Barn Talk - A Vietnam Veteran's Journey w/Garry Roberts

Episode Date: November 12, 2023

Welcome to Barn Talk What happens at the barn, Stays in the barn, But not today! We’re letting it all out! Today, we have Garry Roberts on the show. We discuss: his journey as a Vietnam veteran. Thank you to all the veterans out there that lay down the ultimate sacrifice.  🇺🇸Get farm fresh meat that you can trust! https://farmergrade.com Barn Talk Merch! 👇🏻 https://www.thislldo.co/  SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c  SUBSCRIBE TO BARN TALK CLIPS ➱ https://bit.ly/3BlZnqq   LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY  ITUNES ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk   ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS   ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4   ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS    ------------------------------- ***PLEASE NOTE*** Barn Talk is a significant break from the typical content viewers have come to expect from This’ll Do Farm. Please be advised that we will be exploring a wide variety of topics (some adult-themed) and our younger viewers (and their parents) should be advised that some topics will be for mature audiences only. ⚠NO FINANCIAL ADVICE / DISCLAIMER⚠  The Information discussed and shared on Barn Talk is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or success for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. The Information on this podcast and provided from or through our content is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional, professional broker or financial advisory. Understand that you are using any and all Information available on or through this website at your own risk. RISK STATEMENT– The trading of Bitcoins, alternative cryptocurrencies, NFTs, individual stocks, etc. has potential rewards, and it also has potential risks involved. Trading may not be suitable for all people. Anyone wishing to invest should seek his or her own independent financial or professional advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn stays in the barn, but not today. We're going to let it all out for you guys. Today is a very, very special episode and very special day. It is Veterans Day. And I want to take this time to thank all of the active service members and veterans out there in this country that laid down the ultimate sacrifice for us here at home to enjoy the freedoms that we've been able to enjoy for so long and what's made us an amazing country, the best country in the entire world for so long. And I had two grandpas that served,

one at Vietnam, one in World War II, and a lot of craziness that they both had to endure. and I try to, you know, when I'm going through a situation in my life, I think back to my grandpas and what they had to go through. And that gives me a lot of perspective some days when I think that I'm going through something challenging or I'm going through a stressful situation. Nothing compares to what they had to endure. And any active member probably has had something similar happened to them or any veteran can probably identify with that. And I think that this is a day that needs to be celebrated more and more and more people need to appreciate what they got because without those people, none of this would be possible. So thank you if you

served. Yes. I second that to those, you know, all that have served or continue to serve. Thank you. we appreciate it. We are very blessed in the fact that there are people out there that answer that call and keep us all safe. And that is more of a problem, I feel like, every day. And we're in a, we're in kind of a tough time right now. There's a lot of division in this country. And our guest today, he served during the Vietnam War and has a, has a, has a, great story. He, I guess I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag, but he also, you know, grew up in a time, a lot of division, and there was a lot of division in the country over that conflict. And we're going to talk about that, and we're going to talk about lessons that maybe

we learned or didn't learn, and some that we may have to learn again. So he's a farm kid for Southwest I got one last thing before we get into it. The fee for today, because I always say, share the show, but the fee today is to tell a veteran, thank you for their service. Thanks some veterans, thank active duty members for their service. That's the fee for today's show. So get any value. Actually, if you get no value, which that's not going to happen, you're going to get a lot of

value from this one. But just, that's the fee. Go tell a veteran, go tell somebody that's serving active duty. Thank them for their service. So without further ado, let's get into it. Gary Roberts, welcome to Barn Talk. We appreciate you coming on, and I want to say, I want to give you two thank yous because this is going to air on Veterans Day next week.

So I want to say thank you for your service. And also thank you for support and Farmer Grade. You ended up buying a box for our first drop. Sure. And that was pretty awesome. So you came, swung by the warehouse and bought a box that supported us. So I just wanted to say thank you, and we're excited to get this one going.

So, yeah, I'm glad to, glad to be here and and uh it's veterans day and and i know you're in a sense you're honoring me but look we're on and all veterans and and hopefully we can hit on some things today that uh will shed light on on the men what what what veterans have in going on in their head yeah you know and in their lives so yeah yeah absolutely so let's go back a little bit you Midwest kid where'd you grow up at Yeah, we grew up in southwest Iowa down to Montgomery County, a little town called Valiska. Yep. Down on Highway 71, most people know it as the axe murder, has the axe murder house in it, you know.

And 100, well, over 100 years ago. Yeah. And so I graduated high school down there, which, let me pause there and say that, so people wonder, well, how old is this guy anyway? Well, let's give you a little bit of a clue. So in September we had our 55th high school reunion. Okay. And I'm a slow learner, but I'm slowly learning how to handle those reunions. Of course, my wife went with me, and I've learned when you start talking to classmates,

you keep on the move. You don't spend a lot of time with one, and you do male and female. But I almost got in trouble. talking too long to to some of them. Yep. But I did a lot better than I've done in the past. So the next day we're traveling and traveling back home and we're talking about the reunion and who I saw.

She didn't graduate there, so she didn't know very many of them. And she says, well, I think I probably rated it in the top three. And like an idiot, I answered it wrong. It wasn't really a question. That was just a statement. That was just a statement. That was a statement. But I thought I was going to have to, I responded.

And I said, yeah, I think you're right. And I knew I had done wrong. That was the wrong answer. She baited you a little bit on that. Because the next question that came says, well, who was one and two? Yeah. So we slowly learned how to handle those situations. She's pretty sharp.

She baited you on that way. Yeah, she does. Yeah. It's easy for her to do that. She does a good job of it. But anyway, I grew up in. a little 10 miles north of town on a on a diversified farm as as a good most of them were back in those days it had been it had been three generations that that farm had been in the in the family

and being southwest iowa's kind of rolling and hilly and a lot of pasture and timber maybe a hundred close to 200 acres in row crop was probably all there was but a lot of A lot of hay ground. So we had dairy 12 to 15. Yep. Usually that we tended to, at least 125, sometimes up to 150 U's for sheep that took care of. Well, it's year-round deal, but winter's really busy. Yep.

And I can't tell you how many hogs we had. I know in the 70s, when I went back to the farm for a little bit, we had 100 sows and in a couple of old hog houses. And we were doing two ways, Farrow to finish or selling 40-pounders. Yep. But, and then about 20 beef cows. So it was a busy time.

Absolutely. On that old farm. It was, and I, we worked from the, from the long as I can remember, I can remember having shores and responsibilities. I probably one of the first things I did was hauling wood to the house to heat with. And we were, I was a, I don't know, maybe we were kind of backward in a way.

We were, I was a junior in high school when they put in the first gas furnace. Until then we burnt, you cut wood in the fall and split, and I packed it to the house. And how many brothers and sisters? So I had, there's five, five kids, had a sister that's four years older, brother three. And then a sister that's five years younger and one that was 11 years younger. Sure. And we all participated. We traded off up at 5.30 in the morning.

One of us would be our day to help milk the cows and go out with dad and you'd feed the calves and separate the cream from the milk and bring the cattle into the stanchions. And the next day it'd be another one. You'd do that night too. If you weren't doing the cows, then you either wash the dishes or you dried the dishes. So the folks used us completely. Yeah, absolutely. For as much as they... Yeah, it was a group effort.

Much as they could. There's a couple chores I had to do that I was thinking about what was some of the least desirable. One of them was a stationary grinder that you had to shovel with a steel scoop shovel. I don't know if we ever had an aluminum one. A steel scoop shovel, ear corn into a grinder. And there was always corn and cubs popping back out of that thing and noisy. When you got that done, you pulled over next to the barn, you scooped it into the grainery in the barn so you could feed the milk cows when they come in. So that was a tough one.

But even tougher yet was cleaning the brooder house, the chicken house. Oh, I'm sure. Wood floor. Oh, yeah. I'm sure. So did you bed them with corn cops? I think probably. Yeah.

Well, maybe sometimes, but I think there are a lot of times it was straw because if I were a picture, I can picture it on the fork coming. And but the ammonia that come off of that, that's what would kill you. So, but it was, it was a good, uh, it was a good life. Us kids didn't know we lack for anything. It never seemed to be any extra money around, but there's plenty of food and, uh, um, and plenty of work. And I think if there's a, uh, all of the Roberts kids are hard workers. Yep. And I think that was instilled into us.

If we're part of the family, we're going to contribute. Yep. And plus and minuses, I suppose, but it served me well through the years to have that kind of farm kid mentality when it comes to doing a job. Yeah, absolutely. So what year did you graduate high school? 68. 68.

So as you started your senior year in high school, there was a lot of upheaval, and there was a lot going on in the country. And what year did the draft start? That didn't start until 1970. 70. Well, I take that back. The lottery started in 70. The draft was already in place. Yes. And the draft was, you had, Eirch County, had a draft board. Yep. And they had a list of names and how they, how they sorted them out. I don't know because there were deferments, you know. Yep. And for college deferments. and so forth. And in 70,

because there, I think because there was a, well, there'd been politics involved as far as who got selected to go. And parents would be upset and raising a fuss. And they raised fuss with a congressman. Congress passed the lottery that was based on, well, the draft that was based on lottery. Yeah.

They pulled and that's, That's where I got it. That's where I ended up getting. I had a low number and, uh, and, uh, and went right away then. So, so you, when, when did you get drafted? What age? I was, uh, 19. So you had graduated high school. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Unlike World War II where they took a lot of them right out of high school. Yeah. Or, you know, before even finished. So did you have any desires? Like, what were you going to do? Did you have any idea what you were going to do before that? I did. The last two years of high school, I took a college prep class. I never was much of a student. You know, working in school was never a priority in the family. And so we just kind of bummed along a little bit.

But I got serious the last couple of years and started taking some college prep classes. And, you know, we had a lot of timber ground. We spent a lot of time down there cutting trees and making saw logs and splitting hedge posts, or not hedge post, but it'd been oak post. and a couple of, there's three of us that would, we spent our summers in an old shack down in the middle of the timber, and so I got a real liking for a career that would be in the forest industry somehow, production or preservation or something. That really interested me, and so I, and I, in 4H there was forestry projects and met with the county forester

several times and did some different activities, activities. That really interested me. And so when I got toward the end of high school, I told my dad that I was interested in going to school down at the community college. It's about 25 mile down the road. And he said, well, it's a lot easier to get in than it is to stay in and then walked off. And there I stood. And I didn't know what to do. And I didn't know what to do. And I didn't. didn't have the wherewithal to go ahead and make it happen. Yep. Somewhat intimidated most of my life anyhow, and so I dropped that thought at that point.

