When I ah came back from Vietnam in 1963 I was assigned to the 11th Air Assault Division which was a test unit to to test the concepts developed by General Howells ah in his Howells Borad which was how to employ the new helicopter technology and ah make it a viable US Army organization.

And, basically, what that technology said was ah taking the three things that the the infantry is required to do; to move, shoot and communicate, gave us the capability to move faster, to extend the range of our weapons by moving them by air or actually firing the weapons from aerial platforms, and gave us the capability to talk over longer distances by aerial relay, etc.

And, for about two years we tested and refined these concepts ah working ah exercises, field training. ah unique training two helicopters such as repelling ah learning the difference between ah dismounting this or dismounting a gruck. Ah. How to react quickly while you were in the air instead of the old long winded operations orders.

What were the, what were the feelings that you had when...

Well, I actually ah ah ah volunteered to go back to Vietnam with the 1st Cavalry Division. The 11th Air Assault Division was redesignated the 1st Cavalry Division and I was on orders at the time to go to the advanced course at Ft. Benning, Georgia.

My brigade commander asked me if I consider going back to Vietnam with the unit, ah, because I'd been there before, and he logically felt that experience was a valuable asset to have. So, I volunteered to return to Vietnam as a company commander of A Company, 1st of the 8th Calvary.

What did you, what did you think of the war then, Ted? What what, did you think it was something that was going to be over with pretty quickly or how did you look at it just from a professional point of view. You might mention if that makes any sense to you.

Well, the war at the time it was a it was a new type of warfare to the United States Army. I'd experienced it as an advisor to the Vietnamese. Ah. I saw how they did it. At the time the Vietnamese generally South Vietnamese who were communists that were receiving a certain amount of support from the outside. About the time that the 1st Calvary went back and while we were there, the the enemy changed from the guerrilla type into the North Vietnamese regular units or as they were known the PAVN. Ah.

As far as my feelings about the war ah I felt at the time it was sort of like ah ah we were in 1775 and 6 when ah we as the United States was looking for help from France and asked for the help and they came to help us. Not exactly the same because in Vietnam we were assisting the legitimate government and ah France on the other hand was helping somebody that was revolting against the legitimate government for a particular reason even though the the government of England was far removed.

Stop a second.

Okay.

When I was an advisor in 1962 and 3 I always felt when I was accompanying the Vietnamese ah on their military operations ah I was a lieutenant at the time and I of course would do it differently or better and developed a certain amount of ah confidence in being able to deal with the situations. When we went back in ah 1965 I had a opportunity to do what the the government has spent a lot of money teaching me how to do and that's to to ah lead a company in combat. Ah.

We also knew that guerrilla warfare was a strange phenomenon to the United States Military as far as combating it, and we saw this in in our advisory days where we had a lot of control about ah the area of operations during the daytime and then at night the villages would lock up the gates and and it was turned back over to the VC.

As far as a feeling of of of going as a representative of the United States in 1965 there was a tremendous degree of of ah popular support for the soldiers in unit going to Vietnam. I remember that our division was adopted by cities in the United States. As a matter of fact, one of the greatest ah gifts that that I have seen is the city in South Carolina sent a cement mixer to the 1st Calvary Division.

Now, people think what's a cement mixer. Well, when you're living in the mud and you can make a a cement ah slab to put a tent on or a place to sleep on or a place to keep your feet dry it means an awful lot. And, ah, the soldiers got a great deal of support from the States. Classes by the hundreds would would write letters addressed to a soldier in Vietnam and these were packed up and sent to our unit and ah by and large the the soldiers would try to respond to these things. There was a ground swell of of popular support behind the troops in 1965, which helped the morale an awful lot and...

Say that again. Which helped their morale.

Which helped their morale an awful lot and they felt like they were doing the right thing an and the people at home were behind them. So, that made my job a lot easier because there was a lot of of outside motivation ah that that they had in doing their job and that helped overcome the the boredom of walking through the jungle or the constant being wet, the the ah the tedium of of days on days with nothing happening.

