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Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Vietnam War
Kim Tuck
Length of Interview: (01:25:30:00)
Pre-enlistment / Training (00:00:12:00)
He grew up in the rural area around Battle Creek, Michigan, living mostly on
farms, and spent a lot of his early teens working on a sawmill that his grandfather
operated (00:00:12:00)
Born in 1946 (00:00:34:00)
Went to college at Michigan State (00:00:44:00)
During that time, the draft was used heavily in recruitment for the military and in
1966, Tuck received a draft notice (00:00:51:00)
o He and his fiancée moved their wedding date up three months to
accommodate the draft (00:01:06:00)
Tuck was standing in line at the draft center ready to go to Detroit for induction
when a lady came out and told him and another man that they had reinstated the
college deferment and the two men did not have to go (00:01:20:00)
Went back to college and graduated in 1969 with a B.S. in Building Science
(00:01:41:00)
o The draft board notified him upon graduation that he was back in the
process and would be leaving in March to be inducted again (00:01:55:00)
Instead, Tuck went down to the local Air Force recruitment office to talk about
enlisting in the Air Force (00:02:09:00)
o The recruiters said he could qualified for the Officers Candidate process
(OCS) if he qualified to be a pilot candidate; at the time, the Air Force was
only taking pilot candidates for OCS (00:02:20:00)
o Tuck went to the center and took a series of tests and after the first three
hours, he wondered what else more could they test him on (00:02:40:00)
o Test involved looking at moon graphs, cloud cover, picking out sights on
photographs and answering questions and out of the twenty-four testtakers, only two, including Tuck, qualified for the pilot process
(00:02:57:00)
Went to Selfridge Air Force Base for a physical and discovered that he had
elevated blood pressure, so the Air Force required him to get blood pressure
readings for the following weeks (00:03:16:00)
o Found a doctor that would do the readings for Tuck; instead of paying
Tuck, using his construction experience, traded for free readings
(00:03:32:00)
o Received a clean bill of health, went back through and was signed up for
the delayed enlistment program (00:03:47:00)
In Fall of 1969, he went down to Lackland Air Force Base after being processed
through Detroit and spent the next ninety days in officers training (00:03:59:00)
�
o During officers training, the military came out with the lottery system for
the draft and the trainees were told that if they wanted to drop out of the
program and take their chances with the lottery, they could and several
did; Tuck’s number in the lottery was eight, so he was going either way
(00:04:22:00)
OCS consisted of a long day; got up at five o’clock in the morning and be dressed
and ready for the chow line by six o’clock (00:04:52:00)
o They marched everywhere in formation and when eating, they had three
minutes to eat from when the food was placed in front of them until they
had to be back outside in formation (00:05:06:00)
o They had to sit at attention while eating and Tuck got into a bad habit of
eating too fast for years following his service (00:05:20:00)
o They had portion of the day dedicated to marching in formation,
calisthenics, running and then about six hours of academics; the days were
exhausting and it never seemed like they got enough sleep (00:05:44:00)
o Had some very valuable lessons, including a lesson that that has followed
him; a class on resistance to change (00:06:08:00)
All the trainees in the class were upperclassmen in the last month
of training and they were sitting in the classroom waiting for the
instructor to begin when all the sudden, a strange officer came in, a
captain they had never seen before, and began reading the riot act
to the trainees, saying that nothing the trainees had done was right
(00:06:22:00)
The regular instructor then came in laughing, saying that the
trainees had just had their first lesson in resistance to change
(00:06:57:00)
This was the factor that would be the plague of the trainees for
most of their assignments; getting people to change and to
overcome their natural instinct to resist (00:07:05:00)
The instructors were teaching them how to recognize the resistance
to something that is different to a person’s routine (00:07:29:00)
They also taught the trainees more management processes and how
to deal with people (00:07:57:00)
The Air Force was unique in that a lot of it was run like a business; some of the
newer officers understood this and some of the older officers did not have the
training or the skills, a fact that was evident to Tuck when he got into the field,
especially in Southeast Asia (00:08:03:00)
From OCS, he went directly to pilot training at Del Rio Air Force Base in Texas,
where he started out in the T-41, essentially a military version Cessna 172, to
learn the basics of flying a plane (00:08:36:00)
o Moved up to the T-37, a twin seat jet aircraft, and then into more advanced
aircraft; however, he ended up blacking out a four Gs; with such a low G
tolerance, he was not able to continue in the pilot training process
(00:09:03:00)
�
From there, Tuck had a choice of critical career fields and he put in for missile
launch officer and munitions maintenance officer and ended up receiving a
munitions maintenance officer slot (00:09:33:00)
Went through munitions training, a six month program with six hours of class
everyday, in Denver, Colorado at Lowry Air Force Base (00:09:55:00)
o They learned everything it seemed there was to learned about every
weapons system on every aircraft that was operational at the time, along
with all of the munitions, warfare agents, and nuclear weapon systems
(00:10:13:00)
o At the time, they needed a “top-secret” clearance to go through munitions
school and Tuck discovered that the Air Force went back and talked to
even his grade school teachers (00:10:37:00)
The investigators were concerned because he and his wife had
taken a vacation to Florida and they could not account for where he
was for the vacation (00:10:55:00)
He was eventually approved and was placed into the training
program (00:11:10:00)
During training, Tuck’s wife was back home for the most part, although for pilot
training, she was with him at Del Rio (00:11:20:00)
o They then moved into an apartment in Denver for his munitions training
and their daughter was born in Denver at the Army Hospital (00:11:34:00)
First Assignment (00:12:15:00)
After munitions school, he received his first assignment (00:12:15:00)
o He was supposed to go to Minot, North Dakota but another trainee in the
class received an assignment in Michigan, so the Air Force offered the two
men the chance to switch assignments (00:12:20:00)
o Since both men were from around the other’s assignment area, they
switched and Tuck ended up going to Wurtsmith Air Force Base in
Michigan (00:12:35:00)
o He and his family’s first few days on base were quite an experience
because they had to move into temporary house as the base did not have
housing available (00:12:46:00)
They ended up staying in the old emergency response pilot
quarters, a couple of old house trailers, and were awaken several
times a night when B-52s would take off and land on the runway
next to the building (00:13:08:00)
Tuck had two missions on the base: munitions services where he took care of the
training of all the loading crews for the B-52s and later, he took over the weapons
maintenance area where they maintained the weapons for both nuclear missions
and conventional support (00:13:51:00)
o Munitions referred to bombs and ammunition for the 20 mm gatling guns
in the rear of the B-52 as well as wing-mounted missiles that the bombers
had early on (00:14:36:00)
o They also loaded conventional weapons for training missions
(00:14:55:00)
�
They also supported the alert missions, planes ready to take-off at a moment’s
notice (00:15:10:00)
o Tuck spent many nights on the flight line monitoring and making sure
none of the weapons were sabotaged (00:15:19:00)
o A lot of winter nights with heavy clothing, winter parkas and fighting to
clear snow to load the munitions (00:15:50:00)
They had a lot of emergency response drills, nearly two a month, when some
agency would call (00:16:15:00)
o One time when he was going to an emergency response, he heard over the
radio that the mission was not a drill and that they were under attack
(00:16:34:00)
o Turned out that it was a mistake because someone in command had read
the wrong message (00:16:56:00)
o Tuck thought they were going to war because it was recently after the
Pueblo Crisis (00:17:04:00)
o Parts of the drills involved removing all the real munitions and putting on
dummy munitions to test the response times of the operations
(00:17:31:00)
o Tuck had the responsibility of being the explosives safety officer, the
nuclear safety officer, the ground safety officer and training the troops in
properly using the equipment (00:17:52:00)
The munitions maintenance portion consisted of forty men plus eight senior
NCOs and when he moved into the bomb dump area, it was a smaller operation,
with four two-man crews and four senior NCOs (00:18:21:00)
o He ended up getting a commendation medal for the flight line operations
portion in part due to one of his enlisted men being very detailed oriented
(00:18:53:00)
Essentially they did depot level maintenance in the field and the equipment was
some of the best in the Air Force at the time (00:19:14:00)
Most of the enlisted men were draftees, some of whom had come from other
services (00:19:54:00)
o The munitions program demanded a higher quality of enlisted personal
and some of Tuck’s enlisted men were college graduates, meaning that
Tuck had an intelligent group of men and the majority were very good at
what they did (00:20:02:00)
o They had a lot of people advance through the ranks rapidly because unlike
some of the other forces, the Air Force gave promotions based on the
soldier’s intellect (00:20:23:00)
o The morale of the unit was were good; they rarely had any problems and
part of this was due to the background checks performed on each man
before he was admitted to the program (00:21:07:00)
Was at Wurtsmith from November 1970 until 1972 (00:21:44:00)
They did not have much exposure to the anti-war movement, partly because they
were at a remote base, removed from any large metropolitan areas (00:22:18:00)
o The movement really had not been getting into the full process while he
was in college, even though there was fifty thousand students at Michigan
�
State, although there were few people at the university around the fringe
who were anti-war (00:22:31:00)
Eighteen months was a long time for an officer with a munitions background to be
in one place (00:23:19:00)
o Tuck had another senior officer partner who was eligible to get out of the
military, did manage to get out but after two weeks, called the commander
of the squadron, wanting to come back to the Air Force (00:23:27:00)
o The Air Force got him back in and immediately went to EOD school and
that was Tuck’s first experience working with explosives (00:24:04:00)
The two were responsible for disposing of outdated munitions, so
in the middle of winter, they went out to the EOD range
(00:24:19:00)
They had a few thousands pen-gun flares to dispose of which they
sent a good amount of time shooting into the clearing before
deciding to blow the flares up instead of burning them, which
would have taken more time (00:25:01:00)
When they set off the explosives, the sky was filled with
thousands of lit pen-gun flares (00:25:46:00)
o Most of his time was spent responding to the alerts that they had all the
time (00:26:19:00)
Eventually he received his orders to go to Southeast Asia (00:26:26:00)
o He had had a little exposure to what was going on in Southeast Asia
because he had a tech sergeant assigned to him who had worked for the
CIA and Air America as a gun plumber on the C-47’s, maintaining the
gatling guns (00:26:32:00)
The sergeant had had two tours in Southeast Asia working for the
CIA and each time he had to resign from the military to do the
secret missions although he was paid quite well, roughly
equivalent to $80,000 -$90,000 dollars, tax free (00:27:00:00)
The sergeant told the others a lot about what was happening in
Southeast Asia although he was a quite guy and he did not talk a
lot about what he actually did, apart from the benefits he received
and the environmental issues he faced while living over there
(00:27:28:00)
o Tuck was originally supposed to go to Da Nang Air Force Base, where at
the time, they were bombing right of the end of the runway because the
enemy was so close to the base (00:28:15:00)
o He had a thirty day layover in Denver for a refresher course for
conventional munitions and during that time, his orders where changed to
go to Takhli Air Force Base in Thailand because the unit he had been
assigned to, the 366th Tank Fighter Squadron, had moved to the base
(00:28:27:00)
Takhli (00:28:48:00)
When he arrived at Takhli, they were still renovating the base, meaning that they
did not have any of the comforts that they would eventually have (00:28:48:00)
�
He worked nights from six pm to six am and they were loading aircraft all night
long (00:29:05:00)
There was also a contingent of Air America at the base, which was an interesting
operation to watch (00:29:20:00)
o The pilot would taxi up to their loading area, stick his head out of the
window while smoking a cigar, reverse the spin of the propellers and back
the plane up to where others would load the plane with supplies, including
chickens, pigs, bombs, munitions, and rice (00:29:28:00)
o The pilot would get out of the aircraft with bandoliers across his chest,
pistols on his hips and wearing Bermuda shorts and flower shirts
(00:30:01:00)
o The others on the base knew that they were flying goods into the
Montagnard people in the Highlands (00:30:35:00)
Tuck did know what the missions were of the planes that he was loading with
munitions (00:31:48:00)
o The planes were doing a lot of bombing and he saw of the strike films
because his portion of the operation was in direct support of the activity
and if there were any munitions that did not perform, he needed to know
(00:31:51:00)
o There was a count taken after every mission and if on occasion the
munitions came back, they met the planes when they landed (00:32:10:00)
o They had aircraft returning damaged and Tuck’s roommate said that
seeing a SAM fired looked like a white picket fence coming towards the
aircraft (00:32:30:00)
If the missile did not impact, they had a proximity fuse that caused
it to explode and throw shrapnel into the aircraft (00:32:54:00)
They also had a squadron of F-111s on the base as part of the Air Force’s
determination of the effective ability of the rapid dispersement of the F-111,
which was relatively new to the Air Force inventory (00:33:07:00)
o They were supposed to have the eight aircraft fly across the ocean, land,
reload the aircraft, and immediately turn around and do another mission
within twenty-four hours (00:33:35:00)
o On the first mission, of the eight aircraft, they launched three and only one
returned (00:33:55:00)
o It was interesting to hear how the pilots claimed the others were shot
down, which they claimed was the golden BB (00:34:05:00)
The planes had terrain-following radar and they flew just above the
tree tops, so someone happened to fire up and hit something in the
right place (00:34:12:00)
o On the second mission, one plane came back and the entire bottom of
aircraft was torn up; there was not a single square inch of metal that was
not twisted or destroyed (00:34:40:00)
Tuck talked with the pilots, who explained that they “experienced
some turbulence” and they had no idea the bottom of the aircraft
looked the way it did (00:34:57:00)
�
They had received missile lock-on warnings, jettisoned their
bombs, dove to avoid the missiles and ended up running into their
own bombs as they impacted the ground below (00:35:11:00)
He saw a lot of aircraft that he was amazed could even return to the base
(00:35:35:00)
They lost just a few aircraft; it was not very often that they lost an aircraft
(00:35:45:00)
o However, one time he had a pilot talk to him, questioning how the bombs
were hung on his plane; he was carrying napalm canisters which have a
white phosphorous fuse that was set up differently then other fuses
(00:35:53:00)
o That plane did not return from the mission and that was one time that Tuck
personally talked to someone that they lost (00:36:30:00)
At Takhli, they lived in barracks built with slotted exterior walls and were
partially screened (00:36:53:00)
o It was an experience sleeping in them, especially during the day because it
was so hot that that they just laid on the sheets after wiping off the gecko
dung because geckos lived in the rafters of the barracks, eating the bugs
(00:37:08:00)
Also, the Thai Air Force had old F-86 aircraft and they did practice
flying over the barracks and it woke the men up when aircraft
when screaming over the buildings (00:37:36:00)
o Tuck would get off at six o’clock in the morning and try to get as much
sleep as he could before it became super hot (00:38:04:00)
Takhli was about eighty kilometers north of Bangkok (00:38:23:00)
o There was a fairly sizable town right next to the base and once in a while,
some of the men would go down and eat at a local restaurant
(00:38:31:00)
o He had a chief master sergeant assigned to the squadron whose girlfriend
was a wealth Thai lady, who would come to the base with her Mercedes
and chauffer to pick the sergeant up and take him into town (00:38:47:00)
She owned a fleet of five hundred vehicles that were leased the
U.S. military to use on the base (00:39:05:00)
They had two parties in the town that she paid for in celebration of
the sergeant’s birthday (00:39:16:00)
Takhli was a base of pretty good size; they had five squadrons of F-4s, although
one was in revetments but when he got to Udon, all the squadrons were in
revetments (00:39:43:00)
o Udon Air Force Base was a larger, better built base that had been in place
for a long period of time (00:40:12:00)
He had a couple of incidences at Takhli that scared him (00:40:21:00)
o One night he was doing his monitoring of the loading crews when he
drove up behind one of the door crews and he could see that they were
loading the wrong side of the aircraft but they were too far along for him
to stop them (00:40:28:00)
�
Just as he drove up, they positioned the munitions to be locked into
place on the pylon and the other part of the lift truck punctured the
wing tank on the F-4, shooting fuel out twenty feet and all over the
bomb lift truck driver (00:40:57:00)
Tuck called for a wash-down truck and the flight ops people came
down in their van while the fuel leak had spread to around sixty
feet in diameter (00:41:22:00)
When one of the flight ops men got out of the fan, he threw down
his cigarette right in the middle of the fuel leak and Tuck thought
that they were done for but the man put the cigarette out
(00:41:45:00)
o Another night, he was driving down the flight line monitoring the aircraft
and he saw a bomb convoy, aircraft tow vehicles used to pull bomb
trailers, trucking down the line when one of the bomb trailers detached
(00:42:01:00)
Tuck is following behind and calling the op’s people
(00:42:35:00)
The trailer traveled two or three hundred feet and it sheered off the
nose cone off of the nose cone of the tip tank of an F-4, dumping
out all three hundred gallons of fuel and stopped an inch or so from
the nose gear of the plane; thankfully nothing happened
(00:42:42:00)
They had around one hundred airplanes, fully fueled and armed
and an explosion could have been a problem (00:43:15:00)
There were military police with dogs that monitored the perimeter of the base and
every once in a while, they would hear bullets hit the metal roof of the building
(00:43:38:00)
o However, the bullets were fired from so far away that all their momentum
was sent (00:43:53:00)
o They never had an issue at Takhli (00:44:02:00)
Udon (00:44:12:00)
At one point, they did a rapid deployment from Takhli to Udon with one of their
squadrons (00:44:12:00)
o They were all marshaled to C-123 aircraft and in the plane were nothing
but cargo palettes and the men had to sit on the palettes and although they
flight was not long, it was an experience (00:44:24:00)
His son was born while he was in Thailand and he received R&R and an
emergency return to the United States (00:45:17:00)
o He flew from Thailand to Vietnam to the Philippines to Guam in the back
of a C-141 aircraft, sitting on a fold-down shelf next to a jet engine, before
going to the United States (00:45:27:00)
The Thai people were really friendly (00:46:05:00)
o He had maid service for his quarters for eight to ten bucks a month; the
maid washed his clothes, shined his boots and swept out the room and she
�
spoke enough English so that Tuck learned a little about the local culture
(00:46:12:00)
o He never saw any hostility from the locals, even when he took a three day
R&R to Bangkok (00:46:45:00)
He had an accommodating taxi driver whose fee was only two or
three bottles of cheap booze and he drove Tuck everywhere that
Tuck wanted to go (00:46:57:00)
The taxi driver set up the hotel for Tuck and even negotiated the
price (00:47:38:00)
Tuck found the driver by chance when he arrived at the bus depot,
which had a mob of taxi drivers around it and when Tuck asked the
man’s price, he said he wanted the booze, so they went to the base
PX and Tuck bought three bottles of the booze (00:47:52:00)
The driver even took him to a nice French restaurant, although
Tuck suspects that all the places the driver took him gave the
driver kick-backs for delivering a customer (00:48:26:00)
The driver took him to the water gardens and waited while Tuck
took the tour (00:48:38:00)
The main thing the men were taught regarding keeping safe when off base was
dealing with hookers and drugs (00:49:02:00)
o The Air Force gave them an indoctrination at each base, telling them
where the problems were, certain areas outside the gate that they did not
want to use the taxi and in what locations to stay away from the women
(00:49:12:00)
o The men were told that they could get anyone killed for a carton of
cigarettes but if the men were smart about what they were doing, they
could avoid all that (00:49:41:00)
One time, he took a ride in a pedal powered cab down a highway, something that
he will never do again because riding in the cab with truck convoys and the large
amounts of traffic was quite an experience (00:50:01:00)
The drainage ditches were sewage and the water was so filthy that he could not
see the bottom and could see the water moving from insects (00:50:36:00)
o Once, he was on a boat near the market when a young boy dove into the
dirty water and swimming up to the boat, tried to sell things to the
passengers (00:51:02:00)
He rode a train from Udon down to Bangkok for his flight out on one R&R where
he went back to the United States and people were cooking in woks in the middle
of the cars and the train stopped at every road crossing, making an eighty to
ninety mile trip take thirteen hours (00:51:34:00)
The men in his unit were very similar to the men he had served with back in the
United States, just more of them (00:52:24:00)
o When he moved from Takhli to Udon, he became the munitions services
officer, who was in charge of loading operations, the weapons systems
maintenance operation and the weapons reload operation, and he had
almost five hundred soldiers working for him (00:52:30:00)
�
The first experience of going to Udon was quite a big one because the morning
after his first night on duty, he had to go and talk with the squadron commander, a
major (00:53:07:00)
o He went into the major’s morning briefing room and all the senior NCOs
and officers assigned to the squadron were in the room in a circle and
Tuck read them the statistics from the previous missions, including how
many planes they had loaded and a list of accomplishments (00:53:25:00)
o As Tuck reported, the major exploded and gave a tirade for a few minutes
before storming out the door; the room was silent for a moment then
everyone laughed and they told Tuck he had been initiated (00:53:54:00)
Turned out that the major’s tour was short-lived because a few days later, the
inspector-general arrived at the base, the first time this had ever happened
(00:54:23:00)
o The major met the inspector-general, a colonel, on the flight line and after
a short conversation where the major berated the colonel, the colonel said
that he wanted the major off the base by sundown; it was the quickest
justice Tuck ever saw in the military (00:54:43:00)
o The next morning, Tuck received a call from the wing commander,
wanting to know where a representative from the munitions squadron was
at the wing commander’s briefing (00:55:11:00)
o Tuck went to the major’s office where the major’s assistant, a captain, was
out cold drunk on the floor and Tuck went to the wing commander’s
meeting and explained what was going on (00:55:28:00)
Things settled down at Udon following the incident with the major (00:55:58:00)
o The next officer turned out to be a former missile launch officer who had
been in a missile silo in the Western United States for eighteen years and
in charge of only a very small contingent of people (00:56:03:00)
o At Tuck’s first briefing, he went in and gave the officer a rundown of the
night before, including the number of men in jail and the number of men
in the hospital for VD treatments (00:56:19:00)
The officer just sat there shaking his head, looking at the desk and
saying “you’re trying to get me fired” repeatedly (00:56:38:00)
The officer had a real awakening because he had never been in
charge of a munitions operation of six hundred soldiers, which
involved a lot of responsibility and although he grew into the role,
it was initially a shock to his system (00:56:49:00)
However, there still were accidents on the flight line (00:57:26:00)
o One day, Tuck was driving down the line monitoring the crews and down
the line, he saw a crew unloading a “Mur”, six five-hundred pound bombs,
from a trailer, with three bombs on each side (00:57:33:00)
One of the crew took the tie-down strap and threw it over the side
of the trailer while the lift truck was picking up the six bombs and
backing away; the tie-down accidentally hooked itself onto the
“Mur” and also a “Tur” (00:57:58:00)
�
A “Mur” is six bombs loaded onto a rack that locked
center-line on the F-4; A “Tur” is three bomb clusters that
locked onto the wing pylon (00:58:22:00)
Tuck watched in slow motion as the load truck backed up and the
“Tur” tipped over and smashed the fuses on the front of the bomb
(00:58:49:00)
It was a “thanks” moment where they were thankful that they had
really good fuse designs that required arming before they would
detonate (00:59:03:00)
o Another incident occurred at night when a weapons maintenance crew was
checking the arming system on an aircraft (00:59:21:00)
One of the crew unscrewed the cartridge retainers on the pylon and
one came out without any cartridge in it (00:59:44:00)
The man assumed that they had forgot to put the cartridge in
initially when in fact the cartridge had stuck inside the container
and when the man signaled the pilot to test, the cartridge shot off in
his face (00:59:52:00)
The man was shivering and shaking in shock because he thought
he was going to die although the wounds turned out to be
superficial (01:00:18:00)
After taking the man to the hospital, Tuck reported to the squadron
commander, who was drinking with the his second in commander
and did not seem to care (01:00:31:00)
Was in Thailand from 1972 to 1973 (01:01:08:00)
The politics came to light towards the end of his assignment in Southeast Asia
(01:01:26:00)
o When he became the munitions services officer and got more involved
with the operations and missions and saw some of the strike films, there
was a lot more talk of the politics of the war, especially [Johnson’s]
philosophy and how it was relayed to the men (01:01:36:00)
[Johnson’s] philosophy was that the Communists know the
Americans have the ability to wipe them out and since they know
that, then the Communists should just give up (01:02:11:00)
o There was discussion toward the later days of the war that the American
prisoners were being treated well because the Communists though the
American military was going to go in and take over Hanoi when all of the
sudden, the United States changed gears and pulled out when they could
have essentially won the war (01:02:39:00)
The missions that Tuck saw towards the end of the operation were ridiculous
(01:03:14:00)
o He saw pictures of airports were nothing but a series of craters and they
would stack up three or four squadrons of fully-loaded F-4s that would
spiral around the airport and drop their bombs because theoretically there
was a line through the craters were a MiG fighter could take off and make
a strike (01:03:24:00)
�
o They also saw pictures of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and those roads and trails
were bombed extensively, to the point that they were merely rearranging
the craters (01:04:05:00)
The North Vietnamese were moving all the cargo on bicycles, so
all they did was go around the new craters (01:04:26:00)
o Thousands of tons bombs were dropped on similar targets, where if the
bombs had been dropped on primary targets, the war would have been
over sooner; the politicians did not want to bomb the targets that made a
difference (01:04:36:00)
o They seemed to blow up a lot of jungle and nothing was accomplished
(01:04:52:00)
However, he did see some strike film where there were against some meaningful
targets (01:05:00:00)
o One of the films was after they had the Maverick missile assigned to the
war environment (01:05:06:00)
The Maverick was a TV monitored and targeted missile in which
the pilot used a small TV screen to target where he wanted the
missile to go (01:05:18:00)
One of the strike films showed the pilot targeting a tunnel opening
in the side of the mountain and they saw the missile fly into the
opening and a few seconds later, the entire top of the mountain
came off because there was a large munitions dump within the
mountain (01:05:32:00)
Because the targeting was all central-seeking, the missile followed
all the way through the mountain until it found the target
(01:05:57:00)
o Eventually the decree came down from command that since each
Maverick cost $25,000 apiece, they could only use the missile against
targets that were more valuable than the missile (01:06:13:00)
Politics played a huge role and were usually to the detriment of accomplishing the
mission (01:06:28:00)
o It did not really have much effect on the men; day in and day out, they did
their job without much grumbling (01:06:43:00)
o Usually it was more an issue of Tuck not letting them take naps inbetween servicing aircraft (01:06:54:00)
There was very little drug use; largest problem was alcohol and they later found
that some alcoholics hid bottles of liquor on the flight line and were drunk to the
point that they did not know which aircraft to load the munitions on
(01:07:32:00)
Race was hardly ever even talked about; they had a mixed race make-up of the
crews and he never really saw problems (01:08:20:00)
o He did have a tech sergeant at Wurtsmith who he had to discipline because
the sergeant was a alcoholic African-American who claimed that their
decisions were based on race, although the decisions were not and the
sergeant ended up being forced out of the Air Force (01:08:39:00)
�
Always viewed the Air Force as the elite of the military; they operated under a
much more business-like environment than the other armed forces (01:09:48:00)
o He did not know a lot about the Air Force before signing up (01:10:12:00)
o He had some fascination with the airplane aspect of the military and the
Air Force seemed like a much better way to go than the Infantry
(01:10:21:00)
o He never cared much for the water, so he the Navy was out (01:10:43:00)
One humorous event happened in Thailand (01:11:08:00)
o One day he was driving around the end of the runway to get to the
operations side of the base from the housing side to get to work, a three or
four mile ride on a bicycle (01:11:12:00)
o He had bought a ten-speed Japanese bike and had ridden it for several
months, meaning he was in good condition, and on the way to work, he
got behind a Thai biker with his wife sitting in the back of the bike
(01:11:33:00)
o Tuck decided to go around him and when he pulled out to go around the
Thai biker speed up and kept ahead of Tuck (01:12:02:00)
o Tuck pedaled a little faster and shifted down a gear while the wife sat on
the back of the bike smiling; for the next two miles, Tuck pedaled flat out
and the Thai biker kept ahead of him (01:12:12:00)
o The Thai biker chuckled, waved, and rode off, which humiliated Tuck
because he could not keep up (01:12:37:00)
Another assignment he had was investigating crimes on base and one time there
had been the theft of all furnishings inside a building on the base, so Tuck was
called in to do the investigation review and give a recommendation (01:13:07:00)
o There were two guards posted at the end of the driveway across the road
from the building that was burglarized and Tuck’s recommendation was
that the two guards be required to ask people who were moving equipment
on or off base because there had been a crime committed in full view of
guards on base and no one said anything (01:13:32:00)
Usually their most exciting, or apprehensive, issues occurred at the end of the
runway (01:14:18:00)
o One time they had a returning aircraft landed and the bombs dropped off
the pylons and slid down the runway towards Tuck’s crew, arming as they
went (01:14:34:00)
The bombs stopped just before they got to the area where they
would have gone off if they had been contacted (01:14:50:00)
The bombs did not drop off when the ejector cartridges activated,
which was why the bombs returned on the aircraft (01:15:07:00)
The racks have cams that went down and locked onto the bomb
and for whatever reason, the cams did not release (01:15:23:00)
There were scary moments that were almost bad things, although there had been
incidents in Vietnam earlier in the war when the bombs used were from World
War II and had been shipped in from Europe (01:15:59:00)
o The explosive liquid leached out of the filler used to make it into a safe
compound, essentially creating nitroglycerine, and whenever the liquid
�
came out of the filler plugs, it crystallized and if anything jolted the
bombs, they exploded (01:16:15:00)
o They saw film of instances when the forklift dropped the bomb off into the
munitions revetment, the nitroglycerine exploded and the crews working
at the time evacuated to protection (01:16:49:00)
However, the pressure wave from the explosions flipped their
vehicles over and killed them all (01:17:28:00)
o In another case, one of the bombs dropped in the middle of the flight line
and took out all of the aircraft (01:17:38:00)
By the time he received his orders to return to the United States, Tuck was ready
to go home because a year was long enough (01:17:59:00)
o He received a new assignment to report to missile defense command at
Griffiths Air Force Base in New York, which was a whole different
operation; the squadron’s mission was to essentially repel Soviet “Bear”
bomber attacks on the east coast (01:18:08:00)
o He was the munitions services officer and reported directly to the wing
commander; on previous assignments, he had had a senior officer between
him and the wing commander and this would be his final assignment
(01:18:41:00)
o Griffiths was just about in the middle of the state, in Rome, New York
(01:19:12:00)
o He had had some training opportunities there for the 106 aircraft and they
also had inventory from Bangor, Maine (01:19:24:00)
He had another experience with politics in the upper echelon of the military that
occurred at Griffiths (01:19:43:00)
o They had a surprise inspection of the base from the inspector-general and
they came in and inspected the base a week after Tuck arrived
(01:19:53:00)
o They came in an inspected the base based on depot-level maintenance
criteria rather than on fuel-level criteria; it was obvious that the whole
intent was to remove the wing commander from the position and eliminate
his possibility of becoming a general (01:20:07:00)
o Tuck had to respond to the inspector-general on the majority of the issue
that were classified as so serious that they that could not complete their
mission; when they did research on the criteria from the depot-level
maintenance books, it was clearly a mechanism to get rid of the wing
commander (01:20:31:00)
o Within the thirty days that they had to correct the deficiencies, they
changed the processes to meet the criteria (01:21:04:00)
o It was interesting to see how the process worked and the politics that when
through the upper echelons to get positions (01:21:25:00)
Discharge / Post-Military Life (01:21:47:00)
At the time, there was an effort to get the non-pilot personnel out of the military
because as the Vietnam War slowed down, there were a large number of pilots
coming back to the United States without positions to fill and because they had
�
spent so much developing the pilots, the Air Force wanted to find them positions
(01:21:47:00)
o One decision that was poor on Tuck’s part after he got out was that he was
offered a position teaching at Michigan State in the ROTC program but he
was in the middle of building a house and he passed (01:22:12:00)
He probably would not have joined the military had there not been a draft going
on at the time (01:22:52:00)
The total experience of management was greater than anything he had ever
received; when others question how he can stay calm in stressful environments,
he tells them that they have no idea what real stress is (01:23:06:00)
o He gained a level of maturity that sometimes takes a lifetime to
accomplish (01:23:43:00)
When he got out of the military, he went to work for his wife’s uncle in a
manufacturing process making pre-cast concrete products and pre-cast countertop
systems (01:23:57:00)
o He went on to become a licensed residential builder, which was what his
degree from Michigan State was and in a slow period in building, he was
asked to take on the role at the NA lumber yard as the general manager
(01:24:11:00)
o Later, he was offered the position of a rehabilitation loan officer for the
city of Battle Creek, which he did for four years, when one day his boss
came in, said that they had fired the supervisor for the inspection division
and told Tuck to go down and take the job until they found a replacement;
he had the job for the rest of his career with the city (01:24:45:00)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
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RHC-27
Language
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
TuckK
Title
A name given to the resource
Tuck, Kim (Interview outline and video), 2009
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Tuck, Kim
Description
An account of the resource
Kim Tuck was born in 1946 in Battle Creek, Michigan. After graduating from Michigan State University, he enlisted in the Air Force and completed officer training as a munitions officer. Following training, he served as a munitions officer at several bases around the country and the world, including a year's tour at bases in Thailand from 1972 to 1973.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
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
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
2009-08-05
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e0ea466048378ac0c4db52b5a4806809.mp4
6a33ec2227df4bf4309f91ee8d02fbf9
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b03b3b680527d47fde73a85116185c51.pdf
4f5b70d038f60618c9a6ec0f78fa8988
PDF Text
Text
GVSU Veteran’s History Project
WWII
Nina Trierweiler
Total Time: 34:50
(00:25) Mrs. Trierweiler was born in 1921 in Lansing
o Grew up on a farm
o Had six siblings
o Had a sister who enlisted with her
(1:26) Heard an announcement that the military wanted aides to help in the hospitals,
which is why she and her sister enlisted
o 21 years old when she enlisted, sister was about 23
(2:16) Before the war, she had a few jobs
o Worked in hairstyling
o Also worked on aircraft sheet metal in Detroit
o Got another job in Detroit working on floor sections until she got married
(3:48) Her husband was in the military, got transferred to California
o Worked as a Motor Sergeant; managed the MACs and was in charge of the
operations in them
(5:31) Husband worked in the desert in California and she worked at an air depot there
o The only reason they went to California was because of potential spies; ended
up getting shipped back to New Jersey, then to England
o From England, they sailed
o Eventually went home in Lansing
(8:10) When they went home, she and her sister decided to join the Army
o 6 week training
(8:45) Had military training and then they were told they wanted to be in the hospital in
6 weeks; the person who trained them didn’t realize this
o Went through a course on how to work in a hospital
o Chattanooga, Tennessee
(10:08) She and her sister planned on working in the Battle Creek hospital
(11:40) In the hospital there were soldiers who had gotten injured
o Lived in Battle Creek during this time, there was a place to live right in the
hospital
o Met a lot of friends while working here
(13:15) Worked in the hospital form March – November of 1945
o Heard the announcement that the war in Germany was over
o Remembers cartoons relating to the end of the war
�
(14:23) Her husband came back in October
o Said she would work in the hospital until her husband came home
(16:05) She was sent to Indiana to get her discharge
o Took a train there
o Mr. Trierweiler didn’t want to talk about the war a lot, but mentioned things
occasionally
(20:20) Remembers getting letters from her husband while he was overseas
o He met a family in Holland; remembers praying with them
o This family sent a letter to Mrs. Trierweiler after the war and said they
appreciated having her husband there; wanted to know if he made it home
o Remembers a French guy being happy that the US troops had made it
(22:18) Mentions that her husband enlisted so he could choose which part of the
military he wanted to serve in
o Took a course in automotive repair
(24:04) Mr. Trierweiler’s group was attached to different battalions
(26:38) Mr. Trierweiler met a woman overseas who was defending Hitler; slapped her
(27:28) Remembers a fellow student who was a veteran; had a dream that he was still in
combat
(28:50) Mentioned her husband and a comrade getting lost at midnight and accidentally
wandering in the German area
o Example of small things he talked about sometimes, but didn’t get too detailed
when talking about the war
(31:30) Remembers a lot of girls being there in training; took a group picture together
(31:58) Moved back to Lansing when her husband returned
(32:38) Remembers meat being limited at grocery stores during this time
�
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
TrierweilerN0839V
Title
A name given to the resource
Trierweiler, Nina (Interview outline and video), 2008
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Trierweiler, Nina
Description
An account of the resource
Nina Trierweiler served as a nurse's aide in the Army during World War II. She and her sister enlisted together, trained at Chattanooga, Tennessee, and were assigned to the military hospital in Battle Creek, Michigan, where she served until November, 1945. She also discusses some of her husband's experiences as a soldier in Europe
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Lamphere, Misha (Interviewer)
Bassett, Jessica (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
United States. Army. Women’s Army Corps
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives, American
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2008-02-21
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9f93959232c9239f687da945642eb3d0.mp4
8dcb887970d80a6f09663566a31cb153
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/244a66aae546c6ad42d2c4cf416c5d83.pdf
204ccd25648ecd1c99bf71b94f408ea2
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Vietnam War / Cold War
Alan Toms 2
Interview Length: (01:41:34:00)
Vietnam Deployment (00:00:39:00)
While Toms was in the Ia Drang Valley, the operation he was a part off lasted for about
two months and during that time, Tom’s flew aboard a helicopter gunship (00:00:39:00)
o The gunship was a “B” Model Huey helicopter mounted with six machine guns
and fourteen rockets; using the weaponry, Toms’ helicopter provided support and
performed reconnaissance by fire (00:00:52:00)
o In the center of the Ia Drang Valley was the city of Pleiku but the majority of the
fighting occurred around the valley (00:01:12:00)
o Because his helicopter was providing support, Toms was only on the ground a
couple of times, whenever the helicopter had to land (00:01:48:00)
One time, the helicopter was waiting on the ground to receive a mission,
which was quite typical and there were a large number of body bags about
fifty to one hundred and fifty yards away from where the helicopter sat;
Toms inquired what was going on and someone told him that those where
infantry who had been hit but did not make it and were waiting to be airvaced out (00:01:58:00)
Toms did not want to get any closer to the bodies because he
already had enough things to worry about (00:02:42:00)
Toms was aware that there were infantry in his own unit who were
missing but he did inquire too much about them; he just packed up
his things while other people came in to replace the missing
soldiers (00:03:02:00)
Toms’ helicopter tended to be fifty to one hundred yards off the ground
and he could see quite well what was going on, hoping that the helicopter
would not take any fire (00:03:28:00)
If the helicopter ever did go down, it would be in the middle of a denselyjungled area, without a settlement nearby to walk to, and Toms was sure
that either the Viet Cong or NVA would show up quickly (00:03:38:00)
o Toms worked as a door gunner, firing an M-60 machine gun on one side of the
helicopter while the helicopter crew chief operated the M-60 on the other side of
the helicopter (00:04:35:00)
Every member of the crew wore helmets fitted with communication
equipment so Toms could hear everything that the pilot and co-pilot were
saying and vice versa (00:04:51:00)
Toms knew about what was going on as much as anyone in the
helicopter, which was really good (00:05:01:00)
o The crew usually did not use any of the rockets unless there was an actual hard
target (00:05:19:00)
�
o During reconnaissance by fire missions, the crew would fire the machine guns
into wooded or jungle areas, with the objective to flush out whoever was hiding in
the woods or suppress them so that the unit could land infantry and allow the
infantry to maneuver (00:05:29:00)
As far as he could tell, Toms’ helicopter did not receive any return fire
from enemy units on the ground (00:05:57:00)
o One time, the helicopter was flying in an area with a suspected enemy presence,
there was a person riding a bike and Toms received the order to put so fire on him
(00:06:06:00)
The bike was leaned against a tree, so Toms shot several rounds into the
tree as the helicopter passed by (00:06:28:00)
o Once, the helicopter landed and there were two Viet Cong who had been taken
captive sitting there but the two only looked ten years old, sitting in their black
pajamas; Toms considered it kind of pathetic that the enemy looked like kids but
it was such a big event to capture them (00:07:08:00)
The two Viet Cong looked as though they had not eaten anything in
several days and were afraid of what was going to happen to them; the
soldiers who were there were knocking to two captives around, roughing
them up (00:07:35:00)
Based on the two captives, Toms assumed enemy should not have been
too formidable but the enemy were more formidable than they looked;
they had a cause to fight for and they fought as a team (00:08:01:00)
The enemy did not need to look the role of soldier to be effective;
all they needed were decent weapons and the correct mindset to be
dangerous (00:08:23:00)
o The Ia Drang was heavily forested and in the open areas was elephant grass,
which was tall grass that could grow taller than a soldier’s head (00:08:55:00)
If someone was laying down on the ground, Toms could not see him
unless the person really presented himself (00:09:21:00)
Toms had several friends from Fort Benning who in the infantry section of the 7th Cav.
