Speaker 1: Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
Speaker 1: this edition is Lieutenant Doug Greenlaw. He's a US Army veteran,
Speaker 1: a Vietnam veteran, and the recipient of the Silver Star,
Speaker 1: two Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts. He later became
Speaker 1: a top executive at MTV, VH one and Nickelodeon, and
Speaker 1: also served as National Commander of the Military Order of
Speaker 1: the Purple Heart in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen. He's
Speaker 1: the author of the memoir Forged by Lightning. From Boyhood
Speaker 1: to the Battlefield to the Boardroom. Doug Greenlaw was born
Speaker 1: in Minnesota in nineteen forty four. A few years later,
Speaker 1: the family moved to Michigan City, Indiana, on the shores
Speaker 1: of Lake Michigan, where Greenlaw's father got a job working
Speaker 1: in a local mis Greenlaw loved growing up near the
Speaker 1: Great Lakes, but his most notable moment from those years
Speaker 1: is when he was struck by lightning shortly after returning
Speaker 1: home from the beach.
Speaker 2: I was thirteen years old. We lived in a little cottage,
Speaker 2: a beautiful little cottage, but it was tiny. All five
Speaker 2: people in a little two bedroom cottage off the beaches
Speaker 2: of Lake Michigan. So I was down on the beach
Speaker 2: swimming with my friends, and there's a family reunion at home.
Speaker 2: So I hurried home to be at the reunion, and
Speaker 2: my favorite cousin showed up and he just got a
Speaker 2: new buzz cut. So I reached up to rub his
Speaker 2: head his new buzz cut, and boom, lightning struck me
Speaker 2: right in the chest. And I don't know if you've
Speaker 2: ever seen it, but you get these red lines through
Speaker 2: your chest, my neck and chest and both arms from
Speaker 2: the electricity going through your body. Later turns black and blue,
Speaker 2: not just all out myself, my cousin, and my uncle.
Speaker 2: And it hit a tree route nearby and followed a
Speaker 2: route to the tree and blew the tree in half,
Speaker 2: split it right in half. So yeah, that was my experience.
Speaker 2: One of my many experiences in my crazy life was
Speaker 2: sort of starting with that one.
Speaker 1: As he moved into high school, green Law joined his
Speaker 1: dad in the mill during the summers of his high
Speaker 1: school years, and.
Speaker 2: I did my time in the mill too. I worked
Speaker 2: there every summer during high school sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen.
Speaker 2: You had to be eighteen to work there, but they
Speaker 2: didn't have an HR department in those days. If I
Speaker 2: said I was eighteen on the paper and I was
Speaker 2: strong enough to do the work, they hired me. So
Speaker 2: I enjoyed that, made really good money, and saved it
Speaker 2: for college.
Speaker 1: After high school, green Law went to Indiana University to
Speaker 1: play baseball, but college life did not suit him at
Speaker 1: that time, so he dropped out and joined the Army.
Speaker 1: And he knew right away from his athleticism and his
Speaker 1: leadership skills that the military was a perfect fit.
Speaker 2: I played freshman baseball for Indiana, and I played all
Speaker 2: the sports except basketball. I played all the sports in
Speaker 2: high school, so I was in really good shape when
Speaker 2: I got to the Army. You know, I could run
Speaker 2: a ten second one hundred yard dash. I ran in
Speaker 2: the Army for the testing of the candidates in the Army,
Speaker 2: I ran a mile and under six minutes with my
Speaker 2: boots and uniform on. So I was in really good shape.
Speaker 2: That helped a lot. And I had leadership skills sort
Speaker 2: of embedded into me by sports. I was usually picked
Speaker 2: as the captain of the baseball team and all that
Speaker 2: as I grew up, so it fit me like a glove.
Speaker 2: It really did and so they would have us run
Speaker 2: the obstacle course, not ask him if I could do
Speaker 2: it again. That was fun. They said, no, shut up
Speaker 2: and get in line, you know. So that's the way
Speaker 2: the army was for me. They made me a platoon
Speaker 2: leader for a student platoon leader of both basic training
Speaker 2: and advanced training. So it just came to me naturally.
Speaker 1: Green Law thrived and eventually went through Officer Candidate School,
Speaker 1: finishing seventh in his class of two hundred and fifty.
Speaker 1: Before deploying to Vietnam, he also completed jungles survival training
Speaker 1: in Panama. Green Law says it prepared him well for
Speaker 1: the triple canopy jungles of Vietnam. But he says the
Speaker 1: most memorable moment was when one guy on his four
Speaker 1: man team got attacked from one of the residents of
Speaker 1: the jungle.
Speaker 2: So my point man was up maybe fifteen twenty feet
Speaker 2: in front of me, and he screamed as loud as
Speaker 2: he could, and I'm thinking, oh, great, they're going to
Speaker 2: discover us out here by the river, you know, where
Speaker 2: we're not supposed to be. Maybe they'll they won't let
Speaker 2: us get our certification. So I went up to him
Speaker 2: and I had a little pen light. I was the
Speaker 2: only one that had a light, A little, tiny, little
Speaker 2: tiny pen light with work with your helm. I turned
Speaker 2: a pen light on him. I said, what the hell
Speaker 2: are you screaming about? He said something bit me and
Speaker 2: I said, well where, And he said, my hand. He
Speaker 2: had bites on the palm of his hand and bites
Speaker 2: under his elbow from one bite. That's how big the
Speaker 2: mouth was on this snake. And I said, holy crap.
Speaker 2: I took my light and I shined it down in
Speaker 2: to look, you know, see maybe he was still there.
Speaker 2: And I saw the back of this snake slide into
Speaker 2: the river, and his back was the size of a basketball.
Speaker 2: Since then I researched it and I found out would
Speaker 2: be a green anaconda. And they they're fairly docile, but
Speaker 2: they strike when they're molting skins coming off. They're sort
Speaker 2: of pain. It gets over their eyes. They can't see
Speaker 2: very well. They'll strike. Then they strike when they're hungry
Speaker 2: to get food. They'll they'll grab a live jungle pig
Speaker 2: and drag it into the water, drown it and then
Speaker 2: swallow it. And the rare human being they will do
Speaker 2: that too, very rare. I couldn't believe the size of
Speaker 2: the mouth. It had to be a fourteen inch right.
Speaker 1: Fortunately that team member turned out to be just fine.
Speaker 1: Green Law then got a week at home before deploying
Speaker 1: to Vietnam. From everything he had learned as an incoming
Speaker 1: platoon commander who hadn't seen combat yet, green Law knew
Speaker 1: that he should rely heavily on the experience of his
Speaker 1: platoon sergeant, and that's what he planned to do. But
Speaker 1: once he arrived at his new platoon, that plan abruptly changed.
Speaker 2: So I got there and I met the company commander
Speaker 2: out in the jungle, and I said, sir, I'm Lieutenant
Speaker 2: green Law, or your new platoon leaders, just replacing a
Speaker 2: guy that was killed a couple of days before. And
Speaker 2: he said, okay, your platoon has You're out here at
Speaker 2: nine o'clock, from nine o'clock to noon in a circle
Speaker 2: nine to new like a clock. That's where your men
Speaker 2: are go take it over. So I'm going over there,
Speaker 2: and I'm expecting Clint Eastwood, you know, or Rambo. So
Speaker 2: I said the first guy I saw, I said, I'm
Speaker 2: Lieutenant Greenlaw, the new platoon leader. I want to see
Speaker 2: the platoon sergeant. Bring him to me, said yes, sir,
Speaker 2: takes off. Excuse my language. I mean, I'm not supposed
Speaker 2: to talk about people overweight, but this guy was. I'll
Speaker 2: just put it nicely, he says. Obese individual sloshed over
Speaker 2: to me. Before I could say anything, he says, are
Speaker 2: you the new platoon leader? And I said yes, I
Speaker 2: am Lieutenant green Law. And he said, man, I'm glad
Speaker 2: you're here. I know nothing about running a platoon. It's
Speaker 2: all yours. And I'm thinking, oh, oh no. My whole
Speaker 2: life flashed in front of me. I think I got
Speaker 2: struck by lightning again. My training was good, so I
Speaker 2: knew what to do. I had to replace him, but
Speaker 2: I didn't have any As a first lieutenant, I had
Speaker 2: no authority to fire my platoon sergeant. It's a military
Speaker 2: you know. He asked to be done officially. I fired
Speaker 2: his ass right there on the spot, and I said,
Speaker 2: the helicopter is still out there. That dropped me off.
Speaker 2: He's unloading food and gear. Get on that helicopter and
Speaker 2: get out of here. And he did. He took. He
Speaker 2: didn't even get his stuff. He just grabbed his rifle
Speaker 2: and ran to that helicopter. And the company commander comes
Speaker 2: over to me. He said, what the hell did you
Speaker 2: just do? I said, well, I fired my platoon sergeant
Speaker 2: and I hired one of my best squad leaders. I
Speaker 2: found a guy that had been there nine months. He
Speaker 2: knew what he was doing. He's a sergeant. I promoted
Speaker 2: him the staff sergeant, which I had no authority to do.
Speaker 2: So he's now my platoon sergeant. And he said what
Speaker 2: and the hell you don't have any authority to do that,
Speaker 2: And I said, well I did it, and so I
Speaker 2: had my first really good stare down. I looked him
Speaker 2: right in the eye. I did this once more in
Speaker 2: my career or two, and it works. I stared at him.
Speaker 2: I didn't blame, I said, sir, I told him exactly
Speaker 2: what that guy said to me. I said, this is war.
Speaker 2: I don't have time to sit around and wait for
Speaker 2: a bureaucracy to take care of this. I took care
Speaker 2: of it. And he stared at me and he said
Speaker 2: finally he blamed, turned and walked it with Okay, but
Speaker 2: don't do anything like that again until you talk to me.
Speaker 1: Green Law also described his new duties and responsibilities as
Speaker 1: a platoon commander.
