 Good morning and welcome. My name is Major Isabella Ramirez. Major Josh Neighbors and I had the honor and privilege to interview Lieutenant Colonel Retired William Shortfinger Schreidfeger. Today he is going to give us his personal perspective from his time as an F4 pilot on POW in Vietnam. And as you can already see, he's a character and he should be pretty entertaining. We will conduct an on-stage interview followed by a short question and answer session. However, here is a short video to highlight his military career. Retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Bill Shortfinger's military service span 20 years. He was born in 1945 in Oklahoma and cultivated a deep passion for flying when he accompanied his uncle on his J3 Cub flying over his family's farm. He joined the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps at Oklahoma State University and then commissioned in the United States Air Force as a second lieutenant in 1967. Lieutenant Colonel Shortfinger went on to complete pilot training at Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma and was awarded his pilot wings in September 1968. His first tour in Vietnam was with the 433rd Tactical Fighter Squadron at Uban Royal Thai Air Base, Thailand, from August of 1969 to June 1970. Upon returning to the United States, he attended F4 pilot upgrade training at George Air Force Base. He then deployed again with the 433rd Tactical Fighter Squadron back to Uban for his second tour flying over Vietnam. It was during this tour that he was hand-picked as a Wolf Forward Air Controller, a selectively manned squadron of the best fighter pilots of each unit. During his two tours in Vietnam as an F4 pilot, he accumulated over 1,000 combat hours, spanning 350 and a half combat missions. Then, on 16 February 1972, as the lead Wolf on a combat mission, he was forced to eject over North Vietnam after taking fire from a surface to air missile. Lieutenant Colonel Shortfinger was held captive as a prisoner of war for 407 days until his release during Operation Homecoming on 28 March 1973. Following his recovery, he went on to serve as an F4 Fighter Weapons Instructor and maintenance liaison officer with the 414th Fighter Weapons Squadron at Analyst Air Force Base, Nevada. He then served in Europe as an F4 Fighter Weapons Instructor with the US Air Forces in Europe at the 406th Tactical Fighter Training Wing at Zaragoza Air Base, Spain. Then, during the early 1980s, Lieutenant Colonel Shortfinger transitioned to the F-15 Eagle and was stationed at the 49th Tactical Fighter Wing at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico. And just prior to his retirement, he served as the Air Force Advisor to the Kansas Air National Guard at McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas, until he retired on 1 June 1988. During his Air Force career, he logged over 3,500 flying hours in the F4 and the F-15. After he retired from the Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel Shortfinger went on to fly over 10,000 hours with American Airlines. He currently lives in Kansas with his wife Fania, taking care of his collection of Corvettes. Ladies and gentlemen, please join us in welcoming to the Gathering of Eagle Stage, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Shortfinger. Hi guys. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We're going to go a little bit different in that Alf and Josh are going to do side team. So I might be a little jinking, have to use a little bit of chaff and flares to avoid some of the shots you're going to put at me. Go ahead, sir. All right, sir, before we get into your stories of in Vietnam, can you tell us a little bit about what influenced you to become a pilot? Well, you know, we saw that J3, the Yellow Cub, big balloon tires. My uncle would always fly out to the farm and deliver the mail or some milk or bread, and he'd take me flying. And when I was about seven, so this 1952, he tells me that Oklahoma has its first ace in the Korean War. And I go ace, the Korean War. And he says, yeah, it's James Robinson Reisner. And I go, oh, he's a fighter pilot, huh? And I says, I think I want to be like him. I want to be a fighter pilot. I want to go out there and serve my country. So that's where it all started, that J3. So those that like little airplanes, grow into bigger airplanes, faster airplanes, that's what it's all about, flying for me. Go ahead, Deis. All right. What was it like during your tours in Vietnam? Specifically, we would like to focus on what it was like keeping in touch with your wife and your family before you were shot down. Well, you know, I did two combat tours. I got married in March of 69 at George in August. And so it was a standard letter writing. Some tapes back with the big cassettes that you would send back in the mail and get a little voice contact. No telephones, no iPads, no links like that that you have nowadays where