American Experience of Vietnam War, Collin Evenson

Collin Evenson
NK P3
5/24/10
Introduction

My subject was the Vietnam War, more specifically; the American experience of the Vietnam War. In each interview, I tried to get a feel for the unique experience of each person. Two of my interviewees (both men) served during the war so I obviously targeted the experience and feelings of an American soldier (or navy sailor, which both mine were) during the war. I also interviewed my grandma who is a completely different generation than the other two. In the solider interviews, I wanted to know what serving was like, the duties that serving for US entailed and their feelings about it. for my grandma, I wondered about the general experience of an American citizen. I wanted to know how it affected her and her feelings towards it. Each interview is unique and interesting but there is also overlap with the truths of that era.

Interviews
1. My Grandma (my dad’s mom) Betty Evenson

What do you remember about the general feeling that people had or you had when America first sent troops to Vietnam?
Well, either people were mad or just plain disappointed that it had to be. And I was probably part of each. Partly disgusted and sorry that we had to get so involved.
How did the views of the war differ among you and your friends?
I think everyone felt about the same way as I did, I don’t remember anyone being more vehement, of course if they had family members over in Vietnam, they were very worried. I don’t remember really knowing anybody that had anybody in the war. I’m sure I must’ve known somebody but right now I’m just not remembering.
How did the feelings differ among generations? Kids vs. Middle Age People
Well, anybody that was old enough who lived through World War 2, really hated war and really hated war and younger people could see more reason to fight. Like I say, its hard for me to remember.
Now, how did your feelings change from the start to the end of the war?
Well, the one feeling was it was going on so long and we were losing the boys over there. I guess we all wondered if it was worth it.

Did you ever doubt the presidents that were leading the fight or the other leaders that were the main people pushing for it?
I think the reaction all of us had was we hoped they knew what they were doing. That it wasn’t a shot in the dark or whatever you want to say. It seemed foolish in some ways and in some ways it seemed we had to stand up for what we believed in.
How did the whole thing go about with Don (her son, my uncle) being of draft age?
Well my first concern was that they gave him numbers; he had one that showed that he probably would not be called, so I could relax on that. But had I thought he would be drafted, I would be very concerned.
Now was there any conflict between you and Don over the feelings of the war?
When he was a teenager and a younger man, he pretty much doubted everything that was going on. He was more focused on being an artist. I think I heard him say a couple of times, that if he was called he would go to Canada. I know a lot of the guys said that, I don’t know how many went. I can’t remember anyone that was in active duty over in Vietnam. I’m sure at the time I did but now my memory isn’t so good.
Were your feelings different about Korea, Vietnam, and WW2?
Oh yeah, a lot more doubt about the Vietnam, whether we should be there. The first day of the Korean conflict, my dad died and I remember that more than anything.
Was it just that Vietnam seemed a lot less noble of a cause than WW2 and Korea?
Well probably, because WW2 was completely different.
Kind of just with the general opposition to the war, do you have any specifics as to how strong people felt or what happened in terms of protesting it?
I wasn’t sure the protesting was going to do any good. Particularly when they got really radical about it. I don think anyone in the country really wanted war. They hated it. ‘Cause even though you didn’t know anyone in this war, you probably knew someone in the previous war that lost members of their family. It was a bitter situation.
How did grandpa (my grandpa) feel about it?
He was unhappy that it had to be. He was strongly against it. I mean (her dad) he lost a brother in the First World War Actually, from illness, he died in a ship going over to France. And then my dad had to search for his grave. And that was just from hearsay, I never knew him at all. The man that died. So I would hear this from my dad who had to look for his body.
So even with grandpa being in the military he didn’t have a very different stance, he still felt opposed to it?
Yeah I would guess that was true. He was certainly anti-war if at all possible. I man like things like Pearl Harbor, I mean that changed everyone’s opinion.
Now do you remember much more about how people felt about the presidents? JFK, LBJ and Nixon?
And they were all part o the war at different times. Boy that covered a lot of years. That made the public madder because wounded and killed was just going up by thousands. People wondered when this was ever going to stop.

Do you remember much about the evasiveness and vagueness of the presidents in how they were going to solve it?
I think everyone wondered if he knew what he was doing. We didn’t feel real confident that what was going on had to be going on. We were thinking “was he doing the right thing”?
How much did it affect the life back home in terms of resources?
I don’t remember there was a shortage like there was in the Second World War. Your great grandmother in North Dakota would say, I’m guessing this was earlier she would send food over to relatives in Norway that were short of certain types of foods.

2. Thomas Robinson (Fellow Member of Church)

Were you in the military during the Vietnam War?
