empowered um, black homosexual female, like like capture all
Speaker 1: of those things at once. Well, if you're talking about that,
Speaker 1: then the recent attack on the guy attacking air quotes,
Speaker 1: so the guy from the power well that's sort of
Speaker 1: a separate issue. I mean that was really fucked up,
Speaker 1: but it was you know, the the narrative was gay
Speaker 1: black man attacked by trend reporter in the in the
Speaker 1: in the all sorts of different media from movies, video games, etcetera.
Speaker 1: They're trying to capture this this aesthetic I feel like
Speaker 1: of the person of color, the um, the female voices,
Speaker 1: and I think there's absolutely a role for that, but
Speaker 1: it's um. Again, it's an aesthetic rather than a value.
Speaker 1: It's something that's trendy, something that they're commercializing and selling
Speaker 1: to us, and it comes across as just so inauthentic. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, like if you think back to the past,
Speaker 1: like I realized this is in some terrific you know,
Speaker 1: art film, but still a wonderful movie Predator, and you
Speaker 1: remember Mac and Predator. I don't feel like you could
Speaker 1: have a African American character like that in a movie today,
Speaker 1: Like that guy was so over the top but memorable,
Speaker 1: but really like memorable, just a memorable role. Everyone remembers
Speaker 1: him in that movie. Um. Now, in these films, I mean,
Speaker 1: these Hollywood action films, they suck because they're all homogeneous.
Speaker 1: They have to be homogenized. There's like so many blocks
Speaker 1: you have to tick, you know, and and it comes
Speaker 1: off like the with these stereotypes, there's always it's always
Speaker 1: the same cast, uh and crew. It's like in your
Speaker 1: in your tea of like commandos or whoever it is.
Speaker 1: There's the big beefy black guy with the shaved head,
Speaker 1: there's the nerdy guy with the glasses who runs the radios.
Speaker 1: And then the guy in charge is always just about
Speaker 1: always he is male, white, good looking and charismatic, like
Speaker 1: like he's the movie star one. It's just like these
Speaker 1: tropes are so fucking boring. It's like, I don't know
Speaker 1: who goes to see movies nowadays, Like I would rather
Speaker 1: go and see like a fucking Harry Potter movie then
Speaker 1: go and see like an action movie. I'd rather go
Speaker 1: see a good science fiction movie and see these These
Speaker 1: action films are so horrible because they've just been destroyed
Speaker 1: by all this. Yeah, I mean, you just might, even
Speaker 1: though you are a former military guy, you might not
Speaker 1: be the demo for it because there are films that
Speaker 1: do relatively well. You know, if that's thirteen hours, it
Speaker 1: wasn't huge, but but a lot of people loved it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well that's a different thing I'm talking about, like action
Speaker 1: adventure fictional films, like the ones that try to be realistic.
Speaker 1: I don't watch them at all, Like Lone Survivor. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen it. Did you watch I did finally see
Speaker 1: it um last summer UM when I went and visited
Speaker 1: my Team Sergeant and he threw it on tv UM. Actually,
Speaker 1: his daughters wanted to watch it, which is really weird.
Speaker 1: So I ended up watching that with them. But I
Speaker 1: don't I don't have any desire to watch those kinds
Speaker 1: of movies. One thing I will say about it, and
Speaker 1: it's interesting because we have Chris coming on the podcast
Speaker 1: next week, I believe. Yeah, next week we have Chris
Speaker 1: coming on. Yeah, we can ask him about the movie,
Speaker 1: what he thought of it. Oh well, I've why I've
Speaker 1: talked to him about it. I think he has on
Speaker 1: the podcast. But what I was gonna say is that
Speaker 1: and and he's agreed, and I think a lot of
Speaker 1: his friends the guy who played Chris did a great job.
Speaker 1: I could see that. Yeah, it's kind of like kind
Speaker 1: of funny goofing off when they're not working. And I
Speaker 1: think that's very much him. A lot of people saw
Speaker 1: the film that know him and said, like, this guy
Speaker 1: did an excellent job of capturing who you are. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, It's like when we wed interviewed Jocko Willing
Speaker 1: and I asked him about Um American Sniper, and he
Speaker 1: was kind of like, well, it's a Hollywood film. You know.
Speaker 1: They tried to capture something. They tried to do something
Speaker 1: good with the film. But I think what he was
Speaker 1: trying to say it was like, look, man, it's a
Speaker 1: Hollywood film. It doesn't replicate what he experienced in Romani,
Speaker 1: you know, and how could it's not going to How
Speaker 1: could that guy on that I was showing you the
Speaker 1: other day who was like, you know, I can't play
Speaker 1: war video games because in real war you can't play
Speaker 1: a press reset. Oh ship you sent me that. I
Speaker 1: was laughing my ass off. Yeah, I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: think anybody plays those games. And you know, I know
Speaker 1: that there is a mental aspect that if you're you know,
Speaker 1: one of these people who's addicted video games, sitting in
Speaker 1: your house all day killing people, you know, it does
Speaker 1: desensitize you. But I think to the rational person who
Speaker 1: maybe is a you know, a gamer, after they get
Speaker 1: home from work and this is what they enjoyed doing,
Speaker 1: they don't feel like they're a warrior. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I think, Uh that came up again where in an
Speaker 1: interview with William Neeson where he was talking about that,
Speaker 1: He's like, I don't believe that people see these movies
Speaker 1: and it like motivates them to kill people. Like that's nonsense.
Speaker 1: There's always gonna be that those people, you know, like
Speaker 1: just like the guy who's obsessed with serial killers or something.
Speaker 1: People as opposed to someone who enjoys a horror movie,
Speaker 1: people who are already predisposed towards violence and becoming like
Speaker 1: violent criminals are going to gravitate towards that type of media.
Speaker 1: Like the Columbine shooters were like those kind of kids,
Speaker 1: but playing violent video games didn't make them go shoot
Speaker 1: up their school. You know, it's it's funny how like
Speaker 1: throughout history you see, like first it was like Harley
Speaker 1: Davison motorcycles. You know that you get the motorcycle and
Speaker 1: you become a criminal. You know. Then it was comic books.
Speaker 1: Comic books were were like the devil's work and they
Speaker 1: were polluting the brains of our children, corrupting them. There's
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons is turning you into a satanist? Um?
Speaker 1: And then video games where the big one when I
Speaker 1: was a kid that the video games are corrupting America's youth. Um,
Speaker 1: And I guess today it's what social media is what's
Speaker 1: destroying our kids, right tablets? Yeah, do you remember that
Speaker 1: Chris Rock bit from Bigger and Blacker where he was like,
Speaker 1: I don't care about what the comumbine kids were listening to.
Speaker 1: He was like what was in Hitler's CD case? Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I tend to agree with that. Yeah, who gives a ship? Really? Um,
Speaker 1: unless you have anything else, I think we're gonna get
Speaker 1: over to Mickey Um. Like I said, I've been reading
Speaker 1: about him earlier today and of course when we booked
Speaker 1: him and his father's story is incredible and I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to hearing it from him. I did not know
Speaker 1: this story at all. And his story by the way too,
Speaker 1: I should say, because I could remember certain things from
Speaker 1: when I was six years old, which he was, you know,
Speaker 1: fleeing the communists. It's got to be a crazy, crazy story,
Speaker 1: really cool story too. I'm I'm excited to talk to
Speaker 1: him for the first time on Software Radio Mickey. When
Speaker 1: Mickey's father was Bob when his story was covered by
Speaker 1: Mickey in the Oscar nominated film Last Days in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: At the age of six years old in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: five during the Fall of Saigon, Mickey's father saved his
Speaker 1: family as they fled the Communists in the Chinook helicopter
Speaker 1: with his family. And we'll get into the whole story
Speaker 1: of of going on board that navy ship who saved
Speaker 1: your life and your family's life, but before we get
Speaker 1: into the entire story itself. Great to have you on
Speaker 1: and thanks for reaching out to me and bringing this
Speaker 1: amazing story to our attention. Yeah, thank you for the
Speaker 1: opportunity just to be on here and share with you
Speaker 1: a story of my my family and my dad. Uh
Speaker 1: that played a at least within the film Last Days,
Speaker 1: and had a pretty dramatic scene in it, so that
Speaker 1: that helped the film stand out a bit more. In
Speaker 1: two thousands, Justien ostrominting there, I was actually totally unfamiliar
Speaker 1: with your story, and so I'm so glad that you
Speaker 1: reached out to us. Um. Just reading article about about
Speaker 1: this whole story, it is just really incredible. I us
Speaker 1: I like, if you're if you can to start at
Speaker 1: the beginning and talk about um, you know, your upbringing
Speaker 1: in South Vietnam and UM, your father, um, and all
Speaker 1: the things that led up to, you know, the fall
Speaker 1: of Saigon. Yeah, so this the fall of sign Sure
Speaker 1: a lot of your audiences are where in the history
Speaker 1: of Vietnam was, but but if there's some audience members
Speaker 1: that may not be familiar, this was the final you know,
Speaker 1: the U. S. Troops were They officially left in seventy
Speaker 1: seventy three, two years prior to the fall of Saigon,
Speaker 1: the capital of South Vietnam, in April the end of
Speaker 1: April April thirtieth, the nineteen and during that time, I
Speaker 1: was about to six and a half and as the
Speaker 1: the oldest in my family and my dad boban Wyn
Speaker 1: was during that time. He elevated up to the lieutenant
Speaker 1: colonel and uh he flew the you know, the Chinook
Speaker 1: c And prior to that, in the early sixties, he
Speaker 1: uh had a chance to join the the the Air
Speaker 1: Force and actually flew to Alabama and another part of
Speaker 1: the U s for helicopter flight training in his early days.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, so he was actually he was actually
Speaker 1: the States in the early sixties for for training. So
Speaker 1: he picked up he picked up some some English, which
Speaker 1: later on became very handy during a very dramatic part
Speaker 1: of the escape of uh once the Communists came down
Speaker 1: and actually took over the capital, took down the South
Speaker 1: Vietnamese flag. Prior prior to that, he was what kind
Speaker 1: of operations was he flying for the South Vietnamese Air
Speaker 1: Force during the war. Oh, he flew a lot of
Speaker 1: different missions just around the area and the surrounding area
Speaker 1: there in terms of uh, you know ration uh you know,
Speaker 1: flying military personnel, um uh, flying tanks around, flying uh,
Speaker 1: just missions in terms of um food ration to the
Speaker 1: various troops in the surrounding area there. So well, and
Speaker 1: he worked side by side with a lot of the
Speaker 1: American UM soldiers as well during that time. Free and Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, just to point out, Um, without you know,
Speaker 1: this is really the first time I'm coming to your
Speaker 1: father's story. But the stories I have heard in the
Speaker 1: past about South Vietnamese pilots Um from Vietnam vets UM guys.
