James Fleming’s Impossible Vietnam War Rescue | From Medal of Honor

Introduction to America

0:00This July 4th marks the 250th anniversary of America. 250 years of rebellion and innovation, of struggle and survival, of liberty and courage and sacrifice. As many times over the past quarter millennium, our American experiment looked like it could fall apart at the seams. When you look closely at those moments, though, it wasn't politicians who held us together.

0:33It was ordinary people. People who spoke up, who protested, who fought. Regular people, in times of great strife, grabbed at the frayed fabric of this country and pulled it together.

Medal of Honor Season

0:45In this season of Medal of Honor, as America celebrates its semi-quincentennial, we're telling the stories of some of those people. Because bravery is in all of us. And because the same qualities that carried us through the first 250 years, courage, honor and loyalty, will help us endure the next 250. This is Season 3 of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage. Thank you for listening. Here's host J.R. Martinez with the first episode.

1:15Find Medal of Honor wherever you get podcasts. And binge the full season ad-free with a Pushkin Plus subscription. Sign up and save on the Medal of Honor show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus. Use the code MOH25 for 25% off an annual subscription.

Helicopter Mission

1:35The helicopter made its way up the river. The rotor blade was humming against the sky. There was thick jungle on both sides of the riverbank, bright green against the rushing brown water. It was November 26, 1968. And that river separated Cambodia from South Vietnam. The pilot of the chopper followed its path, heading towards the sound of gunfire, towards the battle.

2:10The mission had started with five helicopters, but three of them were already gone. The pilot of this one was 25-year-old James Fleming. He could see a downed chopper burning on the riverbank. He knew exactly how dangerous the situation was. And as he got closer, shots started coming at him from both sides of the river. The noise of gunfire crackled through the jungle. The enemy was everywhere. He was supposed to touch down in the middle of this mess.

2:41But even if he could get to the riverside without being shot, he knew there wasn't enough space for him to land. But Jim Fleming also knew something else. There were seven soldiers down in that jungle who were about to be captured, or killed, by the North Vietnamese Army. They had fought their way to the riverbank. And Jim was their only chance to get out of there alive. Jim remembered what he told those same guys just a few hours earlier, when he dropped them there. He had told them he would put them in.

3:13But he would also get them out.

3:16Jim looked at his fuel gauge, and it was almost empty. He looked at the terrain. Impossible. And then he banked his helicopter and started in.

Medal of Honor Explained

3:30I'm J.R. Martinez, and this is Medal of Honor. Stories of Courage. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. It's awarded for gallantry and bravery in combat, at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty. Each candidate must be approved all the way up the chain of command, from the supervisory officer in the field to the White House. This show is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice.

4:03I'm an Army veteran, and in the military, we talk a lot about no man left behind. You know, the concept that troops will do anything to protect each other from harm. But the guy you'll meet in this episode, Jim Fleming, doesn't just see that as a concept. But he sees it as a responsibility, something we owe each other. It's something he feels deep in his bones. The importance of staying true to your word, being there, showing up.

4:34And that's why this story really stuck with me. It makes me think about the way we show up in our own lives. Because for Jim, that responsibility isn't a burden. It's an honor. The kind of honor that would lead him straight into a death trap. We spend hours deciding what to buy, but there's a split-second decision that can make or break a sale.

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Jim Fleming's Life

6:47Learn more at directtv.com. Restrictions apply. When Jim Fleming tells the story of his life, he begins with the moment he was left behind. I was born in Sadea, Missouri on the 12th of March, 1943. My mother, we were abandoned by my father right after my brother was born. He was born in 44. And she was a single mother working in a town and country combat boot shoe factory in Sadea, Missouri. Jim's mom met John Fleming, an Air Force pilot stationed nearby. They started dating.

7:18And before John left that base for California, he asked her to marry him. They got married in Las Vegas. He came back and took my brother and myself and her to California. John Fleming taught Jim two things. First, what it means to have a dad, an all-in, fully committed father. Second, he taught Jim how to love the Air Force. John was a career pilot. He served during World War II, Korea, and even the early years of Vietnam.

7:48My father was the driving force behind everything I did. He was my hero. I really looked up to him. I didn't want to work for a living. And I always wanted to be a pilot in the Air Force. I never wanted to be anything else. Halfway through his pilot training, Jim volunteered to go to Vietnam. By that time, the war had been going on for more than a decade. Jim was married. He had two little girls at home. But he couldn't wait to get into combat and serve his country.