and they would often stop to see Toms (00:09:43:00)
o When they stopped by, Toms knew that the soldiers had changed, including how
they dressed and the way they talked (00:10:06:00)
The soldiers told stories about shooting enemies with their pistol who had
crawl up close to the soldiers at night (00:10:19:00)
Toms was somewhat relaxed about the situation because he was in the air
but the soldiers on the ground were in the middle of the fighting and Toms
could tell they were shook up about what happened; looking into the
soldiers’ faces, Toms could tell that they were much older than when he
had talked with them only a couple of months before (00:10:52:00)
The only real time the any attacked near where Toms was based was the attack on the
platoon atop Hong Kong mountain (00:11:55:00)
o One night, there was a lot of fire atop Hong Kong mountain and the soldiers
stationed on the top of the mountain had to beat back an attack by the Viet Cong
(00:12:15:00)
�
o The attack was a big deal the next day because it was at night and the fighting was
visible on the ground; the soldiers below the mountain could see the tracers and
hear the sounds of battle quite clearly (00:12:30:00)
o The enemy never tried to mortar Toms’ base camp, although Toms does not
understand why; his and the other units were in a fixed position, just sitting in a
big circle (00:12:46:00)
According to Toms, he was not afraid when he would ride in the helicopter; he had gone
through Airborne training, including jumping out of airplanes, and that was more
unnerving than flying in a helicopter (00:13:20:00)
o Toms rationalized it that once the helicopter took off, there was nothing he could
do and he was just going to be there (00:13:35:00)
o During flights, Toms was continuously searching for targets of opportunity that
appeared and would be worth shooting at but most of the time, Toms was figuring
what he was going to do and had his equipment on his body in case the helicopter
did go down (00:13:45:00)
Apart from his .45 pistol, if the helicopter crashed, Toms planned to grab
an M-16 rifle in the floor; he kept his canteen full and carried a couple of
candy bars for food (00:14:09:00)
Toms knew that if the helicopter went down, his first move was getting
away from the helicopter as quick as possible before preparing to defend
the other members of the crew, depending on their condition
(00:14:26:00)
During flights, Toms wore a safety belt attached to the floor so he would
not fly out in case the helicopter dipped and he learned how to get out of
the belt quickly so in the case of a crash, he could be off the helicopter
quickly with all his equipment with him (00:14:50:00)
Toms had other parts of the plan, including keeping his flight helmet on
instead of reaching for his other helmet because there would not be time
(00:15:16:00)
o Toms never had to put his plan into action because the only time the helicopter
went down was when the hydraulics failed (00:15:30:00)
The helicopter was not in a hot area, so there was no danger from the
enemy; the biggest danger was getting the helicopter down without
crashing and the pilot did an excellent job of that (00:15:52:00)
After fighting in the Ia Drang Valley, Toms’ unit moved to the coast, around the town of
Bong Son, although Toms’ helicopter continued their missions of providing covering and
suppressing fire of infantry on the ground (00:16:28:00)
o The only major incident that Toms remembers from around Bong Son was when
on the unit’s jeeps hit a mine (00:16:57:00)
Because Toms’ helicopter was not that far away, the pilot said they were
going to fly over and take a look (00:17:28:00)
Toms had an image in his mind of what the wrecked jeep was going to
look like but when the helicopter arrived, there was just a big black circle
with a tire laying nearby (00:17:35:00)
�
What ever the jeep hit must have been pretty big because although the
helicopter crew looked and looked, all they could find of the jeep was that
single tire (00:18:06:00)
o The coastal area was just as dangerous as being in the Ia Drang Valley, although
the beach looked like any one would find in Florida (00:18:35:00)
The entire area composed of rice paddies and was heavily farmed,
including growing tapioca rice (00:19:04:00)
Once, two helicopters flew out and landed in the middle of some rice
paddies, where curious farmers gathered around them; however, Toms did
not like the situations because if any of the farmers were carrying
anything, they could blow the helicopter away (00:19:24:00)
Toms knew he was in the third world because at one point, a five
year old walked up and was smoking a cigarette (00:19:54:00)
The Vietnamese stayed around the two helicopters, who ended up
spending the night in the rice paddy (00:20:30:00)
o As far as Toms was concerned, he could not trust any of
them, so the crews rotated guard duties and Toms
remembers that when he was on guard duty, it was
terrifying because they were so vulnerable (00:20:46:00)
Toms was glad when it became light and the helicopters were able
to take off and get out of there (00:21:38:00)
Although nothing happened during the night, had Toms been the
VC, it would have been a excellent opportunity to destroy two
helicopters that were just sitting there (00:21:54:00)
There were civilian Vietnamese workers on the base where Toms was stationed but they
were always supervised, although Toms does not know by whom (00:22:16:00)
o There were hundreds of civilians working on different construction projects on
the base (00:22:29:00)
During some nights, Toms wished he had brought his long underwear because during the
rainy season, the soldier’s clothes got so wet that it was hard to keep warm, especially
during the night (00:22:48:00)
o During the rainy season, Toms was stationed at An Khe and the rainy season
tended to overlap with winter and the Christmas season; it did not get cold enough
that Toms needed to constantly wear a field jacket unless he was standing guard
duty but it was still cold (00:23:09:00)
o It did not rain all the time, just in the afternoon and at night, which was a difficult
period to try and dry things out (00:23:29:00)
o Both the jungle and the type of ground helped to maintain a relatively even
temperature during both night and day; it was cold but not too cold and the main
problem was being wet (00:23:52:00)
o Because the soldiers in Toms unit were some of the first regular American
soldiers in Vietnam, they had regular Army fatigues and combat boots, not the
necessary jungle fatigues and jungle boots (00:24:11:00)
The uniforms did not rot off the soldiers as happened later because Toms
and the others were smart enough to rotate their clothes (00:24:24:00)
�
Toms spent a full twelve-month tour in Vietnam and within those twelve months, there
was some turnover of soldiers within the unit; towards the end of Toms’ tour was when
the worse soldiers were arriving in Vietnam (00:24:52:00)
o Just as Toms was leaving was when the drug use in Vietnam began increasing;
apart from drugs, there were also isolated incidents of fragging officers in the
division that Toms heard about (00:25:07:00)
o There were some real troublemakers that came into the 9th Cav. and although
Toms knew the soldiers he served with were good, he was not so sure about the
new soldiers, so as new ones came in, Toms was glad to be leaving (00:25:45:00)
Toms was on the first soldiers to leave the unit and when he received
letters from his friends still in the unit, the friends would write about how
the new soldiers caused problems and did not fit in (00:26:01:00)
Although the new soldiers had to go through their AIT, the Air Cav. was a
home for soldiers whose MOS did not translate to combat in Vietnam,
such as Toms having an armored MOS (00:26:52:00)
Nevertheless, it was not difficult to pick up the job or learn the
weapons (00:27:28:00)
The new soldiers simply did not have a military background, unlike Toms,
who had been in the military for roughly three years before he deployed to
Vietnam (00:27:43:00)
There were some draftees who had a college education and Toms found
plenty of people who he could converse with and learn from
(00:28:21:00)
During Toms’ tour, the Army offered several different R&R locations, including:
Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Hawaii (00:29:27:00)
o However, Toms viewed the far-off R&R locations as a waste because the military
paid to transport the soldiers there (00:29:47:00)
o When Toms received his own R&R, he had the option of going to Vung Tau, with
was a costal resort near Saigon; Toms agreed and received at three-day R&R pass
(00:30:08:00)
o Toms went to Vung Tau and the resort had some of the most beautiful beaches
that Toms had ever seen (00:30:45:00)
While Toms was at Vung Tau, it did not feel like there was a war going on
(00:31:09:00)
Toms met some other soldiers who were also on R&R in Vung Tau; all the
other men were single, like Toms, so they picked up some women and
went to the beach to hang out (00:31:40:00)
o Later, Toms put in for a more extended leave and was able to travel to Hong
Kong with another soldier in his unit (00:32:27:00)
The other soldier was an African-American from Denver and was well
educated (00:32:34:00)
When Toms and the other soldier went to Hong Kong, they ran out of all
their money, so Toms called his father in Grand Rapids, asking his father
to send six hundred dollars from Toms’ bank account and Toms’ father
said okay, asking what part of Hong Kong Toms was in (00:32:56:00)
�
Toms’ father wired the money and Toms gave some to the other
soldier, with the other soldier saying he would pay Toms back
(00:33:18:00)
Toms and the other soldier had a wonderful time in Hong Kong, including
going on a tour and going onto mainland China [in the British part]with
some girls to visit both the English New Territories and a Buddhist
monastery (00:33:28:00)
After Toms had left Vietnam and was back in Michigan, he received a
letter from the other soldier with the money Toms had loaned to him in
Hong Kong (00:34:07:00)
When Toms’ troop transport landed in Vietnam, there were thousands of soldiers aboard
and if they all had the same rotation date, then they were all going to leave Vietnam on
the same day (00:34:33:00)
o Therefore, some of the soldiers left early and some left late, with Toms leaving
early (00:34:42:00)
However, none of the soldiers knew whether they were going to be
leaving early or later and there was no sense in asking any of higher-ups
because they did not know either (00:34:49:00)
A soldier would usually receive two or three days of advance notice before
he was supposed to ship home (00:35:24:00)
Toms gambled his entire time in Vietnam, never lost, and won a total of $1700, apart
from the $210 he made every month (00:35:34:00)
o Toms kept the money in his duffel bag because there was not a bank nearby but
he was terrified that at some point, someone would cut open the duffel bag and
take his money because everyone knew he had the money (00:35:43:00)
o There were card games that Toms was involved in and even played against the
company commander (00:35:58:00)
o The day before Toms left, another soldier want to flip quarters with Toms; Toms
promised he would not lose and ended up taking a lot of money from the soldier
(00:36:11:00)
During his journey out of Vietnam, Toms first flew from his unit’s base to Pleiku, where
a C-141 flew him back to the United States (00:36:25:00)
o However, while Toms and two hundred other soldiers were waiting on the tarmac
to board the plane, they were all told to dump their ammo and duffel bags on the
tarmac (00:36:37:00)
All the soldiers dumped out their bags and officers came through to check
and make sure the soldiers were not taking anything illegal or contraband
back to the United States (00:36:58:00)
Toms had nothing because after a year, he did not want to get in trouble
but just get on the C-141 and lift off (00:37:15:00)
o After the soldiers repacked their bags, they boarded the C-141, which flew first to
Japan then to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines; eventually, the plane
arrived at Travis Air Force Base just outside San Francisco (00:37:27:00)
o Toms was dressed in his military uniform when he walked through the airport in
1966 and nobody said anything to him (00:37:52:00)
�
o Once at Travis, Toms got himself a taxi and a hotel room, where he stayed for two
days, going to different night clubs and meeting another Army soldier and his
wife who took Toms all around the city (00:38:31:00)
o Toms eventually flew back to Michigan for a ten-day leave (00:39:12:00)
When he returned to the United States, Toms had to re-enlist in order to attend OCS, so
he now had a six-year commitment, with four and a half years remaining (00:39:35:00)
o Toms knew he was going to have to stay in the military but he was kind of
worried because he was still an E-5 with little prospect for promotion, which
tended to come slowly (00:39:48:00)
However, because Toms had been in armor when the war started,
promotions were coming fast to armor soldiers but he did not know about
that because he was only an E-5 (00:40:06:00)
o When Toms arrived at his new assignment at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, he was
told that he needed to go in front of the promotion board for a promotion to an E6 and after he went in front of the board, Toms knew he was going to get a
promotion (00:40:20:00)
Toms did receive his promotion to E-6 and did extremely well in front of
the promotion board because he had gotten soldier-of-the-month so many
times in Germany (00:40:41:00)
Eventually, Toms heard that the Army needed men to attend drill sergeant
school at Fort McClellan, Alabama and Toms decided to go (00:40:57:00)
o Toms went down to Fort McClellan with about eighty other soldiers, with the top
10% percent being honor graduates and Toms managed to graduate sixth in his
class (00:41:13:00)
While at Fort McClellan, Toms and the other soldiers learned how to teach
basic training, including memorizing the drill and ceremony manual wordfor-word because they had to teach exactly how the manual said to teach
(00:41:31:00)
The soldiers also covered all the subjects that were taught in basic
training, including physical training and how to teach it, rifle training,
protective masks, infiltration courses, and Army manuals (00:41:55:00)
After finishing the training at Fort McClellan, Toms went back to join a basic training
battalion at Fort Campbell, Kentucky and was given the job of being a platoon sergeant
(00:42:30:00)
o As the platoon sergeant, Toms had two other E-6s as assistants and was assigned
the task of teaching the sixty soldiers his platoon received from the base’s
reception center (00:42:42:00)
o When Toms arrived at the training battalion, there were a couple of other
sergeants but only one opening as a platoon sergeant, so the officers asked if any
of the sergeants wanted to take the position (00:43:28:00)
However, since Toms had the lowest rank, he did not say anything;
nevertheless, the other sergeants said to let Toms do the job and the person
who was asking asked Toms if he want to do the job, who said it was okay
with him (00:43:45:00)
�
o The platoon sergeant position carried a lot of responsibilities, such as getting sixty
men to follow Toms’ directions and if it did not go well, then he would be called
to account (00:44:16:00)
Toms’ tasks were distributing jobs to his two assistants and running the
sixty-man platoon; however, running the platoon was easy because Toms
had been to drill sergeant school and the men had not (00:44:37:00)
o Most of the men in the platoon were college graduates and fantastic athletes, with
several gaining maximum scores on the PT tests (00:44:53:00)
The distribution of the soldiers was roughly half enlistees and half
draftees; overall, the men had good attitudes, although there were a couple
of troublemakers but not what Toms would categorize as bad
troublemakers (00:45:04:00)
o Toms had been in a fraternity while at Western Michigan University and he felt
the fraternity overdid it in trying to be mean to new members and making it clear
that the new members were under the charge of the fraternity, doing things that
Toms believed were unnecessary (00:45:50:00)
When Toms was a low-ranking member of the military, a lot of similar
things happened, which caused Toms to vow that those things were not
going to happen if he ever made rank (00:46:12:00)
There was so much swearing in the Army that the swearing
became insignificant to Toms; when Toms used the same
vocabulary towards the men in the platoon, it shocked them but
managed to get their attention (00:46:28:00)
Apart from a couple of vivid incidents, Toms did not directly mess with
any of the men in the platoon; instead, he would either curse at them until
they came around or shame them (00:46:49:00)
Vietnam was going on and most of the men in the platoon were
probably going there, so Toms would say that if someone messed
up in training, imagine what it would bee like when the fighting
was real (00:47:12:00)
Because Toms lived in the barracks, the soldiers saw that it was
not a part-time role for Toms because even he would be spitshining his boots (00:47:40:00)
Toms held the drill sergeant position for two years, through 1968 (00:48:11:00)
o During this time, attitudes in the United States changed and there became more
protests, which Toms read about in the newspaper (00:48:33:00)
o Toms himself was in favor of the war simply because before the war, he was
watching the spread of communism through Europe as well as both Central and
South America and on college campuses in the United States (00:48:45:00)
Toms was considered somewhat liberal in the military but he did not know
anyone in the military who thought differently than Toms (00:49:32:00)
In terms of the recruits, they did not become more military; the recruits
learned to suppress their believes because they knew that they were not
going anywhere and their lives would be a lot hard if they made the drill
sergeants mad (00:50:00:00)
�o While he was a drill sergeant, Toms did not expect to be sent back to Vietnam
because the Army was large enough that there were enough replacements; not
even all the drill sergeants were Vietnam veterans at this point (00:50:50:00)
As it turned out, Toms received orders for Germany and he figured that by
the time his tour in Germany was over, the war in Vietnam would be over
as well (00:51:08:00)
Second Germany Deployment (00:51:21:00)
Toms eventually deployed to Bad Herzfeld, Germany, which was near the East German
border and was supposed to be the first line of defense against the East German and
Russian armies (00:51:21:00)
o The base at Bad Herzfeld was about twenty kilometers from the East German
border and soldiers often went on patrols into the “five kilometer zone”; no
American soldiers were allowed into the zone except for the soldiers assigned to
the patrols (00:51:40:00)
o Initially, Toms was part of “I” Troop, 14th Cavalry, which was headquartered in
an area where Russian and Warsaw Pact forces were expected to mass their troops
for an attack (00:52:01:00)
However, the unit’s designation changed to the 11th Cavalry, known as the
Black Horse Cavalry for a black horse on the unit’s patch (00:53:01:00)
o Toms’ platoon had an infantry section, an armored section of three tanks that
Toms was a member of, and a scout section with two M-114s, where the platoon
sergeant rode whenever the platoon went into the field (00:53:23:00)
Whenever the platoon went into the field, the armored section would just
follow along because they did not have a specific mission (00:53:55:00)
The M-114s were small armored vehicles that appeared as a
chopped down version of an M-113, which the infantry squads
rode in (00:54:14:00)
Eventually, Toms suggested to the platoon sergeant that he be put
into an M-113 to be the point man and another person could run
the armored section (00:54:38:00)
o The new job was more exciting because Toms was in front
and could make initial contact with the enemy
(00:54:55:00)
However, whenever the unit went to tank gunnery, Toms rejoined
his tank (00:55:21:00)
The tanks in the armored section were M-60s (00:55:28:00)
o The base where Toms was stationed was just on the outskirts of Bad Herzfeld
itself (00:55:41:00)
The base was and old German Army base from World War II and as Toms
suspects, all the way back to World War I, based on the barracks where
the soldiers slept (00:55:55:00)
The soldiers could walk out of the base, go down and hill, and be in Bad
Herzfeld (00:56:12:00)
On the next hill over was a West German Army post that Toms went to on
several occasions to compete in athletic events (00:56:19:00)
�
A lot of Germans worked on the base and when Toms’ barracks were being re-modeled,
Toms was allowed to live off-base, so he found an apartment in the town (00:56:39:00)
o The soldiers on the base were able to go into the town and visit restaurants
(00:56:59:00)
o There was an NCO club on the base, which was really nice and often had a live
band (00:57:03:00)
Toms took a lot of trips from the base, including to Amsterdam, but he eventually started
taking his car to Hamburg (00:57:42:00)
o While vacationing in Hamburg, Toms meet a German girl, the couple dated and
eventually married (00:57:50:00)
Before Toms and his wife married, the base chaplain advised the couple
not to marry in Germany because of the Armed Forces agreement, which
said a soldier could not marry a German girl; if they married in Germany,
Toms’ wife would become a dependent and the U.S. government would
have to pay for her, something they did not want to do (00:58:01:00)
Instead, the chaplain advised the couple to go to Switzerland, which they
did, and they married in Basel, Switzerland (00:58:12:00)
After marrying in Switzerland, Toms and his wife returned to Hamburg,
where they had a marriage ceremony at a church (00:58:20:00)
Toms was stationed at Bad Herzfeld for his entire three-year deployment (00:58:46:00)
While Toms was deployed in Germany, he and the other soldiers were aware of the
activities of the Baader-Meinhof Gang, an anti-American terrorist group (00:59:06:00)
o As well, it was the 1960’s and both Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin were playing in
Frankfurt but Toms did not see them (00:59:12:00)
o There was a newspaper called the “Overseas Weekly” and Toms knew some of
the reporters, who were radical friends of his wife (00:59:51:00)
One time, the reporters came to Bad Herzfeld to do a story, came to the
headquarters and asked for Toms; the request shook everyone on the post
up because the newspaper went all over Europe each week (01:00:13:00)
Toms did go with the reporters to the border and although parts of
the story ended up in the newspaper, it was not the big thing that
everybody feared it would be (01:00:37:00)
Toms visited the reporters’ apartment in Frankfurt and they had a lot of
radical literature, were using drugs, and Toms being a soldier and
associating with them was risky (01:00:54:00)
Whenever he was with the reporters and their radical friends, Toms just
had to be careful about what he did (01:01:52:00)
o On the whole, the German population were not hostile towards the soldiers; the
Germans were rapidly recovering from the end of World War II (01:02:03:00)
There was always the fear that the Soviets would attack, especially because things were
going bad for them at the time; either the Soviets were going to have to attack soon or
give up, so the soldiers were always ready and expecting things to happen (01:02:35:00)
o The soldiers knew that the Soviet economy was going bad (01:03:08:00)
o During one of the Arab-Israeli wars, the Soviets supplied the Arab nations with T62 tanks; during tank gunnery, Toms was able to go through a captured T-62
tanks and he never saw anything so primitive (01:03:16:00)
�
The tank was armed with a huge, 155 mm gun but the tank itself was not
really something Soviet soldiers could fight out of; it was basically a
platform for the huge gun and a couple of machine guns (01:03:51:00)
A lot of the interior of the tank was made of wood while even the tanks
Toms first started out with, the M-48s, did not have wood (01:04:12:00)
Toms actually felt sorry for the Soviet soldiers because that was supposed
to be their best tank (01:04:26:00)
o Toms also did a lot of reading and knew that the Soviets were having a lot of
problems that increased as times went on (01:04:36:00)
o As well, the difference in the standard of living between the recovering East and
West Germany became more apparent, although Toms did not fully see it until he
later received an assignment in Berlin (01:05:01:00)
While in Berlin, Toms was able to go into East Berlin and see how things
really were there (01:05:12:00)
After seeing the differences between the East and West, Toms became less
worried about the Soviets because they did not have the capabilities to
fully defeat the western nations (01:05:30:00)
Return to the United States (01:05:38:00)
Toms finished his deployment at Bad Herzfeld in 1970, when he received orders to go
back to Fort Knox and be a drill sergeant (01:05:38:00)
o The people who Toms was training now had already completed basic training and
were coming to the training battalion for armored training (01:05:55:00)
o During the eight-week course, Toms and others taught the recruits about how to
drive a tank, tank communication, and tank gunnery (01:06:07:00)
o When Toms returned to the United States, his wife came with him and she began
going to school; although she had the high school equivalent in Germany, it was
not recognized in the United States, so she had travel twenty miles to the south of
Fort Knox to get her GED (01:06:30:00)
Later on, after she completed her GED, Toms’ wife went to college and
eventually received a Master’s Degree (01:06:55:00)
Toms’ wife had already been married to an American and had son by that
man who was four when Toms married his mother; the son did not speak
English, so he and Toms spoke in German until they moved back to the
United States and the son began taking classes in English (01:07:06:00)
Toms’ wife did not have much problem adapting to living in the United
States and did excelled in her GED studies; normally, it was one test per
day but Toms’ wife took them all in a six-hour block (01:07:34:00)
Toms’ wife then began taking courses to being her college studies
and in one of the courses in logic was Toms’ company
commander, who worked with Toms’ wife on some of the work
because she had a more open mind (01:08:04:00)
The recruits who Toms was training now had been through the eight weeks of basic
training and were less intimidated because they knew the drill sergeants’ tricks; Toms
and the other drill sergeants had to treat the recruits more like men (01:09:02:00)
�
o On the weekends, the recruits were usually free to leave the base, whereas in basic
training, the recruits were confined to their barracks for six weeks unless they
marched to the PX (01:09:15:00)
o There were not a lot of troublemakers amongst the recruits and although the
Vietnam War was beginning to die down, the recruits knew that they would be
joining an armored unit somewhere (01:09:48:00)
There were a few incidents where Toms had to use his rank to scare
someone into doing what needed to be done (01:10:03:00)
The armored forces were usually dedicated to fighting in Europe; even
armored units stateside were nothing like the forces in Europe, where there
were thousands of soldiers living on huge bases (01:10:35:00)
Toms stayed at Fort Knox for two years before he applied to go to the “bootstrap
program”, which was a program that if Toms received a letter from a university saying he
could completed a program within eighteen months, the Army would send Toms and his
family to that university (01:11:27:00)
o Toms went back to Western Michigan University and completed his degree
program in eighteen months, with his lowest grade being a “B+” (01:12:03:00)
o Toms’ wife also started attending the university and completed a full, four-year
degree in two years, minus two courses (01:12:20:00)
o Toms could not take just the courses in his degree program because he had been
out of school for so long and some of his credits were no longer recognized; Toms
ended up taking graduate-level courses for some of his credits because he already
had certain courses (01:12:45:00)
Toms took one course with a professor who had given him a “D” when
Toms first attended the university and Toms was determined to get a better
grade than the professor, which he did (01:13:26:00)
o Before Toms got his degree, he had to do practice teaching and was assigned to
Kalamazoo Central High School, which was rough (01:14:43:00)
Toms taught grades nine through twelve for five hours a day; the
instructor told Toms that he was in charge and then Toms never saw the
instructor again for the entire semester (01:14:52:00)
The kids Toms taught were worse than anyone he encountered as a
drill instructor; however, being a drill instructor helped Toms
during the teaching (01:15:10:00)
o While at Western Michigan, Toms became involved with the university’s ROTC
and attended several group functions with his wife; after he completed his degree,
Toms was given the option of working with the ROTC program (01:15:27:00)
One night, Toms received a phone call from the Department of the Army
asking if he had ever been to Berlin and when Toms said no, he was told
they could give him a deployment there (01:15:45:00)
Toms went down to the ROTC the next day and said he would not be able
to work for them because he had received an assignment to the Berlin
Brigade (01:15:57:00)
�Third Germany Deployment (01:16:14:00)
Toms’ assignment to the Berlin Brigade started off bad (01:16:14:00)
o When Toms arrived at headquarters, he was told to join the 40th Armored but was
also told that there was not a position open for him; however, the personnel at
headquarters were lying because of another sergeant (01:16:18:00)
The other sergeant was an E-6 who had a year to go, was liked by the
personnel at headquarters and was occupying Toms’ position,
(01:16:27:00)
o Explaining he had a Phys. Ed. degree, Toms asked if he could work recreation
services because there was fantastic physical activity program for the soldiers;
there was an opening in the section, so Toms worked there (01:16:39:00)
When he took the job, Toms was told he out-ranked the NCO in-charge of
the program and was asked if that would be a problem, but it was not for
Toms (01:17:34:00)
The main things Toms did apart from managing twenty-five civilian and
military workers was work with the boxing team, being a judge for boxing
matches and organizing various running teams (01:17:53:00)
Toms’ running teams competed against the British, French, and
West Germans and won every time (01:19:04:00)
No soldier could serve in a unit in Berlin if he had any recent disciplinary action and a
soldier could only serve in Berlin once (01:19:46:00)
o Berlin was such a sought after assignment because it was right in the middle of
everything that was going on; as well, the city was beautiful, both in historical
beauty and in things to do (01:20:04:00)
The living conditions for the soldiers were like nothing else in the military
and the soldiers were able to live there free (01:20:39:00)
Toms went into East Berlin with his wife and when they went, Toms had to be in uniform
in order to get through Checkpoint Charlie (01:21:01:00)
o Toms and his wife would spend the entire day in East Berlin and they needed to
be out by a certain hour (01:21:11:00)
o When they went over, Toms had to exchange his and his wife’s Western marks
for Eastern marks at a rate of one to one; however, because the East Germany
guards were unable to even touch or search Toms, he began exchanging his West
German marks in West Berlin at a rate of nine to one (01:21:26:00)
Thereafter, when Toms and his wife went into East Berlin, they had all
kinds of money (01:22:07:00)
Once, Toms and his wife went to a restaurant at the Alexander
Platz hotel and ordered the best items on the menu, filet mignon
and wine from Hungary, spending around 100 marks but because
Toms exchanged marks at nine to one, price did not matter
(01:22:45:00)
o Toms remembers that at one point, there were five people
waiting on his and wife’s table (01:23:02:00)
o Despite what Toms and his wife were able to do, it was sad to see the plight of the
people in East Berlin due to communism (01:24:13:00)
�
East Berlin looked like it was from the 1920s with the exception of the
hotel and massive television tour (01:24:26:00)
None of the buildings had been cleaned; a material would coat the walls of
a building, making the walls dark and if the material was not sand-blasted
or scrubbed away, then the walls just got darker and darker (01:24:38:00)
Toms and his wife would always see Russian soldiers in uniform;
invariable, the soldiers would be short and dark-skinned, marking them as
conscripts from the east (01:25:09:00)
Toms extended his tour one year while in Berlin, making it so he spent four years total in
the city, leaving in 1979 to go to the Virginia Military Institute to be an instructor in the
ROTC department (01:25:41:00)
End of Military Service / Post-Military Life / Reflections (01:26:01:00)
When Toms went to the Virginia Military Institute, he took over the ROTC department
from another E-8 (01:26:01:00)
o Toms and his family rented a house in the country and his children, his son and a
daughter who had been born in Berlin began attending school (01:26:08:00)
o With her degree, Toms’ wife was able to get a job at the local grade school and
Toms began teaching in the ROTC department, specifically teaching freshmen
and sophomores in armored subjects, such as tank driving, tank communications,
and tank gunnery (01:26:20:00)
Meanwhile, the captain in the armored section taught tactics to the juniors
and seniors (01:26:41:00)
There was a major in-charge of the department and every so often, he
would teach one of Toms’ class, just to kept up to date (01:26:57:00)
o During some of the classes, there were five tanks in a field and the cadets drove
the tanks around the field (01:27:38:00)
The classes also went to a firing range at Fort A.P. Hill and at another
base; the cadets could fire the co-axial machine gun but that was it,
although they could simulate firing the main gun (01:28:09:00)
o The cadets Toms taught were highly motivated; one cadet was the son of the
Secretary of the Army (01:28:49:00)
Some of the cadets were marathon runners and Toms would talk with
them about his experiences, including going to Washington D.C. and
running in the Marine Corps marathon (01:29:04:00)
From the military institute, Toms went to Fort Lee, Virginia and processed out of the
Army there; while Toms processed out, the Army tried talking him into claiming some
type of disability although the only time Toms had been in the hospital was when he hurt
his back taking a track off a tank (01:30:06:00)
Toms finally left the Army in 1981, having served twenty years (01:30:56:00)
After Toms got out of the Army, he and his family returned to Grand Rapids, where they
purchased a house and Toms got a job working for the Kentwood School district as a
supervisor to the custodians (01:31:05:00)
o Toms stayed in the job for two years, working at three different schools, where
half the employees cooperated with Toms and half did not (01:31:27:00)
�
o After two and a half years, Toms began working with rental houses, tendered his
resignation to the school district and began working fully with rental houses,
which were more profitable (01:32:09:00)
Over the twenty years that Toms was in the Army, the Army itself changed a lot,
including the PT tests (01:34:02:00)
o Toms himself is not a advocate for change unless the change improves things and
in his opinion, the tests the Army had were good as they were (01:34:09:00)
o The Army also changed the designation of people going through training, which
Toms believes was a bad idea because the Army should not be giving titles to
people who do not know anything yet (01:34:39:00)
o During the 1960s and the Vietnam war, there was more of a laissez-faire attitude
and Toms believes that the country did not survive that period; the country is a
little to lax with their finances (01:35:17:00)
o Toms feels that the Army today is very well equipped to complete the missions
that they have assigned to them (01:36:39:00)
When he came out of the Army, Toms feels that he was a lot more educated and was able
to combine all the things he had learned in school with what he had read (01:39:24:00)
o The instructors Toms had in college were good but the ones in the Army were just
as equal (01:39:32:00)
o Toms learned not to anticipate that something was always going to be good;
something bad might happen and Toms needed to be ready (01:40:06:00)
When Toms was on the tank, he would be constantly thinking about what
would happen if the tank was hit but an enemy RPG or tank (01:40:15:00)
o Toms learned that he needed to maintain all his equipment, lest he be caught out
in a time when he needed it (01:41:14:00)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
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1914-
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
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Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
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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
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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TomsA2
Title
A name given to the resource
Toms, Alan (Interview outline and video, 2 of 2), 2011
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Toms, Alan
Description
An account of the resource
After completing his tour in Vietnam with the Air Cavalry, Alan Toms returned to the United States, where he completed drill sergeant training before going to Fort Campbell, Kentucky. From Fort Campbell, Toms deployed for a second time to Germany, where he met a girl from Hamburg who he eventually married. Toms returned to the United States in 1970 with his wife and her son and went to Fort Knox, Kentucky to give more basic training. Eventually, the Army sent Toms back to Western Michigan University, where he finished his degree before deploying for a third time to Germany, to join the Berlin Brigade. Finally, when Toms returned to the United States, he went to the Virginia Military Institute's ROTC program before finally retiring from the military.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Kentwood Historic Preservation Commission (Kentwood, Mich.)
WKTV
WKTV (Wyoming, Mich.)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Army
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2011-03-10
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
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application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/125eadc257caf9ab9f29c1d572a3384f.mp4
3d3897369c7e26fc95147b91cb45342b
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0f36d5d9f23f0c70d3d84ff4b3b08053.pdf
19fde60e59ff92179ac34418258312a4
PDF Text
Text
ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW
ALAN TOMS – NO. I
Interviewed by: James Smither PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project,
Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, July 16, 2011
Interviewer: Now Alan can you start us off with a little bit of background on
yourself and your family?
I was born in Toronto Canada in 1939 and the earliest memories I have was when my
mother would be packing up a box of clothes and other dry good items to send to Europe.
It was known then as a care package and the thing that’s interesting about it is that my
wife was the daughter of a German seaman in the German navy and was on the receiving
end of these packages. 1:06 A lot of my relatives were in the service and they were all
conscripted, and I don’t think any of them joined, to the best of my recollection. But,
starting off, my grandfather was in the First World War, and he said that he remembers
that he walked all the way across France during all those campaigns and part of the
Canadian Army as an infantryman. Some of the other things he told me was his father
served in the English Army, because he was born in England, Blackwell, and his father,
part of the time, was stationed in Poona, India, right outside of Bombay, and won a medal
for shooting, which my grandfather had passed on to me. 2:03 I’m supposed to pass it
on to another relative of mine, hopefully, perhaps will serve in the military. He also
mentioned the fact that his father fought in the Boer War, with the English, in South
Africa, right around 1900 My other uncles were in the Canadian military, my uncle Bud
was an ambulance driver in Holland and my uncle Les was in the Canadian Air Force,
enlisted and served as a crew of the aircraft and he was a bombardier, and he said that he
had been over most of the large cities in Germany. I thought about it and I didn’t think
1
�too much about it then, but I think about it now, because my uncle was quite a very timid
man. 3:01 He must have been terrified--from the books that I’ve read of the things that
went on when they were trying to be up there over those German cities.
Interviewer: Then you mentioned that you remembered when one of your uncles
came back from the war.
My Uncle Bud came in his uniform and picked me up from school and I was in, just
about, the first grade when the war was ending and it was quite a moving experience.
Interviewer: You had—and that was his first—when he’d just got back?
He’d got back, he’d just gotten back to Toronto, but I had another brother Denny and he
just loved coming over to our house and doing things with us. So, it’s the first thing he
did when he got out of the—when he came home.
Interviewer: How was it then that you wound up in the U.S?
My father, after the depression—he did find employment during the depression. 4:04
Then somehow, he got working with plants that made gears, and he somehow learned
that trade and I really don’t know how, because I was five, six, or seven when he was
getting established, and then I know he said one day that we were going to move to
Woodstock and leave Toronto, which I really didn’t want to do it because I really liked
where I was. We moved to Woodstock and he was working there at a place called
Rollins Gears and he was a gear specialist. I guess he was self-trained, because he was a
high school graduate and not any further, but we lived there in Woodstock for two years
and then he said we were going to move to America and he had a sponsor and he had a
job there that was lined up, and also related to the gear cutting industry. 5:03 So, we
moved to urban Detroit and it was quite exciting, because we were dressed quite
2
�differently. I remember when we came to Detroit I had l had leather pants that came
down to my knees and socks that came up to my knees also, and then some boots. I
actually had a coat that had fur around it, around the head, the hood and that’s how I went
to school.
Interviewer: In the 70’s that would have been fashionable.
Right, well I had to get—then I had a—the Canadian Maple Leafs had won the Stanley
Cup and I had a big Maple Leafs sweater and, of course, I could never wear that
anymore, because the very year I went there, the Detroit Red Wings won the Stanley Cup
and they were going—they were hockey crazy in Detroit. I was from Canada, so I had to
get out of those clothes and fit in, in the fourth grade. 6:00
Also, when I came, they
thought I was smarter than what my grade showed, so they put me ahead a half a year,
because I could multiply by three numbers and they couldn’t. But, then they found out I
couldn’t write, because in Canada you print until the sixth grade and this was the fourth
grade and so, then they put me back a whole year, which was embarrassing, so I lost a
half a year, so I became the oldest kid in the class. So, I was the oldest kid in my class
throughout my high school schooling. The thing was, in Canada you end up with better
penmanship than you do in America. I have letters from Canada, from my mother and
everything, and it’s a better system there so, but at the time I was quite embarrassed.
Interviewer: Now, you eventually move on from Detroit though, while you’re
growing up?
Yeah, my dad was offered a better job at Continental Motors, which was in Muskegon at
the time. 7:03
A very, very large plant, I think it was about a mile on each side and
once again in the gear cutting industry, but they wanted him to work seven days a week ,
3
�so after about six months he quit that job and found a job, while we were living in
Muskegon, in Grand Rapids, at Lear, in gear cutting, in downtown Grand Rapids. Then
we did move to Grand Rapids and he was once again involved in this gear industry, so I
really moved around an awful lot, but looking back on it, it was really quite interesting.
We always improved, every step of the way, my dad was getting better work all the time
and I was getting older. 8:00 Now, when I look back it was quite an adventure.
Interviewer: And he eventually sets up his own business too, doesn’t he?
He started a gear manufacturing plant called Gear Research up on Taylor, which is up in
Creston Heights and they were there about five years. A couple of interesting things
there, I worked there when I was fourteen and I would take the bus down and work there
in the afternoons, in the shipping department, boxing up gears. One thing that is kind of
interesting is that one of our employees was Roger Chaffee, the astronaut. He was a
student and I worked there over the summer and so did he. And he was a student in
engineering at Purdue. His father worked for my dad too in the inspections department,
Don Chaffee, and sometimes we would have too many gears to pack, so he would come
out. 9:00 He was a student and he was working on the gear cutting machines, but he
would come out in the shopping department and help me, because we were overloaded
with stuff to ship. But they made gear assemblies for, I remember, Brunswick Pin
Setters, which was based out of Muskegon, and made gears for Abrams Instruments,
which was out of Lansing. There was always trouble, because that was Air Force related
and those gears would come back rejected and there was always a lot of flak about that.
We’d get the boxes back and it was a lot of trouble, because the ―so called military‖
4
�establishment had tougher criteria than what my dad thought was necessary for these
gears, so there was always a big problem there.
Interviewer: Now, how was it you wound up in the army? 10:03
I was a student at Godwin High School and from there I went to Junior College in Grand
Rapids, here and then I went to Western Michigan University and lived there in Vander
Cook Hall, in the dorm and my grades were not very good and I was really more
interested in having a lot of fun, and I joined a fraternity, Tau Kappa Epsilon, which I
shouldn’t have done, learned the Greek alphabet and di a lot of other things like that. In
general, I was going to sports events and my grades were not very good. They were not
good enough to stay in school and that was rather embarrassing, so rather than embarrass
my family any more, I joined the army. I’ll be on my own and I won’t be a problem for
my family either anyway. 11:05 So, then I got in a little trouble with the law, minor in
possession, doing a little drinking and creating a public disturbance. Anyway, I was
interested in—I was in a lot of running events and a was a fair to middling runner, I was a
long distance runner and I even ran in the Greek Week, I ran the mile for Tau Kappa
Epsilon, and I placed fifth in the Greek Week activities. I played basketball for the
fraternity and I liked doing things like that. I—throughout my life, work’s okay, but I
work, so I can have a good time, that’s my object.
Interviewer: Why did you pick the army?
Well, I could get a guarantee in the army that I knew that they would honor, so I joined,
because I wasn’t really interested in the navy, or the air force. 12:03 I thought that—I
was an avid reader even then and it just appealed to me and I guess I read Leon Uris’s
―Battle Cry‖, Iwo Jima, and that’s why I guess I thought I’d probably be a lot better off in
5
�the army, but that was a mistake. The reason it was a mistake, my view from reading was
nothing like what the real army is, in fact, a person that hasn’t really ever been in the
army, which really amount to living outside twenty-four hours a day. It’s a lot different
than what anybody could ever imagine. Reading will help a little bit, but the real thing is
quite different. In 1961 I joined the army and I went to—down to Detroit. 13:00 And
they said, ―You got a Canadian birth certificate and you don’t have any citizenship
papers‖, so they sent me back to Grand Rapids to sit. I had to come back to Grand
Rapids after being down there in Detroit, down on Jefferson Avenue at the induction
center, and I had to go home and get my citizenship papers and then I went back and
that’s when the adventure started.
Interviewer: Where did you go for boot camp?
We left there in a train and I went to Fort Knox and I was in basic there and after eight
weeks, I got assigned to some other type of training, I didn’t know, and I really didn’t
care, because like I said, I joined the army for fun, travel, and adventure and I really
didn’t care what kind of job I got, because I had a guarantee I was going to go to Europe.
14:02 What capacity it was, it didn’t really matter to me, because I already had three
years of college and I thought, ―This is going to be an adventure‖, and in the end it was.
Interviewer: Now, tell me a little bit about the boot camp experience itself. How
were they running the boot camp in 1961?
Well, they’d stand you out there, I could tell you it was three in the morning, but it was
probably about six, in the rain, and there would be a platoon sergeant standing in front of
you and he would swear without letup. He could hardly see us, because it was pitch
black, and we’d be standing there with our rifles and steel helmets on, and all ready to go
6
�to the range and he would tell us in so many words what would happen if we messed up
marching to the range, which was a few miles, not five, or ten and it took us about an
hour to walk there, march there, there is a difference. 15:00 Anyway, he cursed us up
and down, didn’t know us, and like I said, I don’t think he did even see us. Anyway,
there was just an awful lot of that and some of the guys in the formation were crying,
standing out there crying. At the time you had the draft and those people. We were in
Kentucky and there were people from--and people dragged out of those hills to be in the
army, and from the Virginias and they didn’t want to be there, they just wanted to be
home, and it was kind of sad. Anyway, we would go to the range and fire, and the army
taught me how to fire. I had a shotgun at home and went out hunting, but never hit
anything, but when I got in the army, they actually taught be how to shoot. We had a M1 rifle and a M-1 rifle has a clip that you push down, so when you hear now about
different things happening in the United States and they say, ―Well, I had a thirty round
clip‖, it doesn’t have a clip, it has a magazine. 16:01 A magazine comes up from the
bottom and a clip is pushed down from the top, it’s not a thirty round clip. Anyway, a M1 has a seven round clip that you push down. They taught me how to fire and we went to
the firing range for qualification and you had to get sixty, sixty hits on these targets that
would pop up and it was very realistic. I did my best, because I was a fair to middling
athlete, and I got fifty eight, so an ―expert‖ was sixty and above, and I fired ―marksman‖,
which was fifty eight and that was okay, because as long as you try your best and I was
satisfied with that. A lot of guys did fire ―expert’ though and it was quite authentic.
Interviewer: How much did they do in terms of physical conditioning?
7
�Well, we had to take a PT test and I did well. There were five events and a hundred on
each event was possible and you could get five hundred maximum. 17:03 I probably
got four sixty, four seventy, I could always do that. Later on—that was one thing nice
about the old army, they had the same test and later on I got four ninety nine, I only
dropped one point in the grenade throw, but that was a tough test and to get a hundred
points you had to run a mile in six minutes in fatigues and combat boots. You could have
a t-shirt on, but to run a mile in six minutes with boots on—I did that later on when I was
in my middle thirties and almost forty, I could do that.
Interviewer: But, as someone who had been a distance runner and things like that,
you were in reasonable condition when you went in.
I was in excellent condition.
Interviewer: How did yo do in terms of adjusting to the discipline in the army?
Not very good, I don’t know, call it whining, or complaining, I wasn’t the best soldier.
18:01 But, they always knew that if they needed something done, if you needed
somebody who could shoot, or run, or join a team, or be on time, or to be accountable, I
was good at that. In those days you had guard duty, you had KP, on KP there were about
six different jobs. The job that I quickly jumped right into was pots and pans, and the
reason I did that was to avoid the wrath of the people who worked in the mess hall,
because even the privates would be swearing at you, they wouldn’t hit you, but they
would just get in your face, even though they were PFC’s, they were cooks and they
would just be all over you, but all you had to do in pots and pans was keep those pots and
pans clean, keep that soap hot and keep a lot of suds in there to break down the grease.
19:00 Then they would stay out of your face and off your back. You didn’t want to be
8
�the outside man, because you would have frozen to death outside washing garbage cans
all day long. You didn’t want to be a DRO, dining room orderly, because they would just
be all over you. You couldn’t put the salt and pepper shakers on those tables the right
way, no matter how many different ways you did it, it was wrong and they would just be
all over you all day long, just constant yelling. I was buried in suds with those big gloves
up to my elbows, in peace, for the entire day, so it was a good idea, I guess.
Interviewer: Now, were you older than most of the guys you were training with?
Because I had already gone to college, I was twenty-two, and coming down there on the
train they had a club car and everybody was drinking, but I have—and I like to drink, but
I didn’t drink, because I didn’t want to go into basic with a big hangover. 20:00 Then
when I was in the reception center, for a week at Fort Knox, and that’s where you take
these tests, and these tests govern what kind of a job you get. By then I was starting to
think that maybe I should start trying to do things right, so even though they were
drinking and running around on the post, because there wasn’t much accountability when
you’re in the reception center, so people, they would drink, and they would carouse, and
things would go on all night long, and just raise hell in the barracks, but I got a good
night's sleep before these tests. These tests were eight hours solid and what you come out
of there is your—that test is a combination of math and English and what you come out
of there with is your GT score, general technical, and you carry that with you the rest of
your army career, and I got a hundred and twenty six, and that’s one of the highest scores
they’d ever seen. 21:01 I never ran into anybody that had a higher score than that, but I
had three years of college and I was sober and I was ready. I went into it with a good
night's sleep and I got a great score. And so, they—I got offered jobs later on in the army
9
�and they always said, ―You have a high GT, Toms‖, you didn’t even have to prove, or
just---or you didn’t even have to go in and act smart, they knew that just by looking at my
paper work and that helped me.
Interviewer: What kind of training, then, did you get after boot camp?
After I hitchhiked home on Highway 31, which nobody used to go out there in uniform,
on Highway 31 and hitchhike home for Christmas, which I immediately did. I hitch
hiked all the way home and didn’t pay a cent, because I’m English and I’m cheap and
that’s how I accumulate money and that’s why I have money. 22:00 Then when I came
back they said, ―Don’t you bring a car to this post‖, and I brought my car to the post and I
hid it on the other side of the post and on week-ends when I was in AIT, Advanced
Individual Training, I would go over to the bus station and there would be two hundred
guys trying to get to Louisville and I’d say, ―Anybody wants a ride to Louisville, give me
a dollar‖, so I’d fill up my car with people and for five, or six dollars you could drink—I
could drink for two days on five, or six dollars, because drafts were ten, or fifteen cents,
maybe a quarter. Anyway, I reported there to that AIT and I saw these guys outside
sitting in the snow, with their winter outfits on, and they were sorting brass. It was fifty
caliber brass, links of brass, and I thought, ―Oh my God, I’m in tanks‖, and I thought,
―This is going to be bad‖. That’s what is was and they had M-48, M-60 tanks, and that
was the training that I got, eight weeks of tank training. 23:00
Interviewer: Now, what does that consist of? Do you learn all of the jobs in the
tank?
You learn how to drive the tank, you learn—you have classes on tank communication,
tank radios, and we fire the coaxial machine gun, that’s a machine gun that’s mounted on
10
�the tank and the main gun that’s 105mm and on the same access as that coaxial is a 30
caliber machine gun. You sit in the tank and you do fire that machine gun on the range.
But, one thing was, we were at the firing range and we had no idea they were going to
fire this main gun and we were just lolling around on the ground out behind this tank and
what they were doing was, they were fore sighting this main gun, lining the sights up
with the gun itself, and all of a sudden this tank fired and I was about fifteen feet behind
it. 24:00 Well, it just about knocked me down, because there’s a big ball of fire three,
or four meters across that comes out of the muzzle and it’s physical, because it will knock
you, because the oxygen is burned out of the air and creates a vacuum and the air rushes
in and makes this big sound, but it actually moves you. But anyway, I’ve never heard
any sound that loud since, up to that time, or since then , I couldn’t believe anything
could ever be that loud as when that tank fired, and the tank, of course, rocked back and
moved back. It weighs fifty-two tons, but it moved back about three inches when that
gun fires. These NCO’s, they knew what was going to happen and they just stood up.
We didn’t have ear plugs, nothing and we got away from that, after that, but they thought
that was great fun to scare us. I’d never heard anything like that in my life.
Interviewer: Did you stay with the tanks, or did you find a way into something else?
I stayed in tanks, because if you’re in a combat arm, you can make rank faster. 25:03
And after that training I went to—I went by bus to Fort Dix and I went to the Jib and saw
Chubby Checker there live, we didn’t have any civilian clothes there—live. We were
taken by bus after we were at the reception center there for about a week and what my
main function there was to stay out of Hoff detail. They would have formations, but they
didn’t know who we were. There would be thousands of people standing outside, me and
11
�some other people, we wouldn’t even go to the formation, because you knew at the end of
the day, on the board, they would have a list of people who were shipping out, because
from there you would go by bus to Brooklyn to get on the ship. 26:00 So, they would
just keep you busy all day long, working in the mess hall, working in the barracks, so we
would just go and stand behind the barracks somewhere with some other company, while
our company was having formation. They’d take all these people out for detail and we’d
appear and we’d go hide in the barracks and mess around the whole day until five o’clock
came and you’d go and see if your name was on the list to ship. We just avoided detail.
Anyway, finally my name was on the ship and you got your duffle bag and got on the
bus. We went on the bus and went to Brooklyn, down to the docks, going all the way
through Brooklyn, it was exciting. This was Brooklyn in 1961; actually it was 1962,
because it was February. We got there and on the dock they had a band playing ―When
Johnny Comes Marching Home Again‖ and it was really something, you know.
Interviewer: A sendoff
Yeah, it was something and the next band I heard was when I got on the ship going to
Vietnam, a little bit different. 27:00 Anyway, we got on the ship, it was 1962, in
February, and that was the year when they had enormous storms on the Atlantic and
people were throwing up before we got away from the land. That ship, it took us usually
seven days to cross, but it took us eight. I was in C compartment, and twenty-two
hundred soldiers on there.
Interviewer: Now, was this a troop transport?
It was the Gordon, and the waves were seven stories high and they came at us just like
enormous apartment buildings. When the bow would go down and you could look up
12
�and it was seven stories above the water. When the bow would go down, the whole ship
shuttered. 28:00 This is a big ship, because the screw, the propeller came out of the
water and then would go back down. No one was allowed out on the deck, because the
waves were coming over the tail and over the bow of the ship. And I remember you go
up a long way to get on that ship, up the gangplank and there was a lot of the ship above
water until you got out there in that ocean. Anyway, I was on KP down there, but there
wasn’t much KP, because everybody was sick and we were just sitting, but you still had
to go to your job eight hours a day, but we’d just sit in the mess hall and if you could get
up and do something--all the cooks were Filipinos and if you could get up and do some
work, you did, but most of the guys sat along the wall throwing up and had these barf
bags. People were in the chow line and the mess sergeant would go down there and say,
―Get that guy out of the chow line‖, people would be throwing up in the chow line,
because you couldn’t keep anything down.
Interviewer: Right 29:00
Anyway, they had salt water showers, there was no fresh water and after your shower you
were all gummed up, but I showered, probably, a couple of times. Then there were a lot
of gangs on the ship, tough guys, that wanted to fight, and I remember the guy I knew, a
big guy, named Hicks, came in there looking for his hat and this guy that Rob was
hanging around with, he was from Detroit and he was strong guy, and he started going
through our lockers and this guy named Senna from Detroit said, ―Don’t open my
locker‖. This was about a six foot four guy that looked like Cassius Clay in every way.
The guy looked at Senna, Senna got off his bunk and said, ―Don’t open my locker‖ and
the guy looked at him and didn’t open it and I thought you’re crazy Senna, because this
13
�guy will kill you, and I’ll probably get killed , because I’m only two feet away and can’t
move. 30:00 See, there were five bunks in there and the lowest one was right on the
floor and those bunks were only about a foot and a half and you had to slide into them.
Once you’re in the bunk, there are five on top of each other. You slide in and you
couldn’t turn over, you had to lie—the only way you could turn over was to slide out,
turn over and slide back in, there were five f them. Anyway, I tripped that way all the
way to Bremerhaven. Anyway, we got to Germany and I didn’t know that all of northern
Europe was underwater too and there were a hundred and some people died in Hamburg
and all the lowlands were flooded. All those countries, Belgium, northern Germany,
Holland, they lost—thousands and thousands of people died in northern Europe during
that storm.
Interviewer: That storm you were in, you just kind of took the storm with you as
you went across the Atlantic.
Well, it was all going on at the same time. 31:00 We walk around now, in Europe,
you’re in Hamburg, where the Elbe River came up so high there’s markers all over along
that shore that shows where it came up in 1962. There are newspaper articles and all
types of things. Anyway, my wife was there and she was on the water, because she lived
on a house boat in Hamburg and it was quite exciting. We came into Bremerhaven and
finally the water was calm, because we were going into the harbor. So, everybody got
outside and it was February, so we had our coats on, overcoats, and at the very same time
a great big Russian freighter came out with an enormous Hammer and Sickle on the
stack. We gave that ship the finger and cursed, you should have heard the profanity and
they were only about a hundred yards away. 32:04 We were just screaming and
14
�everybody was just so happy to be outside in some fresh air from being in that prison.
Where my bunk was, it was three floors below the water line and no windows, there were
no windows in there. We took the train from there and there were only two going—this
very strong tough guy named Dan Senna, he and I were the only ones going to
Baumholder and in tanks, in armor, Eleven Echo, that’s the MOS. Anyway, they said,
the people on the ship said, ―You won’t like Baumholder, it’s the A-hole of Europe‖, and
I said, ―Where are you going?‖ ―Going to Munich, going to Frankfort‖, we were the only
ones going to Baumholder. Well anyway, Baumholder is a large post with ten thousand
soldiers, the largest concentration of American troops, all combat arms, infantry, armor,
artillery. 33:04 That’s where we ended, two of us and we ended up in B company 68th
Armor.
Interviewer: Was that part of a division?
That was part of the 8th Infantry division and it was headquartered in Bad Kreuznach.
This is over close to the French border not too far from Trier.
Interviewer: Alright, and what duties did you have there?
Well, I started off as a tank loader, the lowest thing, but it didn’t really matter, but after I
was there about six months I started thinking about the fact that I didn’t always want to
be a loader and I thought, ―Well, after this guy goes I’ll be the driver‖, and somebody
else came into the unit and they made him the driver. I thought, ―I’m never going to get
ahead here, I’m just going to be a dud‖, and it was really disheartening. There were some
shifts around and I got stationed on this other guy's tank and he said, ―I want you to drive,
Toms‖. 34:00 I said, ―Okay‖. I’d never driven much, a little bit around the motor pool
anyway, so then a battlefield problem came up and I ended up—I drove that tank all the
15
�way across Germany, a battlefield problem in the winter and your head is sticking out and
the cold air is just roaring in there. By the time I got to where we were going, which was
Hohenfels, which is over close to the Czechoslovakian border. We were close to the
French border and it took us, I think, three days to get there on the Autobahn and
everything, but it was really a thrill, so I established myself as a tank driver. Then the
tank gunner came around and he said, ―You’re going to have to be the gunner Toms‖, and
I thought, ―I’m a PFC, and all of a sudden I’m the driver, that’s an E4 position, I’m the
gunner, that’s an E5 position, and I’m a PFC‖. 35:00 I was a PFC for over two years. I
had two years in grade before I made spec four, and part of the problem was that I had
two article fifteens, which is non-judicial punishment. I got one of those for one time
missing bed check. I was about ten miles away in a little town called Reichenbach, and I
said, ―I’ve got to be back at the barracks at twelve‖, because if you have a pass you have
to be home, you have to be back in the barracks in bed, at midnight when they make the
bed check. He said, ―We’re calling a cab‖, but they had an overnight pass and they just
tricked me. There was no cab coming and it got to be ten to and I said, ―You didn’t do
anything‖, and they just laughed and they were in this bar in Reichenbach and they didn’t
call, so I got a cab and got back to Baumholder, back to the barracks. I lived in the
barracks for eight years, anyway, and that’s not fun. Anyway, I got an article fifteen and
they didn’t want to—I told them my story and they didn’t want to hear it. 36:04 So, I
got seven days shoveling coal as my punishment, because every room had a coal burning
stove, that’s how we kept warm, so if your room was cold, you got some wood, and you
got some coal and you made it warm, you didn’t just turn up the heat, or go and complain
to somebody. I was up at five, because that’s when they got you up, and revalie was at
16
�six, so I was up, fully dressed in my clean fatigues, with my spit shined boot, had already
made my bunk, and buffed the floor. I was doing something, I was buffing the floor, or
something and I didn’t hear them yell outside. We had the formation at six and I looked
out the window and there were a hundred and fifty of them standing outside and I’m
standing in the room. They said, ―You missed formation Toms‖, and I said, ―I was
buffing, and I didn’t hear anybody yell outside‖. 37:00 Once again, another article
fifteen, another seven days shoveling coal. I went in there and they introduced me to the
first sergeant, and he asked me if I had anything to say and I said, ―I was buffing, I was
up fully dressed‖, and he told me to ―shut up‖, and get out of the orderly room and that I
was getting an article fifteen, so I did just that. Anyway, that’s why I was a PFC for two
years. Then while I was a PFC we had tank gunnery where we go to Grafenberg, which
is a big former German training area over on the East German border. There were
seventeen tanks in our company and we’d try to fire—you have a day course and a night
course and they keep score and it’s an honor to fire high gun in the company. 38:04
I
had a good tank commander, and I had a good driver, a good loader, and before we went
to tank gunnery the commander said, ―We’re going to have an auction and we’re going to
auction off these tanks. We’re going to have a contest and the tank that wins will get half
the money, who won the competition, and the guy who buys the tank at the auction will
get the other half of the money‖. I had been loaning out money, because somebody came
down to my room and wanted to borrow five for ten and I thought, ―Pfffff, he is a
sergeant and I’m a PFC, that’s great‖, and I said, ―I’ll give it to you, here’s five‖, and at
the end of the month he gave me ten dollars. About a year later I had money loaned out
to fifty-six different people and I had over twelve hundred dollars loaned out. 39:03 In
17
�fact, when we lined up for pay, and we lined up alphabetically and my name is Toms, and
I’d have to stand in the pay line, because they paid you in cash, and I’d have to stand
there for an hour. I told my platoon sergeant, ―I can’t wait in this line for an hour. I’ve
got to get to Alpha, Bravo and Charlie Companies, because there are guys over there that
owe me money and their names don’t start with T. They’ll be AB and C, and they’ll be
down in the village drinking and spending money on those women, (I was going to use
the other term that starts with W), and I’ll never get my money. I’m going now, and I’ll
be back before they get to T‖, so I’d have to run to the company, with my book, get the
money from them and then run back to the company. Anyway, when the auction came,
come to find out, and I was still a PFC, the people who held all the ranks, they didn’t
have any money. 40:02
So they started this auction, who wanted to buy this tank, who
wanted to buy that tank, and there were only a couple of us that had any money and the
people who were loaning out money were low ranking people. So finally a couple of
sergeants said, ―They’ll probably have to go home and ask their wife for some money‖.