Speaker 1: The the other airframe that they flew back in those
Speaker 1: days was the King Be. I believe and Um, the
Speaker 1: guys who served in Macvie SAG and Special Forces just
Speaker 1: tell the most incredible stories about South Vietnamese pilots coming
Speaker 1: and pulling their bacon out of the fire literally time
Speaker 1: and time again. Just credible, incredible stories. We'll have to
Speaker 1: have um. John Mayer on Um Actually we may have
Speaker 1: interviewed him about this before, about how his team was
Speaker 1: a small six man team in Laos and the the
Speaker 1: n v A surrounded them, set the elephant grass on fire,
Speaker 1: and the flames were coming in on the team. They
Speaker 1: were each down to one magazine apiece. Um, when the
Speaker 1: King be swept in the South Vietnamese pilot flying and
Speaker 1: pulled all of them out of there. I mean, and
Speaker 1: I just say this just to point out that the
Speaker 1: heroism of the South Vietnamese helicopter pilots is sometimes overlooked
Speaker 1: um by US Americans. I just want to take one
Speaker 1: second to point that out. Yeah, yeah, for sure, there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different stories you know of different uh,
Speaker 1: military folks pilots of all sorts that just if you
Speaker 1: listen to it, would you give you, you know, goose bumps. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so for sure, and you appreciate you calling out in
Speaker 1: terms of the South getting these the bravery and courage
Speaker 1: of folks like my dad during that timeframe. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of stories that my dad called that. Uh to
Speaker 1: this day, I'm still amazed that he's you know, that
Speaker 1: he was allowed to survive through all of that got
Speaker 1: shot down of many times his helicopter he flew, you know,
Speaker 1: he flew chinooks for the most part towards the end
Speaker 1: the past few years that he flew other types of
Speaker 1: helicopters as well. And my mom would share stories in
Speaker 1: my down share stories that he would, you know, get
Speaker 1: shot down and fortunately the helicopter was was able to
Speaker 1: at least maneuver its way down and hit the hit
Speaker 1: the ground and then he would you know, run out
Speaker 1: and basically take off his his uniform to just you know,
Speaker 1: because if he ran around look in his uniform, he
Speaker 1: would be an easy target for the embedded vcs, the
Speaker 1: viccoms around that area. And so taking you know, crashing helicopter,
Speaker 1: come down and take off this uniform and run around
Speaker 1: to go grab a uh, you know, a taxi back
Speaker 1: to a main city and then get it right back
Speaker 1: to the town there. So because in that area, in
Speaker 1: in that area where he was serving, UH, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of embedded VC activities going on, and so getting
Speaker 1: shot down or getting hit was part of a daily
Speaker 1: duty that he had to had to deal with. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I was wondering if you could take a moment to
Speaker 1: talk about the rest of your family, you know, about
Speaker 1: your your mother, your younger sisters, and kind of what
Speaker 1: home life was like, you know, before things really started
Speaker 1: to unravel. Yeah. So in the in the from seventy four,
Speaker 1: from the two or three years prior to us leaving
Speaker 1: UH Saigon, we lived on a military Air Force base
Speaker 1: at ben Wa, which is about an hour away from Saigon,
Speaker 1: and growing up there as a kid, just you know,
Speaker 1: playing in the barracks, um my mom uh while my
Speaker 1: dad did the daily missions. My mom would be at
Speaker 1: home if they had a little condience story that she's
Speaker 1: set up and just hold uh, you know, like a
Speaker 1: seven eleven items to the local folks on the Air
Speaker 1: Force space there. And I remember growing up as a
Speaker 1: kid playing around on the in the the barracks, they're
Speaker 1: pulling home cases of spent m or at times pulling
Speaker 1: home cases of things that could blow up. And so
Speaker 1: this is part of my my childhood growing up is
Speaker 1: just I felt normal scared of that kind of my
Speaker 1: mom when I would bring home, and it was different
Speaker 1: to military items that I would find laying around. But
Speaker 1: it's just part of my normal childhood growing up. But
Speaker 1: I can sense the fear in my mom not knowing,
Speaker 1: you know, whether one day my dad would fly off
Speaker 1: and on a mission to uh and but not know
Speaker 1: that to whether he would come back or not. It
Speaker 1: was just that sort of tent sheer in living in
Speaker 1: that moment during that time friend uh. And you know,
Speaker 1: every day watching TV or listening to the radio, the
Speaker 1: Communists coming down, you know, every day coming down closer
Speaker 1: and closer and closer. Um, and you know, not knowing
Speaker 1: what would happen if they did eventually take over the South,
Speaker 1: take over the capital eventually they did, but just living
Speaker 1: in fear knowing that and having a husband and will
Speaker 1: fly off on daily missions and not knowing whether he's
Speaker 1: you know, shotdown or not was a stress that my
Speaker 1: mom had to do with every day. On top of
Speaker 1: raising three little kids. Got brother, my brother micha younger
Speaker 1: than me by a few years. And then of course,
Speaker 1: uh my babysitter, I'm not my baby, a sister who
Speaker 1: in was about the six seven months old. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's life how it was for me. Uh prior
Speaker 1: to how old were you in about April's buck six
Speaker 1: and a half, six and a half. I remember, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember, you know, there's yeah, there's some dramatic parts
Speaker 1: of one's life makes you remember these people. So growing
Speaker 1: up around that time, if I remember just playing around
Speaker 1: the barracks and I remember I can smell, you know,
Speaker 1: I know the smell of the aviation fuel, um, flying
Speaker 1: with my dad a few times on the helicopter. It's
Speaker 1: just a normal part of life that stared in my memory.
Speaker 1: I imagine as a as a six year old, you
Speaker 1: didn't have like a great political awareness of what was
Speaker 1: going on as far as a larger situation in South Vietnam.
Speaker 1: But were there some indicators you got things that your
Speaker 1: mom said or maybe your dad said at the dinner
Speaker 1: table that made you realize that things aren't looking so hot. Uh. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: later in my life I learned more about it. The
Speaker 1: history is yet now, But during that time frame, just
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't really think too much about the politics.
Speaker 1: I just knew that the bad guys were coming, and
Speaker 1: that when we lived on the barracks, we can hear
Speaker 1: you know, during the last few months, Uh, the the
Speaker 1: base there got shelled a couple of times. So, and
Speaker 1: we had a bunker in the back of our house
Speaker 1: built out, you know, in case you hear the siren going,
Speaker 1: you know that you have to run back and getting
Speaker 1: getting to the bunker to hide from that. Otherwise, that's
Speaker 1: just a normal, a normal occurrence in my young childhood. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: all the politics and everything else behind it didn't didn't
Speaker 1: didn't wasn't too much aware of that until until later
Speaker 1: on in my life did more researcher. And it's just
Speaker 1: just saying, just just absorbing the being around and hearing
Speaker 1: my mom and dad talk about it. It was just
Speaker 1: enough to know that, um, you know whatever, whatever they did.
Speaker 1: I have to follow quickly or else uh was not safe.
Speaker 1: You know, if I see my dad or my mom
Speaker 1: running into the bunker, then probably do the same. There
Speaker 1: are times where we did go and run into the
Speaker 1: bunkers too, you know, the months leading up to the fall.
Speaker 1: So tell us how how did this unfold then that
Speaker 1: things were going downhill? You knew the bad guys were coming.
Speaker 1: How how did this great escape begin for you and
Speaker 1: your family? Yeah? So, Uh, my dad, you know, at
Speaker 1: this time, at this time frame, March early April time frame,
Speaker 1: knew knew exactly what was going on because he had
Speaker 1: the military intelligence and uh, you know, talking with other
Speaker 1: military folks as well, that things were not going to
Speaker 1: turn out well, and that the communists started to every
Speaker 1: day creep more into the main city. They're signed one there,
Speaker 1: and so he knew that things were going south. And
Speaker 1: what he did, maybe in the last week or two
Speaker 1: prior to April twenty nine, was a move my mom,
Speaker 1: you know, our immediate family into the main city to
Speaker 1: be with uh with uh with Grandma, his mother in
Speaker 1: the main in the main capital. Because again, living on
Speaker 1: the barracks there, it got he got bombed pretty bad.
Speaker 1: The main airport, Tumpan. Yet airport was of course uh
Speaker 1: destroyed and none of the planes, none of the large
Speaker 1: you know plans could fly in and out. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then of course the military base got to hit as well,
Speaker 1: so that was not a safe area to be Hence
Speaker 1: he moved us to UH into the main city to
Speaker 1: be with with my grandmother. And so he noted to
Speaker 1: my mom a few days prior, and he had gone
Speaker 1: off to take care of business, you know, doing what
Speaker 1: he could, um and waiting to the very last minute
Speaker 1: to continue to listen to to get orders from his superiors.
Speaker 1: But towards the April time frame, after waiting for a
Speaker 1: long time for orders, um, he found out that his
Speaker 1: superiors also had uh you know, found a fleet basically
Speaker 1: to find to save themselves in their own family. So
Speaker 1: your dad just goes into work one day and his
Speaker 1: his superior officers have fled. Yeah. By this time, everybody
Speaker 1: knew that it's it's now time to You couldn't hold anymore,
Speaker 1: and there's there's always this was the dam bursting out,
Speaker 1: and it's time to it's time to exaccuate, it's tent to,
Speaker 1: it's time to run. So by that time he he
Speaker 1: told my mom, you know, if you if you hear me,
Speaker 1: if if I'm coming, then get the kids reading and
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna high tail out of there, because
Speaker 1: he knew that if he gotten um uh state or
Speaker 1: too long, either gotten killed or gotten arrested by the
Speaker 1: communists and of course sent to sent to the jail
Speaker 1: or execute. When he says at this moment, when he says,
Speaker 1: when you hear me coming, he's not talking about pulling
Speaker 1: into your driveway in a Cadillac though. Well that that
Speaker 1: was one of the That was what my mom had thought,
Speaker 1: maybe he's come back in a in a in a
Speaker 1: car or something to go to get us. But what
Speaker 1: he did was that morning, the morning of April twenty nine,
Speaker 1: I can hear I can hear the distinct the night
Speaker 1: before it was I remember very rough. The night before
Speaker 1: we were uh. They were shelling all over the city,
Speaker 1: their bombings all over the city. The things that you see,
Speaker 1: you know, in the news these days in Iraq here
Speaker 1: in places like that, I experienced that first hand as
Speaker 1: a child, bombing in the city and we were ducking
Speaker 1: underneath the bed and just hearing, you know, bombs and explosions,
Speaker 1: all around us. Uh. Fortunately we were we were okay.
Speaker 1: But the next day, the next day, I can I
Speaker 1: can hear the very familiar sound of a show helicopter,
Speaker 1: and uh, it was coming. It was coming closer and
Speaker 1: closer to to grandma's house, and so close that we
Speaker 1: ran out, all of you know, my my dad's brothers
Speaker 1: and sisters, my aunt and uncles, everybody to run out
Speaker 1: and here comes a huge, huge Chinook helicopter. And uh
Speaker 1: living here in the Seattle area here and there's a
Speaker 1: uh uh Lewis Joint based McCord air of um JBL
Speaker 1: further down in the Tacoma area. We would drive down
Speaker 1: to go visit family down in Olympian Portland, and you know,
Speaker 1: once a while you hear the chinook coming. So even
Speaker 1: from miles away, this chinook is huge, It's it's loud,
Speaker 1: it's it's um you can hear it coming from miles away.
Speaker 1: And for us to come towards my grandma's house, I
Speaker 1: knew it was my dad, uh coming game to be covered.
Speaker 1: He hovered above the house and back then there was
Speaker 1: a there was a small little soccer field playfield area
Speaker 1: in front of my grandma's house, and he dropped that thing.
