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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3f02c0761f2c8f57bf10e98a76e9d674.mp4
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fdf9e54cdec40323da03436af10eb475.pdf
02af6e337dca5ee5594cb406828a2baf
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Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
World War II
Joseph Krzeminksi
Total Time – (01:24:41)
Background & Civilian Conservation Corps
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He was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1919 (00:16)
His parents moved to Grand Rapids from Chicago, Illinois and were originally
from Poland (00:41)
His father was a brick mason
His family moved to a home with an indoor toilet as his father became
increasingly successful (01:30)
o The home was in the city
They had rabbits, chickens and other animals
When he was eight years old, he would go and pull beans for a local farmer
(02:32)
There were seven kids in his family
When the Depression came, his family lost their home (02:59)
o His mother had a breakdown and died
o His father was extremely depressed
After that, his family bounced between different homes and lived on soup (03:27)
o When they moved around, they found dumps that they would live in
He went to school until the tenth grade (04:12)
He joined the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) April of 1936 (04:31)
Before he was accepted, he had difficulty meeting the minimum weight
requirement of 107lbs. – he weighed 102lbs. (04:48)
o He worked to plant trees
o The CCC mimicked the Army – There were barracks with a similar social
structure (06:15)
There were some Army officers in charge
o They ate extremely well – the cooks were World War I veterans (06:48)
The CCC broke up and the camp was split and he was sent to Fife Lake near
Traverse City, Michigan (07:43)
o He was discharged and ended up weighing 138lbs.
After he left the CCC, he began working in a factory (08:30)
o He was laid off from the factory job
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He then got a job working in the kitchen at St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand
Rapids(09:14)
They started taking men for the CCC again
He went into the program and was sent to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan
(09:32)
o He was in Newberry, Michigan
In Newberry, he began working in the gravel pit until he was sent to work on the
Fox River where he built a shack (10:35)
He was then sent to be a surveyor on the lakes
o He would work alongside rangers (12:13)
He finished the CCC in June of 1940 and then joined the Army
Enlistment/Training – (13:22)
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He signed up because he was disgusted with the times – the job situation, etc.
(13:27)
When he was in the CCC, he heard the news of Poland being hit by the Germans
When he enlisted, he knew that it was possible that he would be in the war
(14:48)
After he signed up, he was taken to Detroit at Fort Wayne where he was
processed
He then went to Monterey, California (15:37)
o He stayed at Presidio of Monterey (16:13)
o He received two weeks of training
It was called recruit training (17:06)
o He had a lot of training from CCC that was useful
He stayed in Monterey for roughly one month (18:35)
The military was good because it provided all of the necessities – food, clothing,
housing, no bills, etc. (19:31)
He was transferred to Fort Ord, California (19:58)
When he was at Fort Ord, he was in the 7th Division with the 32nd Infantry
Regiment (20:52)
o There were inspections every Saturday followed by a parade
o There were a lot of new recruits going into the camp (21:28)
o The draftees started going into the camp around November
He got shipped to Oregon in February of 1941 (22:05)
o He was stationed at Camp Clatsop, Oregon (22:10)
o Two battalions were being formed to go to Guam
They were formed from the 6th and 7th Divisions (22:34)
At this point, he was a PFC (Private First Class)
o It was difficult to get promoted in the military (24:28)
There were many older military personnel
When the soldiers had time off they would go and be “rowdy”
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When he was in Oregon the soldiers slept in tents
Active Duty – Part I - (26:49)
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He was sent to the Aleutian Islands in July of 1941 (26:58)
o They received supplies every two weeks
o They were sent to the Aleutian Islands on a transport ship (27:35)
The voyage to the Aleutians was difficult for many
o They were very seasick (27:54)
o He had received some training at Fort Ord on how to deal with seasickness
In the Aleutians, they were sent to Dutch Harbor, Alaska (29:08)
o They were surprised to see the new barracks for the soldiers (29:15)
o There were only men at the harbor – he only saw one woman
o He spent 32 months in the Aleutian Islands (29:56)
Before Pearl Harbor, his platoon was doing patrols
o There were four men on each patrol (30:31)
o They would go out and survey the beaches to see if there were any that an
enemy could use to their advantage (30:57)
He heard about Pearl Harbor when he was on outpost at Morris Cove, Alaska
(33:52)
o He then went with a friend to Ugadaga Bay where they replaced two men
(34:11)
o When they were leaving, a note was delivered to his lieutenant that told
them Pearl Harbor had been bombed
o It became a miserable night
Patrols were then sent out all over to ensure an attack would not happen (35:52)
There was a fire in their tent so they could keep warm
o They heard a shot that was fired to signal to a ship that could not
communicate (37:03)
The winter was extremely difficult
o The infantry was always out patrolling or on outpost (38:04)
o There were no toilets or showers
o It was not extremely cold (38:30)
o It was extremely windy (38:43)
o There was one man that was killed while walking on the beach from a
piece of tin that flew off a building (39:28)
The soldiers were informed of what was going on, but they did not have specific
details (39:58)
The Japanese attacked Dutch Harbor on May 27, 1942 (40:16)
o The Colonel called his company and told them that there was a Japanese
fleet coming towards them (40:56)
o They were told that they were not going to get any help (41:25)
o His Colonel told them to watch their ammunition
There was only one battalion in Dutch Harbor at the time (42:23)
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They began fortifying the areas – built machine gun nests, set up wires, etc.
(43:16)
The Japanese eventually attacked with aircraft (43:48)
The soldiers moved out of the barracks and moved into large bunkers
o At this point, he was the second commander in charge in the squad
He woke up one night when he heard a growling off in the distance – it was a
seaplane (45:18)
o The plane continued to get louder and louder
o A friend looked out and thought that it was a friendly plane
As soon as he said that they heard a bomb explode (46:33)
They grabbed their rifles and got into their positions (46:49)
o He saw four planes coming across and could see the bombs dropping out
of the planes
His squad had BAR’s (Browning Automatic Rifles) (48:14)
o The Americans had mortars and other weapons as well
The Japanese left for the night and came back the next day with dive bombers to
hit what they had missed the day before (48:48)
o They hit fuel storage tanks
o The barracks began to burn (49:15)
There was a crater right in front of their barracks
o Eleven men died from the attacks (50:43)
After the Japanese attack, they did not come back (51:14)
o They were told that they had landed on Attu and Kiska islands (51:28)
They also landed on Adak and Atka Island [the Japanese did not,
but the Americans did]
Reinforcements were being pushed past Dutch Harbor
The military began building an air base on Adak Island (52:20)
o The Japanese were surprised that the Americans had built the base
He was told that he was going to board a ship and leave the next day
o They joined a convoy the next day (56:04)
When the convoy arrived on Adak Island, they were picked up from a Navy boat
on the bottom
They stayed in tents while on Adak Island (57:48)
o They would play poker, shoot craps, etc. (57:46)
o They were going to be called when they made a landing
The attacks on Attu Island happened during the middle of 1943 (58:50)
Active Duty – Part II – (59:03)
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In February of 1944, they boarded the USS Columbia
o There was a dance floor on the ship (59:40)
o They crossed through the Bering Sea and it was extremely rough weather
(59:55)
o He was placed on guard duty one night
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o The ship stopped in Ketchikan, Alaska (01:00:28)
They were not allowed to get off
After Ketchikan, the ship traveled to a Canadian barracks where they stayed for
one week (01:01:18)
o They stayed in Prince Rupert, Canada
The men were waiting to land on Kiska Island (01:01:37)
o They were not told what they were waiting for, but they knew
When the men were supposed to leave Adak, the replacement privates returned to
their original units (01:02:41)
While in Prince Rupert, the soldiers would pass the time by shooting craps,
playing cards, etc.
o One of the men was caught with a set of phony dice
From Prince Rupert, they were placed on a train and taken to Sumas, Washington
(01:03:46)
o The train went through Vancouver on the way through
o The curtains had to be drawn down on the entire ride
From Sumas, they traveled to southern Oregon at Camp White in Jackson County,
Oregon (01:04:40)
o Camp White was inland – away from the Pacific coast
After Sumas, they were shipped out to different outfits (01:05:14)
o He was sent to Arkansas for more training
o Some of the men were shipped to Europe (01:05:53)
He was at Camp Robinson near Little Rock, Arkansas (01:06:30)
He was a trainer in basic training
o They started out with seventeen weeks
They then began rushing through basic training so that men could
get through it in thirteen weeks (01:06:47)
During training, they would go into the field and teach soldiers how to protect
themselves (01:07:14)
o They would often camp out
When new soldiers would come in, they would train them, ship them out and then
receive more new soldiers (01:07:57)
He was satisfied with staying in Arkansas (01:08:54)
o He knew that they were needed
He trained roughly one thousand men in Arkansas (01:09:51)
The rest of his time in the service was spent in Arkansas (01:10:13)
He was taken to the hospital in Chicago, Illinois for his neck and back (01:10:36)
o He went to a sick call and had X-rays taken on his back
The doctors did not know what was wrong with him (01:11:11)
Before Chicago, when he went on sick call, the doctor told everyone to take their
undershirts off – it was during the winter (01:12:17)
o He was so cold that he did not do it
o When he was called, he walked to the doctor with his shirt on (01:12:56)
The doctor knocked his helmet down
The doctor told him to get out of there (01:13:33)
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o He told his story to the first sergeant and was told to get a prisoner and
watch over him
He got to sit there while his prisoner worked (01:14:15)
He had to be with the prisoner all the time
During lunch, the man did not want to leave and he had to be
forced to leave (01:15:20)
• He threw the man through a door
• His commander saw it happen, but he ignored it
When he saw non-commissioned officers come to the camp, he knew that he was
being replaced (01:16:52)
He remembers walking through the mess hall and vomiting – he was sick in the
stomach (01:17:15)
After the Service – (01:17:30)
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He went home after nearly one week (01:17:31)
He returned to his father's one bedroom apartment
o Two of his brothers lived with his father as well (01:17:43)
His stomach never got better – he is currently on pills for stomach problems
When he returned home, he was unemployed for nearly one month (01:18:47)
After one month, he got a job working at Kelvinator (01:18:56)
o He stayed at Kelvinator for thirty five and a half years
o He did a lot of work as a welder
He was married two times (01:20:13)
o His first wife had a child before they were married
o She found another man at her work and left him (01:20:21)
He married his second wife and was married for forty-seven years
When he reflects on his experiences in the Army, he believes it was a good thing
to join (01:22:10)
He is not sure what way he would have gone if it were not for the Army
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KrzeminskiJ1459V
Title
A name given to the resource
Krzeminski, Joseph (Interview outline and video), 2012
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Krzeminski, Joseph
Description
An account of the resource
Joseph Krzeminski was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1919. His family suffered during the Depression, and he left high school and joined the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1936, serving two stints, and then joined the Army in 1940. After training at Fort Ord, California, he joined the 32nd Infantry Regiment, 7th Division, at Camp Clatsop, Oregon. His battalion was sent to the Aleutian Islands in April, 1941, and stayed for three years. He witnessed the Japanese attack on Dutch Harbor in 1942 and helped with preparations for later American landings on Attu and Kiska, and then went to Camp Robinson, Arkansas, to serve as a trainer until he was discharged.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
United States. Army
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2012-10-09
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
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application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f2a87fe6a8cf425e52d3d95093716b22.pdf
be2d5915b74a19d8b3a0adb13f1444ee
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Vietnam War
Dale Krueger
(34:36)
Background Information (00:20)
He was drafted into the Air Force. He served for 4.5 years. (00:22)
He thought that he might be able to fly while in the Air Force. However, due to the rule that the
men had to serve the amount of time they stayed in school during active duty (i.e. 4 years of
school in training meant 4 years of active duty) he joined the Army instead. Dale was engaged at
the time and did not want to serve this long. (00:44)
Training (2:04)
Dale switched to the Army because he did not like the way the Air Force was regimented. (2:00)
Service in Vietnam. (3:11)
In 1971 Dale was sent to Vietnam. He did not want to leave his life at home when he left. (3:12)
Dale was able to keep in contact with his family and wife through mail. Writing every day
however, was difficult. (4:15)
Dale did experience some action but did not think that he saw the worst of what the war had to
offer. (5:36)
He believes that dealing with the emotional trauma of the even gets harder with age. (6:18)
Dale did form a lot of close relationships with the men he served with. (7:11)
Dale had exited the service already when the war ended in 1975. (8:41)
End of Service (9:12)
Dale was flown home from Vietnam. He thought the process required to get him home was a
“nightmare.” (9:15)
He was thrown to San Francisco and then to Chicago. (9:58)
The decay of how men in uniform were treated during dales time in the military was very
insulting. Middle to older aged civilians treated dale better then the younger ones. (11:05)
Life after Service (12:54)
Dale didn’t have much direction in his life. However he felt that the duty to serve was always a
guiding influence. (13:36)
Dale served in Iraq in 2005. He worked at a road side check point by the 14th of July Bridge
during an election. (15:25)
He was thanked by Iraqi civilians for the voting process that the military had made possible in
that area. (17:00)
From Dale’s experience, the Iraqis liked the U.S. during his time there. (18:30)
�Thoughts on the War in Iraq (20:03)
He thinks that it is unjust to gauge what has been done in Iraq with the condition it has fallen
into in the late 2000s. (20:03)
For most of Dale’s service he was not fighting Iraqis. He recalled while driving on a road there
were billboards put up by Iraqi citizens warning solders of IEDs. (22:25)
He does believe that there were mistakes made during the U.S. presence in Iraq. (24:55)
He believes that there had been fewer deaths in Iraq during the U.S. presence as opposed to
when Saddam was in power. (26:20)
Dale served in Panama as well. He recalls that some men did not want the military there. But
when he was interacting with the common man and farmers they were please the U.S. was
there. (27:50)
He believes that patriotism is the main uniting factor that should unite the Iraqi people. (29:00)
He agrees that the war could have been handled better. (33:35)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KruegerD0966V
Title
A name given to the resource
Krueger, Dale (Interview outline), 2010
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Krueger, Dale
Description
An account of the resource
Dale Krueger served in the U.S. Army from 1971-1974 in the Vietnam War. He also served in Iraq at a check point as well as in other countries such as Panama.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ezinga, Olivia (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives, American
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2010-06-03
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9cea859054bc21dba304030ebb8de58f.mp4
b8cd13f678935ad943964c6a8e3c114d
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4f71728ac16f92dc622ce7d710024cba.pdf
1a7bb1870cc9d2999c046cfc9102643c
PDF Text
Text
GVSU Veteran’s History Project
Cold War Era
Debra Kridler
Total Time: (40:49)
(00:48) Has a brother who served in the Gulf War; said they didn’t talk about it a lot
(1:34) She said her family seemed more concerned with her brother than her (she was
in the service but didn’t fight in any wars)
(1:54) The unit that she was with in Frankfurt was in lockdown; their job was to secure
the area
(2:22) Made friends with a few people in her unit
o Became hard to stay in touch after awhile
(2:56) The area she served in was in Southern Bavaria
o Here, they faced bomb threats
o American/German military base
(3:40) Says the relationships she built was a memorable experience, as well as her job
o Ms. Kridler worked in communications
o Went to school in Georgia for telecommunications
o Worked as a radio operator in Germany
o Used a lot of books
o Did practice alerts
(4:41) Her usual schedule was from about 8-5; afterwards they would clean the barracks
sometimes
(5:07) The Germans were in one section of the base and the Americans were on another
(5:48) Mentioned that there weren’t a lot of females in the infantry
(6:03) Guessed there was about 350 on their base
o Maybe 50 Germans
o Germans had to serve at least 1 year in the military
(6:56) M-16’s were their main weapons that they trained on
(9:09) The base that Ms. Kridler was at was near Frankfurt
(10:08) Said there wasn’t a lot of interaction with the Germans
(12:44) Mentioned that German economy was pretty good
(13:09) Had a chance to travel a lot
(14:10) Didn’t see combat, but was ready for it
o Used landmines and hand grenades as well as being able to fire an M-16
(16:04) During training she learned how to send messages through computers
(17:20) Learned how to throw grenades with the drill sergeant
�
o Describes process of detonating hand grenades
o They were explosive
o Wore a vest which protected her from shrapnel
(20:45) Mentions that they had earplugs with them when using weapons
(22:33) Says the oldest you could sign up for the service was 36 years old
(23:04) Wore camouflage; before she was in the service, the color for service men and
women was green; there had been a recent switch
(26:22) Discussed drills they had to do at midnight; gave them an idea of what war was
really like
(27:20) German uniforms had an emblem and the German flag colors
(27:48) Says that they had more equipment than the Germans
(29:25) Had a few clashes with her first superior officer; Ms. Kridler was frustrated when
how he ran things
o Liked the second superior officer better
(30:45) Remembers having first lieutenants, but not a captain on the base
(31:35) By the time Ms. Kridler got out of the service, she was a sergeant
o Served two years without leave
o When she came back to Michigan she did another year, then served longer
o Eventually went to the National Guard
o Seven years total in the service
(33:50) Ms. Kridler thinks that if she stayed in the service another year, would have
gotten a higher ranking, but decided not to
(34:12) Also had a sister in the army; brother was in the Marines
(35:11) Said the military helped her learned to be independent
(36:33) Said if she was younger, she would have finished school before joining the
military
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KridlerD0477V
Title
A name given to the resource
Kridler, Debra (Interview outline and video), 2009
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kridler, Debra
Description
An account of the resource
Ms. Kridler was in the US Army in the 1980's. She served in the southern Bavarian region of Germany on a base that was shared by Americans and Germans. Ms. Kridler worked in telecommunications, but also received combat training and served on guard duty. After completing her enlistment, she served in the National Guard.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kirchinger, Ben (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Army
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives, American
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2009-05-25
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fc559e70a3e142f7821745739a9678be.mp4
e9551ca40fe838a3860ed28d77b784ee
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/bc6873dd54c373d218e6f46774949bb9.pdf
1f4a3758e391222c27ceede3a2d0aee2
PDF Text
Text
Robert Kriegbaum
World War II
U.S. Army
(2:10:09)
Interviewer: James Smither
(00:10)Background
• Born in Richmond Indiana December 4 1922
• Graduated from Richmond High School June 1941
• Father was an Engineer with the International Harvester Company‐kept job during depression‐
worked with farmers‐moved to Chicago 1944 when plant closed up‐experimental engineer
testing out new farm equipment out on the field
• 3 sisters
(02:45)
• Enrolled in Purdue University‐initial training in the ROTC‐field artillery
• December 7 1941‐at fraternity when he heard about Pearl Harbor
(04:10)
• Drafted Fall of 1942‐told to report Feb 1943‐mother tried to exempt Robert for being asthmatic‐
Robert said he didn’t want to do that‐went in
• Most of friends had enlisted‐many into the Air Force
• Belonged at time to the Quaker Church‐joined Westminster Church with mother
(07:20)Fort Benjamin Harrison‐Indianapolis Indiana
• 1 week of physicals and paper work
(07:45)Fort Sill Oklahoma
• Artillery training
• (8:05)Vacations taken before the war were by car. One to California and one to New York.
• (9:15)First Train Trip was from Richmond to Fort Sill
• George was 5’6” 140lbs at the time
• Tough Sergeants
• Robert says he did well in training
• Learned about guns, surveying, observation‐all about artillery training
• (11:42) Most of the other guys were not college educated but well educated men
• 13 weeks of basic training
• Graduated May 1943‐guys were split up around the world
**Robert was shipped around to half of a dozen replacement depots of east side of the United
States from May to August 1943. Among the depots were Camp Miles Standish, Maine, Camp
Shenango Pennsylvania, and Patrick Henry, Virginia
�(14:20)left Patrick Henry‐shipped out to North Africa
• Robert said they didn’t know where they were going
• 23 days a part of a convoy going from Virginia to Oran, Algeria
• Crossed Straits of Gibraltar‐Robert finally knew where he was going
• Submarine scares kept them on deck only at night
(16:18)Oran
• Cold and raining often‐war in Africa was over as far as U.S. was concerned
• Barrack Bags were heavy‐received gas masks here
• There about 1 month‐shipped out to Naples Italy
(19:00)Naples Italy
• Port had been bombed
• Replacement Depot was in an extinct volcano
• Jumped out of fox hole during an air raid and landed on a guy from Richmond Indiana
• Trucks came and brought their unit to the front‐34th infantry division
• (20:53)Robert was part of the175th Field artillery battalion, C Battery‐ inside of the 34th infantry
• Forward observer was his position‐3 groups with 3 guys in each group
• He was to find where on the map the enemy was going to land and communicate that by smoke
shell where they were going to land.
• (23:00) Robert’s asthma kicks in‐informs field commander‐switches places with another
replacement
• (24:24)crossings of Volturno River Italy‐close to winter 1943‐168th regiment
(25:55)2nd observing job‐
• Approaching Mount Pantano‐tough fighting for the men there‐
• Struggle to the front line where their were frequent attacks by the Germans‐
• Protected by the mountains and grape plantations‐
• Built rocks up‐couldn’t dig fox holes(no dirt)‐
• (29:20)Spent 2‐3 days on mountain before retreat
• Went back up‐gained control‐mortar, machine gun fire, rock throwing, and grenades were being
used
• December 4 1943‐Robert’s 21st birthday‐he remembers saying ‘I made it’
• (31:00) Germans were literally stone throws away‐slow going‐moving toward Cassino
• 2 ½ months before relief came
• (33:08) Trenchfoot became big issue‐people were getting sick‐Dysentery
• Christmas dinner‐hot turkey meal‐Germans fired on them‐Robert’s dinner was ruined
• Pulled out before reaching Cassino
• OD’s hadn’t arrived yet for winter
• Given 3 week rest
�
(37:20)Cassino‐January 1944
• Built pup tents to keep warm‐2 men to each tent
• Put charcoal in tin food cans lit them on fire‐wind would blow heat into tent‐woke up with tent
on fire
• Payday‐came down mountain to get paid‐stayed in commander’s truck till clothes and
equipment could be replaced
• Battle at Cassino‐Germans flooded valley and laid mine fields
• Men had to walk through mine field for 1500 feet before making it‐lost a few guys going through
• (43:45)Artillery stayed behind unit but with the men
• City of Cassino‐destroyed‐stayed inside of a house‐heavy artillery fighting‐didn’t go outdoors
• Hygiene wasn’t the best‐peed in corners wherever they were
• Used bathroom on the side of path‐mother and daughter walked by
• (46:31)Many divisions at Cassino‐tried to advance toward Rome‐couldn’t get there
• Mount Tocchio‐used as Germans observation point before abandoning them because Allies
were advancing on them
(48:30) Mont Cassino Abbey
• Germans were using the base as an observation point on the Allied forces
• February 15 1944‐B24 bombed the Abbey‐reduced it to ruins
• Robert says there was controversy over whether we should have bombed the Abbey because it
was sacred ground to the Monks
• (51:05) Robert’s division went off line back to rest area the following day
*Robert was sent to the hospital for dysentery in Naples Italy. Meanwhile his division moved
out.
(52:10)Boarded LST truck from Naples to Anzio
• Robert landed on shore and was assigned to the Instrument Survey Crew‐by his request
• Survey crew consisted of a 7 man crew, Jeep, 4‐ton trailer for supplies
• Would head out on a reconnaissance mission with the Captain, 105mm Howitzers, would survey
guns back to a base point, then to another base point to continuously keep track on a map
where their location was
• (55:45)Germans had chased them back a few times‐in front of men a ways
• Came across cross road‐military police‐trucks were empty‐men were in ditches‐Germans were
firing on the cross road
(57:40)Anzio
• Settled in and dug their fox holes‐got as comfortable as they could
• It was springtime by the time they arrived
• They didn’t dare to move during the day‐Axis army was in the mountains above them
�•
•
•
Played cards and read during the day
Robert was with the 125th artillery battalion
They set up camp in abandoned farm houses
(100:55)North Africa (does a flashback of sorts on previous experiences of 34th Division)
• 34th infantry division
• Took a 40 and 8 across North Africa thru mountains to Bizerte
• 40 and 9 was a term used in WWI where they had a boxcar with 40 men and 8 horses
• Roberts division had over 40 guys and no horses
• 500 miles and 5 days to cross North Africa
• (1:02:00)34th infantry was a group of guys from the National Guard federalized into one unit
• 1st outfit sent to Europe in January 1942 after war was declared‐Landed in Ireland
• Parts developed into the First Rangers‐job was to sabotage the Germans
• Selected to invade North Africa
• Landed at Oran, Algiers, and Casablanca
• Fought French Vichy upon landing for a short time‐remained in Allie hands
• Moved eastward towards Tunis
• Met African Corp Rommel in Tunisia‐first combat for the 34th division
• (104:39)They were defeated at Fondouk Pass and Kasserine Pass
(106:10) Back at Anzio
• Dug hole outside of barn through the floor and into the barn to provide an easy exit incase they
were cornered into the barn. Built up sand bags on the outside of the hole.
• Slept in the barn or the house on the floor and listened to music on a radio
• Could hear ‘Big Bertha’ shells every night going off toward the beach front toward Ally ships
• June 1‐Cassino had fallen‐ they decided it was time to move on
• (1:11:10)General Clark wanted to conquer Rome‐received orders to conquer Germans leaving
Cassino instead‐Clark disobeyed orders and went into Rome
(1:12:20)Arrived at Rome
• June 4th or 5th‐Open city‐little damage
• 34th division not allowed to stop in Rome to celebrate‐had to keep Germans on the run
• Continued North West to Tyrrhenian Sea
• Stopped at Santa Marinella for the night
• (1:14:15)Robert receives Dear John letter
• Chased Germans up the west coast of Italy‐Pigeon Run
• Went thru Civitavecchia, Lake Horn, and Pisa where they met the 91st division
(1:15:50)Assigned to Florence Italy
• Boarded boat on the Arno River to Florence
�•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Drove Germans north out of Florence on highway 65 and 64 back into the mountains
Called their Jeeps “Peeps”
(1:18:40)Take Jeep up the mountain to position‐settle in for the winter
Overlooking Paloma Italy
Little fighting during next three months
Housed in with Italy family in a farm house
(1:21:00)Christmas‐boiled chestnuts over fire
(1:22:00)Brother‐in‐law‐ensign in the navy‐visits Robert while in Italy
(1:24:30)Drove up hill to observation point with brother‐in‐law‐destroyed Church
(1:25:20)Spring came‐Invasion of France had started
Mountain‐northern Apennines‐into Bologna and Po Valley
Partisans and civilians in Bologna waiting to greet them
Took highway 9 through Po Valley toward Piacenza‐couldn’t cross River due to bridge being out
(1:28:00)Retreated all the way back thru Odayna(?) then back north across river
Headed to Milan
(1:29:40)Milan Italy
• Partisans and civilians wanted to bring the guys to see Mussolini hanging from his feet
• Chased Germans out‐they were heading toward Switzerland and Austria
• Chased North to Ifraya?
(1:30:50)Ifraya? (Biella) Italy
• At the foot of the Alpines
• War had ended in Italy May 2 1945
• Settled a huge field where Germans could surrender and set down their guns
• General called Robert ‘Creekbomb’‐nickname‐told to direct the POW’s into the field and give
them directions
• Right at noon from all directions Germans surrendered
• Threw in P38, German Lugers and Machine Guns
• Robert took two pistols to home where he was staying and accidently shot one thru the roof
between two guys sleeping
• (1:36:40) 2 to 3 weeks later they were still surrendering‐total of 40,000 men surrendered
• Sent to San Remo‐in the Italian Riviera‐keep peace between Italians and French
• Villa King‐stayed for two months‐corresponded with a few girls from village even after war was
over
• (1:40:00)Letters from Luciana‐girl in Italy
• Went to Turin‐didn’t know why he was going‐Picked up old lady and daughter carrying olive oil
• Returned to camp and received orders to go to Udine‐by Trieste
(1:43:30) Udine Italy
�•
•
•
Kept peace between Italians and Yugoslavians‐both wanted Trieste
Received first ration of Russian Vodka‐half of canteen cup full‐nobody had vodka before‐all were
drunk
Considered an area for ribbon‐Robert hadn’t applied for it yet
(1:45:35)Chicken coop story
• South of Cassino by river
• Found chicken coup‐cleaned it out and slept in it to stay out of the rain‐rotated guard duty every
2 hrs.
(1:49:00)Naples
• Went by 40 and 8 back to Naples
• Roberts division chalked up over 600 days of combat time on the front line
• Robert had 430 days of combat time
• 19 days to get back to the states
(1:55:15)Back in the states
• Returned in November‐New Port
• Nobody there to meet them
• Sent by train back to their home state
Camp Atterbury Indiana‐mustering out stations
• First thing he was asked was ‘Would you like to sign here for extra duty?’ Robert said no.
• Gave Robert $5.10 for train fare back home to Richmond
• Snuck up on parents at home‐they didn’t know he was coming
(1:57:55)Effects of his time in the service
• Robert felt that his time in the service made him a better person and that he strives to be a
good person still to this day
(1:59:40)Richmond Indiana‐back home
• Took GI Bill and went to Earlham College‐Richmond Indiana‐Quaker school
• Went back to Purdue for half a semester‐met wife
• Got married‐went to San Francisco
• Joined wholesale hardware outfit
(2:02:40) Michigan
• Opened up a hardware store
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KriegbaumR
Title
A name given to the resource
Kriegbaum, Robert (Interview outline and video), 2007
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kreigbaum, Robert
Description
An account of the resource
Robert Kriegbaum is a veteran of the army who served during WW II. He was a forward artillery observer with the 34th Infantry Division. He spent much of his service in North Africa and Italy fighting on the front lines with many battalions. In all he served over 400 days on the front line and his unit spent over 600 days fighting. His record going thru Italy was thoroughly understand and remembered details of civilian and German POW's. Robert's unit was in Italy when the war ended and directed all surrendering German soldiers to camps. His service was impeccable and his memory of events vivid. He was also one of the men who fought near Monte Cassino Abbey against the Germans.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
United States. Army
Video recordings
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2007-12-19
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6c2e35ac81897b521aa4bf1f91b3e201.pdf
63ed62fcb62c800851573fd9a4ea2ba4
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Vietnam Era
Richard Kranenberg
(16:11)
Background Information (00:23)
Born on January 6th 1944 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. (00:25)
He has a brother and two sisters. (00:45)
He was the first in his family to serve in the military. (00:50)
Richard enlisted in the military because he was soon to be drafted. He picked the Navy as his
branch of service. (1:33)
Richard served in ROTC in high school and did not like marching. Because of this, he was pushed
toward the Navy. (2:30)
He enlisted on August 27th 1962. (2:55)
Miitary life (3:30)
Life was very structured and had a high emphasis on discipline. (4:00)
The food came as a shock to Richard. The men ate oatmeal and tomato sandwiches in the Navy.
(4:27)
The Navy placed a lot of emphasis on being clean and well organized. This was to prepare men
for ship life. (5:20)
The men did their laundry by hand. (6:22)
Overview of Service (7:15)
When he left Basic at Great Lakes Naval Base, he was sent to Patuxent River, Maryland where he
managed supplies. (7:15)
Richard was reassigned to San Francisco. From there he served 1 year on the USS Midway (an
aircraft carrier). (8:12)
During their first cruise, the men sailed toward Japan, Korea, China and Vietnam. (8:46)]
Richard Served on the first task force in Vietnam. (9:20)
The Midway was decommissioned. He was then placed on the USS Enterprise. (9:33)
There was one radio station, one television station, and poor beds aboard the USS Midway. The
USS Enterprise was much nicer and had air-conditioning. (10:11)
Richard wrote lots of letters while in the service. (10:55)
The amount of parting that the men had to do while in the service made it hard to hold close
friends. (11:47)
Thoughts on Service (12:16)
He did not have a difficult time in the service because he never saw combat. (12:22)
His service was extended for several months. He returned home in September of 1966. (13:07)
Adjusting back to home life was fairly simple. (14:08)
The military was a great positive impact on Richard’s life. (14:40)
�
His family was proud that he had served. (15:50)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KranenbergR1426V
Title
A name given to the resource
Kranenberg, Richard (Interview outline), 2012
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kranenberg, Richard
Description
An account of the resource
Richard Kranenberg, born on January 6th 1944 in Grand Rapids Michigan, served in the U.S. Navy as a supply man between 1962 and 1966. Richard served in ROTC in high school which prepared him for service. Throughout the course of his service, Richard served aboard the USS Midway as well as the USS Enterprise.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Nitzche, Nicole (Interviewer)
Caledonia High School (Caledonia, Mich.)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Navy
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2012-05-25
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b5d52f7e559114220208b1f67d52ba9a.mp4
4de4ce94c37644a09b67eadf625f209e
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4b6e5e3463f1a50ba0eed24d00952dd9.pdf
4fdab58bac2154fc1cfe5fdeae21d7d6
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
WWII
Louis Kramer
Length of interview (1:00:07)
Pre-Enlistment
• Kramer was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in December 1925. (00:09)
• He attended Grand Rapids Public Schools until 9th grade then moved to Cedar
Springs, Michigan where he finished high school. (00:30)
• His father worked for a furniture maker as a shipping clerk. (00:44)
• His family lived o a farm in Cedar Springs, Michigan so they could subsistence
farm.
• Mr. Kramer heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor while he was at school. (1:30)
• He remarked about his expectations and exposure to media during the war. (2:00)
• June 1st 1944 he graduated high school. (2:40)
• June 2nd he is assigned to the United States Army. (3:55)
Enlistment
• Kramer was assigned to Fort Sheridan, Illinois for induction. (4:30)
• From induction he proceeded to Camp Blanding, Florida for Basic Training.
(4:35) His cousin trained at Camp Blanding as well. (5:00) He also worked at the
message center on post. (5:30)
• From June through August he was part of a rifle company. (5:50)
• He received training for messaging and then was transferred to a new group.
(6:20) Further, he comments on receiving basic weapons training at this post.
(7:05)
1st Duty Station
• In October 1944 Kramer is 18 years old and is sent to Camp Gruber, Oklahoma
where he joins the 22nd Infantry Regiment, 42nd “Rainbow” Division; he serves at
this location for 3 weeks. (7:52)
• Comments that the Rainbow Division was named by General MacArthur. (9:00)
• Learns that his rifle company is being shipped overseas, and he will not be
serving as a support unit. (9:25)
• He is transferred to Camp Kilmer New Jersey where he boards the USS
Alexander. (10:12)
2nd Duty Station/Overseas Transport
• The USS Alexander joins a convoy with liberty ships destined for France. (10:40)
• He discusses the ship and the food on board. (11:04)
• Comments on the Thanksgiving meal. (11:35) He mentions the preponderance of
seasickness and the overall good weather. (11:55)
• He recalls the accommodations on the ship. (12:55) Additionally, he speaks of the
men on board. (14:05) His journey on the ship took 15 days. (14:40)
3rd Duty Station
�•
Kramer lands at Marseilles, France. He describes the condition of the city as he
arrives. (15:00)
• In December, Kramer was transferred to CP2, where he camped in tents. (16:00)
On the 15th or 16th of December he was transferred to a new location on boxcars.
(16:30)
• Talks of the Maginot Line and Strasbourg, France, where he spends Christmas.
