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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/99f65f2b80ce6ff692e728f432c063e8.mp4
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/47ddbf3a76cdf761da08ab75a4515384.pdf
67df91732c074f508feecebea0e5d5b0
PDF Text
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Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Raymond Zandstra
(00:54:14)
Background
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Interviewed at the Lowell Historical Museum. (:07)
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Born 9/30/1941, in Grand Rapids. (0:16)
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Raised as an only child, until his half-brother was born. (0:41)
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His mother was a single parent during WWII. As a result he spent a lot of time with his
extended family when she was at work. (:52)
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His mother re-married 1947, when he was about six. (1:24)
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His step-father was the only father he knew. He accepted and respected his step-father.
(1:43)
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He was nine when his brother was born. (1:56)
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First job was delivering the Grand Rapids Herald, a morning paper. The Grand Rapids
Press was an afternoon paper. (2:06)
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Worked at a car wash during high school. (2:25)
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Went to Godwin Heights high school, and graduated 1959. (2:38)
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Met his future wife during high school. He was about fourteen. (2:49)
Enlistment
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Enlisted at age 17, in the Navy. (3:05)
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Sworn in six weeks after graduating, July 14, 1959. (3:24)
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Decided to enlist because he had no direction in life, and didn't want to go to college at the
time. He had “had it” with books and studying. (3:45)
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Also thought he wouldn't be injured during peacetime, and wanted to learn something.
(4:13)
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Learned discipline, respect, and became a man. (4:33)
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His parents were opposed to his joining, but realized it was his choice and respected that.
(4:50)
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He chose the Navy partly because his biological father and his step-father had both been in
the Navy. (5:13)
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Another reason was that he liked the Navy clothes the best. The Army, Air Force, and
Marines had to wear neckties and button shirts. The Army also had to wear hard hats and
the Navy had softer hats. (5:42)
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Basic training ideally lasted twelve to fourteen weeks, but in practice was usually around
sixteen. The longer time was a result of bureaucratic lag in assignments and processing.
(6:18)
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Was shipped out, but not informed where he was headed. He didn't find out specifically
until he had almost arrived. He did know he was being sent somewhere in Europe. (7:20)
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Spent a year in Sicily. (7:30)
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Came back to the U.S. Afterwards, and went to a school for helicopter training. (7:35)
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Helicopter maintenance school in Memphis, TN. Lasted sixteen weeks (7:45)
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West Coast, San Diego, CA. Helicopter Squadron 1. (8:02)
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Helicopters were used for plane guard on aircraft carriers, and for rescue duty. (8:34)
Survivor Training/Mock Prison
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San Diego, one week survival training. (8:34)
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Survivor course, had to learn how to survive off the land. (:02)
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Escape and evasion techniques. (9:23)
The week was completed with twenty four hours in a mock prison. (8:39)
Were interrogated in the mock prisons. (8:39)
Trained to only give name, rank, and serial number. (10:04)
Training was required for air-sea rescue staff. (10:23)
The course was also recommended for individuals looking to advance in rank. (10:44)
The first day of the week was spent on the beach learning swimming techniques. (11:06)
Had to forage for food. Had lobster and fish soup cooked on a fire pit. (11:34)
They were taken out to sea in boats, and had to float alone in the sea for a short period. This
was to learn about being stranded at sea. (11:57)
Trained in helicopter pickup. (12:16)
Learned more swimming techniques in a large swimming pool. (12:27)
Endurance swimming and life-vest training. (12:40)
Had to jump off of a tower, about sixteen feet high. Training for jumping off of sinking
ships. (13:06)
Went on hiking trips, five to seven people with a contour map. (13:23)
Had to find their way to a specified point. (13:37)
It was a day long activity. (13:52)
The week was filled with other similar activities. (13:52)
During the interrogations they were not given food or medical supplies. (14:28)
Finally were given some food, but only after they sterilized their canteens with boiling
water. (14:52)
Remarks that hot water was “not fun to drink.” (15:18)
They were not given much water to drink. (15:18)
Asked for more water. (15:30)
Given small amount of food, had to learn to share with his comrades. Usually made soup.
(15:45)
Stimulated air raids during mock prison experience. (16:00)
Interrogations varied in length. (16:08)
The interrogations were longer if they got any information. (16:33)
During interrogations it is best to only give name, rank, and serial number. The interrogators
often try to socialize with their victims. If they can get some information, even it is
unimportant; it is easier to get more important information. (16:53)
Common questions include: What task force are you with? What size ship? What ship?
Where are you going? How many planes? And other similar questions. (17:27)
Name, rank and serial number, only. (17:42)
Some were interrogated multiple times. (17:51)
One of the men was black (1 out of 125). He interrogated for longer periods, and more
often. (18:05)
Minorities were often picked on. (18:23)
The black man was nicknamed “Elvis.” (18:46)
The interrogators would often ask for Elvis, and the men would try to protect him, to no
avail. (18:46)
Elvis did very well. He was well conditioned, and intelligent. (19:17)
Elvis was able to keep in mind the experience was a training exercise. It was very close to
the real thing however. (19:30)
The interrogations got physical frequently. They were hit, chairs were kicked out from
under them, but the interrogators were not allowed to draw blood. (20:00)
The interrogation was at the end of a survivor course. The men were exhausted, physically
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and mentally. (20:35)
Several people, six to ten, got heat exhaustion. (21:01)
The compound was in the desert, the exercise had to be stopped. The men with heat
exhaustion were in critical condition. (21:22)
A helicopter took them to the naval hospital. (21:43)
Sicily
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While in Sicily was a part of FASSRON, Fleet Air Support Squadron. (22:29)
Originally was assigned to Malta. When he arrived, they were in the process of
decommissioning the air base. (23:35)
He was then sent to Sicily, to oversee the construction of the new base. The construction
was delayed. (22:50)
NATO required that the base be more than half built by Sicilians. The Sicilians were not
very quick, resulting in the delay. (23:08)
Some parts of the camp were finished, others were not. The barracks were not completed,
and they had to sleep on desks in the administrative offices until they were finished. (23:32)
The Sicilians didn't know much about the United States. American occupation during
WWII had been brief. (23:55)
The men were not permitted to wear uniforms while in Sicily. (24:28)
Men went to Catania, Sicily for supplies and groceries. (24:36)
Ate outdoors most of the time. (24:50)
Sicilian culture did not approve of tattoos, uniforms, or living behind fences. They
perceived people who did such as the “enemy.” (25:00)
Italian perception was that higher class people lived North, and lower class people lived
South. Sicily was south of Italy, and perceived as being low class. (25:31)
Sicilians were mostly Italian culturally. (26:07)
Americans did many of the things that Sicilians did not approve of, resulting in them being
disliked. (26:19)
The air base was part of an arrangement with NATO. (26:30)
The air base was strategic to American interests, as it was in the center of the
Mediterranean. (26:30)
The base also provided jobs for Sicilians in construction, maintenance, and cooking. (26:58)
While in Sicily, his duties were aircraft maintenance and repair and occasionally security.
(27:21)
The “ship's company,” men who were permanently assigned to Sicily, had three aircraft.
(28:06)
Had many types of planes coming and leaving. (28:17)
Planes were usually at the base four to six weeks. (28:59)
The planes served on many types of missions. Reconnaissance using photographs and
sonar, and patrol squads. (29:03)
Letters were the only form of communication. They took seven to days to arrive. (29:27)
During Christmas he wanted to call home, so he went to a hotel. The operator had to place
the call, which took two to four hours. The calls usually lasted two to three minutes.
(30:08)
The long distance calls were very expensive, which was why they were not allowed
frequently or for very long. They had phones at the base, but they were internal only.
(30:53)
His aunt frequently sent him care packages. Gum, fudge, cookies, cakes, and other various
baked goods were the most common contents. (31:17)
Hopefully the baked goods would be sent by air. This only occurred if the aircraft had the
�room, otherwise they were sent by ship. The ship route took thirty to forty days, by which
time most of the baked goods were no longer any good. He was always thankful to receive
things from home, even if they were stale baked goods. (32:03)
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Has a picture of the base, explains various parts of the base. (32:32)
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Some of the men brought their families with them. (33:14)
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His barracks overlooked olive orchards. (33:38)
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The base was near Mount Etna, the largest active volcano. (34:04)
Helicopter School
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After Sicily, he went to the Helicopter Maintenance School.
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Helicopter Squadron #1 in San Diego, CA. (34:52)
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The base was in Imperial Beach, CA on the Mexican border. (35:02)
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Was a very small air base. (35:22)
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It was five or six miles away from San Diego, which had a very large air base. (35:31)
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Between the two was North Island naval base, which was used to train the Navy SEALS.
(35:48)
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The helped the SEALS with helicopter training. (36:10)
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The SEALS had a graduation rate of around 8%. Half of a one hundred man group would
drop out within a week. (36:33)
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At Imperial Beach, he was the training petty officer for Helicopter Utility Squadron One.
(37:15)
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The air-sea rescue crew had rigid training. They had to lean special swimming techniques,
aircraft, and were trained in taking off of an aircraft carrier. (37:41)
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They had a permanent detachment in Hedsuey, Japan. The rescue crews would spend a year
at that base. (38:22)
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He scheduled training exercises, assignments, and classes. (38:46)
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Deployments were called “cruises.” (39:04)
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Cruises varied in length. North PAC or South PAC (North or South Pacific) lasted about
three months. (39:16)
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The cruises to the Poles were the only ones where crew was allowed to grow a beard.
(39:41)
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Other cruises were between four and ten months aboard carriers in the Pacific. (39:55)
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Helicopters were put on plane guard. A helicopter had to present, and in the air at any
landings or take-offs onto an aircraft carrier. (40:25)
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When he was in Memphis, he sometimes went home for the weekends. It was a fourteen
hour drive. (41:06)
Discharge
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His tour duty was a “minority enlistment” because he was sworn in at age seventeen. As a
result he was to be released the day before his twenty-first birthday, but that was a Saturday
so he was released an additional day early. (41:50)
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Released 9/28/1962 (42:30)
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He had everything packed and ready. He left base at about noon that day. Drove twenty
hour days from San Diego to Grand Rapids and arrived at 9:00 pm Sunday. (43:02)
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The following week he wanted to call one of his military friends at home. He found out his
friend wasn't home. (43:13)
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His friend had been at the “Bay of Pigs” invasion, and was not discharged until Christmas.
No men were allowed to be discharged during this period, a fate he barely escaped. (44:14)
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Credits Kennedy's fast-talking with preventing a war with Russia or Cuba. (44:38)
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He was stationed during the Cold War Era, many things happened that he didn't know about.
Later on, in the seventies, the government issues “Vietnam bonuses” to men who had served
�in the “Vietnam Era.” He had served during the period, but had never heard of the situation
in Vietnam. (44:45)
Post-Enlistment
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After being discharged, he came home. He was married by this time. (45:54)
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His wife was expecting their first child. (46:08)
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He still didn't want to go to college, and he had a family to support so he looked for a job.
(46:20)
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His parents had wanted him to go to college to avoid work in a factory. As a result, he did
not want to work in a factory. (46:28)
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He had taken drafting courses in high school, and got a job with the Fred F. Johnson map
company. (46:54)
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The company drew and sold city maps. (47:19)
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He worked with that company for a year to a year and a half, and then had an opportunity to
work with a civil engineering company in Grand Rapids. This job paid more, and had more
of a future so he took advantage of the situation. He worked there for ten years. (47:32)
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He left that company for another, similar company and worked there for fifteen years as the
head of the surveying department. (48:11)
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Later on, one of the engineers wanted to leave and found his own business, but was looking
for a partner. The two of them started a company. (28:30)
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For the first year and a half the office was in his home. They were in business for eighteen
years. (49:21)
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The company still exists, and has offices in Grand Rapids. He retired September 30.
(49:36)
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Has three daughters, his oldest is forty-five and named Rayna, after him. His second
daughter, Wendy is four years younger. His youngest daughter Shelby is ten years younger
than Rayna. (49:49)
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He has five grand-children. (50:41)
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His grandson is named Caleb Zandstra, and will continue the name. (50:59)
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His family has always been in the Grand Rapids area, until recently. His eldest daughter is
leaving due to a job transfer. (51:27)
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His second daughter is still in the area, but she will be moving because her husband lives in
Mobile, AL. She is waiting for some business transactions involving condos to be
completed. (52:00)
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His youngest daughter is moving as well, but he isn't sure where. (52:40)
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Recommends retiring to everyone. (53:00)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ZandstraR
Title
A name given to the resource
Zandstra, Raymond L. (Interview outline and video), 2007
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Zandstra, Raymond L.
Description
An account of the resource
Raymond Zandstra was born in Grand Rapids. He served in the US Navy from July 14, 1959 to Sept. 28, 1962. He served in Sicily, and in the San Diego Helicopter Squadron One. Most of his duties revolved around helicopter maintenance and repair. He was trained in air-sea rescue in Imperial Beach. He also relates the story of a one-week survival training course he took, during which he was placed in a mock prison for twenty four hours.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Finnie, Rebecca (Interviewer)
Lowell Area Historical Museum (Lowell, 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.)
Video recordings
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
United States. Navy
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2007-05-30
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/5013053e63cc3351a76c6b4470452975.mp4
e029740b8ec11ef00382ebb76d137942
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3d9f105f4838b17bcc605fad331ba039.pdf
4b316bf4fddc05606361ff2a8b8ea7d1
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans’ History Project
Ronald Zandbergen
Cold War
23 minutes 0 seconds
(00:00:10)
-Born in November 26th, 1942 in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
-Raised on a farm.
-About 250 acre farm raising animals for food.
-Sold wholesale meats.
-Joined the Navy in January of 1961.
-Graduated high school in June of 1960.
-A friend of his decided to join with him to see the world.
-Took basic training at Great Lakes, Wisconsin.
-Training was rough, and rugged.
-Only half passed training.
-He was assigned to be a radioman.
-In Bainbridge, Maryland he was trained to do communications, Morse code.
-After Bainbridge he was sent to Keflavik, Iceland where he remained for one year.
-Their role was protecting the military line between Greenland and Iceland.
-Protecting US ships from Russian aircraft etc.
-Grounded two mig fighters at one point. Released after Cuban blockade ended.
-After Iceland he was sent to Little Creek, Virginia to transfer to the Tactical Air Control
Squadron 21.
-The remaining four years of his military career were spent with the Squadron.
-Spent six months in the Mediterranean.
-Visited all of the ports.
-Traveled on the USS Boxer for six months.
-Went to Cuba.
-Did training just off of Cuba.
-Visited Guantanamo Bay.
-Valuable lessons from the Navy.
-Being at sea for so long teaches you to get along with people you don’t like.
-Mediterranean different from the Ocean in that it is so clear you can see the bottom.
-Loved going to France and Spain.
-Attended the bull fights.
-Being in the military teaches you a lot about yourself.
-He loved the Navy and enjoyed the experience overall.
-In Iceland it was so dark and icy that walking to the mess hall required holding a rope.
(10:00)
-He was injured while slipping on ice and sent to a hospital in New York.
-Injured his back.
-Navy didn’t tell them too much about the Russian position or Cold War in detail.
-Iceland was backed by Russia, but the locals were very friendly.
�-Locals worked on the base in kitchens, and theater etc.
-Appreciated the fact that the Cold War was not active fighting.
-What did you think about the Vietnam War?
-He was discharged in January of 1965.
-Can’t comment too much in detail, but felt bad about the situation.
-What was it like being in Virginia?
-Married while in Virginia.
-Had his son there.
-Son now serves in the Air Force as a Lieutenant Colonel.
(15:00)
-At that time he was considering staying in the military, but decided against it.
-Basic training required jumping from an 80 foot high platform into a pool.
-Learned how to tie a pair of pants around him in such a way that air from the fall created a
floatation device.
-Does not recall any women in the Navy at that time.
-Very proud to pass his basic training because it was so difficult.
-Learned to fire a gun, however they were not issued a firearm.
-Their vessel was a flagship, not a battleship.
-During the travels along the Mediterranean they were aboard the USS Francis Marion.
-Originally the ship was a passenger ship.
-They sailed with the commander.
-As a radioman he communicated with aircraft in the area, not menial cleaning duties.
-Highest rank achieved was radioman 3rd class.
-Up for 2nd class before leaving the service.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27_ZandbergenR1834V
Title
A name given to the resource
Zandbergen, Ronald Fay (Interview outline and video), 2015
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-30
Description
An account of the resource
Ronald Zandbergen was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan on November 26th, 1942. He joined the Navy in January of 1961. At Great Lakes, Wisconsin he endured basic training and became assigned to communications as a radioman. In Bainbridge, Maryland he was trained in Morse Code and radio specialization. Then he spent a year in Keflavik, Iceland where the US was wary of ships during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Next he was sent to Littlecreek, Virginia to the Tactical Air Control Squadron 21. During his time in the Navy Ronald travelled on the USS Boxer, and visited European ports in the Mediterranean area on the USS Francis Marion.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Zandbergen, Ronald Fay
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Burrill, Zach (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives, American
United States. Navy
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
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
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a>
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University Libraries. Allendale, Michigan
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b4a971084faf2ee7e6b962d95c465e11.mp4
07b9272c14d4a44f7b7863febcfc960c
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f5757102578b9b5ad361ebe5065e60b6.pdf
81fd8d834a447404033012b0eb056254
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley state University
Veterans History Project
Vietnam War
Ron Zahn
(50:44)
Background Information (00:20)
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Born on December 29th 1951 in Indiana. (00:22)
He lived his childhood in a small town in the upper peninsula of Michigan. (00:40)
Ron’s parents were retired farmers. (00:55)
Before going into the service, Ron did much of his work on farms and also trapped animals.
(1:17)
He had little knowledge of what was occurring in Vietnam and paid little attention to its
occurrences. (1:48)
Ron got two MIPs while in high school and was given the choice of going to jail or going into the
service. Ron chose the service in the spring of 1969. (2:15)
Ron went into the Army and signed up for a 2 year stint. (2:54)
Ron entered service in September of 1969. (3:45)
He was sent to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for a physical. He saw people intentionally breaking digits
in order to avoid entering the service. (4:03)
Basic Training (5:02)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Ron was sent to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, for basic training. He thought it was a little scary
(5:15)
Because Fort Campbell was full, Ron was sent to Fort Benning, Georgia. (5:55)
Basic training was physically difficult; however Ron was in better shape than most. (6:25)
Basic training lasted 6 weeks. (7:00)
Some of the instructors were Vietnam veterans. (7:32)
Next, Ron was sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, for AIT [Advanced Individual Training]. Ron was
assigned to Field Artillery. (8:11)
Ron was trained on 155mm howitzers. Ron was responsible for sighting the weapon. Ron set the
elevation of the gun by using a sight and a crank. (9:10)
The training on the gun lasted 6 weeks. (11:03)
Ron graduated AIT in December of 1969. He received orders to go to Germany. (11:27)
He was given 2 weeks leave and then reported back to Fort Sill. When he reported back the
orders were changed to Vietnam. (12:12)
The men were given another week of leave and then reported to Fort Lewis, Washington. From
here the men flew to Alaska and then to Cam Ranh Bay. (13:47)
Early Service in Vietnam (14:00)
•
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•
Ron was scared when he arrived in Vietnam. He took note of the heat. (14:15)
Ron was then sent to Camp Evans where the 101st Airborne was stationed. (15:20)
The Battery was at Camp Evans. (15:36)
�•
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He believes that the Battery received Ron all right. He was not the only new man. (16:17)
There were 6 guns on the battery. Ron was assigned to gun number one. Ron kept the breech
clean and oiled the barrel. (16:45)
Ron began his service at Camp Carroll where the men stayed for 2 weeks. In February of 1970
the men were moved to Firebase Rakkasan. (17:25)
On the fire bases the men were subjected to mortar and sniper fire. (18:46)
The men in the battery did have to set up parameter security. The men also had their own fox
holes by the guns. (19:19)
A month later in March of 1970, the men were moved to Gladiator. (20:11)
While at Gladiator, enemy men got through the wire and demolished the ammo dump. (20:41)
The men spent about one month at Gladiator before being moved to Fire base Kathryn for 1-2
weeks then to Rakkasan again. (21:17)
Service on Ripcord (22:00)
•
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•
•
•
•
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•
•
•
•
•
The men arrived at Ripcord in mid June of 1970. The area was very frightening due to the
proximity of the jungle to the base and that other groups had been chased off Ripcord before.
(21:31)
After the engineers dug foxholes, Ron went in and dug them deeper. (24:00)
The guns often provided support for the troops around Ripcord. (25:25)
Gradually, mortar and sniper fire began showing up along with rockets, tear gas, and machine
gun fire. (25:50)
Ammunition was brought in using Chinooks and Hueys. (26:52)
The ammunition was dropped at the back of the base. The men were required to carry the
ammunition from the back to the front of the fire base. (27:19)
Ammunition often got to the base, it was the drop and going to get the ammunition that was
dangerous as this was what triggered enemy fire. (28:51)
Ron doesn’t remember sleeping in Vietnam. (29:50)
Ron’s unit did not lose any guns. However, the 105mm battery unit lost all 6 guns in July after a
helicopter crashed with ammunition on the base. (30:44)
A man got pinned in the fire and pleaded for the others to shoot him. But due to the intensity of
the fire, no man could get in close enough to do so or to help him. (32:05)
There were no casualties in Ron’s battery because of the 105 accident. But because the 105s
could no longer fire, Ron’s battery had to fire more to fill the missions. (33:02)
At this time the unit was losing officers and sergeants through indirect fire and mortars. (36:37)
There were some men that came to replace casualties, however on Ron’s gun, the men did not
want any one else on their gun, even if a man as lost. (38:37)
The men were told on the night of July 21st that on July 22nd the men would be leaving Ripcord.
The men shot off as much ammunition as they had before leaving. Ron did not think they would
be able to evacuate Ripcord. (39:10)
Men were always prepared to destroy the guns if over run. (40:24)
All 6 guns were removed successfully form Ripcord. When the men left, they were handed a
number. The numbers were used to decide who left Ripcord first. (41:15)
Ron took the second to last chopper off of Ripcord. (43:03)
The men are moved to Camp Evans. Ron didn’t know where the other members of the battery
or the guns were once he was moved. (44:41)
�End of Service (45:09)
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There was a two week long stand down after returning from Ripcord. The men then stayed at
Rakkasan. Here Ron had his hand smashed in the breech of the gun. (45:16)
Ron volunteered to assist build a new fire base in early August of 1970. (46:30)
Ron did finish his high school education. This was before he was sent to Vietnam. (49:26)
Ron was asked to reenlist but did not want to. (49:40)
Ron spent his time after the service working as an auto mechanic and a truck driver. (50:15)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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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
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
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Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
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/.
Identifier
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ZahnR1444V
Title
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Zahn, Ronald (Interview outline and video), 2012
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Zahn, Ronald
Description
An account of the resource
Ron Zahn, born in 1951 in Indiana, served in the U.S. Army from 1969 to 1971. Ron was forced to enlist in the Army after receiving an MIP. He underwent basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and AIT at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where he was trained on artillery. In early 1970, Ron was sent to Vietnam where he served in A Battery, 2nd Battalion, 11th Field Artillery in the 101st Airborne Division. His battery was based at Camp Evans, and moved around the northern part of South Vietnam, spending time at Firebases Rakkasan, Gladiator, Kathryn and Ripcord and at Camp Carroll. His battery was on Ripcord while it was under siege and evacuated in July, 1970.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
McGregor, Michael (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
United States. Army
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
Language
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eng
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2012-10-06
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
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application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c07421cde92d0987cd4dd240e30be68f.mp4
8bf0bf11a896e804c3cff1d156ba24a5
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ce8d84cc928abc936a143a8cff5ebae0.pdf
508b280ee2d456382ad29c3a13d3d41d
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Cold War Era
Gord Youngquist
2:03:35
Background information (00:07)
Born April 12th 1956 in Wheaton, Illinois (a small suburb of Chicago) (00:10)
He lived there till he was 4 and then moved to Fennville, Michigan (approx
1960)(00:12)
He attended School in Fennville (00:20)
In Illinois his father worked as an editor for a magazine publisher. When he came to
Michigan he worked as the chief engineer at John Thomas Batts
He finished high school in 1975 (1:16)
After graduation he attended school at Farris State University (Approx 1975-1977)
(1:18)
He decided March of 1977 to go into the Coast Guard (1:30)
He Joined the Coast Guard in order to get the sea time needed to upgrade his
captain’s license. (1:40)
At this time he also wished to avoid the conflicts occurring in Vietnam [although
these were over by then](3:05)
He also did not want to hurt or kill people (3:25)
Did not support the political reason for or action of Vietnam (4:01)
Basic Training (5:30)
He attended boot camp in Cape May, New Jersey (Approx. 1977)(5:40)
His first station had been at Group Saint Petersburg in Saint Petersburg
Florida(5:45)
Boot Camp lasted 18 weeks (5:57)
The training was geared to educate as well as mentally, emotionally, and physically
prepare the trainees for their service (6:15)
Boot camp had only taken place on land (6:39)
Military discipline had been somewhat in forced during his training, but not to the
same degree that is seen in the marines or army. (7:00)
When entering training he was deemed an E1 or a Seaman Recruit. (7:42)
Much of the early training had been for first aid and emergency medical
preparedness (8:00)
Of the men he trained alongside, approx 80% had been of “no class,” had worked
before, and had at least graduated high school. (8:55)
�
Most men who entered boot camp had stayed with the program until its completion.
(9:55)
In between his first assignment and boot camp, he had been given 1 week's leave
(10:43)
He started out as a buoy tender. Here he scraped slime off of buoys used for
navigation (11:03)
Service in Saint Petersburg (11:00)
The buoys had first been secured on a ship he worked on before the maintenance of
the buoys could begin (11:45)
He was a buoy tender in Saint Petersburg Florida for approx. 2.5 years (approx
1978- 1979 or 1980) (13:02)
An off base apartment was aloud for Coast Guard members as there had been no
base housing (13:21)
His pay as a jr. Coast Guard man had been approx 140 dollars a week (13:50)
If men were willing, breakfast, lunch, and dinner could be provided on the ships.
However at liberty time (3:00 PM) many of the men would leave the ship. (14:40)
He served “1 and 3” duty. Every third day a man was required to stay on aboard the
ship for a night shift to serve watch while the ship was docked. (15:20)
These watch sessions were typically fairly calm while in Saint Petersburg (16:00)
Women Coast Guard members had been stationed in St. Petersburg but not on the
boats. They typically had more administrative office type jobs. (16:45)
In spite of the negative opinion the public had over Vietnam in this era, the Coast
Guard did not seem to have any difficulty recruiting (17:37)
He desired to go transfer to a small boat station. These locations had been
responsible for search and rescue as well as law enforcement. To do this he had to
complete a request.(18:40)
Small boat stations were also seen to have more of a family bond. (19:12)
Service at Cortez Station (approx 1981) (20:00)
The first small boat station he served at was Cortez (19 miles west of Bradenton
Florida) (20:04)
35 to 40 men had been stationed at this station at the time (20:55)
2, 41 foot ships, 2, 30 foot boats a small boat (approx 20 feet long with an Avon) had
been stationed at Cortez (21:01)
While at Cortez he responded to a shrimping boat call in which a man aboard had a
heart attack. (22:15)
His station did very little bad weather rescue as the ships Cortez were not capable of
handling violent storms. (23:55)
�
Most of the drug trafficking law enforcement things he had done had been the sizing
of marijuana (25:00)
Most of the sea crimes he encountered had fairly compliant suspects who did not
fight back when apprehended (25:40)
He served at Cortez for 8 months (Approx mid late 1980 to early 1981)(26:50)
Service in Sarasota Florida (Flotilla 8-4 approx 1981) (26:55)
Next he served in Sarasota Florida on an 82 foot patrol boat (26:55)
While serving here, one could either live on the boat or live In an apartment (27:30)
Having one’s own space (such as an apartment) was highly valued. (28:00)
This ship often patrolled past the 12 mile limit looking for vestals suspected of
carrying illegal contraband (28:28)
While on patrol he seized 30 tons of illegal contraband. (29:37)
Many jobs on the ship could be done by any man on the ship regardless of ranks.
(33:55)
During the extensive periods his ship would spend out at sea (1-13 days at a time)
encounters with suspicious ships had been rare. (33:59)
Search and rescue had been the primary priority. (34:25)
1 out of 4 calls to the crew had been a search and rescue job. (34:56)
Had been a Thatcher for approx 13-14 months. (approx 1981-1982)(38:30)
At this point his time had been up in the Coast Guard. However, he had been
transferred back to the group for administrative liaison for the Coast Guard
auxiliary (38:40)
The last 72 hours of his Coast Guard duty he applied to work a new session aboard a
283 foot ice breaker. Here he was given the position of the ships 3rd Quartermaster.
(38:27)
Before being placed on his new assignment on the ice breaker, he had been given 2
weeks leave. (40:01)
He left 5 days early to accommodate his living arrangements in the areas in which
the ice breaker would dock. (40:28)
Service aboard the ice breaker (1982) (40:30)
The ice breaker left port and would be out at sea for a period ranging 4-6 months
(40:45)
The ships tasks included assisting scientist in conducting arctic surveys, as well as
making routs for supply ships to reach areas such as Tully Greenland where an air
base had been located. (41:47)
His motive for working on an ice breaker had been to get more sea time and
experience. (41:40)
�
Because of the sea time and experience he acquired during this period of his service,
he was able to obtain an unlimited Masters License when he was out of the Coast
Guard (42:08)
Often the first thing that sailors would do aboard the ship was find their own little
“nook” or personal living space (42:59)
His experience on this ship exposed him to particular environmental sights
(mountains, native peoples, glaciers) that he otherwise would not have seen.
(43:18)
He got seal skin and ivory as a souvenirs from some native arctic peoples. (45:30)
On one expedition scientist aboard the ship had excavated ice and found plankton as
well as leaf growth in the glacier. (46:15)
It was not odd to have at least three scientist on board the ship during any
particular voyage (47:40)
He served 25-30 voyages aboard this vessel (47:58)
He served in the Coastguard for 10 years (approx 1977-1987)(48:05)
On his final voyage aboard this vessel, the ship hit a growler (portion of an ice berg
located under water.) the following morning he spotted some brown matter in the
water. Using a lead line and a rag to inspect the actual damaged area, he was able to
deduce what was leaking was diesel fuel. As a result of this the ship was shut down,
as running out of fuel in a remote location would be disastrous. (48:17)
When having to go outside the ship on to the ice, some men would be armed with
M16s in case of a polar bear attack. (52:00)
After a quick patch was made on the ship, the vessel went to a shipyard in Scotland
for repairs. (52:42)
The improvised repair to the ship had been done so well, that the men in the ship
yard in Scotland said they could not have done a better job. (53:06)
The man doing the repair (Bill) got his name in the Guinness book of world records
for the most north repair. (53:08)
One trip so the South Pole was made while he served on this vessel. (54:28)
This trek to the south pole took 6th months. (54:50)
On a voyage this long, finding peace and quiet or time to one’s self was immensely
valued. (55:28)
The purpose of the South Pole voyage was simply to break ice to make a way for
supply vessels. (25 feet thick sheets of ice needed to be broken.) (55:47)
The most ice the vessel ever cracked while he served was 35 feet thick. (56:08)
Five miles a day was considered fairly good progress. (56:40)
His sleeping area had been by the portion of the ship used to for cracking ice and it
had been very loud (57:10)
The South Pole was incredibly dry and very little if any precipitation was seen.
