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Podcast: Veterans Chronicles
Episode: Lt. Jesse 'Bud' Alley, U.S. Army, Vietnam, Battle of Ia Drang
Description: Jesse "Bud" Alley was born in Florida but grew up in Greenville, South Carolina. He joined Army ROTC while enrolled at Furman University. Not long after commissioning, he was assigned as a radio officer. After one more reassignment, his job was to make sure radios were in working order for the colonels in the new Air Cavalry Division.Because of the radio work and other training, Alley had never gone through an infantry training course or even flown in a helicopter when he was deployed to Vietnam in 1965. Within months he would be in the midst of some...