Interview: Captain Timothy Dickenson
The time has finally come. It was the day that I was going
to do my first interview with a Vietnam vet. I knew him from
Civil Air Patrol as Captain Dickenson. He was the Group II
commander and I was an inactive cadet. We met for the interview
at a Group encampment that he was in command of. I just wanted
to get in there, spend about an hour or two there on the
interview and then get out of there and on with my busy weekend.
There was no such luck.
I went up to the place at about three o'clock. It was at
that time that I found out that Captain Dickenson wouldn't be
there until about six o'clock. This news was rather
disappointing to me because I had other things to do. Besides
that, I wasn't on favorable terms with some of the 'gun-ho'
people of my squadron and me being out of uniform didn't help. I
didn't wear my uniform because I wanted to do the interview on a
more personal bases without having to worry about military
customs and courtesies. So there I was waiting for Captain
Dickenson while getting a very cold shoulder from half of the
people that passed me. Then when he finally showed up, I ended
up waiting another two hours while he did some things concerning
the encampment, after all he was in charge of it.
Finally it was time for the cadets attending the encampment
to have movie time. The movie that they choose to watch was some
Vietnam movie that Captain Dickenson's wife wouldn't let him see
(do to nightmares). So we went into an office to do the
interview. There were two or three other people in the office
that decided to listen in. Captain Dickenson then asked me "Why
are you interviewing me?" I told him that I was doing the
interview because it was an English assignment and I was also
very interested it the subject of Vietnam. He then asked me
"What are your views of the war?" I told him that I thought that
we had no rights being over there but I learned about Vietnam
from a 'hippie' type teacher and I wanted to hear about the war
from another view point. We then started the interview.
I was surprised about how great the interview was going.
Captain Dickenson was giving clear and informative answers. I
learned so much from him. He gave me a much more clearer picture
of what he, and other vets, have been through. It then came time
for me to flip my tape that I was recording him on. I pulled out
the tape and saw that the tape recorder had eaten it. This was
very depressing to me because I was really enjoying the
interview. So I put in another tape and then finished the
interview. When I listen to the interview later, I found out
that not too much was destroyed, thank God.
The Interview
Q: Did you enlist or did you get drafted?
A: I enlisted, and then re-upped for a year.
Q: You 're-upped' for a year?
A: So I wouldn't have to go to Vietnam; quote unquote what they
told me. I was young and naive at the time. I didn't know any
better. I figured they wouldn't lie to me.
Q: What year and what branch of the military did you sign up
for?
A: I joined the army in November 1967.
Q: That was when the war just about got started then?
A: Just about. It was running for a while. Actually America's
involvement in Vietnam started in about 1958 or 59 when the
French drew out. The American's went in as cagey and started
training as a multinational peace keeping force. 'Started
training,' yea right, some peace keeping force. That was their
idea. As the war escalated, became more involved, the first
influx in military troops to actually hit there wasn't until
1964. The major buildup started in 65, late 65.
Q: While your on that, what did you think of the Gulf of Tonkin
incident?
A: Which one?
Q: The one in 65 that got the whole thing started.
A: I think it was drawn up by our political side to draw more
troops into the war.
Q: What did you think of it at the time, before they found out
that it was fake?
A: At the time? I was in collage and I didn't care too much, I
figured that, no I wasn't in collage, I was still in high school
and I was rather divorced from the subject. I figured that it
wasn't going to bother me. The war is going to be over with by
the time I graduate in 66, so there wouldn't be any problem. I
would be out. You know, the war would be over by that time.
'Hopes spring internally in youth.' So I figured, you know, I
wouldn't have any problem at all. So it didn't even really
bother me. I didn't even start to study the political analogy of
Vietnam until almost after I left Vietnam.
Q: Which was? Which year was that?
A: I left Vietnam in 1968.
Q: And you started what year?
A: I joined the army in November 66. Did I say 67?
Q: Yes you did.
A: It was November of 1966 that I joined the army; I went to
Vietnam November of 1967; I left Nam in November of 1968; And I
was ETS, estimated termination of duty or service, out of the
army in 1969.
Q: So you were there two year then?
A: I was there for one year. I was there for twelve months and
three days. But who was counting?
Q: You were. [laughs]
A: You know it. I had a short timers calender too. Its a girl
in a bathing suit and we kept coloring out little dots. There
were 365 little squares on this girl in a bathing suite.
Everyday you'd color out one. The last three were in extremely
strategic areas of location. [laughs]
Q: Is there a certain time that you had to be there then?
A: Yes, each tour of duty was, what they called a tour of duty,
was for one year. Unlike the other wars that we've gone through
that the solder went and were there for the duration, Vietnam had
a tour of duty because it was not a declared war. It was a peace
keeping force. The VFW was very upset with it. They wanted to
make it a war so that the troops that were there would stay there
and there wouldn't be so many replacements. In a war you could
take certain liberties that you can't in peace keeping efforts.
Q: Which would benefit the soldier?