(58:48)
A thermal pack was used by seamen in order to protect their skin from the harsh
arctic conditions. (58:28)
The ship compiled weather information using wet bulb thermometers, dry bulb
thermometers, barometric pressure, wind measurements, sun angle, and existing
�
condition. Most measurements could be taken from inside the ship but the
thermometers had to be checked outside the ship (59:53)
Even in the fridge temperatures of the South Pole the engine room had
temperatures of 120 degrees. (1:00:52)
For all men aboard the ship, many of the environmental challenges they simply
adapted to or “got used to” (1:01:15)
When making South Pole expeditions, the ship rarely stopped in ports save for the
stop at the Panama Cannel during the voyage down from the northern Hemisphere.
(1:01:40)
One of the places the ice breaker did stop during its South Pole voyages had been
the most southern tip of South America. (1:02:04)
However when sailing around the areas by the horn (the most southern tip of South
America) the ship had been primarily in open ocean (1:02:46)
It was very important to stay focused while on duty, otherwise one seaman could
end up injuring another. (1:03:53)
Dramatic Accounts from service in Florida (Saint Petersburg) (1:05:34)
On September 10th 1979, while stationed in St. Petersburg Florida, he had been
involved in a motorcycle accident. Resulting in 4 compound fractures in right leg his
leg, a split sternum, 2 breaks in his hip, and a skull fracture. He woke up from a coma
2 weeks after the accident. (1:05:50)
After the accident, doctors wanted to amputate his leg. (1:06:44)
Unwilling to stay in his hospital bed, he was placed in epileptic cuffs which he
snapped. This lead to a physiologist stating that his will to live was unbelievably
strong. (1:06:50)
In an effort to save his leg, the Coast Guard sent him to Tampa Florida where the 3rd
best orthopedic surgeon in the U.S. at the time would operate on him. (1:07:37)
At the time of the accident he had been stationed in Saint Petersburg, however was
on liberty (1:08:23)
Was in the hospital from September 10th 1979 to May 5th 1980 (the date he walked
on his own with a healed leg for the first time) (1:09:28)
The Coast Guard considered having him retire from service as a result of the
injuries. He had been sent to New Orleans (approx February-March of 1980) for a
medical survey to figure out if he was to be discharged (1:09:57)
He had been informed about a new procedure called a bone growth stimulator.
Showing this to his doctor, he decided to go through with the new procedure. A
week later, Gord had become the 3rd person in the U.S. to have the bone growth
simulator implanted. He also went through the procedure without anesthetic.
(1:11:11)
6 weeks after the surgery, the bone had been filled and completely healed. (1:13:38)
He accredits the opportunity to have this procedure down largely to being in the
right place at the right time and luck. (1:15:05)
�
After his leg had healed he was placed back in Saint Petersburg and was placed on
full duty. (1:15:55)
He then served temporary duty on a steadfast (210 foot parole boat.) (1:16:09)
The Blackthorn Disaster (January 28th 1980) (1:16:55)
The Coast Guard cutter Blackthorn had been originally in Tampa Florida at a ship
yard and underwent a total switch out of all crew members. (1:17:18)
The Blackthorn had been outbound from Tampa were as the Capricorn had been
inbound to Tampa. During this time a large storm enabled either captain to see.
During the storm the Capricorn side swiped the Blackthorn and tore a hole approx.
80 feet long approx 40 feet from the water line (1:17:44)
6 people of a full crew (approx 282) survived the Blackthorn ship wreck. (1:18:35)
At the time he had been on body recovery. (1:18:55)
In spite being in a cast and having crutches at the time of the wreck (January of
1980) he had been called aboard to assist with body recovery.
The 3rd day after the Blackthorn ship wreck, divers had located the vessel. (1:20:39)
The Harbor in Tampa Bay had been closed as a result of the ship wreck. (1:21:05)
The bodies had been recovered after 3 days in salt water. The skin of the deceased
had been pale while with bite makes from fish. While attempting to remove a body
from the water, Gord grabbed a hold of the bodies arm. While trying to pull him in
the boat, the limb detached from the body and it had been dismembered. (1:21:35)
As a result of this he had been subjected to a large amount of emotional distress as a
result of no knowing how to react. (1:22:30)
To get the bodies aboard the ship he suggested they use the crane aboard the ship as
well as a helicopter basket (a gurney) with the flotation devices removed (1:23:30)
After being placed aboard ship, the bodies were placed into black unmarked body
bags that were then stacked at the bow of the ship (1:24:42)
The stack of bodies had been approx. 6 feet tall 20 feet across and 30 feet to the
bow.(1:25:12)
It had been very emotionally traumatizing for him to have this experience and yet
not know any of the men or their names. (1:25:24)
After the bodies had been removed from the wreck, the Commandant of the United
States Coast Guard gave all the men meritorious commendation medals to the men.
But Gord pushed it off and let it fall to the floor. He did not want to be given a medal
for picking up dead bodies. (1:26:00)
The Blackthorn event was the most prolific nautical disaster that he had
experienced or knew of during peace time. (1:27:59)
The media coverage of the Blackthorn ship wreck had been fairly extensive with
helicopters and boats covering the event. (1:28:33)
The base, however, had been restricted from media coverage and the men evolved
in the rescue we’re told not to say a word. (1:28:55)
�Experience with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) (1:30:00)
To this date he has not held a job over 30 days, due in part to the psychological
effects his service has had on him. Some jobs we’re held for a week others for an
hour. (1:30:13)
He had checked into a mental hospital in his local area (Michigan) and then went to
the Veterans Administration (V.A.) hospital in Grand Rapids Michigan. (1:30:34)
When at the V.A. hospital in Battle Creek he had been diagnosed with post traumatic
stress disorder (approx. 1990) (1:30:54)
He noticed he had been emotionally instable. He often would have short burst of
anger or would cry over something he saw on television. He would often even cry
and not realize he was crying. (1:31:28)
He very much cherishes the relationship of understanding that he shares with other
veterans. (1:31:57)
He believes that the returning veterans from the Iraq War will over whelm the V.A.
system due to PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) (1:32:55)
He states that soldiers who wish to come home and live anything close to a normal
life again need the V.A. for help. (1:34:00)
He believes that the amount of help that is available for veterans who return from
service is fantastic. (1:34:35)
Because of his traumatizing experiences he had woken up one night to find that he
had dragged his girlfriend out of bed in his sleep. (1:35:34)
He states that the memory of his service is still very much still there. (1:36:25)
He rid his home of all his “personal protection devices” (hand guns, knives) due to
the fear that he might hurt someone accidentally or that he might be
“triggered”(1:36:59)
He had been called in to court for trespassing charges, which he has no memory of
ever doing. (1:37:22)
In World War II post traumatic stress disorder was called combat fatigue (1:40:25)
The Sunshine Sky way Bridge Disaster (May 9th 1980) (1:41:00)
the Sunshine bridge disaster and the Blackthorn disaster happened very close to
one another (1:41:20)
during this incident, he served in the operations center handling the coming and
going of ships (1:42:21)
Approx. 6 vehicles had fallen into the water from the bridge. (1:42:58)
He had been in high school at the time of the Fitzgerald ship wreck (1:47:25)
�Addition information (1:48:00)
He had been discharged due to his inability to serve his duties. This had been largely
as a result of the experiences on the Blackthorn disaster. (1:49:23)
He reports that even his physical movements where altered and difficult. (1:50:10)
A friend of his who had PTSD would often simply stare when having attacks and
during these periods he was not to be bothered until he recovered himself from the
episode. (1:51:45)
His PTSD has lead to “rages” or periods of sudden violent outbreaks. (1:53:16)
The triggers for his PTSD can be as wide ranging as the absence of his electric bill to
a broken speak plug. (1:53:30)
Some times Gord can feel the attacks coming on, other it is almost instantaneous.
(1:55:00)
He feels the need to have a certain amount of money readily available to deal with
potential fines or court orders that may arise as a result of his PTSD condition.
(1:56:11)
Due to his condition he is unable to operate an automobile. This has lead to many
inconveniences (1:58:15)
On his dresser he has approx. 15 bottles of medication in order to help with cope
with his situation. (1:59:20)
Best therapy he has had was at the V.F.W. ((2:01:11)
Isolation for individuals with this condition is dangerous (2:01:08)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
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1914-
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
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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/.
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RHC-27_YoungquistG1287V
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Youngquist, Gord (Interview outline and video), 2011
Date
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2011-11-02
Description
An account of the resource
Gord Youngquist served in the United States Coast Guard from 1977 to 1987. During this period Gord served in a wide variety of positions and locations from Cortez Florida, Sarasota Florida, Saint Petersburg Florida, as well as aboard an ice breaker that did voyages in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. In this interview, Gord recounts his time in all of these location, particularly Saint Petersburg Florida, where he helped on both the Blackthorn as well as the Sunshine Bridge disasters. Gord also accounts the repercussions his service has had on him as well as his struggle living with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.)
Creator
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Youngquist, Gord
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives, American
United States. Coast Guard
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Moving Image
Source
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<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>
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Grand Valley State University Libraries. Allendale, Michigan
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
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application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/77dbc87293a6f2fa75f4caa7dd9e657a.m4v
f551e738e9b37977900c2426821b7485
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a3e5546e8add0b8ee4b875f405a5e192.pdf
1d9e42aa8709f77334d199fe1ed23adc
PDF Text
Text
ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW
LOIS YOUNGEN
Women in Baseball
Born: October 23, 1933
Resides: Eugene, Oregon
Interviewed by: Frank Boring, GVSU Veterans History Project, August 5, 20010,
Detroit, Michigan at the All American Girls Professional Baseball League reunion.
Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, December 9, 2010
Interviewer: “To begin with what is your full name and where and when were you
born?”
My full name is Lois Joy Youngen and I was born October 23, 1933 in a little town of
one hundred people called Ragersville, Ohio.
Interviewer: “What was your early childhood like?”
Full of activity, I had a wonderful childhood and my mother was an elementary
schoolteacher, my father was a principal and subsequent superintendent of schools and he
also was coach and he also was a varsity baseball player. So, I think maybe that’s where
I got some of my ability. 45:03
Interviewer: “What was your school like? You said it was a small town, was it a
small school?”
We had moved to a little larger town where I started first grade. The first few grades
were rather uneventful and by the time I hit the fourth grade we had moved because my
father got a better job and it was about then that I started playing with all the
neighborhood boys because there weren’t any girls in the neighborhood and if you
wanted to play outside, and there’s no television remember, and other than reading books
and trying to learn how to play the piano, which I didn’t do very well and they finally
gave up on me, I played outside with the boys.
1
�Interviewer: “Give us an idea what the lot was like. What was your neighborhood
like for example? Was it a big back lot? Was it a full diamond where you play
baseball? What was it like?” 45:57
A yard and a back yard and then a little later on when we moved again and my father got
a better job, we were in—all the houses were on one side of the street and across the road
it was farmland, it was pasture field, so we took our paper bags and our one ball, you
only had one ball and you reused it, and our bat which had copious amounts of, I guess
it’s electrical tape, it’s black and it also had a screw and a bolt through it, but that was it
and I remember that the boys weren’t too excited about my wanting to play, originally
when we moved to this new town with the pasture field across the street. 46:40
Interviewer: “How old were you roughly?”
Let’s see—probably ten, ten years old.
Interviewer: “You’re the daughter of educators, small town, you’re playing the
piano, but you don’t want to play, you’re reading, which is wonderful, and how did
you hear about this boys’ baseball going on? How did you happen to get involved
with that?”
Well, there were a lot of boys in the neighborhood and they always just played ball over
there, so I wandered over naturally. I was interested and I asked about playing and they
said, “You can play right field or catch”, and being rather intelligent I said, “well, if I
play right field at this age, no one will ever hit the ball to right field because when we
choose up teams, which you often do in elementary school, the last person to be chosen is
the one who gets to play right field”, so I said, “I’m going to learn how to catch.” I knew
2
�my dad was a baseball pitcher and if he could throw to me some, I could really become
proficient as catcher. 47:44
Interviewer: “Did you have a glove?”
At the time I don’t know if I had a glove or not, but I know my father was supportive,
which is important, so we went out and bought me a glove. I don’t think it was a
catcher’s glove originally. Later on I got the real thing, but I’m not quite sure.
Interviewer: “So in the early days in elementary school, why baseball as opposed to
anything else?”
Well, we’re talking about the nineteen forties and individual sports were only for those
elite families that had money and could have private lessons. There was no physical
education in the schools during the forties, there was some extra, what would you call it?
Varsity sports, there were some varsity sports floating around, but baseball was one of
those things that every small town had a baseball team. That had maybe changed some,
but I think there were enough remnants so you could play with a limited amount of space,
a limited amount of equipment and still have a very good time. 48:48 All the small
schools that I went to, there was no football, no track and field when you look out and
soccer was something you played in PE, I think for fifty years before it caught on as
being a really important kind of sport around the world, but maybe never will catch on in
this country, we’ll see how that goes. Anyway, it was a remnant of a sport that
everybody could play you could join in. Everybody had a little softball game at a reunion
or at a picnic. You played softball, but this was baseball with a hardball that we threw
overhand. 49:24
3
�Interviewer: “Did you have access to sports either by newspaper or radio? Did you
know what was going on in the world of baseball?”
I had a grandfather that kept his ear to the radio to listen to the Cleveland Indians games,
so we had no television, but we did have radio and I think our family was always so busy
trying to earn a living—we had gardens in the summer and I had odd jobs that I did and
every kid had chores to do around the house. Some of my friends at that age, in
elementary school, got an allowance and other students had to work and they were doled
out certain amounts of money if they asked for it and that kind of thing. I’ve lost your
question. 50:13
Interviewer: “You actually already answered it in terms of did you know about
baseball from the outside.”
Oh yeah, the radio and newspaper, yes, yes.
Interviewer: “Did baseball from the very beginning or when did baseball become
more important to you than just kind of playing?”
Well, that’s an interesting question. That’s a very interesting question. By osmosis I
suppose, I don’t know if I ever realized when. I got to the point where we gathered more
boys to play on our team and then we started to call ourselves the “Town Team” and then
we walked to other small towns five miles away, no soccer moms to take us anywhere,
we took our one ball and our one bat and we would walk and we would play and then we
would walk home. They would walk over and we would kind of pre determine, it was
usually in the afternoon because we didn’t have jobs or anything and we were free to
play, and I know that one summer, I think I probably was in junior high school by then
and we did this for three or four years, and finally they came down, the boys, the team,
4
�came down to my house and they told me they didn’t want me on the team anymore
because the other towns teams and kids were laughing at us because we had a girl on the
team. 51:40 All I know is I think I suppressed that to the point where I don’t remember
it, but my mother said, yes, I was there and I heard them ask you to do that, you were
devastated she said, but it took them about a week before they came trudging back down
and asked me to join them again because they had lost two games and they wanted me
back on the team. I said, “well, that proves that winning is more important than having a
girl on the team”, so then I sort of graduated from their team. The boys got older and we
did have a varsity baseball team in that town and there were a couple of women’s softball
teams in the larger cities, Wooster, Ohio and Ashland, Ohio, so in the summer the
manager stopped by, I don’t know how they found out about me, but they came to me
and asked if I would like to play. I didn’t know if I was good enough, but then I played
softball with the Wooster, Ohio softball team for a year and then I played with Ashland
probably two years. 52.42
Interviewer: “A couple questions between all this, what was your father’s and
mother’s reaction to your playing baseball with the boys?”
Nothing, I mean it wasn’t negative, and you know the research shows, all the early
research shows, that the father is supportive and supportive of their daughter playing.
There’s no problem and my father was always supportive and my mother probably didn’t
disagree at all because she was a horsewoman in her early years and rode a lot and grew
up on a farm and farm women had to help and get out in the field, so she knew what
physical work was like. She was a little bitty woman, but she use to drive when they
made hay and would drive the horses, so I don’t think she thought there was anything
5
�wrong with it and like I said, dad was supportive. They didn’t get to very many games,
but they had other things to do, but I think they were supportive. 53:37
Interviewer: “So a scout of the softball team somehow heard about you and came
along and said, “I understand you’re a pretty good ball player?” You played for a
year or two years?”
I played with the Wooster team one year and Ashland was closer and I think that was one
of the reasons, I can’t think of any other good reason, why I went from one to the other. I
went to play with Ashland and I was in high school by now, I was in high school.
Interviewer: “And you were still a catcher?”
I am still a catcher.
Interviewer: “Do you have a catcher’s mitt now?”
I have a catcher’s mitt now.
Interviewer: “This is a more difficult question I know because you’re delving back
quite a few years, but did you have any indication what so ever of what you wanted
to do with your life at that point? Did you want to be a teacher like your parents?”
54:31
I always knew I would go to college, that was never a doubt. That was instilled in me
from the beginning, I mean as long as my folks and I communicated about anything, I
knew I would go to college, so I knew I had to do well in school, which I did, but I
wasn’t sure what I wanted to do after I got there and what my major might be at the time.
Interviewer: “Baseball isn’t even in the consideration because it’s something you’re
doing because it’s fun?”
6
�Yes, doing it because it’s fun, yes, definitely. Fun, F U N, fun and winning too
occasionally.
Interviewer: “Did you feel like you were pretty good?”
I don’t know, I don’t think I ever really—I don’t think I thought much about that. I was
interested in the fact that we were a team and that every time we won the team won. As
women, I don’t think we spent much time thinking about statistics and who hit the
winning RBI that high. I think it was the team winning and we were interested in the
game as a team game. 55:41
Interviewer: “Now, you’re in high school so your morning you go to school, you
come back in the afternoon, when are you playing baseball?”
Probably on a night, like a Friday night and we might be playing on a Sunday afternoon.
Interviewer: “This is a neighborhood thing, so you got the bleachers full of locals
and those people egging you on with rah, rah, rah?”
It was the thing to do to, and here we’re talking about the nineteen forties and people
didn’t have a lot of money and I think we were much before television was popular. You
might have one or two people in town that had a television set. I remember going to visit
somebody in 1948 and they had this snowy television set, but I think there wasn’t a lot to
do. You could go to the movies, pay seventy-five cents and go to the movies, maybe it
was a dollar by then, or you might go out and watch, I’m sure we weren’t the only
softball team in Ashland, the men probably had one or two teams, and they still had
businesses that sponsored men’s softball teams, so I still think in the nineteen forties
softball was probably a pretty popular activity for a medium sized, we’re talking about
twenty-five thousand people or twenty thousand people, something like that. 56:58
7
�Interviewer: “Can you remember, and how did you hear about Pearl Harbor?”
I was sitting with my father in our den and we had one of those Zenith tall radios, you
wouldn’t know about that, sorry, and it had a big round dial on it and so on.
Interviewer: “I actually do know about that.”
You do? I wasn’t going to—and we were in Ohio and it was in the morning, I’m sure it
was in the morning, it was a Sunday morning, I don’t know if we had been to church and
come home or we hadn’t gone yet, I can’t tell you the exact time, but my dad was
listening, I don’t know when it got turned on or anything, but I heard my father call my
mother in and they sat down and I think I kneeled, I don’t know if there was a chair there
or an ottoman or sofa or something for me to sit on, but I get the impression I was
kneeling down and cocking my head and listening and we heard Roosevelt come on the
radio and talk about the date that would live in infamy. 58:10 From there on it sort of
changed everything.
Interviewer: “How did it change around your immediate world?”
All the good teachers went off to work in the war plants, so there was a shortage of
teachers and I don’t know if you know this, but maybe you do, but once a woman got
married, in the nineteen thirties, she no longer could teach. Married women could not
teach, so until World War II, married women were pretty much prohibited from teaching
unless they had a special kind of certificate to do something, but in general married
women, if the husband taught, the wife couldn’t teach. So, my dad came home and he
was the principal of a fairly good size school, and he had been losing all his teachers—
you could make five times as much—you know that’s still the way it is, you can make
five times as much money doing something else as you can teaching. 59:13 Everybody
8
�was leaving to go to the was plants, so what happens is dad says, “Mom, you got to go
back and teach third grade, or fourth grade, or fifth grade, but you got to get back in.
They are dying for good teachers”, and my mother was a very good teacher, so she got
geared up to go back and teach and those were the years when people only had one car or
one truck, you didn’t have two. Our life changed immediately after we started in 1941
and we had war drives and war bond drives and we collected scrap metal and I know we
had scrap medal. We had recesses where we got our physical activity and remember I’m
a lot younger than I was from your previous question, but we didn’t have any organized
teams during that time that I’m aware of. 00:07 I had a paper route and I needed some
spending money, so after we lived there a couple of years I got a paper route in that
small town.
Interviewer: “When did you first hear about the league, The All American Girls
Professional baseball League?”
I’m not quite sure whether I read about it, and remember this is 1951, actually it’s 1950
when I first went to visit a cousin in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I don’t know when I heard
about the league, but Fort Wayne had a team and I went to visit my first cousin that lived
there, and she and her husband had two children at that time and they said to me, “would
you like to go see the girls play baseball tonight?” Well, that’s a no brainer you know,
YES, and I’m sitting there and I’m sixteen years old and we’re watching the game and
Fort Wayne had quite good attendance in those years and I’m sitting there and we’re
getting to the seventh or eighth inning and I have no idea who won the game or even
played, all I did was I turned to my cousin and I said, “you know, I can do that”, just like
that, right out of the blue. 1:24 That surprised even me because I don’t think the
9
�majority of women in that generation are terribly aggressive and I surprised myself by
saying that, and by golly my cousin got on the phone that next morning about eleven
o’clock I had a tryout with Max Carey, our manager, our hall of fame manager and least
four other Daisies were there and he put me through the paces for about an hour and he
said, when we were wrapping things up, “Lois, we will be in touch with you. We will
contact you probably around the first of the year”, and this was probably in August or
maybe July of the previous year, so I went back home and finished my junior year and
started my senior year in high school. 2:25 Along about January third or fourth I got
and invitation to come to spring training in Alexandria, Virginia, Fort Wayne Daisies.
Interviewer: “What was your parents’ reaction?”
I think they were both very positive about it. I remember my dad talking to my mom and
saying, “well, she’s going to go off to college at the end of this year. She’ll have a
chaperone and that’s more than she’ll have at college. We better send her off, it might be
a good experience for her”, so they were kind of positive about it. 2:57
Interviewer: “I want to walk you through very carefully, with a lot of detail, what
was the preparation to go, packing and the whole bit, what you’re thinking about
while you’re going through this. I don’t want to just suddenly show up there, give
us an idea of what it was like.”
Well, first of all during those years, every senior class had been collecting money for
fifteen years to go on a senior trip. We picked potatoes and we mowed lawns and we had
car washes and you know, some of the same things they are doing today and we ended up
with quite a bit of money, so our senior trip was planned to go to Washington D.C.
Alexandria, Virginia is real close to Washington D.C., and I thought, “well, if I can plan
10
�this and work this out, I can go with the class trip on the train, I don’t know if I had been
on a train before or not, I can’t remember, and we would go down—I think we left from
Akron, Ohio, went through Youngtown, through Pittsburg, on down to Washington D.C.,
this was my thinking, and then I could go to Alexandria and the rest of the seniors were
going to go to New York because they had all this extra money and they could go to New
York and spend it freely in New York City for another four days or so before we had to
go back to Ohio. 4:20 It was standard for every small high school in Ohio to take a
senior trip, so I’m thinking, “maybe I can maneuver this so I can get to Washington,
spend some time with my class, go see some of Washington D.C. and then get myself
over to Alexandria, Virginia, which is just across the river”, so I’m thinking, “well, the
first thing I have to do is I have to get out of school for about three weeks in addition to
our senior class week”, so this is a big chunk and whether you believe this or not, you just
didn’t get out of school. You had doctor’s appointments, dentist appointments, other
kinds of appointments after school or on week-ends. You just weren’t allowed to walk
off the school grounds. So I’m thinking, “how am I going to maneuver this?” I’m
talking to my teachers and I got an ok from all of them except one and I talked to the
superintendent and it was like getting special dispensation from the Pope to get away for
four weeks. 5:23 I jumped through all the hoops that they could possibly put in front of
me. I had one teacher that I had to send homework back to and I promised religiously
that I would do that. Everybody else said, “go with our blessing, and make the team “,
even the fellow I was going to the senior prom with said,” make sure you’re back here for
the senior prom”. Anyway, so I arranged it with the Fort Wayne Daisies, Ernie Bird was
their business manager and we wrote letters, we didn’t call back in those days, long
11
�distance phone calls cost a lot of money, so you wrote letter and I think they probably
cost three cents for a stamp too, so we wrote back and forth and we made the
arrangements that I would go spend some time with my senior class and then go over
Alexandria for the tryout for the Fort Wayne Daisies. 6:12 So we got on the train, there
are fifteen in my graduating class, nine boys and six girls, that’s a small town, and all I
remember is all the mothers and fathers were there and you would think we were going to
cyber space or someplace, and they gave us sandwiches, we had food, we had this long
trip to go to Washington D.C., I think it took eighteen hours, it wasn’t that far away.
Anyway, I remember eating sandwiches, we left like in late afternoon, and we went
through Youngstown and Pittsburgh and all the Bessemer burners in the steel mills were
going strong and it was an absolutely gorgeous site to see them lit up the way they were.
That’s one of my vivid memories of taking that trip. The rest would be seeing the
monuments in Washington D.C. and meeting with our local Senator or Representative
and having our picture taken with them, which every small class does on their little
sojourn to Washington D.C. Then they left and went over to New York City and I went
over to Alexandria, Virginia. 7:20 This is where, and I don’t know if you want to
include this, but you may know that Peanuts, Mamie ”Peanuts Johnson” had an article in
the New York Times not too long ago, and she’s an African American woman, and we get
asked this a lot if we speak to groups and so on, and since Jackie Robinson didn’t get into
the majors until 1947 it was obvious that there was a problem with having African
Americans in our particular league as well. Well, here we are in 1951 and according to
Mamie, she came to Alexandria, Virginia during that time that I supposedly was there. I
never saw her, but she indicated that she came, she came with another girl, another
12
�African American girl, and they wanted to try out and whoever the management was at
the time that met them and talked to them, told them that there was no place for them in
the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. 8:20 Now, the girls like myself,
none of us that I have talked to ever have any interaction with them or knew that she had
even come and we feel bad about that, but there wasn’t really anything we could do
about it when we didn’t know about it, so that’s something that we have been thinking
about and talking about some. Anyway, we never did have, to the best of my knowledge,
any African American player in our league. So, back to what we did there, I got the
opportunity, I’m not quite sure why, but I got picked out of the group to do some public
relations things and we were supposed to play in Baltimore. 9:06
Interviewer: “Let me back you up a little bit. You got there for tryouts?”
Yes, so I’m trying out.
Interviewer: “Ok”
I’m hitting, I’m running, and I’m throwing.
Interviewer: “In the movie you get this idea, and I know it was in the very
beginning of the league that you saw from the movie, but you walk out onto the field
and there’s all these women out there, girls playing, is that similar to what happened
with you?”
I don’t remember, to be honest, but I don’t think so because there were two teams and the
object in the 1951 spring training was to have two teams, the Battle Creek Belles and the
Fort Wayne Daisies, all have spring training together and then you would play exhibition
games around, I think it was Katie Horstman talking about being in North and South
Carolina and so on. Well we played—we had an exhibition game scheduled in whatever
13
�the Baltimore Stadium was at the time and we also were supposed to play in Griffith
Stadium. So this was part of—we practiced in Alexandria and we didn’t practice very
long before we started playing, supposedly, exhibition games. 10:04
Interviewer: “You’re the new kid.”
I know
Interviewer: “what was that like?”
I don’t remember very much about the tryouts. What I remember about it was that I
whisked off to be on the radio and whisked off to meet with Maury Povich, he was the
sports supreme or one of the major sports writers in the country at that particular time. I
had my first glass of wine, don’t tell on me, at one of the lunches we got feted at you
know. We were taken to lunch and I had a glass of Rosé and I have no idea who ordered
it, but I didn’t, but I drank it and I think I enjoyed it.
Interviewer: “You are very articulate and I would imagine, because of your
educational background with your parents and what not, some of the girls may or
may not been able to speak as well as you. If they are going to get you on the radio,
you have to be able to talk and that’s probably what happened.”
Well, we were trying to get them to come out to the games. I the idea we’re playing this
exhibition, come out to the game. I do want to tell you about—we got rained out of
Griffith Stadium, but the one picture I have, other than with Jimmie Fox who came later,
is I have a picture of Clark Griffith, the grand old man of baseball, and myself standing
next to him and another rookie I have never been able to find out, and then Max Carey.
11:25 The four of us are there and Max Carey has the handle of the baseball bat and
Clark Griffith has the other end of it you know and I am there in my dress, you know
14
�dresses, we must wear our dresses, and it’s an 8x10 and it’s been chopped and cut and
pasted, but it is my picture with Clark Griffith and Max Carey and it’s the only one I
have. The interesting thing is, I made the team and the girl next to me didn’t and I don’t
have any idea who she is, but that is, that’s my picture. 12:01 The second thing I want
you to know, in the world, as far as that goes, is that we went, we were in Griffith
Stadium and I go and take batting practice and I stood up there and I said, “Joe DiMaggio
stood here”, and I’m standing there and I turned around on the other side and I said, “Ted
Williams stood here”, and we didn’t get to play, we got rained out, but at least I had the
opportunity to stand there in Griffith Stadium at home plate. I never thought about
getting behind the mound like a catcher would. I was thinking about hitting for whatever
reason and now that I think about it in retrospect, I didn’t think about getting down there
and getting into a catchers position like Jim Hagen who caught for the Cleveland Indians.
12:41
Interviewer: “Now, by 1951 was there the—did you have to go through the charm
school and all that kind of stuff?”
It is interesting that you mention this. If you talk to groups of people, especially younger
people, one of the things they want to know is, “was that charm school really for real?” I
have to say, “yes, it really was in the early years”, and most of the gals that went through
it thought it was worthwhile. They didn’t pooh pooh at it and they didn’t think it was
terrible. I’m sure there were some that did, but the few that I’ve talked to thought they
learned some valuable lessons going through the charm school.. I think that was Mrs.
Wrigley’s idea in the first place.
Interviewer: “What about you? By the time you got in?”
15
�This is what I tell my audiences, “by the time they got to 1951 they had given up on us”,
so that’s my response. They were more interested in the ability of the players. Some of
those were still maintained through the whole twelve years, but charm school was not one
of the— 13:44
Interviewer: “What were some of the rules, the ground rules, when you started if
charm school was not in there, what are some of the things they told you? This is
what you have to do as a player.”
We always wore a dress or a skirt when you went to the ballpark, when you were out in
public; you were invited to a luncheon, home from the ballpark. You lived in private
homes and usually there were two of us to a private home. I think there might have been
some occasions over the years where there would be four. I’m looking forward to seeing
my Blue Sox roommate here at this reunion. Anyway, the pants thing, nope, no pants, no
slacks and even by then women were starting to wear slacks more and blue jeans were
more common as far as everyday dress. 14:33
Interviewer: “Kathryn Hepburn in particular really made it.”
