Event this event. Onlys were supported by vietnamese forces. [applause] i dont know if i need to introduce our keynote speaker. Mr. Robert traister was Second Lieutenant when he first arrived in vietnam in 1962, and he never left. I was first lieutenant. Second lieutenant in korea. We are going to love hearing about it. He was our province Senior Advisor in sa dec forever. Without further ado. [applause] traister ill see if i can walk. Hes got a mic. Mr. Traister ladies and gentlemen, it is a pleasure being here. I get the award for the longest trip of anybody to arise to i come from where thailand. I retired there. I am pretty happy there. I started out in a little town. F liverpool, new york five minutes of background. Only kid on a bus driver. My father drove a bus for 35 years. Middleclass family. My mom was a court stenographer. Theywith enough money put enough money to send me to school. I went to Syracuse University and graduated with a bachelors of science degree. I became Second Lieutenant in the United States army. October, i got called up. Off i went to the basic officers course, field artillery. When i got over there, they put me in another course, the motor maintenance course for vehicles. There were two foreign officers there. One was a vietnamese lieutenant. The second was a pakistani captain. Little did i know how ironic it was that that is where i would spend the rest of my adult working life, in those two countries. That was an amazing thing. Theid not realize it at time. From there, we went on to korea. Can you hear me . [indiscernible] mr. Traister got to speak louder . Okay. I went off to korea. Lieutenant in the first medal group, eighth cav. I was in charge of the mortar battery. We did not have any mortars. [laughter] 4. 2 inch mortars. To turnme a job to do, the m65 assault gun, an antitank weapon, no armor on it. A world war ii kind of weather. Kind of weapon. They wanted to give is training. Here i am, Second Lieutenant, i dont know where my elbow is. I had a great sergeant. Officer, if you are any good, there has to be a good sergeant. A quick armyer training. We went off to the seventh. Ivision range, th the first round we fired went aer the hill and came down by farmhouse. That was exciting days. The general called, nobody was injured, keep on. Subcaliber it was range. It was not take range. Tank range. We finished the test. We carried the rest of the andsten core ones back turned them in. I got my first certificate, signed by the general, in english and korean. That is the beginning of my advisory career. Then i moved to vietnam. Vietnam. Orders in i was supposed to get out. Working for a paul. Named jean thoughts young officers there was a guy telling it like it is. We got the straight story about how tough it was and what the problems really were. Two quick stories about this place. There, up against the cambodian border, we had a small team down there. Things went along all right. Major in charge of the team. He was our armor officer. Was in an entry assignment. A west point graduate. I dont know if he is dead or alive. He took us out every sunday on. He road down andday, we go come back. Iwas working for a captain think he retired a colonel. He and i sat and talk. What he really wants to do is get the cib. You got to talk louder. Mr. Traister more . Ill have to be like the company adjutant. Really, we found out he wanted to have the cib. We had this in the back of our minds. Sergeant north, he was the intelligence sergeant. On our team. 12 very small team. Six officers, six ncos. Out there every sunday, someone is going to get killed. Is there something we can do about this . I said, what do you think . Maybe if we got shout get shot out there, we wont have to go anymore. I said, sergeant, it sounds like a good idea, but i dont want to know about it. I want plausible deniability. Went out. Xt week, we bam bam bam. Up high. Captain, i think we have been fired at. He says, yes, we have. Lets go back to the compound. He got his cib. We didnt have to go out anymore. Sergeant north and i used to wi nk all the time. About that time, it was 1963. I was i left the army, promoted to captain, u. S. Army reserve. I like the army. It was good. Camears service, if i across another officer like this, i would have a hard time biting my tongue. I said im going to quit. I will go back to washington, find a job. Fory came along, he worked u. S. Aid at the time. He says, why dont you work for us . That set the pattern for my entire life. I never applied for a job. I had it in the luckiest guy in the world. Been the luckiest guy in the world. I signed up. I went back to the United States. When john f. E kennedy was assassinated, you know where you were. 1963. November, a little girl crying on the steps. I can never forget that. What is the matter . The president has been killed. The president has been killed . Yes. It was an amazing shock. That set everything back in washington, as everyone knows. I got delayed before i came back to vietnam. When i came back to vietnam, i was now the civilian. A lover of rumors of me being in the cia. That is not true. Let me set the record straight now. I was too good to be in the cia. [laughter] mr. Traister anyway, there was some stuff out of germany that linked me and others to some cia cell. It was not true. I went down from sa dec, the next province up. There was a picture of me with some Young Students there. I dont know if that is out or not. Young girls adoring me. Anyway, i spent a couple years there. Work closely with the robert traister i worked closely with the macv team. There were separate teams. One incident there was a warm one. I hate to tell you these toories, but this adds life the reality of what i did. There were two majors, a major keithter, and i cant remember the team number now. An out board motorboat so they could go on the river and waterski. He wanted me to haul that back. Driving. Re, me we are coming over the bridge. A truck is up ahead. The wind is blowing. I can remember this crystal clear. This is when the adrenaline was pumping. I was going to say, wow, vietnamese Information Services on a sunday afternoon. That was ridiculous. How could they work on a sunday afternoon . This was the