 I was the son of a farm worker in Central Washington State. My father worked on an apple orchard. We were poor and I grew up in a very conservative area of eastern Washington. John Birch society type area. I grew up believing in the Domino theory, and there was a big stop in communism that there was patriotic duty to serve in the military. And, you know, also I was thinking about getting married when I soon when I graduated and I thought it was my only chance to go to college. There's no other way I was going to be going to college unless I could use the GI bill and also my only chance that I thought that I had of maybe buying a home. And so I went to Vietnam in 1969. I was there from 1969 to 70. When I first got there, the Army lost me for a little bit. So I was talking to a Vietnamese soldier. We were in a bar. And anyway, we were talking about Vietnamese, you know, what I thought of the Vietnamese culture. And I said, I don't know, you know, we don't really have much to do with the Vietnamese personally, you know. So he invited me to his home and I actually lived with that Vietnamese family for a little bit. And that just blew me away. That just totally blew me away. The hospitality and the kindness, you know, was just amazing because we were taught that the Vietnamese were less than human. And we were taught names for them, which I'm not going to speak right now that we call the Vietnamese. And but I soon found out that they were living under a military dictatorship and so I started some cracks in my belief system on cracks that continued on. So I continued my military, my time over there. I was with the 362nd Signal Battalion after they found me again. I was sent to the Central Highlands up in Han K, Second Corps. And eventually I was stationed on a 2,000 foot high mountain in the jungle. There was a total of 45 of us up there on the mountain top. That's all. And they had communications equipment, blinking lights, red lights so the jets wouldn't run into us. But it was kind of like, here we are, here we are, here we are. And so we had the, at nighttime, we on the top of the mountain and the BC and the North Vietnamese army on the rest of the mountain. Kind of a scary situation. But anyway, going back to what Danny was talking about. And when I was in Vietnam, I would say in my units, the units I was with, I would estimate a good 60, maybe even 70 percent were anti-war. And against the military, against the war, and against what our country was doing. And definitely against the army. And there was a real battle with army discipline. Honestly, there was really a breakdown then when we got back on military discipline. We were a band of brothers. There were no women in our unit, so I'll say a band of brothers. And we were mainly concerned about getting home alive and making sure that our friends and our brothers got home alive. And that's, and we were fighting to do that because a lot of us were against the war. And we're against the man, the system. We're against the lifers, military terrorists. And we're against our country at that time because we've been lied to. Most of us were under 21 years old. We resisted the military, the war in our country every way we could. Some of the, we'll go on later on about war wage, but you know, on our helmets, almost, most of us had FTA written on our helmets, which stands for the Army. And there's such a breakdown in discipline that nobody did anything about that. Because some, you wouldn't follow orders or you'd do something wrong and a senior NCO or an officer would, would try to dress you down and you just say, fuck you. Where are you going to send me to Vietnam? I'm over here. There's nothing worse you do to that. So from there, I'm going to turn it over to Paul. Thank you, brother. Dan, thank you. So listening to you, Dan, I'm reminded of the fact of how young so many people were and you were one of those young people are barely a year or two out of high school. It certainly know that that there is no reason to believe that you could have or should have had a complete understanding of that war. And that's one of the things I encountered. I, in fact, was a little different. I was a few years older. I was at the wise old age of 25 when I got drafted, which was about five years older than the average person that that was drafted as you were Dan. And I had done a lot of reading. And I knew that the war was a lie. I went to, I just completed medical school and the internship and I had a residency all lined up at Boston City Hospital. And then I got drafted. What was the height of the war in 1969 because they needed battalion level medical personnel rather than more than a significant trained positions for the hospitals that were there. They had enough of enough of those six weeks of basic training at Fort Sam Houston and I find myself in the late summer of 1969 in in Vietnam, and I'm sent up to I core and essentially to become a field doctor with an infantry battalion of the hundred and first year born division. We're in fact some of the most fierce fighting of the entire war had been taking place and continue to take place. A little bit about the area that we were in. It was an area that historically was absolutely a part of the Vietnam colonial war with the French remained that way. Overwhelmingly in support of the National Liberation Front, and then of course, coming out of Laos and in the triple canopy and in the animite mountains, you had large numbers of North Vietnamese regular army and we were put out on fire bases in the area where there were remaining villages and I want to say remaining because over a course of three or four years before these villages were destroyed. People were uprooted there was a war against the land itself, and you created a refugee culture back along along the coast. We arrived at the at a fire base. Those in the army would know that they were for platoons about a battalion level. 800. There about four companies about 800 infantry. There were squads and a medical contingent of position, barely trained position and and and 16 corpsmen who were remarkable in terms of their courage and bravery and commitment. What did we see when I got by the time we got there this again was 1969 the war had been going for four years. We very quickly learned that you were judged by which side. We you on the side of the grunt that essentially was being used as cannon fodder of the cult the culture and it was a corrupt field grade officer culture where every six months they rotated lieutenant colonels ahead of the battalion. Because that was the only way you could achieve the pathway to promotions for careers. And the currency was body counts, whether it was the remaining villages that were there or whether it was in the in the triple canopy, where we were didn't belong and and there. And in order to have body counts, you essentially had canaries in the mine shaft, which were us less not me per se because I was at the fire base, but it was these 1819 2020 21 year olds that had that were basically being chewed up and spit out and and the kid that you saw her in the morning that was lifted in a helicopter out, not more than one or two or three kilometers away came back in a body bag and pejoratively we were saying, this is a way of dealing with it bag them and tag them and get them home and that was what was going on. When we were there, and what was going on for countless rotations and the rhythm of this war for months and years prior to that, and there was no end in sight. In addition to the con ongoing destruction. It was a great relief to the average infantry grunt in the in there that there was some there was support from the medical side, because we the first resistance where how do we shut down these daily missions, which essentially again the currency of body counts. There's in Vietnamese and American. And we were the first line to be able to do that, and we did that with some degree of success but with an extraordinary degree of conflict with brass and some ethical conflicts with you take out too many people because it's going up at first light because at the medical tent, I've got a headache I've got diarrhea I've got fever I've got a I can't go out on this mission. You can get enough of them off, you can shut down the mission, which is a victory, but what if you can't, then you've got a depleted group out, and others are being jeopardized in a very dangerous situation and so the ethical conflicts were never ending and extraordinary and that was one of the resistance the second kind of resistance was essentially really an agreement. This is search and avoid at this point. And when we found second lieutenant they were between. They had they they they had led to tunes or captains companies that were sympathetic to that. You essentially would go into the bush and you would essentially, you would, you would blend into the triple canopy and come back and everybody would be fine and there'd be no destruction. You didn't always find offices that supported that but when you did that was part of the support. And then you had the feel great officers that were highly aggressive. And, and that's where the trouble began, and Dan can speak to this, I think, from some of his experience. That's where you saw the extreme end of resistance where they had to be taken out. And there were other forms of resistance. And what we call Vietnam gold was ubiquitous. And so people basically needed, you know, you were you were strung out on draw on grass and, and, and, and, and the insanity of the whole situation, almost required that the. And then, so you found both personal level resistance, small group level resistance that would not participate in follow orders. And, and, and, and many people just said I am refusing to go to the field either individually or small group collectively, send me down to LBJ, long been jail, which was the end in country jail for for our using to go to the field and follow orders. And that was always happening. And at the level of where we were, or others in that resistance out there, the level of the anger and the with feel great offices were palpable and the the and I find myself transferred from one fire base to a more dangerous fire base, because I ended up being labeled as, as, as a resistor and, and someone in opposition to military tactics. So I think, you know, at the extreme end and we talked about this and Danny talked about this. There was, it was, it was a matter of life and death, and it was a matter of self defense in some cases. Very complicated series of issues that in the lifetime. I've never been able yet to sort out and what that all meant. Let me turn it back to Danny because I think he had a few more thoughts here I would like to close with my summit, some, some observations I had when I came back home from Vietnam with one or two things because I could illustrate some very very important racial differences and how resistance to place. So let me turn this over back to Dan. Thank you, Bob. Both Bob and Danny have touched on the ultimate resistance and that was right. For those of you that don't know, bragging refers to a fragmentation grenade, which leaves no fingerprints. So as Bob also indicated, we were in an insane environment. And in order, we were young in order to survive, but pretty much had to go insane. I actually live and mentally survive living in such insanity. So I'm going to give you everybody that's listening to scenario that might help you understand this extreme resistance. So as I talked before, it's a band of brothers. You're all trying to get you want your friends and your buddies to get home to, you know, you love them. Somebody comes along, either field grade officer or a second lieutenant and say you're in a squad infantry squad. I'll use an example where there's maybe 12 men, you know, and you're ordered to go out and do something that you've done before. You know that it's going to get people killed. You know it, you know it, you know what has happened. And you know, and you're ordered to do this by say a second lieutenant or first lieutenant who has a brush over, you know, brush off the plane to Vietnam. He wants to, he wants to advance his career. He wants to be self grandizing. He maybe even wants to get a medal, you know. That would that would advance his career tremendously. So he's willing to put people in danger because he doesn't know what he's doing. He won't listen to the sergeant who is trying to tell him that you can't do this. We've done this. And you know that tomorrow probably out of the 12 out of your 12 very dear close friends, three of them to five of them are probably going to die. And you have a chance of dying. So your choice boils down to this one person died or just three to five of your best friends. I just want to make the following point when I when when I came back I was drafted for two years I had the year in Vietnam and, and I have to finish up after leaving and I get assigned to Fort Meade, Maryland. And which was the first Army base, the huge Army base about 20 miles outside of Washington, Laurel, Maryland. And one of the things that was absolutely astounding. And this was in the very last couple of months of the 20 of 1970 was a section of Fort Meade called the special processing battalion. And what this became where a bunch of barracks segregated off from everything else surrounded by barbed wire high level barbed wire, it looked like a concentration, it was a concentration. And what this was were for desert is, and they were several thousand almost exclusively black Afro Americans that were now rounded up and put into the Fort Meade special processing battalion. And the exact number I can't remember. But it was several thousands. And this, this took the form of resistance in the black community. You were drafted you went to basic training you got your orders to go to Vietnam and they said, no way am I going and they take off and they back to their homes and Philadelphia and Newark. Camden, Baltimore, Washington, and then the Army goes in finds and picks them up and brings them back and put them into the special processing battalion for some kind of adjudication of their desertion status and that basically voting with their feet and what was so apparent because it would be it was exclusively American, I remember, was that if you were white and you were college educated, you had many routes to get out of that. Some of that obviously was you never got out of graduate school, you just stayed in stayed in stayed in and out and waited out the war conscientious objective status you had access to lawyers to the arguments in 1970 spring court ruled you could do this on not just religious grounds they were in position to try to do that and and and all these ways which were more draft dodging than deserting. African American African American in drafted into, you know, men did not have that option, and they can only vote with their feet and they found themselves in the special process of the Italian, I do not know. What eventually happened to them but the judgments against them almost certainly were far more severe than the draft dodging judgments that came to people that also were making choices by conscience and in many cases in most cases, perhaps but but there was a classic disparity there. When I got back in 1970, I was stationed in Fort Wachuka, Arizona. And I was in a unit, the 11 signal brigade, which was almost exclusively Vietnam veterans, our whole unit were all Vietnam veterans and we were training as a quick strike communication force, we're training in the desert. So that we could be deployed rapidly into the Middle East in 1971, 72. And so we were training in the desert. And so you just survived a war, you spent a year in the jungle and you come home and you're happy and the next thing you know you're sleeping in tents and eating sea rations in the fucking desert. So, as you probably could understand the morale was out the bottom. And what I was talking about military discipline and resistance to the war resistance to the military resistance to the livers resistance to the country and the anger was unbelievable. Just one thing that would illustrate it very well is every morning. We had a morning formation and anybody in the military is familiar with that that's where you stand in attention. The first sergeant and the commanding officer come out and tell you everything that's important and line out the day and all that so you stand there in attention. In 1970 and 71 you didn't stand. We smoked our cigarettes and we had our hands in our pocket and they come out somebody and yell a biggie, biggie, biggie. Right. And, you know, because the thing of it is there was, see, there was the first sergeant and the seal there, but there were 45 men there that were brothers. And if they tried to press charges against anybody, 45 men would say, I'm sorry, that's not the way it was. This guy had it in for him for weeks, right. That didn't happen at all like that, right. And so again, there was a complete breakdown and discipline. You know, and there was a total breakdown discipline, you know, and GI disrespect for the army senior NCOs on and on. You know, it's going to be up to future historians, but, you know, Bob touched on it and also Danny touched on it. But as far as I'm concerned, what led to an all volunteer army in 1973 was what happened with us Vietnam veterans. When we got back, there was no military left. And I want to say one thing. I'm in favor. I'm in favor of a draft. I'm in favor of a draft where nobody gets out of it. Because as long as it's poor people trying to go to college and buy a home that are in our military, then we fight these wars for 1920 years all over the world. But when it's a senator's sons and it's other people, when it's the whole nation going to war and their sons and daughters going to war, we don't fight these wars. We don't fight these wars. We don't do. We figure out another way. So anyway, that's my time. Thank you.