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Jack Tragis
Vietnam
| 82nd Medical Detachment
He was in charge of the Delta Dustoff unit but Jack Tragis was green. His CO was also a pilot and began to show him the ropes of evacuating casualties, sometimes under fire. There were other good pilots who had been flying in country for a while and he began to learn what they don't teach in flight school. (5:55)
No GPS, you had to find them with rough map coordinates and a radio beacon. Medevac pilot Jack Tragis had a reputation for getting in and out quick on his evacuations so you better be ready. He went down in a chopper seven times. The most memorable of those incidents was the time he spent the night in a rice paddy with a full load of patients. (7:07)
Jack Tragis supervised the pilots at the 82nd Medical Detachment but he had limited experience himself and was still flying in the right seat. He became an aircraft commander much sooner than he would have except one day he had a pilot announce that he was quitting. (5:58)
Medevac pilot Jack Tragis was coming in to pick up some casualties. He was landing at night on a boat that was one among many in the Mekong Delta. Could you maybe pop some smoke? It was a long tour and when he got home, all he wanted was to be left alone with his family. (5:16)
If you're going to war, commit to winning it. Don't play around with people's lives. That's the plea of Jack Tragis, a helicopter pilot who saved a lot of people in Vietnam. During the ill-fated Operation Lam Son 719, he learned an important lesson; that Medevac pilots must be prepared to fly other kinds of missions. (5:21)
Tim Orr
Vietnam
| 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines
Tim Orr served the last two months of his time at Quantico playing an aggressor for OCS war games. Then he was out of the Marine Corps and in a country that was uninterested in anyone who was in that war in Vietnam. Undeterred, he built a solid career for himself. (6:34)
His father was very disappointed. Tim Orr wasn't doing well at college and was about to lose his student deferment. Knowing that his dad was a Marine veteran, maybe becoming a Marine himself would smooth things over. (4:29)
His Marine MOS out of boot camp was 0331, machine gunner. Tim Orr finished his infantry training and flew off to Vietnam where an overwhelming bad smell smacked him in the face as he walked off the plane. Soon he was standing lone 2 AM watch in the bush. (6:19)
The Marines in the machine gun squad were great guys. They welcomed Tim Orr into the fold when he arrived in Vietnam and he has kept in touch with some of them through the years. (3:19)
It was relentless for the Marines. Tim Orr remembers the cycle well. Go into the bush and dig in. Set up ambushes at night and patrols during the day. Then move to another spot and repeat. When the regiment was sent home early, he volunteered to stay as a part of a special unit which moved into a village and stayed there, protecting the villagers from the VC. (5:20)
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