(HOST): [00:00:01] There are more than 58,000 names on The Wall at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, representing nearly 20 years of the war from June 1956 to May 1975. In recent episodes of this podcast, we’ve looked at a couple of significant moments during that period, including the Siege of Khe Sanh and the Tet Offensive. And we’ll do more of that in upcoming episodes. For today’s episode, we wanted to do something a little different. We’re going to zoom in on eight days in March of 1968, specifically March 9 through 16. What’s remarkable about these eight days, they could have been any eight days in the Vietnam War, really. And yet these eight days provide such a vivid snapshot of the war with stories that reveal a great deal about how it was fought, what was at stake, and who was lost. You’ll hear about a secret mission in Laos, rising tensions back home and the amazing story of one Medal of Honor recipient.

(RICH & CORY): [00:01:01] They’re up there dressed like Lockheed workers. The fact that anybody could have made it out of there is incredible.

(HOST): [00:01:13] From the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, founders of The Wall. This is Echoes of the Vietnam War. I’m your host, Michael Croan bringing you stories of service, sacrifice and healing from people who still feel the impact of that conflict. Nearly 50 years later. This is Episode 24 Eight Days in March. To set the stage for this episode. We need to spend a few minutes talking about The Wall and its design. Now, I know this probably isn’t new for many of you who listen to this podcast, but just bear with me while I get us all on the same page. It’ll make sense later, I promise. So picture a triangle pointing upward. It’s much wider than it is high. And it is isosceles, meaning that the left half and the right half are mirror images of each other. That’s the overall shape of The Wall. Now divide that triangle right down the middle, from top to bottom. That line represents what we call the apex of the wall, its highest point. From there, the east wall stretches out more than 80 yards toward the Washington Monument, and the west wall points to the Lincoln Memorial. The Wall contains the names of more than 58,000 fallen service members engraved in polished black granite. They’re arranged first chronologically by date of casualty and then alphabetically for each day.

(HOST): [00:02:52] So The Wall is, by design, a kind of timeline of the war. It begins in July 1959 at the apex, proceeds out to the Far East end of The Wall, picks up at the far west end of The Wall and continues back to the apex ending at May 1975. So its narrative of our country’s sacrifice begins and ends at the apex. Each Wall East and West is made up of 70 separate panels, and these panels are numbered starting at the apex. So Panel 1 east and Panel 1 west are side by side at the apex, each with 132 lines of names, panels, 70 east and 70 west. At the far ends of The Wall contain only a single line of names. So here’s just one example of how Maya Lin’s design tells a story. Panel 1 east contains about five years worth of casualties. Panel 2 East five months. Panel 3 East represents the casualties of just five weeks of fighting. In those three panels, you can see the escalation of the war. The casualties from 1968 alone cover nearly 72 panels, starting at panel 33 East and ending at 35 West. That’s a little more than half of The Wall. The eight days we’re going to focus on in this episode make up the entirety of Panel 44 East. That’s March 9 or 16, 1968.

(HOST): [00:04:25] Why have we chosen these particular eight days, this one particular panel? Because Panel 44 East has an interesting history all its own. The original panel 44 East, created in 1982, was never placed in the memorial because of a crack discovered in the upper right corner. If it had been exposed to weather over decades, it might have gotten worse. So a different panel of granite was inscribed and installed and the original was lost. Many years later, the original panel was found. Where you ask? eBay. Where else? VVMF reached out to the seller who donated the panel and it has been displayed in our office ever since until very recently. That is when it became part of a traveling exhibit, which I’ll tell you more about a little later. And that brings us back to the beginning. Eight days in March as a snapshot of the war. Panel 44 East contains 337 names representing Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force. 44 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Casualties ranging in age from 18 to 46. One Medal of Honor recipient. Three soldiers who earned the Distinguished Service Cross. Two sailors and one Marine who earned the Navy Cross. Nine service members who earned the Silver Star Medal for Valor. All of that in just eight days.

(MARK): [00:05:57] To appreciate the importance of those eight days. It’s important to set that period within the larger frame.

(HOST): [00:06:04] That’s Mark Lawrence, director of the LBJ Presidential Library and the author of three history books about the Vietnam War.

