Captain Young, to you and to your magnificent crew, thank you. Not only for the extraordinary hospitality that you have given to all of us here, but also for all that you do with your ship of the line to protect U.S. interests around the globe. And it's great to see you're back in the water. And in April when you get back to the sea, it's going to be with the same professionalism and spirit this ship has exhibited since it was christened on 21 July 1990.
Admiral, Captains, Colonel Al Colter, and to all of you who are here today, I've given a lot of speeches along the way and I don't get intimidated very easily anymore. But today is one of those days where my heart is pounding a little harder than it normally does because I need to find the right words. And also because I know there's Italian blood in my body that will rush to my heart, and it's going to be a contest whether my brain gets to rule or my heart gets to rule while I'm speaking to you. So if I slow down a couple of times while I'm up here just bear with me.
First of all, you should know the ground rules of who Pete Pace is. I am here in pride as an observer of those who fought in Hue City, not with pride as a participant because by the time I got there all the hard work was already done. And we should not forget that, if you study military history you know that attacking forces normally like to have a ratio of about three good guys to about one bad guy if you're going to attack. In the case of Hué City, about 2,500 U.S. servicemen, mostly Marines, attacked 11,000 N.V.A. (North Vietnamese Army) in a well-defended city...and kicked their butts. But I can say that because I wasn’t a part of it. It would be inappropriate if I had been and said it that way.
But to get there, and to join that magnificent group, I graduated from the Naval Academy and went on to The Basic School like all Marine officers do, and I got trained up to go to Vietnam. If you recall, those of you who were alive back then, in the winter of '67-'68 there was a huge blizzard on the East Coast. And that blizzard closed down training at Quantico. And it happened to be at a time when we were supposed to learn how to fight in cities. "Not doin' it," one instructor said. "Have to learn how to fight in a tight space. And, so it's unfortunate that you're going to miss this training. But if you have to fight in a city, we'll train you up for that before you go."
So off I went to Vietnam. And I still didn't know I was going to go to "Two/Five." So I got into Da Nang and got on a cattle car, which is basically a big old tractor-trailer truck that had seats in it. And it had seats in the middle, and it had seats on the outside. So I sat on the outside, and I was across the way from a major who looked at me and said, "This is your first tour in Vietnam, isn't it?" And I said—and I'm wearing my gold bars—and I said, "Yes, sir. It is." He said, "You know how I know?" And I said, "Other than my rank, sir?" He said, "Yeah, see, the veterans sit on the inside so the guys that sit on the outside can take the bullets."
So this is good. This is day one, and I'm saying to myself, "I'm already dead."
Found out I was going to "Two/Five." Still didn't know what the words "Two/Five" meant. Just knew that I was going to be proud to be part of that great, great unit.
Got up to Phu Bai, and then I started realizing that Phu Bai was close to Hué and that all that stuff I'd been reading about in the papers was about to become part of my life. Then-Major O. K. Steele, who is now a retired Major General in the Marine Corps, who was the battalion XO (executive officer), said, "Come on. We're gonna' go." And we got in a jeep. He's in the front seat. We had a driver. We had a guy in the back with a rifle and me, and we take off for Hué City. So we drive from Phu Bai to Hué City with one jeep. And I'm saying to myself, "OK, I didn't die in Danang; I am going to die en route to Hué City."
Gen. Peter Pace