Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
5:30 | Carl Fedde first arrived in Vietnam in the city of Saigon. There, he and his platoon trained the scout dogs they were working with on how to alert on Vietnamese only. He talks about a mission with his dog, Charlie Brown, that made a believer out of him and everyone else.
Keywords : Carl Fedde Saigon Vietnam Training scout dog first mission humidity quarantine alert Viet Cong (VC) Vietnamese Booby Trap squad leader Charlie Brown platoon leader sniper close call
Carl Fedde was born in Connecticut, and had his training for the Army at Fort Riley, Kansas. He trained with dogs and learned how to scout before flying over to Vietnam.
Fedde talks about an unfortunate event that happened while he was going through a village with his scout dog, after a man behind him open fired on a house nearby. He also talks about another close call he had where he almost got blown up by a hand grenade booby trap.
When his first tour in Vietnam came to a close, Fedde had no choice but to leave behind his scout dog, Charlie Brown. When he returned home, he became a drill sergeant at Fort Dix. Afterwards he went to flight school at Fort Wolters and Fort Rucker, and started his second tour in Vietnam flying missions in helicopters.
Once he was situated in his second tour, Fedde did all kinds of missions, including sniffer missions and dropping mortar shells from his helicopter.
Fedde talks about things that could and did go wrong for him when he was flying the helicopters in Vietnam. Luckily, one time his training was able to save him and everyone on board.
Fedde talks about how he came home the second time from Vietnam. He says that Platoon was a movie that captured the details of Vietnam very accurately.
