Utah Vietnam War Stories: Transcripts

Personal Interviews

And when those guys walked through that doorway to sit in chairs around us and we saw what they looked like, I said to myself, “What would you have to go through to have a uniform that looked like that?” And their boots, their boots were in shreds; their uniforms were in shreds. They had that look. They had that look that you can't describe, and it wasn't until then that I was terrified; I was terrified. I knew that to get to a point, looking the way I did in fresh-pressed, green new-issue uniforms, to looking the way they looked, I knew that I was going to have to go through indescribable things and it wasn't until then that I became very afraid. And from then on, I was very afraid, scared to death. That frightened me. They never said a word. I don't remember any of them speaking anything. They came in, they sat down, they had that look. We got on a plane and I think we were silent all the way into Vietnam, until landing time. It impressed every one of us – saw that and we all were struck the same way, like, this is not going to be good.

Interviewer

You touched down and what happened?

Russ Moseley

Touched down in Vietnam. I had been riding with a guy from North Hollywood, California, whose name I can never remember. We touched down. The enemy started a rocker mortar attack on the runway and the area surrounding that just as we hit the ground, and I don't know whether the aircraft was damaged but we pulled over and I don't remember ever having stairs or anything to get out of the aircraft. They just pulled off the side of the runway, threw open all the emergency doors and just told us all to get out, just get out and to lay down because the mortars were coming like crazy. So I don't know if the airplane was struck, but they were done. Everybody had to get off, including the crew, pilots, everybody. They were looking for a place to hide.

So, you know, my friend and I, we were just thinking, “The Army is going through a lot of trouble to scare us, to try and psych us out, that now we're in-country and this is a battle and this is a real stupid way of introducing this,” because we didn't think it was real at all, and we thought it was a harsh way to get out of an airplane. But there, the sand dunes where of the place we landed – I'm trying to think of where it was – just seemed like sand dunes and while everybody else was digging in, this guy and I, from California, sat on the top of this sandy mound, and every time something would blow up, we would throw a dirt clod at somebody to make them think that stuff was flying around them and they would dig deeper and get more frightened. But me and him were just sitting there and going, “This isn't real; this is not real; they're playing with us.”

And when the smoke cleared and the sun started coming up and we started moving toward the hangar to be processed into Vietnam, we found a couple of our dead soldiers that had been badly mutilated by rockets or mortars coming in, and they were really dead and we realized that he and I had just sat up there exposed to everything and thinking it was just an Army way of, I don't know, turning your mind into a combat mind, leaving the safeness of back home and now you're in combat. We thought it was all just another training thing, and it turned out to be the real thing, and that happened to us several times in Vietnam.

They called me Casper because there were so many things that happened to us where I was supposed to be in the kill zone and I ended up not in the kill zone or walking away untouched. Several times, when people looked and they saw me there and then things blew up and I popped up someplace else.

My first unit was called A-1-2 so first battalion, A Company, First Battalion, Second Platoon or Second Flight or something. Anyway, it was in Phu Loi, but it was during the monsoon, so for a few days, while we were getting processed and assigned, they would send us out on guard duty at night, and I just remember just being in a poncho all the time, because everything was always wet. My job was guarding the big ammo dump and the lightning was furious. The night lightning was furious all around you, everywhere. It was blinding and deafening, but I was guarding the ammo dump and I thought, “With all the explosives inside this sandbagged area, if I get a bolt of lightning, I'm toast.” Because every once in a while, you could hear a bolt of lightning strike and a mine or two on the perimeter would detonate because they were electrically fired. And so enough electricity must have been traveling through the wet grass, would fire mines once in a while just randomly. And I thought, “If they fire the mines in this big dump that I'm guarding, I've had it.”

So I think my first real big decision, combat-wise, was, “Do I stand right next to this, so if it goes, it will be very quick and I won't have to feel anything, or do I go to the outer extremity of where I'm allowed to go and still be within my guard station, hoping that if it goes, I'll survive it?” And I chose to nestle right up close to it, because it offered some protection from the storm, but not much. You still just got soaked.

Interviewer

When did you first get assigned to an aviation unit?

Russ Moseley

I think it took two or three days, and then they trucked us all out and they sent me to this aviation thing and my job was to be a crew chief, to fly, but they wanted you to work for two or three weeks in the hangar doing mechanic stuff: working on ships, get really, really familiar with them, and as soon as a guy rotated out and a helicopter became available, then you got assigned a helicopter and from then on, every time that helicopter left the ground, you were in it, without exception.

Interviewer

Do you remember your first combat flight?

Russ Moseley

I don't. I just remember that it took a few flights, because we flew with the doors open and crew chiefs, and door gunners were supposed to wear a harness that kept you anchored in the ship, and we called them monkey harnesses, and I never saw one.

Nobody ever wore 'em because that wasn't the tough-guy thing to do. That wasn't the macho thing to do, so nobody ever wore the harness. Everybody just flew with doors open, your feet out on the pegs, your M-60, your gun, is right in front of you, and we just flew on these missions and that's what you did; you manned that gun and if it got hot, you brought up your gun and fired for all you were worth. And otherwise, you just kept an eye out for other aircraft. You didn't want a mid-air collision and did whatever you could, whatever the pilots needed, you know.

Interviewer

During the first mission you really had to fire your weapon?

Russ Moseley

Interviewer

Describe who's on the ship and tell us, were you flying your Bulldog H-Model Huey?

Russ Moseley

Same ship, flew that ship the whole time.

The ship was an H-Model Huey, had a jet engine, produced 1350 horsepower. The side of the ship was painted with the Georgia Bulldog because our first sergeant evidently was from Georgia and he had an English Bulldog as a mascot in the company unit. And so we were called the Bulldog Company and we set as our call sign, Bulldog 1, Bulldog 17, Bulldog 23 and that was our call sign. The particular flight that I belonged to was the Comancheros. We had two or three flights of about ten ships each. I was a Comancheros. Other guys belonged to the Champagne flight and I know there was another one and I can't recall it. So we had “Comancheros” written on the door of my ship, and a big Georgia bulldog painted on each side on the doors.

We had two warrant officers up front generally. Sometimes they were ranking officers like lieutenants or captains but most of the time they were warrant officers. The warrant officer on the left is in command of the ship; the warrant officer on the right is under him. The crew chief is in charge of everything: the loading, the unloading, the fuel; are we going to do this, are we going to do that. The pilots took care of all the flying part but the crew chief was the ship's manager. If you thought we were too heavily loaded and if you thought we weren't balanced right or anything to fly, you had to take care of that; that was your job. Pilots didn't have time to worry about that, and my gunner, who was on the right side of the ship always, always took care of the guns.

Translated?

Russ Moseley

Yeah, they couldn't be sent over the air, they were so sensitive that they didn't want to be over the air and the enemy pick them up so you'd take a guy that had this message locked to his wrist and you'd take him to a place that he could deliver the message. I mean, you did everything.