Speaker 2: Make sure we survived. My first job this and also
Speaker 2: as company commander later on. I didn't want anybody to die,
Speaker 2: so I try to be smart. I try to stay
Speaker 2: ahead of the enemy, and my job was to save lives,
Speaker 2: not take lives. We took a lot of lives of
Speaker 2: the enemy, don't get me wrong. But I had a
Speaker 2: really good ratio on my side with my men, so
Speaker 2: I'm very careful to take care of them. I make
Speaker 2: sure they we had and every company, infantry company and
Speaker 2: every infantry platoon. You have not experts, but you have.
Speaker 2: Lets say that you know medicine a little bit. Blood
Speaker 2: doesn't bother you all of a sudden. You're the medic.
Speaker 2: We make you the medic. Somebody else is good with
Speaker 2: C four high explosives, they're good with They're good with
Speaker 2: explosives and tech skills with their hands. He becomes the expert.
Speaker 2: I had experts for every area. My last name is
Speaker 2: green Law, so my nickname my whole life from childhood,
Speaker 2: so today it's law Law. I said, don't call me sir,
Speaker 2: don't salute me, don't salute me. Out here, the snipers
Speaker 2: are looking for the guy getting saluted. The snipers will
Speaker 2: shoot three people. They'll shoot the guy next to me
Speaker 2: and the other guy next to me, usually the radio man.
Speaker 2: They shoot him and then they shoot me. So the
Speaker 2: platoon loses its communications. It's leadership, and so that's what
Speaker 2: they're smart. People are smart, you know. These these Vietcong
Speaker 2: were local peasants, but they weren't stupid. They had IQs
Speaker 2: just like everybody else, and they figured this stuff out.
Speaker 2: So I tried to motivate everybody to and work together
Speaker 2: as a team, team building, and not to be afraid.
Speaker 2: The more bold you are, the more likely you are
Speaker 2: to survive. If you're a coward, you're gonna get shot,
Speaker 2: probably right in the back. So we we had we
Speaker 2: had a great relationship. It was it was a wonderful
Speaker 2: learning experience for me. I was twenty twenty two, almost
Speaker 2: twenty three when I took over that platoon. I was
Speaker 2: twenty three when I took over the company a company
Speaker 2: later on in another area. So it's survival, survival and
Speaker 2: kill everything, you see.
Speaker 1: He got even more specific about the challenge of finding
Speaker 1: and avoiding enemy booby traps.
Speaker 2: It's very very difficult. You have you have to work slow,
Speaker 2: and you don't look for the wire. You'll never see it.
Speaker 2: Because it's about shin hai, and it's it's like a
Speaker 2: piece of thread, metal thread. You know, you can't even
Speaker 2: see it. Uh, So you have to look for abnormalties,
Speaker 2: look for some leaves that have been crushed in there.
Speaker 2: Back in they're putting, putting all this together, the trip wire,
Speaker 2: and they were all they weren't all that careful, and
Speaker 2: so you could tell something was going on somewhere. So
Speaker 2: we would stop and take a really close look, go
Speaker 2: inch by inch until you saw the wire. Once you
Speaker 2: had the wire, you can't touch it. You have to
Speaker 2: step over it. And it's usually about shinhai, so it's
Speaker 2: fairly easy to step over. But uh, there's no easy
Speaker 2: solution to it. And once in a while, including me
Speaker 2: later on, that's that's what got me. It was a
Speaker 2: trip wire. It's a little luck and a lot of
Speaker 2: a lot of hard work to an intense pressure. One
Speaker 2: way you can avoid it is to stay off the paths.
Speaker 2: Don't take a path. You see a worn path, like
Speaker 2: to a village. Don't take that path because the villagers
Speaker 2: all know where the booby traps are and we don't.
Speaker 2: And so we get off the main drag to it.
Speaker 2: You know, the main the main path to a village
Speaker 2: might be oh, you know, eight feet wide. Still it's
Speaker 2: not a road or anything. It's just crushed jungle path.
Speaker 2: So we avoided those. We use the paths out in
Speaker 2: the middle of the jungle where they were small and
Speaker 2: you could it was. It wasn't a lot of use,
Speaker 2: if any use. But so avoid the path and be
Speaker 2: real careful and be a superman. You know, in combat,
Speaker 2: you become a super person of yourself, a super green Law.
Speaker 2: Your eyes are wider, your prefer vision is better, you
Speaker 2: can see, you know, during during combat, you can see better.
Speaker 2: You can smell things you couldn't smell before. You know,
Speaker 2: you were stronger with all the adrenaline pumping on your heart.
Speaker 2: So you become a super being of yourself in combat.
Speaker 2: And I always thought that was interesting. Probably it's the
Speaker 2: same in sports. You know, you get out there playing
Speaker 2: some kind of a sport. I don't care what it is.
Speaker 2: It's not like you're laying on the couch. You're pretty
Speaker 2: fired up. Well, was picture that in extreme and that's
Speaker 2: what combat is like.
Speaker 1: That's a US Army veteran and Vietnam veteran Doug green Law.
Speaker 1: In a moment, they'll share the details of the harrowing
Speaker 1: day that earned him the Silver Star. I'm Greg Corumbus
Speaker 1: and this is Veterans Chronicles.
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Speaker 1: This is Veterans Chronicles I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
Speaker 1: this edition is US Army and Vietnam veteran Doug Greenlaw.