you can see and talk directly to the family. I feel like you're really in touch. It was all long distance. When I come back to the States to upgrade to the front seat, my wife goes, Now wait, we've been married for about a year now. And I've been with you for three months. That's what's going on here. And I says, huh, this is my passion. This is my desire. It's my calling. I need to upgrade to go back to the war. That was the only way I was going to get in the front seat. Or else if you go to Europe and sit in the pit for three years and one year in the pit was about one year too many. The second tour, things are a little bit more heated. And I would take a tape recorder with me during the flight. And if it was a benign home mission, I would send her that tape back to let her know that it's nothing really to worry about. Everything will be fine. Your daddy is the world's greatest fighter pilot. We are not all the world's greatest. And I says that everything will be fine. All right, sir. During our interview, during your time in Vietnam, you mentioned that you were shot six times before that seventh shot. So what gave you the courage to continue suiting up and getting in a jet and flying? Well, I tell you, the Duke, John Wayne, good friend of mine. I talked to him several times during the war. But his philosophy is courage is being scared and saddling up anyway. And that's what our job was. Was I nervous when I went out to the airplane? The very first sortie I flew of my first pit ride, the Dubon, I was nervous. But as soon as the gear went up, I knew exactly what we were doing. The second combat tour, same thing, no fear. Now, a couple of instances where fear jumped out at me was on the first tour. We took a 37 millimeter wing. That didn't scare me. Snap 270, NKP is on your nose for 95 miles. Theverted took the wire, the holes like this and the wing. But the mighty F-4 brought us home. She's a brute. She's a stallion. She's a stud. That's number one hit. About three or four days later, still in the pit, around Choupon. You know where Choupon's at? One of the highest threat areas in Laos with the 37, 57, and 23s ringed that area, a choke point. And I started to suck it up just a little bit that night. A little nervous. And all of a sudden, here comes a string, water hose of 23. It's just like taking a red string and pointing it at you. And as long as it's not moving on the canopy, good news. Guess what? It was not moving on the canopy and we started to move that airplane for all it's worth. Took a 23 and a tail. Hopefully I'm not coming off that mic over there. Snap 270, NKP is on the nose, 95 miles. But the airplane's flabble. No indications of anything wrong. We talked to ABCCC, you call the command post to Dubon. You want us to go to NKP, close the space, or RTB, to Dubon. We went back to Dubon. They could fix the tail. And it was a hole about like a no big deal. It's not that I'm a lead magnet. I was in the pit. You know, I wasn't even driving the jet. But you find that when you're in combat, hot metal is in the air. And your job is to stay away from the hot metal, okay? It doesn't do any good to go dooling with somebody. BC Corps, captain, Wolf Mission, the ZPU comes up, 7.6. And we carried two pods of Willie Pete's, white puffer's rockets, 14 up in total. And center line C23, a Gatlin gun. BC sees this guy open up on us. And it's the old whiff for deal. Back around and right in on him. And I'm screaming at him. And I says, BC, we who live by the gun will eventually die from the gun. Kind of scared me. Luckily, that guy died for his opening up on the mighty Wolf FAC. Took some small arms as we are at low altitude checking out targets. You got to get down to see them. Of course, getting down is 550 with 6 Gs. The wings are bowling white. And your job is to get in, over, and out of that threat. Once you got him, you can put some smoke on him. Call in some LGBs. Laser-guided bombs, right, guys? And kill. Second tour. Four hits. All as a wolf. All in the high-thread area. We'll save that seventh one for just a little bit later, okay? The big one. The one where you end up with a half-emission. That's the one that kind of sucks. Sir, speaking of that half-emission, when you took that seventh shot that required you to eject, can you please share with the class what was going through your mind at that time and then what took place once you hit the ground? Yeah. Well, let's kind of lead up to that half-emission. 