And, constantly doing those things which never show up in the in the movies about warfare because they're always exciting and that that's not the case when you're when you're out actually in a situation like Vietnam. There's a lot of dead time, there's a lot of boredom, there's a lot of tedium in addition to the actual experience of combat. But, by and large in those days, the cheers were there and the and the parades were there. The, the just the tremendous support that you felt from back home.

Did you have a sense of when American units were introduced that we'd be able to wind it up quickly or did you have any feeling about that?

Well, in the I always felt confident that American units could do a a good job where they were on the ground. But, you can only cover so much of the ground. That that spot that we were on we could control that situation that we were involved in we could control. Twenty miles away might be a situation where you you could not control it and ah but as far as the situation over which I had influence and what over which I knew Americans had influence we could control. Ah. It's just it was just a matter of ah we couldn't control the the whole country. There were just not enough troops. And, the country itself is so ah ah barren, not barren from a...

We're out of film.

You know over time the uh... uh we forget the things that we enjoy and the things that our Constitution provides for us. One of the big things it does provide for us is the freedom of choice. And, with respect to the Vietnamese people and what I personally thought about what they were going through at the time is that they were in the process of losing their right of self determination, which is that what we enjoy here by a voting process we, we through our vote determine for ourselves what we want, and the majority rules.

In Vietnam, at the time, I feel that the majority was not really ruling, and that from within they were losing this right of self determination. But that's my personal, uh, feeling. Uh, the way our government is set up, uh the, the military, uh operates under civilian control. And any time it acts, it acts within the, the... confines of whatever the national policy is at the time. And I think that uh at that time our national policy was to assist the government of South Vietnam in counting the aggression that was there. And... if that required action by our military in support of that policy, then that's what the military is for- to support the national policy if, in fact, it requires military force.

Okay.

I'll never forget uh one medic we had who was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, which is our nation's second highest decoration. Before we went to Vietnam he was always in debt. And no matter what we did, no matter what counseling you could give him. He just couldn't manage to get out of debt. And uh... after we got to Vietnam and he was decorated, a copy of the citation was sent to his creditors. And to the dollar all of his debts were cancelled across the board. And that gives an example of the kind of support that in those days people enjoyed. That was 1965 and 1966. Later that uh the parades turned to tirades and cheers turned to jeers, so to speak. And uh, the national mood changed...As I said uh, a...

Don't say anything. Sorry Ted, start again.

A ground force controls the ground that it's on or that he can put fire on. In a twenty-four hour time frame in the Cavalry, we could move to more ground over wider ranges, and consequently for that period of time that you are on a particular piece of terrain, you controlled it. Now, if you were reacting to the VC, and you know where they were and could get there, you're control is established over the enemy force, because you, when you found out that they were in a particular location you could get there in a hurry, instead of taking a day to get there.

You might be able to react to six different locations in the space of uh a day, rather than one location in the space of a day. And this mobility, the, the capability to move to more places in a constrained time period and influence whatever was going on there, I feel gave the 1st Cavalry a distinct advantage over units that were not uh, uh mobility intensive as we were. A truck moves maybe twenty kilometers an hour and a helicopter moves 120 kilometers an hour. And a truck needs a road primarily to move over, and a helicopter doesn't need a road. Uh.

What advantages did it give you over the enemy, and how did that work out in the field as you remember and can remember?

Okay. I think in those days the 1st Cavalry Division enjoyed an enormous amount of success. Uh... the PAVN had evidently made a decision to try to cut the country in half...

Just start again and say... “The North Vietnamese army...”

Okay. The North Vietnamese army at the time uh had apparently decided to cut the South Vietnam in half. And uh... they were met by the South Vietnamese near a place called Plei Me. And that precipitated the first large engagement of the 1st Cavalry Division against the North Vietnamese army.

Uh, that subsequently turned into the Ia Drang River Campaign of the 1st Cavalry Division. And it was uh militarily tremendously successful against two uh crack North Vietnamese regiments. On a company scale, which was where I operated, uh what we did every day was was successful. Uh, we were given certain tasks to do and we'd go out, and if we did that task with uh as directed, uh we were in fact successful. The... the more you do it with uh success or the more times you...

