Daily Smile

And now Bob presents, the most laid back fetch ever in the history of fetch....

Smile 8 17 26

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Smile: Monday, August 17, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Daily Smile: Monday, August 17, 2026

 And now Bob presents, the most laid back fetch ever in the history of fetch....

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Wyoming Life

ELK MOUNTAIN — Margaret Karstoft’s grandfather came to America from Sweden in 1870. He spent three years earning the money needed to bring his family to Elk Mountain, where he worked as a tie hack.

Karstoft is among longtime Elk Mountain residents whose memories are now preserved in a new 30-minute legacy film commissioned by the Elk Mountain Museum. 

Created as an America250 project, the film distills hours of interviews into an oral history of the Carbon County town — from its tie hacks and sheep camps to its blizzards, dances, and stubborn will to survive. 

The museum has also retained the raw interviews as part of its archive, and given copies of the tapes to their families. 

Karstoft’s grandfather had a backbreaking, seasonal job. The men lived in tents, working through the winter on Elk Mountain, a place where the brutality of wind and cold are legendary among locals.

The men hewed their ties by hand, one timber at a time, then hauled them to the river, where they were floated downstream in the spring, after it had warmed up enough to melt the ice. 

“My grandmother wanted to come to this country because she heard that the streets were paved with gold,” Karstoft said in a soft voice. “She wanted to come here because it was hard times in Sweden at that time, too.”

In the film, old-timers tell of wind sometimes so harsh men had to crawl rather than walk, and blizzards where they had to trust their horse to get them home. But they also remember neighbors who banded together to help each other not only survive but thrive.

Tie hack camps in Carbon County shut down as large corporate ventures in 1912, but many people in Elk Mountain were still cutting railroad ties by hand into the 1950s. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Bob Johnson was one of them."}]

“It was before chainsaws or anything like that,” Johnson said. “We used a handsaw and an ax. I had a measuring stick and it was 102 inches long. That’s how long a railroad tie was back then. They had to be 102 inches. I cut a lot of those.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Bill Jones remembers peeling the bark off railroad ties."}]

“It froze on there in the wintertime,” he said with a chuckle. “That was a ‘good’ job.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Before Elk Mountain Was The Crossing"}]

Elk Mountain today has 144 people, according to the most recent census. It has always been a tiny town, however, even from inception. When it was incorporated in 1909, it recorded 98 residents in the 1910 census. 

Its peak population was recorded in 1980 at 338, on the coattails of a regional energy development boom in Carbon County that started in the late 1970s and continued into the early 1980s. 

Before it was incorporated, people had a different name for the area. It was just called “The Crossing.” It had been a convenient stop along the Overland Trail in the 1860s, with the nearby river offering reliable, year-round water. 

Fort Halleck was built just west of The Crossing in 1862 to protect emigrants, mail carriers and telegraph lines In the developing area.

Nearby Carbon, which incorporated in 1868, was much larger with a peak population of 1,140 in 1890. But its coal mines closed in 1902 — the same year a mercantile store opened at The Crossing, followed by the Mountain View Hotel in 1905. Both the hotel and the store remain standing. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Life In A Wind Tunnel"}]

Elk Mountain has always been a place where weather sets the rules — especially true in winter. 

“Up on that mountain, the wind can blow,” Shorty Richardson said. “Me and Pete Johnson, we went up on one ridge and we had to cross the top of that. I ain’t saying I was tough, but Pete Johnson, he was a horse, and we was on our hands and knees crossing that ridge, because we couldn’t stand up, the wind was blowing so hard.”

Powd Boles remembers his dad chaining a large sled to a telephone pole so it couldn’t blow away at night. 

“That’s how hard the wind blows down through there all the time,” he said.

One day Pete’s brother, Bill Johnson, noticed a fellow walking what locals refer to as the UL flats, looking for something. 

“He asked the guy, he says, ‘What’s the trouble?’ He says, ‘Well, I’m looking for the wheel for my anemometer. It blew off last night and I’m looking for it,’" Richardson said. "And Bill says, ‘Well, how hard was the wind blowing?’ He says, ‘Well, it registered 200 and then it died.’ So he said, ‘I don’t know how much harder it blew, but it did register 200.”

Richardson believes the wind blows so fast because it’s coming in down between mountains, forming a wind funnel. 

It’s not unlike pinching a garden hose, causing the water to flow out with more force, but in this case the “water” is the wind.

