[00:00:13] (HOST) Next week, The Wall That Heals will make its first ever appearance in the Aloha State, with stops on both Maui and the Big Island. We’re pretty excited about it, especially those among us who get to make the trip. Hawaii holds a special place in the hearts and minds of many Vietnam veterans. One of the key reasons for that is its popularity as a destination for GI’s escaping, if only temporarily, whatever they were enduring in Southeast Asia.

[00:00:39] (VILLARD) To some extent, R&R or rest and relaxation, you know, R&R is a shorthand has been a feature of almost every military since time began.

[00:00:51] (HOST) That’s Dr. Erik Villard, author, long time friend of the podcast and digital historian at the US Army Center of Military History.

[00:01:00] (VILLARD) There’s a certain natural limit to one’s constitution, moral, physical capabilities, and nearly every society has recognized that and provided some way to send combatants home at a certain point, or to some place where they could be away from the fighting, or they could recover themselves and, you know, rebuild their spirit and their physical health. In the American experience, we’re talking about, you know, the Army or the 20th century generally, there’s been a policy where if you’re in theater or in combat for a certain amount of time, that you’d be given either sort of local leave someplace near the front, but not at the front, or if you’ve been in combat or in service for a certain amount of time, that potentially you could go farther to the rear in some cases all the way back to, say, the United States or your place of origin. In the Korean War the United States began offering R&R from Korea to Japan. So they were actually beginning this process, you know, in the later stages of the Korean War. But it really began in a big way of during the early years of Vietnam. So by 1962, as the American advisory strength, you know, starts rising past 10,000 and, you know, 15,000, there was a recognition that this would be beneficial for all concerned to be able to offer that, you know, once in a tour, seven days in some place that wasn’t Vietnam. And so these, you know, flights began in 62. And initially the easiest one was Bangkok, right? Because it’s right next door. And over time, those choices expanded. So by 1967, you had a total of ten locations that service people could choose from. So the process, again, was incremental. Not all those choices became available right away. And there was a lot of diplomacy involved in those choices. And look, all of those ten, the most popular was Hawaii. You know, this was offered in the later part of 1966. There were other places that were quite popular. Sydney, when it was offered, was exceptionally popular. Hong Kong, Bangkok. But you could also go to places like Taipei, Penang. There was an element of first come, first serve. There was also some consideration, particularly in the case of Hawaii, given to people who had families, right. If they had wives or dependents, they would tend to be given priority. And so Hawaii, you know, by far was the most popular choice. Now, at the peak of this program, there were about 65 commercial flights every month. And Pan Am did most of them. 10,000 people a month, in other words, are going through Hawaii. It clearly was, you know, the home to Cincpac and Usarpac and all these big military organizations, but it was Paradise.

[00:04:31] (HOST) Were there other things that distinguished a Hawaii R&R from some other R&R?

[00:04:38] (VILLARD) It was a part of America. I mean, honestly, it was a recent part of America. You know, if you really think about it, you know, it hadn’t become a state all that long ago and not more than a decade ago. It was a part of it was that, you know, so many 80%, I think somewhere in that neighborhood of the service people going were going to see family, you know, they were they were married or had gotten married not too long ago or in some cases, you know, hadn’t seen their child, or hadn’t seen their child in children in, you know, quite some time. So, the Hawaii R&R was also very much wrapped up in the family experience, you know, and that really set it apart from all the other places. Anyone who was there, will probably remember that as one of the most, the fondest times of their military experience. That’s my feeling. And the fact is that Hawaii has always inextricably been tied to the United States military. Again, you had, you know, extremely large military presence, at least on the island of Oahu. You know, long before Vietnam.

[00:05:54] (HOST) You mentioned the 25th Infantry. Is it true that, you know, Hawaii is one of a few or only a handful of states that sent entire divisions to Vietnam?

[00:06:04] (VILLARD) It depends on how you define that. So, for example, like the fourth Infantry Division staged out of Fort Lewis in Washington, it went from a state. But in terms of outside the continental United States, you know, the 25th Infantry Division has been unusual in that sense. Schofield Barracks, you know, was there in World War II. It remains there today and is, you know, its nickname is Tropic Lightning. It is trained and organized to fight in an Asia Pacific environment. And I don’t think that will ever change.

[00:06:45] (HOST) Well, this has been really helpful. Thank you. Is there anything you just kind of want to sum up for our listeners in terms of why Hawaii is so special in the in the history of the Vietnam War.

