[00:00:09] (Erik Villard) So the Americans in South Vietnam had been involved in training the South Vietnamese from really the time that the first American advisers went in there. But for a long time, the focus was on the regular South Vietnamese armed forces. And that was true until the 1968 Tet Offensive.

[00:00:31] (Host) That’s Doctor Eric Willard, a Vietnam War specialist at the US Army Center of Military History at Fort McNair in Washington, DC, and a long time friend of the podcast.

[00:00:41] (Host) And one of the things Tet had done is to really underscore the fact that the South Vietnamese territorial soldiers, the ones who did security in the countryside, were really not well trained, not well equipped. And if the South Vietnamese are ever going to stand up mostly on their two feet and handle all aspects of the war. This was a very important one. So, you know, time had come to help with these rural security forces.

[00:01:13] (Host) You probably already know that US military advisers worked side by side with the South Vietnamese military during the war, but not a lot of people are aware of these Mobile Advisory Training or MAT teams who worked with the regional forces and popular forces known as Rough Puffs from 1968 to about 1971 or 72. Advising and training the Rough Puffs was one of the keys to eventually being able to hand the war over to the South Vietnamese, as these were the units responsible for security at the village and hamlet level.

[00:01:46] (Bob Blair) The VC came into the villages. I mean, they had no respect for women or children or older individuals or anything. I mean, they often killed someone when they came to visit, and anything we could do to keep that from happening, the people appreciated that.

[00:02:05] That’s Bob Blair, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who led MAT team 44, based in IV Corps in 1971.

[00:02:14] (Bob) It was interesting, and it was it was rewarding to be out there. It was not, you know, the safest job in Vietnam. But it was a good job, and I’m glad that I did that.

[00:02:32] (Host) Stick around. 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 more than 50 years later. This is episode 61, Advising the Rough Puffs. Lieutenant Colonel Bob Blair, US Army retired, was a MAT team leader in IV Corps in 1971. We talked in a meeting room at the public library in Camdenton, Missouri, back in September.

[00:03:32] (Bob) I grew up in Springfield, Missouri, and I graduated from high school there and went to college at the what’s now Missouri State University for a couple of years, and I took ROTC and enjoyed ROTC and didn’t enjoy the rest of my studies there. And I thought I would just go ahead and join the Army and maybe go to officer candidate school. And so I joined the Army on the 12th of April, 1966 and went to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, for basic training. And then from Fort Leonard Wood I went to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, for what they called advanced individual training, which in my case, I went to a specialized advanced individual training called OCS prep, and I had already been selected for officer candidate school at that point and then went to.

[00:04:25] (Host) So you must not have been too bad a student.

[00:04:28] (Bob) Oh, I had I was good in math. I was good in math. So that made me a candidate for the artillery. And so I went to Artillery Officer Candidate School at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and which, by the way, was one of the best things I ever did.

[00:04:43] (Host) What made it so enriching for you?

[00:04:45] (Bob) It showed me how to approach my studies and study properly and And gave me a grounding in in what is important in life and and showed me a little bit of attention to detail. Well, not a little bit, a whole lot of attention to detail and taught me about interacting with people there.

[00:05:11] (Host) Well, that all became very important later because you became a surgeon.

[00:05:15] (Bob) It did. And I still I still think of officer candidate school, little things from officer candidate school every day. Yeah. April of 67. I graduated from officer candidate School. Okay.

[00:05:29] (Host) And where did you go then?

[00:05:30] (bob) I stayed at Fort Sill for another, uh, period of time, a few months, and I was a battery officer, a training officer in a training battery for cannoneers. And we trained young enlisted folks to to become cannoneers in the artillery. And then sometime in that time period the tensions grew pretty tight in Korea, and it culminated later on in the capturing of the pueblo. As you can remember, and instead of my orders for Vietnam being coming to fruition, they cancelled almost all of my classes orders, and we all went to Korea for a year or 13 months. And I served as an artillery officer in Korea for 13 months and then went from Korea to Germany for another 15 months and as a as a staff officer at division artillery of the 3rd Armored Division, the assistant operations officer there, and then,went from there to, to Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg. And that was a course called the Matta CORDS course. And it was a course for advisors. Half the course was, was customs and courtesies and that sort of thing for, uh, about Vietnam, you know, history of Vietnam and, and all sorts of things about what we were, what we were preparing for. And then the afternoons all turned into a Vietnamese language study. So we had had Vietnamese instructors and we learned language in the afternoon. And then from there I went to Airborne School, jump school at Fort Benning for, 3 or 4 weeks. And then from there went to Fort Bliss, Texas, to the Defense Language Institute, southwest, and had another, I think, maybe 2 or 3 months, of language study in Vietnamese there. And that’s great because that I finished that in like, I guess, December of 1970 or January of 1971 and I can’t remember three words of Vietnamese today. So. But anyway, so we were well prepared. The guys that went through my courses there, the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, and then the then the Defense Language Institute at Fort Bliss. We were well prepared to become advisors.

