Speaker 1: Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest once
Speaker 1: again in this edition is Darren Walton. He is a
Speaker 1: US Marine Corps veteran who served on a reconnaissance team
Speaker 1: in Vietnam. He's also the author of D D MAO,
Speaker 1: a true story about Tigers, rock Apes, the Jungle, and War.
Speaker 1: In the first part of our story, Walton told us
Speaker 1: about becoming a marine and then going through elite training
Speaker 1: to become a recon marine. He also told us about
Speaker 1: the pivotal role of the point man on missions and
Speaker 1: how the jungle was also an enemy for the Americans.
Speaker 1: In a moment, you'll hear some of his most intense
Speaker 1: moments under fire. But we start the second half of
Speaker 1: Walton's story back in the jungle. As I read the
Speaker 1: heart pounding way that he described operating in the jungle.
Speaker 1: In the chapter about the Jungle, as you explain what's happening,
Speaker 1: there's always a sentence, every couple of paragraphs saying in italics,
Speaker 1: where's the enemy? Where's the enemy? Because you're so close
Speaker 1: in they could be anywhere. And here's a paragraph that
Speaker 1: just really grabbed me. Every sound that wasn't yours stilled
Speaker 1: the heart. Was the clang in the distance of cow
Speaker 1: bell or the sound of enemy equipment bouncing about? Were
Speaker 1: the whistling sounds from the shutter of rustling leaves or
Speaker 1: enemy bodies moving through the brush? Did that twig snap
Speaker 1: under the paw of an animal or the booted foot
Speaker 1: of an NVA soldier on patrol? So I mean these
Speaker 1: missions are sometimes taking multiple days, when every sound makes
Speaker 1: you wonder how close a threat could be. How do
Speaker 1: you deal with that psychologically?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good question. So remember I said, how
Speaker 2: exhausted would be and we would bivouack at night. You'd
Speaker 2: fall asleep from exhaustion, and you look forward to fall asleep,
Speaker 2: and where you slept it was, like I said, wet, muddy, dirty.
Speaker 2: You tried to make it as comfortable as you could.
Speaker 2: You had a poncho or a poncho liner, and that's
Speaker 2: all you had for covering. You fall asleep, and you're
Speaker 2: happy because now there's no more breaking brush, there's no
Speaker 2: more jungle, there's no more listening or being alert. You
Speaker 2: are unconscious and you're someplace else. So now it's time
Speaker 2: to get up in the morning. And it's not like
Speaker 2: when you get up here in the morning, you look
Speaker 2: forward to the day. You get up in the morning
Speaker 2: and you start thinking, I'm going to be on alert again.
Speaker 2: Am I gonna make it through the day? I made
Speaker 2: it through the day yesterday, and so all I'm trying
Speaker 2: to do is make it through the day so I
Speaker 2: could go back to sleep and forget about where I'm
Speaker 2: at and what I'm doing. So you're on alert constantly.
Speaker 2: You can't ever let your guard down. You do hear
Speaker 2: things and see things that aren't there sometimes because you're
Speaker 2: imagining that it could be the enemy. And as I
Speaker 2: became a short timer in the jungle as a point man,
Speaker 2: they actually had to take me out of the jungle
Speaker 2: eventually and put me on what you call an observation
Speaker 2: post because I would see, for instance, the bamboo or
Speaker 2: the elephant grass would be blowing in the wind, and
Speaker 2: one piece wouldn't be blowing, one piece would be just stable,
Speaker 2: and that wasn't right, so I'd shoot it. Now, once
Speaker 2: I shoot it, I give away my position. Usually when
Speaker 2: I shot at something, there's something there. Well, it was
Speaker 2: a pick, so I knew that there was something there,
Speaker 2: but I overreacted and gave away a position. And blew
Speaker 2: the mission, and so I became super alert that I
Speaker 2: was shooting monkeys out of trees because I'd see something
Speaker 2: and I'd think right away it was the enemy. You
Speaker 2: would not want to be near me near the end
Speaker 2: of my turred duty, because anybody got my vision able
Speaker 2: to alert me and I would just start shooting right away.
Speaker 2: So the only time that I felt peace is when
Speaker 2: I fell asleep at night the whole time.
