2nd brigade. so on the 12th hal moore calls us together and says, okay, we have a new mission. the brigade has some intelligence that there's an enemy force somewhere, and he drew a goose egg on a map right at the base of the mountain. so our mission was to go in there and see what's there. that was about the degree of intelligence we had. >> i see. >> we believe there's an enemy base camp, but we don't know how many, what, or anything. but you guys are going to go there and look and see what's there. so we were all spread out. on the 12th we were all spread out in platoon size locations. so the air assault on the 14th was difficult, because there weren't many helicopters, and

they had to make a lot of trips to pick up this group over here, this group over here, this group over here. >> you didn't stage from one central location? >> no. >> your choppers had to go out and get you, and then there was -- well, give me an example with your company. let's talk about alpha company. where were you? >> i was, i guess, about 20 minutes flying time east of lzx. 20, 30 minutes flying time, i think. i was with a platoon and with the company headquarters of i think the 1st platoon and the weapons platoon were together. so they picked me up. there were eight helicopters, as i recall. >> the first lift in?

>> no. the first lift in was b company. >> b company went in first, so you're the second? >> i'm the second lifting. after they did b company, they came to get me. i went in with that platoon. the choppers went back and picked up the second platoon, and then they went back and picked up a third platoon. >> you ultimately had your three platoons, but they were coming from different places? >> right. >> you were with the first platoon? >> first platoon. >> now, as i understand the battle, the first few lifts in received no fire. >> that's right. >> but about lift three and four they started to get fire. where were you guys? were you in the three and four or -- >> yeah. when i landed i sensed no fire. i immediately reported to hal moore, who told me, b company is engaged. you get your company, and you

join them in the left flank. so the first platoon that landed -- i led them over to where the b company flank was. i went back to wait for the second and third platoon to come in, because i, you know, had to place them when they arrived. then i could -- by that time i could hear bullets. i could hear gunshots, and a few bullets whizzing by. >> so moore put you on the left flank of b company? >> right. >> anticipating a flanking movement? >> well, actually at that time -- see, the mission was when we landed the mission was going to be b company was going to initially hold the landing zone. they were going to go out in one direction. then my company would land, and

we would go in a different direction, and c company would land and hold the landing zone. when the fighting started, moore said to me, okay, you guys secure the landing zone, and i've got b company moving to the west where they fire on the famous creekbed on the western end of lz. he said, you go -- he told john herring, you go west and exploit -- not exploit, but explore what's out there. he told me to secure want landing zone. so i sent my platoon to the left of b company. they go to fight pretty quickly, the moment they got there. >> so how difficult was it to get your -- you're in charge of all three of these platoons. do you have four platoons now?

>> they had taken the weapons platoons, which were by that team had become quite small, because the mortar were equipped and too heavy to carry in the jungle. >> sure. each company had come down to evolve to one -- carrying one mortar, 181, and they fired the direction for that one mortar and a couple of additional guys to hold the ammo. so the weapons platoons had been probably halved in size. >> i see. >> and the troops had been used as infantrymen, replacement infantrymen. >> organizationally you -- as you think about it, you were thinking about three platoons. that was your responsibility. >> they had taken all those small weapons platoons and put them together at the landing zone to operate sort of as a weapons company kind of thing. >> i understand, i understand.

so now you've got responsibility for three rifle platoons, most of whom -- well, most of whom except for your career korean and experienced ncos and yourself have never been in combat, never had a shot fired in anger against them. you hit this lz, and you start taking fire shortly thereafter. how difficult was it for you to pull those platoons into their -- in their positions? >> not difficult. they landed. i met the lieutenants and said, okay, you link up with so-and-so, and 3rd platoon is right over there. this is a small landing zone. so we were going from where the helicopters landed to the creek bed wasn't more than 150 yards at most. 100 yards.

