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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
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RHC-27
Language
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eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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.)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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
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eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2011-02-17
Identifier
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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
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application/pdf
video/mp4
-
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)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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
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application/pdf
video/mp4