[00:08:19] (Host) Now, had they had they put you through those courses with the aim of making you an advisor, or was it the other way around?

[00:08:25] (Bob) No, no, we were pre-selected as advisors for some.

[00:08:30] (Host) So you knew you were going to Vietnam.

[00:08:31] (Bob) I knew I was going to Vietnam, and I knew that I was going to be an advisor. Okay. While I was in Germany, I did get I got orders for Vietnam. Okay. And on the orders, it had my schools that I was going to go to before I arrived. So it was pretty clear what was on the road ahead.

[00:08:53] (Erik) So the Americans in South Vietnam had been involved in training the South Vietnamese from a very early age, from really the time that 55 or so, the first American advisers went in there. Uh, but for a long time, the focus was on the regular South Vietnamese armed forces. And that was true until about 1968. And what happens, what changes? Because the MAP program was started in March of 68. Uh, a couple of things led to its creation. First off, you had now a very, uh, robust, fleshed out MAC-V advisory program for all the South Vietnamese units. So they were pretty well covered, right? So we had some extra bandwidth. Uh, the second thing is this is, of course, coming right on the heels of the 1968 Tet Offensive. And one of the things Tet had done is to really underscore the fact that the South Vietnamese territorial soldiers, the ones who did security in the countryside, were really not well trained, not well equipped. And when Tet happened, the government lost control, huge parts of the countryside, at least temporarily. So the recognition was okay we really got to bear down and help these other folks. And the third thing was in this period, this, of course, you know, March 68th, this is still well over a year before the United States made a decision to start pulling out. But there was always a recognition that, you know, we the US won’t be here forever. And if the South Vietnamese are ever going to basically, you know, stand up mostly on their two feet and handle all aspects of the war. This was a very important one. So, you know, time had come to help with these rural security forces. So that’s why they created these teams. Generally speaking, it would be two officers, you know, two junior officers, three enlisted men and a South Vietnamese interpreter. So these are, you know, small teams, uh, six person teams. And the focus of these teams was on what they called the regional and popular forces. These were the South Vietnamese troops who, by and large, were responsible for security in the countryside. They would be, you know, operating mostly as companies or platoons or small units at the village and hamlet level. And so these were the folks who actually bore the brunt of the guerrilla war, uh, and were chiefly responsible for maintaining security of the population, you know, the South Vietnamese regular armed forces played a role there as well, but they were more focused on the big NVA and VC units. So it’s these local guys, these territorial soldiers, as they called them, that needed the help. So that’s why they created these mat teams to go out and live and work with these regional and popular forces, soldiers and to give them, training on weapons tactics.

[00:12:14] (Host) I mean, by then. Right. We’re talking about this is after Tet, right? Yes. After the kind of turning of the tide of American public sentiment and.

[00:12:22] Most of the American units were drawing down, or some of them had actually gone by then. I believe I’d have to look at the history, but there weren’t many Americans there, at least. And then where I was in the Delta, there weren’t any Americans other than aviation and some hospital and things like that. Yeah. So six types, IV Corps. Yes. I was a captain at that time, and I had been a staff officer at division level. And had, you know, I’d been around the Army a little bit at that time. I arrived in Vietnam sometime in January of 1971 and processed in at Tan Son Nhat, arrived in Saigon and, you know, have this typical story that everybody has when they open the door of the airplane, how the the heat hits you like a, like a furnace, like a blast furnace. And I don’t remember the smells that a lot of guys talk about. But I do remember the heat. And we stayed in Saigon processing in for maybe a week or so, maybe a little bit less than a week. And then they sent us to another, believe it or not, another advisor course for about two weeks at a place called Zion. And at that course, they actually took us out and showed us MAT teams in the field. They worked some more on our language skills and talked about what we might be doing, where we were going. And so it was a big group. And then from there we split out and went to the different corps that we were going to be deployed to and started processing in there. While I was there, I met, I mentioned Chris Morbitzer, my good friend Chris, who is in fact on the wall, and Chris was also a MAT team Senior Advisor, team leader. And Chris wound up falling victim to some sort of a booby trap and died in action there.

[00:14:34] (Host) Was he the first person you knew personally who was killed in action?

[00:14:39] (Bob) No, I had known of other people that I had known, but he was the first real friend that I had that that had died in action.

[00:14:51] (Host) Do you recall anything changing for you when you heard that news?

[00:14:57] (Bob) Well, I just I had already figured out this. This is once you get out in the field. I mean, you realize it only after the first time that that you’re in in combat, you realize that you, there’s not much you can do other than rely on your training out there. And if they get you, they get you, and just do your best not to allow that to happen by relying on the training and being careful and, trying to do your mission and, and keep going. And so the fact that he died impacted me very deeply. And it still does today. But I don’t think it changed anything that I did because I was still as careful. At that point.

[00:15:54] (Erik) The nickname was Ruff Puffs, their reputation wasn’t great, partly because they hadn’t been well trained, they weren’t well armed, often not well supported, but, you know, by 68 as they got more support, more training and, probably most importantly, they traded in their old World War II weapons for like, M16s. So by 68, these Ruff Puffs, you know, were approaching this sort of equipment and training of the South Vietnamese armed forces. So they were actually able to do a lot more. So, again, when the MAT teams go in, they’re not just a bunch of sad sacks. I mean, these are people who really want it, you know, get the job done and they have the equipment to do it. And so that is their focus.

[00:16:53] (Host) By the time you got there in 71, the MAT teams had been around for a few years, and presumably they’d kind of gotten there their way of working, their way of operating, kind of dialed in.

[00:17:05] Yeah.Team MAT 44, which was the team that I was eventually sent to, was, formed in 1968, and they had four guys or five guys at that time on the team. Uh, Captain Ben Yeomans was the team leader at that time. And then Tom. There was a staff sergeant or a sergeant first class. Smith was a medic on the team. And there were there were a few other guys, also a lieutenant, Jim Vantrease, was the executive officer of the team at that point. And a couple other fellows that I just don’t have their names. And that team was on Fukok Island in the same province Kien Giang Province, which is the west coast of Vietnam, if you look at it on a map. And, um, they were on Fukok Island, and later on the team moved back onto the mainland. And by the time I joined it, we were in a Kien Province or, or Kien District, I should say, of Kien Giang Province. And it was on the on a canal called the Kanjo Canal. Our team was and we were, we were in a little, uh, triangular shaped, bermed outpost with 30, popular forces’ soldiers. And we had on my team. We had myself we had Stu Ferguson was my executive officer. Bill Morgan was the captain that I had taken over the team from. And he stayed for a week or so after I got there. Sergeant Sam Yorty, who was a light weapons infantry advisor, Sergeant D.D. Dalton, who was a heavy weapons infantry advisor. And then I had, Doc Smith and I don’t know Doc’s first name, but he was our senior medic. He was a SFC medic. And then we had an interpreter, Mr. Chi, who helped us with our language skills if we needed it. Even though we had extensive language skills. Uh, which reminds me of a story. I was sitting on the sandbag one evening talking to one of my counterparts, and he said, Dai, we? He said, You speak Vietnamese like a Saigon schoolteacher. And it turns out, you know, if you think back on it, those are the people that taught us. They brought over Saigon school teachers to to teach the Americans Vietnamese. And so by the time I was there, I was a pretty countrified in my Vietnamese. I think by the time I’d been out there for a while.

[00:19:54] (Host) Considering that MAT 44 had been in place for a few years. Uh, how did you find the the condition of the popular forces?