At nighttime, sometimes you'd do psychological operations where they'd strap huge speakers on each side of your helicopter and you'd fly over the jungle at night with your lights out, almost within pistol range of the enemy, but they couldn't see you because it was black and you had no lights running whatever. And you'd fly blind, by instrument only, and you'd play these tapes; the psychological guys would be on board and they'd hand each of you, the gunner and the crew chief each got a big box of these leaflets that you'd throw out, and they were leaflets that gave instructions to the enemy: “If you're fighting and you don't want to fight and you want out of this, this is the way out, and these are the instructions and this is how you surrender safely, that you don't get shot accidentally. This is what you do, and we'll take care of you, and we'll take you to a place that's safe, and we'll come and get your families, and we'll save your pigs and we'll save your chickens and we'll take your parents and we'll fly them to a safe place, but you've got to come out.”

And while we were throwing these leaflets, these speakers would be playing this nightmarish audio and it was the sound effects of a firefight. There was machine guns and mortars and screaming and Vietnamese yelling back and forth. And then this voice would come on and it was the voice of a Vietnamese who evidently had been killed and he was in that place hovering over the earth that all Vietnamese go to, of their religion when they die, and he was now able to see the Earth, and now he could comprehend the truth from the lies, the Communist lies.

And in this video explained, “I'm here and I see the Earth from above and I see the truth, and now I see that Communists are lying to us and you're fighting for a cause that's not right. But I've been maimed and disfigured, and I cannot go on and I'm going to be here now forever, but you still have a chance to save yourself from this above-the-earth hell; surrender, let them save your families.”

But it was such a horrible thing. Even at night with our night scope vision, we could look down and every once in a while you could see a guy coming out of the trees with his hands in the air unarmed, chancing the fact that somebody else in his unit might kill him for surrendering. So I know that frightened 'em and I know it frightened me. Listening to it frightened you. You had no idea what it's saying; it was all done in Vietnamese. But the psychological operation guy on board that was running the little tape recorder, he'd say, “Yeah, this is what this says; this is the story that we're telling, and those guys down there are scared to death because this was done in such a way that they really believed that this guy is telling them the story.”

Interviewer

You're creating a nightmare.

Russ Moseley

We created a nightmare for it and it was a nightmare. And a lot of them that were fighting for us didn't want to be. A lot of them were taken out of villages in the middle of the night by the Viet Cong, either Viet Cong or NVA soldiers and say, “You're going to come and you're going to kill Americans with us,” and they would say, “We don't want to kill Americans; we have a farm to run; we have our rice that's growing; there's nobody here to run the rice.” And so they would walk over and shoot grandma and go, “Now, how do you feel about not feeling like going with us, because we can kill everybody in this hooch. How do you feel about resisting us now?”

And we've captured soldiers and I've talked to them myself, personally, yeah. “I was lying, sleeping with my family and I resisted and they walked over and shot grandma, and they go, ‘How do you feel about that? Get up, get your clothes on, you're coming with us.’”

Interviewer

So you would pick up enemy soldiers?

Russ Moseley

No, not then; no, not then; it was too risky at night. We would just play the tape. We would plant the seed in their mind; we would throw these leaflets so they could find them, so they'd know how to – you know, the word in Vietnamese for surrender is Chieu Hoi. So we'd tell them, if you want to Chieu Hoi, this is the way to do it, but if you don't do it right, you could be shot as an enemy. This is the way you do it, and then we'd plant the seed and they'd be terrified all night. Some of them would, some of them would walk out of the jungle; some of them would sneak away from their unit at night and they would find a base or an American unit and with these instructions, they would know what to do to be taken prisoner without getting shot.

Interviewer

What's the difference in the medevac chopper and your chopper in terms of picking up and treating?

Russ Moseley

The medevac guys were air med people. I mean, these guys had been to Ft. Sam, Houston. They had trained as, I guess you'd call them nurses, flight nurses; I don't know, maybe that's the wrong term to use for those guys, but they had done very intensive medical training on wound care and first aid – but more than first aid; serious wound care – and they were equipped mentally and physically and equipment-wise to patch guys up and save their lives and that's all they did. When you called those guys, they knew it was going to be bad.

They usually had a cross on their ship; hopefully the enemy wouldn't shoot at them but I don't think it saved them ever; I don't think it ever meant anything to the enemy, but they would fly in, they'd extract these guys, and this is what they did all the time. They didn't do combat runs; they didn't do supply runs; their job was to go and extract dead and wounded soldiers and get them out.

My job, as the slick crew chief, is, we did everything. If they needed a helicopter, we were the helicopter and we would show up for anything so we would transport anything, go anywhere, any time of day or night. Sometimes it was easy stuff, like flying over a battle that we knew was going to ensue during the night and we'd fly at a pretty high altitude and we'd kick out those huge magnesium flares under parachutes so that they would light the area below, so our soldiers could see the enemy and fight with a little bit of light. And that was easy because you were too high for the enemy to get you, generally. And that's all you did, is kicked out these gigantic magnesium candles to light the ground below, and you did that until you ran out, and then you went and got some more. Sometimes they were just nothing missions. You had to transport somebody someplace.

Interviewer

When you get that desperate call from down on the ground, and you know it's going to be a mess down there, tell us about that.

Russ Moseley

Well, you know, all of us had, under our seats, we had our bulletproof vests. Now, our bulletproof vests for flight crew is different from the ground guys. The ground guys, their bulletproof vests, that you saw all the time in the films, were flexible; they were just heavy, thick, very heavy, very hot, but they'd stop a bullet. Ours, in a helicopter, our vests had solid rigid plates, one solid rigid plate on each side – well, no, it was one solid one for the whole front. They weren't split, so you lifted it over your head, dropped it down the front. You had no protection in the back but you had this big plate in front of you, so if rounds came at you and hit you in the chest, this plate would stop the bullet, but they were heavy.

We got a message out, and it was really funny, because we had Marines with us. Again, I say... the Marines that we had on board, we were taking them to an ambush and they were carrying an incredible amount of ordinates on their back and when we went down, they jumped out and set up a perimeter. We're outnumbered, outgunned. Without those Marines, we wouldn't have survived a day. That was Christmas morning, daybreak, 1969. That's where I spent my Christmas.

But anyway, you know, the Air Force helped us out and they dropped some ordinates and supported us and late in the afternoon, another Huey came in, landed at a distance and three guys jumped out and ran straight toward us. Now, they were wearing uniforms that we had never seen before. They were all black and we weren't sure who they were; we almost shot them because we'd heard rumors about the enemy capturing some of our ships, putting on our uniforms, flying with their helmets on and their visors down so you couldn't see their faces and they'd fly in to rescue soldiers and the soldiers would jump on, not knowing that the guys in the ship were Vietnamese, North Vietnamese soldiers. By the time they realized, it was too late; you were on an enemy aircraft headed for a prison camp.

