 I was prepared for all the things that he's done, which is like flying on the first helicopter to fly around the world. But I wasn't prepared for this, which was interesting because I didn't even know. He got the Distinguished Flying Cross in Vietnam. And on that mission, it was right before him and his group were supposed to leave the day before. Just getting the story, the way that he told it, was pretty amazing. Chief Mass Sergeant Don A. Beasley, the sheer fact of serve or force self, he's lived that his entire life. Working some of the NASA missions and then actually going through some of the interviews. Chief Beasley has probably impacted every pair rescue person that is training today. The pair rescue training when he went through, there's only maybe one or two people that actually even went through the pair rescue training. He's also led some of those training facilities. You could almost say he's one of the pioneers for a pair rescue, for a modern day pair rescue that we have today. My dad was a former New York City paramedic where we'd train the pair rescue guys that were supporting. And so after talking through some of that stuff with my dad and talking through with Chief Beasley, it kind of struck a nerve as far as rescue is concerned and making sure that we have our search for rescues in place. His biggest takeaway was that technology comes and goes, but leadership doesn't. And what you need to sit down and realize is you're going to be that person to make that young enlisted folk believe in themselves. And so you give them a sense of purpose and they'll actually go do and you'll be surprised by it. And so that was one of the big takeaways that I took as far as the leaders concerned, along with just the perseverance and the way that he ensured that his entire crew was good to go on every mission. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Major Jeffrey Ladoo and I have my distinct honor and privilege to introduce Chief Matt Sargent, Don A. Beasley. Chief Beasley started out his service in 1956 as a Russian linguist, but in 1963 he decided he wanted to change. He traded his listening station for a perfectly good helicopter airplane that he could jump out of just for fun. Oh, and occasionally decided he wanted to rescue people here and there. He decided to become a pair rescue jumper. He had countless impacts on the U.S. space programs starting with the Apollo mission where he would help design and implement the capsule rescue apparatus and help stabilize the craft and facilitate the extraction of astronauts after a splashdown. Additionally, as a lead pair rescue member, he supported the first helicopter flight around the world by providing rescue capability for the entire crew. His drive to better the pair rescue career field is evident with procedures he helped develop over the course of his 31-year career that are still in use today. He's a leader's leader who's willing to put himself on the line to support his fellow team members and his comrades. Many people still look up to Don, both literally and figuratively, for safe advice or where to find a quick fosters. He continues to support service members by working with both the Disabled American Veterans Organization and the Veteran Affairs. Chief Mass Sergeant Beasley's wisdom and innovative methods have had a lasting impact on the armed services. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming to the Gathering of Eagles stage Chief Beasley being interviewed by our Gathering of Eagles team member, Major Joe Dolce. It's okay, Chief. It's okay. We're not going to interrogate you. Before you even ask me anything, I just wanted, you see a guy up here, six foot seven, 300 pounds, went through Ranger School where we went through old Kofunoki swamps. We had a little camp, we had a little linsetic compass and a map and a knife. Never scared me. Sitting up here just scaring the hell out of me. Well, Chief, you've been in a lot of scary situations, but I'm not that scary, so it'll be okay. Yeah. Chief Beasley, it's an honor to have you here to tell your stories. First off, I want you to talk about your family and how your family life impacted you during your 31 years of career and then after. So if you could give me some insights on those pieces. Well, if you didn't have the support of the family, you wouldn't be able to do what we did. When I came into the Air Force, I came in specifically, I wanted to come in and become an airborne radio operator. And I got in and all of a sudden they wanted me to be a radio traffic analyst and a crypto analyst, Russian crypto analyst. So I did that for four years and then I came back and they sent me to another school and I did that. And in 63, I was at Scott Air Force Base and I was looking around to see what was going on. And I, you know, my family life at that time, I'm not started, but I was going with this young lady at Scott. And the para rescue career field was open because all we had at that time was cross trainees. The career field opened up and they were trying to get people to go to scuba school and jump school. And the old para rescue guys had all been cross trained out after the Korean War and were too old to go through. They had an age limit, I think 90 years old, but they had an age limit for going through scuba school and jump school. And so most of those guys were not eligible, so they were trying to get new people into it to go out and see what they could do. So I ended up wanting to go into para rescue because I saw a light at the end of the tunnel that that's what I really thought was something unique. And it wasn't a lie because it was unique. So I came in and I ended up with this young lady and we decided we were