16th of February, 1972. Oh, dark 30 in the morning. The night before I knew that I was going to be leading eight FODs with laser-guided bombs to the north of the DMZ to take out heavy, 130-millimeter gun positions that the North Vietnamese had that were firing on our Arvin and Marine bases to the south of the DMZ. And we knew that they were prepping for another tent. And so as I go into the target area, or add the briefing first, Intel says, and I want you, Intel folks, to listen quite well to this, okay? I want you to listen with all your ear. Cyber guys, perk up. Because Intel told us that the threat in the area was 37 and 57. I reached into my flight suit pocket, pulled out the red flag. I always scared with me when I went to a briefing. And it had bullshit on it. And I waved it. I said, wait a minute. I have pictures of three SAM sites at 5, 15, and 20 clicks north of the DMZ. And the Intel guy goes, where'd you get those? And I says, I got it from my Wolf Intel shop. We spent last night going over film. And we found them. And he goes, oh, they're not there. That's old film. So as we go into the target area, just as the sun's coming up, we're down in the weeds trying to pick out these guns right north of the DMZ. Nobody's up. Nothing's happening. After spotting six of them, I go to the tank off the beach, the purple tanker, come back by two F-4 flights out of the U-bond, 433rd tactical fighter squadron, my squadron guys with the eight LGBs. And the job was to kill those heavy artillery pieces. Put down the first mark, boom, 2,000 pounder. No gun, no more. Second smoke, boom, no gun, no more. And all of a sudden, remember the picture there with the painting of 601, my airplane? It's got 85 millimeter around it. I go, what the hell's going on here, man? And I look over here and it is the classic 85 millimeter gun sight with the F-4 can radar right here in the middle and five guns crunched. And the raw radar omen and warning gear and the F-4 says, you got a gun over here. And I go, no shit, I see the flak. And so I tell the guys, we're going to change targets, brief them on the engress, egress, closest divert base again, and put down a willy peat and I told the guys, and I'm pretty damn good with the willy peat. I've been doing this for 350 missions. As soon as I toggled off the willy peat, I says, hit my smoke. And as I'm cranking, and that was that photo, as I'm cranking, the willy peat goes into the van itself. And I says, hit that smoke. Well, boom. And I says, okay guys, the wind's coming off the beach from the northeast, so we're going to start at the south end of the gun ring and just work our way into the wind. They got the guns. Eight bombs later, we've got that threat neutralized. First flight of force out of ordnance. Dropped down the stack. Next flight of guys come in and says, okay, we're going back to the guns. Well, as I'm orbiting, waiting for them to get ready, so I put down a smoke, a 23 just unloads on me. A pair of them. They come down and there's this giant command center. Antenna's coming out of one end and I assume a barracks, because there were a little bit of squirrels running around like chipmunks out there, out of the barracks. And I says, okay guys, change target. We're going to take out this site first so that we can go back to doing our business. So in a curvilinear approach, right? That's the fighter pilots know what that is. And boom, boom, bracket both ends. It says hit my smokes, boom, boom, that command center. And we knocked out about 75 guys out of that hooch and about another 30 guys out of the gun pits. It says, okay, let's get back to doing our business. And all of a sudden the sand comes up. And you know what that rattlesnake sounds like still? And the strobe's going like this saying, there's a guy here. Okay. You know that photo I still had? Let's go find him. Because he's a threat. And I didn't want him or my bombers to be exposed to him. So I'm going to go find him and then maybe we can get some hard bombs in to take out the sand site. So as I'm going up the river to the north, about 500 feet, 100 to 600 knots, 5 to 6 G's wings white, I roll over the first sand site at the five click spot, Star David. Classic Star David. Empty. Good news, just like the photo, empty. As I come up to the second one, wow, this guy is locked on, the rattle is rattling, and the launch light comes on followed by two big clouds of dirt coming up. That guy's active. No shit, right? Now I'm in a defensive turn because these guys are coming right off the rail. Now the only thing I knew, the enemy quite well, is that as long as those boosters were on, those missiles were not a threat to me because they got to drop off the guidance antennas to get the information to guide the missile. So they go by close to board. I mean close to board, bracketers. And I just pop up over the top of that guy and spin. And I call ABCCC and I says, I've got an active sand site. I'm over the top of it. He cannot do anything to me. Bring in some guys from Da Nang rock eyes, CVUs and hard bombs. Well, as I looked at that a little bit more, they had to come up the valley just like I did. That guy could shoot at them or if they come in from the beach they could shoot at them. So my intent was to neutralize that sand site. What does an F-4D have on it? No gun this time. I kind of thought we were using it too much. I had nine Willie Peats left, two AIM-7s and two tanks. My intent was to spin, point, do east, walk on, put the speed gauge such that it looks at the ground as a target, boresight and boresight two AIM-7s into that sand site. The expanding rod will do a lot of damage. Once we get some fuel cooking, follow it up with the Willie Peats. Really make a hell of a fire. And as I'm going supersonic over the top just in the tanks just to see if there's any residual fuel that we can get to burn. That was a master plan. I know the enemy. Okay, Intel, listen up now. Not only did they not tell us that the sands were there, but there was a top secret manned by the Russians, SA-2F, the very first optically guided site. And my buddies down at 7th Air Force were in the skiff. It really wasn't a skiff at that time, but you know what I'm talking about. And they were listening to the Russians talk about how they're going to blow 601 and Ralph and I out of the sky. Classified top secret, secret no-form. Did they tell us about it? No. Ralph makes a call. Sam. Well, no shit. I mean, we were just in a battle with one. The site that was to the north was not launching. The site to the south of me was empty. I was very confident. It blows the ass-end off the airplane, flat-spin, in the chute, land in the rice paddy. Now, most of my sorties were flown in Laos, where the path at Laos were not taken prisoners. The response was a machete to the head. And so I always carried four hand grenades with me. Two on the chest belt, two on the gun boat, and leaded holopoints in the pistol. Because if I went down in Laos, there was going to be some hell to pay before I died from my country. As I landed in the rice paddy, right in the crotch of the dykes, there's two squads of regular North Vietnamese coming at me. And the guy here on the left has his nine out, and he's planking right at my feet. So again, I talked to the Duke, and I says, Duke, what do you think? I think we ought to pull a couple of pins, chuck them like this, and go out in a blaze of glory, or should discretion of valor live to fight another day? And the Duke says, short finger, it's pretty damn simple. Let's live to fight another day. Because I had to untape the pins. My army buddy told me that those, I think they're M9 grenades. The fuses on them are as unreliable as anything else. You might get one that go off in your hand and one not go off. So we left the grenades alone, immediately captured. So, can I tell you, oh, damn, if I had only done this, if I could have got a spot where I could hide for a second, maybe I could have got a 2,000 pounder to make me a foxhole. That's a 30 meter crater. Okay, that's a pretty big foxhole, and I could jump in that damn thing and boy, I would have survived, and I'd been like true grip, you know? Bring them on. But it didn't happen. Ralph, my back-seater, obviously goes out first, floats longer, and lands in the village. And there's a villager that's got one of these blunderbuss Plymouth guns. And he points up at Ralph, misses Ralph. Soon as Ralph hits the ground, though, he turns it around and uses it as a sledgehammer and cold cocks him, knocks him out. We're immediately captured. The guys that were with me were marching me just like this, AK-47s in my back, and the guy stops me right in front of a trench, and he cycles around through the AK. And I look up and I say, God, the Almighty Father, I'm about to die here. Die on a land that nobody will know where and how I died. But I pray that you have mercy upon my soul. The guy then turned me to parallel that trench. And I turn around and told the Lord, I says, thank you, Lord, for saving me, for I knew that I would survive. Where we at, Juss? Sir. So it took about two days from where you crashed to you got to Hanoi. So tell us a little bit about that process when you were separated into different interrogation rooms from Ralph, your navigator. Can you describe that initial intake at the Hanoi Hilton? Well, Ken knows what that rides like. Some guys had to walk it. Some of us were lucky enough to jeep transport. But when we pulled up in front of the Green Door, and I'd never, ever seen that Green Door, and I told Ralph, we're at the Hilton, man. We're here. And they put us separated us and put us in a separate quiz rooms and asking all times of questions. And I ride up, I told Ralph, this is our story and we're going to stick with it. And the story was this was our very first mission. We weren't even supposed to be in that area, but I got lost. And oh my God, we ended up getting shot down. Very simple. And I screwed that one up. Ralph says, good plan. And so we stuck with that for this initial quiz section. And he goes, I don't believe that. I said, sorry, sir, that's all I know. You know, started out with the initial name, rank, zero, number, day to birth. But I had a felt like I had to give them something, and so I gave them the most simple thing that we could do