Speaker 1: If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough. You're
Speaker 1: listening to Software Radio Special operations, military news and straight
Speaker 1: talk with the guys and the community. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome back to Software Radio for a radio on time
Speaker 1: on target. I'm your host this afternoon, Steve Allstari. We
Speaker 1: have a very special guest with us on the line.
Speaker 1: He just came up with the book. His name is
Speaker 1: Mike Leonard. He was a pilot in the Air Force.
Speaker 1: He was a fact pilot in Vietnam. I think you know,
Speaker 1: once you hear his story, our listeners are gonna love
Speaker 1: here and about Mike, uh, what he did in the
Speaker 1: Air Force, some of the stories he has to relate.
Speaker 1: It was really really interesting book. I encourage all of
Speaker 1: our listeners to uh to check that out and download it.
Speaker 1: But before we get into all that stuff and what
Speaker 1: will you know, inform our listeners and readers where they
Speaker 1: can find that later on in the podcast. But before
Speaker 1: we do that, we want to welcome Mike to the podcast. Mike,
Speaker 1: welcome to Software Radio. Thanks for taking the time this afternoon.
Speaker 1: We really appreciate it. Stevie, were more than welcome. I'm
Speaker 1: just please as bunch to be here. And looking forward
Speaker 1: to our little discussion. Yeah, you know, um, you know,
Speaker 1: I think there was a there's an old Chinese proverb.
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of a curse when it says,
Speaker 1: may you live in interesting times? And I think you
Speaker 1: could say your life was a very up to this point.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're not done living yet, but I think
Speaker 1: that you've lived through some pretty interesting times. You know that.
Speaker 1: That's that's so true. That's I think I used that
Speaker 1: that little quote in my book somewhere, and that was it,
Speaker 1: may you live in interesting times? And if you think
Speaker 1: about it, you know, you go through life. There's three
Speaker 1: things in life. You know that you're born, you live,
Speaker 1: and then you die, and so you can't control the
Speaker 1: first one of the last one, but you can control
Speaker 1: everything in between in the life phase. And and I'll
Speaker 1: tell you something right now, you want to pack into
Speaker 1: that life phase as much interesting stuff and do as
Speaker 1: many things and meet as many great people as you
Speaker 1: possibly can. That's what life is all about. That's it.
Speaker 1: And uh, I think you did that. I mean reading
Speaker 1: the book, it was like every page was something else.
Speaker 1: And you know, early in your life you talked about
Speaker 1: how you're you know, you grew up in your family,
Speaker 1: and you know, your grandmother was actually traveling for a
Speaker 1: while with a circus, which was like really interesting. And
Speaker 1: then yourself, you you took Mary Fran from the Bob
Speaker 1: new Haward Show to your college, from which I was,
Speaker 1: I'll have to say, I'm dating myself there, but I
Speaker 1: was quite jealous of that. Well, like, well, her name
Speaker 1: was got Lever. You know, she's passed away now, but
Speaker 1: her name was Mary Fran Lukey and she was a
Speaker 1: Saint Louis Carol and uh, I think she was one
Speaker 1: of the first teenage Miss America's or something like that.
Speaker 1: But at the time she was just one of the
Speaker 1: young ladies that we dated. And uh yeah, and I
Speaker 1: took her to my college prom. Remember she she came up,
Speaker 1: came up on a train, uh, and we picked her up.
Speaker 1: And you know, of course it was all very much
Speaker 1: by protocol in those days when you're you know, coat
Speaker 1: and tie in the whole nine yards. So that she
Speaker 1: was a great gal, great gal. Yeah, and uh she
Speaker 1: was fantastic on that bottom New God show. I love
Speaker 1: you know. I thought when I heard he was coming
Speaker 1: out with that second show, I was like, he can
Speaker 1: never beat that first show that he had. I think
Speaker 1: he did with that one, and she was a big deal. Yeah. So, um,
Speaker 1: you know, fill our listeners in a little bit about
Speaker 1: how you came to become Air Force officer and a
Speaker 1: little bit about your military career, and and we'll go
Speaker 1: from there. Okay, so let me just jump it right
Speaker 1: into it there, Steven, I'll tell you it's it's funny because, um,
Speaker 1: so I wrote the book, and of course some of
Speaker 1: the highlights of the book that kind of the high
Speaker 1: points or some of the things that occurred in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: In order to write a book, you have to have
Speaker 1: the starting point who who are? Who is this guy?
Speaker 1: You know? What? How did he get to where he
Speaker 1: is now? So? Um, yeah, I mean I I grew
Speaker 1: up in St. Louis and and I went off to
Speaker 1: college there in Kansas, a small liberal arts college called
Speaker 1: Saint Benedick's College and Atchison, Kansas, great little school. And
Speaker 1: um and then I you know, after got married late
Speaker 1: I like my last year in college, and I had
Speaker 1: a little one on the way, and so I'm thinking
Speaker 1: what am I going to do for a living here?
Speaker 1: And I remember the marine guy came in a marine
Speaker 1: recruiter came through our our student union, so to speak,
Speaker 1: and and I was going to sign up and join
Speaker 1: the Marine platoon leader class. But when he came back
Speaker 1: to do the final paperwork and I was looking for him,
Speaker 1: he never showed up. And but air Force recruiter walked
Speaker 1: from the door, and I said, that must be the
Speaker 1: guy I'm gonna be signing up. So I ended up
Speaker 1: joining in the Air Force because I needed a job
Speaker 1: and I didn't feel like selling insurance in Kansas City
Speaker 1: or coaching football and teaching high school in Chicago. So
Speaker 1: those are my options. So, um, does it is? It is?
Speaker 1: It's the serendipity to life. Is just the way things work.
Speaker 1: And and so there I was and off to San Antonio, Texas,
Speaker 1: and for what I didn't realize was the beginning of
Speaker 1: a twenty year career. And and uh, you first started
Speaker 1: off as a crew member in later transition to become
Speaker 1: a pilot, and can you talk to our listeners a
Speaker 1: little bit through that? You bet? You bet? So when
Speaker 1: I went into the Air Force, I ended up being
Speaker 1: brought in as what they was known as a weapons controller.
Speaker 1: And the weapons controller was the recruiter said, well, you're
Speaker 1: going to be controlling missiles out of Cape Kennedy, Florida.
Speaker 1: And I thought, geez, that would be great, you know,
Speaker 1: launching missiles and stuff. Well that wasn't exactly what the
Speaker 1: job was. The Javan tail working at radar sites sometimes
Speaker 1: the remote radar sites throughout the you know the Northern two,
Speaker 1: remember the Dow Line, You remember the Distant Early Warning
Speaker 1: lineup in northern Canada. Those are the places that you went.
Speaker 1: And what you did was you would you would get online,
Speaker 1: you control fighter interceptors in case any of the Russian
Speaker 1: Bear bombers would come your way or anybody. You basically
Speaker 1: run intercepts against these these these bombers. So that was
Speaker 1: the job. And so but my first job ended up
Speaker 1: in a place called Fort George Mead, Maryland at the
Speaker 1: seven sevent Years Radar squad And so that was it
Speaker 1: was a radar squadter and I ran intercepts there and
Speaker 1: did all my things, and and I was living, you know,
Speaker 1: living as a young second lieutenant. I think I was
Speaker 1: making a hundred seventeen dollars a day and it was
Speaker 1: twice a month, so you can see what money wasn't great,
Speaker 1: But but the job was really fun and you know, so,
Speaker 1: but the pod. What the next thing had happened was
Speaker 1: I looked online one of the bulletins that they put
Speaker 1: out and said, you know, you can you can actually
Speaker 1: go and fly and do the same job controlling controlling
Speaker 1: these airplanes and interceptors. You can can you can get
Speaker 1: on us e C that's the Oldwaukee Constellation, the Airborne
Speaker 1: Early Warning Control System. You can get on this airplane
Speaker 1: and you can fly all over the place and you
Speaker 1: can control intercepts. And by the way, they pay an
Speaker 1: extra hundred bucks a month. I thought, heck, I don't
Speaker 1: think I just died and went to heaven. So there
Speaker 1: I was, you know. And so now I moved out
Speaker 1: to Sacramento, California with mcclonin Air Force Space and at
Speaker 1: McClellan flying with the five fifty second Wing, and we're
Speaker 1: all of a sudden we get noticed we're being deployed
Speaker 1: to Vietnam, and off I go on my first tour
Speaker 1: to Vietnam in working in the back of a Khani
Speaker 1: at Laki khannie flying up in the Gulf of Tonkin,
Speaker 1: controlling fighters and trying to keep any MiGs away from
Speaker 1: the fleet that's out in the Gulf of Tonga. So
Speaker 1: that's that was the job. That's that entailed. And then, um,
Speaker 1: somewhere along the line, you know, Steve, I got this.
Speaker 1: One of the pilots said, you know, we make an
Speaker 1: extra hundred and fifty bucks if you're a pilot fly
Speaker 1: on airplane. I said, well, hell, I said, how hard
Speaker 1: is that? Maybe I can try that. So I volunteer
Speaker 1: to become a pilot and the Air Force pilot, and
Speaker 1: I became an Air Force pilot. After I think it
Speaker 1: was nineteen sixty eight, I graduated with my group and
Speaker 1: what the heck they do to me? They put me
Speaker 1: back in the cockpit DC Loggy Consolation. This time they
Speaker 1: sent me to OTUS Air Force based up in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of how that first part started. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know otis quite well. Um, you know, growing up
Speaker 1: in Massachusetts, we had family down in Falmouth, so I know,
Speaker 1: you know Falmouth very well. Being staged I lived, I
Speaker 1: lived Stephen Lisa, And Yeah, when I was reading the book,
Speaker 1: I got a chuckle out of that because I know
Speaker 1: how New England winters are. They just had a huge
Speaker 1: northeaster up there. It's yesterday and I can't imagine flying
Speaker 1: in the stuff like that, and you you talked about
Speaker 1: a couple of instances where some of the storms up
Speaker 1: there kind of made things a little dicey. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you you flew out of hotas. Especially during the winter.
Speaker 1: You you just had to expect, you know, icing, and
Speaker 1: you had to expect really really bad weather and we
Speaker 1: got it on a regular basis up there. Yeah. Well, man,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine that. And you know, for somebody who
Speaker 1: just flew in the back and jumped out of aircraft,
Speaker 1: my hats always off to those, uh, to those people
Speaker 1: who know how to fly to that stuff, because I'm
Speaker 1: glad it wasn't me doing that. We probably would have
Speaker 1: been bent around a tree somewhere. So well, it was
Speaker 1: an interesting time. I think one of the times I
Speaker 1: related in the book, and it might be interesting is
Speaker 1: even we were deployed up to Iceland Directlibate Iceland to
Speaker 1: the navy base. And what had happened was, I think
Speaker 1: some of the some of the radar sites along the
Speaker 1: you know, the sea lanes that came out of Russia
Speaker 1: between Greenland and Iceland had been had blown down and
Speaker 1: one of the radar sites have blown down, so they
Speaker 1: needed to put these Lucky Constellation airborne early warning planes
Speaker 1: into the slots over the waters kind of the bridge
Speaker 1: the gap in the radar. So we went up there
Speaker 1: and we're flying and one we get an active ary
Speaker 1: defense mission and we get launched, and I think I
Speaker 1: relate in the book somewhere that we actually rolled out
Speaker 1: on the runway and since it was an active or
Speaker 1: defense mission, we had to go. We're going. So the
Speaker 1: unfortunate part was the runway had about you know, three
Speaker 1: or four inches of snow on it, and you know,
Speaker 1: normally you wouldn't even fly in that condition. But we
Speaker 1: got on that runway and took off to go down
Speaker 1: the runway and we weren't getting the power we needed
Speaker 1: and and so the pilots, it was in the left
Speaker 1: seat at the time, Jim Marner, I think his name was,
Speaker 1: Jim reverses the engines, you know, And we come into
Speaker 1: a sliding stop towards the end of the runway because
Speaker 1: we had to abort the take off. And I'm telling
Speaker 1: you what it was. It was a ride, and we
Speaker 1: kept slowing down and slowing down, but we're end of
Speaker 1: the runway coming up and we had to quick What
Speaker 1: he did was he essentially just kind of stepped on
Speaker 1: one break and pull one couple of inches out of
Speaker 1: reverse and we just kind of spun around at the
Speaker 1: very end of the runway. I remember reading that in
Speaker 1: the book and I was like, yeah, I can't imagine
Speaker 1: being in the back of that aircraft at the time
Speaker 1: and going through that because that would have been one
Speaker 1: of those instant bathed and sweat moments. You know, It's funny, Steve,
Speaker 1: because what what happens is you get you know, you look,
Speaker 1: you look at a pilot like the guy on the
Speaker 1: left seat Gym was and he had a lot of
Speaker 1: experienced thousands of hours of flying in here. I was
Speaker 1: kind of a new pilot of time. But those are
Speaker 1: the guys that taught you how to fly airplanes. And
Speaker 1: you know, I give them so much credit because they
Speaker 1: were you know, they were just they had had the experience,
Speaker 1: They knew what they were doing. This guy it was
Speaker 1: like second nature to him. So that's what you had
Speaker 1: to develop as a pilot. You had to have a
Speaker 1: second nature to you. That's cool, and so to talk
Speaker 1: us through and then you transitioned and into the smallest
Speaker 1: aircraft in the Air Force and talk us through that oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know it's it's funny. And one of the common
Speaker 1: themes you're gonna hear hear me sick is I was
Speaker 1: always trying to follow the money because if you've got
Speaker 1: a growing family or growing family, you're always looking to
Speaker 1: make sure that you're taking care of them getting a
Speaker 1: little bit extra. So what happens is so I'm I
Speaker 1: noticed when the guy said to me, you know, um,
Speaker 1: you know if you go into combat, if you go
Speaker 1: to Vietnam and going to combat, you know, they I
Speaker 1: think they pay an extra hundred and ten bucks a
Speaker 1: month for combat pay and so. And at the time
Speaker 1: I was OTIS Air Force Space, I was kind of
Speaker 1: a position where I have been there for a couple
Speaker 1: of years I think it was, and and I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, um, they got a war going on. If
Speaker 1: I can help it anyway, I sure like could try it. Oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, they pay an extra hundred and ten
Speaker 1: bucks a month in combat pay. Well you know I could.
