Donald Walsh

Donald Walsh is a US Air Force Vietnam War veteran. During his time in service, he served three tours in Vietnam, in addition to serving brief stints in Taiwan, Thailand, Guam, and Okinawa. Walsh served from 1969, when he joined the Air Force at the age of twenty-three, until 1973. He was a KC-135 crew chief. He also served on B-52 bombers.

Walsh always felt his place in life was in the sky. Since his youth, he always loved being on a plane. Walsh “felt a thrill in flying”, so the Air Force was an obvious choice when he joined the military. His older brother spent a year serving in Vietnam, and his entire family was in support of the war effort, and had pride in the United States and its military. Walsh never finished college, and his dream career after military service, to work for a New York based airline, did not come to fruition, but he did find satisfaction in the Air Force. 

When Walsh joined the Air Force, he did not do so with any of his friends. He was initially stationed at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, for basic training. Walsh recalled the weather there as unbearably hot to the point that “we weren’t even required to march, it was so hot.”

He noted though, that the heat in Texas was nothing compared to that in Thailand, which was “ungodly hot.” At Lackland, Walsh took basic courses on survival, and learned how to stay relatively healthy in the brutal jungles of Southeast Asia.

On leaving Lackland in 1969, Walsh went to Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts, for three months advanced training in operating aircraft and weapons. He learned which weapons to use and when, the mechanical operations of aircraft, and how to maintain them under combat conditions.

On arrival in Vietnam, Walsh was assigned a brutal work schedule. He worked on 24-hour shifts with little to no food or water while on duty. Uninterrupted sleep was a rare blessing that he did not experience often, and he soon realized that “dry was more important than cool” when it came to staying healthy.

One of his first training missions in Vietnam included a parachute jump from 23,000 feet in the air. According to Walsh, when you are that high up, you cannot breathe while falling, and must scream just to let a small amount of air out before it gets pushed right back into you. He said that there were 18,000 pounds of pressure on his body, which made his limbs feel useless, and he felt like a “falling rock at the speed of light.”

On another training day, Walsh and his crew were on a surveillance loop when their plane’s engine stopped working. They almost ended up crashing, but Walsh, although no pilot, was able to maintain control of the aircraft for as smooth of a landing as possible. He also recalled that environmental concerns were nonexistent during his time in Vietnam. Thousands of tons of fuel were sometimes dumped on the landscape.

After his first Vietnam tour, Walsh was sent to Taiwan for four months. While there, they heard rumors that President Johnson had ended the war, and this was contradicted by the fact that we were still bombing North Vietnam. He recalled feeling very isolated and lacking knowledge of the course of the war. Walsh felt like he was not being told the truth by his commanders.

Walsh remembered the weather in Taiwan as dominated by monsoons, hurricanes, and flash floods. Lumber often floated away, and airmen would have to search for and bring the wood back. Once the daily rain stopped, the sun would come out, and it would become brutally humid and hot. The aircrews slept in metal huts, and Walsh recalled them feeling like “baked potatoes in an oven”. He also remembered that everyone got sick from drinking local water, and there was really nothing that you could do about it.

Walsh was then assigned to Thailand, and stationed at U-Tapao Royal Thai Navy (RTN) Airfield, which became a front-line facility of the United States Air Force in Thailand from 1966 to 1975.

The plane that Walsh valued the most was the B-52. They were the “most feared weapon of the Vietnam War”. This plane was too large to aim at small strategic targets, but the damage that it could inflict was unmatched by any other military plane. The B-52 could carry 108 bombs on board, and Walsh was happy to fly in one of them. He never touched the bombs when they were being loaded onto the planes, but as a crew member, he would map out where they would be dropped.

Looking back on his efforts, Walsh was very proud of what he did for his country. His only personal regret was that he never finished college. When he finally came home for good, his wife and family threw a huge party in his honor. Because this was a time when veterans did not want to even say they fought in the Vietnam War, Walsh very honored.

Walsh does many fundraisers around the country, and almost every year he swims around Manhattan to raise money for different charities.

His message to younger generations is that you can do whatever you want to do in life; don’t just settle because you think it’s what other people want, or it’s what is most convenient for you. Fight to do what you love.

The interviewer closed with, “We thank you Donald for your service. You are an inspiration to all!”