Yeah, most definitely. I was in high school I think when the US started really making it public. I got in high school in 1960 and graduated in 1964. In 64 they were really kicking up the arms personnel and equipment. Back in those days it was a draft. It wasn’t volunteer. So everyone was, if you were a young person, in high school mostly. If you were in college you could get away and get out. You didn’t have to go. But in high school you were probably getting some sort of designation to either – unless you had some sort of physical disability. Which sometimes they made you prove it. You didn’t have a disability; you could get 1Y pretty quick. So I had some friends that were getting 1Y designation probably starting around my junior year.
So what is 1Y?
It meant that you were ready to be drafted and entered into the service. They had different levels and I can’t remember all of them. You got a 1Y, it was a done deal. You were headed off unless you decided you weren’t going to go. My mom, my family was poor, I couldn’t, I wanted to go to college, I wanted to go to Circle University of Chicago but we didn’t have any money to do that. And I went to an all boy private high school, so there were some rich families that sent their boys there. I remember hearing that there were some that weren’t going to go. Some had the money to head up to Canada. We didn’t have any money to send me to Canada. I didn’t know anybody in Canada. I didn’t have any way to get there. So I ended up joining the navy, volunteering for the navy.
Was it that you were drafted and then kind of chose the navy or …?
I was close to being drafted. I think I had a 1A designation. I knew that pretty soon I was probably going get some designation and get drafted. I was a senior in high school. I didn’t really have any disabilities. You know so I just kind of figured I better jump, beat them t the punch.
So you figured, you’re joining the army either way, you might as well at least choose what you’ll do?
Yeah exactly. I didn’t want to go into the army; I didn’t want to do the marine thing because it just seemed they were doing their won thing. I had a friend up the street who got drafted in the marines. And I just thought, “eh I don’t want to go into the marines.” ‘Cause I had an uncle that was in the navy for 22 years. You know, that was one of the reasons.
So how close were you to the real action or fighting?
Well the first time, I went over twice. First time I was over on a destroyer. What? It was the Buck DD7 16 of San Diego. And we were supposed to do a West-Pac cruise. And what a West-Pac cruise is a West pacific; it was supposed to be in like 6 month intervals. And we were supposed to head to the 17th parallel about parallel with, just north of Denang. And provide gun support for land troops, the army and marines.
So the 17th parallel, would that be south of the 16th?
Yeah. In fact it would be just east off the coast of Vietnam. And so we were supposed to spend 6 months. And so I had gotten out of boot camp, gone home on leave and then came back and had orders to go to Vietnam. We were supposed to be there 6 months and ended up staying there almost 7 months to 8 months. I saw my first junk, “junk it”. You know a Vietnamese boat that was just transporting food and tuff and at the high seas. So we were boat hopping and searching and doing all that. Also we were firing 16 inch mortar shells over to Vietnam. About 5-10 miles. And 7 whole months. And so the second time we came back to state side, I had 30 days leave. I went home for 30 days. I had a friend in personnel and I kept telling him “man I got to get off this boat.” Cause that 6-7 months had given me a lot of time to meet a lot of guys and these guys had been on the boat 5 years, 6 years, 10 years, 12 years and I thought there is no way I want to stay on this rusty boat. I really wanted do a Mediterranean cruise. I didn’t really want to go wets, I wanted to go east. But because of that all action was going on, I didn’t have a choice. So I had this friend that was in personnel and I said hey- his name was Jim Bauers, I said hey Jim, look, if you get any sort of orders, let me know, there might be something like shore duty that I could maybe do if a fit. And I’ll just put in a transfer and he kept telling, alright nothing’s come through. Everything’s Vietnam, Vietnam- and I’m like I got to get off this boat. And so there was a rumor that we were gonna go back in 2, 3 months, 6 months at the most.
Now would this be going back to Vietnam?
Yeah, this would be doing another 6-7 months and these cruises were a long time. And I thought I don’t want to do that. So he got a hold of m, I went up there and checked on things and he said “I don’t have any things.” And a couple days later he sent word for me, so I run up to his office and he says hey, I got shore duty and I said where, Mediterranean? And I’m getting all excited and he goes no, its Denang, Vietnam and I went “oh my gosh Denang!” (Laughing) So I said man, well so what’s the duty and he says its shore duty, you aint going to be out in the boats and it just, its not the marines or the army. And I go yeah that’s right. Okay I’ll try it. So then I put in for a transfer and got it. So I went back home for two more weeks on leave and my mom was worried when she found out I was going back over there and this time on shore. And so they put us through about 6 weeks training with the marines at camp Pendleton in San Diego which was crazy. And then they flew us over. I forget what the flight was like. I don’t know, 12-14 hour flight, got to Saigon, and stayed in Saigon for about a week. And they put us on a military transport and I thought that thing was going to fall out of the sky and went to Denang. And I was stationed at Camp long in Denang, Vietnam, so I spent a year there…on shore.