going to get married, but I was going to go to jump school. And she goes, we need to get married before you go because when am I going to see you again? Yeah, we probably get married, so we did. And we start out, at that time you'd go to one school, you come back to the base, you go to another school. It's like today, TDY, the Afghanistan are out to the desert. Every six months you're out and you come back. So I went through all the schools and it took just about a year to complete all the schools. And in the meanwhile we had a little child, a little girl. That was my first one, Lisa. And at that time we ended up going down to the transition school at Eglin Air Force Base. And they were just starting the transition school up. We had three instructors down there. And I'd started out with 15 individuals and we would go five out of school, one school, five out of school, another school. And it would be different schools until we met up at supposedly end up at the transition school. When I got there I walked in and I'm the only student. The other 14 had washed out. And that's not good news when you're a student and you're in that kind of, got those kind of instructors that are looking at you that we got one here. It was push-ups and it was running and it was making, doing all the little things you do. We had an active duty team there. And the active duty team had a couple of young para-rescumen that had come back from Saudi Arabia, not Saudi, Ethiopia. And they'd come back and they would, we hit it off and they thought I was a nice guy. So they'd come over to the house every night about 10 o'clock with a case of beer, want to play cards. And then we'd sit there until three o'clock and I'd get up at five o'clock and go run my three miles and do my PT. And then I'd walk back up there and they're leaning up against the building going. Well, Roy, what do you think? We ought to go back and take a nap. That was a rough night last night. So I said, oh, no, this ain't going to work, Pat. Got through all of that and ended up getting an assignment to Hickam Air Force Base as a para-rescumen. And when I got there, we ended up having our second child. The first child was born at Scott Air Force Base and the second one was born, and she's here today, in Hawaii, a little Hawaiian girl. And we spent that, the years that I spent there were unbelievable. That's when we were doing the Apollo and the Gemini and those kind of programs. And I ended up going to Vietnam from there and I came back and went to Bermuda, another bad assignment, you know. Para-rescue had some bad assignments, you know, Hawaii, Bermuda, Alaska, you know, all the dungeons that you don't want to go to. But we went back, when we got to Bermuda, we closed Bermuda down, went back to McCoy Air Force Base, McCoy closed down, and I went back to Hawaii and then I had my son. So we've got my three children, they're all doing very well. My ex-wife, she divorced this because, again, the life of a para-rescumen in that family, like a lot of you know, when you're in combat and et cetera, it gets a little bit harsh. So we ended up getting a divorce, very amenable. We get along fine, my kids are there. And then I remarried. I met a girl over in England when I was stationed in England, a young Air Force young lady. And we got married and been married 40 years now and been happy ever since. That was a great story, Chief. I know it was his wife's birthday two days ago, so happy birthday, Menci. Oh yeah, nobody got her card. She's a Southern girl and ever since she got here, her birthday was Monday. And we got here Monday, she was telling everybody, it's my birthday, it's my birthday. So every time we went someplace, everybody would say, it's your birthday, isn't it? Yeah, she's not too bashful. She'll tell you in a heartbeat. She's from Cotton Valley, Louisiana. Anybody ever heard of Cotton Valley? They don't have any cotton, but... So, Chief, now we'll get to the storytelling piece. You had a great opportunity in your career to support the first helicopter flight around the world. Just please talk to your experience. One, how did you get picked up to go fly with Mr. H. Ross Perot in 1982? And then talk through how that experience worked and to support that flight. Well, it's H. Ross Perot Jr. I was sitting up in Alaska, I had a team up there, and I was sitting up there and I get a call from 23rd Air Force, which at that time was ASOC, which was the encrole of all the rescue people and the combat controllers, but it was the beginning of ASOC, was the 23rd Air Force. And they called me up and said, hey Don, we need to get you to go on a mission. We need to get you one more guy, we need to have a PJ team on board. With all your equipment and all the equipment you're going to need to jump into the North Atlantic or the North Pacific and rescue a group that might crash in on there in the helicopter. And I'm going, you're speaking Greek, what are we talking about here? And they go, well there's a gentleman named H. Ross Perot and he's got a son that wants to fly around the world. And it was the first part of September, he had been 82 and he was sitting there reading the paper and there was a young man from Australia coming in and he was going to fly around the world in a bell helicopter and was picking it up there in Dallas and was going to pick it up and fly around the world and so he called his son Jr. and said, hey, how would you feel about that? And he goes, I think an American ought to, we ought to be able to do that. Shouldn't be anybody else coming in doing it. The Americans ought to be doing that. So his son agreed and so they decided they would get themselves a bell helicopter. So on a Friday they ordered it