A: Yes, for the simple reason, for number one, we couldn't fire
until fired upon. We couldn't shoot at the enemy until they shot
at us. They could stand as close as four feet from us and if
they didn't shoot at us, we couldn't shoot at them.
Q: And was that for the whole war?
A: The whole war. It was SOP, at least it was for the 101st. I
mean when you can't shoot at the enemy until they shoot, that
tells you right there that your going to loose personal. People
are going to die.
Q: What was your job?
A: I went in as a combat photographer. I was to take pictures
of advancing infantry and various other positions. Mainly
advancing infantry and infantry usually advances against the
enemy. So that give you a somewhat idea where that puts the
combat photographer. So yes, we got rather sticky wicket.
Actually for the first month that I was in Vietnam they didn't
know what to do with me. So I became a helicopter door gunner
for a while. And then they figured, OK we will send you out with
the photography division. And I went out with them and I watched
a Lieutenant Colonel get seven men killed because of a stupid
stunt that he did. By doing that I busted his jaw with a rifle
butt and they sent me out to the LuRRPs.
Q: Which is?
A: Long range reconnaissance patrols, LRRP. They chopper us out
about a hundred kigs, hundred kilometers, drop us off, and tell
us when we got back, report anything that you have seen. What
they didn't tell us is 'If you got back.' But that was what I
did in the later months of Vietnam.
Q: Where were you stationed? Was it down is South Vietnam?
A: I was stationed near the DMZ in Vietnam. Between South and
North there was a demarcation zone and that is what they call a
DMZ. I was stationed in Hue, South Vietnam. That was my rural
area, was Hue. Actually Hue is the closest city to where it was.
What it was is a rather extremely large city right next to Hue
called Phobi, but the only reason that it was a large city was
because it contained almost, I'd say 24, 25 thousand Americans.
Big business was in there quite strong too, because right next to
Hue was Filco Ford, which is an electronics and exploring lead
division. Ford Motor Company was there. Also there was Sun Oil
Company.
Q: An this is pretty near the boarder?
A: Yes, right near the boarder. Vietnam has rich oil reserves.
It has quite a few oil reserves. And from what I understand
there was some silicon deposits, and as you know by working with
computers and stuff, silicon is highly desirable. What basically
was happening was that the GI's were defending the country for
the American businessmen to rake it. The American businessmen
were taking everything they could out of Vietnam at the cost of
American lives. So again it was the big cooperate dragon coming
after us again.
Q: So what would you say that the war was about then?
A: I would say that it was two phase. First of all the mock up
phase, they wanted everyone to believe that it was political.
That we were trying to gain freedom for the Vietnamese. When you
talked to the Vietnamese they didn't care weather they were ruled
by the communist or Americans or French or whoever. They didn't
care who it was. They just wanted to be left alone. The
Vietnamese have been fighting for almost three hundred years.
First it was like the Chinese and then Thailand and then French
prior to World War II and then the Japanese and then the French
again after World War II and then the Americans. So they have
been fighting continuously. So they were just looking for peace.
'Just leave us alone.' That is basically all they wanted.
Q: Did they tell you what you were fighting for when you went in
there?
A: Are you kidding? Army never tells you what your fighting
for. They just tell you 'There is a position, go take it.'
Q: So you never knew what the war was about until after?
A: We found that the, by being in the military, the closer you
got to the source, the less you knew what was going on. In other
words, when you were a civilian you heard all of the news and all
of the input about Vietnam, what was going on. When you got into
the army, you had a day room that had a television in it and
stuff like that, but conveniently, during the news hour was chaw
time and cleaning the day room. So the television could not be
turned on. And lights were out at 10:30. So you had to be out
of the day room, where you went in for television, they had a
pool table, and various other games in there. You had to be out
of there by 10:00.
Q: So you think that they tried to keep you from the news?
A: You were being purposely being drawn and drawn further into
the military organization by your ties to civilian life being cut
off slowly. It's a form of brainwashing that the military does
and they do it quite effectively.
Q: Do you think that it was good? Did it affect the soldiers
like in saying 'Why am I doing this?'
A: No, it didn't affect the soldiers why they were doing it at
first. This was before I went to Vietnam. They were like gun-ho
lets go kill Charlie, lets make the world safe for peace,
halalugia brother, kill a Commie for Christ. This was the
attitude before Vietnam. After Vietnam it changed drastically.
Most of the American soldiers that I know that were there and
I've talked to, had the same feeling that I suppose that the
British did during our American Revolution. Why are we here? We
don't really need to be here. We're here because we're
colonizing. We're colonizing for big business. We don't need to
be here. The situation was that we decided that, at least
myself, my personal view was that it should not have been done.
I don't believe that Vietnam was a justifiable action, I don't
believe that we should have sent so many troops there and what
really hurts me the most was the fact that we wasted so many
lives from our country. At one time, barring New York and San
Francisco, Vietnam was the largest city, South Vietnam was the
largest city in the United Stated with all male population.
