Advisorn infantry during the eastern offensive in vietnam. He has a ba in history from texas and them. An ma and phd from the university of kansas. On the command school, the command and general staff college, the department of since 1992. Tory he has chaired the department for 11 years and during that time it has come to be known as the internet as the intellectual center of the army. He quotes that at the bottom of his email signature. Its required. Hes the author of 14 books, including the book great commanders. He authored books on the offensive, etc. Es been an editorial advisor on the Editorial Board of armchair history. He now holds the highest arm highest honor a historian can have. Which is also the longest title you could hold as a historian. Over the last 15 months we have won 80 awards. Staff. A fabulous our first partner arrived 15 years ago at this Library Thanks to jim wilbanks, the cgs c. They are the best year after year, great thoughtful lectures from fine faculty. Men and womenof who have given Great Service to the country. Jim wilbanks. Thank you for that introduction. Usually does come ill take it this way. Electivel, i teach an and have done so for 1520 years. I taught a similar course for five or six years, havent done it in a while. The most popular part most with a fews exceptions these are the cast of the usual suspects here. Into a coughing fits and rollout in the hallway they will drive out, dont worry. The guy next are will tell his story. We were asked to talk about the experience of vietnam from a soldiers standpoint. The slight says september 1950 with the First Advisory group, the first u. S. Soldiers on the ground were actually during world war ii in 1946. After the beginning of the first end of china where we found ourselves assisting the front. And it would become our part to assist the vietnamese government. The first Ground Troops for their. One 73rd 170 third, first army unit paid the first the firstivision was full division. It was followed by the first brigades on 101st. 180,000 u. S. Troops there. These numbers ramped up. On april of 1969, 5 hundred 43,483 u. S. Personnel. American and from the beginning to its end. Capturing the vietnam experience is problematic. These experiences run the gamut and i cannot even list all of the experiences. The Truck Drivers to cooks to clerks, to people who flew aircraft of various types, to women who served advent positions and one of the angels of mercy. I would be remiss to fight if i didntmiss remark that the we like our folks. [applause] in a very real way, when you ask a vietnam veteran what was it where was he or she . When were they there and what were they doing . 1972 my best friend, we were physically located on the same map sheet. We were close enough between here and the legend as him the legend as the most. Even though we occupied the same map. Experiencesider the of the gentleman you see. You ae can do is give feel of our individual experiences. Do is let them introduce themselves in turn. We will start with the brigadier general. A Rutgers University graduate. Graduated and was commissioned second of armor. After airborne school, went to washington, had to do a year on the ground in the cavalry squadron. In december of 1966. You have the sign in here. Youre putting together a new assault helicopter company. We deployed from fort bragg North Carolina in may of 1967 and went to a place that happened to be stationed at a different time from when i was there. It was 15 to 20 kilometers northwest, which is northeast of saigon. It was the headquarters of the ninth infantry division. Companieshelicopter and the combat support in a knife division headquarters. Saigon. In the south of you can lose an engine and always have a place to land. You dont always have been the anroblem as aviators assault Helicopters Company mission is to pick up troops from their home away from home, load them up and you can get it you fly them from point a to point b, which is wherever they want to go. I happen to be an armed helicopter pilot and we flew in light fire teams. It was our mission to escort. We do not show them where to go but if they took any kind of fire, we were to protect the lift or transport helicopters. Most of the time, when we put troops into a landing zone, you did not go in. There may be a preparatory fire or the gunships also would prep based on the intelligence picture we had. From may until august, not much happened. I can remember the first time i got into that was the 10th of august because that was when my son was born. For the remainder of this summer, we had routine action and it did not heat up until december of that year. Early december, we had a couple of largescale fights they were not North Vietnamese troops cong whoere the viet were willing to stand and fight. We did not pick up the nuance that they were fighting and they were larger numbers of people. That was the forerunner of the tet offensive. I could tell something was wrong. Something was a little different. When we took off, the jungle that we thought and villages we thought were peaceful, there were hundreds of viet cong flags. As we turned to go south to our mission the crew chief called , me, and said, saigon is ablaze. They had jet planes dropping bombs on the outskirts. We knew something was wrong. We had a tough mission that day but that that was the beginning of tet. After tet, things kind of calm down and then they spiked again in early may. I left on the 17th to come home. That is what i did for my first year. I went back for a second tour later on. I will turn it over to bud, our resident marine. He will tell you about his tour. Thank you. I am the only guy who went to vietnam as an enlisted fellow. I always wanted to be a marine. As a child. Why, i dont know, but i did. On graduation day, 