(17:11) He describes the pillboxes on the Maginot Line. (17:30)
• He joins the 7th Army and is assigned to a unit called Task Force Linden. (18:00)
He further discusses the movement and replacements of other divisions. (19:00)
• He recounts arriving to the front on the 15th of December as the Battle of the
Bulge is happening. (19:48) They are moved at night. (20:15) He guarded an
electric generating station. (20:41) He discusses combat. (20:56) He mentions
spending New Years guarding General Linden’s headquarters. (21:13)
4th Duty Station
• Kramer speaks of the conditions in Strausberg, Germany including field hospitals.
(21:48) He also mentions the civilian population. (22:27)
• He discusses Operation Nordwind on the 4th and 5th of January. (22:57)
5th Duty Station
• On January 21st, the line was pulled back and he volunteered to stay behind; he
had just turned 19 years old. (23:26) He rode a truck to company B’s area and
recovered his field packs. (24:50) He arrives beyond at prominent river. (25:28)
• On the 24th of January the Germans attack Neuburg and at Schwetzingen (?).
(25:51) The Germans get through the American lines. (26:30)
• He stays in a barn while on march. (27:13) He described combat in the woods at
night. (27:44) He ‘hits the ground’ in the snow. (28:50) 3 German machine guns
fire. (29:30) He described casualties and yelling (30:00) he started shooting and
his gun malfunctioned (30:41) Mortar artillery is missing its target and he yells
for them to change their position (31:44)
• Germans are yelling, “comrade,” and George Jackson kills the German machine
gunners. (32:54)
• Kramer returns to town. (33:55) Losses from combat are counted. (34:15) Many
Germans try to surrender during the fire fight. (35:00) Dead German soldiers are
carried out of the field. (35:40) By January 25th there are 237 casualties. (36:45)
Kramer’s unit receives a citation. (37:05)
6th Duty Station
• He is taken off the line and is waiting for the rest of the division. (36:47) While
waiting he receives more training. (37:05)
• On the 14th of March, a ‘push’ is ordered. (37:20) Company B is sent to the front
on March 15th. (37:50) Kramer says Dean Finley is shot in the stomach. (38:35)
1st Platoon moves. (39:13)
• He describes his assignment to carry a BAR. (39:40) He discusses his field gear.
(40:36) Kramer is shot and BAR stops all but one bullet. (41:03) He mentions his
attempts at first aid with his knife. (41:50) The north side of the hill is attacked.
(42:35)
�•
Kramer talks about his experience at the aid station. (42:56) While at the aid
station he recalls yelling at General Linden without knowing who he was. (43:20)
Mr. Kramer talks about German POWs carrying him out of the aid station.
(44:05) He remembers meeting a German who lived in Chicago, Illinois for 5
years. (45:00) He talks about an ambulance ride. (45:26)
th
7 Duty Station
• He moved to the 11th Field Hospital (MASH). (45:38) He had a surgery. (46:20)
He received a new kind of procedure and talks about a chaplain. (47:48) He talks
about his recovery and his wounds reopening. (49:37) His wounds became
infected and required further treatment. (50:34) Kramer mentions being moved to
the 36th General Hospital in Dijon, France. (51:40) He remained at the 11th
General Hospital from the 25th of April until the 15th of March. (52:00)
8th Duty Station
• He is moved to Paris, France by C-47 and remains at an evacuation hospital for 3
days. (52:09) He discusses his route back to the United States in a C-54. (53:00)
He describes being at the Schick General Veterans Hospital for 2 to 3 weeks.
(53:29)
th
9 Duty Station
• He is transferred to Fort Custer in Battle Creek, Michigan until October. (54:00)
th
10 Duty Station
• Mr. Kramer was transferred to San Antonio, Texas. (54:20)
• He describes his duties on base and his search for a new assignment. (54:30) He
mentions his job at a bowling alley as a pin setter. (55:51) He is sent to Brook
General Hospital in April. (56:14) He is assigned to the section 8 ward. (56:50)
He is sent to Fort Sheridan, Illinois where he is discharged. (57:26)
Post-Enlistment
• He described using the G.I. Bill to attend Western Michigan University to study
United States history and science. (57:50) He retired at age 65. (58:30)
• He discusses the effects of his time in the service. (58:55) He explained that his
experience caused him to become an adult over night with many responsibilities.
(59:26) He was married in 1949 and had children. (59:32)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KramerL
Title
A name given to the resource
Kramer, Louis (Interview outline and video), 2008
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kramer, Louis
Description
An account of the resource
Louis Kramer served in the 42nd Infantry Division in the US Army during World War II. His unit was shipped to France late in 1944, and joined the 7th Army in Alsace. Kramer's unit fought near Strasbourg during the Battle of the Bulge and Operation Nordwind, and participated in the counterattacks that followed and in the campaign into Germany. Kramer was wounded in March 1945, and out of action for the rest of the war.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Byron Area Historic Museum (Byron Center, Mich.)
BCTV
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Army
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2008-03-04
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/40ea23c8ac1c1a1dcf538dce6e6d6093.mp4
cf2e91fb7071a73f5badb4608b2d63b3
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7619aebb282c6095414385dd22280a45.pdf
a1aa785ea3fa23c5d56893a831842179
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Name of Interviewee: Donald M. Kramer
Name of War: Vietnam War
2 of 2
Interview Length Disc #3: (00:40:35)
Interview Length Disc #4: (01:28:40)
Disk 3 (00:40:25)
(00:05:04) Vietnam
The First Day in Vietnam
The plane landed at an air base and they were already under attack when getting off the
plane
The advisors were shown maps of areas of the country and told where not to go
Don worked in the Southern tip blocking supplies and transportation
Don was ordered to stop transportation of supplies through the water ways
He worked with many Vietnamese on this project and was always worried that some of
them would turn on him
He took language classes to learn the dialect, but also worked with interpreters
(00:07:06)
Fire-fights occurred along rivers often and unexpectedly
(00:09:55) Fire Fights
There were many times when they had to beach their boats and chase the enemy into the
jungle
They sometimes ran into farming areas, but usually the enemy would hide in
underground tunnels and they would throw grenades in them
(00:17:18) Water Taxis
Transportation along rivers was often stopped and searched
He once had to interrogate some people and had to shoot a young pregnant woman
because he thought she was reaching for a weapon. (00:18:34)
They found two grenades strapped to her legs
He cut open her stomach and delivered the baby, whom he gave to a local villager
(00:22:41) The Base is Attacked
Don was near the water when their base was attacked by heavy fire
There were many men around him that were shot and died
It was hard working with the Vietnamese because they were always changing sides
Don got a 15-caliber machine gun and killed everyone swimming away in the water
(00:26:58) Ambush
�
Don was going to prepare an ambush, but did not have enough men
He got some help from the Army, but one of the men was high
Don told his sergeant that they could not work with the man, but the sergeant did not do
anything
The man on drugs kept following them around trying to go on the operation with them
Don told the man that he could not go and the man pointed an M-16 in Don’s face
Don pulled out his 45 and shot the man in the leg, shattering his femur bone
(00:30:12) Army SOS in the Forest
The Army called for help and because it was under heavy attack
They took a boat upriver to assist and the Vietnamese did not hear or see them coming
Some of the boats had twin engines and could go up to 70 mph
They ran their boats alongside the Army boats and attacked the Vietnamese, surprising
them while the others escaped
They got about 60 bullet holes in their boat and one of his gunners was wounded
(00:37:11) The New Doctor
They had been under attack and the new doctor was not properly trained
Seeing all the bodies devastated him
Don had to help the doctor work with all the bodies from the attack
(00:40:25) Shows Items obtained from Vietnam
Disc Four (1:28:40)
(00:40:58) Operations in Thailand and Laos
Don was hand-picked for a special operation in the area
He was presented with a jade cigarette case in 1972 for being an instructor of guerilla war
tactics from the Royal Navy Force
He also received gifts from the Laotian government for his help
(00:43:00) Another Attack in Vietnam
A little Vietnamese boy had lost a leg in an attack
The bleeding would not stop, so Don put gun powder on the wound and cauterized it
Don was older than most of the men he worked with and was viewed as a father figure
(00:48:25) A Call from Saigon
Don thought he was being sent home, but he was asked to take part in a special operation
He worked with 6 other Naval Advisors
They were all brought into a room full of maps and pictures and told to memorize
everything
They were sent to Thailand and Laos when the war had started slowing down
(00:50:11) Bangkok
Don met the other Naval Advisors in Bangkok
�
They needed to help build a Navy for Laos because they had no protection along their
coast
Don worked secretly at night and bought many things off the black market
They worked with the elite from the Laotian Army
This area was much less dangerous than in Vietnam and he could actually sleep at night
(1:01:03) The Trip to Vietnam
Don had to leave half way through his mission in Laos and go back to Vietnam
A mortar round had come in and hit a wood structure near him and he was wounded
He now has 4 pins in his lower spine from his injuries and he had broken both his wrists
Don has braces on both his legs and has extensive nerve and muscle damage
(1:05:01) Back to the US
After the war veterans were treated bad; they were spit on, yelled at, and beaten
Don spent about 2 years in military hospitals for therapy on his spine and legs (1:08:50)
In 1974 Don moved to Michigan, but there were no jobs
Don said that fathers were competing with their sons for jobs pumping gas
He began working for a brass polishing shop
Don was denied retirement and pushed out of the Navy on medical leave 6 months before
he was supposed to retire
(01:15:20) The Post Office
Don got a job at the Post Office and for the first couple of years there, many people
would not associate with him because they thought he was a crazy veteran
They all got along better after a few years
(01:17:03) Retirement
Don got associated with the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans and Military Order of the
Purple Heart
In February of 2005 he retired to spend more time at the Veterans Home
Don speaks in a lot of schools about Vietnam and Veterans affairs
Don has 4 children and 10 grandchildren
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KramerD2
Title
A name given to the resource
Kramer, Donald M. (Interview outline and video, 2 of 2), 2006
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kramer, Donald M.
Description
An account of the resource
Don Kramer was born in Gary, Indiana on April 3, 1943. Don got his GED when he was 17, got married, and also joined the Navy. Don worked in the Caribbean, Europe, Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos. Don was involved in many fire fights while in Vietnam and was often under heavy attack. After being badly wounded in a mortar attack in 1972, Don was discharged from the Navy 6 months short of retirement and spent 2 years in military hospitals receiving physical therapy. He retired from his job in 2005 and now spends most of his time at the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Collins Sr, Charles E. (Interviewer)
Collins, Carol (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
United States. Navy
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2006-12-04
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e30dfb72a4f3a44e609dc4a2a9883066.mp4
fa83d1fa836d1eb7d9e3609bae0ecfee
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/116397846dbf3885556398fe62f737a3.pdf
86cfbf6c352f4009bcb850395eec8950
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Name of Interviewee: Donald M. Kramer
Name of War: Vietnam War
Interview Length Disc #1: (01:06:30)
Interview Length Disc#2: (01:51:40)
Interview Length Disc #3: (00:40:35)
Interview Length Disc #4: (01:28:40)
Disc One (01:11:41)
(00:00:25) Background Information
Don was born in Gary, Indiana on April 3, 1943
His family was very close when he was young and he has many good memories
They were a lower-middle class family and his parents had to work a lot
His father worked in Gary Steel Mills and his mother worked for Amco Window
Washing (02:55)
He went to a Catholic elementary school that was very hard for him and he got in many
fights. Further discusses the good times of his childhood—dancing & family.
Don got his first real job when he was 9 years old at a grocery store
When he was 12 he got a paper route and had to deliver 110 papers every day before
school (13:12)
(00:14:30) High School
There were many race issues at Don’s high school
Don could not afford to take a bus to school and had to walk every day
He started playing basketball and made many new friends, yet he still did not like school
and got bad grades
Don joined the Navy before his senior year and got his GED when he was 17 (16:58)
His dad was in the Army during World War Two and had told him that the Navy would
be a better choice than the Army
(00:19:25) Joining the Navy 1960
(019:45) Was recruited out of Gary, Indiana.
Don went through basic training at Great Lakes Naval Academy in Illinois
There was no draft at the time because so many people were volunteering for the service
The drill sergeant was a giant and told them that they were going to be miserable
Don stated that the “service is the biggest individual change you could make in your
whole life.”
Don had to get all of his hair cut off and the men had to wash their clothes on their hands
and knees in the shower (25:03)
The men had lots of pressure about completing their class work
(00:29:34) Norfolk, Virginia
�
Don was sent on an Attack Transport ship with 1000 marines to Virginia
There were many giant ships in the area and Don had never seen anything like it
His MOS was radar school, but he found it very boring (31:08)
He began working on ships instead and really liked being able to work outside
Don also enjoyed being out on the ocean when everything was calm
They saw many sharks and shot all of them; they even ate some of them
(00:40:44) The Deck Department
Don was working on maintaining the ship, which was a luxury liner that had been
converted in World War Two
Many dolphins would jump through the engine parts and get hurt, also damaging the ship.
Don learned about nautical knots, different types of ships, and worked on painting and
repairs
(00:45:10) Don’s Wife
Don was married and had one daughter when he joined the Navy
He met his wife in Gary and did not get along well with her parents
They got married when they were only 17 and they had his daughter when he was 18
They were living in Navy housing
Don was gone on average of 6 months a year and worked on the port for about 3 months
a year
They had 4 children together and they were all born premature (59:52)
(01:01:25) The Caribbean
They took a ship through the Caribbean for six months, but had stopped in Charleston,
North Carolina to pick up about 1,000 Marines to be transported there. Went around the
Caribean—West Indies & other places to show the U.S. was there to help and not solely a
war monger.
Don worked on shore helping to build infrastructure
He was always excited to get back home and see his family
Disc Two (1:51:40)
(01:06:31) Attack Transport Ships
Don served on 3 different ships while in the Navy
Each ship carried up to 1,000 Marines and cargo; the ship maintained a fleet that was
ready to go to war at any time
(01:09:03) The Bay of Pigs
They were on a ship and moved up along the Cuban coast while the US was trying to
overthrow Castro
Don had been working on the USS Rockbridge and was then transferred on to the
Fremont for 5 years (1:09:58)
(01:13:15) Europe
�
Don headed to Europe on the Fremont
They traveled through the Mediterranean and he went on many tours of Europe
Don traveled to Italy, Spain, France, the Dutch West Indies, and Africa (1:14:25)
He got involved in boxing matches while on the Fremont
Don got into 21 fights and only lost 1 to a Marine
He also worked on the USS Monrovia, which was the smallest attack transport ship
(01:19:15)
(01:22:53) Italy
The Italians had once been nice to the US because of the help received during and after
World War Two
Yet when men from the Navy went there on leave, they were attacked by Italians and
there were also many Russians there influencing them
(01:27:09) Back to the US
Don had 10 days on leave to spend with his family and then he had to go back to working
on the ship
His wife was always very sad when he had to leave again
They always left for the Caribbean or Europe to make sure that the areas were always
ready for war (1:27:31)
(01:28:54) His admiral diverted his squadron and steamed back to the Mediterranean to
replace another squadron.. Tried to come to the aid of the Puebla’s crew however
circumstances prevented them from rescuing them from torture. As a result of this
instance, many officers lost their commands.
(01:32:01) The Cuban Missile Crisis
o
Don was on board the Command ship for 7 days
They prevented a Russian sub from entering Cuban waters
Castro had cut off the power and water supply to Guantanamo Bay
The Navy Seabees went in to build a water distilling plant and a power plant
(01:32:14) The USS Intrepid
Don was working on safety operations on the ship while plains were landing on the
carrier
There were many accidents that happened during peace-time
(01:35:00) Assassination of JFK
Don had been on board a ship headed to Europe when he heard the news
Every US military installation in the world was on red alert because they thought the
Russians had killed the president
(01:36:16) Shore Duty in Meridian, Mississippi
Don had to escort someone from the ship that was court marshaled for grand larceny
(01:37:41)
His whole family went with him to Mississippi
�
There was a very large air station and Don was put in an office working with a disaster
control team (01:39:23)
He was in charge of restructuring the entire program from 1400 to 1600 employees
because a lot of positions were repetitive
Don was then working with the military police and the state police in a variety of
capacities. (01:41:19)
(01:43:22) Training for Vietnam
Don volunteered to be part of a Naval Advisory Group
It was an elite group that went through difficult training called Sierra training for
survival, resistance, and escape (1:44:30)
1/3 of the men could not make it through the training
They went through the types of torture that was used on POWs in Vietnam
It was very rough and his jaw almost broke (1:49:25)
The training was to see who would be able to survive if captured
They had to eat blind-folded; it was like they were in a concentration camp
Disk 3 (00:40:25)
(00:05:04) Vietnam
The First Day in Vietnam
The plane landed at an air base and they were already under attack when getting off the
plane
The advisors were shown maps of areas of the country and told where not to go
Don worked in the Southern tip blocking supplies and transportation
Don was ordered to stop transportation of supplies through the water ways
He worked with many Vietnamese on this project and was always worried that some of
them would turn on him
He took language classes to learn the dialect, but also worked with interpreters
(00:07:06)
Fire-fights occurred along rivers often and unexpectedly
(00:09:55) Fire Fights
There were many times when they had to beach their boats and chase the enemy into the
jungle
They sometimes ran into farming areas, but usually the enemy would hide in
underground tunnels and they would throw grenades in them
(00:17:18) Water Taxis
Transportation along rivers was often stopped and searched
He once had to interrogate some people and had to shoot a young pregnant woman
because he thought she was reaching for a weapon. (00:18:34)
They found two grenades strapped to her legs
He cut open her stomach and delivered the baby, whom he gave to a local villager
�(00:22:41) The Base is Attacked
Don was near the water when their base was attacked by heavy fire
There were many men around him that were shot and died
It was hard working with the Vietnamese because they were always changing sides
Don got a 15-caliber machine gun and killed everyone swimming away in the water
(00:26:58) Ambush
Don was going to prepare an ambush, but did not have enough men
He got some help from the Army, but one of the men was high
Don told his sergeant that they could not work with the man, but the sergeant did not do
anything
The man on drugs kept following them around trying to go on the operation with them
Don told the man that he could not go and the man pointed an M-16 in Don’s face
Don pulled out his 45 and shot the man in the leg, shattering his femur bone
(00:30:12) Army SOS in the Forest
The Army called for help and because it was under heavy attack
They took a boat upriver to assist and the Vietnamese did not hear or see them coming
Some of the boats had twin engines and could go up to 70 mph
They ran their boats alongside the Army boats and attacked the Vietnamese, surprising
them while the others escaped
They got about 60 bullet holes in their boat and one of his gunners was wounded
(00:37:11) The New Doctor
They had been under attack and the new doctor was not properly trained
Seeing all the bodies devastated him
Don had to help the doctor work with all the bodies from the attack
(00:40:25) Shows Items obtained from Vietnam
Disc Four (1:28:40)
(00:40:58) Operations in Thailand and Laos
Don was hand-picked for a special operation in the area
He was presented with a jade cigarette case in 1972 for being an instructor of guerilla war
tactics from the Royal Navy Force
He also received gifts from the Laotian government for his help
(00:43:00) Another Attack in Vietnam
A little Vietnamese boy had lost a leg in an attack
The bleeding would not stop, so Don put gun powder on the wound and cauterized it
Don was older than most of the men he worked with and was viewed as a father figure
(00:48:25) A Call from Saigon
Don thought he was being sent home, but he was asked to take part in a special operation
�
He worked with 6 other Naval Advisors
They were all brought into a room full of maps and pictures and told to memorize
everything
They were sent to Thailand and Laos when the war had started slowing down
(00:50:11) Bangkok
Don met the other Naval Advisors in Bangkok
They needed to help build a Navy for Laos because they had no protection along their
coast
Don worked secretly at night and bought many things off the black market
They worked with the elite from the Laotian Army
This area was much less dangerous than in Vietnam and he could actually sleep at night
(1:01:03) The Trip to Vietnam
Don had to leave half way through his mission in Laos and go back to Vietnam
A mortar round had come in and hit a wood structure near him and he was wounded
He now has 4 pins in his lower spine from his injuries and he had broken both his wrists
Don has braces on both his legs and has extensive nerve and muscle damage
(1:05:01) Back to the US
After the war veterans were treated bad; they were spit on, yelled at, and beaten
Don spent about 2 years in military hospitals for therapy on his spine and legs (1:08:50)
In 1974 Don moved to Michigan, but there were no jobs
Don said that fathers were competing with their sons for jobs pumping gas
He began working for a brass polishing shop
Don was denied retirement and pushed out of the Navy on medical leave 6 months before
he was supposed to retire
(01:15:20) The Post Office
Don got a job at the Post Office and for the first couple of years there, many people
would not associate with him because they thought he was a crazy veteran
They all got along better after a few years
(01:17:03) Retirement
Don got associated with the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans and Military Order of the
Purple Heart
In February of 2005 he retired to spend more time at the Veterans Home
Don speaks in a lot of schools about Vietnam and Veterans affairs
Don has 4 children and 10 grandchildren
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
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RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KramerD
Title
A name given to the resource
Kramer, Donald M. (Interview outline and video, 1 of 2), 2006
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kramer, Donald M.
Description
An account of the resource
Don Kramer was born in Gary, Indiana on April 3, 1943. Don got his GED when he was 17, got married, and also joined the Navy. Don worked in the Caribbean, Europe, Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos. Don was involved in many fire fights while in Vietnam and was often under heavy attack. After being badly wounded in a mortar attack in 1972, Don was discharged from the Navy 6 months short of retirement and spent 2 years in military hospitals receiving physical therapy. He retired from his job in 2005 and now spends most of his time at the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Collins Sr, Charles E. (Interviewer)
Collins, Carol (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
United States. Navy
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2006-12-04
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
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application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/acd038172e18bcd1123cb0a3c648fbac.mp4
257387d169c3b9900616c49f4e25307f
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7202d58e1f1676eabcbf4fe062f83b61.pdf
78e9be9ee2cda2a54f2bdc968fb1b282
PDF Text
Text
Bernard Kraai
United States Army
World War II – European Theatre
1:17:00
00:07 Introduction:
- Born in Grand Haven, Michigan in 1919.
- Graduated from high school in 1936.
- His father worked at a piano factory.
- During the depression, his father lost his job, so his mother assisted financially by
baking bread and taking in the wash.
- He worked for Western Union while in high school.
- He also worked in a shipping department of a factory right out of high school
until 1942.
- He worked at Keller Tool Company making pneumatic tools for the war efforts.
- There was a major gender shift in the workforce during the war, including in the
factory at Keller Tool.
- He felt pressure to enlist in the military before he was drafted.
- He does not remember any of the women having any problems while working in
the factory.
- Single and married women worked in the factory.
- Received his draft notice in March 1944.
- Had to go to Detroit, Michigan for his physical.
- There were many men who did not pass the physical.
06:10 Basic Training:
- Received his notice to report in June 1944.
- Went to Fort Sheridan, Illinois to receive clothing and equipment.
- He remained at Fort Sheridan for 4-5 days.
- He was then sent to Camp Croft, South Carolina by train.
- The train ride took 2 days.
- The drill instructors were good to the men.
- Half of the training period was sent in one battalion, and then sent to another to
finish the training.
- Basic training consisted of a lot of exercise as well as weapons training.
- He was trained on an M-1 Rifle.
- He had no problem with the training, he felt the food was good and the officers
were polite.
- Spent 17 weeks in South Carolina.
10:30 Voyage Overseas:
- After basic, he had a 10-day furlough.
- He was then sent to Fort Meade, Maryland, for processing.
- He was then sent to New York to load the Queen Elizabeth to go overseas.
- The ship did not need an escort across the ocean. There was an air escort for one
day out of New York and one day before England.
�-
The voyage took four days.
He landed in Scotland.
They could only have two meals a day because there were so many troops aboard.
He crossed the ocean in November.
Once they arrived, they took a train to Glasgow, and then to Southampton
England.
They remained in Southampton in four days.
14:50 Moving to the 80th Division:
- Was part of a replacement unit in France.
- Took a train to the 80th division.
- The 80th division was in the south of France and was supposed to go to the East to
Germany.
- The replacements trained for a few days with the troops before heading out.
- The division had taken many losses at the battle at the Moselle River.
- The company had been replaced over six times, since they made their way into
France, until the end of the war.
- He joined a mortar unit.
- He was the gunner in his unit, with a 60 millimeter mortar that weighed 42 lbs. He
had to carry the entire mortar through France.
18:45 Battle of the Bulge:
- Did not know exactly what was about to happen.
- The weather was not bad when they began to move towards the battle.
- The men traveled to a small town in Luxembourg and stayed in the homes of
residents.
- They walked from Luxembourg onward.
- Made first contact with the enemy a day or two before Christmas.
- The Germans fired one shell in the troops’ direction; this is when he realized this
was really war.
- On Christmas Eve, the men could hear Silent Night being played over a
loudspeaker.
- On Christmas, they started to move into position.
- The day after Christmas, they began their move towards Bastogne.
- They began taking mortar fire from the Germans.
- At one point, he got down into a depression from a tank.
- He was hit in the head by a piece of shrapnel, it missed his helmet and went into
the side of his head, and it did not penetrate his skull.
- He was unconscious, and had a concussion.
- A medic came to him, bandaged his head and he was sent to the aid station a
couple of miles away.
- The field hospital was set up in tents.
- He was laid up for 8 or 9 days due to his wounds.
- He went straight to his unit after being released from the hospital.
- On the way back to the front, he received a 1903 rifle, which was more accurate
than the M-1.
�-
More replacements had joined his division while he was in the hospital, due to
heavy losses during the attacks.
30:00 Movement through France and Second Injury:
- While moving through France, Luxembourg and Belgium, the towns were
basically deserted.
- The men spent many nights outside in the snow.
- To keep warm, the men would wear two pair of long underwear, two sweaters,
field jackets, and overcoats to sleep.
- There were very few times that the men could bathe or wash their clothes.
- The food was scarce while moving, they would live on K rations and C rations.
- The men would eat the chickens left in the towns to eat.
- While the men were beginning their push toward the Rhine, the men traveled
through pitch-black conditions. The men began crossing a swamp and came to a
fence. Once the men cut the fence, a parachute flare erupted.
- Nothing happened after the flare erupted.
- They came across a group of German troops, who didn’t fire at the men at all. The
Germans were then taken prisoner.
- They came into contact with more Germans, who shot large mortars at the allies.
He took a piece of shrapnel in the arm after a mortar exploded after hitting a tree.
- His injury required surgery due to the amount of debris in the wound.
- He took a plane to Paris and remained in the hospital for seven weeks, until the
end of the war.
- Recalls the hospital being very modern at the time.
- Toward the end of his hospitalization, he took part in physical exercises to
maintain his fitness.
- The mobile injured would sneak out of the hospital to go to downtown Paris.
- There were also organized trips for the troops, including a trip to the Notre Dame
Cathedral.
- The relationship between the Parisians and soldiers; many of the soldiers did not
speak French.
- The soldiers were told not to mix with the civilians.
- He was in uptown Paris on the day the war ended in Europe.
- There were many people walking around with a bottle of wine on V-E day, but
not a large celebration that he saw.
47:00 Germany and Yugoslavia:
- Returned to his division soon after the end of the war.
- His division was on the Italian border in Austria.
- They were ready to move into Yugoslavia in case of attack by Tito.
- The German Fourth Army came up from Italy and surrendered their equipment to
the 80th division.
- Many of the men in the 80th division took many weapons from a large pile of
equipment in a field.
- The German military was still in full uniform, and were of regular military age.
�-
-
There were rumors of German SS troops in the mountains surrounding the 80th
division ready to shoot the allied troops.
They moved into Germany after Austria.
They were supposed to guard the Radio City Rockettes for two days while they
were in Germany entertaining the troops.
They were stationed in middle Germany for about two weeks, and then moved
into Bavaria for occupation duty.
He was placed into a civilian home with another soldier that could speak German.
The son of the homeowners came home from the Russian front and was given the
job of town policeman.
The people he stayed with were very nice, and they would do favors for them in
return for their kindness.
They found out about the atom bomb from the German civilians. At first, the
soldiers didn’t fully believe it until they heard the news from military men.
He tried out for a choir with a chaplain, and moved daily from town to town to
perform.
Once the chaplain left, the chorus disbanded, but division headquarters wanted
entertainment for the troops so they got back together again.
They then lived in hotels while they traveled and performed.
At one point, they performed for Generals Eisenhower and Patton.
While traveling, he was able to tour castles in Bavaria and traveled into
Czechoslovakia.
1:00:30 Czechoslovakia:
- There were no fears of Soviet occupation while he was in Czechoslovakia.
- He lived very well in the area, they lived in a hotel, and had a barber cut their hair
once a week and shave them every day.
- He found out that he had word be sent home on a emergency return. He had no
idea why he was being sent home at the time.
- Once he went to the division headquarters, he was told to head home.
- He wanted to go to Munich to the 3rd army headquarters to find out why he was
being sent home. They had no more information than anyone else.
- He took a train to Paris, contacted the Air Corps to see if he could take a plane
home, however it would have taken over a week.
- He met with another soldier who was trying to get home, they went to the coast
and got aboard a ship to head home.
- Once he arrived in the states, he found that his father was dying of cancer.
- Because his father was not going to die imminently, he waited for a week to be
discharged.
- Once he was discharged, he received a travel ticket that was supposed to pay his
way home, but once they arrived in Indianapolis, they found Greyhound was on
strike.
- They took a small bus to South Bend, Indiana, and another to Benton Harbor,
Michigan.
- The five guys heading for Michigan started hitchhiking.
- They flagged down a taxi that brought the men north to Muskegon.
�1:08:00 Returning Home and other memories:
- He returned to work at Keller Tool Company.
- He divorced his first wife, and married his second, who he is still with.
- He became a supervisor at Keller and remained there until he retired.
- Many of the German soldiers would wear American uniforms during combat.
- The company that he worked for gave all of the men who served a large book to
record their military memories in.
- He has served on the honor guard for 25 years.
�����������������������������������������������������
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KraaiB
Title
A name given to the resource
Kraai, Bernard (Interview outline and video), 2008
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kraai, Bernard
Description
An account of the resource
Bernard Kraai was drafted into the US Army in 1944, and served in Europe with the 80th Division in late 1944 and 1945. His unit participated in the Battle of the Bulge and the advance into Germany. He was wounded twice, but rejoined his unit each time, and at the end of the war his unit marched into Austria, to the Yugoslav frontier, and eventually into Czechoslovakia. After the war ended, he joined a choir recruited from his unit and toured the region with them until he was discharged.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
WKTV (Kentwood, Mich.)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Army
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2008-06-30
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a498043ee4b6ef6f075ca9075f19afb3.mp4
3115c2663e480a6c5b9c877a3ae4475b
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/97b26097aa6649c22a20c9b0897c1f8f.pdf
ad8441662756e52ad81a9aff83e866af
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Nickoli Kotchka
(00: 29:25)
(0:45) The early years (West Virginia)
• Born July 26, 1915
• Lived in East Gulf, West Virginia which was a coal mining town
o Father was a coal miner
• Attended school in a two-story building that had a total of 8 classrooms
• Moved from West Virginia to a farm in Michigan
o Attended 7th grade in Michigan
(3:35) The Michigan farm
• 40 acre farm
• 2-3 cows and some chickens, pigs, horses
o Sold the cream and eggs in town
o Horses were used to pull the plows—there were no tractors back then!
(5:30) Life in Michigan
• Mom had cancer so Nick dropped out of school to help his dad take care of the
farm and his mom
• Used to go to the 7th Street Drug Store in Grand Rapids for medicine for his mom
o A Polish family ran the store which is why Nick’s family went there (since
they were Polish too)
o The adults would often talk in Polish
Nick spoke both English and Polish
(7:15) The Depression
• Lived off the farm and vegetable gardens
(8:35) Jobs
• Worked at Grand Rapids Brass for 2 years and then went to war
(9:05) Pearl Harbor
• Heard about it on the news and heard FDR’s speech
o Nick always listened to the news
(9:45) Draft
• Drafted into the Army in 1942
• Went to Africa and then on to Sicily
• Basic Training took place at Camp Horner, Texas
(11:15) Italy
• Germans were staked out in the mountains
• Nick’s division went around behind the Germans
• Nick’s division did not suffer too many casualties
• From Italy went to France and then on to Austria
(15:35) The end of the war (Austria)
• Stopped in Austria because the war was over
�•
•
In Austria, Kotchka saw lots of German soldiers marching and surrendering
Did not see any fighting in Austria since the war was over but did see fighting in
Italy and France
o Did not see any fighting while in Africa either
• Kotchka never was injured, “never got a scratch”
(18:37) After the war
• Stayed in Europe all summer
• Did not have to do anything
o Did a little bit of sight seeing but mostly slept
(19:40) The ship ride home
• Traveled home by ship
o Kotchka never got sea sick but he was one of the lucky few. He saw
practically everyone else on his ship get sick.
(20:20) Home
• Worked at Sparta Foundry for 30 years
o Making piston rings, etc.
(21:25) Marriage
• Got married in 1947
o Kotchka knew her family growing up however they did not start dating or
taking interest in one another until after Kotchka returned from war
• Had 3 sons – Bill, Tom, and Joe
o One set of twins and then another boy
• Plane Crash involving Joe
o Joe was going to Florida for a bowling tournament with a friend
o Left Sparta Airport at 8 am but while flying over Tennessee, they
encounter a terrible storm
o While flying at 200 feet, the storm flipped the plane over and the plane
crashed
o Both Joe and the friend lost their lives in the crash
(24:50) Grandchildren
• Has 7 grandchildren
o 6 girls and 1 boy
(25:40) How the Army Impacted his Life
• Kotchka felt the service was like a vacation since he never got a scratch while
serving (although there were a few close calls).
(26:28) Food in the Army
• Food was pretty good
o Lots of spam
(27:50) Letters from home
• Received quite a few letters from home during the war
• Still has some of the letters
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KotchkaN
Title
A name given to the resource
Kotchka, Nickoli (Interview outline and video), 2007
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kotchka, Nickoli
Description
An account of the resource
Nickoli Kotchka is a World War II Veteran who served in the United States Army from 1942 to 1945 in Africa, Italy, France, and Austria as a member of the 15th Infantry 3rd Division. Soon after Pearl Harbor, Kotchka was drafted into the Army and sent to Europe. Kotchka discusses his time in Europe and some of the fighting in Italy, as well as his life after the war.
