735 24 26018 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2b0dfe19aeefeefa3cb290f4cfddcf73.mp4 42ab78cbd16235ae7ab8202ce4a57964 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3d047b3326201205fa097c1f5706a1d4.pdf f774e41ba401f5398778f646004b9cb7 PDF Text Text GrandValleyStateUniversity Veterans History Project Scott Baldwin (32:50) Background Information ()  Scott enlisted in the U.S. Army National Guard in 1983. He enlisted while a senior in high school. (00:20)  There was an Army National guard unit in his town. This inspired him to join as well. (00:52)  The first several days in the National Guard was trying to assimilate into what was a very tightly knit unit. (1:11)  The first few months of being involved with the guard is mentally and physically preparing for basic training. (1:50)  Training was very stressful and a shock to Scott’s system. (2:03)  While in the Army National Guard in Oklahoma, he was also in ROTC at OklahomaStateUniversity. He graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. This would later aid in his civilian career. (2:44) National Guard Service ()  His first service was in Oklahoma under the Oklahoma National Guard. He also worked in DuncanOklahoma and WeatherfordOklahoma. (3:26)  He spent 9 years in the inactive reserve before joining the Army Reserve on July 2nd 2002. (3:55)  When Scott moved to Michigan in 2004 he joined a unit it KalamazooMichigan. (4:05)  Scott has been mobilized twice. When mobilized he spent a year at the InfantrySchool (20052006) at Fort BenningGeorgia. (4:13) Service in Afghanistan ()  He spent several months in Afghanistan serving as an operations NCO. He advised the Afghan military on how to conduct basic training. (4:35)  He served as an advisor of an Afghan colonel. (5:30)  The men had 57 Afghan interpreters to help the U.S. solders communicate with their counterparts. (6:23)  Scott had close encounters with suicide bombers or riots but was not directly involved in them. (6:50)  Scotts most memorable experiences was the culture shock he experienced when arriving in Afghanistan and leaving Afghanistan. (7:11)  There were 3 casualties that were taken while Scott served. None of them involved enemy action. (8:33)  There was one Afghan trainee who turned his weapons upon his instructors as well as fellow shoulders. He was neutralized after a firefight with U.S. soldiers. (11:00)  Scott was very fearful, particularly during his first several days in country. After a while, however, he grew used to the environment. (13:11) � Vehicles have a “Blue Force tracker” which as a real time moving map that showed streets as well as where other friendly units or convoys at. (14:12) Life in Afghanistan ()  CampAlamo, where Scott was located, was multi-service as well as multinational. (14:55)  The laundry and food service were run through outside contractors. The food was very good. (15:49)  Because Friday was the holly day for Muslims, the Afghan military didn’t train. The solders spent these days often relaxing or playing pickup sports games. (16:50)  There was electricity. Men often bought TVs, or had game systems that they used when there was down time. Scott often read. (18:20)  Men still had to do their job on Christmas. On Thanksgiving, the company that provided the food provided ice sculptures for the soldiers. (19:15)  Pastors would have special sermons as a result of holiday. (20:20)  While in Afghanistan the men had to learn to adapt to the culture. (20:53)  Humanitarian aid missions were carried out where soccer balls and shoes were given out to the people. The goods came from the U.S. and Britain but were given to Afghan military from them to hand out to build good will. (21:43) Exiting Afghanistan ()  The day that Scott was leaving country flights were being canceled due to cold rainy weather. While waiting for the flight to come in, the men stayed in tents. (24:10)  After returning from Afghanistan, the men had to demobilize at Fort RileyKansas. (26:08)  Body armor, weapons, and any other issued materials were turned in, in Afghanistan before being flown home. His wife and kids picked him up from the airport. (26:35)  He returned in February and went back to work in March of that year. (27:15)  Scott made lasting friendships that he has kept up. (27:48) Life after Service (28:22)  He works as an engineering manager for General Electric. (28:22)  Scott felt as though this service did make a difference and help many people. (30:00)  He learned to appreciate what the U.S. has and how good it is to live there. (30:52)  Scott is a member of the VFW as well as the American Legion and the General Electric Veterans Union. (32:33) � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Baldwin, Scott (Interview outline and video), 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Baldwin, Scott Description An account of the resource Scott Baldwin Scott joined the Army National Guard in Oklahoma in 1986 and took ROTC training at Oklahoma State University. After a number of years on inactive reserve, he was activated, worked as a trainer at Fort Benning, Georgia, and was later sent to Afghanistan, where he helped train Afghan forces. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Benzing, 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 United States. Army 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 2011-10-02 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context BaldwinS1352V 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/c9df3d58950310306d90f79a2474885a.mp4 9e0ab08a7264f8a3144a05d478b0c235 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/dbd2b7816011b4e6f6f0e902b8054b98.pdf 7627c8454809b52a851e719c2a6ce1ad PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW RALPH BALDWIN Born: Grand Rapids, MI Resides: Interviewed by: Frank Boring, GVSU Veterans History Project, Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, November 7, 2011 Interviewer: If we could begin with your name and where and when you were born? Ralph B. Baldwin and I was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan on the 6th of June 1912. Interviewer: which makes you today, ninety-two years old. Right Interviewer: There is a lot I would like to cover, in terms of your life, but given the restriction of this being a military history. If we can begin with Pearl Harbor and you can explain where were you and what were your circumstances when you first heard about Pearl Harbor? I was an instructor in the Department of Astronomy at Northwestern University. I had registered for the draft and immediately after Pearl Harbor I was put on a list of people that were not going to be drafted, but they assigned me to teach navigation. 1:22 I had to work like a dog to keep ahead of my students and I didn’t like it because I couldn’t see any sense in spending the entire war teaching navigation. In March, the March after Pearl Harbor, I received a telephone call from Robley Williams, a man who had been a professor at the University of Michigan and he said in a fact, “we have a job for you”, and I said, “What is it?” He said, “none of your business, but we want you to come down to Washington for an interview”. I did and it was one of the most unusual interviews I 1 �have ever had. We talked about everything except what I was going to do. We had to listen to some of Robley Williams terrible puns, which were no where near as good as mine, and I went home without learning a darn thing about what they wanted. 2:36 In about two weeks I got another call from Robley and he said the FBI had checked me out as ok, and he said, “come on down”. Interviewer: Now, you had a family at this time, right? I had a wife and a son. Interviewer: Ok I talked it over with Lois before the second call and decided we would accept the offer if it did come through, and when it came through we packed up and it was almost the end of the semester, so we finished the semester and drove from Evanston to Grand Rapids, said goodbye to my parents, drove to Silver Spring, Maryland, which is at the north point of the district, and I was with the laboratory for about five years. 3:34 Interviewer: Let’s not get ahead of ourselves; you had no idea what you were going to be asked to do? I had no idea whether I was even going to be paid for it. Interviewer: Let’s talk about your arrival then. Where were you living? Robley had found a house for us, which we rented for three months and had to get out because the people were coming back. We rented another house, stayed there for a year, year and a half and on our youngest son’s second birthday we moved into a house that we bought. Interviewer: So I assume that you were getting paid then? 2 �I was getting paid, actually, the tremendous sum of a little over four thousand dollars a year. 4:28 Interviewer: Let’s talk about the first day. You’re in Washington, what was your first day at work like, so to speak? I drove and had to park on the street—I couldn’t even park at the laboratory, Applied Physics Laboratory, I couldn’t part in their region, walked in the front door and was immediately met by a man about six feet seven or eight and built accordingly, and he wanted to know what my business was and I gave him Robley’s name. Robley came down and maybe for the next hour and a half we spent discussing the secrecy and how they really didn’t want to shoot me if gave some stories out about it. Then they took me in to meet the man who was to be my boss for the next four years. 5:32 His name was McAllister and he was a marvelous individual. Interviewer: What was the first day like? You mentioned that they briefed you and what not; did you get a chance to see the operation? Were you restricted to one room? I never was restricted to one room, but people were working enough, so they didn’t wander around. My first day, they put me in a laboratory where they were analyzing test Proximity Fuses. They would take the fuse apart; I would, and spread out the inwards, so that laboratory scientists could find out what failed or what succeeded. Interviewer: So this program was already, perhaps in it’s infancy, but it still had already started when you came? 6.36 The program started in England. In 1940 the British found that they had a few airplanes, Spitfires, etc., and they were better than the German planes, but they had so few of them, 3 �and their anti-aircraft gunnery was terrible. It was just as good as the Americans or the Germans, but with an ordinary time fuse, which is sort of an alarm clock set for a time sufficient to allow the shot to get close to an enemy plane, and we had about three hundred parts as an estimate composing one Proximity Fuse. 7:40 I use that term Proximity Fuse, but I haven’t defined it. It’s in the nose of a shell, it is fired from a cannon and the one that we used for the navy, was the navy 5 inch 38, and the one for the army was the 90mm, a little smaller. The work was being done exclusively on the navy fuse because the naval fleet had been badly hurt at Pearl Harbor and we just couldn’t allow it to be destroyed. We’d have lost the war, I think, if that happened. We had to make sure that every one of those three hundred parts could stand the shock of being fired from a gun, a canon. 8:37 Those shells were fired at a speed of about 2700 feet per second and the gravity equivalent was, if I remember correctly, somewhere around 20,000 G, or 20,000 times the force of gravity. The fuse had to go through all of that, but every one of those parts had to operate as though it were on a breadboard in the laboratory, and it was an almost impossible job. 9:27 For years, about two, we didn’t have much success; we’d get maybe ten or fifteen percent operability. The navy wanted a minimum test firing of fifty percent success and we didn’t get that until the late fall of 1942. Interviewer: Now, you’re mentioning navy, perhaps they thought of it as a priority, but what about the army and the rest of the military branches? We did nothing on the army fuse, or the British navy and army, until we made the navy fuse operable, and then they—it was always in the planning, but the difficulty was twofold really. There wasn’t just one gun, but the navy had a 5 inch 25 and a 5 inch 38 4 �and the 5 inch 54, each one, of which, gave a different kind of shock and we had to get fuses, which would operate, first on the 5 inch 38, which was the standard gun for the navy. 10:46 We didn’t do anything for maybe six months after I got there on the 90mm for the U.S. Army, we did nothing for the British Army until after the American Army was taken care of. We did work on the British fuse, which, except for the battery, which produced the electric power, and it’s works, which was the same as the American Mark 32 for the 5 inch cannon. 11:29 Interviewer: I find this fascinating because if you look at the face of it you’re figuring on putting a device into a shell and it’s going to shoot off, but it’s far more complex than that because you have different caliber guns, you have different uses, you have different branches of the military. The navy isn’t the same as the army, so all these factors had to be taken into account. Every one, and we fired, actually, about a million and a half shells in testing. We made, over the whole war twenty seven million Proximity Fuses sent out for use. Interviewer: I understand they did they get allocated out? The navy got so many, the army got so many? The navy had the highest priority all through the war, and they got whatever they needed. Interviewer: Let’s go back to the first days on the job. We’ve established that this was a program started by the British; now you’re taking it on to try to perfect it, what kind of numbers of people are we talking about on this team? 12:32 The laboratory started with about five or six people at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism in Washington, and by the time I got there we had moved over into a used car garage in Silver Spring, Maryland, which we modified and enlarged tremendously. 5 �When I got there we had about a hundred people, almost. We spent approximately a billion dollars on this program, but we never had more than about eight hundred people at any one time. Interviewer: Now in your group it’s self, when you come to work, how many people were in your immediate area? We weren’t segregated in that sense and I had actually—at no time during the war did I have more than about fifteen people working with me. 13:58 Interviewer: Now, were these individuals all working on the same project or did they have individual projects that all tied into the main project? I can’t answer that off hand without getting into the type of work that we were doing. As I said earlier the fuse for the U.S. Navy had the highest priority. One day in March of 1942, I was driving down to the Army War College and the thought occurred to me, “Will these things burst over land by the influence of the land or over water, which is the way we test them, or by the reflection of a radio wave from an enemy plane?” 15:05 Each fuse sent out a radio wave and when it is reflected back it is detected by the same tube, oscillator tube, that sent it out, but the reflective wave is in a little different wavelength because of the Doppler effect. The shell is moving relative to the target, whether it’s land or water or a plane. When that reflected wave is compared to the one that is sent out, a beat note is sent up, and the beat note has a frequency about the same as the wave length of sound and when the beat note is at the right point, the right velocity and the right intensity, it tells the fuse, “now”. 16:07 A switch operated, it allowed an electric current from the battery to go through a little squib. A tiny squib, which is an explosive charge, maybe three eighth of an inch high and a quarter inch—through a hole 6 �near the bottom of the fuse and set off about a quarter inch of tetrol at the very base of the fuse. That blew up and set off the explosive charge of the shell. Now let me diverge a little bit. That all happened automatically, in other words, the target committed suicide. They didn’t know it, but that’s what they were doing. The shell is moving close to two thousand feet a second when it passes the plane. If you take a shell in the laboratory, burst it with it’s full charge of explosive, most of the fragments go our directly sideways. 17:24 Because the shell is moving, they go forward and when they get out about seventy-five to eighty feet from the shell, they have converged until the path of the fragments is about twenty, maybe twenty-five feet wide. The plane has to be in those twenty-five feet or the fragments will miss it, but at two thousand feet a second that is an extremely small time. If the fuse did not operate quickly enough the fragments would miss the plane and you would have the worlds most expensive form of self-destroying ammunition. 18:18 That meant that the plane—the shell going past the plane, the fragments out there twenty-five feet wide had—call it twenty feet, and it’s going at two thousand feet per second, you got about a hundredth of a second and if you had a fuse that operated in two hundredths of a second, you’re going to get a miss. 19:06 Interviewer: Yes, and you had mentioned earlier about the tests in the laboratory, that the fragments would go out to the side opposed to when it was moving forward they would go forward. I’m trying to picture this. We’re talking about a real explosion in the lab? It wasn’t in the lab building, I’m sorry—no, no this was outdoors and what they did was they made a table, set the fuse on the table here and out here fifty feet, or something like 7 �that, was a fence, solid wood, and they set it off electrically and counted where the fragments went. Interviewer: That’s brilliant, so you had—forgive me because I’m really trying to visualize this. How many tests of that particular period of time you were trying to solve these problems, are you talking every day they would be tested or every week? 20:06 Well, they would determine the pattern that was typical for each shell and actually, in that that particular time and actually, in that particular thing, they were all pretty similar. Interviewer: I apologize for moving so quickly here, but we have limited time and there’s so much to cover. Was there a moment or a particular period in the very beginning stages of your work there where you felt that a breakthrough was made, something that was accomplished beyond the testing, the testing, and the testing? The British started, they developed a theory, but they never could make a really successful fuse. 21:00 When we came into the war, considerably later, the British gave us all of their information, they had the theory and it was correct. They had proven if everything went right, and it might be only one or two percent of the time in the early stages, that they were on the right track. When they gave it to us they were getting maybe fifteen or twenty percent operability, but they were at war and we weren’t, so we took the program over and some of their men came over to help us get started. Interviewer: Was there a period, or a moment, in the very early stages where you felt yourself that a breakthrough had been made, that you were now starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel? 22:00 8 �One thing that had to be demonstrated, and the British had done it and we redid it--we would fire shell vertically and they would come down base first. If your shell comes down base first, hits the ground, it will penetrate for maybe two feet, and the shell will be protecting the fuse because of their relative positions. Early in the game they fired in a 57mm gun, the test fuses and they found that some of them would survive with parts good. Well, if some of them would survive we were doing something right, and we knew very early that we could find out what we were doing wrong because the principle was correct. 22:59 Interviewer: Looking back on it, this is very exciting, but I imagine the daily routine could be tedious, or was there a general excitement all the way through this? In writing my books I contacted a great many of the people who were still left, and almost without exception and without prodding, they thought their work at the laboratory was of vital importance and a thrilling top spot in their lives. We were not bored. 23:43 Interviewer: Good, where were you when the first successful test was made? Were you still at the same place? I was at Northwestern that was done before I got there. Interviewer: You were talking about how the navy had the priority and all, but was the navy the first one then to actually get a fuse that worked? Yes, and the first battle use of the fuse was on the fifth of January 1943, and not far from Guadalcanal. The American small fleet had been bombarding a Japanese camp, or whatever you call it, on some island down there and was returning to the area of Guadalcanal at night, no I’m wrong, this was a daytime thing, and three Japanese planes came right down with the sun behind them. 25:00 They weren’t seen by radar or 9 �visually until they dropped their bombs. One of the bombs hit the Achilles, which was an Australian [British] cruiser, and the other two missed the U.S. cruiser Helena, and fortyfive seconds from the time of sighting, the Helena had its anti-aircraft guns working, and on the second shot they got the Japanese plane. They had a search because they wanted to get that plane if they could, but it sank. They recovered the pilot and they brought him back to the Helena, and as he came up the gangway he pulled out his pistol and shot himself. 26:06 That was the first battle use of any Proximity Fuse. Interviewer: Now, lets try to understand the physics of this. In the past, before the Proximity Fuse was designed, if a Japanese plane was coming toward an American cruiser, you would basically be shooting at it like you would at a carnival or something, you’re just trying to hit the target? There were two ways, and neither of them good. They were all that our fleet, or any other fleet had. They had fuses that would go off by contact. Well, your chance of hitting a plane moving very rapidly with that type of fuse were practically zero. They had another fuse, which in effect had an alarm clock set in the nose and you could set that for whatever time you wanted up to twenty-five seconds flight time. 27:18 The idea being to get the shell to pass within about seventy-five feet of an enemy plane and to burst at that instant, just an instant as it’s passing. Well, that time fuse was better, but it was not good, and every navy had those. 27:46 Interviewer: So, the enemy’s coming in and the shells are blowing up and their just concentrating on whatever area you’re shooting at. It’s not being attracted to— It’s not being attracted, the shell is independent, and once you fire it, you committed it to a given path. 10 �Interviewer: So, now what is the difference with the Proximity Fuse that you’ve designed? The Proximity Fuse, in it’s nose, has a first, four tube, and later a five tube, radio tubes, glass, and the shock of firing activates a battery and eliminates certain safety’s that are built in, so the shell won’t burst if you fire it from the tail end of your own ship, you don’t hit the bow. Interviewer: So, this now goes and seeks out—what is it seeking? 28:53 It doesn’t seek anything, you’ve committed to a path and that path is reasonably close to the target and all the time it’s flying the shell will be emitting a radio wave, and that radio wave is reflected off the plane to the target and back, and detected by the same tube that started it. It will develop that beat note that I mentioned , and if the beat note is right and the intensity is right it starts a series of three little explosions and those explosions have to be so fast that the fragments from the bursting shell, following a path only about twenty-five feet wide out in the distance of the plane, and the plane has to be in that area. 30:00 Interviewer: Now you were mentioning earlier about glass tubes, and I understand that you were involved in the development of that. No, I was not involved in that type of research at all. The glass tubes were about equal in size to the metal part that holds the rubber on a wooden pencil, to give you an idea of the size. We made triodes and tetrodes, and one of them was a—well, it’s a particular type of a fuse that acts as a switch. When everything is right that switch operates and the whole thing blows up. Interviewer: Ok, so in terms of the parts, this is what we’re talking about, right? 11 �Yes Interviewer: Is this the one that was developed for the navy or is this a different one? No Interviewer: So this is different. 31:00 The one that was developed for the navy had a bigger area here. It was two inches instead of an inch and a half and we could use a battery that was considerably bigger and more rugged than the one that had to be used in this. We finally had to develop a completely new type of battery, which the electrolyte was in a little glass tube, that glass tube had to resist the firing, we didn’t want to activate it too soon, resist the handling before the firing I mean to say, and the spin of the shell, and the 90mm rotates around four times a second, the spin distributes that electrolyte among a whole series of battery plates, and within about a tenth of a second of firing, the fuse is operable. It was the safest fuse ever developed. 32:09 We never had a bore burst, where it bursts in the gun, and there were less early bursts outside the gun than in any other type of fuse. Interviewer: You know I find this remarkable because from my understanding, and forgive me because my understanding of science is limited, but the complexity of this is, and would seem to me, almost be automatic that problems would happen and that something would blow up before it got out of the bore of a gun, or something, but you overcame that. That was our job, to eliminate that type of happening, because if you eliminate a premature burst, you got a good shell going on and can still work. 33:04 12 �Interviewer: That makes sense now, but I’m just trying to picture going through all the imaginations and making sure that nothing happens. A big part of our laboratory group were people who were working on individual parts of a fuse. Everyday we would test. We would test operability, we would shoot them vertically, so we could recover the shell to find out what failed and what didn’t fail and if it failed, what could we do to change it? Interviewer: This looks like a piece of metal with some green plastic on it. What is it really? The plastic is the plastic called Ethos-cellulose. We started using Lucite, and we found out very quickly that the Lucite wasn’t strong enough and it would break, and when it would break we had a “dud”. We found—when I came back to the laboratory with that report, I went to the engineers, and they said, “we haven’t got anything that’s better than Lucite”, and I said, “You have to find something”. 34:16 They came back in a few days and said they had located a supplier of a plastic called Ethos-cellulose, and that plastic is strong enough—it has one weakness, it will, over a period of time, allow moisture to get in and that’s a whole story in it’s self how we solved that, but it was solved and all of the army, navy fuses, that went to battle use, had that type of a nose. 34:58 Interviewer: Now, without getting into too much detail, what’s in here? What kind of pieces are in here? There’s a battery in there. There’s a battery in the lower part, above it is a five tube radio set, one tube is an oscillator to send out a wave, this cap in the inner part, is isolated from this, so we have— and this really becomes part of the shell, so we have a flying antennae out there radiating and detecting the radio wave. 35:41 We had one group, which was working on 13 �eliminating failures in practically every component. There were something like three hundred components in each fuse. Now, there are multiple numbers in some of those. The fuse has to operate perfectly to have any chance of bringing down a target. 36:18 Interviewer: All those parts have to work in conjunction with each other. One can’t fail and if one fails is there---? Once in a while something fails, but it isn’t critical. Most of the time if it misses the fuse is a dud or it bursts. Let me give you a little statistics here. If you have a fuse, which statistically will operate perfectly at fifty percent, you can use it and it will be more effective than any other method. 37:34 It will actually, I’m saying this wrong. If every one of the three hundred components except one, is good, but that one is bad, you will get a fuse that operates about four percent of the time. If you have ten times better, it will operate somewhere around fifty percent of the time. 38:16 Operate rightly, and if you have another factor of ten good parts, it will operate about ninety-five percent of the time properly. Our job is to get the thing better than the fifty percent, and we did. The navy fuses and the army anti aircraft fuse were fired from these high velocity guns, big shocks, and we got them to be operable about seventy percent of the time. Interviewer: That’s remarkable When we got into the anti-personnel fuses over land, we started at about eighty percent operability, based on the work that had been done on the anti-aircraft fuses, and they were averaging between ninety and ninety-five percent for the big part of the war. 39:22 Interviewer: This may sound like a stupid question, but I want to make it clear in my own mind, are all the shells that are shooting at an airplane or that are shooting at a target, do they all have these on them or do only a few of them? 14 �Well, they were operating against an enemy plane. The fuse had to operate; also they had to know that the gun was pointed in the right direction. If you see a plane over here and you’re here, you don’t shoot at the plane, you shoot at where the plane is going to be when the shell gets there. It’s an extremely complicated proposition, so that’s why fifty percent operability is borderline. 40:16 We were getting better and better gun directors during the war. Some other people made some and we developed one for the navy that were—let me put it a little bit differently. The gun directors that the navy had when the war started were pretty good, but they took about twenty-five seconds to go through the routine of saying, “shoot it here”. Interviewer: It’s the guy standing there, letting the communications department know to shoot at a particular target? Yes Interviewer: I interviewed on of those gentlemen right in this very room. I wonder if he said anything like this. The Japanese found that it took that twenty-five seconds to have the director really line up on the—so every thirty seconds they changed their courses. 41:25 We developed a new gun director, which took 4.6 seconds to line up and the Japs didn’t know about it, and we shot down large numbers of Japanese planes with this new gun director. The same fuses we were using before, but they were much more effective. Interviewer: When you see on a documentary, or you watch one of these gun battles and you see the tracer bullets are being shot out— Those are all small, usually around 40mm guns. You’ve seen pictures of them and they go Bing, Bing, Bing? 15 �Interviewer: Yes They had contact fuses in them. 42:12 Interviewer: Ok They used the tracers to change-Interviewer: Yes, to see to course of what they were shooting, but these are heavier guns that you’re talking about. These are all-- nothing smaller than about a three inch. We took out too much of the explosives. Interviewer: Now, the ones that were used in the Pacific by the navy, we’re talking about the Okinawa Campaign, Leyte Gulf, were they used at Leyte? They were used in Leyte and it was in Leyte that they really started using the—the Japanese started using these Kamikaze planes and the Kamikazes, in a sense, did us a favor. If we didn’t have the fuse, they would have taken our fleet right out of the water, but they did have these fuses that in order to aim at the target they would have to go into a gliding path toward the aircraft carrier or battleship, or whatever it was. 43:18 They were on a path that allowed us to set those guns with accuracy and we shot down—well, I have a tape from Admiral Arleigh Burke and he was praising the fuse and telling how it shot down the Japanese planes by the dozens. In the battle of the Philippine Sea, they had what they called the Marianas Turkey Shoot and in the Turkey shoot a large number of planes were shot down. Some by our own aircraft, and a lot of them by the Proximity Fuse. Some of those were Kamikazes. 44:11 On that day, Japan lost, really, its fleet. The aircraft, we shot out about four hundred total, altogether, Japanese planes in those two days. 16 �Interviewer: I know two individuals who I’m sure would like to shake your hand. One of them was on the Hale and on of them was on the Franklin and they both survived. I wish I could get the true story of what happened on the Franklin. The navy people insist that it was a bomb that came and penetrated the deck and caught planes on the deck and below deck, all gassed up, and others called it a Kamikaze plane that came in. 45:16 I’ve had people from the Franklin give me two different stories. Interviewer: Well, the gentlemen I interviewed was, and there’s a pretty famous story about this group of 300 that were caught below, and rescued out and he was one of those and he stated that the Kamikazes were already coming in, but the explosions that they experiences were because the airplanes that were already in there, the American planes that were all gassed up, all those just exploded, that’s what he said. Well, what happened to the Franklin, and it survived under its own power and went back to the United States, but what happened to the Franklin is almost exactly the same thing that happened to the Japanese planes at Midway. We caught them with their planes on the deck. 46:10 Interviewer: the gentleman from the hale was, as you call them, a director. In fact his name is King Doyle, I don’t know if you know him. In Lowell he owns the King Flour Mill. I will bring it up. Interviewer: It would be fascinating, maybe the next time you get up here we will have to get you three guy in a room together. That would be an interesting 17 �conversation. You said the navy was the priority, so you got the navy one completed, but then you created one for shooting over land, and this created different problems. They were developed rather quickly because we had a long history of solving problems that were not quite as severe because a shell that is designed to burst above ground and fragment, will be fired at a lower muzzle velocity and therefore, a lower shock at firing. The anti-personnel fuses were largely, in this model, and they started at about eighty percent operability. 47:26 They moved up, until around the end of the war we were getting around ninety-five percent operability. I have a copy of a letter from General Patton, and he makes a statement that they caught a group of German soldiers trying to get across the Rhine, and with a time on target, oh I think it must have been more than just one time on target, they counted, by actual count, seven hundred and two dead Germans from that one. 48:17 Then he closed his letter by saying, “I think when all nations get this weapon we’ll have to devise new methods of warfare”. Interviewer: Wow, what battles in Europe was the Proximity Fuse used? What ones that you would know? The Battle of the Bulge, and I’m talking now of the anti-personnel use. The proper use of a tank will have back-up people with it, walking, and it wiped those pretty well out. In my book, “They Never Knew What Hit Them”, there’s a story that a Brigadier General now, who was captured I guess back there, was one of the first to use it. 49:24 In one salvo of 155mm guns they killed something on the order of several hundred. The way he put it is from the 2nd Army 3rd?] went through the area the next day and it was just covered with bodies. If you have a shell that is operated by impact, or by collision with 18 �something, and it hits the ground, it’s going to dig a hole and most of the fragments will go up and away from the target. If you’re in a foxhole, you’re pretty safe from anything except a direct hit. 50:15 I had a group of young women working with the mechanical calculators we had in those days, the Monroe etc. The calculations covering all possible angles of fall, velocity, etc., and against the same distribution of targets, if your shells burst at the optimum height, they would be about twenty-five times as efficient as the ones we had to start the war with. It was such a frightening thing because it was bursting above your head, and we have records of at least four German soldiers being executed, by the Germans, rather than go out in the areas covered by our interdictory fire. 51:35 Interviewer: The Battle of the Bulge, at least in the very beginning, was not in our favor. They broke through and were scattering us. Well, there’s a story not generally known to the public. The fuse had been perfected enough so the army said we could use it, but you can’t use it until Christmas day in Europe. 52:18 In the middle of the ice and snow etc., but we managed to get about two hundred thousand Proximity Fuses, for personnel use, over into the areas covered by the 1st and 3rd Armies, American. Captain Klompfenstein and I, on the 14th of December 1941, were sent to the field artillery headquarters out in Oklahoma. The army brought representatives from every group who were using regular fuses to train them in the use of the Proximity Fuse. 53:27 On the 16th of December Von Rundstedt launched his attack at the Battle of the Bulge. We had practically nothing over there, even our gunners were over here in the United States, and they stayed for a test that we moved up a day, called a TOT. We had eighty-four, as I remember it, canons ranging from all five of the weapons, the 75, the 105, the 155, the 8 inch, and the two 40mm. 54:18 Each one of them was 19 �controlled by a watch, and they were told, “at this instant, these cannon”, the closest distance to a hill, really, would fire and then progressively out until at the end, about two minutes before the shell could hit. The 240mm Howitzer fired its weapon, there were eighty-four guns and every one of those guns was aimed to land at the same time at a hill that was set-up as a target. It was awe inspiring, and it was shocking to see that hill explode. 55:16 That’s what really happened, it just blew and a person couldn’t have possibly lived through anything like that. In the Battle of the Bulge and afterward in the Argonne Forest we used TOTs, and the Germans—I’m not trying to say that the fuse won the war, or the fuse won the Battle of the Bulge, but it certainly shortened the Battle of the Bulge in great fashion, because those boys who were in Oklahoma when it started, got back over there and we got fuses that totaled two hundred thousand to them, which they could use at any rate they wanted to. The army, I guess the joint chiefs of staff, had set Christmas day of that year, as the day to release that fuse for use. When the Germans launched their attack on the 16th of December, the army big wigs put that date up to the 18th. 56:24 On the 18th we started shooting them back, and it was not far from that time, a few days, after the Proximity Fuse was first used that the Bulge began to shrink. Interviewer: I’m trying to picture, the Germans are moving forward, they look like their succeeding and the shells that we’re shooting at them are the traditional ones, so they’re exploding here and exploding there, but if a German got in a foxhole, he’s ok, and if he’s walking behind a tank, he’s ok, but then on the 18th the Proximity Fuse will explode over a tank and wipe out all those guys around that tank, or it can actually blow up near a foxhole and still get the guys in the foxhole. 57:12 This must have inspired terror? 20 �It did, why do you think that German soldiers were executed there in the Argonne [Ardennes] Forest? They didn’t know what hit them. I’ll tell you a little anecdote about that. In the early days we were firing vertically and the shell would go up—the 90mm shell would take about a hundred and five seconds and it would come down base first and you didn’t know where it was going to come down. I had one come down within twentyfive feet from me these were inert shells. Well, when the soldiers who were helpers, they would dig these up for us and spot them etc. They refused to go out in the area when they were coming down, so we had the army put up four posts and then a piece of four inch thick armor plate, so that will fix it. 58:21 So, they went out and when the shells were going to fall, they would step back under the armored plate. That was fine until a three inch hit and it hit right on top of that armored plate, and the noise was so bad that the boys were packing up, they wanted to get out of there. Well, we solved that by putting sand bags on top. When that three inch shell hit, the yellow paint that was on the body of the shell slipped right down and made a ring a little over three inches in diameter. The shell it’s self shortened itself by fifty percent. It’s no wonder we didn’t like that. I solved that problem, at first, in a weird sense. 59:28 I gave each one of the men a two foot square, two inch thick piece of pine wood and they would hold it up over their heads. They knew and I knew that it wouldn’t do any good, but they were doing something, something to protect their heads, and they would stay out. Stay out until that one came down so close, and then we went through the routine I just described. Interviewer: That’s amazing, and unfortunately we’re running out of time, so let’s –you said you had a little story about this lamp. :03 21 �On that early day in March 1942, I had been promoted by that time and was now the chief liaison officer to the U.S. Army. I had this series of meeting, usually once a week, at the Army War College with Colonel Froman, and on the way down the thought occurred to me that there had to be another use for these fuses. We were working antiaircraft only, but if that burst, and we know that the Germans have told us, and our own people too, A shell fired into a tree would hit a twig or so, and burst, and it was much more dangerous to people underneath the tree than it would have been with the contact fuse. 1:12 I got into the Army War College and Colonel Froman came out and as soon as we got out he turned to me and said to me, “Ralph, I think there’s another use for those fuses”, and I said, “Are you thinking of an anti-personnel use?” He said, “yes”, well, my fifteen-minute meeting with him lasted an hour and a half and he wanted to know what would have to be done. I came back to the laboratory and instead of reporting to my boss as I normally did, I went directly to the chemical research part of the lab and a man by the name of Phil Rudenick. I told him what we wanted; we wanted him to design a circuit, which would burst the shell at a lower height, and less sensitivity than the antiaircraft fuses. 2:16 He did—the only fuse we could modify at that time, to use, was a bigger version of this, but we weren’t getting a good result even with that, so we ordered two hundred rounds, two hundred fuses, one hundred for over land and one hundred for over water. Well, I went up there with Colonel Froman and a couple others, we started the water portion and we only got fifteen operable rounds out of a hundred. We could measure their height of burst. Then we went to the land and the first shell came whistling in—a dud, nothing at all, we’re in trouble. 3:10 The second one bursts something like twenty out of the one hundred actually burst, and they burst about half the height over 22 �land as they would have burst over water, which gave us a starting point. Two weeks after this we had a meeting with about six Generals, and an Admiral here and there, and I was called upon to tell about the test. The Admirals were absolutely shocked because the Generals made it known that they were going to need a lot of fuses and they wanted them. 4:18 About a week later an order came through for a million fuses. We weren’t ready, but we sure put a lot of pressure on him. It turned the lab completely over until now it would be ten times bigger. When that order came through we were in a meeting of the policy group at the lab, Merle Tuve was the director, and he said, “my God, I meant to pull the string on a small toilet and I got Boulder Dam”. 5:14 We’ll finish the story on this. I wanted one or two as a sample, I knew where they had hit, and this is what was left of the fuse as it blew out the nose. The shells had buried themselves at a fairly low angle into the ground. I was dressed with just a summer shirt on, this was April 29, 1942, so I went in after these and I got two of them, my son Dana has the other. They make pretty good lamps and the one thing I didn’t count on was that Poison Ivy was present in that area below ground. It was still early enough, so it hadn’t leafed out up above, and I didn’t know that I was digging into Poison Ivey, so I laid on the bed for three or four days with my arms out like this and Gentian Violet is not a cure for Poison Ivy and that’s all we had in those days. 6:31 Interviewer: I know what Gentian Violet is, it’s that purple stuff that you have to put on yourself. What would your thoughts be about the contribution of the Proximity Fuse to World War Two? I’ll give you my opinion, which is, it turned out, exactly the same as that of Admiral Arleigh Burke, who used the fuses extensively, and after the war he was Chief of Naval 23 �Operations and was the highest navy man there was. I have this down on a tape from him, that when they began to use the fuse in the march across the pacific, it was so much better, not perfect, but so much better than anything we had before, that it allowed the U.S. Navy to go into Japanese waters where they wouldn’t have dared go before. 7:44 One net result, which illustrates why I say the navy fuse shorted the war against Japan by probably a year, and that quote comes from Burke. If we hadn’t had the fuse we’d have won the war anyway, but we wouldn’t have gone into the western Pacific anywhere nearly as quickly. 8:18 When we did get up to Okinawa, and they could take of from Saipan with their B-52’s [B-29s] with the atomic bomb. They had just enough gasoline to go and drop the bomb and come back, and they couldn’t have done that unless the fleet had been able to move into Japanese waters. That’s why I feel very strongly that the Proximity Fuse, while it didn’t win the war, it shortened it by perhaps a year. Interviewer: Well sir, I’m hoping at another opportunity we’ll be able to talk even further, now that you’ve gotten through this particular one, but I’m afraid were going to have to wind down the interview. I want to thank you very much, and I realize you came up here especially for this interview and I greatly appreciate that you did that. 9:18 Well, I have been working off and on since the war to publicize the effects of the fuse and why it was important. I published two books on it, one “The Deadly Fuse”, and that sold for five dollars. I looked on the web a couple days ago and it’s now being advertised at eighty-five dollars. I should have saved some. The other one is called “They Never Knew What Hit Them”, similar, but different. 10:09 24 �Interviewer: That’s the one that I read, it’s more of a coffee table size with lots of photographs and detail in there. You have to forgive me, I didn’t understand all of it, but I’m not a scientist. Well, we’ll talk again and once again I thank you very much for your time sir. My pleasure 25 �26 � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Baldwin, Ralph (Interview transcript and video), 2007 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Baldwin, Ralph Description An account of the resource Ralph Baldwin was an astronomy instructor at Northwestern University in 1941 who volunteered for service after Pearl Harbor. He was initially assigned to teach navigation, but lobbied for a more important assignment. He was sent in 1942 to a secret program in Maryland being run by the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. Here he helped to develop the proximity fuse, a device that enabled anti-aircraft shells to sense when they were near targets and explode. By the end of the war, the fuse had become highly effective, and aspects of the technology developed for it are still used today. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boring, Frank (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American 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 2007-11-12 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context BaldwinR 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/dcb9ff60df6b54a70f624aa633a3b07d.mp4 84e2d3ea211c5535648f7c77abdb59d6 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4615349f19948ad2a07faebbd22057c0.pdf 45836ae6af457f32a2768a8051cc5d8b PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Charles Baker-Clark (1:07:32) Background Information (00:17) • • • • • • • • He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1948. (00:20) Because his parents moved around often Charles spent most of his childhood in Illinois. (00:57) He completed high school in 1967. (1:26) Charles worked selling ice cream for a summer after having graduated high school. (1:57) He began his education at community college in the fall of 1967. (2:08) In October of 1967 Charles decided he wanted to join the Navy. (2:26) He had a history of family members in the Navy. He also had the desire to get away from home and work on the water. (3:00) Charles father did not approve of him joining the military. (4:00) Training (4:36) • • • • • • • • He was sent to a building on Van Buren Street in Chicago where he went through assembly line style with 50 other men to receive physicals. (40:40) He was sent to Great Lakes Naval Base in Illinois. He found his own transportation to the base. (5:13) When the men arrived they were referred to as “receipts”; after being placed in a company they were then called recruits. (6:20) He did not believe that basic was all that difficult. (6:50) Basic training lasted 13-14 weeks. (7:35) Charles had a difficult time adjusting to the Navy initially. He was used to having very little privacy however it was the psychological stress of not going to college and the fact that many of his family members had been officers in the Navy that got to him. (7:45) At the end of training the men put in requests as to what positions they wished to fill. There was pressure for him to go into the nuclear training in the Navy due to his high aptitude test scores. However this was a 6 year service rather than 4. He put down cook and hospital corpsman for his position. (9:34) There was such a great need for hospital corpsmen that any man who expressed a slight interest in the field was taken. Charles knew little about the situation in Vietnam when he signed up. (10:50) Medical Corps Training (12:30) • • • This training lasted 15 weeks at Great Lakes Naval Base. The training involved intensive studding. Class lasted from 8 AM to 4PM. (12:30) Charles thought that he was not good enough to keep up with the intensive studding and tried to drop out but decided against it. (13:15) After 3 weeks of training, another company was assigned alongside Charles. (14:37) �• • • Charles was in training in mid 1968 when the Tet Offensive ended. At this time wounded soldiers were brought in from Vietnam to Great Lakes. This is when the men all became aware of how many casualties there were from the war. (15:10) Charles did pass his training in spite struggling often and failing to fit in due to his lack of drinking. (15:51) The men learned that most new corpsmen were sent to a hospital for 6-8 weeks for some training in the wardss. Then the men were sent to Camp Lejeune and then Vietnam. For a period of time the men would work at a field medical station and then in the bush for 6-8 months. (16:44) First Assignment: Naples, Italy (17:41) • • • • • • • • • • • • Charles was first assigned to work in Naples, Italy, along with 2 other men he had previously trained with. (17:42) He began working in a hospital. It was very hot and not air-conditioned. Charles felt fairly unsure of himself at this time. (19:12) The Corpsmen Charles was with often drank on their free time. Because Charles didn’t drink he felt unable to fit in. (20:14) The nurses were Charles's supervisors. Often they complained about his penmanship being poor. (20:40) He was in Italy from May to December of 1968. (21:15) Charles did travel to Rome while working in Italy. (22:00) When he returned to the hospital he found out that he was supposed to fill out a request form to leave the city. (24:21) The Italians mostly ignored the American military men. (25:19) There were men who worked in Italy that spent their entire enlistment there and never moved. (26:05) Charles learned that one of the Corpsmen was selling drugs. He informed the office of Naval Intelligence which set him up as an informant. When the deal was busted 12 fellow corpsmen were also turned in. (26:47) Naval intelligence then arranged an immediate transfer so that Charles did not get hurt by men who were angry with him. (28:55) Charles was then sent to VP26 in Maine. (29:50) Service in Maine (29:52) • • • • • He arrived in late December of 1968. (29:55) The men in Maine were hesitant to place Charles in any position due to poor evaluation in Italy. They asked for Charles's side of the story and decided to give him a chance. (30:36) Finally Charles began to fit in after several months in Maine. (32:12) The men who were often on the base flew PT Orions. The plains were used to drop buoys in the water to help track submarines. (32:55) In 1969 Charles was deployed with the Squadron that flew PT Orions in Iceland. (34:57) Deployment with Unit (35:05) �• • • • • • • • • He was first sent with his unit to Iceland. While serving in Iceland the men came across a Soviet Alpha. (35:06) Most of the time Charles was left on the base but occasionally he was taken aboard the aircraft. (35:58) The men were then deployed to Sicily (37:16) One of Charles corpsmen helped him serve soft drinks to Marines in order to make some money. (38:31) He was then sent to London. He remembered having a lot of freedom.