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Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Vietnam War
Lawrence Merritt
Interview Length: (00:39:06:00)
Pre-enlistment / Training (00:00:24:00)
At the time he joined the military, Merritt’s immediate family were his parents and three
sisters; when he joined the military, Merritt’s family was living in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania but Merritt had been born in Oak Park, Illinois (00:00:24:00)
o Merritt actually joining the military came about from his choice to attend Purdue
University, which he did not realize at the time, had a requirement that all
freshmen had to take ROTC (00:00:47:00)
While fitting the ROTC into his curriculum, Merritt had to decide between
Army, Navy, or Air Force ROTC and he had to do the ROTC for at least
one year (00:01:01:00)
However, before Merritt enrolled, the university canceled the ROTC
requirement for freshmen but since Merritt was already in a scheduled
format, his father thought Merritt should just try the ROTC and see what
he thought of it (00:01:13:00)
As well, the ROTC program paid a little bit of money each month,
which was a little enticement (00:01:28:00)
o Merritt stuck with the Army ROTC and one year led to the next, then to the next,
then to the next, and finally to the fourth year, after which, Merritt received a
commission as a 2nd lieutenant out of Purdue (00:01:36:00)
Merritt graduated with a degree in civil engineering and as the curriculum
unfolded, Merritt could see himself joining the Army Corps of Engineers
while the non-engineering ROTC members were likely to go into either
infantry or artillery (00:01:52:00)
At the time, the Army required that all engineering officers attend an engineering officer
basic course at Fort Belvoir, Virginia that lasted for eight weeks; the course was a first
step so that all engineering officer candidates could learn military engineering because
they all knew civil engineering but as the military go a hold of them, then the candidates
had to learn military engineering (00:02:25:00)
o The course was very informative and Merritt was able to apply most of the civil
engineering to what he would be doing with Army engineers; however, the course
also taught the candidates about explosives, which a civil class would not have
taught them, and other aspects of military engineering that might come into play
in a candidate’s future (00:03:03:00)
o As far as basic training, during one of the summers in ROTC, Merritt and the
other members had to go to Fort Riley, Kansas for what was a rudimentary
infantry, artillery, and armor exposure; it was nothing more than to teach that
there were other disciplines in the Army and in the future, the students might be
drawn into one (00:03:26:00)
�
From Fort Belvoir, Merritt’s first assignment was at Fort Carson, Colorado in a heavyequipment platoon, which itself was in an engineer battalion that worked in support of an
infantry division (00:04:01:00)
o In the platoon, the soldiers had more combat engineering responsibilities,
including: operating heavy-terrain cranes to retrieve vehicles, bridge launch
vehicles, bull dozers, road graters, dump trucks, and paraphernalia that might be
useful from and engineering unit for an infantry division (00:04:15:00)
o Merritt’s time at Fort Carson lasted for about six months before he had a chance
to attend another class at Fort Belvoir (00:04:43:00)
While at Fort Carson, Merritt had received assignment to MACV (Military
Assistance Command, Vietnam) and although there was a class for joining
that command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the class was full, so the
Army allowed Merritt to go back Fort Belvoir and take and engineering
equipment officer course which was intended to give him some time
before going to Vietnam (00:04:54:00)
Deployment (00:05:32:00)
From Fort Belvoir, Merritt went to Vietnam by way of Travis Air Force Base in
California; when he arrived in Vietnam, Merritt still did not know where he was going incountry but he was a 2nd lieutenant assigned to MACV, so the Army started going
through the regular curriculum of what advisors did in Vietnam and actually asked
Merritt which Corps or region he might be interests in going to (00:05:32:00)
o Merritt had the option of going to the north (Military Region 1), the Central
Highlands (Military Region 2), Saigon (Military Region 3) or the Mekong Delta
(Military Region 4) (00:06:17:00)
o Merritt knew that he did not like snakes or DMZs, so he decided to go to Military
Region 2 and the Army found an opening for him in that region (00:06:33:00)
o After two days, Merritt flew to Nha Trang, which was the stop-off point for the
head of Military Region 2; once in Nha Trang, the regional commanders looked in
their list of openings and assigned Merritt to the Darlac province, which was on
the western reaches of Vietnam (00:06:48:00)
When Merritt first arrived in Vietnam, it was nothing like what he expected; all the
training films in college and the war stories Merritt had heard both, in person and over
the news, indicated that he would be using his rifle sooner than he wanted, which was not
