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Jack Tragis

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Jack Tragis said goodbye to his wife, which was rough, and flew off to Vietnam. He was a Medical Service officer and a helicopter pilot so he was going to have plenty to do. He became the operations officer of a Dustoff unit down in the Delta which was great. It meant that he was based at a Navy facility and the Navy knew how to fight a war. (5:20)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

Jack Van Keuren

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Tank commander Jack Van Keuren describes the chaos of D-Day and the experiences of his crew as they moved inland through the Normandy villages and into Holland and Germany. (14:23)

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Tank commander Jack Van Keuren relates some humorous experiences from his training in the States and his crossing to England to enter the fray in WWII. Apparently, the Yanks' solution to dealing with roundabouts was to drive straight through them. (14:25)

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Tank commander Jack Van Keuren relates the tale of a fierce battle at the town of Rheinberg, Germany which pitted Allied tanks and infantry against dug-in German artillery. (13:16)

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As his tank crew moved inland following D-Day, Jack Van Keuren had some unusual experiences including finding a bank full of German money and liberating a Mercedes convertible from a garage. (7:05)