There were a few females there you know as far as nurses, which
did a very gallant part, but you have to realize that the
majority was male. For every female that was in the area you
figure that there between a patulin and a division size force of
male. The ratio was like 300 to 1. It was really like
everything was against you from the start. When you got there
the country was hot. You could just set in a chair and sweet. I
mean, you're talking 120 degrees in the shade with 98% humidity.
And this in the summer.
Q: Is that why you see all the soldiers dressed up in
practically nothing?
A: You got it, or you see them with towels tucked around their
necks and stuff like that. A lot of times you'll see a GI with
OD towel around his neck tucked into his jungle fatigue. And
what that towel is soaking wet with water. He puts it on him to
keep cool, the water drips into the uniform and stuff. And
through natural evaporation cools you down.
Q: They didn't really care about uniform at all, did they?
A: No, any comparison between military doctrine over there and
what really happened is purely coincidental. Myself personally,
I wore a pair of jungle boots and cotton socks and my jungle
fatigue pants were cut off just below the cargo pockets, which
are the pockets that are on the thigh, and my jungle fatigue
shirt had no sleeves in it, except it had a little ways past the
patch, that's the only thing I had, and I very seldom had it
buttoned. When I got off the aircraft in Vietnam I weighed a
hundred and eighty-five pounds. I was five foot nine and a half
at the time and I had a thirty two inch waist. Twelve months
latter, when I left Vietnam, can't tell you how much I weighed,
my height hadn't changed, but I had a twenty-two inch waist and
my shoulders were forty-four. So if you can draw a conclusion of
what I looked like. I had sunken cheeks. The fact of it was, I
spent three months in the Aushau Valley eating rice and coconut
milk and drinking bamboo water, for three months, because we
couldn't get resupplied because the mansions came in. And
monsoon, you know, is a rain storm. It's capable of dropping
eight inches of water in about two hours which it did. That's
why you'll see a lot Oriental houses in that area that are built
on stilts, because eight inches of water is a lot of water in two
hours and the rivers and stuff can't handle that influx and it
takes awhile for it to go down. So the houses are built up and
they have boats. You see this house completely on dry land and
maybe a quarter mile from the river, but there's a boat tied to
the side of the house. That's there for one purpose and one
purpose only, that's for the monsoon when they come so they can
get transportation in and out. ŒQ: So what did you think of the countryside?
A: The countryside is beautiful. I've never seen a more green
and growing and fertile country in all my life. You could plant
anything and it would grow. In fact, I've had my dad send me
some garden seed from home, over there and I'd plant them. And
you figure, compare to the plants that we plant, you've got a
twelve month growing season, because on the coldest day we're
there, that I can remember, it was 60 degrees, coldest day. Here
in Michigan that's still growing weather. You figure that I
would be sitting there in 60 degrees. I'd have three sweaters
on, four fatigue shirts, three pairs of fatigue pants, and a
field jacket and my hat with the ear flaps down in 60 degrees.
Now if you subtract sixty from a hundred and twenty, it's a big
difference. It is cold, when you're used to 120. See their
summer coincides with our winter. Right now it's summer over
there, probably the hottest time of the year. Now come June,
July, they start heading into the monsoons. It really gets bad
about August. September it starts lightening up. October it
starts going into their summer again by start getting hot. So I
went over to Vietnam, in November here, you know you're looking
at maybe 40's, 60's, 40's at night 60's or low 70's during the
day. When I got to Vietnam, during the day it was 120 degrees in
the shade, at night it would drop down to almost 80, at night it
would cool off to 80 degrees. But to a guy who was only used to
70's, it was blistering hot during the day and semi-comfortable
at night. So after I got acclimated, it took me about two months
to get acclimated to the weather, but after I got acclimated to
the weather it didn't bother me 'cause I could stand the summer.
Well the summer left, and it drop. You know I was used to the
120 degree, the high heat and high humidity. Well the bottom
fell out of it and it turned into automatic cold. And, you know,
60 degrees I was freezing to death. I knew I wasn't going to die
of frost bite or anything like that, but I had extreme cold
shivers. We had plastic that we pulled down on the hoodshed to
keep the rain out. And we had little insent burners that we got.
I don't know if you've seen them. A lot of people use them nowªa-days to put in their gardens as ornamental things. They're
little cement stands that look like little pagodas on legs. Well
those are insent burners that they used over in Vietnam. They're
every place for burning insents out of. Well what we did was we
used to get wood and stuff like that and we'd get these insent
burners and we'd have fires in them going in the woods to keep
warm,'cause it was so cold. Vietnamese do not have central
heating. There is no need for it. There's a vast need for
central air conditioning.
Q: What about the Vietnamese people, do they get use to the
weather?
A: They had no problem with it. It's like us here in winter.