the case (00:07:06:00)
o Saigon was domesticated, which was not something Merritt was prepared for, but
going into the smaller settlements, it got more rural all the time and things were
almost normal, except when nighttime came, which was when people stopped
using the roads (00:07:27:00)
Merritt did not realize that the curfews were on-again, off-again but
usually, there was no one out at night and it became very quiet in the
evenings and nights, not the constant barrage of war (00:08:04:00)
Once Merritt arrived in Darlac, his specialty in engineering allowed him to become an
engineering advisor, which was an assigned position in the advisory team Merritt was a
part of; the advisory team as a whole was a part of CORDS (Civil Operations and Role
�
Development Support), which was made up partially of civilians and partially of military
personnel (00:08:29:00)
o The advisory team was mostly officers, senior NCOs, and civilians with a
government background who were in specialty positions to help improve the
society in the area, such as health, education, and welfare (00:08:58:00)
o The team was more of a civilian organization working with the Vietnamese than a
group of military advisors, although they were in the military (00:09:25:00)
o As an engineer advisory, Merritt was involved in several public works projects
that required aid from the team; the team did not have specific people to assist in
the actual project but the team had money and mental knowledge to help the
Vietnamese (00:09:37:00)
o Merritt was also the assistant supply officer, which involved the more remote
military assignments within the province, who were living more off the land and
separate from the advisors living in the towns and Merritt helped supply those
soldiers with supplies, including: food, ammunition, and fuel, all of which had to
be shipped out from the central point in the province (00:09:55:00)
Along with being the engineering advisor, the supply side kept Merritt
pretty busy (00:10:26:00)
There was an airfield in the town where Merritt was stationed used by the Americans as
well as the Vietnamese infantry division stationed there, who used the airfield as a launch
point for their field operations (00:10:43:00)
o However, when it rained, all the jet propellant used for re-fueling would float
downstream over the land and enter the village, becoming a fire hazard because as
the propellants dried up, they stayed on the surface and eventually, a propellant
from someone’s cooking stove would light the streets on fire (00:11:00:00)
o The engineers had to devise a way to collect the rain water and contain the jet fuel
while allowing the storm water to continue flowing (00:11:33:00)
o The military had been in the area long enough that it was questionable why
something had not been done sooner but it was a military problem that the
military had to clean up (00:11:58:00)
Another public works project that Merritt took part in was helping construct buildings for
administrative duties; the advisors did not actually build the buildings themselves but
there was an engineering battalion who came in a built the buildings where the team had
chosen to place them (00:12:15:00)
Towards the end of his time in Vietnam, Merritt became involved in the Army’s effort to
re-locate entire Montagnard villages; the villagers were take out of the contested areas
and re-located to an area where the engineers helped them build perimeters and defensive
fortifications around the new village (00:12:39:00)
o There were a tremendous number of Montagnard villages that had been re-located
and although the majority had re-located before Merritt arrived in Vietnam, the
Americans were still involved in the re-supply and refurbishment of the
fortifications around the villages (00:13:07:00)
o The Montagnards themselves did not like the re-location efforts; they were taken
from their historic, family areas and re-located to flat farming areas (00:13:30:00)
However, the Montagnard system of farm was such that they would plant
crops around their village and they needed the jungle atmosphere and
�
replenishment of the soils, which they could not get in the open farm
lands, so their farming efforts became more tedious (00:13:44:00)
o The soldiers did not supply the Montagnards with supplies, who grew their crops
and trade for whatever else they needed in the markets; logging was a big industry
for the tribesmen and they could turn any profits from that into rice if they did not
successfully grow any (00:14:18:00)
The town where Merritt was stationed had around seventy thousand inhabitants but the
surrounding areas were more remote, so the entire province itself had around onehundred-and-fifty thousand inhabitants, which was not much for being a seven-hundredsquare-mile province (00:14:41:00)
Merritt kept in contact with his family; the mail service as a little slow but the mail
eventually came through (00:15:19:00)
o It was a little tedious trying to keep up with everything because the letters did not
always cover what Merritt wanted to know; there was a limit to how much
someone could remember to put into a letter and how much Merritt wanted to
