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Speaker 1: This is a Jesse Kelly Show. It is the Jesse

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Speaker 1: Kelly Show. Final hour of The Jesse Kelly Show on

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Speaker 1: our Memorial Day edition where we honor the fallen for

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Speaker 1: three hours, just once more a reminder veterans, it's a

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Speaker 1: day where you can get low if it happens. All right,

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Speaker 1: if you're there, If you're low today, put the bottle down,

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Speaker 1: pick up a phone. Nine eight eight is what you

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Speaker 1: call them. Then press one nine eight eight. But that's

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Speaker 1: just one number. There are so many resources out there now.

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Speaker 1: The only shame is not talking to somebody. Okay. So

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Speaker 1: if you're dwelling on your brothers that are no longer

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Speaker 1: with us today and you're getting too low, reach out, okay,

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Speaker 1: reach out and remember look, you can always email the

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Speaker 1: show Jesse at Jesse Kellyshow dot com. Jesse at Jesse

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Speaker 1: kellyshow dot com. The first hour we kind of did

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Speaker 1: a World War two centric thing. Then the second hour

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Speaker 1: we did Korea. This hour, we're gonna do Vietnam. In

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Speaker 1: just a couple of minutes. I'm gonna finish this list

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Speaker 1: of names. These are combat training deaths men who died

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Speaker 1: in training. Captain Michael Quinn, Lance Corporal Joshua E. Barron,

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Speaker 1: Lance Corporal Matthew J. Detterman, Captain Brian Kennedy, Captain Kevin Roche,

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Speaker 1: Captain Brian Kennedy, Sergeant Jeffrey Sempler, Corporal Matthew Drown, Corporal

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Speaker 1: Thomas Jardis, Lance Corporal Ty Hart, Captain Stephen Torbert, Major

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Speaker 1: Sean Campbell, Sergeant Dylan Semolina, Sergeant William Sergeant Adam Schuler,

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Speaker 1: Corporal Christopher Orlando, Pfc James Beach, Major Dennis Doggs, Corporal

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Speaker 1: Michael mccallich. And remember this, these training dying in training

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Speaker 1: while you're in the military, that's just as heroic. It's

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Speaker 1: just as honorable as the guy who died on the

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Speaker 1: beaches of Normandy. If you're a family out there today,

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Speaker 1: maybe remembering a son or a daughter, husband, wife, whatever,

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Speaker 1: whoever died in a training accident. No, they don't make

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Speaker 1: movies about what your loved one did, but it's just

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Speaker 1: as honorable and heroic. Military training is dangerous and has

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Speaker 1: to be dangerous, and you die in training so that

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Speaker 1: others may live so they can work out what went wrong,

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Speaker 1: and you'll never see it. They'll never come knock on

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Speaker 1: your door and tell you, but people will live because

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Speaker 1: of the sacrifice your loved one made in training period.

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Speaker 1: All right, now, let's go to Vietnam and talk about

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Speaker 1: a couple of Vietnam things before we check out it

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Speaker 1: here this hour. First. I know a lot of this

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Speaker 1: stuff will be basic. But again, you know, there was

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Speaker 1: North Vietnam and South Vietnam. South Vietnam the Vietnamese who

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Speaker 1: were fighting against us there, they were the gorillas, the

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Speaker 1: viet Cong. In North Vietnam, they had the North Vietnamese Army,

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Speaker 1: regular army troops, regular uniforms, that kind of stuff. But

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Speaker 1: all that man in the black pajamas talk you hear,

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Speaker 1: those are gorillas from South Vietnam. Gorilla fighters. What's a

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Speaker 1: gorilla fighter. Well, he's somebody who you look out at

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Speaker 1: his field and he appears to be a farmer. He's

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Speaker 1: just all look at him. He's working the rice fields

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Speaker 1: and he is a farmer until you leave. Then he

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Speaker 1: goes to his hut and he digs up the AK

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Speaker 1: forty seven he had hidden there, and he heads out

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Speaker 1: to a spider hole and he waits in a little

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Speaker 1: hole in the ground for your patuon to walk by

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Speaker 1: again where he'll snipe your best friend in the face

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Speaker 1: and then go hiding right back down on that hole.

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Speaker 1: He's a goerilla fighter. He's the one putting booby traps

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Speaker 1: up everywhere. He's the one recruiting other people and threatening

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Speaker 1: other people in the South. Now, it's very, very, very

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Speaker 1: difficult if you're going to fight a modern war with

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Speaker 1: modern sensibilities to root out gorilla fighters who are entrenched

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Speaker 1: in the population. It's very very difficult. Let me, let

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Speaker 1: me explain why. Uh, well, I'll give you the other

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Speaker 1: how the other half lives. First, if you're Genghis Khan.