[{"type":"text","text":"Getting To The Dance On Time"}]

Neither wind nor cold stopped people from getting to town for dances, though, Powd Boles added. He remembers the time a fiddle player was snowed in upriver and couldn’t get to town for a dance.

“So Henry Cheesbrough, he had a Jeep, and he says, by God, he’d run up and get the fiddle player,” he said. “So he ground up there and got the fiddle player, and they were having a dance here in the Odd Fellows Hall. 

"Old Cheesbrough, he just drove through the front doors, drove right up to the bandstand, and dumped the fiddle player off.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Then he drove right back out the same doors he’d come in. "}]

“The next day he had to, by God, go to town and find new doors for the Odd Fellows Hall,” Boles said with a laugh.

Another time, Boles remembers that a couple who wanted to get to a dance couldn’t get anything to start but an old tractor.

“So they drove it all the way down from the UL down here to the dance,” he said. “That was in the middle of wintertime, and of course that tractor didn’t have no cab on it or nothing.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Winter Fun, Winter Peril"}]

Winter was a time for fun. There was ice-skating on the frozen pond and there was skiing behind neighborhood vehicles. It was safe enough then because there were no major highways. 

“You’d go up over where the roads are going into people’s ranches or meadows,” Bill Jones recalled. “You had to bounce over them a little bit when you ski. And then we’d have a whole line of sleds hooked together and somebody pulling us with their pickup around the streets. If you were the last one, sometimes you’d get snapped around.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Winter wasn’t all fun and games, though. "}]

“We used to follow the telephone line across this one spot we called UL Flat,” Bob Johnson said. “The horse knew the way, and I knew the way kind of, if you could see.”

In a blizzard, though, Johnson learned to listen for telephone wires overhead. 

“You could follow them to get home,” he said. “It used to take me 45 minutes to come down this direction and nearly two hours going back against the wind and the crosswind.”

Cheryl Bowen remembers her dad making her stand with her back toward the wind to avoid her face becoming frostbitten.

[{"type":"text","text":"She, like many children in that day, rode horseback to school."}]

“You couldn’t wear jeans to school, so I had to pack my dress,” she said. “And then I put my dress on to attend school.”

[{"type":"text","text":"When Sheep Ruled The Range"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Elk Mountain was sheep country when he was growing up, Boles said. "}]

“Everybody had sheep back in the old days,” he said. “Predators got too thick and they couldn’t find any help to herd them, so that was the end of sheep. But Carbon County was like the largest sheep-producing county in the United States at one time.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Johnson remembers living in a sheep wagon with his brother. "}]

“My mother would live down on the ranch a mile and a half away,” he said. “We’d have lanterns, and we’d have a stake in the ground. We’d light a lantern to keep the coyotes away.”

His mother would climb up on the cellar to see if the light was burning at their sheep camp. 

“If we had a light in our sheep wagon, it meant we were done flagging sheep and we were cooking supper,” Johnson said. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Boles’ family was among the first to bring Angus cattle to the area. "}]

“Everybody else had Hereford cattle,” he said. “And everybody thought they were stupid for raising black cattle. But when they’d ship in the fall, their calves always weighed over 400 pounds and everybody else’s weighed like 310 or something. So they were a step ahead of everybody else.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Making Do On The Ranch"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Families worked hard and knew how to stretch a dollar, Karstoft said. "}]

“We’d get flour in feed sacks,” she said. “My mom always tried to get a couple of them that would match, so she’d have enough material to make us clothes. That’s all we had were clothes made out of flour sacks. She did everything. She milked cows, fed chickens ...”

And she also cut the heads off those chickens herself whenever it was time to make dinner.

During times of war, women were also out in the field helping hay, Richardson added.

“There were no guys, they were all at war,” he said. “And you had to feed your livestock. It was a chore putting it up back then. Not like now. We’ll probably put up more hay in 15 minutes now than they used to put up in a day back then.”

[{"type":"text","text":"There also used to be many more little ranches, Boles added. "}]

“It’s 50, 60 head of cows,” he said. “Now all them little places are gone. The big outfits have bought them out, so all of them little places are history … when I was a kid, I suppose they delivered mail to probably 40 people out there. Now my wife runs the mail and she delivers mail to seven people.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Why They Stayed"}]

Many of the people who live in Elk Mountain today can trace their ancestry to the original homesteaders, and say they’ve never thought about leaving.

“I had chances to go elsewhere, and I always came back,” Jones said. 