Speaker 1: He landed it right on you know, right in that air,
Speaker 1: just enough space to land the helicopter down. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know we see we see the back open up
Speaker 1: and his coal pilot comes running out, uh, you know, waving, waving,
Speaker 1: the waving us it. He says, hey, you're you know,
Speaker 1: this is your husband's there. We're here to here to
Speaker 1: get you. And so immediately my mom grabbed just the
Speaker 1: small supply of diapers and just enough food, grabbed my
Speaker 1: my sister six month old, and myself and my brother
Speaker 1: ran to into the back of the helicopter. And my
Speaker 1: dad had noticed that, uh, he had one of his
Speaker 1: other guys on on both sides of the chinook, you know,
Speaker 1: point as some huge guns back at at cops and
Speaker 1: and others, just to keep them you know, at day
Speaker 1: because again there was a lot of embedded vcs around there,
Speaker 1: and who would you know, who would know maybe that
Speaker 1: one of them could could shoot him, the pilot or
Speaker 1: you know, take out the helicopter somehow. And so they
Speaker 1: had to hold off some of the military, uh, some
Speaker 1: of the police activities that were coming towards us. You look,
Speaker 1: while we were while they were waiting for us, to
Speaker 1: climb on board. But eventually we got on. We got
Speaker 1: in and my mom turned around and asked, you know,
Speaker 1: other aunt and uncles that were standing there, going, come on,
Speaker 1: you know, come with us. This is an opportunity now
Speaker 1: to to leave because that as you can see in
Speaker 1: the film, a lot of people wanted to to get
Speaker 1: out of there. They tried to climb the embassy wall.
Speaker 1: We see a lot of people struggling to get into
Speaker 1: to get a way out of that area. But my
Speaker 1: aunts and uncle said, you know what, you know, we
Speaker 1: that's your husband. Go with him, and they stayed behind
Speaker 1: UH and had to deal with the with the situation
Speaker 1: after the communists came. It was it was not a
Speaker 1: difficult life after they came. But we left, we got
Speaker 1: on board, and he quickly, you know, took off as
Speaker 1: fast as he had got the heck out of there,
Speaker 1: and the thinking was to fly out of the city,
Speaker 1: get out of the hot zone and meet up with
Speaker 1: a couple other uh of his other guys that they
Speaker 1: had the same idea was grab a helicopter and to
Speaker 1: go save their own family. Because at this point my
Speaker 1: dad had noted that this was this is chaos, this
Speaker 1: was why is every man for himself. And there's all
Speaker 1: the wild West analogy he uses. You had your horse
Speaker 1: and you did whatever you get get out of Dodge
Speaker 1: exactly get the heck out of there, because if you
Speaker 1: stayed back there, it would have been bad news. And
Speaker 1: so we got out of there and flew a few
Speaker 1: hours south to get away from that hot zone, reconvene
Speaker 1: and figure out a plan with his uh you know,
Speaker 1: with his other crew all reconvened in this one area
Speaker 1: with a bunch of other helicopters and kind of discuss
Speaker 1: what the next steps were. And so the next steps
Speaker 1: where to think. The thinking was to go and buy
Speaker 1: get get food bags of rice, loaded up with other
Speaker 1: supplies uh fuel as well, to fly further further south,
Speaker 1: just away from the air and maybe perhaps find find
Speaker 1: an island of some sort to just hide, right um,
Speaker 1: And so all of that we loaded all the loaded
Speaker 1: all up the helicopter up with with ration food and
Speaker 1: started to head on out. Just if I can interrupt
Speaker 1: for one second, just as a as a kid for
Speaker 1: you and your little sisters, did you understand what was
Speaker 1: going on? Or was this just a helicopter ride with daddy? No? No,
Speaker 1: I I it's you know, five or six years old.
Speaker 1: But this one I knew was all the bombings. That
Speaker 1: knew something wanted to hurt us. Nobody wanted to hurt us.
Speaker 1: And the it's a fight or flight situation here, it's instinctually.
Speaker 1: Remember you were a kid and you got beat up
Speaker 1: in school or you either you fight back or your
Speaker 1: run away. And so at this case, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: knowing that the enemy and if we always coming and
Speaker 1: wanted to hurt you know, moms are all over the place,
Speaker 1: and so the the the the the need to fly
Speaker 1: where they need to get out of there was instinctual
Speaker 1: and obviously following, um you know, uh following my mom
Speaker 1: and dad was direction and was critical at this point
Speaker 1: just to get out of there. So yeah, I realized
Speaker 1: that the danger the imminent danger coming. So the next
Speaker 1: step is you're going to load up on supplies and
Speaker 1: try to find an island to go land on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly right. So my dad said that his helicopter, his
Speaker 1: helicopter had I think roughly fifteen or sixteen people of
Speaker 1: the pilot, co pilot, gunner. Uh, you had a mechanic
Speaker 1: on board and one one other person as well, one
Speaker 1: of crew member and of course uh immediate family, the
Speaker 1: crewman's m his copolits girlfriend, and um, you know other
Speaker 1: people's what. So in total, about about seventeen people on
Speaker 1: his you know, on his helicopter loaded up with ration,
Speaker 1: and then two other helicopters with the different crew members
Speaker 1: as well. And so they they had out three helicopters
Speaker 1: head out and at this point they followed my my dad,
Speaker 1: hoping that maybe we just you know, stick together as
Speaker 1: as a pack and try to find a safe place,
Speaker 1: a safe refuge. And so as as he was flying south, uh,
Speaker 1: he heard on on the radio US communication US chatters
Speaker 1: and again he knew just enough English years back to
Speaker 1: understand that there and as well as you heard on
Speaker 1: the radar, there's you know, the US military ships out
Speaker 1: in the in the Pacific. And so maybe the idea
Speaker 1: here was instead of you know, flying to find it island,
Speaker 1: maybe the first thing to do is find a ship
Speaker 1: large enough so that he could you know, possibly land
Speaker 1: on it and find find safety. And so it sounds
Speaker 1: like a great idea. Let's give it a shot, you know,
Speaker 1: And so he headed out towards specific The other two
Speaker 1: helicopters had other ideas and so didn't didn't follow my dad,
Speaker 1: So it was just you know, and they took off
Speaker 1: further stuff. And so it's just my dad flying now
Speaker 1: basically with faith that perhaps the ship out there would
Speaker 1: be large enough to land on. Out of curiosity before
Speaker 1: we get wanding on the actual ship the U S S. Cark,
Speaker 1: do you have any idea what happened to those other
Speaker 1: two men and who was with them? Well? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: eventually later on they fortune where they they found they
Speaker 1: found their way to the US. I don't have the
Speaker 1: full exact details of how it got to the U. S.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure it's pretty much a similar store in
Speaker 1: some ways. Um, but they you know, because my dad
Speaker 1: in in the U. S. Here. My dad is part
Speaker 1: of the South Vieta US Air Force sort of a
Speaker 1: club similar to many of their veteran clubs here in
Speaker 1: the US. And so once a year they would meet
Speaker 1: in different cities to just you know, sitting and and
Speaker 1: and do the military guy talk kind of thing, you know,
Speaker 1: and meet up and have reunions in different places and so, uh,
Speaker 1: all these different cities that they would meet, eventually everybody
Speaker 1: would share the story, and my dad would share this
Speaker 1: particular story of his and so there's only one person
Speaker 1: that that did the stunt that was able to survive
Speaker 1: and tell about it. And so everybody knew this story.
Speaker 1: But to answer your question, these two other guys they
Speaker 1: ended up okay, and eventually they you know, they round
Speaker 1: these loop with my dad years later on in the US.
Speaker 1: Very cool. So getting back to the actual story itself,
Speaker 1: as you were kind of getting into, you know, your
Speaker 1: dad spotted what you know we now know as the U. S. S. Kirk,
Speaker 1: the Navy ship. Uh, exactly, So flying out there, he
Speaker 1: he he had enough. My dad was a smart guy.
Speaker 1: He you know, in terms of planning, in preparation, the
Speaker 1: amount of risk that I was able to take. You know,
Speaker 1: the rule of the one thirds, right is, well, I'm
Speaker 1: I like fishing and boating, and so the rule of
Speaker 1: one third is you have a one third of your
Speaker 1: field to get out, one third of your field to
Speaker 1: kind of put around there, another one third to get back. Right.
Speaker 1: So I knew that that he that he took a
Speaker 1: calculator risk to get out there to kind of look
Speaker 1: around and see because I think he knew also the
Speaker 1: proximity of where these these ships were located, and so
Speaker 1: he knew he had enough, and if he couldn't find
Speaker 1: something appropriate, or maybe if they didn't allow him to
Speaker 1: do what he wanted to do, which was asked for help,
Speaker 1: then he had an a fuel to at least get back.
Speaker 1: But fortunately, as he as he got out there kept going, going, going,
Speaker 1: and nothing in sight for it for a while until
Speaker 1: often the distance he spots a ship and so he says, well,
Speaker 1: let's let's let's give it a shot. Let's let's approach
Speaker 1: them and see see what happens here. But as he
Speaker 1: he noted as he got closer to the ship, it
Speaker 1: was mild. He was a little too small. It's a
Speaker 1: bit it's a bit small, and uh, and so what
Speaker 1: other options did he have at this pointing? He didn't
Speaker 1: really see anything any other larger ships close by as
Speaker 1: an option, and so he approached it. He went as
Speaker 1: quick as he quit towards it, didn't want to waste
Speaker 1: any time or fuel, got close to it, but backed
Speaker 1: off on the throntal because he didn't want to look.
Speaker 1: He didn't want to look like, you know, the bad
Speaker 1: guy coming. He didn't want to look aggressive in any way.
Speaker 1: He wanted to look very safe, and so, you know,
Speaker 1: just just Hey, I'm coming and don't shoot me, right,
Speaker 1: So he approaches it very slowly and as he approaches it,
Speaker 1: he my mom tells the story that she looked on
Speaker 1: the on the port side looking down, you know, of
Speaker 1: the U. S IS crewmen below were there's some guns
Speaker 1: pointing back at us, and they were scared as well
Speaker 1: in terms of not knowing if if this chinook was
Speaker 1: you know, had enemies on it or something and so.
Speaker 1: But the way the way that he handled the situation
Speaker 1: is hovering around this thing several times, very slowly and
Speaker 1: seeing all the commotion and the activities going down. And
Speaker 1: what we saw what my dad and others on the
Speaker 1: on the chinook lapsaw was the crewmen below trying to
Speaker 1: push smaller Huey helicopters over the edge. Uh. And these
Speaker 1: a little smaller helicopters have the same idea my dad had.
Speaker 1: They were South Vietnamese air too, with their own family. Yeah,
Speaker 1: came out as well. They have the same idea. It
Speaker 1: came out and where a was to land on the
Speaker 1: back of the ship, which later on we found that
Speaker 1: was the U. S S. Kirk. But they were able
Speaker 1: to land and then families are run out and uh
Speaker 1: the crew below would push the hell the smaller he
Speaker 1: was over. But in this situation still my dad was
Speaker 1: way too big. What the helicopter is way too big.
Speaker 1: So what he was able to do was at least
Speaker 1: get communication radio communication with the captain, the radio person
Speaker 1: on board the ship, to kind of communicate what he
Speaker 1: wanted to do, which was basically hover. The plan was
Speaker 1: to hover, you know, close to the ship and UH
Speaker 1: and jump over. And so that's what that's what we did.
Speaker 1: The the captain of the U S is Kirk. We
Speaker 1: found later on Captain of Paul Jacobs, just an outstanding man.