v. C. Unfortunately they had the old sks. One round, right in front of our faces. The round was so loud, it passed through the pickup truck. It sounded like a. 45 pistol went off. I dont know what happened. Traister, i know when that round went in front of our faces, you had your foot in the carburetor. Because when i opened my eye, it was next to your foot. A crack shot. He had a long. 44 magnum. He was a marksman. The next thing i heard was bam, bam, bam. I look over. Matt as his eyes closed with a pistol over his shoulder, going bam, bam, bam. I say, what are you doing . He says, i want to let them know we have something here. I say there is a machine gun under my seat. Take that and show them. We made it through that one. A force came out on the bridge i dont know what i dropped here. V. C. , so they immediately begin shooting in the air. We made our way into sa dec. We are on the dirt road. Keith decides he is going to get on the back end of the truck and ride shotgun. He says, give me that thompson, im going to set back there. He takes the thompson. I said,ed it open and whoa, what are you trying to do . He says, i want to chamber a round. I said it goes off, bang he says, it has been a while since i seen one of these. He was a good man. We made it all the way back. I moved on for a while. One group was a bulwark against the communists. There were different stories about it, other reasons, but i know that. His old men used to say eyes sparkled when he talked. He was a guy with charisma. Didnt spark literally, but he was a convincing speaker. He was killed by the communists. That is why the entire buddhist sect became anticommunist. That was the bulwark, part of sa dec, the better part of sa dec. Anyway, then what happened . I had the longest time in vietnam, about 13 years. I went back to the states. I came out again. See john paul. A second fielder force. I said, i really like to go to work for you. I speak some vietnamese now. All right, he says, fine, but i will tell you one thing. This was working with the military at the same time. Military, you have to get your hair cut. Get the haircut. You cant have this long hair. You saw the picture of the long hair. It is not there yet. , the othere says thing, you have to stop being such a smartass. Wantback on monday and i to hear what you have to say. I came on monday and said, here i am, sir, im ready to talk about the job. I didnt tell you to get your head shaved. The hair is anr, easy thing to deal with, but the thing about being a smartass is much more difficult. He laughed. [laughter] he says, fine. Special forces were up there at the time. That was at the rubber plantations near the cambodian border. There were b52 strikes on the horizon. I saw all that stuff. Wallnt a few nights on the with my assortment of ak47s and other things i had managed to get together with some other colleagues. We were on the civilian and of town. Edge of town. Nothing happened. We were fine. Someone was always looking out for me. That was a year. To down oned me down the coast. Nice place. It was okay. A major general, he later became vice chief of staff. He was there. It was a funny story. Angus was a really nice colonel, intellectualeally army officer. He looked at the problems deeply. We got along pretty well. He told me a lot of things. We were having lunch. He wanted to go to the country the latrine. We went to headquarters where we were going to meet the general. I said this one is a flag latrine, so he went up and i followed him in. He goes, go to where the cubicle is and opens the door. The next thing i see, he closes the door and goes out. I said, what happened . He said, i dont know, all i could see was the two scars on his hat. Saluted him. You salute . Eturn the he goes, how the hell should i know . That general was the finest general i had ever met. He had a sense of humor. A reunion inmet at washington. He lived in hawaii before he passed away. I am standing here. Says, this is our psa over there. I give him a smart salute. The general holds his hand out, colonel, i think we have met before. [laughter] get it . Earlier that same day. He had a great sense of humor. I started laughing. What are you laughing about . I says, ill tell you later. There. Hed up i followed him down. I liked working for him. He was a guy you either loved or hated, but he didnt want to disappoint him. He was tough. That is how i ended up in sa dec. Of sa decone story that i can tell that has to do with bill mckinney, who is sitting in the back of the room here. That has to be told. It was pretty quiet when we got there. Only one district still had some v. C. And stuff like that. Time, we had a pretty good compound. We built a Swimming Pool three feet below ground. You hit water, you could not get in the thing. Helicopter the loach. Sounds like chop, chop. Its a chopper coming in. So i head over to the helipad. Byeard it over the helipad the 19 division by the ninth division. He took off. Its gone. I went back to hooch. He says, what is going on over there . You running the toc not . I came in the helicopter, no one came to pick me up and i left. I said kamara coming in but i didnt get any call. He said, half an hour i called before i came. I kept calling in and never could raise anybody. I said, ill check it out. Me. Aid, its 5 00, you call i want to know what is going on. Yes sir. So i went over with the jeep. Captain mckinney was there. He said, what the hells going on . He heard the helicopter, too. Because i thanked him when i saw him again, i said, i always remembered your name and that incident. So i went over, was going on . T , the only, mr. Thing i can think of is perhaps his pilot did not have the i, because we changed last night at midnight. Made beautiful sense. Shed a guy that gave me answers to two questions. One was the problem, the second was how to tell van without insulting him because i knew van carried his own ssi. So i called him at 5 00. Is said, what the hell is going on on there . Hell was a very convenient word for him. [laughter] i said, one of the officers had they were on duty, everything was functional, he said maybe a soissi. D not have the we change frequencies last night at midnight. I know if hes doing, he is looking to