[00:20:07] I was never, um, I was never disappointed in in their warrior capabilities. The guys, they never ran. They never, they stood and fought. They were there, ready to go any time. All the time. Um, they were ready to die for us. As a matter of fact, they didn’t. I think maybe it was like they felt like they might lose face if they lost one of their Americans. So, we were pretty well protected as well. If we would have been the last ones to, you know, buy it if, if something had happened and I mean, things like that did happen. A friend of mine who’s a actually a retired dentist in Springfield, Missouri, Curt Inman, he was a MAT officer and was overrun, wound up going naked into the into the canal with his rifle only and spend the night and waiting to get picked up the next day and lost most of his team. So it happened. And on on April 24th, uh, 1971, it happened to my team. Except we didn’t get overrun. And because of, um, some people you’re familiar with, the Seawolves came and helped us out. Another group of Navy The aircraft called Black Ponies, which were the OV-10s with a ton of armament on them, came and helped us out. And,I think another Air Force gunship helped us out as well. So it was an exciting evening, but nothing happened really bad to us.

[00:24:49] (Host) I’m sure that in that situation, there’s no such thing as a typical day, but to the degree that you can, can you just sort of talk about the day to day work? You know, absent any major crisis.

[00:25:01] (Bob) You know, we’d get up in the morning and, and probably go down, down to the village, which was about 200 yards down the canal and meet with the village chief and find out if there was anything we could do for him that day. Usually we had a contingent we’d had. We had some of the Americans. We always left the Americans back at our outpost as well. But myself, as a senior advisor, almost always went down and talked with the village chief every morning. And, you know, we had different projects going on. We had a dispensary that we were trying to build for them or help them build. We had a little schoolhouse that we helped them with, and we brought in medical teams of American medical teams, dental teams to come in and treat the folks in the village and try to take care of their, their needs. We worked on some; some sewer type projects that they had that they had undertaken there. We had people from the Department of Agriculture that came down and helped them with different types of rice and we were kind of the liaison for all that sort of thing. So, you know, by lunch, you know, we usually had shaken hands with most of the villagers in the, in the village square down there, and they usually took a two hour siesta for lunch. And then we’d come back and see if there was anything else we could do, and then we’d go back and maybe take a nap for a little while, and then get ready to go out on an ambush that evening, if we had an ambush planned. And that was kind of our day, and we went on night ambushes, we’d usually move out before, before dark moved to a point and kind of sit down and wait until dark and then move out to where our ambush site was going to be located.

[00:27:13] (Host) And this is you advising the Vietnamese troops?

[00:27:18] (Bob) Yes. And sometimes in the afternoon we would we would have classes on, on weapons, you know, of one sort or the other. And non-commissioned officers would teach a class or we’d talk about very, very basic small unit tactics, you know, movement and maneuver and fire, fire and maneuver and that sort of thing. And then the, the ambushes, not every night, but very often we’d go out on an ambush. Um, there may be a, may have been a project, uh, in another hamlet in the village and the hamlets were, I guess maybe like, townships would be the best way to describe those. And some days we’d get in a Sampan. We’d just ask some farmer to take us to a different hamlet, because there were no roads in the Delta at that time, at least where we were down in Kien Giang province. Everything was every bit of commerce moved on the canal. Every bit of every bit of military moved on the canal. If it wasn’t American and they could fly. So all the all the VC moved by canal, all the NVA moved by canal.

[00:28:37] (Host) All their supplies?

[00:28:38] (Bob) All their supplies moved by canal down there because there wasn’t any walking in that. And a lot of mangrove swamp and rice paddies. And that was about all there was down there.

[00:29:03] (Host) What were some of the challenges or obstacles? That might have made the work of the mobile advisory teams more difficult?

[00:29:13] (Erik) Well, in some respects, they shared some of the same challenges and frustrations as the MAC-V advisory teams because South Vietnam was a sovereign country, right? These American advisors were advisors. They had no operational control. They can’t tell their counterparts to do this or do that. They can suggest. And if the relationship is good, then that works out pretty well. But there have to be very careful to not to, you know, overstep boundaries.

[00:29:46] How did the role of MAT teams or the contribution or expectations of MAT teams change when, you know, when we started talking about Vietnamization?

[00:29:59] So again, with the MAT program got going, uh, in early 68, they formed about 353 of these teams. And eventually they, I think reached a maximum number of like 487. Again, these are all across the country, you know, and particularly in rural areas. But by the time, let’s say early 71, Vietnamization is underway, the US combat forces are coming home. The drawdown is beginning. And so at a certain point, uh, those MAT teams also have to be, um, scaled back. So the MATs really 68, 69 and 70, those are their big years where they’re just like going hell for leather to make a difference. Because if you couldn’t get those rough up, Rough Puffs up to speed, nothing else would work, right? That was a critical element, and they did a good job. They did make a difference.

[00:31:06] (Host) The M in MAT stands for Mobile.

[00:31:12] (Bob) Mobile Advisory Training Team.

[00:31:14] (Host) So can you talk a little bit about the mobile part of that?

[00:31:17] (Bob) Well, the mobile meant that at any point in time we could be picked up and moved to a different platoon, let’s say, of, popular force or company of regional force soldiers and help them out. And while I was with MAT44, I was never moved. We were in one position the whole time.

[00:31:44] (Host) You mentioned that, by the time you got there, we were starting to pull some troops out of Vietnam. I don’t remember when the term Vietnamization came up. Had it had it come up, had you heard that term when you got there?

[00:32:01] (Bob) Yes, we heard that term Vietnamization. And that was part of the effort that we were involved in is to try to get people try to get their people up to the up to snuff. And I do believe, in my opinion that they that the soldiers, the South Vietnamese soldiers, the regional forces, the popular forces, at least to that level, at least were pretty good soldiers at that point. And the stories of them running at the first sound of a battle, you know, I just never saw anything like that. They were always they were always great warriors. But I think that they relied on the technology and the assets that the US had. And once that was pulled, once the air was pulled, once the, you know, naval gunfire was pulled, then it was it was going to be the outcome that happened.

[00:33:03] (Host) You know, I never thought about that. I mean, here you are advising them based on a certain set of circumstances, right? You’re trying to get them up to the task of fighting it without you. But you’re advising them and training them in a circumstance that’s going to completely change when you pull all your guns out.

[00:33:20] (Bob) That’s exactly right. You know, we had the Vietnamese Air Force and I flew with many, uh, we called them VNAF Vietnamese Air Force pilots in the, in Hueys. And they were all top notch. I never had a problem with, with the, with the helicopters. And they were all, uh, intrepid enough to do what we needed them to do. Nobody balked at going in where we needed them to go in or doing any, any mission that we ask them. But once we pulled all the support, then I think it was the writing was on the wall at that point.

[00:34:00] (Host) I guess I’m surprised that in 1971, after having fought that fight for, I mean, when did they start fighting each other, 56’, 57? And prior to that, having fought the French? That these guys needed advisors. I mean, they were, well, battle hardened by this.

[00:34:29] (Bob) They were. And that’s my soldiers were great soldiers. You know, there was a there was a the platoon leader was Mr. Duk, and Mr. Duk would stand up and he would walk around in the heaviest fire and, never blink an eye and would be directing fire and directing maneuver and never gave it a second thought. He was a fine soldier. His drinking habits, on the other hand, maybe not so much, but he was a great soldier.

[00:35:01] (Host) Did you advise him on that?

[00:35:02] (Bob) I advised him, don’t do that as much. And, you know, I always hear the old adage, you know, when I left, we were winning. And it seemed like that to me because we had made some real friends of the Vietnamese in our area. And if, let’s say the tax collectors or the recruiting guys for the Viet Cong were going to show up in our village, anytime soon, we got we knew about this and that, hence the ambushes that we were able to set up and, and lots of times they were successful. But when we saw the what happened when those people, you know, the VC came into the villages, I mean, they had no, respect for, you know, women or children or older individuals or anything. I mean, they often killed someone when they came to visit, and anything we could do to make, to keep that from happening the people appreciated that. And they appreciated that we were trying to help them with rice. Although, you know, they’d been cultivating rice for like 10,000 years or something, you know, or something, I don’t know, but I think they really did appreciate what we were doing. It seemed like we never had any, any issues. And they were all very friendly, at least as far as we could tell. And, you know, actually, the longer I was out there, the more you could tell that because you got more familiar with the way the language was and the way the, the nuances of the, of, you know, communication were. It just it just worked out. And of course, we had the interpreter that could tell us anything that was technical in nature or anything like that, but it was interesting and it was rewarding in my opinion. It was rewarding to be out there. It was it was not, you know, the safest job in Vietnam. But it was a good job and I’m glad that I did that.

[00:37:34] (Erik) By early 71, writing’s on the wall. The US is beginning to really draw down. Um, and so what happens is the South Vietnamese themselves take over. Uh, so South Vietnamese regular forces by that point, you know, had many, many years of training with the Americans and started their own MAT teams, which is which was the point all along. I mean, you want that that would be preferable. I mean, the MAT teams are only a temporary measure. So, you know, by the end of 71, the MAT teams are down to about 66. So 71, you know, they go from, you know, the high point and then really start drawing down quickly as a South Vietnamese take over, which again, which was always the point.

[00:38:24] (Bob) And it was very sad. I was back in school in 1975 when Saigon fell, but it was again, it was predictable.

[00:38:46] (Host) Other than maybe not being surprised, did you have any other reaction?

[00:38:52] (Bob) I was sad, I was sad, and I was worried about the people that we knew there, you know, that had worked with us. We had both at in the MAT team. You know, all the all the soldiers they had their wives and their kids at that little outpost. And I just wondered what happened with that, that outpost? Did they just walk in and say, all you guys are now VC or what? What what happened there? We I don’t know. And, you know, the MAT teams I think were a very important part of, of the of that time frame that we, we were there in from 68 through 74, whenever they, whenever they deactivated all the MAT teams, it may have been 73 that they finished them up. But, you know, there were just a lot of guys that had served in other units, American units that wound up on MAT teams or guys like me that got specifically trained to go on MAT teams. And there were just a lot of quality people that did that and, and that, some of them obviously, like Chris Morbitzer didn’t make it back and, I always think of all the guys that served on MAT teams and I knew from when I came back from Vietnam, I went to the to the officer advanced course at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and the artillery. And there were probably 3 or 4 of us that had been advisors, you know, MAT team advisors. And we were like in a different world than the other guys that had served in American units when they were in Vietnam. You know, it was just like it was like almost speaking a different language. But I do credit that year of study there at Fort Sill with not ever having any nightmares or any issues as far as what guys have, because every day we had multiple coffee breaks to talk war stories and, to help to, to settle all that. Unfortunately, none of the guys from MAT 44, are still alive except for myself, Ben Yeomans and Tom McLaughlin. They’ve all passed.

[00:41:09] (Host) But other than the one you mentioned, Chris, Chris.

[00:41:12] (Bob) Morbitzer.

[00:41:13] (Host) The rest of them came home from Vietnam.

[00:41:15] (Bob) As far as I know, I don’t know of anyone that on MAT.

[00:41:18] (Host) That you knew.

[00:41:19] (bob) Exactly on MAT 44. I don’t know of any casualties of any, you know, anybody losing their life on MAT 44. Now, I know that other MAT teams weren’t nearly as lucky as we were. And even though even though we had, you know, several engagements with VC and maybe even North Vietnamese regulars, we just were always in the right place at the right time and had the right support from. Again, your Seawolves or the Black Ponies or even sometimes Army aircraft or crafter or Air Force F-4s sometimes would come in and help us out. We just always, always had the right folks at the right time, at the right place, and it just worked out for us. I wish it could have worked out for a lot of other people that way. Same way, but it didn’t.

[00:42:17] (Erik) I do think it’s probably one of the less well known aspects of the war, and I think if people heard of it, it’d probably be very easy to confuse them with the MAC-V advisory teams. It’s an interesting aspect of the war and one that is still with us. Uh, the United States has always had a advisory element to it. We do now helping, let’s say, the Ukrainians, you know, all the other folks that were helping, of course, look at Iraq and Afghanistan. And of course, they look back to Vietnam to try to learn some of those lessons. One of those lessons, of course, is that there’s only so much you can do. And so this is one of the reasons I think we should remember the MAT teams and other folks who did that in Vietnam.

[00:43:24] (Host) These days, you can find Bob Blair working as an oral and maxillofacial surgeon in Rolla, Missouri. We’re grateful to him for sharing his story. And to my Seawolf buddy Tex Morgan for making the introduction. And special thanks to Doctor Erik Villard, who provides invaluable historical context for so many of the stories we tell here on echoes. Believe it or not, you can’t always take Wikipedia at face value, and Erik has kept me from stepping in it more than once. His book Combat Operations: Staying the Course October 1967 to September 1968, is available on Amazon and at history.army.mil. His follow up to that book will be coming out next spring. Bob’s friend, Captain Chris Morbitzer, was killed in action on August 19th, 1971. He is memorialized on The Wall at panel 3W, line 134. We’ll be back in two weeks with more stories of service, sacrifice, and healing. See you then.

Full Interview with Dr. Erik V Villard

Full Interview with Bob Blair