They have the type of stuff to put on. All we had was rain gear,
because the army and their infant reasoning said 60 degrees your
not going to freeze to death just put your rain gear on. Well
what good is rain gear when your just as wet inside from sweating
from the rain gear as outside from the rain? So we didn't bother
to wear it. We'd wear rain gear one day, out in the field, and
we'd look at ourselves and we'd be just sopping wet as though we
hadn't wore it. So we didn't bother to wear it. It was an
unessential thing, item. After awhile you'd develope a sense of
'I don't care' attitude. You actually, it's hard to explain, go
into a state of mind where you don't care whether you live or
die, eat or sleep, or whether you even breathe, you don't care
about anything. You slip into this field where you don't care
about anything.
Q: Do you think that's probably what kept you going, surviving?
A: Well I think everybody slipped into that. You could tell,
the guys that came in the country, fresh in the country. They
cared about things, they enjoyed life and stuff. As far as I'm
concerned, about six or seven months of my life is just blanked
out. The simple reason is that I didn't care about anything. I
didn't write letters home. All I did was get up in the morning,
go out on a mission, come back a week latter, have a weekend off,
go out and get drunk and if I couldn't fight the enemy I'd find
somebody else to fight. And then I'd just go back to mission
again. It was a viscous cycle. You'd eventually know there was
a bullet out there with your name on it and you just don't care
any more. You'd start doing stupid things like standing up,
assaulting a machine gun nest, jumping on hand grenades, and all
this kind of stuff weather it comes a stupid situation.
Q: Did you have to fight the North Vietnamese or was it the
Vietcong?
A: Yes, I fought Vietcong, I fought North Vietnamese, regulars.
What we called the regular army over there or the NVA, North
Vietnamese Army. They were trained and equipped just like we
were. They were equipped with Chinese-Communist weapons and
Russian support supplies. They were being equipped with all this
stuff. Russia and China were equipping them at that time.
Q: Do you think their fighting skills were good at all?
A: Yes, because a man always fights better on his own home soil
then on foreign soil. When you're fighting for your home land
you fight harder.
Q: They probably believed in what they were fighting for?
A: Well they believed their cause was right just as we believed
our cause was right. It's just like anything else, we have a
cause for what we are fighting for and they have a cause for what
they are fighting for. That's why fighting for a cause never
solves anything. Now verbally debating a cause, my idealism
against your idealism tends to work better then sending in an
armed force. To say 'You will believe in my ideal because I have
superior number in fire power.' That doesn't work.
Q: That's basically what they did?
A: 'You're going to believe what we're going to tell you to
believe because we are a bigger nation and we know what we are
doing and you don't.' I maybe wrong on it, but what I say, this
is my personal opinion what I say.
Q: Did South Vietnam, did you get to fight along with them?
A: Well, yea we had to fight along with them and sometimes we
had to make them fight. We'd get into fire fights. If they're
fighting Vietcong, which is code name which we call Charlie,
Black PJ guys, they'd run out and they'd fight those guys tooth
and nail. But if they came up against the NVA army, they'd
hesitate. They wouldn't go out into the field and fight them.
They'd back down from them. I remember one time we had to chase
a company of South Vietnamese out of their trenches to help us
fight the NVA at fixed bayonets. We fixed bayonets behind them.
We told them 'Look, you have a choice. You can fight the enemy
or we'll kill you right were you're at and we'll fight them
ourselves.' And they went out and they helped us fight. That's
what made me believe, at that point in time, that we really
shouldn't be there. When the army doesn't want to fight the
other army, then why should we fight? They're willing to take
out the saps and gorillas and stuff like that, but they're not
willing to fight the army. The real cause for all their problem
and they're not really ready to do it. At that point in time I
started asking myself 'Why are we here? What are we doing to
these people? Do they want us here or are we here because
someone in Washington said you should be there.?' And I just
couldn't see any point in it.
Q: What about the protestors? Did they bother you?
A: Yea, I didn't really enjoy getting off the airplane being
called a baby killer.
Q: That's on the way home I take it.
A: Yea, I had never shot or killed someone, in Vietnam, that did
not have a weapon. However the female Vietnamese fought just as
diagnostically or not more so then the male did. They carried
weapons, they carried grenades. But a lot of times we ran into
cases where kids like 16 and 15 and 13 would come out and they
would offer you some food or a drink or something like that and
at the same time throw a grenade in your truck. Blow up ten or
twenty people. And they were just little kids. And their
parents were putting them up to it. So when I got called 'baby-killer'
and stuff like that when I got back home and getting off
the aircraft, I kind of got off the aircraft low keyed. We flew
into a military base at Fort Orde, which is in California.
That's where we landed at. Got off the aircraft at Fort Orde.
We're taken on civilian Greyhound busses, to the airport at San
Francisco. I forget the name of the airport. And then we were
given botchers for tickets to anywhere in the United States, to
go home. I walked up and said 'I want to go to Detroit.' They
gave me a military stand-by ticket. This was at three o'clock in
the morning. The plan didn't leave until, I'd say, seven or
eight o'clock in the morning. It was a commuter flight from LAX
to Detroit. I got the flight and I was sitting in the aircraft
with about ten to fifteen GI's sitting around, one civilian
businessman and one hippie type person sitting in there. Knowing
what I knew about Vietnam, we all looked at the business man
type, all of us vets, and we didn't even sit near him. We didn't
even say 'Hi' to him. We didn't even talk to him. We just
completely ignored him. Myself, personally, I was starving for
some news back home and I figured that the only one who would
really have a lot of news back home was the hippie type because
their activist, their protestors and stuff like that. So I sat
down and struck a conservation up with him. We had a long talk.
