Instead of giving you the cliff notes will have the other talk about it. Without further ado, mr. Wright. [applause] thank you, philip. I like the further ado. Its an honor to me to participate in this program, at this place, an institution committed to protecting and sharing the rich legacy of the United States navy. Its a particular pleasure for me to be with you today. I am delighted to see veterans and friends and those of you who are curious to learn more about the vietnam war. Im honored to contribute to try to contribute to that process of learning. I do want to talk about my book. Thats why i am here today and i hope thats why you are here to. Maybe the best way to do that is to try to describe why it is i wrote it what i was trying to do and why i tried to do that. Last year my wife susan and i attended a performance of hamilton in new york. Many lines from that play struck me and stayed with me but one of them kept running through my head. Eliza hamilton, the widow of alexander hamilton, saying with a chorus of Founding Fathers who lives, who dies, tells your story. This is relevant to my remarks, its relevant to my book because in any war, any war, and any armed confrontation the first questions are the determinate ones. Lives dies. Stripped of all other explanations about the purposes and the goals of war this is the fundamental human question that those who go to war was based. Indeed, its the cool purpose of war and its best never to get this, who lives in dies. Thats why ive had so much trouble in recent years as politicians and pundits have talked about boots on the ground as a metaphor for sending in combat troops i keep pointing out that were not talking about shoe leather but were talking about flesh and blood and were talking about our young and we are asking of them who lives and who dies. The burden after all the shooting stops in any war is the lingering question of tells your story, tells your story. That share narrative of battles fought, of the dead forever young, and the memories of the survivors. This is critical for framing that story. It provides an assessment of why lives were lost and reminds us of who they were and marks brother the lives of survivors who them. Survivors who will carry the memory. I believe in the most perverse and cool way there may be nothing more human and more of individuals in war testing their courage and testing their values and testing themselves and needing to do so much instinctively that theyve been taught all their lives not to do actively. They must confront that basic question of who lives in dies. I interviewed a number of people for this book and hanging with me is one conversation that i had with the man who didnt go to vietnam itself because he was a teenager when he went to vietnam, 14 or 15 years old and he lived in small towns and plaintiff and there was a knock on the door was home alone one day and went to answer the door and there were two soldiers there and they asked if his parents were home and he said no that they were running an errand and should be back in 15 minutes or so. Please, wait if you would like to and they would sit on the porch and he joined them there. He told me he was so enthused to have the soldiers there and he said i have a brother who is in the army. My brother is a helicopter pilot is in vietnam and im so proud of him and what he does and hell be home in a couple of months and i cant wait to see him. Do you know my brother . He was struck by the fact that these two soldiers sitting on his porch really didnt say much of anything to him. They didnt acknowledge his questions. His parents came home and, of course, the soldiers informed them that his brother would not be coming home because his helicopter had been shot down and was dead. He told me he iran up in the woods behind and wept and wept thinking about his brother and a little embarrassed about sitting there asking the soldiers if you know my brother and when it comes with the family and his brother was dead. We all need to assist in the responsibility of carrying and sharing the stories. These stories need to become embedded more in our National Narrative and the human face of war its critical to note that this narrative is not about just those who died but those who serve with them also have important reflections to share and they need to have an opportunity to do that rather than to remain burden with the silent memories that more veterans carry. In this country the narrative of Wartime Service have really been subdued since world war ii and many people point to the vietnam war as a factor in the declining interest in veterans and theres no doubt that Vietnam Veterans were seldom celebrated and that clearly related to the fact by the 1960s there war had become unpopular. It didnt necessarily follow that the unpopularity of their war also made them unpopular and the outright hostility toward the men who served was not widespread but present. What was widespread was an indifference maybe even in embarrassed indifference and an unwillingness to engage them and talk with them. If americans really did not know what was happening on the ground of vietnam its also the case that most were not eager to the veterans. Their stories remain largely unfold. In my book i quote from a poem shared by a sailor and had been serving on a patrol vote in the mekong delta in april of 1969 he had watched a very Close Friends of his die when their vote was ambushed by enemy troops on a narrow waterway of the delta and it was pretty hostile territory in these small votes. The sailor had gone to saigon a