[00:06:55] (VILLARD) It was the nucleus of, you know, so much of the planning and projection. It was the Cincpac commander who was actually the boss of Westmoreland or Abrams. Right. Hawaii was the nerve center and logistical center for all this. So it was important that way. But in a, in a sort of a conceptual, almost mythic way. Hawaii was home, but it was exotic. It was a place where you could have family time, but you’re still in theater, you know. And so I think it does occupy this in-between space, which is both sort of very practical. That’s, you know, where you’re shoving supplies and men through, and, the fact is that that you had a Infrastructure in Hawaii, which was used to dealing with military people, but also conceptually, this other paradise, this other tropical place that was actually safe and beautiful. Comfortable.

[00:08:02] (HOST) But and perhaps most importantly, American soil.

[00:08:06] (VILLARD) American soil!

[00:08:14] (HOST) In this episode, we’ll hear from a Vietnam veteran who lives in Hawaii and is among those responsible for bringing The Wall That Heals to the islands. Michael Doolittle did two tours in Vietnam and went to Hawaii twice for his R&R. But that’s not the focus of our discussion. Instead, Michael will share his personal experience at the Battle of Sui Tre.

[00:08:36] (DOOLITTLE) We lost 33 men that morning and 109 wounded. How we managed to survive that because our perimeter had been penetrated…

[00:08:46] (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 66:Aloha! This episode contains graphic descriptions of battlefield injuries and death. It might not be suitable for all listeners. One of the people responsible for bringing The Wall That Heals to Hilo is an Army veteran who volunteered to go to Vietnam after having his heart broken at the tender age of 20.

[00:09:52] (DOOLITTLE) My name is Michael Doolittle. I joined the Army on June 27th, 1962. I went to Vietnam in late December of 1966.

[00:10:04] (HOST) Michael Doolittle grew up in California and has lived in lots of places, 14 years ago, he gave in to an inexplicable but irresistible impulse to live full time in Hawaii. He joined me via zoom from his home in Hilo.

[00:10:19] (DOOLITTLE) So I was in Vietnam from late December of 1966 through the end of July 1968. Yeah, it was an experience that will never go away. Humping through the jungle, you know, loaded down with your rucksack. And, you know, I carried 45 loaded magazines from my M16. I mean, rounds in the magazines, 45 of them, you were weighted down with stuff. I had two blocks of C4, 2 lbs. each. Claymore mines, six hand grenades, two gas grenades, two smoke grenades, your c-rations, changes of socks, all that other paraphernalia that you carry around. You know all the gear you’re trenching tool to dig your foxholes and when you think about how much guy six canteens of water. Just think about it. Six quarts of water, on d-rings and whatnot. And when you think about the load that you carried, I guess it was maybe 65, 70 lbs. or thereabouts. Yeah. Claymore mine weighs about 7 or 8 lbs. or something like that. And, you know, the C4, the C4 was one of the more important things, because that’s how you heated your c-rations with plastic explosives. You tear off a little piece of the clay and roll it in a ball, and light that on fire and burn like propane, you know. So that’s how you heated your coffee. We probably use more C4 to heat c-rations than we did blowing things up.

[00:12:25] (HOST) Yeah. So you arrive in Vietnam with four years of experience in the Army, including some overseas experience. How old were you when you get there?

[00:12:34] (DOOLITTLE) Uh, I was 21 and 1/2 years of age. Um, so, yeah, I’d been in the Army four and a half years. I did a year in Korea. I did almost a year as a drill sergeant at Fort Ord, California, teaching bayonet training and that the Combat Development Experimental Center. That was out of Fort Ord and Hunter Liggett Military reservation down near King City. And then I re-enlisted to go to Germany. I’d heard all the stories from guys that had spent time in Germany and chasing Frauleins and drinking beer, and that sound adventurous to me. So I re-enlisted to go to Germany. And so I went to Germany in late 1964. And, uh, so I was there until, uh, mid-year of mid to late year 66 when I volunteered to go to Vietnam. I left out of Germany, I think, in September, October. Went on a 30 day leave, bought a brand new Mustang and drove it across the country. Figured if I was going to Vietnam, I might as well enjoy this 30 day leave, right? The reason I volunteered to go to Vietnam. I had gotten married to. I took a leave and went home to California and got married to an old high school girlfriend, and she came to Germany on January the 1st, 1966. And within a month or so, she started messing around on me while I was out in the field and on maneuvers and stuff and I was the last to know, you know, how Army guys talk. Yeah. We were up in a training area at Baumholder, Germany, up. And we had a beer hall on the third floor of this big barracks. And, you know, people Now let’s get a little loose when they’re drinking.

[00:14:40] (HOST) Mhm.