his own soissi. Right it, your thank you [laughter] so that was bill again, giving thanks for giving me the solutions to two problems. That was the end of that. By then, the ceasefire came along. Military started moving out. They created this thing called arrow, area relief and rehabilitation office. I had all three of those. At all because they were difficult to get around, you dont have helicopters anymore, we only had air america we did a lot of crazy things those days. Long,g on a bit too maybe. Maybe i should go. Know, weve got all night. Ok. We were in the remote out host, taking small arms ammunition disguised as Office Supplies for the local government on that. Says, wemerica private dont like to carrier we can down your Office Supplies before you, but is there anything you can do about the papers . It, butwe appreciate there is no other way we can get ammunition in. He said, we know that. They were very good guys. Very cooperative. Being a little bit morbid, one area was overrun completely by the vietcong. Three days, nobody was able to get in. We had no military advisers. I am sitting with the deputy province chief in a helicopter. Landed in the middle of an urban 113 circle with about close to 100 bodies which had been sitting in the sun for three days, which the body recover guys from the army were picking up. All these guys were on dope. You had to be on dope for the kind of work they did, unbelievable. That was my really first taste, or should i say, smell of what death is about. It was horrible. Never forgot it. On the one other time in my life ket, when they had this anatomy, and literacy scores of people where they had the tsunami, and literally scores of people were killed. They left them outside because it was no refrigeration. You had the same smells. Horrible. But anyway, you never forget that. Those who have been there im saying those who have been there know what i am saying. Band, ato play in a high school band. That. Rts, nothing like ended up doing all the squad stuff in the world. How it happens, i dont know, actually wentou on i should mention guam. Quick story. We went down the river in a boat. I had taken my 35 guns along with me on the vote because i was going to dump them in the south china sea. I didnt want the viet cong to get them. Away i went. Lcvp, i stands corrected on that event is not the kind of craft. That is my camaro with the sunglasses behind me with the long hair mcnamara with the sunglasses behind me. We made it. We went to this boat and that boat, we went on the blue ridge command vote, got on the helicopter, flew to the embassy. We were on the ground for one night, i got a new pair of pants because my clothes were walking. I was taking showers and washing my clothes at the same time. Guam looking after refugees. I did two things i was there, and i am proud of both those things. I always liked gold. Gold. Owed the price of there was no computers or anything those days, i just called up Merrill Lynch and said, whats the price of gold, got the price. I want to deacon company, dont know if anybody remembers it, but deac was a Money Changer in guam. They had this operation of buying gold from refugees. So what they were doing, believe it or not, they had a 5 charge. Price thatbuysell is standard, but they were charging 5 on top of the sell price. So they were getting 5 . Secondly, they were selling they were paying for one ounce il ofld and getting one ta gold, of 1. 2 ounces. So what do we do now . Coordinator the military did all the work, but there was a civilian guard. Down. T closed them i said, how can there close them down . The military has authorized this. He said, close them down and tell them to come and see me. I said ok, fine. I did it. They were mad as hell, of course. Then they came to me. I want to his Office One Day two weeks later. He puts his hand over the phone and says, are you sure about this gold thing . I said, i will stick my life on it, for god sakes. I know what i am talking about. Million ory got 4 5 million that they stole from refugees. They were there months before i got there, they had to get that much. He said kemal alright, mr. Deac you come along with your lawyers and we will have a conversation. He said happy to see you. Never showed. Total bust. After that, they went out of business because word got out what they had done. And they dont exist, the company, the Foreign Exchange company. That was one. Draft dodgers. Think about this one. Saigon, you had chinese section. Those Ethnic Chinese never wanted to go to any army. They bought papers from taiwan and there were always Walking Around with no i. D. Cards, but they had papers that they were taiwanese citizens. But they werent, they were as much vietnamese as anybody. The immigration and Naturalization Service turned them down because they didnt have the enemies i. D. Card. They were chinese, not the enemies. So we had a problem. Bill and i talked. Got the easiest guy is immigration, we will take him out to dinner, have a few drinks, you tell him the story and we will see what we can do. There were 20 of these guys, between 2025. Ok. Dont know what his name was, i forgot. He was a good guy, dan something. I say, look, these guys are all draftdodgers from an army that does not exist. The army is gone. Who are we to pass judgment on what the foreigner does with his army . These people were vietnamese, they came on the vietnamese boat ,rom saigon and they are not they are not able to go back to taiwan. They can go to the mainland. Nobody would have them. They were people without a country because of the enemys i. D. Card. So this guy says, after a couple more drinks, and more discussion, he says, you know, if we dont do something collectively to solve this problem, weve got 1520 guys will be in guam the rest of their lives, and the american taxpayer will end up paying millions of dollars for their security, food, housing and all the other things. And if they get married they will have children who are also stateless well, they will be born in warm and it will be born in guam and they would be american citizens. He says bring them at 3 00 and we will see what we can do. All of them gone. Solved the problem. He says you guys can pay me for that. [l