Transcripts For CSPAN3 Oral Histories Kenneth Carlson West Point Interview 20180222

Cadet, has vietnam war service, his years teaching at military colleges, and the time when Newt Gingrich audited his class. The interview is produced by the west point center for oral history. Its an hour and 40 minutes. Good afternoon. Today is 13, november, 2015 and i am in the center for oral history with mr. Kenneth g. Carlson. How are you, sir . I am fine, thank you. Sir, could you please spell your last name for us carlson. Youre not the only carlson in your class, are you . I am not the only carlson in my class. Theres another guy with the same name, kenneth carlson, hes kenneth r. Carlson. He was a wrestler. Im kenneth g. Carlson. I was sort of a basketball player. Did that cause any problems for you . Absolutely. The day i reported into the gymnasium, i walked into the door with my little bag and the people who had the roster there said youve already signed in. I said, no, i havent, i just walked in the door the first time. They said kenneth carlson, you just youve already signed in. I said i really have not. And they said oh, my gosh, theres two of them, kenneth g. And keith r. So when we were in east barracks, i was getting his laundry, which was much too small for me, and he was getting my laundry. So now my classmates know me as ken carlson large, and he is he used to be ken carlson small, but he didnt like that. So he is now ken carlson handsome, and im ken carlson large. And it works out fine. He became an fbi agent. Yes, sir, as long as youre good with it im fine. Im happy with that. Yes, sir. Tell me a little bit about your background, where youre from and where you grew up. Im an army brat. I was born in detroit. My father deployed to world war ii just after my birth. He went to the pacific as an army officer. He was going to be part of the invasion of japan from the philippines. He was an ordnance officer which is why we were in detroit. He came back im sorry, he did not come back. My mother and my brother and i went to japan after the war was over and we were part of mcarthurs pioneers. Wow. We lived in yokohama and my brother played with arthur mcarthur, they were both about the same age and he went to school through some sort of a mail order program. And i was 2 years old at the time. I learned to speak japanese before i learned to speak english because i had an ama who taught me japanese. Yes, sir. A little blonde headed boy walk around saying speaking japane japanese ]. And so anyway when we came back, i was 3 years old and, lets see, where did we go . We went to the naval war college. My dad was way war they didnt send him to the Army War College because they wanted him to transfer into the air force, the brandnew air force. Okay. My father wanted nothing to do with the air force. And so they said, well, youre a rising guy, you know, he was an 06 by that time, so weve got to get you some purple experience. So they sent him to the naval war college. Which was pretty cool, you know, we enjoyed that time, although i was too young to really remember it. And then we moved around for 16 or 17 more times until he finally ended up in the well, ended up in vietnam as a family. Wow. And ive got a little article here that im going to give you a copy of. This is from vietnam magazine. Yes, sir. And i published an article in this this is in 2009 called my whole family served in vietnam. Its a twopage article. But the interesting part about it is a lot of people have said my dad served, my brother served, not very many people can say my mom served in vietnam too. Yes, sir. But my dad was the deputy chief of the mag under hanging sam williams from world war ii. He got the name hanging sam because he was in charge of the executions at nuremberg. Wow. He was a lieutenant general, and he was the head of 50 or 60 americans in the country. My dad was a brigadier and there was one other brigadier. We lived in a very nice mansion with servants and drivers and all that stuff. But they had to go on the social circuit every night for three or four things a night, and it was really bothering my mother for two reasons. She started to become an alcoholic, but secondly she was standing on high heels on marble stuff for hours on end every day and it was beginning to hurt her back. So, in the middle of my second year there what year was this, sir . This was 19 lets think here. 195758. Okay. Okay. I got there in 57 and we came home at the end of the 58. So i was there for two years. And one conference that my dad was coming out of he lingered for a few seconds after the conference. All these generals are very well timed as to where theyre supposed to be and when. He lingered to talk to somebody at the conference and a huge planter outside the Office Building where this thing was blew up. It was targeted for him. Wow. He was supposed to be killed by this planter exploding. My mother was a little upset about that. And then three weeks later the the veto min, they werent vietcong at that time, drove by on a motorcycle and threw a hand grenade under my school bus. Of course the school bus was moving, and i was sitting up front, but it blew up the back of the school bus and a lot of kids were cut up pretty badly. So within a period of a month they tried to kill my dad and they tried to kill me. And my mother then was becoming frantic. So just at that point in time cinkpac sent orders to vietnam that said we want general carlson to go to laos, take his family to laos to start the mag in laos which there wasnt anybody there except laotians and North Vietnamese. L he said no, im not going to do that. He wrote a letter back saying as to why they couldnt do that, my brother was still here at west point, he hadnt been here but two years. Theyre trying to kill us. A lot of different things. Anyway, they rescinded those orders and he was sent back to the pentagon where he got promoted for his second star and retired in 1962. Yes, sir. How was it living in vietnam for you except for the hand grenade under the bus . Except for the bad parts . Yeah. I had a lot of fun in vietnam. I was a 13, 14yearold kid, i had a diplomatic immunity card. So that got me and my friends out of a lot of trouble because id just flash this at the white mice, i got let these teenagers go. We only went to school in the morning because it was too hot in the afternoon. To be able to stay in these quonset hut classrooms. And so in the afternoon we all went to the circle sportif in saigon. Thats the french sports club. It was about a block and a half from my house, near the president ial palace. It was still populated by french girls because their parents were still working in vietnam even after the french left. So i would go over there and i was learning french in school, but i really learned french by talking to the girls in the bikinis. At 14 years old, i had to be able to communicate with these women. Yes, sir. So i had a pretty good time. We went to hong kong. We went to india and took some side trips, and then we finally came home in late 1958, and we went instead of back across the pacific, we went around the world, came back through paris, and i flew across the atlantic on the second 707 to ever cross the atlantic. Wow. The first one that went from new york to paris, we got the return flight and went from paris back to new york. Thats exciting. Thats the first jet of course id ever been on. Yes, sir. Now a second ago you said white mice. Yeah. Some of our listeners might not know what youre talking about. Thats the vietnamese police. They all wear full white uniforms and theyve got a cross belt and all that and a revolver. But when you see them that was the white mice. Yes, sir. So i imagine you learned to speak french pretty well then. I was a pretty good french speaker. I took it throughout high school, i took it here and i got into advanced french and ive used it during times in europe. But if you dont use it, you lose it. Yes, sir. So. Did you learn any vietnamese . No. Well, i learned vietnamese swear words. We all knew those. Of course. So what year did you arrive at west point . Was that 62 . 1962. Okay. And what was your expectation when you showed up . Well, first let me say my dad did not want me to come to west point. Hes a 31 graduate. Okay. My brothers a 61 graduate. And he said, look, ken, youre air National Merit scholar, you have other opportunities. You have Ivy League Schools who are trying to recruit you to come. Why dont you do that . And i said i think i will. I think ill go to princeton. And then president kennedy gave his famous speech about let every nation know whether they wish will well or wear, we will go anywhere, pay any price to protect liberty. And i said dad, i changed my mind. I want to go to west point. And i had an appointment already. So i had a choice. He said are you sure . Because its not going to be pleasant. I said, ive heard stories from you and ive heard other stories from gunner, my brother, and so i will be prepared. Well, when i walked in the door, i was too well prepared because we you know, you pick up and drop your bag the first day when the man in the red sash tells to you drop your bag you drop your bag. Well i set mine down and pick it back up smack head i told you to drop your bag. And i dropped by michigan bag and it bounced. Because i had filled wit foam rubber to protect all my shaving gear and stuff that was in there. So the guy looked at it and said your bag just bounced. Open that up. And they saw all the foam rubber inside and said oh, its one of these guys that knows all the inside stuff. Then they learned my father was a general and at that point in time my pleeb year was toast. There werent enough first classman in the world who could get my neck to go back. Yes, sir. So it was a challenge. It was a challenge but i was a good student. I was on the honor roll most of the time. I graduated 57th in my class, out of 579. So i sneaked into the top 10 . But i was not a star man. But i didnt have any academic problems. One of the things they did with me was my tactical officer called me in one day its never a good idea to have to be called in by the tac, but he called me in and said i need your help. I said, you need my help . Had this is when i was a cow. He said, yeah, i need to give you a new roommate. I said whos that, sir . He said kevin kelly. I said id be happy to room with kevin. Whats