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George Crockett

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After leaving the Marine Corps, George Crockett found work doing what he loved in the outdoors. Looking back on his time in the military, he is grateful for the structure it provided him. (5:11)

George Culpepper

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George Culpepper sits in the water of the Surigao Strait and watches as two Japanese naval task forces pass him by in the night. (4:50)

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George Culpepper, aboard a Navy submarine chaser, has a close encounter with a Kamikaze in Leyte Gulf. (4:17)

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George Culpepper remembers picking up three Phillipine civilians who had been floating on the open sea in a small raft. (2:25)

George Ferkes

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He was married and in graduate school but when his deferment no longer protected him from the draft, George Ferkes enlisted in the Air Force and learned to fly. He was assigned as a forward air controller and began training for Vietnam. (5:10)

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The base was at Quang Tri, up near the DMZ. George Ferkes was a new forward air controller, or FAC, whose job was to support the South Vietnamese forces in the area and their American advisors. (5:07)

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Operation Lam Son 719 was an attempt by the South Vietnamese forces to cut the Ho Chi Minh trail and disrupt the supply of Communist forces in the South. George Ferkes supported them by calling in air strikes where needed. The campaign went so badly that, eventually, he was calling in strikes to destroy abandoned armor. (3:56)

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Forward air controller George Ferkes marked his targets with white phosphorus rockets that put out a lot of smoke. He also had a Starlight scope, the first practical night vision device, but it was bulky and hard to use. He describes one memorable mission which had him supporting an ARVN unit near the DMZ which was overrun by the enemy. (5:28)

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When he returned from Vietnam, George Ferkes is fairly sure he saw his old hooch burning on the television when Quang Tri fell. After a couple of years he leapt at the chance to join a special ops outfit, even though, at the time, there was little interest in those units. (3:04)

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When the Iran hostage crisis happened, President Carter asked the joint chiefs if there was any way they could be rescued. This set off a mad scramble to put together a multi-branch operation and Air Force special ops pilot George Ferkes was right in the middle of it. (4:23)