Took over as far as that was concerned, but that rule was sacrosanct, we did not wear
pants period. Now, if we were going to the corner grocery store or something, if we
happened to be lucky enough to have a day off, of course if it was pouring down rain, you
could wear your jeans. You were very careful about how you presented yourself to the
public that was still very important. You didn’t have to worry about make-up, you didn’t
have to worry too much about the length of your hair, that was something that was
included in this charm school business and make-up, yes or no depending, most of the
time you put it on after the game not before. I remember the idea of dating—I don’t
16
�think—I’m going to get side tracked here, but the movie A League of Their Own, has this
wonderful scene at the “Suds Bucket”, I don’t know if you remember, but where
Madonna does her thing and I’m thinking, “oh, if we only had a “Suds Bucket” when I
was playing ball, I would have been there at every opportunity. 15:40 I love to dance
and I don’t remember my date ever asking a chaperone whether they could go out with
me and I dated quite a bit.
Interviewer: “Well, let’s start at the beginning, you’ve gone through the spring
training with the Daisies and the key thing here, I think, is for us to understand, and
remember we’re trying to get as much of your experience as possible and not the
league, but your experience. You had left home to play in the league for how long?”
Four years
Interviewer: “Right, but for your first season, a season is what?”
I think that first year Peoria was in the league and both of the Wisconsin [teams], so we
had eight teams that first year and then it went to six and eventually it went to five, but
we started out with eight teams. First of all I went back home, went to my senior prom
and graduated from high school all in one week and then I became a Daisy. There I am
in Fort Wayne, Indiana, my roommate is Pat Scott and she’s another rookie and she’s a
pitcher and a very good pitcher. I’ve got my Daisy uniform on and somebody picks me
up in a car to take me, I didn’t have an automobile or anything and I had no camera and
by the way we didn’t have cameras, if we had cameras you’d have all kinds of things to
use. The only cameras around were the little Brownie box cameras, no one had a camera
to take any pictures of each other and that’s why we’re short on pictures. The girls keep
asking about former players pictures and none of us had any cameras to take any pictures,
17
�let alone a movie camera. So here I am again, I’m back on track. 17:24 At the ballpark
and Max Carey is our manager we’re playing seven days a week with double headers on
Sunday and a seven inning first game. I think originally they had a nine inning second
game, but the switched and changed that to—I think because it got a little too much
with—we played a hundred and eighteen games that first season, so we had seven innings
and seven innings and then you got on the bus and rode all night to Rockford, Illinois and
then you played on Monday night and then you played seven more games and so on.
Interviewer: “This is overhand at this point?”
This is overhand, yes, this is 1951 and overhand started in 1948, so we went to—we were
definitely overhand pitching. 18:12
Interviewer: “This wasn’t a problem for you because you started out overhand and
as a catcher you were catching overhand anyway.”
Yup, well I loved it because I have short fingers you know and the baseball is small.
Nine inches is very different from a ten inch or twelve inch softball you know and my
softball would every once in a while fly off into right field when I’m trying to throw to
second base. So here we are, I’ve got this wonderful little nine-inch ball that I can get a
hold of, so I really enjoyed playing with a regulation nine-inch ball.
Interviewer: “What did you think of the uniform?”
I didn’t give it too much thought, but the reaction, I think, on the part of a lot of the
players in the beginning, and very much like it was in the film, was, “you mean I have to
play ball in that dress?” I think once they started to play—I think the biggest problem
was the strawberries, I don’t think it was—well, the other problem, and I’m going to
digress here a little bit and go back. By the time I got in the league we’d already made
18
�them into mini skirts. 19:09 If you look at the original uniform it’s got like three yards of
material in it. It’s got all kinds of extra skirt and it was to be worn exactly, according to
the older women, it was to be worn exactly one hand length above the knee. Well, that’s
pretty long and then you try to bend over and pick up a ground ball, you’ve got mostly
skirt and no ball, so you know these gals—our players are smart cookies and the first
thing they did was say, “we got to modify this”, so I talked to some of the older players
and they said was one of the first things they did was they got safety pins and they would
safety pin all this extra material of to the right and to the side, so it was more straight up
and down. By the time I got to the league they had really wised up I’ll tell you, we had
the first mini skirts. We took out all of the extra material, tightened it up and we lifted it
up so it was right below the tight line, so you could completely spread your legs without
any problem. Now, it’s still a one-piece dress and another thing, they wanted us to keep
it cinched in so it looked like we had a waistline you know. 20:20 Have you ever tried
to catch with your arms and your dress tries to go up in the air? It’s practically
impossible, so I kept—we would loosen everything when no one was watching you
know, we’d loosen this decorative belt that we had, which didn’t serve any real purpose
except being decorative, so we’d loosen that up and we looked pretty great out there
because according to everything you’ve read and so on, showing a lot of leg is ok, and we
got to do it in the fifties when it didn’t happen all the time. They were covered up below
the knee, and there were a lot of good-looking legs, so it served the purpose.
Interviewer: “What can you recall, if not your first game, what’s the first memory
you have of a game in the very beginning?”
19
�The first memory I have is being sent in to catch the last inning or the last two inning of
the game and hopefully we were ahead. I would get to go in because I was the rookie on
the team. We had two other very good catchers, and I’d get to catch batting practice
often for experience, and that first year I just sat on the bench and watched everybody.
21:31 Like I said, I’d have to go out and warm up the pitcher or go out to the bull pen
and warm up the reliever that was going in or maybe you got in to catch the eighth inning
or the eighth and the ninth inning for experience, and I know that first year, in 1951, Max
Carey said, “well, if we send her off to Kenosha for August, or part of August”, and
Kenosha was a team that was folding at that time and there last year was in 1951, if I
remember correctly. They were traveling by car and all of their home games were all
now away games, they adjusted that somehow, so I got to play a few games for Kenosha.
I don’t remember much about that; it was only for about a couple weeks. 22:18
Interviewer: “Your first season, this is going to be a touch question because it’s—I
have to keep in mind that you’re a very young, seventeen your first year—Was
there any sense at that point, maybe later it’s different, but was there any sense at
that point, the first season, that this was going to go on anywhere beyond that year,
or next year, playing?”
I don’t think anybody thought too much about it, this was my first year, maybe some of
the older players who had been in the league for four or five years, had a sense, when all
of a sudden they’re thinking about, “we don’t have the turnout in some of these towns
and we’re not going to have a team in Kenosha next year”. Dropping from eight to six-that would have been a clue to me if I had been thinking about that.
20
�Interviewer: “I guess what I’m trying to get at is, today a young boy, even to a
certain degree a young girl, can dream about being a professional, not necessarily
baseball, but you’re playing professional ball, but did you see yourself as a
professional ball player?” 23:24
I knew I was going to college, so after the 1951, first year, I took what money I earned
and paid my college tuition. I did that for four years, so in essence my four years as an
all American paid for my Baccalaureate degree. So there and I think my parents were
very supportive of that, but that’s the way I used the money. I never saw myself or as my
one hat or one role in life as being a professional baseball player.
Interviewer: “Another tough question, and this as you look back—I look at my own
life and as a seventeen or eighteen year old, did I really know what I wanted to do
kind of thing, but did you understand that this was something very unique and that
this baseball team was something very unique at the time or was it just like at the
ballpark when you played in the back lot with the kids, it was fun, but was there any
sense—ok this is paying for my college, but was there any sense the this is really
something great?” 24:32
At least you didn’t ask me the question; did we know we were being part of baseball
history?
Interviewer: “I’ll wait until later for that one.”
I mean no, no, I don’t think there was ever a player that played in our league—my
question to you, do you think you’re going to get the Pulitzer Prize sometime? No,
everybody that I knew loved to play and the only time you didn’t love it was when you
got a strawberry. Another time when you didn’t love it is when it rained in Fort Wayne
21
�and they poured gasoline on the field and burned the field in order to get rid of the water
and you had to go out and play in that and slide in that and field ground balls in that.
There were times when you didn’t—or you were very, very tired. Sometimes in August
when it’s very hot and muggy like it is the last couple of days here in Michigan, it got
pretty hot and when it got muggy we got pretty tired. 25:25 Remember, we didn’t have
any weight lifting or any weight training, we might have had some batting practice in
mornings at home, but very seldom on the road. We had no batting helmets, so if you got
hit in the head, you got hit in the head you know. We wore men’s equipment and I was a
catcher and I was forever—I don’t know what kind of tape it is, the shiny stuff.
Interviewer: “Duct tape”
Duct tape, there you go, I couldn’t think of it. I was forever cutting the chest protector
down so I could lift my arms, and the shin guards came halfway up my thighs because
that’s all we had, we had men’s equipment. Our bats were men’s bats and I couldn’t find
a bat that was small enough around, Ted Williams would have loved me because he
wanted that really small handle there, and I needed that because I had short fingers and
the weight was thirty-five, thirty-six pounds [ounces], that’s Babe Ruth weight for a bat.
26:32 I think I probably would have been a pretty good hitter if I ever could have found
a bat. We’d go into a sporting goods store to buy our bats right off the shelf and there
weren’t that many. Excuse me, I’m getting carried away, but the playing of the game
was made a little difficult because of the fact that there was nothing much out there,
really, for women, but no, the question you asked, did anybody think they were going to
be, or where were they going to be in history, how important was women’s baseball
compared to others? I do know though because somebody asked me, Jean Faut asked me
22
�this, we were the first professional women’s team sport league—first professional
women’s sport period. The golf people have challenged it, the PGA has that, but they
didn’t come into being until 1948, 1948 I think Just a tidbit to throw in there, but I don’t
think any of them ever, I never heard any talk about it, we has more fun singing on the
bus and deciding what we were going to eat or what we were going to wear to something.
27:45
Interviewer: “How many seasons did you play?”
Four, I terminated the league; I finished them out in 1954.
Interviewer: “I want to start now in getting into the actual games, but I want to do
it season to season as opposed to jumping—if you want to jump in there it’s fine, but
I’m just thinking, because your experience actually grows as you get better season to
season and I assume you did, so how was the first season?”
I did get better, you’rer right. It was very enjoyable even though I didn’t play very
much. I got to meet and get acquainted with my teammates and Max Carey was a
wonderful—he was a terrific base runner, so you learned a lot about base running from
him and he was a good teacher and I was very content to be where I was and continue to
learn. I never thought about jumping up and down and saying, “I want to play”, which is
something they would be doing now days, the men would be doing anyway or, “trade
me”, one of the two. 28:49
Interviewer: “I did one of the interviews in Milwaukee and I asked this question
about the managers. Did the manager treat you as a woman baseball player or did
the manager treat you as a baseball player?”
23
�As a baseball player, let’s face it, look at society during those years; the men were in
charge of everything, religion, economics, political, and were in charge of baseball.
There were men managers, the men were the umpires, the men drove the bus, but they
treated us as baseball players. That doesn’t mean they didn’t treat us with respect, they
respected us as women and were concerned about things like we were up all night riding
the bus. The manager was very concerned about that and the bus driver, helping us with
out luggage and be careful that is a bad step or something. They were very aware that we
were women, but as far as the game was concerned, we were treated like ball players.
29:51 No yelling, they were very professional about—the professional players like
Jimmy Foxx and Max Carey and so on, they were very professional in their interacting.
The no crying in baseball, I know that’s Hollywood proverbially, but still there are people
who think that actually happened and if you made a mistake, in some ways, your
manager would maybe call you off to the side or into the dugout and talk to you
individually or after the game was over they might call you in. I only know of one
incident in four years of a manager, in a relatively public area, having words and I don’t
remember what it was about at the time, but they were very professional and I know as a
catcher it was all right for me to kick a little dirt on the plate and to maybe kick a little
dirt on the umpire’s shoes. 30:56 You had to be very careful what you said to him you
know. I didn’t talk much to the umpire and I didn’t talk much to the other players.
Interviewer: “An interesting thing came up in the interviews that I’d done in
Milwaukee and was that a lot of you learned how to play baseball, as you said, just
playing with the boys. You never had professional training per say, but the ones
that I interviewed said that amateurs contributed a great deal because they told you
24
�little tricks or little things that professional baseball players learned in their
training, but since you were kind of a new thing, did you get any kind of tricks or
hints about catching that helped you become a better catcher or did you just learn it
on your own?”
Not too much because none of the—none of my managers were catchers. If they had
been I probably would have, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t listen. I learned a lot about
base running and learned some things about covering the base and certainly—we had
infield practice and we’d have-- the ball would be hit in from right field and you have to
hit the cutoff player you know and bounce it in on one bounce to the catcher. 32:05 We
all knew the basics, I don’t know where we learned them, but we knew the basics. The
manager might, some managers more than other managers, some had practice where
others—it seemed to be individual, from the gals I talked to, it seemed to be
individualized. Different managers worked on different things. I know one of the things,
because I wasn’t playing regular, I didn’t get—I got about two swings in for batting
practice because, you know, we had to get the regular players and hitters out there, and
we didn’t have much bating practice before—the managers I played for, they just didn’t
do that and I know darn well that I could have hit much, much better, every year I got
better at everything, and I know if I’d had more hitting practice and had a bat that I could
hang on to and didn’t fly out to the third baseman every time it flew out of my hands.
33:01
Interviewer: “When did it change for you, in the second season or the third season,
where you were playing more? You said you were sitting on the bench most of the
time.”
25
�I sat on the bench and the next year was 1952 and Jimmy Foxx, we had six, I think six
teams, you can go back and check on this, but I think we dropped down to six teams that
year and for the next two years I think we were at six teams, and Jimmy Foxx was the
manager and don’t let anybody tell you that he wasn’t just a wonderful man, I adored
him. He was renascent, well the exact opposite of Jimmy Dugan. Now, he was an
alcoholic and I want the record—everybody knew that, but if you’re a health educator,
you know that alcoholics can drink quite a bit and it doesn’t show, so he’d go home and
do his drinking at night and he would show up at the ballpark sober the next day and he
was a great big guy, so I suppose he could drink a lot. 34:01 I don’t know, but I think
everybody that knew him, and Bobby Doerr lives in my part of the world out in Oregon,
and I’ve talked to him about Jimmy Foxx and he said that the drinking is what caused his
demise as a baseball player or helped add to that, and we just loved him. If we were
lucky he would take batting practice four or five times during the season and he would
hit the ball over our fence, over a pasture and out over a four lane highway, but we
couldn’t get him—we just couldn’t get him to do it very often and we had to beg him, we
had to grovel to get him to take batting practice, but we all adored him, so most of us feel
kind of bad that sports writers and movie critics have written that the Jimmy Dugan in A
League of Their Own is a thinly veiled Jimmy Foxx and every chance I get I like to say,
“you think what you want, but that’s not the Jimmy Foxx that I played for”, so that kind
of bothered me. 35:10
Interviewer: “In the second season did you start to play more?
I played some, not a lot, we still had two good catchers and we had lost two good teams
from the league. I was always the squirt, about 110 pounds, maybe 115 at my top weight.
26
�I wasn’t a home run hitter, and I was vying with six foot gals that were pretty good sized
and I couldn’t get a bat that I could hold.
Interviewer: “I think that was the reason. When did it change?”
1953 I started to play. I was traded to South Bend and I guess they needed a catcher, I
don’t know, but I was traded to South Bend and started to play regularly.
Interviewer: “Once again It’s unfair, but can you remember the feeling—because
you’d been sitting on the bench for two seasons and now you’re, you got a good gig
going on here, you got money coming in, you’re going to college and all, but there
had to be a difference in your emotions when suddenly you’re now at south bend
and now you’re playing more. Tell us about that, how did that feel?” 36:16
Absolutely, and I guess all of a sudden I realized that, “yeah, I belong here”. Maybe
before I didn’t think that I quite belonged. I belonged in all these ways, but as far as
being a ball player maybe I didn’t quite belong and all of a sudden I started to play and I
started to be able to throw the ball down to second base alright and I got knocked on my
whatever I suppose ten or twelve times and got knocked out a couple times, but I
managed to make the put out at home plate and it’s not easy when you see a six footer
coming at you. Anyway, I took a few of those knocks pretty well, hung onto the ball and
I think my feeling was coming that I really belonged. 37:14 My hitting was coming
along, I wasn’t a great hitter, and that didn’t seem to bother me. I thought it would come,
but my throwing was better and I always knew in my head what was going on, more so
than some of my teamates who couldn’t remember how many outs there were, but you
know, I always was on top—the mental part of it wasn’t any problem.
27
�Interviewer: “I was a pitcher, a lousy hitter, but such a good pitcher, this is little
league and I’m not anywhere in your league, and I’m talking as if we’re both
professionals here, but I do know what you mean. There is a certain amount of
compensation your players give you if you know that you’re a really good pitcher or
a really good catcher. You don’t hit as well, but we got hitters and we’ll take care of
it. What was the most challenging thing about being a professional catcher as
opposed to this sandlot kind of catching? Or maybe there wasn’t a whole lot of
difference, I don’t know.” 38:11
It’s hard to compare because you’re older and have had all these other experiences that
kind of filtered in here. I think part of it might be the idea of playing everyday rather
than just on occasion and you tend to build on that fact that maybe you learned something
last night and you still remember it. Excuse me, but rather than, “I made that mistake two
weeks ago”, because you didn’t play that often, plus the fact that we’re older and
hopefully you learn some things, you read the paper, you maybe read some things about
Ted Williams hitting you know. I mean, different players had a different, I think,
approach. 39:06
Interviewer: “Did you have any sense of how good you were?”
No, not the foggiest and you brought that up earlier and one of the things that I think is
interesting is I have always felt rather uncomfortable knowing I was on a team for four
years, but never contributed heaps and gobs. That I never was, although I played
regularly, especially the last two years and played well and the last year I hit 284 which is
in the top one third or yeah, in the top one third of all the players that played that year,
and I was up there and I feel good about that, but I always felt that I wasn’t quite worthy
28
�and I don’t know quite how to explain this. I never really thought about how to articulate
it, but I’ve always thought—yes, I guess that would be a way of expressing it, that I
wasn’t as good as some of these other players and therefore, I’m not worthy of being
included in the group and yet so many people, people that aren’t just my friends who
might tell me something like this, “hey, you made the league, you made the team, you
played, what else is there?” It’s just a “get a hold of yourself and quit thinking that way,
that thinking is obsolete, it doesn’t make any sense”. 40:34
Interviewer: “A lot of people didn’t make the league and another thing that is
really a good part of that movie, is that scene with Geena Davis and Tom Hanks
where she says, “if it was easy everybody could do it”.
That’s the scene I quote to everybody, throw out that” there’s no crying in baseball” and
get to the heart of the game of baseball. “It just got too hard”, she said and he said, “it’s
supposed to be hard, if it wasn’t hard everyone could do it, it’s the hard that makes it
great”, and to me that is the summary, the overpowering scene in that whole movie that
sums up what baseball is all about. 41:12
Interviewer: “I use it in my writing classes. I teach writing and I said, “If it’s not
hard anybody could do it”. I use that same example.”
It’s the hard that makes it great and to me that is the scene from the whole movie that the
women in this league should take with them to share with friends, relatives, and admirers,
fans, and forget that, “there’s no crying in baseball”, which is a clichéd kind of thing that
got thrown in there so Tom Hanks could do a little acting. I guess he did it well because
according to Pepper Paire, one of our catchers in the league who was one of the advisors
on, or whatever kind of a role she had as far as the film was concerned, she said, “they
29
�had to have ten takes of that with Tom Hanks because the cameraman would break up
every time he said, “there’s no crying in baseball”.
Interviewer: “So you just got to take it realize, “well, that’s Hollywood”. 42:12
Absolutely, but I’m sorry, but that’s the real clincher in that film, that’s my scene.
Interviewer: “I agree”
So I got better every year, all right? 1953 I’m catching with Fort Wayne, I mean with the
South Band Blue Sox and I catch a perfect game. Jean Faut, who pitched as probably one
of the all time greats in our league, she could play any position, she could hit the ball out
of the ballpark, she could pitch, she had all the pitches in the world, she pitched a perfect
game on September 3rd, 1953 and we beat the Kalamazoo Lassies four to zip in
Kalamazoo on their home turf. 42:56 I’m laughing because I have no idea if she called
the game or if I called the game, but I’m sure she did call her own game, so I take very
little credit for that other than the fact that I managed to hang on to the ball, all right?
People keep asking me who called the game and I said, “well, when Jean Faut’s pitching
she calls her own game and whether or not I called the pitches she liked and she didn’t
you know.
Interviewer: “Yeah, but something you might have noticed in baseball, you have to
have a catcher with the pitcher. It’s essential to the whole thing and she may have
been a great pitcher, but unless somebody was on the other end catching it, I’m
afraid the game would just not be the same.”
Anyway, that’s my big claim to fame. That and hitting one home run in Grand Rapids.
43:42
Interviewer: “I want to hear that one, please.”
30
�I hit one home run in 1953 with South Bend, I think it was—no, maybe it was 1954—all I
remember is that I hit it over the fence, it was in Grand Rapids and it was my one home
run and it might have been in 1954, I think it was in 1954. Anyway, 53 or 54 I got my
one home run in there. 1953 I caught almost the whole season for South Bend and that’s
where the perfect game came in. We were playing a shorter—I think maybe six teams,
but we weren’t playing as many games and attendance was starting to fade and I think, if
I’m not mistaken, when I reheard Ken Burns, they had it on PBS again, they talked in
there about the fact that in the early 1950’s all the major league ballparks had problems
with attendance. 44:42 So, I’m trying to put together—people want to know why we
quit playing and I hadn’t realized that the attendance had really fallen off in major league
baseball in the early fifties. So, it stands to reason that we wouldn’t have people coming
out to the ballpark either. They didn’t give any reason for it, but they said there was a
major drop off in all major league attendance during the early fifties, so obviously that
happened with us as well, so 1953 the season was shortened, 1954 I got traded back to
Fort Wayne. I didn’t ask why, I just picked up my stuff and went and Bill Allington was
out manager then and you’ve probably heard his name because he’s the manager in the
league over the years that everybody said, “if somebody cracked open his skull little
baseball would roll out”. I mean, he was a taskmaster, I don’t know if he did spot
quizzes, but he had the rulebook and he expected you to know the rules, he did a lot of
teaching and he was the manager of the infamous Rockford Peaches for many years and
then he came to us in 1954. 45:45 He said, “Lois, I’ve got a catcher, you’re too fast
you’re going to be a left fielder”, and he made me into an outfielder. I didn’t –well, I
roamed well and I was pretty quick, I had to make up for my other lack of strength and
31
�other things by being fairly quick, so I could read where the ball was going to go and
made some pretty good catches out there and I could throw fairly accurately and in left
field you didn’t need a cannon for an arm, only the right—that’s the interesting thing
about playing right field, you know when you’re a kid it’s the worst place to be and when
you’re in the majors it’s the best outfield position because you have to have the greatest
arm and you got to hit and do other things. Left field was a good place for me because I
could handle everything he needed and I hit. There’s something I want to share with you
if we’ve got time. I’m playing left field and we’ve been playing with this ten inch ball
and all of a sudden, around the fourth of July, I think it was a couple of days after the
fourth of July, it was around the fourth of July in 1954 and all of a sudden we get a nine
inch regulation baseball. 47:00 I’ve talked to the gals and I can’t get anybody for the life
of me, able to explain whether or not they ever really practiced with a nine inch ball. It
just sort of appeared. We got to the ballpark, the baselines had been extended, the
pitchers mound had been moved back to sixty feet when we had been playing with it a
little shorter than that. Same old bats and same old uniform, but they moved the outfield
fences back and they kept playing with the distance so they could—I remember hearing
bill Allington say, “If you can hit a home run, we got to move the fences back”, but the
thing that I haven’t been really able to digest is how we could go from a major change
from a ten inch ball to a nine inch ball and change the distances everywhere and not ever
have practiced like two or three weeks before in the mornings or sometime with this nine
inch ball, but it just appeared and bingo there we are with a whole new game. 48:02 I
don’t know what the newspapers or the radio, we had those two venues, but no television,
but what they had to say about it. I would like to go back sometime and do some
32
�research to find out how it happened. I know it happened because of the fan appeal and
they wanted to see if they could bring some more people into the—I think most of the
changes that were made over the years were made primarily to bring more people into the
ballpark. Softball wasn’t a novelty, but boy, throwing it sidearm from a distance with a
smaller ball that’s kind of different. The second part of my theory, since I’m allowed, is
that these managers knew of the athletic ability of the gals they had playing the game. I
don’t think they ever would have tried to change the game if they didn’t think the gals
could handle it. 48:51
Interviewer: “How did it end for you? How did you find out that it was the end for
you particularly?”
Well, fortunately I was playing left field and I think it was around the sixteenth of
August, around the middle of August after we’d made this giant switch to the nine inch
ball, that somebody in South Bend, the catcher, got injured, so they asked me if I would
go back and finish the season because they needed a catcher. They were—we kept losing
the catchers, but anyway, I got shifted back and I said, “Well you know if they need a
catcher, I don’t think I have much choice”. I had to go and that was the year that fort
Wayne was just knocking the socks off the ball you know. They had Jo Weaver and
Betty Weaver Foss and Jean Weaver and these four hundred hitters and home runs every
time you turned around and locomotors on the base pad I’ll tell you that and so, I went
back and finished the season in South Bend. Now, Fort Wayne won the pennant and I
remember going back and I don’t know, I don’t think—they had a banquet or something,
but they did give me—I got a scrapbook and it says Daisies “54” and you know I’m not
sure—I got a couple of things that they gave to the players. 50:08 But I finished at
33
�South Bend and it kind of finished with a whimper and I’m not sure we did anything in
South Bend to end thing s up, but I’ll ask Mary, my roommate, my married roommate
with I don’t know how many grand kids she has now, but we’re rooming together and
I’ll see if she has any feeling about how we ended. It sort of ended with a whimper,
actually. Now the thing that probably didn’t bother me as much was because I was
getting ready to go, I got my degree now and I’m out in the world, I got another goal in
mind and I was fortunate enough that I was very successful in education and went on and
they were four wonderful years, don’t misunderstand me, but they’re not my entire life,
they don’t define me. 50:52 My four years don’t define me.
Interviewer: “That’s an interesting transition for my next question. You say it
ended with kind of a whimper, but you had a life ahead of you and you and you had
a very productive life ahead of you. A lot of the WWII vets that I’ve interviewed
and even some of the women ball players, say that they didn’t really think about
their baseball experience as they’re going through their life. Is that true of you too?
Did you tell people you were a baseball player when you were an educator?”
I did on occasion and the response was, “oh, you’re a softball player”, and you’ll get that
from everybody. No one knew who we were and where we were or what we did. I
wasn’t until Penny Marshall came out with the film and people were coming out of the
woodwork, former students and colleagues say, “Why didn’t you ever tell us you played
baseball?” I said, “If you had been listening, I did tell you that early on and you
responded with “you played softball”? And I never could explain it well enough to get
you to understand that it really wasn’t softball, it was baseball”, and once the film came
out—51:58
34
�Interviewer: “That’s my next question. What effect did the film have on you? I
don’t mean a critical review of the film, do you know what I’m talking about?”
I’m going to give you a critical review of it. I’m in Eugene, Oregon and I get a call from
a local newspaper, the head of the sports section calls me and he said, “ I would like to
take you to see the film and the first showing is Saturday morning at eleven o’clock”,
and at a local theater, and I said, “well”, my mother lived with me for twenty-two years
and she was still in good health then, so this is 1992, so I said, “yes”, and I obviously
hadn’t seen it and hadn’t been invited to any of the premieres. I’m way out there where it
takes a pony express to get to me and no one had ever bothered and I didn’t get to
Cooperstown to the exhibit because my boss was an Englishman and he didn’t think—I
suppose if I had said it was soccer he may have—or cricket, there you go, but he didn’t
think I should go. 53:03 I had to work with the guy for another eight years or so and I
didn’t think it was worth circumventing him to go to the Dean, which I could have done,
but I opted not to do that.
Interviewer: “It shows that you didn’t think it was that big of a deal I guess, huh?”
Well, I had to work with this gentleman for eight years and he was in charge and he could
have made life very uncomfortable for me for eight years. There we are back to the
movie, so I meet him at the theater and we go in. The first thing is the music you know,
overpowering music. I don’t know how many minutes we were into the film before I was
crying and in another two minutes I was sobbing. I sobbed, and I don’t mean cried, I
sobbed through the whole movie. Talk about embarrassed, losing my cool, I just cried
and cried my heart out. I just brought back everything I hadn’t thought about for—since
1954 to 1992. 54:03 It all came rushing forward you know, excluding the hyperbole, the
35
�feel of it, and like I just said, I just sobbed for—I sobbed through the end and then I was
embarrassed and he wanted to buy me a cup of coffee or something and my eyes were
two big red blobs here and I told him I was sorry and I was embarrassed, but it just
brought back this rush of memories and I’m sorry, this is just the way I reacted to it.
54:35
Interviewer: “How did that movie change you or change your perception of your
participation after that. You’re past the crying and the emotional element and now
you’re into day two, day three and the rest of your life. Did it have any effect on you
in terms of other people reacting? You said your students were talking about it and
stuff. How did it change you?”
A number of people wanted to go see the movie with me. They wanted to know, all of a
sudden there’s this big gigantic interest in this movie. It made lots of money because it’s
still being shown every two months or three on cable TV, so anyway, I went, I must have
gone eight times with different groups of people who wanted to go see the movie and
we’d go have ice cream or something afterwards and they could ask me about the movie
and then I got to—I was a chapter in a book and the university bought the book, that
chapter to put in their quarterly. 55:36 Then more people had a chance to read it, but
immediately after the film, I think I went seven or eight times with different groups of
people and I was considerably calmer and could explain what happened and then people
started asking me if I would come and speak to this group, the rotary, there are three
rotary’s in Eugene and while the film was still being shown I got invited to speak to a lot
of-Interviewer: “Were you at all surprised at all of this?”
36
�No, honestly no, because finally our story got told and it was the truth. Now, there are
some things that are out of order and probably the most significant is the fact that in 1943
we would have been throwing underhand and not overhand, but there was a germ of
truth, even Stillwell, you know I played for the Blue Sox and Jean Faut, the pitcher for
the no hit game, was married to the manager, Karl Winsch, and they had a little boy and
he traveled on the bus with us, but he was a little boy of the fifties and not the 1990’s, so
you never heard of him, you never knew that he was there, so they took some of these
ideas and did the Hollywood thing to him, which I could stand. 56:46 I’ve always said
that it captured, that film captured the spirit of the league and the spirit of the women that
played, the spirit of the game, those three things, the spirit of the league, the spirit of the
game that we played and the spirit of the women that played because not being nit
picking, I thought Penny Marshall did us just fine. 57:08 I was pleased with her film.
Interviewer: “Looking back now and for the record, Where do you think this all fits
into the whole scheme of things for—and lets get really big here, you’re an educator,
I’m an educator and we know that in human history there are moments, some of
them tragic, some of them great, some of them—you look at the time line of history
and there’s all these things. We’re blips on these things, but where does the All
American Girls Professional Baseball League fit into all of this?”
Well, I think we need to stop taking credit for being a pioneer in women’s sports. Title
IX is what did this for us. Title IX came along in 1972 and any parent that’s got a child,
male or female, that can get a college scholarship now, we can’t—you know if you’re
going to get $100,000.00 free scholarship to Stanford or Ohio State or Michigan or
wherever it is, it’s not to be sneezed at and that came with Title IX. 58:12 Also, the
37
�proliferation of other women’s professional sports came with Title IX because until
Penny Marshall got to us, nobody knew we even existed, so I see us a sort of a blip, a
very fond, warm, fuzzy blip or whatever you would like to call it, an anomaly actually
and I’m often asked if women belong playing with men’s teams and no, I don’t see that
because of lestosterone and lack of and levers, you know, they’re bigger, they’re
stronger etc., but I do think if the ever wanted to have an al American girls, Women’s
professional baseball team again, and there were enough women who were interested in
doing it, we have professional women’s fast pitch softball and most of those gals, that’s
the way the original All Americans got started. 59:06 Most of them made the transition
to the smaller ball and the longer distances, some couldn’t, but I don’t think we should e
taking credit, in retrospect, for something that really title nine, through federal funding
and balancing the men’s and the women’s varsity sports at the collegiate level, and the
high school levels, helped balance out.
