In an episode that promises profound insights into an often misunderstood era, Kevin Lowe sits down with Robin Bartlett, a Vietnam War veteran whose experiences have culminated in the powerful book "Vietnam Combat: Firefights and Writing History."

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Today's interview explores not only Bartlett's personal journey but also sheds light on the collective narrative of those who served in Vietnam, revealing the stark realities and the often overlooked aftermath of the war. Bartlett narrates his initial steps into military life, spurred by the escalation of the Vietnam War and shaped by his family's rich military history. He speaks candidly about the rigorous training that forged his resilience and the brutal honesty of combat – a testament to the spirit of the soldiers he served with. The episode delves deep into the dichotomy of war's chaos and the poignant moments of reflection that followed Bartlett's service, culminating in a discussion about readjusting to civilian life and the long-term impacts of PTSD.

In a heartfelt message, Bartlett encourages thanking Vietnam veterans for their service and sharing the words "welcome home" for a profound impact.

LINKS & RESOURCES

MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE

Robin Bartlett's Website: robinbartlettauthor.com

Bartlett's Book: "Vietnam Combat: Firefights and Writing History" available for purchase on Amazon and at a discount on his website.

Get ready to dive into the profound narratives of those who served in Vietnam with Robin Bartlett and explore the lasting impact of their experiences. Visit robinbartlettauthor.com for more on his journey, and don't miss the chance to hear the full episode for a deeper understanding of this pivotal chapter in history. Stay tuned for more episodes that promise to educate, engage, and enlighten.

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ROBIN BARTLETT

Robin Bartlett is an esteemed author and Vietnam War veteran, profoundly shaped by his extensive military background and experiences during the conflict. Coming from a long line of military family members, with relatives who attended West Point, Bartlett chose a different route via ROTC to fulfill his military obligations. His service in the Vietnam War at the height of the conflict in 1968 deeply influenced him, leading to a future in writing. Bartlett's book, "Vietnam Combat: Firefights and Writing History," encapsulates his unique stories and perspectives from the war, providing a deeply personal account of his time in combat and his role in recording its events.

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0:00:37 - (Kevin Lowe): And that's what he finally did, some 50 years after serving in Vietnam. Now, I'll be honest, when I first heard Robin's story, I wasn't sure if it would be the perfect fit for this podcast because, well, it's a little bit different than most. Most of the guests on here, as you know, if you've been listening for a while, they've had something happen in their life, a life changing event, a disability, a diagnosis, and they've overcome that to get them to where they are today.

0:01:45 - (Kevin Lowe): I always want this podcast to mean something to you, to impact your life. And, well, at the end of our conversation, Robin shares the most powerful thing ever. It's two simple words that he asks you to say to a Vietnam vet, and he said, most likely you'll bring a tear to their eye. I hope you'll stay till the end so you can find out what that is, so that this episode can mean more to you in your life.

0:03:03 - (Kevin Lowe): Have you ever been on a sailboat when there is no wind? If so, well, then you know you are not getting anywhere fast. That is for sure. Well, the same is said for a life without purpose. A life without purpose is like a sailboat without wind. You have nothing to push you forward, my friend. I encourage you at whatever stage of life you're in. If you are not crystal clear on your reason why your life's purpose, well, it's time for you to discover.

0:04:00 - (Robin Bartlet): I come from a military family, and my grandfather went to West Point. My father went to West Point. My brother went to West Point. I turned down an appointment to West Point. I said, enough is enough. I went to 13 elementary and middle schools, four different high schools, and I said, I don't want any more of this army life. But when I started college, it was the build up of the Vietnam war. My classmates and I were actually getting reclassified during the summers to be drafted. And I said, well, that can't happen. I've got to serve my obligation as an officer, and I'm not going to be drafted.

0:04:55 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. Now, out of curiosity, was your family upset with your decision to not go to West Point?

0:05:35 - (Robin Bartlet): I decided, you know, I'm going to choose the toughest thing that I can think of. Never been challenged in my life, really. So I volunteered for airborne ranger and assignment to the 82nd Airborne Division, and I got everything I volunteered for and more.

0:06:05 - (Robin Bartlet): So I was commissioned on the same day as I got my college degree as a second lieutenant in the infantry. That was my branch of service. I was in the army four days later. I had everything packed in my car. Driving across the United States, reporting in to the famous 82nd Airborne Division in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. I was there for about a month and then received orders sending me down to Fort Benning, Georgia. By the way, all these military posts now have been changed. So Fort Bragg is now Fort liberty, and Fort Benning is Fort Moore.

0:07:18 - (Robin Bartlet): It was pretty much mandatory, although it was voluntary once you got there. And if you said, you know what? I've had enough of this, they'd put you on a truck and you were out.

0:07:39 - (Robin Bartlet): So this was 1960. I graduated in 67, and after my training, I went back to the 82nd Airborne Division. I was there about six months and was deployed to Vietnam, to the 101st Airborne Division, initially arriving in Vietnam in May 1968, which was just after the major Tet offensive of 1968. And that was really the political and psychological turning point of the Vietnam War. It was the height of the war.

0:08:26 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. And so at the height is when you show up.

0:09:14 - (Robin Bartlet): And about three days later, at 04:00 in the morning, I was awakened and said, get ready to go. You're going to the first cavalry division. And my brother, who served a tour in Vietnam before me, had been assigned to the first cavalry division. And this was an air mobile division, meaning the air mobile concept was to transport combat troops to the battlefield via helicopter as opposed to having them march to battle.

0:10:16 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes, yes. Talk to me. What it was like first landing in Vietnam, getting to the base. Walk me through that.

0:10:53 - (Robin Bartlet): Here were a bunch of straggly soldiers in fatigues. We were wearing khaki uniforms with jump boots. And here were all these other soldiers who'd spent a year in Vietnam who were loading up to take our places on this plane. But what I remember most is this intense heat. I mean, the average daily temperature was 105 degrees. And it was not uncommon, especially in some of the areas that we went into deep three canopy jungle, to have the humidity take us up to 110, 115.

0:11:53 - (Kevin Lowe): So. Wow. Now, after landing, how soon did you go out on your first mission?

0:12:38 - (Robin Bartlet): We did get to sight in our rifles and hung around there for about three or four days, and then we were shipped again by helicopter up to Icor to a new base camp called Camp Evans, which was near the city of Kwantri. And that's where the first cavalry division had been assigned to operate along the demilitarized zone. So the terrain was the Gulf of Tonkin on the east. And as you came further west along the demilitarized zone border between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, you had kind of sandy soil, tumbleweed, no overhead cover.

0:13:45 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes. Now, with your position, were you leading a troop of soldiers when you guys went into battle?

0:14:29 - (Robin Bartlet): He gave us a two minutes. We went in in alphabetical order. And I was first. I happened to be. There was no a's, so I was a b. And we saluted, stood at attention. And he gave us about a two minute speech, of which I have absolutely no memory whatsoever. And he said to the s one, who is the personnel officer in the unit? Where do we need these officers? And the s one said, well, we need one in a, two in b, one in c, and one in D. And so he said, well, I guess it doesn't make any difference. And he pointed at me, he says, you go to a, you and you go to b, you go to c and you go to d.

0:15:22 - (Kevin Lowe): It pays to go first, I guess.

0:15:25 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, sometimes.

0:15:51 - (Kevin Lowe): And what does that mean?

0:16:42 - (Robin Bartlet): We even had some naval bombardment if we were close to the beach, and B 52 strikes if we had encountered a very large north vietnamese enemy force.

0:17:04 - (Robin Bartlet): So I was 22 years old. I was the second oldest man in my platoon. We had one old man who was 24. My soldiers, as I mentioned, 90% of them were drafted, but they were all very, very good soldiers and dedicated. Average age was 17 and 18. My platoon sergeant, who was supposed to be the most experienced man in the unit, usually that platoon sergeant is what they call a sergeant. E six, has about ten years of experience.

0:18:00 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. So walk me through what a mission would look like, especially with you guys flying in via helicopter. Walk me through what that looks like.

0:18:46 - (Robin Bartlet): So as you came in on one of these, about five minutes out from landing, there would be an artillery barrage, and they would open up with 105 millimeter howitzers on the landing zone and the surrounding area, and you would swear that absolutely nothing could survive a barrage like that. And the last round fired was a white phosphorus round. And then that was the signal for the cobra helicopters. These were two cobra helicopters that would come in, and they had miniguns that could fire at a rate of 3000 rounds per minute and 76 rockets.

0:20:05 - (Robin Bartlet): It was amazing how the enemy could survive that barrage, but often they did. And they would wait until the second helicopter came in. Not the first, but the second. So the first one had offloaded, and the report had been given back to the command and control helicopter flying overhead that the landing zone was clear. And then they would pop up and fire rocket propelled grenade at the second helicopter and take it out.

0:21:08 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. Did the training you received prepare you at all for landing?

0:21:47 - (Robin Bartlet): There really was never once in my experiences in Vietnam when I did not feel in control of the situation because of that training. Now I was plenty scared. There were many times that I was afraid. It didn't take away the fear, but it gave you a tremendous sense of confidence, because this training took you to the point of mental and physical exhaustion. And also, if you didn't make it to your objective, at the end of the day, you didn't get any food.

0:22:41 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank goodness. And, I mean, as brutal as the training was, I mean, thank goodness that you had that to be prepared for something that I would think there's no way that you could be prepared for such a thing. So that, I mean, hats off to the training 100%. I listened to a little bit of audio on your website, and I believe it's maybe taken from your book, and it was talking about the significance of the trail, and I was wondering if you could expand on that a little bit. I'm assuming the trail referring to as you and your men are making your way through this terrain, the jungle, not really knowing what's coming, could you speak to that?

0:23:58 - (Robin Bartlet): Now, that may sound funny, but there were occasions where officers did stupid stuff, and it cost lives. So just trying to be smart, trying to be intelligent, trying to be cautious. And then the third thing I did is to trust my point man. I always walked fourth in line. And when we were out in the jungles near the Laochan border, as I mentioned before, it was mountainous, three canopy jungle, and often you had to cut your way with a machete. So the point man, who is out 25, 30 meters in front of you, he's cutting his way with a machete often or following an animal trail, and he has a coverman that's 5 meters behind him. But those two men are at tremendous risk from ambush or from booby traps.

0:25:27 - (Robin Bartlet): My call sign was foggy, day one six, and I fired so much artillery that they put a budget on me of 25 rounds. That's all I can speak. But when you put 25 rounds of artillery out in front of what you're going to walk through, you have a much higher degree of confidence of not encountering enemy ambush or enemy problems from the enemy.

0:26:09 - (Robin Bartlet): Now, this was in ranger school. If you didn't complete the day's mission in ranger school, that's where the food was at the end of the mission. And if you didn't get there, you didn't get your sea rations for that day. But in Vietnam, we carried sea rations with us, and as I mentioned before, we had this tremendous helicopter support. So even in dense jungle, if we could cut down enough trees and open a hole in the canopy, they could fly over, hover, and kick out sea rations to us.

0:27:14 - (Robin Bartlet): And when that happens in deep jungle like that, the only way to get them out is via jungle penetrator, which is the cable. You've seen that on television where they drop a cable and man sits on a seat, they strap him into a seat and haul him up. And that happened a few times, and it's not an easy thing to deal with because there was no gps and the helicopters had a hard time finding.

0:27:58 - (Robin Bartlet): Well, the answer to that question is yes. We were very cautious. We knew that the enemy, especially the VC, Vietcong, were watching us all the time. They were masters at camouflage, and occasionally we would spot them and engage them. This would be one in two man teams who would be monitoring where we were. And so each platoon would send out an ambush every night. I'd lead it one night, my platoon sergeant would lead it the next.

0:29:03 - (Robin Bartlet): And the standard protocol is to send two men across the rice patty, check out the opposite side, and then they give you. This was dusk. They give you two blinks on the flashlight with a red lens on it. And so my reinforced squad began to cross this rice patty next to a rice patty dike. And the enemy had actually sighted in that rice patty dike. So they waited until we were completely exposed, and then they started dropping mortars on us and engaged us with machine gun fire. And I had three men killed immediately and two others wounded.

0:30:11 - (Robin Bartlet): My helmet came off, and I ended up on my knees with my back to the engagement. And about that time, another mortar round went off in front of me. And the only thing that really saved my life was the fact that we were in a muddy rice patty, and this mortar round penetrated into the mud and exploded. So I just got splashed with mud and water, and a piece of shrapnel did catch me in the groin, knocked me backwards, and I hit my head on the rice patty dike.

0:31:42 - (Robin Bartlet): And that was a real turning point for me because, of course, they kept slapping me in the face to make me stay awake. My wounds were not that severe, but I had lost a lot of blood, and we had nothing that they could do to prevent that. But I went through quite a catharsis at that point in time, evaluating whether or not it would have been worth it for me to have died at that point in time. And it really changed my opinion about the war, about what I was doing, and really caused me to evaluate the value of this effort, my own personal effort, as well as the effort that America was exerting.

0:32:29 - (Robin Bartlet): Well, this was the height of the Vietnam War, as I mentioned before, and up until the Ted offensive of 1968, in which the North Vietnamese were able to successfully attack more than 200 cities throughout South Vietnam and really have a tremendous impact on the psychological conduct of the war. And up to that point in time, McNamara and Johnson were saying, oh, we were winning the war. And Wesmoreland, too, who was the commanding general in Vietnam. We're winning the war.

0:33:40 - (Robin Bartlet): And it was true because we were fighting a committed north vietnamese enemy or soldiers who were fighting for their homeland, and they would fight till the very last man, until we killed every single person. So the war for them was never going to end. And that was something that I don't think America came to understand. We kept thinking that we could beat them back, and that was not the case. So unfortunately, the war was prolonged, and it was prolonged unnecessarily by Johnson and especially by Nixon, who kept thinking that, well, we'll just bomb them to hell. And they did.

0:34:52 - (Robin Bartlet): Those are my feelings.

0:35:00 - (Robin Bartlet): So we didn't have any news. There was no tv. There were no newspapers. There were no magazines. We were out in the boonies, and we stayed out in the boonies for four to five weeks at a time. The longest I stayed out was six weeks. And you got pretty ripe after that period of time without any. You had enough water to brush your teeth and maybe wipe the sweat off your face, but that was it. And you wore the same clothes for that period of time.

0:36:00 - (Kevin Lowe): Oh, wow. Well, talk to me, then, about returning home, because I know from what I've heard that many of our soldiers were not welcomed home.

0:36:43 - (Robin Bartlet): And if you survive your tour, we'll make you the s one. So I did survive my tour, and I came out of the field and I was understudying the s one, getting ready to take his job. And he came to me one morning and he said, well, did you apply for a job at division headquarters? And I said, no. And he said, well, I have orders here that you're to go to division headquarters for an interview with the 14th MHD.

0:37:45 - (Robin Bartlet): So I was interviewed by a captain, and I looked around this office. It was a tent office. And he had a television set, he had a refrigerator. They had cots to sleep on, and they had a shower off the back. I was offered the job and I said, I'll take it. The last five months of my tour were spent at division headquarters with this 14th military history detachment. But in answer to your question, when I returned back to the United States, I was still a regular army officer. So unlike many of the soldiers who when we arrived in Travis Air Force Base in California, on the return flight, they went into know, they got paid, and they went into San Francisco, and they were spit upon.

0:39:22 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, well, thank goodness, because it's disgusting when you hear those stories. It's just disgusting because the men coming home, they had nothing to do with anything.

0:39:43 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. So I have to go back real quick, though, before we talk about life back at home, is you got to explain to me about the historical division that you got assigned to. What in the world was that? What did you do?

0:40:34 - (Robin Bartlet): Engineers always had discovered something, created something, done something that was unusual, and they always loved to report on that activity. And it could be various different strategies that were being tried and either successful or unsuccessful. And as I mentioned, lessons learned. But it was basically a battle report, and then these unusual lessons learned. But we had no copying machines. And so these reports would come in from each of the battalions, and they had to be edited because a lot of the folks were not great writers. They had to be edited and then retyped into this specific format, but with carbon paper, we only got six copies out of one typing, and we had to generate 18 copies to be distributed army wide. So that necessitated retyping the report three times.

0:42:19 - (Robin Bartlet): So we would go out there and draw maps, talk to the ncos, non commissioned officers and platoon leaders and company commander, anybody we could talk to who was still alive or not wounded, and try to rewrite the battle, or at least write up the battle and to determine what had transpired.

0:43:03 - (Robin Bartlet): On one particular battle occasion, a company, american company, and a company usually was about 90 to 110 men, had literally been decimated. Out of the 90 to 100, I can't remember exactly how many. I'm going to say 120 men. There were 80 killed and wounded, 80 killed and wounded. So it literally decimated this company. And all of the platoon leaders had been caught, killed. All of the platoon sergeants had been killed.

0:44:05 - (Robin Bartlet): They had to take this company offline and re equip them, bring in new replacements, retrain them. So I wrote up the report, and the company commander placed the blame on the battalion commander, who was flying overhead directing the battle by looking down. Again, this was at night, and he's flying overhead trying to direct the battle based upon seeing the rifle flashes and the Tracer rounds that were coming from the enemy versus Americans. American tracer rounds were red and enemy tracer rounds were green.

0:45:18 - (Robin Bartlet): Careers were determined based on body count. So I put in my report that while they were able to see blood trails and body parts, there was no body count. And the division g three, the division operations officer, threw the report back at me and said, this is ridiculous. You are to hold the company commander responsible for the loss of his men. He failed to follow the orders given to him by the battalion commander and put 450 enemy killed. And I said to myself, where did that number come from? And it was just manufactured. But I had to follow his orders, rewrite the report, hold the company commander responsible, and say that we killed 400 and 5460 north vietnamese soldiers.

0:46:15 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow, that had to be really tough.

0:46:44 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. So back home, how did this honestly affect kind of the rest of your life?

0:47:19 - (Robin Bartlet): And I didn't get orders, and I didn't get orders. And I talked my boss into sending me to Saigon for three days to buy art supplies. We had combat artists as part of our group, and they needed art supplies, and I needed to find out what my orders were. So this sergeant and I got in a convoy and we went to Saigon, and we had a great time, did a lot of sightseeing and ate some good. And so finally, on the third day, I said, well, you know, I better find out what my orders are.

0:48:26 - (Robin Bartlet): And we went down the line, alphabetically, of course. A to b to ba to Bartlett to Bartlett. John to Bartlett, Peter Bartlett. Robin pulled the card and said, oh, you're going to Seattle, Washington. Well, I had gone to high school. I finished high school in Seattle. And I said, oh, I'm going to Fort Ord. And the officer I was with said, no. Says here, Fort Wainwright. And I said, well, wait a minute, I lived in Seattle. There is no Fort Wainwright in Seattle. And he says, well, oh, this says, apo, army post office, Seattle. We had to get a directory to look up that Fort Wainwright was located in coast. Hey, I got the west coast.

0:49:19 - (Robin Bartlet): After two weeks in Monterey, California, after 105 degree heat in Vietnam, I went to Fairbanks, Alaska, fortunately, during the summer, so the temperature was about 65. But during the two years I spent there, I saw -20 -30 -40 it doesn't snow when it's that cold, but you have incredible ice and you have to plug your car in every day and every night or it freezes. You have to have a battery blanket, a circulating water heater, and a dipstick heater. And if you don't have those things plugged in to the electrical post in front of every parking space, your car is dead.

0:50:08 - (Robin Bartlet): By this time, I had spent two years in the army, and I was promoted to captain. So here I was at the age of 24, and I was a captain, and I was put in charge of headquarters and headquarters company. And this was the company, the support company for the line companies. And we had all the support vehicles, ambulances, two and a half ton trucks, armored personnel recovery vehicles, armored personnel carriers. We were a mechanized unit at that point in time.

0:51:11 - (Robin Bartlet): And finally somebody in their brilliance decided we should not be a mechanized unit. We should be a light infantry unit. So we put all these vehicles on a railhead, on a railroad, and sent them down to the national guard, and everybody strapped on skis and snowshoes and learned how to ski. And we became the. Well, this unit in Fairbanks was the first line of defense in the event the Russians ever came across the Bering Strait.

0:51:57 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Wow. So how long did you stay in the service?

0:52:31 - (Robin Bartlet): And he had never been in battle. You could tell that by the uniform, by his ribbons. He had never been in combat. And he told me that the army had me programmed to go to the career course and then to the Monterey language institute to learn how to speak Vietnamese and send me back to Vietnam for a second tour as a vietnamese unit advisor. And there was only one job that was worse, had a shorter life expectancy than the platoon leader in Vietnam, and that was the vietnamese unit advisor.

0:53:32 - (Robin Bartlet): If you choose not to go to the career course, which was voluntary, we would have no choice but to send you back to Vietnam right now. Take the weekend and think it over. So I took the weekend and I called my father and I just said, you know, I am not going to be programmed. That is not the life for me. And I came back on Monday morning and I met with this same major, and I said, okay, go ahead and reassign me to Vietnam right now, but I want my resignation on file for 365 days from today's date.

0:54:50 - (Robin Bartlet): So that's what I did. I went back to Fort Benning. I was assigned to the leadership department of the infantry school, which is like the management department of a college. And I had a wonderful final assignment in the military. I was assigned to a special group that was responsible for putting together a course of instruction that was implemented army wide called leadership for professionals. And we brought in an officer and an NCO, non commissioned officer from every military unit in the world and trained them.

0:56:01 - (Kevin Lowe): Oh, wow. Okay. Wow. Got to love the seamless transition. That is too cool. Now, before we proceed, I want to ask you about it, and I don't even know that back then they had the term of PTSD. Did you suffer from that?

0:56:57 - (Robin Bartlet): It didn't go through the graves registration part, and I had to fill out what we called a death card, which was basically a 305 card with a hole punched in it and a piece of string. And for the first time, the officer actually wrote down the coordinates as close as possible to where the soldier was killed. And they began at that point in time to really record the locations of the death as close as you could make it. And that death card was tied to the boot of the soldier along with a dog tag.

0:57:57 - (Robin Bartlet): And it was tough. The first one was the toughest. But there were others that followed and that often created PTSD for me, as well as some of the other events that happened to me. And about interesting about ten years after Vietnam is when I started, I put these memories and these thoughts in what I called my titanium steel trunk in the back of my mind, and I just locked it down. And I wouldn't allow it to affect me.

0:58:53 - (Robin Bartlet): And I said, listen, I like to take you to dinner, and then tomorrow I want to have a professional session with you. And I did, and I met with her for about 2 hours, and I let all this stuff come out. I talked about it and I said, I'm having these daydreams and it feels like I'm losing control. That was the scary part. I couldn't control it. And she said, well, I have a very simple solution for you to solve this problem. And I said, really, what is it?

0:59:55 - (Robin Bartlet): That was my experience with PTSD. Although in writing the book, I thought it would be a good catharsis for me, that I would really be able to, once I wrote these stories down, once I wrote these events down, they would be forever out of my titanium steel trunk. Well, that didn't happen. In fact, in writing them, it all came back to me. But I've done a lot of podcasts and a lot of personal appearances, and I've wanted to do that because I wanted, first of all, to teach people more about what it's like to be in combat and about my experience.

1:00:50 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. Well, kind of coming full circle to where we began our conversation today. Talk to me. Tell my audience about your book.

1:01:32 - (Robin Bartlet): You can purchase the book at Amazon, but if you buy it on my website, you can get a substantial discount and I'll autograph the book for you. There's an audiobook and there's an ebook available on Amazon as well. But that website is going to be the best source of more information about me, reviews of the book, and some great resource material.

1:02:24 - (Robin Bartlet): So, Kevin, thank you. I have one last notice for all your listeners, and that has to do with the fact that Vietnam veterans now are starting to walk in the boots of Korean War and World War II veterans. World War II veterans are dying off about 150 a day. They're all up in their late ninety s and hundreds. So Vietnam veterans are the ones that are going to be seen, and they're the ones wearing their Vietnam veteran caps. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with saying thank you for your service to these soldiers.

1:03:27 - (Kevin Lowe): So powerful. So powerful. Welcome home, Robin. Thank you again so much. I appreciate you being here.

1:03:36 - (Kevin Lowe): Absolutely. For you today. I hope you've enjoyed this conversation with Robin as much as I have. As I said, so, of course, entertaining, but so heartbreaking at the same time. Yet again, the thought that even today, all these years later, that maybe you could have the impact in a soldier's life by simply saying two words, welcome home.