that's why I was now a prisoner of war. That worked for 90 days worked for 90 days solitary confinement as a new guy, the longest guy in the solitary quizzes as Ken knows is on and off, day in, day out all night, day and there was this little lieutenant with a vein right here. And if he didn't get the answer that he wanted it would pop out. Now the thing was this is 1972, not 1966. And so basically hands off. I knew he just wanted to reach across the table and choke the crap out of me. And he was asking me about laser guided bombs. And I go, I don't know anything about laser guided bombs. And he says, here's the laser guided bomb. Tell me about it. I said, I don't know anything. Then he lays a sheet of paper on the table. And it's a copy of my form 5. And it has the fact that I've flown 350 missions, got over a thousand hours of combat both tours in the 433rd Techno 5 Squadron, which is the laser guided bomb squadron. Oh, that new guy out here just rooting around ain't going to cut it anymore. I said, I still don't know anything about the LGBTs. Now the odd thing was at the back of the quiz room were blue epilepsy in Caucasians. My guest Russians. They wanted to know what hell's going on here. I still played the village and it said I don't know anything about laser guided bomb. And he wasn't touching me, so therefore I wasn't going to give him squat. On the 10th of May an infamous day for the 433rd Tactical Fire Squadron when DL Smith took 8 F4Ds to Hanoi and dropped the doomer bridge with laser guided bombs. That night long clothes dragged me out of the camp. Oops, ain't supposed to do that, right camp? We can't leave the camp. That was our plums. Okay, where are we going? Go to another camp walk in and there's the bug and straps and bars. The bug's a little interrogator about this tall 5th helmet, dark glasses. Straps and bars is about as tall as I am. And the other guy is about 5'9". The bug's sitting at a table and I'm 6' plus. They throw me down on the floor and bug now looking down upon me says, tell me about the LGBT. I said, I don't know squat about LGBTs. What do you mean? They grab me up and straps and bars right here takes the AK-47 he had and he bangs me right here and over here on the wall which is rugged rock jagged brick rock to about the shoulder height plus bangs me into that thing necessarily I go down to the ground they drag me back up tell me about LGBT don't know shit. Back down on the ground straps and bars goes over to the corner and starts to break out the ropes. And in Ken's case they were manacled and roped between their biceps make your elbows touch and then up and over the top of their shoulders to their ankles very painful right Ken? cuts off the blood supply, shoulders, gut, diaphragm, the whole nine yards mine was a little bit different because what they did was ouch I was flex cuffed like this and then took the ropes between my biceps and made the elbows touch anybody want to put them there? I mean I realize that I'm a little bit older a little bit rounder but they don't go there but they will right Ken damn square they'll go there and then up and over the top and what you do is rotate out rotate over the top dislocate shoulders very painful when the bug asked me again LGBTs I go I still don't know anything straps and bars walks over picks up a fan bill and I knew that at that instant if I lost control of this through pain I'd be toast I would say things that I would not normally want to say so I tell the bug as I'm like this verily breathing maybe I know something he goes well tell me about the LGBT I says I can't because I can hardly breathe the pain is so extreme I need to be out of this position when they took the ropes off and the blood started to flow back in right Ken painful as going in maybe in fact more painful I spend another 10 days in solitary confinement and heartbreak great place to be quizzing almost 24-7 about LGBTs and the thing that got me and my attention was when I stole the bug maybe I know something about LGBTs in my mind's eye I could see the bug go yet another Yankee airport falls in my heart of my heart I was looking up to the bug and saying bug I have won because I'm going to shovel so much crap up your backside because you don't know anything about LGBTs so I can say anything about nothing you did at times 3 multiply it times 10 that the bomb can't do it was very effective they thought they were getting something and they were getting squat that's number 7 in the day in the jailhouse 16 for 10 May is he? thank you for taking the time to share that part of your time there at Hanoi kind of transitioning towards the end and you knew that you were going to be released can you share a little bit with the class what that felt like how did you know and at what point did you really recognize that you were coming home okay the Ken and the guys know for sure they've been jerked around so many times that oh you're going