V A L O RThe Veterans of Vietnam

A Publication of the National Vietnam Veterans Committee

Volume 1, Issue 4 - Winter 2006/07

A Conversation With Lt. General Harry W.O. KinnardFormer Commander, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile)

Reflections on the Vietnam WarDr. Lewis Sorley

Vietnam: The POW Experience

Fallujah: Two Years LaterThe Heroes of Today’s Generation Share

Their Own Stories of Valor

Valor: The Veterans of Vietnam - Issue 4.

A quarterly publication of the National Vietnam VeteransCommittee, 1100 N. Glebe Rd, Suite 900, Arlington, VA22201. Telephone: 202-777-7272. Fax: 202-408-0624.

The National Vietnam Veterans Committee is a division ofthe American Veterans Center. Valor is mailed to donors tothe National Vietnam Veterans Committee who make a con-tribution of $50 or more per-year. Contributions help tofund the Committee’s various speaker conferences, studentprograms, the National Memorial Day Parade, documen-tary and oral history projects, and this publication. To make acontribution or subscribe, call 202-777-7272.

Valor: The Veterans of Vietnam

National Vietnam Veterans CommitteeBrig. Gen. R. Steve Ritchie (USAF-Ret) - Honorary Chairman

James C. Roberts - PresidentTim Holbert - Editor/Program DirectorJim Michels - Director of Development

Michael Paradiso - Publisher

www.vietnamvetscommittee.orgwww.americanveteranscenter.org

Valor - Issue 4

On March 22 America lost a great lady. On that day Mrs. CarrieMoorer, widow of the late Admiral Thomas Moorer died after along illness.

Admiral Moorer had one of the most distinguished careers in U.S.Military history. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he was ajunior naval aviator at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked.He saw extensive combat in World War II and was decorated forhis heroism. Enjoying a meteoric rise through the ranks of theNavy, Admiral Moorer would serve as Commander-in-Chief ofboth the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets (the first Navy officer to havecommanded both fleets). He was Chief of Naval Operations from1967-1970, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1970-1974.

Tom and Carrie Moorer had a long and loving marriage and weretrue partners in life. “They say a wife can make a man successfulor happy,” Admiral Moorer said of his wife. “Mine has made meboth successful and happy.”

He related how, after Pearl Harbor, his young wife had to makeher way back to their home in Alabama, traveling by ship, trainand bus for several weeks with an infant in her arms. Mrs. Moorernavigated innumerable moves during her husband’s long career,including duty stations in Japan and Britain and many places inbetween. She took the lead in raising four children and was asuperb homemaker and hostess as well as a trusted advisor.

Following Admiral Moorer’s death I approached Mrs. Moorer withthe idea of naming the Committee’s planned new headquartersafter him. She and her family readily agreed and we are preparingto launch an ambitious capital drive to acquire the funds for thiseffect. The new Moorer Center will also include a tribute to Mrs.Moorer.

This capital campaign will help us to better our mission to high-light the stories and sacrifices of America’s heroes, and to pro-vide a forum for the veterans of Vietnam to share their stories ofvalor with the public through our speaker programs, documenta-ries, and this publication.

We owe a special debt of gratitude to Admiral Moorer, who wasone of the earliest supporters of our organization, and who spokeat the first six of our national conferences. It is fitting that, in thisissue of Valor, we include the transcripts from several of the speak-ers and panels on Vietnam from our Ninth Annual Conferenceheld last November. The conference was a tremendous success,and brought together some of the great heroes of Vietnam along-side their counterparts of World War II, Korea, and those fightingtoday in Afghanistan and Iraq. The conference was televised liveon C-Span, then replayed several times in the ensuing months.None of this would have been possible without the early supportof our friend, Admiral Moorer.

If you would like more details on the capital campaign pleasewrite to me at the following address:

National Vietnam Veterans Committee1100 N. Glebe Rd., Suite 900

Arlington, VA 22201

As we look to the future, we will continue to provide an outletfor America’s greatest veterans to share their experiences withthe public, and to preserve them for future generations. Andwe thank you again for your support.

Sincerely,

James C. Roberts

From the President

Everywhere one looked, from November 9 through 11 atthe Hyatt Regency Crystal City, in Arlington, Virginia theysaw a hero. Gathering there for the American VeteransCenter’s Ninth Annual Conference were distinguished vet-erans from World War II,Korea, Vietnam, and Op-erations Enduring Free-dom and Iraqi Freedom.Here, they met with andspoke to their fellow vet-erans from across the gen-erations, a grateful public,and several hundred highschool and college stu-dents, eager to hear of theirexperiences in service toAmerica.

The conference proved tobe a who’s who of Ameri-can heroes, and featuredsuch legends as veterans ofthe “Doolittle Raiders” and“Band of Brothers” from World War II, former prisoners ofwar from Vietnam, Medal of Honor recipients, and deco-rated veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Joining them weresuch prominent veterans as Lt. Gen. Dave R. Palmer, formerSuperintendent of West Point and noted military historian;Dr. Lewis Sorley, veteran of Vietnam and the preeminenthistorian on the war today; Lt. Gen. Harry W. O. Kinnard,aide to Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe during the siege ofBastogne and commander of the 1st Cavalry Division (Air-mobile) in Vietnam; and Brig. Gen. R. Steve Ritchie, theonly Air Force ace pilot from Vietnam.

While the conference provided an opportunity for theseveterans to share their stories with each other and the pub-lic, the focus was on the many high school and college stu-dents, who were given the opportunity to learn from someof America’s greatest heroes. During a panel featuring Medalof Honor recipients George “Bud” Day and Hiroshi“Hershey” Miyamura, Lt. Col. George Malone, recipient ofthe Navy Cross during Vietnam and panel moderator, in-vited each and every one of the students in attendance tocome forward and shake the hands of these two men.

Miyamura received the Medal of Honor for his service onApril 24-25, 1951, where during an intense battle north ofSeoul, he killed over 50 Chinese attackers before being felledby an enemy grenade. He was captured and held as a POW

for the next 28 months.

“Bud” Day needed little in-troduction to the audience.Shot down by the NorthVietnamese on August 26,1967, Day was seriouslywounded and captured.Despite being tortured andphysically spent, Day es-caped from captivity, nearlyreaching the safety of a unitof U.S. Marines. He waseventually recaptured, andsent to the infamous“Hanoi Hilton.” Day be-came one of the great lead-ers among the VietnamPOWs, and was later

awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism. John McCain,his cellmate in Hanoi, would call him “the bravest man Ihave ever met.”

At the conclusion of the panel, Malone told the students,“Each generation has an obligation to future generations tomake things better. Your turn will soon be here.”

For the next panel, four young men who were not mucholder than the students in attendance, their time has alreadycome. Moderated by former Marine Lieutenant Wade Zirkle,the panel featured decorated veterans of Iraq and Afghani-stan, young men who have already answered their country’scall. Among the panelists was David Bellavia, who as anArmy staff sergeant during the battle of Fallujah, single-handedly cleared a house full of insurgents, and was laternominated for the Medal of Honor.

“America does not owe this generation anything,” Bellaviasaid. “I think we owe America, and that’s why we fight forour country. We volunteered for this.” He continued, “I thinkthat the enemy today completely underestimated what we

Ssgt. Rex Swartz and 1st Lt. Christopher Rauh, veterans of Operation IraqiFreedom with the 101st Airborne Division and speakers at the Ninth AnnualConference, speak with Vietnam veterans following a wreath-laying ceremony

at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Friday, November 10, 2006.

Valor - Issue 4

A Gathering of HeroesBy Tim Holbert

Editor

have to offer. If they are going to take us on, they betterwear their hardhats and pack their lunches.”

Following the three days of speaker sessions and wreathlaying ceremonies at the war memorials, the event wascapped off with the annual awards banquet, this year ex-panded to honor veterans of notonly World War II, but each erasince. Presented with the AudieMurphy Award for Outstanding Ser-vice in World War II were the leg-endary “Doolittle Raiders.” Giventhe Ray Davis Award and JoeRonnie Hooper Award for Koreaand Vietnam respectively wereHiroshi Miyamura and George“Bud” Day. Also on hand to be hon-ored were the men of 3rd Platoon,E Co., 28th Marine Regiment, 5th

Marine Division—the men whoscaled Mt. Suribachi leading to thefamed flag raisings during the battlefor Iwo Jima.

Despite the great heroes of thepast, it was the heroes of thepresent who left the most strikingimpression on those in attendance.Honored with the inaugural Paul Ray Smith Award for Out-standing Service in Operations Enduring Freedom and IraqiFreedom were Marine SSgt. AnthonyViggiani and Sgt. Timothy Connors.Until recently, Sgt. 1st Class Smith wasthe only Medal of Honor recipientfrom the current struggle against Is-lamic radicalism. He was killed dur-ing the initial invasion of Iraq in afirefight where he was credited withsaving the lives of dozens of his com-rades.

SSgt. Viggiani, presented the award bySgt. 1st Class Smith’s widow, Birgit,stood out in a room full of heroes. Cur-rently a drill instructor for the MarineCorps at Parris Island, Viggiani, wearing his “Dress Blues,”looked the part of the legend that he has quickly become.On June 2 of popped a few aspirin, and rejoined his men inpursuit of the enemy. For his actions, he was awarded theNavy Cross. Now, as a drill instructor, he is charged with

forging the Marines who will continue on the fight in Af-ghanistan and Iraq. If SSgt. Viggiani is any indication ofthe kind of Marines America is producing, the insurgentforces do not stand a chance.

Leaving a different impression was Timothy Connors, whodespite being one of the greatyoung heroes of Iraq, could havewalked through the room largelyunnoticed. Now a college studentat Holy Cross, the 23-year-oldConnors might have been mistakenfor one of the many ROTC stu-dents who were in attendance, orpossibly the grandson of one of theveterans of World War II. In fact,Connors, sitting at a table with theWorld War II Marines who took IwoJima and their wives, might haveappeared slightly out of place.However, once his story was read,it quickly became clear that he be-longed right alongside these heroesof yesterday. Then-Cpl. Connorswas the veteran of a dozen housebattles during the brutal fight forFallujah two years ago, the mosthouse fights ever recorded in

American military history. During a particularly vicious fight,Connors was responsible for retrieving the body of a fallen

comrade, saving him from falling intoenemy hands, and is believed to havetaken out Omar Hadid, Abu-Musabal-Zarqawi’s top man in Fallujah. Hewas later awarded the Silver Star.

The evening ended with a tribute tothe soldiers of the 101st Airborne whofought in World War II, and those whoare continuing on their tradition of ex-cellence in Iraq today. Veterans of thenow-famous “Band of Brothers” be-stowed medals upon six current ser-vicemen of the 101st who recently re-turned from Iraq, a symbolic passing

of the torch from the Greatest Generation to this latestgeneration. As a crowd gathered around them all to takephotographs, master of ceremonies Gene Pell remarked,“Folks, this is what it is all about.” Seeing the heroes ofyesterday and today together, no more needed to be said.

VALOR

Heroes of then and now. Col. “Bud” Day (right),veteran of three wars and recipient of the Medalof Honor, with Marine SSgt. Anthony Viggiani,

recipient of the Navy Cross for actions inAfghanistan.

Christopher Glass of Covenant Life High Schoolintroduces Dr. Lewis Sorley prior to his presentation atthe Ninth Annual Conference, which was carried live onC-Span. Each conference speaker is introduced by one of

the students attending the conference, in an effort toencourage them to learn about, and from, the veterans

they meet.

Valor - Issue 4

On April 18, 1942, sixteen B-25 bombers launched from the airstrip of the USS Hornet, situated deep in enemy controlled waters. Their destination was Japan. Still reelingfrom the attack on Pearl Harbor, these last few months had gone poorly for the Allies in the Pacific. Determined to strike back at Japan and boost American morale,American war planners had conceived of an idea in which twin-engined Army bombers could be launched from an aircraft carrier. Tapped to plan and lead this difficult anddangerous mission was the famed aviator and engineer, Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle.Doolittle’s task was enormous. Gathering together 24 crews at Eglin Field in Florida, he had to teach them to lift off in a B-25 at 50 miles per hour after a 500 foot taxi—less than half the speed and distance pilots were accustomed to using. In order to lighten their loads, the bombers were stripped of all unnecessary equipment, while extra fuelcapacity was installed. Each was loaded with four 500-pound bombs.On April 2, the USS Hornet, with crews and bombers aboard, left Alameda Naval Air Station enroute to Japan. Two and one-half weeks later, an enemy patrol vessel wassighted about 650 miles off the coast of Japan. The vessel was quickly sunk, but not before sending a radio warning to the mainland.Recognizing that time was of the essence, Doolittle decided to launch the attack immediately, despite being 200 miles further from the Japanese coast than planned. Thealready dangerous mission now faced an alerted Japan, poor weather, a longer trip that would tax already perilously-limited fuel supplies, and an estimated arrival time duringthe middle of the day—a much easier time for Japanese fighters to attack the B-25s.After a successful launch, all 16 planes proceeded directly to their military targets in the cities of Yokohama, Kobe, Osaka, and Tokyo. In spite of anti-aircraft fire andJapanese fighters, all 16 planes successfully reached their targets.Clear of Japanese resistance, the new fear was making it to friendly territory before running out of fuel. Fifteen of the planes raced toward the coast of China, while the16th flew toward Russia, where upon landing, the crew was interned for several months. The other fifteen crews were forced to bail out or crash land off the coast of Chinaor over its coastal mountains. One crew member was killed bailing out, while two more died while swimming ashore. Eight, were captured, and subsequently starved andtortured, by the Japanese. Following a mock trial, three of the eight were convicted of charges of which they were never made aware. The next day, all three were executed.Immediately following the raid, Doolittle told his crew that he believed the loss of all sixteen aircraft, combined with the relatively minor damage inflicted on Japan, hadrendered his attack a failure and he expected a court martial upon his return to the United States. Instead, the raid provided a tremendous morale boost to a country thatwas in desperate need of good news. At the same time, Doolittle’s attack struck fear into the Japanese command, which recalled fighter units back home to defend againstfurther raids—a strategic shift that would have huge consequences at the next turning point of the war—the Battle of Midway. For his actions, Jimmy Doolittle wasawarded the Medal of Honor and promoted to Brigadier General, while each of the Raiders received the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Audie Murphy AwardFor distinguished service in the United States military during World War II

The most decorated soldier of World War II, Audie Leon Murphy was born to Texassharecroppers in 1924. He joined the army as a private in 1942, shortly after his 18th

birthday. Throughout his three years of active service, Murphy fought with the 3rd InfantryDivision in nine major campaigns in the European theatre. He received every medal theArmy had to offer including two Silver Stars and three Purple Hearts. He received theMedal of Honor for his valor repelling six German tanks and their supporting infantrynear Holtzwihr, France. Murphy also received five medals from France and Belgium. Whilerising to the rank of Second Lieutenant, Murphy killed over 240 Germans and single-handedly eliminated a tank. He was deactivated on September 21, 1945. After the war,he became nationally known for both his wartime heroism and his leading role in films.Audie L. Murphy is and will remain one of America’s most heroic sons.

Col. WilliamBower

Lt. Col. RichardE. Cole

Maj. ThomasC. Griffin

M/Sgt. EdwinHorton

Maj. Gen. DavidM. Jones

The Doolittle Raiders

Raymond G. Davis AwardFor distinguished service in the United States military during the Korean War

Raymond G. Davis was appointed a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps in1938, following his college graduation and ROTC training. Throughout his military career,Davis fought in three wars and fourteen different campaigns. He rose to the rank of general,while earning 18 American and seven foreign awards. Among these included the Navy Cross,earned for actions at Peleliu during World War II and the Distinguished Service Medalduring Vietnam. However, it was in December of 1950, near the Chosin Reservoir inKorea, that Davis would earn the acclaim that has made him legendary. While carrying hiswounded along, he led his battalion over icy ridges to rescue a stranded rifle company. Duringthis mission alone he was credited with saving over 1,000 Marines from certain death and6,000 additional Marines from possible destruction. For this, he was awarded the Medal ofHonor, and remains one of the great heroes in Marine Corps history.

Hiroshi “Hershey” MiyamuraOn the night of April 24, 1951, Corporal Hiroshi Miyamura waited with his five riflemen and ten machinegunners for the expected attack of the Chinese Communist Forces (CCF). The 3rd Infantry Regiment wassituated north of Seoul. The UN forces had recently recaptured the capital city, and their line had advancedfarther north. The CCF had already attacked other areas of the line, and the Americans had been forced towithdraw. Holding Seoul was crucial for the Allied forces. Though not militarily strategic to the troops, thecity provided the United Nations with extra clout when bartering with the North Koreans for peace.

The Chinese had attacked other areas of the line on the 22nd, driving parts of the UN line backwards andcollapsing the ROK 6th Division, several miles to the east of Miyamura and his men. Marines hastilyattempted to fill the gap as over 250,000 Chinese troops prepared to attack on the early morning hours ofthe 24th. As darkness fell, the South Korean conscripts among Miyamura’s men deserted the company. Theattack began, and the Chinese came in waves for hours. The Americans were forced to pull back as supportingFilipino and Korean regiments crumpled exposing their flanks.

As they threatened to overwhelm his squad, Miyamura deserted his machinegun. Charging forward, he killed ten Chinese with his bayonet. Hereturned to his machine gun, firing until the gun jammed. Undaunted he bayoneted his way to the second machinegun, assuring his men that hewould cover their retreat. Unaware that Miyamura was still fighting, American forces began dropping phosphorus bombs on his position. Afterkilling over 50 Chinese, Miyamura’s ammunition was depleted. He made his way toward what he thought was the U.S. lines. A dying Chinesedropped a grenade after being bayoneted by Miyamura. It exploded filling his legs with shrapnel. He stumbled onwards until he was too weakto continue. After crawling into a ditch, he lost consciousness.

The American troops continued to withdraw over territory they had gained less than six weeks before. Miyamura awoke the next morning tofind hundreds of passing enemy soldiers. Hoping to remain unnoticed, he played possum. However, one Chinese was not deceived. He stood overMiyamura and in English told him not to worry—the Chinese had a lenient policy. Soon he was joined by other wounded Americans. Afterhelping bandage each other’s wounds, they began their march to the prison camp.

The UN line continued to retreat until the 28th of April. Able to halt the Chinese a few miles short of Seoul, the tide once again turned. Asthe Americans advanced north, this time it was the Chinese doing the retreating. The line became static as peace negotiations began with theNorth Koreans and Chinese. Miyamura spent the next 28 months as a prisoner of war. Poorly fed and with no medical attention, he lost over50 pounds before he was released on August 23, 1953.

Hiroshi Miyamura fought in one of the most savage battles of the Korean War. Through his personal sacrifice, he saved the lives of many whileinspiring others to fight on against overwhelming odds. For his valor, Miyamura was presented with the United States military’s highestaward—the Medal of Honor.

Joe Ronnie Hooper AwardFor distinguished service in the United States military during the Vietnam War

The most decorated soldier in international combat in American history, Joe Ronnie Hooper, a nativeSouth Carolinian, joined the military when he was 19 years old. He was deployed with the 501st

Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, popularly known as the Delta Raiders in 1966. Duringhis two tours of duty in Vietnam, Hooper killed at least 115 Vietnamese. Surpassing both SergeantAlvin York and Second Lieutenant Audie Murphy, Hooper earned 37 medals, including two SilverStars, six Bronze Stars and eight Purple Hearts. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for hiscourage on February 21, 1968 in the battle of Hue during the Tet Offensive. Among his many acts ofvalor that day, he is credited with single-handedly destroying three enemy bunkers, eliminating the enemyin four more with grenades and killing additional Vietnamese with his rifle and bayonet. He accom-plished these feats while he was wounded, refusing medical help until his line was restored. Hooper retiredas a captain in 1972 at the age of 34, one of America’s great heroes of Vietnam.

Colonel George “Bud” DayOn August 26, 1967, then-Major George “Bud” Day, commander of squadron of F-100s nicknamedthe “Misty Super FACs,” was leading a mission over North Vietnam to locate military targets and call inair strikes on them. Suddenly, ground-fire hit his plane, destroying its hydraulic controls and forcing it intoa steep dive. While Day was able to eject, he smashed into the plane’s fuselage, breaking his arm in threeplaces.

As Major Day descended toward the ground, North Vietnamese militiamen gathered below, eager to makehim their prize. Upon being captured, Day was marched to a hidden underground shelter to be interrogated.Despite treatment that would break many men, Major Day refused to talk. His captors then staged amock execution and hung him from a rafter by his feet for several hours. Figuring that Day was too weakto attempt an escape, the North Vietnamese took little care in tying him securely. They figured wrong as onhis fifth day of captivity, Day untied himself and escaped.

On the second night following his escape, Day was sleeping in thick jungle undergrowth when a nearby bomb or rocket explosion violentlyshook him awake, leaving him bleeding from his ears and sinuses and sending shrapnel into his leg. Despite his wounds, Major Day forcedhimself on toward the south for several days, eating berries and frogs, and evading enemy patrols.

Nearly two weeks later, Day heard helicopters in his vicinity and stumbled toward the sound. Realizing they were U.S. choppers evacuatinga Marine unit, Day hurried to catch them. Unfortunately, he arrived just as they were leaving the landing zone. His bad luck continued, asthe next day, he ran into a North Vietnamese Army patrol, which shot him in the leg and hand before capturing him and bringing him backto the very same camp from which he had previously escaped. Once again, he was subjected to more torture.

Soon, Major Day was moved to the infamous “Hanoi Hilton.” The conditions were miserable – Day suffered from malnutrition, and hiswounds were untreated. He was repeatedly tortured, at one point for 48 hours without rest. Finally, the enemy believed that they had brokenhim, as Major Day began to talk. Once again, they were wrong, as despite being broken physically, Day had the mental strength to providethem with false information on every important question.

In February of 1971, a number of American POWs gathered for a forbidden religious service. They were suddenly interrupted by enragedenemy guards, who burst into the service with rifles pointed at the prisoners. At that moment, one of the prisoners stood, staring directly intothe muzzles of the enemy rifles, and began to sing. The song was the Star-Spangled Banner, and the man was Bud Day. One by one, theother prisoners stood, joining in the anthem to freedom, their bodies broken, but their spirits strong.

George “Bud” Day was released on March 14, 1973. Three years later, along with fellow POW James Stockdale, he was presented withthe Medal of Honor by Gerald Ford. Colonel Day saw extensive service in World War II, and later served in Korea. He is the mostdecorated living American soldier.

Paul Ray Smith AwardFor distinguished service in the United States military during Operation Enduring Freedom and

Operation Iraqi Freedom

Paul Ray Smith was born in Texas in 1969. He enlisted in the United States Army in1989 and was deployed with Bravo Company of the 3rd Infantry Division to Kosovo in2001, rising to the rank of sergeant first class the spring of 2002. In January of 2003,he was deployed to Kuwait in preparation for what would become Operation Iraqi Free-dom. On April 4, 2003, two weeks after the invasion, Smith’s unit found itself engaged inheavy combat against superior numbers of enemy forces near Baghdad International Air-port. In the heat of the battle, Smith ran under heavy fire to a nearby mounted machinegun. While maintaining this exposed position, he killed nearly 50 enemy fighters before hewas mortally wounded. His selfless actions saved the lives of more than 100 soldiers andrepelled the enemy attack. For his valor, he posthumously was awarded the Medal ofHonor—to date the only American service member to receive the military’s highest honor forOperation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom.

On June 2, 2004, the First Battalion, 6th Marines launched Operation Asbury Park, an mission thataimed to push deep into the Taliban stronghold near Dey Chopan, Afghanistan. Prior to this expeditiontwenty-four-year-old Sergeant Anthony Viggiani and his men in Charlie Company had seen little combat asthey uncovered considerable caches of arms, ammunition and ordnance. However, their luck was not tocontinue. That day near Siah Chub Kalay, they were ambushed by anti-coalition militia (ACM) andproceeded to fight an intense seven hour battle with the enemy.

On the following day as the company entered the village of Khabargho, they spotted approximately 20heavily armed men fleeing into the nearby mountains. Squads led by Viggiani and Sergeant Ryan Westmoved after the enemy. Realizing that the Marines would be hard to escape, the ACM left five fighters tocover their retreat farther into the mountains. Three hid in a cave on the right side of the valley; one positionedhimself on the opposite hillside, while the fifth fighter waited for the Marines in the valley floor. The Marines

made their way over the rough, rock strewn terrain into the valley under intense fire. As the Marines on the left slope descended into the valley,Lance Corporal James Gould was hit in the calf by a 7.62 round. Corporal Randy Wood helped him find shelter behind a rock. They weretargeted with a heavy barrage of bullets from the cave across the valley. One of the bullets ricocheted off a nearby rock and cut across Wood’scheek.

As Viggiani made his way down the right slope, he saw a break in the rock. When he leaned through the opening, he spotted a piece of cloth.Realizing he had found the ACM’s hideout, he fired his rifle into the opening several times, paused and fired again; but the hostile firingcontinued. Realizing that rifle power was futile and a grenade was needed to eliminate the enemy, Viggiani sprinted toward two nearbyMarines to retrieve one. As he returned to the cave under heavy fire, the ACM fighter across the valley hit Viggiani in the leg. Blood oozedfrom the wound above his boot. Intent on reaching the cave and eliminating the enemy, Viggiani did not notice. He quickly made his way overthe rocks. When he reached the cave, he pulled the pin and tossed the grenade inside flattening himself against the rocks for protection againstthe oncoming explosion.

With the three fighters silenced, help reached Gould and Wood. The Marines were able to eliminate the others; and in less than ten minutesafter entering the valley the Marines were ready to move out. It was then that his comrades noticed the crimson stain above Viggiani’s boot.Encouraged by his fellow Marines to return to the aid station, Viggiani refused, determined to continue with his company deeper into themountains after the enemy. After taking two aspirin, he was once again on the move. For his relentless determination in destroying a brutalenemy, Viggiani was awarded the Navy’s second highest award for valor, the Navy Cross.

Staff Sergeant Anthony ViggianiOperation Enduring Freedom

On November 15, 2004, the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment of the 1st Marine Division, came under fire fromthree sides as they attempted to clear a section of twenty houses in the eastern section of the Iraqi city of Fallujah,long known as a hotbed of terrorist activity. The city had been declared secure two days previous; the Marines were noweliminating the remaining insurgents. As the Marines in Battalion 1/8 took cover, LCpl Travis Desiato was shotdown in the corridor of a small one-story, three room house. Fearing for Desiato’s safety and feeling responsible as hehad allowed Desiato to fight that day, Corporal Timothy Connors decided to investigate the situation.

Connors, already a veteran of eleven house fights and the battalion’s most experienced squad leader, cautiously movedtowards the entrance. As he entered, he noticed the main room on his right was empty. A corridor on his left led pasta second room into a back bedroom. Against the bedroom wall in plain sight was Desiato’s body, stricken by a hail ofbullets as he had fallen to the floor. LCpl Matthew Brown followed Connors into the house. After confirming thatDesiato had been killed, Connors entered the corridor, determined not to let his fellow Marine’s body fall into enemyhands. A barrage of AK fire greeted him. Quickly stepping back and grabbing a SAW, he let two hundred roundsfly into the backroom. Silence reigned.

Connors grabbed a grenade and pulled the pin. Pulling his arm back to throw the grenade, he glanced down the corridor. His eyes locked with a man witha full beard and wild hair, his arm also back and armed with a grenade. “Grenade!” Connors yelled as he pulled Brown into the room on his left. After theexplosion, they moved out into the courtyard. Making his way down the narrow alley to a small window, he raked the room with bullets before quicklyretreating before the insurgents could get to the window and return fire. Next Connors threw a stick of C-4 down the corridor and ran to take shelter underthe overhang of another house with three other Marines. The C-4 blew. Before the Marines could react a muzzle poked out of a hole in the roof andsprayed the wall a few feet above their heads with bullets. Connors threw a grenade into the opening, the explosion silencing the enemy.

The main Marine force had pulled back to a larger house about thirty feet away. After lobbing a few more grenades at the house, Connors and hiscompanions joined their fellow Marines. Corporals Eubaldo Lovato, Camillio Aragon, Brad Donaghy, and Lonnie Longenecker returned with Connorsto the house. The other Marines provided covering fire. They entered the house; a short burst of fire came from the back room. Aragon and Longeneckerthrew a few grenades into the room and were greeted with silence. Suddenly Donaghy noticed that Desiato’s SAW was missing. Apparently it was in enemyhands. Not knowing if there was anyone else in the room, Connors and Aragon inched down the hallway. When they reached the door of the room,Aragon fired his pistol into the room. Silence. As he re-cocked, they were met with two hundred rounds of SAW power. The stream of bullets flew past.The two Marines stumbled backwards to the door of the next room where Lovato was pulling the pin on a grenade. “Frag out!” he yelled.

After reaching safety, they decided that they needed more firepower. Tanks were called in. With the house now breached, the Marines rushed forwards,killing two insurgents attempting to escape. They discovered six insurgents in the room. The one with the thick beard and wild hair that had lobbed thegrenade at Connors resembled Omar Hadid, a notorious terrorist who Abu Musab al-Zarqawi reported martyred but whose body was never identified.Hadid was known for being particularly brutal, and was the leader of the Fallujah insurgents.

The battle for Fallujah was one of the toughest fights in recent American military history. There, the Marines and Army attacked room by room,reminiscent of the battle of Hue City, three and one-half decades earlier in Vietnam. Prior to the taking of Fallujah in November of 2004, manyinsurgents believed that the United States military would never fight in such close combat, that they would rely on air and artillery strikes. This attitudechanged with Fallujah, as the insurgents learned that the choice to stand and fight the Americans would be a fatal one.

Timothy Connors, in his four-hour battle to retrieve the body of his fallen comrade, personified the toughness of the United States Marine Corps inFallujah. He would end up fighting at least a dozen of these vicious house-battles, the most in recorded American military history. For his courage, hewould be awarded the Silver Star, and is a worthy successor to those Americans who fought at Iwo Jima, the Chosin Reservoir, and Hue City.

Paul Ray Smith AwardSergeant Timothy Connors

Operation Iraqi Freedom

Then-Lt. Col. Harry W.O. Kinnard parachuted with the 101stAirborne Division into France on June 6, 1944. From there hewould lead his men through Normandy, then into Holland, beforefinding he and the rest of the 101st surrounded at Bastogne duringthe Battle of the Bulge. It was there that he gained everlasting fameby suggesting General Anthony McAuliffe’s one word response tothe German demand for surrender: “NUTS!”

General Kinnard would goon to become the originalcommander of the 1st Cav-alry Division (Airmobile),and has been called the fa-ther of airmobile warfare.It was under his leadershipthat the 1st Cav becamebattle-tested in Vietnam.General Kinnard spoke ofhis experiences at the NinthAnnual Conference in a dis-cussion moderated by GenePell.

Gene PellIn July, 1965, then-Ma-jor General HarryKinnard took command of the 1st Cavalry Division, andone month later deployed to South Vietnam with his sol-diers.

The climate was quite a bit different for you in the junglesand rice paddies of Southeast Asia from the war in Europeduring World War II, and particularly in a place called IaDrang, where at this point you were commander of the 1st

Cavalry Division. That was a pretty bloody fight, wasn’t it?

General KinnardYes it was. And I have often thought about the same differ-ences that you just described—the complete difference be-tween the weather and the terrain in Germany and Viet-nam. We were in the highlands of Vietnam, of course.

I would like to back up just a bit regarding the 1st Cav. TheArmy had not done as well in developing its movements asit had in firepower. This was recognized by a lot of people,including Secretary McNamara. McNamara had directedthe Army to take a hard look at improving our mobilitythrough use of aircraft, primarily helicopters, but other air-craft as well.

At the time I was theassistant division com-mander of the 101st Air-borne down at Ft.Campbell. I received aphone call that theChief of Staff of theArmy wanted to see mein Washington the nextday. Well that’s a littlerare, for a brigadier gen-eral to be called up bythe Chief of Staff! Butanyway, I went.

He said to me, “Harry,we’re going to find outhow fast and how

quickly the Army can embrace air mobility; how quicklyand how completely. And you’re going to be the guy to doit.” And I said, “Yes sir!” He said, “It’s very important. I’mgoing to let you have your pick of personnel,” which waswonderful.

So I left walking on cloud nine. But it was a tough thing.For two and a half years we tested everything; it was calledthe 11th Air Assault Division, and I was the commander ofit. We tested everything that you could think of, to includeeven atomic war. Starting with guerilla war and going allthe way up through the spectrum to include atomic war. Sothere was a real question of whether the Army was goingto improve this thing. At the end of test of the 11th AirAssault Division, we fought the 82nd in a big maneuver inthe Carolinas, and we whipped the socks off of them,frankly, despite some very bad weather.

Soldiers of the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) on a reconnaissance mission.

A Conversation WithLt. General Harry W.O. Kinnard

Valor - Issue 4

But anyway, word went through the Army staff that wewere good, and that this was a concept that we should gowith. I thought that we should be called the 101st Air As-sault Division; but General Johnston, who was Army Chiefof Staff and had been in the 1st Cav., said, “No, we’re goingto call it the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile).” So I said,“Yes sir!” though I did ask that all of the elements of thedivision be airborne—I thought that they should be jump-ers. My father, who was in theArmy, always told me that it isvery difficult to tell in advancewhether a man will be a hero ora coward once into combat. ButI thought that if a guy wouldjump out of a perfectly goodairplane, there might be a bet-ter chance that he could be ahero!

So anyway, the Chief of Staffcame down for our graduation,and told us that we would begoing to Vietnam. He said to methat President Johnson was go-ing to be going on TV to de-clare a state of emergency. Thiswas important because withouta state of emergency any sol-dier could get out when his timewas up. Well I had a number ofsoldiers who only had a fewmonths left in their service. Asit turned out, the President changed his mind between theday the Chief of Staff spoke to me and when he made histalk—he didn’t announce a state of emergency. Conse-quently, I lost thousands of people from my division rightbefore going into combat.

Gene PellThis brings up another point, I think an important differ-ence between these two wars in which you played such aprominent role. In World War II, the entire country wasbehind the effort, from beginning to end. The terms wereunconditional surrender. From my understanding, Rooseveltpretty much left things to George Marshall and his generalsand admirals to run. Now you come to Vietnam, and you’vegot decision making taking place in the smallest level of

detail in the White House, in the Pentagon, etc., and by alot of people in high places in high office who had no expe-rience whatsoever in the military.

General KinnardIt was a miserable situation, actually, which I have thoughtabout forever. In fact, one of the main reasons I got out ofthe Army was I was so upset at the way our people were

being treated when they cameback from Vietnam. You hit thenail right on the head. Wethought we could do this thingswift and quick, and McNamarawanted to put sensors out allover the jungle and such, con-trolling things down to almostthe squad level.

Gene PellWe’ve talked about the differ-ences between the weather andthe political differences be-tween World War II and Viet-nam, now tell me a little bitabout the differences in termsof fighting a set piece army andfighting against local insurgen-cies.

General KinnardThere were several differences.First, there was no air threat

from the Vietnamese, which made it an entirely differentwar. I had a meeting with General Westmoreland when Ifirst went over there. Westy didn’t know what had beengoing on with the air assault testing and such. In additionto the fact that there was no air threat from the Viet Cong,the biggest threat was just finding them. In Germany, youdidn’t have the least problem finding the Germans…theywere there, big time! The trick in Vietnam was that it wasprimarily a hunting operation to find these people.

Gene PellDid Westmoreland know about this special mobile supportthat he was about to get?

The 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) is awarded the PresidentialUnit Citation by Lyndon Johnson for heroism in the Ia Drang

Valley in Vietnam from October 23 to November 26, 1965.Standing center is Lt. General Harry W.O. Kinnard.

Valor - Issue 4

General KinnardHe knew very little of it, unfortunately. I said to him,“Westy, I have a divisional structure that requires that webe concentrated as a division. There’s not enough aviationthat allows it to be split up into packets to be sent allaround.” Fortunately, I was also able to tell him that theChief of Staff of the Army said that our principle job wasto keep the Viet Cong from cutting the country in two inthe line from Qui Nhonto Pleiku, which hadbeen a real battlegroundin the earlier wars withthe French.

Gene PellTell us how it worked inpractice, as opposed toall of the training youhad done.

General KinnardIt worked even betterthan I had expected towork; it was incredible.There were a lot ofproblems that had to besolved. We flew, basically, what we called “nap-of-the-earth,” or flying right above the tree line, and would end upwith a lot of tree limbs and leaves stuck in your helicoptersas you flew—I mean you were right on the deck. And youflew under power lines, not over them, and stayed basi-cally right on the ground. This made us much less vulner-able than we otherwise would have been. But there were alot of tough problems that go along with this, such as com-municating with other low-flying aircraft that are, say, 75miles away from where you are. My division had a tremen-dous operational area—we were 100 miles from Qui Nhonon the ocean back to the border with Cambodia and Laos.And it was about 100 miles in the other direction, as well.No division in the world ever had to cover a chunk ofterritory like that, and we actually did a pretty good job.Later, of course, other divisions came in. Anyway, thereare a lot of problems to solve in communications with low-flying aircraft, but once you do, it’s just incredible how muchdifference it makes if you have somebody that can’t beinterdicted on the ground as they moved.

Gene PellSurely one of your biggest problems of all would be what Iwould call the issue of sanctuary because the rules of en-gagement did not allow for pursuit across the border. Theenemy was able to pick and choose when he wanted tofight and disappear when he wanted to disappear, locatinghimself where his supply lines were shortest and most con-venient.

General KinnardActually, Hal Moore,who with Joe Gallowaywrote the book We WereSoldiers Once…and Young,was representative ofhow we fought thatthing. When we werefirst there and Westy, asI said, did not knowmuch about our capabili-ties and limitations, hewould typically send usinto some area and say,“I want you to go inthere and fight for 48hours.” That’s a strange

kind of mission, and didn’t mean a thing to me. I keptsaying, “Why don’t you tell me to develop a situation? I’llgo any place that you think is hot, and I want you to giveme the latitude to develop the situation and then fight it.”

Finally when there was the attack on the ARVN camp out-side of Pleiku, I convinced “Swede” Larsen, who was aclassmate of mine and corps commander, to tell Westy,“Give Kinnard the chance to go in and chase these guysout of there.” Westy agreed, and we took on out after theseguys and chased them from the ARVN camp all the wayout to where Hal Moore had the big fight at LZ XRAY. Atthe end of that fight, the enemy remaining headed for theborder, and I asked for permission to cross the border withmy division. I wanted to put them clear out of action, andwe were trying to pursue them as much as possible. It wasapproved by Westy, and it was approved by our ambassa-dor, who was Lodge at the time. But then we got wordback from the United States: “disapproved.” It was rightthen that I said that there was no way we were going to winthis war if we were going to let this guy have a sanctuary.

VALOR

Lt. General Harry Kinnard with ROTC students at the American Veterans Center’sNinth Annual Awards Banquet - November 11, 2006.

Valor - Issue 4

Dr. Lewis Sorley graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in1956. His Army service included leadership of tank and armoredcavalry units in Germany, Vietnam, and the U.S. In Vietnam, hewas the Executive Officer, 1st Battalion, 69th Armor, 25th InfantryDivision. He retired from the Army a lieutenant colonel, and re-ceived his PhD from Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Sorley is the author of severalbooks, including Arms TransfersUnder Nixon, Thunderbolt:General Creighton Abrams andthe Army of his Times, and theacclaimed, A Better War: TheUnexamined Victories and Fi-nal Tragedy of America’s LastYears in Vietnam—a work whichwas nominated for the PulitzerPrize. One of the most esteemed his-torians of the Vietnam War, Dr.Sorley addressed the Ninth AnnualConference on November 10, 2006.The following is a transcript of thatpresentation.

I am very pleased to be here and to, in a very short time, saya few words about the war in Vietnam. The Vietnam Warwas one of the longest and most complex wars our countryhas ever taken part in, so you will understand that what Iam going to say is highly selective, but I hope will open upsome aspects of the war that you may want to talk about. Iwould like to say something about the nature of the war,about the conduct of the war, about the outcome of thewar, and about the people who fought the war.

First of all, one of the controversies you have heard overthe years has to do with the nature of the war, with somecommentators arguing that it was essentially a guerrilla war,and others disagreeing, saying that it was a conventionalwar. I think that, in many ways, this is a false dilemma.Because the fact is that, in some times and in some places,it was one, and in other places and other times, it was theother. Sometimes, in the same place, and in the same time,it was both. You talk to people who served in Vietnam, you

get a wide range of views as to the nature of the fightingthey were engaged in, and the enemy they were engaged infighting, and that will be because some were engaged infighting in one province, some up in the north near the de-militarized zone, where the nature of the war was, let ussay, more conventional, and others who might have found

themselves in the MekongDelta, where for most of thetime the war was more of aguerrilla-type war. Then, somewho served in the early periodwill have one experience, whilesome who came later will havehad a different experience—maybe in the very same prov-ince or provinces. And so, whatyou have really is a patchworkof experiences, all of which area part of the whole. But if youtry to reason from an individualexperience at one time and inone place, you will only get onepiece of that whole.

The conduct of the war is probably the most interestingaspect of it. It’s interesting to think of the war in terms ofsegments. I have used for analytical purposes four segments(involving the U.S. experience in the war) starting with 1960.You can pick different starting points, but for those of uswho served in Vietnam, we each received a medal from thegovernment of the Republic of Vietnam—the South Viet-namese—and on the ribbon of that medal, there is a littlemetal scroll. It has the opening date—1960—then a littledash, and then it is blank after that. I presume the intentionwas, at some point, to fill in the last date, but unfortunatelyby the time that date came, there was no longer a SouthVietnam, for reasons which you know and on which I willcomment in a bit. I took the date 1960, the date that theychose, as a reasonable starting point for the American in-volvement, even though we had people there in variousroles before that. I think it’s useful to look at the period of1960-1965 as the period of primarily advisory effort ofAmericans in Vietnam, although we did do other things

Valor - Issue 4

Reflections on the Vietnam WarDr. Lewis Sorley

ARVN soldiers gather outside of a transport in 1971. SouthVietnamese forces grew increasingly effective as the war progressed,and with American materiel and air support, repulsed two major

NVA offensives.Bettmann/CORBIS

Valor - Issue 4

during that period, to include helping the South Vietnam-ese improve communications, and with intelligence and lo-gistics. By the way, the advisory effort that we made duringthat period was a very difficult one for the American armedforces, particularly for the U.S. Army, because the peoplewho were sent there as advisors, primarily senior non-com-missioned officers and junior officers, were drawn from theexisting units. We had no separate corps to fill that role, sowe pulled those people out of their units, which meant thatless experienced people had to step in to fill those jobs, andothers would fill in behind them. This extended advisoryperiod in Vietnam took something of a toll on our existingunits. So let us state that the advisory period went from1960 to 1965. I pick that date1965 because at that pointPresident Lyndon Johnsondecided to commit groundforces to Vietnam, a majorchange in the nature of ourinvolvement, and in the na-ture of the conduct of thewar.

In the spring of 1965, someMarine units went in and, inJuly of ’65, major Americanground forces were sent in toVietnam. The next periodcould be called the “buildupof the American involvement in Vietnam.” This is combatinvolvement on the ground, side by side with the SouthVietnamese and, as time went on, with certain forces fromother nations as well, primarily those from the Republic ofKorea. This buildup continued from the summer of ’65through when it was capped early in 1969. It eventuallyresulted in our fielding 543,400 Americans on the groundin Vietnam at the peak—over one-half million people onthe ground helping to fight the war. That was the period ofthe buildup. I end that period at Tet of 1968, because thatevent was a watershed in many ways, including a change incommand on the part of American forces there from Gen-eral Westmoreland, who had commanded from June of 1964until June of 1968, to General Creighton Abrams, who com-manded from 1968 until 1972. So from ’68 through ’73,that is the period of American withdrawal, and handingover more and more responsibility for the conduct of thewar to the South Vietnamese themselves, who of coursehad the sole responsibility before we had become involved,so it was a change back to the earlier situation, except by

that time they had a lot more combat wherewithal, and insome cases a lot more combat experience. We are out ofthere at the end of March 1973, pursuant to the Paris Ac-cords, as they were called, which were a so-called peaceagreement, theoretically ending the war. Of course no suchthing happened, because the North Vietnamese violatedthe accords from the very first day, and meanwhile we with-drew as we had said we would.

So then you have the final period, from 1973 through ’75,when on the 30th of April of that year Saigon fell, whichwas the end of the war for the South Vietnamese, and NorthVietnam, as they had always sought to do, had unified the

country by force under theircommunist domination.

Let me go back and say a littlebit about how those variousperiods were conducted, asthey were quite different. Inthe earlier period, when Gen-eral Westmoreland took com-mand and we began to deploythe large numbers of forceswhich I described, his ap-proach to the war was to con-duct what he called a “war ofattrition,” and to conduct op-erations in pursuit of that

strategy that were characterized primarily as search anddestroy operations. What this meant was the measure ofmerit in this period of the war was body count, as the ob-jective of a war of attrition was to kill as many of the en-emy as possible. The theory was that if you killed enoughof the enemy they would lose heart, cease their aggressionagainst South Vietnam, and therefore our objectives wouldbe accomplished, and our objective from the beginning tothe end was to allow South Vietnam to be able to sustainand maintain itself as an independent non-communist gov-ernment, free of domination from the north. During thisperiod of the war of attrition, as I mentioned, the buildupcontinued, and the use of these forces, larger and largerAmerican forces, was primarily to conduct large-scale multi-battalion and sometimes multi-division operations prima-rily in the heavily jungled areas adjacent to South Vietnam’sextended western border with Laos and Cambodia. And oneof the major problems of this period was finding an elusiveenemy, because we had said that, politically, we had put theconstraint on ourselves that we would not cross those west-

Supported by helicopters, ARVN troops conduct missions in 1972.Bettmann/CORBIS

Valor - Issue 4

ern borders. So if the enemy decided or desired to disen-gage, they had a relatively simple mechanism for doing that,which was simply to move to the west across the borders,where they were off-limits and out of reach of our forcesand those of the South Vietnamese.

During this same period, the South Vietnamese forces wererelegated to somewhat of a secondary mission in supportof what was called pacification, and I am sorry to say givenwhat were rather inferior weap-ons, largely castoff World WarII American weapons. Thosewere great weapons in WorldWar II, but they were not thebest weapons in the world bythe time we are talking aboutnow. Furthermore, if any ofyou ever lugged a BAR, andyou looked at the average Viet-namese person of rather slightstature, and think of them try-ing to lug a BAR through thejungle, that’s not the easiesttask in the world. MeanwhileAmerican forces were gettingthe best first-line weaponry (which included the M-16 rifle)and by the way, so were the enemy forces, which in 1965began to be armed with the best of current ChiCom andSoviet-bloc weaponry, such as the famous AK-47. Unfor-tunately it was not until about three years later that theSouth Vietnamese began to get comparable weaponry. Soif you hear people criticize the South Vietnamese forcesduring these early years, I think it is only fair to bear inmind that they had inferior weaponry, not only to what theAmerican forces had, but inferior to what the enemy forceshad. And by the way, Americans were also hogging most ofwhat we might call combat wherewithal, I am talking aboutclose air support, B-52 bomber raids, intra-theater trooplift, helicopter gunship support, all things which are com-bat multipliers, and which American forces had in abun-dance, but the South Vietnamese very little.

How did this work out during this period? I would have tosay that the approach of General Westmoreland was highlysuccessful in its own terms, which means that large casual-ties were inflicted on the North Vietnamese and the VietCong—horrifying numbers, really—but the intended anddesired and anticipated outcome did not result. They didnot give up their aggression against the south, they simply

sent more and more forces south, and of course many ofthem were slaughtered too, but yet more would come totake their place. Meanwhile it’s only fair to say that twomore important missions did not get the attention that con-duct of the ground war was getting. To wit, the South Viet-namese were not trained, counseled, advised, and improvedas they might have been, both because of the secondarymission and because they did not get the first-line weap-onry that other forces were getting. And another extremely

important mission, which wasconduct of the pacification pro-gram in the villages and thehamlets of South Vietnam, wasneglected. The importance ofthat was that the communistshad in place and had had inplace for a long period of timein these villages and hamlets acovert infrastructure that wasthrough terrorism and coercionkeeping the South Vietnamesepeople, the populace in the ru-ral parts of Vietnam under theirdomination. Until you came inand rooted out this infrastruc-

ture and neutralized it, the people could not be free no matterwhat happened out in the deep jungle.

The Tet Offensive of 1968, which began at the end of Janu-ary and lasted throughout February was a huge event, awatershed event, I think it is fair to say, in the history of thewar. In part because in the months preceding that LyndonJohnson, General Westmoreland, Secretary Rusk, and oth-ers had been saying that the war was proceeding extremelywell. And then, people across the country saw on their tele-vision screens this offensive in which all of a sudden, inmost of the major cities and towns of Vietnam, here cameenemy uprisings that were completely unanticipated, at leastby the people at home. There was an argument as to whetherthey were anticipated by the forces in the field. A series ofcataclysmic and dramatic events followed from that, includ-ing Lyndon Johnson’s announcement that he would not beseeking reelection and his decision to begin a partial bomb-ing halt in North Vietnam.

Soon after that the command changed in Vietnam. GeneralCreighton Abrams replaced William Westmoreland. Inter-estingly enough they were 1936 classmates at West Point,Westmoreland an artilleryman and Abrams a tanker, and a

U.S. Marines fight in the streets of Hue City, the fiercest battle ofthe 1968 Tet Offensive.

Dept. of Defense Photo

Valor - Issue 4

horse cavalryman before that who had been a great hero inWorld War II when he commanded a tank battalion thathad broken through the German encirclement to relievethe 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne. Abrams had a dif-ferent view of the nature of the war, and that view led himto prosecute it in a different way. He saw the war as “onewar,” as he described it, along with his two excellent col-leagues, Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and William Colby,who had come out from the Central Intelligence Agency tobe in charge of support for the pacifi-cation program. They all described it as“one war,” which meant a continuationof the military fighting, as had been thecase previously, but much revised. Inequal measure with fighting, there wasemphasis on pacification and rooting outthe infrastructure, which I described,and upgrading the South Vietnamesearmed forces so they became more ca-pable of undertaking a major responsi-bility for defense of their country.These things were enhanced by now fi-nally giving the South Vietnamese first-line equipment, giving them bettertraining, and especially incorporatinginto the armed forces and giving em-phasis to territorial forces. Territorialforces were what were called RegionalForces and Popular Forces, and they re-mained at the province and districtlevel, which meant that they were basi-cally defending their homeland andfamilies. They were very strongly moti-vated by that, and as they were given upgraded equipmentand training they became a very important part of the SouthVietnamese ability to defend themselves.

The changed tactics were also very important and need tobe mentioned. General Fred Weyand, who was a very closeassociate of Abrams, said, “The tactics changed within 15minutes of Abrams taking command.” The way in whichthey changed was from emphasis on large operations and inthe deep jungle a change to an emphasis on small unit op-erations, and for those operations to be positioned more inbetween the enemy and the people, because Abrams recog-nized that this was a war for the control of people, and ifyou positioned yourself so that the enemy had to come toand through you to get to the people, first of all, if they

came, the problem of finding them, which had plagued usin the earlier years was much less, and secondly, if theyengaged you, you had the opportunity to deal with them. Ifthey couldn’t get through, then the people in the villageand the hamlet, if you got the infrastructure out, would beincreasingly free. That was the nature of the war in thatsecond period. And, by the way, things went extremely well,so much so that I was emboldened in A Better War to saythat the war was won. The fighting hadn’t ended, but the

war was won and the reason it was wonwas because the South Vietnamese hadachieved the ability to maintain their in-dependence and freedom so long as wekept the commitments that we hadmade to them.

We come up to January of 1973, theParis Accords the supposed peace treatythat had been agreed to in Paris, thenpursuant to that agreement, we beganto withdraw our forces. They were allout by the end of March of 1973. Be-fore that, in the spring of 1972, the en-emy had mounted a major conventionalinvasion of the south, across the so-called demilitarized zone in the north,and through two places in the westernborders I had mentioned before, and avery fierce battle had ensued that lastedseveral months, but the South Vietnam-ese prevailed. Our ground forces weremostly gone by that time and did notplay any part in the battle, although our

air and naval forces did. With support from them, the SouthVietnamese were able to prevail and throw back that inva-sion of a force totaling the equivalent of about 20 divi-sions. It was a very serious battle.

Some people criticized the South Vietnamese, saying theycould not have prevailed except for American air support.That is a rather strange criticism, because we had at thattime hundreds of thousands of troops in Europe to helpthe European allies in the very same manner, should theyneed it, and we had about 50,000 troops in Korea to helpthe South Koreans in the very same manner, should theyneed it, and nobody was criticizing them for not being ableto defend themselves without American help. But in Viet-nam, I think that criticism was unfairly leveled. By the way,

In his four years as U.S. commander inVietnam, General Creighton Abrams proved

to be remarkably effective in achieving themilitary’s goals of securing the population andbuilding the South Vietnamese infrastructurewhile training and equipping the Vietnamese

military to stand on its own.U.S. Army

Valor - Issue 4

last brief message, “Ultimate outcome hardly in doubt, be-cause South Vietnam cannot survive without U.S. militaryaid as long as North Vietnam’s war-making capacity is un-impaired and supported by Soviet Union and China.” Sothat is basically the end of that story.

I have only a little time left, but I want to say a little some-thing about two groups of people who fought in the war.First, I want to talk about the American veterans of thewar in Vietnam. We have been hearing for a number ofyears now about the Greatest Generation as christened byTom Brokaw, those who fought in World War II. That was awonderful generation, and I am extremely proud of them,

and what I have to say in noway denigrates that genera-tion. My father was a part ofthat generation. My unclewas a part of that generation.But if I last long enough, Iam going to try to write an-other book, the title of whichmight be Also Great, and thesubtitle would read The Gen-eration That Fought the VietnamWar, because I think they area marvelous generationwhich has not gotten thecredit they deserve. For ex-ample, very few peopleknow, as B.G. Burkett pointsout in his wonderful book,

Stolen Valor, two-thirds of Vietnam veterans volunteeredfor their service. He said, compare that to the 33% of WorldWar II veterans; in other words, the percentages are just theopposite. I doubt that many people know that.

Not too long after the Vietnam War was over, the VeteransAdministration got the Harris polling company to poll thosewho had served in Vietnam to ask them a number of ques-tions, and the results were very interesting. Ninety-one per-cent told the pollsters they were glad they had served. Sev-enty-four percent said they had enjoyed their time in ser-vice. And most impressive of all, two out of three said theywould serve again, even knowing the outcome of the war.Those are great people and we have every reason to be proudof them and grateful to them. And as I am sure you haveheard, the only thing that was missing was when they re-turned from their service very few people said, “Thank you

General Abrams rose to the occasion, saying, “I doubt thatthe fabric of this thing could have been held together with-out American air power, but, if the South Vietnamese hadnot stood and fought as they did, ten times the air powerwould not have allowed us to prevail.”

In January, 1972, rather late in our involvement, just beforethe Easter Offensive, one of the famous people of the warwas a man named John Paul Vann, who was an Army of-ficer early in the war, and went back and rose to a verysenior position in the pacification program and was veryhighly regarded, especially by Gen. Abrams. Vann said inJanuary of ‘72, “We are now at the lowest level of fightingthe war has ever seen. Todaythere is an air of prosperitythroughout the rural areas ofVietnam, and it cannot bedenied. Today the roads areopen and the bridges are up,and you run much greaterrisk traveling any road inVietnam today from the scur-rying, bustling, hustlingHondas and Lambrettas thanyou do from the VC.”

The end of the war in Viet-nam is a very sad case, and itis in part because—and thereis no other way to describeit—we wound up abandon-ing the South Vietnamese. I told you about the crucial con-ditionals. We had promised the South Vietnamese that ifthere was renewed fighting, if the North Vietnamese vio-lated the Paris Accords, we would reintroduce combat forcesto punish those violations—air and sea power. Secondly, ifthere were renewed fighting, we would replace—as the ParisAccords permitted—we would replace major combat sys-tem losses on a one for one basis; that means artillery pieces,tanks, and aircraft. And we said we would maintain robustmaterial support for the South Vietnamese for the indefi-nite future. In a meeting at the Western White House, Presi-dent Thieu of South Vietnam and President Nixon had men-tioned the figure of about $1 billion. When it came to crunchtime, I am sorry to say, we defaulted on all three commit-ments. Meanwhile the North Vietnamese are getting muchincreased support from their patrons, the Soviet Union andChina. As Tom Polgar, the last CIA station chief, said in his

Atop their M-48 tank, ARVN soldiers display the “V for victory” sign.The photo was taken in early 1973, shortly after the South Vietnamese

repulsed the NVA’s “Easter Offensive.”Bettmann/CORBIS

Valor - Issue 4

for your service, and welcome home,” which every veteran,of course, wants to hear.

The last thing I want to say to you is about the Vietnamesewho fought that war. They were very heroic people whofought for a long period of time under a number of severehandicaps which I described earlier but, when they got thewherewithal to do the job, did it very well until we essen-tially pulled the plug on them monetarily and logistically,and they no longer had the wherewithal to go ahead. Manyof them - no one knows exactlyhow many, fled their country toavoid living under communistdomination. You have heard themdescribed as the “boat people.”Many of them perished in theSouth China Sea trying to escape;storms overturned their boats, pi-rates attacked and robbed them,but many of them made it to theUnited States to refugee camps andwere sponsored by church groupsand in some cases by their formeradvisors who were compassionatetoward them. There are now about one million former Viet-namese in this country, spread out over a number of placesaround the country.

I would like to end with two vignettes. There is a place verynear where we are now, in Northern Virginia, that is calledthe Eden Center. It is about a city block, and hollow in themiddle. Around the outside of it, there are all Vietnameseestablishments—jewelry stores, a grocery store, restaurantsof all kinds, a music store, a bookstore. In the hollow middle,besides parking, there are two tall flagpoles, one of whichflies the American flag, and right next to it is the flag ofSouth Vietnam, still flying proudly.

I was there a few years ago on the 30th of April—the dateof the fall of Saigon, and a date that is commemorated, butnot celebrated, by many Americans and their Vietnamesefriends. I met a person there who had been a captain withthe Regional Forces at a place called Dak Sut. He was withhis wife, who had also been a captain. Their daughter hadgraduated from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at KingsPoint, and she was now an Air Force captain. She was get-ting her PhD at a college in Tennessee, after which she wasgoing to teach at the Air Force Academy. They were veryproud of her, and I was very proud of them.

My closest Vietnamese friend is a man by the name of HaMai Viet. Viet and I were captains in the armor officer ad-vance course in 1961-62. He rose to be a colonel, and wasthe G-3 to General Truong, considered by most Americans,including General Abrams, to be the best fighting generalthe Vietnamese fielded during the war, and Viet was a won-derfully fine staff officer for him, having commanded him-self and being a province chief in Quang Tri, one of thetoughest provinces to deal with. I lost track of him whenthe collapse came, but a few years ago I found him in Hous-

ton. He and his wife had foundtheir way to America. He had got-ten a menial job, and she got work,too. Eventually he was trained asa draftsman and worked in the oilindustry and did very well. Vietand his wife worked at two jobs,and sometimes three jobs—a day,night, and weekend job—to puttheir five kids through Texas A&Mand Sam Houston State college,which is near where they live inHouston. All five kids are nowprofessionals. The mother, a very

strong woman, had a conference at one point when all fivekids were still at home. She said to them, “Any of you whowant to go to college, we’ll find a way to put you throughcollege. Any of you who do not want to go to college, I willgive you $1,500 to get yourself started, and you can leavenow. Who wants to go to college?” And all five hands wentright up. They all did extremely well, though they had alittle problem when the youngest daughter, Qui, wanted toget married. She married a Chinese man from Malaysia, andthey were worried that if she got married, she wouldn’t fin-ish college—she had a year to go still. So Viet said to her,“If you will let me do this in the ancient way, between meand her father, I will agree to it.” She went along with it,and Viet wrote to the father, who as he knew, was in aninternment camp somewhere in Southeast Asia. The letterhad to go through a cutout in Paris before going to the in-ternment camp, then through the same route on the wayback. That took about six months each way, and by thetime the response had come back, Qui had graduated, theygot married, and everybody was happy.

I would like to close by saying, I am very proud of our Viet-nam veterans. I am very proud of our Vietnamese colleagues,though I wish we had done better by them in the end. AndI am grateful for the opportunity to speak with you today.

VALOR

Dr. Lewis Sorley speaks at the conference astelevised live on C-Span.

Valor - Issue 4

On November 10, the Ninth Annual Conference featured a panelon the POW experience in Vietnam. The panel, which was televisedlive and on replay on C-Span, featured Maj. General EdwardMechenbier, Captain Jack Fellowes, Lt. Colonel Marion AnthonyMarshall, and Colonel George “Bud” Day—recipient of the Medalof Honor his heroism while a prisoner of war. The panel wasmoderated by Taylor Kiland, co-author of the book, Open Doors:Vietnam POWs, Thirty YearsLater and cur rently V.P. ofCommunications at the U.S. NavyMemorial. In this issue of Valor, weprint an excerpt from this panel ofdistinguished veterans of Vietnam.

Taylor KilandGood Morning, my name is Tay-lor Kiland. I am the co-authorof a museum exhibit and bookcalled Open Doors: VietnamPOWs, Thirty Years Later, whichtakes a close look at the current lives of thirty former Viet-nam POWs, including the four with us today, in words andpictures. There have been many articles and documentarieswritten about the POW experience—especially the Viet-nam POW experience—and that’s because this is a uniquegroup of men, and their families are just as unique. Theywere the longest held group of POWs in our nation’s his-tory. Many of them were held for years—one, three, andsome of them even nine years. Their families did not knowof their fate for years. Not days, not months, but years. Thesewere the days before CNN, before the Internet, and beforecell phones. Back then, communication took a lot longer.So many of these families did not know the fate of theirloved ones for a very long time.

This is also a unique group because our country was notunanimously appreciative of the service and sacrifices ofthese men. As Dr. Lewis Sorley said, there is this lingeringnegative stereotype of the Vietnam veteran as the down-trodden, alcoholic, jobless, unemployed veteran. And whileour objective in this book and exhibit was to celebrate thesemen specifically, if we are able to defy that lingering ste-reotype that is all-the better.

We are lucky to have Colonel Day’s wife, Doris Day, withus today. And we also have Colonel Marshall’s sister, Sue

Marshall, here. These are two family members who waitedvery patiently for years. Many of the families of the POWsfelt alone and quite helpless when they were waiting forthem to come home. They felt cut off from the news fromtheir husbands, sons, and brothers, and they were isolatedfrom each other. So what was it like when these men re-

turned home, when most of thecountry wanted to forget aboutVietnam? I call it the “Rip VanWinkle effect.” Many of thesemen left in the early to mid-1960s. As most of you know, be-fore 1965 much of our countrystill resembled the way thingswere in the 1950s. The men re-turned home in 1973. Thinkabout the cataclysmic political,social, and cultural changes thatoccurred while they were gone.So what was it like for these mento go back to work or to read a

newspaper? Many of them are pilots; what was it like forthem to get back in the cockpit? One of the POWs told methat when he left for Vietnam, his wife had on long skirtsand his son had short hair. When he came home, his wifehad on a short skirt and his son had long hair. He was eagerto reestablish himself as head of the household so hegrabbed his son by the ear got him down to the barber andgot his hair cut. He said that in retrospect it was the mostdamaging thing he had done to their relationship and it tookyears to repair. So how did these men adjust when theycame home and what can these men teach us about how toovercome adversity and take advantage of the secondchances that freedom offers you?

These men took the lessons gleaned from captivity and fromwar, and incorporated them into their lives, but focused onthe positive things. And that is the goal of the museumexhibit and the book I co-authored with my friend, photog-rapher Jamie Howren. But these men also have many les-sons for us, and also for many of the soldiers and sailorsnow returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Some werewounded physically and some were wounded in spirit.

I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing thirty of these gentle-men of the little more than 700 who came home in ‘73. Wehave with us today Colonel George “Bud” Day, who spent

Vietnam: The POW Experience

Operation Homecoming culminates with the release ofhundreds of jubilant American prisoners of war.

Valor - Issue 4

a long career in the military, retired and is now quite activeas a lawyer, and his wife Doris helps him out at his lawpractice. We have Captain Jack Fellowes, who is a retiredNavy captain and taught at the Naval Academy upon hisreturn from Vietnam and is now a tireless volunteer at An-napolis. We also have with us Colonel Tony Marshall. Hereturned from Vietnam, finished out his military career andis now a captain with United Airlines. And then we haveMajor General Ed Mechenbier, who actually was one ofthe last Vietnam POWs to retire from the military, finallyretiring two years ago. He now works for SCIC, a defensecontractor, and also does a lot of motivational speaking.So I am going to ask a series of questions to each of thesemen. Each one is directed atone of the panelists and I’mhoping when he answers thequestion he will also tell you alittle bit about himself in theprocess.

The first question I’m going toask is to Colonel Day. Can youtell us what lessons youbrought home from your expe-rience that you shared and usedwith your family and personallife, as well as professionally?

Colonel George “Bud” DayI have been waiting a long time for this opportunity. Themajor lesson I brought home from Vietnam was that withgreat adversity comes great opportunity. I certainly did notlike my POW experience. But I learned a great deal from it,about my enemy both foreign and domestic. I want to thankDr. Sorley for his marvelous analysis of how that war went.His book is absolutely splendid, and no one should leavehere without buying Dr. Sorley’s book, A Better War. And Isay this because it fills in the absolute vacuum that all of ussitting here have. We did not know, after reading the earlierbooks that are out there exactly what happened during thewar. And Dr. Sorley fills that gap in and explains to you justhow things went under General Westmoreland then over toGeneral Abrams and to the disaster that followed.

What I brought home from there was realizing the need tostand up to the plate when the opportunity is there. So whatI took away from there was, first of all the very marvelouswork that those hundred and sixty POWs who precededme in jail, the marvelous things they had done, how theygot the system organized. The resistance effort that was

going on, the great caring for each other, the maintainingof the standards you were supposed to maintain. It wasjust marvelous to see that because of the brutality of ourcaptors—a lot of times a lot of things happened that youjust had no control over. Things did not go exactly the waythat you wanted to, but over that long period, things cameout well—the POWs that came out of there could holdtheir heads up and for that I’m grateful. And I also want topublicly thank Jack Fellowes here who picked me up andcared for me after 101 days of torture and kept me alive.

Taylor KilandI think it’s interesting that George Day mentioned stepping

up to the plate. Many of youmay not know that in his workas a lawyer, he actually repre-sented a group of veterans andfiled a class action lawsuitagainst the government thatwent all the way to the SupremeCourt. So he saw a need and hedid step up to the plate and wasan absolute tireless fighter inthis lawsuit for almost six years.He is still active, works aboutsix days a week, and he and hiswife have four children and 12grandchildren and a grandson

who just returned from a second tour in Iraq.

The next question I ask I would like to direct to TonyMarshall. A lot of people, when I tell them I did some workwith POWs, say that it must have been very depressing.But I say it’s actually quite inspirational. They ask me, “Wellhow many of them are homeless?” And I say, “Zero.” Butthere is a lingering question about how the POW experi-ence affected you physically and emotionally over the longterm, if at all. Some of you may know that the POWs par-ticipate in medical studies. There is a center down inPensacola that sponsors a yearly physical for these men andtheir families or the spouses and families if they are inter-ested so they can track their emotional and physical wellbeing over a long period of time. The results have beencompared to a group of Naval aviators of about the sameage who were not POWs. There are some interesting com-parisons about how they have fared physically and emo-tionally. The divorce rate is about the same, and the POWsseem to be suffering more from their injuries—broken bonesand muscle problems from their ejections and treatment bytheir captors—than from heart disease. So Tony, can you

Families of servicemen welcome home the POWs as they return toClark Air Force Base just after their release.

Valor - Issue 4

tell us how the POW experience emotionally and physi-cally changed you? And how did your recovery compare toprevailing stereotypes that exist out there about Vietnamveterans and his/her readjustment after the war.

Lt. Colonel Marion Anthony MarshallI would like to see if Ed would like to answer that one. Iwas going to defer to Ed because he had a much longerexperience than I did. My experience there was fairly simple.I got there in the late summer of 1972. Things had changedquite a bit by the time I gotshot down. I could see mostof the changes going on in thecountry. I had a fairly goodview of what was going onwith the dissatisfaction athome, a chance to adjust towhat was going on. So mytransition in the short periodwas fairly simple. Again be-cause the folks who had gonebefore me had endured all thetorture and harsh treatment,I had a fairly easy time of itthere. So the adjustment wasnot as great for me. As Budsaid, I learned some profoundthings about both sides as far as what’s good, what’s bad,and I think the biggest thing I came out of there with isrealizing that there is nothing critical in life anymore—moveon, take things one day at a time.

Maj. General Edward MechenbierThere are among our group those who came down laterwho were a little shy to associate with us because they fig-ured they were just the new guy, that they weren’t therevery long. But in reality, five minutes makes you an old pro.I guarantee you that every one of us who were there for six,seven, eight years has nothing but the greatest fidelity forthe guys who arrived later.

On the physical side, I think I’m pretty typical. I lost 66 lbs.in jail. The good news is that I didn’t put it all back on. Theother side of that is that back in those days the ejectionseats were like a 21-G cannon shell ride. I used to be a littleover an inch taller than I am now. It was just a compressionfracture. Again, on the physical side we euphemistically re-ferred to it as “abuse.” But the Vietnamese did use physicalmeans to extract what they thought was the desired out-come. So a lot of things like shoulder dislocations are pretty

common with us now as well as hip problems from sleepingon a concrete bunk for six years. So a lot of our damage isjust now coming to light with long-term structural damage.

Emotionally—well you have to understand that I don’t thinkany of us volunteered to be a POW. And so you look at usnow and people say, “Gee I could never do that. How didyou do it?” Well the fact of the matter is, we were not spe-cially trained to go become prisoners of war in North Viet-nam. We were merely products of a society in uniform that

everyone in uniform got. Any-body would have performedexactly the same way—somegood, some bad. But we keptfaith. And so I think it’s im-portant to understand wewere nothing special. Noteven really different from any-body else at the time in thefact that we had, as JeremiahDenton said, the opportunityto serve under a most unusualcircumstance.

The return. Dr. Sorley talkedabout the return of the Viet-nam veterans. When we came

home we were heroes—again not because we were differ-ent, but because the perspective of the nation had for onereason or another had finally changed. And so if there isanything that we as individuals and as a group feel today itis the slogan that is spelled out at the bottom of the MIA/POW flag: “You are Not Forgotten.” We were the luckyones who were afforded the privilege by God to come home;to have that opportunity to be welcomed home. And at thesame time we have spent a lot of time at VA centers withveterans groups, saying “Hey folks, this isn’t about BudDay, Jack Fellowes, or anybody else. It’s about you—it’sabout us.” And so like Dr. Sorley said, if we have a missionnow, it’s to remember those who were not privileged to comehome and at the same time to deflect some of the attentionwe get to all those who very honorably served in Vietnam.

Taylor KilandI would also like to say that I don’t feel like these men andtheir unique experiences they have learned have been usedenough by today’s military. They go out and talk about howthey survived the experience, but there is not enough em-phasis as to how they readjusted to life afterwards. Todayyou know there are many veterans who are coming home

After years in captivity, former POW George “Bud” Day is finallyreunited with his wife, Doris.

Valor - Issue 4

who are diving right back into the civilian life and we knowthat the military is an increasingly isolated part of our soci-ety, and a smaller and smaller part of our society. So theyare being brought back into civilian life with peers who haveabsolutely no idea what they went through and I think thesemen can really serve as an inspiration and instruction, assomeone who has gone before.

Let me ask one more question. I want to direct this ques-tion to Captain Fellowes, because there were incrediblechanges that occurred in our country during the time thatthese men were gone. I call it the “Rip Van Winkle effect.”They may have another term for it. But how did you reactto the changes that occurred both in the military and ourculture while you were gone, and how did these changesaffect you and how did you react and adjust to it?

Captain Jack FellowesThere is an expression that says “It’s not who you know, it’swhat you know.” But in my case, it was who I knew. I knewthese guys—I knew 680-plus prisoners who had the samegoal, which was to support and care for each other. So Icame out with this sense of togetherness as a group.

I moved in with Bud Day on one strange day—he was alegend because of what he’d been through—and I walkedin there and I said, “What the hell am I doing here?” Atwhich time Bud told me that he was married to Doris Day,and I looked at him and said, “You can’t even give me astraight answer on the first day!” Well I found out he wasmarried to Doris Day, but his Doris Day was far more beau-tiful than even the other one, and she’s the real Doris Day.

What I developed out of this whole thing is a sense of hu-mor. And I can tell you we’ve lost it. And we are not goinganywhere in this society until we get it back. For example,we just went through the most horrific, mind-boggling elec-tion I can ever imagine. I can’t imagine calling EdMechenbier a liar, a cheat and a thief, and then the next daywe shake hands and work together. That’s not the way itoperates. What this country should do is listen to theseguys—these guys know how to get along. These guys knowhow to survive. And the most basic instinct of all, I think,is survival. I just think this group knows more collectivelythan this entire country because they know how to survive,they know how to take care of each other. They know howto support each other. Never one day did I go through thatimprisonment that I didn’t feel Bud Day’s strong arm onme or Ed Mechenbier over there helping me.

So my point is get with people who want to survive, whoare positive, who have a sense of humor. By the way, thenext story Bud Day told me was that he was coming into alanding in England at 200 feet and his engine froze up andhe had to bail out. He said, “Yeah, the chute didn’t open,either.” I’m thinking, “Well now, come on Bud!” But that’strue. He landed in a tree. So I found out that everythingthat Bud Day told me was true. That helps too.

Taylor KilandThe next question I am going to ask is to GeneralMechenbier, hoping he won’t get too political, but I amwondering how you personally feel about the controversysurrounding the treatment of the detainees at GuantanamoBay. For that matter, what do you feel about the compari-sons between the war in Iraq and the Vietnam War?

Maj. General Edward MechenbierTony, I thought we had this discussion last night! Tony andI had dinner last night, and we decided this really is some-thing that a military officer doesn’t have the privilege ofhaving an opinion to express. Not that we are apoliticalwhen we put the uniform on, but I don’t care if it’s a Demo-crat or Republican or Libertarian or whatever, we still sa-lute and march forward. We execute the policy of thoselawfully appointed over us.

Now having said that, with a look at this question, I thinkthat the only thing that can really properly be said was ex-pressed by Captain Fellowes. The men and women who areout there fighting the war now, whether it’s at GuantanamoBay, whether its Iraq, Afghanistan, on a ship off the coastof those “-stans” that we never knew existed until a fewyears ago, or flying over our nation’s capital deserve noth-ing but our greatest respect and support. And having beenpart of the Guantanamo detainee movement—I was as-signed the privilege of still flying airplanes in the Air Forceat age 62 when I retired a couple years ago—the unit towhich I was assigned for flying as an attached pilot movedall the guys from the Middle East to Guantanamo Bay. Ican tell you right now that for every person who was in theback of that airplane with handcuffs and hoods on theirheads, there were two Americans whose mission it was tomake sure that if anything went wrong, they got off theairplane—they, being the detainees. So the legal status ofthe fellows down in Guantanamo are not mine, as a mili-tary officer, to question. But I can tell you honestly they arebeing very well treated. It’s like all the things you see in thepress about how bad things are going—you know in mostof Iraq, outside 25 miles of Baghdad, it is fairly safe. All

Valor - Issue 4

you have to do is talk to the young men and women whohave been there. And as far as comparisons between thewar in Iraq and Vietnam, the military is an instrument offoreign policy, the political will of this nation. So if I haveany opinion it would be for all Americans to lay aside yourpolitical opinions of the war, and support the men andwomen who voluntarily joined. Ok, Dr. Marshall, your turn.

Lt. Colonel Marion Anthony MarshallAs Ed said, probably the most demoralizing thing in themiddle of a war is the lack of support from back home. Ifyou look at the situation with Guantanamo, when you’vegot someone in the captive situation, the sliding scale goesfrom good accommodations, toabuse, to torture, to execution.What you hear in the papersmostly is railing against someoneputting underwear on someone’shead or some other area that Iwouldn’t determine as abuse. Youhear very little about folks whoare beheading civilians. In my per-sonal opinion, again, they are de-tainees; they are innocent untilproven guilty, but I hold absolutelyno comfort for terrorists once theyare determined to be terroristswho are not sponsored by any rec-ognized state, or if they are kill-ing civilians.

Captain Jack FellowesWhen I got home my kids had grown somehow. I don’t knowhow they do that. But they were 2, 4, 6 and 8 when I leftand 9, 11, 13 and 15 when I came home. And I had a littlerunt of a son who wore one of those Eddie Bauer baseballcaps so I could never see his eyes. So we sat down in theroom and the first thing my daughter did was to bring out arecord of the new music—which terrorized me. Everybodysat around the table talking, but Tom didn’t say anything. Isaid to my wife, Pat, “What’s the matter?” She said, “Wellyou are not home very long, give him some time.” So afterthey all walked out, he then came around and lifted up hishat and said, “Dad, you’re the greatest.” And I was home.

Colonel George “Bud” DayWhen Jack’s kid said he was the greatest, he was right.

Maj. General Edward MechenbierYou know one thing you might find interesting, I have two

kids in the Air Force, one an airman first class, he’s going tobe deployed in the springtime. I’ve got a daughter who is atech sergeant in the Air Force. Jack’s got kids and relativesgoing, Bud has people going, Tony Marshall has a 26 year-old-daughter who he couldn’t be more proud of. It’s whatthe next generation did after our experiences. We must havedone something right.

Colonel George “Bud” DayI would like to focus on another kind of issue. We’re at apoint where there is an enormous parallel right now withthe government having essentially turned over to 1968 whenLyndon Johnson stopped the bombing and all of a sudden

our policy just got reversed inmany respects. After I got releasedfrom POW Camp I went with JohnMcCain and Floyd Thompson—the longest held prisoner—and aMarine who’s name I unfortu-nately can’t remember, over toVietnam to kind of sort out whatwas going on from our perspec-tive, and amazingly we found outthat Congress had just choppedall of the funding off for the Viet-namese. They were down to fir-ing just a very minimal amount ofammunition, and General Vientold me that they were only flying

something like 25 percent of their sorties because they hadno fuel. And suddenly our allies who we fought with, bledwith, were suddenly almost defenseless. So pull that up onyour radar screen and think what might happen in Iraq. Ithink every one of you ought to be in contact with yourCongressman and tell him not to pull the plug on Iraq. Be-cause if that money isn’t there, we are going to have an-other Vietnam on our hands after all the marvelous workthat these young kids have been doing. We listened to fourof them yesterday, and they make my heart beat a mile aminute because they are exactly as Dr. Sorley described them.They are the heirs to our generation and their war is abso-lutely as good as the Vietnam War or the Korean War, orWorld War II. We cannot shirk our responsibility to makecertain that these kids get the appropriate funding and thatwe have the country behind them all of the time, all theway and in every way.

QuestionIf you knew you were going to be POWs beforehand wouldyou still have served?

Senator John McCain returns to the infamous “HanoiHilton” - the site where he and his fellow POWs were

tortured and beaten - 25 years following the fall of Saigon.Reuters/CORBIS

Valor - Issue 4

Lt. Colonel Marion Anthony MarshallAs was alluded to earlier, we all volunteered to go. One ofthe things I like to remind people, I had to fight to get intoflying. I had to fight to get into fighters. I had to beg to go tocombat. And knowing what the possibilities are, I wouldnot shirk from that. So if I had itto do all over again, knowing whatI do now, I would do it exactly thesame.

Captain Jack FellowesYou’re damn right I would do itagain.

Maj.Gen. Edward MechenbierI think any one of us would be ly-ing if we said we weren’t anxiousabout going. But when you look atall the good things that came outof it, for us personally, the thingswe don’t take for granted. The bond between us—you can’tbuy that. You can’t teach that. You can’t share that in anyother way than just to live it. So if you don’t look at theglass being half-empty, giving six years of your life, and youlook at what happened as a result of it, you will be alright.We are all much richer for it. Look at the Doolittle Raidershere. They volunteered to go do something with a greaterunderstanding of the fear that theymight not come back than we everdid. We were fighter pilots, nothingwas going to hurt us. But those guyswent into it, knowing they were walk-ing on a short plank and they did itanyhow. And the way these gentle-men conducted themselves this morn-ing in their own panel, the camara-derie, they shared as if it had beenone of their reunions. Sometimes youhave to take a step backward to go1,000 steps forward.

QuestionHow has your philosophical approach to life changed sinceyou were a POW?

Captain Jack FellowesI love life. I get up in the morning and I’m alive! I do haveto check if I ache, because at my age, you ache—and if Idon’t ache, I check the obituary column to see if I am in it.But do you realize what we can do as American citizens? I

can get up and go any place I want, do anything I want, aslong as it’s within the law. What a magnificent deal! I justhope they let me live. They just put in a defibrillator in.The doctor said, “I want to take it out at 96.” I said, “Why96?” He said, “The heart doesn’t want to restart when you

are 96.” I said, “Leave it in!”

Maj.Gen. Edward MechenbierYou walk into a room and you takethings for granted—the lightswitch is right there, the hot wateris on the left, cold water on theright, and if you want to get a realshock go someplace where they arebackwards. But I think that’s theone thing we learned—to not takeall that we have for granted. All thefreedoms and all the privileges andthe quality of life that we do have,as Jack and Bud and Marshall said.

A lot of the things we learned, a lot of the philosophicalchanges that we learned you really can’t describe. But againthere are things everybody learns by being tried and tested,and that do change your values—they do change your out-look, they do change your perspective.

When I got out of my airplane, it takes two seconds fromwhen you eject from an F-4 until theparachute deploys. My airplane hit theground at over 600 miles per hour. Iwas within two seconds of dying.How can you not be grateful to Godfor getting an extra 30 years on life?That isn’t half bad.

QuestionWhat can you tell us about thechanges in race relationships sincethe 1960s?

Lt.Col. Marion Anthony MarshallOne of the things you have to look

at is where your priorities are in life. Probably the best thingout of this experience is you don’t have time to worry aboutthose petty differences. Skin color, religion, whatever.You’ve got a mission to do. You’ve got the camaraderiegoing and your priorities there are to do the best job youcan at the time. And you let the best people do the best jobthey can. Keep faith with the fellows there and your bestwill come out.

VALOR

Maj. General Edward Mechenbier listens as Captain JackFellowes recounts his story during the panel as televised on

C-Span.

Maj. General Edward Mechenbier, Captain JackFellowes, and Lt. Colonel Marion Anthony Marshall

- friends and comrades for over 35 years - reuniteprior to the panel.

The American Veterans Center’s Ninth Annual Conference was held fromNovember 9-11, 2006. Exactly two years earlier, United States soldiersand Marines were locked in a brutal struggle with enemy insurgents for theIraqi city of Fallujah. When the history of Iraqi Freedom is written, thesecond Battle of Fallujah—Operation Phantom Fury—will go down as theiconic battle of the war. Fallujah had become a magnet for Iraqi insurgentsand foreign jihadists, eager to make martyrs of themselves, all while killing asmany Americans as they could.

By the time the battle began on No-vember 7, 2004, the city’s citizens hadall but fled. Remaining were several thou-sand of the most fanatical jihadists inIraq. They were fearless, vicious fight-ers, who had come to die. Many of themwere high on drugs—liquid adrenaline,amphetamines, heroin, and 3-quinuclidinyl benzillate, also known as“Agent Buzz”, a hallucinogenic chemi-cal weapon. This made the enemy fight-ers nearly impervious to pain, and ableto fight on after sustaining wounds thatwould have taken down a normal man.

There were an estimated 39,000 build-ings with 400,000 rooms in Fallujah, and it was the grim task of theAmerican soldiers and Marines to root out the insurgents block by block,house by house, and room by room. They advanced through streets boobytrapped with mines and improvised explosive devices, and faced an enemy aslethal as any our military has ever known.

At the November conference, four distinguished veterans of Operation Phan-tom Fury gathered to share their experiences. We are printing the transcriptof this panel to demonstrate to our readers that the valor and heroism of themen who stormed the beaches at Normandy and Iwo Jima, who survived thebitter cold at the Chosin Reservoir, and who battled in the streets of HueCity lives on in the current generation of United States soldiers, sailors,airmen, and Marines.

Participating in the panel were former Army SSgt. David Bellavia, whosingle-handedly took out a house full of insurgents, for which he was subse-quently nominated for the Medal of Honor and awarded the Silver Star, aswell as former Marine Sgt. Timothy Connors, recipient of the Silver Starand veteran of twelve house fights in Fallujah—believed to be the most of anyAmerican serviceman. Also participating were Sgt. Matthew Ragan, a MarineBattalion Senior Intelligence Analyst and Sgt. Jeremy LaForce, veteran of1st Battalion 8th Marines in Fallujah and currently NCO in charge of the

Grounds Element at Marine Barracks in Washington, DC. The panel wasmoderated by American Veterans Center President James C. Roberts.

Jim RobertsSgt. Connors, can you begin by describing the preparations youmade for the battle itself?

Timothy ConnorsWhen we started I was stationedat Al-Asad air base and we werejust doing counter-mortar opsgoing back and forth in the desertand outside cities. We reallyweren’t allowed inside cities atthat time, and were just trying tostop mortar attacks on the basewhen we got the call that we weregoing to go into Fallujah. So ev-eryone I was with was very ex-cited. It’s an honor to fight; it’san honor to be a part of some-thing like this. For all of us to betogether, to be as close as wewere, and be able to do some-thing, and actually know we are

making some kind of difference was huge for us.

We went to Camp Fallujah where we trained every day for abouta week until it was time to go in. The day of the actual invasionof the city we sat outside the city a few miles, and I watched inawe of the power we unloaded—missiles, air strikes, artilleryrounds. The actual power that our country has prior to men go-ing in is unbelievable. We all sat there in complete awe—you needto see it to believe it. The first wave went in and pushed probablyabout a block or two in, and then we ended up pushing pastthem to the Government Center.

David BellaviaI was an Army Infantry squad leader at the time. I think there wasa preconceived notion about the war in Iraq, leading up to it, thatit was going to be a sterile war, with something like GeneralSchwarzkopf with a laser pointer, showing bombs that blow upand you don’t really see the aftermath of it. When you look at afight like Fallujah, you can train all day and all night to enter andclear a room, but training only gets you so far. It’s something youreally can’t prepare for. You can train for the fundamentals overand over again but until you get into that first house fight, I think

Fallujah: Two Years Later

Soldiers of the 1st Cavalry Division prepare to enter a building inFallujah, November 9, 2004. A tactic of the insurgents was to hide insingle rooms and wait for coalition forces to enter before unleashing a

flurry of small arms fire.

Valor - Issue 4

pretty much all that training goes out the window. It becomes asurvival instinct. And one of the things this enemy has constantlytaken for granted is the fight of this generation of Americans. Iwas really honored and privileged to fight with warriors from theMarine Corps and the 2/7 Infantry, in be what will truly be re-garded as my generation’s Normandy. So when you see the abso-lute lethality, the professionalism of the United States military—Air Force, Navy Corpsmen, United States Marines, and Armyinfantry going toward one objective, at one time, it is incredible.For all of the brothers and sisters we lost that entire year, weknew that that the capital of all evil in Iraq was Fallujah. So we allhad a staked interest in taking it out. I echo what Sgt. Connorssaid. It was a privilege to be a part of that offensive.

Jim RobertsWhat were you told to expect beforeyou went into Fallujah and how did itmatch up with what actually happened?

Jeremy LaForceWe were told it was going to be thefight of fights, and to expect the worst.And for the most part that’s what wegot. Some days were slow, and somedays were just what you expected. Formost Marines and soldiers, most ofus joined to get into the fight and helpout. But like David said, we lost a lotof good people. It does tend to be-come more of a fight for survival, itdoesn’t matter how much you train for it. It’s kind of strange tosay but in a sense it becomes your 9 to 5 job, and you’re there tomake sure that the Marine next to you is able to come homesafely. And that’s the big picture for us.

Matthew RaganUnlike my colleagues, who are infantry, I’m an intelligence analyst,so we knew about three weeks before this thing kicked off thatwe were going to be going in. For me the buildup was basicallytrying to get everything prepared, knowing that there are 5,000 to12,000 enemy insurgents in there and trying to make sure that thesquad leaders had everything they needed, including the maps andthe intelligence that they might need. It was my job as a seniorintelligence analyst for the battalion to keep the staff informed ofthe enemy threat, but it was also my job to make sure that thecompanies and platoons had their intelligence analysts so that’swhen we pushed down intelligence analysts to individual compa-nies. Everything they said is absolutely correct, it was a fight forour lives. My battalion lost 33 Marines, with over 75 otherswounded. It was just a horrible fight.

Jim RobertsCan you describe the battle plan for taking the city?

Matthew RaganI was mainly worried about just my battalion but from what Igot, we were going to start from the north. We were going tohave a couple battalions down south of the city, and to try topush the insurgents all north. We knew that the Jolan district whichwas in the northwestern part of the city was the most heavilydefended. It was considered the heart of the insurgency and itprobably had the worst terrorists and insurgents. We knew theforeign fighters were mainly in there. And the foreign fighterswere the ones who were going to stay and die, while the localinsurgents were going to fall back. They were willing to die for

their cause but they were going to fallback and try to survive if possible.We pushed south from the northernpart of the city, and did a right flankto the river and then just continueddown until we cleared the entire city.

Jim RobertsTalk about the insurgents and jihadists.

Timothy ConnorsFrom my experience in the housebattles, you ran into two types. Therewere the ones where as soon as youwent in and they saw you they startedscreaming and yelling, and pretty much

gave up. Then there were the ones where it didn’t matter howmany of us there were, or how few of them, they were theywere going to fight until it was over. During the fight, I didn’tknow much about the drug use, but it would make sense. Therewere a lot of times when you would destroy a room with fragsand they would still keep fighting. You would think to yourselfthat there was no reason why they should still be fighting.

After we pushed to the end of the city and we started clearing thehouses, that’s when we ran into the majority of the insurgents.That’s when we had to go back and clear every single house. LikeI said, there were different types of insurgents, but the one thingthat was common through all of them was when they got there,they were given money, weapons, a bunch of ammo, and weretold to go find a place to wait where they would be contacted.That’s what every single one of them we captured said. Theywere obviously not all contacted, but just left alone by themselves.Mostly if they were in smaller groups they would end up surren-dering. A lot of the people we caught were not Iraqis. We caughtChinese, Saudis, Jordanians, and Chechens—some Chechen snip-ers were very well trained. It was a variety of nationalities.

A satellite photo of the city of Fallujah. U.S. forces,supported by Iraqi Army elements, entered the city from thenorth, pressing block by block, and house by house, to clear

the city of insurgents and hard-core jihadists.

Valor - Issue 4

David BellaviaWe found a house that had some Hezbollah flags in it. We hadsome Palestinian passports. What really blew me away was theimagery provided to us by the intelligence guys—I have neverbeen a part of any operation that was more thoroughly goneover. To give you a quick background, the Fallujah Brigade wasleft in Fallujah from April of 2004 until the start of the battle.This Fallujah Brigade was intended to be an Iraqi civil-defensecorps that turned into Iraqi army, and was made up of localsfrom that region. They were given Texasbarriers—the large 15-ft high blast walls—Jersey barriers, and Hesco baskets. So whenthe Fallujah Brigade proved a failure, theinsurgents were able to take these barriersto fortify themselves in the city. As they gotready for the battle in November we couldactually see on the intelligence imagerywhere they put these barriers. We had theeyes and ears when we went in to knowwhich areas would most likely have IEDs.We knew that there were a tremendousnumber of roadside bombs that were putin the ground.

What I really was not prepared for was theamount of gear these guys were wearing.We were fighting guys with protective bal-listic vests and Kevlar helmets; the Armyhad given their excess battle dress uniformsto the Iraqi army so these guys were essen-tially wearing our uniforms. They were wear-ing our protection. The Marines’ uniformis a little bit different but at the same timewhen you are looking at 300 meters andyou see a guy running with that gear, youalways pause cause you never want to be ina situation where you are shooting yourown.

The other thing was a lot of these guys had the atropine autoinjectors that we use for nuclear, biological and chemical attacks.They were juicing themselves up—a couple insurgents we foundwith heroin needles broken off in their arms. If you’ve got todope yourself up for your cause, then your cause really isn’t allthat worth it. We’re out there doing it on old-fashioned coffeeand Coca-Cola.

Jeremy LaForceTo touch on what he said about the insurgents doping themselvesup, it definitely plays a bit of a trick on your mind if you seesomeone wearing what we thought to be Army uniforms and

the next thing you know they are shooting at you. But it doesn’ttake much for your mind to get set right and get back in thegame. It is pretty strange; at first we couldn’t figure out exactlyhow in the middle of a firefight when one of them would get hit,rather than go down these guys would keep fighting. Later onyou figure out that these guys are on heroin and adrenaline shotsand caffeine pills.

It was crazy to see what these guys were on, and just how badthey wanted to get you. On the 26th of No-vember we had gone into a house, and gotpinned down, shooting at each otherthrough a door. I lost my point man, andhad my whole squad pinned down in aroom. It’s kind of strange when you areshooting 5.56 and putting a dent in the wall,the other is shooting 7.62 and it’s comingthrough. I’m not going to lie, we werescared. But in this sense it kind of makesyou want to prove the fact that it doesn’tmatter what you are shooting at us, we aregoing to come and get you. There wereseven Marines in that house, and we lostthe one, but we ended up taking the housedown and finding out there were 14 insur-gents in there with a huge cache of weap-ons, IEDs, and frags—they pretty muchhad a little armory inside the house. It wassomething to see how far these guys werewilling to go to try to prove their point.

David BellaviaJust to touch on that, they would mark theirhouses with different insignia. They wouldhave a flag on the outside, which wouldmean perhaps this is the house that hadRPGs in it. You’d find houses with IV bagsand medical gauze. They actually had a pretty

good plan of when in doubt, go and instigate on the Marine sidethen run behind the lines and try to pick a fight over here. Itseemed to me in an urban fight like that what this enemy is tryingto do is to get you to make the first inappropriate move. Hewants you to chase him through street corners so he can lead youinto an ambush. It takes a tremendous amount of discipline tomaintain your battle plan even though all these things are jumpingup. A couple times there were squads that would chase a guy andwalk into a platoon-sized element just unloading on them.

On 9 November there was an insurgent who walked down thestreet with a PKC machine gun, Rambo-style with a belt on hisarm. He started shooting it wildly and motioned for us to come

Perhaps the most famous photograph fromOperation Iraqi Freedom, by Lucian Read of

World Picture News. Marine 1st Sergeant BradKasal is carried from a house in Fallujah,

following an intense battle with insurgents.Kasal was shot seven times during the fight,and was hit with nearly 40 pieces of shrapnel

when he used his body to cover a fellow Marinefrom a grenade blast. Though he lost 60 percent

of his blood, Kasal emerged from the housealive. The insurgents did not.

Valor - Issue 4

and get him. There’s no way a sober mind does that. This all sayssomething about accountability of the al-Qaeda leaders out there.Not only do they not care about innocent life, they don’t careabout their own soldiers. They are just throwing them out to theslaughter and that’s what happened in scores in Fallujah.

Matthew RaganI want to add one point regarding the discussion of our uni-forms being compromised. If you really think about it, the GenevaConvention and the rules of war really need to be sat down andthought through, because these people are not abiding by therules of no-strike targets, for instance, or wearing our uniforms.No-strike targets means such things asmosques, hospitals, police stations, andsuch—things that you just shouldn’t tar-get because there will likely be innocentpeople in there. Well we found multipleweapons caches, armories, hospitals,medical facilities, and weapons repair fa-cilities inside mosques. They knew thatwe weren’t going to target those places.We found C-2 nodes, places where theydid their command and control, wherethey gather their intelligence inside hos-pitals and schools because they knewthat we couldn’t target there. It’s just something that we have todeal with—going into a mosque, an already sensitive place, andfinding these things and having to fight inside of it. A point I liketo bring up is that it’s not all fun and games when we go out thereand the media often twists it on us. We don’t want to go intomosques or desecrate anything that’s holy to them and we don’twant to kill any innocents. But sometimes bad things happen.

Jim RobertsCan you tell us about the strategy and tactics of the enemy? Thingslike pre-positioning of weapons caches, and of the tactic of shoot-ing to wound rather than kill in order to draw in rescue forces.

Timothy ConnorsThe hardest thing about fighting in cities is that you not only haveto fight inside, there’s also a threat outside. There is a threat every-where. The worst part is when you are walking down the street,there is always the threat of a sniper, which is often difficult tofind. If you were out in the open, a sniper would take his shot atone of your fellow Marines or soldiers, but not shoot to kill—he’d shoot to wound so he could get more Marines or soldiers tocome out to try and help pull the wounded one away. As theywent out to get him, the sniper would continue shooting. It waskind of like they were baiting us, because they knew we wouldgo get our men, and it didn’t matter how many guys went down,all of us would still go after our fellow soldiers and Marines.

Prior to going in we were trained extensively in techniques toclear the houses. But what I found most helpful for my squadwas using our imaginations. I told them that if they had any ideason how to get in, something that the insurgents wouldn’t think of,to throw the idea out and we would try it. Instead of busting inthe front door that they probably had covered by machine gunfire, I would rather climb up a different house, jump from houseto house, climb down, and attack from the top.

So just like our tactics changed, their tactics changed. The housesin Fallujah are usually set up the same. There is the main housewith a small courtyard outside, surrounded by a wall. First we’d

have to penetrate the wall to get intothe courtyard; so what they’d end updoing is drill holes through the walls andtake machine guns and point them atan area like the front gate, and tie a stringto the trigger. As they heard us come inthey would be in a separate room andstart blasting the machine gun. So wewould be shooting at a machine gunwhich had nobody actually firing it. Weadapted to whatever situation we hadand just moved from there.

David BellaviaThe creativity of the American infantryman is amazing. You lookback to World War II and Normandy, and to get through thosehedgerows it took a young E-5 in the Army to come up with aplow to put on a Sherman tank. Throughout our history we’vealways had NCOs coming up with contingency plans using theircreativity. That’s what will always make us elite, as Americans ingeneral. The officer corps allows the NCO the creativity to comeup with their own plans in battle. We needed that creativity tomeet the challenges the insurgents met us with. There were a fewtimes I was in a house where we had made contact and therewere mirrors that were broken off on all the corners which theseguys used to look around corners into rooms like a periscope tosee where you were coming from. We found a house where theycreated a maze of cinder blocks about eight-feet high. They triedto arrange it so you were forced to walk through it while at thesame time they had it covered by two machine gun positions onthe roof. You would want to break contact out of that maze,obviously, and right there was a 130mm ready to blow.

Fallujah is about the size of Tampa Bay, Florida. When it isn’t fullof insurgents it’s full of about 300,000 law abiding Iraqis. Theinsurgents had shut off all buildings to the north and east andwest. What we saw were doors. They know that the Americaninfantryman likes to get on roofs and take the high terrain. Theycut that off from you and try to force you down avenues or kill

An American Marine entertains a young Iraqi followingthe battle for Fallujah.

Valor - Issue 4

sacs. We saw newly bricked doors, closed off to keep us frombeing able to get inside. They were ready for us. It’s the creativityof the infantryman which at the end of the day wins the fight.

Jim RobertsAs David mentioned Tim was involved in 12 house fights. That’sclearing insurgents out of 12 houses, which we think is a record.We don’t know anybody that approaches that, probably goingback to World War II. Was there a particular strategy for clearinga house, the point man for instance?

Timothy ConnorsIn our training, you stack on doors and are supposed to rush intorooms. The purpose is to overwhelm a room with fire so youcan kill the enemy. But at the same time you take casualties your-self. One of the first things you aretaught when you start training is thatthere is an 85 percent casualty rate,which to me is not acceptable. SoI soon realized that rushing intorooms, in my mind, was not thebest tactic. I decided that slow andsteady was the way to go. Eitheryou to rush into a room and get alot of people killed, or you takeyour time, go slow, and hopefullythey’ll give up their position beforeyou give up yours.

War is a big chess game but once you are put inside a house, youare fighting a war inside that house and it is a tiny chess game—you cannot make a mistake. There are times when you might lookout the window or doorway and five feet away from you isanother head looking right at you trying to do the same thing.That’s when the creativity comes in. Your training can only takeyou so far, and there is a point where you over-train and loseyour creativity, lose your imagination, and that’s mainly when peopleget hurt. The best tactic you can use is your imagination. You haveto outthink the people you are fighting or else you’re done.

You need to be ready to use everything at your disposal. I had alot of different tools I could use. Obviously you could call formissile strikes, artillery, etc. It’s not just using the obvious, it’s alsousing what you would not find so obvious. There’s a story frommy company where another squad of Marines tried to clear ahouse, but the insurgents were barricaded in the middle of thehouse in a kind of bunker so it was very hard to go in and takethem out. The Marines happened to see a big bulldozer drivingdown the street, so they called the bulldozer over, covered it, andthe bulldozer took out every corner of the house until the houseended up collapsing on itself. There are so many different ways

of getting things done, and people get caught up on the word“doctrine.” There is no way it should be. If there was then we’dstill be fighting with swords and shields. Everything changes. It’sjust doing what you think feels right using people’s past experi-ences so you won’t have to experience the same things they did.

Jim RobertsOne thing I have discovered in listening to the veterans of Iraqand Afghanistan is that while they are all very articulate, they arealso very modest in describing their own actions. I am very famil-iar with the records of Sgt. Connors and SSgt. Bellavia because Iwrote up their stories a couple weeks ago. David Bellavia as youknow is very talkative, but not when it comes to describing whathe did. You should know he’s been recommended for the Medalof Honor and his story is almost quite unbelievable. I’d like you

to walk through November 10th.

David BellaviaWell, in a nutshell it was my 29th

birthday—two years ago yester-day—and we walked into a com-pound. We had 1/8 to our westand they were in a pretty good fight,which was keeping us, a cell ofabout 6 to 12 guys, locked into oneneighborhood. My XO EdwardIwan, who was actually killed twoyears ago today, had the foresightto block off a neighborhood with

Abrams tanks using their thermal imagery to keep these guys frommoving. We knew we had 6 to 8 guys in a block of about 70houses. And for the most part we cleared these houses, waitingfor the insurgents to set their trap. Finally, we walked in to onehouse and they unloaded on us. There were a couple guys on thebottom floor who opened up on our boys and got them prettygood. We had some under-vest wounds in the stomach and somefacial wounds from broken glass and metal.

First of all, I want to say no one left Fallujah without a nick, a cut,a scrape, a gash, whether they are wearing a Purple Heart or not.But once we were all inside the house returning fire from theother side of the door, these idiots shot from the window with aPKM machine gun belt-fed 7.62x54 and just unloaded on myinner cordon. Kids got hit in the face and back, and for the mostpart what made that story just crazy, was these guys were tauntingus. We have young men that are screaming that they were hit in theeyes, shouting out their injuries, and these terrorists are makingfun of them. From the position I was standing, it would havebeen great if I had had a Sgt. Connors to my right or left. But Ihad a bunch of kids and they were scared. I was scared, we wereall scared. From where I was standing I made the decision that

Timothy Connors (left) speaks during the conference panel onFallujah. Seated next to him is David Bellavia.

Valor - Issue 4

any one on this panel would have made which is assault by fire.I’m not a very good mathematician and I thought there were twoin the house but there ended up being six. I got caught and Iwalked out by the grace of God. It was just dumb luck. I feelreally fortunate and I treasure my life and my family because of it.

Jim RobertsSgt. Connors you saw a lot of combat, and you were awardedthe Silver Star. Could you describe the action for which you re-ceived that award?

Timothy ConnorsWe were at the end of the city; we had pushed all the way down.The city bottlenecks at the end andthere were so many troops andsoldiers there, too many people inone area. So we kind of gotpushed ahead, there probably were12 to 15 insurgents in the open andwe were pretty much chasingthem down the street as they wererunning out of the city. We got tothe edge of the city before anyoneelse did and were fighting them asthey hid behind barns and behindhouses. We were fighting them inthe open and we got the call thatwe were too far forward. My pla-toon sergeant made the call that wehad to fall back on the line so therewould be no fratricide where we would be shooting each other.We fell back and upon falling back we ended up getting sur-rounded. We were getting shot at from every angle. My platoonsergeant chose a house to go into to use as a base until everyonecaught up with us. That was the biggest house there and he madethe right call; it was the biggest, strongest house there, with twofloors and a big roof, higher than any other house. So a squadwent in there to clear it out and a Marine by the name of TravisDesiato went into a room first. I think what happened was hethought that there was a stack behind him and he got bumped byaccident—a bump is a signal to go in a room. The other Marinesbehind him weren’t ready and he ended up getting shot. I wassomewhere else dealing with a completely different situation. Iheard someone yell, “Corpsman up!” which nobody likes to hear.I ran back to the house and went inside to see what was going on,where everyone told me what happened. It was one big firefightthat went on for about four hours. Our whole purpose was toget Travis out in the best shape possible so his family could burytheir son. I wanted them to be able to see their son before he wasburied. So I looked at him, although he was shot up, he wasn’t inas bad shape compared to others who had been killed. So that

was my mission and the mission of the four Marines that helpedme. We all did it together, going back and forth, throwing gre-nades, fighting within a few feet of each other, around doors andeverything. It went on for awhile and it ended with a tank comingin and shooting some holes into the room. Through small armsfire we ended up killing the rest of the insurgents.

It went on for four hours because there were six insurgents inthere and apparently they were using each other for shields. Afterone would die they would cover each other up with the body inthe hopes that we would think they were all dead. We ended upgetting Travis’s body out and getting him home, which was ourmain goal. That was what it was for. The other Marines with me

received Bronze Stars, I think. Itdoesn’t matter what people receiveas an award. I could have gottennothing, that wouldn’t have mat-tered. I just wanted to get him out.Awards are for the paper at homeand your parents.

Jim RobertsSgt. LaForce, Sgt. Ragan whatstands out in your mind?

Jeremy LaForceMy battalion lost 21 Marines inFallujah. Some of which were fouror five at a time, going into housesand having a whole fire team get

hit. It is really something to see just how heartless people canbe—like David was saying they were making fun of guys whoscreamed out when they were injured. I think what is really im-portant is that we get the word out for everybody to know whatis going on there. I didn’t get the Medal of Honor or the BronzeStar. Nobody goes out there and does it for an award. In a senseit’s nice to get recognized for what you do but at the same timeyou’d rather have that soldier or Marine you just lost back withyou next time. The story needs to get out for those 21 Marinesthat didn’t make it home and for their families to know that theydidn’t pass away without somebody caring about them. It’s not amatter of how many guys are shooting at you, it’s a matter ofgetting back in there and getting that Marine out of there andbringing him home, knowing that he’s going home just like you.

Matthew RaganI would like to finish by saying that war truly is horrible. One ofmy favorite quotes is from Robert E. Lee, who said, “It is wellthat war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it.” And we alllost a lot of brothers out there, our own soldiers and Marines.Thank you for coming and listening to us.

VALOR

David Bellavia (center) with a group of the high school studentswho attended the conference. Each day, the conference began withspeakers dedicated to World War II and Vietnam, working its wayto the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, giving these students anopportunity to learn from veterans from across the generations.

Valor - Issue 4

The American Veterans Center’s

Tenth Annual ConferenceNovember 8-10, 2007 - Washington, DC

ANNOUNCING...

You have read their stories, now meet them in person. ThisNovember, some of America’s greatest heroes will once againgather in Washington for the American Veterans Center’s TenthAnnual Conference. From the great battles of World War II tothe jungles of Vietnam to the desert of Operation Iraqi Free-dom, and all the years in between, this is your opportunity tospend a weekend with heroes. A full schedule will be availablein the coming months. To receive information on the upcom-ing conference, contact the American Veterans Center at 202-777-7272.

Learn history from those who were there.To receive more information on the Tenth Annual Conference, call202-777-7272 or e-mail conference@americanveteranscenter.org

Thank You For Your Support!The National Vietnam Veterans Committe wasformed to tell the true stories of valor, courage,and honor displayed by our Vietnam veterans bothduring the war, and in the years since. Through itsvarious programs, the Committee is working to pro-vide a forum for the veterans of Vietnam to sharetheir experiences and knowledge with the public, and to preserve them for future generations. The continuedsupport of thousands of individuals across America has allowed the Committee to expands its efforts over theyears, instituting a number of quality projects, including:

The National Memorial Day ParadeHeld each year along the National Mall in Washington, DC, and featur-ing nearly 200 elements and over 100,000 spectators.

Valor: The Veterans of VietnamOur quarterly publication, which provides the opportunity for veter-ans to tell their stories, in their own words.

Documentaries and Radio SeriesThe Committee has a long history of producing quality radio docu-mentaries in association with the Radio America network, and cur-rently sponsors two weekly radio series, Veterans Chronicles andProudly We Hail. Both programs feature interviews with America’sgreat military heroes from across the generations.

Annual Veterans ConferenceEvery Veterans Day veterans gather to share their stories. The 2006conference was televised live on C-Span. Youth Activities and Educational Outreach

The underlying theme of each of our programs is to provide a forumfor veterans of Vietnam to pass their knowledge and experiences on tofuture generations. Students and youth groups are encouraged to par-ticipate in Committee activities, and the Committee sponsors essaycontests, a high school and college scholarship, and a summer intern-ship program where students meet and interview Vietnam veterans. Supporting Our Troops

In addition to featuring the stories of those currently serving in ourpublications and radio programs, and including them in the NationalMemorial Day Parade, the Committee is proud to sponsor regularevents for our wounded heroes currently undergoing rehabilitation atWalter Reed Army Medical Center.

Coming this May

The 2007 National Memorial Day ParadePresented by the American Veterans Center

This Memorial Day—May 28, 2007—join over 100,000 fel-low Americans in Washington, DC as we honor our veter-ans and fallen heroes at the third annual National MemorialDay Parade. The parade, sponsored by the National Viet-nam Veterans Committee and its parent organization, theAmerican Veterans Center, will feature nearly 200 veteransorganizations, marching bands, and youth groups, as well asactive duty military personnel and an Air Force flyover.

This year’s parade will pay special tribute to our woundedheroes from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as celebrate the60th Anniversary of the United States Air Force. Theparade will begin at 2:00 PM and travel down Constitu-tion Avenue along the National Mall.

Veterans’ organizations are invited to participate in theparade. To learn how, or to volunteer, call the AmericanVeterans Center at 202-777-7272 or visitwww.nationalmemorialdayparade.com.

Valor

National Vietnam Veterans CommitteeA Division of the American Veterans Center1100 N. Glebe Rd., Suite 900Arlington, VA 22201