Taylor Johnson Interview # 1

Interview # 1
My Uncle Ben Castellano

Me: So what was it you actually did? What was your job?

Him:
Well I ducked a lot

I worked in the medevac what you call huey helicopters

I picked up dead people.

I worked in a DUSTOFF medevac which is an acronym.

Do you know what that is??

Me: YESSS UNCLE I DO (laughing)

Him:
Well it stands for Dedicated Unhesitating Service To Our Fighting Forces
There is a difference between us and other medevacs in that we pick up anybody, civilians allies like Koreans or even our Enemies.
Another difference was medevacs get to carry machine guns
Dustoffs signed the Geneva convention and were not allowed to carry weapons
The Vietnamese never signed so they shot at us all the time.
Its funny how one does and one doesn’t but we are in the same war.
But anyway you could tell the difference by on our helicopters we had red crosses meaning we couldn’t shoot.

Ohhhh! Our mascots were monkeys and dogs that hung around our camps.
(laughing)

I wasn’t an office person I liked being on call all the time and always in action.
Me: So what did you think about the war?

Him:
No comment. (laughs)
Well I wasn’t drafted
Whatever was asked of me I would accept
I was not political I was not RA RA USA!
I was 18 years old and I thought it was the thing to do
Although I wasn’t patriotic or anything I was proud to go I was proud I went.

Me: I heard that it wasn’t very good for some when they returned home. How was it when you got home?

Him:
I was spat at
Called baby killers
And all that good stuff
We had bombing craters and these bombs would cause collateral damage meaning it would kill everyone around it it couldn’t pick and choose who to kill.
See during WWII the public thought you were a hero when you returned from war
Well it was the opposite for us.


Me : You said you were proud, why are you proud now?

People except it now
They made Hollywood movies
Im famous

Me: Okaaaay uncle if you say so

Me: What types of things did you see?

Him:
I need therapy now lets put it that way.

One time we got this call a girl was injured.. never told us the injury
We went in
She was an 11 year old girl
What these men did was they folded a barb wire they folded into a v shape and put it in her vagina putting the front end in first so that when they pulled it out it would rip it even more. We found out that this happened after the raped her.


Another time
When I first went in country
In country is what we all called it its like we left the world and was going into country but anyway.
There was this local guy who was at the PX store which was the post exchange where they sold my shaving cream sausage spam cigarettes it was like our walmart
He invited me back to his bunker we were talking story smoking, he had an ash tray it looked like a spoon meat coconut with all the meat dried up inside and the hair around the outside so I was dumping my ashes into it when I asked him why he didn’t eat the meat and where he got this coconut from that’s when he told me it was a ladies skull with her red hair still on it.

See when people go to war they lose there sense of detachment they desensitize themselves.

At these camps we had a dump where we dumped all our rations and the poor Vietnamese would come in and take the left over food and the Vietcong thought it would be a wonderful idea to booby trap the dump so when they came to get food they would get blown up.
Then there was a time I picked up 4 soldiers what happened to them was there are cannons that don’t explode so Vietnamese take the shells and set up booby traps so when Americans run through the jungle the would shoot.
So we dusted off these 4 soldiers so we could take them to the hospital
When we have multiple people on the helicopters we have to decide which is more serious. My friend and I both from Hawaii decided to work on the stretchers but there are only 3 that can stack what is the worst thing is when the guys are bleeding a lot and the top one over flows with blood then it drips down to the second stretcher then when that one over flows it goes to the bottom one. So we chose the 3 that looked most injured and aided to them 1st when I looked at the 4th one I saw he wasn’t conscious and he was cold and when I felt for his pulse there was none. He died on that flight. I felt like it was my fault and I could have done something. I didn’t know until way later that I couldn’t have done anything a piece of medal went into his rib. I wish I could have known earlier for 3 days I walked around like a zombie I shut out everything I was confrontational and I blocked out those all around me.


I didn’t remember that story because I blocked it out for so long until I went back to Hawaii for my daughters graduation and I went to my friend Rogers house who was there with me we talked about all the funny times until he brought that moment back to me.

Me: you said funny times. What were the funny times?

We had what we call donut dolleys which were American women, nurses who worked at the medevac hospitals.

The officers got to date.
So you know how soldiers are supposed to be prestigious and big shots. Well there was this one who used to play football for Florida and we all hated him his name was Bruce
He used to take dolleys into his room to “watch tv” so one time me and roger decided to give him one bad experience so we took gas grenades which are all different kinds of colors blue green purple yellow etc. so we grabbed some and while his air conditioning was on snuck into his room and popped them near his air conditioner

My friend and I became very famous that day every time we went to the PX they would buy us our spam.
(laughs)

So yea it was fun I go to therapy now, is there anything else?

Me: No im speechless
(laughs)