I was born and raised in providence, rhode island, 1943. I graduated from Providence Country Day School and went to the military academy in july of 1961. And while 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, and i was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the infantry. I went to Airborne Ranger school, as did most of my classmates at the time. I was assigned to the first of d battalion at fort campbell, kentucky. That was my spent in a year and first. A half there and decided i wanted to go to Flight School, and i was on orders to go to the third brigade and decided i wanted to fly rather than walk, so in 1967, i went to Flight School and finished in september of 1967. Went to vietnam on my first tour in october of 1967 to the first cav. Came back a year later and did the advance course and back to vietnam for about i think it was seven months or so. Units were standing down, and i had to rotate through a number before i had time to get back. I was reassigned back at fort benning with the 197th light infantry brigade. And i resigned and left the army in, lets see, it was 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 . Is kind ofat interesting, because the was a program on the television at the time called west point, and i thought these guys with the uniforms on looked pretty sharp. They had an in with the ladies and so forth the way the shows were, and i thought that would be a good way to do that so i , applied through the process of getting an application in rhodeur congressmen island and did the testing and all of that, and i actually turned out to be a fourth alternate, meaning there was a principal and three ahead of me. So i thought well this isnt going to happen. Actually i got accepted at duke , and i was go to do a premed course there. About two weeks before i got a letter saying you got an appointment. Be at west point at such and such a date if you accept and so on, and i said sure, why not. I showed up. That is basically why i went to west point and how i wound up there. You said you played a logical squash and tennis. Stephen yes, i played four years up there. With each. You played against navy at squash and tennis. Stephen yes. How did you do . Stephen never lost. Our team never lost. I never lost. I dont remember if we played them as plebes but the three years on the varsity level we beat them every year and last year we shut them out, which was the first time between army and navy in squash. That was the highlight of my athletic career if you will. , you graduate from west point and you are commissioned in what branch . Stephen infantry. Flyou decided you wanted to instead of walk. Stephen this is kind of interesting. When i was with the first of the 502nd there was a gentleman named junior gaspard. Unfortunately he passed away a ago, but heyears was an aviator and also was the representative or the tennis team, and we used to play tennis once in a while. We got to discussing one day that i was on orders to go to vietnam and with the third brigade and 101st and was with the first cav in 1965. When they were first put together, he flew with the first aviators. He said you ought to consider going to Flight School. He said you can fly over that, you dont have to walk through it. I thought that is a good idea so i decided to guy and spent i think it was four and a half months at fort texas then 4 1 2 at fort rucker. There is rotary . Stephen that is correct. Yes. Why did you choose helicopters . Stephen i had this desire, and i am not really sure why, fred, but i wanted to fly gun ships. I had seen pictures and videos and i wanted to live something that i could shoot back with rather than just be shot at, and at that point if time the gun Ship Development with bell was starting and they were hanging gun systems if you will on the old b and c model helicopters in my last week at fort rucker they asked if anybody with be interesting in a weeks transition course into gun ships. I said yes. I would like to do that so we , flew the system and i liked it. Fred what was the gun ship at that time . Stephen a gun ship was a helicopter with four people in it, pilot, copilot, and chief and another, and they were b and c models the first bell had developed and originally used for troop carrying and resupply and so forth and somebody got the idea lets put some guns on them mini , m16, four him 16, two pods, and and two they carried ammunition. They were the first helicopter gun ships that were developed. They had some i think in 1966, late 1965 when they first came out. Fred so you were in one of the first models of this . Stephen they had evolved to the point when i got to my unit in october of 1967, so they had gone through a period of evolution with certain improvements. Rotor blades, tail rotors, structural things and so forth. Fred that is what you were going to fly and you went to the first cav. Stephen yes. You come to vietnam, and tell us about the transition. Stephen i first came into vietnam, i was assigned to the i dont know what it was but they said what , do you want to do. I want to fly helicopter gun slips with the first cav. He said ok, fine. , my orders were to go to anke and be