Anyway, we had the auction and everybody was totally flabbergasted. I bought my tank
and one other tank I thought would win. Anyway, to make a long story short, we won;
we won the tank gunnery combined. We were in second place after the day run, and the
night run, we won that too, so my tank sergeant, Easton, and I, we won the competition,
so I got all the money. I got the money, because—you know now, I had to split it four
ways. The money was split to four crew members, but they didn’t buy our tank, because
they didn’t have any money, so I got more money than anybody. 41:00 We did win and
we were part of the 18th Division and I found out that we were—our score was third
highest in the 18th Division, and our battalion was fifty four tanks and we were the
18
�highest in our battalion with our score, but there were other tanks, maybe Bad Kreuznach,
Mannheim and some other places, so we were third in the division, so we got in some van
and they took us to Bad Kreuznach division headquarters and the division commander
presented us with an engraved Ronson lighter that had the 18th Division crest on the
lighter and I didn’t smoke, so I kept it and gave it to my mother when I got home,
because she smoked, and my father did, so I gave her the engraved lighter.
Interviewer: Now, how long did they have you in Germany for that tour?
That was two years.
Interviewer: Okay, are there other—why did you stay in the barracks the whole
time? Was there just nowhere else to go? 42:00
You couldn’t, the only people that got to live in what’s known as family housing, were
the people who were married.
Interviewer: Right
Only NCO’s and even just the higher ranking NCO’s and most of the officers, so I lived
in the barracks with one company down , Bravo company, no Bravo company down—
One company down and one company up, I can’t remember, I was in Echo Company first
and then Alpha Company, but it was dangerous. They sold beer upstairs, they had a little
restaurant up there and even the sergeants, they’d want to come down and fight at night.
I remember, I pushed my wall locker away from the wall and they said, ―Rich is looking
for you, Sergeant Rich‖, and I was a private. I had to hide behind that wall locker,
because Rich wanted to come in and fight. The one time, I was down there in my room, I
was down there visiting a friend of mine who was a fighter himself. 43:01 The door
burst open and this guy named Greenway came bursting, came into the room and I had
19
�to—I’d been to town and in order to go to town then you had have a coat and tie on, you
couldn’t just—no casual dress. I was standing there with my topcoat on and my tie and
he burst in this room and he said, ―I think I could whip your ass, Toms‖. He flew into
me, I was—he came across the room and I started to take my jacket off and I got both my
arms behind me getting out of my jacket and he punched me in the face, but the thing
was, he was about my size and I didn’t go down, but then somehow, even in the army, the
guy had long hair and I got a hold of his hair and pulled him around and punched him a
few times. Anyway, I got on top of him and I won this fight. But that was—I didn’t
mention earlier, but I had fought in the Golden Gloves. 44:02 I was a fair to middling
basketball player, but there were great fighters on this team at Godwin, where I went to
high school and I got cut from the team, so I went and hung around with some tough guys
and went down and fought in the Golden Gloves tournament in the Civic Auditorium and
I lost to a guy from the Moose Lodge. It was a three round decision, so I learned an
awful lot about boxing. I fought a lot of tough guys and I took a lot of beatings over
there at the Westside Youth Commonwealth, in training. But I did learn a lot and it was
okay, because I had gloves on and it was a sport, it wasn’t fighting, it was boxing, there’s
a difference and I learned a lot, so I was able to get Greenway off my back and I punched
him enough times that he quit, which was the only fight I won in my life, but I didn’t start
it either, which was good.
Interviewer: Did you get in many fights, or did you mostly stay away from them?
Most of the time I tried to stay away from them, but one time I was with this tough guy,
he was on the ship, Senna, and we were in Ebertsheim drinking. 45:07 We had gone
outside and I didn’t know he was such a fired up guy, I knew he was probably the
20
�toughest person I had ever met in my life, we walked down the street and there were three
black guys standing there and we just walked between them, I just walked between them
on the sidewalk and one of them said something and Senna hit this guy and knocked him
out in the street. I thought, ―Are you crazy?‖ So then, the two of them, the guy laid
there, they took off running down the street the other way. I said, ―They’re coming back
you fool‖, and we ran, we took off, we were all dressed, we had a top coat on, tie, coat,
we ran down and hid behind some houses. The came down the street, and this is no lie,
there’s five of them. Anyway, they came around the corner and they found us. 46:00 A
guy came up to me, a huge guy, got me in a headlock and started punching the shit out of
me. Anyway, I just remember Senna knocking people down. Anyway, the next thing I
know this guys’ grip is relaxing on me, cuz I’m trying to flail away, but I couldn’t
because this guy was twice as strong as I was and twice as big. Then Senna is punching
this guy in the head who’s got me in the headlock, the guy releases me and goes down on
the ground. There are a couple of guys laying there, one guy is running away and I never
saw anything like it in my life. I fought in the Golden Gloves with guys who were city
champions and I saw the best fighters who ever came out of this area and I really learned
a lot, but this guy was unbelievable and he had never fought in the Golden Gloves. So
then, I was bleeding, and I got a big scar right there and had about eight stitches there, I
was bleeding and had blood all over my clothes, we ran down this alley and I knew they
were coming back and they did, and I thought, ―They’ll kill us‖. 47:00 We crawled up
on the top of a garage roof and lay down on our backs and we could hear them running
up and down the alley looking for us and I thought—anyway, somehow they left and we
made our way back to a bar and I got in the bathroom and cleaned myself up and we got
21
�back to Baumholder and I went down to the center and got my face stitched up, but there
was an awful lot of that in the army.
Interviewer: Life in the army at that point was, you had your duty and what you
were doing and then there was drinking, and fighting and at least some of the
womanizing that was sort of what one did.
Yup, yup
Interviewer: All right now, how long had you enlisted for? What was it?
I enlisted for three years.
Interviewer: Then did you then decide to go ahead and reenlist and stay in?
Anyway, I started—I got the idea that since I wasn’t a stupid person, I could soldier and I
could try to make it my life. 48:00 You have what is known as a guard mount, you go
down there and you’re inspected for guard and there’s seven post, three men, three
reliefs, there’s twenty-one guards, but there’s twenty-two people that report for guard.
The one person on the guard mount will be picked as knowing military subject and he
will be known as the Colonels orderly and he won’t have to walk guard, he’ll just have to
go up and report to the Colonel and the Colonel will just say, ―Good job, make a pot of
coffee and you’ll be free, you won’t have to walk guard and you’ll have the next day
off‖. So, I thought that would be a good thing to do, so I shined up all my clothes, got
new fatigues, went down and got the supply sergeant to give me—I traded in my field
jacket, and I kinda got in good with him, because he was the volleyball coach and I was
playing volleyball. I got completely—I got my whole uniform done over, so I was
extremely—I was so sharp I could hardly walk. 49:00 All my stuff was pressed,
starched, I had a clean haircut, spit shined, even when we had guard mount overshoes and
22
�field pants, I spit shined my goulashes, those buckle goulashes. I went down there to
guard mount and I started answering those questions they would ask. They would ask
you your weapon serial number and ask you about who’s the Secretary of Defense, who’s
the—the one time the guy asked me, ―Who’s the prime minister of Egypt?‖, and I said it
was Gamel Abdel Nasser and I was just a—I would read the Stars and Stripes, I was just
a news junkie and I knew all this stuff. The only thing I had to do was brush up on
military subjects, because they would ask yo some military things too, the maximum
effective range of your pistol, and about tank gunnery and about all kinds of military
stuff, map reading and everything. I started making Colonel's orderly and if you made it
two times in a quarter you’d get a three day pass. I made it six times in a row and they
always owed me a three day pass and they owed me a three day pass from the tank
gunnery. 50:02 Then they said, ―If you make Colonel's orderly ten times, then you
don’t have to pull guard any more‖, so I said, ―Okay, but I already made it six‖. The first
sergeant, he hated my guts and he said, ―You start over at zero Toms‖, so I said, ―Okay‖,
you obviously said ―Okay‖, so then I started making it again every time I was on guard
and I made it six times in a row and I got up to ten and he said, ―You’re off guard‖. I
went to the NCO Academy, volunteered, I’d just made E4 and the top ten percent
graduates at the NCO Academy got promoted, so I went from one month—one month I
was a PFC and a month later I was an E5, I jumped up two ranks after waiting two years
in one rank. 51:00
I made two ranks in one month, so then I was a spec five and I
didn’t have to pull KP anymore, I didn’t have to walk guard anymore, I’d already just
made the sixteen times Colonel's orderly, but by then I was a knowledgeable soldier and I
was sharp and I made soldier of the month there and I won the tank gunnery.
23
�Interviewer: Now, did you get a chance during that tour in Germany to go very far
afield off base?
Yeah, I had all these three day passes and I saved all my leave and I got there in February
and I was really good with money even though, as an E2, I made eighty six dollars a
month, but I saved I saved enough money somehow and I took a train and I went to
Barcelona with this very tough person, Dan Senna, but we kinda argued a lot, so I wanted
to do things my way and he was sure going to do things his way, but anyway, we went to
Barcelona on the train and it was wonderful. I only had about twenty dollars to spend
once I got there. 52:00 But, we stayed in a hotel in downtown Barcelona and went out
to a place called Castle Hills, on the bus, and stayed out there for a week and then we
came back on the train. I ended up going to Barcelona three times on that tour of three
years and I went to Paris seven times on the train, because you just had to get to
Reichenbach, which was about ten Kilometers away. The train from Frankfort to Paris
went right past there and that was a stop, so you just had to get to Reichenbach and six
hours later I was in Paris. Then I went to Amsterdam, I went almost twenty times to
Amsterdam.
Interviewer: Now, did you speak any European languages?
I took a course, they had a course during the daytime in German--I took that. I took
University of Maryland for three credit hours, I took that German. 53:00 I got quite
good at it and they asked me, when the instructor left that taught the troops, the troop
class each day, if I wanted to be an instructor, and I said, ―There’s no rank and I’ll end up
being a spec five forever‖, so I didn’t take that job. I went back to the motor pool being a
tank driver and gunner.
24
�Interviewer: So, how did you kind of get around otherwise if you’re in France, or
in Spain, or someplace like that?
Well, we’d always take the bus. They said, ―You should buy a car‖, but I didn’t want to
buy a car, because I liked the public transportation and to me that was just a—I didn’t
want to drive, not at all. For the whole tour I didn’t want to drive.
Interviewer: In Europe you can get around pretty well public transportation.
I always tool the bus and it was just great and it was no problem at all. 54:00 Then
taking the train was just wonderful. It was eight hours to Amsterdam and I’d take that
three day pass and leave on Friday and I’d be in the club car, get something to eat there
and it was just absolutely wonderful. Go from there to Koblenz, change at Koblenz, into
Bingen and into Amsterdam. I’d get myself a hotel room; it was just paradise, that’s
why I went there so many times. It was actually the best years of my life. I didn’t have
very much money, it was just the whole thing, Amsterdam, it was the start of the music
thing—I didn’t—I was just a--I just loved the music, I liked all the women in
Amsterdam, I liked the drinking and all that, but to me the music was the most—the
greatest thing. I remember being in the bars and those Beatles songs would come on and
everybody in the bar would be standing singing those songs. Total strangers would have
their arms around me, it was just the most fantastic thing and I just loved it. 55:02 of
course coming back on Sunday with a hangover was pretty rough.
Interviewer: Now, when that tour in Germany finishes then what happens to you?
Well, I applied for OCS and I came back and I went to—I applied for infantry and they
said, ―You have enough math‖, because I had four years of high school math,
trigonometry, geometry and everything, so they sent me to Fort Sill to artillery OCS, a six
25
�months course and I was there four months. I quit after four months, because my grades
as a lower--middle classman were fine, but I could see that I wasn’t going to be as
knowledgeable as I should have been to be an officer in artillery, so I quit before they
quit me. 56:02 I didn’t want to flunk out, so I quit at the end of that, and I have a little
bit of a problem standing up in front of a group, so we had some group and giving a
presentation I’d choke up. I did that a couple of times and I thought, ―I have to get over
this‖. It was really embarrassing to have a firing mission and not be able to talk, it was
sort of like in ―The King's Speech‖, it was like that and back in Canada I used to sing
―God Save the King‖. I was King George the VI, from the movie ―The King's Speech‖.
Interviewer: Now, did you take steps to kind of learn how to talk in front of people?
Well, after I flunked out of OCS after four months I was kind of depressed and I was
assigned—I was sent to the 2nd Infantry Division at Fort Benning and I was in the motor
pool, it was in armor and they had tanks there. I could really drive that tank and I was the
only one that could drive the tank on the train. 57:05 They were going to ship tanks to
North Carolina for a maneuver and nobody could drive the tank onto the train car. I said,
―I’ve driven plenty of them on the railcar‖, because it’s scary, you go up like this and you
can’t see anything except the sky and then the tank falls forward. You’re on the ramp
and it falls forward and you’re on the train while somebody is on the ground walking you
forward, ground guiding you and I could drive the tank on the train, so I drove all the
tanks in the company on the train. Anyway, I made the—they asked if anybody wanted
to go airborne, they had an airborne class and they got nine hundred people and they
needed fifty more just to fill up the class. ―Even though you guys are in armor, do you
want to go airborne?‖ I said, ―Hell yes, after that OCS thing, I’m ready, I’ll jump out, I’ll
26
�do anything‖. I was just kind of depressed with my accomplishments. 58:00
Anyway,
I went to that airborne school, nine hundred, and that was tough, but I was really good,
not great, but a really good athlete, but that airborne training was tough and I almost
didn’t make a certain part of it, because I had trouble doing this PLF, parachute landing
fall. You’re hooked up in a harness, they swing you back and forth and they drop you.
You have to hit and do a perfect parachute landing fall and I was borderline, but on my
very last one, they said, ―We’ll give you one last chance Toms and if you hit this one,
you’re going forward‖, I hit it and I got to go. Anyway, up there with sixty-four jumpers,
it was unbelievable. They opened that door up and I jumped out of that airplane and I
jumped out twice on my birthday. I’m not even in the infantry and I jumped out twice on
my birthday and I’ll tell you it was exciting.
Interviewer: How old were you by that time?
Twenty-six, twenty-five-- anyway I made soldier of the month, battalion soldier of the
month. 59:02 Then went to training in Fort Bragg, North Carolina and they said, ―We
don’t want you to go with us, you stay back and study for division soldier of the month‖,
so I stayed back and studied, but then I never--then Vietnam picked up and the 11th Air
Assault changed to the 1st Cav and I never, ever, did go up for division soldier of the
month, because I got sent over there to the 1st Cav and it was back to being a nothing. I
got assigned to this company and I was a spec five. They were all—just lines and lines,
hundreds of helicopters and Chinooks and Hueys and I was just off a tank from an office
over in Sand Hill, this is a different part of Fort Benning. They assigned me—they said,
―Well, we’re leaving in a week Toms, you’ve got to go over and get POR qualified‖,
which meant qualified to ship out to Vietnam. 00:02 They said, ―You better go over
27
�and get your shots, we’re going to give them all to you in one day, because you don’t
have time‖, so they gave me seven shots, so then I went down to the flight—they said,
―Go on down to the flight line‖, so I got down there and you meet your crew. So, I got
down there and met them and I started to pass out, because they gave me all these shots.
I said, ―I’m sorry I got to sit down‖, and I sat down and passed out and laid over there for
a while, because I had all these shots going in me.
Interviewer: At this point, you say you’re coming in from tanks, so you don’t know
anything about the helicopters or whatever, what kind of assignment did they give
you then?
They said, ―You’re going to be a door gunner, because you’re in armor and you know a
little bit about weapons. You fired machine guns and you know a little bit about them.
You know how to take apart a thirty caliber machine gun‖. 1:00 I said, ―Oh yeah‖,
―And fire these weapons?‖ I said, ―Oh yeah‖, and that’s what they did with all the
tankers, they made them door gunners. They said, ―You’re going to get flight pay‖, and
I, for years, made $99.37 and now as a spec five, I was making $210.00. To make
another eighty some dollars flight pay and be a member of a flight crew was--I thought,
―This is really special‖, so that’s what I did. And then just like in the movie with Mel
Gibson there, we were soldiers, we were young. We took the bus to Charleston, south
Carolina and there was a band playing ―When Johnny Comes Marching Home‖, we got
up on it and took that ship, got on there and they said, ―You’re in C compartment‖, and I
thought, ―I remember that, that’s KP‖, and I said, ―I don’t pull KP, I’m a spec five‖, see, I
was still mouthy, and he said, ―You’re going to be a KP pusher, you go to the mess hall.
You’ll be in charge of the KP‖. 2:00 I thought, ―The whole thirty days‖. We left and
28
�went down past Cuba, through the Panama Canal, that was exciting, landed fifteen days
later at Long Beach. It’s not like the movie where everybody gets off, goes into town and
gets drunk, except one person from the platoon, a thirty man platoon, he gets to go in. Of
course it was kiss ass Schoenborn; he got to go into Long Beach and the rest of us,
twenty-nine of us, we just stood on the deck looking at Long Beach. We were there for a
day, they had to fuel it up and get more food on, or whatever and we left for Vietnam.
Fifteen days later, it was just like a big lake, we fired machine guns off the back, pistols,
and rifles, fired everything off the back deck. We did PT on deck every day and then
down in the kitchen. It was a little better because I was a spec five, unlike the first trip
there was no trouble, no fighting. 3:01 Then we got to Vietnam, we stopped and you
could just barely see the shore, but I could hear cannon fire, ―boom‖, and I thought, ―My
God‖, ―boom‖.
Interviewer: What did you know about Vietnam at this point?
I was a phys-ed major in college and I was geography minor, so I knew right where we
were, and crossing the International Date Line I knew what part of the world we were in.
I knew that we had been there before and I knew about the French at Dien Bien Phu, I
knew the history and I knew about Ho Chi Minh and I knew about China. The reason we
went to Vietnam was justified, bona fide, the reason we went there was to stop the spread
of communism. The communists were in Cuba, they were in all the European countries,
and communists were very big in France, Italy, Spain, and Greece, even in England. 4:04
And they were all over South and Central America, of course, China, Russia and they
were in North Vietnam and that’s why we were in South Vietnam, to stop it, that was far
enough, that’s why we were there. I know the premise, the Gulf of Tonkin incident and
29
�all that was falling, but we were in there and I wasn’t running that. Anyway we got off
and came down those cargo chutes with all that equipment. I had that M-60 machine gun
and I don’t even know how I carried all that, because I weighed a hundred and –I fought
in the golden gloves at 126 and that’s what I weighted when I came off that ship and still
do. I got in that big landing barge and I kind of laughed, because I never thought we’d go
over the edge, over the side of that ship on the cargo net. Anyway, I crawled down there
and somehow I ended up in the front of the landing barge and standing there I thought, ―It
must be the Colonel‖, and I can’t remember his name, but he had a horse and I wish I
could remember his name. 5:07 He was kind of eccentric, he was kind of a famous guy.
Interviewer: He had been in the Cavary a while.
Yeah, and he had a horse and I was just somehow standing behind him, just fate, and we
got up to the shore and that big door came down and everybody walked off in about a
foot of water. We walked in there and there were television cameras and photographers
and everything. We went in and we went through there and I just looked around and I
had no idea that I was ever going to be on the front of a magazine. We went and got on a
C-124 and we flew to An Khe and it was dark when we got there and I had no idea and
they said, ―You all set up your tents‖. Everybody had a shelter hat and teamed up with
somebody and put up a pup tent wherever you wanted to. The next day, they were all
over the place jumbled up and not very military. So, then after that, the next day, we had
to get up and line them all up, which is natural, because we were in the army. 6:01 We
used those pup tents about the first two months, but it rained every night and every night
the rain would just come through the tent and you’d have to get out of your sleeping bag,
30
�hold up all of your bedding, and squat inside that pup tent while that rain ran through the
tent and then you’d lay it back down again and go back to sleep.
Interviewer: Did you have air mattresses?
Yes, we had air mattresses, but for some reason they did not keep you off the ground high
enough to stop that waster from soaking that sleeping bag, because they were hanging all
over the next morning.
Interviewer: Yeah, so once the flood water went away you could lay them back
down.
The thing was, the very first morning it was so different. It was like when you go from
Michigan to Florida. The fauna, the trees, everything, the smell and everything and when
that sun came up the next morning it was like misty and I thought it was just like being—
such a strange thing, I had never been in anything like that, except maybe Florida maybe,
because I’d gone down to Florida, hitchhiked down there actually. 7:08 I saw a line of
about two or three hundred Vietnamese workers, and those conical hats and black
pajamas, five hundred yards away on the other side of the airstrip, and I thought, ―God,
this is really the orient, look at these strange people‖. I was really something, and the
smell, that ground was red and it smelled different, because everything smelled different.
Anyway, An Khe, where we were, was a big circle with all the units around the circle and
in the center were four hundred and thirty-five helicopters, including six of those flying
cranes, those big grasshopper looking affairs. The first day they started flying and they
said, ―You’re just going to be on standby Toms, because we don’t have a crew for you.
There are ten helicopters in your platoon, but you’re going to be an extra, but you can fly
right now‖. 8:08 So, the first day, I went over there and they showed me about the
31
�rockets and M-60 machine guns and I was in charge of loading up these rocket pods,
seven rockets on each side, two M-60 machine guns, that were belt fed, on each side and
then the crew chief, he had an M-60 machine gun and I, the door gunner, had an M-60
machine gun and I fired out. The door was open and I sat on a little seat. I was in charge
of loading up the ammunition, cleaning those six M-60 machine guns and loading up the
rocket pods we were flying. Then about a week later there was a guy in the next bunk to
me and I can’t remember—I just remember his name was Knight and they went out, I
was in the tent and they came back and said that Knight got hit and they said, ―You’re
going to take his place‖. 9:02 I never—they came in—―Knight got killed‖, that’s what
they said, and they folded up his bunk, picked up his stuff and took it up to supply and I
took Knight's place. I never saw that, and after that and I thought, ―This is real stuff,
Knight’s dead‖, and I didn’t know him from a hill of beans. I didn’t even talk much to
him, because for some reason I was off on detail and I didn’t see much of him, so I took
his place. We started going on these missions and supporting the infantry in what they
were doing. We’d go to Pleiku a lot and I remember they’d take that helicopter down the
riverbeds, low, ten feet off the water and there would be Vietnamese just standing in the
river, crossing, or doing whatever, or fishing, or washing clothes and they’d see us
coming and they’d lay down, lay down in the water, because they didn’t know what we
were going to do, because we were harm.
Interviewer: At this point did you have any orders? Were you looking for things to
shoot at, or were you just on reconnaissance? 10:03
We would shoot at whatever we were told to shoot at. We would—now I was a spec five
and they didn’t really come out and tell us very much about what we were doing, or
32
�anything else. Later on when I got to be an E8, I would always call the platoon together
and I would give them a, what we called, a five paragraph field order. Situation,
admission, execution, logistics, I can’t remember all five parts of it, but I would tell
everybody what’s going on and I said, ―The reason I’m telling you guys is to bring you
into play, so you know what the hell is going on and this isn’t just boredom, even if it is
just a field problem, you still have situation, admission, execution, a five paragraph field
order‖. No one ever gave that to me, so consequently, most of the time I was ill informed
and I didn’t know what was going on and what units of the enemy we were supposed to
engage in. 11:01
Interviewer: When you first got there, was it 1965?
1965 in July
Interviewer: Okay, so you’re with the 1st Cavalry Division, 1st Battalion, 9th
Cavalry, with helicopter units. This is really the first large [division sized] army
formation that went into Vietnam at that point, and when you were based there at
An Khe, initially, was there a lot of security around the base? Were they worried at
that point about Viet Cong attacks and things like that, or was it fairly loose when
you first got there?
Well, we had full guard every night. We’d have at least two hours in a fox hole with
sandbags around it, close to where our tents were. That was what was known as the inner
perimeter, but then they had an outer perimeter, which was up the hill out further, but I
never got assigned to the outer perimeter. So, we were the second line of defense. 12:00
But, sitting out there on guard and every—I don’t know, it was just, at night you’d be
looking into—and there would be shadows and things and it was scary, because these
33
�people could crawl up on you. When I was a kid I used to do that, when I was a kid I was
always the Indian and that was my bit. I would crawl up and I could tell you a lot more
stories about being in the army at the NCO Academy, I was really good at crawling up on
people and sneaking up on—especially, even in the daylight, because like I said before, I
was always the Indian. I know these people could crawl up on you in the dark and all of
a sudden be right onto you, and you’d be overwhelmed really quick. So, I didn’t have
any problem with falling asleep on guard. I had a little problem with every shadow, it
was something. There were a few times when we parked these helicopters, out on the
different operations, where—well, you’re out on guard and here are these great big
helicopters there on a dry spot in the middle of a bunch of rice paddies. 13:03
And I
thought, ―Oh my God, I’m out here all by myself, everybody else is asleep, two
helicopters by themselves and in the daytime there’s all kinds of Vietnamese and then
they kind of fade away. Well, who knows who they are, so they could be sneaking up on
you‖, so I’m kind of hustling around there, moving around these two helicopters for my
two hours and then I’m supposed to go to sleep and I’m a case of nerves, because I knew
that they could—anybody that’s armed with even a bow could sneak up on you and kill
you in a minute. Just with not even a real weapon, or even a spear. There were people,
when we were off, over by Pleiku, fifty miles away, not very far, there were Montagnards
and they had spears and we’d see them all the time. Primitive people with a loin cloth on
and that was all and they’d be out tending some kind of little plot of ground they had,
growing some things. 14:04 I was kind of terrified at night and I was glad when it
finally got daylight and you could see.
Interviewer: Did you actually get people infiltrating the base and doing damage?
34
�They did, but not—only one time and it was in Hong Kong Mountain. One time we were
woken with a lot of racket and they had gotten up on top of Hong Kong Mountain and
there was a platoon of people up there all the time and they attacked them. You could
hear a lot of things going off and see some flashes of light, but they were repulsed by the
people in the 1st Cav.
Interviewer: But the base that you were actually on did not get infiltrated?
We never did, we were just sitting there, everybody knew where we were, there were
twenty-five thousand troops, it was a large division, the 1st Cavalry, the entire division
was in one big circle and we were sitting right there. Everybody knew, everybody in
North Vietnam, and China, knew exactly where we were sitting. 15:02
Interviewer: There may have been a certain amount of safety in numbers there
against that kind of infiltration.
Oh, there was, and like I said, two perimeters and I just had an M-16 and I wasn’t armed
with anything special. At night you don’t have much in field of fire, because somebody
could be up on you in a minute.
Interviewer: Right, and did you have Vietnamese working on the base during the
day?
We had a Vietnamese, it was a tall Vietnamese, the tallest I had ever seen, was our
interpreter and there were a lot of civilian day laborers. There was nobody there at night.
During the day they would come in, but not in our immediate area, not in our company,
or in our troop area, not close to us at all. We’d just see them out there doing things on
the heli pad, or doing different things, but with supervision in a large group. 16:00 You
could go into the village, sometimes they would let you get on—you could walk to the
35
�village, about two miles into An Khe, or you could jump on a truck, You could just stick
out your thumb, everybody stops. We’d go into the village, but you had to have
everything with you and we’d go into the village for some women, they had what was
known at ―boom, boom girls‖, for some ―boom, boom‖ and it was about a hundred dong,
about a dollar. Anyway, we’d get on a truck and you could go in there for the day, but
you had to have all your stuff with you. You had to have your web gear on, your—you
didn’t have to take your steel helmet, but you had to have your weapon with you. I had
a... being on a helicopter, I had a pistol, a forty-five, which is the same pistol I had when I
was in tanks. We were in armor and we don’t carry rifles in armor, our personal weapon
is a pistol and I did qualify expert with a pistol. 17:02 I missed that in rifle by two, but I
could fire—when they gave me a pistol I thought, ―Oh good, a second chance, they’re
giving me a chance again to get that expert rating‖, and I did with the pistol, and actually,
it was relatively easy.
Interviewer: Now, was it safe to go back and forth to An Khe at that point?
Yeah, we never—there were a lot of people when we were in the village and they were
selling beer and Schnapps and beer, there were two kinds of beer, ―Tiger LaRue‖ and ―
33 Bop‖, which was known as ―Bomb a Reba‖, I don’t know how much that means, I can
count, but you had to know how to count, because you had to tell those ―boom, boom
girls‖ how much you were going to pay, you needed to—they liked to dicker a bit, not a
great amount, but you could dicker.
Interviewer: Then did they make sure that everybody came back at night?
Well, you came back on your own, you were told, yeah, told. It was on a river and they
had a water purification truck down there, there was no bottled water. 18:01 I think
36
�that’s what would do some damage, and something about some flak, about some
corruption, something about millions and millions of dollars in contracts for bottled
water. I said, ―I don’t care, we’re not in Iraq, you can get water out of the water buffalo
like I did, that’s why we have water purification teams, I don’t need bottled water. Your
bottle is your canteen, fill it up with water out of the water buffalo, it’s water, you don’t
need to have a plastic bottle‖.
Interviewer: Well, I guess we’ve gone upscale as far as that.
Well, it’s costing us too much money we don’t have.
Interviewer: All right, how long was it before your division started to get into large
scale action after you got there?
In October, that’s when they said there’s a big thing—they over ran Plei Me, but then that
was an outpost armed by ARVN’s. 19:03 Army of the Republic of Vietnam and the
people that over ran them were people known as PAVN’s, People’s Army of Vietnam
and I said to a really good friend of mine, ―What are we doing fighting the people?‖
Anyway, I said, ―It’s the People’s Army of Vietnam‖, anyway, a great friend of mine. So
anyway, things really started happening then and they said, ―The 7th Cav’s involved and
we’re going to be supporting them‖, so we just loaded up those machine guns and those
rockets and we would fire everything, though I can actually say, I never saw a North
Vietnamese soldier. I never—we would unload and we would fire that stuff where we
were directed by the people on the ground and we would come back to the, what they
called the heli pad, the ―golf course‖, the big circle, and we would load up the rockets
again, load up the machine guns and go and unload the thing three, or four, times a day
and we would do that every day for a month, every day seven days a week. 20:08
37
�Interviewer: So it’s not just that intuition fight in the Ia Drang Valley for that first
Mel Gibson movie part of it, but continued action in that area over that period of
months.
We knew there were American troops down there, we could see some of them One time
they said that there wasn’t a medevac around and would we land and pick up a wounded
soldier, so we landed the helicopter and we thought, ―Ppppp, here we are sitting in the
middle of all this stuff‖, and here’s this guy, a great big black guy, and he must have
weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. We were--me and the crew chief, we got this big
guy under his arms and started pulling him and he had a big hole in his stomach. I
thought, ―My God‖, because I’d never seen anybody wounded like that. 21:01 He had
a—there was nothing coming out of it, it was just a big hole about an inch in diameter. I
thought, ―My God look at this, don’t look at that, you might get sick‖. We got him up
into the helicopter and laid him on the floor and took off. I thought, ―I’m glad we’re back
up in the air, because obviously, whoever shot this guy is not very far away and I’m glad
the helicopter got off the ground again‖. We’d fly in pairs and we’d usually fly with the
same helicopter behind us. We would be the lead helicopter, because our pilot was a
Captain, yeah, Captain Kidd, the name of the pirate. Anyway, we were flying alone, we
had a 1st Lieutenant copilot, we were flying, it was in the Ia Drang Valley, and he said,
―Where’s, what’s his name?‖ 22:02
B-1, B-2, they had a code name of the helicopter
and they were Charlie something, it was, we were Charlie 3 and they were Charlie 4, he
said, ―Where’s Charlie 4?‖ I looked around and said, ―I don’t see them‖, and I didn’t
think anything of it, and come to find out, they were gone. They got shot down and we
never saw the four people in that tank crew, in that helicopter, never saw then again, and I
38
�thought, ―My God‖. We went back down to An Khe, landed that helicopter and he said,
―Their chopper’s parked right beside us, you got to be kidding me‖, and I never saw those
people again. I can remember one, the pilot, or the copilot was a Hawaiian warrant
officer and he was--it seemed like he was about twenty years old, of course he was a little
bit older, for just a young, fresh faced, guy and I never saw any of those people again.
Interviewer: But, the chopper itself got back?
No, the chopper was gone. 23:00
Interviewer: Oh, so when you got back there was a place where the chopper should
be, but it wasn’t there?
And I, really—that’s how this really was, and in real combat you don’t really see—it’s
not all—the enemy’s not out there, it’s not frontal attacks like, maybe, it was in Korea,
it’s just a strange thing, all of a sudden somebody’s there and then they’re gone. They
were gone and I never saw them again.
Interviewer: Now, did you take much ground fire at this point?
One time I was on KP, even though I was a spec five, and a guy named Meyers, who I
had been playing cards with the night before, owed me forty dollars, and he’s firing the
machine gun out of the helicopter, taking my place and he fires the machine gun into the
rocket pod. The pod blew up and brought the chopper down, it blew up and he got a
wound in his leg, so they evacuated him to Japan, with my forty bucks. 24:07 But, he
lived and I thought, ―Oh god, there goes—there’s that‖, and one other time we were
going out in the jungle there and Warrant Officer Green said, ― The stick’s dead, we’ve
lost hydraulics‖, and that might have been caused by ground fire. The hydraulics went
and he said, ―We’re going to land it and it’s going to be rough‖, so the propeller keeps
39
�turning, but he auto rotated the chopper down to the ground, but it came down and he
said, ―Hold on‖, So I grabbed on and that thing hit the ground, ―kabam‖, and bounced
about three times and finally came to rest and then somebody came and picked us up and
we left that helicopter sitting right there and never saw it again either. 25:01 We were
lucky that helicopter didn’t crash, because it was—I don’t know how he even found an
open space, because there were trees everywhere, vegetation and, you know, you can’t hit
anything, the helicopter’s like a big spider with that chopper going around, you can’t hit
anything, or it well just flip right over. He landed it on the skids and it bounced there on
the ground and we jumped off and grabbed all our stuff, weapons, grabbed the weapons
and as much as we could and threw them in this other helicopter and got out of there
without the rockets.
Interviewer: Now, what you’re doing, you’re landing in the middle of nowhere and
there’s not American forces around.
I know it, yeah 25:37
The end of interview tape I
40
�41
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
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1914-
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
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Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
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RHC-27
Language
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eng
Source
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.
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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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TomsA
Title
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Toms, Alan (Interview transcript and video, 1 of 2), 2011
Creator
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Toms, Alan
Description
An account of the resource
Alan Toms was born in Toronto, Canada in 1939. Because of his father's occupation, Toms' and his family moved several times while Toms was a child, eventually ending up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. After graduating from high school, Toms attended junior college in Grand Rapids before enrolling at Western Michigan University, although he eventually left the university. After leaving Western Michigan, Toms joined the Army and went through his basic training and armored AIT at Fort Knox, Kentucky. From Fort Knox, Toms deployed to Germany for a three-year tour as part of an armored unit. After his tour in Germany, Toms went to the artillery OCS at Fort Sill, Oklahoma but did not do well and eventually transferred to the 2nd Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Georgia. While at Fort Benning, Toms went through Airborne training before transferring to the 1st Cavalry Division and was with the division when it deployed to Vietnam. While in Vietnam, Toms served as a door gunner aboard a helicopter.
Contributor
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Smither, James (Interviewer)
Kentwood Historic Preservation Commission (Kentwood, Mich.)
WKTV
WKTV (Wyoming, Mich.)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Army
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
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eng
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2011-03-10
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
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application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f66fdec7ceef5e28e81bf4bb7eb7eac0.mp4
021d728e6946bf037ef9bf0ab8364ab3
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/78b136fa1f7eada85b146f6484b1b68d.pdf
43405181d362f57c0a34a1330af1d9a6
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans’ History Project
Charles Tipton
Vietnam War
41 minutes 28 seconds
(00:00:23) Early Life
-Born in Baskin, Florida on March 10, 1947
-Parents were farmers
-Grew corn, peanuts, tobacco
-Engaged in sharecropping
-Raised horses, cows, goats, and mules
-Had twelve brothers and sisters
-Youngest boy
-First year of school was in Baskin
-Moved to Morriston, Florida
-Father worked for other farmers
-Lived there from 1952-winter of 1961
-Moved to Arcadia, Florida
(00:02:45) Awareness of Vietnam War
-Watched the news every night in high school
-Knew the casualty count for each week
-Had no desire to serve or to fight in Vietnam
(00:03:13) Getting Drafted
-Received draft notice after he turned eighteen in 1965
-Granted a delay because he was recently married
-Also had two daughters
-Had to report in 1969 when he was twenty two years old
(00:04:55) Basic Training & Advanced Infantry Training (AIT)
-Reported to Fort Jackson, South Carolina on June 16, 1969
-Twenty three weeks for both basic and AIT
-Trained to be an infantryman and part of a mortar team
(00:05:19) Deployment to Vietnam
-Granted two weeks of leave before deploying to Vietnam
-Deployed in October 1969
-Didn’t know his unit or location
(00:05:40) Arriving in Vietnam
-Left U.S. out of Fort Lewis, Washington
-Arrived in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam
-Three days of processing and waiting for assignment
-Got assigned to the 101st Airborne Division
-Sent to Bien Hoa Air Base for preparatory training (protocol and basic information)
-Sent to Phu Bai and then to Camp Evans by helicopter
-Remembers smelling Vietnam before he left the plane in Cam Ranh Bay
-He was taken to a mess hall, but the smell destroyed his appetite
�(00:07:30) Camp Evans and Field Duty
-Assigned to 2nd Platoon, Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne
Division
-From Camp Evans was taken to Firebase Bastogne via helicopter
-Taken to Firebase Birmingham, three days later, and carried out infantry duties
-Guarding the firebase
-Patrolling the surrounding area
-Defending engineers building roads in the area
-He wasn’t assigned to be a part of a mortar team despite his training
-Made a standard infantryman
-Accepted it
-After Firebase Birmingham he returned to Camp Evans
-Time frame was October 1969 – December 1969
(00:09:49) Details on Being in the Field
-Only knew when Mondays came while in the field
-Medic gave out weekly dose of anti-malarial medicine on Mondays
-Never knew the actual date
-Usually stayed in the field for forty to sixty days
-After being in the field returned to Camp Evans for a stand down (rest)
-Lasted two days
-Rest
-Socialize with each other
-Drink beer
-Eat better food
(00:10:44) Firebase O’Reilly
-Sent to Firebase O’Reilly after the monsoon season was over
-Patrolled the area of operations surrounding O’Reilly
-Area of operations was five to six kilometers in diameter
-Stayed in that area for a decent amount of time looking for the enemy
-Got ambushed
-Set up ambushes
-Found enemy bunkers and destroyed them
-At night established perimeters in the field and guarded them
(00:12:42) Firebase Ripcord
-Prior to being sent to Firebase Ripcord he and his unit were stuck at Rakkasan Ridge
-Weather and fog made resupply and transportation impossible
-He was aware of how bad things had gotten for Alpha & Bravo Company at Ripcord
-Went into Ripcord three (or four) days from Rakkasan Ridge
-Stayed at the base of the hill until March 12, 1970 [April 11]
-Saw destroyed helicopters while they moved up the hill to Ripcord
-North Vietnamese mortars were hitting in front of them as they moved up the hill
-Secured and guarded Ripcord once they were to the top of the hill
-Once the area was secure they started building the firebase
-Captured a North Vietnamese soldier that had broken through the barbed wire defense
-Every bunker at Firebase Ripcord was rigged with explosives in case of retreat
�-Stayed on Firebase Ripcord March 1970 – April 1970 [April-May?]
-Built fortifications
-Guarded the perimeter
-Patrolled the surrounding area
(00:19:23) Mortar Unit Transfer
-Moved into a mortar unit after he was at Ripcord
-Sent back to Camp Evans
-Stayed there for two weeks
-Got orders to be transferred to Charlie Company of the 1st/327th
-Sent to Camp Eagle
-While at Camp Eagle ran into a high school friend who was a helicopter pilot
-He enjoyed riding in the Hueys
-Friend told him that he could re-enlist and go into helicopter aviation
(00:21:34) Re-Enlisting to Change Occupation
-Re-enlisted while in Vietnam
-Changed occupation from infantry to aviation
-Temporarily assigned to A Company 5th Transportation Battalion
-Stayed at Camp Eagle from July 1970 – December 2, 1970
(00:23:02) Fort Rucker, Alabama
-Transferred to Fort Rucker, Alabama for aviation training
-Had no prior experience with aviation
-Flight chief trained him
-Trained by the book
-Became a door gunner instructor
-Mostly classroom training
-Taught recruits about the .50 caliber and M60 machine guns
-How to disassemble and clean them
-Basic facts
-Had been promoted to Spec. 4 rank
-At Fort Rucker met his second wife
-First wife had wanted a divorce when he was deployed to Vietnam
-Stayed at Fort Rucker from January to September 1971
(00:26:43) Returning to Vietnam and Camp Holloway
-Returned to Vietnam in October 1972
-In July there had been a manpower inspection at Fort Rucker
-He was going to be designated as a truck driver in Fort Rucker area
-Opted for Vietnam instead
-Stationed at Tuy Hoa from October to Christmas 1971
-Assigned to be in the 361st Aeroweapons Company at Pleiku
-Attached to the 52nd Aviation Battalion
-Maintained Cobra helicopter gunships and Huey helicopter transports
-First time he had hands on experience with a Cobra was in Vietnam
-Very similar to the Huey
-He was no longer considered to be infantry, his new designation was mechanic/crew chief
-Friend taught him about Cobra flight systems
-Supported II Corps region of Vietnam
�-Worked out of Camp Holloway (near Pleiku)
-Supported the Central Highlands
-Company was being shut down and moved out of the area
-He was in charge of moving the Cobras to the trains
-Had to clean, turn in weapons, and inspect the helicopters
(00:32:11) Saigon, Vietnam
-Sent to Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) compound in Saigon
-Stationed in Saigon for the last six weeks of his tour
-Guarded civilians while they worked at night
-Moved to Camp Alpha, Saigon
-Had a good relationship with the Vietnamese civilians
(00:32:55) Drug Use
-Knew that people were using heroin in the rear areas
-Prevalent issue
-Never saw drug use in the field
-Never saw drug use first hand
-Found the remnants of drug use (empty heroin bottles)
-He just drank beer while on base
(00:34:19) Military Career: Post-Vietnam
-Sent home and attained the rank of Spec. 5
-Sent to Hunter Army Airfield, Savannah, Georgia
-Took a month of leave in October 1972
-Began service there in November 1972
-Married his second wife on December 1st 1973
-Served there until July 1973
-Hunter Army Airfield is closed down
-Sent to Fort Bragg, North Carolina
-Signed into the 82nd Airborne Division on September 19, 1973
-Signed out on March 17, 1987
-Sent to Fort Campbell, Kentucky
-Assigned to put together a unit of helicopters bound for Korea
-Deployed to Korea from September 1987 to March 1988
-Only stayed six months because of rotation schedule
(00:38:13) Military Career: Retirement
-Returned to Fort Bragg after Korea deployment
-Assigned to B Company 159th Aviation Battalion of the 18th Airborne Corps
-Attained the rank of first sergeant
-Stayed at Fort Bragg until he retired on October 31, 1990
(00:39:03) Reflection on Service
-Accounts his mechanical expertise to the quality of training he received
-Paid attention to detail and protocol because his trainers did
-Becoming a tech inspector at Fort Bragg made him appreciate the training he received
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
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1914-
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
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Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
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RHC-27
Language
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eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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TiptonC1539V
Title
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Tipton, Charles (Interview outline and video), 2013
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Tipton, Charles
Description
An account of the resource
Charles Tipton was born in Baskin, Florida in 1947. He received a draft notice in 1965, but received a deferment until 1969. After training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, he deployed to Vietnam in October 1969. He was assigned to Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. He was sent to Camp Evans and then to Firebase Bastogne where he met up with his unit upon which they traveled to Firebase Birmingham. In December 1969 he and his unit moved to Firebase O'Reilly where he saw action in the field and from there went to Firebase Ripcord where he helped establish the base there. After Ripcord he was assigned to a mortar unit then he re-enlisted to be an aviation mechanic. He trained at Fort Rucker, Alabama and returned to Vietnam to serve with the 361st Aeroweapons Company at Camp Holloway outside of Pleiku. After Vietnam he served at Fort Bragg, Fort Campbell, and in South Korea until he retired on October 31, 1990.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
McGregor, Michael (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
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
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2013-10-11
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
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application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a360b4c983fa0c1911372595fccd225d.mp4
6a7951a4424cfc185c87591ca8064798
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/957ad7dd46d830fbc3196e9a24d5c71b.pdf
94df28085d5b0a4e704f9473c11949d5
PDF Text
Text
ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW
BERNICE TIPTON
Born: January 3rd, 1924 in Springville, Utah
Resides: Ionia, Michigan
Interviewed by: James Smither PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project
Transcribed by: Claire Herhold, January 10, 2013
Interviewer: Mrs. Tipton, can you start by telling us a little bit about your background. To
start with, where and when were you born?
I was born in Springville, Utah on January 3rd, 1924.
Interviewer: Did you grow up in Utah?
Yes, I went through school there and part of my college was there, Utah State and Brigham
Young.
Interviewer: And what did your family do in those days?
In the beginning of my life, my father was a blacksmith and then he went to work for road
contractors and became a master mechanic. When I was growing up we often spent time in road
camps, on dirt floors and in tents and he did some blacksmithing there because they used horses
in order to build the roads. 1:06 Later, as trucks and so forth came in, he became a master
mechanic.
Interviewer: But was he able to keep his job through the thirties?
Yes. We didn’t have a lot of money, but he did work all through that time. We had to watch our
pennies but we didn’t have hard times like some people did.
Interviewer: How many children were in the family?
Well, there’s three daughters. One is ten years younger than I am, the other is twenty four years
younger than I am, so it was three families.
�Interviewer: So, when you started out anyways, it was just you and your parents and then
eventually…?
Yes, until I was ten years old.
Interviewer: And then where did you actually go to school, if you’re moving around or that
kind of thing?
Well, I went through high school in Springville, Utah. 2:02
Interviewer: How big a town was that?
About five thousand.
Interviewer: So you could have a decent sized high school and that kind of thing?
Oh yes. It was 105 in my graduating class.
Interviewer: Alright. And you were still in school then when Pearl Harbor happened?
When Pearl Harbor happened, yes, I was a senior in high school.
Interviewer: And do you remember when you first heard about that?
Yes. I was a student director of a school play, and it was Sunday and we were going to
have…we were going to practice for the play, about noon. Someone brought a radio with them
and we heard about Pearl Harbor.
Interviewer: Now, before that happened, had you been paying much attention to what was
going on in the world? There was a war going on in Europe and that kind of thing?
Oh yes, we had that in high school classes. 3:00
Interviewer: And did you know people who were already going off and joining the army or
being drafted in ’41 before that?
You bet. Many, many, many people.
�Interviewer: Did it occur to you when the war started that you might actually have an
opportunity to get involved in it?
Well, since the women were … started becoming part of the military, that was in 1920…that was
in 1942 and that’s when I graduated from high school. So that was a new, new situation in the
army.