Now, I don't know myself, personally, if this really happened, but they were telling us, “Be careful, make sure you know who the other helicopter is. It might not be our guys.” And I'm sure they got some of our helicopters. But anyway, the guys ran toward us. One guy ran straight toward us; the other two guys ran to my helicopter that was down and he screwed a big I-bolt into the main mast of the helicopter, on the top, to receive a hook, and the other guy put a drag shoot on the tail of the helicopter so that when it was towed, it wouldn't spin and the third guy jumped in amongst us and said, "Okay, guys, this is what's going to go down. In a moment here, a Chinook is going to come where a cable dropped and they're going to hook your ship and get it out and we're going to get it fixed. Then another ship is going to come in and get all of us and we're going to get out, but until then, we have to lay low."

And sure enough, here comes this great big Chinook with a long cable and a hook on the end, the one guy on top of my helicopter was standing there with rubber gloves on so he could grab this hook and hook it in the ship and as soon as that hook latched, he just jumped off the ship, laid down for cover, the Huey picked up and off they went, and there went my helicopter and the Chinook, and moments later another helicopter charged in out of the trees – never heard him coming – and then suddenly he was right there. He hit the ground; we all jumped on, and we were gone, and in moments it was over. It was like we got out faster than we landed. It was like, it was all over now. We were out. It was over. We were going back to our unit. Of everything that happened that day, not one of us took a bullet; not anybody was injured in that downing in the rice paddy; we all got home or got out of that deal.

Interviewer

Quite a Christmas day.

Russ Moseley

It was quite a Christmas. So, you know, I've got to be grateful. It's the worst and the best day of my life, all the same day, like in "City Slickers," you know, “What was your worst day?” You know? “What was your worst day? What was your best day?” That was my best day and my worst day on the same day.

Interviewer

You were talking about that you felt kind of guilty dropping guys off in a hot zone and that far-away expression on their faces. Can you describe that?

Russ Moseley

Well, you know, when you pick guys up, you knew it was a good thing for them, but when you drop them off, you knew it was a bad thing. There was no time you dropped guys off that you didn't know that you may never see them again. Nobody ever spoke on those missions. You didn't speak except for pilots would ask you to clear left or right for aircraft, but there was no conversation; you didn't talk about anything; you didn't talk to the guys that you were carrying. Once in a while maybe you'd say, "Okay, what are you guys doing?" But most of the time it was dead silent except for the sound of the helicopter and the wind whistling through the ship.

You didn't talk. You just thought. Myself and the gunner, we thought about, “Okay, are our guns ready? Are we loaded? Are we ready to go if things get bad?” The pilots, they're thinking about the LZ, what they're going to do. The guys in the ship that you're going to drop off, they're thinking about their mission. They already know what they're going to do. They're not talking even with each other. They know this could be a bad thing. So you didn't talk, and oftentimes you didn't talk when you picked guys up and took them out. You still were quiet, you know?

Sometimes the best you could do was light a cigarette. Sometimes that's all you could manage, was to get a cigarette lit. But I don't remember talking much to guys in and out. It's a pretty quiet ride. Everybody's mentally preparing themselves for what may come and you always knew that something was coming. Something coming was inevitable. When you flew in and dropped people off and got out and a shot wasn't fired or something didn't happen, you were very relieved but you always knew that around every corner was a surprise. I don't remember talking to the guys much.

Interviewer

Describe their faces.

Russ Moseley

Their faces are blank. Their faces are very concentrated on – you know, you don't know what they're thinking, and as easily as they could be thinking about their mission and how many mines they might have on them and how they were going to set up their ambush or how they were going to do their patrol, they could just as easily have been thinking about mom, apple pie and the girl they left behind, a letter that they got. They could be easily thinking about, “I wished I'd have mailed the letter.”

And while I'm on letters, I just have to say, I can remember Thanksgiving, was one of the hardest things. I can remember flying a chaplain around with his portable pulpit that he used to do an Easter Mass, or an Easter service for the guys out in the boonies and we'd fly this guy out, we'd set down very quickly and we'd do a fast mass. We'd never stay. We'd drop this guy off and we were gone and we'd come back and get him. And while we were doing that, we would have these big insulated coolers with hot food. Now, these soldiers, some of them hadn't had hot food – or seen it – in maybe weeks. And it would be so dangerous in some of those places we'd land.

I can remember how heart-wrenching it was for me, personally, to fly in, knowing I'd had a shower sometime in the last 48 hours, to fly into a place and these guys would be slugging out of the mud one at a time because more than one guy near the ship was a big target and they'd come, one at a time, with a canteen cup in one hand and their weapon in another hand and they wouldn't look at you; they would just walk toward the aircraft and they'd put their cup out and you'd slop turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, whatever you had, in the same cup together, and they kept an eye on the trees and their finger on the trigger the whole time.

And they would slink back into the trees and they would stand watch while somebody else came in and got their food. And they couldn't turn loose of their weapon, so they would drink their food, slop it in their mouth with one hand, weapon in the other, standing waist deep in water. And once in a while, a guy would set his cup down and he'd reach inside his shirt and he'd pull out a letter – and sometimes the letter was just cardboard that'd been ripped off a C-ration box – and it was a note penned to his wife or his mom on a piece of cardboard, and he'd say, "Can you put this in the post for me when you get to a base?" And you'd just jam these things in your shirt because your hands were on the guns you were trying to supply these guys.

And those are the moments that you felt a great deal of gratitude, knowing that you weren't him. He just wanted to slip a note to his wife or his mom and the best he could do was put it on a piece of cardboard to let them know that he was still okay, covered in leeches, standing in swamp water, one hand filled with a weapon, the other hand filled with a cup of food that he couldn't even use utensils to get into his mouth. And that was their Easter, that was their Thanksgiving.

And the great thing about that was, it made you feel so eternally grateful that you were just going to pick up and fly off and leave this behind you and go to a much safer place, but leaving those poor guys behind to do that duty that they were doing, day in and day out, every day. If you were smart and aware of the things that were important, if you did what I did, you became acutely aware that you were better off than everybody else because you didn't sleep in a jungle. You just went out there and took care of those guys the best you could and some of them you never got to see again; most of them you never saw again, most of them because somebody else came and got 'em, some of 'em because they didn't survive that night.

Interviewer

Can you tell us the cross story?

Russ Moseley

The story of the cross, you know, the story of the cross came at a time – now, let me see, I would have arrived there the first of August, probably worked in the hangar sharpening my skills with maintenance, waiting for a slot for my own helicopter and then I started flying, Septemberish, Octoberish. And I think that a lot of my missions weren't too intense. They were just missions, ash and trash, what we called it.

But we were just flying along one time, and we just suddenly got this radio call and we could hear it and it was a “Mayday, mayday, we've had a couple of guys – we got a couple of guys that need a lift out; we got two KIAs” – killed in action – “so we need somebody to come get them.” And it was an armored units, tanks and APCs and so we flew down. We were right there. We flew down and we landed and we never shut the ship down. We knew that we just could not spend much time there.

