Colonel siry, thank you no your time. It was a pleasure, thank you. Lets take a look at some of the interviews in the collection at the west point center for oral history. This is stephen, he served as a helicopter pilot during the vietnam war. Its april 11th, 2016. Im in savannah, georgia, with steve dara, major retired from the u. S. Army. My first name is stephen, stephen and my last name is darrah, darrah. Lets provide a framework for this decision this afternoon. Take us from your Early Childhood right up through west point and into the army and through your army career. Okay. Look at more detail later. I was born and raised in providence, rhode island. Born february 25th, 1943. I graduated from school in 1961 and and went to the military academy in july of 1961. And while i was at the military academy, i fought the Academic Department on a daytoday basis. Played a little squash, played a little tennis and was delighted to finally graduate. I was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the infantry. What the Airborne Ranger school, as did most of my classmates at the time, and was assigned to the first of the 502nd battalion in the 102nd Airborne Division in fort campbell, kentucky, first assignment. Spent a year and a half there and decided i wanted to go to flight school. Decided i wanted to fly rather than walk. In 67 i went to flight school, finished that up in september of 67, went to vietnam on my first tour in october of 67 to the first cav. Coming back a year later i went to fort rucker, did the advanced course, went back to vietnam for about seven months or so. Units were standing down and i had to rotate through a number of units before i had the requisite amount of time to get back. Reassigned to fort benning, and i resigned and left the army in new years eve of 1974. Lets go back and spend a little time prior to west point. What was it that motivated you to choose west point. Thats kind of interesting, fred. Theres a program on television at the time called west point. I really thought these guys with all these uniforms on and so forth looked pretty sharp. And they had an in with the ladies and so forth. I thought, gee, that would be a good way to go do that. So i applied through the normal process of getting an appointment through our congressman in rhode island, a guy named amy feran and did the testing and all the rest of that. And i actually turned out to be a fourth alternate, meaning there was a principle and three guys ahead of me. I thought, well, this wasnt going to happen. And actually, id been accepted at duke and i was going to go to duke and do a premed course there. I then i got a letter, youve got an appointment. I said sure, why not. So i showed up. And thats what basically why i went to west point. And how i wound up there. You said you played a little squash and a little tennis, you played a lot of squash and a lot of tennis. Yeah, i played four years up there with each. Now, you played against navy in squash and tennis. Yes. How did you do . Never lost. Our team never lost, i never lost. We had i dont remember if we played them, but the three years we played them, at the varsity level, we beat them every year. That was the highlight of my athletic career. You graduated, and commissioned in the infantry. Decided you wanted to fly instead of walk. This was kind of interesting. When i was with the first of the 502nd, theres a gentleman there named junior gasbard. He passed away a number of years ago. He was an aviator, also the officer of representative for the tennis team when i was up there. He and i used to play tennis every once in a while. We got the discussing one day i was on orders to go to vietnam with the third brigade. And he was with the first cav in 1965 when they were first together. One of the first aviators. He said you ought to consider going to flight school. You can fly over that stuff and not walk through it. I thought, hey, thats a good idea. I decided to go to flight school, applied and started in fort walters, texas, spent four and a half months there and then four and a half months at fort rucker. This is rotary. Thats correct, yup. Why did you choose helicopters instead of fixed wing . I had this desire, not sure why, fred, but i wanted to fly gun ships, i had seen pictures and videos of them, i wanted to fly something i could shoot back, not just be shot at. At that point in time the gunship development with bell was starting, and they were hanging gun systems, if you will, on the old b and c model troop carrying helicopters. In my last week at fort rucker, they asked if anybody would be interested in taking a weeks transition course into gunships. I said yeah, id like to do that. We went out and fired the systems and so forth. I really liked it. What was a gunship at that time . It was a helicopter that had four people in it, a pilot and copilot, gunner and crew chief. These were b and c models, first early models bell developed. They were originally used for troop carrying, and resupply, and so forth. Somebody got the idea, well sanction gun systems on them, mini guns on them, m16 systems, which are four m16 machine guns, two rocket pods and so forth and then modify the interior in such a way, shape or form that you carry the ammunition and all that. They were the first, if you will, helicopter gunships that were developed. They had some of them, i think, in 1966 and late 65 is when they first came out. You were in one of the first models . They had evolved if you will at the point in time i got there in 67. They had gone through a period of evolution, if you will, with certain improvements, blades. That was what you were going to fly. Thats what you flew in first cav. Thats correct. You come to vietnam. Tell us about that transition. When i first came to vietnam, i was assigned to the i dont know what it was down in they said they said what do you want to do . I said i wanted to fly helicopter gunships. Who do you want to fly with . The first cav. My orders were go to be assigned to the first cav. They said what unit do you want to be in. I said one of the either one is good for me. They assigned me to d company, 229th, assault helicopter baa tan tallon as platoon leader of third platoon. I arrived in october 10th or 11th or 12th, around that time frame, and took over that platoon. Whats a platoon . About 28 to 30 men, door gunners, crew chiefs, officer pilots, commissioned officer pilots. And five to six helicopters, five to six gunships. And what would be a normal week for you . What would some of the assignments youd be doing . We provided basically armed escort for a variety of different things. It could be a combat assault consisting of six troopcarrying hel helis for example, or escorting a medevachelicopter. Resupply stuff. If the helis were resupplying and they needed an escort, we would take two gunships out and escort them to do that. We also did a number of escorts for what we call longrange reconpatrol insertions. That was something that was done on a regular ongoing basis. And that consisted basically of a team of anywhere from five to six men. And they would be inserted into a particular area, and they would stay there for whatever the time that they could stay there doing reconnaissance work, mapping data, so on and so forth. We would escort the aircraft to put them in. When it came time to get them out, we go escort them out. Escorting the whole way. Thats correct. We never carried troops. You said these were m16, you had m16 on there . There was a number of different varieties of gun systems on the old b and c model helis. One was an m16 system, it had four m16 machine guns, two on each side, and two nineround rocket pods, one on each side. Plus the door gunners had somewhere around 4,000 rounds of door gun ammunition split between the two of them. So you had guns that you could use as a pilot . Thats right. The pilot that sat in the left seat was the aircraft commander, and he would actually fire the what we call the gun systems, the mini guns or the m16. And the pilot in the right seat, the copilot, would fire the rocket pods. You had the capability of changing that over if something happened to one or the other of those individuals in the aircraft. That was normally the way we divided up the responsibilities. What was your First Experience in combat in that situation . I was assigned the way it worked is that when you went to the d company, the 229th, you flew with an experienced aviator for a period of time. Then that aviator would say whether he thought you could be an aircraft commander or not. If he didnt think you could be an aircraft commander you stayed a peter pilot or you were reassigned some place else. Hay had a warrant officer named john mituski who was the best facility id ever seen in my life. I flew with him about three months. I became an aircraft commander fairly quickly after i got there. He and i clicked together. So we flew a variety of different missions. To answer your question, the one name that sticks out in my mind is one of the things we used to do was fire fly missions at night. We were in the bong song area. There was a river that ran down through there. Our base was close to the coast. That night we would fly three of four missions, checking the river out. We had a slick, a troopcarrying helicopter that had a search light system on it in one of the doors and he would fly slowly down the river with a search light checking the river out. We would fly back out 50 to 100 feet up behind him. If he got shot at, then we could protect him to get him out and so on and so forth. We also had a chase bird, another heli that flew higher in case somebody got shot dun and had to be rescued. What i distinctly remember, the first time, this happened quickly after i got there, the second fire fly mission we flew. And at the time there was a rej meant of north vietnamese that were coming from the north across that river going south and the cabin interpretcepted t. They were trying to break out of whatever cabin they were in contact with. They had a number of 50 caliber aircraft guns. What i distinctly remember was the first time i saw a tracer round from a 50 caliber at night. And i remember i was flying the helicopter, mituski was sitting next to me. I saw this green thing coming up, vertically, very slowly. It had some sort of light. Suddenly it turned and came towards us and just accelerated right by us. And about the time it turned, miteski said break right, break right. I was so transfixed on that softball, that green big softball that was coming up in the air that he finally had to take the stick and bang it off to the right so we broke out of the way of that thing. That was the first time i had seen a large caliber tracer round at night. Saw a lot of them before we went back home. I remember that distinctly. And did you have Laundry Service next day . Not that time. There were other times we did though, yes. Yeah. So you were in a number of those situations . You said you were involved during attack. One of the things that and i was very fortunate in this regard. In december of 68, first of all let me just say we probably flew on average anywhere between 140 to 200 hours a month. There was supposedly a limit on how much flying time you could actually fly. Those limits really werent enforced that much. And depending upon the activity that was going on, we would fly as much as, if it was a busy time, as much as 200 hours in a months time period. So you could be flying every day. Thats correct, and you could fly seven to eight hours a day, and you could fly at night also. In december of 1967 i was selected, myself and one of my warrant officer pilots were selected to go to the cobra transition course, the ah 1 g cobra had been developed by bell. Bell helicopter, which has designed and developed all i say not all, but the majority of the helicopters that were in service in vietnam at the time. Decided at some point in time, not sure exactly when in the middle of 1967 to develop a purposely designed gunship. And the prototypes for this were finished in im going to say maybe september, fred, and then they starts manufacturing and sending to vietnam. The first ones arrived in late september, early october. And they were part of what they called a new Equipment Training Team found in the saigon, where they actually brought pilots in, crew chiefs and door gunners from flying the older helicopters, bell helicopters in and actually trained them. There was a big difference between this cobra and the gunships we were flying, the b and c models i mentioned. One, there was only two pilots, they sat in an dem, one in the front, one in the back. The aircraft was designed in such a way that it had a much higher cruising speed. The b and c models, we could cruise, if we were loaded, somewhere around 70, 75 knots. The cruiser would run 145 knots. In the gun range, you could take it up to about 100 knots indicated before things started to get shaky inside the helicopter. A toeb cobra you could take up to 110 knots. The gun systems themselves on the cobra were designed for it. It could carry much more ammunition, many more rockets, hea heavier payload, and had about the same station time, about two hours of the full load of fuel the b and c models had. The great thing about it was it had a width of 36 inches. As long as you kept that width, pointed at what you were trying to go after, you had a very small for somebody to shoot back at you. It had better armament protecting the pilots, and it could take a lot of damage before they actually gave up the ghost, so to speak. And you were the only gunners . And the interesting thing about this, this was a bit of a problem. The crew chief and door gunners had been flying, getting flight pay, going out on missions, could see what was going on and so forth, had their own helicopter they were responsible for, and now that they were being asked to do is just to maintain a helicopter and not fly it. And psychologically that became it didnt become. It could have become a big problem. And thank god for these young kids and okay, fine, we cant fly, well maintain it and make sure youre safe when you fly. I kept a c model gunship in my platoon, supposed to turn them all in. I kept them there so we could get these guys out and put them up in the air and let them see whats going on, where we were flying and so on and so forth. But it was a bit of a change for them. The rest were cobras . Thats correct, we had five cobras. You were a platoon leader for six months. Yes. And then you became i was assigned as the assistant s3 in battalion. What was your job then . Planning operations, taking information on available assets we had to be able to assign to supporting combat assaults, interfacing with, you know, infantry battalions and the regiments and so forth, providing what they needed for various operations. It was just a Tactical Operations planning on a daytoday, week to week basis. But you stayed in the air . I continued to fly with my platoon. I was asked to come back and fly by the Company Commander there at the time as well as the guy that took over for my standpoint as a platoon leader. I came back and flew with these guys on a regular basis. For another platoon leader . Thats correct, yeah. You were under his command at that point . Well, actually, it was kind of interesting because what they did is they let me plan and lead the missions that did this platoon. Which i was fine with. I enjoyed the flying. I was very close to the guys that were in that platoon, both the enlisted and the warrant officers and the commissioned officers. And one of my objectives when i was there, personal objectives was i wanted to make sure i did everything i could to bring everybody home. And i was successful in doing that. In flying its interesting that it doesnt take much to make a mistake. And somebody get hurt very badly or get killed. One of the things that we always stressed, and that i always stressed with these guys is certain fundamentals about thinking before you do something. And safety was a big, big part of what we did. And it was not that safety aspect out when youre running a mission, but a safety aspect when you came back, how you refueled, how you rearmed, how you cleaned them, so on and so forth. One of the things i was asked to do because this was kind of a bible with me, if you will, was come back and maintain that dialogue, and maintain that environment with the guys that were actually still in the third platoon. Which i did, and enjoyed doing it. Just to back up a minute, on the cobra transition, it was interesting. When i was asked to go down there, actually i wasnt asked to go down there, i was assigned to the threeweek course. I had never been to the saigon. So this warrant officer Jack Gallagher and i went down there, spent three weeks learning how to fly and shoot and of forth. When we came back, the first six cobras that came in country, three went to the 334th playboys down south, around saigon, and the other three came up to my platoon. Whats playboy . It was a call sign. They were a Gunship Company also down in the southern part of vietnam. And so we actually had the three of the first six cobras that came in country, came to my platoon. And it was just before or just after tet started. We flew those continuously through the time frame i was there until i came home in october. What were your observations as a soldier, going through that vietnam experience during tet . You were right there in the midst of it. What was your impression of the way the war was being waged at that point . You know, i didnt have a sense, fred, because a a large sense of how the overall tactical stuff was going on. We got the stars and stripes with and we could read what was going on. We were so focused on what was going on in our unit with us, in our helicopters, in our units that we were supporting, and normally we would support one Slick Company, which was three different platoons of troopcarrying helicopters and they in turn would be supporting one battalion. Always thing that were going on at tet at the time, the blockage of nva positions, the cavs, they were not involved in way itself, that was the marines that were involved in that, but our world was a fairly small world. And i dont remember having any sense at all about what was going on overall with the war, how the war was being waged. Of course, we Read Everything about what happened in tet after it actually happened. I was if kwang tree when that went on, late january, early february of 68 i think it was. The vietnamese took over the town of kwang tree. And we actually had moved up there, my platoon moved up there with a Slick Company to support the first of the 12th of the cav three days before this started. And the first of the 12th was supplying the perimeter defense, if you will, for the troop carrying helicopters and my gunships and so forth. So it was what i remember about that time is that the weather was absolutely awful. It was the start of the monsoon season, and we had ceilings of about maybe 200 feet before you got into the clouds. You had visibility of a half mile. Sometimes it went down to 100 feet. To fly in that type of weather was difficult. If you couldnt see any more than a half or quarter mile ahead of where you were flying and you were flying at 120 or 140 knots, you had to be pretty damn careful about what you were doing. So the work that we did during that time frame, a lot of it was predicated solely on how the weather was, could we get out, could the medevacs get out, could the troop carrying helicopters get out, the resupply. It was particularly difficult at night. The weather was about the same thing at night. There were some difficult times that we had to get through. What i remember, fred, was that there was an evening where we were trying to get back to our fire base. And it was midnight, 1 00. The weather closed in. And by closing in, we could not fly back. We would have to either turn around and go back to someplace else, or we could use the radar at the fire base to pick us up and guide us in there. We would have to go what we called ifr, which is flight rules, go up in the soup so to speak where we couldnt see and fly off the instruments and let them talk us down. And i decided i was going to take the flight, three gunships and two slicks, two troopcarrying helicopters, empty at the time. And we would go get contact with the ground controlled approach radar one at a time. And wed get them to pick us up before we went to the ifr conditions. So the first four aircraft, that all worked well. And i was the last one, contacted the gca folks, they come up and said, yup, okay, go on up. Well pick you up as soon as you get there. We went up in ifr, climbed to 4,000 feet. And i lost every instrument in the helicopter. I lost all the electrics. I lost everything and had nothing except a nav compass and an attitude indicator. It showed the helicopter was this way, this way, this way or this way. The compass gave you a north, south, east west kind of direction as to where you were going. Still had radio contact . Nothing, no radios, absolutely no instrumentation at all except those the nav compass and the attitude indicator. I had no radio contact. Im at 4,000 feet. In the middle of something i cant see. I dont know where i am. And what i decided to do was, well, okay, we were close to the coast. I know if i fly east im going to fly over the ocean. If we run out of gas flying over the ocean, thats a big problem. If i fly west and we run out of gas, ill get a 20minute fuel warning light. Ill know about the time were going to run out of fuel and i can set it down wherever. And then maybe we can get picked up and so on and so forth. So i turned west. Were still at 4,000 feet, flying along at 80 knots. And the pilot next to me was a new guy in the country was going bananas about this time. He was just, you know, having himself a realtime. And the guys in the back, the tour gunner and the crew chief in the back didnt say a word. And we flew along for, i guess, about 20 minutes. And an ov1 bird dog, a propeller driven, single propeller bird dog came through the mist coming at us, just suddenly he was there. Fortunately, he was fast enough and quick enough to turn it up on its side. When we went by us, we were here and he went by this way and missed us. When we had our 20minute fuel light come on, we had flown into the 20minute fuel light about 10 minutes. I looked up on the instruments, i was flying the helicopter at the time and i saw these lights out in the distance. And i had no idea. Didnt know if we were over in cambodia, still in south vietnam. I had no idea where we were. The private sitting next to me, ill never forget this, said, oh, look, theres an aircraft carrier. I said, no, were not flying east, were flying west. Theres not aircraft carriers here in the western direction were going. What it turned out to be was on k. We just lucked out. We on k was the main heli port for the first cav. So i remember sitting in approach at the end of the runway, didnt call them up, didnt have any raids. At the time that i shot the approach at the end of the runway, we ran out of fuel. Came to a hover and we ran out of fuel. Just sat the aircraft down and that was it. We were very, very fortunate that night. I turned out we turned in the right direction, maintained the right course and wound up back in a safe place again. How about one more story about a combat situation where you had to either protect a dustoff, a medevac or supporting troops. Well, ill tell you about the last time i flew. And what we were doing, flying cobras. I was flying a cobra at the time. I had a cobra as a wingman. And we were putting in longrange reconpatrol in. It was up west of crying tree, weis of the assaw valley, not big high mountains, but goodsize ridgelines and valleys. The way we did this, wed take three troopcarrying helicopters, the lurk team, five, six, seven men would be in one helicopter. And we would fly to three or four designated landing zones. And the lurk team may be in the third helicopter and they would fly in a trail, one behind the other. The first helicopter would go down and land and the other two would fly over. Nobody would get out of the first helicopter, nobody in it. He would pick up, fall in behind the second one where that team was. If somebody was watching us do that, they didnt know where the guys were getting out or where the actual team was being inserted. It was around 6 30 or 7 00 at night. It was just starting to get dark. And we went to leave the lz, two ridgelines the lurk team was put in. They sat down, team got out, helicopter picked up, other two flew over. And he picked up behind him. There was a guy named bob lynch flying that helicopter. What we normally did is that we would all then go to a location that was maybe 10 or 15 flight minutes from where the team was put in. They would go silent and they could come back up on the radio and click twice on the radio if everything was fine. We would then leave. If they needed to be picked up. They would get a hold of us and tell us to be picked up. As soon as they hit the ground, they started yelling on the radio. What happened was that unbeknownst to us is that an nva regiment had come into that area and put up the headquarters. Where they were sat down was on top of that regimental headquarters, the whole deal, the bunkers. And when they were set down, when they got out of the helicopter, of course, the north vietnamese opened up on them. Three were killed immediately and all the others were wounded. The north vietnamese had reenforced the ridgelines where this team on either side, the ridgelines ran east and west. And the valley ran east and west. So where this team was actually put in was in between these two ridgelines. On those ridgelines they had a number of 50 caliber machine guns, antiaircraft machine guns, rpgs and so forth. And when bob tried to get back in to get those guys out he tried four times to do it. And got shot up something terrible. Still kept the helicopter flying. Couldnt get them out. Every time he went in, we would go my wingman would prep one ridgeline and id prep the other. You could see the north vietnamese down there. You could see the guys behind the guns and so forth. We finally ran out of ammunition, ran out of rockets, mini guns and ammunition and so forth. And bob said he was going to try it one more time to get in there to get these guys. So what i did was said, okay, when youre on short final im going to hover down that ridgeline with my search light on on the east side of where you are. Thats going to take all the attention from that side away from you. And i didnt have anything to shoot back with. And thats what i did. I went down that ridgeline and hovered down there about 10 or 20 knots. We got the crap shot out of us and so forth. Lynch got in, got the guys, the dead ones and the wounded ones into his helicopter, got them out, went about two miles away from that area. And then his helicopter gave up the ghost. The engine failed and so forth. He went in. We had to go back because we were banged up pretty well our self. No ammunition and so forth. Had to get back, refuel, rearm and get back out again. By that time we had all sorts of air force folks, we had gunships from other units there and so forth. So they provided the support to pick bob up and the team members when they were on the ground. What i remember about that night, when i went back and landed back at our refuel rearm point, the crew chief of that helicopter, when i got out, he came up they always came up and opened the door for us, and we got out. And he looked at me and said that was a pretty tough one wasnt it . I said, yeah, it was pretty tough. And he started laughing at me. I said what the hell are you laughing at . He said, look, you peed all over yourself. That was an underwear changing moment in that particular situation. Thats the last time i flew in vietnam on the first tour. A Ford Operation base is what they called it. This place was staffed and run by special forces guys. There were a number of mercenary troops there. Every orient you can possibly think of, thais, koreans, north veet in a sneeze and south vietnamese, taiwanese, so forth. These are Running Missions into laos. And what they would do is they would get dressed up as north vietnamese, including the special forces guys, these great big e7s, north vietnamese units on. The mercenaries could pass, but the other guys i always said well, you know, the role that we were playing, we had two troopcarrying helicopters, one for the team to be inserted, one chase, and two shut down, two to escort them out and to go out and pick them up and bring them back. And these guys were being inserted to laos on the western side of the valley, which at that time nobody had been in the assaw valley for a year and a half to two years. There used to be three special forces camps, but they had all been abandoned. When these guys were inserted, they would do similar things, theyd go silent. What their job was was to do reconnaissance work and raise hell as much as they could to japon and laos. When they couldnt survive anymore, they would call and say weve got to come out. I remember distinctly the first 250i time we went out, we had the troopcarrying helicopter that picked them up and used mcguire rigs. The canopies were so hod, and mcguire rigs were ropes, to drop down through the canopy to the men on the ground. They would strap themselves in with their feet, arms and so forth. The first time every extraction was a hot extraction, every single one. And the first time that these guys came out, i remember the pilot on the troopcarrying helicopter, said, okay, come on out. He picked up and i glanced down, there were guys that were hanging on this mcguire rig by their feet. They put their feet in this thing so they could put their knees back down as the helicopter was flying out. It was the most surrealistic thing id ever seen. They would fly them to some safe place and set them down on the ground. They would get out of the mcguire rig and get back in the helicopter. The issue around the assaw valley was that this was a main supply route for the north vietnamese on the ho chi minh trail. The air force went there on a regular basis and bombed the hell out of that place, craters all over the place, ac, 130 gunships at the time were starting to come in. And the antiaircraft guys from the north vietnamese out there were good guys. They had 23 millimeter and a lot of 50 caliber stuff. When we started flying out there to put these teams in. We had to figure out how do we get from basically the east coast, across the assaw valley, into laos, get the team in and then get back again. We tried everything. We tried, for example, 12,000 feet. Which is about as high as a loaded cobra will fly. And all that did is wed get flak, 37 millimeter flak all over the place. We tried going down to the south. We tried going to the north, up towards the direction of where caisson was and coming back to the south. We tried low level, tried everything. Every time we went out we got shot at. Shot at by big stuff, not just small arms stuff. This was 51 caliber and 37 millimeter stuff. Those missions were really tough missions. And i remember that the north vietnamese were clever about this. What they would do with the 51 caliber antiaircraft guns is triang late them. They would shoot at you with one. Then you had to guess and say, okay, where is the triangle. If you rolled in on one, depending how you broke, the second one would open up. Now ive got two. Wheres the third . And it became a bit of a guessing game. And the guessing game from their standpoint. They didnt know how we were going to roll in, didnt know the angle of attack, didnt know if we were going to fly off some place and rapport leappear low and so forth. The reason im smiling is it was a game more often than not when we went out. The guys were good. We were just a little bit better, thats all. That was a tough time. We did that basically for about a month and a half. And then the cav went into the assaw valley in 1968. Made the major assault. This was a major, big deal effort. We lost 24 aircraft the first day, 24 helicopters. And the distinct memories i have of that is a ch47 shinook flying down the valley with fire coming out of the back of his aircraft. The whole aircraft was on fire. We escorted a ch54 sky crane. We were in the first lift that went in. And he was actually hovering up the side of this mountain. And unfortunately he hovered right past a 37 millimeter they had dug back into the side of that mountain. And the 37 mill miter opened up on him put five rounds in his canopy and blew the helicopter up. So that day was a bad day. One of the reasons that it was a bad day is that went assault went in, the weather was such that there was a small area over the valley to get over 600 aircraft in and out of. It was maybe a halfmile wide and maybe a mile long. We had an awax plane up there controlling everybody going in and out. And i distinctly remember, when we came out to rearm and refuel, you had to climb up through this opening, get up above the clouds and then fly back to wherever your rearm, refueling point was. And i could still hear those 37 millimeters and those 51 caliber guns shooting. They made a very distinct sound, a distinct thumping sound they made. As we were climbing up, the back of our seats were armored. I slid down in my seat as far as i could go and still fly the helicopter. And i thought that just let me get out of this thing and stop hearing this noise going on behind me. And as i was basically looking at my instruments, i wasnt looking up ahead and everything, and the copilot was sitting in the front seat. He didnt come over the intercom. He just yelled plane, and i heard him distinctly. He was an f4 phantom coming down through the same area. All sorts of stauff hanging off him. He was coming right directly at us. And i just froze. I didnt know what to do. He knew what to do. He rolled his aircraft up on its side and he came by us. He was so close i could see the skull and cross bones in white and the black helmet the guy had on. As they went by, all he did was go rolled it level, looked down. I looked back, dropped his bombs, hit afterburner, and off he went. Theres memories of that area that i remember distinctly. It was a difficult time there. Youre back in fort rucker. Whats it like to come back after touring vietnam to the United States in 1968 . Well, for me it was a special time because my first son was born a month and a half after i left. And i had not seen him. He was ten months old when i came back. So and i distinctly remember meeting him for the first time in the Providence Airport at 12 10 at night. His mother had him all dressed up in this cute little jumper suit and so forth. And his name is steven clark your junior. He was woken up. Didnt know what was going on. Phyllis took him and said clark, heres your daddy, and held him out to me. He took one look at me and screamed bloody murder. He didnt know who this guy was and so forth at midnight. All he wanted to do was go to sleep and so on and so forth. So coming back was a special time, fred, because thats when he and i started to get together and we started to bond. And so forth. That was a very, very special time for me and also for him, i think. And for phyllis too at the time. Fort rucker was kind of interesting. I was assigned to the department of education there, working on the warrant officer advanced course down there and putting that pogt and so forth. Had a chance to play a lot of golf. Had some really good people that i worked with, and folks that worked for me and so forth in that regard. And it was for the first part of it was it was very noticeable from the standpoint, all the stuff we did in vietnam, to this very peaceful, quiet normal, if you will, type environment. And i didnt have a problem with it. I just thought about it and said, gee, thats different there versus here. I like here better. I like my son here, i like my wife here, this, that, and so on and so forth. So it was a good assignment, and i enjoyed it. Fort rucker was doing a lot of good things, good education for folks coming into the army, aviators and so forth. Two years later, back in vietnam . Right. I was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division. I was a cav troop executive officer. It was an interesting time in 7172. As you probably remember, the paris peace talks were starting. And it was there wasnt a ceasefire, but there was an understanding between they and us that we werent going to screw around with each other. We were going to kind of let things go down there and paris. I went back to the exact same area i was in the first tour, camp ed mondamonds was the sout the kwang tree area. Flew the same areas. Didnt go into the assaw valley, but everywhere around there. We flew over north vietnamese aircraft positions. Theyd wave at us and wed wave at them. It was difficult for these young warrant officers over there. They had been trained, and they were looking for a war. And they wanted a war. They wanted a shooting war. And there was no shooting war going on. And that was a bit of a morale problem because they they wanted to go out and shoot somebody, to be honest with you. That was not the time we wanted to be shooting. We were basically told. It was also a time that drugs started to come in. We never had a problem with anybody related to drugs my first tour over there. If there was a problem, i wasnt told about it. It was just taken care of and the individual left. I dont know how he left or where he left to and so forth. Second tour there were some issues. And they werent dealt with as well as i at the time they came up thought they should have been dealt with. But different times, different people, different places and so forth. And i was with a cav unit for about i guess five or six months, somewhere in that range, and the 101st stood down, rotated back to the states. I didnt have enough time in the country at that time to rotate back with them. I was reassigned to another unit down south, a vip flight attachment in saigon. Wonderful living conditions. Absolutely great, shower, regular beds, a club we could go to, a nice restaurant that had good food. The flying was awful. Terrible, flying vips around. I spent a month or two months with that gang. And had enough time in country when they stood down and then came back. Came back. And your next assignment back in the states . Went to fort benning. I was with the department of instruction for a short period of time. Then i was assigned to the 197th flight infantry brigade, hoping to get a company out there and so forth. I was an assistant s3 for a year and a half. Went tonight school, got an mba with georgia state. The assignment as a Company Commander didnt come about, and i decided i was going to leave the army. Thats when i left new years eve of 74. Looking back at your experience in the army, what two or three things do you take out of that experience that you reflect on today that affected you in any of your dealings today, or what you did after the service . What do you take away from that . I think a couple things have meant a lot to me is im still very close to the guys who were in my platoon. And its enough we have a reunion every year. It was 45 years before we got together. Theres a story around that. How that happened. Now we have about 13 to 15 of us that come to my beach house with their wives every year for a week. And what ive learned to appreciate with that is that you have relationships with people in certain situations, and certain environments that can become very, very special. And they do last. So thats one takeaway. Another takeaway is that if you take care of your men, you take care of your folks, take care of your organization, they, for the most part, will take care of you. Its a leadership issue, as you well know. I think the other takeaway that from my time in the service, its more of a disappointment than anything else, and its not sour grapes or anything. But as compared to my civilian commercial life, if you will, recognition of performance in the military is done on a different basis than my experience was in the commercial world. Not saying its right, not saying its wrong, thats the way it was. I didnt i obviously personally agree with that in the way it was done so i left. I decided to do something else. I dont think its particularly objective, i think it was subjective. If you asked me to do what could have been done for it to be better . I dont have a solution to it. But evaluating somebodys performance, and making clear to them whats expected, not only what to do, but also how to do it, and then having an honest evaluation, i had an issue with the army in that. And i dont think i really preesh appreciated that as much until i got in the socalled civilian world. We can evaluate your performance here as being first rate. We appreciate you sharing these stories about vietnam. Its something that i know that people will want to hear about. As they look back in that history, thank you, steve, for your time here. Appreciated it. Thanks for your time, fred, i enjoyed it. Our look back at the vietnam war will continue in a few minutes. Friday night on American History tv well focus on abraham lincoln, his friends and enemies with programming from the lincoln forums annual symposium in gettysburg sunday night on afterwards, Republican National committee spokesperson, the book the new American Revolution the making of a pop lus movement. Ive had conservatives say to me why do you use this word, im not a populist. To me it sums up what this book is about, and its the people. I wanted to honestly profile the people on the left and on the right, and most of the voters i profiled were trump voters. But i did profile some who were not. And so to me it was tapturing the sentiment that drove an ele elect rat modern history. It was a profile of the American People on given issues from terrorism to poisoned water in flint, michigan. Watch afterwards sunday night at 9 00 eastern on cspan2s book tv. Now back to our programming on the vietnam war, and the Lessons Learned from it. Two former members of congress who served in the war spoke on a panel at the National Archives in washington, d. C. This is about 90 minutes. Now i ask all the Vietnam Veterans or any United States veteran who served on active duty in the United States armed forces, anytime during the period november 1st, 1955, to may 15th, 1975, the vietnam era to stand and be recognized. [ applause ] veterans, as you exit, staff and volunteers will present each of you with a vietnam veteran lapel pin. The United States of america vietnam war commemoration is