Edited script
Robert Riggs
As I watched the daring rescue of the two airmen shot down over Iran in early April of 2026, I found myself thinking of John Bagwell.
Johnās story isn't a true-crime saga you'd expect on this podcast, but it is gripping, timely, and no less dramatic.
I learned about his military service when he wore a Purple Heart ribbon to a search engine marketing group meeting here in Dallas many years ago.
John had never talked about his time in the Vietnam War, and we were surprised.
We learned that in 1968, Bagwell escaped from behind enemy lines during a surprise attack dubbed the Tet Offensive.
He was wounded and alone, moving through deadly, unfamiliar territory while trying to avoid enemy fire and, at times, bullets from his own side.
His harrowing fight for survival began at a radio station in Vietnam with a scene that could have been lifted straight from a Hollywood movie.
John, you were the Robin Williams version of the disc jockey portrayed in the movie Good Morning, Vietnam, but he didn't get shot. You did.
John Bagwell
Yes. Well, Good afternoon, Vietnam. I actually have the afternoon shift at the radio station in An Khe, South Vietnam, and I was a disc jockey, pretty cool job, huh?
Robert Riggs
Well, and you were with Armed Forces Radio, but you were assigned to First Cav.
John Bagwell
First Air Cavalry Division in An Khe. The American Forces Radio had a station in Saigon, and then they had stations throughout the area of South Vietnam that basically rebroadcast from the Saigon radio station. We did our own little broadcast from An Khe. General Tolson, who was in command, wanted rock and roll music, and so he instructed us to play the rock and roll music.
Robert Riggs
So in contrast, and in the movie, there's the conflict between the commanders and the DJs inside Saigon, because they want them to play classical and other stuff that the soldiers hate. It sounds like your general was tuned in to who his men were.
John Bagwell
Very, very, very tuned in, and he was listening one day and heard the classical music and asked his aides, what the heck was going on? Why were we playing classical music on his radio station? And they had to tell him it wasn't his radio station. It actually belonged to the group out of Saigon, but he commandeered enough disc jockeys and decided that the troops needed to hear rock and roll. And he was a lot more, I guess, easy on the ears in that we got to tell jokes and do other things. And I was more like Robin Williams, in a way, in that particular movie. I mean, I had very few restrictions on me.
Robert Riggs
So are just the troopers from First Cav hearing this? Or are there other soldiers in the field?
John Bagwell
Pretty much within 50 miles of An Khe, that was mostly the First Cav. And we were designed to have information about the First Cav. And it started out with a recording a newscast every morning and at noon, just telling about what the First Cav did. And then it morphed into later for us, playing rock and roll records and doing a little bit more, and the general wanted it that way, and we were glad to do it.
Archival audio ā John Bagwellās Army radio broadcast
Stay tuned next for music and fun with the scrawny thing, Army Specialist John Bagwell on AFBN radio, good morning to you. Seven minutes now past the hour of eight o'clock. I'm disc jockey. Specialist John Bagwell, the Scrawny Thing, and this program is called A Scrawny Thing Happening, nonetheless. You know Bagwell used to be a track man? Is that right? Yeah, he came in last in the human race.
Robert Riggs
So were you spinning 45 RPM vinyl records in that day? A lot of listeners, they're not even going to know what that is.
John Bagwell
Well, actually, it's interesting. Our radio station was in a bunker, and it was hot in Vietnam, and it was often the temperature got close to 100 degrees or better. And so we actually took the records and put them on audio tape, and then we used audio tape on the air, and we had another kind of a secured area that we could record the records. And the records would just melt after a while. They would get so hot you couldn't play them. And we would record on the tape, and then we'd have to take tape and redo it after a couple of weeks, because the tape would break because it was so hot in the bunker. And so
Robert Riggs
What are the popular songs of the period?
John Bagwell
Oh, we played a whole lot of war protest songs. We played,
Robert Riggs
You played war protests?
John Bagwell
Yeah, we were able to play. āWe Got To Get Out Of This Placeā, and āSomething's Happening Hereā. We played just rock and roll in popular, popular stuff.
