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HomeMy WebLinkAboutAl Rampmeier TranscriptionCity of College Station Heritage Programs Oral History Interviewee: Al Rampmeier Interviewer: Tom Turbiville Transcriber: Brooke Linsenbardt Place: College Station, Texas Project: Veterans of the Valley 00:00: Al Rampmeier (AR): Scott Apton’s crew. 00:03: Tom Turberville (TT): Oh is that right? 00:03: AR: [Inaudible] and, and. But. Then. Went to Sam Houston. I liked that because of all the trees, it was totally air conditioned in [inaudible] ’61, September ’61 is when I started school. TT: Yeah. 00:19: AR: And, graduated in three and a half years, almost made it in three. TT: Right. 00:24: AR: But I had to go to summer camp ROTC, in Fort Sill, Oklahoma with a bunch of, with a lot of the Aggies too. And the summer of ’64 had to be the hottest summer I’ve ever been. TT: Oh my goodness. Yeah. 00:36: AR: And, then, I had, earlier, in January ’64, I had got, taken a flight physical at Fort Hood. But, the last eye physical of the day, they flunked me. So I, I took my, I was di-distinguished military graduate. In fact I was a company commander of the scabbard and blade there which is, like a president of, and, I took my, turned down my regular Army commission, which was armor and finance. And had me, have a degree, uh had a B.B.A., with a major in accounting. And I took my reserve commission which was military police. Graduated from Sam Houston in January. Spent about six weeks working for, a tax service over there helping them out, and then went in to the Army in March. TT: In March? Of? 01:34: AR: ’65. TT: ’65. 01:35: AR: And went to Augusta, Georgia to Fort Norton for my officer basic. And then was assigned to main post at Fort Benning, Georgia. And from there, I was. TT: You were a second lieutenant? 01:49: AR: I was second lieutenant. Yes. And, I uh, was assistant operations officer there. And had just finished being on duty for all of Fort Benning and got a call that said, “You’re reporting the next day to the first cav.” Well the [inaudible] assault was a test unit for the first cav. TT: Right. 02:11: AR: And of course, we saw a lot of helicopters and everything and knew what was about to go in it. Lyndon Johnson had come on T.V. and said, “We’re now committing air and mobile division to Vietnam. And we’re changing the colors from the 11th Air Assault to the First Cav.” And they brought those colors over from the United States and flip-flopped the Sec-Second Infantry colors to Korea. And with that we became the first air cav uh, and, uh, General Kinnard was the general, was the major general in charge and, he, he was known 101st Airborne paratrooper in World War II. TT: Right. 02:53: AR: Bastogne, in that area. And, we, at that point, the 1st Cav, when Johnson said, “We’re committing air and mobile division in Vietnam.” What he made real different was, he did not call up the reserves, or the National Guard. So at that point it became a tour of duty. TT: Right. 03:13: AR: And consequently those individuals with less than ninety days left in the service, didn’t go to Vietnam. And anybody with more than ninety stayed. In fact a lot of them were killed during the Battle of the la Drang. The movie where we. TT: [Inaudible]. Yes. 03:34: AR: The. We had thirty days, to pack everything up. To test fire the M-16. We were the first unit to go over with the M-16. We had 450 helicopters. They had to be loaded. They were loaded on four, aircraft carriers. Jeep aircraft carriers. And the rest of us were sent over by, by ship. I was on the William O. Darby, named after General Darby. We left. And a thousand men of the sixteen thousand that went over, went over by plane. And they were the advanced party. They landed and they virtually cut a golf course. An air strip. By hand. Machete and tools like that so that the grass would not be disturbed. And they were, our main base was An Khe, Vietnam which was not very far from Qui Nohn and right between Qui Nohn and Pleiku. Pleiku was where they had been attacked in January of ’64. And. TT: Right. So this is like the central highlands? 04:42: AR: It was central highlands. And we were placed there strategically to stop the splitting of the country. And. So at that point we went over by ship. I was a provo marshal, of the ship. A, a very interesting gentleman by the name of Lieutenant Colonel (Stockton?). He commanded the first of the ninth cav. Was the commander of the ship and of course we did have some people on bread and water but had, were going to try to miss the, the trip. They were AWOL. And, and. But we went through the canal, went out of Charleston, went through the canal, went up to Long Beach. Spent about six to eight hours in Long Beach. Pulled up the side the aircraft carrier Enterprise. And we look like a toy boat, compared to the aircraft carrier. And then we left, went to Vietnam, and we arrived. TT: You were M.P.? 05:32: AR: I was military police officer. TT: Military police officer, right. 05:37: AR: And when I got to Vietnam, we unloaded off the ship and the landing craft. We came up on the beach, just walking. And we were picked up by helicopter and helicoptered up to our base. We were put out in grass. It was up to about our, our chest high. And we saw this big mountain, it was called the H.O.N.K.L.M.