month later as a brief r r and he describes in his diaries sitting in his tall room looking out the window and watching a storm come onto the city and he wrote the sky is black now. Its illuminated now and then by silence stroke of lightning. People bustling about before the storm and for the curfew. Soon the reins will come and cool us all and slow the motion and the city will become quiet under the soothing rhythm of the rain. People will move inside and watch the monsoon downpour from a darkened window and some, perhaps, will reflect on the day that its just ended. The closing line and some perhaps will reflect on the day just ended. I can assure you that those who were there have never stops reflecting and its long past time for the rest of us to understand something of their experience in this war telling their story, hearing it and all of us reflecting on it is a burden we share. I want to share some of my reflections on the days of that war and the years of that war now ended to discuss the very Human Experience of those americans who serve in vietnam. In 1965 when the american ground war began president johnson since marines into vietnam in the march of 1965 in a Significant Army brought that spring. The dominant public image in the United States that year was of young heroes fighting communism in the jungles of Southeast Asia there was surely protests against the war and there was this sense of the present johnson escalating it by sending in Ground Troops but most americans thought of those kids who were over there as being road americans on the front lines in the battle against communism. Within a few years as american casualties increased significantly, as a draft picked up and drew more and more americans into the army and as people read stories about some of the things that were happening to the vietnamese as a result of this major war being fought for their villages and as people began to have less confidence to the resolution in the war the attitude toward those serving their changed. Not in a negative way which many now consider them to be objects of sympathy who had been sent over to fight a cool and illadvised war but after the story of may lie became public in the 1969, in the minds of some of those it leads to protests of the war and those who were over there fighting it became the perpetrators of that cool war and the stereotype of the drug addled psychotics who were in vietnam, the apocalypse now we image. I have described in this book the apocalypse now as vietnam meets woodstock and it may indeed be a very good movie and it is considered a good movie but its not a story of the vietnam experience. I have to say a few weeks go in for may, california i made that same statement and the first question from a member of the audience following my said im a screenwriter on that movie and it was accurate and we worked very hard to make it accurate. I did not debate that points with him. I would say that excepting for some remarkable books written by the veterans particularly the fiction of tim obrien in jim webb, few of the popular accounts of the vietnam war recognize those who served what they were, scared kids. They were scared kids signed up for a disk and difficult and very scary assignment. We knew them as the baby boome boomers, as the 60s generation, as the woodstock celebrants, the antiwar protesters on our campuses in our streets, to stereotype hippies who challenged the boundaries of American Culture but it also is clear to me and should be clear to everyone that this is not the face, the fullface, of this generation. Not at all. For example, about 40 of the 60s generation served in the military and about 10 went to vietnam. More of them died in vietnam then went to canada or what to present for evading the draft so my book tells the story and reminds us of some of the members of that generation. It is enriched by over 160 interviews i completed with men and women served in combat or medical unit in vietnam. I really did focus on the ground action, the combat, the war fighting in vietnam. I describe in some greater detail in the book in the spring of 1969, which i think of as a pivot point in the nature of the war. I talked to my interviewees about why they went, what was on their mind and i talked to them about the experience of serving in vietnam and i talked to many of them about being with friends when they died. I talked with them about coming home and their experience when they came home. I also interviewed members of families confronted a military delegate at the front door and told them that their son or daughter would not be coming home. So, a couple of weeks ago, in late march, i sent out personally described copies to each of these 160 people that i had interviewed for the book and told them that they were collaborators in my effort to tell the story. In the story book i tried to describe what it was like to grow up in that postworld war ii baby boomer generation and about the exciting america of those years and about the expansion of possibility and of opportunity, about the emphasis on education. It was a heady time for those of us that remember growing up. But i also detail the scary world in which this generation grew up. About worries of impending nuclear attacks, certainly, from the first half of the 1950s we were warned regularly that it could happen at any time and we needed to be ready. I talk about the duck and cover drills that we had in the schools where literally kids in schools in small midwestern town like mine were trained to get under the desk, duck and cover, if the Nuclear Bombs