Latest Vietnam veterans memorial Podcast Episodes
The Hero in Your Midst
Echoes of the Vietnam War - May 09, 2024 14:44 - 45 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsAlfred Coke served 730 days in Vietnam and he estimates that he received enemy fire on 400 of them. He was wounded multiple times, and he has both the scars and the decorations to prove it. He never gave much thought to his own trauma until he formed an unlikely friendship with Allan Danroth, a C...
Cherries Writer
Echoes of the Vietnam War - April 24, 2024 15:07 - 49 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsIn 1970-71, John Podlaski spent twelve months in Vietnam — seven with the Wolfhounds of the 25th Infantry Division, and five with the Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division. John never dreamed that he’d become a writer, but his first novel, Cherries, led to five more books and a hugely p...
Fortunes
Echoes of the Vietnam War - April 11, 2024 21:02 - 54 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsForty-nine years ago this month, thousands of South Vietnamese children were airlifted to the U.S. and other Western countries in a mass evacuation known as Operation Babylift. In this episode, you’ll hear the incredible story of one of those children, including her reunion — 44 years later — wit...
Making an Impact at Home [Remastered]
Echoes of the Vietnam War - March 29, 2024 13:00 - 40 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsNext spring will mark 50 years since Saigon fell, an anniversary that will likely spin up more coverage and conversation about the Vietnam War than we’ve seen in decades. Much of that attention will probably focus on how the war ended. We've decided, instead, to emphasize the countless ways that ...
Di Di Mau
Echoes of the Vietnam War - March 14, 2024 12:36 - 59 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsDarren Walton arrived in Vietnam in 1970 and served a full tour on Marine Corps Reconnaissance teams. In this episode, he breaks a 50-year silence to talk about being a Recon Marine, to explain why he hid his Vietnam experience for decades, and to thank the men who routinely risked their lives to...
We build. We fight.
Echoes of the Vietnam War - February 28, 2024 15:23 - 53 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsTrained for combat as well as construction, the Seabees of the U.S. Navy have been distinguishing themselves with their heroism since 1942. There are 85 Seabees memorialized on The Wall, including one Medal of Honor recipient. In this episode, we’ll hear from two Seabees who served in Vietnam.
Heart
Echoes of the Vietnam War - February 14, 2024 13:12 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsA few years ago, Lee Ellis noticed that he and the other POWs who made it home from Vietnam were outperforming the general population in the area of romantic longevity. He looked into the reasons why that might be true, and then he published his findings in a book called Captured By Love: Inspiri...
Red Eagle
Echoes of the Vietnam War - January 31, 2024 20:44 - 55 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsRed Eagle Rael’s tour started in February of 1968 in the Mekong Delta. The guys in his unit called him “Chief,” a common nickname for Native Americans serving in Vietnam. Highly decorated, Rael is a kind of living legend in New Mexico. In this episode we visit Picuris Pueblo, where Red Eagle gran...
Aloha
Echoes of the Vietnam War - January 17, 2024 18:55 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsHawaii holds a special place in the hearts and minds of many Vietnam veterans. We'll explore the state’s popularity as a destination for GIs on R&R, and a Vietnam combat veteran -- now living in Hawaii -- remembers the bloody battle that left him with a debt of gratitude that he works every to re...
River Rats (Part 2)
Echoes of the Vietnam War - December 14, 2023 19:59 - 46 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsIn episode 64, we introduced you to the Mobile Riverine Force, a joint Army-Navy task force that patrolled the brown waters of the Mekong Delta in an effort to disrupt the movement of enemy troops, weapons, and supplies. In this episode, we’ll go a little deeper with stories of enemy engagement, ...
River Rats (Part 1)
Echoes of the Vietnam War - December 01, 2023 17:26 - 43 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsCommander Task Force 117 was a joint Army-Navy effort to disrupt the movement of communist troops, weapons, and supplies through the Mekong Delta. It was the first time since the Civil War that American soldiers and sailors operated under a joint command. In this episode, veterans of the Mobile R...
Healing Wounds (Part 2)
Echoes of the Vietnam War - November 17, 2023 16:27 - 47 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsDiane Carlson Evans picks a ten-year fight, facing enormous resistance from corners both surprising and unsurprising, resulting in the first memorial on the National Mall to honor the service of women in wartime.
Healing Wounds (Part 1)
Echoes of the Vietnam War - November 02, 2023 16:23 - 59 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsAfter her tour as a combat nurse in Vietnam, Diane Carlson Evans came home in 1969 to a country she hardly recognized. In 1982, a visit to Washington, DC started an avalanche that surged inside her for more than a decade, culminating in the dedication of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial thirty years ...
Advising the Ruff Puffs
Echoes of the Vietnam War - October 19, 2023 22:41 - 44 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsFrom 1968 to 1972, Mobile Advisory Training (MAT) teams worked alongside the South Vietnamese Regional Forces and Popular Forces — known as Ruff Puffs — who were the units responsible for protecting their local villages and hamlets against communist attacks. Bob Blair, who led MAT Team 44 in 1971...
An Unbreakable Bond
Echoes of the Vietnam War - October 05, 2023 12:36 - 38 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsPeggy and Maryann were just little girls when a 1969 helicopter crash in Binh Dinh province changed their lives forever. The stories they heard from the adults around them were less than clear... and a long way from comforting. But kids grow up. And when they do, they write their own stories.