Interviewer: Before you joined the WACs, you went to college for a while first?
Yes, I had a year and a half of college before I went into the service. We couldn’t go in ‘til we
were twenty years old.
Interviewer: So were you just waiting until you could join at that point?
No, I had no idea I was going in. Two of my friends had set up an interview, and they invited
me to join. 4:03 And I did. But this was for the Air WACs that they were interested in. They
both had brothers in the service. Of course, I knew those brothers well. So I did join with them
to hear the recruiter.
Interviewer: So how did the recruiter describe the Air WACs or why was that particularly
interesting to you?
Well, everything was new in the service at that time. This was 1944. The WACs had only been
in existence for two years. I went in shortly after the “auxiliary” was dropped. At first it was the
WAAC, and right after they dropped it to WAC, was when I decided to see what they had to
offer. 5:00
Interviewer: Now, as far as you could tell, was there a difference between it being an
auxiliary corps and just “Women’s Army Corps?” Was it more military now?
I think it was about the same. It was just that they didn’t want to be an auxiliary any more.
Interviewer: Just a recognition that they were doing something important.
�Right.
Interviewer: Now, did you have any idea what sort of work you might be doing for them
when you signed up?
Well, of course we had quite an interview, and they knew what I was capable of doing. No, I did
not know exactly…there wasn’t any of us knew exactly what we would be doing.
Interviewer: In the interview, what kind of things did they want to know? Just how much
schooling you had?
Yes, and where we had worked, if we had worked before. I’d had quite a bit of office training,
both in college and high school, and I had worked in some offices besides. 6:04
Interviewer: So there was some stuff they would be able to use?
Yes.
Interviewer: Where did they send you for training?
I went to Des Moines, Iowa. To Fort Des Moines, it was, which was a military base there.
Interviewer: What did your training consist of?
This was in January so when we arrived it was very cold and the snow was very deep. We
weren’t very impressed. Fort Des Moines was a very old fort, so most of the buildings were
brick. Ours was just a wooden barracks. 7:01 We trained in military history, in military
manners, how we should treat officers and so on. All that sort of thing. We marched a lot. We
had to know how to fold our clothes in our foot lockers, how to make our beds so that the dime
would plop up. And we scrubbed floors and we did windows. You know, it was zero weather
outside. We marched and marched and marched. That wasn’t too hard for me because I’d been
in marching band for about five years, so that helped.
Interviewer: Did they have much other physical training or just the marching?
�All the physical training we could do under the conditions of the weather. 8:01 We were
supposed to go through training with gas masks, but they had to put that off because it was so
cold. They couldn’t continue with that, but it didn’t matter anyways because we weren’t going
overseas. That was kind of a joke anyways.
Interviewer: What kind of people were training you? Did you have drill sergeants?
Oh yes. And there were WACs. This was strictly army. This so far was just the army training.
Interviewer: And about how long did that phase last?
I think it was six weeks.
Interviewer: And then, having completed that, did you get more specialized training or did
they just send you to a base?
No, from there we got our orders to go to an air field, yes.
Interviewer: Now were all the women you were training with, were they all training for the
Womens Air Corps or were they going all over the place? 9:06
No, it was mixed.
Interviewer: So you all get the same basic training and then they move you out from there?
Right.
Interviewer: Where did they send you then for your assignment?
I was…I think God answered our prayers. I was sent to Barksdale Field in Shreveport,
Louisiana. The difference between Barksdale, getting off the train…we always went by train.
Getting off at Barksdale and being in Des Moines in February was very different. We saw green
grass, flowers blooming, trees, and it was quite a shock. Barksdale is a very old base. I
shouldn’t say that. Barksdale was a new base after World War I, they built it. 10:01 I can tell
you a little bit more about it here. The government after WWI bought twenty six thousand acres
�of cotton plantation and they built this air field. It was dedicated in 1933. And it was named
after a WWI pilot. When we arrived it was part of the third air force, and it was used to train
B26 crews. Later, they expanded the runways to accommodate 29s. And in 1944 an MP training
unit with their dogs moved in. And also a chemical, you know, moved into it. The main
buildings, including the headquarters and the housing for officers and enlisted were French
colonial, and made of brick and stone. 11:10 The halls and stairways in the headquarters
building were marble and this was a permanent base and it’s still used today. I have a grandson
in the Air Corps and he has been stationed there on and off, so they’re still using that field today.
Interviewer: Did they have the WACs in separate quarters or a separate part of the base?
The WAC barracks were built about a mile from the front gate, off in the middle of a bare field.
There weren’t any trees, there were no bushes or shrubs. They were just wood buildings which
was quite a contrast to the other buildings. They had us located out in this field and there was
one road that went around it. 12:04 There was two barracks, a mess hall and an office building.
They weren’t used to women being in the service and they didn’t know what to do with us. The
rules were very strict. Our day room was used for PT in bad weather, and our mess hall was the
favorite place for officers to eat because our food was better. They all got the same food but our
cooks knew what to do with it, so they liked to come to dinner. I might say here, that it was later
when I realized, and knew the comparison with the way they treated us and the way they treated
the blacks at that time. We were isolated. So were they. They couldn’t be in the same place.
13:02 They had their own PX and we had…we could go to the big PX, they couldn’t, but we
also had our own PX where we could buy most of the things we needed. They weren’t allowed
to go into the movies in the big movie building which was air conditioned. We could do that but
�they couldn’t. But …they didn’t know what to do with us I don’t think. Our rules were very
strict. We rode a little trolley to work even. It was placed out that far, so it was different.
Interviewer: Now what kind of work did you do?
I was assigned to the statistical section. I said, “I can’t even say it, let alone work there.” And I
became a statistical clerk typist, typing… I was a fairly good typist so that didn’t surprise me
any. 14:07 And it was in the headquarters building where we had the marble floors and the
marble stairways. One of our jobs was the daily strength report. It was classified material and it
showed exactly how many men were on the base, how many was on leave, and how many were
in the hospital; how many cooks, drivers, pilots and so forth could be located so that in a very
short time they could find whomever they needed. These were long reports, and it was before
electric typewriters or computers and so forth. We got stencils and used the old typewriters that
you had to throw back. 15:00 We had two civilians working in the office and they wouldn’t
work on weekends so we had to. That was fine with us, that’s what we were there for. We were
told, and I didn’t say this at the beginning, but we were told that we were to relieve men from
their jobs so they could go overseas. Well, it didn’t take us long to find out that most of those
men did not want to be relieved from their jobs, and they weren’t too happy with us.
Interviewer: Now when you came to that base were you sort of the first group of women to
go in there?
No, it was…they were established. There were quite a few women there by that time. A lot of
them had just been pulled from the WACs into the Air Corps because that was the new
designation.
Interviewer: But there were still men around who were getting replaced by women or were
just afraid of being replaced by women? 16:05
�Oh yes, that continued throughout the war I think.
Interviewer: About how many WACs were on the base do you think?
Oh my.
Interviewer: Well, how big was the barracks, I guess?
Well, there were two barracks, two story. Typical. I don’t know how many people they held. I
would say, there might have been 75 to 100…not 100…probably about 75.
Interviewer: And were the barracks set up like men’s barracks, just a big open dormitory
with a bunch of cots?
Yes, you bet. Yes, sir. With one bathroom downstairs with showers. Just like the men. We had
bunk beds just like the men. A foot locker. And a place to hang our clothes. That was it. 17:01
Interviewer: And the office you were working in, about how many people were working in
there with you, do you think?
In my office? There were two of us WACs, one civilian girl, two officers, and I think two other
enlisted men.
Interviewer: And did you work with pretty much the same group of people the whole time
you were there?
Yes, as long as I was there. I was there thirteen months.
Interviewer: And from there, were you paying a lot of attention to what was happening in
the war or with the air corps or things like that, or did you just focus?
No. We knew what was happening. We were training these men to be, like I said, B26
pilots…or not pilots, these were crews that came in and were trained just before they went
overseas.
�Interviewer: Was this a place where all of the crews for an aircraft would get together and
work together? 18:02
Right, take their training.
Interviewer: Did you have much contact at all with the men who were being trained, or did
they keep you away from them?
Well some of the women did. It depended on your job. My job did not…I did not come into
contact with them because it more on the base. But some of the women did. We had women in
weather, and photography, and drivers of trucks and…they did just about everything.
Interviewer: And what kind of backgrounds did these women have? Were they from all
over the place?
Oh all over the United States, all ages. I mean…it was interesting, the base commander did not
believe in women being in the service, like most of these men did at the time. 19:05 And when
he found he was going to have a WAC secretary he was… “no way.” Well, then they told him
he had to have a WAC driver, well that was terrible. It ended up that his secretary was
wonderful. She’d had a lot of experience. She even made sure that he was dressed correctly,
and so on when he went out, and when he had his coffee and the whole works. And he wouldn’t
have anyone else. Then he found out that this driver was excellent, and no way was he going to
have a man replace her then. We were all very pleased that these gals could turn his ideas
around and find out that women could do some of these jobs and do them well. 20:00
Interviewer: And was this something that you thought much about, or talked much about?
The idea that you were kind of being pioneers and doing new things that women hadn’t
done before? Or were you just doing your job then?
�We were aware of the way people felt about it. They saw us in uniform and many of them just
wanted to ignore us. We had people who were very kind at times. When we’d go out to dinner
they would pay the whole check, be very kind and thank us. But we mostly…the women in
uniform…people weren’t too pleased about women being in uniform. We were supposed to be
ladies. That was part of our training at basic training, was do not draw attention to yourself.
21:00 Well, this was impossible. The uniform itself drew attention. And so anything you did, it
didn’t matter if you dropped a fork on the floor, you were drawing attention because you had on
the uniform. But we had to make sure that we were ladies. We didn’t cross our legs like I’m
doing now. You crossed them at the ankles when you sat down. Things like that. And most of
these women were wonderful. They were there to do a job. Many of them, some of them had
husbands, brothers in the service. They were hard workers. You always find a few that, you
know, well, ruin the reputation of the rest. But these were wonderful women. I had some very
good friends.
Interviewer: Did you pay much attention to publicity about women in the armed forces?
Or the stuff that would show up in the popular media, like magazines or news reels and
stuff? 22:07 Did you see yourself in those things or notice what was being said or written
about you?
Not a lot. There really wasn’t, I don’t think, a lot. It was just a negative feeling wherever we
went.
Interviewer: How often did you get to off the base? Would you go into Shreveport or that
kind of thing?
�We worked on weekends, but we’d have a day off, yes. We didn’t go in a lot. We managed to
keep pretty busy and…There was something I was going to tell you and now I can’t remember
what it was.
Interviewer: If you do go in, how did you get in town? Was there a shuttle or a bus or did
you get a Jeep or what did you do?
Oh, you’d go in on bus all the time. 23:03 I didn’t tell you too much about our clothing that was
issued to us when we first went in, which I think is quite important because a lot of people don’t
know. We had to send everything, all of our civilian clothing went back home. They sent it all
back home. We had ten cotton underclothes, ok. And cotton stockings for work. We only had
one pair of silk stockings and nylons…you couldn’t get nylons. Our underpants were longlegged and we were issued sleeveless vests of cotton to wear over our own bras. They gave us
summer and winter clothing which included skirts below the knees. 24:03 Shirts and blouses,
blouses were jackets, and ties. There was a winter dress with long sleeves, winter overcoat, and
an all-season utility coat. Our shoes were brown, medium-heeled oxfords. We had a pair of KP
boots, which, the boots came just above the ankle. For PT we wore striped seersucker shirtwaist
dresses with bloomers underneath, and these were the kind of bloomers with elastic around the
legs. The summer clothes were khaki tan, and the winter was olive green, olive drab or green.
We had pajamas but no robes. Nothing fit us right, and we all looked like something out of
World War I. 25:02 We were not to draw too much attention to ourselves, and like I said, but we
did because of the uniforms that we had. And we…when I first went in, we wore what we called
“hobby hats” and I have a picture there for you later. These were like a pillbox with a brim in
front. And they had to fit very tight because when the wind hit that brim they would go flying.
And they had to fit so tight, they gave us all headaches. So it wasn’t until about, oh six months
�later after I went in they finally gave us hats like the nurses wore so we looked different and felt
much better. But we were to have that uniform on, even though we went home for furlough, we
weren’t supposed to take it off. 26:01 Of course, some of us cheated just a little bit then, but….
Interviewer: But you’d wear it when you were traveling though?
Absolutely. We weren’t supposed to be out of uniform at all, not in civilian clothes at all.
Interviewer: Did they have regulations about how long you wore your hair or things like
that?
Oh yes. Immediately, before I even enlisted, I got my hair cut short. It couldn’t be on your
collar. I often, later on…at first I had it cut short with a permanent and then I wore it in braids so
that I could have it a little bit longer, but it had to be off the collar.
Interviewer: Because I think the WASPs, the Women’s Auxiliary Pilots Corps, they
actually were supposed to have their hair longer, that there were regulations about that,
that all the different versions of how much do you make them look like girls or something
like that. Ok.
No, they were very strict about that. 27:02
Interviewer: What other aspects about the experience that you had down in Louisiana kind
of stand out for you? Have you got particular incidents or things…?
We had to stand retreat every Friday, the WAC company had to stand retreat, which meant that
we went out on the parade field at five something, I think it was 5 o’clock, and march, and stand
retreat while the band played the “Star Spangled Banner” and the flag came down, and so on.
This was hard to do in the summer, because in the summer it gets very hot down there and you
had to be in full uniform with tie and blouse and everything on. And there were many people
passing out on the parade field at that time. You just let them pass out. 28:03 No one do
�anything about it. Just kind of step over them as you marched off. But that was very interesting,
but very nice. I came from a very patriotic family and so the patriotism there really showed and I
enjoyed that, even though I almost passed out once in a while.
Interviewer: Would somebody eventually pick up the people who passed out or help them
get up?
Eventually, or they’d come to and get up or something.
Interviewer: And so you’re there basically for thirteen months, so you’re getting into early
1945 at that point. Now did you get a furlough in there some place or did you get a
furlough in between assignments?
Yes, get a furlough about every six months, usually unless there was something happening that
you couldn’t.
Interviewer: Were there ever emergency moments on the base or unusual things happening
that interrupted the routine? Or could you pretty much follow the same routine the whole
time? 29:11
At that field, it was pretty routine. I can’t remember of anything happening. See, this was before
VE-day and so on.
Interviewer: And then after the thirteen months in Louisiana, then were do you go next?
I was having trouble with sinus down in Louisiana, and there was a military police company on
our base with their dogs…incidentally, we used to watch them train dogs…that was going to be
transferred to Buckley Field in Denver, Colorado. 30:03 And of course, that’s high altitude and I
knew that the sinus wouldn’t be so bad so I asked if I might be transferred with them. And I got
the ok, but I couldn’t work in statistics because their statistical section was filled up, so they
assigned me to their classification unit, and I transferred with them to Buckley Field, Colorado.
�And what a difference that was. This was really a shock. Buckley was located about fifteen
miles east of Denver, in the middle of wheat fields and sagebrush and here I came from a
permanent base in Louisiana. No trees, no landscaping. The buildings were all frame with tar
paper on the outside. 31:01 It was a temporary base. We ate at the hospital. We lived in the
barracks close by. We were on temporary duty from there. We were assigned to Lowry Field
which was in a little closer to Denver. There wasn’t any officers, we didn’t have officers over
us. There were only about five WACs on the base and they worked in the hospital. They were
giving us a barracks close by the hospital. So different. We weren’t isolated. It was just a
different way of life. Well, while I was there, VE-Day, Victory in Europe, was May 7, 1945, but
we didn’t do any celebrating. We just kind of made a sigh of relief and went on working. That
was the way we celebrated that. 32:04 Our job in classification was mostly record-keeping and
testing, we did testing. We used a card called the Form 20 that had the history of each military
person on it. We could tell what he or she did as a civilian, how much schooling they had, what
their health was, and every job they had while they were in the military, so in seconds the entire
army and civilian background of any military person on base could be checked, and they could
be placed where they could do the most good for the war effort.
Interviewer: So then, were you processing new recruits who were training on the base so
they could go somewhere else? Or you were just collecting the information, just working
with the information they already had? 33:02
Well, this card went with them wherever they went, ok? We didn’t have new military on there.
It ended up after the war came to an end that we were getting people from overseas. We kept
them until they could go to a place to be discharged. So ours was mostly just record-keeping, but
we did do some testing, IQ-testing and so on. While I was there I was offered the opportunity to
�go to Maxwell Field in Montgomery, Alabama for special training, which I did. It was a month’s
training, in classification. I came back then as a classification specialist, so I had a different
MOS and at that time I was also promoted to buck sergeant. 34:06 So, I was back in the South
again when I went to Alabama, but it didn’t last very long.
Interviewer: When you were in Colorado, you said you changed bases, you went from
Buckley into Lowry at the end, or did you just stay in Buckley the whole time?
No, we stayed in Buckley.
Interviewer: Now, with only a small number of WACs on the base, did you have a lot more
contact with male personnel or were you still isolated pretty well from everybody?
Well, we…for a while, we still worked in base headquarters, so we had contact with personnel
coming in and we were the ones that told them where they could go. When the war was over and
they started bringing all these men in from overseas, that was quite a deal because these men
came in and we’d ask them what they’d prefer to do… 35:13 Well, they all either wanted to
drive trucks or go home. We couldn’t send them home. They were there to wait until they could
be sent to a discharge place. And there wasn’t that many trucks, so many of them were assigned
to very odd jobs around the base. Some of them weren’t very happy, but you could only do so
much.
Interviewer: I’ve interviewed quite a few men who talk about coming back from overseas
and having to sit around for a while on a base or sometimes they’d have a lot left on their
enlistments and didn’t have anything really that they were supposed to do, so it was your
job to help figure what to do with them.
We assigned so many to our office that we didn’t have desks for them, so we had to double up on
desks. 36:08 My husband happened to be assigned to my desk. That’s where I met him, and he
�had an awful attitude, but we won’t go into that. But these men, they couldn’t understand why
we couldn’t give them decent jobs but you’ve only got so many things you can do, so they just
blamed classification. And my MOS was frozen and so when a lot of the women went back
home and were discharged, I couldn’t get out of the service for a while until we got through this
group of people coming back from overseas.
Interviewer: One of the things that happened at the end of the war was that there was sort
of a general push to make room for the men returning. 37:01 Were some of them coming in
and replacing women in some of the jobs with the air forces or … I guess, there wasn’t
anyone to replace you for a while, but were some of the other women being replaced by
men or…?
Well, I’ll tell you, they even brought women recruiters in for a while, but they went out fairly
fast too because they didn’t have MOSs that were frozen. No, actually, the army was trying to
downgrade and get rid of a lot of people at that time.
Interviewer: Men and women, so everybody could get smaller at that point.
Tried to get them out as fast as we could.
Interviewer: Did you ever go off the base much when you were in Colorado or did you just
stay where you were?
Some, but it was quite a ways into Denver so we didn’t go off and we had to ride a bus in. 38:04
Didn’t go off…and we were worked…Men and I worked until 12 o’clock at night. We didn’t
get paid overtime or anything like that.
Interviewer: What did you get paid anyways? What would a buck sergeant make?
I can’t remember what it was at the end, but at the beginning I did put that down here. My pay at
the beginning was $21 a month for four months, and then it would go up to $30 and it stayed
�there. I don’t think I ever made over one hundred, it seems like it was around ninety. So we
were paid low, I mean, we had low pay but…
Interviewer: Now were there many things you had to buy for yourselves that maybe men
wouldn’t have to buy? How far did thirty dollars a months go if you’re in the army?
You didn’t save a lot. 39:00 It went quite a ways because we didn’t have to buy clothing. Well,
we did some. The shoes didn’t fit right, but they still had to be brown oxfords and so on. And
you didn’t have to buy food. Some of the recreation you had, so … I never went in debt, we’ll
put it that way. But I didn’t save a lot either.
Interviewer: But I guess, in a way for you, because of the job you had, ending the war
actually made you maybe busier because you had all those men to process who were
coming through?
Yes it did in that particular job, yes. But we were always busy because there was always men,
people that had to be placed into jobs and so on, and testing. 40:04 There was a lot of testing
going on.
Interviewer: What had your husband done in the military? What had he done before he
showed up in Lowry?
My husband was a gunner on a B17, served 35 missions off Italy. They bombed into Germany,
and northern Italy and so on and so forth.
Interviewer: But he was fortunate enough to make it through 35 missions and come home.
He made it through. It’s very interesting, we went to some…oh what do I want to say?…reunion
type deals and I learned a lot and every year these stories that came back got bigger and bigger,
but he was able to get together with his crew, so I got to know his crew and so on. He was also
�recalled for the Korean War, and my training in service, of course we were married then, helped
very much being a military wife in the Korean War. 41:15 That worked out good.
Interviewer: So then, you’re discharged then early in ’46, so you spend about two years
there.
Yes, February ’46.
Interviewer: Now had you gotten married yet, or did you get married after you’d both been
discharged?
No, we got married afterwards. He was from Nebraska. So, we married and then we both went
back to college and graduated from the University of Nebraska.
Interviewer: And what did you get your degree in?
Education.
Interviewer: And then did you work as a teacher then after that, or...?
We moved around a good deal. Part of that was in the service, and he went to work for Exxon in
marketing and when I moved here was my thirty third move. 42:05 Marketing kept us busy. I
think we lived in about fifteen different states. That’s when I said to you that I wasn’t from this
area, although one of those moves was to Battle Creek. I said I’d never move back to Michigan.
Here I am. Never say never.
Interviewer: So how did you wind up in Michigan?
My son is here. And at this age, I needed to be close to someone in the family. I came here from
Tennessee.
Interviewer: Alright, if you look back on the time that you spent in the service, how do you
think that affected you, or what did you learn from that?
�I’ve never regretted my time in the service. Like I said at the beginning…am I going too far?...
Like I said in the beginning, we couldn’t go in ‘til we were twenty. 43:07 We couldn’t go in
unless…at twenty, you had to have your parents consent. My dad said that if he ever had a son,
he would send him into the army because he thought that the discipline was so good. Well, he
didn’t have a son, so I kind of figured I guess it’s up to me. So he was perfectly willing. My
mother said if she was younger, she’d go with me, and like I said before my father had been in
World War I. This was a patriotic family. I was raised that way. I never regretted my time in
the service. I learned a lot. It was a different way of living. 44:01 It was the first time I’d been
away from my family…well, I won’t say that because I’d gone to college for a little bit, but, you
know, you could get home then if you had to. I met a lot of wonderful friends, some of whom
I’m still in contact with, and it has been great. And I really appreciate…I appreciate people now
starting to recognize the fact that the women did have a part in it, because we went a long time
without any recognition.
Interviewer: But it’s pretty much standard in the histories these days to recognize how
many women went in and how many different kinds of things they were going and doing.
In the meantime, now we’ve got your story and this is one where people will be able to see
you telling about where you went and what you did, and that’s on a permanent record.
45:04
Well, I appreciate … about two years ago was the first I time I felt like I got a real recognition,
and I got a nice thank you letter from the young Marines in Tennessee, so that made me feel
good, and then not long ago, and I’ll show you my things here, I had a lady who’d been a
lieutenant colonel in the service, a young lady who had retired, they retire young nowadays, who
asked me if I was in the women’s memorial for military women in Washington, D.C. I told her
�no, so she said she’d like to sponsor me, so I am now there too. 46:00 My family was there in
Washington, D.C. about two months ago and they looked my record up there and said it’s there,
so…
Interviewer: Well, I’d just to thank you for taking the time to talk to me today and tell
your story.
Well, it’s been a pleasure. 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
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RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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TiptonB
Title
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Tipton, Bernice (Interview transcript and video), 2010
Creator
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Tipton, Bernice
Description
An account of the resource
Bernice Tipton was born in Utah in 1924, and enlisted in the Women's Army Corps (WAC) in 1943. She trained in Des Moines, Iowa, and served on army air bases in Mississippi and Colorado, working primarily in personnel classification, assigning servicemen on the base to specific duties.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
United States. Army
United States. Army. Women’s Army Corps
Language
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eng
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2010-11-18
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
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application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/60a5be29562e7fafdc0dc7aaef7fa540.mp4
8d1b5b21a7c32edf3d99cef37226fc0e
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b00ce48412daf1d3ebbe268f186a4fab.pdf
723b369e680431a173b4741fc1dc2cef
PDF Text
Text
Robert Timmerman (60:00)
(00:04) Background Information
•
Robert was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan
•
His father worked on the road and was gone a lot
•
He graduated from high school in 1931
•
Robert went to work with his dad after high school at American Seating Co.
•
He was drafted in March of 1943
(7:01) Training
•
Robert was sent to Kalamazoo, Michigan and then to Camp Grant
•
They were told that they were going to be Ski Troops and were sent to North Carolina
•
When they got to North Carolina they found out they were going to be a part of the new
78th Division Calvary
•
Robert was assigned to be the Squad Leader
•
He went through 4 basic trainings and was there for 19 months
•
He was in charge of soldiers in the Army Specialized Training Program
•
They did maneuvers in Tennessee and then went to Camp Pickett, Virginia
(15:18) Deployment
• They shipped out from New York on an English troop ship that carried 5,000 troops
• They landed in England and crossed the English Channel
• Robert landed at Le Havre on the day before Thanksgiving
• He boarded a train towards Tongeren, Belgium
• They went to the Hurtgen Forest to lead the 8th Division
• There was a lot of casualties there from mortars
• After leaving the Hurtgen Forest they were supposed to have a break
�• They went to the Remagen Bridge, which the Germans were trying to blow up, and
crossed the Rhine River
(26:07) Conditions
•
It sometimes got down to 15 below zero
•
They would lay back to back in their foxholes to keep warm
•
The men pinned extra socks on their pants to keep them dry
•
Robert ate K rations and chocolate D bars
(30:00) Wounded
•
Robert was wounded in Germany while walking behind a tank
•
He heard a loud explosion and woke up in the hospital with his hand bandaged
•
Robert received a Purple Heart
•
He told the Army he wanted to go on fighting
(31:35) German Towns
•
The towns were not all completely destroyed and sometimes they were able to find beds
to sleep in
•
The Germans that surrendered to them were about their age and some were SS troops
•
Then they went to the Roer River dams that were rigged to blow by the Germans
•
If the dams were blown they would have taken out a lot of troops from both sides
•
They went by one prison camp that had already been taken over
•
The war ended when they were in Wuppertal, Germany
(36:02) After the War
•
Robert shipped out on the ship John L. Sullivan
•
The ship had 500 men on it and most of them got sick for the whole 16 days it took to get
home
•
When Robert got home he bought a tavern and ran it for 16 years
�•
He was the Township Supervisor and later became President of the School Board
�
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
TimmermanR
Title
A name given to the resource
Timmerman, Robert (Interview outline and video), 2008
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Timmerman, Robert
Description
An account of the resource
Robert Timmerman was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In 1943 he got drafted at 29 years old. Robert was assigned to the 78th Division and was a Squad Leader. Robert landed in England and made his way through France and Belgium into Germany. He fought at the Hurtgen Forest and in some small towns in Germany, where he received a Purple Heart. His unit was one of the first across the Remagen Bridge.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
United States. Army
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2008-04-28
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3750b3dc1b3f28429205d8d1aa2f4996.pdf
add4030c9d558be9c7c85ae7747b62f2
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Philip Tietz
(14:57)
Background Information (00:03)
•
•
•
•
•
•
Born June 12th 1942. (00:05)
Served in the U.S. Army, attaining the rank of Staff Sergeant (00:07)
Phillip grew up in Lansing, Michigan. (00:30)
He ran track and managed the football team in high school. (00:55)
Phillip enlisted in the Army in March of 1963. Because he struggled in college, Philip figured he
would be drafted. So instead, he decided to enlist and get the branch of service he desired.
(1:02)
Phillip chose the Army due to the opportunities it had offered at the time. (1:27)
Training (1:43)
•
•
•
He attended basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Phillip was in the wrong unit (an airborne
unit) this mean he was undergoing much more difficult physical training. (1:45)
Philip was placed in a radio school in Fort Monmouth New Jersey. (2:11)
He was taught to be a radio receiver repair man. (2:25)
Service in Vietnam (2:54)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The first year he served in country (approx 1964-1965) he was living in Saigon and worked in a
unit that was stationed in a small village outside of Saigon. (2:55)
Once he arrived in Vietnam he was assigned to be a systems controller. (3:32)
During his first year of service, Phillip was in a rear unit and saw very little “action.” He did,
however, return for a second tour of duty and this time was placed more towards the front in a
town called Le Trang. Here he carried out the same radio jobs. (4:28)
When living in Saigon, Phillip took a bus ten miles to get to his work station. It was not
uncommon for this bus to be shot at or have grenades lobbed through its windows. (5:02)
Phillips second tour (aprox. 1965-1966) consisted of being flown via helicopter to different
locations where radios needed to be fixed. (5:44)
His service did affect him; however he does not believe he had PTSD. (6:20)
Phillip did manage to make close friends during his military service; he has since lost contact
with them. (6:31)
To communicate with home, Phillip relied primarily upon letters. (7:14)
During his first service of duty, the men were allowed to go out into town more often. There
were bowling allies, restaurants, bars, and other amenities that the men could use. Phillip liked
to go to the things that the military offered of established because they were most often the
safest. (8:00)
From Phillip's hotel in Saigon, he could see fire fights in the jungle 20 miles away. (9:30)
End of Service (9:40)
�•
•
•
Phillip was not in country when the war ended. He was glad that he himself was not in Vietnam.
He thinks that the country's actions were not very effective or wise. (9:57)
He was flown to California to be processed and discharged. (10:34)
When Philip was discharged he had to walk out of the military base to catch a bus to go to the
airport. In order to do so he was required to walk past protesters. (11:00)
Thoughts on Service (11:30)
•
•
•
He thinks that the Army is much better prepared and has had great increases in the amount of
technology and effective strategies. (11:45)
The equipment that Phillip worked on was very unreliable and somewhat impractical. (13:19)
It was a very interesting experience for Phillip, but he would not like his son or his grandson to
experience it.
�
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
TietzP1187V
Title
A name given to the resource
Tietz, Phillip (Interview outline), 2011
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Tietz, Phillip
Description
An account of the resource
Philip Tietz, born June 12th 1942, served in the U.S. Army from 1963-1966 during the Vietnam War. During his first tour of duty, he lived in Saigon and worked as a systems controller. On his second tour, Phillip was flown via helicopter to various locations where radios needed repair. Phillip was discharged in 1966.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
McGookey, Michael (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Army
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
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
2011-05-31
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/68dd35ad300130cdbf79f72207420157.pdf
f30c544eafde67bb025f6f36f320e528
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Frank Tichvon
World War II
Total Time: 22:52
Pre-War (00:33)
•
•
Was born in Barry County, Michigan.
Was drafted into the Army in October, 1941.
Training (02:10)
•
•
•
•
•
Worked as a combat engineer.
He was trained at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and as they were some of the first
trained there he found it very difficult.
Spent 13 weeks in basic training
(03:41) Was then sent to Fort Robinson, Arizona, for maneuvers, and after Pearl
Harbor was attacked they were shipped to Fort Ord, California.
The journey to Fort Ord took them 6 days and 5 nights by train.
Active Duty (04:15)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
While they were at Fort Ord they build fake machine gun nests in case of an
invasion by the Japanese.
They were then shipped to Canada where they built 305 miles of the Alcan
Highway.
They then built around 300 miles of trails to oil wells in Canada, but eventually
that was abandoned.
The total time he spent in Canada was around 18 months.
(04:55) He was then sent to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to specialized training for 6
weeks and was then sent to Scotland and then on to England.
While in England, he spent more time training.
A lot of their training dealt with mines, specifically clearing the mines.
They also spent time fixing potholes and building bridges.
(06:45) They had some casualties, but they were generally from accidents during
construction rather than live fire.
(08:05)During the Battle of the Bulge, they became surrounded and were cut off
from the rest of the Army.
His unit earned 5 Bronze Stars and a Presidential Unit Citation.
(09:30) He was part of the 45th and 35th Combat Engineers.
They were often limited on supplies
He had a good opinion of the officers in his battalion
Post-Service (13:10)
�•
•
He got out of the service in October, 1945.
He had a couple of good friends from the service with whom he kept in contact
with.
�
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
TichvonF
Title
A name given to the resource
Tichvon, Frank (Interview outline and video), 2004
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Tichvon, Frank
Description
An account of the resource
Frank Tichvon was born in Barry County, Michigan, and served in World War II. Drafted in 1941, Tichvon served in the U.S. Army. He worked in Canada building the Alcan Highway and trails. He was later sent to England and then to the European continent, where he worked for a construction battalion whose job was to clear mines and construct bridges. He served in the Battle of the Bulge. He was discharged in October, 1945.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Yanosik, Christine (Interviewer)
Caledonia High School (Caledonia, Mich.)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Army
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
2004-12-07
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8f26e402e57c0581840c18e7d89ee6f9.mp4
8b1f8b49e7e47ab792d000ac2e25b74b
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3632dcfeb4ca65ba3da499084c91c71f.pdf
f95675eaf28762b64c2d94401125104b
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Name of War: Vietnam
Interviewee: Richard Tibbe
Length of Interview: 00:37:30
Background:
Richard was born in Grand Rapids, November 21st, 1945.
His father served in the Army in WWII when he was born and would return a year and a
half after he was born. His mother lived at the north end of Grand Rapids with her
parents. His father would work on a farm, in Grant, after he returned.
Richard went to MSU for one year. After that, he ran out of money, so he went to look
for a job.
He found a job at GM and worked there for a while.
When it came time, he knew that he would either be drafted or he would have to enlist.
He chose to enlist so he could choose where he wanted to go and hopefully get some
college out of it.
He enlisted March of 1966.
Training: (2:30)
He did not know much about the Army or what was going on in Vietnam. He was too
young to care.
After he signed up, he was sent to basic training in Fort Knox, Kentucky. He then went
on to engineering training in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
His basic training lasted 12 weeks. It consisted mostly of marching, exercise, and lots of
discipline.
He had mostly draftees in his company.
He had no trouble adjusting to military life. He thought he would, but he surprisingly did
not.
He found out quickly that if you do what your superiors say, they treat you well. But if
you give them a hard time, they will give you one too.
A lot of guys around him would have trouble adjusting. For those who did not listen,
they would have to do KP, push-ups, running, or if they goofed off in class their superiors
would throw stuff at them.
Most of them would eventually get through the process.
He picked going into the engineering because he was raised on a farm. He enjoyed
working with tractors, motors, bull dozers and other things like that.
Engineering Training: (5:40)
After basic, he was sent directly to Leonard Wood, for a 3 month course in engineering
training.
�
This stage of training was different from basic in the sense that there was more classroom
experience and he did a lot more operation work on the equipment. The discipline was
not quite as harsh either.
The men he would attend training with at Leonard Wood would be a much different
group than the one he trained with at basic. More of them were enlistees and they learned
from basic what they needed to concerning discipline.
Most of the guys there were pretty much the same age.
Their routine consisted of getting up in the morning and making rounds across the
grounds picking up cigarette butts, then some exercises and then they started their
classes. After classes he would go out into the field and operate on the machinery.
One of the big things he learned out was maintenance.
After his training at Leonard Wood, he was assigned to a unit, the 93rd Engineering
Battalion.
He left for Fort Lewis, Washington and stayed there for about 9 months for the whole
unit to organize and come together there.
While there he did a lot of classroom stuff and makeshift projects. They did just about
anything to make sure the men there stay occupied.
Their job in Vietnam was supposed to work on mainly airport runways.
Active Duty: (10:10)
They shipped out to Vietnam in January or February of 1967.
As his unit was formed, he did learn more about Vietnam, but he said you never really
know until you’re there.
He had no expectation for what was going to happen when he got there. He just figured
if it’s going to happen, then it’s going to happen.
He went to Vietnam on a troop ship. The trip took 21 days and they made a stop at the
Philippines for one day.
While he stopped there he went to shore, but was not allowed off base.
When he got to Vietnam, he landed in Vung Tau.
When he got there he was awestruck by the poverty he saw. The poverty that the people
there lived in what something that he had never seen.
His unit was based originally at Long Binh. As a battalion they would create the camp
and build it up from an open field.
At that point they did have guard duty and they did see the enemy at night, though never
during the day. They used infrared goggles to see the enemy at night, an early version of
night vision.
Unlike what many veterans remembered, it was pretty quiet. This was mostly likely due
to the fact that he was exempt from guard duty because he was serving in another
position.
He would help the clerk out with some of his paperwork because he could type.
It would not take long before they began building airplane runways out of dirt, although
he would not participate in any of it as he was working in the clerk’s office.
The native Vietnamese, most of them teens, would help them out by cleaning their huts
and doing their laundry. Of course there was concern that they were spies gathering
�
information, but they were screened fairly heavily before being allowed to enter the
camp.
He would go to Saigon a number of times, as he had a friend stationed there. He would
just go to another base, but he would see poverty and more poverty along the way.
Promotion: (18:40)
He would not remain with the 93rd battalion very long as he was offered a promotion.
His new position would be stationed at the Brigade Headquarters in Bien Hoa.
He would move 2 months after he arrived in Vietnam.
Bien Hoa would be basically the same thing as Long Binh, but established for a longer
period of time.
It was the 20th Engineer Base Headquarters
In that area, they base was very much on its own.
He would be stationed there when the Tet Offensive began. The base would be hit a
couple of times and they would have to take cover in the bunkers. It would be closest he
got to any sort of action there. After the attack all he can remember is people digging
holes for bodies for the Viet Cong. It was unreal for him.
The fighting would last three or four nights on that particular base. They would suffer
from mortar fire and rifle fire around the perimeter. Most of the attacks would occur at
night, and none during the day.
There was no contact at the time and no information about what was going on across
Vietnam.
As an officers’ clerk he would deal with many different ranks of people, the highest ever
being a colonel. He would have to type up their performance review sheets and would
handle the paper work being done for rating the different officers.
Usually he would have to deal with military career men, nothing really below a captain.
He would often go off base to Saigon with the chaplain.
Infiltration and other sorts of action would not be a problem for him while he was at Bien
Hoa. He also would not see anything of the South Vietnamese Army either, other than
when he would make a trip to Saigon and he would see them there. They were never on
the base at all.
They would have movies and celebrity entertainment, USO shows for entertainment for
the soldiers. Sebastian Cabot, the narrator of the Winne the Pooh stories, would be one of
the guests who would visit while Richard was in Vietnam. Cabot did not do much for
entertainment, but merely went around base and shook people’s hands and spoke with
them. (24:25)
Connie Francis would come in and put on a show. He remembers that she was kind of
nasty.
While he was there, the only action that was down that far was during the Tet Offensive.
Otherwise the front lines were farther north.
One time, a group of airborne men had come to the base for a couple of days and things
got out of hand. Someone would eventually get shot. It was surprising because he did
not expect his own to act like that.
�
He remembers that it was really hot and very wet. There was a lot of rain. It would be
bad at Long Binh when he had to trudge through mud, but it really wasn’t that bad at
Bien Hoa.
There was no air conditioning, but they did have big fans to help keep things circulating.
He spent a total of a year of Vietnam.
While he was there, they tried to get him to reenlist, but he had another year to go before
his enlistment ended. Instead they focused more on other who were ready to leave.
Some did end up staying for another tour, even without going home.
At that point he was ready to go home, but he had another year left.
Back to the United States: (29:00)
After his tour in Vietnam was finished he would come back to the United States and
spend his last year at Fort Benning, Georgia, keeping his position as an officer records
clerk.
The overall atmosphere at Fort Benning was very carefree and fun. Since many of the
men there were getting out, they really did not care and there was a lot less when it came
to discipline.
He had no thoughts of staying in the Army.
Post Duty: (30:00)
He thought he would have an idea of what he was going to do when he got out, but he
was wrong. He really enjoyed operating and thought he would go into construction, but
he ended up going back to GM. He had only worked there for 3 months before he left.
He took an apprenticeship in tool and die and he really like it.
After he got back he noticed the attitude toward the war was very negative. He felt that
way too, even when he was over there. He and others would talk about that a lot when he
was over there. It was the general shared opinion of those behind the front lines.
When he got home, he came back to his family. There was nothing spectacular.
There were a lot of people who would ask questions about what it was like when he was
over there.
He did not like the anti-war protests. He thinks that they did not know what they were
talking about.
He likes what he sees now when he sees soldiers come back from Iraq. He’s heard
stories of people seeing a man return in uniform and asking him questions, buying him
lunch. He thinks that the treatment that soldiers get nowadays is truly amazing. (33:20)
While he worked at GM he would check car parts. It was mostly hand work at first, until
the years started going by and then machines started taking over.
He worked at GM for 39 years.
Looking back, he thinks that everyone should join the Army and see what it’s like. At
the time he did not like it, but he certainly thinks there are good things that come out of it,
like an appreciation for what you have and discipline.
There was no problem with any racial issues in the unit that he served in. It was mostly
whites and a few blacks.
�
He learned out to work with people from all different parts of life and he learned out to
respond to their emotions and feelings.
�
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
TibbeR
Title
A name given to the resource
Tibbe, Richard (Interview outline and video), 2010
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Tibbe, Richard
Description
An account of the resource
Richard Tibbe enlisted in the Army in 1966. He trained as a combat engineer, and served in Vietnam 1967-68. He was given clerical jobs with engineer units based in Long Binh and Bien Hoa, outside of Saigon, and did not spend time in the field. The one time when he experienced and attack was at the start of the Tet Offensive, when he was at Bien Hoa.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Byron Area Historic Museum (Byron Center, Mich.)
BCTV
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
2010-03-16
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/eceba65595bbaaa37f729c9ec9e4d476.mp4
5c6ffff10c3fd57c3609928cbf29b604
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8116086c9a3a417c8207ee983602d9d7.pdf
4c101de9a7ea3e74b4a9583943159cc3
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Arthur Thorsen
40:44
Background information (00:17)
He was Born in Muskegon, Michigan, in 1923 (00:20)
His father was a factory worker (00:30)
His father had to change jobs during the 1930s, but his family stayed in Muskegon
Michigan. (00:39)
He did not finish high school and dropped out in the 11th grade. (1:03)
At the age of 17 he joined the Navy. Due to his young age, this action did require his
parent’s permission. (1:15)
His parents were willing to let him enlist. (1:21)
He enlisted in 1941 (1:27)
He knew there was a war in Europe and figured he would be drafted. This
encouraged him to join the Navy so he could pick his branch of service. (1:36)
He chose the Navy because he didn’t want to be a soldier. (1:49)
Basic training (2:00)
After enlisting he was sent to Great Lakes Naval Base in Chicago Illinois. (2:10)
Here he was required to become accustomed to Navy discipline. (2:26)
He also attended a service school in Detroit Michigan where he learned mechanical
engineering. (2:36)
When Pearl Harbor occurred in December of 1941 he was in Boston on the Kilauea,
an ammunition ship. (3:00)
The Kilauea was about the size of a victory ship. (3:45)
While on this ship he worked in the engine room where he checked gauges and
monitored the engines performance. (4:00)
Service on the Philadelphia (early 1942) (5:00)
After Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 he was placed on the Philadelphia. (5:09)
The Philadelphia was a light cruiser. (5:20)
This ship would make runs from the East Coast to Scotland on convoy escort. (5:44)
While in the North Atlantic he experienced rough seas. (6:00)
The ships he escorted would travel in the far North Atlantic because German
submarines were unable to operate in the conditions found there. (6:58)
�
Some of the convoys he was escorting were lost. (7:28)
He was concerned about encountering German surface ships(7:52)
While in Scotland he was given shore time; there was little to do there. (8:22)
The Philadelphia also ventured to the Moroccan coast in Africa in November of
1942. (9:18)
The Philadelphia assisted in a landing. However during the landing he was below
deck in the engine room and witnessed very little of it. (10:23)
Sometime after the landing he arrived back in the states and was transferred to the ,
a destroyer. (10:50)
Service aboard the destroyer Anthony (approx. early 1943) (10:50)
The destroyer was new and was launched from Bath, Maine. (11:00)
There was a commissioning ceremony for the Anthony. (11:20)
The first task for the Anthony was down in Guantanamo Bay. (11:40)
While serving on the Anthony he encountered German submarines and depth
charges were dropped on them. (12:07)
His battle station was the number 2 engine room. (In the middle of the ship.) This
was a very sturdy place. (13:02)
When the ship encountered subs, the ship would change course. (14:45)
After Guantanamo he went through the Panama Canal and to Honolulu. (15:11)
He traveled with other destroyers in a convoy as well as with a carrier. (16:00)
When he stopped in Pearl Harbor he was able to stop and go ashore. There he saw
the Arizona in the harbor but other battle signs were mostly cleaned up. (16:56)
Service in the Pacific aboard the Anthony (17:00)
Once he left Hawaii the Anthony traveled to the South Pacific. (approx 1943) (17:20)
For a time he was stationed in Guadalcanal in 1944. (17:54)
The destroyer was primarily an escort and conducted some shore bombardments.
(18:28)
He worked in the engine rooms in shifts. When not on ship he likes to get on deck
where it was cooler and the sun was out. (19:11)
While off duty, there was little entertainment available to the soldiers. At
Guadalcanal however there was a small beach area the sailors could use. (19:56)
Movies were played on the ships for sailors. (20:20)
One of the paces he stopped was Guam but he was unable to get off the boat. (20:55)
His ship was also sent to Iwo Jima in 1945. Here, the Anthony had a spotter plane
that gave coordinates for the ship to shell. (21:20)
While pulling out of Iwo Jima a Japanese artillery fired upon the destroyers but did
not hit the Anthony. (21:52)
He stayed at Iwo Jima for a long period. (22:50)
�
While off Okinawa in March [April?] of 1945 the Anthony was attacked by Kamikaze
pilots. (23:08)
In Okinawa, his destroyer was in charge of providing cover for other ships. (Picket
Duty) (23:16)
The USS Brain was struck by a Kamikaze Pilot while the Anthony was on picket duty.
Though he could not see the attack he could hear it in the engine room. He
originally thought that the Anthony had been hit. (24:30)
There were 4-5 occasions where the Anthony had near miss Kamikazes. (25:50)
He was unaware the USS Brain was hit until he had made his way out of the Engine
room and made it up top deck. (26:17)
He saw neither the casualties from nor the damage that was done to the USS Brain.
However he was able to see bodied bags filled with navel man after the incident.
(27:13)
After Okinawa he was sent off to Sasebo (September 1945) where he was given a
rifle and a bayonet as war souvenirs. (27:41)
He went to Nagasaki in September of 1945. (28:42)
He was able to see where the bomb struck in Nagasaki and he toured much of the
destruction. The navy did not know how bad the radiation was to the men who were
exposed to it. (28:55)
He was based in Sasebo for a short time before Nagasaki (29:30)
He believes that he and the men stayed on the ship in Sasebo unlike when touring
Nagasaki. (30:00)
He saw very little of the Japanese civilians. (30:11)
After his stay in Nagasaki the ship returned to the U.S. in November of 1945. (30:29)
While traveling back to the U.S. the ship hit rough seas that caused the ship to take
on some water. (31:00)
Unlike being one a large ship, everyone had known everyone else on his destroyer.
(32:30)
In general his own captain would look after him as well as the other sailors. (32:40)
Because of the dimensions of the destroyer, one of the sailors on the ship was
washed overboard. The man was recovered several days later. (34:35)
The ship had 2 casualties. (35:52)
He was discharged in late 1946. (37:12)
Post naval life. (37:30)
He stayed in the Navy for an extended period because he thought it would be a good
way to make more money. (37:30)
He was encouraged to reenlist and was offered 1st Class ranking. (38:00)
He tried to go to school, but was unable to attend due to inefficient intelligence.
(38:28)
He ultimately ended up working in a factory that made mechanical parts for a wide
variety of parts from mechanisms for McDonalds to bomb bay doors. (38:38)
He worked for this company for 33 years. (39:05)
�Effects of Naval Service (39:10)
He believed it was a good experience. (29:20)
He learned how to work with people and cope with hardship. (39:55)
�
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
ThorsenA0828V
Title
A name given to the resource
Thorsen, Arthur (Interview outline and video), 2009
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Thorsen, Arthur
Description
An account of the resource
Arthur Thorsen is a Muskegon, Michigan, native who enlisted in the U.S. Navy before Pearl Harbor in 1941 at the age of seventeen. He worked mostly in the engine rooms of the ships he served on, initially an ammunition ship, and then the light cruiser Philadelphia in the Atlantic in 1942 and 1943 as it escorted convoys and supported the North African landings. He was then assigned to a new destroyer, the Anthony, which was sent to the Pacific in 1944. This ship also served as an escort and engaged in shore bombardments, notably at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and was then based at Sasebo, Japan, after the end of the war.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. 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
2009-06-12
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f0f787d2859939c98e5744b7ec9a3cc1.mp4
d17f303f07f722c49240cbf2f7ca1efe
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/65afb737400a9d4b9d7aaa57523db156.pdf
bf51bc83b8cf833023993008abdb1a8e
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Name of War(s): World War II, Korean War
Name of Interviewee: Darrell Thornley
Length of Interview: (01:09:41)
(00:12) Background Information
Born in [Cato, OK] on February 21, 1925 (00:13)
Father owned an ice plant, a trucking line, and a transfer and storage unit (00:23)
Raised in Duvant, OK and stayed there until he was 16, then left for his sisters’
house to work (01:05)
Family effected by Dust Bowl (01:51)
Recalls hearing about Pearl Harbor (02:09)
(02:41) Enlistment/Training
Received draft notice to report to induction center to take his physical (02:46)
Got in the wrong line and was sent into the army in Forts Hill, OK (02:55)
Basic training held in Camp Roberts, CA (03:22) Caught pneumonia while
training in a creek in 110 degree weather, spent 5 days in the hospital (04:06)
Described rifle training, physical training, and 25 mile hikes (04:53)
Was asked to stay to serve with the training cadre, but didn’t like the strict drill
instructors and asked to be transferred (05:30)
Served as an active squad leader at Camp Roberts (05:51)
(06:17) Camp Calin, San Luis [Obispo], CA
Transfered to the 97th division, which was training to go to Pacific (05:40)
Joined Company A 386 at Camp Calin in San Luis, CA (06:16)
Briefly describes his experience training here (06:48)
Trained to make assault landings at [Camp Pendleton]
Had never been on ocean before, didn’t enjoy it (07:02)
Unit scheduled to go to the Pacific, but due to the Germans’ counterattack after
the Battle of the Bulge, their orders changed and they were sent to Europe (07:16)
Describes his experience traveling by troop train from California to Camp Kilmer
in New Jersey (07:35)
(08:45) Crossing the Rhine River
Arrived in LeHavre, France and trucked to the front lines (09:31)
Allies counterattacking, unit went right into the fight on the Rhine River in
Cologne, Germany (09:42)
Briefly describes leading companies as a scout during their first endeavor (10:23)
Germans were retreating once the U.S. began advancing towards the Rhine River
(12:00)
Describes crossing the Rhine River while under fire (12:00)
Recalls that the troops was prepared and functioned well together (12:55)
�Campaign before reaching the Rhine took about three weeks because they had to
wait for supplies (13:55)
Germans were retreating once the U.S. began advancing towards the Rhine River
(14:55)
German forces must have been “scraping the bottom of the barrel,” German troops
comprised mostly of very young men (15:12)
Didn’t have much confrontation with German forces (15:55)
Describes fortifications used (16:15)
Describes experience crossing the Rhine River while under fire (17:06)
(18:30)Germany
Once across the Rhine River, advanced as far as possible until support arrived
(18:30)
Describes the radio technology available and its applications (18:46)
Describes experience occupying Cologne, Germany before and after crossing the
Rhine River (19:11)
Entered Germany upstream (20:12)
One complete division surrendered to them (20:55)
Describes his experiences and duties as a scout for his unit (21:03)
Describes casualties suffered (23:43)
Advanced to Ruhr Valley, sent to Czechoslovakia (24:25)
Truck overturned upon arrival on May 2, broken an arm and was taken to hospital
(24:35)
His unit did not encounter any prison camps while driving across Germany
(25:19)
Fractured his skull when the truck that was evacuating him turned over on bridge
in England (26:26)
(27:13) Rehabilitation
Spent 7 months and 12 days in a hospital in England (27:13)
Took a hospital boat out of England once he was able to travel and landed at
Newport News, VA (27:19)
Was transferred by train to a rehabilitation center in Okmulgee, OK (27:37)
After a visit home during his 30 day leave, received orders to go to a rehabilitation
center in Fort Sam Houston, TX (27:48)
Primarily evacuated because his wrist had fused together while healing from the
fracture, making it stiff and mostly unusable. (28:04)
Describes how he spent his time during rehabilitation (28:32)
Had earned enough points to qualify for discharge (29:22)
Went home and tried to return to work, but his position had been filled and he
re-enlisted (29:41)
Received $300 bonus for re-enlisting (30:18) Sent to 20th Armored Division in
Killeen, TX as Cadre (30:46)
Didn’t enjoy Cadre, asked for reassignment
�(31:08)(31:14) Italy
Didn’t want to join the infantry, but couldn’t get away from it. [Changed MOSs to
ammunition pioneer (a 505 at the time)] (31:23)
Taught and used demolitions to construct areas for buildings, latrines, and
flagpoles (31:41)
Stationed near Udine (32:37)
Went to Trieste (an international port) after the 88th division dissolved. Continued
training with 351st Regiment (32:51)
Describes Yugoslavia’s advance into Italy (33:31)
Recalls that Trieste was beautiful and largely unaffected by the war (34:19)
Recalls that the local Italians were nice to them (34:45) Based in Italy for three
years (35:14)
(35:28) Re-Enlistment, 1948
Re-enlisted and was assigned to a unit in Fort Sill, OK (35:28)
Found that there was no opportunity for advancement, asked for transfer (35:44)
After 6 months of waiting, he was transferred to a National Guard unit in Fort
Bliss, TX in 1948 (35:52)
Didn’t enjoy that, asked to be transferred in 1950. Assigned to ordinance unit
in Japan for occupational duty (36:12)
(36:34) Japan
Landed in Yokohama, Japan by passenger ship (36:34)
Troop went to Camp Drake to be sent to various units in June 1950 (36:45)
Sent back to infantry at 24th Division headquarters via troop train (37:05)
Was a platoon sergeant with a Combat Infantryman Badge at the time. Joined
Company A, 19th infantry (37:41)
(38:08) Service in Korea
Stationed in Pusan, S. Korea in June of 1950 (38:08)
Troops were issued ammunition, boarded Korean trucks, and moved forward
(38:23)
North Korean troops had overrun much of South Korea and were moving towards
their troops. Received orders to slow the Koreans’ advance (38:54)
Majority of his platoon were replacements, not infantrymen, and therefore had no
battle experience (39:09)
Describes first contact with enemy during advance to Taejon River in which their
commanding general was captured. Retreated to Pusan Perimeter. (40:42)
Recalls his impression of the North Koreans (41:25)
Managed to hold onto their position despite the North Koreans’ strength and
bravery (42:06)
Describes the differences between their tactics and the North Koreans’ (42:15)
Suffered many casualties due to inexperience. Their platoon [company?] was
reduced from 167 men to 9 by July 14, including officers (43:03)
Describes the weapons used by the North Koreans, and what they utilized in
response (44:24)
�Recalls that the weather was hot and that they weren’t prepared for it (45:24)
Frequently combined entire companies to replace casualties (46:06)
Remained at Pusan perimeter until General MacArthur broke landing at Inchon.
Left once Koreans’ supplies had been cut off (46:27)
Unit advanced and took Seoul (47:24)
Unit then advanced on the end of North Korea. Reached Yalu River, but were
confronted by Chinese troops before they could advance further (47:36)
Unit withdrew quickly toward Seoul. Suffered from stomach ulcers at this time
and was evacuated to Kobe, Japan for one day. Unit was attacked while he was being
evacuated (48:46)
Was asked if he was able to rejoin his unit. Describes briefly rejoining the fight
after his three day evacuation (50:11)
(52:52) Service after Evacuation
Assigned to the 229th Ordinance Company, a base depot. Worked as the chief
clerk of ammunition branch of Depot that was in control of the ammunition dumps in
Japan (52:52)
Joined 1st Cavalry Division which returned to Korea (54:16)
Returned to the United States in 1952 and was assigned to a National Guard unit
at Fort Bliss, TX. Didn’t enjoy that, volunteered to go back overseas. Joined 1st
Cavalry Division, which returned to Korea (58:37)
Describes what he thought of Japan at this time. (59:34)
Left 229 Base Depot and went to another Depot in Kure. Stayed there until 1953
before returning to the United States (1:00:03)
Received Bronze Star while in the IX Corps in 1954 (01:01:47)
Joined 1st Ordinance of 906 Ammunition Company, stationed in Fort Knox, KY.
Family joined him here. (01:03:11)
Received orders to go to Saigon, Vietnam in 1958 as a part of a state department
mission to recover equipment given to the French. (01:03:43)
Three days before he was scheduled to return home, his hotel was bombed. Took
cover behind a desk to protect himself. Witnessed his friend die in the blast
(01:04:31)
• Retired in 1966.
�
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
ThornleyD
Title
A name given to the resource
Thornley, Darrell (Interview outline and video), 2009
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Thornley, Darrell
Description
An account of the resource
Darrell Thornley was raised in Duvant, OK and was drafted into the army soon after hearing about Pearl Harbor. His extensive military career in World War II and the Korean War and beyond took him to France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Darrell held a variety of positions throughout his career, such as squad leader, scout, and Cadre leader. During his military career, he received the Combat Infantryman Badge and a Bronze Star Medal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
United States. Army
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2009-05-14
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/58f1abd439d4f6c84518b07cfaed1b6d.mp4
ce6119647bb1fdcbac1aa76069adf7c0
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/807936426b8be469a1372e38fdb98d5c.pdf
099106c18a42e3973fca9fb6763febd4
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Evertt S. Thompson
(00:53:27)
(01:36) Born in Detroit Michigan 1924 Dec 19
(02:02) He was drafted in march 1943
(02:23) He wanted to be a pilot yet found out that he was color blind
(03:03) He did his basic at Florida
(03:46) St Petersburg Florida for 9-10 weeks
(04:31) He was sent to the University of Illinois by the army to take classes
(05:04) in 1944 he was sent camp Cutter, Missouri the army determined that he was able
to take care of large diesel engines
(06:09) 1944 November he went to California and then went on a troop ship on his way
to New Guinea.
(07:37) He was in charge of building and operating radio stations in New Guinea, where
he stayed until June 1945
(08:42) He then went to Manila. He was very close to a military POW camp. He was
there for a few weeks. He did not do much there beyond a little KP duty
(10:05) He found out that the Japanese had surrendered
(10:31) He was still in Manila and went into town to register for classes. When he got
back to the base he found out that he was going to Japan so he could not take college
classes.
(11:12) He found out that he was on his way to go Japan. On the USS Titan, he slept in
clean sheets for the first time in a very long time. The voyage took 18 days
(11:41) during the trip he was a little nervous because no one knew if there were rogue
subs in the water.
(12:49) He anchored outside the bay. He says that there must have been every U.S war
ship outside the bay.
(13:59) He was two hundred yards away from the USS Missouri
�(14:52) in August he went into Tokyo. The Japanese had put bed sheets over all the gun
emplacements
(16:05) There were B-29’s flying very low and on the belly there was POW written.
Their mission was flying in medicine and supplies to the POW camps. He said it was a
welcome sight.
(16:54) Sep 2 1945 he describes the ships for the Generals and the Japanese before the
signing
(18:11) he took pictures standing 10 ft away from Macarthur and Chester Nimitz
(19:10) He describes seeing General Wainwright.
(20:00)He describes the feeling of the day.
(20:32) He was not allowed off the ship for three days. When he was allowed off the
ship, the troops had to carry their rifles.
(21:28)He built a radio tower for Tokyo he stayed there for a month or two until his
living facilities burnt down. He lost a lot of his things in the fire.
(23:09) He then moved into a school building.
(23:42) He describes how he was allowed to move freely to around Japan.
(24:47) He got to travel within 100 miles of Tokyo. He describes the devastation of the
bombing and how you could see for miles and there was nothing because of the
destruction of the housing.
(26:06) The allies did not bomb the emperor’s palace or the business district.
(27:26) The U.S took over office space. Macarthur took a building across the street from
the emperor’s palace.
(28:41) Interactions between Japanese and American troops
(29:23) Speaks of the people of in Japan
(30:28) He did not find too much belligerence
(31:05) He stayed at the radio station until December 1945
(31:32) He then stayed at the West Point of Japan. The emperor’s son had a residence
there.
�(32:16) He then went home in Jan. 1946
(32:54 )He went to Michigan State and became a civil engineer.
(34:32) He discusses his later careers
(35:19) He did not think that the military affected him later in life.
(36:37) Discusses basic training.
(38:56) He stayed St Petersburg for three weeks after basic.
(39:34) He went to the Citadel, South Carolina to be shipped to school. He lived in
fraternity houses.
(40:51) When he went to Missouri and found out what he was going to do in the Army
(41:47 )He took a night school course in diesel engines before he went in the military.
(43:48) Trip across the Pacific ocean: everyone got sea sick for about three days. At night
all the ships had to be lightproof, because of the submarines
(46:34) In New Guinea they sleep in tents and it was a sad night because of the day
before Christmas. It did not bother him to be away form home.
(47:57) He moved into larger facilities he had to sleep in netting and he had to take a pill
to warn off malaria. The pill was called atabrine.
(49:13 ) He worked with the natives.
(50:00 )Manila was obliterated by the Japanese bombing. He gave food to the kids in
Manila because they were starving.
(51:17 )Last thoughts
In New Guinea he saw a bunch of downed aircraft and from the scrap he made bracelets
and things to send home.
End. 53:27
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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
ThompsonE
Title
A name given to the resource
Thompson, Everett (Interview outline, video, and papers), 2007
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Thompson, Everett
Description
An account of the resource
Everett Thompson served in the Army Signal Corps in World War II. He was drafted in March 1943. After doing basic training in Florida, he was sent to the University of Illinois where he took classes to prepare him to take care of large diesel engines. He was shipped out to New Guinea, and operated large diesel engine generators for radio stations until June of 1945. He spent a few weeks in Manila, waiting to be sent into Japan as part of a large convoy. Once there he witnessed the men boarding the USS Missouri to sign the armistice. After a few days he was able to leave the ships and see Japan. He helped build and operate a large radio tower in Tokyo and saw the devastation of the bombing within 100 miles of that city. He came home in January 1946 and entered Michigan State University, becoming a civil engineer. Photographs and correspsondence from Thompson's service are appended to this interview outline.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
United States. Army. Signal 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
2007-05-24
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f8f3653d2c6a99cc88861bcaced07ca7.pdf
2f5606eb2a737fcff888ca41aebed75f
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Alfred Thomet
(00:54:18)
Audio skips throughout interview.
Skips until (00:32)
(00:32) Background:
• Grew up in Lowell, Michigan.
• Father was a farmer.
• Member of the Future Farmers of America.
(02:18) Enlistment:
• Enlisted for Navy in East Grand Rapids.
• Chose Navy because of convenience.
(03:10) Training:
• Began training at Great Lakes Training Center.
• Then sent to San Bernardino, California before being shipped overseas.
• Has a lot of admiration for his commanding officers.
• Feels his basic training prepared him well for his work in the war.
(05:25)
• Sent to Okinawa, Japan.
• First day on Okinawa was a terrible storm.
• Member of a naval supply detail.
• Served as a truck driver to supply ships.
• Experienced combat when arriving in Okinawa.
• There were a few casualties in his unit.
• The men would play cards to entertain themselves, they also played softball.
• He had no time for leave while overseas.
• Took 30 days to get from Okinawa to the United States.
(16:18) Discharge:
• Worked at a factory after returning home from service.
• Began working in automotive business in 1950.
(18:07) Veterans organization:
• Joined American Legion and VFW.
(18:21) View of War:
• Believes American’s attitudes towards war are different today then they were
in the forties.
(20:00) Length of Service:
• Served 16 months in active service.
(20:55) Family Life:
• Spends time with his children and grandchildren.
• His father was a WWI veteran.
(23:15) Explanation of Photographs:
�(24:18) Memories of his wife.
• Did not meet his wife until after the military service.
(27:40) Okinawa continued:
• Two typhoons occurred while he served.
• Japanese civilians would attempt to sneak into camp at night.
• Served in the Navy with his cousin.
(33:58) Explanation of Newspaper articles and photographs:
(38:10) Explanation of K-Rations:
• Three rationed meals the military would carry with them.
• Everything had 4 cigarettes with them.
(40:20) Members of his unit:
• One member had never learned how to drive, but was assigned to be a truck
driver.
• Cousin in the Navy is named Edward Bird.
• Extensive amount of camaraderie within the unit.
(45:15) Recollections of childhood.
947:35) Feelings of the Draft:
• Feels a volunteer army is a better army than one that is drafted.
(49:15) Joining the Navy:
• Joined the Navy thinking he would become an aircrew man.
(53:34) Photographs:
�
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
ThometA
Title
A name given to the resource
Thomet, Alfred N. (Interview outline), 2007
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Thomet, Alfred N.
Description
An account of the resource
Alfred Thomet became a member of the United States Navy at 17 years old. He served in the Pacific theatre, specifically on Okinawa, in 1945. He worked as a truck driver in a supply route for the Navy. He returned to Lowell, Michigan after his service where he married and had a successful automotive career.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Brenk, Nancy (Interviewer)
Lowell Area Historical Museum (Lowell, Mich.)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
United States. Navy
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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
2007-05-31
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
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/747ef2bbb1ef1be72fa069d92f7c12b8.mp4
04efc510243a2a395324c58cc25894dc
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/bb1d26ce5928dae22d3d79db1a657447.pdf
d9f412594a35ca5c4cae7f8eef3dd66c
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Gib Thomas
(59:10)
Background Information (00:14)
Born in South Dakota in September of 1920. (00:15)
His father owned and ran a farm. (00:42)
In 1932, Gib and his family moved to Faulkton, South Dakota where his father tried to make a
living buying and selling cattle. (00:54)
In 1933, Gib and his family moved to Miller, South Dakota were his dad ran a hamburger shop.
(1:50)
In 1937 the family closed the shop after Gib’s older brother died in a car accident. (2:31)
In 1939 Gib began working as a lifeguard. (3:14)
Gib did complete high school and played basketball, football, and track. (3:27)
Gib attended South Dakota State University in the fall of 1939. (4:10)
Gib heard of Pearl Harbor while working in the Union at South Dakota University. (4:40)
He paid fairly little attention to the events that were going on in the world in the late 1930s
early 1940s. (5:17)
In the summer of 1940 Gib worked in Yellowstone National Park. (6:00)
There were programs in the ROTC at South Dakota in 1942. (7:23)
In March of 1942, Gib joins the ROTC. Gib reported for active duty in July 1st 1943. (8:18)
In the summer of 1942 Gib worked in the shipyards in California. (8:45)
Gib worked on transport ships. (9:31)
Basic training (10:00)
Gib first reported to Kalamazoo, Michigan and then was sent to the V12 program at Western
Michigan University for 3-4 months.
In late November of 1943 Gib was sent to boot camp. (10:33)
He attended Parris Island, South Carolina for Marine Corps basic training. The men were sent by
train. The trip took several days. (11:04)
While in the ROTC Gib was taught marching and military discipline. (12:19)
The college students were treated differently than the normal recruits during basic. (12:53)
The men were trained on rifles and taught military discipline during basic. (13:10)
A man in Gib’s barracks died one night with a high fever. (13:45)
Book camp lasted between 6-8 weeks. (14:10)
Officers Training (14:40)
Gib was then sent to officers training at Quantico in Virginia. (14:41)
He was sick for a 10 day period during this training. Because of this he was sent out and did not
become an officer. (15:12)
He considered this lucky because most of the men he trained within his company at officer
school died in battle. (15:50)
�
He was given a 10 day leave after being sent out of Officer’s School. (16:30)
Gib was then sent to the 6th Marine Division at Camp Lejeune. (16:50)
He was assigned to the 29th Marine Regiment, Headquarters Company of the 2nd Battalion, and
was made Property and Police sergeant. This meant he was in charge of the issued property that
all the enlisted men had. (17:38)
He entered Camp Lejeune in April of 1944 and left in June of 1944. On August 1st 1944 he set sail
for Guadalcanal. (18:50)
Voyage to the Pacific (19:10)
The voyage was very rough (19:11)
The weather was very hot and humid. Men had to take many medications for malaria and
yellow fever as well. (19:38)
Service at Guadalcanal (20:09)
The men spent 7 months at Guadalcanal. Here the men did more training and maneuvers.
(20:10)
While on Guadalcanal the men had to wear their pants with the leg rolled up and the socks
going over the pant leg. (20:57)
He was not near Henderson Field. He was 100 yards or so from the shore line. (21:45)
For fun, the men organized softball teams. (22:18)
There was a mess hall that the men used. They ate quite well. (23:00)
Gib was on Guadalcanal from the later part of 1944 through early 1945. The men were unable to
hear much of what was happening on the war effort. The men did not have radios or papers.
(23:44)
Gibb traveled on a regular troop transport ship. (24:33)
Service at Okinawa (24:40)
The men were scared to death going ashore on Okinawa. When the men landed ashore, there
were no shots fired. (25:03)
Before the lading, there was a massive naval bombardment. (25:50)
The first night the men were on Okinawa, Gib almost was hit by an incoming landing craft. The
night was fairly quiet. (27:21)
Gib was sent to the northern part of Okinawa. The men met opposition and took casualties.
(28:25)
The Japanese shelled the Marines quite heavily. (30:11)
He did see some natives and civilians but not too many. This was due to his close proximity to
the shore. (31:10)
After 10 days near the shore the men walked inland. (31:45)
Inland, Japanese soldiers would pop out and take shots at the Marines. (32:20)
Due to his position and rank, Gib was not as much on the front lines as others. (33:48)
While fighting on Okinawa, a man jumped on top of Gib to protect him from a bomb. The man
died but was honored as a hero. (35:00)
Gib was given tasks ranging from taking care of equipment, aiding casualties, shooting mortars
and sniping. (35:50)
�
Gib’s battalion took a lot of casualties. (37:04)
There was difficulty telling whether or not the Marines had the upper hand or the Japanese. It
often seemed to vary. (38:09)
Occasionally the Japanese did attack positions at night. (39:34)
Gib’s battalion was pulled back and replenished. Then they were sent to Okinawa’s capital to
attack the airport. (40:00)
Near the end of the fighting on Okinawa, Gib did not see very many POWs. (41:37)
Gib was very happy to leave Okinawa. In 1969 he revisited the island. (44:59)
Service in Guam and the End of the War (46:37)
The men arrived in Guam in July of 1946 to prepare for the invasion of Japan. (46:40)
The men were organized to lead ship prepared to go to Japan when the war ended. (48:12)
After the war ended, Gib was sent to Tsingtao, China. (48:37)
Gib was unsure as to why is battalion was in China. They spent most their time there on liberty.
(49:05)
While in China the men stayed in old dorms and hospitals. (50:30)
Gib was in charge of making sure deliveries were sent on time. (50:55)
The Chinese treated the Americans well. Much of the Chinese could speak English. (51:28)
When Gib left, much of his unit was left behind because they did not have enough points.
(52:49)
The men that Gib worked with were very reliable, due primarily to their military discipline.
(54:00)
April 1st 1946 was the day that Gib arrived home. (54:20)
He was discharged in San Diego, California. (54:58)
After graduating from college, he worked several small jobs. (55:20)
Gib started a laundromat. (56:55)
Thoughts on Service (57:36)
Gib was no longer lazy due to his service in the military. (57:45)
Gun shots still trigger reflexes for Gib. He did not have trouble adjusting to civilian life. (58:25)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ThomasG1375V
Title
A name given to the resource
Thomas, Gilbert (Interview outline and video), 2012
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Thomas, Gilbert
Description
An account of the resource
Gib Thomas, born in South Dakota in September of 1920, served in the U.S. Marines from July of 1943-1946 in the Pacific during World War II. While in college in the early 1940s at South Dakota University, Gib was a member of the ROTC. After reporting for active duty, Gib was made the Property and Police Sergeant of the 29th Marine Regiment, Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion. He also served on Guadalcanal, Okinawa, Guam and China during and after the war.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
United States. 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
2012-04-10
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8840f19cbf4841195d7ace72d21ea1bc.m4v
2be831482f2b5ea0dabfa2dcaeeb4ea9
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8569be8f46b8239deb7725cd1e8a90d1.pdf
78fdb152474c1b358e143b717c1a81ab
PDF Text
Text
Interview Notes
Interview Length (1:13:10)
Donald Thomas
US Army Air Corps
World War II
Pre-Enlistment
Born in a suburb of Toledo on August 26th, 1925 (0:10)
Attended a small community school in a rural area (0:15)
Graduated with 90 kids from high school (1:10)
Was playing basketball with friends when Pearl Harbor happened (1:30)
Had no idea where Pearl Harbor was located (1:50)
Was still 17 when he graduated, but took tests for the ASTP (Army Specialized Training
Program) (2:50)
Formed a reserve program, and he joined in order to go to college (3:10)
Just wanted to fly airplanes, did not want to attend college (3:30)
Used to go to the Toledo Airport to watch planes take off and land and frequently took rides in
planes (3:45)
Mother dropped him and a friend off to sign up and get a physical (5:20)
Training
Was sworn in, took a train to the University of Kentucky (5:35)
Was in Engineering school, tried to get a transfer out to fly planes (6:15)
Went home for several weeks at the end of Engineering school (7:00)
Went to Cleveland, took the Air Cadet test (8:40)
Accepted two days before transfer to Fort Benning for basic training (8:50)
Had ROTC uniforms (7:10)
Stayed at Boyd Hall, and the university walled off between the boys and girls section of the hall
(7:45)
Ended up in Keesler AFB in Mississippi for basic training (9:25)
Initially slept in a cabin, then slept in tents (10:00)
Was excited to go south because it was cold at home (11:00)
Did a lot of marching, drilling (11:10)
Was placed in an early form of a simulator to get used to the feel of an airplane (11:30)
Went to Oklahoma State for graduation (12:30)
Ran everywhere for everything (13:40)
Food was marvelous (14:00)
Thoroughly enjoyed the experience, mostly because he got to fly (14:45)
The entire Air Cadet program ended April 4, 1944 because they had too many pilots (15:10)
Was in the hospital with pneumonia when this happened, came back and everybody was gone
(15:30)
Sergeant signed him up for Gunnery School (16:10)
Gunnery School
Took a train to Laredo, Texas for school (16:15)
�Thousands of people were there because the program across the country had ended (16:40)
Had no choice as to the aviation specialty (16:50)
Originally 36 people to a cabin, then it jumped to 96 (17:30)
The Army lost him for a month because there were so many people (18:15)
Skipped out on hard duties, was able to lay down by the pool in the afternoon (18:30)
Saw that his friends were taking a gunnery class, made his presence known (18:45)
Trained on an Emerson nose and tail turret as a gunner for B-24 (19:20)
Was able to take the turret apart and put it back together blindfolded (19:45)
Everything was voluntary, even flying in combat (20:15)
Shot shotguns so much on different courses (20:30)
Learned to love to shoot (21:15)
Learned to operate turrets (22:30)
Shipped to Lincoln, Nebraska to get a crew (22:45)
Found a cyst in his spine and needed an operation, which grounded him (23:00)
Met a friend in the hospital and transferred into B-17s (23:45)
Service overseas
Assigned to a crew and shipped to Tennessee (24:00)
Sat in an auditorium with all the crews to get to know everybody (24:20)
Since he was small he was assigned to the ball turret (25:10)
Biggest issue was that he couldn’t fit a parachute in the turret with him (25:30)
Did a lot of training and flying with the same crew (27:05)
Had false attack planes, instead of shooting, they shot photos (27:20)
Lasted for 3 months (28:30)
Went overseas afterwards (28:45)
Supposed to fly overseas, but bombardier was ill and had to cross by ship in late 1944 (29:45)
Not too many Air Corpsmen on the ship, mostly Army troops (30:15)
Took trains through Scotland, stopped at a base (30:45)
Relieved a depleted squadron (31:20)
Still trained for several weeks while there (32:15)
Flew with the 13th Wing (36 planes) (33:00)
Flew to Berlin 3 times in large groups, sometimes with 2,000 planes (33:30)
First Mission to Berlin
Rose at 3:30 am and got good food when going on a mission (34:10)
Drank too much grapefruit juice, which served him poorly while in the air (34:35)
Had a group briefing, watched different groups go overhead (35:00)
Then went to pick up the equipment, then driven out the hardstand where the planes were (35:40)
Had a tent for the ground crew where they changed into their flight suits (36:20)
Stripped and cleaned the guns so they wouldn’t freeze at high altitudes (36:50)
Took off around 6 am (37:00)
Averaged 10 hours in the air on a mission to Berlin (38:00)
Saw several planes go down via flak (39:50)
Could see the black puffs from flak, bomb bay doors and the explosions from the bombs (41:20)
Was hit by flak, but not enough to severely damage the plane (42:00)
Second Mission to Berlin
�Same routine as the first mission, but the group had drifted into heavy artillery fire (42:30)
88mm shell went through the plane about a foot from his turret (42:50)
Didn’t explode, but took out oxygen and electric (43:00)
Had to fall out of formation about 30 minutes later, dropped bombs into the English Channel on
the way home (43:40)
Got a P-51 escort for the way back in case of Luftwaffe attack (45:25)
Everything was just like training until people started dying (45:45)
Called easy bombing runs “milk runs” (46:10)
February 9th, was over Germany and saw his first jet-powered airplane (46:30)
Fighter planes were not a significant worry, but would make guerrilla-style attacks on formations
(47:45)
As the Germans retreated, their flak guns became more concentrated, which was the biggest
problem (48:15)
4th Mission
Saw an ME-262 on April 7th (49:00)
Came up behind the plane and shot rockets (49:30)
One plane caught on fire, and that plane was carrying Napalm (49:50)
Two P-51’s attacked and shot the ME down (50:45)
Chronicles planes lost over Germany due to flak through various missions (51:00)
Ball turret took a direct hit, but was not in the turret (51:30)
Woke up before the mission sick, but flew anyways (51:35)
Got sick right before the attack and crawled out of the turret (52:00)
Only time he left his turret in 25 missions (53:20)
Chronicled various injuries on his crew (53:35)
Couldn’t hear flak hitting the plane because the other noise was too loud (55:45)
Requirement to get out of combat missions was 35, but his last mission was at 25 because the
troop movement was so fast (56:15)
Went on non-combat missions to drop food, called them Chow Hounds (56:45)
Dropped food to the Dutch (56:55)
Sent three planes at a time, and bomber pilots would start to play chicken over the water to see
who could drop lowest to the water (57:30)
Often would buzz cows (58:00)
Had some vacation time around VE Day, but the base was locked down because of the end of the
war (58:50)
No real celebrations when they heard the news, but glad it was over (59:20)
Back to the States
Was sent back to the States to get retrained on the B-29 to be sent to the Pacific (59:50)
Took the Queen Elisabeth back (1:00:35)
Was in the middle of the ocean when they dropped the bombs on Japan (1:00:45)
Disembarked in New Jersey, then sent to Harrisburg, PA, then sent home for 2 weeks (1:01:00)
Got a free drink when the war finally ended, but didn’t realize it at the time (1:01:45)
Took a train back home and found out the war had ended (1:01:50)
Took a bus home, surprised his family (1:02:10)
Had brothers and cousins home from the war, as well (1:02:20)
No real celebration, just lots of hugs (1:03:45)
Still in the military, but lied to them to get more time at home (1:04:10)
�Was sent down to San Antonio to be discharged in October of 1945 (1:04:50)
Post-Service
Came home, went to college at Bowling Green on the GI Bill (1:05:15)
Graduated with a BS in Business Administration in 1950 (1:06:10)
Joined with Sun Oil, trained in Toledo and became a sales rep on the east side of Detroit
(1:07:00)
Transferred to Grand Rapids for a few years (1:07:10)
Tried to ship him to Chicago, but switched to a ceramics factory to stay in Grand Rapids
(1:07:20)
Got married at 29 (1:08:45)
Continued to learn to fly during college (1:09:20)
Quit flying because he didn’t have any money to fly (1:09:45)
Is very thankful that he joined the military because it filled the awkward gap between high
school and college (1:10:45)
Was the most exciting time of his life (1:11:30)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
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RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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ThomasD
Title
A name given to the resource
Thomas, Donald (Interview outline and video), 2009
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Thomas, Donald
Description
An account of the resource
Donald Thomas joined the Army after he graduated from high school, intending to fly airplanes in World War II. Initially, the Army sent him to Engineering school, but after a two week break, he switched into the Air Cadet school. The program ended in 1944, and he was assigned to a turret gun in a B-17 and shipped overseas to Scotland to fly bombing missions into Germany.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kiwanis, Alden K. (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
United States. Army Air 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
2009-10-15
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
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2269fe6320f2853e54ffe7e1e2f46eb6.mp4
7492ac7fd662ad7fcd5d0669bbba06d3
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0e8d1fbdab70798899a14dc9e82a2cf2.pdf
9be97eb7a17a9a1ed7700f6e549ffc8b
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
John Thiel
Vietnam War
Total Time: 26:30
Pre-War (00:00)
•
•
•
Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1950.
Was part of a family of 6 children.
Joined the Navy right upon leaving High School in 1969.
Training (05:35)
•
•
He took Basic Training at Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Chicago,
Illinois.
Attended Hospital Corpmans School at Great Lakes Naval Training Station.
Active Duty (05:55)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Went to Charleston, South Carolina, and worked in the Hospital for 6 months, and
after that went to Parris Island where he learned how to work in a lab.
Was the sent to field medical school, and then went to Lab School in Portsmouth,
New Hampshire.
(07:09) He then went to Albany, Georgia, to a Marine Corps Supply Center where
he worked in the lab.
(07:45) He was then given orders to report to Camp Pendleton and was attached
to the a medical battalion in the 1st Marine Division. He operated the lab for the
battalion. He also got to work in the hospital at Camp Pendleton, and was given
charge of the morgue for a time.
He got out of the Navy in 1973.
(14:15) He then joined the Army in 1981 and had to do basic training all over
again.
After basic, he was given the job of driving forklifts and trucks at Fort Bragg and
Germany. Went to the NCO Academy while he was there.
His wife was in Germany with him for a while.
Was sent to Columbia, South Carolina, to be discharged from Germany.
Post-Service (20:05)
•
Returned to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and became a trucker.
�
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
ThielJ
Title
A name given to the resource
Thiel, John (Interview outline and video), 2008
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Thiel, John
Description
An account of the resource
John Thiel was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1950 and served in the Navy/Marines and Army during the Vietnam War era. He worked for the Navy and Marines as a lab assistant in a number of different locations, including South Carolina and Camp Pendleton in California. After his stint in the Navy, he joined the Army and worked as a truck and forklift driver in Germany and at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Collins Sr., Charles E. (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Navy
United States. Army
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2008-06-30
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a6ad98b5e8938a2141df2a003e923d49.m4v
75190e40576c114d8918b2bbd77dd550
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/70172d5de5cd82de703774579ad1c659.pdf
5877ef6842b7f9ce9bbb1d9252a7b646
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Howard Terry: Disc One
Length: 2:17:45
(00:15) Background Information
Howard was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1927
His father was born in 1853 and fought in the Civil War, then became a street sweeper
and lamp lighter
His father later retired from the city of Nashville and met his mother who was much
younger than he
Howard’s mother was born in 1900 and was an orphan; it was his father’s third marriage
Howard’s father died when he was only 5 years old and then his mother brought him to
stay at an orphanage after the funeral
As he grew older Howard moved through a few different orphanages and worked very
hard while he was at them
They had to cut their own wood for fire to heat the building, pick vegetables for food,
cook, and wash their own laundry by hand
They never got to eat any of the good food they picked and/or canned and he suspected
the orphanage actually sold the food
(29:05) Marines
Howard ran away from the orphanage and visited a recruiting station
He was told he was too young and would need his mother’s signature, so he returned to
the orphanage and snuck back in
His mother only lived 2 miles away and so he took off another night to visit her
She agreed to sign the papers for him to join the Marines and claim that he was 17 years
old as long as he would send her a portion of his pay every week
Howard was really only 15 years old and signed up for 4 years of service
He was sworn in and shipped to Parris Island, South Carolina
(44:15) Boot Camp 1942
Howard was always worried that someone would find out his real age and send him back
to the orphanage
They got up every day at 4 a.m. to stand at attention in their Quonset huts
They worked a lot on close order drilling, running obstacle courses and with weaponry
All the sergeants knew he was under age and made bets on his shooting abilities
Boot camp was fun for Howard because he was actually getting paid to do less work than
he had when he was in the orphanage
He was in boot camp for 6 weeks and then took a train to Quantico
�(59:15) Overseas
In Virginia the some of the soldiers had to stay in small tents while they waited because
the barracks were already so full
They took a train to New York and then boarded a Spanish liner
Howard was with most of all the same men he had worked with in boot camp
They were not traveling in a convoy, but still moving pretty slowly because of the zig zag
course they were taking to avoid enemy submarines
On their way they occasionally ran into wreckage from other ships that had blown up
The trip took 2 weeks and they landed in Belfast, Ireland
(1:05:30) Ireland
After arriving they walked to a train station where they loaded another train and headed
to Londenderry
They stayed near a Navy base and there were oil fields in the back ground
Howard often worked on guard duty at night, watching for German saboteurs that wanted
to blow things up on their base
There was also a large ammo dump, which was their main target
There were often German bombers flying over the base and air raid sirens were always
going off around 3 a.m.
They would then have to move to the air raid shelter and it was very cold sitting there in
the middle of the night for hours in their pajamas
Howard was working with the First Provisional Marine Battalion, guarding facilities in
Northern Ireland
Howard and some other men formed a bagpipe band in an attempt to get the civilians to
like them
Howard was in Ireland for 2 years and then sent back to the US after the Normandy
Invasion
(1:18:15) Time Off
Howard was sent back to Quantico and then spent some time in Washington DC on
liberty
He was in the Marine Corps for 4 years and only had time on leave once when he
received furlough and traveled to Grand Rapids, Michigan
Howard went to Michigan because his mother had moved there with her new husband
He was 17 years old, but could still go to the bar in his uniform and everyone would buy
him drinks
People always wanted to hang out with him because he could get gasoline while in his
uniform, but they were not able to themselves because it was rationed
�(1:30:00) Camp Pendleton, California
Howard went through extra combat training and finally qualified as an expert shooter
On his time off he was a contestant on a trivia game show; he won, but the only prize
they gave him was a box of soap
He worked part time sometimes for extra money
Howard was part of the replacement detachment awaiting to be assigned to a unit
They shipped out from San Diego on an escort carrier that was loaded with fighter planes
(1:40:35) Okinawa
On their way they stopped in Hawaii and Howard visited Honolulu
He and a few other men got arrested for swimming in the women’s pool area
They were put in the stockade, which was very hot and filled with an awful chlorine scent
They were never actually charged with anything, but just kept in the stockade for a few
hours
They boarded their ship again and headed towards Okinawa
Howard was assigned to a machine gun platoon of X Company, 2nd Battalion, 29th
Marines, 6th Marine Division
There was fighting all over the island and Howard did not like seeing the civilians get
hurt, as well as their rough living conditions
(1:58:45) Daily Life
They were always hungry and could never get seconds for their meals; they barely ever
had hot meals
The island was filled with an absolutely terrible odor from all the bodies, but they got
used to it after a while
There were flies al over the bodies and it was hard to eat or breath without them flying
into your mouth
They had to blow up caves to look for the Japanese that were hiding in them
They had to use very short fuses on the bombs because if they used a long one, the
Japanese would put out the fuse while they were waiting for it to blow up
Many of the Japanese hiding in the caves would actually blow themselves up before the
Americans could get to them; even some of the women were blowing themselves up
(2:07:25) Attacked
Howard had been working on a rig in the South of the island and was attacked with
artillery shells
Then they began shooting at the Americans with machine guns and charged towards them
Howard hit the deck and played dead so the shooting would clear up in his general area,
but the shooting continued for about another hour
�
Finally an American tank came up along the area and the shooting stopped
Howard often worked as a machine gunner carrying ammo and then as a rifleman to
protect the machine gun while it was going off
Disc Two: 02:26:41
(01:55) Grenades
While in boot camp Howard had been instructed to throw a grenade like a baseball
They practiced with grenades from WWI because they were made differently and did not
go off right away when the pin was pulled
In Okinawa Howard had been attacked and stuck up against a large wall while being fired
at
He threw a grenade, but it did not go far because they were on a slight incline
It rolled back towards them and went off, with shrapnel going everywhere, but no one
was seriously hurt
(10:50) Island Secured
Howard fought on the line from June 10-22 until the island was declared secure, but there
were still many Japanese soldiers throughout the island
Many of them were hiding in the jungle and in the caves, still attacking with machine
guns
During an attack Howard’s friend was shot in the head and Howard was grazed with
many bullets himself, but not injured
There were many civilian women that killed themselves because the Japanese had told
them the Americans would do terrible things to them if they caught them
Some of the women even jumped off cliffs while holding their babies
The majority of the civilians did not believe the Japanese and were much more scared of
them
There were dead Marines all over the island whose bodies needed to be gathered
In Okinawa there were more Americans wounded than actually killed
(34:50) Guam
They moved South of Naha and then boarded an LST in early July to go to Guam
�
Once they reached Guam they set up their tents and began training for combat
The food was terrible and there were mosquitoes everywhere
They were eating a lot of mutton from Australia and New Zealand and Howard did not
like it at all
They trained through September and then took a ship to North China
They landed in an area that had been taken over by communists
(41:50) China
They remained on the ship for about 10 days before going ashore
While on the ship many of the men were lowering buckets to pull up bottles of liquor thy
bought from the locals
They locals were very poor and starving; they had likely made the liquor in small tubs in
their homes
Some of the men that drank the home-made liquor got sick and/or died
Once they did go on land the locals were all very nice to them
They caught some of the Chinese stealing and tried to scare them by threatening to do
what the Japanese used to do to them; cut off their hands
(58:35) Working in China
There was no war damage in the Northern area where Howard was working
He stayed in Tsingtao the whole time and worked on water purification and supply
Howard met a Japanese man who had gone to school in the US and was completely
against the war
The man invited Howard over for dinner and he told him about how he was in the
Japanese Army, but refusing to fight
There was not much crime in that area and the Americans often tried to help the Chinese
(1:17:15) Leaving the Pacific
�
While in the Pacific Howard had lost track of time and was surprised when he was told
that his 4 years of enlistment was up
He did not want anything to do with the service again and did not even consider reenlisting
He arrived back in the states and bought a fancy suit and a fifth of liquor
Howard rented a hotel room and took a shower and then drank all his liquor
He left his uniform in the hotel and never saw it again
Howard took a bus to Michigan and stayed with his mother and stepfather again for a
while
He got a job working with his stepfather with UAW, but was fired after about 4 weeks
Howard went through many jobs for a while, but kept getting fired because he was sick
of taking orders from people after being in the Marines
He then traveled to Chicago to try to find a job, but was unsuccessful
(1:29:20) Army
Howard later took a bus to Kansas City in 1947 to look for a job, but still no one was
hiring
He decided to go to Fort Riley and enlisted in the Army for 18 months
He was made Corporal and had to take a few refresher courses to begin
Howard was then transferred to Fort Knox in Kentucky in July of 1947
For the 4th of July he took a bus to visit his cousin in Nashville, and on the bus ride he
met his future wife
He traveled with her and her sister the whole way and they talked a lot, getting to know
each other
Howard was transferred for Fort Bliss about a month later and she came there to meet
him, where they got married on August 1, 1947
(1:51:25) Virginia
Howard had to go through a 90 day course in correctional custodial methods at Fort Lee
Once he passed the course in Virginia he was sent to New Cumberland, Pennsylvania
�
His wife got a job waitressing, but they had a hard time and neither of them was making
enough money
Howard worked watching prisoners at a compound in Pennsylvania
They were all men who had been court marshaled for some reason, but at one point he
was given too many to watch
He complained to his superior that he could not keep track of so many men, but he was
told to just follow orders
2 of the prisoners took off on him and Howard was put in the brig and later court
martialed for neglect of duty
He was sentenced to 6 months of hard labor, lost ¼ of his pay for 3 months, and was
demoted to private
Howard was sent to Fort Meade to work on the stockade for 4 weeks and then his
sentence was rescinded because it had somehow become clear that he had just been
following a superior’s orders
Howard was very angry at that point and wanted nothing else to do with the Army
He told his captain he wanted a 369 hearing to be honorable discharged and he was soon
finished with the Army
(2:15:10) After Service
Howard hated being in the Army, but really enjoyed his time in the Marines
In November of 1946 he took flying lessons with a friend of his and really enjoyed flying
over the Grand River in Michigan
Unfortunately his good friend was later killed in a plane crash
In 1949 Howard began going to watch-making school in Kansas City, Missouri
He later wrote a book about his time in the service with the help of his granddaughter and
is currently seeking a publisher
�
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
TerryH
Title
A name given to the resource
Terry, Howard (Interview outline and video)
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Terry, Howard
Description
An account of the resource
Howard Terry was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1927 and lived in different orphanages from the ages of 5-15. When he was 15 years old he lied about his age and enlist in the Marine Corps to get out of the orphanage. Howard went through boot camp for 6 weeks and then began traveling east until he eventually made it to Londonderry, Ireland where he worked with the First Provisional Marine Battalion guarding facilities in Northern Ireland. Howard was in Ireland for 2 years and then sent back to the US after the Normandy Invasion. After having some time off and going through more training Howard was sent to the Pacific where he fought in Okinawa and Guam. He was later stationed in Tsingtao, China before his 4years of service was up. Howard then signed up for 1.5 months with the Army, which he did not enjoy and decided to leave early. He later began working on a book, detailing his life in the orphanages and his time in the service.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
United States. 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.)
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c52737efdbc54318c872f0c6d9e242ea.mp4
4e6d7a8d080775cc5630e893c43e5dc4
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8809690167ce196261a5f706e707da41.pdf
44a419bdd503d50e66e954c5db7e19c6
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Ken TerHaar
(31:20)
(00:35) Background Information
• Ken was born in Byron Center, Michigan on January 31, 1928
• His father was a mechanic in a Ford garage near their house
• Ken graduated from high school in 1946
• He had paid much attention to international news and the war during high school
• Ken had already gotten his physical for the draft in April of his senior year
• He had been deferred from the draft for school
(02:25) Drafted
• Ken was drafted in August 1950 at the beginning of the Korean War
• He was sent to Fort Knox in Tennessee for basic training with the 6th Armored
Cavalry Unit
• Ken had done well in his aptitude test and would later be working as a mechanic
• He spent six months at Fort Knox and then another six months at Camp Kilmer in
New Jersey
(04:55) Overseas
• Ken boarded a troop carrier from New Jersey and was traveling for about nine
days in very nice August weather
• He had KP duty on the ship and most were not allowed on the deck
• They stopped in Germany and visited a youth camp from the war
• They were high up in the Alps area, which was very nice with not much damage
from the war
• Ken was working as an assistant supply officer for the headquarters company
• They worked with the Army of Occupation in Germany for six months
• Ken also continued with field training
(11:15) Post War Germany
• The German economy was in pretty poor condition
• There were many poor civilians that were thankful for the help from the soldiers
• Some soldiers still held a grudge against the Germans
• Ken was working with four battalions trying to keep people from surrounding
countries from crossing into Germany
• A “freedom train” had escaped from Czechoslovakia to get away from the red
zone and had broken through many barricades
• A Polish pilot had escaped from the Russians and landed on an air strip on their
base
(17:16)Every Day Life
�•
•
•
On the base the men watched movies, went dancing, swam, played football, and
drank beer in town at night
Ken had some time on leave in Paris, which was still recovering and he did not
enjoy his stay there
Over time he could tell that Germany was starting to recover because the dollar
was not worth so much as it had been when he first arrived
(24:40) Shipped Home
• Ken received notice that he would be sent home on August 20, 1952
• He took his time leaving the country because he did not want to have any more
time to spend in the reserve when he got back to the US
• They tried to get him to re-enlist, but he refused
• Ken was always surprised that he was never sent to Korea
(29:05) Life After the Service
• Ken took about 60 days off of work and got married
• He then went back to work at GM and had the same position
• Ken had started in production and ended up working in an office for 25 year
dealing with production control
�
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
TerHaarK
Title
A name given to the resource
TerHaar, Ken (Interview outline and video), 2008
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
TerHaar, Ken
Description
An account of the resource
Ken TerHaar was born in Byron Center, Michigan on January 31, 1928. He graduated from high school in 1946 and was drafted into the Army in August 1950 at the beginning of the Korean War. Ken spent six months training at Fort Knox in Tennessee and another six months training at Camp Kilmer in New Jersey. He was then sent to a base in Germany where he worked with the Army of Occupation for about one year. He spent time working with many German citizens while the country recovered and saw the effects of the Cold War grow stronger over the year.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Kentwood Historic Preservation Commission (Kentwood, Mich.)
WKTV (Wyoming, Mich.)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
United States. Army
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
2008-04-09
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/30bab714fd037580575d11602b87994c.mp4
b5b7b1788f3cc51e692762f4e0d81305
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/18f03c433728187771468f5ee7118b7f.pdf
2c89bbe207117fea4c2a37772d1c995a
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Name of War: Vietnam, Cold War
Interviewee: Paul Ryan
Length of Interview: 01:45:49
Background:
He was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1952
He lived in Brooklyn until he was 3 years old. Then his family would move to Long
Island and live there until his first year of high school. He would then move to
Manhattan.
He would attend Xavier High School, a Roman Catholic day school and participation in
the military was compulsory.
This was junior army ROTC at the time, and throughout his four years of high school he
would participate in this.
He would graduate in 1971.
At the time, the military service would be made voluntary for people. And it would be a
concern for the school to continue operating as a military compulsory school, given what
was going on in Vietnam. If things changed, it would be a huge deal, as they had to wear
uniforms to class every day.
The kids who attended his school would have many different opinions of the war in
Vietnam. There was no overwhelming opinion one way or the other.
Interestingly enough, his school would be located near Greenwich Village, Manhattan,
the NY center of “hippiedom”
This hippie sort of lifestyle would affect the kids and their opinions, but more than that is
the fact that the kids and their parents would see things very differently because they are
simply individuals with different points of view.
Those who would be in favor of the war would find themselves in a higher rank than
those who didn’t. Those who did not favor the war would take their feelings of the war
and basically place them on the military as well. Because of this, they did not achieve
such a good military position.
Living near the Village, he would have to walk through it. He was called fascist a few
times and you were very noticeable because of your uniform.
He had to use public transportation every day to get to school. He never had an issue
with it though. People would mostly look at you funny, but nothing harmful was ever
said or done.
It was only going through Greenwich Village when he had the trouble and even then it
was only occasionally.
They learned to avoid the places that gave them too much trouble. (5:40)
Although there was no official obligation for the student to go into the military after they
graduated, some did. Those who had done well and found it interesting, like he did,
would go on to some sort of military service. This may not have been a military career.
The school was an all-male school, and still is today.
�
Most of the men who graduated from the school would go into some sort of officer’s
school.
When he graduated, he decided to join ROTC.
Training School (7:30)
He thought about flying, but decided that he didn’t like that too much.
That left the choice between the Army and the Navy.
What would help him make his decision would be an extra-curricular activity that he
joined in high school. In this, he would do drills and shoot rifles and they were pretty
good at it.
One of the teams that he competed against was the Navy ROTC unit out of Villanova.
The guys there would be Navy and Marine Officers and he thought they were really cool.
So he applied and was accepted at Villanova, for a Navy ROTC scholarship.
However, at the last minute, his advisor convinced him to change to Notre Dame, which
would have a little bit better academic level.
He would begin at Notre Dame, in the ROTC Navy unit in 1971.
For him, moving from NY to South Bend came with some condescension. Being a big
city boy, he felt he was really coming down the ladder. This would change rather quickly
when he actually started school.
The level of academic performance was much more than he had ever thought it would be
and he would spend so much time on his education that he simply did not have time to
ponder on the notion that he was at the edge of the world. (10:00)
This would keep them out of trouble for the most part as well, though they did party
some. He and his buddies did have an understanding that school was not going to be
easy, so they spent most of their time studying rather than partying.
While there he would learn the basics of the basics. Left-face, right-face, and all of those
other things that are needed to work for the military.
They would also take academic courses. Usually some 3-hour courses were the norm,
followed by physical training, though not like today.
Other than that participation and keeping their hair relatively short, they were just like
anybody else there on campus.
The number of ROTC participants was a small enough number that they would not have
to keep them separated from the rest of the school population.
There were some days when he had to wear his uniform for half a day. Other than that,
he was just like any other undergraduate at college. He really grew to like the life as
well.
Because of the feelings some people had from Vietnam, some ROTC programs were
removed from colleges. On other campuses, the ROTC participants would be harassed
by other people opposed to the war.
When he was in college, he learned about a story that had happened about a year before
he got there. A group of people had gathered in front of the administrator’s building and
was protesting about war in general. The president of the university came out of his
office and informed the students that they had 15 minutes to disperse or they would be
expelled.
�
Without so much as a whimper of “this is unfair treatment,” they had all gone.
For the four years he was there, there were only 2 visible protests that he can recall
happening.
One was when he was walking to the ROTC building and someone had spray-painted
graffiti all over the side of the building in response to some world event, he can’t
remember which.
The second time, he was in class and movement had caught the corner of his eye.
Outside the window, there was a group of protesters with signs protesting against the
Yom-Kipper War, which happened in October 1973. It was over before he got out of
class.
By the time he graduated in 1975, the Vietnam War would basically be over. (16:20)
At that point, because retaining people in the armed forces had been such a task, he
would be placed in the Navy and not the Navy Reserves, for almost 5 years.
Training in San Diego (17:40)
Two weeks before he graduated, he would get his orders to go out to San Diego.
He had a number of training courses that he was required to partake in, which would last
about six months.
He had 10 days leave and went home to visit.
When it was time to head out to San Diego, he would take a plane to Cornado. From
there he would spend from June until December going to different schools and going
through different courses learning about all the things he would need to know for his job.
The first school, the longest one, was called “Surface Warfare Officer’s School Basic
Course” and had only been established a couple years before by the navy.
Although they would have some time in the summer to learn how to be aboard a ship, this
was not enough, and so they would have to attend this class. Here, they would learn how
to do many things, from steering a ship to doing paperwork.
They would learn about the make-up of the ship, the rules of the Navy, how the ship is
balanced. They would also learn, and practice running different drills with simulators.
They would have to understand a tactical strategy, which does not necessarily mean
combat situations.
Even in a simulated environment, people get stressed, voices are raised in order for you
to get the most attention and it can end in disaster sometimes.
It takes a lot of practice for you to learn, even in a simulation, to try to keep calm and
have each person play their part without things getting out of hand. (21:55)
He would also get training in biochemical warfare, which everyone had to know.
Eventually he would get special training for his job, which was the Combat Information
Center Officer.
The Combat Information Center is where the various systems, such as weapons, radar,
etc. information of the ship go to. From here, the officer would have to decide on how
these ships systems need to be employed tactically.
He would also have collateral duties that he would have.
When he got to his ship, he would be part of a small crew, 280 enlisted and 12 officers.
He would serve on a destroyer.
�
There were not so many on the ship because the Navy was conducting an experiment to
see if a ship could run on 80% of the crew. Short answer: it didn’t work.
With a crew that small, you are expected to do other things. His duty was to act as a legal
officer. His ship was too small for a JAG officer, so he would take a course for a month
learning how to be a non-lawyer legal officer.
He would learn much more than he did in his previous schooling about the military
justice system. He would learn how to investigate crimes that were to be proceeded by a
court.
He would also learn how to enforce Article 15, which in the Navy is called Office Hours.
In this, he would punish minor offenses without having to go to trial.
As the legal officer, he was responsible for all the processing of the minor offenses and
the handful of court martials that he had to deal with in his three years there.
He would also have another collateral duty in which he did not receive any training,
which was Narcotics Bulk Custodian.
They had a sick bay on the ship, but no doctor. They had a couple of medical corpsmen.
In the bay, there was a safe and in there was morphine and other narcotics. Once a
month, he would have to go in with a corpsman and inventory what they had. Sure
enough it was all still there.
There was 30 or 40 miniature bottles of brandy that had been there since the 1960’s.
One time, when they were trying to get the ship refueled, it had been kind of a rough
night. Water was coming over the bough and things were getting dangerous. As a
reward of finishing the job safely, the captain of the ship would break the rules and allow
the men to have some of the brandy. But, in order to keep inventory, they had to drink
the brandy in the sick bay. They were not allowed to take it back to their room and drink
it leisurely.
It was the only time, in his career that there was an authorized consumption of alcohol on
a ship.
Active Duty (29:30)
When he was done with his training, he would be assigned to the ship USS Agerholm. It
was the oldest destroyer on active duty in the Navy at the time. It was built in 1946.
The ship was named for a Marine who was killed in WWII.
As an older vessel, it did not have some of the comforts that some of the other ships had.
The propulsion was 1930’s technology. The rest of the ship was 1940’s technology.
In the 1960’s, the ship went through a phase called FRAN in which the whole
superstructure was taken away and the ship was modified for electronic warfare. Things
like radar were added.
The ship had 2 5-inch 38 and gun turrets. The aft turret was taken off. Torpedo tubes on
the ship were torn off and replaced with anti-submarine rockets.
The combination of the weight being removed aft and all the electronic gear being put in
the top resulted in an unbalanced ship. This made the ship not ride very well in heavy
seas.
On the ship, they would have DASH, unmanned, anti-submarine helicopters. They
would be sent out to destroy subs or they would come back and report nothing. They
�
ended up have a problem with them, as some of the time they would go over the horizon
and have a nasty habit of not coming back. So the project failed.
Instead they used the leftover space to refuel manned helicopters.
Based on what happened to the ship over its lifetime, there were many odd modifications
that happened to the ship.
He would serve on the ship for three years. (35:30)
He would focus mostly in the area around California, but did make one deployment to the
Western Pacific.
They left in September 1977 and came back in April of 1978. They made port visits,
refuel, resupply and training missions.
He would practice naval gunfire support when he was on Maui, Hawaii.
A lot of it was repairing and refueling in the Philippines.
One of the larger exercises that they had done was 75-80 ships in this enormous
formation to practice some tactics.
While he was seeing this incredible sight, an older Naval Officer told him that he would
never see anything like that again. Which he hasn’t. In fact, he does not know of any
naval force of that size being gathered since then.
They would visit many places in the Pacific, including Australia.
He found an interesting difference between the US people and the Australia. There was
not a great appreciation for the US military by its citizens. So much so that when you
were there, you did not wear your military uniform. Instead you had to wear civilian
clothes everywhere.
It was totally different in Australia. You were encouraged to wear your uniform. There
was a program where families would sign up to bring a sailor home and make him dinner.
Some of the guys would be on the streets, in their whites, and when they pass a bar, the
citizens would buy them a drink.
The officers and chiefs of his ship were invited to the New Castle City Hall, where the
Mayor had an official city welcome for them.
They remember and really appreciated what the US Armed Forces had done for them in
the past.
He and the others were fortunate to reap the benefits of that when they were there.
Subic Bay is the banks where the surface ships stop. He had been there during his
college cruises.
Places along the bay had been come to known as “the wild west” and people did get in
trouble. One guy who worked for him, a really good guy, had got really drunk one night.
The next morning the man came up to him, worried what had happened the night before.
A woman had come forward, saying that they had been married that night and she had the
right to become a US citizen. Some of the officers had heard about this happening before
and did not think that it was true. So moving as quickly as they could, they got the guy
temporary orders off the ship and on a plane out of there in 45 minutes. When the native
police came, there was nothing they could do.
The shore patrol would be mostly responsible for the ongoing of those soldiers who were
on land, but if there was real trouble the men would be brought back to the ship where
things would be taken care of there.
�
The leaders of the ship had to take care and teach the junior level soldiers what exactly
they could or could not do when they were on the beach.
For his ship, the leader told them, “I don’t care what you do on the beach, just not on the
ship,” which would lead to a lot of trouble. Thing are different nowadays, of course.
Back then, if you got back to the ship hung over, but you could still do your job, you
were ok. Things aren’t like that anymore. (44:40)
His ship consisted of all males while he served. In fact, they saw very few women in any
of the services until after he had left the ship.
The ship was decommissioned in 1978, and he had become an instructor at the Surface
Warfare Officers School, where he had gone to class.
This was 1979, and that was when he first saw women entering the service.
He would visit politically sensitive places as well. New Zealand at the time had just
ended disputes with the southern alliances.
As they were coming to the pier on the southern island, there was a “noise hazard” sign
on their ship. One of the civilians on the pier had misread the sign and thought it said
“nuclear hazard” and there was a big commotion on the pier.
They had to make a Flash communication to Washington, where you spoke directly with
Washington, not through the chain of command. This happened when there was anything
that had to do with nuclear protests or things of the like.
Eventually things did calm down, but things were tense there for a little while.
They would also make a visit to Taiwan, before President Carter had changed the
diplomatic relationship between the Peoples Republic and Taiwan.
When they visited, it was like Australia. They were very much appreciated. A couple of
his friends who would serve with him would go back a couple years later after the
changes had been made, and they noticed a complete 180 in attitude.
They pretty much stayed in the South Pacific for the time he was there.
One of the signs of the time, about a year before he became an ensign, the chief of Naval
Operations Admiral Zumwalt had made a lot of new about humanize and modernize the
Navy.
One of the ways he did this was changing the uniform some of the junior officers had to
wear to the double breasted uniform that the senior officers had to wear. It was a
complete failure. No one liked it and in his 5 years of service, he had only seen 2 people
who looked good in it.
The crackerjack uniform, they originally had, were easy to store and very adaptable.
They were meant for ship use. The coat and tie uniforms were not.
There was no place to put them, and there was also a problem with keeping them in a
decent temperature.
They had to deal with a lot of problems and a lot of messes.
Another thing the Admiral did was to allow beards. In his 5 years of service, the same
two guys who looked good in the uniforms also looked good in the beards. That was not
a wise move.
He did grow a beard on deployment. While they visited Tasmania, he had made the front
page of the local paper showing kids the anchor system, and there he was in his beard.
His superior made him shave it off a couple of weeks later, saying that he had had his 15
minutes of glory.
�
The most important thing he was troubled by was an attempt to handle drug abuse in a
different way. Sailors could come forward as marijuana users and not get in trouble, and
would be assign to a week’s worth of counseling ashore. This could only happen when
they were ashore.
Of the 40 men he had to watch over, and he only had a couple of guys who did this.
He began to notice that those who came forward basically got a weeklong vacation. They
got to sit in an air conditioned room, they didn’t have any duties, etc. while the men who
obeyed orders still had to work.
There was not a lot of fairness in that. When the Navy went to a no tolerance drug abuse
police in the 80’s so that was taken care of.
His last 18 months of active duty were as an instructor, in Cornado, where he had gone to
school.
While he was in the ROTC, he did go on some cruises. In the summer of 1972, he spent
2 months on the USS Leonard S. Mason, which was a destroyer. They spent time as an
enlisted person. They went to Hawaii and up and down the west coast.
After his junior year, they stayed with some aviation people in Texas for a few weeks and
then stayed with some marines in North Carolina.
Then after his junior year, he was back to sea again, but this time as an officer. He was
on the USS Cleveland, which was a landing platform dock. He spent two months there.
He would cross the Equator and become a shellback on the Cleveland, which saved him
some trouble when he served on the Agerholm.
Crossing the Equator had some ceremonial things to it. They had some stuff happen,
which he was sworn to secrecy, but it ended in a cookout. (59:30)
When he crossed the Equator with the Agerholm, only 3 of the 12 officers were
shellbacks: him, his roommate, and the second in command.
So when the initiations began at five in the morning, the captain would join too. He was
a real good sport about it.
Any participation was strictly voluntary.
Since they needed people to run the ship, and only 3 of the officers were shellbacks, he
ended up driving the ship. He would be on the bridge with some of the men who did not
join in the celebration, despite that they were not shellbacks.
You could cut the atmosphere on the bridge with a knife, between the pollywogs and the
shellbacks.
It’s all good fun and a shared celebration for the people on the ship.
For him, those were very vivid memories, and he will always remember them.
The Navy had tried to get him to stay when it came time for him to be done with the
service.
Retention rate was low for the armed forces. For his position that he served, there was
retention of about 15%.
There was a lot of subtle pressure to stay. His decision to leave didn’t occur to him until
he was 18 months during his shore command.
His CO at the school was not happy with his decision. This was probably because of the
compiled decisions of many of the servicemen to leave.
It would be his wife that would eventually make him get out of the service. She was not
happy with the Navy and wanted him out. (1:07:00)
�
He wasn’t feeling too good about the armed forces at that point either; it was not what he
had expected. Some of the leadership that he had seen, he was not thrilled with. Of the 3
captains that he had on his ship, he would not use any of them to examples of someone
who really showed Navy core values.
Same with the shore as well. There were many people who felt the same way he did.
He would be discharged in April 1980.
Once he was out, he retained his commission in a reserve status for 18 months.
During that time, he didn’t really pay attention to the Navy at all. He moved away and
got a job and continued on with his life.
Reserves and Post Duty (1:11:15)
He would go back into the Navy, though in the reserves.
He was employed at an insurance agency and it was not what he really wanted.
One night, his wife got a call from a girlfriend of hers, saying that her husband, who
happened to be a friend of his, got a job as a recruiter.
He and his wife had been talking about him going back into the reserves. After a while
he decided against it because it would not be worth the money.
After encouragement from his wife’s friend, he would look into working in the reserves.
He would eventually get in contact with the reserve station in Muskegon, and he would
begin working there in November of 1981 and work there until he retired in 2005.
What he did was administrative in nature.
Eventually he would have command of 7 reserve units. He would manage filling
positions in active duty with trained soldiers who were in these units.
As a reserve he would have to go one weekend a month and two weeks a year. He would
have to make sure that people did what they needed to do and even get professional
qualifications themselves.
While he was in the reserves, he did have to go places and did receive individual
assignments.
He would go to Norfolk, Rhode Island, he commanded a literage unit
He had commanded a unit that supported the USS Caron. That was the only time he
spent at sea while in the reserves.
He spent some time on the USS Shenandoah, USS Scott and others.
He would spend three years with a unit that worked internationally with Europe. They
had to come up their own war gamming exercise.
He was also in a logistics unit that did some expeditionary training.
When he was a CO, he had to make sure that the people he went with were well cared
for, while other he would spend more time focused on his own qualifications. (1:20:00)
He was still in the reserves when 9/11 happened. However, things in the Navy were
different than reserves elsewhere.
For him personally, it did not have a lot of impact.
In his first 21 years in the reserves, the only callup was for Desert Storm. After 9/11,
there were a lot of groups deploying. At one point almost a third of them were mobilized
for Operation Enduring Freedom, the name for the operation in Afghanistan, or Operation
Noble Eagle, which was the domestic response to the attacks.
�
Since then, there has been a lot deploying and a lot coming home wounded in duty.
As the Army and Marine Corps got stretched in the years, the Army was looking to the
other branches to provide support for them, like jail guards.
After he had retired, he had stopped by the reserves center and he met up with an old
friend. She was in process of leaving to go to Iraq as a jail guard and was terrified.
Another friend of his, a member of the Navy JAG Corps, in 2007, had to be in Baghdad
for 8 months trying to find troops that would help support those who were already there.
Another friend of his, a captain who he had served with, was assigned a casualties
assistance calls officer when the planes hit the pentagon. In this he would have to deal
with the families of those who had died. He was the senior CACO for 180 CACO’s, and
it put so much stress on him that it cost him his marriage. (1:29:00)
When he was working with the reserves he would still have a day job. He would work
for a bank up in Ludington, which was acquired by Old Kent Bank, which was then taken
over by Fifth Third. When he moved to Grand Rapids, he would stay with them.
He would also be a part of Employers Support of Guard and Reserve, in 1996. He had
not heard of it since them.
When he was working, at the time, at Old Kent Bank, one of the other guys there was a
Captain, who was on the reserves for another branch. He had suggested that they put the
bank up for this award, as the bank helped some or their soldiers out during Desert Storm.
So he found out more about it and they had won the award.
In order to accept the award they needed to go to a ceremony in Battle Creek in their
uniform. He thought it was going to be a weird little thing, with a couple of guys and it
wouldn’t be worth their time. He was wrong.
It was a huge ceremony, with 8 or 9 banks there that were all receiving awards. He had
to speak because he had nominated his bank and then the award would be given and the
representative of the bank would say a few words.
This event resonated with him and he began to learn more about it. Eventually he would
get a call from the organization and would replace a man who was retiring.
It was a volunteer organization that was created by the department of defense in 1972.
The mission is to create a culture where military service is valued by every civilian
employer in the US.
They do this in 3 ways: they recognize the outstanding support already done by the
employers, they educate the employer and the employees about all of their rights under
the federal law, and they resolve conflict as a mediator.
There are 4500 volunteers throughout the country, 100 in MI.
He continues to volunteer today at ESGR and does various tasks in order to help out.
He gets to speak to a lot of employers and a lot of service members. (1:36:00)
As his role as State Chair, he sees a lot beyond MI and he loves to hear all of the cool
stories of all the good that has happened.
They also work a lot with family support organizations and he really likes seeing what
happens there too.
As the number of soldiers on active duty as increased, so has the work that ESGR does.
Since it is a taxpayer funded organization, it has certain criteria it must follow. They
keep track of the different people that they interact with and it has increased since 9/11.
�
With all the individuals leaving, the company has to deal with it and that leaves no
guarantees for the soldier. Although the federal government says that they must take care
of their employees there is no one there to make sure that they do.
He tells a lot of people today “So I hear you support your military, what do you do
exactly?”
There are a lot of things for people to do to help out there military and there are many
organizations that could use your help.
One of them is called Yellow Ribbon, which helps soldiers transition back to military life
and deal with things like PTSD.
Personally at his ESGR, they are looking for a more diverse population to help bring in
new ideas.
The military is more than bullets and bombs, but support and helping others with their
problems.
�
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
RyanP
Title
A name given to the resource
Ryan, Paul (Interview outline and video), 2011
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ryan, Paul
Description
An account of the resource
Paul Ryan was born in New York City and attended Notre Dame University on a naval ROTC scholarship. Upon graduating in 1975, he went on active duty for four years, serving on destroyers in the Pacific. After leaving the Navy, he joined the reserves in 1981, and did administrative work for them until he retired in 2005. Since then, he has been actively involved with the Employers Support for the Guard and Reserves, an organization dedicated to assisting men and women in the service deal with issues that they encountered when called to active duty.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives, American
United States. Navy
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2011-01-18
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
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/42aa255da149ce31eea0f80678492ed2.mp4
bf94f976f686f2b8ed04933ffc3896e1
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8a1514d1b91cb194448fbb6545758a43.pdf
5af15c200c276c11e3111d2044137412
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans’ History Project
Larry Terborg
Cold War
56 minutes 44 seconds
(00:00:40) Early Life
-Born in 1953
-Grew up in a town called DeMotte, Indiana
-Father was a soft drink distributor
-Owned his own business
-Larry worked for his father during junior and high school
-Didn’t really consider military service when he was in school
-Didn’t come from a family with a strong military background
-Did know some of what was happening in Vietnam
-Became common to see the war on the news
-Sobering reality of what was happening overseas
-Graduated from high school in 1971
-Attended Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan
-Graduated in 1975
-Majored in psychology
(00:02:22) Working for the FBI
-Checked into working for the Air Force and with local law enforcement
-Got denied by both because of no demand for jobs
-Looked into working for the FBI as a cleric to work towards becoming an agent
-Got accepted by them
-Worked as a fingerprint technician
-Boring, mind numbing job at the time
-Worked in the FBI Building in Washington DC
-Worked for the FBI for a year
(00:03:41) Navy Officers’ Candidate School
-Got interested in becoming a pilot in the Navy
-Talked to a recruiter and took the preliminary tests
-Got sent to Pensacola, Florida for a major flight physical
-Got accepted into the program
-Went to Navy Officer Candidate School in Pensacola, Florida
-Had to be an officer if you wanted to be a pilot
-Having college experience allowed him to go right into OCS
-Three months of training
-Extremely difficult
-Trained by Marine drill instructors
-Essentially it was a more advanced, intense version of basic training
-Learned about navigation and the Navy’s history
-Lots of physical and survival training
-Swimming a mile in the pool with a flight suit on
�-Swimming seventy five feet underwater with a flight suit on
-Learned how to escape from a cockpit underwater
-Three candidates of the thirty candidates dropped out
-Not uncommon to lose at least ten to twenty percent of a class
-OCS lasted about three months
-After graduating from OCS he was made a commissioned officer
(00:06:54) Flight Training
-After completing OCS he was made an ensign in the Navy
-Sent to Whiting Field, Florida for flight training
-Trained using propeller driven planes
-Lasted three months
-Remembers that it was incredibly hot
-Learned the basics of flying
-Did well and was allowed to pick what he wanted his designation to be
-Given a choice between helicopter pilot, propeller pilot, or jet pilot
-He chose to be a jet pilot
(00:07:35) Jet Training
-After Whiting Field he was sent to Meridian, Mississippi for jet training
-Started on the T2 Buckeye and then moved on to the TA4 Skyhawk
-TA4 was a more sophisticated training jet
-Started off with instruments training in a simulator
-After simulated training he went on to learning how to fly a jet
-Taking off, landing, and acrobatic maneuvers
-Practiced dropping bombs and engaging in dogfights
-He had gotten married before he joined the Navy so he could live on base with his wife
-She worked as a nurse
(00:09:14) Aircraft Carrier Training
-Final phase of jet training was landing on an aircraft carrier
-Practiced on the runway first
-Had to complete readiness training to see if you could actually land on a carrier
-Flew down to Pensacola, Florida to land on a training carrier
-First landing was intimidating
-Remembers the incredible force of being catapulted off the aircraft carrier on takeoff
-Went from 0-150mph in about two seconds
-Landing on the aircraft carrier involved using a hook and cable system
-A hook on the airplane would catch a cable on the flight deck of the ship
-A way to stop the jet’s momentum
-Some trainees were held back due to not being able to complete a phase of training
(00:14:01) Whidbey Island, Washington Pt. 1
-After completing jet training he was given the gold pilot’s wings
-Had to select what he wanted to do as a jet pilot
-He chose to be an A6 Intruder jet bomber pilot
-Sent to Whidbey Island, Washington
-Moved there with his wife and daughter
-On the way there had to stop in San Diego, California
-Further instrument and survival training courses
�-Went in to the Replacement Air Group V8128
-Taught how to fly the A6 Intruder
-Training lasted six months
-Worked with a bombardier/navigator flying training missions in the Cascade Mountains
(00:15:51) Life as a Navy Pilot
-On occasion accidents did happen
-Between the Navy and the Marines there were about one hundred fatalities per year
-To be a pilot you had to have a level of competitiveness
-Also had to have a sizable ego to have the confidence to be a pilot
-At times had to check your ego though so that you didn’t make unnecessary mistakes
(00:18:32) Whidbey Island, Washington Pt. 2
-By the time he reached Whidbey Island it was 1979
-Thirty percent of his instructors were combat veterans from Vietnam
-They had flown low level bombing missions over North Vietnam
-Started to notice a shift in public attitude over Vietnam
-By 1976 he noticed a large amount of regret in the public
-Remorse about how Vietnam veterans had been treated
-Spent six months training at Whidbey Island
-Joined a Fleet Squadron at Whidbey Island
-Went on training missions in Nevada
-Flew down to the USS Ranger aircraft carrier in San Diego
-Flew training missions to Hawaii and Vancouver, Canada
-After a nine month preparatory “work up” period he was given a fleet deployment
(00:22:48) First Cruise
-Worked with a great group of pilots and personnel on both cruises on the USS Ranger
-Had to prove yourself: personal capabilities and as being a team player
-On occasion there were some pilots who just couldn’t integrate into the group
-He had no problems integrating himself into the group
-First cruise began with a stop in Hawaii
-Next stop was in Guam for a flight exercise
-Stopped in the Philippines for a major resupply operation
-After the Philippines sailed to the Indian Ocean for patrols
-Left in April 1980
-First cruise lasted eight months
-During that time had very little contact with the outside world
-It took several days, or weeks, to receive mail
-Got their news delayed and on news reels
(00:26:57) International Relations and Defense during the First Cruise
-Had to be prepared to fly combat missions during the Iran Hostage Crisis
-Monitored Iranian coastline
-Concerned about Iran’s air combat capabilities for a while
-Eventually fears passed when they learned Iran had little air combat capability
-Iran-Iraq War was not much of a concern for them
-Operating in the Indian Ocean and not in the Persian Gulf
-Had to keep track of Soviet spy trawlers that followed their ship
-Once in a while a Soviet jet would fly over them
�-Remembers flying wing to wing with a Soviet transport plane
-Found the experience surreal and somewhat saddening
-Sailed with escorts: cruisers, destroyers, and one submarine
(00:30:47) Visiting Ports and Downtime during First Cruise
-Pulled into Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Kenya
-Sometimes had to anchor offshore due to shallow harbors
-Allowed to visit the mainland
-Visited Australia
-Spent three months at sea once without going to port
-Not allowed to have alcohol on the aircraft usually
-Beer was flown in as a reward for their patience and they were each allowed two beers
-Seeing third world countries made him rethink his own perspective in life
-The real difference between what someone needs and what they want
-Remembers going to shore on Kenya on civilian fishing boats
-Went on a photo safari in Kenya and was able to see wild African animals
-Went to Subic Bay in the Philippines
-Filipinos were very nice
-Saw kids swimming and playing in sewer runoff water
-Astounded by the level of poverty that existed in the Philippines
(00:35:40) Improvements in Weapons Technology during First Cruise
-Biggest change was in the accuracy of weapons
-Went from using “dumb” bombs to laser/infrared guided bombs
-Led to being able to be more precise with bombing runs
-Better bombing tactics had been developed after Vietnam
-Allowed for safety for the pilot and for better accuracy
-Technology and tactical improvements led to fewer civilian casualties in the future
(00:39:31) Coming Home from First Cruise
-Returned home after eight months of being on the cruise
-Able to be close with his young daughter despite being gone for so long
-Conducted another work up at Whidbey Island for nine months
(00:40:24) Flying Conditions during First Cruise
-Flying in the Indian Ocean was difficult due to the wind and dust off of Saudi Arabia
-Flying at night was incredibly difficult
-Landing on an aircraft carrier at night was even more difficult
-Had to avoid various hazards upon landing (other aircraft and flying off the ship)
-One saving grace of flying was being able to get fresh air
-Some sailors were stuck down inside the ship for long periods of time
-Worked with British mercenary pilots flying training missions over Oman
-Engaged in dogfight training with them
-Practiced midair refueling
(00:44:27) Conditions onboard an Aircraft Carrier
-Average work day was about twelve hours and consisted of a lot of clerical work
-Midrange officers like himself shared a room with another officer on the ship
-Had a room with a bunk bed, sink, and a couple desks
-Had to use a common bathroom with the other officers and sailors in the hall
�(00:45:45) Second Cruise
-Second cruise was in 1982 patrolling the Indian Ocean again
-Got to see Perth, Australia
-Australians were extremely welcoming and hospitable
-Welcomed the Americans into their homes for dinner
-Had some disciplinary problems during shore leave
-Mostly involved sailors drinking too much
-Seeing various parts of the world opened his eyes to the reality of the world
-Logical and cultural divide is what led to problems with diplomacy
-Some countries and cultures only knew how to reason and be reasoned with violence
(00:48:37) Serving as an Instructor at Whidbey Island and Leaving the Navy
-After his fleet assignment he worked as a flight instructor at Whidbey Island
-Flew training missions in the southwest U.S. teaching pilots how to drop bombs
-Taught pilots acrobatic flying
-Served as an instructor for two years
-Service was getting to be too stressful for the family so he decided to get out of active duty
(00:50:37) Airline Pilot
-Applied for an airline job and went into the Navy Reserves
-Spent some time in the Reserves flying training missions out of Whidbey Island
-Flew as an airline pilot for twenty five years with Northwest Airlines then Delta Airlines
-First based out of Minneapolis, then to Seattle
-Flew a commuter jet between Detroit and Whidbey Island
-Did that for a year
-Eventually moved to Michigan and flew out of Detroit
-Based out of Boston for a while
-Northwest Airlines merged with Delta Airlines during his last two years of work
-He got a chance to fly all over the United States and Europe
-Also got a chance to fly into India, Japan, and China
(00:52:26) Gulf War
-Felt like he should have been present to fight in the Gulf War
-Also recognized the reality of the danger in flying combat missions
-In a way felt fortunate that he didn’t have to go to war
(00:53:55) Reflections on Service
-Believes that people don’t fully realize the emotional sacrifice of servicemen
-Just being away from home for long periods of time is emotionally taxing
-The psychological weight of dealing with the reality of high mortality rates
-Has a tremendous amount of respect for older combat veterans
-Flying in the Navy prepared him to easily transition into being an airliner pilot
-Navy also taught him management skills
-As a Navy pilot he had to manage at least seventy to eighty personnel
-Managing fifteen airliner personnel was easy after that
�
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
TerborgL1591V
Title
A name given to the resource
Terborg, Larry (Interview outline and video), 2014
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Terborg, Larry
Description
An account of the resource
Larry Terborg was born in 1953 in DeMotte, Indiana. He graduated from high school in 1971 and attended Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan graduating from there in 1975 with a degree in psychology. After a short time of working for the FBI in Washington DC he decided to enlist in the Navy with the intention of becoming a pilot. He attended Navy Officers' Candidate School in Pensacola, Florida and after graduating from that went on to train at Whiting Field, Florida; Meridian, Mississippi; and Whidbey Island, Washington. After completing his training he was stationed at Whidbey Island to be an A6 Intruder pilot with the Replacement Air Group V8128. He served aboard the aircraft carrier the USS Ranger where they operated in the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific during the time of the Iran Hostage Crisis and the Iran-Iraq War. In the mid-1980s he voluntarily left the Navy and became a commercial airline pilot.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
WKTV (Wyoming, Mich.)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988--Personal narratives, American
United States. Navy
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
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2014-04-10
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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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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9ca763c84a468fa610f267c0ca13290d.mp4
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Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Jacob Rozema
(00:58:22)
(00:19)
•
Born in the Netherlands
•
Moved to the United States in 1930 during the Depression
(00:45-01”15)
•
Explains the family income
(01:33)
•
Did not follow the war in Europe much before American entry.
(02:00)
•
Brother went back to the Netherlands to fight in the Dutch Army, and became a
prisoner of war when the Nazis took over
(02:28)
•
Did not want to join the army immediately after Pearl Harbor because he did not
know what it was exactly
•
He enlisted after they realized the impact
(02:55)
•
Rejected from the army due to flat feet and glasses
•
He was slightly disappointed
(03:53)
�•
Joined up as a medic because he wanted to help people, and because he really did
not want to kill people
(04:07)
•
Trained in Illinois at Camp Grant for three months, basic training
•
Moved on to Fort Knox in Kentucky for medical training
(04:52)
•
Trained to do anything that was necessary to do on the battlefield to ensure
survival
(05:08)
•
Always under the supervision of a doctor, they were not trained to do surgeries,
but they did amputations and treated diseases and shell shock, etc.
(05:34)
•
Went to California for more extensive training
(06:00)
•
Went to Oakland to do training for duties over seas
•
Happy about it because it gave his training more of a purpose
(06:20)
•
1942-43 winter sent over seas with 18,000 soldiers to Australia
•
Received more training here
(07:31)
•
Went to New Guinea
•
Received hot climate and tropical disease training here
(08:09)
�•
Gave out a lot of aspirin and antibiotics for Malaria and such
•
Describes his duties to fight the tropical diseases, mumbles most of the names of
medications
(08:49)
•
Treated patients with shell shock and other mental issues
•
Not a lot of wounded or dying people involved in his beginning work
(09:30)
•
Treated Malaria, kidney stones, etc
•
Mostly kept people for only 3 days
(09:51)
•
Was with the 148th Station Hospital
(09:56)
•
Evacuation hospital more for wounded people and a station hospital more for the
people with shell shock and people coming down with the mental issues, giving
them rest away from the killing mostly
(10:48)
•
Met a few people from Holland
(11:13)
•
Saw a lot of graveyards with the dog tags on the little makeshift posts for the dead
soldiers, many unnamed
(12:26)
•
(13:00)
Was with the 148th station hospital for 14 months, which moved around a lot
�•
Describes New Guinea as hot
•
Used New Guinea natives to do most of the work because they were used to the
heat
(13:44)
•
Jacob doesn’t remember a lot of the details about natives, except the head hunters
(14:24)
•
Became a ward master, sometimes supervised more then two wards at once
(15:00)
•
Switched to an evacuation hospital, because he wanted to help people more and
did not feel he was really helping people at the station hospital
(15:23)
•
Evacuation hospital in New Guinea in 1944
(16:22)
•
People came to the evacuation hospital from different areas of the war in the
Pacific
(17:00)
•
Went into enemy territory with a unit as medics for the front
(18:00)
•
Caught in the middle of a skirmish and his unit proclaimed dead, but they got out
and survived
(19:19)
•
(19:40)
Philippine Islands is where the skirmish happened
�•
Trouble remembering about his experiences
(20:12)
•
Went to Manila with the 71st regiment (??)
•
A lot of heavy fighting and work
(20:32)
•
No set hospitals, medics just ran out into the battlefield and grabbed the people
that could be saved and dragged them behind the lines
(21:49)
•
Had little shops for the shell shock patients to keep them busy so they could
recuperate and take their minds off of things
(22:29)
•
Became a hospital chaplain
•
Played the organ and sang, and helped set up the churches for prayer services
(23:40)
•
Had to search through dead bodies sometimes to get to people they could take
back to the hospital area to save, saw countless dead bodies
(24:16)
•
Treated Japanese soldiers too
(24:27)
•
Took care of the Japanese patients, even though many other soldiers wanted them
to be killed
(24:55)
•
He was doing all this very close to the front lines in Manila
�(26:59)
•
Was on the boats ready to invade mainland Japan on the island of Kyushu when
he found out the war was over
(27:50)
•
Did not believe that the war was over, then he heard about the bombs that were
dropped
(28:31)
•
Does not think that the bombs were a good idea to be dropped on all the civilians,
but was happy that there was no need for a land invasion anymore
(28:37)
•
Stayed in Japan for two months, found them to be very friendly
(29:12)
•
Amazed at how the Japanese treated the P.O.W.s, but were still so nice and
accommodating
(30:00)
•
He was invited over to a Japanese family’s house for dinner
•
He stepped on their table, and was very upset that it was their dinner table
(31:05)
•
Only treated soldiers while in Japan
(32:11)
•
He commented on how the Filipino people were very happy to see the Americans
even though they were all skin and bones, starving
(34:47)
�•
Went swimming and the next day the place was swarming with sharks
(37:14)
•
Japanese went for the medics in battle because they were believed to be as good
as killing seven soldiers in one, which made the medics job harder and more
dangerous
(37:39)
•
Did not wear the red crosses in the Pacific portion of the war for that reason above
(38:15)
•
While hiding in a fox hole during his mission that ended badly he hid in a fox
hole that had about half a dozen decaying bodies of the Japanese
(38:55)
•
He did not loot the bodies, but many people did loot bodies, for gold and stuff
(40:05)
•
Got Malaria, they wouldn’t let him go, but he insisted that he wanted to be home
for the 1945 Christmas
(40:37)
•
Did not get compensation for his hearing loss due to the disease because he left
(43:20)
•
Had a pet monkey but he had to leave it behind when he returned to the States
(44:31)
•
Kept a detailed journal about what he was doing as a medic and his experiences,
but he thinks someone stole it because he lost it before he returned to the States
�(44:48)
•
The Japanese general Tojo was taken to the hospital that Jacob worked at, he was
taken care of for stab wounds to the stomach which was characteristic of the
suicide actions taken by the Japanese, but general Tojo failed in his attempt, after
he recuperated he was hung for war crimes
(46:08)
•
Mass graves in Manila, with civilians, Filipino women and children
•
He was disgusted by how the Japanese treated the people of the islands
(48:27)
•
His belief in god kept him going and staying strong and sane because he knew it
was his duty and mission to be there and help people
(49:17)
•
Was not married before he left for the war
(50:30)
•
Married in 1964 after they sold a retirement home he owned
•
Has a happy family
(51:58)
•
Used to be jumpy with loud, sudden noises after he returned home
(52:50)
•
War didn’t really change his outlook on life, he said, because he always wanted to
help people and always did
(53:50)
�•
Found his old medical notes and told stories about he was supposed to forget the
details and such
(55:13)
•
Hospital unit assigned to the 150th infantry regiment, there was some confusion in
the interview about this
�_....--~-----~..,
xx :1 •
'
-----
..........
.__ TIlE DUTY .\S CHAPLAIN IN THE ARMY OF THE U.3 •• PH>\sE !.!.:CVERSEAS IN.
nIE ~ .W.PAOIFIC. WITH THE 71'st EVACUATION HOSPITAL, MARC::H.1944-
NOVEMBER, 19~'·
... NEW-\lUINEA. MARCH. '4.4--J!ll••
)
...
....-- ../
'4ft.
was,
The first atep of our overee8:S movement.
nr eourse. our tra.in ride
fro", Corv"g.1is,Oregon, to our staging area, O*aP JJtO~rftou~dct/,(t~~~JLJJBi
ah &J>-.ciIIDld P1ttsburg,undoubtedly because of the large steel mU ':& in that
vicini:l)·. We Were here about a Week or ten days to get ready for our oversea
trlQvement. Each of us was giv:en his clothing allotment an" other gear. Minl
-, mttm unit equipment was designated for our b>spit.al. And again each of .us .
'nad to paas a physical exam and be brought up-to-date with immunizations.
All chaplains in t.he Tarious units in the sta.ging a.rea attend," a :br·iefil:Dgl·::,~·
sc:ssion held in t.he st..Jll'anci,. lfotel in San Prancisco. In addition We "'ore talc
to a depot at a S.P. ~.,here each chaplain dre, bis overseas equipment·,in
cl~ding a portable field organ, a bOx ot hymn-books, an altar set: and even
a Jeep. All th·1s would be placed for U8 on board our ship and to be claimed.
by us when we would eventually disembark somewbere in the S.W.Pacl~ic.
When the time came for our unit, togebher with several others, to
board a Libert.y Ship which vas to take us to an unknown destination. this
operation _came a :rather moving exp8f'lence. Each of us, carrying on his
back a large duffel bag f\l1l 9f personal belongings, moved in a column under
neAth an arch over which in large letters was the signlUThrough these P9rtals
pass the best soldiers in the World·. And all of this was to the aCCoM98,ni
ment o~ a military band playing martial musio. !hus, n5 we ascended the gang
plank into the hold o~ the ship, we felt like we were starting out on our
~ble crusade.
'
•
Our destination,· even 1f it were known to t.he higher bran. was not
revealed to us as we . .bar~. f"or obvious reasons. But eac.P of us was per
mitted to phone his family and tell them that we were at the.point of leaving
the ~bte&. Bu't of course, here too, it would have been foolha.rdy to have
given the folkS baCk home any other information than 'just that. Whore -w.. ; were
headed ~or was not to ld tIII.;1It. &.DIy time during \lt1e 1.'bJlg.\'mir.ell.banl-at Mb'.lIOnth
voyage across the Pacific. 1Qward the end of the journey rumor had it that '
it'might be Australia. And then again it was. some islanp in the S.W~Piclflc,
o~ whioh there was an untold number. Sb no one really knew, except a rew
higher-ups. Actually,~~80meda'te early in·~l'4~ we lande~ at ~~f"e
~ which is at t.he extreme eastern tip at the island or NewGu1.nea~'1 can
st.ill remember the ~irst night. after ws landod and had set up our tents under
swaying palm trees. Tropical birds of every", dflscription chirped and ~hat.tered
and made a racket all night. long. W. knew that we were in the trop~cs.too,
because of the heat and the humidity. We' stayed at. this location for several
weeks,perhaps even a month, during which time we gpt.\more 'fully equipped with
what it would take to funotion as an Evacuation Hospital. While we waited .
for orders to mv. on)we had ample time to play g&lIles)such as volley-ball and
baseball,and to take hikes. ~jor Arthur Salguero,our unit medical adminis
trative officer and I usually teamed up for 8uch exploratory hikes. Once on
such a tramp we encountered a Datl~e l~bor-batt.alion cutting down underbrush
under the watchful ~upervision at a",eel Australian lltO:diers. . '
.
In early lul" '44,ve hed~-bopped to the WakdlL~sarmi area, not far
from :f8.DxJu~ Hollandia,where General ~c1rthut had his huadqual"ters at that
time. Here, through 0 bservation at an already funcUon!ng Evc.euation Hos
pital, mema.ecrsl of our un! t learned how we lIIQuld b. ,",xpeCited to function at
some later time. At that t1Jlle t.Ms area. was atill til t.he combat Zone. A few
tim- wile here we had to ·hit·.~ur fox-boles when we received air-raid alarms
and heard eXploaions as 'the Japs dropp.w~.bs. We learned afterwards that
they were trying to hit an airfield wh!C1i" we had taken from them on a small
island just off-sbore from where we were. We dug our foxboles large enough
tor tlillD perlOU to &et. into. I still remember how I jumped into a fox-hole
already occupied by another one of our off1cers, and how during such an air-raid
I
.-
J
�-,-r
as our bodies touched, we could teel eachother tr8lllble.
OUr snit WIlS e1tua'ted in au area adjacent to the veteran 1,& Re~meDtal
Oombat Team--hariened soldiers who had already been in battle JIUlny times. &at one
ni!ht, even they.alon,; with our own personnel, were 1!I)st. apprehensive, tor not taJ
away we could hear shootin~ !pin~ on. There was fear that some J~ .ay have in
filtrated into our area and that they were shootin! at U8. I can still re.em\er
seeln~ 80me of these veteran intantrymen dressed in full combat par seated on th~
ed~e. of their bunks, alert anll ready, with loaded rines in hand and ready to 3U11
into action if' and when any order were pven. !ut soon the shoot1n~ stopped and
everyone was more relaxed. The next 'IIOrnin~ we learned what had happenened. There
had been no infiltration of Japs, but at m1dni~ht, durln~ the chanr;int; of our own
~ard, so.e of ollr own soldiers, \e11evin,; tha~ such infiltration va.s taklns plac~
had mistakenly shot at. e..chother. In this exohan&8 one of our own soldiers had bee
killed. A trapc mistake, ot course. IMrins thi . . . .e hectio ni@;ht, in drenchin~
rain, Oaptain Bins,our gnit psychiatri.t,bad "een jiven an order by our cOlIII&ndln~
oftioer to tp to a certain location in our area to deliver a meB8a~. In tryinl to
carry out hi • •i8s1on, as he slushed throu,;h deep wnid~, he slipped and fell into a
partially filled foxhole. With 'this shootins r;olnl on nearby he dill not dare to tr
to set out ancl stayed there until daybreak--an experience which he no doubt wou14
never forrt. This s. .e n1~t amther one of our lIIedical oN"1cer. went beserk,pre.
sumably lteoa1lse he coul" Wt endure t.he ,tres. of illllinent danler. fte vas likely t
victim 01' what 1s called battle tatl~e • Cons.quently he was 1IIOved to a lIOre qui
area,ani we did not see him apin until some lIlOnths later,when we were ln the Mani
area in the Philippines. And there we found that he was now fully recovered. and 1rJ
charp of' a ward. 1n one at our m1litary bospi~le.
The 158 eollkt 1'eaa bad only reoently been relieved f'or a rest after -:
they had. been fghtinl a group ,,1' tall Japanese Inper1al aarines. Jape are u8_11,.
short in stature, but these were all tall. 1b relieveithea, a certain regiment of
the Sixth Divis10n had. \een pulle" in,who.e speolal as.isn-ent was~to capture a
certain airfield still held by the Japs. !dt betbre the, were committed to \attIe,
1I_\ers ot the 158 Oo."at 'l'. ....-yeteran. 1n f'ightbl! .the Jap.--tr1ed to warn lIembe
of this reliev1nc unit reprdint; the encirollng tao'tbs thaVthla Bit 01' the enemy
otten used. But. offloers of" t.he Sixth DividoD icmrecl thi. advice,' with the reeul
that the Ja,. ,layed t.he ..... trick and. ln1'liotea heaVy casualties on tho wh.n tb
atteapted to take the airfield. It vas s.veral: days att.er the battle before per
sonnel .on our side were able to set into the area where the ~att.le had race4 in
order to recover the bodies 01' oar dead for burial. I"oan still remember seeins th
reCO'very teaa brincinl ln IIOlIIe sixty corp.,. for burial in I. .akeehU't cemetery,
The steneh was almost unltearable. "-e bad ·now .eeD..w1th our own eyes the cost. of .
com\at. In a history 01' vart'are in the Paoifio.I" read that· the battle f'or the c.p'
ture of' this ,articttlar airfield. held. Dy the .,lap. was.at a looation oalle4 Lone Tr·
Mill. By the eveninl of 27 May, '44, the 15& aoaltat Teaa bad lost. ~OO 1dlled,.,;)IotMe,
or evaototate" .as non-battle casl.lalt1es(such as h.at-exhaust1()n). The Sixth Infantry
Divis1on, w~ich vent. in on reliet on 14 Jde, D1 the end of their operation lest 1,
aenkUlecl, 8,0 .,unded and evaouate"(I1&:ny trolil s~1tn888,heat exhaU8tion and ,syche
somatic di80rier8~. The Ja,s lost ,00 kill••. and ~:·wounded.
The next jump f'0J' us in our 'hedge..tiop,inS'· was to &111lC) at the extreme
west end 01' New Chin.a, in the so-called Dutch' ,.trt,tei a '8JIlall island in the Gel ...
vinck Bay, lfoead'bor. A. few da,.. \efore we JIUlde ow aaphi1tious landinf there the
1~ Co••aT." '1'. . had already arrived by pa~h\lte ancl· .leo in an amph bious landinr;.
Their, prt.ar;yobjeotive wad to takeanalrfield fro. ~he Jape f'rom which they bad
been flyinl,.sortle. alainst ue. Ke~e, we wer~oJ'Clered 'to set up shop as a b;)spital
and to z:eoelve aD4treat any oasualties of-i:tu!' trcto,. trolll this figbtinl. Fortunat'
1y, cas.~ltles were relatively ll~ht.. Neverheles.,t.h&re were enou~ to require us
to set
several pyramUal tents to care tor the 'ft)\lnded. Several Ja,s who bad fIt
into'the jlUll[lfts, al80 wera brought in to us to b. treat". In addition _ny 1n40·
nesians an~;~rmosans whom the .,la,s ware .sinl as laborere, and wbo were terribly
.alnouri.sh" and diseasedJ ltecqe patients in
bch,ltal. These and tbe Ja, pria
onere wer.e kept. in separaT.e wards 1n our ho.p1".. aac! were of course unier conistan1
pr~., "Th"7 ~re, all terribly unkempt and emaclat..d,.,so th'tt th..~ ware cleaned UPI
delous.d" ...~~ liven SOlle proper food. Our oper!!1tlo~n.lbemfoor bland were ao
tually ~re extensive than 1 have deecrlbedabove. 1618"oan be seen from a p.,er
whleb I r.cently discovered. in JIll _tUest 'ateel 1 'Jamaa~, 1945. ThiS docuaent was
eent to our hospital by ftKADQ;t1ARTDS SIxTll ARMY, A1'O 442,GENlRAL ORDRI,lb.l,a ,art.
of which read. as follow.. (sae next pa~e) -,
1
a19""
tI,
QUr
�....-
"::"'
-57~
~A ~~ITORIOUS SSRVIO! UNIT PLAQUE is awarded by the Commandin~ General,Sixth
Army to the follow1nl; unitJ I"at ivacl.l9.tlon Kosplta!<Sem). Jl'roW16 July to
1 Deee••er 1944 the 7"st Evacuation Hospital baRdl" all llIedical services and
.u,~ly on Noemfoor Island, Dutch New GI.llnea. The hospital was operated at full,
400 lied oa,ulty within fOUT days atter arrival on I>-DIly plu8 six. A 'totlll of
2.~2 patienta, includ1nS 14, Japaneae prllOnera, were tTeated in three month's
tillle with a mortality rate of only three-tenth. of one percent. The hospital ef
ficiently maintained and operated a llIedieal sup~ly depot for the entire island.
The organization al80 coBr.inated, adalai.ter"; and oparated evacuation facili
ties, evacyatlng 1,011 patienta. Deapite the many o88tacl.s encountered, inelud
in! enemy air raids, shorta~e of peracnUlel, lon& hours of lIOrk, and inclelllent
weather, the orticers and llIen of this unit have displayed the most exemplary ini
tiative,energy and devotion to duty. They have maintained the higheat standards
of efficiency,discipline, and morale and have contribu~d greatly to the succe.s
of this operation. By oo_ncl ot Lieutenan.t General JCRUEGs::R." In a few days afte.,
our JOD wit.h them wa.·tinl~n.4: ~hey. were -.t.aken ellewhere a. our prisoners and
p08sibly used as labOrers, but of course always under ~ard.
One day a soldier of the 158 Oombat Team who was a patient in our hos
pit.al came to me in my chaplain tent-office with his problem. He had not been
wounded. Nevertheless he had \een sent to our hospit.al ~ecau8e he had discover
ed that the muscles of his arms and shol.llders had suddenly become tight. and rigid.
preventing him f~m lifting his rifle. H1s commanding orricer, no dOUbt, believed
that. this soldier was .al1ngerln~ and was perhaps dellierately rakln~ his ina\111
ty to perform hi- duty as an infantryman. Our hospital medical offieer. dia~
noeed his difficulty as what waa then called ·~attle fatigue". This means that
that they believed he had developed a physical disability '.cause of fear of the
poe.iil1lty of ~ettinl killed in COlllbat. 1bdey psychiatrists ~uld .ay that his
was a ease of ·conversion hysteria."
I Deliev. that. he c.... to llIe with hi. probl.m because he had come to
suspect --and ri~h~lly 8O--that hi. problem had it. roots in the moral and re
11g10u. Deliefs he held. Me told llIe that this IO-call.d p~ralysia came on him
suidenly ,after he had shot a Japanese soldier. MOreover, he said he knew that he
had killed him because he saw him topple over. s.,ha.izing his beliet that all
kll1in~ is murder, even when it takes place ln co.iat, he repeated the sixth Oom
mandment t "Thou shalt not kill," and .aid he· felt. that abd ~uld hold him eter
nally responsible fbr having .1Oken ~his commandmeat in killin! this Jap. I ask
ed him next whether this was a recent .eU.t 0 f hiS, or whet.her, when he was ...
in! called up into service, he already held this viev. His anewer w.s that he
always ~elleved this. I then told him that if this vere so, why did he not de
clar. himself aa a conschntioua o.jactor frolll the start, 80 that then th.y oould
have placed him 1n a non-collliat unit rather than in the infantry. H11 answer to
that was that he bad not done so .ecause he did not want to appear to 'e a Shirke-,
or a cowarcl. 01ear1y he hael a ~llt complex "ca\&•• of what he had done. And noW
his Dody was com1nC to hie asdstance 1n cau.lng that very part of his bod; ..
apecially involved in lhooting to be incapacitat.d ~ conversion hy8teria. I IIlW
wy duty elearlt to lte to t.ry, if at all po . . iile, to rid him of his ~llt co.
plex. I also saw that at this Ita!e 1n hi. military career it would do no !ood for
him to declare himselt to ie a conecientious 0 Itjector with the
that havinr;
done 80 he might. be transferred to lOme aon-comiat unit. MillMJot •.\ltb;)rit1ea
'C)uIel refuse to 40 80 anyway, ieUevin! that he waa only a mal1n!erer tryinr; to
avoid hAzardous duty.
!net 8Q this 18 the 1o!1c I \& •• 4 with hi.. I told him that to ie lure
there i. alway. r;u.Ut conneot.d witn. the killinC of any bl.llll&n teinS. I alao told
hi. that I a&r.ed with hia, of couree, that a Japan••• soldier 18 a h"'n ieinc.
But I declared my.elf as tel levin! that the guilt of all such killin~ In armed
com.at is to be \orne iy the n ationa Involvect in .\&c1'1 com_at, and not ~y the·
individual 1IOlcUer. who do the kill1l'll. Th. 80141er is only the "agent" of the
(00 nUnuecl, next pa~e)
ha.
ho,••
�-~
r,overnaent. llnd it. 18 the &overnlllent. t.hat. _eare ~he responsl_iHty find ~1lt..
I told him thnt in 8hoo~in~ t.his part.icular Japanese soldier he was only C8r
ryin~ out hie duty as a soldier. ~rthereore I told pim that. when this Japan
eee soldier appearee .efore h1Jll it wes likely t.haV-ti;e~r t.h • .Ia, would \e
killd. or \ath. HIs Jcl11in~ could rI,htly Ite aaid to haTe been clone 1n
Maolf cietenae.· (The reader of my story oan lIeoide tor hiJIIself whether he
considers my rea80nin~ in ~hi. ca •• to have ~.en sound, or whether 1t ...
• erely a convenient rationalization to justlty war .n~ killinl that tak••
plac. 1n war). In any ca.e I looke' upon it as my duty to tree .y 5014i8r
patient ot his ~11t complex, it at all posaible, SO t.hat h. al~t. •• reliev
•• of hia hyateria and his aoeompanyins pby_leal incapacity.
Wbether or not .y oounae1l1n, leuiona(for I ha4. more then one with
him) really helped hi. I do not re.....r. But in tbe .eant.lme I ha4 con
terencea "ith the aeaieal teu of our hospital. Inc~udin~ Cspt.Bin!, our unit
,sychiatrist, a~ut this 501111er. They acr." that wy lo~ic with thls soldier
wae warrante•• and they fUrthermore .xpr•••• d themselves of the ltelier that
atter a period of rest away troll the strell of co.ltat it would be ponltle to
send this soldier .ack to hil unit. How the authorities in hi. ~nit interprete.
our consolidate. report on this eol«l.r ... how they followe4 1t up I have no
way of kno"in~1 ItLlt at least "'. had clone what we coul. with and for hia.
Att.r the airfi.ld on Nbellfoor I.laD4 had .een eaptured and the Jape
had ••en -appei up our en«ineerl l.n&tbene' ita runways 80 that they cou14 'e
uncl Ity our 8-29 \oa.en to 1'11' .i"lone to hit the lti,; 011 installations which
the Japs haa in !brneo, and th~. to orlpple thea 1n the where-withal to fi~ht.
~t when our :8-29_ were to take off fro_ the Nete.foor airt'1.a With their heavy
~mb loads there was ,;reat .an~.r. it they bad tl"Oultle pttin~ air~rae, that
they Ili~ht crash into our ho.,ital area--for we were looatscl ri~bt 1n t.heir
p..th. A.D« so whenever they were tp1n~ ~ 't,ake o'ft we were al ..rtecl ahead of
t.ime, an4 .. mucb as Possible w. lIIO.e' to the 8ille of their fU~bt. ,ath. ~r
t~at.11 noae of these planee ever .r•• ~ Oft take-off.
I .till r ••••ber that
I clicl;~(tlciate at tb. iurisl of a few infantrymen who •• re. .ln. we lald to
rut ~n t.he tempou!'1 .ilitary celletery on ICoellf'oor Illan'.
We were at thts looation fro. e.rly July. 1944 until early JanMary.
194,. when "e w.re destlne. to move to lO.e ,art of the Phili,pine I.landl.
AB. aln•• it waa anticipat" that our landin! there woula ln all likelihood
~e an amphl\10u8 one, it wa. considere. illportant that while we were .till 1n
N.w Gu1nea~-oulG \e ",.11 t.hat we should h.... a -trial r~n· for th1s type of
laDd1n,. To ~t lI. rea.y fbI' lhh our unit,aptt..r with several oth.rs, .&tIe
...eh a ,ncUee lan.in~ on Japen I.laDd. ju. . .tt ~ coaat ot New Guinea, ane
not rar tro. where we then wer.. '!'hie wa. to ,ive eYeryone in such an o,eration
an 14ea or hew thlS wa. to \e dOlle 1n an effill ••t .anner. the navie-tora of' the
LS'1'. were to l.arn how to _aeawer their cra1't, an.« .11 pereoftnel were to learn
bow to eli•• down ro,. la.,den -t",n, over the elie or the veuel. with full
pa.eks atr",pe. on our .boulier., an' how to wad. to .hor. throl.lt;h walat or
sbololl.er-dee, water. So now we w.re read,. for the next cha,ter 1n our e. .palp
in the S.W. Pacitle. We will t.ll that ator, ••• we r ••••ber it, 1n the next
.
~,t«"...
8. Tim P!ILIPPINI LIBERATION O.ucPlIGlf--JANlJARl-AUGUST. 1945 ,
NOw a~aln, j",at like .e did not know our exact or eTen ,ro.a.te •••
tiftatton when w. le1't SaD hanc!.aco. 80 h.r. a'81n we
not know,enroute,
Where we were .e.tlne' to mak. that u,hlltio~a lanainl for wblch we be. hac
0\0' ,racthe i,.i11. Ve offh.r. of the units on ~arcl 0\11' transport expertene
e. the l",xl.lry of eatt.a, with' the fta"T ott1eer. ill th.ir •••• aDCl reHah•• the
••at 1'00. that w. hael he« tor eo•• U... W no .o ••t all p.reonn.1
\etter ,on ioarll ship than "e
whU. atill 1n lev lAtinea. W. baci. now lisen at
.ea tor eolle ia,s. W. knew when 'I. hili r ...oh" the PhUl"in• • • •n w. . . w our
IIhtp mY1n,; ~.t".en 1011. of tbe naerO\lS idaM. tpt aake u, thh oountry. Our
first. i"kline that .e were ."roac~ftI a po.. tlth kttle Cone wa. when we It.pD 1 J
..ein! 10•• ot our own ca.aar4 ship. whioh pre.... U" taali .e.ft 1n 110 . . . . nl
'-7
Ii'"
ha.
fare.
�remember that I was asked by acme mellibers of a Philippine Baptist church to
conduct a service in their church. They were overflowin~ with exhuber&nce
because of their liberation from the Japanese. Thr.r hailed us as heroes and
11 ber.tor.,..
I weIR. about my duties as a chaplain in our hospital vis1tin~ at
the be.sides of lar&e numbers or the ~~nde~ and maimed that were sent to U8
from variou8 forwar4 COlllba.t unite. Besides trying to brin! them whatever
. comfort 1 could by chattinl with them and offer1nl prayers for them where
this was appropriate, I found that there was a. very practieal 8~rvlce I could
render I18.ny of them. Some of these soldiers were 80 IIIllnt;ltd. and shot up the.\·
they ware either psycholot;ically of physically unable to write to their loved
ones Dack in the States to tell them what had happened to them. Menee. 8.
they told their stories to me, I WOl.llcl talce notes,. They then invariably ber;
ed. lI.e to write to tho hollS folks on their behalf. And of course I prolll1sed
to do 80. Iobre orten than !'lOt before the day wa" over I had written those
lotter. for them. A. touehin~ thln~ which I 0 b8erve~hat./if t.hey had been
~unded ratb~r badly, such as losins an 8ra or a leI, they then wanted. me
to be sure not to exa!t;erate their condition in the me8Sat;eS which I was to
write for thom. They did not want to shock a wife,_ parent or a sweetheart
back home or cause them to worry about them. Such pllantryl
When we were atill 1n the ~8ar1o & Damortl. area. &uards were
po sted at ni~ht at the pe!limeters and throughout ol.lr bivouc areas to ap
Frehand any Jape who might attempt to infiltrate. 10 detect whether anyone
movin~ in the area was friend or foe the p... s-word was ehant;ed each nl~ht.
There was a chaplain who belonged to one of the units who was hard of hearin&.
One night when he IJPt up from his bunk to ~ to the latrine a t;U8.rd ehfll'
lenged him to ,ive the pass-word. Evidently he did not hear the challenge,
or at least he did not respond. As a result the guard let him have it. and
he was shot to death. It is one thing to lOllS personnel at the hands of
the enemy. but doUbly tragic when death Co~e! as the ~e8ult of' such an
apparently unnecessary mistake.
(now gp to pat;e to)
,
...
.
�Jr. a liffiited wey I hurl e Lr-eady bCf.;un thi::; l<:tter ..Jdtinr; s e r-v Lc e \ihen
ct Ll l in New Guinf1&. ~l.1t the period when I \'Ias to do this j n much
i"rcat'3T vo Iune ~/a3 i...hen we received heavier c1i8W11ties fro~1 the fighting der",
by the 37'th Di v Ls Io n and the 1 1 s t ~av'.lry Division in the re-tal.inG of t he
city of'Vr.nila. That was in January,Fo:lcrunry e.nd ~1flrch -:;f 19'1';'. D..iring
th·~t period, even t.bo ugh I '1ould write such letters from 11i)' notes until Lat,e
~nt0 the night, I sometimes fell two or three days behind roy schedule in get
t i :J6 of'f rr:y letters f'or our wounded patients. I still have on file several
t;,-.lchin;;- letters which r received from folks back home to who!!! I had writt.en
3u~h letters. There were also times when it was my sad juty to inform loved
o ne s about th~ de e.t.h of a soldier-patient. In those cases 'tlhere I conducted
a burl!:.l service for such men(and it was in ~race Parbl.!B.nila, that I held
ffiany $uch services) I let the folks back home~~e Scriptures rod prayers I
h~d used in such committal services. This brou~h~ from them letters of' th~nks.
One such letter I still treasur.e because of it; d-eep felt expr es sdo n or gr9.H
tude for the service I had rendered in this manner. But once while We Were
st:ll stati~ned in ~~nila I was reprimanded, or at least cautio~ed. through
channel s , to be careful not to be so prompt, in writing to the families of
deceased soldiers. The reason given me wes: that in some instances my me3sage
had reached the family before the offictal word had re&ched them from the
\'!ar Department. Thereafter I did not -have to feel that I was remiss in T'JY
duty in delaying getting off my messages to the home folks, even if I person
~l'y felt th~t I Was sometimes two or thre~ days behind my own schedule in
do In; so. nut it gave me gref.lt d es l of satisfaction to 1:110\01 that in wh9.t
othen-tide mig:ht be a rather impersonal world I could render this reo r-e personal
5ervice. It was the least that I could do.
Our Amerie~n llber~ting army had now pretty well pushed any remaining
Japanese troops into the hills where they would be mopped up and away from
the main cobblestone highway which leads down to i-fanila.
h noW the way was
open for the major units that were to besiege V~ni1a from behind(i.e.,from
the north !.tnd....east) to move on to their objective. 'l'he rOl:l.Q W&S now ja!lllued
wi~h army vehicles of every description and troops steadilY.ll'lOvin!r down this
corridor. One day &9 we were doing so word was sent on ahel:l.d to us th~t
General ~~c Arthur himself and his staff ~ere not very far behind Ud, and that
- we get off the road to both sides to fet him pass in his triurr.phe.l mer ch or
ride into the city in fulfillment of the promise he hue made three years before,
when he had left the Philippines, when he had said: "I \il) 1 return".
'3:> here
he came and r.is staff with him. He was seated in a command C!2.r ... hd c h na tur e l Iv
had on it his stars of r ank and flying his General's flai;'.
It and its e ccom
p3ning vehicles moved past us so quickly, however, that I barely caught ti
glil'!pse of him, corncob pipe in his mouth. and his jaw jutting out in ib usual
d et.e rmi.ned manner. He was indeed returning, as he had seid he would do I
As our party approached the outskirts of the city a. sco ut f ng pa r t.y
from our unit had been sent on ahead to select ~ suitable pIece for U3 to set
up our Evacuation Hospital. The site which was chosen was at the extr~me east
ern outskirts of the city. There ~/as a beer brewery on one side 0 f the road
and a tannery on the other side, but a bit up~ on a small knoll. The tan
nery wag chosen as the place where we yhi~t up our hospital. Here were some
b~ildings Which, after cleaning them up,were converted into the operating-rooms
part of our hospital. But the wards for the recovering patients of our hospiysl
~Iould as usual be our large pyramidal tents with- cots to serve for patient's
beds. >\fter all we were a semi-mobile unit.
But at the very edge of our a r eu
~II:'S an artillery liost. Sever~l large 50 mm artillery guns had been set !-IP on
thi3 bluff which were almost constantly lobbing their bi~ shells ilrto the
heart of the city. For the Japs had barracaded th~mselves in the IHrge l:l.nd
rror e sturdy stone and brick buildings there, 80 it was necessary for our
artillery to ~ batter them down before the infantry could storm them and burn
the Japs out with flame throwers and MOp up with rifle fire.
I c&n still re
W(;
;~ere
�t;l~
tL\s
bt13J'
3~}
";'jr...l.:>.:1..II::. ";o~ld
not !·ut-L..i es o u r e s r d r-ums ,
?ut ",,{:r. ~.:; ..''.; .o u Ld t,)' }-:t
us from pcr:'orwing OlU' i.",,_j.Jiti.,l d.ut t e a ,
'\'e W~:l" 1':>0
which were brou.;ht to us not v(JIy ly It;.,:·ulttnc<,,,; ~.ut i r
tt:tWlpilj~: [...,.i.~~ ~::ef;jp
tr,,;,t.1",~ ~El:::uli.lties
kinca
0 f'lIehtcles.
:):Jr hospitlil operated at full capllcity in th1s bctiltion in Mar,i1~
d u r Inr: Dart of the month of J,\nuary, during all of' F~bruary and part of Y.arch,
., .
"
194'". This was the busiest time for 1.18 in our overseas operations. ve knew
!i.h~"lld o f time that we would be receiv1ng many more patients than we JttO; had ever
had before beClluae we knew that the f'et8.king of the city of Manila would involv
intense fighting. with neither aide taking prieonerl. We aleo knew that the
wounds whieh our soldiers would suffer lIOuld. be vor •• tl;w.n we bAd needed to tre
at any t1me previously. That is also why, during this period, a brain surgeon
had bean hdded to our surgical staff, tor we anticipated that there would te
m~ny severe head injuries.
It was soon olear that it had been wise that we had
this ~~L~ented staff. All medics 1nd surgeons and their helpers were ~ept ~u~y
a ro und the clock for these weeks while the siege of' Manila went on.
Aa a chaplain I certainly also knew what to do. It was here th9.t I Wii!
busier with rr.y ministrations to the ~unded and the sick than at 'lny time while
o ver aea s , '.'{hen the doctors and surgeons had done what they could with tLe
wour.ded they were laid out on litters 1n an area between the operatin~ rooms ~n
the wards the..t. were to r ec e Lve them.
I wollid circulate !,'l.!lX)r.g these littets
,c;ivi:~g such cOl'!'fort as I could to allay there anxieties and fears. Uso r,was
?erdHed to of~er cold drinks from our hospital reefer(refrigerEttor) t.o non
3urgicll pati"nts, and perh8.ps light cigarettes for those who were perrr.Hted to
have them, to help quiet their r.erves.
Each litter was so ta~fed that I would
~no·.-J bow to CMI with the person on 11'..
Pbr those thl".t had been zo ved into eJU'
hos?ital lisrus I not only tried to :>r1ng whatever cheer I could by mea ne o f'
c~nvers~tion ~nd prayer. where it was p13usible, but here my 4etter ~riti~g to
Lovec ones bacl<: in the States on behs If' of the more seriously wounded ... as ~,t H,
peak. I remember needing to write these letters until lat~ into the ni~ht i~
order to keep up this service. Zarlier when I descr1b~d our Tarl~c op~ratio~s
".c1 went into some details regarding this service.
U this time, too, !'t very active end efficient Red :r"5'~ Di r e c to r l'y
the :1'.. me of .;l .. nc ey , WllS 'lttached to our ho"pit,'I. He lind T f'r e quer.t Ly :':J::.dt:
tr1:)5 l.y veb i c Le to a Red Sross warehouse where we o b t a i r.e d 'i l s r-ge v a r i e t.y of'
'"h,t ',;_·1"e c e Tl ed ncom~o:'t items" which we gave out '..0 o ur F ~ier.ts gr vt.Ls ,
To::.,
~ften it he,e be zn sb.id th'it the Hed Oross only so Ld H,;:",!!:) to so Ld Le r s , I can
Jay 'J,)1t pc s Lt Lve Iy t hc t, '1-.13 cel·t""inly was not th~ case in our op6re.ticn.3,)~.e
c f" t l.-. tt1ingq we gave Ollt we r e s tooth brushes arid to,':'t~·It>,-,st·~,r·-"ors,~h,;i:'l~
c r e vm , l:'t~r-f:hl1..,e lotion,combl>J,cigsrettes, corn-cob jJij::r:!s( !;ti:r... L~t=d,n) ':o'Jt·t.
by our cO:lm),n:':er 3en'1 ~~ttC Arthur's f.;rofile) s Io r.g ',~i'th s:""oldnf, tobP.CCO.0CCl:iS1.:'1,
'Illy J:.ne cig:.rs, end even plug'f;;j chewing tob::.cco, i:' » nyo ne wRnted it.
T3Jt it
,",,0-11.:: :'01. hs v e been discreet for !Ue to h't"~ eiv'~n 'OIny 0" th"t OJ'I. t.o pctients
in 0,,1' r.v~t'it1:Jl.
Jn our previous overseas operations as a hospit&.l our:::;.:;. had r e Fu s e d
tv h~v~ ,~eric':ln female nurses on cur staf"', Whatever his r e s so n was , i1ut no v ,
be e-rus e of the ~r,~at need for no r e nurses some Phillppioo nurses were t ake n en
:0 ~'J~'.,jlement our staff. ~"e really needed them, and they were a g rea t help. Of
co ur s e I held Protest13nt church services re!?;lJlarly, :it,tended bv member, of' o ur
stJf: 'ino to.mb-..ll.:ltory patients. .\nd for our bedfast patients I" tad d evo t Io ns ut
bed sd d e whe~ r e que s t ed or when it seemed fitting. Every mllit"l~Y chaplain is
;hi.l,rg~d wit. the responsibility of' making arrangements for r c l Lz Io us ministrlitio:
r o r :'\.1 per sor.n(!l.
Hence I contacted Oatrol1c chaplains from other units t:> hole:
masses. Silt because JeWish chaplainl were very scaroe, several of the M.D. on
our st'iff w~ were JeWish volunteered to take care of the needs of' t he J j\ ish
personnel •
.
�-'
"
\
..,~lii
WIn 01':
\of
,",.
e:=::" ~ i~
When our trocps entered the city of 1·1anila one of the first
r la c e s
t.hey I i b.~nted was a place called Sant._ T)IOm' • • ~ re.ia 4q~Siat:B 1.... ~hi!l weq
a University,..
'PH •
.\t any rate it waa in the building of this int-U
t
~:;2; u llt
• \of: f~ C tuBon that the Jape had held as prisoners ma.ny ,J,mericllns who hnd served in the
011 J.::i~ i?h11ippine8 as mls-slonaries,t.eachel"lI,doctorll and bUBlne8~men. ~'hen they ",ere
~:~~ liberatea it was found th~t they had been terribly ~bused and maltre~ted by
I
';;=.~~ thei~ c ap tc r s ,
l'bst of them suffered from malnutrition and as a. result ... ere
!:-!~ very emac Lat ed , and many of them suffered from a variety of disea:HHI. Hence
... ~. \of many ,:d' them B.' SO became patients in our hospital.
~ng them I remember es
:;~ 0 pee'1ally a Rom~n Oatho lie priest who, ·....hen he had been resto red to a suffieient
• u~ ~
measure of' hes l t.h helped to fill our need for Catholic chup l e t na by saying
I~fJ~I mUSeS but also making bedside visits to our patients.
I t'i :.1:( < W
It is of course und er at andabl e that there were a number of.' death::3
I~~\of WIll among o ur p s t.Lent.s as well as those . . . ho were killed ip combat. In our area
.~=
Grace Park ,-cas the name of a Philippine ceMetery, a section of which was used \"
__4.-c.
~..-4::J"o."I. to bury OUf lwerican dead.
It was here that it became my sad duty, along witr;
•
." It'\,&: ..
.., • ...,~ other cba.plains, to read the last rites for several of the deceased. I also
'II~.C"
,
"
'
t.&::WlIl S'" wrote letters of' oondolence .. ') the loved ones of tI-.ose who were thus laid to
,8~
~ re~t here. In my letters I mentioned the Scriptures and prayers I used in t ne ee
••• 2
o~
1.:;;4:i~.t- grave side rite,. :In the wl!I'.!ks following I received ma.ny touching letters t he t,
,~:::. thanked me for letting them know that the'military he d followed their loved ones
, i II"CC to the very end. I still treasure some of thele letters.
'""
s: 0
.
• ~~:."~
Sometime in Vl8.rch, 1945, our work •• ,11 hospital ziear Manila came to an
~~:;:: end.
And so we were ordered to pack up in preparation for our next lDOve. Since
we had been so extremely busy Without a break for ncnth., higher authority de
:::~::i~ cided we all needed a rest, before being given a new duty aSSignment.
So, along
t~;~ with other units we noved by convoy to the southwestern Up of the island of
It o=t~ Luzon, to a quiet area near the city of Batangas.
Just off' .hoTe f'rOl'll us was
. : : . : I I . Tad island which had on it an active volcano and which in the past 'had erupted
~=;:IEt:.::; I:IlOre tha,p"QPce. (Sometime 1n the 1960'. or 70'. it erupted again). Here we
1'o~ pitohed OLU" tent9, as usual, as we had already done several times bef'ore;because
I: ~t" after all we were a semi-mobile unit.
There were no duties for us to perform
r.l~~ here as e. hospital.
And 90 for some three weeks or so we were able to relax
u ~ and really luxuriat,e, 1= this del1p:;htful tropical climate. A.ll kinds 0 f tropical
'CI:~~ fruita were to be had. by us in abundance 80 that we ate our fill of th6m. Chickens
~1 ~3 • and ep;ga were also to be had. All this enabled US to unwind after the arduous
....... .; labore we had had in the previous ~nths. The Army was now reward ing us for
.:1~ hav Ing been SO hard-worked 1n:t1. battle zone for such fi protracted period. B\lt
'-'.I:Z; at the same time we knew that, .... re Jr:lt'Z'JD being prepered and fortified for another
"II~ duty assignment \Ihich might come any day.
As a chaplain I carried on my minis
..... '0. . .
. .. 0 "" terisl lind counselling duties, not only for our own unit, but also 1'or some
• A~'"
,
._ .. ~ ne Lr hbo r Lng' units who did not have a chaplain of their own.
S::lmehow, also , I
S.J:. • !Ds,de th,. aCq..tai"ltance of some Phil1ppino Christi,l!'lS of' a Baptist church in
=~~ii the nearby .man :town of Lemery XXXxXXXXXXXXXXXXX, and was asked to httld a rev!
:. kJr serv1ce~ for them while we were in thia 1rea •
.. ~a~~
~~~
But toward the end of March we received orders to pack uo and hold O-.lT
:~':_1: selves ready for our next move.
And that came on ~nday, April 1, '45, ~Ihich
&:;::
also happened to be Easter that year. Here again, for the fourth time since we
,~ .....~ had l~ft the States, we were not told whither we wer e bound. We learned l&.ter
that it was on this same date that our American forces launched their ~assive
assault on the island of Okinawa. Fortunately we were not fated to te a part of
that campaign which turned out to be very costly in killed and wounded on both
sides. I believe that our side suffered some 5,000 killed und many more wounded
in thut battle on Okinawa. Ins~e~, along with other unita we proceeded hy con
voy in a basically eastern direction, but slightly south a s ...ell ,p'iSsing through
the s,.ln Bernardino straits which 1s between the islands of Luzon and 1.=indoro •
.'\fter we had gone t9.r enough east we rounded the south-eastern tip 'oi' Lu~on',
..~
gradu~lly s~linging ~rth and a bit wset, a. we did so, until ~Ie came to Legaspi
h
,.'
harbor which was jU3t a.bove the city by that same name. It was here th~t we
~
Were to make our a~?hibious landing, just as we had already done at L1ngayen
•
! IiJ!
~C
=
0;....
.1I.:.a
:f:a
!ii
L'"
t
eel
(\",..
~,,",n
:+""'4t: ..... ..,..... _ ....
~ •• f't."~
'I.,. t. .....a . , .... ""'"••
~~ .... _ "'\a .... _ ...
,..,_~
_-'
1\.T~ ..
'f9l"'"' .....
4Cl'a'P'\~
�we were to Ie 1n suppOrt,to~ether with 80me field hospital',ot the veteran
1~ Combat Team Infantry' ~.~tment. Our collective a•• i~ent waa to -mop up".
as it was called, tho Japs who were still believed to be in the area. Many of
th••e Japs, antic1patinl our al,ault. had fled into the hilla above the city.
The perfectly shaped Mt. Mayan. somewhat inland, but 1n clear .1~t everywhere
her. dominated this area. It ie an activ. ~loano, and all the ~1. . thAt .e wera
here, whon not shrouded with cloudl. it- peak could be leen to be em1tt1n~ smoke
and ~Ie•• Thia voleano,too,blew itl top alaiD eo••tt.. in the 1970's. It r~a
a perrectly shaped do•• very much r ••••blin, ~.PUjl n.ar 1bkyoJapan~
Our oonvoy had nov arrhe4. 11\ Alhy la7. When we pull.' in, naval
shi,. wor. already stream1ng their rock.t. aDd Ih.lll .horewari, tTJlng to dis
lodS. any Japi "'ho mi~ht still ~. in th. plaln. or in the hill behind the
har~ur and city. It "'., ind.ed a elramatie li,.ht to. watch our ~attleehip.
sending up a ateady Itr.a. 01' fire .hoY.wari
al v. had e.rli.r vitn..... 1n
,..
Linsayen Gult. Th. differ.nc. h.r., hOwev.r, va. that/the ship. that were used 1n
this •• ,ault·ver. considerably ••al1.r tbaD tho •• ·.ne-co' in that pr••10u.
~attl •• Evid.ntly 1t was anticipat.' that tk, r ••latane. here ~ul4 not be ••
Itiff a. it had ~.eD in the battle tor Manil•• AM· that proved. to b. tbe c••• too.
Mer. asain, •• ~.t'or. on NO.atoor Illan' a~' Lln~y.n Qult v. were
.l.t•• to make an aaphlbioul la~lnc.· a".th11.tl",wl ver. more or 1••• ~.t.r·
an• •t this. The artill.ry an' inf.ntry ~• •1r••• J,'r••••' •• u.,of oourse.Ono.
on lhore OW' unit and oth.r IU.PPOr't unit. w.r. or•• ,ed to Ita, in th. ~en.ra1
ar... where our artill.ry piec•• v.r. still io~b1DC .h.ll after .h.ll into
~1".,1 .1~y aM Int.o tb. hiU • •",rrotmdlna tht.. port in oreler to tlrive aack
&ny J.p ....ho m1sbt .tlll ~. &rolUld. WhU, w.it1nl: tor further or'.r. to I!I)V• •
~it inland w. sot out our '0' ratlona ·an4at•. tb••·bu.dled tor protection ~.hind
aJ:lY vaU. ot" ruined buil"1n~. still .t.~iftS.·· ;.-.{
.
9)lIl8t.1ae iii the .fternoon it _ . OODI14...." late .nough for UI to ie
allow.' to v.nture IIOmewhat furth.r lnt4 tbe h1.in,.'city. We ",.,.. ordered. to
tin" an are. wh.re wh.re w. mlsbt ~l~uao at'l,a.t·tor tbe fir.t nl!bt.Ther ......
rr:»t,," lO.alaroW14i. The Jap. had tle. up 1llto :the hUll an4 our intantr)" were at
t~eir ~••U": IYen the Philippine native. ha.··.abiuldon•• the city an' prul,tlDably
had Fn. into hid in~ in the ne.. r~,. COWltryIU•• - It ftl eoMwhat ••rie for lAS a.
v• •xplol'H unmoleste" into hou.. , and other \a114inCs that hac ~'8Il abanConect
only DoUrS hefor•• 'boe an« utin'.ls w.r. ~tlllaa kitch.n ta~le., hire. in
th.ir o.ge., anel S02e flyin« aroun4, .ftd'c~t..·""fclO'1 .n' other 40llestic ani
mal. w..ndered li.tle.. l)" .~ut. Th.r. were .all·.kiftit of l1,;nl or • hurrte.
flight ~.for. our invading fIOre.s. In ~h. ~_.tot .11 the dev ••tation we mana
~ •.. tOI f1nel an are. that
"'8 tor a • ..,. .Ih":. ~,tor. we .et up our ho.
pit.al tor .it. \laRa! operation.
.. '.~'~;; ~ r . ,'" ~.
. .
Bouu.•• onc. 1n a whUe Japan..., anUlerJ' .hell • •till zoomed throLl~h \
tao air a~cl "'ere exploding quite near .', ,·w., f'owu'. it discreet that tirst nl,bt
totini wb.tever cover w. could. We lAve tbe~ft'.' :,orl&=1n, JeDfti•• to the••
Ja.p IIh.lls beu". . . . they fl.w throql\..th~. a!r,i.••, IOWld.. 11ke th,'whine 01'
• ,hiSb-pitch•• ~~~. "010•• Aat••Uy it .... tOftu.ctte that "'. COIl14 hear tb••
CO.lll1nc 80 that .... covl. quickly take CO'YlJ''!lne.~whbl.... ·tb.a Oft the way. At.
""ch' ti... Ve ""'uld -80rall\)1, into .the oraW'l""oll, bderneath hou ... an. otber
l:>ullcl1nC' i t h a t Ilisht still b• •tan«in,..·.... H"""'~"f ,~.,
.
.
1: '..":: But1n· a few
w, coul' h...1' t_.t..t.
\"••,lnC ot' r;u.nl anli other
eXplo'ionl v'I'. , ~r. 'iet.nt. !lavifts·folln4·.wtaat,w
nIU.rei to ~e • ew.taile
ar..... we p~o ..... ~ s.t ap our bo.plt&l ....! . l•• ia.··hnt••ot cour.e. Ana ZlOW w.
~.p.n·to' let. , ..tt-nts ••nt ~ac1c to '" .)" t'orv&1'4,. .41oal t ...ml. w. oparat_
... ·Y.:..}aa•• don.c1n I,.ard oc..iI1on.. bltol'•• ,W••r "I " • • • 'th14 ho.pite.l, aM
'lftO,~b.,..l' not h.~. tb.ir,own oh.pl.lft~I<"r~•• ~th•••• ve11. One ••• ~1ng
"e .• a' •• Us .soare whaD we .~d.n • • ri •...-'",aaiaC .lenny" b••••• our va)". An.
ill'.d t.b• •h.n dtt laall .t the v.r,. .etiC.... t ... Ilfr,'-sp1t.al .r.... But lucky for
UI, t.ll'.lbelluU.• ..,'-....104 •• It pre." to~e"'~'v.4~.!fa~ it be.1i aliT., vbo
leDDv. Ybat. .• -.1cht h&....~ _ _ tne re.talt•. , ...:.I.... '.;, .... " .. ~
.'.
. .. .1· bav. ,ictu•• 0 t t.h• •e••t~1'7 \~t.~ w&,.. l&1. out here ~y our encin.era
a~ _lnt"lDeli. ~ our V.v•• r.cinl'atio.· . .n ...., .-.•t pr.vioul looation. both .
lli J_!'( ...OYJ,a'.: e.M in Manil. at w.• • ~~ ~ 4,"rtto,.",ft'Jt~\b. co.-1ttal "Or'. a.
;...-
··:'p.l(.~.'p~.1. the re.a. tJ~ t.hn.,. whA _ •• +".4~
H'
•
.,",el
(
'.7'
_" .-
�-63~-
E!:ct>.use once in a. while Japanese artillery shells still ZocmE:d thro:l.sh
Wt:=re 6)'.ploding quite near us, we found it discreet that first ni;/,t
to find whatever cover we could. We gave the name"screaming Jennies" to the~e
Jap shells because as they flew through the air they BOunded like the whine or
a high-pitched woman's voice. Actually it was fortunate that we could hesr them
coming eo that we could quickly take cover when we heard them on the way. At
such. ':.i::1~S we would 8cre.:nble lnto the crawl apaoe. undern.ath houses and other
building that might still be standing.
But in a fe'" days we could hear that the thudding of guns and other
explosives was more distant. HaVing found what was considered to be a suitable
area we proceeded to set up our hospital, again in tents,of course. And noW we
began to get ~MS patients sent back to us by forward medical teams. ~e operated
as we had done in several locat1ona before. Near us was a field hospital. and
since they did not have their own chaplain I served ~em &8 well. One evening we
had a big sc.aro w~en we again heard a 'screaming Jenny" headed our way. And
indeed it did Land at the very edge of' our oospital area. But lucky for us, the
shell did not explode. It proved to be a "dud". Had it been alive who know.
what might have been the result.
I have pictures of the cemetery that was laid out here by our engineers
and maintained by our grave. rep,lstration service. As at previous locations both
1n New Juinea ~nd 1n }~nila it was my sad·duty to speak the committal words 8S
we laid to rest the remains of those who gave their all 1n this "mopping up"
campaign at Legaspi.
In an earlier chapter when I deecribed the combat at Wakdl-Sarml in
New Guinea, I mentioned that one of our medic<:il officers had gone "beserk" because
he could not stand the potential danger we were in. This time here in"t."eg&spi
it was our 0.0 •• 0010ne1 Ohdstian,hlmself'. who broke under the strain of being in
a combat area. Some members of' our own medical staff first detected our C.O's
psychotic behaviour and began to realize that hp. needed treatme~t. "But in order
to make sure that they were making a correct diagnosis a psychiatric team from
a higher headquarters was brou~ht in to observe his behaviour and make their in
dependent tests. It was confirmed that his \o;as a case of "ba t t Le fatigue" or
"s he L'l shock".
At a.ny rate he was t'lken away to a safer area, and Col.Reynolds,
o u r executive o~flcer took over the command of our hospital. But I can still
r emember that Col.Christian called me into' his office when !lll this was ~olng on
and pled with me to come to his defense. as his chaplain. and a.cted with dis
appo Lnt.me nt, in me when he could see that I f'avored the decision of the medical
team. He acted as if he felt that his ohaplain had let him down to permit the~
to take him aw~y.
Tbi. eout-bealt.rn part ot the Pb111pplne. Va' an ar... wh.re the preabr
teria.D ohl.luh had It••n •• peoieUy aoth. ln 1I1t11oDary lOJ1c. P.rh~,a for tbh
. " 1101' *'u nathe. 1IO\l&ht _ out anet invited •• to oo~uot ohuroh servioe. for
a •• r.bant ••nt.r. wh.r. the local Pr.. byter
[ bea. N • .". . in the o1tr ot
1&11 obur.h b\llU 1n1 bad be.n
tror" or at 1....t va. d__l_ ln COMbat. INt _ . .
IJt the __.ra ot tb!. otMaroh a.Sc" that I n.Ylnb.1". bolel •• "10" tor tit. .
AD« thl. W' 1.14. 1n th.ir "0
!!ow erat.ru1 th., weI" that w. bad co.e in a. t.tIiab
~he 3.i!"
arid
11~erator..
Tbl. oaw-eh ba4
.-Mrahl, ot 1,0 coAt•• dftl •••~.r ••
About th1. U ... ,toe, I i_I'll" • • ut .. r.Ullo~' conferenc. which va. to
b. held ia a hl.torlo Manila otlLlreh. 'fbi. wa. toe 1n~lT' not ollly Dativ. Phil1
,pino" c1.rg . - la7 ,erIOD•• 1tut. . .!Dly ••"loe .en of ~.b extraotloft. !Il.
~ flap!.c1. Pr ••• r.port" th1f" pt.••rine 11' t.h••• lIOr•• 1 ·T1e. of OO_ft. r~
11."'.Ii~ 1l• •kCNUD' aa4 raci.l extraotlon 'INQlht tocetMI" the larl,et. 11'0. of
~"'!4' ~l.r' ot ~ob cl•• oent .V.I" b.lieved to have met. in any theatre of
W..W~,~ .;~ ......,
'11_ at
&1U.~oi-Malate oh'll'oh 1Jl ManUa on ~.12t '4,.
A. llri:et·"~."'.ot t
pTlftl
.nlll by Ca,t.LeoDAr. De lbor.Oba,lalft,
//0"-' 'a. . . . tII.•.• n.b Iltllloa R.t.
0""01&. TM .lell.r. join" Ma_11.. hoI
~ ~U....
ollW'ob 1. their "1'111., .."s.o••• Date of t.h. . . .tlne
..1".1...·"''',-.\ t)w,:'ua "In ot til. J .., •••• nllSncn'.' to .111"1' . . . . .
t'"
t.,".."••,.
...
A"
r
o.
1'.·
I I I'
/0 '
�I had been ,laced on .,eolal ortior. to attend thi. conterence. The view from the
plane a. v. t},ftV tro. th. airport. near the foot of Mt.Mayan to ManUa 1. Itill ill
,r1ntell on a.i:~~n•• Serpentine river. w!.nli1.n« throush lu.h and verli,ant valley. ane
the 1rr.~ularlJ,.Aut neatly la1d out ,attern. of rioe ,attie. and otber cro,. "'a.
the everch..n«!n« 'anor.... to '" leen tro. th. ,lane wln~w. Our phne vas to land
at historio Olark ne14 ju.t out.lde ot ManUa. AI 1. well known, rl«ht atter
'earl !arbor, the Jape had al~ ~rprl.e. ue hire, oatchiD& .any plane. oD'the
ero wnl betore t.b.a7 vere able to take ott. llenoe our &er1al red.tanco A' l"eduoed
alllOlt to aero in the Philippine. at tbat t1ae. But bOW tha litu&tion at Olark
rs.alll
altor:ether diNerent. I..
,l&ft. . . .oen4" toward Olark '101cl runway I
oould .ea many' aircraft. with til. I r 18i q ND·. •rkinC' on tho• •trewn heltar .kal
ter , all .hot UP. 1y1nl on the ttelel where oW" ait-fo rce bad oau~ht tho. ~atore
they had a cbance to get off the groWld. 'lb1a tima 0\11' del. had ga1nltd contracl
o t tha airway...
Whil. atill at Leca.,i I vae glv.n a .peCl&l aa.l~ment which might ••
colt.ldered b1 lOme to be III)mavhat out ot line for a chapl..in. O\,lr ho.pltal staft h
bjgWl to notice that a certain amount ot our medical lupplies .ere mhainr;. 'lie bad
be,un to '\,l.paot that parhap. 110m. of the Ph1l1pplno. wb>m .e ",ere ~e1nr; to help u
in O\,lr ho.pital operation. were _tealln~ t?om us. And it that vere the ca.e. eoul
it be tbat they were .alling the•• dr'll' anel lupp11e. to Philippino .e4iea1 doctor
in near~y towns ..nel vlllage.? And 10 I
deputi~ed, along "'ith a lergeant who
would drive my jee,. to make ·trlendly· but dtacreet and yet alert vldt. to 10m.
ot the medical clinicI, "hic' IIIOre otten than not tu.rn'" out to be the hom•• ot
the•• physician •• 1 was to kee, my o;yel open t'or any ligna that har. 1, Where Bome
of' our medical l\,lpp118s had Fne or could bo 1\llpected to have gene. And I va. to
report my finding. to our medioal .taft. I do not remember whether I really dld d1
cover anything that wal .uspicious. But I do rem_bel' that ,lOnie of the.e PhiUpp111
doctor•• without ..ylng,1O outright, gave indications by tha1r behaviour that the
su.pecteel that I wa, on lO.e kind of "ap7 mielion·. '!'bay allO ciealt with ... ln ar.
in,ratlatlng fashion, IOlDetime. eyen having IDe over tar a ••al in ttidr home••
They acted to me ... it th.1 were trying to hood.wink me. Tbie lDiuion was not al
to,etb,r pl....sfor . . tor another roallOn. At such meal_ tl18. invariably ttwaraect
over the table 10 that. ,a .e"ant 'Oultl have to lttand benind your chair to .boo the
tliel away with a k1n4 of ·d~.ter·. !ut this wal all to be endured 1.1 part ot the
inYe.tl~tt~e WQrk. A. I write thl1 I ha~. ju.t noW red1scovered a little note
book in which I bael jottd
oerta1n Pb1l1pp1nol I wa. tol. to coJ:ltlLOt. in tb,,\,a
1nveltlcatloll. They .ere. th. Qoyernor of 'the Province, the Uayor all40h1tf' ~t ,
Po11ce of Lep.pi Oit.y,and to", 10c.. l PbUippino M.D. vb" were au..,.cted ~J"~."
ing IOlIlehow illegally obtain" .edioal luppl1e •• Dr.AF and Dr.Go.ez. )\y.. ,.. ,J~*
that for the molt part ~tb the m&roT &114 chief ot police mad. 8tat.Il.JIt-:::~ .' -17
oxonerat1n, the .eelical doctors.
' ' ""
•. ,t
'\,,~>:"
. s,metime in MI'Ut.1~. 01.11' lOrk at Lega.pi bad co•• to an .na,' aDd.
We were to '/Bake our••lve. r ....y tpr 01,11' Den DlOve. B\.It a\ thil atar-what .... thl
to be? OLlr airforoa hd aDo'lt th1. till, ,llropp.d atomic ~lDb. on the tlO Japane ••
eitie" UagataJei anel II1ro.b1IIa. In aclel1tion.to' 'that, tl.-l;ollllba had b~~t. \I~ ...et
arue in alul aroun4 yo. . . . anel To~. As a, re.Lll t ILll'uad.r taral ~~ ~een
ned by the Japane•• 1n 1b~ IaJ. lenoe a po"ibla .u1c1dal &ttao~ bY,!Urtbrc••
on tbe Japan••• holllel...&"J16,er. QOl.\lcl be avo t.eled. 'ltl- w~y v.. no~
~r 1,1' to
land 1n Japan al part of' . . oac~nlnr; armecl tbree., A:1d 10 the 11 .~,I~,b&'tlon
"cepital was d. ••tined to, have a part in tbh t1nal pb..e ,of' W.W. I i i~;~)'aclt1e
Ap1n by convoy ~ "are lIOon on QUI' ¥&y to TokyQ.!~Y•. ' We· arrlv" ~ll~-::~m th.
early part of SeI't.ell.hr,194,.
'
,
w.
II,
V&.
"NIl
;"
'81,
,0'.
! .
/J
..
�I
o. WITH THE OCOUPA'I'IoN FOROES IN' JAPAN. S!PT5:M!l!R-OO'1'O~ER. 19451
The ship we vel'e on, I.S part of .. convoy, atsamed into Tokyo !ay only
a .attar of days after the Japanese government had _ilned tho articles of
.u~render on the !attl.ship MlslOur1.
~ the end of my cays 1 .hall never
tbrget what ve sav a. our ship snaked it. way &:ong the endless number of
naval craft of all description. which lay at anchor here. One would almost think
that all tho allied naval power in the ~rld va. concentrat.~ in thea. vaters.
To. I.e mammoth battle.hips of OTOr" d•• crlpt~n,alrplano carrler.,cruisera and
all tht rest ot this hug. armada, each vo, ••l flying its country'. color., and
endlessly .trstched out in the.s w&tsrs in ever.y direction vas a spectacle which
wo 'IIsre likely never again to vitneu. I &Ill sure that enoTlDOus ...tiefa.ction and
justified ptlde mUlt have caus.d ou~ ch••ta to svell at loaet a little bit when
we r.alized that ln 80m. samll mea'ure, ve too, had contributed our part toward ~
tha r.al1ut.ion o~ this overvhelming viotory 1n the Pacific I
The Jape knew tha.t they vere licked. And tH8y gave evitenee of it in the
lar £e-lettered slp8 which they had painted on IlOmo 0 f the buildin,_ along the
~harve. which we vere nov app~aGning and wher. w. dt.embarked. I regret that I
did ~t write down what 801130 of' the.. a1~s aaid. But ths ,eneral tone o~ them,
.. I ~ clearly remember it, vas an a.ckno"ledp.nt Df' clefeat on their part and
.. welCOlte to the incoming allied occupation torcee.
W. first let toot on Japanere ~1l at YokDh&lDa, a.nd did 10 "lih mingled
ro'11n,_ o~ caution and lurprhe. 'ft. 800n l.arned,bovover, that there were no
ground. tor either of' these emot.ions. Their . .poror had taken care of th.at. He
had. ordered his people to lay down all arms, to offer no resistance and to accept
def.at. General Mao Arthur, haVing apent the major part of his life in the
ortent, knew exactly how to deal vith the Japansee. Me ehowed that h. had a
correct under.tanding of their peycholo~, and 80 inaha. of shoving their em
peror a.ide, he found it userul, even if he was only a fi~r.head, to give or
dera to tbe Japane.e nation throu~h their ~p.ror, detoated thoug~he was. Thus
ve~ the occupying fore •• were saTed from any need to rtrut about 1n a proud
and oondee~endin~ fa.hion. All Japane'e ~ere submi.sive-and co=p11a.nt, even
though BOllia of them did look somewhat aulUm.
, Our first. order of b*aine.s was of ce ur e e to find an area Where
could ut. up our hospital. Thi. t1me,of courso, our operation ~a!J not to talco
" ~re of \attle ca.su,a.ltio., but only to care for the sick and any VOO lIl&y ha.ve
bad an injury or met with an accidont. !Ut ~. had como into Japan 1n the midst
of a tnl:oon which was t1P1cal of this region a.nd "hich had been .v.. p1n~ ov.r
the southea.stern part of Japan for 80mo day8 nc~. ·Wlnd and rain vere inco ••ant
so that the eoil,thoroughly sa.turateli, va.a 11lee a quagmire. Henc. ~e had dif
ficult;)' in pitching our tents beca\uo 'th. foree 0 t the 'Wind eateh1nl; in the
caman :p~lled tentp!ns right out of the ground. Nevertbelus 'We did the beat
wo coul~. eut soon ve were permitted to f!X)V. into a. primary school buildin,
which W.I only partlally d.... ~ed., though everything for miles around had beeo
burnt up and denetated from the fire bombin~ of Tokyo.
r~~ ehiof exeit. .ent ~. had in tho tew iays ve wore in YOkOhama "as this:
To jo ha.d .... 0 the Japanoao Pre.ler, the head o't tho VAr ~rty. -:;ith hie nation
noY in H'~ae. for baTin& lost the war, tbo only bonora'ble thin!: for a Sa.1II&ur1
warrior ~La to co~lt harikari. And this is just what he had att~mpted--only
un.ucee"~~lly. Me had only ~unded himself. And where was he taken tor treat
••nt.t ~:.lll.lr;ht kno~' Ol.lr 71 t s t iv&cuat1on a,apit&l. Kero he vila kept 1n iI01a.
ticn 110 th1tt. I did not pouonally .e. hiJIl. !ut. I ca.n sUll remember the exci't.•
!Dent whieh hh pre••ne e in our hospital ooeaeioned &mon~ our personnel.
I haTe just nov red.iscover" a lIl0m0ra.ndUlll in Illy filu about 'this 'l'ojo
incident ~eh giv •• Y1Yid details. It is .. a tollovs' Jbr a.neral Rol •••• J
Kq .i1gtlL L~, A.PO
San hanci.eo, li:1gth J..rty Hq., YokD ham., Japan •
-Th. aan ~ flrst c1rcle4 on hi. deSk calendar tho infamous ~to.of Ooc.7.
19~1, ~ ... hp.etored at the 7,'et ivacua.t\\on lblpital 1n tho ovonin,; o f
(continued on p.&'O ~f)
w.
,-4"
------.
--~.
_.,~.
."
..
�·\
-65t,
Sopt.",194,. al 'Patient No.l0,694.
s~1cid.·.
••
Diag~'l.'
SUn.hot WD~nd.,atteropte4
Suicide, but not 1n the mann.r of Japan••• militarists vho '.nar~'
a.signaenta given thes. but with an "erlo&n )e.o.l.Colt auto.atic revolver.
Tojo wa. oarried. trom htl boa. 1n To~ by U.S.Any medica and va. admitted to
the 7,'at. a1t~a't.ecl in a l'okJohau. ,rllaar7 .01'1001 \~Ud1n&:. Thtl 18 the tirst
t1me the hoaplt.al bal b••n under a root 81M. ooainl OV.l'.eas•• And the co_mi
inc ofticer, Col.Riohard. Re)'nolcll ot Qad.no1.*... ,'lit it. 'out ot th. Dl.llh and
into the hrick.· • 'lDjo
tbe 100 tth patint to be a.cleltteti on the 11'th of'
Septellb:r. Whih 1n '1bk)oo, 1n .erai-oon.otcu... condition, h.
4 to allow
Japan.. ph)'.lolanl to attend hla after be va. abot, blAt was dooUe vhUe be1nC
tr.ated by ~1. foraer enem1....nil atten.ed by V.S.Ar-1IlY nur •• l' It Lt. ,J'l&cb.l
Sor.1i.t of Lone Gr•••
I added tM. add.it~D&l note. '1'here are three
nliU" 1n attendanoe upon 'Ib jo who ooae tro• • • pita1 ehlp. vhich lie ln
folcoh. .a harbor. '
Ow- stay .in YokDhaaa,bowever. va. 1••• tha4 a week. C)"ar next. IIlOve wa.
to be nearby '1'0 kyo ~ The .re.. betw••n the tltO citb. through which we had to
travel valone vaat 1n'aArial are••. or at l ...t blLd. been lueh bef"ore our t1re
bombin!. It had nov been re~cl!ld to e. valt .coronee! eanll .. tar IU the eye
eould .ee--& sob.ring .i~t ind.ed. And when ve 0'" to !bKyo. at le.et Where
we were told to try to ••t up our holp'ital. 1t was the ....e .tory ... we h&4
eont'ronted 1n Yokohama. on17 perhaps even IIOre truetrating. ),bat Japane.e houa8$
(oont1nue on
66)
wa.
1'.',....
*.-
,&,,*
••
The fullest and IIIlut graphio aocount that I bave •••n a~bere of' th1e attempted
.u1cide of HIDEXI lfOJO. whe» WaB b~ht to our 71~ at Evacuatlcn lbspltel in
Yokohama on September 1'.194,. 1e to be ~ound 1n the bock bl -Wll11e.J1 Craig,
THE FALL OF Jj~!.J{, The D1d Pr.8•• !~.Y •• 1967. 1n C~!lpter 22. THE L\ST REOOUR3E
(Pp.'1~-~21).
1 ha~e zeroxed these pagee and it may be leen ••• separate
docwaent which I have appended ... .0 . . Autoblograph¥.
.
( ,:;-'l ....~.-t-Yj
.. ~I..
I~"""')
L.D.~~.
r
/
�-07
:-,,'':1=:1 \.!-t-::t he r
I ~o'tlld h-cv e f'\ jet:p tit my d1sjjo9>J.l t.o~~thl:r ~;i'lh ti. d r Lv e r ,
I tub. 1.1", ! I;IO"t Cdl't"inly co u I d , "Good", he lltt1d. "And ;;':{th,'r Burnl:i b.:I :.ll-o~~y
t..;,1.: r.',1j iu~t w!.erl:1 your unit h loeatlt"', 90 1 '01111 fllp.nbge t o let to your ph~:
.. t. 7 ~.m. 1.,):llr,)l"ro'w un.! I will l1erve liI.S your gUide 1.0 :r.ukc the r e.t he r long trip
;:.:
'•.)
5".; K"g;'\~.:l.1I
,1.lid t.hat i:1 ex~ctly \IIhat. Wit did.
T~.ro;l ·!".out the wa~' Kag'lwa had been an outspokcn critio and Or-paTient of'
l,tH ....~ 11n~t the U.3.
Ii re.ult he lind :.. number vi' his f,:,llowur8 had
J 'f'",1. 1 il
L .<0":'"' ?l·,,;,d uuc er ho ue e
."s
arrest throl.lghout the cor.flict. But now th'\t the WEIr
....,;.~ 0 t er , he h'aJ agliin !.lpea;<:ing out and was currently much 1n the n",ws. 'tlha't.
OJ. )l;-.:.l:lQn oplJOrtur.ity it was for me to bavo the privilege of an interview with
th!;; '''0 do 'I~igurel :'bt only 'Was he perhaps the I'\'kj st t's.lIl';)\'I~ Japanese Christian
. le~d~r, hut h~ was known also for his pacif1c1sm and the fact that he Was tho
founder of the J~?~eneao Christian Cooperative movement and other Soc1al sor
vic~~ edp~ci~lly to the poor.
In fact he was knowf as the Walter Rauschonbush of
Jl1plin.
At th6 coor to graet me when we arrived was none other than Mrs. Kagawa
She half bowed to me, in the ~sual d.~rent1al manner of her ~ountry.
but ...t 0 rice al $() po 1nt.d to my shoes as if to indicate that I was to remove
the~ before gplng farther.
But then ·,he &110 ~ve me & pair of alippers to put
on, Qnd thus she led the way through & room where I later learned several mem
bers of the Press were already .eated,e&ch waiting hig turn to see Kagaw~ for
a ncwpnp~r story. But since I already had an advance anpointment I was at once
brcught to Kagawa, who 80180 gree't.ed lila corlS1~lly atter Og8:wa had introduced me.
Og!l~:a blid suggested that it 'WOuld be uaet\tl it I would have a number of queations
pr~?s~ed to ask Kagawa so tha't. a maximum ~ •• would be made or Kagawa's t1mo.
Anci so the previous evening I had alroady prepared ~ questions.
And 80 Arter
a m1nut~ or :10 o~ getting mutually acquainted with eachother, w~ proceeded With.
our conference. I kept my note-taking of his answers at a m~niml.lm, 80 as no't. to
offend him, but immediately after the interView, seated in O~T jeep outside, I
~rote his answers out moro fully, for I realized th~t I had a very valuable
document. When my conferenoo With Kagawa was over. and before we teft th~ ~r.a,
OgaW& invited me allO to vi.it. ~~~ wa. called-triend.hip Hall",the social centor
of hi' Presbyterian ehl.lrch, where I wa. given a n~ber of booklets and pamphlets
wr1tt~n by",Y~wa and l1'terature about him &.nd his \olOrk.
Here, also, I met a
Mrs.Topping a long-time American m1.aionary in J&pan. It ~as here,too, that
I had a supplemental interview ~lth a certain Mr.WatAnabt, whoae father was the
pasto r o f a Baptist church· in Yokahama, and who tat.lght sce te logy in a .Baptist
college in Yokohama. I asked him lOme ot the same ql.lutions I had already put
t.:> Kag>!wa, and in TIly report which follows, 1 have wedgl)d 1n his knswer to SOlllO
~r these q~e$tion9.
In this way the reader can got u doybl~ perspective.
Here, then, are the questions I asked and the answers ! received from
K~g~wa, excep't. wher$ I indicate that it is Watanabe speaking'
~ue st ion 11 to yOl.l look upon what has happened to Jf&pen 9.3 a. disaster or 88 an
c ppo rtuni ty? And why?
Answer, Both are true. It i9 a disaster becau.~ of ita magnitude. In all of
Japan there were 2,200,000 homes de.troyed,10 million people are homeless in
77 big cities. In Tokyo alone, 770,000 are homeless and 25°,000 of these are
living in dugoyts. On March 10,alone, in only one district of' Tol.cyo (eastern)
100,000 wure villed. But ye., it is an opportunity at the same time: As a mili
ta.ry power Japan is done for good. The ,volee. of' those who were suppressed by
the military c~n now speak o~t again for a new Japan(including Kagawa,of cour~o).
~dtanab. 6nswered I' follows to this same questionl This 1s the dawn of a cew
d~y 1n Japan.
Wba't. we sball gain
i . to time. what wo lost.
#'
.
9Hestlon 2$ Can the Japane.e who are atill 1n office in Jopan(under tho Supreme
) ,-11lied Commander) be counted on to work for the beat interests or Japan!. That
~ 1s, w111 they eo~n~rate to g1v~ Japan ~eedom or rel1gion, speech and press and
equul1 tv nt' e~O • pportW1i't.y? Kagawa t. anewer was th1Sl Yes, tr.ose now in
hera~lr!
�-68
power under the allied com~~nd~r w111 w~rk for theee things. Ho cited ~he f~et
that the Premier hoci called a rooetir.g 0 r· clJrt"in lee.J.~rs and mad e e l ear to th",'-;
tha.t it was for auc h objectives ~he:r $~\.ild rlOw 13.1:..01'.
"('lt~.nabC:!ls nn!l\',er ~o this question was more specific, l folt.
He said I !-~nJ 0:''' us
r e f'er to GH~ as "the clec.r:ing cotllprmy". ~ far it. hna done well 1n ca:r:r1ng
out its cl~an1ng prop;ram "Nith r e gu r d to one set of po ve r s I the militar; :::achL-,:iS
which has been 90% clesned out, And th~t 1s £ood. But t~1s program ~~~t con
tinue, for the bureauer~ts who are still i~ pOher must a.1so be c1eane: out.
A."d 1:1 addition to th9.t, the C!1f italists(big bus i ne s s ) I::ust also be gi';,:n a
tharo\.lsh cleaning. And we believe th",t !J~nerrll :-:9.0 Arthur \01111 not s~C? until
h~ hag made a thorough house-cl~Qning in all three of these department!.
And
it 'dill be 'oiith our approval, yes, our hC!l.rty app ro vs I that he do so. 7"ds is
exactly what Japan needs. The ~re tr~rou;hly he Goes so the better we shall
like it. He went on to se.~r. I ask you, .... h·-it attitude do you find on t:.e par t, ~r
the cot::~n people and the average Japanese soldier? ',','hat have you eXr~rience~
to be their attituda to\.;ard the o ccupat to n troops? It must be ac.:!littei that ~~
first there was fear, b9cause of 'trhat ./e had been ":.old tha.t A=.eric9.n t=-oops wc:..:l~
do to us. Eut now that we see that we have nothin; to fear, we h~ve ~~ u~ki .. c
feclings to you. ~e wish to learn fro~ you all that we c~n_ Has any "~erican
soldier been hurt by any Japanese? None. On the other hand , what is ::-.~ f!tti
tude of the eereeo n people and th') aver age Jap soldier to their own military
leaders? 1'0'11 that We know tho real nature of the Jspanese srmy,its ru~::'lessne5s
and the atrocities it has COl::l!l!itted, \018 are even v1olcn~ly in op?OBit~n to
the~.
~~at do you suppose every Japanese soldier is carrying on his back as you
see them on the train' :iLnd on the streets? These ar e suppl iee and s to r e s \oihic::
they have t~ken(stolen) from the ~ilitary which h~d vast stores for tr.~~selvesJ
and tr~s at the expense of hardships which had to be suffered by the ~~er~ge
Japenese _ The Japanese military ~achine has deceived un and ni31e~ us. We
now repu-:iiatc it and know that our sorry lot is onl:r due to their blu:".~ering.
quostion
roO ..... l'ls,ny Christians do you eatir.:'1te there are in J~panJto:=.y? And
rJO~_l-h:;l~J churches? Kaga\ol s l s answer is: Thero are 400.000 Christi:J.ns i:'1. Jap&.l':,
-250,000 Protest~fl.t...and 150,000 Ca.tholics. There wer e 16CO chcr cbe s , :>~ ',;hich
there are 500 big churches th'Z.t were burned. In Toiqo, e lone, there aT'3 .3;0
Christian churches with 60,000 Christian3_ But ~bout 160 of these ch~rches in
Tokyo were destroyed.
't
~Jestion 4: Are
K~gaw~'s ans~er
Christianity and Shintoisn cutu~lly exclusive? .tnd w~:?
is as followst As a Christian! feel th~t I c~n still ~~ve re
spect for shrines,sacred places and the Z~pGror. Whe~ I show such res~ect and
r-ev er enc e I do so not a s an act o~ v,~r:::hip, 'blt I do So in the spirit of' vene!'a
tion for those wr.o have gone on be~ore. But Shintois:n as a re11gbn i3 mt
- co~p!ltible ....ith Ohdsti?nity. (And r.ow Kc.g~'.:a added eomethh1g wl".ich r::: f'or.ne~
teacher of Bible Ln both Hope CollcG;: and \"!e!d.ern S~=_~1n3.r:r. Dr •.\lber~u3 ?icte!"s.
arid a long-tit:113 ::I19:3iona1'y in Ja.pan. ~!lid ,::lgs,\'1!t ":.lid because he t-ne.... th!lt I
had originally been ~ minister in the Refor~~d Church in ~~erica. ~ne~ I made
my report of my interview with K9.ea.... a to hb he said thlt Kagawa. had R=form~:'
Cr.uTch M1s~i~nary ....e rk 1:'1 J"p~(n in Mind). t.tl~'.i~:"l. s~,1dl The earliest ~:)rI:l of
Chri3ti'mitj"t;.. l".ich t he J~ps.ne3e came in cc nt e c t, ',;ith o.fter the Restoatbn in 1~6i\
....0.::1 D..ltch C~~lvlr.ir.C':.
Its em?h~sls uj'OI1 God 8S Cre~"tt.or and 3:lvereign. and its
emphasis upon the e ne-nes e of G:>d(ro.ther tha.n upon the 'trin1tarhn eo~cept)
appealed to the J:.panese. Ag a result, D...tch Cnl ... ir,lm:l contributed to a ~~reet.
r(lv1vul, called U:e l~elji Fleror~9.tion, ...: hieh 1:icluded the r e s to r c t Io n of the
po ve r e.nd place of l.h$ Emperor .(1n the .pIu c e o~ the numerous Sh:>euns). Thus
Chr1sti~n1ty 1n the !'orrr, of Dutch Cll.lv1nb~ was o ne or the r.lOlst power!'ul in
flu~nces in the building up or th,) E~p"Tor concept 11: J~p~ne8e lira_ In thh
. I ,/sc:lse Chr1stihnit.y e nd p,:)l1tic,,-'l S~.1r:toi~;1!i are not l;Juiunlly e xe Luc i ve , but. Ci-.rl!'·
I C i9.nHy has oven co n ' ributed to this co nc e p t ,
�-,
.
4
,
,
U -'or'liue:r to VG the 'l'e~~te!'t :'i:,nl~ld ~robl,;rr. th.·t f",~es
"\n"',:-?
,oeEJ.~.. it. be fa.ced'? Kll.~e..WfLtlf
l.I.n~ur \11.\S: ScI: ~rF!lHy
•
, - no
0
~ l,J~r;r,~S:; :.f' co r ',Ili! I eo ns1d.iU' to b" 'the grlto:t,oet weaknee' of our peo p'le , P'\H
1.1-.1:-. 'J!-,d,.lti.mity with its toaching of purity is the only be pe , No help can be
O,(I)'.:C:..::::;1 i'l'oru any o'ther religi.on which the Jllpanelle kmw. Instelil.d. t~e e t.he r r e-
lL:ion:i o:",}y incre'1ge the problfttll. Kaga~& added thr.t he ilt behind It. new Life
fnvernent", the driVing force of' which 11, through Christi6.nity, to fin Japan of
... his c;rl!.,tedt of' all evils. Wllt.'11'1ab1'. aplwer ~ U to this Clueat1lj,on \I&a
ciifrer~nt.
He expessed him.el~ as believing that the 8ex-mora~1ty ilsue i8 minor.
Inltead, h~ said, JapAn .hou14 concern'it.elf ~th business morality. In this
regard J~pan n~eds a new ph11olOphy.--a new 'Weltanschauung·. aa he 'called it.
(~bte hi~ an~wor to que.tion 2, where' he zeroed in on the military,the buresu
er'lts ... nd t.he ctlp1talists).
,
.. Question 6, What do you consider to' be the pro apects for Christian mhs1.ons 1n
Jll.pal'l in the future, and What type of progrUl of Oh/istian mi ••1o_ ,do you think
will be th~ best for Japan? Here Kaga.wa and Vatanab1 wore in perfect agreement I
The prospects \~erl!l never brighter. Why! Beca.uu Ohiathnity is llgainst m1U
t~rlsm, and militarism has been defeated once for all in Japan. They exprossed
th~mselves as believing 'that tho prejudice. which tho peopl$ formerly had a~lnst
Ohrl~t1nnity were now dying out, that is, the pro~udice~ they had beo~u.e it was
Chr13t1~n .~erica that had bombed them to 8ubmi8sion. . But Japane •• Ohri.t1an1ty
must be indigenous. If mia.ionariea will come 1n the spirit of aloofnes" and try
to hand us something ready made, like a coat to put on, it will not -e rk
Christ1.:.nity must be brought in tho s'pir1t of·-love,charity and unc.erstl:lnd1ng,
and not in t.he spirit of haugh'ty 8uperioreb&nd1ng us something for our own !1POd.
The right :>plrit has been shown in previous m1a:Jlon we rk. We crave .. OQft1..1nua
tion 0 f' ve rk in th,h spirit.
.
••
I~
~-
i ..-pe.rt
.. ··r,:.L,·
,. ; .."
"6,.,,.1'
Question 7'
Wh~t
18 the most urgent message you
~lsh
to have
~e
bring to the
Ohrl$ti~n peopl~ of America? Kagawa's an.wer. Please send us Bibies. This 1s
the m~3t urgent need. Also aend us missionaries who will come'not only to preach
~nc te~ch, but who through the incarnation of 'the spirit of love and charity \lill
tu 11 ving defloiltirations of 'the po\leJ" of Ohristinn1ty. They must be men and
\<iomon who will exemplify the spirit of the third 0 rder of tha Franciscans I who
preach Lv gpod work'. America's best girt and it~ best reprosentatives to Japan,
J<ortN, )&nchur1a. and China w111 be such ~iSfl1ontl.r1es. Al::5o we want tTIOrd books,
periodicals and ma.gazines in all branches. He emphasized medical books in Eng
11sh; lie \Yill do the tranSlating into Japanese. \'o'e tire hun cry to l~ar!1 whtlt
l\mer1c~ has to contribute 1n all fields of Science.
To this same quea't1on
W~tan~hi's ~nswer was thisl My most urgent message is thisl Oontinue to clean
r~use in J~pan. !b not be satisfied with tho destruction of J~panl8 military
power to flg;bt. Get rid of' the buroaucrats and the c,·.pitaHsts.-big business.
"'!'hej' art! thOl'oughly corrupt The only reasonat~e Ja.paa:MJe peo·ph hav e done so
lit1le in ~~re than u month since host111ties~ave ceaded to b~11d houses Bnd
to cl~ar away debris iSI beoauao the bureaucrats nnd big busine~s men do not
release to thd people the mater1al.(l~ber) which ~.H.Q. haa made avail~ble for
thi~ purpose. The bur.~ucrat. ~nd b~sineal men want 'to feather their own nest.
before they us nndly 7t1cked out. W1th wint.er a tronth away, 1n Japo.n, where
are the people going to live? How can they eont1nue to livo 1n their miserable
galyan1zed lron shacks and in bom~sh.lter8 1n the ground?
SuesHon 8 I . Wh!l.t ~ok or periodical wau.Id you recommend me to read to be 1n
formed on the situation 1n Jnpan today1 I have only Kagawa's an.wer to this
question' Give us the pap.T,and ve w111 print 8UC~ book. and periodicals. We
just don't have anyt.h1ng 'to recommend, to ')"Ot.l along this line. turing the la~
two yeus not one Ohrietia.n IIlAg¥1ne OT paper has been printed 1n Japan. !:low.Ye~
on aece nd thought Kagawa did mention The History of Jfl.panen ~.ligiona by
Anezak1. a professor in the Japan... Imflerhl Un1vers1ty(Harvard 'lecturea).
/ ......Th e l''1 he aaild, I personally expect in tim. to print a Christian nevllpa.,,.r •. r
/Thus ended my interview with Kagawa, and tbe eubs1d1ary interview with Vatanab1.
Littl. did I know .then ,that only a utter ot ... couple months later, that U io.
Decemfer..~94"iL I WQ.uld. be Lldng .. report. or this interv1ev tU 'I1l1 Nr.t ohapel
tal~ _n ~.tin6. 0011.,- wben I wa. 1nv1t,~ there te ~~ ~A_".~
~.
.
'
'
A
�-70
D.
/
F:t;):;E:j3!~t},
TRAV:::r; BA:::K T0 ':':~E 3T.-\.TES, SE:PA.1HTIO~l
TE:i:·;n:.;.L LZA.V::t 12 OCroBSR.194l:)..-25 J,U·IUAi\Y.1946:
F;:O:~!
ACTIV~
DUTY
A."-n:
:;.lcost. ev,::ry d9.y,now,somo !r.embers of our raoBF-ital received c r d e r s to
beJ:in p ro c e s 'ing for the ret.urn home. ''''hat "eter~ined '~hen yo\.lr turn would
come was the number of points you had a.ccumulated in Qversel:u ..rvt ce , My
t urn came on October 12, '4~. The pla.c& in Jttpan whc.re this depzc c e e s Lng "as
G~ne
at le~dt for our area of Japan, was in a J~panese military ca~p near
,
Yokah9.!llfl.,
in \·,hr,t was called the West Po int of J:lpan It ,-a very n 1
co1ayou t f
c.'
!.L.iildl:igs. T'hi:3 of course involved a. gre·~t delll of' paper ~Iork,both for e ur se I»
'le;!,indi'vic!w:lly, but a190 for the offices. We \'1ere kept in the dark until
almo.;t the la.st minute about whlit kind of' transport.ation we w,:,ulci have ::'or t he
return voyage, whether it would bo by plane or ship. This We3 a lively t~pic
of' :,r:-eculation 9.:~.o:'lg U3, some prefering one ID matT.s of return Etn~ others >!l.(s
other. ~~t fortunately we had no c~olce 1n the matter. I considered myself
Iucky that it w~s to be by ship, and especis.lly when it turned out to"t it .1.:l5
to be t.he hu:.:e 33 General '....eigel a passenger liner 0 r the ~us Pr e e Lden t
Lines which was now being used by the government to transport r et.ur nt ng military.
personnel. I can still remember that every meal w~s a veritable fea9t. In
cluded were ste~k9, vegetables ~nd salads which we hud missed overseaa,except
~hen we h~d been on ~avy t.ransport.s.
Milk ~aa to be had s~ much as we ~ant~ci,
s nd ~,meh.:lw this is what! especiallv craved and a-ot n;y fill of.
And hal' "cO:
apFr,,~is.ted the leisure and relaxation this voytlge a.C:!"'03S th~ vl1de P&.cif'1c af
forded UJI Ar.d to think ttat every day We were drawing nearer to a reunio~ witt
our loved or.es.
At first we were ~lated to land ut Seat~le,Washlngton. But n
few d ay s r·61'o1"e we ..lould hit the west coast orders \-Iere chonged and He v e r e told
that.le were n esc ed for the O::llden Ga.te. So $.;i.n Francl;;;co here we corne I A
large mJb of e xhube rant, \oiive3,sweethe8.rts and other famil)' member,S of' r e t ur ne-s s
wrc ~ived i~ the western Stutes wero at the dock to greet us 65 we dise~barked.
'::hat :f-j'tibllant and tear-jerkirlg reunion that was! ':1"ose 0:" us .. ho ne e ded to
travel f&.rthl':r inland to t~eet our fr..reiliea would h",,,e to ...:!it .;;. fe ... d s y s Io ngc r ,
but, ... we kne.,: t!';at our turn would be coming soon, too.
But all of us would first have t.o go to Oamp Stoneman for a cey or t.v-c
for d epro c e s s Lng , just as this had also _been the carr.? ,/r.er6 "'.any 0 f' U.3 hd been
processed ab.1uthlO years before on our way t.o the 3.\·;.P&cific. Again there
;",5 th~ inevita.ble but necessary paper worka physical eX3.:!:s,rece1vir.g pay due
U9, getting travel vo uche r s and finding out at which 09'lp or fort we would
finally be demobilized. etc. ThIS pros and cons of taking out a reserve co m
11lission were carefully pointed out. to us.
I Sll.W the advantages of accepting
a reserve commission. All th~t it called for was attenciir.g a weekly p&id rnili
t'J.ry drill with a local unit and two weeks of paid a.ctive duty each SU:QT~er "ith
everit ue I retired pay if one had put in twenty years ty the ag~ of 60, after
which one draws retired pay for the rest of his life. I signed up for this and
h~ve never regretted doing so, in spite of the fact that. in 1961-'62, in th&
Cub~n crisisJ along wit.h some 180,000 National Guard and Reserve personnel, and
nt the ag8 of 59, I was called b~c~ to active duty with the ~2C'th Ordnance
8!lttsli o n and served for A year in !Port Ord,California. This last yea.r of' a ct Lve
duty made me el:l.gible for prorootion to the rank of.' Lt.Col.,which !llso helped to
in~re~8e r.y retired P9Y which I have been reeeiving since uec.l,19c2.
Somehow,however, for final d&pro~.ssing my name \18.8 mist&kenl:r placed
on the Ft..Log~n(neer Denver) Hst. It should have been on the Pt..Sheridan
(near Chicago) list, for t.his·was closer to ~here ~neva and the fl1mily had been
living(rolland,r'~ichlglin)While I was overaeas. But that was Ii minor incon
venience 91nceeveryone was fumished wIth travel vouchers to reach or,·~ls !-orne ; {
station. In order to reo v e alJ tro:;)ps returning from the Pacific required the
.1.--
;:;overnment to place Into service all the ro lHng stock they co u Ld lay the1 r
._~
hnr-ds on. As e. result some of the trains were rather old arid Lea t e n up, even
~f they could be mad e to serve the purpose.
S::> if we b"d e xt.e c t e d t ... ","" ..
Pullu.rnn e l e epe r e we had another gue!u en",1 "'_
"'.
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•
:~~y ~ain -c~aches.
s;:"'wifre-
Denver had!
and they were of the vinbge who:
the green colored Yariety that could be pushed back into only a slightly
reclining position. But since ve knev that our trip would last a tew daye.
we war veterans took things into our own hand. to chance theae aeats into at
least se~1-s1eeper8. ~ renoving or loosening some bolta and screw. we managed
to l~y these seats down flat SO that we could sleep ~alrly comfortably at night.
Of' course t.here was food on the train :for us. '!ut every once in a while when the
train stopped at a station, even it only for a few min~tes. some of us would
da.sh out to buy 8upplemental snacks of t.hings We had missed having for a long
time.
We were in Port Logan,just outside ot Denver, tor only a rew days where
some more paper work had to be donp, and then ve vere off' again, each in hie own
direction, and on the last lap of our homeward trek, which for me was Ohicago
and t.hereafter Holland,Michigan. It. was now Nov. 10, 1945.
When my ~ra1n reached North Platt.,Nebrasbt, it was held up long enough,
here,as w.re IIlOlItFroop trains. to change crewa and to take on fuel and water.
Knowing that t.his was a regular pra.etice ot the.e trains, many WOlllen from North
Platte and the sur~und1ng area were always ready in the tr9in statton with a
bi~ spreat ot all kinds of fbod and othes ~odies to which w. returning yeterans
were invit.d to help ourselves. Intact. H3rth Platt. became tllJlloUS t'or this.
and I am sura it ia atill rememberad by many a aervice man all over t~o U.S. for
what took place on these stop-overs. )breonr, 11 ttl. did I realize it at the
time t.hat. in l.es thantw) months ~m then our family llOuld b. taking up r.d
dence 1n N.braeka where w. have at
ever aince. .--
Even though JAY Army t.rmina leaye pay would continue until 25 January,
1946, of cours. I r.alized that I needed at once to Make moves to eecure a civ
111an pOsition. Getting back to 00l1.,e teaching wall of course my fervent hope.
I did have a leave ot abaenc. trom Huron Col10&e, where I had taught bofore
military service. 80 that I could have returned ther•• !ut i~poa~ibl. I wanted
to g,o to a larg.r sohool. So a day or 80 in ChiO&&O, while waiting for Geneya to
join me her. vas tailor mad. tor me. I .pent the better part of a day .xploring
this possibilit.y with the American College Bureau where my papers w.re on file.
Mrs. 'Goodell, the head of this teach.rs· agency,. was of course most sympsthetic
and cooperat~et SO she wu genUinely sorry that there waa nothing open in my
tield just then. Such positions ahe did .haYe would not begin until Septe.aber,
1946,and that was ten months away. I already had my hand on the knob of' the
office door, ready to leave, when abe 8~ddenly called ~.back. ~er., ah. aaid,
I have juet discov.red something which it ~ight be worth while to explore. The
Pr.sident of !lastings Coll.g., Dr. William H. French, is looking 1'or SOlleone to
teaoh both philosophy and 8Oc1010gy, "hlcb is your sP.cialty, but though the job
would begin 1n September. he bas added .. note saying that it the right person
should oomo alon~ he might. be llble to -.-tart this p,r80n in the middle ot' the
academio year, that is, in Pebruary next. -Of course we were both delighted with
this discovery, eo t.hat I at one. told her to-r.lay my int.rest in this position,
and at t.he- same tim. I asked her to .end Dr.JPrenoh a set ot my ered.ntiah. And.
of eeur se I al80 promiaeci h.r t.hat I woould write 4ir8ctly to Dr. French telling
him of rrry intere.t in t.hi_ position as, soon as I ~~ci r.joinod my fusily in
Iblland.
Of courle immediately after-I arrived in Ohica~ I had already tele
phoned Geneya to say that I had arrived. ~he aad. arranrlllents for the caro of
our three chUaren so that ahe JIligbt. come to- Ohicago where w. would meet. It. was
whUe ah.· wu on the vay that I bad- 'that intoniew- at tbe Amerioan 00 11o&e Burea.t.
And· 80 wben· she arriYed on Nov. 12(her lil1rthdayl )tYG\l can bag!ne t.he warm .and
tend.r reuniGn whicb took plac. atter our 221DOnth. of ..psrdionl And lIOW to
top otf'-our celebration ve could.- -leo .bare- tbe· we100me exoitement occasioned
.y the pro8pect ot' ~ posaible job opportunity. What a· doublyjeyous home-colll1ng
that-was' Since August ot 194' the '8JIl1l)" had \een renting a c~t.e and con':'
venlent. one-floor 1lJC)dern hou1le at 246 W.la'th str.....1n Jblland. But. a short tble
be to re my' ret.ur n this heu.. vas so 1cl, 80 _tbat - It.· was . neoU8ary fo1' the talll11y t~..: :p?-"t
rent an upstairs apartJllent at. 11' W.1' 'th Str••on a corner directly south ot the'! I;,.,L
Third Betor.ed Ohurch. This was to 'b. our loq.atioll \lDtU a job vas certain, and ," 0f
4'-- ... - - "..If +,. ft. not lon~ in com1n~. . .
. _ ... '"
._
./ j
. .,
~
~
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�
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
RozemaJ
Title
A name given to the resource
Rozema, Jacob (Interview outline, video, and papers), 2007
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rozema, Jacob
Description
An account of the resource
Jacob Rozema was born in the Netherlands and moved with his family to Michigan in 1930. He enlisted in the medical corps and served in the 148th station hospital in New Guinea before transferring to an evacuation hospital in Manila. In the Philippines, he served with front line combat units at times as well. He served in Japan after the war and contrasts what he observed of Japanese brutality in the Philippines with their treatment of the soldiers in the occupation forces. Extensive personal narrative written prior to this interview concerning New Guinea, the Liberation Campaign, Occupation Forces in Japan, return to the US and separation from active duty is appended to this interview outline.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
United States. Army
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
2007-12-14
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/dfbae46da0ea3e43896d97eb71921a0d.mp4
4fa00d9d10942216fcb3288cd82bf82b
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e8ff594597e321f6317523ff84bbc523.pdf
6215b1e1e380d805a8946061af0c80ba
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Glenn Ten Brink
(01:30:11)
(00:01) Introduction
(02:44) Interview Begins:
• Glenn TenBrink
• Born in Olive Township, Michigan, June 23, 1924.
• Grew up on a farm and achieved an eighth grade education.
(04:44) Pearl Harbor:
• Heard the news on a radio.
• Many cousins and friends around him were drafted right away.
(06:00)
• His father applied for a farm deferment in Glenn’s name and had two deferments,
until Glenn asked to go to war.
• He had only traveled to Little Rock, Arkansas prior to military service.
(08:20)
• He was drafted into the army.
• He completed his physical in Detroit, Michigan.
• Remembers the “biggest” guys’ being the ones to pass out due to needles during
the medical inspections.
• He returned home for 10-15 days.
• He was then sent to the armory in Grand Haven, where he took a bus to Fort
Sheridan, Illinois.
(09:44) Fort Sheridan:
• There were “grumpy” sergeants hollering at the new recruits.
• All of the men were marched into a barbershop and had their hair shaved down.
• The men were marched around the fort, and received their military clothing.
• Only remained in Fort Sheridan for two weeks.
• Although it had several barracks, it was used as an assembly station.
(11:58) Basic Training:
• Shipped to Camp Croft, South Carolina.
• Describes the camp as large, including many training fields.
• The men would complete 20-mile hikes in full gear.
• Glenn fell ill one day, at first the doctors did not believe him, until they diagnosed
him with pneumonia, for which he only received one day off.
• Every morning the men would stand around for inspection.
• The men would complete training in calisthenics, target practice, and marching.
• He enjoyed the target practice training.
• During basic, he had no idea what area of the Army he would actually be serving
in.
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Feels they dug more foxholes in basic training then they did in actual service.
At the end of training, the men marched in front of several dignitaries in large
groups.
While on maneuvers, a piano was brought out so the men could sing Christmas
carols on Christmas day.
(16:16) After Basic:
• He received ten days of home leave.
• After leave, he was sent to Fort Meade, New Jersey to assemble.
• He then boarded the Queen Mary.
(17:01) Aboard the Queen Mary:
• He had never been on a ship before the trip.
• He luckily did not get sick while on the voyage.
• The trip across the Atlantic only took six days.
• There were thousands of soldiers on the Queen Mary.
(18:58) England:
• Once they landed, he did not get to see any of the countryside.
• The men were immediately brought within a large building in blackout
conditions.
• Glenn and two other men went to a warehouse to get blankets, when he shook one
of the blankets out and a military Bulova watch fell out.
• After a few days, he was placed on a smaller ship and brought to France.
(21:10) Landing in Europe and First Battle Experience:
• The beach had already been secured at the point. He landed in January 1945.
• All of the men accompanying him were newer recruits with no battle training.
• The men marched for many miles until they loaded on a large train, in cars known
as a “40 & 8’s.”
• The men stood in a large boxcar for the voyage.
• Landed in a small city, he cannot remember the name, for dispersal information.
• While in Europe, he was ranked as a PFC.
• He was placed in the F Company, 276th Regiment of the 70th Division.
• During a briefing orientation, the men learned very little, except hearing from
other soldiers about their conflict experience.
• Sent to a small town in France, with F and E companies, he only remained there
for a week.
• He left in a truck convoy to a combat region. The men jumped off of the trucks
and straight into the trenches due to shelling.
• The temperature, he remembers, was less than ten below.
• Many men had very wet and cold feet, due to the lack of waterproof boots.
• Glenn carried a Browning Automatic Rifle, much heavier than the standard issue
M-1’s.
• When the men approached the town, they were attacked by sniper fire, Glenn hid
behind a garage for a long amount of time until the sniper was removed. He
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
decided he was carrying too much with him and left his Bible under the edge of
the garage to remove weight. Three years after he had returned home, his bible
was sent back to him from a young French girl who had found it and seen his
address written in it.
The men moved down towards Forbach France.
The men went into a home with French people living there and stayed.
The residents were happy the soldiers had arrived, although they were scared of
the German fire.
A machine gun attachment was added to the group. Glenn stood upstairs standing
guard out of a window.
In the morning, he heard footsteps, and a troop of German soldiers marching
down the street in front of the house he was standing guard. His sergeant would
not let the men out to attack the German soldiers.
Within two hours of the German’s marching, the house was attacked by heavy
artillery fire, no one was seriously injured.
Later that afternoon, he walked along side of a tank down the street.
The men dove into homes at the end of the street while heavy artillery fell, as
soon as the tank stopped.
His partner, Terpstra, and he were able to get to a radio and let other soldiers
know where the tank fire was coming from, after seeing it out of a second story
window.
The next day, they captured many German soldiers as prisoners. Because Glenn
could speak Dutch, he helped transport the prisoners.
Remembers his fellow soldiers seeing German soldiers, as young as 12-14 in
uniform, killed by machine gun fire.
At one point, the soldiers found many American POW’s who were being kept
prisoner in a church, and rescued them.
(45:12) Moving through the city
• Moved through the City of Forbach
• The men worked to secure the railroad track.
• Remembers hearing a small child crying for his mother at night, Glenn wanted to
help, but was not allowed.
• As the men tried to move through the street, it was cluttered with bodies, and
destroyed tanks and jeeps.
Tape Freezes and stops at 47:30. It resumes at 48:08, repeating some previous
information.
(48:34)
• At one point, there was a dead German soldier lying in the street, and over 300
soldiers walked over his body.
• The German soldier, was actually alive, and ran away after the final American
soldiers walked over him.
• Once they reached the end of the town, the men stayed there for a couple of days.
Also, at this point, the liquor rations caught up with the group and most of the
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•
•
•
soldiers became quite drunk. Glenn and another man from California did not
partake in the drinking.
Many men were lost approaching a large house at the end of town which was
heavily equipped with German soldiers and firepower. During this battle, Glenn’s
friend from California was killed.
The American soldiers eventually took the house.
One soldier who had volunteered to take the German Prisoners to their holding
facility shot them and returned to his company and said they had tried to get
away.
The company had many officers due to injuries and illness.
Once they left the city, they marched for 30-40 hours without stopping.
(52:40)
• Marched to an area to guard railroad tracks.
• At this point they were around five miles behind enemy lines.
• The Officer was a young man, and the company clerk let him know they were
behind enemy lines, they then moved back to the railroad tracks.
• A German tank came over a ridge and fired at the American men.
• Glenn did not know how many other companies or groups of American soldiers
were with his group in the swamp, he recalls it as very confusing.
• At this time, he received various injuries due to shrapnel. He could not receive
help, for the company was completely surrounded for at least 24 hours.
• He did not even attempt to look at the injury to his foot, the shrapnel went
completely through his foot.
• Once the other company broke through to them, he crawled back and boarded a
Jeep with 6 other injured soldiers.
(57:19) Military Hospital
• He was only able to spend one night in the hospital.
• He was sent back to his company with one foot measuring as a size 10, and the
other a 14.
(57:30) Saarbrucken
• The men were not able to bathe for a very long time.
• They moved to Saarbrucken, France.
• Their major concern were the defenses across the Saar river.
• The men had to fish dead bodies out of the river while standing guard.
(59:47) Interactions with the French:
• There was minimal contact with the French people.
• At one point, a young boy approached Glenn and asked for a hand grenade so he
could blow up a German machine gun that was attacking the soldiers. He
succeeded.
(01:04:10) Occupation of Germany
• The men were assigned to various towns throughout Germany.
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
They would patrol through the town, and held one position that they had to guard
on the Autobahn.
His squad was assigned to a small town, he does not remember the name.
Russian soldiers were occupying the town next to theirs.
The Russian soldiers would steal cattle from the small American fortified town.
The German citizens were beginning to return to “normal” life about a month
after the allied forces took over.
He was transferred to the 3rd division for actual occupation services once his
division shipped out.
He occupied Germany for about a year and a half.
He was stationed at Kassel, Germany.
When he returned in 1995, he could not even tell a war had ever existed there.
During the war, almost every house was ruined.
A theatre in town, reportedly had over 400 people in it when it was bombed.
Glenn recalls that the stench was horrible.
He would supervise new recruits to the area through their basic training skills,
such as marching and calisthenics.
During the occupation, he decided to partake in classes offered in another town.
One of the classes was in agriculture, and had the opportunity to teach it.
(01:13:34) Impressions of German Civilians
• Remembers them as a very industrious people.
• Recalls that the women worked more than the men, because most of the men,
Glenn feels, were gone due to the war.
• An old lady who lived across the street would do his washing and also baked him
a cake for his birthday.
• The German people were very friendly towards the American soldiers.
(01:16:45) Learning of V-J Day
• Glenn was on leave in Paris, France.
• Recalls the city as jubilant when the news was delivered.
(01:17:30) Communication with Home
• He would write 5-6 letters a day he said.
• He received notification that he would be sent home.
(01:18:29) Process of returning home
• He was sent to a processing station in Germany.
• There, he stood in lines all day long for meals in the mess kits.
• He was loaded onto a small victory ship and landed in New York City, right past
the Statue of Liberty.
• Most of the men were violently ill on the ship due to a storm.
• He received tickets from the military to get home.
• His parents did not know that he would be returning home.
• Received a purple heart and a bronze star for his efforts.
�•
He feels that his military efforts have made him thankful for the freedoms that he
has.
�
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
TenBrinkG
Title
A name given to the resource
TenBrink, Glenn (Interview outline and video), 2004
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
TenBrink, Glenn
Description
An account of the resource
Glenn TenBrink served in the 70th Infantry Division during World War II. He joined his unit as a replacement in a rifle company in January, 1945 and participated in battles in northeastern France and in Germany before being wounded in action. He provides detailed descriptions of training, combat and occupation duty in Germany.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Boring, Frank (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
United States. Army
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
2004-06-26
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fb41a06df10899ccd975fd7464d8049f.m4v
09d74f0dbb149228e0637677bfdf2c47
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a0938b5daaa72aa4e8557eede0841720.pdf
824c4e83a407681acf85c3707ba091a9
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Vietnam War
Richard Teesdale
Length of interview (13:58)
(00:17) Basic Training
Served in the Vietnam War in the U.S. Marine Corps. (00:21)
Upon discharge, he was an E4. (00:28)
Served mostly in Vietnam. (00:34)
Enlisted in October, 1966 at the Grand Rapids Marine Corps Depot. Had his physical in
Detroit before being sent to MCRD in California for basic training for 8 weeks. (00:45)
Was 19 at the time. (03:25)
Describes why he chose the Marine Corps. (05:27)
Joined the service because he wanted to serve his country and thought that he could reach
his full potential as a Marine. (07:14)
Was the only one in his family to ever join the service. (07:36)
Was sent to ITR (infantry training) before being assigned to a Combat Engineer position.
(01:34)
Went to Camp Lejeune for 20 weeks to learn how to disarm mines and booby traps.
(01:55)
(02:10) Service in Vietnam
They spent most of their time Quang Tri, Hue, and Quang-thien. Also went to Da Nang
for
R&R for three days at China Beach. (05:54)
Everyone was told that they were to defend their nation and there was no question of that.
(03:08)
Served in the several offensives and considers himself lucky to have survived. (08:00)
Describes getting to know his superiors. (02:17)
Describes their leisure time activities, which included story telling, writing home, and
stargazing with friends. (06:40)
Describes the importance of making close friends in order to keep sane. (03:30)
Had his picture taken in Da Nang at a camera shop. Sent it home to his mother to let her
know that he was all right. (12:37)
Served for over 13 months. (08:31)
(07:46) Life after Service
Recalls that it was very difficult to adjust to life after the service. (07:46)
Describes the long-term effects he’s suffered from Agent Orange and Post-Tramatic
Stress Syndrome. (02:44)
Currently attends group therapy twice a month to help with his PSTD. Spent 35 days at
the North Chicago VA Medical Center to get “tweaked up.” (09:16)
Received a Bronze Star with a Combat V and a Purple Heart, and a Presidential Unit
Citation Award, among others. (04:45)
�Received Staff Sergeant chevrons. (11:27)
Was honored to be a Marine. (12:30)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
TeesdaleR
Title
A name given to the resource
Teesdale, Richard (Interview outline and video), 2009
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Teesdale, Richard
Description
An account of the resource
Richard Teesdale served in the Vietnam War with the U.S. Marine Corps. After his eight weeks of basic training in California and 20 weeks at Camp Lejeune, NC, he was assigned to a Combat Engineer unit. His service in Vietnam included several offensives in Quang Tri, Hue and Quang Thien. He was awarded several medals, including a Bronze Star with a Combat V and a Purple Heart, among others. Today, he still has difficulty adjusting to life after the Vietnam War. He has suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, as well as the long-term effects of Agent Orange.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Teesdale, Elizabeth Eve (Interviewer)
Kellogsville High School (Kelloggsville, MI)
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. 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
2009
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives