{"id":15776,"date":"2016-05-30T14:00:01","date_gmt":"2016-05-30T19:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=15776"},"modified":"2016-05-30T14:00:01","modified_gmt":"2016-05-30T19:00:01","slug":"profiles-in-courage-he-was-one-of-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/05\/30\/profiles-in-courage-he-was-one-of-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Profiles in Courage:  &#8220;He Was One Of Us&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"How One Man Helped Keep So Many Vietnam Servicemen Alive\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MPNSQ0dtB2Y?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><em><strong>Not sure if any of you caught this story last night on ABC News, but it was a good&#8217;un.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>It is stories like this that as a historian and veteran, I absolutely love to learn about, mostly because you won&#8217;t find it in any official history books.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>I did some digging and found this amazing article on Nguyen Hoang Minh and the SEAL&#8217;s he helped to save. As you read it this Memorial Day, say a little prayer for this humble little Vietnamese Man and his family&#8230;because of him so many American soldiers got to come home from that bloody War. What an Amazing and Noble legacy to have! -SF<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<h1 style=\"text-align:center;\">&#8220;HE WAS\u00a0ONE OF US&#8221;<\/h1>\n<p class=\"lead\" style=\"text-align:center;\"><strong>Echoes from the Jungle<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"lead\" style=\"text-align:center;\"><em><strong>By Mike Hixenbaugh<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"lead\" style=\"text-align:center;\"><strong>July 26, 2015<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"lead\" style=\"text-align:center;\"><strong>Reporting from My Tho, Vietnam<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"col-sm-10 col-sm-offset-1 col-md-8 col-md-offset-2\">\n<h3>The last time Rick Woolard left Vietnam, he didn\u2019t think to say goodbye to the South Vietnamese interpreter who had guided his Navy SEAL platoon on dozens of hair-raising missions through enemy territory.<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"col-md-2\">\u00a0\u201cI figured I\u2019d see him again on the next tour,\u201d Woolard says.<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-sm-10 col-sm-offset-1 col-md-6 col-md-offset-0\">\n<p>But there was no next tour. After years of combat and hundreds of nighttime raids \u2013 missions that would help shape SEAL tactics for decades \u2013 the U.S. began pulling out of Vietnam in the early 1970s. The American public, it seemed, was ready to move on.<\/p>\n<p>Woolard and his teammates moved on, too. Some left the service after the war, settled down, started families. Others, like Woolard, continued serving with the SEAL teams, through the Cold War and into the 1990s, helping shape a little-known special operations force into one of the most celebrated military units in history.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-xs-12 col-md-4\">\u00a0\u201cRelatively speaking, we\u2019ve all lived pretty comfortable lives since the war,\u201d says Woolard, who went on to become one of the first commanders of Naval Special Warfare Development Group, the Virginia Beach-based unit known as SEAL Team 6.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"col-sm-10 col-sm-offset-1 col-md-8 col-md-offset-2\">\n<p>\u201cWe left Vietnam and got on with our lives,\u201d Woolard says.<\/p>\n<p>Nguyen Hoang Minh, the teammate they left behind, wasn\u2019t as fortunate.<\/p>\n<p>He had been so much more than an interpreter. Like the SEALs he worked for, Minh painted his face green and carried a gun on missions. He cussed and drank and chased women like one of the guys. At least once, his blood pooled on the floor of a rescue helicopter, mixing with the blood of his SEAL teammates.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe was one of us,\u201d Woolard says.<\/p>\n<p>Only, he didn\u2019t get to leave when the war ended.<\/p>\n<p>Woolard and other SEALs were decorated with medals for their bravery; Minh was punished. He was arrested by North Vietnamese soldiers weeks after the South surrendered in 1975, then spent two years in a prison camp. In the decades that followed, he worked a series of back-breaking jobs, earning barely enough to feed his family.<\/p>\n<p>Minh, a folk hero in early Navy SEAL lore, lived a peasant\u2019s life.<\/p>\n<p>In March, Woolard and Pete Peterson, another former SEAL, went back to Vietnam, returning for the first time to the communist country where they once fought.<\/p>\n<p>They went to tell Minh they hadn\u2019t forgotten about him.<\/p>\n<p>Read the Remainder at<strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pilotonline.com\/app\/media\/content\/pilotonline\/2015\/vietnam\/part8.html\">Pilot Online<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not sure if any of you caught this story last night on ABC News, but it was a good&#8217;un. It is stories like this that as a historian and veteran, I absolutely love to learn about, mostly because you won&#8217;t find it in any official history books. I did some digging and found this amazing&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[5773,1247,1860,5016],"tags":[2410,11969,763,11970,11971,11972,2742],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15776"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}