Show Notes
At department stores, tree lightings, parades, and office parties all over the world, Santa makes personal appearances around this time every year. You might be surprised to learn how many Vietnam veterans are... well, uh... let's say "involved" in those efforts. Among them is Fred Honerkamp, who was wounded in combat while serving in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969.
More from Echoes of the Vietnam War
The fighting starts. Captain George Forrest runs five hundred yards through an ambush to reach his men. Nurse Dottie Harris meets the war at Cu Chi; Captain Leroy Pitts, who could have ridden out his tour behind a desk, asks for combat instead. In Part 2 of this three-part series drawn from Wil Haygood's The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home, the color line fades under fire -- even as it comes roaring back in the rear.
In 1967, six young men from Wil Haygood's block in Columbus, Ohio left for Vietnam. The next year, National Guard tanks rolled down his street. He came to see them as a single story — the one he tells in his book, The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home. This is the first episode in a three-part series featuring the book's author and two of the veterans who lived it.
On the night of January 30th, 1968, the Tet Offensive reached the city of Hue. AFVN deejay John Bagwell was one of nine men who spent the next five days in a house, waiting for a rescue that never came. When they were finally overrun by the NVA, three of them didn't survive it. Five spent the next five years as prisoners of war. John Bagwell got out alone, shot through the foot. The Army had reported him dead but “the Scrawny thing” from Oklahoma was crawling through rice paddies determined to make it back.
Good Morning, Vietnam is entertaining. But art, in this case, is a thin imitation of real life. For six months in 1967, John Bagwell was an Armed Forces Vietnam Network disc jockey, playing rock and roll to the First Cavalry Division out of a bunker in An Khe. He'll tell you it was the best job in Vietnam — until it wasn't. This 104-pound deejay came home with a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star with a V for valor.
Sixty-five years ago today, a test aircraft sprayed herbicide over Bien Hoa province. The operation that grew from that test lasted a decade and dumped roughly 20 million gallons of herbicide on South Vietnam. In this episode we’ll explore how Operation Ranch Hand affected the people who served in Vietnam — and their descendants — and how the U.S. government has responded since.