Speaker 1: So the stories that I share through through my book
Speaker 1: in what I you know, I've talked about this in
Speaker 1: the film and another uh conferences or events that I've
Speaker 1: spoken that was the story of courage, my dad, heroism, UM,
Speaker 1: but also the story of compassion and the big you know,
Speaker 1: the big heart of an individual like Captain Kirk to
Speaker 1: go ahead and allow uh other smaller helicopters that come in,
Speaker 1: say family, save these UH pilots and then you know,
Speaker 1: do what it took to help more save at the end,
Speaker 1: at the end of all this whole mentions thousands of
Speaker 1: people that he saved and so the Captain Poul Chick
Speaker 1: I talked about him amazing individual, amazing and he's in
Speaker 1: his mid nineties but still just sharp as a whistle. Well,
Speaker 1: when I saw that then I was just gonna say,
Speaker 1: when I saw the interview though, and we'll get right
Speaker 1: back into this of you speaking about this event. You see,
Speaker 1: you know, your sister jumping off with your mom, which
Speaker 1: is it's absolutely crazy to think about. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a baby jumping out of a houter onto a ship.
Speaker 1: Do you remember at the age of six years old,
Speaker 1: jumping off the chinook and onto the deck of the U. S. S. Kirk,
Speaker 1: Because I mean a let a woman being six years old,
Speaker 1: like I'm a thirty two year old man, it would
Speaker 1: be hard to get even if in fear of my life.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is a scary fucking thing. It is.
Speaker 1: It is. And again, you know traumatic parts of one's life,
Speaker 1: no matter how you know, even young, traumatic things in
Speaker 1: your lives that it stays in your head, right, good
Speaker 1: or bad, it stays in your head. And so yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: this is one of those things that I remember very
Speaker 1: very vividly. And that finally they Captain Kirk Captain Kirktloe
Speaker 1: said yeah, let's let's do this, right, let's do this,
Speaker 1: and so they kept the the they kept the ship
Speaker 1: continuing to move at a at a steady pace about
Speaker 1: roughly five five knots or whatever, because if you shut
Speaker 1: the ship off, it would the current and the winning
Speaker 1: I would just float randomly. You can't control it. So
Speaker 1: the idea here was to keep that ship moving at
Speaker 1: a at a constant slow pace so that it's it's
Speaker 1: a constant vector trajectory. While my dad was able to
Speaker 1: go towards the back of the fantil, they called the
Speaker 1: stern of the ship there and got close, hovered coast close, close, close,
Speaker 1: just get that stucker close because as you know, this ship,
Speaker 1: we found out later along was a suber industry net
Speaker 1: to search, hunt and destroying, and so it had all
Speaker 1: sorts of you know, very expensive, very valuable, very critical
Speaker 1: electronics and antennas and radars and all of his instrumentation
Speaker 1: on board, and so, uh, the the fear was if
Speaker 1: he got too close, or if a swell or a
Speaker 1: wave you know, would have caught in the ship, or
Speaker 1: a wind or something obviously would have moved the chinook
Speaker 1: in Manda chinook into the ship and a lot of
Speaker 1: damage and lives, uh you know, at stake here. And
Speaker 1: so he hovered that thing, you know, just continued to
Speaker 1: maneuver it with the aid of a person you know,
Speaker 1: standing on the deck. They're trying to trying to guide him.
Speaker 1: So he kept an eyeing that well at the same
Speaker 1: time covering this this backwards. He was flying, looking over
Speaker 1: his shoulders, hovering, hovering this thing backwards and trying to
Speaker 1: keep pace with with the ship while at the same
Speaker 1: time getting close down while not getting you know, enough access,
Speaker 1: enough HiPE so that um, his you know, myself brother,
Speaker 1: what you know, his wife, mother, and and others on
Speaker 1: you know, other female you know, folks on board were
Speaker 1: able to able to not jump too far and hurt ourselves.
Speaker 1: And so this is you know, one of the one
Speaker 1: of the crewman said, this is an amazing flying that
Speaker 1: that he did, just to keep this thing steady you know,
Speaker 1: with the ship and at the right angle so that
Speaker 1: he didn't didn't bang into the ship while enough to
Speaker 1: just have us jump out. Uh. So that's what we did.
Speaker 1: So how far how far dropped down to the deck
Speaker 1: of the ship. Oh, this was the the starboard side
Speaker 1: open the co pilot opened up the serbot side and
Speaker 1: this is about about fifteen feet more than ten feet
Speaker 1: anywhere from you know, hovering this around fifteen feet in
Speaker 1: heights just to stay, just to stay within that range.
Speaker 1: Anything higher would have been too dangerous. Anything low would
Speaker 1: have been just as dangerous in that range. Like Ian said,
Speaker 1: I mean as I mean, I was in the Army
Speaker 1: and did jump out of helicopters at various points in time, UM,
Speaker 1: and I was hesitant to do that as a Special
Speaker 1: Forces soldier. I mean, I can't imagine the parachute in
Speaker 1: parachuting to um, but as a six year old boy,
Speaker 1: I mean, you must have been terrified. I know, you know,
Speaker 1: it didn't was not so much of a terrifying experience.
Speaker 1: Just following everybody else really before me. You know, there's
Speaker 1: other you know, other other ladies, other other guys, you know,
Speaker 1: adults and everything else, and I just I just followed
Speaker 1: to it. I looked over and uh, there's soaps below,
Speaker 1: four or five guys, the crewmen below, and incredible heroes
Speaker 1: down there risking their lives to stand underneath this, you know,
Speaker 1: because what would happen if the swell came up or
Speaker 1: I guess something my dad miscalculated. He could have squashed
Speaker 1: these guys. One of those guys I met years later
Speaker 1: on Kent shipman again, an incredible individual, brave, uh, total
Speaker 1: bravery and just standing underneath their volunteering his own body
Speaker 1: to catch us. And so that's what I did. I
Speaker 1: looked over and jumped like everybody else didn't. Uh, they
Speaker 1: caught us below. And then the last the last two
Speaker 1: people was was my my sister and my mother and
Speaker 1: your little everybody six months of the crewman. Everybody jumped,
Speaker 1: go ahead, you're you're a little sister was six months.
Speaker 1: He was an infant at the time, right, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just an infant and Ken shipmen some of the other
Speaker 1: crew it's like, you know, my mom with her left
Speaker 1: and holding onto the you know the door there, the
Speaker 1: handle on the door there, and with the right arm,
Speaker 1: she dropped my sister Nina, Uh like a basketball they
Speaker 1: call it, you know, like catching the basketball. So you know,
Speaker 1: it was difficult from my mom to you know what
Speaker 1: any you know what, any any same mother would do that.
Speaker 1: But she had to rank and take that risk and
Speaker 1: hope that things turn out well. So they caught they
Speaker 1: caught my sister, and it was just my mom and
Speaker 1: dad on the helicopter at this point, and so he
Speaker 1: continued to hover it in. My mom, you know, just
Speaker 1: looked over and said goodbye to my dad, uh, not
Speaker 1: knowing you know, what would be the next she you know,
Speaker 1: she she jumped and and everybody besides my dad, you know,
Speaker 1: got got down. The only person that got hurt was
Speaker 1: one of the gal one of the girlfriends to the
Speaker 1: crew of my dad's crew, spread her ankle. But otherwise
Speaker 1: every but he was okay. And they quickly ushered you know,
Speaker 1: ushered our family, uh inside, because they didn't want kids
Speaker 1: or folks running around the deck to dangers. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and the last thing that I see when I looked
Speaker 1: over my shoulder was my dad hovering, hovering away from
Speaker 1: from the ship, you know, and that was that was
Speaker 1: the last that I saw them. And so they pushed
Speaker 1: this inside. My my brother uh fainted or my mom's
Speaker 1: was unconscious. Um for some reason, I'm not I forgot
Speaker 1: what the story behind that was, but he he yeah,
Speaker 1: he passed away in the two thousand and three brainy aneurysm.
Speaker 1: And so it's you know, it's a tragic story in
Speaker 1: my family's are in there. But uh, but the medic
Speaker 1: tended to to to us inside and um, you know,
Speaker 1: fetus and all that stuff in there. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: it wasn't until like maybe half hour or an hour
Speaker 1: later somewhere around there, that we finally saw my dad, right,
Speaker 1: and so in that half hour time frame, Uh, just
Speaker 1: an incredible, incredible story that my dad shared that through dinner,
Speaker 1: you know, dinner conversations when you know, he would see
Speaker 1: his other buddies and they would share war stories and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. And I would, as a boy growing
Speaker 1: up in the U. S And Seattle area here listening
Speaker 1: to all these conversations, I knew, I knew my dad's story,
Speaker 1: but it was only a story told through conversation. None
Speaker 1: of these pictures, none of these videos that you saw
Speaker 1: that we saw on the film appeared until nearly you know,
Speaker 1: nearly forty years or so many years later on many
Speaker 1: years in two thousand and nine is when all of this,
Speaker 1: all of these pictures came about. So the story that
Speaker 1: my dad told just was absolutely amazing and is a
Speaker 1: family story for the most part. But what had happened was, um,
Speaker 1: he he had a couple of options. After everybody safely,
Speaker 1: he saved, you know, saved everybody. First he had a
Speaker 1: couple options. First option, you know, was to uh fly
Speaker 1: back to land, but made no sense to him that
Speaker 1: his family, his wife, his kids are on that ship
Speaker 1: and there's no no way in hell that he was
Speaker 1: gonna go back because number one, they would have killed him.
Speaker 1: Then he would killed him arrest of them sent him
Speaker 1: to the re education camp. You know, we've seen stories
Speaker 1: of John McCain and others who have uh not not
Speaker 1: a good thing to be in those re education camps
Speaker 1: in anyway. So not an option Option one was was
Speaker 1: not not going to be the option he was not.
Speaker 1: An Option two was to extricate himself from this this monster,
Speaker 1: this horse of his And so that was the that
Speaker 1: was the only way that that was the only option
Speaker 1: that Nate sense to him. And so he shared you know,
Speaker 1: in this during conversations, during conversations that he hovered, he
Speaker 1: flew out about fifty fifty sixty yards away from the ship,
Speaker 1: and uh, at that point, the thinking was to try
Speaker 1: to ditch this thing, all right, trying to ditch this helicopter,
Speaker 1: get water land, or trying to ditch this sucker, and
Speaker 1: so he hovered there. He hovered there, kept control of
Speaker 1: this thing, and at the same time unzipped his flap
Speaker 1: jacket while trying to hold this some steady, unstrapped his
Speaker 1: bootlaces and get out of his boot stripped out of
Speaker 1: this which is not I mean, I tried, you know,
Speaker 1: I've I've tried wearing this full body suit jacket. It's
Speaker 1: hard getting in and out of that place, you know,
Speaker 1: without without any strip, without any uh, you know, trying
Speaker 1: to keep this helicopter floating and all of that. So
Speaker 1: again one of the one of the huge oile, one
Speaker 1: of the crew member on the ship was saying, that's
Speaker 1: just Houdini trying to get out of this, this flatshacket
Speaker 1: and boot in this whole situation. But he did. He
Speaker 1: finally got got out, you know, got his boots off
Speaker 1: and got down to his his shirt and his boxer shorts,
Speaker 1: because the thinking here was to ditch it and get
Speaker 1: get into the water. And it's you know, we all know,
Speaker 1: it's hard as heck to to try to swim with
Speaker 1: your shoes on, it, with your clothes on, it's nearly
Speaker 1: impossible to get down there. But once he got once
Speaker 1: he stripped down to his shirts and his shorts. There uh,
Speaker 1: he he kicked open the emergency of portside, the left
Speaker 1: side door. It's just enough to a little hatch, just
Speaker 1: enough for him to uh, you know, cover close enough
Speaker 1: to the water and get and basically prepared to dive
Speaker 1: to his to his left while at the same time
Speaker 1: using his right foot to move that cyclic the joystick
Speaker 1: and push that joystick so that it would lean the
Speaker 1: helicopter to the right. That was the theory, that was
Speaker 1: the hope. And mind you they they they only what
Speaker 1: my dad told him that he learned this sort of
Speaker 1: academically in terms of ditching the chinook. You know, you
Speaker 1: don't actually do training for this, you know, there's no
Speaker 1: actually you don't. You know, you can train, you can
Speaker 1: train to jump parachutes, train hundreds of time to jump parachutes,
Speaker 1: but you don't really you only learn this just from
Speaker 1: an education suffer and the idea. Yeah, on paper, you
Speaker 1: don't really to actually practice it. But in this case
Speaker 1: he had to actually do it, trying to execute this
Speaker 1: maneuver the very first time. And that's what he did.
