“Thanks”
SF Sgt. John Bradford of Texas, (right) wraps up unfinished business conducted with Frank Kelley of Plymouth, Mass., (left) at the A Shau Valley 42 years ago. Joe Fitz at Boston Herald:
“I don’t want to sound mushy,” he explained, “but bonds are developed in certain situations and this was a man I needed to commend, even though, for most of my life, I didn’t even know who he was.”
He finally tracked him down by phone last spring in Plymouth, and that’s where they met last Wednesday night.
Bradford, 68, now resides in Texas, far removed from the battlefields of Vietnam, far removed from the badly injured Special Forces sergeant he was that fateful day in 1966 when Kelley came into his life, just as he thought he was about to lose it.
It was in a place called the A Shau valley, near the Laotian border, where Special Forces had set up a camp to monitor enemy movements along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In doing so, they were totally reliant upon airpower for their defense.
Six miles long, one mile wide, nestled among the mountains, the valley posed a great challenge to pilots, who nicknamed it The Tube.
Determined to wipe out that camp, the North Vietnamese Army had launched a ferocious attack, flooding the area with troops.
“They had the whole area ringed,” Bradford recalls. “They had come to kick our butts. I was badly injured, unable to walk, and now daylight was fading.”
Bernie Fisher, who would later receive the Medal of Honor, led the air support in his A-1E Skyraider.
“Bernie was saving our bacon, keeping the bad guys off us,” Bradford said, “but our birds were being shot down all around us. Every aircraft entering the valley was hit.”
Confined to a stretcher, Bradford was resigned to his fate.
“Anybody in Special Forces has to be a pragmatist,” he said. “And I was one at 24. I knew I was in serious trouble and would need a miracle to get out alive.”
The rest here. A Shau Wikipedia page here. Bernie Fisher MOH page here. Other things that happened in the “Ah Shit Valley,” also prominent in USMC history and lore.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 7:40 am on Monday, September 8, 2008
One Response to ““Thanks””
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September 8th, 2008 at 11:39 am
What a great story. [i]There’s[/i] your “two Americas”, Linda Grant, you twit.