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PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans’ History Project
Ronald Allen
Vietnam War
24 minutes 45 seconds
(00:00:01) Overview of Service and Training
-In the Air Force from 1970 to 1974
-Worked with the Airborne Air Rescue Recovery Service
-Better known as Air Force Pararescue
-Worked as a crew chief on the Sikorsky HH53 helicopter
-Started off with the 1550th Combat Crew Training Wing in Ogden, Utah
-Spent his first year there
(00:00:36) Deployment to Vietnam
-In April 1972 he was assigned to the 37th Air Rescue Recovery Squadron
-Stationed at Da Nang Air Base, Vietnam
-Joined the squadron just after a rescue crew was lost during Bat 21 rescue attempt
-Also joined prior to a major operation carried out at Quang Tri
-Massive evacuation of South Vietnamese Rangers and Americans
(00:02:18) Daily Life at Da Nang
-Rocket and mortar strikes were a common occurrence
-Lived on the north side of the base in the old Marine compound
-Heavily fortified position that also had a hospital
-Allowed them to get to the helicopters and to launch quickly
-Had to wear body armor at all times for the most part
-Ate mostly C rations even while on base
-Worked in conjunction with the other maintenance teams
-Insured that the helicopters and other aircraft were working properly
-Formed a deep bond with each other
-Worked with two Coast Guard pilots that were stationed at Da Nang
-Being involved in the missions made him feel like he was playing a major part
-Day to day life could be boring
-Weather was always hot and humid both during the day and at night
-Mosquitos were also a constant annoyance that he just had to get used to
-Involved in a large number of missions
(00:06:49) Involvement with the Army
-Worked with the Army on occasion
-Got invited to fly in a Cobra attack helicopter once
-Took the opportunity to fly along the South China Sea coast and got target practice
-Upon landing he was severely reprimanded by a superior officer
-He was definitely not allowed to ride along in a Cobra
(00:08:54) Enemy Attacks
-Remembers on August 19, 1972 the base was hit by a sapper and rocket attack
-Happened at night
-Blew the doors off the hut where he slept
�-The next morning, August 20, they were hit again
-Attack happened at 6:30 in the morning
-120mm Vietnamese rocket made a direct hit on the helicopter he worked on
-Destroyed the helicopter
-He was uninjured though
(00:09:58) End of the War Pt. 1
-His unit was deactivated in December 1972
-He was flown out of Da Nang by the Utah National Guard
-Remembers flying over the Ho Chi Minh trail as they left
(00:10:36) Typhoons
-During his time in Vietnam he was a part of two typhoon evacuations
-Once to Saigon
-Once to Thailand
-Considered to be somewhat of an R&R period
-Chance to rest for a couple days while the storm blew through
(00:11:32) End of the War Pt. 2
-War was winding down when he was deployed to Vietnam
-Army was being withdrawn
-Firebases in the north were being overrun by Vietnamese forces
(00:11:52) Involvement with Other Aircraft
-Bombing missions were being flown out of Da Nang on a daily basis
-He could feel the ground shake when the bombs were dropped in the distance
-Search and rescue teams from his unit would follow the pilots out
-Circled the area of operation in case a jet was shot down
-Always a celebratory event when a pilot was recovered and returned to base successfully
-Saw a B52 bomber land at Da Nang
-SAM (surface to air missile) was stuck, unexploded in the wing
-Vietnamese pilots would come into Da Nang and have to make crash landings
-Remembers a rocket attack that destroyed several Marine F4 Phantoms
-Marines suffered losses because of that
(00:15:49) End of the War Pt. 3
-Towards the end of the war a large amount of soldiers were being moved to different positions
-He and his unit were pulled out of Da Nang because of eroding security in the area
-Also part of the political maneuvering that occurred
-He was transferred to the 40th Air Rescue Recovery Squadron in Thailand
-Worked with them for a few months
-Remembers a large number of B52s flying out for bombing runs
-Remembers one that crash landed upon its return
-The crew ejected safely
-In February 1972 he was pulled off the base in Thailand
-Given twelve hours to pack and get ready to leave
-Part of the Paris Peace Accords of 1972
-Flew out of Bangkok, Thailand back to the United States
-Returned to the 1550th Combat Crew Training Wing in Ogden, Utah
�(00:18:52) Enlisting in the Air Force
-Enlisted in the Air Force to avoid getting drafted into the Army
-He had a low lottery number which meant he had a high chance of getting drafted
-He had a fascination with aircraft and the Air Force since a young age
-This also played a major part in influencing him to join the Air Force
-Had to travel from Kalamazoo, Michigan to Indianapolis, Indiana for his induction
(00:19:49) Mascots of the 37th Air Rescue Recovery Squadron
-The pararescue unit’s mascot was a boa constrictor named “Stretch”
-It was a real boa constrictor that had been taken out of the jungle
-Fifteen feet long
-His maintenance crew’s mascot was a dog named “Dash”
-He got hurt by shrapnel from a Vietnamese rocket attack once
-Pararescue soldiers gave him stitches and brought him back to health
-Dash received the Purple Heart for his wounds at an on base bar
-They lost track of him during the evacuation of Da Nang
-Never knew what happened to him
-Stretch was taken with the unit to Thailand and released back into the wild
(00:22:52) Reflections on Service
-He felt that the war was an important part of shaping himself and his generation
-It was difficult being a soldier or a veteran during the war
-Despite the negative aspects of service he is glad that he was a part of the war
-Feels that it was worth it because he was able to help save some lives
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Allen, Ronald (Interview outline and video), 2013
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Allen, Ronald
Description
An account of the resource
Ronald Allen served in the Air Force from 1970 to 1974. He enlisted in the Air Force to avoid getting drafted into the Army and had a deeper interest in serving with the Air Force and working with aircraft. After travelling from Kalamazoo, Michigan to Indianapolis, Indiana he was inducted into the Air Force and was sent to basic training. He was deployed to Da Nang Air Base, Vietnam in April 1972 where he served with the 37th Air Rescue Recovery Squadron after he trained with the 1550th Combat Crew Training Wing in Ogden, Utah. During his time in Vietnam he was involved in a large number of rescue missions and had multiple incidents involving enemy artillery fire. In December 1972 his unit was deactivated and he was flown out of Da Nang by the Utah National Guard and attached to the 40th Air Rescue Recovery Squadron stationed in Thailand. In February 1972 he returned home and continued to work with the 1550th Combat Crew Training Wing in Ogden, Utah.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Cullison, Jennifer (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
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
United States. Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2013-05-21
Identifier
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AllenR1495V
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
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PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans' History Project
Don Alsbro
Cold War, Vietnam War, Peacetime
(00:00:11) Early Life
-Born in Detroit, Michigan on May 20, 1940
-Moved to Plymouth, Michigan in 1944
-Grew up there
-Father was a travelling claims adjuster for the Pere Marquette Railway
-Went to the scene of train wrecks for insurance purposes
-Family was allowed to travel with him
-Got to see New York City and San Francisco
-Father died suddenly in 1949
-Traumatic experience for Don
-Fortunately, the railroad had a retirement fund set up
-Father had also purchased a small apartment complex in Detroit to rent
out
-Fund and income from rent made it so his mother didn't have to
work
-Spent summers at the family cottage on Whitmore Lake
-Graduated from high school in 1958
(00:02:55) ROTC at Western Michigan University
-Went to Western Michigan University
-Encouraged by his machine shop teacher/track coach to do something he loved
doing
-Inspired him to go into teaching
-Had been accepted by the University of Michigan and Michigan State University
-Chose Western because it had the best teaching program in the state
-There was a two year requirement of phyiscal education or Reserve Officer Training
Corps
-There were 1500 ROTC cadets at Western
-Decided to be in the ROTC
-Only had to wear his uniform once a week for drill
-Had to apply, and be accepted, for two extra years of ROTC
-Encouraged to sign up for the extra two years
-Told he would only have to do six months active duty
-Also told he would be commissioned as an officer in the Army
-Due to the Cuban Missile Crisis the six months of active duty was extended to two years
-Took a semester off to deliver a car to Phoenix, Arizona
-Allowed to return to Western and continue with the ROTC
-Received orders to go to West Germany for three years at the end of ROTC training
-Drove to Phoenix in spring 1961
-Commissioned and graduated in January 1963
(00:11:33) Teaching and Infantry Basic Training
-Went to Infantry Basic Training from June through August 1963 before going to
�Germany
-Did some substitute teaching in Kalamazoo, Michigan before Infantry Basic Training
-Trained for 10 weeks at Fort Benning, Georgia
-Learned how to be an infantry officer
-Summer was bad in Georgia
-Wound up at Martin Army Hospital due to heat exhaustion
-Had gotten married in May 1963
-If he took an extra year of service he could bring his wife and stepdaughter to Germany
-In December 1965 he got an invitation to teach at Comstock Park, Michigan
-Requested release from the Army
-Could only leave early if he served a tour in Vietnam
(00:15:42) Stationed in West Germany Pt. 1
-Served at Larson Barracks in Kitzingen, Germany with the 3rd Infantry Division
-Became the athletics and recreation (A&R) officer for the 3rd Infantry Division
-Coached the 3rd Infantry Division baseball team
-Coached the brigade basketball team
-Assistant coach for the brigade football team
-Played against teams from all over Europe
-Army wanted soldiers to play sports to avoid getting into trouble
-Offered a chance to stay in the Army and work as a coach
(00:18:06) Deployment to Vietnam Pt. 1
-Received orders for Vietnam in February 1966
-Once he was done he could leave the Army
-Didn't know much about Vietnam
(00:19:10) Stationed in West Germany Pt. 2
-Germany was a good place for American servicemen and their families
-Not always enjoyable, but good for the most part
-Baseball team played a championship game in Nuremberg
-Same stadium where Jesse Owens ran in the 1936 Summer Olympics
-Note: Most likely played in Berlin, not Nuremberg, or was at Nuremberg stadium
used for famous Nazi rally in film Triumph of the Will
-Basketball team played the Air Force teams
(00:20:19) Deployment to Vietnam Pt. 2
-For 90 days he was attached to the 15th Infantry Regiment for infantry training
-Allowed to return to the U.S. in July 1966
-Assigned to be the Civil Affairs Officer in the 11th Aviation Group in the 1st Cavalry
Division
-More helicopters in the 1st Cavalry Division than trucks or jeeps
-Sent a welcome letter by the 1st Cavalry Division
(00:22:32) Arrival in Vietnam Pt. 1
-Spent two days in Saigon being processed
-Took a helicopter to An Khe
-Would spend a year in An Khe working as the Civil Affairs Officer
(00:23:17) Deployment to Vietnam Pt. 3
-Spent 30 days of leave in the U.S.
-Received 15 days of Jungle Training at Fort Sherman in the Panama Canal Zone
�-Taught how to rappel and cross rivers
-Tremendous experience
-Spent one week in the barracks and one week in the field
-Taught how to build shelters and identify poisonous snakes
-Returned to Charleston, South Carolina
-Had to get to California on his own
-Returned to Michigan to spend a few days with his wife and stepdaughter
-Went to Chicago O'Hare International Airport
-Boarded an Air National Guard C-130 at O'Hare Air Reserve Station
-Took him five or six days to get to California
-Landed in California and was processed in Oakland
-Flew out of Travis Air Force Base
-Flew between Travis AFB and Vietnam aboard a C-130 six times
-24 hour trip one way
-Stopped at Clark Air Base, Philippines to refuel
-Went to Vietnam as an individual soldier, not as part of a unit
(00:29:54) Arrival in Vietnam Pt. 2
-Landed at Tan Son Nhut Air Base near Saigon
-Received three days of orientation in Saigon
-Not a lot of training for officers
-Learned about the country
-Culture and geography
-Traveled in a school bus with grates on the windows to stop grenades
(00:31:26) Stationed in An Khe with 1st Cavalry Division
-Flew to An Khe
-Near Highway 19, in II Corps, and inland
-Arrived in June 1966 along with soldiers from South Korea
-Stationed at Camp Radcliff and took a bus to his unit
-Didn't get to meet the officer he was replacing
-Had a sergeant serving under him that had been shot down seven times
-There were 400 helicopters in the 1st Cavalry Division
-Had a South Vietnamese interpreter
-Spoke excellent English and was college educated
-He was part of a Civic Action Team
-Medic, sergeant, interpreter, and himself
-Worked from 9 AM to 10 or 11 PM in the village inside Camp Radcliff
-Villagers were moved one mile away to a place near a river
-Each villager was paid $300 to move
-Enough money to build a permanent house with bricks
-Moved off base for security reasons
-Had a medic in his Civic Action Team who treated civilians six days a week
-Very primitive area
-No running water, no electricity, and no sewers
-Had a hospital in An Khe that they could use
(00:41:57) Interactions with Vietnamese Civilians
-Worked with the village chief, the two hamlet chiefs, and the local police chief
�-Set up a shower system to deal with the rampant impetigo in the area
-Built a basketball court, volleyball court, softball diamond, and playground with
engineers
-Played games with the villagers
-On Friday night showed movies to the villagers
-Showed them footage from space
-On Monday nights had English classes for the children
-20 to 50 children came on average
-On Wednesday nights they provided math classes to the children
-On Christmas they brought gifts to each household in the village
-Got so comfortable with the villagers that he didn't carry a rifle
-Never had a problem in the entire year that he was there
-Brought the village 18 piglets to bolster their economy
-By June 1967 the village had 150 pigs
-Gave the girls dolls for Christmas and boys sports gears
-One soldier dressed up like Santa Claus
(00:49:21) Working with South Korean Soldiers
-South Korean soldiers put on a tae kwon do show for the villagers
-Chopped bricks in half with their bare hands
-For a few weeks after they treated a lot of children with broken hands
-They had tried to emulate the South Korean soldiers
-Showed the Vietnamese that the Koreans were formidable soldiers
-By extension, it also meant the Americans were formidable as
well
-Prior to June 1966 a lot of American soldiers were killed on Highway 19
-He routinely traveled between An Khe and Qui Nhon to get supplies
-Never had a problem thanks to the South Korean soldiers
(00:53:06) Reenlisting in the Army
-Initially planned on getting out of the Army after his tour in Vietnam
-In October 1966 he decided to stay in the Army
-Wife supported the decision
-Requested transfer to the Adjutant General Corps
-He was accepted and would be sent to the Adjutant General School after June
1967
(00:55:50) Travel
-Went to Saigon a couple times for paperwork
-Went to Qui Nhon
-Went to Hawaii for R&R in February 1967 and got to see his wife
-Went to Tokyo near the end of his tour in 1967
(00:57:05) Getting Shot Down
-Experienced getting shot down while on a Caribou transport
-Went to a leprosarium (leper colony) run by the Catholic Church to deliver presents
-Incredibly clean
-Ate dinner with the priests and nuns
-Boarded the Caribou with his interpreter and sat down in a seat near a window
-Heard a voice from nowhere say, "Don't sit there"
�-Moved to a different seat and the plane took off
-Shortly after take off he heard a "ping"
-Gunshot had gone through the plane and hit the plane's hydraulic line
-Looked out a window and saw the ground coming up fast
-Saw his life flash before his eyes
-Able to land back on the runway, but it was a rough landing
-Learned that a .51 caliber round had gone through his original seat and hit the hydraulic
line
-Spent a night in the field
-Didn't sleep well that night, but they didn't get attacked
-The next day a plane came in and they were able to leave
(01:04:17) Building a High School
-The 1st Cavalry Division donated $9000 to build a high school for the villagers in An
Khe
-Villagers could only get a 6th grade education before the high school was built
-High school had 12 rooms and two stories
-Supposed to get two cement mixers to build the school
-Only received one
-Went to Da Nang to ask about the other mixer
-Learned that the mixer had been moved to the Monkey Mountain Facility
-Note: Located at the peak of Son Tra Mountain
-Went to the Marine signal unit stationed there to ask about the
mixer
-Found it and was able to move it down the mountain
-A week later they got the mixer to An Khe and proceeded with construction
(01:09:38) Adjutant General Corps
-Returned to the U.S. and was sent to Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana
-Took the Adjutant General Career Course
-Seven month course
-Adjutant General Corps was in charge of paperwork in the Army
-Mail, personnel action reports, punchcard processing, and court martial
processing
-Sent to Fort Sheridan, Illinois for Adjutant General duty
-Headquarters for the 5th Army
-Took care of 50 colleges in that area with ROTC
-Processed commissions and ROTC paperwork for one year at Fort
Sheridan
-Had a lot of say in whether or not someone was qualified
-Didn't run into a lot of anti-war problems
-Lived in Zion, Illinois
-Near Great Lakes Naval Station
-Almost in Wisconsin
-Enjoyable time living in Illinois
-His second year at Fort Sheridan he ran a printing plant
-Had 40 civilians and 10 or 15 soldiers working for him
-Had presses and cameras
�-Responsible for book binding
-When former president Eisenhower died they dealt with press for his funeral
(01:17:15) Redeployment to Vietnam
-Didn't anticipate having to return to Vietnam
-Told he had to do a tour as a member of the Adjutant General Corps in Vietnam
-Returned to Vietnam in August 1970
(01:18:10) Stationed in An Khe with the 4th Infantry Division
-Assigned to the 4th Infantry Division in An Khe
-When he returned to An Khe in 1970 he was not allowed to leave the base without
protection
-This was as opposed to being able to go into the village without a rifle
-Didn't return to the village of An Khe
-Wasn't allowed to and didn't want to see what had become of it anyway
-Processed paperwork as the 4th Infantry Division prepared to return to the U.S.
-Processed paperwork sent to senators and representatives from soldiers
-Issues and complaints
-Every issue from the trivial to the serious
-Usually took a month for an issue to be addressed and dealt with
-Processed paperwork concerning men that went on leave and didn't return for duty
-Men that went on leave in the U.S. and decided not to return for service
(01:24:55) Stationed in Chu Lai with the 23rd Infantry (Americal) Division
-Sent to the Americal Division/23rd Infantry Division in Chu Lai
-Unit strength: 22,000 men
-Worked with them for eight months
-Worked as the Special Actions Officer
-Cut orders for men going home on emergency leave or on R&R
-Processed special orders
-On one occasion he received a top secret message that had 150 copies
-149 were accounted for, but one had gone missing in Da Nang
-He went to Da Nang to the South Vietnamese headquarters there
-Successfully found it and had it signed for
-Responsible for producing the daily bulletin for the division
(01:29:52) Morale & Drug Use
-Morale changed during his second tour
-Didn't see any evidence of drug use on his first tour in Vietnam
-On his second tour he saw evidence of drug use
-Soldiers still did their jobs without resistance on his second tour
(01:31:39) End of the War
-Remembers sitting in the chapel on Easter Sunday 1971
-Heard that Firebase Mary Ann had been overrun by the Viet Cong
-Marines were pulled out in spring 1971
-Didn't think too much about what would happen to South Vietnam after the U.S. left
(01:33:11) Interactions with Army of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam)
-Had positive encounters with soldiers from South Vietnam
-Felt that South Vietnam had been left to be conquered at the end of the war
-Didn't have proper funding from the U.S. to defend itself after U.S. troops left
�-Friends with a South Vietnamese colonel
-Had fought alongside the French forces in the First Indochina War
-Able to get out of South Vietnam via Saigon in April 1975
-Left on the last helicopter out of Saigon with his family
-Resettled in Corpus Christi, Texas
-All 10 of his children made it out South Vietnam before it fell
(01:38:42) End of Active Duty
-At the end of his second tour in Vietnam he was ready to go home
-Had orders for Fort Bliss, Texas
-Drove to Texas with his family
-Spent seven or eight months in Texas
-In February 1972 he received a letter saying Army was reducing in size
-Meant that his active duty was coming to an end
-Active duty ended in April 1972
(01:39:53) Army Reserve
-Drilled with an Army Reserve unit in Kalamazoo starting in May 1972
-Spent five years with the hospital unit there
-Worked as an executive officer for seven years at Fort Sheridan
-Part of the 149th Medical Detachment
-Went on active duty in the summers
-Did four summers at Camp Ripley, Minnesota
-Did four summers at Camp Grayling, Michigan
-Got promoted to the rank of colonel
-Spent 31 years in the Army (active duty and reserve)
(01:41:22) Civilian Work
-Had teaching jobs while he was in the Army Reserve
-Owned a horse farm in Niles, Michigan
-Raised horses and went to shows
-Got his doctorate in teaching
-Coached a track team at Lake Michigan College and worked as their athletics director
-Developed "Dump Your Plump," an international weight loss program
-Team based, goal oriented, competitive program
(01:43:38) Lest We Forget
-Part of Lest We Forget
-Patriotic organization
-Collects the stories of veterans
-Have collected the stories of 300 to 350 veterans
-Educates people about American military engagements
-Conducts war reenactments for World War Two, Korean War, and Vietnam War
�
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_AlsbroD1899V
Title
A name given to the resource
Alsbro, Donald E (Interview outline and video), 2015
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-17
Description
An account of the resource
Don Alsbro was born on May 20, 1940 in Detroit, Michigan. In 1958 he attended Western Michigan University and enrolled in the Reserve Officer Training Corps, received his commission in January 1963 and graduated in June 1963. He received Infantry Basic Training at Fort Benning, Georgia and was stationed at Larson Barracks in Kitzingen, Germany from 1963 to 1966 working as the athletics and recreation officer of the 3rd Infantry Division. In February 1966 he received orders for Vietnam and in summer 1966 he deployed to Vietnam. He served as the Civil Affairs Officer in the 11th Aviation Group of the 1st Cavalry Division at An Khe promoting the welfare of the Vietnamese civilians in the area. He left Vietnam in June 1967 and received Adjutant General training at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana and served at Fort Sheridan, Illinois for two years. In August 1970 he returned to Vietnam for a second tour where he served with the 4th Infantry Division at An Khe and the Americal Division at Chu Lai. He returned to the U.S. and served at Fort Bliss, Texas until his active duty ended in April 1972. He continued to serve in the Army Reserve in Kalamazoo, Michigan
Fort Sheridan, Illinois
Camp Ripley, Minnesota
and Camp Grayling, Michigan. Don served for 30 years and attained the rank of colonel.
Creator
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Alsbro, Donald E.
Contributor
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Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
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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
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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>
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University Libraries. Allendale, Michigan
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video/x-m4v
application/pdf
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d477cace4c921d4510e4efadbd528cda.mp4
3e5ddfe5e742e923d514965f803035fb
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/bce3383305a62b5fcf9e0bcc37987aca.pdf
bd2cb2d49f8b6915351d41814a15ba1e
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
All American Girls Professional Baseball League
Veterans History Project
Interviewee’s Name: Isabel (Lefty) Alvarez
Length of Interview: (00:37:11)
Interviewed by: James Smither,
Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, June 30, 2010
Interviewer: “Can you begin to tell us a little bit about your background? To start
with, where and when were you born?”
I was born on October 31, 1933 in Havana, Cuba.
Interviewer: “What did your father do for a living or what did your family do?”
Well, my father was in the marines and then in the police force for fifty years.
Interviewer: “So he had a regular job. How many children were in your family?”
My brother and myself only
Interviewer: “When did you start playing baseball?”
I think very—my mother was all sport orientated and she knew it was healthy, so baseball
they played in the street you know and she let me do the sports, but she didn’t let me do
any other things. 1:14
Interviewer: “What other sports did you play besides baseball?”
Fencing, soccer and baseball most of all
Interviewer: “Now, when you played these games, were you mostly playing with
boys or were there a lot of girls too?”
In the fencing there was women, it was well organized and directing the fencing was
people from the government.
Interviewer: “Did you have fencing tournaments and did you travel around?”
At the time, in fifty-- it was the time, I can’t remember the exact day, but we were going
to go to Europe for fencing and I had to make up my mind if I wanted to go to Europe or
come to the United States to play baseball, so I decided to come here and I would like to
know the date, I can’t remember. 2:09
Interviewer: “Well, when did you first have contact with American baseball?
When did you start playing either with or against American teams?”
1
�In 1947 when they went to spring training and we had an exhibition game and to let you
know, I pitched that one game.
Interviewer: “How old were you when you pitched in this exhibition game?”
I was fourteen years old. In 1947, now I figure it out.
Interviewer: “If it was in the spring of 1947, you were probably thirteen.”
Thirteen, I can’t imagine.
Interviewer: “How did you do?”
I did very well, that’s what my mother told me. She was at the game and that’s the first
time my mother saw me play. 2:54
Interviewer: “How did they get the team together? How did you wind up on the
team?”
The owner of our Cuban team was a—he was the owner of a wine distillery and he had a
lot of connects with tourists and how he get to know Max Carey and the commissioners
of the league, I don’t have any idea, but he had a lot of good connections and a lot of
money and we had a place to go and train. I love it you know because we even stayed on
weekends and had food and everything. 3:33
Interviewer: “And do you remember at all what happened in that game that you
pitched against the Americans? Your mother told you, you did well.”
Well that’s when they decided they were going to bring four Cubans to the United States
and the President came to my house to my mother and said I wasn’t old enough to come
to the United States, you had to be fifteen, so I waited until 1949, I was fifteen then.
Interviewer: “You really knew from 1947, that you wanted to go.”
Yeah, the manager said, the Cuban manager, “you’re going to be next”, so I knew and it
was anxiety you know. 4:16
Interviewer: “So then when it gets to 1949 and you’re going to go to America, how
did they get you over to the states and where did you go first? Do you remember
about going over?”
The first time I step here in the United States to go to play for—it was Chicago and I—
coming fresh from Cuba at that age, I didn’t even know I was in Chicago.
Interviewer: “How did you get from Cuba up to Chicago?”
By—how did I get over there? A plane to Miami and then drive to Chicago.
Interviewer: “You drove to Chicago?”
2
�No, I didn’t drive—how did I get over there? That’s a funny thing, how did I get to
Chicago?” 5:08 We fly, we had to fly. We flew yes.
Interviewer: “Now, were you all by yourself when you did this or did you have
someone with you?”
There were three Cubans with me.
Interviewer: “So, a group of four Cubans go together?”
Yes, together, that’s how we first started in 1949.
Interviewer: “So, the time you came to the United States did you speak any English
yet?”
Not very much, my mother was tutoring me with words and works and everything
because my mother was right, to learn English. There was a professor in Cuba, a
neighbor, he was supposed to learn, to teach English and my mother sent me to him for a
week . He thought I could learn English in a week. I don’t know, so then my brother,
when I came over here he said, “well you knew English when you came to the United
States”, and I said, “I did not know the English much in a week”. 6:09
Interviewer: “What happened once you got to Chicago? What did they do with you
then? What did you do?”
They assigned us to a team and I was assigned to the Chicago Colleens.
Interviewer: “Did the team make any provision to help—were you the only Cuban
player they had or did all of you go together?”
No, there were four of us.
Interviewer: “All four of you to one team?”
Yes, two, there were two teams, the Chicago Colleens and the Springfield Sallies.
Interviewer: “So two went to each team?”
Yes. 6:45
Interviewer: “You had somebody else there from Cuba.”
Yes, those years, Madelia, the older one. She was the one who helped a lot with the
language because she knew pretty good English when she came.
Interviewer: “How well did you get along with the other players on the team?”
3
�I had no problem with getting along because I was happy to be here and I knew that I had
to get along because my mother was right there and she wanted me here in the United
States, so I better—I don’t know, it was something natural. I was trained to like the
United States from my mother and I think it’s good. 7:36
Interviewer: “At this point you were a pitcher?”
Yes
Interviewer: “Primarily pitching, all right, now was the game you were playing
here any different from the game you played in Cuba in terms of the style of play or
the equipment used or anything like that?”
The ball was a little bigger, but I don’t really—I got adjusted so well, I feel, that I don’t
have any knowledge about it that I had trouble because I was here to play ball and that’s
what my mother wanted me to do.
Interviewer: “Ok, and how successful were you as a player at that point? Did you
Pitch well and win games?”
Well, I don’t –all those years back, they got some scores—I got some baseball cards, but
my records, they don’t show that I was a real, real great ball player. 8:41 I don’t
consider myself that great.
Interviewer: “How long did you play in the American baseball league?”
Six years.
Interviewer: “Six years, you stayed in the league all that time?”
Yeah
Interviewer: “So you were apparently good enough to do that?”
Right, and I had the chance when the Colleens folded, I had a chance to go to Fort
Wayne, they picked me up to go to Fort Wayne and that’s the biggest opportunity I had.
Interviewer: “Did you like playing in Fort Wayne better than Chicago or was it
about the same?”
Well, we were in a group and we would ride the bus all together, everything was all
together, but when I went to Fort Wayne I was just on my own and it took me a little
longer time to start getting use to it, but it wasn’t anything that I disliked. You’re just in
a strange place all by yourself. After coming from a group and going to Fort Wayne you
didn’t know anybody and they were older. The girls in Fort Wayne that were playing,
they were older than I was. 9:59 I got along and I think I did very well.
4
�Interviewer: “Tell me a little bit about the experience of just kind of traveling
around with these teams. When you’re going to play how did you get from one
game to another? What did they do? Did they put you on busses or trains?”
Yes, busses and oh yeah, we had more fun and I sat in the front, in the front seat, so I
could have the big window in the bus and then I can read the signs where we were going
and the manager was sitting in the other side and he was a mixed Cuban. I would read a
sign and he helped me to pronounce it better. 10:46
Interviewer: “Who was your manager at this time? What was his mane?”
Mitch Skupien, I might not be pronouncing it right, but he was really, really nice.
Interviewer: “When you were playing at these games, did you get a lot of fans who
would come to the games in Fort Wayne or Chicago?”
Yes, and I always had a lot of good—a lot of fans, they liked me, but everybody was
always nice. I have a lot of respect for the people here, but I was brought up that way.
Interviewer: “The league had a lot of rules for how the players were to dress and
act and all that kind of thing, was it easy for you to follow those rules or did it not
make any sense to you?” 11:48
No, No, it was because I was raised differently. My mother you know, different, and I
didn’t, my mother always pampered me a lot with lipstick and combing my hair and my
dress, she just couldn’t let me out of the house without being dressed nice. I didn’t go to
school there because the schooling was in 1943 and by 1949 they didn’t have those strict
rules. 12:26
Interviewer: “So it wasn’t quite the same as it was when the league started by the
time you got there?”
It was different it was just different.
Interviewer: “Were there particular friends you had on these teams or people you
got to know really well and stand out in your memory?”
Yes, I had a—it was more they get close to the Cubans you know and we always had that,
the players being very, very nice. I had pretty good luck in that and we had fun because
my English was broken and they laughed and I laughed with them because it was funny.
13:13
Interviewer: “Ok now, when you think back about the time that you spent in this
league playing these games, are there particular events or things that kind of stand
out in your mind or that come back to you a lot, good things that happened to you at
certain points along the way?”
5
�On the touring or on the whole?
Interviewer: “Anything about that whether it’s on the tour or in a game or off the
field.”
Well, I mean what—I’ve been lucky, I don’t know if it’s the right word because—
Interviewer: “If you hadn’t had the opportunity to come to the United States to
play baseball, what do you think you might have done over that period of six years
instead?”
You mean in Cuba?
Interviewer: “If you were back in Cuba, yes.”
Oh my dear, I don’t know, my mother would have been crying, but she would cry
because that was her ideal, the baseball, she loved baseball. She use to—in our house she
was one of those little old ladies and she would sit there and listen to the Cubans baseball
playing. She was, there was a team names Allemandes, their blue, and she would light a
little candle, she loved baseball. 14:38
Interviewer: “That really was her dream, that you go and do this?”
Exactly, she probably would have liked to play ball herself.
Interviewer: “Did she ever come up to the United States to see you play?”
Never
Interviewer: “Did anyone from your family come up at any point?”
No, they never could because at the time it was hard to sponsor anybody. I couldn’t
sponsor anybody, so it was rough.
Interviewer: “So there were immigration rules and things that made it difficult to
come up?”
You had to have a sponsor and I was very lucky in 1953 when Mr. And Mrs. Blee,
they—I met them through their daughter at a ball game. I met them, they took me home,
to their home, they gave me a room and then, because they knew I was a Daisy then you
see, and anybody who was a Daisy player, they had to be good people, and more or less
from Cuba. 15:37
Interviewer: “So, what kind of living—did you normally live with people’s families
in their home?”
Yes
Interviewer: “Did you do that in Chicago too?”
No, we stayed in hotels.
6
�Interviewer: “So, when you got to Fort Wayne you would go and live in people’s
houses?”
Yes
Interviewer: “So these people essentially sponsored you so you could stay in the
states?”
No, this was after the first year when I went to Fort Wayne in 1951. I already knew who
I was going to live with, I think the league set it up. The fans would take ball players in,
so I went to—with them, and this time in 1951 and in 1954 I went back to Fort Wayne
and where was I staying in 1954? 16:24
Interviewer: “I was asking, how did you wind up staying in the United States?”
Oh, yes
Interviewer: “You talked about people sponsoring you.”
In 1951, when I came on, I was rooming there for doing baseball and then in—I met
someone at a ball game for some reason. It’s a long story and I don’t know if you want
to hear that?
Interviewer: “We’re interested, yes.”
I was at the ball park watching some—I wasn’t playing ball, and there were some kids
playing softball and I went to the ball park to watch them, so I was sitting there, I was
very fresh from Cuba and I even had a little pocket with money that my mother always
said to put it in between your bra, and for some reason, I have some pictures, and I knew
I was a Daisy, so then that time I had some pictures with me and the kids were all crazy
about looking at my pictures and suddenly I don’t know where everything was. 17:31
My money, the money that I had, I must have—I don’t know and the pictures, I couldn’t
find nothing I was—so one of the girls from the ball team, she was the one that helped
me, she called the FBI and we were going to call the police to see if these kids have taken
the money and run, and guess what? That morning that was finding the police, the FBI
she said and I went to the ballpark and you know I found everything, the pictures and the
money, that little pocket. Somebody get scared and throw it around and I was very lucky
because I had about a hundred dollars and then she took me home to meet her mom and
dad and that was it. They give me a home and they applied for citizenship in 1953
because they knew I was—I was kind of lost really that year, it was in 1952. 18:47 I
went there and I stayed with them and became friends and this friend, it wasn’t a friend,
she was the one who helped me, she went into college and I stayed with her mom and dad
and I was sleeping in her room upstairs while she was in college, so I never saw this
friend, I never saw her very much. 19:16
Interviewer: “Now, the league shuts down after the 1954 season, so when that came
to an end what did you do at that point?”
7
�See, in 1953, Mr. and Mrs. Blee, I applied for citizenship paper, so in 1954 I had my
residence, so I didn’t go back home.
Interviewer: “What did you do for a living at that point?”
They give me a job I was a carhop. They call in the drive-in and he says, “I got a girl
here from Cuba and she don’t speak English, but she needs a job”, and Don Holt said,
“bring her over “, so they drove me in there and they give me a job and I could hardly
even speak English, but they were helping me. I use to go and take the orders you know
you put a tray in and sometimes I miss the tray drops and sometimes kids they laugh at
you. 20:25 I go inside, take the order and go inside and call it and the manager he saw
me coming and he grabbed my slip and said, “I can read it faster than you can call it”, but
you know what, I never got mad at him, I thought he was great, he was a good manager.
20:50
Interviewer: “How long did you wind up working there?”
I don’t know how many years, but I worked quite a bit until. Right, and then I went to—I
worked on the 401 Tailoring Co. also, so I really worked all through my whole after
baseball. I worked and I always had a job. Years ago you know they helped me to go
and get a job, they aren’t going to support you.
Interviewer: “If you look over that whole experience you had playing baseball etc.
How do you think that wound up affecting you? You talked a little bit about how,
and obviously your life was different because you came to America and stayed, did
it change you as a person? Did you otherwise?” 21:44
No, it probably made me better because I was raised that America was a good country
and you had that in your mind to respect.
Interviewer: “Have you paid much attention to what has happened with women’s
sports in this country over the past fifty years? You see more women on television
doing different things, basketball and that kind of thing.”
It is great and I think your mother and father have a lot to do with getting their son’s and
daughters to start playing sports and supporting them, but the mother has to have the
incentive like my mother did otherwise I wouldn’t be here because my dad said, “why are
you going to go over there where it’s cold?” It would have broke my heart if they would
never take me to come to the United States. 22:53
Interviewer: “Aside from just being on your own, were there aspects of just
adjusting to living in the states that were a problem? Did the cold bother you or
anything like that?”
No, I never did complain about the weather. As a matter of fact, I didn’t complain about
much of anything because I was here best and complain, ‘holly cow”. I never was that
type either, but I made a lot of friendships and that’s one thing and I don’t know I’m just
8
�myself, but my friends have made my world. In Fort Wayne too, I don’t have no enemies
I don’t think so. 23:53
Interviewer: “I can see why you wouldn’t. Do you have anything else that you
would like to put on the record here before we close out the interview? Anything
that you would like to say about the league itself or playing?”
Well, I am so thankful and I have been very lucky because of all the Cubans that came. I
believe that I—let me see how I’m going to say it, I just, the appreciation that I have
being here. 24:48
Interviewer: “Now, were their other Cubans that came and joined the league after
you did? Did you meet anybody new or were you the last group?”
Yes, and there were some that came before earlier.
Interviewer: “Alright, there is something I did want to get in here and ask you a
little and that’s, did you normally have a spring training session of some kind?
What did you do to prepare for a season from one year to the next?”
When I use to go back home or here?
Interviewer: “No, from one year to the next, while you were playing baseball, did
you go home in the winter?”
Yes
Interviewer: “Ok, you go home in the winter and then you?”
From 1949 until 1953 I use to go back home.
Interviewer: “When you came back, did you do spring training games before the
regular season?” 25:53
Yes, just a spring training practicing.
Interviewer: “Where did you do the practicing? Was that wherever your team was
based?”
Yes, and when I was in Chicago, in the morning we use to practice and on tour, the
touring team, we practiced the same and it’s a mostly in the morning we did our
practicing.
Interviewer: “Was it 1949 and 1950 that your team was touring?”
Right, we did a lot of practice.
Interviewer: “When you were touring would you play just any local teams from any
community you went to?”
9
�We had two teams, the Springfield Sallies and Chicago.
Interviewer: “They just toured together and played in different places.”
Yes, and they would advertise in the paper that we were in town and we had the tryouts
for the one, just like in the movie you know. 26:50
Interviewer: “As you were touring, how far away from Chicago did you get when
you were traveling? Did you just stay in the Midwest mostly?”
Yes, let me see, about—I had that written down how many places we went. I had a map
and right now I just can’t tell you because I—sorry.
Interviewer: “But there were a lot of different towns, not just two or three places?”
