Echoes of the Vietnam War

In 1970-71, John Podlaski spent twelve months in Vietnam — seven with the Wolfhounds of the 25th Infantry Division, and five with the Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division. John never dreamed that he’d become a writer, but his first novel, Cherries, led to five more books and a hugely popular website (cherrieswriter.com) that is a community chest of first-person stories, information, and imagery from the Vietnam War.

Forty-nine years ago this month, thousands of South Vietnamese children were airlifted to the U.S. and other Western countries in a mass evacuation known as Operation Babylift. In this episode, you’ll hear the incredible story of one of those children, including her reunion — 44 years later — with her birth mother in Vietnam.

Next spring will mark 50 years since Saigon fell, an anniversary that will likely spin up more coverage and conversation about the Vietnam War than we’ve seen in decades. Much of that attention will probably focus on how the war ended. We've decided, instead, to emphasize the countless ways that Vietnam veterans have made America better since they came home. To set the tone for the next 15 months or so, we take you back to where we started... three years ago today.

Darren Walton arrived in Vietnam in 1970 and served a full tour on Marine Corps Reconnaissance teams. In this episode, he breaks a 50-year silence to talk about being a Recon Marine, to explain why he hid his Vietnam experience for decades, and to thank the men who routinely risked their lives to save his.

Trained for combat as well as construction, the Seabees of the U.S. Navy have been distinguishing themselves with their heroism since 1942. There are 85 Seabees memorialized on The Wall, including one Medal of Honor recipient. In this episode, we’ll hear from two Seabees who served in Vietnam.

A few years ago, Lee Ellis noticed that he and the other POWs who made it home from Vietnam were outperforming the general population in the area of romantic longevity. He looked into the reasons why that might be true, and then he published his findings in a book called Captured By Love: Inspiring True Romance Stories from Vietnam POWs. Happy Valentine's Day.

Red Eagle Rael’s tour started in February of 1968 in the Mekong Delta. The guys in his unit called him “Chief,” a common nickname for Native Americans serving in Vietnam. Highly decorated, Rael is a kind of living legend in New Mexico. In this episode we visit Picuris Pueblo, where Red Eagle grants a rare interview to share his story... or, at least, the parts that he is willing to talk about.

Hawaii holds a special place in the hearts and minds of many Vietnam veterans. We'll explore the state’s popularity as a destination for GIs on R&R, and a Vietnam combat veteran -- now living in Hawaii -- remembers the bloody battle that left him with a debt of gratitude that he works every to repay.

In episode 64, we introduced you to the Mobile Riverine Force, a joint Army-Navy task force that patrolled the brown waters of the Mekong Delta in an effort to disrupt the movement of enemy troops, weapons, and supplies. In this episode, we’ll go a little deeper with stories of enemy engagement, environmental hazard, the lingering effects of the River Rat experience, and of course brotherhood and healing.

Commander Task Force 117 was a joint Army-Navy effort to disrupt the movement of communist troops, weapons, and supplies through the Mekong Delta. It was the first time since the Civil War that American soldiers and sailors operated under a joint command. In this episode, veterans of the Mobile Riverine Force — known as “river rats” — share their stories.

Diane Carlson Evans picks a ten-year fight, facing enormous resistance from corners both surprising and unsurprising, resulting in the first memorial on the National Mall to honor the service of women in wartime.

After her tour as a combat nurse in Vietnam, Diane Carlson Evans came home in 1969 to a country she hardly recognized. In 1982, a visit to Washington, DC started an avalanche that surged inside her for more than a decade, culminating in the dedication of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial thirty years ago this month. Diane talks about Vietnam, coming home, and why she picked a ten-year fight for women who served.

From 1968 to 1972, Mobile Advisory Training (MAT) teams worked alongside the South Vietnamese Regional Forces and Popular Forces — known as Ruff Puffs — who were the units responsible for protecting their local villages and hamlets against communist attacks. Bob Blair, who led MAT Team 44 in 1971, shares his experiences in this episode.

Peggy and Maryann were just little girls when a 1969 helicopter crash in Binh Dinh province changed their lives forever. The stories they heard from the adults around them were less than clear... and a long way from comforting. But kids grow up. And when they do, they write their own stories.

Ever since Mike Stubbs left the Army in 1968, he has been trying to find the family of Luther Smith, who was among 64 infantrymen killed at the Battle of Ong Thanh. In this postscript, you’ll hear excerpts from the first-ever live conversation between Luther’s daughter and his best friend. Visit Luther's Wall of Faces page at https://www.vvmf.org/Wall-of-Faces/48432/LUTHER-A-SMITH/

Gus Kappler laughs a lot. If you met him in line at the grocery store, you’d never guess that he spent a year in Vietnam as a real-life Hawkeye Pierce performing unimaginable surgeries on young men with unspeakable injuries. It made him angry, and that hasn’t changed. What has changed is the way he understands his anger… and how he deals with it.

In a remote mountain town, a father turns his devastating personal loss into a place for public healing and remembrance.

U.S. and Australian forces have fought side-by-side in every major conflict since World War I, and some 60,000 Australian service members served in the Vietnam War. August 18 is Vietnam Veterans Day in Australia, and in honor of that commemoration we bring you the personal story of an Australian helicopter pilot who served in Vietnam in 1970 and ’71.

While pursuing his lifelong ambition of becoming an infantry platoon leader, John Hedley overcame a lot of obstacles. His reward at the end of that long, difficult road was a tour in Vietnam starting in July of 1969, where he would lead the Army’s legendary red-scarved recon platoon known as Fox Force. John shares the story of that journey, his experiences in Vietnam, and a surprise ending that will boggle your mind and warm your heart at the same time.

In EP55 we shared the story of Dennis Lobbezoo, one of 142 service members whose names are on the wall and who were born on the fourth of July. In this postscript, his then-fiancée Joyce Washburn shares the story of Denny and the surgeon-turned-sculptor who was inspired to cast the young Marine’s likeness in bronze 45 years after they met aboard the USS Repose.

July 4th is the birthday of the United States of America. It’s also the birthday of 142 service members whose names are on The Wall at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. This is the story of one of them — Dennis Lobbezoo of Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is remembered by his then-fiancée, Joyce Washburn. Visit Dennis' Wall of Faces profile: https://bit.ly/46xI5Hu Read more about Dennis and Joyce: https://bit.ly/46wCLEf

In the wake of Operation Cedar Falls, tunnel-rat duties in the 1st Infantry Division were transferred to the 1st Engineer Battalion where men began to specialize in it. In this episode, we’ll hear personal stories from members of the Diehard Tunnel Rats. [WARNING: This episode contains vivid descriptions of combat, injury, and death.]

Communist forces in South Vietnam used vast networks of subterranean tunnels as hiding places, bomb shelters, weapons factories, food stores, headquarters… even surgical hospitals. In this episode we’ll introduce you to the 1st Infantry Division’s dedicated team of Tunnel Rats — combat engineers who volunteered, whenever necessary, to do their fighting underground.

There are more than 72,000 U.S. service members still unaccounted for from World War II -- a war we fought in for four years. The number missing after 20 years of combat in Afghanistan? Zero. That’s no accident; it represents a dramatic shift in policy and priorities, another unheralded legacy of the Vietnam War generation. In this episode, author Taylor Baldwin Kiland shares the incredible true story of the military wives who fought to make “no man left behind” a promise that America keeps.

For the tens of thousands of families who received tragic news during the Vietnam War, their lives were profoundly changed at that moment and their reactions to the news covered the full range of human grief. Imagine being the person who rang doorbell after doorbell for months on end, triggering that outpouring of emotion over and over, in all its forms. In this episode, two Marines talk about coming home from Vietnam and being assigned that terrible duty.

To celebrate the fiftieth episode of our podcast, we reconnect with a few of the people who have shared their stories with us over the past two years. They talk about what they’ve been up to since, and we discover some surprising, real-life connections resulting from the podcast.

Throughout the month of April 1975, in a mass evacuation known as Operation Babylift, around 2,000 infants and children were airlifted from orphanages in South Vietnam to the United States. In this episode, we bring you stories from the first and last flights of that operation — one ending in tragedy, the other in joy.

Of the 58,281 names on the wall, two-thirds of them died in 1967, ‘68, and ‘69. Robin Bartlett landed in I Corps right smack in the middle of that period. His training sergeant at Camp Evans said to him, “your life expectancy is less than 90 days.” In this episode, Robin talks about the realities behind that prediction, how he defied it, and the book he wrote about his Vietnam War experience.

For soldiers joining the Vietnam War after the initial buildup, the first stop in Vietnam was usually at a replacement battalion — commonly referred to as a “repo depot” — where they would wait to be assigned to a unit. Those few hours or days unfolded in a strange kind of limbo where hot emotion met cold procedure. And somebody had to run it.

American Red Cross volunteers known as “Donut Dollies” were often called in to visit a unit after it had been experienced intense fighting and had suffered heavy casualties. Why would any twenty-something, college-educated woman volunteer to work in a war zone halfway around the world? In this episode, Peggy Kelly shares her personal reasons and talks about how that experience shaped the rest of her life.

December of 1967 was a pivotal time to arrive in Vietnam. A month later, the Tet Offensive would alter the course of the war, public sentiment about its prosecution, and the direction of a presidency. From his unique vantage point as General William Westmoreland’s special assistant, Joe Zengerle saw the world transform itself in the first half of 1968.

In May of 1972, radar intercept officer Jack Ensch and his pilot* shot two North Vietnamese fighter jets out of the sky, a feat for which they would each be awarded the Navy Cross. A few months later, Ensch found himself ejecting from his F-4 Phantom and on his way to the Hanoi Hilton, where he’d spend 216 days as a prisoner of war. In this episode, he shares his amazing story of victory and defeat, captivity and release, duty and friendship.

Surprises are an essential part of the Christmas experience. But in wartime, the surprises aren’t often joyful. In this episode we’ll hear stories of Christmas from people who survived the war in Vietnam, and from people whose losses nearly 50 years ago have colored every Christmas since.

Show-business legend Ann-Margret entertained troops in Southeast Asia in 1966 and 1968, and she remains an active and ardent supporter of Vietnam veterans to this day. In this episode, she sits down with Jim Knotts to talk about why she went to Vietnam and what those trips have meant to her — personally and professionally — in the five decades since.

Honor Flight San Diego takes 85 HA(L)-3 Seawolves to Washington, D.C. for a tour of memorials and museums. Along the way, men who haven’t stood together in 50 years rekindle old connections and forge new ones, remember their fallen brothers… and receive the surprise of a lifetime.

The HA(L)-3 Seawolves were the Navy’s first attack-helicopter squadron, and they remain the most decorated squadron in the history of U.S. naval aviation. Their courage, dedication, and ingenuity made them heroes to Navy SEALs and River Rats throughout the Mekong Delta from 1967 to 1972. So how come you’ve never heard of them?

Completing the Wall of Faces took more two decades of sustained effort by thousands of volunteers around the world. In this episode, you’ll hear the story of two of them — a story that sheds some light on why this project was so important to so many people.

Originally published one year ago today, we reprise a very special episode. With audio gathered at a stop on last year’s 26-city tour of The Wall That Heals, we bring you several very personal stories that shed light on why people visit The Wall, the emotions they bring to it, and what happens when an entire community connects with its Vietnam War history.

Drafted out of high school, Alex Walker Jr. arrived in Vietnam in February of 1969 and served for more than a year. In that time he faced unimaginable threats from enemy fire, deadly predators, and a generally hostile environment. In this episode, he recounts those experiences and talks about why his younger self was drawn to danger.

When Lori Goss-Reaves set out to write a book about her father, a U.S. Navy corpsman, she couldn’t have imagined where that process would take her. In Kiss Lori For Me, she celebrates her parents’ inspiring love story and discovers, decades after the fact, the truth about her father’s death on Valentine’s Day 1968.

Deceiving and demotivating an enemy, enlisting and engaging an ally, all of these are necessary in war. You have to get people to do things or to stop doing things. And for that, you need to understand them at a narrative level. Histories, cultures, belief systems… what are you up against, and what facts or fiction can you inject to change or influence it? Major Ray Ambrozak sheds some light on psychological warfare during the Vietnam War.

George Price was instrumental in getting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial’s design unstuck from a morass of politics and controversy. That was a pivotal moment for VVMF, but just a tiny blip on the radar screen of General Price’s remarkable life. In this episode, Jim Knotts sits down with the general to get the rest of his story.

Captain Dale Dye served 20 years in the Marine Corps including three tours and 31 major combat operations in Vietnam. In 1985 he founded Warriors, Inc. to help Hollywood do a better job of depicting American fighting men and women. He has worked with some of the biggest names in the business — Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Oliver Stone, among others — and has appeared as an actor in dozens of films, including "Platoon", "Saving Private Ryan", and "Mission: Impossible."

The United States Navy Fighter Weapons School — better known as TOPGUN — was established in 1969. Early TOPGUN graduates fanned out across the Navy’s fighter squadrons to share what they had learned about dogfighting, and the results were dramatic: according to the Navy, its kill-to-loss ratio against the North Vietnamese MiGs saw a sixfold improvement. In this episode you'll hear from a real TOPGUN graduate, a veteran who flew 150 combat missions in Vietnam.

Tony Cordero talks about growing up without his father, realizing in early adulthood that there must be many thousands of other kids who lost their fathers in Vietnam, and creating an all-volunteer non-profit organization, Sons and Daughters in Touch, to connect them with each other.

June is National PTSD Awareness month. Vietnam veterans often have a hard time getting help for this condition, and having someone in their corner can make all the difference in the world. Cyndy Hollender-Stancliff married two Vietnam veterans, both of whom suffered from PTSD. She shares her story of love and support, loss and healing.

In wartime, casualty and injury records are often created (or not created) in moments of absolute, unimaginable chaos. Sometimes the dots just don’t get connected. David Kies is the living embodiment of that phenomenon. He is alive... and his name is on The Wall. In this episode, he tells us what it’s like to do a rubbing of your own name at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Hill 937 was the center of a brutal and legendary battle that began 53 years ago this week. After eleven days of vicious fighting and heavy losses on both sides, it would become known by another name: Hamburger Hill. Hear a personal account from a soldier who survived it.

October 27th, 1967, outside of Bù Đốp, near the Vietnam-Cambodia border. The helicopter John is piloting has just been shot down by an enemy RPG while attempting to evacuate two wounded Special Forces soldiers from the jungle. In this episode, John shares the story of his service in Vietnam, including his helicopter crash, his dramatic rescue, and his long, strange journey home.

April 10, 2022 was National Siblings Day. In this episode, we bring you the inspiring stories of two separate sets of siblings — both from families with long legacies of service — whose lives were forever changed by the war in Vietnam.

Jan Scruggs, a decorated veteran of two tours in Vietnam, had the idea for a memorial in March of 1979. Three and a half years later, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was a reality. In this episode, Jan recounts his incredible journey from grunt to visionary to target… and, ultimately, to victor.

The panels that make up the Vietnam Veterans Memorial each represent a moment in time. Some moments are measured in years but for one of those panels, its beginning to end lasted only eight days. It could have been any eight days in the Vietnam War, but this panel tells the story of a secret mission in Laos, rising tensions back home, and the incredible story of a Medal of Honor recipient.

More than 400,000 items have been left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in remembrance, in longing, and in tribute. Learn how those items became a museum collection of the National Park Service, and hear from its first curator — a Vietnam veteran who would perform that labor of love for the better part of three decades.

War interrupts everything normal in life… except for love. In this episode you’ll hear stories of people falling in love, people keeping love alive, and love keeping people alive.

On January 30, 1968, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops launched an offensive that is widely considered a pivotal moment in the war. Vietnam War specialist Dr. Erik Villard sheds a historian’s light on the Tet Offensive.

The siege at Khe Sanh began on January 21, 1968. For 77 days, 6,000 Americans — mostly Marines — held their positions against an all-out assault by more than 30,000 enemy troops. Hear personal stories from two men who survived the siege and then returned, decades later, to Khe Sanh.

Surprises are an essential part of the Christmas experience. But in wartime, the surprises aren’t often joyful. In this episode we’ll hear stories of Christmas from people who survived the war in Vietnam, and from people whose losses nearly 50 years ago have colored every Christmas since.

Music of the Vietnam era had the power to unite and divide, to support and protest, to remind those in-country of home, and to help those at home begin to understand what being in-country meant. It provides a soundtrack that can teach us a lot about the war, the era, and the people who lived it. Michael Croan interviews Doug Bradley, one of the authors of "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War."

November 14, 1965 marked a pivotal moment in U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Elements of the Army's 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) entered the first major land battle of the war at landing zones X-Ray and Albany, which would turn out to be proving grounds for a whole new kind of warfare. Hear three personal perspectives from men who survived.

More than three million men —and 11,000 women —served in the Vietnam War, and the 58,000 who died there are forever memorialized on The Wall in Washington DC. But how many came home, only to die later as a result of their service? And how do we honor these unsung heroes, whose war wounds took decades to become fatal?

From a recent stop on this year’s 26-city tour of The Wall That Heals, we bring you several stories that shed light on why people visit The Wall, the emotions they bring to it, and what happens when a community connects with its Vietnam War history.

Army medics and Navy corpsmen (often serving in Marine Corps units) were the enlisted “first responders” of the Vietnam War. They saved countless lives, often at great risk to themselves. In this episode, we bring you two stories from members of the 1st Cavalry’s 15th Medical Battalion.

More than 1,500 Americans from the Vietnam War remain unaccounted for. In this episode, one woman whose father is still MIA tells about her journey from silence to advocacy. Another explains why she rode her bicycle 1,200 miles through the jungles of southeast Asia in search of her father’s crash site.

Nearly 11,000 women served in the Vietnam War, most of them as nurses and all of them as volunteers. Guest host Callie Wright brings you personal stories from two women who experienced the war —and its aftermath —from this unique perspective.

August is National Dog Month in the United States, so in this episode we salute the four-legged warriors who helped us fight the war in Vietnam, saving an estimated 10,000 American lives.

The Vietnam war ended nearly 50 years ago, but thousands of Vietnam veterans and their families are still fighting illnesses related to Agent Orange exposure. On the 60th anniversary of the first use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, we bring you a couple of personal stories from people whose lives are still marked by the use of this deadly toxin.

There are 16 chaplains on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. In this episode we interview Jim Johnson, a former Army chaplain, recipient of three Bronze Stars, and author of two books about his experiences during the Vietnam War and its aftermath.

LCpl Bill “Rocket Man” Klobas left Vietnam in 1969, but Vietnam never left him. Nearly 50 years later, his daughter Casey is fighting like hell to get him the care he needs and the benefits he deserves. In the conclusion of this two-part series, Casey also takes on the U.S. Marine Corps over the Purple Heart that her father earned but never received.

Three years ago, LCpl Bill Klobas showed up unannounced at the home of his daughter, Casey Byington, and proceeded to have what she calls “a meltdown” at her kitchen table. She had never seen him like this, and neither one would ever be the same after. In honor of National PTSD Awareness Month, this episode is the first in a two-part series following Rocket Man’s journey from Paradise to Charlie Ridge, and from the morass of despair to the fingerhold of hope.

Peace Trees Vietnam safely removes unexploded ordinance and plants trees on the cleared land, creating a living monument to reconciliation and friendship. In this episode, founder Jerilyn Brusseau — who lost her brother in the war — tells the organization’s epic and inspiring origin story. Also, VVMF’s Heidi Zimmerman discusses In Memory, VVMF’s program for honoring those who died after returning from Vietnam.

VVMF’s virtual Wall of Faces aims to feature a photo of every person whose name is inscribed on The Wall. Journalist Ryan Kern teamed up with some colorful Vietnam veterans to find the missing photos of fallen servicemen from Massachusetts. His podcast, Finding Faces, richly tells the story of that effort. In this episode, Ryan talks about creating Finding Faces and shares an installment from its second season.

Hal Kushner was a U.S. Army flight surgeon from 1967 to 1977, and spent more than half of that time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. In this episode, Dr. Kushner recalls his experiences before, during, and after his imprisonment. Also, we remember “the Mayaguez incident.”

The draft is one of the most complex topics related to the Vietnam War, and its perceived inequity is often cited as a major factor in turning public sentiment against the war effort. In this episode, Callie Wright interviews two veterans who were drafted —Ernie Guthrie of rural Georgia, and Michael McMahon of New York City —about their personal experiences with the Selective Service System.

In this episode, we hear two personal stories related to the use of helicopters in Vietnam. Rich Kuhblank was a helicopter pilot during the war, and later became responsible for teaching other pilots how to investigate crash sites. Julie Kink lost her brother, David, whose helicopter was shot down when she was only eight years old. Decades later, she found an entire community of new "big brothers" when she set out to learn more about David's life in the army.

Despite what Hollywood would have us believe, the vast majority of Vietnam veterans came home and, despite their difficulties, led meaningful, productive lives. Quiet lives of service to others, to their communities, and to the nation. Their stories don’t sell a lot of movie tickets, but they are definitely worthy of our attention. In honor of National Vietnam War Veterans Day, we bring you three of those stories.

Even after 50 years, the impact of the Vietnam War echoes across generations. Hear the stories of service and sacrifice from people who are affected — veterans, their families, and others who add perspective to those experiences. Brought to you by the nonprofit that built the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, “The Wall,” in Washington, D.C.