“I was 20 years old. I was drafted. The Vietnamese called, when they did, they called me ‘the Little Kid.’ They said, ‘No, you’re that Little Kid. You don’t belong here.'”

“You know, my government says I do.”

Every so often, Wisconsin Public Television sits down with American warriors for a series called “Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories.” Two years ago, they caught up with Mike Allen, who babyfaced and fresh out of high school, fought as a soldier in the barbarous jungles of Vietnam in the 1960s.

“They were hot. They were muggy with the humidity. You see rain every day. We got rained on every day and we slept in it. We slept in the mud, so we were always wet. As far as clean clothes, I wore my first set for roughly 80 days; 80 days. I only had like four or five changes of clean clothes while I was there.”

“You were scared, but you couldn’t feel scared because it would overtake you. You know what I mean?”

Allen received an Air Medal after making it through 25 CAs (flights) into unsecured LZs (landing zones).

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