Robert Riggs
āEve of Destruction?ā
John Bagwell
āEve of Destructionā was certainly one of the songs. It was played.
Robert Riggs
Yeah, the listeners will have to go tune these up, and they'll really get a feel for this.
John Bagwell
I think some people will have to get on Google and try to figure out what some of this is.
Robert Riggs
But yeah, because some of those were like The Ballad of the anti-war movement. Oh, sure, sure. The, you know, radio station stateside, the disc jockeys would get requests to play songs, call-ins. Did you do that?
John Bagwell
Matter of fact, we did. We had a telephone in the bunker, and it was connected to the system. Now, this was kind of the old crank type system, and you would crank it up and people out in the field could actually call in. And it would be interesting, you'd think somebody would be calling in to call in air strikes. And the operator would get a hold of them, and they'd say, Well, what do you want? You want some air strikes? And they said, No, call that disc jockey in An Khe because I want to request a record. And so we would hear from people, mostly on base, but off of the out in the field, would call and request a record.
Robert Riggs
You must have been having a lot of fun?
John Bagwell
Oh, I had a great time. I mean, it's a cushy job. I'm playing records, I'm telling jokes, and it was just a really, really wonderful time. I started out when I got there, I weighed only 108 pounds, and so one of the disc jockeys looked at me, and he said, You're pretty skinny. And another one said, You're not only skinny, you're scrawny. And so pretty soon they started making these jokes about me being skinny, and it was just a way of, kind of causing the troops to laugh. And so we would record one evening all these jokes about me being skinny, and we had a guy with a little bit deeper voice, and we had sound effects of a knock on the door, and then he would give off the one liner, and then there would be the sound effects of a door slamming. And so we'd have things like, hey, Bagwell. Hey, Bagwell, You're so skinny. I heard that one time when you want to take a shower, you have to jump around just to get wet. And then the door would slam. And it was interesting. And of course, I was the butt of the jokes.
Archival audio ā John Bagwellās Army radio broadcast
We are going to pause right now for a spot announcement. (Dog barks) Thank you spot we appreciate you dropping by and sharing with us. You're in tune with the scrawny thing, disc jockey Army Specialist John Bagwell, the most popular disc jockey in all of Vietnam.
John Bagwell, now there's a guy I don't like, and from all the things I've said about him, I never will. Look up there in the sky. Look, it's a scrawny thing. Is it a chicken? No, it's specialist John Bagwell.
John Bagwell
I tell folks I was the Rodney Dangerfield of Vietnam. Of course, a lot of your listeners will have to look up Rodney Dangerfield. I get no respect. And funny thing happened after a while, the audience started writing the jokes. They would scribble a joke on the back of an envelope, and they would send that in, or they would see me at the mess hall, and somebody would holler at me and say, oh, there's John Bagwell. Bagwell, You're so skinny. And they'd get off the line and I'd jot it down, and that was the next day's jokes. So it was interesting. And finally, at one time, it did get a little bit worse. They started kind of expanding. And another one was, hey, Bagwell. Hey, Bagwell, not only are you skinny, but you're ugly. In fact, I heard that one time your mother used to have to tie a pork chop around your neck just to get the family dog to play with you. Oh god, it did get up. So it did get ugly, but it was fun and it was interesting. And people just loved, loved talking about that. I ran up an interesting thing. I was in Abilene, speaking a number of years back, and a pilot came up to me, and he said, I remember you on the radio. And he said, I remember your jokes. And he said, at the time, we would take our helicopter, and the only way we would navigate was by the AM signal there in An Khe and after we dropped off the troops, we would signal in on that. And as we were flying back, we were listening to your show, and we would crank it up. He said, there's a couple of times I almost crashed the helicopter, because we would hear one of your jokes about you being so skinny. So I was thinking that, what if that helicopter did crash in the jungle? Can you imagine going up the chain of command and telling them, oh, the helicopter crashed because some disc jockey told this joke.
Robert Riggs
So, but An Khe is the base for the
John Bagwell
An Khe is the base, right?
Robert Riggs
And so how long were you there?
