American Hero's: US Army and Vietnam Veteran David Harker

The American dream is built on freedom, and that freedom comes at a cost. American Heroes Stories presented by Life Liberty Happiness is a new series honoring the men and women who've sacrificed to protect that dream. We're proud to play a small part in preserving their stories for future generations. Life Liberty Happiness, a media squatch podcast, presents American heroes stories. All right, folks, welcome to the program. US Army in Vietnam veteran David Harker, welcome to the program. Thank you, Rian, good to be here. All right. Let's kick it off with where it all started? Where were you born and raised? Was born in Letchburg, Virginia, some of the eighth nineteen forty five. My parents just moved from Newport News at the end of the war. Head brother, older brother, and sister, and I was the third of the seventh. So the last five of us were born here in Lynchburg. Oh wow, and you went to Brookville I did? Yes? Yeah, great community, Yeah, schools, a life in church back then, that was a social life and the life of the community, real close knit community. Rofield Timberlake area. So what was high school like? Were you an athlete. Was played football, I played baseball and I ran track. Yes, now Brookville has a history in football. Now they've got a pretty good, pretty good track record of winning program. It was a good back in those days. We won the district championship my junior and senior years. Yeah. Oh wow. I was a starting half back and a linebacker at one hundred and thirty five pounds soaking wet. Probably I had to fire and me, but yeah, really good program. John on bucker Hill was a coach and clip what Kenna did the backfield? We had two coaches and wow yeah, and of course the district was all you wanted, no state playoffs or any regional playoffs or anything. So oh wow. Ye had Appomattox and AltaVista were the powers to deal with. Yeah they crazy, yeah kind of still are yeah in their groups. Yeah yeah, or at least Apthomatics for sure more recently. So, uh, what what got you into your like, what started your military service? What was your motivations? Uh? My unmotivation? I had academic problems of Virginia Tech and I had to sit out. Uh so young people listening, Uh, do not neglect your studies or get deterred Uh, so I had to sit out a quarter. Uh. They took me back at Mead Corporation, where I worked in the laborpool. I worked during the summer and laborpool and made enough money to pay my tuition to school. They took me back early. Flunked out of the winter quarter. So I was planning on re enrolling in the fall quarter and I come home one day. First I had to change my I had to tell the draft board that I was no longer a full time student. So my two S student deferment status changed to one A immediately. I came home on four or five weeks later and my mother handed me the greetings letter. Yeah, yeah, so off I went to the United States Army. So you were at Virginia Tech. So what year would that have been. It's nineteen sixty seven. I was in my third year. Wow in a business. Holy cow and man. One bad semester and next thing you know, you got a slip. Let me tell you a little story about that too. Because my father in law's old Navy veteran, my wife and I dated in high school. Didn't get married till I came back home because we'd cooking up somewhere along the way. But uh, I was still, you know, good friends with Clarence, great man. And so I went by and said, Clarence got my draft notice. He said, well, David, let me tell you something. If you go before you go get inducted, you know, into the military, you can go join any branch of service you would want to. I said, well, I didn't know that. He said, yep. And my advice would be go join the United States Army because you'll have three squares meal, three square meals a day, you'll have a warm bunk to sleep in every night, and nobody will be shooting at you. So I used to tell that story in the pow camp and the guys would laugh and they said, why didn't you follow his advice? I said, well, when I found out that i'd have to extend, you know, you know, for another year, I only wanted to do two years and go home. So I ended up with an involuntary extension along the way. I did more than my two year draft years. All right? So where after? Where it's basic training at Ford Bragg, North Carolina, North Carolina. Ye, yeah, and a eight two best damn company on the hill. Sergeant, Let's go, sergeant, So were you I mean, were you terrified? Were you fearless? What I mean, what are your emotions at that stage? No, I was just waking up real quick. I said, oh, okay, here I am. And when I'm at a train, I'm thinking, hmmm, I had a better deal of Virginia Tech than this, you know, getting up at five in the morning, going out double time march and you know about an hour and coming back and cleaning the barracks up. Yeah, yep, I was just a little old PFC. So were you thinking, were you knowing that at that point that Vietnam is a reality? And is that has that set in or is it even thought process at that point? At that point, well, Virginia Tech. My good friend Steve Nice was in Shanks doing with me and down Hall and we'd watch Walter Crime quite every evening, and yeah, we were where the war was going on. I knew that, you know, the numbers were increasing, you know, have involvement and military involvement and uh so, uh yeah, where it really hit me is when I got to Fort Poke, Louisiana, and uh like, I spec for sat us down and said, okay, guys, you're gonna go to Vietnam. After you finish advance infantry training, It's like whoa, yeah, I knew it was coming, but so you said a Spec four, Yes it is fourth class Okay, yeah, you'd think a major general will be telling you that, right. Wow, Now did you choose infantry or they just told you? Was that something you wanted to be? That was the process when I my G three testing was really good when I came to the Army. So first Lieutenant brought me into the office. I'm sure he said, you know, we could send you to OCS and you could pick any branch you want. You know, I said, well, I'm interested in flying, maybe helicopters, and again the idea of he told me, well, you'd have to extend you at least give us three years to you know, go to helicopter school and then you know, go off to Vietnam. But h I said, well, I'll just do my two So I deferred for infantry. Holy com All right, So you're down in Louisiana. Oh yeah, it's hot Tiger Land. Yes, it's miserably hot down there. How long are you there for? Nine weeks? Nine weeks? Yep? So what's after nine weeks? Home? For thirty days and then shipp into Vietnam. When I left Pok, I had my orders. I had orders originally for the ninth Infantry Division. Do you remember, Like, how do you got back home? I mean where do you like? We had a guest on earlier, he hitchhike. You know it wasn't exactly. Did you have transportation to be able to get back home. For the yea, yeah, the military gives you flight paid. It flew back from New Orleans back to Richmond, Virginia. And a friend of mine, Jerry Goffert, went to school with me. He and I. We're on the buddy system. We ended up drafted together. Oh wow. We ended up in basic and advanced infantry training. We ended up in the same infantry company in Vietnam. But his parents picked us up and drove us back from Richmond. Yeah. All right, so let's see. So your next plane ride, I guess, is overseas. At that point, it is about nineteen hours. Yeah. Are you what type of plane are you in? Oh? We're in a Tell me it was a commercial aut We flew commercial airline. We flew commercial airliners. Had stewards say here we are you know in our dress uniforms. We've got orders and we've got Air Force, Army and all. On the same flight we landed ben Jan. We didn't go out there respective military units. I went the nineties replacement there it ben Wah. But anyway, so we flew I'm trying to think of the air base there, and well, first I flew from d C from Reagan Airport or Kennedy Airport out to San Francisco. Again the military paid for that. But then we got on the commercial airliners there. I was in a holding area there for about six days or so, and then they would load us up by groups, and so flew to Hawaii. That's a route we took. It was a northern route they took, but I flew the middle route and then from there to Guam. So we're flying in the night time the whole time, okay, and we've got you know, movies up on the screen and all and U. It's interesting. When we flew into uh Hawaii, they let us get off the plane while they refueled going to the airport. Well, I'm sitting beside a man that's got orders for air Force and he's all upset, you know. He said, oh, you know, I said, well, I'm infantry. You know, I ought to be a little more worried than you. Just calm down. You could probably be at a secure base, you know, you know, you're not going to be out hunting down the enemy. And so get back on the plane. And he does not get back on the plane. He jumped ship. He went, he went a wall only cow and the stewards came through a little while later and said with so and so. I said, yeah, she got his papers. And I don't know whether they arrested him later or not. But you can't hide out too much, I think in Hawaii. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it'll bind you. Yeah. I never it never crossed my mind that that's a reality. But sure, you know, I mean, you're eighteen years old at this point, right, Well, Brian, you know you think about it. Here you are operating search and destroy missions in the middle of these villages rice paddies up and you just don't think about dying. You don't think about getting ambush. You just yeah, you just it's not in your mind. You know, when you do get hit, yeah, that will come later. Yeah, that's yeah. Then that's when, Yeah, the fear s it's in and yeah, the chaos of combat. Did you think you were trained as an infantryman ready for I mean, were you confident going knew that you had been training. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And fire and movement was one of the strategies. I use, a group of men moving up under the base of fire from the other and yeah, and just uh, yeah, it's a different type of warfare. I mean, Vietnam changed things a little bit in the types of warfare. And so I guess the war has been going about a couple of years, so you had some people that knew, Yeah, I guess the best way to. Fight, Trent. I've read we were soldiers once and young and that group of the first calf those guys had there the hierarchy, the officers and n CEOs had seen combat in Korea. Yeah, and you talk about they went over as the unit and as time went on, some of those men rotated out, so they lost that. But that just and that you know, the eyes rang they held a day, and a lot of it is due to those guys. And see, you know we were wet behind the ears of my union. You know, we didn't have seasoned leaders. But anyway, yeah, everything was still kind of still new sort of new. For you, right in the gorilla warfare, you know, it doesn't translate into conventional war like we had been in in Europe, you know, but even you know, Japanese had lines and you moved them and assaulted and we probably lost more people than we did and you know in the European theater. But yeah, it's still though. Yeah, yeah, m all right, so your first you know, a couple of nights there, what's you know, what's that like? What's I mean? You I'm assuming you've landed. Now you're in uh An area. When you start realizing, all right, this is what you know, what we're going to be doing here? Yeah, well it's hurry up wait in the military. So I'm there at this replacement uh barracks type. Yeah, the trains were interesting, welcome to pulling out drums, you know, out and burning them. Yeah uh so, but so there was just kind of boredom. Did have Thanksgiving? They had a really good Thanksgiving meal. I still have the program from that. Wow, yeah we did. So when I get orders and fly out to July, my orders change from a ninth Infange Division to the one ninety six Light Iverage Division and so we flew up to Cheulib North near Danang, about fifty miles south of Danang, up in that area and the Quayson area, and so that's where I got with my unit. But I was still in Brigade Headquarters company area, and so it was a secure area down by the beach. Roger Stawback was down on the beach with a Navy group. They said he'd throw the football, you know, I know if I saw Roger, but he was down there with you know, with the Navy. They had an air base there and I don't know what his duties were, but he'd be throwing the football. And then they trained us. We did have a little in country training, and then when I flew out to my company, that's when then, yeah, here we are welcome to fire Base Central and up on the hillside, I don't know, five hundred six hundred meters up in the air artillery guns in the middle of this firebase that they have. Infantry has perimeter around to keep the enemy from getting to our guns. And so the battalion that I was in was on this firebase and one company pulled security while the other three companies were out doing search and destroy and then they would rotate around. So I had only been there about three or four days, and we got relieved and we walked off the firebase into the no man's land in the enemy territory, off a firebase, and my first night, we were just moving very slowly at dusk under cover of darkness, got down the mountain side and we just sat up just right in the middle of a rice paddy and I woke up with a leech on my lip had swollen up from getting blood. Flipped it off and off we went next day. We worked a whole month of December out in the area Quayson Queson, not Quson, but and Marines were in that area too. We probably about fifty miles southwest of the nang and an area that the hundred and first everyone had been in that area because I saw the screaming megal Eagle magazines and the huts we'd go in and so we'd go from village to village. You know, I don't know what our orders was. I was just a PFC, but you know we had a certain area to move to, in a certain territory to cover. And that whole month of December, every four days we'd get resupplied with sea rats, sea rations, and if we didn't get socked in. And one time we got socked in, so we didn't get food for seven days. So we extended. We started getting right big and rice from the peasant people there and cooking it up. But so that's how we operated. No showers, no nothing, just you know, moving every day, sleeping, set up positions at night. And yeah, is the group of you just a fire team of four or is it a sko? This is the whole company us and my company was undecized. You know, two hundred men usually makes up a line company. We probably I did a count one time about ninety people in my company. So each platoon was really you know, short of men. Yeah, and each platoon will go out. Now we moved this a whole body of people. Yeah, what's Golf with your buddy? Golf? Was he still with you? He was in a different squad, Yeah, Jerry was with us. Wow. He was a machine gunner. He had a big old machine gun. I had a little light sixteen and he had an ammal barrel with him. You know, the machine gunners did. And what are you looking for actually when you're doing is just the enemy that has guns? We're just looking. Yeah, make contact. Yeah if we can, you know, surprise them and yeah, but you know you don't surprise them. They're tracking you and they know where you are and I'll find out later. Yeah. Wow when you are in their country and they know it. Like absolutely, we know our own ridges. Yeah, so you're when do you see your first gunfire battle? January of the eighth, nineteen sixty eight, the day I was captured. We did not have contact with the enemy that whole month we were out, and the end of January they did a Hello lift. They took us by helicopter over out of this hinterlands west of tam Kee, the provincial capital, over to the beach east of where we were, about twenty minute flight thirty minute flight, and we did a combat assault there and did round up some Vietcong people, but didn't have any engagement with them. And then they put us on a deuce in half and took us back to brigade headquarters the thirty first of December, and we were supposed to have what you called in country R and R. We came into brigade headquarters. We dropped a gear weapons as perimeter around us, so we were safe and we got hot Shaigh. We had a day area uh and about the third day we were there, we were supposed to be there six days, and so we got called back out and we had chinnooks took us back out that they carry about thirty combat loaded guys as opposed to UI's and dropped us in the Hepduc area. There's a different area of operation for another brigade of our another battalion of Hours, and the company had been wiped out a few days before we walked back up on firebase end up when we got up there that night Company Sea of second of the first got hit and it was it was like the fourth of July. You could see the rounds, the green rounds, enemy rounds, and the helicopter was trying to run support and we ended up a joining them as POW's Frank Anton's crew. They got shot down that night and so anyway, we and the guns were off all night, they were shooting flares out and so the next day we walked off fire base, picked up helicopters, went into that area where you know they had already removed the bodies and there were still stacks of North Vietnamese troops around that hadn't been removed. And so that's kind of the first time in the helicopter. Anton's helicopter had a tail boom up in the air. He had auto rotate, had a rice paddydike, but they had already booby trapped it, and so and we would look and the crew was missing. They were missing in action. The co pilot had had made it back to friendlies. He got back to an orbon camp, but the other three on a helicopter, Anti and the pilot and two door gunners and crew chief of Robert Lewis and Jim Feaster were missing in action. I ended up being prisoners with him three years. So tell us about how that goes down. I guess how do you get become a prisoner? At that point, we. UH set up camp. That night we went into the area where they had been hit, and you could tell. I saw one of them had they had a perimeter set up, and I saw a bush hat with great matter in it. Okay, that hadn't been removed from the area. So I could just hidden vision, you know, when the men had his UH but instead of his steel bought put his bush had on. You know, not relaxing, but he knew, and they hit him I think from within. I think they had spider holes inside and hit him from outside and uh killed a lot of them, just pretty much wiped to come now. Anton said that when they rolled in on the gun ship, uh, he wanted flares on both sides. We didn't only got one flare, so he didn't know where to put his gun fire. So by the time he came back around he got hit hydraulicsno that so he had to auto rotate and hit the ground and get off the ship. But the so we set up that night. We thought we were going to get hit, but we didn't, and we walked operated a couple of days, just sweeping down through the valley with a couple of the companies trying to locate the enemy. And the third day we swept down started early in the morning, about noontime. We broke lunch and the other company set up. We set up a perimeter, and a helicopter brought us some resupplies and took some gunfire. So that's when a squad of men left. The company CEO got a horn and said, hey, you know, I need a couple of riflemen for each platoon and so about twenty of us. I did not have a good appetite. The other guys were eaten. I didn't volunteer usually, but I picked up my weapon and I went off of the group. We did a fire and movement into the village where we'd been early in the day. And we got into the village and just and kids in there screaming, and you know, we didn't hit anybody, but they were down. Yeah. Yeah, So civilians were caught right in the middle. That that always bothered me a lot. Uh. But and so they forgot to tell us. We decided to go in the village catcorna back across the Low River and go into that village. Uh Online, And maybe they were that they forgot to tell us that's where they were. So by that time Captain rolland Belchum, my commanding officer, had joined us with his r t O, with Ford observer and his r t O. And uh we set up a little staging area right on the banks at the Low River. And Belcher said, Okay, we're gonna get on, make a file of men, get online, and we're going to go into the village. So I'm the last man and a file of men and Uh. So I'm in the middle of the river. Men in front of me, some of them already kind of set ready to go into the village, waiting for all of us. And I got my M sixteen up at poured arms because the river's pretty swift. It's up, you know, almost to my waist and pretty you know. And I hear mortars going down the tube, and I said, we don't have a fire mission. And I knew then, and what they did. They walked the mortars in on the men who were already out in the open and pushed them right into the