Speaker 1: Well, mister Walton, let's talk about a couple of specific
Speaker 1: missions now, and the first one I want to talk
Speaker 1: about is perhaps the most amazing coincidence of the book,
Speaker 1: and that's March twenty eighth, nineteen seventy. Your platoon, I
Speaker 1: assume this is not the Rock Ape incident, but you
Speaker 1: needed an extraction and the CH forty six came in
Speaker 1: to get you. Tell us a little bit about what
Speaker 1: led to the need for that extraction and then how
Speaker 1: it proceeded from there.
Speaker 2: I'm not certain which extraction that was, but I can
Speaker 2: give you.
Speaker 1: This is the one with Dennis Welch.
Speaker 2: Dennis Welch, Dennis and I we just talked the other
Speaker 2: day too, now, that guy some Yeah, we linked up.
Speaker 2: That's a good story. I can't remember exactly, but there
Speaker 2: was a couple of incidentss that I remember. The one
Speaker 2: was we're being chased through the jungle and going across
Speaker 2: the rice patties and getting shelter and a bomb crater.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if that's the one, or I have
Speaker 2: to go back and look at the book I can't,
Speaker 2: Or there's one where we're being chased again, and this
Speaker 2: is a good one. We're coming out of the jungle
Speaker 2: the forty six landed and and Dennis was a gunner
Speaker 2: on the forty six. I think that was an m
Speaker 2: He had an fifty and he was just trying to
Speaker 2: keep the enemy from closing in on us, and they
Speaker 2: were getting close to us, and I knew if I
Speaker 2: could make it to the helicopter that I was going
Speaker 2: to probably stay alive. And I was fast, I was
Speaker 2: a good runner, and my team was passing me and
Speaker 2: they never beat me before, and I was running like
Speaker 2: I could I could run on water that day. And
Speaker 2: as I'm running is a good story. As I'm running
Speaker 2: towards the helicopter, Dennis's gun is just blazing and it's
Speaker 2: getting hot, and he's keeping the enemy at bay, and
Speaker 2: I see this one guy, one of our team members,
Speaker 2: running in the opposite direction. I go, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: You know you're crazy. It's get you know. He goes
Speaker 2: the guys down, Well, I got behind. I got behind
Speaker 2: Dennis in the helicopter. I didn't know it was Dennis
Speaker 2: at the time. There we had a guy down, or
Speaker 2: two guys down. We had two guys down, and the
Speaker 2: guy who was going the opposite direction was the corman.
Speaker 2: He's out there trying to figure out who's who he
Speaker 2: could patch up and who he can shoot up and
Speaker 2: keep comfortable with the morphine. And he's putting guts back
Speaker 2: in and gluing this one guy up, trying to save
Speaker 2: his life, and another guy from the helicopter went out
Speaker 2: to help him. But to show you, as tough as
Speaker 2: I was, I wasn't that brave to go back out
Speaker 2: and and help him. I was watching this whole thing
Speaker 2: and I'm going, this is amazing, and that these marines
Speaker 2: weren't going to leave those two guys out there under
Speaker 2: that kind of conditions. And Dennis was firing everything he could,
Speaker 2: and there was another guy who had an M sixty
Speaker 2: who was trying to help Dennis out. There was another
Speaker 2: mission that we were being chased. We made points point
Speaker 2: contact and I had to didd him out, did him out,
Speaker 2: and we had smoke grenades out there and white phosphorus,
Speaker 2: and we were able to break contact for a short
Speaker 2: period of time, and I could hear them catching us,
Speaker 2: and they did catch us going down to these ravines
Speaker 2: out of the mountains, and they would be intertwined with
Speaker 2: my team, and we were losing contact. And I was
Speaker 2: trying to keep up with the radio man wherever the
Speaker 2: radio man when I wanted to be, because that's the
Speaker 2: only way we have contact with the rear. And the
Speaker 2: enemy got in between us, so if I shot at
Speaker 2: an enemy soldier, I might miss him and hit one
Speaker 2: of my guys. And it was dark, and you see silhouettes,
Speaker 2: and everybody's just fallen and over each other, rolling down
Speaker 2: the ravine and getting tangled up in these roots and stuff.