“It’d be hard to leave, I guess, now,” Boles said. “I wouldn’t know how to act anyplace else.“

What Karstoft has always liked about Elk Mountain is the “small town” living. 

“Everybody knew each other, everybody helped each other,” she said. “Of course there was disagreements, too. There always are. But it was a beautiful place to settle.”

Richardson knows he could retire somewhere else — Florida, California, Arizona.

“I’m going to stay here,” he said. “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here, but anyway, I’ll be here till it’s done.”

Through the years, what Richardson has seen is there’s always just enough to keep the town going. 

“There will always be an Elk Mountain,” he said. “I’m sure of that.”

Thanks to the legacy film project, there will always be stories of the people who made it so, from the tie hacks and ranch families to the children on horseback and the neighbors who helped each other not only survive, but thrive.

Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com

Elk Mountain history Powd Boles 8 16 26

<title>Elk Mountain Old-Timers Keep Remote Town’s Wild History Alive One Story At A Time | Cowboy State Daily</title>

To preserve the town's legacy, old-timers in remote Elk Mountain, Wyoming, are sharing their tales for a film project. The blizzards were so bad, they say, you had to trust your horse to get home.

Elk Mountain Old-Timers Keep Remote Town’s Wild History Alive One Story At A Time

Kerry Drake

John Adolfi, a creationist in Syracuse, New York, searched for many years for Noah’s Ark and a race of giants who supposedly walked the Earth. But until he died last November, the elusive Pedro Mountain Mummy found in Wyoming in 1932 still clearly haunted him.

In 2005, Adolfi posted a $10,000 reward for the tiny mummified remains of the 

” as he came to be known in the region. Pedro hasn’t been seen in public since 1950, but in the past 76 years the mummy has been the source of extraordinary speculation about its origin.

Adolfi’s goal was to have the mummy tested through DNA samples, magnetic resonance imaging, and improved X-ray technology to establish exactly what it was so he could disprove the theory of evolution.

Countless newspaper and magazine articles have been written about Pedro, who is also the subject of a host of videos on YouTube and was featured on an episode of “Unsolved Mysteries” in 1994. 

Some of the videos make sensational claims, including that he was a member of a tribe of 

But was the human-like Pedro an example of the Nimerigar, a mythical tribe of savage pygmies with sharp teeth that Native Americans thought were hiding in the mountains? 

Nimerigar is literally translated as “people eaters,” and it’s said they shot their Indian prey with tiny bows and poisoned arrows. 

In 1941, the Milwaukee Journal asked in a headline, “Did a Race of Pygmies Once Live in America?” According to this account, the preserved mummy was a 65-year-old man.

Most disturbing was the article’s claim that X-rays showed “food in the stomach appears to have been raw meat. The teeth in the front of the mouth are pointed and of the flesh-eating variety.”

Or was the mummy an example of a benign race of humanoid pranksters? 

One aspect of the legend is that people who go near the San Pedro Mountains in southern Wyoming should carry something shiny to offer the Little People as a gift, so they knew no harm would come to them.

Perhaps all the fascination is due to the fact that while so little is known about the mummy, including its whereabouts, there is no doubt that it existed, that it looked freakish, and there are still copies of X-rays — but not the X-rays themselves — that have led to scientific speculation that Pedro was either a full-grown adult or an infant with an abnormality called anencephalus, in which only the brain stem develops. 

Complicating matters was the appearance of a large wound on top of its head.

There is just enough photographic and other evidence left for people to claim Pedro was anything they want it to be.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Wanted To Disprove Evolution"}]

Two decades ago, Adolphi told then-Casper Star-Tribune reporter Brendan Burke — who became so curious about the mummy that he added Pedro to his unofficial beat — that he realized proof of a previously unknown prehistoric relative of man would not disprove evolution.

But Adolphi maintained that a new humanoid species would poke holes in the paradigm evolutionists have created regarding human origins.

Six months later he was interviewed again by Burke, who reported that while Adolfi said he received many leads, none had panned out.

A Wyoming woman told him the mummy was in the possession of an Indian tribe not based in Wyoming. But Adolfi investigated and determined that tip was a dead end.

So was another person who reported seeing Pedro at a garage sale in New Jersey. And an 86-year-old Wyoming man who had what appeared to be a hominoid mummy that could fit in the palm of one’s hand.

But the man was not willing to have the artifact X-rayed, Adolfi said, because he didn’t want to know if it was an authentic Nimerigar corpse or a vegetable carving. And the man wanted to continue believing that his mummy was “the real deal.”