24th of may, 1965, in scottsdale arizona, we had graduation ceremonies. I marched down and signed up. The most honest man i ever met was my recruiter. He said where going to cut off we are going to cut off your hair and send you to vietnam. He did. Twice. My experience was completely different from anything any of these gentlemen saw. I was a Security Guard at the american embassy. As we were building the new embassy that was attacked in january, the first day of the tet in 1968 and our mission was the protection of classified and sensitive information. The second the mission was protection of life, etc. I will tell you the first year there was like a hollywood script. You knew you were in a war zone. The danger was more real than was apparent, if that makes sense. You could hear the war going on. You could hear the air policeman and the mps in particular. My life the first year was comfortable. We could see the influx of the war, the effects with more refugees coming into the city. As a general proposition, and until the tet offensive, life was not bad. Long hours but life was not bad. At 2 50 in the morning on 31 january, 1968, things change. Everything turned upside down. That was when the first rockets and the explosion blowing the hole in the wall outside the embassy occurs in the fight takes place. A lot of people reported the embassy was taken. Washington initially thought the embassy was taken. The embassy was never taken. The compound was but the embassy never was. That second year, i wind up having an unusual assignment. I was put on the personal Security Unit for an ambassador. In that capacity, it was the ultimate fly on the wall. A Young American g. I. In a combat zone, doing what his government said, but in an unusual situation. The frequent occurrences were daily meetings, Vice President chu and the president. The people you read about. As a youngster, i knew i was in the presence of something great that was going on in the world, if that makes sense. I left on the 24th of january, 1969, having served my 24 months. I look back on it now with much pride. Would i do it again . Yes i would. I have no reservations about signing up and going. I thought it was the right thing to do then and i think it is the right thing to do now. The world has changed and things have moved on. So have they and so have we. Sir . For those of you i have not met, my name is Dave Drummond. For those of you i have met, my name is Dave Drummond also. I was commissioned out of the United States military academy in west point in 1968. Back then, you were a Second Lieutenant for 12 months and you were a First Lieutenant for 12 months. You became a captain 24 months into your service. I was captain at 24 years old and if you look around at 24yearold kids today, i consider them kids, a lot of responsibility back then. I flew into not training nha trang. It seemed like such a nice place, i asked if i could stay there. Ps. As in the signal cor we provided communications. They said there is a signal battalion here so i went over and they said youre going up and land at the golf course. I said, maybe that is not so bad. I was only 23 then. I did not know. I will tell you another thing. Of those 48 months 24 months it took to become a captain, most of that i spent in airborne school, ranger school, signal school. I only spent six months with a stateside unit. At any rate, i went up to the Central Highlands. You have to realize that communications back then are different than now. Today, we pull out our cell phone. Then, it was line of sight communications. The company i commanded was called the 167 signal company. We were authorized 302 enlisted and six officers. That is pretty big for a company. Typical infantry was about 110120 people. We covered about the size of the state of connecticut, in terms of where we were. My headquarters were in one place but we were in others. A whole bunch of places. As a matter of fact, you did not want to drive around too much. Fortunately, i had my own twocopter and i had 19yearold pilots i would not let drive a jeep but they flew me around. We got shut down once that is isshot down once but that another story. Communications were different then. Typically, what you did, because it was line of sight, in other words two antennas had to see each other. You had to put your antennas on high ground. I used to call them aiming sticks because that is what they were. You could see them im a from a distance. Although we were not all offensive in nature, we did get hit a lot in terms of defense and we had to try to protect ourselves. It was an interesting year. I will be honest. We only looked at the 50 meter targets. I was not concerned what is going on in saigon. I was not concerned what was going on in my battalion. My commander was 130 miles away by helicopter. He did not get up to see us too often. If you think, 24 years old, i did not have adult supervision. We were fortunate. We did have a couple of People Killed and several injured. That happens in those wars. I closed out my unit in october of 70, they said youre going to shut down and by november 20, we had everything brought in from that terrain and had everything turned in. It was difficult because our people had to go through the area and turn in our equipment in a different place. All our beds, that was done in another place. We had to do it in specific timelines. Very challenging. I was fortunate when i left to europe for four and a half years. I was at nato. Then, i came to Fort Leavenworth and resigned my commission to stay at the faculty at the college. I spent four years at the faculty. I thoroughly enjoyed it and then and am glad to be here with you tonight. With that, i will turn it over to ron. For all the staff of the library, this has been an incredible series. Thank you for enlightening the kansas city area on all these and thank you for allowing me to participate tonight. I am rich kiper. I graduated from west point in 1967. 26 years in active duty. I was commissioned infantry. After commissioning, i went to the army ranger corps. Subsequently, the Freefall Parachutist course and the special forces qualification course. And at the ageny of 23 and as a First Lieutenant, i was commanding an airborne Infantry Company. This happened to be at the time when russia invaded czechoslovakia. We had excitement there. I left there and went to vietnam, where i commanded an infantry rivalry company. I was able to then transfer into when russia invaded being a plans officer at the special forces group in nha trang. If youre coming back to the after coming back to the states, i had a number of different assignments. Among them was teaching military history at west point and that and at the army command and general staff college. I then went to fort bragg and became the deputy chief g3 of the First Special operations command. Then, i went to the pentagon, where i served as a special forces force Development Officer developing future doctrine and materiel for special operations. I retired and went to ku and got a phd. In early 2002, i went to afghanistan as an Army Contract historian with the Army Special Operations command. I should mention about the time i became the g3, i had transferred to special forces because, until then, special forces had not been a branch. It was just a specialty. I took off my cross rifles as infantry and did that for the rest of my career. I went to afghanistan as a historian. After coming back, i worked four years at the Army Counterinsurgency center at Fort Leavenworth. The center was created by petraeus and mattis. That would be the current secretary of defense. I worked there until the Center Closed and then i retired. During my time in vietnam, as an Infantry Company commander, i had become a captain and was 24. Having commanded an Airborne Company in germany, i had a sense of what command was like. Commanding in a combat environment is entirely different. We were operating in three core. Our company was a straight leg Infantry Company. When you see the news reels of guys slogging through jungle, we were in the jungle area, not the rice patties or the mountains, it was jungle. Thick jungle. You could not see to the back row of what was in front of you. Our mission was the typical infantry mission. Close and kill the enemy. That is what we were to do. During that time, i made 33 combat assaults in helicopters. I hated people like general cherry, when he put me in your when he put me in. I loved people like him when he pulled me out. I loved his compatriots who had the huey gunships that brought rocket fire whenever we got into contact and we had quite a few. By this time, the war had changed substantially since tet, cong had been and they weretet starting to infiltrate into south vietnam. There were still units around, no question but i knew the day we killed a guy that was wearing a belt buckle, that we were in a different kind of war. It was jungle fighting. It was stumbling into bunker areas and you could not see before you got there. It was going out on platoon sized patrols, which at that time, the drawdown had begun. We were talking maybe 21 or 22 troops in a platoon. Those of you who have been in the military, always love it when your Company Commander wants to come down and sit with you for a while and go on operations with you and be there to boost you up. I always loved that. I made sure my three platoon leaders always had that joy. I would go with each one of the leaders and i would change out with them so i could give them the benefit of my 24yearold wisdom. It was a difficult time for the army. At one time, my platoon, my Company First sergeant was an e 7. One was a staff sergeant, who a shake and bake, meaning he had graduated honors. He and i are still in close contact and we are friends to this day. When i went to special forces, it was a different environment. Everybody was leaving vietnam. Special forces left on the third of march, 1971. My job, well, just because a bunch of guys wearing green berets and carrying a flag got on an airplane and flew back to fort bragg, did not mean that the missions left. Left behind were what we called residual missions. My job as a plans officer, was to develop the organization documents for the units that were taking over the special operations missions. The Overall Organization was called the special Mission Advisory group, although very few have heard of it. Under it, it had a number of different organizations, some of which were partnering with the studies and Observation Group to conduct crossborder kind of missions that had to be accomplished. I had several trips to talk with them about how we were going to take the green beret side and their side and put it into this group. Then, i left vietnam ended the vietnam and did the other things i talked about. After i retired, i wrote a couple of books on the civil war. I went on special operations in afghanistan during the first seven months of the war and win and went on the Armor Company in korea. I will be willing to sit by for any questions you might have. My name is tom. I sat out most of the heavy fighting in the war at the university of kentucky, where he where i majored in bourbon and whiskey. I was commissioned the week after the kent state shootings. An interesting time. I went to fort benning and did all of the merit badge courses that have been mentioned here. I was commissioned as an armor officer. I had gotten a private pilots license and was set to go to Flight School and the army said, you have to do six months. I said, ok and they sent me to the sixth armored cavalry , which was and armore