(gentle upbeat music) - On the twin, you add power slowly, gears down, two knots to flaps.

There you go.

(airplane humming) Once you get 57, 59 mile an hour, I should be able to rotate.

Gear up.

(button clicks) (alarm chiming) Oh, don't stall.

Miles out, you can see the runway.

You can see the ground going by.

We're getting close.

That's a tough approach here.

The lights should show up on the runway pretty soon.

Here we- - Stall.

- Oh, I can't stop.

- I did it, Chris, - You made it, you made it to the ground.

- That's something.

That is so realistic.

This is where I do 'em all.

And you can see how...

This shows how they're not bad even on a big screen.

This is how it starts out.

♪ One, two, three (upbeat rock music) My title in Vietnam was, they called it signal.

You were a signal guy.

It was photography.

It was a division of the Army.

In Vietnam, in the division that we had, there were nine photographers, and that's all they had.

So you were assigned a job by the captain of the group, and you'd go out, and you'd be on that assignment and try to get something newsworthy or human-interesting to show that we were there for some good, not just everybody getting shot up.

We were to show that the United States was there to help the people.

(upbeat rock music continues) I got done with a certificate of apprenticeship for photography, and two, three days later, I got a letter in the mail saying that "You're drafted."

I went to the courthouse, and I knew the people there.

The lady, Lois, said, "No, they're not drafting you, Gary.

You're too old, and you've been married three years."

She said, "Just forget it."

The next thing I got was a letter to go in for a physical, and I went there and said, "What are they doing here?"

She said, "Just a normal routine, Gary.

They'll send you home."

So I went in to all these young...

I was 24 years old, and these kids were...

It was a big draft session at that time.

These kids are 18 years old out of school.

Then they take you in a room after a while, and they're sitting in a room, all these guys, and the captain in Army comes in and says, "The Marine is gonna come in and pick who he wants for his troops for the Marines."

And then he leaves, and he takes those guys out, and the Army guy comes in and says, "The rest of you are in the Army."

I go, "Wait, wait a minute.

I'm too old.

I'm not supposed to be drafted.

I'm going home tonight."

So he went out of the room, and I mean, I'm falling apart there because, all of a sudden, I'm drafted.

But I went home, and I imagine there's tears, and I said, "Honey, I'm drafted.

I'm in the Army.

I'll be gone for two years."

Next morning I went to my boss.

We had school photography, printing to do.

I said, "I quit."

He said, "Why?"

I said, "They just drafted me."

He said, "They can't do that."

I said, "You tell them.

I'm gone in 30 days, and I gotta get Carol settled someplace because I'll be gone for 30 days.

I have no choice.

You're not gonna change it."

So that's how I got drafted.

So it was a big surprise to me at that age to get drafted that old because I was married three years, but we didn't have kids.

But they said it wouldn't have made a difference.

But generally, if you had children, they'd probably hold you back.

I got my certificate of apprenticeship program, and I got a draft notice the next day.

I mean, they couldn't have timed it better because it took a while at the state to get my certificate.

In the meantime, the draft notice say, "Oh, this guy's free now.

We're taking him."

So I get the letters within a day of each other, and I can't believe it, but that's what happened to me about getting drafted.

(mellow rock music) In photography, our job was to go out and do things that the Army wanted to show as part of the history.

So they were gonna teach us that if you were in Vietnam, you didn't wanna get captured.

And the way they would show that, they set up a mock prison camp.

They had a guy come in and teach you.

They gave you supplies someplace in the prairie.

They had the trail there for you.

So we went into the base camp where they captured 'em.

First thing they did is took your clothes off.

You stayed in your underwear, but they laid you in a mud hole.

It was all wet with dead snakes and junk like that, all rats and stuff in there.

And then if he came by and asked you a question, he'd take his foot and put your head down in the mud because nobody could answer any questions.

They never knew anything.

So then they'd take you in the basement, and they'd sit you on a barrel.

And you'd kneel on a barrel, and then he'd ask you questions.

You couldn't answer anything.

And they have a cattle prod.

They'd stick 'em in the belly.

And then they had a barrel they'd put over your head, a empty 55-gallon drum hung on a rope.

And his hands were tied, and they'd ask him questions.

He couldn't answer anything.

So they had a big beam, and they'd hit the barrel.

And then if he wouldn't answer questions, they'd take a M-14 rifle with blanks in it, and they'd blow it off right next to the barrel.

And the guys, their legs were shaking.

I'd be going, "I don't wanna do this."

I know I'm gonna be... Don't wanna do it.

I'm going, "I don't wanna do this."

And then at night, everybody had to stay.

It was cold in the prairie.

You stayed in your underwear in like a rabbit cage-type thing, all barbed wire.

Everybody was back to back.

You were tucked in this cage at night.

Well, I took a photo of that.

That went back to the base 'cause we turned our photo in every night.

And the captain went to the general and said, "This is going bad.

They're gonna kill some of our guys."

So they shut down the camp, so I never had to go through it, but I filmed everything.

(gentle rock music) We got to Vietnam.

We landed.

They took us by small boats, and they'd load us on shore.

And we go, "What's this?"

and they'd load us in Jeeps.

We went on trucks, and we went out to wherever our base camp was through the dirt and the dust.

We had no idea what was going on.

(chopper blades humming) We carried three cameras.

My camera's all taped up with masking tape because in Vietnam, the humidity, if you didn't put your camera in a little box with a bulb in it to keep it dry, your camera would be rusted, and the film would get very sticky.

So everything had to be in a box to keep it dry.

(gentle rock music continues) All the black-and-whites here, they were sent in on a roll, and we never knew what was good or bad other than they'd send... We'd get like a Stars and Stripes flyer, and they'd say, "Hey, you got your picture in there."

Otherwise, we never knew where anything went, whether it was good or bad, had no idea.

So with black-and-white, and you never knew if you got a good shot.

You were hoping if you got a good shot, it was good because it's not like today.

You can go look at it and say, "Hey, I better do it over."

I mean, when you think about what we got for all this, it's pretty spectacular in a way because you don't know what you're getting.

You're just guessing.

When you send the film in, you go like, "Oh, I got something."

So you never saw anything until it was all done.

Nowadays, you can go through and look at it.

(mellow rock music) The motion picture guy was with me because I watched him at night, and he watched me.

He would sleep at night for a while.

I'd stay awake, and then I'd sleep, and he'd stay awake because if they got up and moved during the night, we weren't part of a group.

We always tried to stay close by 'cause they would leave us.

And when we went on a duty, they didn't like us because they knew that if they're sending photographers and a motion picture guy, there's gonna be a big...

There's gonna be something going on here.

We're not just flying out to go out, take a little tour of the rice paddies.

So they didn't really like us with.

We were like a bad omen, like bringing an ambulance with.

(mellow rock music crescendos) We were never to walk in the dikes.

You were walking in the water all day, and you'd sleep on the dike at night in water.

So you were wet all the time.

And you had special boots for that, but they didn't help a lot 'cause your feet are wet all the time.

And so then you're not supposed to be on the dike walking, and I was eating rations.

I didn't wanna walk in the water with my camera, and I fell on a punji stick hole.

But I fell over the top of it, and the camera went in the water, and the guys hollered, "Bipes is walking on a dike."

Captain come back and said, "What did you just do?"

I'm crying.

I said, "My camera's in the water.

I lost a camera."

He said, "You're on the dyke.

You know what you could have done if you fell in that punji stick hole?

Look at the prod."

What they did is they put dung manure on the prods of the sticks.

Then when you fall, it'd puncture you.

Then you'd get an infection.

Most of the time you were saved, but I fell over it, and I go, "Oh, I was lucky."

(gentle electronic music) And you couldn't trust anybody in the village because you never knew who was gonna be carrying something, and you couldn't trust the kids outside the village because they'd have some explosives on there on them, and they would blow 'em up.

Not as bad as today, but in that time, you couldn't trust anybody, that they would have explosives on them, and they'd set 'em off.

Basically, I wanted to show the people what the life was really like over there because no one realized what these people went through.

One time they were taking a general through a tour in a Jeep, and I was in the village looking at things in the square.

And he come by, and he stopped the Jeep, and he said, "Troop, what are you doing here?"

I said, "I'm kind of a photographer.

He said, "Oh, okay, carry on."

And the other guy said, "Doesn't he have a pass?"

"He doesn't need a pass.

He doesn't need one.

He's doing a job."

So I could roam anywhere I wanted, but basically I had assignment to do.

(pensive music) the fact that I have an Army Commendation Medal was that I was a great water skier in my young days.

I did a lot of trick skiing and did some shows.

And when they went across the river, they went up to their neck in water, and they got backpacks on.

And these guys, they're scared of water.

And then Lieutenant say, "You guys gotta cross.

You gotta cross."

Well, they had no way of carrying the backpacks across.

They went down the water, and I said to the captain, "I'm a great swimmer.

Water doesn't bother me at all.

I don't have a backpack.

I'll put my camera down.

I'll help these guys get across."

So I helped all these guys get across, and then the captain awarded me a Commendation Medal for heroic action.

But when we got across the river, the saddest thing in my life, the guy in front of me, he was married.

I'm sorry, sorry.