started hitting there. I talk about the conviction and shared fear that the world would be at war and the reminder that this nation, this time, had to be prepared to fight this inevitable war. This nation and its citizens would need to step up and all of us would have to assume that responsibility that came with citizenship in this republic. It was an era of the peacetime draft and in my High School Graduating class in 1957 there were 25 boys and about 13 of us enlisted immediately after graduation. Five of us in the marines and i was still 17 years old and it was just going into the service was part of life as part of the culture that. Now, i am not in this book, or in any place sympathetic to those political leaders who took us to vietnam. My interest here is less in assessing the foreign policies and the commitments of president s from truman to nixon. Other historians have done this and more will provide this history. My interest is in relating what it was like to grow up in the world that was described by political and cultural leaders and educational and religious leaders as a place where we all needed to be prepared to stand up for freedom, anyplace in the world. The world war ii veterans, the children of the munich generation and this indelible lesson of world war ii that is feeling stand up to aggression or dictators only encourages more of it. These are the parents of the baby boomers and they warned what would happen if this country did not respond to challenges and threats. John kennedy, at his inauguration in january of 1961, said ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country. If this summons to a sense of shared in common responsibility for the wellbeing of the republic seems quaint in 2017, it was not quite in 1961. There was a sense of a Global Responsibility and we had to be prepared to meet it. Ironically, this Global Responsibility would play out in vietnam of all places in the vietnam war was never truly about vietnam, it was about this much larger conflict and we had a sense that this was where we were being tested and we had to stand up in this place. We found ourselves in this war there that kept escalating and young americans, the baby boomers, self in possible places and one of the most distinct descriptions of the Tactical Combat decisions in vietnam was provided by colin powell. He had first gone out there in january of 1963 as a young army officer. President kennedy was sending in more advisors in uniform posted with South Vietnamese troops the army of the republic of vietnam in various places around the country and powell was sent out to the valley and it is still a vessel in the northwestern part of the old South Vietnam just a few miles from laos. He was with an unit in an outpost and after his orientation he asked the South Vietnamese commander of that unit and said tell me why are we here and why is this outpost in this place and the South Vietnamese commander said this outpost is here to provide protection to guard this airstrip down below us and there was a small grass airfield down there and powell said that make sense but tell me why is the airstrip there and the South Vietnamese officer said to him the airstrip is there to supply this outpost. Colin powell who would go over again and heavy american combat in the late 1960s said he wasnt sure he ever heard a better explanation as circular as it was for what we were doing at some of these places. Working in this book in addition to my research and reading and interviews and intellectual framing of the story i certainly knew i needed to visit vietnam not just the tourist spas and starting cities i wanted to get to the delta and the high country and i wanted to get to the jungles and far reaches where the baby boomer generation fought and where the stories of some of the men i was describing had died. I visited the delta but visiting even today you can understand where the young kids controlled along the waterways and canals from the hostile and scary places. Traveling up to this cities i saw the remains of liberty bridge that so Many Americans to serve their new. I visited the old area that the marines called god city, north of lodi bridge. I left behind some momentum is there for dartmouth marines were killed in two different images with a third battalion of seven marines one with kilo company in july of 1968 and a second classmate of the first with mike company less than 2 miles away in november of that year. I looked across at Charlie Ridge still dark and foreboding 45 years later and i went away and walked around the ancient citadel that have been the site of intense fighting during tet in 1968. Greeted by a brief summer shower, the trail was steep and slippery, i stumbled and i slid and i sweated and i wondered how to scare young men in may 1969 knowing there were over 50 years younger than me was not a sufficient explanation. No one was shooting down at me and i wasnt carrying 50 pounds of equipment and ammunition and weapons. It took our group two hours to reach the top. It took them twee 10 days it took ten days for those who reached the top. Some of those units who came in by helicopter had 70 , 80 casualties before that fight was over. On top of the hill i told the north vietnamese soldiers i wanted to share a story with. I grew up in an old midwestern mining town called galena which is the last name of led sulfide, it was a lead mining town first settled in the 1820s. I worked at the mind after i got out of the marines and one of my bosses was a world war ii veteran who served in europe. I had tremendous regard for him and i