POSTSCRIPT: Nina and Bubba... and Bubba
Echoes of the Vietnam War - September 27, 2023 14:55 - 14 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsEver since Mike Stubbs left the Army in 1968, he has been trying to find the family of Luther Smith, who was among 64 infantrymen killed at the Battle of Ong Thanh. In this postscript, you’ll hear excerpts from the first-ever live conversation between Luther’s daughter and his best friend. Visit...
Gus Kappler Is Still Angry
Echoes of the Vietnam War - September 15, 2023 15:04 - 46 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsGus Kappler laughs a lot. If you met him in line at the grocery store, you’d never guess that he spent a year in Vietnam as a real-life Hawkeye Pierce performing unimaginable surgeries on young men with unspeakable injuries. It made him angry, and that hasn’t changed. What has changed is the way ...
Angel Fire
Echoes of the Vietnam War - August 31, 2023 14:00 - 30 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsIn a remote mountain town, a father turns his devastating personal loss into a place for public healing and remembrance.
CHOOK
Echoes of the Vietnam War - August 17, 2023 16:27 - 34 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsU.S. and Australian forces have fought side-by-side in every major conflict since World War I, and some 60,000 Australian service members served in the Vietnam War. August 18 is Vietnam Veterans Day in Australia, and in honor of that commemoration we bring you the personal story of an Australian ...
The Red Scarf
Echoes of the Vietnam War - July 25, 2023 15:30 - 59 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsWhile pursuing his lifelong ambition of becoming an infantry platoon leader, John Hedley overcame a lot of obstacles. His reward at the end of that long, difficult road was a tour in Vietnam starting in July of 1969, where he would lead the Army’s legendary red-scarved recon platoon known as Fox ...
POSTSCRIPT: Denny and the Sculptor
Echoes of the Vietnam War - July 14, 2023 15:59 - 11 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsIn EP55 we shared the story of Dennis Lobbezoo, one of 142 service members whose names are on the wall and who were born on the fourth of July. In this postscript, his then-fiancée Joyce Washburn shares the story of Denny and the surgeon-turned-sculptor who was inspired to cast the young Marine’s...
Born on the Fourth of July
Echoes of the Vietnam War - July 04, 2023 14:03 - 46 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsJuly 4th is the birthday of the United States of America. It’s also the birthday of 142 service members whose names are on The Wall at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. This is the story of one of them — Dennis Lobbezoo of Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is remembered by his then-fiancée, Joyce Washburn....
Tunnel Rats (Part 2)
Echoes of the Vietnam War - June 21, 2023 20:12 - 36 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsIn the wake of Operation Cedar Falls, tunnel-rat duties in the 1st Infantry Division were transferred to the 1st Engineer Battalion where men began to specialize in it. In this episode, we’ll hear personal stories from members of the Diehard Tunnel Rats. [WARNING: This episode contains vivid desc...
Tunnel Rats (Part 1)
Echoes of the Vietnam War - June 07, 2023 18:07 - 30 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsCommunist forces in South Vietnam used vast networks of subterranean tunnels as hiding places, bomb shelters, weapons factories, food stores, headquarters… even surgical hospitals. In this episode we’ll introduce you to the 1st Infantry Division’s dedicated team of Tunnel Rats — combat engineers ...
Unwavering
Echoes of the Vietnam War - May 10, 2023 15:17 - 33 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsThere are more than 72,000 U.S. service members still unaccounted for from World War II -- a war we fought in for four years. The number missing after 20 years of combat in Afghanistan? Zero. That’s no accident; it represents a dramatic shift in policy and priorities, another unheralded legacy of...
No Words Necessary
Echoes of the Vietnam War - April 26, 2023 18:45 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsFor the tens of thousands of families who received tragic news during the Vietnam War, their lives were profoundly changed at that moment and their reactions to the news covered the full range of human grief. Imagine being the person who rang doorbell after doorbell for months on end, triggering ...
Familiar Voices, Surprising Updates
Echoes of the Vietnam War - April 12, 2023 13:58 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsTo celebrate the fiftieth episode of our podcast, we reconnect with a few of the people who have shared their stories with us over the past two years. They talk about what they’ve been up to since, and we discover some surprising, real-life connections resulting from the podcast.
Operation Babylift
Echoes of the Vietnam War - March 30, 2023 17:11 - 47 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsThroughout the month of April 1975, in a mass evacuation known as Operation Babylift, around 2,000 infants and children were airlifted from orphanages in South Vietnam to the United States. In this episode, we bring you stories from the first and last flights of that operation — one ending in tra...
Humping The Boonies
Echoes of the Vietnam War - March 15, 2023 17:30 - 52 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsOf the 58,281 names on the wall, two-thirds of them died in 1967, ‘68, and ‘69. Robin Bartlett landed in I Corps right smack in the middle of that period. His training sergeant at Camp Evans said to him, “your life expectancy is less than 90 days.” In this episode, Robin talks about the realities...
Repo Depot
Echoes of the Vietnam War - March 02, 2023 05:00 - 38 minutes ★★★★★ - 78 ratingsFor soldiers joining the Vietnam War after the initial buildup, the first stop in Vietnam was usually at a replacement battalion — commonly referred to as a “repo depot” — where they would wait to be assigned to a unit. Those few hours or days unfolded in a strange kind of limbo where hot emotion...
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