Speaker 2: And we made it to the I made it to
Speaker 2: the bottom of the ravine, and my team we we yeah,
Speaker 2: somehow we got together and we started running out to
Speaker 2: pass across the rice paddies, trying to make it to
Speaker 2: the other side to another jungle covering, and there was
Speaker 2: a bomb crater and the enemy had left let us
Speaker 2: be for a short period of time to get reinforcements,
Speaker 2: and we knew that we weren't going to be able
Speaker 2: to fight them off. And we were actually saying our
Speaker 2: goodbyes to one another because we could not figure out
Speaker 2: how we're going to get out of this mess. And
Speaker 2: it was going to be like, are we going to
Speaker 2: go out like Alamo and just stand their ground or
Speaker 2: some of us are writing letters or notes, you know,
Speaker 2: to our loved ones. Some of them were crying. I
Speaker 2: figured out I was just going to put the clay
Speaker 2: moors out there and uh wait for them to come
Speaker 2: and overrun run us and kill us. And I was
Speaker 2: going to go out like Davy Crockett or something like that.
Speaker 2: We made contact with a squadron that was coming out
Speaker 2: and they got had to turn back because it was
Speaker 2: too hot of a landing zone and they couldn't get
Speaker 2: the ladders to us, and they didn't want to lose
Speaker 2: any more helicopters or lose any men, and so they
Speaker 2: said for us to hang in there, that they'd figure
Speaker 2: out something else. The helicopter went back and we really
Speaker 2: were pressed then, and out of nowhere, the Purple Foxes
Speaker 2: it's another squadron heard what was going on, and that
Speaker 2: was with Dennis Welch again, and they said, we here
Speaker 2: were you're you know, Papa smoke, so we can find you.
Speaker 2: We're coming in and our radios don't seem to be working,
Speaker 2: so uh, headquarters hasn't told us to abort the mission,
Speaker 2: and we're going to come in and do what we
Speaker 2: can for you. So they came in. Right before they
Speaker 2: came in, there was someone to call OV. Ten broncos
Speaker 2: that came in, and there was a broncho pilot and
Speaker 2: an aerial observer who found us and coordinated the extraction
Speaker 2: with some Cobra helicopters. And then Dennis Welched the gunner
Speaker 2: again and his squadron, the Purple Foxes, maintained that helicopter
Speaker 2: and dropped the ladder one hundred foot ladder to us.
Speaker 2: They couldn't land and we had to climb up the
Speaker 2: ladder while they're being shot at. Now we're climbing up
Speaker 2: the ladder. I'm looking at this helicopter and start to
Speaker 2: looked like Swiss cheese. And again I'm saying, let's get
Speaker 2: out of here, but we can't leave until last guy
Speaker 2: is secure. And we have these what they call Swiss
Speaker 2: saddles for repelling that have d rings, and we link
Speaker 2: up on the ladder and they pull us out there. Again,
Speaker 2: there's certain individuals who broke protocol and saved our lives unconditionally.
Speaker 2: And basically late years later, I talk to the gunner,
Speaker 2: Dennis Welch, and he said, we weren't going to leave
Speaker 2: you guys out there to die. That's not he goes,
Speaker 2: we just don't give a shit. But the you know what,
Speaker 2: they're trying to tell us that we just turned the
Speaker 2: radio off. He goes, I remember that mission, and he
Speaker 2: saved our lives. That the helicopter pilot more than anybody
Speaker 2: had to keep that helicopter stable while he's taken rounds
Speaker 2: big balls. I don't know how they could do that.
Speaker 2: That squadron, I can't tell you how much Recon loves them.
Speaker 2: And then the ov Ten pilots, the Bronco pilots finding
Speaker 2: us out there and coordinating the extraction. Now I'm going
Speaker 2: to be middle of July, I'm going to go meet
Speaker 2: some of these aerial observers and pilots down in San Diego.
Speaker 2: And they invited me because of the book. They want
Speaker 2: me to let the whole These guys are old now
Speaker 2: and I get to thank them because I've never got
Speaker 2: a chance to thank them for what they did for us.
Speaker 2: So I'm meeting with a lot of these guys that
Speaker 2: were instrumental and save in my life and my team's life.
Speaker 1: That's Darren Walton, a US Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam,
Speaker 1: where he often served as point man on a recon team.
Speaker 1: Still to come, Walton will tell us how the American
Speaker 1: revulsion towards the war prompted him to hide his service
Speaker 1: for more than forty years. But up next, the Dennis
Speaker 1: Welch story hit closer to home than Walton would realize
Speaker 1: until many decades later. That's next. I'm Greg Corumbus and
Speaker 1: this is Veterans Chronicles sixty Seconds of Service.