Oh yes
Interviewer: “Were they in a few hours of each other or did you have really long
trips sometimes?”
We played and we also left that same night sometimes. The traveling was heavy you
know and the many towns in the states; we had quite a few, close to fifty, fifty-six I think.
27:54
Interviewer: “You said you would hold tryouts when you went to these different
places?”
Yes and there was one lady, one of the girls, she’s in our team and she’s here today. We
pick her up in Cuba for Arkansas and she was a good pitcher and she came with us and
she had to leave home and she was--said English and we became friends because she was
sitting in the same seat. Can you imagine what she thought, I can’t speak English and she
was from Arkansas. We got along fine and we’re still good friends now and she stayed in
the league and she is really the only one we picked up that I can remember.
Interviewer: “Did they recruit women to play? At some point they had to through
junior teams or things like that. Did they recruit people for those teams or just—“
To play for us, yeah they had three and they had to be pretty good and she was, she was a
good pitcher and we always need pitchers.
Interviewer: “As far as your own playing career goes, you were a pitcher. Now,
were you a starting pitcher or were you a relief pitcher or both?” 29:32
I was a starter and relief both ways.
Interviewer: “And did you play any other positions?”
Outfielder.
10
�Interviewer: “So it wasn’t like the baseball teams today where the pitcher only
pitches and is sitting on the bench the rest of the time?”
No, no and also, the pitcher never get in hitting practice very much. I can’t imagine that,
so supposedly when you run the bases then they bring you your coat and that was real.
The pitcher was given great care and the chaperone would message your arm. 30:24
Interviewer: “So they did try to do what they could at that point to make sure you
didn’t blow out your arm or anything else like that?”
Right, they were very, very good.
Interviewer: “Now, did you ever get hurt while you were playing? Did you ever
have an injury that kept you out of the games?”
Yes, in 1954 in Fort Wayne.
Interviewer: “What happened?”
Trying to second base and I twisted my leg, so that was it. I went to the hospital and they
put me in traction and they left me in traction for one month, can you imagine this?
Interviewer: “That’s what they did back in those days.”
I lay there and I didn’t know nothing you know, so I never went back in the game
because I had to have surgery. 31:10
Interviewer: “Now, when you heard about the league shutting down, were you sad
about that or were you planning on going back?”
No, I wasn’t going back, I was just here, I was glad I had my residence. If I never would
have met those people I would be back in Cuba yet. My mother would cry then, but I’m
so thankful, you just can’t imagine how lucky I’ve been. I think I have been, of all the
Cubans and I’m not bragging, I have been the lucky one.
Interviewer: “It certainly sounds like you had a good time and you tell good stories
and thank you for coming in and talking to me today.”
Thank you thank you. 32:05
11
�
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
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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-58
Format
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-02
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-58_IAlvarez
Title
A name given to the resource
Alvarez, Isabel "Lefty" (Interview transcript and video), 2009
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Alvarez, Isabel
Description
An account of the resource
Isabel Alvarez was born in Havana, Cuba in 1933. She grew up in Havana and played baseball with the neighborhood kids and was also involved with other sports. In 1947, she pitched her first exhibition game in American baseball and was picked by the All American League and sponsored to come to the United States with three other Cubans to play baseball in 1949. She played pitcher for the Chicago Colleens from 1949 through the 1950 season. When the Chicago Colleens folded, she went on to play for the Fort Wayne Daisies during the 1951 and 1954 seasons. Upon getting her citizenship in 1953 she stayed in the United States permanently. During her six-year baseball career she also played utility outfielder and also played briefly with the Battle Creek Belles (1951); Kalamazoo Lassies (1953); and the Grand Rapids Chicks (1954).
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.)
Video recordings
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives
Baseball for women--United States
Baseball
Sports for women
Baseball players--Illinois
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Baseball players--Indiana
Baseball players--Michigan
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
2009-09-26
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
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b46df14b4b13d4523402b92406294764.mp4
2d13c540054f3cdd7e2d00df9f75eced
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/08818f8aa62e7ae9d3f6d1a82b774eb4.pdf
0a91e2a98ca64eb36da350fb9bf780f9
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Title: Ambrose, Thomas (Interview outline and video), 2010
Subject: Korean War, 1950-1953-–Personal narratives, American; United States.
Marine Corps
Description:
Thomas Ambrose joined the Navy in 1948. He trained for the Medical Corps, and
initially did hospital duty, but then transferred to the Marines and was sent to Korea to
serve as a corpsman with a line company. His unit fought a series of engagements on the
Imjin River and in the Punchbowl. He learned to use field radios and transferred to a
signal company, and at the end of his tour he served near Panmunjom.
Creator: Ambrose, Thomas
Contributor (Interviewer/Affiliation): Montney, Bobby (Interviewer); Caledonia
High School (Caledonia, Mich.)
Date: 2010-06-05
Digital Identification: TAmbrose
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ambrose, Thomas (Interview outline and video), 2010
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ambrose, Thomas
Description
An account of the resource
Thomas Ambrose joined the Navy in 1948. He trained for the Medical Corps, and initially did hospital duty, but then transferred to the Marines and was sent to Korea to serve as a corpsman with a line company. His unit fought a series of engagements on the Imjin River and in the Punchbowl. He learned to use field radios and transferred to a signal company, and at the end of his tour he served near Panmunjom.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Montney, Bobby (Interviewer)
Caledonia High School (Caledonia, Mich.)
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
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
United States. Marine Corps
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2010-06-05
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AmbroseT
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9791825c9f4d33c809d504735184521a.mp4
4f33d3a87181a932d68234f4a43553de
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6312dfd72f5f38d472a64189b9922835.pdf
e85d2fdc3d683db146c22b8ce957b222
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Name of Interviewee: Mitch Amlotte
Name of War: Vietnam
Length of Interview: (00:39:18)
(00:21) Alpena Michigan
Born July 13 1950
Hillman is his hometown. His grandfather settled the town
He played in the woods as a kid. He remembers as a kid, stripping a girl naked and
painting her red with barn paint
(2:22) His first day at school his teacher was a large lady and she spent most of the
day pulling his ears. It was a one room school that use to be a garage. There was about
18-19 kindergarteners in the building.
Mitch says he was the class clown. He was in trouble a lot. He used to sneak critters
into school. One time he fell backwards and hit his head on a chair and got stitches.
He went to a new school built for K-12th grade.
He walked to school
(5:30) Remembers having a crush on his teacher
Figures he didn’t ask for studies so he didn’t care for them
He was the first person in his family to graduate from high school
(7:30) Mitch started playing percussion in sixth grade thru high school
Was involved in sports during school. Baseball, Basketball, and football
Went to U of M for games and played there
His father worked for Besser’s in a factory and mother was a homemaker and
eventually went to work in a factory when Mitch was in fifth grade
He has two older brother, younger brother and a sister
(10:13) Mitch had no plans after school so since other guys were getting drafted he
figured he would too so he volunteered for the Army
Visited a recruiter with his cousin on the buddy plan. Wanted to join the military
police and was told they qualified. Signed up for 4 year hitches
(11:17) Fort Wayne Michigan to Fort Knox Kentucky
Basic training
When it came time to get their AIT orders he went to Fort Polk, Louisiana, which was
the gateway to Vietnam. A military personnel seen he was guaranteed MP upon entry
into the military so instead of sending him to Fort Polk, they sent him to Fort
Benjamin Harrison Indiana to postal school. Graduated and was sent to Germany
�
During training he was hit with a Pugal stick and blew his eardrum out. Pugal sticks
look like big Q-tips used to practice for bayonet training
Went to Louisville on a weekend pass and slept in a hotel for two days and two
nights. It was his first contact with black people and he was scared and tired.
(14:50) Said he could never live in a big city.
He said his company was not happy that he was back and looked at him as a coward.
He said he had no problems going but send him to MP school first and then send him
to Vietnam
(16:40) Germany-Rheine-Main Airbase
He flew over there. It was his first time on an airplane. He was brave at one point
and looked out over Ireland and said it was beautiful. Flew over to Rhein-Main
Airbase
Two guys met him there in the middle of the night and took him to Heidelberg to the
4th Base Post Office
Heidelberg 4th Base Post Office
Was here for a year
He sorted mail and payroll checks for all of the European theatre
On off time he bar hopped
Went to Frankfurt and was offered a chance to go to Rome, Italy. Went to the
Catholic Chaplain and got administrative leave and nobody could countermand it
except for the Attorney General of the Military. Mitch took 120 days of
administrative leave. He would take children of military personnel on field trips.
(20:00) He got to travel quite a bit and two weeks at a time. Went to Czechoslovakia,
Scandinavia, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Switzerland
Met two girls while in Czechoslovakia who were in an AFC club and wanted to go
home and see their parents. The guys took them to the border and hid the car and
walked 4 ½ miles to her home town. On the way back they were being tracked and
ran 1 mile and outran their pursuers.
Mitch said he didn’t chase women too much. He likes history so he spent time at
Museums and seeing castles while he was overseas.
He went to Neuschwanstein Castle. Walt Disney designed his castle after this. He
went to Hindenburg Castle
(22:45) Went to France trying to do a family tree. Found names but never met any of
the people
Mitch said civilians were very standoffish. The men he found hated them and he lost
rank a few times for getting into physical fights with them. He ended up in German
jails for fighting
Mitch said Commanding Officers just wanted to know if he won or not. Took a stripe
�
away and told him he would get it back shortly that it was just a formality.
(24:40) Mitch spent a little over 2 years in Germany
His enlistment was cut from 4 years to 3 years since they didn’t get to go into MP’s
(25:00)Came Home
Mitch thought about re-enlisting in the military but Dad talked him out of it seeing
that his next tour of duty would be Vietnam
His father promised to get him a job at the factory he worked at and since it was the
best paying job in the town he thought that was a good idea
His dad never got him the job
Mitch went on a drunk binge for a few months
His dad died at 93 and his mom at 76. They died one year apart from each other.
(28:00) He married an old friend. Went from job to job. He had two kids and
Divorced in 1988
Married a new girl. Had custody of his kids at this time. Married for 12 years this
time.
January last year he talked to a friend and was asked how he was handling the news
of getting divorced. He had no idea he was getting divorce. Both his kids were grown
at this time.
He found out he was suffering from severe depression dating back to his first
marriage
He packed up and headed to Philadelphia where his daughter lived. She eventually
kicked her husband out and separated so in May he headed back up to Michigan to
live with his sister
(33:09) Moved to Farwell to live with sister
Mitch had nowhere to go when he sister told him his time was up and nobody else
would let him live with them.
August he moved to the Veterans Home in Grand Rapids. He does not like being
there and feels they don’t treat him well but with his medical problems he can’t get a
job
He says that the military made a man out of him but it was thrown away when he got
out and couldn’t get a job. He states in the interview that his second biggest regret
was not staying in the military.
He is being treated for depression and says he rarely sees his family
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Amlotte, Mitch (Interview outline and video), 2007
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Amlotte, Mitch
Description
An account of the resource
Mitch Amlotte volunteered for the Army in 1968 to escape a bad home life. He was sent to postal school and then to Germany. He volunteered to travel with the children of military men on field trips and spent much of his time seeing different countries. He was released from the military after 3 years would have re-enlisted except that he did not want to go to Vietnam. He encountered an assortment of personal and medical problems after his discharge, which he discusses at some length.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Collins Sr., Charles E. (Interviewer)
Collins, Carol (Interviewer)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
United States. Army
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2007-05-22
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AmlotteM
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/500d3eb5307224fe8950a824bb9ad373.mp4
eaed1cca096c3ae173c090db7f0c68af
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f3051aa91efc605e250c63dc615d12fd.pdf
07be9bf523fee507ecbd049b15b63eed
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veteran’s History Project
Vietnam War
Bob Anderson
Interview Length: (02:41:51:00)
Pre-enlistment / Training (00:00:08:00)
Anderson was born in August 1948 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where his family lived for a
few years before Anderson’s father decided to go back into the Air Force; Anderson’s
father had served as a pilot during World War II and had grown tired of civilian life, so
he applied for, and the Air Force granted, re-entry into the service (00:00:08:00)
o When Anderson’s father re-enlisted, it was towards the end of the Korean War,
and he served not a combat pilot but a personnel transport pilot (00:00:59:00)
o Anderson’s family ended up living in several different places, including
Charleston, South Carolina, and Florida as Anderson’s father trained with
different types of aircraft (00:01:21:00)
o For the majority of the time before Anderson himself joined the service, his father
was stationed at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where Anderson received
the majority of his schooling and graduated from high school (00:01:32:00)
Anderson graduated in 1966 and proceeded to attend junior college; during that time,
Anderson ended up living with his uncle in the Gulf Coast region of Mississippi, where
the uncle was a professor at one of the local colleges (00:01:46:00)
o After a year, Anderson transferred from the junior college to Michigan State
University in Fall 1967 (00:02:12:00)
o While in college, Anderson felt that he did not know how to study properly; he
would read the necessary texts for hours but he could not translate the reading to
re-gurgitation on tests and as a result, Anderson ended up being academically
dismissed from the university in Spring 1968 (00:02:23:00)
o While at Michigan State, if there were protest movements on the campus,
Anderson was unaware of them; he was insulated growing up and although his
parents allowed him to do what he wanted, Anderson grew up oblivious to world
events (00:03:07:00)
After Anderson was forced out of Michigan State, he packed all his belongings up and
moved back to Maryland to live with his parents, while feeling like he had failed
something because he had done well in the junior college (00:03:38:00)
o Although he could have gone to junior college again in Maryland, something in
the back of Anderson’s mind told him that he was not ready to try again yet; he
talked with his father and his father thought it might be a good idea for Anderson
to join the service (00:03:57:00)
If he joined the service, Anderson would receive free training and when he
got out of the service, if Anderson did not want to go back to college, then
he would at least have training for a trade (00:04:18:00)
�
o Anderson’s father suggested refrigeration equipment repair because people used
air conditioners and everybody had a refrigerator, so Anderson enlisted in the
Army to be a refrigeration equipment repairman (00:04:36:00)
Anderson ended up enlisting in the Army on his mother’s birthday: May 6th, 1968
(00:05:12:00)
o When he enlisted, Anderson had a guaranteed enlistment for the school that he
wanted, which happened to be at Fort Belvoir, an Army base just over the
Potomac River and ten miles away from Anderson’s home (00:05:32:00)
Anderson did his basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia; had he gone to the refrigeration
repair school, Anderson would have then gone to Fort Belvoir but during the reception
period, Anderson scored high enough on the tests to be considered for Officer Candidate
School (OCS) (00:06:04:00)
o For two years before he enlisted, the Vietnam War was an un-event for Anderson;
even though the division he would serve with, the 1st Air Cavalry, had fought in
the Ia Drang valley, that was Anderson’s senior year in high school and he was
still oblivious (00:06:48:00)
o Anderson had the choice of going to OCS because he qualified and once he said
yes, his waive his guaranteed right to go to refrigeration equipment repairman
school (00:07:10:00)
Therefore, after completing his basic training, Anderson went to Fort Dix,
New Jersey (00:07:20:00)
o Anderson feels that the basic premise behind basic training was the instructors
wanted to tear the men down and expunge any thoughts of the civilian word so
they could re-make the men as soldiers (00:07:33:00)
Therefore, there was a lot of physical torment by the instructors, who were
allowed to yell profusely at the soldiers; although the instructors are still
allowed to yell today, they have a limit on what they are allowed to call
the soldiers (00:07:50:00)
During Anderson’s training, the soldiers had no recourse but to say “yes
drill sergeant” and do whatever the instructor wanted (00:08:03:00)
o The soldiers learned how to drill and march, as well as the manual of arms for the
M-14 and rifle marksmanship (00:08:16:00)
o Not everyone who went through basic training ended up with a combat unit; there
were many soldiers ended up going to specialized schools, such as refrigeration
equipment repair or welding (00:08:32:00)
That being said, the training was oriented towards infantry tactics, such as
target detection, night division, escape & evasion, etc. (00:09:15:00)
o For the most part, Anderson’s adjustment to military life was fairly easy,
primarily because his father was career Air Force and from afar, Anderson had
some understand of what he had to do, mainly not arguing with everybody and
doing whatever he was ordered to do (00:09:34:00)
o In basic training, if someone told you to get down and do a bunch of push-ups,
then you got down and did as many as you could (00:10:04:00)
There was no debate with the drill sergeants; if they said stand on one foot
in the corner, the soldiers said “yes drill sergeant” then went and stood on
one foot in the corner (00:10:21:00)
�
Nevertheless, there were a few soldiers who could not be broken or did not
want to be broken and Anderson suspects that most of those soldiers were
draftees; they had been doing whatever they were doing when Uncle Sam
knocked on their door and said they would report (00:10:41:00)
Anderson suspects the draftees were rebellious because they did
not want to be there, whereas his situation was different because he
had enlisted; although his feelings might be similar to theirs,
Anderson kept his head down and his mouth shut (00:11:05:00)
o When he enlisted, Anderson was in better physical shape, so the physical aspects
of the training, such as running, were not an issue; the only thing Anderson really
had trouble with were the monkey bars, which the soldiers had to do every day
before they could eat breakfast (00:11:34:00)
Anderson was not very good at first because he did not have much upper
body strength but eventually, he learned how to do them (00:12:01:00)
o Anderson’s basic training lasted for eight or nine weeks, after which he went to
Fort Dix, New Jersey for his Advanced Individual Training (AIT) (00:12:13:00)
In a lot of ways, AIT was similar to basic training, although the training was much more
geared towards the infantry, including more weapons training, radio procedure, field
exercises, tactical training and less drill and ceremony; by this time, most of the soldiers
knew where they were going (00:12:26:00)
o While in basic training, the drill sergeants for the most part had served in Vietnam
but in AIT, some of the instructors, such as the training company commander, had
not served a tour; Anderson vaguely recalls the platoon sergeant in AIT had
served in Vietnam but he cannot be sure (00:13:07:00)
o During AIT, the instructors tried to simulate what the soldiers would experience
in Vietnam as best they could, although they could not replicate the physical
aspects, such as the terrain, humidity, and monsoons or the jungle (00:13:54:00)
o As part of the overall training, the soldiers went through two or three days of
training in how to interact with the civilian population, although Anderson does
not remember it taking place in a mock Vietnamese village; he knows some of the
other AIT locations, such as Fort Polk, had them (00:14:24:00)
After completing AIT, Anderson had a couple of days before he had to report back to
Fort Benning for OCS, which he did in the middle of September 1968 (00:15:14:00)
o There were about one hundred and twenty other soldiers who started the course
with Anderson, which was designed to turn them all into the lieutenants for the
infantry (00:15:34:00)
o The class days were long and although the academics were hard for some,
Anderson did not have any trouble with that nor with the physicality of the
training (00:15:51:00)
o In his platoon of twenty soldiers, Anderson figures that around half were college
graduates and the other half were like Anderson, with a couple of years college
schooling (00:16:43:00)
A large number of the soldiers in Anderson’s platoon were also married,
around thirty percent; any of the soldiers who had a degree and were
married were draftees because they would not willingly enlist if they
already had a four-year degree and a family (00:17:28:00)
�
Many of the soldiers brought their wives with them and Anderson assumes
it was difficult for the soldiers to have their wives five miles off-post but
have to be stuck with one hundred other guys (00:17:58:00)
o The training the soldiers received tended to be similar to what they had already
received, only more intense; there was a lot of map reading, artillery firing and
learning how to adjust fire, etc. (00:18:26:00)
There was also a lot of classroom work, such as a film which the
instructors would stop suddenly, say the company commander had been
killed and ask Anderson what he would do; when this happened, hopefully
Anderson was awake enough to give a good answer and after he did so,
the instructors analyzed his decision-making before continuing the film to
see if what Anderson had said was correct (00:18:53:00)
It was always “go, go, go” from reveille until the end of the day,
the soldiers ran everywhere, it was hot, etc. and when the soldiers
got into an air conditioned building, it seemed like as soon as they
sat down, they went to sleep (00:19:42:00)
The instructors had ways to deal with the sleeping soldiers and
sometimes, they were humorous; the instructors would tell
everyone who was awake to ignore the next command, then they
would yell out, “on your feet” (00:20:16:00)
o The soldiers were conditioned to respond to that command
even if they were half asleep, so when half the class stood
up, they were chastised by the instructor (00:20:35:00)
o OCS lasted for twenty-three weeks; although it was not like the World War II
model of the “ninety-dya wonder”, the soldiers who completed the course still
received that moniker (00:20:52:00)
After the soldiers completed the OCS course and their orders came down, some stayed at
Fort Benning to go into the tactical unit, while others, like Anderson, stayed to go into a
basic training unit; however, each soldiers received a furlough for about a week or two
before they had to report to their new assignment (00:21:14:00)
o Anderson graduated from OCS on March 29th, 1970 and reported back to Fort
Benning in mid-April, where he stayed for three months before receiving his
orders to go to Vietnam (00:21:38:00)
o The role of a 2nd Lieutenant in a basic training company was “to be seen and not
heard”; they were “gentlemen” by an act of Congress but many new lieutenants
were unsure of themselves and since the drill sergeant cadre knew what they were
doing, if a 2nd Lieutenant was smart, he got out of their way to let them do their
thing while watching to learn, which Anderson tried to do (00:22:04:00)
They had a good training company commander who had served with the
101st Airborne Division while the company first sergeant was a two-tour
Vietnam veteran, as well as Korea (00:22:51:00)
All of the other drill sergeants had been to Vietnam, they knew what they
were doing, and they did not need Anderson telling them what to do, so he
tried to stay out of their way (00:23:05:00)
�
All that being said, the lieutenants still received a lot of responsibilities,
such as being the mess officer, the Army emergency relief officer, the
blood-drive officer, etc. (00:23:26:00)
They were trying to give the lieutenants some responsibility, not
necessarily to build up their self-esteem but to make them feel
comfortable with the idea of giving orders; unless they had worked
in a previous job as a supervisor, most of the lieutenants had never
told people to do things (00:24:02:00)
They tried to make break the lieutenants in and make them feel
comfortable in a uniform that said eighty percent of the people on
the base had to salute them (00:24:38:00)
o Once he said that he was not going to go to be a refrigeration repairman,
Anderson knew his path was chosen and there was not question in his mind that
he would ultimately end up in Vietnam (00:25:14:00)
However, Anderson did not dwell on that fact; it was what it was, he had
raised his hand to volunteer and if the Army kept him at Fort Benning for
two years, then so be it (00:25:32:00)
The senior lieutenant in the training company had gone through
that; when he graduated from Armor OCS, he stayed at Fort
Benning for two years, but Anderson did not have any grand
illusions that the same thing would happen to him (00:25:50:00)
Anderson did the best he could as a 2nd Lieutenant and if the time
came, then he would go on to the next step and do as best he could
then too (00:26:12:00)
When his orders finally did come down, Anderson was naturally apprehensive; unlike
being a civilian, Anderson received news from the Army every week about the war and
he was able to see who had been killed and how many were officers (00:26:30:00)
o In some ways, Anderson was glad; he was almost certain he would eventually go,
he had been at Fort Benning long enough to get the assignments down pat, so it
was time to go do what Anderson had been trained to do (00:26:53:00)
Deployment (00:27:20:00)
Once the orders finally arrived, Anderson had to report to Travis Air Force Base in
California, although he does not remember how exactly he got to Vietnam itself
(00:27:20:00)
Anderson does remember arriving in Vietnam and while most soldiers remember it being
smelly or hot, Anderson does not recall the smell; the soldiers arrived in Vietnam at
night, meaning it was dark, and Anderson does remember the bus ride to the 90th
Replacement Battalion (00:28:01:00)
o On the bus ride, all the windows on the bus were open but were covered in a wire
mesh and when one of the soldiers asked what the mesh was for, the bus driver
said it was to keep the VC or somebody else from throwing a hand grenade into
the bus (00:28:20:00)
o That was the first indication that the soldiers were in a real situation; they were
riding in screened-in buses so people could not throw grenades inside and kill
them (00:28:44:00)
�
The soldiers arrived in Bien Hoa and went to the 90th Replacement Battalion, which was
the unit that every newly-arrived soldier went to and from there, the soldiers were
assigned to different units throughout the country (00:28:57:00)
o Anderson spent three days at the replacement battalion, received his uniforms,
although he did not know where he would be assigned, and after a couple of days,
orders came down that he was assigned to the 1st Air Cavalry Division
(00:29:16:00)
While in OCS, the officers listed the three locations where they would like
the serve and Anderson ended up listing Vietnam number three and maybe
Germany as number one (00:29:42:00)
However, when he arrived at the First Team Academy (FTA), they asked
Anderson which unit in particular he would like to join, although he did
not know units from anything (00:29:59:00)
Some officers who had been indoctrinated longer, mainly West
Pointers, chose specific units, such as Custer’s regiment or another
unit, to go to (00:30:34:00)
They had a map of the area and Anderson remembers looking at
the 2nd Battalion of the 7th Cavalry regimental area and seeing that
their headquarters was surrounded by a bunch of firebases, figured
it would be a safe location, so his first choice was to join the 2nd of
the 7th (00:30:50:00)
However, the Army had already decided where Anderson would
go and instead of going to the 2nd of the 7th, he went to the 1st of
the 7th, but that was not big deal to him (00:31:11:00)
The soldiers were at the First Team Academy for about three days, where
they received a weapons familiarization course, did some repelling, etc.;
more than anything, Anderson believes the academy was designed to get
the soldiers acclimated to the heat (00:31:34:00)
o After the three or four days at the FTA, Anderson received orders for the 1st of the
7th; the Army led him by hand because “there is nothing dumber than a 2nd
Lieutenant”, so when Anderson asked how to get to the 1st of the 7th, the Army
said they would take him back to Bien Hoa and tell him right where he needed to
go (00:31:54:00)
At the time, the 1st of the 7th was stationed in III Corps, to the north and west of Saigon,
fifteen miles from the Cambodian border (00:32:37:00)
o Immediately around the base camp, it was in the middle of a rubber plantation but
the further out the soldiers got, to the individual fire bases, it was double and
triple canopy jungle with bamboo and clearings interspersed and for the most part,
the terrain was flat (00:32:58:00)
Initially, Anderson took a C-7 Caribou ride to Quan Loi, where someone knew he was
coming because when he got off the C-7, a sergeant was waiting for him (00:33:32:00)
o When he first arrived in Quan Loi, it seemed like Anderson had been transported
to the moon; there was not anybody he knew and Anderson had orders to get on
the C-7 and when he arrived in Quan Loi, there would be someone there to meet
him (00:33:56:00)
�
o When he arrived, Anderson was walking around with his eyes wide, wondering
what he had gotten himself into, and someone called to him, asked if was going to
the 1st of the 7th and told him to jump in the jeep, which took him to the battalion
headquarters (00:34:15:00)
o After Anderson reported to the headquarters, the other officers told him to go
through a set of doors so that he could talk with the colonel commanding the
battalion (00:34:42:00)
The sequence of Anderson meeting the colonel was similar to the scene in
film Apocalypse Now when Martin Sheen’s character first meets Marlon
Brando’s character (00:35:05:00)
Anderson and the colonel talked for a few minutes, during which the
colonel gave Anderson a Garreyowen crest, which was the regimental
crest for the 7th Cavalry, and told Anderson he was being assigned to
Alpha Company and who the company commander was (00:35:40:00)
o When he arrived at Alpha Company’s rear area, the first sergeant was there and
he knew Anderson was coming; Anderson spent no more than two days getting
his equipment, including his rifle, helmet, poncho, pack, etc. (00:36:31:00)
o Then, on either the second or third day, the company in the field was being resupplied, so they told Anderson the day before that when they went out to resupply, Anderson could go and join the company (00:36:57:00)
The next morning, Anderson gathered all his equipment and boarded the Command and
Control helicopter flying out to the company on Firebase Wescott (00:37:15:00)
o When Anderson jumped off the helicopter with the rest of the soldiers, he asked
what he had to do and was told to wait until the re-supply helicopter arrived; the
company was in the field and they would be moving to a re-supply site where
Anderson would go an meet them (00:37:44:00)
o It seemed like a couple of hours passed before the re-supply helicopter arrived at
the firebase and when it did arrive, Anderson hopped aboard and the helicopter
took him to where the company was (00:38:18:00)
o It was an interesting helicopter ride to the company; Anderson believes the
helicopter crew chief saw he was a newly-arrive lieutenant, so he radioed the pilot
that information and suggested giving Anderson a ride to see if they could make
him throw up (00:38:47:00)
As the helicopter flew out to the company, the pilot made the helicopter
bob and weave, flew along the knap of the earth, etc. but Anderson
thought the flight was great and similar to a roller coaster (00:39:12:00)
During the flight, Anderson sat on a crate with his feet spread apart so he
would not fall out and after awhile, the helicopter crew tired of the erratic
flying, figuring they could to make Anderson vomit (00:39:26:00)
On the other hand, every other helicopter ride that Anderson had was not
as erratic and wild as that first flight (00:39:40:00)
o They eventually dropped Anderson off with the company and when he asked to
speak with the company commander, the other soldiers pointed him out, so
Anderson when to talk with him, who welcomed him to Alpha Company and
assigned Anderson to be the mortar platoon leader, which Anderson did not think
was a good idea (00:39:55:00)
�
Although he had familiarization and knew about mortars, being mortar
platoon leader was not exactly what Anderson wanted to do; still, he held
his tongue and asked where the mortars were (00:40:51:00)
At that time, the soldiers in the platoon were carrying the 81 mm mortars
in the field; the base plate alone weighed eighty-one pounds and the
soldiers also had to carry to launch tube, tripod, aiming sticks, as well as
two rounds of ammunition apiece (00:41:06:00)
Anderson stayed the mortar platoon leader until the next re-supply and
believes the company commander placed him in charge of the mortar
platoon as part of his acclimation; Anderson was wearing his rucksack,
carrying his equipment, and was far enough away from the fighting that he
could see what was going on but not be involved in it (00:41:25:00)
o At the next re-supply, the 2nd platoon lieutenant moved up to be the company
executive officer and Anderson was his replacement (00:42:04:00)
o In the time Anderson was the mortar platoon leader, the soldiers fired the mortars
a couple of times, if only to get ride of some of the weight, although they never
fired them with permission from the company commander (00:42:22:00)
On some occasions, other soldiers in the platoon would go into an area but
before they did, the mortar platoon would launch several rounds into the
area; the soldiers in the platoon knew what they had to do and Anderson
never had to check to make sure everything was ready (00:42:39:00)
When Anderson joined the company, they stayed in that location
overnight and the next morning, a patrol was going out and the captain
wanted some mortar rounds into that vicinity (00:43:52:00)
When Anderson joined the platoon, he had two E-6s, the platoon sergeant and the man
training to be the platoon sergeant; the lieutenant Anderson was replacing moved right
out of the platoon when Anderson arrived (00:44:26:00)
On the first morning Anderson was in charge of the platoon, the captain told him he was
going to be leading a thousand meter patrol and the soldiers were going light, meaning
they were only taking their weapons and ammunition while they left their rucksacks
stayed behind with the company (00:45:21:00)
o The company had a scout dog with them and the captain told Anderson to take the
dog with him; Anderson gathered his sergeants and told them the platoon had to
do a thousand meter patrol and then return to the company (00:45:42:00)
o The sergeants said okay and after tell them the platoon would leave in ten
minutes, Anderson talked with the dog handler to explain what the plan was, who
said okay as well because the handler knew why he was the there and what the
dog’s job was (00:46:12:00)
o Anderson does not recall if this was the patrol where he started walking where he
normally would but if not, then it was shortly thereafter (00:47:09:00)
During a normal patrol, the column would have a point man, a slack man
to cover the point man, then a squad leader and then Anderson himself;
Anderson could not run anything if he was at the rear of the column and
he could not know exactly what was going on (00:47:24:00)
Anderson also had a radio operator and he ended up walking
directly behind Anderson in the column (00:47:58:00)
�
o The patrol had gone around seven hundred meters when the point dog alerted;
although Anderson did not know what was going on, soldiers who had worked
with dogs before did and they told Anderson that the dog had sensed something
near the patrol (00:48:08:00)
o Anderson began to ask in his mind what he had to do next because it was not like
OCS when they would stop the film and ask him; Anderson called one of his
sergeants, asking him to come to the front of the column and when the sergeant
asked why, Anderson said the point dog had alerted, which was a none event for
the sergeant because he had been in-country for six months (00:49:06:00)
When Anderson asked the sergeant what he should do, the sergeant said
they would normally recon by fire, a term Anderson was not familiar with;
the sergeant explained what to do but suggested Anderson radio back to
the company beforehand and tell them what they were planning to do,
otherwise, the men back at the company would hear the gunfire and
assume the patrol had made contact with the enemy (00:49:39:00)
o Anderson radioed back to the company, saying the point dog was alerted and they
were planning to recon by fire; the soldiers did the recon by fire but received no
enemy return fire, so they continued the patrol, performed their sweep and
returned to the company (00:50:16:00)
o Years later, other soldiers in platoon said they could not believe Anderson made
them go through the entire patrol; whenever they went before on a long patrol, the
lieutenant before Anderson would lead the soldiers out about five hundred meters,
where they would sit and relax before going back to the company (00:50:45:00)
o Nothing happened on the first patrol and Anderson is thankful for that because he
was still a green lieutenant (00:51:19:00)
After about three weeks, the company moved from Firebase Wescott to Firebase Jerry in
the middle of November (00:51:42:00)
o The company was picked up in the field and then air assaulted into a new area of
operations, Firebase Jerry; it was late in the day and Anderson’s platoon was the
last platoon into the area (00:52:18:00)
o Just as the platoon was dropped off outside the firebase, they came under mortar
attack; all of the mortar rounds hit up front, wounding several soldiers severely
(00:52:33:00)
The attack was only a few mortar rounds, after which the platoon made it
inside the firebase, where a doctor tended to their wounded (00:53:12:00)
o In the field, the company had around one hundred and ten soldiers and Anderson
had around twenty-five soldiers in his platoon; the most soldiers Anderson had in
the field at one time was twenty-five and the fewest was seventeen (00:53:43:00)
o After the soldiers left the firebase, they set up for the night, although nothing
happened that night (00:54:12:00)
The next morning, the entire company was moving; Anderson’s platoon was not on point
when a couple of NVA ran along a little trail coming from the right and although the
point element fired towards them, the soldiers did not hit anyone (00:54:28:00)
o The captain wanted to see where the NVA had come from, so the point element
walked up the trail for about thirty or forty meters before someone ordered them
to get further away from the trail (00:54:42:00)
�
o The soldiers had just seen an enemy on the trail and the enemy most certainly
knew the soldiers were there because the soldiers had fired on them, so the
company moved off the trail (00:55:05:00)
o When his platoon reached the trail, Anderson looked at the trail itself, which was
hard packed from numerous people walking on it; then, as he looked up the trail,
Anderson figured it would be a good spot for the enemy to fire on them and no
sooner had he said that then the enemy started firing (00:55:24:00)
As quite often happened, there was gunfire but the bullets were going
everywhere because the enemy was not taking the time to aim properly;
the initial firing might be aimed but the response was not (00:56:06:00)
o Again, it was late in the day and the captain said the company was going to set up
a defensive position for the night; as the soldiers began preparing the position, the
captain called Anderson over and said he wanted Anderson to go parallel to the
trail for four or five hundred meters so he could ambush the enemy (00:56:28:00)
o Anderson said okay, so he and his men found the trail, set up their claymore
mines and then backed off to wait for somebody to stumble down the trail; it
rained that night and the mosquitoes came out but fortunately, nobody came down
the trail but the soldiers could hear chopping in the distance as the enemy chopped
down trees to make bunkers (00:57:01:00)
The soldiers could also hear laughter, which makes Anderson believe the
soldiers on the ambush were within a couple of hundred meters of the
enemy’s position (00:57:58:00)
In the morning, the soldiers picked up their equipment and back tracked to
the company (00:58:15:00)
o Trails crisscrossed the whole area and the soldiers could see where the enemy had
rested in the daytime and nighttime from the debris of cooking fires (00:58:22:00)
o Every two or three days, the soldiers either would be fired on or would fire on the
enemy, although they did not take many casualties (00:58:52:00)
After about a week in the new area of operation, the company got involved in a large
firefight lasting for about five or six hours (00:59:06:00)
o Again, Anderson was somewhat lucky because his platoon was walking last that
particular day and it was mostly the front of the column that received the brunt of
the attack (00:59:17:00)
o Two platoons really got into it with the enemy and although there was nobody
killed, there were sixteen or seventeen wounded soldiers who needed to be medivaced out (00:59:26:00)
o It was a longer day for Anderson because he was not under the direct fire; he and
his men were merely sitting guard, acting as a company reserve, although
Anderson did have to send his machine guns up because the other platoon’s
machine guns malfunctioned (00:59:41:00)
Anderson’s machine gunners were not happy about having to go into the
fight because they had already been in the field for six or seven months
and had seen a lot of action, but they still went up and Anderson believes
the two machine gunners were a key piece of the battle (01:00:17:00)
Both gunners were meticulous about keeping not only their machine guns
but their ammunition clean, while other gunners were not (01:00:42:00)
�
o The soldiers also had to pass ammunition from Anderson’s platoon to the other
platoons because they were in the jungle and the platoons could not be re-supplied
with ammunition from the air (01:00:58:00)
It eventually became nerve-wracking because not only did the two
platoons in the fight not have much ammunition, but neither did
Anderson’s platoon (01:01:08:00)
o The fight continued until late in the afternoon before the soldiers had to set up a
base camp (01:01:24:00)
o The next morning, Anderson’s platoon was the least beat up, so they had to lead
the company back to the firebase, which was nerve-wracking as well because the
area had been so well worked over by artillery and air strikes that it looked like a
tornado had moved through; intermixed with the destroyed jungle were human
body parts and bloody bandages (01:01:38:00)
Although the soldiers were hit bad, Anderson believes the enemy was hit
worse and they were now gone, of course (01:02:49:00)
The purpose of that particular mission was to move into the area and assess what the
attacks had done and they ended up getting ambushed (01:03:24:00)
o Overall, the company’s mission was to aggressively and actively patrol to find the
enemy, and if successful, destroy him (01:03:56:00)
o When they were in the area, the company was fortunate because there was not a
system of enemy tunnels; there were bunkers and the major battle was against a
small series of bunkers (01:04:21:00)
o The North Vietnamese were excellent soldiers and had been fighting for twenty
years, meaning their camouflaging ability was excellent; there were times the
soldiers would step, look down, and they would be standing directly in front of a
bunker, which happened to Anderson a couple of different times (01:04:57:00)
Anderson would be fourth in the column when he found the bunker, which
meant three other soldiers did not see it and in those situations, the bunker
was not occupied (01:05:19:00)
o By the time of the six hour fight, Anderson had been in country for three weeks
and he had a much better understanding of what was going on (01:05:43:00)
Eventually, another new lieutenant joined the company and Anderson was
happy to see him because it meant Anderson was no longer the dumbest
lieutenant in the company (01:05:53:00)
However, the lieutenant had only been in the company for a couple of
weeks before the fight began but he still did a marvelous job in handling
the situation; Anderson wonders what would have happened if the roles
were reversed and he had been in the fight (01:06:07:00)
The lieutenant’s point man spotted the NVA claymore and was able to
alert the lieutenant, who in turn alerted the captain so that by the time the
enemy detonated the claymore, there was no one around to be seriously
wounded in the explosion (01:06:19:00)
The most powerful weapons in the platoon were the M-60 machine guns and when the
soldiers found an enemy bunker, if it was occupied, then they tried to get as much
firepower against it was they could (01:06:58:00)
�
o Once the soldiers managed the suppress whatever the enemy was trying to do to
them, if they could, then they wanted to pull back so they could use explosives
against the bunker (01:07:18:00)
o If they were using artillery against a bunker, under normal circumstances, the
soldiers were working with another group of soldiers, normally a forward
observer for the artillery unit, and as Anderson recalls, the soldiers could not get
artillery fire closer than six hundred meters unless they were in direct contact;
then, the fire had to be danger close rules (01:07:38:00)
However, the vast majority of engagements were twenty-five meters or
less and although he had great confidence in the artillery, Anderson would
never call artillery fire that close unless it was a last resort (01:08:10:00)
There were situations that called for fire that close but only as the last
resort for the soldiers (01:08:43:00)
Anderson was a platoon leader from October 1969 until the middle of February 1970,
after which he was removed from the field and given a rear job as a reward for doing
good work in the field (01:08:51:00)
o The rear job Anderson received out the be the most miserable job Anderson ever
had in his life; while in the base camp, Anderson was in charge of one quarter of
the base camp’s defense (01:09:29:00)
At the time, Anderson was still as lieutenant while the three other men in
charge of the other sections were all captains (01:09:42:00)
They gave Anderson two other soldiers to work with and all three ended
up working what seemed twenty-one hours a day; the three had to make
sure the trip flares were out, all the defenses were set, etc. and they did not
have any help (01:09:50:00)
To make it worse, Anderson had to report to the most obnoxious
lieutenant colonel that ever wore a silver oak leaf (01:10:13:00)
Anderson and his men had to report to the lieutenant colonel every
day and he wanted to know all the minute details of what the
defenses were and it eventually reached the point that it was too
much for Anderson (01:10:26:00)
Anderson worked extremely hard every day but the work did not seem to
make any large contribution; if he needed supplies, Anderson did not
know where to go or what to do while the captains, who had many more
years of service, knew what to do and where to go (01:10:40:00)
o The job lasted for about three weeks before Anderson was called to the battalion
headquarters to talk with the battalion XO, a major, who said he had both good
news and bad news for Anderson (01:11:07:00)
The major said that he knew Anderson and the lieutenant colonel were not
getting along although Anderson was working hard, so Anderson was
going back into the field (01:11:42:00)
Anderson said that he only had one question and when the major asked
what it was, Anderson asked if this was going to negatively affect his
officer efficiency report and the major said no (01:12:18:00)
The major also said Anderson was not going back to Alpha Company but
was going to Charlie Company, something Anderson was not enthused
�
about; when Anderson asked if he had to go to Charlie Company, the
major said he did (01:12:38:00)
o When he received the news, part of Anderson felt good he was out of the job in
the rear but part felt bad because he had to go to Charlie Company and begin the
process of training soldiers all over again (01:13:27:00)
The next day, Anderson reported to the firebase where Charlie Company was stationed
and when he arrived, the company CO was in the medical bunker being worked on by a
visiting dentist (01:13:52:00)
o Anderson went into the bunker to report and the CO asked if Anderson had ever
been in the field before; Anderson replied that he had been in the field with Alpha
Company for four months (01:14:11:00)
The CO assigned Anderson to lead the 3rd Platoon and after the CO told
him where the platoon was located on the fire base, Anderson went to the
platoon and introduced himself (01:14:30:00)
o When Anderson arrived, the old 3rd Platoon leader left and went back to the
battalion rear area to take over Anderson’s old job (01:15:16:00)
o After a couple of days in the field, it became clear that the CO did not fully
understand what he was doing; although he was an armor officer, he was not from
the same mold as Anderson’s CO in Alpha Company but Anderson did the best
that he could with the cards he had been dealt (01:15:43:00)
o The terrain Charlie Company operated in was similar to the terrain that Alpha
Company had operated in, with a lot of bamboo and things like that (01:16:10:00)
o There were only two times when Anderson took his boots off in the jungle, with
the first time was the night before Alpha Company had the large contact with the
enemy in November (01:16:21:00)
Firebases had what where labeled “mad minutes”, although they seldom
lasted a minute, and their purpose was to not only use up any bad
ammunition, but to also just fire around the base to try and hit anyone
trying to sneak up on the base (01:16:36:00)
That night, the company was so close to Jerry that the bullets were flying
past the men; Anderson jumped into a foxhole that happened to be full of
termites and within a matter of seconds, they were biting his feet, causing
him to jump out of the hole (01:17:10:00)
o The second time Anderson took his boots off was when he was with Charlie
Company; it was pitch black outside, Anderson took his boots off and around ten
or eleven o’clock, he heard one of his M-60s start firing (01:17:41:00)
Anderson stumbled around trying to find his boots and his glasses before
eventually making his way over the foxhole where the M-60 machine
gunner was located (01:18:15:00)
When Anderson asked what was going on, the gunner said he thought he
saw something, which caused Anderson to berate the gunner for firing the
M-60 and giving away the heavy-firepower position (01:18:22:00)
Then, a voice in the darkness said he had ordered the machine gunner to
fire and that turned out to be the company CO; Anderson told him it was a
bad idea because they were going to have to move the gun in the dark,
which was going to make a lot of noise (01:18:46:00)
�
The CO countered that there had been something, and Anderson
looked out and asked where, the CO fired his pistol, with tracer
rounds, where he thought there was a dead NVA (01:19:05:00)
Anderson could not see the body but he suggested shooting an M79 round out, so Anderson got his platoon’s M-79 grenadier, fired
a round out and said that if there was anything there, it was either
gone completely or dead from the M-79 round (01:19:43:00)
However, the CO said someone needed to go out to check, although
Anderson questioned the order because the soldiers did not know what
was out there; there might actually be someone out there, he might only be
wounded, and the CO wanted them to crawl out there (01:20:10:00)
The 1st Platoon leader, who was a friend of Anderson, eventually came up
and asked what was going on, so Anderson explained that the CO believed
there were NVA outside the perimeter, which was why the machine gun
fired, the CO wanted to go out and check if there were any bodies, and
Anderson was going to go with the CO (01:21:03:00)
The 1st Platoon leader said he would go out as well, so it was the
CO and two lieutenants who should have known better crawling
outside the perimeter, although they had let the perimeter know not
to shoot if the soldiers heard anything (01:21:45:00)
From where the gunner was to where the CO thought the enemy soldier
was located was about thirty meters but being in front of a rifle company,
there was always the possibility somebody did not receive the message
and when they heard movement outside the perimeter, they fired;
moreover, all it took was one guy shooting before the entire company
began shooting (01:22:26:00)
Eventually, Anderson told the CO it was a bad idea for the three
men to be outside the perimeter; they should return to the
perimeter and check the location in the morning (01:22:52:00)
The CO must have agreed with Anderson because the three
officers crawled back to the perimeter and when they checked the
next morning, there was no evidence of any NVA being where the
CO thought he was (01:23:28:00)
The incident with the M-60 gunner occurred in early April and on April 26th, the
company became involved in a hugely horrific firefight (01:23:54:00)
o The 1st Platoon was performing a “cloverleaf” patrol while Anderson’s third
platoon had been left behind as an ambush; however, while performing the patrol,
the 1st platoon was ambushed themselves (01:24:14:00)
o As Anderson was moving through the company’s position, the CO hurried past
him, told Anderson to take command of the perimeter because he, the CO, was
going out to kill an enemy with his knife, and Anderson said okay (01:24:23:00)
Anderson did not question what the CO was going to do because the
bravado was part of his persona and that was the last time Anderson saw
the CO alive (01:24:49:00)
�o The CO went out with the 2nd Platoon while Anderson sat in the perimeter
listening to the sounds of the enemy firing their weapons, intermittently mixed the
sounds of the 1st Platoon firing back (01:25:16:00)
o While he was commanding the perimeter, Anderson was able to hear with the CO
and the 2nd Platoon were doing but not the 1st Platoon because both their radios
had been shot (01:26:04:00)
o Eventually, there was a call from the CO and 2nd Platoon telling Anderson to
bring the 3rd Platoon out because the 2nd Platoon was pinned down; Anderson
acknowledged, saying the platoon would be out there momentarily (01:26:22:00)
Anderson yelled over to his platoon sergeant, a newly-arrived E-5, to get
the soldiers ready to move out to do what they could do (01:26:40:00)
o When the 3rd Platoon left, the final platoon in the company, 4th Platoon, stayed
behind to guard the perimeter; however, at the time, they were not a complete rifle
platoon, which was why they were staying back to guard the perimeter and they
were only to assist the rest of the company as a last resort (01:27:14:00)
o As Anderson stood up to get ready to move out, an enemy B-40 or RPG round hit
near the platoon, knocking down three or four of Anderson’s soldiers; although
the round did not knock Anderson down, a piece still hit him (01:27:41:00)
Looking around, everyone in the platoon except for five soldiers stood up,
so they got the medics over to the wounded soldiers, then proceeded to
move out and assist the other platoons, although there were then only
around fifteen soldiers in the platoon; Anderson was wounded as well but
it was a miniscule wound compared to regular wounds (01:28:01:00)
o It was easy to follow the trail the CO and the 2nd Platoon had made, although the
soldiers did not know where anyone, friendly or enemy was; however, following
the trail was the most expedient way Anderson had of finding the friendly forces
that were under attack (01:28:27:00)
o The platoon did not go very far, only around one hundred meters, and as always
happened, there was a lot of firing and then there was nothing; by the time
Anderson made it up to where the headquarters section was, the firing had
somewhat stopped (01:28:45:00)
Anderson remembers the company’s forward observer, a large man
nicknamed “Bull”, hugging the ground and looking up at Anderson, telling
him to get down; although Anderson had heard all the firing, there was
nothing happening at the moment (01:29:18:00)
o Off to Anderson’s left was a large termite mound, behind which was the radio
operator talking with the battalion, who was screaming into the radio that all the
soldiers were going to be killed; meanwhile, off to Anderson’s right, he could see
medics working on a soldier (01:29:50:00)
o Anderson then went over to the termite mound and grabbed the radio away from
the hysterical soldier; Anderson reported that he had just arrived and would
update the battalion when he figured out what was going on (01:30:29:00)
The battalion commander eventually got onto the radio and told Anderson
to update him as soon as Anderson knew anything; Anderson handed the
radio back to the soldier and ordered him to not talk on the radio or answer
any calls (01:31:10:00)
�o Then, Anderson asked the soldier where the CO was, but the soldier did not
know; Anderson thought it was weird that both the radio operator for the battalion
and the company radio operator, who was nearby, were not with the company CO,
although it was not the time to berate them (01:31:41:00)
Anderson then asked if they had any communication with the 1st Platoon
and by the amount of firing that had gone on, Anderson figured the
platoon had been wiped out (01:32:07:00)
o Anderson placed a gun team on the other side of where the medics were working,
kept the other team close to him, and told his radio operator to wait nearby while
he, Anderson, went up to find out what was going on, although in retrospect, it
was dumb because he did not take the radio operator with him (01:32:23:00)
o Anderson began crawling but he had not gotten more than ten feet when the
fighting started up again and it was more personal for Anderson because it
seemed like everyone was shooting at him (01:32:53:00)
Although he realized it was not a good situation, Anderson kept crawling,
even though he might be the only soldier out there and the enemy all
might be able to see him, as they were all shooting at him (01:33:20:00)
o Eventually, the 2nd Platoon leader low-crawled past Anderson as fast as he could;
the 2nd Platoon leader said the company CO was dead and when Anderson asked
where his platoon was, said that he did not have any idea (01:33:50:00)
When Anderson asked if he was sure the CO was dead, the platoon leader
said he had crawled right past the body (01:34:10:00)
o The platoon leader had not stopped crawling past Anderson as he told him the
news and Anderson, realizing he could not leave the platoon leader to get back
and get on the radios to report, turned around, crawled back to the termite mound
and called the battalion commander, saying they had a situation and Anderson did
not really know what was going on (01:34:26:00)
Anderson reported that the company CO was dead and as he made the
report, Anderson watched the medics work on a soldier with a sucking
chest wound, who, despite the effort of the medics, ended up dying while
Anderson was watching (01:34:38:00)
The battalion commander continued question Anderson for information
about the fight that Anderson did not know because by then, the brigade
commander had become involved (01:35:07:00)
Finally, Anderson heard the brigade commander come over the radio and
order the battalion commander to stop pressuring Anderson and allow him
to develop an understanding of the situation; the battalion commander
acknowledged and Anderson never had any more trouble from him after
that (01:35:34:00)
o As they were sitting there, one of Anderson’s machine gun teams asks if they had
any people out there; Anderson said that he did not think so and the gunner said
there was somebody running away (01:36:16:00)
Not knowing if they were friendlies or not, Anderson told the machine
gunner to watch them; then, they heard sound off to the left and it turned
out to be the remnants of the 1st Platoon, which had somehow managed to
disengage the enemy and retreat (01:36:41:00)
�
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
Anderson asked the platoon leader if he had all his soldiers with him and if
there were any from the 2nd Platoon; when the platoon leader said he had
all his soldiers and the soldiers from 2nd Platoon were behind him,
Anderson told him machine gunners to fire at anything outside the
perimeter because they were the enemy (01:37:00:00)
Anderson called the battalion commander back, saying the 1st and 2nd platoons
had made it back, they had a large number of casualties, and he still did not know
the status of the company CO but he would find out (01:37:22:00)
The 1st Platoon leader was sitting behind the termite mound, huffing and puffing
because he had taken over one of his M-60 machine guns when the gunner was
wounded until the gun was destroyed (01:37:49:00)
Anderson went up and said the 2nd Platoon leader had said the CO was
dead; the platoon leader agreed and when Anderson said that they could
not leave the body out there, the platoon leader said he was not going to go
back out there (01:38:11:00)
Anderson could recover the body but the platoon leader said he
was not going out there, so Anderson said okay (01:38:42:00)
By then, the firing had stopped because what Anderson’s M-60 gunner had seen
was the enemy having enough and retreating back because by then, Anderson had
been calling in air strikes and additional support (01:38:52:00)
The 11th Armored Cavalry had been moving through the area with their
APCs and tanks and the NVA had built bunkers near to where the armor
had moved, thinking that if the soldiers went through once, then maybe
they would go through again and they could attack them (01:39:18:00)
Anderson grabbed another soldier and said they were going to check things out;
the soldier was new enough that he said okay as opposed to asking if Anderson
was nuts (01:39:47:00)
Anderson and the soldier went out about twenty-five meters and found the
body of the CO, who had been shot in the forehead; there was not any
horror to seeing the dead body but Anderson questioned where the CO’s
glasses were (01:40:03:00)
The other soldier grabbed the CO’s arms while Anderson grabbed his legs
and they carried the body back to the termite mound, where Anderson
radioed the battalion commander that they had recovered the CO’s body
and everyone was moving back to the original perimeter (01:40:43:00)
The CO had weighed around one hundred and fifty pounds, so Anderson ordered
one of the M-60 teams to give him their gun while they carried the body back to
the perimeter (01:41:24:00)
Although there was no incoming fire, there already having been lulls in
the fighting and the soldiers did not know for sure that the fighting was
over (01:42:00:00)
All the soldiers eventually made it back to the perimeter and they started the
process of medevacing the wounded out (01:42:22:00)
After the battle, the “B” Company commander had heard Anderson’s company
commander had been killed, so he grabbed his rucksack and led the company for
the rest of time the company was in Cambodia (01:43:19:00)
�
o Anderson remembers telling one of the other officers who was there that he would
never see another day like that and it was the worst day he would ever see,
although when the company arrived in Cambodia, that day would be a good day
compared to what they experienced in Cambodia (01:43:53:00)
Three days after the major firefight, when Charlie Company was back on the firebase,
Anderson’s former company, Alpha Company, got involved in similar fight, probably
with the same group of enemies, and had a lieutenant and sergeant killed (01:44:25:00)
o Typically, when a company was be beat-up, they would come back to the fire
base to “decompress” and Charlie Company was in the middle of
“decompressing” when Alpha Company got beat-up (01:44:53:00)
o They could not leave Alpha Company in the field, so they brought them back to
the firebase and told Anderson he was transferring back to Alpha Company to be
the executive officer (XO) (01:45:07:00)
The Alpha Company commander who had led the company while Anderson was there
had left in March and moved up to the battalion S-4 (01:45:30:00)
Alpha Company XO / Into Cambodia (01:46:17:00)
The job of an XO was really to just take over command of the company in a situation
where the company commander has been killed (01:46:17:00)
o The XO also had to sign to property book accounting for all the weapons and
equipment in the company; whenever Stateside, the company commander signed
for it but in a combat environment, the XO signed for it (01:46:30:00)
Whenever the company was on a firebase, Anderson would travel out to the company
every day then return to the battalion headquarters at night; it was mostly administrative
work because the company 1st Sergeant really ran the rear area and if they had a good 1st
Sergeant, then they let him do his job (01:47:06:00)
o Anderson would not necessarily call the job a promotion for good work but
someone could be a bad XO, so long as they had a good 1st Sergeant; however, if
someone was a bad XO and the had a bad 1st Sergeant, then the soldiers in the
field did not get what they needed (01:47:43:00)
o It was Anderson’s job to run interference if the 1st Sergeant ever had any issues,
although he rarely did because even lieutenants would defer to a 1st Sergeant until
the lieutenant found out if the 1st Sergeant was good or not (01:48:12:00)
The company eventually moved into Cambodia but Anderson would only go into field in
Cambodia every three days, when the company was being re-supplied (01:48:43:00)
o When the company moved into Cambodia, the brigade headquarters stayed at
their original base camp and the battalion had a tactical operations center at a
firebase in Cambodia, which was where the battalion commander would be
stationed (01:48:55:00)
o Similar to when Anderson first arrived, he would wait at the firebase until a resupply helicopter showed up, fly with it out to the company, take care of any
business he had with the company commander, then fly out when the last resupply helicopter left (01:49:25:00)
Anderson is not aware of any times a helicopter was shot at while flying
either to or from the company’s location; still, the only way to know was
if they heard a round impact or the door gunner saw tracers (01:50:02:00)
�
Anderson was fortunate because he never had to land in a “hot LZ”, when
the helicopter flew to the landing zone like an assault and the enemy was
at the LZ and engaging the soldiers (01:50:23:00)
It happened to the XOs after Anderson and the XOs before
Anderson, but never to Anderson (01:50:39:00)
o Like most people at the time, Anderson believed the discussions about the domino
theory of Communism and part of the reason the Americans went into Cambodia
was along those lines, to help the South Vietnamese in their fight against the
Communist North Vietnamese (01:51:08:00)
o All the soldiers had heard both the president and individual stories of how the
enemy would engage American soldiers then retreat across the Cambodian
border, where the Americans could, theoretically, not follow them (01:52:09:00)
After the April 26th engagement but before he rejoined Alpha Company,
Anderson was in a briefing where the officers were informed they would
be going into Cambodia, although no more than thirty miles, would stay
there for sixty days in an effort to find enemy supplies and disrupt enemy
activities and they did not know what the soldiers would find once in
Cambodia, only that they could get the soldiers on the ground and get
them out (01:52:41:00)
Charlie Company was actually supposed to be the first company to go in,
but the fight involving Alpha Company occurred and Anderson joined
them, so going into Cambodia did not affect him (01:53:22:00)
o The plan originally called to load the ARVN (South Vietnamese) forces, fly them
out to a firebase, then pick-up the American forces to flying into Cambodia;
however, someone figured the ARVN forces would run away after they reached
the firebase, so the plan was scrapped (01:53:38:00)
Instead, they took the ARVN forces into Cambodia first and the
Americans in second (01:54:01:00)
o The 1st of the 7th ended up taking a large number of casualties when they went
into Cambodia; they were definitely the hardest hit battalion in the Air Cav. and
possibly the hardest hit battalion out of all the units (01:54:11:00)
There were one hundred and fifty American soldiers killed over all the
units and Charlie Company alone lost sixteen soldiers, in just forty-five
days of combat (01:54:32:00)
o Anderson stayed as Alpha Company XO the entire time the company deployed
into Cambodia, working on administrative aspects for the company (01:54:53:00)
o The fighting the soldiers encountered in Cambodia was brutal; as determined as
the NVA forces were in South Vietnam, it seemed like they were more serious
when fighting in Cambodia because they had more to defend (01:55:09:00)
Nevertheless, while the Americans took casualties, the NVA were beaten
up pretty well in Cambodia as well (01:55:34:00)
In the years since he served, Anderson has read books about the war which have made
him more disenchanted with the war, such as a book about a former National Security
Advisor suggesting President Kennedy was considering the removal of the military
advisors from Vietnam when he was assassinated in 1963s (01:55:39:00)
�
o There was a group of soldiers that Anderson knew who died in Vietnam and it
leaves him with a sense of sadness, not only for the American soldiers who died
but also for the North Vietnamese who died; somewhere among the dead might
have been the cure for cancer and Anderson is not naïve enough to believe it
would only be an American who could come up with a cure (01:56:31:00)
Before leaving Vietnam, Anderson spent two weeks as the acting company commander
because the company commander had gone on R&R (01:57:15:00)
o A new company commander took over following the end of the Cambodian
campaign and by that time, Anderson was short time, with only about a month left
in Vietnam until he could go home (01:57:35:00)
o One time when he was out at the firebase, the company CO told Anderson that the
next time he brought supplies, bring all his equipment as well and when Anderson
asked what he meant, the company CO said he was going on R&R (01:57:50:00)
o The CO went on his R&R, Anderson was back in the field for two weeks and
within those two weeks, the company was involved in three different firefights,
although they did not have anyone wounded (01:58:01:00)
o By this time, the colonel who Anderson had had trouble with while working base
defense was now the battalion commander (01:58:21:00)
Anderson recalls doing an aerial recon with the colonel, who pointed out
where Anderson’s company would go, what they would do, and where he
wanted them to end up when they were finished (01:58:44:00)
The company operated in the field for the two weeks and on the day they
were supposed to be extracted, Anderson had the company at the spot the
colonel had drawn on his map (01:59:06:00)
The colonel eventually called Anderson to say he was circling the
location in a helicopter and to tell Anderson to pop smoke;
Anderson said the company was where the colonel had drawn on
the map and they did not hear any helicopters (01:59:13:00)
The exchange between the two went back and forth before the
colonel told Anderson to cut an LZ where he was and report to the
colonel when he got back to the base (01:59:31:00)
The company cut the LZ, extracted everyone a single helicopter at
a time and once Anderson got back to the base, he reported,
expecting the colonel to rip his head off (01:59:50:00)
However, the colonel commended Anderson on doing what the
colonel described as a perfect extraction of a rifle team from the
field (02:00:07:00)
It turned out the colonel had drawn the wrong location on Anderson’s map
but apart from saying he was at the location on his map, there was not
much Anderson could do (02:00:31:00)
A similar situation happened when Anderson had served with Alpha
Company the first time; the company CO said Anderson was in one place,
when in truth, he was in another and the two officers debated for awhile
before the CO said he would shoot a marking round (02:00:54:00)
�
The round went off right over Anderson’s head and when the CO
asked if Anderson was able to get a reading from it, Anderson said
his compass did not work when pointed straight up (02:01:14:00)
For Anderson, the jungle school he went through in Panama was useful only in that he
knew what jungle was like; the school consisted of mostly classroom training, with some
field exercises, including a night course (02:01:51:00)
o There were four lieutenants in the night course, Anderson including, and he
maintains he had neither the compass or the map but the four got horribly lost and
were out all night with mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds (02:02:12:00)
One of the lieutenants ended up losing his watch and the entire situation
was like the Four Stooges (02:02:31:00)
The next day, it seemed like the instructors had a helicopter flying
overhead calling out for the lieutenants and finally, the lieutenants
managed to make it back (02:02:40:00)
o The school helped Anderson because the weather was extremely hot, which
helped prepare him for the weather in Vietnam, although Vietnam was hotter than
Panama, and see what the terrain was like (02:02:54:00)
o The other great thing about the school was it counted against the soldiers time in
the service, so Anderson did not have to spend a full year in Vietnam, only around
eleven months (02:03:16:00)
While in-country, Anderson had very little contact with the Vietnamese (02:03:52:00)
o They did have some former North Vietnamese soldiers who had surrendered,
gone through an indoctrination program, then returned various units to serve as
Kit Carson scouts or interpreters (02:03:56:00)
Early on, when Anderson was with Alpha Company, they had one Kit
Carson scout, who ended up being wounded in the major firefight in
November, after which the company received another (02:04:32:00)
The rehabilitated scouts could have been either officers or enlisted
personnel and served in either the Viet Cong infrastructure or in the
regular NVA (02:04:51:00)
o When Anderson was the Alpha Company XO and serving in the rear, they had
Vietnamese who worked on the base, such as cleaning hooches (02:05:01:00)
o However, while Anderson was out in the field, anyone they ran across was either
trying to avoid bullets or was firing at the soldiers (02:05:16:00)
At the time, Anderson’s unit was not in a populated area but before he got
there, the company was operating in an area with a large number of
indigenous people and there was more interaction then (02:05:29:00)
o Anderson did not have much of an opinion regarding the Kit Carson scouts but it
was not so much a matter of trust (02:06:01:00)
Anderson and a scout could look at the same trail and although Anderson
would see nothing, the scout would see some indication of a large amount
of NVA movement (02:06:13:00)
Anderson did not speak Vietnamese and the soldiers did not speak fluently
English but they managed to let their feelings about the different soldiers
come through clearly (02:06:34:00)
�
The scouts were not part of the ARVNs, so he does not want to
characterize them, except to say the scouts were there and when the
soldiers found a trail, they were able to interpret how many enemy had
passed, although that told the soldiers nothing (02:06:46:00)
o On occasion, the soldiers would capture enemy intelligence and if the scout was
Vietnamese, he could generally read the documents (02:07:18:00)
On occasion, it was not always ugly for the soldiers (02:08:05:00)
o The soldiers would come back from a mission into the firebase and their 1st
Sergeant, who had been a major during the Korean War but was caught in a force
reduction following the war, have steaks for them (02:08:09:00)
One time, the company CO said Anderson was in charge of cooking the
potatoes Anderson had no idea how to cook the potatoes, other than
remembering that on occasion, his mother would boil potatoes in water
(02:08:31:00)
Anderson got a big metal canister from the artillery soldiers, cleaned it
out, filled it with water, and boiled the potatoes; it worked and Anderson
did not get yelled at by the CO (02:08:54:00)
Whenever Anderson was with Alpha Company, the morale was good throughout all three
platoons (02:09:41:00)
o Anderson believes a company’s moral was a function of several different things:
if the company had a good commander, good platoon leaders, good squad leaders
and good platoon sergeants (02:09:53:00)
If any of those were out of whack, then Anderson believes that a
company’s morale will suffer (02:10:10:00)
o When he initially got to Charlie Company, Anderson already had a preconceived
notion about the company CO and he had to try hard to keep his guard up and
only let his true emotions be know to a very small group of people, namely the
leader of the 1st Platoon (02:10:21:00)
Both men had to be careful because if the men saw that the lieutenants did
not have any respect for the company commander, then that would upset
the situation (02:10:48:00)
Another humorous incident occurred when Anderson was stationed on Firebase Compton
with Charlie Company and one day, when he was having bad bowel issues, the company
CO ordered Anderson to take his platoon on a recon patrol (02:11:11:00)
o The firebase was located at the end of an old airfield in the middle of a rubber
plantation and the soldiers could see six hundred meters in almost every direction,
so Anderson thought it would be a good opportunity to let one of his squad
leaders take the platoon out and receive some training (02:11:30:00)
The soldiers never knew when a fight might occur in which the lieutenant
and platoon sergeant were killed and one of the squad leaders would have
to take over command (02:12:09:00)
o Anderson did not receive any argument from the soldiers, although if he had, he
would have figured something else out, because they were not necessarily
concerned about the area (02:12:22:00)
o The platoon started going out and began calling in situation reports, which
Anderson monitored; the next thing Anderson knew, the CO called, asking where
�
Anderson was and when he told him, the CO said to wait and he would be right
there (02:12:37:00)
o The CO showed up a couple of minutes later and began berating Anderson, who
was trying not to throw up; when Anderson tried to explain himself, the CO said
he had ordered Anderson to lead the patrol and to get out there, so Anderson
threw the radio over his back, slung two bandoliers of ammunition over his
shoulders and began walking to where the platoon was, who he had ordered to sit
tight and set up security (02:13:04:00)
o As Anderson was walking, the platoon sergeant ran up, asking what Anderson
was doing, and when Anderson explained it, the sergeant said Anderson could not
go out there by himself (02:13:37:00)
Anderson as the platoon sergeant if he was coming with him and the
platoon sergeant said yes, so Anderson told him to get his equipment
because he was leaving (02:13:56:00)
o The two men walked out of the firebase to the platoon and when he got there,
Anderson radioed back that he had joined the platoon; the CO radioed back to
have Anderson let him know how the patrol went but the platoon ended up
staying where they were for the rest of the day (02:14:03:00)
While Anderson was in Vietnam, his father’s duty station was at Clark Air Force Base in
the Philippines, so Anderson took the R&R he received in the Philippines (02:14:52:00)
o Anderson’s father was then a lieutenant colonel and in charge of scheduling all
planes into and out of the base; he flew over on the R&R plane to Vietnam, where
Anderson and seven or eight other soldiers got on (02:15:05:00)
o The plane landed at an airfield in Manila where the other soldiers got off but
Anderson stayed on while he and his father continued to Clark, where he re-united
with his mother and sister (02:15:36:00)
Everyone else going to the Philippines did their R&R in Manila while
Clark stayed at Clark with his family (02:15:58:00)
While at the base, Anderson played golf a couple of times and went to
Subic Bay with his family (02:16:04:00)
o The R&R flight back to Vietnam from the Philippines originated at Clark, so
Anderson was able to get on there (02:16:12:00)
Post-Vietnam Service / Post-Military Life / Reflections (02:16:37:00)
Anderson left Vietnam in the middle of September 1970 and his enlist ran until March of
the following year; however, there was a slight problem in the orders he received when
he left Vietnam (02:16:37:00)
o Anderson was assigned to Fort Knox, Kentucky and the report date was Sept. 31st
but he knew he would miss that date, so he mailed a copy of the orders to his
father; his father mailed back, saying there was no Sept. 31st, so Anderson went
down to the personnel office, who changed the date to Oct. 31st (02:16:54:00)
After leaving Vietnam, Anderson went back to Kalamazoo, where his grandparents were
living, and stayed there until renting a car and driving down to Fort Knox, where he was
sent to the reception station (02:17:53:00)
o Anderson felt like a fish out of water from the beginning because he was an
infantryman at an armor base and on top of that, Anderson viewed it as they had
�
the audacity to send him to the reception station; he was at least hoping to go to a
basic training unit to teach someone else the lessons he had learned (02:18:18:00)
o Nevertheless, Anderson reported to the lieutenant colonel in charge while wearing
his uniform and all the medals he had earned, including his CIB (Combat
Infantryman Badge); however, Anderson did not have the armor school insignia
on the uniform (02:18:51:00)
Anderson stood at attention as the lieutenant colonel looked him over
before he began berating Anderson for being out of uniform and having
neither an armor or cavalry patch; the lieutenant colonel told Anderson to
have them the following Monday and be ready to work (02:19:33:00)
o Anderson saluted him and ended up driving back home to Kalamazoo; he had
gotten a hat when he was coming that had the cavalry patch on it and when he got
home, asked his grandmother if she would sew that patch and the armor insignia
on his dress uniform (02:20:11:00)
Anderson’s grandmother sewed both patches on so when Anderson
reported on Monday morning, he was in the proper uniform (02:20:46:00)
o They made Anderson a training and operations officer and a friend from OCS was
also stationed on the base, so Anderson was living with him (02:21:06:00)
o Anderson’s friend kept asking if Anderson was going to go back to school when
he got out of the service and when Anderson said he was, the friend asked if he
was not going to stay in the Army; when Anderson said he was not, the friend
suggested Anderson apply for an early out from the service so he could start his
schooling again in January (02:21:35:00)
o Anderson filled out all the necessary paperwork to get an early out from the
military, which the Army accepted; once they realized Anderson would be leaving
at the end of December, they sent him to headquarters company, where he worked
as XO, counting paper clips for the last two weeks of his enlistment (02:22:05:00)
When Anderson had graduated from OCS, he received a letter from a colonel in the
Department of the Army saying the colonel had talked with Anderson’s battalion
commander, Anderson was the type of person the Army needed, they would send him
anywhere he wanted to go etc.; all of which sounded great to Anderson because he had
only been an officer for a couple of months (02:22:50:00)
o All Anderson needed to do was say “yes” to an interview with the brigade
commander, which he did; however, the commander was busy that day, so
Anderson interviewed with the brigade XO (02:23:26:00)
o However, Anderson had not given much thought to re-enlisting until the time for
him to get out of the Army, at which point he figured that he still did not have a
college education and staying in the Army might not work for him (02:23:53:00)
Once Anderson left the military, he went right back to his education; his official last day
in the Army was Dec. 31st and they allowed him two days to travel from Fort Knox to
Kalamazoo (02:24:24:00)
o Anderson signed out of the military and went to his grandparents, while school
started either the next week or the week after, at which point Anderson went back
to Michigan State (02:24:40:00)
To get an early out, Anderson had to be accepted to some university, so he
re-applied to Michigan State while he was still in the Army (02:25:01:00)
�
o When he returned to school, Anderson had a different outlook on the idea of
studying; prior to his service, Anderson would put in the time but he was not able
to express what he had learned on test and although he did not fail any tests, he
had two consecutive terms of a 1.0 GPA (02:25:09:00)
o Anderson was re-accepted to the university unconditionally but he still had the 1.0
GPA and it took him some time to bring the GPA up to a better level
(02:25:57:00)
Going back to school for Anderson was a lot easier, partially because he
was much more mature (02:26:47:00)
o Anderson remembers there being protests in the 1970s, although Anderson does
not remember what they were protesting; Anderson remembers he and some other
students going to watch and he remembers that he and his roommate told the cops
to roll up to windows of the police cruisers where the protesters were held to
make them sweat (02:27:21:00)
o Anderson assumes people knew he was in the service because he continued
wearing his old fatigues, although he did not receive any trouble from people
about his time in the service (02:28:39:00)
o Anderson’s undergraduate degree was in General Business with an emphasis in
Management, while his masters degree was in Personnel Management
(02:29:01:00)
When he graduated with his masters degree, it was 1976, which was not a great year to
try and find a job (02:29:22:00)
o Anderson had been married for a couple of years by then and it even got to the
point that Anderson considered doing what his father had done and re-enlisting in
the military; Anderson had stayed in the IRR (Individual Readiness Reserve),
although he never had to go to meetings (02:29:37:00)
o Anderson eventually wrote to a general, saying he was ready to go back onto
active duty but he never heard back from him (02:30:10:00)
Finally, Anderson got a job with Continental Can Company; he spent a year in New
Jersey before transferring back to Grand Rapids, Michigan when the company opened a
factory there (02:30:36:00)
o Anderson stayed with the company before eventually being laid off, after which
he joined another small company in Grand Rapids, then another small company in
Zeeland, Michigan (02:30:42:00)
o Finally, Anderson joined a packaging company in Holland, Michigan but was
eventually let go from there as well (02:31:12:00)
Following his time in the service, Anderson had a lot of anger issues but until he got into
therapy, he did not know why; he always seemed to have trouble with bosses who he
viewed as incompetent and it did not take too long for a therapist to say that Anderson
was dragging around his experiences from the war and was looking at his bosses, who
may or may not have been incompetent, and comparing him to the officers Anderson had
served under (02:31:26:00)
o However, by the time he learned this, Anderson had stopped work but he wishes
he had known it long before (02:32:28:00)
�
o Many of the people who were diagnosed with PTSD were able to function
because they stuffed the PTSD down; however, the symptoms tended to rear their
heads at inopportune times (02:32:41:00)
o Anderson has been married for over thirty years, he and his wife have one child,
he never did drugs, drank, or any of the typical things associated with people who
had PTSD, although he did have the symptom of being a workaholic; as well, the
idea of telling his child what to do was imprinted on the child and that caused
some drama (02:33:14:00)
o A new concept that Anderson recently heard of in his therapy group is the concept
of Post-Traumatic Growth (02:34:27:00)
o Anderson thinks that all of the training and exposure made him a good supervisor,
although it did not make him a great employee (02:34:50:00)
Anderson was tough on his subordinates and he when has run into several
during his therapy, Anderson has apologized to them; however, almost
universally, they have said the Anderson was not as hard as Anderson
believed he was and once the soldiers figured out he had been in the
situation before, they tended to see that he was right (02:35:13:00)
Ultimately, Anderson would not trade the experience (02:36:31:00)
Anderson has been able to go to the Walter Reed Medical Center on several occasions to
see veterans of the current wars and although on some levels it makes Anderson angry
that they are putting the kids through that but it makes him sometimes feel that he is
unworthy of the benefits he is receiving from the government because not only are those
veterans going to have PTSD but they are also going to have to continue their life with a
disability (02:36:36:00)
Anderson avoided the idea of therapy for a long time because he knew there were people
who went to therapy who faked the experiences that they had; however, one day, it
dawned on him that he not only had to do the therapy for himself but he could not help
anyone else if he was only sitting on the sidelines (02:37:42:00)
o Anderson jokingly says he decided to do therapy because he wanted to stop being
a jackass and over the six years, he has seen some changes from therapy
(02:38:29:00)
Anderson is involved in a chapter for the 1st Air Cav. Association; the members meet
every month, do work out of the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans, including running
bingo on every fifth Sunday in a month (02:39:12:00)
o If the members see a veteran on the street, they stop and thank them because in a
lot of ways, the current group of veterans has it much harder because they
continue having to go back to fight (02:40:03:00)
Because Anderson has been through the benefit system and he is able to help other
veterans with the system, including men from his old company (02:40:33:00)
Anderson would not change anything from the military experience and the only thing he
would change if he could would be to understand what PTSD was thirty-five years before
(02:41:24:00)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Anderson, Bob (Interview transcript and video), 2011
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Anderson, Robert
Description
An account of the resource
Bob Anderson was born in August 1948 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. While growing up, his father re-enlisted in the military, meaning Anderson and his family moved constantly, although Anderson's father stayed at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland long enough for Anderson to attend school and graduate. After graduating, Anderson attended a junior college in Mississippi and went to Michigan State University for a year before the university kicked him out for low grades. Once he left Michigan State, Anderson received his draft notice and following completion of basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia and AIT at Fort Dix, New Jersey, Anderson went back to Fort Benning to attend OCS. After completing OCS, Anderson deployed to Vietnam and joined the 1st Air Cavalry Division as a platoon leader. During his tour, Anderson served as a platoon leader, worked as part of base defense for a position and as a company executive officer. Once his tour in Vietnam ended, Anderson returned to the United States and went back to Michigan State.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Kentwood Historic Preservation Commission (Kentwood, Mich.)
WKTV
WKTV (Wyoming, Mich.)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
United States. Army
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2011-02-17
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AndersonB
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cd711cb60f7e8157cd7b380938aa9a34.mp4
0bbd396564ad211c58d437df9308775c
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3d175a673b21fdfe5c871f5b7613ff19.pdf
4e585cc78507f74a13ae3c29edd41f95
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Doug Anderson
Length: 26:55
(00:25) Naval Training
•
Doug was in high school when WWII started and the Navy had been offering a special
officer training program
•
He enlisted in the Navy and began training one month after graduating from high school
in July of 1943
•
Doug was sent to Oakland College in Ohio for an accelerated college program
•
He was then sent to midshipman school at Long Island Sound in New York
•
Doug was later transferred to a supply corps school in Boston
•
The war ended while he was still in school
•
He went through further training in salvage and preservation; there had been a lot of
equipment left over in the Pacific after the war and it needed to go into storage
(4:30) Salvage and Preservation
•
Doug was sent to Guam in the Pacific where he worked at the spare parts distribution
center
•
They set up a sort of assembly line where they would dip parts in a conservative
compound and then pack them away for storage
•
He stayed there working in Guam for the extent of his service
•
The crew he worked with continued to shrink every month or so while he was there and
he was discharged in August of 1946
(6:20) Navy
•
Doug had chosen the Navy because he said he had always been intrigued with the ocean
and wanted to serve his time on a ship
•
He grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan and went to Union High School
�•
During his time in the service Doug traveled to Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, New
Jersey, and Guam
•
While training he did a lot of marching and drilling while also working on signaling,
gunnery, and seamanship
•
Midshipman school was the hardest because they had a lot of classes and went on cruises
in small naval craft
(10:20) Guam
•
On the island they lived in Quonset huts and had decent food; Doug did not have any
“horror stories”
•
He got along well with everyone and had an enjoyable experience
•
There had still been a few Japanese soldiers hiding out in the jungle and mountains that
did not know the war was over
•
They would sometimes come out at night and raid the garbage dumps
•
Doug also helped with orders from ships that were in need of new equipment
•
He served under a regular Navy Commander in charge of the base and Doug was the
Executive Officer
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Anderson, Doug (Interview outline and video), 2004
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Anderson, Doug
Description
An account of the resource
Doug Anderson was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan and graduated from Union High School in 1943. He enlisted in the Navy and began training one month after graduation. Doug went through accelerated college courses at Oakland College in Ohio and was then sent to mid-shipman school in New York. After going through training, the war was already over and Doug was sent to work in salvage and preservation in Guam. Doug spent the extent of his service in Guam and eventually became an Executive Officer when he was only 19 years old.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mangione, Nathaniel (Interviewer)
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. Navy
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2004-05-03
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AndersonD
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b24cf9936319b54edaab6f1a108ce48c.mp4
eb4f271493fa0c374a3715f2729bd38a
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/abae5647a61b7899dfde087dd6a49fc4.pdf
6c8312bf28a791ab08916bf6413b7389
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
George Anderson
(00:25:37)
Background
• George Anderson
• Born February 5, 1931
• Coopersville, Michigan (00:09)
• He enlisted into the navy (00:29)
• Grew up on Garfield Street not to far from where he lives now (00:44)
• Wanted to do something for his country to help out in the Korean War (01:00)
Enlistment/Training
• Signed up in Muskegon
• Sent to Chicago for training
o Great Lakes training camp
� Spent three months learning to be a sailor (01:16)
• Sent to Newport, Rhode Island, for four months
o For torpedo school (01:42)
• Went to San Francisco, California and set out on the USS Curtis in November
(01:56)
• First day of service he was 20 years old scared
o They cut all of his hair off, which he didn’t like at all (02:20)
• Enjoyed his time in the service (03:34)
• Officer in charge of boot camp was bitter about being called back to duty from
retirement
o Did a lot of marching, inspections, firefighting drills
• Took his training a day at a time to get by (03:29)
• Set sail from San Francisco
• Went up and down the coast
• Target drills, last from one hour to several days (04:50)
• Was a telephone operator for a gunnery officer (05:36)
• Shore patrol around Pearl Harbor
Acapulco, Mexico
• Acapulco Mexico, good will tour basically
• All along the west coast
o Training and having fun (06:24)
• Worked in the armory of the ship, because they didn’t use the torpedoes
• Kept things up
o Worked for a first class aviation ordinance man (07:03)
• Did not see any combat (07:56)
• Watched a Hydrogen bomb go off
�•
o Cant look directly at it for the first three seconds
Brighter then the sun when it explodes
o Very beautiful (08:08)
Reflections on Service
• Got a Korean war medal, because he served during that time period, and he
received a good conduct medal (09:25)
• Wrote letters home to family
o Wrote letters every week, as the months went on he started to write only
once a month
� His family wrote to him a lot (09:53)
• Lots of good food, good rations masters, and good cooks.
o Plenty of supplies (10:43)
• Got a package of cigarettes for eighteen cents (11:26)
• Never felt pressured or stress while in the army (11:43)
• Was a mail delivery person from ship to ship
o Motor whale boat
� Hard to get in and out of it
� Didn’t want to fall into the ocean (12:50)
� Had recreation: beers, swimming, nap for entertainment (13:58)
� In Pearl Harbor hula girls came onto the ships to entertain the men
� Had movies sometimes(14:38)
� On leave he would go home and see his family (15:33)
� Doesn’t recall taking part in any pranks (16:00)
� Shows a series of photos (16:24)
Post Service Life
� Discharged honorably April 4, 1955 (17:09)
� Still showing pictures, cant see them very well, explains some of them (18:34)
� Given papers of dis charge in San Diego (20:05)
� Mother and sister came to visit him when he was discharged, they drove home to
Michigan cross country (20:31)
� He got a job in construction that October did it the rest of his life (21:03)
� Never took advantage of the G.I. bill (21:17)
� Part of a convention with people from his ship (21:51)
� Forced to retire, he didn’t want to retire (22:36)
� Military experience shaped him and his thought process towards life
o He keeps up with world affairs (22:48)
� Part of a war organization, doesn’t participate in them very much now (23:20)
� You have to get along with people, associate with different things, lots of travel
(23:36)
� Wanted to see combat (24:40)
� Sad to leave the service, happy to see his family and be back home (24:48)
� Brothers were in various branches of the war in the military (25:16)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Anderson, George (Interview outline and video), 2005
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Anderson, George
Description
An account of the resource
George Anderson was born on February 5, 1931 in Coopersville, Michigan. He enlisted in the Navy in 1951. He was sent to the Great Lakes training center in Chicago, and then transferred to Newport, Rhode Island, where he took torpedo training. He was sent to San Francisco and assigned to the USS Curtis. He did not see any combat, but he went through patrols that took him all across the country and to Pearl Harbor. He worked in the armory of the ship.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Collins Sr., Charles E. (Interviewer)
Collins, Carol (Interviewer)
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
United States. Navy
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Video recordings
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2005-02-01
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AndersonG
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0a0bf0abf7bf128b8986c63856896b3a.mp4
7709e5cec0d9b3da8c0a486c812651a2
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a4eb2cafbe1f9e5d18c5e1acec928f02.pdf
56751491af6bc460ef0bddb84a5aca05
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Afghanistan
Nick Anderson
Total Time – (01:16:38)
Background
He was born in Minnesota in 1989 (00:25)
o He lived there for a year until his family moved to Grand Haven,
Michigan (00:30)
His father is an automotive engineer and his mother stayed at home with the kids
o There are four kids in the family (00:43)
He went to Freedom Baptist High School in Hudsonville, Michigan
He remembers being in 8th grade band class when he heard about 9/11 (01:01)
The news came over the loudspeakers – everyone was shocked
o There was a TV in his science class and they all gathered around and
watched it there (01:25)
The event stayed with him and was part of the reason he joined the military
Before 9/11 he had given thought to the service (01:49)
Movies helped make him want to join the military
He graduated high school in 2007 (02:14)
Enlistment/Training – (02:18)
He had decided midway through his senior year of high school that he wanted to
be a Marine (02:24)
o He chose the Marine Corps because he believed that they were the best
He based that on word of mouth and old veterans (02:41)
After signing up there were optional work-outs and class sessions on Wednesdays
at the recruiting station (03:12)
o The military expected the soldiers to know a lot of different acronyms and
general orders
He did not have any sense of what he was getting into before he was sent to Boot
Camp (04:03)
He was sent to San Diego, California for Boot Camp (04:12)
Before getting to California, he was sent to Lansing, Michigan to swear in (04:26)
o He is then sent to the airport to fly out
o Before they get on the plane, the soldiers were greeted by an angry guy
(Drill Instructor)
o He landed late at night (04:56)
�
On the bus ride to the recruiting depot, the recruits had to look down the entire
time (05:14)
When he got off the bus he was made to stand on yellow footprints, they yell at
you, shave your head, make them put their possessions in a box, give them all the
same things (05:29)
It took roughly a day or two for them to get put into their Boot Camp platoons
(05:52)
The only aptitude test he had to take was the ASVAB (Army Services Vocational
Aptitude Battery) (06:16)
o He had done it in high school
He was offered a variety of jobs but he only wanted to be infantry
Boot Camp was meant to break the soldiers down to nothing and then build them
back up (07:23)
o After that, he had to go to the School of Infantry where he learned all of
the basic infantry skills
Patrolling, shooting, etc. (07:38)
He was then sent to the 3rd Battalion 5th Marines (07:45)
o He went through little mandatory classes such as suicide prevention
He was able to call himself a Marine as soon as he was done with Boot Camp
(08:02)
Boot Camp was thirteen weeks long (08:07)
When they break the soldiers down, there are three phases that the they do it by
o The first phase is when “everybody is just like garbage” (08:21)
They are just learning the basic things – they could not do basic
things that Marines could
They could not roll up their sleeves, blouse military boots,
etc. (08:28)
The soldiers learn how to march
o They start of simple and then get more difficult (08:52)
It was not that difficult to adjust to the military life – he was used to get yelled at
– “I got yelled at a lot because I was stupid in high school.” (09:14)
It was all mind games
There were “a lot of stupid people that wanted to be Marines. If they’re getting
yelled at and I’m not, it’s fine with me.” (09:37)
Boot Camp has all kinds of recruits in it
o Some are fat, skinny, goofy looking, some say stupid things and get yelled
at, etc. (09:55)
o For some people, the military was an easy job
Some did it for school as well (10:21)
o One of the major reasons that many of the men were in the military was to
serve the country (10:44)
There are other perks that are factors as well
o There were men from all over the country (10:59)
When people messed up in Boot Camp they get yelled at in front of everyone
They had pre-pressed camis and boots that do not need to be shined (11:48)
�
There were a lot of Irish pendants that needed to be clipped on
The Drill Instructors came from all over the place
o To be a Drill Instructor you have to be crazy (12:36)
He was normally associated with a platoon with three instructors associated to it
(12:50)
o There was a senior, one that was specialized in drills, and one specialized
in knowledge
o The Senior Drill Instructor was like a father figure (13:19)
If they had problems they could go to him and he would not
usually scream at them as much (13:23)
After Boot Camp he was sent to Camp Pendleton, California for Infantry Training
(13:32)
Camp Pendleton was basically an addition to Boot Camp
o They soldiers are still getting yelled at but technically they are all Marines
(13:47)
o They give you more responsibility
They trained on the M16, M249 SAW (Squad Automatic
Weapon), explosive rounds, etc.
o They did not train on many heavy weapons (14:40)
o He did a lot of patrolling training (14:54)
When he first arrived to the fleet, he was joining a battalion that had already been
in Iraq (15:17)
At Camp Pendleton, some of the soldiers had already been to Iraq – they picked
on the new guys
After Camp Pendleton, his job was to join the unit and join their training schedule
(16:00)
o He got to his unit in March of 2008 and they went on their first
deployment in January of 2009 (16:17)
The environment was a lot more relaxed
o He had some more time to himself (16:40)
o When they were in the rear or stateside, unless they are on duty or
training, they have normal working hours (16:45)
o He did not got off the base very much because he did not have a car and
the base is in the middle of nowhere
He had a cell phone while he was there that allowed him to stay in contact with
others back home (17:14)
o There was a building in each part of the base that had free internet
In Boot Camp they tried to disconnect the soldiers from the world (17:31)
o He received one phone call in Boot Camp
Active Duty – Part I - MEU/Pacific Cruise – (17:49)
His first deployment was on a MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit) (17:54)
o It is virtually a show of strength to the world if something happens they
are right there to take care of it (17:58)
�
o He went to Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Thailand, and Australia
They took unit transports to the different locations
They flew on a 747 to Okinawa (18:29)
o The ship that he took was an LPD-9 (18:37)
The backs open up and they let the amphibious vehicles out
He started out of South Korea
In most of the countries that they went to they trained with the actual armies of
those countries (19:00)
o They did house room clearing
o He got he impression that the South Koreans had tight restrictions on what
they could and could not do (19:23)
They had nets on their guns that collected the brass after they shot
He heard that they had a high suicide rate (19:36)
The Marines are fed by eating MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat) (20:01)
o They come in little brown bags
o Some of them are good but some of them are nasty (20:06)
o When they were on the ships they ate very well – they ate Navy food
After Korea, he went to the Philippines, Australia, and Thailand (20:24)
o They did not get a good reception when they went to Australia (20:33)
o There were girls there that were trying to make fun of the Americans
accents
It was funny to the soldiers even though the girls did not mean for
it to be funny (20:44)
o The Philippines was the most receptive of the countries they went to
When they go to shore they are given the normal rules – “if you’re gonna drink,
don’t get stupid.” (21:07)
o Incidents in other countries are difficult to deal with
o Alcohol was usually involved in the misbehaving of soldiers (21:23)
Usually the soldiers did alright
o He stayed away from the drinking for the most part (21:37)
Having gone to a Baptist school helped him in the military (21:42)
o It gave him a good foundation to stick to
o He met a couple of married men in the service that wanted to remain
faithful so he hung out with them (21:48)
They usually got a couple of days in each country to go and hang out (22:12)
o They had to stay in groups of no less than four in case they got in trouble
or got lost
The cruising lasts for about eight months (22:37)
Day to day life on ship did not have much for Marines to do
o The higher-ups would get made at them for being lazy and sleeping all day
(22:56)
They made it mandatory that they got out of bed
The Navy men had to work and the Marines were in there way
(23:10)
They then stayed in their beds all day to stay out of the
Navy’s way
�
The Senior Battalion Commander and Sergeant Major were probably in their 50’s
(23:38)
o The Company Commander was probably 30 years old and the Platoon
Commander was probably 24 or 25 years old (23:52)
o All of the Officers had college degrees (24:04)
He had a sense that promotion was fairly slow
o It was dependent on what job the soldier has
o The military did not need a lot of promotions for infantry soldiers (24:33)
The soldiers that had been in Iraq did not talk about it very much (24:47)
o By that time Iraq had slowed down quite a bit
There were some of his seniors that had been in Fallujah, Iraq in the deployment
before the major deployments (25:12)
At this point he never expected his military experience to get bad
o He figured that he may have to go to Afghanistan but never thought it
would get too bad (25:43)
He then returned to the United States from his cruise in August of 2009
At this stage he was figuring that a four year stint would probably make him go
on two different deployments (26:43)
o He was thinking that he would not reenlist
o He had been open to the idea of staying in for longer (27:01)
When he was in his return, he was in the middle of seniority – he was more senior
than the new guys but less senior than the higher ups
Active Duty – Part II – Camp Leatherneck/Sangin/IED – (28:00)
He stayed at Camp Pendleton for roughly one year (28:03)
In January of 2010, they went to Bridgeport, California for mountain warfare
training (28:10)
o The first week they were there it snowed 6-10 feet
They would train in different extremes – they would go to the dessert in the
summer for training (28:20)
In the process of all of his training he received amphibious landing training
(28:37)
o They would get on an amphibious assault vehicle and would shoot off of
the back of a ship
He learned that he was going to go to Afghanistan three months before they were
going to leave (29:17)
o They were all thinking that it was not going to be fun but more exciting
than what they had been doing (29:30)
o Once it gets closer to it they hear about what is going on where they are
going
They did not receive much specialized training for Afghanistan before they left
(29:51)
Most of the training they did before they went they did not use because they did
not know what to expect in Afghanistan
o The training they had was based more on Iraq than Afghanistan (30:12)
�
o Where they were in Afghanistan they had to walk in single file lines
because of IED’s (Improvised Explosive Device) (30:25)
Typically soldiers will not walk in single file line in case the
enemy has a machine gun – they could mow down all of the
soldiers
When the time comes to leave, they flew on a plane to Maine and then to
Kurdistan (30:51)
o They stayed at an Air Force Base in Kurdistan for a couple of nights
before flying in to Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan
They stayed in Camp Leatherneck for a week while they were briefed (31:13)
o They then flew in to Sangin, Afghanistan where they took over (31:19)
They were in the Helmand Province (31:32)
His first impression is that everything is made of dirt and the people are dirty
There was a river that ran right next to the town that was green on both sides –
there were pomegranate trees and other vegetation (32:01)
Across from the main road there was just a desert where nothing grew
o They were in the desert part for the majority of the time (32:25)
The guys that they were taking over for told them that they should not go for the
Taliban flags, do not go in to abandoned compounds, and follow in the footsteps
of the soldier in front of you (32:40)
The properties in Sangin had twelve foot high mud walls surrounding their land
with a compound on the inside (33:17)
o They had outhouses
o Their own property was enclosed in the walls (33:36)
o The compounds often shared the same walls
There were narrow streets and allies (33:58)
He was a part of Lima Company (34:16)
o Their area of operations was to the south of the city
o The different companies split up to the different parts of the town (34:26)
It was a big town
Their basic mission was to cut off supply routes and kill the Taliban (34:39)
He was not sure how the Taliban moved supplies around
o They would do vehicle and personnel checks
o They had rules of engagement that were pretty relaxed at the beginning
(35:03)
Anyone that had a walkie talkie or a cell phone could be shot
(35:09)
The local population was scared of the American soldiers (35:15)
o They were once told that they believed they were going to kidnap the
women and children and cut their heads off
o One lady told them that the Taliban was only in her town because the
Americans were. If the Americans would leave, the Taliban would leave
as well (35:31)
o Little kids would throw rocks at them when they would drive by
Each company was broken down into four platoons (35:59)
o There were three patrol bases where the platoons would split up
�
o From each patrol base, one squad would be sent out each day (36:13)
o There were typically 12-15 men in each squad
They would typically go out and patrol – they found a lot of IED’s
(36:31)
They found a lot of weapons caches (36:37)
The IED’s were found by either seeing them with their eyes or by metal detectors
(36:50)
o IED’s are made of plastic jugs with chemicals, a lamp cord, 3 9 volt
batteries to complete the circuit, and a pressure plate made of wood
o The metal detectors could only pick up on the batteries (37:18)
They were very careful with any unsettled dirt
Each patrol was led by an engineer with a valence (metal detector) (37:53)
There was one day when they only moved 50 feet and it took them two hours to
clear the area (37:58)
Clearing out IED’s was very slow
When they find the IED they call up the EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal)
(38:10)
o They drive up in their truck and dig at the IED to see if it is – if it is they
blow it up (38:20)
o The EOD were awesome at their job
o There was one patrol where the EOD helped them with sixteen IED’s
(38:52)
The patrol bases were typically abandoned buildings
o Their patrol base was a cement building – they would joke that a drug lord
had owned it (39:14)
o They would put sandbags all around the top of the building
He started to run into trouble about a week after he was there (39:56)
o The first day there was a three hour long gun fight
It was kind of fun because no one got hit (40:06)
It was like “all guns blazin”
o They were up on a hill being shot at (40:32)
o They were only 200 feet away from their patrol base
o They called in an A10 Warthog to go in and unload their main firepower
(40:50)
The A10 Warthog worked
They wanted to hide after that (41:11)
After the first firefight, the enemy got the idea that it was not a good idea to fight
them (41:19)
o The Americans had way more firepower than the enemy could imagine
o The enemy would sometimes take a couple of pot shots but that was about
all (41:31)
The biggest threat was the IED’s (41:39)
The IED’s were typically just the pressure plates
o There were sometimes some manually triggered IED’s (41:59)
They came across a lot of the abandoned manual IED’s
�
The next day after the first firefight was when they discovered an IED that was
very close to them
o An Afghani soldier stepped on an IED and blew it up (43:07)
o The dust from the IED takes roughly 2-3 minutes before it clears
o They could hear screaming in English (43:27)
Their lieutenant had been hit as well
o They saw the Afghani soldier rolling around and yelling (43:37)
He bled out in front of them (43:44)
After the IED exploded, no one really wanted to walk around anymore
o They had to get to the body and take care of it
o It took a while because they were all trying to be very careful (44:03)
o A helicopter came and took the body and the American to a hospital
(44:17)
They were supposed to take the Afghans on every patrol so that they could train
and learn how to do everything on their own (44:30)
o He does not see that every happening
They would never lead the patrol and would wait for the
Americans to lead (44:36)
o The Afghans were not any better than the Americans at spotting IED’s
Typically, when an IED would be spotted, the Afghan soldiers
would sit on the ground with their gun over their laps (44:51)
Active Duty – Part III – Patrols/Taliban Flags/ Weapon Caches – (45:01)
There was at least one interpreter on every patrol (45:07)
o The interpreters were Afghans
o The Americans liked the interpreters because they spoke English and
would go out without guns (45:31)
Most of the interpreters wanted to eventually go to America (44:44)
They were primarily recruited by the government to work as
interpreters
It was very dangerous working with the Afghan soldiers (46:26)
o One of his best friends was blown up when they were going down an alley
way and one of the Afghani soldiers went off on his own and stepped on
an IED
o The enemy typically fires at the Americans when the bombs go off
because it is very hard to see anything (47:08)
He was deployed in Afghanistan for seven months
o In that time he carried an M249 saw when he was there (47:46)
He kept a diary for a large portion of the time that he was there (47:52)
Usually the rooftops of the compounds did not have walls – everyone was able to
see them but they could hardly see anything (48:18)
When they were on the ground they could only see 15-20 feet away because of
the walls
When they were patrolling and had to go into a compound they would typically
have the interpreter knock on the door and ask to let the Americans in (48:53)
�
o If the compound was not occupied, they would rarely go through the
doorway
One of his other best friends was blown up and killed because he
walked in an empty doorway that had an IED on the other side
(49:14)
o They would take ladders and go over the wall
o They eventually just started blowing holes in the sides of walls (49:29)
It made a lot of the Afghans upset
About three months in, his unit moved farther into the country so that they could
secure the whole area (50:04)
o They had to make their own new patrol base (50:16)
There were a lot of sandbags to be filled
The men in his squad were mostly kids (50:35)
He has one friend from Hawaii that he still talks to
One of his friends that stepped on an IED was from Minnesota (51:03)
He also maintains contact with many of the guys out in California (51:11)
They were not supposed to get “buddy buddy” with the sergeants because they
were higher ups (51:30)
o He liked most of them and did not agree with the decisions of some of
them
o One of the sergeants was a short guy and felt like he owed someone
something
His mindset was that since he had been in Iraq he wanted to do a
lot of the things that were not supposed to be done in Afghanistan
(52:12)
He wanted to get the Taliban flags, find IED’s, etc.
He was only put in charge of them because he was a higher rank
than them (52:27)
He was the squad leader
The Taliban flags were typically in abandoned compounds that have IED’s
planted inside (52:46)
o Their mindset is that the Americans will want to go get the flags. That is
why they booby trap the building that they are in (52:59)
o They eventually learned to not go and get the flags (53:08)
The weapons caches were also in abandoned compounds (53:27)
o They would sometimes get tipped off on where to look for them
o There was a big tower with a camera on top where they could look for
hostile movement
o One time they saw a man with a long barreled weapon that he should not
have
They called it in and had him “blown to pieces” (53:59)
o Sometimes they would see people moving in and out of abandoned
compounds – they would then have to go and check it out (54:08)
The rules of engagement changed over time
o When they arrived there was hardly anyone traveling the streets (54:27)
Near the end there were families going down the streets
�
o On some level, the American presence was working (54:45)
The Afghani’s probably felt safe because there were Americans
everywhere with guns
o Toward the end there was a lot less gunfights (55:03)
The trucks and mine rollers that they would use were essentially big trucks
(55:30)
o Most of them have a v-shaped hole
o The humvees are being used less because of their flat bottoms (55:44)
o They would sometimes use an MRAP (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected)
truck (55:55)
o The mine plows were extensions of the truck that had solid rubber tires
with weights on top that will set off the IED before it gets under the truck
(56:28)
When driving around on the mine plow he had a lot of problems with the tires
A typical day when not on patrol was being put on post (57:45)
o If he was not on post he would be on an unloading party – they would
unload water bottles, food, or filling sandbags
Active Duty – Part IV – Miscellaneous Info./Last Experiences in Afghanistan –
(58:13)
He had more down time at the beginning than at the end (58:19)
When someone in the unit would get hit and taken out, the rest of the men stayed
back and continued fighting (58:36)
o They would always have to push through it
In the beginning they did not patrol as much because of the IED threat (58:55)
o The would have spades tournaments
It was typically too cold to take showers – they would sometimes take solar
showers but it was still often too cold (59:32)
o It was three months before he got his first running water shower
o The soldiers would have to put the same dirty clothes back on (59:51)
They were expected to shave and keep their hair short (01:00:00)
o They had generators that were brought in
At first they could only shave
o The generators had outlets where they could plug in and shave their hair
(01:00:22)
The seven months that he was in Afghanistan was spent with the same group
o After guys were killed or hurt they would receive combat replacements
(01:00:45)
For a while they liked to believe that they were the best squad
o There was not much of a difference between the units (01:01:44)
The night vision goggles were sometimes beneficial
o He had a pair that was blurry and he could not fix it (01:02:06)
o He had another pair that would randomly shut off
If a soldier received a good pair, he could see fine (01:02:17)
o There has to be a little bit of light for them to work well
�
The larger strategy against the Taliban was working to some degree (01:03:01)
Once the Americans got into the trucks, they would sometimes still have the
Afghans alongside them
o When they were on the patrols, the Afghani soldiers would remain with
them (01:03:22)
They were not really able to see improvement with the Afghani
soldiers when they were on patrols
He rarely had to deal with the Afghani soldiers
o One of his friends had a Star of David tattoo – when he took his shirt off
an Afghani soldier pointed his rifle at him (01:03:55)
There were only eight Americans and twenty Afghani soldiers
o Two of his friends were murdered by Afghanis (01:04:17)
He never saw any suicide bombers
o He would see them set off bombs and then run away (01:04:36)
o They never wanted to become complacent and believe that there were not
suicide bombers so they still checked everyone (01:04:52)
When they had the generator with electrical outlets they would charge their iPods
or other devices
o One time they all gathered around an iPod and watched Aladdin
(01:05:32)
o There was one guy that had a laptop and care packages would sometimes
have DVDs in them (01:05:44)
He was able to stay in communication with his family roughly once every month
o The married men usually had first dibs
o There was a seventeen hour time difference between Afghanistan and
Michigan (01:06:13)
The best time to call was in the middle of the night in Afghanistan
because it was the middle of the day in Michigan (01:06:23)
o He got care packages – he had requested Monster drinks and Swedish Fish
(01:07:02)
o They would get so much candy that they did not know what to do with it
They would give some out to the kids when they would go out on
patrol (01:07:25)
The kids would like the soldiers when they were giving them
things
When he went into Afghanistan he did not think about how long his deployment
was going to last (01:08:03)
o He was more worried about knowing if he was going to die, etc.
When he was in Afghanistan he knew a month or two ahead of time that he was
going to be leaving
o They would do something called Ripping (Relieving In Place) (01:08:43)
o They would train the replacements by going on patrols with them
o The Afghanis knew that they were sending replacements and that “new
blood was coming in” (01:08:53)
The second patrol that they were on with the new guys an engineer stepped on a
bomb and lost both of his legs
�
o He later found out later that one of the other engineers in the unit was
killed and the other had his leg blown off (01:09:19)
Over the course of his time there, there were twenty-five that were killed and
almost two hundred wounded – there were only eight hundred soldiers there on
patrols
The most that any soldier ever had to use was a tourniquet (01:10:16)
o The doctors would use IVs to keep the soldiers out of shock
There were times when soldiers would step on bombs that were only a couple feet
away from him (01:10:37)
o There were a couple of times where he was almost shot
o After one explosion his nose started bleeding (01:11:06)
o He was never hit by shrapnel
o One time he had to pick flesh of other soldiers off of his neck (01:11:20)
He had, by that time, decided that four years in the military was enough
He returned to America in April or May and was discharged in August (01:11:47)
Once he was back from Afghanistan he had to turn in his gear, make sure his
medical information is up to date, took classes, etc.
The military gave TAP (Transition Assistance Program) classes to soldiers that
were about to head home (01:12:39)
o He cannot remember if anything that they taught him was useful
o The courses were extremely boring
He believes that if he would have gone straight to college he would not have done
nearly as well as he is (01:13:27)
o He probably would not have gone very far because he was a horrible
student
o Problems in America are not as big as they seemed before his military
experience
His first class was three days after returning from the Marine Corps. (01:14:19)
o It was nice because no one was yelling at him and no one was in his face
about anything
o Whenever he walks across the GVSU bridge he imagines someone
grabbing a kid and throwing them off (01:15:02)
He studies Criminal Justice at Grand Valley State University
All of his checkups at the VA (Veteran’s Association) are free
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Anderson, Nicholas "Nick" (Interview outline and video), 2013
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Anderson, Nicholas
Description
An account of the resource
Nick Anderson was born in Minnesota in 1989 and moved to Grand Haven, Michigan three years later. He had given thought to joining the military before 9/11 and, during his senior year of high school, decided that he wanted to be a Marine. Nick swore into the military in Lansing, Michigan and then went to San Diego, California for Basic Training. He was then sent to Camp Pendleton, California for Infantry Training. His first deployment was on an MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit) until he returned to America for Mountain Warfare Training. Nick was then deployed to Afghanistan and landed at Camp Leatherneck. His unit served in Sangin where there was a constant threat of IED's. He remembers his experiences on patrols and the routines of finding abandoned compounds.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
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
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
United States. Marine Corps
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2013-01-18
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AndersonN1473V
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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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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d26c7988d1d574dc0f9cfda7794ccac7.mp4
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/266fbcd8d0b1a3746e8efe92614dba79.pdf
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ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW
BOB ANDERSON
Born: August 1948, Kalamazoo, Michigan
Resides: Ada, Michigan
Interviewed by: James Smither PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project,
Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, August 24, 2012
Interviewer: Bob, can you start us off with some background on yourself? To begin
with, where and when were you born?
I was born in August of 1948, in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Interviewer: Did you grow up in Kalamazoo?
Probably for three or four years, and then my father went back into the Air Force, he was
a veteran of WWII, and he was tired of the rigmarole of civilian life. He was a pilot so he
applied for and the air force granted him a return to duty, so he went back in the service
and ended up retiring from the Air Force.
Interviewer: Did he rejoin while the Korean War was going on?
I think it was—of course I was little, so I didn‟t—I think towards the tail end maybe of
Korea. Although he was a pilot, he was not a combat pilot. He was a personnel and
transport pilot. 1:13
Interviewer: They needed a fair number of those while the Korean War was going
on probably.
Yeah, and we lived in a lot of different places, you know, we were in Charleston, South
Carolina, we were in Florida for a few months while he was transitioning into other types
of aircraft. The majority of the time, before I went in the service, he was stationed at
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�Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. That‟s where I went to high school and graduated,
in Maryland.
Interviewer: What year did you graduate from high school?
I graduated in 1966 and proceeded to go to junior college for a year, and I lived with my
uncle, believe it or not, down on the gulf coast in Mississippi. He was a professor at one
of the colleges in the gulf coast junior college district and I loved living with him and that
was quite an experience. 2:11
Interviewer: Where did you go from there?
Then I transferred and I went to Michigan State and started there in the fall of 1967. I
really didn‟t know how to study, so I spent a lot of time doing book work, actually
counting the hours and things like that, but I didn‟t know how to translate the studying
into regurgitation on the tests, so as a result I ended up getting academically dismissed
from Michigan State in the spring of 1968.
Interviewer: While you were on the Michigan State campus, was there much going
on by way of peace movement stuff or protest activities or things like that that you
were aware of? 3:08
If there was I was really unaware of it. I was pretty insulated as a kid growing up. I
mean, my parents didn‟t keep me from anything and I was free to do what I wanted to do,
but I just was kind of oblivious to world events, I guess if you will.
Interviewer: Did you think of the possibility that somebody might draft you or
anything like that?
Well, when I came—my parents, again, were living in Maryland, so after I got dismissed
I packed my stuff up and came back to Maryland feeling kind of like a failed something
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�because I had done so well in the junior college. I could have gone to junior college
again in Maryland, but there was something in the back of my mind that said, “No,
you‟re really not ready for this yet”. 4:07 So, I talked to my dad quite a bit and he
thought it may be good if I went in the service to get some free training, and when I got
out of the service and was no longer interested in going to college, I would at least have a
trade to go to. So, we kind of talked it over and my father‟s very handy, so he suggested
that maybe refrigeration equipment repair, you know. People always need—air
conditioners were kind of just coming into vogue in 1968 I guess, and, of course,
everybody has a refrigerator and so maybe that might be something good. I didn‟t know
anything about any of that, but it sounded good. So I enlisted in the
Army to be a refrigeration equipment repairman. 5:08
Interviewer: When did you enlist?
I enlisted on my brother‟s birthday, May 6th 1968.
Interviewer: Now this is a point when the army needed people pretty badly, the Tet
Offensive had just gone on and all that kind of stuff. Were you able to actually
dictate the specific type of training you received?
I was, I actually had a guaranteed, I have that at home in my paperwork, still, it was a
guaranteed enlistment for that particular school, which was to be held at Fort Belvoir,
which was just across the Potomac River about ten miles from my home, so I thought that
would be kind of interesting too, so yeah, the army guaranteed me that I would go to
refrigeration equipment repair school. 6:01
Interviewer: All right now, where in fact did they—what did you do for basic
training?
3
�I took basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, home of the infantry. Then I took—had I
gone to the refrigeration equipment repair program, I would have then gone to Fort
Belvoir, but during the reception, reception station period, many of us take tests and I had
scored high enough on the testing to be considered for Officer Candidate School, so I
thought, “Well, if I‟ve got to “—by then Vietnam was, you know, two years ago Vietnam
was a nonevent for me, even though my division, the 1st Cav, had fought bravely and
honorably in the Ia Drang Valley, but that was my senior year in high school and that was
still oblivious to me. 7:06 But, I had my choice to go to OCS, because I qualified, and
once I said, “Yes, I‟ll do that”, then I gave up my right to go to refrigeration equipment
repair school, so after basic training I went to Fort Dix, New Jersey.
Interviewer: Now, back up a little bit and describe what your version of basic
training was like.
Well, the basic premise behind basic training, I think, is they want to tear you down and
expunge all your thoughts of the civilian world and turn you into a soldier, so there‟s a lot
of physical—back in those days they could really yell at you and everything. Now, I
guess they do, but it‟s more on the QT. 8:01 They could call you whatever they wanted
to call you and you really had no recourse to it other than say, “Yes drill sergeant”, and
then do whatever pushups they wanted you to do or what have you. It was first aid
training and drill and ceremonies, how to march, teach you how to do the manual of arms
with your M14, and rifle marksmanship, of course, was a big thing. But, not everyone
that goes through basic training ends up in a combat arm, or infantry or what have you,
you know. Many of them did not sign off and some went to refrigeration equipment
repair school, some of them went to welding, wherever the regular army folks, whatever
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�they had signed up to do they went to those various posts and did there thing. How to
find mines in the ground, we shot 3.5 rocket launchers and M72 LAWs, and pistol
familiarization. 9:13 It was orientated toward infantry tactics, target detection, night
evasion, escape evasion and things like that.
Interviewer: How easy, or hard, was it for you to adjust to military life?
I think for the most part my adjustment was fairly easy, primarily because my father was
career Air Force and I had, even though from afar, I had some knowledge of what you‟re
supposed to do, you know, you don‟t argue with everybody if somebody tells you to do
something. Of course in basic training they‟re not going to give you anything illegal.
10:02 That may or may not have come later, but basic training, if they told you to get
down and do a bunch of pushups, you got down and did as many as you could, you know.
If they told you to run around the building five times, you ran around the building, there
were no debates with the drill sergeants, you know. If the drill sergeant said, “Stand over
in the corner on one foot”, and went away, that‟s what you did. If you were smart you
did what they told you to do.
Interviewer: Did they have people who kind of just did get it, or put up a fight?
There were a few that I guess couldn‟t be broken, or didn‟t want to be broken, and I
would suspect that probably most of those were draftees. They were doing whatever they
were doing and then Uncle Sam knocked on their door and said, you know, "You will
report to wherever”, and they did. 11:05 They were rebellious, I suspect, because they
didn‟t want to be there in the first place. I—my situation was a little bit different in that I
enlisted, so even though my basic feeling might have been similar to theirs, I basically
just kept my mouth shut because I signed up.
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�Interviewer: Were you in pretty good physical shape at that point? Could you do
all the PT stuff?
I would say yes, I was much different than I am now days, but running was kind of a
nonevent thing, and the pushups, you know, eventually I got pretty good with that. The
only thing I really had trouble with is the overhead, we called them monkey bars, you had
to do that every day before you went to chow and I wasn‟t very good at that at first
because I didn‟t have good upper body strength, but eventually you learn how to do it.
12:09
Interviewer: How long was the basic training?
It was about nine weeks, I think, eight or nine.
Interviewer: Did you go straight from there into OCS?
No, I went straight from there to Fort Dix for advanced training and in a lot of ways it
was similar to basic. Of course, this is geared toward infantry now because I backed out
of the other. It‟s more weapons, it‟s more radio procedure, it‟s not as much drill and
ceremony, but, you know, more field exercises and more kind of tactical types of things
and kind of gearing you up to—pretty much most of the people knew where they were
going, if they were in that infantry AIT company they were going to Vietnam. 13:03
Interviewer: Now were you trained by people who had already served there?
In basic training yes, and in a little lesser degree in AIT, and the company commander
had not been there, either of my company commanders, basic or AIT had not been there,
but all of the drill sergeants in basic training had been to Vietnam, and I‟ve got a pretty
good memory of all of the names except for AIT and I don‟t remember many of their
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�names. I think our platoon sergeant had been to Vietnam, but I can‟t be a hundred
percent sure of that because it‟s just kind of a vague memory.
Interviewer: Did they make much of an effort to simulate the physical conditions in
situations you may encounter in Vietnam?
Probably as much as they could, I mean the physical situation, you know, the terrain or
the humidity, or the monsoons, or those types of things, they couldn‟t replicate. 14:09
Of course the jungle, they could replicate, but barring all of that I think they did a pretty
good job.
Interviewer: Did they prepare you to function in civilian areas and thing like that?
We actually did two or three days of training on crowd control, or something, I forget
what they called them, but yes, there was a class on dealing with civilians.
Interviewer: Did they have like a simulated Vietnamese village set up, because some
of the training places did?
Not that I remember, I don‟t think so, but I know some of the other posts, like Fort Polk, I
think they did.
Interviewer: That would be harder to do in New Jersey for some reason.
Well yeah 15:07
Interviewer: Once you complete AIT then, what’s the next stage?
Then it seemed like I had a couple three days before I had to report to Fort Benning, and I
reported there in middle of September, I think it was, or the first week of September,
something like that, for infantry officer candidate school. There were about a hundred
and twenty of us that started, and of course their focus was to turn all of you into
lieutenants of infantry. The class day was long; the academics were hard for some.
7
�Really, I didn‟t have any trouble with the academics. 16:02 I didn‟t have any trouble,
really, with the physicality of it, and some folks did, but it was geared strictly to take,
probably by now, take a sixteen, seventeen week Army kid and make him a rifle platoon
leader.
Interviewer: Were most of the people you were with college graduates, or were they
like you and maybe had some college or a little bit of that?
I would say that in my platoon, and I would guess there were maybe twenty of us,
probably half were college graduates and then the other half were probably like me with
one to two years of schooling.
Interviewer: Traditionally OCS has been, in a lot of situations, primarily college
graduates, but they adjust the standards depending on how many people they need
in part. 17:09
Well, I suspect that‟s true, you know OCS, military academies, and ROTC were
primarily very, and still are, primarily commissioning sources for all branches of the
service, but a lot of the guys were married, too. In my platoon probably thirty percent of
the guys were married and then again if they were college graduates and they were
married, they were in there because they got drafted. They didn‟t raise their hand with a
four year degree and working in a good job, and say, “Well, I think I‟ll go in the Army
that sounds good”, so Uncle Sam came and knocked on their door too. Many of them
brought their wives down and I‟m sure it was quite difficult to have your wife, you know,
five miles away, just off post, and here you are stuck with a hundred other guys, you
know. 18:13
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�Interviewer: In what ways were they giving you specific training, towards
Vietnam? What kinds of things were they trying to prepare you for?
Well, it was kind of more of the same, but it was more intense. Being more of the same
infantry oriented, and there was a lot of map reading, there was artillery firing, and we
had to learn how to adjust fire with an 81mm mortar, and tactical situations. You know a
lot of it was classroom too, you know. They‟re showing a film on TV or something and
all of a sudden it would stop and they would call out, “Company commander Anderson
has now been killed, what do you do next?” 19:05 Hopefully I was awake when they
called my name and I was able to give them something and then they would dissect what
I had given them and then roll the film to see if what I had given them was what was
supposed to have been done. The few times he called on me I was A, awake, and able to
give him the proper result, but when you‟re, you being a professor know this too, I‟m
sure you can look up from the lectern and see some students dozing off. And it was go,
go, go, from the time that reveille started at 0500, or what have you, until lights out at
2100 or 2200, whatever it was. You run to wherever you‟re going, and it‟s hot in the fall
in Georgia. 20:06 Then you get in an air conditioned building and it seemed like
sometimes your fanny hit the seat and you were conked out, and they had ways to deal
with that too, it was humorous in some regards sometimes. He would just speak out,
“Ok, for all of you who are awake ignore my next command”, and then he would yell out,
“On your feet”, you know and of course only the ones—you were conditioned to that, but
if you were half asleep you didn‟t hear the previous command, so half of the class stood
up, and then they got chastised a little bit, but it was humorous in some instances.
Interviewer: How long did OCS last?
9
�OCS was twenty three weeks, I believe it was.
Interviewer: So, it was not quite like the WWII model of the ninety day wonder.
No, we still receive that moniker, so I guess we were twice as good. 21:07
Interviewer: There you go. All right, now once you get to the end of that do they
give you a furlough or anything before they assign you? What happens?
They did, order came down and some guys stayed right at Fort Benning to go to the
tactical department or something. I stayed right at Fort Benning to go to a basic training
unit to be a training officer, but there was a week or two in between.
Interviewer: How long did you stay on as a training officer?
I graduated on the 29th of March and I probably reported there in mid-April, so I was
probably there about four months when I came down on orders for Vietnam.
Interviewer: Now, what was life like on the other side of it? Now you’re training
other people. 22:01
Well, the role of a 2nd Lieutenant in a basic training company is kind of like what you use
to say about children you know, be seen and not heard, because we were gentlemen by an
act of congress, but many of us were unsure of ourselves and, of course, you had the drill
sergeant cadre there that really knew what they were doing, so if you were smart you
kind of got out of their way and let them do what they were supposed to do, and you just
watched and learned from that, and that‟s really what I tried to do. There was—we had a
good company commander, he was—he had served with the 101st Airborne and our first
sergeant was a two tour Vietnam guy and had been in Korea as well. 23:04 All of the
other drill sergeants had been to Vietnam, so they knew what they were doing and they
didn‟t need me to tell them what to do, so I tried to stay out of their way.
10
�Interviewer: Did you actually have any responsibilities then?
You got a ton of responsibilities, you know, you‟re the mess officer, and you‟re the army
emergency relief officer, and you‟re the, I can‟t even remember, the blood drive officer,
and I mean there‟s a whole host of things that you have to do and those are just three. I
can‟t even begin to list all of the extra duties that you have to do.
Interviewer: There’s a lot of administrative and bureaucratic work, and that kind
of thing, and in a way, that may be you’re best suited to do, at that point, because
you haven’t been anywhere yet. 24:01
Right, and they‟re trying to give you some responsibility just to—not necessarily to build
up your self-esteem or anything like that, but to make you feel comfortable with the fact,
“Ok Jim, I need you to go over here and take three guys and do this”, and unless you had
been in a working environment and had been a supervisor, most of us had never asked or
told, or cajoled, people to do things. They tried to kind of break you in easy and just
make you feel comfortable inside your uniform that says eighty percent of the people on
this base have to salute you now.
Interviewer: Now, you’re in sort of an odd situation in a way I would think, because
you’re aware that sooner or later you’re going to go to Vietnam, and instead of
being packed up right away you’re sort of cooling your heels at Fort Benning. Did
you think about that much, one way or another, or did you just take things as they
came? 25:10
You know, once you became an infantry—once I said I wasn‟t going to be a refrigeration
equipment repairman, then my path was chosen and there was no question in my mind
that I was ultimately going to end up in Vietnam. And again, I didn‟t dwell on that at all
11
�you know, it is what it is. I raised my hand and here I am, and if they keep me here for
two years then that„s what I would have done. In fact, the senior lieutenant in our
company had been there exactly that, when he graduated from Armor OCS, he stayed
right at Fort Benning. He was in that company the whole two years and never went
anywhere. 26:04 But, I didn‟t have any grand illusion that was going to happen to me.
I was doing the best I could as a 2nd lieutenant and if it came then I would go on to the
next step and do the best that I could there.
Interviewer: So, what was your reaction when the call actually did come?
I was apprehensive, of course, you know-- by then you‟re a whole lot different than you
were a civilian, you know. Now you‟re getting the Army Times every week and you
open up to the middle and “ninety killed” or whatever, and four of those were officers. I
guess I was—I don‟t know if I was glad, I guess I knew that I was going to have to go
there eventually, or pretty sure I was going to go there. 27:04 “I‟ve been here long
enough, I‟ve got this duty assignment down pat, so let‟s go do what I was really trained
to do and see what happens”.
Interviewer: How do they physically get you out to Vietnam?
Well, you came down on orders and you had to report to, or I had to report to, Travis Air
Force Base in California and I guess I flew out there, I don‟t even remember how I got
out there to be honest, I didn‟t drive, of course, I had a car, but I didn‟t drive out there,
and I didn‟t take the train, so I must have flown.
Interviewer: But you don’t have any particular recollection of flying?
I don‟t have any particular recollection.
Interviewer: Do you remember actually arriving in Vietnam?
12
�I do remember that. 28:03 A lot of folks remember that it was smelly and that it was
hot and everything and I don‟t remember the smell. It was night, it was dark, I do
remember the bus ride to the 90th Replacement Battalion and all of the bus, and many
people will say this and the windows were open of course, but there was heavy mesh
screening over the windows. I think one of us asked the bus driver, “What‟s up with
that?” He said, “That‟s to keep the VC, or somebody from throwing a grenade inside the
bus”. “Oh, I guess this is a real situation now, they got screened in buses so they can‟t
throw grenades in and kill us”.
Interviewer: Now, were you in the Saigon area at this point?
Bien Hoa, 90th Replacement Battalion was where everybody newly arriving in the
country went to, and from there you went to wherever you went. 29:12
Interviewer: How much time did you spend with the replacement battalion before
they shipped you out?
Probably three days, as I recall three days. We‟re getting uniforms and, of course, none
of us knew where we were going initially. A couple of days later you came down on
orders and I was assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division.
Interviewer: In some situations, some replacement officers were actually asked to
kind of list what their preferred assignments would be and pick three units. Did
they have that for you or not?
Well, that was in OCS where you listed your top three and I don‟t remember, but I don‟t
think Vietnam maybe was number three, I guess Germany or something.
Interviewer: But, within Vietnam you weren’t picking what divisions to go to or
anything like that?
13
�Well, only when we went to what they called the First Team Academy. 30:05
Soldiers
reduced that to FTA, which was the moniker of “screw the army”, basically. When I got
there they asked us what unit we wanted to go to and I didn‟t know units from anything,
you know. Some guys actually enlisted, West Pointers, they‟re sort of indoctrinated, you
know for a lot longer than we were. I want to go to Custer‟s unit, or I want to go to the
5th Regiment or what have you, but I had a—they had kind of a map of the area and I
remember looking at the 2nd Battalion, 7th Calvary regimental area, and I thought, “Well,
their headquarters is surrounded by a whole bunch of fire bases”, and I thought, “Well
that might be—what do I know, that might be a safe place to pick”. 31:08 So, my first
choice was the 2nd of the 7th. They had already decided where I was going, that was
actually embedded in code in the order I got. If I could ever find the key to that code it
would be kind of interesting, but I didn‟t go to the 2nd of the 7th, I went to the 1st of the
7th, but that was no big deal either. And we were at the First Team Academy probably
about three days , and they gave us weapons familiarization, and we shot a M79, and we
did some rappelling, and I think, more than anything, it was just to get us acclimated to
the heat. Then after that three or four days they said, “Ok, you‟re going to the 1st of the
7th”, “Ok”, you know. 32:07 I got on a C7 Caribou, you know, they led us by hand
because there‟s nothing dumber than a 2nd lieutenant, you know, especially in a combat
environment. “You‟re going to the 1st of the 7th”, “How do I get there?” “Oh, we‟ll take
you down back to Bien Hoa and we‟ll take you right where you need to go, and then
eventually there‟ll be a plane going to Quan Loi, and make damn sure you‟re on it”,
“Ok”.
Interviewer: What region of Vietnam was your unit based in?
14
�I was in III Corps, down south, probably northwest of Saigon.
Interviewer: Between Saigon and the Cambodian border sort of?
Yeah, probably fifteen miles from the Cambodian border
Interviewer: What was the physical terrain like in that area?
Immediately around the brigade base camp it was right in the middle of a rubber
plantation. 33:03 The farther out you got to the individual firebases were single and
triple canopy bamboo, trees and bamboo interspersed, and big clearings here and there.
Interviewer: Was it fairly flat in that area?
For the most part, yeah
Interviewer: So, you go out to the brigade headquarters, and do you stay there
initially or do you go out to your battalion?
No, they took me to—again, I took that Caribou ride to Quan Loi and somebody knew I
was coming. I jumped off the helicopter and walked up to the little hut there and there
was an E4 or E5 just sitting there just—you know you—It‟s like you‟ve been transported
to the moon, you know. You don‟t have anybody that you know, it‟s just, “Anderson
you‟re going there, and I‟ll take you down, and you get on this plane and when you get
off somebody will be there”. 34:09 Somebody was there, you‟re just kind of walking
around, your eyes are this big, and you‟re thinking, “What the hell have I got myself
into?” Then a guy says, “Lieutenant, or LT?”, and I go, “Yeah”, and he says, “You‟re
going to the 1st of the 7th?” “Yeah”, and he says, “Well, jump in the Jeep”, and a quarter
mile down the road they took me to battalion headquarters and I signed in, I guess. They
know I was there, so I don‟t physically recall signing in, but then they said, “Go through
this door and Colonel Drudick will—he‟s in a little enclosure back here and he‟ll talk to
15
�you”, so I said, “Ok”. 35:06 If you‟d seen the movie Apocalypse Now, I don‟t know if
you have, but when Martin Sheen finally finds Marlin Brando, he‟s kind of talking and
then Brando kind of leans forward out of the shadows, that was kind of—of course that
movie came out after that experience, now that was kind of, looking back on it, that was
kind of the experience I had. I‟m in there and Colonel Drudick is kind of in the shadow
and then he kind of leans forward. We talked a little bit, you know, similar to what we‟re
doing now, and he gave me a Garry Owen crest, which is the regimental crest for the 7th
Cavalry, and he gave me a crossed saber similar to the 1 , and it had a 1, 7 because he
was the 1st of the 7th commander. 36:01 he said, “I‟m assigning you to Alpha Company
and Captain Keen is the CO and good luck”, and he shook my hand, I walked back out
front and I said, “I guess I‟m going to Alpha Company”, and, of course, they knew that,
and I said, “Duh, somebody lead me away again”. I didn‟t have a clue where Alpha
Company was, fifty yards away or whatever. First sergeant was in the rear, they knew I
was coming, and I spent no more than two days there getting a helmet and a rifle, getting
a poncho liner, getting a pack, and getting some food, and then the company was being
resupplied on the second or the third day, I don‟t remember now. 37:01 They said,
“Tomorrow morning we‟ll take you out to company”, and I can‟t even remember now
where I slept. The next morning I gathered up all my stuff and we went out and took the
Charlie, Charlie, the commanding control helicopter, that‟s usually the first one that‟s
going to the field, and jumped on that, it took us out to fire support base Westcott, that‟s
where we were operating out of at the time, and I jumped off with the other guys and I
said, “Now what?” He said, “Now we kind of wait until the log bird, the resupply
helicopter, shows up and then the company will be moving to what we call a log site”,
16
�which is a supply site, and he said, “Then we‟ll take out the mail and all of the stuff that
had been requested the night before, plus you”. 38:10 I said, “Ok”, so it seemed like it
was a couple of hours before the log bird showed up ad they said, “Ok, LT”, we‟re going
now‟, so I got on the helicopter and they took me out to where the company was.
Interviewer: So, what happens when you get out there?
Well, a couple of things. It was an interesting helicopter ride. I think the crew chief saw
that I was new and he probably radioed to the pilot and he said, „We got a brand new
f*%#ing Lieutenant here, let‟s give him a ride, maybe we can make him toss his cookies
or something”. 39:06 That‟s the only thing I can think of because we backed out of the
revetment and he pulled pitch and we went down the runway and then he was doing this,
and flying map of the earth, and I thought it was great, like a rollercoaster ride. I was
sitting on a box in the center of the thing with my feet sticking out, so I don‟t go tumbling
out the door. I guess they finally got tired of that and figured, “We‟re not going to make
him barf”, and that‟s the only thing I can think of because every other helicopter ride I
had was never up, down, or sideways and banking, that‟s the only thing I can think of.
They dropped me off and, of course, I knew Captain Keen was the company commander,
and I said, “Where‟s Captain Keen?” 40:04 They said, “He‟s over there, the guy kind of
standing up without a shirt on”, so I went over there and reported to Patrick J. Keen. A
Captain, a farmer born in Garryowen, Ireland, actually he was, but I didn‟t find that out
until later. He said, Welcome to Alpha Company”.
Interviewer: Did you have a job with Alpha Company?
I did, he assigned me as the mortar platoon leader, and I thought, “This is not going to be
good for me or for anybody else”. That wasn‟t my—I mean we had familiarization and
17
�everything. I knew about it, but that wasn‟t really what I wanted to be, so I said, “Ok,
where are they?” 41:00 He showed me where they were and at that time we were
humping the 81mm mortar in the field, and base plate was eighty pounds, or something
and the tube, and the tripod and the aiming stakes, and everybody in the platoon had to
carry two mortar rounds it seemed like. I was mortar platoon leader for about—until the
next resupply, and again, I think it was more—and we did fire it a couple of times, but it
was acclimation to being in the field. Now you got all your rucksack stuff on, now it‟s
kinda real. If something happens you‟ll be, you‟ll not be up front necessarily, you‟ll be
back enough where you can see what‟s going on, and then again, like I said, that only
lasted like until the next resupply. 42:03 The 2nd Platoon leader was sent back to
become the executive officer and I moved up to be his replacement as the 2nd Platoon
leader.
Interviewer: Now, the time you were with the mortar platoon did much happen?
Did they get in any fights or anything?
We fired it more just for primarily, to get rid of some of the weight. I mean, you didn‟t
fire it without the company commander's permission, of course, but I think it was more of
an act, we‟re going to be moving out there 4,000 meters away, so let‟s drop three or four
rounds out in there and announce that we‟re coming, I guess, but—of course, the guys
that were in the mortar platoon, they just said, “Ok, we‟re going to shoot here”, and we
knew where we were and they knew what to do. 43:05 And again, I didn‟t have to
double check the FDC or any of that stuff. Here‟s the deal and charge two, or whatever,
and shoot the mortar round 4,000 meters, or whatever it was, and so they did their thing.
18
�Interviewer: So, you get orders from someplace else if you use the mortars, or
request, and then they okay it?
Yeah, that would have been all kind of unknown to me. We weren‟t on the move when
that was happening, we were—it seems like we got resupplied when I joined the
company and we stayed there that night, and then the next morning a patrol was going
out and Captain Keen wanted to shoot some 81mm and high explosive out into that
vicinity and it seems like that‟s what we did. 44:07 It wasn‟t an actual in contact firing
mission or anything like that.
Interviewer: So, it was relatively quiet at the point when you join them?
Yes
Interviewer: So, what was it like leading a platoon then when you go take over
there?
Well, I had—I had two E6‟s, one was the platoon sergeant and one was the guy that was
kind of training, I guess, to be a platoon sergeant. Then there was the dumbest lieutenant
on the planet and that would have been me. Here I am a, say 4 [?] or something.
Interviewer: Did the fellow you were replacing stay a little to get you oriented or
just move right out?
He moved right out
Interviewer: Did anybody explain to you what you were supposed to be doing?
Well, you‟re the platoon leader and now you have five months of commissioned service
and you know that you‟re the guy that‟s now in charge, but nobody said, “This is the
deal”. 45:11 Again, I was, I like to think smart enough as opposed to dumb enough, to
just—you know, that first morning when I‟m really in charge, Captain Keen said, “Ok,
19
�you‟re going to go out and you‟re going to do a thousand meter patrol out and back”, and
blah, blah, blah, “and you‟re going to go light”, which means you‟re just going to go out
with your weapons and your ammo and your pack and all that is going to stay behind.
We had a scout dog with us at that time, or with the company. “Take the dog with you”,
and I said, “Ok”, so I got Sergeant Ikely and Sergeant Spencer and I said, “Ok, here we
are and we‟ve got to go out a 1,000 meters and then go over a 1,000 meters and then
come back”. 46:10 They said, “Ok”, and I said, “We leave in ten minutes”, or
whatever, and they said, “Ok”, and then the dog handler was there and I said, “This is
what we‟re going to do”, I guess, and he said, “Ok”. He knew why he was there; he
walks around up front, up close, so the dog can smell. When the dog smelled something
he, or she, went into what they call an alert status and freeze or what have you, so, away
we went.
Interviewer: Now, did the sergeant sort of tell you where to go in a line, or anything
like that, or did you just kind of all start going out? 47:02
I don‟t know if they did, I don‟t remember if that was the patrol, the 1st patrol, where I
started walking where I did, but if it wasn‟t, it was shortly after that. We‟d have a “point
man” and we‟d have what we call a “slack man”. The slack man‟s basic job was to kind
of cover and keep track of the route you‟re walking and then the squad leader and then
me, so it either started with that patrol, or shortly after, that I walked fourth because you
can‟t run anything if you‟re at the rear and you don‟t know what the hell‟s going on if
you‟re at the rear. Sometimes you don‟t know what the hell‟s going on when you‟re
fourth, but you have a better chance of knowing what‟s going on the closer you are to the
front.
20
�Interviewer: Now, did you have a radio operator with you? 48:01
I did, and Gary May was my radio operator and he was right behind me, so we had gone
maybe 700 meters and the dog alerted. Probably at that time I was probably sixth and
the dog would have been in front of me, and we didn‟t always operate with dogs. In fact,
as I recall, that was probably the only time. So, the dog freezes up and locks, and I
thought, “What the heck is going on with this?” The people that had worked with dogs
before knew what was going on and I said, “Well the dog‟s alerted, what does that
mean?” He smells, or senses, or sees something, and my mind says, “Oh goodie, now
what do I do?” 49:08 It‟s like the film is running and it‟s like they stop it. Ok, it‟s not
now candidate Anderson it‟s Lieutenant Anderson, “Ok Lt. what are you going to do?”
So, I called Ike, Sergeant Ikely, and I said, “Can you come up here?” And he did, and he
said, “What‟s going on?” I said, “Well, the dog alerted”, and this was a nonevent to him
because he had six months in the field, or something, and I said, „what do I do?” He said,
“Well, normally what we would do is recon by fire. I go, “What the hell does that
mean?” We didn‟t do any recons by fire in OCS or anything like that, you know, this is
OJT for the most part. He told me what to do and he said, “But, before we do that you
should radio back to the company commander and tell him what you‟re going to do,
otherwise they‟ll hear the M60 go off and they‟ll think we‟re in contact or something”.
50:14 I said, “Ok”, and radioed Captain keen and said, “The dog alerted and we‟re
going to recon by fire”, and he said, “Ok”. We did and we got no return fire or anything,
so, okay, we keep driving on, so we another--whatever it was, and then made a right turn
and made a big sweep. Years later guys were telling me that they couldn‟t believe that
the first patrol that they ever went on with me they thought, “Oh, crap”, because, I guess
21
�the previous guy, Lieutenant Fowler, if they were going to do one of these things; they‟d
go out 500 meters and sit down and yuck it up. 51:06 Here I am. You know, it‟s a
thousand degrees and we‟re doing what I was told we were going to do. They were all
cranky, nobody ever said anything, but nothing happened, which I‟m thankful for,
because I was just brand new and I didn‟t know anybody‟s names or anything.
Interviewer: How long did it take before things got a little more interesting?
It was about three weeks. We moved from firebase Westcott to firebase Jerry, and this
was in the middle of November, maybe. 52:02 I forgot to say that I‟d gone to jungle
school down in Panama, so I didn‟t actually get to Vietnam until the first ten days of
October. We were picked up in the field and air assaulted to a new area of operation at a
firebase called Jerry, and it was late in the day and as we were—my platoon was the last
one in and they just dropped us off and we got mortared, the front of the—because we‟re
outside the wire and trying to figure out which way we‟re going to go. As we found out
later, they mortared Jerry pretty much regularly, but with a helicopter—they‟re always
trying to hit the firebase or hit the helicopter and what have you, but all of the rounds hit
up front and we had four or five guys very seriously wounded. 53:06 One guy was
blinded, I guess for life, but three or four rounds and that‟s the end of it and then we get
them inside the firebase to the doctor, medical doctor. Then we go on our way and they
get treated and sent back to wherever.
Interviewer: How many men do you have in your platoon at this point?
I probably had—again this was the whole company that was hit. These weren‟t any of
my guys, so the company, in the field, probably had about a hundred and ten, maybe, and
I , maybe, twenty five. I think the most I ever had in the field was twenty five. The
22
�fewest I had was about seventeen. 54:00 So, we marched off the firebase and then there
just sign [?] everywhere and then we set up and, you know, and nothing happened that
night and then next day, late, we were walking and I didn‟t have point, my platoon didn‟t
have point, but a couple of NVA ran up a little trail to the right and the point element
fired on them and didn‟t hit them or anything then. So, we were going to see where they
went, so the point element got up to that trail, got off the trail and walked up 30 or 40
meters and somebody finally said to Captain Keen, you know, “Get farther away from
this trail”. 55:02 First of all, we just saw somebody there and we know that they know
we‟re here because we fired on them, so it‟s not a good idea to be this close to a trail
because you could, essentially, be walking into an ambush, so I‟m assuming he realized
that, or somebody told him that, whatever, we got off the trail. Then my platoon got right
up to that little trail and I was just kind of standing there looking up the trail like—this
trail was like this floor here, I mean it was that hard packed, you know, a thousand people
could have walked on it and you would have never known it, it was just beat solid. I was
looking up that trail wondering, well, I‟m glad they got off the trail because you could see
it just kind of disappear. 56:00 I think, “That would be a good place for them to fire on
us”, and I no sooner said that and they fired on us, but as quite often happens in those
kinds of fleet meeting engagements, bullets are going everywhere, but It‟s not an aimed
response. The initial firing might be aimed, but the response, usually isn‟t, you just,
aaah! So, we moved off, and again, it was late in the day and Keen said, “We‟re going to
set up here”, and we did, and then he called me, he started to, and then he called me over
and he said, “I want you to go out and up that trail, not on the trail, but up parallel to the
trail, three or four hundred meters and ambush the thing”, and I thought, “Oh, great, I
23
�know that there‟s at least two of them up there, somewhere”. But I said, “Ok”. 57:06
We went up and we found the trail and we set up claymore mines and we backed off, you
know, a hundred feet, or whatever that wire was on the claymore, and we just laid down
and waited for somebody to tumble down the trail. I guess, fortunately, nobody did, but
we could hear, and it rained that night too and the mosquitoes—the whole episode was
miserable. We could hear, off in the distance, chopping, so they were chopping trees and
making bunkers, or doing something with the trees, and we could hear laughing. 58:00
I suspect we were probably within a couple of hundred meters of where they were. Like I
said, nobody came down the trail and the next morning we picked up out stuff and back
tracked to the company and then we went on our way, but that whole place was just criss
crossed with trails and you could see where they had rested in the night, or in the daytime
because they had their little cooking fires that—they weren‟t warm, they were all done,
but you could see all along that trail where, probably, a whole company, or more, of
NVA had been in that area. It was like every two days, two or three days, we‟d get fired
on or we‟d fire on them. 59:00 We didn‟t have any casualties, or anything like that,
until about a week into this new area of operation we got into a horrendous fire fight for
about five or six hours. Again, I guess I was lucky because my platoon was walking last
that day and it was mostly the front two platoons that really got into it. We didn‟t have
anybody killed, we had sixteen or seventeen wounded that had to be medevac‟d and it
was a long—it was a lot longer day for me because I wasn‟t really under the direct fire,
just kind of sit back—you‟re on guard, of course, you‟re looking left and right and behind
you and everything, in fact I never left the—where we slept the night before. 00:03
Interviewer: So, were you, essentially, sort of the company reserve at that point?
24
�Yeah. I did have to send my machine guns up because the other two guns malfunctioned,
and my gunners weren‟t happy at all because they were both six, almost seven, months in
the field and they had seen a lot of action, but they went up, they didn‟t squawk. Our
guns, I think, were the telling tale. The gunners were meticulous about keeping, not only
their guns clean, but their ammunition clean and other gunners weren‟t that meticulous.
But, we had to pass ammunition up from my platoon at one time because you were in the
jungle and you couldn‟t get ammunition down to you. 1:09 That got to be a little
nervous, nerve wracking when, “Oh, not only did they not have much ammunition up
here, and now we don‟t have much ammunition back here”, but that went on until late in
the afternoon and then we set up right—we didn‟t move very far, and set up basically.
The next morning, because the 2nd platoon, my platoon, it was the one that was least beat
up, you know, we had to go back—we had to lead the company back into the area, and
that was pretty nerve wracking because the area had been worked over so heavily with air
strikes, and Cobras, and artillery. 2:06
We were real close to Firebase Jerry, we were
only about three clicks away from Gerry. I mean, we had all the battalion organic fire
really close by. The place was just beat silly with trees—it‟s like a tornado goes through
these places because if you‟ve ever seen that kind of damage to trees, they—there‟s no
logic to how they go, they‟re all inter—they‟re like pick-up sticks when you drop them.
And, of course, interspersed in all that are pieces of enemy soldiers, and bloody
bandages, you know. We got hit badly, but they got hit worse, I think. They were gone,
of course, so other than the-- I don‟t want to say scared, other than the unnerving part of
the whole thing; it was pretty routine, I guess. 3:14
what we had to do.
25
We had to go in there and this is
�Interviewer: Now, did you have any kind of understanding as to what the larger
purpose of your mission was at that point?
The larger purpose of that particular mission was to just go in there and evaluate what we
got into, but, I mean, essentially we got ambushed. The 1st platoon leader, George
Atkins, his platoon was walking point and he did a marvelous job, and the 3rd platoon
leader, which was walking second, Freddy Davis, and he actually got wounded and never
came back with the company. But, our missions, really, were to aggressively and
actively patrol and find the bad guys if you could and raise hobs on them. 4:14
Interviewer: Was this an area where there were a lot of underground tunnels or
booby traps, or things like that?
No, we were fortunate that there were bunkers, and that‟s what was happening that day, it
was a small bunker complex, but no tunnels that we ever found. I mean, most of the
tunnels, I think, were down Lai Khe or around Cu Chi, in that area, but primarily
bunkers, fortified fighting positions, you know. The North Vietnamese, you know,
they‟re excellent soldiers, they‟ve been doing this for twenty years, you know. 5:03
Their camouflage was excellent and there were times when you‟d just walk up, you‟d
step and you‟d look down and you‟re standing right in front of a bunker aperture, and that
happened to me a couple of different times. I‟m fourth and the three other guys that
walked by never saw it.
Interviewer: In those situations, was the bunker not occupied?
The bunker was not occupied, but as far as I know it was not occupied. It was—and of
course now, I‟ve been the platoon leader for three weeks, so now I‟ve got more
familiarity with what‟s going on. I know the guys' names and—but, George Atkins, he‟d
26
�been—I remember, I was so happy to see him join the company because that meant that I
wasn‟t the bottom—I wasn‟t the dumbest lieutenant anymore, now it was him. 6:07 But,
he‟s only been there two week when this happened, and he did a marvelous job in the
company. I always wonder, you know what would have happened it that had been me
out there. But his point man actually spotted the NVA claymore and was able to tell
George and George was actually radioing Captain Keen when they detonated it, but at
least by then they knew it was there and they‟re not just staring at it when it went off, so
they had—some of them were wounded, but not as bad as if they had just stumbled onto
it and then it had detonated right away. He did a marvelous job.
Interviewer: Once you locate a bunker, or a place where they’re actually fighting
from, can you call in, sort of, the heavy weapons to blow it up? 7:00
Of course the heaviest weapon you have in a rile platoon, unless you‟re carrying heavy
mortar, is your M60 machine gun, and if they‟re occupied you want to get as much fire
on them as you can, and at least to suppress what they‟re trying to do to you. If you can,
you want to pull back and then you use your Cobras, you know, with the 2.75 folding fin
rockets and the mini guns and things like that, but if you‟re trying to use artillery, the
Cav, under normal circumstances—I know you‟re working another veteran, Mike
McGregor, he was an artillery forward observer sergeant, he would know, but as I recall,
generally you couldn‟t shoot artillery closer than 600 meters unless you were in contact
and then it had to be danger close and there were all kinds of rules and things like that.
8:07 Again, most of these engagements were—the vast majority were 25 meters, or less.
I had a lot of confidence in our artillery, but I never would have tried to call artillery that
close unless it was a last resort and you were completely pinned down and you couldn‟t
27
�get Cobras or if you were about out of ammunition. There are situations where you have
to do that, but being that close that would have been about the last resort.
Interviewer: How long did you spend as a platoon leader?
I was the platoon leader from about October until the middle of February, October of
1969, until the middle of February of 1970. 9:10 Then I was taken out of the field, you
know, to confirm what they call a rear job. “You did a good job out in the field, and now
we‟re going to reward you by giving you one that‟s a little less dangerous”. It was the
most miserable job I have ever had in my like, I think. It was—I was in charge of, at the
brigade base camp, of one quarter of the base defense. Now again, I was still a 2nd
lieutenant, all the other guys in charge of this were captains. They gave me two other
guys to work with me, and so really, there were three of us and we worked twenty-one
hours a day. 10:05 We had to make sure the trip flares were on, we had to do this—and
we didn‟t have any help, just—and to make it worse, I was reporting to the most
obnoxious Lieutenant Colonel that ever wore a silver oak leaf, and we had to report to
him every day. He wanted to know how many trip flares were put out and how many feet
of this, and how many—and frankly, it just got to be too much. I was working my fanny
off and making no, seeming, contribution, because if I needed anything I didn‟t know
where to go or what to do, and these captains with many years of service, they knew and
they probably even knew guys from previous tours or whatever, so if they needed
something, they—and it just wasn‟t working. 11:07 That lasted for about three weeks
and then—I was still assigned to headquarters company of 1sr of 7th, but—so, I got called
up to battalion headquarters, Major Stillman, who was the XO at the time, said, “Well, I
got, I guess, good news and bad news for you”, “You can‟t send me to Vietnam because
28
�I‟m already here, so what‟s the good news?” He said, “Well, this job obviously isn‟t
working. Colonel LaBrose‟s not happy with you”, and I said, “Major, I‟m not happy
with Colonel LaBrose, and I‟m breaking my fanny here and nothing is happening”, and
Stillman said, “I know you are, you‟re working hard, but it just isn‟t working”. 12:01
“Ok”, and he said, “I‟m going to send you back to the field”, and inside I go, “Yes”,
because I was good at that, so I said, “Well I got, I really only got one question”, and he
said, “What‟s that?” “Am I going to get smashed on my officer efficiency report?” He
said, “No, this will show it casual, or we‟ll do something, but this will be a learning
experience for you and you won‟t get hammered on your OER”, and I said, “Ok, good”.
He said, “Oh, and you‟re not going back to Alpha Company, you‟re going to Charlie
Company”, and I go, “Oh, Charlie Company?” He said, “Yes, you know when you left
Alpha Company we backfilled you, and you‟re going to go to Charlie Company and then
were going to pull that Lieutenant out and he‟s going to do your job”. 13:05 I said, “Do
I have to go to Charlie Company?” I knew their company commander because he‟d been
the headquarters CO and he was pretty not with the program. He said, “That‟s where
you‟re going”, and I sad, “Ok, thanks”, and part of me felt good, and I thought, “Gosh, at
least I‟m out of this base defense gig, but golly, now I got to go to Charlie Company and
I have to start over training guys and everything”, so I went there and, I guess, the next
day I went out to the firebase and the CO was in, he was in the medical bunker, and the
battalion or brigade dentist was out there working on him. 14:06 I remember him sitting
in the chair looking back. I went in to report to him and he said, “Oh, ok, have you ever
been in the field before?” I said, “Yes sir, I was with Alpha Company in the field for
over four months”, and he said, “You‟re going to be the 3rd platoon leader”, and I said,
29
�“Ok, where might I find the 3rd platoon?” he gave me a general idea, and of course I‟d
been on and off that firebase with Alpha Company a dozen times, so I knew right where
they were. I said, “Who‟s the 3rd platoon sergeant?” “Pat Hansen” and I said, “Ok”, so I
shuffled over to 3rd platoon and introduced myself to Pat Hansen and their platoon leader,
I forget what his name is now, but I‟ll remember it afterwards. 15:08 He probably took
me around and introduced me to the guys, or maybe it was Pat, I don‟t remember now.
He left and he went back to the rear and took over my job and he lasted until he rotated,
so I guess he did ok, he was drunk most of the time, but maybe that‟s what it took to do
well in that job, I don‟t know. So, now I‟m back with a different company and the
company commander that I had seen in the rear area, and it didn‟t take too long for a
couple three or four days out in the field and, you know, he didn‟t know what he was
doing, he was armor officer too, but he was not cut from the same bolt of cloth as Captain
Keen, my previous CO, but you do the best you can with the cards you‟re dealt. 16:05
Interviewer: What kind of situation were you in at that time? Were you still
patrolling jungle?
Yeah, but the terrain was similar, there was a lot of bamboo and things like that. We—
there were only two times out in the field that I ever took my boots off. The first was the
night before we had that big contact in November, and firebases would have what they
call mad minutes where it wasn‟t the same time all the time, rarely did, they last a minute,
but the purpose of the thing, they had to shoot up bad ammunition, but really that was
purpose number two. Purpose number one was to just shoot fire out everywhere in case
anybody was trying to sneak up on you and if they were, and you were firing them up,
maybe that would trigger early, their attack, or what have you. 17:05 We were so close,
30
�like I indicated before, to Jerry, that when they were shooting that night bullets were
coming into our perimeter. I jumped in the foxhole and the thing was full of termites, in
the bottom , and their little pinchers, you know, they like to bite, so I jumped in the hole
and in a matter of seconds, you know, their biting my feet. I didn‟t know what it was
until the next morning, so I jumped back out of the hole and that was the first time I had
my boots off. The second time was with Charlie Company and its pitch dark, which you
never know how dark it is in a situation like this until it is dark and you literally can‟t see
your hand in front of your face. 18:00 so, I took my boots off and, I don‟t know, ten or
eleven o‟clock I hear a M60 fire and it is one of my guns, so I stumble around, try to find
my glasses to try to find my boots, and I make my was over to the foxhole where my
gunner was and I said, “What‟s going on?” And he said, “Well, I thought I saw
something out there”, and I said, “Why the hell did you shoot the machine gun? You
never give away your heavy firepower position unless you‟re really under attack”, and
then I hear this voice off to the side, “Because I told him to do it 3-6”, it was Captain
Bouyev, and I kind of looked, and again, it‟s really dark and you can‟t see, and I said,
“Well sir, that was a bad idea, now we‟re going to have to move this gun in the dark and
that‟s going to make a lot of noise and everything”. 19:07 He said, “But there was
something out there”, and I‟m kind of looking and I can‟t see anything, and I said,
“Where?” He said, “Well, watch”, and he shoots with his 45 and he carries tracers in his
45. Of course you can see them going out, and he says, “Right there, there‟s a dead
NVA”, and I wasn‟t there, so I don‟t know, but I said, “Let‟s do something a little
different here, let‟s shoot a M79 out there”, “Oh, ok”, so I got my thumper guy over there
and I actually did it, I shot a M79 over there. 20:06 If there was something there it was
31
�either, A. gone, or it‟s dead from the M79 rounds. “We got to go out and check”, he said,
and I said, “What? We don‟t know what‟s out there, maybe there is somebody there, and
maybe he‟s just wounded. Are we going to go crawling out there?” He said, “Yup, come
with me”, and by now-- my guy that became one of my best friends in the service was the
1st platoon leader, he shows up.
Interviewer: We were a spot in the story where you and your company commander
are there is the perimeter and you fire off etc., and then the Lieutenant from the
first platoon comes up.
Phil Zook, the 1st platoon leader comes over and he became, and still is, one of my best
friends from my army days. 21:06 He says, “what‟s going on Andy?” I said, “Well,
Captain Bouyev thinks”, Phil and I were having a conversation like you are and Captain
Bouyev is right there, but we‟re just ignoring him, and I said, “Captain Bouyev thinks
there‟s—there was an NVA out there, that‟s why he had the gun open up”, and Phil
probably said something grumbly about, “You never shoot an M60 at night unless you‟re
in contact”. „So, Captain Bouyev‟s going out there and I‟m going to go with him”, I said.
“I can‟t let him go out there”, so Zook says, “Well, I‟ll go with you”. So, here‟s the
company commander, he‟s crawling, here‟s me, the “should have known better”
Lieutenant, crawling, and here‟s Phil Zook, who should have known better, he‟s
crawling. 22:07 Of course, we had left the perimeter now, “So if you hear something,
please don‟t shoot, or throw grenades or something because we got three lunatic officers
out here crawling around outside the perimeter”, and again, from where the gunner was to
where Captain Bouyev thought this enemy soldier was thirty meters maybe, I mean, it
wasn‟t a long way, but when you‟re out in front, in the dark, in front of a rifle company,
32
�there‟s always the chance that somebody doesn‟t get the word, or something. All it takes
is one guy shooting and the whole company opens up, you know. So, we‟re crawling, I
guess about as slow as you could possibly crawl, and finally, I think I said to Bouyev, I
said, “Six, this is a bad idea, we‟re out here in front of “. 23:11
Of course, I‟m
probably whispering it, not knowing if there‟s anything out there or not. I said, “We‟re
out here exposed, we need to get back in the perimeter and we‟ll check it out in the
morning”, and I guess he finally decided, “Boy, this is a dumb idea, all of us out here in
front of everybody”, and we kind of turned around and crawled back and then the next
morning there was nothing there. No evidence of any blood or anything, so was there
somebody there? I don‟t know, but probably not, we found no evidence. This was early
April, probably, when all this is going on. And then a big event on the 26th of April, we
got in a big, horrific, fire fight again. 24:13 Phil was out doing a clover leaf and I‟d
been left behind as an ambush, and then Phil got ambushed, and then I was hurrying back
to the company, and Captain Bouyev was, as I was coming to the perimeter he was just
going out, and he said, “Take charge of the perimeter, I‟m going out and I‟m going to get
one with my knife”, and I said, “Ok”. That was just the guy's persona; he was just full of
himself. He was a lousy—maybe he was a good tank officer, I don‟t know, because that
was his branch. 25:03 In my opinion, a crappy infantry company commander, but—so,
that was the last time I ever saw him alive, you know. He went out with part of the 2nd
platoon, or with the 2nd platoon, and then I kind of came in and just was listening to the
sounds of, at that time, Phil shooting, and they were shooting B40‟s at them or RPG‟s,
RPD‟s if machine guns, and AK‟s and SK‟s and the whole nine yards, you know.
Intermittent in all that is Phil shooting back, his platoon shooting back.
33
�Interviewer: Now were you in a position to hear whatever he was saying on the
radio?
Well, I was able to hear what Captain Bouyev was saying, and at some point in all of this,
Phil‟s radio and then his platoon sergeant‟s radio had been shot out. 26:18 So, I had no
communication with them at all, and then there was a hasty call from Bouyev that we
needed to come out there, “We‟re pinned down”, and I reply, “Roger, we‟ll be out there
momentarily”, and so I yelled over to—I‟d gotten a new E5, and Pat Hansen had gotten a
rear job, so he left as platoon sergeant, and Lasco, I think his name was. So, I said, “Get
our guys ready, we‟re going to go out there and do what we can do”. 27:08
Interviewer: Would you be leaving anybody still at the perimeter when you do
that?
Just the 4th platoon stayed behind and they were a small, they weren‟t a complete rifle
platoon, so they stayed back to guard the—to make their own little perimeter, and they
had a radio, and that, really, was going to be our last—that worked out really, was the last
reserves. So, as I‟m standing up, and we‟re just getting ready to go out, a B40 or RPG, or
something, hit close by where we were standing and knocked down three or four of my
guys and it didn‟t knock me down, but a piece hit me, and then I look and everybody gets
up, but like five guys. “Oh shit”, so we get the medics over there and we went out. 28:09
maybe there were fifteen of us, because the other guys were wounded. I was wounded
too, but it was a miniscule wound compared to what most people get. It was easy to
follow the trail that Captain Bouyev and the other guys went, not knowing where
anybody was, that was the most expedient, it might not have been the safest, but at least I
could find out where they were by following their trail. So, we, and we didn‟t go very
34
�far, you know, 100 meters, because this all happened very close to our perimeter, and
quite often happens, there‟s a lot of firing and then all of a sudden there‟s nothing, and
about the time I got up to where the headquarters group was, the firing kind of stopped.
29:14 I remember our forward observer, we called him “Bull”, his last name was
Durham, and he was a huge fellow, and he was as close to the ground as he could get, and
he was probably still two feet off the ground, he was just a bull of a man. He looked up
at me and he said, “Andy, you better get down, it‟s really bad up here”, and of course, I‟d
heard all this bad firing, but there wasn‟t anything happening right then. Then I hear off
to my left, was a Termite mound, a huge Termite mound, and behind that was the
battalion commander‟s radio operator, the guy who had the radio on the battalion end,
and he was just screaming, “Were all going to be killed, the 1st platoon is wiped out”.
30:13 Of course, by now the battalion commander‟s on that radio and this kid is just
going nuts. Off to my right, on the other side of Bull, I could see the medics working on
one of guys and they were yelling at him, “Stay with us, stay with us, you‟ll be ok, you‟ll
be ok”, so I went over to the Termite mound and grabbed the radio away from this kid. I
said, “This is “Cool killer 3-6”, I‟m up here now and I‟ll let you know what‟s going on
when I know what‟s going on. I just got here and I don‟t know who‟s a line one, who‟s a
line two, there‟s no radio commo between 1st platoon and me, or 1st platoon and anybody,
six is not here”. 31:07 That was probably a sergeant that I was telling that to on the
radio, and then the Colonel got on the radio and he wanted to know, “What‟s going on?
Have I just lost a company?” I said, “I just got here, leave me alone and let me develop
what the hell‟s going on”, and he said, “Tell me what‟s going on as soon as you know”,
and I said, “Loco”, and I gave the radio back to the kid, and said, “Do not talk in that
35
�radio, and do not answer. If they call you don‟t do anything”, and I said, “Where‟s
Bouyev?” The kid said, “I don‟t know”, and I; thinking, “Well, this is nuts, you‟re
supposed to be with the company commander and the other was on the company net and
he was just sitting there, but now‟s not the time to tell somebody what they‟re supposed
to be doing, you know. 32:01 I‟m going through my mind, “What?” Then I asked him,
“Do you have any contact with the 1st platoon?” He said, “No, we haven‟t”, and by the
amount of firing that had been going on, I thought, “Well, they‟re wiped out”, you know.
So, I put a gun team over on the other side of where the medics were working on a guy,
and then I had one kind of close by me, and I said, I told my radio operator, “Just sit
here”, and I don‟t know why I didn‟t say, “Follow me”. I said, “I‟m going to go up there
and find out what the hell‟s going on, really”, which I think in retrospect was kind of
dumb because I didn‟t take the radio operator with me. So, I started crawling up and I
hadn‟t gotten in the prone position and crawled ten feet when it all started up again.
33:00 It was real personal at that time because it seemed like everybody was shooting at
me. The bullets, they weren‟t going by six inches away from me, they were going right
over the top of my head, and I‟m thinking, “This is not a good thing, but “follow me” is
the motto of the infantry”, so I‟m still crawling out there and then I was kind of thinking,
“This is a real bad idea, as far as I know I‟m the only one out here, and as far as I know,
all the bad guys can see me because they‟re shooting at me”, and then I saw the 2nd
platoon leader, Danny Clark, he came low crawling past me as fast as he could low crawl,
and he said, “ Bouyev‟s dead”. 34:01 I said, “Where‟s your platoon?” he said, “I don‟t
have any idea, “Bouyev‟s dead”, and I said, “Are you sure?” He said, “Yeah, I crawled
right by him, he‟s dead”, and of course, he‟s by now—he never stopped when he told me
36
�all this, he‟s just going. I said to myself, “This is—I can‟t let him get back there and get
on the radios”, so then I turned around and I crawled back and got behind the Termite
mound and called the colonel back and I said, “You know, we got a situation here. I
don‟t know what‟s going on. One of the guys says six is a line one”, and as I‟m talking
on the radio I‟m watching Manny Torrez, you know, the—he had a second chest wound
and the medics did everything they could, but he died while I was watching. 35:03
Colonel Jahn, he was just questions, questions, and questions, “What‟s going on? You
got to find out what‟s going on. You got to tell me what‟s happening with one six”, and I
said, “I don‟t know what‟s happening with one six, it may be just five of us here, I have
no idea, you just have to give me time”, and he said, “I don‟t have time, you know the
Colonel”— you know the brigade—see it‟s the echelon, so here‟s the Colonel Jahn, and
here‟s Colonel Kingston up here, and finally I hear, “ break, break, break, this is Gary
Owen Six”, or whatever, and I knew that was the brigade commander. He said, “Red
Baron Six”, which was Jahn, and Jahn comes on and he says, “This is Gary Own Six, get
off his back and let him develop the situation, he‟ll tell you what the hell‟s going on when
he knows what‟s going on, leave him alone and let him fight the battle”. 36:06
“Roger”, and I never had any more trouble from Jahn after that. So, we‟re just sitting
there and then my machine gun team, all if a sudden, yells at me and he says, “Do we
have presits?” I was close enough so we could see each other, and he said, “Do we have
people out there?” I said, “I don‟t think so”, and he said, “”somebody‟s running,
somebody‟s running away”, and, of course, I didn‟t know if that was our guys or what, so
I said, “Well, just keep a steady eye”, and then all of a sudden I heard kind of movement
off to the left, and here comes Zook, somehow, disengaged and got his people back.
37
�37:01 I said, “Do you have all of your people?” he said, “Yes”, and I said, “Well,
where‟s Clark‟s people?” He said, “They‟re coming, they‟re behind me”, so then I told
both gunners, “If you see any movement out there now, fire it up because it‟s enemy. All
of our guys are back”, so then I called Jahn back and I said, “Ok, I‟ve got, essentially I‟ve
got good news, 1st platoon is disengaged, the 2nd platoon is behind them. I know we got
one line one and we probably got fifteen or twenty line two‟s, wounded. I still don‟t
know the status of six, but I‟ll, hopefully know something about that soon”, so Zook was
sitting right there behind the Termite mound kind of panting, because he had taken over
one of his machine guns when the gunner got wounded, and he was firing and then that
gun got shot up and then his radio operator had also been shot. 38:10 I said, “Well,
Clark said the Bouyev is dead and he‟s out there”, and Phil said, “Yeah, he probably is “,
and I said, “We can‟t leave him out there”, and he said, “I am not going back out there”,
Phil said. I said, “Well, we can‟t leave him out there”, and Phil said, “You can go out
there, but I‟m not going back out there”, so I said, “Ok”, and by then the firing had kind
of stopped because what my gunner had seen, they had enough. 39:02 Of course by then
I‟d been calling in Cobras and stuff like that .
Interviewer: So there had been some kind of air strike?
They were in bunkers and they were—the 11th Armored—this was a lot of bamboo
around this area and the 11th Armored Cav had been going through this area with their
APCs and their tanks and everything, and the NVA had built bunkers real close to this,
thinking, “Well, if they went through here once, maybe they‟ll come through here again,
and we‟ll be right on top of them and we‟ll blast them with our RPGs or whatever and
take them out”, so I grabbed Locko and I said, “Let‟s go out there and see what we see”,
38
�and I guess that he was new enough that he said, “Ok”, rather than, “Are you nuts?”
40:02 So we went out there 25 meters, maybe not even that, and there Captain Bouyev
was, dead as a door nail, he‟d been shot through the forehead. We rolled him over to
make sure he was dead. There wasn‟t any horror to it. The thing that was so bizarre that
I remember was that he didn‟t have his glasses. I thought, “Where the heck were his
glasses?” Then so, I guess, Kerry grabbed an arm, or two arms, and I grabbed his feet, or
one of each, and we kind of carried him back to the Termite mound and then I radioed to
Jahn and I said, “Well, six is a line one and we‟ve recovered his body, and everybody‟s
moving back to the perimeter”. 41:12 So there‟s nothing—you know you hear the term
“dead weight”, you know a hundred—he was a stocky man and he weighed, maybe, a
hundred and fifty pounds, you know, but that‟s a lot of weight when you‟re getting no
help, no movement. I had the gun team, I said, “Give me your gun and you two guys
carry him back and we‟ll just back our way right back the thing and I‟ll be the guy with
the gun covering as we move back”. So, I took the M60 and there was no incoming fire
there, but having been once where heavy identifire and then it stopped heavy identifire
[?] and then it stopped, you know you don‟t know, so I just fired them up as we went
backwards. 42:18 Then we got back to the perimeter and by now they‟re starting the
medevac‟s. They had to use the jungle penetrator because there wasn‟t a place for them
to land, so everybody was going up on the jungle penetrator. Bloody bandages
everywhere and it was a real mess.
Interviewer: What happened to the company at that point?
Well, what I thought was going to happen was, of course it‟s kind of the last thing on
your mind, essentially I‟d taken over the company for a couple hours, or whatever. 43:06
39
�All of this happened a lot—you know I talked about it in twenty minutes, but it was a
number of hours over the course of this thing. One of the other company commanders
had been—the B company commander was an S1 and when he heard that all this was
going on and that Bouyev had been killed, he grabbed his rucksack and came out and got
on a helicopter and he came out, and he had already served four or five months as
company commander, and he came out and served for two months for the rest of the time
in Cambodia. I remember telling one of the guys that was there, Lieutenant Smith, after
it was all over I said, “This is—you‟ll never see another day like this. This is the worst
day you‟ll ever see”. 44:10 When the company got to Cambodia, that April 26th would
have been a good day compared to what happened to them in Cambodia. They just got
decimated in Cambodia. Three days after that action, Charlie Company was back on the
firebase, my former company, Alpha Company, got into a similar heavy, ugly contest ,
probably with the same group of people, and they had a Lieutenant killed and a buck
sergeant killed. Typically when a company got beat up like that you come to the firebase
just to decompress a little bit, so we were kind of in the middle of decompressing when
Alpha Company got beat up. 45:03 So, they couldn‟t leave them out in the field, so
they brought Alpha Company in, but they told me that, “Well, you‟re going to go back to
Alpha Company and be the executive officer”, because they were about ready to make
that switch and then Lou Favoussa got killed, so then I became the senior Lieutenant, so
they sent me back to Alpha Company.
Interviewer: Is Captain Keen still there?
Captain Keen had derosed about the middle of March, and he was, actually, the S4 at that
time, so he was making sure everything was—the battalion was supplied and everything.
40
�He was a career officer too, Patrick Keen, and retired as a full Colonel. The guy that took
over the company after Bouyev killed, Dana Dillon, he was a career officer too, and also
retired as a full Colonel. 46:01
Interviewer: So, who did you have then as a captain in Alpha Company when you
got there?
Captain Bowen had taken over from Captain Keen and I was his executive officer. The
job of a XO, there‟s really one job, and that‟s to go out and take over the company if
something happens to the company commander, that‟s really it. You also have to sign for
the property book, all of the weapons, all of the typewriters, all of the starlight scopes, all
of that minutia called TA50, all of the—in the stateside the company commander signs
for it, but in a combat environment, or at least in the Cav, in that environment the XO
will sign for it. 47:00 I would go out to the field every day, if the company was on the
firebase, I‟d go out there every day and come back and sleep at Quan Loi, the brigade
headquarters, where our company was, and then the next day go back out. It was
administrative, the first sergeant really ran the rear and if you had a good first sergeant,
you know, you just let him do his job and we had an excellent first sergeant, and there
was no need for me to look over his shoulder. It‟s—I wouldn‟t necessarily say it‟s a
reward for good service, or what have you, because you need slots filled, but you can be a
crummy XO and it would have no effect on your—if you‟ve got a good first sergeant you
could be a crummy XO, but if you‟re a crummy XO and you got a crappy first sergeant
then the guys in the field didn‟t get what they needed. 48:08 that was really my job, to
run interference if the top ever had any issues and he never really did because, you know,
most people defer to first sergeants anyway. A good lieutenant will defer to a first
41
�sergeant until he finds out if the top is good or bad. If he‟s bad then he‟s got to get
involved, but that‟s kind of what I did. We went to Cambodia and even though I went
into Cambodia, essentially, every three days as the company was being resupplied.
Interviewer: Did the brigade headquarters go to Cambodia, or did they stay back?
They stayed at Quan Loi. 49:01 The battalion, of course the battalion had a huge
presence at Quan Loi, but they had a tactical operation center at the firebase in
Cambodia, that‟s where the Colonel would be.
Interviewer: Now, would you go out to the firebase?
Out to the firebase and then again, similar to what it was the previous October you know,
wait until the log bird, the resupply bird would show up, and then I‟d jump on there with
any—you know, the mail was the first thing to go out and then any business I had with
the company commander. I‟d get out there and eat lunch with him and when the last bird
was done for the day, you know, I‟d get back on and go back to whatever firebase we
were at.
Interviewer: Now, if they’re actively campaigning, did you get shot at when you few
back and forth? Was it a dangerous thing to do?
I‟m not aware that we ever got shot at, but you only know if they hit your helicopter, I
guess, or if the door gunner sees the tracers or what have you. 50:13 I am, I can‟t say a
hundred percent sure, because I don‟t know, but I never recall being shot at, I was
fortunate that I was never called into what they call a “hot LZ”. When you‟re doing your
combat assaults you‟re going in and the enemy is there and they‟re engaging you, which
never happened to me. It happened to guys after and it happened to guys before, but it
42
�never happened on any combat assaults that I made, that I‟m aware of, at least we never
had a “hot LZ”, whether they shot at us when we were going or coming, I have no idea.
Interviewer: Now, because of your position, did you now have a little bit more of an
understanding of what was going on in the larger operation etc.? 51:00 As you saw
it, at the time, what was the purpose of going into Cambodia?
Well, I was probably like a lot of people, again my father was a career Air Force, but, you
know, I believed all that palaver about the domino theory, if we don‟t stop them over
there, then we‟ll be fighting them in Kalamazoo.
Interviewer: On a military level, I guess, is what I was asking. Why were you going
in at that point, what were you trying to accomplish?
Well again, I think it‟s along those lines. You‟re just trying to stop the production of
communism; you‟re trying to help a South Vietnamese country that is trying to be taken
over by North Vietnam.
Interviewer: Did you have a sense of what the actual military objective of the
operation was, or were you going to Cambodia because they sent you?
In Cambodia, oh, oh, oh, I‟m sorry. 52:01 No, the—well, we heard the President say
what he said and, of course, we were operating close enough to Cambodia that I don‟t
recall that it ever happened again to any engagements that I was in, you know, people that
I was serving with, it happened to them earlier where they‟d run across the border and
you couldn‟t chase them. Sometimes you did, and sometimes you didn‟t, and a lot of
guys would say that we were actually in Cambodia, but whether you were or you weren‟t
you don‟t know. When we got the briefing, again this was before—this was after April
26th, but before I got sent back to Alpha Company. The briefing in Nha Trang was, you
43
�know, “Were going into Cambodia on the 1st of May, and we‟re going to go in no more
than thirty Kilometers or thirty miles”, or whatever it was. 53:00 “We‟re going to be
there sixty days and we‟re going to try to find as much supply stuff as we can find,
disrupt what they‟re doing and the only thing we know for sure is we can get you on the
ground, but we don‟t know if we can get you out”. So, Charlie Company was actually
supposed to be the first company to go in, and then of course Phil Favoussa got killed and
then I went to Alpha Company, so that part didn‟t affect me. They were originally going
to load ARVN‟s, South Vietnamese Army soldiers at Quan Loi and bring them out to
Frances, unload them, put Americans on and then go in. I guess somebody decided that
if we do that, as soon as we let them off the helicopters they‟re going to run away and
we‟re never going to get them into Cambodia. 54:00 So, they decided they‟re on there,
and they took the ARVN‟s in first. It was, you know, strike the sanctuaries and I—our
battalion had a lot of people killed in Cambodia. We were probably the heaviest hit
battalion of all the—certainly of all the Cav that went into Cambodia and maybe of all of
the soldiers, I think there were a hundred and fifty five, or something, killed in
Cambodia. Charlie Company alone had sixteen or seventeen in just forty five days of
combat.
Interviewer: Now, were you with, in that position, through the whole Cambodian
phase, or did you leave before that?
No, I was there the whole time, I again, my job as XO was to do the administrative thing,
and it was just brutal. 55:10 I mean, there was serious, as serious as the NVA were in
South Vietnam and in the old April 26th and what have you. They were a heck of a lot
more serious, it seems like in Cambodia because, like I say, a mortar battalion, and they
44
�were beaten up pretty bad, the enemy soldiers. You know now, forty years after the fact,
I‟ve done a lot of reading, and I‟ve done a lot of research, and the more you read the
more disenchanted you get, you know, and I forget the name of the book now, I just read
it about a year ago, but—it was [Mc]George Bundy, I think, it was a book about him as
National Security Advisor. 56:06 The premise of that book was essentially that
Kennedy was about to withdraw all the advisors at the time he was assassinated and had
happened, you know, we most likely never would have been in there. It‟s a—I know a
lot of people that—you know in a very small circle and then you expand it a little that
you know of that were killed there, and it just leaves me, and it still does, with a sense of
sadness, you know that—not only for the American side, but for the North Vietnamese
side, you know. They had well over a million, I guess, by all accounts, and somewhere in
there maybe there was the cure for Cancer or something, you know. 57:02 We can‟t be
so foolish as to think it can just be an American that can come up with a cure.
Interviewer: Now, was the XO assignment the last one you had while you were in
Vietnam?
No, I served for about two weeks as the acting company commander. George Loveless
went on R&R, Captain Bowen left about the first of July, right after Cambodia, and
George Loveless came in and I thought, “Well, this is good, he seems like a pretty good
guy”, George Loveless, and then, I was short, I was down to about, well, certainly within
my last month and I went out to the firebase one day and he said, “Well, the next time
you log, bring all of your stuff with you”, and I said, “What do you mean?” He said,
“Well, I‟m going on R&R”, and I said, “Huh?” 58:00 So, he went on R&R and I was
back out in the field for two weeks and we had, in those two weeks we had three different
45
�fire fights and we didn‟t have anybody wounded, fortunately, but the interesting thing,
the Colonel that I had so much trouble with when I was the base defense guy at Quan
Loi, he was now our battalion commander. So, I thought, “This is lovely, how can that
little cloud, the pig pen cloud, keep following me around?” But, I remember doing an
aerial recon with Colonel LaBrose and he said, “You‟re going to go here and you‟re
going to go here and do this, and when you‟re all said and done I want you right here”.
And he drew this little place on my map. So, George went on R&R and I was out in the
field and we did our thing. 59:07 The day we‟re supposed to be extracted, I was right
where he drew on my map. He calls me up and he said, “I‟m circling that place, pop
smoke or something”, so, I said, “Well we‟re right where you drew on my map”, and we
don‟t hear any helicopter. This went back and forth, back and forth, “You‟ve got to go to
this location”, and I said, “I‟m at that location”, “You got to go to this location”, “I‟m at
that location”, and finally he said, “Well, just cut an LZ where you are and then I want
you to report to me when you get back”, and I said, “Ok”, so we made out like a one ship
LZ and got out one helicopter at a time. I was the last one on the helicopter and I went in
and reported to the TOC and I expected him to just rip my head off, you know. 00:07
He said, “I want you to know Lieutenant Anderson, that was the best extraction of a rifle
company from the field that I have ever seen in my life. It was just marvelous, it was just
wonderful”, and blah, blah, blah, and I said, “Ok, yes sir”, “Carry on”. I left and George
came back in and that was it.
Interviewer: So, you never had any idea what had gone on, you figured out that he
had the wrong location?
46
�He drew it wrong on my map, but I wasn‟t—and I‟m not going to say anything other than
saying I‟m at that location, but what more can I do? He can‟t say, “go to that location on
the map that I drew. “I‟m at that location”. “Shoot artillery, do whatever you want to
do”. I had that happen one time too with captain Keen. He professed that I was at the
wrong place on the map, and this went back and forth, back and forth, and finally he said,
“Ok, I‟ll shoot a marking round”. 1:06 They shoot white phosphorous with a grid
coordinate 400 meters over your head, and that thing went off right over the top of my
head, and he said, “Did you get an azimuth to it?” I said, “Well, my compass doesn‟t
work when it‟s pointed straight up”. “Er, we‟ll come to you”, and it took them four hours
to get to where we were, and he was not happy. But, I learned that in jungle school. We
got lost, horribly lost, in the map reading course.
Interviewer: That was, if you follow the questions, and the first one actually was,
what did jungle school consist of and how useful was it?
For me, it was useful only from the standpoint, you knew, kind of, what the jungle was
like. It was a bunch of—and there were classrooms, and there were a couple of field
exercises, one of which was the night compass course, and there were four of us dumb
lieutenants. 2:13 I always maintained that I didn‟t A, have the compass, or B, have the
map, I was just one of the guys. We got horribly lost and we were out all night with
mosquitoes the size of Humming Birds and one guy lost his watch and we were all—it
was like the Four Stooges, you know, and finally the next day it seems like they had a
helicopter flying over us and yelling, “Where are you dummies?” Finally they found us
and we found them, but it was useful to me, from my standpoint, more A, the weather
was beastly hot, so again you got somewhat acclimated to the weather, although Vietnam
47
�was hotter, and seeing what the terrain was like. 3:14 Other than that is was—and the
other thing that was great, they counted it for your time, so from the time you reported to
the time the school was over, until the time that you got to Vietnam, all of that time
counted, so actually, I was somewhat lucky, I was only there not quite eleven months, in
country.
Interviewer: We were kind of talking about jungle school and you were pointing
out that because that time counted overseas, that it shortened, a little bit, the time
you had to be in Vietnam. The next question at that point was how much contact
you had with the Vietnamese themselves.
Actually, very little, I mean we had Hoi Chans, which were enemy soldiers that had gone
into the Chieu Hoi program, you know they raise there hand, Chieu Hoi, that means don‟t
shoot me basically, and they surrender. 4:10 Then they go through an indoctrination
program and once they graduate, or what have you, or deem to no longer be communists,
and then they become what they call Hoi Chans and then some of them get sent back to
companies, Kit Carson Scouts, or what have you, so early on with Alpha Company we
had one, I think, a Kit Carson Scout, and one of them got wounded in that big fire fight in
November and then we got another one. Some of them were just enlisted guys and some
had been officers and in either the Vietcong infrastructure or actual NVA folks. Then we
had people that would come in the rear, when I was XO, you know, hooch cleaners, or
what have you. 5:12 But, out in the field, while I was out in the field, anybody we ran
across usually was trying to elude bullets or shooting at us first.
Interviewer: You weren’t really in a populated area?
48
�I wasn‟t, but before I got there the company was operating up around Bao Loc and there
were a lot of Montagnard and indigenous folks up there, so they had a lot of interaction,
but that was prior to me getting there.
Interviewer: What opinion did you have, if any, of the Kit Carson Scouts or the
Vietnamese soldiers that were assigned to you?
You know they—I guess I didn‟t have much opinion. It wasn‟t a trust factor, it just
seemed like, you know, he could look at a trail and I could look at the same trail and
again, if it was like this concrete, and he would say something like, ”Boo Coo, NVA”,
you know, or something. 6:18 Boo Coo [corruption of the French "beaucoup"] was a
big word for them and if you were Dinky Dow, you know, you were nuts, and if you
were Number 1 you were good, and if you were Number 10, you weren‟t good. I
couldn‟t speak Vietnamese.
Interviewer: Did they seem to be reasonably good soldiers?
Well again, they're not part of the army. I heard so many bad things about that, that I
wouldn‟t want to characterize except say, „Well, they were there with us and if we saw
some muddy foot prints, you know, “How many went by?” “Boo Coo, Boo Coo”, and
that told you inessentially, a bunch of them. 7:09 It could have been one or it could
have been fifty, so I guess the—and sometimes you would capture documents. If it was a
Vietnamese as opposed to a Montagnard, then they can generally read the documents and
glean some information from it, but I wouldn‟t day they were bad and I wouldn‟t say they
were good, they were just there.
Interviewer: From, particularly the time you spent out in the field in one capacity,
are there other kind of individual incidence or things that kind of stick out in your
49
�mind that you haven’t brought into the story yet, or did you kind of hit the main
events?
I think we touched on the main things. You know, it wasn‟t always ugly. 8:06 One time
we came back from mission, came into the firebase and our first sergeant had been a
major in Korea and he‟d been caught up in a reduction of force and he was our top
sergeant and he use to have steaks for us when we came back. Where he got those I have
no idea. Captain Keen told me, “You‟re going to be in charge of the potatoes. “What do
I know about cooking potatoes?” I remembered when I was a kid, my mother on
occasion, use to boil potatoes in water, so I got a, probably a 155 canister, you know a big
metal canister from the artillery guys and cleaned it out, so there wasn‟t any gun powder
residue or what have you in it. 9:07 I filled it halfway through with water, threw the
potatoes in there and boiled the potatoes, and it worked, and I didn‟t get yelled at my
Captain Keen, so it was just an off thing.
Interviewer: How would you characterize morale in the units you were with when
you were, particularly, in the field?
I would say the morale in Alpha Company was real good through all the platoons.
Morale is a function, I think of a couple different things. One, if you got a good company
commander, and you‟ve got a good platoon leader, and you‟ve got good squad leaders,
and platoon sergeants, then I think you‟re going to have good morale. 10:08 If any of
those are out of whack the morale‟s going to be crappy, I think. Initially, when I got to
Charlie Company, because I already had a preconceived notion of Captain Bouyev, and I
had to do my best to only let that guard down and the only person I ever let that down
with was Phil. We were very careful about that because if the men saw that the
50
�Lieutenants didn‟t have any respect for the company commander, then that could not be
so good either. 11:06 There was one other, kind of in retrospect, humorous incident.
We were on Firebase Compton and I had bad bowel issues that day and Captain Bouyev
wanted our platoon to go out on a recon, and this firebase was in the middle of a big—at
the end of an old airfield in the middle of a rubber plantation, and you see for 600 meters
in almost every direction. So, I thought this would be a good opportunity, A, because I
felt lousy, to let one of my squad leaders take the platoon out on a—they could read
maps, so it wasn‟t that, and give them some training. 12:09 You never know when the
film is going to stop and the lieutenant's dead and the platoon sergeant‟s dead, and
Sergeant McGregor, you‟re now in charge of this platoon. I got no static from the guys
that were going to do that, and if it had I probably would have figured out something else.
But they said, “Sure, that‟s”. You know, we weren‟t necessarily concerned about the
area, or anything like that, so they started going out and they were calling in situation
reports and I was monitoring it, and just trying to get my bowels under control. The next
thing I hear on the radio is, “3-6 where are you?” Captain
Bouyev was calling, and I said, “Well, I‟m in bunker 15”, or whatever, and he said, “You
wait right there”. 13:05 So, he shows up about two minutes later and he‟s just chewing
me up one side and down the other, “I sent you out to do this patrol”, and blah, blah, blah.
I was trying to keep from throwing up and doing everything, and I said, “Well, here‟s
what I‟m trying to do”, and he said, “I don‟t care what you‟re trying to do, you‟re
supposed to lead that platoon, you get out there and lead that platoon. When I tell you to
do something you‟re supposed to do it”, and I said, “Ok”. I grabbed the radio and I threw
it up on my back, I threw two bandoliers of ammo over my—and I started walking. Pat
51
�Hansen comes running and says, “Where you going?‟ I said, “I‟m going out there”, and
he said, “You‟re going out there by yourself?” And I said, “Yeah, I‟m going to go”, so I
radioed the guys and I said, “Set up and butt up security”. I could darn near see them,
you know. “You can‟t go out there by yourself”, and I said, “Are you coming with me?”
He said, “Well, yeah”, “So, get your stuff because I‟m leaving”. 14:03 We walked out
through the gate and we walked right down the airfield and we turned west and walked
500 meters and just like two guys on a stroll in the woods. Probably if there had been
any VC, or anybody, around they would have looked at that and thought, “this has got to
be a trap, that can‟t be two guys dumb enough to be walking out here all by themselves”.
So, we walked out and sat down and I radioed back and said, “Ok, I‟ve joined the
platoon”, and he said, “Let me know how the rest of that patrol goes”, and I said, “Ok”,
and we sat right there for the rest of the day, to hell with him, you know. So, I tried to do
some training and it didn‟t work out.
Interviewer: You mentioned other people going off on R&R and that kind of thing,
did you get a break in anyway?
I did—my father, by now his last duty station was Clark Air Base in the Philippines and I
took my R&R in the Philippines. 15:01 He actually—his job was—he was a lieutenant
colonel then, and he was in charge of scheduling all the planes into and out of Clark. He
flew over on the R&R, the Air Force R&R plane, and I got on the plane along with seven
or eight other people that were going to Manila, which was the R&R center. They landed
at whatever the Manila airfield is and those guys got off and I stayed on the plane and we
went to Clark airbase and was reunited with my mother and my sister, so I did my R&R,
and everybody that went to the Philippines went to Manila, and I went to Clark Air Base.
52
�16:02 We played golf a couple of times at the airbase thing and we went down to Subic
Bay and then it was over. Of course that R&R flight was originating from Clark, you
know, so he took me down and I got on the plane and he said, “Obviously, stay on the
plane until you get back to Tan Son Nhut, or Bien Hoa” , or wherever it was going, and I
said, “Ok”.
Interviewer: When you r tour in Vietnam came to an end, how much time did you
have on your enlistment at that point?
I left Vietnam about the middle of September and I was supposed to go to the twenty
eighth of March the following year. There was a little snafu with my orders. I was being
assigned to Fort Knox and the report date was the thirty first of September, and I missed
that part. 17:08 I mailed it to my father, because I got that early on in July or the first of
August. I mailed him a copy and he mailed me back and said “There‟s no such date as
the 31st of July”, which he caught on right away, and I thought,”Yeah”, so I went down to
the personnel office at battalion headquarters and said, “They got the wrong date here”
and they said, “Oh”, and then they changed it to the 31st of October. So, I went back to,
went home, and went to Kalamazoo, my grandparents were living in Kalamazoo and
stayed there for forty-five days, or whatever it was. 18:07 I bought a car and drove
down to Fort Knox and reported in and they sent me to the reception station. First of all I
didn‟t want to—I felt like a fish out of water anyway, an infantryman in an Armor
School. Then they—to my way of thinking, they had the audacity to send me to the
reception station, you know. I was hoping that I would go to a basic training unit, or
something that—you know, I‟d survived, I‟d learned a few things, and maybe I can teach
somebody one thing that they will remember that will save them. Well, you‟re not going
53
�to teach anybody anything at the reception station. I reported in to the Lieutenant
Colonel that was the commanding officer at the time, Lieutenant Colonel Pew. 19:01
And I had on, you know, my medals, my CIB, and what have you, and I was in my green
uniform, but I didn‟t have the Armor School tag, on my—or insignia on my uniform. Of
course, I‟m standing at attention and he‟s looking me up and down and I forget what he
was, he was a Signal Corps Officer or something like that. He starts busting my chops
about—I‟m essentially out of uniform and he said, “Weren‟t you in the Cav or
something?” No, he probably asked me and I didn‟t have the Cav patch on my uniform
either. He said, and this was probably a Friday, he said, “When you get back here
Monday, you better have the Armor School thing on your shoulder, you better have your
Cav patch on, and you better be ready to go to work”. 20:09 I saluted him, went out and
got in my car and thought, “Jeepers, now what?” So I drove back home to Kalamazoo,
and I‟d gotten a boony hat that the 90th replacement-- when I was coming home, and it
had a big yellow Cav patch on the top of it, and I asked my grandmother, I‟d stopped at
the PX and gotten my Armor School things, “Can you rip this off my boony hat and sew
it on my dress green uniform?, and she said, “Of course”, so she sewed my Cav patch on
and then my other and I got back there Monday morning and showed up in the proper
uniform. 21:03 They made me a training and operations officer, or something. You
know, they had so many 1st lieutenants running around. There was a captain running the
section and a couple of sergeants and a friend of mine from OCS was also stationed there,
and I was living in his—and sleeping on his couch, actually in the BOQ. I‟d signed in to
the BOQ, but I was staying with Mike, and Mike kept asking me, he said, “Are you going
back to school when you get out, are you going back to school when you get out?” I said,
54
�“Well, yeah”. He says, “Well, you‟re not going to stay in the army?” I said, “No, there‟s
too many guys like LaBrose and Pew”. And he said, “Well apply for an early out, you
know, and then you can start in January”, “Oh, ok”, so I forget who I talked to about that,
and I filled out all the paper work and sent it in. 22:08 Of course, the army—“Hey, no
problem”.
Interviewer: Were they downsizing a little at this point?
Yes, so that came through and then once they knew I was going to be getting out at the
end of December, and there again, I reported on the 31st of October, so by all of this—it‟s
the middle of November, so they send me down to Headquarter Company and I was the
XO counting paper clips, or something, for the last two weeks I was in the service.
Interviewer: Now, had they made any effort to encourage you to re-enlist?
I had—when I was in—as a training officer, after I graduated from OCS I got this letter
from the Department of the Army. 23:01 Some full Colonel in the Department of the
Army, and he said all these lovely things, you know, “I‟ve been talking to your battalion
commander about you, and you‟re the kind of guy the army needs and we‟ll send you”,
you know, and blah, blah, blah. I was only four months commissioned and it sounded
really great to me. So, all I had to do was say, “Yes, I‟ll go and be interviewed by the
Brigade Commander”, and, of course, you‟re not going to say, “No”. So, I went up and
saw-- he was busy that day, so I saw his XO, I guess, but---you know, we talked, just like
we‟re talking now and I only said, “Yes sir‟, about a thousand times. I hadn‟t really
given it much thought, but—until it came time to get out, and then I thought,”You know,
eleven months”, and I still didn‟t have a college education, “this might not work”, so I
55
�decided to get out. 24:10 But yeah, they were kind of after me. You had to go
indefinite and maybe you‟d get a regular army commission or something.
Interviewer: Now, once you do get out, did you go right back to school?
I did, yeah; my official last day in the service on active duty was December 31st, so they
gave me, like two days to travel from Fort Knox to Kalamazoo, so I signed out, went
home, to my grandparents‟ house. My parents were still in the Philippines, and then
school started either that next week, or the week after, the first full week, probably, in
January.
Interviewer: Did you go back to Michigan State at that point?
Yes
Interviewer: So, they had kicked you out and they let you back in now?
Yes, I‟d been out and I‟d—of course to get the early out you have to be reaccepted
somewhere. 25:03 So, I‟d already done that and they had reaccepted me and I had a
little different outlook on studying. Prior, I was putting in the time, but I wasn‟t getting
anything out of it, or at least I wasn‟t able to translate what I did or didn‟t get out of it
into exams. I never flunked anything, but two consecutive terms of straight one points,
you know, and then they had what they call a step scale at that time and I was below the
step scale for two consecutive terms and as a transfer student they exhaust me. But, I was
reaccepted unconditionally, they had changed the step scale and it was something else.
26:05 Of course, I had a one point average that I had to—and that took, probably, a
couple semesters to get that above a two point, because you got to get A‟s to bring a one
to a two point five, but you know, you eventually got it worked up and then I—it was just
easier, I guess, then, I was older, I was in the dorm, and there was another guy who
56
�became a very good friend of mine and he was a sergeant, he had been a sergeant in
Vietnam with the 9th Infantry. I was a lot easier, and I was a heck of a lot more mature.
Interviewer: Did you feel at all out of place as a veteran, at this point, on campus,
or being older than most of the students? 27:02
No, not really, I mean our hair was still shorter and we all wore field jackets in the
winter, not all, but the three or four of us that were veterans on the floor, and no, not
really. I remember there was some rioting and I want to say in 1971 or 1972, or
protesting. I forget what they were—they were protesting, you know, and all the long
haired “Hippies‟ were down there and the state police were there. We went down to
watch and they arrested a couple guys and threw them in the back seat of the state
cruisers. My roommate and I—he was in the Air Force reserves, and we were saying,
“Roll up those windows, make them sweat to death”, and the cops were all laughing at
us. 28:06 “We can‟t do that”, and we said, “Oh yes you can, those pot lickers”. I forget
what they were protesting, but it was a big deal and Grand River Avenue was all jammed
full of pedestrians and cars were going real slow. The cops were beating on the cars to
get them to speed up, but I can‟t remember what it was all about now. We just went to
school and studied.
Interviewer: Did people generally know that you were a veteran and had been in
Vietnam?
Probably, because my uniform was my—my fatigue shirts, basically, and cut off fatigue
pants, that‟s what I wore to school.
Interviewer: But you didn’t get particular flak, or anything, from anybody because
of that?
57
�No
Interviewer: What did you take your degree in?
My undergraduate was in general business with a major, or what have you, in
management. 29:13 Then my masters was in personnel administration.
Interviewer: What kind of a career did you go into?
Well, I graduated with my masters, MBA, in 1976 and 1976 wasn‟t a great time for the
country either, as far as getting jobs, and it even got to a point where—I was married by
then, I‟d been married for a couple of years, and I thought, “Maybe I‟ll try to do what my
father did”. I‟d stayed in the IRR, the Individual Ready Reserve, and I didn‟t go to
meetings or anything like that, it was just a paperwork shuffle that every three years, “Do
you want to stay in? And if the balloon goes up, maybe we‟ll call you and maybe we
won‟t”. 30:07 I forget who I wrote, some General somewhere and I said, “I‟m ready to
go back onto active duty, I‟ve got my MBA and I‟ve got all this stuff. I was regular army
at one time”, but I never heard from him, of course, but then finally I got a job with
Continental Can Company. I spent a year out in New Jersey and then they transferred me
back here to Grand Rapids when we built the plant out here. I stayed there and then got
reduced out of there and then I went to a small company over on 32nd Street call Aloff‟s
and they‟re out of business now, and from there to another company called Batts
Incorporated, they use to make hangers out in Zeeland, and they‟re defunct now. 31:02
So, all of the places I went to work for became defunct , and then to the packaging
company out in Holland, Bradford Company.
Interviewer: Do they still exist?
58
�They do, and I got downsized out of there. I had a lot of anger issues until I got into
therapy I really didn‟t know why. I always seemed to have, which isn‟t a good thing,
trouble with bosses that I always felt were kind of incompetent. It didn‟t take a lot for the
therapist to say, “Well, you‟re dragging around all of your lieutenant stuff, and you‟re
probably viewing guys, who may or may not be incompetent, you‟re looking at them as
like the LaBroses or the Bouyevs, or the Pews, or what have you, of the world”. 32:23
“Oh”, and of course by then I wasn‟t working any place, so it really makes a---I wish I‟d
known that thirty five years ago. Many of us who have been diagnoses with PTSD, we‟re
able to function in—and, you know, we just stuff it, and then sometimes, at an
inopportune time it pops out and then you‟ve got a lot of fence building to take care of
and sometimes you‟re not able to mend the fences and then you‟re left with, “I guess it‟s
time to move on”. 33:09 But, I‟ve been married for thirty eight years now, almost, and I
have one child, so I didn‟t—I never did drugs, or never was a drunk or somewhat the
stereotype, you know, you‟re a womanizer, I never did that, or you‟re a doper, I never did
any of that, never smoked, ever. Another part of the characteristic is you‟re alcoholic,
and I was that, you know, I was always at work, and then some of that, do this, this and
this, gets imprinted on your children, or child in my case, and that causes heartbreak, and
drama sometimes, so I wasn‟t immune to any of that. 34:11
Interviewer: Do you see positive aspects in ways which your time in the service
affected you that one way or another turned out to be positive?
Oh yeah, I do think so, I mean it—we just learned something new a couple, or I did
anyway, a few weeks ago in our group. I go once a week to group, “post traumatic
growth”. Apparently that term and concept has been around for a while, but just got
59
�introduced to us a couple of weeks ago, but I mean, I think all of the training and all of
the exposure made me a good supervisor. It didn‟t necessarily make me a great employee
from this level down, but from this level down through my subordinates it helped
immensely. 35:11 And I was tough on suborinates too and I run into five or six of them
since I‟ve gotten into this therapy business, and I‟ve apologized to them and say, “I was
tough, I was a bastard sometimes, you know”, and universally they have said, “You
weren‟t as bad as you think you were, and we‟re always harder on ourselves anyway,
usually, but you weren‟t as hard as you think you were and once we came to realize
you‟d spent some time in that situation, we kind of understood a little better” 36:02
Almost universally they all turned around and said, “You never—sometimes maybe you
were over the top with your criticism, or how to do this or that, but you never did it just to
be—to just prove that you were the boss, you were always trying to make us better”, and
a lot of those folks have been successful too, but—so I wouldn‟t trade any of it. I‟ve had
the occasion to go Walter Reed a number of times and see our, see our kids that are
fighting the war now, and that‟s brutal stuff, to go there and see that. 37:00 It makes
me; on a number of levels it makes me angry that we‟re putting them through that. It
makes me, sometimes, feel like I‟m not deserving of the benefits that I‟m getting from
the government, because not only are they going to have PTSD, but they‟re going to be
going through life, in many case, you know, with no arms and one limb, one eye and
what have you. Of course my therapist can always turn that around and say, “Well,
they‟re getting their compensation too and yours is not obviously visible to everybody
because yours is a different kind of a what have you”, and you know, I resisted this for
years too, this business because I knew some people that I thought were fakers and
60
�charlatans and what have you. 38:00 I didn‟t want to be involved in that, and finally
one day it just dawned on me that, “You need to A, do this for yourself, and get some
help, but you can‟t fix anything, or help anybody else if you‟re just going to be on the
sidelines looking in”. The government doesn‟t care if Bob Anderson shows up and raises
his hand for benefits, at all, the government could care less because there‟s a thousand
other people right behind me. So, I did this to, I always say this kind of jokingly, I
started this because I was tired of being a jackass all the time, and I see some changes.
I‟ve been doing this for almost six years now, the therapy part, but it does allow me to
help other veterans because I think I‟m conversant enough in it that I can help other
veterans, and I‟ve been fairly successful with the ones that I‟ve helped. 39:02
Interviewer: So, are you involved with any kind of local support organizations in
the area?
Well, we have, maybe it‟s showing up here. We have a local chapter of the 1st Cav, it‟s
been renamed to honor our President Emeritus who just passed away, James Mason, he
was an armor officer, but he was also, a career officer, and he fought in Korea and was
wounded badly as a tank platoon leader and he was also in WWII. So, we get together
once a month, in fact we have a meeting tonight. We do some social service out at the
Grand Rapids Home for Veterans. Every month that has a fifth Sunday in it we go out
there and we run Bingo, so that‟s kind of a way to give back. If we see veterans on the
street, most of us, we will thank them for their service. 40:09 In a lot of ways they have
it a lot rougher than we do because they keep going back, and back, and back, and back,
It‟s just brutal from this chair, just brutal.
Interviewer: Well, you’re certainly in a position to know something about that.
61
�Like I say, it‟s been, because I‟ve been through the benefit tunnel, I guess if you will, and
sometimes the government is not willing to help people get their benefits. It‟s not that
they‟re unwilling; it‟s just that they‟re not willing to, if that makes any sense. I mean,
they‟re not hunting them down and telling them what the benefits are, you have to kind of
stumble into it, and I‟ve been lucky enough to understand, I guess, how the system
works, so I‟ve been able to help guys from my own company, my Alpha company group.
41:07 We pushed a couple of guys in the group, our chapter group, to seek benefits, and
some of them have.
Interviewer: Well, as a whole, you seem to have come out of things pretty well in
the end.
Well, I wouldn‟t change the whole military experience at all. The only thing, if I was
able to change, with a magic wand, is to have understood what PTSD was thirty five
years ago, and then I might have had a—worked at one place for thirty five years, I don‟t
know.
Interviewer: Well, thank you very much for coming in and talking to me today, I
appreciate your story.
62
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
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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
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
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Title
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Anderson, Robert (Interview transcript and video), 2005
Creator
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Anderson, Robert
Description
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Robert Douglas Anderson, born near Grand Rapids, Michigan. in 1926, was drafted into the Army in 1945 after the war had already ended. After training at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, and Fort Meade, Maryland, he was sent to Yokohama, Japan to identify and sort war materiel.
Contributor
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Andrews, Greg (Interviewer)
Otten, Andrew (Interviewer)
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
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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
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eng
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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Moving Image
Text
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2005-05-26
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AndersonR1081V
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project collection, (RHC-27)</a>
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application/pdf
video/mp4
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4da245a5729832a667d0330b8c2e25a1.mp4
26983f37c058a62acae795cfa6a361c9
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ee7a5230e33e418ee8603120939566a3.pdf
0bfd435907af23ee457369d97f9b545f
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project
Oral History Interview
Veteran: Sarah Anderson
Interview Length: (1:13.28)
Interviewed by: Dr. James Smither
Transcribed by: Chloe Dingens
Interviewer: This interview is a joint production between the Grand Valley State Veterans
History Project and the WKTV Voices. We are talking today with Sarah Anderson, a
Marine Corps veteran who lives in Grand Haven, Michigan and the interviewer is James
Smither of the Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project. Okay so Sarah,
begin with some background on yourself and to start with where and when were you born?
I was born in Muskegon, Michigan I… in 19... I’m sorry I’m a little nervous now.
Interviewer: That’s okay!
Alright I was born in Muskegon, Michigan I was born and raised in, on the west side of
Michigan 1990.
Interviewer: Okay, alright and what was your family doing for a living when you were
growing up?
My dad is a mechanical engineer, my mom was a stay-at-home mom. I have an older brother, a
little sister, and a little brother so we kind of all just kind of grew up, I grew up in the same house
I did for like 18 years of my life and stayed on the same spot.
Interviewer: Okay, alright and then when did you graduate from high school?
I graduated from Freedom Baptist High School in 2009 and that school’s in Hudsonville, it no
longer exists right now but…
Interviewer: Okay, alright so you went there and then what did you do after high school?
I immediately joined the Marine Corps.
�(1.44)
Interviewer: Alright, now what motivated that?
So, in high school I was an athlete and I was not a bad student, but I did not like sitting around
and just, I needed to expend energy somehow and so I, my outlet was sports. And the thought of
going to college immediately for me, I was a restless spirit so that kind of wasn't really like as
exciting to me as it was for a lot of my peers at the time. My brother joined the Marine Corps in
2007 and when I was a sophomore in high school, I attended his graduation up from boot camp
from Marine Corps Recruiting station like Marine Corps Recruit Depot there we go. Recruit
Depot San Diego and I just saw like the- the transformation in him. He was not a very good
student, and then he just had, was filled with all this pride at would he had accomplished, and the
Marine Corps just seemed like very attractive to me at that time. It was just an outlet of just
doing something, filling a purpose, or a mission, or a duty and I just, I don't know I just wanted
that confidence. I envied it and when it was my time to decide I talked to a recruiter and decided
that that's the challenge I wanted to take on.
(2.56)
Interviewer: Okay now before we continue with the story there was one thing, another
component I wanted to add up, add in there; you were old enough to remember 9/11.
Yes.
Interviewer: And do you remember where you were and what happened that day?
September 11, 2001 I was in fifth grade. Just came in from recess and I remember my teacher
just had this like really sad look on her face and she turned on the radio and she said, “I need you
all to sit down and be quiet.” And a bunch of rowdy kids were like some, we knew something
was serious going on and we just listened. I didn't know what the World Trade Center was, like I
�didn't know anything about New York other than you know Empire State Building and Lady
Liberty, the Statue of Liberty. So, I learned real quick what the World Trade Center was the;
Twin Towers and I didn't know exactly, it was just the radio so I didn't see any picture but they
let us off of school early. All our parents came to pick us up, came home and just saw the news
and I saw the towers fall on TV.
(3.54)
Interviewer: Alright and just kind of awareness of that, I mean does that in any way kind
of shape your later decision to go in the service? Or was your decision really just a personal
one?
I think it shaped my decision for sure, it was a personal one but the momentum of the patriotism
I think that I experienced as a child, like America's one of those unique countries that like it's
very patriotic very proud of where we come from, and I mean our country has its issues but
overall there is a unifying aspect of being an American. And around September 11th timeframe
that even more so, we were all unified in our grief and in our passion to you know stay together
and be strong. So, that impacted me as a child and when I saw my brother graduate from boot
camp I, kind of like reaffirmed me and my personal decision too. It’s like this will be good for
me and you know I really want to see like all different sides of America, and including the
military, and the challenge really attracted me too. Like they, the other branches, the Marine
Corps said, “hey, we’re the hardest one, if you can hack it, you can do it.” And I'm like, I'm
gonna hack it, I can do it. It was just a really fun challenge to take on.
(5.11)
�Interviewer: Alright now when you were talking to the Marine Corps recruiter then, did
you have any opportunity to- to choose types of training to get? Or were they offering you
any particular programs? Or was it just go in and see where we put you?
So, I did get to choose my MOS which is a military occupational specialty like my job in the
military. So, males and females in the Marine Corps they get trained equally, trained the same.
There's- there's different standards sometimes when it comes to PT like run times, but every PT
is the same and every training is the same. There is no difference and so when- when you join the
Marine Corps, you’re a Marine first and then you become your job as well. So, boot camp- boot
camp was entirely like just breaking you down and training you to be a Marine.
Interviewer: Okay well what- what MOS did you choose?
I chose to be a public affairs specialist, at the time it was called combat correspondent public
affairs specialist, now it is strategic communications and mass communicator. Like a lot of my
MOS’ changed a little bit since I've left, I guess, we've combined the combat camera and public
affairs into the same MOS so everyone's cross-training and they're doing some awesome stuff
right now.
(6.27)
Interviewer: Alright so let's go back to boot camp, so where do you go for boot camp?
I went to Parris Island, South Carolina that is the only place females are, well as of now are
permitted to go to boot camp mostly because there aren’t a lot of females who take up that
challenge so. The, financially that's just like the best place to go. It's definitely not a
discriminatory thing I don’t want to say that.
Interviewer: There are only two bases that- that train Marines at all so it's one or the other,
and so they took Parris Island. Okay, now what time of year do you arrive there?
�I arrived in August 2009, so it was just the tail end of the summer and it was hot, and it was I just
remember feeling like I was gonna die. I've never felt anything that hot before, just the swampy
blistering heat, it was awful. And then when I graduated in November it was snowing so, we did
the crucible in the snow. It was the weirdest time of the year to go.
Interviewer: Okay now what sort of reception do you get when you arrive at boot camp?
(7.29)
The reception to boot camp, it is not an easy one. It is the first experience you have with a drill
instructor. You pull up at night, or at least I pulled up at night on a bus. And a drill instructor
comes in, shots at you, tells you what exactly to do, follow exactly- exactly everything they say
to the letter, and you rush out step on some yellow footprints, get yelled at some more, about like
how to enter the hatches, how to get started in boot camp, and then you go from there.
Interviewer: How to enter the hatches?
So, or like how to like what hatches to enter if you will. We, there's a sign in Parris Island above
the doors that say, this really inspirational quote that's not coming to mind right now, I can look
it up but it's like “through these hatches are those who train to be the most… America’s fighting
force…” or something. I’m sorry I totally just slaughtered that.
Interviewer: That’s okay, but a hatch is like a door, right?
So, the Marine Corps uses Navy terms.
Interviewer: Yes.
(8.31)
Because we're a department of the Navy so, yeah through, we use hatches or door, portholes,
windows, deck is the floor. And in bootcamp it's like we have to be taught a new language and
these drill instructors are even more frustrating because they just passed an entire cycle of
�Marines that just graduated boot camp who were, you know ready to be Marines going back to
people who have to be taught, “this is a deck. This is a hatch,” and it was just kind of, I'm sure it
was entertaining for them or infuriating I don't know but.
Interviewer: Okay now when your group, when you come in out of the bus was the bus
load all women or was it a mix of men and women?
The bus load was a mix of men and women.
Interviewer: Okay so that initial thing, they’re just bringing you all in. Then did they
separate you out into different companies with women's training different/ separately from
men or how do they arrange that?
For processing we're kind of mixed because, you know we're just getting all separated. Like the
phone calls home and everything, but then they eventually like separate us males and female,
yeah that's just part of it.
(9.31)
Interviewer: Okay, alright and then sort of what's kind of the sequence of events in boot
camp? What are you doing first, what do you do later?
At the time there's three cycles, now I believe there's four but at the time there's three cycles.
And in cycle number one is just kind of processing, getting your uniforms, getting you’re your
boots learning how to do basic things like make a rack and fold a towel and be comfortable being
around, I was in a squad bay, with 80 women. A squad bay is a big room full of bunk beds. Like
no privacy whatsoever our bathroom doors were sawed off we weren't allowed to have that, even
that kind of privacy. So, we had three round, rounded showerheads to share between 80 women
and we only had like about a minute each to shower all at once. So, we had to figure it out, and
so, it was just kind of getting comfortable. I'd never touched a weapon before, we got issued
�rifles and like what is this? I yeah and I it didn't grow up with guns or weapons or anything. So,
just kind of learning how to do my hair; the Marine Corps is pretty strict hair standards when it
comes to pull your hair back in a bun, no fly always. Learning the language, learning the basic
rules, learning even the basic core values and everything. It’s just kind of what you do in the first
phase; learning how to march like it's not like simple like- like you think marching in the movies,
it's like in sync it's an in-sync motion with your squad and your team so. Second phase is honing
more combat skills and rifle range, so you like learn how to shoot, you learn how to move
together as a team, more drilling obviously you learn how to march even better. And learn, yeah,
learned how to patrol and just kind of basic- basic combat maneuvers.
Interviewer: Do you get hand-to-hand combat stuff too?
We do, we get something we call MCMAP it's Marine Corps Martial Arts Program. It's
affectionately known called McNinja, yeah just basic self-defense technique. Basics on, how to
punch, how to block, how to maneuver and in boot camp you just get the basic level through
your Marine Corps career you can progress in... we have a belt system like a lot of martial arts
programs do but it's tan belt in boot camp and just basic leg sweeps and stuff like that. So…
(11.59)
Interviewer: How to knock down someone who's bigger than you were.
Yes absolutely, and which actually was kind of nice because I was a small eighteen-year-old
female at the time, so it was just nice to know how to do small joint manipulation or basic selfdefenses. It was never intro; I was never introduced to anything combat related. So, that was
second phase and then third phase we continue all of that into a culminating event, we learned
pugil sticks, we continued MCMAP, we should be nearly experts at drill at this point when it
comes, like marching and formations and stuff so we do that competition. We do, you know…
�what else do we do? Well basically it's just honing those skills, more physical training PT and to
accommodating event which we just called The Crucible which is an event where we I believe
we did a 9-mile hike. It was three days of kind of surviving as a team, doing team building
activities and exercises, and combat techniques like crawling under barbed wire, and running up
range, and shooting, and like it just it was just a lot of culminating things that we just learned the
entire time there. The entire 13 weeks really, so it was an exhausting three days and we were
given a limited number of MREs which are like military rations to kind of like, so we could
teach ourselves how to like pace ourselves when it comes to if you have this much food like this
is how you survive off of this much, you don't eat it all at once or you're gonna starve kind of
thing. At the very end we're all beaten, exhausted, dirty, and tired and we're all marching back
together, and we're all like singing and- and chanting cadence and getting motivated because at
the very end we line up. Barely standing because we’re exhausted to be given our Eagle of an
Anchor which signifies you have earned the title of marine.
(14.06)
Interviewer: Okay now go- go back to the beginning of things in this first- first few weeks.
How easy or hard was it for you to adjust to life in the Marine Corps?
Everyone adjust differently and I think basically it depends on personality and how you grew up.
I've seen girls who went to boot camp got screamed at, it didn’t faze them because they've been
screamed at all their lives. Me, I grew up in a very Christian religious Bible Belt of Michigan it's
what kind of the reputation is. So, it was a very conservative area and I was- I was never put
down as for being a female or anything but it was just kind of like a cultural thing that you just
get assumed that you're gonna be a wife and a mom one day, and you don't go and join the
military because that's just not culturally what we do. And not anyone looked down on me I'm
�not trying to bash my- the way I grew up it was, I grew up very well I was very blessed. But it
was it was a very different thing for me, especially in the Christian school I went to that like
women don’t, like ‘what? Why?’ kind of thing. And I, when I got to an area where people from
all different backgrounds and all different walks of life where all in one room getting screamed at
by these women that I thought like where demon possessed at the time. I don't know I was just
an ignorant 18-year-old. I thought it was the hardest thing at the time that I had ever been
through. And mentally I had to adjust and emotionally I had to adjust, and it was just… I didn't
really know what I was getting into. At first it was difficult but then there's just something in you
that clicks, that is like I can do this, like I want this. If you want it bad enough, you're gonna
complete it, you're gonna overcome it and I think that's accredited, I think to some of my drill
instructors too. Not only like beat like discipline in me, but like the confidence as well and at the
time I hated everything about them but you know, I there is one drill instructor in particular that I
modeled my entire leadership style after the next eight years of my life.
(16.25)
Interviewer: Okay, what was it about how she did things that stuck with you?
So, this drill instructor, her name was Sergeant Feight all my drill instructors were sergeants
which is kind of uncommon in the drill field or in boot camp environment. Usually if staff
sergeants or gunnery sergeants like high-ranking but my drill team was all sergeants and
Sergeant Feight she was- she was very like just the way she carried herself. She was our senior
drill instructor so her role on the drill team was to kind of be available, be strict, and be
disciplinarian, but be also available for us. Because you know if something is wrong and we're
too afraid to tell the drill instructors somebody needs to know and like she’s, so she made herself
in her leadership role that was available to us. There was one time like she, I don't know it's just
�the- the confidence she had in herself and the way she carried herself was really inspiring to me.
There was one time a male drill instructor… a male drill instructor insulted one of our recruits on
the rifle range, because we trained at the guys during that week. And our senior drill instructor
Sergeant Feight found out about it and I don't think her intention was to shame him in front of
everyone, but she did it in a way that as a no BS mentality. It was an example to all the girls, all
80 women in my platoon to not take that just because like it doesn't matter what rank, doesn't
matter what status you are, who you are, you like you- you have the confidence, you earn you’re
earning this, you're working on it you don't get to take that, and she stood up for us but also made
herself an example of how to stand up for yourself, and like do not, like don't- don't take that
basically and come to find out the next eight years of my life dealt with that a lot. And it just I
don't know I really appreciated her example and when I became a sergeant, I wanted to treat my
junior Marines in a way that was fair, inspirational, and in a way that could build their
confidence.
Interviewer: Right, now when you and did your brother tell you anything about what to
expect in boot camp?
(18.59)
I don't know if I really want this part on here but me my brother and I don't really get along that
well. So, like we have a relationship if you will, but he didn’t really kind of prepare me very
well.
Interviewer: So basic question, so it wasn't they're gonna do X Y & Z and this is why
they're doing it?
Yeah so, my brother was a relatively new Marine when I enlisted so he was still trying to find his
feet in the Marine Corps.
�Interviewer: Right.
So, I didn't really understand a lot other than they might yell at me, or not might, they will yell at
me. But I didn't realize what exactly was going to happen and so when I enlisted my recruiter
didn't really know much about the roles female Marines play. I just assumed they were gonna be
equally treated which, they were, like they- they same PT schedule standards same training and
everything. But I mean we had a little difference when it comes to standards, like when it comes
to PT fitness test.
Interviewer: Right.
If you will, but he didn't really know much at all, so I had to figure a lot of it out by myself.
(20.15)
Interviewer: Alright so- so okay now were there other women you were training with who
when in the end couldn't take it?
Yes.
Interviewer: Okay what proportion do you think?
I think I graduated with 40.
Interviewer: That was out of 80?
Yeah.
Interviewer: Now where some of those people gonna be recycling and coming through
again?
Some were hurt, so some women dropped out of boot camp because they were injured, or they
were recycled to another platoon because they were injured and needed to recover.
Interviewer: Right.
That- that, that's very common and so I'm not saying they failed or couldn't hack it just...
�Interviewer: Oh yeah no, it happens to men too yeah.
But a lot of women just got there and realized this is not for me and those women are weeded out
real quick. You will not survive boot camp unless you want to survive boot camp and the fastest
way out of boot camp with an honorable dis… or the fastest way out of boot camp is to get
through it.
(21.04)
Interviewer: Alright now was there a point in boot camp when you figured out what it was
that they were doing, or did that only really occur to you after you were done?
It kind of it occurred to me after I was done, how effective the training was or what the training
actually did to me. At the time like I- I knew that oh they're trying to discipline us and stuff but it
was just- it was just like a different environment than I was used to so I didn't really comprehend
like what was going on and how the training was breaking me down and building me back up.
Interviewer: Okay now physically were you in good enough shape to handle all the stuff
they had you do?
Physically I yes, I was an athlete in high school, so I just transitioned right into it. I it was not…
so I've never been a phenomenal runner but I can run, and I can do push-ups and, you know at
the time I was really nervous because you know it's the Marine Corps and but they make the
training in a way that starts you from the beginning. So, not everyone was where I was
physically because I was an athlete, not everyone was an athlete, so they keep that in mind. They
start everyone off at the same level. So, yeah while I was nervous like I had other reasons to be
nervous other than physical training but they- they are realistic about training in my opinion or
were at the time.
�Interviewer: Alright anything else about those first 13 weeks that kind of stands out in your
memory? There doesn't have to be.
(22.48)
There are a few, I guess it's just, it’s just a long time ago so- so there was this one time on the
rifle range and speaking about women getting weeded out. There's this one time on the rifle
range that there was this girl who intentionally kept missing because she wanted out of boot
camp and she didn't like it, and she made it through first phase, and I remember thinking it might
have been me being naive. But I'm like well why would you sign up? And I, why don't you want
this? I want this, like this is just a foreign concept to me and… but yeah if the girls who wanted
out found a way. And… but I didn't, I wanted to complete it and like there's no challenge that
I've ever not really given my whole heart into. Whether I completed it or not, but I was not gonna
not complete boot camp, and I think receiving the Eagle of an Anchor at the end was one of the
proudest moments in my life, if not the proudest. And it sets the tone for every marine going into
the Marine Corps, every Marine receives an Eagle of an Anchor, everyone gets it pressed into
their palm and everyone remembers that, what that feeling is like and that kind of unifies us
throughout like our service and whenever a Marine starts kind of losing their way another
Marine can be like, “hey do you remember that feeling? Do you remember what it was like? This
is why we act the way we act. This is why we hold on our courage and commitment in our hearts
is because of that moment; because we all felt it and we all felt that pride, and so you got to do
your duty the way that you're expected to. The way you committed to.” And yeah, it's just kind
of a unifying thing.
(24.33)
�Interviewer: Now once you complete those 13 weeks do you now go to a school for your
MOS or is there any additional training that everyone gets before that?
So, in the Marine Corps after boot camp we go to Marine Combat Training or for infantry guys
they go to infantry ITV (infantry training battalion.) So, as at the time females weren't allowed in
the infantry so all females went to Marine combat training and it wasn't just female exclusive it
was every Marine that was not signed up to be an infantryman.
Interviewer: Okay.
So, that's the only separation. Every Marine needs combat training. Infantry Marines go to
infantry training battalion because that's doubles as their job school.
Interviewer: Right.
And we just get the basic month of down-and-dirty, this is how we do things, this is how you
patrol, this is how you guard a tower, this is how you use a radio, this is how you treat you know
medical like I need this various medical, like an injury…
Interviewer: Wounds, injury.
Yeah wounds and so it was like down and dirty a lot of information packed into that month.
(25.42)
Interviewer: Okay and where did you do that?
North Carolina camp Johnson.
Interviewer: Okay is that part of Camp Lejeune?
It is within Camp Lejeune yes.
Interviewer: Okay, alright you get- you get that for a month and how did that go for you?
It was interesting it was my first time working with males and I mean it felt… I mean it's a tough
month they're hard on you. Like, but I was kind of like expecting that because boot camp was
�hard on us too. So, after boot camp you get 10 days leave and then you go to Marine Combat
Training and you learn more in depth about rifle training, about patrolling, about basic combat
techniques that expounded upon what you learned on in boot camp. And yeah, that’s all I
remember.
Interviewer: Okay, alright, so you kind of get that, so you've got that and then where do
you go next?
After Marine Combat Training you go to your MOS school or your military occupational
specialty school. I signed up for public affairs, so I went to Fort Meade, Maryland it's a joint
base. It was an army base, but it was joint schooling. So, I went to- I went to school with every
service Navy, Air Force, Army, Coast Guard even so did I forget one?
(27.04)
Interviewer: Well no because you are, Army, Navy, Air Force yeah- yeah Coast Guard,
yeah yes that's all. Okay now how was that experience different from your Marine Corps
training?
It was different because every branch is a different culture and I remember being really
motivated and really excited about being a Marine and you know just a little nineteen-year-old
me and so there was a lot of you know trash-talking between like all services because we were
all brand new and we all wanted to be like “yeah we're the best” kind of thing and that's just, it's
just how it was. And it was my first experience with that. It was actually really fun getting to
know other services, it wasn't just trash talk we actually built relationships and we learned things
about other services and other people our age who made different decisions and what services
they made, it was- it was a good experience. The schooling itself taught journalism, it was three
months I can’t remember if it was three or five months, but I think I was there for five months,
�but the school was three. They taught us basic photography, basic journalism, how to write
stories, how to interview people, how to record people for video interviews, down-and-dirty
journalism, multimedia journalism and that's what it was. And after I completed school, they
gave me orders to the Marine Corps Combat Center Twentynine Palms.
(28.27)
Interviewer: Okay, now at the school itself I mean did that work based off like a nine-tofive job as opposed to kind of other sorts of training that you had or were they still waking
you up in the middle of the night or was there still a military training aspect to the school
or was it now more professional?
The school were definitely was a more professional environment, but they were still military
training. We woke up super early to go run together or go PT together. We, the Marines all were
in one barracks type building we each got our own rooms, or we shared rooms with people but
we, it wasn't a squad-based setting anymore. But yeah no, we all woke up together well PT’d,
showered up, went to school together till 5 in the evening and then we had the evenings off.
Interviewer: Okay and what proportion of that group was female?
So, in my MOS, it was probably about 50/50. My MOS is pretty- pretty mixed-gender,
Interviewer: Right.
And the diversity is pretty good. The Marine Corps overall when I was in only 6% of the Marine
Corps was female so that is rare to see a 50/50 mix between female/ male.
(29.44)
Interviewer: Okay so now you head off to your first base and it's at Twentynine Palms,
California describe that place a little bit.
�So, the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, California; well from a
Michigan girl, never really left Michigan other than the occasional family vacation. I’d never
been to the desert before and I heard stories, I heard stories that it was like the heat like the worst
base to go to and no Marine wants to get stationed in Twentynine Palms and I was like “oh no,” I
was like freaking out. Like my first duty station is in Twentynine Palms, well I kind of learned to
embrace the desert. The desert California’s beautiful and if you go in there with a mindset of “oh
I'm gonna have a terrible time,” you're gonna have a terrible time and I kind of learned that. It
took me a few months to adjust because I wasn't used to anything other than East Coast, but what
really kind of on my personal time attracted me to that area was Joshua Tree National Park; I
love climbing and hiking and it was just beautiful. The desert flowers in the spring it’s just, it
was- it was really great community, the actual base where I worked there's some really great
people, people who love the area and love the Marine Corps just kind of stick around and you
kind of get to know the culture of the base itself even though Marines are always transitioning in
and out, the culture of the area it's really a family type environment. The combat center was very
fast-paced, we had battalions it's- so the combat Center is really fast-paced we had it- it was a
transition base so before units went to Afghanistan or Iraq they would have to train in
Twentynine Palms, they would have to get desert warfare trainings so we had battalions coming
through all the time. It was like very fast we had deployments leaving and coming and buses
leaving and coming full of Marines all the time and I was a journalist; I was a photographer, but I
was stationed at headquarters battalion, so I wasn't allowed to deploy with them. And I think my
biggest frustration was building relationships with these guys, spending time with them in the
field, taking their picture, interviewing them, and watching them leave on buses, and watching
most of them come home seven months later and not all of them and that was, as a Marine who
�wanted to be there to document their stories and stuff it was it was frustrating that I couldn't go
with them.
(32.23)
Interviewer: Okay and then sort of what kind of group were you working with? Was there
a certain set of people you were normally with and how large was it or how many people
were you…?
You mean stationed in my section?
Interviewer: Yeah.
So, in headquarters’ battalion, it's kind of like, I used to say its kind of like the misfits of- that
run the base; we have, it’s a unique battalion because there's sections of people all in one
battalion. Then we have the supply section, we have the transportation section, we have motor
pool, we have the admin section, we have the journalists like that was us, there was combat
camera, there's just all like the, all a bunch of sections making up one battalion. So, whereas
normal battalions’ kind of interact all day or a lot and they get to know each other and what
companies and stuff, we were so separated, and we only got together during unit PTs or special
events. We tried but I mean you, so each section became very close and I had probably eight or
nine Marines in mine maybe ten at sometimes and we work at the base newspaper at the time,
before the base newspaper disappeared. So, every week we had to tell stories about what's going
on in the base and I'd take pictures of Marines in training. So, since there was so much transition
of battalions coming in before Afghanistan I would take a lot of like I'd go out to the field a lot
with them and just kind of document them before they head out, and kind of tell the story about
the training that they're being prepared for before they go over there. But yeah so it was- it was
�just cool, I got to know a lot of people in my own battalion only because my job required so
many stories to be put in the newspaper that I went out and like actively sought them out.
(34.08)
Interviewer: Alright and when you're, you want to interview people and so forth what kind
of responses did you get?
So, Marines are typically pretty private people, or not they don't… I don't know it some- some
Marines are really helpful, and some were like “I don't want to be in the media.” It was kind of
frustrating at times because I understood that, like absolutely we don't join the military for
recognition or fame or to have our face out there, but as they got to know me and like kind of
trusted that I can do my job well and will make them look good basically or will support them. A
lot of the pictures and videos I took were for the families and were for people back home it
wasn't necessarily for that Marine, it was to tell their story and well as some of them didn't want
their story being told, it was important to tell their story and that's kind of, yeah the angle I took
it from and they kind of understood that. So, yeah, I understood I, that some of them didn't want
their faces out there but you know I had to do my job, so I figured it out.
Interviewer: Alright and you kind of learned in a way sort of how to talk to them or
approach them, did you get a sense of how they're gonna respond as you're gonna… or
how to deal with people of different personalities and feel that out?
(35.39)
Absolutely, you know actually being a Marine Corps journalist instead of just a journalist
coming on a base really helped because we had that bond already, or that mutual understanding
of what being a Marine is and so like no one was like just outright disrespectful at least not to my
face about not wanting their you know their presence out there, because like we were both
�Marines; there was like that mutual respect there. So, as a journalist coming in not a lot of them,
or yeah most of them have never been in the military, don't know what the standards are: how
you conduct yourself professionally, how we hold each other accountable, and you know what
being a Marine actually means so.
Interviewer: Alright now would units coming back from Afghanistan or Iraq if there were
any at that point, did they go back through Twentynine Palms or?
Not every one of them, so say a unit deploys out of Camp Lejeune so they go to Twentynine
Palms to train, go back to Camp Lejeune and deploy from there but we had infantry battalions at
Twentynine Palms that were stationed there so they did go to the sandbox as they called it, they'd
go to Iraq or Afghanistan and they'd come back and just stay in Twentynine Palms because that's
where they lived.
(36.56)
Interviewer: Okay and then did you interview some of them after they're back or was that
not part of your job?
I did. I think most of the stories that were impactful were off the record though because of those
relationships built.
Interviewer: Yeah.
So, I wouldn't say that I wrote a lot of stories about you know that their personal experiences
other than the ones that kind of like “hey like this is what we did, this is just letting you know,
like this is what the Marines this is how the Marines are doing awesome things and just keeping
you informed.” But like when they came to a real like down and dirty stuff it was more important
to me to build relationships and be there, be available for those people to like talk in a trusting
environment without being like fear of on-the-record.
�Interviewer: Now on some level is that kind of part of what your job is or was that just
some way that you dealt with things yourself?
I think it's just being a Marine, you know there's a kind of a joke between all the branches that
the Marines of the brainwashed ones and you know the Marines are like a cult or, you know it's
probably true. I don't know we just have like a special understanding of what it's like to be a
Marine and we just have a lot of pride in who we are and I mean every service is respectable and
you- you're giving up your time and you're serving your country and stuff but you know as a
Marine I'm a little biased because like we have that understanding and it's- it's funny to you
know trash talk each other sometimes like I got some really good Airforce friends that just mess
with me all the time and I'm just like, “hey you know whatever you right we are a cult.”
(38.39)
Interviewer: Okay now how long were you based in Twentynine Palms?
I was in Twentynine Palms from ‘09 to ‘13 and then I was transferred to Marine Corps Base
Hawaii Kaneohe Bay in 2013 and then I stayed on island till 2016 but I transferred to Camp
Smith while on Island which is another base on Island.
Interviewer: Okay, now so you've got basically four years at Twentynine Palms. Did your
job change over that time or were there things about the environment that changed at all?
In Twentynine Palms no, I worked in a newspaper the entire time.
Interviewer: So, they still had a newspaper by the time you left?
Yeah and then when I transfer to Marine Corps Base Hawaii, they're just like on the tail end of
their newspaper so I kind of started working at their newspaper for a year but then there became
a huge social media focus. It was, in my job field it's different because communication overall
changes, and grows, and develops. I mean when I was a kid I had a, like we didn't have cell
�phones and then I had my first flip phone when I got my license but like barely; it was prepaid
minutes and now like I see you know nine year old’s having iPhones. It's just- it's just crazy how
technology and communication changes over time. So, for a very old school environment like the
Marine Corps that is very stuck in tradition it is really difficult to tear their newspapers away
from them and be like this is not how we communicate anymore, we communicate via social
media, through like online presence, through building relationships, having a continual presence.
And the Marine Corps actually is leading all the branches I would say in their social media
presence. The, their branding is amazing and how they've taken it but there's still like the oldschool mentality of a lot of the Marines to just kind of like, wait but we need our newspaper, and
I’m like it's not how people communicate anymore. So, it's- it's actually transitioning out and I
have loved that I've gotten to see the Marine Corps grow from one aspect to another.
(40:44)
Interviewer: Okay now how long was your original enlistment?
My original enlistment is four years.
Interviewer: Okay so at a certain point you decided to re-up then?
Yes.
Interviewer: To stay in there. So, when did you make that decision?
I was in Twentynine Palms and I was on my last year of enlistment and something hit me that,
I'm not ready to get out, like what am I gonna do go to college? Like and I’m obviously I'm just
going to college now, there's nothing wrong with going to college, but I just I wasn’t ready. I
was- I was disappointed because I worked so hard to be a Marine and I wanted to deploy and I
wanted to do all these amazing things and I, as much as I loved Twentynine Palms or grew to
love Twentynine Palms I never left it, I never did anything that I wanted to do so I- I realized
�that I got to reenlist because I got to see what else is out there in the Marine Corps like I love the
Marine Corps so maybe they'll deploy me next enlistment. But there was a time, yeah this is a
little more personal but I don't mind sharing it; so the Marine Corps is… attracts very ‘good old
boy’ type mentality like, country boy traditional and that very… attracts very progressive women
and those two cultures don't mix very well. So, a lot and I'm not speaking, I’m not speaking for
all individuals, every individual is different. But I'm just telling you from my experience how I
saw things. I know what I saw was a lot of men very hesitant, or still feeling very new that
there's female leadership above them and that was not an easy thing to maneuver through. I never
experienced sexism before, I never experienced a culture where sexual assault, I wouldn't say
they have a rape culture in the military I would say that it's a very real thing. And they, like they
do their best to train and inform and educate like I- I really think they try but it's a very real thing
and- and a culture like that, being thrown into a culture like that as a female just from a gender
perspective was not easy. I felt like I worked twice as hard for half the credit a lot. So, picking up
rank I was proud of myself but not everybody else was. So, having a culture like that there was,
when it came to reenlisting I was really thinking about getting out because it was kind of
exhausting to adjust to that but I had a Gunnery Sergeant who was, I was a corporal at the time
so I was an E-4, he was an E-7 a Gunnery Sergeant he told me that you know, “Anderson you
single-handedly changed my mind about female Marines, you are a good example and the Corps
would be losing a good Marine. Wouldn't it be worth it to reenlist and change one more mind?”
And I'm like that's it, I'm reenlisting, like I got to, that like if, that was just, that meant a lot to me
when he said that. And just you know there are stereotypes that are- that are ahead of you as a
female Marine and, or as I’m sure a female military in general. I can't speak for any other branch
but there’s stereotypes that you constantly have to battle and even if you never live up to one of
�them, you still have to battle it just because of how you're born. And so, when he encouraged me
like that and just kind of basically told me that I was breaking glass ceilings without even
knowing it. I was just like, yes let's do it like I’ll reenlist, and you know what I actually did, I
picked up rank I gained more confidence I got more leadership roles and I became an example
for, or I strove to become an example for other female Marines to the best of my ability at least.
(44.44)
Interviewer: Okay now when you reenlist do, they offer you a chance to- to pick your next
station or at least put in requests or how do you wind up in Hawaii?
So yeah when you reenlist the first time you get an incentive and my incentive was a deployable
unit in Hawaii so that's how I got Hawaii. They're like okay you were in the desert for four years,
I'm sure we can get you, we can you know pull some strings and get you a tropical island so that
was nice but when I got to the unit it transitioned into a non-deployable unit or it'd be option of
deployment went away.
Interviewer: Okay.
And so, I was like man… alright we can make the best out of this, but I ended up falling in love
with the Island of Hawaii and I did go, I did travel a little bit but not nearly as much as I wanted
to.
Interviewer: Now which island is the base on? Is it on Oahu or is it on the Big Island or?
Yeah both bases are on Oahu.
(45.39)
Interviewer: Okay.
Actually, every military base is on Oahu, so.
�Interviewer: Alright. Okay so yeah now what was- what was what were you actually doing
on that base because you said the newspaper goes away so then what are you doing?
So, I, we had a public- public affairs is the military version of public relations in this equivalent
at least into the civilian world. So, we did a lot of media escorts, we did talking points,
interviews, I still interviewed people, I still wrote stories but it was more like a social media
aspect and it was just different focus, different platform we use. So, my job didn't change it was
just a heavier focus on how do we effectively communicate to people or how do we, what's the
best way? And we did a lot of media training as well for units, to how to use their social media
accounts, how to, every battalion has like their own Facebook so how do you use it? We’ll will
teach you how so… yeah that's kind of, we’re the communication people.
Interviewer: Alright now did you have to learn a lot of that stuff yourself or had you or far,
were you far enough along with that kind of thing by the time you got there that you could
just step into it?
(46.43)
A lot of it was experimentation on social media, like do videos work better? Or do photos work
better? And since communication is always changing and evolving it was kind of both selftaught and as a team. We learned together; we did a lot of experimenting as a unit like of like ten
people. We, let's try new things out and that's what I really appreciated about my MOS is it was a
very creative environment and in a military setting you don't get a lot of creative environments
and that's why I just I loved my job so much we got to, I got to meet new people every day and I
got to experiment and create graphic designs and news articles and it's just I loved it. It was just a
lot of freeing artistically but while still holding the standard of discipline and being a Marine.
�Interviewer: Okay in terms of the kind of content of the stories and stuff that you're doing
how was it different in Hawaii from Twentynine Palms? Where you talking to different
kinds of people or people who have done different things, or did it all seem pretty much the
same?
(47.43)
So similarly, the bases both had infantry battalions so there was that culture there, but in Hawaii
because of its location in the Pacific we were closer to a lot of different countries and we did a
lot of exercises that promoted like regional security. We’d would work with Australia or
Indonesia, and Japan, Korea we- we’d partner with these nations to do training exercises just in
case something happens like the Earthquake in Nepal when everyone started sending- sending
aid, we had to know how those countries functioned that way we can like build up security in the
region.
Interviewer: Right.
So, we did I worked, I was so blessed I worked with like a bunch of different countries and
learned you know how they do their- their routines and their ranges and I have made friends
from all over the world, it was- it was fun experience.
Interviewer: Okay what, were there things that you learned that kind of surprised you
about these people or these places?
(48.49)
You know one yeah, a bunch of, I learned a bunch of different things. One thing I did notice on a
few training exercises is how well some militaries integrated their females and males, like as a
female Marine that was like my biggest struggle was always being out there with the guys as the
photographer but usually I was the only female in the field so a lot of guys didn't know how to
�handle me and they eventually warmed up to me after a few days you know, but like at first it's
like, “what, why is she here? She's not a… in the infantry.” At the time females weren’t allowed
in the infantry. So, New Zealand, Canada, and Australia in particular. I don't I mean, I don'tactually don't know all the issues with their services that they deal with but in the training
exercises they just, it just felt like they were so in sync the females and males. A lot of like
Canada in particular their army there seemed to be their average demographic or average age
was a little bit older than ours. Like late 20s, early 30s so there was like a maturity aspect when it
came to like integrating males and so I just- I just like watched them be like, while they can do it,
we can do it. Why are we freaking out? That females are gonna be allowed in combat roles?
Because they're doing it in these countries already and they're fine you know. It just gave me
perspective and I really appreciated seeing those different nations and like the pluses and
minuses on both and how we can improve and how, what how they're doing things and it was
just, it was cool.
Interviewer: Okay and did anything stand out to you about say a Japanese or Koreans?
(50.25)
So Asian- Asian countries they- they don't really integrate their females very well. So, when they
saw me a lot of them were just kind of like, like looking at me like I was a unicorn and I thought
that was funny, I got used to it after a while because we worked so often with other nations. But
it was just culturally like they don't have a lot of women heavily involved in their military. Not
saying that you know women don't have opportunity in those countries but in their military it
was just kind of weird that you know like I was just like a different foreign concept to them and
so that was in… that was interesting to kind of… it was, I thought it was funny and but it was
good, like I got to know them I'm a very friendly personality so I wasn't afraid to you know try
�and like I didn't obviously didn’t know the language but I'm not afraid to look kind of stupid to
get to know someone if you will, so. The Indonesians were fun, they would teach me somesome words and they just thought it was so funny like my accent and just I don’t know, it's good
I love my job for that to meet all these new people.
Interviewer: Okay and like how large was the section you were working with there and did
you have a team and so forth?
(51.47)
So, we had like I said, like a team between like eight and ten Marines in the public affairs and
then combat camera had like anywhere between like fifteen to thirty depending on the shop, but
when it comes to like video shoots and training, you're by yourself. So, you learned how to work
by yourself very like quickly. And you have to get all these, the missions and deadlines done
while coordinating what you need done with like for example an infantry battalion who doesn't
need Wi-Fi to upload photos and get them online, how do you function? Like how do you meet
your deadlines while being in the middle of a desert or being in an island with no connectivity
and so you have to problem-solve. So, individual working and problem-solving are like two
skills that I really picked up. Working with like, working at my job remotely.
Interviewer: Okay now when you'd go in the field like that what kind of equipment did you
take with you?
(52.45)
So you take your basic stuff like- like packs and your food and your, all your gear and everything
but also like my camera gear and computer were always with me because I needed to get photos
like put together, video projects put together, stories put together, and the soonest opportunity I
could to upload them I did. But I had all that extra gear too.
�Interviewer: Okay and the, I guess the camera equipment I mean how large a camera were
you carrying?
So, we had DSLRs which is like an awesome digital camera that does video and photos. So, we
are past the days of me carrying this giant video camera with me so, it's like the same, so like
yeah, the Canon- Canon just a normal camera kit that like professional photographers carry out
now is about the size of the kit I had.
Interviewer: Okay but that’s sort of on top of a lot of essentially the regular military kit or
at least if you're carrying your own food, water, things like that plus now did you have a
laptop computer or a tablet or what where you using at that point?
(53.46)
I had a laptop. Yeah so, you're right when it comes to like long distance hikes and stuff all thethe same- the packs that the guys had to carry; I had to carry that and camera gear. Now I- I
understand every guy had a different like weapon to carry too, like infantry guys have machine
guns and mortar tubes and like a bunch of other stuff additionally that I didn't have to carry but
the average standard pack we had and then I had the camera gear as well..
Interviewer: Alright so that- that original Marine training and so forth comes in handy at
that point because you’re used to go marching around places with a pack and all that kind
of thing. Okay, and are there other particular things about that first assignment in Hawaii
that kind of stand out for you?
(54.33)
Hawaii afforded me a lot more opportunity I think than Twentynine Palms and now I like I said I
like that base and it was fun learning the combat side of things; the desert warfare type things if
you will. But Hawaii I don’t know, I just, it's because there was an Air Wing there that was more
�available, I got to fly around more, I got to get on ship in Hawaii like I'd never been on a Navy
ship before. I, you know the Navy ship was a good experience but I'm really glad I didn't join the
Navy because I get seasick so like that's it, that's a real thing. I respect all those, my Navy friends
for that one. But I- I got to go to like the Big Island and train with like 40 other countries once,
like that was a master training exercise. I went to Australia for Marine Rotational Force Darwin.
The- the unit deployment program. I went to Australia again for Talisman Sabre so Australia was
a really only country that I got to visit, which is like kind of still my kind of deepest regret with
the military is not being able to, even though it wasn't my fault but not being able to travel as
much as I wanted to.
Interviewer: Right and you said with the deployments in history you mentioned Darwin
was at Darwin like the town in the northern part of Australia that you actually went to?
Yes.
Interviewer: Okay so what was that like?
(55.58)
Darwin, Darwin's like… so Darwin is not a like massive city like Sydney and it's kind of a
‘desert-y’ environment like really hot. It's not like a desert but it's just got like the tundra and
everything. So, we were based in Darwin but then we'd go on training exercises in Bradshaw
Training Area, which is like officially known, the- the outback if you well. So, we go into the
middle of the actual desert and we would run ranges and train and I mean it was sleeping
underneath the Milky Way in the middle of the outback. Seeing the Southern Cross, which is our
unit at the time, our unit constellation on our logo, like that was just it was just, it was so cool. I,
waking up like super early in the morning for a hike and like all the dust from the desert is like
piling up with a sunbeam showing through it, it was like a photographer's dream, like I had so
�much fun taking pictures in the outback. It was exhausting, you got dirty, you didn’t get to
shower very often, and you had to suck it up a lot, and you had to carry your own weight, but it
was an experience like nothing I've ever had.
(57.16)
Interviewer: Were you the only person from your unit that was doing that, or would you
have a few people that you knew with you?
So, in Darwin we had a few people, but we each like again when training exercise happened, we
each like went out and did our own thing. And when I actually went to train for our month and a
half, I believe that extra- that cycle was, we had four of us with us.
Interviewer: Okay.
So, we could all like kind of tag-team: you do video, I'll do photo, you write the story kind of
things, we all just kind of took turns.
Interviewer: Okay and when you went to that deployment do they fly you out or did you
have… so you're not riding a navy ship with a troop transport with everybody the whole
way?
(57.52)
Some do, I didn't I flew.
Interviewer: Alright, and then what was the other deployment in Australia then, as you
had…
That was a two-week training exercise, so it wasn't like a deployment it was called Talisman
Sabre every year there is a partnership with Australia in some way shape or form and there,
every other year they do Talisman Sabre and the off years are RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific
Exercise) I believe.
�Interviewer: Okay.
I'm trying to make sure all my information is correct. Like I…
Interviewer: So now what area were you in then for Talisman Sabre?
Darwin.
Interviewer: Okay you're back in Darwin again.
Yeah.
Interviewer: Okay and do they take you back out in the desert again? Or do you… Okay.
Yep so that, because there's only two weeks I… there's some training exercises I went out for a
day and came right back because I needed to get the photos up. I'm going out for two days, some
I went out for a month, so it just depended, or a month or two. It depended on what the demands
of that were like and I would you know, when on the longer training exercises I would have like
a USB and send it back of photos or whatever if I couldn't connect, and I’d- I’d figured it out
every- every place you went you figured it out.
Interviewer: Alright and so were there vehicles or helicopters going back and forth
between the field and the rear so you could either hitch a ride or give something to
somebody?
(59.14)
Yes, they're usually, so when we go out into the field there's like this, they set up like a- like a
base camp if you will, and then you go even further out. So, like there's the base camp that you
can go to- to deliver stuff to.
Interviewer: Right.
But you're still out there you're not, I'm not going all the way back to Darwin that was like a tenhour drive.
�Interviewer: Alright now some people that hear about Australia, they think about
interesting and dangerous fauna did you have to worry about scorpions and snakes and
things like that or was that not an issue?
I was worried about that but I, we're in the middle of the desert like and there's tall dry grass so
there was brush fires everywhere and there's wildfires all over that area and- and we kept far
enough away for safety and everything. But we were, so there was like really tall dry grass
because in the- the wet season the whole place is covered, swampy and in the dry it's like a waste
land so there’s really tall dry grass that we're walking through for our, one of our patrol
movements and we just, we’re supposed to be quiet you know because, you know coming up on
a hypothetical enemy and I was just sitting there with my camera walking through this tall grass
like kind of low-key panicking that there's gonna be these crazy poisonous creatures everywhere.
I like remember nudging the guy next to me, I didn’t know who he was I'm like, “are you
worried about like snakes and stuff.” And he just kind of looks at me he's like, “I don't know.”
And I looked over to another guy and he heard us and he's just kind of like “shh.” And I’m like
okay you know I guess- I guess we're just gonna accept our doom and continue like whatever.
Like I'm sure somebody thought about it.
Interviewer: Okay but there weren't any formal warnings about the fauna or anything like
that?
No, I mean we saw kangaroos and stuff, but we never encountered anything super dangerous so.
(1:01.05)
Interviewer: Alright and at least if the Kangaroos attack your people are armed so.
Yeah exactly.
�Interviewer: Alright so you have, now you do, when you're in Hawaii you do switch
assignments, you go to a different base and how did that come about?
So, when I first got to Hawaii, I spent a year in their Marine Corps Base Hawaii but then there
were openings at Camp Smith, Marine Corps Forces, Pacific and so we're taking
recommendations from because we, I guess we had too many people at Marine Corps Base
Hawaii so they just transferred me and one other person over. And that was a higher command
that was unlike any of the command I had been in. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific was in charge of
every Marine Corps unit in that area. So, I worked two floors below a three-star general, I
worked two doors down from a full-bird colonel which is one step below a general, so it was, as
a sergeant like who was used to just dealing with people, peers, and a few enlisted ranks above
me, I had to learn real quick how to… I always felt like I was professional, but I had to learn real
quick that, how to talk to senior leadership within the entire organization of the Marine Corps.
And it was a good experience, I think not a lot of Marines get to see a general level and work
next to one, and it was really fun to kind of learn from like the older generation of Marines and
kind of learn leadership styles from what they had experienced, what they are, what I want to be,
and just kind of take, it was a good learning experience.
Interviewer: Now were the more senior people, were they used to dealing with women or do
they handle that professionally or do you still have the sense that you kind of don't belong
here?
(1:02.52)
With senior leadership they’re way more professional.
Interviewer: Okay.
�So, that was not- not really an issue with, for the most part. I mean I can't speak for every female
Marine obviously there's a bunch of situations, but it was kind of refreshing working around
people who were like older and like genuinely cared about your development or where guiding
influences if you needed it and so.
Interviewer: And where there some higher-ranking women in that assignment as well so
you're...?
Yes, but with that, when it comes to female leadership it's hit and miss and at the risk of
sounding like negative and the same with males too. There's not… a lot of… a bad leadership
can ruin your unit, it can ruin your experience, it can ruin your attitude, I mean if you let it. So,
there's unfortunately there's like a stereotype for a female Marines for a reason because there are
people who have bad, poor moral character or just like people who just are not good at
leadership. But when you find that female that is like what you want to be, like that is someone
to like cling to and become a mentee of for sure.
(1:04.13)
Interviewer: Okay, alright and was your job now different from what it had been
previously? Are you doing a different set of things or just the same stuff for a different
group of people?
So, I stopped- I stopped being so much of a journalist and more of a brand marketer if you will
and focusing heavily on media relations. I learned how to write press releases and talking points
for the generals when/ should they be interviewed. Media escorts; got to work with CNN, Fox,
VICE News, Reuters so I mean it was cool. I got to meet a lot of Pearl Harbor veterans because
Pearl Harbor is right down the road from Camp Smith. I got to see a lot of and appreciate a lot of
�like the history that I am a part of, and I learned a lot about the Marines’ role in the Pacific- the
Pacific Theater during World War II, so.
Interviewer: Alright does anybody, I mean so the, so some of it is you're gonna… using
Marine Corps history to help kind of promote the Marine Corps? Or are there some of the
events going on that your part of because you're at Pearl, in that Pearl Harbor area? Now
do they also pay attention to things that Marines did later, you know Vietnam or Korea or
the more recent conflicts, was that also, did you do things that related to those or was it
mostly World War II and now?
(1:05.42)
Absolutely actually I had a combat camera friend go to Vietnam to document retrieval of bodies
of Marines that never came home or service members.
Interviewer: Right.
So, like it was very, the history of the- the US presence in that area is very real and it's like still
a- a like it's still a big part of the history and taken very seriously and respectfully. When I was in
Hawaii 35 bodies of Marines were excavated from Tarawa from World War II an island of
Tarawa. Marines still hike to Iwo Jima like to this day to put their rank or their emblem on the
top to memorialize like the Marines that died there. The history of the Marine Corps is very
important to Marines; it's just who we are it's- it's those who came before us and those who are
coming after us. We kind of all see each other in like a bonding way of you were a Marine, and
this is what you did, and mad respect to you because you know that's- that's kind of what we're
all here for and so we’re, take care of our World War II veterans and Vietnam veterans if we get
the chance for sure.
�Interviewer: Okay now you basically do two hitches, you do eight years in the Marines. At
what point did you decide you were leaving?
(1:07.16)
The decision to get out was very bittersweet because I never stopped loving the Marine Corps. A
lot of, a lot of people get out because they're disheartened or disgruntled but like that was, I felt
like I was ready to get out. I did not get the deployment opportunities that I really wanted, and I
wasn't going to.
Interviewer: Okay.
And there's a… and I- I saw the next base I was going to would have advanced my career, but it
wouldn't have advanced my- my like just like my goals.
Interviewer: Yeah, your personal agenda, where you wanted to go. So, where did theywhere did they want to send you next?
They wanted to send me to a recruiting station to be a public affairs representative for an entire
region of recruiting which would have been awesome for my career. As a Marine though I- I
wanted to lead junior Marines, I wanted to deploy, and I wanted to do what I signed up to do and
that wasn't it. So, I just, I applied for some things to do. I didn't really get them and the decision
to get out was a very like personal like okay, I'm ready to go to college, like I'm ready to start a
new path, and I think it's important and any advice I give Marines that are getting out is make
sure you're ready. Because even now I don't regret the decision to get out, I miss it, but I don't
regret the decision to get out, but I encounter a lot of veterans who were like, “I want back in.”
And like you gotta be ready to get out, if you're not ready you're gonna like, what if I would have
stayed in mentality would tear you up so.
(1:08.50)
�Interviewer: Alright so when did you get out?
I got out the day after our Marine Corps ball in 2016 so it was kind of like the best like goingaway party I can take for myself, yeah so.
Interviewer: Okay and now you're back and you're a student at Grand Valley State
University, what are you majoring in?
I'm majoring in PR and advertising with an emphasis in PR with a minor in photography and I
am learning so much. Like it was fun doing photography in the Marine Corps, I learned a lot
there but the technical skills were not taught to me the way they should have, and I'm just
enjoying learning how to do studio photography, and abstract photography, and storytelling
photography on a level that I've never done before.
Interviewer: Okay now do you find that your background helps you or you know things
that some of the other traditional students don't know?
100% the military has 100% prepared me to set me up for success in the civilian world, at least
in the college environment and I have no doubt in the professional world as well. They've just,
they taught me, I didn't have discipline getting into the military, I have discipline now and I
didn't have as much confidence going in as I do now. Now confidence isn't like, I'm not cocky
I'm still humble, I've come from humble beginnings and like that's where I'm, I know where I
come from, but there is a level of like I got this and challenge accepted type mentality that I
didn't really have before, other than to take on the challenge of being a Marine so.
(1:10.26)
Interviewer: Okay well you've effectively answered the usual final question of an interview
like this; how do you think your- your time in the service affected you? Because I think you
just told me. Now are there, is there anything else that you recall that you- you want to put
�on the record here before we close this interview out? Or anything else, you think that kind
of stands with you in your mind that, if you think back to being in the Marines?
I definitely grew a lot as a person. There were some dark times and there were some really
motivating times. I- I was not like the perfect poster child of being a Marine but I did my best
and I think that the- the concept of a poster child is not an accurate one because we all come
from different walks of life. I'm grateful and I have nothing but good things to say about it even
though the challenges, even with sexism stuff that's not the Marine Corps fault, that's a human
error, and a lot of women unfortunately get like really disgruntled towards that attitude and
disheartened, and you just get exhausted after fighting a stereotype for so long and you still can't
win because it's a cultural mentality. It's not- it’s not like an individual person you can have a
discussion with.
Interviewer: Yeah, did that evolve at all over time, I mean or was you just by changing
stations you have a different environment?
No, it never evolved, never changed and the worst I got, the more rank I picked up and I mean I
ran into some really good leadership and really bad leadership. And the really good leadership
encouraged me and mentored me in a way I clung to that, and I guess that would be like advice
to anyone I would give is to cling to the ones you want to be like.
(1:12.07)
Interviewer: Yeah.
And learn, learn continue to learn from the ones that you don't want to be like. But, yeah it, a lot
of females had it worse off than I did because I'm a very flexible personality I- I try to
understand where people are coming from even though they say messed up things, I try to have
discussions with people and I wasn't like, I- I'm very slow to anger. So, like a lot of women
�really struggled with getting like, taking it so personally and so angry and instead of like letting it
roll off. Gotta get some thick skin and sometimes I think thicker skin than some of the guys. I
mean they have their own battles too they have to fight; the whole Marine mentality like you
have to be the Captain America, you know and if you're not then you're not really a good Marine
and like that's just a stereotype they have to face so we each have our own struggles. But I think
the most important thing is to respect each other's struggles and that's what a lot of, I found male
Marines lacked was the respect for the struggle of fighting that stereotype, instead of just
assuming, if that makes sense.
Interviewer: Sure, it does.
Assuming that we're part of it.
Interviewer: Yeah and it's really sophisticated view of the whole thing really and I’d just
like to close out here by thank you- thank you for taking the time to share the story today,
really told us quite a bit.
I appreciate you having me thank you.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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RHC-27_AndersonS2303V
Title
A name given to the resource
Anderson, Sarah (Interview transcript and video), 2019
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-04-19
Description
An account of the resource
Sarah Anderson was born in 1990 in Muskegon, Michigan, and lived in the same house for her entire childhood. Anderson graduated high school in 2009 and immediately joined the Marine Corps since she disliked the mundane environment of the classroom, was energetic, and saw the positive impact the Corps had upon her brother. During the 9/11 attacks, Anderson was in the fifth grade and remembers being sent home early after hearing of the attacks over the radio, later influencing her decision to join the service. She attended Marine Boot Camp in August of 2009 at Parris Island, South Carolina, where male recruits were separated from female recruits, even though training standards were equal between the sexes. In addition to basic training, recruits were instructed on hand-to-hand combat in the Marine Martial Arts Program and Anderson recalled how all training was meant to break down recruits to build them up again as skilled, devoted, proud soldiers. After Boot Camp, Anderson transferred into Marine Combat Training in Fort Johnson, North Carolina, where she chose her career within the Corps, and then to Fort Meade, Maryland, for her Marine Occupational Specialty schooling in public affairs. She then chose her occupation within the Corps as a Combat Correspondent, or Strategic Communications and Mass Communicator, and described her occupational schooling as greatly constructive due to her greater exposure to the experiences of other branches of the U.S. Armed Forces. Anderson's first base assignment was in Twentynine Palms, California, where she interviewed Marines before they were deployed to Afghanistan, growing attached to her work and to the stories of these men. When her first four years of service ended, Anderson was encouraged to reenlist by her fellow Marines as well as an underlying dread that she had not seen enough of the Corps or the world. Once reenlisted, she opted to be stationed in bases on Oahu Island, Hawaii, where she continued her media work online and through interviews. She became exposed to working with military personnel of all ranks, urging her to quickly develop proper etiquette for addressing high ranking soldiers and commanders. She also acquired opportunities to work with military personnel from other nations from across the globe, allowing her to see into the military cultures of other countries. Anderson concluded that her work on Oahu taught her the values of working individually, thus independently, and problem solving between the needs of various specializations within the military. Later, she transferred to Darwin, Australia, for Marine Rotational Force Darwin, a unit deployment program, and Talus Mu Saber, a two-week training exercise held every other year between the American and Australian militaries. Anderson became more of a 'brand marketer' than a Combat Correspondent, focusing on both media and public relations through working with major media outlets, social media, and other forms of press coverage. With this new focus, she became more integrated with the history of the Corps in the Second World War, Vietnam, as well as current conflicts. After eight years in the service, Anderson made the difficult decision to leave the Corps in 2016 since she never acquired the deployment opportunities she strived for. From there, she attended Grand Valley State University for a degree in PR, advertising, and photography. She commended her recent academic ventures for teaching her the technical skills that the Corps could not provide her while also commending the Corps for teaching her discipline and responsibility. Reflecting upon her service, Anderson believed she grew tremendously as a person through the Corps by doing her best, especially in the face of subtle, underlying sexism or gender stereotypes. Ultimately, these subtle tensions in gender relations remained constant during her service. She also adhered to the moral and ethical teachings of various mentors and instructors who helped her build a stronger character and skills in leadership.
Pre-Enlistment: (00:00:52:00)
Enlistment/Training: (00:06:30:00)
Service: (00:29:48:00)
Post-Service Life: (01:07:17:00)
Reflections: (01:09:43:00)
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Anderson, Sarah
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
United States. Marine Corps
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
video/mp4
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Veterans History Project collection, RHC-27
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections & University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401.
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Language
A language of the resource
eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b2a5e2b8fcb48a883fc57ad0e1584c0a.mp4
fd1cecd183e183d0b2b905fcb90c9d7d
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/eac40e377056536e7101f40bdbdf1286.pdf
e3419816a8c8dffc6eb2ece3dc5583f8
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Wayne Anderson
(01:18:05)
Background (00:11)
Wayne Anderson introduces himself (00:11)
Born March 10, 1924 in Ionia Michigan (00:35)
Doesn’t remember much before grade school (01:06)
Emerson School, still standing today, and it was an old elementary school when
he was there. (01:22)
• Mother was a housemaid and his father worked all the time, commercial baker
(02:08)
• High School no longer stands, had built a new one when he was going into it
• Went to WV Lincoln School, it was a junior high (03:48)
• Ionia High School
o Didn’t play sports or instruments (04:26)
• Graduated in 1942 (05:43)
• Didn’t hear any speeches by Adolf Hitler (06:27)
• Anderson and interviewer have a good time reminiscing about radios (07:10)
• Discuss giving radio to nursing home radio museum and price inflation (10:03)
Employment Before Service
• Worked for Rexall Drug Store for three years (10:21)
• Got a job at a factory making jeep seats and tarps for the service
o Got paid more at the factory then at the drug store, quit on the spot of the
offer (11:01)
Enlistment (11:23)
• He was drafted
o Remembers the words: “Your friends and neighbors have chosen you”
(11:23)
• Sent to Camp Custer in Battle Creek, Michigan
o Spent three weeks here for pre-basic training (12:00)
• Didn’t travel a lot before his service, he was scared and confused because he
didn’t know what the future held for him (12:14)
• He got drafted at age 18
• Sent to Jefferson Barracks in Missouri for basic training
o “Hell hole of the nation” (14:44)
• Basic training, worked to the ground
o Officers were mean (14:55)
• Woke up at 5:30 a.m.
o Had to make beds, clean up, and get dressed in minutes then run out for
roll call
• Couldn’t even use the restrooms before roll (16:21)
•
•
•
•
�Could choose where he went into training
o Cook, armaments, airborne
• He took up armaments (18:15)
• Learned how to take apart a gun and put it back together (18:58)
• Sent to Lansing Michigan to learn about guns
• He didn’t go visit his family in Ionia when he was in Michigan because he didn’t
have time or transportation (19:54)
Training (21:56)
• Went to Hamiliton Field in California
o Permanent place, brick buildings
o Was here for three weeks (21:56)
• March Field, now its March Air Base
o Stayed here for a long time (23:11)
• Put on a train and sent to Kansas City, then on to Boston to a military camp near
there (24:06)
• Sat around, nothing to do while waiting for their assignment (25:10)
• Taken to New York, marched into a warehouse and told they were aboard the
Queen Elizabeth, they did not realize they had entered onto a boat
o En route to England
o Ship traveled alone because it went very fast (26:25)
England (28:16)
• Nice, hot weather(28:16)
• King’s Cliff Air Base in England 1943 (30:35)
• Argues about planes with the interviewer
o P-51 Mustangs won the war
o They could fly to Berlin and back (32:08)
• At King’s Cliff Air Base for two years while he was in Europe (33:02)
• Set out P-51 Mustangs and loaded them up with ammo and repaired them on the
D-Day invasion (33:24)
• Went to Manchester when he was given weekend passes
o Went to pubs, and took girls out (38:30)
• Weren’t bombing too heavily by Germans when he got there
o Germans probably didn’t know there was an Air Base there
o The Germans were testing heavily with the V2 rockets
• Could hear an explosion from up to four miles away (41:20)
• Talked about buzz bombs
• “If you could hear them you were safe” (42:32)
• He was not married when he went to war
o He looked for a new girl everywhere he went, didn’t tie himself down
(44:32)
Battle of the Bulge (45:57)
• Took six men from every air base to be sent down to Hamilton Air Base for basic
infantry training to be sent out to reinforce those at the battle of the Bulge
o Intensive
• Sent to France once his training was done
•
�Camp Chesterfield, 30 miles from Paris
o Never took a leave to go to Paris (47:41)
• He was not needed for combat duty when his training was done
o Turned to the south, went to Lyon
o Told not to drink the water, drainage pipes went right into water supply
(48:21)
• Made camp in Marseille, France
o Was here when war ended (51:12)
• Spent three weeks on machine gun guard duty at a German P.O.W. camp
o The inmates were given spoons to eat with due to fear of the German
soldiers using them as shanks
� Given pails to be filled with food to eat out of (51:28)
• Told to board a ship that was headed for the South Seas theatre in the Pacific
• When they got on to the ship they were told that they were going home, lots of
tears of joy
o Happy when they saw the Statue of Liberty (57:07)
• Docked in New York, doesn’t remember where he went after that
o Thinks he went back to Boston (59:18)
• Sent back to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri (59:55)
• At Jefferson Barracks, a group of men were marched over to a building and told
to find a seat, they were then told they were honorably dismissed from the Army
Air Corps
o Put through demarcation procedures (01:00:00)
After the Service (01:02:10)
• Dropped off in Grand Rapids on his return trip
• He was in Calais, France when he heard about the bombs being dropped on in
Japan
o He doesn’t feel that the US had a very good idea of the exact capabilities
of the bombs (01:05:07)
• Met his wife and they had a few dates then got married after six weeks (01:06:00)
• Is sad about his wife and her mental condition that she has developed
• They discuss their marriages (01:10:08)
• He was not a part of unions when he joined the workforce after the war
o Thy control your life and ruin the economy (01:14:50)
• Worked on a punch press (01:15:14)
• Quit his job because he was given the choice to join the union or be fired, so he
quit to stand up for his beliefs on the matter (01:16:06)
• Went to college for a few semesters, GI Bill did not help him with all the funding
o Had a baby coming so he had to drop out to get a job to pay for the child
and his family
o Moved around a lot (01:17:06)
•
**Cuts out**
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Anderson, Wayne S. (Interview outline and video), 2007
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Anderson, Wayne S.
Description
An account of the resource
Wayne Anderson served as an armorer in the Army Air Corps from 1942 to 1945. He was based in England and serviced fighter planes, primarily P-51 Mustangs, that escorted bombing missions. At the time of the Battle of the Bulge, he was assigned to infantry training in France, but was not needed for combat. He served as a prison camp guard before being sent back to the US for his discharge.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Collins Sr., Charles E. (Interviewer)
Collins, Carol (Interviewer)
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
United States. Army. Air Corps
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Video recordings
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2007-06-29
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AndersonW
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4