I learned a lot of things about what was going on back here. But
I came to find out that he was mainly interested in how much
money could be made on the black market in Vietnam. Then it
struck me all of a sudden that everybody back here in America
that I've talked to so far, and I've talked to quite a few
civilians, they were all concerned about the monetary gains.
What were WE getting out of it. Not what we were giving the
Vietnamese. Not weather we were helping them out. But what
where we getting out of it. My point of view was the fact 'Why
bother with it?' It was useless. So I changed seats and just
sat there the rest of the time and didn't say a thing. We landed
in Detroit. All of us just all split up and went our own way.
The airport was crowed but there was no distinguishing marks on
me to say that I've just came back from Vietnam other than the
fact that I've had a very good sun tan, with very few tan lines.
I had a real good sun tan. And for that matter, I've could have
been stationed down south somewhere and coming home. It was
November. I could have been coming home for Christmas. And I
got off the aircraft. LAX it was about 95 when we took off.
When we landed in Detroit Metro, keep in mind that I had on a
summer uniform, an army summer uniform. Which is what we called
the sun tan uniform. It's a short sleeved, light cotton uniform.
And I got off at Detroit. I had no winter gear at all. When I
got off at Detroit, it was about 30 degrees outside. It's like
welcome home and you got a very cold reception [laughs]. I
walked from the aircraft, down the runway, inside, and
immediately to the nearest bar. I had about fifteen hundred
dollars on me. I think I tried to drink it all that night. I
called my folks and said 'Come pick me up. The aircraft will be
in about four hours. Four to five hours. Page me when you get
there because I might be in one of the bars in one of the
terminals.' And I sat there, and I drank, from the time I called
them until the time they picked me up, one right after another.
We're talking double shots of Jack Daniel's. The funny thing
about it was, that when my parents came to pick me up, they
couldn't tell that I was drinking. My speech was not slurred and
there was just no way that it even looked like it affected me.
Of course then again, I was drinking approximately a fifth of rum
a day in Vietnam. We're talking about Vietnamese rum which is
approximately 180 proof.
Q: So there wasn't that big of a deal when you came home?
A: No, my home coming was nothing really special. It was like
'Hi folks, I'm home.' My mom and dad gave me a warm welcome. My
fiancee was there at the airport. It was more of a family
welcome home. There was no brass band welcoming the conquering
hero or anything like that.
Q: Did you ever try to avoid combat or refuse to go fight?
A: Not if you went airborne, you didn't refuse anything. You
got to remember that I was an airborne trooper, sergeant. I had
three stripes up and one rocker. I lost the rocker when I hit a
Lieutenant Colonel in the mouth with a rifle butt. I figured
that I should. He had seventeen of my men killed. I figured
that I should put him in the hospital to get him out of there.
Q: That was just a 'butter bar?'
A: Lieutenant Colonel. I don't mess around. You get my men
killed and I'll take you out.
Q: So it was almost worth the stripe?
A: It really was seeing how he was a Second Lieutenant the next
time that I saw him. It hurt him more than it did me.
Q: Did you ever hear of any problems with the other groups not
wanting to fight?
A: Yep.
Q: Did it happen often?
A: The only ones not wanting to fight were the Arbens.
Q: The what?
A: The Arbens. That's the South Vietnamese army. The army of
Vietnam.
Q: But for the American army, for the most part, they fought?
A: We fought. When we had to fight, we fought. Tooth and nail.
There were no jerkers on that.
Q: So how well do you think the people respected rank over
there?
A: Above sergeant?
Q: Yes.
A: Lieutenant, first and second, maybe Captain. After that, you
were useless. Stay out of my way. Your not in the field. Don't
tell me how to run the field duties. A lot of times, what
happened over there, was that we would get a replacement officer
coming in and the company commander, who was field grade, meaning
Major or higher, would tell the officer when he came in, 'Listen
to your sergeants. Do exactly what your sergeant tells you to do
and don't screw up! And you might make it out of here alive.'
