Reflections from Anti-War Combat Veteran Douglas Greenlaw, Part 2

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Your positive imprint.

what's your P. I.

And has been inducted into the United States Military Hall of Fame for his service as a 1st Lieutenant Infantry, Platoon Leader, and Infantry Company Commander in Vietnam. War is brutal, bloody, and graphic. Doug will share some of his experiences as these have profoundly influenced his thoughts and actions following his return from the war.

In addition to his military accomplishments, doug has an incredible career in the entertainment industry. industry, having served as the former president of MTV he has a passion for the outdoors, and just simply relaxing in nature.

He believes in the tremendous power of positive thinking and embracing life at any age.. As a veteran, his words resonate deeply across every continent and nation. "All gave some, but some gave all." Douglas Greenlaw, I salute you with the absolute utmost respect. Welcome to the show, Douglas Greenlaw. Doug, hello.

And I was just like the privates. I wasn't any better than them or no worse, but I was the leader and they became to trust me. , I treated everybody the same. Today I treat the doorman the same way I treat the CEO and I learned that from those days.

My catastrophic wound

If you could

explain those

And it's pretty hard to survive, just like it's, the number one is the Medal of Honor. That's number one. Most of them are posthumous you know, they, they die during the event. A lot of people die during a silver star event too. It's really a dangerous, it's meant for, , valor in combat.

The bronze star below it is for heroism. And so a Silver Star is when you get to that point where it's beyond heroism, you do things, that are, , either unheard of or very rare. And, and I did, , and I had a couple of things happen to me, , into combat that I don't know if we'll talk about or not, maybe see where it goes.

The silver star is the third highest award. , the bronze star is the fourth highest for heroism in combat.

, you have to be able to prove it, , by the people around you and your commanders and the purple heart is the oldest metal of all, and it was created by General George Washington in the Revolutionary War, and the Purple Heart is for being wounded by the enemy in combat. If I shoot myself in the foot, I don't get a Purple Heart.

It has to be caused by the enemy. And so that's, that's the three, four big awards that are out there. I never really, uh, cared one way or the other if I got them or not. , I was, I was just doing what I thought was right at the time.

And, , a couple of interesting things happened to me. It was sort of like being struck by lightning. When you go through heavy combat and I killed people, I killed, people, , within reach during hand to hand combat. I killed one in that tunnel I told you about. , it changes your life.

It really does to kill somebody. I don't care if they're the enemy or, , and it's not fun and it's not pretty. And it's not something to be proud of. It's not glamorous. When I, when I meet a Vietnam vet or a veteran who starts talking about how brave he was, I'm thinking this guy wasn't very brave.

He wouldn't be talking about it right now in the way he is.

I was wounded twice. The first time was a leg wound, , behind my knee. , just up from my hamstring and it healed in country, they took it out and it healed in country.

And I, I stayed there and I was a platoon leader at the time. ,

the helicopter pilots, we were, we were light infantry. That means light. in gear. We just wore our fighting equipment. We didn't, we didn't have, , backpacks and all that. We just went out to fight. And they took us around to different areas in these helicopters to fight. I fought, I fought almost every day.

, that was my introduction to actual combat was as a, as a young platoon leader, and the helicopter pilots made a mistake and landed, didn't read their map correctly and landed us at the front of a, uh, North Vietnamese, enemy battalion, which is about 400 men. So it's 400 to them on their side and 52 with me with my platoon because we were the lead platoon.

My job was to pick a safe area, pop green smoke and green smoke means okay. Red smoke means no. Pop green smoke where it's safe and the rest of the company would come in then. Well, they landed me a thousand meters off. So we were overrun. It was a nightmare. My men were all killed or wounded, getting off the helicopters.

They shot one helicopter down, the rest of them turned around and went back. So there we were on our own. One thing in combat, I always said to my men, never have your weapon on automatic. When you pull the trigger and it just fires all the, all the bullets in your magazine, well, you keep about 18 bullets in a magazine.

If you squeeze it on automatic, you're going to be out of ammunition within one second. Well, you want to be able to control. So what, what happened is we were overrun and we were, we were fighting, , man, man to man, uh, hand to hand combat. And I was calling in on my radio. My radio man was with me, and I didn't have the radio.

He had it. But I was calling in an F4 jet dropping bombs right next to our location. We got a couple of my men got wounded just by the jet bombs exploding, but we had to drive the enemy away because we couldn't do it ourselves. There were only 50, 52 of us, 400 of them. The Jets did it. They scared them away.

So they, they ran. And so we were able to survive. It took them five hours to get to us. Oh my gosh. So we fought for five hours.

You know, you're so excited and that's, that's another point I wanted to get to. Two things really bad happened to me. One is I lost my religion. I, I thought, how, how could some God up there in the clouds or wherever he is allow this to happen I killed 200 people in one day.

With those jets, and I killed five or six myself. And you need to justify that in your mind because I'm, I met with, a rabbi, a uh, Catholic priest and TV evangelist. And I asked them the same question, should I go into war and kill people? Very simple.

It says, I shall not kill. You shall not kill. So one of the biggest in, in, in the Bible. And the rabbis go, people have been killing in the Bible for, since the beginning. Uh, the Catholics said, yes, go. The evangelist said, don't go. He said, I can help you get a, conscientious objector permit. And I thought about it, talked to my parents.

I said, I'm going. So I went. And that, and so that's, that's what happened. That's one thing. I lost my religion. I just, and I still don't have it today. I'm not an atheist. , I'm an agnostic because I'm waiting

because I met with Pat Robertson. I don't know if you know the name, but he was a big evangelist.

And, , he said, go, he said, go. And so, I ended up going and, , so I went in to kill. I went in aggressive, very aggressive.

My second wound was catastrophic, meaning life changing. , I was, I was company commander by this time, I'd go out with once in a while, , as commander, I would go out on patrols with My men to show that I wouldn't ask them to do something that I wouldn't do or haven't done.

I'd go out with them and I'd motivate them and we'd talk. I went out on a patrol with about six other men and we came upon a large, bamboo forests. I didn't realize this, but bamboo trees can get the size of oak trees. I didn't realize that it's a special version of my species. I don't know, but these big, huge bamboo trees.

We were in the jungle looking at these trees stunned, really, , to see them. And there was a booby trap and explosive device planted in one of those trees, and the word was that it was a 105 artillery round, what happens, they pick these rounds up, the enemy picks these rounds up that don't go off in the jungle, on the jungle floor, and they extract the, uh, tip of it off, it screws on, and they put a blasting cap from a hand grenade in there with a trip wire, and so when you you Trip the trip wire, the blasting cap makes the round go off like it's normal, so it killed three in front of me and one behind me and I had my neck, my neck.

You can't see it now, but I've got a scar from my just below my ear down to the bottom of my neck. This was all opened up. It, uh, it knicked. Thankfully, it just nicked my carotid artery with the blood was, I don't know if you've ever seen it, but it shoots out three, four feet. And I, and that was it.

I had a compound fracture in my right leg. I lost my left kneecap. , I was blasted by sand, and dirt and leaves. , so they were always worried about infection. And I had a piece of bamboo that nailed my left arm to my chest, and I laid there on the, on the floor of the jungle and I said, well, this is it.

This is it. I'm in no pain. I didn't have any, I felt numbness. I didn't feel any pain. I felt a sting, like a bee sting below my, my right knee where the compound fracture came up. That's the only thing I really felt. I didn't feel the neck at all. Blood was just gushing out all over. And, uh, it was, it was, it was horrible.

And, , I died, I bled out. , they got me, fortunately, there's a helicopter coming in to my unit. , and we weren't that far out from it. , it was coming in with supplies. So they rushed me. You never put dead people on a helicopter with a live person. So they put me on a helicopter alive.

And they saved my life. These helicopter pilots were amazing. If there any, if you have any helicopter pilots as your, your viewers on your podcast, they saved my life. , first of all, they, the, uh, the jets that I called in saved my life that time, but they, when I was dying and, and, and I did die, I died on a helicopter and I went to the other side you know, what's on the other side.

That's the average age. So he lived 969 years. I always say the Bible was written by men.

Pat Robertson's the smartest guy I've ever met in my life, and he believed every word of it. And he said, don't worry. God will come to you.

I'm ready. So I am to this day. I'm open to it. I try to keep an open mind. People a lot smarter than me believe all of it. Not just some of it. I mean, all of it. Commas, periods, the whole thing. So I don't know. I, I hope, I hope I'm wrong because I think I led a pretty good life. And if I, if there's a God up there, he's going to say, Oh, you know, you made some mistakes.

Uh, give me 20 pushups and you can go ahead and go on in.

Drop down. Give me 20. So, And the second thing I lost, and I, and I, and I missed this too. I lost , , I lost fear. Fear is a good thing. Something happens, you know, if you're in the jungle and a tiger jumps up in front of you, you better be afraid.

I'm not afraid. I, I'm not saying this from a macho standpoint. I'm saying it from a physical standpoint, I'm not afraid . And I wish I was, it's like a religion. I wish I had that too. I wish I had fear because it's a good thing. I don't. And I've experienced things that most people would be fearsome of after that.

And , my heart beats still at 57 and, uh, my breathing is normal and everybody else is freaked out. And I should be, but I, you know, I don't see these warning signals. That's what fear is. It's a warning signal. Careful. Watch out. I wish I had it.

I know that some of these. transformational events that I had, even as a child on up through where I was in Vietnam, 23, I was still pretty young.

Uh, you sort of train yourself to, maybe I still have fear. I don't know. I haven't, I just haven't experienced it, , since that time. The catastrophic experience, , getting my throat slit and, and everything that happened to me put me out of the army. I mean, I was thinking about going back to school and then, , re upping into the army and making a career out of it.

But, uh, uh, things were so wild back then of the anti- war protesters and going back to college. I just never did. I went into the business world, and I'm glad I did. Actually, it's worked out well.

some of the stories and he says I've shared with your sister. That's good enough for me but now he's opening up a little bit more

I'd advise your brother-in-law to talk a lot about it. , not, it's not bragging. Um, you know, it's, it's just getting it out there.

I'm here because I'm here The government has sent me and now I have to fight for my life, and you also have all of these men underneath you. That you have to help.

Your words mean a lot to me. When I wrote this book, I said, wait a minute, this is an anti war book. It's anti war because I was an example of exactly what happens in war.

And I saw it all as a leader, , I was a young kid with no education and, you know, went to a bad high school, , went to college and flunked out, ended up in the army. I was actually drafted and then I volunteered to go to officer candiate school , I was a typical. Young man who was victimized by war.

They picked me up, they threw me into the military with, along with Ford, Studebacher, and Buick. And then I went to OCS, they threw me into Vietnam. This is what happens. So I was, I was fodder. And that's, that's anti-war, , because I'm an example of what happens to young men in war.

The only, the only thing I did is survive it. I survived it. A lot of them didn't. And, you know, when I was a 23 year old company commander, my men were all 18, 19 years old. I had a couple older guys in there and that was it. So everybody's young. You know, you know what? I didn't meet any Harvard MBAs out there in the jungle either.

You know, upper class, they have ways of avoiding the draft and all of that. It's all the lower class guys like me. that survived it. , so I think the book is a good anti war book. If you look at it from a big perspective, from, stand away from it a little bit, kid thrown into military, killed, thrown back out.

And, and these big decisions are made by generals and presidents and vice presidents that never did anything like this before. I get, I get very anxious and, , upset when I see These, talking heads on television, you know, we ought to, we should put, , at least a company of, Navy SEALs into, Ukraine and let them do some up close killing.

You know what? No, no, we shouldn't be in Ukraine. I'm a big pacifist when it comes to, to this. They tried 20 years ago to go to Kosovo. No, no Kosovo. So I'm, I'm really an anti war person. And I think a lot of combat wounded guys are, cause they've seen it. It's not, it's not pretty. It's nothing to be, you get a stupid medal for it, you know?

And then what the hell does that mean? That doesn't mean much. All he gets is a purple heart. We lost some women too in the rear areas where they get bombs thrown in, , some of these nurses, they saw a lot and, and they, they all have PTSD because they, they handle these mutilated cases one after another, after another, you know, it's not easy for women either in combat.

And then you get the wives and girlfriends at home. They have their issues, you know, so it's, it's horrible. It's a horrible thing. No war. I should be president of the United States. I'd never have war.

You need the power. It's like when I said, when you, when you stare them down, you better be telling the truth.

You tell the truth. If we want to go to war, it better be for real. I became a, anti war guy.

Yes, you are holding it. I am holding it in Kindle.

It's easy to talk about, but I wanted to write a book that's what it's like down on the ground

Of course, Doug, of

course. This one is short, but I love this story because it's a, it's a story of different cultures. and how people react. I tell this story, the men laugh, the women don't laugh, because it's not funny to them.

You could hardly see 10 feet in front of you. There's a little path we found. We could take this path. They told us don't take paths because that's where the booby traps are. But after a while, go one mile an hour through the jungle, or you want to walk normal four miles an hour down the path.

We'd take the path. And I saw some movement up in front of us and I gave him the stop sign. Where can I do that? I gave him halt. That means stop quiet. My platoon stopped and I looked and it's walking toward us on the same path we're on. And I looked and it turned out it was a woman. I could see a woman about 30, 35 years old.

Which is. Fairly old for the, , natives in the jungle and under one arm, she had a dead baby pig , she's going to have a some kind of a, dinner or, you know, celebrate some kind of a celebration, whatever it was, it was dead on her other hip. She had a little boy.

Now she probably picked him up when she saw us. Cause he was, he was like six years old he's on her hip and they walk by us and I look at the little boy. We made eye contact. I looked at the little boy in one hand. He had one of her breasts, one of her teats, and he was suckling. Which I thought is pretty old to be so, you know, we don't do that in the six year old is pretty old for.

So he's sucking on one breath. On his other hand, he had a lit cigar. He'd take a puff off that cigar suckle on the break. And he looked at me. And as he walked by, he looked at me. It's like his face said war what war life is good.

I

I saw your face when I mentioned it,

, to this day, if you have a German Shepherd at home and it's the nicest dog, I could walk in and it would roll over on its back to rub his belly. If you have that kind of a German Shepherd, not with me, if I walk in the room, and this is funny because they have the sixth sense, you know, I walk into the room with the friendliest, friendliest German Shepherd in the world.

And when I walk up to it, it looks at me like, what you looking at? it's a sense we have between us. And I'm thinking to myself, one more move, you try to bite me, I'm going to rip your head off. He senses that immediately.

And most of them are real friendly, but I don't know, lot. You know what I mean by that?

There's a perspective from your perspective and from culture, there's a different perspective and when we are 50 years later, 60 years later or whatever it is, the perspective changes. So when you're reading about the animals that are killed or the wild animals that are killed Caught up in the war. We forget that it's wartime.

I think about the, uh, white tiger caught up in war in Afghanistan the Middle East.

And that is a reminder that not only government and not only soldiers, but also the wild animals and the domestic animals are affected. And that's, that's important.

They didn't have to do it. I would never let my men do that. And, uh, so these snakes, you know, I'm an expert on snakes. Snakes don't want to bite you. They want to get away from you. So just don't, don't surprise them. Don't try to pick them up. You know, a little innocent garter snake will bite you.

They don't want to be picked up. There are ways of doing it so they can't reach you, but you know, so I don't bother, I don't bother these animals

It's when somebody says something they know is not true. That's a lie. I would never lie. I could say something wrong. I've been wrong a lot.

you have the Green Law Foundation.

org. So in Greenlaw is G R E E N L A W. So tell us about Greenlaw Foundation.

I founded it in, , 21. Because, , coming out of the, the tough times we went through in the, in the early twenties, , the veterans were getting all shoved aside and a lot of the veteran programs were getting hurt. Not the big boys, you know, the, the disabled veterans, the, American Legion, all the big companies, they were doing fine.

It was the mid level, , service programs that were suffering. Weren't getting funding. I, , Developed this 501c3, everything's tax deductible, we're legitimate, registered, and we raise money for, , suicide prevention, veteran suicide prevention, veteran homelessness, and the catastrophically wounded, which I have a special feeling for because of my experiences.

You've seen them all, no faces, no arms, no legs. When I, when I see a, , I read an article that two were killed, , 14 were injured. Well, that means the average person says, well, at least 14 survive. Well, a lot of them don't, it's not a good survival with a lot of these guys and they get into big financial trouble.

So I donate a hundred percent of the money that I raise. All the. Administrative costs and website. I pay personally myself. I just take 100 percent of the money that comes in, goes back out to these best mid level organization, like the Independence Fund is a good one. It's for catastrophically wounded.

The guy, guy's wife started. I think he just went through his 160th surgery.

Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness.

So thank you for that reminder.

I usually tried to stand up for them, but I only stood up for them if they deserved it.

I had a really good career

I was a disabled veteran and I could park anywhere on campus. I had a special, because my, both my legs were acting up. And, uh, so, uh, I tracked her down.

I went back to my apartment and I looked in my, uh, school book yearbook and there was no picture of her in there and, , she didn't belong to any of the big sororities. I said, there's a couple of dorms. That were popular. So I looked in one and there she was. I found her in a dorm. And I looked her up and I called her. And I said, you don't know me. I just totally brazenly truthful. I saw you at a football game and you're so beautiful. And I just want to say, if you want to have coffee someday, she said, I've got a boyfriend. I said, okay, I went on my way driving a new Corvette.

I was having a blast on campus. So I, and I said, what's your major? And I found out she was a speech and theater major. So I went to that line where they were signing up and there she was, and I got into one of her classes. See, this is where I got into one of her classes and I, and I sat behind her and I tapped her on the shoulder and she said, Oh, I remember you calling her.

She's so nice. , I'm still dating my boyfriend. I said, okay. So, uh, you know, semester goes by and, next time I came in, I sat next to her. A big, a big, you know, one of the big courses were 200 people in the classroom. It wasn't, wasn't much. And I said, and I, and you remember Certs, breath mints?

Well, I hit the brakes.

And so what are you doing Friday night? and all that we were. That was 52 years ago.

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Thank you so much for your support and for listening to 'your positive imprint'. And again, join Douglas Greenlaw for the next episode of Your Positive Imprint. Your Positive Imprint. What's your PI?