So now, what exactly did you do at that (camp)-
Well at that time, these places didn’t get a whole lot of play fr the technical skill jobs and unless your family had money and you got through college and enter that way as an officer. Cause I did meet a couple of black officers. One was the head of communications and the other guy was head of personnel. So I was in Storekeeping. We kept control of all of the goods for military personnel, whether it was food or equipment, what have you. And but the first 6 months, heck we didn’t have the place we were going to work from. It’s called a cold storage area, mainly dealing with food, it wasn’t built yet. So they had military well no, they were civilian Koreans were, they had skills in refrigeration, so they were building this huge area to store all of the food and I wasn’t ready. So we ended up being security for this area for 6 months. We didn’t have any running hot water, we were taking cold showers. We were eating sea rations for food. It was crazy for the first 6 months.
Now were there any real security breaches or anything?
Yeah, a couple. I almost got shot. That’s one time I can say the Lord was really watching out for me. I mean at the time, I was raised Catholic but I didn’t have a personal relationship with Christ. But I feel like the Lord was watching out for me ‘cause one night we were- our bunkers were around d the perimeter of this cold storage area that we were going to subsequently work for. And on one side was a village Hamlet, real thick with tropical plants and you couldn’t see anything except for a few huts. And then on the other side of it was a huge cemetery. So one night we were sitting in the- we had these 12 hour shifts, we went on these shifts at 6 pm and got off at 6 am. And so I don’t know, it must’ve been, I don’t know 10, 11 o’clock at night. And I told the guys that- usually there were three of us to a bunker, so I told the other two guys “I’m gonna go check on the next bunker, make sure they’re not sleeping.” So they said “okay”. So I probably got from here (in my dining room) to the street (he points to the street outside) and all of a sudden shots started firing, automatic weapons and I could hear these bullets flying over my head. So I just kind of fell down in this hole like area. It was an impression into the sand, ‘cause everything was sandy. And we started firing back. We got some return fire. By that time out first Class Officer, who was like a sergeant, Red we called him because he had red hair. But he finally came with reinforcements and shot up flairs and didn’t find anybody but that was one time where it got real close. And then was one other time there was this guy in this Bunker, they called it Suicide Bunker because it was like 3 or 4 feet from the fence. I guess they got overran one night and he got stabbed a couple of times. He survived but they were trying to breach the camp, probably trying o see what they could steal. Those were the couple incidents that were real close to me. Besides guys I knew in the army and marines that were not stationed to a base but where it was rmy and marine personnel could come in and spend a few days and kind of clean up and take hot showers. That was when we finally got hot water. We could get hot food and we could finally give ‘em hot food. And kind of relieve them. But yeah pretty weird though. I saw a lot of kids though. At that time the Vietnamese, the Viet Cong were notorious for doing damage to young kids. I mean you would se e kids with one arm wacked off or both legs wacked off or no arms and no legs. Little tiny ones, no more than 2, 3 years old. That was really kind of heard to see, these young kids, heck they weren’t even 5 years old and they had limbs missing. It was really kind of bad. Besides the parents, you know the older people, -you know ‘cause what would happen is they would overrun a village and if the village elders didn’t want to be partners with them or help them in any way or gibe them what they wanted then they would kind of take it tout on the kids until they could get the adults to kind of comply with what they wanted.
So now in general how did you feel about the war?
I don’t know I if I had a real, I don’t think I really understood why we were really over there. It was kind of out of sight, out of mind kind of thing until I actually got there. I started interacting and meeting with the people and because initially getting there and being emerged in the culture over there, I realized they were some great folk. I mean, every culture has some people that you don’t want to associate with but the majority of the people were just like us. You know, trying to raise a family, trying to you know raise their kids, trying to do what was right in their sight. And yet we had Americans over there who were treating them just really kind of bad. As though they weren’t even human, they would be talking about them and just saying all kinds of crazy things about them. And so whenever I got the opportunity I would just confront people about it and a lot of times they would want to call them gooks, you know derogatory terms like that. I’d always try to make friends with- especially the ones I knew I would be having interaction. If they were just a passerby I would say hi or that kind of thing and you know a lot them felt suspicious, initially if you were friendly you could be seen as suspicious but as they got to know you they would get to see the legitimacy of you wanting to get to know them. And so initially I really didn’t have any thoughts about Vietnam. I knew that we were there, the French had been there. They had fought with the Vietnamese and left. And he we were, and so it wasn’t until later on in the latter part of ’66 before leaving that I realized that there were a lot of people back home unhappy about u being there. Because by that time there were marches against he war, Martin Luther King had spoke by then you know against it. For me, I at least started feeling “why are we really here?” You know what we were told and trained in is that we were trying to keep South Vietnam from being taken over by North Vietnam which were communist. And so I guess, you know you try to justify that with “well okay maybe the South Vietnamese aren’t strong enough to keep the North Vietnamese out of their country. Sort of, kind of, I left with that thinking that we were there for a reason and it was to keep the North Vietnamese yet when we were there we weren’t treating the people way we would be treating them. It was a conflict, like an inner conflict.
