Retired Army Colonel Gary Bridges spoke at the annual Catholic Social Services Palm Sunday Brunch, March 24, in Rapid City. He is a veteran whose family has served a combined total of 139 years of U.S. military service in the Navy, Marines and Army.

 Colonel Bridges’ stories of valor and sacrifice are preserved through his six published books, which he writes under the pen name Matt Jackson. The colonel’s third “Undaunted Valor” book, “Lam Son 719” is being optioned for a Hollywood movie.

“Like other school kids, I worked summer jobs,” he said. At his first summer job, he didn’t earn any cash. Bridges worked at a tiny airport refueling and washing airplanes in exchange for flying lessons. “At age 16, I had a private pilot’s license,” he said. Later, his other summer jobs included driving a cannery forklift, serving as a merchant sailor on an oil tanker, and working on a logging crew in Oregon.

After high school, the small Oregon college he enrolled in just wasn’t a good fit. If he quit college his options were to enlist, be drafted, or become a merchant sailor.

His Dad said, “You’ve got a private pilot’s license. Why don’t you go down and apply for that Warrant Officer flight school program and become a helicopter pilot? The next day I applied, took the exams and the physical, and was accepted.”

Enlisting via the Warrant Officer candidate program, his basic training was at Fort Polk, Louisiana, in February 1968. From there, he went on to flight school. The first month of flight school is called preflight, a combination of lectures and white glove inspections. He said, “The name of the game was attention to detail, and at the time we didn’t realize it, but attention to detail is paramount in flying helicopters.”

Starting in 1969, Bridges navigated the skies of Vietnam for 19 months piloting a Huey aircraft. His career spanned varied operations from Washington to Alaska as well as Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm.

In Vietnam, he was assigned to an assault helicopter company with 42 pilots. They flew combat missions both taking troops in and bringing them back, evacuating wounded, and mission resupply. “Ten months into it, I decided I was going to stay in that unit and not accept the transfer back to the United States. I put in for an extension request in to stay another six months,” he said.

At the end of his first year, he had 30 days leave in the United States, where he met his wife, Bobbie. They corresponded when he went back to Vietnam. Following his tour, they married 54 years ago.

“In the first 25 years of our marriage, she put up with 22 moves. She managed to see her husband and her two sons deployed to combat, and she’s still hanging with me,” he said.

He was asked to work at the Pentagon in Washington DC, but he decided to retire instead of taking a desk job. “I am a muddy boots soldier,” said Bridges.

The Bridges were avid sailors and spent almost every weekend on a Kentucky lake living on their sailboat. In 2015 they moved to Florida. Two years later, medical reasons led them to sell the boat. “Now what do I do? I’m not a golfer, I have a bad back from a parachute jump that went wrong. I don’t like watching daytime TV. So, what’s the next best thing to do? Hello, Jack Daniels. I start drinking too much, literally. Finally, one day I had to go to the VA for a problem and we’re talking to the counselor, and he asked about Vietnam. That night I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and assigned a psychologist and a psychiatrist both.

“Now I had never believed in PTSD. I thought PTSD was a crutch for weak-minded people — was I ever wrong,” he said.

Counselors asked him to write down in detail what happened in Vietnam. “I started writing. About 300 pages into this thing and I’m remembering details that are incredible. I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday and yet I can tell you on the 20th of June at 1400 hours in the afternoon exactly what happened in 1969. It was unbelievable, but I wrote all this down and as I’m writing it, why not make this a book? That was my first book, “Undaunted Valor,” said Bridges.

The counselors were looking through the pages and asked how many times he got shot down? “Nine times and I knew every time I was going to get shot down,” he responded. “They asked, ‘how did you know you were going to get shot down?’ I said because I got up in the morning and I had a feeling. Something told me things weren’t going to go well that day.”

His flight crew started asking him how he felt before missions. “They didn’t care about my health, they were worried about their safety. Every time that feeling happened, it happened because my guardian angel told me,” he said.

“I’ve got a special relationship with my guardian angel because I met my guardian angel when I was a little kid. My folks were stationed in Italy. Dad was a convert and he wanted to see every Catholic Church. We drove through the most insignificant towns, and he had to see the inside of the Catholic Church. One day we went to this little town called San Giovanni Rotondo “

It was a small town, but the church was magnificent, according to Bridges. After Mass, he, his dad, and 10 other people were escorted back into a little room. The priest walked in and said a general blessing. Then he walked over to the young Bridges, laid his hand on his head, said something in Italian, and then left. “That priest is known as Padre Pio. He was a stigmatic—he bled from the wounds of Christ,” said Bridges.

“He was an absolutely amazing man. I prayed with him every day, not so much for me, I don’t take that many chances anymore in my life — except I do drive on Florida roads, but I pray for a couple of reasons,” said Bridges — worries about domestic problems like drugs, immigration, and homelessness. He is also anxious about military threats from Russia, Iran, and China.

“All those problems could be overcome if we remember a few simple things. Jesus was asked what’s the most important commandment and He said, ‘love the Lord thy God,’ and the second is ‘love thy neighbor,’” said Bridges. 

“I think the first one is pretty easy for all of us in this room, not so sure about the second one. It seems that the further we get from our neighbor physically, financially, politically, and racially, it becomes a lot more difficult for us to love each other,” he concluded. 

Jim Kinyon, outgoing executive director of CSS, spoke next. He commented on Colonel Bridges’ extraordinary experiences and about his ability and maturity to be able to speak on the trauma he went through in his life. “The need for mental health services throughout our nation is just absolutely critical,” said Kinyon. Reminding people of pledge envelopes on the table, he said, “Helping others is what we are called to do as Catholic Christians.”