But one of their APCs, they had been going along through the jungle, one of the APCs had run over a mine and when the mine blew up, it tipped the APC up on its side, blew off one track, wasn't going to be repairable. They were going to have to destroy the track and go on, bunch the guys into other units and go on. All the guys got out; everything was okay. The guys got out, had a cigarette, ate something, let things cool down for a minute, made sure the enemy wasn't right there in their pocket. And when they didn't get any rifle fire from the enemy, they decided a couple guys need to go inside the APC and throw out all of our personal stuff, everything we can take with us. And so they did and when they went in, somebody must have been smoking. Everybody smoked but there was a tank of – it would have been napalm, it was the juice that supplies the flame thrower so it's napalm, so there was a tank inside of there and it must have ruptured because when they went in, it blew and it killed these two guys in a horrible ball of fire. So that's how they got killed.

And we were flying in to get up their bodies and take them to Long Binh to grave registration. I had never seen a dead soldier yet. I had never seen a wounded soldier yet. I don't think at that time I'd ever got into a serious fire fight yet, so this was my first thing, and I was really nervous. I was afraid, I was nervous, but I knew the landing site was going to be safe. There was an armored unit there; there were guys there; we're okay.

We landed and I watched them as they put the two guys on a single poncho and tied it up, and I thought, “How are you going to throw that poncho with two guys, a plastic poncho?” but there wasn't enough left of them for that to be a problem. I think they were both gone from their torsos down. So they tied them up, they tied the corners of the poncho together and they slung it over and threw it on the floor of the ship and, you know, the looks of the guys, their comrades, left behind, they were going to miss these guys. But more than that, they were two guys that they had been fighting with, a different kind of bond than any other kind of bond. And so we just picked up and flew off with these guys.

Now, I don't know where they're from, didn't know what their names were; I just knew there were two guys in this single poncho on the floor of my helicopter and this is my first contact with death in Vietnam. So this must have been Novemberish. It had to be around that time. And flying back to Long Binh where grave registration was, just very silent; we didn't have anything to say to anybody. We cleared for take-off and that was the only words spoken and then we were gone.

And as we flew off, you know, I just kind of looked down and I could see that APC laying up on its side with the tank there and maybe another APC, other guys, now they were busy doing what they had to do; they had to continue on; they didn't have any time to mourn the loss of their friends; they didn't have any time to think about it. They had things to do and we flew off and left them. The looks on their faces were... I can't describe it. They knew how serious the situation was, but they also knew that they couldn't weep. They didn't have time to weep over this. They had to get out of there.

So this poem that I wrote about that incident was about the incident, and the flight home and the aftermath and what it did to me. But I didn't write this poem until some 26 or 27 years later. I was at a cowboy poetry gathering in Elko and you know, I was really into that. I memorized a lot of cowboy poetry. I thought that was good times. And at Elko, Nevada, there was one cowboy who I have tons of respect for, in my mind, one of the great cowboy poets, writers and performers; his name is Rod McQueary, a veteran himself, and I think he was a lieutenant and then a captain in Vietnam himself.

And at these cowboy gatherings, there was always a segment where we did poetry relating to veterans, of all wars, any veterans, anything attached to veterans. And you could sit in one of those sessions and hear great writings and great stories from cowboys who were also veterans, and Rod McQueary was one of the best but he felt so strongly about veterans that he usually headed this up. He was always in charge of the veterans and I had such a great respect for him that I thought, you know, after all these years, I had this burden on me that I always wanted to get rid of, and didn't know how to do it. And this year, when I watched Rod perform and the way he took care of the veterans, I said, “Okay, this guy is going to be my way out,” and so this is why I wrote this poem, and this is where the poem comes from. Do you want it?

Interviewer

We'd love you to read it.

Russ Moseley

I call it "The Cross I've Had to Bear," and I wrote this 26 or 27 years afterwards and at this time right now, this is some 42 years later. This is actually a letter that I wrote to Rod, explaining to him what my problem was and how he could bail me out.

"Upon these pages, I'll explain this package I've sent you, And I pray you'll undertake the task I ask for you to do.

“I was flying over the jungle near a place called Nui Ba Den, When a call came over my radio about some trouble a unit was in.

“They were calling for a medevac chopper. It was a call I learned to dread. Still, they needed some help and while two of their comrades were dead.

“Just another mission of duty though this one was solemn and grim. Long months of duty lay ahead for me but it was the last day of duty for them.

“Our LZ was just a clearing. I could feel the oppressive jungle heat, And we stared in solemn witness as they were wrapped in a poncho sheet.

“To the Long Binh registration, it was a long and silent flight, And my crew was dealing with feelings and I was dealing with all of my might.

“There were things that made this mission so hard that weighed heavily upon my mind. This was my first mission flying out with the dead and it was a look of the comrades left behind.

“It was shortly before Christmas, their unknowing families would have it tough. I'm glad that I did not know them, this flight was rough enough.

“I don't remember mention of their names or where they were, where they might be from. Their comrades just said, "Take 'em home, boys," and their spirits were awfully glum.

“I didn't know if they were black or white and their faces were never seen. The important thing is that their blood was red, their uniforms OD green.

“I flew them only part of the way home, but the story doesn't end there. What follows is why I call this The Cross I've Had to Bear.

“And during that flight, from out of the poncho came a hand clenched tight in the fist, And I couldn't see what he had. This took a spiritual twist.

“At the end of the day, I washed out my ship, and the day's mission filled my mind, And the water cleaned out the debris and the blood and I noticed this cross left behind.

“It was the very thing that had been clenched in the fist of the soldier who had died. And in that instant, he knew his life was over and to his creator he had cried.

“It was as if, in the clutching of this cross, in faith, was the only chance he had. He'd fought for his country and he believed in God. He's probably somebody's dad.

“I couldn't just cast this treasure away or trade it as a souvenir, So I kept it safe in my quiet place and though hidden, it's always been near.

“For the last 26 years I'd open the box and the cross would be laying there. Not knowing what to do with it all of these years made it the cross I've had to bear.

“But then I saw Rod McQueary at the 96th veteran session. It brought back floods of memories for all and we gained valuable lessons.

“And then it came to me, and I could see, that this was the end of the trail. I knew that he'd help me. His heart couldn't refuse. So here's the end of the tale.

“I buried this cross out on your ranch, out where the sage brush grows, Out where there's peace and quiet and only a few folks know.

“Please say a few kind words of farewell for this soldier and fellow vet, And although we did by him proper and my burden will be lightened, you bet.

“Well, Rod, is a man with a mind of his own and he finished it in his own unique way.
And if you care to be curious, you ask him about it someday."

Interviewer

Can you describe what happened as well?

