Stephen F. Redmiles Jr. - USMC 1965-69

Stephen Redmiles served in Vietnam with both HMM-263 and HMM-362 as a UH-34D Crew Chief and was stationed aboard the USS Okinawa as well as at Ky Ha. Stephen clocked 1,300 flight hours during his tour in Vietnam primarily flying troop transport, supplies and medevacs. “We'd fly into Laos, do inserts in the morning, fly back in the afternoon hoping you were picking the right people up. We were flying medevacs; you'd see tracers coming up. Some days it wouldn't be that bad, but most of the times you got shot at. My plane had many bullet holes in it.”

Stephen was “very lucky” to survive two near fatal incidences. “He climbed right into the tail of our plane, chopped the tail rotor off and part of the tail pylon off. We landed in a dried-up rice paddy, which is like landing on a brick street. All the landing gear was gone. It was, you know, terrible. I was very, very lucky. I mean, most people don't survive a mid-air. And then I was shot in the fuel cells, on fire at 2,000 feet.”

During his interview Stephen honored the memories of those who he served with that didn’t make it home, including James Harvey Post Jr who was killed while crewing Stephen’s plane. To honor CPL Post’s service please visit his Vietnam Virtual Wall Memorial https://www.virtualwall.org