the problem . Hes in the ejection seat, which means he currently stands last in the class. And if he goes deficient in anything, hes gone. And hes a great hockey player. And he said im moving him in with you because youre the closest thing weve got in this company to star man, and i want you to help him with academics. I said id be happy to do that. Well, kevin would come home from hockey practice. And hed say i need to rest my eyes for a little bit. So he would lie down on his bed. I would say hey, were having a written review tomorrow in electrical engineering. Are you prepared for that . No, not very well, but come over to me and let me know what i need to know. So i read to him while he was sleeping. Actually i brought him up 11 files. When he graduated he was 11th from the bottom. When i moved in with him he was at the bottom. Yes, sir. So i succeeded. He ended up becoming a doctor, actually he was an ob gyn. Thankfully i never had to see him. But i said if i ever woke up on an operating table and i saw kevin kelly with a knife standing over me i would die right there on the spot because wasnt the sharpest tack in the drawer but he was a really good guy and im glad he graduated. Yes, sir. Thats a wonderful story. And you said you played basketball a little. I did. I played for bobby knight. Okay. When he was the plee coach. Right. And mike suliman, all american was one of my roommates in the east barracks. So bobby was a spec 4 when he was working for kates lock. Who was the coach at the time. They asked him tates wanted to move to north carolina. And they had bobby knight if he would be the head coach. And he said yeah, but im only a spec 4 in the army. And they said, well, no, you wont be in the army. Well get you out of the army and well make you the head coach. He said will i make as much as a spec 4 . And somebody somebody wrote a number on a piece of paper and said, this is what were going to pay you. And he said, okay, ill do it. But bobby knight was its a handson coach. He would grab you and he used we had buckets, not bottles of water, we had buckets of water, he used to kick the bucket of water, he threw chairs across the court. In the mid of basketball games he got thrown out of the basketball game. But he was a super basketball coach. And now until Mike Krzyzewski took over, he was the guy who had won the most basketball games in collegiate history. Wow. I only played for him for a year and a half, though, and then i realized that i was not going to be a starter and that he and i didnt really get along very well, probably my fault. So i left the Basketball Team and i went to other activities yes, sir. And so as you progressed through and you get ready to branch, what was in your mind . What were you thinking about for branches . We all had to go, in the class of 66, we all had to go to Ranger School because they did not send us to the basic course. And then figured maybe if you went to Ranger School you might learn enough about combat you could actually succeed in vietnam where we all knew we were going. Right. So i said, look, it was buckner i made that decision that i wanted to go armor, because i was learning all these infantry skills. But they put us in a big concrete trench one day and they showed us a tank attack coming at us. A platoon of tanks. One would appear and another would appear. Pretty soon all five of them. They would drive right over the ditch. They tell everybody get your head down, right over the ditch. I said, you know, when im commissioned, i want to be the guy in the tank, not the guy in the ditch. 578d thats why i wanted to go armor. And you were high enough that you got it . Yes. Were there any other classmates higher . Yes. Wesley clark was the number one man in our class. And usually the top guys go engineers, with some exceptions. Sometimes theres a guy thats number one in the class thats so gungho he wants to go infantry. But wes stood up and said armor. I went oh, my gosh, there goes my chance to go to berlin where i desperately wanted to go on an experience that i had had there earlier. And so tend of all of this i said where are you thinking about going, wes . And he said, well, im choosing between munich and berlin. I said think quick, ken. This is the smartest guy in the class. Wes, do you not want to go to munich is in bavaria. It is nothing but blonds and beer, and youll not ever learn to be a platoon lead fer you go down there. So of course wes chose munich, and i was the next guy up and i went to berlin. How was berlin . Berlin was 90 miles behind the iron curtain. Am i doing all right . Youre doing great. Berlin was 90 miles behind the iron curtain. The brigade located there had three Infantry Battalions, one tank company, one artillery battery, and one helicopter detachments. And then of course the brits also had a brigade there and the french had a brigade. We were occupying west berlin and the russians were occupying east berlin. So i went in as a palo alto toon leader of company 40th f armor. And the Company Commander was 34 years old, a guy who had a lot of experience. He said so when did you graduate from the basic course . I said, sir, i havent been to the basic course. He said what . I said, none of us went to the basic course, they sent us airborne and Ranger Schools and then out to you. He said what do you know about tanks . I said not very much, sir, but im willing to learn. And he said, well, unfortunately you cant just learn by experience. So heres what im going to do, it was january of 1967. He said im going to send you to nco tank commander course at vilsec in west germany. And youre going to be there with a bunch of sergeants, but youre going to learn everything about a tank. That was the smartest thing he ever did. He was a grade commander but he sent me down there and i learned thousand take apart and put them back together again in the motor pool, in the mud, and when i came back, you know, the troops were no longer able to make fun of me. Before i left, you know, im sitting out there trying to figure out how to make the tank tourette slew and all that, and one of the sergeants comes up and said, sir, how many times have you done that turning it this way . I said, i dont know. He said you got keep track of that because if you turn it 52 times it falls off, it unscrews and falls off. So i started putting stuff in the logbook that says, you know, heres the number of times that turn the and the troops just thought this was hilarious. But im out again in the motor pool, thats where i lived. I went out and one of these guys took the external earphone off an m60 a1 tank and said sir, youve got a Long Distance call from america. I said i do . So i picked it up and the guy on the inside of the tank said, hi, kenny, its mommy. And by this time im going, what . Of course everybodys going oh my god we got the lieutenant again. Hes got a lot to learn. Yes, sir. But it ended up being a very good experience. One of the more interesting things that happened to me was we had this Immediate Reaction platoon that had to go out in ten minutes notice because we had to be at checkpoint charlie if the russians started making noise and screwing things up again. So one night my platoon was and we all had to live in the barracks when that happened. One night my platoon was called out at 4 00 in the morning to report to a certain block in the woods that surrounds berlin. And he said report to the commander in chief of the United States army europe, four stars at block 68. Will well, i hadnt been a platoon leader very long so im smart enough to know i had to turn to my platoon sergeant you lead the column and ill be the second in line. He said i know block 68 blindfolded. We got out there and there was general ill think of his name in a minute. I reported to him. He was standing there in hunting clothes next to his mercedes. And he Said Lieutenant, andrew p. Omeara. We called him apo. And he Said Lieutenant carlson, i want you to take your platoon and go down to that wood line on the other end of this open area, and i want you to come through the wood line. And then when you come out of the wood line, i want you to put your unit in line and come with me with five tanks in line, driving right towards this mercedes. And i said, yes, sir. He said and i want you to be sure to be buttoned up. Do not, do not let me see any heads out of any tanks, because i want to see if you can do this without hand signals. Okay . I had no clue what was coming. So we went down the road, turned into the wood line. Sergeant shipp said sir, we can line up this way. Heres the tanks. I said okay, lets go, everybody lock your hatches, were going right for the mercedes. And of course what we were doing was driving wild boar. Sure. I had no clue. But we drove he got two wild boar that morning and my platoon pulled up right in front of his mercedes and got out and he said, lieutenant, that was outstanding. And i got a fourstar letter of commendation as a second lieutenant. Which i dont think that many people get those. Do you still have that piece of paper, sir . I have it in my files somewhere, but yes, sir. So my Company Commander congratulated me, my Battalion Commander congratulated me. That was my welcome to berlin. I met my future life in berlin. She is not a german. She was working for state department. I knew i was going vietnam. I was a platoon leader for a while and then they picked me to be the commanders aide, the Brigade Commanders aide, which i did. And i did it for two different commanders. Samuel baldwin who ended up at being at fire base marianne and samuel goodwin, who retired as a brigadier out of the berlin brigade. But there someone aide story i need 20 tell you which is its one of my favorites. Im four days into being an aide and general baldwin calls me in the office and says ken, we need to good to veal flicken. We got troops who are down there training in the zone in west germany, we need to go to veal flicken. So set up the arrangements. Sir, when do you want gob . A day and a half from now. So i come out. Ive got a sergeant whos a stenographer and a sergeant who is a driver who speaks fluent german. I said how do i get airplane reservations from pan am to get the general and i from here to frankfurt and then from frankfurt back to how do i get to vealflicken. And somebody give me a vehicle. Spec 6 Said Lieutenant, relax, you got your own