Fred, I wonder if you could tell me first of all when you got to Vietnam [incomprehensible] at this point. When you got to Vietnam, what year was it and what were you actually doing?

I arrived in Vietnam, I think uh, in July of 1970. I'd finished flight school in June. In June we had a month's leave. I went up and ah deposited my family ah with my father and mother-in-law up in New York and flew over to Vietnam and got there and went into the processing center. I think it was ah in Long Binh. As a pilot. I had been, finished flight school and ah was ready to fly. I had no other experience outside of flight school.

Now this was 1970. There'd been a lot of ah protest and Americans seemed to be a bit split about the war. How did you feel about actually going to Vietnam? Did you want to go to Vietnam?

Oh, I g—I guess my background is a little different than, than some of the, a, the people who were protesting the war. My father was a retired army officer. I always felt ah and I think probably through my, my family background, an obligation to ah, ah serve in the military and serve my country. I was married at the time. I had two children when I went in. Ahm. I was in ROTC in college. I signed up. I volunteered for that, and when ah I went into the army, I volunteered ah as an infantry officer. I volunteered for jump school and I volunteered for ranger school, and I volunteered for flight school and I knew I was going, and I felt that it was part of my obligation to this country.

What did you actually do when you got th—when you got to Vietnam? What was your job?

I was initially ahm a platoon leader in a, in an in an air cav unit. We, I was with the Americal Division out of, out of Chu Lai. We ah, there was a 123rd Aviation Battalion B Company. Called ourselves the War Lords.

What did you actually do? Wha—wha—what sort of missions were you [incomprehensible] an attack mission?

No, well, a, a cav unit, or, or, or a is basically made up of ah it has [incomprehensible] or light observation helicopters which, and we had the [incomprehensible] model. It has hueys or slicks which carry ah troops. We had our own infantry, a platoon of infantry. Really, a heavy platoon. It probably had maybe fifty guys as opposed to a regular platoon. And, we had gun ships, Cobra gun ships. And, our basic mission was to go out and fly ah what we call boxes, which were grid squares on a map and go out and do a VR, visual reconnaissance, of that box.

And, we were, we were kind of performing two missions. One was to fill the gap as the American units withdrew from the field, which they were doing at that time and secondly, ah, to, to ah, actua1ly do visual reconnaissance to find out if there was anything in these, in these areas where perhaps we didn't have American units, cause we did quite a bit of flying out west, as a, as, as, as opposed to ah or in conjunction with flying in the areas where we had pulled American units out of.

And, thh, it's kind of interesting way we flew, what we did is we would take the ah the [incomprehensible], the light, the small bird, fly it at tree top level from air speed at anywhere's from zero to 120 knots and ah just peek out the aircraft and take a look and see if you could see anything. And, basically, try to, to, to draw fire, which normally we were very successful because what would happen at the same time ah we saw them, they saw us and they realized ah what we were. They could see the gun ships. They knew, you know, they knew our tactics as well as we knew theirs and ah they would, they would open up and then the Cobras would roll in and create ah ah gun ship cover so that the, the small bird could break off somewheres and then when we, uh, worked the area out with ah with ordinance then we would put in our infantry, which we called our Blues, we'd put the Blues down and let them take a look at what, first do a battle damage assessment of what we'd done and also take a look at what we might have found. Ah. If there were either ah arms cachets, food cachets ah ah prisoners of war or even KIAs, you know, depending on wha—what was down there. Or, or any kind of ah, ah intelligence ah information that we could gather.

Tell me what it was like as you went out on action, what was it like when you saw the enemy, and how did you see them and how did you deal with them? I wonder if you can re-live in, in your mind one of those missions?

The good ones or the bad ones? (chuckles) Ah.

Tell me about a good one.

I, I, I found like uh, and I'm sure many of the other pilots, when Charlie wanted to fight, the NVA and the VC, ah, there were two situations that normally we, we encountered. One was where we caught them off guard, and ah that was usually what we called a good situation, because what we would be able to do was ah he was either in an open field or in a, a barely ah, ah, secured bunker area or hooches or whatever it was, and ah, ah we would, I would have to say pretty much demolish them, and it was very one-sided. Ahm. And, you know, you asked me how I felt about it. I felt it was my job. I, I really didn't have any deep guilt feelings about it. They were shooting at us. We were shooting back and uh, that was it.