John Bagwell
I was there almost a year as a disc jockey. I had just a short period of time left, about two months, when I got transferred up north to the city of Hue, to another radio station. The First Cav was moving, and General Tolson wanted a radio station that would be heard by his troops, and so he sent us up to the city of Hue, there was already a radio station there, but it wasn't really in operation. It just rebroadcast a Saigon station.
No, in fact, it's real close to the DMZ, the demilitarized zone. And I arrived there one day before the Tet Offensive started in 1968 and many of your listeners will remember the Tet Offensive that it was a time when the war was in full swing, and they took over the entire country of South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese.
Robert Riggs
So explain that was Lunar New Year, but there was a just a simultaneous attack all over the country by North Vietnamese regulars and the Viet Cong guerrillas, that is correct.
John Bagwell
And Tet was the Vietnamese New Year, and there was a Tet every year in Vietnam. And in the past, Tet had been sort of one of those times that there was a ceasefire and there was a celebration. But this particular year, in 1968, they decided they were going to take over the entire major cities in South Vietnam, as well as most military bases. And not only were we under fire in Hue, but everybody else was. Now at the time Hue was the Imperial City. It was a very quiet city. There was very, very little fighting that had ever gone on in the city of Hue, and it was really untouched by the war.
Robert Riggs
And you're living, where near the radio station?
John Bagwell
The radio station was located in the city. We had a military compound, MACV, and it was a facility that housed primarily support people. The radio station for some reason, and I've never really understood that, but the radio station was in the city itself, about a mile from our compound, and so we stayed in a house across the street from the radio station and TV station, and that's where we were.
Robert Riggs
Now, you've just arrived, you really don't know your way around the city at all. Do you?
John Bagwell
Absolutely, I arrived on January the 30th, just before the Tet Offensive started. And it was an interesting time. I arrived, and they dropped me off in the middle of Hue, and I looked around, and I was used to being at An Khe and I was used to having pretty good perimeter with lots of guards. And I was quite surprised that we were there and we had a house, and in the back of the house, there was about a six-inch high field of barbed wire. And I remember remarking to one of the guys, I said that this can't be right. That's not going to keep anybody from coming into their house. And they said, Oh no, no, no, that's to keep the ducks, the duck pond from coming up. There's a duck pond down the hill. And ducks come up and poop at our backyard, and we want to keep the ducks out. And so they were more concerned about keeping the ducks out than keeping the enemy out. But we didn't think there was any enemy to keep out.
Robert Riggs
And I've seen the photographs of the house. It's not fortified. It's, you know, more like a shack in one sense. How many of you are living in there?
John Bagwell
Well, there's nine of us at this time, radio and TV people. There was a television station and a radio station. Steve Straub was with me from the An Khe area. He had been set up with me, and the rest were all radio and TV people.
We did invite an additional person to stay with us, a civilian with NBC. So there were eight of us, military and one civilian in the house.
Robert Riggs
Were you heavily armed?
John Bagwell
Lightly armed? We had some military weapons. We did have a grenade launcher, and each of us had our own rifle or a pistol, and that was it. We were not what I would consider to be fighting personnel. No, not at all.
Robert Riggs
You're DJs. You were,
John Bagwell
We were disc jockeys, television personalities, engineers, and we were in this particular house, and when the Tet Offensive started that evening, we actually went to the outside, sat down, we watched fireworks, because we were expecting fireworks that night from around the Citadel, and it was a great opportunity.
In fact, we watched the fireworks explode, and we were kind of excited, and then all of a sudden we began to realize that there was more going on than just fireworks, that these were mortar rounds, and we were under attack. And so we had a landline telephone, and we called back to our military base at MACV and said, what's going on? And they said, Well, we think we're under attack and stay put. And of course, our commander was all military, and he took the command seriously, and we stayed put for five days in this house by ourself.
Robert Riggs
So describe this five-day siege, how much fire you're taking. How close are these? Is it North Vietnamese regulars, or is it Viet Cong?
John Bagwell
It's Viet Cong, and it's North Vietnamese regulars. There were probably 300 Americans in the city of Hue at the time. Most were support people, cooks, truck drivers, some signal people, and of course, the disc jockeys. There were about 20 Marines that guarded the base, and that was it, depending on who you talk to. There's been several books written about this, but it appears that at least 20,000, maybe as many as 30,000 North Vietnamese came into the city by way of tunnels, and some just walked in over the period weeks. So we're totally outnumbered, 30,000 against 300, I mean, what are the odds of that? So we're in the house and we don't know what's going on. Ironically, the American Forces Radio Station is still on, and we're getting Saigon. We were on the grid for the city of Hue, and for some reason the electricity stayed on. And so we did have backup generator, but because the electricity was still on, the radio station was still on. And to this day, I don't understand why they took five days before they shut off the radio station. But the North Vietnamese were more involved in other things than worrying about the radio station. So we were able to listen to the radio out of Saigon and get some information about what was going on, even though we had no actual landline opportunities back with anybody. So we heard General Westmoreland say we knew they were coming, to which we looked at each other and said, Well, if you knew they were coming, I Wish you'd told us, because we would have got out of Hue.
While we were in the house, there was for five days, there was no activity. I mean, we just sat there waiting to be either rescued or for the North Vietnamese come and get us. I did find out later that, within a couple of hours, that the Americans were trying to get us, and they sent a contingent of Marines, and they got probably a couple of blocks and suffered so many casualties that they went back and at some time, basically they thought that we were probably dead, but they didn't send anybody to look for us for five days. So on the fifth day, we're sitting there just trying to survive, and all of a sudden they came. The North Vietnamese.
Robert Riggs
Describe how they came. I mean, I understand they had satchel charges.
John Bagwell
They had satchel charges, grenades. They started bombing the house, shelling the house with mortar rounds. It was late evening, early morning, and we had been for five days standing guard around the house. I was at a particular window, and all of a sudden this North Vietnamese, or maybe a Viet Cong, a kid jumps in front of me and I say, a kid Robert. He was probably 11 or 12, years old, and he started firing and he was just as scared as could be. He was shaking like a leaf. And one round that he fired off went by my right ear, and within seconds, another round went by my left ear, and it was so close I could feel the bullet against the hair on the side of my ear. It was that close, and I realized that if I didn't shoot him, he'd shoot me. And I got a couple of rounds off, and we were probably 10 feet away, I could have stood up, taking my gun, stepped forward and hit him on the head with my rifle. That's how close we were. And he couldn't hit me, but I got him. And I remember when he fell, the rest of the guys cheered, and I sat there and thought, What in the world is going on? You know, the army teaches you to kill, but they don't teach you how to feel when you kill somebody. And I had this overwhelming guilt come over me. I've just killed this kid. Of course, I'm a kid too. I'm barely 19, almost 20, at that time, and I just remember thinking, What the hell are we doing here?
Robert Riggs
And you had signed up for this. You worked, right?
John Bagwell
I had signed up to be a disc jockey. Yeah, yeah. I thought that probably I needed to sign up. My grades were not great at college, and there was a draft going on, and my draft number was going to be pretty high, and I probably would have been drafted at some time, so I wanted to do what I could do.
Robert Riggs
Now I'm from the same period, and recall that every semester, your grades went to the draft board in your hometown, and if you didn't make the grade, they canceled your deferment for finishing college and you had a one-way trip to Vietnam.
John Bagwell
Absolutely, a lot of people were going.
Robert Riggs
Suddenly, they're hitting you from every direction. What happens? Do you make a run for it?
John Bagwell
Well, we decided we had to get out of the house, and they were coming in the back door. In fact, one of the guys, was killed in the house, but we were standing toward the front door, and Corey Niles, who was the NBC civilian, was standing up front, and he made a run for it and ran to the left of the house, and I followed him. And of course, I'd watched enough John Wayne movies and westerns, you know, I laid down fire as I ran across and jumped into the gutter just on the other side of where he was, the rest of the guys ran to the right, and they were all taken prisoner. I didn't realize it at the time. I thought they were killed, but they were taken as POWs or killed. Courtney was laying there and he was bleeding. Blood was coming from his leg just gushing, and so I pulled off my belt, and I put a tourniquet around him and pulled it tight to keep him from bleeding. As I mentioned before, I weighed 108 pounds, and ironically, I had on a 30 inch pair of fatigues, because there's not 28 inch fatigues available, and I had a 28 inch waist. So now all of a sudden, I've got my belt around Corey. I've got to lift him up somehow. I've got to hold on to my pants, because they're about to fall down. And I get him up and we try to escape to the back and that he gets shot, and he falls. I check him out real quick to make sure that he's still alive. He's notāno pulse, and I realized at that time is he's the only other person that knows how to get back to the MACV headquarters. I don't, and so I just take off running at that time, and next thing I know, I looked down and I've been shot in the foot. The bullet comes in through the back of my boot, comes around the toes, pulls all the skin off, doesn't break any bones, but then comes out the tip of my boot. So I can feel the blood in my boot, but it's not hit an artery, but I'm bleeding pretty, pretty, pretty bad, and I realize I've got to do something. So at this point, I'm wounded. Didn't get me higher in the leg, so I'm not falling down, but I'm still in a little bit of pain at this time.
Robert Riggs
And so now you're on the street running.
John Bagwell
I'm on the street. I'm behind enemy lines. Nobody knows where I am. And I see this church, Catholic Church. So I jump up on the church and knock on the door, and priest comes to the door, and I know very little Vietnamese, so I'm talking to him, and I said, Please, you help, help me. And I'm pointing to my jacket, Army, military. I said, Army, military, American, you help me. And he says, Oh, sure, come on in. I'll help you. He spoke English, he spoke French, he spoke Vietnamese, and so he took me inside the church, and it was at that time that I made a decision that saved my life, but also put me in peril for a bit later. The priest talked me into getting out of my military uniform and putting on civilian clothes. And he said, I think I can make you look like a Vietnamese. And so I put on civilian clothes, and he had no medication, but he did have a lot of gauze. And so he gauzed me up all over my face, all over my hands, so that all you could just really see was my eyeballs. And I sat down in the church. There were about 50 other Vietnamese that were there hiding out, waiting for somebody to come rescue them or something so.
Robert Riggs
And you look like a wounded peasant,
John Bagwell
And I looked like a wounded peasant, yeah. And all of a suddenāI had just sat down, probably 30 secondsāthe door busted open, and the North Vietnamese came in, and I was face to face with a Russian AK 47 about two inches from my nose, and I closed my eyes, and I thought, There's no way he's gonna know that I'm not an American. He's gonna know that, and I'm gonna die. And I looked up, and they had moved along the side, and for some reason, he thought that I was just another Vietnamese, a peasant. They left, and then the priest came to me, and he says, Man, he says, I got to do something with you. He said, I'm going to put you upstairs. And they took me to the very top of the church to the steeple area, and there was a little bed, so I'm there. Kind of enjoyed life for a couple of seconds, and all of a sudden, the walls start coming down.
All of a sudden, we're being shelled. And I figured at that time, and discovered later that it was actually the Americans, because somebody had reported that North Vietnamese were in the church, and the Americans were trying to blow the church off the map. And I was in it, as well as all the other people below in the church. And at the same convention that I was at in Abilene, a guy came up to me after I gave my talk, and he said, My brother was the one who shot at you in the church. He says, I know it was. He's been haunted by that all of his life. And he talked about he got orders to destroy a church five days after the fighting started in Hue, and I'm sure it was that church. And I said, Well, you go back and tell your brother he missed me. So another interesting fact that was probably 15 years ago, but a couple of years later, I joined, just here recently, a VFW in the Dallas area, and we were kind of talking about war stories, and this officer said, John, I have to tell you, he said I was the commander of the artillery unit that fired on that church. He said, I didn't do it. I instructed my man because we had heard that the North Vietnamese were in the church. And he said, I gave the command to blow the church off the map. And I said, Well, you missed me, so I could have been I should have been dead at that point.
Robert Riggs
You're up around the steeple, and now there are no walls.