Contributor
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Collins Sr., Charles E. (Interviewer)
Collins, Carol (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Video recordings
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
United States. Army
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Language
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eng
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2007-06-25
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
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application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9021a04ec1ec2c1bcf81cb8165f71d6c.mp4
eb4057df76ce50dc047b0e323c3a4eb7
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f295b995b9051fe61575462a6bd8fa88.pdf
99983daec1f4b19dab3a9407a5f96dd6
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Duane Koshork
(43:12)
(00:08) Background Information
•
•
•
•
Duane was born in Wisconsin in 1925
His family moved to Chicago, IL when he was a baby
Duane’s father was a machinist
He enlisted in the Army Air Corps
(02:35) Training
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Duane did basic training at Jefferson Parish, Missouri in 1943
He signed up to be a cadet but was denied because of high blood pressure
Duane was assigned to be a sheet metal worker
He went to San Antonio, TX to do fundamental sheet metal training
After that he was sent to Akron, OH for supplemental training on fuel cell repair
Basic training lasted 3 months; he was in Texas for 6 months and Ohio for 1 month
Duane was sent to Riverside, CA for deployment
(07:18) Deployment
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
They loaded onto a troopship and crossed the Pacific Ocean in 30 days
Along the way they stopped once for a day in Melbourne, Australia
The ship landed at Bombay, India
There were 10,000 troops on the ship and they sailed alone
Duane’s first day on the ship he did kp duty, but was too sea sick to do it the rest of the
time
At Bombay they boarded a train and went across India for a week
He was stationed outside of Calcutta, India so he would go there on his days off
The people of Calcutta were nice
They stayed outside of Calcutta for about a month
They loaded all of the trucks onto a train and headed to Ledo Road, which was connected
to the Burma Road
Duane was a rider in the truck and had to do kp and guard duty
His unit was divided into 3 convoys and they would stop to camps at night to sleep
They went through the jungle and didn’t see anything but a tea plantation
Their destination was Kunming, China and it took them about a month to travel 1,079
miles
The convoys hauled gas for planes
�• One night they heard shooting and found out it was American GIs shooting to celebrate
VE Day
• On the trip they saw the aftermath of an air drop bombing
(21:48) Kung Ming and Shanghai
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
They reached Kunming and were put into barracks
Kunming’s population was about 500,000 at the time
Duane was put into a radiator repair shop and fixed C-46, C-47, P-40, and P-51 planes
The living arrangements were nice
There were USO plays and movies
He spent almost a year in Kunming
Duane visited the Western Hills Temple on leave
When they heard about the atom bombs being dropped, they didn’t believe it at first and
then they were glad that the war was ending
Duane was moved to Shanghai and was assigned to be a MP from December until April,
1946
They could go into Shanghai and go to the race track to play golf or ride horses
(31:48) Discharge
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
There were less people on the way home and it took less time
The ship landed in San Francisco and they unloaded
Duane was discharged in May, 1946
He stayed with his parents for a while and then got married
Duane went to Northern Illinois State Teachers College for 3 years
He then went to Michigan State University for a masters degree in therapeutic recreation
In 1989 he retired
Now that he is retired he reads, plays golf, travels, and attends WWII reunions
(37:25) Old Memories
•
•
•
On one of his first nights in India he went on guard duty and saw eyes coming from the
jungle, when he yelled halt he found out it was civilians going back to their villages with
lights on sticks for seeing snakes
A friend of his went to the latrine at night and they heard him yell so they went to check
on him, they found him frozen with fear because there was a giant python above him
Another night when he was going on guard duty he heard a noise in the kitchen and asked
the guard who was getting off duty what it was; the guard said it was a gorilla, so they
went to check on it and it was a spider monkey banging pots together
�DUANE W. KOSHORK. was born on May 6.
1925 at Pardeeville. WI. His family resided in Chi
cago. IL where he at
tended South Shore High
School. He enlisted in the
U.S. Army Air Corps in
1943. received basic
training at Jefferson Bar
racks. MO and ground
crew training at Chanute
Field. IL and Kelly Field.
TX . Koshork was a mem
ber of the 69th Depot
Repair Sqdn, of the 30 Ist
Air Depot Group assigned to the China Theater. He
was based in Kunming. China after traveling across
India and the Ledo-Burma Road . In 1945 he was
transferred to Shanghai where he served in the mili
tary police.
Upon discharge in 1946. he attended Northern
lllinois University. receiving a &emf} $4pIIl. degree
in education. followed by an MA degree from Michi
gan State University. During this period he married
Gloria and they have three children: Barbara. David
and Lori.
Koshork was employed by the Veterans Admin
istration as a corrective therapist; was State Director
of Day Treatment Centers for the severely mentally
handicapped; served as adjunctive therapy director
and held administrative and executive positions with
the Michigan Dept. of Mental Health. He retired in
1989. and he and Gloria reside in Grand Haven. MI.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
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RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KoshorkD
Title
A name given to the resource
Koshork, Duane (Interview outline, video, and papers), 2008
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Koshork, Duane
Description
An account of the resource
Duane Koshork was born in Wisconsin in 1925 and grew up in Chicago, Illinois. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1943 and did sheet metal training. After about 10 months of training in the US Duane went to Bombay, India on a troopship and then travelled by train across India. They got to Calcutta, India and loaded their trucks on to a train. Then they unloaded their trucks and hauled plane fuel from the Ledo Road to the Burma Road. Duane ended up in Kung Ming, China where he worked at a radiator repair shop on an airbase until the war was over. He was then sent to Shanghai to be a MP and sent home in April, 1946 to be discharged. Newspaper clipping about Koshork is appended to interview outline.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
McCauslin, Kelly (Interviewer)
Spring Lake District Library (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Video recordings
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
United States. Air Force
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2008-11-28
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
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application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b1581814a0c99c679db02245dcc9ca78.mp4
0dc8b8725ff44d0986165aa7aec461d2
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a99e81c2b1f62fb2092382ec2c024c5b.pdf
7998fe448d55827fbf91968b3247ed95
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
PTSD Awareness and Veteran’s Programs
Catherine Kooyers
1:17:05
Introduction (00:20)
Catherine was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She comes from a family of military
veterans, with her father and uncles having served in World War II and cousins that were
in Korea, Vietnam and Desert Storm.
After she married, she moved to Toledo, Ohio and that is where she learned about the
need to help veterans.
Her main focus was PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).
She remembers when she was sixteen years old the boy across the street was killed in
Vietnam.
While in Toledo, a woman Catherine met had a son that was a POW/MIA, and she helped
with raising awareness. (02:45)
Catherine graduated from high school in 1969 at Forest Hills.
She attended several different colleges: Stotsenberg University in Toledo and she took
courses in writing and business at the University of Toledo. (04:23)
She did not go to college right after high school; she worked as a telephone operator at
Bell Telephone, and then moved up to the motor vehicle department.
Catherine was mentored by Dick DeVos when she was younger. (06:10)
She was not paying as much attention to Vietnam as she should have. The 70‟s were a
time of partying and having fun. (08:00)
People distanced themselves from the veterans when they came home. One group that
came home would always wear their uniforms and carry guns and knives. This group
was also very vocal and intimidating, which caused most people to fear them.
While at a county fair, she met some members from this group and Catherine learned
about them and who they were. The person that motivated her the most was a POW who
had an injured leg and could not be seen for six months. (10:30)
Catherine called the VA clinic and tried to appeal for the veteran. This sparked her
interest and caused the situation to snowball and she began to fight for their rights.
Working for Veterans (12:00)
Catherine began working with this veterans group and showed them how to set up a
rolodex, print out a newsletter and start to get organized.
Several veterans groups started at this time, but the Vietnam Veterans of America was the
only real survivor of these groups and they took the lead.
One veteran, Mike Flowers, was instrumental in the making of VVA. He would travel to
Washington D.C. at his own expense to discuss veteran‟s rights and the organization.
(14:00)
�
PTSD was the main cause they focused on.
Between 1978 -1979 the need for PTSD treatment came to light.
Catherine‟s group formed a PTSD committee, but she was not allowed to act as chair
because she was not a veteran, so she was made an honorary co-chair.
They began collecting and distributing information about PTSD treatment and received
more calls for help than anything. (16:46)
At the time, each veterans outreach center had a specialty such as drugs, suicide and
finding jobs. No one was addressing PTSD.
They decided to open a veteran‟s outreach center in Toledo that focused on PTSD.
Catherine also began to learn more about what PTSD was and how it could be treated.
As she reached out to the medical community of psychologists, they simply told them to
“send your guys to us”. (18:30)
They began to create and distribute PTSD monthly newsletters.
The next year at the Lucas County Fair, they had a brochure they handed out that talked
about PTSD as they had learned about it and how they perceived it to be.
Catherine noted a difference between shell shock and PTSD the former being more
combat and battle related while the latter is the result from a traumatic event, not
necessarily war or combat related. (20:15)
Moving Forward – National Recognition (22:06)
VVA chapter 35 was the original committee that helped boost the PTSD awareness
campaign.
In 1982, the government decided to expand the program for two years. Once that time
had expired in 1984, they were allowed to present testimony to Congress. While there,
Catherine was able to meet Sonny Montgomery, the creator of the Montgomery G.I. Bill.
When they were presenting to the VA and to Congress, they learned quickly not to
disclose their sources because those were often times closed after wards. (24:55)
At a meeting at the VA, each veterans group (i.e. VFW, American Legion, Disabled
American Veterans, etc…) did not get along. It was at this meeting that Mike Flowers
stood up and said “If we don‟t start working together as veterans, it is going to be the
downfall of all of us.” That day they formed what Catherine calls the first „Veterans
Coalition‟. (26:36)
They also began promoting job fairs, in order to clean up their image, find a job, have a
successful interview and drug counseling.
1984-1985 was the year of the big push for veteran‟s rights, and things really started to
take off then. (28:43)
With the anniversary of the fall of Saigon, in 1985, public support steadily rose and more
awareness also grew.
Around that time Catherine helped bring the mother of a soldier killed in Vietnam to the
memorial wall in Washington D.C. Everything was donated for her to go including a
new dress and the plane tickets. When they arrived, a television camera crew showed up
to film and take pictures of her there, but the park rangers told them no shooting was
allowed. They did it anyway and the pictures were used to close out the broadcast day.
(32:27)
�Looking Back Over the Past Forty Years (33:29)
A lot has happened that was good for veterans, but much more is still needed.
The veterans outreach center that Catherine had been fighting for since 1984 in Toledo
was finally built in 2008. (34:04)
One veteran she met at the wall was cracking jokes and was very nervous. She could tell
that he didn‟t think it was funny, it was nervous laughter. He was a Vietnam veteran
whose wife wanted him to see it. After talking with him, he told her that he wasn‟t
prepared for that, and he started to cry. (36:50)
He related his story to Catherine, and he lost 38 soldiers in Vietnam and he was the only
survivor from his unit.
Even though she cares about veterans, the program needs veterans to be involved as well
for it to work. (38:20)
Today, some veterans either deny they have PTSD or are unaware of the fact that they
may have a problem. (43:30)
Each case is very different and personal.
One thing that Catherine can do for veterans is to help them take care of things like
beginning college and doing everyday things that they may need help with. (47:20)
There is a difference between World War II vets and others, when asked they will just
say they did what they had to do. They also live more frugal lives and save and go
without because of their memories from the Depression. (49:20)
The Korean Veterans that Catherine encounters feel like they were forgotten; stuck
between the heroes of WWII and the vocal veterans from Vietnam.
Patriot Guard, which is present at fellow veteran‟s funerals, helps to reach the veterans
that seem unreachable because it is something that they can connect too. (51:31)
Veterans’ Divisions (55:06)
Vietnam veterans are very diverse: Whites, Blacks, Native Americans and Asians.
Each of these groups stayed away from each other for a long time. They don‟t know how
they fit together, but Catherine has told them that they each had a similar experience and
that they should get along. (57:08)
Once at one of these meetings, the group was fighting and she made the mistake to try to
stop it. She ended up being shoved against the wall with scissors held to her throat.
Education is the key, we need to inform the public and teach our children about veterans
and the struggles they went through. (59:50)
Most of the people getting involved are the children and grandchildren of veterans who
want to learn about their experiences and how they can help them. (1:01:24)
A large amount of the veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan listen to older
veterans, because they know in their mind something is not right. Some have survivor‟s
guilt because they made it home while others did not. (1:04:30)
Cross guilt also exists in veterans who did not go into combat because they feel that they
didn‟t do as much.
Getting veterans to events like Landing Zone Michigan and veterans functions at Grand
Valley State University is a huge step in reaching them. (1:06:42)
�
Computers have made a big impact on information and being better educated. These
resources have helped veterans connect to others and become affiliated with veteran‟s
organizations. (1:08:20)
One concern that Catherine has is the suicide rate amongst veterans. The rate is not
measured by day, but by minute. (1:10:20)
She used to work on suicide watches that would rush out to veterans that were thinking
about suicide and would talk them out of it.
Education is the best way to deal with these issues. Legislation also needs to be pursued
to make sure that veterans are represented and spoken for. (1:12:30)
Cleaning themselves up and maintaining a healthy, reputable image to make them more
respected.
Catherine‟s historical timeline of veterans history is the 60‟s when everybody was torn
apart, the 70‟s was a time when things were happening but we weren‟t sure what, the 80‟s
were the critical turning point, where Congress became involved and the VA starting
looking forward. (1:15:37)
She thinks that the Vietnam Veterans of America really stand out because they were the
ones that really started the movements that Catherine has worked so hard for over these
years.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KooyersC1432V
Title
A name given to the resource
Kooyers, Catherine (Interview outline and video), 2012
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kooyers, Catherine
Description
An account of the resource
Catherine Kooyers was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and comes from a family of veterans. After she got married, she was working at a local fair when she first encountered Vietnam veterans. From her experiences, Catherine quickly realized that work needed to be done in veteran organizations and that work needed to be done in the field of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Catherine was part of a PTSD committee that formed and fought for the VA (Veterans Affairs) to provide services to veterans that they had not previously received.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Kentwood Historic Preservation Commission (Kentwood, Mich.)
WKTV
WKTV (Wyoming, Mich.)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives, American
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2012-08-02
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/82e93c6aa22b12224abe83bfa7c5f4ae.m4v
3a0f8d1a4ac2727564525dd860a92b1b
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0dc95f4bf3f7d9e2a3863a3a169f12d1.pdf
c336506f4976e68db916b21ca1ef0b29
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Name of War: World War II
Interviewee: Bill Koetje
Length of Interview: 02:01:59
Background
He was born in Kalamazoo, MI in December 18, 1921.
He father worked in a paper mill and his mom was a stay at home wife. He is the oldest
of 5 children.
He graduated high school in 1940.
Once he graduated, he would work in a grocery store, in all different positions. He still
lived with his parents at the time.
He knew a lot about what was going on in the war at the time. In fact, his military career
would start in 1937 or ’38 when he joined the CMTC, or the Civilian Military Training
Corps.
The government put up this program. He was out at Camp Custer for ten weeks. He
would get out of school and go there for training. They didn’t get paid, but had a regular
military life.
They drilled all morning. In the afternoon, they would do classwork. The first thing they
learned about was military regulations.
He was supposed to go four summers and graduate from the program. This would
automatically make them a 2nd Lieutenant. Then they had to spend 16 years either in
regular service or the reserves. Then the draft started.
In 1940, he was expecting a war, especially with all the things that Hitler was doing.
He enlisted in the Marines in 1941, but they rejected him because of his feet, they had too
high arches or something.
30 days later he would receive his draft notice. He had two weeks to get his things in
order.
From there he went right out to Fort Custer and he was inducted into the service.
While he was there he had to take an IQ test. When he was finished he was put on a train
to Fort McClellan, Alabama
Training (6:40)
The farther south he went, the hotter it got. Otherwise he did not remember much. He
had to stay on the train the whole trip.
The camp itself was a nice place. It was not like other camps, in the sense that it did not
have barracks and such.
Instead the men lived in huts.
When he got down there, he was sitting on the curb, waiting to get his uniform. There
was a big guy there who was being a bully, stepping on their toes and such. He warned
the man to stop, but he did not.
�
So, he started hitting the guy. When his captain saw him, he ran out to them and grabbed
him off the man. The captain held him at arm’s length, when he told his captain to let him
go. He said “You can order me around but you can’t man-handle me”. The captain
informed him that they would speak later.
He would finally get his clothes and get his bed ready along with everything else.
He would report back to the captain who started asking him questions about where he
learned his military knowledge. He was not cooperative, and told the captain that his
records from the day he was born until that moment were with the military and he would
tell him when he was ready to ship out.
That would put him in quite a spot, though he did not get any sort of punishment.
He would spend 6 weeks in basic training.
When he was offered the option to stay there as a cadre, he said no. He had made too
many enemies with the current cadres there and did not want to fight them all the time.
They sent him out to Fort Benning, Georgia. He would join the 101st Airborne Division.
He was 20 years old.
He would go through all their training at jump school. When you were there you did not
walk anywhere, you would have to run to every place you went in order to help harden
you up.
Then they would start calisthenics; push-ups, push-ups and more push-ups. They were
not rough on the soldiers, but it was rough training.
He would also learn how to pack his own chutes.
When he was getting ready to make his first jump on the airplane, a jeep pulled up and
called his name. He was ordered to come with them.
When he reported to the colonel, he was asked old he was. He was 20. The colonel was
relieved that he did not make that jump. In order to do jump school he had to be 21 or
have parent’s consent.
At that point he was sent to Camp Butner, North Carolina and joined the 78th Infantry
Division. They had just activated the division and he was the first one there. Troops
would slowly join them. When they had enough, they would begin training.
At this point he was still a private. That was the one thing he could not stand about the
Army, it was the poorest paying job in the world.
He got to North Carolina in November 1942 and stayed there until the following
September or October.
He was accustomed to living military life. He wasn’t homesick or anxious about things.
He was able to leave base and go into town.
He wasn’t always a good boy. After the passes were signed and stamped he would take
10 or 12 of them. When the coast was clear, he would go to town. (18:10)
While he went to town, he would spend a lot of weekends with a guy he knew, who
owned a big house. He called him Doc.
Doc would almost figure out that he was sneaking passes.
He had a lot of fun out there during the weekends. In fact, he would have picture of him
and some other guys who were also from other areas of Michigan.
He would go home to visit for Christmas before being transferred to Fort Meade,
Maryland.
�
He was made a sergeant after he got there. He would work processing soldiers before
they went overseas. He would work in that job for about a year.
So far, he had spent two years in the military in the US.
He was still at Fort Meade when D-Day happened. This made the men more worried
about going overseas.
It was right after supper one night, and suddenly the guy upstairs came running down to
his room and told him that there was a guy with a pistol warning that he’d shoot anyone
who would come near him.
He thought about it for a few minutes and he went up alone. The man had crawled into
his bed and under the sheets. He would go up to the man and demand the pistol, butt
first. At first the man did not comply, but eventually he gave up the pistol. He emptied
the gun and took the man to the orderly room.
They called the hospital and had the man taken to the hospital. The man resisted and
would only go if he went with him. So he did.
When they got to the hospital, he told one of the ambulance drivers to go get a
straitjacket. They got him in the jacket and they took him off. He doesn’t know what
happened to him from then on.
There was another incident when an Indian stabbed the guy in the bunk next to him. I
caused a lot of commotion. (25:35)
He went to the hospital with the man who ended up getting 4 or 5 pints of blood. He
would stay with him there for a couple of days. Eventually the guy got better.
There was yet another incident when a man threatened to jump off a balcony in order not
to go overseas. He ended up pushing the guy who fell and was fine. He told him to stop
with the funny business or next time he would push him down head first. The man did
not give him any more trouble.
He would have to deal with men like this all the time, because they got into a mood.
Otherwise he had a great time while he was there.
The men who worked under him would often ask for passes to go to New York, Boston
or any other areas around there. He would look over the charts and see who had KP or
guard duty. If you did not have either of those, he told you to disappear. He did not want
to see you until Sunday evening around 7, when you needed to get checked in again. The
men really appreciated it.
He would visit Washington D.C. It was a free city, where you did not have to salute,
transportation was free and the Pepsi company would have a big building set aside for
entertainment for the soldiers.
The town itself was interesting. He went to a lot of different places there and saw a lot of
things.
This would all come to an end when he was ordered to go overseas. His namewais at the
top of the list.
A colonel that he knew would find his name on the list and would order him to go home
to Kalamazoo for a couple days and come back when they were ready to ship out.
Europe (31:30)
�
He would ship out of Fort Dix, New Jersey, on the Queen Elizabeth. Since he was on
one of the fastest ships on the ocean, the ship would go without an escort.
Because he was a sergeant, he had to stay in the “white” area. 12 hours he spent with the
13 other guys in the room and the other 12 he was rotated out onto the deck, where he
would take his blanket and sleep.
The weather was good, and that ship could handle anything.
There was one time when the soldiers were very lax. You were supposed to carry a life
preserver wherever you when on the ship, but they did that very half-hearted. When they
got to Scotland, someone started shooting and it scared the daylights out of them. They
really scrambled for their life vests then.
There was not a problem with seasickness on the way over there, but on the way back, it
was huge.
The ship anchored off of Scotland and had to take smaller boats to get to shore because
the ship was so huge. They couldn’t go straight to the English Channel because the
Germans would have sunk them
He was then sent by train to Liverpool. From there he was sent right away by boat, across
the English Channel.
He landed in La Havre, France, where he would stay about a day and half.
He was taken right up almost to the front lines, where he joined the 100th Infantry
Division as a replacement, just outside of Dijon, France.
His first experience under fire was quite a different experience than he was used to. He
was scared to death.
When he got off the train and started marching out to the front lines, he would have
American fire going over his head. They were all scared that it was incoming fire. When
they got to the front lines, he learned quickly which outgoing fire was and which was
incoming; you can tell by the sound of the shells.
His division was assigned to the 7th Army, which had come up from Southern France.
They were supposed to join with France’s 1st Army.
When he joined them, he went to his captain. The captain asked if he could handle a
machine gun; he said yes, and was assigned to carry ammunition. He was too scared to
tell him that he was a sergeant, so he did as he was told.
He would carry ammunition for a couple of days when a runner would come up to him
and tell him that the old man wanted to see him. He went back and he was assigned to
take over a section, two machine guns. (40:00)
His buddy, Gordon Roberts, would be assigned to the mortar section, but they did not use
mortars a whole lot because of the Germans heavy fortifications. Instead they would use
other stuff.
His unit was always on the go. They had the Germans on the run, which he liked because
their back to them, which means they wouldn’t shoot at them.
Whenever they took over a town, they would fortify the town and fool around a bit.
A lot of the civilian population would hide in the basements. One time a woman came
screaming out of a basement. She didn’t speak English, but he understood “baby.” One
of the women down there was having a baby, and he pointed her toward the medics.
The Germans would counterattack a lot. One night, the counterattack was absolutely
wicked. You couldn’t get out of the hole, and you didn’t know where they were at.
�
He just had his guns keep shooting all night. The Germans were coming at them with
foot soldiers.
The next day one of the soldiers had hung up his rain coat on some nearby brush. It was
always wet there and it was in the middle of winter. So he hung his coat up and when it
started getting dark, someone started shooting the coat, thinking it was an enemy.
When they finally got the guy to stop shooting, the coat was all torn up. He sure didn’t
miss his target.
It was the winter of 1944-1945. It was difficult for them to get food. The people who
were supposed to bring food to them on the front lines were reluctant to get close. So
instead, he had to send a couple of guys at a time back to them to get some chow. They
would come back and he would send the next two, etc. (46:00)
They would try to get C rations, but sometimes they would get K. If they ate K rations
they would often times get sick.
He would have a lot of trouble with men getting sick from trench foot and frostbite. It
was 17 degrees on the front line and all they had was wool coats and standard boots to
keep them warm.
He wore 3 pairs of OD’s on, 3 shirts and a field jacket just trying to stay warm. His
hands were so cold that he could hardly fire his rifle.
He had been fighting real well there and pushing the Germans back until he hit Biche,
France and hit the Siegfried Line. They also fought in what had been the Maginot Line.
The little pillboxes there would give them a lot of trouble. It was difficult to take them
out.
They tried bombing one once. They bomb skipped over it and exploded near them and
he got a concussion.
They were there for 2 days when they got self-propelled cannons. They started
hammering on the side of these things, like at the side of a mountain. This would work.
They finally blew a hole in the thing in the morning. They would then get orders to
attack. He would run point on the mission that day.
He would work with a full-blooded Indian, a good soldier, who would cover him.
He would work his way up to the newly blown hole when he would run into two men
with pole charges; explosives at the end of a pole. They would make it up to the wall
where the Germans couldn’t get them. They were having trouble reaching to where the
charge needed to go, so he would help them set up the charges.
He would get the charge into the hole and BOOM!
He would then do the same with the second pole charge.
He would get a bronze star for bravery in this event.
When he got back to his line, the medic would notice a really bad limp. He didn’t notice
anything, but when the boot came off, his foot swelled right up. So he was tagged and
sent back.
Once they got into one of the pillboxes, which were all connected, they would blow their
way through the rest of them.
He was then brought up to the First Aid Station. He was there a little while. Not much
excitement then.
�
He was in Sarrebourg, France, a little town. There was a French Garrison there. They
cleaned out some stables and put cots in there. Army beds were brought up around
Christmas time. They felt very special at the time.
They would also clean him up a bit. He did not have time to shave, so they shaved him.
He told them to just cut his clothes off. He got different clothing.
The nurses were singing Christmas Hymns and they turned off the lights and enjoyed the
moment. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place.
A twin engine bomber flew over and dropped two bombs, hitting the barracks and the
stables. Only 4 people lived that day.
He would finally come to in Paris, when he realized he was alive. He was in the hospital
for 4 months recovering from frostbite and a concussion from the last bombing.
He doesn’t know how he was alive. He felt like he was hit by a 10 ton truck. He
remembers grabbing the mattress and covering himself in a corner. It was probably what
saved his life that day.
When he was in Paris, the Battle of the Bulge had started.
When he came to, there were 4 doctors trying to decide what to do with him. One wanted
to send him back to the States, the other three said that he wouldn’t make the trip. So he
was sent to a hospital in England instead.
During that time, he was stuck in bed the whole time.
While he was there he got himself into some trouble with a Lieutenant who had called for
attention. He had learned in school that a soldier in the hospital was not a soldier, but a
patient, so he didn’t pay any attention. The Lieutenant was very upset by this. They
exchanged a few words and the guy left. He would return.
Before the Lieutenant got back he found a hand grenade. He took the powder out to
make it harmless. When the guy came back he handed him a supposed ready-to-blow
hand grenade. He never saw someone turn so white.
That stirred up a big fuss in the hospital.
He wanted to see a Chaplain, but the nurse was ordered by the guy not to get one. She
was eventually convinced otherwise by him.
He was then visited by a large man, a colonel who would inform them that he was not in
trouble and would be transported to another hospital by the end of the day.
While he was in England, he would go to a pub and had some good times. (1:00:00)
He would end up almost being court martialed while creating some trouble at the pub.
He had another ordeal there before he could go back. Soldiers had to fire a rifle and
mortar before they were seen fit enough to go back overseas. When he got to the rifle
range, a $20 bill was offered for the best score on the rifle range. He won that money.
The officer who offered the 20 wanted to know how he knew he was going to get the
money. He said that he spent 3 weeks in a rifle program, where you had to score between
95 and 100 points. He had quit the program because he shoulder hurt so much, he could
hardly hold his rifle anymore.
Shortly after that, he got on the boat and went into France. He went back to his unit that
was now in Germany.
His regiment had new orders to stop a German unit that was trying to come through
Italy.
�
On his way there he was shot at. When he shot back, a man came running out of a house.
He did not last very long.
At that point, most of the Germans were surrendering to the Americans whenever they
caught up with them.
As they were getting farther into Germany, the civilian population would hide in their
wine cellars. They would stay out of sight of the Americans as much as they could.
After the war had ended they were ordered not to fraternize with any of the Germans,
civilian or otherwise. There was a $50 fine for disobeying the orders.
They ended the war in Urbach, Germany near the foot of the Alps.
After the War (1:18:00)
They would patrol a long highway between two of the towns.
The Americans that were there would go through everything.
One kid found a motorcycle and wanted to ride it so bad that he did. He didn’t know how
to stop so he crashed and broke his ankle.
There was one time when someone started to shout warnings and the whole village went
absolutely chaotic. He and the others spent almost 2 days trying to calm the people down
and get things back to normal.
They stayed there about a month.
When he first got there, he did not see in civilians. After they had set up a cooking
station, he was sitting on the curb eating his food when two little girls showed up.
Suddenly he could not eat.
He had such a big lump in his throat, he just had to give them his food. They would show
up while he was eating for about the next for days. He didn’t eat so they could.
One day they had formation and while he was there he toppled right over. Out like a
light. They couldn’t wake him up right away, so he was taken to a hospital.
When he came to, a captain started yelling at him for drinking too much. Luckily, his
men were there to inform the captain that he didn’t drink. They believed that the captain
owed him an apology.
When he got back, the report told his superiors that it was malnutrition. So he had to be
supervised when he ate. When he would go get seconds, he would give it to the little
girls the food and tell them to eat at home.
When it was time for him to leave, the girls heard about it. They found him and gave him
two little dolls. He still has them today.
The worst part about the whole thing was that the territory was being turned over to the
Russians, who were ruthless.
They then went to Kemen, outside of Stuttgart. He had a nice time there and made some
nice friends.
The autobahn went right through the city, so they had to police the autobahn.
They would stay the Burgomaster’s house. The house was emptied before he was
allowed in it. But when he got in there he found a gold watch. He would return it to the
lady of the house and she was very grateful. He was treated like a king.
While they were there, the townsfolk had a dedication ceremony. Where there was a
Swastika flag, there would then hang an American flag. During the ceremony he was
�
called forward to receive a special honor. A little girl, dressed in her Sunday best would
put a ring of flowers around his neck.
There wasn’t a dry eye there. (1:29:30)
He was there about 3 days for a quartering party when the troops came in.
While he was there, a guy came up to him screaming “Come to my house!” It was
against the rules to go and they would be fined for disobeying the command, but they
were willing to do it.
He got to the house and they wanted to give him wine. They ended up leaving, but didn’t
know what he wanted. They got themselves a German-English Dictionary to figure it
out. It turns out that he had captured this guy and treated him decently and had even
brought him to the American medics. He said that he wanted to pay him back.
The man ended up giving him gold handled sword that he would send home.
He would stay in the army until February. He would move around and ended up staying
at Esslingen from August or September until February.
They would live in a school building, using the cots of the Army Garrison there.
There was a lot to do there. There is much chaos after the war and millions of people
displaced, and none of them knew where to go or what to do. Many of them were
starving too.
It was chaos. These people were from all over Europe.
It was rough dealing with the Russians there.
He was on police duty 24 hours a day, trying to keep the peace. They got buses running
and got coal brought in for hot water and coal.
They got reorganized there and were scheduled to go to Japan. As they were ready and
on the train to go when a colonel got on the train and told them good news: the war in
Japan was over and bad news: they were staying there. So they had to get off the train
and unpack everything and went back to the school house until February.
In the middle of the city there was a big pool that they got working and would go down
there all the time. They would even hire a masseuse once in a while. They were living
like kings.
The lives of the Germans were slowly getting back to normal, especially when they found
out the American soldiers were not mean or anything like that.
He would also have to shake up the houses, which means they would go from house to
house and search for weapons. They found some too. (1:42:00)
Some of the Germans did not like the American soldiers and would attempt to separate
the soldiers from the group.
While they were there, they were ordered to turn in their live ammunition. It went on for
a while until a colonel was walking in the street and was attacked by a couple of kids in
the streets. He went to help the guy and eventually live ammunition was brought back.
Once day while he was out he spotted some kids trying to corner him. He clipped one in
the butt and took off. Later 11 of them were rounded up and taken to interrogation.
He was finally allowed to go home in late January.
He would go home on an old grain boat.
While he was at the school house, a captain and another soldier hat gotten into it. He
broke it up and got in trouble with the captain because he had spoken out of turn. He was
�
then assigned to guard the other solder in the fight the whole way home, which was under
arrest.
While he was staying in Marseilles his gun was stolen and he had to go and get it back
Going Home (1:52:50)
The trip back was awful. A motor stopped working and they had to use the compass to
tell where they were going to land when they hit land.
When they were taking roll call on the ship, the guy taking it suddenly got confused of
which one was the prisoner and which one was the guard, because the other guy was
holding the gun. The man was worried about the prisoner running away, but he
convinced him otherwise.
When he got home he had no ammunition left, he had shot them off. He had to pay 35
cents per round. He told them to go jump in a lake.
They would be assigned to a barracks and get cleaned up. He would then get to call
home to talk to his family.
Two days later he was on a train to Atterbury, Indiana where he was discharged. He was
given $300 and a kick on the butt goodbye.
Post Duty (1:55:45)
Looking back, he lived through the depression, went into the service and he was a kid
who wasn’t anything. Going into the army would change his life. He learned to get
along with people. He went from having nothing to $50, clothes and it was amazing.
CMTC changed his life as well. He learned discipline and how to live with people.
It was a big adjustment.
He came home and it was a big letdown. He spent 42 months in the service. He had to
sleep in a bed by himself and it was very different. He didn’t have a job.
He did eventually get one, but it was very poor pay. He felt like he was going backwards
instead of forward.
He would also go to school for a year at Central Michigan University. He got a 4.0
average.
Uncle Sam has really treated him good since then. They take care of his health and
medical bills.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
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1914-
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
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Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
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RHC-27
Language
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eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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KoetjeB
Title
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Koetje, Bill (Interview outline and video), 2010
Creator
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Koetje, Bill
Description
An account of the resource
Bill Koetje served in the Army during World War II. He was drafted in 1942 and initially trained as a paratrooper, but was not yet 21 and was transferred to an infantry unit, where he did well enough to stay on as a trainer rather than ship out with his unit. He was then assigned to Fort Meade, Maryland, to supervise recruits who were about to be sent overseas. He finally shipped out himself in the fall of 1944, and was assigned to the 100th Division in northeastern France. He led a machine gun section and was involved in heavy fighting against German fortifications, and was wounded and evacuated. The aid station that he was sent to was bombed, and he was sent to England. He rejoined his unit in the spring of 1945, and served with the Army of Occupation in Germany until the end of the year.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
United States. Army
Language
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eng
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2010-04-26
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
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application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/403f8b82f3eb268e1be15d85d47d7fe6.mp4
529de23af154d2e9d46a241ccd907925
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e3df6684853f99fed74927c775e12a47.pdf
642cd80816b589b7729d147ad3097134
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
World War II - WAV
Merle Knight
Length of Interview: 13:38
(00:10)
BS: My name is Brittany Steffans and I’ll be the interviewer and recording is Holly Strong.
Mrs. Knight is 81 years old, having been born on April 14, 1923.
(00:33)
BS: Please state for the recording what war and branch of service you served in. What was your
rank and where did you serve?
MK: I took my boot camp at New York City, at Hunter College. I lived on about the sixth floor.
I have to tell you something a little bit funny. I never ate breakfast, so when I got there, I wasn’t
going to eat breakfast either. That’s not the way it works. You march to breakfast, whether you
eat or not. Now I forgot the next question. After that, I went to Cecil Field, in Florida. And
later on I went to Banana River, also in Florida. There both south of Jacksonville.
BS: Umm, what war and branch of service did you serve in?
MK: That was World War II and I was a Navy WAV.
BS: Can you state what WAV means?
(01:30)
MK: Women Accepted for Voluntary Service.
BS: What was your rank?
MK: I ended up Seaman First Class.
BS: Were you drafted or did you enlist?
MK: I enlisted.
BS: Why did you join?
MK: Oh…they took my husband. To-be husband, was drafted. My brother was gone. Maybe I
had to find myself.
BS: Why did you pick the service branch you joined?
MK: Navy blue. (laughs) I didn’t like the WACs color.
�BS: Oh, okay. Do you have any experiences from boot camp that you remember? Or training?
Other than the breakfast.
(02:32)
MK: Oh, we got to go into New York City and see things. I’d never been to New York before.
Statue of Liberty, all those kind of things. And then before I was sent down to Florida, I got to
work in the Officer’s mess hall and I thought that was kind of interesting.
BS: What was your job assignment?
MK: That’s what this little book is sitting here for. (Picks up hardback book.) When I went to
Cecile Field, umm, I logged in pilot flight time. And every pilot had one of these. And when
they came to our office, they had to tell us what plane they were taking and we had to log in what
time it was. And then they took the plane, and when they come back, they had to come back to
our office and log back out. And there were some that didn’t come back. And that’s how we
knew. I don’t have flight time in mine, so I ended up using mine as a joke book. I have a little
bit of flight time in there. I got to fly. I didn’t fly the plane.