—Hong Kong Mountain. And they said, walk towards that mountain, that’s where the division base camp will be at. And we did that, and we were pretty much all online around the perimeter because we were one of the first troop ships that landed. TT: Right. 06:20: AR: And so there only about a thousand Americans there at the time. TT: Yeah. 06:23: AR: And, then we built the first cav base. And. It. During that time, our area of operations was taken care of by, one of the first brigade of, of the 101st Airborne. Little did I know at the time, one of the captains in the operations shop was, Dave Hackworth who wrote the book about [inaudible]. In fact it appeared on Fox many, many times. And, he always wore a black turtleneck, black coat, and had a Julius Caesar type of haircut. TT: Right. 06:59: AR: And. But. I went out with 101st Airborne, O.J.T. Even as a leg, I wasn’t airborne. So, but they, they accepted me. I went out with them for about a week in a half and they were going through a real bad operation. And had just had a lot of guys that were hit. And, from there I, then I started supporting the second brigade, of the first cav., which was commanded by Colonel William R. Lynch, who, and, and goes by Ray Lynch. He was, he was born in the Madisonville area. Went to Sam Houston. Was in War World II with the Texas division, 36 infantry division. Was in Korea as an infantry officer. And then of course, then commanded the second brigade of the first cav. And I supported his brigade with a, a platoon of military police on every operation they went out. Of, until, uh, later in my tour. TT: Right. 08:03: AR: During that time, we, we handled conveys. Getting everything up from the coast, all the way up into Pleiku. We were in conveys. We had two passes on either side of An Khe. One of ‘em was where the French mobile unit was eliminated, as you say in the movie. TT: In the movie, yup. 08:28: AR: And that was just a winding. Just like a. You could see, as you flew over by helicopter, you could see the graves and you could see all the trucks that were blown away down in the pass kind of thing. And we had men on both sides of those passes. I say infantry men, infantry. And, and the military police were in the convoys, and along with, with everyone else. And, uh, then at the same time, we, from there, we, we spent, we were out on a, by ourselves. I had about eighteen of my men. We were guarding a bridge. And we were running conveys twelve hours a day. And that got a little hairy. We were, you know, got a little fire here and there. But uh, pretty much after that then, we came back into our base count. And as a brigade would go out, then the military police would go with them. And that platoon handled all the captured individuals, P.O.W.s. It handled all the captured weapons. Worked for the M.I. team during the interrogation process. And, then of course, we provided security for the brigade commander. And so we always had somebody with him. We had somebody guarding the top. The Tactical Operations Center. So our job pretty much, and then if we were in an area where there was a little town, we also did typical military police. When we came back in the division, then we actually acted as a division M.P. company. And, provided that type of security. Very interesting uh, when everything started hitting the fan over there in late October, what we call the Pleiku Campaign. And of course the second, third brigade which had two battalions under Colonel Brown at the time. And Lieutenant Colonel Moore was just a battalion commander at that time. And of course they stepped into some real stuff as you can tell from the book and the movie. TT: Right, right. 10:44: AR: And. So. After that, we were brought in to replace the third brigade. What was left of them. And we finished off what was left, which really wasn’t that much. Years later I ran into General Norman Schwarzkopf. And General Schwarzkopf and I were talking. He actually had just made major and was, was an advisor with a Vietnamese paratroop unit during this campaign. And he saw me with my first cav [inaudible]. And, he came over real quick. And, he said, “First Cav.” I said, “Yes sir.” And I said, “Yeah, you were over there in that area.” And we started talking. TT: Right. 11:32: AR: And he kept coming back over to me during this reception. And he said, “You know, I’m gonna tell you, that was the most satisfying, battle I’ve ever been in in all my life.” He said, “Because the cav was running the North Vietnamese towards us and we were on the border. And we were just cutting them down.” TT: Right. 11:55: AR: So from there, after the Pleiku Operation. It, it’s interesting because we came in on Thanksgiving Day of ’65 into the Pleiku Air Force Base, for a stand-down for just a little while. We celebrated Thanksgiving Day that year eating cold sea rations, or sea rationed turkey. And I had gone to the officer’s club and was able, or to the P.X. and was able to find a two-fifths of Canadian club. And I’m walking back, to my platoon man and people are stopping me trying to trade machine guns and everything else for the. [chuckle] TT: You weren’t taking it. 12:40: AR: I wasn’t taking it. And that’s what we had, that’s what we had for Thanksgiving. TT: You [inaudible] machine guns. 12:47: AR: That’s right, take care of the tree. You know. It’s one thing, one thing about, one thing about R.O.T.C. that they really taught us was always listen to your senior N.C.O.s. And I left. I had a Korean War veteran