Ten feet above a firefight in Vietnam's Central Highlands, a door gunner put his boot in John Fisher's back and shoved him out of the helicopter. It was his first day as a radio telephone operator, and he had no idea what was waiting on the ground.
A month earlier, John had won the U.S. Surfing Association Class A championship and come home to a draft notice. By May 1968 he was humping a 25-pound PRC-25 radio through the jungles around Pleiku, Kon Tum and Dak To with the 4th Infantry Division, calling in artillery with a map and a compass. In this episode he talks about the lieutenants he served beside, the mortar blast that took his hearing, the night his mother's nightmare pulled him off a firebase hours before his gun was destroyed, and coming home on July 3, 1969 to a country that didn't want to hear it
.Then he tells us what came after: surfing his way through New Zealand and Australia, becoming a chiropractor, writing his way through PTSD, and going back to Vietnam more than a dozen times, where a former enemy soldier lifted his shirt to show his scars and told John, "Now we can be friends."
This episode is dedicated to the lieutenants John Fisher served beside as a radio telephone operator in Vietnam's Central Highlands, to the battery captain and the gun crew lost on his firebase, to the radio operator killed the day before John arrived, and to every soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who served in the jungles around Pleiku, Kon Tum and Dak To. We also remember the more than 58,000 Americans who never came home from Vietnam, and the Vietnamese people on every side who lost their lives, their families and their homes in the war.
Content advisory: This episode includes descriptions of combat, the deaths of fellow soldiers, wounded men in a field hospital, killing in war, moral injury, PTSD and substance use after coming home. If you're a veteran who is struggling, you are not alone. Call 988 then press 1, text 838255, or visit VeteransCrisisLine.net.
📚 Find John's books, including Dak To Rx: A Travelogue - A Veteran Returns to the Land of His Nightmares on his website: https://www.johnwesleyfisherbooks.com/Dak To Rx: A Travelogue on Amazon: https://a.co/d/0eWsifpG
⏱️ CHAPTERS
00:36 Surf Champion to Draft Notice
05:30 Fort Ord, Fort Sill and the 105 Howitzer
10:00 Shipped Out Early to Cam Ranh Bay
15:30 Pleiku, the M16 and the PRC-252
1:30 Sent Further Forward29:00 Life in the Jungle
33:30 Three Lieutenants
44:00 Coming Home to "Baby Killer"
47:00 The Mortar Blast and the Field Hospital
54:30 "My Mom Saved My Life"
1:01:30 R&R in Thailand With His Brother
1:09:00 Surfing Cam Ranh Bay and a Painful Return
1:16:30 The Last Months on the Hill
1:20:30 Home on July 3, 1969
1:36:30 Mexico, New Zealand, Australia and Chiropractic
1:44:30 PTSD and Writing Angels in Vietnam
1:50:00 Back to Vietnam: "Now We Can Be Friends"
2:04:00 Dak To Rx: Back to the Central Highlands
2:13:00 No Accidents, War and the Soul, and Maine🎖️
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