8:20I was terribly excited to go. If you talk to my wife, she'll probably tell you that I was apprehensive that it would be over by the time I got there. I wanted to go and fly in war.

8:34But Vietnam wasn't exactly what he'd imagined. Jim remembers how it felt when he arrived in 1968. As we get off, the flares are going off around. You can see artillery going off over here. And it was just no question in your mind, you're somewhere you've never been before. We probably got there at midnight and got in our barracks probably four in the morning or whatever to get a couple hours of sleep. And I remember turning over and a tear comes out of my eye and down my nose.

9:06And I said to myself, damn, only 364 more of these to go before I get out. You know, I already knew I didn't like it there. Jim did three days of jungle survival training. You know, just in case a chopper went down. It scared the hell out of him. I didn't like that at all. It taught me I did not want to go down and have to walk home. But dropping people into the jungle was what Jim was in Vietnam to do.

9:38Okay, here's the deal. The North Vietnamese Army, NVA for short, needed to supply their forces fighting in South Vietnam. So they built a supply line through two neutral countries, Laos and Cambodia. The Americans called it the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The U.S. wanted to stop that flow of supplies, but they couldn't officially be in either of those countries. So they secretly sent in small teams of Green Berets. They were the Studies and Observations Group, or SOG for short.

10:12It was totally covert ops. Those SOG teams were inserted by Air Force pilots from the 20th Special Operations Squadron, otherwise known as the Green Hornets. They flew UH-1 helicopters. In the military, we call them Hueys. You know this kind of helicopter. You've seen it in every single movie about Vietnam. Jim was one of those Green Hornets.

Green Hornets in Vietnam

10:37And on the morning of November 26, 1968, he got ready for a drop.

10:44The first mission of the day was to insert a seven-man Special Forces team. Three Americans and four mercenaries. Those mercenaries were referred to as Montagnards. They were members of a tribe from the highlands of Vietnam. Montagnards were a key part of any SOG team, because they were not only seasoned soldiers, but also expert local guides and translators. So this SOG team was going to be dropped right at the border of Cambodia and Vietnam.

11:18Their target was the Tan Laysan River. They suspected it was a route for the NVA. SOG had already tried to get there twice before, but each attempt had ended in a scramble to pull the team out under heavy weapons fire from the enemy. But they needed the intel, so back they went. The team would be taken to their mission by a convoy of five helicopters, two gunships, and three SLICs. Jim flew a SLIC, which was essentially a bus.

11:48Take the guns out, take the rockets off, open up the cab, and it's completely empty. You carry troops. It was a SLIC. A SLIC's only job was to bring guys in or pick them up. Each SLIC had a pilot, a co-pilot, and two gunners, one at each door. The convoy always traveled as a unit. It was safer that way. Plus, there was a forward air controller plane, what the guys called a FAC. The choppers didn't have much navigation, so the FAC had to lead them in and out.

12:22The SOG guys and the Green Hornets gathered on the runway, the way they did before every mission. Before you took off, you would brief and you would shake hands and hug the team members and the crew members. Not a lot of talking going on. And what's going on here is what you see in football. When men stand around and hold hands, these big guys hold hands, there's a bonding going on there. What you're doing is you're saying, I'm going to take you and I'm going to put you out in the middle of hell.

12:55If you have to come home, I'll bring you home. That's my duty. It's my honor. I will do that for you. It seems simple enough to Jim. You make a promise and you keep it. But this was Jim's second day as an aircraft commander. He was a lieutenant, way younger than the other pilots. Less seasoned. He didn't know that it wasn't going to be so easy.

13:29The FAC left first, then the Hueys. They headed towards the drop location. When they got close, the choppers split up to evade detection. You send five helicopters and one of them peels off and another one peels off. And if anyone's watching or listening, they don't know who lands. So we did that and I put the team in. After the Saw group was on the ground, the Green Hornets met up at a refueling stop. They kicked back and waited to hear how the mission was going. We're sitting around listening to rock and roll from Armed Forces Radio and eating sea rations and smoking cigars and, you know, setting alert out in the middle of this miserable little place.