and i started them in the right direction and wait for the next one to come in. >> tell me about the first -- your observations of the first reactions of your troops to enemy fire? >> i hit the ground and started firing sort of wildly in the direction of the enemy. let me give you a sequence of events of what happened. the -- platoon -- the first platoon lands, goes over to the left. the second platoon lands, it goes between the first platoon

and "b" company. the third platoon lands and it go -- becomes my right flank platoon. after i got the third platoon in place, i heard intense enemy fire from the first platoon area because the creek bed came down where the first platoon was. the fos, we go across the landing zone, and i am looking for the platoon leader. the landing zone is grassy, and there's grass there about this high which is a key factor in the fight for the next three days so when something goes to ground, you can't see them. we move over there.

as i'm moving over there, i sort of stumble on the platoon sergeant nathan. and i say where's lieutenant taft? and he said lieutenant taft is dead. i said well, where >> which platoon was he? >> he was the first platoon. >> the first platoon? >> no, excuse me, the third platoon. the third platoon. and -- i said well where is he? >> and he said he's in the creek bed. they had pulled back from the creek bed due to the enemy fire. as the book points out, one of

the machine guns was back, it had a lot to do with holding that sector by just staying in the fight, even after his -- he was a system machine gunner, and his machine gunner got shot in the head. bill reaches over and puts the guys brains back in his head and gets the medic to -- the guy survived this. anyway, one of the things that i believed in, one of the things that they believe in, one of the things that i told my soldiers all the time was we're not going to leave any one of you hinz. they had a little tiny head like that. when i was in the creek bed i saw them going off in the creek bed.

while i was there i found another soldier. taft was there. i should have brought the other soldier back first, but i brought taft back and then my raid operator and i went back and brought the other soldier back. >> you say you should have brought them because one was dead or alive. what happened on the battlefield is he was responsible for that soldier. the soldiers were all lying in

the grass. i told them sergeant floyd, don't do that. you're going to get shot. he looked at me and disregarded me and the went out to rescue his soldier and got shot and died there. after that battle i always used to tell my guys, if someone is killed or someone is shot, your first responsibility is to shoot the son of bitch that shot him. if you go after him right then, the guy who shot him is going to shoot you. that's a tough lesson to learn. and that's a group that's as

heroic a group of anyone in uniform lose a lot of lives going right after a wounded soldier. we think of the logic of it. someone just shot someone right there, and until you get him, he's going to do it again. >> well, yeah. and i can see where that difficulty, the unit cohesion thing has been studied now ever since that war. it has its positives and negatives, but overall it's a positive. >> a huge positive. i mean, it -- >> because the war -- the units that came in after that went to replacements suffered so much because nobody cared about anybody else. they were all in it for themselves, and that's a blanket statement. i shouldn't make it that way. we both know what we're talking about here.

>> well, look. i don't know my background beyond this thing. i've spent the major portion of my career when i was not commanding, i was studying leadership or teaching leadership or revising army leadership, and the issues of cohesion and how you lead soldiers and all of that are sort of close and dear to my heart. >> you're a psychologist, too? >> right. i lecture at west point and at the army war college, i have in the past. everything from rotc to infantry battalions in germany. i have this presentation give, which is called "combat leadership" -- leadership in combat in small unit operations. i talk about rifle companies and the experience of a soldier when he first goes to combat and the psychology of being in combat and what they expect of a leader and the leaders to respond and all that.

>> so let's talk a little bit about when taft goes down. the leadership of that platoon falls to the platoon sergeant. >> sergeant nathan. >> was it evident to you that the -- that that worked the way it's supposed to, and that is the next man takes over? >> yeah. >> it was -- >> yeah. i didn't -- you know, the -- i lost all three platoon leaders that day. only one killed, but two were wounded. and my forward observer, it was too late. there wasn't a discernible change that i could tell. however, i think it's important for people to understand that as a company commander, i was so

busy that i wasn't observing a hell of a lot of what the enemy was coming from, where the artillery was landing, what i was supposed to do with the maintain contact with b company, all that. i've often said it's easier to be a company commander than it is to be a pfc, because a company commander is so involved, so mentally occupied that in my case i can honestly say i did not feel much fear. the reason for it is that i didn't have space in my head for it. too much on my mind. the soldier -- the private soldier is sitting there lying in the grass waiting for someone to tell them what to do. so i think it's tougher. >> when we look back on the war

now, we know that company commanders, captains at least as a rank suffered the greatest percentage of casualties as a percentage of how many were there of any other rank. >> i didn't know that. >> now, you can take into account there were some that were killed in chopper crashes and everything else, but company commanders suffered as a percentage greater than any other rank. >> i can see that, because you're trying to move around. you're going to economic your platoon here and there, and everyone else is hunkered down, and if the commander is doing his job getting around. >> it was a company-size unit war more so than it was a battalion or brigade like it was in world war ii. >> that's right. >> you've lost all three platoon leaders over a two-day period? >> yeah. >> one killed, two wounded, i believe. >> actually, in the first

afternoon. >> what percentage of your troops were killed or wounded? i'm thinking this only in a military effectiveness? did you get -- did you stand down? did your unit stand down then? your company? >> so over 50% were killed or wounded? did you stand down? did your unit stand down then? your company? >> not immediately. we went back, and then we were put on a defense position guarding the -- an airfield and a brigade headquarters. >> uh-huh. okay. >> a few days later we went back and stood down for just a short time. never let the infantry stand down for very long. >> i know. this was also one of the first times that we got to think about what i call the organic

artillery of an m-79. did you use that? >> wonderful weapon. >> wonderful weapon? >> that's right. >> shooting in the trees, because there were va in the trees. how about the competence with that weapon? did you feel like they knew what to do with it, and that they liked carrying it? >> it wasn't an issue because we hadn't experienced any heavy combat before. i think they were confident with it. everyone liked to see that little thing. you could watch it go out there and explode and make big noise and so forth. we all liked it. i think they liked it. i think as the war evolved a lot of them wanted the current m-16 also because of the rain and they eventually came up with the m-16 combination with the -- >> they came up with essentially a shotgun shell for that first

round if you were on patrol, so you had a little more and you could defend yourself at least with the first shot. >> right. >> what about your cruiser, what about the m-60? >> they worked fine. i mean, we didn't have -- again, i'm not aware of any sort of major grievances with the m-60 machine gun. >> the laws, we were testing those for one of the first times, too? >> yeah. we carried a couple per platoon and joe marm, that was the way he started his charge across the open clearing to get a machine gun behind an ant hill, you shot that into the ant hill. it worked. as far as i know, that was the only -- they didn't have targets to speak of. >> i ask these questions about weapons because you guys were the laboratory.

>> yeah, yeah. later on. the marines used to bitch like hell about the m-16, and my response was that's because they don't clean their rifles. we didn't have a lot of problems with them. we had problems with other things like medevac and so forth. i had problems with -- the biggest problem i had in the battlefield was that before the major assault took place that afternoon was to go get that lost platoon. i could not get artillery fire to fire prep for me. only one fo from the various companies could be directing or artillery. b company had a very good -- we got on the radio net early, and when it came time for us to assault, i couldn't get through to get a prep fired. so i used my mortars, but they ran -- they didn't have much

ammunition. they ran out of ammo very rapidly. so that's my biggest problem was that. >> they were trying to bring in 105s? >> 105s. >> okay. >> how about -- how difficult was it to identify your own positions? when you were calling -- >> we just used red smoke. >> you used smoke? >> yeah. >> so your troops were carrying smoke grenades you get on the radio and say identify? >> that's right. >> and let them -- >> and then you had an aerial? >> also there were air force

facts in the air. and we had for the army helicopters, it was just radio contact with the choppers. >> i see. >> with the flight leaders. >> join us next weekend for more oral histories from the vietnam archive. that's saturday at 8:00 a.m., sunday at 3:00 p.m., and monday at 4:00 a.m. eastern. for more information and to watch past oral histories, visit our website cspan.org/history. next a look at our recent visit to little rock, arkansas. a look at the city's rich history and literary culture. our watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. >> we're standing in one of our newest exhibits called a

splendid little war in arkansas. and it's really one of the conflicts in our state and i think our nation's history that has been overlooked when you look at the military history of our country. we opened this exhibit a couple of months ago and we're very excited about the artifacts on display here and the chance to tell the visitors the role of our state and the impact that this splendid little conflict had on the development of our country and our state. >> a lot of people overlook the importance of the war somehow we focus our attention on the civil war and then we fast forward to world war i. there are several conflicts during this period of time that i think are very important in the spanish-american war is one of them. for us it represented the first major conflict. conflict post-civil war and for southerners it was the chance for southerners and northerners to come together as americans for the first time after the war, it was a chance for all of us to come together as a nation,

as americans, to fight against a common enemy. it was also the chance for african-americans, many of them for the first time to enter the military and to show that as former slaves, they, too, could fight to defend this country. from that perspective, if no other, the opportunity it provided to unify northerners and southerners i think is very important for us to look at. as with any conflict, there's that really a particular cause. there are several causes to it. you can go back to the way spain was treating its colonial empire. cuba in the late 1890s was about the last vestiges of spain's colonial empire in this hemisphere and cuba was a very profitable part, colony, of the spanish empire. with the sugarcane that was produced there.

there was a lot of american investment in cuba. and because of the unrest in cuba from insurgents who had been striving for independence from spain for some time, america's economic interests in cuba were threatened so there was a sincere interest and desire by businesspeople in our country to see some stability in cuba. there were also a lot of atrocities that were committed by the spanish forces in cuba to try to quell the rebellious factions, the insurgents, and so these factors all combined to provide i think what was the sea for the conflict and then you can't really underestimate the role of journalism. the yellow journalism as it's called. particularly of the two newspapers controlled by joseph pulzer and william randolph hurst. they drove the public's perception of the conflict. you have to remember, back at that time, most people got their current events from the newspapers and so these two business newspaper owners, they

really had a vested interest in fanning the flames of interest in going to war and they really sensationalized a lot of the atrocities that were committed by the spanish and cuba, or that were purported to be committed there. there was also a movement in this country led by undersecretary of the navy theodore roosevelt to take our country to war. they really felt like america needed to exert its role in this region of the country, since cuba was only 90 miles from our country, and so there was a combination of the atrocities committed by spain and cuba, the impact of the yellow journalism, the impact of those who were trying to take our country into conflict. and then you have to remember at this time, our country's president was president mckinley who had actually served in the civil war and he knew conflict. he was reluctant to take our country to war then you have youngsters who were called by

theodore roosevelt who were adamant to go to war. i think it showed the conflict between some of the old military minds and some of the new military minds, and it ultimately led with the sinking of the maine, and the havana harbor as the catalyst that brought all of these forces together that ultimately led to us declaring war on spain. war is declared in april 1898, the peace was not signed until december but there were ten weeks of warfare. one of the interesting aspects is that its cause was the atrocities in cuba, and yet it spanned halfway around the world to the philippines, when the united states entered into the war we did not have any colonial possessions, yet after the war we picked up guam, puerto rico,

the philippines, there were people who said we had designs on cuba. we did not, in fact, colonize cuba. they became an independent country. but another important i think aspect of the spanish american war is that it really thrust our country onto the world stage as a colonial empire. arkansas' role was in a non-military manner if you will. we raised 2,000 troops. i'm standing in front of the beautiful restored regimental flag from the second arkansas u.s. volunteers. however, few arkansans actually fought in the conflict. mainly because the war only lasted ten weeks. our two regiments were sent to training camps in georgia and alabama, and as they were getting ready to go to fight in cuba, basically the fighting was over.