Air Force veteran Michael Keller shares his Vietnam War experience and how the VA helped him heal from PTSD decades later.
Announcer
World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and our other wars and conflicts. America’s fighting men and women strapped on their boots and picked up their guns to fight tyranny and stand for liberty. We must never forget them. Welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson.
These stories will touch your heart, inspire you, and give you courage. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Here’s Kim Munson.
Kim Monson
And welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website, that is americasveteranstories.com. And the show comes to you because of a trip that I took in 2016, where we accompanied 40 day veterans back to Normandy, France for the 72nd anniversary of the D-Day landings returned stateside realizing that we need to record these stories, broadcast them, archive them, hence America’s Veterans Stories.
I’m so pleased to have in studio with me Michael Keller. Michael, you were in the Air Force. I was. You served during the Vietnam War.
Correct. So let’s start though at the beginning. Where did you grow up?
Michael Keller
I grew up in a town about 80 miles west of Omaha in Nebraska.
Kim Monson
Okay, so were
Michael Keller
you a cowboy?
Kim Monson
Yeah,
Michael Keller
I love riding horses and I did a lot of that probably harder than working for my grandfather like I should have.
Kim Monson
Okay, well I grew up in western Kansas and so I understand farming and ranching and it’s long hours. It is and
Michael Keller
early mornings which I never was a big fan of and once I got in the military I had to live that life anyway so.
Kim Monson
Yeah, it is early mornings there. So, so you grew up outside of Omaha, or about 80 miles outside of Omaha, and then summers on the ranch. How did you end up getting in into the Air Force?
Michael Keller
It’s kind of an embarrassing story in a way, but I was right in the middle of the draft. And I graduated high school in 1966. And I went to the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, and unfortunately for me anyway I majored in fraternity and it didn’t it didn’t end well I’ll put it that way and I came back home after my freshman year and my father was a very good friend of the postmaster in town so he got me a job unloading semis at the post office which was supposed to be a I guess they called a critical job and would keep me from getting drafted again.
And I worked there for about four months, and I got my second draft notice because they had hooked me up as a temporary employee instead of a permanent employee. And at that time, I said, Well, I don’t think I want to go to Vietnam, so I’ll join the Air Force.
Kim Monson
Okay, so you joined the Air Force. And what happened after that?
Michael Keller
Well, I went to basic training in San Antonio, which is where everybody goes, and still today even, and I got into the medical field, what’s called medical materiel, which is basically managing all of the medical facilities, the drugs, the whole nine yards, ordering it, getting distributed, and they assigned me to this air mobility unit, and I ended up in Forbes Air Force Base, which no longer exists, just south of Topeka, Kansas. And I got there and after about seven months they sent me to jump school because everybody that was going to be in this situation was going to have to be jump qualified because you may have to jump out of the C-130. I get back from jump school and a month later I get notice I’m going to be assigned to Vietnam so they I was there less than a year in Kansas and so I ended up going to Vietnam they obviously didn’t have that situation going on so I was
assigned to the 12th Tactical Air Force Hospital that was at Cameron Bay and I was in there but the facilities and we sent out all of the supplies and material to all of the Air Force medical facilities all over the country from there. And I was put on a team that went out TDY or temporary duty and visited all of these and we were doing inventory and the process of kind of winding down the war. I got to Vietnam in December of 69 and in 70 they were starting to pull back, I guess, a little bit. And so I ended up probably at eight or nine different Air Force facilities in Vietnam and in Northern Thailand.
Kim Monson
Well, graduating in 1966, things were hot, really hot over there at that time.
Michael Keller
Yeah, 69. I got there five days before, actually, I probably should have said 1970. I got there five days before New Year’s of 69. But technically, that’s when I was assigned.
And As I worked, I got more and more involved in what they called Medical Civic Action Program, MEDCAP. And that’s where we would volunteer with medical experience and we would go out into the villages and into the different parts of Vietnam. And we would treat for malaria, we’d treat for napalm burns, a lot of things like that that they just didn’t have the ability to handle. So I probably did 16 or 17 of those over my year.
And I did it all over. So when I’d go TDY, like if I went to Pleiku, we’d go up into the Mountains for the Montagnards who were kind of our allies and and treat them and I did it outside of Cameron Bay and also outside in the Trang and Vung Tau and Probably a few other places that I don’t remember and it Hit me pretty hard After I got home thinking back about seeing these small children and the other villagers with, I mean, gruesome stepping on landmines, napalm burns, I mean, all of this. And at the point it told me I never wanted to have children.
Kim Monson
Did you have children?