Interviewer: “But you have to admit the number of women who credit you,
regardless of whether the film was there or not. I talk to athletes, women athletes at
our university. There’s a coach at our university who you were a major inspiration
to and knew enough about the fact before the movie.”
We may be an inspiration and I’m not saying that our story won’t inspire prospective
women athletes, and I think we do everything we can to be the voice as well as the face
of the AAGPBL speaking as often as we can, but yes, sure I would love to be an
inspiration to a group of Babe Ruth baseball ten year olds, girls, and boys.
Interviewer: “I’m trying to get my mind around that.”
38
�Interviewer: “Let me ask you the last question and I really appreciate you put up
with this for so long. You mentioned earlier about how you played baseball as a
child and you enjoyed it. You played the baseball as a professional with the idea
that you were going to go to college, you had a larger picture involved, but now,
looking back at that experience, and now you have pre-baseball professional
baseball after you watch the things you’ve accomplished that you’re proud of, this is
just one of them, I know that, but where does that fit in your life?” 1:02
Oh, it’s extremely important because I’ve been sports oriented you know, it’s right up
there with some other awards, alright? It was only four years out of my like, but it’s a
significant four years. I wouldn’t trade those four years for forty of some of my other
years, and it’s even better now that we’re older because we can embellish all those stories
that we’ve been telling over the years you know? You really did get to third base, but I
tagged you, no you didn’t, it was second base, what do you mean, you never got to third
base. It’s a significant part of my life. I simply meant—what I’m saying is it doesn’t
define my total life, but it’s a significant portion of it and I’m extremely proud of it. I
wear my ring with pride and thank god I had those four years and I probably would have
played four more if they had them because it worked out well being a teacher and coming
back and I was getting better. 2:10 That made me feel good.
39
�
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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All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a>
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
Sports for women
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives
Oral history
Baseball players--Minnesota
Baseball players--Indiana
Baseball players--Wisconsin
Baseball players--Michigan
Baseball players--Illinois
Baseball for women--United States
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401
Identifier
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RHC-58
Format
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Language
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eng
Date
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2017-10-02
Contributor
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Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
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-58_LYoungen
Title
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Youngen, Lois (Interview transcript and video), 2010
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Youngen, Lois
Description
An account of the resource
Lois Youngen was born in a small town in Ohio in 1933. She grew up playing baseball with boys from her town, and played on a boys' team for several years before switching to a girls' softball team while in high school. She learned about the All American League while visiting a relative in Fort Wayne in 1950. She joined the league the next year and played for Fort Wayne, Kenosha and South Bend as a catcher and outfielder until the league folded in 1954. She used the money she earned as a player to go to college, and eventually earned a doctorate in Physical Education and taught at the University of Oregon.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Boring, Frank (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.)
Video recordings
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives
Baseball for women--United States
Baseball
Sports for women
World War, 1939-1945
Baseball players--Indiana
Baseball players--Wisconsin
Women
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2010-08-04
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a>
Format
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application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2e8ddfe60ff446e37caf04dd638cab4f.mp4
89f805a717e12a3be00a1b5fb5a3f064
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/896a94fe90d035df154cd7af8d5fbf65.pdf
910c702ef10c2862e84e6f2c58e8d34e
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
World War II
Thomas York
Length of interview (00:47:19)
Background Information (00:00:12)
Born in Baltimore, Maryland in July of 1927
Moved to Oklahoma in 1929 (00:00:23)
o
Remained in Oklahoma until 1941
Father worked in the oil fields during the depression (00:00:31)
Mother was a school teacher
o
Had taught in Grand Rapids, Michigan
1941- The York family moves to Wayland, Michigan
York describes life in Oklahoma in the 1930’s (00:01:01)
o
Lived in the town of Britton
o
Father had been a pilot in WWI
o
Oklahoma was “a flying country” (00:01:30)
o
York remembers that his father was a “very natural mechanic” and worked for
General Motors when the family first moved to Oklahoma
The family moved up to Michigan before the attack on Pearl Harbor (00:02:55)
York knew about the war in Europe, and remembers being worried about the possibility of
being attacked by Japan
o
Learned about the war primarily in school , although it was in Civics class and
none of the information was new (00:03:46)
o
Information was heavily censored (00:04:15)
York heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor on the radio (00:04:50)
o
Followed the war through the letters of GIs from Wayland
o
Was a very patriotic time, many young men signing up for the service
When York was 16, he went to enlist and was accepted.
o
When York graduated from high school at 17, he entered the service (00:06:44)
o
A parent’s signature to enlist was not needed, even though York was a minor
York was called to active duty July 1st of 1945 (00:07:20)
Training (00:07:21)
Air Force basic training squadron was out of Biloxi, Mississippi
o
Basic training had a lot of emphasis on physical training (00:07:41)
Marching, cross-country running
York was in great shape, remembers training being easy for him
o
Reenlisted after his 6 months were over, rather than be drafted (00:09:01)
Was discharged from the Air Force and reenlisted in the Army Air Force
Didn’t want to be a mechanic
Sent to Greensboro, North Carolina (00:09:20)
o
Finished training and shipped out to New York in less than a month
Shipped out of New York in October or November
�o
Shipped out on an NYU Victory ship
V-hulled, bunks were 18 beds high, and rolling over was impossible
Small ship—900 troops packed into the ship
York slept on deck after the first night, he wasn’t supposed to but he hid
in a life boat (00:10:27)
York remembers there being very little food.
Lunch was a cup of soup and two crackers
Spent 31 days on the ship
o
Went to Casablanca, then Naples in Italy
WWII is over, but many men were still being shipped to Europe (00:11:46)
Remembers the Straits of Gibraltar as still being dangerous, even after the war
o
Torpedoes, submarines, and mines (00:13:19)
Italy (00:14:00)
The stop in Casablanca was a one day stop. York did not get to leave the ship.
First impression of Naples was of a city on a hill
o
Could see Mt. Vesuvius
o
Stayed in Naples for a week or two
o
The weather was warm, similar to Georgia or Alabama
Sent to Caserta, Italy (00:15:00)
o
About 18 miles inland
o
Allied Headquarters Command at that time
Both British and American troops were stationed there
German prison camp located within Caserta as well
o
Was a clerk in the medical area.
kept track of supplies
o
When the First Sergeant became a Lieutenant, York took his former position
(00:17:26)
o
The officers did not seem to do anything, but were “your friend” (00:20:15)
o
The British were also on the base (00:22:10)
Describes the British
o
Talks about the German prisoners of war (00:23:02)
Describes one German prisoner who taught himself English
o
The prison camp was a separate compound from the base in Caserta (00:25:50)
o
York went to Naples every weekend
o
York spent over a year in Italy (00:27:20)
o
York got to ride in an aircraft carrier
Air Force food was the best
o
York describes the Italian civilian population (00:30:10)
One popular restaurant the GIs went to for eggs and fried potatoes
Many children visited the base
The only warning York received was not to park a vehicle on the street
because it would get stolen
o
York does not recall many discipline problems within the base (00:33:11)
o
The USO came in four or five times for entertainment
o
York talks about a monastery that had been destroyed and was going to be
�rebuilt
o
Rome was almost untouched by the war due to historical significance
o
The German prisoners were allowed to go home, but many who lived in the
communist zone did not want to leave (00:38:33)
The prisoners did not have a choice to stay, but were sent home
regardless
The majority of the prisoners were still in Caserta when York went home
The SS prisoners were not separated from the other prisoners
Return to the United States (00:41:17)
The ship York returned to the United States on was a lousy vessel
o
The return trip was much worse, although men who had gotten married in
Europe were bringing their wives home (ship was gender segregated) (00:41:48)
o
The first thing York saw was Coney Island, then the harbor, then finally the
Statue of Liberty
o
Took about 20 days to cross the Atlantic
o
Took about a week to process him before he was released
After returning home, York worked at Pet Mill (00:44:10)
o
Went to Florida
o
Went on a blind date with the woman who became his wife
o
Went to Kendall for art school
Worked graphic design for Spartan stores for a while
After retiring, became a graphic design consultant for around 10 years
Conclusions about the war (00:45:28)
The war made York grow up
o
Saw a lot of the world
o
Never really returned home, had gained independence
o
Gained leadership and teamwork skills during the service
York wanted out at the time, but now he wonders why he did not make it his career
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
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RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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RHC-27_YorkT
Title
A name given to the resource
York, Thomas (Interview outline and video), 2010
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2010-01-13
Description
An account of the resource
Thomas York was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1927. His family moved first to Oklahoma, then to Michigan. York enlisted in the US Air Force at 16, and after graduating at 17, entered active duty on July 1st of 1945. York underwent basic training at the base in Biloxi, Mississippi. York re-enlisted after his 6 months of duty were finished in the US Army Air Force. York was sent to Caserta, Italy, where he served for a year as a medical clerk. While at Caserta, York met British military personnel and German prisoners of war.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
York, Thomas
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
United States. Army Air Forces
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Moving Image
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project collection, (RHC-27)</a>
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a>
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Grand Valley State University Libraries. Allendale, Michigan
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
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application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f8ab030f573c52fc0fdd68e3b783b27a.m4v
9812cf0df14b559519c751212146b81c
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/46c449a7730033a55ebaeabd2d07f204.pdf
1123527ed915219fe36dc1c1ba1a893d
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans' History Project
David Yonts
Vietnam War
1 hour 26 minutes 59 seconds
(00:00:15) Early Life
-Born in West Virginia in February 1950
-Came from a family of coal miners
-When he was nine or ten months old his family moved to Kentucky
-Grew up in Kentucky
-Attended school in Kentucky
-Met his wife when they were in high school
-Got married when she was still a junior in high school
-Got a job working with cars
-Graduated from high school in 1968
-Had a job at a Studebaker dealership in high school
-Went to work for his uncle at his uncle's Texaco station
(00:01:54) Getting Drafted
-Married for one year when he got drafted on August 31, 1969
-Wife came home from work and he told her that he had been drafted
-Given ten days to report for duty
(00:02:53) Knowledge of the Vietnam War
-Didn't know a lot about the Vietnam War
-Heard stories about soldiers coming back from Vietnam
-Knew that he didn't want to go fight in Vietnam
-Didn't know the politics of the war
(00:03:39) Basic Training
-Went to Fort Knox, Kentucky for basic training
-Went from Ashland, Kentucky to Fort Knox by bus
-Arrived at Fort Knox at dusk
-Greeted by a private first class screaming at the recruits to get off the bus
-Assigned a place to sleep
-Next day given a haircut, a quick breakfast, vaccinations, uniforms, boots, and clothing
-Took an entire day to get processed
-Most of the recruits were from Kentucky, West Virginia, and Michigan
-In retrospect understands why basic training was done the way it was
-Drill instructors were trying to break down individualism
-Teaching them discipline and to follow orders
-Learned not to be flip with superiors
-Taught to work as a unit
-Help each other and think as a group rather than as an individual
-Received weapons training
-Did well with rifle training
-Wonders if that led to him getting assigned to the infantry
�-Only had two or three recruits that had to start basic training over
-Some men were physically and mentally unfit to be soldiers
-Completed basic training anyway
-Majority of men were capable of being soldiers
(00:10:59) Infantry Training
-Sent to Fort Ord, California for Infantry Training
-Company commander was a Ranger in the 101st Airborne Division
-Meant that he was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division
-Training lasted eight weeks
-More physically demanding than basic training
-Learned how to rappel out of helicopters
-Received more weapons training
-Learned how to read maps
-Went through simulated Vietnamese villages
-Knew then that he was going to get deployed to Vietnam
-Went on a lot of marches
-Not allowed to go off base until the seventh week of training
-Only thing to do was to go into town and drink
(00:14:55) Assignment to Fort Hood
-During seventh week of Infantry Training he learned that his wife was pregnant
-Wanted to go home, or at least stay in the U.S. until his wife gave birth
-Talked to a chaplain who talked to David's superiors
-Granted a deferment and assignment to Fort Hood, Texas until his wife gave birth
-Worked in the motor pool at Fort Hood
-Daughter was born on May 6, 1970
-Able to talk to his wife on the phone
-Went to the PX and bought some celebratory cigars
-Same day that his daughter was born he received orders for Vietnam
(00:17:35) Deployment to Vietnam
-Given three and a half weeks of leave home before being deployed
-Got to see his wife and his baby daughter
-Felt like a part of his heart was torn out knowing he might die in Vietnam
-Took a lot of pictures with his wife and daughter
-When he was in Vietnam he sent a lot of voice recordings back to her
-Went to California and boarded a plane
-Stopped in Alaska and picked up more military personnel
-Flew to Japan
-Flew on a chartered American Airlines jet
(00:20:03) Arrival in Vietnam
-Landed at Saigon
-Went through an in-country orientation process
-Explained the assignment process
-Did it backwards alphabetically, so his name was the fifth one called
(00:21:05) Assignment to the 101st Airborne Division
-He was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division operating near Phu Bai
-Flew up to Phu Bai in a C-130
�-Gto to Phu Bai on July 1, 1970
-Received more in-country orientation
-Cultural awareness training
-Told by one sergeant to shoot first and ask questions later
-In theory, U.S. troops only shot at someone after being shot at
-In reality, if you waited to shoot you would probably get killed
-Got assigned to Alpha Company of the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st
Airborne
-He had already received air assault training in California, so he didn't need to go through
SERTS
-Note: SERTS: Screaming Eagle Replacement Training School
-Joined Alpha Company on July 7, 1970 at Camp Evans
(00:24:35) Siege of Firebase Ripcord Pt. 1
-Note: Since July 1, 1970 the North Vietnamese had been attacking Firebase Ripcord
-On July 8, 1970 he went into the field to join Alpha Company
-Boarded the third helicopter out of Camp Evans that day
-Told that he would be dropped off at Firebase Ripcord and A Company would go
there
-Couldn't go directly to A Company because they were in a firefight
-Remembers the countryside going from green and vibrant to brown and war torn
-Thought the firebase didn't look too bad
-Immediately assigned to a foxhole on the perimeter with three other soldiers
-The three other men had been in the field and told him the situation
-Heard a lot of small arms fire around the bottom of the hill Ripcord was on
-From July 9 - July 23 (fall of Ripcord) they were under siege
-He never got into the field
-Assigned to a bunker on the perimeter at night
-First night on the perimeter he didn't sleep
-Set out land mines at night
-The next day they were turned around so the explosion would go toward the
bunker
-North Vietnamese had gotten that close without being detected
(00:30:13) Firebase Ripcord-Details
-Ripcord was on the top of a hill
-Tactical operations center (TOC) was at the top of the hill in the middle of the
hill
-Artillery batteries surrounded the TOC
-Farther down the hill was the perimeter consisting of bunkers and foxholes
-Each bunker was 20 to 30 feet apart
-Perimeter was 30 feet away from the bottom of the hill
-Bunker dugout was the size of a king size bed
-Wood made a roof over the dug out
-Sandbags went on top of the wood
-Each bunker was manned by four men
-A trench went out to a collection of foxholes in front of the
bunker
�-Called the bunker the "house" and the foxhole "his porch"
(00:33:30) Siege of Firebase Ripcord Pt. 2
-Bombardment of Ripcord got more intense as July went on
-Heard movement beyond the perimeter
-Ordered not to fire because it might be American soldiers and not Vietnamese
-Took a lot of mortar fire
-His bunker never took a direct hit
-A lot of shells landed around his bunker though
-Later in July they took more small arms fire
-Had a nearby bunker that served as their latrine
-Couldn't go to the bathroom without worrying about getting hit
-Only went if he absolutely had to go
-Got resupplied by helicopters during the siege
-Helicopters would fly in, quickly drop off supplies, then fly out as fast as they
could
-On July 18, 1970 a Chinook helicopter was shot down and crashed into an ammunition
dump
-If the hill was a clock, the helicopter crashed at 3 o'clock and he was at 7 o'clock
-Initially thought a B-52 accidentally bombed the firebase
-Ordered to stay in his bunker and stay down until all of the ordnance had cooked
off
-Learned to stay aware, understand that he could get killed, and to look out for himself
-Heightened security and put two men on watch instead of just one man
-Noticed more Cobra gunships operating around Ripcord
-Escorting the "Loach" recon helicopters onto and off of the firebase
-On the morning of July 21 things got even worse
-Started to seriously consider that he might not survive the battle
-Bombardment got even worse
-Late on July 22 they saw more enemy movement
(00:41:55) Fall of Firebase Ripcord
-On the morning of July 23 he actually saw North Vietnamese soldiers beyond the
perimeter
-On July 23 he received word that Ripcord was going to be evacuated and destroyed
-Upset that they were just letting the firebase fall rather than stand and fight
-Saw Lieutenant Colonel Lucas get mortally wounded by a mortar shell
-Throughout July 23 men were getting pulled off the hill
-Told that the bunkers to the left and right of his would go first, then his bunker would go
-Had to decide the order of men in his bunker to get evacuated
-Pulled straws and he was the third man to go out
-Still doesn't know if the fourth man made it out
-Had to leave all of his gear and personal possessions behind except for his rifle
-Boarded a helicopter with two other combat capable men and two wounded soldiers
-Remembers the gunners laying down suppressing fire as they took off
(00:48:22) Regrouping & Going into the Field
-At Camp Evans learned that Alpha Company had been hit and lost a lot of men
-Received more replacements
�-He tried to help the new replacements adjust to Vietnam
-He was supposed to be a squad leader, but got assigned to the M60 machine gun instead
-Didn't want to be on the M60 for too long because it drew too much attention
-Once A Company had enough men they returned to the field
-Pattern was this: go to the field, make some contact, then retreat from the field
-Didn't understand why they retreated from the field
-Learned later that the U.S. was pulling out of Vietnam
-Became the radio-telephone operator (RTO) for Captain Chuck Hawkins
-Called in rations, medical evacuation, and supplies for the company
-Hawkins explained that the Army didn't want a repeat of Ripcord
-That's why they didn't stay in the field for too long if they made contact
-Assigned to be the RTO for a new company commander
-He told David that if he stayed in the field two extra weeks he would make him
sergeant
-Declined because he didn't want to risk getting killed
-After Ripcord, A Company took 10 to 15 casualties
-Some of them were accidents
-Remembers one new man from the Industrial Midwest (Illinois, Michigan,
Indiana, etc.)
-David tried to watch over him and protect him
-Landed on an old landing zone
-Never should have used an old LZ
-Most likely being watched or booby trapped
-David got off the helicopter and ran down to the tree line
-New man followed him and tripped a land mine
-Killed instantly
-Only found a boot and his glasses
-Army listed him as missing in action (MIA)
-Angered him because the man was dead, not missing
(00:59:32) Life after the War Pt. 1
-As of 2015, despite hardships, he and his wife are still married
-Had four children
-After the war had a quicker temper and his family went through a lot because of his
PTSD
(01:00:40) Interactions with the Vietnamese
-While in the rear they could go into Phu Bai, so he saw some Vietnamese civilians
-Had a Vietnamese interpreter known as a chu-hoi
-Meant that he was a Viet Cong soldier that defected to South Vietnam
-Didn't interact with many civilians
-At the time he hated all of the Vietnamese, but now he regrets feeling that way
(01:01:55) Reflections on Service Pt. 1
-Has no desire to return to Vietnam or see the remains of Firebase Ripcord
-Doesn't want to relive the war
-Also doesn't want to step on an unexploded land mine near Ripcord
-It wasn't always bad in Vietnam, there were some good times
-Feels that sometimes you just had to laugh to deal with the stress
�(01:02:55) Downtime & R&R
-Got to see Bob Hope in Phu Bai
-Men from the field were allowed to sit in the rows closest to the stage
-Thankful to Bob Hope for doing those shows for the troops
-Saved his R&R for the end of his tour in Vietnam
-Able to see his wife in Hawaii
-It was a good R&R
-Got to spend a week together
-Difficult to leave his wife again
-Took some comfort in the fact that the war was coming to an end
-Drank a lot when he was in the rear
-Refreshing to go on R&R, but strange to go back into the field so quickly
(01:07:25) Leaving Vietnam & End of Service
-Left Vietnam on June 15, 1971
-Told he'd be placed in the inactive reserves because he had less than six months of
service to do
-Flew from Vietnam to Japan to Alaska to Washington
-Outprocessed and discharged in Washington
-Given a ticket to fly home to Kentucky
-Strange to think only a week ago he had been carrying a rifle in Vietnam
-Told to travel in civilian clothes to avoid harassment
(01:09:26) Treatment of Veterans Pt. 1
-Son served in the Army for 20 years
-Deployed to Iraq three times
-Made sure that every time his son came home he had a big welcome home party
-Didn't want his son to go through what he did upon coming home
-When he came home he was ostracized by the public for being a Vietnam veteran
-One woman accused him of killing children
-Blames some of the harassment on other Vietnam veterans
-They came home and talked about raiding villages and executing civilians
-As a result of that, people thought all soldiers did that
-For most veterans it was difficult to get a job
-Fortunately he still had a job with his uncle at the Texaco station
-Only 21 years old when he came home from Vietnam
-Barely old enough to vote and buy alcohol
-Treated like a war criminal despite being so young and not being a war criminal
-People asked his wife why she stayed married to a Vietnam veteran
(01:12:52) Life after the War Pt. 2
-Continued to work with cars after he came home
-Eventually got a job at an Oldsmobile dealership
-Moved to Florida in 1982 and worked for a dealership there
-Started his own car repair business in Florida
-It was successful and he sold it
-Went into used cars sales
-Owned a used cars lot for 12 years
-Helped with a friend's security business
�-Had a contract with a hospital
-Got him a job at the hospital as the security director
-Led to him getting interested in medicine and becoming a nurse
-Hospital paid for him to go to Nursing School
-Got into a motorcycle accident in 2007 and retired from everything after that
(01:15:14) Readjusting to Civilian Life
-Worked 70-80 hours a week
-Didn't understand why he worked so much until after the motorcycle accident
-Realized that he worked so much to distract himself from the war
memories
-Got treatment for PTSD through the VA
-Took a year of classes with other Vietnam veterans
-Advised to file for PTSD compensation and Agent Orange compensation
-70% physical disability and 30% psychological disability
-Diabetes, neropathy, and hypertension from stress and chemical
weapons
(01:19:36) Reflections on Service Pt. 1
-Sees the Vietnam War getting repeated through the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan
-Government's reluctance to compensate those veterans for their sacrifice
-Politics getting in the way of giving treatment to veterans
-Believes the psycholoigcal effects of Vietnam will continue for years, if not generations
-The indirect effects will last for the spouses and children of veterans
(01:23:05) Treatment of Veterans Pt. 2
-Has just started wearing a Vietnam veteran cap
-Still gets negative reactions from people, but it has gotten better
-Actually receives thanks from people
(01:24:24) Reflections on Service Pt. 2
-Leadership abilities
-Respect for people
-Accountability for his actions
-Would serve again if called and would go to Iraq with his son if he could
-Willing to fight for the country and rights if necessary
�
Dublin Core
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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
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
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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RHC-27_YontsD1886V
Title
A name given to the resource
Yonts, David (Interview outline and video), 2015
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-08
Description
An account of the resource
David Yonts was born in February 1950 in West Virginia. He grew up in Kentucky and on August 31, 1969 he was drafted. He received basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky and infantry training at Fort Ord, California. Due to his wife being pregnant he was allowed to serve at Fort Hood, Texas until May 6, 1970 when he received his orders for Vietnam. He was deployed to Vietnam and got to Phu Bai on July 1, 1970. He was assigned to Alpha Company of the 2nd Battalion of the 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division and served at Firebase Ripcord until the firebase fell on July 23, 1970. He served with Alpha Company until he left Vietnam in June 1971. Upon arrival in Washington in late June 1971 he was discharged.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Yonts, David
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
United States. Army
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
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a>
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University Libraries. Allendale, Michigan
Format
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video/x-m4v
application/pdf
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/843d83917c190866fd2267cdaca1923d.m4v
c8ad12bf18f33cd333e60ae14ed68e8f
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f717ac0fb41be0e857b4a73fccefd499.pdf
7fb1b5d70378efc42152260cfa8938f7
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veteran’s History Project
Vietnam War
Michael Yocum
Interview Length: (01:38:51:00)
Early Life / Training / Pre-Vietnam Service (00:00:33:00)
Born in Seattle, Washington and raised in the Mount St. Helens area
(00:00:33:00)
Joined the Air Force right out of high school; when testing to get into the military,
his test score was a seventy-five, only ten points above the lower limit
(00:00:43:00)
Only two services had jet aircraft, the Air Force or Navy (00:01:25:00)
o Yocum had high ranking relatives in the Navy and he did not want to run
into either of them and the Navy would not guarantee him what he asked
for (00:01:35:00)
o The Air Force gave him a signed contract that he would he asked for, so
long as he passed their school, which he did (00:01:53:00)
Going into the Air Force was the only way that Yocum was going to get to work
on jets because they had none of the technical schools at the time (00:02:08:00)
Signed a six month delayed enlistment but he forgot to read the final line at the
bottom, which said, “Or to the needs of the service” (00:02:26:00)
Command called the recruiter and told him to pick up Yocum and get him down
to Portland, Oregon to ship out (00:02:48:00)
o Portland was a major military processing center, everybody except Coast
Guard went through and was where recruits had their physicals and
received their assignments (00:03:01:00)
Yocum’s assignment was Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas
(00:03:23:00)
Boot camp was a lark because Yocum was an athlete and in good physical shape
and although it was a lark, there still was discipline and the men learned to be
military (00:03:48:00)
After boot camp, he want to Amarillo Air Force Base for training as a jet aircraft
mechanic (00:04:18:00)
o They also had heavy aircraft at the base and Strategic Air Command
(SAC) tried to get him to switch but Yocum said “no, he wanted fighters,
not bombers” (00:04:33:00)
o When in school, he had a contract saying that he would not get certain
things (00:04:49:00)
In training, he worked on trainer aircraft, aircraft that for some reason were not
flyable, but were good for someone to learn how to repair them (00:05:11:00)
o Some of the parts were wore out due to the number of times they had
come on and off (00:05:29:00)
o Would go through sections, beginning with a basic section – the
aerodynamics of the aircraft, and moving up (00:05:34:00)
�
o There was both classroom and practical training (00:05:54:00)
Started training on the F-80, the first jet aircraft in the Air Force inventory and he
also worked on the F-100 and the F-101 (00:06:28:00)
Completed training in Amarillo and was then assigned to Glasgow Air Force Base
in Montana, a SAC base (00:07:14:00)
o Fighter mechanics did not have good SAC appetites (00:07:28:00)
o Yocum was assigned the job of transient alert, taking care of the planes
coming into the base, i.e. non-base aircraft (00:07:39:00)
Most were fighters coming in from the West Coast headed east or
vice versa (00:07:46:00)
o The base was out of the way but a perfect drop-off spot (00:07:54:00)
o Was at Glasgow for approximately eighteen months (00:08:01:00)
o Worked twelve hours on and then thirty-six hours off (00:08:13:00)
They had to have crew that was alert and ready to go on when
needed; like a fireman, many hours of twittling their thumbs then
instant action (00:08:24:00)
o One of Yocum’s jobs was taking out the “follow me” truck and bringing
in the B-52’s drag chutes, which weighed six hundred pounds
(00:08:43:00)
o Had an excellent group to work with and they got along well
(00:09:07:00)
Then went to RAF Bentwater in Great Britain (00:09:13:00)
o Learned quickly that in Europe, when they mentioned a Sunday driver, he
moved away from the driver because it referred to a driver that could
afford to only drive one day a week (00:09:20:00)
o One time, another guy went to the beach, became too tired and tried to
return home the next day and he and Yocum went up opposite sides of a
hill and they both ended up in Yocum’s lane (00:09:36:00)
They crashed and Yocum had fourteen major fractures of the face
and lower jaw (00:09:53:00)
o Yocum was in the hospital for two months (00:10:11:00)
The Air Force had to send him to a civilian hospital because they
did not have the proper equipment on the base or the time to get
him to the better hospital at Leighton because he was so injured
(00:10:19:00)
o Dr. Gay, the surgeon who worked on Yocum, specialized in facial
reconstruction and when Yocum arrived, Dr. Gay came in to check on
another patient and ended up picking to work on Yocum, saying that he
was the doctor’s to work on (00:10:37:00)
o He had to sit on the gurney because when they would lay him down, the
bones would move, causing pain; two police officers tried to do it at the
accident site and Yocum “threw them about twenty feet” (00:11:12:00)
o Dr. Gay really put his face back together and Yocum only lost two teeth in
the accident, although because of the accident, through the years, he has
slowly lost his teeth (00:11:33:00)
�
Could not have a facial injury and he does not get into situations
that made an injury possible, including riding horses (00:11:55:00)
o The Air Force made checks on him, including sending a specialist, but Dr.