John Bagwell
There are no walls at all, and I'm just looking out over the city, and it's just absolutely an opportunity for me to look out and see everything. And finally, at that point, I had a little bit of time now before pretty much the adrenaline was really rushing, and I hadn't really thought a whole lot about what was going on, but at this particular time, I had time to think. And interesting fact happened at that time, I'm a religious person. I'm a Christian. I surrendered my life to Christ, and I didn't really know all of that meant, but I'm sitting there and I had a talk with God, and a lot of my friends say, you know God spoke to you. John Bagwell, are you sure, but as real as could be, God spoke to me and said two things, you're going to die and you're going meet Jesus, or you're going to get out of this and you're going to have one heck of a story. Those are the only two options. One of those is going to happen, and it gave me great peace that if I didn't make it, I still had an appointment with Jesus. Now, a lot of my friends kind of scoff at me about that, but it's given me great peace through the years. Obviously, I made it, I got out, but at that particular time, I didn't know that I would, and by the time it was all over, I was either shot at or should have been killed at least 12 times in the two days, probably six by the Americans and six by the North Vietnamese. And the Americans didn't know where I was, so they weren't trying to protect me.
Robert Riggs
So now you've got to flee the church.
John Bagwell
I've got to get out of the church somehow.
Robert Riggs
Where do you go?
John Bagwell
Well the priest got me, and he said, you see the light over there? That's what I believe to be an American military installation. And I said, you think? And he said, I think so. I said, You're not sure? He said, No, but I think it's Americans. And he said, If you will crawl there, you'll be able to get with the Americans. So at 11 o'clock at night, I took off across a rice paddy to go probably a mile, mile and a half to what I thought would be American military establishment.
And I woke up every chicken, every duck, every farm animal I'm making all kinds of noise as I go through that night, I figure that somebody's going to know I'm out there, and that's where the helicopter flies over.
An American helicopter flies over the rice paddy, flies down, shines a light on me. And again, I pause and I thought I'm dead. Here's an American helicopter looking at somebody that's in civilian clothes that looks like a Vietnamese headed crawling toward an American military post. They're going to take me out. And after a while, he moved on, and either didn't see me, or for whatever reason, moved on. So it's the next morning. It's seven o'clock, and from 11 to seven, I pretty much crawled that mile to get to the Americans in mud, in mud, and then through a rice paddy barefoot at this time, in civilian clothes. And it's seven o'clock in the morning, and it's cold, it's February, and I remember I sneezed pretty loudly, and I thought, well, now the Americans on the other side are going to hear me, and they're going to know that rice does not sneeze and there is an American out there, or there's somebody out there, and they're going to kill me. And I hadn't really thought through all what might happen, but I realized now somehow I've got to surrender, and I've got to convince them that I'm an American. So I jumped up and waved my hands, and I said, Don't shoot. I'm an American. Don't shoot. Don't shoot.
And they started shooting. And I paused, and I thought, Oh my goodness. And the guy hollers back, and he says, You an American. And I said, you can't tell from my okie accent that I'm an American. He said, Yeah. He said, What are you doing out there? And I said, Well, I was with the American Forces Radio Station. And he says, No, we don't believe you. I said, you don't believe I'm an American? He said, Oh yeah, I believe you're probably an American, but we don't believe you at the radio station. And I said, why? He said, Well, they're all prisoner of war or they're dead. And he said, there's only one body that we haven't found, and that's a Bagwell. And I said, Well, I am Bagwell. And they said, Well, we've been looking for you. You're alive, and they took me into the base, and it was a signal unit, but you're in bad shape. I'm in bad shape at this part, and this is seven o'clock in the morning. I'm at a base, and they have been pretty much under restriction for food. They're down to two C-rations a day. And somebody shared with me a can of apricots, which I was glad. I hadn't had any real food in about two days, so I'm excited to have something. And I looked down at my leg, and it wasn't a bad wound, as I said, and I wasn't still bleeding, but my leg was turning black, and over the period of time, it was getting blacker and blacker as it went up my leg and close to my knee cap, it was all black. Gangrene. Gangrene was setting in, and I was beginning to be in some pretty good pain. So the people at the signal battalion called a MASH unit military surgical hospital, which is right up the road, and they said, good news, we found Bagwell. Bad news is he's been shot and he needs medical attention, and you guys come get him. And they replied, Well, fighting is going on in Hue. It is still pretty dangerous, and we're not going to come get him. You bring him to us. And they said, well, fighting is still going on in Hue. We're not going to come take him. You come get him. Seven o'clock in the morning, one o'clock in the afternoon, when they finally decide what to do with me, and somebody throws me in the back of a jeep, drives me a mile or so to the MASH unit and tosses me out.
So I finally get some medical attention. And Robert, you've seen MASH on television, I get Major Houlihan. I get the only nurse that's there that's going to be total Army. I mean, Major Houlihan thinks there's two ways to do things, the Army way or the wrong way.
Robert Riggs
The rule book.
John Bagwell
The rule book. And she looks at me and she says, Gangrene is setting in on you. We're gonna have to amputate your leg. And I said, Can I get a second opinion? And she says, There is no second opinion, soldier, you're in the Army. And I said, Please, can you not cut off my leg? And I started telling her all the story while I was at the radio station, all my people have been killed or prisoner of war. I spent all this time. I tell her about the church I crawled through the rice paddy. I'm just pouring out my heart to her. She reaches over on the wall and she grabs a bottle of that Methylate Iodine-type solution that they use so often, and she just pours it on my leg, and I scream bloody murder. I felt like they were taking a chainsaw into my leg. Most painful I've ever been in. And she says, Does that hurt? I said, Well, matter of fact, it does. She said, Well, that's good. It's killing the infection. So over the next 30 minutes or so, she came back every 30 minutes and just bathed me in that Methylate Iodide solution and gave me some antibiotics. And ironically, over the period of time, the blackness did go down, and as it started going down, she said, Well, maybe we can save your leg. And after probably 8 to 10 hours, the Gangrene was under control, and I survived. But had I let her originally do that, I would have been less one leg?
Robert Riggs
How long until you get back home?
John Bagwell
Well, not long after that, I'm able to go back to the military base, and I had an opportunity to call my mother on the phone. They allowed us a three-minute phone call. This is before cell phone, so it was kind of a two-way radio call, but I called my mom, talked to her, and my mom knew that I was in trouble. Mothers instantly can know when their sons are in danger or their daughters, and she had been reading what was going on, so she knew that I was in trouble. I was glad to talk to her. I had about six weeks left, and of course, the military has to keep you busy. The radio station was gone. So there's no need for me to be a disc jockey. There's nothing to talk on. So they've got me picking up cigarette butts and doing KP, and anything that needs to be done. I'm doing guard duty. I'm doing KP, whatever.
Robert Riggs
And because you've got to do 365 days?
John Bagwell
I got to do 365 almost to the day. And so finally I, after I finished six weeks, they sent me home. Now, if I'd had my leg amputated, I probably would have gone home directly, but so they kept me for that much time. And so I went home and visited with my mom, and it was really interesting. I was home probably a couple of days, and we were sitting down eating, and my mother said, you know something strange happened the other day. And I said, really? She said, Well, there was a knock on the door, and it was an officer from Fort Sill. And he said, Mrs. Bagwell, I'm here to inform you that your son, John Bagwell, is missing in action in Vietnam and is presumed dead. And she said, I looked at him and said, what he do now? And he says, What do you mean? She said, Well, I just talked to him a couple of weeks ago on the phone. You mean he's gotten shot again? And the officer looked down, he said, Oh, well, I have him down as being wounded and perhaps dead on February the fifth, and now this is March. And she said, Well, I've talked to him since then. He says, Well, I guess we made a mistake, and he left. So when I surrendered and they thought that I was dead, nobody updated the fact that I was indeed alive, even though I went back to my main source of base. So it was interesting, the army didn't always get everything right.
Robert Riggs
And your mother later comes across an article in Time Magazine about the priest of that church was executed.
John Bagwell
Absolutely. There was an article that a priest of a Catholic church was executed for hiding an American. Don't know that was him for 100% sure, but I'm pretty sure that probably him. There weren't too many churches in that particular area, and to my knowledge, there weren't too many Americans that were hiding out. So that priest probably gave up, ultimately gave up his life for trying to save me.
Robert Riggs
Well, people are few and far between who've been trapped behind enemy lines, wounded, and survive. What have you learned from this experience? What's the life lesson here for anybody listening?
John Bagwell
Well for me it's great to be alive, and I know that I should have been killed 60 years ago when I was in Vietnam. I wake up every morning thankful to be alive, realizing that I'm on borrowed time, and it's a little bit different, I think, because you appreciate life just a little bit more, and I've had a lot of issues, a lot of trouble. I kind of joked that one time I got behind with the IRS, and the IRS was after me, but having the IRS after me was nothing compared to having the North Vietnamese after me. And I've kind of realized that whatever happens, nothing can compare to Vietnam, and I am grateful to be alive. I am grateful for every day I think I'm a better person by surviving. I had the opportunity to stay in the military, but I chose not to. Something about once you get shot, you don't want to get shot again. And I didn't want to be in that position again. But I have been grateful for my military experience, the great, great time to learn, great time to fellowship with other soldiers and to just fortify my life. I went on to become a disc jockey out in Odessa at KOZA radio for a while, and then I ultimately got into advertising, but the military was good to me.
Robert Riggs
When you saw the two American airmen downed in Iran, did you think about what had happened to yourself and what they must be going through?
John Bagwell
Oh I did. I did. Very interesting bringing this back to reality today. Of course, at Iran, we had a pilot wound up behind enemy lines. They were looking for him. We spent a lot of money, probably several million dollars. There's a couple airplanes lost, and so forth. I imagine he had some of the same thoughts that I had. Now they weren't looking for me, and so I really wasn't expecting somebody to find me. I was hoping I could get myself back somewhere to Americans. But I'm sure he was wondering, by the minute, am I going to get out of this? And he probably had a similar experience, and maybe a religious experience too at that particular point.
Robert Riggs
But, and then the weapons officer who was in the back seat, yeah, you know, injured, yeah, climbs a part of a mountain.
John Bagwell
Injured. Alright, of course, I was injured too, but not probably as bad as that, the pilot was injured. But being behind enemy lines is a scary, a scary situation. And you know, I expect few people have done that through the years. I'm not the first, but probably won't be the last, but it is a scary feeling not to know what's going to happen to you and not to know whether you're going to be rescued. And in my case, I knew they weren't looking for me. I was just hoping I could get back.
Robert Riggs
Three broadcasters were killed, and five were taken prisoner. Only Bagwell escaped the onslaught of the Tet Offensive.
The five survivors spent five years as prisoners of war, their suffering beginning with a brutal barefoot march up the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
What followed was the squalor, hunger, and abuse that defined life for Americans held in North Vietnamās most brutal prisons.
One POW fought off the psychological misery of solitary confinement by building a radio station in his mind. He imagined every detail of it. He equipped it, staffed it, and ran it as if it were real. The private project became an obsession, but also a lifeline, helping him resist the crushing despair of Communist imprisonment.
The NCO who had been in charge of the Armed Forces station in Hue turned to much the same mental survival technique in isolation. He built a radio station in his mind from the ground up, laying the bricks, fitting the windows, even installing the wiring and equipment.
The Tet Offensive of 1968 became a turning point in the Vietnam War.
By 1967, after more than two years of savage fighting, the commitment of more than 400,000 American troops and a steadily climbing casualty count, many Americans believed the conflict had sunk into a bloody deadlock.
Meanwhile, the anti-war movement was swelling in force and fury.
After witnessing the aftermath of the Tet Offensive, legendary CBS newsman Walter Cronkite pronounced the war mired in a stalemate.
President Lyndon B. Johnson reportedly said, āIf Iāve lost Cronkite, Iāve lost Middle America.ā
Facing intensifying political fire, even from within his own Democratic Party, Johnson shocked the nation in a televised address. He announced he would not run for reelection as President.
The Vietnam War ended on April 30, 1975, as Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese Army during a massive, chaotic helicopter evacuation of the few American and South Vietnamese allies left there.
U.S. forces had largely withdrawn two years earlier.
John Bagwellās story is one chapter in a conflict that lasted twenty years.
He shares his story of survival with schools, civic groups, churches, and veteran organizations.
You can schedule John to speak on his website at JohnBagwell.com.
This is Robert Riggs reporting.
