Interview with 3/5 Veteran and FedEx founder Fred Smith.

Where am I talking to you? Well, I'm in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. I'm at my father's house right now. So my wife and I bugged out for vacation up here, so nowhere else is open.

I'm a reservist with Echo Company 225 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Yeah, there is. I was just saying a FedEx truck pulled in the driveway and got the dog barking, and we almost got sabotaged by our own people here.

Oh yeah, driving out here, that's all I saw. I was of course, I was like, oh man, I got a big interview coming up and all I see is FedEx trucks reminding me, making me a little nervous.

Sure, you go right ahead. You gotta remember, Chris, I'm 75 going on 76, and so a lot of water under the bridge since my days in the Marine Corps. But sometimes I remember things like it was just yesterday, and sometimes I can't pull it out of my head. So I'll do the best I can.

Well, I think you had a couple of points there. I'm a southerner. All my family been in the Marines Corps or the Navy or the Army. I had an uncle during the war was in Europe, another in New Guinea, another one that was a Navy torpedo bomber operator and gunner. My father-in-law was a Marine. My stepfather been in China, fighter pilot. So there was just that tradition in my family. My father had been in the Navy in both wars, actually, World War I and II. So I decided that I would go into the PLC program because you did it during the summer. And I think a lot of people don't realize it today, but there's this huge dividing line in the Vietnam generation. There's my class, '66, and then there's the class of '68. In between my class of '66 and the class of '68, everything changed. My guess is probably half to 60% of my class at Yale went into the service, mostly into the Navy. So the draft was on, you had to do something, and with the tradition in my family, I was going to go do something. And decided the PLC program and the Marine Corps was the way to do it. Of course, I had no idea when I was graduating that Vietnam would be really, really heating up. Johnson had put the Marines in in '65. So I graduated in '66 and went to Basic School, which they had shortened tremendously. It used to be nine months, and either my class or the class before me, they shortened to five months. We worked almost six days a week and at least two night problems. So I went through in a very compressed period of time because they needed people in Vietnam, although they diverted me and several other people. I went to language school for three months in Monterey. And that was kind of why I did it and how I ended up in the Marine Corps.

Well, when I went to Vietnam the first time, I went to Okinawa first. And as you may know, the Marine Corps in Vietnam had a 13-month tour and the Army had a 12-month tour. I think part of it was just because the Marine Corps always wanted to be a little bit harder-nosed than the Army, but I also think the Marine Corps wanted to utilize the facilities in Okinawa. So I was supposed to go to Okinawa for several days and go through some sort of a climatization and orientation and so forth. When I got to Okinawa, they put us in these barracks, and it was about six hours later they came in and said things have changed, they need you down south. You're not staying here at all. So we got into a C-130, as I recall, and flew to Chu Lai. And we got to Chu Lai and they told us to give them our seabags and get our 782 gear and weapons. And long story short, I actually went to the Fifth Marine Regimental headquarters and then to my rifle company, India, in the space of 24 hours because they needed so badly. I had originally understood I was going to the 3rd Marine Division, but on Okinawa they assigned me to the 1st Marine Division. And then when I got to Chu Lai, I was assigned there to 3/5. So that's how it all happened. And it was in the field and actively engaged when I joined the unit. They were on an operation, and I was picked up at the battalion headquarters and a guy took me out through the weeds to India 3/5.

Well, I think it hit me. I did understand the history of the Fifth Marines and the Belleau Wood, the Forêt de Belleau, and all that sort of stuff. So I liked the fact I was going to Fifth Marines. I guess I would have been perfectly happy to go up north too, I mean, with the Ninth Marines or whomever. But no, I got it right away. The Fifth Marines was a legendary unit. So I was happy to be assigned to Fifth Marines.

Well, it was definitely a cultural shock, all right. We actually got mortared out in the India 3/5 position, and there were NVA in the field, so there wasn't any question. It was just, I can't even, it was unbelievable, the transition, really. So I was like, oh my goodness, this is something.

Well, you know, it was one of the most important experiences of my life because all the guys that worked for me, my platoon and then eventually my rifle company, as you say, most of them had been high school guys and they had joined the Marine Corps because they wanted to be a Marine or the draft was trying to get them and they decided Marine Corps was best. And to be honest, I had a few lads that were sent there by a judge, you know, their choice was go in the Marine Corps or go to jail. So it was an interesting juxtaposition of background. But again, I was a southerner. I worked on my uncle's farm during the summer. It wasn't as big a cultural shock perhaps as it was to some people. And I love those guys. I spent every night with them for 13 months, every single night. And I remember virtually every one of them to this day. That's Corporal Aino, my radio operator, and Sergeant Barr, and Sergeant Jackson, who was my original platoon leader and probably saved my life because he told me what was what, and I was smart enough to listen to him. And he got killed in September of 1967. His son works for us now.

Well, first of all, he knew what was what. I mean, the NCOs run the Marine Corps, you know that as well as I do. The only difference, I think, in the Marine Corps is that it acknowledges that and embraces it. Some of the other services have the barriers between the officers and the NCOs and the men. That was never the case in the Marine Corps. And he just knew how the world worked. If you had sick call and you started letting malingerers take advantage of you, they were going to take advantage of you. Sergeant Jackson knew who the straight shooters were and who the ones that weren't. He knew a lot about the employment of the infantry weapons that we had in those days, M60s, M79s, and things. He was tactically very, very sound. And he knew when to be a hard-ass and when to go easy. And I just had the greatest respect and admiration for him. We spent a lot of nights talking about philosophy and the way the world works and how the Marine Corps was supposed to work and what a platoon leader was supposed to do and not do. So I think the world of him. His son works for us today, and my daughter corresponds to his widow quite often.

Well, no question about it. I essentially, that little article which is one of the few things I ever wrote about my time in the Marine Corps, but everything I did at FedEx was just borrowed from what I learned in the Marine Corps about motivating people and all of the principles of leadership. The Marine Corps taught it. It's the best leadership school in the world. I mean, you got to remember you're part of an organization that's been continuously successful for 200 years. There's not very many of those. So there's something they're doing right. And I think at the end of the day, the modern Marine Corps, which really came about in World War I, and I'm not long ago talking about the Fifth Marine Heritage, I visited Belleau Wood and laid a wreath on the graves over there with my daughter. But the Marine Corps' principles of leadership are really based on 2,000 years of human experience. And the difference between the Marine Corps and a lot of other institutions, it puts leadership number one. It's not subordinate to a lot of what schools you went to or what have you. And in terms of when people are shooting at you, it's the ultimate democracy. That AK-47 round didn't know what school you graduated from. And the important thing was to know what your job was. And that's what Sergeant Jackson was very helpful to me. And then later on, I had a terrific Gunnery Sergeant, Alan Sora. He was one of the toughest guys I ever met in my life. And I think a lot of their feedback made me a lot better officer and being able to lead and fight the platoon and then particularly the company. And you had to know what you were doing in those days because we used supporting arms very, very close. The Army philosophy in Vietnam was sort of make contact, back off, and try to annihilate people using a lot of long-distance artillery and air. And the Marine Corps, we used our direct support, our 105s, which was Fox 2/11, our direct support battery, and we would use our air. We would put napalm in sometimes 50 meters in front of us and Snakeye bombs, you know, 500-pound Snakeye bombs, 100 meters in front of us. So our philosophy was once you got them, keep contact and then use those close supporting fires to really put a licking on them. So that was a kind of management at the platoon and then particularly at the company level, you really had to know what you were doing because the ordnance that we were using didn't distinguish between the NVA and us either. So it was a real choreography of arms that the Marine Corps knew how to do extremely well and was very lethal, as the NVA quite often wrote about.

Well, Operation Swift was an interesting kind of development. My best friend in the Marine Corps, Carl Fulford, who ended up as a four-star, kicked it all off. He was with, let's see, I think he was with 1/5. And there was a provincial capital, Quang Ngai, not Quang Tri, but Quang Ngai. And the NVA and Viet Cong had decided to take it over before there was a provincial election. I mean, it was a political move as much as military. So Carl was out there with his rifle company, I can't remember what it was, he was the XO, and they were a company minus. And they sat in for the night, and I always accuse him of being lost because he didn't know where he was. And I think that's why an NVA regiment that was attacking Quang Ngai ran up on them. So this hellacious fight started. And then we were airlifted out in CH-53s at night, and that was very clear this was a big deal because they never risked those damn things any place, they were so expensive. So Swift was really us going after, trying to find them, now having no idea how big a unit was actually out there, which was a regiment of the 2nd NVA Division. And unfortunately, I'm getting the dates all mixed up, our battalion commander made a mistake. We had a ceasefire at Fox 2/11 because they had a short round that killed some of the gunners. So he made the decision to go across this rice paddy dike in the evening to hit a phase line where we were supposed to end up without any preparation fire. And they were in there, and that's where the fight just got completely out of proportion. And I had just left India, I actually had 81s at the time, and so we were, if we hadn't had those 81s, they would have completely overrun us, that and the Spooky gunship, because those are the only things we could use at night. We didn't have Fox 2/11 firing for us because they had ceased fire because of this incident. So we laid those 81s in on that, and had we not been able to do that and use the CH-47 Spooky gunship, I think they probably would have overrun us. Anyway, it was a tough several days. And of course, our chaplain in the Fifth Marines, 3/5, famously was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions out there, Vincent Capodanno. I don't know whether you've ever read the book about him, but I gave an interview in it, I'm quoted in there quite a bit, called The Grunt Padre. If you ever get a chance, get a copy of it. He's an inspiring man.

Well, I went up to his grave not too long ago. I have a daughter that's a movie producer, she was shooting a movie in New York, and I drove out to Staten Island to pay my respects to Father Vince. And he didn't mention anything about his Medal of Honor on his tombstone at the time, but what I was so gratified about is that there were coins, small kind of military units on his gravestone. Special Forces, Navy, Army, Marines. So they hadn't forgotten him. And then a bunch of us took up a collection and got him a proper gravestone and got a window put in his honor at the chapel at the Marine Corps Museum. So he was sort of emblematic of, you know, I can't even describe, they didn't have a medal big enough for Vince Capodanno, but he was a great guy. He was a good guy with the troops too. He was a holy Joe, but he never got offended if somebody took the Lord's name in vain or first word. He was a major poker player. He won money off me and everybody else. He'd take it in there, he says, 'All for a good cause, son, all for a good cause.' He'd give it to some kid that was going to get married on R&R or something. And he smoked prolifically. I taught him how to make a smoking machine with a C-ration box. He followed us out on a platoon-sized ambush one night. Hell, you would have thought I'd given him the cure for cancer, that where he figured out where he could at night nobody could see that cigarette lighted under a poncho. He was a great guy. And so I can tell you stories all day about all my friends and so forth. I usually, this time of year, I'm in Washington. I try to go to the Wall every Memorial Day, but unfortunately, I wasn't able to do it this year because of the pandemic.

Bring him back to life for you. He was a real card. He was a good guy, a lot of fun. We won't tell those stories to the Pope to try and get him canonized.

Yeah, I actually took over Kilo in the fall of '67. I was head of Kilo during the Tet offensive. So I don't know where the records are, but I know my DD-214 that I mustered out on, it's replete with errors on it. So I can't remember exactly when it happened, but I was the CO of Kilo when we were told that Tet was going to be a very sort of calm, it was a ceasefire. And that article that I sent you, Jack Ruggles, he was killed sort of midway through the Tet offensive there. So I can't remember what date I took it over, but maybe it was late December. I just can't remember. But I had it by Tet, I can tell you that, that started the end of January.