[00:14:40](DOOLITTLE) And one of the guys made a rather distasteful comment about my wife. And I came across the table with a beer bottle and I threw him out the third floor window. Lucky there was a, there was a lot of snow on the ground and he hit the snow bank and he didn’t really hurt himself all that much. But the story came out and I was wounded. And so I volunteered to go to Vietnam. You know, I figured, oh I’m going to go to Vietnam, be a war hero and try to erase that memory. You know, whatever the pity me thing was at the time, who knows?

[00:15:16] (HOST) Had you talked with guys who had been over there? Did you have friends? No. Came home from.

[00:15:20] (DOOLITTLE) No. This was still in the build up period. So, you know, and being in Germany for, for that previous couple of years, we didn’t have any returning, you know, Vietnam veterans coming to our units yet. Right. And so I’d never spoken to anybody. About going to Vietnam. You had no idea what to expect. None at all. And you know, one of the things about the army when they’re getting ready to send you to a foreign country, they do a lot to desensitize you to where you’re going. You know, you can imagine you’re about ready to go to a war. And the one thing that they don’t want is you to hesitate. Especially you’re an infantry guy, right? Don’t hesitate to pull the trigger. You know, if you’re going to go into your head and try to moralize killing somebody, you’re going to end up dead. You know, it’s like in bayonet training. When I was teaching bayonet, they had this old saying, there’s only two kinds of bayonet fighters the quick and the dead. And that’s the mentality that they’re trying to promote in you. As you’re getting ready to go. If you’ve got this moral compunction about being able to kill somebody, you’re a threat to the guy to your left and your right and, and yourself. That’s why the military likes young guys, you know, draft them when they’re 19, 20 years old. You know.

[00:17:01] (HOST) What is most vivid in your memory about first impressions of Southeast Asia?

[00:17:06] (DOOLITTLE) Boy, you know, you’re not going through a jetway, right? Like a modern airport. You’re out on the tarmac and you’re coming down this big, long set of steps with your bag. Must have been 3:00 in the morning or something like that. 3:00 in the morning. The humidity, the heat and the smell just smacks you in the face. Rotting vegetation and heat and maybe a tad of mildew. Or, you know, it’s hard to separate the smells. It’s just this amalgam that overwhelms your senses. You know the saying the FNG’S. Well, everybody looks at you because you’re an unknown quantity. And especially in this unit I was in, because they were all drafted together, they all trained together. So they had a bonding. They’d all been in the Army about a year total. That’s from the day they were drafted to the time I met them, you know. And on top of that, I’m not just any replacement. I’m a four and a half year Army veteran, E-5 and and I’m a maybe a threat to them in some form or fashion. I’ve got more time and grade in my rank. And so, you know, I outranked everybody in my platoon. And they don’t know who you are. They don’t know if they can trust you, you know. And that’s kind of the thing with, with the new guys. You’re an unknown quantity. Will you panic when the bullets start flying?. You know, I went out probably on a dozen or more ambush patrols in the first month, not only from our base camp, where we were very seldom, but also when we would go out on search and destroy operations. When we’d set up our night position we’re always sending out listening patrols, you know, LP positions where there were two guys, maybe three guys might be 100 yards out in front of your perimeter as an early warning system, or we would send out an ambush patrol a couple of hundred, 3- 400 meters out in front of a of a major unit area. And you’d have to plot defensive concentrations for artillery if you had to escape in the middle of the night. You know, you spring an ambush. You don’t want to stay there. Once you spring an ambush, you want to get the hell out of there. And you got to be able to get back into your own lines without your own guys shooting you as well. So, you know, in the middle of the jungle, in the middle of the night, it’s dark, you know, there’s no moonlight, there’s no starlight.

