The Firefight Audio

Since publishing the book, I have received a few inquiries about the firefight audio which is found on page 130.

Audio QR Code from Page 130

First of all, the fact that you can listen to this by scanning your smart phone over the bar code is quite remarkable in itself. Again, credit goes to our son, Bart, who suggested doing it. Many people in my generation, including myself, don't even have a smart phone... but my wife, Jane, does. When we got our first copy of the book, she downloaded a free bar code reading app called "qrafter". Then she hit the "scan" command on her phone and took a photo of the bar code. After that, she hit the play button and my voice came on followed by the firefight recording. I couldn't believe it! What Bart had said, was true. With today's technology, you can listen to an audio recording while reading a book!

The recording itself came from a tape recorder that I had taken on one of the multi-day patrols on the Vinh Te Canal. (It was one of those small, cassette tape recorders that I had purchased in a Navy PX someplace.) While in Vietnam, I periodically sent tapes home to friends and family instead of writing a letter. On this occasion, I used it to actually record some of the "goings on" on the Vinh Te Canal. The first vignnette includes some background discussion between myself and a boat captain of an airstrike he had recorded a prior night. The second occurrs on another night when I turned the recorder on during a firefight between the enemy and the RAG boats.

Fortunately, when I got back to the YRBM 20 after this patrol, I made some copies of the tape. One of them got to an Admiral who queried Mike Connolly (see page 125) about it. Apparently, the tape found its way around because when I was writing the book, Larry Forbes sent me a copy of it, now on a CD. (I believe that Larry had gotten it from Joe Petro or one of the other patrol officers.) When Bart told me that we could make it available to readers through this bar code technology, I sent him the tape (CD), this time with my voice as a lead-in describing what the reader is listening to.

All of this is to say, that getting this tape into a book was a joint effort. I could never have figured out how to do it on my own. However, now that it is done, I am pleased with the outcome. You can write about the emotion, fear and chaos of a firefight, but when you can listen to it – it takes on a whole new dimension.

Rolly Kidder

The audio file is repeated here:




Also - if you'd like to try the QR code link, scan the code below with any free QR code reader app (i.e, i-nigma, qrafter, scan).  The direct link to the US Archives is: http://goo.gl/atxkzG