read about in a letter (00:15:26:00)
o Merritt tried to contact his family once through the telephone system, which was
an interesting concept of using radios to transfer a call; although it was a
cumbersome system, it was still something Merritt tried (00:15:52:00)
The food available to the soldiers was good; because the Vietnamese were cooking
American-style food, the soldiers did have to suffer (00:16:10:00)
o The food was not overly fancy but the soldiers managed to stay healthy from
eating it (00:16:22:00)
The soldiers stayed in old French quarters from when the French had occupied the
country; Merritt does not know if the quarters were an old French hotel but each soldier
had an individual room (00:16:37:00)
o However, the soldiers eventually took over a former Special Forces encampment
and because the Special Forces tended to receive better supplies and facilities, the
soldiers enjoyed what the Special Forces soldiers had left behind (00:16:53:00)
Merritt had to put working with the Vietnamese people in two vernaculars: the true South
Vietnamese and the Montagnards, and Merritt happened to be stationed in the
Montagnard capital of South Vietnam (00:17:09:00)
o Therefore, the majority of the people the Merritt and the other advisors worked
with were Montagnards; Darlac was one of four provinces that had Montagnard
province chiefs (00:17:21:00)
o However, there were South Vietnamese living in the area who had actually come
down from North Vietnam and found more land available in Darlac than they
found by the coastline, where the traditional South Vietnamese maintained
ownership of the land (00:17:41:00)
o The soldiers enjoyed the Montagnards, who were friendly, knew enough English
to keep Merritt out of trouble and so he could communicate with them, and were a
happier people than the South Vietnamese (00:18:01:00)
The Montagnards were more festive and had a tighter bond with their
families, who they shared with the soldiers, who would went to the
different families for Sunday afternoon dinner (00:18:19:00)
�
On a typical day, the soldiers had their breakfast in the morning and be working by eight
o’clock, although there were some supply soldiers who were always either procuring
supplies or preparing to ship the supplies to the outlying units in the area (00:18:43:00)
o The outlying units needed new supplies either weekly or monthly, depending on
the supplies, and because all the units were on different progressions, the
workload for the supply soldiers was spread out, based on what the individual
units’ needs were (00:19:06:00)
o The units would call ahead with their needs because there were some items the
supply soldiers could not get right away, the units knew this and gave the supply
section time to scrounge the items ups (00:19:22:00)
Generators were the biggest problem because the units relied on them for
electricity twenty-four hours a day, so when a generator went out, the
supply soldiers had to have another generator ready, so the supply section
always had move generators than they were allocated (00:19:30:00)
Fuel was not a problem; Merritt believes that the supply soldiers were able
to do well there because there was a South Vietnamese Infantry in the area
and their supplies, namely fuel and ammunition, became supplies for the
Americans as well (00:20:06:00)
There was combat in the area and Merritt divided it into two groups (00:20:26:00)
o The first group were pre-meditated attacks by the American military in which
they would plan operations in the area using either helicopters or trucks to get to
certain stages areas, where the soldiers would stay for a period before returning to
their base (00:20:32:00)
o The second group were attacks by the Viet Cong where they would occasionally
attack at night using mortars or rockets, which generally aiming at the airfield
with the helicopters being a particular target (00:20:53:00)
However, the attacks left the soldiers’ barracks alone as well as the town;
Merritt does not recall anyone in the town being wounded in an enemy
attack (00:21:12:00)
The unit Merritt served in itself was interesting; there were a few enlisted soldiers and a
lot of both senior NCOs and officers (00:21:51:00)
o After sundown, it seemed like everyone could mingle together; although rank was
respected, it was put away so that people got to know each other as part of the
team, not by what their rank was (00:22:08:00)
There were a lot of hazing parties for soldiers who were getting ready to
go home and other occasions where the soldiers were happy (00:22:26:00)
o The soldiers had chances for R&R and they would often go together; however, the
soldiers did not receive many because they were a small unit (00:22:51:00)
o Once of the advantages in being in the supply section was the soldiers helped
obtain the food for all the outlying units and whenever they would go to Cam
Ranh Bay or another place on the coast, the soldiers would take Montagnard
souvenirs and return with steaks or extra items, so that the section because the
focus point for Sunday afternoon partying (00:23:03:00)
The supply section got the goodies while the other soldiers brought the