And I knew that there probably would be, well, and the Army was probably in my future. So what am I going to do until then? Well, I still had some, I still had some, I had some livestock. And I think dad was, I think he always thought that I would probably stay on the farm. I never really ever, ever put a lot of thought into it. And I remember my grandmother would ask me, where are you going to farm? And, well, nobody's said anything. If they'd have said something, maybe it would have.

But the lack of communication is not good when a kid is that age. And, you know, and you haven't developed the communication skills to that point. So that was kind of a hindrance. So I had, but, and I think his, what makes me think that he thought I would probably gradually grow into being on the farm is that you never really ever paid me any cash, but I had a couple of sows. Oh, sure. Sold the pigs, that's my money. And I had a couple dairy and I had some sheep. And so I worked through the summer after high school.

and then at the end of the year, I sold my livestock and decided I needed to, I didn't see a future there right then. A friend of mine had worked for a steel building company and made some pretty good money, and I said, well, I'm just going to give them a call and see what I can do, and I did. And I went up to Atlantic, and there were two guys that had a company. They weren't even 30 years old yet, and they were building buildings. buildings all over the country and and so I went to work went to work for them. No one that the draft may come may become in my future. It was a it was a it was a I really enjoyed the building trade. I wasn't pretty tough anyway from you know five gallon

buckets and scoop shovels we didn't have augurs we used scoop shovels to fill our hog feeders. And the one thing that that taught me as well as well let me back up. between my junior and senior year, the workload was so heavy that I went to town one time. I went down at the John Deere store, and I bought a radio and put on my 8-N-Ford tracker. Now, I knew all the songs, the top 40, but I was on the thing constantly. We were mowing and raking and bailing and doing this. And when it come to grind and feed, we'd grind at the thing. that old hammer mill, you'd scoop out of the box car and five scoops of corn, one scoop of

protein, and, you know, however you did it back in those days. Then you went to the, then you went to the hog lot and you scooped out of that thing. Well, you'd think, well, you never going to get done with a scooping this big old barge box scooping it out, but you just keep going. You learn to park to the winds and your advantage and away you go. Next thing you know, you're down to the floor. Pretty soon you're scraping a corner. It's mission accomplished. And you really felt an accomplishment through all that hard work, whether it was mowing, you know, a huge hayfield or whether it was fell in the feeders. And it gave me perseverance. Yeah. Is what I did. Served you well. I'm going to hang right in here and, and, and the satisfaction is going to be

when I get done. The only dissatisfaction would have been if the pigs had ate the valve stem off the tire. All that goes. Get paving to shoe a boy. But anyway, I was there. I, you know, I was there. stayed till the end and I went and went to Atlantic to build steel building. Now I was close enough. It's only, well, I don't know whether it was 30 miles or not. But one thing interesting me about it was going all week and just home on the weekends. And this is the scary part that maybe it's a life lesson for somebody. But I really wasn't welcome to come home and just hang out or eat the folks's groceries or use the laundry and which uh that's never been my philosophy uh the prodigal son came home because he had a home to come home too yeah right and so they

i was you know i was put at risk in a sense in that way but i i found places to stay and and good or bad or slipped in my car i did something so it but it wasn't the best uh it uh it It just wasn't the best situation. Sure. But we worked in what was really interesting about that. Oh, I started to say that through all the labor, and then you throw that on top of building steel buildings, and the philosophy was hustle, hustle, hustle, let's go.

And you're just going on a dead run constantly. And by the time I was drafted and went, I was one tough little bugger. You were in good shape. I was in good shape. Basic wasn't. No, that wasn't a piece. That wasn't about it. So we worked in, and that and we were in, I don't know, rugby North Dakota,

Biss, Dickinson, Bismarck, South Dakota, Eagle Butte, St. Joe, Missouri, Clay Center, Nebraska, all over Iowa. And some of those jobs were just one week jobs, some would be two, some would be a little bit longer. We were working in one in Pipestone, Minnesota, both crews were there, and they were going to draw for the draft, for the lottery for the draft. So we all gathered around in one room in a motel and was watching. And my number came up. It was number 24.

And they'll say, oh, who didn't hollered and Roberts is gone, you know. And because of a small county, small town, that's probably going to come pretty early. Yeah. So I had stopped back by home there in the late December, 1st of January. And there was a letter from the president of the United States, Richard M. Nixon. and you have been, you have been selected. Yeah, yeah. And mother asked me if I was, I don't know, scared or nervous or I think she probably

probably was just, if I was nervous about it, probably what she said. And I said, oh, no, not too bad. And I left, quite frankly, inside, I was excited. Yeah. It was my opportunity to give back to my country. Yep, yep. And I had watched others through the years. We talked about somebody was gone to.

the Army or they're back from the Army. And to me, it was a common thing. Everybody should do it. Yeah. I don't think today everybody should do it, quite frankly. You should have a desire. Yeah. I mean, of all, I'm okay with a volunteer army, but, but I was excited to get that letter to go. And then in February 5th, end of 1990, my wife, well, my girlfriend, she's my wife now, and my mother took me over to Red Oak to meet the bus bright and early in the morning, and there was only one other person on the bus. It must have been chartered just for us as far as I know, and we said our goodbyes and waved goodbye,

and I sat in the back of the bus when I got my composure after a while, I went back up to talk to the guy up front, and it was Alberg Anzel. Albert Gansel, I knew from, he lived, he was in a different school district, same county, but I knew him from 4H, the county fairs. I met him down there and talked to him once. And so we visited. He joined the draft. He had number 61.

He joined the draft thinking that he would get a better position, a better job. Well, oh, sure. When he told me that, I says, yeah, I will see how that works out for you, you know. But we decided to stay together and process through together. So we went to the induction center and went through that. And we did end up in the same basic training company down in Fort Leonard Wood. Fort Leonard Wood. And he was a B.

I was an R last name. So he was in one or two and I was in another. They just split you up alphabetically. We would see each other occasionally. And one of the biggest regrets that I have is that later on during basic on a Sunday afternoon or a Sunday noon, And if you had family there, you could leave and have a meal with them. And his folks asked me a couple different times to go with them. And I turned them down.

It's the Family and Friends event at Shopper's Drugmark. Get 20% off almost all regular priced merchandise. Two days only. Tuesday, April 28th and Wednesday, April 29th. Open your PC optimum app to get your coupon. Wish you would have. Yeah. Yeah.

I regret that today. Yeah. So you got to think what if, I guess, sometimes. But we went through basically together. I got a question for you. So what was the feeling between young guys when you're sitting there, listen to the radio or watching TV, whatever it was, what was the feeling around most young people your age, young guys your age?

Was it, were they a lot of them like you and the fact that they were excited to serve their country? was it more because you know that's a controversial conflict so you had a lot of people that didn't like it you had a lot of people that were willing to sign up or willing to go you didn't be excited for it what was the feeling you i think the feeling was what can i do to get out of it get out of going yeah most for most people working working in uh yeah some of the guys that worked around and some of their friends uh they were i mean they were talk about it was gonna you're gonna shoot your toe off or you're going to do you know do stupid stuff like that i'm going to burn my draft card i mean that was that was prevalent um they didn't have the same at most a good share of those didn't have

the same attitude that i had and i just kept to myself and and uh anyway but that's that's that's and a lot of them would join another branch of service they joined the national guard you know less a lot less chance of being called up if they knew they had to go anyway they would make sure that they kept in good standings in school so they wouldn't have have to go, but generally that's the way it was. There wasn't anybody looking to go, and I wasn't looking to go to war necessarily. I was looking to serve my country wherever they wanted to put me. My brother had gone to Germany, and he was just three years older, very well could have ended up in Vietnam like I did. But I think what happened was, and along about 68, that same time frame

when I got out, that's when the TED Offensive was, when the North was just, they rolled over several big cities in the south. I read there was 60,000 North Vietnamese soldiers killed in that, in that, well, January, went clear to September, actually, and about 2,700 of archives, our American soldiers. And, but it was a, and you would think that that would be, well, you know, we've got the upper hand of this thing. We're, you know, we're going to be able to bring it to a conclusion here pretty soon, but it had for some reason it had the opposite effect it turned more people opposed to the to that

conflict or that war now being in high school not paying much attention to the news i didn't pay much attention yeah i just know i'm going to serve my country if that's where they send me fine yeah and but but the most most everybody just were looking for that i knew were just looking for ways to get out or go to a branch that would be a lot safer yeah so it's all personal personal personal safety is what they were yeah you know looking looking at so uh how many weeks basic is that that was a i think count it's an eight week eight week i believe and there's a week uh a processing on the way in and in that processing there was we took an took an aptitude test and uh that one that one was interesting there was i tried doing well on the uh electronics part

Because my brother was in a radio communication, and so I want to be like my brother, you know. And I kind of bombed out on that one. But they had asked questions about like, how often do you fish, do you like hunting? How much camping have you done in the last year? I knew how to answer those. You know, I probably looked like a sissy when it comes to those kind of questions. Yeah. But, and then they had counseling after that, and they said,

private Roberts you've qualified for aircraft mechanic helicopter mechanics maintenance but it can't guarantee it to you unless you sign up for another year and I said well I'm just here for two years

I won't be signed up for another year he says well you'll probably end up in the infantry then I said but just for two years right and I said right so that's why we left it okay and that leads to another story. When I was, we were out on Bivouac and marched out. It was like a three-day affair and a rucksack and the whole thing and weapons.

And we were bivouacked in an area of the second night, had a battle buddy set up her little two-man tent. And the perimeter was all set. and the word had been put out that there would be a 50% alert. Every other man had to be up. So you know there's going to be some kind of attack that night from the opposite opposite force. And I had a radio, battery operated transistor radio.

It was contraband, but I had it anyway. And I'd had it all the way through probably six or seven weeks. Somebody finally stole it. But I had it for a long time. I used to keep it in my pillow. and at night I would get WHB, I think, out of Kansas City and listen to it, and just, you know, it was secured under my pillow, so it was in goodest place. Well, I took it with me out on Bivouac and had some dead downtime when I went, it was in March. I went down, down from our perimeter a little bit, and the sun was shining against the trees and just really comfortable there, and I just sat down to soak up some sun and listen to the radio a little bit.

and then heard a weather forecast. They talked about severe thunderstorms that night for that area. And then I heard some voices, and I shut the radio off and got down, and I looked, and there was a drill sergeant and a training officer coming down a trail on the backside of our Bivouac area. And I kept secured until they left, and I did, and I went up back to my company area. And I found my battle buddy, and I told him, I said, there's rain coming tonight.

We need to get our, we need to be able to get sleep up off the ground here. So I found a pallet. And then I found a little, some strong barn steel and a couple four beforeers, scrounged up and put those, we got those fit inside of our tent. And I said, at least the water run under us tonight when it rains. And then I got notified me and probably a half a dozen others to go to the command tent. So we go up there and they told us to go stand over there and sit over there in the corner until we're ready. And they were having a meeting.

Well, I think they were probably planning that attack for that night, probably. But where they had us go set, that's their pyrotechnics was laying there. And so into my field jacket pocket, went a trip flare. And when they found out what the meeting was about, well, one thing that the reason they called us up there was that we had to go in that night on the chow truck and go the next day to the hospital and take a flight physical. So, aha. So there's a chance I won't be in the infantry yet here. Yeah. And so then I went back down to that trail that I, where I saw the commander earlier, the training officer earlier, strung that wire across that trail and didn't tell anybody at all. And got on the chow truck that night, rode in. Sure enough, it rained cats and dogs. It was in a 10, 10 building and the rain just

a beating on that rough. I was laying there high and dry. Yeah, glad to not be in that. Bennett told me the next day that he was glad we had that pallid in there because he just been soaked if he had enough. But so they got our physical done, rode out on the noon chow truck, and they dropped us off where the guys were road marching to their next location. And so I got in line with our platoon, and it was like this dark cloud hanging over that place.

And I said, what's going on? He said, the guys are pretty quiet. And he says, he said, well, nobody's had any sleep. He said some son of a gun put a trip flare across. And the drill sergeants had us up all night. They were going to find out who put that trip flare in place. Yep, yep. And I said, oh, that's right.

Boy, who is that son of a gun? Yeah, I had never told anyone that. I've told one guy since that story. That's pretty good. They were just beat up. They were letting them have it. Well, I think it's pretty good when you can beat him at their own game. Yeah, absolutely.

That's the idea. You got to think. Yeah. That's good. So you get through Basic and what's the process before you go overseas? Well, you went to advanced training. Yeah. And that was in Fort Rucker, Alabama.

Okay. And so we would have gone down there April, yeah, early April. and there was two parts to that. There was the basic maintenance, basic aircraft maintenance, and they flunked out three or four at that point. So there's only about 10 of us left. And then you were specialized into a model of helicopters. So I was in the Huey helicopters in.

So you ended up not going the infantry route. No, no. Yeah. And so you were on the path that. I was, well, yeah. Well, I had to pass that flight physical, which is, you know, it's sight and hearing are real important on that.

Yeah. And the big things on that. When my orders came before we got out of basic training, then I had the orders to go to Fort Rucker, Alabama. And that's where the aviation training was. That's where they trained the pilots and the mechanics. I'll tell you, I'll back up one thing on that basic training. When I got those orders,

everything was real lax the last couple, last day or so of basic training. The drill sergeants that were just semi, along, which they bothered to be quite, two or three weeks, I thought it was in a communist country, quite frankly. I thought I made, I thought it took a wrong turn someplace. And, but after a two, after two or three weeks, it lightened up a little bit, only they just pull stupid stuff on you. So it was a joke to see what they're going to pull on us today, because they're not going to kill us. Yeah. Well, I don't think. Yeah. But they're going to work us, they're going to work us hard, but anyway, but we got to the last day or so, and they, they were back to human, you know,

all, all of them were, uh, combat veterans, Vietnam combat veterans. And, this one tall drill sergeant had a small group around him in the edge of the parking lot. I went over to see what they were talking about. And he was telling him, he says, I knows where most of you boys are going. I've been there. Not everybody comes home. And he said, if you wonder why we were so tough on you, because we want you to be able to think on your feet, we want you coming home.

And man, that was one of the best sermons I ever heard from, to understanding why you have to have the discipline and why you have to have the kind of training that you do have. So that was, I was impressed, he impressed me, but to take time to do that. And so as we were breaking up, Al Bergenzel was there, my buddy Allen, and he'd gotten, he'd gotten orders to go to artillery,

going to Fort Seale, Oklahoma, and the artillery. Was pretty disappointed about that and bothered him, bothered him some about that. It wasn't what he expected. But you know, They're not going to look at see whether you volunteer to get in the draft or you're just in the draft. Yeah, you're just a number. Don't matter.

Don't matter if he's regular Army. If this is, if this were the Nidja, it's where you're going, if we're going. Yep. And so that was, uh, we said our goodbyes and that was the last time I've seen him. Yep. So, so we went to Alabama, went to Alabama and that was a good, that was a pretty good experience. Our orders were slow coming. So we were just doing details for a couple.

of weeks. I think it had to have been very end of July and came at a two-week leave to go home and then orders to fly to Fort Lewis, Washington to ship out from there. So I came home, Pam and I spent a lot of good times together. My dad had talked me into selling my 64 Chevy Impala Convertible while I was in basic training. And it wasn't hurting anything. thing. When I got home, I couldn't use his car, so I had to go buy something. Yep. So I went up, went Spiker Chevrolet and bought an old Chevy, too, 62 Chevy, too, a little six-cylinder.

Yep. And we puttered around in that thing for two weeks before I left. One of the strange things that, that's hard to, I still have the orders at home in things I can take, cannot take to Vietnam. And I had to, they issued your white T-shirts for basic training and your training. I had to dye them green. Yeah, I couldn't take them. Yep, had to dye them green to go.

Nowadays, you know, I think the clothers, the clotheers, whoever's supplying the army, they're making so much money, they just keep continuing to change uniforms constantly. But back in those days, you had to take your old white eason and die them. I don't remember why the underwear we died to. I can't recall. But so could you imagine how many different shades of green? Showed up. They showed up over there.

Oh, yeah. It would have been different. Oh, man. So I got to Fort Lewis and a guy I was in high school with was an MP out there. And somehow no cell phones, how in the world we get, how we communicated, I don't know. But I gave him a call. He came down. We had a couple beers together.

And that was good to see a local, you know, somebody from home down there. Well, the 10 guys that I went to school with the maintenance school with were all going, all had their orders for Vietnam also. And we were there at the same time. And every once in a while I'd hear him called, they'd call off her. roster for somebody to get in line to, you know, this is going to be a load to ship out. And they'd be together. And I thought, man, what's it take to do that? I want to go with somebody that I know. Yep. So in the roster that I was on, they called a called one of the guys that I knew,

or one of the rosters. And then he called for a Jerry Robbins. I said, right here. I'd run up there. And he'd look at my ID and he says, no, it's Jerry Robbins, not Roberts. And I did that a couple times, but I never made it. So I ended up going by myself. Oh, no kidding. Oh, man. We flew, went to a, fueled up in Alaska and then on into Cameron Bay down in Vietnam. That's where they, I think, most of them all went into and they went in.

And the smell was just terrible. And it was that way for 13 months. No kidding. Yeah, I just, I could, that's the first thing that hit me was the smell. And I don't know whether they didn't have burned pits. They had burned barrels, whether it was that or. or being on the coast, you know, the humidity.

The humidity. The other thing that surprised me was the number of Vietnamese that were there. I'm thinking, I don't trust any of these Vietnamese. The civilians that were working for the Army. Yeah. And that were there. That was one of the things that surprised me. And then they had a here again, you're processing in,

and they're just assigning numbers to wherever they need what. So they need a mechanic and on K. I'm a mechanic, so here that's where I'm going to go. Here's where you're going. And they were, they listed a, on a bulletin board, they listed where you're going and what your instructions were, where to be to catch a flight there. And guys were looking at that and they said, and they would say, well, I'm going to foo by and clap, oh, yeah, this is going to be great.

And then somebody say, on K, and they say, oh, wouldn't want to go there. Well, that's where my name was. Yeah. And it was kind of a pit. The fourth division was in on K and B Company, fourth aviation. It was a hunter-killer team. They had cobra helicopters and Loach and what they called Loach, OH-6 Loach, and OH-58 helicopters for observation helicopters, and then they had the cobra gunships.

So it required the different ways they did it, but generally a pilot and a gunner or a crew chief, I guess they'd call him on the observation helicopter, goes down looking for the bad guy. Yeah. And then the gun ships would roll in when they find something. And that's the kind of unit I was in. I was just a mechanic there. And I worked, we worked in the hangar kind of regular, regular, well, long, but regular day hours. And it wasn't about probably a month or so, and I was put on an unscheduled maintenance team.

So we had a truck and two mechanics, an arm's man, and an aviation, electronics guy, avionics. And we would see the missions off in the morning. They were back for fuel midday or late morning. We'd be there and then to go back out again. It's got kind of a routine to it. But it was, you were off any additional details, you know, the guard duty and KP and all those things that had to be done. So that was a pretty good gig. I messed it up.

I mouthed off to an NCO and lost that privilege. But the maintenance officer liked me, and he had been enlisted, and then he went to flight school, and so he was our maintenance test pilot, and he put me on second shift, and that was a sham job, too. Because there was nothing going on. I was off of details again. Well, what was going on was that was in, September

early August, early August, September, October. In November, the 4th Division stood down, Vietnamization, we're turning this war over to the South Vietnamese. And the 4th Division came back to Fort Carson, Colorado. We rounded up all of our equipment and shipped it off.

I was involved in some of that, riding shotgun, taking stuff down to Quignan in order to put it on a ship to get to send it away and uh so i still had time left in in the service uh or in in in vietnam so i was sent to uh up further up the coast up and not what they call icor uh chuli um to an assault helicopter company it had oh probably somewhere around 20 plus maybe 25 uh hughy helicopters that were uh H model, D model, H model, transport helicopters. They took the troops in and out, supplies in and out, so forth.

And then they had eight helicopter gunships. That door gunners. That supported them. And the H1 would have a crew chief and a gunner and two pilots. And since I had been working on the Cobra's down in OnK, they automatically, they just put me with the Charlie Model team, which was the gunship maintenance team. And so that was the second phase of my time there

was just working on the Mike Muddell and Charlie Model gunships and that maintenance team. When I came into OnK, we came in through a replacement center down right there on the South China Sea and had a formation early in the morning and I rolled out for that and I hear a voice behind me. He said, Roberts, what are you doing? And here was a guy that I'd gone through basic training.

In fact, we were probably best friends in basic training. He was just, oh, Missouri Hillbilly, you just bunked right across from me. He was standing behind me. Well, he'd gotten redeployed. He'd gotten reassigned too, and he was right behind me. So we had Thanksgiving dinner in that mess hall of that replacement company, and I still say every Thanksgiving, I say that was the best Thanksgiving dinner I ever had. Well, it was the company, and it was a good meal.

Yeah. for an Army meal that was pretty good. But Cecil and I kept in touch. He had been in an artillery unit, and when they transferred him, they messed up on the typewriter. I didn't look this up. I have looked that up before.

I didn't look it up here this week. But they were one digit off, had changed one digit in his MOS. It's a number of letter combination that tells your job's description. made him a combat engineer. Oh, Jesus. He says, I'm not telling anybody.

I'd much rather do that than do the artillery. So he stayed. Now, what that looks like on his DD-214, where he changed M-OSs, it'd be odd me. But that was a blunder, and he just stayed with it then. So I worked on the gunships, and I ended up on unscheduled maintenance again, to where I was working on aircraft between missions,

even the transport helicopters. And I caught on to that. I caught on to the maintenance system and what the requirements were, you know, to maintain them in top shape. And at times, I'd had pilots, young pilots, there were all kids. I was still 19 years old.

They'd come ask, they'd come ask, about what should I look for when I'm checking the tail rotor in the mornings. And I show them the details, which jam nuts and which safety wires. And I could explain it to them what to look for. And it made me feel pretty good to be able to do that. Well, I ended up on unscheduled maintenance again, where we work on gigs, problems with helicopters between missions, and as they go out.

So I did that for quite a while. And about that same time, this is getting about toward February. My mother would keep in touch, and I got a letter from Mother and opened it up, and here's Albert Gensel's obisher. I'll be darned. He was killed during Operation Lamb's Sond. Artillery piece got him.

And so that weighed heavy on me. I didn't know Al real well, and that's why I wished I'd spent time with his parents. Yeah. And I guess to compound that, I could have went and saw him when I got home. But how do I do that? I was uncomfortable with being able to do that. And I visited the Gravestide in the last year, but I never seen him. So that was a shock to my mother, of course.

And he had just been home for a two-week leave, or 10-day leave. They had started allowing you leaves out of Vietnam, which for a long time. They weren't allowed at all. And she said, don't bother coming home. Just get your time, dude. Yeah. And come home. They had a shortage of crew chiefs in the gunship platoon.

And Rodriguez had taken a real high caliber round in the leg and really buggered him up and hit the aircraft. And it went in the fuel selling out, but it didn't know a further damage. And one of the crew chiefs came to me and asked if I'd be interested in crewing his helicopter. And this wouldn't have been a, it wasn't necessarily a revenge thing, but at that point, after being there for several months, I'd been eight months altogether. I didn't really want to go home not seeing combat. Yep.

I could have done my whole tour and never fired a weapon. Yep. And just worked in the hangar. And that would have been fine. And quite frankly, if you're in a position doing any job that supports that's supporting the mission, to me that you're given 100%. Yeah.

Well, I wanted to give 100% in a different way. Yeah. And so I said, well, sure I'd like to, but I said, I've got to get released from maintenance to do that. Well, it happened to be that the maintenance NCO and my platoon sergeant were both on R&R. One was in Hawaii. One went to Australia, I think it was,

and one went to Hawaii and met his family. And so I went to Captain Haskins and a maintenance officer. And I said, Captain, I said, I've been working blah, blah, blah, months. And I said, I hope I've been doing you a good job. I said, I've been given the opportunity to go to the flight platoon. They'd like to have somebody with some mechanical experience. So I said, I just need your blessing to go. And he said, well, I think that would be a great opportunity for you.

Yep. And so I got out of it. And when Sergeant Walls and Sergeant Sergeant Sergeant got back, they said, you'd have never got out of here. If we'd have been here, we'd have kept you right here. Well, they liked that old farm boy. Let's get the job done. Because if when I'd work the unscheduled, when I got done, I'd go back to hangar. Who needs help?

You know, just the way it was. So I got in the flight platoon, took over crew chief on that aircraft. And I was pretty nervous the first day out. kind of half knowing half knowing what to do and whatnot didn't know when to load the machine gun my machine gun and and uh we had rockets and in minigone and they've those are operated by the pilot and co-pilot who always flew in uh in pairs there was a lead helicopter and a trail lead helicopter had just rockets the trail had the mini gun so we could fire under them if they took fire we could we had a little more flexibility and uh i was in the left door had a gunner in the

right door. And they sent me out with, well, was a crew chief, but he was on his way. He was about done. He was on his way home. He said he'd been there for five years. I can't imagine that. And he was, he was, he was, well, he slept on the way out toward the first mission. I was scared. I was scared to death. It was old hat for you. He was pretty callous to it. Well, then the radio chatter started and command helicopters talking to lead, lead helicopter, you know. and so he comes to, he loads his machine guns, so I hustle a load mine up right away. And we were prepping an LZ, rockets into an LZ,

a little fire around the outside, making a place for troop carriers to come in, and there had been, I didn't have a lot of briefing ahead of time, apparently there had been some activity in that area, and we didn't get the prepping done before we had activity already. And taking, there was rounds coming. You can see tracer rounds coming up.

And so we rolled in with always worth. And I had a successful day, the first day out, the first morning. And I was no longer scared. I had the power of the machine gun. It's a little naive to think that that's going to save you in every instance. But I was baptized by fire that first. day and never so glad that I hadn't made the move to to fly the guns. Yeah. My gunner, he just flew the guy that flew gunner, he just flew one day. Then I had a

friend that we had worked with in maintenance. He flew the second day with me. He shot a hole in my helicopter. And so I fired him. And they had another guy and lined up to come in as a gunner. And Smiley came in. He was a, he was a fire. a finance clerk at division. Oh, wow. But what a, and that's where they got them. I mean,

nowadays, I think they specifically train gunners, you know? Yes, right. But in those days, they took volunteers. Sometimes it was somebody in the infantry that wanted to come in out of the field

and would fly. Yeah. But he was a, smile, he was an excellent gunner for me. And when I left, he ended up taking over, uh,

responsibility for the aircraft. Yeah. As crew chief then, which was pretty good, pretty big, step but he was but we flew together constantly uh then after that so weather per may did you fly every day weather no they uh yeah we don't have we don't have the night vision that we had you know that they have now and and uh um so it's mostly day missions it got to be this is in 71 yep and the war

been going on for a long time. And so there was operations kind of took care of logistics. And we were in kind of a rotation. You'd be on a 24-hour standby. If, uh, something, well, escort a medevac or, or, uh, if someone was pinned down, um, rocket attack, you'd go out and try to find the tubes or whatever. You'd be on five minutes standby, 24, for 24 hours. And since you were right there, with your two aircraft ready to go, you were first up the next morning. Whatever combat assault mission there was, you were first up for that. And you'd fly that entire day. The next day, you might be on five minutes standby, or not five minute, but 30 minutes standby.

And you just needed to be available. And then you may have a day off. Well, in those days, there wasn't really a day off because you had maintenance to do. Sure. There's 25-hour maintenance on aircraft, 50-hour maintenance, and so there's always something to do. occasionally about twice I remember having absolutely okay I'm done for the day I don't have after all I'm free today yeah and uh but that didn't happen very often so it's kind of there was you just got into a system got in a rotation one uh I can't I haven't got time to go in this

whole story one oh the five minutes standby I can tell you about this here sometimes it was right there at our base at Chulai which used to be a marine base uh for marine jet so everything was concrete and clean and it was it was really nice facility up there sometimes it would be remote like provincial capital was south at quangnai uh sat down there kind of in between some trees in an open area and uh one time we were up at a it's a soccer field at uh a little city up to the north and we were up there on a standby it mosquitoes were just eating us alive and no place to lay down the pilot got priority he got the what room there was in the cargo area yeah smile he was up on the rotor blades with his arms wrapped around it and uh pilot and i was stretched out on top the aircraft trying around the

antennas you know yeah but we got a radio call that there was uh firebase marianne was was getting overrun and and so we crank up right away and and off the ground we go and we didn't go a probably didn't go a quarter mile, you couldn't see anything. It's fogged in, so bad. And so the pilots communicated, and we managed to get our way back down and sat back down, and then listened to the war on the Fox Mic Radio, because we couldn't get there. There was over 60 Americans killed that night. That'd be tough.

It's still torments, you know, you couldn't be. There was a set of guns that got there out of the 101st. They came up from the south, and we got there, and one of the crews up there, there got some, it got credit for some kills up there. Why couldn't have been me? Yeah. But that's just the way of work. So we were, next morning we left, cleared up and next morning. And I think the VC knew, you know, what the weather's like. It's going to be limited how much support they can get. And so the next morning, our my aircraft got tagged for another mission. And a couple of the pilots that I know went back out to Marianne. They flew, they flew. They

two body bags back and forth. They're escorted for the body bags going back then. That was, that one, there's a book written on that one. I think I've loaned it out. I need to get it back because it was, you know, when you're there and you're that close and you want to be, want to do more. But it's,

it's a good reminder of the way life happens, you know. Yeah. That was, now this was in 70, like I said, it's in 71, Vietnamization. We're turning this over to the Vietnamese. the American soldier, you know, there was protests here, but there was protests there too. Memorial Day, down on the beach, Chulai, war protesters, soldiers.

And everybody was careful, could be kind of politically correct, you know. Let them say their peace. Yep. And then they go back to their units. Well, so how much effort were they putting out when they's in the field? right we're leaving i'm going to go out here and risk my life and uh and so it was a it was an odd combination going on there uh even even in vietnam most of them well a good share of them probably would have been draftees even if they'd join they still could have been turned against you know

what we were what we're trying to accomplish there so that probably caused a lot of division within units, guys would protest and then guys you would have to trust that they would have your back or give their all and you don't know if they were or not. I was fortunate in that the platoon that I was in, there was a couple things we did. There was no drugs and the crew chiefs and gunners were, crew chiefs anyway, were handpicked by older crew chiefs. Yep. And until, but they changed command every six months until we had a new commander and he said oh no we're in charge you know you're not this is how it's going to be this is how it works and he's right it should have been his but we started getting some that we're doing smack and and one of them put he put at least three rounds in his

helicopter and uh shot the ammunition and the minigone as it was going down the tray and uh you know so it kind of not good for morale you kind of lost control of that. So there was drugs constantly that was going on. I'll tell you one about, one thing about, let me back up to us and back in on, Kay, I had to do guard duty around our cobra helicopters. And I was walking up there with two other guys. And the guy said, hey, you want a cigarette? And so he'd rolled us put tobacco in a regular cigarette,

some kind of wacky tobacco. And I was just open-minded. We didn't have it in high school. Some of the guys had come back from college. There was, start here about marijuana, but in high school, you know you never even thought of it never even heard of it and I was just open-minded to it because on the steel crew there was there was some that were involved probably and so I said well yeah I'll try one and I puffed on it the other guy one I'm left the guy left and then the other

guy I was with he said I'm not going to finish mine he said well I'll finish it you know and then I had guard duty for three hours and longest three hours of your it kicked my bud I there was an ammo can next to the revetment and I and I kept trying to to get on it, you know. And I said, I got to keep moving and kind of wear this stuff out if I can. And so I get up and I'm trying to walk to the helicopter. And I'm telling myself, slow down, slow down, you're going to run into it. I look down, my feet are barely shuffling. And I was afraid the officer of the guard or the sergeant in the guard was going to show up and now it's got to be in serious trouble. And so I was just scared. And three hours of that.