Michael Keller
I did, but it was later on. Okay. So I came back. Actually, I got very fortunate in a way.
My mother got ill and I was supposed to leave on the 29th of December to come back to the States. And my squadron commander got noticed that my mother was ill and he was able to get me out of the country. So I got home before Christmas and got to see my mother.
Kim Monson
So you were there about a year?
Michael Keller
I was there a short four days of a year. Okay. I went on R&R halfway through or seven months after I got there to Hawaii to see my wife and I met these two Australian combat engineers and we ended up going to downtown Saigon and we drank all night and got back about half an hour before our plane for R&R was supposed to go and they told me they were going to Hawaii when they said why aren’t you going to Australia to meet Australian women and I said well I’m going to meet my wife and they said well we’re going to Hawaii to meet American girls
and I actually met them on my way back. We were on the same plane and they’d snuck a bottle of alcohol on the flight and we drank all the way back to Cameroon. So they were your buds, huh? They were for about, you know, off and on about a week and I saw them again a little bit later, but they told me at that point, or at least they figured out that they could drink almost any American under the table without even working at it very
hard.
Kim Monson
and it sounds like they were somewhat successful, huh?
Michael Keller
They were very successful and they told me they got in a fight in Hawaii when I guess they were trying to talk to a couple ladies that had boyfriends or husbands and they took the husband or boyfriends out pretty easily, I guess. Oh my gosh, pretty tough guys then. They were, yes.
Kim Monson
I didn’t realize the Australians were in Vietnam as well. I did not realize
Michael Keller
that. Australians, New Zealand, and what they call ROKS, which are Republic of Korea, soldiers were over there too, and those were mean motor scooters. They didn’t follow any of the laws of the land, if you will. If they decided that there was a bad guy somewhere, they’d take him out without asking permission.
Kim Monson
Well, and it probably was really in Australia and New Zealand’s best interest to prevent the success of the North Vietnamese. Exactly.
Michael Keller
And we were a member of, I don’t know if it still exists or not, of an organization called ANZUS, which was Australia, New Zealand, and US, kind of like NATO is for the South Pacific, for Southeast Asia, I guess.
Kim Monson
So let’s see, how old were you then when you joined the Air Force?
Michael Keller
I would have been 19, I guess, just before 20, before I hit 20.
Kim Monson
So you didn’t end up at any, would it be called combat hospitals or anything?
Michael Keller
Oh yeah, we, in fact the hospital in Cameron Bay was the largest medical facility in the whole country. So we had Marine, we had Army, we had Navy, we had Australia, I mean anyone that was on our side and even a few like prisoners they would end up at that hospital and then we had medical facilities at almost all of the air bases in in Vietnam.
Kim Monson
Okay. In treating all of these South Vietnamese and these injuries it had to be really tough Did they appreciate did you do you feel that they appreciated the Americans being there?
Michael Keller
They appreciated the help medical help that we gave them and then I did some other volunteer where we go out and we Build off we build a church and we build an orphanage for them, but I got to talking to some of the Locals obviously when we were out there and they didn’t look at us as so much there to help them. They felt like we kind of took over their country. It’s just like here in this country, there were many sides to every story.
And some of them were very happy for us to be there. And then of course, the ones that got into trouble, you know, physically or medically, they tended to blame us for that. And the government in South Vietnam was corrupt before we got there. And it was corrupt right up until 75, when North Korea or North Vietnamese took it over.
So have you been back to Vietnam? No, I was scheduled to go back about eight years ago with a group. And I ended up because of a work situation, I ended up not going. And I’m not sure now with my age and everything, if it’s something I probably should do.
I would like to see it and I’ve talked to people who have been back and they said you wouldn’t recognize it. It’s not even the same country that you were in. It’s economically much better off right now. They’ve got a lot of international investments in hotels and resorts and a lot of businesses there.
They’re kind of taking over a lot of the Chinese manufacturing that have moved from China into Vietnam.
Kim Monson
It is rather remarkable, all these years later, how things do change. I’m talking with Michael Keller, and he was in the Air Force in the Medical Air Mobility Unit. And we’ll continue the discussion. But first, I wanted to mention the Center for American Values, which is located in Pueblo, Colorado.
Pueblo is known as the home of heroes because there’s four Medal of Honor recipients. I’ve been to it. Yeah, it’s a special place, isn’t
Michael Keller
it,
Kim Monson
Michael? Yes. It’s so reverent to stand in front of the portraits of each of these Medal of Honor recipients and see their quotes. And it’s been my honor to become involved with the Center.
And if people want more information, they can go to AmericanValueCenter.org. That’s AmericanValueCenter.org. And we’ll be right back with Michael Keller.
Speaker 6
REMAX Realtor Karen Levine helps bring to life the individual stories of our servicemen and women. With her sponsorship of America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson, Karen honors the sacrifices of our military and is grateful for our freedom. As a member of the National Association of Realtors Board of Directors, Karen works to protect private property rights for all of us. Karen has a heart for our active duty military and veterans and is honored to help you buy or sell your home.
Call Karen Levine at 303-877-7516 to help you navigate buying or selling your home. That’s 303-877-7516.
Speaker 10
All of Kim’s sponsors are an inclusive partnership with Kim and are not affiliated with or in partnership with KLZ or Crawford Broadcasting. If you would like to support the work of the Kim Munson Show and grow your business, contact Kim at her website, kimmunson.com. That’s Kim Munson, M-O-N-S-O-N dot com.
Kim Monson
Welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. I’m talking with Michael Keller. He is a Vietnam veteran. You’re in the Air Force.
And you were saying during the break that you had a kind of an interesting experience after you returned back from Vietnam.
Michael Keller
Yes, they didn’t quite know what to do with me because the original part of the train I had was a group that no longer existed and I didn’t have enough time probably to either retrain or they wanted me to reenlist, which I wasn’t real interested in doing. So they sent me out to Andrew’s Air Force Base in outside of DC and I was assigned to the Malcolm Crow Medical Hospital and I did what they I was head of local purchasing where we bought equipment that was not standard military equipment and that was quite interesting getting involved in some of the politics around that as well.
Kim Monson
I bet because it’s always kind of been lucrative for people to, for businesses to sell to the government, correct?
Michael Keller
wanted to make sure they got very friendly with a lot of the officers that were involved in acquiring, whether they were doctors, dentists, or even just high up into the procurement side of the government. And I got to see it from a small view, because I had to make the purchases, but I saw some of the ramifications leading up to that final decision on purchases. and as I think I told you, I happened to be in DC then during a lot of those anti-war demonstrations that were going on. So what year was that probably?
That
Kim Monson
was 71. 1971. What went through your mind as you saw these protesters? I
Michael Keller
will admit I was having my own questions about the validity, I guess, of the war itself. I mean, I went over as a, I guess I call myself a vanilla wafer, Protestant, grew up in the Midwest and very, you know, Republican families. But I started to question myself, you know, we weren’t fighting the war to win it, we were just seemed like we were marking time. And I would never have joined the anti-war, obviously I would have gone to jail if I did, but I could, after talking to some of them, I could see why they felt it was wrong.
But again, I was in the military, I’d been there, and a lot of the people that were demonstrating had no idea what what we American soldiers had to go through. And I thought it was a little presumptuous, I guess, of them to go out and protest against people that, you know, I happened to enlist, but it was basically enlist or get drafted. So it was very confusing for me. And I
Kim Monson
That was a confusing time for America.
Michael Keller
It was. And my sister, who was three years younger than me, was a total hippie. And she was, I mean, so anti-war that my father basically refused to have conversation with her for about five
Kim Monson
years. Our soldiers, our military, our young boys, young, 19 years old, did what they were asked to do. and to learn that what you just said that we were over there not fighting to win the war.
Michael Keller
At least that was my feeling. Yes. And
Kim Monson
you’re not alone in that as well. Michael, I find it really frustrating that we would send our blood and treasure over there, put our young men and women in harm’s way, and many lost their lives. And from what I’m learning, there was so many politics up at the upper level. And I, I’m frustrated about that regarding the Vietnam War, but our military, our young men did what they were asked to do.
And I, from my understanding is, is that we, we were winning the war, but then politics pulled it back. And I find that a travesty. It was,
Michael Keller
you know, push hard, and then pull back, push hard, pull back. I wasn’t the first to say it, but my experience is, and I even saw it with Iraq and Afghanistan, and that’s usually old white men make a lot of money off wars by sending young men that aren’t their children or their brothers or sisters. And that still to this day bothers me. You may get in later, but I did volunteer work at the VA with a lot of returning Afghan and Iraq patients, particularly around PTSD.
And to hear their stories was very disheartening for me, too.
Kim Monson
Well, because the rules of engagement really puts our military in harm’s way, I think. I
Michael Keller
mean, we took probably 30 rockets outside of Pleiku when I was up there, and we could not fire back. We could see the flashpoints of where they took off, but we couldn’t fire back until we got the okay from the village elders who were basically getting paid by both us and the North Vietnamese. I mean, it just, it just doesn’t make sense. No, it doesn’t.