How did your parents specifically but overall people you knew feel about the war and the reasons for it? Well I know back in the 60s, the 50s and 60s there was this big thing about the US being guardian of anything that was communist. We just felt like we had to be the ones to mitigate against it. Any sort of country take over or government take over or military whatever, we felt like we needed to be the ones- its almost like today in that the US government officials we feel as if we have to set democracy in place for a lot of countries where countries don’t have democracy at all. So flip the script, if you’re thinking about the 50s and 60s it was this whole communist thing. So my family, for my mom and my grandmother, and my aunt and my uncle that was the going or current thought. That we were there to protect the people and we thought if we weren’t there then the communists would just come in and take over. And I think when Khmer Rouge happened and they killed those million or so people, there was a lot of that “see we should be there because if we were then that wouldn’t have happened.” That kind of thing. It was really kind of bad. But yeah I think they thought we were there for a just cause. Until the colleges, the people in the colleges, were jumping up in arms against the war I think that caused people to go “wait a minute. Are we really there to protect them or is it just there for our own advantage?” It started to cause this questioning.
So was there much talk about the presidents and how they were leading the war?
Well at the time, there was a lot of turmoil back then. I mean Martin Luther King had gotten killed and John Kennedy had gotten killed and his brother had gotten killed. It just seemed like we had this cloud, like the world was coming to an end. There were major things, people were getting killed. There was war going on, there had been that embargo on Cuba going on, it just seemed the world was in this big, huge turmoil and it looked like we weren’t going to be able to get it out. And when president Kennedy got shot and then Martin Luther king got shot and then Kennedy’s brother got killed , it just really kind of, folks just though “wow all of our hope that we thought could get us out of this mess are now gone and who was left to do it, nobody. At least I felt like we were in this lurch kind of where we had anyone at the helm that could maybe steer us out of the muck so to speak.
Was there any real correlation between the president of South Vietnam Diem, I think his last name was and JFK was assassinated soon after that, and what I’ve read is there was a slight thought that the US had something to do with it?
There was that talk going on. By that time, I was in, well when Martin Luther King died by that time I was in North Virginia, well a bunch of us that had been stationed in Denang were now stationed in the North of Virginia so we could continue our friendships and stuff. But to get back to what you said, there was rumor going around that the CIA had had something to do wit it. You know they wanted to put their own person in place. So that person could take orders better, I don’t know. I don’t know for sure if that was really the case, it’s like all the controversy over President Kennedy getting shot in Dallas.
Now what do you remember about the Tet Offensive? Were you in service at the time?
No, I had gotten out in ’68. I didn’t have any friends at that time that were connected to the service at that time. I was living in LA. It was pretty bad. And I remember thinking “man I’m glad I’m not there.” you know there were sniper shots from- well, we called it Monkey Mountain. We were in this old French camp that the US had taken over which was at the base of the se foothills and huge mountain range. We would always get these pock shots down on the camp from above and just remember it would probably be mess if Tet offensive had happened and we were there, it probably would have been much worse. I was just thankful that I wasn’t even over there.
Now so did the camp you were in get attacked?
I believe yeah, by that time the last helicopters flew out of their in ’71 form the embassy in Saigon. Well they had already started shrinking, well if this is Vietnam, this is north and this south (pointing to table for example) they had already- Saigon sits at the south end of it. They had already started shrinking their forces to allow Saigon to be the last stronghold and they kept running overrun and they kept coming form Ho Chi Minh Trail and as well as using Cambodia as a way to get int. and so it was just putting so much stress on US forces that they were pulling out forces out of all these different outposts and focused towards Saigon so Saigon was the final stronghold. Denang had gotten overran, I don’t know that for a fact but I’m pretty sure. ‘Cause it was way north, if Saigon was here (pointing to object for example), Denang was here. And North Vietnam was here. I think it was Camron bay and one large bay between us and the North Vietnam bay, so we were pretty far north.
So overall what did you take away from it, having served in it and being out of it for the end?
I think it wasn’t until later that I had sense of accomplishment or not so accomplishment, but not being ashamed of being there. Because the time of the country the military was there towards the tail end, there was this huge anger towards anyone associated with being there. It’s not like now where everyone is really open arms to Iraq and Iran, the veterans. When we came back, e had people spitting on us and throwing stuff at us. When I got out of the service, discharged in North of Virginia I took the train home and I just tough I would change clothes just so I wouldn’t you know, I didn’t know what to expect. I knew that Chicago was up in arms I mean they were just everywhere, guys were getting attacked and what have you. So I just though, just to keep my wits about me I thought I’d go incognito. I came home in Daishiki and beads and a big head of natural when I finally got to Chicago, and it wasn’t until way later, oh man probably until the 80s before it seemed like the country was saying oh man we never did honor those guys that sacrificed their lives and those that made it home from that time being over there, we never did do anything to celebrate them. It wasn’t about until the early 80s or late 70s that I felt like it was okay to let people know that I had been over there. I had gone over there twice, the second time I had volunteered; I mean show does that, volunteer to go to a war. But I knew I wasn’t gonna have to run around with a gun which I did the first 6 months. It wasn’t way later that I felt like I could tell people “yeah I’m a Vietnam vet”. And it’s okay I’m a Vietnam vet. Initially I’m a Vietnam vet but it’s not okay. You know what I mean, I felt like I didn’t want to, my family and close friends knew that but people who didn’t know me wouldn’t know and I would just say I was in the service and leave it at that.
Just to recap, so how old were you when started and stopped and what years did you serve?
I went in, I volunteered fall of 64 and graduated form high school that June and by that September I was in boot camp. I was in 3 years, 11 months and 22 days and got out in August of ’64. I went in when I had just turned 18 and just had gradated that June. Got out a few days after my 21st birthday.
So (you got out) ’67?
’68. March of, no, August of ’68. At that time, well even now when you are drafted, you term of service is 6 years. So it can be a combination of 4 years active, 2 years inactive or 3 years active, 3 years inactive and at the time when you were being drafted, it was four years active in the service and 2 years inactive. Ad in those 2 years inactive they wanted you to do some 2 weeks of some summer activity in the reserves and just refused to do it. I just said “Hey I did my time; they’ll have to come get me if I’m waltzing off playing navy for two weeks in the summer.” So didn’t even do my two years of active, I mean I was inactive but I didn’t go anywhere or do anything. I think they realized that probably guys had spent time and now were out, they probably weren’t gonna get them to spend too much time.
So what did you do in Virginia? That was your active time, right?
No that was my active time. It was the last of my active time. I spent 18, 19 months in north of Virginia,. So I was a petty officer in storekeepers so we were in charge of equipment that was being shipped out, either shipped in or out so for the entire base. It was a support base, so we had navy and planes and we kept stores for all of them; ammunition, food, clothing, all that stuff.


3. Rudy Renfro (Fellow Member of Church)

Were you in the military during the Vietnam War?
Ok, I was in the military what people call the Dark War, the war was supposed to have been over in 69, 72 but it really didn’t end until about ’78.what happened was the news media pulled off, we call it the victorious push basically, the tide turned, for a long time, they were actually winning and most people don’t know that either. My point is I was in ’74 to ’78. Now technically the war ended around they say 71, 69 but we fought up there and died.
Did you actually serve in Vietnam?
Let me tell you. I was in the navy. And I did what’s called West-Pac, which includes, Vietnam, Guam, Subic Bay (in the) Philippines, china, all the countries along what they called the eastern rim. I did 2 18 month tours and I was stationed in Subic Bay, Philippines and ‘Nam. All total at different times. 8 months, and so I did in country twice, standard patrols so for the 8 months and then my rate, like I said I was in the navy, I was on a cruiser, a guided missile cruiser and then on my rate I used to shoot missiles at the enemy. When I was your age I was doing this so now it’s not so glamorous but back then…
Did you get drafted or did you volunteer?
I actually enlisted, so I guess that would be volunteering, so yeah I enlisted. One of three boys in my family, I went in first and then my older brother went in and they wouldn’t take my younger brother. Back then because so many of us were dying they wouldn’t take, they could never take the last male of any family.
So was this before or after the draft?
The draft was still on.
But you hadn’t been drafted yet?
No. I actually, the story’s interesting, I was walking downtown with a few of my friends and back in those days they had enlistment offices all over because they were trying to recruit young men. So I went into one to see what was going on. And ended up, basically, enlisting. They gave us a physical test and said you’d be good at this, that and next thing I knew they gave me this card that said you meet at this spot, which was interesting because the instant that you agree, they have you come to this spot, literally, like at midnight at night and that would be the last time you were wherever you was from. They’d fly you or take you to wherever your boot camp was and get started. I did 6 months in San Diego boot camp and 6 months in what’s called Beat training, which is basic electricity and electronics training and then I did about a year, a little more in what was called combat training with war heads at Great Lakes, Waukegan Illinois. And then in my first duty station was out of Hawaii. There I met my boat, and then we just, for four years we just sail around on the Eastern Rim, because basically the Pacific fleet was the patrol areas for that and it depended on the task, like in ‘Nam it was really bad so we would go in and do relief; meaning this the cats that got shot up and all that stuff, we would go in and get ‘em. And so we would fight our way back out with them because the point is no man left behind no matter what. So that’s kind of what I did.
