busy my name is kept i get it in your connection to belmont it is what the connection to belmont right now i'm the commander of the rehab on belmont i'm also the commander of the american legion unveiled on this other in the same facility you it was a day of chaos person because nobody knew what was going on and they pretty much had you in the dock and i think as i just kept you so busy that you funny were just so fatigued when you finally get to where you were going which was for dix for me that's why i did basic training and by the time you got there and you got your fatigues and whatever else it was probably four o'clock in the morning and they let you go to bed and then pretty much catch you up at eight o'clock the next morning to ground to and then you still had no idea was going on so that was he at that day and i recall when you got off the bus that that make you sit down and take over a whole battery of written test and what have you or your g s to bill i can't remember the bill or yeah it's just a bill or you know whatever they did you know it was just a blur until you get your hair cut and then you all had the same head you know where everybody was just right down to skin so that was what he wanted our boys regular or you want to just up a little off the top it was the same here with some and be able to send twenty one words and then you pass than you could go out and you know completed your course so that was that was what you had to do in order to pass that course i think so i mean it was kind of tough at the beginning you know with jets and dots and whatever so and then i get it and i never used it i want to want to vietnam and i never used morse code so well you know you got to learn what the radio procedure was you know in vietnam you know twelve foot antenna which was you know that was like the talk i got target i target for the viet cong the v c whatever you know i mean it's take out communications for us and then you know everything else was no support for you so that's what they did so high school with them all and then i just kept running the gym mchugh i still see him from time to time he's still in waltham so you know and you always come back and you remember you know you have stories you can tell each other whatever else and also those are the stories that remain amongst close friends that's it that's it right yeah and they'll be they he may hear their stories but they don't you're talking about you know so like this you're talking in code yeah so you want to you want from you want home on leave i assume after the radio school and then you went  vietnam and went to vietnam right in did you walk did you fly over on a cargo plane or on regular illinois regular airlines you know it was funny joe because it was just you made the hop from i think it was from we went from here to california california to alaska alaska japan japan to vietnam and it just and i you know i tell people say what was it like and i said well have you ever seen the movie platoon i said that's basically when you get off the plane you just get hit right in the face with the heat the smell and then you know you just said yourself you know this is real this is this is not fun and games and with israel and that's when you finally realize you know and i mean if people told you they weren't scared when they went there they're lying to you because god and then you know you could get something of the sort of fountain and then right back on you know so they didn't let you go too far because they they didn't want they want if they had sixty people off they wanted sixty people back on you know so that was it so you  recovery ok and i was his radio operator he went out i went out so i was his you know i was his communication expert specialist so you know if that's that was a thing so and he was one of these kind of guys you know if you had a good c e o you would do whatever you have helicopters you know they yeah they were there were here was there were taken i was on you get you drop zone and they didn't land they kind of kicked you off so you know there was no touchdown would just get off and so they could take off because that was that was the big thing you know the less time that in the area the better off everybody was including them i did thirteen months straight i didn't take an hour an hour because i figured i knew myself that if i was out of country i would want to come back i want to be tough to come back so i figured i just do the do my time so i stayed an extra months like to get the early out of a drop or  so but i mean you learnt a lot about yourself there was a whole thing about going into military i think you learn a lot about yourself and it's one of those things that you know the  the friends and acquaintances that you made during the times that you were they are forever there you know had a good friend of mine that i actually met in basic training he was from virginia he was  bodies meeting again and then we both left vietnam the same time come home we kept in contact and he actually get killed in a car action there christmas eve you know a drunk driver so but that  christmas he became all more or well was that we got home i got home in march of seventy one and that christmas eve you could kill a car accident so it's you know like you say when your time is up your time is up and then you can go so basically that i've known since i've been elementary school that i'm still close friends with so you know there is that bond when you are in the military because you know your life is in the hands of a life is in your hands so it's a mutual respect that you have for each other and you know you do whatever you could to save them there were no boundaries where you would stop you know that was just it also it was just a great thing to learn about yourself while you learnt who you were what you joe you know and then things that you didn't think you could do you could do you know so a lot of confidence building for muscle that you when you when you came back you come through oakland or were to come back for which i came back from oakland and and then from oakland i took a private you know private plane back to boston and i came home and you know it doesn't hit you when you came back when i came back it didn't hit me for a couple of years basically because i think that you're still on that heightened alert status that your body has always been and you know and still today i mean i go through a little p t s d now but it's you know certain things certain smells certain you know sounds you know bring back certain things but it's just one of those things that you know you have to become aware of today it's a lot more there through every war or every conflict you know whether being soldiers had battle fatigue p t s d it's there and you know in most people so some people handle a lot better than other people do so i guess it's just one of those things  things too is you know it's i don't like crowded rooms because the noise and you can't you know it's you know hiding behind alertness is you know it's just not day because you can't control the situation you know brother ron was in the i mean he said to me ok peace and you're going to me and if they have you had boot camp and they want you to do pushups and they tell you to drop and do push up to twenty pushups all you have to do is say drop with me and you won't have to join so i was in the  days and i had come out in our religion that when you came out of a building in the military they just bought a fully clothed you had on your shirt on your pants blouse in boats so i came on i think i