N.C.O. And. But after that, things sort of slowed down in December. And of course third brigade came under Colonel Moore. He was promoted to full colonel. During that time, Cardinal Spellman came through. We guarded him. Bob Hope Show, I had state security for the Bob Hope Show. That was an interesting, interesting time. And. Then we started the operations again. After the brigade. Or after, the division was pretty much, a lot of changes were occurring. We were getting new troops in, people that had volunteered, during the summer, that had already gone through their training and they were coming in as regular Army. My first lieutenant of military police had about two and half years of college. My second platoon had about a year. But the thing is is they were all regular Army. They had heard the call, and had volunteered. And so at this point in that December, early January timeframe, first cav was pretty much changed out. You know but you got to go back a little bit. The air assault unit was pretty much stripped. And they brought in all these new people, just like I was brought in. I mean, they had the senior commanders and they had a lot of the senior N.C.O.s, but they lost a lot of the people. So a lot of them were real new to air assault. And, so then this new group came in and we had plenty of troops for a while. And then we started. We had a, a real bad plane crash. C-123 went down in the, in the An Khe pass and hit top of the mountain and killed everybody on board. And our military police had to go up there and help secure the area and take care of the, the body bags and things like that. And that interesting enough, was a third brigade aerial unit, second of the seventh. I think it’s company eight. Uh. Of course as you well know if you’ve read the book, We Were Soldiers, it was really two battles at la Drang. And one was only depicted in the movie. TT: Right. 15:22: AR: The second one was, just. No one ever figured why. TT: Right, right. 15:28: AR: But. And. So. Um. From, from there we started Operation Right-Wing Masher, which is the largest, longest, operation of the war, really, of all the Vietnam War. And it started, it went for about forty-five days. Third brigade got into it, second brigade got into it. First brigade got into it. During that time, uh, we were, we had a little, they were, we were down on the coast, near Bong Son, where a lot of the rice was being harvested. And our job was to try to protect, keep the North Vietnamese away from their food supply. TT: Yeah. 16:13: AR: It was one of the reasons, and I said, and that area had not been, no one had been in that area. TT: Right. 16:21: AR: We had, we had quite an interesting operation during that, that time frame. And during that time, Colonel Lynch, was, he had completed his tour of duty and they promoted him to Brigade General and a new Colonel came in, from General Johnson’s staff. And. Then, in May, I was called, by the task to rotate to the third platoon if, and by doing that I would be supporting the third brigade under Colonel Moore. And, because he wanted an experienced officer. And. So at that time, I went over to the third brigade. And once again we were back in Bong Son, going back to that same area. And I think it was Operation Crazy Horse, operation. And, we. Of course the first cavalry’s oversees the presidential unit citation for the camp-, platoon campaign. TT: Right. 17:26: AR: But. From there. We pretty much, stayed out with the brigade. And, fourth of July ’66, we were at Don Tre, special forces camp, with, which was near the Tuy Hoa, which is on the opposite, closer to Saigon than, than from Qui Nohn. And so I can show you on the map some of it but. We had the opportunity to have, of all people, we had General Westmoreland. And everybody else that was a general there to give General Lynch, excuse me, Colonel Moore, his D., D.S., Distinguished Service Cross. And, and I just sent these pictures to General Moore. This is a. Believe it, believe it or not, this is a special forces camp. There are north, there are informers in the camp. And here we are, this is Colonel Moore. And General Westmoreland. That’s a better picture of him. TT: That’s Westmoreland there. 18:35: AR: Hmm-hmm. And this is where Colonel Moore has a [inaudible]. Receives his D.S.C. and goes home, and is replaced by Colonel Daniels, who took over the third brigade. And it, it appeared at that point everybody was doing almost a six-month tour in a higher level combat position. TT: Right. 19:03: I left. My replacement came in, interesting enough, I had a replacement, but I didn’t have orders. So I wrote to the Department of Army. They sent me a letter saying, well they knew I was over there, but they hadn’t cut the orders, so I did not get to go home early. I actually stayed. And then my last operation with the third brigade. I came in and started looking for my orders. And I left the states by plane on 15th of August. Went, went out to Fort Bliss for my last six months in the Army, and got out. TT: Right. And that was, that was quite a year. 19:50: AR: It was very, very interesting years. And there. TT: I want to look at them more. 19:55: AR: Yes. There’s, there’s a bunch of action photos and things like that but. TT: Was Colonel Moore depicted accurately in the movie? 