And I got relieved and you'd sleep for three and then go back on for three. My second three, I was better shape. Buzzed, but I mean, I was okay. So how many? It scared me so much. That was the first and last experience. Yeah, yeah. I bet.

I was just plain swore off of that. And I drank a lot of beer, but yeah. That was it. And that, I mean, I don't even like take an aspirin. I don't like anything. It makes me feel funny, you know, if I don't have to. Yeah. But that, I guess I'm glad for that experience that it scared me.

Yeah. Had more sense. and try to live like that, you know. So how many missions did you fly? I don't have a, you know, I don't have a count on it. You know, I talk to pilots, and they know how many combat missions they flow and so forth. So, but I don't know, it depends on operations,

whether they keep track very well. I didn't keep any. Some place there might have been records because we fill out a form, you know, and when you take off, and that's where they come up with those numbers, but it never was ever brought down to me. I would say there was five months, said I flew. So it could have easily been three to four combat type missions a week, probably.

Yeah. It would have been a pretty good average. And were they mostly like LZ, like what was the most common? An LZ coming to somebody's aid, escort, what was the most common type of mission, do you think? Probably probably the combat assault missions, taking troops in, bringing troops out. And we just flew gun cover for those for the most part. We would escort transport helicopters, the Sokorsky or the Chinook, and they may be taking artillery pieces and putting them on a fire base, and we need to be there to fire gun cover for that. We did one where a Chinook had barrels of diesel fuel and detergent,

and we're dropping them on an area of heavy. heavy visitation where there'd been a lot of enemy activity. And then a little loach would drop down and throw an incinerator grenade and then it would burn. And we'd burn out a whole area, maybe like a five acre, maybe 10 acre area. And our job is just to be there if something runs out or if there's secondary explosions or a helicopter goes down or whatever. We were doing that one day. Those got to be kind of boring.

But oftentimes, but we were there doing one one day. You could get RFVN radio and listen to the top 40 on coming out of Saigon while you're flying around in a circle. That was a lot of fun. It's been on the pilot whether he'd allow that, but most of them did. But there was a Chinook was coming. And of course, Mama-San, Papa Son's got their little huts and their rice patties, and that's their little world, you know. And all they want to do is eat and enjoy life and sell a little produce. You know, they could care less about the war, except they got to pay the,

VC when they come around, a token in order to stay alive. Yeah. And then be nice to us, you know, that's all they got it. They just want to survive. They just want their little country. Anyway, the Chinook was coming and all of a sudden you hear a radio call. A guy says, oops. And about a half a dozen barrels come rolling out of his net.

Oh, boy. On to Mama San Pappasant's property onto the rice paddy. And there was blood splats. around there and of course we were cheering because there was blood and uh flew over there and it turned out that we'd hit their ducks oh oh geez it had killed their ducks and it was at no time at all and someone was there from headquarters was out there right in a chat trying to make it right yeah my trying to make that right yeah and i don't know the pilot probably got he probably got in some trouble uh over that one another time a guy might have gotten some trouble too the 71st gun ships were

just across the high speed active from us and therefore fire team came in and and uh and i was we're just working on our helicopter and all of a sudden you heard a rocket come shooting out of the tube he hadn't disarmed he'd gone through p o'l flew down the active parked and hadn't dearm the system and when he hit the key the mike he hit the he hit the trigger and and he shot a rocket off and they have to go so far so fast before they'll arm and this one hit a big old rock and it didn't arm but it didn't arm but it glanced over and went out of sight over the, over the drive, over into a Bivouac area, housing, uh, uh, housing, uh, officer housing, actually.

Jeez. It blew up in their tennis court. Oh, man. And, and that guy's rotor blades had not stopped yet. Yeah. And the battalion in, uh, battalion commander was down there in his window, screaming at him. He was just shocked. That was quite a sight.

Yeah. Oh, I bet. I mean, they had a, I had a, my aircraft only got hit three times that I'd know of, and we ended up getting, uh, getting new rotor blades because they were so far out of balance because they've been patched so many times. And so we never took any critical, I never took any critical rounds. I only had one engine failure. And we had been in some really rough country that morning, uh, looking, we was trying to,

trying to find a, uh, a white, a tall white man that's, with the VC American. And we were looking for him and we didn't find anything. We'd sat down at a firebase, went to take off again and we got about as high as this barn

and the engine blew up. And we hit pretty hard. Smoke was rolling and but no fire spread the skids pretty bad. We secured the area. Chinook came out

and was able to pick up, pick it up and haul it back to July then for repairs. My gunner I spent, we spent several days and got new skids put under it and fix some damage. The engine shot pulled the engine out. They were, they were slow about getting the engine going again. And I was 12 days actually before they got it going. In the meantime, man, I can't just sit on the ground. And I asked a friend of mine that was flying the slicks if he needed a gunner.

And he said, well, yeah, mine needs a day off. Don't you come with me? So I flew. on the right door and we took we transported some south vietnamese army out to a town down near near mili uh it's just going to drop them in and and make a couple trips down there and that's always going to do so i i was glad to get in the air again and rode with him and and we're heading in heading in toward this this little town and a little village and the south vietnamese one of them was yanking on my jacket and pointing and there was 12 nvaa paksin weapons, uniformed NBA, on the run. They were running out of the area as hard as they can go.

I know they didn't know where they, where to go, because they'd have been in a spider hole if they were from around there, or they'd have been secure. So you always had to have permission from the aircraft commander to fire, unless you, unless you had pre-approval. And so right away, I told him, I got, I got 12 NBA packs and weapons on the run, 9 o'clock. And he looked real quick and got on the radio. and he calls command helicopter, who was overseeing this whole mission,

and he says, wait one, I'll call intelligence. So he calls chew lie for intelligence. And the word came back pretty quick. Hold your fire. There's no confirmed reports of enemy activity in the area. Oh, no, kid. Let the South Vietnamese check it out.

Well, the South Vietnamese, one of them had a burlap bag or net bag, with a bunch of either ducks or chickens, one of the other in it, well, they could carry a lot. They're going for a picnic. Yeah. They're going for a barbecue. Yeah.

They're not going to go looking for the bad guys. Yeah. And so that kind of give me a hint that this thing isn't working like it should. Yep. Why aren't we allowed to do what needs done? We have gunships out there. Can the gunships go check it out? Yeah.

Perhaps you could go over and get them to take a shot at you. Yeah. Well, then you can let it go. but that wasn't an isolated incident. You always had that for mission, Aircraft, Commander. The only way I could find around it was sometimes you could thump your heel on the floor and make it sound like you were taking hits. The other way was I had an AK-47.

Actually, my gunner did. I had an AK-50. It was a wirestock. And with 3,000 rounds of Chinese ammunition, I could fire off two or three rounds of that. and they'd go, k, k, kak, are we taking fire? And sometimes, it's not, sometimes it's what you had to do. Yeah.

If you were convinced that there was something going on. Yeah. With that. I got one pertinent story here. So one of the missions was, we were at a fire base, wasn't even a firebase. It was a rear-arm refuel location, about 15, 20 minutes out of July. and we stopped there and we were waiting for orders for the rest of the day. It was toward getting late in the afternoon.

And up onto the runway and had one of the metal PSP runways. Here comes Cecil Parsons, my buddy from basic training. And he says, I need a ride back to July. And he was getting close to processing out and he needed to get back. And I said, well, we can't hire, we can't take passengers. I said, we were loaded, you know, with armament and fuel and we're just limited. And I said, boy, I sure need to get back. It wasn't any other slicks or any other aircraft around.

So, well, let me ask the pilot. So I asked the pilot, and he said, well, yeah, we've got a long enough runway. We can get transitional lift. We can get off the ground. We'll burn some fuel off and we'll be okay. The time we get to Chulay, the land. So, sure enough, the orders come, we're going back straight to July, done for the day. And so Cecil gets in, and I had an extra helmet, I had a Y cord, always kept that around in case I had radio troubles and somebody come to work on it.

He sat on my foot locker, which was full of gun parts and helicopter parts, and between my gunner and I. So we're heading back, and we hadn't been on near 10 minutes, and we get to radio call from operations. they says we got an aircraft shot down or we had an aircraft down. I don't remember why it was down, but had an aircraft down and Chinook trying to pick it up and they're taking sniper fire. Any gunship's in the area? And that pilot turned out looked at me and just shook his head. Here we got a passenger.

Yep. That's kind of like going from an 80,000 pound load of grain to 90,000. There's a difference when you go to takeoff. So here we got the slug riding with us in here, but it's probably not so bad. We burn some gas off, you know. So we get out there, and sure enough, there's a Chinook. He's off to the side, and there's some guys on the ground around the helicopter. They're taking sniper fire from this hillside.

And so we lead helicopter rolls in, and door gunner fires, and I come in trail, and I'm just kind of like spray on the hill, hillside, because you don't see any enemy, so you're just shooting it up. And the second pass around, I felt something on my shoulder, and I look and here's Cecil, he's trying to see out there where he's trying to see what I'm shooting at. And the third round, I handed my AK-50. Both of us are shooting the third time around. And I don't know, we made a few passes in.

And in the meantime, the Chinook got a hold of that helicopter. Got the guys off the ground. And they deed him out, and it was a successful day. We got out of there. And it sounds like a war story of some kind. But anyway, we get back then and drop Cecil off and he said, well, that was something. And I hadn't seen him since. We had both extended so we'd come home the same day.

And he wasn't around when I processed out. I never did see him, so I didn't know how he got home. His name wasn't on the wall, so I figured he made it, you know. Couldn't remember the town he lived in or anything. But I did find him, oh, it's been seven, eight years ago, down. in Missouri. Okay. And he's not just an old hillbilly.

He's, he's been very successful. And he married right and took by and the selling nursing homes and salvage yards and farms. And so he's done real well, but he has a little post-traumatic stress. Yeah. I think it's from that,

I think it's from that helicopter. Right. Yeah. I think that put him over the edge. Yeah. Might have. Might have. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. were a little more callous that than he was. Yeah. It was just another day. Did you get to the point where you were sleeping on the way to a mission after a while? Were you like that? Not terribly.

We flew kind of high. And so it was, you generally, you felt pretty comfortable when you're going out. But that kind of attitude probably. Yeah. Probably still had, yeah. Yeah, I can't wait to get there, you know. But I enjoyed the countryside and enjoyed the view. and enjoyed the flame.

So there were several types of missions. And I actually wrote a couple chapters, which would be like a book. And I hadn't even got into missions yet. One whole chapter is just the first mission. And it's all the sights and sounds and vibrations and G-forces and smells and the adrenaline and the fear, the lack of fear.