And I’m not the smartest guy in the world. But that was just one of those things that would make just made me shake my head. And quite frankly, it’s one of the reasons that I decided I didn’t want to re enlist, I had a really good opportunity I’d made staff sergeant before I went to before I even got back from Vietnam and probably would have made a E6 if I would have stayed in or reenlisted.
But I just said, I, you know, I want to go on with my life and do something else.
Kim Monson
Well, and so you went to Washington, DC, Andrews Air Force Base. And it sounds to me that like you had conversations, though, with many of these protesters. I find that interesting, because I’m not sure there was a lot of conversation going on.
Michael Keller
They, you know, even though I wasn’t in uniform, they could tell by my, my haircut and everything that I was, you know, I was not one of them. And some of them I had very deep conversations with, and they tended to listen to my side, and others, basically, they thought I was the enemy. So I was very careful about where I went and who I talked to.
Kim Monson
Did you ever feel really threatened?
Michael Keller
Yeah, a couple times. Because I think involved in just probably any of those kind of very large situations, there are people that are in it for different reasons. I think they’re there if they like the power or they want to show that by physical force that they are right and we’re wrong. And I felt some of that.
Kim Monson
Well, let’s go back to Vietnam a bit. You’re there for a year, you went out and helped people. You said 16 or 17 different missions? Is that right?
Michael Keller
Yeah, I hit probably just about all but maybe two of the Air Force medical facilities and some of those were just very small dispensaries or I mean, they just weren’t very large. They didn’t have hospital beds. But they were a lot of times the one that would they would see a lot even army and marine casualties that was the closest place where there was any kind of medical help so it was not just an air force facility literally anywhere there was medical help in Vietnam first place closest place would tend to get and they’d do what they could do and then they’d send them on.
Okay
Kim Monson
did you ever have to jump out of the C-130 ever? Yeah,
Michael Keller
when I went through jump school at Fort Benning, but never had to do it after that. I always said, once you jump out of an airplane that’s perfectly running, you don’t really want to do it again. So you only had to do it once? No, no, we had, what did I do, five jumps, six jumps at that point, yeah.
I did some cabling down off of helicopters, but that was… That had to be thrilling. Yeah, it was, I guess, especially when they’re shooting at you. So
Kim Monson
you did come under and
Michael Keller
you were
Kim Monson
in combat. Yeah.
Michael Keller
And I got wounded in my leg and also a shell hit our helicopter. I wasn’t even supposed to be in combat. I was going from one point to another and a piece of the side of the helicopter hit me in the mouth and I knocked One tooth off, knock five loose, and I had like 35 stitches in my mouth. And to this point, I have a very bad dental situation, and thank God the VA’s taking care of me.
Kim Monson
You’ve had a good experience with the VA?
Michael Keller
Good and bad. My current experience has been very good.
Kim Monson
And then you said your leg was injured as well?
Michael Keller
Yeah, I got a piece of shrapnel in my leg. And
Kim Monson
is it still there?
Michael Keller
No, but it chipped a bone and I’ve had some infections that came out of it.
Kim Monson
You know, Michael, I think that civilians, particularly here in America now, we don’t understand the sacrifices that our military has given. And on a personal level, You’re probably reminded every day. Dental work, you might still have pain in your leg. I don’t think that civilians understand just the sacrifice.
And pain, if you have pain, it can be, chronic pain is, it’s kind of exhausting. and there’s many of our veterans that I think have pain from their injuries. My last
Michael Keller
jump at jump school, I landed sideways a little bit and turns out later on, I have two compressed vertebrae in my back and I get sciatic. It runs all the way down sometime below my knee and luckily I’m getting good treatment. Actually I’m getting treatment through UC Health because there’s a relationship between the VA and UC Health. and I also was diagnosed when I was 43 years old with prostate cancer.
Kim Monson
Do you think that that had anything to do with Agent Orange
Michael Keller
and all that? Being diagnosed that young tended to be one of the triggers. They told me I would be lucky to live to be 60. Okay, so I’m on house money now.
I’m 76. I
Kim Monson
love that. And I think that’s so important for people to hear your story that they say you won’t live past the age of 60. And here you are 76. I think that gives people hope.
Michael Keller
Yes, and that’s one of the things I’ve tried to do. COVID really screwed up a lot of that, but I was spending a lot of time volunteering out at the VA on, as I said, with these PTSD patients and There were women too in there that their PTSD came from sexual, not just harassment, but they were sexually assaulted and either usually by their sergeants or whoever were above them. Yes.
Speaker 1
There
Michael Keller
were at least four of them that I remember going through the year and a half that I did that. And those stories, that’s not discussed very often either. No, it’s not. That’s kind of pushed under the rug.
Kim Monson
This is the second time in this week that somebody has mentioned about rape in our military. And up until this time I hadn’t really realized that.
Michael Keller
Well, I think When I was in it, there wasn’t a lot of it because we had really the only combat, if you will, military females were nurses in the hospitals or the dispensaries. And now, of course, we’ve got 11 B’s. We’ve got them out in the field. They’re flying helicopters or flying jet aircraft.
I mean, there’s so many more of them right now, I think. And it’s just the opportunity maybe has grown because of the percentage of women that are involved in the military. And the ones I’ve talked to were incredible. I mean, they fight right along with their male counterparts.
One I talked to was an A-10 pilot, and just listening to her stories and stuff, I mean, she probably was a better pilot than 80% of the males in her squadron.
Kim Monson
The Marine Memorial is located right here in Colorado. in Golden in the corner of 6th and Colfax. It was dedicated in 1977. And my friend Paula Sarles, she’s a Gold Star wife, a Marine veteran, and she’s the president of the USMC Memorial Foundation.
And she and her team are working diligently to raise money for the Marine Memorial remodel. And you can help them and get more information by going to USMCMemorialFoundation.org. That is USMCMemorialFoundation.org. We’ll be right back with Michael Keller.
Speaker 4
In these tumultuous times, it is necessary that we each have a freedom library to know and understand our history. Bury Him! A Memoir of the Vietnam War by Captain Doug Chamberlain is a must for your personal library. In this honest and gripping memoir, Captain Chamberlain recounts the chilling events that took place during his command of a company of young marines at the height of the Vietnam War.
Chamberlain painfully recalls the unspeakable order he and his marines were forced to obey and the cover-up which followed. Purchase the book at marinedugchamberlain.com so that you gain perspective on this time in our history.
Speaker 7
Eyes peeled and moving quickly, Lance Corporal Jack Swan led 164 of his fellow US Marines from Mike Company 3rd Battalion 5th Marines over the face of a bare rocky knoll to rescue an isolated company of fellow Leathernecks besieged by the Communist North Vietnamese Army. Then, all hell broke loose. Instead of rescuing their fellow comrades, the Marines now faced complete annihilation. Author Doyle Glass tells their story in Swift Sword, a true Vietnam War story of epic courage and brotherhood in the face of insurmountable odds.
Order Swift Sword by Doyle Glass now. They never gave up. We should never forget.
Kim Monson
And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is americasveteranstories.com. And as you know, a sponsor of the show is Hooters Restaurants.
And how I got to know them, it’s a really interesting story about when I was on city council. and it’s a question really about freedom and free markets and capitalism and I call them PBIs. Politicians, bureaucrats and interested parties that like to kind of control things. But Hooters Restaurants is a great sponsor of the show.
They have five locations, Loveland, Aurora, Lone Tree, Westminster and Colorado Springs. And great specials for lunch and for happy hour and of course a great place to get together with friends to watch all the sporting events. Michael Keller, during break you said that you had traveled all over the world. So tell me a little bit about that.
Michael Keller
Well,
Kim Monson
when I,
Michael Keller
after I got back and got out of the military, I realized I probably didn’t want to go back to school and become a fraternity.
Kim Monson
You had your experience with all
Michael Keller
that. I did that. I decided it was time to settle down and do something.
Kim Monson
So you were married though when you were in Vietnam? You went over to see your wife in Hawaii?
Michael Keller
Yes. Unfortunately, I got married right before I went to Vietnam. was a
Kim Monson
So Michael, you said that you reconnected and you got married right before you went to Vietnam. There was a lot of that going on. That’s tough. Yeah.
And it was on both sides. On both sides. Exactly. And so but I wanted to continue on.
You said that you ended up coming back and you ended up traveling the world. So tell me about that.
Michael Keller
went back to school. I wanted to go into, I was, I got involved in a scuba diving club while I was at Cameron Bay. And when I was back there, we were actually, I got my certificate, diving certificates by the Navy SEAL group that was there. And we would go diving anytime we could get off and I decided I wanted to be a marine biologist.
So when I got discharged, I had to go to a junior college for one semester because in order for me to get an early release from the service, I got out four months early. I had to have had acceptance into a Institute of Higher Learning so that I could get out because my last four months were just would have been wasted time as
Speaker 1
far as
Michael Keller
I was concerned. And then I just applied and had marginal acceptance because I’d taken some train some correspondence classes to Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California. and I was literally driving cross country stopped and saw one of my old high school football teammates who lived in Boulder and we went backpacking up in Rocky Mountain National Park and he convinced me I didn’t want to go to California I wanted to stay in Colorado and they didn’t have marine biology program but I don’t
Kim Monson
have any oceans here no
Michael Keller
and lakes don’t count so So I ended up actually at Northern Colorado in Greeley, and they didn’t have a marine biology program, but I got into their what’s called human ecology environmental science program. And human ecology is effectively how we humans affect the world. And back in the mid to late 70s, that wasn’t a very popular conversation to have. So I decided I better get a second opinion on life, so I took a second major in information systems in the business department, and that’s what I spent my first career in.
And I worked for a couple of very large Fortune 200 companies, and a couple of smaller ones, and then I got into consulting. And the laws in IT consulting are pretty much you never find work in your backyard. They for some reason don’t think you’re that good if you’re local. So I would do contract work in San Francisco and people from San Francisco would come to Denver and do work.
But I was the rainmaker in my last two consulting groups and that meant I was the one that went out and found contracts. And they came from all over. I’ve been to 49 of the 50 states and I’ve been to probably 50 countries. Wow.
Not all in work. There’s probably 80-20 work to this personal travel.
Kim Monson
I’ve not traveled that much like that. in doing so, of course, you had the experience at Vietnam, but we really have it very good
Michael Keller
here in America. And that’s why I wish I sent both my children or gave them opportunities to get out of the country when they were younger, just to see there’s we’re not the center of the universe like they think we are.
Kim Monson
Yeah. But this concept of personal freedom is a pretty, pretty unique thing really out there. Yes. Yes.
And
Michael Keller
I remember during the Bush II re-election, people would ask me, I think I was taking a taxi from the airport to downtown Prague, and the driver said, are you a Yank or a Canadian? I said, I’m a Yank. and he said that we got into political conversation. I swear to God, almost everywhere I’ve been, especially in Europe, people know more about our government than we do.
It really woke me up after the first three or four times that happened that we just don’t do a very good job of what I call civic education. I mean, college students know less about our government than a 11-year-old might in Zurich, Switzerland.
Kim Monson
Well, and Michael, so I’m from Western Kansas. You’re from Nebraska? Yeah. Okay.
I can’t quite remember how close Omaha is to Iowa. But so Nebraska boy, Kansas girl. And it’s now I lost my train of thought. Hold on.
Yeah. Hold on here. Let me think about it. Oh, I know what I was gonna say.
Okay, here we go. And I’d come across the eighth grade exam to graduate from eighth grade back in 1895 in Saline County, Kansas. And I am sure that there are kids with doctorates that can’t answer those questions. Probably me
Michael Keller
too.
Kim Monson
It’s amazing. And back then they had questions about civics and all these different things. And we’re doing a terrible job on teaching our kids about this. And another thing, I didn’t know that much about the Vietnam War because we don’t really teach that.
And World War II, my understanding, there’s not much in history about that. These are important stories that we need to know.
Michael Keller
My father was in the South Pacific in World War II in the Army. I was fascinated by, I shouldn’t say by war, but by, I guess, my father, my uncle was in the Navy and the South Pacific as well, his brother. And it just it fascinates me how little even my sisters don’t know about even my experiences and their relative experiences in the service. It just almost is like, you know, that’s that’s old history.
You know, I want to know what’s going on right now. I want instant gratification and something that will keep me informed. I mean, keep me involved, but not necessarily informed.
Kim Monson
There’s a lot of that going around these days, Michael. Did your father talk at all about his experience in World War II?
Michael Keller
Yes and
Kim Monson
no.
Michael Keller
I would ask him questions and when I was younger, he didn’t. But as he got older, he started opening up more, I guess, kind of like I have with my my kids. They knew I was in Vietnam, but I don’t think they I never talked to him about what I did or what I saw until maybe this last four or five years. My father got a lung disease in, he was in, where was he?
One of the islands in the New Guinea, I guess. And he had asthma to begin with, which he tried to get in the Navy so he could be offshore. And the Navy said, we can’t take you because you have asthma. But the Army said, you’re good to go.
And they sent him home on a hospital ship, said they had to resuscitate him twice on the way home and didn’t think he’d live to get back here. And he died at 95 of a stroke.
Kim Monson
I love that. In your family, when you’re told that you’re going to pass on early, you’re like, watch this, show me. Definitely. So he’s in the South Pacific, but he didn’t really talk about it.
Michael Keller
As he got older, he would share a little bit, but he was in the field artillery, and so they were firing these 155 millimeter, they call them long toms, over this mountain range. And that mountain range divided the Japanese from the Americans. There were some Australians, he said, there with him. And so they just fire over, he said, we fire over the hill and then they’d fire back.
And he never saw direct hand-to-hand combat, but they did go out on several missions checking on damage or whatever and he could see the results of his 155mm shells and I think that shocked him to see what pulling a lanyard could do to other people.
Kim Monson
My, I had three uncles that served in World War Two in the European theater. And one of them, Kansas farm boy, and left when he was 18 and came back as a, I think a second lieutenant
Speaker 1
at the
Kim Monson
age of 22. But he was a bombardier. And he said, my father said that it really did affect my my uncle is that the bomb had gotten Jammed and so he had to and I guess they had armed it so they had to get rid of it obviously and so he had to kick it out of the Bombay and It hit a farmhouse and he doesn’t know if there were people that were in the farmhouse or not But he carried that around in his heart.
I did get to and I can’t remember which one it was but one of them and One of the bombers, I actually, the World War II bombers up in Loveland, I got to fly in one of them. And I don’t know why I thought that these planes were like as big as, you know, what we fly on now. They were small. And to get around with that, with the bomb bay open, it’s amazing what these guys did.
Michael Keller
Well, and you think about, especially in Europe, They weren’t pressurized until the B-29 came along. So they were flying at 14,000, 15,000 feet and tied with an oxygen mask. And obviously they weren’t temperature controlled. So, you know, you’d be below freezing the whole time you were above probably 8,000 feet.
Kim Monson
I guess they had these electric
Michael Keller
suits. Yeah, but I’d heard tales too of people, especially the gunners, that they’d literally, they’d lose ends of their fingers and things that would freeze after so many times of holding the guns. I bet that’s
Kim Monson
true. I hadn’t thought of that. So yeah, we’re going to continue this discussion, which is super fascinating. Michael Keller, he is a Vietnam veteran.
Really, I’m learning so much. I really appreciate it. So we will be right back with Michael Keller.
Speaker 2
If you’re 62 or older, a reverse mortgage could be a great tool regarding retirement and estate planning. It is essential to understand the process. Lorne Levy with Polygon Financial Group has nearly 20 years in the mortgage industry and has the experience to answer your questions. Lorne understands that each financial transaction is personal.
If you’d like to explore your options on a reverse mortgage, remodel your home, buy a rental property or move, call Lorne Levy at 303-880-8881. Licensed in 49 states, Kim Monson highly recommends Lorne Levy for all your mortgage needs. Call Lorne at 303-880-8881.
Speaker 5
You’d like to get in touch with one of the sponsors of the Kim Monson Show, but you can’t remember their phone contact or website information. Find a full list of advertising partners on Kim’s website, KimMonson.com. That’s Kim, M-O-N-S-O-N dot com.
Kim Monson
And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Check out the website. That’s americasveteranstories.com. I’m talking with Air Force veteran, Vietnam veteran Michael Keller.
And Michael, during the break, you mentioned that you were diagnosed with PTSD. So tell me about that.
Michael Keller
Yeah, unfortunately, it was pretty late in my life. But I think the ones that hit me the hardest were the Looking back after going out into the villages and doing work, especially with the children and some of the ungodly things that happened, stepping on mines, napalm burns, malaria. I mean, just true third world situations. And I didn’t realize at the time how much that kind of hit me until I had my first child, my son.
And I started comparing notes and saying, oh my god, I’m glad it didn’t happen to my son. But the fact that it did happen to all these other people, not just children, but people. And it really got to the point where I was having nightmares and reliving parts of that. So I would get up and walk around and I probably went 10, 12 years of my life, maybe not getting more than four or five hours of sleep.
That was just kind of my pattern. And as I mentioned, I started self-medicating, some with alcohol, but mainly working. I worked 60 some hours a week for probably 20 some years of my life. And in that period of time, I also I eliminated my time with my own children because I just was focused on everything but the rest of my life.
And I got involved in the U.S.S.A. Master Ski Program and got into ski racing when I was in my mid-fifties and did that until my second knee operation and I decided I probably ought to get out of that when I was 63, I think. Oh my gosh. Your
Kim Monson
ski racing after you had been told the age that you would pass on. I love that.
Michael Keller
and I got into big wall rock climbing. We did the Grand Teton up in Wyoming and we did the East Face of Longs Peak a couple times and tried to do El Capitan out in Yosemite and we got lightning, snowed and rained off twice in three days. So anyway, and my psychiatrist at the VA, as we went through all these things, she said, you were when you were doing that, your focus on that wall was three foot by five feet. And your focus on this ski hill was a set two gates down in front of you.
And I went, yeah. Well that was just another way of you bringing in your own focus so everything else in your life was out for that period of time and it was a release and it worked the same way and it cost me a marriage. It cost me time with my children. And now that they’re adults, we’ve reconnected, but they were told by their mother that I really didn’t care enough about them.
So that’s why I was always gone or doing something else. And so that guilt was pretty heavy. And then like I told you, I started volunteering at the VA with mostly Iraq and Afghan PTSD student or patients, I should say. And I told them if you wait like I did 35 years, you’re literally losing a period of your life physically, mentally, socially.
And you can’t get it back. It’s burned up. It’s gone. And I said, it’s kind of like a compost pile.
You keep pushing it down and pushing it down. And then when it flames, it can get real ugly. And I’ve gotten incredible care. I had terrible care.
I went out to Walter Reed back in the early 2000s. And after my second visit, I swore I’d never go back to a VA hospital again. And fortunately, another veteran told me about Denver. I found my psychiatrist here, I found my real good treatment for my prostate cancer and then I ended up with lymph node cancer and they took out 57 of my lymph nodes robotically over at UC Health but interacted through the VA and I’ve had nothing but incredible care.
It’s good to know. Every one of my doctors, they don’t treat you like a number. They treated me, at least, like a human being. They cared about me.
They would check up on me. I know this isn’t a paid political announcement for the VA, but for all those veterans out there that haven’t gone or won’t go, or their significant others, convince them to go, because it is an incredible hospital.
Kim Monson
Well, that’s really good to know. What can you tell me? How did your psychiatrist unlock this PTSD and help you?
Michael Keller
By taking me back and forcing me to some extent to relive or to revisit those experiences that I was having. and also with some drugs that help me sleep. And I’m still on an anti-anxiety drug, but it’s about a third of the strength it was seven or eight years ago. But she also got me, she was, got her MD in India and she got her psychiatric treatment, or license at, what’s the big hospital out in Baltimore?
Johns Hopkins. And she got me into meditation. And it took me about a year to, as she said, break the ice and let my mind open up to it. And once it did, it just, my heart rate went down.
I mean, my blood pressure went down. I just literally became almost a different human being after getting into meditation. And I wear a bracelet that says breathe on it. Even if things get tight, I’ll just is a And the bad news was I took too long.
And God knows what could have been different in my life. But I guess you could say that about
Kim Monson
anything. That’s true. But it’s important to learn and to share that knowledge with our younger veterans. I think that’s really important as well.
And we’ve got about four minutes left, Michael. And helping younger veterans with this PTSD, this has been something that’s been very important to you. US English
Michael Keller
I can’t do that. I’m very three-dimensional and I want to be face-to-face.
Kim Monson
Yeah that was a real travesty during that time. I look back on that and it’s almost like it was a dream that our country
Michael Keller
went through that. It was surreal. That’s kind of what I put it by. I
Kim Monson
know, really it was surreal. So Michael, pretty amazing life experiences. And, you know, what would you like our listeners to kind of what’s kind of your final thought you’d like to leave with our listeners? Well, I think,
Michael Keller
for me, having not been a very good father, a very good husband, as far as being away all the time, to not let your military experience get in the way of, of your life get in the way of your families. I mean, it’s always going to be there. But accept it and kind of, I won’t say compartmentalize it, but at least put it aside long enough so that you can focus on what’s really most important, and that’s your life, your family’s life, your friend’s life, and what you can do for the world, whether it’s pick up a piece of trash on the street or go on a mission to South America.
I always feel like if you can give something back somewhere, you get a lot more comes back to you than what you put out.
Kim Monson
So Michael, we have a duty as human beings to work to pass on something better. And I take that seriously. And so you just mentioned it’s I really thank you for agreeing to do the interview. I felt like when I initially asked you, you seemed just a little reticent.
I was going to refuse.
Michael Keller
I think this is only the second time I’ve really opened up very much about this. It’s been a hit and miss with my family, hit and miss with some friends and things. But this has been good for me to actually talk about it in a little bit of a string. So instead of just being a piece here, a piece there, it kind of has put all my experience back together.
told me how fortunate I am, I guess, one, to be an American citizen, but two, to still be alive after things have happened. And I embrace that life every day. I get up, I have a, I’d see the whole front range off my deck, and I go out every morning with my coffee and just thank everybody for me, one, being able to still be here, but be able to experience that in Colorado, and put a smile on my face and go to work.
Kim Monson
Well, Michael Keller, thank you so much. And my friends, indeed, it is apparent that we stand on the shoulders of giants. So God bless you and God bless America.
Announcer
Thank you for listening to America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure to tune in again next Sunday, 3 to 4 p.m. here on KLZ 560 and KLZ 100.7.
Speaker 1
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ Management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