beer and everybody was welcome, including some of the outlying units
because there were not much fun in their areas on weekends (00:23:39:00)
�
Merritt spent his entire tour in Darlac (00:24:10:00)
o A shallow point of Vietnam was that Merritt only saw what he did for that year
but he did not know the bigger picture of why he was in Vietnam (00:24:14:00)
Merritt’s was a little easier because he was working with the civilians and
he could see construction of buildings were before, everyone was pensive
about their future (00:24:44:00)
The soldiers could see an evolution in the attitudes of the civilians; the
soldier’s work was having an effect but they might not have been aware of
it because they were so close (00:24:59:00)
As a young officer, Merritt did have a few extra assignments; there were numerous jobs
that needed to be delegated to the younger officers and the officers never knew when the
conditions were met for those assignments or what they entailed (00:25:21:00)
o One of Merritt’s extra assignments was the MPC conversion officer, although he
did not know what the assignment was until somebody told him that the following
day, Merritt needed to be prepared to travel to all the district teams, who would be
locked down as well as the main base and no one would be allowed to leave or
enter (00:25:39:00)
Merritt was expected to collect all of a unit’s military scrip, which was
being done all over Vietnam on that day, take the old script back to the
regional headquarters, get new script and take the scrip back to the
soldiers, giving each soldier the same amount of scrip he had given Merritt
in the morning (00:26:07:00)
The purpose of converting the scrip was to prevent any scrip in the black
market from being useful again because the scrip would not go back into
circulation (00:26:43:00)
There was a thought-process that the Viet Cong and NVA were
partially funding their operations through the use black-market
military scrip (00:27:03:00)
There were four districts plus the main base and Merritt also had to fly
back to Nha Trang to convert the script, which was an hour-and-a-half
away from the main base (00:27:27:00)
When converting the scrip, Merritt had to be accurate to the nickel with
every soldier, so it was a sort of challenge to make sure he had everything
right (00:27:40:00)
o Another interesting extra assignment was Merritt was assigned to be the real
estate officer, although he had no idea what a real estate officer did (00:27:52:00)
The position was meant to take care of what happened to a facility after
the Army unit that occupied the facility moved (00:28:08:00)
Technically, there was supposed to be paperwork done ahead of time
saying that before the facility was vacated, there would be a South
Vietnamese unit occupant or some other useful job and the facility would
then get properly transferred over (00:28:26:00)
However, this was not the case while Merritt was in Vietnam; units were
leaving positions so fast that the arrangements could not be made, so
Merritt had the job of playing catch-up with the abandon bases to make
�
sure that at the least, the province chief would take security forces to each
base to make sure the gate was locked (00:28:42:00)
If the gates were not locked, the buildings would be stripped, the
plumbing taken out, and civilians would move in to start making
houses (00:29:08:00)
One of his last jobs in Vietnam was making sure that the transfers were
taking place (00:29:25:00)
Most of the bases were near where Merritt was stationed but there were
Special Forces, Signal, and Air Forces units moving around further out
and if there was not somebody at an abandoned base with a key and gun to
keep people out, then the people were going to get in (00:29:32:00)
Merritt had two good friend while he was in Vietnam: one was his senior supply officer
who left Vietnam before Merritt and the other was the unit’s Phoenix officer, who was in
charge of the Phoenix program for the group (00:30:03:00)
o Overall, Merritt served in a small unit but because most of the soldiers varied in
age, the two Merritt kept in the most contact with were the two soldiers who were
closest to his own age and rank (00:30:53:00)
Once it reached the time for Merritt to go home, it was ironic because Merritt did not
know he was supposed to be going home (00:31:14:00)
o All the soldiers in the unit knew they were deployed for a year and each kept track
of his own date of return; however, Merritt was not of the mind to count the days
down because he believed that just made it seem longer (00:31:18:00)
o Before he even reached the point of being concerned, Merritt still had and R&R to
look forward to and had been planning to go to Bangkok with one of his friends;
the two men had the trip planned when Merritt was called into the office and told
that because of a recent decree by President Nixon, he was going home the
following day (00:31:42:00)
o Merritt did not have any great period of time to prepare to leave; it just sort of
happened, although the unit did have a ceremony for Merritt and another soldier
who was had orders to go home (00:32:18:00)