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Speaker 1: This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
Speaker 1: this edition is US Marine Corps veteran Darren Walton, who
Speaker 1: often served as point man on a reconnaissance team Still
Speaker 1: to Come. Walton tells us about the mission where his
Speaker 1: weapon failed at the worst possible time, how the Marines
Speaker 1: helped a Vietnamese orphanage with help from the unlikeliest of allies,
Speaker 1: and how returning to the US forced him to keep
Speaker 1: his service a secret for more than forty years. But
Speaker 1: we pick up his story with the explanation of how
Speaker 1: Dennis Welch saving his life on those extraction missions in
Speaker 1: Vietnam hit really close to home. A few decades later, Dennis.
Speaker 2: Welch was him and I were in high school together.
Speaker 2: He was a football player, and he'd come out and
Speaker 2: he was on the track team as a shot putter
Speaker 2: and a discus thrower, and he'd watch me run races
Speaker 2: because I could beat most guys and I was always
Speaker 2: going for a record, and so the track team would
Speaker 2: always come and watch me run wherever I was. And
Speaker 2: he was one of those guys that came out to
Speaker 2: watch me run. So I knew who he was in
Speaker 2: high school and we talked, and I knew his girlfriend,
Speaker 2: and his girlfriend was the same class. And I went
Speaker 2: to school with his girlfriend since junior high school or
Speaker 2: even earlier in Nevado, and eventually he married her. Is
Speaker 2: a high school sweetheart, and they got married right after
Speaker 2: he came home from Vietnam. I would go on a mission,
Speaker 2: and you know, we'd get it. We'd get in the
Speaker 2: chopper in the purple Foxes would be our date, insert
Speaker 2: us and extract us. And I'd be sitting there in
Speaker 2: the helicopter and he'd be sitting there behind his gun
Speaker 2: for you know, many missions we were together. So at
Speaker 2: a high school reunion years years later, I go, Dennis,
Speaker 2: where you've been? He goes, I was in the Marine Corps.
Speaker 2: I go where were you? And he goes, I was
Speaker 2: at Danang. He goes a marble mountain. I go, what
Speaker 2: were you? He goes, I was a gunner. He goes, really,
Speaker 2: what year? And he goes, well, nineteen seventy. I go
Speaker 2: I was there. He goes, who are you with? And
Speaker 2: I said first recon And he told me his call
Speaker 2: signed and I said, this is my call sign. He goes, well,
Speaker 2: our squadron was assigned to your team to insert and
Speaker 2: extracts you guys. And I go, well, we must have
Speaker 2: been on the same helicopter together, and he goes, yeah,
Speaker 2: we had to be. He goes, how can he didn't
Speaker 2: say hi to me? And I go, Dennis, how would
Speaker 2: I recognize you? I wasn't thinking about an old high
Speaker 2: school buddy. They go, you could have said hi to me.
Speaker 2: I'm sitting right next to you. He goes, you're all
Speaker 2: painting it up. How could I recognize you? So we
Speaker 2: were on these missions together and we've become it's kind
Speaker 2: of nice because when you for many, many years, Greg,
Speaker 2: I tell you, there's nobody I could talk to about
Speaker 2: what I've been through. When I ran into Dennis Welsh,
Speaker 2: he was on those missions the same as I was.
Speaker 2: I was on the ground and he was in the air.
Speaker 2: And we laughed today because what he saw was a
Speaker 2: completely different war than what I saw, even though it
Speaker 2: was the same war, because when you're down low, I
Speaker 2: don't have the perspective of he has. He goes now
Speaker 2: that one mission I was telling you about where we
Speaker 2: were in the bomb crater, I put in the report
Speaker 2: that there's maybe twenty thirty guys who were going to
Speaker 2: overrun us, and Dennis said, no, there was over one
Speaker 2: hundred guys from where they were looking at that were
Speaker 2: surrounding us. That we weren't getting out of there alive.
Speaker 2: And so he had a different way of looking at things.
Speaker 2: And so Dennis and I have done some talks about this,
Speaker 2: you know, locally, and so we've been invited to some talks.
Speaker 2: Actually our last they did a film with Dennis and
Speaker 2: I at George Lucas's studio before they tore it down,
Speaker 2: and so we're the last ones to be filmed at
Speaker 2: George Lucas's private studio.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a great footnote in history as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now the mission, the mission you mentioned just a moment ago.
Speaker 1: Is that the one from June of nineteen seventy for
Speaker 1: which you received the citation?
Speaker 2: Now that one, do you know? To be honest with you,
Speaker 2: there are so many like that. It's a combination of
Speaker 2: missions that they wrote that I can't remember that one.
Speaker 2: What I'm trying to tell you.