What did your parents think about you joining kind of spontaneously like that?
Those were different times, I never knew my dad. My mom she was a great lady you know, she had a lot of kids and it was tough n her. In those days, like I said it was different times, you hear a lot about the anti-war protests but they don’t tell you a lot about the other side. There was a sense of pride with the men that were enlisted who were actually serving you know. Because you don’t ever get the either side or know that North Vietnam and South Vietnam were at war and the North Vietnam had the backing of Russia and literally committing genocide on the South Vietnamese. So we went in , and we all know our main concern was Russia, we didn’t want Russia to get this foothold. So we were concerned about Russia, Russia was using North Vietnamese as their foot soldiers and they would provide them with weapons and all that. So you wanted to protect your country and protect the people that we love here and take care of the people there which we thought was a good thing. As a young man your age I didn’t think this deep or conceptual as I do now and so from that point, that’s where we were at; young man, excited to something for his country protecting his country, getting the bad guy, so yeah.
So overall you were for the war?
I was for being able to be safe because at the time Russia, the Soviet Union were on a rampage, literally they had control of over half of the globe and their threat was o enforce communism on everybody. And so I was for doing something to protect something against that. Most people don’t realize that the war wasn’t even about the poor Vietnamese people who were being used, it was a big war between the two giants. So that’s what I was excited about. You know like, hey I’m stopping that.
So how did you feel about the presidents who were leading the war?
So remember now, I came in the years of Kennedy, who was one of the best presidents that ever lived. I mean we have Obama now but Kennedy was yeah…so of course when he got assassinated, we were devastated. Having said that Kennedy was great, Lyndon B. you know alright, nothing spectacular. But then we had some crooks.
Yeah Nixon?
The only president I know that got busted for a felony and before he left the office he wrote himself a little part of California, he made it, whatever the president owns when they leave office they get to take it with them, so he wrote a land plot of California for himself. So him not so much. We had Apscam, Watergate, it was some interesting times. Holly North, you know and he thought he was doing good, taking drugs from the drug dealer and selling it to trade it to other folks so they could undocumented weapons. And then giving them to the mercenaries like the South Vietnamese
So his name was Holly North?
Yeah that’s what the whole thing was about. Unless you were there it would be easy to drop some research, technically him and the CIA and MIT, of course the big guys kind of faded into the woodwork and they threw all the small guys to the wolves. That’s how they got Holly North, ‘cause he was just a colonel and really just a foot solider and literally George Bush’s dad, George Bush was the head of the CIA at the time and so Holly North and his whole crew was working for these guys and Ronald Reagan remember the famous phrase “I don’t remember. I don’t recall.” They had him answer all these questions and he signed all these documents that actually authorized for you to go get this dope and then sell it and then when they put him on the stand he was like “I don’t recall. I don’t remember.” And he got away with it. im like, how do you do that? We have this document from Holly North with your signature on it saying to get 46 kilos of heroin and then trade them to the Afghans for some Russian weapons; what do you say to that, “I don’t recall.” So there were some interesting times. So what can I tell you about the presidents? I can tell you that Kennedy was my guy. But yeah these cats had agendas, you know. Lyndon B. he was kid of in transition and so he wasn’t so bad but he really wasn’t strong either. But the rest them guys had agendas; they were trying to do something.
Now I’m sure the outlook depended on the war, so there were tons of that didn’t support the war and so they didn’t support the president, right?
Exactly, that was always a unique kind of dynamic because it was tough, you had a war going on so you have this dynamic of leads and people with other positions, and then take the anti-war protesters and remember now we also had racial unrest at that very same time and so this is my personal opinion and then I’ll go back to fact but as a result came the hippie group, the hippie movement. And they said, it’s just too hectic and stressful and we just need to love one another. I was never a hippie but I could kind hear what they were saying because there was a lots of crazy stuff going on. We had just come out of the country, just come out of the 50s where America was golden and ruled and then you went into the 60s and Russia’s trying to take over the world and racial unrest and so the people like Anti-war protesters were definitely not with any of the presidents that were supporting the war.
So now was JFK just as strict and kind of opposed to communism like the others were?
Well like so, what do you mean by strict.
Very opposed to it.
Okay, he actually wasn’t super opposed to it but he was opposed to not working harder and trying to do things so that we don’t drop A-bombs on each other. It wasn’t just an opposition to the war, he was trying to look down the road, his same mindset was on the internals of the country, because on the racial issue where he stood strong with martin Luther King and so his position was the same when it came to the war but like I’m not so much for the war but I’m not for people that are trying to destroy the globe. And so he was kind of called in that conundrum. He was trying to walk that tight rope and that’s what got hi killed.
Now do remember the president Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam and how he got killed right before JFK did?
Kind of interesting huh. Yeah and there’s a whole bunch of rumors going around about that. I wont ray the rumor but if you whittle way a lot of the surface rumors, they’re not that far off. I was there and so I got a chance to…
You mean you were in Vietnam?
Yeah, I was there in Vietnam during that time and if you in country, and on the ground and got your master sergeant, and chief petty officer and there’s almost a direct line up the pipe and so orders, it comes down the pipe and its reflected in the kind of orders we get. So I’m not talking about oh I heard these two talking but the fascination with Kennedy but the kind of orders you get where its like OK, what’s going on? Like saying ok, were gonna pull out now, ok I’m all for pulling out but that’s gonna leave that quadrant all unprotected and there’s a straight pipeline into…you know that kind of stuff. And when he got assassinated, it was a sign of huge weaknesses of what we had already fought for years to establish and all of a sudden in the final push when they literally burnt the American embassy, the entire eastern perimeter that was mighty got deployed. Okay here are your papers and you’re going out of the country. Well okay that’s cool but aren’t bad guys over there (the other way). So when you’re in this, you don’t get t hear them doing the plotting but you’re out their and been doing this long enough, you can be like that’s a stupid move, why would somebody do that? And of course you hear about assassination, burning down of the embassy, of course there’s no protection. There was like 1 platoon, there were 46 platoons, mixtures of jarheads, grunts, seals and squids you know redeployed everybody to guard the embassy. Of course they didn’t stand a chance, it was a wipe out. So when I say yeah I think it was something going on, obviously with the both of them. Because when you’re there, you can say okay you aint been making these stupid mistakes and al of a sudden its like yeah. Then they killed him, my guy too. So I wasn’t going for that. So I thin it was a plot, it wasn’t an accident. I don’t have any proof or anything.
I guess just compared to other people who served, how did you feelings compare? What were their feelings about the war? What was that like?
You had such a tremendous mix of folks that hated it and folks that love it, then you had folks who hated it and good at it and then you had folks who loved it and began to hate it. it was just this tremendous, ‘cause you get there and you see stuff and your psychi has to change. You know there’s just no telling, I used to think its just your nuts and bolts, what put you together. So there were guys like my brother, who was a green beret and he would go for days in another country and his assignment was to kill and he would come back and I watched him go crazy. I haven’t seen him, he just kind went away but when I last saw him he was not all there. it was very scary, even to me. So that’s one kind of perspective and then you have the other side of people who got drafted but didn’t go to Canada and were definitely against the war. I don’t want to kill anything; I’m not going to shoot anything (they would say). And then they would go to a camp and you’d see the remains of where the North Vietnamese had taken children and held them up from a bout 3 feet away from a fire. That way it allows for them to cook really slowly and you see that and suddenly you want to kill every North Vietnamese you can get. Actually anti-war protesters turn into straight military people and I’ve seen these people come in hard and they just, just the human affect is immeasurable. Probably most unimaginable because we sued stuff like napalm, we used to call it sticky fire, and then the North Vietnamese they would make and literally they would make like small bomb but what happens is when you step on it, its not under your feet, its about 5 yards away from you and it rises up, charge goes off and it rises to about head length and then there’s an explosion with all kinds of shrapnel and bits of metal, its not only designed to kill but maim. So these are kinds of things you see, and you go in one way and come out the other way. I don’t know anybody that wasn’t smoking dope, or smoking heroin or opium, you know drinking. The officers out of Officers Candidate School, they got it bad. Thaw as a bad deal, they would go to officer candidate school to be an officer but they had never been in battle, walked the dirt as we called it.
Wait so what school?
Officer’s candidate school you could go in.

Like Westpoint?
Yeah. They had a ton of ‘em. They had it bad. We would literally, leave them hanging out in the wind because they be trying to tell you something but its like dude you can go that route if you want to go but you gonna walk right into this trap. You are sending you man down here and he aint gonna be able to get back. You get into a firefight and they’re trying to tell you stuff out the books? That’s not, what are you talking about? So the dynamic was very interesting. It was hard on people period.
Any last statements?
So what would are you approaching this from or what angle because then I can comment on something?
I’m going at it like I know that the war was very opposed in some cases, but also through these interviews I’ve noticed that like the people who served in it had a little perspective on it, so I’m just trying to see how Americans felt in general and specifically the war experience most because it is first hand?