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Speaker 1: If you're Genghis Khan and you have an area with

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Speaker 1: a bunch of gorilla fighters who are giving your people trouble,

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Speaker 1: well that's not that big of a deal if you're

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Speaker 1: Genghis Khan, because he doesn't have our modern sensibilities. Meaning

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Speaker 1: if there's a let's say, the state of Arkansas, the

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Speaker 1: state of Arkansas, the Mongols have taken over America and

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Speaker 1: the state of Arkansas, they're giving him trouble because in

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Speaker 1: city after city and town after town, these frigging gorillas

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Speaker 1: are making life miserable for Genghis Khan. Well, Genghis is

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Speaker 1: not going to stress about that. He's just gonna go

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Speaker 1: kill everyone because it's a different moral code, because the

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Speaker 1: human life is not as valuable. Each human life is

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Speaker 1: not a unique god breathed soul, none of that stuff,

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Speaker 1: because there's no value of human life. Well, it's easy

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Speaker 1: to clear out a gorilla insurgency. Just kill them all, men, women, children,

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Speaker 1: It's fine, kill them all, raise the buildings to the ground.

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Speaker 1: Look at that. We solved the gorilla problem, didn't we

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Speaker 1: Everyone's dead problem solved. But that's not modern sensibilities and

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Speaker 1: the modern era. It's very very very difficult, not just

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Speaker 1: for us, for any nation to fight in an area

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Speaker 1: where a significant portion of that area they don't want

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Speaker 1: you there and they're fighting a gorilla war against you.

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Speaker 1: It's just very, very very difficult. In empire after empire,

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Speaker 1: from Britain to France to America, they've had to go

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Speaker 1: through exactly this shoot. France went through this in Vietnam itself.

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Speaker 1: It's hard when the people around you, when enough of

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Speaker 1: them don't want you there and want you dead. It's

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Speaker 1: a constant stress. A constant strain. Is my meal poisoned?

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Speaker 1: As I walk across the street, Am I going to

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Speaker 1: get sniped from somewhere. It's a problem. We were dealing

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Speaker 1: with how to deal with this problem in a I

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Speaker 1: really don't want to use the word humane, but we

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Speaker 1: didn't want to go full Genghis Khan. But in South

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Speaker 1: Vietnam there would be areas, and many of them hotter

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Speaker 1: than others that were just hotbeds of the Vietcong. Picture

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Speaker 1: it like there were provinces. Okay, So there's a province

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Speaker 1: and it's in South Vietnam, so technically we're kind of

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Speaker 1: on their side, except the Viet Cong are really causing

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Speaker 1: us huge problems from that area. Because there are so

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Speaker 1: many of them, we weren't sure what to do, so

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Speaker 1: we began what we're called search and destroy campaigns. They

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Speaker 1: sound intense, and they were intense. When I say campaign,

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Speaker 1: I mean it wasn't one patrol, It wasn't an afternoon.

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Speaker 1: You would have a province, okay, the Province of Chris

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Speaker 1: in South Korea, and this province is annoying obviously, and

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Speaker 1: that it has a bunch of Viatcong guerillas in there,

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Speaker 1: and I want to get rid of I want to

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Speaker 1: clean out the Province of Chris. And I'm the United

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Speaker 1: States of America. So what am I going to do?

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Speaker 1: What we would often do And you can laugh at

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Speaker 1: this all you want, but again, we were trying to

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Speaker 1: do it humanly kind of. We would fly overhead and

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Speaker 1: we would drop leaflets all over the place. We would

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Speaker 1: tell them, hey, civilians, you might want to get out, Hey,

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Speaker 1: get out now, this is a problem area. We are

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Speaker 1: coming in. Get out. Just to heads up everybody. You

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Speaker 1: don't want to be here when we come back, get out,

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Speaker 1: get out, get out, and then we will begin search

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Speaker 1: and destroy. Search and destroy can take the form of

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Speaker 1: many things. It's a platoon walking into a village and

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Speaker 1: interrogating the villagers. Hey, who's a Vietcong? Who's not searching

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Speaker 1: the village for weapons and food supplies? And when I

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Speaker 1: say food supplies, supplies, you can tell when a village

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Speaker 1: has enough food for the village and when enough village,

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Speaker 1: and when a village has enough food for Wait a minute,

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Speaker 1: this looks like you're supporting some sort of an army unit. Again,

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Speaker 1: you look for secret weapons stashes. If you find any

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Speaker 1: of these things or enough suspicious activity, well, war's an

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Speaker 1: ugly thing. You start burning down the village, refuge hit

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Speaker 1: the road. They're in the course of our search and

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Speaker 1: destroy campaigns, there were millions of refugees created by US

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Speaker 1: and the Vietnamese. As again, I mean, wars fought amongst

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Speaker 1: civilians wherever they're fought are the most horrible wars. You've

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Speaker 1: seen enough pictures and video out there of just line

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Speaker 1: after line after line of women and children walking up

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Speaker 1: the roads with the belongings they can carry. That's all

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Speaker 1: the belongings to have left in the world. And so

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Speaker 1: we're burning out villages, we're running people out, we're also bombing.

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Speaker 1: These search and destroy campaigns were also aerial bombing campaigns.

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Speaker 1: What you're trying to clear with a search and destroy

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Speaker 1: campaign is an area. It's an area focused thing, and

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Speaker 1: they last thirty days, forty days. A sustain campaign over

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Speaker 1: and over bombs patrols, bombs, patrols, bombs patrols. You're trying

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Speaker 1: to clear an area out. That's a search in destroy campaign. Now,

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Speaker 1: were they successful or not? Everyone can argue about this,

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Speaker 1: because everyone argues about everything when it comes to Vietnam.

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Speaker 1: The military just started counting bodies to try to report

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Speaker 1: how successful it was. Because we always killed more of

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Speaker 1: them than they could kill of us. We had better training,

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Speaker 1: more firepower. So they'd go attack an area for thirty

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Speaker 1: days and at the end of it day say, NIC's

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Speaker 1: we killed two thousand of them, we lost one hundred

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Speaker 1: of ours. We won. Kind of it's still a bad area,

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Speaker 1: all right. So that's search and destroy. We'll read you

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Speaker 1: a search and destroy citation and email recommendation. Next Jesse Kelly.

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Speaker 1: It is the Jesse Kelly Show, honoring the fallen on

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Speaker 1: this Memorial Day and kind of did World War two

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Speaker 1: first hour, Korea second hour talking about fallen troops. This hour,

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Speaker 1: we're going to focus more on Vietnam. Was kind of

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Speaker 1: just going through search and destroy missions. And you should

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Speaker 1: know before I go into this whish service cross citation

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Speaker 1: and the email someone emailed in, you should know that

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Speaker 1: they were extremely nerve racking, very difficult campaigns for the

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Speaker 1: troops themselves. Think about what a mission that is. You

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Speaker 1: have to go root out gorillas. Well, gorilla fighters fight dirty?

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Speaker 1: Why because they have to, You fight as dirty as

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Speaker 1: you have to. So these were the campaigns where our

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Speaker 1: guys would routinely be sniped and that was such a

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Speaker 1: problem in Vietnam. Sniper fire it's always difficult, it's always horrible.

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Speaker 1: But when you're in that kind of an environment, there's

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Speaker 1: a lot of easy places for a sniper to hide,

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Speaker 1: especially when they have holes in the ground. The booby

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Speaker 1: traps were terrible. You know about pungy sticks or pungee pits,

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Speaker 1: at least I hope you've heard of them before. They're

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Speaker 1: just long, sharpened wooden steaks, and the Vietnamese would make well.

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Speaker 1: They used them in a bunch of different ways, but

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Speaker 1: one of the main ways, the main way they used

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Speaker 1: them is they would simply have a pit. They would

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Speaker 1: dig in the ground, call it a few feet deep

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Speaker 1: three four feet deep, and they cover up the pits.

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Speaker 1: You wouldn't know there was a pit there, and if

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Speaker 1: you stepped on it, you would fall through. Well, it's

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Speaker 1: not just that there were wooden sticks there. They would

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Speaker 1: uh go number two on them, and what that did was,

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Speaker 1: as you can imagine, would create basically an instant infection.

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Speaker 1: And unless you have a strong stomach, I wouldn't bother

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Speaker 1: looking this up, but you can look this up and

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Speaker 1: see pictures of guys who have stepped on them with

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Speaker 1: wooden stakes through their feet, through their legs to there.

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Speaker 1: It's debilitating. So that's one of the things they went through,

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Speaker 1: then you have to get metavact out of there. They

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Speaker 1: would have not all booby not all booby traps are

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Speaker 1: made to kill you. They would put booby traps up

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Speaker 1: like glass jars at eye level. That won't really create

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Speaker 1: enough shrapnel to kill you. But one moment you're walking

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Speaker 1: with your buddies. The next moment, boom, there's an explosion,

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Speaker 1: and your buddy doesn't have eyes anymore. He's blind now

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Speaker 1: for the rest of his life. These search and destroy

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Speaker 1: missions were intense, and they were very, very difficult, and

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Speaker 1: very difficult on the troops. And this is well. We

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Speaker 1: got this email about a Joseph Andrew Garcia. The email

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Speaker 1: said this, Jesse, I don't know if I should read

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Speaker 1: his name. I probably can, but Jesse, I don't want

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Speaker 1: to read his name without permission. Jesse, my name is Blank.

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Speaker 1: I was the combat medic in Joe's infantry platoon and

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Speaker 1: was in the same firefight in which Joe was killed.

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Speaker 1: A day doesn't go by that I don't see Joe

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Speaker 1: in my mind's eye leaping from the irrigation ditch and

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Speaker 1: charging across the road with his M fourteen rifle in

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Speaker 1: his right hand and the laws rocket anti tank rocket

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Speaker 1: in his left. Please don't misunderstand. I'm fortunate to have

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Speaker 1: never suffered from pro traumatic stress. It's just that I

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Speaker 1: always want to always remember that, for one brief period

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Speaker 1: in my life, my boots walked on the same ground.

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Speaker 1: I shared jokes and drank beer with the true American hero.