He was married, and you have claymores go off, and you're never supposed to walk close to somebody within 10 feet 'cause if he trips a claymore, he'll get shrapnel on his rear end, which won't hurt you.

But the guy went across the river ahead of me.

I had just talked to him, and it hit him in the throat.

They laid him on the dike, and the medic was trying to help him, and he couldn't help him.

And I said, "The guy's not gonna make it."

First of all, one of the guys said, "He's done, he's done.

Just put him in a body bag."

And the guy was dead, right?

I never got his name.

I never knew him, never knew his name.

And it still haunt me today that I'd like to talk to his wife.

But he's gone.

And they just, they put him in a body bag.

They call a helicopter, and they say, "Okay, you guys are going.

You keep going on," because nobody could think about it.

I'm emotional, but you couldn't think about it 'cause you're in a daze, and you had to keep moving because they wouldn't let you think about it.

(poignant music) We would catch them after we'd overrun an area, and we'd capture them, and then we couldn't tell if he was a Vietnamese sympathizer or if he was really a Viet Cong.

After now we realized these people were Vietnamese people, the North Vietnamese and the higher-up people are telling me United States were bad.

So they just believed that we were bad people, get us out of there.

So they were just doing something they thought was good for them, which was bad for them because they were getting killed trying to do something they thought was good, which wasn't.

So we'd blindfold 'em, took them in, and if they had IDs, then they'd go through 'em.

They'd interpret 'em.

They'd give 'em to the Vietnamese people, and the Vietnamese would interpret 'em.

And we were very good to them.

The Vietnamese, we went with a Vietnamese colonel on a mission, and they caught some guys.

You'll catch 'em.

They'd come in and give up, and they put 'em in a row.

And a Vietnamese colonel came up behind the guy with his pistol on the back of the guy's head.

And he's talking to 'em in Vietnamese, and the guy's shaking.

I mean, can you imagine you're so scared, you're shaking like that?

And we're talking to him, "Put it down, put it down."

There was one in Vietnam where the guy got on film.

He shot the guy.

But we talked the guy out of not shooting him.

We talked him, begged him, "Do not shoot him," because he was... And we didn't wanna be there to witness that.

We didn't know if he was bad.

He was noted as a bad guy, but we don't know.

He was gonna shoot him.

You say one thing wrong, Vietnamese people didn't horse around with you.

(birds chirping) (chopper blades humming) We had a doctor, a medical doctor, and we had a Vietnamese doctor.

And he would give all the kids shots.

They all had to come in and get shots.

All the parents would bring their kids in to get vaccinated and all that and then the people also.

And then there's pictures in the book where, one picture, I was taking a picture, and the little girl was going, "Ah."

And that's a cute picture of screaming at getting a shot because that's what we did.

We wanted to show the United States, the Vietnamese, that we were doing some good over there.

They had a hospital.

We repainted the whole hospital, fixed it all up for 'em so they had a hospital in the village.

And we did all that for 'em, and then, and there's one picture in the book, an old guy.

I'm 81 now, but to me, he was like, he had to be, to me, 70 years old or older.

He was watching us take pictures of this hospital.

And so we did a lot of good for the village people.

- Because of our position next to the village, we feel that we can get in here and do civic action work with the people, and thereby reach most of the people in the district.

What we try to do mainly is create projects for these people in coordination with the district and village officials that are going to be, number one, long-lasting, and number two, projects in which the people are going to derive a lasting benefit.

(tranquil music) - What you see on TV that time was all the shooting and all the massacring stuff.

They never showed the people.

They never let the United States people know that there were people they were protecting.

I wanted to show at home that there were real people there and that we had friends over there.

They liked us, and I wanted to show what the people were like, what their lives were like, how hard they had it, and how easy we had it at home.

(mellow rock music) The chaplain lived next door to us, and his assistant was with us.

And I went to church quite a bit 'cause I got to know the chaplain real well.

And I get emotional, but in church, they'd say... God (speaks faintly).

The chaplain would always say, "Gary, what hymn you wanna sing?"

"I want 'The Old Rugged Cross.'"

And a couple months ago, the church sang "The Old Rugged Cross," and I fell apart.

(laughs) I went back in time.

I went all the way back.

I did it twice I told the pastor, Pastor Amy.

I said, "You hit home to me."

I said, "That was my hymn in the chapel," 'cause a lot of guys were really religious over there because you had nothing else to look forward to 'cause you hoped that God would take care of you.

And out there, you prayed a lot because you go like, "I hope God takes care of me because who else is gonna do it?"

You had to have faith that you were gonna make it.

And I think we had God going for us.

I don't care what you say because in all the helicopter crashes I had in civilian life and the airplanes I took down, God said my wife's gotta stick with me the rest of her life.

She's not gonna get by getting without me.