14:09After Jim dropped them, the seven members of the SOG team moved into the jungle. The trees were so tall and so dense that the canopy totally covered them. And that was dangerous, too. Those trees were filled with monkeys, ready to scream and tip off the enemy to their location. The men would have made their way towards the river, setting up a perimeter of Claymore Mines for safety. But then, out of nowhere, a huge enemy force was on them.

14:42Suddenly, the jungle was blazing with gunfire. Monkeys screaming, bullets zipping past the trees. The SOG team knew how outnumbered they were. They had to get out now. The radio operator with them keyed the mic and said, Tango 5-1 contact, need extraction. As soon as that happens, we get it. We're on our way. The pilots scrambled to their choppers and took to the air.

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SOG Team in Danger

17:43For the SOG team on the ground in Vietnam, the situation had gone from bad to really, really bad. Jim Fleming and the rest of the Green Hornets were getting updates from them over the radio. The NVA had the SOG team on the run. Now they're after them, and they chased them all the way to a riverbank. This large river, which is the border between Cambodia and Vietnam. And they can't get across the river. It's too wide. So they're now, with their backs to the river, set up a defensive position, put claymore mines out.

18:16And they're fighting off these people that are starting to come in on them. The forward air controller got to the area first. But he couldn't find the men. The jungle canopy was just too dense. The FAC has identified where he thinks they are, because they're moving. He knows they're on the river, but exactly where, he can't really tell. Then came the helicopters. Two gunships and three slicks. The first guys to get there are the gunships. What do gunships like to do more than they like to do anything else? Rock and roll.

18:47They were blazing gunfire and rockets towards the enemy, which was both helpful and not. Because it created a totally new problem. Before, the SOG team had just been facing the men in front of them, the ones who had chased them to the river. But after a few gunship passes, an even larger group of enemies knew they were there. They suddenly began taking fire from across the river. It was coming from six enemy machine guns hidden over there. So now, they had nowhere to hide.

19:19The gunships knocked out two of the machine gun positions. But then, they hit the first gunship. He starts trailing blue smoke, and he yells, I'm hit, I'm hit, I'm going down. He turns back, goes across the river, and crash lands. One of the slicks spiraled down and landed next to the gunship. Their job was to rescue that crew and take them to safety immediately. They go home. They can't help anybody, so they're going home. Only three of the five helicopters were left.

19:51Everyone on the ground, the enemy and the Special Forces men, had seen the crash. And they watched as yet another slick flew off. Engine trouble. Low fuel. So now, just two helicopters left. The second gunship, Leonard Gonzalez, goes across the team and takes battle damage and starts trailing blue smoke. So while this is going on, the forward air controller is talking to me, and he's saying, damn, what are we going to do?

20:22I said, well, I'll tell you what. This is really a lot of chaos. I bet you I can get in there and get them. I'm the only one here. Get me low. Way out. Throw me in there. I bet you I can sneak in there and get them. Jim knew what kind of danger was waiting for him on the ground. But he and his crew of three other guys were in total agreement. They had to try. So he puts me low, way out, to go down the river and come back around. So I hit that river bank, and my right door gunner starts shooting.

20:54He says, go right, go right. And I'm starting to go down the river looking for him and going right, going right, sort of backing up, actually, going down the river. The chopper was skimming over the water, flying through the bullets. His door gunners and co-pilot returned fire and searched for the team. The SOG team saw Jim's chopper come in. But as they started to move towards it, the wood line in front of them erupted with gunfire. There was no way for the men to make it to Jim. The radio operator says, get out, get out, they got us, get out.

21:29Jim got out as fast as he could. He moved up and away to safety. But here's the thing. Jim had made the man on the ground a promise. A promise to come back. Remember, no man left behind. And now he and the rest of his crew had to decide if that was a promise they could keep.

21:52Daylight was fading. And down on the ground, the gunfire was so thick you could practically walk on it. Jim was desperately low on fuel and ammo. The last remaining gunship with Gonzalez was still trailing smoke. Jim called out to him. He says, we've got some damage. I've got to take this home or we're going to live out here. We're going to live out here. In the jungle. Remember, this is Jim's worst nightmare. But his mind flashed back to the men on the ground. They had to get them out before dark if they were going to get them out at all.