came to have an affection for his son. I picked up a couple pieces of led sulfide, a few days later in spring of 1969, a rocket propelled grenade struck him in the chest and killed him immediately. I told the north vietnamese soldiers about him and pulled out of my pocket a piece of led sulfide that i brought with me. I said im going to bury this on this hill at the top of this hill where my young friend never reached the top but now a piece of his hometown was here and i assured them that this led this led sulfide would last as long as the red clay would last. In many ways in that brief moment on that isolated hot triple canopy quiet hilltop in vietnam my research, my personal biography, my commitment to working with and supporting veterans and remembering those who died, my scholarly focus, my personal interest all overlapped. I have a chapter on Hamburger Hill in this book. It is the only battle in the war that i treat in any detail because it represents and symbolizes so much about the war. My interest is telling stories of the human faces and human tragedies, sharing their stories, something that is important. I always found it troubling that perhaps the name most americans knew was lieutenant william cowie. The commander of that army unit massacred Vietnamese Civilians in 1968. I can assure you there were some truly impressive kids who served in vietnam. They did some remarkable things. They demonstrated as much courage as anyone who fought in any of our wars. Vietnam was a war without heroes but it was not a war without heroism. There were plenty of these stories. They did this on our behalf but few know this. Few thank them because our war was just something we all wanted, prefer not to talk about. I would share with you my dedication that i wrote for this book. This book is dedicated to that american generation who honorably served in the vietnam war and salutes those who sacrificed. Their stories deserve to be known and their lives remembered. The difficulty of this american generations war and the controversies it engendered made their willingness to serve and the sacrifices they made greater and not the lesser. Think of what they did when they were asked to serve. Not all were eager to serve i can assure you but when asked to serve, they did. They knew the war was unpopular. Within a few years they knew it was not likely to be a war that would be won in any traditional sense. But they went. I tried to pass along the stories as a liza hamilton encouraged us to do, the sailor in saigon reminded us to do. A few of the stories in my book, i talked to a young marine officer. He was a young marine officer posted to vietnam. He was a platoon leader with an infantry unit. His in country orientation, he was told the critical thing for an officer was not to cry, never to cry, never to show that emotion. Within several weeks, one of the top men in his unit was killed in an ambush and he remembered, 45 years later, how he struggled so hard not to cry when he learned that this young man was dead. This marine just died in the last month. He encouraged me to tell the stories and his wife shared with me some things he had written including something 10 or a dozen years ago when he was writing a diary in sharp detail about this young marine that had been killed on that ambush in that day. He didnt forget. I tell the story of a young massachusetts man who joined the army. He was drafted coming out of Boston College and talked to somebody at the Army Recruiting office to ask what his options were, you are a college graduate, you can apply to ocs and be an officer. He said why what i want to do that . I would have to serve for two more years. The recruiting sergeant that i will tell you why. You could either be inside the Officers Club drinking a cold martini or you could be outside the Officers Club walking on guard duty for those who are inside drinking a cold martini. What would you rather do . He decided he would be an officer. I dont know if he ever had a cold martini in vietnam. I dont so. I know he had warm beer that was served to the men there. But he told the story of a young man in his unit, they all had such regard for. A young sergeant from the twin cities. It was on the fourth or fifth day on Hamburger Hill and they went up another assault and the north vietnamese hit them with some rockets and one month one young man was badly wounded, they stopped to organize a letter to get him down, helicopters cannot get medevac from that steep hill. They had to go down and find a clearing at the bottom. They organized a litter group and this young sergeant from minnesota was going to lead it and just as they started they got hit by another rocket. Two men were killed and this young sergeant from minnesota was badly injured. Lieutenant sullivan said dont worry, we will get you down, we will get you to a hospital, you will be okay and organized another litter party and this young sergeant said no. I am looking over jordan right now. What do i see . I see a band of angels coming after me. Dont you worry, we will get you to the helicopter. They got him on a litter and started carrying him down. Three different men who were there that day told me they remembered all these years later a powerful voice singing swing low, sweet chariot coming to carry me home he was dead by the time he got to the bottom of the hill. I remember interviewing this woman who was a young iowa wife. She and her husband both opposed the war. When he got his draft notice rather than go to canada, she suggested, if i dont go somebody else will have to. Dont worry, i will look