Believe it or not, sergeants run the army. Officers do the
paperwork. Sergeants run the army. They do all of the jobs and
they come up with the 'How to do things better.' And they do a
well job, very well trained in that area. As far as the sergeant
goes over there, E-6 or E-5 could walk into a bar, and if there
was some conflict going on in the bar or something like that,
all he would have to do is raise his voice and say 'Settle down
boys' or something like that. And they would stop right then and
there. Because they would look over and see who said it and if
he was in starched fatigues with heavy crease and spit shine
boots, they wouldn't listen to him. But like me, when I walked
in and I had black jungle boots on, the toes were black or mine
were brown because I never put a drop of polish on them. My
fatigues were tiger stripped and you could see were the
camouflage paint had stained the collar and stuff like that
highly visible. They would look over at me, and they'd realize
were I was coming from, and they would stop. That's all it would
take. They just had to know who. Rank, you earned over there
like you did in state side army. Only thing was, respect you had
to earn through combat. Now rear epsilon sergeants and stuff
like that, they didn't have the same respect as the combat
sergeant. Sergeant in combat held a respect that was above and
beyond anything else because they figured what you went over
there as. Usually the most influx you got was like corporals and
PFC's, PVT's. That's where you got most of your troops from. If
you made sergeant while you were in country, you were very highly
respected. ŒQ: Did you go in as a sergeant?
A: I went in to Vietnam as a corporal, E-3. No, a E-4. I made
grade E-4 and I had two stripes. I held two stripes for three
months and then I went on a LRRP patrol and I gained a stripe as
a combat promotion. Instead of giving me a metal to put on my
chest, they gave me a stripe and a pay raise. Which I liked a
lot more. The next one that I went on, they gave me a rocker and
a pat on the back and a pay raise. Which worked out a lot
better. I got two combat promotions while I was in Vietnam.
Which isn't unheard of. Combat promotions are quite common.
Q: What did you think of the chemical warfare type stuff like
the napalm and stuff.
A: When we went up against bunker lines, they were God sent.
Charlie use to dig in maybe 20-, 30-feet underground. Napalm has
a unique tendency, it burns forever. One other thing about it
too is that it takes all of the oxygen out of the air surrounding
it. So if you drop it on a tunnel line, it takes all of the air
out of the tunnel. So you defeat your enemy that way. So you
don't have to go down the tunnel yourself with a 45 and a
flashlight and dig him out.
Q: They used a lot of tunnels then?
A: I swear to God that if those tunnels ever collapsed, Vietnam
is going to sink into the sea.
Q: You said that you didn't see 'Platoon' didn't you?
A: No, I did not see 'Platoon.' My wife won't let me see it.
Q: You're practically narrating it. What about the Agent Orange
stuff, the def...?ŒA: Defoliating agent. Yes, well I had contact with it and I
have been tested for it. As far as they know, at this present
time, I've been exposed to it but I have no chemical reactions to
it yet.
Q: Don't you think that it was too bad that they killed all of
that country side?
A: As far as a strategic point, it was worth it. As far as an
economical and an agricultural point, it wasn't. But let me tell
you how we made fire bases over there. We would find a hill top
that was higher than the rest. We'd fly in a C-130 with a
thousand pound bear on it. That's a thousand pound bomb. Hooked
to a parachute to drag it out of the back of the C-130. As soon
as the shoot dragged it out, that shoot wouldn't hold the bomb up
in the air and it would just drop like a normal bomb. It would
hit, go off, and you would have a flat fire base to build on.
Then the planes would come over and drop the defoliating agents.
So that the jungle around the fire base would all drop down out
of sight so that you would have more of a kill range. Then they
would send the infantry in to set up a consenteen wire, dig the
bunkers, set up the fire base. And that is how it was done.
Very logistically and very quickly. We could set up a fire base
in about 48 to 72 hours we could have a functional fire base.
Q: Did you have a lot of contact with booby traps?
A: Yea, they were there. I'm well versed in pyrotechnics. Any
way imaginable that you could do it. Case in point, Charlie was
very fond of pungy sticks. What it is is sharpened bamboo. And
sharpened bamboo is very very sharp. It would go through the
sole of a boot. We used pungy sticks too. But we didn't dip in
the same stuff that Charlie did. Charlie used whatever he could
get. Defecation, urination, anything like that he could dip it
in that would cause a poisoning and pestering in the wound when
you got punctured with it.
Q: Do those spike proof boots work?
A: No. They only had a two inch wide piece of steal going down
the center of the foot. That means that the sides of your foot
were still vulnerable. They figured that if they'd put any more
steal in them, you couldn't function as well.
Q: Did you even bother wearing them?
A: We wore them a day. They didn't work that well. We could
still step on stuff. Then we found out too that the metal in the
boot also could contact a magnetic mind and blow it off. So we
stopped wearing them. It was the same reason that we didn't wear
black fight vests over there. They show some of these guys
running around in black vests in some of the movies and stuff
like that. If you are in a heavy fire fight, yea it's great to
have a black vest. When you're walking out in the middle of the
jungle with nobody around, that's all you need is forty pounds of
extra weight on a nice cool day of about 110 outside. You just
don't need it.
Q: What about Ho Chi Minh? What did you think of him?
A: 'Papa Ho?' He was a great political and military strategist.
He knew what he was doing. He defeated America not militarily
because he knew that he could not. He could not, as far as North
Vietnam, did not have the supplies and power to defeat America.
So he did it politically. He actually used the American public
and the personal here in the United States to help defeat it by
telling horror stories, letting horror stories leak out that
weren't actually happening. Case in point, Jane Fonda was one of
them who really went off the deep end. She actually put a flower
in my gun barrel at Fort Carlson, Colorado while I was on guard
duty there.
