Vietnam Veteran News with Mack Payne

Janna Hoehn, a good friend of this podcast, was recently presented with a Civilian Lifetime Honorary Membership in the Vietnam Veterans of America. This presentation was done to show the appreciation of the VVA and all Vietnam Veterans for the incredibly tremendous job she has done and is doing to help the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund track down photographs of every person whose name appears on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington DC. The pictures will be a big part of the proposed Education Center that will be located adjacent to the Wall in an underground two story structure.

Hoehn became heavily involved in the search for pictures six years ago after a visit to the Vietnam Memorial Wall. She did not know anyone named on the wall so she rubbed a name at random, Gregory John Crossman, an Air Force pilot, for a memento. She got interested in the name and looked into his background when led to her finding his picture. She kept it in a scrapbook. Later she heard about the Wall of Faces project and decided to submit Crossman's picture to the project. She was thanked by Jan Scruggs, the head of the project, and he asked her to help find pictures of fallen heroes from her home state of Hawaii.

She gladly agreed to help and as of today she has personally accounted for 5,000 pictures being secured for the collection. When she started six years ago 32,000 pictures for the 58,315 names on the Wall were needed. Today the number of pictures needed is 7,472 and that number is shrinking daily with the capture of new images. Currently Hoehn is working diligently to find missing pictures in Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas and Missouri.

On February 25, 2017 the VVA chapter in Kailua, Hawaii, not far from Honolulu presented Hoehn with a Civilian Lifetime Honorary Membership in the Vietnam Veterans of America. She has done a great job for the project and intends to see it thru to completion.

Listen to her compelling story in this podcast episode.

CLICK HERE for information about the Wall of Faces.

In the continuing effort of this podcast, Vietnam Veteran News, to highlight outstanding representatives of the Great Vietnam Veteran Generation, Bob Parsons will be featured in this episode. There was a story about him and his foundation that described how he is helping the Semper Fi Foundation in The AZBIGMEDIA website that was titled: Bob Parsons’ Double Down For Vets reaches $20M goal.

Parsons grew up in the inner city of Baltimore in a family that struggled financially. Upon graduation he joined the Marines and served in Vietnam with 1st Battalion, 26th Marines in the 1st Marine Division. He was wounded in 1969 and earned a Purple Heart. After his hitch in the Marines, Parsons went to college at the University of Baltimore where he earned a degree in accounting, graduating magna cum laude.

After college he went to work in the business field. And to work he went. Today he has a net worth of $2.3 billion (one of his companies was the giant internet domain store GoDaddy). As his estate grew he always maintained an interest in veterans’ issues. Through The Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation, he and his wife Renee have generously granted more than $31 million to the Semper Fi Fund.

The Semper Fi Fund was established in 2004 with a simple vision of providing the country’s heroes with the best care and support available in their hour of need. Since its inception the Semper Fi Fund has awarded more than $142 million in assistance to 18,000 service members.

The story on the AZBIGMEDIA website announced that the annual “Double Down for Veterans” fundraising challenge has raised $20 million as a result of Bob Parsons leading the way with a donation of $50,000 and a pledge to match all other donations dollar to dollar up to $10 million.

CLICK HERE for the Semper Fi Fund website. You are encouraged to follow the lead of Bob Parsons and make a donation to the Fund to help our veterans.

Did you hear the latest? It seems Amy Pascal’s Pascal Pictures has asked Steven Spielberg to direct a new movie that is in the works. It will tell the story of Daniel Ellsberg and his theft of the Pentagon Papers back in 1971. The proposed film will be co-financed by Fox and Amblin Entertainment. The movie project was recently covered in a story in the Business Insider website: businessinsider.com titled: Spielberg is making a film on the 'Pentagon Papers' that exposed lies about the Vietnam War that was submitted Paul Szoldra.

Szoldra told how the now movie hinge around the participation of The Washington Post in publishing the papers. Tom Hanks is slated to star as the Post's top editor, Ben Bradlee and none other than Meryl Streep is penciled in to play the part of the paper's publisher, Kay Graham. No word yet on who will pay snitch, Daniel Ellsberg.

Back in the day the "Pentagon Papers" were classified as Top Secret - Sensitive. Today they have long since been declassified and are available for reading by any interested party at the National Archives. CLICK HERE to see them in their entirety at no cost. Anyone with any interest in the whole picture from the insider's viewpoint are encouraged to go the site and review history.

Your podcaster has always had an interest in the events that led to the US becoming involved in that challenging war. As a result, he perused Vol 1, Vietnam and the U.S., 1940-1950. The findings were that during World War II the United States was torn by a desire to see a free Indochina as championed by F.D.R and wartime realities. This line, in the opinion of yours truly, sums up the reason 53,000 Americans died in a war with dubious causes: "Through the fall and winter of l945-1946 the U.S. received a series of requests from Ho Chi Minh for intervention in Vietnam; these were unanswered."

In several of the previous episodes of this podcast, the US Marine Corps and its members have been highlighted. There is nothing wrong with that because they did a tremendous job in that conflict. In this episode we will be taking a look at the many challenges the US Air Force faced when they entered the war in 1965. There was a very informative post about the situation on The War on the Rocks website warontherocks.com titled: How the U.S. Air Force Went from Eagle to Chicken that was submitted by Col. Mike “Starbaby” Pietrucha. In the post, Pietrucha described how the Air Force was configured when it was committed to the Vietnam War which that being fought against a determined enemy utilizing guerilla tactics in a challenging environment of mountains, jungles and rice paddies.

In 1965 the Air Force was configured to fight a nuclear war against the USSR in Europe. It was totally unsuited for anything short of nuclear war. At the time, its primary fighter force consisted of the “Century-series” fighters (F-100 through F-106), and hundreds of derivatives of the Korean War-era F-86 Sabre. The F-105 Thunderchief, the best fighter in the inventory at the time, was a straight-line, single-engine behemoth designed to deliver a nuclear weapon from its internal bomb bay. The Air force had no attack aircraft at the time and only five observation aircraft (five O-1 Bird Dogs).

Much to their credit, the Air Force leadership got busy and successfully pivoted the service into a highly efficient jungle fighter. The Air Force reacted to the Vietnam test by getting rid of interceptors and obsolete aircraft and bringing on line aircraft and aircraft types that were better suited to the Vietnam War.  In 1969, the Air Force had five fighter/attack aircraft production lines running.  By the fall of Saigon in 1975 (after the United States had been out of Vietnam for two years), a decade of investment had reduced the Century-series strength from over 95 percent of the fighter/attack force to less than a third.

Recently two US Marine Corps Vietnam Veterans got back together after a 44 year gap in their relationship. The reunion was described in the LEX18.com website titled: Vietnam Veterans Finally Reconnect After 44 Years. It was a highly emotional event when Ken Barnell of Sierra Vista, Arizona visited with David Freeze at his home in Pryorsburg, Kentucky.

The writer of this piece recently had a similar experience that helped him appreciate how the two Marine veterans felt. He made contact with his old racing buddy, Al Marmande, of Houma, Louisiana. They were bonded together by their racing experience. After an absence of contact for fifteen years, it was a joyous occasion when they recently spoke on the phone about old times and an upcoming meeting when the writer plans a trip to New Orleans.

Getting back to the Vietnam Veterans reunion, Barnell and Freeze were assigned to the same unit in Vietnam in 1972. They immediately became fast friends but lost touch with each other when they left the country. Barnell rejoined the Marines after a 14 month period of civilian life and retired from the Corps after 21 years of service. Freeze became a welder but could never shake a feeling of aimlessness and bounced from one job to another. He said this about their situation when they came home: "We were sent home and turned loose to survive the best way we could. You can't live like that, then come home and everything be fine."

Freeze has an advanced lung disease - partly due to exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. His home health nurse, Julie Purcell, was helping him get his affairs in order and when Freeze expressed a desire to see his old friend, Ken Barnell, from Vietnam, she made it happen. Barnell came up from Arizona and visited with his long lost friend for four days in Pryorsburg. They both had a grand time reminiscing about old times.

Their feelings about their time in country was summed up by these comments. Freeze said: "We were doing our jobs. We were supposed to be there." Barnell summed up his thoughts on the subject with the comment: "I felt 100 percent in what we were doing, and I wanted to be with men like (Freeze) who I knew I could count on. My job wasn't to ask why - my job was to do or die."

Bert Crum of Norfolk, Nebraska is another outstanding representative of the great Vietnam Veteran Generation, one as great as any that ever heeded the call of duty from its country. Despite being seriously wounded by a mortar explosion in Vietnam he has survived and recently celebrated his 70th birthday. The event and his life story was featured in a story in The Omaha World-Herald titled:  Veteran who defied death in Vietnam will get birthday salute in Norfolk that was submitted by Michael Kelly.

After graduation from Omaha Tech High in 1966 Bert enlisted in the US Marine Corps. He did this so he could follow in his father's footsteps who served in the Marines during World War II. After his training ended he was immediately shipped out to Vietnam. On Sept. 25, 1967 he was crouched in a foxhole with two other Marines when a enemy mortar round made a direct hit on the three. The two Marines next to him were killed on the spot and Bert suffered a severe brain injury.

He would up spending seven years in a Topeka, Kansas hospital recovering from his injury. If anyone deserves to be bitter about the tough hand dealt to him by life it is Bert Crum. He has endured lifelong physical disabilities because of his service in the US Marine Corps. In a 1975, Bert said from his Kansas hospital bed that he didn’t regret volunteering for the Marines and would do it again if he could.

He continues to display a positive attitude at the veterans home in Norfolk, Nebraska, where he moves around in his wheelchair. Rose Ann Ross, a social worker at the home says this about Bert: “Part of his daily ritual is to go around and tell everybody good morning. He is very well-liked, and we are privileged to have him.”

Happy birthday Bert Crum, LCpl, US Marine Corps

Something exciting and wonderful just happened for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund in Washington DC. They received a a $10 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. towards the planned Education Center at The Vietnam Veteran Memorial Wall. There was a story about this generous donation in The Bloo Loop website blooloop.com titled: $10m Donation to Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund for Education Centre at The Wall that was submitted by Justine Maunder of Bloo Loop.

After the Wall was built it was decided to add an education center to explain the context, share the stories and honor the sacrifices of those involved in the war. One of the features of the education center will be a display of pictures of the fallen veterans whose names are on the Wall. Obtaining pictures for all 58,315 names on the wall is a daunting task. To date 50,843 have been secured. One of the people that is making this image search so successful is Janna Hoehn, a frequent guest on this podcast. She started her search for pictures six years ago and has personally added 5000 pictures to the collection.

She and many others are working day and night to get all the pictures collected. The plan is to put them all on display in the planned Education Center at the Wall. The Center will cost $130 million and will have to rely on private donations for its creation. It would be a gigantic disappointment for all those who have worked so hard on finding the images of the fallen heroes to not have a place to let the world see them.

The Education must be and will be built. The Lilly Endowment Inc., an Indianapolis-based, private philanthropic foundation created in 1937 by J.K. Lilly Sr. and his sons J.K. Jr and Eli believes in the project as demonstrated by their $10 million donation to The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF). With that addition to the fund, the amount raised to date is $42.5 million toward the $130 million goal.

You are urged to make a donation to make this deserving project a reality. It will be something you can always be proud of in the years to come.

CLICK HERE to make your donation.

In episode 847 of this podcast, the shocking treatment of a California State Senator was featured. State Senator Janet Nguyen was physically removed from the Senate Chamber while delivering a speech about the late and former State Senator Tom Hayden. Hayden you may remember was a darling of the political left because he was a violent anti-war protestor who was once married to the vivacious and lovely Jane Fonda. The cute couple ventured to North Vietnam at the height of the war to celebrate the efforts of the NVA who at the time was killing their fellow Americans.

Senator Nguyen had the audacity to tell the truth about Hayden and his collusion with the murderous Vietnamese Communists who among other things cut down her relatives after they took over the South. Apparently California Democratic state senators do not believe in free speech. This was demonstrated when they demanded she stop speaking and then manhandled her out of the senate chamber when she continued to exercise his first amendment right of free speech.