Gay would not sign off on until he believed Yocum would be safe to go
back (00:12:35:00)
The Air Force could not have gotten him the same quality of care
at Leighton because they did not have the same quality of surgeons
(00:12:51:00)
Dr. Gay rebuilt his face to the point that someone could not tell
Yocum had been in an accident and the only way to tell was to
look at pictures from before and after the accident (00:13:05:00)
o When he got out of the hospital, he was given light duty for six months
and not allowed to even go into a hanger, for fear that he might fall, so he
worked on tech orders i.e. filing the changes (00:13:19:00)
From Great Britain, he went to Maxwell Air Base in Montgomery, Alabama,
which was strictly an officer’s training base (00:13:59:00)
o Still worked transient alert, although now he had twenty four hours on
then seventy two hours off and one day off a month, meaning he had a
seven day period when he did not have to report to duty (00:14:21:00)
o Spent off time having a blast and when he was there, he volunteered for
Vietnam, but they turned him down three times before they allowed him to
go (00:14:44:00)
o The air base had a federal penitentiary on one side, so the base was locked
down several times whenever someone got out (00:15:04:00)
o Had no issues with officers and staying at Maxwell caused him to look at
officers as persons, rather than as entities (00:15:22:00)
Once a month, they had a code-seven fly into the base, a full
colonel or above, for conferences and everyone else they parked in
the “outback 40” and took care of them when they could
(00:15:34:00)
o That was the one time he saw a real F-80, who came in from Mexico with
guns loaded and rockets armed and they had to call an Army missile base
to send someone down to dearm the aircraft; the aircraft turned out to be
an original 1950’s model aircraft (00:15:55:00)
The Air Force turned down his Vietnam requests because they did not want to
have to replace him; they had somebody good and they tried to hold on to him
(00:16:51:00)
o He knew he would have to go to Vietnam so instead of being grabbed and
given non-volunteer status, he wanted volunteer status (00:17:01:00)
From Maxwell, he spent three months at Clovis Air Force Base in New Mexico
training on the F-100 aircraft and from Clovis, he went to Phan Rang Air Force
Base in September, 1967 (00:17:14:00)
Not everyone in a squadron went to Vietnam at the same time; they started with
the ground crew, then the NCOs to train the ground crew and then the officers
(00:17:41:00)
�
On most aircraft, to change a tire, they would slide the main wheel over the brake
but on the F-100, they put on the main wheel then slid in the main brake, attach
the hydraulic system, and bleed the hydraulic system (00:18:08:00)
o A main tire change on the F-100 took and hour and a quarter of work, but
when working on the F-101, twenty-five minutes and Yocum was done
changing the tire (00:18:28:00)
Taking the aft section off the F-100 to fix the engine was difficult; most aircraft
allowed the engine to drop out, but with the F-100, they had to take the tail
section off (00:18:42:00)
The F-100 was the first of the serious dedicated fighters, including afterburners
(00:19:04:00)
o Afterburners were a kick in the butt when the pilot wanted to move, but
they used copious amounts of fuel, so if a pilot used afterburners, he used
them with caution (00:19:29:00)
The crew Yocum worked with got to the point when they did an aft section off,
people thought is was a Chinese fire drill (00:19:49:00)
o Yocum’s first job was to get onto the back of the aircraft and put the
engine hanger until the others pinned the engine so it would not roll out of
the aircraft (00:20:12:00)
o Another one of Yocum’s jobs was breaking loose the four nuts that held
the aft section on and once the repair was complete, Yocum’s job was to
torque the nuts back into place (00:20:38:00)
Took three thousands foot pounds (one hundred and forty four inch
pounds to a foot pound) to torque the nuts back into place, whereas
an average car tire requires sixty to eighty inch pounds to be
torqued (00:21:01:00)
Was at Clovis to learn the F-100 and its inner sequences and to get him over to
Vietnam, where he could be working and training at the same time (00:21:47:00)
Vietnam Deployment (00:22:05:00)
Flew on a commercial aircraft leased to the military on an eighteen hour flight in
a packed 707 aircraft (00:22:05:00)
Passengers were all military personnel because Cam Ranh was the dispersal point
in Vietnam and when they deplaned in Cam Ranh, they divided up amongst the
different services (00:22:25:00)
Getting into Cam Ranh was stepping into a sauna bath; high moisture and high
heat, but he was used to it from growing up where he did on the upper West Coast
(00:23:00:00)
At Phan Rang, he was assigned to the 352nd Attack Fighter Squadron, which was
flying F-100s at the time (00:23:43:00)
o Nothing on the base except F-100s and OV-10’s, an observation aircraft
used to drop markers on Charlie for the F-100s to attack (00:23:51:00)
While a Phan Rang, five or six times, they loaded daisy cutters, a thousand pound
bomb with a sixteen foot fuse in front (00:24:16:00)
�
o The bomb would explode two inches off the ground, leaving no hole but
destroying everything above two inches for a five hundred to one thousand
foot radius from the impact point (00:24:32:00)
o Bombs would destroy anything but was used mainly to create landing
zones in the jungle for helicopters (00:24:49:00)
o One time while he was there, they had a high priority to get create some
landing zones (00:25:02:00)
They knew a North Vietnamese Army Group was in the jungle
somewhere and the Air Force ended up finding them
serendipitously (00:25:10:00)
The spot the Air Force had chosen to drop the daisy cutters was
directly in the middle of the Army Group, leaving nothing much
but a sponge job (00:25:20:00)
From Cam Ranh, he took a C-131 out to Phan Rang (00:25:56:00)
Phan Rang (00:26:06:00)
Good sized base, although today would be considered a medium sized base, with
an emergency runway built with planking at the starting of the base and a concrete
runway and taxiway (00:26:06:00)
Had three layers of fencing, each one covered with razor darts and tm wire, which
would cut through even a leather glove (00:26:33:00)
They also had Army troops at the base and they would wake up at night when the
Army stopped firing the 105s because when it was silent was when they worried
(00:26:56:00)
One of the first things the enlisted men in the squadron did was look at their
bunker and decided it was not safe (00:27:08:00)
o They sat, designed, and built a new bunker which could take a 105 round
direct hit and not collapse (00:27:26:00)
o They tore down the old bunker and proceeded to build a new bunker
(00:27:43:00)
Took two 50 gallon barrels, welded them together and filled them
with sand and on each side, they had two layers of sandbags and an
openings they filled with sand (00:27:46:00)
Covered the roof with old planking and did the same thing with the
sandbags (00:28:18:00)
Planking was a honeycombed landing strip designed to be
dropped in a place so a plane could land (00:28:32:00)
Coming under fire was not common but it happened enough to make them realize
that they needed some kind of protection (00:28:56:00)
They had a new base commander come in about four or five months following the
Tet offensive and they received a mortar hit on the base (00:29:07:00)
o At the time, Charlie did not have a base line, making it difficult to pinpoint
attacks on the base and during the attack, the new commander got on the
AM radio and gave Charlie a complete hit report (00:29:24:00)
�
o The others drove an APC down to the command center, put the
commander into it, drove the APC onto a C-131 and flew the commander
out of county (00:30:21:00)
o Charlie had no base line to attack the base, not allowing to move their
artillery and although the commander was trying to calm people down, he
just used the wrong entity to do it with, the unsecure AM radio
(00:30:57:00)
o The base was hit a more frequently following the incident (00:31:36:00)
Incoming fire was mostly mortars (00:31:41:00)
o The enemy tried rocket attacks but whenever they would launch the
attacks, the Air Force would have something hitting the launch sites and
shooting the rockets out of the air (00:31:48:00)
They could go off base from seven am to six pm (00:32:02:00)
o They had three men from New York who decided to get haircuts at 5:00
and miss curfew and all three ended up dead (00:32:13:00)
o If they were off base and it was after six, they were dead (00:32:42:00)
They had civilians working on base and if they worked on base after six pm, they
stayed on base all night and were released in the morning (00:32:58:00)
Vietnam was his best time ever in the service (00:33:18:00)
From Vietnam, he went to Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho and ended up
going to another tech school (00:33:28:00)
o At one point, Yocum had a disagreement with an NCO and Yocum gave
“him a physics lesson” (00:33:40:00)
They were on the second floor of a building and they did not have
landings to go down to the first floor and the NCO told Yocum to
do something non-military, which Yocum took affront to
(00:33:53:00)
The NCO kept giving Yocum bad reports and one night, he ticked
Yocum off too much and Yocum leaned him over the side of the
staircase then slammed him against the wall (00:34:10:00)
o A week later, Yocum was in another tech school (00:34:33:00)
Every base came under attack during the Tet Offensive (00:34:51:00)
o The enemy had tunnels between the second and third row of fencing out
(00:34:55:00)
o First row was the base perimeter then thirty feet out was the second fence
and another thirty feet out was the third fence (00:35:02:00)
o The army forces defending the base dropped a mortar round directly into
the tunnel (00:35:25:00)
Everyone was on high alert for all the entire Tet season, meaning sixteen hour
days on the line, not including personal time (00:35:37:00)
o Normal day was twelve hours a day, six days a week, although sometimes
they went up to fourteen (00:35:58:00)
o They would get exhausted but would be refreshed by the day off
(00:36:10:00)
The actual attack on the base did not last long because they had 105 artillery and
the infantry and no enemy made it onto the base (00:36:28:00)
�
The enemy tried to bombard the base, but this was before they had the base line
(00:37:16:00)
o They had an Army construction unit on the base, which fixed any
problems to the point that the enemy could not tell what had been repaired
and what had not (00:37:22:00)
o They knew that Charlie sent people in on base as workers but there was
not a way for them to tell where the rounds had impacted (00:37:53:00)
In thirty days, they had a turnover of the entire squadron from bottom to top
(00:38:30:00)
o They had ten days to get the bottom troops used to the situation, then on to
the NCOs and finally the officers (00:38:38:00)
o The officers did not come in with a completely green unit; the others were
not ripe, but they were not green either (00:38:57:00)
After being in the military for eight to ten years, he could not go to a place
without running into someone he knew (00:39:41:00)
o The military is a very big small town and the longer Yocum was in, the
more he knew, both jobs and people (00:39:53:00)
Was at Phan Rang from 1967 to 1968; arrived at the end of his fifth year of
service and left at the end of his sixth year (00:40:12:00)
In the 352nd, they worked with munitions people; they did not specify only doing
specific jobs (00:40:34:00)
o When the munitions people were loading the .50 caliber guns, they would
tell Yocum readings on instruments around them so that he could do
service on them (00:40:48:00)
o They worked as teams, splitting each group in half and working on two
planes at once (00:41:28:00)
o One time, some high ranking officers had to have combat time and at the
appointed time, the planes from all three bases squadrons were not ready;
within thirty minutes, the 352nd planes were locked, loaded, and moving
out (00:41:47:00)
The 352nd had a much higher performance level than the other two squadrons on
the base (00:42:19:00)
o They did not have turf, saying that only a certain man could do a job; if a
job needed to be done, then they did it what they could (00:42:21:00)
o The enlisted men decided serendipitously to work together, instead of
against each other (00:43:12:00)
o Munitions had arrived a month before the mechanics; they changed units
by months so that there was always crews on hand (00:43:32:00)
o There was nothing wrong with doing something you could do to help
someone get the job done quicker, which was the whole idea behind
working together; the work had to be done, either singly or together, so
why do more work than necessary (00:43:54:00)
o The major and the captain in the squadron allowed the men to continue
working together; there was no animosity as long as the job was being
done 100% correctly (00:44:27:00)
�
o They worked as a unit, half mechanics / half munitions to get one plane
done (00:44:46:00)
The pilots were a separate group of people; they would come in whenever the
plane was ready in an air-conditioned van (00:45:05:00)
o The ground crew would assist in prepping the aircraft, starting it,
marshalling the plane out, and sending it on its way (00:45:17:00)
o The Air Force is easier about contact between an officer and an enlisted
man but there is still a line dividing them; the two sides got along and got
to know each other, but they did not fraternize with each other
(00:45:45:00)
The officers did not go to the NCO club and vice versa
(00:46:09:00)
Normal week was twelve hours a day, six days a week, then up to fourteen hours
a day, six days a week, then seven days a week and when it really got bad, it was
sixteen hours a day, seven days a week (00:46:27:00)
o There was always at least two time period groups overlapping each other;
the new group would talk with the old group to figure out what was
happening and once everything was going well, the old group would go
back (00:46:42:00)
The planes had been built in the late 1950’s and had done their time, but Yocum
saw things that dispelled the myth that the aircraft could not do something; i.e. an
F-100 with a two foot diameter hole in the wing that should not be able to fly, but
the pilot managed to land the plane on ground successfully (00:47:12:00)
o When they had unload the equipment from it, what was left of the airplane
was hauled over to the fire pits for the firefighters to train on
(00:47:55:00)
o One time, he was running a Deuce and a Half truck to start up an aircraft
when another Deuce and a Half caught fire and Yocum attempted to haul
the plane to safety (00:48:15:00)
Another man, seeing what was happening, swung a cable and
dislocated Yocum’s ankle (00:48:30:00)
Yocum believed he was dead because they had napalm and antipersonal bombs on the plane (00:48:53:00)
They had to send someone running after Yocum to catch him
(00:49:56:00)
Yocum did things in Vietnam that under normal conditions are physically
impossible to do, including a standing high jump of twenty four feet
(00:50:02:00)
o A stray bomblet was coming towards a group and when it impacted, it did
not explode; they could hear crickets because there was nobody around,
they had all somehow gotten out of the way (00:50:19:00)
o They had twenty-four foot tall steel walls, which Yocum cleared and then
flattened his body down (00:50:43:00)
They had a pilot that they hated because he was guaranteed one main tire change
whenever he landed (00:51:08:00)
�
o One time, an enemy plane fired an HE 20 mm shell that went up the intake
and lodged in the instrument panel in front of the pilot (00:51:23:00)
o The rounds were made to explode upon impact and if the pilot landed
rough, then the round would explode; the pilot ended up landing smooth
(00:51:59:00)
o The munitions crew dearmed the aircraft, the ground crew took the canopy
off and took the seat out (00:52:39:00)
o Yocum told the men working on the instruments that they had a choice:
they could go in an disconnect all the instruments or Yocum could go in
and cut everything eighteen inches back (00:52:50:00)
The instrument panel was held in with thirty-six spring snap locks
and Yocum had to make sure that the locks did not snap, or the
round would explode (00:53:21:00)
o Yocum ended up freeing the panel, hooking wires from a crane to the
panel and getting off the plane before gingerly moving the panel out with
a wire (00:53:58:00)
o They built a thirty-six diameter sand bag pit and buried the panel plus a
quarter pound of C4; the explosion nearly lifted the panel back up
(00:54:20:00)
o When they wanted the instruments, Yocum took what was left in a box
plus a letter saying it was combat damage and gave it to supply
(00:54:43:00)
Went once to Bangkok (00:55:36:00)
Was going to go to Japan but they had an alert and they canceled all leaves
(00:55:39:00)
o They had to fly planes up near the Vietnamese border and by the time they
were done, he did not have enough time to take the R&R (00:55:53:00)
Going to Bangkok was nice because he could relax; he did not have to worry
about the bad guy being one or two chairs over (00:56:14:00)
They were always nervous when they initially left the base (00:56:26:00)
o Yocum had a pineapple hand grenade thrown into his lap; it did not go off
and Yocum is still trying to figure out how he put his body through a steelrimmed hole smaller than his body (00:56:34:00)
o With the right incentive, you could do almost anything (00:56:55:00)
o Yocum had been off-base, downtown, getting on a “putt-putt” cab to
return to base when a grenade came in, bounced once and when it hit
again, it exploded (00:57:02:00)
o The Vietnamese would take a bicycle and pack the frame with C4; three or
four pounds of C4 would go off against the wall, so that the blast would
come out into the street (00:57:40:00)
They were always in non-combat situations, although they did receive some
combat situations; their main job was to make sure that the grounds guys had
airplanes ready for them to use (00:58:16:00)
Information on the success of the mission the crew participated in was classified
(00:58:57:00)
�
o “Don’t ask, don’t tell”, even if they knew the officer; if they asked, then
the officer had to report them (00:59:01:00)
They knew quite a bit about the actual war because Phan Rang was the in-country
R&R location of the 1st Infantry Division, the “Big Red One”, as well as a base
for Australians using the B-57 (00:59:17:00)
o They had sources of information; including the military newspaper, Stars
and Stripes, and some radio programs (00:59:44:00)
o They did not know which operations they were supporting; that
information was strictly “need to know” (01:00:18:00)
Another memorable moment was when “Puff” came online (01:00:51:00)
o “Puff” was an armed C-47; an old C-47 changed into an AC-47 by placing
gatling guns transversed through the fuselage (01:00:58:00)
o At night, they could watch as a red arch went from the plane to the
ground; only every fifth round caused the red arch, indicating a
tremendous rate of fire (01:01:17:00)
Take a football field, including end zones, and divide it up into one
foot squares and within three minutes, every square would have a
bullet in it (01:01:50:00)
o The firing sounded like a buzzsaw (01:02:17:00)
o They could see the plane in action because they knew where to look; at
night, they would look in a specific area (01:02:27:00)
o “Puff” would land at Phan Rang to get serviced before returning to their
main base; one of the planes that came in was older than Yocum, the
frame had been built in 1942 (01:02:49:00)
o When they went up to the C-119 and AC’d them, they became a nasty
aircraft; when these planes came online, they gave “Puff” to the
Vietnamese to use (01:03:23:00)
The aircraft carried two 75 mm recoilless rifles in the tail, four 20
mm gatling guns, and another pair of recoilless rifles
(01:03:43:00)
The planes could attack from the side or the tail and Charlie hated
them because they could not hear the planes (01:03:59:00)
o If the planes spotted Charlie, the whole area was saturated (01:04:08:00)
o The C-119 was just coming in when Yocum was leaving but he knew
about them (01:04:18:00)
Anybody worth his salt had a hundred day calendar; as soon as he hit a hundred
days, he had the calendar up and was marking it off (01:04:31:00)
o Near the end, everybody was packing up and getting ready to go while
waiting for their replacement body and as soon as someone’s replacement
arrived, the first person left because they did not have enough bunks for
two groups (01:04:49:00)
They did the replacements in a steady enough flow so that there were no problems
(01:05:07:00)
o In the last ten to twenty days of their time, the Air Force would bring in a
group of ten to twenty guys and twenty guys from the base would leave;
some men left before Yocum and some left after (01:05:14:00)
�
o The replacements had to be trained and shown what to do (01:05:45:00)
o Yocum does not know what happened to the 352nd after he left, although
he knows that it was deactivated (01:05:48:00)
In a war zone, you were either the best or the worst; there was not mediocre
because they did not have time to be (01:06:00:00)
o The men he worked with were the best group of guys he had ever been
with and although he cannot hardly remember any of the names of the
men he served with, he does remember what they did there (01:06:12:00)
While he was recovering from his dislocated ankle, he was placed temporarily in
charge of non-powered equipment (01:06:24:00)
o The position was supposed to be temporary but the man Yocum served
under received an emergency, had to return to the United States and
Yocum stayed in the position for the rest of his tour (01:06:36:00)
o Yocum eventually got payback (01:07:00:00)
He had ordered thirty-six rolls of three inch wide reflective tape
but instead he got three rolls of thirty-six inch wide tape
(01:07:09:00)
The tape was non-returnable, so whenever someone needed to put
a number on their vehicle, they would have to barter with Yocum
(01:07:25:00)
Yocum eventually had the best spray guns, compressors,
etc., because every piece needed a number on it
(01:07:36:00)
He even ended up with a cargo container to lock his stuff
up in, when before he had just a wood shack (01:08:01:00)
o He wanted to get back to working on planes but he did not because there
was no one able to take over the position (01:08:23:00)
o They flew a man in when Yocum had forty-five days left so that Yocum
could show him the ropes (01:08:31:00)
Returned to the United States September, 1968 (01:08:55:00)
o Any time someone transferred, they had the opportunity for leave, so long
as they had the time and they could borrow time, but only up to fifteen
days (01:09:01:00)
o Yocum had been in country for twelve months without leave, so he earned
thirty days worth of leave (01:09:12:00)
o Came back and landed in Seattle and on his leave, he circumvented the
United States; did not complete the last six hundred miles of the trip,
although he completed it later when he had a new car (01:09:24:00)
Following his leave, he reported to Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho; he
lived six hundred miles west of the base and on a three day leave, it took him ten
and a half to eleven hours to get home (01:10:16:00)
College kids had changed their attitudes towards soldiers, thanks largely to inept
politicians (01:10:55:00)
o The one guy that Yocum thought he could trust was Walter Cronkite, but
he turned out to be one of the worst; people trusted his word and he lied,
which really upset Yocum (01:11:05:00)
�
o Yocum had to be careful when he was around college towns because the
students would go after anything military and those who went to Vietnam
paid the price and never received a welcome (01:11:35:00)
They went out and did what they had to do and the students had no
right to criticizes them (01:12:02:00)
o Walter Cronkite would cherry pick the news scenes to show what the
soldiers were doing, both good and bad, although the soldiers did more
good than bad in comparison to the news (01:12:08:00)
They helped with building schools and tried to interact with the
local people, but the news portrayed them as gunning down
everyone they saw and blowing everything up (01:12:24:00)
o Yocum felt bad for the little girl in the famous napalm photo but Charlie
was there and he always hid behind the civilians (01:12:46:00)
o They had places that they could not attack and this was where Charlie was
(01:12:59:00)
Charlie had an old temple which served as his munitions storage
but the Air Force could not attack it (01:13:05:00)
o When they stopped the B-52 raids, they had Charlie broken if they had not
stopped the raids; once Charlie figured out the Air Force would only go so
far, Charlie knew they had the Air Force (01:13:24:00)
o Presently the politicians are not micromanaging as bad as they did during
Vietnam but there is still political micromanagement (01:13:45:00)
Let the military do the job it was trained to do; if the military had
its hands tied, then they could not do the job as well (01:13:51:00)
Like World War II, the military had to go in and decimate Vietnam and then let
the country rebuild (01:14:26:00)
o They had to go in and win the war first, then go in and do the politics; do
not go in and do the politics while fighting because it would cause the
military to lose (01:15:12:00)
o He sees World War II and the veterans are not angry, the Korean war and
how the veterans were a little angry, and finally Vietnam, were the
veterans are angry because they were punished for not doing the job and
not being allowed to do the job (01:15:57:00)
o The soldiers did not have the ability to make decisions (01:16:26:00)
One thing he wishes they had back in Vietnam was the A-10 attack fighter; the
ground crews love it and the pilots love it because they are well-protected
(01:16:32:00)
Post-Vietnam Service (01:17:08:00)
Was discharged from the Air Force in 1980 (01:17:08:00)
Starting at Mountain Home, he was an aircraft mechanic and this was where he
had the disagreement with an NCO (01:17:18:00)
o Air Force policy was to separate the men, so they sent Yocum to test
school and the NCO was not allowed to reenlist because soldiers had to be
given the invitation to reenlist or they would not be able to reenlist and
they would have to request retirement (01:17:30:00)
�
o Yocum knows a man who was discharged for twenty-six years without
retirement because his son did something illegal overseas (01:17:57:00)
If a soldier’s family does something wrong, then the soldier loses his enlistment,
which was what happened to Yocum (01:18:15:00)
o Yocum fought his discharge and managed to get to Jimmy Carter’s desk
(01:18:44:00)
o He was not scheduled to be reviewed until January 27th but on the day
before Thanksgiving, he was told he only had six days to leave the base
(01:18:48:00)
From Mountain Home, he went to Germany, where he served for four years;
originally was to be three years but the after their eighteen month party, their time
was extended another twelve months (01:19:19:00)
o Was at Bitburg Air Force Base, the Air Force Base that President Reagan
flew into (01:19:56:00)
o There was a controversy because the news media portrayed the President
as he was going to lay flowers at an old SS cemetery, when in reality, he
had to go past the cemetery to even get out of the base (01:20:29:00)
o Excellent base to serve at; got to know his ex-wife, who he married and
brought over to the United States (01:20:49:00)
From Germany, he went to Griffiths Air Force Base in Rome, New York, where
Woodstock II occurred (01:21:02:00)
From Griffiths, he and his wife lost a child and so the Air Force reassigned him to
an Air Base in Spokane, Washington (01:21:17:00)
o He and his wife had another child and Yocum received orders in 1976
sending him back to RAF Bentwater (01:21:34:00)
He should have known something was wrong with the troubles he was having, but
he did not and when he found out, he exploded (01:21:47:00)
o Personal information that destroyed his career (01:21:58:00)
Post-Military Life (01:22:13:00)
When Yocum was discharged, he was angry and although he is still upset, he is
not angry because the Air Force did what they had to do (01:22:13:00)
Upon discharge, Yocum did not look for work and instead tried to get medical
because he messed his back up when he was stationed at Griffiths; he bent over
and ripped every muscle in his spine (01:22:33:00)
o Over time, the pain has gotten worse and although he does the exercises
that he can, he is limited (01:23:01:00)
o The injury makes him unhireable because he is not able to do simple tasks,
such as stand for two hours or lift his back (01:23:09:00)
o It took him seven years of non-government funded therapy to get over his
anger (01:23:47:00)
Married his second wife just before his discharge in November of 1980
(01:23:52:00)
o He did not plan to be reviewed until late January or early February of the
next year when all of the sudden, he was discharged (01:24:02:00)
�
His second wife had a job that she worked at and Yocum kept up doing odd jobs
but he could never keep anything permanent (01:24:28:00)
o Finally, in 1985, Yocum was able to go back to school (01:24:37:00)
o Normally, with the trade he had chosen, Yocum would have gone to an
electronics school (01:24:45:00)
o When Yocum graduated, the major electronics companies, including IBM,
released a lot of their experienced technicians, making it difficult for an
untrained person, such a Yocum, to find a job (01:24:52:00)
His second wife is from Michigan and her parents live around the Crystal Lake
area (01:25:17:00)
He and his wife have two sons: the oldest son has been in the Air Force for ten
years and loves it and the youngest son recently married at the time of the
interview (01:25:33:00)
Yocum is still trying a few things to work out his problems and he has to dig
through records to prove what he has claimed, including civilian X-Rays that
show he does have problems in his back and hips (01:25:47:00)
o Every so often, he hears a click and his legs become rubber because a
nerve is being pinched in his back and no signals go to his legs
(01:26:18:00)
o Yocum does not count on much anymore, which contributes to his anger
at the Air Force and although he receives a small pension for his face, he
believes that the Air Force owes him a lot more (01:26:47:00)
He learned quickly in the military that it was all or nothing and there is no inbetween (01:27:07:00)
His time in the Air Force gave him a lot of knowledge, which he tried using but
because he had no college degree, it was difficult (01:27:55:00)
o One time, he went to an interview and told the interviewer to point out
something that he needed to be more productive; Yocum went in and fixed
one of the man’s slower production lines, making it more productive
(01:28:09:00)
o The man ended up hiring a college graduate and not hiring Yocum
because he did not have a college degree; Yocum told the man off, which
turned out to not be a smart decision (01:28:46:00)
o He showed the man what he could do and that he was not a dummy, just
because he did not have a piece of paper to hang on his wall; that had been
his job in the service, to keep production running smoothly (01:29:14:00)
o He loved doing the job, but management viewed the service as a burn-out
field; he went in and either became a cinder or a piece of steel and most
become cinders (01:29:48:00)
The men were under stress because the top was always looking
down and the bottom did not like what they were doing and the
men were the center of the target (01:30:06:00)
As long as Yocum did his job, nobody knew, but if he failed,
everybody knew (01:30:23:00)
o The men did not mind the problem although they did have some men who
were afraid to make a move, lest they upset someone (01:30:33:00)
�
o Twice in eleven years, Yocum had to go to his commander, both colonels
and after doing non-verbal communication, he was told to leave
(01:31:01:00)
Presently, civilians and the media are treating the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan
better, but they are still not treating the soldiers right (01:32:13:00)
o Yocum is happy to see that when they come back, there are happy crowds
and not agree crowds, although the crowds are mostly the soldier’s
relatives; anyone that is bad is kept away; during Yocum’s time, the
people would get right into his face (01:32:19:00)
o When his son returns, people see him in his uniform and they know who
he is (01:33:01:00)
He did four years of ROTC at Central Michigan, which was a
shock because Yocum did not recommend it, although the son used
him as a source for military protocol, which gave him a two rank
increase upon his graduation (01:33:04:00)
Makes Yocum proud because until the son is ready, he will not
take the test to move up in rank (01:33:38:00)
He has seen too many men burn out to the point that they cannot
do their job (01:34:46:00)
Try to get into a good field, but do not count on the field being the same when
you get out of school (01:35:30:00)
Do not reject the chance to go to school (01:35:58:00)
o Yocum would love to go back to school (01:36:10:00)
One time, when he was in a class, the teacher made Yocum assist the other
students (01:36:66:00)
o In the military, anyone over an E-5 takes classes to learn what they can do,
what they cannot do, what they need to do, and what they should never do
and they receive this training yearly (01:36:43:00)
If Yocum ever does go back to school, he never has to take the general education
classes (01:37:14:00)
He had wanted to switch over to accounting because he liked numbers
(01:37:30:00)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
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1914-
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
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Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
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RHC-27
Language
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eng
Source
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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
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Identifier
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RHC-27_YocumM
Title
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Yocum, Michael (Interview outline and video), 2010
Date
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2010-08-19
Description
An account of the resource
Michael Yocum was born in Seattle and grew up in the Mount St. Helens area of Washington. He enlisted in the Air Force in the early 1960's and after serving at several bases around the world as an aircraft mechanic, he did a tour in Vietnam at Phan Rang Air Force Base from 1967 to 1968. He remained in the Air Force until 1980, serving on bases in the US and Europe.
Creator
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Yocum, Michael
Contributor
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Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
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Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
United States. Air Force
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Moving Image
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project collection, (RHC-27)</a>
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a>
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Grand Valley State University Libraries. Allendale, Michigan
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
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video/x-m4v
application/pdf
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a0db85737e00ffb02f80331489aca36c.m4v
e5c26ebb6dcff7374c46b9fe888e9c7d
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d9b33d6daf8cdbc15e6adbe490166682.pdf
f8f885dea00e4683f2a12def82126be1
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Grand Valley State University Veterans History project
Interviewee‟s name: Kevin Yeomans
Length of Interview: (01:17:25)
Date of Interview: November 16, 2017
Interviewed by: James Smither
Transcribed by: Madison Vander Lugt
Interviewer: “So we're talking today with Kevin Yeomans of Jenison, Michigan, and the
interviewer is James Smither of the Grand Valley State University Veterans History
Project. I start us off with some background on yourself and to begin with, where and when
were you born?”
I was born in Grand Rapids on September 30, 1986. I stayed in West Michigan for my childhood,
moved around a bit. Comstock Park, Grandville, Wyoming, Kentwood.
Interviewer: “What was your family doing for a living when you grew up?”
My mom did daycare out of our home pretty much my whole life. The only time she took a break
from that was when she was pregnant with my sister and she worked for a company doing some
secretarial work. I grew up with the house full of kids and always running around and playing so
yeah.
Interviewer: “Okay, was your father around, or?”
Nope.
Interviewer: “Not there, okay.”
Single mother…
Interviewer: “Just your mom and doing all that, okay. Where did you go to high school?”
I ended up going to high school from Grandville and that's where I graduated from in 2004.
Interviewer: “Alright, now what do you remember about 9/11?”
�Oh man that's…that for me will definitely be something I'll always remember. I mean, I was
sitting in... I can't remember if it was my freshman year or my sophomore year. Okay, I was in
German class and the principal comes over the intercom and you knew something's up right away
and he's like, hey everybody please turn on the TV, go to the news, and like he...news comes on,
there's these burning buildings, there‟s smoke billowing out and I didn't know much about the
twin towers before then. Um, but just that was definitely a huge, huge moment. Cool, kind of just
ground to a halt, you know? You go home and talk to my mom and I was only 11, 12...13?
Somewhere around there. I didn't really understand the whole significance of everything. I knew
it was big but I didn't understand all of it.
Interviewer: “Okay, so when did you graduate from high school then, it was..? (00:02:33)
2004.
Interviewer: “2004, alright. At that point had you decided you were going to go into the
military or how did you wind up going in the service?”
Uh, for me growing up the military was definitely always an option; my great-grandfather served
in the Navy during WWII. My grandfather, he served in the Army kind of in between Korea and
Vietnam. He served in Germany. He always had great stories to tell. Um, I realize now that he
had great stories to tell because he was in a different era of the Army.
Interviewer: “Right.”
And then between that was just my cousin and I would always talk about growing up. So then the
time came, would have been, would've been my junior year. I kind of said like this is where I
want to go. I just, I wasn't a good student at all in high school. Um, so my seventeenth birthday I
was in MEPS. Sign the paperwork and then my whole senior year, just like ready to get done and
go.
Interviewer: “You were in maps?”
Uh, MEPS so Military Entrance Processing…I can't remember what the acronym was.
Interviewer: “So basically you're going at this point, you're taking the test, or...just
preparing so that once you graduate then you go in?”
Yeah.
Interviewer: “Okay. Now, why the Army?” (00:03:50)
�You know. I looked around, I never looked at the Air Force, but Marine recruiters never seemed
to be there. It was just different mentality and I thought it had really come down to the Navy and
the Army. And then my grandpa had served, my great grandfather had served in the Navy and my
grandfather's experience in the army that kind of attracted me to those two. But like I said, I
wasn't a great student, I didn't really want to do more school, and that's kind of what the Navy
recruiters were pushing. Like, hey so you can come work on nuclear electric reactors. We'll send
you to school for the next four years in the Army. I'm like, I want to be an adventurer. I want to be
on the ground. They're like, we can do that. So they gave me what I wanted, and that's kind of
why I went there.
