My Father's Vietnam Page #5

with Glenn Rickert in Vietnam in 1970.

For him the Vietnam War represented an

opportunity to pursue his love of flying.

He works as a pilot to this clay.

[Glenn] I looked up to

him, maybe a role model,

I believe that

would be the case.

He had a commanding

presence, soft-spoken.

I Wasn't the only one

who would say this to him,

but probably the first and I'd say

it many times because we were close.

The job we were doing was

very dangerous, very risky.

Every day you never knew

what was going to happen.

And I said, I told him

a couple of times that

I could do all of those trips

and he wouldn't have to do any,

because he had a wife

and a child now,

there was more to lose there

if something happened to him.

I remember

the conversations with him,

and he said "No," he said, "Thank you,

but I really like flying these flights."

[Soren] Like my father and Ring Bailey, Glenn

Rickert had only been married a short time

before shipping out. His son Glenn Jr.

Was only an infant at the time.

He and his mother Margie still live in Pennsylvania,

not far from where Glenn Sr. Grew up.

[Rickert] I think it was a little bit

after the parade for Bucks County,

Vietnam Memorial. I finally

started realizing my heritage,

so I finally wanted to get it

all put together, the letters,

the uniforms, things like that,

so it was a lot of information

so I figured I'd just kind of start throwing

it all together in some type of format

just so I could show people.

Because a lot of people

were asking after that time.

And then, in school I did

a project about his life,

that helped out a lot, too,

with being able to share that.

[Margie] He wanted to go,

he wanted to do his part,

and he really believed

in what he was doing.

It wasn't that he didn't

feel that we should be there.

I mean, of course everybody

has mixed feelings about war,

nobody likes war, but if you believe

in what the purpose of it is,

tying to liberate

an oppressed people basically,

that's what it comes down

to and he believed in that.

He was a very moral person.

He was a Christian, so he valued life,

every life, regardless of their politics.

In Vietnam, there was a time when

I was so wrapped up in the war

and what I was doing over there, that

I didn't really write regularly.

I believe it was Glenn that told me one time

that my parents were trying to get a hold of me

or that the Red Cross had contacted him

to tell me that I needed to write home.

Because I hadn't written or contacted

them for maybe a couple of months,

and when you think about it,

that's pretty sad

with all that was going on

on TV every day of the week,

every hour there were pictures

of helicopters being shot down

and people getting

killed by the thousands.

So I thought it was very selfish of me

to be that way and not communicate.

I just isolated

myself over there.

I just really detached myself from there

rest of the world, it just didn't exist.

No newspapers,

I didn't see any TV.

It was really what was going on

right there and then.

But then when the Red Cross

contacted me

through Glenn Rickert, then I realized

there that I really needed to communicate,

and that they cared and they wanted to

hear from me, so it was a wake-up call.

[Margie] Because of his

morality and his beliefs,

I believe that's why on weekends

he would go to the orphanage.

That was an outlet for him that he felt probably

counteracted all the death and destruction,

through the week whenever

he could go to the orphanage

and do something in a more positive vein,

I think that was an outlet for him.

[Glenn] He was really a very humane guy.

He really cared about,

he wasn't prejudiced, he didn't

look at the Vietnamese as being-

whereas some pilots you know, looked at

the Vietnamese as being maybe inhuman,

not like them.

But really we were all the same,

and Glenn looked at

the Vietnamese,

both the enemy and not

the enemy, as being people.

And there was an

orphanage in Quang Ni.

He wanted me to do a favor for him. He

had adopted an infant Vietnamese girl.

She was probably

six months, four months old.

Anyway he asked as a favor,

"Would you mind taking pictures of the

baby so I can send them home to my wife."

It was kind of strange because

she was a part of his life,

but of course to me

it was just a picture.

But I knew I'd be able

to love her like he did.

He flew me up there

and we got out.

I met the baby and took pictures and

printed up some pictures for him.

I had it in our kitchen. I don't...

Well, Glenn was so little.

I also had a bank where I was saving

money towards our R&R in Hawaii,

so it was like Ian and the

bank were right there.

It was just, that was

what we were, you know,

that was our goal to get

to R&R and then to adopt Ian.

[Soren] Glenn Rickert shot this 8mm footage

while piloting his light observation helicopter

over Vietnam in 1970.

Margie told me that Glenn had always wanted

to fly helicopters and that, in a way,

he was very much in his

element during the war.

For Ring Bailey, unfortunately,

things were not going quite as well.

So I think it was at least on two

occasions, once before and once after,

I was in the public

information office,

his unit...

I crossed paths with his

unit and he was there.

And he was...

I got insights.

He had no axe to grind,

and he was an honest person...

or candid with me. I had no reason

to believe he'd color the facts...

or would say anything

that was inaccurate.

But the first time he was seemingly

pretty down in terms of spirits.

The unit was involved

with a company

either practicing or calling in

air-strikes on farmers,

clearly not military targets,

and they were either just for the

hell of it or they were practicing.

There were situations like that, or just

the day-to-day grind was getting him down,

the lack of sleep,

the physical work,

the snipers, the ambushes that

were set up night after night,

He was not in a good place

mentally, let's put it that way.

He wasn't depressed, but

he was exhausted, I think.

I had a cat named Miranda.

And I had her bred

and she had kittens,

and I had written him about the kittens,

and here he was in the jungle and he said,

"You know how I'd react, but its

really hard for me to understand"

the joy of being

a cat with kittens

"when I'm out here

in the jungle."

The second time I saw him, we were about to get

an opening in the public information office

and I said, and in fact

I had mentioned it last time,

if I can put your name in or would you

mind if I put your name in for a position

writing and taking photographs,

and of course he jumped on it.

And it was about the time that

the vacancy became available

that I found out

that he was killed.

It's just another day

going out on patrol.

We were getting toward evening.

We were setting up a night defensive

perimeter for the platoon.

And so I had both Robert and

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