Speaker 1: I could do that for you know, a year. So, um,
Speaker 1: here comes this bullet and it says, hey, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: looking for people to become forward air controllers And I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: that sounds interesting. Um a little that I know, But
Speaker 1: so I volunteered to become an oh one bird Dog
Speaker 1: forward air controller or fact as they call it. And
Speaker 1: sure enough they accepted me, which you know, I guess
Speaker 1: it shouldn't have surprised me because they needed they needed
Speaker 1: all the help they could get over there at the time.
Speaker 1: Um off, I went to Herbert Field down in Florida,
Speaker 1: went through the air Ground Operations school and the flight
Speaker 1: training and the old one bird Dog and which, by
Speaker 1: the way, as I understand it's was the smallest airplane
Speaker 1: in the Air Force inventory at the time. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I did once through the crew qualification, did all the flying,
Speaker 1: got qualified, checked out, dropped the family in Oklahoma, and
Speaker 1: then took off out of I think it was Travis
Speaker 1: Air Force Space and uh, you know, a few weeks
Speaker 1: later and I flew all the way to uh into
Speaker 1: the Philippines where I had to go through the Jungle
Speaker 1: Survival school and of course that you know, after I
Speaker 1: think it was a week long or ten day long course,
Speaker 1: you know, then off we go to Vietnam. So that's
Speaker 1: that's how I got there in an old one bird
Speaker 1: dug right, and you know, the tactical air controller or
Speaker 1: fat forward air controller. Nowadays those guys are on the ground, um,
Speaker 1: much more so than the guys in the air. And
Speaker 1: you know, um, can you talk some of our listeners
Speaker 1: through how the changes came about with that, Because you
Speaker 1: guys who were on the basic I mean, you're flying
Speaker 1: in a what we would call today a piper cove.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know you see those they're they're kind
Speaker 1: of like small pleasure craft and you've got some rockets
Speaker 1: on that and you you're getting shot at with air
Speaker 1: defense are are and have a machine gun fire. I
Speaker 1: mean that that's probably why a lot of those changes
Speaker 1: came about. Yeah, yeah, So so here's the as I mean,
Speaker 1: of course, I've been out since I retired in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three, but so if you think about it when
Speaker 1: when I retired, So, the four air controller in Vietnam,
Speaker 1: it was an airborne mission um, the you know, and
Speaker 1: the Air Force four air controller. His job was to
Speaker 1: control tactical air, putting it on the target in support
Speaker 1: of the ground troops who were in contact. Um. Another
Speaker 1: job he had was artillery adjustment, visual reconnaissance and in
Speaker 1: my case I handed managed the the Asian Orange defoliation
Speaker 1: missions for the province that I was in. So that
Speaker 1: was another story. I think I related the book. Um,
Speaker 1: but you have he had all these various missions, and
Speaker 1: you know, and and these missions all kind of came
Speaker 1: down to one thing, and that is that you control
Speaker 1: tach air onto targets to keep the bad guys away
Speaker 1: from the good guys. And that's what that's what you did.
Speaker 1: Now we fast forward to today's for air controller and
Speaker 1: these are they're no longer officers flying in the air planes.
Speaker 1: They're enlisted men and you know n c o s
Speaker 1: who have gone through rigorous training. And because your special
Speaker 1: Forces that you know this, you've met them, you know
Speaker 1: them the air the combat controllers are I mean, these
Speaker 1: are young Air Force kids that that are you know,
Speaker 1: qualified and special forces operations and the physical and the
Speaker 1: mental sorts of stresses that they go through. And these
Speaker 1: guys are embedded with you know, the troops on the ground,
Speaker 1: and so it's a whole different world. A matter of fact,
Speaker 1: I think one of their controllers trying to remember his name,
Speaker 1: I think he just was reward the Medal of Honor
Speaker 1: here a year or two ago. Uh was it was
Speaker 1: it Chapman? Yeah, I don't remember his name. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: he I mean, that's what a that's what a four
Speaker 1: year controller or combat controller does today. And I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what, My hat is off to him because at
Speaker 1: least I was above the free and I know. So
Speaker 1: it's it's a funny thing, Brandon. Now you said this discussion. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, he said, well you did that, and he
Speaker 1: was flying around and shot going. You couldn't. You were
Speaker 1: on the ground. You know, you're hugging a tree or
Speaker 1: in a ditch somewhere under. You know, my hat's off
Speaker 1: to you. And he said, no, my hat's off to you.
Speaker 1: So it's you know, it's it's just an amazing thing,
Speaker 1: an amazing thing. Yeah. In fact, you know, um, working
Speaker 1: with those guys, I've worked with them in the past
Speaker 1: and they're just great people. They have a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of training and you not only have they been through
Speaker 1: a lot of the same stuff that we did it
Speaker 1: as uh you know green Berets, but I mean tactically
Speaker 1: they hold their own, you know, as well as anybody.
Speaker 1: And they have all this other you know, these guys
Speaker 1: are coolest cucumbers when dealing with aircraft flying all over
Speaker 1: the place. And you know, I remember reading the story
Speaker 1: the guy you mentioned, Chapman, then he had like he
Speaker 1: had a whole flew slew of aircraft in his in
Speaker 1: his in his pattern. They're trying to coordinate all of that.
Speaker 1: Those guys, they're they're just absolutely amazing. But getting back
Speaker 1: to yourself, Uh, that one story about the age and
Speaker 1: orange and how it got all inside your aircraft, I
Speaker 1: think our listeners would appreciate a little bit of that story. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: so what happened there, Steve is So one of the
Speaker 1: jobs that I had was I was coordinated the Asian
Speaker 1: Orange defoliation for the province that I was in. Atter
Speaker 1: of fact, I had a couple of provinces under my
Speaker 1: responsible for. So what happens whenever they would have enemy
Speaker 1: out there and it would be in the triple canopy jungle.
Speaker 1: Uh you know the great minds in those days, So well,
Speaker 1: let's just go and defoliate, uh this section of the
Speaker 1: jungle maybe it was a forest or something or a jungle.
Speaker 1: And then I would coordinate and with the C one
Speaker 1: twenty three's the ranch hand missions of the air planes
Speaker 1: and they would come in and the way we would
Speaker 1: do it is they would they would have a time
Speaker 1: on target where they hit an initial position and they
Speaker 1: would start the spraying and be usually a three ship
Speaker 1: of of these C one twenty three. They come in low.
Speaker 1: Then there may be a few inter feet off the ground,
Speaker 1: off the jungle, and they start spraying. My job was
Speaker 1: I got to like a set of fighters and I'd
Speaker 1: have overhead and I had him holding and I would
Speaker 1: be behind the C one trees and maybe a few
Speaker 1: inter feet above them. And as they would start to
Speaker 1: defoliate and spray, Ah, what would happen was one of
Speaker 1: the guys on the one being that he was down
Speaker 1: at a couple hundred feet spraying this stuff. If he
Speaker 1: they took ground fire, got hit, or heard any sort
Speaker 1: of ground fire, he would throw a smoke grenade out
Speaker 1: the back door. And when the smoke grenade hit, he
Speaker 1: would told me that they were taking ground fire. And
Speaker 1: I would roll in and I would be looking for
Speaker 1: that smoke grenade for the smoke that was emanating from
Speaker 1: the jungle. Once I saw it, then I would bring
Speaker 1: the tactical air the left hundreds or the fours or
Speaker 1: whatever it might have been down and I would direct
Speaker 1: them onto that the target where the ground fire was
Speaker 1: coming from. And that said One of the problems that
Speaker 1: you face was now, as a young four yer controller,
Speaker 1: I would end up diving through this spray, so this defoliation,
Speaker 1: this agent orange, and you know, you fly the mission
Speaker 1: and you'd come back and your land and now it
Speaker 1: was all over with. In your landing, the crew chief
Speaker 1: would come out and you know, your windscreen would be
Speaker 1: it's like an oil. It's all I can say. It's
Speaker 1: like a clear oil. It was just all over the windscreen,
Speaker 1: all of the airplane, all over you, your advisor, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean it was like you just took a bath
Speaker 1: in the stuff. That's that's how bad I could get. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, when you think about all the guys who
Speaker 1: had health problems, you haven't had anything prop up from this.