signed. When i got this and he they said when i got this, and they said what units, i said you can have two gunships. One is 227 and 229. Either one is good. They signed me 20 d company 229 assault helicopter battalion as platoon leaders of first platoon. I arrived in about october 10 or 11 and took over that platoon. Fred what is a platoon . Stephen about 28, 30 man. Door gunner, crew chief. Warrant officer pilots. Commissioned officer pilots. And five to six helicopters, gun ships. Fred and what would be a normal week for you, some of the assignments . Stephen we provided basically armed escort for a variety of different things. It could be a combat assault consisting of six troop carrying hueys, for example or it could , be escorting a medevac helicopter into someplace with a hot l. Z. And they needed Fire Suppression so the helicopter can medevac folks who have been wounded. We supplied stuff. If the hueys are resupplying somebody and they need an escort because of conditions on the ground and so forth we would , take two gun ships out and escort them to do that. We also we did a number of escorts for what we call longrange recon patrol and that was done on a regular ongoing basis. 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 they could stay there, doing reconnaissance work, mapping data, so on and so forth. We would escort the aircraft that put them in, and when it came time to get them out, we would escort them. Fred you would escort them the whole way. Stephen that is correct. We never carried troops. Were m16,aid these you would have m16s on them . Stephen there were a number of varieties of gun systems on the old b and c model hueys. One was m16 with four machine guns two on each side and two nine round rocket pods. One on each side. That was the arming. Plus the door gunners. They had somewhere around 4,000 rounds of door gun ammunition split between the two of them. Fred so you had guns that you could use as far as a pilot . Stephen that is right. The far side of left seed was aircraft commander , and he would fire what we call the gun systems, many guns or m16 and m60s and with the rocket pods but you had the capability , of changing that if something happened to one of those individuals in the aircraft. That was normally the way we divided up the responsibilities. Fred what was your First Experience in combat in vietnam . Stephen i was assigned the way it worked when you went to the 229th, you flew with an experienced aviator for a period of time. Then that aviator would say whether he in turn thought could you could be an aircraft commander or not. If he didnt think you could you could be an and or craft commander, you would stay of what we would call a peter pilot or reassigned someplace else. And i had a warrant officer name joined moteski who was the best pilot ive ever seen in my life and i , flew with john for about i guess about three months. I became an aircraft commander fairly quickly when i got there but we clicked together , and we flew a variety of different missions. To answer your question, the one thing that sticks out in my mind one of the things we used to do is fly firefight missions at night. There was a river that ran down through the area and our fire base was close to the coast. And at night, we would fly three to four missions, checking the river out. We would have we called it a slick, two pairing helicopter with a searchlight system in one of the doors, and he would fly slowly down the river with a searchlight, checking it out, and we would fly 50 to 100 feet above him so if he got shot at we could protect him to get him out and so on and so forth, and we also had a chase bird, as we would call it. That was another louie that fly much higher in case somebody got shot down and they had to be rescued. What i distinctly remember, and this happened fairly quickly once we got there, the second the regiment of north vietnamese were coming from the north across the river going south, and the captain intercepted them, and they were trying to get back to the south and break contact with whoever they were in contact with, and 50calibernumber of antiaircraft guns, and what i distinctly room ever is the first time i saw a tracer round from a 50 caliber at night. And i was flying the helicopter and pateski was sitting next to me, and i saw this green thing come up, and it looked like it was coming up vertically, very slowly, and it looks like it was some sort of like suddenly appeared, and it turned and came towards us and just accelerated right by us, and about they time it turned, he said, rake right, so fixedht, and i was on that softball, that green, big softball that was coming in the air, he finally had to take the stick and bank it. That was the first time i had seen a large caliber tracer round at night. I saw a lot of them before we went back home but i remember , that distinctly. Fred and did you have Laundry Service the next day . Fred and did you have Laundry Service the next day . Stephen no, not that time. But there were others we did. Fred you were in a number of those situations. You said you were involved during tet. Stephen yes. One of the things that is i was very fortunate in there