When you talk Americans, people who served and people who didn’t, and everybody in between. So how did people feel about it? My take on it is there was a lot of fear. Most of what they did was out of fear. That’s how the actual wars effort sustained itself, not because of the anger or technical might, we were afraid, we were afraid because everything was unsure, we were afraid of communism, we were really reacting out of fear, now there were, in my opinion every little facet, every little section; anti-war protesters, hippies, the militants, black militants, the black panthers and every group were that group because that was their way of dealing with the fear and unsureness of the times. Now it’s sure, but then countries were blowing each other up, all of a sudden we had these big bad guys, and of course I hadn’t been to Russia and I didn’t know they were people just lie me. I only knew what I heard about them and what I heard they had done and so they were monsters. So it was fear time. So people dealt with it in different ways, some fought, some disconnected you know. My little take on it is it was a very scary time of unsureness and ignorance, I don’t mean that negatively, just meaning not knowing.
I remember Thomas saying after he got out of the service, he couldn’t tell people because he would be looked at as a bad person, did you experience that too? Could you tell people?
Yeah, that was so scary and so confusing for me. I thought I did a pretty cool thing, I mean hey I pout my life on the line so everyone can be safe and I did my part. And I was the bad guy, the thing that got me was I would tell some people of some of the stuff I saw and its like they wouldn’t hear me, they weren’t real to people. They were focusing on yeah well you killer, you just killed people you monster and I never shot a kid. They get mad because they see a kid getting shot but I know this I’ve watched kids walk into camp with strings of grenades tied around them. I’m sure that they were brainwashed into doing it. they would run right into our camps, which were like mini bases, they were just a place where we would stop and put up stuff and they would literally run in and pull the pin, they would have one pin that would pull them all off. And so we would we see that and we would yell stop and they would keep coming, and we would have to shoot them. Of course the news just shows us shooting the kid not how 14 soldiers have been killed in the last week. It doesn’t make the kids bad but all the point is when I got back they thought I had shot kids. Especially from an African American standpoint because we were already struggling with not having a place in the country and so that was pretty tough. We got to the point where we would only talk to each other. I will say you serve with a cat; your ethnic origin does not matter because you get this bond with them. Most people don’t know about it except for people like you who write about it or learn about it. So yeah I totally experienced it.


Reflections
1. My interviews were not awkward at all. Most of the time they had lots of stuff to say. Also, none of them got emotional. I think it had been a long enough time that people were over it and had really embraced what had happened. For me to interview them, overall it was really interesting. Two of the three people I interviewed had served in the military and they had surprisingly similar stories but it didn’t make it any less interesting. The stories really intrigued me in the military and what that would be like. The people were very relaxed about having served in the military and seeing horrible things. They weren’t choked up about them now, they weren’t they really disturbed or anything. They were completely fine and remembered a lot of little details.
2. What surprised me in these interviews are a couple of things. As I said before; the ease at which they were able to talk about something that it so traumatic for so many people. I hear about Vietnam vets and how messed and crazy they are because of the intense experiences over there but my interviews weren’t like that at all. Also, I was surprised at the answers I got about the perspectives of the war. It seemed that that the anti-war sentiment was less common than I thought. I noticed that both of the guys had served during the war and they both saw a fair amount of reason for being there. They did no have anti-war sentiment like the college kids back home had had.
3. The experience matches what I read by the horrors of the War. They both explained how the Viet Cong were just cruel and committed horrible atrocities. I had read about how they were horrible but there weren’t details like my interviewees gave. A common thing talked about was the attack and killing of children. The differences were the feelings towards the war. In my readings it definitely talked about how no one wanted this war except the president and a select few but that wasn’t true. There were more legitimate reasons for being there and fighting there than they have written about.
4. I would definitely want to talk Vietnamese people. I would do an interview from a communist and a South Vietnamese to get both perspectives. These interviews could even the playing field at which I had already had three Americans interviewed, two of them having served for the Armed forces. To get multiple sides of the story, this would allow a better rounded understanding of what happened and I would form a more educated opinion about the war. Children would also be good to interview in Vietnam because of all of the horrible stories I heard, they would be interesting and be a firsthand experience to the stories.
5. I would want to more people for less time. I got really in-depth which was good but I got sick of writing the stuff from the dame person. So, to hear way more perspectives would be really helpful. Interviewing someone who had participated in all the protests and anti-war commotion would be a compliment to my project. It would bring in an extreme side of the war I don’t have yet. I would have liked to definitely have some more questions; a larger arsenal of questions would’ve helped and made for more interesting interviews. I kind of asked similar questions and so if I had known more about the background of each of my interviewees then I could’ve thought of more in-depth questions specific to that person which would harbor much more diverse and profound results.
6. These interviews obviously give firsthand experience to the general experience of the American public. This shows how there is two sides to everything and gives better details than a textbook or website can. It showed that some of the generalizations of the War in the common information sources are true and others weren’t so much. This sheds light on my topic because of the real experience is provides, the interviewees have things to say that actually happened because of other stuff that undoubtedly happened. It not only deepens the overall Vietnam experience through details, it solidifies most of the info but also shows that some stuff was not true for everyone.