to be released only to find out that that was a joke but on the 27th of January 1973 Kissinger signed the Peace Accords in Paris and as soon as that happened things changed you were still up in the dog patch I think up north Cal Bang were you at the Hilton it was the first time that we got out of the cells as a group we could talk through the bamboo to the old guys I actually got some face on face time and our job is new guys in room 5 while in captivity was to provide as much information we had a guy that worked at Boine on the Saturn 5 we told him about the launch in 69 to the moon we told him about yep hair is now long skirts are now short and things have really changed a lot so we tried to prep them as best we could through messaging and talking direct about getting them ready to come home they also fatten us up I don't know about Ken but I went in at 185 come out at 150 and it was probably down to about 130 prior to getting fattened back up a lot of soybean cake a lot of salmon stuff first time we got medical attention as crude as it was but we got some medical attention Ken had boils out the wazoo we had a guy in our room that probably had over about 100 on his body and we called him Mr. Pussman because it was just a solid war we used toothpaste to help medicated spots but the deal was is that we knew we were coming home they moved us the new guys the FNGs from the Hilton back over to the zoo getting the sequence ready to come out the first guys come out on president's day February the 12th 1973 4 March 28 March is when I come out the last flight was on the 29th of March and when we finally got on the bus with our little clothes bag we knew it was probably true could guarantee it but we knew it was probably closer than what it had been before and we stopped short of the staging area and it looked like the moon around us I mean my buddies the B-52s lit up and wiped out the rail yard the area around the airfield it just looked like the moon and I tell you what we were silently then we transitioned from control from north vietnamese to the general that was there the greatest and as we were walking out would you ever want to come back here I said I'll fly one mission with a B-61 and I'll give Laos some beach time because we're going to move high-fung and everything towards Laos it kind of chuckled the greatest day when you saw that picture of us all on the airplane that's our flight that's 28 March flight if you go to President Nixon's library in Yorba Linda it covers an entire wall about the size of this and it's our pictures Bill Talley is the guy in the middle with the big smile and his mouth wide open in his hands and I'm just at his right five o'clock with the same big smile when we got out of an airplane we were a military discipline we marched, sat and waited only when the aircraft commander says you are now feet wet out of North Vietnamese airspace did we erupt into the screams and joys of freedom and Ken knows what freedom is about and being denied freedom it's for you to ensure we maintain that freedom and that we'll never leave anybody behind we'll bring them home we'll bring them home it is Josh sir we're about almost 15 minutes left so I encourage everybody to really read these interviews because there's a lot more to this story but we do want to give our class here an opportunity to ask some questions so please at this time feel free to ask some questions and if y'all don't have any we have more questions if you don't talk to me I will so let's open up a little bit I know Adams here from Oklahoma State I've been with him for four years so he's heard my story for four years straight Dan Hughes is here from Vance and he's heard my story about three times if there's a question great if not I'll spend a little bit more time talking about the war sir we have a cadet furino here at the wall with a question for you you can move to the mic yeah good morning sir thank you for being here with us I was reading through your interviews in the book and I noticed defiance came up multiple times and it was integral to your mindset as a POW and even after you came back and I was hoping you could just elaborate on that for us defiance I'll give you some examples of defiance I'll use Admiral Starkdale the CAG he had been beaten and tortured to make a press conference to sign some document when the pain got to such that he says yes I'll go they threw him back in the cell let him get his bearings back and when he went back to the cell he had a stool and he started beating his face with the stool he was bloody in his face and when he thought that wasn't enough he started beating his face against the cement walls in the cell and when the guards came in to drag him out for this interview they 180'd out he was defiant he was outside of the box and denied the enemy the propagandized himself in his values on another instance the CAG again beaten and tortured for another conference thrown back to the cell and in the corner of his cell he had an old rusty razor blade and the CAG went like this and cut his wrist and his statement was I would rather die than submit to the enemy the CAG Medal of Honor other instances were prominent throughout the case and the senior leadership the SROs really defined the word defiance don't give in be strong have faith in your fellow prisoner of war have faith in your country and have faith in God and with that you will have the strength to survive defiance is critical never give up for if you lose this you're dead the body will survive all the pain and the agony and starvation and the torture but you gotta have this and that's what we're paying you for to be the smartest, brightest future leaders of our great nation you had a question kind of short and sweet my wife got a call from Senator Kennedy I don't like that thought but says watch television tonight and that was my shoot down and then release she was watching us when we got off the airplane and Clark and the tears the tears across the nation were paralyzed flowing in 591 guys brought the nation together the first time in the Vietnam war that the people of our great nation were in sync with Operation Homecoming my integration back into the world was simple that's just a small T.D. by some place I can handle that six years they have Alvarez eight and a half years Robbie Reisner seven and a half years four years in solitary confinement in a cell blocked out four steps by three steps by four steps no light how do you survive faith in your fellow prisoner of war the ability to communicate leadership among your fellow prisoners and again faith in God will get you through any other questions sir we have another one here at the mic okay go ahead can't hear you so you mentioned communicating with your fellow prisoners of war could you speak to those communication tactics how you kept in touch with the other POWs in the camp well yeah I remember the first time I tried to tap code to the guys at the zoo and I'm using the quadratic five by five drop out to K so it's pretty simple call them in row and I go find R in my mind and tap R and then I find 45 for U tap U and then you find O and C for K are you okay what I get back I mean these guys have been tapping for seven years okay we were texting in 1965 they were professionals they could do a hundred words a minute and I'm back here in square one of so it took me a while when we had line of sight this communication was quite easy cut out having to go from numbers to letters or letters to numbers to your finger making the tap other communications were critical our Thai counterparts our Laos and counterparts our South Vietnamese counterpart and Hague doll Seaman Hague doll were free in the camp as they swept and they would sweep the tap code sweep the tap code when the stuff came out of China from the north in the winter everybody was snotting and spitting and coughing and you could sneeze the tap code communicate communication is critical anything else sir I do have someone go into the mic okay how are we doing on time this will be our last question sir you got the last one man thank you sir major smith from filet d'etre we've talked a lot in this class about the need for modernization someone who experienced first-hand the post-Vietnam modernization going from the f4 to the f15 and establishment of the weapons school and things like that do you think we did it right then and do you think the air force and the DOD is still doing it right today damn right damn right at the close of the Vietnam war red flag was brought up with speed where guys were taught combat for the first 10 missions so that they could survive the threat we wanted guys like Mike Lane to be shot down on his first mission so it was a prep program we brought on the Gomers that's the t38s of the time then the f5s now the f16s and the eagles eagles are no longer there as Gomers but real air-to-air threats the ground threats grew from almost nothing to a massive array out on that Dallas range to have spent six years as an instructor at Dallas and the weapons school I can guarantee you we did it right now we have weapons school programs for all systems so that you can integrate your system with everybody else's system so that you know the big picture for one of these days you're going to be like General Holland or General Siltan commanders in the field information is critical communications is critical and it's up to you to solve those problems today as our future leaders don't set back on your haunches get up on your toes and press forward innovate and please God for anything else think outside of the box get out of the box and think and solve problems where we at? Lieutenant Colonel Shortfriger we want to thank you for being with us today for sharing your experiences and your leadership insights and your story thank you so much thank you thank you