plane. I said, i do . He said no, not you lieutenant, the general has his own plane. I said what am i supposed to do . All youre supposed to does make sure you got a 45 thats loaded, make sure you have a handcuff that you can carry the generals plans because as a Brigade Commander he has to carry the contingency plans wherever he may be. So he is going to have top secret documents and youre going to be armed. I said how i do get to the airport . I have no clue. And they said were going to pick you up in the mercedes and were taking you to templehoff. So we got to temphoff and there is this little plane, a u6. Two pilots in ba s is in front, passengers in back. It looks like a chevrolet with wings, all right. So we got in and general was sitting there reading Time Magazine, of course hes sitting on the right and im sitting here, i brought my map because i said im an Airborne Ranger im supposed to know where i am 100 of the time. Im sitting there looking at the map thinking as we flew over germany, he was going to say ken, what is that right down there . Knowing its a soviet installation. He probably already knew that im expecting him to give me a quiz. And i realize that navigating from the air is not the same as navigating from the ground put cant see the terrain features. They all look the same. So all the sudden i go into this sudden panic says ive got to know but there ill ask the pilots. Okay. So how i do talk to the pilots . Well, theres got to be a way. Theyve got a general in the backseat, theres got to be a way to talk to the pilots. So im looking around, looking around. Oh, here. Got a little tube on it, you know, sort of a funnel and so i said, hey, you can guys hear me up there . Hey, you can guys hear me up there . The general drops his Time Magazine and he looks at me and says ken, why are you talking into the piss tube . I went from 65 to 55 in a matter of nano seconds. I said, sir, i didnt realize. I was just trying to talk to the pilots, and i couldnt figure out how to do it. He said let me show you how do that. Reached forward and tapped on the helmet of the copilot who immediately turned around and said, what can i do for you, general . So i was so embarrassed but then he thought it was great because when we got back from veal flicken we were on the social circuit at berlin, as you might expect. And he would say hey, let me introduce you to my new aide, and let me tell you about the first time we flew on the plane. I became the laughing stock of berlin. But i got a really good aor. Thats good. You said had you experience in berlin before. Oh, yeah, yeah. When i was a cadet on aot, which is now cadet troop leader training, i guess. Okay. I went to germany, and then a couple classmates and i went to berlin after we were done. We had a few weeks before we had to go home. So were sitting a good classmate of mine were sitting up by the new wall, not the new wall, but the its the wall that had only been up for two years. This is 64, summer of 64. And so, you know, were having a beer and were looking at the little old lady standing in the corner with a red light green light thing, and she keeps looking at her watch. The light keeps changing and she never crosses the streich. And she looks at her watch again and she reached in her handbag and pulled out a pair of binoculars and she looked across the wall. So we stood up. We didnt have binoculars. But we stood up and looked across the wall. About five or six blocks in, a little old man leaned out of a sevenstory window with a pair of binoculars, and they waved at each other and they blew a kiss. Then she put the binoculars in her back and started to walk away. And so i ran over to her with my terrible german, and i said frau, frau, what is it that we just saw . Who were you looking at . She said that was my husband. I said how is it that your she spoke good english. I said how is it that your husband is in east berlin and the day the wall went up, he was on business in east berlin. I have not been able to touch him or talk to him. For the last two and a half years. At this point in time i got the real meaning of freedom was never clearer in my mind. I said i want to be stationed here. I want to face these guys on the other side of this wall and give them the italian salute every single day. And i pretty well got that and was able to do that because my tank platoon was moving around all the time and we saw the russians all the time. Wow, that is an incredible story. Thats when i said i want to be in berlin and thankfully thanks to wes clark i got to be in berlin. And so when did you return back home from germany . It was in the let me see. Take a look at my cheat sheet here. Okay. I left in october of 68 and got home for a short leave and then deployed straight to vietnam. And who did you go to vietnam with . Myself. Sy was an individual replacement. It wiz just after the siege of khe sanh, and the marines needed a lot of help. So they brought the first brigade of the fifth mec over from carson to give them more armor support. Because they realized when the marines were surrounded at khe sanh that it could have gone either way. Right. So when that brigade came over, they had a cavalry troop with it. And they took a brigade slice. But thats not where i was supposed to do go. I had a set of orders worked with general goodwin worked with his good friend general patton who was commanding the 11th acr at the time. This is general pattons son, of course. He offered me a cavalry troop as a request of general goodwin who said this guys good and you ought to take him. I had a set of orders from da and i got to the 90th replacement battalion and everybodys rushing around go to these classes and so on and im just looking for a jeep. From the 11 acr. I want to get out of this replacement battalion as fast as possible. And some major comes up and says with a are you doing, captain . And i said im looking for the 11th acr because ive got orders. He said let me look at those. He took them and tore them in half. I said sir, what are you doing . He said we dont give a damn what they say, he said were sending you as far north cause go in vietnam before youre in North Vietnam. Were sending you as far north as you can be in vietnam before youre in North Vietnam. Were sending you to dong ha. And thats what i did. Wow. And so what was it like once you arrived at your unit . Well, first let me tell what you happened when we landed at dong ha. They told me i was on a c130. So we had to stop a couple different places. But when i got to dong ha, they never stopped the airplane because the marine airport there was under shelling. So the c130 went rolling down the runway and they opened the back and kicked our stuff out, and we ran out the back door. They handed us helmets, and we ran for the nearest cover. Wow. Welcome to your new unit. 157 artillery coming in on us. Running off a c130. Running off a c130 out the back door. As its still moving. As its still moving. They just pushed the bags out. We left everything there. They handed us helmets. We went back and got our bags later on. Holy cow. Thats an incredible welcome. I had been da nang, as far north as da nang when i was a kid. I didnt know where dong ha was. They said if you fly past dong ha, youre in North Vietnam and youre screwed. Holy cow. I went and got in this replacement detachment again. And they issued us a uniform and they told us get some patches sewn on by the local vietnamese. And they gave us each an m16 rifle. I had never fired an m16 rifle before, until the second night. What did you train on as a cadet. M14. Second night. Second night the perimeter was attacked, some major came in and said any of you guys officer . Yeah, we all are. Okay. Get your stuff on. Heres a clip for your h manifesto 16. I want you go to this bunker, you go to this bunker. So i ran out there and took charge of a bunker. We werent under a ground attack thankfully. If we had been first time i fired my rifle it jammed and i didnt know what to do. So it was, you know are thankfully it was not a brig ground adak, but it was a big attack. And so that was the first day. And then, yeah, two days later i got called in by the Brigade Commander and he said, captain carlson, he said, have you ever been a calvary man . I said no, sir, ive been a tank platoon leader. He said well youre about to become a cavalry man. I am relieving the commander of the a troop fourth squadron 12th cavalry and putting you in. And i said, sir, when will that be . I was kind of hoping to be a staff officer get my feet on the ground. He said report down to landing zone nancy tomorrow. And i did and i was suddenly in command of 318 guys and 44 combat vehicles. Okay. What type of vehicles did you have . M48 tanks and armored cavalry assault vehicles, which is a 113 with a 50 turret on top of it and two m16 machine guns pointing out of either side. Okay. And i had radar tracks, i had maintenance tracks, i had a medical track with a full set of medics in it. Like i said, 44 combat vehicles and that doesnt include any of the wheel stuff. Okay. What was your mission . Well, interestingly enough, my mission was not do what the brigade told me do, although they did give me missions occasionally. They attached me to a tank battalion, the first of the 77th armor. But the first of the 77th i was attached to them but they never gave me a mission because the first time i took the troop to the field, which was about four days after i was in command, the first helicopter to land was a marine helicopter. And it was the commander of the third marine division. A fellow by the name of ray davis who won the in world war ii, won the navy cross. And as a Battalion Commander in korea won the medal of honor. Holy cow. And a couple of silver stars and a couple of bronze stars with v. He was a stud. And i didnt know all that stuff about him at that point in time, but he said ken carlson, i havent met you yet but ive heard a lot about you. So obviously they were doing some research too. And he said now listen, you are youve got a unit that moves faster with more firepower than anything ive got in my division and anything youve got in your brigade. So youre not the words 911 didnt exist in that day. He said youre going to be my fire truck. Whenever i call you for some strange mission, you turn on the red lights and just move like hell. And i said, sir, how will i know what