Speaker 1: The thing that stands out from that, and I don't
Speaker 1: know if this happened in other missions that maybe you
Speaker 1: can effect on that is that everything's about to come
Speaker 1: to a head and your weapon malfunctions.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, able, Okay, that's true. Yeah that now, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you did a little trigger that mission. Yeah, that was crazy.
Speaker 2: That's and I did get a citation for that. My
Speaker 2: rifle did malfunction. The citation says that I was cool,
Speaker 2: calm and collective and I didn't panic, And that's whole
Speaker 2: bunch of bullshit. Uh, Marines, are you know that they're cool,
Speaker 2: calm and collective. They couldn't put that as shipping and
Speaker 2: pissing my pants because I couldn't get that, you know,
Speaker 2: round to go off, and I got two guys that
Speaker 2: I killed one and the other guy had his barrel
Speaker 2: pointed at me, and I knew I was going to
Speaker 2: get killed and somehow hitting and you know, I just
Speaker 2: beat the ship out of that rifle and I got
Speaker 2: a round off and killed him too. But the way
Speaker 2: they wrote it up the story was not the way.
Speaker 2: That wasn't reality. They had to make it look like
Speaker 2: I was a real marine, and I did panic and
Speaker 2: I was screaming and yelling. That said and done. I
Speaker 2: never walked point again with an sixteen after that, and
Speaker 2: there had to be a better way because I couldn't
Speaker 2: take the chance of jamming up on me again. But
Speaker 2: that did happen.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's Darren Walton, a US Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam,
Speaker 1: where he often served as point man on a recon team.
Speaker 1: In Just a Moment, Walton shares how he hid his
Speaker 1: service for decades after coming home to a nation, and
Speaker 1: especially a part of the country that was hostile to
Speaker 1: the war, and he explains how marines helped the Vietnamese
Speaker 1: Orphanage after raising funds from the last people he'd expect
Speaker 1: it to help. I'm Greg Corumbus and This is Veterans' Chronicles.
Speaker 1: This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
Speaker 1: this edition is US Marine Corps veteran Darren Walton, who
Speaker 1: often served as point man on a reconnaissance team. In
Speaker 1: this final portion of our conversation, Walton reflects on the
Speaker 1: forty plus years that he kept his military service quiet
Speaker 1: and what it means to him to be able to
Speaker 1: talk about it now. But we continue now with a
Speaker 1: story about unlikely allies in two ways. It's about US
Speaker 1: service members determined to help kids at a Vietnamese orphanage
Speaker 1: and how the Marines got help from the last people
Speaker 1: they expected it from.
Speaker 2: There was a village where there was a Buddhist orphanage
Speaker 2: with German doctors volunteer doctors, and the kids there were
Speaker 2: just precious and they were ostracized from the village because
Speaker 2: there may be a mixed race, and they were casts
Speaker 2: from the village and they had to go live with
Speaker 2: the Buddhist nuns and had no money, no food, and
Speaker 2: they were trying to keep these kids healthy somehow. They
Speaker 2: they'd come into our compound occasionally and we'd give them
Speaker 2: chocolate bars and they you know, make sure our hooches
Speaker 2: were cleaned, and they waited for us because we'd played
Speaker 2: baseball with them and play catch with them, and they
Speaker 2: liked that, and uh uh we treated them really well
Speaker 2: and we got we got more out of having them around,
Speaker 2: uh than anybody else. And uh, this is what made
Speaker 2: me proud of the Americans. You know that I was
Speaker 2: with my little team of six guys. We did another
Speaker 2: team and we would get baseball gloves from the exchange
Speaker 2: or from home. They'd sent us some baseball gloves and
Speaker 2: we'd played catch with them and give them chewing gum
Speaker 2: and and they seemed to really enjoy a game. But
Speaker 2: they they were struggling. And so a group of us
Speaker 2: decided what if we went up to command and talk
Speaker 2: to the chaplain or talk to some of the you know,
Speaker 2: kernels to help the orphanage ot And basically what we
Speaker 2: got was a run around saying we were fighting a war.
Speaker 2: We can't worry about Buddhist kids. Uh, we have enough
Speaker 2: to worry about and uh uh we got a war
Speaker 2: to fight. So I wrote home saying can you send
Speaker 2: me a care package? And I need food, medicine and
Speaker 2: clothing for these kids and my town in Nevado. It
Speaker 2: was right in the middle of when we were having
Speaker 2: protests and and and there's a lot of chaos back
Speaker 2: in the sixties with the Black Panthers and protests and riots.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of riots going on, and anti
Speaker 2: war riots and Kent State where college kids were getting
Speaker 2: shot at and killed, and so them that's weren't well received.
Speaker 2: And so and mostly my neighborhood. They were going to
Speaker 2: Berkeley and San Francisco State and they were the protesters,
Speaker 2: and I was someone who they resented. Now, even though
Speaker 2: we grew up as kids, I was the enemy to
Speaker 2: them because I was on board to protest the war
Speaker 2: at the time. So I was asking the city council,
Speaker 2: who I was friends with, and I said, can Nevado
Speaker 2: help out? And they got we got a city to run.
Speaker 2: We can't help you out there. And you know, I'd
Speaker 2: like to, but you know, we got a city to run.
Speaker 2: So I went to the church. My mom was a Catholic,
Speaker 2: and I grew up with the Catholic religion for a while,
Speaker 2: but she married a Mormon and got excommunicated for marrying
Speaker 2: a Mormon, and so but I went to the church
Speaker 2: and they weren't interested I went to the Mormon church
Speaker 2: and they said, you know, we should give to our
Speaker 2: own before we give, you know, to Buddhists. Let the
Speaker 2: Buddhists take care of the Buddhist And so I went
Speaker 2: to my mom and wrote her a letter saying, you know,
Speaker 2: can the neighborhood help us out? And she wrote back saying,
Speaker 2: you know they hate you for what you're doing. They're
Speaker 2: protesting that people's park over in Berkeley and it's getting
Speaker 2: real nasty, and the anti war protesters are all your
Speaker 2: friends now and they won't help you out. I said, well,
Speaker 2: just ask them, you know. So my mom put the
Speaker 2: word out without much success. I thought that Darren is
Speaker 2: asking for help for the children for the orphanage, and
Speaker 2: he needs food, medicine, clothing, And a short period of
Speaker 2: time after that, truckload of food, medicine and clothing came
Speaker 2: into my compound to give to the orphans. Guys, the
Speaker 2: people who hated me, who are protesting the war, who
Speaker 2: were protesting me, were the ones that pulled through for
Speaker 2: me because of the children. They were willing to give.
Speaker 2: And that's what Americans kind of do. We're always we're
Speaker 2: a conflict. We're kind of a dysfunctional family. But if
Speaker 2: you give it a chance, I think we all pulled
Speaker 2: together for a cause. And if it's a cause that's
Speaker 2: a moral cause and a good cause, Americans will pull through.
Speaker 2: I think I believe that today, even the people who
Speaker 2: did not like me were never going to be my
Speaker 2: friends again were the ones who came through for me.
Speaker 2: And that was very humbling. And the rest of my
Speaker 2: team also got care packages for the village, for the orphanage,
Speaker 2: I should say, and yeah, it was very humbling.
Speaker 1: Just a couple of questions left, Darren. You mentioned the
Speaker 1: cold reception, to put it mildly, that Vietnam veterans got
Speaker 1: when you came home, and as you tell us at
Speaker 1: the very beginning of the book, that's the reason why
Speaker 1: you hit your service for more than forty years after
Speaker 1: just seeing how hostile that was. And it wasn't until
Speaker 1: someone wanted to honor you publicly. I think it was
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve that you finally decided to let this
Speaker 1: be known. So, now that it's been about a dozen
Speaker 1: years since you've felt comfortable telling your story, what does
Speaker 1: it meant to you to be able to share that
Speaker 1: and not keep that a secret anymore?
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm out of the closet now and
Speaker 2: now I'm talking and I can't stop talking. It's gotten
Speaker 2: to the point where it's a therapy for me to
Speaker 2: be able to share my story. And I really don't
Speaker 2: care what anybody thinks of me anymore. But when you're young,
Speaker 2: you want to fit in and you want to have
Speaker 2: a relationship, maybe with a college sweetheart or something. And
Speaker 2: being a Vietnam that what was happening in the media
Speaker 2: was saying guys like me, there were atrocities that happened.