Interviewer: “Alright, so where did they send you for basic training?”
Uh, Fort Benning Georgia. Yup, so I did the one station unit training. So instead of doing,
because I was infantry, so instead of doing basic training and then another separate training for
whatever my specialty was. It was just 15 weeks of getting yelled at and tired and and physical.
Interviewer: “Alright, now the whole basic training process is something that's familiar to
people of older generations but not necessarily to new ones. I mean, you see things on
movies or television here and there so take us through that. What actually happens; you
arrive at Fort Benning and what do they do with you?” (00:05:06)
Oh goodness, so I got to Fort Benning…I kind of start like leaving home. I remember being
thrown up to the security station, saying goodbye to my mom and then…I still wasn't nervous. I
still knew the recruiters and knew all that but then bus comes, picks you up and it could be to
Lansing or Detroit but I don't remember where. Maybe I'm mistaking that for when I went to
Lansing to sign up too. It's been awhile since I've thought about that.
Interviewer: “[But they brought you to the airport and walked you down?]”
I don't really exactly remember how I got out of Michigan but I remember getting to Atlanta and
then Drill Sergeant showing up to pick you up. And like by that time, by myself really served
probably the first time in my life really off on this journey by myself. Drill Sergeant come pick
you up and they're not mean, but they're not friendly at the same time. They're slowly getting you
used to like what it's going to be like. Then you get brought to Fort Benning, sitting there in like a
processing center for, I don't remember if it was couple days or for the couple weeks now. And
then get to start to know a few guys and then you all split off and go to your training units and
then get to your training units and get off the bus there. That's when you start getting really yelled
at.
�Interviewer: “Okay. So what does the actual, take us through the training process. Would
they do it in sections with different things or was it all rolled together pretty much for you?”
(00:06:45)`
Um, I mean it was definitely like different events that stick out but it was just kind of a
progression. I think the biggest part is getting there, getting used to the guys, and then you start
slowly getting to know the different things. Then they slowly add another thing like like, okay
you've been carrying around this empty rifle for so long, let's go to the firing range today and use
it and start to get used to some of those things that are. But just slowly pulled in new things and
try to build that unit cohesion, understanding how things work. (00:07:22)
Interviewer: “Okay now were you down there in the summer?”
Um, I would‟ve been there in the fall.
Interviewer: “So you had a few months after you finished high school before you actually
report for duty.”
Yeah.
Interviewer: “Alright, now what kind of physical shape were you in when you went in?”
Better than I am now but not as good as I was. I think when I graduated high school I was
probably a hundred and sixty pounds, scrawny. And then by the time I got out of basic training,
definitely much better shape, put on some weight. I want to say I was probably around 175. So
definitely had some muscle where before I was, didn't have much. I could run but that's about it.
(00:08:04)
Interviewer: “Alright, and how easy or hard was it for you just to adjust to the life of the
Army?”
Um, I don't really think it was too hard. You know, in the beginning just I opened myself up and
said here we go. Um, especially when you're lower enlisted, I mean. You get told where you got
to be and you got one uniform to wear. So as long as can show up on time and do what you're
told, you don't have to think a lot until you start getting to, you know, other situations and things.
(00:08:34)
Interviewer: “Alright, now what size unit were you training with; about how many guys
were with you?”
�Oh goodness um 40, 50 maybe.
Interviewer: “Okay, so basically a platoon that you're with. Alright, now among that group,
were there people who had a lot of trouble?”
There was definitely a few guys that, I wouldn't say a lot of trouble, but definitely came from
probably rougher backgrounds than I did and that kind of pushed back on some things and had a
little more adjusting to do than I did.
Interviewer: “Alright. Now, what level of discipline were they exercising at this point? I
mean, you have the stories of, you know, the older eras, you know, that started beating
people up and doing all kinds of things like that. I mean, through what level of discipline
was really being exercised there?”
You know, I think I grew up watching the movies and seeing the Full Metal Jacket and different
things like that. I don't know it wasn't, it didn't seem like it was that tough. As long as you
did what you're told, showed up, woke up, shaved your face. I never had too many difficulties
with it but, I mean, there were separate conversations had when somebody was screwing up. You
know like, hey, it's 3 o'clock in the morning and we're still up because of you. We're going to
make sure that we adjust..
Interviewer: “Okay, there is that kind of group discipline thing that goes on and you make
the other guys - kind of toe the line through it. Okay, so now over the course of your 15
weeks here so what kind of main things do you spend your time doing? (00:10:18)
I mean, exercise every morning, training, studying. I feel like the beginning part you had some
more classroom stuff for your just getting to learn some of the language. getting to some of the
weapon systems, learning basic patrol base techniques, how to set up a patrol base, how to
especially how to walk strategically so if something does go happen you don't all die at once.
Um, just kind of just pulling in really basic knowledge on how to be an infantryman.
Interviewer: “Okay, now the time you're doing this you knowing we were already in Iraq
and in Afghanistan did you have a sense of any of that training was sort of geared toward
those places?
You know, with basic training it was really just basic [reference] task, you know, like
how to not be an idiot. You know, keeping your head on a swivel. You know, how to work as a
team so that when you showed up to your unit you weren't completely useless.
�Interviewer: “Okay, alright. so you get through the training part now what do they do with
you?
For me, after the basic training period got done I went to airborne school. So that was
four weeks long and that was still in Fort Benning, Georgia.
Interviewer: “Okay, now, what does that actually consist of?”
That was definitely a nice little reprieve; you had a little more freedom. Could leave base after
training was done but it was still pretty similar like show up, doing your exercise in the morning,
and then for the first few weeks you go to a hangar and they start.to teach basic task of essentially
alright if your parachute goes out this is when you pull your reserve and this is how you do a
parachute landing fall and kind of basic task and then, I can't remember if it's the last week or the
third week that you start doing jumps, but then you get to go up in the airplane and jump out of an
airplane. (00:12:23)
Interviewer: “Did they do a thing where you were jumping off of the tower or something
like that in between because I feel World War II thing…”
They still had the towers, we didn't get to do that. I can't remember if it was, I think it was
broken or there was something of the day we were going to do it, if I remember correctly, the
weather or something was off. so it was like well we're not doing it this time like we're just going
to the airplane.
Interviewer: “Alright, so what was that first jump out of an airplane like?”
Oh man, I don't remember if it was my first time jumping out. I was, I never remember being
nervous. I was more excited and I think one of the memories that sticks with me the most is
there's only one jump and it was while I was in airborne school that I got to be the first person
in the door and you're sitting in the door and you're just a ball of energy and you're looking out
and you're looking down at the ground and you can see the ground but you're still somewhat
separated from it and it's exhilarating. So like, I couldn't tell you if I got slapped on the butt, or if I
just heard the word “go”, if I saw the green light go off, or what it was, but I just remember
Like looking and then all of a sudden like I'm out the door and there you go. And then you see the
parachute kind of tug open. While you're 800 feet up in the air our basic training was probably a
little bit higher. it would seem like it would take a while but there's so much going on in the air
that just like, alright don't run into that guy, don't run into that guy, get rid of your rucksack,
alright am I tangled. And before you know it, you're hitting the ground. (00:13:48)
�Interviewer: “Alright, now, were there problems with people getting hurt when they
landed?”
Uh, for our basic training we did have a woman die, so.
Interviewer: “Wow.”
Yeah. That was a tough one. and we had a few guys that kind of stepped out after that. But never
heard the final word on the investigation on what happened, if she had gotten a cigarette roll with
her parachute; so if her parachute was deploying, if something happens, so if it just kind of, but
still a streamer. She never pulled the reserve. So yeah that kind of halted for the rest of that day
and then the thing with the military is, I mean the mission has to go on. So the next day those of
us that continued were back in the airplanes jumping out again. I think it was like the first time in
20 years that somebody had died in airborne mission. (00:14:46)
Interviewer: “Okay, so now you get through all of that. Do you now get assigned to a unit or
do you have other training or what happens?”
No. After airborne school I was done. I got sent to my unit. I got sent to the 82nd so that was one
thing that when I joined up I wanted to do it and wanted to jump out of airplanes. It would be,
everybody's, well most people have heard of the 82nd and the 101st airborne and stuff like that.
But I didn't have a slot so, um, kind of go back. I remember there's me and one other guy in basic
training that had to compete for that slot. I'm thankful that I got it. My knees and my back aren't
so appreciative now, but. it was, I mean, it was a different mentality at the 82nd.
Interviewer: “Now isn't parachuting kind of an obsolete skill? I mean does the military still
use it very much?”
I don't know if I'd say obsolete. I mean, I never did a combat jump. I know there's like one or,
I shouldn't say numbers. I know there were, there was at least one combat jump that happened in
Iraq to secure airfield. I mean it's just a matter of, you know war is definitely changing. You see
101st is a lot more of the, the fast roping things like that, but I don't know. You can definitely see
it being abused, be able to get a ton of guys, you know, to an airfield in the middle of
somewhere where you can't get ground troops there right away. (00:16:11)
Interviewer: “Okay, but in the meantime, when you're with the 82nd, which particular unit
within the 82nd were you assigned to?
�So I was with, now I'm going to forget my Company now that I got to say it, but I was with the, I
believe it was with Bravo Company 2/505, so the 2nd Battalion 505th Parachute Infantry
Regiment.
Interviewer: “Alright, now when you go and join the units, what kind of reception do you
get?”
Again, it wasn't like what I expected, you see the movie, you get the hazing. That might have
been cracked down a little bit, but I don‟t know. But I wasn't welcomed with open arms and hugs
and high fives but this is your unit, you get dropped off standing at the CQ desk, and I can‟t
remember what that acronym means at the top of my head but you're standing there waiting and
they take their time to come get you. I can‟t remember if it was my squad leader or my platoon
sergeant that came and got me. I‟m guessing it would have probably been my squad leader, comes
gets me, starts showing me around. People will look at you and they look you up and down and
kind of measure you up and move on. Don't say hi, here‟s your room, here‟s your roommate, this
guy is going to square you away, you know, you be at formation the next day, whatever that is.
(00:17:30)
Interviewer: “Now what was the unit doing generally, or was its assignment at the time that
you joined it? Was it just in-base hanging around, or?”
Yeah, so with the 82nd...I‟m probably going to mess things up. It‟s been awhile since I‟ve said it.
There was three different training cycles; there was division ready force one, on which we were
on call. So one of the things of the 82nd is we could be anywhere in the world in 24 hours. so
there was always, I can‟t remember if it was a brigade or a battalion that was always on division
force one. So those were always a tough few months because you‟re not supposed to go
anywhere, you‟re not supposed to drink (we never drank), and just be ready to go. And then you
had a heavy training cycle where you‟d be out in the field a lot and doing missions and training,
whatever that may be. And then you kind of have like a slower few months where either you‟re
going home on leave or you‟re doing some classroom training or doing some other maintenance
stuff within the unit, things like that. (00:18:32)
Interviewer: “Okay, now, had your unit before you joined it, deployed either to Iraq or
Afghanistan?”
Yeah, I‟m trying to remember what the last deployment was before I got there, but there was
definitely, some of guys that I had served with had gotten deployed both to Afghanistan and Iraq,
I don‟t remember the time frame. I know a couple of my buddies had gotten there at the tail end
of the Afghanistan deployment and then had deployed to Iraq…?
�Interviewer: “So there were at least some people who had been someplace at that point in
the unit.”
Yeah
Interviewer: “Now, do you think they had gone as a unit or had they been in other units and
then just reassigned to your Battalion?”
There was definitely a lot of guys that had been in that unit. There was a few that had come from
other units
Interviewer: “Alright, so now you're with them and then, now, where is the division based?”
(00:19:28)
So that‟s going to be Fort Bragg, North Carolina. So Fayetteville which, I don‟t know if a lot of
people know of Fayetteville, but I think it's relatively in the middle of North Carolina.
Interviewer: “So there's not a whole lot of built-up stuff around it otherwise.”
No
Interviewer: “It‟s a very large base, it‟s got a lot of space. So, now when you're doing the
training, is this where you're doing a lot of the practice jumps and this kind of things? Is
that a regular thing to do or do they do that just occasionally?”
Yeah. I feel like we did a jump every few months to stay proficient. by the time I left the 82nd I
had 15 jumps. Yeah I remember getting back from. getting back from Iraq and if you hadn‟t had
15 jumps before the deployment, they were making you do remedial training. So you had to go
through this whole like month-long course. So I just squeaked by that I had to go and mess around
with that. (00:20:26)
Interviewer: “Alright, now, so in that period there, you‟re at Fort Bragg for like a year or so
before you deploy?”
Yeah
Interviewer: “„Cause you go in in „04 and you‟re taking the rest of 04 to train.”
Yup, so I got to my unit sometime in „05 and then we deployed in August, September…? Yeah so
fall time frame of „06.
�Interviewer: “Okay so you got. you‟re still there at Fort Bragg, so what was daily life like at
Fort Bragg during that period?”
Daily life; I mean, wake up at six, some days you‟re still drunk, some days you‟re hungover.
Usually still pretty tired no matter what it is. And you go down, get in formation, do your morning
routine and then usually off at around, usually ran every day and then come do push-ups, sit ups,
maybe a rough march, whatever it may be. Go back, cleanup, eat breakfast, report to the
Headquarters, and then see what the daily tasks were and then go out from there. With the 82nd,
when we were in the, when we weren‟t heavily training, I mean, a lot of times we were out there,
out of work fairly early so we could go, hang out, relax and then that way when we were in
division ready force one or in the heavy training cycles, the men, the guys with families were able
to spend some time with them. And then took the younger of us that didn‟t have families were
usually started drinking. (00:22:14)
Interviewer: “Okay, now was that on-base or off-base, or? Were there clubs on base that
enlisted men go to?
There wasn‟t really any clubs on base that we went to. I‟m sure, I mean there was the officers‟
club and things, but I mean, we usually just drank in the barracks or we‟d go off post and there's a
few little watering holes that we liked to go to.
Interviewer: “Okay, now were you paying any attention to kind of what was going on
overseas or keeping track of where or when you might go somewhere?” (00:22:44)
I figured we‟d just get told, I mean. You know, I was lower enlisted so I just did my job. I showed
up in the right uniform and, you know, made sure I had my hair cut and looked the part, and just
did what I was told. And they would tell me when I was going to go and what I needed to do.
Other than that, I just…
Interviewer: “Alright so how much in advance of the deployment do you get notified that
you're going to go?”
So before our deployment they had told us that, “Alright we‟re going to deploy”. So we kind of
started getting ready, then right before we had a leave scheduled, they said, “Nevermind. It‟s
cancelled, it‟s off” So that wasn't surprising. Before we deployed to Iraq, we had actually
deployed to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina so that's kind of what happened then, they‟re
like, “We heard the news that this is happening. Word came that we might go.” So like we were
going and then we‟re not going, and then we‟re going again and then we‟re not going. And the
news says we‟re going, so like “Hey, we must be going”. (00:23:53)
�Interviewer: “Well, talk about the Katrina deployment. So you go to New Orleans
after the hurricane, so what did you do there? What did you see?”
So for Hurricane Katrina, that‟s definitely another one of those memories that will stick with me
for awhile because I had, I haven‟t told my wife this story yet, but I had met a girl, I had gone
when I went on leave, one of my buddies from New York had met a girl. So she had come down
because we had a four-day weekend scheduled. We were going to see if this was something we
wanted to explore or if it was something that “it was nice to meet ya” but she had come down, got
there early Friday morning so we help my buddy move and we kind of have the night to
ourselves, kind of talking, getting to know each other. Get the call in the morning, “hey, get to
work „cause you‟re on division ready force one. We are deploying to New Orleans.” Alright so
we grabbed our bags, we go. We‟re gone all day Friday and we have our bags packed. I remember
building the pallet of our rucksacks and things like that and watching some of my buddies getting
on the airplane to go to New Orleans and sitting there with a couple other NCOs and [things like
that]. You‟re just sittin‟, waitin‟ and we‟ll be on the next plane to go. And all of a sudden we see
these guys coming off the airplane and we get a call like, “hey, get the rucksacks off. We‟re not
going. So we roll back into my buddie‟s apartment late that night, I can‟t remember if it was 11 or
1. So I potentially come home, see this girl, talk for a little bit and the just pass out. And, again
the next thing, I mean the next day I think it was like we start doing some things, like. “hey, get
back into work, we‟re really going this time.” So that time we really did go. Packed our bags, got
on the airplanes, got to Hurricane Katrina. One of the things they kept telling us was like, “Make
sure your rucksacks are full of water like we don't care if you got enough clean underwear but we
don't know how much good water there is. We don't know when we'll get clean water.” So we‟re
carrying around, I mean, ginormous, heavy rucksacks, load up on the plane. As soon as we get off
the plane to get to the airport there is just pallet upon pallet upon pallet of clean bottled water–so
we were prepared but thankfully we didn‟t have to like ration our water for the next couple weeks.
Got from the airport, shuffled around. Ended up getting put up on the Coast Guard base there in
New Orleans. Somebody pointed one of our guys, like “that‟s” your building, clean it up, make it
your area. So we spent the first couple days just making the area where we could live. Potentially
just set up some tents and “alright, this is where we‟re going to live for a while” Did that for a few
days, and kind of did the hurry-up and wait for them. We‟re sittin‟ there for a second like alright,
now what are we gonna do. Then finally we got connected and like “alright, we‟re going to go out
on missions. We‟re going to hook up with…” I think we ended up hooking up with a couple
Coast Guard guys. And they keep telling us “don‟t get in the water, the sewage. Don‟t get in the
water.” So I remember at that time they had made me a temporary radiotelephone operator for my
platoon sergeant. So I‟m following him around, we get the little rubber, zodiac boats. Get that in
the water and Coast Guard guys jump in and start pushing it away from the little, low island of
actual dirt we had and I look at him cause we‟d just been told for days “don‟t get in the water” he
�looks back at me and just goes *shrug*. Starts walking in the water so we got wet right away and
then just ended up patrolling on boats for that the first part of the day. (00:27:54)
Interviewer: “So what was the point of all that?”
We were going out and just looking for people that were stuck in their homes
Interviewer: “Okay.”
Saying like “hey, we can get you back to dry land and we‟ve got some stuff set up. Some people
were like “thanks but no thanks” and then I remember there was a couple other people that we
were able to get back and get to dryland get some aid. End of that first day, I remember there was
a guy and his dog that we got and that one stuck out for me that day. But, just kind of looking
around and, I mean you‟d see just houses flooded. I remember one that will stick in my mind is
there was like a wrought iron fence where somebody had left their dog that it looked like the dog
had been trying to squeeze through and had got his hind-end stuck in the fence and drowned that
way. There was definitely things like that but then after the end of the first day, I mean kind of
soggy and wet and tired. We‟d load the zodiac boats back on the trailer and we had one last one to
go, bunch of us trying to get it on top of the stack. We couldn't quite do it so I go around the back
of boat and I push up and I was just, a wave of the sewage water washes over me. It‟s in my
mouth and you're like oh man, but thankfully I was one of the first guys to get shower. I was
probably 1 of 2 guys that got shower that night. And then we slept the night, and then kind of
went back after the next day. Just kept going through, seeing if we could help people. Another
memory that will stick in my mind for that day, or for that week is, I‟ll tell a sad one first and then
I‟ll tell the happiest one. I remember going into the, not the Superdome or whatever it was, a big
coliseum… (00:30:00)
Interviewer: “Well Superdome was yeah that‟s what they used as kind of a big
concentration area.”
So yeah I remember walking in there, and that it smelled rancid. It was...it looked like a different
country. It looked like something you wouldn‟t see in America. I remember seeing like dirty
diapers there's crap on the wall, human crap on the walls and there were blood smears on the
walls, there‟s like rotting food. It was like something you‟d see in a horror movie. It was just,
whatever went on in there wasn't good for those people. So by the time you went through there, it
was emptied out, and they had been brought to other aid shelters. And now that I‟m talking about
it I‟m remembering more and more memories. So like we went through there, there was nobody
still in there, we got out as fast as we could. On another patrol, I mean, one the reasons we were
brought in was because of looting and things like that. So, you know, we weren't walking around
with loaded guns, but kind of, we were prepared if anything did happen. So we‟re walking
�around; we've got our uniforms on, got our berets on, we‟re walking. We‟re not walking in a
group, but we‟re walking like a military unit. So there‟s a guy here on this side of the road, a guy
here on the other side and staggered the whole way down. I'm in the middle with my platoon
sergeant and I‟ve got this huge radio on with a huge antenna sticking out my back. And we start
walking up to this checkpoint and I‟ll never remember, I mean I'll never forget, this cop like sees
us coming like puts his hand on his gun and like “Stop! Who are you? Stop! Who are you?” and
my platoon sergeant looks at me this time and is like “Is this guy serious?”. He didn‟t say that out
loud but he kind of looks at me and “We‟re with the Army…?” and like the cop puts his gun
away then he gave us, he gave my platoon sergeant and I a little tour of New Orleans and it was
one of the most surreal moment of my life. So we‟re driving through and trying to get the lay of
the land and he‟s like “Here's this statue” like giving us a tourist like of so-and-so jazz musician
and like “Oh, there's the dead body” and keep driving on and kind of just weird stuff like that. It
was just tourist things you know like “oh, we got somebody here” and very weird experience. So
we got done with that. went back home at the end of the night and kind of just went through that
grind over and over again. (00:32:47)
Interviewer: “So how long did you stay down there?‟
Months, three weeks? I'm not sure on the time frame. It‟s one of those moments in my life where
it's just like the days kind of blended into one another so there's different moments highlighted but
I couldn‟t tell you if we were there for...we were there for more than a week but If it was two
weeks, three weeks, a month, I don't know.
Interviewer: “So you were keeping pretty long days and you're out there walking
around a lot so you get kind of pretty well worn out. And did you have, I mean Coast Guard
station, did you have actual bunks and things to sleep in or were you just..”
No, no bunks they just gave us a little place where we could set up camp and where we set up
camp.
Interviewer: “And there you were, alright so you come back from that and how much of a
gap was there you think between that deployment and actually going to Iraq?”
I feel like that was pretty quick turnaround, I mean, I feel like we got back, kind of got a few
things done and started to prepare to deploy. So yeah we got back Floyd [?]. “ Hey, you‟re
deploying” then getting ready to go home, “oh you‟re not deploying” So I‟d go home, come
home. I got my nipples pierced and like “Oh, we‟re not deploying!” Seemed like a great idea at
the time.
Interviewer: “Okay.”
�Um call all my friends, family, tell them I‟m not deploying. Get back to base...oh by the way, we
really are deploying so not going to have a fresh wound going into a foreign country so took the
nipple rings out, called my family and friends, said “hey, we are deploying some time within the
next few months.“ (00:34:38)
Interviewer: “Alright, so now what is the actual deployment processing? Do you go
anywhere else to train or to prepare you for being in Iraq first or did they just load you up
at Fort Bragg can send you overseas?”
Oh yeah. We went down to Louisiana to do, I can‟t remember the acronym they used for it but we
went down there for like a month and did some training and that was more focused on the
situation in Iraq so got some guys that were recently back and talking about different things on
like how to look for IED 's. You know, trying to set situations to get used to the different culture
which, I mean, you can‟t get used to it until you‟re there but getting used to people walking
around and women walking around with their faces covered and just different things like that.
Interviewer: “Okay, so there is some [special] orientation or something because you really
haven't had any specialized training at this point that was geared toward the Middle East.”
No, not especially. I mean like as a weeklong training course a lot of that's just, you know, the
guys that been there already trying to teach us what they've learned and building that unit
cohesiveness and just. You know, our training activities were definitely more geared towards
what was going on in Iraq but, there's nothing like we did in Louisiana before then.
Interviewer: “Okay, now do they have people who were sort of playing Iraqis or whatever?
Did you get the practice encountering civilians or things like that or were they just telling
you about that stuff?”
No, in Louisiana they do, I mean...you're interacting with civilians, but I mean, it‟s just another
private dressed up in , you know, different type of clothing. So, I mean, some of those guys
that were playing the civilians hadn‟t actually been there, so they‟re, you‟re doing your best to
create the situation and, you know as best as you can. (00:36:40)
Interviewer: “Alright, so now what's the actual process for getting into Iraq?”
Get on a plane, fly, I can‟t remember if we stopped in the states, but we flew to Germany, layover
there. Get back on the plane; we‟re only there for a hot second. They didn‟t want us there for too
long. Back on the plane and then flew into Kuwait. Fom Kuwait we took some tour buses. I can‟t
remember...I remember getting on the tour buses like driving through Kuwait and you‟re trying to
�take as much as you can in; there‟s light and it‟s dark. But then like driving through the desert on
these tour buses and nothing the pictures I‟ll look at occasionally, but we got stuck! Well you‟re
driving through a big beach so like this big tour bus gets stuck in the middle of the desert. We all
pile off the tour bus and we just sit there and wait till another tour bus comes to pick us up and
hopefully that one doesn't get stuck. I don‟t remember how long that trip took but eventually we
got to where we needed to be. And yeah, I can‟t remember if we...I doubt we took the tour buses
all the way to Tikrit but there's a gap in my memory between the tour bus and how we got to
C.O.B. Speicher. I don‟t know if we got into another military base and took a quick flight, but that
sounds right. But eventually we ended up at C.O.B. Speicher in Tikrit.
Interviewer: “C.O.B. Speicher?”
Yeah, command operating base…?
Interviewer: “Okay.”
Goodness, i don‟t remember what the acronym actually stands for. Something operating base.
Interviewer: “Okay, command operating base makes some sense; it has a “c” to start with.
And now, were there other units based there that you were joining or was this kind of you
were taking it over or what was the deal?”
So C.O.B. Speicher was actually a really big base. It‟s actually an airfield, an Iraqi Air Force or
Army airfield before the war so it‟s pretty built up. There was all sorts of different units there, but
for my company, because we were so far spread that our company was detached and attached to
an artillery unit. We‟re not really using, well at that time we weren‟t really using a lot of artillery
in Iraq so we were kind of tasked with being the infantry unit for that whole area of operations
and doing our best to train the artillery guys on, essentially how to do more infantry tactics. How
to, you know; do route secure, how to do security for high-value people and yeah, that‟s kind of
what we were tasked with for that area. I don‟t remember the name of the Artillery unit we were
attached to but that was a pretty big base. (00:39:45)
Interviewer: “Okay so are you going off the base a lot and into the surrounding area, or are
you staying on the base, or what's happening?”
No, we definitely tried not to stay on the base; too many rules. But we did a few different things.
There was the provisional (00:40:05] reconstruction team that was working with the local
government and local officials to try to build some stability and structure and then also to
negotiate like, this is my understanding so it might not be perfectly clear, I didn‟t get told
everything, but “We‟ll give you this money but it's for this” and then kind of following up and
�doing our best to make sure they use the money for what it was given to them for. And this would
kind of build relationships. And then, for that we just, we‟d convoy out of the base, bring them to
the governance building, set up a perimeter and then full security for however long they were
going to talk to you for that day. Just sit there and talk and try not to be complacent or take your
eyes off them, make sure nothing happens. (00:40:55)
Interviewer: “How long was the deployment?”
The deployment ended up being 15 months, so we were part of the surge that kind of happened
towards the end, so we got extended for three months.
Interviewer: “So you initially go out there through the surge, hasn't started yet, now was
there much hostile activity going on?”
In our area it was relatively quiet, I mean there‟s still guys taking potshots at us and trying to
blow us up. But, I mean, I feel like our area was fairly quiet for the time we were there.
Interviewer: “What impression did you have of the Iraqis themselves?”
I mean, what I tell everybody is, I mean yeah there‟s people that didn‟t like us, it's a different
culture but, you know. I am more than. more positive than ever that 98/99% of people, all they
want to do is, you know, put a roof over their heads, feed their kids, and have their kids lead a
good life. I mean, that was most people that I ran into over there. There was definitely, it's a
different, very different culture. Different level of there‟s very open corruption. I guess just... they
don't try to hide it very much. And, wasn‟t healthy to become the police chief. I know one of the
guys that we were working with at the time got killed in his driveway and like the guy before him
got killed in his driveway. There was Iraqi police checkpoints where there was times we would
find an IED and we‟d find the wire and we‟d go follow it back and “Oh, it‟s an Iraqi police‟s little
checkpoint box” and “Oh! we had no idea!” or it‟d be a house that was 50 feet from where they
were stationed, [sure he didn‟t] (00:42:43), so I mean there's mostly good people but there is
also some different stuff.
Interviewer: “Okay, well did you see much of the Iraqi military or are they someplace
else?”
Yeah, we did do some interactions with the Iraqi military. One of things is after, I don‟t remember
if it was three-months, I don‟t remember if it was six-months into our deployment, but we lost
some of our friends. So what we did is after that was one of the areas that we were operating in,
to secure the area more, we set up a patrol base. And that patrol base ended up being in the Iraqi
Army compound. So they gave us an old warehouse that we set up shop in and then we just kind
�of worked with them to do security and do different training missions. That was definitely a big
part of our goal was to train these guys so they‟re confident and competent and could kind of
takeover their own stuff. (00:43:43)
Interviewer: “Okay, and how did that go?”
It was a mix. You know, it came, coming from our unit in our military where it was more
established and there‟s a different level of discipline. I mean, I don't, it seems like there was some
guys that were in the Iraqi Army that were just there because there's no other jobs. There
definitely wasn‟t the same level of discipline but there were also some really good guys. The
name escapes me at the time, but one of the colonels in the Iraqi Army that we work with was
really solid dude and was trying to build it up and like both were kind of men that we looked for
to hopefully build on what he was able to do and keep getting them stronger.
Interviewer: “Now would you do a lot of patrolling in built-up areas or towns and villages
or were you a lot in the countryside, kind of where were you?”
I was both so I mean Tikrit was definitely a bigger city and we did definitely patrolling through
there and then on the other side of the river there was, I‟m not going to say the names right but Ad
Dawr and Hujamah [?](00:44:53). They were two little smaller towns. I don‟t...I think Hujamah
was a little bit north and that was kind of, seemed almost like an apartment block
and then you got Ad Dawr to the South which had...was more like a small town, small city kind of
feel but there‟d be other times where we get some information they say like “There‟s this bad guy
out here, gotta go check these houses”. So I‟ll never forget that we had a really good Lt that prior
to this said “Yeah, that was really solid”. I remember sitting there and like getting ready to go
somewhere and our Lt would point like we gotta go that way. You‟d look that way and you‟d see
nothing but desert so you‟d end up driving for “x” amount of hours and all of a sudden you‟d
come up to this little compound that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere and go knocking on
doors. Yup so there was definitely a good mix of being in the city to being in the middle of
nowhere.
Interviewer: “Ok so just as to reference, “L” “t” refers to lieutenant?”
Yes.
Interviewer: “Ok so he‟s your platoon leader basically?”
Yup.
�Interviewer: “Okay and then we go ahead and we‟re knocking on doors. So you're
searching houses, you‟re trying to find somebody?”
Yeah, so there‟s, I mean there was two kinds knocking on doors that we did where we‟re actually
knocking on doors and talking with people or other times where we would do a raid where we
were kicking in their doors cause we suspected, you know, some bad guys were there. (00:46:22)
Interviewer: “And were there rules for how you went about doing that?”