Now the other situation would be where ahh VC and NVA, they were ready for us. And, then it was very, to me, it was very harrowing. Ah. You're talking about, down south very rarely, I, I never saw anything bigger than a 51 calibers, but that's certainly big enough to do in any kind of helicopter that we had. And, ah, when you start seeing 51's fla, tracers coming up at you, ah, it's very scary, and when you see a bird next to you go down, or you go down yourself ah that's very scary because normally when an aircraft gets hit, it doesn't necessarily mean that the, the pilots are hit, but it, it ah it means that the aircraft lose, you lose control of the aircraft, and it ah you, you just crash. Hopefully, a control crash. But that was normally what happened and that (breathes deeply) I guess, your insides are, you're just tensed up. I guess the word would be your pucker factor tightened very tight and scary.

In a way, in many respects the war as being seen as sort of winding down on [inaudible]...How did you actually feel? Did you feel your time there was a success? As far as you were concerned do regard it as a success? Do you think things were going well, as far as you were concerned with your units?

It's a di, I'm trying to put myself back in the time when you're talking about because I think now having hindsight, I might feel a little bit differently. I thought we were very successful with what we did. Ah. The, the ah aviation units in general had a very high esprit de corps. The morale was good. Ah. We enjoyed what we did and, and I, part of it I think is due to the fact of the logistics of being a pilot. If you go out and you fly your mission every day and you take, you know, very precarious chances, but it, you know, you come back home, you have a, a, a comfortable hooch. It might be air conditioned. You've got an officers club across the street where you can get loaded every night and kind of forget about the world. Ahm.

And, and that kind of made, iiit was almost like a nine to five job. I mean if I could put that kind of parallel. Go out and fight. Come back and, and live almost the way you lived in the States. I mean, we weren't except for the, for, you know, the lack of loved ones around, we really didn't live that badly. So, ahm, I kind of lost my train of thought here. Ah, I’m sorry.

You, you, you did fine. You were telling me whether you thought it was a success or a failure.

Let me, I'd like to say some more about that. Ah. (clears throat) As the units pulled back, as the American units pulled back and we picked up that responsibility, you know, I never was in a situation where we didn't really dominate ahm, ah, the, the, the outcomes. I mean, we had some precarious situations and we lost some birds and, and we lost some people, but we always won. I mean we ehh, so to me, we were very successful. But I ahm as I think of it now, I don't know what we won. We won a, a, a, box on a map where the next day we left it and we never came back maybe. But, it, but every time we we were engaged in that type of an operation, we won.

What frustrations did you have as far as doing your, your work? Were there frustrations? Were there things you couldn't do that you wanted to do as far as fighting the war was concerned? For you in the field?

Well, I think, for me, yes and I think for many other pilots. I mean there were ah, restricted areas. There were areas where you weren't supposed to fly over. There were areas where ah if you took fire, you had to call back maybe all the way back to the commanding general of the division to get permission to fight to ah fire back. And, to me that was absurd. We're fighting a war. Somebody's shooting at you, you turn around and you shoot back and you kill 'em, and I, they're gonna kill you. To me, it was very basic.

Ah. There were areas south of Chu Lai, the My Lai area that was a completely restricted area. And, and, and the VC , NVA knew it too. They damn infested the area once we, once they put a restriction on it, and we would take fire and we couldn't fire back. There were areas ah, ehhh, all over I Corps where you had to get special permission before you were able to engage a target, and ah, you know, you, with the type of of a, not aggression, I don't think the right word, but the spirit that we had and, and, and the, the willingness to go out and do it.

You know, when you encounter those types of situations they were very frustrating cause you knew you had the opportunity to, to perhaps ah, I don't, ehh, I'd say this wrong. You had the opportunity to, to, to do what you felt your mission was. Not necessarily to kill people but to go out an, an, and subdue the enemy and you couldn't do it. It...very, very frustrating.

Why were these frustrations? What were they about as far as you were concerned?

Well, you know, you ask, this is more of a value judgment. Ah. They were political in nature obviously. I mean the whole, you know, basically, the way we fought the war was political. Who fights a war where you're not allowed to have an offense or win, but, ah you know, they were due to the situation that we had back in the US with ah, with the My Lai, the whole My Lai incident and ah and I think that incident and that area was what generated quite a few other restrictions that we had because I think that the senior military people were very sensitive to the adverse publicity we could get ah in areas where we might have to do uh severe military action and, and perhaps kill people that we weren't sure whether they were good or bad guys.

Was it always a problem not knowing who were the good or the bad guys, or was it for you not a problem cause you were facing, you saw them and they'd fire back, or but who was the enemy? Who was the enemy as far as you were concerned?

I, as pilots, I don't think we had as much of the frustration as the, as the infantry, the ground guys did.

Sorry. We just ran out of film. Ten-minute run of film.

