Places they can no longer go. Be not ashamed to say you love them though you may not have always. Take what they have left and what they have taught you while youre dying and keep them in their own. And in that time when men decide and feel safe to call the war insane, take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind. Michael odonnell, january 1st, 1970. Susan who was Michael Odonnell . David he was a young man who found himself in vietnam in 1970. He was a songwriter and a poet and a helicopter pilot and a hero and ultimately a casualty of the vietnam war. Susan how did you encounter his poetry . David i first read a book by harold evans. There was a section of the vietnam war in that section theres a small photograph of Michael Odonnell. And it said that young man wrote this poem, the poem i just said. And below that, shortly after writing this short poem, his helicopter was shot down and he remains missing in action. That book was published about 20 years ago. And at that time, michael was still recorded as missing in action. I was very curious about who this young man was. The poem moved my deeply. And i wanted to learn more about why he wrote it, who he was and what the story was behind the poem. And one thing led to another. And here we are. Susan 20 years of effort, so how did the book come about at this particular time . David well, initially i was struck by the poem and curious to learn more. I suppose at some level i was taken by his request that we remember people who served in vietnam including him. I began to do some investigating. Im an academic and a scholar. As i did, i began to meet the people in his world, his sister, his best friend. At that time i wasnt sure what i would do with this information. I didnt really have a full vision in my mind. And then i put the material away as my career unfolded. About two and a half years ago, i decided i wanted to write this book because the story needs to be told that the more i reflected on michaels life and his experience and what he can teach us through his own story and his poetry, i felt like i wanted to tell that story. And a way to do that began to present itself in my mind. So i made a plan and wrote the book. Susan could you write a similar book about anyone one of the 58,000 who perished . Or is this Something Special about Michael Odonnell . David at one level he was one of 58,228 casualties of war. But at a another level he wrote poetry about it. He had a distinctive point of view about the experience he was living because he was a helicopter pilot flying in and out of the worst battles of the war. Then he had the capacity of the poet to write about that. So he recorded those experiences. And over time he began to see as he was writing and experiencing the war that the odds were increasing. He wasnt going to survive the war and he wrote about that too. So i think in many ways he was illustrative of young people who were caught up in the young war in the 1960s, but in many ways he was exceptional, i think. Susan he was born in august 13, 1945. You describe him as the quintessential post war baby. David he understood that war was something that took four years that tended to that one reflected on the world war ii experience, there was a great victory, of course, great sacrifice, a great cost. But he understood something about the world he lived in as based on being really his family and his own life were informed by the second world war. There was a period of great prosperity. His parents were very well positioned. His life was very comfortable he wanted for nothing. He could indulge his own interests. And that was really in many way what is that period was like for most young americans. And vietnam was something on the horizon nobody saw it coming. Susan it sounds like they might have been more than middleclass. Is this family well to do . David i would say upper middleclass. His father was a professional. He was an drill psychologist. And he was his career progressed rather nicely. So michael moved several times throughout his childhood to ever fancier houses. And then he went to high school in shorewood, wisconsin. He lived in a lovely house. He went to a very good high school. He in many ways he was living the American Dream at the time. Susan siblings . He had one sister, patsy who was four years older. She became the steward of his legacy after he was shot down. Susan you tell us that he had a challenge with his educational pursuits. How did he finally find himself . David well, like a lot of kids, he was obviously very bright and very curious about the world but not particularly interested in school. And he was never a distinguished student. In high school he was an athlete. He was on the Crosscountry Team and the wrestling team. He had lots of friends. But he didnt do especially well in school. And in college, he was interested in the music scene which is in the early 1960s. He arrived in college in 1963 months before john f. Kennedy was assassinated. And he was caught up in the folk music movement. He was interested in everything that went in that. But he wasnt particularly interested in school. So he was an indifferent student but a very good songwriter. He devoted time and energy to that. Susan he made an important friend through music. Would you tell me about that friend . David yes. In november of 1963 right after kennedy was assassinated or maybe december, he was writing a song about the assassination. And Marcus Sullivan who was also an accomplished musician who was a sophomore saw him performing that and was very taken by michaels music because unlike all of the other kids there, he was writing and performing his own music. He wasnt writing peter, paul and mary. So they became really good friends quickly. They both recognized within hours that theres would be an epic friendship that they would have an epic friendship and a be a bond. They wrote music beautifully. They were the best of friends in no time at all. Susan because you got to know michael through his writings and you have actually