 Okay, I am Major Billy Seahall, U.S. Army, retired. Actually, I started out in the Marine Corps back in 1941 as a $21 a month private. And so I did a tour of duty, well, two tours of duty in the Marine Corps and got out right after the war was over. I was in aviation all during the time that I was in the Marine Corps back. I flew in the backseat of the old SBD dive bomber and later on the torpedo bomber. And so I got out right after the war was over and eventually joined the California National Guard and as a communications sergeant and they needed communications people so bad and didn't have a communications officer in the regiment that I was in. So I wound up doing both duties. I was a communications sergeant and also the communications officer. And so I did a tour of duty in Korea that way and they were having a problem with the fact that all of the aviation people in the old Army, Army Air Corps went to the Air Force and the Army didn't have aviation people anymore and they were wanting aviation in the Army. And so they offered the opportunity for any of us that had gotten the commission by this time and any of us that had served for a year in our branch and I had served for over a year in the infantry branch could put in for flight school. And so I did and I put in for flight school and eventually got to go to a fixed wing flight school and the Army didn't have any flight schools at that time. The Air Force did. So I had to go from the Army to the Air Force to go to the primary flight school and then back to the Army to get tactical training. So I became an Army pilot and what they called Army aviators and I did that, went to Korea. Well, no, you see, I went to, where did I go? Went to, well, all around in the States, in Alaska as fixed wing and then eventually added helicopter training to it and became a helicopter pilot as well and was sent to Vietnam, they were making companies of helicopter pilots now and helicopters in the Army. And so we established three new helicopter companies and I went with them to Korea, not Korea, to Vietnam and flew helicopter pilot, flew helicopter in Vietnam at that point and then retired. I was in between the freshman year in high school and sophomore year in high school and this recruiting sergeant came through my hometown, a little small hometown near Amarillo, Texas and Cal Country and talked to a bunch of us kids to belong to the Marines. And he looked like, he looked great. He looked really sharp in that and I wanted to be in communications and in radio at the time so he had me lined up that I could be, go to radio school and really learn something and people asked me, did you lie to get in the service? Cause I was only 15 and a half years old and I said, no, I didn't lie about it but that recruiting sergeant sure did. So he had me all lined up to go and my folks, my dad had just gotten remarried and I was kind of a fifth wheel in the family and he says, okay, he says, if he wants to do that, he can do it. So I went into the Marine Corps and was gonna go into radio and wound up not being able to go into radio but got into aviation and had a ball. Well, there was five of us that he had planned on going to San Diego to recruit training. When they come to pick us up, there was only one standing there and that was me. I grew up in the Marine Corps, let's put it that way. I wanted to be a Marine and I wasn't gonna let anything happen that kept me from being a Marine and I did whatever was necessary. I've got memory after memory after memory but what might be interesting? Well, one of the first things that is memorable, we, you always, each Marine, each platoon that went through training would set up the first three people that acted like they knew what they were doing or started picking up the training to become temporary squad leaders. And so after we'd been in for about a month, they had already picked three people to be squad leaders and we were standing out in front of the barracks one day and here come two NCIS Navy criminal investigating type guys in civilian clothes and handcuffs and walks up to one of our squad leaders, put handcuffs on him and takes him away. We found out later this guy had been in the Army, went AWOL absent without leave and joined the Marine Corps and was in our platoon and they came and found him and took him away. So that's kind of like being in the Army, going to, no, working in a bank, robbing a bank on that side of the street and hiding out in a service station across the street. But I got a chance to go to aviation when our platoons were sent out to wherever they were gonna go to and I went to North Island where the Navy was and they had a few of us, a handful of us, that were gonna be in Army aviation and that was before we had any airplanes and the only pilots that were designated to be Marine pilots were flying with the Navy. But eventually I was sent to radio school, the one that I would have gone to if it had been with the Marine Corps, going in with the regular Marines, they sent me to North Island to Jacksonville, Florida and I'm supposed to teach aviation radio in Jacksonville, Florida. I'm just out of school myself but I wound up teaching a group of Royal Canadian pilots, Royal Canadian pilots that were down in Jacksonville learning how to fly, teaching them Morse code so that they could work the radios and along, I wanted out of there and they came in with a word, if you wanted to, they were looking for volunteers to join the Marine Expeditionary Force. I guess that's what they called it. It didn't know it at that time but that was the formation of the group of people that were going to land on Guadalcanal and so they sent me back to Naval, well, I forget what they call it here. It was still here, not on Pendleton but right nearby Pendleton and that's where they started getting all the troops and lined up and they started getting aviation to go into the landing on Guadalcanal. Well, I was put into an outfit called MAG-11 which was Marine Air Group 11 and we had a dive bomber squadron that was VMSB-141 and we had a torpedo bombing squadron. That didn't even exist at that time but we also had a fighter pilot squadron with BMF-121 and so we were doing, I was flying in the backseat of SPDs at that time and we made the landing on Guadalcanal and started flying from a place called Henderson Field or cactus was the tactical word for it and it wasn't like the landings that they had later on where you had enough troops to go in and capture an island. Capturing Guadalcanal was a long time of several months because we didn't have enough troops or ships or airplanes or whatever to do that so it was done in piecemeal and when I made the landing on the canal, my landing portion, we came in on board troop transports that had a rope thing hanging down on the side of the ship so you come down this rope ladder type thing and get into a Higgins boat. The Higgins boat is a flat bottom boat that can run up pretty much onto the ground and has a great big front end to it and that front end drops down and then we can run out and we were all set with rifles and bayonets on there to shoot and there wasn't anybody there so we made a landing on a non-defendant area and as soon as the Japanese discovered that we had gone where they didn't expect us to go they started bombing the heck out of us and that was my entry into combat. When I volunteered for this expeditionary force they sent me back to California and I came to a place called Kearney Mesa and they had scraped out a runway out on the open area that where our planes were flying from and they were amassing people from all kinds of places coming in and that was the formation of MAG-11 and the two sister squadrons and since I knew code, Morse code I wound up working and pulled into the MAG-11 headquarters to help receive the code messages that were being sent to the Marine Corps aviation people there and all the ships that see and every place else and so I didn't get it I kind of halfway was getting some training in the back seat of the dive bombers but I was also doing code duty in the tent for receiving the code and when we made the landing on Guadalcanal I went immediately to the fighter squadron and this is one that Joe Foss probably or everybody remembers Joe Foss because he was one of the first congressional medal of honor winners of recipients that we had and I was working both of them eventually I got back to my dive bomber squadron and the Navy had just gotten wiped out with torpedo bombers as far as taking them in on ships and they stopped making torpedo runs on ships with the torpedo bombers and they gave them all to the Marine Corps and we started dive bombing with those torpedo bombers and stopped using the old dive bomber because the dive bomber could only carry one bomb and you came in and you dropped that one bomb you had to go back and get another one so at least the torpedo bombers had more space. Well, there used to be a deal of don't volunteer for anything and I say volunteer for everything and while you're volunteering for it learn as much as you can about what you're doing there because you're picking up more information and I say learn all you can about the guy that's over you, the one that's underneath you the people on the right and on the left because you never know when those guys are gonna get hit and not be available so I did my level best to learn everything I could so that as opportunities existed you could take advantage of that and I hadn't gone to college I was enlisted and hadn't finished high school and so I had to go up rank from the back door rather than coming in from the front of being qualified through college degree so I learned everything I could to be able to take care of the situation. How has it changed? Well, I can't tell you about the ground forces but aviation wise grew and grew and grew as you know, aviation was really building and so instead of us having us losing all of the aviation people that we had to the Air Force when the Air Force was formed they took all of those people by the Marine the army decided we needed aviation as well so they started trying to build up aviation with what was left and I had gotten a commission by going to OCS while I was in the infantry and I'd gotten a commission and if you had served or I'd gone to Korea and if you had served for at least a year in your basic branch infantry, artillery, signal, whatever you could apply for flight school and so I had qualified for that in infantry and so I went into, I put in for flight school and got approval on that and was eventually sent to flight school. I think the Marine Corps is just, it's the epitome of having the ability to take the high ground, hold it, do whatever is necessary move in where it's needed, do it, go wherever you're needed I think the Marine Corps is the place to be. Probably the little small helicopter, the little two man bell helicopter if you will because there you're in more control of that chopper you can make it do all kinds of things it was fun to fly, you could go do things with it and it was the first ones I learned how to fly too but I enjoyed being in a fixed wing pilot and I enjoyed being a helicopter pilot. I was enlisted in the Marine Corps to start with in World War II of being air crew so I was an air crew and then a fixed wing pilot and then a helicopter pilot so I got in on all of the aviation and they were just bringing the Cobra into country because I'd taken a company of helicopters to Vietnam the old demodel this, well not this one this is a much later model but the old demodel helicopter and we were beginning to start taking people into landing zones and dropping them off to fight and so I was doing that and finished up there they were just bringing the Cobra which was the gunship, the first gunship of the Marine aviation there was the first ones that we had and I was involved in that and that was the first ones that we took companies of helicopters and pilots together. Well, already I can see all kinds of improvements it's bigger, it's got a larger engine I think it's got two engines it's got things on it that we didn't have first of all, some of the slicks they call slicks if they're not gunships and some of the slicks even have machine guns on them now or rockets so it would be neat they had those for the pilot to be able to fire otherwise you got a turret gunner I mean not a turret gunner I had those on the fixed wings but you had a door gunner and the crew chief on the helicopter was also on one of the doors and so they fired 50 caliber machine guns from the side and we didn't fire, the pilots weren't firing weapons on the guns, on the ships that we took in at that time. Okay, well one of the things that people started doing once you were in combat and coming back they would thank you for your service and so I used to think, well, thank you for caring and appreciate that and all of that so finally I came up with the idea of telling them that they were worth it and so we picked that up as an answer to people thanking us for being in the service and you learn more and more about what was going on when people come to me and say thank you for your service I look at them and say you were worth it and I also say not only you're thanking me for my service, I want to thank you and your family for providing me with a country that was worth fighting for and I enjoyed my tour of duty in the Marine Corps, hurrah!