Speaker 1: He pushed that stick, he said, he pushed that sound
Speaker 1: of a bit hard, you know, move that sucker because
Speaker 1: as she not cocor his uh fifteen thousand horse and
Speaker 1: the model back then about fifteen thousand horsepower and its
Speaker 1: shooting tremendous amount of power. That the that he had
Speaker 1: to quickly subdue in a very short amount of time.
Speaker 1: Uh And so kick that that that joystick to the
Speaker 1: to the right end. He leaped as far as he
Speaker 1: could to his left, and he dove in the water,
Speaker 1: and all that he could you know say it was
Speaker 1: just immense amount of of of energy and noise and
Speaker 1: commotions just you know right behind him. He tried to
Speaker 1: dive into the water at least three or four times,
Speaker 1: but the saltwater was was saltwater is extremely boint and
Speaker 1: so I kept pushing him up several times. But after
Speaker 1: the third of the fourth time he was able to
Speaker 1: you know, to get down. And we see in the
Speaker 1: pictures of just the massive explosion behind him, shrapnse of
Speaker 1: fiberglass all over the place. Who's to say that, you know,
Speaker 1: during this time frame, you know, one of these fiberglass
Speaker 1: pieces or something could have come down on his head,
Speaker 1: or the physics of the helicopter could have you know,
Speaker 1: flopped back on his on his head or something. All
Speaker 1: of these different things could have could have happened, but
Speaker 1: he finally was able to get down and then um,
Speaker 1: the helicopter behind him was able to settle down and
Speaker 1: he popped back up, and he felt just a tremendous,
Speaker 1: tremendous relief that that stress and that anxiety for for
Speaker 1: weeks and weeks and days and days on end, Calma
Speaker 1: neating to that point right in his life and seeing
Speaker 1: seeing a small little boat coming out to pick him up,
Speaker 1: he just felt just like this massive, massive relief that finally,
Speaker 1: you know, all of this moments of running away from
Speaker 1: from the enemy and and doing all of this and
Speaker 1: who's to say that you know, you've gotten would have
Speaker 1: gotten shot during the back in the in the city,
Speaker 1: or you know, not enough fuel or all these different
Speaker 1: things that have just you know coming and changed plans. Right, uh,
Speaker 1: the universe call it what you will. Just everything was
Speaker 1: clicking perfectly right the captain and the compassion of the
Speaker 1: crew to to risk their life as well to help
Speaker 1: us out and to provide assistance and support. Just everything
Speaker 1: had to click, you know, courage and compassion combined together
Speaker 1: to two at that one moment and they picked him up.
Speaker 1: He was all wet. Uh. We a picture of him
Speaker 1: in this little boat coming towards the the you know,
Speaker 1: being being rescued, and so got on on on board
Speaker 1: and just felt really relieved. Uh first thing mom, mom said,
Speaker 1: he said, he was sharing. The first thing you did
Speaker 1: was got on the on the ship and instead of
Speaker 1: asking you know where, you know, where's my family? Said what,
Speaker 1: I need a cigarette? He was that wound up. He
Speaker 1: was that wound up, right, you just you just need
Speaker 1: to just give me five minutes to calm down. Here,
Speaker 1: give me a cigarette, and then I can finally, you know,
Speaker 1: I can finally say hi to the family. But sulking,
Speaker 1: wet and all cigarette in hand, he was like finally
Speaker 1: relieved that he was taking everyone around him. I read
Speaker 1: that he was rescued wearing his red boxer shorts that
Speaker 1: your mother had sewn for him. Yeah. Yeah, so she
Speaker 1: you know, she she saves a lot of stuff, and
Speaker 1: that was one of the things that she she saves.
Speaker 1: He's just, you know, they said in the film that
Speaker 1: he had gold. He's a military I didn't have any gold.
Speaker 1: Perhaps other others that had that that resource M fortunate
Speaker 1: to bring gold with him. Uh it is, but not
Speaker 1: not our family. We came uh, just a military family
Speaker 1: and my mom had a convenience story. So uh the
Speaker 1: only thing that he had was just an old thing.
Speaker 1: We started in the US is just a pair of
Speaker 1: shorts in the shirt. And that's how. That's how. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how we started. And she stayed that she stayed
Speaker 1: after the years and so uh in when he so
Speaker 1: long story short, Uh uh, well, there's so many parts
Speaker 1: of this story afterwards. But we were only we were
Speaker 1: on that ship for only about one day, less than
Speaker 1: twenty four hours. And uh we were whisked off with
Speaker 1: other families, other Vietnamese families onto a cargo ship and
Speaker 1: went to a Guam Wake Hawaiian and eventually to Camp Pendleton.
Speaker 1: And so were lost lost contact In't you know they
Speaker 1: you couldn't ask hey, can I friend you? Or can
Speaker 1: I get your phone number? Or whatever? Right, you couldn't.
Speaker 1: You couldn't do that. It was just didn't the lost,
Speaker 1: didn't lost track of the name of the ship, lost
Speaker 1: track of the name of the captain, all of that
Speaker 1: just you know, it's just chaos at that time, wondering
Speaker 1: what's going to happen. Next and so, uh, you didn't
Speaker 1: get a chance to write down any any information. Um,
Speaker 1: so were you guys able to file for political asylum
Speaker 1: where you where you considered refugees? Yeah, it was a
Speaker 1: refugee status and uh in nineteen seventy five, a lot
Speaker 1: of there's a lot four or five different refugee bases
Speaker 1: scattered all across the US. We happened to end up
Speaker 1: end up in Camp Pendleton's uh in the San Diego area,
Speaker 1: the marine base there, and we were there for a
Speaker 1: couple of months until a church in Seattle, the church
Speaker 1: and the Belleview Washington's here across across Luis Church sponsor
Speaker 1: our family, and I was watching came up there. I
Speaker 1: was watching the video of of you basically growing up
Speaker 1: with these people and and them adding value to your
Speaker 1: wife and basically rescuing you and you guys, paar only
Speaker 1: adding value to their life. And so it actually just
Speaker 1: makes me wonder And people often we've gotten emails before
Speaker 1: about you know, you guys don't cover spirituality or anything,
Speaker 1: but but in this case, I would wonder you surviving
Speaker 1: your dad, surviving unfortunately the you know, passing of your
Speaker 1: brother years later. But as you said, everything basically going
Speaker 1: according to plan, then being rescued by this Christian family.
Speaker 1: Do you believe this is some sort of divine intervention
Speaker 1: or that it was just that your dad had an
Speaker 1: amazing plan and things worked out. I wish that was
Speaker 1: the case sometimes in life. You know, you can plan
Speaker 1: all you want. But when they said plan of you
Speaker 1: want if you get punched, it was the tyson Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody has a plan and the fig yeah until you well,
Speaker 1: in this case, you know, the um the plan was
Speaker 1: you know, for his life to grow up in a
Speaker 1: in a peaceful country, you know, go to school and
Speaker 1: get married and have you know, all of that. But
Speaker 1: that was not that was not the story for for
Speaker 1: Vietnam in the turmoils and the situation that it went for.
Speaker 1: And so uh in life, you know, life throws you
Speaker 1: all sorts of curveballs and you just you just gotta
Speaker 1: do the best you can to handle and think through
Speaker 1: and and be calm um uh you know, maneuver your
Speaker 1: way through that that challenge. And that's what he did
Speaker 1: throughout his life and so he you know, my dad
Speaker 1: to me is is my hero and throughout throughout this
Speaker 1: whole experience. Um. In terms of working in terms of
Speaker 1: reuniting and meeting up with captain uh, Paul Jacobs again
Speaker 1: and Kent Shipping and other crew members at a reunion
Speaker 1: you know, many many years later, just to thank them.
Speaker 1: It was, you know, all of this had to come
Speaker 1: into play the universe at work. I was looking at
Speaker 1: that video of and that was from being reunited with
Speaker 1: the members of that ship, and I'll try to post
Speaker 1: it because they really you know, interesting thing about that
Speaker 1: video that you described there is that at that point
Speaker 1: your father had dementia. Yet you know he stands up
Speaker 1: and and salutes those men. Yeah, exactly. So let me
Speaker 1: look back up just the story just a little bit.
Speaker 1: In two thousand, so settled in America. Long story short, Uh,
Speaker 1: he went back, you know, started back in the very
Speaker 1: beginning and again literally started with nothing. The church helped
Speaker 1: us out. That got us an apartment. A few years later,
Speaker 1: worked hard, saved, lived that American dream. Eventually got it
Speaker 1: into electronics in the Settle area, worked at Bowing, retired
Speaker 1: from Boing. So in two thousand and one, he retired
Speaker 1: from Bowing. This is not knowing about the curtain, not
Speaker 1: knowing about the captain too. So when he retired from
Speaker 1: bowing two thousand and one, I said, hey, Mom, I
Speaker 1: want to do something special from God instead of getting
Speaker 1: in a tire a watcher a dinner for his retirement.
Speaker 1: Do you still have that shirt in that short you
Speaker 1: kept for him? So she says, yeah, I still kept it.
Speaker 1: So then I put together the box. I think there's
Speaker 1: some pictures of it. Well, there's strictures on my website. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I put this you know keepsakes box together and
Speaker 1: all the medals at my grandma's sage and everything else
Speaker 1: that I made him this this box, and uh, it
Speaker 1: was it was so funny that um, a few years later,
Speaker 1: the the US Navy, uh Mr Jan Herman wanted to
Speaker 1: do a documentary on this on the ship the U
Speaker 1: S S Kurk again uh submarine destroyer meant to search,
Speaker 1: hunt and destroy, but in the end became a humanitarian
Speaker 1: story saving many, you know, hundreds and hundreds of lives,
Speaker 1: thousands of lives on the ship. And one of the
Speaker 1: dramatic events that occurred during this time term was, uh,
Speaker 1: this Chinook pilot and they wanted to find this Chinook
Speaker 1: pilot who uh, so that it would fill out you know,
Speaker 1: this the story that Jan Herman in the U. S.
Speaker 1: Navy wanted to to produce as a documentary on the ship,
Speaker 1: and so they put out they put an email. And
Speaker 1: because of my mom and dad's involvement with the South
Speaker 1: Vietnamese Air Force clubs all across you know, different cities,
Speaker 1: Virginia's Houston, l A saying Jose all these places, many
Speaker 1: of the other Vietnamese pilots, Um I knew about my
Speaker 1: dad this story. There's only one person that this isn't
Speaker 1: able to survive and tell about it. And so Jan
Speaker 1: Herman puts out this email and also produced a YouTube
Speaker 1: trying to find this this pivot. And eventually the email
Speaker 1: was sent out to the Virginia area, Washington, DC area,
Speaker 1: and it got forwarded onto a few other people and
Speaker 1: then forwarded onto my mom. She gets to email. Her
Speaker 1: English isn't very very good, so she ford to see me.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting at work. This was in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting at work and I get this email and
Speaker 1: it says, hey, uh, email was from the U. S.
Speaker 1: Navy and we're looking for this pilot. And so I'd say, hey,
Speaker 1: I read the email. I said, you know what, uh?
Speaker 1: And I confirmed with my mom again back then you
Speaker 1: know what, what time? When, what day? And what time?
Speaker 1: Did had ditched and schnook because again this is all
Speaker 1: the story, And so she says, well, April twenty nine,
Speaker 1: this is you know, during the afternoon time free And
Speaker 1: so I said, ah, okay, So I went, I ran home.
Speaker 1: I took a picture of the box, right. I took
Speaker 1: a picture of box, and back down my dad was
Speaker 1: My dad was early stage of Alzheimer's at this time,
Speaker 1: and I had him hold the box and I took
Speaker 1: a picture of box because in the picture of the
Speaker 1: box of a picture of the shorts and the shirt.
Speaker 1: And so I replied back to the Mr Jean Herman,
Speaker 1: and I said, hey, hey, if you're looking for this
Speaker 1: pilot from ditch you on this time frame, this time frame,
Speaker 1: perhaps that's my dad. And so I had said, not
Speaker 1: knowing that you know what what would come out of it.
Speaker 1: But no later than just a few hours later, Mr
Speaker 1: Jann Herman sent back, hey, yeah, here's some pictures. Take
Speaker 1: a look, and holy cow, holy cow, everything that my
Speaker 1: dad shared at the dinner tables, here are some pictures
Speaker 1: that my dad was in live. He wasn't bullshit and
Speaker 1: you actually did this because I didn't see it. I
Speaker 1: didn't see it when I was a kid. I was
Speaker 1: you know, we are insights, and I was only told
Speaker 1: through stories and so holy crap, I got all these
Speaker 1: pictures and everything. And so the person that took the
Speaker 1: picture was Mr. A. Caapiano, one of the crewman picture
Speaker 1: had a he had a camera and in a video
Speaker 1: and everything captured all of this, and so uh, they
Speaker 1: the Navy came out and interviewed myself and my mom.
Speaker 1: My dad again back then wasn't able to talk. He
Speaker 1: had Alzheimer's Alzheimer's and they got worse. As you know,
Speaker 1: time moved on. But yeah, this is two thousand and ten.
Speaker 1: That your two thousand and nine when they flew up
Speaker 1: to a thousand and nine when I when all of
Speaker 1: these pictures came. About a year later they finished, the
Speaker 1: Navy did their own documentary called The Lucky Ssue, And
Speaker 1: so we got a chance to fly out and rolled
Speaker 1: my dad into the wheelchair of this u SS Kirk reunion.
Speaker 1: And the first person that came up to us in
Speaker 1: his full you know, navy fatigue was the man by
Speaker 1: the name of Kurt Kent Tripment and he reaches out
Speaker 1: and he says, Hi, I'm can't sure that I'm the
Speaker 1: guy that caught you, And oh my god, my heart
Speaker 1: just went I just it's just oh wow, he was
Speaker 1: the one that caught your baby sister too, right, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and myself there, my sister is a mom and my
Speaker 1: my dad, my brother passed away years prior to that.
Speaker 1: But the four of us, uh came out and brought
Speaker 1: my my two kids to experience all of this as well.
Speaker 1: But he came up and introduced distance. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: guy that caught you, and it's like, holy caw. Look
Speaker 1: just the full circle afterlute, full circle because for many
Speaker 1: many years we didn't know him, we didn't know the captain,
Speaker 1: didn't know all of that. And so they they showed
Speaker 1: the documentary from the name and it was focused around
Speaker 1: the ship itself, mainly around the US is Kurt, and
Speaker 1: towards the end they invited, you know, they called up
Speaker 1: my dad and uh, they invited our family to come up,
Speaker 1: and I pushed my dad in his whelschare and there's
Speaker 1: you know, throughout the prior to pushing him up, he
Speaker 1: was we were in the back because he was again
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's dementia. He couldn't he couldn't control his his himself.
Speaker 1: Uh just make noises. You just anybody who who has
Speaker 1: parents or knows somebody who has Alzheimer's and mensias um,
Speaker 1: they're not able to talk. He was just making odd
Speaker 1: noises and so uh not all there, you know, up
Speaker 1: in the head. We pushed them up on stage and
Speaker 1: they gave him um an honorary u ss Kirk Metal
Speaker 1: and uh just amazing to shake the hand and say
Speaker 1: myself to say thank you to the captain on behalf
Speaker 1: of my father and my family. And as the crowd
Speaker 1: started to uh, you know, uh no recognize my dad
Speaker 1: clasp and uh we I I saw my dad start
Speaker 1: to in his wheelchairs start to kind of wiggle and
Speaker 1: move around. And I'm standing close and trying to just say,
Speaker 1: hey Dad, you and just stay calm and stay down,
Speaker 1: but he persisted, he wanted to, you know, move is
Speaker 1: something kind of kind of agitated. And so he finally
Speaker 1: was able to push himself up out of the wheelchair
Speaker 1: as the crowd was clapping, and the only thing that
Speaker 1: he couldn't speak a word. You know, again just not
Speaker 1: all there, but just enough, just enough consciousness there to
Speaker 1: stand up and lift his right arm up and saluted,
Speaker 1: you know, the captain and the crew and Um. That
Speaker 1: was all that he could say, just to say thank you,
Speaker 1: you know, and not to me. That was just so
Speaker 1: emotional to me and UM and my and my mom
Speaker 1: as well to see that and so what we we
Speaker 1: although at times in the past few years before it's
Speaker 1: deathly we were questioning whether he was all, you know,
Speaker 1: mentally conscious, are there or not, But it's Fred of God,
Speaker 1: I knew my dad was. There's just enough to say
Speaker 1: thank you in you know, and that was it. That
Speaker 1: was all that you can do, very emotional time at
Speaker 1: that point. What really strikes me about this story, I mean,
Speaker 1: really what this this entire story is about. I mean
Speaker 1: from my perspective just listening to you tell it is
Speaker 1: really it's about the love that your father had for
Speaker 1: all you guys, and just the incredible things that there
Speaker 1: was nothing he wasn't gonna do to get you out
Speaker 1: of there and and make sure that you were safe
Speaker 1: and that you were free, and just the incredible risks
Speaker 1: he took. But but he did it for his family.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very that's very clear, awfully clear. The
Speaker 1: instinctually just being a father and a role model in
Speaker 1: leading through example all of that. I just if I
Speaker 1: can be half the man that he in my own life,
Speaker 1: that would just be fantastic. But he set a very
Speaker 1: very high bar in family, uh, as you mentioned, in
Speaker 1: terms of all of that and doing doing the right thing,
Speaker 1: and that message of doing the right thing really resonated
Speaker 1: in the story that a few years later on that
Speaker 1: Rory Kennedy produced in terms of the last days in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: It was just doing the right thing right that we
Speaker 1: see in the last season in Vietnam, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people in the embassy just um, you know, all
Speaker 1: this chaos as commotion going down and and the orders
Speaker 1: from Washington, d C. To do this, do this, and
Speaker 1: that that they said, you know, that's through that we're
Speaker 1: going to do the best we can to save as
Speaker 1: many people as we as as we can right and
Speaker 1: and defy all of these rules and things that were
Speaker 1: supposed to fall and use your best judgment to do
Speaker 1: the right thing, to to help others, help your family,
Speaker 1: help your help the people around you if you can,
Speaker 1: and so not that totally resonues that you can't can
Speaker 1: completely subvert or submit yourself to a mindless bureaucracy that
Speaker 1: there has to be some sort of human decision making
Speaker 1: process there. And that's why I really love that story
Speaker 1: about about Chippy Kent Chapman, you know, running running out
Speaker 1: there and catching your baby's sister. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: an incredible story. And how did how did things turn out?
Speaker 1: I mean, um, where where are all of you? Where
Speaker 1: is the family today? Uh so, well, it's still in
Speaker 1: the areas that we live in Redmond, Washington here and
Speaker 1: uh everyone's everyone was great. Um, you know it was
Speaker 1: my mom. My mom is the other hero in my life,
Speaker 1: just for her to support my dad through the wartime
Speaker 1: activities and raising all of us up and you know,
Speaker 1: doing all that she can to to provide and help
Speaker 1: the family as well. And then during the last years
Speaker 1: of my death life being the sole caretaker. And again,
Speaker 1: is anybody who has a person with dementia all all
Speaker 1: the time there's in their life, they know how it's
Speaker 1: difficult it is to take care of that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: to care for that person. And so my mom, um
Speaker 1: just to the jury and until my dad passed away,
Speaker 1: took care of him, uh you know, showered him, bathrooms,
Speaker 1: all those kinds of things just amazing, amazing, um wife,
Speaker 1: a mother individual in her own way. It just strikes
Speaker 1: me as like such the quintessential American dream story. It's
Speaker 1: the kind of story that are the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that as American citizens, you know, people like myself who
Speaker 1: are born here, we tend to take for granted way
Speaker 1: too often. And there was your family that fought for
Speaker 1: a tooth and nail. Um. But but I mean it
Speaker 1: did come true in the end. Yeah, Unfortunately, my family
Speaker 1: story it was was positive. Everything you know, went went well.
Speaker 1: There are so many thousands and thousands of other refugee
Speaker 1: stories during the Vietnam time frame that did not end
Speaker 1: up very well then. So I'm very humble and very
Speaker 1: lucky that our family's story came out and turned out
Speaker 1: the way he did. But we talked to we talked
Speaker 1: to Jim Morris about one of those stories about our
Speaker 1: our Mountain Yard allies in Vietnam, and so many of
Speaker 1: them were left behind, and uh and Jim and some
Speaker 1: of his compatriots were able to get some of them
Speaker 1: back to the United States, but so many of them,
Speaker 1: you know, were wiped out. Yeah, there's exactly a lot
Speaker 1: of stories like that in terms of uh, just the
Speaker 1: things that humans do to each other unbelievable at times,
Speaker 1: and and the things that you know, humans do with
Speaker 1: each other help is also very inspiring. So both ends
Speaker 1: of the spectrums when it comes to war, and it's it's, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, if you you served, if you've gone through it,
Speaker 1: if you're a part of if you're a refugee, A
Speaker 1: war is not not something that you would want to
Speaker 1: wish on on anybody, whether you served it or whether
Speaker 1: you've gone through it or you know, survived it at
Speaker 1: that point. So yeah, um, one of the things and
Speaker 1: maybe this is one of those those things that uh,
Speaker 1: I wanted to kind of share in terms of war itself.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you guys, go ahead, please go
Speaker 1: uh the so and in the past few years as
Speaker 1: as all of this, you know, emerge and learning more
Speaker 1: about all this and ward, so if I got the
Speaker 1: chance to to to circle back in and do some
Speaker 1: do some of my own homework and in crafting together
Speaker 1: the book that I wrote entitled that My Father the Badass.