(MARK): [00:06:11] One good place to pick up the story is in late 1967. By this point, the generalization I think, that’s safe to offer is that the war had become a very bloody, grueling stalemate on both sides. On the American side, Lyndon Johnson and his administration were increasingly frustrated that they were unable to make progress in the war, and they made a decision to stick with it. Nevertheless, despite the frustrations of of that moment, they were aware of declining public support for the war, and this concern them greatly.

(HOST): [00:06:49] So greatly, in fact, that President Johnson and members of his administration had been issuing statements meant to reassure the American public that we were making progress in Vietnam. Perhaps most famously, General William Westmoreland in late 1967 suggested that victory or something like it was only a couple of years off. And then in late January came the Tet Offensive, a highly coordinated show of surprising Communist strength that had many people, including America’s newsman Walter Cronkite, questioning whether victory in Vietnam was possible at all. For more about Tet, check out Episode 21 of this podcast.

(MARK): [00:07:26] The Tet Offensive and the counterattack were really over by the first days of March, but of course, this only means that the war resumed its very bloody constant toll of battle and bloodshed. That, of course, had been the norm across 1966 and 1967. So long story short, the week, the eight days that we’re talking about in March remained a period of very bloody losses for all sides in in Vietnam. March 9th, the New York Times published news for the first time that a request had been made for 206,000 more soldiers. And remember, this is at a time when there were already more than half a million Americans fighting in Vietnam. This news report was a bombshell that stirred outrage among both hawks and doves. A lot of questions about what was going on. Did the administration have a reasonable strategy? What was the limit on how far the United States would go? Was it reasonable to think that the United States could actually achieve something positive no matter what level of manpower was committed to to Vietnam? And that was only the first day of this of this eight day span of time. This was also an important period in the run up to the 1968 presidential election, of course, in November. This was the period of the primaries and the Democratic primaries, particularly the New Hampshire primary that occurred in this eight day span, became a kind of referendum on Lyndon Johnson’s conduct of the war. Imagine how disappointed and bitter Lyndon Johnson was becoming as he was increasingly under attack from political rivals. And at the same moment, he confronted an economic crisis. He became increasingly aware in this period not to say for the first time, but intensely aware in this period of of a number of economic problems that were attributable, at least in part to the war, inflation, growing budget deficits were a growing problem. In this period, his Treasury secretary, Fowler, basically told LBJ in no uncertain terms that he was going to have to slash his his budget requests and/or raise taxes before very long if you wanted to head off economic disaster.

(HOST): [00:10:00] Johnson thought he could end the costly war in Vietnam faster if he could bomb Hanoi to help achieve that objective. The U.S. would make use of a half-secret radar installation just over the border in Laos called Lima Site 85.

(MARK): [00:10:14] Lima site 85 was a radar installation that had been constructed by the US Air Force on Laotian territory just across the border from Vietnam. And it was a site that was very important to conducting the bombing raids against North Vietnam that had been going on since 1965. The communist forces were certainly increasingly aware of the importance of this installation. And in the period that we’re talking about, I believe it was March 10th and 11th, the North Vietnamese forces, in collaboration with their Laotian counterparts, the path that Lao launched an attack against this this radar site. And, of course, this led to very bitter fighting in this mountaintop location and ultimately to the capture of of this of this installation. I believe I’m right saying this was the biggest loss of life, the most intense fighting perhaps, and certainly the biggest loss of life for Air Force personnel in the entire Vietnam War.

(HOST): [00:11:21] One of the fallen airmen from Lima, site 85, was Chief Master Sergeant Richard Burger. The Medal of Honor recipient. On Panel 44 East. His sons, Rich and Cory Etchberger, sat down with us to talk about their dad’s heroism, their mother’s strength, and the long, strange journey to the Medal of Honor ceremony. Rich begins the story when he was ten years old and Cory was nine.

(RICH & CORY): [00:11:44] We were used to up and moving every two years. We’d grown up our whole lives, living on various Air Force bases around the world. And it wasn’t that wasn’t a bad thing. That was actually a good thing. You know, you got you had new friends every couple of years. You know, imagine when you’re you’re that age, it’s all just this one big adventure. I think my dad was very, very cognizant of what the risks were of going on this mission. He really wanted us to have some kind of support structure in case something happened. And so we were living in Hamburg, Pennsylvania, where his father, Donald Etchberger, owned a five and dime store like a Woolworth’s. So we we got access to our grandparents who spoiled us rotten. And it was a fun place to live. And it’s a town of about 5000 people. So we knew our family knew everybody in that town. Dad was the president of his his senior class. All of his buddies lived there. The teachers in the schools were the same teachers that he had when he was growing up.

(HOST): [00:12:53] Settling his family in Hamburg while he was in Laos, just in case anything bad happened would turn out to be a prescient move by Etchberger, the first of three life changing phone calls for Richard Corrie. And the most devastating came on March 11th, 1968.

(RICH & CORY): [00:13:08] We were actually having dinner and I jumped up, answered the phone, and the gentleman on the other end of the line said, Could I speak to Mrs. Etchberger, please? And handed the phone to Mom and sat down. And literally 30 seconds later, Mom dropped the phone and fell on the floor crying.

(HOST): [00:13:28] It was unusual to receive this kind of news by telephone. Mrs. Etchberger had always been told that if her husband were killed in Southeast Asia, someone from the Air Force would show up at her door.

(RICH & CORY): [00:13:39] Within a day or two. Representatives from the Air Force showed up, and what we learned was that dad had died in a helicopter crash in Southeast Asia.

(HOST): [00:13:50] Here’s Cory Etchberger.

(RICH & CORY): [00:13:51] A few days later, we got a telegram. Dear Mrs. Etchberger sorry for the loss of your husband. No regrets, blah, blah, blah. And it’s signed by not the Air Force, by the HR director of Lockheed Aircraft Services. The Air Force and our government are trying to cover this up immediately. There’s no paper trail whatsoever of anybody contacting her in the Air Force. It all comes through Lockheed.

(HOST): [00:14:19] A little less than a year later, in January 1969, the Etchbergers’ were summoned to the Pentagon, where things just kept getting weirder.

(RICH & CORY): [00:14:27] It was pretty secretive. We drove to drove down there, and they they put us in a blue panel van with the windows blacked out. They drive us ten miles outside of DC and put us in a hotel there. So the idea is we don’t want the Etchberger family talking to anybody.

(HOST): [00:14:50] The next day.

(RICH & CORY): [00:14:51] They bring us back in. We go into the basement of the Pentagon and we step out and we go up in an elevator and go into a room where there is eventually the chief of staff of the Air Force, General John McConnell, the four star. Now, this doesn’t mean anything to a young kid. Big deal. He’s got a bunch of silver on a shoulder. So what? And so it was a ceremony where our family was there. His mother and father and Rich and I and my brother Steve, who is 11 years old. So he was actually in the Air Force. He shows up with one stripe on his shoulder, shaking hands with a four star. And so they presented mom with the Air Force Cross. And but there was no press release. There was no nothing back in the Hamburg Item that the Berger family went to the Pentagon. Everything was very hush hush.

(RICH & CORY): [00:15:44] Cory has said this so many times. We thought that that everybody who is in a helicopter crash got got a medal maybe. And we had no context for how important an Air Force Cross was at that time. We go home and mom takes that Air Force Cross and she puts it in her closet as far back under all her blankets and all the other kinds of things. Never talks to anybody about it. She she never talks about this to any of your friends. It’s never it’s never a topic of conversation. She never talks to us about it. She doesn’t have a shadow box made for it to have it on the wall. Certainly. Now, I wish, I wish I wish I wish my mom would live for another ten years, you know, because she our thoughts now are that that the reason that thing went in the back of the closet was because she knew things that she could not talk about. Rightly so, there’s a lot of attention focused on on our father’s action. But really, when you think about, you know, an Air Force family and how everybody in those families serves just like all of our military families do. I’ve come to this awakening about how our mother served and and and made made enormous sacrifices. You know, imagine telling your kids something that you know about their father. It was it was a very difficult time for our family.

(HOST): [00:17:17] The support system engineered by their father kicked in the town of Hamburg through its arms around the Etchberger family. All the boys knew was that Dad had died in a helicopter crash and that he had earned the Air Force Cross. 25 years went by. And then came the second life changing phone call.

(RICH & CORY): [00:17:36] So in 1994, Rich gets a phone call from the author of a book called One Day Too Long by Dr. Timothy Castle. And he is a CIA analyst at the time, but he’s also an Air Force veteran. And he he’s been sort of tracking this whole story about Lima site 85. And I guess a lot of these documents become declassified. He starts to write this fabulous book and he says, “Would you like to know the true story about your dad?”

(HOST): [00:18:09] After a short break, we’ll hear the incredible story of Richard Etchberger’s life saving heroism at Lima site 85. Stick around. This year, we’re celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to commemorate this milestone. Every day at 3:00 pm Eastern, we read the name of every Wall honoree who died on that date. This is in addition to the live in person reading of the names that will be held in Washington, D.C., beginning on November 7th. You can visit vvmf.org/ROTN for more information about the daily virtual reading of the names and about the in-person event. We know it isn’t easy for everybody to visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. So VVMF created the wall that heals. It’s an exact replica of The Wall at three quarter scale that travels to communities all across America, The Wall That Heals, and the Mobile Education Center that travels with it will be in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi, March 24 through 27. To see the rest of this year’s tour schedule and to learn how you can bring the wall that heals to your town, visit vvmf.org. Do you have loved ones who survived the Vietnam War but died after returning home? Did you know that you can honor them at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington? We’re still accepting applications for the 2022 In Memory honor roll through March 29th. We also have an In Memory Facebook group with more than 15,000 members, so be sure to join that group if you want to feel part of a community of people who’ve experienced a loss similar to yours. You’ll find the In Memory honor roll application and a link to the Facebook group by going to vvmf.org And clicking on In Memory.

(HOST): [00:20:03] For 40 years, VVMF has led the way to help heal our nation. Remember those who gave all and honor all who served? Our new legacy endowment will ensure that we can continue honoring Vietnam veterans for the next 40 years and beyond. We launched the Legacy Endowment with a $500,000 matching gift campaign called The Legacy Challenge. Each new outright gift or gift established through a will will be matched up to 50%, with a maximum of $50,000 matched per gift. All qualifying gifts established or newly identified before November 12th of this year are eligible for the match. Learn more at vvmf.org/legacy. Before we get back to Rich and Cory Etchberger, I promised you some details about the Oanel 44 traveling exhibit from now through March 30th. You can view it at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Virginia. The rest of the tour goes like this April three through June 17 at the National Museum of the U.S. Army, Fort Belvoir, Virginia. June 23 through August 13 at the First Division Museum in Wheaton, Illinois. And August 17 through September 23 at the Museum of the Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. Need those dates and places again? You can find them at vvmf.org/panel44. It’s 1994. 25 years after Rich and Cory attended a secret ceremony in the Pentagon, awarding their father the Air Force Cross. And Cory has just received the second of three fateful phone calls, this one promising to shed light finally on what exactly happened at Lima site 85.

(RICH & CORY): [00:22:06] You know, again, this is back pre-cell phone days and the phone rings and the gentleman on the other end says, hi, I’m Tim Castle. I’m writing this book. And literally he said, Would you like to know the story about your father? And I said, Why don’t you give me your phone number and I’ll call you back? Because I was kind of amazed that I was getting this phone call out of the blue. I call Tim back on the phone. And as Tim is talking to me for a couple of hours on the phone, I’m going through a box of Kleenex because the story he’s telling me is so emotional. And and you can only imagine having all these things orbiting around for at that time, maybe 30 some years to have it all hit you in one phone call was really, really emotional. Tim shared an early draft of the manuscript with me, and at that point that that was where our mom had passed away the year before that. And so that started a lot of phone calling between Cory and myself and our other brothers, Steve just trying to bring things to an understanding of what happened over there.

(RICH & CORY): [00:23:34] We weren’t supposed to be in Laos in 1968. They were supplied Lockheed IDs and they had to then give up their military IDs. Now what they did was they would transfer back and forth between Udar and Thailand and the site in Laos. So when they were on the military base in Udar and Thailand, there were military uniforms, they had their military IDs, and when they went to Laos, they surrendered their military IDs and they were issued their Lockheed IDs. So if they’re caught, captured or killed, the US government, the Air Force can deny we have any military personnel in Laos. President Johnson is having a difficult time managing the war. He thinks that if he can bomb Hanoi, he can bring Ho Chi Minh to the peace table because of the Tet Offensive. Basically, General Westmoreland was caught, I don’t want to say lying, but maybe deceiving the United States people that that the war was going well. And the last thing that the government needs is this thing blowing up in their face and everybody figuring out that we actually had military people in Laos where we shouldn’t have been. This is a difficult part of the world where obviously it’s dark half the time, monsoon season, half the year. And so the kind of airplanes that we have at that time is basically World War Two technology, you know, a B-52. Open the Bombay doors, you know, drop 500 bombs. And gosh, I hope they hit something. This was a radar that could direct the airplanes to the target. And so as a low intermediate step between World War Two technology and what we have today with the smart bombs, we’re not getting the bomb back, then we’re guiding the plane. And so this was almost not almost it was immediately effective. Hanoi was feeling this right away and the North Vietnamese decided they weren’t going to stand for that, and they built the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos to take this site out.

(HOST): [00:25:55] Lima site 85, was at the top of a mountain with sheer cliff walls on three sides. The CBs had dynamited the top flat to accommodate the radar site. A very steep approach road on the far side of the mountain was the only way up, and it was heavily fortified and guarded. On March 10th, the NVA sent 5 to 6 battalions to attack the site, which of course was quite difficult, nearly impossible. There was some discussion about evacuating the site, but the decision was made to wait one more day since missions were already scheduled for the next morning. That night, the impossible happened. Under cover of darkness, three groups of NVA soldiers scaled the cliff walls with ropes and crampons, suddenly, in addition to the artillery bombardments. U.S. personnel were facing enemy soldiers just yards away. The hilltop would soon be overrun. At first light, the evacuation helicopters came in for the survivors. 11 had been killed in the night, but Richard Etchberger and three others were still alive. Etchberger had either minor wounds or none at all. So he insisted on sending the other three men up in the sling first, at the same time as he continued fighting off the enemy. Finally, Richard Etchberger boarded the chopper himself as it lifted off the enemy, attacked it with small arms fire and a bullet tore through the belly of the aircraft, hitting Etchberger. He died of those wounds on his way to the next landing site.

(RICH & CORY): [00:27:30] The irony here is that it was a CIA Air America helicopter with aluminum skin that rescued these guys. If it had been the Air Force Jolly Green Giant that’s armored from the bottom, that would have never would never gone through there.

(RICH & CORY): [00:27:50] When I think about that situation and what what it was like that night, the fact that they’re up there dressed like Lockheed workers, you know, they’re not they don’t have flak jackets and helmets and all the other kind of stuff that you would have if you were anticipating being in combat. The fact that they have any kind of weapons at all is kind of amazing because there were rules about not having weapons up there that I guess some of those rules got stretched. You’ve still got probably hundreds of the enemy out there and there’s a couple of helicopters hovering. CIA actually, CIA helicopters is what they they evacuated on. The fact that anybody could have made it out of there is incredible.

(RICH & CORY): [00:28:44] There are 12 names from this action that are on that Panel 44E. And our family is the only family that is fortunate to have a body. The rest of those guys were left up in that mountain. And if you go and look at pictures of that mountain, no place for the Vietnamese, the North Vietnamese to bury these guys. So they they threw them over the cliff. There are three guys that dad saved. 12 of them are killed on the mountain. So there are three names that are not on that wall, thank God, because of Dad. And when these three guys get back, the commander of the mission says, you guys can go anywhere in the world you want, get stationed, and just not none of you are going to be at the same station with each other. So one guy, the captain that dad saved, decides he wants to go to Hickam in Hawaii. My mother about every other year would go to Hawaii. And I’m convinced that the reason she went to Hawaii was to be able to talk to this guy because she knew he was there. And he after he got back from Hawaii, he was living in Colorado. I went and talked to him. And then the other gentleman, John Daniel, who’s the only guy left alive, is the first guy up in the sling that dad saved. We met him many times. And so, yes, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting two of the three guys that dad saved. And every year I call John on March 11th, the day that John got saved.

(HOST): [00:30:30] The third momentous phone call the Etchberger boys received came in 2010, but the wheels started turning years earlier in 2006.

(RICH & CORY): [00:30:40] Retired Air Force Sergeant Robert Dilley from North Dakota, he reads Tim Castle’s book and he looks at it and kind of goes, this sounds like Medal of Honor material to me, not Air Force cross. So anyway, Bob Dilley writes a letter to his congressman, Earl Pomeroy. And wouldn’t you know about a week later, I get a letter from Earl Pomeroy, and I’m living in Kansas City at the time, and he says, I’d be happy to consider your father for an upgrade of the Medal of Honor from the Air Force cross. But the request has to come from a family member, not from one of my constituents. So if you’d like for us to consider this, would you please write to my Veteran’s Affairs person? And we will proceed with you with seeing what we can do. So I did that. And then the whole, the snowball going down the hill and begins to begins to get bigger and bigger. Of course, you need to have at least two eyewitnesses. The commander of the mission is still alive. The sergeant who wrote up the original Medal of Honor citation is still alive. And lo and behold, the guy who was in charge of, after Johnson rejects it, the guy who kind of backtracks and says, okay, let’s put this in this file and we’ll consider it in a later date. Well, this is sitting on some file somewhere. And this guy, he goes, Yeah, I’m the one who did that. And so he writes and writes an affidavit, gets notarized, sends it to the committee who’s considering this.

(HOST): [00:32:15] Eventually Cory’s phone rings.

(RICH & CORY): [00:32:18] And a woman calls the house and says, this is Katie Johnson from President Obama’s office. Please hold for a call. Oh, my God. So I mouth to my wife and daughter. I said, it’s the president. And my my daughter’s like, I don’t know. 12 years old, she runs and picks up the other phone. [laughing] And President Obama talks about dad’s story. I mean, I can’t believe what detail he knows. And eventually he said, I’m going to have my chief of staff, Max, call you and, hey, let’s set up a meeting between your family and my family at the White House sometime for the ceremony.

(HOST): [00:33:00] Cory, of course, tries frantically to get in touch with Rich. But Rich is on vacation high up in the Rocky Mountains and well off the grid.

(RICH & CORY): [00:33:10] I was up in the mountains. I didn’t have a cell phone service. And I came off of out of the mountains and my phone immediately started pinging with messages. And I thought, why am I getting all these messages? And I look and it’s Cory and he’s saying, call me, call me, call me, call me. And so I pull over next to the road and whip out my phone and I’m talking to I dial up Cory and Cory says, Dude, you’re not going to believe it. President Obama called and they’re going to have a Medal of Honor ceremony for dad.

(HOST): [00:33:46] On September 21, 2010, in a ceremony held at the White House, President Barack Obama presented to Richard Etchberger’s sons his posthumous Medal of Honor. It is the U.S. military’s highest decoration.

(RICH & CORY): [00:34:03] Standing on stage with the President as he hands Rich a Medal of Honor. It was very solemn. John Daniel was there. Steve actually was pretty emotional about it. Rich and I are just trying to hang on for dear life so we’re not falling over. And we went back to the hotel room that evening and popped a bottle of champagne. He finally got what was due. And what’s important to us, our family, is that know that there are 12 names on Panel 44E, out of 337, 12 of them are from just one mission at Lima site 85. And we were hoping that that would bring some notoriety to all of those guys.

(HOST): [00:34:57] Great big thanks to Rich and Corey Berger for sharing their story. To Mark Lawrence for giving a context. And to Jim Knotts for conducting all of the interviews you heard in this episode. And thanks to you, too, for supporting the official podcast from the founders of The Wall in Washington, DC. Since our last episode, we crossed a major milestone. More than 50,000 listens across the first 23 episodes. Thanks to you, our little podcast is growing up. If you want to give us a little extra boost, tell a friend or two to check us out. Or better yet, leave us a rating or a review wherever you get your podcasts, that’s the most powerful way to help new listeners find us. We’ll be back in two weeks with more stories of service, sacrifice and healing. See you then.

Full Interview with Cory & Rich Etchberger

Full Interview with Mark Lawrence

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