Start again.

Uh... I thought that our unit was tremendously successful in the time that it was there. At the time we were enjoying these operational successes, we were also learning the terrain, because we were operating over terrain we'd never been over before. And in appreciation of the military and its operations, the terrain is a tremendous uh uh force multiplier if you occupy the right terrain. Uh, but you had to be familiar with it. It's one of the paramount considerations that you have any time you do anything. Uh, so I thought we were, in my company- A Company- we were extremely successful, and in the 1st Cavalry Division.

When we were designated the 1st Cavalry Division, the uh, my unit was designated as airborne or parachute outfit. And we didn't have the people in that unit uh that were parachute qualified. Consequently, I got a lot of my non commissioned officers- sergeants, corporals- from the 101st Airborne Division. And those people were, without a doubt, the backbone of my unit because they knew how to deal with soldiers. As far as the privates and the specialists, they came to us uh straight from Airborne School, Parachute School at Fort Benning, which is tremendous personal motivator.

And when they came to my unit they met the sergeants who were were good. They knew how to lead people, they knew how to explain things. They knew how to teach the rudiments of what soldiering was about. Then we were put on a ship to go to Vietnam where we were confined for thirty days. And these squad leaders who had charge of ten people would take their ponchos and put them on the walls of the ship and explain range cards, and tactics, and fields of fire, and where each weapon was supposed to go and what it was supposed to do.

We spent a lot of time like that in the confines of the ship where the sergeant really got to know his people, the people got to know his sergeant, the officers got to know their NCO's in a confined environment. And, uh there was a lot of esprit de corps that was generated there. As a matter of fact, uh from the time we got the word to go, our battalion...

Stop.

Just one second.

With this feeling developed in the company between the officers and the NCO's and the soldiers, uh from the time we got notified that we were going to Vietnam, we went through the requisite uh, uh- what we call POE Training- getting ready to go overseas. Uh, traveled to Savannah, Georgia; made a boat trip; stopped in Hawaii, in the Island of Guam, uh arrived in Vietnam and out of our battalion of of 850-900 people, there were no AWOL's. None whatsoever had occurred knowing that they were going to Vietnam and that's an indication of the kind of unit that battalion that these troops felt that they belonged to.

And, that was the feeling of the troops and the NCO's in that particular unit. It was perhaps, the best-trained unit that the army ever fielded, because the techniques were tested and refined by the officers over the two year period that the 11th Air Assault Division was in existence. And then we took that same unit to Vietnam knowing how it operated, and put it into practice.

And I don't think anybody, any army unit, has ever had that luxury before. And so we were confident, and and, I believe that that confidence exist- showed itself to the troops, even the new troops that we got in just before we went overseas. And they saw it and they had uh... esprit de corps develop from that confidence, and from the way they were treated by their NCO's and by their officers.

Did you, at the time, have any personal sense of how long this was going to take?

No. I don't think anybody did in those days. It was a uh... we were the first division sized unit uh... with the exception of the Marines, that were sent to Vietnam. Brigaded the 101st was in the country when we got there, but we were the first division sized unit that was sent there. And later, uh, the number of US committed troops grew. But at the time, ah, we went, ah we felt that there was a certain job that we could do, and uh we were committed to doing that job. Uh...

There's an old saying in the military that

Try again.

There's an old saying in the army that the troops will do things in combat the way they were trained to do them uh in a training environment. Uh, I was proud of the way that uh my soldiers performed. They acquitted themselves well, they fought well, they cheered up their comrades well, they helped each other out, they became great friends amongst themselves, uh all you could ever ask for. And these were were troops from all walks of life, that, that once we got into that environment there seemed to be no difference between them- whether they were Black or Hispanic, or or uh White.

I know my first sergeant was of Hispanic origin. Tremendous soldier and the troops, all the troops, just thought he was, you know, the top soldier, which he was. And they liked him. And there just seemed to be no, no label on anyone except soldier and comrade and buddy. And based on that they performed well, extremely well. It was a pleasure to have uh and a privilege to have commanded them.