Speaker 1: Obviously it's it's around you know this situation and just
Speaker 1: want being one badass mofo doing whatever you can to
Speaker 1: to survive, save yourself and sit you, save the family,
Speaker 1: do the right thing. But in the whole aspect of
Speaker 1: that and learning about the war itself, it really opened
Speaker 1: my eyes up in terms of, you know, the reason
Speaker 1: for Vietnam War and the and the things that we
Speaker 1: see today. You know, the word Venezuela comes into it,
Speaker 1: and in the media these days, is this gonna be
Speaker 1: you know, Venezuela, Is this gonna be another another Vietnam
Speaker 1: and everything else around it. But in terms of researching
Speaker 1: all of this and calling me a conspiracy person if
Speaker 1: you will, but um, the war itself dragged on for
Speaker 1: more than twenty years, and as we all know, you know,
Speaker 1: the war is very profitable. War is very profitable, and uh,
Speaker 1: three millions South Vietnamese you know, uh, Cambodians died in
Speaker 1: this war, and fifty six thousand Americans died in this floor.
Speaker 1: And the question that I asked and and the research
Speaker 1: that I went into in terms of poking around the area,
Speaker 1: was did that happen? You know, did that needed to
Speaker 1: be the case? Where did the war needed to be
Speaker 1: stretched out for that mong and that many lives on
Speaker 1: both sides have to die in And I came out
Speaker 1: of it thinking night it didn't have to It didn't
Speaker 1: it didn't have to end that way because uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and again this whole notion of um, you know, for
Speaker 1: every bullet hole, for every gun soul, for every planefold, somebody,
Speaker 1: somebody is profiting out of this. And UM, I just
Speaker 1: I just there are too many things that I that
Speaker 1: I researched that UM point to that fact. Well, that's
Speaker 1: what we were talking about with Fred Galvin the other
Speaker 1: day about General Smedley Butler, marine general who uh you
Speaker 1: know we're probably like in the nineteen twenties or something,
Speaker 1: he wrote that book War as a Racket. UM talking
Speaker 1: talking about that very subject. And UM and I was
Speaker 1: actually having a conversation with someone just this morning about
Speaker 1: you know, there's that incredible story when Robert McNamara, who
Speaker 1: is the Secretary of Defense during Vietnam after the war,
Speaker 1: he went to Vietnam and he met with one of
Speaker 1: the Vietnamese generals, one of the Communist generals, and I
Speaker 1: you know, he told McNamara, you guys were trying to
Speaker 1: turn Vietnam into a into into an American colony. And
Speaker 1: he was like, no, no, that's that's absolutely not what
Speaker 1: we were trying to accomplish there, and he said they
Speaker 1: almost got into a fist fight. But from the Vietnamese perspective,
Speaker 1: there were how many American troops stationed in Vietnam at
Speaker 1: one point, like several million, So, I mean you can
Speaker 1: see how from their perspective they're like, well, if this
Speaker 1: isn't colonial, there's something what is, you know? So yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. There's so many mistakes made in retrospect um.
Speaker 1: And you know the Vietnamese as you know, you know
Speaker 1: better than I do. I mean, they were fighting the
Speaker 1: Japanese before the French, and then after the French they
Speaker 1: were fighting the United States, and for them it was
Speaker 1: it was Vietnamese nationalism, um. And it's it's just a
Speaker 1: tragedy what happened in Southeast Asia. Yeah, exactly, it's been
Speaker 1: a country that's been attacked. It was it got a
Speaker 1: lot of resources, you know, close to the beach side,
Speaker 1: close to the Pacific Ocean, so it's a highly desired
Speaker 1: territory and a lot of natural resources, um, you know,
Speaker 1: within the country itself. But uh yeah, just uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the whole experience in working and giving the created to
Speaker 1: share a positive message in light of all the craziness
Speaker 1: of of you know, the events happening in Vietnam. Just
Speaker 1: the the opportunity to share this story with others and
Speaker 1: you folks, your your audience as well as been UM
Speaker 1: a great opportunity. Just there's good people out there as
Speaker 1: people with every day just normal people but UM, you know,
Speaker 1: going through different different things in their life, big challenges,
Speaker 1: small challenges, but at the end of the day, we've
Speaker 1: got to continue to press through and UM, you know,
Speaker 1: find the courage to to you know, get through our
Speaker 1: obstacles and our personal deenions or whatever challenges in every way.
Speaker 1: So that's the story that UM I'd like to continue
Speaker 1: to resonate and I appreciate the opportunity to that through
Speaker 1: forms like this. Yeah, this is such a great story Mickey,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for telling it to us today. UM.
Speaker 1: I honestly was not totally sure why to expect when
Speaker 1: when I walked into this interview UM this morning, because
Speaker 1: I just I read up on As I said, I
Speaker 1: wasn't familiar with this story, and I read up on
Speaker 1: it a little bit in the studio here before we
Speaker 1: got started today. But I mean, this has really been
Speaker 1: a pleasure I'm so happy that we could have you on.
Speaker 1: And um, I hope people will really go and check
Speaker 1: out this book that you wrote. We're looking at it here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at it here because you sent me a
Speaker 1: lot of info. It's possible I passed over it, but
Speaker 1: I wasn't aware until you just mentioned it that you
Speaker 1: wrote this book. So my father, the badass, inspiring real
Speaker 1: story true here. I would have had to send this
Speaker 1: a couple of copies. Yeah, go go look this book
Speaker 1: up on Amazon. Uh, this is such an incredible story, Like,
Speaker 1: this is a great story to even like buy this
Speaker 1: and give this to a relative. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: really cool. And the film that already did, the one
Speaker 1: that the one that got uh nominated for the Oscar
Speaker 1: last season, Vietnam is also on on Netflix. So in
Speaker 1: that's in the in that film, I just share, you know,
Speaker 1: the foty hours of that particular uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: dramatic event. The book really covers the his childhood days
Speaker 1: and what kind of a person he was all the
Speaker 1: way to to the reunion as well. So it's a broader,
Speaker 1: broader into a deeper storyline. Netflix on the last day
Speaker 1: of Get On, written and Producerbrory. That's great, so that'll
Speaker 1: be accessible to a lot of people. And then actually,
Speaker 1: just as wrapping things up, I just kind of want
Speaker 1: to expand upon what you were saying before. So you
Speaker 1: originally were saying people comparing you know, what your family
Speaker 1: went through and everybody else in Vietnam to what's happening
Speaker 1: in Venezuela. Um, I just wanted to flush that out
Speaker 1: a little bit though. Are you saying you feel like
Speaker 1: what's going on in Venezuela is not comparable or or
Speaker 1: that it is Oh no, no, I only bring up
Speaker 1: the Venezuela think is the you know, the media or
Speaker 1: people in the general public now with information these days,
Speaker 1: you know, the the notion of that being called upon
Speaker 1: akin um is very relevant to today's time, so that
Speaker 1: there's people out there calling for a military intervention and
Speaker 1: things like that. Yeah, but at the same time, we
Speaker 1: don't know what the underlying motive is behind that, right.
Speaker 1: I wrote my book that you know, fighting for God,
Speaker 1: which is got a gold oil and drugs. You know,
Speaker 1: we we we hear stories that's written fact about c
Speaker 1: i A moving moving drugs through during the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: In taking advantage of that situation. So, um, there's there's
Speaker 1: more truths behind that, right, things going on behind that
Speaker 1: that we may not be fully aware of, and so
Speaker 1: Venice Weather could be of a part of that sort
Speaker 1: of UM, I don't know how to say it. Um,
Speaker 1: the same team as well, perhaps, No, I would agree.
Speaker 1: I've heard that before. By the way, the the G
Speaker 1: O D acronym. Yeah, I'm just yeah, there's things that
Speaker 1: well for Venezuela, the oil and the oil part is
Speaker 1: certainly there. Yeah, yeah, that's for sure. That The other
Speaker 1: one that we're agitating with right now. This this is
Speaker 1: actually something an article I've been writing is Iran, which
Speaker 1: is another that would be a really a full's errand
Speaker 1: for us to go over there and try to instigate
Speaker 1: something with UM, I hope that doesn't happen now. So
Speaker 1: nobody wants. Nobody wants that situation. It's kind of interesting
Speaker 1: because you know, someone like yourself and a lot of
Speaker 1: other authors who have written about somewhat similar things seemed
Speaker 1: to share this idea. UM. I remember actually when I
Speaker 1: was working on Senator Bill Bradley Show, and I think
Speaker 1: I mentioned this on a recent episode. Um, this guy
Speaker 1: wrote a book about his dad raising the flag of
Speaker 1: Regima and his story. It turns out that his dad
Speaker 1: was not in the iconic photo they found out years
Speaker 1: later of them raising the flag of Regima, but he
Speaker 1: did raise a flag of Regima, and he was not
Speaker 1: aware of this. But the reason I bring this up
Speaker 1: is that when we had him on Editor Bradley Show
Speaker 1: The Son, he was very vehemently anti war, or I
Speaker 1: should I I don't even know if I should use
Speaker 1: the word anti war, but just the idea of going
Speaker 1: to war without using it as a last resort. And
Speaker 1: I feel like that's the occurring theme of a lot
Speaker 1: of people who have experienced what you have, people who
Speaker 1: experienced communism or socialism or you know, any of these
Speaker 1: things that their family had to escape. Diplomacy is always
Speaker 1: the best round. I mean, it's just trying, yeah, just communicating,
Speaker 1: talking things out. Diplomacies is the best rewards. Is the
Speaker 1: absolute less you know, last option. Yeah, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: most of you guys who have been there, you know,
Speaker 1: agree with that as well. Certainly, I'm not hungering for
Speaker 1: war by any means, having seen it up close in
Speaker 1: a number of different countries. It's just the tremendous human
Speaker 1: costs um and whatever a little foreign foreign policy value
Speaker 1: that our government thinks they're deriving from it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I I just don't think it's worth it, and I'm
Speaker 1: you can color me a skeptic about what we can
Speaker 1: realistically accomplish around the world with regime change and things
Speaker 1: like that. But which, by the way, is also why
Speaker 1: they recruit guys at you know, seventeen eighteen, because if
Speaker 1: you meet someone who's seventeen or eighteen going to the military,
Speaker 1: they're like, I want to see action. And I think
Speaker 1: a true a guy in his mid twenties is less
Speaker 1: likely to have that a guy in their mid thirties
Speaker 1: that has a family. Oh yeah, exactly. It's you don't
Speaker 1: you know. You can read it in a book, you
Speaker 1: can watch it in a film, watch all these ramble movies.
Speaker 1: But it's it's a different thing to experience it firsthand.
Speaker 1: And even you know, you were only too young, Mackey
Speaker 1: won't won't know. I experienced it, you know, like bombs
Speaker 1: all over the place, running through the bunkers and jumping
Speaker 1: out of helicopters like I lived it. I experienced it.
Speaker 1: One of the one of the things that I wanted
Speaker 1: to bring up also was, you know, when I mentioned before,
Speaker 1: like dragging on the war for a long time. Uh.
