guys came just at dark. so i'm -- if my recollection serves me, the perimeter was big enough that his company could fold in and we didn't have to push out in it further. >> tell me about the battle during the day the night, how intense does it get for you all? >> pretty intense, because we got some pretty serious -- i'll call them more than probes. they were assaults aat least in my mind, assaults on our positions. again, we were -- once you can re-establish combat integrity or unit integrity, whatever, an infantry company is aa pretty formidable force. if you don't have to worry about security, because we are where we are, most of our efforts are outward. so we're in pretty good shape.

as i recall the assaults on our position probably came from the direction of the ambush, so we could pretty well concentrate most of our firepower for that. i had indirect fire weapons to help us out. >> what about the fire support? >> yeah, artillery. one of the guys wonded many my -- in the initial assault was my artillery fo. they had backup. they were really tough on operators and were also skilled fire support guys. so we did get artillery support particularly as we knew we were going to turn off the air coming in. we could do some night defensive

fires to put them around the perimeter. there was artillery at -- lz slips me. it's probably in the book. >> still falcon. >> yeah, yeah, right. >> tell me about that night. >> i guess about -- the hour slips me, but we were getting these intermittent radio calls from -- wi initially thought it was probably north vietnamese who probably captured some of our equipment and using our radios to try to get us out of our relatively secure position back into the ambush area. but we were getting this -- one radio call was from the call sign of that was ghost force 6. if you get the opportunity, that

will be -- because his experience is one that i cannot imagine. i cannot imagine how -- what that must have been like. at any rate, we got these calls. i was convinced that there were people still left in the ambush site, and that we needed to do something to try to get support for them or get them out. at some point we decided we needed to go. so i basically made the decision i was going to go to patrol and go out. i don't know if you interviewed fred and said, captain, you cannot leave this perimeter and go out on a patrol and try to -- you have more guys in here that you need to worry about. the xo is wounded and i have lieutenants down. i have a number of my key ncos

and i'm going out on a rescue mission not knowing what's out there. so clerk said i'll do it. he takes a patrol and some stretchers that had been dropped off by the medevac guys who were coming in to go out into the lz. we're assuming we get a single radio call. there's not a lot of folks out there. i don't remember the number, but whatever the number was, we took enough guys to do two-man stretchers. so i would imagine the -- maybe 15 guys went out. we did send a medic with them, and his name was daniel torres. they get into the lz or into the kill zone, and he calls back and says, there's not one guy out here. there are a whole lot of guys out here, and we can't bring them all back.

so i said, okay, you need to make a decision. he said i can't leave them out here, because some of these guys are really in bad shape. we need to get them back. at that point tully had come in with his company and had brought his medical team, which gave us additional medical support. he said some of these guys need treatment. i knew that i had missing folks from my unit. so part of that sojourn into that pure hell was looking for "a" company guys. the other guys i didn't -- there was -- there was some concern, but there was more concern about the guys from my company. >> sure. >> and that's reflected in the book. when you really -- when you believe that you have rescued everybody, brought everybody back, and then some months later

you find out that one of the guys was still out there. i think we went back out there in april. i think it was in april. and found parts of his equipment that basically says he never got out. after some investigation, some of the guys in his unit basically thought that they saw him getting on a helicopter because he was wounded. the only reason that we realized that he was missing is we had gotten a letter from his mother that had basically said she hadn't heard from him since december, november/december time frame. you go back out there and you find this guy. it makes it a tough piece,

because you never want to leave anybody back or at least think that you left them. >> tell me about the next day. >> we got up the next morning, and then went back into the lz. by that time some of the units from second of the 7th were doing the same kind of searching for american bodies. i -- >> did you realize then kind of what had really happened up and down the line? >> right, because we could see. because we walked going back into the kill zone. we walk up the same trail where these guys had just sprung the ambu ambush. lots and lots of wounded, dead folks.

and i'm saying lots and lots. more than -- more than he'd seen in -- more than i had seen prior or more than i would see in any one given battle. so it was one of the reasons -- you know, i think larry guinn, one of his comments was there's no real glory in war. anybody who has ever said that never has been in war. this was -- what happens when you encounter that much violence in that short period of time and how -- i'm searching for the words here to try and describe

the emotion of going in the next day. >> yes. >> because i'm thinking long-range as i'm going, how do i get these guys? this is not -- for a lot of these guys, this is not the end of the, you know -- a number of them were scheduled to rotate in december. i mean, but for a lot of the guys, there was going to be a next day. there was going to be another battle, and there was going to be da-- i'm thinking how do i motivate these guys and how do i make sure what they're seeing here today will serve to keep them alert? then the question in my mind is how do i, as a company commander, keep them safe? >> what did you tell them? what did you do? >> we talked. we talked about the need for preparedness, the need for not

being careless. we always have discussions about taking care of your equipment and making sure that everything functions and that you don't -- you don't lose sight of where you are. the early part of there, it was more passification. we kind of went around and handed out medical stuff. this was a rude awakening for us, because up until that time, i think we had -- i had -- up until that time i had one casualty in the company. this guy was killed -- he went out of the perimeter, and either didn't remember the password or didn't say the password quick

enough. on the way back into the perimeter he was shot. i don't know whether you talked to freddie owens yet or not, but this was one of freddie's buddies at that died in freddie's arms because, again -- i won't say it was carelessness, but it was a lapse, a mental lapse. so we talked an awful lot about that. now, again, the rest of the guys went back second of the 7th, these guys went back to thanksgiving dinner and whatever and we got back and my battalion commander said we have another operation and -- we weren't back very long before we were out. but i think a better unit, because i didn't have to tell th

them. make sure you have your order, your am mission, your weapon is ready to fire, don't smoke on the trail so these guys can pick you up. you need to make sure that security is out. once burned, you become a better unit. i think they became a better unit as a result of that battle. >> what was your morale like? >> low, really low. again, i had lost people, and i think all of it. i think if you watch the only time in this -- after the war, the only time i've seen hal moore break down is when he talks about this feeling that he had that was a commander and that he survived and his guys didn't survive. that's kind of the same feeling that we have. he just expressed it a little bit i think with a lot more

passion than a number of us. again, my morale was really low. first of all, i'm going, what the hell am i doing here? why am i doing this? what is this really all about? again, i'm 25, 26. what do i know about -- what ordained me to be this leader? because i went to the infantry school or whatever for it, or some guy in rotc told me to. you start to question your ability to be able to manage this. you have to start sitting down and writing these absolutely horrible letters. i regret to inform you that your son died. there was no -- there's a form letter that you can do, but my mother would have been absolutely livid if she received

a form letter from somebody that said, you know, the president regrets that your son was killed and whatever. so i used to do those myself. that's a hard, hard task. >> looking back at albany now, what are your thoughts? what do you see in your mind's eye actually when you think of that now? >> waste. what a waste. what a waste of young people's lives. you know, i don't know in those 17 guys what they might have been, could have been. i know this sounds melodramatic, but who knows that robert hirsh, my radio operator who often

talked about what i want to do in the future. do i want to go to medical school? do i want to -- suppose this was the guy who goes to medical school and becomes the next great ben carson brain surgeon or whatever? those are all things that you think about in hindsight. >> stthis is what you thought about over the years? >> this is what i thought about over the years. for a number of years until joe wrote this book. until joe and hal wrote this book, i would not, first of all, be able to do this interview, nor would i have been able to sit down and talk to anybody about it. when you first called me, i said, you obviously have the wrong guy because i do not want to talk about what happened to me in vietnam. in a lot of ways i'm still reluctant to do it. for a lot of the guys that you will interview here -- this is not a criticism. for a lot of the guys that you will interview here, this is their life. they are locked here.

they are -- i can do this once a year or maybe twice, but after that it is really hard for me to sit down and have discussions. everybody keeps telling me, you need to think about what if you hadn't done -- what about all the guys -- i mean, like last night. i'm in this room with a bunch of guys and their wives and their children and their grandchildren and whatever. not that i have any responsibility for them being there. there's a d.e.i deity somewhere we had control over. if i had done something different or just lay there on

the ground and not done anything, can the whole company -- these guys wouldn't be here. i don't want to make that sound like i had this great power over making it happen. it is a reality. >> two questions. what's that do for you personally, and were you really actually thinking these things when you stee this room full of men last night? >> absolutely. it's still there. i mean, it's still there. i mean, it is -- it is a part of you that you can put away for a little while. when they stare you right in the face and look at you -- i think sometimes they don't -- i haven't been able to successfully communicate this. sometimes i don't think they understand that i'm not the captain anymore. i am not the guy that pulls it altogether, that leads them,

whatever. i'm just me. >> they still see you that way. >> absolutely. it is -- >> you don't want that? >> no. >> why? >> because it's an awesome responsibility. it really is. i mean, it is -- i know -- i know hal moore would never tell you this, but i know he gets tired. i know he gets tired of leading this organization. we're 40 years out. he still is leading this organization. >> 84 years old. >> 84 years old. i would not be surprised if hal moore says tonight, i have had enough. i'm going to do hal moore stuff. i know he enjoys doing this, but again, at some point you have to step back. i guess a lot of it -- a lot of it is what you -- the other piece of your life. i guess in my case, the other piece of my life, what i do now

is so rooted in you got to make decisions. sometimes i go home at night , d and don't ask me to make a decision about what we're going to do for dinner or where we're going to go to eat. i have done that all done that . all i want to do is put my feet up, turn on the western channel and watch and that may sound -- it is, and so when i come to these, we have these discussions about -- and i always want to be socially correct. i always want to remember who they are, and i always want to remember what they did, but sometimes i look in the faces of these guys and i don't have a

clue, and it is not that -- it was so long ago that i remember there are some faces that i remember, and i don't know how to communicate this, but there were 123 guys in this unit. >> yes. >> if they did what they are normally supposed to do as soldiers, them coming into my conscience conscious is remote. it is like -- i guess i can relate a lot of my after life experiences after the military to the military. when i was principal of a high school, one of the commitments i made was i want to learn the names of all the kids in the school. now, this is a school of 900, so

i know i am not, but what drives me to do that is because when i see these guys, i mean, i saw a guy yesterday. i mean, i remember his name because in the book i don't remember him because he was a good soldier. being a good soldier, the company commander doesn't pay attention. it is like in school. we don't pay attention to the average good kid. we look at the ap kids, and we give them lots of attention, and we look at the kids on the other end of the spectrum. in the middle, there is a great book written by a guy that talks about education and it is called the neglected majority, and it is about -- it is so reflective of the world that we live in. those folks who are in the middle and pay their taxes and vote and do whatever, nobody

pays any attention to them. it is the high flyers and the lower achievers and the health and strength of this nation is in that middle group. in my college years i remember -- i cannot remember the name of the number one graduate from my college. i mean, he probably is ph i beta ckappa, whatever, but there are a whole lot of guys i do remember, and maybe it is because i was in the middle group and maybe on the low end of the middle group in terms of achievement, accomplishment, i just -- i am just kind of circling back to why do you want

to not leader? i didn't want to be the leader in school, i think, in my relationship with my parents and my brothers and sisters because i was the second child and there was not a lot of expectation for the second child, at least in my mind. my father tells me now that's a misnomer on my part, but i have an older brother that has my father's name. he was a junior. he was a high flyer and over achiever and got lots of attention. my reaction to that is be a low flyer and you will get lots of attention, too, so here i am 67 years old now and i walk into a room of men that i have not seen in a year, and i am not sure what their expectations are. >> interesting commentary on

leadership, and that book and your reputation precedes you. the leadership qualities you exhibits, if i am hearing you correctly, now you just want to be one of the guys and the burden of leadership, not necessarily a horrible burden, but hearing a burden of leadership from albany and from this company and going forward with this company after all that. he is still with you. >> and i guess at some point maybe i will get comfortable with it. i am not comfortable with walking in a room and guys coming up and saying sign my bo

book. so what are you saying? i don't want to sign your book, no, you sign the book and whatever, and then when you do that, i guess you continue to learn as you grow. what really kind of made this or pulled this to some different level for me, when we went out to california for the screening of the movie, i had the pleasure of having some meaningful conversation with sam elliott, and in that conversation i made a mistake. i had a program in my hand, and i asked him to sign the program. his persona changed and he basically said to me i am here for you guys, not here to be a celebrity. those weren't the exact words, but that was kind of his --

that's kind of where -- i mean, the guys, the valuable guys at this reunion are freddy and perp and fred and al montgomery, allen brown, and it is not george. they're not here -- >> why do you come back then? that might be a way to escape it. >> yeah. yeah. because maybe i need them as much as they need me. >> do they know that, that you need them like they need you? >> no, because i don't think i have gotten in touch with my sensitivity to be able to communicate that to them and the other piece is we never have time for meaningful conversation. i mean, for example, tonight

when we go to the dinner, we will be overcome by lots of stuff, so to sit down and have a meaningful conversation with these guys about what you feel, how you feel, where you are, whatever, no, i have never done that. the only guy that i have spent after vietnam some quality time with is don adams and that's just been recent because we go to football games together and he is a big georgia tech guy and we go down to spend time with him and i stay at his house, but we have never had real dialog about the war and what we did in the war and i don't think we have reached that comfort level yet. don is a funny guy. a lot of our experiences are about funny stuff that happened when we were -- safe stuff that

doesn't make you vulnerable or sensitive or whatever and maybe my discussion of the sensitivity is maybe therapy for me. >> are you going to have those conversations? >> at some point. at some point. i mean, it is a work in progress as i am a work in progress. >> i guess as we all are. >> as we all are, as we all are. >> you're watching american history tv where every week we bring you eyewitness accounts of the people and events that have shaped our nation. saturdays at 8 a.m., sundays at 3 p.m., and mondays at 4 a.m. eastern on c-span 3. american history tv is marking memorial day 2012 with programming featuring the stories, recollections and

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