Adolfi said he was willing to pay less money for evidence of other pygmy mummies, but he apparently never got his hands on one.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"A Middle Eastern Cousin?"}]

 on his YouTube channel Lost World Museum, though, is fascinating. 

Adolfi interviews a man with a Middle Eastern accent and wearing clear plastic gloves who wants to show him his own find. The man speaks in a foreign language to someone off camera, and relays the answers in English.

The man unwraps what looks much like Pedro from Wyoming, but in a slightly different pose and with a lot more hair. He says the artifact was discovered about a half-meter underground by accident.

“Unfortunately, we can’t share too much with (viewers) about location or what’s going to happen with this little fella,” Adolfi says. “But I wanted you to see this for yourself, examine it, and ask yourself, ‘Is this a full-grown human? Or is it just a mummified fetus?’"

“The doctor here says it is fully human,” the man volunteers. “It’s estimated to be 1,500 years old.”

“They do have plans for it,” Adolfi says when the man is gone. “I know there are some questions about the legalities of it. I know if this was in the United States, such as the Pedro Mountain Mummy, there’s Native American rights there, and obviously there's archaeological rights there, there are human rights there.

“But over in the Middle East, Far East, there are laws and whatnot that you have to follow. But they’re big boys, and they’re going to do whatever they’re going to do, I guess.”

Adolfi speculates that the mummy “is going to be put in someone’s private collection, and it’s never going to be seen again.”

Wherever Pedro is, or whether he still even exists, George Gill, a University of Wyoming anthropology professor, has seen the medical research and he said it’s definitely an anencephalic infant. 

He said in 2013 that further testing on a female pygmy mummy later brought to Gill and sent to Children’s Hospital in Denver to obtain X-rays, a DNA sample and a radiocarbon date yielded the same result.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Pedro’s Strange Journey"}]

The Pedro Mountain Mummy was discovered in 1932 by two gold prospectors, Cecil Main and Frank Carr, who detonated some explosives near the Pathfinder Reservoir and opened up a cave, according to an article in the Oct. 21, 1932, Casper Tribune-Herald.

Inside on a ledge by itself was Pedro, sitting with his feet tucked under him and his arms crossed. 

In 2013, the website Atlas Obscura described Pedro: “His skin was brown and dried by the arid Wyoming climate, his mouth was drawn into a placid scowl — a lean Buddha with a misshapen head.”

It was estimated that if the mummy had been standing, it would be about 17 inches tall. It weighed less than a pound.

The prospectors brought their find to Casper, where some were sure it was a hoax and others didn’t know what they were looking at. The pair sold it for the not-too-princely sum of $25.

The mummy apparently exchanged hands several times and was seen at various sideshow exhibits in the region. 

It wound up at the Jones Drug Store in Meeteetse for several years before a curious Casper car salesman named Ivan Goodman paid several thousands of dollars for it and brought it back to his showroom, where it acted as a mascot for the dealership.

It was also a place guaranteed to attract business, and Goodman was a showman of sorts. The most well-known photo of the Pedro Mountain Mummy depicts Goodman holding it in a glass case.

Main once signed an affidavit in 1941 that said the mummy was brought to the Chicago Field Museum, but there was no record of it ever being seen there. 

It’s known that Goodman did have the artifact analyzed on one of at least two trips he made with it to New York City, where it was X-rayed and examined by scientists.

“After an exhaustive study by the scientists it was agreed that it was the only specimen known of a human race of that type which perhaps dated back a million years,” Goodman told the Tribune-Herald on March 5, 1950.

The car dealer didn’t leave New York City with Pedro. It’s not clear whether he was swindled by a con man, as one story purported, or he sold it to a man named Leonard Wadler, who according to a 1979 Casper Star-Tribune article took it to Florida.

Only two things are certain: Goodman died in 1950, and Adolfi’s research showed Wadler died in the Sunshine State in the 1980s. The creationist told reporters he always expected Pedro to show up somewhere in Florida.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"True Believer In Montana"}]

Interest in the mummy has remained high in the Rocky Mountains. 

One of the foremost true believers in the region in the existence of the Little People was Shirley Smith, who owned the Little Cowboy Bar and Museum in Fromberg, Montana, for decades before it burned down in 2013.

Smith had many exhibits in her museum related to Little People of the Pryor Mountains, but apparently none survived the flames.