So we've been married 61 years.

So I think God gave me a chance to come home to pass this story on.

(tender guitar music) (Gary chattering) - Oh, Maine?

- Yeah.

- Some more?

- Yeah.

(spoon clattering) - I don't know I can do it with this.

- I'll see you a hug with his jelly.

(crew member laughs) This arm doesn't work very well.

- [Crew] Aw.

- Nope, it's swelling up a little bit, but it's okay.

- We should get that ice- - I think as a photographer, it's bringing you that the only history you have is you can talk about it.

Somebody walks away, they forget about it.

But as a photographer, when I got home, I was in Brownton, and I went to a lot of the meetings with ladies and men, people.

And I had a slide program, and I would show 'em the pictures of the people.

I had basically a slide program.

I had slides left, and that's how I got these pictures.

So I'd have a slide projector, and I'd go to the meeting and explain to 'em about Vietnam, what it was like over there.

So that's why I felt that I have all these pictures.

Where are they going to go when I'm gone?

We can't lose that history.

(slide reel clicking) I want them to see what went on.

I think they need to know what us guys went through.

The World War II guys and Korea, they don't know what they went through.

They have a museum thing in Washington, DC, but they don't have any real good pictures of showing what they do.

All I can do is show that there's people there.

Who cares about the combat?

Everybody's getting combat.

But I wanted to show that there are really people there that were people living there that we should have protected.

And that's just one village.

That's just one village.

Look at Saigon.

Look at all that.

I just feel that it's important to show that I lived this, I made it through it, and I'm happy that I made it.

I wanna show you that I'm happy to be alive and showing it.

Sorry.

(poignant string music) I didn't wanna go.

I did not wanna go.

I didn't go to Canada, but I go, "I have to go because this is important.

I'm going for it."

And now I'm proud that everybody has a freedom.

They don't know what freedom we have if we hadn't gone and fought for ourselves, whether it's Japan or any other place.

(poignant string music continues) My book I want to go on forever and ever, ever to say, yeah, it's history.

And I think the thing it's so popular now is because we were forgotten coming back from Vietnam.

We were bad guys.

When we came back to San Francisco and even Hawaii, they did not like us.

We were basically taboo people.

They'd go like, "You guys are nasty.

You are not... You don't deserve to be here."

But you just live with it.

You go... And now it's hard to take the attention.

I feel guilty, but I wear my hat only because I get to meet a veteran.

Every time I get to meet a veteran, I carry my USBs with.

I go, "Here's a card for you.

Wanna look at the book?"

And the guys tell me their history of what they did and all that.

You get to hear their story.

(pensive music) Nothing until the last few years, didn't mean anything, until they started recognizing us.

I felt guilty at first.

I didn't wanna till I realized Julie said, my daughter Julie, "Let's do a book, Dad.

You got so much history here.

If it wouldn't be for her, I wouldn't have the book.

I have a hard time trying to sell somebody the book.

I want 'em to have the book if I could give it for free, so I decided... Julie was not really in favor of me doing this.

She said, "Dad, they can copy anything they want."

I said, "Julie, let 'em copy it.

I don't really care.

If they think that picture's important, and they wanna hang it on the wall, hang it on the wall."

"What if they sell 'em?"

"I don't really care."

So I took 'em on the USB card, and I started making 'em, and I started handing 'em out.

I have 495 photos that I didn't put in the book.

(poignant string music) - So many years have gone by.

It seems like a different lifetime.

You know, it's hard to imagine that he was there when you see all of this stuff and what he went through.

And, yeah, it's, yeah, like it's a different lifetime.

So much time has gone by, it's hard to believe, hard.

(poignant music continues) - Life can be short, and enjoy every day because you don't know what tomorrow is gonna happen.

And all those guys over there are the same way.

You live today, and then tomorrow you go out, and I hope and pray I come back tonight.

I think every day was important.

We don't think of it today 'cause you go, "Oh, tomorrow's tomorrow."

But when you're there, the existence of life is daily.

It might even be during the night if they martyr you.

So every day you woke up, you go like, "I'm alive today.

Can I make it tomorrow?"

And all of us guys had calendars with squares in 'em like 365 days.

So we crossed out a square every day.

So then when you got the thing almost filled, you go, "I'm getting home," 'cause every day your goal was to put another square, color another square 'cause that meant you were here today.

And the next day you'd say, "I hope I can color one in."

And I want them to know that there was some good people over there we were trying to help.

I mean, I want them to say we did some good over there for some people.

We were fighting for those people.

It wasn't just blood and gusts and things like that.

We were doing something good over there, we thought.

(poignant music continues) (slide reel clicking) (upbeat rock music) (slide reel continues clicking) - [Announcer] This program is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.