Russ Moseley

You know, we flew the body back to Long Binh, and we landed at this place, and they knew that we were coming in with two dead soldiers and, you know, I don't remember much. We just landed and my gunner and I didn't do anything; the pilots didn't do anything. We set 'er down. The guys came out from grave registration, they took the poncho, put it on a litter and left, and we took off. I remember not looking. I remember just looking out forward from my gunner's well, out into the distance, or at my feet, or at my guns. And I remember us lifting off and I turned around to look and they were gone, and we flew back to our base. And we didn't have anything more to do that day and so we flew it back and landed it in a place where we had some water to wash out the ship, and we did.

My gunner wanted the cross as a souvenir and I just thought it was a crucifix; it was a crucifix and it was a crucifix like the military issues and we've all seen them; it was a military – I suppose you could call it generic crucifix. And my gunner wanted a souvenir. A lot of us that went over there, sometimes we were looking for souvenirs to bring back and the guys on the ground who really did the fighting, they got souvenirs a lot, but those of us who flew back and forth, we weren't really in the mix. So we had to fish for our souvenirs. And it just struck me wrong for that to be a souvenir. It wasn't a souvenir. It was a man's crucifix, and I'm thinking, “I don't know who these guys were. How do you return this crucifix? Maybe I'll take it to the base chaplain and give it to the chaplain and he'll know the proper way of disposing of this crucifix.”

I never did that. We were busy. We had lots to do. I never got away to see the chaplain, so I ended up just cleaning it and putting it away in this box that we kept. All of us had a little metal box or something that our precious things – letters from home, photos of our families – those things were in those boxes and those were our sacred places, whatever was in there. So I put the crucifix in my box and that's where it stayed for 26 years; travelled all around; went everywhere, but that's where it stayed. And I always felt guilty that I didn't turn it over. So, after all the years, every time I'd get in the box to look for some old memorabilia, military memorabilia, I kept facing this cross, kept thinking, “I never did anything with this cross; I've got to do something with it, but what?” Who do you take it to? Do you take it to a Protestant chaplain? Do you take it to a Catholic priest? Do you take it to your Mormon bishop? It almost felt like they didn't have the feeling for this crucifix that you did so I never did.

And it wasn't until the cowboy poetry gathering in Elko, Nevada, seeing how Rod respected and took care of the veterans, that I said, this was my way out. So the first thing I did when I came home is I sat down, I wrote this letter to Rod, and packed it up in a box and I sent it to him. I didn't give him a lot of choices. I sent the letter and the crucifix and the package to him and now he was stuck with it, and for me, I felt a great deal of relief. At least I felt like I had done the most right for that soldier, whoever he was. I had done the most right I possibly could by giving it to Rod.

Interviewer

And me, I never got that hard. I don't think I got that hard, because kids would run up, the ship wouldn't be running, it was safe, you know; you'd run out and chase a kid and grab them, mess with them, bring them back, sit them on your lap, let them touch things, let them get in your helicopter and stand on the floor and look at all the great and, must be marvelous things to them, the instrument panels, the controls, the glass, the guns. I mean, you know, helicopters are pretty awesome machines. And for a little kid like that, to be able to get into one of those things and mess around with one of the crew members was pretty fun. It got a lot of reward.

They didn't speak any English; I didn't speak any Vietnamese. It was like, you didn't need to. You'd chase those little kids around, reach in your pockets, snatch out some little thing to give them. They were ever so grateful for anything you had. But it was like, for them, it didn't seem like the war was going on. I'm sure they knew what to do when things got hot, but they had their moments when they were just little kids like anywhere. It was kind of fun to mess with them, you know? Oftentimes, I wonder what happened to those little kids. I think of those little kids still as little kids, you know, what are they doing now? But those guys now would be, what, 50 years old? More?

Interviewer

Forty.

Russ Moseley

Forty, fifty years old? You know, you wonder what happened to them after we left. Did they get sick? Did they get hurt? When North Vietnam took over, were they slaughtered because of their association with the Americans? I don't know, but I do think about them.

I think about the poor little old mama-san that used to take care of my clothes and their age – I have no idea how old she was, but to me, when I was 20 years old, remembering how mama-san looked. I had the oldest mama-san in the unit. She was a grandma and then some. She appeared to be in her seventies, hunched over, tiny. I could pick her up with one arm; nothing. I used to sneak minute rice to her and she used to think that was the coolest stuff in the world and she took really good care of me.

She was an old woman who worked long after women should have to work and she kind of mothered me. I know a few times when I came off of missions when I was exhausted, and my best that I could do was find my bunk and get on it, dirty and sweaty and exhausted and stinky. And would wake up with my clothes off, my boots off, my clothes had been washed, my boots had been cleaned up. I had been wiped down with a wet rag, stuff I don't remember because mama-san would come in and – lots of guys have lots of stories about mama-sans but this one literally mothered me and I gave her everything that I could scrounge to take to her hooch for her family, because she sincerely took care of me when she could. She's dead many years ago.

Interviewer

You told me when you were coming home, the first purchase you made in the USA when I got home was a handgun.

Russ Moseley

Yeah, the guys that left ahead of us would write letters back and some of the letters would say, "You're not going to believe this but when you get home, you're in as much danger here at home as you are there. There are people that are so angry that we're doing what we're doing. When you get home, the first thing you should buy is a gun, because you're going to be surprised at the aggression of people your own age who didn't have to go, who have dodged it. So if I was you, the best thing that you could do is buy a gun."

And I did; I bought a cheap handgun from a pawn shop, a Roam .38 revolver, about as cheap a handgun as you could buy, but it never left my side for a couple of years, and even when we landed at the Sea-Tac airport coming home, an aircraft just ahead of us that had landed had come under fire from protesters and it became quite a skirmish in the airport.

When I say, “quite a skirmish,” I'm talking about paramedics and ambulances and police, and it was just a matter of, the soldiers were coming home, the anti-war demonstrators weren't going to let them through the terminal and essentially their lieutenant said, "Guys, the only thing between you, mother and apple pie, and the girls you left behind, is this rabble here in the airport, and when we get through that, you're on your way home, but we've got to take care of this mess first."

Do you smell that smell? Smell that smell. That's that smell. That is that smell. Okay. The DMZ, demilitarized zone, that's that invisible line that was parallel, where we decided, “If you're north of there, you're North Vietnam and you're the enemy and if you come south of there, you're in South Vietnam and you're our target.” Big, dangerous area.

A lot of bad guys in there, moving from North to South to bring supplies and manpower to fight the war in South Vietnam. Some of them were North Vietnamese, regular soldiers, NVA, wore uniforms, caps with stars on them. But a lot of them were what we call Viet Cong and I'm not really sure now what the translation of that is, but they were freedom fighters for North Vietnam. They wore their clothing that they grew up in. They didn't have uniforms. They had whatever weapon that they could scrounge. Sometimes a lot of them only carried a knife. A lot of them only carried ammunition and supplies and food for those that did have a weapon.