Yeah, I was. I will say in retrospect, and I take a lot of pride in this, I was good at my job. I knew how to use the supporting arms, and my goal was to inflict the maximum amount of destruction on the bad guys and keep my guys alive. And that's why Sergeant Jackson and Gunnery Sergeant Sora were so important to me. And it could be also, Chris, what happened in those days, again, it's so far back, they may have made me the acting company commander thinking they were going to get some railroad track guy in there, and they didn't, and then they gave it to me officially. There was a lot of stuff like that done not according to the book. That's probably what happened. But I definitely had Kilo when we were told Tet was going to be a ceasefire, and then of course the whole country went into flames. We were attacked by 22 North Vietnamese divisions from I Corps up to III Corps. And we took a lot of pride, talking about Fifth Marines and 3/5, in that the NVA did not get into Da Nang and they did not penetrate Da Nang Air Force Base. It was the only major city that wasn't penetrated. And I always heard that we had their order of battle, but we were waiting for them, that's for sure. And then we went up west of Hue, where the First Marines and part of the other parts of Fifth Marines were pushing guys out of the houses, but we were out to the west, and paratroopers were up to our north and northwest. So it was a hell of a whipping those guys took. But it was a PR victory over here because people were for it. But the devastation that we laid on those guys was unbelievable.

That's right, yeah. So I was very proud of the fact I was the first lieutenant company commander. And one of my best friends was a senior captain. And I was in every rifle company, I was in every company in 3/5. I started with India, then I went with Lima, I was an XO, FL platoon leader, and then I got Kilo. And for very brief periods of time, they had 81s, mortars. So on Operation Allenbrook, Captain Kolakowski and Joe Campbell, who used to be one of my platoon leaders, and the company gunnery sergeant were all killed or badly wounded. So I had K Company, and we were up on this hill, and Mike was kind of down, as I recall, near the river or the stream. And so I actually ended up taking over both Kilo and Mike Company. So I guess I was a brevet battalion commander at that point, because I was in India, Lima, H&S briefly, then I had Kilo, and then for about three days I was in command of all the troops of both Kilo and Mike until they could send a replacement out there. So I had experience in every unit in the battalion. And Hank Kolakowski is a great guy. He would have been a general, I think. He was Naval Academy class of '61. And I relate to it a lot because I just had two grandsons graduate from the Naval Academy. One last year, he's down at Pensacola, going to be a Navy pilot. And another one's not nearly as smart and played football, he's gonna be a Marine. Name is Hendry, big guy. We take 'em tough, they don't have to be smart as long as they're tough, right?

Well, for sure. Of course, it's a different game today. What changed everything were the handheld SAMs. And so you can't, and of course they outlawed napalm, so you can't use that anymore. I really don't know how you do it today. I think the Israelis, when they went up into Lebanon, it was not a good experience. Those guys are tough and they can't use stuff up close now. All they got are these CBUs, and I don't know, I'd have to get out there and learn it all again by today's technology, that's for sure.

I may do that. I'll try. I'd like to do that. I'm actually going to, I don't know about this pandemic, but many times they've asked me to come and take the parade at 8th and I. I've never been able to do it, and I'm scheduled to do it this August 28th. So it's one of my few ventures back into the Marine Corps with the new Commandant. I'm looking forward to it.

You know, I don't remember all of the details. I think we were just doing our job that day. I never felt I did anything. My troops did everything. I think I just outlasted everybody. I believe I was one of the few 0302s in the Marine Corps that spent virtually every day as a platoon leader or a company commander. And what they tried to do in those days, once you spent about six months as a leader, the fatality rate was so high they tried to send you back and put you in the G3 or one thing or another. But as you just said, reading the unit histories, I never got out of the field. So what we did down there in Operation Allenbrook, I think it was, we actually overran a regimental headquarters, and I think that was a big part of it too. We captured all of this stuff, and so they made a much bigger deal out of it than I thought it was. I mean, to me it was just kind of another operation, and you just did what you had to do.

I think it was more the culture. I think we had, actually in Operation Swift, our commander was relieved because of that mistake he made, and his name was Bill, wonderful guy. But we then had two very good battalion commanders. And Colonel Rocky was our battalion commander, his father was a very famous general in World War II. And I can assure you that Colonel Rocky, who I see from time to time, I take him to football games, he's in a nursing home now, he wasn't a martinet, but he wanted the unit to operate in a Marine Corps fashion. I don't think there was any SOP or order, as I recall. It was just like that is part of the unit. And so I'm sure there was some of it on people's helmets and all, but it wasn't like the stuff you see in Platoon and all that, where it was just a goddamn organized mob. It was 3/5, Kilo 3/5. I mean, it was an organized unit, and if you tangled with it, you were going to get into a hell of a fight, that's for sure. So I think that's what it was. I never gave any orders, don't color your helmet or put something on there, but I just think everybody thought it was sort of stupid. I mean, it wasn't part of the mission and didn't get anything done. So now when I went back, you know, as an aviator my second time, the difference in discipline and sort of the culture at the wing as compared to the division, that was a different deal. It wasn't nearly the discipline and the camaraderie between the officers and the enlisted people as there was in the Fifth Marines.