and on the next Friday morning they ordered a bell and they paid $725,000 for it and it was delivered that afternoon. Then they sent it over and 18 days later they got it modified for extra tanks, extra radar, I mean extra navigational aids on it. They ended up getting about 375 miles distance on it, extended the fuel on it. So I said okay, we'll go down and we'll see what's happening. So we got all of our equipment on board a civilian aircraft. We flew down to Dallas. We got to Dallas, I'd never even heard of H. Ross Perot, had no idea who he was and when we got to the airport there we had the whole line of all of our equipment with scuba tanks, parachutes, medical kits, the life rafts, support system that we'd have to have if they went into the water, what we'd get them out of. His dad is very, very protective obviously. So then we ended up going over to, when we got there there were three guys standing there and they were going where's Chief Beasley? Where's Chief Beasley? And then we were in civilian clothes and so they said well we got our trucks outside there and they had control of anything you wanted to do, H. Ross could do anything you wanted to do. Because they had the pickup truck sitting right up there next to where we unloaded everything and they just took everything we got and put it in the trucks and says we got in a limousine and we went out to what they called EDS, which I think was electronic, I can't even remember what it was, but that's what H. Ross owned. He was the big boy on that. We drove out there and it's on a nine hole golf course and as you get up to the gate there's two guys standing there and they've got crew cuts and they've got blue uniforms on and they've got 45s on their hips and I'm going, where are we at here? You know, what's going on here? But that was H. Ross, that was his business up there. So we went in and we were introduced to him and we took us into the ward room and in the ward room they had a flight plan that they were going to go all the way around the world with it. There was a young man named Jay Colburn who had been in Vietnam, which was a Huey pilot and he was going to be the co-pilot. He had been working for H. Ross all this time as his pilot and H. Ross Jr. had just finished Vanderbilt, graduated and his dad hadn't given him his graduation present yet so that was his present to be able to go to chopper school and to learn how to fly a helicopter and we got started briefing them on survival and how to do it before we went into the water, what they were going to have to do when we went into the water for us to be able to get to them. So we would get that afternoon, we went down and we had lunch and as we got to lunch you went through lunch in cafeteria style. Now here's one of the world's richest men and we go through cafeteria style with little metal plates like you had in the military and at the end of the meal you're sitting there and you scrape your stuff off in a can and you put it on the thing and you move on and he's in front of us doing the same thing and you're going holy crying out loud, you know this is going to be something else. So the next day we ended up doing some briefing and H. Ross would come in one morning and he'd have a scuba mask and he'd say dive a mask and he'd say would this work on them and we said yeah but we've got that equipment for them, don't worry about it, they won't be needing it. Oh I thought maybe I'd buy a couple of these and let them have them and he'd come in every day with something else that he was worried sick on that something was going to happen to his son. So after many briefings and we told him how we were going to do everything we'd be okay, it wasn't going to be a big problem. We ended up going over to Love Field and the day that we were going to take off of one September and we were waiting for a 1.30 to come in and all of a sudden this weird look at 1.30 comes flying in and taxi's up to us and the crew gets off and you didn't know who they were. They all worked for CIA, they were the Air America boys and they had hired that aircraft to, they'd just come in from Africa as a matter of fact landed that day back from Africa and they were cleaning stuff out of it and they were getting ready to load stuff on and we got introduced to the loadmaster and the loadmaster was sitting there and he was from Scotland and thank God I'd been to England and could understand maybe every other word that he said and he was very adamant about how he was going to pick us up and get us back in the aircraft where we had to hang up if we did a jump and about that time a three star general walked up to the back and he said we're in flight suits at this time and he walks up to the back of the aircraft and he said chief how are you going to jump this thing? I didn't see any kind of apparatus here for the stand-up hookup and no cable, jump cables and we said well we'll hook up to a D-ring on the floor they're 5,000 pounds tensile so we don't have to worry about that and he said well how are they going to get you back in? The big thing all that time was once you had a hang-up or you jumped and you had a hang-up you'd end up having to get back in there they'd try to retrieve you into the aircraft unless you put your hand in your head but you lose and you get your reserve out and I said but he's got that all planned down he's got a system up in the front up there and he said well let me talk to him so I walk up to the front of the aircraft and I said I want you to talk to this general back there and tell him that you're going to hook us up and the line from your hoist up here in the back and come back and you're going to hook around it and you're going to be able to bring us back