You know, all of that wrapped into one first day out. And after that, I was hooked after that first day anyhow. And one chapter was just on my decision to go in the gun platoon. And it's a pretty patriotic one, and it's a loss of friends, too. See, Al wasn't the first one we'd lost. We lost two good friends in the first unit I was in. They were shot down in the hunter-killer in the little loach, or they was in the 58, I guess, and rescued in the hillside.

helicopter was cracked up, but it was, they got it out too. And a week later, probably no more than a week, the same two were on the similar mission, both of them shot down by machine gun and killed. You talk about balls. Those guys were, those guys were my heroes. To face death like that and then go back at it. And that's what I want. You know, it was kind of my feelings there.

I didn't learn until I was leaving Vietnam that my good friend from AIT from the advanced training, Shorty Blackman was killed also. It made me glad that I flew what I did and did what I did. And he was just working on a flight line with two other guys on it. And I had a rocket attack, and he was killed instantly, and the other two guys lingered for a couple of days. From what I've read on it. I extended an extra 30 days over the 12-month required so that when I got home, when I returned, I would automatically be discharged.

Okay. Otherwise, I would have gone six months to some other base someplace, or probably a month leave, and then off to somewhere else. And so I thought, well, I've done my time. I feel like I'd do my 30 days and be done. A lot of guys would quit flying 30 days out just for safety reasons. And I flew to the last day. We had a little action for the last day.

There was a patrol on a road, and there was some VC up on a hillside, and it could have very well been setting up at a lamb bush, and I threw a smoke grenade down a spider hole where I saw them, and then we rolled in with rockets. And that concluded my last day. We flew in, we flew back home. I cleaned up, we must have had some action that day because I cleaned up, I remember cleaning my machine gun,

my gunner and I, turned it in the arms room, went up to our hooch, and we had a couple beers. The guys gave me a plaque and at a boy, and the next day I went down, a platoon sergeant took me down to the terminal. There was a little terminal there, and where the guys would process in and out. of Chulai and ran into a guy that I was in basic training with from early Iowa and we flew we processed

together and flew back to Omaha together then and so three days later I always said I'd have to do the math but it was awful close to that I'm sitting at home in my old bedroom on the north side of the house facing the pacing the barn lot and the hogs and the chicken house and I'm sitting there and the sun's coming up I'm here and I'm here in the next. neighbor's rooster crowing and and it was over just changed like that and it was too fast yeah i probably should have done that six months someplace and been with other veterans not that transition and and wound down some nowadays when when you get out there there's a little more of a transition and and and and counseling and here's what could happen but not then you're on your own and

And that wasn't so bad. There was a shock. I didn't really have any real direction yet. And what went through my mind was the guys that are still there, they're getting, they're putting on their, they're grabbing their machine gun. They're going out and doing the same thing again today. Yep.

And, but I couldn't find much in the newspapers. World Herald. And what there was was negative by then, 71. Yep. And the folks just didn't ask any questions. It started, actually, when we came into, when Paul and I were waiting at Seattle, Tacoma to get an airplane to come to Omaha, we were fogged in. And so there was, wasn't any, there was some empty corridors there. And you just had to find a place to sack out for the night and catch a plane the next day because it was fog.

And unannounced, we were just walking down a quiet corridor. and announcement came over the PA. It came as a boom. And both of us looked at each other because we were on the ground. Yep. Looking on another. I did that for a long time. And I wasn't in the bush.

Yeah. But you get rocket attacks and you just react, you know. But anyway, we got to, uh, got to Omaha and we come down the ramp and Pam, my wife, girlfriend then, was there with her mother. and to meet us and Paul's folks were there. And there was, I hadn't noticed it, but my wife told me about it. She said there's a, there's a lady at the bottom of the stairs with her two young children. And as we come down, she hustles her kids around to protect them.

You know, I'm a vicious, I'm a vicious baby killer. Yeah. And her mother, they hung out. sometimes down at Andy and Ruby's down south Omaha. And we went down there and son-in-law, or not son-in-law, but here's Pam's boyfriend. He's just back from Vietnam. And it was just complacent.

You know, there wasn't no questions asked. It was just, it was like people just turned back to what they were doing, except for one guy. He was putting a hit on Pam, a little strong. And, and disrespected me. Yeah. They made us fly home in your uniform. Yeah.

So it was obvious. And I probably should have poked him, I suppose. But, you know, you're just glad to be home, you know. Right. And then we went to a small town, Pam's, where she went to high school. And some of her friends were at a house, and they were having a party. And no one was mean or cruel, but there was no, there was an acknowledgement that, yeah, Gary's back. But that was it.

And I don't know, I was expected more than that. Right. But it got worse. I went to that same week, we borrowed a folks' car, and Pam and I went down to my hometown. And the guys were just coming, they were just getting out of National Guard, and they were going across the park. And it's dark. And I stopped, and they said, well, Roberts, haven't seen you for a long time. Where have you been?

I said, well, I was pretty proud of myself. I just got back from Vietnam. And they said, well, you don't. mass. Why the blank did you do that? You know, you could have joined the National Guard. You could have gone to Canada. You didn't have to go over there. I was shocked by that. Yeah. So that same week, early the next week, I went with my brother, was in Blair, Nebraska. He worked on Harvester silos, and I went and spent a couple days with him, and we did some service work. And that night, We stopped at a bar and he says,

Bartender, bring me a couple beers. I said, my brother just got home from Vietnam. I was standing at the end of a bar, and there were two people, a man and a woman, sitting on stools, my brother between me and them, and I was just looking down toward the bartender, and I noticed something out of the corner of my eye,

and I looked, and my brother caught this guy's fist in his hand. Had words with him, and that guy left. But he was going to slug me upside the head, just because I served. I served. I came back in Vietnam. I was shocked by that. Dave was fine.

He was real supportive, and so was Pam. She was, my biggest supporter. And my brother had been in the Army, and he was, he was, there was no, there was no problem there. But I got, and I thought to myself driving back, you know, it was a couple hours back, I thought I need to, I just need to go back to work. I've, I was building steel buildings before, and I was comfortable with that, and I just, I just need to keep busy.

So I went, I'd go back to work, and the guys were, guys were talking, talking and smack and different things. And I said, well, when I was in Vietnam, I got shut the hell up. Nobody else here. The two worst things that could have happened to you is, one, being, being, having that mindset,

that I just need to get busy. Like I just need to get busy and just push it all down. And then two, not having anybody to talk to about it and nobody wanted to hear you. That's the worst. I mean, for anybody, you know, people that have gone through anything,

it helps to be able to talk about it. And when you're constantly surrounded by people that don't want to hear what you have to say. Pam would listen, but there's a limit. Yeah. You know, what she could even absorb. So that was in September, and I'd gone back to work. I actually hung my field jacket up, and I quit talking.

Yep. Nobody cares. And you would think Christmas, you know, you missed Christmas the year before. I'm 21 now, finally. And you would think you'd want to be home for Christmas. I was living in, had a little apartment in Atlantic, little two-room shack up there, and it's close to, close to work. And Pam wanted to go with family, and I said, you go ahead.

I said, I'm just, I'm not going to go. Yeah. And I went down in the back door, just a couple blocks away to one of the taverns there in Atlantic. There weren't very many people there at all, of course, Christmas Eve. and I had a handful of quarters and some dollar bills and I just went from the bar to the payphone. Yeah. Had my laddress book. Kind of knew who might already be home trying to make contact.

Yep. With somebody familiar. Yep. Yeah. And I didn't get any answers. I didn't work out. I didn't get a hold of anybody. The operator probably got tired.

It wouldn't be the same operator, but if she would have, she got tired of me. I said, well, check this, check and see, check this name, you know, in this town. And so I spent the night at Christmas Eve there and then stumbled back to my apartment and crashed. And I guess I had a little, I don't know, I probably had a little attitude, but I was just, I just needed to talk. Actually, I wanted to go back at that moment. if I could have gone placed right back where I left. I was going to ask you that. That's where I wanted to go.

That was the thought that was going through your head. You just wanted to. Now, fast forward when the boys, my two boys went to, Mike, I went to Iraq and Afghanistan, and then both of them were in Afghanistan together at the same time, different mission, different doing different, a little bit different things, but they were together, got together once in a while.

When they came home, we threw a party up at the Cologne Park. And I bought food and we had music and patriotic songs. I came in on a, I borrowed a golf cart from Yachti camouflage, and we come rolling in with Corey and Micah. And I said, fresh out a can to heart, Afghanistan. Well, Corey was all about, he was all about it. He likes to be up front.

You want people see him. Micah, not so much. So I didn't do much. I didn't do that. I told him that a lot of people have been talking about you. They've been praying for you, and they want to see you. And I said, it's just an opportunity. I said, I'd like to see you come.

Yeah. And the truth is... One day, you're negotiating with suppliers. The next, you're installing a shelf in the back room. Running a business means moving in many directions all the time. TD's new small business banking accounts are built for how your business moves. It's how we're making banking more human. I was doing it for them.

Yeah. Wanted to have a point in time. They could look back and say, all my friends, acquaintances, showed up. Yeah. Welcome to me home. Yeah. Give me an add-a boy.

It was a different situation, you know, coming back out of Afghanistan, even. I mean, it's way before the failure. But, uh, right. You wanted to, them to feel what you didn't feel when you came home. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't, it wasn't anything like that for, never was.

Never was. Now, I kind of hold a grudge about that. And you know, the people that should have and would have, a lot of them are alive now. Or they're my age. Right. Yeah. But younger guys, they ask questions. They want to know, you know.

It was a tough time. Tell me about it. Yeah. Last, I went to Governor Reynolds Harvest Festival, fundraiser a couple of weeks ago. go, Riley Gaines was there. Yep. That was good. Awesome. That was awesome. But Pam was ill, and so she didn't go. And I already spent money for the tickets, so I'm going.

Yep. And there's one kid, one fellow, a young guy sitting at a table by himself, and I said, anybody sitting here, and he was a freshman law student from, this would give you hope in America. He was a freshman law student from California that, came to Drake, Iowa, or Drake came to Iowa, hoped to get a well-rounded education. Because he knew we weren't going to get it.

I know what I'm going to get in California. Yeah. And as we talked, we talked about that I'd been in Vietnam, and he asked questions about that. His mother was brought, came out in 74 with the airlift. Oh, yeah.

And she was, he said she is so thankful for the American soldier. If they hadn't have done what they did, there'd have been a lot more countries. Had fallen, and she would not have had an opportunity to get out. So that was really a small world.

And that was, I'm glad I'm glad we ran into him. In the aftermath of that, how much time do you feel passed before you were able to, I guess, move on from that, not have that twinge of resentment. I moved,

kept her tamped down for a long time. Yeah. In 75, 1975, an Easter Sunday. I had known the gospel, but I trusted Christ as my Savior on that Easter Sunday. And it changed, changed my life, it changed my thinking and my patience and understanding and so forth.