known Marcus Sullivan over the years through working on this, what did you learn about that friendship . What drew them together . David it was a love of music. I know, of course, i know Michael Odonnell i never met him. But i know him very well from the record of his other relationships and from his letters and his poems and his music. And ive been a very good friend of Michael Sullivan for years. They have a great sense of music and a great sense of adventure. They discovered these same joys in life. Theres nothing like the best friends that you meet in college at this moment in your life when everythings in front of you. Theres enormous possibility and potential. They saw that in one another. And they loved each other very deeply. Michael was in many ways the more outgoing one. He was extraordinarily charismatic. He could be prankster or troublemaker. He never ever was accused of anything that stuck. He was just a lovable kid. And marcus saw that in him and liked. That and they were just i think young people at a very happy time in their lives. Susan would you have been a friend of michael . David i probably would have liked him. Im not a musical guy so i wouldnt have made the team. I gotten to know him well as i say through my own research of he was something quite wonderful in my character and it comes through in these ways through the record of his letters and his poems and his songs, especially the people in loved him whom ive come to know very well. He was a very special person and well worth the earth into getting to know him. Susan in addition to telling Michael Odonnells story, you also trace the history of u. S. Involvement in vietnam. I want to go through some of that. Who did you write this book for . David its a wonderful question. I wrote the book for people who would be interested in the Human Interest in story about a compelling american kid who got caught up in one of the great tragedies in american history. I wanted to write a book that would engage people in all aspects of that story that is to say that the period of the 1960s, i dont see this book as a war story. I dont really see it as a book about poetry. But its a Human Interest story about what happened to Michael Odonnell and therefore to all of us in the moo 1960s. So the reader is you. Its my mother. Its my friends. Its people who care about the american story. Susan the vietnam story begins in the 1950s with harry truman. If you wouldnt mind i would like you to walk our audience through each of the vietnam era president s involvement with that conflict. So what was trumans approach to it . David so harry truman was confronted like all of his successors with the problem of expansion of communism. There was in the 1990s, the very real belief that communism was the great toxic influence in world. And that it must be contained the way a virus is contained. Harry truman felt that, his great concerns were Eastern Europe out of the soviet unit. You and in asia. And the advance throughout indo china that region where communism could expand through china. And the strategy that he developed was called containment. It was not to couldnt confront an active war but to go actively creating lives and everything that goes with war. But to try to continue the advance of this, this really toxic political development, that was seen to be a threat to american democracy. So containment was his tragedy. His goal was to do as little as he had to without distracting American Resources or the military. And he passed that on to dwight eisenhower. People talk about the domino series. Was it is same as containment . It was understood that if one nation falls, then the next one will fall. And after a while, this virus will take over the world. What no one really saw coming was that ultimately communism was not a sustainable phenomenon. It was not a Political Movement that was capable of sustaining itself. People didnt know that. It was a very real threat for harry truman and his administration. They took on the same sort of challenges that truman did. He, of course, had the successful led world war ii strategy. How did he fulfill it . Well, think his political point of view wasnt radically different from trumans particularly with communism and southeast asia. So his view was to advance communism in much the same way. No one wanted to commit high levels of the American Military resources or funding or lives. That wasnt the goal. The goal was to do what we have to do to contain this problem while we focus on other greater issues. Everyone was more interested in the 1950s, in Eastern Europe than they were in southeast asia. The theory was that these countries would fall one by one and all of ashay dominated the communism movement. They were hope to minimize the damage and carry on with other initiatives. Susan you recountedt in 1954, the french defeat changed everything. Why did that change the policy so much . Well, the vietnamese rather the french had been vietnam for a very long time. And in 1954, it was the first evidence that that movement wasnt working. So someone had to step in to address what was still seen as a very real risk of the advance of communism vietnam. And if the french were not to be there, then somebody had to. And they had to take that responsibility directly because that was that. Our job was to preserve the world for democracy. So eisenhower did have to commit it. Susan during those first two president s involved in policy, our commitment was in the form of military advisors. Who were they advising . David they were advising the South Vietnamese army. After the division of vietnam from north and south and the south seemed to be allied with the Democratic Values and the measures. Our job was to advice the american jobs was to advise out the series unanimous army and what strategy would help to contain the advancement of the north vietnamese and the north korean, vietnamcong all under the direction of ho chi minh. So that was the goal. The number of advisors grew from 900 to 16,000 . Yes. What was the policy to drove that big exchanges . I think for kennedy this was reluctant acquiescence in vietnam. Kennedy did not take an active policy of bringing troops to vietnam or trying to escalate the war there but rather to contain it as well. But they had to send more american troops to advise larger number of vietnamese soldiers in order contain a Successful Mission in the north vietnamese. So he was a very cautious military leader. Following the bay of pigs. And he i think its clear from the record that he reluctantly made decisions to increase advisories in vietnam but never wants to engage in war there. But its true. By the time his administration had been killed, the number would have increased exponentially. Susan do we have any indication of where it is policies would have gone had he lived . My own view from having read all of the material i did in preparation for this book was that kennedy would absolutely not have allowed himself to escalate the war in anything the way Lyndon Johnson did. Because as i said he was a cautious leader. As i say in the book he was first and foremost, a politician. He was very attentive to public interest. He was concerned about the longterm consequences. I think he was traumatized by the bay of pigs. As soon as he became president taking the word of his advisors perhaps more to heart than he should have. I think he would have navigated vietnam much more carefully that more carefully. That said, it isnt obvious with the information they had at the time communism was seen as a very real problem in the world. And it may be its much easier 30 years late tore to reflect on the fact that communism wasnt a sustainable phenomenon. But back then it was seen as one. I think i would not have done he would not have done what happened. He also would havent gotten us out of the war either. The world would have been a different place. By november of 1963, how aware was the public in general about the war in vietnam . It was increasingly in the news. But it was not a major story in the way it would soon become. I think as you observe there were 16,000 american troops in vietnam at the time he was assassinated which is a small number compared to deployment of american troops elsewhere in the world at that time, Eastern Europe and korea. So i dont think it wasnt a major story. It was something increasingly looming on the horizon. But a year later, it was a very big story. Susan our first story was our first video to add to the conversation was Lyndon Johnson, august 4, 1964. Lets watch how l. B. J. Approached the vietnam war. Renewed hostile actions against the United States ships on the high seas and the government of tonkin have today required me to order the military forces of the United States to take action and reply. This new act of aggression aimed directly at our own forces, again brings home to all of us in the United States. The importance of the struggle for peace in southeast asia. What do we need to know about the gulf of tonkin . It remains unclear to american servicemen that precipitated to the gulf. And the way that congress described theres great question about what he actually reported. But the second is that Congress Took very seriously the claim that the president made that he needed to have the authority and the act quickly in defense of and the independence to act quickly in defense of the american interest. So senator fulbright was the floor lead whore helped to bring this resolution to a successful conclusion giving the president Carte Blanche to wage war. And no one anticipated in the senate that he would take that the president would take that authority as far as he did. I think the great lesson one has to learn was a that the balance of power function in a way to protect america interest even in war. And if given too quick lip and too powerfully, the president would have abused throws powers. Susan do we know now president johnsons motivation . David i explore these questions in the book. Theres a great industry on reflections on what exactly the president was trying to accomplish. My own video on this was that johnson was first of all, he was the new President Trump into his own explanation. He was on the one hand intimidated by the very high powered intellectually advisors who were then Lyndon Johnson advisors. But the real ambition was throughout his presidency. He was not a Foreign Policy president. He wanted to change in the way Franklin Roosevelt did in the new deal. He was looking to address the irritating action that you could just make it go away by leveraging American Resources quickly and powerfully. Then you could return it to the domestic agenda. That was the result of inexperience and an inability to think carefully about the longterm consequences of these near term actions. So ultimately, once he made that decision, once he initially decided to escalate the war as he had, he got himself going on a path that he found very difficult to retreat from. He put general william west west moreland in charge of the effort. Can you imagine what could happen as a catastrophic email. I think it was the at that leader to have time. So were still in an environment where world war ii was the dominant experience of that generation. Westmoreland understood how to change war at least in the conventional sense. He was highly decorated. He was one of the highest graduates of west point. He received general more quickly than ever had in military history. He was chosen by Lyndon Johnson to lead this war because he was a soldier, soldier. He didnt know how. So he had a strategy called what strategy search and destroy searchad a strategy of and destroy to win a war of attrition. Beat the vietnamese. Not to win a war of territory as world war ii was. As a result, they would win the battle, but they would lose the longer term engagement because they didnt win the territory. They didnt win the hearts and minds of the people around them. And they couldnt even find the enemy. So as they committed increasing level of troops to this enterprise in South Vietnam where they were fighting, they found that they had to continue to grow their resources to achieve ever diminishing victories. And that was not sustainable. And that was a time of drafting young men to fight in the war. What did that do to the sentiment at home . They had to implement a draft. Result, no longer was there a selfselection for people with the war. Everybody was at risk. So the entire country began to pay more attention to what was happening in vietnam. Because their children or they themselves could very well be chosen to fight this war. With the advent of the draft and in very short order, hundreds of thousands of american citizens were being drafted. The entire country took notice of what was happening there and , it changed everything about public discourse. Susan Michael Odonnell decided to enlist. Why does he make that decision . David michael enlisted because as i said earlier, he was an , indifferent student. He wasnt really enjoying college. He saw all around him, this was something in the 1960s that was ever present. The draft was taking his friends. But particularly young men of draftable age. So michael thought after all he was, i dont know, 21 years old at the time. He wasnt the wisest of young people. He wasnt doing very well in school. He was worried that he would be drafted. So he had the idea that if he enlisted, he could learn how to become a helicopter pilot. One, he would develop a skill that might be useful for him. After all, aviation was an industry. Two, the amount of helicopters years. In his own mind, wars dont last that long. By the time he would be trained to fly helicopters, the war itself would be over. That was his calculation. That was his decision at the time. Susan sounds exceedingly logical. David almost immediately after he enlisted his best friend marcus was drafted. In some ways, simply adding some credibility to the decision that michael made. Susan so marcus is more experience sent him where . David marcus decided not to become a helicopter pilot. But just to accept the draft. Andecame a combat engineer served a year as was the , obligation of draftees. And he stayed safe. And he did his job and he came home. But the time the war was behind him, michael was still training to be a helicopter pilot. Susan what was his role on the vietnam war . David well, for anyone who lived through the vietnam war at any level, the huey is always known as slick because the helicopter he flew there were no guns visible. It looked like a huey and no gun ship. That was the ubiquitous level of the war. Helicopters were used to transport soldiers quickly andy efficiently to wherever the fighting was because this was not a war of territory. Military leaders would select the locations would where they would have battles. And then they would move large numbers of troops very quickly in these helicopters to the site of the battle where ever it was in South Vietnam unanimous. In South Vietnam. They were used to wage the war. So helicopters would fly to wherever the battle was and use their weapons to wage war. They were also used to clear battle signs of agent orange and napalm, these terrible chemicals that were used during the war in order to clear the foliage in areas where they needed greater visibility to the enemy. They would drop these tons an thousands of helicopters did all that. And then ultimately, they also were used to rescue the injured. And to bring back the dead. And michael spent a lot of time trans copter pilot transporting soldiers and recovering the bodies of the dead. What was the time that he enlist and began his training . So he enlisted in 1965. And the training throughout the late 1960s, and in texas 1969 in 1969 he was deployed in four years. He was trained to be an officer, first. And then he was trained to be a helicopter challenge. He reconnected with another person. A woman by the name of jean hogue. Who was she . They were classmates at high school at shorewood. When michael was training to become a helicopter pilot in alabama. He wasnt very far from where jane was a graduate student at south florida. But they reconnected somehow. They reestablished contact. And they began a romance, a very intensive romance. And michael had plenty of time. By her account, they had a wonderful period of several months together perhaps about , six months together while he was training and their romance bloomed. And it was a magical time in both of their lives. Did they discuss marrying before he went to war . Yes. They talked about getting married as the plan when he returned, his obligation like marcuss was to serve one year. So the intention is when he returned, they would establish their lives together. They would marry. Marcus and michael would resume their Musical Partnership and they would get on with the career they envisioned for themselves, which was a very big musical career. By the way, did his parents react to his decision to enlist. No one could understand why he did this have to live with that. So michaels parents were devastated. His mother in particular was just mortified that her son was going to be going into this terrible war that they all saw as a military disaster. Michaels sister, who had been selected for the peace corps, patsy, she was about to leave the country to serve her country as a member of the peace corps and when michael decided to enlist and there was a real risk he would be in vietnam, their parents persuaded patsy not to join the peace corps because they could not imagine both of their children to be abroad in dangerous places at the same time. Patsy gave up on her dream of being in the peace corps. Michael went into helicopter training. Everyone made their peace with it but it was not a happy moment. Host his deployment was the 178th assault Helicopter Company. Where were they deployed and who were the most important people in that one of his life . Guest when he first arrived, he was deployed at camp palo a halloway in vietnam. 10,000 soldiers were there so it was a small city he was deployed to, and the conditions, as he reported, were not bad. He had hot showers, hot meals. It was not a bad place. The base was relatively safe. It was a large community. Their missions were dangerous. They were flying into territories where there was great danger. For the first two months or so, he was at holloway and his unit was deployed further to the north in a much more dangerous territory. This was an area that was in the Central Highlands of vietnam but further to the north, completely remote, surrounded by the enemy, in a much smaller number of american and a much smaller number of american troops were there. And they saw danger there every single day. That base was attacked by missiles almost everything obey. Almost every single day. And a colleague of michaels in vietnam and a fellow helicopter pilot, described this to me, that every day, for reasons we are not that were not clear, around dinnertime, the missiles would start to fly. They were very large, telephone pole sized missions and they sounded like freight trains. They were wildly inaccurate. They almost never hit anything. It was almost like a Fireworks Show they were exposed to everyday of the war. This was in khartoum, a very different kind of territory. Host the psychological toll had to be enormous on the people working there. Guest it was. For michael, his spirit really turned a corner when he got to that area and all of the soldiers who served their report the same thing. They were on the front lines of an unwinnable war at a time in history of the war when victory was out of the question and survival was on that one could hope for. That was by early 1970. There was no question that vietnam would not be a victory for the americans by this time. They would everyday day fly their helicopters into battle, see casualties occurring all around, bring back the injured and the dead. Return to their base, and that and then experience these missile attacks every night on their base, so there was no respite from the war for them. That is where he found respite, and poetry. He would return to the base at the end of each day and clean up his helicopter, and go back to have a shower and have dinner, and when many of his colleagues were in the bar having drinks, which is what they tend to do each evening to try and forget the war, michael sat at his little desk in his barracks and wrote poetry. He had a manual typewriter he brought with him and he would write this poetry to try and make sense of this experience and it was during those months as he was writing this poetry, that it began to be clear to him that a successful outcome from him in the war was unlikely and he wrote poetry about that. Host if one were to read his poetry today, what would you find in it . What are some of the themes that would echo through . Guest the most powerful theme is the sense of loss and hopelessness in the heart and mind of a really wonderful young man who had so much idealism and joy that went into this war, and this war killed it. You can see in his poetry how he is trying to make sense of what it means to be 23, 24 years old, and recognize that your life is likely to end any day, and that you are doing it for a because for a cause no one believed in, and that your sacrifice, and the sacrifice of your friends, which he witnessed every day, how would be unappreciated and unrecognized by the people you are doing it for, the American People. So he wrote about that. Poetry was a creative way for him to try and find beauty in tragedy, that is ultimately to create something that was that had enduring meetings for meanings for him and for others. In the face of an environment where there was nothing good, nothing positive, nothing to look forward to, so i think ultimately, that core of idealism in him needed to find expression somewhere and it was at his little typewriter in his dark little barracks. Host did he send his poetry with his fellow combatants, did he send it home to his family . Guest he shared very little with his combatants, but they knew he was writing it. They said how much they appreciated it because michael was trying to tell their story. He brought his guitar with him to vietnam. He performed music for them. He was a funloving guy on the outside. They recognized they had in him someone who was a compelling, charismatic figure who loved them and cared about this experience. And they believe the poetry he was writing would matter, but he did not share it with them. He did not read it to them. He did share it first and foremost with marcus, his friend at home, so he would write his poems and pack them up and send them in an envelope for marcus to look at and read. He talked about making music when he eventually would return. Marcus was his primary audience. Host his Fatal Mission was a result of a change in u. S. Policy that occurred under president Richard Nixon. Our next video, president nixon talking about cambodia. In cooperation with the armed forces of South Vietnam, attacks are being launched this week to clear out major enemy sanctuaries on the cambodian vietnam border. We take this action not for the purpose of expanding the war into cambodia, but for the purpose of ending the war in vietnam and winning the just peace we all desire. So michael donalds 170th Helicopter Company had what role in this change of policy . Guest several months before Richard Nixon made this announcement, the 170th was already in cambodia. Michaels mission from the base in the Central Highlands was to fly special operations teams into cambodia to conduct reconnaissance. These special operations teams of three or four american soldiers, those were local communities a very capable soldiers who served with the americans to bring these small teams into cambodia secretly by helicopter and they would spend several days on the ground in cambodia trying to identify where enemy troops were, what the enemy strength was, and how to conduct a larger scale invasion down the road. Michael and his colleagues knew perfectly well that we were going into cambodia and it was very dangerous work. They were flying into enemy territory. In the event any of these helicopters would be attacked or shut down, they were left they could not be recovered, so it was very dangerous work every day, and that is what he was doing in march. Again, this announcement made by president nixon was late in april. Host he wrote a poem right before he died. I will ask you to read this. It is captured in your book. Guest this poem michael wrote just a few days before his helicopter was shot down in cambodia. By this time, it was fairly clear to him that the war was going to overtake him and he wrote the following. I have tasted the air in the Early Morning before the sun and before the day. I have let it run all down my face and stained my clothes, and i have learned to wash myself with the part of the day that remains. I am dying in the sun. I am each day becoming less interested in the way the morning tastes, and i am dying in the sun. I am dying in the sun. Six days later, michael donalds helicopter was shot down in vietnam in cambodia. Host he died a hero. What about that day would allow anyone to describe his particular decisions and actions as heroic . Guest because of the nature of the rescue mission he was flying, there are many witnesses to what happened. His job was, on that day, to fly with a whole group of other helicopters and fixed wing aircraft to rescue a group of special operations commandos who were under attack in cambodia by the north vietnamese. They had radioed to their team that they were hours away from being overrun, so the American Military group of helicopters arrived on the site to rescue them on the ground in the mountainous area of cambodia where they were. Because these commandos were not able to get to the landing zone rather quickly, ultimately, very quickly, alternately, the Mission Commander on that flight was jim lake, michaels good friend, and he made the decision to return to the base to refuel and he said you stay on site here as long as you can, as long as your fuel holds out. We will get fuel and come back and we will make the rescue. We will jim lake helicopter will be the one to land on the ground and recover these troops. That was the plan. They left and odonnell was hovering in the sky about 1000 feet above the action and the gunships were also there. And it became clear that the time had run out for the commandos and the commandos on the ground signaled that they really needed to be rescued right away and so the gunships came in and did the best they could to clear the site of enemies the enemy. Michael odonnell with his crew and his helicopter went down into the ground in the valley of this area in cambodia to rescue these men by himself. That was never done. Normally what would happen is there would be a team of helicopters helping each other and supporting each other to make sure they were safe but because there was no one else there and it had to be done, odonnell made the decision immediately that he would rescue these men so he went down into the landing zone area and he hovered on the ground for four minutes, waiting for the Reconnaissance Team to arrive there, which is a battle condition in eternity, a very long time to be sitting vulnerable to the enemy, but he waited. Reconnaissance team arrived injured but safe. Odonnell began to pull the helicopter up above the tree line and radioed. I have everyone. I am coming out. As he did that, jim lake and the rest of the teams had arrived on site. There was not anything they could do because the rescue was underway. They saw all of this unfolding. As the helicopter gained altitude and began to move forward, it was shot out of the sky by a missile from the side of the mountain and the valley. And the helicopter dropped beneath the jungle canopy in flames. Host how many souls were on board that lost their lives in that mission . Guest eight commandos. Three americans, and odonnell and his crew were four men. 12 altogether were on board the helicopter that fell from the sky and burst into flames, so jim lake tried as best he could to fly over the site and see if rescue was possible but there was enemy fire everywhere, and that he had to make a very fateful decision, the most horrible decision one has to make, to abandon the site, so he commanded them to leave the site because they were under attack. There was no way to get to odonnells helicopter. They flew back from cambodia back to the base, never to return. As jim lake said, it was a fateful decision, the hardest decision he made in his life, and he was 19 years old at the time he made his decision. Host Mike Odonnell and all those on board became missing in action during the vietnam war. Guest they did, because there was no way to determine whether anyone had survived, they were listed as missing in action. That was the case until the site was eventually identified and recovered in 1998. Host you tell us in the book the stories of how the Recovery Efforts unfold in the United States, from 1973 to 1985. You tell us there were no attempts at recovery of any of that. Is this just in cambodia or throughout . Guest throughout. By the time the war had ended, the mid1970s, and then in 1975, in april of 1975, when saigon was overrun and the war was completely lost, the South Vietnamese were overrun, and the northern vietnamese won the war, the American People had really had it with vietnam. There was a desire to turn the page and move on. Gerald ford made that abundantly clear in his own statements as president , that it is time for us to turn the page and move forward. I think people were ultimately exhausted by the drama and tragedy of the war in vietnam, so for the next decade more or less, there was very little discussion about the war. There was some scholarly work being written. There were examples here and there, but the American Movement to revisit the war took more than a decade. Host however, there is still a very active pow mia activist group in this country pushing for americans to continue to identify and find the remains and repatriate them. How impactful was that group of people to the eventual decision by george w. Bush to establish a formal process and budget for it . Guest it was very impactful. They were externally dedicated, extremely dedicated, hardworking, and thoughtful. They knew how to create political change. They were very good advocates for their cause. They continued to advocate. I think that they were extremely effective. Two phenomena that led to this decision by the president. One was this group who advocated for the recovery of mias and the other was the increased rise and visibility of Popular Culture around the war. Films and books that were beginning to appear in large numbers that began to engage the American Public in a greater interest in revisiting the war and the tragedy. Particularly the impact of that war on the people who fought the war. That was not the major theme in the 1960s. The themes were about democracy and communism, cold war and containment. In the 1980s, it was about the tragedy of what happened to those who are left behind. Host how long did it take for his remains to be found, identified, and ultimately have his remains buried in Arlington Cemetery . Guest in the 1980s, when this recovering group was put in place by president bush, there began to be a series of missions undertaken to find the remains of lost american servicemen. Odonnells helicopters were on the list of casualties that should be investigated because a fair amount was known. They knew where in cambodia the helicopter went down roughly, so there were various attempts that were made to try and find that craft site beginning in the 1980s and they were all unsuccessful because the site was so remote, but by 1998, the site was located by a cambodian and vietnamese recovery team. They first identified the location and the americans came in to excavate along with the cambodians. That work was done in 1998 in the dry season in march of 1998 and this was all recounted in the book, how this team identified the site and the work that goes into effectively finding the remains of humans who were lost in a tropical jungle decades before and the remains that survive might be very small bone fragments or a single tooth. Host had his poetry began to become more popular and more wellknown . Almost immediately, michaels poetry was found in his footlocker. Shortly after he was shot down, and the grim task of having to return his personal effects to his family, they opened his footlocker and his friends saw his typewriter and poems that were in a file called letters from several servicemen copied those poems right away and started to circulate them. A british journalist who happened to be on the site named brian benton brought those poems back with him back to the u. K. , to london, and some years later, they published newspaper in london. So by within a few years of michaels disappearance in 1970, his poetry was pretty well known. It just had it just continued to find an audience in one way or another on its own in the aftereffects in the war. Host statistics that you write about, in vietnam, there were 2. 7 million american soldiers who ultimately served in that war. 58,220, as you mentioned, killed, whose names are memorialized on the vietnam war memorial. 150,000 american soldiers who were wounded, 75,000 severely. 2 million plus vietnamese killed. U. S. Budget estimated at 600 billion. So what are the lessons from all of that . Guest i think the greatest lesson is the one we continue, it seems, to me to revisit. When our leaders make a commitment to engage in military conflict, it is very difficult to stop. Once you begin, it is very difficult to stop unless you demonstrate extraordinarily high levels of courage to acknowledge that a decision might have been the right one. This we have seen in both president johnson and nixon and was very difficult to do. And that human life should be valued more highly than it is by our political leaders. In the time of the 1960s, soldiers were being sent to vietnam. It was abundantly clear to any thoughtful person including president johnson that this policy was not likely to be successful and that these soldiers who died were not likely to have to be able to advance the cause he was fighting for. There is a very powerful recording Lyndon Johnson made in a conversation with Mcgeorge Bundy early on in his presidency where he said i dont know what we get out of this war. Once we go in, i dont know how we are going to get out. This seems like a hopeless cause to me. At the time he said that, 400 americans died in vietnam. By the time the war ended, 58,000 died. Thats a lot of casualties for a cause that would seem to be failure right from the start. That is the greatest lesson. When you make a decision like that, be right, be careful, think the implications through as thoroughly as you can and imagine it is someone in your family who is going to fight that war on your behalf. Host in the month we are talking, after a three year legal battle, the Washington Post published the afghanistan papers, which are the transcriptions of conversations produced by the government on the war in afghanistan. And i am wondering what your thoughts were when you saw that, once again, the information going to the public about the war was very different about our political and military leaders understood . Guest its very heartbreaking because all of us who had anything to do with the vietnam war, who lived through that one way or another, thought that more than anything else, this war will teach us not to make that mistake again. Ultimately, i think, in my own view, and i explored this in the last chapter of my book, that i think this is a reflection on leadership. I am a believer that our leaders need to have signs of integrity and character because ultimately, the kind of experience they have and the kind of knowledge they have will fall short of what they need to know to be effective leaders. They always have to learn on the job. What matters most is the ability to make decisions from a point of view of integrity and a commitment to transparency to the people who elected you. None of these people demonstrated that capacity to the level that was necessary to protect human life or the interest of our society. What we should be voting for our people who have character. That is my view. Host you mentioned the lessons of vietnam. What were the ultimate effects on American Society . Guest one of the greatest effects was that ultimately, everyone who was aware of the war at the time came to understand the sense of betrayal that the American Government engaged in against them. For those who were assiduous supporters of the government in the 1960s, and there were many who felt, my country, right or wrong. I believe in my president , my government. That is my patriotic obligation ultimately, the secretary of defense published in his own book, in retrospect, that he knew, and they knew, the war was going to be a failure, and they knew they were making commitments they could not justify. Everyone recognized at that time that the government failed them, and i think one of the great consequences of the 1960s is the sense that government must be questioned with skepticism. We must think carefully about who we elected to these roles because they have power that can be exercised in ways thats not in the best interest of American People. Thats probably the greatest take away and thats why the tragedy of afghanistan today is so compelling. We seem not to have learned that lesson. Host you said you have become friends with the people who were Close Friends with Michael Odonnells sister. What was their reaction when you told them i am going to make this into a book . Guest in the first instance, my first conversation was with marcus. He was a retired schoolteacher. He was living in milwaukee. He was very supportive of the idea. We bonded right away as friends. He of course believed deeply that michaels story is a compelling story and should be told. He saw the power of that story and all kinds of ways that was important. We then went together to meet with patsy and i began to explore what might go into such a project. I think patsy had spent most of her adult life as the steward of her brothers legacy. She was the one who provided oversight over the use of his poetry. She was the surviving child who had to deal with both parents, who never learned in their lifetimes, they never found out what happened to their son. All they ever knew was what they read in the telegrams that were given to them in the weeks following michaels disappearance. So if she was responsible for that legacy when i arrived with marcus, whom she of course knew well, she was gratified, i think, that someone else would want to carry this burden and take on this responsibility that she felt so close to, so she gave me all of these materials associated with her brothers life that i think, in many ways, was very heartening for her to see, that finally, someone would take an interest in this story. And then for the years i was writing this project this book she was incredibly helpful. She would respond to every inquiry, every silly question. What was the name of your dog . Remind me of where you lived in shorewood . She had inexhaustible patience and support for the project and perhaps the greatest satisfaction for me in writing this book, when i sent her the manuscript after i had written it and it was ready to go, she said, finally, i have peace, and to me, that felt like that is why i wrote the book. Host and a gift to people who loved him, ultimately. Guest and who knew how important his story was. Host when all of his work has been gathered into a website, what will people find, and what is the web address . Guest inthattime. Com. There are photographs of michael from his childhood and from the years he was the in vietnam, but most important, there is michaels voice because marcus was the best friend anyone could ever have. Michael sent marcus tape recordings of letters. In those days, he had a fancy tape recorder where he would make music and write letters or dictate letters. And michaels letters were preserved on tape, and they are present on this website, so you can listen to michael talking to marcus about his music, talking about the war, telling jokes, and you get a sense of who this wonderful character was. His warmth, sensitivity, sense of humor. It is all there. If you want to learn more about Michael Odonnell, go to the website. Host in the minute we have left, you tell us that you have been a scholar all of your life. You run the new York Metropolitan Museum of art. Did this project change you . Guest it did. I got to know someone who is eminently worth knowing, and that is Michael Odonnell. They are very Close Friends. Most important, i was too young to fight in the war, but i lived through it as a kid in the 1960s and early 1970s. I wanted to understand better what happened in that time and i think i have. Host we are going to close by going to that website. We have picked one of Michael Odonnells songs to close by. As we listen to that, can you give us a brief introduction of what his music sounds like . Guest they were folk singers in the early 1960s it in the spirit of peter, paul, and mary or the mamas and papas. You will hear songs that are joyful, beautifully composed. They harmonize really well. They are looking forward to a time ahead of them that was not to be, a time of happiness and love, and that is what they wrote about in the 1960s. Host appreciate the conversation. As we close, we are going to listen to Michael Odonnell and Marcus Sullivan in one of their songs written during the vietnam era. No one to talk my troubles to i remember when you were looking up at me if i were the only one you want to see no one to talk my troubles to no one to talk my troubles to darker on next weeks q a, we will sit down with donald ritchie, historian and emirate as of the u. S. Senate to talk about the history of the u. S. Senate history of the impeachment trials. The house will be in order. 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