Speaker 1: Green Law now shares the story of Thanksgiving Day nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven when his platoon was overwhelmingly outnumbered by enemy forces,
Speaker 1: and he tells us about the actions that led to
Speaker 1: him receiving the Silver Star.
Speaker 2: I was with a one ninety six infantry. It's light infantry,
Speaker 2: so they put us in helicopters and flew us to
Speaker 2: hot areas during the Tet offensive. So we fought almost
Speaker 2: every day. They would fly us to where something's happening.
Speaker 2: They flew us to this one area. I was a
Speaker 2: lead platoon for my company, and what our job was
Speaker 2: to fly with the helicopter land pop green smoke, which
Speaker 2: means okay, and then they rest can come in in
Speaker 2: an area that we've secured. Well, the pilots got mixed
Speaker 2: up with the map. They landed us one thousand meters
Speaker 2: farther than where we're supposed to be left off, and
Speaker 2: that happened to be right in front the battalion of
Speaker 2: North Vietnamese, which was about probably four hundred between four
Speaker 2: hundred and five hundred men at that time. I had
Speaker 2: forty two men in my platoon, so it was us
Speaker 2: against them, and it was hell. Everything you can possibly imagine,
Speaker 2: including hand to hand combat, happened that day. When it
Speaker 2: got to be hand to hand, I had to call
Speaker 2: in a phantom jet to bring air support, and I
Speaker 2: asked this guy, this pilot, to drop bombs on my
Speaker 2: own position because we were so close they were overrunning us,
Speaker 2: and he did that and some of my guys. I
Speaker 2: lost some of my guys, but I saved most of them,
Speaker 2: and it worked. It pushed them back away from us,
Speaker 2: and it was hell fire. We fought for five hours
Speaker 2: before they could catch up to us from where they
Speaker 2: were supposed to be a thousand meters behind us. So
Speaker 2: it took them five hours to get to us through
Speaker 2: the jungle and everything. And when they got to us,
Speaker 2: a lot went on. You know, hand to hand combat
Speaker 2: is hard to describe. You kill somebody with your bare
Speaker 2: hands or your knife or your weapon. I'll give you
Speaker 2: one example that I put in the book. Because we
Speaker 2: were bringing jet bombs on our own people, everybody had
Speaker 2: to get down, obviously, and I saw a little trench,
Speaker 2: a handmade trench, about twenty feet from me, so I
Speaker 2: ran and jumped into that trench. I got in there
Speaker 2: and there were four North Vietnamese soldiers inside that in
Speaker 2: that trench, locked and loaded, and I just snapped a
Speaker 2: new load of bullets into my AR fifteen, locked it in,
Speaker 2: and just then I jumped in and there they were.
Speaker 2: So I killed all four of them with my weapon.
Speaker 2: The sixteen fire so many shots in a second or
Speaker 2: a minute. You only have like eighteen rounds in your magazine.
Speaker 2: And I told my men, don't ever leave it on automatic.
Speaker 2: You'll be out of ammunition in one second. So I
Speaker 2: just popped them all. What we used to call in
Speaker 2: those days. I stitched them from their genitals to their brain.
Speaker 2: They all fell dead, and one of them dove into
Speaker 2: a tunnel at the end of the trench, had a
Speaker 2: little canvas flap on it. And I was out of
Speaker 2: ammunition and I saw him. I took my helmet off
Speaker 2: and I threw it at him, trying to stall him
Speaker 2: so I could get a hold of him. I missed
Speaker 2: him and he dived in. To my stupidity, I dived
Speaker 2: into that tunnel after this guy. I got in there
Speaker 2: about ten feet in its dark, and I could hear
Speaker 2: the muffles of the war going on out front of
Speaker 2: the artillery and everything coming in, the bombs being dropped
Speaker 2: by the jet, and I didn't see the guy. And
Speaker 2: I started getting my night vision opening up a little bit,
Speaker 2: coming in from that bright sunlight. I saw a form
Speaker 2: in front of me, ten feet in front of me
Speaker 2: or so, and I saw that the tunnel took a
Speaker 2: hard right turn. And these tunnels had been there a
Speaker 2: long time. They're hard as a rock, it's almost like
Speaker 2: cement smooth on the inside, and they've been there. There
Speaker 2: are hospitals in them. There are sleeping quarters. One time
Speaker 2: we stumbled on a tunnel that had a young woman
Speaker 2: and her baby hiding from us in there, so they
Speaker 2: lived in these tunnels. I knew my men were up
Speaker 2: there wondering where the hell their leader went. So they're
Speaker 2: all up there not knowing what to do. I said,
Speaker 2: I better get up there because they don't know how
Speaker 2: to handle this calling in the jet. So I turned
Speaker 2: to leave, and I heard this rustling behind me, and
Speaker 2: this guy was coming at me. He had ammunition. He
Speaker 2: fired one shot. I turned around, he fired one shot,
Speaker 2: and I hit right over my head into the top
Speaker 2: of the tunnel. You could feel it falling on my
Speaker 2: neck and sweat. And uh, he obviously missed. The next
Speaker 2: shot whiz right by my ear. I could hear it.
Speaker 2: The third shot, it nicked my my right shoulder, just
Speaker 2: just barely a nick, more of a burn than an
Speaker 2: actual shot. So I said, I got to charge this guy.
Speaker 2: And I charged him, and I was out of ammunition.
Speaker 2: I took my, uh my Gerber commando knife from my side.
Speaker 2: It's a dagger, long dagger, and it was it was
Speaker 2: as sharp as a needle at one end and and
Speaker 2: it was like a razor blade sharp down down the sides.
Speaker 2: So I charged him and I heard a click. He
Speaker 2: was out of ammunition too. So when I he turned
Speaker 2: and ran to go around the turn I told you about,
Speaker 2: and I grabbed him by the heel. I pulled him
Speaker 2: around and I stabbed him in the calf of his leg,
Speaker 2: into his into the bone, pulled out, brought him up
Speaker 2: to me, and finished him off. And it turns out
Speaker 2: they think, and the reason I got the silver Star,
Speaker 2: I think versus the bronze. They think that he might
Speaker 2: have been the battalion commander. That was a formal tunnel.
Speaker 2: It wasn't recently Doug, it had been there a long time,
Speaker 2: and that trench is probably the entrance to that battalion
Speaker 2: level leaders ship's rule. He probably slept in there. I
Speaker 2: got back out to my men and we held him
Speaker 2: off till my support came five hours later. By that time,
Speaker 2: three and a half hours later, most of us survived.
Speaker 1: Much more from Doug Greenlaw's story of service. In just
Speaker 1: a moment on Veterans Chronicles, this is Veterans Chronicles. I'm
Speaker 1: Greg Corumbus. Our guest is US Army veteran and Vietnam
Speaker 1: War veteran Doug green Law. A moment ago, we heard
Speaker 1: green Law's intense account of protecting his platoon while badly
Speaker 1: outnumbered and fighting hand to hand in a North Vietnamese tunnel.
Speaker 1: What goes through your mind in a moment like that.
Speaker 1: Is it reverting to how you've been trained, realizing that
Speaker 1: it's either him or me that's going to emerge from
Speaker 1: this fight alive. Or is it simply instinct.
Speaker 2: You hit all the points. It's all that mixed up
Speaker 2: into one person. It turns out we were bigger, we
Speaker 2: were stronger. They had on their side, they had a
Speaker 2: strong loyalty to their country. You know this is their country,
Speaker 2: not ours. They lived there, their families are there, so
Speaker 2: they fight equally as strong as we do. But we
Speaker 2: were always physically stronger. It's either him or me. The
Speaker 2: tunnel is a good example. It was either him or
Speaker 2: me was that. Am I going to die in this tunnel?
Speaker 2: Or is he going to die? It's not going to
Speaker 2: be me. And that's the way young people think. I
Speaker 2: just turned twenty three at this time, and I thought
Speaker 2: to myself, I'm not going to use the language, but
Speaker 2: I thought to myself, I'm going to kill this guy
Speaker 2: going to kill me. I'm not going to die here.
Speaker 2: Now that was just my youth. With one of those
Speaker 2: bullets would have hit me, it had been all over,
Speaker 2: I'd say it's a combination of everything that you said,
Speaker 2: all in one person, also filled by a quart and
Speaker 2: a half of adrenaline pouring onto your heart all the time.
Speaker 2: So you have a superhuman thing going for yourself.
Speaker 1: And there's more to the story. Green Law also elaborated
Speaker 1: on how he positioned his men to fend off hundreds
Speaker 1: of enemy fighters while he called an air support and
Speaker 1: waited hours for ground reinforcements to arrive.
Speaker 2: Well, I put everybody into a tight circle, and real tight.
Speaker 2: I'm shoulder to shoulder. So if you're going to have
Speaker 2: to get all of us, you're not going to get
Speaker 2: warn you're not going to pick us off. I was
Speaker 2: calling in a lot of overhead bombing. I was on
Speaker 2: direct call with the pilot, and he and I got
Speaker 2: to be friends, short and fast friends there because he
Speaker 2: would he's coming in fast, you know, even slow, as
Speaker 2: slow as a jet comes. If a jet is flying fast,
Speaker 2: he's flying almost either down or lateral. But when you're
Speaker 2: coming in low, you got to go as slow as
Speaker 2: you possibly can. And this thing comes in like this,
Speaker 2: you know, with this being the engine down here, and
Speaker 2: he's going as slow as he can go to drop
Speaker 2: those bombs. So he could be accurate. Still, you can't
Speaker 2: be that accurate. So we got into an argument. Not
Speaker 2: an argument, but I'd say you got to bring it back.
Speaker 2: I'd give my zone. I'd say bring it back three
Speaker 2: hundred yards. He dropped it again. I say bring it
Speaker 2: back three hundred yards. He said, I just did. I said, no,
Speaker 2: you didn't. I'm down here watching you weren't three hundred yards.
Speaker 2: So we're back and forth. It becomes a talk through
Speaker 2: none of this formal broadcasting thing, you know. Back and forth.
Speaker 2: We ended up being friends. But he even came in
Speaker 2: lower and slower. I can't believe it. So he got
Speaker 2: pretty accurate, and he kept him away until to support.
Speaker 2: Seemed like it took forever, But it's not as complicated
Speaker 2: as you might think. He's like one of my men
Speaker 2: up there, and he happened to be an ima.
Speaker 1: Yet, in addition to the other losses that day, Greenlaw
Speaker 1: says two other things ended that day as well, his
Speaker 1: sense of fear and his faith. He says he's never
Speaker 1: been afraid since then, which can be both good and bad.
Speaker 1: As for his faith, Greenlaw says the horrors he witnessed
Speaker 1: and was part of on the battlefield led him to
Speaker 1: becoming a doubter. He says he's not an atheist, but
Speaker 1: an agnostic who is going to need a lot of
Speaker 1: evidence to believe again. After the fighting on Thanksgiving nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, green Law was soon promoted and named a
Speaker 1: company commander. He went on fewer patrols at that point,
Speaker 1: but the difficult work of his men continued, including finding
Speaker 1: and avoiding enemy booby traps. But on some occasions Greenlaw
Speaker 1: still joined his men on patrol, and that's how he
Speaker 1: was severely injured.
Speaker 2: They're getting my during my silver star ceremony they had
Speaker 2: back at the hospital because my leg was healing. I
Speaker 2: had a minor wound in my leg and it was
Speaker 2: healing up in country and that's when they're going to
Speaker 2: send me back out. And the battalion commander was putting
Speaker 2: the silver star on me, and he said, we're real
Speaker 2: proud of you, and blah blah blah, and he said,
Speaker 2: you're getting a brigade level promotion to a company commander.
Speaker 2: You're going to command second of the first company. And uh,
Speaker 2: it's and I didn't know what a brigade level though
Speaker 2: it was versus anything else. Turns out that's a big
Speaker 2: deal for the brigade. The colonel to do that or
Speaker 2: might have been might have been a one star general.
Speaker 2: So they made me a company commander. I got back
Speaker 2: from Bangkok on R and R. My leg was finally healed.
Speaker 2: I was ready to go. They sent me out to
Speaker 2: be a company commander. I told my battalion commander, they
Speaker 2: don't teach you how to be a company commander. I've
Speaker 2: never been a company commander. I don't know what to do.
Speaker 2: And he said, hey, he had a good platoon. Just
Speaker 2: have five good platoons. I'll get out of my face.
Speaker 2: So I did, so I just took over the company.
Speaker 2: Fortunately I had Rambo as my first sergeant. This guy
Speaker 2: was fantastic. He and I ran that company. So what
Speaker 2: happened was that we're doing fine. We were mean, you know.
Speaker 2: I wrote home for Ace of Spades, and everybody said
Speaker 2: what I said, I don't want the cards the deck,
Speaker 2: just send me the Ace of Spades, and we use
Speaker 2: the Ace of Spades to put the fear of God
Speaker 2: into these North Vietnamese enemy. I had stack of them
Speaker 2: in my pocket and i'd pull one out and stick
Speaker 2: it in their mouth. And because they're very superstitious, and
Speaker 2: that's called the death card in Vietnamese. We were out
Speaker 2: on as a company commander. Occasionally I would go out
Speaker 2: with my men on a patrol at night to secure
Speaker 2: the area, make sure it stays secure so everybody else
Speaker 2: could sleep. We'd come back in the morning, maybe get
Speaker 2: one hours sleep if we're lucky, on the floor of
Speaker 2: the jungle. And I did this as an active leadership
Speaker 2: to show my men that I wouldn't ask them to
Speaker 2: do something that I wouldn't do or haven't done, And
Speaker 2: so I would go out on these patrols with them
Speaker 2: once in a while. And we were out on a
Speaker 2: patrol and we entered into a big something I'd never
Speaker 2: seen before, a very big bamboo forest. I didn't realize it,
Speaker 2: but bamboos, the ancient bamboos are six feet around like
Speaker 2: big oak trees. What the enemy would do would set
Speaker 2: a bomb. They would find an artillery round, a dun
Speaker 2: one that didn't work on the jungle floor, and they
Speaker 2: would take it up. Now this is very sensitive, so
Speaker 2: these guys are brave that did this. You can screw
Speaker 2: the end of the artillery round off. There's a screw
Speaker 2: drop it slip in very easily, a hand grenade blasting
Speaker 2: shell inside of it, and it's a little aluminum about
Speaker 2: the size of a pencil. Stick it inside and all
Speaker 2: it does is explode and set the big explosion off.
Speaker 2: So they put that in with a trip wire. They
Speaker 2: bring it out from the tree about head head level
Speaker 2: is a bomb, bring it down across the trail about
Speaker 2: shin Hai. And we were out there that one night
Speaker 2: and my point man tripped the trip wire, killed three
Speaker 2: in front of me, and one behind me and wounded.
Speaker 2: Everybody else on the patrol is that one whether they
Speaker 2: think is a one to five artillery round, which just
Speaker 2: for your sake of understanding, is about two feet long.
Speaker 2: One five. You know, this big round pack full of
Speaker 2: thirty three pounds of TNT, so when it goes off,
Speaker 2: it makes a big blast. There was a helicopter coming
Speaker 2: in at that time for resupply, and that helicopter came
Speaker 2: out and got me. I don't think it's real cloudy here.
Speaker 2: They picked me up, got me on a helicopter, and
Speaker 2: the other wounded got on a helicopter. The dead people
Speaker 2: we left there with being guarded by our people, in
Speaker 2: due respect, but you never put dead people on a
Speaker 2: helicopter with live people. It's just it's an unwritten rule.
Speaker 2: So they flew us back to a mash unit in
Speaker 2: the jungle, a little clearing, and these helicopter pilots broke
Speaker 2: all the rules. They flew full speed ahead right tree top.
Speaker 2: They're not supposed to do that, but they did to
Speaker 2: get because I was bleeding so bad. My throat was
Speaker 2: slit from my left ear to my atom's apple. I
Speaker 2: had a hole the size of a tennis ball. Here
Speaker 2: I cut my left carotid artery, not in half, but
Speaker 2: sliced it half and squirting out two feet from my neck.
Speaker 2: Compound fracture on my right leg, lost my left knee,
Speaker 2: cap had a piece of bamboo that nailed my arm
Speaker 2: to my chest, missing my heart by a quarter of
Speaker 2: an inch. And I survived. I was twenty three, iron man.
Speaker 2: I shaved off my stitches before they could pull them out.
Speaker 2: Back in the hospital when in denaying, we were all tough,
Speaker 2: tough as nails. You had to be if you weren't tough.
Speaker 2: And I've met people that weren't tough. They're hard on
Speaker 2: the whole organization because they can't you can't depend on them.
Speaker 2: So everybody became tough, whether they were or not. I
Speaker 2: never saw super weak people. I saw stronger than others.
Speaker 2: But so that was it. Somehow I survived and I
Speaker 2: got back to the mash unit. The doctors started working
Speaker 2: on me. They stopped the bleeding. Here they clipped off
Speaker 2: my carotid artery. He eclipped it shut, and Catholic priest
Speaker 2: was there. He gave me the last rites and I died.
Speaker 2: I was dead for no breathing, no respiration, no heartbeat
Speaker 2: for fifteen minutes. That's what they told me.
Speaker 1: Anyway, After much care and enough time, green Law recovered
Speaker 1: remarkably well from his many injuries. He returned to Indiana University,
Speaker 1: got his degree, and met and married his wife. His
Speaker 1: newfound fearlessness proved very helpful in his new career in sales.
Speaker 1: He was a great success selling advertising in radio. He
Speaker 1: was later a sales executive for Pat Robertson at the
Speaker 1: Christian Broadcasting Network before moving on to work at the
Speaker 1: highest levels of Viacom, including MTV, VH one, and Nickelodeon.
Speaker 1: Greenlaw says his fearlessness also served him well in a
Speaker 1: showdown with Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone, I'm not afraid.
Speaker 2: I'm not afraid if I were working for you and
Speaker 2: something was going wrong. My job is to protect you
Speaker 2: by doing a good job. My job is to make
Speaker 2: me real successful so you're successful. So if you're not fair,
Speaker 2: I'm going to tell you right to your face. It
Speaker 2: doesn't bother me a bit. If I'm right, you got
Speaker 2: to be in order to do this, you got to
Speaker 2: be right. And if you don't know if you're right,
Speaker 2: keep your mouth shut. If you know you're right. Say
Speaker 2: it to anybody anytime. I stared down Sumner Redstone, the
Speaker 2: chairman of Viacom, just like I did that company commander
Speaker 2: in Vietnam, same technique. I did the same thing. He
Speaker 2: gave me a direct order to hire his daughter, Sherry Redstone.
Speaker 2: And she came in fingernails bitten down to the quick,
Speaker 2: with blood sweaty, looked like she just got off a
Speaker 2: hard walk through Central Park, casual arrogant, you know, Sumner's daughter,
Speaker 2: for God's sake. And I'm thinking to myself, I can't
Speaker 2: hire this woman. She's not ready. So I'm thinking to myself,
Speaker 2: I'll give her a job. He gave me an order
Speaker 2: to hire her. I'm going to offer her a job
Speaker 2: as a second level assistant down at the bottom of
Speaker 2: the And like I started out, start at the bottom.
Speaker 2: By the time you work your way up, you're going
Speaker 2: to know the game you're gonna and you do well.
Speaker 2: I said to her, Sherry, I'll hire you, but you
Speaker 2: know it's going to be a low level job. In
Speaker 2: a year, and I'm in the back of my mind,
Speaker 2: I'm thinking I'm going to put her with Sandy Sheffer
Speaker 2: and Karen Zolman two of my top executive salespeople. They
Speaker 2: were fantastic. They were on Armani outfits. They looked stunning,
Speaker 2: and they were nice looking ladies. And they could They
Speaker 2: could talk to her differently than I could. They can
Speaker 2: talk woman to woman to her, get to get her
Speaker 2: fingernails fixed, put on some decent clothes. She wouldn't do that.
Speaker 2: She wanted a top level marketing job. And I said,
Speaker 2: it's not going to happen, So my phone ran. The
Speaker 2: next morning, some of the Redstone wanted to see me
Speaker 2: in his office. I walked up and I had my
Speaker 2: best I knew he was going to do this. I
Speaker 2: had my best harmony. Soon on tie looking good. Strode
Speaker 2: into his office, standing tall, and before he could say anything,
Speaker 2: I said, Summer, I didn't hire her because she's not ready.
Speaker 2: And he looked at me and he said, what do
Speaker 2: you mean. I told him exactly how she showed up.
Speaker 2: She was arrogant. I described her fingernails. I did. She
Speaker 2: was sweaty. I don't know why she was sweating. She
Speaker 2: didn't seem nervous. She seemed arrogant. I told him like
Speaker 2: it was, and he stared at me, sitting in his
Speaker 2: big chair in his office and I stared at him.
Speaker 2: He finally blinked. He blinked and turned around and said, ah, hell,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have hired her either. You know where she
Speaker 2: is today, Cherry. She's had of CBS, She's head of
Speaker 2: the holding company for CBS Inc. So she had the
Speaker 2: smarts she just needed. I don't know how she got it,
Speaker 2: but she found out somebody, some good woman got a
Speaker 2: hold of her. I think straighten her up.
Speaker 1: After retiring, Greenlaw found himself serving military personnel again, not
Speaker 1: on the battlefield this time, but through the Military Order
Speaker 1: of the Purple Heart, where he eventually served as National
Speaker 1: Commander for two years and met countless Americans who still
Speaker 1: bear the scars of battle.
Speaker 2: The Military Order of the Purple Heart is a leading
Speaker 2: organization of Purple Heart recipients in America. There are about
Speaker 2: five hundred thousand wounded individuals in our country right now
Speaker 2: from all wars, and the Purple Heart is the oldest
Speaker 2: medal in American history. George Washington created it in the
Speaker 2: Revolutionary War, and so it's been around a long time,
Speaker 2: and then in World War One they got serious with it.
Speaker 2: I think Roosevelt redesigned it. In World War two to
Speaker 2: be as beautiful as it is today. The purple Heart
Speaker 2: is the most beautiful medal. I think the medal of
Speaker 2: honors is number one. Distincuish served cross his number two,
Speaker 2: silver stars number three, purple Heart is number four, and
Speaker 2: ranking when you put it on your uniform, it's how
Speaker 2: they rank up. So it was an honor to be
Speaker 2: the National Commander. I started off by founding a chapter
Speaker 2: and then I was a commander of that chapter for
Speaker 2: nine years. I ran for State Commander of South Carolina
Speaker 2: and I won that, and then I ran for National
Speaker 2: and I won that. So it's not like it was
Speaker 2: new to me. I grew up through it and I
Speaker 2: experienced the order, and the President of the United States
Speaker 2: is the honorary chairman. I thought I had it rough.
Speaker 2: I got to meet Purple Heart recipients across the country.
Speaker 2: Met a guy in Atlanta that woke up in a
Speaker 2: zipped up body bag in the cooler. You know, I
Speaker 2: thought I had it rough. He felt something in there
Speaker 2: with him, pulled it over. It was his arm. Like me,
Speaker 2: they had no respiration, no heartbeat. Threw him in a bag,
Speaker 2: threw his arm in with him, zipped him up. The
Speaker 2: guy woke up. Now, here's what happened. He says, God,
Speaker 2: not an image of God, not the thought of God.
Speaker 2: God himself entered that bag with him, and he said,
Speaker 2: don't worry, you're going to live. You have to scream,
Speaker 2: kick your feet, yell. They're going to hear you and
Speaker 2: they'll pull you out of here, and you're going to live.
Speaker 2: You're going to die an old man. Unfortunately without an
Speaker 2: arm you're going to die. You're going to die an
Speaker 2: old man, happy old man.
Speaker 1: Doug Greenlaw has a lot to be proud of from
Speaker 1: his service to our nation and our wounded veterans. But
Speaker 1: it didn't take him long to pinpoint what makes him
Speaker 1: most proud of his service.
Speaker 2: Saving the lives of a lot of people in combat,
Speaker 2: the circle life formed in it with my platoon when
Speaker 2: we were being overrun. I think I saved lives doing that.
Speaker 2: I can't save everybody, but I think being a good
Speaker 2: leader with my men in a platoon and also in
Speaker 2: a company, and it was extremely rewarding and it changed
Speaker 2: my life at a young age twenty three, and it's
Speaker 2: been an interesting ride ever since.
Speaker 1: Doug Greenlaw is a US Army veteran, a Vietnam Veteran
Speaker 1: and the recipient of the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars,
Speaker 1: and two Purple Hearts. He later became a top executive
Speaker 1: at MTV, VH one and Nickelodeon, and also served as
Speaker 1: National Commander of the Military Order of the Purple Heart.
Speaker 1: His memoir is entitled Forged by Lightning, From Boyhood to
Speaker 1: the Battlefield to the Boardroom. I'm Greg Corumbus and this
Speaker 1: is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus and thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the American
Speaker 1: Veterans Center. For more information, please visit American Veterans Center.
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