Speaker 1: Um Well, you know, no, the answer the answer is um.
Speaker 1: The answer is I've got some skin issues, you know.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, So yeah, something like eggs of the type stuff.
Speaker 1: But that's controllable with with various you know, saves and
Speaker 1: annointments or whatever. The biggest thing that I think I
Speaker 1: came away with was so like, I just got a
Speaker 1: coal here the other day, and with you, so my
Speaker 1: coals always tend to go to asthma and I never
Speaker 1: had asthma any lung problems until I came back from Vietnam.
Speaker 1: So that's that's kind of where that's about the only
Speaker 1: things not the good news state I had had all
Speaker 1: my kids, so so I wasn't so that was always
Speaker 1: a big danger when you went through or were involved
Speaker 1: in the aged orange stuff. Is you know, it could
Speaker 1: it could be passed onto your kids. So unfortunately that
Speaker 1: was all done with me. And so yeah, the stuff
Speaker 1: I had is I mean, is I considered kind of minor.
Speaker 1: It's manageable, Okay, yeah, because uh, I know that we
Speaker 1: gave some of that stuff to our South American allies
Speaker 1: around one of their jungle bases and I'm bennounced to
Speaker 1: us they had sprayed around to you know, cut down
Speaker 1: some of the the foliage around the base to give
Speaker 1: them a you know, a better security perimeter. And we
Speaker 1: took the troops we were training through that and I
Speaker 1: was the first guy into the jungle around there, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, from the waist down, I was
Speaker 1: covered with this oil stuff. So I walked everyone out
Speaker 1: of there and before and it was just a case
Speaker 1: of maybe twenty minutes before I could go back and
Speaker 1: peel off all the clothes because I knew right away
Speaker 1: exactly what I had gone through. All the hair on
Speaker 1: my legs and my feet just came right off, and
Speaker 1: my my skin turned purple. It was like a huge sunburn,
Speaker 1: and I just burned those clothes and boots. So and
Speaker 1: I was lucky that day because probably t M I
Speaker 1: was probably a little too much information there. But I
Speaker 1: never wore underwear down in in the topics, and I
Speaker 1: happen to be wearing it that day and glad I did. So, Uh,
Speaker 1: we'll just leave it at that. Well, those are the Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are the things that you do. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's we didn't know any better, right, Oh, nobody told
Speaker 1: us they had sprayed there either. I mean, well, obviously
Speaker 1: wouldn't have walked in there, but it happened. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm getting back to the forward air controller. What can
Speaker 1: you talk our listeners through what maybe a typical mission
Speaker 1: profile would be like, Yeah, well, um, so you had
Speaker 1: you had degrees of of problems of issues, let's say,
Speaker 1: and the worst thing you could be out doing visual
Speaker 1: reconnaissance so you could find maybe some bunkers or some
Speaker 1: trenches that and so you could bring in tactical air
Speaker 1: at least would be like F four's F one hunders
Speaker 1: a ones you name it, or even eight fours from
Speaker 1: the Navy, and you bring them in and they would
Speaker 1: drop their bombs or there, you know, on these particular targets.
Speaker 1: So if you've got um enemy positions, that's one level
Speaker 1: of a problematic. That's one level of problems. The top
Speaker 1: level problem that you ran into is when you had
Speaker 1: friendly troops in contact. When you had troops in contact,
Speaker 1: that's when that's when you started getting into the deep Kimshi.
Speaker 1: You know, this is where this is where you've got
Speaker 1: your friendly guys on the ground and they're fighting it
Speaker 1: out and slugging it out, uh, and you've got to
Speaker 1: come in and you've got to get the tactical air
Speaker 1: or the bombers to strafe or to drop napalm or
Speaker 1: to bomb uh near the friendly troops. And so you
Speaker 1: know what I always do did, and I think most
Speaker 1: of the facts did in order to try to avoid uh,
Speaker 1: you know, getting you know, getting any trendy troops hit
Speaker 1: by by our friendly air. What you do is you
Speaker 1: hold my position to hold directly over the top of
Speaker 1: the friendly troops that way, they fighters would have to
Speaker 1: come almost through me to get you know, to drop
Speaker 1: a bomber erratically. But you also try to make sure
Speaker 1: that that the fighters on there what they call run
Speaker 1: in heading. Uh. It was parallel to the line of
Speaker 1: troops that you had. So the friendly troops are lined
Speaker 1: up in a certain way, and you want to make
Speaker 1: sure that the bombers didn't kind of bomb perpendicular because
Speaker 1: that's how you can get a short run or something.
Speaker 1: So that was always a big, big concern for us.
Speaker 1: So long story short, UH, if I had troops in
Speaker 1: contact or a convoy convoy being ambushed, my job would
Speaker 1: be to get out there and get tactical air and
Speaker 1: support them. Now, if I couldn't get tactical air, then
Speaker 1: I was able to Like in the case in the
Speaker 1: in the book that I related, uh, I get after
Speaker 1: the Special Forces camp where the camp was being probed
Speaker 1: by enemy all night long, and I got out there
Speaker 1: in the morning and started adjusting artillery from some friendly
Speaker 1: you know, some friendly artillery batteries into the region around
Speaker 1: the airfield, around the Special Forces camp and into the jungle.
Speaker 1: So I that's the other thing you did to try
Speaker 1: to keep the bad guys away from the good guys, right,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know one of these missions around Special
Speaker 1: Forces Camp, you were awarded the the Flying Cross And
Speaker 1: I believe that was Thanksgiving nine. Can you fill our
Speaker 1: listeners in a little bit about that one. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was kind of the day of all days one't that?
Speaker 1: And when I first started writing this this book, by
Speaker 1: the way, as I mentioned the catalysts of the book,
Speaker 1: was was Brandon Webb and my wife and um and
Speaker 1: and I'll get to it in a minute here it
Speaker 1: was how I really got cranked into this book. But
Speaker 1: there was Thanksgiving Day and excuse me, don't mean the
Speaker 1: coff in the ear there. But I was called out
Speaker 1: to the camp. And as I headed out to the camp,
Speaker 1: um Special Forces camp was called duck Lop and it's
Speaker 1: about maybe maybe five clicks kilometers or so from the
Speaker 1: Cambodian border there in Vietnam. And as I got out there, um,
Speaker 1: one of the problems, one of the problems I had
Speaker 1: was the weather was really low, so I was having
Speaker 1: difficulty getting into the area where the camp was, which
Speaker 1: so I started trying to navigate visually because we didn't
Speaker 1: have any instruments. So you're you're doing it by looking
Speaker 1: at the topographic map and trying to navigate, looking at
Speaker 1: a jungle, you know, looking at road, trying to figure
Speaker 1: out where you were over the ground, and and you
Speaker 1: try to try to navigate myself and get into this
Speaker 1: region of this area where the Special Forces camp was.
Speaker 1: But the problem was the weather kept getting lower and
Speaker 1: lower and lower from the point where it was probably
Speaker 1: just a couple feet off the off the jungle that
Speaker 1: the overcast was. But I managed to I managed to
Speaker 1: find a kind of a depression, was a creek bed
Speaker 1: or a small river or something that was moving in
Speaker 1: the general direction I wanted to go. So I kind
Speaker 1: of got down. I was able to get down a
Speaker 1: little bit below the clouds, maybe fifty ft below the
Speaker 1: this overcast, and I was I decided I was going
Speaker 1: to drive, you know, time and distance. I was going
Speaker 1: to drive for about a minute two minutes, see if
Speaker 1: I could come up near this valley or anywhere near there,
Speaker 1: or get in a bit of weather conditions. So as
Speaker 1: I got down there, all of a sudden, I was
Speaker 1: getting ready to turn around. I was because I was
Speaker 1: thinking myself, this I'm not gonna make it. So just
Speaker 1: about that time I'll be darned if I didn't pop
Speaker 1: across a little road and the terrain below me kind
Speaker 1: of dropped a bit, and I was in the valley.
Speaker 1: I was not more than half a mile from this
Speaker 1: Special Forces camp. It took one so now here I am.
Speaker 1: And just about that time I popped in there, I
Speaker 1: guess at the NBA probably wasn't more than a minute
Speaker 1: or so, and they realized that there was an airplane
Speaker 1: flying around the camp, and they decided, let's let's take
Speaker 1: this guy out. So I started getting taking ground fire
Speaker 1: from the two of these uh um, you know, but
Speaker 1: it's twelve point seven million. It's a fifty one caliber
Speaker 1: any aircraft kind of the the Russians built in the
Speaker 1: Chinese everybody uses in those days. Anyway, that the these
Speaker 1: two twelve sevens opened up, I mean one from near
Speaker 1: the airfield and in one behind me near the road
Speaker 1: that I just crossed, and a couple of those two
Speaker 1: anti aircraft weapons which they were firing green traces, so
Speaker 1: you can watch them as they came up at you.
Speaker 1: And then a couple that with the fact that you've
Speaker 1: got a bunch of guys down there. I don't know
Speaker 1: what it was a platoon or you know, a few
Speaker 1: squads or whatever it was around the area, and they're
Speaker 1: all shooting at you with a K forty seven. So
Speaker 1: it's uh and you can hear it. You could hear
Speaker 1: the A K s, but you could see the anti
Speaker 1: aircraft guns, so you knew what you were into. And
Speaker 1: all you could do was start cross controlling the airplane,
Speaker 1: jink and moving the airplane around. And by the way,
Speaker 1: jinking is just means just constantly turning the airplane to
Speaker 1: keep from getting hit. So I did that for a while.
Speaker 1: And while I was doing that, I was adjusting artillery
Speaker 1: onto the onto the sites around the near the camp,
Speaker 1: around the airfield and things like that. And then right
Speaker 1: about that time, the talk over there at the at
Speaker 1: the camp call me and says, hey, we've got a
Speaker 1: couple of helicopters and gun ships coming in, and they
Speaker 1: would you know, they're gonna be able to help you
Speaker 1: out here, and they're gonna suppress some of the anti
Speaker 1: aircraft fire and some of the small arms. So they
Speaker 1: came flying in and I gave him a quick griefing
Speaker 1: about the problems that I was having with the anti
Speaker 1: aircraft and where the guns were located, and I told him,
Speaker 1: I said, don't fly in that area, fly over in
Speaker 1: this area. But the young ward officers, you know, they
Speaker 1: were they were just gung ho and and a great
Speaker 1: bunch of kids. They took off, and the first number
Speaker 1: one guy was I forget. He was a wolf pack.
Speaker 1: I think it was called wolf pack. He ends up
Speaker 1: strafing on his initial run in with rockets and machine guns,
Speaker 1: and I'll be darn if he didn't get shot down
Speaker 1: right in front of me. I mean, he isn't. He
Speaker 1: isn't more than a few hundred yards in front of
Speaker 1: me as he's going in, and he makes a kind
Speaker 1: of a quick right hand turn and auto rotates and
Speaker 1: kind of crash lands right right below me. So there
Speaker 1: I was with now a helicopter crew on the ground.
Speaker 1: I've got another helicopter behind me, and he's he wants
Speaker 1: to get in and get these kids out of there.
Speaker 1: And so and I'm talking to the talk and I'm
Speaker 1: talking about twenty five people. You know, you know, we've
Speaker 1: gotta we gotta get some help in here to get
Speaker 1: these folks out. And so for the next maybe twenty
Speaker 1: or so minutes, and we decided, how are we going
Speaker 1: to get these guys out. In the meantime, the guys
Speaker 1: on the ground, Steve had jumped out of their chopper.
Speaker 1: There are four of them, polit polit there was two gunners,
Speaker 1: and they jumped out, and He's took up defensive positions
Speaker 1: around the chopper. And then it didn't take them long.
Speaker 1: And then I went in and I I kind of
Speaker 1: dropped my A R fifteen out the side window, and
Speaker 1: I started shooting this tree line that was out to
Speaker 1: their west. And so then now they knew where the
Speaker 1: enemy bad guys were. They were in the trenches under
Speaker 1: the trees. And so they two guys, a doorgun and
Speaker 1: the pilot are treated and all four of them got
Speaker 1: into a ditch on the kind of on the other
Speaker 1: side of the helicopter. And meantime, I'm talking to the
Speaker 1: second helicopter and he's going to go and make a
Speaker 1: kind of a dash and pick up of this four
Speaker 1: guys on the ground. So I said, before you do that,
Speaker 1: I said, what I'll do is I'll roll in ahead
Speaker 1: of you. I'll unloaded some rockets. You know, I had
Speaker 1: a couple of White Foster's rockets left. I'll unload those
Speaker 1: and then I'll swing around and lead you back in,
Speaker 1: and I'll just try to keep their heads done by,
Speaker 1: you know, unloading out the side of the side window
Speaker 1: of my airplane with my A R fifteen. So I'm
Speaker 1: going in, um maybe a couple hundred feet above the ground,
Speaker 1: and I'm as I'm flying in, shooting out the side
Speaker 1: of the airplane, UH number two helicopter wolf pack. The
Speaker 1: number two guy, he comes swooping in. He takes some hits,
Speaker 1: but he's okay, still fliable, and he lands. But four
Speaker 1: guys jumped into his helicopter, and then they got the
Speaker 1: heck out of there right now. And they as they
Speaker 1: pulled off and they crossed the road, they crossed right
Speaker 1: over the top of the fifty at twelve point seven
Speaker 1: aircraft gun and but that the guy couldn't get a
Speaker 1: beat on him. So anyway, they pulled off and headed
Speaker 1: back towards Bammy to It, which was up maybe minutes
Speaker 1: up the road. I then swung off and I called
Speaker 1: it a day because I've been up to fly around
Speaker 1: for over four and a half hours and plane and
Speaker 1: so was supposed to fly for four and a half hours.
Speaker 1: We got much calf and so we were puddling off
Speaker 1: and I'm heading back and next thing I know, because
Speaker 1: the helicopter was faster than my bird dog, I'm climb
Speaker 1: it up and here comes these these guys were all
Speaker 1: eight of them now on this shot up second helicopter,
Speaker 1: and they pull up alongside of me, giving me the
Speaker 1: thumbs up. It was, it was, it was all you
Speaker 1: could ask for. You knew where they were fine, they
Speaker 1: were all good. And they made it back, and they
Speaker 1: made it back to the you know, back to Bammy
Speaker 1: to It, and I managed to get climb up to
Speaker 1: about a thousand feet and it was putting along for
Speaker 1: a Bammy to It and having leaned the airplane out
Speaker 1: as much as I could, trying to save as much
Speaker 1: gas as I could. And anyway, I got as the
Speaker 1: runaway there at Bammy Too had disparted into my nose
Speaker 1: just somebody dropped full flaps, pointed the nose over and
Speaker 1: brought you brought it back to idle, and I just
Speaker 1: headed for the end of the runway. I land the airplane,
Speaker 1: I turned off in the first invetment, which is our revetments.
Speaker 1: We're going to park the airplane, and ran out of gas.
Speaker 1: I know in reading that story in the book, I
Speaker 1: can um. I can tell you I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I first of all, I thought it was amazing that
Speaker 1: the helicopter was faster than your plane and where the
Speaker 1: guys pulled up beside you and we're waving to you
Speaker 1: and giving you the thumbs up. And then then your
Speaker 1: plane runs out of gas as soon as you basically
Speaker 1: hit the ground, which is like, that's not a lot
Speaker 1: of leeway in that, you know scenario. But you did
Speaker 1: what you had to do, and you you hung out
Speaker 1: on target there for the entire the entire time, and
Speaker 1: you said you had I got four and a half
Speaker 1: hour lawyer time. I think that was yeah, as I recalled,
Speaker 1: the old one had a it had you know, four
Speaker 1: and a half hours, five hour or something like that.
Speaker 1: But you know, we got a lot of stuff hanging
Speaker 1: off of it, you getting rockets and you know, things
Speaker 1: like that. So so you're right around four and a
Speaker 1: half hours was supposed to be about the amount of
Speaker 1: time he had on to laiter. And so what you
Speaker 1: would do is I was always tell, you know, taught
Speaker 1: by some of those guys that I flew the one
Speaker 1: with and um and and guys, and I threw the
Speaker 1: sea forty seven with things like that. You know, they
Speaker 1: always they always took care of their engines. They always
Speaker 1: leaned it out. You didn't want to run too rich.
Speaker 1: So I was always in the habit of kind of
Speaker 1: leaning out, um, you know, the you know, the engine,
Speaker 1: so that I could get as much time and distance
Speaker 1: and laid time I thought the plain as I could.
Speaker 1: That's interesting because you know when I read that, I
Speaker 1: was like, wow, you talked about because a lot of
Speaker 1: times you hear pilots say, well, I have built in reserve,
Speaker 1: but then that was long gone by that time, so yeah,
Speaker 1: there was nothing left now, you know. I you know,
Speaker 1: reading in the book, and I don't want to give
Speaker 1: too much away because we want our readers and listeners
Speaker 1: to to purchase this. Um did you have I mean,
Speaker 1: you had a lot of interaction via the radio talking
Speaker 1: to these Special Forces camps. Did you ever actually get
Speaker 1: to meet some of these guys after the fact, after
Speaker 1: you've helped them out? Oh? Yeah, absolutely. A matter of fact,
Speaker 1: I think there's a picture in the book. Um, excuse me,
Speaker 1: got that cough again. There's a picture in the book
Speaker 1: of I think it was some time and I want
Speaker 1: to say it was January of seventy when something the
Speaker 1: Special Forces guys from the boot Pray Special Forces Camp,
Speaker 1: which was up even closer to the Cambodian border than
Speaker 1: the Duke Lap was. But um, you guys, if you've
Speaker 1: ever heard of Firebase Kate M, Firebase Kate was kind
Speaker 1: of a famous because the Special Forces guy, his name
Speaker 1: was all Breck he he uh had to escape in
Speaker 1: evade with his entire group off of this firebase and
Speaker 1: made his way back to to the boot Prank Special
Speaker 1: Forces camp. And so the guys at Boo Prank we
Speaker 1: supported them through. I think it was October November September
Speaker 1: October November of sixty nine, and so excuse me, the
Speaker 1: seventy January seventy we uh they were down at the
Speaker 1: Ganeau compound where I was stationed. Anyways, Um what happened
Speaker 1: was they came in, we had like a little party
Speaker 1: and they gave us a plaque, which I've got somewhere around.
Speaker 1: I gets at my house up in Reno, and the
Speaker 1: plaques says, you know, hey, thanks for saving our butts
Speaker 1: and you know, and I think the plaques says something
Speaker 1: to quote from someone that says, you've never really lived
Speaker 1: to you almost died. For those who uh some about
Speaker 1: my life, you know, the protective will never know what
Speaker 1: it's like to go through and sort of here is that.
Speaker 1: My wife's got it here so I can if I
Speaker 1: can read it, it says, yeah, yeah, so it's Gottain, Mike, Leonard,
Speaker 1: duck Lap and bou Prang Team's sixty October duck Lap.
Speaker 1: It says you've never really lived to you've almost died
Speaker 1: for those who have fucked. Life has a flavor the
Speaker 1: protective will never taste. And it was kind of cool
Speaker 1: a little plaque that gave it's got SUPI on its Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great. I want you know, and I love stories
Speaker 1: where some crazy things and strange things, humorous things can
Speaker 1: happen even in the most series of circumstances. And there
Speaker 1: was one in your book that I cracked up laughing
Speaker 1: because it's like you saw, uh, you know, nv A
Speaker 1: soldiers crossing an open field, so you're getting ready to
Speaker 1: call in a tactical as strike, and then then you
Speaker 1: noticed they started walking on their hands. Yeah, that that
Speaker 1: was that was exhilarating, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: it became embarrassing. You know. That's that's how that would uh.
Speaker 1: And there's a little anecdote I don't know if I
Speaker 1: put in the book, but it's it's kind of cute.
Speaker 1: So the situation was, I think it was like nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy and I was up around boot Prang and I
Speaker 1: was just doing some visual reconsts work, flying around the jumble,
Speaker 1: and um, I looked. I looked down at this kind
Speaker 1: of the savannah grass area and I see these I
Speaker 1: see these NBA troops and they're running across this field
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, what the hell you know? I just
Speaker 1: I reached out to over my VHF radio called back
Speaker 1: to my command post. I said, hey, give me some
Speaker 1: tag here, I said, I get troops in the open,
Speaker 1: And so I decided to dive in and you know,
Speaker 1: just take a look at it. I went down and
Speaker 1: as I was getting closer to him, I realized that
Speaker 1: these guys were kind of running on all four as
Speaker 1: opposed to running on just two legs. And they got closer,
Speaker 1: I realized it was a herd of baboon. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if that's the right stature. There were a bunch
Speaker 1: of baboon, and so I thought, oh, so I pulled
Speaker 1: back off and said, forget about it. You know, we're
Speaker 1: not gonna be blowing up a bunch of poor animals.
Speaker 1: So so they canceled the flight. And so what happened
Speaker 1: was we're going to fast forward to like nineteen I
Speaker 1: think it was six and I was back in Vietnam,
Speaker 1: and I had an agent and his sister was riding
Speaker 1: with my wife and I and we were leaving Saigon
Speaker 1: and we're going up through the Bottle Lock, which is
Speaker 1: where I was originally stationed, and then up to the lot,
Speaker 1: and we're going to spend the weekend up at the
Speaker 1: lot in the central Highlands. It's it's a beautiful location.
Speaker 1: And as we went through Baulock, I was relating the
Speaker 1: story to the young Vietnamese woman who was our agents sister,
Speaker 1: and I said, you know, explain the story about the
Speaker 1: bab boon. She says, oh, we don't. We don't have
Speaker 1: any babboon in Vietnam. And I went, I said, well,
Speaker 1: yes you do. I mean I saw him, I was,
Speaker 1: I mean I always shot him up. Oh no, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think we have any baboon in Vietnam. And Steve,
Speaker 1: it was almost like somebody said, hey, que the baboon
Speaker 1: because across in front of the car, as we all,
Speaker 1: the driver, the agents, the gal Linda, we all see
Speaker 1: this big baboon run right across in front of the car.
Speaker 1: It was it was like, see, I told you I
Speaker 1: knew there was a baboon here. He must have been,
Speaker 1: you know, monitoring the conversation and he was like, okay,
Speaker 1: time to show this woman we do live here. The
Speaker 1: baboon soom um. And uh you flew now, you flew
Speaker 1: bird dogs in Vietnam, and then you transition to the
Speaker 1: largest aircraft in the Air Force inventory, the C five.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine what that was like after flying bird dogs,
Speaker 1: you know basically but yeah, I mean you talked about
Speaker 1: I mean, there wasn't a lot of avionics on there.
Speaker 1: There was no aiming points for your rockets you talked about.
Speaker 1: There was just basically a little welded pull on the
Speaker 1: calling and then you had grease pencil where you kind
Speaker 1: of did your marketings. Transitioning that to a C five
Speaker 1: had to have been like flying the Space Shuttle, I guess.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so that so it that was a really
Speaker 1: interesting I thought I always suck at some some you
Speaker 1: know satus that the Air Force Personnel Center and decided,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna, you know, we're just gonna do this to
Speaker 1: this poor guy. You know, We're gonna take him out
Speaker 1: of the smallest airplane in the mentor and put him
Speaker 1: in the at the time, the largest airplane in the world.
Speaker 1: Let's see if you can transition, you know, laugh. But
Speaker 1: what happens is, UM I got assigned to Charleston Air
Speaker 1: Force Base in South Carolina, and I was. I had
Speaker 1: to go through the what they called the training center
Speaker 1: at at Oklahoma, at Alphas, Oklahoma, and they put me
Speaker 1: in a class with all uh initial cabre people, meaning
Speaker 1: these were the first pilots to actually be flying this airplane.
Speaker 1: And I was, I was in this class of guys
Speaker 1: that were all, you know, high time multi engine pilots.
Speaker 1: And here I am. I'm coming out of Vietnam and
Speaker 1: my experiences and multi engine receipt the old Hockey constellation
Speaker 1: days and see forty seven, and now I'm flying and
Speaker 1: a bird dog of course, smaller plan and now I'm
Speaker 1: going to be going to multi engine jet, not just
Speaker 1: multi engine jet, but the biggest multange and jet. So
Speaker 1: so there I was, UH and it was a it
Speaker 1: was a real interesting time. Uh. To be quite frank
Speaker 1: with you, the guy that I as instructor part of
Speaker 1: it at Sea five School in Alpice, his name was Johnson.
Speaker 1: He he was as he was just so calm, cool
Speaker 1: and collected. He simply said to me, you know, this
Speaker 1: is no different then flying the other playing the old
Speaker 1: one bird dog, he says. The only differences your site
Speaker 1: picture is going to change me your landing picture, meaning
Speaker 1: when you when the bird dog, you might be looking
Speaker 1: out to your left and right front as you land,
Speaker 1: he says. When you land a big airplane like this,
Speaker 1: your thirty thirty thirty five ft in the air when
Speaker 1: you touchdown, he says, And so when you go into
Speaker 1: the flare and you go to land, keep your vision
Speaker 1: at the other end of the runway because that's the
Speaker 1: only way you're gonna be able to judge the closure
Speaker 1: rate of the europlane onto the runway. Once. Once I
Speaker 1: kind of got that to my my thick skull, it
Speaker 1: became just another airplane. Mm hmm. Yeah. Having lived down
Speaker 1: in Charleston after my army days were over, as I
Speaker 1: as I told you offline, um, I lived right near
Speaker 1: the ends of the runway down there, and watching those
Speaker 1: big ones come in our condo at the time was
Speaker 1: right there, and it's amazing how big those things are.
Speaker 1: I got to fly on one, but you know, watching
Speaker 1: them from the ground it's always amazing because they don't
Speaker 1: even look like they're moving. They're so big and it
Speaker 1: as you you mentioned in the book, I think our
Speaker 1: listeners will get a kick out of the nickname you
Speaker 1: guys gave it. Yeah, we we have. We call it
Speaker 1: the aluminium overcast because it looked like it was just
Speaker 1: this huge sheet piece of sheet metal that hung over
Speaker 1: this over your above in the sky. It was amazing. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm you know, with all the years it's in thousands
Speaker 1: of hours you had flying, is there one experience that
Speaker 1: probably you chalk up as your most fun uh, of
Speaker 1: all the airplanes that flew um. Yeah, the as far
Speaker 1: as this basic flying, you there was no way you
Speaker 1: could beat the flying you did in Vietnam. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you took away the war, he took away all
Speaker 1: the people trying to kill you and you're trying to
Speaker 1: kill them. You took all that away. That kind of flying,
Speaker 1: that sea the pants flying was about as good as
Speaker 1: it gets. It's you and the airplane and you're on
Speaker 1: your own and you love that. When you get into
Speaker 1: Crewe airplanes, then you've got a bunch of their folks
Speaker 1: that are helping you, and you're coordinating things constantly, and
Speaker 1: so it's a different it's a kind of a different
Speaker 1: ball game. But as far as puriflying, you couldn't beat
Speaker 1: the bird dog, excellent. And then after your military career
Speaker 1: was over, you have the opportunity to travel with your
Speaker 1: wife back to Vietnam and you actually got to visit
Speaker 1: some of the places, um that you had been stationed in.
Speaker 1: What was that like? I mean, you know, and and
Speaker 1: again as as we talked offline before the podcast began,
Speaker 1: you know, I had mentioned to you I had spoken
Speaker 1: with several veterans from the Vietnam War and they all
Speaker 1: said the same thing that it's such a gorgeous country.
Speaker 1: If there hadn't been a war there back in the
Speaker 1: time when they were there in the you know, sixties
Speaker 1: and early seventies, that it would have been a tremendous
Speaker 1: place to visit. What was it like to go back?
