Michael and Darragh Beggs
In the tumultuous 1960s, Michael and Darragh Beggs got married just ten days after they met. At StoryCorps, the Beggs discuss their 50-year marriage and Michael's harrowing Marine deployment in Vietnam, when a college buddy at Texas A&M broke the rules to save his life.
- [Michael] I guess one of the best times was a R and R in Hawaii, the five days break that I got from the war and we got to spend together in Hawaii. I wasn't even sure that you had gotten my message and you were gonna be there when I got off the plane. But, it sure was nice when I did get off the plane there, that I saw that beautiful face, with the big brown eyes and that auburn hair, and there you were. It was a wonderful time.
- [Darragh] It was.
- [Michael] The bad part about that was, the day after I got back to Vietnam was when I got wounded for the second time, and it was a pretty bad one.
- [Darragh] I know when I put you on the plane to go to Vietnam, I had a feeling that you were gonna be wounded, but you were gonna be alright, and I knew you were coming home to me.
- [Michael] I'm glad you knew, because I had stepped on what we called a booby-trap, back then. They call them IEDs now. And all I knew was that I was lying there on this hill, and I'm bleeding, and I can't move anything except my hands, and I can't see. My first thought was, please god, let me see my wife and my little boys again, I don't want to die here in this red dirt.
- [Darragh] You were saved.
- [Michael] I was. As it turned out, the medevac helicopter whose call sign was peach bush one seven, they had a piece of equipment called the jungle penetrator, that was kind of unreliable, and because of its unreliability, its use had been temporarily curtailed. And, in order for me to be taken out of there, the only way to do it was the jungle penetrator. So, the pilot of the helicopter had to disobey orders in order to deploy the jungle penetrator. And he did, they tied me to the jungle penetrator, pulled me up, and I felt the hands on me taking me off the jungle penetrator and I'd lost consciousness. That pilot of the aircraft, call sign peach bush one seven, saved my life. It took me forty years to find out that that [sic] pilot was a good friend, and a Texas A&M classmate named Charlie Rodenberg. An Aggie friend and classmate saved my life, so that I could indeed come home and see my wife and my little boys again, and make three more children.
- [Darragh] Yep, we sure did.
- [Michael] It's like the Garth Brooks song, the dance: "could have missed the pain, but I'd of had to miss the dance," and I wouldn't have missed the dance for anything in the world. I love you.
- [Darragh] I love you.