Her longtime partner, John Hanson of Bridger, said school children would visit the museum, and Smith had a popcorn machine. 

“She would make sure that every kid got a bag of popcorn so they could give it to the little people,” Hanson told Cowboy State Daily with a laugh.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Hanson said it was all a myth. "}]

“I think every civilization … the people of Hawaii have their little people, the Irish have their little people. I think it’s a worldwide phenomenon in that sense," he said. "Everyone seems to have some kind of little people.”

Smith grew up near Byron, in the boondocks, Hanson said.

“She spent all her life calling to (the Little People] and going up and down the mountains,” he said. “She would get some of the Crows to come over, and some of the older ones were true believers. Shirley and them would be thick as thieves talking about them. She was a true believer too.”

Diana Shaffer of Thermopolis was one of Smith’s daughters. 

“She told me that when she was young, someone brought a mummy of one to school,” Shaffer told Cowboy State Daily. 

That was an experience Adolfi couldn’t claim. Nobody ever claimed his $10,000 reward, either, though many people tried to get in on his treasure hunt but never passed his truthfulness test. 

Then again, he never met Smith, who died in Thermopolis in 2022. If her finds hadn’t been destroyed in the fire that claimed virtually everything in her museum, one can bet they would have found plenty to talk about.

Pedro Mountains and mummy 8 16 26

<title>Nobody Will Ever Claim $10K Reward For Wyoming's Missing Pedro Mountain Mummy | Cowboy State Daily</title>

In 2005 New York creationist John Adolfi offered a $10,000 reward if someone brought him the "Pedro Mountain Mummy" found in Wyoming in 1932 but never seen in public after 1950. With Adolfi's death in November, no one will ever claim the reward.

Nobody Will Ever Claim $10K Reward For Wyoming's Missing Pedro Mountain Mummy

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Around Wyoming

He rescued two wounded men under heavy enemy fire, took a bullet to his leg, and the next day was blown into the air as a rocket-propelled grenade hit a half-track vehicle he was standing beside, sending shrapnel into his legs and back.

Capt. Barry Gasdek kept leading his men in September 1968 while countering a heavy North Vietnamese Army attack. During other action in Vietnam, he was shot out of the air twice while riding in helicopters.

Gasdek's philosophy then and now as a retired lieutenant colonel who closed his career at the University of Wyoming teaching ROTC students is that officers “lead from the front.”

“If you’re closer to the front, then you’re in whatever’s going on,” Gasdek said. “I never asked my men to do anything that I would not personally do, including being a tunnel rat or point, whatever.”

He left Vietnam after two consecutive tours with the Distinguished Service Cross, Legion of Merit, Soldiers Medal as well as a Silver Star, Bronze Star with a “V” for valor and four oak leaf clusters, and the Purple Heart with an oak leaf cluster for wounds received on the battlefield.

Growing up, Gasdek said he never considered the military as a career. He was born the day before Memorial Day on May 29, 1942, as the nation tried to respond on two fronts in the early days of World War II.

Born and raised in Loyalhanna, Pennsylvania, southeast of Pittsburgh, in a Czechoslovakian neighborhood, Gasdek’s grandparents had left the old country and moved to the U.S. to find a better life. His grandfather was a coal miner and his father also worked in the coal mines and steel mills around Pittsburgh.

An Eagle Scout and multi-sport athlete in high school, Gasdek was a three-sport college athlete at Indiana State College in Indiana, Pennsylvania. He played guard on the football team, wrestled in the heavyweight class and ran the two-mile on the track team.

Entering college, he chose to join the Army ROTC rather than do two years of required physical education because his sports commitments already meant he would have a lot of gym time. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"He found he enjoyed the military order. "}]

During his junior year, he committed to advanced ROTC training and graduated in 1964 with a degree in art education and due to his superior academic performance received a commission as a second lieutenant in the regular U.S. Army instead of a reserve commission.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Germany To Vietnam"}]

Gasdek said initial assignments took him to Fort Benning, Georgia, and then three years in Germany during the Cold War with the 4th Armored Division, where he had roles as a platoon leader, company executive officer and then company commander with the 1st Battalion, 54th Infantry Mechanized in the 3rd Brigade of the 4th Armored Division.

In 1967, he received orders to join the 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One, in Vietnam. Gasdek said he convinced the army to send him to Ranger school before he went into combat. The Army gave him a slot in the school, but a month through the training he injured his knee and spent three months recuperating.