regard. In december of 1968, we probably flew on average anywhere between 140 to 200 hours a month. There was supposedly a limit of how much flying time you could actually fly. Those limits really were not 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. Fred you could be flying every day. That is correct. Seven or 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 was developed by bell. Bell helicopter, which designed and developed not all but the majority of the helicopters that were in service in vietnam at the time, decided that at some point in time i am not sure what exactly this was in 1967 to develop a purposely designed gun ship. And the prototypes for this work finished in im going to say it may be september, and then they started manufacturing them and sent them to vietnam. The first ones i think arrived in vietnam in september, early october. They were part of a new equipping Training Team down in saigon where they actually , brought pilots in, crew chiefs and door gunners from flying the older bell helicopters in and actually trained them. There is big difference between cobra and the gunships we were flying, the b and c models i mentioned. One only two pilots in tandem. One in front and one in back. And the aircraft was designed such a way it had a much higher cruising speed. The b and c models, we could cruise, loaded, around 70 to 75 knots. The cobra was about 145 knots. On a gun run the b and c models depending on angle of attack of course. You could take it up to about 100 knots indicated before things started to get real sinky. The cobra was 210 knotts. The gun systems themselves on the cobra were designed for it. They could carry much more ammunition, many more rockets, heavier payload and had about , the same station time, about two hours with a full load of fuel that the b and c models had. The great thing about it was that it had a width of 36 inches. So as long as you kept that width pointed at what you were trying to go after you had a small , silhouette for somebody to back at you. It had better armament inside protecting the pilots and could take a lot of damage before it actually gave up the ghost, so to speak. Fred you were the only gunners . Stephen this is the interesting thing about this. This is a bit of a problem because the crew chief and door gunners had been getting flight pay and going out on missions, could see what was going on and so forth had their own , helicopter they were responsible for. Now what they were being asked to do is maintain a helicopter and not fly it. Psychologically that became didnt become it could have become a big problem. Thank god for the young kids. They said, ok, fine. We cant fly. We will make sure you are safe when you fly. I kept a c model gun ship in my platoon. We were supposed to turn them in. I kept one there just so we could get these guys out and once in a while put one up in the air and let them see what is going on and where we are flying and so on and so forth but it , was a bit of a change for them. Fred the rest were cobras . thats correct. Stephen five cobras. Fred so you were a platoon leader for six months . What was your job then . Stephen Planning Operations taking information on available , assets that we had to be able to assign to supporting combat assaults and independent facing with battalions and providing for them providing for them. It was a Tactical Operations planning on day to day and week to week basis. Thread but you stayed in the air . Fred but you stayed in the air . Stephen i continued to fly with my platoon. I was asked to come back and fly by the Company Commander. Fred you were under his command . Was kindactually, it of interesting, because they let me plan and lead the missions that this platoon was doing, which i was fine with. I enjoyed the fly. I was very close to the guys in the platoon, both enlisted and warrant officers and commissioned officers. And one of my objectives when i was there, personal objective, i wanted to make sure i did everything i could to bring everybody home. And i was successful in doing that. In flying, it is interesting that it does not take much to getsa mistake and somebody hurt very badly or gets killed, and one of the things that we always stressed and that i 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 when you are running a mission but as a safety aspect when you came back, how you refuel, rearm, what you do with the helicopter, how you clean them, so forth. So 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 that environment with the guys that were 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, i was not asked, i was assigned for the threeweek course, and i had never been to saigon, and there was a fire base and so forth, so this warrant officer and i went there and spent three weeks learning to fly and shoot the al1 z. When we came back, the cobras first six that came into the country three went to the 334 , playboys down south and other three to my platoon. Fred what is a playboy . There that was their callsign, a Gunship Company in the southern part of vietnam. We had the three of the first six cobras that came in country came to my platoon and it was , just after