Speaker 2: I saw atrocities, but I saw also good things that happened,
Speaker 2: Like we just talked about with the children, and I said,
Speaker 2: the Marines I was with would do anything to help
Speaker 2: the village and save a villagers life unconditionally without thinking
Speaker 2: about it. And they would never do anything that was
Speaker 2: like the stories that we were told. So the media
Speaker 2: got hold of the America and when we came home
Speaker 2: combat vets. They raped women, burned villages, killed babies. And
Speaker 2: if the protesters and the hippies and the people who
Speaker 2: I was involved with, and if I was a little
Speaker 2: bit more how should I put it more brave as
Speaker 2: instead of being a kind of a chicken shit and
Speaker 2: keeping my mouth shut, and I stood my ground. I
Speaker 2: think the American public, if they would have given these
Speaker 2: veterans a chance and listened to them instead of condemning them,
Speaker 2: they would find that most of these soldiers, most of
Speaker 2: them were more against war than they were and if
Speaker 2: you heard their stories, you would find that they didn't
Speaker 2: have a story like these guys coming home did, and
Speaker 2: why war. If we all worked together, maybe we could
Speaker 2: do something more peacefully. And it just didn't happen when
Speaker 2: I came home. And what I did is I grew
Speaker 2: with beard long hair, lived in a you and smoked
Speaker 2: dope and became a hippie and found out if I
Speaker 2: kept my mouth shut, I get late, you know, I
Speaker 2: go to parties and stuff, and so it got easy.
Speaker 2: And like most combat vets coming home, they've been married
Speaker 2: and divorced at least once. And that was me. I
Speaker 2: was in turmoil for a long time. So I just
Speaker 2: found that if I just forgot the war in which
Speaker 2: I did, I let the war go, that life would
Speaker 2: be good. And it was pretty good. And I met
Speaker 2: another girl later on in my life and we married,
Speaker 2: and her name is Gina was from the Midwest from Michigan.
Speaker 2: She's what they call a Yupur from the Upper Peninsula.
Speaker 2: And as matter of fact, I met, I go, where
Speaker 2: are you from? I go, You're not like from any place.
Speaker 2: You know. She's a hard worker, she's smart, she's independent.
Speaker 2: You know. She didn't condemn me. And she told me
Speaker 2: stories about Vietnam vets, how much she loved them, and
Speaker 2: I go, what are you talking about. She goes, in
Speaker 2: my little town called Iron River, they honored the bets
Speaker 2: they had to pray. I never heard of such a thing.
Speaker 2: And so I kind of opened up to her a
Speaker 2: little bit, and over a period of time, she thought
Speaker 2: maybe I had some benefits from the VA. But I
Speaker 2: didn't have a DD two fourteen, and I got rid
Speaker 2: of everything, all my records, and I didn't know how
Speaker 2: to go about going to the VA because the first
Speaker 2: thing they ask is where's your DD two fourteen. So
Speaker 2: she and some of my friends behind my back, with
Speaker 2: using my ID, got my records and I came home
Speaker 2: one night from work and she's on the couch and
Speaker 2: she's saying to me. I'm looking at her. She looks
Speaker 2: very angry at me. She goes, Darren, I thought you
Speaker 2: had an open relationship with me, and you told me
Speaker 2: everything about you. You're good, your bad times, you've been arrested, times,
Speaker 2: you've gotten in trouble. You know your relationship. You know,
Speaker 2: you were supposed to be honest with me. How come
Speaker 2: you never told me about this? I go about what?
Speaker 2: And she threw in some papers in my face and
Speaker 2: I opened up the papers and in there was my Uh.
Speaker 2: They got all my records. They released them to my
Speaker 2: wife of every mission I was ever on and they're
Speaker 2: not pretty when you read them. And she goes, who'd
Speaker 2: I marry? You didn't tell me you did this kind
Speaker 2: of stuff? She says, how come you couldn't tell me
Speaker 2: to talk to me? And and basically I was afraid
Speaker 2: to tell her that I was a ranger because of
Speaker 2: my past. And I didn't mind telling her I was
Speaker 2: a marine. That I never told her who I was
Speaker 2: and what I did. And she was pretty angry with me,
Speaker 2: and uh, but we overcome that. And uh, and that's
Speaker 2: something that I would say to all that's you know,
Speaker 2: just be upfront and honest, and it's not gonna it's
Speaker 2: not gonna hurt, it's gonna heal to you know, to
Speaker 2: what the people you love, let them know who you are.
Speaker 1: What are you most proud of from your time in
Speaker 1: the service.