You were you've been telling me, Frank, about the frustrations of not being able to, basically, to go after the enemy, and I wonder if you've got any particular example which you could...

It's a little... it, it, it let me explain to you what happened in... it, it, it was one where we went at the enemy, and we, and we shouldn't have, and, and in the My Lai area, uh, just to the- I guess it would be the east of the My Lai area- was what we had was the, uh, uh, target range, where we would take the Cobras down and test fire the rockets, and then the mini guns, whatever else we had; and one time we were down, we were flying down there to do some test firing, and we saw some VC NVA in the open, with weapons, and we... they fired at us, we rolled in... now, this is a no fire area... we rolled in, and we just blew 'em away.

Now, we had a problem, because it was a no fire area, and we had some KIAs, and we needed some weapons, and we put the infantry down on the ground, we took the slicks and put the guys down on the ground, and they couldn't find any weapons. Now they were there, there was no doubt, because they fired on us, but the frustration was that we knew that if we reported these KIAs without these weapons, we would be in a lot of trouble.

And we must have spent two and a half hours, and we had guys down there with shovels digging through the bunkers that collapsed when we, when we engaged the targets, and finally they found one old SKS down there, brought it back on the bird, so that we could say, We were fired on, we had no choice, we had to fire back, and therefore not get in any trouble; but this was the type of... you know, here, here's somebody shooting at you, and here's a pilot who, who returns fire on a target of acquisition, and he should have, and the next thing you know, he's worried about whether or not the guy had a weapon so that he doesn't get himself in trouble for doing what he was supposed to do, which is fight, and win a war. So, uh, you know, that basically is, I think, a good portrayal of what I'm talking about.

Was it often you had this sort of frustration? How often did this frustration come about? Two or three times during the tour, or regularly?

Regularly. Absolutely regularly. I mean, every box we ever went into, if it had a restricted area, it had to be cleared before we could... we could do anything with it, and if we were in there and we, and we... for instance, flying from point A to point B, anytime you engaged a potential target, you had to make sure that it wasn't a restricted area, I mean, that was with us constantly; every pilot that I at least in I Corps, and I would suspect in other areas too, had to experience that all the time, at least in the cav units, where we had the firepower to, to engage any type of target that we wanted.

What about the... the enemy, and the frustration of, uh, knowing who was the enemy? Did you... was that easy for you, were you constantly worried as to whether you were going after enemy or friends or how did you do friendship?

Well, I, I, I would have to tell you this, that when we engaged... if we, if we were, uh, taking fire, or we, we found a potential target in a village, and, uh, we knew that there were VC, NVA in there, I'm not sure that we always knew that everyone in the village was good or bad, and I think that was very difficult to decide. However, as long as we were taking fire, and there was hostile action coming out of that village, it, to me, it really didn't matter. I mean, I'm not...I think I'm concerned about human life, but you know, when it's your life against someone else's, and you're in a, in a war situation, you do what you have to do, and, uh, I never really lost much sleep about it. I mean, I thought about it, but I...it had to be done.

One of the... one other area I'd like to touch with you. What was morale like, I mean, this is the time when in the paper one is reading about sort of fraggings, and guys not wanting to go up. You said that your morale, as far as your individual unit was concerned, was quite high did this exist generally? I mean, what was morale like around you?

Terrible. Absolutely terrible.

Could you say [inaudible]...?

Uh... I think for me it was, it really was very vivid too, because, you know, being brought up in the family environment that I had, and, and, and thinking in my mind that this was the right thing to be doing as an American, to see the reaction of a lot of other uh people was hard to understand. Um, even in our unit, you know, we had, you know, when I said the pilots had quite a, a high morale, now, we had quite a large support group, uh, which all aviation units do.

The morale was not so high with them. Serious drug problems, um, you know, you could go out in the morning, behind, and do a policing of the hooch area where the enlisted men were, and you could find multiple vials of empty heroin... uh...there were occasions when we found guys with needles in their arms...uh...which, which would result in some serious discipline...uh...the fraggings themselves I didn't personally, in our unit we didn't experience that, although I heard about it, and, uh, we did have a colonel in the unit who, uh, constantly got CSed, uh, from the enlisted men, and it wasn't too bad except when the wind blew down near the officers' area, then it, then it got a little strong, but, uh...

It's all right. Please tell me about the [incomprehensible] and can you tell me about it again, and can you tell me what actually happened to your colonel?