(04:04)
BS: Oh. Can you tell me a couple of your most memorable experiences during the war?
MK: Belonging to the Fast-Bit softball team, probably was my most fun.
BS: Were you awarded any medals or salutations?
MK: After playing ball, I was awarded a silver baseball. It’s hanging up there. (Points) From
Admiral Kincaid.
BS: How’d you get it?
MK: Well, that was from playing baseball.
BS: Did you stay in touch with your family while you were in Florida?
MK: Writing letters. I never made phone calls.
(05:01)
BS: What was the food like, while you were there?
MK: (shrugs) It must have been all right. I gained a few pounds.
BS: Did you feel any pressure or stress while you were in the service?
MK: I don’t think so.
�BS: How did you entertain yourself? Other than baseball. What did you do for fun?
MK: Well, I was in a room with about ten girls. And it wasn’t hard to find entertainment with
ten girls back there. (laughs) You could go off base, if you had liberty. And we used to go out
and run an obstacle course.
BS: Do you recall anything humorous or unusual events that happened?
MK: Well, I went off base once, without liberty. I got caught. And I had to clean…I cleaned
the biggest linen closet you’ve ever seen. (laughs) That was my punishment. But, you know,
I’ve always remembered that.
(06:35)
BS: Did you and your friends ever pull pranks on others?
MK: On April Fool’s Day, I did. I got them all up too early. Told ‘em it was six o’clock and it
was five o’clock. And…they threw me in the shower. (Laughs)
BS: Can you show us what some of your photographs are here?
MK: (Holds up class photo) This was taken, I think, right after we got to New York. And this
one (holds up another photo or women lined up) was at Cecile Field. And it was, I think, most of
those girls I roomed with, in one room.
BS: How big was the room? Was it…
(07:24)
MK: It was big. (Looks at photo) Some of them left and went to smaller rooms, which they
were allowed to do.
BS: What about this one? (Hands MK a photo)
MK: This was taken just when we went on liberty, in Jacksonville, Florida. We went to St.
Augustine, a few other places.
BS: What did you think of officers’ or your fellow soldiers?
MK: Well, the only trouble I ever got into was when I went off base and I wasn’t supposed to.
(laughs)
BS: Do you recall the day of your service ending?
(08:20)
MK: Hmmm. Well, I was discharged at Miami, Florida. That’s probably all I remember. And
then I got on a train. You know, we didn’t get to fly on a plane. We had to ride the train.
And I guess I came home.
�BS: What did you do in the days and weeks afterwards, after you were out of the service?
MK: Probably went back to roller-skating. We roller-skated at North Lake. That has since
burned down. And then tried to find a job.
BS: Did you make any close friendships while you were in the service?
MK: Yes. I still write to four or five of the girls. Of course, some of them have died.
(09:24)
BS: Did you join a veterans organization?
MK: No, I never did that.
BS: What did you go on to do as a career after the war?
MK: I got married the same…a few months after I got home. My career was five kids.
BS: Did your military experience influence your thinking about the war in general?
(10:24)
MK: This war right now. We’re both against it.
BS: Do you attend any reunions?
MK: No. I don’t know why…I don’t know why our outfit never got together.
BS: How did your service and experience affect your life?
MK: I learned discipline. Probably helped me a lot in training my kids.
(11:11)
BS: Is there anything you’d like to add that we didn’t cover in the interview?
MK: I was thinking about this a lot before you came, but you gave me some questions there I
wasn’t thinking on. (laughs)
BS: So how old were you when you enlisted?
MK: I was twenty-one.
BS: And you weren’t married at the time, right?
MK: No.
�BS: Your husband was drafted, correct?
MK: Yeah, he was drafted.
BS: So you didn’t see each other.
MK: No. We never saw each other for nearly three years.
BS: Was that hard?
(11:53)
MK: It was probably harder on him than me, because where I was a little more fun. And no
fighting.
BS: So you didn’t see any combat while you were in the service?
MK: No. No.
BS: How long were you in?
MK: I was in a year and a half. I would have stayed in longer. A bunch of us girls were going
up for assignments, and we were going to take one more assignment and then we were going to
go to Pearl Harbor. And then the war ended. And we would have had to stay in at least another
six months. So we all gave up on that. Since then, maybe I’ve regretted that a little bit.
(Laughs)
(12:43)
BS: So how long was it between when your husband to be was drafted and the point when you
decided to enlist?
MK: That was probably a year and a half.
BS: So if you had the opportunity to enlist back then, would you have done it? Gone back to
war.
MK: Yes. I would have recommended it to most girls. Unless they have to go over there and
fight, like what’s going on now. That I don’t agree with.
BS: Is there anything you’d like to add that we have not covered?
MK: Not that I can think of. But those were nice, fun days that I had. And I enjoyed it.
BS: Thank you.
(13:38)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KnightM
Title
A name given to the resource
Knight, Merle (Interview transcript and video), 2004
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Knight, Merle
Description
An account of the resource
Merle Knight served in the Navy WAVES during World War II. She was a volunteer who spent all her time on the East Coast of the US, primarily at a naval air station. Although she wanted to go to serve in Pearl Harbor, she would change her mind due to the war ending
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Steffens, Brittney (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
United States. Naval Reserve. Women's Reserve
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2004-04-12
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/26d01b52dc93c1ede03af442eb9b194f.m4v
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PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Terry Knapp
(01:00:03)
Background (00:00)
Born in Carson City Hospital (01:00)
Father was a farmer (02:00)
His parents went into baking (03:15)
He had one brother and two sisters (03:30)
He played hide and seek as a child (05:20)
He played football and ran track in high school (06:00)
After graduating high school he worked on a line at Oldsmobile for about six weeks
(11:30)
Lived in Lansing (11:45)
Got married and moved back to the bakery (11:50)
Dad died in 1975 (12:45)
Military Experience (14:00)
Went to Fort Leonard Wood Missouri for basic training (14:35)
Fort Polk Louisiana for advanced training (14:40)
Married on April 27, 1967 (16:45)
Description of Vietnam: hot, smelled like rotten vegetation, there were leeches and the
troops had to take quinine tablets at every meal to avoid malaria (17:30)
During the Tet offensive, there were firefights nearly every other day (19:30)
Worked with Vietnamese during the day and fought them during the night (19:45)
Had to watch out for traps and ambushes (19:55)
�
He witnessed some individuals killed or wounded by traps (20:10)
Sometimes they were overrun and had to fight hand to hand combat (20:20)
He was offered the Purple Heart (22:30)
They would set up sentries around their perimeter to spot enemy patrols closing in on
them (23:10)
Three APCs that he rode on were destroyed or damaged while he was in Vietnam (24:30)
They had to wait for clearance, to determine no friendlies were in the area, before they
could spray it (24:55)
He was in charge of the radio on the command track, and he had to communicate with the
CO and other officers (26:00)
His unit suffered a lot of casualties (26:40)
When he first arrived in Vietnam the 11th Cavalry had a n entire troop wiped out (27:00)
He was a replacement (27:10)
Blaine Landers was killed after taking over his patrol (27:50)
That same night his unit lost six APCs to RPG fire (28:10)
They would normally set up trip flares and claymores around their position (29:00)
They would fight the Chinese that crossed over into Vietnam (29:40)
Long Distance Recon Patrol wore black beret and worked with Green beret units (30:50)
He was in a unit with tank and APC support (31:40)
He got out of the army in 1968 (35:20)
His unit once pursued a fleeing enemy unit but had to turn around because they had
crossed into Cambodia (36:00)
He was mostly out in the field except for about a month at base camp re-arming (38:00)
Flew to Hawaii on R&R (38:50)
He had two children, one son and one daughter who died at the age of thirty one from
breast cancer, but was survived by two children (39:40)
�
He was in Vietnam during Tet (40:40)
He will never forget his experience in Vietnam (41:30)
He suffered from post traumatic stress, a lot of soldiers did after fighting the war (45:20)
He had flash backs and still does occasionally (46:56)
His unit would pick up dead Vietnamese and return the bodies to their villages to be
buried (49:10)
In his opinion he did his duty and did it well (51:05)
After the war he returned to work at his family bakery (51:27)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KnappT
Title
A name given to the resource
Knapp, Terry (Interview outline and video), 2006
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Knapp, Terry
Description
An account of the resource
Terry Knapp joined the army in 1967. He served in Vietnam with the 11th Calvary. His unit served during the Tet Offensive and suffered heavy casualties. He received a purple heart and was discharged at the end of 1968. After the war he returned to work at his family bakery in Lansing, Michigan.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Collins Sr., Charles E. (Interviewer)
Collins, Carol (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
United States. Army
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2006-12-06
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a61ec092a4eecb2b954b087eaef0d49e.mp4
02f3a6711f656dab552d73cbb52b612a
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PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Jim Kloosterman
(00:26:29)
(08:45) Introduction
• Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan 1946.
• Attended elementary school in Allendale and Coopersville High School.
(09:29) Enlistment
• Joined the United States Naval Reserve at seventeen years old.
• During his initial check up, the doctors found a cyst that would have prevented
him from joining the military. His parents paid for surgery.
• During Christmas break of his senior year of high school he attended training at
Great Lakes Naval Training for boot camp.
(10:27) Boot Camp
• Describes Boot Camp as “eye opening.”
• He remembers being treated like dirt by the commanding officers.
(11:48) Deployment
• Began his two years of active duty the January after he graduated from high
school.
• He went to Norfolk, Virginia at the naval base.
• He was then assigned to the aircraft carrier, USS Independence
• Kloosterman worked in the communications radio division.
• His ship was then deployed to Vietnam.
(12:23) Why he joined the Navy
• He joined the Navy to see the world.
• After his deployment to Vietnam, he was then sent to the Mediterranean Sea.
(12:41) Active Duty
• Describes his first days of active duty as confusing.
• His first choice was to work on an aircraft carrier.
(13:30) Aboard the USS Independence
• While on the ship, they sailed the South China Sea.
• The aircraft would fly missions off of the ship.
• He would communicate with other bases about missions while on the carrier.
• He also worked as a cryptographer on the ship.
• Flights of MIG’s attempted to attack the ship, but were turned away by the United
States aircraft.
• Several planes were lost during his time in Vietnam.
• His ship was awarded the Navy Unit Commendation for Merit us Service.
• He communicated with his family mainly through letters.
• Describes the food as fairly good.
• To entertain themselves, the men would play cards, read, or write letters.
• He would try to sight see as much as possible when on leave.
�Remembers taking a new man to the mess hall and vomiting when he saw the
men take a bite out of a cooked cockroach.
• The men would pull minor pranks, such as setting watches ahead to wake men up
earlier than they needed to, to help curb the boredom.
(20:48) Photographs
(21:24) Opinion of others he served with
• Most of his officers were decent people.
• He liked most of the men he served with.
(21:53) Discharge
• Stationed in the Mediterranean.
• He was transferred from one base to another before flying back to the United
States.
(22:18) Life After Service
• The first few days were like a vacation in order to become re acclimated to
civilian life
• Worked at Bell Telephone Co. after returning home.
• Remains very good friends with a couple of men he served with.
• He joined the VFW.
• He is still working in communications to this day.
• Describes his military experience as an overall positive experience.
• He also feels that his military experience made him grow up and mature quickly.
•
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KloostermanJ
Title
A name given to the resource
Kloosterman, Jim (Interview outline and video), 2005
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kloosterman, Jim
Description
An account of the resource
Jim Kloosterman served in the US Navy in 1965 and 1966. He served as a radioman on the carrier USS Independence, spending much of his time decrypting Soviet radio traffic. During his tour, his ship saw action off the coast of Vietnam, and then served in the Mediterranean.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Collins Sr., Charles E. (Interviewer)
Collins, Carol (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Video recordings
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
United States. Navy
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2005-02-01
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/562e7572edb4523c9c0f81f4cd113d77.mp4
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PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veteran’s History Project
Ron Kloet part 3
Vietnam War
Interview Length: (02:10:14:00)
Recap / Fourth Vietnam Tour (00:00:29:00)
Prior to deploying for his fourth tour, Kloet attended a captain’s officer course and after
completing that, rather than returning to Fort Bragg for re-assignment, Kloet decided he
wanted something else (00:00:29:00)
o Instead, Kloet decided to volunteer for the Phoenix Program, which, due to the
on-going Vietnamization efforts, had been changed to the Vietnamese name for
“phoenix”, Phung Hoang (00:01:00:00)
Once he joined the program, Kloet went to the Special Forces section of Fort Bragg for a
military advisor course to study how to work in a combined center with the Phung Hoang
program (00:01:22:00)
o The Phung Hoang program was targeted against the enemy infrastructure,
specifically individuals who were working for the Viet Cong (00:01:47:00)
o During the advisor training, Kloet learned how to properly interact with his
Vietnamese counterparts, how to acquire information and develop the information
into dossiers, and how to execute plans to neutralize the Viet Cong infrastructure
(00:02:01:00
o Although he had already in Vietnam for three previous tours, the Army also sent
Kloet to a Vietnamese language course (00:02:21:00)
The course was every morning and consisted of only a small group of
soldiers and an instructor going through each chapter of Vietnamese
vocabulary (00:02:30:00)
However, the Vietnamese vocabulary that the soldiers learned was strictly
related to the terms they would need to work with their Vietnamese
counter-parts in the Phung Hoang program (00:02:47:00)
After completing the advisor program at Fort Bragg and having a short leave, Kloet
deployed to Vietnam, arriving in Saigon, where he went through another orientation
course given by the civilian side of the MACV (Military Assistance Command Vietnam), which was what the Phoenix Program was under (00:03:13:00)
o During the orientation, Kloet and the other new members of the program were
told how exactly they were supposed to report information (00:03:39:00)
o Part of the course was also learning about one specific report, the Big MAC; all
the soldiers were given books that showed the infrastructure of the Viet Cong,
including where they were located, and Kloet took all the books with him when
he reported to his unit (00:04:19:00)
From Saigon, Kloet went to the Binh Son province and the III Corps, where he received
another orientation geared specifically for the region (00:04:39:00)
o Kloet originally went to the Phuoc Long province and was assigned to a district in
the south-east corner of the province, next to the neighboring II Corps area; once
�
in the district, Kloet went through additional training to prepare him to take over
for the departing Phoenix Program officer in the district (00:05:15:00)
o By the time Kloet arrived in Phouc Long, the 1st Air Cav. Division, which had
previously occupied the region, was gone (00:06:24:00)
o During this time, the Army was consolidating its presence within Vietnam, so
Kloet moved up to the province capital to replace an out-going major; this was the
first time Kloet was able to spend more than a day with the soldier he was sent to
replace, which meant Kloet could learn the ins and outs of the assignment and get
feed-back from the major on how things were going (00:06:41:00)
Once he finally took over for the major, the first thing Kloet discovered as that there was
nothing going on in the province; Kloet and his soldiers would consolidate what
information did come in into different reports (00:07:30:00)
o At the time, Kloet had a Vietnamese interpreter assigned to him to help with
Kloet’s Vietnamese counterpart, who spoke English but not the technical
terminology (00:08:03:00)
The Vietnamese counterpart was of both Vietnamese and Chinese descent,
thus making him less liked by pure, ethnic Vietnamese, who did not trust
people with mixed blood (00:08:19:00)
Kloet’s interpreter was the son-in-law of the provincial leader, a colonel
also of Vietnamese and Chinese ancestry (00:08:44:00)
Kloet’s Vietnamese counterpart was part of the South Vietnamese Special
Police, which was equivalent to the American FBI and he eventually told
Kloet that Kloet would never get anything done (00:09:18:00)
According to the counterpart, the military sector who controlled
the province for the provincial leader would not allow any
operations due to the operations being compromised (00:09:37:00)
Therefore, the only thing Kloet could do was work on different reports; as
well, Kloet got intelligence clearance for his entire team because the
previous intelligence officer had left and Kloet had received his job, which
meant Kloet was then also working on intelligence (00:10:10:00)
For the intelligence work, Kloet had a specialist assigned to the
group who took care of all the documentation (00:10:36:00)
When Kloet first arrived for the tour, his unit’s living quarters and other rooms were
housed in underground bunkers in the northern part of the compound (00:11:09:00)
o The living quarters were very secure because some years before, during the Tet
Offensive, the enemy had attacked the capital and destroyed everything, so Army
engineers came in and built the bunkers (00:11:36:00)
During the time when Kloet first arrived at the unit, the unit was
consolidating, moving down to a total of fifteen personnel (00:12:29:00)
o Kloet himself moved in with an advisor to the regular South Vietnamese street
police, a retired NYPD lieutenant (00:12:46:00)
o When he first arrived, Kloet went through a daily routine of sitting in committees
and going through paperwork, which was boring because Kloet had gone through
the necessary training and he wanted to see something happen (00:13:13:00)
While in training, Kloet had received warnings about the possibility of corruption
amongst the South Vietnamese (00:13:32:00)
�
o Kloet believes that the Americans were naïve in believing that all people were
good when in reality, nothing happened unless “the skids were greased”, a
situation common throughout the third world (00:13:35:00)
o Once, during Kloet’s second tour, a local Vietnamese leader wanted to sell rice
back to the Montagnards when the rice had been seized from the Viet Cong, who
had stolen the rice from the Montagnards in the first place (00:14:04:00)
When the unit’s S-2 eventually departed, Kloet took over those responsibilities as well,
so he was working two jobs, although there was very little going on (00:14:32:00)
o The majority of the people who Kloet dealt with were Montagnards, a simple
people who were more anti-Vietnamese then strictly anti-Communist because the
Vietnamese had treated them like dirt for centuries (00:14:52:00)
o Over time, Kloet and his personnel did the things that were necessary for their
assignment, although on occasion, there were some incidents where Kloet needed
to go out and verify the bodies of enemy soldiers (00:15:16:00)
One time, the Vietnamese PRU (Province Recon Unit) came into contact
with the enemy east of the province capital, so Kloet had to visit the
location with his two interpreters, one who had been assigned to Kloet
straight away and one Kloet gained when the S-2 departed (00:15:27:00)
Once at the location, Kloet had to take pictures of all the dead
bodies (00:16:14:00)
The PRU did not receive any payment unless the dead enemy were
verified to be Viet Cong (00:16:26:00)
Another time, there was an incident at another district headquarters where
soldiers had killed another five enemy (00:16:36:00)
By the time Kloet arrived to inspect the bodies, it was the middle
of the day and the bodies had been laying in the hot sun in a pile
since sun-up and they stunk (00:17:01:00)
The frustration of not being able to get anything done eventually caused Kloet to fire his
interpreter from the Phoenix Program because Kloet thought the interpreter was a snitch
for the enemy (00:17:23:00)
o Everything planning to be done eventually reached the interpreter’s father-in-law,
the provincial chief, and if the chief did not like it, then the plan did not go
forward (00:17:41:00)
The province chief was not openly supporting the Viet Cong but was
instead playing both sides, the Americans and the Viet Cong, against the
middle (00:18:12:00)
Because of the province’s proximity to Cambodia, there was also
politics involved in the decision-making; the province was far
enough away from Saigon that there was some political leeway
while there was also a strong presence of North Vietnamese and
Viet Cong coming in from Cambodia (00:18:18:00)
The government did not want to remove the province chief because
he managed to keep everything in the province in line
(00:18:49:00)
�
None of the Vietnamese who Kloet talked to particularly liked the
province chief nor did they trust him but the chief was in charge
and that was the way things went (00:19:05:00)
When Kloet fired the interpreter, it upset the province chief, which meant nothing go
done until the beginning of April 1972, when the North Vietnamese began their Easter
Offensive (00:19:10:00)
o When the offensive began, the enemy attacked in the next province over and
managed to cut the road from Kloet’s province to Saigon, which meant no food or
supplies were coming in (00:19:43:00)
o Once the offensive began, the province chief and his staff began arresting people
in the province who had possible Viet Cong or North Vietnamese Army
connections and throwing them in jail (00:20:09:00)
The prisoners were placed into holding areas that looked like chicken
coops (00:20:25:00)
o Eventually, Kloet received a phone call from the representative of the Pacification
Security Group for that particular area of III Corps asking on whose authority the
province chief and his staff had been using to arrest those people (00:20:54:00)
Kloet talked with his counterpart about the questions and the counterpart
showed Kloet a document; when Kloet asked if he could have one, the
counterpart said he could (00:21:43:00)
The document dated from 1968 and stated that the province chief
could arrest whomever he wanted (00:22:17:00)
The document had existed since 1968 but because of the US
Army’s rotation policy, the Americans had forgotten about it
(00:22:25:00)
o The province chief tended not to act on intelligence because he did not want to
stir up trouble with the enemy; instead, he padded his list of available suspects
and once the fight began, then he could make arrests (00:22:53:00)
o All the interrogations of the prisoners was handled by the South Vietnamese and
Kloet does not know how they did it because the South Vietnamese never brought
in Kloet or his men (00:23:12:00)
At the time, there was a South Vietnamese fire support base alongside a
highway to the south and all of the sudden, the police arrested the captain
in charge of the base and brought him back to the province capital but
Kloet never knew where the captain went (00:23:24:00)
The South Vietnamese police acted under the guise that the prisoners had
relatives in either the Viet Cong or North Vietnamese Army (00:24:05:00)
o In some ways, Kloet was happy that the offensive finally did come because it
offered him and his men the opportunity to do real work trying to find out what
was going to happen in their province (00:24:23:00)
Once the enemy cut the roads into the province, Kloet got more approvals
for operations, including a B-52 strike in the north (00:24:50:00)
During the offensive, Kloet received intel from the local intelligence unit about enemy
movements as well as the locations of enemy supply caches (00:25:08:00)
�
However, from his experience during his first tour, Kloet could tell that
must of the information was inaccurate and he had no way to substantiate
the intel (00:25:32:00)
After the Easter Offensive finished, someone from the Pacification
Security Group visited Kloet asking for targets for a group of defectors the
man was running who went out and attacked enemy targets (00:26:09:00)
Kloet decided to use the request as a test to substantiate the claims
made by the intelligence unit; it turned out that every single piece
of intelligence from the unit was bogus (00:26:52:00)
While still gathering intelligence for the other units, Kloet’s commanders also wanted
him to still file his month reports (00:27:27:00)
o The MAC report was an infrastructure report detail individual villages and
locations where the enemy was located, what was their strength, etc.; however,
there was no way to get all that information, so Kloet just submitted the
information from the previous month (00:27:37:00)
At the beginning of the Easter Offensive, there had been a South Vietnamese unit
stationed along the border but when the enemy began bringing in tanks, the unit retreated,
leaving the Montagnards behind (00:28:24:00)
o When the Montagnards eventually made it back, the province chief decided to
give them the old Air Cav. base, which was still standing (00:28:39:00)
On July 1st, all hell broke loose in Kloet’s province (00:28:53:00)
o The enemy had a 152mm artillery gun that was firing towards the capital; Kloet
had to do crater analysis, which was how they managed to find out the caliber of
the gun (00:29:03:00)
o Before the enemy managed to cut the road from the district headquarters to the
province capital, the Americans had issued M-72 LAWs (00:29:27:00)
o At one point, a single platoon defended a triangular position against an entire
enemy battalion (00:30:01:00)
o Eventually, the enemy attempted to take the mountain located next to the town,
where the South Vietnamese had a radio-intercept position (00:30:32:00)
Kloet’s South Vietnamese counter-part gave Kloet intelligence about
communications between North Vietnamese tanks; Kloet showed the
information to his commanding officer, who wondered why the American
intelligence could not tell that there were tanks out there (00:30:50:00)
The commanding officer, a colonel, asked up the chain-of-command about
why there was no intelligence from the Americans (00:31:23:00)
Before the offensive began, Kloet’s unit received an electronic box that
when turned out, sent out an electronic beacon, to be used in case the unit
was about to be overrun (00:31:32:00)
Once a unit turned on the beacon, the Air Force deployed a Spectre
gunship, an AC-130 mounted with Gatling guns (00:31:46:00)
As the fighting for the mountain continued, the Air Force continuously
launched air strikes against enemy positions along the side of the
mountain, making it so the enemy never managed to take the top of the
mountain (00:32:03:00)
�
o Although Air Force air strikes continued around the district capital, the road
leading into the town was still cut; after about a week of fighting, the Americans
mounted an armed convoy to retake the road and re-establish contact with the
district capital (00:32:20:00)
Kloet traveled with the convoy and watched as the Air Force continued
dropping bombs on enemy positions (00:32:43:00)
The ground around the district capital was all torn up with craters from
where the Air Force had dropped their bombs (00:33:09:00)
The airfield for the district capital had taken several mortar strikes and
Kloet was ordered to determine what caliber the mortar rounds were
(00:33:27:00)
While measuring the mortar strikes at the airfield, Kloet heard the
whistle of incoming mortar rounds, so he ran to a small shack that
served as the airfield’s control tower (00:33:43:00)
Flights did not come into the airfield every day because the Air
America re-supply flights landed on an old two-lane road near the
province capital (00:34:01:00)
When the mortar rounds started coming in, Kloet ran to a nearby
trench and hopped in, although the South Vietnamese had been
throwing their garbage in the trench (00:34:35:00)
From the district capital, the South Vietnamese took vehicles captured
from the North Vietnamese, all of which turned out to be American-made,
and towed them back to the province capital to display (00:35:05:00)
All the destruction done to the vehicles happened from South
Vietnamese soldiers armed with LAWs (00:35:43:00)
One of the vehicles had been hauling ammunition and when the
LAW round hit, it was like someone took a can opener to the side
of the vehicle (00:35:48:00)
o During the offensive, the regular South Vietnamese Army units assigned to
Kloet’s province actually fought in the neighboring province, which was where
the thrust of the enemy attack was; although the South Vietnamese forces fought
very well, there were two things that helped the South Vietnamese (00:36:16:00)
First, an American Air Cav. brigade from the 1st Air Cav. division was still
in the province and second, there was a tremendous amount of air power,
both from a Marine air wing and an Air Force air wing (00:36:51:00)
The fighting was still tough because the enemy attacked toward the capital
with tanks, who’s crews had been chained inside their tanks; the crews
were not stupid and they knew that driving tanks into cities was a bad
idea, especially if the enemy had anti-tank weapons (00:37:17:00)
In Kloet’s province, the Vietnamese forces divided into three groups: the regular South
Vietnamese army, which consisted of only South Vietnamese, and the Regional Forces
(RFs) and Popular Forces (PFs), which consisted of Montagnard soldiers (00:38:01:00)
o The PFs were used for local defense around the various villages and they fought
very well while the RFs were a mixture of both South Vietnamese and
Montagnard soldiers and were under the direct command of the sector
commanders, acting as a sort of Ready Reaction Force (00:38:14:00)
�
o From what Kloet saw, the South Vietnamese treated the Montagnards at a level
that the Vietnamese would treat a dog (00:39:13:00)
By the time Kloet’s tour wound down to an end in 1972, the situation had stabilized, with
the North Vietnamese having pulled back into Cambodia (00:40:41:00)
o In Kloet’s mind, had the United States continued to offer military support at a
level akin to that of 1972, the end of the war would have turned out differently for
South Vietnam (00:41:08:00)
o Kloet, and as he believes, many of the Vietnamese and other veterans, feels that
President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger sold out the soldiers in order to
get a deal passed that allowed the United States to get out of the conflict without
any more casualties; according to Kloet, had Nixon not jeopardized his political
standing with Watergate, the United States could have pulled out of the war while
still maintaining a high level of logistical support to South Vietnam (00:41:38:00)
The South Vietnamese forces had learned how to operation and how to
fight as how the Americans would (00:42:41:00)
Germany (00:43:43:00)
Once his tour finished in September 1972, to preclude having to go back to Fort Bragg,
Kloet took an ITT (Inter-Theater Transfer) test for Germany (00:43:43:00)
After completing the test, Kloet was assigned to the G-2 section for a headquarters in
Heidelberg, Germany; however, because his security clearance from 1966 had expired,
Kloet needed to get it updated (00:44:05:00)
o However, the Army did not want to wait for Kloet to get his security clearance, so
the Army amended his orders, sending him to the Third Infantry Division in
Wurzburg, where he was assigned to work as the surveillance officer in the G-2
(00:44:46:00)
The soldier commanding Kloet’s new unit was a major, eventually
promoted to colonel, while Kloet’s particular section consisted of himself
and two enlisted personnel, a lieutenant and master sergeant (00:45:17:00)
Because the division was operating in “peacetime”, Kloet’s section was
responsible for keeping the map library for the division, establishing map
policies, and establishing policies for using ground-surveillance equipment
within the division (00:45:55:00)
The section’s training consisted of going into the field with the rest of the
G-2 and setting up a desk inside the TOC (Tactical Operations Center) to
help with surveillance requests (00:46:44:00)
Kloet arrived at the division in November 1972 and the first thing he noticed was the
temperature was very cold (00:47:48:00)
o Kloet went to do the standard things necessary to be issued his field gear but
when he went, the supply unit did not have any of the equipment, so Kloet was
told to come back the following week (00:47:57:00)
o However, before Kloet could go back to get the gear, a field exercise was
scheduled, so the commanding officer told Kloet he could stay behind and
maintain the office, taking down incoming messages (00:48:14:00)
Halfway through the week, Kloet received a phone call from one of the
other officers in the G-2 saying that the colonel wanted to see Kloet;
�
however, Kloet stated that the only way he was going out was if he had
some field gear because there was snow outside (00:48:47:00)
Kloet managed to get some field gear although when he was going out to
the field, it was in an open-top jeep and Kloet was still cold, despite all the
clothing (00:49:19:00)
Once Kloet arrived at the G-2’s position, he waited and waited and waited,
until it was finally two or three in the morning before Kloet asked one of
the other officers what was going on (00:49:32:00)
Someone eventually went to ask the G-2 what Kloet needed to do because
he did not have a tent or any other equipment and Kloet was told just to go
back (00:50:16:00)
The experience with the G-2 during the exercise did not leave a
good taste in Kloet’s mouth (00:50:40:00)
Most of the time, Kloet’s new job was boring because the only time he really did
anything was in the field (00:50:45:00)
o Kloet had an additional duty, serving as part of a two-officer team who had the
responsibility of launching nuclear weapons if that time ever came (00:50:50:00)
During his career course, Kloet had received training on nuclear weapons,
such as which area to drop a bomb in order to receive the largest amount
of destruction, where not to drop bombs, the security of the bombs, what
their guard forces were, etc. (00:51:29:00)
Kloet did this job during the day with another officer who had been given
access (00:51:57:00)
o At one point, Kloet received an assignment to take photographs of the division’s
entire forward area of operations, running from the mountains on the division’s
right flank to the city on the division’s left flank (00:52:39:00)
It took several days, during which Kloet and an assistant took Kloet’s
personal vehicle and drove with camera equipment to the main areas,
moving from the left flank to the right flank (00:53:20:00)
The pictures were panoramic, so Kloet and his assistant had to climb hills
and mountains (00:53:44:00)
When Kloet finally came back with all the photographs, he took the
division’s “general defense plan” and some maps to equate each set of
images to a location on the map (00:54:06:00)
After organizing each panoramic with a map, Kloet took another picture of
both the map and the panoramic, which he then organized into a slide
show, first showing the picture of both the map and the panoramic then
just the panoramic (00:54:52:00)
Although Kloet had been promised reimbursement for all the money he
spent on gasoline and food, he never received anything (00:55:20:00)
In early May, the 3rd division underwent a review, where all the officers in the division
had to go to the division headquarters in Wurzburg to go through interviews with OfficerPersonnel (OP) officers (00:55:37:00)
o During the interview, the OP officer reviewed Kloet’s entire record and
commented on all the training Kloet had received (00:56:16:00)
�
o At the end of May, Kloet received word that the colonel wanted all the officers
serving in the G-2 to report to his office (00:57:26:00)
Once all the officers had gathered, the colonel individually handed out
letters, most of which were discharge orders (00:57:47:00)
The criteria for discharge was that if an officer had made captain
between January 1st, 1968 and June 30th, 1969, then he was
discharged (00:58:51:00)
After the colonel handed out the discharge letters, the only officer
left in the G-2 was a counter-intelligence officer who was Regular
Army (00:59:26:00)
After receiving their letters, Kloet and the other officers had ninety days
before their discharge papers became official (00:59:52:00)
Kloet and the other officers also received top priority when going
through out-processing, so Kloet decided to just go home, although
the G-2 tried to get Kloet to stay (01:00:23:00)
An issue Kloet had with the colonel in charge of the G-2 was that the colonel would order
maps from Kloet for every unit in the division, not just the division headquarters
(01:00:50:00)
o Kloet knew the S-2s in the various brigades in the division and they all laughed at
the colonel (01:01:21:00)
o It eventually reached the point that Kloet had an entire storage room in the
basement of the division headquarters just filled with maps for operations that
nobody ever used (01:02:03:00)
o Whenever the G-2 section went into the field as part of an exercise, Kloet had all
the maps the section would need already rolled up and separate so that all the
soldiers had to do was pick up the container, throw it into the back of the truck
and go; however, the colonel did not like this (01:02:18:00)
o When Kloet received his discharge orders and decided to go home immediately,
the colonel was bent out of shape, so Kloet never received the reimbursement for
the photography assignment and he had to go all the way to the Department of the
Army to receive the colonel’s final efficiency report for Kloet (01:02:47:00)
o At one point, instead of doing it himself, the colonel ordered Kloet to write a
letter of reprimand against the officer in-charge of the M-I (Military-Intelligence)
section of the G-2 (01:03:32:00)
o During another period, Kloet and his section spent four months working on a
report about ground radar, only for the report not to be published (01:04:01:00)
In those four months, Kloet gathered input from all the units who would
be using the radar and incorporated the useful information into the report;
however, the colonel did not accept some of the information, so Kloet had
to write back to some of the units and formally explain why he was not
using their information in the report (01:04:04:00)
Once he finished, Kloet put the entire report in the colonel’s in-out box
and left it there (01:05:07:00)
o One of the largest faults of the colonel was that in reaching that rank, he never
learned how to effectively communicate with subordinates (01:05:37:00)
�
At the time Kloet was in Germany, most of the lower-ranking officers, such as captains,
were combat veterans, including the M-I officers (01:06:16:00)
o Kloet himself was one of the first officers to go to a M-I specific officer training
course, in 1964; prior to 1964, M-I officers went to infantry training first and M-I
training second (01:06:40:00)
o On the other hand, the colonel had always served in military intelligence and to
Kloet, it seemed like the colonel was always trying to one-up someone else
(01:06:59:00)
One time, the colonel threw a large, very nice, Christmas party and of the
sixty-eight people invited, the only ones who showed up were the
colonel’s wife, an unfit sergeant-major, and the officers; the other sixty or
so soldiers had a choice of whether or not to show up (01:07:09:00)
The colonel was livid that none of the soldiers showed up but the colonel
never understood why (01:07:48:00)
After receiving his discharge, Kloet followed the colonel’s career and the
colonel eventually ended up at the DIA as an O-6 colonel (01:07:59:00)
When Kloet returned to the United States in June 1972, he went to Fort Meade, Maryland
to serve in the management office for the base (01:08:46:00)
o Kloet served under a major in the management office but the first thing the major
did when Kloet arrived was go to a training course in Miami (01:09:03:00)
o Kloet’s job was to gather any money collected the previous night from the various
officer and enlisted clubs, organize and document the money, then take it to the
management office (01:09:17:00)
Kloet also inspected the clubs, listened to any problems or complaints and
tried to fix the problems within the limit capacity he had (01:09:36:00)
Post-Active Duty Service (01:10:10:00)
Once Kloet finally left the Army, he went to graduate school at Michigan State
University to earn a master’s degree in history (01:10:10:00)
o The program was divided into two tracks, A and B, with the A tract consisting of
a thesis and intended for students going onto a doctorate; Kloet himself took the B
track because he had no intention of going on for a PhD (01:10:30:00)
o During the course, Kloet wrote roughly a paper a week while also taking classes
in historiography (01:10:44:00)
Kloet ended up paying a woman who was a typist to type up all of his
papers for him (01:11:06:00)
o The majority of Kloet’s involved Eastern Europe and Russia, including ancient
Russian history and Soviet history, along with classes about European and
American history (01:11:24:00)
o To fulfill his language requirements, Kloet took a Russian language refresher
course, which was a great experience because Kloet had not used the language
since 1965 (01:12:07:00)
Apart from the master’s degree in History, Kloet also got a teaching certificate, although
he now considers that to be a waste of his time (01:12:56:00)
o As part of the teaching certificate, Kloet did some student-teaching at a high
school in Warren, Michigan, where he taught a couple of World History courses
�o
o
o
o
o
o
o
and a Russian History course because of the large amount of people with Slavic
backgrounds living in Warren (01:13:16:00)
While teaching the Russian History course, Kloet contacted his professor at
Michigan State asking for a book recommendation to use as the text for the
students (01:13:56:00)
The World History classes did not actually have textbooks but rather, a
series of brochures (01:14:58:00)
While teaching the World History courses, Kloet decided to give the students a
mid-term exam, although the only thing he could do was lecture using the
brochures (01:15:24:00)
Most of the students in Kloet’s courses did not have any discipline (01:16:11:00)
After giving the mid-term exam, which Kloet comprised of multiple choice
questions taken verbatim from the texts, the highest grade was a 72% and the
lowest was in the thirties (01:16:35:00)
Kloet ended up taking the average of the scores and making it the highest
of the class and he still was only able to pass a couple more of the students
(01:17:03:00)
Kloet individually took each student into the hall to explain their grade
and what was going to be sent home, which caused many of the students
to become upset (01:17:13:00)
On the other hand, the Russian History course was good because the students
were motivated, Type-A people going to college (01:17:38:00)
Because the school did not approve of Kloet’s textbook selection, he had
to lecture for the most part, so in one weekend, Kloet outlined the entire
book (01:17:53:00)
One of the students wanted to do a paper on the Russian Orthodox Church
and one day, Kloet received a phone call that the mother of the student
wanted to talk with Kloet (01:18:36:00)
Kloet called the mother to see what the problem was and she said
that the student was consumed with working on the paper, doing
nothing else (01:19:26:00)
Apart from the student teaching, Kloet also had to take a courses at the Michigan
Department of Education on how to properly manage a classroom (01:20:24:00)
Kloet’s advisor, PhD candidate, had never actually taught in a classroom
while Kloet had taught while in the Army, which meant he knew how to
operate the equipment in a classroom, so the advisor said Kloet did not
have to take the course (01:20:41:00)
At different times, Kloet and the other students had to go to sessions where they
were supposed to “bare their souls to the others” (01:21:16:00)
Kloet was the oldest person in the group by far and he had had classes
with some of the other members, including a girl whose habits annoyed
Kloet (01:21:30:00)
As he closed in on finishing the teacher certification program, Kloet had to
go to a final interview with his advisor, where Kloet talked about the role
he played in the group seminars (01:22:15:00)
�
When the advisors asked about the role, Kloet explained that he
was older than all the other members and he did not see the benefit
of going over his own experiences (01:22:44:00)
After he neared the end of the history program at Michigan State and obtained his teacher
certification, Kloet went to the employment office at Michigan State and was told to what
to put down to create an effective resume (01:23:26:00)
o Kloet sent the resume out to ever school district he could find in the employment
office and although he obtained some interviews, by and large, Kloet received
rejection letters (01:23:57:00)
The common thread amongst the rejection letters was that Kloet had too
much experience and the school districts could not hire him; Kloet’s
experience as at the level of Master’s Degree +, which was too high for an
entry-level teaching position (01:24:22:00)
Kloet also looked at private schools and he thought he had found one
opening, at a military school, but the teacher who was planning to retire
decided not to retire (01:24:42:00)
After graduating, Kloet tried to substitute teach, which he did not like because the school
districts would call him early in the morning and on most occasions, there was never a
lesson plan that Kloet was supposed to follow for that day (01:25:05:00)
Eventually, Kloet decided to work on his active-duty position and began teaching
summers at the various Army schools, eventually going to the Command and General
Staff College for almost a year, where he eventually worked his way up to commandant
of the entire college (01:25:32:00)
o Although Kloet had retired, by teaching at the Army schools, he increased the
amount of time he had on active duty, with the intention of reaching twenty years
on active duty; when Kloet first started teaching at the Army schools, he had
fourteen years of active duty and slowly added onto that amount (01:26:10:00)
o Working at the Command and General Staff college was really good assignment
for Kloet (01:26:52:00)
o Kloet also worked at the 5th Army headquarters at Fort Sam Houston in San
Antonio, Texas (01:27:16:00)
o Overall, the best assignment Kloet had was when Kloet was the commander of the
intelligence school at Fort Sam Houston, where Kloet sent out various instructors
to different reserve units to give the reservists MOS qualifications (01:27:35:00)
From March 1983 until June 1995, Kloet worked as part of U.S. Army Foreign
Intelligence Activity (FIA), directing the Collection/Management division (01:28:34:00)
o When he joined the FIA, Kloet worked in the Collection/Management branch,
which involved organizing the collection of information, so that the intelligence
services would only gather the intelligence they needed to gather (01:29:20:00)
As part of this, there were collection plans listing what information needed
to be collected and how to collect it, based on a certain set of
requirements, such as geographic areas, technical areas, etc. (01:29:51:00)
Kloet’s Collection/Management Division was organized to go worldwide
coverage to collect human intelligence (HUMINT) (01:30:10:00)
�
“Worldwide” did not mean every country in the world but rather
focused on specific countries relative to the master HUMINT
collection plan, which was controlled by the CIA (01:30:23:00)
Apart from the Army FIA, there were also intelligence collection
units in the Navy, Air Force, and Marines, although Army
intelligence became the largest and most important of the units
(01:30:45:00)
o Army intelligence eventually became the only collection
unit to use actual operations, not just debriefings and overt
collections (01:30:53:00)
The other collection units had soldiers trained in
this and many of those individuals were eventually
absorbed into Army intelligence (01:31:29:00)
Apart from performing operations, Army intelligence also had
several detachments of overt de-briefers to work with foreign
personnel and technical personnel, such as American businessmen
and embassy employees (01:31:46:00)
Kloet’s section worked primarily with reporting on operations that
Army intelligence was performing (01:32:08:00)
Whenever a specific American group would request information on a
specific area, Army intelligence would submit a capabilities statement
outline what Army intelligence could do (01:32:49:00)
If a specific area or situation arose that would require long-term
observation, such as the Middle East, Russia or China, then Army
intelligence could develop a source (01:33:11:00)
The other side of collection/management was to publish the
information to came from the various operations (01:34:11:00)
o Kloet’s job was to sort through the information that came
through and organize it for publishing, as well as check to
make sure the initial questions that they were searching for
were answered (01:34:24:00)
o The period leading up to the first Gulf War was very intriguing, specifically the
conflict occurring between Iraq and Iran (01:35:56:00)
o Army intelligence was divided into branches, with a branch devoted to each of the
Army’s commands (01:35:44:00)
o The first Gulf War did not really change how Army intelligence operated
(01:36:39:00)
Operations tended to develop over time and as the processes were done
correctly, more information became available; if something happened to
change the progression, modifications might be needed but the personnel
in Army intelligence continued the operation regardless (01:36:51:00)
Kloet worked for Army intelligence until 1995 as a civilian employee, at which point his
unit was absorbed into a newly-formed organization; in large part, Kloet’s unit was
largely a victim of its own success (01:38:05:00)
�o At the time, the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) convinced members of
Congress that consolidation of all the intelligence services’ collection units under
one unit, the DIA, was more efficient and cost-effective (01:38:48:00)
o After the DIA made their suggestions, units across all the services were either
absorbed into the DIA or deactivated; part of the agreement was that all members
of the FIA would receive positions within the new organization (01:39:14:00)
o The new organization was labeled “Defense Human Service” and was technically
headed by an Army Brigadier General; the organization’s first commander was
Kloet’s former commanding officer when Kloet first joined the Air Cavalry in
Vietnam (01:39:40:00)
When the general saw what was happening within the new organization,
he told Kloet that he was going to try and leave because he did not like the
situation (01:40:07:00)
After the first general retired, another brigadier took command of the
organizations; however, because he still wanted to advance his career the
general began spending most of his time at the White House, acting as a
representative for the organization (01:40:23:00)
o Within the new organization, Kloet worked as a desk officer in the Eurasian
division, focusing specifically on the former Soviet Islamic republics in Central
Asia (01:41:01:00)
For the five countries, Kloet had one attaché while military representatives
covered the others (01:41:40:00)
The military representatives were often students trained at a former Soviet
military academy that specialized in training soldiers to work within the
Islamic republics (01:41:54:00)
Although there was no specific assignment for his section, the work was
still interesting for Kloet because he was able to meet people and because
he gained insight into why the situations within the five republics were not
working properly (01:42:22:00)
Kloet’s job involved gathering information from each source about the
situation within a specific republic and there were several ways of
communicating back and forth (01:42:51:00)
There was the traditional encrypted communications but in one
case, the counter-part in one of the republics would not bother
encrypting the report (01:43:01:00)
Whenever a military advisor was scheduled to go to one of the
republics, they would first talk with Kloet to become oriented with
the area (01:43:42:00)
The biggest problem Kloet ran into was logistically supporting all
the representatives, although there was an entirely separate section
within the organization for logistics (01:44:26:00)
o However, the logistics section had to take care of logistics
for representatives from all over the world, not just Kloet’s
(01:45:01:00)
o When Kloet first joined the organization, he checked what was needed so he
could eventually get out, so he talked with the woman in charge of retirements,
�
who said that although Kloet could retire at sixty, he did not have a large amount
of civil service credit (01:45:51:00)
Kloet could get to the thirty years necessary if he converted some of his
active-duty military years, which entailed paying six percent of his base
salary for every year in the military that needed conversion, which totaled
13+ years (01:46:20:00)
Kloet paid for the years to be converted and that brought him up to the
years needed (01:47:18:00)
Eventually, it reached the point that the continuous rigors of the job, such
as waking up at 3:30 a.m. to get the train, took their toll on Kloet and he
decided to put in his retirement paperwork (01:47:36:00)
When discussing retirement, Kloet asked whether it mattered if he did not
fully reached thirty years and when the woman told him it would only cost
a dollar a month, Kloet decided to retire (01:49:07:00)
Once Kloet finally retired, he returned to Michigan to live in a house he had bought for
his mother in the 1960s, although his mother had passed away in 1992 (01:49:32:00)
o At the end of September 2001, Kloet received a phone call from a former
subordinate from Vietnam asking if Kloet wanted to come back to work; when
Kloet said he did, the soldier said Kloet need to update his clearance level
(01:49:57:00)
o After finishing the necessary paperwork, Kloet sent it back in and waited for a
reply; eventually, in March, he received a telephone call telling him that
everything was okay and he could begin working (01:50:38:00)
o Kloet needed a place to live near Washington, so he contacted a friend whose
wife was a real estate agent and she helped Kloet find a place (01:51:27:00)
o Once he got back to work, Kloet was working in counter-terrorist operations
group within the Defense HUMINT service (01:52:20:00)
Kloet enjoyed doing the work because it gave him an opportunity to teach
younger soldiers (01:53:37:00)
Kloet’s section was led by a Navy Commander and she did not like the job
because it was somewhat out of her comfort zone (01:53:50:00)
Pacific Command was Kloet’s area of interest and he eventually became
involved in writing reports for the DIA to act in countries where the
analysts thought there were credible operations (01:54:22:00)
This was the first time that Kloet saw the politics that went into the
operations and he saw the large number of successful operations that went
unnoticed (01:54:54:00)
o Although he enjoyed doing the job, Kloet did not actually make any money
because of the expenses that he incurred (01:56:12:00)
o Once the time came for Kloet to extend his contract, the DIA fooled around with
it and Kloet decided to just go home (01:56:59:00)
o The only downside of doing the work was Kloet had to interact with analysts at
the CIA and they often made it so they were the center of everything that was
happening and would fight with Kloet tooth and nail (01:57:07:00)
�
o At one point, the chief CIA analyst wanted a meeting with the DIA analyst and
based on his previous work experience with the CIA, Kloet ventured a guess as to
what type of person the analyst was (01:58:20:00)
Sure enough, when the meeting happened, the chief was a bureaucrat and
it was because of him that the majority of the work Kloet and the others
did was met with opposition (01:58:31:00)
In Kloet’s mind, one of the positives to come out of the 9/11 attacks was the
establishment of the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) (01:59:33:00)
o Prior to the attacks, there was a large amount of cooperation amongst the various
intelligence agencies at the ground level; problems developed around the
bureaucrats, each of whom had vested interests in maintaining their authority
(01:59:56:00)
Whenever there were conflicts, it was often agency versus agency, never
individual versus individual (02:00:20:00)
o In a macro sense, Kloet believes that the NIO (National Intelligence Office) was
very difficult to control without controlling the agency’s budget and he believes
the CIA still trying to hold onto its position as the top dog of all the American
intelligence agencies (02:00:56:00)
From Kloet’s perspective, it has reached the point that regardless of what
the situation is, it will always be resolved how the CIA wants it to be
resolved (02:01:47:00)
The dominance of the CIA amongst the intelligence agencies has led to a
reduction in the multiplicity of sources; the CIA has fought tooth and nail
since the formation of the different service intelligence units because the
CIA wanted to control everything (02:02:27:00)
o When President Bush wanted to reorganize and expand the TSA (Transportation
Safety Administration), he wanted to hire outside contractors until enough
personnel were trained; however, the bureaucrats in charge of the intelligence
agencies forced him to take personnel from the current ranks of the agencies, so
Kloet knows people who advanced several ranks by doing so (02:03:54:00)
o At the local level, there is mutual cooperation between the different organizations;
it is with the higher-ranking bureaucrats where the problems begin to arise
(02:06:16:00)
Looking back on his career, when he first joined the service, Kloet enjoyed it because he
was young and his brain was full of the stories his uncles had told him about serving in
World War II (02:07:09:00)
o When he first enlisted, Kloet’s goal was to eventually be an officer, although he
was not sure about make the military a career (02:07:41:00)
o Being placed in the Air Force signals intelligence was enjoyable for Kloet and it
pushed him towards going to college for degrees in Russian language and
literature (02:07:54:00)
o After completing his degrees, Kloet realized that his chances of finding a job as a
civilian were small, so he began looking at working for different government
agencies (02:08:23:00)
�o Kloet always wanted a career in the military, just never a career in a specific field
in the military; although he enjoyed the intelligence work, Kloet also enjoyed just
being busy (02:09:03:00)
o Kloet would serve again, although he would make some changes, such as keeping
his mouth shut a little bit more because he irritated some people (02:09:58:00)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
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1914-
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
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RHC-27
Language
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eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KloetR1071V3
Title
A name given to the resource
Kloet, Ronald (Interview outline and video, 3 of 3), 2011
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kloet, Ronald
Description
An account of the resource
Prior to beginning his fourth tour in Vietnam, Ron Kloet initially went through officers training with the Army intending to give him an assignment at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Kloet, wanting something else, instead volunteered to serve in the Phoenix program, a specialized program in Vietnam. After finished the fourth tour, Kloet transferred from Vietnam to Germany to work as an intelligence officer. Following his tour in Germany, Kloet's military service ended and he attended Michigan State University, attaining master degrees in Russian history and Russian literature. However, Kloet found his work at graduation unsatisfying, so he began working to complete enough active-duty service time to retire with a pension. Eventually, Kloet began working for the U.S. Army Foreign Intelligence Activity (FIA) as a civilian employee. In 1995, the FIA and other intelligence agencies reorganized and Kloet, not liking his new roll, eventually retired. Then, in Sept. 2001, he received a phone call from a former colleague asking Kloet to return to work. Kloet did return for six months before retiring for good.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
WKTV (Wyoming, Mich.)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Army
United States. Air Force
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives, American
Language
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eng
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2011-02-24
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
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application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2011e4452200dc8c97cc962ee042e48d.mp4
1a5d98eb5acf3ff0b2f4457a68337aef
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/55d2598b8261bfbb7043af898c54e4fe.pdf
5d5eddaf65932f7d87db791e1ebe6946
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veteran’s History Project
Ron Kloet part 2
Vietnam War
Interview Length: (02:37:28:00)
Recap / Third Vietnam Tour (00:00:57:00)
During his first tour in Vietnam, Kloet worked in the combined intelligence center in
Saigon, which included both Vietnam and American personnel and personnel from all the
service branches and had the assignment of creating “orders of battle” about the different
enemy forces (00:00:57:00)
o During his second tour in Vietnam, Kloet again worked with the Vietnamese in
the Central Highlands region as an S-2 advisor to a Vietnamese captain who
collected intelligence regarding enemy activity in the local province
(00:01:19:00)
o After returning from his first tour in March 1968, Kloet had a gap until his next
assignment in June 1968 because he was in school (00:01:59:00)
o When his second tour ended in June 1969, Kloet received a thirty-day leave in
order to go home because he had re-upped for another tour (00:02:20:00)
After the thirty-day leave, Kloet returned to Vietnam in July and served from July 1969
until July 1970 (00:02:34:00)
o During the third tour, Kloet served with the 1st Air Cavalry Division, which was
where he specifically wanted to go when he re-upped (00:02:47:00)
o Whereas the second tour had been peaks and valleys of action and in-action, the
third tour was constant peaks, which meant Kloet was always busy (00:02:57:00)
When he arrived at the 1st Air Cav., Kloet received orders to replace a captain and two
lieutenants as a battle section chief, all of whom left the following day; however, Kloet
had done the work before, so he did not necessarily need help except for a short briefing
on how the three officers had been running the operation previously (00:03:11:00)
o Kloet meet with the assistant to the unit’s G-2, a major, and the major said that the
G-2, a colonel, wanted Kloet to clean the section up regarding twenty-four, seven
operation with a systematic organization (00:03:35:00)
o Kloet had to come up with a proposal of how many people it would take to run
two twelve-hour shifts with officer supervision and an NCOIC (NonCommissioned Officer In Charge) for all the enlisted personnel (00:04:04:00)
The design of the section was to cover all possibilities relating to enemy
activity in the 1st Air Cav.’s area, from local enemy activity such as the
Viet Cong, up to entire NVA divisions and echelons above divisions, as
well as enemy infiltration (00:04:47:00)
At the time, the 1st Air Cav. was stationed in the “3rd Military Region” (the III Corps),
which included Saigon; the actual base camp for the division was Phuoc Vinh in the
Phuoc Long province, which was north of the Binh Xuyen River, north and west of
Saigon (00:05:11:00)
o The terrain in the region was flat and consisting of rice paddies and jungle,
although to the south was some jungle, which had the designation of “war zone
�
D” and extended south into the next province; to the north, there were the rice
paddies that locals farmed as well as more jungle (00:05:46:00)
The locals used water buffalo for farming and one night, the buffalo herd
went down a trail another unit was monitoring with electronic
surveillance; to the soldiers monitoring the trail, the herd looked like
enemy soldiers, so they had the artillery fire their 8 in. guns (00:06:48:00)
The next morning, the locals were angry because the artillery had
destroyed twenty-eight of their water buffalo (00:07:49:00)
Part of the area where the division had it’s base camp was a rubber
plantation and the buildings that the Military Intelligence (MI) company,
amongst others, occupied were on the plantation (00:08:15:00)
Under the concept of a military intelligence company, the unit was only supposed to be a
detachment assigned to the G-2 but over time, the unit expanded to a company-sized unit
configured to support the G-2 section of the division (00:08:58:00)
o The G-2 was the chief intelligence officer within the division and was normally a
lieutenant colonel who could also have an assistant (00:09:14:00)
When Kloet arrived at the division, he “jumped into the frying pan” (00:09:44:00)
o In early August 1969, the enemy conducted a major offensive in Military Region
3; at the time, Kloet’s division had the responsibility of the province from the
Cambodian border to the II Corps’ boundary (00:09:50:00)
The offensive started in the Binh Long province by the 9th Viet Cong
Division while other units attacked both the division base camp and a
brigade base camp further to the north (00:10:29:00)
Eventually, an entire task force, code-named SHOEMAKER, was sent
north in order to coordinate the activities of both the Cav. and an armored
unit that was also in the area (00:11:01:00)
They took someone from Kloet’s unit to be in the task force and
Kloet was thankful that he was not chosen because he wanted to
“get his feet under him” before going on a mission (00:11:18:00)
The task force and soldiers went through some extremely tough fighting,
with the enemy almost overrunning the base camp (00:11:39:00)
o After the offensive in the north subsided, another enemy infiltration came north
from War Zone D Phuoc Long province orchestrated by the 5th Viet Cong
division (00:11:45:00)
o Enemy activity continued through October, November and December because the
division covered such a large geographic area in III Corps (00:12:12:00)
When he had served as a de facto S-2 during his second tour in II Corps, Kloet talked
with one company commander and his deputy and both said that they normally had
around seventy-six soldiers fit for duty at any one time whereas the company had an
authorized strength of around one-hundred-and-forty soldiers (00:12:34:00)
o At one point, Kloet met with General Hal Moore, famous from the Battle of Ia
Drang Valley and the subsequent book We Were Soldiers, and according to
General Moore, when the division deployed to Vietnam, it consisted of roughly
seventy percent of the soldiers who had started in training (00:13:49:00)
That amount stayed consistent until individual replacement soldiers began
being feed into openings (00:14:19:00)
�
With R&R’s, wounded soldiers, and other situations where a soldier was
gone but still “on the books”, it was difficult to get any continuity in
estimates regarding troop strength in the division (00:14:26:00)
o Overall, the entire division was spread too thin, which was exhausting for the
soldiers; however, the one advantage companies in the division had over regular
line companies was access to a large number of helicopters (00:14:42:00)
In theory, the division could air assault an entire brigade at one time if
necessary to any target area; on the other hand, line companies had to take
trucks and could only travel in smaller elements (00:15:05:00)
With their air mobility, the division was able to cover a larger amount of
territory which upset the abilities of the enemy; because the division could
get troops to a given location rather quickly, the enemy could not plan
large, intricate operations (00:15:29:00)
Once he had successfully re-organized the section, Kloet began performing a day-to-day
process (00:16:07:00)
o At the time, Kloet’s unit had an agreement with a documentation center in Saigon
so that all the paperwork Kloet’s unit obtained on one day would be taken to
Saigon by liaison and returned the following day with cursory translations as to
what each document contained, although if the center believed a document to be
of extreme importance, they translated the entire document (00:16:16:00)
o The problem for Kloet was he was dealing with an entirely new staff of soldiers
who, although they were good soldiers, did not fully understand what needed to
be done; therefore, Kloet himself screened the entire stack of translated
documents, deciding which were important and which were not (00:16:55:00)
o Initially, Kloet had two lieutenants working for him, one to command the day
shift and the other to command the night shift; however, one of the lieutenants
had gone through Airborne and Ranger training, considered the assignment
beneath him, and decided to transfer (00:17:34:00)
When the one lieutenant transferred out, Kloet decided that he would
maintain the day shift and the remaining lieutenant would command the
night shift (00:18:14:00)
The arrangement did not work from the beginning because the other
lieutenant, although a good soldier, did not know what exactly he was
supposed to do (00:18:30:00)
Although Kloet was supposed to mentor the lieutenant in the job, it
was still a war zone (00:18:51:00)
Nevertheless, Kloet believed the lieutenant could handle to job
because Kloet thought back to his own experiences as a 2nd
lieutenant when he just dove into his assignment because he
realized that he would be held responsible for the work; however,
the lieutenant never picked up on that (00:19:32:00)
o Every study that went out from the section needed Kloet’s approval, which was a
major job at first because in addition to teaching the new soldiers how to do their
jobs, Kloet needed to proofread all their work to make sure it met the criteria for
the G-2 (00:19:51:00)
�
The G-2 would send out specific requirements for information, which
Kloet relayed to the NCOIC, a sergeant, who told the other soldiers the
requirements (00:20:22:00)
The sergeant was a benefit to Kloet because he too had worked in
military intelligence before and would pick up on what needed to
be done (00:20:36:00)
o Every night by midnight, there was supposed to a report sent out electronically
that reported on all activities that had occurred in the division’s area for the day,
intelligence included, and Kloet’s unit had the assignment of putting notes on the
intelligence information (00:21:06:00)
Part of the lieutenant’s job was synthesizing all the information; however,
the lieutenant would take the information up and the G-2 staff would
immediately call Kloet (00:21:41:00)
o Kloet would go in the morning, usually around six in the morning, and would not
get to bed until around ten-thirty or eleven o’clock at night, which did not include
waking up from incoming enemy fire (00:21:56:00)
o The lieutenant did not know how to properly synthesize the information and
although he had gone through his officers basic course, it seemed to Kloet that the
lieutenant had not learned anything (00:22:20:00)
o Eventually, it reached the point that Kloet was staying up until the report was sent
to press (00:23:04:00)
o Kloet does not believe he could have handled all the work he had to do without
help from the NCOIC sergeant, who took care of the enlisted men (00:23:24:00)
One time, there was a soldier who complained about not liking his job and
would “disappear” from time to time; eventually, the others found him in
the men’s room reading comic books and the sergeant ended up having a
long discussion with the soldier (00:23:45:00)
The soldiers had bunkers built behind their “hooch” and Kloet’s personal sleeping area
consisted of a cot next to the back door covered by mosquito netting, a small foot locker,
and a fan he bought at the PX (00:24:42:00)
o Kloet believes he got the fan illegally because he did not have permission from
the officer in-charge of electricity; the entire base ran off a power grid supplied by
generators, so there was limited electronic power available and soldiers needed
permission to have a fan (00:25:18:00)
One time, Kloet and a friend went into the PX to get the fan and because
Kloet talked so quickly, the E-4 working in the PX did not know what to
do, so he forgot to ask whether Kloet had permission (00:25:43:00)
o The fan sat on Kloet’s foot locker and was a blessing because the temperature was
hot (00:26:16:00)
o There was a road behind the hooch with a huge bunker next to it; each hooch had
an individual bunker assigned to it (00:26:26:00)
Kloet never once went into the bunker assigned to his hooch, even when
the base came under mortar and rocket attacks (00:26:49:00)
First, Kloet had already been in Vietnam for three years and the
attacks no longer seemed to phase him and he came to the
�
conclusion that if he heard a round and it landed, then he was still
alive (00:27:11:00)
Secondly, there were snakes that loved the bunkers because the
bunkers were dry (00:27:38:00)
In February 1970, Kloet was involved in a “fragging” incident because for a period in
December and January, the unit did not have a commander; the commander had gone
home on an emergency leave because his sole surviving parent, his mother, had had a
physical problem (00:28:28:00)
o In companies that worked in a base camp and not in the fields as actually
companies but as attachments to various sections, they could get along without
having a commander (00:29:28:00)
In normal, peace-time situations, someone would temporarily sit-in for the
departed commander (00:30:16:00)
o However, because there was no commander, chaos very slowly began creeping
into the entire unit (00:30:36:00)
o At the end of January and beginning of February, the unit went through an IG
inspection; however, the inspection was not like those in the United States, where
everything needed to be polished and put in the right place (00:30:46:00)
This inspection was only intended to check how everything was going in
the unit (00:31:09:00)
However, everything in the unit was not going well; the sandbags
surrounding the bunkers were deteriorating and other things were just
falling apart, something the inspectors did not like (00:31:14:00)
Once they completed their inspection, the inspectors would inform the G-2
that the area was either good or needed improvement; if the later occurred,
the G-2 needed someone to take care of the problem, so the G-2 appointed
a major to become the interim company commander (00:31:48:00)
However, the major did not like receiving the assignment as the
company commander because he had dreams of glory and bigger
and better things (00:32:17:00)
Instead of actually working at the company’s position, the major spent his
time at the G-2, which meant he was not able to supervise what was
happening in the company (00:32:36:00)
Instead, the major delegated tasks to the company first sergeant,
who delegated the tasks to another sergeant, with orders that as
men came off a shift, they were supposed to take care of the
problems (00:33:11:00)
o The new orders did not go over well and as a result, the soldiers would talk to
Kloet; the soldiers picked up on the arrogance of the major and Kloet learned that
they were blaming him for all the problems and the extra work (00:33:30:00)
o Kloet had a choice: either talk to the major or not; however, the major was not apt
to listen to Kloet, so Kloet went to his actual commanding officer, another major,
and explained the problems with the major (00:34:13:00)
Kloet’s commanding officer told Kloet to keep track of the situation and in
late February was when soldiers began throwing rocks onto the top of
Kloet’s hooch because the rocks sounded like grenades (00:34:49:00)
�o One night, Kloet got off work at 10:30, which was relatively early, and went to
the showers before going back to his hooch and going to bed; whenever he went
to bed, it took little time for Kloet to fall asleep because he knew that he was
getting up the next day (00:35:07:00)
All the soldiers had developed a habit of listening with one ear while they
slept and as he slept, Kloet heard the “clink, clink” on the roof, which had
been going on for a while; however, the next thing Kloet knew, there was
a large explosion (00:36:03:00)
The first thing Kloet did was look over and saw that his fan had been
knocked to the ground and was off (00:36:35:00)
Within the hooch, Kloet’s bunk and foot looker were directly against one
of the walls and near one of the doors; the rest of the hooch consisted of
major’s area, which was in the center and covered with sandbags, a small
common area, and the area for the interrogation section (00:36:51:00)
Following the explosion, Kloet was looking through the dust and could see
pieces of wood lying about; eventually, he managed to get untangled from
the mosquito net, which had collapsed on the bed (00:37:43:00)
As he got out of the bed, Kloet accidentally stepped on a board with a nail
in it, which went into Kloet’s foot; after pulling the board out, Kloet saw
the captain in charge of the interrogation section (00:38:07:00)
When he first heard the clicking, the captain had stepped out off
his office and during the explosion, a piece of wood with three
nails in it flew past the captain, scratching his face, before
imbedding itself in a piece of plywood (00:38:19:00)
Eventually, the military police came around to investigate what had
happened; when Kloet explained it had been grenades, the MPs said that
grenades did not have fingerprints and the MPs ended up not asking many
pertinent questions (00:38:52:00)
Luckily, no one was seriously wounded in the explosion; the major was in
his own little bunker, while the one captain was scratched by the nails,
which caused him to have a mental breakdown (00:39:38:00)
o The major reacted to the “fragging” attempt by placing guards around the hooch,
including one on the bunker behind the hooch and roaming patrols throughout the
company area (00:39:55:00)
However, apart from their regular shifts, the soldiers were now also
expected to go on guard duty, which also did not go over very well with
the soldiers (00:40:35:00)
o Kloet eventually found out that the soldier who committed the “fragging” was in
Kloet’s unit because some of the other soldiers told him (00:40:48:00)
The soldier was a transfer from the aviation battalion, which set off a red
flag in Kloet’s mind because the Army did not transfer a soldier in-country
unless there was a problem in the soldier’s previous unit (00:41:14:00)
Kloet learned that prior to the “fragging” incident, the transferred soldier
had pulled his pistol on another of Kloet’s soldiers; however, other
soldiers suspected he might do this, so they took the magazine out of the
pistol (00:42:31:00)
�
Eventually, the soldier ended up leaving the unit as part of the normal
rotation of soldiers (00:43:47:00)
Cambodia / Information Gathering (00:44:10:00)
For the most part, the intensity of the action stayed the same during the tour, with the
only lull coming around December; however, following the new year, the unit began
studies into new areas as other units began moving into those areas (00:44:10:00)
o One soldier had made a study about a specific region and had given the study to
Kloet so that Kloet could brief the commanding officers; however, Kloet had
taken the position with the requirement that the soldiers who developed the
studies would be part of the briefings (00:44:38:00)
o Following the new year, the unit moved into Tay Ninh to set up interdiction
operations to stop enemy movements from Cambodia into southern Vietnam,
specifically into Region 4 (00:45:22:00)
o During this time was when American soldiers were performing operations inside
of Cambodia (00:45:48:00)
While the units were preparing for the operations in Cambodia, Kloet and
another soldier visited fire bases around Tay Ninh as well as a special
forces base near the border (00:46:02:00)
While at the special forces base, the other soldier accidentally
walked into an active minefield (00:46:28:00)
o Kloet himself went into Cambodia at the beginning of June (00:47:24:00)
One morning, Kloet was woken up and was told that the G-2 wanted to go
to Cambodia because there had been a sapper attack on a camp that was on
the border (00:47:42:00)
As Kloet and another soldier boarded a helicopter, it was foggy outside
and as the helicopter climbed into the foothills of the mountains, the fog
became heavier (00:48:09:00)
Eventually, the helicopter arrived at the base and the soldiers onboard got off on went through the gate into the base, where the G-2
met the commanding officer, a colonel (00:48:41:00)
While the G-2 talked with the colonel, who was his friend, he told Kloet to
count the number of wounded and try to get an intelligence (00:49:15:00)
Kloet and the other soldier walked along the perimeter where the
sapper attack occurred and based on the bodies, Kloet did not
believe that any sappers actually made it into the base; instead, he
and the other soldier counted twenty-eight bodies (00:49:27:00)
The soldiers had set out claymores around the camp with fougasses
in front of the claymores; the fougases were filled with soap so that
as both the fougases and claymores exploded, the burning soap
particles would stick to the ball-bearings from the claymores
causing the ball-bearings to burn (00:49:51:00)
In one area, an NVA soldier had been carrying a pack with RPG
rounds when he was hit with the burning ball-bearings, and the
lower part of his torso was in one area while the other part was
several feet away (00:50:35:00)
�
As Kloet and the other soldier gathered information, the found out
that the majority of the NVA attackers were armed with AK-47
rifles and RPGs (Rocket Propelled Grenades) (00:51:01:00)
At the entrance to the base was a .50 caliber machine gun and the
soldier manning it happened to kill an enemy officer; the officer
had been carrying a Luger-type pistol, which Kloet tried to con the
soldier out of (00:51:19:00)
As the helicopter had flown up to the camp, the soldiers saw where B-52
bombers had flown and decimated the area; Kloet figures the bombing
attacks must have been recent because no moisture had gathered in the
craters (00:52:10:00)
There had only been one injury to an American soldier from the sapper
attack on the base that Kloet and the G-2 visited (00:52:31:00)
A lieutenant who had been a helicopter pilot who had been shot
down ten times, which meant he was grounded, had been assigned
as the air liaison officer for the brigade (00:52:37:00)
During the attack, a claymore exploded near the lieutenant and
some fragmentation went into the lieutenant’s head; because of the
severity of the wounds, the lieutenants was medi-vaced out
(00:54:00:00)
During his first tour, Kloet found very few enemy documents that needed translation but
as various units had more successful contact with enemy forces, more and more
documents came in (00:55:01:00)
o The Air Cav. in particular, especially in Cambodia, recovered so many documents
that Kloet did not have enough soldiers to go through them (00:55:18:00)
o By the time it was 1970, Kloet was receiving stacks of translations and summaries
of enemy documents (00:55:25:00)
One of the more valuable soldiers in any unit was the personnel officer
who kept a record of all the soldiers in the unit and on some occasions, the
Americans would kill an NVA personnel officer who had his information
in a book in his pack (00:55:39:00)
Information in the book was valuable to Kloet and his men because
it told what NVA unit and what the soldiers did (00:56:07:00)
On the other hand, the soldiers would get maps off dead NVA officers that
told what other NVA units were going to do (00:56:15:00)
If the Americans attacked an NVA base camp, the enemy often fled before
they were unable to get rid of all their information, which the Americans
were then able to capture (00:56:19:00)
o The majority of the information that Kloet and his soldiers examined came from
the NVA because the Viet Cong were part of the community (00:56:40:00)
By 1970, Kloet and the other soldiers believed that all the enemy divisions
were NVA, although some still carried the moniker of being Viet Cong
(00:57:10:00)
o Captured documents gave the analysts and idea of what enemy units were where,
what the units’ strengths were, who the commanders were, etc. (00:57:26:00)
�o As time when on and more documents were discovered, the soldiers made several
discoveries about the enemy (00:57:43:00)
First, the soldiers found out that the enemy was working more and more in
what Kloet labeled as “task forces”, where companies from different units
would join together so that if the individual companies were destroyed, an
entire unit was not destroyed as well (00:57:52:00)
Second, the soldiers discovered that the enemy was cutting back on the
automatic weapons issued to their soldiers and had returned to issuing
semi-automatic weapons (00:58:40:00)
The AK-47 was fully automatic and soldiers tended to fire their
entire allotment of ammunition quickly; however, the enemy was
having ammunition supply problems because the Americans were
successfully performing interdiction operations (00:58:55:00)
o When they went into Cambodia, the soldiers found positions where the enemy
had back-loaded thousands of rifles, machine-guns, and ammunition
(00:59:40:00)
o Through the intelligence, the Americans learned the combat effectiveness of the
NVA forces and became less afraid of them (01:00:06:00)
o The best pieces of intelligence, apart from ordinary body counts and captured
documents, were prisoners who could often give information (01:00:21:00)
On some occasions, an enemy soldier decided that he had had enough of
being shot at and decided to surrender (01:00:43:00)
Once, an enemy reconnaissance lieutenant surrendered and told the
Americans exactly where the enemy units were, which units were
going to move where, and which units were going to attack which
American positions (01:01:07:00)
o After a while, Kloet and his soldiers had built an impressive database that was
filled with good information (01:01:20:00)
o In regards to prisoners, the MPs controlled the POW camps and the interrogation
section had a responsibility to finish gathering any information from the prisoners
quickly, before the prisoners were shipped back (01:01:37:00)
Any priority prisoners needed to identified quickly, although that was not
always the case (01:01:57:00)
The division base camp was labeled as the AOT and it’s defense
fell under the command of the division artillery commander, with
different battalions rotating every six months as the guard units
(01:02:11:00)
o Once, a battalion on AOT defense captured a prisoner and
without telling anyone, used the prisoner as a point man on
further operations (01:02:43:00)
Normally, if an enemy soldier declared himself as a
refugee, then he was not supposed to be used in any
further combat operations (01:03:02:00)
Another time, soldiers captured an Vietnamese who was listening
to helicopter communications (01:03:28:00)
�
o Because the soldier was signals intelligence, the
interrogation section of Kloet’s company began working on
him; however, once word got out that the Americans had
captured a signals intelligence soldier, higher-ranking
government agencies wanted interrogate him and they just
sent people to take him (01:04:06:00)
o Normally, the interrogators were supposed to report that
they had captured a signals intelligence soldier immediately
but they did not because the soldier was giving them good
information (01:04:54:00)
During the Cambodian operations, there were more people
available to interrogate and debrief any prisoners; there was a flood
of prisoners and most gave good information (01:05:18:00)
Within the division headquarters base camp, there were USO girls who ran small clubs
for the soldiers; however, the girls did not date the ordinary soldiers (01:06:08:00)
o Normally, it was the helicopter pilots who dated the USO girls (01:06:44:00)
o Kloet’s unit’s first sergeant lived with a Vietnamese woman on the base camp, but
that was a highly unusually situation because civilians were normally not
supposed to be in a tactical zone on a base camp (01:07:07:00)
There were not Vietnamese working on the base camp during the day (01:07:24:00)
To Kloet, morale was a relative term in the sense that each unit determined their own
morale and there was not an over-arching moral that applied to all the soldiers and all the
units (01:07:38:00)
o Most of the time, the overall moral in Kloet’s unit was good, except the time with
the interim commanding officer (01:07:51:00)
Kloet had four or five soldiers extend their tours once their first tour ended
because they did not want to go back to the United States (01:08:03:00)
o However, in the units rotating in for the base camp guard duty, there was less
positive moral because the soldiers were taken out of combat and given what
amounted to house-keeping duties (01:08:16:00)
At the time, Kloet was a junior officer, which meant he ate in the junior
officers' mess hall; one of the other officers was a lieutenant with the
headquarters company, which was in charge of the guard forces
(01:08:52:00)
However, the dislike was so bad that the officers did not sleep with
the company so that the guard soldiers could not find them
(01:09:13:00)
The one lieutenant in particular was glad to leave the base camp,
even if it meant going to an ammunition supply point along the
Cambodian border (01:09:22:00)
Soldiers coming out of combat were often squirrelly (01:10:13:00)
It was difficult to diagnose stress problems unless someone had
already been stressed (01:10:36:00)
Kloet does not know how much of an issue drugs were on the base
camp, although he does know it was a little more difficult to get
drugs on the camp (01:11:27:00)
�
o The soldiers were not allowed to go into the village but
helicopters pilots were able to fly around, giving them the
ability to get drugs and bring them back (01:11:32:00)
o When Kloet was working in II Corps, he saw more open
drug usage (01:11:42:00)
o Overall, Kloet did not see much in the way of racial tension amongst the soldiers,
although during his final tour in Germany, Kloet definitely saw more racial
tension (01:11:52:00)
Apart from doing his regular work within his section, Kloet also had to do administrative
duties as soldiers began rotating in and out of the unit (01:12:48:00)
o One soldier did not look the job that Kloet had assigned him to, so the soldier
volunteered for Ranger school; however, to get into the school, any prospective
soldiers had to go through a one-week course (01:13:01:00)
Kloet knew the Ranger commander because Ranger units in the field
received orders to collect any intelligence (01:14:07:00)
Kloet could not stop the soldier from going to the school and when the
soldier went, but before he went, Kloet talked with the Ranger commander
and told the commander to put the soldier through the same routine that
any other soldier went through (01:14:28:00)
Two days later, the soldier is back and says that he wants to be a
helicopter door-gunner, so he submitted the paperwork again and receives
the re-assignment; however, within a month, the soldier was killed
(01:15:41:00)
During his first tour, Kloet went to Japan for R&R and during his second tour, he went to
Australia; however, during the third tour, Kloet received two R&Rs because the Air Cav.