So that was a major, that was a major thing that just made me go on. Yep. But a period of time after that, I'm going to say maybe this would have been five years later. I read a paper, I read a book called Chicken Hawk, Robert Mason. He was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, and I was just where I would start reading those. And I could relate to it because he flew different kinds of helicopters, but I could relate to it, you know, the stories that he had. When it got to the last chapter, it all came back again.

He went through the same thing. Yep. Well, and I said, I'm not alone. I never was much for joining anything. I wasn't going to go to any group groups. and sit around and whine and complain. And I'm not complaining now. I'm just telling you, this is just the way it was.

Yeah. And if there's anyone at fault, it's our congressman that continued the fallacy. Yeah. You know, if there's any fault. Look what it did to a generation of soldiers. They try to make up for it now. After 9-11, they would have rallies for all veterans. I didn't fall for that.

Yeah. No, you had your chance. should have done right, should have done right previous. But I read Chicken Hawk and maybe realize I wasn't alone. For the first time, I realized I'm not alone. Yep. And there's two million of us. Yep.

Not all of them have the same experience. Right. And I think many of them had the same, had this, and they handle it different, you know. It has to do with your own, your own upbringing and a lot of things, enter in, how you handle different things, and what you did, maybe what you saw. There wasn't anything that I did that I'm a sure. ashamed of in Vietnam. I didn't have any, I don't really have any sleepless nights over Vietnam. Right. I do after, I do once I got home. Yeah. The treatment you received. The treatment.

That, that, that lingered on for a long time. Fifteen or 16 years later, took the boys to an air show and they had a had a gunship helicopter there. I didn't know they had those in Iowa. They're based out of Waterloo. and in fact one of them that was in our platoon of eight there one of them was up there and uh talked to the recruiter and I did the math and I said well

I got enough time to retire out of the guard I said I did a trial one I said sign me up for one year and went to Boone and I thought I'd go as a crew chief well I went as a mechanic.

Yeah. But I was fine. I got to fly quite a bit. And I joint for one year, and then I just kept re-up on it until I retired in 2006. So in 2001, they had a, uh, uh, they had some buildings blew up in, in, uh, in New York. Yep. And I remember the day and the place I was at and somebody asked me, well, you think your guard, you don't know, go?

It had to be a long protracted war before they'd ever call us. Well, less than 30 days later, we got the call. I was working on an 8760 and trying to put it together and working some overtime. And the phone rang. And they said, bring your stuff being booed tomorrow morning. I had planned to be gone for at least a year, maybe two. Wow. And I wasn't ready for all that.

I bet not. We kind of had a hint that we always need to be ready. So some things were in. Everything was in place. I actually got an extra 24 hours, and Pam and I was able to put some other things together. And then I went. We didn't go, so the unit mobilized.

We went to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, with the 160th Special Ops helicopter regiment. They were doing missions in Afghanistan at the time, and the major maintenance was done in Fort Campbell, and they were short mechanics. Yep. And so they flew them back and forth for major work. And we were down in Fort Campbell for a year then. Wow. And one positive thing was close enough. Close enough if you had a long weekend, you could come home or the wife would come down there.

And so there was a lot of that back and forth. And everywhere you went, thank you, thank you, thank you. Yeah. That helped you heal a little bit, or did it open past feelings? There was so much familiarity with the aircraft maintenance world. It was like being back in Vietnam in times. And so, yeah, I think if there's any feelings that I'm hanging on to, I'm doing that myself. Yeah.

I'm just being stubborn about that. You know. You're entitled to that. Yeah, I think that's what's happened there. So we were a year, and I hated it because they were leaving work. Well, when I came back, you know, I was working the repower tractors. Well, that had slowed up. So then they joined vehicle maintenance and the repower under one manager, kind of one manager.

And I came back. I did do a tractor because they only had a couple there. And then I worked on as their forklift mechanic. And 90 days later, we got called again. the owner of John says, can they do that? I said, well, they did. Yeah. Well, this time we were going to go with the 101st and invade Iraq.

So we geared up and prepared for the desert and packed our bags three times and then unpacked them three times. Turkey wouldn't let us bring troops down from the north, which were we were scheduled to go. And so that held us up. So we were at Camp Atterbury for literally months, trained up and ready to go and no place to go. And there's a lot worse things and worked in the world than having to get up in the morning and having to go to work. And that's getting up and having no responsibilities and no place to go. Yeah, and not knowing. That was hard.

We still, they still were going to come up, was still coming up with a mission for us. We were still going to go. I was looking for my homecoming. Yeah, I want to go because I want that homecoming. Yeah. And it got next. We ended up back at Fort Campbell doing, I had a little different job, but doing the same thing we did before back at Fort Campbell.

No overseas for you. And I was disappointed about that because I need my homecoming. But with fans encouragement and my own want to too, I took advantage of being back down there. Austin P. has a college on post. I went nights. I went to, I took advanced auto technology classes. Yep. And I got 12 college credit hours.

I studied for the automotive service excellence exams. Army paid for two. I bought the others and passed all eight of them. Became a master truck technician. Nice. I was a technical inspector inspecting people's work on the helicopters, which got to be mostly paperwork. So I was a lot of computer work.

So when I came, and then when we came back after the. second year then there was an opening for a production supervisor for vehicle maintenance and the repower. I was a shoe in. And I did that for 10 years then and retired out of the garden and it continued with that. So I took advantage. You know, what was a negative? Staying home. Yeah. Turn into it turned into a big advantage. You can't do all that stuff. No. Working on helicopters out in the desert, you know. Yeah, right. So I just took advantage of it. Well, I think we'd be remiss if we didn't talk a little bit about that whole business when you ended up going to work for Kinsey.

So how did that, where did that come from? How did you end up working for Kinsey manufacturing? In, I'll tell you, just in a nutshell, in 70, I was home, I was home to Vietnam, when I was home to Vietnam, I went back to work to steel buildings again. I did that for about a year, and I had a crew there. And then the talk was always, well, when you get older, you're not going to be able to do this. Well, I already started in when I was pretty young thinking about that, you know. Yep.

So I went to Iowa Western Community College, took aircraft maintenance. Yep. And worked on getting my A&P to work on aircraft. And toward the end of that, when I was finishing up, I still had this urge to go back to the farm. even as negative as a lot of it was. And, and dad encouraged it. And so I bought,

bought in and on a contract and, and we moved back to the farm. Low, low, low hog prices, 35 busheled acre drought. Yeah. Work day and night, day and night,

home one night in a year before dark. Yep. Living on food stamps. And, uh, no means of other work for income. I said, no, one year that was enough for me.

Yeah. And so I had some mechanical knowledge and experience and training. And my wife's dad managed to farm repair shop and grant on a large farm. And I got on with him and I was there for five years. We were interested in getting our children. and I don't think Corey was in school yet. Maybe he was getting close. He's getting close.

Daughter was in younger grades. And getting them a Bible-based education, Christian education. And there was a school in Knoxville we were interested in moving to. I look in the Omaha World Herald, and here's a guy looking for a truck mechanic, should have Detroit diesel experience, you know? Yep. And I had that. And I called him, I called him.

I said, I said, well, the first thing I asked him was, how far are you from Knoxville? 12 miles. Okay, good. And I had other opportunity with the other, with, but I went there and was there for 10 years. And so he had, he sold drainage tile, delivered drainage tile. So we had trucks and trailers, lots of acres that he farmed, fed cattle.

His dad was killed in a car, in a tractor accident, inherited a grain elevator. So we had fertilizer and grain and on and on and just grain trucks. It's not Smith, is it? Uh-uh. Okay. No, he's south. He's still in business, too.

Yeah, yeah. But he, uh, so I was there 10 years. And then he cut, he was going to cut back to what he and his boy can handle. And I was probably costing him too much, I suppose. But I, I was making good money, but I wasn't saving. anything and and and I need to do I need to do something different we'd start going church over in this area and I wanted to get over in this side of the state anyway but I didn't want to settle for anything I wasn't going to go work at Moines right and uh I look in the paper and and and here

kenskenzie was looking for a track engine installer and so I come up and interviewed almost all day spent the day with John and and then a few days later I was up here working so I started out with so I started in January 1990 working the uh We were repowered in the John Deer four-wheel drive tractors, 8630, 8640 at that time. How big of an operation was it at that point? There was, it was only the second. Well, it was only about a year old then. 12 tractors had been done.

Okay. Yeah. When I started. And so there was just maybe a painter and one mechanic and Jim managed it. Yeah. So at the time, and then I started, they hired me and an engine guy, an engine guy of rebuilding engines. Yep. And we were in John's personal shop at his farm.

Yep. And later that summer, he moved to the plant. And we got a little more room. And then later on, we got expanded a little more room until there was five or six tractors being done at a time. Yeah. Later on. We also had a major change. They could have a series one, series two.

Series two's has just a lot different tractor, a lot, a lot handier to work on. not simpler. Yeah. And we developed that while I was there, as well as taken on the 8850. At the same time, I would did the 8850 then, too. Yep. So, but I did that clear up until, well, clear up until I was called up the National Garden. And it had started slowing down some because the tractors are getting older.

And, you know, they don't have the hydraulic systems that newer tractors do. And so there was some downsides that. But they're simple. And the guys that have them just love them because they, put anybody in them and there's no computers yeah and and they just run and run and run we were going from a 275 horse like on 86 30 or 40 and and 360 horse was a small engine and 400 was was an option yeah and and then 8850s would put a five and a quarter five and a quarter on a few tractors special order but 400 was a standard and uh 450 horse was uh was what most of them asked for yeah

They got good power out of those. Yeah. And the rest of the tractor was holding up good to them. There was about 600 done altogether. 2007 would have been, I was managed. Well, when I took over his production supervisor and vehicle maintenance, they had a manager. And he was doing parts.

Well, then they hired a parts guy, and then that manager disappeared. And so it's like the transport, hasn't been here for a while and there's no fuel in the barrels. So somebody needs to order some fuel. Well, I guess that's me. And we need some parts for these repart tractors. I'll order them. So I ended up doing all that the manager was doing. But that's how you do it without having to raise your pay. You just give you more responsibility. Yeah, that's right. And I just, I just hung in. So it was probably the best, to me, it's the best 10 years that I spent at Kinsey's was

because I worked with each department. And when they had material handling issues or problems, I'd look for solutions and try to be, you know, as efficient as we could be. John let me buy a lot of equipment. Got his blessing on that as I went. He watched some of the projects that we did because we did some repowers. I did some repires afterwards that were beyond after it was supposed to have been done. And he saw what was being done and the progress was being done. And I think he was watching me all along.

So when I got near retirement, he says, I had an offer. opportunity to go back over to his shop and manage his antique tractor collection. Yeah. So for those that don't know, how big is that collection? Do you know? John never talks about, he never talks about, he never puts a number on it. So I'm reluctant to, but it's several hundred. Yeah, it's amazing. If you ever managed to get on a tour and if you want to count them you're just welcome to but nobody has ever completely got them counted yeah uh for sure but there's several hundred yeah it's an incredible and uh i h you know that a lot of i h tractors that was his favorite and so so it's like you got you got all the h farmalls 39 to uh 19 39 to

54 so we got one for each year and then there's some variations in there yeah so there's extras same thing with the ms and then when you get down to the the the 100 series or the 50s or the 560s and that, you know, not necessarily one for each year. Yeah. But there's John Deere's and A.C.s and Oliver's and Minneapolis Moline's. And, yeah, it just goes on. Some really neat stuff. Several cars, several cars and trucks.

A lot of what would be like old green trucks, like a 29 international delivery truck. You know, it's kind of neat. couple impalas with 409s, 62 and a 63, one's convertible, three corvettes, several pickups in there, combines,

cotton pickers, yeah, packers, just whatever he liked. Whatever John likes. Yeah. And yeah, whatever,

it'd be interesting. A lot of miniatures, too. And there's many that he, they've been stacked too high. Yeah. In some buildings. I try to count

in the one building, how many was up on top? And I got all that time. Yeah. So I walked through them and I enjoy them. I don't know what the oldest international is. I'd have to go back and look, but it'd be pretty old. I'm probably on steel. It may be something like an F12, I suppose.

But a 1586 would be the latest one. Yeah. So it's kind of newer. And in the John Deere, 44, 55 is probably the newest. Yeah. That's in there. And he doesn't have like one for each of the 55 series or he'd really have something. Yeah, right. But that one was low hours, so he kept it. There's a 4440 with 50 hours.

That's amazing. I saw when it, when he bought it, you know, it was, it was, you know, it was an, it would have been an annual income for most people. Yeah. It's doubled that. There's an 80, 80, 80, was the, was the first, uh, John Deere was the first articulating, uh, commercial four-wheel drive John Deere put out. It had a Detroit diesel six owner in it. Yeah. Um, they had transmission issues. I They only built 100 of them. They brought them all back in. There's one that actually didn't come back in. But anyway, most of them all came back in.

They were put back out as 80-20s. We got a new tractor now, a new model. And so there was 100 of those, and that one is really valuable, too. And it's a sweet tractor. It runs good. We took the cab. He don't like the cab on it. He took the cab off.

It's painted and up on the shelf. It could go back on. Amazing. I like the cabs on it. He told me what one sold for an auction and was, and I said, Well, the problem is if you sell it, then you don't have it. Yep, that's right. Yep, that's absolutely right.

So we start those once a year, at least once a year, and run them long enough to get the hydraulic pressure up and oil pressure and try to get oil up to the valve train and so forth. And then I take make notes if I got issues, maybe a water pump bearing or a little leak or an ignition problem or carbureation problem or something. And then I'll go back and I work those all. and that's what I'm doing, doing now. Twice a year, there are scheduled tours, like next spring in May.

There'll be two days. We don't do it as many as we used to. About 60 on each tour. You tour in the morning, tour in the afternoon. And then you flip-flop, you tour the plant or you tour the barn so that you flip. And do that for two days. Waiting list is at least two years. That would be a minimum.

Maybe close to three. You just called Judy at the front desk and she put your time. your name on the list and contact and how many you want to bring. So spring and fall, we do that. Next June, next March, I suspect gathering of the green will have their convention in Davenport. They're going to want to, they usually bring two bus loads over. So they'll do a morning and afternoon, probably about 50. That one sells out. That one actually sells out. We don't, we don't charge anything for it, but they, gathering of the green feeds them. Yeah. So there's a charge for that, I think. So but it sells out real quick. Oh, yeah. Out there.

we could do more tours. Sometimes a tractor tour, like an AC guys, we were having a deal up in a manna last year, and they came down one day and went through. I would, to me, it's,

to me, it's a promotion in the sense that if, if we're doing the tractor and plant tour, you know, it's marketing. Sure. And, and so that,

but other than that, it's just because John wanted these tractors, and he's got them. You turn, you turn cash into iron, and then you turn around, turn iron into cash. I think it's pretty cool that your whole life that you've kind of took this mechanical

mind of yours and you've made a complete career out of it. And you kind of all, it's called came back a little bit. Now you're kind of, you're an ag, you know, you're still in the ag sector. And that was, that was my goal, especially when I, when we were in, in Pleasantville, that was a, that I always said, and I told, I told the guy I worked for there. I told him in this last year, I said, I tell people, this is the best job I ever had because he, he turned me loose. He got me a service truck and a welder and a boom and a spot in the shop, and we did customer work when we could. But, and he, and he knew how to get work out of me, and I don't even know if he knew he was doing this, but he would, he would say, I said, I don't know, how do you figure that stuff out?

You know, to play me up a little bit. He worked me. and and and uh and he said uh he said i like he told me one time so i like having you around because when i'm gone because he'd have to go collect try to collect for tile and sell tile and that and he said uh he says when i'm gone uh i know you're getting the job done and i always tried to do it to please him he'd have to make me go home at night have a salary and i just worked all time and and uh but i enjoyed working there and but every but every place i'd been built on the next so that where I'm at now I can be comfortable. My goal when I left when I left that job at Pleasantville to, I was looking for a job then. I went to pastor, a friend of mine in town.

I says, I know I got to, our family was split up for a while because Pam had them where they could be in a Christian school. So we were leaving separate except weekends. And that wasn't a good situation. I said, I need to get it back together. I don't want to give this job up. And I said, I don't want to do it. He said, you need to write down a piece of paper. your goals are. And I wanted a farm-related job, ag-related job, and I want a place that has a retirement program so I can get started on that of some kind.

And the other was a church that I could be active in. And so, man, there it was right in the Des Moines Register, the WANT ads. Well, they don't use WANT ads anymore. Yeah. It had been elsewhere. Yeah. But they were right there.

And the other goal I had, I watched my aunts and uncles, not my folks so much because they worked, I know dad farm because he wanted to until he couldn't. And mom worked 29 years as a cook. The year that we had to bail out because we starving the death down on the farm, she went to work at the nursing home in town as a cook. She worked 29 years. Well, she wanted to get off the farm more, I think. Yeah. It was a life outside of just being there on the farm. So she enjoyed doing that.

And my goal, but I've seen aunts and uncles that were, well, my age now in their 70s, looking for work because the Social Security wasn't going far enough for them. And they needed money. And my goal was to be able to work because I want to, not because I have to. I don't have any hobbies except work. And when I'm not working, I'm working part-time. There's hardly a year that's past that I haven't worked on somebody's combine or ran their combine or got their corn plan ready. because I and I enjoy doing it. You can make some money at it,

but you can do other things too, but I enjoy doing it because it's me. You're probably going to, at some point, you may have heard of farm rescue. I just heard about them maybe in the middle of the summer through a podcast, and then I research it a little bit. And I spent a week here in the first part of October and worked a, it's a solid week,

started Monday and I didn't get home until Sunday night. And three volunteers and one field manager and we took out 500 acres for a farmer that was having cancer surgery. Couldn't get his own crop out. Needed help. And I think we help, we're helping to save that farmer's farm because somebody had to do it. On Saturday, neighbors came because they had time off. Most of them are working nowadays, you know, most farmers, they had time off.

And that was great. They came and helped. had a trucker, when a guy stopped by and he says, anything we can do to help? Well, he sure could use another semi. Well, I got one. I just got to find me a driver. The driver volunteered at his time and he helped. So it's that kind of mentality. That's what that's, that's, you talk about unity in the ag, in the ag business. And that farm focus pulls that all together. And I did that for a week. And that was the, to me, that was a highlight of this year. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, farm rescue is awesome. We're going to have,

I said farm focus, but yeah, farm rescue. No, we hear, we're going to have them on. We're going to have them on, I think, I don't know for sure when, but upcoming, we're going to talk all about it. We need no more about them because they've been in the northern states and they're getting used more now and through the corn belt. And if there's a need and they can help us, we want to do it. I was, I'll throw this in. I don't think I told you this. We were, we had stopped at a store to get some batteries because our walkie-talkies when we came out of the field. us three volunteers. And we all had our farm rescue hats on and maybe a jacket or two.

And this kid behind the counter, a new generation, he says, what's farm rescue? Well, it's a nonprofit organization that helps farm families in crisis. And we're helping to get a farmer's crops out because he's having cancer surgery. And he says, I don't agree with that. The government should be doing that. What the hell? We all stepped back. We just couldn't believe it, you know.

And the guy that was buying the batteries, one of the other volunteers, he said, he says, well, he says, you're not going to find the, you're not going to find the government doing this job. Yeah. He says, well, they should be doing it. Somebody shouldn't be making a billion dollars coming in here and taking that guy's crops out. Well, nobody, this is nonprofit. Nobody's making it. Nobody's making a million dollars anywhere on this deal, you know. Yeah.

But to me, it's a man. of a different generation. I would imagine if I would ask him, I said, do you believe in a guaranteed national income? 100%. Yeah. I think it's that woke mentality. I'm afraid.

And he was real bold about it. That's a thing that really shocked, kind of shocked us. So we're still talking about the next day. We couldn't believe it. And these guys are both out of state. The other two volunteers, I hope they don't think we're all like that,

but they're everywhere. If we got them in the Cornfields, Iowa, you know, we're in a world of hurt that way. Yeah. Well, Gary, I appreciate. I really truly appreciate you spending the time, sit down with this great story.

And thank you for all that you've done. Thank you for your service. And I have trouble putting into words, I guess. I think as a country, we've gone through a time where I feel like we've lost our way, little bit, but I will say I feel like one of the few things left that, for the most part, I know there's exceptions of this, but for the most part, I think one of the few things left in this

country that I find at least, I hope this is true, I hope it's not just my feeling that we can agree on, we can come together about is, the appreciation we have for our veterans. We don't have much appreciation for our politicians anymore. We don't have a lot of trust. But I feel like as a nation, we can all be thankful and we can all appreciate the sacrifice that people have given and continue to give. And on Veterans Day, I thank you for your service and I think all veterans for theirs.

I will second that. Thank you. It was a great, great episode. I hope you guys got a lot of value from it. I hope this just shows a little bit of different perspective how it was back then, and, you know, just shows you that you got it pretty good. We got it pretty good here in America, and count your blessings and be grateful for what you got. And pay the fee and thank a veteran today.

Pay the fee and thank a veteran today. So we appreciate you guys tuning in. Thank you again, Gary. see you back here next week for another episode.