Q: Did you ever hear anything bad said about Ho Chi Minh?
A: Well, it depended on who you talked to.
Q: Like the South Vietnamese, the Vietcong ...
A: Papa Ho, 'I was too close to the source' so I didn't really
hear that much. Papa Ho was the head of the enemy. Our
philosophy was 'Shoot Papa Ho, and the war would stop. We'll all
go home. It would all be done with us. We won't have to do
anymore of this stuff.' Unfortunately that didn't work because I
know of two attempts to assassinate him that didn't work. I
believe I heard discouraging words about him. We turned on the
political structure of the United States and Papa Ho for keeping
us there. All it did was fuel the hatred for the situation that
we were in.
Q: What was the fighting like when he died? He died pretty
early in the war.
A: As far as I was concerned, it was just another man dyeing.
Q: It was '69 that he died.
A: I wasn't there in '69.
Q: That's right.
A: He died in late '69 almost '70.ŒQ: September third.
A: September third. Yea he died just as I was leaving. As far
as I was concerned, it was too little, too late. If Ho would
have died in, let's say 1948, we would have never been involved
with Vietnam. Vietnam would have been a democratic colony or a
Republic.
Q: What about all of the bombing that the U.S. did?
A: You're talking to the wrong guy. I was a grunt, on the
ground. All of the bombing that we had was in support of the
infantry. As far as the bombing in North Vietnam, I wasn't aware
of it until almost, the devastation and destruction, until almost
five years after the war was over. All that really happened. I
had a mental block when I came home. I didn't want to hear
anymore about Vietnam. I didn't want to know anymore about
Vietnam and it was just a subject dropped. I didn't want to hear
about it.
Q: What about the Ho Chi Minh trail?
A: The expressway to the south. Actually the Ho Chi Minh trail
was not one trail as people think. It is a series of tens of
thousands of trails. In fact, I don't know if you know about the
Chew Hoy program. That's where Charlie and a NVA could give
themselves up to us and be repatrinized into the Republic. We
had this one gentleman, Chew Hoy, who turned sides from their
side and he told us that he carried two motor rounds from Anoid
down to Saigon, to shoot at Saigon. They were both dudes. So he
went back and got two more. Well the entire time it took him was
six months trip both ways. Just to carry two motor rounds and
the two were dudes. He brought the next two back and they didn't
explode. He Chew Hoyed after that. He surrendered. He said
that he wasn't going to spend another year carrying motor rounds
that don't go off [laughs]. True story, honest to God because I
was standing right next to the interpreter as he told it. I have
a picture of it on my wall at home as he was coming out of his
hole.
Q: Why is it that you hear about the Vietnam vets being all
disturbed about the war and everything, but when you talk to
World War II or World War I or some other vets, it doesn't, I
don't know if it's there, but you don't seem to notice it as
much?
A: Well, number one, in World War II we weren't fighting
guerrillas. We were fighting an army. It was an army verses an
army. I'm leaving out the political causes and all of that kind
stuff and any idealogy. It was an army fighting an army. When
we were fighting guerrillas, they were here one day and gone the
next. Another thing too was that we knew where the battle lines
were, we knew where the front lines were, we knew what was
expected of us, and we knew what to do and when to do it. In
Vietnam there was no down time. You were always on alert. You
could always be attacked. There was no front line and there was
no rear echelon. You were just there.
Q: Sometimes when I ask a Vietnam vet what the war was like in
your opinion? They usually sum it up 'Like hell.'
A: That's about the best answer you're going to get out of any
of them. Because that is what it was. What is your idea of
hell?
Q: That is what my next question was.
A: What is your idea of hell?
Q: I don't even imagine it.
A: I can't describe something to you that I haven't got the
words for and you haven't got the comprehension to understand.
Just assume the fact that hell is hot, bug infested, and
persecution. It is just constantly there. You can't escape it.
Q: What are your view on the U.S. in Central America?
A: Help the Contras. Do you know how many people that man has
in prison? Ortega, the taco chip, is throwing people in prison
because they look at him wrong. That is no way to treat human
beings. The Contras are there trying to set up a political of
the fact of being pro-democratic, pro-republic. France was a
republic, look what it did. Like during the revolution. A lot
of people lost their heads over that revolution. What I'm trying
to say is that Ortega is filling his prisons with political
decedents and shooting them and killing them. And eventually
Ortega isn't going to have anyone to control because they are all
going to be dead. The guy is a tyrant and an asshole. I believe
in the Contras. I would love to see the Contras hang that son of
a bitch. And if I wasn't married and didn't have a family, I
would hire out as a mercenary and go down there and help them
out.
Q: What about the Persian Gulf?
A: Nuke them until they glow and shoot them in the dark. Does
that sound a little militant? I believe Carter handled that
situation all wrong. It started with Carter. Carter handled it
all wrong, of course any democrat in power would handle it wrong.
Q: So you think that Reagan handled it good?
A: Yea, he's got a fleet over there that's telling them 'Take
your pop shots at us. But you screw up major and we're going to
burrie you in sand.' They're going to turn Iran and Iraq into a
glass factory. And I'm all for it.
Q: But don't you think that's in a way like ...?
A: Yea, I'm a hawk. If that's what you're asking.
Q: No, I'm saying, don't you think that's like Vietnam again by
trying to impose your views with force?
A: Vietnam never made an attack on civilian, non-military
personal. They all made their attacks on military personal.
They've never attacked like that Filco Ford and Sun Oil
Corporation there. We're in a military base five miles up the
road from them and they've never once attacked those bases.
Never once. But they hit us. They hit us all of the time. But
they never hit them.
Q: What about the Americans, do you think they ever?
A: During Vietnam?
Q: Yea, during Vietnam.
Q: The Americans were are own worst enemy. The civilian
American was our own worst enemy there in Vietnam.
Q: I mean, do you think that American soldiers ever shot a
civilian or something like that?
A: Well, let's put it this way. The only people that wore
uniforms over there were the NVA, North Vietnamese Army. Charlie
wore black at night. Well, when you get over to Vietnam, the
national dress of morning is black. Most other people wore there
common dress daily. It's like you walking out onto the street.
With the back of your jacket and pants there. And you got a 45
caliber gun in there waiting for a GI to walk down the street and
off him in the back of the head.
Q: So it probably did happen quite a bit?
A: Yea, it happened. You turn around and a guy offs you with a
45 and he doesn't care who's standing around you. He's just
firing like crazy. We have automatic weapons and we have to
select to fire at semi-automatic and make sure of our target
before we fire when we're in a crowd. While watching our GI
buddie bleed on the street, knowing he's dead. How would you...
It's frustrating.
Q: What do you think of Russia today and Gorbechev?
A: I am not overly fond of communism. Communism, to me, is not
my idea life. I'm one of those guys that would say 'I'd rather
be dead, than Red.' Gorbechev is using a new political ploy to
try to gain credence for his idealogy.
Q: Do you think that he is doing his country any good at all?
A: I don't know if he's doing the country any good or not. The
country may be thinking that good things are happening, but I
don't think they're doing that good.
Q: A lot of the music groups that I listen to sing a lot of
songs against war and Contra aid and that kind of stuff. What do
you think of those people?
A: They did it in the 60's. Don't bother me none. Music is
music.
Q: Did you ever hear the saying 'If you liked Vietnam, you'll
just love Nicaragua?' Do you think that that would be another
Vietnam?
A: No, Nicaragua would never be another Vietnam.
Q: Why do you say that?
A: It may be another Grenada, but not another Vietnam. United
States will never let another Vietnam happen. Because you take a
look around and a lot of people are using Vietnam as a yard stick
to measure everything else by. Three day war or four day war,
fine. We're in and out. No problem, we have that capability.
We could drop on Nicaragua enough troops to enialate the country
of any form of suburbinite force and get them out of there in
three days. With a minimal amount of casualties.
Q: Nicaragua, isn't that about the same size that Vietnam was?
A: Yep.
Q: And the same kind of climate too, isn't it?
A: Basically.
Q: It seems like the same kind of situation because you've got a
lot of Americans not really in support of the war.
A: It's the same situation over again, but like I said, I don't
think that it could happen again.
Q: You think that we would know enough how to take care of it
right this time?
A: Right, we know enough now how to do it. What we're doing is
instead of training an army to fight an army, were training
guerrillas to fight an army. And guerrilla warfare has been
proven by Castro, by Ho Chi Minh.
Q: Actually, I guess Nicaragua even used it. I guess they've
even studied Vietnam.
A: Right, what's the best way to fight a large force? You have
a large force coming at you and you have inferior fire power.
How do you do it? You let them keep coming. As they walk past
you, you pick the last guy off in line. By the time everybody
else turns around, they don't know where the rifle shot came
from. But you've got one dead soldier, or wounded. You never
really want to kill a man in battle. Because you kill a man, he
lays there. If you wound him, it takes two men to get him off
the field. So by wounding one, you've taken three.
Q: I've never thought of it that way.
A: That's part of guerrilla warfare. You never kill a man in a
battle. You wound him because it incompasitates three people.
Q: What would you say if your son was drafted to fight in
Nicaragua?
A: Well, unique case. My son is the only son of an only son.
The only way that he would go into the military is if he
volunteered. He'll never be drafted. As far as military, CAP is
military enough for him. He's the only son of an only son that
has seen combat and is a silver star. I wear a silver star.
Q: Here is my last question for you. If there is one thing that
you wish someone would have told you before into Vietnam, what
would have you have wanted it to have been?
A: To really sit down and talk to me about what Vietnam was like.
Like what I'm doing here basically. Letting you know
something about it. I'd probably gone to Canada. Knowing what
I know now about Vietnam, I would have gone to Canada.