gave R&Rs based in six-month intervals (01:16:17:00)
o During one of the R&Rs, Kloet went to Taipei and during the other, he went to
Hong Kong (01:16:40:00)
o When he got off the plane in Taipei, local pimps were practically on the bus with
Kloet; when he got to a hotel run by the R&R centers, the pimps were able to go
right into the hotel (01:17:15:00)
There was a lot of culture shock for Kloet in Taipei, including the different
foods he could eat (01:17:50:00)
Kloet and some other soldiers went to the Presidential Palace and upset the
palace guards by taking pictures (01:18:11:00)
o In Hong Kong, Kloet stayed in a large hotel and shared a room with a Marine
officer (01:18:30:00)
Going on tours throughout the city as well as just walking around was all
enjoyable for Kloet (01:19:01:00)
The ability to get clean water and showers was fantastic (01:19:21:00)
By the time he went to Australia during the second tour, Kloet had
a permanent black mark on his forearm because the soldiers never
received enough hot water to shower and properly clean
themselves (01:19:27:00)
�o Kloet had been in Sydney when the Australians were constructing the famous
opera house, so Kloet and some others were able to get a tour of the area
(01:20:10:00)
The military encouraged soldiers to meet up with an Australian family, so
Kloet decided to do so and received the family of barrister, which equated
to an American lawyer (01:20:47:00)
Kloet arrived at the family’s home around six o’clock in the
evening believing that he and the family were going to eat dinner;
however, unbeknownst to him, the family usually did not eat until
later and they preferred to drink before dinner (01:21:20:00)
When Kloet arrived, the family patriarch brought him a large, dark
beer, which Kloet drank, but by the time dinner came at eight
o’clock, he was tipsy (01:21:30:00)
o When Kloet twice went to Bangkok for R&R, he found the city to be very
crowded (01:22:11:00)
One of the most interesting incidents in Bangkok was when Kloet was
walking through a reptile house at a local zoo (01:22:56:00)
As Kloet was walking, a sign said “World’s Largest Sea
Crocodile”, so Kloet began walking in that direction (01:23:07:00)
However, as he walked past one of the other boxes, a massive King
Cobra struck the glass, scaring Kloet (01:23:27:00)
o All the R&Rs Kloet went on were educational, especially with the history of the
areas and because Kloet was a history buff, he enjoyed that (01:23:49:00)
o During his time in Australia, Kloet had a slight physical problem that he had to
deal with (01:24:02:00)
During the tour, Kloet had a slight bout of dysentery, a problem
compounded by the need for Kloet to take malaria pills; as well, Kloet also
had a carbuncle on one of his legs (01:24:18:00)
When Kloet arrived in Australia, one of the first things he wanted as a
good meal, so he went to a restaurant (01:25:03:00)
Kloet got through about half the steak he ordered before needed to
go to the bathroom (01:25:19:00)
Post-Cambodian Operations (01:25:43:00)
Everything was anti-climatic once the soldiers returned from the operations in Cambodia,
with the commanders trying to make work for the soldiers (01:25:43:00)
o Eventually, the old G-2 left and a new colonel came in to take over the position;
however, the colonel had the personality that he was better than the junior officers
and they should not talk to him (01:25:51:00)
o Kloet had not talked too much with the other G-2s he had served with except to
brief them on what his section was doing but the new G-2 (01:26:12:00)
Eventually, Kloet’s company commander came down to warn Kloet about
confronting the new G-2; instead, Kloet watched for a month period as the
G-2 took the helicopter he shared with the G-3, the colonel in-charge of
operations, and left (01:27:07:00)
�
One day, the G-3 came into the TAC where Kloet was, asking if
anyone knew where the G-2 was because he needed to use the
helicopter (01:28:27:00)
o One of the soldiers in the room had been screwed over by
the G-2 and although he knew where the G-2 was, when
asked, the soldier said he did not know (01:28:47:00)
o When the G-2 came back with the helicopter, he was barred
from ever using it again and instead had to go to the
division headquarters and ask permission to take out a
helicopter (01:29:14:00)
Because he occasionally briefed the division commander, Kloet
could talk with the soldier in-charge of allotments for helicopters
and the two became friendly to the point that the soldier would
willing grant Kloet use of a helicopter whenever Kloet needed to
go out to one of the brigade headquarters (01:30:28:00)
One time, the G-2 went to get a helicopter and managed to get an
armed observation helicopter (01:30:57:00)
o The G-2 was a short man and as he was climbing into the
helicopter, he grabbed the handle of a machine gun but
accidentally grabbed the trigger and shot a round through
his foot (01:31:39:00)
As much as his commanders would allow, Kloet would travel out to the different bases,
including once going on a reconnaissance mission (01:32:27:00)
o One thing Kloet liked about the Cav. was that none of the soldiers had to pretend
that they were perfect; all the soldiers could give their all to their jobs because
even though they were going to make mistakes, as long as the soldiers did not
make mistakes that got other soldiers killed, it was acceptable (01:32:36:00)
o One day, Kloet asked the G-2 how helicopters pilots could see a group of Viet
Cong walking down a trail when the pilots were flying past (01:33:05:00)
Kloet did not realize it but the colonel had arranged for Kloet to go on a
reconnaissance mission with a “Pink Team”, which was a Little Bird
helicopter with Cobra gunships for coverage (01:34:02:00)
Kloet was ordered to pick up a weapon and report to a nearby unit, the 1st
of the 9th (01:34:35:00)
During the flight, Kloet was in the left seat of the helicopter with an M-16
but because he is left-handed, firing the rifle out of window was awkward
for him (01:34:51:00)
Once they left the 1st of the 9th, the trio of helicopters flew south, with both
Cobras above the Little Bird (01:35:18:00)
All of the sudden, the Little Bird began to dive, eventually ending up
below the tree line; Kloet then realized how the pilots were able to see
enemy soldiers, because the helicopters was flying only ten or so feet off
of the ground (01:35:28:00)
As the Little Bird is flying, the helicopter crew chief is sticking explosives
into used ordinance and dropping it out the side of the helicopter;
�
meanwhile, the pilot is talking with Kloet through headphones, which
caused him to loss his concentration (01:36:03:00)
All of the sudden, the pilot swore and an explosion from one of the
ordinances pushed the helicopter forward (01:36:50:00)
o Apart from the reconnaissance mission, Kloet would also fly to the different bases
in the area; as well, he once acted as a liaison with the 1st Infantry Division to
coordinate intelligence sharing (01:37:17:00)
While working as the liaison officer, Kloet saw that his own intelligence unit was much
better than that of the 1st Infantry because his unit was better organized in the sense that
the 1st Infantry either placed too much responsibility on the younger, less experienced
soldiers or not enough responsibility (01:37:42:00)
o Kloet viewed his unit as having a nice mix of senior supervision, including a
couple of officers who rotated in and a couple of senior of NCOs (01:38:10:00)
The problem with the original lieutenant Kloet had was the lieutenant did
not try and Kloet did not have time to take the lieutenant under his wing
and teach him everything that needed to be done (01:39:11:00)
o When Kloet first joined the Air Cav., he developed a plan with a small group of
other soldiers as to what would be a good mix for the unit before talking with the
G-2, who gave his approval to the plan (01:40:01:00)
When Kloet first arrived at the Air Cav., the G-2 who was in the unit was a short-timer,
so Kloet did not interact with him and the colonel who replaced the outgoing G-2 did not
last long because the colonel was not “Cav-standard” (01:40:53:00)
o One time, during the daily five o’clock briefing given by the G-2, the colonel had
briefing cards with him and as he would reading each card, he would use a pointer
in his other hand to point out the location on a board (01:41:17:00)
Kloet was standing near the entrance to the tent and the division’s
commander officer was seated in front of the colonel along with his chief
of staff and the division G-3 (01:42:04:00)
The board the colonel was using was also used by the G-3, which placed
all the units in their areas along with their statuses and what their
operations were; however, as the G-2’s pointer moved down the board, it
pulled out all the push-pins that the G-3 had used (01:42:34:00)
Kloet looked at the G-3 and saw the G-3 was incensed; although Kloet
does not know exactly what happened after that, the G-2 was eventually
transferred from the unit (01:43:11:00)
After the G-2 departed came another colonel who had served in the cavalry already and
was a straightforward soldier who wanted the soldiers to tell it like it was (01:43:42:00)
o The general staff would normally eat together, often with better accoutrements
than that of the regular soldiers (01:44:16:00)
o One day, the G-2 sent someone to get Kloet with orders for an overlay of all the
enemy infiltration corridors in the division’s area of operations, which was a
major project (01:44:41:00)
The project involved splicing together sheets of acetate in order to cover
an entire wall then placing pieces of different colored tape to represent the
different infiltration corridors (01:45:19:00)
�
Once the soldiers finished, they rolled the entire project up and placed it
behind the G-2’s desk in his office (01:45:52:00)
A couple of weeks later, the soldiers came to Kloet saying that they were
running out of the acetate, which they used to make overlays on individual
units’ areas of operation and everything that was going on within that
specific area (01:46:10:00)
The soldiers asked permission to get back the project they had made fro
the G-2 because it was a lot of acetate, so Kloet walked to the G-2’s office
and asked the colonel if they could get the project because they were
running low on acetate (01:46:32:00)
The colonel confessed that he could not remember why the roll of
acetate was there (01:46:57:00)
In early 1970, the Air Cav. was running interdiction operations in war zone three because
the enemy was running from Cambodia, through what was labeled as the “elephant
sphere” and into the southern area (01:47:27:00)
o The Americans placed bases in order to stop the movement of enemy soldiers and
the enemy wanted to destroy those bases (01:48:01:00)
o One time, Kloet and some other soldiers were listening on the radio as the
division talked with a battalion about enemy activity when the enemy began
lobbing 122 mm mortars onto the base; because it was hot, the G-2 had been lying
on top of the battalion command bunker when a mortar round landed nearby and
took off one of his legs and one of his arms (01:48:05:00)
The enemy charged the base although a lot of them did not have any
weapons; the enemy would drug their soldiers in order to get them to
attack without weapons (01:48:50:00)
o Over time, the fighting intensified and once the Cav. came back from Cambodia,
Kloet and his soldiers were asked to make studies using captured enemy
weaponry and equipment (01:49:23:00)
At some points in the tour, Kloet became very out-of-shape because all he did was sleep,
ride in a jeep up to his job, sit in a chair, and walk only short distances (01:50:08:00)
Post-third Tour / The Phoenix Program (01:50:48:00)
Kloet ended his third tour in 1970 and headed towards the “career course”, a captain level
course to train the captains in how to be a company commander and do more complicated
intelligence functions at Fort Holabird in Baltimore, Maryland (01:50:48:00)
o Kloet spent time in the career course, which Kloet believed precluded an
assignment back to Fort Bragg; however, when Kloet officially received the
assignment to Fort Bragg, he scoffed at it and requested assignment back to
Vietnam as part of the Phoenix Program (01:51:21:00)
Kloet had previously served at Fort Bragg as a headquarters company commander, which
involved, amongst other things, organizing the motor pool and billets for all the soldiers
in the headquarters (01:52:22:00)
o However, the headquarters company was drained due to the war, so when he
came into the unit, Kloet was the senior company grade officer in the entire
battalion; the only people higher ranking than Kloet were a major, who was the
�o
o
o
o
o
battalion XO and the battalion commander, while the personnel officer was a
lieutenant (01:53:08:00)
When he arrived, the first thing Kloet had to do was an inventory for the unit and
when he first opened the desk in his office, he found a draw full of half-empty
bottles of Maalox (01:54:01:00)
After he arrived, Kloet received his orders from the battalion commander and
although there were orders of what Kloet needed to do, there was no mention of
where he could get soldiers to do it; however, the commander told Kloet to just
use everyone in the headquarters (01:54:36:00)
Once inventory was finished, Kloet asked if he and the company first sergeant
were responsible for making sure every soldier kept his sleeping area in order;
instead, Kloet suggested using a group of NCOs to monitor the soldiers’ living
quarters (01:55:16:00)
Although the battalion commander accepted the idea, the NCOs who
received the assignment grumbled and disagreed with it; the NCOs had
often already served in Vietnam and were nearing the ends of their
enlistments (01:56:18:00)
After the living quarters were organized, Kloet needed to organize the motor pool,
so he suggested developing a list of all non-critical personnel (E-5 and below) and
they would work in the motor pool doing vehicle inspections (01:57:28:00)
Eventually, one of the sergeants came up and told Kloet that the soldiers in
the motor pool were working for the maintenance officer, so Kloet sent
another sergeant to supervise the activity in the motor pool (01:57:56:00)
However, the maintenance officer complained to the battalion S-4, who in
turn, went to a higher ranking officer instead of Kloet (01:58:48:00)
Kloet went into the hospital the day after Christmas, 1968 with what the doctors
believed to be dengue fever, although there were no reported cases of dingy fever
in the entire country (01:59:56:00)
Kloet went into the hospital for two weeks and when he returned to his
unit, the battalion commander had left and his supply sergeant had rotated
to Germany; however, Kloet had to do another inventory for the unit, so
he received another sergeant to be the supply sergeant (02:00:14:00)
The sergeant started to do the inventory but returned to Kloet and
explained that items were missing (02:00:58:00)
When Kloet asked how long it would take to fix everything, the
sergeant said he could take care of it because he had “connections”
with other soldiers (02:01:11:00)
The battalion commander warned Kloet against using soldiers from
other units to take care of the problems but the new supply
sergeant had friends in a basic training unit and was able to get
soldiers to help with the inventory (02:01:40:00)
Part of the reason soldiers wanted to work for Kloet was because
they received a meal from Kloet’s mess hall, which was very well
organized: Kloet had been a mess officer in Germany and he knew
how to make sure a mess hall ran properly (02:02:15:00)
�
The supply sergeant squared everything away for the inventory and
the unit ended up with only six items missing, all OD watches, and
the reason they were missing was the previous supply sergeant had
used them as trade items (02:02:45:00)
While the inventory was going on, Kloet filed paperwork for reassignment to Vietnam and although the battalion commander could not
stop him from going, he delayed Kloet by saying Kloet needed to do an
investigation into the missing watches (02:03:38:00)
After the investigation was complete, it went up the chain of
command and over to Germany, where the old supply sergeant had
to pay for all six watches (02:03:59:00)
Kloet first went to Fort Bragg in 1966 and joined a unit preparing to deploy to Vietnam,
although few of the officers or enlisted men knew exactly what they were going to be
getting into (02:04:18:00)
o Then, when he came back from his tour, Kloet went back to Fort Bragg before
going back to Vietnam for his second tour (02:04:54:00)
o Before Kloet rotated from Vietnam for his second tour, he received an assignment
back to Fort Bragg (02:06:03:00)
Between August 1970 and September 1971, Kloet attended two different schools, the
career course and a MASA (Military Assistance Security Advisory) course (02:06:00:00)
o The career course consisted of teaching intelligence officers how to be captains
while maintain their intelligence skill and the MASA course trained Kloet to take
part in the Phoenix program (02:06:43:00)
During the MASA course, courses included Vietnamese language classes,
how to organize reports, etc. (02:07:01:00)
The Phoenix program was a program designed to neutralize the communist infrastructure
within Vietnam and consisted of both district- and province-sized committees made up of
police and American advisors, although originally, the advisors were CIA operatives and
Special Forces officers (02:07:28:00)
o The committee’s jobs were to coordinate with any other organization in that area,
such as the census or grievance bureaus, that might have information on Viet
Cong routes, villages, or communist individuals, with the intention of neutralizing
these threats (02:08:20:00)
o In Kloet’s case, he was at the district level and had the assignment of gathering all
the gathered intelligence and placing it into a single report, named the “Big Mac”,
which listed all the communist villages and what was the status of the Viet Cong
infrastructure (02:08:48:00)
Kloet also scheduled operations to maintain what was known as “the black
book”, which were files and dossiers kept on a suspected person
(02:09:22:00)
Once the committees had enough vetted, reliable information
within one dossier, the person went onto the black list and if more
reliable information came in, then the soldiers could conduct an
operation to neutralize the person (02:09:53:00)
Ideally, the soldiers would neutralize a threat by arresting the
suspected person (02:10:38:00)
�
In Kloet’s committee, his Vietnamese counterpart was part of the
Vietnamese special police (akin to the American FBI) and he warned
Kloet when he first arrived that Kloet would not be able to get any
operations within the sector (02:10:48:00)
The provincial leader was a military commander and there were
leaks within the commander’s staff; if any operation was launched,
then Kloet would not find anything (02:11:53:00)
During the training, Kloet and the others were warned that this
might happen (02:12:14:00)
In order to effectively perform operations, the soldiers needed the
assistance of the Vietnamese government, which was the military,
and in Kloet’s case, his province was on the VietnameseCambodian border (02:12:19:00)
o The consensus amongst the Americans within the province
was that the provincial leader was play both sides against
one another (02:12:43:00)
Kloet recognized this when his first interpreters was
the son-in-law of the provincial leader and turned
out to be a snitch, telling the leader everything
Kloet and the others worked on (02:13:04:00)
Kloet removed the interpreter and this caused a rift
with the provincial leader (02:13:46:00)
o Over time, Kloet and the others were getting more
neutralizations by way of killing the suspect as opposed to
arresting them (02:14:00:00)
o The soldiers were conducting operations within the villages
and at night, there were explosions where the soldiers had
set up ambushes for the enemy; after the ambushes, the
soldiers would find intelligence on the enemy that Kloet
and the others used (02:14:34:00)
o One time, Kloet went to a district near where he had served with the 1st Air Cav.
because soldiers had killed five suspected enemy personnel (02:15:04:00)
Originally, pictures were taken of dead Viet Cong or communists as
verification; however, headquarters found out that in some cases, the
“enemy” were paid to act dead, so Kloet was told he needed to verify any
suspected enemy KIA (02:15:39:00)
When he traveled to the district, Kloet could not arrive early in the
morning because the district was covered in fog, so that when he did
arrive, the bodies had been laying out in the sun (02:16:40:00)
o The Vietnamese were the ones conducting operations and ambushes against the
enemy, not Americans (02:17:56:00)
Kloet only spent about six months working in the Phoenix Program because when the
Easter offensive began in Spring 1972, all hell broke loose (02:18:50:00)
o Most of the fighting during the offensive took place in a province next to where
Kloet was stationed but the enemy still managed to cut the roads leading out of
Kloet’s province, which meant no supplies could come in (02:19:03:00)
�o As well, the S-2 in Kloet’s unit had left and Kloet had to also fill that role
(02:19:13:00)
o Prior the offensive, Kloet’s unit received regular intelligence unrelated to the
Phoenix program that said enemy tanks were to the north, just across the
Cambodian border (02:19:33:00)
A lieutenant who was part of the Phoenix program was in the area and
Kloet told the lieutenant that he needed to verify the intelligence; the
lieutenant tried to find intelligence on the tanks and found nothing but the
following day, the enemy offensive began, with tanks rolling into the
neighboring province (02:19:48:00)
The enemy used a nearby bridge over the Song Be river to run tanks, so
Kloet’s unit organized an air strike to destroy the bridge (02:20:22:00)
o Once the offensive began, Kloet’s attention shifted to more military-centered
work and keeping an eye on what was happening in the neighboring province; the
work continued through April, May, and June and in July, the enemy pulled back
due to the large amount of damage they had taken (02:21:01:00)
However, as the enemy pulled back, they sent a unit to attack a district in
Kloet’s province and managed to cut the road; some of the Vietnamese
asked permission to retreat to Saigon but a CIA officer in Bien Hoa told
Kloet not to allow it (02:21:54:00)
Kloet’s interpreter told Kloet that the Vietnamese were planning to
kill Kloet if he did not let them leave; Kloet reported this to his
superior and his superior went to the Vietnamese leaders, saying
that if they heard another word, the Vietnamese were going into
the jail (02:22:52:00)
During the first part of the attack, the enemy bombarded Kloet’s area with
152 mm artillery and RPGs, so Kloet had to go out with a jeep and do
crater analysis, both to determine what exactly the enemy were shelling
them with and where the shellings were coming from (02:23:33:00)
Once Kloet plotted the artillery’s location, he told the provincial
chief, who said he would send some soldiers out; the Vietnamese
soldiers did go out and found the artillery were Kloet said it would
be but there was roughly a battalion-sized force of enemy soldiers
guarding it (02:24:47:00)
o During offensive, a friend of Kloet had been stationed in the province where the
bulk of the fighting occurred (02:25:34:00)
o By July 1st, 1972, there was talk of reducing the size of Kloet’s unit, so the unit
was moved out of the bunkers that the Army had built a couple of years earlier
and into a couple of civilian trailers (02:26:22:00)
Kloet shared a trailer with a retired New York City cop and on the night of
July 1st, when the enemy fired RPGs into the unit’s compound, the cop
went crazy, grabbing a M-3 “grease gun” (02:26:51:00)
Kloet managed to get the cop into a nearby bunker and because he had
been in Vietnam for four years, Kloet knew what to do, so he took his time
and did everything right (02:27:43:00)
�
In the morning, Kloet went out to do his crater analysis, which involved
measure which directions each round came from; where all the lines
intersected was where the enemy artillery was located (02:28:13:00)
Eventually, the Army managed to clear the road out of the district and the
unit left via an armed convoy (02:28:49:00)
o When the offensive began, the Vietnamese soldiers in the province left their
equipment behind as well as some Montagnard tribesmen who were fighting with
them (02:29:19:00)
Eventually, Kloet went with a CIA-owned Air America helicopter and
watched as a C-130 Spectre gunship destroyed the left-behind artillery and
ammunition dumps (02:29:34:00)
The Montagnards eventually made it through the jungle and were sent into
an old Air Cav. base (02:29:55:00)
o During the operation to clear the road, there were endless craters on both sides of
the road from Air Force bombings, with very few buildings left standing, except
for a pagoda that the Vietnamese then considered haunted (02:30:08:00)
The Air Force was still dropping bombs as the soldiers advanced down the
road, so the soldiers would occasionally stand underneath the awnings of
any remaining buildings (02:31:24:00)
o From their compound, Kloet and the other soldiers could see Nui Ba Ra¸ which
was a large nearby mountain with Vietnamese intercept facility on it and during
the offensive, the Vietnamese reported tanks near the facility (02:31:47:00)
Kloet’s commanding officer asked why he and the other soldiers were not
receiving that information from American sources and was told that he did
not have high enough clearance, which upset the colonel (02:32:12:00)
During the offensive, some of the soldiers with Kloet managed to capture
a couple of American-made APCs that the NVA had captured when the
American forces in the area abandoned them (02:32:48:00)
o After July 1st, a small Montagnard platoon occupied as small, triangular
compound constructed by the Americans just to the west of Kloet’s position and
the Montagnards defended that compound so fiercely that the enemy were not
able to overrun it (02:33:55:00)
When the offensive began in April, the Air Force talked with the soldiers and told them
what types of ordinance were available, including smaller versions of gas bombs used to
attack caves that had never been used in Vietnam (02:34:44:00)
o The Air Force also provided a transponder so that if things ever got dicey, the
soldiers could flip the switch, notifying the Air Force that they needed support
while simultaneously telling the Air Force exactly where the soldiers were
positioned (02:35:21:00)
o After July 1st, the soldiers turned on the transponder and the Air Force sent a
Spectre gunship, which was an awesome sight to see (02:35:42:00)
Instead of firing the heavy artillery aboard the aircraft, the crew mostly
fired 20 mm miniguns, which looked like a laser going from the aircraft to
the ground (02:35:55:00)
The Air Force also dropped a few of the gas bombs, which released a
heavy gas that over-pressurized and killed anyone in the gas (02:36:22:00)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
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1914-
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
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RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KloetR1071V2
Title
A name given to the resource
Kloet, Ronald (Interview outline and video, 2 of 3), 2011
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kloet, Ronald
Description
An account of the resource
In July 1969, Ron Kloet returned to Vietnam for a third tour of duty. During this tour, he served as part of the intelligence section for the 1st Air Cavalry Division in the Phuoc Long Province. While with the 1st Air Cav., Kloet took part in operations within neighboring Cambodia. Once his tour with the Air Cav. ended, Kloet's original orders called for him to go to a career course at Fort Bragg. However, recalling previous time spent at Fort Bragg, Kloet instead requested going back to Vietnam for a fourth tour, which he received. Therefore, after receiving training in another career course and in a MASA (Military Assistance Security Advisory) course, Kloet deployed to Vietnam for a fourth time. During the fourth tour, Kloet served as part of the Phoenix program, a joint Vietnamese-American effort to neutralize the Viet Cong and communists at a local level. Also during his time with the Phoenix program, Kloet took part in the NVA's 1972 Easter Offensive, which occurred in a neighboring province.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
WKTV (Wyoming, Mich.)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Army
United States. Air Force
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives, American
Language
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eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2011-02-24
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
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application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/5aaee66ac7347e72ff90b9ce115fa8d7.mp4
c69431f02424aa8e86645eb6ca0d1cff
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1ba680797f32296c85ecd5ef1c510a3a.pdf
db560ea5fc38cb45ad94fd7e5e97f910
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
The Cold War
Ron Kloet
Interview Length: (01:59:46:00)
Pre-enlistment / Training (00:00:18:00)
Kloet was born of Aug. 8th, 1936, on the west side of Grand Rapids, Michigan; as Kloet
grew up, his family moved around, from apartments to one house then another, two-story
house that was only two blocks away from their old house (00:00:18:00)
o Kloet attended Christian school for K-9th grade and took a single year of Christian
high school but did not like it because he did not know anyone and the high
school was so far away from his home that Kloet had to ride a city bus, which was
inconvenient, especially when the bus workers went on strike (00:00:58:00)
o Instead, Kloet convinced his parents to allow him to attend Union High School
and Kloet graduated from there in 1954 (00:01:20:00)
Up until the start of World War II, Kloet’s mother was a housewife and his father worked
as a photo engraver for a company, making plates for newspapers, a job that last for forty
years (00:01:37:00)
o However, while Kloet and siblings were in school, their mother got a part-time
job working at a grocery store; after the war, Kloet’s mother took a job working at
a brass company (00:02:06:00)
After graduating from high school, Kloet left home and enlisted in the Air Force in
January, 1955 (00:02:39:00)
o Kloet had been raised the old-fashioned way, that children were expected to leave
the nest, and when he graduated from high school, a lot of people suggested Kloet
go to college to get a practical degree (00:03:07:00)
Therefore, Kloet briefly attended Davenport University for a semester but
because he had to pay rent, Kloet needed income, so he took a job,
attending classes in the morning and working in the evening (00:03:30:00)
Kloet was also not happy with the school; not that he could not handle it,
he just did not like it (00:03:56:00)
o Kloet was restless and wanted to get away, so he decided to enlist and join the
service (00:04:01:00)
When he first enlisted, Kloet took entrance tests at the induction center
and scored high (00:04:08:00)
Kloet did not want to be drafted because friends of his who had graduated
from high school in 1954 were drafted and went to Korea [the armistice
had been signed in 1953, but the Americans maintained a strong presence
there] (00:04:18:00)
o Because Kloet scored high on the tests, the military chose to send Kloet to the Air
Force; when he enlisted, Kloet did not chose a specific branch to join but the
military chose to send him to the Air Force security services (00:04:41:00)
�
Kloet went for his basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas and
that marked the first time Kloet had ever been to Texas (00:05:12:00)
o Kloet spent January through April at Lackland to complete the twelve-week basic
training course (00:05:26:00)
o The basic training was typical of the time: going to the rifle range, physical
training, a lot of marching, and some classroom work (00:05:38:00)
o It was not hard for Kloet to make the adjustment from a civilian lifestyle to a
military lifestyle; physically, it was a little more challenging because Kloet had
never been athletic, liking to read books instead (00:06:01:00)
o A beautiful part of basic training was the Kloet met a cross-section of American
society; before, Kloet had only known the Poles and Dutch living on the west side
of Grand Rapids and not much outside of that (00:06:18:00)
When Kloet had been going to grade school, his uncle who had served
during World War II lived with Kloet’s family both before and after his
service and he filled Kloet’s head with stories of his experiences while
serving in the Navy (00:06:52:00)
Kloet had other uncles who had served as well and they told their
stories to Kloet, so Kloet was always interested in life outside of
Grand Rapids (00:07:18:00)
During basic training, there were some African-American and Latino
recruits but a lot of the recruits were from the South, a demographic that
supplied a large amount of enlistees for the entire military (00:07:31:00)
When he first enlisted, Kloet went from Grand Rapids to Detroit,
where more the recruits were picked up and some of them were
African-American (00:07:50:00)
Kloet was not too knowledgeable about the race issue because he
had grown up in Grand Rapids and the issue really hit home when
the recruits were taking the train down to Texas (00:07:59:00)
o The train stopped at a small town in Texas where the
recruits were allowed to get off to get some food, as there
was none on the train (00:08:13:00)
o However, the African-Americans were barred from
entering a restaurant (00:08:24:00)
The majority of the drill instructors were from the South, but they
did not treat the African-American soldiers any differently and
yelled at everybody (00:08:45:00)
After the first twelve weeks, Kloet received orders for his training school at Kelly Air
Force Base, which was only a few miles away from Lackland (00:09:03:00)
o After the twelve weeks, Kloet received leave, so he bought a plane ticket and flew
back to Grand Rapids before returning to Kelly to go through what the Air Force
had termed as “technical school” (00:09:18:00)
Kelly attended the headquarters and training school for the Air Force
Security service (00:09:43:00)
o Kloet’s training at Kelly consisted of learning how to analyze traffic from
intercepted communications using codes, which was similar to doing crossword
puzzles (00:09:53:00)
�
Another big part of the training was pattern analysis and Kloet worked as
a signals analyst, working with collected material; his full job title was
“radio intercept traffic analyst” (00:10:22:00)
o Kloet’s training at Kelly lasted for another four months, from April through
August (00:10:49:00)
o During the training, Kloet was allowed to go off-base and into San Antonio, as
well as going once to Padre Island on the Gulf of Mexico with other airmen who
lived in the barracks with Kloet, if only to walk along the beach (00:11:02:00)
Kloet would go into San Antonio, which had a nice theater and several
nice restaurants, although it was hot in the summer (00:11:18:00)
San Antonio was somewhat unique because there had always been Air
Force bases there; there were more bases around San Antonio than any
other place in the country (00:11:34:00)
There was Brooks Air Force Base, Randolph Air Force Base, Kelly
Air Force Base, Lackland Air Force Base and one other one, plus
the Army had Fort Sam Houston (00:10:45:00)
There was a lot of military presence in San Antonio, which made
for a friendly atmosphere towards the military (00:12:03:00)
After completing the training at Kelly, Kloet was to ship overseas, so he was given a
thirty-day leave and he went home before reporting to Travis Air Force Base, which was
north of San Francisco (00:12:22:00)
o Eventually, Kloet and the others who were deploying were placed aboard a ship,
the Mitchell, and taken from San Francisco to Japan, a two-week voyage that
ended when the soldier arrived in Yokohama, Japan (00:12:53:00)
The Mitchell was a troop transport that was terrible, especially during any
rough weather; the ship would bounce all over the place during rough
weather and people would get sick (00:13:30:00)
The people onboard the Mitchell were a mix of servicemen who were all
being re-assigned (00:14:00:00)
o When he first deployed, Kloet did not know which specific unit he was supposed
to join, be it a group, wing, or squadron; Kloet knew where to go but not which
unit to go to (00:14:09:00)
Deployment (00:14:30:00)
Kloet’s first impression of Japan happened when the Mitchell was getting close to the
islands; as the ship got closer to the islands, the servicemen sniffed the air and asked what
the smell was (00:14:30:00)
o It was October and that was the time that the Japanese farmers put fertilizer on
their soil; however, the fertilizer the Japanese used was night soil, which roughly
translated as human excrement (00:14:50:00)
o The farmers would put the fertilizer on the soil and the heat from the sun would
make it so the people on the ship out at sea could smell the fertilizer before they
even reached land (00:15:21:00)
After the ship landed in Yokohama, Kloet was assigned to 6902nd Special
Communications Group, which was stationed at Shiroi Air Force Base, which was to the
northeast of Tokyo (00:15:38:00)
�
o At the time, there were several larger Air Force bases in Tokyo but Shiroi was
supposedly “off the radar” and nobody outside a select group was supposed to
know where it was (00:16:15:00)
o As Kloet rode to the base, he looked out the windows and watched the
countryside of Japan, which was pretty (00:16:38:00)
o All the units at Shiroi were intelligence; there was a wing and a group, while the
group had several smaller elements but they were all intelligence (00:16:49:00)
While at Shiroi, Kloet did his analyst work in a building with no windows or central air,
all to make sure that no signals could get out (00:17:09:00)
o The work consisted of analyzing the paperwork that Kloet receive and placing the
results on sheets that could be feed into an early computer (00:17:52:00)
Each analyst covered a specific area, Kloet covered the Soviet Union, and
after the information came out of the computer, Kloet went over the form
again to make any corrections that needed to be made (00:18:23:00)
The forms then went out by messenger to a higher headquarters but Kloet
did not know anything about that (00:18:46:00)
o Intelligence, and signals intelligence in particular, amounted to a 365-day-a-year
job (00:19:01:00)
One of the benefits of being in intelligence was that Kloet was working at
a job, not training; the only time Kloet participated in any extent to what
could be described as training, was when he was with the 3rd Infantry
Division in Germany between 1972 and 1973, although it was not a live
mission (00:19:14:00)
On all the other assignments, there was a live, 365-day-a-year,
24/7 mission and Kloet worked a part of that mission, which
helped keep his interest in the mission because he was doing
something (00:19:48:00)
Kloet had to keep track of whoever the bad guys were at the time,
be it the Soviets or the Chinese (00:20:13:00)
The analysts operated on a daily schedule, although nobody woke them up in the morning
and there were no formations; instead, the analysts had a normal work schedule where
they had to be working by seven-thirty in the morning (00:20:31:00)
o The personnel on the base lived in barracks, with two men to a room, although the
NCOs and officers had better rooms (00:20:44:00)
o After getting up, Kloet would go to the mess hall, eat, return to his room to clean
up then go to work (00:20:57:00)
o To get to where he worked, Kloet had to go through a guarded gate and anyone
who wanted to get through the gate needed a badge with their name and picture;
after the guard checked each person out, the person went through the gate, into the
building and to their office (00:21:15:00)
o The analysts needed to be to their jobs by eight o’clock and would be supervised
by a sergeant and an officer, in Kloet’s case, a 1st Lieutenant (00:21:32:00)
o A standard shift for the analysts was eight working hours plus a meal break
squeezed in at some point (00:21:59:00)
While Kloet was stationed at the base, he was able to leave and travel around Japan in
order to see the sights (00:22:13:00)
�
o The base had a bus that took personnel to a train station in the nearby town of
Goko, where the personnel road on a small train down to the town of Mazado;
from Mazado, the personnel took a train into Tokyo (00:22:16:00)
In total, it took roughly an hour to get from Goko into Tokyo; the trains
were nice, comfortable, and always on time (00:22:40:00)
o Downtown Tokyo at that time was still not the city Kloet saw when he went back
to Japan in 1986, and still had open sewers running through the town
(00:22:50:00)
Nevertheless, the main part of the city had some nice jewelry stores and
restaurants (00:23:16:00)
At the time, although there were no major conflicts in the world, things were still
happening, such as the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and troubles in the Middle East
(00:23:23:00)
o The Hungarian Revolution was a major event and it reached the point that the
personnel on the base thought they were going to go to war; the personnel had to
have their duffel bags ready because the thinking was that if it went, the personnel
would be shipped to Germany and operate there (00:23:40:00)
The Hungarian Revolution made Kloet’s job exciting because for a while,
the Hungarians were beating back the Russians (00:24:01:00)
The strategic problem was whether the President of the United States
would go to war but given the time period and the equipment available to
the Americans, who had disarmed after the end of World War II, Kloet
believes that the Russian could have run the Americans over just by sheer
numbers (00:24:23:00)
o Another crisis was when an American aircraft was shot down near the Russianheld Kurile Islands but again, nothing came of it; nevertheless, it kept the job
interesting for Kloet (00:25:54:00)
On one of his trips, Kloet received a three-day R&R and went to the small town of
Nikko, which was a Buddhist/Shinto temple complex; Kloet ended up taking numerous
photos of the temples, which were beautiful (00:25:14:00)
Kloet also liked the food that was available, including a Hungarian restaurant in Tokyo
run by a woman who had escaped from Hungary; it was at the restaurant that Kloet
received his first introduction to real Hungarian goulash (00:26:41:00)
o There were Japanese workers on the base doing a lot of support functions and
there was a kiosk built on the base for Japanese food; the food at the kiosk was
good and eventually, all the GIs were eating there, leaving nothing for the
Japanese workers (00:27:08:00)
o Although the GIs were eventually forbidden to eat at the kiosk, Kloet still went to
Japanese restaurants in Tokyo and at one restaurant, tried sukiyaki made from
Kobe beef, which, because the dollar was worth more than the yen at the time,
was not that big of a thing for the soldiers (00:27:37:00)
Kloet spent two years and two months in Japan, having extended his tour by two months
over the standard two years (00:28:21:00)
o If a soldier was unaccompanied, his deployment lasted two years and if a soldier
was accompanied [by family], the deployment was three years, although there
were not a lot of accompanied tours at the time (00:28:20:00)
�
o At the time, a person’s promotion depended on which command he was in; Kloet
was in the Security Command, where the promotions were terrible, although the
general tests score for the personnel in the command were much higher than
personnel in Strategic Air Command or Tactical Air Command (00:28:40:00)
Kloet scored extremely well in all the tests but the promotions still went to
either SAC and TAC (00:29:13:00)
Kloet chose to extend his deployment because it appeared that a
promotion would be coming for him with the next set of orders because he
had climbed through the chain of command (00:29:28:00)
However, about a month before Kloet was to receive his
promotion, a bunch of other personnel from came outside Security
Command who had more seniority than Kloet and he was pushed
back down the ladder (00:29:42:00)
o When he was pushed back down the ladder, Kloet decided that his deployment
was done after the two-month extension and he was done with the Air Force
because he saw no future in remaining (00:29:56:00)
In the same time period, Kloet had applied for Officer Training School but
was told he was too young and to apply the following year, which just
acted like frosting on the cake for why he should get out (00:30:04:00)
After Japan, Kloet returned to San Antonio but continued doing the same type of work, in
the same type of buildings, although the buildings were air-conditioned (00:30:24:00)
o Eventually, Kloet requested a drop from the Air Force so he could attend
Michigan State University; Kloet applied for an early out and was accepted by
Michigan State, so he got out in December 1958 (00:30:39:00)
Once he was out of the military, Kloet packed his car and drove continually until he was
out of Texas before stopping; Kloet returned home to drop his uniforms off before
heading to Michigan State, which was on the quarter system at the time (00:31:09:00)
o Kloet began at Michigan State as a “non-specific” student and did not have a
major but was interested in Russia because of the work he had done in the Air
Force; although he never learned the language, he knew some words and was
interested in Russian geography and culture (00:31:32:00)
Kloet started off taking Russian language and literature before signing up
for history courses and eventually declaring his major as Russian; Kloet
took Russian history, Russian political science, and Soviet economics, as
well as a German minor for his final two years (00:31:54:00)
o When Kloet finished his degree, he thought about immediately continuing on to a
Master’s Program and actually started the Master’s Program when he found out
his Russian was intellectual (00:33:09:00)
Kloet had spent four years memorizing words, structure, and knowing how
to put the right words in the right order yet when he started the Master’s
Program, it was about the phonology of the language, which Kloet had not
studied (00:33:20:00)
o Going into the Master’s Program was actually Kloet’s plan “B” because he had
applied for jobs, although the job pool for someone with a Russian degree and a
background in signal’s intelligence was small, so Kloet applied to the Central
Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency (00:33:54:00)
�
Kloet ended up with interviewing with the CIA at the University of
Michigan but he heard nothing from either the CIA or NSA after that and
because summer was coming, Kloet was getting anxious, so he applied for
the Master’s Program, which took him in (00:34:31:00)
Kloet did not even have to take an aptitude test for the Master’s Program
because he had just completed four years and although the literature aspect
of the program was fine, when they started discussing the phonology, he
was completely out of it (00:35:29:00)
The Central Intelligence Agency (00:36:01:00)
As he was going through grad school, Kloet was hating it but all of a sudden, he received
a call from the CIA, who wanted Kloet to come down for an interview because they
wanted to hire him (00:36:01:00)
o By this time, things were getting financially tight for Kloet because he was paying
for the graduate school and although he had had a small GI bill, it did not count
towards anything (00:36:36:00)
Kloet agreed to the CIA’s offer and the CIA said they were going to send
tickets to him via priority mail (00:36:50:00)
o Kloet received the CIA offer on Monday and by Wednesday, he had the tickets,
although he also received a call from the NSA, saying that they wanted to hire
Kloet as well; however, Kloet decided to go with the CIA (00:37:02:00)
o When they called, the CIA asked how much time would Kloet need to get there,
so Kloet loaded all his possessions into a Volkswagen Beetle his father had
helped him purchase and drove to Washington D.C., where the CIA paid for a
hotel room in downtown (00:37:35:00)
o The CIA sent Kloet and several others to school in downtown Washington for
training for several months; at the same time, Kloet and the others were scheduled
for polygraph tests (00:38:30:00)
That was Kloet’s first time with a polygraph test and although he has gone
through several others, this was the only one where the questions were
personal, asking about Kloet’s life (00:39:20:00)
There were two types of polygraphs, counter-intelligence and lifestyle;
lifestyle tests covered every facet of someone’s personality, associations,
feelings, and to make sure someone was not crazy (00:39:44:00)
o As soon as someone passed their polygraph test, they went to a psychological
evaluation and were then given a job (00:40:07:00)
Kloet passed all the tests and received a job working in the main CIA building, where he
worked from January 1963 through August 1964 before he quit (00:40:23:00)
o Kloet was considered a temporary employee, which meant he was only going to
work at the CIA for two years, during which time he was evaluated (00:40:41:00)
At the time, the CIA had several missions and Kloet’s job was working in the Human
Intelligence section; there were several support jobs in the section, such as editing
paperwork, and that was where Kloet worked and it was a boring job (00:41:04:00)
o Most of the workers with Kloet were in a test period and the only permanent
employees were the supervisors and above; the work was simple but the
supervisors were watching the workers at all times (00:41:20:00)
�
o The work Kloet did was boring and the people who were the supervisors had
either worked in the field but were declared persona non grata in whatever
country they were stationed or the people had quirks or were divorcees or had
some sort of physical or mental problem (00:41:48:00)
o Kloet did not see any progress because he was not being trained for anything that
he would do in the future (00:42:20:00)
Kloet would occasionally make contact with a person in another section
but that was usually because there was a problem that needed to be
rectified (00:42:29:00)
However, whenever Kloet would go someplace, he had to tell his
supervisor because she was afraid he would try to get out of the job or was
getting too smart and trying to take her job (00:42:41:00)
The other supervisor Kloet worked under was physically injured
and needed mechanical assistance but always wanted to his
workers were he could see them (00:42:54:00)
Kloet did not like the work he did at the CIA and he eventually talked with a co-worker
who was frustrated as well; the co-worker said that he was an officer in the National
Guard and asked if Kloet had ever considered join the Army Reserves and getting a
commission (00:43:11:00)
o Kloet asked what he needed to do and the co-worker said Kloet needed to take a
test and go before an officers’ review board that would evaluate him
(00:43:31:00)
o Kloet decided that he would try it, so he filled out the application, did all the
things he was supposed to do, went before the review board, and the next thing he
knew, Kloet was approved, so he was sworn into the Reserves, although he
continued working at the CIA (00:43:47:00)
Apart from being treated like he did not know anything, Kloet did not like working in an
environment like that (00:44:21:00)
o Eventually, the CIA told Kloet what their future plans were for him but he was
not the type to go sneaking around, but he was told to take the offer or leave it;
Kloet did not like the idea of being a spy and preferred bring in signals
intelligence and doing that type of work (00:44:38:00)
o Kloet’s commission into the Reserves was in the Army Intelligence Security,
which was signals intelligence, which the CIA was not happy about; however, the
CIA could not control the Department of the Army and which branch they gave
Kloet a commission in (00:44:13:00)
Due to all the frustration from his job at the CIA, Kloet eventually submitted a form
requesting active duty, which was approved and he was told to report to Fort Devens,
Massachusetts (00:45:37:00)
o Kloet went into the CIA about a month before he was supposed to report to Fort
Devens and said he was resigning, upon which the CIA immediately transferred
him to another menial job within the same division, which just reinforced Kloet’s
decision (00:46:00:00)
When he went on active duty, Kloet went to train at Fort Devens, which used to be the
home of the U.S. Army Security Service training school (00:46:25:00)
�U.S. Army Security Service (00:46:46:00)
Kloet reported to Fort Devens in September 1964 and went through schooling there,
which was enjoyable; Kloet stayed until December 5th then received orders to deploy
over to Europe to join the U.S. Army Security Service Europe (USASE) (00:46:46:00)
o Once he received the orders, Kloet returned home and dropped his car off with his
father while also giving his father the power of attorney to sell the car
(00:47:32:00)
After his leave, Kloet went to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, where the Air
Force flew him and several others first to Gander, Newfoundland, then to Ireland and
finally to Frankfurt, Germany (00:48:04:00)
When Kloet arrived in Frankfurt, there was a driver and an officer waiting in a sedan to
pick him up and take him to the headquarters for processing, although Kloet did not know
yet what his specific assignment was going to be (00:48:54:00)
o During the processing, the Army placed Kloet in a building across the street from
the headquarters and after he was processed, Kloet received orders to go to Berlin
to be assigned to the security unit there (00:49:20:00)
o Kloet was told that when he went to Berlin, he was to wear civilian clothing and
would be considered a civilian; however, Kloet had his hair cut in a military
fashion and only had a single civilian outfit, so he had to rush and find civilian
clothes because the duty train for Berlin was leaving within a week (00:50:08:00)
Kloet also needed a passport, a civilian I.D. card, and several other items,
so the Army had someone escort him around the expedite the entire
process (00:50:30:00)
o Once Kloet got onto the duty train, he had his passport with him and once the
train crossed the border at Helmstadt, it went straight into Berlin; at Helmstadt,
Russians came aboard the train and Kloet gave them his passport, although he
does not know what the Russians did with it before returning (00:50:46:00)
Once Kloet made it to Berlin, he was met by members of the security team he was going
to be a member of; in Berlin, Kloet was housed in bachelor officers’ quarters (BOQs)
near the headquarters for the Berlin Brigade; between the BOQs and the Berlin Brigade
Headquarters was a PX and a sports stadium (00:51:20:00)
o The room Kloet was assigned was nice, with large windows, a kitchen, a
bathroom and a cleaning person assigned to him who, for twenty bucks a month,
would clean, wash dishes, and iron Kloet’s clothes (00:52:11:00)
Kloet also bought an old Volkswagen Beetle from a soldier who was
leaving (00:52:43:00)
o Kloet worked in Berlin from December 1964 until August 1965, when he
received orders to report back to Frankfurt because his slot in the unit was vacated
and no longer needed to be filled because of budgetary reasons (00:53:06:00)
After returning to Frankfurt, Kloet was assigned to a service company, but joined a
detachment of the company based near the main train station in Frankfurt (00:54:11:00)
o After arriving at the detachment, Kloet received the de-facto position of being the
detachment commander; the previous detachment commander had rotated home,
so the Army gave Kloet the position without officially slotting him into it
(00:54:42:00)
�
o In Kloet’s particular specialty, if the Army wanted to keep a soldier, then they
could keep the soldier, not matter how much the soldier fought against it; the only
way someone could get out at the time was to volunteer for Vietnam
(00:55:06:00)
o Kloet wanted to do the work he had been doing while in Berlin, which was where
his Russian and German were the most beneficial; however, Kloet did such a
good job, the Army decided to keep him with the detachment (00:55:22:00)
o Nevertheless, despite living like a king with the detachment, that was not how
Kloet wanted to spend the rest of his deployment in Europe, doing management
tasks, such as: assigning KP duty, promotions boards, and inspections
(00:56:06:00)
Eventually, Kloet put in a volunteer request to deploy to Vietnam and although his
commanders did not like the decision, they could not stop him, so Kloet left Germany in
June 1966 for Fort Bragg, North Carolina to process for overseas replacement into a
combat zone (00:56:42:00)
o At Fort Bragg, Kloet and the other replacements went through gas chambers,
uniform replacement, and firing weapons (00:57:09:00)
o The training was for roughly three months, from June until September, before
Kloet left to deploy to Vietnam (00:57:34:00)
Vietnam Deployment (00:58:11:00)
When he deployed to Vietnam, Kloet thought he would be flying to Vietnam; initially,
Kloet and other soldiers flew from Pope Air Force Base, south of Fort Bragg, on a
chartered airliner to Travis Air Force Base in California (00:58:11:00)
o The next thing he knew, Kloet and the other soldiers were loaded on a boat at the
Oakland Army terminal, a two-stack troop transport (00:58:54:00)
o The transport sailed from Oakland to Tacoma, Washington to pick up artillery
soldiers from Fort Lewis, Washington; Kloet was part of a specific “packet” of
roughly fifty soldiers, officers included, deploying to Saigon (00:59:19:00)
o Once the transport got out into the ocean, a few things happened: first, one of the
men in the packet developed severe asthma and although there was a doctor on
the transport, he did not have the drugs to take care of the asthma (00:59:50:00)
Worried about whether the soldier would survive, the crew diverted the
transport close enough to Okinawa that an amphibious aircraft could fly
out and pick up the soldier (01:00:48:00)
o The transport continued on its course and landed in Okinawa, where everyone
was given an overnight liberty; the next day, drunk soldiers were coming back to
the ship and some were purposely diving over the rails of the ship and into the
water (01:01:18:00)
o Once everyone got back aboard the transport and had made it a good way to
Vietnam, the soldiers were told that the order of debarkation had to be changed
because of an enemy offensive in the northern part of the country (01:01:46:00)
The change in debarkation meant the soldiers landed in Nha Trang, in the
northern part of South Vietnam (01:02:04:00)
o The entire voyage took thirty-one days, so it was getting into October by the time
the soldiers left the transport (01:02:12:00)
�
o Apart from the soldiers on the ship, there were also supplies for the soldiers;
however, because the debarkation order had changed, all the supplies were in the
order for all the units as the transport sailed up the coast (01:02:20:00)
Instead, the supplies were placed on floating barges in the Bay of Nha
Trang while the transport was off-loaded and re-loaded in the new order
for the voyage down the coast (01:02:43:00)
o In Na Trang, some soldiers off-loaded who were supposed to head north because
of the enemy offensive; after Nha Trang, the transport sailed to Qui Nhon and
Cam Ranh Bay before finally arriving in Vung Tau (01:02:54:00)
Once at Vung Tau, the remaining soldiers off-loaded from the troop transport to a smaller
landing craft, which took them to the shore (01:03:48:00)
o Near where soldiers, including some tankers who were joining the 11th Cavalry,
were waiting was an airstrip made from metal, PSP strips (01:03:52:00)
o Eventually, C-123s picked up Kloet and sixty-three other soldiers and took them
all to Bien Hoa Air Force Base, which the airplanes were not supposed to do
(01:04:20:00)
o When the soldiers arrived at Bien Hoa, the packet commander, a captain, went
into operations with the packet’s shipping orders but the personnel in operations
told the captain the packet as supposed to be in Saigon, so the personnel said that
they would make contact to move the soldiers (01:04:53:00)
The soldiers waited at Bien Hoa before buses and a couple of trucks
finally came up; the soldiers loaded on the buses and their equipment went
onto the back of the trucks (01:05:29:00)
The temperature was extremely hot and on the bus, the windows were kept
up with screening over the front of them for grenades to bounce off of
(01:05:46:00)
o Once aboard the buses, the soldiers rode to a compound in a district of Saigon;
although the permanent enlisted quarters were already in the compound, the
officers were given temporary quarters in a hotel across the street (01:06:10:00)
When they arrived, the soldiers were assigned to work at the Combined Intelligence
Center, which was in a temporary structure while their permanent structure was being
built at the time (01:06:38:00)
o After receiving their quarters at a hotel in downtown Saigon, the officers were
bused to where their soldiers were stay, in an old Air Force hanger on Tan Son
Nhut Air Force Base that had been partitioned into a two-floor structure
(01:06:54:00)
o As the soldiers started settling in, Kloet had still not adapted to the heat; it was the
“dry” season, so the temperatures were elevated (01:07:22:00)
Eventually, the soldiers were moved into the permanent structure on Tan Son Nhut and
most of them were assigned to work in the Ground Order Battle section (01:07:36:00)
o Within the section, there were teams that corresponded to the different sections of
Vietnam: I Corps, II Corps, III Corps, IV Corps, Laos / Cambodia, and North
Vietnam, and the sections were all headed by officers and a warrant officer,
(01:07:55:00)
�Kloet was a 1st Lieutenant assigned to the 1st team, which covered I Corps
and worked as the night branch chief with a lieutenant colonel was the
night commander (01:08:22:00)
o Eventually, Kloet took over command of the Ground Order Battle section because
he received a promotion; the position basically involved writing efficiency
reports, supervising production, receiving distribution and controlling an incidents
team (01:08:41:00)
The incidents team worked out of Kloet’s office and took the data
produced by the section teams and processed the information into a
computer database (01:09:12:00)
The section did studies on both the South Vietnamese Army and enemy infiltrations, such
as the size and weaponry of the enemy unit (01:09:49:00)
o Initially, the section relied heavily on the Vietnamese data, although they were
having the same problems as the Americans, an overall lack of intelligence
(01:10:16:00)
o In 1966, the section was using a lot of “agent reports”, which were reports write
by a military intelligence group that Kloet’s battalion was a part of (01:10:36:00)
The military intelligence group had battalions that collected intelligence in
the form of agent reports; however, it was very difficult to verify any
information that was in the reports (01:11:00:00)
o Nobody gave the agent reports much credence; the only reports that received
credence, apart from reports received from the Vietnamese, was information
captured by American soldiers, such as enemy orders (01:11:22:00)
There was a document translation center in the same compound as Kloet’s
unit where they translated any captured enemy information (01:11:39:00)
The section did not receive any signals intelligence because nobody within
the section was cleared for that (01:11:55:00)
o When an American unit made contact with the enemy at specific coordinates, the
information was feed into the computer and basic map was printed out with dots
and numbers correlating to every incident in the country, although the numbers
did not differentiate between whether a report was real or fake (01:12:31:00)
However, in the more heavily contested areas, there were large
concentrations of dots and finding a pattern became difficult; nevertheless,
the information from each incident was stored in a database and with
program, could be extracted (01:13:19:00)
Using the information from the printouts and the database, the soldiers in
the section were able to create studies (01:13:38:00)
o Kloet worked in the section for a year and in that time, the soldiers made several
important studies, such as the actually number of NVA (01:13:49:00)
At one point, a lieutenant colonel from the production division of MACV came to the
unit; the production division was a major part of J-2 and worked to print the intelligence
reports (01:14:16:00)
o The lieutenant colonel came down after the section did a study about the number
of enemy soldiers in country (the total strength of both NVA and VC units in
South Vietnam) and came up with a figure around 300,000 (01:14:44:00)
�
MACV disagreed, believing that the figure was too large, although CIA
intelligence supported the section’s study (01:15:02:00)
o There was to be a large conference using the section’s study, which the soldiers
had meticulously created using the information from their database and the
commanders wanted to make sure the information was accurate (01:15:20:00)
o The section had an adding machine and one of the incidents team members was
very good with it but the lieutenant colonel insisted that an officer do it, so Kloet
had the lieutenant in charge of the incidents team run the machine (01:16:08:00)
When the figures were run again and they came back to what the section
had first reported, so they were given to a colonel whom the soldiers in the
section thought understood the information (01:16:47:00)
However, like a lot of people who thought promotions were more
important than doing what was right, the colonel went to the conference,
where the study, which the entire section had spent a large amount of time
work on, was thrown out (01:17:05:00)
o The section had compiled the report on enemy troop strength in the spring and in
August 1967, a Colonel Graham, later general, came along and became the
director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (01:17:34:00)
Graham was a soldier whose star appeared to be on the rise and when the
Army wanted a study done about the ability of the enemy to perform
offensives in the South, Kloet’s section reported that the enemy could
conduct divisional-sized offensives and attacks (01:18:26:00)
o The section’s original reports were thrown out at the conference because Sec. Of
Defense McNamara was fighting with the director of the CIA (01:19:14:00)
Colonel Graham eventually left and Kloet rotated out and back to Fort Bragg; however,
in January 1968, the Tet Offensive occurred, with the enemy operating in divisions and
making attacks throughout South Vietnam (01:20:20:00)
Inter-deployment (01:21:17:00)
Kloet stayed at Fort Bragg until March 1968 before volunteering to leave; while at Fort
Bragg, Kloet managed to miss the Tet Offensive (01:21:17:00)
o While at Fort Bragg, Kloet was a commander in the headquarters service
company; within service units, there was a headquarters company and Kloet was
the company commander (01:21:33:00)
Kloet had responsibility for all the barracks, the motor pool, and supplies
for the battalion headquarters (01:21:53:00)
o The battalion Kloet joined was aerial reconnaissance support, which used planes
to take photographs and imagery interpreters to analyze the pictures
(01:22:09:00)
However, because of the war, none of the units were at full strength; the
headquarters company alone was larger than the rest of the detachments in
the battalion (01:22:32:00)
o There would be problems with supply or the motor pool and it did not seem to be
getting any better, whereas in Vietnam, Kloet at least knew where the enemy was;
nevertheless, Kloet managed to get the unit organized (01:22:57:00)
�
In December, Kloet came down with an illness and spent two weeks in a hospital;
although he had not thought about going back to Vietnam, while he was in the hospital,
the battalion commander allowed Kloet’s supply sergeant to get an early drop and deploy
to Germany (01:23:25:00)
o The deployment of the supply sergeant should have taken place while Kloet was
there because when Kloet returned to the company, he was given a supply
sergeant who came in and told Kloet that they were in trouble because some
things, such as sheets, pillowcases, and blankets, were missing (01:24:04:00)
At the time, a lot of the major equipment was moved around so much that
most people did not know where it was but because they were large items,
they were squared away quickly; however, the missing sheets and
pillowcases indicated that some trading had been going on (01:24:34:00)
o The supply sergeant was a good trader, so he went to friends who were assigned
to a basic training brigade and was able to get some trainees help him with the
inventories (01:24:48:00)
o After new supply sergeant did the inventories, the unit wound up missing six
watches, which at the time, had individual serial numbers that were kept in the
property book as property of the arm (01:25:13:00)
The boxes were on the shelves but the watches were not in the boxes, so
they sent a letter to Germany and the deployed former supply sergeant had
to pay money for the watches (01:25:32:00)
As Kloet was getting everything organized the way that the battalion commander wanted,
Kloet felt that nothing looked like it was going to last (01:25:56:00)
o When he first got the job, Kloet opened his desk and inside were two full and a
handful of partially full bottles of Maalox; Kloet never met his predecessor but
after going through the process of organizing everything, Kloet understood why
his predecessor drank the Maalox (01:26:16:00)
o Expect for the commander, who was a colonel, and his deputy, who was a major,
Kloet was the senior officer on the battalion staff, although he was only a captain,
which was not typical of battalion staffs (01:26:42:00)
As part of the battalion staff, Kloet had: a terminal infantry officer incharge of supply who was close to getting out and did nothing; a warrant
officer in charge of the motor pool who, although he was in maintenance,
was in artillery maintenance, which had nothing to do with working with
vehicles; no personnel officer apart from a 2nd Lieutenant; and no
operations officer (01:27:16:00)
o Once, there was to be an inspection of the motor pool, so Kloet was ordered to get
the motor pool ready, so he had sent a detail from the headquarters company to go
down and maintain the vehicles; however, the soldiers in detail were misused by
warrant officer, who wanted the soldiers to take care of paperwork (01:28:04:00)
Because unit would get in trouble because of the motor pool, Kloet told
his first sergeant that they needed to place another sergeant in charge of
the detail to supervise the vehicle maintenance (01:28:52:00)
However, the warrant officer did not go to Kloet but went to the major or
the colonel and complained that Kloet was interfering with what the
�
warrant officer was doing, so Kloet had to go up to explained himself and
the colonel agreed with him (01:29:08:00)
The situations within the battalion were making Vietnam look good, so in January 1968,
Kloet put in a request to volunteer for Vietnam (01:29:39:00)
o After the request, the Army sent him to Fort Holabird, Maryland, to receive
training to be tactical intelligence staff officer, which was the first course the
Army had done that; the Army realized they needed trained company-level
captains and below in the battalions if the battalions were going to accomplish
anything (01:30:05:00)
The battalions were not able to just go into the jungle, manage to bump
into the enemy, and expect to be successful (01:30:28:00)
Kloet ended up being the class leader and stayed from March until the end
of May (01:30:38:00)
Once he completed the course at the end of May, Kloet received a leave then flew to
Saigon, where he went through the Long Binh Army Replacement Depot (01:30:52:00)
o From Long Binh, Kloet traveled to Cam Ranh Bay and Nha Trang; Kloet had to
go to the different bases because the airlines did not fly directly to the corps
headquarters in Na Traing (01:31:21:00)
o From Na Traing, Kloet went to Pleiku then to the division area at Ban Me Thuot
before finally joining his team (01:31:48:00)
A problem Kloet and his soldiers faced at the time was determining correct figure
numbers for enemy troop strength (01:32:31:00)
o Many times when units would go into the field and make contact with the enemy,
they did not have time to make a correct count of every enemy soldier who was
killed in that particular contact; as well, it was difficult to count specific casualties
if a bomb was dropped on an area (01:32:39:00)
o The Army had developed a formula and although Kloet does not remember the
exact parameters, for every one dead enemy on the ground that the soldiers
counted, there was an assumption that so many enemy soldiers were carried away
because the enemy tended to carry their wounded and killed away (01:33:03:00)
The Army also applied the formula to wounded enemy soldiers, as the
soldiers would see blood trails and could make assumptions about the
number of wounded (01:33:43:00)
o The soldiers also managed to capture information from the enemy and as time
went on, they captured more paper intelligence which helped form enemy unit
structures (01:33:59:00)
For example, if soldiers captured an enemy or found a piece of paper
saying the enemy was from a specific unit within a larger unit, depending
of the structure, Kloet and the other soldiers might not know anything
about the soldier’s unit beyond the soldier’s platoon (01:34:26:00)
However, Kloet and the soldiers were able to marry different pieces of
information and come to conclusions about the enemy units (01:34:38:00)
o According to the information that the Vietnamese provided would say that an
NVA division had “x” number of soldiers as its strength (01:34:47:00)
�o Nevertheless, following large engagements, Kloet and others had no way of
comparing how the actual casualty numbers compared to the strength of the
enemy unit, which was were the formulas came from (01:35:07:00)
At the time, when someone would ask for information about a specific
enemy unit, Kloet and his soldiers would provide a six-month history of
the unit, stating the number of engagements they had been involved in and
the number of casualties, which where then subtracted from the overall
enemy unit’s strength (01:35:15:00)
However, the soldiers did not know the number of replacements that the
unit received in that time, although the studies on infiltration helped
somewhat (01:35:52:00)
Still, the infiltration studies only gave figures once the enemy
forces entered Vietnam because the Americans had been pounding
the forces all the way down the Ho Chi Minh trail (01:36:04:00)
o As time went on, up until 1967 and 1968, there was not a good handle on the
information about the combat effectiveness of the unit, especially in the southern
areas; in the northern areas, there were a lot of big contacts (01:36:21:00)
o The formulas the Army developed only supplied Kloet and the other soldiers with
an approximate enemy strength but the fact that the figures Kloet and the others
were getting was close to what the CIA provided them made the soldiers feel like
they were on the right track; however, those figures did not match up with the
figures that people in the Pentagon had (01:36:45:00)
For example, if something happened in Saigon, a report had to be at the
Pentagon as soon as possible and the people in the Pentagon were making
decisions based on what they were given directly (01:37:07:00)
Kloet recalls one time, during his second tour, when there was a contact
with the enemy; that night, Kloet was in the bunker as the staff dutyofficer and the enemy was firing mortar shells that were landing on the
roof of the bunker (01:37:32:00)
Kloet received a call from the higher headquarters in Nha Trang
because they were receiving reports from other units and the
headquarters wanted to know what direction the mortars were
coming from (01:37:59:00)
Although he wanted to go off, Kloet said he did not know, ending
the conversation; Kloet then talked with his colonel, telling him
that the higher-ups wanted to know the direction of the mortar fire
but the colonel told Kloet not to worry about it (01:38:21:00)
o Much has been written about the micro-management of the Johnson
Administration and Kloet always felt that although he disagreed with Kennedy, he
had a handle on the Pentagon and could control those people, whereas Johnson
seemed to let the McNamara and the others control the war while Johnson
focused on his social agenda (01:39:00:00)
Therefore, Kloet feels that Johnson would react to a situation instead of
making policy (01:39:47:00)
�
o At Kloet’s level, he and his soldiers took whatever information they had and tried
to stick it into some sort of order; nevertheless, Kloet and his soldiers were not
privy to the high-level signals intelligence (01:40:38:00)
The Vietnamese general in charge of intelligence would talk with the
Vietnamese working with Kloet and also sat in with the higher-level
American intelligence officers; often, when the American’s presented
information, the general said that the Vietnamese knew the information
months before (01:40:54:00)
Every day during his first tour, Kloet had contact with the Vietnamese intelligence
because the Vietnamese and Americans worked as a combined unit (01:41:45:00)
o However, whereas the Americans rotated soldiers in and out of the unit, the
Vietnamese soldiers were permanent and many of the Vietnamese soldiers were
bright but they never received recognition for being bright (01:42:07:00)
o For whatever reason, the decision was made to allow a coup d’etat against the
ruling Vietnamese administration and the decision was made that the Americans
would run the war and get it to the point that they could turn the war over to the
Vietnamese (01:42:56:00)
After the decision, the fighting went from counter-insurgency to an almost
full-scale, linear war with divisions against divisions and battalions against
battalions (01:43:18:00)
Nevertheless, Kloet feels that the decision exacerbated the problem
because the more the Americans built up, the more forces the enemy sent
in (01:43:30:00)
While Kloet was in Saigon from 1966 to 1967, there was not fighting within the city,
although there were incidents, particularly involving Saigon Annie (01:43:50:00)
o Saigon Annie was a Viet Cong who rode on the back of a motorcycle and
shooting at Americans who were at bus stops (01:43:57:00)
Stories about the shootings appeared in Stars & Stripes but Annie made a
mistake when, one time, she approached the bus stop just outside an
American base (01:44:10:00)
One of the Air Force police was at the bus stop and was armed with a
shotgun; when he saw what the happening, the officer fired his shotgun,
destroying Annie, the motorcycle driver and the motorcycle (01:44:41:00)