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Speaker 1: And without further ado, this is the American Hero Joseph

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Speaker 1: Andrew Garcia's Distinguished Service Cross. The President of the United

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Speaker 1: States of America, authorized by Act of Congress July ninth,

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen, amended by Act of July twenty fifth, nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty three, takes pride in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross

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Speaker 1: posthumously to Specialist fourth Class Joseph Andrew Garcia, United States

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Speaker 1: Army for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations involving

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Speaker 1: conflict with an armed hostile force in the Republic of Vietnam,

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Speaker 1: while serving with Company A, first Battalion, eighteenth Infantry, second Brigade,

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Speaker 1: First Infantry Division, our first Infantry Division Specialists for Garcia

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Speaker 1: distinguished himself by exceptionally valorous actions on the thirty first

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Speaker 1: of January nineteen sixty eight, as a member of an

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Speaker 1: infantry unit conducting search and destroyers operations near Tan Sun

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Speaker 1: Nut Airbase. His patoon, the lead element of the company,

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Speaker 1: was suddenly subjected to intense machine gun, automatic weapons and

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Speaker 1: small arms fire from an insurgent force of unknown size.

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Speaker 1: Serving as point man, Specialist Garcia remained completely exposed to

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Speaker 1: the ravaging enemy fusillade to provide covering fire for his

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Speaker 1: comrades as they deployed in defensive positions. During the ensuing firefight,

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Speaker 1: he located a Vietcong machine gun emplacement that had inflicted

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Speaker 1: several casualties to his unit. With complete disregard for his safety,

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Speaker 1: Specialist Garcia armed himself with a light anti tank weapon

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Speaker 1: and crawled across an open field toward the hostile position.

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Speaker 1: He was severely wounded by a burst of enemy automatic

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Speaker 1: weapons fire as he maneuvered forward. Heedless of the hail

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Speaker 1: of bullets continually striking around him, he fearlessly rose to

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Speaker 1: one knee and fired his weapon from point plank range

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Speaker 1: at the machine gun, destroying it and killing its crew.

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Speaker 1: As he fired his weapon, Specialist Garcia was mortally wounded

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Speaker 1: by an enemy sniper bullet. Specialists for Garcia's extraordinary heroism

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Speaker 1: and devotion to duty at the cost of his life.

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Speaker 1: We're in keeping with the highest traditions of military service

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Speaker 1: and reflect reflect great credit upon himself his unit in

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Speaker 1: the United States Army nineteen years old. Nineteen years old

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Speaker 1: died that day, died low crawling across to enemy fire

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Speaker 1: so he could fire an anti tank weapon into an

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Speaker 1: enemy machine gun emplacement and stop that machine gun emplacement

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Speaker 1: from killing his buddies. Nineteen years old. That's something we

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Speaker 1: don't think about enough either, is it. Reagan talked about

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Speaker 1: this once during one of his favorite famous speeches. But

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Speaker 1: it's true. The mind plays a trick on you. Make

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Speaker 1: sure these guys as old men, right, because that's how

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Speaker 1: we picture them. But they were kids man, nineteen nineteen

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Speaker 1: year old lions is what they were, all right. We

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Speaker 1: have another one, maybe some POW talk next. It is

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Speaker 1: the Jesse Kelly Show on a Memorial Day, a Memorial

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Speaker 1: Day where we are honoring the fallen. Remember you can

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Speaker 1: email the show if you want, Jesse at Jesse Kellyshow

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Speaker 1: dot com, Jesse at Jesse kellyshow dot com. Before we

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Speaker 1: move on to this POW story, Vietnam POW. I thought,

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Speaker 1: as long as we're on that same search and destroy mission.

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Speaker 1: Now that we've kind of gone over what those were

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Speaker 1: in a little way, I thought maybe we should do

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Speaker 1: one more of those. Here this is for a Julius

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Speaker 1: Maddox US Army Distinguished Service Cross. The President of the

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Speaker 1: United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress July ninth,

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen, takes pride in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross

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Speaker 1: posthumously to Private first Class Julius Maddox, United States Army

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Speaker 1: for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations involving conflict

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Speaker 1: with an armed hostile force in the Republic of Vietnam.

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Speaker 1: While serving with the Headquarters Company, first Battalion, fourteenth Infantry,

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Speaker 1: fourth Infantry Division, Private first Class Madics distinguished himself by

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Speaker 1: exceptionally valorous actions. On the sixth of February nineteen sixty eight,

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Speaker 1: as medical aid man of an infantry company on a

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Speaker 1: search and destroy operation near hoy Ann. While crossing an

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Speaker 1: open dry rice paddy, his unit was hit by devastating

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Speaker 1: fire from enemy soldiers entrenched in camouflaged positions within two

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Speaker 1: meters of the friendly forces Goahly. The ravaging small arms

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Speaker 1: and machine gun barrage killed or wounded many of the

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Speaker 1: men in his platoon during the initial moments of the

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Speaker 1: ambush and the remainder of the friendly force withdrew to

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Speaker 1: concealment offered by a nearby cane field. With complete disregard

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Speaker 1: for his welfare, Private Mattocks sprinted across the bar terrain

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Speaker 1: under a hail of fire to reach a wounded comrade

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Speaker 1: and carry him to safety. Seeing a fellow medic hit,

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Speaker 1: he returned through enemy withering or through with withering enemy

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Speaker 1: machine gun fire to move the man to a helicopter

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Speaker 1: evacuation landing zone. When the rescue ships arrived, he placed

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Speaker 1: his patients aboard, secured a litter from one of the crews,

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Speaker 1: and returned to aid soldiers still trapped in the deadly

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Speaker 1: killing zone. He was shot in both legs by North

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Speaker 1: Vietnamese fire, but ignored his wounds to carry another casualty

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Speaker 1: to the waiting aircraft. He was urged to board the

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Speaker 1: helicopter for evacuation, but he refused any aid for himself

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Speaker 1: and returned to rescue more wounded. Only when he was

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Speaker 1: certain that all his injured comrades were safe did he

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Speaker 1: allow treatment and evacuation for himself. His courageous and selfless

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Speaker 1: action and the heat of battle were directly responsible for

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Speaker 1: saving the lives of several fellow soldiers. Private first Class

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Speaker 1: Mattox's extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty. We're in keeping

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Speaker 1: with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great

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Speaker 1: credit upon himself his unit in the United States Army.

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Speaker 1: And he was killed in action sixteen days after that. Again,

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Speaker 1: like I've explained, we read Medal of Honors citations every

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Speaker 1: single money as part of our Medal of Honor Monday,

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Speaker 1: But those aren't the only awards for valor. And you

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Speaker 1: read through these other awards for valor, and you say

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Speaker 1: to yourself, how does that guy not get a Medal

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Speaker 1: of honor? The dude just keeps charging into the teeth

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Speaker 1: of an ambush to pick people up and carry them

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Speaker 1: to safety, including being shot in both legs and still

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Speaker 1: carrying them to safety and refusing to be evacuated. Not

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Speaker 1: that there's anything wrong with the distinguished Service Cross, mind you,

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Speaker 1: but how in the world is that not a metal

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Speaker 1: of honor? What does a guy gotta do for a

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Speaker 1: medal of honor? Around these parts, which brings me to

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Speaker 1: the final part of our show today on Medal of

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Speaker 1: Honor Monday. POW's. We talked about POW's briefly in the beginning,

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Speaker 1: when it came to Japan and the Pacific portion of

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Speaker 1: that war. The POW's in general, it's a difficult conversation

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Speaker 1: to have. It's always a difficult conversation to have because

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Speaker 1: when you're a family member of a POW, what's going

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Speaker 1: through your head? Is there anything worse? If your son

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Speaker 1: is he's not killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan, he's

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Speaker 1: captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan? Do you ever sleep

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Speaker 1: again as a parent wondering what your child is going through?

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Speaker 1: Wondering what are they doing to him? Is he already dead?

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Speaker 1: They're torturing him as he's suffering from disease. So the POWs,

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Speaker 1: they don't get I know, I shouldn't say they don't

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Speaker 1: get enough credit, because we do honor POWs a lot,

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Speaker 1: but POW's, especially in these conflicts where you're facing a

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Speaker 1: power who doesn't believe in any kind of ethical treatment

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Speaker 1: for POW's, it's something. Now let's discuss these some of

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Speaker 1: these some Air Force things. When it comes to Vietnam,

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Speaker 1: we had these planes called RF four c's phantoms is

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Speaker 1: what they were called. But don't worry about details. Don't

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Speaker 1: worry about that. What these planes were, where they had

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Speaker 1: cameras attached to them. Daytime, nighttime didn't matter. You would

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Speaker 1: fly reconnaissance missions around to see where things are. Always remember,

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Speaker 1: we take for granted because of modern technology, we make

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Speaker 1: the mistake of thinking that, even today, that we just

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Speaker 1: know where things are. I know they have this many

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Speaker 1: artillery pieces here, and I know that this unit of

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Speaker 1: a thousand strong is here, and this unit of two

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Speaker 1: thousand strong is there. But even today, with all the

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Speaker 1: fancy satellites and fancy spy planes, we don't know where

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Speaker 1: many things are. And things get moved, and things stay hidden,

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Speaker 1: and you try to offuskate where things are. Chris, No, seriously,

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Speaker 1: you try to cover up where things are. Now, that's

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Speaker 1: with today, that's what's satellite imaging from today. Go back

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Speaker 1: to the basically the rest of human history. Half the

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Speaker 1: battle is trying to figure out where they are and

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Speaker 1: how many of them are they. Again, because we read history,

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Speaker 1: we always read about a battle. In hindsight, we read

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Speaker 1: about a battle where one hundred men will take on

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Speaker 1: a thousand men. Well, the hundred men will usually take

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Speaker 1: on a thousand men because they didn't know there were

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Speaker 1: freaking thousand men over there. You don't know. It's not

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Speaker 1: like the enemy walks around with a big billboard. We

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Speaker 1: are one hundred miles to the east and we outnumber

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Speaker 1: you ten to one. That's not how it works. And

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Speaker 1: when you have a country like Vietnam, with all those

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Speaker 1: mountains and all those jungles and things, it's hard to

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Speaker 1: get accurate information. Where is the enemy, how many are there,

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Speaker 1: how much equipment does he have? What do you do?