Speaker 1: In doing the research in the one of the things
Speaker 1: that I looked at was when I googled it and
Speaker 1: did other sources around it. But from like they called it,
Speaker 1: from the Rolling Thunder, and the premise behind that was that, uh, there,
Speaker 1: the US was basically handcuffed in terms of rules of
Speaker 1: rules of engagement in terms of attacking the enemy. And
Speaker 1: the point here, well, what what some of the things
Speaker 1: that they were restricted in doing was they you know,
Speaker 1: they could not uh, the U S cannot attack certain
Speaker 1: parts and certain targets. They were handcuffed from you know,
Speaker 1: flying a Dirton, time frames limited to certain things. So
Speaker 1: basically handcuffed. And if if if I were if I
Speaker 1: had all the wherewithal, if I had all the military might,
Speaker 1: the quickest thing I would want to do is to
Speaker 1: subdue my enemies as as soon as possible, to just
Speaker 1: end this thing. Right. But some of these somebody is
Speaker 1: crazy rules or things that I've researched out here really
Speaker 1: uh dragged out the war a lot longer than it
Speaker 1: had hence giving the Commons the ability to continue to
Speaker 1: move further down, down, down, down, down, and stretched to
Speaker 1: seeing out longer than than it too, that it needed
Speaker 1: to be. That was the whole point. I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to make it the the fact that this this could
Speaker 1: have this could have ended a lot sooner than later,
Speaker 1: saving a lot more lives than you see today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's something I've heard a lot as well. And I
Speaker 1: even think that people domestically who glamorized like that the
Speaker 1: country is almost in a state of civil war, that
Speaker 1: they want to see things get worse. I think a
Speaker 1: lot like the social Yeah, and I think people have
Speaker 1: truly seen a country in a state of civil war.
Speaker 1: That's the last thing. And you know, people maybe like
Speaker 1: to glamorize the liberals of America going up against the conservatives,
Speaker 1: or the gun owners going up against the people want
Speaker 1: to grab guns, but you know that they also haven't
Speaker 1: seen countries where people are starving and their's foodlines or
Speaker 1: any of that, and and they're they're really negative sides
Speaker 1: of it. So there's people, I'm sorry, I don't want
Speaker 1: to go off on like a whole tangent, but there
Speaker 1: there are people in America today who are so politicized
Speaker 1: and so ideological, and they're so honestly they're just filled
Speaker 1: with hate in their heart that they think that they're
Speaker 1: gonna have like some sort of civil war in America
Speaker 1: and it will result in this creative destruction, and what
Speaker 1: will come out of it is like this utopian society.
Speaker 1: And I mean I've seen essentially what are civil wars
Speaker 1: in Iraq and Syria, UM, a more low level kind
Speaker 1: of insurgency in the Philippines, UM. And then of course
Speaker 1: you know, making you live through some of it. I've
Speaker 1: studied the Vietnam conflict academically because it was of course
Speaker 1: before my time. I mean, no, that's not what's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: It's just a destruction of society, the destruction of our
Speaker 1: of our social structures, are institutions, are families. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: just a horrible, horrible thing. There's no thing to glamorize
Speaker 1: there at all. Yeah, that's absolutely Uh. You know. One
Speaker 1: of the things I've been researching also is this this
Speaker 1: globalist movement. Are you guys Are you guys into that
Speaker 1: or we talked about the time. The thing is it's
Speaker 1: such a broad spectrum though, are we Uh? Because I
Speaker 1: feel like the globalism thing could go very Alex Jones,
Speaker 1: or it could be very uh rational, but but like
Speaker 1: what what specifically? Well, yeah, exactly right said. It's one
Speaker 1: of those areas where I want to do very I
Speaker 1: want to thread very cautiously, very cautious because you know,
Speaker 1: being called a conspiracy, there's all that. But you know,
Speaker 1: I just uh, the the one world government, the New
Speaker 1: World Order, the globalist movement, call it whatever you will,
Speaker 1: it's just and what we see in terms of this
Speaker 1: deep state, you know, the people that pull the levers
Speaker 1: of people, the the illuminati, call it what you will,
Speaker 1: the things that they're doing to disruption, descrupt different countries. UM,
Speaker 1: so that you know, divide and conquered, right, divide the
Speaker 1: world up into different areas and then um conquer them
Speaker 1: that way. And how does that? I mean when I
Speaker 1: when I when I looked at the history that I
Speaker 1: went through with Vietnam and trying to understand all of that,
Speaker 1: all of that, how it applies to Vietnam. Um, the
Speaker 1: notion the notion of back then when Kennedy initially wanted
Speaker 1: to uh stop the communist red tide. Uh. The difference
Speaker 1: between what I've learned here and I'm still trying to
Speaker 1: um looking to it to more. But the difference of
Speaker 1: things the US and Vietnam at a very high level
Speaker 1: of communism and versus sort of a democratic is that
Speaker 1: the corporations they they they run their own. Our government,
Speaker 1: the US government. Here on the flip side, I think
Speaker 1: the Vietnamese government. I've lived there in the task from
Speaker 1: U two thousand, seventeen sixteen. They're back there for two
Speaker 1: years and just experiencing the country and living back there again. Um,
Speaker 1: communism is more of a the the government owns the corporations, right,
Speaker 1: and so the the the contrast between the two and
Speaker 1: above them is the bankers and everybody else that controls
Speaker 1: globally everything though, so the whole the whole premise around
Speaker 1: globalist movement, all of that stuff. I'm still learning and
Speaker 1: I'm still trying to pull all the pieces together. But um,
Speaker 1: it's one of those areas that is, you know, I
Speaker 1: tread lightly and I don't want to speak beyond what
Speaker 1: at least done. You know what I know so well? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean one thing I think it just is quite
Speaker 1: apparent now is that there there is a such thing
Speaker 1: as a foreign policy elite. I mean, I don't really
Speaker 1: see it as a as a conspiracy, but there is
Speaker 1: a a ecosystem in Washington, d C and other centers UM,
Speaker 1: and they have ideological views about our foreign policy, and
Speaker 1: I should be constructed in those views, and many many
Speaker 1: instances don't align with the American public. Um. I think
Speaker 1: the American public is getting quite frustrated with some of
Speaker 1: these wars were running basically all across the world, and
Speaker 1: there's and there's no end in sight. And so I
Speaker 1: think there's definitely this um factionalized UM view towards these
Speaker 1: foreign policy issues. And there are people in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Who are just inside a bubble and they don't see
Speaker 1: what you know, America's sons and daughters of having you know,
Speaker 1: been running around fighting this war for seventeen years now. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well,
Speaker 1: this has been a great discussion, man, and and I'd
Speaker 1: definitely love to continue it at some point. Will definitely
Speaker 1: check out the book and want the audience too as well.
Speaker 1: Which on which once again is my father the badass
Speaker 1: and inspiring real story of a true hero. The movie
Speaker 1: is Last Days in Vietnam, Oscar nominated and anything else.
Speaker 1: I don't know. If you have a presence on social media,
Speaker 1: we have a pretty heavy presence that might want to
Speaker 1: check you out. Well, just my website mickey went dot
Speaker 1: com a bunch of pictures. I mean, sharing the story
Speaker 1: is one thing, but a pictures worth a thousand words
Speaker 1: of I encourage you know, any audies out there that's
Speaker 1: just curious abouts to me. These pictures pretty dramatic. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know I had that on my website there. Excellent. Man. Well,
Speaker 1: this has been an awesome conversation. We went long here,
Speaker 1: but it was worth it and I think this audience
Speaker 1: is gonna love it. And thanks for reaching out again.
Speaker 1: I'm really glad we had you on. Oh, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for the opperity to share this. Absolutely, thanks Micky. Yeah, awesome,
Speaker 1: Thank you guys. All right, have a good day, okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: take care of But so I was gonna do a
Speaker 1: throat punch of the week, but you know what, I
Speaker 1: might say that for next show because I just feel
Speaker 1: like we covered so much here. Uh, And I don't
Speaker 1: even want to end it on that. That was just
Speaker 1: too good of an interview to end it with other
Speaker 1: nonsense going on in the world, which is really what
Speaker 1: it is. I mean, this is such a significant story
Speaker 1: and and such a valuable perspective to have. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have plenty of guys on the show who are
Speaker 1: Vietnam veterans, you know, who were in Mac Vi Saga,
Speaker 1: who did different things, but we've never really had anyone
Speaker 1: from his perspective. Yeah, yeah, this is sort of this
Speaker 1: story is sort of like the aftermath of the war,
Speaker 1: you know, and what happened when we pulled out and
Speaker 1: we left that void there, and you know, unfortunately we
Speaker 1: left our allies in South Vietnam at the mercy of
Speaker 1: the communists. Yeah. At the same time, this is also
Speaker 1: a feel good story and I think people will like it.
Speaker 1: I mean the fact that everything basically other than his
Speaker 1: brother unfortunately dying years later, which had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with this, but um, everything went. It couldn't have gone better,
Speaker 1: so um rapping things up. Be sure to check out
Speaker 1: Create Club. We have different tiers of membership depending on
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Speaker 1: top of the news rep dot com to sign up.
Speaker 1: That's fin Rep right at the top of new of
Speaker 1: the news rep dot com. Alex said in a recent
Speaker 1: episode that we're gonna end up I think buying them
Speaker 1: for news rep dot com, but that hasn't happened yet,
Speaker 1: so I'm still saying the news rep dot com. It
Speaker 1: would be cool. I mean, I think news rep dot
Speaker 1: com would probably be easier, but as of now, it
Speaker 1: is still the news Rep dot Com. Um, Like I said,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll do a throw a punch of the week
Speaker 1: next week. I had one prepared, but this was just
Speaker 1: too good of a show. We went pretty long here. Um,
Speaker 1: send us some emails. We love reading your emails. If
Speaker 1: you have any questions comments, soft Rep dout radio at
Speaker 1: soft rep dot com. And I guess the last thing
Speaker 1: I'll say is pre order Murphy's Law. I posted a
Speaker 1: picture of your book next to my metalca back to
Speaker 1: the front book and it got hundreds of likes, a
Speaker 1: lot of comments. People excited to check out the audible
Speaker 1: with you reading it. Yeah, and I did my first
Speaker 1: piece of media for the book today. Actually, I did
Speaker 1: a pretty like a long, like hour hour and a
Speaker 1: half interview. Um, that's probably gonna actually go out. They're
Speaker 1: probably gonna run it on YouTube, um, closer to the
Speaker 1: publication date. But we'll figure that out. I'll you know,
Speaker 1: when when it goes out, people can check it out
Speaker 1: if they want. Awesome man, Well, I think, um, not
Speaker 1: because of us, but because of Mickey. This might be
Speaker 1: an episode that people will think is one of the best,
Speaker 1: you know, better episodes we've done. But I can't think
Speaker 1: of more interesting story than that. I mean that that
Speaker 1: was really mind blowing and he did a great job
Speaker 1: conveying the whole story to start to finish. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's super cool story cool. All right. Well, we'll be
Speaker 1: back with a new episode that will go up on
Speaker 1: Friday as always. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at
Speaker 1: softwarep Radio. Like the new Facebook page, Facebook dot com
Speaker 1: slash software Radio, and we're out. You've been listening to
Speaker 1: Self rep Radio. New episodes up every Wednesday and Friday.
Speaker 1: Follow the show on Instagram and Twitter at self rep Radio.