And everything seems to be amplified. Noises are amplified. You hear your own heartbeat, a lot of the times. It can get in the way of you hearing other things. Um, you know, you’re trying to be quiet, and sometimes you think someone’s going to hear your heart pounding because you’re anxiety ridden or your, you know, it’s a really strange set of circumstances that you’re facing, that you’ve never you’ve never faced before in your life. And all of those things are frightening. The unknown is frightening. You couldn’t see 15 feet most often in the jungle. And so much foliage and so little light because you’re in a double, triple canopy jungle and there’s just nothing that shows through. And so that can be very deceiving. And of course, your imagination likes to play, you know, these huge tricks on you. And so, you know, you’re always imagining something a lot more gruesome than what’s there sometimes. Junction City to started in about mid-March of 67, and we were preparing to make an assault on an LZ. Originally we were planning on assaulting LZ Silver, but the mechanized unit that was supposed to get up and close to LZ Silver before we landed was having trouble being ambushed and slowed down and whatnot. So at the last minute they changed to LZ Gold. We assaulted on March the 19th, 1967. And it was called Landing Zone Gold. So anyway, the 322 A and B Company were the lead elements going in, and B Company was in the first flight of helicopters going in and, and A Company was in the next flights of helicopters going in. And as we went into the LZ with very little, you know, intelligence on what to expect, we didn’t know it was going to be a hot LZ. It was very hot. We lost six helicopters, two completely blown apart and all in, you know, the seven soldiers and two door gunners and two pilots dead in each one. Four other helicopters were destroyed and had to be hauled out. I was on a helicopter, one back into the side of one that blew up, and the concussion blew me out the door as we were coming down. I was maybe 12, 15 feet up, you know, and you’re prepared to jump anyway. But when you get unceremoniously blown out of the door of the helicopter, you’re flailing as you fall.

[00:23:24] (HOST) And are you carrying seventy lbs. you talked about?

[00:23:30] (DOOLITTLE) Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I’ve got 70 lbs. on my back, and I get blown out the helicopter and I land kind of on my knees, head first, and wrenched my neck and banged up my knee and got a crease in my head. Probably had a concussion. But, you know, the mortar rounds were coming in on us and the snipers were shooting at you. And, you know, you don’t have any time to think about your pain unless you got a hole in your body and you’re bleeding real bad, you know, you’re going to you’re going to respond. So anyway, the landing, was really chaotic, but there was no there was no follow up attack other than they wanted to make the landing painful for us, and we had no idea why or how they had planned this. What we didn’t know was that less than one kilometer away from this landing zone was the headquarters of the NVA 9th Infantry Division, the division that was in charge of all of this, the enemy activity around the Saigon area and the Iron Triangle and the like. We didn’t know that until years later. But the landing, after maybe a half an hour or so, the snipers, you know, we dispatched them with gunships and the like and finally things calmed down and we started organizing our perimeter.

[00:25:02] (DOOLITTLE) This was a Sunday, by the way that we landed. So either late Sunday or early Monday, they started bringing in the 105 Howitzers, sling, loading those in and setting up the perimeter. And Monday was rather quiet. We spent the day building our positions and whatnot, and because this was the only time we took our mortars with us. I was not on the perimeter. I was back where the where the artillery pieces were, maybe 50 yards or so from the actual perimeter, setting up our mortar platoon and our FDC and the like. By the end of Monday all the artillery pieces were in place. We didn’t get any briefings that night that we were expecting anything. And I remember laying on the ground that night when it was, you know, dark, and I could hear the rumble of a B-52 strike somewhere, you know, in the distance. I mean, the ground actually shook and you could hear the rumble. It was a rather sleepless night.

[00:26:09] (HOST) Early the next morning, Michael wanted what so many of us want when we’re preparing to face the day ahead. He wanted a cup of coffee.

[00:26:17] (DOOLITTLE) I was thinking about rolling up my C4 in a little hole. And before I could even get to that, all hell broke loose.

[00:26:27] (HOST) After a short break, Michael recounts his experience at the Battle of Sutri.

[00:26:31] (DOOLITTLE) And the din of this fighting. I thought it was hopeless.

[00:26:35] (HOST) And connects that experience to his current work with veterans causes in Hawaii. Stick around.

[00:26:35] (HOST) It’s early morning on March 21st, 1967, and Michael Doolittle has spent a sleepless night at a fire support base near Sumatra. About 90 clicks northwest of Saigon. He’s just about to fire up some C-4 to make his coffee when, in his words, “all hell broke loose”.

[00:32:33] (DOOLITTLE) Mortar rounds, rocket rounds. The enemy was already in our perimeter. This was known as the Battle of Suoi Tre. And it was chaos from the moment it started, which was about a 5:45 in the morning or thereabouts. And you didn’t get a chance to collect yourself at any time? It was survival from the first moment that it erupted. When you got enemy inside your perimeter from the very beginning, we had an ambush patrol, I think nine guys or something like that got trapped outside, and I don’t think any of them survived. We were overwhelmed. Our perimeter was collapsing in several areas, and this is the story, too, about a World War II hero by the name of John Vesey, who was a fill in for the 277 artillery commander who was at. I don’t know, he had kidney stones or something. John Vessey was the 25th Infantry Division’s Artillery Officer, and he was assigned to fill in for their battalion commander. We had 18, 105-Howitzers in this perimeter. The 277 artillery, and we were firing. I mean, they were firing rounds point blank and just the chaos of, you know, you got these ammo piles, each gun has an ammo pile. And as they fire around, they’re pulling out the powder bags and the canister. And if a given charge for that shot was a five powder bags, you know you’re cutting two off and throwing them in a pile. If it’s a two powder bag charge, you know you’re cutting five off and throwing them in a pile.

[00:34:23] (DOOLITTLE) And so the pile of powder bags and the cardboard canisters that the rounds came in is getting big. And the rockets in mortar rounds are setting off fires inside our perimeter in those powder bags and canisters and ammo piles. And as the morning wore on, our ammo piles are blowing up and the fires are raging. And the machine gun, you know, tracers are about belt high. If you stood up and they’re just thick throughout the entire perimeter and this this LZ was this fire support base is probably 300 plus yards long and 150-250 yards wide. And so you draw a circle around that. That’s a pretty big perimeter. And the infantry population that’s guarding the perimeter A and B Companies of the 322 Infantry were probably, I don’t know, 280 men or something like that. Maybe a little less than that, maybe 250. You’re spread out pretty far and wide. There’s a lot of room in between each, each position, and there’s two guys in each position at least. So there was a lot of room for the enemy to sneak into our perimeter. The chaos was just overwhelming. And as that morning wore on and, we finally got fighter jets in to help us and other supporting artillery units and, and we had these beehive rounds, I think altogether we had 30 beehive rounds. And they started firing those point blank, as the perimeter collapsed, the infantry backed up into the secondary positions, which were almost right under the muzzles of the 105 howitzers. And that is just absolute chaos. It’s the only way I can describe it and it’s continuous. There’s no letup and whatnot. And I remember in the din of this fighting and probably at the point I thought it was hopeless. I remember hearing somebody hollering at me, and I turned around to look, I’m in my spider hole and not too far from, you know, the muzzles of the 105 Howitzers where we had backed in. And it was as it was Colonel Vessey. And he was hollering for me to come over and help whatever he was doing. So I reluctantly got out of my hole and crawled on my elbows and knees because, boy, you certainly didn’t want to stand up and crouch down. Machine gun rounds would have certainly cut you apart. And I crawled over to his position maybe 40 or 50ft, and he directed me into opening these canisters of these rounds. And it was just this lieutenant colonel and a captain. There was no other crew there in the gun. And so I’m sitting down behind the gun and I’m starting to unwrap these rounds. I’ve never, you know, mortar rounds came pretty much in the same kind of package. Only ours were all in one package. You know, there weren’t two packages for each round and 105 Howitzer you got the shell casing in one with the powder bags, and you got the projectile in another with, you know, with the fuse and the timers. And so I’m fumbling, opening up these canisters. And I remember lifting up my head and looking down the side of the gun, you know, it’s got these two legs that come out to support it. And, and it’s got some ballistic plates, you know, to kind of keep the crew from being shot. And I looked out the side of the and down the muzzle of the gun there, and just a horde of enemy coming at us and, and the, the, the bullets are pinging off all in all areas of this gun. And Colonel Vessey and his captain were stood right up there behind the gun. I mean, guys, I just don’t know how they mustered that kind of bravery. Except I guess you do when you’re surviving. And I saw this mass of humanity coming at us, and I did not want to see, you know, I just didn’t feel like we were going to survive. And I just didn’t want to see whatever was coming next. And so I buried my head into opening these rounds, and, and they started firing these beehive rounds. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the beehive round. Um, it’s a projectile with 8000 little one inch finishing nail darts they call flechettes. Um, and when they blow up, you know, they’re going forward, like, I don’t know, 3500ft per second or something like that. And it’s just it’s like a massive beehive going forward and spreading out, and it just devastates anything in its path. They fired off of this gun. They fired 4 or 5 of those rounds. And I remember vaguely, you know, the explosions of the gun and the recoil of the gun, you know, because the leg I was leaning up against the leg and you could feel it each time it fired. And I remember all of a sudden, you know, I hear this other noise, mechanical noise. You’re not sure if it’s an aircraft or whatever it is because they’re jet fighters and there’s propeller aircraft and helicopters and gunships and I hear this noise. But it was the attitude and the change in the demeanor of Colonel Vessey and this captain, they seem to have become elated, you know, or they were not, they were not anxiety ridden and defensive, you know, they were almost like, high fiving each other. I don’t think high fiving had been invented yet. You want to know the truth? But they were certainly feeling elated, and they just wandered away, and I’m sitting there on the ground wondering what the hell is going on. And finally I managed to stand up, and I looked out in front of the gun and of the nightmare of what I saw in front of the gun. Shredded bodies, just grotesque. But the noise I heard was the tanks and APCs and whatnot coming to our rescue. And the 50 caliber machine guns, and realize that we had survived, and the battlefield was just littered with bodies. Unbelievable.

[00:41:51] (HOST) Yeah. So what happened to you next.

[00:41:58] (DOOLITTLE) It’s now approaching probably about 1:00. That’s afternoon for certain. It’s hot. The smell was overwhelming, you know. Just the smell of gunpowder and explosions and bodies in the hot sun. And I mean, devastated by it ripped apart. And it’s kind of like you’re wandering in a daze, I guess, you don’t really. You know, you’re alive, but you’re not sure how alive you are. I didn’t have any holes in my body, I wasn’t bleeding. But certainly I was in a state of not understanding, you know, what had happened, other than the fact that we were in a giant battle, you know, and that I was still alive. The armored personnel carriers were picking up bodies from the battlefield and putting them in this giant hole that was dug by a tank retriever. A big well, there 80 tons or thereabouts and they got a great big plow blade on the front, and it had dug this big hole and they were throwing bodies in this hole. It looked like a scene out of the Holocaust. And I remember you know, all of the wounded were in a triage area, and our own guys, that died, were wrapped in ponchos, and they were taken over by the what was established as a heliport and for medevacs and, of course, they’re medevacking the seriously wounded before they take the bodies away. And within an hour at the end of the battle or thereabouts, there were 11 stars besides General Westmoreland on the battlefield. And then there was this Chaplin. A Chaplin came over to my unit and trying to console us, I guess, from what had happened, and he was telling us that all of our men died doing God’s work. And I don’t know, I was disturbed by the whole thing. That battle was the largest single day loss for the enemy in the entire Vietnam War. We picked up 647 bodies off the battlefield and more than 200, a little deeper into the jungle. Altogether, the death toll for the enemy was over 880. We lost 33 men that morning and 109 wounded. How we managed to survive that was because our perimeter had been penetrated but it was Colonel Vessey. If it wasn’t for him plugging the holes in our perimeter and providing assistance, we would have been surely overrun and all of us would have died. Colonel Vessey was given a Distinguished Service Cross for that day, and the unit got a Presidential Unit Citation. Colonel Vessey had been notified a few months earlier that at the end of his tour in Vietnam in 1967, he was going to be retired. He was a World War II hero at Anzio, Battlefield Commission. And here you are 23 years later in Vietnam. He’d been in the military on 26, 27 years and a lieutenant colonel. And he was looking towards retirement at the end of that tour instead this battle was so significant that ten years later, Colonel Vessey was a four-star general. And in 1983, Ronald Reagan named him the 10th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and when he retired in 1986, he was chosen to be the leader of the POW/MIA Commission, and he served in that role for 14 years. And it was during that service as the chairman of the POW/MIA Commission that he was in Hanoi, negotiating with the Vietnamese government about access to some areas to look for, you know, the remains of American soldiers and airmen. Then he got into a conversation with the Deputy Defense Minister in Vietnam, who introduced himself and said to him, um, he said, General Vessey, I you don’t know me, but I know you. And he says, I was the commanding general of the 9th Infantry, NVA Infantry Division that attacked you at Sui Tre. And that gentleman went on to inform Colonel Vessey that his unit was 9,000 men strong, and that they were fully committed into overrunning and killing every member and destroying everything on that fire support base and going out the other side. And how we managed to survive that is beyond me. I don’t know how many of the 9,000 were actually committed to the battle. But I’d say probably more than half. And so our 425 men, artillery and infantry combined, withstood an attack of somewhere between 4 and 6000 North Vietnamese and hardcore Viet Cong. I didn’t really know the history about this battle until I went to the 50th Reunion in 2017 at Fort Carson, Colorado. That’s where the 277 is currently serving and the 212 Infantry, the 322, I think, was disbanded long ago. But when I went to that 53, I had never shared any of these stories. I’d never spoken to anyone who was in that battle after that battle. So that was the first opportunity I had to talk with the other guys that had survived it. And, when you’re in, in Vietnam, in any battle, anywhere, all you see is what’s in front of you. If there’s 400 men on a battlefield in your unit, there’s 400 different stories about that battle. And one may not even be similar to the next. You know, you see what’s in front of you, how you react to it. So I learned, at this 2017 reunion in March of 2017, the specifics of the battle and what happened afterwards and, and, and then when I came home, I was asked to give a keynote address on a Memorial Day talking about Vietnam, representing Vietnam veterans in our community. And I was scared to death to talk about this story that I had lived with all of my life, That even today is emotionally difficult to talk about.

[00:49:56] (HOST) Can you talk a little bit about why Suoi Tre is not the same kind of household name as, you know, your la Drang or or…

[00:50:05] (DOOLITTLE) Right. Well, we were the 3rd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, and we were attached to the 25th Infantry Division. So Operation Junction City, too, was basically, you know, in the south of Vietnam, where the 4th Infantry Division was in the northern part, in the Central Highlands near Pleiku. You had the 1st Brigade and the second Brigade of the fourth and the and the 4th Infantry headquarters in Pleiku. And so the fourth Infantry Division, you know, I went to the 4th Infantry Division Annual Association last year in Kansas City, Missouri. And at the dinner that night, we had the 4th Infantry Division commander there. And we’re having this big banquet. And I went over to the 4th Infantry Division flag, and I was looking for the battle streamer. I mean, we got a Presidential Unit Citation for that, right? So you’d think that there would be a battle streamer on the flag. And I looked for it and I couldn’t find one. And I was asking the guys there, I said, well, where’s the where’s the battle streamer for the battle of Suoi Tre? He said, well, it hadn’t been issued yet. Well, at the 2017 reunion, the 50th Reunion at the 4th Infantry Division Headquarters in Colorado Springs, at Fort Carson. The battle streamer was on the flag for our banquet there. So you know it just and not a when we got to this annual association here in Kansas City. I’m talking to some of the other guys. There were only three of us. Out of the 140 people who attended that were from the 3rd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division that was attached to the 25th. Everybody else that was there was part of the 1st and 2nd Brigade that were in Pleiku. And nobody ever heard and not a member there had heard about the Battle of Suoi Tre. And so part of that dysfunction there is that the 4th Infantry didn’t want to claim that for their archives, because it was actually under the command of the 25th. The 25th didn’t want to put it in their archives and talk about how heroic it was, because we were actually the 4th Infantry. That was at the Battle of Suoi Tre. And so it’s that kind of, tribalism, I guess I call it, you know, not wanting to give or not wanting to celebrate. And the victory of a unit that isn’t part of your unit seemed to have been more the cause of how it got misplaced. I didn’t know it was called the Battle of Suoi Tre. I thought it would be the Battle of Fire Support Base Gold or Landing Zone Gold or something of that nature. I didn’t know it was the Battle of Suoi Tre until I went to the reunion, and basically the reunions were being hosted by the 212 Infantry and the 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry. Neither one of those two units, those battalions were actually in the battle. They were the units that came to the rescue. And the units that were involved We’re like I said before that the 3rd Battalion, 22nd Infantry, just A and B Company and the 277 Artillery. And when I went to the reunion, there were only, I don’t know, 5 or 6 guys there from A Company. And I don’t think there was anyone or maybe 1 or 2 from B Company, and the rest of them were the 277 Artillery and, and the, the 212 Infantry and the 222 Infantry Mechanized um, out of maybe 150 people that attended, there were only maybe eight of us from the infantry that were actually in the battle. There were quite a few from the artillery that were in the battle. But the majority of the attendees were from the 212 Infantry and the 222 Infantry. And, yeah, I don’t know. I was maybe a little bit disappointed by that, that they seemed to have gotten, you know, more of the acclaim than the actual soldiers that fought the battle for a few brief moments. I fought alongside, even though I was just unwrapping rounds to fire. I fought alongside a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who in in my looking back at history, is one of the heroes of my life. He was a hero at Anzio in World War II, earned a Distinguished Service Cross and a Battlefield Commission. He was a hero at the Battle of Suoi Tre, Distinguished Service Cross and his future to rise up to becoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. It’s an amazing history. That I had this tangential experience with and and in looking at it in hindsight, I’m just absolutely overwhelmed by it, that story. You know, the first time I saw The Wall, I went to Washington, DC in 1998, and I remember going to The Wall. And one of the things that was overwhelming to me was that when I got within sight of The Wall, something overcame me. It just it was like a magnetic force that kept me away from it. And for 2 or 3 hours, I stood off in the distance and walked around and would just look back at it and, and one of the, one of the things I realized was keeping me away from it was that I was afraid of my own emotions. I was afraid of getting up close to that memory because I had never thought, you know, I buried Vietnam for over 30 years, and nobody around me and my living environment in my community knew that I was a Vietnam veteran. And so, wandering around The Wall It made me have to unbury Vietnam. I had to dig it up. And I finally managed to get down there next to The Wall to the panel where all those guys are. And so I went through the directory book looking for anybody who died on March the 21st, 1967. When I found that name and what panel it was on, I went down to that panel and stood in front of that panel and got to that date on the wall, the 19th and the 21st of March, 67, and started reading the names and familiarity with the names started to emotionally affect me, and I struggled to read those names and stay composed. I didn’t want to sit there and start, start bawling in front of hundreds of people and standing in front of The Wall. That was my introduction to The Wall. And one of the things that I realized along the way was that I felt very guilty that I survived because everyone in my platoon, this platoon that I was assigned to in A Company 322 Infantry, every one of them was drafted. They didn’t have to be in Vietnam. I did. I came home without any holes in my body. Only 17 of those guys out of that platoon came home whole. And I felt guilty about that. And I knew that I needed to do something to honor the guys that died. And so my entire period of time here in Hawaii County, I’ve been here 14 years now, has been centered around helping veterans. After I gave the keynote address on Memorial Day 2017, I was asked by the mayor if I would want to join or apply to join the Veteran’s Cemetery Committee, and I politely said, no, I don’t want to be on a cemetery committee. And I just casually asked him. I said, why? Why do you have a cemetery committee and you don’t have a veterans committee? Um, don’t you want to help the living veterans? I mean, if you’re so involved with the cemeteries, you know you can’t do much for them except mow the grass and keep it pretty. I said, what can we do for the living veterans? Because I know I had been troubled for a lot of years. And he just looked at me and he said, well, you know, he says, you can’t change anything unless you belong to it. And so I was elected Chairman and within six months to a year, I don’t know exactly how long it took. Um, I submitted a letter to the mayor saying that we needed to change the committee to an advisory committee for all veterans issues, and he agreed. And we got the council to change all the statutes and the codes. And so within a year we had the entire committee changed to a Veterans Advisory Committee. Then I became the vice chair of the board. And when the chairman decided he wanted to retire, he about 85 now, um, I was voted in as the Chairman of Hawaii Island Veterans Memorial. And Hawaii Island Veterans Memorial is the 501(c)3 that is the umbrella organization promoting and bringing The Wall That Heals to Hilo. To me, it just seemed like such a worthwhile thing to do. And so I’ve become very vocal about this. And here’s the thing about Hawaii. Hawaii had more to do with the Vietnam War than any other state. Not only is it a small state in population, but it’s also a state that sent a full division to Vietnam. The 25th Infantry Division, but also a great many damn near half of all the Vietnam veterans have took an R&R, came to Hawaii for their R&R because they wanted to see their families, their wives, their children, brothers, sisters, girlfriends because they weren’t sure that they were going to come home in the end. And I myself, I took two R&Rs and I came to Hawaii. So I know what that feeling is. And it just seemed to me that, you know, here, this Wall That Heals has been traveling the nation. It just finished its 28th year. It’s been something like 750 communities. It’s been in every state 14 to 18 times. It’s never been to Hawaii. And I firmly believe that we’re going to more than double whatever your average visitations are for the displays of the wall, because it’s never coming back to Hawaii. This is a once. This is a one time, never to be repeated display of the wall. And one of the things also that’s real prominent is that we all have to realize that 90% of the veterans who served in Vietnam do not have the financial ability to go to Washington, DC to see The Wall. I just feel dedicated to, you know, honoring the guys that, you know, that I knew that didn’t come home.

[01:03:09] (HOST) Yeah.

[01:03:10] (DOOLITTLE) And bringing this wall here to Hilo is, is that I don’t know, it’s kind of like, you know, looking at your mortgage and somebody that stamps it paid in full.

[01:03:23] (HOST) Yeah. Debt repaid.

[01:03:25] (DOOLITTLE) They are. And the display site is absolutely fabulous. Right on the oceanfront. You know, the back of the wall when the sun comes up in the morning will be right behind the apex of The Wall coming up over the ocean.

[01:03:40] Wow.

[01:03:42] (DOOLITTLE) It’s going to be spectacular.

[01:03:57] (HOST) Our thanks to Michael Doolittle for sharing his story, and for working so tirelessly to serve the veteran population in his community. Thanks also to Doctor Erik Villard for providing some context about Hawaii’s place in the history of the Vietnam War. You’ll find a link to his most recent history of the Vietnam War in the episode notes. His new book will cover the period known as Vietnamization and will be available in the spring of 2025, just in time for the 50th Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. We’ll be back in two weeks with more stories of service, sacrifice and healing. See you then.

Full Interview with Michael Doolittle