20:04: AR: Yes. I. I heard of histories verses fiction. And there were the actual, some of the actual company commanders. And there was Snake, was there. And Two-Tall was there. And so was several other individuals. And they felt like the movie was 75 to 8, 70 to 80 percent accurate. TT: Right. 20:29: AR: And I would say that since I’m just new, I was there for his briefings and everything. I’d say it was very, it depicted him pretty well. TT: Right. 20:39: AR: I think. In fact, I got. TT: He, he’s still alive isn’t he? Is he? Is he? Is Colonel Moore still alive? 20:45: AR: He is still alive. In fact I have a letter here received from him on 9 July, January ’07. TT: I see. 20:52: AR: And where I sent him the pictures. But uh, interesting. He uh. Mel Gibson when he played him, said some very interesting things about the movie and what was [inaudible] done. I was very fortunate. I served under two full colonels that were probably two of the best tacticians, or at that time in the, in the Army. All, all of them made, both of them made general. One of them of course, General Lynch had to medically retire. And by then, Colonel Moore made three stars as general. TT: Yeah, yeah. 21:34: AR: And I had some interesting individuals that I, I met. TT: Right. So as a, a military police and being, I mean, you were obviously where the action was. You were on the ground mostly? In the air? Or were you both? 21:49: AR: Well it, we could not convoy to where we were going to set up the brigade operations. TT: Right. 21:55: AR: We helicoptered. Or we went by Caribou or by C-123 or C-130. Depends on. And most of the time it was what we called the Caribou, which was a fixed-wing aircraft. In fact that’s where I met one of the, one of the guys that was in ROTC with me. He was flying one of them. And uh, then uh. TT: Right. So you saw quite a bit of combat. 22:20: AR: Actually I was on the outskirts you know. We were, we were very fortunate. We ran a lot of convoys. And there were attacks and there were mines, but we were in the right place in the right time, that’s a better way to put it. TT: Right. 22:34: AR: And I, I, you know, I usually ran anywhere from the first vehicle to the second vehicle to somewhere close to the front, because I had responsibility for air cover and any, any other cover that we needed to have, our artillery or whatever. TT: Right. 22:56: AR: But I, I, honestly I, just say no, I didn’t see that much. Got shot at and mortared and some other things happened. TT: Right. 23:05: AR: But I was. TT: Right. What kind of weapon did you carry? 23:10: AR: Well, I went over with a .45 pistol and the first operation I went on, I carried an M-16. After that, I picked up a captured a, a, a M, AK-47. Which I carried for, all of, for about six months. Then I was threatened with, a, a colonel got onto me for, for carrying it. I said, “Sir, I was only issued the .45.” And he said, “Well, then, here’s what we’re gonna do.” He says, “I’m gonna get you an M-16.” So he sent me an M-16, “so, I don’t want to see you with that AK-47 again.” TT: Hmm-hmm. [chuckle]. 23:54: AR: But. There’s a picture of me in combat gear. TT: Yeah. Is this you here? 24:01: AR: This is me there. And there’s a picture of me with my M-16 someplace, let’s see. Here we’re loading up on a Caribou. Start going into the Special Forces camp. A lot of times our operations center was in a Special Forces camp. TT: Right. 24:18: AR: And helicopter crash. I mean, shot up, captured prisoners. You know we, we did have some, we did have some. This is a lot of my guys. In fact, I had two very interesting stories. It should be here. TT: What are you carrying there? 24:41: AR: Yeah, that’s it. That’s the M-16. And that’s operational. One of my Spek-4s had already been in Vietnam. And we came in, he went into my platoon and he and I became close. He was my driver and we had one. We always, I told him I wanted the fastest jeep in Vietnam because he had the, a lieutenant with the biggest yellow streak down his back. And, so, but, he actually went over with me with the third platoon. I made him a sergeant, and uh, later in years. This is my first wife. We divorced about three, four years ago. TT: I see. 25:24: AR: And. But. [Knock: Brief Interruption] 25:35: AR: And. But. [Pause]. I think I was gonna tell you something e-funny, or something. TT: So as the. You talked about your, how you would sort of play host to people like Bob Hope and Cardinal Spellman and people like that. I guess that was. 26:01: AR: We actually had to provide. TT: Security. 26:05: AR: Security for them. Even Andy Fischer and some of the other people that came over. TT: Right. 26:08: AR: Uh. I. It’s, we, we had the stage, I had responsibility for the stage security. And best part about them being there is that when they left, all the food that they had. We all got [inaudible] part of it. [chuckle] TT: Are you one of these people? 26:27: AR: Yes. That’s my, and that’s my platoon sergeant. TT: Okay. 26:30: AR: He just died about two years ago and we stayed in touch my last five years. I’ve been in touch with one of my sergeants since 1987 which. And I happened to write a letter to the First Cav Association and he read it, called me, and then, in ’99, myself and two others started a reunion for our, our 540 5th M.P. Company. TT: Right. 26:57: AR: And the 540 5th M.P. Company is the most decorated military police company, uh, in the Army. TT: Right. 27:07: AR: They were World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. This is one of our 175s.