No, no. I think, as I said in that article, everything I learned about leadership is straight out of the Marine Corps. You've been taught it, you see it all the time. That's why the Marine Corps has been successful. I borrowed everything I learned in the Marine Corps and put it into FedEx to this day. And FedEx, if you do something good, you're gonna get a BZ, BRAVO ZULU, you know, right out of the Navy and the Marine Corps. And so I attribute anything I happen to do in business to what my experience in the Marine Corps. In fact, I used to be, people all the time, they thought I went to Harvard Business School or something. I didn't. I didn't go to graduate school at all. So I would always say, yeah, I went to graduate school, but you got the wrong school. I was in the USMC. You know, they think I went to the University of Southern California. So anyway, but it got, you know, when we came back from Vietnam, it wasn't a popular thing to have been a Vietnam veteran. So now it's much more respected, I think, but it went for a long time there, if you were a Vietnam veteran, people weren't very nice to you in general. I experienced that myself several times.

Well, it was. And of course, there was a lot of literature about that at the time. I have several friends like Jim Webb, you know, who was a Secretary of the Navy. I talked to him last week about the new Marine Corps doctrine. We were discussing whether it makes sense. Of course, we don't know what the Commandant knows because he's got access to all of the classified stuff. But no, it was extremely hard on a lot of people, and it caused a lot of mental scars because you really couldn't talk about it to anybody because it was so unpopular. And then over time, I think the public realized being mad at the troops rather than mad at the policy was two different things. And the great success in the Desert Shield and Desert Storm and all of that kind of changed everything. No, a lot of people carried a lot of burdens. I mean, hell, I can't tell you how many times I've sent money to one of my guys or gotten them out of a jam. And I think some of it was because of that, you know, they drink too much or not be really squared away. And they were trying to do, but a lot of them we got jobs for here at FedEx. So took care of a lot of them here. Yeah, it was a very unpleasant thing to be over there and do your duty and then come back and get the reception what we got.

We were talking about it. And again, I do think the Commandant is right that they're focusing on the Pacific because the Chinese are just out of control. And I don't understand, as we were talking about before, the capability of today's supporting arms used with infantry. And as I said, it changed completely once you started having shoulder-fired SAMs. We had A-4s that would come down and ingest palm fronds, we were so low dropping those Snakeyes. So of course, that's no longer, they got a standoff, a standoff weapon now. So I'd really have to go out and see how they operate. But I take it from what the Commandant's essentially saying is you're not going to be able to use tanks because they're not survivable, and the logistics chain of moving the fuel for an M60 tank is incredible because it gets a half a mile per gallon. So I think he's to some degree kind of going back to a lot of the Marine Pacific doctrine in the early part of World War II, where it was infantry and close air because you couldn't move the artillery up close with you. But hopefully, when I go up for that parade, if you still have it, I'm going to have a chance to talk to the Commandant and get educated on what he's thinking and why. I think Jim and him are meeting, by the way.

Okay.

Much, lad. I mean, I didn't need to read any books to tell me what it was like, you know. Now, I read Jim's book, Fields of Fire. I sort of scanned Carl Marlantes, you know, he went to Yale, the guy wrote Matterhorn. And what was the third one you mentioned?

Rumors of War, yeah, I read that way back in the day. But I have to tell you, I didn't read prolifically about Vietnam because I knew enough about Vietnam. I read a lot and I like to read, but the two or three you mentioned there, I'm familiar with them. And I think Jim's book was very accurate. He was down there a little bit after me. He was also in Fifth Marines. I think he was in 2/5 down at An Hoa, down in the southwest part of the area we were. He's a good man. He's hard.