Interviewer

So when you flew, were you aware that you were in the DMZ zone?

Russ Moseley

Not really, not really. Those of us who were gunners, when you're in the back, you only have one thing, you have the guns in front of you and you're looking out ahead of you. You don't want to fly into another aircraft. You have the thoughts that are going through your own mind. You're always watching. You're watching for rounds coming at you. At nighttime it was easy; there were tracers. I can't tell you how many times you'd be flying over the jungle and suddenly you'd look down.

Now considering the speed of a bullet, you wouldn't think there would be time for this, but many times I'd be looking out of a ship in the dark, flying, and looking at the ground and some enemy soldier on the ground thinking, I can hit him, and cutting loose with a burst of AK-47 fire, whatever it was they had, and you could see the tracers and the bullets coming right at you, these little balls of fire coming at you in a long string. You could watch them coming at you and you could call out on your radio, "Okay, here they come, they're coming." And you just fly along and for the longest time – and it's hard for me to imagine now, considering the speed of a bullet, but you had plenty of time to watch those balls of fire coming at you, all the way from their source to the ship.

And you'd watch them coming and you'd brace yourself, knowing that each one of those balls of fire represented not only one tracer, but five other rounds that were not tracers, that were invisible but they were coming. You had plenty of time to warn your crew, "They're coming, we're going to get a hit." And it seemed like at the very last minute, it was an optical illusion. It looked like they would arc and go behind your tail which mean they didn't lead you enough.

I can remember, after being shot at so many times, yelling out loud in my mic, "You're an idiot; you didn't lead me long enough; you've got to lead me further if you're going to hit me; lead me further." That's how our humor got. You got to a point where, “Damn it to hell, man, if you're going to shoot me and give some honor to yourself, for crying out loud, could you lead me a little bit better than that? You missed again, you're an idiot.” I mean, we should have been grateful, but it brought up a lot of strange humor.

Lots of dark humor. Dark humor got all of us through, and those that could not come up with a joke or something funny about something or make something funny, I think those are the guys today that are having the hard times that are psychologically out of it, they can't be helped. They're not able to make combat humor. My mother has no humor, my mother has no humor. My father was the greatest humorist who ever was, and he could always make you laugh about stuff, and that's what saved my life.

Before I went to fly for the DMZ, when I was still with the first infantry division, flying slicks as a crew chief, one of our missions, we got called out – as many helicopters as possible needed to rush to this fire support base, because the enemy had come and they would were determined to take over this fire support base, which meant they were going to come through the wire, they were going to kill everybody and take over all of the equipment.

Interviewer

And these were Marines, correct?

Russ Moseley

These, I think, everybody on this base were Marines. I don't know. In my experience with the guys we collected, they were all Marines but there could have been Army guys in there.

Interviewer

But you were saying something, when the Marines called for help –

Russ Moseley

Yeah. This was one of those situations where the Marines said, “We're getting our little hinnies kicked and we need extraction,” and so we flew in there. They could see, it was only obvious to them, that by nightfall, everybody that was at that base was going to die. They were not going to be able to hold off the enemy. I wished I could remember where it was or when it was; I can't. But it was before I got transferred up on the DMZ.

So we flew in and we were picking guys up as fast as we could. There was lots of smoke. There was lots of dust everywhere. Everything was getting riddled to pieces, mortars and rockets were raining down from the enemy. They were rushing out of the trees trying to charge the barbed wire fences. Everybody was fighting for their lives. We were grabbing everybody we possibly could and flying out with them. We knew, in our minds, anybody left behind when the last ship left was not going to survive the night; they'd be killed. So we were piling as many bodies on our helicopters as we could to fly out.

My situation, we landed, guys started running for the ship. God, this is funny, and almost funny. One guy who, in desperation to escape the onslaught, had dropped everything. He didn't have his weapon; he didn't have his bandolier of ammunition; he didn't have boots on. He had his boxer shorts on, good old, green, Army boxer shorts with that ridiculous open fly in the front, and a t-shirt on. Didn't even have his helmet, and he was running barefoot for his life to get on my helicopter, because he knew if he did not get on, he was going to die.

And we were getting light on the skids, we were getting ready to take off and he did a long flying leap into that helicopter and we were gone. And we got far enough away from the battle that we knew now they couldn't hit us; we knew now it was simply a flight like any other. We were going to take them to a place where we could set them down, get rid of them and they would be safe and the battle, at least that one, for them, was over. We had successfully gone in and made an extraction and we were still flying so we were good.

I have to show you this shirt. This is my very prized possession. And though faded, this is a diamond, and it says "First Marine Aircraft Wing, Vietnam." This is the size of the guy that dove in my ship, and as I've looked at my own uniforms, this was my size, too, so we were all little guys way back when, 19, 20, 21. This is the shirt he had on, and his boxer shorts and he said, "I wished I had something I could give you." He says, "If I hadn't have gotten this ride out, I would have been killed, and as you can see, I don't have anything to give you."

Interviewer

Talk a little bit about firebases and then talk about the DMZ. What was the importance of the DMZ?

Russ Moseley

Well, the DMZ was supposed to be a place where those who were from North Vietnam could not come into South Vietnam. And I suppose vice versa. But you know, it really didn't stop anything, it was an imaginary line somewhat like North Korea must be now, and South Korea. You know, the only greater danger I saw being stationed up near the DMZ is you got hit more often because the North Vietnamese didn't have to go so far carrying their rockets and their ordinates to get you. I mean, it was just right across the border. And oftentimes by the time they got to the south it was more difficult or labor-intensive to get some of the bigger rockets and some of the things, especially in mass amounts into the south to do these periodic raids and attacks. And the other thing was, is there were MiGs, there were a lot of MiGs that stayed really close to the DMZ that would sneak in, do an attack, and get out unscathed. I know a lot of our guys got some of 'em, but you know, you always worried, this close to the DMZ, a MiG could be anywhere.

But the firebases, I think firebases were the very most dangerous, because firebases are small bases, they're small encampments surrounded by barbed wire and mines with some artillery pieces in there and, you know, not a large compliment of soldiers. And they would surround the larger bases. Now my base was Camp Eagle, this was with my second group that I was with over there, Camp Eagle. And then there were firebases around you and they were to support and protect you from a distance all around.

And you know, the enemy wanted those bases. Because they were smaller, they were easy to attack and they were tough to defend. And I know that being in a firebase, you were on pins and needles and on alert all the time. There was no time where you felt safe. So you didn't stay out in the open for long, guys didn't light cigarettes at night unless they were undercover where the light from the cigarette or the match could be seen. It was always a situation where you kept your head down and listened very, very carefully for incoming mortars and rockets, because it happened all the time. Because you were a pain to the enemy, these little firebases. So you made a great target.

And flying in and out of 'em to supply 'em was always a pain because, you know, the enemy was just – they weren't very far away, the enemy was never far away from a fire support base. They were always out in the outskirts looking for an opportunity to get in and take advantage and flying in and out you always received fire trying to get in and out because the enemy, you had to fly over their heads to get into the fire support base. And you were always low and slow and carrying a lot of stuff. And so flying into a firebase was very dangerous. We were always happy to get away from 'em.

Interviewer

Talk about the enemy, talk about the NVA and how they fight.

Russ Moseley

Well, the NVA was North Vietnamese Army and they generally were all in a uniform, a North Vietnamese uniform. And they had their Chinese cap that they always wore with the red star. It was always very prominent. They didn't wear helmets they wore their, I guess they were wool caps with the red star. And you always knew NVA because they had the uniforms on. And wherever they were, they organized a lot of stuff. And they were tough. I mean everybody we fought against, all of the Vietnamese, they are tough. They are tough little fighters. For their size, they're like little badgers. They are a very difficult enemy to go against because they have no limits, they go to the very end. And the Viet Cong were civilians who had joined up with the NVA to come and do essentially the same task. You know, come in, find us, attack, get out, hopefully unscathed, you know, little hits here and there, kill a few here and there, and then run and hide.

And they're terrific hiders. You know, they're hard to find. They either hid in the heavy jungle or they had their tunnels already pre-built that you went down, and they were difficult to find. And even if you did find 'em, a tunnel was a very dangerous place to go looking for 'em because they knew you were coming and they've had many hundreds of years of this kind of fighting. And so it was a scary thing going after them. And then, as it turned out, a lot of the civilians – and I don't know what the percentage would've been, but there were many civilians who were fighting against the American forces who were, it was against their will.

And I remember speaking to one of those guys who had surrendered and made himself available to a base and they took him and they interrogated him and I talked to him later and he said, "I didn't want to have any part of this. My father had been killed. I was growing rice, I was taking care of my grandmother and the Viet Cong would come into the village and they would see you're the right age and say, 'Come, you're gonna fight with us against the Americans.'" And they'd go, "You know, really, I don't want to do that. I need to be here to run the farm. Because as you can see, we don't have very many men." And he said they would walk over and shoot grandma and they'd say, "Now how do you feel about not going with us now?"

And they just made it very evident that they'd wipe out the whole village. And so many of 'em fought for many years without the ability to escape. If anything happened to 'em, their family never knew when they were killed or where they were killed. A lot of them didn't come back, then from the time they left, their families never knew. And Viet Cong, I'm sure the same way. I don't think that North Vietnam made records. And so, you know, this guy, by surrendering to us, you know, it was scary for him because he worried that the Viet Cong would go back and wipe out his village because he had surrendered. And so we would send helicopters to grab, you know, the surviving members of his family and whatever livestock they had, whatever supplies they had, and fly him out to a – what we tried to consider a safe area, that the Viet Cong couldn't find him.

And lot of these guys surrendered under those terms. You know, "I'll surrender and I'll tell you whatever you want, but you need to save my wife or my kids or my family because they're gonna know I'm here and they're gonna go find my family and they're gonna execute 'em for this." So we did a lot of that.

Interviewer

Some period of time after I got back from Vietnam I did write a poem about a story that had kind of haunted me for a long time, and it's called "The Cross I've Had to Bear." And while I never told this story to anybody, it was always something that bothered me because in Vietnam – it was actually the first medevac mission that I was called on, I had to go pick up a couple of our soldiers that had been killed in the field. And they had been burned very badly in an APC that had exploded.

And I was flying their bodies back and during the flight coming back to grave registration in Long Binh, the arm of the one soldier – and they were wrapped inside of an Army poncho – and that arm and hand had come out in the wind inside the helicopter, and his fist was clenched and he had something in his fist. And it was tough for me to turn around and see them there. I mean, I was just emotionally charged, knowing that two of our soldiers were lying right here and they were dead and their families didn't even know it yet. And we were flying them back to grave registration and when we got there, I could see that the soldier's hand had opened up and whatever was in his hand was gone. I didn't think anything about it, I just didn't really think.

So we unloaded the soldiers and we flew back to my unit and we flew over to a wash pad where I had some water where we could rinse out the blood and the debris and the dirt from the ship. And in doing so, I found a cross. And it was a military-issued cross, and it was the thing that the soldier had had in his hand – excuse me – and he had this cross in his hand, and during the time he had released it, it had fallen to the floor in this ship. As we were washing it out, I found it and then I was thinking, okay, what am I gonna do with this cross? Now my door gunner wanted to keep it for a souvenir and I didn't know if that was a good idea. And I thought I'll turn it over to the chaplain on the base and that never happened.

And so essentially this cross stayed with me in my little personal box for a very long time, many, many years. But every time I'd get in that box, trying to locate some memorabilia from Vietnam, I would run onto this cross and it started to weigh on me. So I wrote this poem, I had gone to the Elko Cowboy Gathering and there was a guy there named Rod McQueary who was a great, great cowboy poet. In my mind, one of the top three in my whole life. And he was a Vietnam vet and he did great poetry, and I asked him if he would do something with this cross. Well, I didn't ask him then. The thought came to my mind that I would ask him at a later time when there weren't so many people around.

And I did, I went home, I wrote the poem about the cross, and sent the poem and the cross to Rod at his ranch in Ruby Valley, asking him, you know, this is the situation, this is how I got the cross, I never did the right thing with this cross, and I know you and I know what kind of person you are, and I know that you can do the right thing for me and it will relieve me of this burden. So he did. He took the cross and he has taken it to a special place on his ranch. And so that is the story of the cross, is Rod now has it at his ranch someplace and has told me that he took care of it, and knowing Rod, I entirely trust that he's truly taken care of it and it's at the very best place it could be now.

I never, on my own, was able to decide or do the right thing for this cross, because obviously I didn't know this guy's family, didn't know who he was, and so it was a story that just stayed with me, and it was just under my skin for many, many years. And then after I sent that to him and he told me that he took care of it, I wasn't bothered by it anymore. And actually, after that happened, I don't think I ever had anymore bad dreams. I think that was pretty much the end of my bad dreams. Now that I think about it, I think that's when they ended. So that was a good thing. So win/win.

Interviewer

Why a ranch?

Russ Moseley

Well... you know, I've been a horseman and I've been a day rider for ranches and I've been involved with that and I've been out in that open country, you know, riding and, you know, to me that's God's own great creation. It's where the air is fresh and clean and, you know, it's not silent by any means, there's the wind and there's the birds and, you know, there's just nature in itself.

And I thought where – you know, I didn't think the cross belonged in a museum, I didn't think it belonged in a box in some kind of military history place. I thought that I need to, for my own personal relief, I thought something peaceful should be done with the cross, because when that cross was snatched in the hand of the soldier who had been killed, he was literally on fire and dying and he grabbed the cross. And so there was so much turmoil and so much violence going on when that cross was snatched from his neck and kept in his hand. And I wanted to cross to be in a peaceful place, someplace that was far removed from violence and the noise and pollution of people.

And part of it was because Rod is such a great... he's done so much to honor the veterans and he's a great example himself and was a Vietnam veteran. And I thought, surely, he would understand, and he did. And he would do something honorable with this cross, and he did. I don't know, for me, it was the right thing to do, because I've spent many days in a saddle in open country thinking, “This is as good as it's ever gonna get. It never is gonna get better than this moment right now.” And I thought, for the cross, you know, it's just for my own peace of mind, I thought it was a peaceful thing to do and the only right thing that I could come up with. And I think I was right. What else could you do with a cross? It certainly isn't a souvenir.

Interviewer

I'll let you know when we talk to Rod where he put it on his ranch.

Russ Moseley

I'm not real sure, I haven't seen it. I just know that he said he took care of it.

Interviewer

Anything final that you'd like to mention about the war?

Russ Moseley

I wasn't really afraid to go until I saw some soldiers coming home in Japan. And then that's when the fear kind of took over, because I saw what they looked like and that told me everything I needed to know. But, you know, I remember, you know, my own father, who flew a P-47 Thunderbolt over German-occupied France, he was shot down, missing for four months. And that in itself is just a great, a great story. And formed great French friendships that last to this day. And I've been to the site of the crash, I've seen the airplane, I've seen his equipment and I've listened to the stories. And you know, his deal, by far, was many times greater than anything I suffered in Vietnam. I always, you know, seemed to get out of the bad situations.

But we've got a great patriotic family. My mom and my dad are great patriots, great flag-wavers and have also done a lot for veterans and remembering the veterans. You know, my mother lost her brother in Australia, shot down. So we have some great personal stories in other eras. And my father came to Vietnam – I think he arrived there a couple of months before I left and he'd made a couple of attempts to come see me and I was out on missions. And I remember guys saying, "Hey, there's this colonel walking around looking for you." So they didn't know whether I was supposed to hide or whether he was really my dad. But my older brother and my dad saw each other numerous times in Vietnam. So my dad did World War II, he did Korea, he did Vietnam, he flew fixed-wing, he flew rotary-wing.

Interviewer

And he's here today.

Russ Moseley

And he's here today. Right here with me in the room. So that's been a great history, all the things that he's done and all the stories he's had. And I'm glad to be a part of it, you know?

Interviewer

Many talk about survivor guilt. Do you experience that?

Russ Moseley

Yeah. I think my very first... my very first day back in Virginia was a Sunday. And I remember somebody at the airport, whom I do not know who that person was, walked up and said, you know, "Be a good idea if you went to church today and it's going right now." So I got a cab and I told the cab driver where the church was, and when he dropped me off, I tried to pay him and he wouldn't do it, because his son was in Vietnam, and he said, "I can't take any money from you because I hope when my son comes home, somebody will help him get home and he may not have money."

So, I got to the church and I saw a lot of people that did know me. And I think a lot of people that knew me before didn't even recognize me, because I'd kind of changed a lot. But after this service there were this very good friend of mine who I ended up staying with there, Sam McAdams, said there was a lady there that wanted to talk to me because her husband had been killed over there. That was a very tough moment, and I think we were only together about 20 minutes. But the whole time she was asking me what it was like over there and answering some of her questions, what I felt was... "How come you went over there and came back home and my husband didn't come home, because my husband was very brave and very strong and... and what did you do that you were able to avoid being killed?" It almost sounded like, "Where did you hide while my husband was out being killed?" You know?

I know she didn't say that and I'm sure she didn't mean that. I'm sure the thought never crossed her mind. But there's been several occasions where you talk to people who lost a loved one there and there's absolutely no way of escaping that awful feeling that... what they really want to know is, how come you survived and their loved one didn't. And it is, with me, it is a very prominent feeling. And that's why I'm even surprised I'm here is because I haven't discussed it since Vietnam. I haven't discussed it with people and when I've had to I come away feeling like... not being accused of, but people walk away thinking, "He just have hid someplace, he must not have gone out and fought, he must have been some safe place, because my loved one was killed there and he was out fighting."

And though I do say, my job, I feel, after watching the infantry guys, the patrols, the ambush teams, the guys at the fire support bases – all of those guys, after watching them, I know that I had it better than them. But I did have my moments, and I don't have anything to defend myself with when they ask me those questions, because I'm kind of one of them guys that just goes quiet. So survivor guilt is a very real and lasting thing that teaches you not to discuss it. And that's why I think a lot of vets don't discuss it and that's why I think some of them get into trouble because of that, because you went over there and you feel guilty for it. You're made to feel guilty in a number of ways for it. And it's a tough thing.

Unlike soldiers maybe of World War II who were celebrated for doing it, I think a lot of us tend to be more quiet and avoid those conversations and avoid that glory of being a return soldier, you know, in uniform, which would've been great, but it didn't work out for Vietnam. And I'm still very proud of my uniform, I'm still very proud of the service that I did. Very proud of my uniform, very proud of the guys I fought with, very proud of my officers and my NCOs and all those guys, 'cause you know, they could make it or break it for you. But as far as talking to other folks, other than this right here that I've been corralled into by my mother (laughs) ...

Interviewer

Bless her.

Russ Moseley

Bless her heart. I don't really want to talk about it.

Interviewer

If you could explain to a seventh grade class what was the Vietnam War, what would you say?

Russ Moseley

Okay, first of all, I don't think I would do it but I really don't, because I really don't know so much about it, the whys. You know, the only impression I got is that we thought South Vietnam would be better off without North Vietnam running it. And as we can see today, at least for what I know, they're doing just fine as a unified country. They're doing fine and they would've done fine. I think a lot of really good people on both sides were killed... because we believed that we were saving the South from the North. And maybe we didn't know much then either. But they're doing fine.

And a lot of the veterans I've talked to that have been back to Vietnam have had the great experience of their life. Something I would love to do. I look forward to a day when I can go there and walk unarmed in Vietnam – North and South – the whole country, and be able to walk the streets and eat the food and see the sites unarmed and not worry about noises that I hear, or lack of noises that I hear. I would love to do that. I hope that I get a chance to do that, because they're fine. But I guess at that time we thought they wouldn't be.

Underwriting for this program is proudly provided by:

Katherine W. Dumke and Ezekiel R. Dumke, Jr. Foundation

George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation

Please join us in honoring Utah's Vets:

Utah Vietnam Veterans: A Day of Honor

KUED and the Utah Department of Veteran Affairs invite you and your family to honor Utah's Vietnam War Veterans.

Armed Forces Day
Saturday May 18, 2013
Utah State Capitol
2:00 to 4:00 p.m.

For more information click here »

Featured Remarks by Governor Gary Herbert
Capitol Rotunda
2:00 p.m.
Exhibit and Reception
Hall of Governors
2:30 to 3:30 p.m.
Moment of Silence
Vietnam Memorial, West Lawn
3:45 p.m.

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