the mission is . He said my operation shop will call you and tell you what needs to be done. But if you ever have a question about any mission that i give you, heres my card. And he reached into his fatigues and pulled out essentially a business card. And on the back of it, on the back of it he wrote his frequency and personal call signs, sudden death 66. He said if you ever have a problem, i only give this to Battalion Commanders but im giving it to you, so you call me if theres a problem. And eventually i had to do that. A little later on down the line i had do that because i got a stupid order from his headquarters. But, you know, i was Walking Around with a get out of jail free card, essentially, call the 2 star if you need to. Skip all your chain of command. So thats your second time in vietnam having a get out of jail free card. Right . Thats exactly right. Diplomatic immunity. And sudden death 66, how to get in touch with him. Very good. That was great. So howd everything go . Well, we did a lot of work along the dmz. They wanted us to be a show of force. This was just after the battle of khe sanh, where five American Marine battalions were surrounded by three North Vietnamese divisions and were shelled well, the battle of khe sanh lasted or the siege of khe sanh lasted for five and a half months. And these guys were living like animals. And the c130s couldnt get into them because they were being shot at by the North Vietnam niece. It was dean den phu again. We or on the low ground and they occupied the hill sides. So every once in a while theyd send my troupe up my troop up there to make sure we could look around. Make sure they know we have forces that can move all the way to the laotian border. So i took my troop to the laotian border several times and came back. And on one mission i got a call from the marine headquarters that said stop at khe sanh, weve got a mission for you. And so i said, what is the mission . They said when the marines left, they left their mines unexploded. So we want to you go out and blow up their mines. I said did they give us a map no. Marines dont make maps. So i said well how do you expect i dont have any engineer capability in my unit. How do you expect me to find these mines . They said we expect to you start driving your combart vehicles around the perimeter of khe sanh. Khe sanh is about a mile and a half long and about a mile wide. So drive your drive your combat vehicles around khe sanh and start exploding the mines. And i said this doesnt sound good, but okay. Ill try. So i blew up two 113s almost immediately, blew their road wheels off and we to fix them. But when a tank went by i said maybe i better lead with tanks here. Because weve got things. And we hit an air tank mine and it blew off the idle armor assembly of the tank. Thats the point in time where i said cease work, im calling the division. I called the 06, who was in charge of their operation shop, and i said are you the guy who gave me this mission that im supposed to be sbloeding . He said yeah. I said im not doing that anymore, i just medevaced a driver out of one of my tanks. We just hit an antitank mine, and we have no idea what were going to see. But im not going to blow up my entire cavalry troop in order to do this. So im not going to do that. He said this is a legal order, captain. I said im not going to do that. That transmission ended on a bad note so i pulled out the card. And i called sudden death 66. And i said sir this is and he said ken, how you doing . I said not very well, sir. I said i got an order from your up shop here. He said where you are . I said khe sanh. He said what are you doing . I said im blowing up mines with my vehicles. He said whos the stupid ass hole who told you to do that . Sir, i dont know the man personally, but it was somebody from your operation shop. I didnt say it was the 06. He said your tanks are hitting mines . Tank mines . Yes, sir. I so i told him i wasnt going to do that anymore. He said thank goodness you told him that. Ill fix that. He said ive got another mission for you. Collect up your guys. Evacuate vehicles you need to evacuate and then continue down ql 9 until you get to these coordinates and turn into the dmz. Thats north. Dont cross the ben hai river, obviously, which divides north and south vietnam. He said theres a big huge dry rice paddy there, and i want you to set your troop up in a perimeter which guards that rice paddy. I want all the vehicles facing outward. And i said sir, whats the mission . He said set up the perimeter. Thats all i can tell you right now. So we did that. You know, and my lieutenant said sir, what are we doing . I said stand by. I said this is directly from sudden death 66 so were going to do this one. And we sat there for a little while, and in comes a c46, which was the navy version or the marine version of the c47 helicopter. And the back ramp falls down and out comes six guys in cooks whites carrying cans. And they set up along the paddy dike, and the whole thing is dry. And then theyre standing there waiting and were waiting and then the lutz call me and say, sir, whats going on . I said stand by. And out of dmz comes a Marine Force Recon team of about 15 guys. They havent shaved in a month. They are dirtier than dogs and they come walking out and they meet with these guys and they make each one of them an ice cream sundae with soup to nuts. I mean, cherries, whipped cream, maraschino cherry on top, nuts. And these guys stand there and eat an ice cream sundae. And they had he hand the stuff back and they put it all in the cans and they walk back into the dmz and the helicopter takes off. And you my lieutenants call me and say sir, what did we just see . I said i think it was an ice cream social. I said i really dont know but all i know is where the order came from. So about five minutes later from his helicopter, the ch46 sudden death 66 calls me up and said ken, i by the way, this is the way marines talk on the radio. They call you by your name instead of your call sign. He said ken, i bet you wonder what we were doing. I said, sir, we were curious. He said those guys had been in the dmz for a month and i thought they deserved an ice cream sundae. And i said sir, that is an excellent idea. Were glad we could see it. But in order to make that happen, i had to have absolute security of that dz. I said okay. Because i was one of the guys in the cooks whites. And the only way the Third Marine Amphibious force would allow me to be that close to the dmz and in that much danger, they made me promise i would have absolute security, and youre the guys who did it. Wow. Semper fi. Thats all i could say, semper fi, sir. So i told everybody and they said, thats one of the best missions weve ever had. Getting those guys an ice cream sundae. So several months later, several months later, after after i was out of command, i commanded for six months, which was the standard. I went to the brigade staff and i got a call from the marine headquarters that said general davis would like to invite you to done tonight or not tonight, but tomorrow night. The miss america troop is in town, and he is going to have them for dinner at his mess. And youre the only army guy were inviting. Can you come . And i said can i . Can i . So i started shining. I started shining my boots and making sure i had a pressed set of jungle fatigues. So my driver took me down there. And we sat there and had cocktails with the miss america troop. I was the youngest guy in the room, but i was the one with the most recent combat. I was sitting across the way from the colonel who had given me the original order and we had an interesting conversation but it ended up being, you know, i probably didnt do the right thing, captain and im sorry. But anyway, i sat with miss new jersey and miss arkansas. And 15 minutes, well, we were sort of in the middle of the dinner, and the mps come running in and saying sir, were being hit by 122 rockets. Well all have to evacuate immediately to the commanding generals bunker. So im looking around at this first plate of dinner ive eat in half a year. And so i say okay. I grab ahold of miss new jersey. And we head out to the bunker. It had an actual viewpoint where you can see. Were watching the rockets coming in. And miss arkansas is on one side and miss new jersey is on the other side. And explosions are going off, and these women are scared to death. But miss arkansas said that kind of looks like the fourth of july. And i said no, it doesnt. She said what do you mean . I said people are dying when those things land. That doesnt happen on the fourth of july. And she started crying. Wow. Miss new jersey, on the other hand, said when you come back from vietnam, where are you going to go . I said well, i dont know. She said i want you to come visit me in new jersey. So i didnt. I didnt. I went back and married the girl that i met in berlin, and we had four children, and now we have 13 grandchildren. Wow. So i made the right choice. But, you know, spending the night in a bunker with a couple goodlooking ladies on either side of you was an interesting experience. Sure. What did you do after that . You . You mean when i left oh, after my command . I went to the brigade s1 shop and answered congressals. Oh, no. My job i had to investigate and write the congre congressionals. I had to visit the site where it happened. I wasnt an ig but i had been a commander so i knew what questions to ask. He would sign the letters and go over to the ocll. In one particular case a letter from one of senator kennedys constituents that said our son Sergeant Gibbons was killed in vietnam and he was on a tank. And they told us they had to seal the coffin because well, they didnt tell us. We wanted to see his body. I didnt have to go investigate that one because i was in that battle with Sergeant Gibbons. He was riding on one of my tanks, and he was hit by an rpg, and his body was blown apart. After i had gotten control of the situation and we had defeated the enemy firing rpgs at us and i had people continuing to work that issue, i went back to see what the wounded situation was and nobody was touching Sergeant Gibbons and i said, hey, we have to police this gentleman up. We have to start putting his body parts in the poncho and pry troops, hes not one of ours. Yes, he is. Hes an american soldier. One of the platoon sergeants saw me picking up body parts and putting it in the poncho to include his head and he jumped on the other young troopers and said youre letting the Troop Commander do that without your help . Youre not thinking. Everybody started helping. So, anyway, when this letter came in i knew what happened to Sergeant Gibbons from personal experience, and we wrote that in the letter. The army made a serious mistake when they said he died of small arms fire. An rpg is not small arms. His body was dismembered and so not really fit to be viewed in a cask casket. We gave him all the honors we could possibly give him and all the awards and decorations. He was a brave soldier and when they turned that over to the Brigade Commander who was named gibson, not gibbons, the only time i ever saw him cry. So thats what i did. I wrote 200 something congressionals and i was redeployed back to the United States. Wow. And when you came back to the United States, what was your mission . My mission was to get married to the girl i left behind but i was sent to the infantry advance course rather than the armored advance course and, you know, i called and said why are you sending me to the infantry advanced course . We want people armored officers with combat experience successful combat experience to tell them at the Infantry School where theyre right and war theyre wrong. I went to the Infantry School and ended up first in the class down there but i had to leave three days early before graduation because i had to report to graduate school at princeton. Youre going to be an honor graduate but not a distinguished graduate. I said all the tests are over. All the papers are turned in and i had a 99 something average. Arent i the distinguished honor graduate . We dont really like to give that to other branches. I was a good grad wuate but i wasnt the top guy. And then i went to graduate school. Tell me about your wedding. Where did you get married . All right. My wife and i lived in salt lake with her family. My folks were living on the east coast still, and my brother was in oklahoma at the time i think at the Artillery School and so we decided to get married in salt lake but we couldnt do it at a mormon wedding because most people have to be mormons and they have to be sealed in the temple. We did get her stake president , which is kind of like your bishop, much higher than your bishop in the mormon church. He agreed to marry us in a civil ceremony which we did at ft. Douglas, utah, in the military chapel there. It was snowing. It was december the 6th. And i can always remember that because one day before pearl harbor day is when i got married. So it was snowy and we got into the chapel and the night before my wifetobe said i am not certain we can do this. She said weve had a lot of history together but youre not a member of the church. So i said, well look, ive flown a bunch of people in here. Theyre planning on going to a wedding tomorrow so im going to be in my blues standing up front with my brother who is going to be my best man. If you dont show up, ill have a little card in my pocket and will say, ladies and gentlemen, were not going to have a wedding tonight and here is the situation. And she said, i dont know. I just dont know. So the wedding came off and she came in with her father and they played here comes the bride which they dont do that in a mormon ceremony. Here comes the bride. She walks up and just about where my father and mother are sitting she stops. She just stops. And i reach into my pocket to pull out the card and she says, no, no, no. What happened was her train got caught on a nail and my father looked down and releases her so she comes bouncing forward and we got married and she said i do three times. I made sure she was going to be good to her word and we have now been married almost 50 years. Congratulations. Thank you. How was princeton . Princeton was my choice. I was selected to come back to teach here at west point. And i asked the colonel, i said where would you like me to go to graduate school . He said you can go anywhere you want, anywhere you can get into. Where do you prefer your people to come from . Well, we like harvard. We like princeton, Johns Hopkins and stanford. Those are the big schools for International Relationships and also for economics. Youre probably going to teach commitments when you first get here. So i said, do you have a preference . He said, no, thats your call. I think ill go to princeton. And when i got there the first day we arrived, one of the reasons i picked princeton, i said stanford middle of the vietnam war stanford is in flames. I dont think i want to go to harvard because its also equally left wing and against the war. But princeton is a pretty conservative place. Went to princeton, the way we arrived they burned down the rotc building. Welcome to princeton. What year is this . 1970. 1970. But we didnt live on princeton campus. We lived off in a small new jersey town nearby. I had a great time learning International Relations except for Richard Faulk. Professor Richard Faulk was the guy who took jane fonda to North Vietnam, as antiwar as they get. And he was the professor of international law. So we were in one of those great big bowls where the professor speaks and everybody looks down on him. And he was lecturing on the vietnam war of which i had recently returned. And he said to everybody there, he said, there are no North Vietnamese troops in south vietnam. These were all indigenous vietcong fighting against an illegal government, the North Vietnamese are not involved in this in any way. And i stood up. I didnt say a word. I stood up. Nobody knew that i was a captain in the army. I started growing my hair a little bit, and i wasnt wearing a uniform. I stood up, and he said hes giving his lecture and he looks up, who are you . I said, sir, i havent had a chance to personally meet you yet but im captain ken carlson of the United States army and i have just returned from vietnam, and i am here to tell you, sir, there are lots of vietnamese troops, i was involved with many North Vietnamese units in uniform, and we had a very good kill ratio of 100 to 1. I lost three guys and they lost 318 guys. So i can assure you, professor faulk, that there are North Vietnamese see me after in my office. Which i did. And, by the way, everybody said, who was that guy . So i went to his office. I didnt appreciate you interrupting my lecture. Sir, i did not interrupt your lecture. I just stood up and you recognized me. And then you asked me what was my problem and then i told you. He said i didnt appreciate you, you know trying to invalidate the points i was making. I said, professor faulk, if you missed the point, you were wrong, and i dont know why you felt like you had to be wrong but you were wrong. And he said, well, dont do that again. So i got an aplus in his course, by the way. But princeton was Judith Miller who is currently on fox news, Judith Miller was one of the classmates i had at princeton and she was a wildeyed antiwar liberal. When she learned i was an officer she said and i put a little sign up that said war is my business, business is good. She hated that. She said how can you shoot those innocent women and children like you did . I said, you just meet them a little bit, they dont run so fast. We made sure we werent killing civilians. Not to say no civilians ever died. I dont believe you. Well, Richard Faulk is your guy then. Now shes become a conservative. And so somewhere along the lines she saw the light. What was it like teaching . The best three years of my life. I had great people around me. The head of the department, Barry Mccaffrey was the executive officer, i was working with jack jacobs, with wes clark, i was working with a whole bunch of people, a very smart group of people, and i taught economics the first semester and the only economies training was from colonel ovi when he was my instructor here as a cadet. And i said, sir, you might recall that the grade you gave me was one of the lowest grades i received here in four years. He said, thats right. Thats why im going to have you teach it because this time when you reach it you really have to learn it before you can teach it. Sometimes i was 20 minutes ahead of the cadets. But, nonetheless, i was able to do macro and micro and International Economics and the students loved me. And i loved teaching them. The second semester i taught International Relations about which i knew a lot more. And they said were going to give you an elective and the elective was Public Policy and administration which is how does the bureaucracy work or not work . And i was pretty much well read on that. I had an elective the last two years. I started with two sections and ended up with six. You have to go take carlsons course. Fast forward to the time after i retired when my wife and family were visiting me up in new york and were Walking Around going into the World Trade Center and one of them said are you captain carlson . I said, not anymore. Im mr. Carlson now. You taught soc . Yes, i did. Sir, i had your glass. I said that was 15 years ago. He said, you havent changed much. He said, i threw away everything except my west point atlas, american wars and your class notes. I still look at your class notes every once in a while when im trying to figure out whats happening in government and you had it write. Thats why so many people signed up for your course. My 16yearold is standing next to me. I couldnt have paid these guys enough money. A 16yearold saying my dad doesnt know anything. And so they walk away and my son said, wow, dad. Who knew . I said, well, now you do. An interesting experience working on wall street. Lots of interesting experiences. You dont want to hear those. At the right time we do, sir. After you left the soc department, where did you go . Okay, i need to go to my cheat sheet. Thats about the time you went to the command and general Staff College . Thats correct. I was a student at the command and general Staff College and immediately after leaving i went to ft. Levinworth, kansas. I got involved in a whole lot of Community Activities because i had little kids and i had to go referee things and announce things and so on. But i also my wife let me build an office in the basement, a little townhouse that we lived in and she kept the kids away from me so i did the homework. Most guys said, no, this is another army school. Look, this is the next level of stuff. They also had me teaching courses there. They had me teaching courses on International Relations and economics. Which i could do. That wasnt a problem. I ended up winning the marshall award. Which was a real honor. Wes clark won it the year before. As a result of that the chief of staff of the army gets to make your next assignment. I didnt know that. They didnt tell me i won until the day before the marshall award. I said, i need an assignment. General rogers will assign you. I need troop time as a major. Will somebody please tell him. I had been promoted. Please tell him i need troop time to make me fully branch qualified to become a Battalion Commander. Hell know all that stuff. So they sent me to run a program being run out of his office and it was not a troop assignment, and i was pardon the en expression, i had been screwed by the chief of staff of the army. I made arrangements with the 96th bring gagade as soon as i get away from this chief of staff issue. Gotcha. Absolutely. Youre the man. And then i came down on the second to Lieutenant Colonel and i was promoted almost immediately so therefore i never had troop time as a major. Which meant i was not fully qualified to become a Battalion Commander at which point in time i went, thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, general rogers. So i never got a battalion. I became a brigade xo in the 8th infantry division. I was the ig, and i taught at the National War College and i was a member of the founding faculty and so i did a lot of educational work but i never got to the point where people say this guy should be in 06. The head of that and he said i have a congressman coming in who wants to sit in on one of the seminars and i want him to sit in your seminar. Hes a historian. Send him some literature. I contacted the office and said when is this gentleman going to be able to come . We have a 15man seminar that goes from 8 00 in the morning until noon and hed like to stay for a week. Were doing the russian and german part. The congressman from the atlanta airport, a brandnew congressman, i send him a bunch of stuff to read and he came in fully prepared. No quarter rest, no quarter given. If you say something, that doesnt make it true. I have 16 smart majors here who are likely to challenge you. And we did that for a week. You are letting them do the work. Who thought about this and who thought about that . And so at the end of the week, my wife victoria and i were having dinner with gingrich and he said i understand youre thinking about getting out of the army. I got passed over for 06. And he said i want you to come work for me and i said doing what . I want you to be my chief of staff. Victoria and i look at each other, this was before he had departed. How much would you get paid as chief of staff . About 70,000. Which was more than i was making. Wed been to d. C. And dont think we can do that. We have little kids and dont think we can. My life would have been totally different had i resigned and then the Second Time Around i got picked up. I was one of two combat arms officers, nonselected in the first year who were selected in the second year. And it was because there were a bunch of generals who knew when i was a brigade xo i turned in for doing illegal stuff and i resigned my position as brigade xo and i sent this letter to the general who was commanding the division and he was colonel reimer at the time. Went to the Corps Commander as well and i said i cant work for this guy anymore. The honorable thing to do is resign, and here is why. I laid this out in a sixpage letter of the stuff he had done illegal, immoral and so as a result of that they called me back to fifth core, which i did. He wrote an o. A. R. On me before he was officially relieved. Once i sent in for this thing it became a black mark the whole time i was considered. Its easy if youre on a promotion board, the odds to get rid of files as fast as you can. You see a black mark, thats a discard. The Second Time Around all those people who knew i got passed over the first time had written letters to the board saying we have done an injustice to ken carlson. I was the first to get promoted to 06. Glenn otis had been trying to get a sams graduate to come over and be one of his. He has the army group. Dont i count . Theres not enough of them to go around. So as soon as i came out on the 06 list, i want ken carlson. I know ken carlson. And so i went to work for him. After him butch saint. My kids had an opportunity to finish high school, two of them anyway. And then i went back and retired, and i finished 26 years in uniform and four years at west point. When people say how long were you in service, i said 30 years. Did any of your children go to the army . No. No. When i was talking to them about are you interested in going to west point, they said, dad, we know what youve been doing and thats not the life we want to live. I said, you do whatever you want to do. By the time i was in wall street, ill pay whatever school you want to go to. They all went to byu and all got married out of byu. Wonderful. I will ask you about what youve done since the army. I see you have a purple heart and you mentioned your hearing tell me a little bit about that. The day Sergeant Gibbons was killed called the battle of kam heung. You can google it and find a complete description of the battle from a number of different viewpoints, one of which is captain carlsons view of what happened. We were outside of a combat base and my ambushes were all out, trying to keep the North Vietnamese from coming in and talking to the villagers and extracting taxes. We were set up for the night. I get a call from the headquarters that says we want to you report to headquarters immediately and not with a combat vehicle so bring your jeep in. Come in with lights on . No. Blackout. My driver said, where are we going . Were going over there, about three miles away. He said, can i turn on the lights . I said no. We drove in the dark and we got there and thankfully they told people that a jeep was coming in so they didnt kill us. I reported to the commander. Ken, im about to ask to you do something ive never asked anybody to do before. Prove crosscountry and cross the river and get to a place called kamlo and then youll become under the operational control of the 3rd or 5th cavalry. They found a headquarters guarded by two battalions. Theyre on one side of a hillside. They want you on the other side with your troops. We drove all night. We were just going crosscountry in the middle of the night. We got across the river into kamlo and had not heard from anyone. The operations officer, i tried to contact him and we couldnt make contact. I told my platoon leaders, put everyone to sleep and sit in my truck and well figure out what to do. We heard we want to you move up on this hill and line up so you are looking down into the valley and were looking down from the other side. Theres an Infantry Battalion of marines who have put a cork in the bottle. Then were going to see what happened. So we sat there and watched the air show the next morning. Outstanding. Napalm and the whole nine yards. Lots of snake and nape. And then its 5 00 in the evening. Take a platoon of yours and go down the hill and do some body damage. Bomb Damage Assessment for us. Find out whats left down there. So i took the nearest platoon. They were missing a tank so got another platoon tank. They went down the hill followed by a platoon and i was there. I wasnt going to lead from a tank. Got down to the bottom of the hill and suddenly from the wood line, there were guys with rpgs. The firefight ensued. People were thinking they were talking on their intercom. They were talking on the troop net so essentially i lost command of my troop because i was getting nothing but talk from other people. Get off this net. Get off this net. I couldnt do it. I could see where the fire was coming from. I was farther back. I jumped off my vehicle with an m16 filled with tracers. Nothing but tracers and my platoon leaders and i had a deal if i cant communicate with you and you see people firing nothing but tracers thats me. Shoot that way. I jumped off and got to a position i could start shooting tracers, my rifle got knocked out of my hand. I said, what the heck was that . I dont remember dropping my rifle. I picked it up, kept on with the mission. Everyone picked up the message and they the firefight was over and perhaps five minutes. We killed everyone inside that wood line. So then on the way back im walking up the hill and, first of all, i helped pick up Sergeant Gibbons. I told you that story already. Im walking up the hill, another one of my troopers, a maintenance guy, had a huge hole in his left arm and he was up on the hill but all the medics were working on the troops. He said i cant stand the pain. I cant stand the pain. Give me some morphine. Im not allowed to carry morphine. Only the medics carry morphine and theyre working on your brothers. But you have to put me out of the pain. Do something. I hit him as hard as i could. In the side of the jaw. I broke these two knuckles. I can see they look a little different. I carried him to the helicopter and put him on the medevac. There was something going on with my left arm. Hit by an ak47 round and that ricocheted into my arm and, boom, i dropped the rifle. I didnt know that. I was pumping so much adrenaline that when i finally got to the point i said any medic around here . The captain has been hit. They dressed the wound, we have to send you back to the hospital because you may have broken a bone but it doesnt appear to be its not a life threatening wound. Put me on a helicopter. I want to be back here soon at night, this night. The next day to take people down and go through again and not being ambushed in the middle of just before its dark, go down and do some dismounted patrols throughout the area where the North Vietnamese were. I think im supposed to be at least in one of these patrols just to make sure things dont go bad. Just before im making guys jump up and down, dont make any noise with their web gear and everybody has their faces blackened. Were doing rangers stuff. Two jump out wearing hawaiian shirts and one has a camera on his shoulder and i said what do you want . He said we want to go with you on patrol. I said, i dont think so. Guys from cbs news, Walter Cronkite, remember him . Here is what i want to you do. For a reporter, you be here, cameraman, you be further back. I dont want to hear a word from you. Take the pictures you need to take. If you need to whisper to me. There may be five coming back. We go down and were walk iing o trails. A kit carson scout and former major and we come to a bend in the stream bed and he said it could be an ambush around the side. Maybe you put men up on the hill. Go up there and tell me when youre ready. I dont want to you blow away anything that does that. They started climbing up the hill and the cameraman says hold on. Get that guy up here and he came up. I said what did you just do . He said, i had to get the shot. They were climbing did i tell you to keep quiet or not . Yes, you did. I have a job to do, too. If you do that one more time i personally will shoot you and it wont be pleasant. It wont be pleasant for you. He was very quiet at that point in time. At the end of the patrol we had found mountains of North Vietnamese equipment. Lots of ammunition, lots of weapons. They were picking up guns and pistols. The guy from cbs news was saying theyre tired and theyre hungry and theyve been out here for months on end and they dont know why theyre here. I said cut the camera off. What are you talking about . They are delighted what we just did. We took a couple of casualties up on the hill. Look what we did to the North Vietnamese army. If i want this to show up on cbs news, Walter Cronkite does not want the American Army to look good so i have to say the stuff im saying at the end though i may or may not believe it and my dad was still on active duty and he saw he wasnt on active duty but he saw that on cbs news and got in touch with me going to the pentagon and reaping me by radio and saying this is big swede six, do you know who i am . My dad. Yes, i do. Whats going on with your unit . Dad, that was cbs news. Here was the battle count. 300 got killed. I had one soldier killed and five soliers wounded and i was slightly wounded. Are you okay . Im fine. Dont believe anything you see on cbs news. And so that goes back to what you were talking about with your controversy. Oh, yeah. All the dead guys were in North Vietnamese uniforms. So no question about who it was and what uniforms they were wearing. Thats the story about how you got wounded that time. That was how i got wounded the first time. How about the second time . The second time was the next day. Oh, my goodness. The next day we were told to pull out and go join up with the 35 cavalry for a new mission. And so i got all my guys together. We had vehicles that were and i, like i said, the major was in charge he was the operations officer. The carpenter from west point was the commander at that time, as i recall. I dont remember his first name. Carpenter. So i figured these are two guys who really know what theyre doing. And on the way out of our battle position i did not lead with my track because, although i believe the commander should lead from the front they should not be the first vehicle. So i rode on the back of a tank. I was sitting on the back of a tank. I had an extra radio with me so i could communicate with the 35 headquarters, Battalion Headquarters and i was the third vehicle in line. We had three tanks. I was on the third vehicle. The North Vietnamese command detonated a mine underneath my tank. There was an extra radio and driver over the top. And so all i remember the bomb i was told later was a 250pound air force bomb that had not exploded and they turned it into an ied and command detonated it. They blew my tank to shreds. I flew up in the air about 30 feet and i landed on my back. There was blood coming out of every orifice of my body, places i never knew blood could come out of. And i was unconscious. And nick was flying in a helicopter above the battle watching all of this and he saw that i was down. He didnt know who i was at the time. Nick never knew me but i knew him. He landed his helicopter and they loaded me in within three minutes of my being blown up and i woke up on an xray table with a roundeyed nurse cleaning me up from places i didnt think she was supposed to be cleaning me up from. And the doctor came over and he said something to me. All i could hear was he said, he cant hear anything. He wrote a note and he said your back is not broken but youll pay for this in future years. Future years are here. And so now i cant walk more than about a mile before because i now have scoliosis. A crook spine. I said where did i get that from . You cant get into west point with scoliosis. Its a disqualifying effect a disqualifying whatever it is. And they said you probably got it when you got blown up. And of course my ears were pretty clear where those came from. So at any rate i continued on and finished a 30year career with hearing aids and a bad back and im now compensated by the Veterans Administration but i was wounded twice in two days. I did not get a second purple heart because no medic treated me in my unit. They put me onboard, they took me to bravo med. The marine corps destroyed all their medical records five years ago and all the vietnam medical records are gone. They have no proof that i was wounded in their facility because they didnt admit me. Put this guy in a jeep and take him back, hes going to have to be on bed rest at least three weeks. He cant hear anything. I was out of command and taken down to nancy laying in bed when my troops came in i said put me in my jeep and take me to the gate. They came back in, i stood up as best i could and saluted them as they came in. Wow. Thats a good i bet they were glad to see you. They were glad to see i was Still Standing up. I was glad to see that, too, but i couldnt hear anything until i got hearing aids. What happened to the rest of the crew on that tank . The platoon sergeant was wounded. He received shrapnel wounds. The driver was medevaced, not on the same helicopter i was but he was badly wounded and medevaced. I dont think anything happened to the gunner or the loader. My rule was you dont lead from the rear. If were going through minefields they have to see me up in front, not in the first vehicle but see me up front. I need to take the risk to show them its worth taking. Right. Wow. So what did you do after the army . After you retired, you retired as a colonel. I got a call one day, i was professor of strategy at the National War College. So youre teaching not just army guys, army, navy, air force, marine, coast guard, fbi treasury department, and civilians who also go to the National War College. I was one of their professors of strategy, one who took them to gettysburg and talked about the leadership lessons of gettysburg. The air force guys said what would have happened if we had a b52 . Would that have made a difference . Yeah, thanks, colonel. Thanks for your comment. I really enjoyed that job. I got a call one day from jack jacobs. Medal of honor winner. Jack, how did you get hold of me . I used to work there, too. I used to teach there. Where are you now . What do you do . I make a lot of money and have a lot of fun. And i said, okay, what can i do to help you . I have these 14yearolds who know nothing, one of the great lessons of leadership when he was a captain. They want 250 pounds for it. Could you check and see if somebody can sell it to me for something less than 600 or whatever that was in pounds at the time. None of whom were willing to part with it because they knew how rare it was. I went to the pentagon, the lady in the pentagon i knew for many years, and who ran the bookstore. Yes, it is. You have a copy of that . Oh, i dont think so. Lets look in the store room. She took a flashlight and a duster and took me up to the store room on the top floor and it was one of those Indiana Jones storerooms. Came back with a hard copy of the infantry attacks, 1952. Well have to go down and check. She went down and went on her computer, 4. 50. I sent it to jack and he said he called me up a couple days later and he said i dont know how you did that, man, but theyve asked me who is this guy and how can we get him to work for us . Work for who . Bankers trust. Jack, im still in the army. Its time to retire. Get a resume by tomorrow and send it over here. They want to hire you and see the resume. We would like to extend this offer to you. Ill do that and took off my uniform, retired in a ceremony. Went back and my brother called up, when you took off your uniform and were hanging it up, did you sit there and think about all that meant to you, what all those ribbons stood for and the stuff you have hanging on your uniform . Gunner, thats his name, i really didnt have time to think about it. I was packing and going to new york the next day. Learning the ropes, i had to learn how to be a broker dealer, get my license. Pack your stuff, were going to london. It doesnt matter, we only take hangup bags. I packed as much stuff as i could pack and went to london and didnt come back for a year. I said, what am i supposed to do . I didnt bring enough shirts, are we paying you enough . Get yourself some decent clothing, buy expensive ties and start looking like a banker. The first rule of banking if you want peoples money you have to look like you dont need it. I did all that and spent a lot of money doing it. They were paying me a lot of money and bonuses as well. One night in london, ken, were going to have din wer tomorrner Thompson Electronics, the cfo and coo. They have a lot of money with us. Were doing it tonight. Meet me at heathrow in about three hours. I said, where are we doing this . In paris, of course. We flew to paris. Got picked up by a limousine. Went down to a four star michelin restaurant, like two of them on the left bank. Came in and sat down with his guys and they brought the wine list and i knew my way around the wine list. I had been in europe for six years. My boss, andrew, says order the wines for us and i said what do you want . I want to start with champagne and i want wine to go with the fish dish and then something before the end, some sort of cognac and some cigars. So i had learned enough about wine lists. I asked somebody at bankers trust, how do you do this . The 47page wine list. They said, first of all, do not order the cheapest wine. They wont do business with you. Dont order the most expensive. Go about threequarters of the way up the price list and start looking for stuff you recognize. And i did. And so i started recognizing stuff and so i ordered all these wines and the french guys who spoke fluent english said, andrew, youve got yourself a winner. And i said, well, thank you very much. Very good choices for the wines. After a few minutes one of them said, next to us at the table isnt that dr. Henry kissinger. I looked over, yeah, it is. Would you like to meet him . They said, do you know him . I briefed him a couple of times. And he said, we would be so honored to meet dr. Kissinger. I go over and i said, dr. Kissinger, colonel ken carlson, United States army. You may remember me when you came to visit the school of advanced studies and you talked to us when we were in washington. Yes, i do, ken. What are you doing now . Still in the army . No, im a banker. He said, congratulations. I said im here with Thompson Electronics and they would like to they would like to meet you. Can they come over and shake your hand. He said, absolutely not. I said, im sorry. I didnt mean to interrupt. No, no, i will come to them. Henry kissinger pulls up an extra chair, chats these guys up for five to ten minutes, signs their menus and tells them how lucky they are to be able to deal with a guy with the integrity of a former military officer. Wow. Im sitting there and my boss is drooling. At the end of this thing, the bill came for the four of us, 1,500. I said i didnt say anything. I didnt have a visa i didnt have an american he can press card so i signed a visa card i was sharing with my wife and i had to call her Long Distance and say i just put 1,500 on the visa card. You may be concerned. But on the way out i said, am i going to get in trouble four of us for 1,500. He said, youre not in kansas anymore, ken. Youre in the banking world now. We spend money like this all the time. Youre not going to have any trouble with this on your ex persons account. Theres one thing you missed while trying to figure out how to sign your name and your hand was shaking. They gave us an envelope. Take a look inside. They gave us another 100 million to manage for them. He said your 1,500 will be lost in the rounding errors. But you are going to get a big bonus for what you did tonight, introducing them to Henry Kissinger and ordering in french from the wine list and all that sort of thing. I said, im not in kansas anymore. Wow. So i had some great experiences with bankers trust. Eventually they dissolved my entire division when they were becoming Deutsche Bank. They got rid of their International Investment because Deutsche Bank already had that. They didnt need to duplicate it in new york. I went to Sei Investments which was a Mutual Fund Company in pennsylvania. And my i had a territory coast to coast all medical establishments which had major investment pools. My job was to go sell them the idea of working alongside sei which would invest their money for them and their 401 k funds. I did that for a few years, three or four years and then i was in this big car accident. I was hit by a truck from behind, 18wheeler drove me into the car in front of me. I had a rental buick that became a rental volkswagen. When the guy came up from the truck, are you okay, and i couldnt feel anything on the left side of my body, i dont think so. Turned out there was a fire station right across the street. They came out with their ambulance, took me to the hospital and i stayed in the hospital for about a week and then went back to business. But i could no longer lift my bag above my head to put it in the overhead bin and i was taking lots and lots of drugs for all the pain i had. They said they had to let me go because i couldnt do the job any longer and i said fine because i had two disability policies with them and i was also receiving Workers Compensation and the guy who was in the truck, he had big insurance and then usaa, you had under insured motorist coverage. He doesnt have enough so i ended up with a lot of money out of that accident and i was fully recovered. You probably didnt need that on your back. And that further complicated having a back injury. You know what, then i became a cancer patient and and you survived that. And i survived that and it is now 2015 and im still talking, talking to you people. That is an incredible story. Did anything, any of the things you learned at west point or in the army help your business . Absolutely. Absolutely. First of all, youd better be honest. Theres a lot of people less than honest. You need to tell people the down side as well as the upside. If you only tell them the upside and things go wrong theyll never do business with you again. And so i made sure all the people who were my clients understood, dont react to every single move of the market. Thats a stupid way of investing. If we have you out of balance, were going to get you back in balance by increasing over here and decreasing over here. But were looking out, trying to look out for your investments not from our perspective. We can make money by over trading you. We dont want to do that. I had the trust of everybody who i had lots and lots of money under our management but nobody ever said were not comfortable because i was the guy that they were talking to. So the integrity is part of the military. Absolutely. And, of course, the ability to take charge when you need to and the ability to know the difference between right and wrong and to plan ahead and all things that you learn when youre a cadet and you actually practice when youre a military officer. Theyre all extremely important in business. So this has been a fabulous interview. Is there anything that i havent asked you that youd like to say . Go ahead. What does west point mean to you . I right now lead a group of 26 of my classmates. We come up here we have come up here 14 times now to help teach the professional military ethic called the cadet character program. Weve been doing that since the class of 2016. We were the last guys who got to talk to them as plebes. The opportunity to come back to west point and to give back for all the west point has given to us is an amazing one. Every time i do this, i take pictures of the class and publish them on the class newsletter and more people say that looks like a mini reunion and so now i have much larger group than either 67 or 68 or 63 had. We have almost 30 people who come up at their own expense because its so important to try to pass on the values that were given to us that we have tried to live for 30 or 40 years. For us its almost 50 years. I just cant tell you how much west point means to me both having been a cadet here, having been on the faculty and an opportunity to talk to cadets even now at our 50th as we approach our 50th year. People say people sometimes ask me, where is west point . And i say its 55 miles north of new york city and 75 years ago. Whats that mean . Theres tradition there that continues to move forward but it is like any other place youve ever been. There are people out there who care about each other. They care about what theyre doing. They know they are going to be leaders of character and theyre trying to develop their character and this is the place to do it. Its the finest Leadership School in the military. Well, maybe Ranger School is a close second. Ranger school puts you through the wringer to show what you can do. Ranger school, because i never command add cavalry troop, when i first showed up, the first question, does this captain know anything . And of course i had never commanded in the cavalry business. But they looked at my uniform and i had a set of airborne wings and a ranger patch. He knows what hes doing. So doing all those things starts by coming to west point. I was thinking when they were making fun of ben carson saying i have a full scholarship, i had a class dinner the other night up in cornwall and we had 35 people at the class dinner. I stood up at the beginning, my name is ken carson and 55 years ago i had a full scholarship to west point. Crack them up. I also told that to cadets and they all got it. They were on the news. It really is one of the seminal moments of my life to walk through here. People say whats the best view you ever saw at west point . I said, in the rearview mirror. Because i was anxious to get out. Once i knew all the things that i knew, i wanted to go out and do it. And so thats why i wanted to go into berlin and i was happy to go to vietnam. I would have extended in vietnam had i not been wounded. I couldnt im a blessed man. Yes, sir. A blessed man. Surviving all the things ive survived since then. Thats my story and im sticking to it. Thats a wonderful story. Thank you so much. The Hudson Institute host as Panel Discussion on the future of iraq and the middle east. Live coverage begins at noon eastern on cspan2. The commission on security and cooperation in europe looks at the doping of russian athletes and the policy solutions for protecting whistleblowers and combatting fraud in sports. Thats live starting at 3 30 p. M. Also on cspan2. For nearly 20 years indepth on book tv featured the nations best known nonfiction writers for live conversations about their books. This year as a special project were featuring bestselling fiction writers for our Monthly Program indepth fiction edition. Join us live march 4th with jeff sherra. His most recent book is the frozen hours. The final storm because 11 more novels which recount the military history of america from the American Revolution to the korean war. During the program well be taking your phone calls, tweets, and facebook messages. Our special series indepth fiction edition with author jeff shaara sunday, march 4, live from noon to 3 00 p. M. Eastern on book tv on cspan2. Henry hank thomas, a Founding Member of the student nonviolent coordinating committee, recounted his experiences as one of the original 13 freedom writers. Civil writes activist who is traveled on interstate buses into the deep south to challenge racial segregation. He also described his combat Medic Service during the vietnam war. Racial tension among the soldiers and being wounded during battle. The interview held by the west point center for oral history. Its 1 10. Were here at the west point center for oral history studio on february 23rd, 2015, with mr. Henry james thomas. Hello, mr. Thomas. Hi. How are you doing