Yeah, there was definitely rules of engagement, so I mean, I served with good guys who didn‟t
want to kill anybody unless we had to. So I mean, that‟s the thing, you never know how good
your intelligence is. So I mean, there‟s times you‟d be, you‟re going to these homes, I mean, so
sometimes you have to be thoughtful because you're going to a home with these kids. There‟s
definitely one house in particular I remember going in and the front of the home had this big
metal door. So whenever you‟re going to do a raid on a house you want to be in it quick before
they know you‟re there, but we didn‟t get in that house very quick. So we got a sledgehammer
and a crowbar and hit the door and *gong* like the whole neighborhood had to be awake. So like
by the time we got in the house, everybody's just on high alert. We get in to the first room and
there‟s one of the older ladies of the house that‟s just, she‟s losing her mind crying, you know she
thinks there‟s someone there to take out her family. So we see her and then out of the corner my
eye I see somebody come out of her room or something like that so turn and there was just a kid
there so I‟m like “What the heck is going on?”. So I mean, you always had to be careful when you
did something like that. (00:47:52)
Interviewer: “Okay if you're going to a place where you‟re not breaking down the door,
what was the procedure? If you actually knock on a door and expect someone to open it,
what was going to happen or how would you behave?”
Usually for those kinds of ,missions I was more on the periphery like watching, making things
happen.
Interviewer: “Okay.”
It would be my lieutenant with our interpreter that would you know, go knock on the door the
interpreter would talk with them and then just like “Hey, we‟re looking for these people or we‟re
looking to do this…” you know trying to build some relationships. A lot of the stuff that Iraqis
would've been done more through, like groups. So they have the sheikhs (00:48:40) that are
overseeing like a group of people. That was really key if you could get the sheikh on your side
and work with them. You‟d see a lot less roadside bombs, you‟d see a lot less people shootin‟ at
�ya whereas the U.S. (00:48:55) in particular is very friendly that you‟d be a little more laxed on,
you know, making sure people weren‟t tryin‟ to kill ya.
Interviewer: “Alright and so during the time you were there, there were parts, there were
areas in Iraq where there was a lot of violence and there were a lot of IEDs, there was a lot
of trouble and Al Qaeda resistance and things like that. And that brought on sort of the
whole surge strategy and the idea and principle that involved having small units kind of
going out in the community and staying out in the community and securing different areas
which would expose you to more attacks but also directly confronted enemy fighters. But
another piece of that was also figuring out who the local power brokers were and connecting
with the sheikhs and trying to give them things that they wanted in exchange for their help.
Now in the area that you were in. how did the surge strategy play out? What aspects of that
did you see?” (00:49:50)
For us, I didn't see a lot of change. I think we were kind of already doing that so we didn‟t see any
more units come into our area at the time but definitely was, you know, it was a lot of work with
the local government like, “Hey we‟re nice, we‟re not trying to rule over you. Don‟t blow us up,
please.” You know, what are your problems? Just like you said, if we could avoid getting blown
up or doing anything like that we really try and do that. So yeah, that was one of the reasons we
set up the patrol base too was we realized that being on C.O.B. Speicher we were on the other
side of the river and there‟s this whole, you know, whole other area that we had to go into and be
a part of that we weren‟t [...] (00:50:36) on the ground, we couldn‟t do security.
Just getting over to that area took a day because we drove slow. You‟re not driving at 80 miles an
hour, you‟re driving at like 25, 30. So we set up that so we could be in that area and be a part of it.
(00:50:51)
Interviewer: “Now did your unit take any casualties while you were there?”
Yeah, we lost my one buddy that was coming back from the patrol base back to C.O.B. Speicher
one day. We were just driving back, saw some different IEDs, some of our guys got out of the
trucks, followed the wires back to the shack and just all of a sudden you just hear this *boom*
and he was gone. We had another guy that had just got to our unit. He actually shipped over to us
in Iraq, I mean he was maybe eight-, he had to be eighteen if he was deployed with us. He‟ll never
be the same. He‟s not dead but he‟s not himself anymore. So that was a tough one. He was a kid
too that never felt like talking with him and talking with some of the other guys that
were with him on the rear deployment, the guys that stayed back to make sure we‟re getting
everything we need and stuff they squared away at home. It seems that he was pushed by his dad
to go in. So like his dad pushed him, he wasn‟t like “Oh, I‟m ready and happy to be here”. Good
guy, would've been happy to serve with him for years but you know for him to be in country for
�like maybe a week and that's it. You know, that‟s something that‟s tough to talk about. I‟ve talked
about it a few times it's gotten, I don't break down crying anymore but that‟s something I‟ll
remember for the rest of my life. That‟s something that pushes me to be better so.
Interviewer: “But, on the whole were incidents pretty rare, were you actually hit, or would
you hit IED 's that wouldn‟t do very much damage or did you just not get that many?”
We definitely got a few, I couldn‟t tell you all the numbers. Personality, I was blown up three
times. There‟s definitely a couple that stick in my mind that happened to me personally. One was
I just got back from mid-tour leave and we were driving down the service road and, I was driving,
and we hit an IED. You know, thought I lost another friend. Thankfully, he was alright. We didn‟t
lose anybody but by that time in the war and where we were at we were driving around a normal,
small tank. The Humvees had so much armor plating added to them and
A big glass armor windows that we could take a lot of damage. But yeah, I remember “Chris,
Chris, are you alright?” and finally he‟s like “Yeah” and just... *gestures / sigh of relief* He was
fine.
Interviewer: “So the IEDs those would normally be while you were in vehicles they would go
off or would you get any even while you were on patrol?”
We didn't, I mean, we lost my one friend because they had dismounted but a lot of the stuff we‟d
hit would be set up to get us on the roads when we were driving. One thing that we had talked
about, the Louisiana training, and one of the questions they ask is how would you identify like
what would be out of place and I‟d say “well, trash on the road”. And they- I remember the guy
stopping us and saying like, “In America, yeah you‟re not going to see a lot of trash in the roads.
If you see like a big garbage bag or something it can be out of place. In Iraq, that's not going to be
the case”. And it‟s true, I mean, there was trash all up and down side of the road so it wasn't as
easy as saying, “Oh, like hey, there‟s this bag of trash, what could that be?” It was, you know,
there could‟ve been a pile of trash that was already there that they put something over and the
roads had been blown up so many times that there might be a pothole that was fixed and you're
used to it. Well, they might pick it up and put a new bomb in that hole and then all of a sudden,
“Oh hey, they‟re blowing us up, again”. I don‟t know if I answered your question fully.
(00:54:54)
Interviewer: “Yeah, so basically there is a certain amount of stress or tension there
whenever time you go out. There‟s a prospect that something could happen even if most of
the time it doesn't. But you said you got blown up three times so were you just in vehicles
that got hit with IEDs each time?”
Yeah. yeah the second time, the other time that I really remember was I would‟ve been in the gun. We
were driving back after a night raid. Driving back to base and then all of a sudden just...I don‟t remember
�hearing the noise. I remember all of a sudden being pushed back and like not being able to see for a second
and you‟re like, “What in the hell just happened?” And then I was in the rear of the truck so like I‟m trying
to get my gun back in working order in case you're going to try to start shooting at us next. You know.
trying to get the gun going, we‟ve got a flat tire, it just happens like that. You know, I remember thankfully
we were in the armored humvees because we get back and there‟s a piece of metal that was probably about
*gestures* that long and about that thick that was stuck in the glass that had it been a little bit higher, had
it been going a little bit stronger, I wouldn‟t be here talking to you today.
Interviewer: “Okay aside from IEDs did you, I mean, actually have much other kind of enemy
contact or was it just that or did like...were you ever in a base, for instance, that got hit with a
mortar round or anything like that?”
I mean C.O.B. Speicher was so big that when we were there...if it happened it usually wasn‟t
close to us. Patrol base never really got hit. The one benefit of being the only infantry unit
in the area was that the guys there are paying attention and watching. So I think that they realize
like who was a well-trained infantry and who were the artillery guys. So I mean, they didn‟t seem
to mess with us a lot that we had a different mentality that if you shot at us what we were going to
do next. I remember the one day that we did kind of have like a little ambush or whatever set up
on us. I‟m sittin‟ with a gun in the Humvee and we‟re just doing our normal routine; check in at
the different checkpoints and I making a jelly cracker, and we got another guy out pulling
security. So I‟m like going to get this ready and snack on it while I‟m watching and get my jelly
cracker ready, sit down, my seat breaks, bust my butt and I was kind of sore, trying to like rig up
my chair again so I can sit. And I had my little swing or whatever you want to call it and the next
thing you know you hear shots coming in and you‟re like “Alright, what‟s going on?” At that
moment it seemed like it took a while but same time it's almost over and done. That was the day
that we had, I don‟t remember what the guy‟s rank was but, he hadn‟t been outside the wire too
many times so he‟s out taking pictures and kind of wandered off by himself a little too far and he
got saved by his body armor. That‟s one of the things that we had received before going over,
with some little side pouches that protects us and he got hit right there. Another guy we were
with, frickin‟ fool, ran out and dragged him back so thankfully neither of them got killed. But
yeah, just little stuff like that. Usually they pop shots at us. (00:58:33)
Interviewer: “So there was an individual sniper and then fire a couple of shots and then
vanish or would you get a more...did you ever get a more extended firefight at all or…?”
No they never took us on head-on, I mean, they couldn‟t have.
Interviewer: “Okay, now you said that you‟re there, in principle your deployment would've
been at most a year, like normally?”
Yeah, it‟s supposed to be 12 months.
�Interviewer: “Yeah, okay [we know the deployment] (0058:59) gets extended, what‟s the
response in the unit when you find out you're staying?”
I mean, we weren‟t happy about it but it wasn't a complete morale killer. I think the toughest part
were for the guys who had families. They had gone on leave really early. So I had a buddy that,
we had only been in country like 3 months before he took his leave so I mean he‟s going to go a
year without seeing his wife and kid. That was really tougher for me, I didn't have, I mean I had
family but I was a single guy and no kids waiting on me so. And I was one of the last people to
take leave so I kind of take the risk on the other end. I mean, I think I was only supposed to be in
country three more months by the time we left with them. It worked out for me because I took it
at the end so.
Interviewer: “Alright, now did you have a sense that you were making any progress or did
things seem to be the same when you left as they were when you got there?”
You know, as lower enlisted, I didn‟t see everything. Hopefully we made a difference in some
people‟s life but it‟s going take more than us staying there for a few months or a few years. And
It‟s If we‟re trying to change something- If you want to do big things, it takes a big amount of
time. Like we talked about with the surge, to win hearts and minds and to become a part of the
communities, can‟t do that here. So I didn‟t feel like we made some big changes. I think we
helped hopefully add some stability for hopefully the good people that were in the area to start
cleaning things up and put some infrastructure in but, I mean It‟s just you can‟t build relationships
in just a year. Especially when they‟ve seen it for the last six. They know that you're going to be
gone in “x” amount of months and then somebody else is going to come in and they‟re going to
have to restart the conversation. Started to make a big change doing things like that. (01:53:00)
Interviewer: “Alright, so now you‟re finishing your deployment kind of late in „07; now
how much time did you have left on your enlistment at that point?”
So we got back in November-ish and I think I had about a year, a year or so left on my enlistment.
So, got back, I was thinking about reenlisting. I enjoyed the infantry, I enjoyed jumping out of
airplanes but at that time I realized there was more I wanted to do. I wanted to do some more,
thinking kind of stuff, looking at military intelligence or whatever that might be. So I was in the
process of getting my security clearance squared away, I found out “Hey you‟re being shipped off
to Fort Hood”. I tried to protest. So the difficulty there is I didn‟t want to go. I wanted to start this
next phase of my career, but if you decline an order they would‟ve let me stay but then I couldn‟t
have reenlisted. So I tried to like “Well I don‟t have the required time”. You‟re supposed to have
like two years left on your contract or something like that, and they‟re like “Oh, we‟ll waive it,
don't worry about it”, like “okay” so off to Fort Hood I went. And then that's when I realized that,
I mean, there‟s a lot of good guys that serve there and I don't want to diminish them or what
�they‟ve done but there was a different mentality in the 82nd. There was a different level of
discipline and the things that I saw that when I got to Fort Hood that, just my time to be done.
Interviewer: “Now what unit was Fort Hood?”
That would‟ve been unit of the First Cavalry. I didn‟t get too attached, by that time I was just
disillusioned. I realized this wasn't going to be the rest of my career that, you know, I was just a
cog in the machine. It‟s a great thing the Army has a overall huge organization that‟s hard to run
but it just wasn't for me and I was ready to be done. (01:03:09)
Interviewer: “Alright, now let‟s backup again a little bit. Are there other incidents or
memories or impressions from the time in Iraq that kind of you...stand out for you that you
haven‟t brought into the story here yet?”
Oh goodness, no that‟s the one thing, like sittin‟ here today like when we talk about New Orleans
or things that kind of you remember then talk about Iraq there‟s different things. There's always
different war movies and things like that and I remember seeing Jarhead after I had deployed and
not the greatest movie but there's one moment where he‟s talking about his time deployed, the
character, and he‟s like “ It‟s like 99% you do nothing and then there‟s just 1% of just craziness”
And that‟s exactly what it‟s like, you‟re just...there's so many days and hours and time for just
sittin‟ in the middle of the desert staring at nothing I felt like and then there‟s these brief little
moments of craziness that get highlighted. You know, there‟s good moments and bad moments
you can know the guys that, for me it was all guys that served next to. You know, you‟re sharing
memories and you know, just doing little things. Whether it‟s you know, you found a way to
sneak a little booze into camp and you know you‟re having a drink and you‟re trying to let loose a
little bit but not too crazy and also not get caught so you don't have a whole, you know searchlight
on your unit. Just little moments like that. (01:04:39)
Interviewer: “What kind of, actually something we should‟ve gotten into earlier, what kind
of living facilities do you have, I mean when you're on C.O.B. Speicher for instance? You
know are you setting up barracks or things like that or were you just sleeping in bags,
or…?”
Oh man, by the time we got to C.O.B. Speicher, that place was a resort. They had a Burger King
and a whole bunch of other junk that you could go to. A big ol‟ chow hall and that was always
nice coming back from our month-long patrols and our whatever it would be and you‟d come
back in dirty and you‟d have this chow hall guard telling you you can‟t come into the hall because
you‟re dirty. You just look at him like “We will roll through you right now”. We‟ve been out for a
week, we‟re dirty, nasty, we understand it but we‟re hungry. We could roll through the chow hall
and you‟d get pizza, chicken, and whatever the hell else you wanted, that was definitely a resort.
�You‟d go back to, they call them CHUS, I don‟t know if I ever knew what that acronym was,
something housing unit. There‟s like a single, wide trailer split in two and three guys were in a
half and it had air conditioning and then one of the guys I served with, he was from Guam.
So that's definitely a tight knit community that we were able to...I say we, I just followed him
around and carried stuff. Santiago, went to some of his family that had been prior [?] deployed.
We had a satellite hooked up so we had some TV and we had an Xbox like that was, that was not
a hardship duty while we were at C.O.B. Speicher, but then when we did our time out in patrol
base Woodcock that, that was definitely a warehouse where we had some showers and we had to,
you‟d lose water pressure sometimes. So like you‟d lose power because somebody in the power
plant was trying to give us grief. So then our lieutenant would call up to the company command
and this company commander would call up and somebody would have to go out and give the
guys at the power station a little trouble. (01:06:41)
Interviewer: “Did you have contact with home? Did you have e-mail or Internet or anything
like that?”
Oh yeah, when we were on patrol there on C.O.B Speicher they had a little phone hut set up so we
could call and there were Internet stations but because we had Santiago's connections that we had
little satellite Internet in our room. Wasn‟t always fastest but I mean you‟d do some emails and
certain things like that. I can‟t remember all the different lower restrictions and I don‟t remember
emailing a lot while I was over there. I'm just, I think that‟s something they kept a pretty tight lid
on just for security reasons.
Interviewer: “So little different world from one that involves written letters and that kind of
thing”
Yeah.
Interviewer: “Alright, anything else out of the Iraq period that you want to bring into the
story?”
No, I think, you know, the biggest things that I wanted, you know I look at and I talk with people
about Iraq is that, you know kind of like I mentioned that this long-term change and its a lesson I
learned in my life that if you want to do big things you got to dedicate a big amount of time. No
matter where we‟re at in the world, there‟s good people. I mean there‟s very few people that want
to go out and murder, kill, and massacre people and rule the world. I truly believe that there's
good people and that's how we‟ll make a difference is by building those relationships, having
those conversations and building a better world. (01:08:11)
Interviewer: “Okay, so now we‟re going to go back. So you‟ve gone, you‟re at Fort Hood,
you‟ve basically decided, okay I'm going to get out. I guess one other thing there was when
�you come back from Iraq, do they do any kind of debriefing for you or do they talk to you at
all about transitioning back to being in the states? Or do they kind of just bring your back
and leave you to your own devices?”
It's a little bit of both. They get back and that‟s one thing they talk about, especially to the guys
that had been deployed and then had successful marriages that watching out for the guys that had
deployed for the first time. That they've been through it and watching out because you don‟t have
to deal with, there‟s a lot of stuff you don‟t have to deal with when you‟re deployed. You don‟t
have to deal with the kids crying so like, making sure that those guys are doing well and that's not
necessarily like big Army but that's just the guys in your unit taking care of each other. You do
get kind of put on a month lock down where you‟re not supposed to go on leave or anything, keep
everybody pretty close to home. There‟s a couple times I almost got in an accident, even after I'd
been home for a while because when we were in Iraq, we owned the roads. We weren‟t ever
going fast but, stop line didn‟t matter. We‟d put on our sirens and you‟d stop or you stopped. So
there‟s a couple times that I come up to an intersection, quick, brief, make sure nobody's coming,
all of a sudden I blow through a red light. There‟s a couple times that I had some close calls. They
try to keep you close to home and give you that chance to kind of reintegrate but there‟s nothing
like the one step programs just like you‟re here, you're staying close until this time period.
(01:10:00)
Interviewer: “So once you decide that you are going out and you're not reenlisting and so
forth, is there an exit process?”
Yeah, there‟s definitely lots of red tape. Just had some good friends that had kind of told me
beforehand like, you‟re going to have times where you get your records and you got to bring your
records from one place to the other. before you do that make a copy for yourself because it's if
you talk to other men and women that have tried to get their military records or health records
from the military after they‟re out, it's an absolute nightmare. So you get given this checklist, you
go to this briefing and then you just start checking stuff off a list; turn in your old uniform, turn in
your rucksack, check and somebody signs off. You just walk around with your little folder and go
“Here you go”, sign, check, okay I‟m good. Like, oh I gotta do this, Just go through the whole
rigmarole. There‟s that one day really, the one last stamp and put it down and they stamp it and
like, “yay, I‟m free!”
Interviewer: “Alright, so what do you do after you get out?” (01:11:06)
For me, I got out of the military „09. I got in my Jeep and I drove straight back from Texas. I had
a friend come down and ride with me but just straight trip back home to Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Got back and my original plan was to kind of take a second. I was fortunate that I had not used all
of my leave so I got a good chunk of change from that and had saved up a little bit of money. I
was going to take some time off and go to school right away. That didn‟t happen because I got
�home and at the time I was 23, all my friends by that time are either finishing up college or with
their careers so it wasn‟t like before I left where it‟s like “Hey, its Tuesday at noon, you want to
go do something?” You know, I‟m sittin‟ there living with my mom going “do do do do doo”
(melodically) and started ended looking for a job and I end up working with DT energy, so the gas
company here in Michigan. I worked for them in Muskegon doing meter reading and loved the
job. I would've stayed there for the rest of my career there; good guys, good company, they took
really good care of me, but then ended 2010. That‟s when I found out about that post 9/11 G.I.
Bill. So that kind of got me to go back to school. It was still a tough decision, you know, like
knowing that I would‟ve had a good life but the post 9/11 G.I. Bill with them paying tuition
directly to the school, giving me a book stipend and giving me a housing loan, so I didn‟t have to
worry about going to school full time and working full-time. Went back to school. That would‟ve
been 2011 that I started. Started off at Grand Rapids Community College, figured things out there
again and then started at Grand Valley in 2012, 13, whenever that was. Graduated from Grand
Valley in 2015 and then that's when I was a student there is, they pushed me to do internships and
ended up doing an internship at the March of Dimes and that‟s when I figured out that‟s where I
needed to be was in the nonprofit sector. I loved...the part about the army that I really loved was
service and that's what I found being back in nonprofit sector so that's what I do now. I work for
nonprofits and I raise money so we can do great things. (01:13:31)
Interviewer: “Alright, now you had mentioned that you had not been a particularly good
student in high school and things like that. Did you become a better student somewhere
along the way or how or when does that happen?”
Yeah, I think definitely realizing that, you know, the plans I had in high school, that‟s not tough. I
mean, that definitely helped a lot. Like I've been through things that will serve me for the rest of
life that I can just be like, meh, it‟s not so bad. I‟ve got a roof over my head, my bills are paid,
and I‟ve got food in my belly, so I‟m doing alright. I think the military was definitely a big part
for me in those experiences I had. You know, I had a lot of good guys that pushed me to do good
things, in the military and outside. So I think for me, going back to community college kind of
helped me figure it out. You know, I thought, “I'm 24, I know what I'm going to do.” I didn‟t have
a clue what I was going to do going back to college, so that gave me time to figure out. Didn‟t
have the greatest GPA leaving community college, but then going to Grand Valley, they allowed
me to start over with a fresh slate. That was kind of my moment of realizing where...you know,
when I joined the military, there was always the option that I could come home, when I joined DT
energy there was always the option that I could quick go back or do something else, well now
after having my life experience in being at Grand Valley there wasn't like...if Grand Valley
doesn't work out I can just go back and work at DTE. Like. I could try and get back in there but
there was no like, what's next. Like, I've fully dedicate myself something. So having that
realization then having my experience of like, “This isn‟t so bad! You show up, you write some
papers and you just pay attention and do what you need to do.” It‟s not so bad. (01:15:21)
�Interviewer: “So some of...so you are taking things out of that Army experience that you
now get to apply in the rest your life or at least gives you that sort of perspective on things.”
Oh yeah, there‟s days I hate to admit it, you know, there‟s kind of the...I don‟t know what the
right word for it is but the stereotypical guy, “Oh when I served…” you hear those guys when
you‟re in and you‟re like, “Yeah, sure”. Now I‟m to that point now I'm like realizing all these
things I learned about working for a company, setting strategy, setting goals, staying focused and
kind of how to organize, and sometimes just little things that I don't realize. One of things that
when I was in was I was always required to carry a notebook and pencil with me. Well now that
I‟m back in the corporate world and you talk with people when you‟re out and about, stuff comes
to you at random moments, having a notebook and a pen, and sometimes its a cell phone now, it
serves you well and you don't lose track of things. So there's things big and small that I‟ve taken
from and sometimes I'm like that guy, “Well when I was in... “ or “I learned this from the Army”
and it‟s like, it‟s a fine line.
Interviewer: “But it really did make a difference in terms of helping you become the person
you became.”
Yes
Interviewer: “Alright.”
That‟s one thing that I've talked about to some of the younger men and women that come and ask
me questions is, there's guys that I served with that came in saying, “The Army will change me”
and that‟s not, the right mindset is “The Army gave me the opportunity to change myself. I was
able to leave home, I was able to break out of that box that was already built around me” and say
like “Who do I want to be?” and “There's all these people that don't know me so I can be this
man” and that's the greatest expenses that I‟ve been able to take away is, I was able to become the
man I wanted to be.
Interviewer: “Alright, well thanks for good stories and thank you very much for coming in
and sharing.”
Thank you, Jim.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
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1914-
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
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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/.
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RHC-27_YeomansK2172V
Title
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Yeomans, Kevin (Interview transcript and video), 2017
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-16
Description
An account of the resource
Kevin Yeomans was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1986. He enlisted immediately after high school in 2004, trained as an infantryman at Fort Benning, Georgia, and was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and served in B Company, 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment. His unit was scheduled for deployment to Iraq in 2005, but first took a detour to New Orleans to help with relief work after Hurricane Katrina, where they spent several weeks patrolling flooded areas and then providing security in the city. Not long after returning from that assignment, the unit deployed to Iraq and were based at COB Speicher near Tikrit, where they conducted patrols and searched houses for al Qaeda supporter. They took some casualties from IEDs and snipers, but saw no major firefights. The unit returned home in 2007 after 15 months in the field. Yeomans was eventually reassigned to the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas, and was discharged in 2009.
Creator
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Yeomans, Kevin
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
Iraq War, 2003-2011--Personal narratives, American: United States Army
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project collection, (RHC-27)</a>
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a>
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Grand Valley State University Libraries. Allendale, Michigan
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
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video/x-m4v
application/pdf
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cde9454ea843b5e4cedff7900660fa93.mp4
e59ecdccd91e71b52b4103a3a5c06ace
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/20e6ba79c02f49e84f962babbdf8eb6e.pdf
ba684b494030b0b88790996a728a3d3b
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Clare Yenor
(00:56:59)
(00:10) Background Information
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Clare was born on a farm in Michigan on March 8, 1921
They later moved to another small town in Michigan where his father was a butcher and
owned his own grocery store
Clare’s father’s appendix ruptured and he died when Clare was just 7 years old
His mother tried to continue running the store for a while, but she was also taking care of
four children
Clare graduated from high school in 1939 and began working on houses
(5:30) Enlistment
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Clare enlisted in the Army in April of 1942
He was inducted in Detroit and then sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma for training
They were marching, following orders, and training in rough terrain
There were many men there from Michigan and the rest were from the South
Clare went through basic training for the first couple of weeks and then went through
artillery training
They trained altogether for 13 weeks
(12:30) Transferred
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Clare was later transferred to the 215th Field Artillery Battalion and they began training
with gliders at Fort Bragg, North Carolina
Clare was part of the first unit to get involved with glider planes during WWII
He spent 1.5 years training in North Carolina
During that time he only had one week leave to come back to Michigan, but at that point
he did meet the woman who would later become his wife
(17:25) Nebraska
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Clare was part of a cadre that was sent to Nebraska to work with the 82nd and 101st
Airborne Divisions
They were training other officers to work with gliders; how to land and carry supplies
Clare worked with C-47 transport planes, loading supplies and jeeps
�• He then began working with a heavy artillery unit
(22:00) Traveling Overseas
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Clare was shipped out of the US right after D-Day in a Liberty Ship from New York
The ship was already slow on top of the zig zag course they had to take to avoid
submarines
They landed in England and then traveled to La Havre, France where they waited for
supplies
Clare was part of a reserve artillery unity of the 3rd Army, answering to General Patton
There were many damaged buildings in France and not many civilians around
Clare had some time on leave in Paris; he visited the amusement park and went to a
burlesque show
He bartered with American cigarettes and stayed in a nice hotel
(26:45) Continuously Moving
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Clare’s unit continuously moved all over France and had to sleep in foxholes
Three men died the first night because they were not sleeping in their fox holes
Clare was the chief of section of a gun section and felt like he was a baby sitter
He did not like his job of keeping track of and watching all the other men
He was also in charge of watching over the ammunition corporal
(32:20) Battle of the Bulge
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Clare was working with very large and loud artillery that could blow one’s ears out
Sometimes they were ordered to fire at will and others they used a timing device
They were working in the Ardennes Forest during the winter and it was very cold; none
of the men have been given the proper winter attire
They were continuously moving and attacked by Germans, who were very fast and
accurate
(38:30) Traveling through the Ardennes
•
•
•
•
•
There were many trucks and other vehicles traveling through the Ardennes carrying guns
and equipment
Many got stuck and could not make it through the icy terrain
Their guns would never freeze up, but they did have to be careful cleaning them
Clare was with the first group to cross the Rhine after the engineers had built pontoon
bridges
He expected lots of resistance, but faced almost none
�(44:55) German Soldiers
•
•
•
•
Most of the German soldiers were just ordinary people that had been forced to fight, but
the SS were very strict and greedy
The SS looked better fed, trained, disciplined, and equipped
After the war most of the German citizens avoided the American soldiers
Clare traveled around Germany in trucks moving German POWs
(49:35) The End of the War
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The government was dividing up men to be sent home based upon how many points they
had earned
Clare had very few points because he had no dependants and did not get wounded
Clare was in Austria when he heard that he could finally go home
He was sent back to France and left on a ship from Marseille
They took a Liberty Ship home and the ride was much nicer than the one to Europe
Clare was discharged shortly after arriving back in the US
He got married that April and worked for Consumers Energy for 30 years before retiring
�������������������������������������
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27_YenorC
Title
A name given to the resource
Yenor, Clare (Interview outline, video, and papers), 2008
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2008-08-07
Description
An account of the resource
Clare Yenor was born in 1921 and lived on a farm in Michigan. He enlisted in the Army in April of 1942. Clare went through basic training in Oklahoma, and after that began artillery training with the 215th Field Artillery Battalion. The 125th was one of the first groups to begin training with glider planes during WWII. Yenor later trained the officers of the 182nd and 101st Airborne Divisions to work with the gliders. He was then assigned to a heavy artillery battalion attached to the 3rd Army in Europe, participating in the Battle of the Bulge, the crossing of the Rhine, and the occupation of Germany and Austria. Photographs, certificates, and medals are addended to the interview outline.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Yenor, Clare
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Army
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Language
A language of the resource
eng
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
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University Libraries. Allendale, Michigan
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/299409470e911ab0e443dfaff83ab24b.m4v
00c04b44418a97a9669657d751674274
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b97df8ab4324a1d97bc113c12eec2649.pdf
74e2e97f9a3d6d776295f950089622eb
PDF Text
Text
Interview Notes
Interview Length (8:13)
David Wyma
US Navy
Pre-Enlistment
Born in South Korea in 1963 (0:15)
Adopted by an American soldier and his wife (0:20)
Enlisted in the Navy the summer after high school (0:30)
Father, 3 brothers and sister have served in the military (0:45)
Went to the Navy because the Air Force recruiter never showed up (1:15)
Training
Boot camp was enjoyable (1:30)
Competition between different companies in different areas (1:45)
Good physical training (2:25)
Not hard to adjust to physical training (2:35)
Enlistment
Served in Norfolk, Virginia, for 3 years, then Iceland for 2 years (3:00)
Flew to Iceland via Iceland Air (3:25)
Stayed in touch with family through phone and mail (4:15)
Had many opportunities for recreation (4:35)
Flew home via commercial airliner (5:25)
Post-Enlistment
Formed several friendships while in Iceland (3:50)
Had no problems adjusting to civilian life (5:40)
College began several weeks after he got out of the military (5:50)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
WymaD
Title
A name given to the resource
Wyma, David (Interview outline and video), 2009
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Wyma, David
Description
An account of the resource
David Wyma was born in 1963 in South Korea. After high school, David enlisted in the US Navy. He served 3 years in Norfolk, Virginia and 2 years in Iceland.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Wright, Chelsea (Interviewer)
Caledonia High School (Caledonia, 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
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives, American
United States. Navy
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2009-06-01
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fae593a2da2fbb7ca50fadd1af553bac.mp4
0d6d1736690d93030db0a5c8d90d225d
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2d8f37e7b70682b8a58b225a2fa14164.pdf
dccdd4a594971b6394da0f3d16750acb
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veteran’s History Project
Vietnam War
James Wykstra
Interview Length: (01:32:05:00)
Pre-enlistment Life / Training (00:00:09:00)
Born in Cutlerville, Michigan in 1947 (00:00:09:00)
Growing up, Wykstra attended Cutlerville Christian School and South Christian High
School and after graduating, decided to attend community college at Grand Rapids Junior
College (00:00:20:00)
Wykstra attended junior college for a year and was not doing great and when it looked
like he was going to get drafted, he went and enlisted in the Navy Reserves (00:00:45:00)
Growing up, Wykstra mother stayed at home and his father worked at a hospital
(00:01:02:00)
o There were five children in the family and Wykstra was right in the middle; he
had an older brother and sister and a younger brother and sister (00:01:10:00)
When he enlisted, Wykstra knew the Vietnam War was going on and figured that he had
a duty to enlist and serve in the military (00:01:42:00)
Wykstra finally enlisted in August 1966 (00:01:52:00)
o He selected the Navy because he did not want to crawl around in the mud and he
wanted nice meals and a good bed to sleep in (00:02:01:00)
While growing up, a friend of Wykstra had a speed boat and Wykstra had a hydroplane,
so he had some experience on the water before he joined the Navy (00:02:20:00)
Basic training was two weeks at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Chicago and
then two weeks aboard a ship in Chicago (00:02:52:00)
Before he left for basic training, Wykstra wanted no one in his family to know that he
was leaving (00:03:11:00)
o Wykstra had a little party the night before he left and the next morning, he
accidentally slept through his alarm, consequently, missing his bus to Chicago,
and woke up when his mother called him to go to church (00:03:16:00)
o Wykstra’s brother had just bought a new Mustang and he drove Wykstra to
Holland, Michigan, where Wykstra was able to catch the bus (00:03:45:00)
o Wykstra finally told his family he was joining the Navy that morning and
naturally, they were a little upset that Wykstra had not tell them earlier
(00:04:04:00)
o He chose not to tell his family because he viewed it that they did not need to
know and because he was only going be gone for a month, it was not a very big
deal (00:04:24:00)
The training at Great Lakes for Wykstra was strictly for the Navy Reserves (00:04:35:00)
o The basic training went well and when Wykstra boarded the ship, he had to get
tours of it to orient himself aboard it (00:04:40:00)
�
o Some of the other men who came aboard the ship with Wykstra had already been
in the Navy and they explained different things to him and helped ease the process
for him (00:05:04:00)
o The ship was a smaller one and the men were supposed to sail it to near
Muskegon, Michigan to fire its guns; however, when the ship left port in Chicago
and made it past the barriers, it had to turn around because Lake Michigan was
too rough (00:05:21:00)
o During the training, Wykstra does not recall how much emphasis they placed on
discipline, although it was something that he always had trouble with
(00:06:01:00)
After completing the four weeks of training, Wykstra went back home and continued
going to the Reserve meetings (00:06:27:00)
o Eventually, he asked if he could go into active duty early or would he have to
complete the year of Navy Reserve first (00:06:37:00)
o They said Wykstra could get in early and he told them that the end of May,
beginning of June would work for him; however, when the middle of June came,
Wykstra still had not been called (00:06:46:00)
The Navy eventually wanted to know if Wykstra had gotten some girl
pregnant and that was why he wanted to leave early but he explained that
he just wanted to get the year done and over with (00:07:04:00)
o When the Navy told him they would get him on active duty right away, Wykstra
asked for a couple of weeks off from his work before he left, so at the end of June,
he basically quit work (00:07:16:00)
He was kicked out of the apartment he living in, so Wykstra took the next
month’s rent, bought a tent and lived on the beach (00:07:41:00)
o However, after about three weeks, Wykstra still was not in the Navy, so he went
back to his old job and asked to come back to work at a print shop (00:07:53:00)
o Wykstra only went back to work for a couple of weeks before the Navy placed
him on active duty (00:08:08:00)
Deployment (00:08:23:00)
Once Wykstra was on active duty, the Navy sent him to San Francisco (00:08:23:00)
o While Wykstra was in transit waiting to be assigned in late August, someone
woke him at four in the morning, said his father had died and Wykstra was going
home on emergency leave (00:08:31:00)
When Wykstra went down to get his orders allowing him to go home, the
man said he thought Wykstra was lying, which caused Wykstra to jump
across the desk and started beating the man (00:08:57:00)
Wykstra had to go talk with the commanding officer but he did his orders
and flew back to Grand Rapids for fifteen days (00:09:23:00)
o After the fifteen days, Wykstra flew back to San Francisco and stayed there for
another week or two before the Navy flew him to the Philippines (00:09:45:00)
While waiting for his ship, the U.S.S. Davidson, in the Philippines, Wykstra went into a
nearby town to drink (00:10:10:00)
�
o One time when he went into the town, a dog bit Wykstra in the back of his calf
and Wykstra asked the owners to tie to dog up for ten days to make sure it did not
have rabies (00:10:32:00)
o In those ten days, the Davidson had unfortunately already come in and left but
after the ten days, Wykstra checked and the dog did not have rabies (00:11:10:00)
The Navy eventually flew Wykstra to Japan to board the Davidson (00:11:46:00)
o When he got to Japan, Wykstra checked in on the base and was given bedding and
told where to go spend the night; however, as he left, they called his name for him
to come back and when he did so, they told him the Davidson was pulling out in
two hours and he needed to get aboard (00:11:51:00)
The Davidson was a destroyer escort, meaning it was a small ship, only about a football
field in length (00:12:35:00)
o The ship was armed with depth charges, missiles, two 5 inch guns and torpedo
tubes (00:12:41:00)
o Different departments on the ship had different sleeping areas (00:13:09:00)
o The ship had just been commissioned in 1965, which meant it had air
conditioning and other modern amenities (00:13:17:00)
Wykstra was put with the deck crew when he first got onboard, which consisted of:
painting, sweeping, cleaning and washing walls (00:13:49:00)
At one point, a weapons yeoman was leaving the ship and Wykstra and another man
applied for the job (00:14:19:00)
o While he was home on his emergency leave, Wykstra met a girl who happened to
be from the hometown of the weapons yeoman who was leaving, they knew each
other, and the yeoman allowed Wykstra to take the typing test three or four times
(00:14:44:00)
On the typing test, Wykstra had to type thirty-five words a minute and
every mistake was a deduction of ten words (00:15:01:00)
o Wykstra took the test three times before he finally passed it and he does not know
how the other man faired but he ended up getting the job (00:15:09:00)
As a weapons yeoman, Wykstra would type up the orders of the day, what duties the men
were supposed to do that day, and any weapon reports, which were logs of how many
shells had been fired, etc. (00:15:30:00)
o Once he had typed up the weapon reports, a lieutenant would read it, make some
slight changes, have Wykstra retype it and then would give it to his superior, who
would make other changes (00:16:04:00)
o There were no computers and would end up having the type the same report or
document around eight times at least because everyone in the chain of command
would make changes to a report (00:16:18:00)
o When they pulled into ports, Wykstra missed liberty time finishing the reports
(00:16:47:00)
o There was always something for Wykstra to type (00:17:08:00)
When he first got aboard the ship, Wykstra was told who he would report to and who
would be giving him orders (00:17:38:00)
o There was not much of an introduction or orientation (00:17:43:00)
�
o One time, while on the deck crew, one man was painting a yardarm and asked
Wykstra if he saw any holidays; not knowing what that meant, Wykstra told him
that he did not see any (00:17:49:00)
When the man came down, he yelled at Wykstra for telling him there were
no holidays, spots where he had missed, when there were (00:18:14:00)
There were a few men on the deck crew that Wykstra fell in with and got along well with
(00:18:42:00)
o After he became yeoman, Wykstra had his own little office on the ship and in
Japan, he bought turntables, speakers, and recording equipment so that when they
were at sea, they could listen to music, mainly rock and roll records (00:18:48:00)
o When they pulled into port at Formosa, the records were a dime an album and the
men came to Wykstra to play them (00:19:33:00)
Wykstra got onto the Davidson in October 1967 (00:20:13:00)
The Davidson’s home port was in Hawaii, so after Wykstra boarded in Japan, they sailed
back to Hawaii (00:20:24:00)
Wykstra did not have any major problems adjusting to life at sea even though when the
Davidson left Japan, the seas were quite rough (00:20:52:00)
o Wykstra only got seasick twice: when the Davidson first left Japan for Hawaii and
another time in rough seas, also near Japan (00:21:02:00)
The second time he got seasick, Wykstra was at the helm of the ship when
a man on the lean helm said he needed a bucket; a messenger got a bucket
and the man threw up in the bucket (00:21:21:00)
The messenger emptied the bucket and when he brought it back,
the man working the status board asked for the bucket and ended
throwing up in it (00:21:59:00)
The pilothouse was beginning to smell like vomit and the
lieutenant in charge of the pilothouse asked Wykstra if any of that
bothered him and Wykstra said “not yet sir” (00:22:11:00)
The lieutenant then lit a cigar and blew it in Wykstra’s face,
causing him to vomit (00:22:28:00)
o When the ship was in rough seas, Wykstra did not worry about it capsizing
(00:23:01:00)
One time, a cook had just made fresh donuts when the seas were rough
and he came up to the pilothouse to see if he could bring up some of the
crew (00:23:06:00)
The men held onto ropes during rough seas and the cook accidentally let
go of the rope and slid, head first, into a steel footrest and split his head
open (00:23:28:00)
When the Davidson arrived in Hawaii, Wykstra was able to go ashore (00:24:03:00)
o Although the ship was only a couple of years old, it had to go into dry-dock
because one of the boilers was not working properly (00:24:17:00)
They ended up cutting a hole in the side of the ship so they could put in a
new boiler (00:24:27:00)
o Because of the sheer size of the repair, the men were in Hawaii for quite a long
time, all the way until August (00:24:35:00)
�
However, even while the ship was in dry-dock, the men stayed aboard it,
instead of in barracks on land (00:24:51:00)
o A friend of Wykstra from high school was in Hawaii at the same time, so the two
met up and went out to drink several times (00:24:56:00)
One time, one of the men went ashore, got extremely drunk, and when he
returned to the ship, got the keys for the gun locker room; the man
unloaded guns and ammunition, went on the deck, and began firing them
before taking off (00:25:23:00)
Shore patrol went looking for him while shining large spotlights and
Wykstra friend, who was part of the Shore Patrol, commented on how
stupid it was; the Shore Patrol was looking for the man with spotlights but
if he wanted to, he would shoot them (00:26:12:00)
They finally caught the man and the others never saw him again
(00:26:34:00)
Once the repairs on the ship were finished, the ship left Hawaii and sailed to several other
locations but Wykstra does not remember them all (00:27:14:00)
o The ship would spend thirty days sailing off the coast of Vietnam then a week at
some other location, such as Bangkok, Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, etc.
(00:27:21:00)
When the ship was sailing off the coast of Vietnam, the men had their regular job but
they also worked in a secondary, combat role; the men would normally go six hours on,
six hours off for their primary job (00:28:01:00)
o Sometimes, Wykstra worked in the fire control room for the ship’s guns relaying
orders between the lieutenant stationed in the fire control room and the gun
mounts, everything from where to fire to how much to fire (00:28:35:00)
o Other times, Wykstra worked in the pilothouse while the ship was off the
Vietnamese coast (00:28:51:00)
o The ship ended up firing a lot of ammunition onto the shore but as far as Wykstra
knows, while in Vietnam, the ship never received any return fire (00:29:10:00)
There were times when the ship had to sail from one location to another
quickly past small Vietnamese boats; the men did not know if the boats
could possibly be filled with explosives, so they did not slow down for
them (00:29:21:00)
If a boat got in the way, the ship kept going (00:29:40:00)
At one point, the ship received orders that it had to sail for Korea as fast as it could get
there (00:29:59:00)
o When the ship arrived, the sonar picked up a submarine; the men told the
submarine to identify itself and surface but it did not (00:30:06:00)
o The ship followed the submarine for eight days before it finally surfaced and
revealed itself to be a Russian submarine (00:30:16:00)
o When the submarine surfaced, the men took pictures of it and the Davidson ended
up escorting it out of the area (00:30:33:00)
They ended up confiscating all the film taken of the submarine and the
next day, Wykstra looked out and saw a torpedo floating in the water
(00:30:41:00)
�
When divers went to get the torpedo, there were snakes in the
water, so sharpshooters were posted before the divers tried again
(00:31:00:00)
Once they got the torpedo aboard, it was placed in the hanger bay, covered
with a tarp and again, everyone’s film was confiscated (00:31:20:00)
o At the time, the men did not know why they were ordered to Korea; all they knew
was that there was trouble near Korea (00:32:06:00)
The men did not know much about what was going on onshore in Vietnam; the
commander would get the orders and the men would follow them (00:32:27:00)
o One time, the ship pulled into the naval base at Cam Ranh Bay and the
commander and XO went ashore while the ship remained anchored in the bay;
when they came back, the two men said the ship was going to pull its anchor and
leave the next (00:32:38:00)
However, the next day, the men could not raise the anchor and after trying
several different ways to raise the anchor, they finally ended up cutting it
off and leaving it in the bay (00:32:57:00)
o When Wykstra worked in the fire control room, the lieutenant in charge of firing
the guns would receive an order, then tell Wykstra what adjustments needed to be
made, and Wykstra would relay the information to the gun crews (00:33:24:00)
o One time, the men heard two secondary explosions when they fired the guns,
which made them happy, but for the most part, they did not know what their
targets were or whether they had hit them (00:33:44:00)
o When it was firing, the ship normally worked alone (00:34:06:00)
However, the Davidson was also attached to the U.S.S. Hornet, and
aircraft carrier, and at any one time, there was between four and seven
destroyer escorts and other ships with the Hornet (00:34:11:00)
Aboard the U.S.S. Hornet (00:34:55:00)
At one point, Wykstra did go aboard the aircraft carrier Hornet (00:34:55:00)
o Wykstra was having trouble swallowing, so he went and saw the corpsman, who
told him it was no big deal and to wait until the ship got into port, then the
corpsman would send him to set a doctor (00:35:01:00)
o It got so bad that Wykstra went back to the corpsman and explained that it was
difficult to talk and he could not longer even swallow water (00:35:20:00)
o The aircraft carrier sent over a helicopter, picked Wykstra up, and took him back
to the aircraft carrier, where doctor diagnosed the problem as a wisdom tooth
(00:35:27:00)
The dentist said they needed to pull the tooth, but they had trouble pulling
it because as it turned out, the tooth was hooked around Wykstra’s
jawbone (00:35:59:00)
They ended up breaking the tooth apart and taking it out in pieces; once
they finished, they took x-rays again, found more pieces, and took those
pieces out as well (00:36:12:00)
They had given Wykstra a lot of pain killers and he stayed in the dentist’s
office for a long time (00:36:24:00)
�
o Wykstra wanted to get back to the Davidson and kept complain when the dentist
staff would not let him because of the amount of painkillers they used; finally, a
messenger came down and brought Wykstra up to the pilot house, where he asked
permission from the commander to fly back to the Davidson (00:36:32:00)
The commander checked and told Wykstra that by the time they got a
helicopter ready, it would be sunset and they could not transfer personnel
after sunset (00:37:15:00)
The commander had the men get Wykstra a bunk and told him to come
back the next morning (00:37:36:00)
o The next morning, Wykstra again asked permission to return to the Davidson but
the commander said he could not; when Wykstra why, the commander explained
that the Davidson had sailed for Formosa and the Hornet was sailing to the
Philippines (00:37:46:00)
The Hornet ended up staying in the Philippines for a week and because it was an aircraft
carrier, there were a lot of benefits for the men (00:38:17:00)
o Everyday, the men were able to grill hot dogs and hamburgers, they had boats
they used to go water skiing, there were women around, etc. (00:38:29:00)
o In the Philippines, they did not want the men to go into town because it was
dangerous for the men (00:39:03:00)
When the men went into town, they could only go down the main street
and between one and three blocks in either direction off that street;
everything else was out-of-bounds (00:39:18:00)
It was basically bar on top of bar and there were enlisted men’s clubs, with
one playing country music and the other playing rock and roll
(00:39:41:00)
Off to one side would be sitting a mamma san and several girls and if a
man wanted to dance, he would go talk with the mamma san, sign his
name in, pick a girl, and dance with her (00:40:15:00)
The government paid these girls well and when Wykstra ended up
meeting a girl whose parents owned the restaurant / bar, she said
she wanted that job because it paid the most money (00:40:37:00)
o Never the less, the Navy tried to keep the men on the base (00:41:13:00)
o One time, Wykstra went ashore because he had the day off and he bought a
couple of butterfly knives (00:41:19:00)
Whenever he went into town, Wykstra walked back on the left hand side
because when he drank, he back a little loose and on the right hand side
were many more prostitutes (00:41:39:00)
This time, he saw two nice looking Filipino women who always tried to
get him to go with them and that time, he said okay (00:42:02:00)
The three ended up hopping the back of a converted World War IIera jeep and on the way through the town, they begin fooling
around in front of the other people (00:42:24:00)
They ended up in an out-of-bounds area and Wykstra followed
them back their house (00:43:11:00)
�
o After Wykstra finished fooling around with another woman
in the house, he put his clothes back on and discovered his
knives were gone (00:44:18:00)
Wykstra then looked outside and saw at least three men standing
on porch of the house; he cannot see the other side of porch, so
Wykstra decides to run and jump out and when he does so, he sees
two other men standing on the porch (00:44:33:00)
o He assumed that they were going to get him and although
they did follow him for a little while, he did eventually lose
them (00:45:10:00)
As he was walking down the street back to the base, some kids came out
asking for money, which Wykstra did not have (00:45:26:00)
The kids started throwing rocks, causing Wykstra to run again and
luckily, a Filipino cop came, causing the kids to scatter
(00:45:40:00)
Wykstra eventually made it back to the ship, but it was bad because he
should have known better (00:45:54:00)
o Before the ship had pulled into port, the men went to a little meeting, where it was
explained how dangerous it was for the sailors in the town (00:46:02:00)
There was a river that ran next to the base and the men had to cross it to
get into town; the river was filthy and kids would stand next to it, trying to
bum cigarettes and other things from the sailors (00:46:15:00)
Just before the ship arrived in port, they had found the body of a sailor
floating in the river with no head (00:47:18:00)
The next day, on the desk of the base commander was a box and inside
was the head of the sailor (00:47:26:00)
o The prostitution outside the base was really bad, although the last time Wykstra
was there, there was a female mayor and she was attempting to clean it up
(00:47:66:00)
Wykstra finally made it back to the Davidson after about six weeks (00:48:46:00)
o While aboard the Hornet, Wykstra did not have any duties and although there
were movies to watch, he was still bored (00:48:53:00)
He would sit up on the flight deck and watch planes take off and land and
he eventually helped the man who was supposed to clean the barracks
because he was so bored (00:49:03:00)
Travels around the Pacific (00:49:31:00)
Wykstra was also able to go ashore in Japan several times but he did not spend too much
time in bars there; mostly, he bought china and other items that he wanted (00:49:31:00)
Going ashore in Hong Kong was fabulous (00:49:54:00)
o When he first came aboard the ship, Wykstra hung out with the men in deck crew
who he worked with and even when he became a yeoman, he still hung out with
them because he worked in his own little office by himself (00:50:07:00)
o One time, four of them were in a bar and another man who had just been
promoted and was not treating the others fairly walked into the bar (00:50:23:00)
�
They invite the man who and he sits between Wykstra and another man;
the other men tell him that he has to start straightening up (00:51:04:00)
The man was dismissive and the next thing Wykstra knew, the other three
men were beating him (00:51:30:00)
The man who was being beaten was in his late twenties / early thirties,
meaning he had been in the Navy a little longer than the other men
(00:52:01:00)
The men warned him that if he went back to the ship and reported them,
they might go to the brig but they would eventually get out of it and they
would find him (00:52:11:00)
Instead, the man reported that he had been jumped by some
Chinese people (00:52:23:00)
o Where the men were at, the city was clean and nice (00:53:11:00)
While Wykstra was aboard, the Davidson spent seven months of the Vietnamese coast
and every month, the ship would travel someplace different (00:53:53:00)
Going to Bangkok was a different experience (00:54:09:00)
o While there, a man would hire a cab for the day, not just one trip because it was
cheaper to hire a cab for the day (00:54:20:00)
o The Davidson stopped in Bangkok after about six months, making it one the later
stops, and it seemed like everyone aboard ship “lost it” around then (00:54:40:00)
Wykstra knows of only one man who did not “screw around” with
someone, even the married men who swore they would not cheat on their
wives (00:54:59:00)
o Wykstra and a friend hired a cab for a day and went touring to different locations
while other men from the ship sort of took over a hotel (00:55:17:00)
People who actually lived in the hotel ended up leaving because of how
the men were acting (00:55:41:00)
One man was on a second or third floor balcony and decided he was going
to jump into the hotel’s swimming pool; the pool was only three feet deep
where he wanted to jump but he did it anyway and ended up hurting his
head (00:56:30:00)
The man continued to beg the others to let him leave the ship and
go ashore again, so the last day they were in city, the men relented
and let him go ashore (00:57:04:00)
The man started drinking again and decided he was going to climb
a tree and grab the coconuts in it; he had to hop a fence to do so
and ended up landing onto of a broken beer bottle and split his foot
open (00:57:13:00)
Some other soldiers at the hotel wanted to put a tourniquet on the
foot, but the sailor said no and to just call an ambulance; the man
did eventually pull through (00:57:49:00)
Morale aboard the Davidson was not bad (00:58:19:00)
Wykstra did end up getting into serious trouble once (00:58:44:00)
o While in the Philippines, he was in a bar drinking and an ensign who had just
come aboard the Davidson walked in; Wykstra had introduced himself when the
ensign came aboard, so the ensign sat with Wykstra in the bar (00:58:50:00)
�o Wykstra questioned the ensign, saying that he was an officer and was not
supposed to be in town and not supposed to be seen associating with an enlisted
man like Wykstra (00:59:12:00)
o The ensign told Wykstra not to worry about it and he continued buy drinks for
himself and two Filipino girls, although Wykstra warned him that the girls were
not drinking alcohol, they were drinking tea (00:59:24:00)
o When they got into the bedroom, the girl Wykstra was with said she was from
Manila and Wykstra said he wanted to go there (00:59:51:00)
However, no one on a ship, not even a commander, was allowed an
overnight; a sailor’s rank determined what time he had to be back aboard
the ship (01:00:08:00)
Wykstra had to be back by ten o’clock, a petty officer by eleven, and a
regular officer was midnight (01:00:24:00)
o The girl said she would take Wykstra to Manila, so they planned to meet up later
and go (01:00:38:00)
o Wykstra figured he was going to get in trouble but his brother had been stationed
in Manila and Wykstra figured he could go there then tell his brother how much it
had changed in eight years (01:00:50:00)
o When Wykstra went to the designated spot, the girl was not there, so he had a few
drinks and decided to return to the ship; however, on the way back to the ship,
Wykstra saw the girl and together, they walked and boarded a bus (01:01:11:00)
o When Wykstra and the girl got off the bus, they got into a taxi, which took them
through several small villages before stopping in one and the girl explained that
that was where she lived (01:01:48:00)
o The girl’s house turned out to be a hut made out of bamboo and while Wykstra
was sitting there, almost everyone in the village came up to see him; it eventually
reached the point that they placed him by a window so everyone could see him
(01:02:16:00)
The girl’s father was the chief of police and when they all went to bed,
Wykstra could not belief that the father would send his daughter to be a
prostitute in order to help the family (01:03:19:00)
o The next day, Wykstra and the girl went to the village’s marketplace and when
Wykstra saw kids running around the streets naked, he bought a bunch of
underwear and handed it out to the kids (01:03:52:00)
o The village mayor lived next to the girl’s family and they ended up throwing
Wykstra a dinner that all the men in the village showed up to; when the men
finished eating, the women could eat while the men drank alcohol (01:04:37:00)
The other villagers wanted Wykstra to sing, so they got a guitar and
started playing for him (01:05:52:00)
o The next day, they went to a movie before Wykstra said he had to get back to the
base and the girl had to take him because he did not know how (01:06:11:00)
o The girl eventually took him back and when he boarded the ship, an officer told
Wykstra he was in trouble, although Wykstra explained he had paid someone to
take his place (01:06:32:00)
The officer said he knew Wykstra had an upcoming liberty leave and he
suggested Wykstra stay on the ship, which he did (01:06:56:00)
�
The Davidson eventually left the Philippines and headed back to Vietnam; on the way
back to port, the commander wanted to talk with Wykstra and hear his story and Wykstra
explained that he did more than any ambassador ever did (01:07:11:00)
o The commander said he did not care what Wykstra had done, he knew better and
as punishment, Wykstra was confined to the ship for the next ninety days
(01:07:48:00)
o After going to Vietnam for another thirty days, the Davidson sailed to Hawaii,
where Wykstra was supposed to get off because his tour was ending
(01:08:16:00)
o Wykstra knew some of the men in personnel and when they typed up Wykstra’s
orders, they left off his punishment, he was supposed to go to the barracks for
thirty more days to finish the punishment, and the ship’s XO signed it
(01:08:28:00)
When he was in, Wykstra did not give any thought to staying in the Navy (01:09:04:00)
o To him, if someone wanted to stay in, that was fine but being in the service meant
that someone did not think for themselves and if they did so, they got in trouble;
the men did what they were told and Wykstra could not continue to do that
(01:09:08:00)
Wykstra never actually went ashore in Vietnam (01:09:35:00)
Off all the men Wykstra served with, he wants to know what happened to one man, who
was from Wichita, Kansas, the most (01:09:57:00)
o The man suggested when Wykstra and he get out they go and tour the United
States together (01:10:10:00)
o However, Wykstra said he could not afford it because he needed to save money
for college (01:10:17:00)
o Wykstra got out of the military in 1969 and in 1972, he and three other men did
decide to do a little tour of the country, although one guy eventually dropped out
(01:10:25:00)
They were gone for three months and when they stopped in Wichita,
Wykstra looked the man up and discovered the man had gone right to hell
(01:10:48:00)
He and another man were renting an apartment above a store and
delivering cars to car lots (01:11:03:00)
o Wykstra and the other man spent a lot of time together while in the service; they
would be paid every other weekend, after which the two men would go ashore
(01:11:51:00)
The first weekend they were in Hawaii, both men went ashore and the
second weekend, they were low on money (01:12:05:00)
If Wykstra had duty on a Friday, he would give what money he had to the
man, who would play cards and would usually win, although one time
they had to spend the entire weekend aboard the ship because he lost all
the money (01:12:23:00)
o One time, the two men went to a piano bar and one of the women there was
gorgeous; Wykstra said something to her and after her reaction, Wykstra told the
other man that they needed to go to church (01:13:31:00)
�
After church, the two men went back to the bar and the woman was still
there; Wykstra’s friend started playing pool (01:14:27:00)
At some point, Wykstra had bought a car, an old Chevy that almost always
had something wrong with it, and Wykstra managed to convince the girl to
go with him, his friend, and a man the friend had been shooting pool with
(01:14:41:00)
The four went to a beach they thought was deserted and they decided to go
skinny-dipping (01:15:23:00)
The girl was so drunk that she passed out on the way back and when the
men got her to where she had said she lived, they pulled her out of the car
and left her on the sidewalk (01:16:06:00)
When Wykstra was first on the deck crew, the lieutenant junior-grade who was his boss
did not like him and one time, ordered Wykstra to sandblast part of the deck
(01:17:19:00)
o Wykstra said he had a liberty leave upcoming but the lieutenant canceled it and
made Wykstra do the sandblasting (01:17:49:00)
Most of the time, the enlisted men and officers were kept segregated (01:19:04:00)
o Wykstra never saw an hostility between the two groups except for one time when
the ship was going into port (01:19:12:00)
The commander and XO were both in the pilothouse and at one point, the
commander told the XO to take over because the XO needed to learn the
stuff; the XO was giving the orders and the commander corrected on him
two occasions (01:19:30:00)
After the third time he had to correct a decision, the commander began
yelling at the XO in front of the enlisted personnel in the pilothouse
(01:19:53:00)
o Generally, the officers treated the enlisted personnel okay (01:20:31:00)
The officers tended to throw their weight around and on some occasions,
their decisions were questionable but the enlisted crew could do nothing
about it (01:20:34:00)
The men could definitely tell that some of the officers were career military
(01:20:59:00)
When there was a ship’s reunion, it felt somewhat awkward for Wykstra because he had
only served for two years whereas many of the others had served longer, often four years
and they were much more “gung-ho” for the Navy (01:21:25:00)
When Wykstra was nearing the end of his tour, he had the opportunity to take a test and
become a yeoman but he declined; when asked why he declined, although he would in all
likelihood pass, Wykstra explained that there had been rumors circulating that some of
the sailors might get and early discharge and if he passed the test, he would not get an
early discharge (01:21:47:00)
o Wykstra ended up flunking the test but he did not receive an early discharge
(01:22:31:00)
Had he enlisted a month earlier, Wykstra would have gotten the early
discharge (01:22:48:00)
o When the Davidson sailed back to Vietnam, Wykstra had the opportunity to take
the test again but he told the officer he was going to flunk it again (01:23:02:00)
�o When the men finally got to San Francisco to be discharged, they were waiting in
a large gymnasium when there was an announcement for all the men in personnel
and yeomen of a certain rank to stand up, but Wykstra was not high enough
(01:23:32:00)
All the men who stood ended up receiving at minimum a month-long
extension on their enlistment to help process all the other sailors’
discharges (01:24:34:00)
Post-Military Life / Reflections (01:20:31:00)
Once he finally got out of the Navy, Wykstra returned to working full time and attending
college (01:25:15:00)
o He took as many credits as he could at a local college before transferring to Ferris
State University (01:25:28:00)
o After taking the required courses at Ferris State, he transferred again, this time to
Grand Valley State University, where he took the majority of his elective classes
in law enforcement (01:26:01:00)
o Wykstra ended up with a two-year degree from the local college and a business
degree from Ferris State (01:26:42:00)
After getting his degrees, Wykstra worked as a 2nd shift manager (01:26:52:00)
o It eventually reached the point that his children would be going to school, so
Wykstra asked to start workings days, even if that meant doing less skilled jobs
(01:27:01:00)
o The company honored his request and moved him to working during the day
(01:27:31:00)
Looking back, Wykstra was glad he was in the Navy, he saw a lot of the world, and if he
had to do it again he would, but he still would not enlist for four years (01:28:03:00)
o Had he originally go in for four years, he probably would have taken the yeoman
tests and passed them (01:28:20:00)
When Wykstra left, he had a going away party at his parent’s house, who were going to
visit his brother-in-laws family; everyone knew Wykstra had the party and when his
parents got home, they found out (01:29:09:00)
o The first letter Wykstra got from his mother said that she was disappointed that he
had the party (01:30:19:00)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
WykstraJ
Title
A name given to the resource
Wykstra, James (Interview outline and video), 2011
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Wykstra, James
Description
An account of the resource
James Wykstra was born in 1947 in the town of Cutlerville, Michigan. After graduating from high school, Wykstra felt it was his duty to serve in the military. In August 1966, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy Reserves. Following completion of basic training at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Chicago, Wykstra returned to Cutlerville and regularly attended the reserve meetings until going on active duty in the summer, 1967. Assigned the to destroyer escort U.S.S. Davidson, Wykstra patrolled along the Vietnamese coast and sailed to numerous locales in the Southwest Pacific, including Japan, Hong Kong, Bangkok, and the Philippines.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (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
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
United States. Navy
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2011-01-13
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