Well, we had a colonel who, uh, had a very strict sense of military discipline, and, uh, had determined that... w—w—we would fight the war, but we would do it by, uh, by, uh, back home standards, and that's just kind of difficult, and what had happened is through a series of things that he initiated, uh, actions that he initiated, he really got the wrath of, uh, I would have to say the enlisted men, and I think a lot of the NCOs and officers, although, you know, from a point of view that we had to uphold what he dictated, uh, we weren't too happy with the...with the way he, he did it. And, you know, I don't know if you want specifics or not, and I'm trying... uh... the guy might still be in the service, for all I know...uh...

Just, just tell...just tell me how the guy used to get CSed in a way in which how can you, say, you know, One of our officers was unpopular, or something like that, and...

Well, he...he was very unpopular, and, uh, not only, you know, he was the battalion, the brigade commander, and, uh, the group commander, which would be the same thing. He, uh...they used to take M-79s with the CS canisters and lob them in, because he...he had a segregated hooch, it was the... the old commanding general of the Marine Corps, when they had the Marines down on Chu Lai airfield where we were, ah, but he was segregated enough so that the officers' quarters were down the road a ways, and what the EMs would do is they'd get out in the...I have to guess how they did it, they would get out in the fields at a decent distance, and then lob some CS canisters in, and then, uh, the CS would blow, you know, would blow down like I said, down into the officers' quarters and clean us out too, but it wasn't meant, basically, for us, it was meant for him. And it was because of, of his lack of, of understanding about the realities of a war zone.

I mean, you know, people coming out of the field, and I'm not talking about, uh, aviators, I'm talking about infantry type guys who had spent their time in the field, and were back for a three day, four day R and R within the Chu Lai facility, uh, might not have their boots bloused, they might not have a hat on, or might not be clean shaven, or their hair in a decent, uh, military style haircut, uh; we would go around in a courtesy way to pick these guys up and bring them in front of the colonel, and then he would, uh, have their commanding officers come in and pick them up, and these guys would get Article 15's and to me it was ludicrous, we're in the middle of a war zone, I mean, what...who cares what a guy, I mean, if he can fight, and if he can do his job, who cares if he doesn't have a hat on? I mean, it's a little different when you're back here in the States.

Uh. It was those type of things, or locking the...we were a mile and a half from the, uh, from the flight, uh, line, and, uh, because of some of the, the instances with fraggings and with shootings, although not in our unit, the colonel decided that all the weapons would have to be locked up. Well, there are some problems with that, because the VC, NVA did come through the wire on numerous occasions, and, uh, that meant that all the officers who were a mile and a half from the arms room were completely unarmed. It also meant that the ah enlisted men also, there were no arms, and heh, if there was a serious problem and you might as well run, because you didn't have a weapon to do anything with it, and that was, I mean there was those type of actions that he took which really frustrated a lot of, of, not only officers, but the enlisted men also.

How about morale in other respects, as far, sort of race relations and attitude to things back home — was this having an effect?

The race relation problem was the most serious problem I've ever encountered. Ah. I mean, I consider myself a very liberal person when it comes to, to ah other races. I accept everyone, basically, for what they are. And ah I had an experience and I'll never forget it. I went in, eh on pay day, the, the ah the commissaries and the PX, well really the PX's over there are just mobbed. Everybody has their money for the month and the lines are really long and really rank has no privilege. Everybody stands in line. Ahm.

I came in one time and there was a long line and we were all standing there and a couple of black guys came in and they walked in front of the line. So, I said ah to the one fella, I said, hey, boy, you'll have to get back on the line. And, I didn't mean it in a derogatory sense. Well, the guy went crazy. I mean he, he, he started to yell at me. Who are you calling boy. I'm, you know, I'm no boy, and I don't remember exactly all the things he said to me, but I said to him, I said, look I apologize, and I was a captain and he was a PFC.

Ahm. I decided it was time to leave. He was really causing a scene. So, I walked out the back door and the guy followed me. And, I turned around to say Hey, look, I'm sorry, and the guy hit. I mean he punched me, and I, he was, I don't know he was about 5' 8", 5 9", 120 lbs. He couldn't have hurt me but in my mind I said this, this guy is a PFC. Just hit a captain. I mean it wasn't him hitting me. It was the whole relationship that, that I'd grown up with, of, you aw, enlisted men don't hit officers. I mean you go to jail for that.

So, ah, there were a couple of NCO's around who saw what happened and they ran after this guy and they caught him, and, you know, they brought him back to his unit and, and we pressed charges, but aaaa, that whole, he, he, tha—that whole intenseness of his feeling about, about white guys and about officers, you know, mostly white officers, ah, ah, ah, you know, I couldn't even relate to it, but serious.

Okay. I think we've got it. I'm happy, unless there is something that you feel...