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Speaker 1: So reconnaissance was huge in Vietnam, But the problem with

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Speaker 1: that is our air force had gotten way more modern

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Speaker 1: and way better. So now we're not dealing with prop

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Speaker 1: planes propeller power planes. We're dealing with jet fighters now.

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Speaker 1: So that's good. Well, wait, nice technology, jet fighters. Except

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Speaker 1: technology goes both ways. Yeah, it's a jet fighter. But

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Speaker 1: now the enemy he has surface to air missiles that

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Speaker 1: can track your jet fighter on radar, meaning he has

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Speaker 1: things on the ground. And again it's not like there's

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Speaker 1: a billboard. Hey be careful of this area. There are

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Speaker 1: surface to air missiles here. Don't fly over it. You

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Speaker 1: don't know until you're in the cockpit and it starts

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Speaker 1: beeping at you, uh oh, missile incoming. And the North

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Speaker 1: Vietnamese army was not ill equipped. Now they didn't have

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Speaker 1: near our equipment, don't get me wrong, but the Soviets

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Speaker 1: were helping them out with equipment. The Chinese were helping

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Speaker 1: them out with equipment. And do you think, look, look

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Speaker 1: what we're doing to Russia today, sending them tanks, sending

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Speaker 1: them all these missiles and things like that. That's the

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Speaker 1: same kind of thing that they were all doing in Vietnam.

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Speaker 1: Do you think Russia was sitting back smiling every time

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Speaker 1: a surface to air missile took out an American fighter jet?

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Speaker 1: Of course they were. Again, this is the ugliness of

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Speaker 1: the proxy war situation. All right. Back to these fighter pilots.

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Speaker 1: I've always viewed this as one of those really really

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Speaker 1: nerve wracking things. But most of the pilots, virtually every

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Speaker 1: military pilot I've ever known, had gigantic brass ones, so

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Speaker 1: they probably just didn't think about this at all. Getting

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Speaker 1: shot down in enemy territory, specifically getting shot down in

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Speaker 1: enemy territory in a place that you have been bombing.

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Speaker 1: Picture that a place you've been bombing. Just do yourself

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Speaker 1: a favorite well we'll come right back and we'll finish

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Speaker 1: this thought. I want you to think about your city,

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Speaker 1: your town, your area being bombed. Think about that for

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Speaker 1: a moment. Hang on the Jesse Kelly Show. It is

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Speaker 1: the Jesse Kelly Show, final segment of this Jesse Kelly

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Speaker 1: Show on a Memorial Day, and we will be back

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Speaker 1: to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow. We just we have always,

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Speaker 1: we've always thought it was important to come do a

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Speaker 1: show today, a special show today, no live ads, no

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Speaker 1: nothing like that. It's just to show to honor the fallen.

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Speaker 1: We get one of those a year, So that's what

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Speaker 1: we're doing today. Now back to the pow thing, back

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Speaker 1: to because we're finishing up with our thoughts on Vietnam.

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Speaker 1: Remember part of the reason it's so brutal for pilots

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Speaker 1: who get shot down in war wars that take place

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Speaker 1: where civilians are, which, let's be honest, that's most wars

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Speaker 1: you don't arrange to go meet out in the countryside.

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00:27:09,160 --> 00:27:16,040
Speaker 1: Wars today are fought where civilians live. Planes drop explosives,

426
00:27:17,040 --> 00:27:23,120
Speaker 1: Explosives kill people, They kill people you love, they destroy

427
00:27:23,320 --> 00:27:27,960
Speaker 1: things you love. Picture this, Picture this, and I'm not

428
00:27:28,040 --> 00:27:29,840
Speaker 1: doing this we're the bad guy thing. That's not what

429
00:27:29,880 --> 00:27:32,160
Speaker 1: I'm doing at all. I'm trying to explain why it's

430
00:27:32,160 --> 00:27:34,640
Speaker 1: so dangerous for these pilots when they get shot down.

431
00:27:34,960 --> 00:27:39,320
Speaker 1: Picture your town, your area, your your neighborhood. What if

432
00:27:39,600 --> 00:27:44,840
Speaker 1: enemy planes, Chinese planes? What if they started strafing your neighborhood.

433
00:27:45,920 --> 00:27:50,840
Speaker 1: What happens the day a kid gets killed? What if

434
00:27:50,840 --> 00:27:55,919
Speaker 1: it's your kid? What happens today they drop a bomb

435
00:27:56,040 --> 00:27:59,760
Speaker 1: or two in your neighborhood. What if it blows up

436
00:27:59,760 --> 00:28:02,840
Speaker 1: your church on Sunday with everyone in it. What if

437
00:28:03,320 --> 00:28:08,240
Speaker 1: it destroys the local school, the hospital. You see your friends,

438
00:28:08,480 --> 00:28:13,119
Speaker 1: your neighbors, your family members, You see them die because

439
00:28:13,160 --> 00:28:16,000
Speaker 1: of these planes, day after day after day. They're flying overhead,

440
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:19,040
Speaker 1: flying overhead. Now picture this moment, I just a you're

441
00:28:19,080 --> 00:28:23,200
Speaker 1: picturing that. Now, picture this. The day comes, you look

442
00:28:23,280 --> 00:28:27,280
Speaker 1: up and you see one of those pilots eject out

443
00:28:27,280 --> 00:28:30,760
Speaker 1: of that plane and he is descending down to you

444
00:28:31,000 --> 00:28:35,040
Speaker 1: on a parachute. What kind of a reception do you

445
00:28:35,240 --> 00:28:38,320
Speaker 1: think he just might get when he hits the ground.

446
00:28:38,960 --> 00:28:41,840
Speaker 1: How is he received by the family who just lost

447
00:28:41,880 --> 00:28:46,920
Speaker 1: their toddler out front? Now, picture American pilots in Vietnam.

448
00:28:47,520 --> 00:28:51,280
Speaker 1: That's what they oftentimes went through. Oftentimes, these pilots, they

449
00:28:51,320 --> 00:28:54,760
Speaker 1: would be beaten to death by the villagers before the

450
00:28:54,800 --> 00:28:57,680
Speaker 1: North Vietnamese or the viet Cong could even take possession

451
00:28:57,800 --> 00:29:03,440
Speaker 1: of them. They torture them. They they'd stab them with pitchforks, knives.

452
00:29:03,600 --> 00:29:06,320
Speaker 1: There are all kinds of these horrible stories of things

453
00:29:06,320 --> 00:29:09,520
Speaker 1: that happened to these pilots when they dropped in. You

454
00:29:09,600 --> 00:29:11,800
Speaker 1: didn't want to be caught by. It was not just

455
00:29:11,800 --> 00:29:14,360
Speaker 1: like you had to avoid the military, dude, you had

456
00:29:14,360 --> 00:29:17,720
Speaker 1: to avoid the civilians who don't appreciate having ordnance dropped

457
00:29:17,760 --> 00:29:21,520
Speaker 1: on their villages. They were as dangerous as the military. Okay,

458
00:29:21,560 --> 00:29:24,520
Speaker 1: so that brings us to this. We're going to read

459
00:29:24,560 --> 00:29:28,240
Speaker 1: the Air Force Cross citation of A. Edwin Lee Adterberry.

460
00:29:29,200 --> 00:29:32,320
Speaker 1: You finally do get taken prisoner, let's say you didn't

461
00:29:32,320 --> 00:29:36,840
Speaker 1: get killed. Then you're being held prisoner in one of

462
00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:40,400
Speaker 1: the various prisoner camps or just prisons, I guess you

463
00:29:40,440 --> 00:29:44,320
Speaker 1: could call them for the POW's over there. You're not

464
00:29:44,360 --> 00:29:48,960
Speaker 1: only subjected to torture pretty routinely, you're also being used

465
00:29:49,040 --> 00:29:51,840
Speaker 1: as a propaganda piece, which we'll go into that in

466
00:29:51,920 --> 00:29:57,160
Speaker 1: just a second, you're also struggling with disease. Your nutrition

467
00:29:57,520 --> 00:30:01,160
Speaker 1: is never where it should be. Therefore disease creeps in easier.

468
00:30:01,400 --> 00:30:03,760
Speaker 1: And this is an area with disease all over the

469
00:30:03,800 --> 00:30:09,240
Speaker 1: place anyway, So you're fighting malaria, you're fighting barry, barry, dysentery,

470
00:30:09,320 --> 00:30:14,880
Speaker 1: you're fighting there's so much working against you here. Now,

471
00:30:15,760 --> 00:30:19,880
Speaker 1: let's clarify something about the propaganda. For instance, this Air

472
00:30:19,920 --> 00:30:23,400
Speaker 1: Force cross citation, it was in a place, a prison

473
00:30:23,480 --> 00:30:26,120
Speaker 1: camp that was known as the zoo. The zoo is

474
00:30:26,160 --> 00:30:28,320
Speaker 1: what our guys called it. It was known as the

475
00:30:28,440 --> 00:30:32,200
Speaker 1: zoo because there were these concrete enclosures where our guys

476
00:30:32,240 --> 00:30:35,320
Speaker 1: were held, and really the only way you could see

477
00:30:35,360 --> 00:30:37,720
Speaker 1: out or anyone could see in is they had to

478
00:30:37,760 --> 00:30:40,280
Speaker 1: pretty much crack the door a little and peek in

479
00:30:40,840 --> 00:30:43,160
Speaker 1: like an animal. So they called it the zoo. But

480
00:30:43,240 --> 00:30:46,840
Speaker 1: this place is horrific. And they would have our guys

481
00:30:47,280 --> 00:30:50,200
Speaker 1: go out and they'd hand them a basketball, and there'd

482
00:30:50,200 --> 00:30:52,600
Speaker 1: be a basketball hoop there and they take a picture

483
00:30:52,640 --> 00:30:55,280
Speaker 1: of them, and then they'd propagandize that out there and say,

484
00:30:55,320 --> 00:30:57,720
Speaker 1: look how well we're treating it. These guys are playing hoops,

485
00:30:57,920 --> 00:31:00,719
Speaker 1: when really they were just torturing all the guys hour before,

486
00:31:01,120 --> 00:31:03,720
Speaker 1: but they would routinely do things like this, this really

487
00:31:03,720 --> 00:31:07,680
Speaker 1: really ugly affair. Anyway, here's the Air Force Cross citation

488
00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:11,360
Speaker 1: of an Edwin Lee Adterbury. The President of the United

489
00:31:11,400 --> 00:31:15,200
Speaker 1: States of America, authorized by Title nine or authorized by

490
00:31:15,240 --> 00:31:18,600
Speaker 1: Title ten, Section eighty seven forty two United States Code

491
00:31:18,880 --> 00:31:22,880
Speaker 1: takes pride in presenting the Air Force Cross posthumously to

492
00:31:23,000 --> 00:31:27,240
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Colonel Edwin Lee Adderbury, United States Air Force for

493
00:31:27,280 --> 00:31:31,800
Speaker 1: extraordinary heroism and military operations against an opposing force as

494
00:31:31,840 --> 00:31:34,640
Speaker 1: a prisoner of war in North Vietnam from the eleventh

495
00:31:34,680 --> 00:31:37,800
Speaker 1: of May nineteen sixty nine to the fourteenth of May

496
00:31:37,880 --> 00:31:41,520
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine. On the eleventh of May nineteen sixty nine,

497
00:31:41,560 --> 00:31:45,840
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Colonel Aderbury escaped from the North Vietnamese prison camp

498
00:31:45,960 --> 00:31:49,480
Speaker 1: known as the Zoo and was recaptured twelve hours later.

499
00:31:49,880 --> 00:31:53,400
Speaker 1: He was subjected to brutal torture for confessions pertaining to

500
00:31:53,440 --> 00:31:58,000
Speaker 1: camp leadership, organization and details of his escape plans. He

501
00:31:58,160 --> 00:32:00,440
Speaker 1: was last seen by other prisoners of war on the

502
00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:04,000
Speaker 1: fourteenth of May nineteen sixty nine, and the North Vietnamese

503
00:32:04,080 --> 00:32:07,880
Speaker 1: later reported that Lieutenant Colonel Adderbury had died through his

504
00:32:07,960 --> 00:32:11,240
Speaker 1: extraordinary heroism and willpower in the face of the enemy.

505
00:32:11,520 --> 00:32:15,720
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Colonel Adderbury reflected the highest credit upon himself and

506
00:32:15,800 --> 00:32:22,920
Speaker 1: the United States Air Force. You should know a couple details. One,

507
00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:27,960
Speaker 1: we ended up recovering his body from the Vietnamese government

508
00:32:28,080 --> 00:32:30,800
Speaker 1: five years after the fact, and I always liked that

509
00:32:30,920 --> 00:32:34,400
Speaker 1: he eventually came home. He'd been held for six hundred

510
00:32:34,440 --> 00:32:38,480
Speaker 1: and forty six days when they captured him. Well, what

511
00:32:38,600 --> 00:32:41,239
Speaker 1: we know is one of the buddies he was captured with.

512
00:32:41,360 --> 00:32:45,240
Speaker 1: We know his name. His name is Drameshi Dramesi, Drameshi John,

513
00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:49,600
Speaker 1: A Dramesi John was captured with him, and John lived,

514
00:32:50,160 --> 00:32:53,239
Speaker 1: but they pinned him face down to a table and

515
00:32:53,360 --> 00:32:57,400
Speaker 1: beat him with rubbers, They tied up, they put his

516
00:32:57,520 --> 00:33:01,720
Speaker 1: ankles in irons. They torched these guys horribly. And that's

517
00:33:01,760 --> 00:33:05,200
Speaker 1: how that's how mister Edwin Lee Atterberry met his end.

518
00:33:05,240 --> 00:33:07,040
Speaker 1: And that's what he did on behalf of this nation.

519
00:33:08,160 --> 00:33:11,560
Speaker 1: So that's why we did a medal of honor or

520
00:33:11,600 --> 00:33:13,920
Speaker 1: a Memorial Day show the way we did it today,

521
00:33:14,360 --> 00:33:17,760
Speaker 1: to honor people, honor the fall, and honor the Adderberries,

522
00:33:17,800 --> 00:33:21,560
Speaker 1: the POWs, any veterans of any war ever, any veterans

523
00:33:21,600 --> 00:33:24,960
Speaker 1: of any military service, whether you dried or in whether

524
00:33:24,960 --> 00:33:27,880
Speaker 1: you died in training or in combat, we honor you

525
00:33:27,960 --> 00:33:30,959
Speaker 1: a great deal. God bless you, God bless your families. Today,

526
00:33:31,840 --> 00:33:32,360
Speaker 1: that's all