Speaker 1: Was there a lot of conflicting emotions there? You know,
Speaker 1: as a very good questions even and the the fact
Speaker 1: is that I was very, very lucky to be able
Speaker 1: to go back, as a lot of people didn't want
Speaker 1: to go back because of the trauma. I I kind
Speaker 1: of when it comes to things like PTSD in the trauma,
Speaker 1: I tend to want to face it kind of head on.
Speaker 1: I don't want to bury things. And so I had
Speaker 1: an opportunity with my company excuse me, to go back
Speaker 1: and UM, but I decided that probably near on the
Speaker 1: side of caution, I would take my wife with me.
Speaker 1: So she was the She was actually the person that
Speaker 1: kind of softened the issues and the edges of the
Speaker 1: travels back there in six mm. Hm, that's great. And
Speaker 1: you know the way you described your wife, Um in
Speaker 1: different parts of the book, of how she was supportive
Speaker 1: to the point of going to bath for you. And
Speaker 1: again we don't give up too much of the book,
Speaker 1: sounds like a very strong lady. Oh my god, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't believe it. But yeah, you know, when we went
Speaker 1: back into Vietnam, it was interesting. Um. She was. I
Speaker 1: think she was blown away even more than I was
Speaker 1: because she she really got into the culture and by
Speaker 1: the way, the country, as you said, just magnificent, beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautiful jungles and mountains, and it's just a marvelous place.
Speaker 1: The people, I swear to God, you know, if it
Speaker 1: weren't for the war, the people are wonderful. They're they
Speaker 1: were one of the interesting stories. We came back into
Speaker 1: through customs and on our first trip in and um,
Speaker 1: when I got to when we got to the customs
Speaker 1: at the Saigon airport, they called Ocheta city. Now. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we got there and we were going to customers, and
Speaker 1: the customs guy said something in Vietnamese too, give me
Speaker 1: to my translator. And the translator said, they want to
Speaker 1: know if you're Russian. And my wife says, nope, we're American.
Speaker 1: And he looked and he went and like surprised, and
Speaker 1: and I was like, everybody in the whole place Americans.
Speaker 1: They're back, Yeah we can. Where have you been? So
Speaker 1: they were very warm, very cordial. We just the people
Speaker 1: themselves were just they couldn't have been just any nicer.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Um, you know. And and I've heard from
Speaker 1: different people who have traveled there from one reason or another,
Speaker 1: that there there is no animosity lingering there, even amongst
Speaker 1: the Vietnamese veterans who who fought against our guys. Now
Speaker 1: they're you know, uh, it would be a good place
Speaker 1: to go and perhaps meant some fences there. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know the biggest, the biggest fence that anybody in
Speaker 1: the military has to men is the one that exists
Speaker 1: in their minds. Okay, it's because you you you basically
Speaker 1: have compartmentalized the trauma of being in combat in that environment.
Speaker 1: So it's really what once you can kind of extend
Speaker 1: yourself beyond that, you'll find that excuse me, former former
Speaker 1: enemies can become friendly. Excuse me for the coughing on,
Speaker 1: just suck sucking at a cough drop here. But the
Speaker 1: people you know, they're friends and there they can be colleague, colleagues, compatriots.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be the animosity that you left
Speaker 1: there with. That's a great point. So, Mike, we don't
Speaker 1: want to take too much of your well, I was
Speaker 1: gonna say afternoon. It's afternoon here on the East coast,
Speaker 1: but it's your morning there in California on the West coast.
Speaker 1: We want to thank you for being here, but we
Speaker 1: want to again our listeners and our readers. The title
Speaker 1: of the book is an American Combat Bird Dog Pilot,
Speaker 1: and Um explain to our listeners where they can find
Speaker 1: this and how they can purchase this book, and we
Speaker 1: definitely encourage all of our readers to do that. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks Steve, And so obviously you can go on Amazon.
Speaker 1: It's on Amazon right now under books under Mike Leonard
Speaker 1: or as you said, an American Combat Bird Dog Pilot,
Speaker 1: or I think you can go through software dot com
Speaker 1: because softwarep dot com was, you know, the publishing side
Speaker 1: of that software up did all the all the hard work,
Speaker 1: all the heavy lifting. They're the ones that edited it,
Speaker 1: put it together. I mean, it was just brilliant. And
Speaker 1: to those people, and by the way, I'm just one
Speaker 1: old veteran, but I'll tell you there's thousands of people
Speaker 1: out there with stories justice Harry just as doing just
Speaker 1: as bad as mine, and I would encourage those people
Speaker 1: that have, you know, if for no other reason, write
Speaker 1: your story down for your project, if your grandkids, your kids,
Speaker 1: and oh, by the way, when you put it together,
Speaker 1: contacts off rep and you know, and they'll take care
Speaker 1: of you. They'll get this thing published and you know,
Speaker 1: like they did for me, I can't thank them enough.
Speaker 1: Well that's great, and uh, you know you mentioned Brandon
Speaker 1: Webb earlier in the podcast, and that's uh soft Reps
Speaker 1: owner and publishers. So it was it was very neat
Speaker 1: that you were able to you know, become friends with
Speaker 1: Brandon and he was instrumental in getting this published. And
Speaker 1: and again like, thank you for taking the time with
Speaker 1: us today. We really appreciate it. You're welcome, You're welcome, Stephen.
Speaker 1: May I just interject one last question. My wife is
Speaker 1: said my my one of my granddaughters just put out,
Speaker 1: you know, Grandpa, we're so proud of you. So the
Speaker 1: message to all those people who can conceived of doing
Speaker 1: this is, you know, do it. See your kids and
Speaker 1: grandkids because they will they need to know who you are,
Speaker 1: who you are, and it's it's leaving a legacy. So
Speaker 1: and thank you again for taking the time to interview me.
Speaker 1: Oh it was our pleasure. But before we go, as always,
Speaker 1: we have to read our little uh piece on our
Speaker 1: ad here. If you want to get soft Reap on
Speaker 1: your phone, download our free mobile app and get easy
Speaker 1: access to our articles, podcasts, gary views, all perfectly formated
Speaker 1: to your device. Well he subscribed the softwarep dot Comedy
Speaker 1: get access to all our library of e books such
Speaker 1: as this book. Here and are exclusive team reforms in
Speaker 1: content available on all your Apple and Android devices. We
Speaker 1: want to thank our guest today, Mike Leonard. Uh. He
Speaker 1: has a tremendous book out there. We encourage all our
Speaker 1: readers and listeners to go out there and downloaded off
Speaker 1: a soft Rep or you can buy a copy and
Speaker 1: UH you'll be definitely entertained. It's a great story and
Speaker 1: he had a great story to tell. He's lived a
Speaker 1: very very interesting life and we've only glossed over some
Speaker 1: of the highlights here in the hour that we had
Speaker 1: for the podcast, but we could have gone much much deeper.
Speaker 1: So Mike, once again, thank you for taking the time
Speaker 1: with us this uh this afternoon, and good luck with
Speaker 1: the book sales, and we hope to do this again
Speaker 1: real soon. He will whenever you want. Just give me
Speaker 1: a call, Steve. All right, thanks again and for all
Speaker 1: of us here it's soft Rep. We'll be back with
Speaker 1: another podcast in the very near future. You've been listening
Speaker 1: to self red Lydia m