22:27I put the nose down, go down the river. And as I come up and I look over, there are people everywhere. The enemy is now focused in where they are. They found them because they saw me. So the enemy is starting to go in. And I tell the fact, bring me in one more time. I know where they are now. Bring me in one more time. As I say that, Leonard Gonzalez says, you going back in. I said, I'm going to try it one more time. He said, I'll tell you what. He says, follow me. I'll go over them one more time. I'll give them everything I got and I got to go home.

23:00Gonzalez hit the enemy with the final blazing pass. He goes over them and he rock and rolls. He shoots all his rockets. They give them everything they got. And he says, see you at home, Jim. And he takes off. Jim's chopper was the only one left. He started back down the river. One of his two gunners, Fred Cook, was hanging out the door, scanning for the team on the ground. And as we get further down, we're starting to take some pretty good damage. And Fred is shooting and yelling and go right, go right.

23:32Stop, stop. I got him. They had made it down to the riverbank and they were half in the water in the reeds, this sort of underbrush. And the blades had blown those reeds and we found them. Jim knew there was nowhere big enough for him to land. But if he hovered just above the water with his landing skids against the riverbank, the team might be able to make it to the chopper. It would be a balancing act that required some truly insane piloting skills. And it would only work if by some miracle, his helicopter wasn't hit and disabled altogether.

24:07Jim hovered the UH-1 against the riverbank, his tail boom hanging just above the water. And he waited for the SOG team. They spotted him and raced forward. But as they did, two NVA burst out of the reeds and opened fire. The men shot back and they kept on running. So I'm hovering over the water as close as I can get to the bank. And Fred Cook, God bless him, I hear him go, hold your hover, hold your hover. I got one.

24:38And what he's doing is he's leaning down and grabbing these guys and jerking them in, scrambling them in. The chopper was taking fire from all sides now. But Jim just kept hanging in there, as calmly as a mom in the school pickup line. Bullets snapped through the windshield. They had four men on the chopper, then five, then six. And I'm looking around and I see people darting up and just sort of jumping up and down, up and down, and shooting.

25:09And there are seven of them out there. We only got six. Now I'm thinking, gosh, maybe they got one of them. I've got enough. He had enough men, but he didn't have all of them. And for Jim, was six really enough? The bullets were getting closer now. He knew they were seconds, not minutes away, from all of them going up in flames. We got to get out of here. Sooner or later, they're going to get us. The round's going to hit me or it's going to hit the engine.

25:40Where was the seventh guy? Jim knew who he was, Randy Harrison, the commanding officer of this group of Green Berets. He had volunteered to go on this mission. Jim wanted to wait for him, but he knew he was pushing his luck too far. He looked over his shoulder one last time. And as I look over, Randy Harrison jumps up. He's a fair-haired guy, and he's all painted up, and he's got a bandana on because he wore a bandana over his light hair.

26:11I see him jump up, and he looks at me, and I look at him. He was the last man, and he waited until everybody was aboard. He gave him a last burst of his automatic weapon, threw it down, and took off to the helicopter. Randy took about four steps and jumped in the water, sort of a flying jump in the water, trying to hit the helicopter, missed, and took about one stroke in the water and got his arm over the skid. And Fred Cook reaches down and grabs him by the rucksack and yells, let's go. And we drug him through the water, and off we went.

26:44All of the men were on board. The fuel tanks were pretty much empty. The windshield was shattered. Jim hadn't even noticed it until he felt the air rushing in as the chopper flew away. Not a single man had been wounded, and not a single man was left behind. Hello, hello.

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29:07You know what this makes me think of? My beloved Boston Celtics. Three years ago, they chose a new coach, Joe Missoula, who was like the third or fourth assistant off the bench. Never had any NBA coaching experience. Everyone was expecting him to fail. And you know what? Turns out he was one of the best coaches in the game. And without him, there's no way the team would have made the playoffs this year, let alone be contenders for the finals. Sometimes, the right hire makes all the difference. With HiringPro, you can hire with confidence, knowing you're getting the best talent for your business.

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After the Rescue

30:30After Jim Fleming's daring rescue, he stayed on in Vietnam, taking care of his men, bringing them to danger, and bringing them home. He was wounded in January of 1969 and spent a few months in a hospital in Japan. Then he got picked up, by a helicopter, of course, to head back to Vietnam. The pilot was a friend of his. He said, well, Jim, you're going home.

31:01I said, yeah, I got another three or four months of this left. He said, no. He says, you're going home tomorrow. I said, I'm going home tomorrow. Why? He says, the president's nominated you for the Medal of Honor. And I said, yeah, great. Because we used to joke, you know, how can you get out of here? Well, you can be nominated for the Medal of Honor. You have to go home. I said, yeah, okay, right, right, right. He said, no, I'm not kidding. He says, you're going home. I said, okay, this is a good one. It was a good one, because it was true. James Fleming was awarded the Medal of Honor on May 14, 1970, by President Nixon at the White House.

31:38As we think of the beginning of this country 190 years ago, we think of it as the land of the free. We should all be reminded that it could not be the land of the free if it were not also the home of the brave. And today we honor the brave men, the men who far beyond the call of duty serve their country magnificently in a war very far away, in a war which is many times not understood and not supported by some in this country.

32:14The ceremony took place just 10 days after the massacre at Kent State University, when members of the Ohio National Guard shot into a crowd of unarmed students, students who were protesting the expansion of the war into Cambodia. Nine students were wounded. Four of them were killed. And in response, there were angry protests everywhere. Washington, D.C. is a battleground. We had escorts everywhere we went.

32:45The tide was really turning against the war in Vietnam, but it would take another five years for it to end. Jim believes that in all those years, many men did exactly what he had done. How many helicopter pilots were in Vietnam? Thousands? How many helicopter pilots did what I did and got shot down and died and no one saw it? Hundreds? I know that. While Jim didn't return to Vietnam, he stayed on in the Air Force. He became a colonel and taught at the officer training school at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.

33:18He finally retired in 1996. By then, his decorations included the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and eight Air Medals. To me, what's cool about Jim's story isn't just the fireworks. You know, the adrenaline of battle. After all, he wasn't rocking and rolling in a gunship. He didn't even shoot a gun. He flew a bus. But I think that bus was more powerful than any gun could be because it was a symbol of his rock-solid reliability.

33:53That's what Jim is all about. And he feels like that devotion to helping one another is deep in our DNA. I never picked up an American in combat that did not, when he got to the helicopter, turn around and put his hand out to the next guy. Never. They automatically, no matter how bad things were going, when he hit that helicopter, that American turned around and looked for the next guy to help him.

34:23He made sure everybody was there. That's who we are. That's who we are. Jim left no man behind. That was my duty, my honor. My job was to take these soldiers into enemy territory, to drop them off, to let them do their mission, and go back and bring them home. All of us understand the importance of showing up, of keeping our word.

34:56But I think some people feel that more deeply. Like Jim. Maybe it was because his dad, John Fleming, was there for him. Showed him the power of keeping a promise.

35:07Jim kept his promise to those seven men in that jungle. And by doing that, he gave them the chance to show up for the people in their lives. Just ask Randy Harrison. Remember him? The last man on the helicopter? The fair-haired guy in the bandana? Here he is, speaking at an event at the Air Force Museum in 2016. There is an ancient American spiritual. The words to wedge... Sorry. Or I looked over Jordan, and what did I see?

35:40Coming forward to carry me home. It was a band of angels coming after me. Coming forward to carry me home. Swing low, sweet chariot. Swing low. Coming forward to carry me home. It would be incredibly presumptuous of me to assume that twice in my life, a band of angels in a sweet chariot will swing low to carry me home. But I'll tell you what. If it happens again, I'm going to know it before I see it.

36:11Because I've heard the sound of angels' wings before. They sound like a UH-1 ten feet off the deck, coming in at full speed. To carry me home. Home to a completed college education. Home to great work. Home to wonderful friends. Home to marriage. And home to children. Two sons. That I would never have known were it not for the Green Hornets.

36:43On that day, in that terrible, terrible place. Thank you. Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage

37:21is written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins and Ryan Zweikert. Our editor is Lydia Jean Cott, sound design by Jake Gorski. Our executive producer is Constanza Gallardo, fact-checking by Arthur Gompertz and original music by Eric Phillips. Special thanks to the series creator, Dan McGinn, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society and the National Museum of the Air Force. If you want to learn more about this story, take a look at our show notes where we have some of the resources we used

37:53to put this episode together. We also want to hear from you. Send us your personal story of courage or highlight someone else's bravery. Email us at medalofhonor at pushkin.fm. You might hear your stories on future episodes of Medal of Honor or see them on our social channels at pushkinpods. I'm your host, J.R. Martinez. If you work in university maintenance,

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