(40:04) He and his friends also had a chance to ride through the Alps.(41:27) Charles made about 95 dollars a month. (41:52) When he left Sicily, Charles's motor cycle was flown back to the U.S. aboard a plane. (43:00) The day before he was to be discharged he was informed that due to low leadership scores and the failure to be evaluated since then on leadership, Charles was not recommended for reenlistment. This did not mean much to Charles at the time (44:09) Life after Service (45:34) • • • • He attended Quincy College in Illinois after having served. (45:10) He thought that the Navy was a fairly good experience. (45:30) After having received his master’s degree at the age of 35, he attempted to reenlist. He was eventually turned down as a result of his low leadership scores given in Naples. (45:45) He feels very sympathetic for veterans and spouses of military men hen he meets them. (46:56) Life in the Military (47:32) • • • • • • • Charles lived in a large trailer while in Maine. He often met many people from his service. (47:32) The Italians often just left the military men alone. Some tried to take advantage of the men but this was rare. (49:10) The Corpsmen were typically white. There were, however, several African Americans and Hispanics. (50:27) There was one man who was ordered to stay in the dispensary until he lost weight but in reality it was because he was black. (52:08) The most tension that was seen in the military was between career servicemen and those who desired to serve only 1 term. (53:03) One of the surgeons placed a Jimi Hendrix poster on the ceiling of the operating room. (54:03) Charles and other men would often play poker as a way to stay entertained. (55:50) Effects of Service (56:15) • • • • • After completing his service Charles had a stronger sense of self. (56:21) Charles started out learning Psychology and Philosophy. He decided he wanted to be a clinical psychiatrist but did not have the GRE scores. (58:02) He then began working a job in counseling. He was later laid off. (59:00) After being laid off he was given a dislocated service grant. He then went into culinary school at Grand Rapids Community College. (1:00:05) He then began working at the culinary department at Michigan State. (1:01:12) �• • • He was then encouraged to pursue a PhD. (1:02:06) Charles was required to take the GRE and this time improved his scores. (1:03:14) He has written a book about the education of an adult. (1:05:34) � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Baker-Clark, Charles (Interview outline and video), 2012 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Baker-Clark, Charles Description An account of the resource Charles Baker-Clark, born in St. Lois Missouri in 1948, served in the U.S. Navy from 1968-1970 as a Naval Corpsman during the Vietnam Era. After completing his basic training at Great Lakes Naval Academy, Charles was given medical training at the same base. After this was completed he was then sent to Naples Italy where he served in a naval hospital. In December of 1968 Charles had to be moved after he was involved as an informant used to bust a group selling drugs on the base. Charles was then moved to Maine where he served in another naval hospital. Soon after, he was sent to Iceland and then Sicily Italy where he served with a Unit of PT Orion pilots. 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 United States. Navy 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 2012-04-18 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context BakerC1374V 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/b0dafdff94c707e52eaf91620726bd4b.mp4 301dcd67a56382c2d07a8d4c65b3fb37 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6088c111578914c0a52ae156b349cd0c.pdf 98b62ba07a25319f7161ad0417a1c819 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veteran's History Project Korean War Glen Bailey Total Time (01:06:39) Introduction (00:00:21)   Glen Bailey was born in 1932 in Kent County, north of Grand Rapids, Michigan (00:00:37) His father was an independent carpenter during the Great Depression while his mother stayed at home (00:01:03) ◦ Glen left during his 8th grade year of school at the age of 15; he went to work in a toilet seat factory because his father had passed and he wanted to support his family (00:02:21) ◦ At the age of 17, Glen got permission from his mother to join the Army although she previously talked him out of it; he enlisted August 1st, 1949 (00:03:18) ◦ Glen did his basic training at Ft. Riley in Kansas; he took a train there and only left the state of Michigan a few times before that (00:03:53) ▪ He had a hard time adjusting to life in the Army; he had never been to far away from family although he didn't have a tough time following orders (00:05:10) ▪ After basic training Glen was sent to Ft. Carson in Colorado to continue training (00:05:48) ▪ Glen trained as a mechanic while at Ft. Carson with armored vehicles and trucks (00:06:27) ▪ The majority of his unit consisted of World War II veterans as sergeants and younger people in their late teens and early twenties (00:07:51)  Glen and his unit were in transfer to the 1st Cavalry Division once the Korean War started; they joined the 5th Regiment in Japan and then traveled via amphibious boats to Korea (00:10:00) Korean War (00:10:00)  When Glen and his unit landed in Korea, his 1st sergeant told him to shoot at anything that moves; they shot at a clump of bushes and it ended up being a rooster pheasant (00:10:43)  They landed in about July of 1950 (00:11:05)  Glen and his unit were transported via ships to Korea and he avoided seasickness due to his father's fishing habits which had him on boats quite often as a kid (00:12:26)  It took 10 days to go from the United States to Japan and they did go on shore for about two days until they departed again (00:13:00) ◦ A lot of the equipment was from World War II and Glen notes that it was lousy and wore out (00:13:50) ◦ Glen's records got messed up and he had to go 20 miles on his own to the Company Headquarters; he traveled with a British outfit and his records never got sorted out (00:15:55) ▪ At that time, there were no tanks brought in so his unit functioned as an infantry unit; there was very little artillery as well; his unit was taking a whole lot of casualties at that time as well (00:17:29) ▪ Glen was part of a line of defense at the Pusan perimeter; his unit eventually pushed the enemy unit back from that line (00:20:25) �▪ ▪ He notes that fighting against real enemy combatants, and not just training, was a tough lesson to learn for a lot of the younger soldiers (00:21:42) Glen mentions that everywhere was chaos and the higher ups in the Army didn't really know what was going on up front (00:22:52)  Glen's unit was on the outskirts of Seoul; he never thought it was close to being over as there were skirmishes every night and it was never quiet (00:23:53)  In the fall of 1950 they encountered Chinese troops and came as a big surprise to Glen; one third of the Chinese didn't have a weapon and used a stick (00:25:07) ◦ He took some shrapnel from part of a grenade and it burned part of his arm and hand while in Korea; he went back to headquarters company for treatment and was left there to work as a mechanic (00:28:41) ◦ During the daytime, the US forces would take a hill and fortify but by the night, the Koreans would take it back (00:30:26) ◦ Glen mentions that he had to watch out for civilians all the time because he never knew if they were an enemy or a refugee (00:31:46) ◦ In certain ways, being attached to HQ was scarier than being on the line for Glen; sometimes the food would be scarce and they'd have to steal food from civilians (00:34:59) ▪ At first they didn't have air support but once the war started going they started to receive it, artillery and tanks as well (00:36:21) ▪ Glen and his unit were assigned to protect General MacArthur when he was in Korea; MacArthur more or less wanted to see what was going on (00:40:05)  In addition to being burned on his arm from white phosphorous, Glen was injured from grenade shrapnel as well; they were so short on troops that Glen was just patched up and had to stay on the line- this caused some Korean Veterans to be passed up on the Purple Heart Medal (00:41:54)  Glen was lucky enough to receive a bottle of liquor via the mail from his uncle (00:43:55)  He didn't see any other United Nations' troops besides the British while he was in Korea (00:45:43) Back to the United States (00:46:26)  Glen was sent back the United States via ship; he landed in California and was sent to Ft. Carson and finally was allowed a 30 day leave to go home (00:47:12)  He notes that it is lousy that people can go overseas and get shot at but cannot enjoy a drink at home because of the drinking age (00:48:20) ◦ Glen had to send money home while he was overseas to support his family; he sent 40$ a month out of his allotment which was a lot to him (00:51:11) ◦ He was sent back to Ft. Carson; he worked in an armored artillery outfit and worked as a mechanic as well as normal duty (00:52:09) ◦ Glen was discharged in September of 1952 at Ft. Carson; he drove his 1947 Chevy Coupe from Colorado to Grand Rapids (00:53:23) ▪ He had a number of jobs when he got to Grand Rapids; he hauled coal, worked for a gravel company, worked in a paint factory and worked for a trucking company (00:54:33) �▪ Glen finally found long term work as a delivery driver and then transitioned over to a supervisor position (00:55:31)  The Korean conflict bothered him a lot and mentions he almost got a divorce because of it; he woke up one night and was choking his wife- back in those days, there wasn't any support for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) (00:56:25)  When Vietnam came around Glen felt for the guys that had to go overseas but had a bad attitude about it; he is bitter because the Korean veterans don't get much mention (00:59:36)  Glen did not stay in the reserve unit but kept in contact with one of his officers for a number of years (01:02:17) ◦ He comments that the Veterans Administration is poorly run; he had to go through so much to get little help and he says it's pathetic (01:04:58) � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Bailey, Glen (Interview outline and video) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bailey, Glen Description An account of the resource Glen Bailey was born in 1932 in Kent County, Michigan. Glen left school during his 8th grade year at the age of 15; he went to work as his father had passed away and he wanted to support his family. At the age of 17, Glen got permission from his mother to join the Army. He did his basic training at Ft. Carson in Colorado where he did additional training as a mechanic. He was transferred to the 1st Cavalry Division once the Korean War started and was then assigned to the 5th Infantry Regiment. He served on the Pusan Perimeter and in the advance into North Korea, and then in the retreat after the Chinese counterattacked. While in Korea, he suffered two separate injuries: a burn to his arm as well as taking shrapnel from a grenade, but each time returned to his unit and rotated home in 1951, and served at Fort Carson, Colorado, until his discharge in 1952. 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 Korean War, 1950-1953--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.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context BaileyG1596V 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/dbdbaff56dbcf6e2a51f7825ef22a0ef.mp4 de1ff60d79e6eaa58843b9ec617a5b03 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4d2eec222928894c79ad2db809d8c745.pdf ead437348063f348ce3cc451d77c7168 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Dick Bailey (00:35:52)  Born in Grove City Pennsylvania on December 4, 1922 (00:25)  Dad worked as a coal miner (00:35)  He had six siblings, four brothers and two sisters (01:30)  Quit school Freshman year of high school to work on a dairy farm for $12 a month, he received one half day off every month and eventually received a raise to $15 a month (02:10)  He was in Florida near Lake Okeechobee when he heard about Pearl Harbor (02:35)  Brother enlisted in Florida (3:20)  He worked at Zipper Company in Pennsylvania and enlisted at the age of nineteen (04:00)  He reported to Erie Pennsylvania (04:45)  He enlisted in the Army Air Corps (05:10)  He spent five weeks at Fort Meade in Maryland, and then went to Miami Beach (05:30)  Sent to Rogers field Oklahoma for several days and then to Woodward, Oklahoma for basic training (06:30)  Sent to Topeka, Kansas as a replacement, he spent three weeks there (06:45)  Received mechanical training at Chanute Field for three weeks (07:20)  Shipped out from Topeka, Kansas to New York, and shipped out on USS Brazil (08:00)  Went down to Panama Canal to cross into the Pacific (08:35)  The ship traveled in a convoy to the Panama Canal and then separated from the convoy with one destroyer as its escort to New Caledonia (09:55)  Once in New Caledonia, they traveled to the New Hebrides Islands were a sub pursued them until the destroyer sunk it with depth charges (10:20) � Moved onto Espiritu Santo, which was a main base with an airstrip (10:40)  Served with the 344th service squadron and the 321st service group, 13th Air Force (11:05)  His job was to maintain aircraft (11:20)  The base wasn’t free from enemy attack (12:30)  Worked on Australian and New Zeeland aircraft (12:45)  B24’s harder to work on than other plains (13:00)  They were attacked during the night by Japanese bombers (13:20)  Life on New Hebrides Islands  Spent 1 year there with very little off time (14:30)  Entertained by the USO and celebrities appearances such as Bob Hope, Jerry Colonna, and Marilyn Monroe (15:00)  Mrs. Roosevelt came by way of a C87 (converted B24 into a passenger craft) (15:20)  Four brothers in service in Europe (16:15)  Had contact with crews of aircraft (18:00)  Squadrons sent out, some had heavy losses (18:30)  Moved to a hospital in Guadalcanal for a wisdom tooth infection (18:55)  Had to tear up the jungle to set up tents (19:45)  Moved to base on Biak Island (20:10)  Moved to Leyte in the Philippines near the end of the war (20:20)  Poured gas into a cave to burn out a hidden Japanese hospital (21:40)  Some Japanese stragglers would steal or break into mess halls to steal food, and occasionally fire at US troops (21:05)  Living conditions; Always lived in tents about five to a tent (21:45)  He joined as a replacement but other people had been there longer (22:15) � The Unit formed in Will Rogers Field, Oklahoma and traveled to Kansas in a convoy (22:40)  Weather was hot; sometimes it was wet and sometimes dry (23:15)  Wildlife on Pacific islands included bats, reptiles and land crabs (23:45)  Tropical diseases were controlled pretty well through preventive medication (24:00)  He was in Leyte when the war ended (25:50)  Left the Philippines after Thanksgiving, sailed on Liberty ship (27:40)  Traveled o California from the Philippines and then to Fort Knox, Kentucky (28:30)  Took a train into Pittsburgh, the buses were on strike so he hitchhiked home (28:55)  Got a job for Cooper Vespa and worked for forty-four years in Gross City (29:50)  He worked on engines and stock car racing (30:35)  He joined Nascar in 1950 (30:45)  Raced on the beach in a new Pontiac (31:05)  Continued racing for thirty years (32:05)  Varied racing cars till 1997 (23:15)  Joined the reserve, Air National Guard, after he was discharged (33:30)  During his time in the service he gained a lot of mechanical experience (34:15) � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Bailey, Dick (Interview outline and video), 2009 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bailey, Dick Description An account of the resource Dick Bailey was born in Pennsylvania and enlisted in the army at the age of nineteen during World War II. He spent the majority of his time deployed in the Pacific, working as an aircraft mechanic in the 13th Air Force. He went home to Pennsylvania after the war, and became involved in stock car racing, and was one of the first NASCAR drivers. 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 2009-09-16 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context BaileyD 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/a66483bc9d8c7caa7eb7d4389393d119.mp4 9074b095f8a4ea2ffa8ad50b8babd95e https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c686ba0bba9f1f7f9df362de10fb649b.pdf e5ec0056a0aff21981683a938dbf2f90 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Jack Baas World War II (1:34:14) Background Information (00:10)          Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1920. He grew up in Grand Rapids. (00:15) He attended Christian schools through the elementary level. He then attended and graduated from George Davis Technical High school. He graduated in 1938. (00:31) He then attended junior college. (00:40) Jack’s father worked on furniture for 42 years. (1:16) He had 4 siblings. (1:33) He attended Hope College in 1940 after finishing junior college. (2:25) Jack was in college for 2 years. He was at a fraternity party the night before Pearl Harbor. (3:07) In January of 1942 in Jack’s senior year of college he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He volunteered for the V5 administration for flight training. (3:48) Jack was sent back to finish school after enlisting, but before completing the term, he was placed on 24 hour notice. (4:20) Basic training and flight training (4:27)               Before graduating in spring of 1942 Jack was told to go to Mississippi. (4:38) He left on the 2nd of June and arrived on the 4th of June 1942. He was going to WT or war training school. (5:20) He chose the Navy because other men he and met at college had spoke highly of it and because his draft number was going to be pulled in August of 1942. (6:05) Men in the V5 program were encouraged to be college graduates. (7:00) The men flew Piper Cubs in their first flight training exercises. (7:20) The men were given fairly little pre-flight training. The men were not given any basic training at first. (8:00) WT lasted 3 months. (8:40) Next he was sent to the University of Georgia for Pre-flight school. Here the men did book work and rigorous physical training. (9:14) He was on bases the entire time during pre flight school. The schooling lasted 3 months however, Jack was asked to stay a bit longer to aid with the next class. (10:20) Next he was sent to Illinois where he flew several rigorous flying tests. (11:50) Every 3rd week during training at Illinois the men were given some time off. (12:25) The men attended the school in the group called a class. 90 percent of the men completed the training. (13:10) All the men Jack trained with were college graduates. (13:44) After the elimination camp he had some leave that he spent in Grand Rapids before being assigned the Corpus Christi, Texas, for more training. (14:05) �  The men trained in flight routines such as acrobatics. The men got to select the plane they wanted to go into after training. This included scouts, bombers, torpedo planes, and flying boats. (15:38) After receiving his wings Jack was to begin service as a torpedo bomber. (16:38) Training on the TBF (16:40)                   He flew a TBF (Avenger). In his training with this air craft he was not flying with an instructor. (16:52) “TB” stood for Torpedo Bomber where as the third letter the “F” refers to the manufacturer. (18:55) There were three men in a crew of a TBF, a pilot, a gunner, and a radioman in the rear of the air craft. (20:30) He trained on the Avenger in Florida for 6 weeks. He was then told to go to Martha’s Vineyard to join Carrier Air Group 83. (22:11) The men did a lot of practice night flying. (22:45) Once arriving with the squadron he was assigned to train with them. (23:15) Aboard ship there were 15 torpedo bombers, 15 dive bombers 30 F4Us (Corsairs) and 30 F6Fs (Hellcats) and a night group. (24:15) He was then based in Massachusetts for 3 months after leaving Martha’s Vineyard. (24:38) He was than given the assignment in mid 1944 to escort ships across the Atlantic. (24:52) The men carried depth charges on the escort missions. (25:48) Aboard ship Jack was given his own aircraft. (26:40) In training the men did carrier landings on old ships in a bay. The men had to make 6 landings. (27:15) The men stayed in small huts while stationed in Massachusetts. (29:32) The men had gunnery practice. This was when the men were allowed to fire from their turrets. The aircraft also dropped firecrackers rather than actual bombs. (30:30) Because some cities were on blacked out in 1944 the men often navigated by following the skipper in a formation. The pilots also used stars to navigate. (32:00) There were a few pilots lost in training. (33:34) There were not very men in his squadron that were shot down, but some men did have to ditch their planes. (34:35) The only problem Jack had with his air craft was a hydraulic leak. (35:38) Voyage to the Pacific (35:59)        After his service as an escort Jack was than assigned to the Pacific. He wasn’t given leave before being sent to Hawaii. (36:25) The men had 5 days to get to California. Most men took the train. (36:55) The carrier arrived in Maui Hawaii. The time there was very nice. (37:52) In Hawaii the men did navigation and group work. (38:20) The ship than sent to Ulithi (Caroline Islands) where there was an anchorage with approx. 400 ships. (38:54) He was in Ulithi in February of 1945 prior to the Iwo Jima Landing. (40:28) The first military target Jack had was Okinawa and the islands surrounding it. (40:45) �Tour in the Pacific (41:00)                    The ship and the pilots were constantly being given new equipment such as aircraft and parts. (41:20) In Iwo Jima the Pilots were instructed to bomb the island to shake the Japanese out of their tunnels. (42:30) He was assigned to attack an airfield in Japan. (43:06) The bombers had fighter protection. They did come under fire by flak while attacking the airfield. (43:20) The men than focused on Okinawa. The men were given a grid that had particular targets assigned on it. (43:02) While aboard ship there were 3 near misses that his aircraft carrier had from a Kamikaze. (46:30) Any time after the pilots made a strike the men were required to contact the ACI (Aircraft Combat Intelligence). (48:05) Once while in Okinawa Jack went on shore for a joint Marine Navy mission. (49:38) The men were flying approx. every day (weather permitting). (51:00) Jack flew 52 missions. (51:17) While being readied one morning for takeoff the ship received word that Japanese naval ships (the group that included the battleship Yamato) were approaching. Jack and the other pilots then had their planes fitted with torpedoes. Jack launched ed his one torpedo and 8 rockets. 52:00) All the pilots returned from this attack. The attack lasted 45 seconds. (57:12) He was awarded 3 distinguished flying crosses. He received 2 of them for attacks on Japan. (58:27) On 2-3 occasions Jack was encountered by Japanese fighters but these were intercepted by U.S. fighters who accompanied the bombers. (1:00:40) Jack’s gunner never fired at an aircraft. Jack did instruct him to fire during dive bombing runs. (1:02:43) The pilots were instructed to bomb primarily airfields and warehouses when over Japan. (1:03:24) He recalled seeing the Japanese using florescent ammunition. The sailors commented that it looked like Christmas. (1:03:35) After 79 missions on the carrier the ship anchored on Ulithi in the summer of 1945 and the men were given R&R. (1:07:02) In the summer of 1945 Jack was a Captain. (1:08:20) The End of the War (Late Summer 1945)     When the war ended Jack was flying a mission to attack an electric plant in Japan. The men were given a message while traveling to the target to return to base and not to attack the targets. (1:08:45) While traveling back to the aircraft carrier, Jack and the bombers with him dropped their bombs and rockets into the ocean. (1:10:45) While flying over Japan there was obvious evidence of fire bombing. (1:10:55) Immediately after the war ended the men began flying missions to relieve prisoner of war camps. (1:12:16) �          He also dropped packages with food and cigarettes to men. (1:12:40) Jack had not heard of the Atomic bomb dropping before hearing of the surrender. (1:14:26) While dropping supplies after the war, Jack’s squadrons were going in and out of an airfield in Japan. (1:15:26) He never left the airfield and saw no Japanese civilians. (1:16:35) The carrier Jack served on was one of the first ships relieved of duty on September 2nd 1945. The ship was then sent to Seattle Washington. (1:17:07) 150 miles off shore the planes were sent off the carrier because the aircrafts and the aircraft carrier were going to 2 separate locations. (1:18:06) The men were aloud 2 phone calls, 1 minute each, after arriving in Seattle. (1:18:56) Jack was in Inactive duty for 10 years following the war. (1:19:45) Jack was offered a job in Florida training South American Pilots but declined it. (1:20:00) Jacks plane was named the Cultured Vulture. (1:20:40) Life after Service (1:21:12)    He studied history and English in college. Jack attempted to get into graduate school but was unable to. (1:22:45) Jack than began working in insurance. (1:23:30) Jack retired in 1982. (1:24:12) Thoughts on Service (1:25:00)     Jack hated war as a result of experiencing it. (1:25:09) The ship would resupply every 3 days. (1:26:00) While supplying aircraft would tow targets for the ships to practice on. Jack was hit and almost shot down when doing these exercises. (1:27:00) 30 Japanese aircraft were shot down in the fleet. (1:30:19) � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Baas, Jack (Interview outline and video), 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Baas, Jack Description An account of the resource Jack Baas, Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1920, enlisted in the Navy shortly after Pearl Harbor. Initially, he was initially allowed to return to college to finish his senior year, but before the term ended, he was sent to Mississippi to begin training. He qualified as a Navy pilot and was given his choice of naval aircraft (other than fighters), and trained on the TBF Avenger Torpedo Bomber. He did carrier training and flew patrols off the Massachusetts coast in 1944 and operated off of an escort carrier with an Atlantic convoy, and then was sent to the Pacific early in 1945. Assigned to Carrier Group 83, he flew missions over Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Japan, and participated in the attack on the Japanese battleship Yamato as it attempted to reach Okinawa. 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 Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives, American United States. Navy United States. Naval 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 2011-11-22 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context BaasJ1327V 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/1f44967757c32a25f511619cba78437c.mp4 6ccdee283c7babaf4fdf4d4022583f2e https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6e86f509d5f1425c392a13bf2390f88c.pdf 23ec10c11162841ce7e99ed2183b414c PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Brian Baar (00:48:00) (00:15) Introduction • Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. • Can remember watching the television when President Kennedy was shot. • Attended school with two of his cousins. • His father was an executive at Steelcase in Grand Rapids. • His mother was a waitress at Bill Knapp’s. • He was the youngest member of his family. • Can remember friends in fifth grade smoking marijuana. • His classmates staged a protest against the war when one of the student’s brothers was killed. • He dropped out of school at sixteen to become a waiter. • At seventeen, he began working at Steelcase. (10:40) Army Rangers • After partying too much at work, he decided to join the military. • He signed up with a guarantee to be a Ranger. • Attended jump school after his basic training and AIT school in 1980. • Jump school was located at Hunter Army Airfield in Atlanta Georgia. • The men received all of their equipment at once. • Every morning, the men would have to do a five-mile run. • A paper mill was very close to the run, so the men would have to endure the smell while running. • They would do hand-to-hand combat exercises and other physical exercise before breakfast. • He was assigned to B Company Weapons Platoon. • He finished his training right at the same time the hostage crisis with Iran was taking place. • He was supposed to take place in Operation Honey Badger, the second hostage rescue attempt. However, he had a parachute injury, and was not able to participate. • He never jumped again after that experience. • After his time off due to injury, he was sent to the 24th Infantry. (19:40) After the Rangers • Became a member of the 2nd battalion, 21st infantry, 24th division Mechanized and worked as a TOW gunner. • He trained different National Guard divisions. • At one point, he went to Egypt to train the Egyptian soldiers. • While in Egypt, he was able to cross train on the Soviet equipment that the Egyptians also used. �Operation Bright Star was the name of the military exchange with the Middle Eastern forces. • Was able to meet General Starr while waiting for the landing gear to be repaired on his plane in Shannon, Ireland while returning home from Egypt. (23:20) End of Active Service and Reserve • Married 6 months before his end of service. • Became a member of inactive reserves. • He became reactivated and had to train once a year. • His reserve unit was the 101st. • Turned down a chance to join the Multi national peacekeeping force. The plane he would have been returning on crashed. • Returned to factory work when his service was over. • He home schooled his daughter and opened his own coffee business. • � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Baar, Brian (Interview outline and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Baar, Brian Description An account of the resource Brian Baar served in the US Army Rangers and with several infantry units in the early 1980s. His active duty experience included training several different National Guard units, and units in the Egyptian Army. 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. 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 2008-01 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context BaarB 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/99a57a9182382e390ce95c4aa1c7796f.pdf ab02f019e52543e5a9ddecea6d567b80 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Charles Nedwin Ash (00:31:33) (00:38) Before service • Lived South Haven, MI • 10 brothers and sisters • Drafted into war o Didn’t want to go (02:36) First day in service • Bus with 50 other service guys • Went down to a fort in Kentucky (03:35) Schedule • Get up at 5 am • Run 6 miles • 6 hour shifts • Slept in small beds • Stationed in Japan, fought in Korea (05:41) Combat in Korea • Saw combat; was in Korea for about a year and a half • Ash was with a tank company o Before assigned that, just a regular soldier (07:49) Korean culture • Hard because didn’t understand the language (09:55) Holidays • Celebrated the same as would at home • Small tree that soldiers could decorate with ornaments, etc. (10:45) Most memorable moment • Made sergeant o Felt great! Got to be the boss (11:50) Leaving the service • Big bulletin board which would have posts saying who was staying and who got to go home (12:20) Final days • Made a lot of good friends • Kept in touch with 3 or 4 of them o John Brown (Detroit) o Chuck Lewis (Tennessee) (13:28) Home • Happy, always good to be home • Celebrations – like a birthday party • Not too difficult to readjust �(15:56) Reflections on Army experience • Would like to go back and visit Seoul, Korea because they were very friendly • Got to go places when in the Army • Favorite part was coming back home • Least favorite part was worrying or having to shoot somebody • Learned how to use a rifle and swim (19:05) Experience as an African American • When went to training camp in Kentucky, felt lots of prejudice • Did not go into to town by himself – it would be stupid to • Segregation in restaurants (indicated by the signs) (23:15) Weather and guard duty • Monsoon rains • Rained 30 days straight; always in the rain • Guard duty was about 3 times per week (24:45) Army life • Army was desegregated (26:00) Correspondence • Letters from family along with cookies and candy (27:10) Chaplains • Lots of chaplains in Army • Ash went to church every other day � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Ash, Charles Nedwin (Interview outline), 2006 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ash, Charles Nedwin Description An account of the resource Charles Nedwin Ash is a Korean War Veteran who served in the United States Army from July 1952 to July 20, 1954 in Japan and Korea. In this interview, Ash discusses his time in the service and also what it was like to be an African American during that time. Ash briefly shares some stories of the prejudice he faced in Kentucky and being promoted to Sergeant. For his time in Korea, Ash received the Korean Service Ribbon with two bronze service stars, the UN Service Medal, and the National Defense Service Medal. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ash, Lauren (Interviewer) Forest Hills Eastern High School (Ada, Mich.) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American African-American soldiers Japan Korea 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 2006-06-05 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AshC 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/9791825c9f4d33c809d504735184521a.mp4 4f33d3a87181a932d68234f4a43553de https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6312dfd72f5f38d472a64189b9922835.pdf e85d2fdc3d683db146c22b8ce957b222 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Name of Interviewee: Mitch Amlotte Name of War: Vietnam Length of Interview: (00:39:18) (00:21) Alpena Michigan  Born July 13 1950  Hillman is his hometown. His grandfather settled the town  He played in the woods as a kid. He remembers as a kid, stripping a girl naked and painting her red with barn paint  (2:22) His first day at school his teacher was a large lady and she spent most of the day pulling his ears. It was a one room school that use to be a garage. There was about 18-19 kindergarteners in the building.  Mitch says he was the class clown. He was in trouble a lot. He used to sneak critters into school. One time he fell backwards and hit his head on a chair and got stitches.  He went to a new school built for K-12th grade.  He walked to school  (5:30) Remembers having a crush on his teacher  Figures he didn’t ask for studies so he didn’t care for them  He was the first person in his family to graduate from high school  (7:30) Mitch started playing percussion in sixth grade thru high school  Was involved in sports during school. Baseball, Basketball, and football  Went to U of M for games and played there  His father worked for Besser’s in a factory and mother was a homemaker and eventually went to work in a factory when Mitch was in fifth grade  He has two older brother, younger brother and a sister  (10:13) Mitch had no plans after school so since other guys were getting drafted he figured he would too so he volunteered for the Army  Visited a recruiter with his cousin on the buddy plan. Wanted to join the military police and was told they qualified. Signed up for 4 year hitches (11:17) Fort Wayne Michigan to Fort Knox Kentucky  Basic training  When it came time to get their AIT orders he went to Fort Polk, Louisiana, which was the gateway to Vietnam. A military personnel seen he was guaranteed MP upon entry into the military so instead of sending him to Fort Polk, they sent him to Fort Benjamin Harrison Indiana to postal school. Graduated and was sent to Germany �    During training he was hit with a Pugal stick and blew his eardrum out. Pugal sticks look like big Q-tips used to practice for bayonet training Went to Louisville on a weekend pass and slept in a hotel for two days and two nights. It was his first contact with black people and he was scared and tired. (14:50) Said he could never live in a big city. He said his company was not happy that he was back and looked at him as a coward. He said he had no problems going but send him to MP school first and then send him to Vietnam (16:40) Germany-Rheine-Main Airbase  He flew over there. It was his first time on an airplane. He was brave at one point and looked out over Ireland and said it was beautiful. Flew over to Rhein-Main Airbase  Two guys met him there in the middle of the night and took him to Heidelberg to the 4th Base Post Office Heidelberg 4th Base Post Office  Was here for a year  He sorted mail and payroll checks for all of the European theatre  On off time he bar hopped  Went to Frankfurt and was offered a chance to go to Rome, Italy. Went to the Catholic Chaplain and got administrative leave and nobody could countermand it except for the Attorney General of the Military. Mitch took 120 days of administrative leave. He would take children of military personnel on field trips.  (20:00) He got to travel quite a bit and two weeks at a time. Went to Czechoslovakia, Scandinavia, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Switzerland  Met two girls while in Czechoslovakia who were in an AFC club and wanted to go home and see their parents. The guys took them to the border and hid the car and walked 4 ½ miles to her home town. On the way back they were being tracked and ran 1 mile and outran their pursuers.  Mitch said he didn’t chase women too much. He likes history so he spent time at Museums and seeing castles while he was overseas.  He went to Neuschwanstein Castle. Walt Disney designed his castle after this. He went to Hindenburg Castle  (22:45) Went to France trying to do a family tree. Found names but never met any of the people  Mitch said civilians were very standoffish. The men he found hated them and he lost rank a few times for getting into physical fights with them. He ended up in German jails for fighting  Mitch said Commanding Officers just wanted to know if he won or not. Took a stripe �  away and told him he would get it back shortly that it was just a formality. (24:40) Mitch spent a little over 2 years in Germany His enlistment was cut from 4 years to 3 years since they didn’t get to go into MP’s (25:00)Came Home  Mitch thought about re-enlisting in the military but Dad talked him out of it seeing that his next tour of duty would be Vietnam  His father promised to get him a job at the factory he worked at and since it was the best paying job in the town he thought that was a good idea  His dad never got him the job  Mitch went on a drunk binge for a few months  His dad died at 93 and his mom at 76. They died one year apart from each other.  (28:00) He married an old friend. Went from job to job. He had two kids and Divorced in 1988  Married a new girl. Had custody of his kids at this time. Married for 12 years this time.  January last year he talked to a friend and was asked how he was handling the news of getting divorced. He had no idea he was getting divorce. Both his kids were grown at this time.  He found out he was suffering from severe depression dating back to his first marriage  He packed up and headed to Philadelphia where his daughter lived. She eventually kicked her husband out and separated so in May he headed back up to Michigan to live with his sister  (33:09) Moved to Farwell to live with sister  Mitch had nowhere to go when he sister told him his time was up and nobody else would let him live with them.  August he moved to the Veterans Home in Grand Rapids. He does not like being there and feels they don’t treat him well but with his medical problems he can’t get a job  He says that the military made a man out of him but it was thrown away when he got out and couldn’t get a job. He states in the interview that his second biggest regret was not staying in the military.  He is being treated for depression and says he rarely sees his family � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Amlotte, Mitch (Interview outline and video), 2007 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Amlotte, Mitch Description An account of the resource Mitch Amlotte volunteered for the Army in 1968 to escape a bad home life. He was sent to postal school and then to Germany. He volunteered to travel with the children of military men on field trips and spent much of his time seeing different countries. He was released from the military after 3 years would have re-enlisted except that he did not want to go to Vietnam. He encountered an assortment of personal and medical problems after his discharge, which he discusses at some length. 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 2007-05-22 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AmlotteM 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/ad7948ea59c2c8b16eaa98081885a04b.pdf 1800afa77334cac1623d4cd7ed0b8b8c PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Panama Era – Operation Just Cause John Adkins 05:30 Introduction (00:30)              Growing up, John had two sisters and one brother. Prior to his enlistment, he went to school and worked some part-time jobs. John chose to join the United States Army because it was something that he had always wanted to do and also because he could not find a good job. It was a growing experience. He remembers the friendships that were started while in the service, and he enjoyed the jobs that he was able to do and the people and places he met and saw along the way. John served during the conflict in Panama. He was there for two weeks and when the conflict ended he was stationed at Fort Polk, Louisiana. (02:25) While away, he was not able to communicate back home with his family. He has maintained quite a few friendships with people that he served with. When John first entered the service, his training lasted for nine months. The first six months was difficult and intense. After that first six months, he began training to drive fuel trucks, which was enjoyable. John’s grandfather was in the Air Force and then switched over to the Army and he also had two uncles in the Army. Some important life lessons that he learned were to be respectful to others and to be neat. (04:30) � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Adkins, John (Interview outline), 2013 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adkins, John Description An account of the resource John joined the United States Army and spent nine months in training. He became a fuel truck driver, and eventually spent two weeks in Panama in support of Operation Just Cause in 1989. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Wisdom, Alaina (Interviewer) 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 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 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 2013-05-27 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AdkinsJ1494V 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/437b935bf05c99568d858d0d311cf33e.mp4 394cb6f512976076a189d66af30a7f72 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0ef24dd5cbe5b79fa2cfbdafa1779865.pdf e9d3cf6859742e0446695d8fd31fc080 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Vietnam Steve Avgerinos Total Time – (48:35) Background • • • • • • • He was born in Chicago, Illinois on April 27, 1949 (00:22) He grew up in Chicago His father worked in a laundry (00:48) He had seven siblings He went to school at Our Lady of Peace and graduated from St. Francis de Sales in 1967 (01:11) When he was in high school, Vietnam was pretty fresh on everyone’s mind o He remembers two men that were in Vietnam that he had gone to school with (01:55)  Both men were killed He received his draft number but did not want to wait to be drafted o He went and enlisted instead (02:29) Enlistment/Training – (02:33) • • • • • • • • He enlisted in the Army (02:36) o He went in the day after Thanksgiving of 1968 He was sent to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri (02:59) When he first arrived, he believes the whole process was dehumanizing o The process was to break the men down and build them up so that they could do what they needed to do (03:19) o He had a lot of anger and frustration during basic training  He broke his thumb (03:36) Vietnam was not stressed during basic training (03:52) Basic training lasted for eight weeks (04:08) The men were from all over the country o Most of the men were from the Midwest (04:22) After eight weeks he received orders for AIT [Advanced Individual Training] (04:35) He was then sent to Fort Lewis, Washington for AIT �• • • • • • • • • • • AIT was a lot less intense (05:18) The trainers were much younger o Not many of them were Vietnam veterans (05:33) He trained as 11 Charlie Company [mortars] during AIT o His training was a continuation of rifle training, learning how to set up a mortar, set it, level it, etc. (06:05) o He was trained on the 81mm mortars (06:20) There were a lot of daytime exercises and they started basic training for Vietnam o On one of the exercises, the soldiers ran out of ammo  They were told to go into the field and say “bang, bang” and pretend like they were shooting the enemy (07:21) His AIT training was very similar to others (07:40) o They learned how to read compasses, had night training, land navigation, etc. o The mortar men had to learn all of the different phases (08:20) He enjoyed the camaraderie of AIT (08:40) o The majority of the men knew that they would all get orders for Vietnam o They tried to enjoy the company of one another during this time (08:57) The AIT was structured with much less discipline – there was more free time o There was a lot less harassment (09:17) After AIT, he signed up for NCO (Non-commissioned officer) school in Fort Benning, Georgia (09:38) o NCO training was another eight weeks o The majority of the training was leadership training (09:54) o They learned how to handle different situations o The majority of the trainers were Vietnam veterans (10:32)  They were disciplined, but they would be willing to give immediate feedback (11:02) o The most challenging part of NCO training was having to make the tough decisions (11:56) He was never worried about having to lead men o He did not have a perspective of what war would really be like (12:47) o Training was simply academic exercises for him When he graduated he was an E5 (13:48) He received his orders for Vietnam (14:03) o His orders were just to go to Vietnam Active Duty – (14:15) • • • He flew through Chicago, California, and landed in Vietnam o He landed in Vietnam in November of 1969 (15:22)  He landed in Phu Bai, Vietnam Once he landed in Phu Bai, he was sent to Camp Evans (15:59) His first impression of Vietnam was that it was hot and the humidity was unbearable (16:17) �• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • He was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division o He never realized the history or tradition of the 101st Airborne (16:42) o He was fairly numb The soldiers were received very well at Camp Evans (17:41) o At Camp Evans, he was assigned to Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 506th Regiment (17:55) o His unit warmly welcomed him Some of the men resented the Shake ‘n Bake sergeants, but none of them said anything to him (18:44) He started going out into the high country (19:39) His company was hit for the first time in March of 1970 (19:59) He was a squad leader o There were three squads with men that carried M79 grenade launchers, M16’s, and a radio operator (20:43) There was a radio in his platoon and not in his squad The operations were generally company sized missions (21:30) The first Firebase that he went to was Firebase Rakkasan (21:52) o He was on Rakkasan two times A typical firebase had a lot of sand bags and ammo crates They would operate out of the firebases – they would sometimes be there to protect the firebase, but often times they would go there to get resupplied (22:36) He would cycle in and out of firebases with his men (23:54) o They would go to the rear on occasion o They would typically be in the field for three weeks before going to a firebase (24:11)  At one point, they were left in the field for forty-five days He was rarely in the lead going in – typically the 1st platoon would go in first (25:01) The LZ’s were typically prepared before the choppers came in His platoon normally had a Kit Carson Scout with them (25:40) o They knew that when they had not heard from their scout in a long time, “shit was gonna hit the fan” o The troops liked their Kit Carson Scout (25:58) The biggest difficulty in leading his squad was making sure that he could depend on people that had been there before (27:18) o He had confidence in the lieutenant  Many of the soldiers did not know him (27:41)  He was a quiet individual  He was an OCS [officer candidate school] graduate As his squad moved forward, it was quiet at first (28:30) o They were laying low until they received more soldiers His platoon had roughly sixty men (29:07) o They were severely underequipped When his platoon arrived at LZ Maureen, everything was relatively quiet (29:48) o The first platoon had already moved off �• • • • • • • • • • o They lost their medic (30:05)  That is how they ended up with Ken Kays, who later received the Medal of Honor, as their new medic (30:17) o They arrived at LZ Maureen on May 7, 1970 o His platoon was vastly outnumbered (30:30) o They were hit the second night that they were on Maureen His platoon assumed they had a better chance against the enemy if they were on the higher ground (31:25) Both of his eardrums were ruptured in the fighting on May 7, 1970 (31:46) o He was medevaced to Japan (32:13) o He was in Japan for three weeks After Japan, he returned to the United States at the Great Lakes Naval Station for six weeks (33:01) After being at Great Lakes, he was sent to Fort Leonard Wood to be an instructor (33:37) o He was currently an E6  His responsibilities did not change (34:02) o He just showed films and did odd jobs He never experienced any of the anti-war protests (34:49) There was a lot of racial tension in the military o There were some blacks that believed that Vietnam was not their war to fight (35:31) o The racism only occurred in the rear – rarely on the field o His squad was predominantly Caucasian (36:04)  There was one Puerto-Rican and nearly six African Americans (36:27)  The Puerto-Rican and a Caucasian got into a fight – they were both sent back There was quite a bit of drug use (37:29) o He participated in it o The soldiers would only use drugs when they were in the rear (37:39) o He never witnessed any abuse in the field The soldiers were angered at the anti-war movements that were taking place in America (38:30) The racial tensions were not felt in basic training, only in the field (39:04) After his time at Fort Leonard Wood, he was asked to re-enlist o He was told he could get a two thousand dollar bonus (39:43) o He decided that two thousand dollars was not enough to go back to Vietnam After the Service – (40:11) • • He regrets not being a better soldier and leader (40:25) When he read about the war in Iraq, he felt a lot of the same feelings as he did in Vietnam �• • • He dealt with a lot of the pain for over thirty years (41:47) o When the book about Ken Kays was being written, he began bringing out his story o He believes the book was accurate (43:22)  During the battle, he remembers the difficulties of fighting the enemy with so few men  As a sergeant, there was not a lot that he could do about what happened with his men (45:11) He sees a different reaction to the troops coming back from Iraq than the troops that returned from Vietnam (46:08) After he got out of the military, he looked for a job, drank a lot, did some drugs, and finally got things together o He returned to a job that he had when he left for the military (47:49) o He eventually went to work with his father at the laundry � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Avgerinos, Stephen (Interview outline and video), 2012 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Avgerinos, Stephen Description An account of the resource Steve Avgerinos was born in Chicago in 1949. He enlisted late in 1968 to stay ahead of the draft. He took basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, then AIT at Fort Lewis, and then went on to NCO school at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was then sent over to Vietnam, and joined D Company, 1st Battalion, 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, based at Camp Evans. In March, 1970, his company began a series of patrols in the hills and jungle west of Camp Evans, operating out of several different firebases. In May, his platoon's perimeter on a hilltop designated Maureen was overrun by enemy sappers, but Avgerinos and those still able to fight held the position. He was injured in the battled and sent to Japan and back to the US for treatment. He completed his enlistment as an instructor at Fort Leonard Wood. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource McGregor, Michael (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 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 2012-10-04 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AvgerinosS1453V 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/f9183abecf9bb09bba80044df7c2c6e7.mp4 15352bbab56053f4446def473ecf8b8d https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0b412f7e059241c97029f9e8e1f5282e.pdf 629519449e0070b650bc76dc68471ad2 PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW ROBERT AUSTIN Born: Grand Rapids, Michigan Resides: Interviewed by: James Smither PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project, Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, October 2, 2011 Interviewer: Now, Mr. Austin can you start out by telling us a little bit about yourself? Where and when were you born? I was born in Grand Rapids and six months after I was born my folks moved to Grandville, Michigan. I lived in Grandville until the depression. My dad lost the house and they moved us out onto a farm, I lived on a farm. Interviewer: What kind of work had your father been doing? My dad was a car salesman, and of course he lost his job. Interviewer: Whose farm did you go to live on? He rented one, and then us kids—then we started eating good because we grew our stuff, but when we were in the city there we didn’t eat very good. We had to go barefoot in the summer because we couldn’t wear out our shoes and if our shoes wore out we had to cut cardboard and stuff it in the holes, so we didn’t walk on the ground. When spring came we had to take our shoes off and we had to go barefoot, except on Sundays when we could wear our shoes. 1:23 Interviewer: Where was the farm? The farm was in Grandville. It was over on what is 28th Street now, but we moved over on the farm there and us kids had to slop the pigs and chase the cows and everything. At 1 �the time we thought it was kind of rough, but now when I look back on it, my folks were the ones that had it rough. Interviewer: How many kids were in the family? There were six of us, four boys and two girls. Interviewer: Did you finish high school? I graduated on June 15th and joined the Marines in 1941 and I went into the Marine Corps on the 25th of June. Interviewer: Why did you decide to join the Marines? That’s a good question. I think what influenced me was the uniform, really, but I thought over the years—I don’t know, I had a girl friend and I was doing good, I don’t know why I went in because it was before the war. 2:32 Interviewer: they were recruiting at that time. They were trying to build up the armed forces. Did you figure it was because there weren’t a lot of job prospects, so joining the military made sense? Me and a buddy of mine went down to Grand Rapids and how we ran into this Marine recruiting office I don’t know, but he couldn’t pass because on account of his dad he couldn’t get in the Marine Corps, but I had rheumatic fever once and my mother went to the doctor and he said, ―don’t worry, he won’t pass‖, and of course they just shoved me right on through. Interviewer: Once you are accepted in where did you go for basic training? I started out from Grand Rapids in a bus and they took us to Detroit and then we got on a train in Detroit and picked up a bunch of recruits. 3:33 Then we went to Chicago and stopped and got some more recruits. Then we started to go south and one thing I thought 2 �was awfully funny, we were going along and this one kid from Chicago said, ―look, look, there’s a cow‖, and we said, ―Cow, what’s the big deal about a cow?‖ Well, he’d never seen one; he’d never been out of Chicago. Then we got down to Parris Island, South Carolina and it was raining, and I had worn my brown and white shoes and all my best clothes and they were marching us. When we got to camp there was a big puddle of water there and we walked around it and they backed us up and made us walk right through it, and I thought, ―Gee, what did I get into here?‖ 4:35 A couple days later we went to the barber shop and they cut off all of our hair. This one kid from Philadelphia had this wavy hair and he was all upset, but it didn’t bother me. In the Marine Corps you got paid twice a month and when we went to get paid the first time they gave you a bucket that you washed your clothes in and in the bucket was paper and pencil to write home, stuff to clean your rifle with and soap and that. They gave you that bucket and they gave you a fifty-cent piece. You only made twenty-one dollars and I thought, ―What the devil did I get into? Here I’m getting paid and I get fifty-cents?‖ That kind of set me back. 5:31 Interviewer: How did the drill instructors treat you? Back in those days they were pretty rough. They wouldn’t let them do what they did today. I remember one Sunday, we were supposed to wear our dress shoes, and we had a corporal and a sergeant who was our instructor and this corporal came back and he was a little tipsy and he saw this one kid without his shoes on, so they called us all outside and they lined us up in two rows and we had to take off our belts. The belts had clips on both ends, of course, of the belt, and he made us run through the line and you had to hit the guy as you went by and if you didn’t hit your buddy you had to go back through again. 3 �That was one of the—they wouldn’t allow that today, but back in those days it was pretty rough. 6:30 Interviewer: How did you hold up under all that? Were you in good shape? Oh yeah, I played a lot of sports in school and I was in good shape. When we got done, when we graduated, they sent me to Quantico, Virginia and they put me in the air force and they sent me down to Jacksonville, Florida to go to this school and while we were on vacation, or on leave really for a week-end, that’s when the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor. They confiscated all the busses and they went through the bull horns yelling, ―all Marines, sailors, Army, back to your base‖, so they took us back to the base and the funny thing about it, they sent all—it was a naval base, the naval school I was going to, and they sent all the sailors out in the woods and they had all the Marines line up in front of the administration building. 7:45 At that time we had the old WWI rifles and they gave us each a clip of, which I think had five shells in it, and there we stood. I don’t know what they thought we were going to do, but it was complete chaos when we landed. Interviewer: How long did it take until things quieted down a little bit? It was quite a while because after that, I don’t know how much longer it was, a week or so, they yelled and we all had to get up and they heard a plane coming. Well, it ended up being one of our own P-40s, but they blacked out the whole camp and they fell the Marines out in front of the administration building and, of course, we had our rifles and our hats. 8:38 They didn’t call them hats, but everything was blacked out and here came this car with its lights off coming to pick up the commander. He didn’t see us and he slammed right into all the Marines standing there. I lost my hat and I lost my rifle, a couple kids got killed and I don’t know how many got wounded, but that was real chaos. 4 �It was so black you couldn’t really blame the guy because he couldn’t see, but that was quite an experience. Interviewer: when you were down there in Jacksonville, what aspect of the Marine air service were you trained for? Were you going to be ground crew or flight crew? No, I was going to be just in the ground crew like a mechanic or something. 9:31 It was a funny thing down there, we were there and there were a bunch of Englishmen down there too, and every Saturday we would have a contest to see who was the best marcher, and of course I was sure we were, and it was a funny thing, every time they voted it always came out a tie. I guess they didn’t want us to know, but I know darn well that we were the best ones. Then they sent me back to Quantico and I was put in the—like mechanics and they put me in one where—back in those days the controls were all in— you had to put cloth on them and here I thought I was a hairy Marine and here I was working on a sewing machine stitching that stuff on there. I thought, ―Boy, this is great. Here I am a Marine and I’m doing that‖. 10:43 I made sergeant and corporal while I was there, but I was kind of embarrassed thinking I’m a hairy Marine and what am I doing sitting here with a needle stitching things? Back in those days you had to volunteer for the paratroopers and they put up note asking for volunteers and I thought, ―here’s my chance to get out of there‖, because I wanted to go fight, so I volunteered for the Marine Corps paratroopers. I got a real nasty letter from my sister saying I wasn’t thinking of my folks by doing it. 11:29 Interviewer: Now, when was it that you signed up for that? Was it in 1942 or was it later than that? 5 �Yeah, it must have been—well I’d been at Quantico long enough to make sergeant, so I must have been there a couple of years, but I can’t remember, but then I signed up and the sent me to North Carolina. Interviewer: Before we go on with your story—you’re at Quantico then for a fair amount of time. What did you do there besides sewing? That was about it. I was a real hairy Marine sitting there stitching. Interviewer: Was there—did they have a lot of guys doing that? There was a master sergeant and a sergeant, an aid and there were two women, civilians that worked in there. You had to stitch that on and after you stitched it on you took it in and you painted—put some stuff on it, it was white and I don’t know what it was, and that made it hard and then you painted it blue after you got done. Then it went back and they put them on the ships, but I didn’t think much of a Marine Corps being a—sitting there with a needle. I was embarrassed to tell anybody what I was doing. 12:49 Interviewer: Did you get much of a chance to go off the base? I mean, did you get leave or anything? Oh yeah Interviewer: Where did you go when you could go off base? Oh, I went to Washington D.C. mostly, we went to Washington D.C., and that would be mostly on weekends. Interviewer: What was going on there? What was there to do when you went there? Well, I use to go around, and I should have taken more advantage of it, but I use to go around—we did a lot of partying. It was just full of Marines and sailors and soldiers, and 6 �we just went around and I went around the different monuments and that, but I should have done more of it. 13:37 Interviewer: Mostly you went there because it was a big city and it was something to do. That was the biggest place around. There was some little town down there we use to go to too, but I forget what the name of it was. Interviewer: Now, you get accepted into the paratrooper program and what do you do in the way of training for that? Well, when we got—they sent me down to North Carolina then where I trained for the paratroopers and then, I would say, there were about forty or fifty in the class. By the time we graduated there were only twenty-two of us, I think, that were left. In the paratroopers you had to pass a real test and it was all volunteers, the paratroopers, and you quit anytime you wanted to until you got your wings, but once you got your wings you were court marshaled if you didn’t bail out. 14:42 We ran, everyplace we went we ran, we got up at five o’clock in the morning and you would go exercise for an hour and then you would run and run and in the afternoon you would run. If anybody passed out you just pulled them over into the ditch until they came to. When they walked back to camp they kicked them out of the paratroopers and put them back in the Marines. I’ll never forget, one time, you know you do all the exercising and running and you are really hungry, and we were in the chow line and we were hungry—it makes me think of pictures I saw where these prisoners bang on the table, and we all started banging on the table wanting more food. 15:38 finally the captain came in and he made them cook up some more food, so we got more food, but it was real rough. We had to pack our own 7 �chutes until you got your wings. The first time I jumped, the plane was a D-4 and it used to come down and pick-up a load and they would go up and it was over an airfield, and they would jump out and then they would come down and get another load. The load before I had to go up there, they bailed out and this one guy bailed out and his chute never opened. He came straight down and you could see, it was just over the airport, and he bounced, and I can still see him bouncing. 16:29 I was a sergeant at that time and I had to be the first one to go out the door and they brought that helmet in there and that helmet was all cracked. They said, ―now see, if you didn’t pack your chute right that’s what’s going to happen to you‖, and that didn’t make it any easier. When they got up there, and I was a sergeant at that time, so I had to go out first and they use to say,‖ hook on, stand-by, go‖, and to this day I don’t remember them saying go, but I stood by the door looking down at the ground going by me like that and I thought, ―I’ll do this once, but that’s the last time‖. He said, ―Go‖, and in the Marine Corps we dove out, in the Army they jumped out, but we went out headfirst. As I was coming, once it opened up you would say, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, and if it didn’t open you had this other chute in front of you and you would open that. I bailed out and once it opens—that was a lot of fun, you hit the ground and you want to go right back up there. 17:43 That day four of our guys ran right by the door and wouldn’t bail out, and when we landed they came and took these guys out and put them back in the regular Marine Corps. They said, ―See what would happen if we were in combat and you froze in the door? You would miss where you were landing‖, so they kicked them out. We had a lot of guys that when we were running and they got tired or something, or the heat would bother them and they would fall, we’d just pull them over off the road and leave them lay there until they came to. 8 �When they came to they’d walk back in and they would kick them out of the paratroopers. In the paratroopers you had to be—when you were done with that you were in real good condition. 18:37 I think, like I said, we started out with about forty and only twenty-two of us graduated. After I graduated they sent me to Camp Pendleton. We went to Camp Pendleton and we lived up in the mountains in tents. It was pretty rough up there because you didn’t have any floor. The only floor was in the ―head," which the Army calls ‖latrine‖, that’s the only floor there was. In the Marine Corps we got paid twice a month, so what we would do—as soon as you got paid we were in the ―head’ shooting dice. Guys were sitting over there shooting dice up there. 19:36 We trained up there for, I don’t know how long, and then they disbanded the Marines [paratroopers] because, I was told and I suppose it’s right, they told us the islands were too small to jump on, so they formed the 5th Marine Corps [Division]. The nucleus of the 5th Marines was the paratroopers and the raiders, and then they had all rookies. They trained us out there and then they shipped me—we shipped to Hawaii and we were on the big island, at Hilo. When we got off the ship they put us on flat cars and towed us way up by this volcano and we trained up there. I forget how long we trained up there. Hilo wasn’t much of a town, so we didn’t see much, but just before we shipped out they took us over to Hawaii to Honolulu. 20:41 We thought that was really something. Interviewer: Now when they had you training on the big island, was that kind of jungle country that you were training in? No, there were volcanoes, a big volcano right up there. It was all—there was practically nothing there at all. 9 �Interviewer: I guess if they were planning on sending you to Iwo Jima, which is a little volcanic island, I guess that made some sense. Yeah, that made some sense, but you know at one time, the kids like me to tell this story. I was a sergeant there and I was the guide and this one sergeant we had, the head, when was a staff sergeant, he fell us out and he had been training women Marines and he didn’t know anything about the Marine Corps. He was a great one for inspection all the time, so he fell us out for inspection and I was between tow sergeant guys, so I would stand by myself with the platoon there, but he handed me his rifle to hold while he inspected and I looked at it an oh was it dirty, holy smokes. 21:51 One thing in the Marine Corps you took care of your rifle and I looked at that and said ―holy smokes‖, and I turned around and there was a corporal standing there and I said, ―here take this rifle‖, and he said, ―no, no‖, and I said, ―you heard me, take that rifle‖, so he took this sergeant's rifle and gave me his and he came through inspecting the rifles and he grabbed that rifle and it was dirty. Oh, was it dirty, and he goes like that and he rubs it on and he was eating this corporal out and finally the corporal said, ―well sergeant, it’s not nine, it’s your rifle. Sergeant Austin gave it to me ―. Oh, he closed ranks and he brought me into his tent and he said, ―I got a good reason to run you up to the captain‖, and I said, ―Why don’t you do that, but be sure to take your rifle with you?‖ 22:41 After that we never got along too well together. I kind of put him on the spot, but it was—I did some funny things when I was in the Marine Corps. Interviewer: Was he the company sergeant? Was he ranked a greater sergeant than you at that point? 10 �We were in the first platoon and you had a staff sergeant, and you had a sergeant guide, which I was, and then you had your platoon. I forget how many in the platoon, so that was in A Company, I was in A Company. We trained up there and then they loaded us up and they didn’t tell us where we were going until we got out to sea, and they told us that we were going to Iwo Jima and nobody knew what Iwo Jima was. 23:37 We didn’t know what the heck it was and we got to Saipan and we were on a troop ship there, and that’s another funny thing about that troop ship, we got in a –it was rough, seasick and everything. We were on there and when you went to chow you come up the gangplank up there and they only let a couple guys out at a time and you had to grab this railing and walk down along and walk back down to where you ate. You ate at these long tables and at the end of the table there was a big fifty gallon bucket setting there and you would be eating and other Marines would be there throwing up in this thing. Oh, it was rough and I don’t know the ship stayed together. It just shook like that, and when we were out there something went wrong with the sewage system in there. 24:43 They didn’t have toilets, all they had is troughs you sat on and as the ship rolled you would pick up you feet and the waste would go by you and when it went back you would pick up your feet again and it went back. That was quite a thing, that troop ship, you know. On a troop ship you sleep about that much apart and you get all those guys in there at night it was pretty smelly in there. We were on this troop ship and they took us to Saipan and I don’t remember how long we laid out there on the bay, but finally we were going to Iwo. I was in A Company, but they assigned me to go in with the first wave. 25:40 I think it was B and C that went in first. I was supposed to go in with the first wave and I was supposed to report back to the captain. 11 �Interviewer: Did you have a radio? How would you communicate? No, I had to come back and tell him. We got off the troop ship and you had to be careful, you had to go down, you saw them, ropes that you went down and if you didn’t time it right, as the ship went up like this the other one dropped and if you let go you fell, so you had to time it just right. As you were coming down there as the ship came up, you could just step off it. Interviewer: Were you getting into landing craft? We were getting into landing craft, an LST [ LVT], and we were getting into that and some guys missed it and went in the water and some guy went bang, but I was fortunate, I got on there. 26:39 We took off for Iwo Jima and that night before we went to sleep they fed us like kings. We never been fed so good before. We had hamburgers and everything and we though, ―boy this is a good deal‖, and of course, it’s the first time I’d been in combat and I was looking forward to it, which wasn’t too smart. We took off and that night when we went to be there was about eight of these small LST’s and in the bottom was where these half-tracks were they were supposed to take you right up on the island. They were just small and I showed you the picture of me on it in that book there. 27:33 Interviewer: Now, the LST’s were the ships that had the door that opened in the front? They would open and when we did it we went down, but the night before there were only about six or eight of us and when we got to Iwo, and I don’t remember how many miles it was, eight or nine hundred miles, but holy, when the sun came up you couldn’t believe the amount of ships that were there. My God, there were ships--there were cruisers in 12 �there, there were aircraft carriers and the Missouri was a battleship. When we had a load we went down below to get in these half-tracks we had to come up to the Missouri and go around it and go around in front and they were shooting out there and I never saw flames—off those great big guns, you know. The flames would go for, gee, I don’t know for how long right over the top of us. 28:34 We started in to land and I still forget—I should have put the gun to his head, this sailor got us in about, oh, fifty yards or a hundred yards, I don’t know, and said he couldn’t go any further. He told us to bail out. Well, I think he was nothing but yellow. We jumped out and when you jump, we were in water up to our necks, so we had to go ashore and we went ashore and when the first wave—before that they saw along the edge there was a bunch of tanks there and they looked like fifty gallon drums and the Marines thought they were going to be fire, so the first wave, we had to put all this white stuff on our faces and our hands, and if anything explodes you put that stuff on and it was just white. 29:41 We started in to land and I’ll never forget, this one sergeant he had been on Guadalcanal and there he was in the corner crying and he wouldn’t even move because he knew what he was going to. At that time we thought it was kind of odd. Interviewer: When you were trained, when you were in Hawaii, were you trained by people who had combat experience? Oh yeah Interviewer: They didn’t tell you much about their experience? No, they didn’t tell you much about it. Two of my best friends, they were both Indians, one was from a New York reservation and one from out west someplace, and I never saw them again. I was told they both lost their lives on Iwo Jima. They were paratroopers, 13 �one was a Raider and one was a paratrooper and they had both been on Guadalcanal, but they never told us much about it. 30:40 Here I am a young kid, I was about twenty-two and I was all ―eager Beaver‖, and I found out. We got out about fifty yards from the thing and he told us to bail out, so we did jump out. We landed on the island and nothing happened. It was just like-Interviewer: Now, were you driving the half-tracks out or did they stay in the boat? No, he turned around and took them back. He went back and I’ll never forget that, and of course, he had to go back and get some more to come in. The first wave, we landed on the island and it was just like going down to Holland, no body was there, and of course, you couldn’t see anything because they were all underground. We landed and, what the heck, what are you going to do? They let three waves get in and then they opened up on it. Mt. Suribachi was on the left and we were supposed to go up straight and capture this airfield and turn right. 31:50 Well, they shot these mortars from Mt. Suribachi and they would shoot them down and you could hear them coming and they were just coming right down there. You could hear them coming and you just laid there and kind of praying and they would lift you right off the ground while you—you couldn’t dig a hole because it was lava and it was hot and you would go down that far and it was hot. You would hear them coming and you would just lie there like that. There was this kid laying in this hole, which I suppose was done by our big guns, and we were laying there with our hands over our head like that and he was behind me there and it would lift you right off the ground and after it went by me I turned and his head was off. 32:57 When I rose up like that there was, and I can still see it after sixty years, there was the brains or the guts or something, and there it lay right next to my head. I looked at it, of course and it was 14 �quite an experience because there he lay without any head. Then I got up and I ran ahead and we use to see these cowboy shows where somebody got shot and they went like this, and that’s exactly how it happened. We were running and this guy up ahead of me all of a sudden, he went down and there was a pillbox up ahead of me and I thought it was knocked out because they had been shooting weeks before I guess, but they never did any good because they were all underground. 34:03 I dove into kind of a hole next to that pillbox and I laid there and I was going to get up to move and I heard a ―pop‖ and I turned around and there was a hand grenade, a Jap hand grenade—our hand grenades would bust up into big pieces, but theirs were smooth and broke up in slivers. I was told later, and I don’t know if it’s true or not, they said the reason theirs were that way was they figured they would wound us soldiers and then it would take another one to take care of us. So, I looked at it, when I heard that ―pop‖ I looked at it and it went off. Of course I had all this white stuff on my face and everything, and I got shrapnel in my face and then I got up and moved out and a guy grabbed me and he thought I had lost my buttons. 35:06 I must have looked pretty bad with that white stuff on my face and blood all over. He threw me down and he told me—I forget, he was trying to help me or something, but I kept saying, ―no, no, I got to get back and tell the Captain‖, so there I laid and I was pretty dazed, I guess because I forgot a lot of it, but I know when they took me back to go onto a hospital ship, and they took me down to where we landed there were dead Marines all over. They were piled up and you had to step over them, and you heard crying and you heard yelling ―Corpsman‖, ―Corpsman‖ and guys screaming and these kids crying, and, of course, Marines cry, but you would cry too if you lost your leg or your buddy died in your arms. 36:14 You had to step over all these dead Marines and they were just 15 �piled one on top of another. The Japs really knew they knew they could have attacked and pushed us right back because it was complete chaos, nobody knew what they were doing, and when the tanks came in they couldn’t go because of the lava rock. They took me out on the hospital ship, but like I told my son, I can’t remember anything about the hospital ship, but he said, they probably had me doped up and maybe they did, I just can’t—the only thing I remember is when the flag went up on Iwo Jima, all the ship, they blew their horns and they were really blowing their horns and all that. 37:12 They put me on this hospital ship, but I don’t remember anything about it. They took me back to Saipan to a hospital and I don’t know how long I was there. Then they took me to Hawaii, to a hospital in Hawaii. Well, I had all this shrapnel in my face and I had some in my eye, so the doctor said he had to operate on my eye. I can still see it today, they deaden it, of course, but I was conscious and I can still see that knife, it was bent like that, and I can still—they had to go in, and he explained what they were going to do. 38:18 They cut my eye and they had to make a hole so they could use a magnet to pull the metal out of my eye, and jeez it felt like they pulled my whole dang eye out. So, they had had to pull the skin down over that hole and put two stitches in each side so it would grow over. Then they put me in the ward and I laid flat on my back there for thirty some days. They had sand bags on both sides of my head and I never got so sick of Hawaiian music in all of my life. 39:01 Of course they were trying to build up your morale and they put those earphones on and played and played that Hawaiian music until I thought geese, and then these red cross, these women, they had to feed me because I had to lay there with those sandbags on my head and they would tell me what they had for dinner that day, or supper, what it was and this one day this woman was telling me and she said 16 �they had spinach and I said, ―don’t give me any spinach‖, holy smoke, I’ll never forget the poor woman she’s trying to build up my morale and asking me about what I did and all about my girlfriend and she gave me a mouthful of spinach and I said, ―ugh‖, and I threw that out. That poor woman, you should have heard her and seen her, she was so sorry, she was begging me to forgive her, but that was kind of funny. 40:15 I laid there over thirty days. Well they give you a shot and I don’t know how many days, I guess it was Penicillin, first they give it in this shoulder and then they do it in the other shoulder and finally it got so hard they started giving it in my butt. After that they—I laid there thirty-one days or something and they took me in—they had to take the stitches out, the doctor had to take the stitches out and the doctor told me that when I got older I would lose control of my eye and it was going to just roll around, but thank god that never happened. Then they took those stitches out and I was there for quite a while. I was in the hospital, I guess, for over nine months. 41:07 Then they took me back to Farragut, Idaho, to the hospital up in Farragut, Idaho and I was in the hospital in Farragut, Idaho and that’s when the war was over. Well, all these guys were celebrating, but we just had a little old town that wasn’t as big as Wyoming. We went to town, but there were only one or two bars in it, a few grocery stores and a gas station or something. Interviewer: Now after those first thirty days, those first thirty days that you were in the hospital there, were your arms and legs restrained too? You said your head was between sandbags. No Interviewer: So you could move your hands and that? 17 �Yes, I could move my hands, but later in life I had something wrong with my knee and this doctor x-rayed my side here and he said, ―boy, when you got shot by that shotgun it sure left a lot of pellets in your leg‖, and I said, ―I never got shot by a shotgun, that’s the metal from a grenade‖, so I still got it in my leg, but it never did bother me. 42:24 The slivers they took out of my face, they would just pick it out and it was just small slivers, the same as what was in my eye, but I lost the fluid behind my eye and that’s why I have bad eyesight here. So, they shipped me up to that hospital and I was there, I don’t know how long, but it was too long anyway. After that I still had time to do because I had signed over—the war was over. 42:59 Interviewer: When did you re-enlist? Was it before you went to Iwo Jima? Well, before, when we were in Saipan they came and said that anybody whose time was up within six months could re-enlist and you could get that, I think it was four hundred dollars. Did I tell you that already? Interviewer: No, not on camera. Well, you could re-enlist and you could get four hundred dollars, I think it was. I thought that is I was going to get killed my folks might as well have that, so I reenlisted and, of course, in that six months after the war was over I still had eighteen months to do, which I wasn’t really sorry. Then they took me back to San Diego, but then they needed guards now at Norfolk, Virginia, so they sent me down to Norfolk, Virginia and I was a guard there on a naval base. 44:05 I was there until my time was up and then they sent me to Chicago and I was discharged from Chicago. Interviewer: What was your experience like in Norfolk? Was that a good base to be working at? 18 �Oh yeah, I thought I had a good job. First I was a guard there and then they made me the Colonel’s driver. You had to keep that car all polished and everything like that and you had to be dressed up all the time. I would pick him up at eight o’clock in the morning and take him back at five o’clock at night day after day and I had to be always dressed and sharp and polished and I would sit there in the barracks and wait for him if he called me. 45:01 That’s when I would go down to the mess hall and the mess sergeant and I would play cribbage and you can’t imagine how many times we played cribbage. Oh my gosh, all day long and here I would wait for him and I’d pick him up at five and take him home. Well, he had back trouble and I would have to take him to the hospital. One time I took him to the hospital and when he was in the hospital I fell asleep in the car and when he came out he shook me and woke me up. You are supposed to be there to open up the car door for him and close it and I got all excited and jammed it into reverse and backed right into a telephone pole and he had just got done having work done on his back and I can still hear him, he went ―uugh‖ and I was just shaking, but he didn’t say anything until the next morning when I picked him up. He said, ―Did you damage the car yesterday?‖ I said, ―no’, and he was a real good guy. 46:13 I would pick him up there. I would play baseball for the Marines there and we would play the city league and the city league asked me to play with them and I don’t want to brag, but I was a pretty good ball player and the sports writer for the paper called up the Colonel, and they had a tryout, the Yankees had a minor league club there and this sports writer asked if I could come down there, and another guy, for a picture. The Colonel said, ―I’m not a Yankee fan, but you can take a Jeep‖, so he let me drive a jeep down there. 47:12 Of course, I wasn’t the caliber of that and it didn’t work out. I wasn’t as good as I thought I was, but 19 �then I did my time and when my time was up I went to Chicago. I got separated and it was over with. Interviewer: Did they make any effort to encourage you to stay in and become a lifer? No, most guys wanted out. When your time comes they came and said, ―Austin, get packed up, you have to go get separated‖, so I did, but another guy and I did offer the Marines if they needed any Marines because the old timer was saying how great China was, so we asked them if they needed anybody in China and they said no. That’s the only time and I would have reenlisted then, but when he said that, I didn’t, so I got separated. 48:26 Since then I’ve been real fortunate, I got eleven grand children. Interviewer: Did you come back home once you were discharged? Yes, I came back home then. Interviewer: What kind of work did you go into then? When I got homer my brother and I went in the trucking business and we delivered refrigerators and stoves. Well, we got caught going to Muskegon without a license and you can’t go more than six miles from you office, which was our house, without a MSC license and we got caught going to Muskegon. I said to my brother, ―this is it, we have to go get a license‖, so we went down to Lansing to get a license and they had a bunch of lawyers from these big companies and they said they didn’t need another MSC license in Grand Rapids and we were tow little guys wanting to get a license. 49:32 I said to my brother, ―I’m not going to that the rest of my life‖, so we gave it up and I went to Steelcase. I started our in the factory and then I was promoted to the office, to the PIC, and they promoted me out to shipping and I was a supervisor in shipping and I shipped to 20 �all of our foreign—to Japan, to North Carolina, and to Canada. I did that until I had thirty-two years at Steelcase and then I retired when I was fifty-nine years old and I’ve been real fortunate since then to have so many nice grand children and everything. 50:23 they look after me pretty good, so I have no complaints, but like I say, I’m no hero, the hero’s are the dead ones. That’s my life. Interviewer: How do you think that whole experience in the Marine Corps wound up affecting you, aside from the injury, the rest of that experience there, was it a good one for you or what did you gain from it? At first when I got out I had trouble because I would see that guy in the hole with me, and I can still see those guts after sixty some years, I can still see that. 51:17 I was fortunate that I was strong enough—we got a lot of these kids coming back for Iraq that are committing suicide and people, a lot of people, kind of look down on them and that, but until you have been in the war and heard this screaming and hollering and the blood, nobody can believe what these kids over in Iraq are going through. Over there they don’t know who the enemy is and we knew out in front of us. Over there, I could be talking to you and you could go outside and shoot me. They’re going through things that the average people have no idea and that’s why--I play poker twice a week and I’m not in favor of Bush and I have some thing that bother me. 52:19 This one day this one guy said, ―You know you’re talking about the President?‖ I said, ―Isn’t this a great country that I can stand here and call him names and not be afraid that you’re going to go and tell somebody?‖ In some other countries they could go and tell them what I said about their leader and they come and throw me in jail. I said, ―that’s what I fought for, freedom of 21 �speech, and that’s why I’m calling him names‖. Over in Iraq, I just can’t believe what these kids are going through. 52:57 The average person has no idea. Interviewer: No they don’t and we have no draft. In Vietnam they had some of the same thing, but you had the draftees. Eventually you had the public outcry because of that. All of this is why it’s important that you come in here and tell us what you saw because it’s a reminder that war is not just a chess game or a ball game, it’s a really, really nasty business, and they do some terrible things. 53:27 People just don’t realize it that when you hear this screaming and yelling, ―Corpsman, ―Corpsman‖. I’ll never forget seeing this one Sargent, he went running there and his legs were blown off and he was running on just stumps and he was screaming—I can still see him running, and, of course, he dropped dead. People just have no idea what they’re going through today and right now red, white and blue runs through my veins, but I’m still bitter about him being in Iraq and these guys, what they are going through. You can’t explain it and nobody can really understand what those kids are going through. 54:19 Those kids are coming back and committing suicide from things they saw and done, and the average person, just like now, who gives a heck is what I think. I served my country, so what? Interviewer: More people care than you might think, and just by you telling your story and encouraging people to do that, it does get their attention and actually part of this project includes talking to people who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan and recording their stories too, so we don’t forget. So, all of this, it’s important for a lot of the reasons that you just said. I want to thank you for coming in here and talking to me today. 22 �Well, you know what I think they should do, I think that in school they should start out every morning they should say the pledge of allegiance. Every morning they should sing the national anthem. 55:16 How many people actually know the national anthem? We got away from that and I don’t think today that they really give a hoot about me, or what I went through. I’m sure, like a guy said to me the other day, and he was an old timer, he said, ―you know, what do you think the youth of today would do if we were attacked? I don’t think they would go‖. Well, I don’t think that at all. I think if we were attacked our youth would join in just like that guy did because in WWII as soon as we were attacked they lined up to get in there and I have enough faith in my youth that they would do the same thing, but to go over and fight a was like in Iraq, I don’t know what were fighting for. 56:15 I can see why the youth of today says ―to heck with it‖, but if anybody attacked us, I think they would be there. Interviewer: I work with people of that are all the time and I expect that they would. I have faith in our youth because the majority are good people, but they have so many things that they can get into trouble with today and the percentage is actually small, but the papers are full of it. I’m toughly convinced that they would defend our country. We did it for the rite to call our leaders any names we want to. We got a bunch of squirrels in Washington D.C. that—I won’t go into that, but I’m just a little bitter about--Interviewer: Sometimes we can vote them out of office. That’s what we should do, I’m an Independent myself, but that’s the sad part, a lot of Democrats and Republicans, if they put up a jackass, they would vote for them. 57:26 They don’t look at—you know you can’t agree with everybody and I think—I voted 23 �Independent and I voted Republican, and I voted Democrat, and I think you should listen to the. You can’t agree with everything, but you should balance it out and see which is the closest. I don’t think we should have two parties myself, but this is why it’s a free country. In Ottawa County, if you’re a Democrat you better not run because you’re going to get voted out, but that’s why we fought, for the freedom of speech, the freedom to vote the way we want, the freedom to call the President or commander a so and so and not be afraid of somebody coming over the next day and locking you up for calling him a this and that. 58:32 We have a great country. A great country and I hope our youth of today—I really, really hope they realize how lucky we are—like out at Grand Valley, you have students our there that can become doctors, lawyers, school teacher, business people. They got that freedom and they got it because the kids over there in WWI and WWII, they fought and they died for the privilege of you being able to grow up to be a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher or something. I think a lot of them don’t realize, like on Leno the other day—he has a program on there where they interview people on the street and they asked this one guy, they said, ―Who did we fight in WWII?‖ 59:31 Here he was a college student, and he said, ―the French‖. I thought, ―Holy smokes, the French?‖ Then they said, ―Who was President in WWII?‖ He said, ―I don’t know‖, and they asked, ―When was WWI?‖ One girl said, ―1952‖. I think more of that should be taught in our schools. 60:00 Like I say, sign the national anthem, because I’m an American and I love my county, but I think there’s a lot of things that we have a lot of things that we can improve on. Interviewer: That’s often going to be the case. Well, it makes for a good story, so thanks for coming in. 24 �Thank you 25 � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Austin, Robert (Interview transcript and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Austin, Robert Description An account of the resource Robert Austin was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and grew up on a farm. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in June, 1941 and trained first for the Marine Air Corps and then for the Marine Paratroopers. He eventually was assigned to the 5th Marine Division and was in the first wave of the landing on Iwo Jima. He was wounded soon after the landing and spent the rest of the war in hospitals. He re-enlisted after the war and played on a Marine baseball team prior to being discharged. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Kentwood Historic Preservation Commission (Kentwood, Mich.) WKTV (Wyoming, Mich.) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans United States. Marine Corps World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American 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 2008-12-04 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AustinRob 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/7e634b14ea73733b8ce278fe3d666a39.mp4 16cff773a8660eb41c54a271fe0f12be https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9d0dacc5ea88d46258bcadad3b2f4f2e.pdf abfaf8814dff21d0ddb4ba26654a21ea PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Randy Austin (39:08) (00:15) Background Information • • • • • Randy was born in Paw Paw, MI on December 30, 1945 He grew up on a grape farm and graduated from high school in 1964 He continued working on the farm and was drafted in 1965 He was sent to Fort Wayne in Detroit where he went through screening and took many physical tests He had not been happy about being drafted and did not know much about what was going on in Vietnam (2:30) Basic Training in Fort Knox, KY for 8 weeks • • • • • • He began training in the winter and was beat down a lot and felt like he was being brain washed It was hard for Randy to adjust and there were many men who were constantly picked on He began weapons training with M-14s He took two weeks on leave in April to see his family Randy was talked into joining for one more year, so spent three years into the Army altogether Randy then began working on aviation electronics (6:20) New Jersey • • • • • • Randy was transferred to a very nice base in New Jersey, which was like the “country club of the Army” After one week he was transferred to Fort Gordon in Georgia because his enlistment in aviation electronics superseded his draft orders Had he stayed in New Jersey, he would have ended up working on communications in Panama Georgia was very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter; he was there for 26 weeks They slept outside in Augusta in tents during the winter Randy then began basic training with electronics for 10 weeks (10:00) Two Years in Germany • Randy flew a commercial flight from New Jersey to Germany • They landed in Frankfurt and then took a train to a base in West Germany �• • • • • Randy was doing many odd jobs in addition to working with electronics No one had to work on KP because they took money out of their own paychecks to pay civilians to do the job Randy was working in headquarters with the maintenance battalion He was working on maintaining tanks and armament repair He eventually became an aviation electronics technician (16:40) Every Day Activities • There were not too many supervisors on the base • Randy had his own car and often traveled • He used his ID card for his passport and often went to France • He found that Spain had the most secure border • Randy took leave every chance he got and traveled all over Europe • He found that Europeans were very nice to Americans • No Europeans were worrying about the Soviets or the Cold War • Many men were worried that they would be pulled from their service and sent to Vietnam • They often heard the news of what was going on in Vietnam and it was always bad (20:40) Guard Duty • During guard duty, nothing interesting happened and Randy just stood around in the cold • It was always very hard to stay awake • His superiors had tried to get him to enlist longer, but there was no way he would do it • Many of the men Randy worked with flew their wives to Germany to live off base • They had inspections by the General every Saturday • Randy felt that the army was like gym class all day long; you did not want to do it, but looking back, it was not that bad (24:25) Discharge • They received the Stars and Stripes magazine and got TV news through the military, but it was all censored • Randy was discharged in a timely manner and got back to the US shortly after • Randy had three older brothers in the service during the Korean War • After being discharged he began working on the family farm again • He then began working for Michigan Bell � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Austin, Randy (Interview outline and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Austin, Randy Description An account of the resource Randy Austin was born in Paw Paw, Michigan on December 30, 1945 and was drafted shortly after graduating high school in 1965. He was not happy about being drafted and expected to be sent to Vietnam. Instead he began training in aviation electronics and was sent to a base in Germany to work on electronics maintenance for an armored unit. He said the base in Germany was very laid back and he took every moment he had off to travel around in Europe. 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 United States. Army Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American 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 2008-05-15 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AustinR 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/404dfab82d7c06c655cd4cfceae8a6ef.mp4 a2b9c8197c11f89b7d5d1092e0055a9d https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8368799d13a55dc8fabc425e6f3c431a.pdf 79be75ffd2affd3c2f457546d4fee06c PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Jack Austhoff (31:42) Pre-Enlistment • Born September 15, 1948 (0:25) • Born in Grand Rapids, MI (0:35) • Attended different schools for K-9 (0:45) • Attended Caledonia High School (1:20) • Has a child living in Woodstock, GA (1:45) • Two other children live in the Grand Rapids area (2:00) • Graduated from Caledonia in 1966 (2:45) Enlistment • Enlisted in the Army in 1967 (2:50) • He and a friend joined together under the buddy system (3:15) • Boot camp was a little scary (3:40) • Very different from what he was used to (3:50) • There was a lot of running, formations, long marches (4:20) • Had very tough instructors (4:30) • Knew there was an end to boot camp, which made it bearable (5:00) • Served in the Vietnam War (5:20) • Spent a year and a half in Germany (5:30) • Served more time in Stockton, CA (5:45) • There were many riots in Germany at the time (6:45) • Was a repair parts specialist in Germany (7:00) • Began working on early computers while in Germany (7:30) • Did not see combat (7:40) • Best tour of duty was while in Stockton (8:30) • Had temporary duty for Presidio, San Francisco (8:45) • Had training on Saturdays for different things, as well as his normal clerical duties during the week (9:40) • Had a great time while in California (10:00) • Did not receive any medals other than service and sharpshooter medals (10:30) • Stayed in touch with family through phone calls (10:50) • Food in Germany was different than America food (11:15) • Had really bad food in Basic Training (11:40) • Was in a supply unit, so was never without supplies (12:00) • Had bowling alleys and movie theaters to keep them entertained (12:50) • Had a chance while in Germany to go to Augsburg, and had a month of convalescent leave (14:00) • Visited an exchange student from high school who lived in northern Germany (14:15) • Made some great friends in the Army, and was respected by his peers (16:00) �• • Was very excited to get out of the military (16:40) Was discharged in California (17:20) Post-Enlistment • Came back to Michigan and bought a brand new car with his discharge money (17:54) • Did not go to college when he came back, went straight to work (17:50) • Installed security systems in banks when the FDIC was formed (18:40) • Had several close friends in the Army, but one committed suicide (19:10) • Belongs to the American Legion (19:30) • Is not heavily involved with the American Legion due to his job (20:30) • Does not regret going in to the service (20:50) • Retains the discipline he learned in the military (21:15) � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Austhof, Jack (Interview outline and video), 2004 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Austhof, Jack Description An account of the resource Jack Austhof, born on September 15, 1948, enlisted in the US Army in 1967 during the Vietnam War with a friend under the Army's buddy system. He spent a year and a half in Germany as a repair parts specialist in a supply company. He did not see combat, but saw rioting in Germany. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Bowen, Sara (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 United States. Army Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American 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 2004-12-08 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AusthofJ 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/9444c6ac3ff9a8548d2238a48a78bd80.mp4 1f90759d55c153d3933159d92a8cc5fd https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3d6158c2982ed1cbd3bb1fc12cd0a0ab.pdf a962563f8e9a5ac1fb2a639019bccc73 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Richard Astrauckas (00:52:22) Pre-Enlistment (00:15) • Childhood (00:25) • • •Astrauckas was born in Manchester, CT on August 12th 1925. (00:30 Family (00:41) • Astrauckas’ father was a laborer for a mill while his mother worked for a meat company. (00:42) •Gives a brief background of his parents’ journey from Lithuania to America (00:51) Education (01:17) • • Astrauckas left high school at age 16 as a junior to pursue other things. He later went back and completed high school and got his GED. His Job (01:21) • Briefly mentions the responsibilities he received while working for an aircraft company and later duties in a hospital. (01:23) Enlistment/Training (01:41) • Background to Joining (01:44) • • • At age 18, he signed up for the U.S. Navy except that his mother wouldn’t sign the papers for him to go, so he later joined the Merchant Marines because the government was drafting men at that time. Briefly elaborates on his thoughts/feelings the day after Pearl Harbor was attacked. (02:07) Continued to stay up-to-date with war events as they unfolded before joining the Merchant Marines. (03:35) Why he joined (03:38) •Joined Merchant Marines in November 1943 because he couldn’t get into the Navy. Astrauckas remembered first being enthralled about the Merchant Marines as a boy after reading about trans-cable steamers. (04:26) • Where he went and trained (04:30) • Reported to New Haven, CT where he was told to report to Hoffman Island, NY for basic training. After basic he attended a 3 week course in cooking and baking. (04:45) Soon afterwards, the men were told that they �would be shipping out. • Astrauckas describes the Hoffman Island facility in some detail and a particular Austrian chef. (05:30) Active Duty (07:06) • 1st Voyage Activities (08:06) • Was shipped out from Hoffman Island in March 1944 and was sent o Baltimore, Maryland where he boarded a Liberty ship bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia. He mentions that the ship carried general cargo. (07:45) •From Halifax they went to Scotland where they joined up with another convoy of ships and from there went down to Island of Skye and back down to London, England. (08:10) •Astrauckas makes mention of a sailor named Emmanuel who gives him a brief sailing family history. (09:14) •Encountered no U-boat activity during their Atlantic crossing.(09:37) •About 750 troops quartered in the city of London including Astrauckas. While there he toured Hammond and London. (10:36) • Normandy Invasion (10:52) • Briefly describes events of June 5th 1944. (11:15) •On June 6th, 1944 he was one of many merchant marines to help in the transporting of troops through the straits of Dover to Normandy. The Germans kept up a continuous barrage of fire on their ships with their 6-inch gun barrels causing one ship to keel over at one point. (11:49) • Astrauckas related how he was listening to music while rockets fired from the ships to shore. (12:51) •Arrived at Normandy on D+1 and unloaded British/Canadian troops on Juno. (13:01) •Briefly describes the fierce battle environment that British and Canadian forces faced while pushing inland at Juno and Sword. That day his ship had made 7 transports and landed 750 Canadians ashore up until August 5th. (14:35) •Astrauckas mentions that his ship was hit by a torpedo or missile killing 2 British quartermasters. (15:35) Relates how they abandoned ship �and went over to the USS Woodwork. (16:37) Later on they returned to their abandoned ship to perform salvage operations and assess damages. Briefly describes what ended up happening to their ship afterwards. (19:02) • Living/daily life aboard ship (19:14) • Relates how he served in the officers’ mess aboard ship and how after that experience went to Glasgow, Scotland where he received retraining. (19:45) Boarded the RMS Mauretania for home. •Relates the treatment of German/Japanese prisoners and shares his thoughts on their treatment. (22:18) • 2nd voyage (23:07) • Took 15 days leave and then went to Baltimore where he signed up for a ship that departed from New Orleans. Took 36 days to go from New Orleans to New Guinea. (23:07) Anchored at Hollandia, New Guinea sometime in 1944. Briefly describes his time there. (24:17) Soon afterwards he went on to take part in the invasion of Luzon. (24:57) •His brief involvement in Luzon involved the unloading of supplies and men. Once that was completed he returned to Hollandia. All the while he was learning radio skills from ship radio operators. (26:08) • Other activities in America and abroad (28:05) • Astrauckas describes in vivid detail how he ended up back on Hoffman Island, NY and taking a 20-week course in radiology. (28:35) Following the end of the war, an officer kept him around so he could complete his studies. (29:15) •After getting his radio license he describes helping ship German prisoners-of-war from Houston back to Le Havre, Germany in Europe. (30:47) • Got his 1st ship and went from New York to Houston. (31:02) In Houston he became a junior officer and from there decided to go to San Francisco. (31:44) •Briefly describes contacting a friend and his interview with a certain Capt. Treadway. Afterwards, he was on per diem and full pay with no ship. (32:42) • Briefly mentions his part in taking a Mexican ship called, which later sailed from San Francisco to Mobile, Alabama where it was �decommissioned. (33:54) • Further mentions taking a train back to San Francisco where he signed a year’s contract to run a coast-island ship. His ship was responsible for transporting personnel from Honolulu to Gateway for R&R. (34:16) • Soon afterwards, he resigned from his post after 6 months, to finish high school. (35:10) Briefly mentions his plane flight from Honolulu to Oakland. (36:40) • Astrauckas mentions working a 3rd shift job while taking classes. He eventually got his GED and graduated from high school in 1946. (37:54) • • After seeing how his old-war buddies lived he decided to go back to the sea. Went to Brooklyn Army Base and resumed his duties sailing army transports. His responsibilities consisted ferrying personnel from Greenland to Baffin Island for 6 months. (38:12) Briefly describes his experience up in the Arctic. (39:08) • For a short time he worked for the American-Hawaiian Lines (39:57) and then mentions his participation aboard the American ship Coral Sea and their various stops at European ports. (40:54) •Astrauckas briefly mentions his involvement with the Marshall Plan back in 1948 to feed starving Greeks. (42:40) Describes the atmosphere and what Communists involvement in the area consisted of. Took a couple months for Greek laborers to unload food from the relief ships. (43:16) • Why he left the Merchant Marines (43:19) • Astrauckas left the service, in due part, because he had spent 7/8 of his time at sea while the other part was that it was time to cleanly cut his romance with the sea. (44:16) After the Service (44:17) • Life after the war (44:20) • • After being discharged, Astrauckas worked as a travel auditor auditing stores until 1950. (44:51) Military service after the service (44:53) • Astrauckas was drafted into the Army in 1950 for the Korean War. Finished basic training and was promoted from recruit to private. Upon completing basic he wanted to know where he was going to be sent. �(45:30) •Met with an army officer in Classification/Assignment office and found out that he couldn’t go to Korea because his parents had been Lithuanian and himself being 1st-generation American. (46:30) •Ended up going to Camp Gordon radio school where he went on to become an instructor there. (48:13) • Other Experiences (48:20) • After being discharged, he finds out that he was put on detached service in the signal corps. Spent his army career as a radio instructor from 50’ to 52’. (48:25) •Astrauckas goes on to describe attempts at further schooling at MIT or UConn but couldn’t because of financial reasons. (49:57) Meets his wife soon afterwards. • Further mentions his different career experiences and finally settling down to work for a telephone company because it only required 2 years of college education. (51:17) • Astrauckas wraps up by sharing his thoughts on his military training and how it gave him the self-confidence and persistence to do everything he set out to do. (52:22) � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Astrauckas, Richard (Interview outline and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Astrauckas, Richard Description An account of the resource Richard Astrauckas served with the Merchant Marines from 1943 to 1948 during World War II and with the U.S. Army from 1950 to 1952 during the Korean War. He discusses his pre-enlistment years, enlistment and training in the U.S. and sea voyages abroad with the Merchant Marines. He describes his experience of the Normandy Invasion and carrying of supplies and cargo to European ports and elsewhere. Astraukas further mentions his involvement in Greece during the Marshall Plan and peacetime service during Korea. 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 Merchant mariner World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Merchant marine--United States 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 2008-05-21 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AstrauckasR 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/4a1632dbac23058a13d2be2b1c6df4b4.mp4 914675366a473c742e5cbe4a7925e9d6 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e75abccbe99d76cfdbcceb06a24d6064.pdf 2ff6051213d90d2588d99836a2dfb16b PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Bob Arntz Length: 16:34 (00:15) Background Information • Bob was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan on June 8, 1944 • He went to Greenville high school and worked on his father’s dairy farm • After graduating from high school Bob got a job working in a factory • He later enlisted in the Army at a recruiting center in Detroit in 1968 (4:30) Training • Bob was sent to Fort Knox in Kentucky in February of 1968 for training • He went through 8 weeks of basic training and was sent to Maryland • Bob went through another 14 weeks in mechanic school (7:20) Vietnam • Bob was sent to Vietnam in October of 1968 • He worked as a mechanic as a while, but did not enjoy the dirty work • He then worked driving semis for transportation all over the country • There were mines all over the place that they had to work to avoid • Bob drank a lot of beer while in Vietnam, but did not have many memorable experiences in the country (8:55) Fort Riley, Kansas • After serving in Vietnam, Bob was sent to a Fort Riley for about 15 months • The base was made up of very old buildings and Bob eventually moved off base �• While in Kansas he drove 10-ton semi trucks • Bob enjoyed living in Kansas and really liked the weather (11:20) After the Service • After being discharged, Bob moved back to Michigan to be with his family • It took him 1.5 years to find a decent job • He began working in Grand Rapids, eventually got married, and remained at the job in Grand Rapids for 15 years • Bob became a much more responsible person through his years in the service • He now believes that everyone should spend 1-2 years in the service � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Arntz, Bob (Interview outline and video), 2004 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Arntz, Bob Description An account of the resource Bob Arntz was born in 1944 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. After graduating from high school Bob worked in a factory for a while before enlisting in the Army in 1968. Bob went through basic training in February of 1968 at Fort Knox, Kentucky. After training at Fort Knox and in Maryland, Bob was sent to Vietnam in October of 1968. Bob drove semi trucks and helped transport supplies in Vietnam. 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 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 2004-06-26 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ArntzB 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/ff483618ff74907e965c976874832f50.mp4 649a19279b670a7c9b9457be542f649d https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ffd3f77fe039256ee1073dff2ca63c0a.pdf 4bde0c1fcaa09d3a88caa61a623ab5ee PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Larry R. Armstrong (18:15) Pre-Enlistment • Born in Livingston, TN (1:40) • Was a shoe shine boy when he was 8 years old (2:00) • Became a boxer when he was in his teen years (2:20) • Tried to run away and join the service, but his mother found out (2:35) • Tape is edited poorly; just the audio ends, but comes back with audio and visual Enlistment • Joined the Marines (3:45) • Very strict code of conduct (4:00) • Had an acting black sergeant named Ingraham [Ingram?](4:50) • Sergeant’s father was president at Fisk University (5:15) • Left Camp LeJeune on December 7th, 1943 (5:30) • Went to Pearl Harbor (5:50) Marshall Islands • Went to Marshall Islands 2 months later for 8 months (6:15) • Did not do any fighting, just cleanup (6:25) • Burned out trees, stood guard duty (6:50) • Had to use code words, because Japanese were still on the islands (7:10) • Had some Japanese POWs, but did not have access to them (7:30) • Stayed in touch with his family through letters, but couldn’t say much (9:40) • Food wasn’t all that good, but kept them alive (9:50) • Were supplied very well (10:05) • Felt strange not being able to see family for long periods of time (10:30) • Often went to the beach at night when he couldn’t sleep (10:50) • Mail call was most important time of the day (11:00) • Somehow found a piano, and sometimes had a sing-along (11:25) • Plenty of gambling on the Islands (11:45) • Went back to Maui, HI, and was there when the bombs were dropped on Japan (13:10) • Was processed out in November of 1945 (13:20) Coming Home • Was attached to the 4th Marine Division (13:30) • Did not see any of the casualties (13:50) • Came back by boat, stayed up all night to see the first lights of San Francisco (14:15) • Stayed on Treasure Island for 6 days, then boarded an aircraft carrier and was sent to San Diego (14:30) �• • • • Went to Camp Pendleton (14:50) Went on leave in Los Angeles for a week after he arrived (15:00) Visited Club Alabama (15:30) Did not receive USO tours while he was on the Islands (16:00) � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Armstrong, Larry (Interview outline and video), 2003 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Armstrong, Larry Description An account of the resource Larry Armstrong was born in Livingston, Tennessee. He joined the Marines and attended boot camp at Camp LeJeune. After boot camp, he was sent to the Marshall Islands to do clean up work such as clearing roads and standing guard. He was sent to Maui, Hawaii, and was there when the bomb was dropped on Japan. 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 United States. Marine Corps World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American African-American soldiers 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 2003-08-18 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ArmstrongL 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/b2a5e2b8fcb48a883fc57ad0e1584c0a.mp4 fd1cecd183e183d0b2b905fcb90c9d7d https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/eac40e377056536e7101f40bdbdf1286.pdf e3419816a8c8dffc6eb2ece3dc5583f8 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Wayne Anderson (01:18:05) Background (00:11) Wayne Anderson introduces himself (00:11) Born March 10, 1924 in Ionia Michigan (00:35) Doesn’t remember much before grade school (01:06) Emerson School, still standing today, and it was an old elementary school when he was there. (01:22) • Mother was a housemaid and his father worked all the time, commercial baker (02:08) • High School no longer stands, had built a new one when he was going into it • Went to WV Lincoln School, it was a junior high (03:48) • Ionia High School o Didn’t play sports or instruments (04:26) • Graduated in 1942 (05:43) • Didn’t hear any speeches by Adolf Hitler (06:27) • Anderson and interviewer have a good time reminiscing about radios (07:10) • Discuss giving radio to nursing home radio museum and price inflation (10:03) Employment Before Service • Worked for Rexall Drug Store for three years (10:21) • Got a job at a factory making jeep seats and tarps for the service o Got paid more at the factory then at the drug store, quit on the spot of the offer (11:01) Enlistment (11:23) • He was drafted o Remembers the words: “Your friends and neighbors have chosen you” (11:23) • Sent to Camp Custer in Battle Creek, Michigan o Spent three weeks here for pre-basic training (12:00) • Didn’t travel a lot before his service, he was scared and confused because he didn’t know what the future held for him (12:14) • He got drafted at age 18 • Sent to Jefferson Barracks in Missouri for basic training o “Hell hole of the nation” (14:44) • Basic training, worked to the ground o Officers were mean (14:55) • Woke up at 5:30 a.m. o Had to make beds, clean up, and get dressed in minutes then run out for roll call • Couldn’t even use the restrooms before roll (16:21) • • • • �Could choose where he went into training o Cook, armaments, airborne • He took up armaments (18:15) • Learned how to take apart a gun and put it back together (18:58) • Sent to Lansing Michigan to learn about guns • He didn’t go visit his family in Ionia when he was in Michigan because he didn’t have time or transportation (19:54) Training (21:56) • Went to Hamiliton Field in California o Permanent place, brick buildings o Was here for three weeks (21:56) • March Field, now its March Air Base o Stayed here for a long time (23:11) • Put on a train and sent to Kansas City, then on to Boston to a military camp near there (24:06) • Sat around, nothing to do while waiting for their assignment (25:10) • Taken to New York, marched into a warehouse and told they were aboard the Queen Elizabeth, they did not realize they had entered onto a boat o En route to England o Ship traveled alone because it went very fast (26:25) England (28:16) • Nice, hot weather(28:16) • King’s Cliff Air Base in England 1943 (30:35) • Argues about planes with the interviewer o P-51 Mustangs won the war o They could fly to Berlin and back (32:08) • At King’s Cliff Air Base for two years while he was in Europe (33:02) • Set out P-51 Mustangs and loaded them up with ammo and repaired them on the D-Day invasion (33:24) • Went to Manchester when he was given weekend passes o Went to pubs, and took girls out (38:30) • Weren’t bombing too heavily by Germans when he got there o Germans probably didn’t know there was an Air Base there o The Germans were testing heavily with the V2 rockets • Could hear an explosion from up to four miles away (41:20) • Talked about buzz bombs • “If you could hear them you were safe” (42:32) • He was not married when he went to war o He looked for a new girl everywhere he went, didn’t tie himself down (44:32) Battle of the Bulge (45:57) • Took six men from every air base to be sent down to Hamilton Air Base for basic infantry training to be sent out to reinforce those at the battle of the Bulge o Intensive • Sent to France once his training was done • �Camp Chesterfield, 30 miles from Paris o Never took a leave to go to Paris (47:41) • He was not needed for combat duty when his training was done o Turned to the south, went to Lyon o Told not to drink the water, drainage pipes went right into water supply (48:21) • Made camp in Marseille, France o Was here when war ended (51:12) • Spent three weeks on machine gun guard duty at a German P.O.W. camp o The inmates were given spoons to eat with due to fear of the German soldiers using them as shanks � Given pails to be filled with food to eat out of (51:28) • Told to board a ship that was headed for the South Seas theatre in the Pacific • When they got on to the ship they were told that they were going home, lots of tears of joy o Happy when they saw the Statue of Liberty (57:07) • Docked in New York, doesn’t remember where he went after that o Thinks he went back to Boston (59:18) • Sent back to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri (59:55) • At Jefferson Barracks, a group of men were marched over to a building and told to find a seat, they were then told they were honorably dismissed from the Army Air Corps o Put through demarcation procedures (01:00:00) After the Service (01:02:10) • Dropped off in Grand Rapids on his return trip • He was in Calais, France when he heard about the bombs being dropped on in Japan o He doesn’t feel that the US had a very good idea of the exact capabilities of the bombs (01:05:07) • Met his wife and they had a few dates then got married after six weeks (01:06:00) • Is sad about his wife and her mental condition that she has developed • They discuss their marriages (01:10:08) • He was not a part of unions when he joined the workforce after the war o Thy control your life and ruin the economy (01:14:50) • Worked on a punch press (01:15:14) • Quit his job because he was given the choice to join the union or be fired, so he quit to stand up for his beliefs on the matter (01:16:06) • Went to college for a few semesters, GI Bill did not help him with all the funding o Had a baby coming so he had to drop out to get a job to pay for the child and his family o Moved around a lot (01:17:06) • **Cuts out** � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Anderson, Wayne S. (Interview outline and video), 2007 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Anderson, Wayne S. Description An account of the resource Wayne Anderson served as an armorer in the Army Air Corps from 1942 to 1945. He was based in England and serviced fighter planes, primarily P-51 Mustangs, that escorted bombing missions. At the time of the Battle of the Bulge, he was assigned to infantry training in France, but was not needed for combat. He served as a prison camp guard before being sent back to the US for his discharge. 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 United States. Army. Air Corps World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American 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 2007-06-29 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AndersonW 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/d26c7988d1d574dc0f9cfda7794ccac7.mp4 4ab41cc1e8d4dd8139a730c648e8ea7d https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/266fbcd8d0b1a3746e8efe92614dba79.pdf 6f77bc3a976428e7d6d9bf3cdc4668d2 PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW BOB ANDERSON Born: August 1948, Kalamazoo, Michigan Resides: Ada, Michigan Interviewed by: James Smither PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project, Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, August 24, 2012 Interviewer: Bob, can you start us off with some background on yourself? To begin with, where and when were you born? I was born in August of 1948, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Interviewer: Did you grow up in Kalamazoo? Probably for three or four years, and then my father went back into the Air Force, he was a veteran of WWII, and he was tired of the rigmarole of civilian life. He was a pilot so he applied for and the air force granted him a return to duty, so he went back in the service and ended up retiring from the Air Force. Interviewer: Did he rejoin while the Korean War was going on? I think it was—of course I was little, so I didn‟t—I think towards the tail end maybe of Korea. Although he was a pilot, he was not a combat pilot. He was a personnel and transport pilot. 1:13 Interviewer: They needed a fair number of those while the Korean War was going on probably. Yeah, and we lived in a lot of different places, you know, we were in Charleston, South Carolina, we were in Florida for a few months while he was transitioning into other types of aircraft. The majority of the time, before I went in the service, he was stationed at 1 �Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. That‟s where I went to high school and graduated, in Maryland. Interviewer: What year did you graduate from high school? I graduated in 1966 and proceeded to go to junior college for a year, and I lived with my uncle, believe it or not, down on the gulf coast in Mississippi. He was a professor at one of the colleges in the gulf coast junior college district and I loved living with him and that was quite an experience. 2:11 Interviewer: Where did you go from there? Then I transferred and I went to Michigan State and started there in the fall of 1967. I really didn‟t know how to study, so I spent a lot of time doing book work, actually counting the hours and things like that, but I didn‟t know how to translate the studying into regurgitation on the tests, so as a result I ended up getting academically dismissed from Michigan State in the spring of 1968. Interviewer: While you were on the Michigan State campus, was there much going on by way of peace movement stuff or protest activities or things like that that you were aware of? 3:08 If there was I was really unaware of it. I was pretty insulated as a kid growing up. I mean, my parents didn‟t keep me from anything and I was free to do what I wanted to do, but I just was kind of oblivious to world events, I guess if you will. Interviewer: Did you think of the possibility that somebody might draft you or anything like that? Well, when I came—my parents, again, were living in Maryland, so after I got dismissed I packed my stuff up and came back to Maryland feeling kind of like a failed something 2 �because I had done so well in the junior college. I could have gone to junior college again in Maryland, but there was something in the back of my mind that said, “No, you‟re really not ready for this yet”. 4:07 So, I talked to my dad quite a bit and he thought it may be good if I went in the service to get some free training, and when I got out of the service and was no longer interested in going to college, I would at least have a trade to go to. So, we kind of talked it over and my father‟s very handy, so he suggested that maybe refrigeration equipment repair, you know. People always need—air conditioners were kind of just coming into vogue in 1968 I guess, and, of course, everybody has a refrigerator and so maybe that might be something good. I didn‟t know anything about any of that, but it sounded good. So I enlisted in the Army to be a refrigeration equipment repairman. 5:08 Interviewer: When did you enlist? I enlisted on my brother‟s birthday, May 6th 1968. Interviewer: Now this is a point when the army needed people pretty badly, the Tet Offensive had just gone on and all that kind of stuff. Were you able to actually dictate the specific type of training you received? I was, I actually had a guaranteed, I have that at home in my paperwork, still, it was a guaranteed enlistment for that particular school, which was to be held at Fort Belvoir, which was just across the Potomac River about ten miles from my home, so I thought that would be kind of interesting too, so yeah, the army guaranteed me that I would go to refrigeration equipment repair school. 6:01 Interviewer: All right now, where in fact did they—what did you do for basic training? 3 �I took basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, home of the infantry. Then I took—had I gone to the refrigeration equipment repair program, I would have then gone to Fort Belvoir, but during the reception, reception station period, many of us take tests and I had scored high enough on the testing to be considered for Officer Candidate School, so I thought, “Well, if I‟ve got to “—by then Vietnam was, you know, two years ago Vietnam was a nonevent for me, even though my division, the 1st Cav, had fought bravely and honorably in the Ia Drang Valley, but that was my senior year in high school and that was still oblivious to me. 7:06 But, I had my choice to go to OCS, because I qualified, and once I said, “Yes, I‟ll do that”, then I gave up my right to go to refrigeration equipment repair school, so after basic training I went to Fort Dix, New Jersey. Interviewer: Now, back up a little bit and describe what your version of basic training was like. Well, the basic premise behind basic training, I think, is they want to tear you down and expunge all your thoughts of the civilian world and turn you into a soldier, so there‟s a lot of physical—back in those days they could really yell at you and everything. Now, I guess they do, but it‟s more on the QT. 8:01 They could call you whatever they wanted to call you and you really had no recourse to it other than say, “Yes drill sergeant”, and then do whatever pushups they wanted you to do or what have you. It was first aid training and drill and ceremonies, how to march, teach you how to do the manual of arms with your M14, and rifle marksmanship, of course, was a big thing. But, not everyone that goes through basic training ends up in a combat arm, or infantry or what have you, you know. Many of them did not sign off and some went to refrigeration equipment repair school, some of them went to welding, wherever the regular army folks, whatever 4 �they had signed up to do they went to those various posts and did there thing. How to find mines in the ground, we shot 3.5 rocket launchers and M72 LAWs, and pistol familiarization. 9:13 It was orientated toward infantry tactics, target detection, night evasion, escape evasion and things like that. Interviewer: How easy, or hard, was it for you to adjust to military life? I think for the most part my adjustment was fairly easy, primarily because my father was career Air Force and I had, even though from afar, I had some knowledge of what you‟re supposed to do, you know, you don‟t argue with everybody if somebody tells you to do something. Of course in basic training they‟re not going to give you anything illegal. 10:02 That may or may not have come later, but basic training, if they told you to get down and do a bunch of pushups, you got down and did as many as you could, you know. If they told you to run around the building five times, you ran around the building, there were no debates with the drill sergeants, you know. If the drill sergeant said, “Stand over in the corner on one foot”, and went away, that‟s what you did. If you were smart you did what they told you to do. Interviewer: Did they have people who kind of just did get it, or put up a fight? There were a few that I guess couldn‟t be broken, or didn‟t want to be broken, and I would suspect that probably most of those were draftees. They were doing whatever they were doing and then Uncle Sam knocked on their door and said, you know, "You will report to wherever”, and they did. 11:05 They were rebellious, I suspect, because they didn‟t want to be there in the first place. I—my situation was a little bit different in that I enlisted, so even though my basic feeling might have been similar to theirs, I basically just kept my mouth shut because I signed up. 5 �Interviewer: Were you in pretty good physical shape at that point? Could you do all the PT stuff? I would say yes, I was much different than I am now days, but running was kind of a nonevent thing, and the pushups, you know, eventually I got pretty good with that. The only thing I really had trouble with is the overhead, we called them monkey bars, you had to do that every day before you went to chow and I wasn‟t very good at that at first because I didn‟t have good upper body strength, but eventually you learn how to do it. 12:09 Interviewer: How long was the basic training? It was about nine weeks, I think, eight or nine. Interviewer: Did you go straight from there into OCS? No, I went straight from there to Fort Dix for advanced training and in a lot of ways it was similar to basic. Of course, this is geared toward infantry now because I backed out of the other. It‟s more weapons, it‟s more radio procedure, it‟s not as much drill and ceremony, but, you know, more field exercises and more kind of tactical types of things and kind of gearing you up to—pretty much most of the people knew where they were going, if they were in that infantry AIT company they were going to Vietnam. 13:03 Interviewer: Now were you trained by people who had already served there? In basic training yes, and in a little lesser degree in AIT, and the company commander had not been there, either of my company commanders, basic or AIT had not been there, but all of the drill sergeants in basic training had been to Vietnam, and I‟ve got a pretty good memory of all of the names except for AIT and I don‟t remember many of their 6 �names. I think our platoon sergeant had been to Vietnam, but I can‟t be a hundred percent sure of that because it‟s just kind of a vague memory. Interviewer: Did they make much of an effort to simulate the physical conditions in situations you may encounter in Vietnam? Probably as much as they could, I mean the physical situation, you know, the terrain or the humidity, or the monsoons, or those types of things, they couldn‟t replicate. 14:09 Of course the jungle, they could replicate, but barring all of that I think they did a pretty good job. Interviewer: Did they prepare you to function in civilian areas and thing like that? We actually did two or three days of training on crowd control, or something, I forget what they called them, but yes, there was a class on dealing with civilians. Interviewer: Did they have like a simulated Vietnamese village set up, because some of the training places did? Not that I remember, I don‟t think so, but I know some of the other posts, like Fort Polk, I think they did. Interviewer: That would be harder to do in New Jersey for some reason. Well yeah 15:07 Interviewer: Once you complete AIT then, what’s the next stage? Then it seemed like I had a couple three days before I had to report to Fort Benning, and I reported there in middle of September, I think it was, or the first week of September, something like that, for infantry officer candidate school. There were about a hundred and twenty of us that started, and of course their focus was to turn all of you into lieutenants of infantry. The class day was long; the academics were hard for some. 7 �Really, I didn‟t have any trouble with the academics. 16:02 I didn‟t have any trouble, really, with the physicality of it, and some folks did, but it was geared strictly to take, probably by now, take a sixteen, seventeen week Army kid and make him a rifle platoon leader. Interviewer: Were most of the people you were with college graduates, or were they like you and maybe had some college or a little bit of that? I would say that in my platoon, and I would guess there were maybe twenty of us, probably half were college graduates and then the other half were probably like me with one to two years of schooling. Interviewer: Traditionally OCS has been, in a lot of situations, primarily college graduates, but they adjust the standards depending on how many people they need in part. 17:09 Well, I suspect that‟s true, you know OCS, military academies, and ROTC were primarily very, and still are, primarily commissioning sources for all branches of the service, but a lot of the guys were married, too. In my platoon probably thirty percent of the guys were married and then again if they were college graduates and they were married, they were in there because they got drafted. They didn‟t raise their hand with a four year degree and working in a good job, and say, “Well, I think I‟ll go in the Army that sounds good”, so Uncle Sam came and knocked on their door too. Many of them brought their wives down and I‟m sure it was quite difficult to have your wife, you know, five miles away, just off post, and here you are stuck with a hundred other guys, you know. 18:13 8 �Interviewer: In what ways were they giving you specific training, towards Vietnam? What kinds of things were they trying to prepare you for? Well, it was kind of more of the same, but it was more intense. Being more of the same infantry oriented, and there was a lot of map reading, there was artillery firing, and we had to learn how to adjust fire with an 81mm mortar, and tactical situations. You know a lot of it was classroom too, you know. They‟re showing a film on TV or something and all of a sudden it would stop and they would call out, “Company commander Anderson has now been killed, what do you do next?” 19:05 Hopefully I was awake when they called my name and I was able to give them something and then they would dissect what I had given them and then roll the film to see if what I had given them was what was supposed to have been done. The few times he called on me I was A, awake, and able to give him the proper result, but when you‟re, you being a professor know this too, I‟m sure you can look up from the lectern and see some students dozing off. And it was go, go, go, from the time that reveille started at 0500, or what have you, until lights out at 2100 or 2200, whatever it was. You run to wherever you‟re going, and it‟s hot in the fall in Georgia. 20:06 Then you get in an air conditioned building and it seemed like sometimes your fanny hit the seat and you were conked out, and they had ways to deal with that too, it was humorous in some regards sometimes. He would just speak out, “Ok, for all of you who are awake ignore my next command”, and then he would yell out, “On your feet”, you know and of course only the ones—you were conditioned to that, but if you were half asleep you didn‟t hear the previous command, so half of the class stood up, and then they got chastised a little bit, but it was humorous in some instances. Interviewer: How long did OCS last? 9 �OCS was twenty three weeks, I believe it was. Interviewer: So, it was not quite like the WWII model of the ninety day wonder. No, we still receive that moniker, so I guess we were twice as good. 21:07 Interviewer: There you go. All right, now once you get to the end of that do they give you a furlough or anything before they assign you? What happens? They did, order came down and some guys stayed right at Fort Benning to go to the tactical department or something. I stayed right at Fort Benning to go to a basic training unit to be a training officer, but there was a week or two in between. Interviewer: How long did you stay on as a training officer? I graduated on the 29th of March and I probably reported there in mid-April, so I was probably there about four months when I came down on orders for Vietnam. Interviewer: Now, what was life like on the other side of it? Now you’re training other people. 22:01 Well, the role of a 2nd Lieutenant in a basic training company is kind of like what you use to say about children you know, be seen and not heard, because we were gentlemen by an act of congress, but many of us were unsure of ourselves and, of course, you had the drill sergeant cadre there that really knew what they were doing, so if you were smart you kind of got out of their way and let them do what they were supposed to do, and you just watched and learned from that, and that‟s really what I tried to do. There was—we had a good company commander, he was—he had served with the 101st Airborne and our first sergeant was a two tour Vietnam guy and had been in Korea as well. 23:04 All of the other drill sergeants had been to Vietnam, so they knew what they were doing and they didn‟t need me to tell them what to do, so I tried to stay out of their way. 10 �Interviewer: Did you actually have any responsibilities then? You got a ton of responsibilities, you know, you‟re the mess officer, and you‟re the army emergency relief officer, and you‟re the, I can‟t even remember, the blood drive officer, and I mean there‟s a whole host of things that you have to do and those are just three. I can‟t even begin to list all of the extra duties that you have to do. Interviewer: There’s a lot of administrative and bureaucratic work, and that kind of thing, and in a way, that may be you’re best suited to do, at that point, because you haven’t been anywhere yet. 24:01 Right, and they‟re trying to give you some responsibility just to—not necessarily to build up your self-esteem or anything like that, but to make you feel comfortable with the fact, “Ok Jim, I need you to go over here and take three guys and do this”, and unless you had been in a working environment and had been a supervisor, most of us had never asked or told, or cajoled, people to do things. They tried to kind of break you in easy and just make you feel comfortable inside your uniform that says eighty percent of the people on this base have to salute you now. Interviewer: Now, you’re in sort of an odd situation in a way I would think, because you’re aware that sooner or later you’re going to go to Vietnam, and instead of being packed up right away you’re sort of cooling your heels at Fort Benning. Did you think about that much, one way or another, or did you just take things as they came? 25:10 You know, once you became an infantry—once I said I wasn‟t going to be a refrigeration equipment repairman, then my path was chosen and there was no question in my mind that I was ultimately going to end up in Vietnam. And again, I didn‟t dwell on that at all 11 �you know, it is what it is. I raised my hand and here I am, and if they keep me here for two years then that„s what I would have done. In fact, the senior lieutenant in our company had been there exactly that, when he graduated from Armor OCS, he stayed right at Fort Benning. He was in that company the whole two years and never went anywhere. 26:04 But, I didn‟t have any grand illusion that was going to happen to me. I was doing the best I could as a 2nd lieutenant and if it came then I would go on to the next step and do the best that I could there. Interviewer: So, what was your reaction when the call actually did come? I was apprehensive, of course, you know-- by then you‟re a whole lot different than you were a civilian, you know. Now you‟re getting the Army Times every week and you open up to the middle and “ninety killed” or whatever, and four of those were officers. I guess I was—I don‟t know if I was glad, I guess I knew that I was going to have to go there eventually, or pretty sure I was going to go there. 27:04 “I‟ve been here long enough, I‟ve got this duty assignment down pat, so let‟s go do what I was really trained to do and see what happens”. Interviewer: How do they physically get you out to Vietnam? Well, you came down on orders and you had to report to, or I had to report to, Travis Air Force Base in California and I guess I flew out there, I don‟t even remember how I got out there to be honest, I didn‟t drive, of course, I had a car, but I didn‟t drive out there, and I didn‟t take the train, so I must have flown. Interviewer: But you don’t have any particular recollection of flying? I don‟t have any particular recollection. Interviewer: Do you remember actually arriving in Vietnam? 12 �I do remember that. 28:03 A lot of folks remember that it was smelly and that it was hot and everything and I don‟t remember the smell. It was night, it was dark, I do remember the bus ride to the 90th Replacement Battalion and all of the bus, and many people will say this and the windows were open of course, but there was heavy mesh screening over the windows. I think one of us asked the bus driver, “What‟s up with that?” He said, “That‟s to keep the VC, or somebody from throwing a grenade inside the bus”. “Oh, I guess this is a real situation now, they got screened in buses so they can‟t throw grenades in and kill us”. Interviewer: Now, were you in the Saigon area at this point? Bien Hoa, 90th Replacement Battalion was where everybody newly arriving in the country went to, and from there you went to wherever you went. 29:12 Interviewer: How much time did you spend with the replacement battalion before they shipped you out? Probably three days, as I recall three days. We‟re getting uniforms and, of course, none of us knew where we were going initially. A couple of days later you came down on orders and I was assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division. Interviewer: In some situations, some replacement officers were actually asked to kind of list what their preferred assignments would be and pick three units. Did they have that for you or not? Well, that was in OCS where you listed your top three and I don‟t remember, but I don‟t think Vietnam maybe was number three, I guess Germany or something. Interviewer: But, within Vietnam you weren’t picking what divisions to go to or anything like that? 13 �Well, only when we went to what they called the First Team Academy. 30:05 Soldiers reduced that to FTA, which was the moniker of “screw the army”, basically. When I got there they asked us what unit we wanted to go to and I didn‟t know units from anything, you know. Some guys actually enlisted, West Pointers, they‟re sort of indoctrinated, you know for a lot longer than we were. I want to go to Custer‟s unit, or I want to go to the 5th Regiment or what have you, but I had a—they had kind of a map of the area and I remember looking at the 2nd Battalion, 7th Calvary regimental area, and I thought, “Well, their headquarters is surrounded by a whole bunch of fire bases”, and I thought, “Well that might be—what do I know, that might be a safe place to pick”. 31:08 So, my first choice was the 2nd of the 7th. They had already decided where I was going, that was actually embedded in code in the order I got. If I could ever find the key to that code it would be kind of interesting, but I didn‟t go to the 2nd of the 7th, I went to the 1st of the 7th, but that was no big deal either. And we were at the First Team Academy probably about three days , and they gave us weapons familiarization, and we shot a M79, and we did some rappelling, and I think, more than anything, it was just to get us acclimated to the heat. Then after that three or four days they said, “Ok, you‟re going to the 1st of the 7th”, “Ok”, you know. 32:07 I got on a C7 Caribou, you know, they led us by hand because there‟s nothing dumber than a 2nd lieutenant, you know, especially in a combat environment. “You‟re going to the 1st of the 7th”, “How do I get there?” “Oh, we‟ll take you down back to Bien Hoa and we‟ll take you right where you need to go, and then eventually there‟ll be a plane going to Quan Loi, and make damn sure you‟re on it”, “Ok”. Interviewer: What region of Vietnam was your unit based in? 14 �I was in III Corps, down south, probably northwest of Saigon. Interviewer: Between Saigon and the Cambodian border sort of? Yeah, probably fifteen miles from the Cambodian border Interviewer: What was the physical terrain like in that area? Immediately around the brigade base camp it was right in the middle of a rubber plantation. 33:03 The farther out you got to the individual firebases were single and triple canopy bamboo, trees and bamboo interspersed, and big clearings here and there. Interviewer: Was it fairly flat in that area? For the most part, yeah Interviewer: So, you go out to the brigade headquarters, and do you stay there initially or do you go out to your battalion? No, they took me to—again, I took that Caribou ride to Quan Loi and somebody knew I was coming. I jumped off the helicopter and walked up to the little hut there and there was an E4 or E5 just sitting there just—you know you—It‟s like you‟ve been transported to the moon, you know. You don‟t have anybody that you know, it‟s just, “Anderson you‟re going there, and I‟ll take you down, and you get on this plane and when you get off somebody will be there”. 34:09 Somebody was there, you‟re just kind of walking around, your eyes are this big, and you‟re thinking, “What the hell have I got myself into?” Then a guy says, “Lieutenant, or LT?”, and I go, “Yeah”, and he says, “You‟re going to the 1st of the 7th?” “Yeah”, and he says, “Well, jump in the Jeep”, and a quarter mile down the road they took me to battalion headquarters and I signed in, I guess. They know I was there, so I don‟t physically recall signing in, but then they said, “Go through this door and Colonel Drudick will—he‟s in a little enclosure back here and he‟ll talk to 15 �you”, so I said, “Ok”. 35:06 If you‟d seen the movie Apocalypse Now, I don‟t know if you have, but when Martin Sheen finally finds Marlin Brando, he‟s kind of talking and then Brando kind of leans forward out of the shadows, that was kind of—of course that movie came out after that experience, now that was kind of, looking back on it, that was kind of the experience I had. I‟m in there and Colonel Drudick is kind of in the shadow and then he kind of leans forward. We talked a little bit, you know, similar to what we‟re doing now, and he gave me a Garry Owen crest, which is the regimental crest for the 7th Cavalry, and he gave me a crossed saber similar to the 1 , and it had a 1, 7 because he was the 1st of the 7th commander. 36:01 he said, “I‟m assigning you to Alpha Company and Captain Keen is the CO and good luck”, and he shook my hand, I walked back out front and I said, “I guess I‟m going to Alpha Company”, and, of course, they knew that, and I said, “Duh, somebody lead me away again”. I didn‟t have a clue where Alpha Company was, fifty yards away or whatever. First sergeant was in the rear, they knew I was coming, and I spent no more than two days there getting a helmet and a rifle, getting a poncho liner, getting a pack, and getting some food, and then the company was being resupplied on the second or the third day, I don‟t remember now. 37:01 They said, “Tomorrow morning we‟ll take you out to company”, and I can‟t even remember now where I slept. The next morning I gathered up all my stuff and we went out and took the Charlie, Charlie, the commanding control helicopter, that‟s usually the first one that‟s going to the field, and jumped on that, it took us out to fire support base Westcott, that‟s where we were operating out of at the time, and I jumped off with the other guys and I said, “Now what?” He said, “Now we kind of wait until the log bird, the resupply helicopter, shows up and then the company will be moving to what we call a log site”, 16 �which is a supply site, and he said, “Then we‟ll take out the mail and all of the stuff that had been requested the night before, plus you”. 38:10 I said, “Ok”, so it seemed like it was a couple of hours before the log bird showed up ad they said, “Ok, LT”, we‟re going now‟, so I got on the helicopter and they took me out to where the company was. Interviewer: So, what happens when you get out there? Well, a couple of things. It was an interesting helicopter ride. I think the crew chief saw that I was new and he probably radioed to the pilot and he said, „We got a brand new f*%#ing Lieutenant here, let‟s give him a ride, maybe we can make him toss his cookies or something”. 39:06 That‟s the only thing I can think of because we backed out of the revetment and he pulled pitch and we went down the runway and then he was doing this, and flying map of the earth, and I thought it was great, like a rollercoaster ride. I was sitting on a box in the center of the thing with my feet sticking out, so I don‟t go tumbling out the door. I guess they finally got tired of that and figured, “We‟re not going to make him barf”, and that‟s the only thing I can think of because every other helicopter ride I had was never up, down, or sideways and banking, that‟s the only thing I can think of. They dropped me off and, of course, I knew Captain Keen was the company commander, and I said, “Where‟s Captain Keen?” 40:04 They said, “He‟s over there, the guy kind of standing up without a shirt on”, so I went over there and reported to Patrick J. Keen. A Captain, a farmer born in Garryowen, Ireland, actually he was, but I didn‟t find that out until later. He said, Welcome to Alpha Company”. Interviewer: Did you have a job with Alpha Company? I did, he assigned me as the mortar platoon leader, and I thought, “This is not going to be good for me or for anybody else”. That wasn‟t my—I mean we had familiarization and 17 �everything. I knew about it, but that wasn‟t really what I wanted to be, so I said, “Ok, where are they?” 41:00 He showed me where they were and at that time we were humping the 81mm mortar in the field, and base plate was eighty pounds, or something and the tube, and the tripod and the aiming stakes, and everybody in the platoon had to carry two mortar rounds it seemed like. I was mortar platoon leader for about—until the next resupply, and again, I think it was more—and we did fire it a couple of times, but it was acclimation to being in the field. Now you got all your rucksack stuff on, now it‟s kinda real. If something happens you‟ll be, you‟ll not be up front necessarily, you‟ll be back enough where you can see what‟s going on, and then again, like I said, that only lasted like until the next resupply. 42:03 The 2nd Platoon leader was sent back to become the executive officer and I moved up to be his replacement as the 2nd Platoon leader. Interviewer: Now, the time you were with the mortar platoon did much happen? Did they get in any fights or anything? We fired it more just for primarily, to get rid of some of the weight. I mean, you didn‟t fire it without the company commander's permission, of course, but I think it was more of an act, we‟re going to be moving out there 4,000 meters away, so let‟s drop three or four rounds out in there and announce that we‟re coming, I guess, but—of course, the guys that were in the mortar platoon, they just said, “Ok, we‟re going to shoot here”, and we knew where we were and they knew what to do. 43:05 And again, I didn‟t have to double check the FDC or any of that stuff. Here‟s the deal and charge two, or whatever, and shoot the mortar round 4,000 meters, or whatever it was, and so they did their thing. 18 �Interviewer: So, you get orders from someplace else if you use the mortars, or request, and then they okay it? Yeah, that would have been all kind of unknown to me. We weren‟t on the move when that was happening, we were—it seems like we got resupplied when I joined the company and we stayed there that night, and then the next morning a patrol was going out and Captain Keen wanted to shoot some 81mm and high explosive out into that vicinity and it seems like that‟s what we did. 44:07 It wasn‟t an actual in contact firing mission or anything like that. Interviewer: So, it was relatively quiet at the point when you join them? Yes Interviewer: So, what was it like leading a platoon then when you go take over there? Well, I had—I had two E6‟s, one was the platoon sergeant and one was the guy that was kind of training, I guess, to be a platoon sergeant. Then there was the dumbest lieutenant on the planet and that would have been me. Here I am a, say 4 [?] or something. Interviewer: Did the fellow you were replacing stay a little to get you oriented or just move right out? He moved right out Interviewer: Did anybody explain to you what you were supposed to be doing? Well, you‟re the platoon leader and now you have five months of commissioned service and you know that you‟re the guy that‟s now in charge, but nobody said, “This is the deal”. 45:11 Again, I was, I like to think smart enough as opposed to dumb enough, to just—you know, that first morning when I‟m really in charge, Captain Keen said, “Ok, 19 �you‟re going to go out and you‟re going to do a thousand meter patrol out and back”, and blah, blah, blah, “and you‟re going to go light”, which means you‟re just going to go out with your weapons and your ammo and your pack and all that is going to stay behind. We had a scout dog with us at that time, or with the company. “Take the dog with you”, and I said, “Ok”, so I got Sergeant Ikely and Sergeant Spencer and I said, “Ok, here we are and we‟ve got to go out a 1,000 meters and then go over a 1,000 meters and then come back”. 46:10 They said, “Ok”, and I said, “We leave in ten minutes”, or whatever, and they said, “Ok”, and then the dog handler was there and I said, “This is what we‟re going to do”, I guess, and he said, “Ok”. He knew why he was there; he walks around up front, up close, so the dog can smell. When the dog smelled something he, or she, went into what they call an alert status and freeze or what have you, so, away we went. Interviewer: Now, did the sergeant sort of tell you where to go in a line, or anything like that, or did you just kind of all start going out? 47:02 I don‟t know if they did, I don‟t remember if that was the patrol, the 1st patrol, where I started walking where I did, but if it wasn‟t, it was shortly after that. We‟d have a “point man” and we‟d have what we call a “slack man”. The slack man‟s basic job was to kind of cover and keep track of the route you‟re walking and then the squad leader and then me, so it either started with that patrol, or shortly after, that I walked fourth because you can‟t run anything if you‟re at the rear and you don‟t know what the hell‟s going on if you‟re at the rear. Sometimes you don‟t know what the hell‟s going on when you‟re fourth, but you have a better chance of knowing what‟s going on the closer you are to the front. 20 �Interviewer: Now, did you have a radio operator with you? 48:01 I did, and Gary May was my radio operator and he was right behind me, so we had gone maybe 700 meters and the dog alerted. Probably at that time I was probably sixth and the dog would have been in front of me, and we didn‟t always operate with dogs. In fact, as I recall, that was probably the only time. So, the dog freezes up and locks, and I thought, “What the heck is going on with this?” The people that had worked with dogs before knew what was going on and I said, “Well the dog‟s alerted, what does that mean?” He smells, or senses, or sees something, and my mind says, “Oh goodie, now what do I do?” 49:08 It‟s like the film is running and it‟s like they stop it. Ok, it‟s not now candidate Anderson it‟s Lieutenant Anderson, “Ok Lt. what are you going to do?” So, I called Ike, Sergeant Ikely, and I said, “Can you come up here?” And he did, and he said, “What‟s going on?” I said, “Well, the dog alerted”, and this was a nonevent to him because he had six months in the field, or something, and I said, „what do I do?” He said, “Well, normally what we would do is recon by fire. I go, “What the hell does that mean?” We didn‟t do any recons by fire in OCS or anything like that, you know, this is OJT for the most part. He told me what to do and he said, “But, before we do that you should radio back to the company commander and tell him what you‟re going to do, otherwise they‟ll hear the M60 go off and they‟ll think we‟re in contact or something”. 50:14 I said, “Ok”, and radioed Captain keen and said, “The dog alerted and we‟re going to recon by fire”, and he said, “Ok”. We did and we got no return fire or anything, so, okay, we keep driving on, so we another--whatever it was, and then made a right turn and made a big sweep. Years later guys were telling me that they couldn‟t believe that the first patrol that they ever went on with me they thought, “Oh, crap”, because, I guess 21 �the previous guy, Lieutenant Fowler, if they were going to do one of these things; they‟d go out 500 meters and sit down and yuck it up. 51:06 Here I am. You know, it‟s a thousand degrees and we‟re doing what I was told we were going to do. They were all cranky, nobody ever said anything, but nothing happened, which I‟m thankful for, because I was just brand new and I didn‟t know anybody‟s names or anything. Interviewer: How long did it take before things got a little more interesting? It was about three weeks. We moved from firebase Westcott to firebase Jerry, and this was in the middle of November, maybe. 52:02 I forgot to say that I‟d gone to jungle school down in Panama, so I didn‟t actually get to Vietnam until the first ten days of October. We were picked up in the field and air assaulted to a new area of operation at a firebase called Jerry, and it was late in the day and as we were—my platoon was the last one in and they just dropped us off and we got mortared, the front of the—because we‟re outside the wire and trying to figure out which way we‟re going to go. As we found out later, they mortared Jerry pretty much regularly, but with a helicopter—they‟re always trying to hit the firebase or hit the helicopter and what have you, but all of the rounds hit up front and we had four or five guys very seriously wounded. 53:06 One guy was blinded, I guess for life, but three or four rounds and that‟s the end of it and then we get them inside the firebase to the doctor, medical doctor. Then we go on our way and they get treated and sent back to wherever. Interviewer: How many men do you have in your platoon at this point? I probably had—again this was the whole company that was hit. These weren‟t any of my guys, so the company, in the field, probably had about a hundred and ten, maybe, and I , maybe, twenty five. I think the most I ever had in the field was twenty five. The 22 �fewest I had was about seventeen. 54:00 So, we marched off the firebase and then there just sign [?] everywhere and then we set up and, you know, and nothing happened that night and then next day, late, we were walking and I didn‟t have point, my platoon didn‟t have point, but a couple of NVA ran up a little trail to the right and the point element fired on them and didn‟t hit them or anything then. So, we were going to see where they went, so the point element got up to that trail, got off the trail and walked up 30 or 40 meters and somebody finally said to Captain Keen, you know, “Get farther away from this trail”. 55:02 First of all, we just saw somebody there and we know that they know we‟re here because we fired on them, so it‟s not a good idea to be this close to a trail because you could, essentially, be walking into an ambush, so I‟m assuming he realized that, or somebody told him that, whatever, we got off the trail. Then my platoon got right up to that little trail and I was just kind of standing there looking up the trail like—this trail was like this floor here, I mean it was that hard packed, you know, a thousand people could have walked on it and you would have never known it, it was just beat solid. I was looking up that trail wondering, well, I‟m glad they got off the trail because you could see it just kind of disappear. 56:00 I think, “That would be a good place for them to fire on us”, and I no sooner said that and they fired on us, but as quite often happens in those kinds of fleet meeting engagements, bullets are going everywhere, but It‟s not an aimed response. The initial firing might be aimed, but the response, usually isn‟t, you just, aaah! So, we moved off, and again, it was late in the day and Keen said, “We‟re going to set up here”, and we did, and then he called me, he started to, and then he called me over and he said, “I want you to go out and up that trail, not on the trail, but up parallel to the trail, three or four hundred meters and ambush the thing”, and I thought, “Oh, great, I 23 �know that there‟s at least two of them up there, somewhere”. But I said, “Ok”. 57:06 We went up and we found the trail and we set up claymore mines and we backed off, you know, a hundred feet, or whatever that wire was on the claymore, and we just laid down and waited for somebody to tumble down the trail. I guess, fortunately, nobody did, but we could hear, and it rained that night too and the mosquitoes—the whole episode was miserable. We could hear, off in the distance, chopping, so they were chopping trees and making bunkers, or doing something with the trees, and we could hear laughing. 58:00 I suspect we were probably within a couple of hundred meters of where they were. Like I said, nobody came down the trail and the next morning we picked up out stuff and back tracked to the company and then we went on our way, but that whole place was just criss crossed with trails and you could see where they had rested in the night, or in the daytime because they had their little cooking fires that—they weren‟t warm, they were all done, but you could see all along that trail where, probably, a whole company, or more, of NVA had been in that area. It was like every two days, two or three days, we‟d get fired on or we‟d fire on them. 59:00 We didn‟t have any casualties, or anything like that, until about a week into this new area of operation we got into a horrendous fire fight for about five or six hours. Again, I guess I was lucky because my platoon was walking last that day and it was mostly the front two platoons that really got into it. We didn‟t have anybody killed, we had sixteen or seventeen wounded that had to be medevac‟d and it was a long—it was a lot longer day for me because I wasn‟t really under the direct fire, just kind of sit back—you‟re on guard, of course, you‟re looking left and right and behind you and everything, in fact I never left the—where we slept the night before. 00:03 Interviewer: So, were you, essentially, sort of the company reserve at that point? 24 �Yeah. I did have to send my machine guns up because the other two guns malfunctioned, and my gunners weren‟t happy at all because they were both six, almost seven, months in the field and they had seen a lot of action, but they went up, they didn‟t squawk. Our guns, I think, were the telling tale. The gunners were meticulous about keeping, not only their guns clean, but their ammunition clean and other gunners weren‟t that meticulous. But, we had to pass ammunition up from my platoon at one time because you were in the jungle and you couldn‟t get ammunition down to you. 1:09 That got to be a little nervous, nerve wracking when, “Oh, not only did they not have much ammunition up here, and now we don‟t have much ammunition back here”, but that went on until late in the afternoon and then we set up right—we didn‟t move very far, and set up basically. The next morning, because the 2nd platoon, my platoon, it was the one that was least beat up, you know, we had to go back—we had to lead the company back into the area, and that was pretty nerve wracking because the area had been worked over so heavily with air strikes, and Cobras, and artillery. 2:06 We were real close to Firebase Jerry, we were only about three clicks away from Gerry. I mean, we had all the battalion organic fire really close by. The place was just beat silly with trees—it‟s like a tornado goes through these places because if you‟ve ever seen that kind of damage to trees, they—there‟s no logic to how they go, they‟re all inter—they‟re like pick-up sticks when you drop them. And, of course, interspersed in all that are pieces of enemy soldiers, and bloody bandages, you know. We got hit badly, but they got hit worse, I think. They were gone, of course, so other than the-- I don‟t want to say scared, other than the unnerving part of the whole thing; it was pretty routine, I guess. 3:14 what we had to do. 25 We had to go in there and this is �Interviewer: Now, did you have any kind of understanding as to what the larger purpose of your mission was at that point? The larger purpose of that particular mission was to just go in there and evaluate what we got into, but, I mean, essentially we got ambushed. The 1st platoon leader, George Atkins, his platoon was walking point and he did a marvelous job, and the 3rd platoon leader, which was walking second, Freddy Davis, and he actually got wounded and never came back with the company. But, our missions, really, were to aggressively and actively patrol and find the bad guys if you could and raise hobs on them. 4:14 Interviewer: Was this an area where there were a lot of underground tunnels or booby traps, or things like that? No, we were fortunate that there were bunkers, and that‟s what was happening that day, it was a small bunker complex, but no tunnels that we ever found. I mean, most of the tunnels, I think, were down Lai Khe or around Cu Chi, in that area, but primarily bunkers, fortified fighting positions, you know. The North Vietnamese, you know, they‟re excellent soldiers, they‟ve been doing this for twenty years, you know. 5:03 Their camouflage was excellent and there were times when you‟d just walk up, you‟d step and you‟d look down and you‟re standing right in front of a bunker aperture, and that happened to me a couple of different times. I‟m fourth and the three other guys that walked by never saw it. Interviewer: In those situations, was the bunker not occupied? The bunker was not occupied, but as far as I know it was not occupied. It was—and of course now, I‟ve been the platoon leader for three weeks, so now I‟ve got more familiarity with what‟s going on. I know the guys' names and—but, George Atkins, he‟d 26 �been—I remember, I was so happy to see him join the company because that meant that I wasn‟t the bottom—I wasn‟t the dumbest lieutenant anymore, now it was him. 6:07 But, he‟s only been there two week when this happened, and he did a marvelous job in the company. I always wonder, you know what would have happened it that had been me out there. But his point man actually spotted the NVA claymore and was able to tell George and George was actually radioing Captain Keen when they detonated it, but at least by then they knew it was there and they‟re not just staring at it when it went off, so they had—some of them were wounded, but not as bad as if they had just stumbled onto it and then it had detonated right away. He did a marvelous job. Interviewer: Once you locate a bunker, or a place where they’re actually fighting from, can you call in, sort of, the heavy weapons to blow it up? 7:00 Of course the heaviest weapon you have in a rile platoon, unless you‟re carrying heavy mortar, is your M60 machine gun, and if they‟re occupied you want to get as much fire on them as you can, and at least to suppress what they‟re trying to do to you. If you can, you want to pull back and then you use your Cobras, you know, with the 2.75 folding fin rockets and the mini guns and things like that, but if you‟re trying to use artillery, the Cav, under normal circumstances—I know you‟re working another veteran, Mike McGregor, he was an artillery forward observer sergeant, he would know, but as I recall, generally you couldn‟t shoot artillery closer than 600 meters unless you were in contact and then it had to be danger close and there were all kinds of rules and things like that. 8:07 Again, most of these engagements were—the vast majority were 25 meters, or less. I had a lot of confidence in our artillery, but I never would have tried to call artillery that close unless it was a last resort and you were completely pinned down and you couldn‟t 27 �get Cobras or if you were about out of ammunition. There are situations where you have to do that, but being that close that would have been about the last resort. Interviewer: How long did you spend as a platoon leader? I was the platoon leader from about October until the middle of February, October of 1969, until the middle of February of 1970. 9:10 Then I was taken out of the field, you know, to confirm what they call a rear job. “You did a good job out in the field, and now we‟re going to reward you by giving you one that‟s a little less dangerous”. It was the most miserable job I have ever had in my like, I think. It was—I was in charge of, at the brigade base camp, of one quarter of the base defense. Now again, I was still a 2nd lieutenant, all the other guys in charge of this were captains. They gave me two other guys to work with me, and so really, there were three of us and we worked twenty-one hours a day. 10:05 We had to make sure the trip flares were on, we had to do this—and we didn‟t have any help, just—and to make it worse, I was reporting to the most obnoxious Lieutenant Colonel that ever wore a silver oak leaf, and we had to report to him every day. He wanted to know how many trip flares were put out and how many feet of this, and how many—and frankly, it just got to be too much. I was working my fanny off and making no, seeming, contribution, because if I needed anything I didn‟t know where to go or what to do, and these captains with many years of service, they knew and they probably even knew guys from previous tours or whatever, so if they needed something, they—and it just wasn‟t working. 11:07 That lasted for about three weeks and then—I was still assigned to headquarters company of 1sr of 7th, but—so, I got called up to battalion headquarters, Major Stillman, who was the XO at the time, said, “Well, I got, I guess, good news and bad news for you”, “You can‟t send me to Vietnam because 28 �I‟m already here, so what‟s the good news?” He said, “Well, this job obviously isn‟t working. Colonel LaBrose‟s not happy with you”, and I said, “Major, I‟m not happy with Colonel LaBrose, and I‟m breaking my fanny here and nothing is happening”, and Stillman said, “I know you are, you‟re working hard, but it just isn‟t working”. 12:01 “Ok”, and he said, “I‟m going to send you back to the field”, and inside I go, “Yes”, because I was good at that, so I said, “Well I got, I really only got one question”, and he said, “What‟s that?” “Am I going to get smashed on my officer efficiency report?” He said, “No, this will show it casual, or we‟ll do something, but this will be a learning experience for you and you won‟t get hammered on your OER”, and I said, “Ok, good”. He said, “Oh, and you‟re not going back to Alpha Company, you‟re going to Charlie Company”, and I go, “Oh, Charlie Company?” He said, “Yes, you know when you left Alpha Company we backfilled you, and you‟re going to go to Charlie Company and then were going to pull that Lieutenant out and he‟s going to do your job”. 13:05 I said, “Do I have to go to Charlie Company?” I knew their company commander because he‟d been the headquarters CO and he was pretty not with the program. He said, “That‟s where you‟re going”, and I sad, “Ok, thanks”, and part of me felt good, and I thought, “Gosh, at least I‟m out of this base defense gig, but golly, now I got to go to Charlie Company and I have to start over training guys and everything”, so I went there and, I guess, the next day I went out to the firebase and the CO was in, he was in the medical bunker, and the battalion or brigade dentist was out there working on him. 14:06 I remember him sitting in the chair looking back. I went in to report to him and he said, “Oh, ok, have you ever been in the field before?” I said, “Yes sir, I was with Alpha Company in the field for over four months”, and he said, “You‟re going to be the 3rd platoon leader”, and I said, 29 �“Ok, where might I find the 3rd platoon?” he gave me a general idea, and of course I‟d been on and off that firebase with Alpha Company a dozen times, so I knew right where they were. I said, “Who‟s the 3rd platoon sergeant?” “Pat Hansen” and I said, “Ok”, so I shuffled over to 3rd platoon and introduced myself to Pat Hansen and their platoon leader, I forget what his name is now, but I‟ll remember it afterwards. 15:08 He probably took me around and introduced me to the guys, or maybe it was Pat, I don‟t remember now. He left and he went back to the rear and took over my job and he lasted until he rotated, so I guess he did ok, he was drunk most of the time, but maybe that‟s what it took to do well in that job, I don‟t know. So, now I‟m back with a different company and the company commander that I had seen in the rear area, and it didn‟t take too long for a couple three or four days out in the field and, you know, he didn‟t know what he was doing, he was armor officer too, but he was not cut from the same bolt of cloth as Captain Keen, my previous CO, but you do the best you can with the cards you‟re dealt. 16:05 Interviewer: What kind of situation were you in at that time? Were you still patrolling jungle? Yeah, but the terrain was similar, there was a lot of bamboo and things like that. We— there were only two times out in the field that I ever took my boots off. The first was the night before we had that big contact in November, and firebases would have what they call mad minutes where it wasn‟t the same time all the time, rarely did, they last a minute, but the purpose of the thing, they had to shoot up bad ammunition, but really that was purpose number two. Purpose number one was to just shoot fire out everywhere in case anybody was trying to sneak up on you and if they were, and you were firing them up, maybe that would trigger early, their attack, or what have you. 17:05 We were so close, 30 �like I indicated before, to Jerry, that when they were shooting that night bullets were coming into our perimeter. I jumped in the foxhole and the thing was full of termites, in the bottom , and their little pinchers, you know, they like to bite, so I jumped in the hole and in a matter of seconds, you know, their biting my feet. I didn‟t know what it was until the next morning, so I jumped back out of the hole and that was the first time I had my boots off. The second time was with Charlie Company and its pitch dark, which you never know how dark it is in a situation like this until it is dark and you literally can‟t see your hand in front of your face. 18:00 so, I took my boots off and, I don‟t know, ten or eleven o‟clock I hear a M60 fire and it is one of my guns, so I stumble around, try to find my glasses to try to find my boots, and I make my was over to the foxhole where my gunner was and I said, “What‟s going on?” And he said, “Well, I thought I saw something out there”, and I said, “Why the hell did you shoot the machine gun? You never give away your heavy firepower position unless you‟re really under attack”, and then I hear this voice off to the side, “Because I told him to do it 3-6”, it was Captain Bouyev, and I kind of looked, and again, it‟s really dark and you can‟t see, and I said, “Well sir, that was a bad idea, now we‟re going to have to move this gun in the dark and that‟s going to make a lot of noise and everything”. 19:07 He said, “But there was something out there”, and I‟m kind of looking and I can‟t see anything, and I said, “Where?” He said, “Well, watch”, and he shoots with his 45 and he carries tracers in his 45. Of course you can see them going out, and he says, “Right there, there‟s a dead NVA”, and I wasn‟t there, so I don‟t know, but I said, “Let‟s do something a little different here, let‟s shoot a M79 out there”, “Oh, ok”, so I got my thumper guy over there and I actually did it, I shot a M79 over there. 20:06 If there was something there it was 31 �either, A. gone, or it‟s dead from the M79 rounds. “We got to go out and check”, he said, and I said, “What? We don‟t know what‟s out there, maybe there is somebody there, and maybe he‟s just wounded. Are we going to go crawling out there?” He said, “Yup, come with me”, and by now-- my guy that became one of my best friends in the service was the 1st platoon leader, he shows up. Interviewer: We were a spot in the story where you and your company commander are there is the perimeter and you fire off etc., and then the Lieutenant from the first platoon comes up. Phil Zook, the 1st platoon leader comes over and he became, and still is, one of my best friends from my army days. 21:06 He says, “what‟s going on Andy?” I said, “Well, Captain Bouyev thinks”, Phil and I were having a conversation like you are and Captain Bouyev is right there, but we‟re just ignoring him, and I said, “Captain Bouyev thinks there‟s—there was an NVA out there, that‟s why he had the gun open up”, and Phil probably said something grumbly about, “You never shoot an M60 at night unless you‟re in contact”. „So, Captain Bouyev‟s going out there and I‟m going to go with him”, I said. “I can‟t let him go out there”, so Zook says, “Well, I‟ll go with you”. So, here‟s the company commander, he‟s crawling, here‟s me, the “should have known better” Lieutenant, crawling, and here‟s Phil Zook, who should have known better, he‟s crawling. 22:07 Of course, we had left the perimeter now, “So if you hear something, please don‟t shoot, or throw grenades or something because we got three lunatic officers out here crawling around outside the perimeter”, and again, from where the gunner was to where Captain Bouyev thought this enemy soldier was thirty meters maybe, I mean, it wasn‟t a long way, but when you‟re out in front, in the dark, in front of a rifle company, 32 �there‟s always the chance that somebody doesn‟t get the word, or something. All it takes is one guy shooting and the whole company opens up, you know. So, we‟re crawling, I guess about as slow as you could possibly crawl, and finally, I think I said to Bouyev, I said, “Six, this is a bad idea, we‟re out here in front of “. 23:11 Of course, I‟m probably whispering it, not knowing if there‟s anything out there or not. I said, “We‟re out here exposed, we need to get back in the perimeter and we‟ll check it out in the morning”, and I guess he finally decided, “Boy, this is a dumb idea, all of us out here in front of everybody”, and we kind of turned around and crawled back and then the next morning there was nothing there. No evidence of any blood or anything, so was there somebody there? I don‟t know, but probably not, we found no evidence. This was early April, probably, when all this is going on. And then a big event on the 26th of April, we got in a big, horrific, fire fight again. 24:13 Phil was out doing a clover leaf and I‟d been left behind as an ambush, and then Phil got ambushed, and then I was hurrying back to the company, and Captain Bouyev was, as I was coming to the perimeter he was just going out, and he said, “Take charge of the perimeter, I‟m going out and I‟m going to get one with my knife”, and I said, “Ok”. That was just the guy's persona; he was just full of himself. He was a lousy—maybe he was a good tank officer, I don‟t know, because that was his branch. 25:03 In my opinion, a crappy infantry company commander, but—so, that was the last time I ever saw him alive, you know. He went out with part of the 2nd platoon, or with the 2nd platoon, and then I kind of came in and just was listening to the sounds of, at that time, Phil shooting, and they were shooting B40‟s at them or RPG‟s, RPD‟s if machine guns, and AK‟s and SK‟s and the whole nine yards, you know. Intermittent in all that is Phil shooting back, his platoon shooting back. 33 �Interviewer: Now were you in a position to hear whatever he was saying on the radio? Well, I was able to hear what Captain Bouyev was saying, and at some point in all of this, Phil‟s radio and then his platoon sergeant‟s radio had been shot out. 26:18 So, I had no communication with them at all, and then there was a hasty call from Bouyev that we needed to come out there, “We‟re pinned down”, and I reply, “Roger, we‟ll be out there momentarily”, and so I yelled over to—I‟d gotten a new E5, and Pat Hansen had gotten a rear job, so he left as platoon sergeant, and Lasco, I think his name was. So, I said, “Get our guys ready, we‟re going to go out there and do what we can do”. 27:08 Interviewer: Would you be leaving anybody still at the perimeter when you do that? Just the 4th platoon stayed behind and they were a small, they weren‟t a complete rifle platoon, so they stayed back to guard the—to make their own little perimeter, and they had a radio, and that, really, was going to be our last—that worked out really, was the last reserves. So, as I‟m standing up, and we‟re just getting ready to go out, a B40 or RPG, or something, hit close by where we were standing and knocked down three or four of my guys and it didn‟t knock me down, but a piece hit me, and then I look and everybody gets up, but like five guys. “Oh shit”, so we get the medics over there and we went out. 28:09 maybe there were fifteen of us, because the other guys were wounded. I was wounded too, but it was a miniscule wound compared to what most people get. It was easy to follow the trail that Captain Bouyev and the other guys went, not knowing where anybody was, that was the most expedient, it might not have been the safest, but at least I could find out where they were by following their trail. So, we, and we didn‟t go very 34 �far, you know, 100 meters, because this all happened very close to our perimeter, and quite often happens, there‟s a lot of firing and then all of a sudden there‟s nothing, and about the time I got up to where the headquarters group was, the firing kind of stopped. 29:14 I remember our forward observer, we called him “Bull”, his last name was Durham, and he was a huge fellow, and he was as close to the ground as he could get, and he was probably still two feet off the ground, he was just a bull of a man. He looked up at me and he said, “Andy, you better get down, it‟s really bad up here”, and of course, I‟d heard all this bad firing, but there wasn‟t anything happening right then. Then I hear off to my left, was a Termite mound, a huge Termite mound, and behind that was the battalion commander‟s radio operator, the guy who had the radio on the battalion end, and he was just screaming, “Were all going to be killed, the 1st platoon is wiped out”. 30:13 Of course, by now the battalion commander‟s on that radio and this kid is just going nuts. Off to my right, on the other side of Bull, I could see the medics working on one of guys and they were yelling at him, “Stay with us, stay with us, you‟ll be ok, you‟ll be ok”, so I went over to the Termite mound and grabbed the radio away from this kid. I said, “This is “Cool killer 3-6”, I‟m up here now and I‟ll let you know what‟s going on when I know what‟s going on. I just got here and I don‟t know who‟s a line one, who‟s a line two, there‟s no radio commo between 1st platoon and me, or 1st platoon and anybody, six is not here”. 31:07 That was probably a sergeant that I was telling that to on the radio, and then the Colonel got on the radio and he wanted to know, “What‟s going on? Have I just lost a company?” I said, “I just got here, leave me alone and let me develop what the hell‟s going on”, and he said, “Tell me what‟s going on as soon as you know”, and I said, “Loco”, and I gave the radio back to the kid, and said, “Do not talk in that 35 �radio, and do not answer. If they call you don‟t do anything”, and I said, “Where‟s Bouyev?” The kid said, “I don‟t know”, and I; thinking, “Well, this is nuts, you‟re supposed to be with the company commander and the other was on the company net and he was just sitting there, but now‟s not the time to tell somebody what they‟re supposed to be doing, you know. 32:01 I‟m going through my mind, “What?” Then I asked him, “Do you have any contact with the 1st platoon?” He said, “No, we haven‟t”, and by the amount of firing that had been going on, I thought, “Well, they‟re wiped out”, you know. So, I put a gun team over on the other side of where the medics were working on a guy, and then I had one kind of close by me, and I said, I told my radio operator, “Just sit here”, and I don‟t know why I didn‟t say, “Follow me”. I said, “I‟m going to go up there and find out what the hell‟s going on, really”, which I think in retrospect was kind of dumb because I didn‟t take the radio operator with me. So, I started crawling up and I hadn‟t gotten in the prone position and crawled ten feet when it all started up again. 33:00 It was real personal at that time because it seemed like everybody was shooting at me. The bullets, they weren‟t going by six inches away from me, they were going right over the top of my head, and I‟m thinking, “This is not a good thing, but “follow me” is the motto of the infantry”, so I‟m still crawling out there and then I was kind of thinking, “This is a real bad idea, as far as I know I‟m the only one out here, and as far as I know, all the bad guys can see me because they‟re shooting at me”, and then I saw the 2nd platoon leader, Danny Clark, he came low crawling past me as fast as he could low crawl, and he said, “ Bouyev‟s dead”. 34:01 I said, “Where‟s your platoon?” he said, “I don‟t have any idea, “Bouyev‟s dead”, and I said, “Are you sure?” He said, “Yeah, I crawled right by him, he‟s dead”, and of course, he‟s by now—he never stopped when he told me 36 �all this, he‟s just going. I said to myself, “This is—I can‟t let him get back there and get on the radios”, so then I turned around and I crawled back and got behind the Termite mound and called the colonel back and I said, “You know, we got a situation here. I don‟t know what‟s going on. One of the guys says six is a line one”, and as I‟m talking on the radio I‟m watching Manny Torrez, you know, the—he had a second chest wound and the medics did everything they could, but he died while I was watching. 35:03 Colonel Jahn, he was just questions, questions, and questions, “What‟s going on? You got to find out what‟s going on. You got to tell me what‟s happening with one six”, and I said, “I don‟t know what‟s happening with one six, it may be just five of us here, I have no idea, you just have to give me time”, and he said, “I don‟t have time, you know the Colonel”— you know the brigade—see it‟s the echelon, so here‟s the Colonel Jahn, and here‟s Colonel Kingston up here, and finally I hear, “ break, break, break, this is Gary Owen Six”, or whatever, and I knew that was the brigade commander. He said, “Red Baron Six”, which was Jahn, and Jahn comes on and he says, “This is Gary Own Six, get off his back and let him develop the situation, he‟ll tell you what the hell‟s going on when he knows what‟s going on, leave him alone and let him fight the battle”. 36:06 “Roger”, and I never had any more trouble from Jahn after that. So, we‟re just sitting there and then my machine gun team, all if a sudden, yells at me and he says, “Do we have presits?” I was close enough so we could see each other, and he said, “Do we have people out there?” I said, “I don‟t think so”, and he said, “”somebody‟s running, somebody‟s running away”, and, of course, I didn‟t know if that was our guys or what, so I said, “Well, just keep a steady eye”, and then all of a sudden I heard kind of movement off to the left, and here comes Zook, somehow, disengaged and got his people back. 37 �37:01 I said, “Do you have all of your people?” he said, “Yes”, and I said, “Well, where‟s Clark‟s people?” He said, “They‟re coming, they‟re behind me”, so then I told both gunners, “If you see any movement out there now, fire it up because it‟s enemy. All of our guys are back”, so then I called Jahn back and I said, “Ok, I‟ve got, essentially I‟ve got good news, 1st platoon is disengaged, the 2nd platoon is behind them. I know we got one line one and we probably got fifteen or twenty line two‟s, wounded. I still don‟t know the status of six, but I‟ll, hopefully know something about that soon”, so Zook was sitting right there behind the Termite mound kind of panting, because he had taken over one of his machine guns when the gunner got wounded, and he was firing and then that gun got shot up and then his radio operator had also been shot. 38:10 I said, “Well, Clark said the Bouyev is dead and he‟s out there”, and Phil said, “Yeah, he probably is “, and I said, “We can‟t leave him out there”, and he said, “I am not going back out there”, Phil said. I said, “Well, we can‟t leave him out there”, and Phil said, “You can go out there, but I‟m not going back out there”, so I said, “Ok”, and by then the firing had kind of stopped because what my gunner had seen, they had enough. 39:02 Of course by then I‟d been calling in Cobras and stuff like that . Interviewer: So there had been some kind of air strike? They were in bunkers and they were—the 11th Armored—this was a lot of bamboo around this area and the 11th Armored Cav had been going through this area with their APCs and their tanks and everything, and the NVA had built bunkers real close to this, thinking, “Well, if they went through here once, maybe they‟ll come through here again, and we‟ll be right on top of them and we‟ll blast them with our RPGs or whatever and take them out”, so I grabbed Locko and I said, “Let‟s go out there and see what we see”, 38 �and I guess that he was new enough that he said, “Ok”, rather than, “Are you nuts?” 40:02 So we went out there 25 meters, maybe not even that, and there Captain Bouyev was, dead as a door nail, he‟d been shot through the forehead. We rolled him over to make sure he was dead. There wasn‟t any horror to it. The thing that was so bizarre that I remember was that he didn‟t have his glasses. I thought, “Where the heck were his glasses?” Then so, I guess, Kerry grabbed an arm, or two arms, and I grabbed his feet, or one of each, and we kind of carried him back to the Termite mound and then I radioed to Jahn and I said, “Well, six is a line one and we‟ve recovered his body, and everybody‟s moving back to the perimeter”. 41:12 So there‟s nothing—you know you hear the term “dead weight”, you know a hundred—he was a stocky man and he weighed, maybe, a hundred and fifty pounds, you know, but that‟s a lot of weight when you‟re getting no help, no movement. I had the gun team, I said, “Give me your gun and you two guys carry him back and we‟ll just back our way right back the thing and I‟ll be the guy with the gun covering as we move back”. So, I took the M60 and there was no incoming fire there, but having been once where heavy identifire and then it stopped heavy identifire [?] and then it stopped, you know you don‟t know, so I just fired them up as we went backwards. 42:18 Then we got back to the perimeter and by now they‟re starting the medevac‟s. They had to use the jungle penetrator because there wasn‟t a place for them to land, so everybody was going up on the jungle penetrator. Bloody bandages everywhere and it was a real mess. Interviewer: What happened to the company at that point? Well, what I thought was going to happen was, of course it‟s kind of the last thing on your mind, essentially I‟d taken over the company for a couple hours, or whatever. 43:06 39 �All of this happened a lot—you know I talked about it in twenty minutes, but it was a number of hours over the course of this thing. One of the other company commanders had been—the B company commander was an S1 and when he heard that all this was going on and that Bouyev had been killed, he grabbed his rucksack and came out and got on a helicopter and he came out, and he had already served four or five months as company commander, and he came out and served for two months for the rest of the time in Cambodia. I remember telling one of the guys that was there, Lieutenant Smith, after it was all over I said, “This is—you‟ll never see another day like this. This is the worst day you‟ll ever see”. 44:10 When the company got to Cambodia, that April 26th would have been a good day compared to what happened to them in Cambodia. They just got decimated in Cambodia. Three days after that action, Charlie Company was back on the firebase, my former company, Alpha Company, got into a similar heavy, ugly contest , probably with the same group of people, and they had a Lieutenant killed and a buck sergeant killed. Typically when a company got beat up like that you come to the firebase just to decompress a little bit, so we were kind of in the middle of decompressing when Alpha Company got beat up. 45:03 So, they couldn‟t leave them out in the field, so they brought Alpha Company in, but they told me that, “Well, you‟re going to go back to Alpha Company and be the executive officer”, because they were about ready to make that switch and then Lou Favoussa got killed, so then I became the senior Lieutenant, so they sent me back to Alpha Company. Interviewer: Is Captain Keen still there? Captain Keen had derosed about the middle of March, and he was, actually, the S4 at that time, so he was making sure everything was—the battalion was supplied and everything. 40 �He was a career officer too, Patrick Keen, and retired as a full Colonel. The guy that took over the company after Bouyev killed, Dana Dillon, he was a career officer too, and also retired as a full Colonel. 46:01 Interviewer: So, who did you have then as a captain in Alpha Company when you got there? Captain Bowen had taken over from Captain Keen and I was his executive officer. The job of a XO, there‟s really one job, and that‟s to go out and take over the company if something happens to the company commander, that‟s really it. You also have to sign for the property book, all of the weapons, all of the typewriters, all of the starlight scopes, all of that minutia called TA50, all of the—in the stateside the company commander signs for it, but in a combat environment, or at least in the Cav, in that environment the XO will sign for it. 47:00 I would go out to the field every day, if the company was on the firebase, I‟d go out there every day and come back and sleep at Quan Loi, the brigade headquarters, where our company was, and then the next day go back out. It was administrative, the first sergeant really ran the rear and if you had a good first sergeant, you know, you just let him do his job and we had an excellent first sergeant, and there was no need for me to look over his shoulder. It‟s—I wouldn‟t necessarily say it‟s a reward for good service, or what have you, because you need slots filled, but you can be a crummy XO and it would have no effect on your—if you‟ve got a good first sergeant you could be a crummy XO, but if you‟re a crummy XO and you got a crappy first sergeant then the guys in the field didn‟t get what they needed. 48:08 that was really my job, to run interference if the top ever had any issues and he never really did because, you know, most people defer to first sergeants anyway. A good lieutenant will defer to a first 41 �sergeant until he finds out if the top is good or bad. If he‟s bad then he‟s got to get involved, but that‟s kind of what I did. We went to Cambodia and even though I went into Cambodia, essentially, every three days as the company was being resupplied. Interviewer: Did the brigade headquarters go to Cambodia, or did they stay back? They stayed at Quan Loi. 49:01 The battalion, of course the battalion had a huge presence at Quan Loi, but they had a tactical operation center at the firebase in Cambodia, that‟s where the Colonel would be. Interviewer: Now, would you go out to the firebase? Out to the firebase and then again, similar to what it was the previous October you know, wait until the log bird, the resupply bird would show up, and then I‟d jump on there with any—you know, the mail was the first thing to go out and then any business I had with the company commander. I‟d get out there and eat lunch with him and when the last bird was done for the day, you know, I‟d get back on and go back to whatever firebase we were at. Interviewer: Now, if they’re actively campaigning, did you get shot at when you few back and forth? Was it a dangerous thing to do? I‟m not aware that we ever got shot at, but you only know if they hit your helicopter, I guess, or if the door gunner sees the tracers or what have you. 50:13 I am, I can‟t say a hundred percent sure, because I don‟t know, but I never recall being shot at, I was fortunate that I was never called into what they call a “hot LZ”. When you‟re doing your combat assaults you‟re going in and the enemy is there and they‟re engaging you, which never happened to me. It happened to guys after and it happened to guys before, but it 42 �never happened on any combat assaults that I made, that I‟m aware of, at least we never had a “hot LZ”, whether they shot at us when we were going or coming, I have no idea. Interviewer: Now, because of your position, did you now have a little bit more of an understanding of what was going on in the larger operation etc.? 51:00 As you saw it, at the time, what was the purpose of going into Cambodia? Well, I was probably like a lot of people, again my father was a career Air Force, but, you know, I believed all that palaver about the domino theory, if we don‟t stop them over there, then we‟ll be fighting them in Kalamazoo. Interviewer: On a military level, I guess, is what I was asking. Why were you going in at that point, what were you trying to accomplish? Well again, I think it‟s along those lines. You‟re just trying to stop the production of communism; you‟re trying to help a South Vietnamese country that is trying to be taken over by North Vietnam. Interviewer: Did you have a sense of what the actual military objective of the operation was, or were you going to Cambodia because they sent you? In Cambodia, oh, oh, oh, I‟m sorry. 52:01 No, the—well, we heard the President say what he said and, of course, we were operating close enough to Cambodia that I don‟t recall that it ever happened again to any engagements that I was in, you know, people that I was serving with, it happened to them earlier where they‟d run across the border and you couldn‟t chase them. Sometimes you did, and sometimes you didn‟t, and a lot of guys would say that we were actually in Cambodia, but whether you were or you weren‟t you don‟t know. When we got the briefing, again this was before—this was after April 26th, but before I got sent back to Alpha Company. The briefing in Nha Trang was, you 43 �know, “Were going into Cambodia on the 1st of May, and we‟re going to go in no more than thirty Kilometers or thirty miles”, or whatever it was. 53:00 “We‟re going to be there sixty days and we‟re going to try to find as much supply stuff as we can find, disrupt what they‟re doing and the only thing we know for sure is we can get you on the ground, but we don‟t know if we can get you out”. So, Charlie Company was actually supposed to be the first company to go in, and then of course Phil Favoussa got killed and then I went to Alpha Company, so that part didn‟t affect me. They were originally going to load ARVN‟s, South Vietnamese Army soldiers at Quan Loi and bring them out to Frances, unload them, put Americans on and then go in. I guess somebody decided that if we do that, as soon as we let them off the helicopters they‟re going to run away and we‟re never going to get them into Cambodia. 54:00 So, they decided they‟re on there, and they took the ARVN‟s in first. It was, you know, strike the sanctuaries and I—our battalion had a lot of people killed in Cambodia. We were probably the heaviest hit battalion of all the—certainly of all the Cav that went into Cambodia and maybe of all of the soldiers, I think there were a hundred and fifty five, or something, killed in Cambodia. Charlie Company alone had sixteen or seventeen in just forty five days of combat. Interviewer: Now, were you with, in that position, through the whole Cambodian phase, or did you leave before that? No, I was there the whole time, I again, my job as XO was to do the administrative thing, and it was just brutal. 55:10 I mean, there was serious, as serious as the NVA were in South Vietnam and in the old April 26th and what have you. They were a heck of a lot more serious, it seems like in Cambodia because, like I say, a mortar battalion, and they 44 �were beaten up pretty bad, the enemy soldiers. You know now, forty years after the fact, I‟ve done a lot of reading, and I‟ve done a lot of research, and the more you read the more disenchanted you get, you know, and I forget the name of the book now, I just read it about a year ago, but—it was [Mc]George Bundy, I think, it was a book about him as National Security Advisor. 56:06 The premise of that book was essentially that Kennedy was about to withdraw all the advisors at the time he was assassinated and had happened, you know, we most likely never would have been in there. It‟s a—I know a lot of people that—you know in a very small circle and then you expand it a little that you know of that were killed there, and it just leaves me, and it still does, with a sense of sadness, you know that—not only for the American side, but for the North Vietnamese side, you know. They had well over a million, I guess, by all accounts, and somewhere in there maybe there was the cure for Cancer or something, you know. 57:02 We can‟t be so foolish as to think it can just be an American that can come up with a cure. Interviewer: Now, was the XO assignment the last one you had while you were in Vietnam? No, I served for about two weeks as the acting company commander. George Loveless went on R&R, Captain Bowen left about the first of July, right after Cambodia, and George Loveless came in and I thought, “Well, this is good, he seems like a pretty good guy”, George Loveless, and then, I was short, I was down to about, well, certainly within my last month and I went out to the firebase one day and he said, “Well, the next time you log, bring all of your stuff with you”, and I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Well, I‟m going on R&R”, and I said, “Huh?” 58:00 So, he went on R&R and I was back out in the field for two weeks and we had, in those two weeks we had three different 45 �fire fights and we didn‟t have anybody wounded, fortunately, but the interesting thing, the Colonel that I had so much trouble with when I was the base defense guy at Quan Loi, he was now our battalion commander. So, I thought, “This is lovely, how can that little cloud, the pig pen cloud, keep following me around?” But, I remember doing an aerial recon with Colonel LaBrose and he said, “You‟re going to go here and you‟re going to go here and do this, and when you‟re all said and done I want you right here”. And he drew this little place on my map. So, George went on R&R and I was out in the field and we did our thing. 59:07 The day we‟re supposed to be extracted, I was right where he drew on my map. He calls me up and he said, “I‟m circling that place, pop smoke or something”, so, I said, “Well we‟re right where you drew on my map”, and we don‟t hear any helicopter. This went back and forth, back and forth, “You‟ve got to go to this location”, and I said, “I‟m at that location”, “You got to go to this location”, “I‟m at that location”, and finally he said, “Well, just cut an LZ where you are and then I want you to report to me when you get back”, and I said, “Ok”, so we made out like a one ship LZ and got out one helicopter at a time. I was the last one on the helicopter and I went in and reported to the TOC and I expected him to just rip my head off, you know. 00:07 He said, “I want you to know Lieutenant Anderson, that was the best extraction of a rifle company from the field that I have ever seen in my life. It was just marvelous, it was just wonderful”, and blah, blah, blah, and I said, “Ok, yes sir”, “Carry on”. I left and George came back in and that was it. Interviewer: So, you never had any idea what had gone on, you figured out that he had the wrong location? 46 �He drew it wrong on my map, but I wasn‟t—and I‟m not going to say anything other than saying I‟m at that location, but what more can I do? He can‟t say, “go to that location on the map that I drew. “I‟m at that location”. “Shoot artillery, do whatever you want to do”. I had that happen one time too with captain Keen. He professed that I was at the wrong place on the map, and this went back and forth, back and forth, and finally he said, “Ok, I‟ll shoot a marking round”. 1:06 They shoot white phosphorous with a grid coordinate 400 meters over your head, and that thing went off right over the top of my head, and he said, “Did you get an azimuth to it?” I said, “Well, my compass doesn‟t work when it‟s pointed straight up”. “Er, we‟ll come to you”, and it took them four hours to get to where we were, and he was not happy. But, I learned that in jungle school. We got lost, horribly lost, in the map reading course. Interviewer: That was, if you follow the questions, and the first one actually was, what did jungle school consist of and how useful was it? For me, it was useful only from the standpoint, you knew, kind of, what the jungle was like. It was a bunch of—and there were classrooms, and there were a couple of field exercises, one of which was the night compass course, and there were four of us dumb lieutenants. 2:13 I always maintained that I didn‟t A, have the compass, or B, have the map, I was just one of the guys. We got horribly lost and we were out all night with mosquitoes the size of Humming Birds and one guy lost his watch and we were all—it was like the Four Stooges, you know, and finally the next day it seems like they had a helicopter flying over us and yelling, “Where are you dummies?” Finally they found us and we found them, but it was useful to me, from my standpoint, more A, the weather was beastly hot, so again you got somewhat acclimated to the weather, although Vietnam 47 �was hotter, and seeing what the terrain was like. 3:14 Other than that is was—and the other thing that was great, they counted it for your time, so from the time you reported to the time the school was over, until the time that you got to Vietnam, all of that time counted, so actually, I was somewhat lucky, I was only there not quite eleven months, in country. Interviewer: We were kind of talking about jungle school and you were pointing out that because that time counted overseas, that it shortened, a little bit, the time you had to be in Vietnam. The next question at that point was how much contact you had with the Vietnamese themselves. Actually, very little, I mean we had Hoi Chans, which were enemy soldiers that had gone into the Chieu Hoi program, you know they raise there hand, Chieu Hoi, that means don‟t shoot me basically, and they surrender. 4:10 Then they go through an indoctrination program and once they graduate, or what have you, or deem to no longer be communists, and then they become what they call Hoi Chans and then some of them get sent back to companies, Kit Carson Scouts, or what have you, so early on with Alpha Company we had one, I think, a Kit Carson Scout, and one of them got wounded in that big fire fight in November and then we got another one. Some of them were just enlisted guys and some had been officers and in either the Vietcong infrastructure or actual NVA folks. Then we had people that would come in the rear, when I was XO, you know, hooch cleaners, or what have you. 5:12 But, out in the field, while I was out in the field, anybody we ran across usually was trying to elude bullets or shooting at us first. Interviewer: You weren’t really in a populated area? 48 �I wasn‟t, but before I got there the company was operating up around Bao Loc and there were a lot of Montagnard and indigenous folks up there, so they had a lot of interaction, but that was prior to me getting there. Interviewer: What opinion did you have, if any, of the Kit Carson Scouts or the Vietnamese soldiers that were assigned to you? You know they—I guess I didn‟t have much opinion. It wasn‟t a trust factor, it just seemed like, you know, he could look at a trail and I could look at the same trail and again, if it was like this concrete, and he would say something like, ”Boo Coo, NVA”, you know, or something. 6:18 Boo Coo [corruption of the French "beaucoup"] was a big word for them and if you were Dinky Dow, you know, you were nuts, and if you were Number 1 you were good, and if you were Number 10, you weren‟t good. I couldn‟t speak Vietnamese. Interviewer: Did they seem to be reasonably good soldiers? Well again, they're not part of the army. I heard so many bad things about that, that I wouldn‟t want to characterize except say, „Well, they were there with us and if we saw some muddy foot prints, you know, “How many went by?” “Boo Coo, Boo Coo”, and that told you inessentially, a bunch of them. 7:09 It could have been one or it could have been fifty, so I guess the—and sometimes you would capture documents. If it was a Vietnamese as opposed to a Montagnard, then they can generally read the documents and glean some information from it, but I wouldn‟t day they were bad and I wouldn‟t say they were good, they were just there. Interviewer: From, particularly the time you spent out in the field in one capacity, are there other kind of individual incidence or things that kind of stick out in your 49 �mind that you haven’t brought into the story yet, or did you kind of hit the main events? I think we touched on the main things. You know, it wasn‟t always ugly. 8:06 One time we came back from mission, came into the firebase and our first sergeant had been a major in Korea and he‟d been caught up in a reduction of force and he was our top sergeant and he use to have steaks for us when we came back. Where he got those I have no idea. Captain Keen told me, “You‟re going to be in charge of the potatoes. “What do I know about cooking potatoes?” I remembered when I was a kid, my mother on occasion, use to boil potatoes in water, so I got a, probably a 155 canister, you know a big metal canister from the artillery guys and cleaned it out, so there wasn‟t any gun powder residue or what have you in it. 9:07 I filled it halfway through with water, threw the potatoes in there and boiled the potatoes, and it worked, and I didn‟t get yelled at my Captain Keen, so it was just an off thing. Interviewer: How would you characterize morale in the units you were with when you were, particularly, in the field? I would say the morale in Alpha Company was real good through all the platoons. Morale is a function, I think of a couple different things. One, if you got a good company commander, and you‟ve got a good platoon leader, and you‟ve got good squad leaders, and platoon sergeants, then I think you‟re going to have good morale. 10:08 If any of those are out of whack the morale‟s going to be crappy, I think. Initially, when I got to Charlie Company, because I already had a preconceived notion of Captain Bouyev, and I had to do my best to only let that guard down and the only person I ever let that down with was Phil. We were very careful about that because if the men saw that the 50 �Lieutenants didn‟t have any respect for the company commander, then that could not be so good either. 11:06 There was one other, kind of in retrospect, humorous incident. We were on Firebase Compton and I had bad bowel issues that day and Captain Bouyev wanted our platoon to go out on a recon, and this firebase was in the middle of a big—at the end of an old airfield in the middle of a rubber plantation, and you see for 600 meters in almost every direction. So, I thought this would be a good opportunity, A, because I felt lousy, to let one of my squad leaders take the platoon out on a—they could read maps, so it wasn‟t that, and give them some training. 12:09 You never know when the film is going to stop and the lieutenant's dead and the platoon sergeant‟s dead, and Sergeant McGregor, you‟re now in charge of this platoon. I got no static from the guys that were going to do that, and if it had I probably would have figured out something else. But they said, “Sure, that‟s”. You know, we weren‟t necessarily concerned about the area, or anything like that, so they started going out and they were calling in situation reports and I was monitoring it, and just trying to get my bowels under control. The next thing I hear on the radio is, “3-6 where are you?” Captain Bouyev was calling, and I said, “Well, I‟m in bunker 15”, or whatever, and he said, “You wait right there”. 13:05 So, he shows up about two minutes later and he‟s just chewing me up one side and down the other, “I sent you out to do this patrol”, and blah, blah, blah. I was trying to keep from throwing up and doing everything, and I said, “Well, here‟s what I‟m trying to do”, and he said, “I don‟t care what you‟re trying to do, you‟re supposed to lead that platoon, you get out there and lead that platoon. When I tell you to do something you‟re supposed to do it”, and I said, “Ok”. I grabbed the radio and I threw it up on my back, I threw two bandoliers of ammo over my—and I started walking. Pat 51 �Hansen comes running and says, “Where you going?‟ I said, “I‟m going out there”, and he said, “You‟re going out there by yourself?” And I said, “Yeah, I‟m going to go”, so I radioed the guys and I said, “Set up and butt up security”. I could darn near see them, you know. “You can‟t go out there by yourself”, and I said, “Are you coming with me?” He said, “Well, yeah”, “So, get your stuff because I‟m leaving”. 14:03 We walked out through the gate and we walked right down the airfield and we turned west and walked 500 meters and just like two guys on a stroll in the woods. Probably if there had been any VC, or anybody, around they would have looked at that and thought, “this has got to be a trap, that can‟t be two guys dumb enough to be walking out here all by themselves”. So, we walked out and sat down and I radioed back and said, “Ok, I‟ve joined the platoon”, and he said, “Let me know how the rest of that patrol goes”, and I said, “Ok”, and we sat right there for the rest of the day, to hell with him, you know. So, I tried to do some training and it didn‟t work out. Interviewer: You mentioned other people going off on R&R and that kind of thing, did you get a break in anyway? I did—my father, by now his last duty station was Clark Air Base in the Philippines and I took my R&R in the Philippines. 15:01 He actually—his job was—he was a lieutenant colonel then, and he was in charge of scheduling all the planes into and out of Clark. He flew over on the R&R, the Air Force R&R plane, and I got on the plane along with seven or eight other people that were going to Manila, which was the R&R center. They landed at whatever the Manila airfield is and those guys got off and I stayed on the plane and we went to Clark airbase and was reunited with my mother and my sister, so I did my R&R, and everybody that went to the Philippines went to Manila, and I went to Clark Air Base. 52 �16:02 We played golf a couple of times at the airbase thing and we went down to Subic Bay and then it was over. Of course that R&R flight was originating from Clark, you know, so he took me down and I got on the plane and he said, “Obviously, stay on the plane until you get back to Tan Son Nhut, or Bien Hoa” , or wherever it was going, and I said, “Ok”. Interviewer: When you r tour in Vietnam came to an end, how much time did you have on your enlistment at that point? I left Vietnam about the middle of September and I was supposed to go to the twenty eighth of March the following year. There was a little snafu with my orders. I was being assigned to Fort Knox and the report date was the thirty first of September, and I missed that part. 17:08 I mailed it to my father, because I got that early on in July or the first of August. I mailed him a copy and he mailed me back and said “There‟s no such date as the 31st of July”, which he caught on right away, and I thought,”Yeah”, so I went down to the personnel office at battalion headquarters and said, “They got the wrong date here” and they said, “Oh”, and then they changed it to the 31st of October. So, I went back to, went home, and went to Kalamazoo, my grandparents were living in Kalamazoo and stayed there for forty-five days, or whatever it was. 18:07 I bought a car and drove down to Fort Knox and reported in and they sent me to the reception station. First of all I didn‟t want to—I felt like a fish out of water anyway, an infantryman in an Armor School. Then they—to my way of thinking, they had the audacity to send me to the reception station, you know. I was hoping that I would go to a basic training unit, or something that—you know, I‟d survived, I‟d learned a few things, and maybe I can teach somebody one thing that they will remember that will save them. Well, you‟re not going 53 �to teach anybody anything at the reception station. I reported in to the Lieutenant Colonel that was the commanding officer at the time, Lieutenant Colonel Pew. 19:01 And I had on, you know, my medals, my CIB, and what have you, and I was in my green uniform, but I didn‟t have the Armor School tag, on my—or insignia on my uniform. Of course, I‟m standing at attention and he‟s looking me up and down and I forget what he was, he was a Signal Corps Officer or something like that. He starts busting my chops about—I‟m essentially out of uniform and he said, “Weren‟t you in the Cav or something?” No, he probably asked me and I didn‟t have the Cav patch on my uniform either. He said, and this was probably a Friday, he said, “When you get back here Monday, you better have the Armor School thing on your shoulder, you better have your Cav patch on, and you better be ready to go to work”. 20:09 I saluted him, went out and got in my car and thought, “Jeepers, now what?” So I drove back home to Kalamazoo, and I‟d gotten a boony hat that the 90th replacement-- when I was coming home, and it had a big yellow Cav patch on the top of it, and I asked my grandmother, I‟d stopped at the PX and gotten my Armor School things, “Can you rip this off my boony hat and sew it on my dress green uniform?, and she said, “Of course”, so she sewed my Cav patch on and then my other and I got back there Monday morning and showed up in the proper uniform. 21:03 They made me a training and operations officer, or something. You know, they had so many 1st lieutenants running around. There was a captain running the section and a couple of sergeants and a friend of mine from OCS was also stationed there, and I was living in his—and sleeping on his couch, actually in the BOQ. I‟d signed in to the BOQ, but I was staying with Mike, and Mike kept asking me, he said, “Are you going back to school when you get out, are you going back to school when you get out?” I said, 54 �“Well, yeah”. He says, “Well, you‟re not going to stay in the army?” I said, “No, there‟s too many guys like LaBrose and Pew”. And he said, “Well apply for an early out, you know, and then you can start in January”, “Oh, ok”, so I forget who I talked to about that, and I filled out all the paper work and sent it in. 22:08 Of course, the army—“Hey, no problem”. Interviewer: Were they downsizing a little at this point? Yes, so that came through and then once they knew I was going to be getting out at the end of December, and there again, I reported on the 31st of October, so by all of this—it‟s the middle of November, so they send me down to Headquarter Company and I was the XO counting paper clips, or something, for the last two weeks I was in the service. Interviewer: Now, had they made any effort to encourage you to re-enlist? I had—when I was in—as a training officer, after I graduated from OCS I got this letter from the Department of the Army. 23:01 Some full Colonel in the Department of the Army, and he said all these lovely things, you know, “I‟ve been talking to your battalion commander about you, and you‟re the kind of guy the army needs and we‟ll send you”, you know, and blah, blah, blah. I was only four months commissioned and it sounded really great to me. So, all I had to do was say, “Yes, I‟ll go and be interviewed by the Brigade Commander”, and, of course, you‟re not going to say, “No”. So, I went up and saw-- he was busy that day, so I saw his XO, I guess, but---you know, we talked, just like we‟re talking now and I only said, “Yes sir‟, about a thousand times. I hadn‟t really given it much thought, but—until it came time to get out, and then I thought,”You know, eleven months”, and I still didn‟t have a college education, “this might not work”, so I 55 �decided to get out. 24:10 But yeah, they were kind of after me. You had to go indefinite and maybe you‟d get a regular army commission or something. Interviewer: Now, once you do get out, did you go right back to school? I did, yeah; my official last day in the service on active duty was December 31st, so they gave me, like two days to travel from Fort Knox to Kalamazoo, so I signed out, went home, to my grandparents‟ house. My parents were still in the Philippines, and then school started either that next week, or the week after, the first full week, probably, in January. Interviewer: Did you go back to Michigan State at that point? Yes Interviewer: So, they had kicked you out and they let you back in now? Yes, I‟d been out and I‟d—of course to get the early out you have to be reaccepted somewhere. 25:03 So, I‟d already done that and they had reaccepted me and I had a little different outlook on studying. Prior, I was putting in the time, but I wasn‟t getting anything out of it, or at least I wasn‟t able to translate what I did or didn‟t get out of it into exams. I never flunked anything, but two consecutive terms of straight one points, you know, and then they had what they call a step scale at that time and I was below the step scale for two consecutive terms and as a transfer student they exhaust me. But, I was reaccepted unconditionally, they had changed the step scale and it was something else. 26:05 Of course, I had a one point average that I had to—and that took, probably, a couple semesters to get that above a two point, because you got to get A‟s to bring a one to a two point five, but you know, you eventually got it worked up and then I—it was just easier, I guess, then, I was older, I was in the dorm, and there was another guy who 56 �became a very good friend of mine and he was a sergeant, he had been a sergeant in Vietnam with the 9th Infantry. I was a lot easier, and I was a heck of a lot more mature. Interviewer: Did you feel at all out of place as a veteran, at this point, on campus, or being older than most of the students? 27:02 No, not really, I mean our hair was still shorter and we all wore field jackets in the winter, not all, but the three or four of us that were veterans on the floor, and no, not really. I remember there was some rioting and I want to say in 1971 or 1972, or protesting. I forget what they were—they were protesting, you know, and all the long haired “Hippies‟ were down there and the state police were there. We went down to watch and they arrested a couple guys and threw them in the back seat of the state cruisers. My roommate and I—he was in the Air Force reserves, and we were saying, “Roll up those windows, make them sweat to death”, and the cops were all laughing at us. 28:06 “We can‟t do that”, and we said, “Oh yes you can, those pot lickers”. I forget what they were protesting, but it was a big deal and Grand River Avenue was all jammed full of pedestrians and cars were going real slow. The cops were beating on the cars to get them to speed up, but I can‟t remember what it was all about now. We just went to school and studied. Interviewer: Did people generally know that you were a veteran and had been in Vietnam? Probably, because my uniform was my—my fatigue shirts, basically, and cut off fatigue pants, that‟s what I wore to school. Interviewer: But you didn’t get particular flak, or anything, from anybody because of that? 57 �No Interviewer: What did you take your degree in? My undergraduate was in general business with a major, or what have you, in management. 29:13 Then my masters was in personnel administration. Interviewer: What kind of a career did you go into? Well, I graduated with my masters, MBA, in 1976 and 1976 wasn‟t a great time for the country either, as far as getting jobs, and it even got to a point where—I was married by then, I‟d been married for a couple of years, and I thought, “Maybe I‟ll try to do what my father did”. I‟d stayed in the IRR, the Individual Ready Reserve, and I didn‟t go to meetings or anything like that, it was just a paperwork shuffle that every three years, “Do you want to stay in? And if the balloon goes up, maybe we‟ll call you and maybe we won‟t”. 30:07 I forget who I wrote, some General somewhere and I said, “I‟m ready to go back onto active duty, I‟ve got my MBA and I‟ve got all this stuff. I was regular army at one time”, but I never heard from him, of course, but then finally I got a job with Continental Can Company. I spent a year out in New Jersey and then they transferred me back here to Grand Rapids when we built the plant out here. I stayed there and then got reduced out of there and then I went to a small company over on 32nd Street call Aloff‟s and they‟re out of business now, and from there to another company called Batts Incorporated, they use to make hangers out in Zeeland, and they‟re defunct now. 31:02 So, all of the places I went to work for became defunct , and then to the packaging company out in Holland, Bradford Company. Interviewer: Do they still exist? 58 �They do, and I got downsized out of there. I had a lot of anger issues until I got into therapy I really didn‟t know why. I always seemed to have, which isn‟t a good thing, trouble with bosses that I always felt were kind of incompetent. It didn‟t take a lot for the therapist to say, “Well, you‟re dragging around all of your lieutenant stuff, and you‟re probably viewing guys, who may or may not be incompetent, you‟re looking at them as like the LaBroses or the Bouyevs, or the Pews, or what have you, of the world”. 32:23 “Oh”, and of course by then I wasn‟t working any place, so it really makes a---I wish I‟d known that thirty five years ago. Many of us who have been diagnoses with PTSD, we‟re able to function in—and, you know, we just stuff it, and then sometimes, at an inopportune time it pops out and then you‟ve got a lot of fence building to take care of and sometimes you‟re not able to mend the fences and then you‟re left with, “I guess it‟s time to move on”. 33:09 But, I‟ve been married for thirty eight years now, almost, and I have one child, so I didn‟t—I never did drugs, or never was a drunk or somewhat the stereotype, you know, you‟re a womanizer, I never did that, or you‟re a doper, I never did any of that, never smoked, ever. Another part of the characteristic is you‟re alcoholic, and I was that, you know, I was always at work, and then some of that, do this, this and this, gets imprinted on your children, or child in my case, and that causes heartbreak, and drama sometimes, so I wasn‟t immune to any of that. 34:11 Interviewer: Do you see positive aspects in ways which your time in the service affected you that one way or another turned out to be positive? Oh yeah, I do think so, I mean it—we just learned something new a couple, or I did anyway, a few weeks ago in our group. I go once a week to group, “post traumatic growth”. Apparently that term and concept has been around for a while, but just got 59 �introduced to us a couple of weeks ago, but I mean, I think all of the training and all of the exposure made me a good supervisor. It didn‟t necessarily make me a great employee from this level down, but from this level down through my subordinates it helped immensely. 35:11 And I was tough on suborinates too and I run into five or six of them since I‟ve gotten into this therapy business, and I‟ve apologized to them and say, “I was tough, I was a bastard sometimes, you know”, and universally they have said, “You weren‟t as bad as you think you were, and we‟re always harder on ourselves anyway, usually, but you weren‟t as hard as you think you were and once we came to realize you‟d spent some time in that situation, we kind of understood a little better” 36:02 Almost universally they all turned around and said, “You never—sometimes maybe you were over the top with your criticism, or how to do this or that, but you never did it just to be—to just prove that you were the boss, you were always trying to make us better”, and a lot of those folks have been successful too, but—so I wouldn‟t trade any of it. I‟ve had the occasion to go Walter Reed a number of times and see our, see our kids that are fighting the war now, and that‟s brutal stuff, to go there and see that. 37:00 It makes me; on a number of levels it makes me angry that we‟re putting them through that. It makes me, sometimes, feel like I‟m not deserving of the benefits that I‟m getting from the government, because not only are they going to have PTSD, but they‟re going to be going through life, in many case, you know, with no arms and one limb, one eye and what have you. Of course my therapist can always turn that around and say, “Well, they‟re getting their compensation too and yours is not obviously visible to everybody because yours is a different kind of a what have you”, and you know, I resisted this for years too, this business because I knew some people that I thought were fakers and 60 �charlatans and what have you. 38:00 I didn‟t want to be involved in that, and finally one day it just dawned on me that, “You need to A, do this for yourself, and get some help, but you can‟t fix anything, or help anybody else if you‟re just going to be on the sidelines looking in”. The government doesn‟t care if Bob Anderson shows up and raises his hand for benefits, at all, the government could care less because there‟s a thousand other people right behind me. So, I did this to, I always say this kind of jokingly, I started this because I was tired of being a jackass all the time, and I see some changes. I‟ve been doing this for almost six years now, the therapy part, but it does allow me to help other veterans because I think I‟m conversant enough in it that I can help other veterans, and I‟ve been fairly successful with the ones that I‟ve helped. 39:02 Interviewer: So, are you involved with any kind of local support organizations in the area? Well, we have, maybe it‟s showing up here. We have a local chapter of the 1st Cav, it‟s been renamed to honor our President Emeritus who just passed away, James Mason, he was an armor officer, but he was also, a career officer, and he fought in Korea and was wounded badly as a tank platoon leader and he was also in WWII. So, we get together once a month, in fact we have a meeting tonight. We do some social service out at the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans. Every month that has a fifth Sunday in it we go out there and we run Bingo, so that‟s kind of a way to give back. If we see veterans on the street, most of us, we will thank them for their service. 40:09 In a lot of ways they have it a lot rougher than we do because they keep going back, and back, and back, and back, It‟s just brutal from this chair, just brutal. Interviewer: Well, you’re certainly in a position to know something about that. 61 �Like I say, it‟s been, because I‟ve been through the benefit tunnel, I guess if you will, and sometimes the government is not willing to help people get their benefits. It‟s not that they‟re unwilling; it‟s just that they‟re not willing to, if that makes any sense. I mean, they‟re not hunting them down and telling them what the benefits are, you have to kind of stumble into it, and I‟ve been lucky enough to understand, I guess, how the system works, so I‟ve been able to help guys from my own company, my Alpha company group. 41:07 We pushed a couple of guys in the group, our chapter group, to seek benefits, and some of them have. Interviewer: Well, as a whole, you seem to have come out of things pretty well in the end. Well, I wouldn‟t change the whole military experience at all. The only thing, if I was able to change, with a magic wand, is to have understood what PTSD was thirty five years ago, and then I might have had a—worked at one place for thirty five years, I don‟t know. Interviewer: Well, thank you very much for coming in and talking to me today, I appreciate your story. 62 � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Anderson, Robert (Interview transcript and video), 2005 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Anderson, Robert Description An account of the resource Robert Douglas Anderson, born near Grand Rapids, Michigan. in 1926, was drafted into the Army in 1945 after the war had already ended. After training at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, and Fort Meade, Maryland, he was sent to Yokohama, Japan to identify and sort war materiel. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Andrews, Greg (Interviewer) Otten, Andrew (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 2005-05-26 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AndersonR1081V 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/500d3eb5307224fe8950a824bb9ad373.mp4 eaed1cca096c3ae173c090db7f0c68af https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f3051aa91efc605e250c63dc615d12fd.pdf 07be9bf523fee507ecbd049b15b63eed PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veteran’s History Project Vietnam War Bob Anderson Interview Length: (02:41:51:00) Pre-enlistment / Training (00:00:08:00)  Anderson was born in August 1948 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where his family lived for a few years before Anderson’s father decided to go back into the Air Force; Anderson’s father had served as a pilot during World War II and had grown tired of civilian life, so he applied for, and the Air Force granted, re-entry into the service (00:00:08:00) o When Anderson’s father re-enlisted, it was towards the end of the Korean War, and he served not a combat pilot but a personnel transport pilot (00:00:59:00) o Anderson’s family ended up living in several different places, including Charleston, South Carolina, and Florida as Anderson’s father trained with different types of aircraft (00:01:21:00) o For the majority of the time before Anderson himself joined the service, his father was stationed at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where Anderson received the majority of his schooling and graduated from high school (00:01:32:00)  Anderson graduated in 1966 and proceeded to attend junior college; during that time, Anderson ended up living with his uncle in the Gulf Coast region of Mississippi, where the uncle was a professor at one of the local colleges (00:01:46:00) o After a year, Anderson transferred from the junior college to Michigan State University in Fall 1967 (00:02:12:00) o While in college, Anderson felt that he did not know how to study properly; he would read the necessary texts for hours but he could not translate the reading to re-gurgitation on tests and as a result, Anderson ended up being academically dismissed from the university in Spring 1968 (00:02:23:00) o While at Michigan State, if there were protest movements on the campus, Anderson was unaware of them; he was insulated growing up and although his parents allowed him to do what he wanted, Anderson grew up oblivious to world events (00:03:07:00)  After Anderson was forced out of Michigan State, he packed all his belongings up and moved back to Maryland to live with his parents, while feeling like he had failed something because he had done well in the junior college (00:03:38:00) o Although he could have gone to junior college again in Maryland, something in the back of Anderson’s mind told him that he was not ready to try again yet; he talked with his father and his father thought it might be a good idea for Anderson to join the service (00:03:57:00)  If he joined the service, Anderson would receive free training and when he got out of the service, if Anderson did not want to go back to college, then he would at least have training for a trade (00:04:18:00) �  o Anderson’s father suggested refrigeration equipment repair because people used air conditioners and everybody had a refrigerator, so Anderson enlisted in the Army to be a refrigeration equipment repairman (00:04:36:00) Anderson ended up enlisting in the Army on his mother’s birthday: May 6th, 1968 (00:05:12:00) o When he enlisted, Anderson had a guaranteed enlistment for the school that he wanted, which happened to be at Fort Belvoir, an Army base just over the Potomac River and ten miles away from Anderson’s home (00:05:32:00) Anderson did his basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia; had he gone to the refrigeration repair school, Anderson would have then gone to Fort Belvoir but during the reception period, Anderson scored high enough on the tests to be considered for Officer Candidate School (OCS) (00:06:04:00) o For two years before he enlisted, the Vietnam War was an un-event for Anderson; even though the division he would serve with, the 1st Air Cavalry, had fought in the Ia Drang valley, that was Anderson’s senior year in high school and he was still oblivious (00:06:48:00) o Anderson had the choice of going to OCS because he qualified and once he said yes, his waive his guaranteed right to go to refrigeration equipment repairman school (00:07:10:00)  Therefore, after completing his basic training, Anderson went to Fort Dix, New Jersey (00:07:20:00) o Anderson feels that the basic premise behind basic training was the instructors wanted to tear the men down and expunge any thoughts of the civilian word so they could re-make the men as soldiers (00:07:33:00)  Therefore, there was a lot of physical torment by the instructors, who were allowed to yell profusely at the soldiers; although the instructors are still allowed to yell today, they have a limit on what they are allowed to call the soldiers (00:07:50:00)  During Anderson’s training, the soldiers had no recourse but to say “yes drill sergeant” and do whatever the instructor wanted (00:08:03:00) o The soldiers learned how to drill and march, as well as the manual of arms for the M-14 and rifle marksmanship (00:08:16:00) o Not everyone who went through basic training ended up with a combat unit; there were many soldiers ended up going to specialized schools, such as refrigeration equipment repair or welding (00:08:32:00)  That being said, the training was oriented towards infantry tactics, such as target detection, night division, escape & evasion, etc. (00:09:15:00) o For the most part, Anderson’s adjustment to military life was fairly easy, primarily because his father was career Air Force and from afar, Anderson had some understand of what he had to do, mainly not arguing with everybody and doing whatever he was ordered to do (00:09:34:00) o In basic training, if someone told you to get down and do a bunch of push-ups, then you got down and did as many as you could (00:10:04:00)  There was no debate with the drill sergeants; if they said stand on one foot in the corner, the soldiers said “yes drill sergeant” then went and stood on one foot in the corner (00:10:21:00) �   Nevertheless, there were a few soldiers who could not be broken or did not want to be broken and Anderson suspects that most of those soldiers were draftees; they had been doing whatever they were doing when Uncle Sam knocked on their door and said they would report (00:10:41:00)  Anderson suspects the draftees were rebellious because they did not want to be there, whereas his situation was different because he had enlisted; although his feelings might be similar to theirs, Anderson kept his head down and his mouth shut (00:11:05:00) o When he enlisted, Anderson was in better physical shape, so the physical aspects of the training, such as running, were not an issue; the only thing Anderson really had trouble with were the monkey bars, which the soldiers had to do every day before they could eat breakfast (00:11:34:00)  Anderson was not very good at first because he did not have much upper body strength but eventually, he learned how to do them (00:12:01:00) o Anderson’s basic training lasted for eight or nine weeks, after which he went to Fort Dix, New Jersey for his Advanced Individual Training (AIT) (00:12:13:00) In a lot of ways, AIT was similar to basic training, although the training was much more geared towards the infantry, including more weapons training, radio procedure, field exercises, tactical training and less drill and ceremony; by this time, most of the soldiers knew where they were going (00:12:26:00) o While in basic training, the drill sergeants for the most part had served in Vietnam but in AIT, some of the instructors, such as the training company commander, had not served a tour; Anderson vaguely recalls the platoon sergeant in AIT had served in Vietnam but he cannot be sure (00:13:07:00) o During AIT, the instructors tried to simulate what the soldiers would experience in Vietnam as best they could, although they could not replicate the physical aspects, such as the terrain, humidity, and monsoons or the jungle (00:13:54:00) o As part of the overall training, the soldiers went through two or three days of training in how to interact with the civilian population, although Anderson does not remember it taking place in a mock Vietnamese village; he knows some of the other AIT locations, such as Fort Polk, had them (00:14:24:00) After completing AIT, Anderson had a couple of days before he had to report back to Fort Benning for OCS, which he did in the middle of September 1968 (00:15:14:00) o There were about one hundred and twenty other soldiers who started the course with Anderson, which was designed to turn them all into the lieutenants for the infantry (00:15:34:00) o The class days were long and although the academics were hard for some, Anderson did not have any trouble with that nor with the physicality of the training (00:15:51:00) o In his platoon of twenty soldiers, Anderson figures that around half were college graduates and the other half were like Anderson, with a couple of years college schooling (00:16:43:00)  A large number of the soldiers in Anderson’s platoon were also married, around thirty percent; any of the soldiers who had a degree and were married were draftees because they would not willingly enlist if they already had a four-year degree and a family (00:17:28:00) �  Many of the soldiers brought their wives with them and Anderson assumes it was difficult for the soldiers to have their wives five miles off-post but have to be stuck with one hundred other guys (00:17:58:00) o The training the soldiers received tended to be similar to what they had already received, only more intense; there was a lot of map reading, artillery firing and learning how to adjust fire, etc. (00:18:26:00)  There was also a lot of classroom work, such as a film which the instructors would stop suddenly, say the company commander had been killed and ask Anderson what he would do; when this happened, hopefully Anderson was awake enough to give a good answer and after he did so, the instructors analyzed his decision-making before continuing the film to see if what Anderson had said was correct (00:18:53:00)  It was always “go, go, go” from reveille until the end of the day, the soldiers ran everywhere, it was hot, etc. and when the soldiers got into an air conditioned building, it seemed like as soon as they sat down, they went to sleep (00:19:42:00)  The instructors had ways to deal with the sleeping soldiers and sometimes, they were humorous; the instructors would tell everyone who was awake to ignore the next command, then they would yell out, “on your feet” (00:20:16:00) o The soldiers were conditioned to respond to that command even if they were half asleep, so when half the class stood up, they were chastised by the instructor (00:20:35:00) o OCS lasted for twenty-three weeks; although it was not like the World War II model of the “ninety-dya wonder”, the soldiers who completed the course still received that moniker (00:20:52:00) After the soldiers completed the OCS course and their orders came down, some stayed at Fort Benning to go into the tactical unit, while others, like Anderson, stayed to go into a basic training unit; however, each soldiers received a furlough for about a week or two before they had to report to their new assignment (00:21:14:00) o Anderson graduated from OCS on March 29th, 1970 and reported back to Fort Benning in mid-April, where he stayed for three months before receiving his orders to go to Vietnam (00:21:38:00) o The role of a 2nd Lieutenant in a basic training company was “to be seen and not heard”; they were “gentlemen” by an act of Congress but many new lieutenants were unsure of themselves and since the drill sergeant cadre knew what they were doing, if a 2nd Lieutenant was smart, he got out of their way to let them do their thing while watching to learn, which Anderson tried to do (00:22:04:00)  They had a good training company commander who had served with the 101st Airborne Division while the company first sergeant was a two-tour Vietnam veteran, as well as Korea (00:22:51:00)  All of the other drill sergeants had been to Vietnam, they knew what they were doing, and they did not need Anderson telling them what to do, so he tried to stay out of their way (00:23:05:00) �  All that being said, the lieutenants still received a lot of responsibilities, such as being the mess officer, the Army emergency relief officer, the blood-drive officer, etc. (00:23:26:00)  They were trying to give the lieutenants some responsibility, not necessarily to build up their self-esteem but to make them feel comfortable with the idea of giving orders; unless they had worked in a previous job as a supervisor, most of the lieutenants had never told people to do things (00:24:02:00)  They tried to make break the lieutenants in and make them feel comfortable in a uniform that said eighty percent of the people on the base had to salute them (00:24:38:00) o Once he said that he was not going to go to be a refrigeration repairman, Anderson knew his path was chosen and there was not question in his mind that he would ultimately end up in Vietnam (00:25:14:00)  However, Anderson did not dwell on that fact; it was what it was, he had raised his hand to volunteer and if the Army kept him at Fort Benning for two years, then so be it (00:25:32:00)  The senior lieutenant in the training company had gone through that; when he graduated from Armor OCS, he stayed at Fort Benning for two years, but Anderson did not have any grand illusions that the same thing would happen to him (00:25:50:00)  Anderson did the best he could as a 2nd Lieutenant and if the time came, then he would go on to the next step and do as best he could then too (00:26:12:00) When his orders finally did come down, Anderson was naturally apprehensive; unlike being a civilian, Anderson received news from the Army every week about the war and he was able to see who had been killed and how many were officers (00:26:30:00) o In some ways, Anderson was glad; he was almost certain he would eventually go, he had been at Fort Benning long enough to get the assignments down pat, so it was time to go do what Anderson had been trained to do (00:26:53:00) Deployment (00:27:20:00)  Once the orders finally arrived, Anderson had to report to Travis Air Force Base in California, although he does not remember how exactly he got to Vietnam itself (00:27:20:00)  Anderson does remember arriving in Vietnam and while most soldiers remember it being smelly or hot, Anderson does not recall the smell; the soldiers arrived in Vietnam at night, meaning it was dark, and Anderson does remember the bus ride to the 90th Replacement Battalion (00:28:01:00) o On the bus ride, all the windows on the bus were open but were covered in a wire mesh and when one of the soldiers asked what the mesh was for, the bus driver said it was to keep the VC or somebody else from throwing a hand grenade into the bus (00:28:20:00) o That was the first indication that the soldiers were in a real situation; they were riding in screened-in buses so people could not throw grenades inside and kill them (00:28:44:00) �   The soldiers arrived in Bien Hoa and went to the 90th Replacement Battalion, which was the unit that every newly-arrived soldier went to and from there, the soldiers were assigned to different units throughout the country (00:28:57:00) o Anderson spent three days at the replacement battalion, received his uniforms, although he did not know where he would be assigned, and after a couple of days, orders came down that he was assigned to the 1st Air Cavalry Division (00:29:16:00)  While in OCS, the officers listed the three locations where they would like the serve and Anderson ended up listing Vietnam number three and maybe Germany as number one (00:29:42:00)  However, when he arrived at the First Team Academy (FTA), they asked Anderson which unit in particular he would like to join, although he did not know units from anything (00:29:59:00)  Some officers who had been indoctrinated longer, mainly West Pointers, chose specific units, such as Custer’s regiment or another unit, to go to (00:30:34:00)  They had a map of the area and Anderson remembers looking at the 2nd Battalion of the 7th Cavalry regimental area and seeing that their headquarters was surrounded by a bunch of firebases, figured it would be a safe location, so his first choice was to join the 2nd of the 7th (00:30:50:00)  However, the Army had already decided where Anderson would go and instead of going to the 2nd of the 7th, he went to the 1st of the 7th, but that was not big deal to him (00:31:11:00)  The soldiers were at the First Team Academy for about three days, where they received a weapons familiarization course, did some repelling, etc.; more than anything, Anderson believes the academy was designed to get the soldiers acclimated to the heat (00:31:34:00) o After the three or four days at the FTA, Anderson received orders for the 1st of the 7th; the Army led him by hand because “there is nothing dumber than a 2nd Lieutenant”, so when Anderson asked how to get to the 1st of the 7th, the Army said they would take him back to Bien Hoa and tell him right where he needed to go (00:31:54:00) At the time, the 1st of the 7th was stationed in III Corps, to the north and west of Saigon, fifteen miles from the Cambodian border (00:32:37:00) o Immediately around the base camp, it was in the middle of a rubber plantation but the further out the soldiers got, to the individual fire bases, it was double and triple canopy jungle with bamboo and clearings interspersed and for the most part, the terrain was flat (00:32:58:00) Initially, Anderson took a C-7 Caribou ride to Quan Loi, where someone knew he was coming because when he got off the C-7, a sergeant was waiting for him (00:33:32:00) o When he first arrived in Quan Loi, it seemed like Anderson had been transported to the moon; there was not anybody he knew and Anderson had orders to get on the C-7 and when he arrived in Quan Loi, there would be someone there to meet him (00:33:56:00) � o When he arrived, Anderson was walking around with his eyes wide, wondering what he had gotten himself into, and someone called to him, asked if was going to the 1st of the 7th and told him to jump in the jeep, which took him to the battalion headquarters (00:34:15:00) o After Anderson reported to the headquarters, the other officers told him to go through a set of doors so that he could talk with the colonel commanding the battalion (00:34:42:00)  The sequence of Anderson meeting the colonel was similar to the scene in film Apocalypse Now when Martin Sheen’s character first meets Marlon Brando’s character (00:35:05:00)  Anderson and the colonel talked for a few minutes, during which the colonel gave Anderson a Garreyowen crest, which was the regimental crest for the 7th Cavalry, and told Anderson he was being assigned to Alpha Company and who the company commander was (00:35:40:00) o When he arrived at Alpha Company’s rear area, the first sergeant was there and he knew Anderson was coming; Anderson spent no more than two days getting his equipment, including his rifle, helmet, poncho, pack, etc. (00:36:31:00) o Then, on either the second or third day, the company in the field was being resupplied, so they told Anderson the day before that when they went out to resupply, Anderson could go and join the company (00:36:57:00) The next morning, Anderson gathered all his equipment and boarded the Command and Control helicopter flying out to the company on Firebase Wescott (00:37:15:00) o When Anderson jumped off the helicopter with the rest of the soldiers, he asked what he had to do and was told to wait until the re-supply helicopter arrived; the company was in the field and they would be moving to a re-supply site where Anderson would go an meet them (00:37:44:00) o It seemed like a couple of hours passed before the re-supply helicopter arrived at the firebase and when it did arrive, Anderson hopped aboard and the helicopter took him to where the company was (00:38:18:00) o It was an interesting helicopter ride to the company; Anderson believes the helicopter crew chief saw he was a newly-arrive lieutenant, so he radioed the pilot that information and suggested giving Anderson a ride to see if they could make him throw up (00:38:47:00)  As the helicopter flew out to the company, the pilot made the helicopter bob and weave, flew along the knap of the earth, etc. but Anderson thought the flight was great and similar to a roller coaster (00:39:12:00)  During the flight, Anderson sat on a crate with his feet spread apart so he would not fall out and after awhile, the helicopter crew tired of the erratic flying, figuring they could to make Anderson vomit (00:39:26:00)  On the other hand, every other helicopter ride that Anderson had was not as erratic and wild as that first flight (00:39:40:00) o They eventually dropped Anderson off with the company and when he asked to speak with the company commander, the other soldiers pointed him out, so Anderson when to talk with him, who welcomed him to Alpha Company and assigned Anderson to be the mortar platoon leader, which Anderson did not think was a good idea (00:39:55:00) �   Although he had familiarization and knew about mortars, being mortar platoon leader was not exactly what Anderson wanted to do; still, he held his tongue and asked where the mortars were (00:40:51:00)  At that time, the soldiers in the platoon were carrying the 81 mm mortars in the field; the base plate alone weighed eighty-one pounds and the soldiers also had to carry to launch tube, tripod, aiming sticks, as well as two rounds of ammunition apiece (00:41:06:00)  Anderson stayed the mortar platoon leader until the next re-supply and believes the company commander placed him in charge of the mortar platoon as part of his acclimation; Anderson was wearing his rucksack, carrying his equipment, and was far enough away from the fighting that he could see what was going on but not be involved in it (00:41:25:00) o At the next re-supply, the 2nd platoon lieutenant moved up to be the company executive officer and Anderson was his replacement (00:42:04:00) o In the time Anderson was the mortar platoon leader, the soldiers fired the mortars a couple of times, if only to get ride of some of the weight, although they never fired them with permission from the company commander (00:42:22:00)  On some occasions, other soldiers in the platoon would go into an area but before they did, the mortar platoon would launch several rounds into the area; the soldiers in the platoon knew what they had to do and Anderson never had to check to make sure everything was ready (00:42:39:00)  When Anderson joined the company, they stayed in that location overnight and the next morning, a patrol was going out and the captain wanted some mortar rounds into that vicinity (00:43:52:00) When Anderson joined the platoon, he had two E-6s, the platoon sergeant and the man training to be the platoon sergeant; the lieutenant Anderson was replacing moved right out of the platoon when Anderson arrived (00:44:26:00) On the first morning Anderson was in charge of the platoon, the captain told him he was going to be leading a thousand meter patrol and the soldiers were going light, meaning they were only taking their weapons and ammunition while they left their rucksacks stayed behind with the company (00:45:21:00) o The company had a scout dog with them and the captain told Anderson to take the dog with him; Anderson gathered his sergeants and told them the platoon had to do a thousand meter patrol and then return to the company (00:45:42:00) o The sergeants said okay and after tell them the platoon would leave in ten minutes, Anderson talked with the dog handler to explain what the plan was, who said okay as well because the handler knew why he was the there and what the dog’s job was (00:46:12:00) o Anderson does not recall if this was the patrol where he started walking where he normally would but if not, then it was shortly thereafter (00:47:09:00)  During a normal patrol, the column would have a point man, a slack man to cover the point man, then a squad leader and then Anderson himself; Anderson could not run anything if he was at the rear of the column and he could not know exactly what was going on (00:47:24:00)  Anderson also had a radio operator and he ended up walking directly behind Anderson in the column (00:47:58:00) �  o The patrol had gone around seven hundred meters when the point dog alerted; although Anderson did not know what was going on, soldiers who had worked with dogs before did and they told Anderson that the dog had sensed something near the patrol (00:48:08:00) o Anderson began to ask in his mind what he had to do next because it was not like OCS when they would stop the film and ask him; Anderson called one of his sergeants, asking him to come to the front of the column and when the sergeant asked why, Anderson said the point dog had alerted, which was a none event for the sergeant because he had been in-country for six months (00:49:06:00)  When Anderson asked the sergeant what he should do, the sergeant said they would normally recon by fire, a term Anderson was not familiar with; the sergeant explained what to do but suggested Anderson radio back to the company beforehand and tell them what they were planning to do, otherwise, the men back at the company would hear the gunfire and assume the patrol had made contact with the enemy (00:49:39:00) o Anderson radioed back to the company, saying the point dog was alerted and they were planning to recon by fire; the soldiers did the recon by fire but received no enemy return fire, so they continued the patrol, performed their sweep and returned to the company (00:50:16:00) o Years later, other soldiers in platoon said they could not believe Anderson made them go through the entire patrol; whenever they went before on a long patrol, the lieutenant before Anderson would lead the soldiers out about five hundred meters, where they would sit and relax before going back to the company (00:50:45:00) o Nothing happened on the first patrol and Anderson is thankful for that because he was still a green lieutenant (00:51:19:00) After about three weeks, the company moved from Firebase Wescott to Firebase Jerry in the middle of November (00:51:42:00) o The company was picked up in the field and then air assaulted into a new area of operations, Firebase Jerry; it was late in the day and Anderson’s platoon was the last platoon into the area (00:52:18:00) o Just as the platoon was dropped off outside the firebase, they came under mortar attack; all of the mortar rounds hit up front, wounding several soldiers severely (00:52:33:00)  The attack was only a few mortar rounds, after which the platoon made it inside the firebase, where a doctor tended to their wounded (00:53:12:00) o In the field, the company had around one hundred and ten soldiers and Anderson had around twenty-five soldiers in his platoon; the most soldiers Anderson had in the field at one time was twenty-five and the fewest was seventeen (00:53:43:00) o After the soldiers left the firebase, they set up for the night, although nothing happened that night (00:54:12:00) The next morning, the entire company was moving; Anderson’s platoon was not on point when a couple of NVA ran along a little trail coming from the right and although the point element fired towards them, the soldiers did not hit anyone (00:54:28:00) o The captain wanted to see where the NVA had come from, so the point element walked up the trail for about thirty or forty meters before someone ordered them to get further away from the trail (00:54:42:00) � o The soldiers had just seen an enemy on the trail and the enemy most certainly knew the soldiers were there because the soldiers had fired on them, so the company moved off the trail (00:55:05:00) o When his platoon reached the trail, Anderson looked at the trail itself, which was hard packed from numerous people walking on it; then, as he looked up the trail, Anderson figured it would be a good spot for the enemy to fire on them and no sooner had he said that then the enemy started firing (00:55:24:00)  As quite often happened, there was gunfire but the bullets were going everywhere because the enemy was not taking the time to aim properly; the initial firing might be aimed but the response was not (00:56:06:00) o Again, it was late in the day and the captain said the company was going to set up a defensive position for the night; as the soldiers began preparing the position, the captain called Anderson over and said he wanted Anderson to go parallel to the trail for four or five hundred meters so he could ambush the enemy (00:56:28:00) o Anderson said okay, so he and his men found the trail, set up their claymore mines and then backed off to wait for somebody to stumble down the trail; it rained that night and the mosquitoes came out but fortunately, nobody came down the trail but the soldiers could hear chopping in the distance as the enemy chopped down trees to make bunkers (00:57:01:00)  The soldiers could also hear laughter, which makes Anderson believe the soldiers on the ambush were within a couple of hundred meters of the enemy’s position (00:57:58:00)  In the morning, the soldiers picked up their equipment and back tracked to the company (00:58:15:00) o Trails crisscrossed the whole area and the soldiers could see where the enemy had rested in the daytime and nighttime from the debris of cooking fires (00:58:22:00) o Every two or three days, the soldiers either would be fired on or would fire on the enemy, although they did not take many casualties (00:58:52:00) After about a week in the new area of operation, the company got involved in a large firefight lasting for about five or six hours (00:59:06:00) o Again, Anderson was somewhat lucky because his platoon was walking last that particular day and it was mostly the front of the column that received the brunt of the attack (00:59:17:00) o Two platoons really got into it with the enemy and although there was nobody killed, there were sixteen or seventeen wounded soldiers who needed to be medivaced out (00:59:26:00) o It was a longer day for Anderson because he was not under the direct fire; he and his men were merely sitting guard, acting as a company reserve, although Anderson did have to send his machine guns up because the other platoon’s machine guns malfunctioned (00:59:41:00)  Anderson’s machine gunners were not happy about having to go into the fight because they had already been in the field for six or seven months and had seen a lot of action, but they still went up and Anderson believes the two machine gunners were a key piece of the battle (01:00:17:00)  Both gunners were meticulous about keeping not only their machine guns but their ammunition clean, while other gunners were not (01:00:42:00) �  o The soldiers also had to pass ammunition from Anderson’s platoon to the other platoons because they were in the jungle and the platoons could not be re-supplied with ammunition from the air (01:00:58:00)  It eventually became nerve-wracking because not only did the two platoons in the fight not have much ammunition, but neither did Anderson’s platoon (01:01:08:00) o The fight continued until late in the afternoon before the soldiers had to set up a base camp (01:01:24:00) o The next morning, Anderson’s platoon was the least beat up, so they had to lead the company back to the firebase, which was nerve-wracking as well because the area had been so well worked over by artillery and air strikes that it looked like a tornado had moved through; intermixed with the destroyed jungle were human body parts and bloody bandages (01:01:38:00)  Although the soldiers were hit bad, Anderson believes the enemy was hit worse and they were now gone, of course (01:02:49:00) The purpose of that particular mission was to move into the area and assess what the attacks had done and they ended up getting ambushed (01:03:24:00) o Overall, the company’s mission was to aggressively and actively patrol to find the enemy, and if successful, destroy him (01:03:56:00) o When they were in the area, the company was fortunate because there was not a system of enemy tunnels; there were bunkers and the major battle was against a small series of bunkers (01:04:21:00) o The North Vietnamese were excellent soldiers and had been fighting for twenty years, meaning their camouflaging ability was excellent; there were times the soldiers would step, look down, and they would be standing directly in front of a bunker, which happened to Anderson a couple of different times (01:04:57:00)  Anderson would be fourth in the column when he found the bunker, which meant three other soldiers did not see it and in those situations, the bunker was not occupied (01:05:19:00) o By the time of the six hour fight, Anderson had been in country for three weeks and he had a much better understanding of what was going on (01:05:43:00)  Eventually, another new lieutenant joined the company and Anderson was happy to see him because it meant Anderson was no longer the dumbest lieutenant in the company (01:05:53:00)  However, the lieutenant had only been in the company for a couple of weeks before the fight began but he still did a marvelous job in handling the situation; Anderson wonders what would have happened if the roles were reversed and he had been in the fight (01:06:07:00)  The lieutenant’s point man spotted the NVA claymore and was able to alert the lieutenant, who in turn alerted the captain so that by the time the enemy detonated the claymore, there was no one around to be seriously wounded in the explosion (01:06:19:00) The most powerful weapons in the platoon were the M-60 machine guns and when the soldiers found an enemy bunker, if it was occupied, then they tried to get as much firepower against it was they could (01:06:58:00) � o Once the soldiers managed the suppress whatever the enemy was trying to do to them, if they could, then they wanted to pull back so they could use explosives against the bunker (01:07:18:00) o If they were using artillery against a bunker, under normal circumstances, the soldiers were working with another group of soldiers, normally a forward observer for the artillery unit, and as Anderson recalls, the soldiers could not get artillery fire closer than six hundred meters unless they were in direct contact; then, the fire had to be danger close rules (01:07:38:00)  However, the vast majority of engagements were twenty-five meters or less and although he had great confidence in the artillery, Anderson would never call artillery fire that close unless it was a last resort (01:08:10:00)  There were situations that called for fire that close but only as the last resort for the soldiers (01:08:43:00) Anderson was a platoon leader from October 1969 until the middle of February 1970, after which he was removed from the field and given a rear job as a reward for doing good work in the field (01:08:51:00) o The rear job Anderson received out the be the most miserable job Anderson ever had in his life; while in the base camp, Anderson was in charge of one quarter of the base camp’s defense (01:09:29:00)  At the time, Anderson was still as lieutenant while the three other men in charge of the other sections were all captains (01:09:42:00)  They gave Anderson two other soldiers to work with and all three ended up working what seemed twenty-one hours a day; the three had to make sure the trip flares were out, all the defenses were set, etc. and they did not have any help (01:09:50:00)  To make it worse, Anderson had to report to the most obnoxious lieutenant colonel that ever wore a silver oak leaf (01:10:13:00)  Anderson and his men had to report to the lieutenant colonel every day and he wanted to know all the minute details of what the defenses were and it eventually reached the point that it was too much for Anderson (01:10:26:00)  Anderson worked extremely hard every day but the work did not seem to make any large contribution; if he needed supplies, Anderson did not know where to go or what to do while the captains, who had many more years of service, knew what to do and where to go (01:10:40:00) o The job lasted for about three weeks before Anderson was called to the battalion headquarters to talk with the battalion XO, a major, who said he had both good news and bad news for Anderson (01:11:07:00)  The major said that he knew Anderson and the lieutenant colonel were not getting along although Anderson was working hard, so Anderson was going back into the field (01:11:42:00)  Anderson said that he only had one question and when the major asked what it was, Anderson asked if this was going to negatively affect his officer efficiency report and the major said no (01:12:18:00)  The major also said Anderson was not going back to Alpha Company but was going to Charlie Company, something Anderson was not enthused � about; when Anderson asked if he had to go to Charlie Company, the major said he did (01:12:38:00) o When he received the news, part of Anderson felt good he was out of the job in the rear but part felt bad because he had to go to Charlie Company and begin the process of training soldiers all over again (01:13:27:00) The next day, Anderson reported to the firebase where Charlie Company was stationed and when he arrived, the company CO was in the medical bunker being worked on by a visiting dentist (01:13:52:00) o Anderson went into the bunker to report and the CO asked if Anderson had ever been in the field before; Anderson replied that he had been in the field with Alpha Company for four months (01:14:11:00)  The CO assigned Anderson to lead the 3rd Platoon and after the CO told him where the platoon was located on the fire base, Anderson went to the platoon and introduced himself (01:14:30:00) o When Anderson arrived, the old 3rd Platoon leader left and went back to the battalion rear area to take over Anderson’s old job (01:15:16:00) o After a couple of days in the field, it became clear that the CO did not fully understand what he was doing; although he was an armor officer, he was not from the same mold as Anderson’s CO in Alpha Company but Anderson did the best that he could with the cards he had been dealt (01:15:43:00) o The terrain Charlie Company operated in was similar to the terrain that Alpha Company had operated in, with a lot of bamboo and things like that (01:16:10:00) o There were only two times when Anderson took his boots off in the jungle, with the first time was the night before Alpha Company had the large contact with the enemy in November (01:16:21:00)  Firebases had what where labeled “mad minutes”, although they seldom lasted a minute, and their purpose was to not only use up any bad ammunition, but to also just fire around the base to try and hit anyone trying to sneak up on the base (01:16:36:00)  That night, the company was so close to Jerry that the bullets were flying past the men; Anderson jumped into a foxhole that happened to be full of termites and within a matter of seconds, they were biting his feet, causing him to jump out of the hole (01:17:10:00) o The second time Anderson took his boots off was when he was with Charlie Company; it was pitch black outside, Anderson took his boots off and around ten or eleven o’clock, he heard one of his M-60s start firing (01:17:41:00)  Anderson stumbled around trying to find his boots and his glasses before eventually making his way over the foxhole where the M-60 machine gunner was located (01:18:15:00)  When Anderson asked what was going on, the gunner said he thought he saw something, which caused Anderson to berate the gunner for firing the M-60 and giving away the heavy-firepower position (01:18:22:00)  Then, a voice in the darkness said he had ordered the machine gunner to fire and that turned out to be the company CO; Anderson told him it was a bad idea because they were going to have to move the gun in the dark, which was going to make a lot of noise (01:18:46:00) �  The CO countered that there had been something, and Anderson looked out and asked where, the CO fired his pistol, with tracer rounds, where he thought there was a dead NVA (01:19:05:00)  Anderson could not see the body but he suggested shooting an M79 round out, so Anderson got his platoon’s M-79 grenadier, fired a round out and said that if there was anything there, it was either gone completely or dead from the M-79 round (01:19:43:00)  However, the CO said someone needed to go out to check, although Anderson questioned the order because the soldiers did not know what was out there; there might actually be someone out there, he might only be wounded, and the CO wanted them to crawl out there (01:20:10:00)  The 1st Platoon leader, who was a friend of Anderson, eventually came up and asked what was going on, so Anderson explained that the CO believed there were NVA outside the perimeter, which was why the machine gun fired, the CO wanted to go out and check if there were any bodies, and Anderson was going to go with the CO (01:21:03:00)  The 1st Platoon leader said he would go out as well, so it was the CO and two lieutenants who should have known better crawling outside the perimeter, although they had let the perimeter know not to shoot if the soldiers heard anything (01:21:45:00)  From where the gunner was to where the CO thought the enemy soldier was located was about thirty meters but being in front of a rifle company, there was always the possibility somebody did not receive the message and when they heard movement outside the perimeter, they fired; moreover, all it took was one guy shooting before the entire company began shooting (01:22:26:00)  Eventually, Anderson told the CO it was a bad idea for the three men to be outside the perimeter; they should return to the perimeter and check the location in the morning (01:22:52:00)  The CO must have agreed with Anderson because the three officers crawled back to the perimeter and when they checked the next morning, there was no evidence of any NVA being where the CO thought he was (01:23:28:00) The incident with the M-60 gunner occurred in early April and on April 26th, the company became involved in a hugely horrific firefight (01:23:54:00) o The 1st Platoon was performing a “cloverleaf” patrol while Anderson’s third platoon had been left behind as an ambush; however, while performing the patrol, the 1st platoon was ambushed themselves (01:24:14:00) o As Anderson was moving through the company’s position, the CO hurried past him, told Anderson to take command of the perimeter because he, the CO, was going out to kill an enemy with his knife, and Anderson said okay (01:24:23:00)  Anderson did not question what the CO was going to do because the bravado was part of his persona and that was the last time Anderson saw the CO alive (01:24:49:00) �o The CO went out with the 2nd Platoon while Anderson sat in the perimeter listening to the sounds of the enemy firing their weapons, intermittently mixed the sounds of the 1st Platoon firing back (01:25:16:00) o While he was commanding the perimeter, Anderson was able to hear with the CO and the 2nd Platoon were doing but not the 1st Platoon because both their radios had been shot (01:26:04:00) o Eventually, there was a call from the CO and 2nd Platoon telling Anderson to bring the 3rd Platoon out because the 2nd Platoon was pinned down; Anderson acknowledged, saying the platoon would be out there momentarily (01:26:22:00)  Anderson yelled over to his platoon sergeant, a newly-arrived E-5, to get the soldiers ready to move out to do what they could do (01:26:40:00) o When the 3rd Platoon left, the final platoon in the company, 4th Platoon, stayed behind to guard the perimeter; however, at the time, they were not a complete rifle platoon, which was why they were staying back to guard the perimeter and they were only to assist the rest of the company as a last resort (01:27:14:00) o As Anderson stood up to get ready to move out, an enemy B-40 or RPG round hit near the platoon, knocking down three or four of Anderson’s soldiers; although the round did not knock Anderson down, a piece still hit him (01:27:41:00)  Looking around, everyone in the platoon except for five soldiers stood up, so they got the medics over to the wounded soldiers, then proceeded to move out and assist the other platoons, although there were then only around fifteen soldiers in the platoon; Anderson was wounded as well but it was a miniscule wound compared to regular wounds (01:28:01:00) o It was easy to follow the trail the CO and the 2nd Platoon had made, although the soldiers did not know where anyone, friendly or enemy was; however, following the trail was the most expedient way Anderson had of finding the friendly forces that were under attack (01:28:27:00) o The platoon did not go very far, only around one hundred meters, and as always happened, there was a lot of firing and then there was nothing; by the time Anderson made it up to where the headquarters section was, the firing had somewhat stopped (01:28:45:00)  Anderson remembers the company’s forward observer, a large man nicknamed “Bull”, hugging the ground and looking up at Anderson, telling him to get down; although Anderson had heard all the firing, there was nothing happening at the moment (01:29:18:00) o Off to Anderson’s left was a large termite mound, behind which was the radio operator talking with the battalion, who was screaming into the radio that all the soldiers were going to be killed; meanwhile, off to Anderson’s right, he could see medics working on a soldier (01:29:50:00) o Anderson then went over to the termite mound and grabbed the radio away from the hysterical soldier; Anderson reported that he had just arrived and would update the battalion when he figured out what was going on (01:30:29:00)  The battalion commander eventually got onto the radio and told Anderson to update him as soon as Anderson knew anything; Anderson handed the radio back to the soldier and ordered him to not talk on the radio or answer any calls (01:31:10:00) �o Then, Anderson asked the soldier where the CO was, but the soldier did not know; Anderson thought it was weird that both the radio operator for the battalion and the company radio operator, who was nearby, were not with the company CO, although it was not the time to berate them (01:31:41:00)  Anderson then asked if they had any communication with the 1st Platoon and by the amount of firing that had gone on, Anderson figured the platoon had been wiped out (01:32:07:00) o Anderson placed a gun team on the other side of where the medics were working, kept the other team close to him, and told his radio operator to wait nearby while he, Anderson, went up to find out what was going on, although in retrospect, it was dumb because he did not take the radio operator with him (01:32:23:00) o Anderson began crawling but he had not gotten more than ten feet when the fighting started up again and it was more personal for Anderson because it seemed like everyone was shooting at him (01:32:53:00)  Although he realized it was not a good situation, Anderson kept crawling, even though he might be the only soldier out there and the enemy all might be able to see him, as they were all shooting at him (01:33:20:00) o Eventually, the 2nd Platoon leader low-crawled past Anderson as fast as he could; the 2nd Platoon leader said the company CO was dead and when Anderson asked where his platoon was, said that he did not have any idea (01:33:50:00)  When Anderson asked if he was sure the CO was dead, the platoon leader said he had crawled right past the body (01:34:10:00) o The platoon leader had not stopped crawling past Anderson as he told him the news and Anderson, realizing he could not leave the platoon leader to get back and get on the radios to report, turned around, crawled back to the termite mound and called the battalion commander, saying they had a situation and Anderson did not really know what was going on (01:34:26:00)  Anderson reported that the company CO was dead and as he made the report, Anderson watched the medics work on a soldier with a sucking chest wound, who, despite the effort of the medics, ended up dying while Anderson was watching (01:34:38:00)  The battalion commander continued question Anderson for information about the fight that Anderson did not know because by then, the brigade commander had become involved (01:35:07:00)  Finally, Anderson heard the brigade commander come over the radio and order the battalion commander to stop pressuring Anderson and allow him to develop an understanding of the situation; the battalion commander acknowledged and Anderson never had any more trouble from him after that (01:35:34:00) o As they were sitting there, one of Anderson’s machine gun teams asks if they had any people out there; Anderson said that he did not think so and the gunner said there was somebody running away (01:36:16:00)  Not knowing if they were friendlies or not, Anderson told the machine gunner to watch them; then, they heard sound off to the left and it turned out to be the remnants of the 1st Platoon, which had somehow managed to disengage the enemy and retreat (01:36:41:00) � o o o o o o o Anderson asked the platoon leader if he had all his soldiers with him and if there were any from the 2nd Platoon; when the platoon leader said he had all his soldiers and the soldiers from 2nd Platoon were behind him, Anderson told him machine gunners to fire at anything outside the perimeter because they were the enemy (01:37:00:00) Anderson called the battalion commander back, saying the 1st and 2nd platoons had made it back, they had a large number of casualties, and he still did not know the status of the company CO but he would find out (01:37:22:00) The 1st Platoon leader was sitting behind the termite mound, huffing and puffing because he had taken over one of his M-60 machine guns when the gunner was wounded until the gun was destroyed (01:37:49:00)  Anderson went up and said the 2nd Platoon leader had said the CO was dead; the platoon leader agreed and when Anderson said that they could not leave the body out there, the platoon leader said he was not going to go back out there (01:38:11:00)  Anderson could recover the body but the platoon leader said he was not going out there, so Anderson said okay (01:38:42:00) By then, the firing had stopped because what Anderson’s M-60 gunner had seen was the enemy having enough and retreating back because by then, Anderson had been calling in air strikes and additional support (01:38:52:00)  The 11th Armored Cavalry had been moving through the area with their APCs and tanks and the NVA had built bunkers near to where the armor had moved, thinking that if the soldiers went through once, then maybe they would go through again and they could attack them (01:39:18:00) Anderson grabbed another soldier and said they were going to check things out; the soldier was new enough that he said okay as opposed to asking if Anderson was nuts (01:39:47:00)  Anderson and the soldier went out about twenty-five meters and found the body of the CO, who had been shot in the forehead; there was not any horror to seeing the dead body but Anderson questioned where the CO’s glasses were (01:40:03:00)  The other soldier grabbed the CO’s arms while Anderson grabbed his legs and they carried the body back to the termite mound, where Anderson radioed the battalion commander that they had recovered the CO’s body and everyone was moving back to the original perimeter (01:40:43:00) The CO had weighed around one hundred and fifty pounds, so Anderson ordered one of the M-60 teams to give him their gun while they carried the body back to the perimeter (01:41:24:00)  Although there was no incoming fire, there already having been lulls in the fighting and the soldiers did not know for sure that the fighting was over (01:42:00:00) All the soldiers eventually made it back to the perimeter and they started the process of medevacing the wounded out (01:42:22:00) After the battle, the “B” Company commander had heard Anderson’s company commander had been killed, so he grabbed his rucksack and led the company for the rest of time the company was in Cambodia (01:43:19:00) �  o Anderson remembers telling one of the other officers who was there that he would never see another day like that and it was the worst day he would ever see, although when the company arrived in Cambodia, that day would be a good day compared to what they experienced in Cambodia (01:43:53:00) Three days after the major firefight, when Charlie Company was back on the firebase, Anderson’s former company, Alpha Company, got involved in similar fight, probably with the same group of enemies, and had a lieutenant and sergeant killed (01:44:25:00) o Typically, when a company was be beat-up, they would come back to the fire base to “decompress” and Charlie Company was in the middle of “decompressing” when Alpha Company got beat-up (01:44:53:00) o They could not leave Alpha Company in the field, so they brought them back to the firebase and told Anderson he was transferring back to Alpha Company to be the executive officer (XO) (01:45:07:00) The Alpha Company commander who had led the company while Anderson was there had left in March and moved up to the battalion S-4 (01:45:30:00) Alpha Company XO / Into Cambodia (01:46:17:00)  The job of an XO was really to just take over command of the company in a situation where the company commander has been killed (01:46:17:00) o The XO also had to sign to property book accounting for all the weapons and equipment in the company; whenever Stateside, the company commander signed for it but in a combat environment, the XO signed for it (01:46:30:00)  Whenever the company was on a firebase, Anderson would travel out to the company every day then return to the battalion headquarters at night; it was mostly administrative work because the company 1st Sergeant really ran the rear area and if they had a good 1st Sergeant, then they let him do his job (01:47:06:00) o Anderson would not necessarily call the job a promotion for good work but someone could be a bad XO, so long as they had a good 1st Sergeant; however, if someone was a bad XO and the had a bad 1st Sergeant, then the soldiers in the field did not get what they needed (01:47:43:00) o It was Anderson’s job to run interference if the 1st Sergeant ever had any issues, although he rarely did because even lieutenants would defer to a 1st Sergeant until the lieutenant found out if the 1st Sergeant was good or not (01:48:12:00)  The company eventually moved into Cambodia but Anderson would only go into field in Cambodia every three days, when the company was being re-supplied (01:48:43:00) o When the company moved into Cambodia, the brigade headquarters stayed at their original base camp and the battalion had a tactical operations center at a firebase in Cambodia, which was where the battalion commander would be stationed (01:48:55:00) o Similar to when Anderson first arrived, he would wait at the firebase until a resupply helicopter showed up, fly with it out to the company, take care of any business he had with the company commander, then fly out when the last resupply helicopter left (01:49:25:00)  Anderson is not aware of any times a helicopter was shot at while flying either to or from the company’s location; still, the only way to know was if they heard a round impact or the door gunner saw tracers (01:50:02:00) �  Anderson was fortunate because he never had to land in a “hot LZ”, when the helicopter flew to the landing zone like an assault and the enemy was at the LZ and engaging the soldiers (01:50:23:00)  It happened to the XOs after Anderson and the XOs before Anderson, but never to Anderson (01:50:39:00) o Like most people at the time, Anderson believed the discussions about the domino theory of Communism and part of the reason the Americans went into Cambodia was along those lines, to help the South Vietnamese in their fight against the Communist North Vietnamese (01:51:08:00) o All the soldiers had heard both the president and individual stories of how the enemy would engage American soldiers then retreat across the Cambodian border, where the Americans could, theoretically, not follow them (01:52:09:00)  After the April 26th engagement but before he rejoined Alpha Company, Anderson was in a briefing where the officers were informed they would be going into Cambodia, although no more than thirty miles, would stay there for sixty days in an effort to find enemy supplies and disrupt enemy activities and they did not know what the soldiers would find once in Cambodia, only that they could get the soldiers on the ground and get them out (01:52:41:00)  Charlie Company was actually supposed to be the first company to go in, but the fight involving Alpha Company occurred and Anderson joined them, so going into Cambodia did not affect him (01:53:22:00) o The plan originally called to load the ARVN (South Vietnamese) forces, fly them out to a firebase, then pick-up the American forces to flying into Cambodia; however, someone figured the ARVN forces would run away after they reached the firebase, so the plan was scrapped (01:53:38:00)  Instead, they took the ARVN forces into Cambodia first and the Americans in second (01:54:01:00) o The 1st of the 7th ended up taking a large number of casualties when they went into Cambodia; they were definitely the hardest hit battalion in the Air Cav. and possibly the hardest hit battalion out of all the units (01:54:11:00)  There were one hundred and fifty American soldiers killed over all the units and Charlie Company alone lost sixteen soldiers, in just forty-five days of combat (01:54:32:00) o Anderson stayed as Alpha Company XO the entire time the company deployed into Cambodia, working on administrative aspects for the company (01:54:53:00) o The fighting the soldiers encountered in Cambodia was brutal; as determined as the NVA forces were in South Vietnam, it seemed like they were more serious when fighting in Cambodia because they had more to defend (01:55:09:00)  Nevertheless, while the Americans took casualties, the NVA were beaten up pretty well in Cambodia as well (01:55:34:00) In the years since he served, Anderson has read books about the war which have made him more disenchanted with the war, such as a book about a former National Security Advisor suggesting President Kennedy was considering the removal of the military advisors from Vietnam when he was assassinated in 1963s (01:55:39:00) � o There was a group of soldiers that Anderson knew who died in Vietnam and it leaves him with a sense of sadness, not only for the American soldiers who died but also for the North Vietnamese who died; somewhere among the dead might have been the cure for cancer and Anderson is not naïve enough to believe it would only be an American who could come up with a cure (01:56:31:00) Before leaving Vietnam, Anderson spent two weeks as the acting company commander because the company commander had gone on R&R (01:57:15:00) o A new company commander took over following the end of the Cambodian campaign and by that time, Anderson was short time, with only about a month left in Vietnam until he could go home (01:57:35:00) o One time when he was out at the firebase, the company CO told Anderson that the next time he brought supplies, bring all his equipment as well and when Anderson asked what he meant, the company CO said he was going on R&R (01:57:50:00) o The CO went on his R&R, Anderson was back in the field for two weeks and within those two weeks, the company was involved in three different firefights, although they did not have anyone wounded (01:58:01:00) o By this time, the colonel who Anderson had had trouble with while working base defense was now the battalion commander (01:58:21:00)  Anderson recalls doing an aerial recon with the colonel, who pointed out where Anderson’s company would go, what they would do, and where he wanted them to end up when they were finished (01:58:44:00)  The company operated in the field for the two weeks and on the day they were supposed to be extracted, Anderson had the company at the spot the colonel had drawn on his map (01:59:06:00)  The colonel eventually called Anderson to say he was circling the location in a helicopter and to tell Anderson to pop smoke; Anderson said the company was where the colonel had drawn on the map and they did not hear any helicopters (01:59:13:00)  The exchange between the two went back and forth before the colonel told Anderson to cut an LZ where he was and report to the colonel when he got back to the base (01:59:31:00)  The company cut the LZ, extracted everyone a single helicopter at a time and once Anderson got back to the base, he reported, expecting the colonel to rip his head off (01:59:50:00)  However, the colonel commended Anderson on doing what the colonel described as a perfect extraction of a rifle team from the field (02:00:07:00)  It turned out the colonel had drawn the wrong location on Anderson’s map but apart from saying he was at the location on his map, there was not much Anderson could do (02:00:31:00)  A similar situation happened when Anderson had served with Alpha Company the first time; the company CO said Anderson was in one place, when in truth, he was in another and the two officers debated for awhile before the CO said he would shoot a marking round (02:00:54:00) �   The round went off right over Anderson’s head and when the CO asked if Anderson was able to get a reading from it, Anderson said his compass did not work when pointed straight up (02:01:14:00) For Anderson, the jungle school he went through in Panama was useful only in that he knew what jungle was like; the school consisted of mostly classroom training, with some field exercises, including a night course (02:01:51:00) o There were four lieutenants in the night course, Anderson including, and he maintains he had neither the compass or the map but the four got horribly lost and were out all night with mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds (02:02:12:00)  One of the lieutenants ended up losing his watch and the entire situation was like the Four Stooges (02:02:31:00)  The next day, it seemed like the instructors had a helicopter flying overhead calling out for the lieutenants and finally, the lieutenants managed to make it back (02:02:40:00) o The school helped Anderson because the weather was extremely hot, which helped prepare him for the weather in Vietnam, although Vietnam was hotter than Panama, and see what the terrain was like (02:02:54:00) o The other great thing about the school was it counted against the soldiers time in the service, so Anderson did not have to spend a full year in Vietnam, only around eleven months (02:03:16:00) While in-country, Anderson had very little contact with the Vietnamese (02:03:52:00) o They did have some former North Vietnamese soldiers who had surrendered, gone through an indoctrination program, then returned various units to serve as Kit Carson scouts or interpreters (02:03:56:00)  Early on, when Anderson was with Alpha Company, they had one Kit Carson scout, who ended up being wounded in the major firefight in November, after which the company received another (02:04:32:00)  The rehabilitated scouts could have been either officers or enlisted personnel and served in either the Viet Cong infrastructure or in the regular NVA (02:04:51:00) o When Anderson was the Alpha Company XO and serving in the rear, they had Vietnamese who worked on the base, such as cleaning hooches (02:05:01:00) o However, while Anderson was out in the field, anyone they ran across was either trying to avoid bullets or was firing at the soldiers (02:05:16:00)  At the time, Anderson’s unit was not in a populated area but before he got there, the company was operating in an area with a large number of indigenous people and there was more interaction then (02:05:29:00) o Anderson did not have much of an opinion regarding the Kit Carson scouts but it was not so much a matter of trust (02:06:01:00)  Anderson and a scout could look at the same trail and although Anderson would see nothing, the scout would see some indication of a large amount of NVA movement (02:06:13:00)  Anderson did not speak Vietnamese and the soldiers did not speak fluently English but they managed to let their feelings about the different soldiers come through clearly (02:06:34:00) �    The scouts were not part of the ARVNs, so he does not want to characterize them, except to say the scouts were there and when the soldiers found a trail, they were able to interpret how many enemy had passed, although that told the soldiers nothing (02:06:46:00) o On occasion, the soldiers would capture enemy intelligence and if the scout was Vietnamese, he could generally read the documents (02:07:18:00) On occasion, it was not always ugly for the soldiers (02:08:05:00) o The soldiers would come back from a mission into the firebase and their 1st Sergeant, who had been a major during the Korean War but was caught in a force reduction following the war, have steaks for them (02:08:09:00)  One time, the company CO said Anderson was in charge of cooking the potatoes Anderson had no idea how to cook the potatoes, other than remembering that on occasion, his mother would boil potatoes in water (02:08:31:00)  Anderson got a big metal canister from the artillery soldiers, cleaned it out, filled it with water, and boiled the potatoes; it worked and Anderson did not get yelled at by the CO (02:08:54:00) Whenever Anderson was with Alpha Company, the morale was good throughout all three platoons (02:09:41:00) o Anderson believes a company’s moral was a function of several different things: if the company had a good commander, good platoon leaders, good squad leaders and good platoon sergeants (02:09:53:00)  If any of those were out of whack, then Anderson believes that a company’s morale will suffer (02:10:10:00) o When he initially got to Charlie Company, Anderson already had a preconceived notion about the company CO and he had to try hard to keep his guard up and only let his true emotions be know to a very small group of people, namely the leader of the 1st Platoon (02:10:21:00)  Both men had to be careful because if the men saw that the lieutenants did not have any respect for the company commander, then that would upset the situation (02:10:48:00) Another humorous incident occurred when Anderson was stationed on Firebase Compton with Charlie Company and one day, when he was having bad bowel issues, the company CO ordered Anderson to take his platoon on a recon patrol (02:11:11:00) o The firebase was located at the end of an old airfield in the middle of a rubber plantation and the soldiers could see six hundred meters in almost every direction, so Anderson thought it would be a good opportunity to let one of his squad leaders take the platoon out and receive some training (02:11:30:00)  The soldiers never knew when a fight might occur in which the lieutenant and platoon sergeant were killed and one of the squad leaders would have to take over command (02:12:09:00) o Anderson did not receive any argument from the soldiers, although if he had, he would have figured something else out, because they were not necessarily concerned about the area (02:12:22:00) o The platoon started going out and began calling in situation reports, which Anderson monitored; the next thing Anderson knew, the CO called, asking where � Anderson was and when he told him, the CO said to wait and he would be right there (02:12:37:00) o The CO showed up a couple of minutes later and began berating Anderson, who was trying not to throw up; when Anderson tried to explain himself, the CO said he had ordered Anderson to lead the patrol and to get out there, so Anderson threw the radio over his back, slung two bandoliers of ammunition over his shoulders and began walking to where the platoon was, who he had ordered to sit tight and set up security (02:13:04:00) o As Anderson was walking, the platoon sergeant ran up, asking what Anderson was doing, and when Anderson explained it, the sergeant said Anderson could not go out there by himself (02:13:37:00)  Anderson as the platoon sergeant if he was coming with him and the platoon sergeant said yes, so Anderson told him to get his equipment because he was leaving (02:13:56:00) o The two men walked out of the firebase to the platoon and when he got there, Anderson radioed back that he had joined the platoon; the CO radioed back to have Anderson let him know how the patrol went but the platoon ended up staying where they were for the rest of the day (02:14:03:00) While Anderson was in Vietnam, his father’s duty station was at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, so Anderson took the R&R he received in the Philippines (02:14:52:00) o Anderson’s father was then a lieutenant colonel and in charge of scheduling all planes into and out of the base; he flew over on the R&R plane to Vietnam, where Anderson and seven or eight other soldiers got on (02:15:05:00) o The plane landed at an airfield in Manila where the other soldiers got off but Anderson stayed on while he and his father continued to Clark, where he re-united with his mother and sister (02:15:36:00)  Everyone else going to the Philippines did their R&R in Manila while Clark stayed at Clark with his family (02:15:58:00)  While at the base, Anderson played golf a couple of times and went to Subic Bay with his family (02:16:04:00) o The R&R flight back to Vietnam from the Philippines originated at Clark, so Anderson was able to get on there (02:16:12:00) Post-Vietnam Service / Post-Military Life / Reflections (02:16:37:00)  Anderson left Vietnam in the middle of September 1970 and his enlist ran until March of the following year; however, there was a slight problem in the orders he received when he left Vietnam (02:16:37:00) o Anderson was assigned to Fort Knox, Kentucky and the report date was Sept. 31st but he knew he would miss that date, so he mailed a copy of the orders to his father; his father mailed back, saying there was no Sept. 31st, so Anderson went down to the personnel office, who changed the date to Oct. 31st (02:16:54:00)  After leaving Vietnam, Anderson went back to Kalamazoo, where his grandparents were living, and stayed there until renting a car and driving down to Fort Knox, where he was sent to the reception station (02:17:53:00) o Anderson felt like a fish out of water from the beginning because he was an infantryman at an armor base and on top of that, Anderson viewed it as they had �  the audacity to send him to the reception station; he was at least hoping to go to a basic training unit to teach someone else the lessons he had learned (02:18:18:00) o Nevertheless, Anderson reported to the lieutenant colonel in charge while wearing his uniform and all the medals he had earned, including his CIB (Combat Infantryman Badge); however, Anderson did not have the armor school insignia on the uniform (02:18:51:00)  Anderson stood at attention as the lieutenant colonel looked him over before he began berating Anderson for being out of uniform and having neither an armor or cavalry patch; the lieutenant colonel told Anderson to have them the following Monday and be ready to work (02:19:33:00) o Anderson saluted him and ended up driving back home to Kalamazoo; he had gotten a hat when he was coming that had the cavalry patch on it and when he got home, asked his grandmother if she would sew that patch and the armor insignia on his dress uniform (02:20:11:00)  Anderson’s grandmother sewed both patches on so when Anderson reported on Monday morning, he was in the proper uniform (02:20:46:00) o They made Anderson a training and operations officer and a friend from OCS was also stationed on the base, so Anderson was living with him (02:21:06:00) o Anderson’s friend kept asking if Anderson was going to go back to school when he got out of the service and when Anderson said he was, the friend asked if he was not going to stay in the Army; when Anderson said he was not, the friend suggested Anderson apply for an early out from the service so he could start his schooling again in January (02:21:35:00) o Anderson filled out all the necessary paperwork to get an early out from the military, which the Army accepted; once they realized Anderson would be leaving at the end of December, they sent him to headquarters company, where he worked as XO, counting paper clips for the last two weeks of his enlistment (02:22:05:00) When Anderson had graduated from OCS, he received a letter from a colonel in the Department of the Army saying the colonel had talked with Anderson’s battalion commander, Anderson was the type of person the Army needed, they would send him anywhere he wanted to go etc.; all of which sounded great to Anderson because he had only been an officer for a couple of months (02:22:50:00) o All Anderson needed to do was say “yes” to an interview with the brigade commander, which he did; however, the commander was busy that day, so Anderson interviewed with the brigade XO (02:23:26:00) o However, Anderson had not given much thought to re-enlisting until the time for him to get out of the Army, at which point he figured that he still did not have a college education and staying in the Army might not work for him (02:23:53:00) Once Anderson left the military, he went right back to his education; his official last day in the Army was Dec. 31st and they allowed him two days to travel from Fort Knox to Kalamazoo (02:24:24:00) o Anderson signed out of the military and went to his grandparents, while school started either the next week or the week after, at which point Anderson went back to Michigan State (02:24:40:00)  To get an early out, Anderson had to be accepted to some university, so he re-applied to Michigan State while he was still in the Army (02:25:01:00) �   o When he returned to school, Anderson had a different outlook on the idea of studying; prior to his service, Anderson would put in the time but he was not able to express what he had learned on test and although he did not fail any tests, he had two consecutive terms of a 1.0 GPA (02:25:09:00) o Anderson was re-accepted to the university unconditionally but he still had the 1.0 GPA and it took him some time to bring the GPA up to a better level (02:25:57:00)  Going back to school for Anderson was a lot easier, partially because he was much more mature (02:26:47:00) o Anderson remembers there being protests in the 1970s, although Anderson does not remember what they were protesting; Anderson remembers he and some other students going to watch and he remembers that he and his roommate told the cops to roll up to windows of the police cruisers where the protesters were held to make them sweat (02:27:21:00) o Anderson assumes people knew he was in the service because he continued wearing his old fatigues, although he did not receive any trouble from people about his time in the service (02:28:39:00) o Anderson’s undergraduate degree was in General Business with an emphasis in Management, while his masters degree was in Personnel Management (02:29:01:00) When he graduated with his masters degree, it was 1976, which was not a great year to try and find a job (02:29:22:00) o Anderson had been married for a couple of years by then and it even got to the point that Anderson considered doing what his father had done and re-enlisting in the military; Anderson had stayed in the IRR (Individual Readiness Reserve), although he never had to go to meetings (02:29:37:00) o Anderson eventually wrote to a general, saying he was ready to go back onto active duty but he never heard back from him (02:30:10:00) Finally, Anderson got a job with Continental Can Company; he spent a year in New Jersey before transferring back to Grand Rapids, Michigan when the company opened a factory there (02:30:36:00) o Anderson stayed with the company before eventually being laid off, after which he joined another small company in Grand Rapids, then another small company in Zeeland, Michigan (02:30:42:00) o Finally, Anderson joined a packaging company in Holland, Michigan but was eventually let go from there as well (02:31:12:00) Following his time in the service, Anderson had a lot of anger issues but until he got into therapy, he did not know why; he always seemed to have trouble with bosses who he viewed as incompetent and it did not take too long for a therapist to say that Anderson was dragging around his experiences from the war and was looking at his bosses, who may or may not have been incompetent, and comparing him to the officers Anderson had served under (02:31:26:00) o However, by the time he learned this, Anderson had stopped work but he wishes he had known it long before (02:32:28:00) �      o Many of the people who were diagnosed with PTSD were able to function because they stuffed the PTSD down; however, the symptoms tended to rear their heads at inopportune times (02:32:41:00) o Anderson has been married for over thirty years, he and his wife have one child, he never did drugs, drank, or any of the typical things associated with people who had PTSD, although he did have the symptom of being a workaholic; as well, the idea of telling his child what to do was imprinted on the child and that caused some drama (02:33:14:00) o A new concept that Anderson recently heard of in his therapy group is the concept of Post-Traumatic Growth (02:34:27:00) o Anderson thinks that all of the training and exposure made him a good supervisor, although it did not make him a great employee (02:34:50:00)  Anderson was tough on his subordinates and he when has run into several during his therapy, Anderson has apologized to them; however, almost universally, they have said the Anderson was not as hard as Anderson believed he was and once the soldiers figured out he had been in the situation before, they tended to see that he was right (02:35:13:00) Ultimately, Anderson would not trade the experience (02:36:31:00) Anderson has been able to go to the Walter Reed Medical Center on several occasions to see veterans of the current wars and although on some levels it makes Anderson angry that they are putting the kids through that but it makes him sometimes feel that he is unworthy of the benefits he is receiving from the government because not only are those veterans going to have PTSD but they are also going to have to continue their life with a disability (02:36:36:00) Anderson avoided the idea of therapy for a long time because he knew there were people who went to therapy who faked the experiences that they had; however, one day, it dawned on him that he not only had to do the therapy for himself but he could not help anyone else if he was only sitting on the sidelines (02:37:42:00) o Anderson jokingly says he decided to do therapy because he wanted to stop being a jackass and over the six years, he has seen some changes from therapy (02:38:29:00) Anderson is involved in a chapter for the 1st Air Cav. Association; the members meet every month, do work out of the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans, including running bingo on every fifth Sunday in a month (02:39:12:00) o If the members see a veteran on the street, they stop and thank them because in a lot of ways, the current group of veterans has it much harder because they continue having to go back to fight (02:40:03:00) Because Anderson has been through the benefit system and he is able to help other veterans with the system, including men from his old company (02:40:33:00) Anderson would not change anything from the military experience and the only thing he would change if he could would be to understand what PTSD was thirty-five years before (02:41:24:00) � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Anderson, Bob (Interview transcript and video), 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Anderson, Robert Description An account of the resource Bob Anderson was born in August 1948 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. While growing up, his father re-enlisted in the military, meaning Anderson and his family moved constantly, although Anderson's father stayed at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland long enough for Anderson to attend school and graduate. After graduating, Anderson attended a junior college in Mississippi and went to Michigan State University for a year before the university kicked him out for low grades. Once he left Michigan State, Anderson received his draft notice and following completion of basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia and AIT at Fort Dix, New Jersey, Anderson went back to Fort Benning to attend OCS. After completing OCS, Anderson deployed to Vietnam and joined the 1st Air Cavalry Division as a platoon leader. During his tour, Anderson served as a platoon leader, worked as part of base defense for a position and as a company executive officer. Once his tour in Vietnam ended, Anderson returned to the United States and went back to Michigan State. 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 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 2011-02-17 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AndersonB 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/0a0bf0abf7bf128b8986c63856896b3a.mp4 7709e5cec0d9b3da8c0a486c812651a2 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a4eb2cafbe1f9e5d18c5e1acec928f02.pdf 56751491af6bc460ef0bddb84a5aca05 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Afghanistan Nick Anderson Total Time – (01:16:38) Background          He was born in Minnesota in 1989 (00:25) o He lived there for a year until his family moved to Grand Haven, Michigan (00:30) His father is an automotive engineer and his mother stayed at home with the kids o There are four kids in the family (00:43) He went to Freedom Baptist High School in Hudsonville, Michigan He remembers being in 8th grade band class when he heard about 9/11 (01:01) The news came over the loudspeakers – everyone was shocked o There was a TV in his science class and they all gathered around and watched it there (01:25) The event stayed with him and was part of the reason he joined the military Before 9/11 he had given thought to the service (01:49) Movies helped make him want to join the military He graduated high school in 2007 (02:14) Enlistment/Training – (02:18)      He had decided midway through his senior year of high school that he wanted to be a Marine (02:24) o He chose the Marine Corps because he believed that they were the best  He based that on word of mouth and old veterans (02:41) After signing up there were optional work-outs and class sessions on Wednesdays at the recruiting station (03:12) o The military expected the soldiers to know a lot of different acronyms and general orders He did not have any sense of what he was getting into before he was sent to Boot Camp (04:03) He was sent to San Diego, California for Boot Camp (04:12) Before getting to California, he was sent to Lansing, Michigan to swear in (04:26) o He is then sent to the airport to fly out o Before they get on the plane, the soldiers were greeted by an angry guy (Drill Instructor) o He landed late at night (04:56) �                On the bus ride to the recruiting depot, the recruits had to look down the entire time (05:14) When he got off the bus he was made to stand on yellow footprints, they yell at you, shave your head, make them put their possessions in a box, give them all the same things (05:29) It took roughly a day or two for them to get put into their Boot Camp platoons (05:52) The only aptitude test he had to take was the ASVAB (Army Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) (06:16) o He had done it in high school He was offered a variety of jobs but he only wanted to be infantry Boot Camp was meant to break the soldiers down to nothing and then build them back up (07:23) o After that, he had to go to the School of Infantry where he learned all of the basic infantry skills  Patrolling, shooting, etc. (07:38) He was then sent to the 3rd Battalion 5th Marines (07:45) o He went through little mandatory classes such as suicide prevention He was able to call himself a Marine as soon as he was done with Boot Camp (08:02) Boot Camp was thirteen weeks long (08:07) When they break the soldiers down, there are three phases that the they do it by o The first phase is when “everybody is just like garbage” (08:21)  They are just learning the basic things – they could not do basic things that Marines could  They could not roll up their sleeves, blouse military boots, etc. (08:28)  The soldiers learn how to march o They start of simple and then get more difficult (08:52) It was not that difficult to adjust to the military life – he was used to get yelled at – “I got yelled at a lot because I was stupid in high school.” (09:14) It was all mind games There were “a lot of stupid people that wanted to be Marines. If they’re getting yelled at and I’m not, it’s fine with me.” (09:37) Boot Camp has all kinds of recruits in it o Some are fat, skinny, goofy looking, some say stupid things and get yelled at, etc. (09:55) o For some people, the military was an easy job  Some did it for school as well (10:21) o One of the major reasons that many of the men were in the military was to serve the country (10:44)  There are other perks that are factors as well o There were men from all over the country (10:59) When people messed up in Boot Camp they get yelled at in front of everyone They had pre-pressed camis and boots that do not need to be shined (11:48) �           There were a lot of Irish pendants that needed to be clipped on The Drill Instructors came from all over the place o To be a Drill Instructor you have to be crazy (12:36) He was normally associated with a platoon with three instructors associated to it (12:50) o There was a senior, one that was specialized in drills, and one specialized in knowledge o The Senior Drill Instructor was like a father figure (13:19)  If they had problems they could go to him and he would not usually scream at them as much (13:23) After Boot Camp he was sent to Camp Pendleton, California for Infantry Training (13:32) Camp Pendleton was basically an addition to Boot Camp o They soldiers are still getting yelled at but technically they are all Marines (13:47) o They give you more responsibility  They trained on the M16, M249 SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon), explosive rounds, etc. o They did not train on many heavy weapons (14:40) o He did a lot of patrolling training (14:54) When he first arrived to the fleet, he was joining a battalion that had already been in Iraq (15:17) At Camp Pendleton, some of the soldiers had already been to Iraq – they picked on the new guys After Camp Pendleton, his job was to join the unit and join their training schedule (16:00) o He got to his unit in March of 2008 and they went on their first deployment in January of 2009 (16:17) The environment was a lot more relaxed o He had some more time to himself (16:40) o When they were in the rear or stateside, unless they are on duty or training, they have normal working hours (16:45) o He did not got off the base very much because he did not have a car and the base is in the middle of nowhere He had a cell phone while he was there that allowed him to stay in contact with others back home (17:14) o There was a building in each part of the base that had free internet In Boot Camp they tried to disconnect the soldiers from the world (17:31) o He received one phone call in Boot Camp Active Duty – Part I - MEU/Pacific Cruise – (17:49)  His first deployment was on a MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit) (17:54) o It is virtually a show of strength to the world if something happens they are right there to take care of it (17:58) �         o He went to Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Thailand, and Australia  They took unit transports to the different locations  They flew on a 747 to Okinawa (18:29) o The ship that he took was an LPD-9 (18:37)  The backs open up and they let the amphibious vehicles out He started out of South Korea In most of the countries that they went to they trained with the actual armies of those countries (19:00) o They did house room clearing o He got he impression that the South Koreans had tight restrictions on what they could and could not do (19:23)  They had nets on their guns that collected the brass after they shot  He heard that they had a high suicide rate (19:36) The Marines are fed by eating MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat) (20:01) o They come in little brown bags o Some of them are good but some of them are nasty (20:06) o When they were on the ships they ate very well – they ate Navy food After Korea, he went to the Philippines, Australia, and Thailand (20:24) o They did not get a good reception when they went to Australia (20:33) o There were girls there that were trying to make fun of the Americans accents  It was funny to the soldiers even though the girls did not mean for it to be funny (20:44) o The Philippines was the most receptive of the countries they went to When they go to shore they are given the normal rules – “if you’re gonna drink, don’t get stupid.” (21:07) o Incidents in other countries are difficult to deal with o Alcohol was usually involved in the misbehaving of soldiers (21:23)  Usually the soldiers did alright o He stayed away from the drinking for the most part (21:37) Having gone to a Baptist school helped him in the military (21:42) o It gave him a good foundation to stick to o He met a couple of married men in the service that wanted to remain faithful so he hung out with them (21:48) They usually got a couple of days in each country to go and hang out (22:12) o They had to stay in groups of no less than four in case they got in trouble or got lost The cruising lasts for about eight months (22:37) Day to day life on ship did not have much for Marines to do o The higher-ups would get made at them for being lazy and sleeping all day (22:56)  They made it mandatory that they got out of bed  The Navy men had to work and the Marines were in there way (23:10)  They then stayed in their beds all day to stay out of the Navy’s way �        The Senior Battalion Commander and Sergeant Major were probably in their 50’s (23:38) o The Company Commander was probably 30 years old and the Platoon Commander was probably 24 or 25 years old (23:52) o All of the Officers had college degrees (24:04) He had a sense that promotion was fairly slow o It was dependent on what job the soldier has o The military did not need a lot of promotions for infantry soldiers (24:33) The soldiers that had been in Iraq did not talk about it very much (24:47) o By that time Iraq had slowed down quite a bit There were some of his seniors that had been in Fallujah, Iraq in the deployment before the major deployments (25:12) At this point he never expected his military experience to get bad o He figured that he may have to go to Afghanistan but never thought it would get too bad (25:43) He then returned to the United States from his cruise in August of 2009 At this stage he was figuring that a four year stint would probably make him go on two different deployments (26:43) o He was thinking that he would not reenlist o He had been open to the idea of staying in for longer (27:01) When he was in his return, he was in the middle of seniority – he was more senior than the new guys but less senior than the higher ups Active Duty – Part II – Camp Leatherneck/Sangin/IED – (28:00)        He stayed at Camp Pendleton for roughly one year (28:03) In January of 2010, they went to Bridgeport, California for mountain warfare training (28:10) o The first week they were there it snowed 6-10 feet They would train in different extremes – they would go to the dessert in the summer for training (28:20) In the process of all of his training he received amphibious landing training (28:37) o They would get on an amphibious assault vehicle and would shoot off of the back of a ship He learned that he was going to go to Afghanistan three months before they were going to leave (29:17) o They were all thinking that it was not going to be fun but more exciting than what they had been doing (29:30) o Once it gets closer to it they hear about what is going on where they are going They did not receive much specialized training for Afghanistan before they left (29:51) Most of the training they did before they went they did not use because they did not know what to expect in Afghanistan o The training they had was based more on Iraq than Afghanistan (30:12) �              o Where they were in Afghanistan they had to walk in single file lines because of IED’s (Improvised Explosive Device) (30:25)  Typically soldiers will not walk in single file line in case the enemy has a machine gun – they could mow down all of the soldiers When the time comes to leave, they flew on a plane to Maine and then to Kurdistan (30:51) o They stayed at an Air Force Base in Kurdistan for a couple of nights before flying in to Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan They stayed in Camp Leatherneck for a week while they were briefed (31:13) o They then flew in to Sangin, Afghanistan where they took over (31:19) They were in the Helmand Province (31:32) His first impression is that everything is made of dirt and the people are dirty There was a river that ran right next to the town that was green on both sides – there were pomegranate trees and other vegetation (32:01) Across from the main road there was just a desert where nothing grew o They were in the desert part for the majority of the time (32:25) The guys that they were taking over for told them that they should not go for the Taliban flags, do not go in to abandoned compounds, and follow in the footsteps of the soldier in front of you (32:40) The properties in Sangin had twelve foot high mud walls surrounding their land with a compound on the inside (33:17) o They had outhouses o Their own property was enclosed in the walls (33:36) o The compounds often shared the same walls There were narrow streets and allies (33:58) He was a part of Lima Company (34:16) o Their area of operations was to the south of the city o The different companies split up to the different parts of the town (34:26)  It was a big town Their basic mission was to cut off supply routes and kill the Taliban (34:39) He was not sure how the Taliban moved supplies around o They would do vehicle and personnel checks o They had rules of engagement that were pretty relaxed at the beginning (35:03)  Anyone that had a walkie talkie or a cell phone could be shot (35:09) The local population was scared of the American soldiers (35:15) o They were once told that they believed they were going to kidnap the women and children and cut their heads off o One lady told them that the Taliban was only in her town because the Americans were. If the Americans would leave, the Taliban would leave as well (35:31) o Little kids would throw rocks at them when they would drive by Each company was broken down into four platoons (35:59) o There were three patrol bases where the platoons would split up �           o From each patrol base, one squad would be sent out each day (36:13) o There were typically 12-15 men in each squad  They would typically go out and patrol – they found a lot of IED’s (36:31)  They found a lot of weapons caches (36:37) The IED’s were found by either seeing them with their eyes or by metal detectors (36:50) o IED’s are made of plastic jugs with chemicals, a lamp cord, 3 9 volt batteries to complete the circuit, and a pressure plate made of wood o The metal detectors could only pick up on the batteries (37:18) They were very careful with any unsettled dirt Each patrol was led by an engineer with a valence (metal detector) (37:53) There was one day when they only moved 50 feet and it took them two hours to clear the area (37:58) Clearing out IED’s was very slow When they find the IED they call up the EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) (38:10) o They drive up in their truck and dig at the IED to see if it is – if it is they blow it up (38:20) o The EOD were awesome at their job o There was one patrol where the EOD helped them with sixteen IED’s (38:52) The patrol bases were typically abandoned buildings o Their patrol base was a cement building – they would joke that a drug lord had owned it (39:14) o They would put sandbags all around the top of the building He started to run into trouble about a week after he was there (39:56) o The first day there was a three hour long gun fight  It was kind of fun because no one got hit (40:06)  It was like “all guns blazin” o They were up on a hill being shot at (40:32) o They were only 200 feet away from their patrol base o They called in an A10 Warthog to go in and unload their main firepower (40:50)  The A10 Warthog worked  They wanted to hide after that (41:11) After the first firefight, the enemy got the idea that it was not a good idea to fight them (41:19) o The Americans had way more firepower than the enemy could imagine o The enemy would sometimes take a couple of pot shots but that was about all (41:31) The biggest threat was the IED’s (41:39) The IED’s were typically just the pressure plates o There were sometimes some manually triggered IED’s (41:59)  They came across a lot of the abandoned manual IED’s �   The next day after the first firefight was when they discovered an IED that was very close to them o An Afghani soldier stepped on an IED and blew it up (43:07) o The dust from the IED takes roughly 2-3 minutes before it clears o They could hear screaming in English (43:27)  Their lieutenant had been hit as well o They saw the Afghani soldier rolling around and yelling (43:37)  He bled out in front of them (43:44) After the IED exploded, no one really wanted to walk around anymore o They had to get to the body and take care of it o It took a while because they were all trying to be very careful (44:03) o A helicopter came and took the body and the American to a hospital (44:17) They were supposed to take the Afghans on every patrol so that they could train and learn how to do everything on their own (44:30) o He does not see that every happening  They would never lead the patrol and would wait for the Americans to lead (44:36) o The Afghans were not any better than the Americans at spotting IED’s  Typically, when an IED would be spotted, the Afghan soldiers would sit on the ground with their gun over their laps (44:51) Active Duty – Part III – Patrols/Taliban Flags/ Weapon Caches – (45:01)         There was at least one interpreter on every patrol (45:07) o The interpreters were Afghans o The Americans liked the interpreters because they spoke English and would go out without guns (45:31) Most of the interpreters wanted to eventually go to America (44:44)  They were primarily recruited by the government to work as interpreters It was very dangerous working with the Afghan soldiers (46:26) o One of his best friends was blown up when they were going down an alley way and one of the Afghani soldiers went off on his own and stepped on an IED o The enemy typically fires at the Americans when the bombs go off because it is very hard to see anything (47:08) He was deployed in Afghanistan for seven months o In that time he carried an M249 saw when he was there (47:46) He kept a diary for a large portion of the time that he was there (47:52) Usually the rooftops of the compounds did not have walls – everyone was able to see them but they could hardly see anything (48:18) When they were on the ground they could only see 15-20 feet away because of the walls When they were patrolling and had to go into a compound they would typically have the interpreter knock on the door and ask to let the Americans in (48:53) �         o If the compound was not occupied, they would rarely go through the doorway  One of his other best friends was blown up and killed because he walked in an empty doorway that had an IED on the other side (49:14) o They would take ladders and go over the wall o They eventually just started blowing holes in the sides of walls (49:29)  It made a lot of the Afghans upset About three months in, his unit moved farther into the country so that they could secure the whole area (50:04) o They had to make their own new patrol base (50:16)  There were a lot of sandbags to be filled The men in his squad were mostly kids (50:35) He has one friend from Hawaii that he still talks to One of his friends that stepped on an IED was from Minnesota (51:03) He also maintains contact with many of the guys out in California (51:11) They were not supposed to get “buddy buddy” with the sergeants because they were higher ups (51:30) o He liked most of them and did not agree with the decisions of some of them o One of the sergeants was a short guy and felt like he owed someone something  His mindset was that since he had been in Iraq he wanted to do a lot of the things that were not supposed to be done in Afghanistan (52:12)  He wanted to get the Taliban flags, find IED’s, etc.  He was only put in charge of them because he was a higher rank than them (52:27)  He was the squad leader The Taliban flags were typically in abandoned compounds that have IED’s planted inside (52:46) o Their mindset is that the Americans will want to go get the flags. That is why they booby trap the building that they are in (52:59) o They eventually learned to not go and get the flags (53:08) The weapons caches were also in abandoned compounds (53:27) o They would sometimes get tipped off on where to look for them o There was a big tower with a camera on top where they could look for hostile movement o One time they saw a man with a long barreled weapon that he should not have  They called it in and had him “blown to pieces” (53:59) o Sometimes they would see people moving in and out of abandoned compounds – they would then have to go and check it out (54:08) The rules of engagement changed over time o When they arrived there was hardly anyone traveling the streets (54:27)  Near the end there were families going down the streets �   o On some level, the American presence was working (54:45)  The Afghani’s probably felt safe because there were Americans everywhere with guns o Toward the end there was a lot less gunfights (55:03) The trucks and mine rollers that they would use were essentially big trucks (55:30) o Most of them have a v-shaped hole o The humvees are being used less because of their flat bottoms (55:44) o They would sometimes use an MRAP (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected) truck (55:55) o The mine plows were extensions of the truck that had solid rubber tires with weights on top that will set off the IED before it gets under the truck (56:28) When driving around on the mine plow he had a lot of problems with the tires A typical day when not on patrol was being put on post (57:45) o If he was not on post he would be on an unloading party – they would unload water bottles, food, or filling sandbags Active Duty – Part IV – Miscellaneous Info./Last Experiences in Afghanistan – (58:13)         He had more down time at the beginning than at the end (58:19) When someone in the unit would get hit and taken out, the rest of the men stayed back and continued fighting (58:36) o They would always have to push through it In the beginning they did not patrol as much because of the IED threat (58:55) o The would have spades tournaments It was typically too cold to take showers – they would sometimes take solar showers but it was still often too cold (59:32) o It was three months before he got his first running water shower o The soldiers would have to put the same dirty clothes back on (59:51) They were expected to shave and keep their hair short (01:00:00) o They had generators that were brought in  At first they could only shave o The generators had outlets where they could plug in and shave their hair (01:00:22) The seven months that he was in Afghanistan was spent with the same group o After guys were killed or hurt they would receive combat replacements (01:00:45) For a while they liked to believe that they were the best squad o There was not much of a difference between the units (01:01:44) The night vision goggles were sometimes beneficial o He had a pair that was blurry and he could not fix it (01:02:06) o He had another pair that would randomly shut off  If a soldier received a good pair, he could see fine (01:02:17) o There has to be a little bit of light for them to work well �        The larger strategy against the Taliban was working to some degree (01:03:01) Once the Americans got into the trucks, they would sometimes still have the Afghans alongside them o When they were on the patrols, the Afghani soldiers would remain with them (01:03:22)  They were not really able to see improvement with the Afghani soldiers when they were on patrols  He rarely had to deal with the Afghani soldiers o One of his friends had a Star of David tattoo – when he took his shirt off an Afghani soldier pointed his rifle at him (01:03:55)  There were only eight Americans and twenty Afghani soldiers o Two of his friends were murdered by Afghanis (01:04:17) He never saw any suicide bombers o He would see them set off bombs and then run away (01:04:36) o They never wanted to become complacent and believe that there were not suicide bombers so they still checked everyone (01:04:52) When they had the generator with electrical outlets they would charge their iPods or other devices o One time they all gathered around an iPod and watched Aladdin (01:05:32) o There was one guy that had a laptop and care packages would sometimes have DVDs in them (01:05:44) He was able to stay in communication with his family roughly once every month o The married men usually had first dibs o There was a seventeen hour time difference between Afghanistan and Michigan (01:06:13)  The best time to call was in the middle of the night in Afghanistan because it was the middle of the day in Michigan (01:06:23) o He got care packages – he had requested Monster drinks and Swedish Fish (01:07:02) o They would get so much candy that they did not know what to do with it  They would give some out to the kids when they would go out on patrol (01:07:25)  The kids would like the soldiers when they were giving them things When he went into Afghanistan he did not think about how long his deployment was going to last (01:08:03) o He was more worried about knowing if he was going to die, etc. When he was in Afghanistan he knew a month or two ahead of time that he was going to be leaving o They would do something called Ripping (Relieving In Place) (01:08:43) o They would train the replacements by going on patrols with them o The Afghanis knew that they were sending replacements and that “new blood was coming in” (01:08:53) The second patrol that they were on with the new guys an engineer stepped on a bomb and lost both of his legs �           o He later found out later that one of the other engineers in the unit was killed and the other had his leg blown off (01:09:19) Over the course of his time there, there were twenty-five that were killed and almost two hundred wounded – there were only eight hundred soldiers there on patrols The most that any soldier ever had to use was a tourniquet (01:10:16) o The doctors would use IVs to keep the soldiers out of shock There were times when soldiers would step on bombs that were only a couple feet away from him (01:10:37) o There were a couple of times where he was almost shot o After one explosion his nose started bleeding (01:11:06) o He was never hit by shrapnel o One time he had to pick flesh of other soldiers off of his neck (01:11:20) He had, by that time, decided that four years in the military was enough He returned to America in April or May and was discharged in August (01:11:47) Once he was back from Afghanistan he had to turn in his gear, make sure his medical information is up to date, took classes, etc. The military gave TAP (Transition Assistance Program) classes to soldiers that were about to head home (01:12:39) o He cannot remember if anything that they taught him was useful o The courses were extremely boring He believes that if he would have gone straight to college he would not have done nearly as well as he is (01:13:27) o He probably would not have gone very far because he was a horrible student o Problems in America are not as big as they seemed before his military experience His first class was three days after returning from the Marine Corps. (01:14:19) o It was nice because no one was yelling at him and no one was in his face about anything o Whenever he walks across the GVSU bridge he imagines someone grabbing a kid and throwing them off (01:15:02) He studies Criminal Justice at Grand Valley State University All of his checkups at the VA (Veteran’s Association) are free � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Anderson, Nicholas "Nick" (Interview outline and video), 2013 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Anderson, Nicholas Description An account of the resource Nick Anderson was born in Minnesota in 1989 and moved to Grand Haven, Michigan three years later. He had given thought to joining the military before 9/11 and, during his senior year of high school, decided that he wanted to be a Marine. Nick swore into the military in Lansing, Michigan and then went to San Diego, California for Basic Training. He was then sent to Camp Pendleton, California for Infantry Training. His first deployment was on an MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit) until he returned to America for Mountain Warfare Training. Nick was then deployed to Afghanistan and landed at Camp Leatherneck. His unit served in Sangin where there was a constant threat of IED's. He remembers his experiences on patrols and the routines of finding abandoned compounds. 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 Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American United States. Marine Corps 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 2013-01-18 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AndersonN1473V 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/b24cf9936319b54edaab6f1a108ce48c.mp4 eb4f271493fa0c374a3715f2729bd38a https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/abae5647a61b7899dfde087dd6a49fc4.pdf 6c8312bf28a791ab08916bf6413b7389 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project George Anderson (00:25:37) Background • George Anderson • Born February 5, 1931 • Coopersville, Michigan (00:09) • He enlisted into the navy (00:29) • Grew up on Garfield Street not to far from where he lives now (00:44) • Wanted to do something for his country to help out in the Korean War (01:00) Enlistment/Training • Signed up in Muskegon • Sent to Chicago for training o Great Lakes training camp � Spent three months learning to be a sailor (01:16) • Sent to Newport, Rhode Island, for four months o For torpedo school (01:42) • Went to San Francisco, California and set out on the USS Curtis in November (01:56) • First day of service he was 20 years old scared o They cut all of his hair off, which he didn’t like at all (02:20) • Enjoyed his time in the service (03:34) • Officer in charge of boot camp was bitter about being called back to duty from retirement o Did a lot of marching, inspections, firefighting drills • Took his training a day at a time to get by (03:29) • Set sail from San Francisco • Went up and down the coast • Target drills, last from one hour to several days (04:50) • Was a telephone operator for a gunnery officer (05:36) • Shore patrol around Pearl Harbor Acapulco, Mexico • Acapulco Mexico, good will tour basically • All along the west coast o Training and having fun (06:24) • Worked in the armory of the ship, because they didn’t use the torpedoes • Kept things up o Worked for a first class aviation ordinance man (07:03) • Did not see any combat (07:56) • Watched a Hydrogen bomb go off �• o Cant look directly at it for the first three seconds Brighter then the sun when it explodes o Very beautiful (08:08) Reflections on Service • Got a Korean war medal, because he served during that time period, and he received a good conduct medal (09:25) • Wrote letters home to family o Wrote letters every week, as the months went on he started to write only once a month � His family wrote to him a lot (09:53) • Lots of good food, good rations masters, and good cooks. o Plenty of supplies (10:43) • Got a package of cigarettes for eighteen cents (11:26) • Never felt pressured or stress while in the army (11:43) • Was a mail delivery person from ship to ship o Motor whale boat � Hard to get in and out of it � Didn’t want to fall into the ocean (12:50) � Had recreation: beers, swimming, nap for entertainment (13:58) � In Pearl Harbor hula girls came onto the ships to entertain the men � Had movies sometimes(14:38) � On leave he would go home and see his family (15:33) � Doesn’t recall taking part in any pranks (16:00) � Shows a series of photos (16:24) Post Service Life � Discharged honorably April 4, 1955 (17:09) � Still showing pictures, cant see them very well, explains some of them (18:34) � Given papers of dis charge in San Diego (20:05) � Mother and sister came to visit him when he was discharged, they drove home to Michigan cross country (20:31) � He got a job in construction that October did it the rest of his life (21:03) � Never took advantage of the G.I. bill (21:17) � Part of a convention with people from his ship (21:51) � Forced to retire, he didn’t want to retire (22:36) � Military experience shaped him and his thought process towards life o He keeps up with world affairs (22:48) � Part of a war organization, doesn’t participate in them very much now (23:20) � You have to get along with people, associate with different things, lots of travel (23:36) � Wanted to see combat (24:40) � Sad to leave the service, happy to see his family and be back home (24:48) � Brothers were in various branches of the war in the military (25:16) � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Anderson, George (Interview outline and video), 2005 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Anderson, George Description An account of the resource George Anderson was born on February 5, 1931 in Coopersville, Michigan. He enlisted in the Navy in 1951. He was sent to the Great Lakes training center in Chicago, and then transferred to Newport, Rhode Island, where he took torpedo training. He was sent to San Francisco and assigned to the USS Curtis. He did not see any combat, but he went through patrols that took him all across the country and to Pearl Harbor. He worked in the armory of the ship. 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 United States. Navy Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American 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 2005-02-01 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AndersonG 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/cd711cb60f7e8157cd7b380938aa9a34.mp4 0bbd396564ad211c58d437df9308775c https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3d175a673b21fdfe5c871f5b7613ff19.pdf 4e585cc78507f74a13ae3c29edd41f95 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Doug Anderson Length: 26:55 (00:25) Naval Training • Doug was in high school when WWII started and the Navy had been offering a special officer training program • He enlisted in the Navy and began training one month after graduating from high school in July of 1943 • Doug was sent to Oakland College in Ohio for an accelerated college program • He was then sent to midshipman school at Long Island Sound in New York • Doug was later transferred to a supply corps school in Boston • The war ended while he was still in school • He went through further training in salvage and preservation; there had been a lot of equipment left over in the Pacific after the war and it needed to go into storage (4:30) Salvage and Preservation • Doug was sent to Guam in the Pacific where he worked at the spare parts distribution center • They set up a sort of assembly line where they would dip parts in a conservative compound and then pack them away for storage • He stayed there working in Guam for the extent of his service • The crew he worked with continued to shrink every month or so while he was there and he was discharged in August of 1946 (6:20) Navy • Doug had chosen the Navy because he said he had always been intrigued with the ocean and wanted to serve his time on a ship • He grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan and went to Union High School �• During his time in the service Doug traveled to Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Guam • While training he did a lot of marching and drilling while also working on signaling, gunnery, and seamanship • Midshipman school was the hardest because they had a lot of classes and went on cruises in small naval craft (10:20) Guam • On the island they lived in Quonset huts and had decent food; Doug did not have any “horror stories” • He got along well with everyone and had an enjoyable experience • There had still been a few Japanese soldiers hiding out in the jungle and mountains that did not know the war was over • They would sometimes come out at night and raid the garbage dumps • Doug also helped with orders from ships that were in need of new equipment • He served under a regular Navy Commander in charge of the base and Doug was the Executive Officer � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Anderson, Doug (Interview outline and video), 2004 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Anderson, Doug Description An account of the resource Doug Anderson was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan and graduated from Union High School in 1943. He enlisted in the Navy and began training one month after graduation. Doug went through accelerated college courses at Oakland College in Ohio and was then sent to mid-shipman school in New York. After going through training, the war was already over and Doug was sent to work in salvage and preservation in Guam. Doug spent the extent of his service in Guam and eventually became an Executive Officer when he was only 19 years old. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Mangione, Nathaniel (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. Navy 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 2004-05-03 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AndersonD 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/b46df14b4b13d4523402b92406294764.mp4 2d13c540054f3cdd7e2d00df9f75eced https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/08818f8aa62e7ae9d3f6d1a82b774eb4.pdf 0a91e2a98ca64eb36da350fb9bf780f9 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Title: Ambrose, Thomas (Interview outline and video), 2010 Subject: Korean War, 1950-1953-–Personal narratives, American; United States. Marine Corps Description: Thomas Ambrose joined the Navy in 1948. He trained for the Medical Corps, and initially did hospital duty, but then transferred to the Marines and was sent to Korea to serve as a corpsman with a line company. His unit fought a series of engagements on the Imjin River and in the Punchbowl. He learned to use field radios and transferred to a signal company, and at the end of his tour he served near Panmunjom. Creator: Ambrose, Thomas Contributor (Interviewer/Affiliation): Montney, Bobby (Interviewer); Caledonia High School (Caledonia, Mich.) Date: 2010-06-05 Digital Identification: TAmbrose � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Ambrose, Thomas (Interview outline and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ambrose, Thomas Description An account of the resource Thomas Ambrose joined the Navy in 1948. He trained for the Medical Corps, and initially did hospital duty, but then transferred to the Marines and was sent to Korea to serve as a corpsman with a line company. His unit fought a series of engagements on the Imjin River and in the Punchbowl. He learned to use field radios and transferred to a signal company, and at the end of his tour he served near Panmunjom. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Montney, Bobby (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 Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American United States. Marine Corps 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 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AmbroseT 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