tet started. We flew those continuously through the time frame that i was there until i came home in october. Thread what were your observations as a soldier and going through tet,vietnam experience and that you were in the midst of that . What is your impression of the way the war was being waged . Stephen well, i did not have a sense, fred, because a large sense of how the overall tactical was going. We got stars and stripes and we could read that. But we were so focused on what was going on in our unit with us in our helicopters and our units that we were supporting, and oneally, we would support Slick Company, which was three different platoons of two carrying helicopters, and they, in turn, with support one battalion, so all the things that were going on at tet, the belongs of people they were not involved in we inch. That was the marines that were involved in that, but our world was a pretty small world, and i dont remember having any sense at all about what was going on in the overall war how the war , was being waged. Of course we Read Everything , about what happened in tet after it actually happened. I was in quang tree in late january and early february of 1960 yet, i think it was, because they took over the town of quang tree. Had moved up there. My platoon had moved up there with a Slick Company to support the first and 12th of the cav about three days before there started. The first and 12th were supplying the perimeter defense , if you will for the troop , carrying helicopters and my gun ships 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 200 feet before you got in the clouds. You had visibility of about a half mile. Sometimes the ceiling was 100 feet, and to fly in that weather was difficult. If you cant see any more than a half or a quarter of a mile further than where you are flying, and you are flying at 100 to 140 knots you had to be , pretty damn careful about what you were doing. The work 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 and can the , resupply stuff get out . It was particularly difficult at night because the weather was about the same at night and , there were difficult times helicopters get out and can the , resupply stuff get out . That we had to deal. What i remember, fred, there was an evening we were trying to get back to our firebase, and it was midnight, 1 00 and the weather , closed in. By closing in, we could not fly back. We would have to either turn around and go back it someplace else or we could use the radar at the fire base it pick us up and guide us. We would have to go i. F. R. , which is instrument flight rules, up in the soup and let them talk us down. I decided i was going to take the flight three gun slips and two slicks two troop carrying , helicopters empty at the time and we would get contact with , the Ground Control approach at a time and get them to pick us up before we went to the i. F. R. Conditions. So the first four aircraft that worked well. I was the last one. Contact with the t. C. A. Folks. They come up saying yep. Ok, going up we will pick you up as soon as you get there. We event up in i. F. R. And climb to 4,000 feet and i lost every instrument in the helicopter. I lost you a the electric, i lost everything and had nothing except a map compass and attitude indicator showing it was this way, this way, this way, this way. And the mag compass gave you a north, south, east, west as to where you were going. Fred you had radio contact . stephen nothing. We had no instrumentation at all except the nav and attitude indicator. We are 4,000 feet and in the middle of something i cant see. I dont know where i am, and what i decided to do was, well, ok, we are close to the coast. I know if i east, i will be over the ocean and if we run out of gas , over the ocean that will be a problem. If i fly west and we run out of gas, i will get a 20minute warning, and i will know, and i can set it down were ever, and then maybe we can get picked up, and so on, so i turned west and , we are still at 4,000 feet at 80 knots the pilot next to me a new guy was going bananas. He was having himself a realtime, and the guys in the back did not say a word, and we flew along for i guess about 20 minutes and an o. V. 1 bird dog, a propellerdriven one, came through the mist at us. Suddenly, he was there. Fortunately, he was fast enough and quick enough to turn it up on his side so when he went by us, he went by this way and missed us. When we had our 20minute fuel light come on, we had flown into about 10 minutes, and i looked up from the instruments. I was flying, and i saw these lights out in the distance, and i had no idea. I did not know if we were in cambodia or south vietnam. I had no idea where we were, so the pilot next to me said, oh, look, there is an aircraft carrier. I said, no, we are not flying east. We are flying west, so there are no aircraft carriers in the western direction we are going, and what it turned out to be it was the main heliport for the first cav. So i remove her sitting in approach at the end of the runway, and i did not call on the radios, and at the time, i shot the approach at the end of the runway when we ran out of fuel. We ran out of fuel. I just set the aircraft down, and that was it, so we were very fortunate that night. It just turned out that we turned in the right direction and maintained the right course and wound up back in a safe place again. So fred how about one more story about a combat situation, where you had to protect a medevac or supporting troops . Well, i will tell you about the last time i flew. And what we were doing we were , flying cobras. I was flying a cobra at the time , and i had a cobra as a wing man, and we were putting in a long range recon patrol west of quang tree in some fairly good sized ridge lines and valleys and so forth out there, and the way we did this, we took troop three carrying helicopters, five or six, seven would be in one helicopter and we would fly to three or , four designate the landing zones and the work team may be , in the third helicopter and we , would be in a trail one behind the other. The first helicopter was going to land. The other two would fly over. Nobody would get out of first because there was nobody in it. He would get up and go behind the second and we will do that a number of times. The reason is somebody was watching us do it and they didnt know where these guys were getting out or where the actual team was being inserted. And it was around 6 30 or 7 00 at night. It was just starting to get. ,rk, and we went to the l. Z the ridgelines. They were to be put there. They set down and team got out and helicopter picked up, other two flew over. And he picked up and bob lentz was flying that helicopter. What we normally did is 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 come back up on the radio and click twice on the radio if everything was fine. And then, we would then leave, and if they needed to be picked up, they would tell us, and as soon as they hit the ground, they started yelling on the radio, because what happened is unbeknownst to us is that an n. V. Regiment was put their regimental headquarters, and where they were set down was on top of the regimental headquarters. Bunkers, and when they were set down, when they got out of the helicopter, of course the , north vietnamese open. Three of them were killed immediately, and all of the others were wounded. The north vietnamese had reinforced the ridgelines before this team the ridge lines ran east and west and the valley ran east and west so where the team was put in was in between these two ridgelines and on , those ridge lines they had a number of machine guns, r. P. G. s, so forth. And when bob tried to get back into 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 they would have won ridgeline, and i would have the other ridgeline. You could see the north vietnamese and you could see the guys behind the guns and so forth. We finally ran out of ammunition. We ran out of rockets and miniguns and so forth, and bob said he was going to try one more time to go in and get these guys, so what i did is said, ok. When you are on short final, i will hover down with the searchlight on the east side of where you are, and that will take all of the attention hopefully from that side away from you, and i didnt have anything to shoot back with. That is what i did. I went down that ridge line and hovered about 10 or 20 knots and we got the crap shot out of us. But lentz got in and got the guys, the dead ones and wounded once 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, so he went in. We had to go back because we were banged up pretty well had noes, and we ammunition ourselves, so we had to get back to refuel and rearm. By that time we had all sorts of air force folks and we had gun ships and other units and so forth, so they provided the support to pick up bob. What i remember about that night is i went back and landed at the refuel and rearm the crew chief point. Of that helicopter when i got out he came up and, they always come up and open the door and we got out, and he looked at me and said, that was pretty tough, wasnt it . And i said, yes, that was pretty tough. And he started yelling laughing at me. And i said, what the hell are you laughing at . And he said, look, you peed all over yourself. That was an underwear changing moment in that particular situation. That was the last time i flew in vietnam on the first door. There was a Forward Operation base is what they called it, out of fubar, and it was staffed and run by special forces guys. And there were a number of mercenary troops there. Every oriental you could possibly think of thais, korean, north vietnamese, south vietnamese, taiwanese, so forth. They were mercenaries that the special forces were paying to run missions into laos. And what they would do is they would get dressed as north vietnamese , including the special forces guys, which had these big big , weapons and uniforms. The mercenaries you think they , could pass. But the other guys but we had two carrying helicopters, one for the team to be inserted, one chase in case somebody is shot down and two cobras to escort them out and to go out and pick them up and bring them back, and these guys were being inserted into laos on the western side of the valley which at that , time nobody had been in that valley for a year and a half to two years. There were three special forces camps in the valley but they had , been abandoned and so forth. When these guys were inserted, they would do things like i described. They would go silent and so forth. What their job was to do reconnaissance work and raise hell as were as they could to japon in laos. And when they finally reached the point where they could not survive anymore, they would call and say, we have to come out, and i remember distinctly the first time that we went out to pick these guys up. We had the troop carrying helicopter that actually picked them up that used mcgwire rigs because the canopies were so high, and the mcgwire rigs had ropes with loops and drop down where the men were and they would strap , themselves in with their feet or arms. The first time every extraction was a hard extraction. Every single extraction was a hot extraction. The first time that these guys came out i remember the pilot on the troop carrying helicopter said coming out, and he picked up, and i glanced down and there , were guys hanging on this mcgwire rig. I think seven of them by their feet. They put their feet in this thing so they could throw grenades back down and shoot back down as the helicopter was flying out. And it is the most surreal thing i ever saw in my life. I thought this is unbelievable. I dont believe guys are doing there. They would fly them to some safe place and set them down on the ground get off the rig and get back in the helicopter. The issue around the valley was that this was a main supply route for the north vietnamese on the ho chi minh trail, and the air force went out there on a regular basis and just bombed the hell out of the place. There were craters all over the place. Ac130 gun ships were just starting to come in. And the antiaircraft guys from the north vietnamese units out there were good guys. They had 57 millimeter, 37 millimeter a lot of , 50 caliber stuff. 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 valley into laos and get the team in and 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 we would get flak, 37 millimeter flak all over the place. We tried going down to the south. We tried going to the north. Up toward the direction of where caisson was and coming back south from there. We tried low level. We tried everything. Every time we went out we got shot at. We were shot at by big stuff. Not just small arms. It was 51 caliber and 37 millimeter stuff. Those missions were tough missions. I remember that the north vietnamese were pretty clever about this. What they would do is the 51 caliber antiaircraft guns they would triangulate them and shoot at you, and then you had to guess where is the triangle. If you rolled in on one depending on the way you broke the second one would open. Now, i have two. Where is the third . And became a bit of a guessing game, and from their standpoint, they did not know how we were going to roll or direction or break or angle of attack or fly off, and suddenly appear at a low level, and the reason im smiling is it was a game more often than not when we went up. The guys were good. We were just a little bit better. Thats all. So that was a tough time. We did that basically for about a month and a half. And then the cav went into the valley april 19, 1968 made major assault during that time frame. And that was a major, bigdeal effort. We lost 24 aircraft the first day, 24 helicopters. And the distinct memories that i have of that is that a ch 47 chinook flying down the valley with fire coming out of the back of his aircraft. His whole aircraft was on fire. We escorted a ch54 sky crane that was taking a d10 dozer to the l. Z. 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 that they will dug back into the side of the mountain and the 37 millimeter opened up on put it put five rounds in his canopy and blew the helicopter up, so that was a bad day. One of the reasons it was a bad day is when the 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 half mile wide and maybe a mile long, and we had an awax plane controlling everybody going in and coming back out. And i distinctly remember that after we had to come out and rearm and refuel. You had to climb up through this opening, get out above the clouds and fly back to the , rearming and refueling point. I can still hear those 37 millimeter and 51 caliber guns shooting. They made a very distinct sound. There was a very distinct thumping that they made. The back of our seeds were armored, and i slid down in my seat as far as i could go and still fly the helicopter, and i thought, let me get out of this and stop hearing this noise that is going on behind me, and eyes i was basically and as i was basically looking at my instruments and not looking ahead, the copilot did not go on the intercom. He just yelled, plane. I heard distinctly and looked up. Looked up and here was an f4 phantom coming down all sorts of stuff off him. I had never seen some bombs and stuff and coming right directly at us. And i just froze. I didnt know what to do. Well he knew what to do. , he rolled his aircraft up on its side, and he came by us, and he was so close i could see the , skull and crossbones and black helmet he had. All he did is go. Went down i looked back dropped the bonds, hippie afterburner, hit thewent, so afterburner, and off he went, so there are memories of that area that i remember distinctly , and it was a difficult time there. Fred you are back in fort rucker. What is it like to come back after a tour in vietnam to the United States in 1968 . Stephen 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 10 months old when i came back. I distinctly remember meeting him for first time in the Providence Airport at 12 10 at night, and his mother had him all dressed up and in this cute little jumper suit and so forth. And his name is Stephen Clark darrah, jr. We call him clark. He was asleep and she said clark here is your daddy and held him out to me. He took one look at me and just screamed bloody murder. He didnt know who this guy was at midnight. All he wanted to do is go to sleep and so on and so forth, so coming back was a special time, fred because that is when he and , i started to get together and started to bond and so forth. That was a very, very special time for me and also for him, i atnk, and for phyllis, too, the time. Fort rucker was kind of interesting. I was assigned to the department of education there working on the warrant officer advanced course and putting that together and so forth. I had a chance to play a lot of golf. I had some really good people i worked with and folks that worked with me in that regard. For the first part, it was noticeable for all the stuff going on in vietnam all the stuff to this peaceful, quiet, normal, if you will, type environment. And i didnt have a problem with it. I just thought that is different there versus here. I like here better. I like my son here. , and so onife here and so forth, so it was a good assignment, and i enjoyed it. Fort rucker at that time was doing a lot of good things particularly educationally with folks going into the army. Particularly aviators and so , forth. Fred and two years later you are back in vietnam. Stephen right. I was assigned to the 101st airborne division. 17 cav and executive officer. It was an interesting time in 19711972. As you probably remember, the paris peace talks worst starting, and there was not a ceasefire, but there was an understanding between they and us that we were not going to screw around with each other. We were going to kind of let things go, and actually, i was in camp edmonds was the south of the kwang tree area. And flew the same areas. Didnt go into the assaw valley, but did everything east of there, up into kaesong. We flew over north vietnamese aircraft positions. 51 caliber antiaircraft positions. We would see the guys down there, and they would wave at us, and we would 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, they were rotated back to the states. I didnt have enough time in the country at that time to rotate back with them, so i was reassigned to another unit down south, basically a vip flight , attachment in saigon. Wonderful living conditions. Absolutely great. We had showers, regular beds, a club we could go to, a nice restaurant that had good food. The flying was awful. Terrible, flying vips around. So i spent a month or two months with that gang. Enough time in country when they stood down and came back. Fred came back. and your next assignment back in the states . Stephen 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 1974. Fred 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 . Stephen i think, fred, a couple of things that have meant a lot close toim still very the guys who were in my platoon, and its enough we have a reunion every year. We did not get together it was 45 years before we got together. Theres a story around that. How that happened and so on and so forth. It 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 to do but also, if necessary, 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 appreciated that as much until i got in the socalled civilian world and working with the same types of things and the same types of systems, so i think that is it. Fred well 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 time. Thank you, steve, for your time here. Stephen thank you for your invitation, fred. I enjoyed it. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2018] announcer the interview is with catherine was moreland, wife of william s moreland, who commanded u. S. Forces in vietnam. Mrs. West moreland talks about her life as a military daughter and spouse, and her time serving as a red cross nurses aide during the vietnam war. And she recalls hosting president s and first ladys as well as her friendship with bob and dolores hope. Thats next sunday, february 4 at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan3. Announcer an attack on the south called tet. Give us your thoughts on facebook and twitter. Announcer at this week on the communicators, we take you to talk about the latest about this in artificial intelligence, robotics, artificial reality, 300 60 degree cameras. Watch at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan2. Announcer president Dwight Eisenhower used to call this his summer white house in 1958 through 1960