ambush and just withering fire and killed the last I saw, Captain Belcher. He was running point. Now the captain is supposed to be back there. We left the river support of five men, uh, all of them enlisted guys. I don't even know whether anyone above the rank of E Ford, but anyway, killed him as RT O. They killed the RT so we didn't have any radio contact. And I come across the river and I join is a creek that comes into the river, and they've five men have gotten sheltered behind that creek bank, including my first sergeant, Richard Frank Williams, who had been in combat in Vietnam, and he became our leader. He was in charge now and it's good to have good leadership tops forty one years old, and so he got us together and we fought them off. They came, they were on top of us, and they would come down and they couldn't see us crossing this path to assault guys on the other side of the river that we left at a wrist support and we were shooting them and dropping them. We had a machine gun across from us to our backs, but we were facing them because we had our back to the creek bank. And so we told him, you know, to start firing, and the gun was not operating, and last, you know, the next thing, I look and they were gone. They weren't there. So we so we were on our own. We started throwing grenades and yeah, it's like I said, it's it's hectic, it's chaos. It's just a deafening noise, all the gun fire and all. And so they don't hit any of us and we're throwing tod ads, and I think, and this is what I believe, just you know, from thinking about it, and you know the way they operate, they usually would overrun you and take prisoners overrun you kill anybody. You know that once they control the battlefield, either hide on back in the bush if if you held a day. Well, they went in charge. And so I think they had orders to take prisoners. I believe that, okay, And so they pulled back. Well they the little lull Top said, okay, we're gonna low crawl because we got this creek bank, and we're going to shorten the distance across the open rice paddy back down CP. You know, because in the open rice paddy with fire, you know, you get shy in. But we that's about all we can do is get back and try to fight another day. So we start low crawl, and we get to the place where the creek bank levels off, and we can see him there walking in the tree line. So we start moving and hoping, and they spotted us by the time, and we got a creek bank up behind us. Now we got to go over that. And I'm Michael Oliver and I the last two men down in the creek bed. And once they spot us, they start firing. Top goes over and he yells back, he said, the next man it comes up, you got to get down quick. He said, this fire is heavy. He got, well, Ali, I'm looking at him. He's got this ash and look on his face. Wirey country boy from Tennessee. He'd been in country eight months, so you know, I'm the low guy. He goes up and over the right and he starts screaming. He gets just torn up. He didn't get down. And then I hear Top trying to keep him from going into shock, and he says, Oli, just take it easy. He said, take it easy. He said, I'm hit two. You know, he had already taken a round through his hand. Top had and hadn't said a word, you know, And that was the first I knew, you know. And then Oli just diyes and he said, Harker, just holds your position. Hels guys, you know, we're using the boys command, and you know we're gonna get help. See He's gonna come up, you know, and help us out. And well, they start coming at us, and so we start we're shooting them and revert again. They took it wasn't the normal way of operating, so they had to have had orders because they could have swept it and just done us in. They out numbered us, went about twenty to one. And so so for about two hours. That's how they try to out maneuver and get around to us. In fact, one time during the day, somebody yells, says, some friendly's coming up behind. So out of the six of us, five oli's been killed. So there are only five of us. I found out latest Seargeant Booker got killed of the group that had gone up and over the rice Patty and anyway, so one of the men rapped the initial ambush, Vince Coglin from Philadelphia. I've taken training with Vince. His M sixteen had jammed up, so we only had five weapons. We had two seventy nine grenade launchers in three sixteen's, which in the whole lot. But anyways, again they try, well, somebody yells, no, it's the enemy. Anyway, They're still coming to us and at times passing, and I hear at some point a voice, rapid Vietnamese voice, rapid fire voice, the tonal sound that language, and and top stands up and I'm right below him, and I look up. I turned in a ninety degree. I'm still down in the prone position as low as I can get, and the Vietnamese it picks him up, has a pith helmet on. He's got his AK forty seven. And Top told me he didn't have his seal pot on because during the day around hit his stell pot and ripped it off like a can opener. Holy count. It's a two piece set with a web gear and plastic piece with a steal pot down on it. So he stands up and he knows it. So he diverts a guy from me, and so I lead back down and I don't have Top anymore. So I got you. Are you by yourself? Now? Yeah, I'm the most forward man. These other guys he's and he's gone. So now you're just you're just laying there. But let me back up because I tell this, I have a testimony. Grew up in a good Christian family, made a profession of faith when I was nine years old as Baptist church. So when we get to that point where we pin down again, I'm lying there and they're coming at us, and I said, it's no way, this twenty two year old, I'm not going to live for the rest of the day. It's no way I'm going to make it through this. I know that in my mind, and God gave me to live as Christ to Die's gain came through my mind, and so I said, I believe, I believe, you know, in the resurrection, and I just hope the bullet hits me and I'm going quick. Yeah. So that called me down, Just that verse that kept going to live as Christ to die is gain, that kept going through my head. That called me down, And I said, yeah, and I'll fast forward and back up a little. My father joined the Gideons because a friend asked him to with a thought. It's what he told me, which is a long stretch, that if one of my captors would get one of those little Bibles and read it and half salvation, I would get better treatment. Well, well, guess what my dad didn't know. But we've been there about eleven months and interpreted. Mister Home brought in a Gideon testament that had been on one of the men that was captured, James Alexander Daily from Brooklyn, New York. The Gideons gave him there at the induction center in Brooklyn, and he had it only when he was captured, and they kept that person and they brought it in and mister Holmes said, this little book camp had talked personality, hierarchy, had talked talked about, well, this little book has something to do with this holiday that's coming up first of December, and said, okay, you can choose some words out of this and we'll prove them or not, you know, whether you can say them, you know. And so the first thing when I grabbed that book, I'm looking to live is Christ to die is gain Philippians one twenty one. Now I learned memory versus in church. But anyway, so they forgot to take the Little Gideon Testament back. So we secreted it away in the thatch roof. Yeah, and I would you know, read it. Great source of comfort and help my faith. You know, it was my strength and helped me. You know, God becomes real in a situation like that. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, so yeah, but back of top step. As I'm laying back down or getting off my elbows and down, I'm thinking the creek takes me back into the lower river, you know, darks coming here soon. And as I look as an infantryman right on top of me of Vietnamese and he's got his ak and so I plant my sixteen in the ground and I stand up. When I stand up from me to where she's sitting. Two North Vietnamese troops were bent over. One of their dead who had almost made it to us, had a big gut wound, and they were taking his AMMO and his gun. You know, they were policing the area, and they hadn't seen me till I stood up, almost at me, and they came over and they stripped me down, and they put a man in charge of me that had a side arm, and so I figured he was an officer. They had rifles. They went around policed up the dead Americans, getting all amo and weapons off of them. And this guy's in charge of me, and they own the battlefield. He's walking in front of me back to this village where they ambush, where they were coming from and attacking us, And so I'm frantic. Had been taught to escape as soon after capture as possible, which you know, makes a lot of sense, don't get you know, I've got the guy. I've got my hand over his mouth, I got his arms pinned to his side, and I got to kill him, but I can't make any noise. He's got a ban at in the scabbard, and I try to get the banet out a scabbard and I can't, it won't come out. And the struggle, you know, he starts screaming bloody murder, and I mean, it's like you just on rapid fire your brain. There's a trail that we've been on, and it's funny. I'm thinking, I'm pretty fast, you know, and been would steal second basil. You know, I was a lead off guy. I'm pretty quick, you know, ran to two twenty four forty, I said, But I got my com when I'm thinking about my combat boots slowing me down. But I well, anyway, and the struggle, he gets bearing that out. He stabs me in the back, just a superficial wound. I had some complications from it. Later. I get his forty five American issue coat off of him, and I put up to his head and he wheels away from him and it's not locked and loaded. Oh wow. So I look up and it looked like a North whole North Vietnamese army standing around with a weapon. So uh yeah, And I got punished for that. We walked at night and they they duck wing me and they tied my arms. My arms swirled up to about three times and I had no feeling in them and the more I tried to get loose and tighter they got I've probably never been the excruciating pain like that. But anyway, so they took us back and to the village, and about that time, American artillery started coming in right in the village, and I'm thinking they put me down in a hole, and I thought, I'm gonna die from my own artillery. You know, I don't get killed by it, but it's subsided. And then they started walking me down this trail. They took my combat boots off of me so I