The aftermath of that egregious action was described in a story found in The Los Angeles Times titled: California's Democrats created a new GOP star when they booted Janet Nguyen from the Senate floor that was submitted by George Skelton. It seems the State Senate leader Kevin de León did a very smart thing. He owned up to one of the dumbest things ever perpetrated by a California legislative leader. The leader fessed up to fact that he and his fellow Democrats were basically numbskulls for dragging a female, former immigrant, Republican State Senator out of the room.

Sen. Janet Nguyen (R-Garden Grove), the nation’s first Vietnamese American female state legislator, had been trying to speak out on the Senate floor against the late Sen. Tom Hayden, one of the most outspoken opponents of the Vietnam War back in the day. So she was “dragged” off.

Nguyen is now a rising star in California.

East Tennessee resident and Vietnam Veteran Ron Kirby has done it again. He has just returned from his fifth (that's right fifth) return trip to Vietnam. Of course, that trip tally does not count his first trip to that country in 1968 where he was dodging bullets as a door gunner on a Huey Helicopter.

Kirby is a proud Vietnam Veteran who feels strongly along with this writer that the Vietnam Veteran Generation is as great as any that ever answered the call of duty from our country. He cares a great deal for the welfare of his fellow Vietnam Veterans. Several years ago he was one of the founding members of Chapter 1078 of the Vietnam Veterans of America in Knoxville. As a result of his hard work the chapter quickly increased its membership to over 200 veterans making it the third largest VVA chapter in the State.

Several years ago he saw a need to return to Vietnam to "kill some ghosts" that had been lurking in his psyche. Upon his return he told other Vietnam Veterans about his trip. Several expressed an interest in making a trip back themselves. Since he was the "return to Vietnam ghost killer pathfinder" Kirby was prevailed upon to lead other veterans on a return trip to the country. Seeing the need he gladly accepted the requests to lead others back to the place that left such an impression on that generation of veterans.

On Kirby's fifth sojourn back to Vietnam he led a group of two dozen Vietnam Veterans whose expedition down memory lane elicited many tears from the graying veterans. A particularly emotional occurrence for Kirby took place when he returned a Viet Cong flag to one of his former adversaries in Saigon. The flag was picked up on a battlefield by Kirby on the first day of the Tet Offensive forty nine years ago. He packed it away and forgot about it for years but he decided it was time for it to go home.

The presentation of the battle flag to a former captain in the Viet Cong military was recorded by reporters from WBIR in Knoxville who accompanied the veterans on their trip.

CLICK HERE to see the TV record of this amazing event and the whole trip.

 

East Tennessee veteran Ron Kirby visits with a former Viet Cong captain and their interpreters during a recent visit to Vietnam. (Photo: WBIR)

The world we live in is constantly changing. That bit of realism was noted by the writer when he recently revisited former US Army duty stations at Fort Lee, Virginia and Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The changes that occurred over a fifty year period were noteworthy.

Recently there was a story in The Straits Times (Singapore) titled: When a war turns into a nation that was submitted by Ravi Velloor, and associate editor. It addressed another noteworthy change in Vietnam. Velloor was in Vietnam during the season of Tet and it reminded him of the tumultuous Tet season of 1968 in that country. He pointed out how it unpleasantly protruded into the Vietnam War annals. We were lead to believe the Americans were winning and it would only be a matter of time before the National Liberation Front collapsed and all would be in a seventh heaven of joy, happiness and prosperity in South Vietnam.

The VC and NVA launched attacks on towns and cities across the country as it slept late for the normal holiday truce. It would have been a pyrrhic victory for the aggressors had not Walter Cronkite made the statement "that this was a war the United States would not win." That gave North Vietnam renewed vigor despite the loss of more than fifty thousand of their fighters in three days to keep up the fight. Their fight led to the Paris Peace Accords in 1973.

Time does change everything. Vietnam has grown to be the fastest growing economic powerhouse in Southeast Asia. Relations with their former foe the superpower America have come full circle. The US is the largest customer for the garments, electronics and shoes that Vietnam makes and is likely to remain so for years. $176 billion goods that Vietnam sent out to the world last year.

Last year, the remaining restrictions on arms transfers to Vietnam from the US were lifted. This will help a crafty Vietnam deal with the challenges posed by its northern neighbor, China.

The times are a 'changing in Vietnam.