Yeah, me too. But our time's passed.

The first piece of advice would be to know your business, you know, to take seriously the training, tactical training and the leadership training that the Marine Corps gave to you. Secondarily, I would tell them to listen to your NCOs because they've got the experience that you don't have. And the third thing is to take care of your troops and don't put them in harm's way or take a chance on getting them killed or wounded if you don't have to. That's why you've got all of the equipment and the supporting arms. That was a big difference between me and some of the other career guys in the Marine Corps is some of them are a little more gung-ho than I was. In fact, I think one of the closest days I ever came to getting killed is we were in this hell of a fight and there was a young Marine that was sitting on the side of the path. I had my radio operators and so forth. I think at this point in time I was a company commander. He's sitting over there by the side of the path and fighting's going up there, we're moving up. And I asked him what was his problem, was he hurt? And he got up and he told me he wasn't going to go back up forward. He was with Lima Company, and he was completely distraught. He had lost it. He pointed his M16 right at me. And I realized pretty quick this guy had completely lost it. So the guy that ran Lima Company was one of these, you know, get online and assault. I mean, it was just complete insanity against automatic weapons. He had gotten a lot of his guys hurt and killed, and this guy wasn't going to go up there again. So I was in a position where I could have been a complete hard-ass and tried to do something. I don't know whether he would have pulled the trigger or not. But my gunnery sergeant, my radio operator was there. So I looked at him and I said, look, I don't want to get killed anymore than you want to get killed, and my guys here will tell you that I don't do stupid stuff. So I tell you what you do, you come along and be my runner. You stick with me, and I promise you I'm not going to get you out there in any kind of a stupid situation. So we de-escalated it, and he came along with me, and eventually I got him transferred over to my unit. He was so upset with the guy that was running Lima, who passed on these days, he was quite controversial. So that's what I'm talking about, that third thing, taking care of your guys. They understand pretty quickly if you care about them as people or you're just looking at them as some sort of an expendable asset. So that's the main thing. I mean, it's a tough profession you're in there, Chris. I mean, as a reservist, I told my grandsons this, that when they were talking about going to the Naval Academy, where I have great affection because all of my friends from the Marine Corps, like General Fulford who ended up as a four-star, they were all Naval Academy. And I told them, I said, you go up there now, I mean, it's a beautiful place and they got nifty uniforms and the fans and everything, but at the end of the day, the government is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to have you have a good time at college. What they're doing is getting you ready that when the balloon goes up, that you're going to have to bring death and destruction down on the enemies of the United States up to and including losing your life doing it. So it's important that people who have never been there, they don't get that. And I think that's the most important thing as a young Marine officer is you're given the most sacred trust in the world by giving to you 40 or 50 young Marines' lives, and you better damn well know your stuff and not waste any of them. Because your job, like in that famous movie Patton, where he says, you know, nobody ever won a war by going and getting killed for his country. The whole objective is to go kill the other guy. And so I think those are the three things I would tell somebody, particularly that's an 0302, a second lieutenant. Those three things: know your stuff, you know everything about it, study it intently, and listen to your damn NCOs because they've got years of experience and they know who the troops are that you can rely on, which ones are the birds and which ones are the guys that are likely to be too aggressive or what have you. But the third thing is you remember that that's a sacred trust you got when you put those bars on. They're giving you those men's lives, and don't waste them. So those were the three things I'd tell them.

I tell you what, one thing about it, I can see you're a fit, good-looking guy. I mean, the big difference between the Marine Corps today and the Marine Corps I was in, hell, we were three-quarters starved to death, and y'all all look like you could play in the National Football League. The troops are just so good-looking these days. And so I'm proud of you. And I rarely refuse a request if it's from a Marine, particularly if it's from an enlisted Marine. So that's why I was so easy to get on this Zoom. I'm glad to help you in any way I can. If you got other issues, just email me and I'll get back to you.

Well, tell him hello back. He's a good man.

Oh yeah, like I say, if you're a jarhead, you can get into me. That isn't a problem, particularly guys I served with. Well, Semper Fidelis, and good luck to your research and everything.

Great, thank you, Chris. Bye-bye. Pride.