wouldn't try to get away again. And as I'm walking, I'm in this mindset that they don't take prisoners. That's how we were trained. They're gonna kill me. They're gonna kill me, and I'm smelling dead bodies and I think they got a common grave. But anyway, they take me to an old French house. It's out I guess a French plantation out there, stuck o roof and all you know, mostly just pool peasant villages, straw roof and but this was a plantation home. They had the headquarters set up. They were coming and go in. They had como where I strung out and there's Top, and there's Francis Eugene Cannon, and uh, and there's Jim Strickland. Strickland had been captured. He was with the group that most would kill. He said that the men that you're supposed to stand up and attack the most intense fire as the training, well, your natural instincts to hit the deck. And he said people were hitting the deck rather than standing up and assaulting them. And he said the bullets were going through the rice paddy dykes killing guys. But he said around hitting near him and locked him out. And when he woke up, they were already dragging him off a battlefield with como wire around him. But he was Strickland. Cannon had been with my group, and he had gotten to a point where he had a bird's eye view and he was telling the Top, you got somebody coming to your right front about twenty meters away, and Top, without exposing himself with his wounded hand, would set that M seventy nine. And during the day Tops M seventy nine exploded on him, and Oli that died beside him had a acic load at seven. So he started using all these But anyway, so yeah. Were you with all that firefighting. Are you and you just had the M sixteen? Are you running out of AMMO? Are you trying to conserve it? Or are you did no thought? I just you just yeah, well they're not coming, you know, in so you know, they just one of two occasional topic say just spray out front with automatic on automatic? No, I still have yeah, I still Wow. You're listening to life delivery to happiness. We're talking with Army veteran David Harker. Take a breath for a second. That David, David, you've only been I mean, honestly just December and January, right, I mean six weeks. Did you just tell yourself well I just got here and I just got there and it was like, oh man, your whole you're just trying to learn how to fight and you're captured only right, yeah, yeah, what what what do you are? You? Are you guy at that? That? It's interesting and that's weeks. It's funny how you build up that spree, that camaraderie, that closeness to other guys that are you know, and I can name you know, my commanding officer, Rolling Belcher, twenty seven years old. Up on firebase. I got to talk to him just briefly one time, and just a great guy. Great guy. He dies there, you know, believing in democracy and freedom. Yeah, just left the family and all. And my platoon leader, Frank Severerts, he died out there near Belcher and he was from out in New Jersey. He was a horse guy, album Ware County. You know. Yeah, just yeah, those guys that died, Yeah, they just have a lasting impression and not modeling. Just that's I remember them because you have to move on. You can't sit there and cry. I don't want to sound ignorant either. In your training, are you guys trained on what to do as prisoners, how to be a prisoner, or is this still so new to you that you guys have to learn on the fly. We had an eight day course Trenton, Oh no kidding, yeah, And it mainly consisted of they gave us some raw chicken and some rice or something and we were supposed to cook that. We had instructions on you know, if you captured, you know, in the bleachers. But then that night they gave us that evening they gave us this food. We're supposed to cook it and then we're supposed to go trails into the forest there at Fort Poke, and there are people posing a via cong and they grabbed some of the guys, Vince Coglan, who's weapon jammed up. He played dead, He survived. He pulled bodies over him. He was one of our six and made it back. You know, besides me Toping Canon died in captivity. But he uh said David, Uh, I'll tell you the story when I get back to the hospital there in Pennsylvania where you know, I doing my recuperation and going through debriefing and all, Valley Forge Army Hospital. I come back to the ward one day after undergoing examinations and tests and all, and there's Vince Carglin's I did not know what happened Vince for five years and two whiles, and there is like a ghost, he said, David. He said, I pulled the bodies over me. And he said when they pulled the bodies off, all they wanted was my sakehod watch. He said. They almost broke my wrists, they didn't check my pulse anything. So he lay there dead and they moved on out and he got picked up a day or so later when the army came in and secured the area. Yeh, and he fought some more. Yeah, he was a firefighter with the Philadelphia Police Apartment, one of the fire department. He died back some years ago. Wow. But anyway, so. Yeah, now you're captured, and where do they put you now that you're in there? We capture. We walked about ten days back to the plantation. They're coming to go and they take us off when at the time and interrogate us. And again they gonna kill me. I'm not going to live. And they're starting to interrogate me. And the guy speaks very poor English. What is your unit? You know? Anyway? And I'm saying, you know, David Harker, US five two nine three, name, rank, service number, day of birth. Okay, I give him that, and he ain't buying that. And he makes it pretty clear that they got the power of life and death. Were you supposed to stand your ground? Well, when you have a weapon, maybe, but you know, here you are, you're on your own. It's just like okay, and yeah, it was rough. And at one point I got wise. I said, a unit like a unit on a stove. Well, they didn't know what a stove was or you you know, that's the only thing I could come up with. But he did, I know, he said to him, it's a wise guy. I'm gonna take him out and shooting if he didn't get right. And they all started laughing at whatever he said to him, you know, because the riflemen was standing around. There were people that were doing the working going on, but some of them were they were watching. Took me back anyway. We walked that night under artillery broads BE fifty two bombing close by, and just kept moving. And so about that sixth day we came to the village. Now we're getting farther away from friendlies. We're going farther west and their territory where you know, up in the mountains of trunks on mountain range. And they do an interrogation again in this village and again, you know, I don't want this. I've had enough. You know, I did survive combat, but I don't want you know, I don't have any military secrets, but I don't want to be pushed to the limit. And so they take me down again, take us one by one. Took Top first, and he comes back. He said, don't tell him anything. I said, I'm not and I don't know anything. But yeah, So I sit down on his bamboo bench, has a little bamboo table there, and he's a kid, looks like he's sixteen. He's got a fixed man at he's standing beside me. He's my guard and n Walks mister Bay interpreter who I had met previously and I saw him later. He works at Region. He comes in and he's with some high ranking officer. The guy's got to cut across his face and I can only imagine he was in a band at fight with French soldiers during the French and he he means business and I'm thinking of woo. You know, he's a hardened infantry guy. And he, you know, kept going on and went on, and he finally hit a nerve. He threw the interpret. He said, well, what about your family back home? I had not thought about my family back home until yeah. I almost cry. You know, it's like, oh no, you know, and anyway, so I thought if and he made that clear, you know, he said, you know, we can do you in. You know, you need to tell us, uh, you know what, you know, you know what I know. I'm AFC. I don't know what tox week it's, you know, but it's just a breaking you down, you know. So I'm thinking, once they take me out, put the blindfold on, and I hear the clicking of them locking and loading, I'm going to just tell them whatever they need and what that might be. But they took me back and Top said during interrogation, you know, I we'll know what unity's with. He said, I'm with the first cavity vision. He still got a first calve patch on, and they said, you're not with the first calve, you're with the one ninety six, and he said, okay. Yeah, So so you guys are able to communicate with one another. They didn't have you isolated or okay. On the last day, we come into this village and spend the night in that village, and that's where we see Anton and his two crew members. They walk us past them and they look like they've been on holiday. You know, we're dirty, grungy. We think it they've already taken sides with the other. I mean you mind, yes, oh I can imagine it. Yeah, it doesn't go right. And so the next day we're on the trail together and we were like, you know, we were the crew chiever. You know, we're not collaborating with them, and we walk and we walk into a pow camp and the sun doesn't shine. It's like triple canopy. When we finally get there, we go up some rough mountain trails, little footpaths, and they have even made steps, you know, so that people can get around, you know, because they don't have helicopters, they get around on foot. And uh so we end up in that camp and the first person I meet is doctor Hal Kushner, the only physician captured during the war. He was with the First Cavern Division. He was a flight surgeon with him. Hal finished high school. GW. Danville, went to u NC, got his master's there in biology, and went to Medical College of Virginia. And he was interning at Tripler where he was born, Army hospital and he saw the wounded coming in, so he volunteered. And when they got there, one of the medics had Doc. We hope we adn't got to name this clinic after you like we did the guy before you. But anyway, they were a night flight, ran into the side of a mountain and he was the only one that survived. He thought they were east of highway when they were west. They anyway, VI had con got him and brought him to the camp. The hell fired off, rounds purned up and he got a couple of rounds in him. But anyway, he got taken. He was asked by their personnel to go work in one of their field hospitals, and he was a he's a smart guy, will read I mean bring guy. He thought it was against the Geneva convention. He found that lady. He could have gone, you know and done that, but he stayed with us. Couldn't practice medicine. We couldn't call him captain or how they go crazy. Of course they weren't in a compound with us, but in their presence and just just his knowledge was a big help to us. We buried nine men in the Pilvery camps, and. How many of you were there? Again, I think that from that period. Christian was picked up in January, I mean in December fourteenth, but you know, as a fluke. They got him, but they had captured a marine and army guy I got throwing a tease in like July of that year. Bob Sherman had come into their hands. So from like sixty seven, the middle of sixty seven and up to the tent and I think that's when they decided they needed prisoners. And in the South they had a lot of pilots were shot down, they were getting them. Of the six hundred and seventy or whatever repatriot Americans, only about one hundred and ten of us were capturing the South. So our numbers was small because again that tactics up to that point, you know, they didn't take people, but they took us. So yeah, but anyway, top he was a big help, Doctor Kushner was and but that camp started growing with us and what there was seven of us it came into the camp. And then later two Marine Marines Joseh. Hockei and Denny Hammond, came into the camp. They were the Caagus Savill Action Group, a pacification group, and the pfs with them fled and they fought, you know, Vietnamese on their own, and both of them died in captivity. They didn't make it through. Fred Burns came to us. He was a Marine PFC out of Britwood to Long Island, a good Catholic could have gone to not to Day as a bright kid, and he wanted to serve his country. And Fred didn't make it through he died. He was eighteen when he was captured, nineteen when we buried him in January of sixty nine. These deaths are talking about, Are these torture? Are they malnutrition? No, they just wounded. Just our living conditions will horrendous. You know, we did have a bamboo bed. We slept on with the thatch roof. We did all the work except the building. We carried the materials and all but captors built the huts. We moved camp about four different times around different locations, and we got a little bit of rice. Okay, we had malaria. All of us had malaria. It would kick you in the butt, and they did. The only medicine had was quina, and large dose of the quana would eventually take care of it. We had the naise, the just the chills, high fever, delirious. Yeah, it would last year, probably about fifteen to thirty days. You can take it. Oh yeah, it was a killer. But anyway, so the camp grew I used to know to probably about twenty five men. The original three members of that camp were Captain Iizing Brown, captured in June nineteen sixty five, Bobby Garwood, the trader that we later testified against the Camp Lejune and then Russ Grisset first force recon marine and well, I mean you talk about some great rush was your marines marine scuba Quallifi para marine and recon and his recon group got a beehive in North Vietnamese and they didn't get extracted. Some of them got extracted. He some of them got killed, and he got captured. But he joined Isien Brown and uh and uh Garwood h about eight or nine months into that captivity. And by the time we came along, Garwood had crossed over, was living with the enemy. It was out of camp when I got there. Uh, Isien Brown had died, and Russ, you know, it was there. He is a force to be reckon with. But uh anyway, uh so we buried Russ in November that year. But just again a little rice. Uh, the most yards around We lived around the mountain people, the villages of them around and you think the poor people and and uh the hunter lands and the backwoods of Vietnam that are working the rice patterns of backwoods they live in the summer age you get up in the mountains of montyards. Even more primitives lowin claws spears, women of bare breasts, the kids have naked, have the distended bellies. They can barely survive if they were like the Home Guard. Anyway, they cultivated fills of manuoc in third world countries South America, Asia, Africa. The cassava root is a staple of poor peasant people, and so I camp personnel would border with them and we would go to these most yard villages five six miles of little footpaths, pull the roots up and break them back in baskets sixty seventy pounds those of us who were able, healthy enough, and that made up the bulk of that diet. And then they had a rotten fish sauce called nukman and that provides a little protein. We were just, you know, just so you had to do labor. You were doing labor and then yeah. Just to survive. Yeah, yeah, and they didn't. We did have a political cadres, and ho spoke the King's English. In fact, he had some French blood in him, I'm sure, because he was about sixty one or two and his uh, he was a party person. He you know, he was a political cadret and he gave us a political cause, you know, and at the end, you know, we had to sign political statements, yeah or else? Yeah, you know. And uh so, anyway, mister hoes. Not to touch a tough subject, but you mentioned a trader, and I just wonder in that environment you're in, and you can discuss or not, it's all up to you what you want to talk about. But what makes a person a trader? And why would you not choose to do that or why would someone choose to do that? Is it just to survive? I just wonder how that works in that environm Yeah. I wasn't there when Bobby crossed over when he decided to go live with them, learn the language. And in fact, I've seen some declassified information or cushioner got it, and I've seen it that the polit viewer questioned why you would give some status to the American pow who's claiming to be you know with you you know, we've got guys up here and not proven themselves that aren't you know, had the status and they gave him some title when the patriot or something. But he was an opportunist. He's a liary. I never knew the man to tell the truth about his capture. He would come into compound from time to time, and he did tell us that he would go down into the American military areas and he's going to bull horn and tell the guys to throw down their weapons or whatever, I you, and he would get shot at h So, I don't know what his role exactly was, except he lived with them, and whenever he came into compound anything we said, Elliott would come back. Yeah. In fact, Grissett and Eisenbrown, griss ha told his story because eisen Brown was dead, that Bobby was living with them. He came into compound and they said, Bobby, we're going to escape tonight. You know you want to go with us. Oh well, next thing, here comes the camp commander with all his henchmen and said, we understand yours. They went on escape that night. Anyway, they pulled the pungee steaks up. They went through the path the pungee steaks, and they wandered around for about two or three days. Griss said they would hide up during the daytime and walk at night. And when they recaptured them, they finally, you know, they didn't any food, and they recaptured them. They brought them back to camp in about thirty minutes. So they didn't really get. Three days and still just thirty minutes away. A wow, yeah, yeah, wow. But it's the whole ordeal we went through. It's amazing, you know, I say it was God, and God gave a lot of good people to us. You know, we learned to pull together. Okay, surviving without anything, you can become, you know, pretty selfish. Right, yeah, I'm gonna make it out. And so here is how I explained it. We would kill a camp's chicken if it came in a compound. Russ would and his philosophy was, smell, kill a small pull it chickens, don't kill a big one. I said, Russ, you're taking the same risk. He figured, if the smaller chicken, unless you're punishment. We said, that doesn't make a lot of sense. Wait, whoever killed the chicken? And Isaiah McMillan, one of the guys, was out a rule farm in Florida, and he could grab a chicken and wring his head off and wouldn't make us say we called him the weasel, but that it was clean in the pot. But whoever did it could say, Okay, you guys, get you know, get the chicken feet and the beak, and I want the rest of the chicken. That was kind of you know, we call it the lion's share. You took a risk, ye till later we became more selfless and altruistic, you know, and you divide it out, everybody gets equal share. And and the sick we didn't know what hapn We keep people from dying at top and Cannon had bad wounds and never recovered from him. They're fading away and you're trying to do it, but you know that they're tough. Count set up against that that uh big support, bamboo support, and just moaned during the night because he never he was always in pain, you know. But you know, and we just take took care of them, you know, later had to clean them, you know, in their last days, and they became incoherent. But it's interesting everyone just at the last would speak of family, mother, father, Russ When he died, he said his sister's name. He gave her a dress in Duberly, Louisiana. It's like here he is dying in you know, his family. Wow. Yeah, Christian I stayed with him, you know, while he struggled during the night. How long how long were you captive? I was three years in the Jungles walked to Hochimn trail in nineteen seventy one. Sixty day hike got to Annoy on April first, nineteen seventy one, had left February first and walked to hoch him In trail. We passed battalions, brigades of North Vietnamese troops and field trading down the trail. We got rifle butts once we saw the Americans, but we went in six. There was twelve of us still living at the time, so it took us in six man groups walk the trail. I got to walk a ho Chiman trail through Laos, went over the trunks on the mountain. Yeah, so it was. And then how long were you at the final I was there two years, two more years or five years all together. And that was a place called Plantation. Gardens of pilots had been kept there. Then they moved them out and put the guys from the south in there. And when they started December bombing. I don't know where you've heard Linebacker two saturation bombing. When the Peace of Agreement broke down in October of nineteen seventy two, they decided to start saturation the arc lighting of Hanoi, and so we woke up. They've been gone to bed. It was about eight o'clock on the night about December the seventeenth, and there's a and they said wave after wave, and we figured, if you know that navigator is off the tenth of a second, that bomb's gonna lie land right in the middle of the camp. They know, I'm sure where we are, and so in about the third night they started shooting to be fifty twos down and Dave Young, who's a good friend of mine, b fifty two pile of the flu lineback or two remember River Mount with me, and he told me that they had the same course and the north end of me is. After about the third night said ah, this is of course they're flying. So they set the SAMs up and they started shooting down. They shot about fifteen of those be fifty twos down. Wow, but it probably did more damage than all the fast movers ever did those years they bombed the North. You're up north at this point at now? Is it creeping in your head any hope of getting out or you still just kind of reserve. To Brian when we get a radio broadcast, mister Holme brings the portable radio into that jungle camp. Okay, the only modern thing. And it's on radio, the Voice Vietnam. They're propaganda, say so we're listening to that. And uh and and so we find out Nixon's elected through that broadcast. Wow, and they kind of get excited because he's going to bring the end of the war. We get, uh, we start getting instead of the red vermin infested rights, we get like Uncle Ben's polished white right, and we get a little higher ration. Well, after a while, they say, have no illusions, you know, they realize it's not going anywhere. He's not going to bend or give to the although in the end I think we pretty much did. But uh so that and we've learned about the moon landing through that bar cast. They said, you know, they put a man on the moon, but they came into the war in Vietnam. They won't leave us alone. You know. So well, and I'm going to tell you I was said Voice of America, it should not be shut down. Mister home leaves it's raining, he leaves a hut. We turned the Voice of America. You can't imagine, I mean, you almost cry. You're hearing the real truth, you know, instead of the propaganda. You're here. Well, we're afraid he's gonna come back and catch us. We don't get punished pretty bad, so we don't keep it on very long. So that's my take on Voice of America to get to these countries that people don't hear the truth. You know, we all we've got a broadcast. Let me go back to an incident we had who was starved, and this is around November of sixty eight. We hadn't been prisoners long and we're starving and jose Ah Hockey, we're sitting out just when the sun goes down. We have to get on the bamboo bed and go to sleep. We got no lights or anything. They have Kency lanterns that come through and do a head check on us. We have punge steaks that are around as a perimeter like Barbara around us and we can so Joe sees a cat. They had just brought a cat from the lowlands because we infested with rats and mice eating and it sounds like Green Bay packers running through the thatch roof at night. I don't want them bit my toe and I so they bring his cat up and Joe said, poor, that'd make a good meal. Next next thing, Russ had killed that cat. I blame him, he was, you know, and we had skinned it down. We had double edged razor blades. We didn't have any growth because we didn't have any protein. We have much to eat. But they did bring a razor blade once in a while office to shape and we hid for medical purposes. Lance boards. Doctor cushion used as an instrument. We got the entrols out of the cat. We cut it down, you know, we cut in fact, cushion was supposed to the entrance away. And I went down to the train a few days later and I look up and it's hanging up. I said, good through it. So we had everything but the palls cut off of it. And we're there by the fire and now we're always in bed, and the guard got suspicious. We had somebody posted of our group while we clean. And when we've got it clean down, I mean we're salivating. We figured that three pounds of meat on this can. And Isaiah McMillan says, David told her he said, guys, I ain't superstition, but I'm not eating none of that cat. Said he wasn't going to eat any of that cat. He's going to kill a chicken now and eat him, but not the cat. And and so he said we could have his share, and we and the why the moatyard guard gets pass and he catches us. We've been caught. At first he thought, ah, they've killed a wild animal. That's the ingenious when they found out it was a camp's cat. And in the camp commander came down and they got the lanterns out there. It's like a Japanese warflick, and we're thinking, whoo. We So before they get down, some of the guys have fled, gotten back on the bed. I'm in the middle of it and some of the other guys and they know, and so we're standing out. But we decided, okay, we're going to tell them. All of us saw this animal running across through the compound. We grabbed rocks and we threw it at it. We killed it, and you know, we thought it was a wild animal and was realized, you know, we weren't gonna come tell you or whatever. So because we knew they like to single somebody out as a scapegoat to you know, And so that's that story. We stood by, and so gard Wood's out there. Ms. Holmes interpreting. We love the camp's cat very much. You've killed the cat, and we're thinking, and we're really you know you people would have eating it too, you know, sure. Yeah, So we're there and Russ for some reason took the blame. As soon as he came out of his both his mouth quiet and dang drop kicked him to the ground. And Russ a pretty big guy. Uh, there's six three probably, and he's and and they beat him real bad. And then they beat the rest of us and tie us up during the night and keep us out. Uh, and took me in Strickland and we had to bury the cat outside of compound. Well it's figured they dug it up later and ate it themselves. So that was the aborted food project. Are you guys making names for the captors? Are there around you enough that you know personalities and who they are and like you make up names? Are you even picking up thee? Yeah? What just words? Yeah, we do. When we leave camp, we do not have an interpreter with us, which isn't a real good thought if you think about it. To go to these villages and I'll tell you a tale about that I had been sick with malaria, and I had boys on me, and I'm a worker. I'm decided the only way I'm going to live is I got to get up and move. I can't sit around. I got and so the whole time, I'm thinking, I gotta get back to work. I gotta get and I was sick. I was a sick puppy and sicker than I thought. I got the point. I said, Okay, I'm going to one of these we called them runs. So I put my name in the hat. We had to say who was going the next day. We told them the night before, and then we had a guard per person, and Willie Watkins went that day. I went, and Robert Lewis and maybe Jim Strickland. So as we were walking out of camp, We're not one hundred meters out of camp, and I am faint and I said, whoa, And I told the guard I got to and they said, don't know, we started this journey, you go in. I said, no, no, I can't make it, you know, and trying to tell it. So off we go. And so I'm telling me, he said, guys, you know, I just can't, you know, make it. They said, what we'll do when we get to the field, You just sit down, you just go. You try to make it, And so we got to feel. I sat down and the guards wouldn't have any of that. No, no, no, no, you go. Well, you can stack a basket full, or you can sack it. You it just it's And so I started just putting a few in there, and they were so when we leave, Willie Watkins has a ten foot stride, and Willie's a tall, lanky guy out of some to South Carolina. He says, okay, David, you're going to be the lead man. Well, okay, set your pace again. They said no, no, no. So that left Sweetie Pants with me Long, And so I'm with Long. The others have gone on up the trail and I can barely make it this hillside, I am. I'm I just can't. I can't get much breath, I'm weak, and so I fake a fainting spell. Well he and by that he locks and loads and puts a banet upon his old mouths or rifle. And I'm thinking he's going to shoot me here and go back and say I tried to escape. I don't know. I got deep within but I was able finally to get to this last village just before I camp. Maybe I don't know, half a mile from my camp. And here comes Willie Watkins out of the village, and they like Willie. He hadn't got anything, he ain't got a guard with him. He and got his basket. He grabs me, I mean almost hugged the guy. I mean he grabs my basket and me and off we go. And I managed to get back and I recovered from that better. Wow. But anyway, so yeah, it was good to know. Or we didn't know the language that well, just a few words to get by, all right. So how does it end? How do you end? The pow? The peace Agreement, the Paris Peace of Courts was signed in January nineteen seventy three, and it provided for the release of prisoners theirs and ours. Were you aware that this was a We knew it was, it was coming, And yeah, the bombing had stopped. It was silent, so we figured that had gone back to the table. And jose Anzeldua was captured. He had gone to language school. He was a marine and when he was captured he had a kit carton Carson's scout with him. Vietnamese come from their side, come over to our side. They executed him right there in front of Jose. Anyway, Jose spoke Vietnamese and he heard through the camp radio in Vietnamese. He said, hey guys, it war was over. We had been moved from plantation over to Wallow Jail Wilton. So we were there from like the end of December till March when we got released. So that was my experience with Hono Hilton, just kind of a holding till we got on the airplanes to leave. Let me back up in Laos, you know, there weren't a prisons that came out hanging on everywhere. Got incredible. When we were walking the trail, they had waste stations, as we called them. So every encampment they had was about twenty miles spaced about twenty miles apart. You walk about twenty miles a day, and when you got to there, they had come o wire laid out. They were communicating with a noise through telegraph or whatever radio and they had these big vats and mainly just vats for cooking, and then they had it set up for sleeping. They had holes dug in the ground about twenty feet by fifteen feet with long bamboo poles along the top of them, so they could the soul could put their hammocks underground and sleep underground pretty much. And these pretty ingenious, you know, good they figured all that out. We were above ground, but I did have a hammock, which got almost better sleeping in a bamboo bed. So we would once we got off the trunks on mountain range. We had our own food cooked, but we got these way stations. They were cooking forests. We would go draw rice out of these big vats almost like an entrenching tool that was shoving the food out, cooking up just in vast quantities. So we got hot rice and we'd go back and eat it at the location where we were staying that night, right there in that encampment. And the next morning we get hot rice, and then they give us a bowl bamboo or banana leaf rice wrapped in a nana leaf for the trail. During the day noontime we stopped, we'd eat the cold rice. So I'm drawing rations at night. And mister Luck, Lieutenant Luck had fought in the plane of Jars. He was our guy. He was an infantry guy and he really had some empathy for us. You could tell he got us more rice and we had he kind of you know, you just got that feeling. Anyway, he was with me and I'm looking where the rice is coming out here behind me, you know, somebody putting around in the chamber, and I'll turn around as a Laotan peasants sitting down and he's got and Luck grabs his rifle and through an interpretive, he says, you know, when we get to the pilots or shot down, we kill him, we don't, you know, So you know he wanted to kill me, and they said no, no, no, no, no, you're not killing this American, you know, wow. And so that was just my take. You know, that's probably what they did. You know, if a Vietnamese didn't get to them before the la Oceans, you know, the villagers, would you know, kill a polies. I mean honestly, you're in probably the poorest area of forest areas. Food that you're consuming is food that they're not consuming it. I mean, you're asking from them, so like killing you is easier than feeding you. Yeah, Trent, that's interesting. When I got there and we're in these little going to these poor villages. They ain't got a pot to piss in. You know, they're working hard. They don't have any men of you know, all the men of military age are gone, you know, so it's the old women, young women, and the little kids that are working these rice paddies. I just mean, it's like, oh my, they can't spell a word democracy. But you know, I understand some of it, but you just I said, you know, I've read about this in Time magazine or National Geography, but when you're there, it's just to see it. And then to get up in the mountains and see those people. Yeah, I say a prayer for their life's. Improve whodos that's amazing of you? Yeah? Wow. When when the day comes when you're finally free and you're I guess you're catching a plane coming back to America, Yeah, or you go into a hospital first. What's what? Yeah, Well, my group was about the second or third. They did us in groups, and I think I was the first from the South to come out. Pilots had been released and then so so we have a date set and they come and get us out of the cell with the other Americans, take us to a holding sale, give us Western stype type windbreakers and pants and shirt and a little duffel bag like we've been on vacation, you know. And so we sit there noontime, rolls around. They bring food in. We said, why are you bringing food? We've been released today. They said, the peace agreement fell through. Oh my goodness, And that backs up to I was gonna tell you with Nixon. We did we got Oh, maybe we this roller cost. Maybe we're going to go home, Brian. I had a thought at one point, if I'm fifty five years old, when I get released, and I'm in good health, I'll have a good few years left. That's was kind of my thought. I mean, and every day becomes like a million years. Here you are in the border, in the jungle. I liked the out of doors, and I didn't like malaria, but we did get mosquito nets and that. But anyway, so living had become kind of commonplace, you know, and the possibility escape was better there, you know. But when I got north, in the boredom of a cell and you know, the same stories, you know, and we're not traveling and walking, you know, getting exercise. We at in the courtyard maybe an hour a day. But yeah, so they come a few days later, and I do they open up a big old iron gates of that old French prison. Yeah, and there it looks like a whole annoy population to stand outside the gate, and they got these vehicles waiting for us, and we get in them and they just, you know, want to see the Americans. And as we're riding along, I told you B fifty two, you could see it tore the railroad up, yeah, and all the infrastructure. It did a lot of damage. And so we've come down to Xylon Airport and the old Quansa hangars are there and I see them and we sit there while we wait, and then all of a sudden we start moving and as we come around, there's a C one starlift through the Air Force plane with the American flag on the back of you. Oh gosh, wow, yeah, oh yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm happy the war's over. And we get maybe going to get home, but we are our names read as a one star general American general there, and they're they're sitting beside the and read a name, and I go up to salute the general, you know hey, And then I get an escort to Air Force. I think when I was a lady walked us back up the ramp of that and put us on a plane and we take off and a little while lady the pilot comes on. He said, we're out of North Vietnam airspace. We're in international airspace. And you talk about crying and screaming, and yeah, the cheer went up. And then we landed in the Philippines. You know, we know the anti war movements bag, you know, but we didn't know what you know, to expect. We land and the dependent families just lying at tarmac there, we'll hi mean, and so you can. The ranking man on that plane gets to make a statement. President Marcos is there, the Bassard the Philippines is there, you know, all the dignitaries. As we get off the plane, we shake all their hands. But the ranking man makes a statement, and we're held in the Philippines for about two days, some preliberary medical, you know, just to make sure we're okay. And then we fly back to the US and oh, that was a great flight. And we land in Honolulu at the air base there, uh hiccam in the middle of the night and again people lining fence, a cyclone fence, and they've got American flags. They've got lays and it's about Chestthai. We're going up and they're putting lays around that next and they've given us American flags and yeah, and one lady says, I'm from a hall town. No kidding, I said, you're from Madist you know where else the river? Yeah, I said, I am home. Well, when I was at the Philippines, Steve Walthall, who lived briefly up in a house in a rental house up road from where I was raised, was in the Navy, and he had a good pause he got over to see me, you know. So it was a hometown guy that I knew in the first a marriage and and I had uh we had an escort who was the same rank I was, East sixth by the unstaff's sergeant. He kind of came from the same background as me. And the first thing he said, everybody in your family's alive. Well, you know, I you know, that's the first time I'm thinking about Well, I guess I've thought about it. So that's a relief, you know, out of seven children, you know. And uh so he lets me they put in a call to my mother, to my home, and my mother is the first one I talked to, and I tell people she sounded like a he'll building from out of Western and uh uh my dear mother out of Killy in South Carolina for two notch roads. She grew up on the sand farm. Yeah. I had the best mother in the world. But anyway, Yeah, they went through a lot. That's something you know that we get lost in. You know, the families back home is suffering that they went through, and they didn't know. How were they informed? Did they they know you're missing? They know they're not hearing from you, and they know there was an ambush that type of thing. Did they wonder if you're still dead in the jungle or how do they know you're actually a prisoner. The first camp I get to in a triple conomy. We moved that camp several days later Augusta and the chiefs of Puerto Ricans they released them as to show us solidarity. Puerto Ricans were subject to draft, whether you know or in the US. One of them was marine and one of them was army, and they brought in names out. So that's the first about I don't know, eight weeks after I'm captured, where it gets back through the Casualty assistance officer to my parents and the hey, David's names on this list, and then Willie Watkins, Jim Strickland and Koy Tinsley were released in the fall of nineteen sixty nine and they brought word out until but from then until I got released, they didn't know. And so when the list comes out. The casualty assistant officer for my parents, Major Plumber, lived in Norfolk, and so he calls up and says, I've got the list. They said it was David's name on. He said, I can't tell you over the phone military, I have to come there in person and let you know. And he got that like in the middle of the night, knocked on the door. He'd had the flu that day, but he got up and his wife drove him down there and he said, David's alive. He's a man. You saw. There's a different color in my family. That's a Major Plumber, the great guy. Anyway, so my brother Danny, next to the youngest UH went up and down Taylor Road knocking on doors about two AM's and David's going yeah wow. So they were excited. Before we went on the air. You showed us what you wore over there. So does that stuff you just brought with you when you were released? I did, I brought that out. I don't know why why would you bring that? I don't that you don't want to assume in here. But the sandals, you know. Were just yeah, yeah, up until I got those, they had taken my boots. So I was walking barefoot when you walking up stony Creek beds. Yeah, your feet, you know, I'm a tenderfoot egg. But they finally brought those into mosquito nets in September, and yeah, they were lifesavers. Just the little things like how hard was it once you got back to kind of get I guess back in the. It's been six years you were going. I mean it's six years since you left, so right, did it feel like? Wow? That changed? What was right? What was your recollection of being back? I just fell back into it. I just assimilated. It just was. And see I was not married, you know, you know, with the wife and children that yeah, so uh and my parents. Yeah, I just right away when I came to the airport. There were about ten thousand people at Preston Glyn Airport, the Lynchburg Regional Airport where I had left to fly out to California from Well up to DC in and out, and so Cardinal Airlines provides an airplane to fly me back. When there's a little catch to it because they got the de WI set, I guess w OVA. Then guy on there to interview me on away flight back from Reading, Pennsylvania back to Lynchburg Airport, he said, what do you think about all these people? What's he talking about? All these people? And when we flew over the airport, there was I had always envisioned in my mother's four year hallway and my family there a little small house. I said, my family's grown quite a bit. That was good to see everybody. Class mates from Brookville High School. When word got out, they you know, my name was on the list to be released. They were having a little get together. They said we ought to do something. Chris Anne overfelt uh more, I married Buddy Moore, star football quarterback at Brookville. She was one of the ones that headed it up. So they got a group together and you saw the bumper sticker. They printed the bumper stickers and said welcome home David for a dollar piece. And so after the preliminary Brookville band was there played, my preacher was there, Carl Collins had a prayer, and then the sea parted and there was a corvette and they took me up to it, and I said, well, how do you get into it? You know? They wanted a push button or whatever hand you know, it's that levery he pushed down. They showed me how. Wow. So I've got the corvette and I had restored and I've enjoyed it. Yeah, god, you still you still have it? Oh? Yeah, I have to drive it. You sometimes? You got a cow. Yeah, that's amazing. You said you cruised the country, right, Is that. One of them? I did? Yeah? In the court I did. I went back to Valley Forge, came home and leave, and then went back and got discharged from there. Uh. Most of my fellow PW's stayed in and made top enlisted rank and made a career of it, you know. I went back to Virginia Tech and got my degree. Yeah, and got into probation and parole work. But anyway, Uh, yeah, drove cross country. My youngest brother, Lewis went with me, and we stopped in Refugal of Texas. So Jose as Adua went fishing out in the Gulf and yeah, h and followed him out to California to his marine base out there, went up and saw cousins up in the San Leandros and yeah, we just just day to day. Yeah, your perspective would be greater than anybody else. Yeah. Somebody said, dropped the Pacific Oast Highways. We went the Coast Highway, camped out a big sur National Park. It's a beautiful if anybody has not driven the Pacific Coast Highway, and oh yeah it's oh yeah, you got well I camp You know, they have a tent set up, so I didn't have a tint. We just got a handbag. Well, I guess you could. You could probably rough better than anybody got an your bamboo beds. The police officer was on vacation next to us. L a police officer, did you stop it? Saying to me, and I said, he said the hearst match. I said, I didn't know about it. I stopped, so I missed that. I did that to her, Yeah I want to. And the Grand Canyon went to the Hoover Dam. Oh, the Hoover Dams. Yeah, yeah, you just did that. That's one that's on my bucket list. You did all that in your We did camp out at Lake me that night. It was two hundred degrees. I mean, you couldn't get your bath. Wasn't that hot? Vietnam? Sir? Oh yeah, wow, So you just that is a question. What was the weather like in Vietnam? We got bone chilling cold during their winter months. Yeah, it got cold, and we had a little piece of cloth, you couldn't call it a blanket, maybe a sheet. It was about two feet wide and maybe six feet long, and that kept the mosquitoes off of us till we got the mosquito nets. And when it got cold, you know, we couldn't light a fire. You know, we would prefer to have a fire going, get by fire and keep warm and keep a because any light would attract spoder planes and we'd get bombed. In fact, that's you know, the starvation, the disease, infectious diseases and all that took lives, and you know was our enemy. The Americans were enemy too, because we got arc lighting. But we got about a half a mile a click away. It was about half a mile and you can hear the bombay doors opening, and you can hear the bombs whistling, and you hope the next one, you know, does not hit you whom whom. Yeah, we had arc lighting near the end of our stay there. Maybe that was one of the reasons. I never knew it was cold. I never knew it would be I've always seen the you know, it's hot in the jungle and it's sweaty and all that snow. And were just it's cold, and you know, the poor diet we had up north. When it got cool, we did have a kind of like a wool blanket there we could cover up with, and uh, we fared better. Food was better up north. Yeah, and uh we got a pumpkin soup one time, cabbage soup the other. And uh, they didn't feed us rice. They gave us a loaf of French bread, a half a loaf, and some mornings they would have a little sugar with it we could dip in as a treat. And uh, and People's Republic of China supplied little can spam or whatever. It wasn't American grave but any it was protein. Chinese grade spam. So let's see just one. I'm trying to think of just I mean, I can't I just can't picture all of just all that's going on, Like when you come back. How do you just does that? Just the switch just goes off and you're you become just a regular citizen, and you don't. I do well. I go back and sleep at my parents home till I go off to Virginia Tech. I buy a townhouse up in Virginia Tech. And and I'm a guy owning a four bedroom townhouse in oak manor Yeah, like it was an incredible story. And going and going to class. Yeah you just you move on. How were your grades your second time around. Virginia Town a little better? I thought there could be straight as I. Yeah. I never was a real scholar. I was good in English, I guess right. Yeah, I wrote a pretty good presentage report for the judges. You know, when I was a probation officer was social background. But uh, yeah, it's just I got war out first on because I felt like, you know, I've got to tell a story. You know, people the first hand account, and churches would invite me, and I just you know, and but over time, you know, when I came back after I got my degree and bought a house and lived here and got married, Uh, high schools would have become history teachers, and I did a lot of that, you know, in church groups and early on. Uh, civic groups still have me come and talk. I do it a rotary club Atnamous sometime in November. But yeah, not like it used to be in a steady but sure. Wow. Well it's an incredible story, and thank you so much for coming in today and check that with us. Last question, Yeah, me always in the show with the last question. This, this one ought to be interesting. So, uh, if you could spend twenty four hours with one person in history and you could pick anybody present, day or past, who would it be and where would you hang out with them? Wow? I don't know, I guess George Washington, how did you do it? Are Thomas Jefferson of Virginia? Well they're both Virginias. Yeah, one of them, Thomas Jefferson, you know who wrote that, you know, declaration and it was involved in all that, you know, the founding of this country. But George Washington, you know, moving the troops without my Yeah, those two men just men of statue, men of integrity, you know, men of character, just saying I know. If I recall correctly, Gary, that was his same answer. Now he's a Purple Heart recipient. So he really wanted to know where that where that would have come from and that idea and just talk to him about that. And it's interesting. But you would say that because Gary, when he mentioned why he went in the military in our interview with him, he said, you were captured and he thought somehow, some way he could be a hero. Yeah, he wanted to come find you. Yeah. Gary's an old Brookefield boy. Yeah. Yeah, it's just an amazing You guys are some amazing men. Their country is uh, it's in debt to I mean just the stories and the grit that you had for to survive all of that. Yeah, think about it, Brian, you leave a good comfortable home and go fight so somebody else can. Yeah, I mean and you'll die. That's pretty incredible. And you know when you think about it. Yeah, Medal of Honor recipients. Yeah, just you talk about a group I admire, you know, and they have no ego, none of them. I mean I've met some in and I know they just you know, they went above and beyond. You know, that gritted a lot of people don't have. But that's what I think about the citizen Army, you know that went to World War two and one, you know, freed Europe that I'm just another person that served in the military. Now I have a story to tell, but a lot of guys you don't have stories to tell. They're just a lot of them out there. But that was the generation I came up in. We love country, ask not what you know the country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. You know, you know, Kennedy was right, you know, in that peace corps. I've met people have been in a peace corps. You know, what a great statement that people will do that go help other people. I get the Virginia Tech magazine and I hadn't seen it lately, but back some years ago. I mean, these stories of these people that graduated agriculture or whatever engine and they're going, you know, and just that servanthood, that sacrifice, you know, because people, and that's to me, defines America. It's not our strengths and that nuclear weapon. It's in the hearts and the minds of people and Americans and we're a good people. We're good people. We care about each other, we care about this constitution, we care about freedom and democracy and free speech. We you know, those are just ideals that we still carry forward. I had the opportunity POW Organization Awards scholarships and my granddaughter, Emily Grace Emmanuel going to women Mary have told you guys, And at the Brookville Awards ceremony, I presented her with that scholarship and they wrote out and just when I read it, I cried, you know, I didn't write it out. This pilled and all said she stands for those I said, she does, you know. And so I got to speak to the Brookville family and you know, along with other people that got scholarships. But yeah, you can tell I love this country and his people. Yeah, yeah, thank yeah, thank you again for for coming in today. We are we are. Yeah, it's an incredible story. I've gottenned Connor and humbled. Yeah, thank you again again. You're listening to Life, Liberty, Happiness. And we were interviewing US Army and Vietnam veteran David Harker