out for myself and never kill anyone. He went to vietnam and he died shortly after he got there in a night ambush. The army organized the funeral in the small iowa town and she said to the army contingent that came, no firing squad please. At my husbands graveside. There has been enough gunfire around him. No more. I dont want any firing squad. I interviewed some family members of a young marine from quincy, massachusetts. Jimmy hickey was part of a strong irish marine culture and was going to join some of his buddies when he was a High School Junior only 17 years old. He delayed going in with them because his girlfriend persuaded him to stay but the following winter in february 1968, one of his dear friends who was in the original group that went in was killed during the ted offense if. Jimmy hickey and four of his friends a month after they graduated from Quincy High School and joined the marines. He was in vietnam by early 1969 and he was killed in may of 1969 on hill 55 northeast of liberty bridge. Dodge city. There is a square in quincy, massachusetts named after jimmy hickey. At last count there were 19 other squares in that city, young men who died in vietnam. Jimmy hickeys uncle, phil burns was remembered by family members as a very sentimental irishman in love with jimmy hickey, a poem called the magic horse, family shared the poem and reprinted in this book. The poem tells the story of when jimmy was growing up he insisted he had a magic horse that no one else could see, this magic horse protected him and took him to some wonderful places. The poem written in 1969 evokes peter, paul and marys puff the magic dragon. Dragons live forever but not so little boys. I tell the story of a patrol boat veteran who told me one time they were hit by an ambush and swung back with heavy fire immediately and apparently they hit an ammunition dump where these people were hiding and there was a huge explosion and he saw two bodies fly up in the air from the explosion and he and the man on his boat did what was 1969 equivalent of a high 5 around the boat and the next several years when he was telling people about vietnam, told the story, and the little baskets went flying through the air and we got them. And he said in 1979 he was on a Church Retreat in shenandoah valley. Part of this retreat was for everyone to go through a maze on the church grounds. Their lives and the meaning of what it was and what they wanted to do. He started thinking about this, started thinking about those two bodies flying in the air and he said maybe if we hadnt killed them they would have killed us. That is what war is. He said you shouldnt celebrate that. His men probably had families at home that were eagerly waiting for them to come back. I killed two men and i should pray for them rather than celebrate. He started weeping and said he was crying so hard he had to run to the woods and sit down out of the way of everyone else, worked his way through this and came back and said i can assure you i never again celebrated the death of anyone at war. It is the face of war. This is the heart of war. These are the types of stories that need to be told. As i point out in my book these are the types of stories that often have no end. I spoke on veterans day 2009 at the Vietnam Veterans memorial right here in washington. It was an honor for me to be asked to speak there on that special day. It was a moving experience standing in front of that wall. It was a cool rainy day but there were some goldstar mothers sitting in front of me. We were surrounded by veterans who had come to remember and so lose again their friends. I concluded my remarks that day with a reminder. I guess it is one that continues to frame my engagement, my objective in this book and so many other things i have done in recent years. I said casualties of war cry out to be known. As persons. Not as abstractions, casualties, numbers entered into the books and not only as names, chisels into marble or granite. We need to ensure, in this place of memory, lives as well as names are recorded, lives of smiling human faces, remarkable accomplishments, engaging personalities and dreams to pursue. We do this for them, for history and for those in the future who will send the young to war. In many ways trying to remind people of this has been an important part of what i have been doing for several years. In the play hamilton, george washington, the old soldier sings along with eliza hamilton. The line let me tell you what i wish i had known when i was young and dreamed of glory. You have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your story. I hope through telling this story that someday somebody can answer affirmatively the question, do you know my brother . I regard veterans who are here, thank you for your service and your sacrifice. All of us, veterans and nonveterans need to tell the stories and more importantly listen to the stories and most important of all, to learn from these stories. Thank you very much for joining me. I am prepared to answer any questions, thank you. [applause] how did you get involved your self in telling these stories . An interesting question. I wrote a book published in 2012 the history of america have swores and those who fund them. That flowed somewhat logically from some of the stuff i have been doing working with veterans, particularly injured veterans since 2005, but when i finished this book i thought i was finished writing books, but vietnam was still hanging there and i wanted to write something about it. I thought of an oped of what the vietnam generation, this doesnt fit in an oped or between the covers of this book. I said maybe i will try another book, so i did. Yes . Can you talk about the experience of veterans from the vietnam generation and those today wednesday come back to civilian life . You have been instrumental in dartmouth for instance but following the vietnam war . I think veterans who come back today are greeted generally warmly. People applaud them when they see them, when they are identified. They thank them for their service. Vietnam veterans did not have that experience. People really did not want to talk to them about their service. I am not sure americans today know much more about what it is we are asking these kids who are serving today to do on our behalf. I am not sure we appreciate the nature of these complicated missions we send them on, about the of engagement that are necessarily a part of these wars, about multiple deployments that they have. And all the pressure on them and their families, older than the vietnam veteran generation was, half of them are married. A Different Military today, a more professional military. The Vietnam Veterans were not greeted warmly as i say here. I am not sure there was as much hostility, some of them did experience that but it wasnt widespread hostility but there was widespread indifference. They were embarrassed to talk to them. We worked our way through that and are trying to acknowledge them in some ways, but as one vietnam veteran said to me a few years ago, when somebody says to me you are in vietnam, thank you for your service, i look upon it with the same reflex we have on when somebody sneezeds, we say bless you. We know more really a blessing someone who sneezes than we are being thanked for our service in vietnam. There is some truth to that. It is an embarrassed instinctive thing that we do. I vietnam generation has done well in so many areas in our country that contribute significantly to our politics, our culture, our economy blues they still bear a lot of these memories and i dont most people have wanted to know what it is they are remembering. My name is chase. Can you talk about the practices, customs or prejudices associated with translating a needed language. Didnt have much authority to do that. Very few people. Doesnt work in the military. That is not a full understanding of the vietnamese. Most of the veterans i spoke to came to appreciate early on the vietnamese didnt want them to be there. They can pick them up without knowing the language. The present conflict with north korea. Not sure. We have trouble understanding north korea. It is difficult to understand north korea and that his leadership. It is not always reaction in the way we in the west government as rational. The concern many people have is misunderstanding or a miscalculation could be quite devastating particularly given the vulnerability of the northern part of south korea to north korean attack. Why do you think in todays day and age there is such difficulty in National Service. And when i went into the army. Brotherinlaw was in the air force. Nobody seems they could teach school, do anything but we blow it up because there is no draft. The draft ended in 1973 and even during the vietnam war the military did not need all of the 18 selections involved. They ended up serving, those that didnt serve did not for a variety of reasons, complicated range of reasons but they didnt serve. Today i am over 75, generation of men are veterans. Those, men in their teens, less then 2 are veterans and that is not going to turn around. The question is can we have a draft today . Yes. It would have to be a lottery. I dont you could do it any other way but in 2010, the last few years i saw it, there were Something Like florida have million men turned 18. The military right now needs 170, 180,000 a year to sustain the force. Which 170 or 180 or 1000 of those for the halfmillion are going to serve. The military would prefer to have those who want to serve come in. The center for new american security, they are not representative of society. Not a military caste system, not what they use. Those who serve in the military are often children of those who serve in the military and it carries off. It means more and more of us dont have the idea of what they do. Could we have a National Service for those, the other 4. 2 million, 18yearolds plus the 18yearold women . I guess we could. Without being cynical, we have trouble on pennsylvania avenue, we are agreeing on some basic things which imagine what would constitute National Service and who would monitor for million kids a year and what they are doing to make certain they met that objective and if they didnt what we would do with them . I worry how you could implement that but there is a sense today that we do not owe something to the common good and that is a major loss for the republic. All right. If there are no more questions i would like to present you with one of the more practical things. I like seeing it out in front, thank you. Thank you for coming. Where are the books . In the gift store. [inaudible conversations] absolutely. Maybe next to the podium. Hold up the book. You are watching booktv on cspan2 with top Nonfiction Book and offers every weekend. Booktv, television for serious readers. This weekend on booktv on cspan2 we have 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books. Here are a few of the programs you will see. On afterwards Cheryl Atkinson reports on how smear tactics used influence to affect public opinion. That is just a few of the authors you will see on booktv on cspan2, television