Amadeo Robert “Stef” Stefanelli grew up in South Brooklyn, in the neighborhood now called Park Slope, surrounded by Marines. His father was one, his cousin Eddie was his idol, and his younger brother Gregory would follow him in. Stef enlisted at 17, and when a … Continue readingASK A VET EP 65: EP 65: What They Never Told You About Firefights in Vietnam as a Marine Grunt

Douglas Greenlaw grew up in a steel-mill family on the shore of Lake Michigan, about an hour from downtown Chicago. He lied about his age to work double shifts in the mills at sixteen, and he learned early that he was hard to kill: at … Continue readingASK A VET EP 64: What They Never Told You About Search and Destroy in Vietnam

Amy Rodman Little was four years old when two uniformed men walked up to her family’s front door in Hanover, Pennsylvania. Her father, Army Captain David “Dave” Rodman, had been killed in Vietnam on May 8, 1968, during some of the heaviest American losses of … Continue readingASK A VET EP 62: What I Never Knew About My Father Killed in Vietnam

Scotty Acton didn’t set out for a military career — he set out to avoid the draft. Raised in Illinois, the eldest of eight kids, Scotty enlisted in the Air Force in 1969 on the advice of a cousin who’d come home from Vietnam a … Continue readingASK A VET EP 61: What They Don’t Tell You About 22 Years in the Air Force Supply Chain

Before he was ever in the Army, Larry Chadwick was living out of Golden Gate Park during the Summer of Love — seventeen years old, bouncing between foster homes, and, by his own account, certain that if he kept living the way he was living, … Continue readingASK A VET EP 60: What You Never Heard About Vietnam’s Combat Radiomen

Morgan Lerette didn’t join the military out of some deep patriotic calling. He joined the Air National Guard in 1999 because his grandfather, a World War II veteran, told him the Air Force had the best food. It’s the kind of detail that sounds like … Continue readingASK A VET EP 59: What They Don’t Tell You About Being a Blackwater Contractor

Bob Echols grew up moving constantly — eighteen states by his own count — following his father’s career with the U.S. Forest Service and the shadow of a war his father never talked about. Bob’s dad had flown transport missions out of Australia during World … Continue readingASK A VET EP 56: What They Don’t Tell You About Guarding Nuclear Weapons in Cold War Germany