After the knee was good to go, he was reassigned to Hawaii and a new battalion being formed for Vietnam, the “Jungle Warriors.” They were deployed to Vietnam in February and March of 1968.

A short time after entering the country and being sent to 11th Light Infantry Brigade headquarters, Gasdek was promoted to a company commander role.

During his first six months in Vietnam, Gasdek was involved in directing search and destroy missions in the northern part of South Vietnam. He said they mostly were dealing with Viet Cong fighters. However, in September 1968, his unit, Company D, 4th Battalion, 21st Infantry, 11th Brigade Americal Division, was sent farther north, where North Vietnamese Army troops were active.

On Sept. 22, his unit was conducting a combat assault into the new area and one of the 40-soldier platoons became engaged with North Vietnamese forces.

Gasdek recalls sending in another platoon to reinforce them and both were pinned down.

With two radio operators, Gasdek moved to where the action was occurring. He called for help from an armored cavalry unit but the M-113 track with a .50-caliber machine gun and two M-60 machine guns could not make it through a narrow pass.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"AK-47 Fire"}]

As Gasdek spoke via radio with a platoon leader, his two radio operators were on either side of him. A North Vietnamese soldier sprayed AK-47 fire on their position. Both radio men were hit in the head, Gasdek was untouched. One of the operators was dead and the other wounded.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Gasdek applied first-aid to the fallen."}]

“The one that was wounded, he calls me once in a while,” Gasdek said. “He was a police captain, I think in the New York Police Department. He said after Vietnam he healed and all that and went from one war to another in New York.”

Gasdek’s Distinguished Service Cross citation states he was wounded in the leg during the firefight. After learning two other men in one of his company’s platoons were wounded and laying in front of a defensive position, Gasdek crawled out and pulled them back into the defensive perimeter.

Other soldiers had hesitated due to the withering enemy fire.

The next morning, despite the leg wound, he led an attack through hedgerows and little villages and carried the radio himself due to the loss of his radio operators. As he crossed a rice paddy into a village, the enemy opened up with AK-47s, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

Armored tracked vehicles accompanying Gasdek’s troops were hit and he was blown off his feet, taking shrapnel in his legs and back. He led the counterattack and “ended up just going bunker to bunker” killing the enemy. 

Gasdek said headquarters informed him they wanted prisoners to interrogate, so he had a tank drive on top of an enemy bunker until it collapsed. They then dug North Vietnamese troops out and sent them to headquarters for questioning.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Casualties"}]

“I ended up with six soldiers killed and 15 wounded,” he said. “I was wounded myself a couple of times.”

The North Vietnamese suffered 67 killed as well as the loss of rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, AK-47s, and other weapons.

During the battle, Gasdek continued to communicate via the radio and help get air support for his troops as well as engage the enemy. The chaos of war from helicopter gunships, rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and other small-arms fire somehow brought him to a place where “in your mind it goes quiet.”

“I thought that if this is the day I die, at least I’m where I should be up front with my men,” he said.

His actions that day resulted in his being awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by Gen. Creighton Abrams, for whom the Abrams Tank is named. Gasdek said he had no clue who Abrams was until after the presentation. 

Abrams later become the Army Chief of Staff.

Gasdek remained in Vietnam for two tours and served for six months flying Visual Reconnaissance Missions as a base defense commander with a pilot on a light observation helicopter. He had at his disposal a mini-gun with 2,000rounds of ammunition and a case of grenades at his feet.

His responsibility was to protect a brigade-size firebase at night.

“We got attacked a couple of times. One night we killed 19 at the wire, and another time 21,” he said.

On other missions, Gasdek was shot down twice while flying as a passenger in Huey helicopters. In one instance they were flying over a village and took 21 bullets and fortunately were able to radio for support.

“It was about 5 or 10 minutes before we had gunships come out,” he said. The pilot found an old French airstrip to make a skid landing and a large Chinook helicopter was sent to lift what was left of the helicopter and take it back to base.

After Vietnam, Gasdek returned to the states through Hawaii, where he spent a week scuba diving, and then San Francisco and back to Pennsylvania. He said he never experienced personally the anti-war sentiment that many Vietnam veterans received. 

Retired Vietnam Veteran Lt. Col. Barry Gasdek had a leadership philosophy that kept him in front of his men. He has the scars and medals, including a Distinguished Service Cross, to prove he lived out that ideal during two tours of combat at the height of the war.

Daily Smile: Monday, August 17, 2026

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