had my pants my pants weren't blouse i had no s i had no hand on and this had five came out he just came back from vietnam you could tell you know he was there just killing the rest of us you know as time in the military so he grabbed me said to me you soldier and i said yeah he says where's the rest uniform i said it's inside he said go get him go back out here not come back out and it's ok now you look like a soldier so he said now i want you to drop and do twenty i looked at him and i said drop with me and i knew it was the wrong thing to say because he had smoke and fire just came out of his nose and his eyes he grabbed me brought me up with a parade field and showed me a cigarette filter he said to fifty different kinds of cigarette filters i want you to find one of every so i want on my knee for another two hours and i looked and then funny grabbed me brought me in and he stuck me in the corner of a yourself so when you when you came when you came back and you got home what did you do with your clock when i came back home i really didn't take any time off because a week later i was i want to work for the phone company used to do that in the summertime with my uncle my father so i came back and i started doing that again and then i worked for a couple of years for some contractors and then i thought if i'm going to work this out i want to work this out myself so i went to work for myself in  six there were six of us they were station at we call the t o c the tactical operations on most of those guys five out of the six were from texas and like i say the other guy was from virginia who got killed so but i did see one of the guys from texas came up here it was one thousand nine hundred and eighty and i've tried to you know i'm not a computer person whatsoever so i can go on facebook or whatever else but i magine if i i want to take the time and around it would be good to run into those guys and just talk them see what's what has happened in the past fifty years you know so it's one of those things too i imagine not seeing those guys for forty some odd years but what you had with them it's like you never left you know i mean it was like right there you know you could ask him anything and whatever else you know the bond is still there going to be with them so yeah well how did you come to come to be commander of the v time yeah and what they did is they sent out they were looking for recruits to join the v f w so what they had done if you are going to be a new member your st memory st your membership was free so i said why not just write down the street you know i know where the place is so i did join it and i joined in one thousand i think seventeen thousand four hundred and seventy five or seventy five and so then i pretty much was not an active you know i would go down there but i was not active in the churches or whatever else and then possibly about it must be about ten years ago there were some financial problems with the post and it was either give up the post and who was the commander he resigned at the time and i had just become the senior vice commander so i became the commander and  a lot of the younger guys didn't want to give up the potion or guys from the sense that were the vietnam guys there pretty much they wanted to keep the place open because now it was here the old the nd world war guys were getting older and they didn't want to go through the changes that were going to happen and the korean guys were in pretty much in the same bracket too so it fell upon the vietnam guys to either keep it gone or let it go and then join another post so we they were probably about eight or ten of us that kept the post going and still to this day most of us guys are still around so well and the post we have now it's at the same place we tend to pull rolled it up see as we have it rented out to a daycare which is help us financially to keep the also and luckily we've been able to do some things too like donating to the high school we have a one thousand dollar that we it's a one thousand dollars that we get for  a female and a one thousand dollars we give to a male down the contribution for them for college for the koch fund so that we do that and we will just try to stay within the community and do things where you have coming up on the th of the month so it just goes to show that a lot of the younger guys who have been iraq afghanistan kuwait you know those guys have all joined some post before because they have nd rd and th deployments they basically reservists most guys you know and like i say when they come back they join someplace so it's not like we have the same guys a number of guys coming back that recruits that you can take go out there and recruited to join the post so but it's just one of those things you know like i say myself dental roca was an interview here the other day we pretty much and there's a few others you know but we probably just joined the post in the early seventy's so we still go down there maintain the polls and we try to keep it going and you know one of the great things we do now at the post as we do school visitations coming morial day and veterans day and the programs at the high school they put on the town about for the veterans i mean it's a great program and anybody who is a veteran who has never been to one really needs to come down and experience what the kids do for the veterans because it makes your day believe me you think about this all year long you see these rd graders and they put their heart school to school which is you know but now it's just we have basically about the same eighteen dollars to twenty dollars guys that go each year which is great and some of these guys like jimmy boozer was one and he's up to ninety three dollars now and you know he's with the walker now so he's kind message and we'll get back to you but just a great great feeling that you get for what these kids really do and what the town of belmont does for the veterans on you know veterans day and memorial day but it's just a great time and like i say when you see the time and effort and when you come walking in i say because being the commander i like the officer of the day and i introduce the guys and whatever else and i say these two days of the year we get to feel like rocks last year because that's how they make you feel you know so it's just a great feeling that you have when you leave in the us will remember that we each go we go to the pledge of allegiance is said which is a great thing too because i mean it's obscene makes you wonder that this is what you know this is what we just is what we we have fought for you know for the freedoms we have in this country you know the freedoms are not free the freedoms of the probably the most expensive privilege that we have in this country you know the paid the ultimate has paid the ultimate price for what we have in this country and now to keep it alive and to keep what we have and that's why we do w well yeah end belmore right now there's a veterans memorial project that's going down going on down the clay pit pond and what it is we're trying to get away or in the process of doing is making in memorial for all wars and conflicts and there is a donation process that's out there if you want to buy a brick they are at one hundred dollars a brick and contributions are well accepted in any denomination it makes no difference from one dollar to ten thousand dollars it's all welcomed and this is a project that's going to take us a little bit of time to get but it's underway and then myself bill is involved in this angelo frenzy we have a couple of general