Post-Military Life / Reflections (00:32:45:00)
The day Merritt flew back to California was also his last day in the Army; normally, an
officer had a two-year enlistment in the Army and four years in the Army Reserve but a
couple of months after Merritt was let off of active duty, he was told he did not have to
go through the Reserve period because he had been to Vietnam (00:32:45:00)
Once he got home, Merritt was still in a bit of shock from having left Vietnam so rapidly
and once he got home, Merritt did not know where to start looking for a job
(00:33:32:00)
o Merritt had a re-collection of someone saying that the first thing he should do was
file for unemployment, but that was not something Merritt want to do because he
had not even started looking for a job; nevertheless, Merritt filed anyway and the
unemployment office had a catalog of available jobs, so Merritt was able to find a
job before he even left the unemployment office (00:33:41:00)
o The was a small engineering firm near Chicago looking for an engineer, Merritt
interviewed for the job and received it (00:34:10:00)
�
Merritt married a couple months after he got home from Vietnam (00:34:25:00)
o Before leaving for Vietnam, Merritt bought a car and paid for it while he was in
Vietnam; an advantage of being stationed in the far western part of the country
was that there was not much for Merritt to spend his money on (00:34:31:00)
o Once he returned, Merritt picked up the car and married his wife a couple of
months afterwards (00:34:53:00)
Merritt does not remember much from after the war; for him, the sooner he could move
on, the better because the war was not a popular thing and something he could tell others
that he had done for the last year (00:35:21:00)
o The war was not really something Merritt paid much attention to; he was getting
married, starting a new job, trying to re-connect with people from college, and
there was not a great interest in re-living the military experience (00:35:52:00)
o When Merritt returned home, his parents had a cake for him and that was about it
(00:36:39:00)
Merritt received a Bronze Star that was issued after Merritt left Vietnam and the medal
came as a surprise (00:36:49:00)
o Merritt cannot say that he did one significant thing or another; it was a unit effort
and there were others who were doing the same kind of work that Merritt was
doing (00:37:05:00)
o The soldiers could tell that the Vietnamese civilians appreciated what the soldiers
were doing, although Merritt cannot speak about how the military viewed what
the soldiers were doing (00:37:19:00)
Merritt and his father have talked several times, not only about the Vietnam experience
but the part about being an officer and the leadership, things that, when Merritt initially
started college, did not think he could have or would have done (00:37:47:00)
o It was a building of both confidence and ability as well as the effort of
responsibility (00:38:10:00)
o Being in command of his first platoon and see his soldiers complete their tasks
was very important for Merritt (00:38:21:00)
�
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
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Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
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1914-
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
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Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
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RHC-27
Language
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eng
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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RHC-27_MerrittL1012V
Title
A name given to the resource
Merritt, Lawrence (Interview outline and video), 2009
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2009-11-10
Description
An account of the resource
Lawrence Merritt was born in Oak Park, Illinois, although when he enlisted, Merritt's family lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After attending Purdue University and completing the university's ROTC program, Merritt received a commission in the Army Corps of Engineers and went to Fort Belvoir, Virginia for his training. From Fort Belvoir, Merritt initially received an assignment to Fort Carson, Colorado but soon received assignment to MACV. Once he deployed to Vietnam, Merritt worked as an engineering advisor in a province populated largely by Montagnards. Merritt stayed in the same province his entire tour and returned to the United States once his tour was complete.
Creator
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Merritt, Lawrence
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Serafino, Meg (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
United States. Army
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Moving Image
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>
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University Libraries. Allendale, Michigan
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Format
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application/pdf
video/mp4