in on the static line and bring us in and I said but put on your biggest brogue and he said oh you might and he went back there and after about 15 minutes of talking with the general the general was just sitting back there going yeah, yeah, yeah and he said chief come here and I come over there and he said you know the old adage flew some people and et cetera and I said yes sir and he said do it safe son do it safe I said I think we will I think we'll be able to do this right so we took off and we ended up going to 26 countries and we ended up in up in Greenland as we were landing in Greenland they were having a bunch of problems up there of getting us into another little base on the other side of England I mean on Greenland to get fuel and the airplane operator up there the airport operator was not going to let us come in he said no we're not going to be able to let you come in and get fuel and so the people in power there at Greenland said go ahead he's on vacation so you'll probably be able to get in we flew over there and we got there and landed and when we landed this lady came out they gave us the fuel and everything the banker that we called on the aircraft because we had 11, on that 130 we had 11 extra people that was all support of the helicopter and he had already given the money and everything to H. Ross Jr. so when they landed there they paid for it and they also gave her a ticket to fly any place she wanted to go on American Airlines first class probably worth about a thousand dollars because when we took off on the 130 we had a guy we called the banker and there had to have been about a million dollars in a satchel that he had because he was going to be buying our way through all these countries that we were going through and when we landed in Canada before we got there we had landed and there was no quarters available for us because they had all the caribou hunters in and all of a sudden the banker walked in talked to a bunch of people and about 15 minutes later there was all these hunters coming out and they're getting on aircraft and they're going out they're going hunting that day and going to stay out there that day and we got all their rooms and I don't know what that cost them because there was a lot of money going out after we left after we were taken off from this little place on the other side of Greenland we were heading for the Shetland Islands we were going to RON in Shetland and as we took off there was a truck coming down the road about 99 miles an hour the gravel road kicking up, spulking off and the pilot he was one of the he's sitting there the whole time he's in a 1.30 he's got that cigarette hanging out of his mouth and he's got his foot cocked up and he's a hell of a pilot but he was just one of those old the old Air America guys that you know they did what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it and we'd sit there and say you know you're smoking on the aircraft and da da da da no big deal that sudden can't burn anyway you know but all of a sudden this guy came down after he got there the helicopter had already taken off and it just barely got off the run they had a drop off and it was just enough to where they get enough speed to where they dropped off and they got the speed up and he came back around and the truck is coming across the flight line and he comes down to about maybe 10 feet above that truck and comes down and burns them just throwing up grabbing everything from the blades coming up and everything and took off and sprayed out and you could hear the this guy coming back on to the base got on the phone up there and he's calling us and a lot of few choice words went back and forth but it was the next night was in Shetland Islands and if you ever read the story that H. Ross put out there was three individuals that got downstairs with the local boys and we're drinking beer at this thing and we had an arm wrestling contest and he keeps saying that was the only time he ever witnessed that this is Ross Jr. that witnessed an arm wrestling champion with a six foot seven guy and we destroyed the Shetland boys every one of us that had our little battles with them with their arm wrestling the next night we flew into England, myself and Schwert Petty or Irv Petty who was my co-partner on this thing we flew back to when we got into England we flew back to Alaska and after we'd stayed a couple of days in England and we waited there because the aircraft left there and went all the way around in a bunch of more countries 26 countries altogether when they got into Afghanistan and Pakistan they threw their maps away because they couldn't get permission to land and they went ahead and landed anyway but they threw their maps away and said they were lost and then some more money came out but they were lost and they because the embassies were not letting them do that and then I sent another I didn't go back on the second route because I thought somebody else needed to get that experience with those guys and so a guy by the name of Brad Voss which was another one of my little staffs he went out with Irv Petty and they met up with him in Singapore and then they flew from Singapore all the way around when they got to the end of Hokkaido and up in Masala they couldn't get permission to go into Russia Russia wasn't going to get many permission to come down to Kamchatka Peninsula for anything they were just going to so they were sitting there sort of stymied on what was going on but in the meanwhile in the background H. Ross was talking with a bunch of people and he had some friends with the president the freighter company and there was a president McKinley was in that area as a as a container ship and it went off course and it went off course to get to a position where they would be able to get enough fuel from them to fly on to Shimya and when we met up with them we flew out of Alaska and came back around and we watched them come in on that container ship and they dropped there and they had a little damage on the aircraft on the helicopter when they did it because they had 40 foot seas and they had some winds and we're going oh boy this is a good one and they did they did an outstanding landing and refueled and once they refueled and got going there was we started out and we were sitting in behind them and we were getting up to probably Atu and our navigator was going you know they got much fuel left we've been hitting some headwinds and we're we're wondering if they're going to be able to make it in there and they were talking to the chopper and Colburn said kept saying Jay kept saying I think we can make it I think we can make it so we dressed up in the back we put our gear on and we were ready to go because we thought they were going to ditch in between Atu and Shimya and we had the door open and we were sitting there just waiting for them to go in and we'd be right on top of them and that wouldn't be any problem they made it into Shimya and as soon as they got touched down in Shimya and taxied off they had a flame out so they just barely got in there and then the rest of it was just they just flew into Anchorage and they flew down in 29 days and 8 hours I think it was 26,000 miles they landed under 30 days they did the flight around the world about 6 months later not even 6 months I guess about 4 months later we get a call and they want us to show up at Washington DC and so the three of us with our spouses went to Washington DC and we were all sitting in this regular blue jeans and shirts and we get off the plane and a guy sitting there and he said I'm supposed to take it to this for Mr. Ross's thing and I said okay so we pull up this place there's no address there's no big flashy signs or anything but it had to be some sort of hotel or a... but we pulled up there and when we got there we walked inside and there's somebody over there playing the harp and there's people walking around with and we're walking in with this stuff and they're all dressed up and all of a sudden the clerk going the side over there said you must be Chief Beasley and I said yeah and they said you're the only one to walk through there at 6, 7 and I said well that probably would be a kick so we ended up going to the Smithsonian and they dedicated the Spirit of Texas to the Smithsonian Census too and while we were there it was Vici was the Chief of Staff or the Chairman of the Chief of Staff of the Army or the Joint Chief of Staff and he's probably about five foot two and he came over and talked to him he said Chief he said what do you think about them being able to fly this thing around the world and I said well it was a pretty good trip and he said yeah but he said I didn't he said you know I think that the I think that the Army or the military should have done that he said I don't think any civilian group ought to do that we got helicopter why haven't we done something like that and I said sir I have no idea but we he sat there for 20 minutes to be written why the Army and the Navy and the Air Force did not do that and the civilian world did it and but they dedicated that aircraft underneath the Spirit of Texas and underneath the Spirit of St. Louis and in white gloves and they're giving us the big sit down white collar dinner and they ended up dedicating that helicopter to it and it's been there ever since that was a that was a great story Chief and like I said flying around in the helicopter probably was a great experience or not a helicopter but the support aircraft behind it can you get to some of your stories that you have in Vietnam and some of those exciting rescues that you had in Vietnam and tell tell the folks what kind of experiences you saw there Vietnam was was our war for the rescue people that's where we first started really becoming a name and becoming an association of pair rescue we we went over there and we'd all been trained for like I was in Hawaii Apollo and the Gemini missions we were doing all that and then all of a sudden Vietnam broke loose and we now they needed PJs over there but none of us we had no idea what guns on the helicopter we had none of that stuff none of that was even thought of well they brought us all back to Eglin and they put the M60s on the three E's and we were over there and we learned the 360s and we learned to run the penetrator in Hawaii all we had was the three E's and the 53s were brand new they hadn't been really taken into consideration yet and so our training for the whole time for us to go to Vietnam was go learn how to find the M60 and to be able to operate that penetrator and drop it into a 55 gallon barrel where the survivor was going to be if the engineer or somebody got hurt we could operate that hoist so we had no background when we got over there but once we got over there we just they were breaking left and right we ended up coming out of there as the most decorated unit in Southeast Asia and the only reason for that is we were they were telling the pilots if they got shot down we were going to get them which we did if you look at the number of pilots that were shot down a number of aircraft that were shot down and the number of POWs that they got a lot of a lot of damage to the rescue crews and the aircraft and loss of people but we got the pilot out and we didn't stop until we got them unless they got captured if they got captured before we got them we knew that so then we the ASAR was called off one of the best ones was when we had little A1Es were what we called the Sandys four of them would take off with two helicopters and that was the rescue force we had a 130 up on top which was the was crown or at one time it was crown and another time it was king and they were the control and when somebody went down they contacted crown and crown would scramble the jollies and we'd go off and we had a couple jollies up in up in Laos that we'd sit on the ground up there waiting for something to happen in the northern part of North Vietnam and we had them gone over at Magia Pass and Magia Pass was notorious that's a no-no zone that's where the Ho Chi Minh came through and we lost a lot of aircraft around that place so we ended up going up to pick up this fact driver he'd got shot down up there so we get up there and we made about three passes in to try to get them and we just got hosed and I was on low bird when we went in on the mission on the low bird to go in and do the pickup and the high bird would stay up here and protect us or be ready to come in and get us if we went down too which that happened a lot but the A1Es were all circling and they would do a daisy chain around us and you got any gunfire they would zoom in on the ground fire and just trailing out and try to eliminate it this particular time we were not being able to get this guy Colonel and he ended up being awarded the Medal of Honor because they hit his sandy and the bullet had gone up and burned his parachute to where he couldn't eject from it so he had to fly this damaged A1E back to Eudhorn and they escorted him back and it was a really really harrowing little ride that he had to have but he ended up getting the Medal of Honor but as the story kept going on all clear now we'd go back in and they'd hose us down and we'd come back up and you're starting to get a little gun shy and then all of a sudden they said hey Jolly, back off we got the supers coming in we got the buffs coming in and that's the first time we'd seen the buffs we knew they were there we knew the 53s we knew who the pilots were we knew the PJs they were all at Eudhorn but they were in a transition period with that done a mission yet we were still the primary all of a sudden they came in and after we'd been down there all that time and with them M60s and firing back and trying to get something done all of a sudden this other car come out of nowhere and it's got flames shooting out two sides and out the ass end of it and that's that minigun and it became a lumber company the trees were just going down on both sides and we're sitting there going the pilot come running over to the aircraft got on the penetrator brought him up and then the big mouth on the Jolly big Jolly says what was so bad about that and it's tried to get M60 against the minigun and you know what you know who's going to win that battle we lost we lost a PJ we had oh we didn't lose them we had another mission we were high and this was just before I left Vietnam while there was two missions this one was we had lost a sandy pilot and had got shot down but at night they flew as spads they had two missions in the daytime or when we had a SAR mission they had fly with us as the SAR and in the daytime at night time they would go as bad or there was a couple other call signs they used doing different missions he got shot down so we went in to get him and myself all of a sudden we hear the high bird coming back he said you better break right you got a 37 coming up your rump because what they would do as you would fly into something the 37s would track you from the rear and they'd come right up your ramp and that's how they blew most of the helicopters out of the ground but they'd come up your ramp so we broke left and we flew around a little bit and about that time the 37 got him so all of a sudden here comes the 53s again and they came back in and the lumber company went to work and they took care of all the opposition and they picked him up and as they picked him up and came back there was one CPU another 37 rather sitting on top of a hill that nobody knew of all of a sudden tracked in on their rear end and it went in on the aircraft and the PGA in the back of it there was blown all the way up to the front and the aircraft was damaged so we're fine enough safe place for him to land we got the safety land form we pulled up alongside of them we jumped out we had some goers running around on the outside of us out there we didn't know who they were but we fired at them anyway and we got the Pope off Pope was a PGA that was on that thing and he had his leg 53-line at the same time and we flew back to NKP and we got to NKP and I jumped out of our aircraft and ran over and the feelings you have when you have your partner on the aircraft when your team is on the aircraft that's your man nobody touches your man you sort of feel a possession now here's a wounded one and I come up to the door and I grab the end of the litter and all of a sudden there's an M60 sitting right in the middle of my head and I don't touch him bees that's my man and I said we got it we got it I backed away and they got the other there was two PGA on board besides Pope they brought him out and everything and the guy the other PGA had reached around in front of him and said back out just back out but that's the first time I ever had a M16 stuck in my head and I thought that that trigger was moving but we got him out giving him the high sign and we use that a lot for that's that was what we do on the DFC thing we'd gone in for a Carter 0-2 had landed in a big hot bivouac area we had trolled through there once twice and went through the third time we knew the Gomers were in there but we didn't know where he was at and finally he popped the smoke and one of the Sandys found the smoke in the far end of that bivouac area so we came back around to come in on it and we hadn't fired a shot the whole time going through there because nobody was showing themselves and we came through that last time they were in the caves they were coming out of the caves they were everywhere and we were just hosing everything down coming back and forth and that's with the M60 if he had the minigun there wouldn't have been any competition but with that we had a lot of work and so I unstrapped the gun belt and I went up to the front and I got on the penetrator and started to swing out and as I started to swing out all of a sudden he comes running back out of this bushes he comes running up to where where I'm going to be coming down on the ground at and they grabbed me and pulled me back in and snapped me and just sent the penetrator down and we got him and we brought him up and that's with I don't know if there's any questions in the audience for Chief Beasley as long as they're clean Hey Chief thanks for coming today my question is about what changes you've seen in the para rescue community since you began through to today what differences changes the differences and the changes I ended up having two tours at the para rescue school and so I was teaching at the school and the whole time both times that I was there there was like a four-year absence between times we were an overage in the states para rescue was so we would be in the states for a year and we'd end up going back overseas because there was only about 200 others and so you'd always end up and they had we only had two units in the states that they were we had active duties at so during that four-year period there wasn't any changes in it I mean we were going four years the four years for the first for the class the first time I was there after we moved the school from Hill down to Albuquerque that syllabus was the same four years later when I come back from England and I sat there for another three years teaching it there wasn't any difference there was a you know we were teaching the same thing and then when I retired out and I retired out of Alaska I went from Alaska down to McClellan but when I the last PJs that I'd worked with on the team they're the personalities and the attitudes and the the dedication that they have has always been the same the training started changing and it started being there's just no way that I feel that the training they've got today is the same as what we had they're so much more they have medical equipment that we didn't even know we had a you know we'd started IV on the on the helicopter or we'd we'd do a vinyl cut down on the helicopter or on a 130 and we would that's because we had to bring them back and we never landed you didn't land at age three or 53 in Vietnam everything was down the penetrator because you had the long you had that canopy down there that you had to bring the stuff down you couldn't bring it I mean you couldn't land any place because there was no clearing for landing so but today's people they're they've got on board when you and I watch that combat rescue and I said you know I just I can't understand the concept and I've been out 30 years and I'm close contact with all the old PJ's we have a reunion every two years and we sit back and like my and we tell stories and my aunt used to say Donny you have the best stories because you're in really well and I said what does that mean and I that's where I learned out what a yarn was but we we sit around and we talk these stories and we talk about what the young guys are doing today and they're absolutely unbelievable I mean they've got this training that that we we spend as much time training and doing our equipment than what we did anything else they go out they make a jump they pop their parachutes off and they walk over get in the truck back to the to the section and start lifting weights they go on a scuba jump they got we used to have to come back wash the boat down wash the parachutes down they've got crews that do that to them now they got rigors that come and take care of all the parachutes they got medical people that take care of all the medical kits we knew where everything was in that medical kit because we had to pack it we made it that was our job was to take care of our equipment also and they don't do that today they've got their own they've got support absolutely great but I I think that they're going away from part of what the basic is of doing the job and that's maintaining your equipment and making sure that it's do you know what it is I we now have at all the time I was in we had all the NCOICs and all the commandants of the Periscue School and everything were all chiefs now we have crews and that's a combat rescue officer and I think there's a problem with the rescue officers and the other one and I not from experience because I wasn't there when we had the but with the crews I I think there's a problem because I as a if I'm a tech sergeant and I've got a captain or a major that's in charge of as the crow if he's wrong it's going to be hard for me to tell him we're not going to do it that way we're going to do it this way this guy might have been in for the tech might have been in or the master might have been in for 15 years already and the crows just been there for about 3 or 4 years you need the experience running back and forth in the day was when the chiefs were there we'd all been there forever we started up from there and we lived our life and we lived a pair of rescue and we had no problems going in and telling somebody I don't think that's going to work and 99% of the time when the staff would ask us if we're going to be able to do something we'd say I don't think that's going to work we could walk out and they would take our word for it we never had a problem and I don't know if that's the same today I don't think that's going to work today and again I said that's from the perspective of somebody that was never in that world in that world some of the problem that I've got with the PT system and all of us believe this thing is holding bearers PT was part of our program I mean you had to be physically fit because you didn't know when you went on the ground how long you were going to be there or what you had to do or how many people you were going to pull out and how long you were going to be there so you were pretty physically fit and we all had that selection school and that selection school the only people that ever get washed out of selection school down at Eglin Air Force Base are those people that do the swim test and the swim test is they get them I think have you seen the wizard and the wizard is supposed to be something that you're almost ready to black out and when you're just about ready to black out they'll pull you up if you come up on your own you're out of the program and we're going where why would you need that to do the job I mean that's the old guys talking we went to school we went to I mean we had the pool of harassment they pulled the mask off of you that's that's that's that's a little bit of a crawl and all of us sold the old PJs next question sir as a A10 pilot and Sandy won myself I just wonder what the team that you guys got to build together in Vietnam kind of how that worked how when new technologies or new people show up how you guys would figure out how to work together and better out there so just looking for some info on how you guys developed tactics to get after the problem of a rescuing people kind of on the fly so as you got new technologies or new it's the technology most of it but when a new one came in it was OJT most of it 99% of it is OJT and taking the kid aside and you've got a teammate you've always teamed them up you know you want to teach the young kids what the old guys have but the technologies got you up there before we get to them I don't know if there's any any you know golden rule how you would swing that around except through leadership you know that you that you get their attention and that they believe in what you're doing and want to do it I've always maintained you could take a guy off the curb out here that's just sitting and if he said he wanted to be a PJ you could take him and make him a PJ I mean if you trained him and you did just one guy could take the other guy and do that to him because I think that anybody that's if you go out and you see somebody do something spectacular now there's some things that not going to happen but normally if it's a human being doing something and you're in that boat if you get the training they've got you can do the same damn thing they did I think that's you know I don't I don't see any difference in where we get the new recruits and the old recruits if there was any difference in how we selected them and put them into the program that big selection program at Eglund is not Eglund at Lackland that's huge and they go through a whole lot of training there and they when they go to Kirtland Air Force Base now again they're the students and as students you need to know what's in your medical kit and you also need to know what's in a scuba tank and can you fill this up to so high or so much pressure and use a cornelius compressor or you need to know what that parachute is and how to pack it and how to do it they don't do that they've got the support teams there to do that they just go and do the medical part basically they're the best medics walking down the pike right now everybody wants them the Marines want them the Navy wants them all the little teams out and we've got well I guess two cross winners already this year or this out of this war and that's the medical part they were with the Rangers and they're embedded in these other teams and they've got to you know they've got to transition pretty fast if they're going to work with other services Well Chief if you would like to give a piece of advice from a leadership perspective especially with your 31 year career from a Chief's perspective toward the majors of ACSC what piece of advice would you give them as far as leadership is concerned Yeah I believe lead by example you know I mean I would never do anything that I wouldn't ask anybody else to do if you had to have something you're going to have to do a job then you need to have you need to be able to do that job too you just don't go out there and tell them I don't think any good decisions have ever been made sitting in a swivel chair and I don't know who made that statement I believe that I believe that you got to be on your feet and you got to be out there talking with people and doing the job and letting them know that you know what they're doing just to be able to say you know that you've got I've always maintained that I'll surround myself with the best people if I ever got any any kind of praise or anything else it wasn't me that got it it's because these guys back me up these guys were the boys that took care of the program and if you don't take care of your people and you don't lead by example then I think you're a failure because you've got to you've got to have those those guys believe in you and to follow you and I think that's one of the big things is just have them believe in you and lead by example Chief, thank you for being with us today and Sharon for your experiences and your insight and leadership Thank you