Speaker 2: I'm just becoming proud just so. I came home from Vietnam,
Speaker 2: and when I was in the jungles, I was proud
Speaker 2: to be a ranger, a recon ranger. I was proud
Speaker 2: of my men. I was proud to be on that
Speaker 2: team that I was on, and I was proud I
Speaker 2: did a real good job as a point man. It
Speaker 2: started bothering me was guys are getting injured, wounded, and killed,
Speaker 2: and I didn't understand war. This war was going and
Speaker 2: at one time I was kind of a patriot and
Speaker 2: believed that maybe it was necessary to go to a
Speaker 2: foreign land to help. What a warrior does is help
Speaker 2: people who can't help themselves, and they put themselves in
Speaker 2: a position to help the ones that need help. Vietnam,
Speaker 2: I started thinking in the jungle, we've been here for
Speaker 2: how many years? You know? I mean, this war is
Speaker 2: going on for way too long. And I go with
Speaker 2: the army, the military. We have the power, in the
Speaker 2: strength that we have, the equipment we have, and we're
Speaker 2: not winning this war. And what are these guys dying for?
Speaker 2: Which you know they're getting killed, and how do you
Speaker 2: go back and tell their parents, their mothers and fathers
Speaker 2: and brothers and sisters what they died for. I didn't
Speaker 2: have an answer, and I was getting a little bit
Speaker 2: angry about the war and that I didn't believe for
Speaker 2: a long time, and I still have a hard time
Speaker 2: believing that it's a just war. I didn't think when
Speaker 2: I came home that maybe I was wrong about the war.
Speaker 2: And a lot of veterans today still think it was
Speaker 2: a just war, in the right war, and that we
Speaker 2: won the war. I was. I had my doubts recently
Speaker 2: at luncheon because of this book. I was doing a
Speaker 2: book signing and this Vietnamese older woman comes up to
Speaker 2: me and she goes, Darren, I want you to know something.
Speaker 2: I'm not the only one. But we love America. We
Speaker 2: loved the American soldier. We loved the American Vietnam soldier.
Speaker 2: She goes, I have a family, my children are going
Speaker 2: to college. I have freedom. She goes, if it wasn't
Speaker 2: for the Americans come to my country, I wouldn't be
Speaker 2: here in America to live the life I am. And
Speaker 2: she goes, I'm not the only one. And she goes on.
Speaker 2: She says, there's thousands of us that you help us
Speaker 2: become free in our country. I never have what I
Speaker 2: have here today. She goes. I have a job, I
Speaker 2: have an education, I have a family. She goes, I
Speaker 2: love the flag. I was stunned. She goes. When I
Speaker 2: go back to Vietnam to visit my family and they
Speaker 2: consider themselves of Vietnamese, I tell them I'm not Vietnamese anymore.
Speaker 2: I'm American. This happened just recently. I needed to hear this.
Speaker 2: You know. I never heard of such a thing in
Speaker 2: my life. Made me feel like maybe there was something
Speaker 2: that came out of this war that was positive. Not
Speaker 2: only that she spends her time and all her energy
Speaker 2: and volunteering for this organization that flies veterans to Washington,
Speaker 2: d C.
Speaker 1: Honor Flights, Buble Flights.
Speaker 2: She's so she's involved out here putting the honor flights
Speaker 2: in her And she explained to me what that was,
Speaker 2: and I go, holy crap, that is so cool to do.
Speaker 2: I love this woman. Great. It's amazing to me. Even now,
Speaker 2: I'm still learning and I'm still healing. You know, so
Speaker 2: I might have been wrong, you know about my feelings
Speaker 2: towards the war, because she goes I saved I saved
Speaker 2: her well, we saved her American savior. And I never
Speaker 2: look at I don't appreciate America like she does, and
Speaker 2: what she has she'd never have in her own country.
Speaker 1: There should be no end to the appreciation of those
Speaker 1: who wear the uniform of this country. Have certainly served
Speaker 1: our nation in combat, and given the response you got
Speaker 1: initially more than two for you and those of your
Speaker 1: comrades who served us in Vietnam. So, Darren, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for your time today, and most of all,
Speaker 1: thank you for your service to our country.
Speaker 2: Hey enjoyed it. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Our guest has been Darren Walton, a US Marine Corps
Speaker 1: veteran of the Vietnam War, during which he was involved
Speaker 1: in recommissions, often as the point man. He is also
Speaker 1: the author of d d MAO, a true story about Tigers, Rock, Apes,
Speaker 1: the Jungle and War. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is
Speaker 1: Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the American Veterans Center.
Speaker 1: For more information, please visit American Veteranscenter dot org. You
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Speaker 1: please join us next time for Veterans Chronicles