o There were several nice restaurants in the city that the soldiers were able to visit,
including a restaurant that served better French onion soup than what Kloet ate
while in Europe (01:45:33:00)
A friend of Kloet’s, whom Kloet had attended college with, was also
assigned to Saigon as part of a transportation unit and the two would get
together at various times to go to dinner (01:45:36:00)
o Eventually, the Army moved Kloet and the others into Cholon, which was the
Chinese section of the city, although according to the map the soldiers had, their
new location was close to an enemy company (01:46:01:00)
The Army then decided it was too dangerous for the officers, so they
moved the officers again and Kloet was sent to a location along the road
into Cholon, where he stayed for the remainder of his tour (01:46:21:00)
�
o When the soldiers moved throughout the city, they did not take their weapons; the
only major threat had been Saigon Annie and she was dead (01:47:10:00)
Nevertheless, there were some locations, such as Cholon, where the
soldiers were advised not to go (01:47:21:00)
Once Kloet got back to Fort Bragg, although there were a lot of military people around
because it was a large base, they had been considered second-class citizens for a long
time up until that point, especially with the war going on (01:47:53:00)
o Several times, Kloet received letters from jewelry stores saying that a soldier had
purchased a diamond ring but was not paying; Kloet would go to his commanding
officer to ask if the Army had become a collection agency and the officer told
Kloet to the store that they would do everything the could to get the soldier to pay
his bills (01:48:30:00)
Kloet would ended up writing a letter saying that the Army would trying
to get the soldier to pay his bills but that was it (01:48:59:00)
o In Fayetteville, outside of the base, the soldiers were considered intruders
although the base had been there for a long time (01:49:28:00)
The issue never became important until there were discussions about
closing the base down, which caused changes in the attitudes towards the
soldiers (01:49:37:00)
During his second tour, Kloet worked as the intelligence advisor to the Vietnamese
intelligence officer at the province capital (01:51:05:00)
o There were also district levels and they had intelligence but the Americans did not
have advisors at the district level; there was one but after he left, the Army did not
fill the position (01:51:16:00)
o Kloet dealt with a Vietnamese captain and Kloet’s job with the captain was Kloet
had funds to pay for intelligence while the captain had to provide monthly
receipts for what he had spent the funds on, such as paying his sources or buying
equipment for his soldiers (01:52:10:00)
Kloet then had to report and turn in the receipts before getting more
money (01:52:46:00)
o As well, Kloet kept a journal, the only time he was able to do so; using cryptic
abbreviations, Kloet reported what happened during any given day (01:52:58:00)
o Every day, Kloet and his two workers had to write an intelligence report and send
it to higher headquarters via telegraph but because of the programs with the
telegraphs, he would often need to make copies of the reports and send them by
courier (01:53:48:00)
Other times, such as the incident with the mortars, information went out as
a spot report about what had happened (01:54:30:00)
o Kloet also gave briefings to visiting personnel, including current Senator John
McCain’s father, an admiral (01:54:58:00)
When Admiral McCain visited, the soldiers rehearsed their presentations,
including overlays and markers for enemy and friendly positions
(01:55:20:00)
The soldiers had a defined timeframe for the briefing before the
Admiral had to leave so Kloet began the briefing but during the
briefing, the Admiral came onto the platform (01:56:29:00)
�
However, Kloet was given fifteen minutes maximum for his
briefing and as he got to the end of it, the Admiral came up and
began asking for explanations, so Kloet was not explaining his
briefing but also explaining what had happened within the last
month (01:58:29:00)
Kloet began talking about past operations and activities, which
lasted for about half an hour (01:58:57:00)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KloetR1071V1
Title
A name given to the resource
Kloet, Ronald (Interview outline and video, 1 of 3), 2011
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kloet, Ronald
Description
An account of the resource
Ron Kloet was born on August 8th, 1936 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. After graduating from high school and briefly attending Davenport University, Kloet enlisted in the Air Force in 1955. After completing his basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, Kloet transferred to nearby Kelly Air Force Base for "radio intercept traffic analyst" training. Once he completed the training at Kelly, Kloet deployed to Shiroi Air Force Base in Japan. Because advancement in his branch was difficult, once his two-year deployment was complete, Kloet chose to get out of the Air Force and enrolled at Michigan State University to study for a Russian degree. After completing his Bachelor's Degree, Kloet briefly thought about continuing for a Master's Degree but instead decided to take a job working for the CIA. However, the job was not what Kloet had expected, so he eventually re-enlisted in the Army and after leaving the CIA and receiving additional training at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, Kloet deployed to Germany. Kloet moved around several units in Germany, eventually ending up as the de facto leader of a detachment in a town outside of Frankfurt. However, that was not the work Kloet expected to do, so he put in a transfer request to Vietnam and after training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, deployed to Vietnam. Once in Vietnam, Kloet stayed in Saigon working as part of the intelligence services, creating reports about enemy infiltration rates and troop strengths. After his tour, Kloet returned to Fort Bragg in March 1968, missing the Tet Offensive before deploying for a second tour as an intelligence advisor at a province capital. (see parts 2 and 3 for rest of career)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
WKTV (Wyoming, Mich.)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Army
United States. Air Force
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives, American
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2011-02-24
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9f7e6a09460306f0857d8914dd4d4801.mp4
f62af69128f319771fbae86365874c06
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9b056235a30093d3939a0ea142923815.pdf
e0f20ee03f8e8a02642e3c2f141d1746
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Thaddeus Kling
(43:17)
(00:01) Background Information
•
•
•
•
•
Ted worked at Brunswick in Muskegon, MI before the war
He finished the 8th grade and then went to work on a farm
Ted plowed for 30 cents an hour on a dairy farm
They didn’t hear much news so he didn’t know what was going on overseas
He heard about Pearl Harbor from a newspaper when he went into town
(06:22) Training
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Ted was drafted in Muskegon and sent to Fort Custer, MI
After basic training he was sent to Fort Sill, OK
They sent him there because he had a high IQ
He taught people how to drive and work on cars
When he was in basic training he thought it was fun and was used to a lot of exercise
After a year he was promoted up to a first class sergeant
He helped run C Battery [308th Field Artillery, attached to the 78th Division]
(14:04) Deployment
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
They landed in Bournemouth, England
It took them 3 days to cross the English Channel because of the bombings and U-Boats
They landed in Le Havre, France towards the end of 1943 [1944]
Ted fought in the Hurtgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge, and Remagen Bridge
Their first combat was in October 1943 [1944]
They were hit with friendly fire when they first got into Germany by the Air Corps
His unit fired 105mm and 155mm guns
The observers went ahead and then came back to direct the fire up to 6 miles away
Each gun had a leader and 5 helpers
They were never fired upon
Ted was at the Bulge for 3 months and couldn’t clean or change clothes
He went forward observing occasionally
After the Bulge they went to Remagen on the Rhine
They fired constantly for three days and nights
(33:44) War Ends
•
The war ended the day after they captured 5,000 soldiers
�•
•
They got ready to go to Japan through Russia, but the war ended
Ted was glad to get out of the Army
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KlingT
Title
A name given to the resource
Kling, Thaddeus (Interview outline and video), 2008
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kling, Thaddeus
Description
An account of the resource
Thaddeus Kling grew up working on a farm in Muskegon, Michigan. He was drafted and trained in Oklahoma where he made first class sergeant and helped run the C Battery of the 308th Field Artillery. He fought at the Hurtgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge, and at Remagen Bridge. At Remagen Bridge they fired constantly for 3 days and 3 nights. The day before the war was over they captured 5,000 Germans.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Montagna, Douglas (Interviewer)
Great Lakes Naval Memorial & Museum (Muskegon, Mich.)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Video recordings
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
United States. Army
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2008-06-30
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/dbd65a6ea740300e489dbac9ffe89166.mp4
6fa780ad9d2f9b4417edd8f6e56920c9
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/865eedf4b4fd4eeca8bcf8f0af184365.pdf
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Morris Kleiman (2:12:51)
(00:05) Background Information
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Morris was born in Grand Rapids and he grew up there as well
His grandfather had moved to Boston before World War One
His family opened up their own cleaning and pressing business
His grandfather had previously been a miller, working with farmers
They eventually moved to Grand Rapids, MI, where his father met his mother
Morris’ parents got married right before World War One
Morris graduated in 1941 from South High School
He had been in the ROTC from 10th-12th grade where he was an officer
His family was Jewish, but he did not have a clear picture of what was going on in
Germany until after the war
(08:35) News of Events in Europe
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Morris kept a scrapbook while in high school and closely followed the beginning of the
war
He used to collect foreign stamps and knew a lot about other foreign countries; he was
also interested in politics
Morris thought that he would eventually be drafted, but he attempted to get through as
much college as possible before that happened
He went to Grand Rapids Junior College for one year and to the University of Michigan
for a few semesters after that
(13:05) Training
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Morris was first sent to Fort Custer, in Battle Creek, MI
The men had to take written exams to determine where they would be placed
The exams were very simple for Morris and he got a high score, so more was expected of
him
Morris was sent to Minnesota where he stayed for three weeks
He was then sent to Atlantic City because he had a broken nose, so he was put on limited
service in a wait station
He went to Mississippi for special training school to be a supply clerk
Then to Louisiana to an Air Base to work with another supply group
His job was to check air planes to make sure that they were properly supplied to travel
overseas
(16:40) Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP)
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Morris started the ASTP in June of 1944, where there were many other college-educated
men
They trained here in Texas for three months
The Army had been in need of infantry men and took the whole ASTP engineering
program to fill the positions
Morris then began infantry training, but none of the others liked him and the men from
the engineering program because they were the “smart college boys”
Looking back, Morris is now glad that he got the infantry experience
They received little training and were sent overseas in September
While in the South, Morris did not feel that he got to experience any real Southern culture
because he had been alienated inside the training camp
He also felt that the Germans had better training and weapons than the Americans
(28:00) Barracks in England
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Morris remembered a small brick barracks that only held three squads
While they were staying there, their lieutenant had told them to get ready because they
would be meeting their enemy in 24 hours
After that, everyone was scared and wrote what they thought was their final letters to
their family
(31:15) The Trip Overseas
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During the trip Morris was sick most of the time, but helped with paperwork when he
was feeling better
They only had a few U-Boat scares, in which they went into “quiet time”
They traveled in a large convoy, leaving in September of 1944 and it took them 2 weeks
to reach their destination
(33:20) England
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They based near Portsmouth, which was very foggy, but had a beautiful country side
The local people here were very friendly
They marched everyday on the country roads
Morris and others had to watch World War One movies to help train, but they did not
help because they portrayed lots of hand-to-hand combat; whereas the Germans he fought
were always at least 200 yards away
They eventually met with some infantry landing craft boats on the beach
Then the men were loaded up on trucks and sent to Belgium
(38:20) Belgium
• Morris and others moved to the front lines to take over
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The men were all spread out and dug fox holes
It was very cold and there was barbed wire fencing and tanks all around
The Germans were better off because they were staying in bunkers
Many of his superiors had little or no experience and they were only in their early thirties
Morris was in the front line from October through December, until the Battle of the Bulge
It snowed every day for 5 weeks and they were only given one hot meal per week
Morris’ squad had 12 men, the company platoon had 40; there were 3 platoons and 1
platoon per barrack
The men were spread out over a stretch of three miles, but in other areas they were
stretched out over eight miles
(46:30) Reconnaissance
• Morris went out on reconnaissance missions once a week at night time
• They had to cut through barb wire fences and get very close to German forces
• Morris set up automatic rifles and helped to cover who ever might be in front of him
• The Germans were less spread out and not so much in the open field
• The Germans would freely light cigarettes at night because they were not worried about
the Americans seeing them
(51:15) Retreat
• The men had been told that they had to get out of the line quickly
• It ended up a big mess and no one knew what was going on
• They found themselves in an open field with lots of tanks burning and carnage
• Many just slept there in the field because they were too tired to go on any further
• Morris woke up every morning to artillery fire
(54:40) The Hospital
• Morris was sick in the hospital when he heard the news that someone had tried to kill
Eisenhower
• Many of the men around Morris were very sad during Christmas time
• Morris was sent to a different hospital in France that was very nice
• He was then put in the Paris Grand Hotel, but he had been too sick to enjoy it
• They crossed the channel to another hospital in England
(58:00) The States
• Morris was never completely healthy again until he had got home and been married for a
while
• He went back to Fort Custer and was married in less than a year
• His wife had done office work at Fort Custer
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Morris did not enjoy the military and could not like to get back to civilian life
The Army made him appreciate everything else and be more positive; it was a necessary
evil for him
Morris had been receiving unemployment checks and wanted to go back to school
He went back to the University of Michigan from 1946-47 and got his BBA, majoring in
accounting
He eventually took over his family business where he worked for 25 years, and then sold
the company
He has spent the rest of his life in Grand Rapids, MI working with the Jewish community
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
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RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KleimanM
Title
A name given to the resource
Kleiman, Morris (Interview outline and video), 2007
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kleiman, Morris
Description
An account of the resource
Morris Kleiman was drafted into the Army for WW II and started his training at Fort Custer in Battle Creek, Michigan. He had closely followed the events in Europe prior to being drafted and was also attending college at the University of Michigan. Morris had fought on the front lines against the Germans in Belgium and had done some reconnaissance work. He eventually got very sick and was sent back to the United States. After his time in the service, Morris finished his degree in accounting and took over his family business.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Video recordings
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
United States. Army
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2007-11-29
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
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f39c38a4ad9e84a06643793a0fa8028c
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Ben Kleiman
(46:55)
Background Information (00:35)
Born on July 17th 1918 in East Grand Rapids, Michigan. (00:38)
His family ran a clothing store in Grand Rapids, Michigan (00:45)
Both of Ben’s parents were born in Russia. (1:06)
He grew up and attended school in Grand Rapids. (2:00)
Due to poor economic climate, Ben’s family was forced to sell their house and move to another
part of Grand Rapids. (3:00)
He graduated from high school in 1936.(3:20)
In 1937 Ben attended junior college. (3:40)
Due to lack of money, Ben did not stay in college. (3:50)
On Ben’s first attempt to enlist in the army after Pearl Harbor, he was turned down, so he went
ahead and got married. (4:10)
He was then drafted in 1943 and listed as qualified for limited service. (4:22)
He was unable to register for the draft prior to 1943 due to poor eye sight. (4:49)
From 1940-1943 before being drafted, Ben worked as a shoe salesman. (5:05)
Ben was visiting friends when he heard the news of the Pearl Harbor attack. (6:06)
Before this, he had been paying attention to what was going on in the world. (6:35)
After receiving his draft notice, Ben was sent to Battle Creek, Michigan, where he received
interviews and was inducted into the U.S. Army. (7:05)
Basic Training (7:25)
He took basic training at Camp McCoy in Wisconsin (7:30)
Basic was short, lasting only 6 weeks. (7:47)
Service at Camp Reynolds (7:50)
After Basic training he was sent to Camp Reynolds in Pennsylvania and was assigned to work in
an office where the soldiers were processed to be sent overseas. (7:50)
Ben received an office job due to his ability to type and his experience with dealing with paper
work. (8:25)]
Basic training was mostly physical work. (9:12)
Ben was older (at age 25 than) the other soldiers. (9:50)
Camp Reynolds was close to several small towns. (10:20)
Camp Reynolds was a replacement depot. Often soldiers had gone AWOL from this camp.
(10:57)
70-80% of the soldiers that went AWOL from Ben’s camp were found. (12:00)
Because he was married, Ben was allowed to live off base with his wife. He worked an 8-4:30
day 5 days a week. (12:35)
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Television, movies, and radio were available at Fort Reynolds for the soldiers' entertainment.
(13:30)
Every person in Ben’s office had a specific job. The office was well supplied. (14:59)
Ben’s commanding officer kept a “tight ship.” (16:00)
Service in Alaska (17:00)
The men were interviewed to replace typists at another location. The men were not told were
they would be sent. (17:10)
The men were not aware of where they were traveling until they arrived at a camp in
Vancouver, Canada. (18:09)
The men were moved to Alaska in the fall of 1944. (18:45)
The men were sent to Alaska via a cruise ship. There were civilians on the ship. (19:15)
He was sent to Camp Richardson near Anchorage, Alaska. (20:27)
When he arrived Ben was placed in G1 (personnel) and made head of the Awards and Casualties
department. He reported suicides and fatal accidents that occurred overseas. (20:33)
Men were required to make, at times, 17 copies of documents to be sent to filing cabinets,
Washington D.C. and newspapers. (22:27)
Aside from awards and casualties, Ben was passed for top secret and worked on were particular
soldiers were placed. (23:56)
The headquarters in Alaska was not connected to forces in the Aleutian islands. (25:10)
Ben and other office workers assigned soldiers to particular maintenance position around the
base such as cooks. (25:45)
Life at Camp Richardson (26:00)
His wife did not move with Ben to Alaska. (26:20)
Ben lived in a barracks. (27:00)
For entertainment, the men would commonly go skiing or go swimming in a lake. (29:09)
There were enclosed walk ways at the camp. (30:06)
There was a lot of snow at the camp but not so much that the men were unable to walk. (30:34)
The men were required to work night duty. This meant that one office worker would have to
sleep in the office one night to guard the paperwork. (32:54)
There were a number of suicides at the base (perhaps due to weather conditions). (34:30)
Ben thought himself very lucky for receiving overseas pay without being in a war zone. (35:44)
The officers were “demanding and understanding.”(36:22)
End of Service (37:40)
Ben was discharged earlier than his points dictated due to an invitation to his brother's wedding.
(37:52)
While Ben was in Alaska his wife worked for a retailer in Grand Rapids. (39:27)
He was discharged in February of 1946. (39:55)
Ben was given enough money to fly home to Michigan. However due to his inability to get a
flight, Ben needed to take a train part way to Chicago. (40:00)
�
Ben was offered a job by the shoe retailer that he originally worked for. He was soon transferred
to Detroit, Michigan, and offered the chance to manage a store in Kentucky. He turned the offer
down. (41:03)
He operated an Army and Navy Surplus store until 1952. (42:00)
He became an auctioneer after several business attempts from 1964-2011. (43:02)
His career as an auctioneer involved a lot of document keeping. (44:09)
Effects of Service (44:34)
Being drafted makes Ben feel that he had done his part. (44:50)
He doesn’t think he learned anything in the service that he didn’t already know. (45:50)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KleimanB1252V
Title
A name given to the resource
Kleiman, Benjamin (Interview outline and video), 2010
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kleiman, Benjamin
Description
An account of the resource
Ben Kleiman was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1918. He tried to enlist in the Army after Pearl Harbor, but was rejected due to poor eyesight. He was eventually drafted in 1943 and put on limited duty. He worked as a clerk at Camp Reynolds, Pennsylvania, keeping track of soldiers who had gone AWOL, and was eventually reassigned to Camp Richardson, Alaska, outside of Anchorage, where he worked as a personnel clerk until discharged in 1946.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Army
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2010-06-05
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/580f1b63d93788dde92adc76f7e81103.mp4
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PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Dale Kissinger
Vietnam War
Total Time: 1:19:00
Childhood and Pre-Enlistment (0:00:0)
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Born in Gary, Indiana in 1948.
Attended High School in Valparaiso, Indiana.
Father worked in a steel mill, and he paid his way through college the same way.
Attended Trinity College in Deerfield, Illinois.
Joined the Air Force in 1972.
He was motivated to join the Air Force because his draft number was low and
recruiters came to him with the option of joining pilot school.
Training (0:02:10)
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He was given the option to go into helicopter pilot training school.
Attended basic helicopter pilot training at Fort Walters, Texas. They would
practice maneuvers including takeoff and landing, and the basics of field landings.
From there, he went to Fort Rucker, Alabama where he took Advanced Helicopter
Training and learned difficult maneuvers.
(0:04:30) After flight training, he attended several different survival schools,
including the Water Survival School in Homestead, Florida and then did Land
Survival in Washington.
His wife travelled with him during this time.
Was taught his specific aircraft, The UH-1 Huey, at Hill Air Force Base. His
assignment was initially to go to Andrews Air Force Base. However he ended up
at Indian Springs, NV.
Active Duty (0:06:50)
• At Indian Springs, his job was to fly over the underground nuclear test program
and monitor the activity around the site. Mostly worked in a support role.
• Had some experience setting up an Air Force test program which allowed him
some high altitude flying experience
• His base was very small, and there were around 11 or 12 men in the unit. They
were around 100 miles from Las Vegas, Nevada.
• (0:10:25) He was stationed there for 4 years.
• (0:11:05) Was then transferred to Howard Air Force Base in Panama in 1977,
where he was stationed there for 4 years. While he was there for 3 years.
• While they were in Panama, he worked in the Canal Zone.
• He worked as an instructor for a time for the Panamanian Air Force.
�• (0:14:20) Was part of the helicopter squadron that moved the Shah of Iran around
when he was in Panama. He also had to be put on alert and fly to a carrier when
the Sandistas took over Nicaragua.
• (0:19:00) Also did some work in Panama as a Rescue pilot. He won an award at
one point by doing some hazardous mountain flying to attempt to save a stranded
mountain climber.
• (0:20:58) From Panama, moved to Shepherd Air Force Base, Texas where he was
taught to fly fixed wing aircraft. He was qualified to fly fighter pilots, but did not
fly because of his age. He instead became an instructor at Reese Air Force Base
in Lubbock, Texas.
• (0:24:50) Left Lubbock in 1984 to go to Scott Air Force Base, IL and did desk
work. While he was there he got his Masters Degree in International Relations.
Worked in the Air Rescue Coordination office.
• Any search that the FAA took to the federal level, their office would get involved
and coordinate the rescue efforts.
• (0:29:30) They were responsible for the search and rescue efforts for the Space
Shuttle Challenger crash.
• (0:34:05) From there, went to Hurlburt Field, Florida in 1987, which was the base
for the Special Operations forces of the Air Force, where he worked as the flight
examiner. He was sent to many different bases around the world.
• (0:37:02) Was promoted to the position of Flight Operations Officer in Naval Air
Station Keflavik, Iceland in 1989.
• They did many different things, including more rescue operations, while in
Iceland.
• (0:43:05) In 1992, was transferred to the Pentagon in Washington, DC in a
program called Reserve Operations. He worked budgeting programs and
defending these programs in hearings.
• (0:44:40) Got promoted out of the Pentagon position in 1994 and was moved to
Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico with the 58th Special
Operations Wing. They trained these men, and their main goal was to create
crews for aircraft. Got to be group commander while he was there.
• (0:53:25) Transferred from there to Charleston Air Force Base, South Carolina in
1997. He ran the C-141 Special Operations Program. He was very tightly
connected to the base because the importance of their planes to operations.
Therefore, he was always on alert.
• (0:54:45) Was moved to McCord Air Force Base, Washington in 1999 to be Vice
Wing Commander of the C-71 battalion. Worked in the logistical transition from
the C-141 to the C-17.
• (0:56:40) Was at the base on September 11, 2001. Remembers shutting down the
base and moved to DEFCON 3.
• Flew into Afghanistan during the war. Flew from McCord, Washington to Europe
in the C-141 and then a C-17 the rest of the way to Afghanistan. Landed in
Kandahar and worked dropping Meal Ready to Eat packs to the civilians in
Afghanistan.
�• (0:58:40) Also worked in Bosnia during his time at Charleston AFB. He was the
437th Air Expeditionary Force Commander during a month and a half of this
operation. He would both bring food and military hardware during this time.
• He retired in 2002 after 30 years in the Air Force as a Colonel
Post Service (1:08:50)
•
When he retired from the Air Force, he moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan and
worked in the Avionics industry. After that, he started working for
militaryavenue.com, which was started by his children. This site helps military
families who move around a lot get acclimated to their surroundings.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KissingerD
Title
A name given to the resource
Kissinger, Dale (Interview outline and video), 2008
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kissinger, Dale
Description
An account of the resource
Dale Kissinger was born in Gary, IN in 1948 and served in the Air Force between 1972 and 2002. He decided to join the Air Force upon completion of high school and attended training to become a helicopter pilot, and later trained in fixed wing aircraft as well. He worked in Nevada, Panama, Texas, South Carolina, New Mexico, Iceland, Bosnia and Afghanistan. He did a number of different jobs, including pilot, flight instructor, and management. He retired from the Air Force in 2002, and works for a website which helps military families during their transitions from base to base.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Kentwood Historic Preservation Commission (Kentwood, Mich.)
WKTV
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Air Force
Afghan War, 2001---Personal narratives, American
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2008-05-22
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c0989ba2096bc1d77b6dcc9bc6ee7c6b.mp4
ed6b6ca424e0c3fb37cb1346bae387c0
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1a58ed980e06b943baa84a4f1581f36d.pdf
0794ceef190406e3ee742f39d484ce5c
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Gunther Kirschner
(42:20)
Background information (00:11)
Born in October of 1948 in Germany. (00:14)
His mother was German but his father was an American Soldier who fought in WWII. (00:30)
He arrived in the U.S. in 1952. (1:11)
He settled in McKinney Texas. They resided there because his mother was required to have a
sponsor to immigrate to the U.S. and his mother’s sponsor lived in Texas. (1:19)
His mother wanted to come to the U.S. primarily for the economic environment. (2:00)
He resided in Texas for about a year then moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1953. (2:11)
He attended Forest Hills High School. (2:40)
He was an only child. (2:48)
He graduated college in 1968. (2:55)
After he graduated he worked in the warehouse for Amway until he was drafted in February of
1969. (3:00)
At the time he was drafted he knew very little about the Vietnam War. (3:17)
He had very little dramatic reaction to his draft notice. (3:46)
He was required to go to Detroit for a physical before being sworn in. (4:12)
He failed to notice any blatant tempts by other soldiers to evade the draft. However, he did
notice the wide variety of attitudes the men had toward the conflict. (4:33)
Basic training (4:50)
Attended basic in Fort Knox Kentucky (4:55)
He thought basic training was a very difficult and intimidating experience. (5:00)
Men from across the country were at Fort Knox. (5:33)
He believed that the drill sergeants were fair. (6:11)
The physical training was fairly difficult and included many physical exercises. At the time he
joined he was small and thin. (6:44)
Basic lasted approx. 2-2.5 months. (7:18)
During basic, men were given aptitude tests. Gunther tested highly in mechanics. (7:30)
He received advanced infantry training and was not given any sort of engineer or mechanical
training. (7:58)
He did his AIT at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Here the base was hot and humid and it rained almost
every day. (8:08)
He recalls being prepared fairly heavily for combat in Vietnam including increased firing range
training as well as some jungle training. (8:50)
Most of the sergeants had served in Vietnam already. However they never spoke about there
experience. (9:00)
The men trained on the M60, M16, and M14.
Upon the completion of AIT, he was given a week leave to return home. After words he would
report to Oakland California. (10:11)
�Arrival in Vietnam (11:00)
He flew from Grand Rapids to Oakland and then from Oakland to Vietnam in Uniform. He recalls
having been treated kindly. (10:30)
The ship landed in Guam before arriving in Vietnam. The men were allowed to get of the plane.
(11:24)
The men landed in Bien Hoa Vietnam in August of 1969. He recalls the country having a very odd
scent. (11:55)
Upon landing the men were given more training on jungle terrain for approx 1 week. This
training was fairly applicable in the field. (12:40)
He was then sent to Camp Evans. (13:40)
He was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division, 2nd Battalion, 506th Regiment, D Company.
(14:15)
When he joined, his unit he didn’t think morale was too low but he did know that they were in
combat fairly recently. (15:19)
The men stayed in bunkers and barracks. (15:38)
Service in Vietnam (16:00)
He recalls going out on patrols with his company soon after being assigned to it. (16:26)
Whenever out on patrol, the men were delivered to their destination via helicopter. They often
patrolled on hilly terrain. (17:43)
The patrols often lasted a few days. (18:30)
He did theses patrols often during his entire service in Vietnam. He never had to go into a hot
landing zone. (19:05)
The patrolling operations could be platoon or company sized however most often it was platoon
sized. (19:50)
There were approx. 8 men in his squad. (20:02)
The men would sometimes utilize trails. (20:44)
The unit did run into booby traps during patrols but this did not result in any casualties. (21:00)
The unit set up an ambush but were never ambushed themselves. (21:16)
Though he did not see any intense combat, he often heard of units engaging in heavy fire only a
few kilometers away. (22:08)
At night the men in the unit took turns being guards and booby traps were set up to warn of
approaching North Vietnamese. They were never attacked at night. (22:30)
The more experienced members had told stories of combat they saw. They were very happy
that they hadn’t seen much combat after Gunther’s arrival in August of 1969. (23:05)
The men were well equipped and supplied. (23:30)
He stayed at Firebase Jack which was a smaller part of the larger Camp Evans. (24:42)
Life in Vietnam (25:00)
He witnessed drug use while in service both in the field and during camp. (25:20)
Men most often smoked marijuana. It was not uncommon for men to smoke in the field near
sergeants in spite it being a court-martial offence. (25:35)
�
He managed to make close friends during his service in his unit. (26:00)
He accepted that he was in Vietnam and had a sense of pride about being in the armed forces.
(26:54)
He recalls two instances when he was very afraid for his life. One was when his unit was shelled
the other was in the DNZ and he was shelled again by U.S. artillery. (27:19)
There was some turnover in his unit. (28:08)
He had trouble with jungle infections. When he was infected it took him a very long time to get
out of the field due to it being the monsoon season. (28:30)
He was flown to a hospital ship off the coast of Vietnam. Here the infection was controlled.
(29:40)
After having healed he was given a choice to stay in Vietnam or return to the U.S. he choose to
return home. (30:52)
He was then sent to a hospital in Japan before being sent to Walter Reed Medical Center.(30:58)
Service in the U.S. (31:00)
After leaving Walter Reed, he was sent to Fort Meade, Maryland. Here he was made a tank
driver and trained to control riots in Washington D.C. (31:30)
He was never called upon to control a riot. He was however mad a bus driver for the base
(32:00)
He was an E4 in Vietnam and an E5 in the U.S. (32:40)
He doesn’t believe drug use in the platoon caused problems in the field. (33:00)
He did not witness racial tensions within his own company. (33:10)
He didn’t notice any racial self-segregation on the base in Vietnam. (34:43)
The officers performed their tasks and were competent. (35:08)
While he served in the 101st, the company was banned from villages due to the bad reputation
they had built up prior to his arrival. (35:45)
Vietnamese worked on the bases and often preformed KP duty. (37:07)
There were other companies at Camp Evans who saw combat and took heavy casualties. (37:40)
He received in country R&R while in Vietnam in a beach area near the China Sea. He received
the opportunity to go out of country but it was during a period in which we was medevaced.
(38:02)
When I the U.S. he did understand that the military was attempting to scale back. (40:00)
Life after service (post February 1971)(40:25)
He returned to the Amway after his discharge in 1971 to work. (40:30)
He used his GI bill for truck driver training. (40:35)
He began his painting career in 1984.(40:50)
The service left positive effects on him and he was proud to have served his country. He valued
the discipline and emphases on team work the military provides. (41:15)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KirschnerG1328V
Title
A name given to the resource
Kirschner, Gunther (Interview outline and video), 2011
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kirschner, Gunther
Description
An account of the resource
Gunther Kirschner, born in October of 1948 in Germany, moved to the U.S. at a young age and lived near Grand Rapids Michigan. After completing high school he was drafted into the U.S. Army. Gunther served from August of 1969 to February of 1971, spending several months as a rifleman in the 101st Airborne Diviision during the Vietnam Conflict. While he was with his unit, his company was not heavily engaged, although other units in his battalion and brigade were. His tour was cut short by infections, and he was sent home for treatment, and completed his service in the U.S.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
WKTV (Wyoming, Mich.)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Army
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2011-12-01
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives