35 24 1541 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a01a05bd588942e04e99b632dd507d20.mp4 e698beaec58db9fc5b9690ca6e9bfe18 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e46e50622e6b339a78d656511d4348cd.pdf 54ce5c4796b78e555af2666225cb1651 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Tony Pacino (24:12) Background Information (00:14)        Served with the Marine Corps as a combat medic (Navy Corpsman) in Somalia (00:15) Tony joined the military due to its education opportunities. (00:21) He enjoyed his training, although it was very demanding. (1:20) There was a blanket fear of failure amongst the soldiers. No man wanted to let another down. (2:10) Before being sent to Somalia in approx. 1992, Tony was stationed in Japan for approx. 1 year. (2:50) When Tony returned to the U.S. he was sent to Camp Pendleton California. There, the men were very aware of the situation in Somalia and were trying to guess who would go first. (3:30) A man of standing E4 or higher needed to volunteer to go to Somalia. Tony had to volunteer being one of the only men who fit this description. (4:16) Arrival in Somalia (5:00)      Tony had culture shock when he saw Somalia based on their living conditions and practices. (5:15) The airport was entirely barricaded and had U.N. guards. (5:54) Tony and other soldiers had trouble trusting the U.N. guards based on their Pakistani origins. (6:25) The heat was very strong with little to no shade.(6:58) The soldiers knew very little of what they would do in Somalia when they arrived there. This left the soldiers feeling very uncertain. (7:40) Operations in Somalia (8:10)          The men were sent by truck to the US Embassy compound. (8:15) There were a lot of people around and lots of destroyed or rundown buildings. (8:40) Tony was 21 when he was sent to Somalia. (10:00) Tony was given many different jobs. He was often sent on many different convoys with varying Marine units. This task often lasted several days. (10:40) When working at the field hospital, there were not very many wound soldiers to serve. (11:30) After things slowed down and he was moved to the Port of Mogadishu, Tony was made a supply clerk and a mail clerk. (12:19) Tony also worked in the Battalion Aid Station performing first aid on soldiers as well as Somalis. (13:35) He made many good friends in the service. He has lost contact with them sense. (14:25) During down time while in Somalia, the men would play spades and dominos. (15:36) Life after Service (16:22) �   It required adjustment when he returned to the U.S. in approx. 1994. He thinks being young, he failed to realize the danger he placed himself in. (16:33) In reflection, Tony is very thankful that he was not wounded or hurt while in the service. (18:09) Tony wanted to work for the fire department when he returned home. He was later encouraged to go to nursing school in St Louis, Missouri. (19:16) Operations in Somalia (cont.) (20:30)     Tony did see combat in Somalia. The combat was mostly quick, much like an ambush. (20:33) He was fearful at times. At times it was “beyond words.” He overcame his fear by following his training. (21:16) His friendships and training were the most valuable things he acquired as a result of his service. (22:14) Periodically, the men were allowed to make phone calls. Letters were also sent. (23:30) � 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 PacinoT1362V Title A name given to the resource Pacino, Anthony (Interview outline and video), 2012 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Pacino, Anthony Description An account of the resource Tony Pacino served in the U.S. Navy as a medical corpsman assigned to the Marine Corps from approximately 1992-1994. During his service, Tony served in Somalia in the early 1990s at the Port of Mogadishu. After his service, Tony was able to use his military training in his career as a nurse. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ironside, Audrey (Interviewer) Tilma, Nicole (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Video recordings Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States. Marine Corps 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 2012-02-21 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/dee4331f721592104291915d391f8beb.mp4 d9b42f6799dca90af854fca675bfdaf5 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2c9f160d7adb6775526e5827e3ccec7b.pdf 00841b6aeee8aece153ed9a2c982825c PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW CHARLES OLSEN Born: September 7, 1921 Muskegon, Michigan Resides: Interviewed by: James Smither PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project, Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, December 13, 2013 Interviewer: Now Mr. Olsen, can you start by giving us some background on yourself? Sure, I was born in Hackley Hospital on the 7th of September 1921. My mother name was Goldie Margaret Walker Olsen and my father‟s name was Charles Arthur Olsen. Charles Arthur Olsen was in the 126th Infantry in WWI and was severely wounded and he kind of brought me up in a military tradition. Interviewer: What kind of work was he doing while you were growing up? What kind of work? I did every kind of work that a father could get his son to do. Interviewer: What kind of work did he do? What did he do for a living? He was a machinist, he was a machinist at the Muskegon Motor Specialties company and he had a job all through the depression. 1:00 My mother died when I was eight and my dad raised me and he did a good job. Interviewer: You said he had you doing all kinds of work. Yeah, we built a house as an example, out in Jenison and we built that house in 1936, 37, 38 and 1939. We built it standard and beautiful and it‟s been kept up. Interviewer: Did you finish high school? I graduated—I was supposed to graduate with the class of 1939, but I flunked English in the last quarter and I ended up graduating in February of 1040. In the meantime I had 1 �already decided to go into the service, so dad took two of my high school buddies and me to get in the RCAF [Royal Canadian Air Force], because the British had already started fighting the Germans. 2:01 The Germans—this is the same week the Germans moved into Poland, so we went to get into the Royal Canadian flying corps. The other two guys from Muskegon got in and they were going to take me and one of the pilots, that was in the office, looked at me and he said, “Shorty, how long are your legs?” I said, “That‟s how long they are”, and he said, “You come with me”. So, he took me in a car and took me out to the airfield and dumped me in a primary trainer, with a back pack, and said, “Kick the right rudder bar”, so I kicked the right rudder bar and he said, “Now, kick the left rudder bar”, and I said, “Shit, I can‟t reach it”, and he said, “That‟s what I thought, your legs are too short to be a pilot”. So, right then I decided I wasn‟t going to be a pilot the air corps, and we didn‟t have an air force yet. So, then we came back and in the meantime I had decided to join the guards as soon as I was eighteen. 3:01 All the guys that were in the Guard, from his division, were all friends of my father from WWI, Colonel Caldwell and the company commanders and things. So, I joined the guard right away and because I had been to CMTC for two summers and I was way ahead of most of the guard unit in training. Interviewer: Tell us a little bit about the CMTC. What was that and what were you doing there? Citizens Military Training Corps was established about the same time they established the CCC. The Citizens Military Training Corps was designed not to give the families money like the CCC did, but to build bodies of young men, who were militarily minded, and teach them some things. The whole story was, you went to the nearest army base, to 2 �your home, for a month and you did military training in the morning and athletic training in the afternoon. 4:03 You got three square meals a day and a good army uniform and you got good army training. You got to shoot all the rifles and whatever other weapons you were going to be using. It turned out I went to Fort Custer and at Fort Custer we had all infantry type things. I enjoyed it and I was very active in the Boy Scouts here in Troop Seven in Muskegon and in the Sea Scouts after I got a little older. In fact, I was a Sea Scout First Mate when I went with the guard. It was the CMTC that kind of pre trained me for my duties in the guard, which I didn‟t know about. At that time the army was changing from the old nineteen year old rifle to the new M-1, which was named for Mr. Garand. 5:00 So, when I got into the guard, here in town, on the very first night, the first sergeant is standing up in front of the company and said, “Sergeant Hart is going to announce the arrival of a shipment of new rifles and he‟s going to tell yo all about it”. Sergeant Hart was an old guard guy and had been there for twenty years. He only wanted to be there, really, one of the guys that only get paid once a quarter, so he walked out with the M-1 in his hand and my face has never been able to disguise what I‟m thinking and I‟m standing right in the front row. He was a little bitty guy, a hundred and five pounds, and he said, “This is a Garand”, and I shook my head and the first sergeant said, “Olsen, why are you shaking your head?” I said, “Because Sergeant Hart don‟t know what the fuck he‟s talking about”. 6:02 He said, “What do you mean”, and I said, “That‟s not the Garand, a guy by the name of Garand made it”. I said, “That‟s the U.S. Army rifle, M-1 caliber 30, bla, bla, bla”, and he said, “How do you know this?” I said, “Because I just came from two summers of CMTC”, and he said, “Do you know any more?” So, I listed off everything about the M-1 and he turned to the deputy, or the exec, 3 �and he said, “Bring him to the 1st platoon as infantry trainer”, so that‟s where I ended up there. Interviewer: Now, when you were with the training corps, you were out at Fort Custer, was Fort Custer a lot smaller than it was going to be later? Was there building going on there? It was kind of a left over from WWI and it was a pretty good size. Interviewer: I know a lot of building went on during the war and it got to be a very big base. 7:00 I sure, but I‟ve never been back to Custer since. My wife went back there the first of June while I was in Japan in 1948 for an operation. Interviewer: But, you’ve not been back to see it? Okay, so we’re going to go back to your story here. You’re in the Guard, you’re now having to show them how to use the M-1. Then the next thing that happened was the government announced that we were going, we the National Guard per say, were going to be called to active duty on the 8th of October, 1940 for one year, just like they‟re doing now, so we all gathered up and the first thing we had to do was take a physical. About thirty percent of the guys that took the physical couldn‟t pass it to go on active duty, so we left them here. We assembled and went through some vaccinations and we ended up in Camp Beauregard, Louisiana, and subsequently transferred about thirty miles away to Camp Livingston. 8:09 Interviewer: Now, how did they get you down to Camp Beauregard? On a train Interviewer: Alright 4 �On a train, jammed on a train, get on it and go. Interviewer: How long did it take to get down there? I‟m going to say a day and a half. Interviewer: Did you get to see anything on the way down? Not much, not much Interviewer: What was Camp Beauregard like when you got there? It was a WWI camp, not very large; it was kind of—just like Fort Custer here in Michigan. We stayed there from October until February and in the meantime they were building this new camp, Camp Livingston, about twenty miles away. As soon as Camp Livingston got partially done, they started to move parts of the 126th and the rest of the 32nd Division into Camp Livingston. 9:02 Pretty soon the whole 32nd Division was there with two, or three, other outfits. Interviewer: Describe a little bit the kind of training you were getting on Louisiana. Starting like right back in CMTC many of the guys were—at the same time the Japs started, so they made a mistake, from my viewpoint. They drafted guys from Michigan and I‟m going to tell you this, because there‟s one guy that‟s very important. In drafting all these guys from Michigan they got the athletes and all that stuff, you know, everybody was only eighteen and could physically pass it, so you‟re now in the army. So they ended up by sending a bunch of Muskegon guys to us, to G Company, okay, with the 126th. In the meantime, because of my CMTC training, I had enough knowledge and training that my battalion commander said, “You‟re going to need to be thr new trainee training NCO, you and four other NCO‟s”. 10:12 And he said, “You got to run these guys through twelve weeks of basic training as fast as you can, because we don‟t know what‟s going to 5 �happen”. Well, we didn‟t, we knew that maneuvers were scheduled for 1941 and stuff like that. So, he took all the guys from Muskegon and one of the things that was really interesting to me was there was a number one football player who wouldn‟t give me the time of day while I was there in high school because I was so little. He was Ray Ahrens and he came down in that first batch. Here I am standing out to train all these guys and here‟s all our football players and that sort of thing, and as that turned out, Ray took to military training real well. 11:00 To make a long story short, he got his training in, went to OCS and became and officer, went to the South Pacific almost immediately and was killed almost immediately. He was one of the first draftees from Muskegon to get killed in combat. That was, I thought, interesting, and we trained then until the division got orders to move. The training was just field training, marched twenty miles a day with a full pack five, six, eight days in a row and rested a day, and sleep in little pup tents at night. It rained quite a bit in the winter in Louisiana and we had to try to stay dry and stay warm to stay alive. It was good for us and good for the country. Interviewer: How did the Michigan guys hold up when it got hot? Good, yeah, good, it was hot like it is here in the summertime, but the guys held up. 12:04 See, our battalion, the 2nd Battalion of the 126 was E, F and G companies and headquarters of the 2nd Battalion. F Company came from Grand Haven and E Company from Holland, I think. Interviewer: D was Holland E Company was Holland? Interviewer: I’m not sure what E was, but D was Holland 6 �The 2nd Battalion, and then we were G Company, a rifle company and we did all the typical training that was required. At that same time, because I‟d got into this thing with the RCAF when I was in high school, they said—see the other two guys were accepted by the RCAF, and they went on to do the training and one of them became a qualified fighter pilot, went to Europe, ended up in Europe and the last time I heard of him was in 1947 or 1948 and he was a Lieutenant Colonel in our air force by that time. 13:02 The other guy got almost completely through the training and he started to get sick, so they washed him out, and I don‟t even remember his name. But, I was interested in doing something other than walking around with a big, heavy pack on my back and two duffle bags in my hands and a rifle on my shoulder and a tin hat. So, I went to see my first sergeant and I had heard that over a Camp Beauregard, which was only about five miles away, that there was another thing called the Army Signal Corps Army Air Corps office, and they were looking for cadets. So, I asked the first sergeant if I could go over and see these people and he said, “We don‟t know what‟s going to happen to us, but you‟ve been with us for almost two years now and we want to keep you around”, and I said, “Thanks sergeant”, and that Saturday came and I scooted over there anyhow. 14:00 I walked into this air corps office and told the guy what I wanted and he looked at me, and I told him about my RCAF thing and he said, “Well, you obviously can‟t be a pilot”, and I said, “No, but I can be a damn good bombardier”, and he said, “Well, see if you can take this test, because you‟re very fortunate they dropped the two years of college requirement to be an aviation cadet two weeks ago. Now we‟ve got this test 2CX. If you can pass the 2CX, you‟re in the air corps”. So, I took the test and it wasn‟t that hard. A lot of it was about things about local events, which I had been able to find anyhow, because I was 7 �kind of a history major. He looked at my paper and he said, “We‟re going to transfer you to the United States Army Air Corps today”. I said, “Ho, ho, ho”, because I had been married about eighteen months before that. I said, “Are you going to transfer me as..." because they made me a private, and he said, “No, we‟re transferring you today and you‟re going to be a sergeant”. 15:04 Because you‟ve had all your training, we‟re going to send you down to an air force cadet training center and yo won‟t have to take all this basic training, so you‟ll be able to go into aviation training more rapidly. I said, “There‟s one thing I want to tell you, my testicles hurt”, and I had lifted up two big duffle bags to put them on a truck about a month before that and got a double hernia and didn‟t realize it. I had all kinds of pains down there, so he said, “Go to the hospital and see what they‟ve got to say”. In the meantime, he said, “We‟ll let your outfit know that you are now in the air corps, so go back and get your stuff”, so I went back to where the company was and went and saw the first sergeant. He shook his head and said, “God damn you, you‟re not going to the air corps, because I‟m going to bust your ass to private”. 16:02 I said, “Go ahead, because they‟re going to make me a sergeant just as soon as I get back over to Beauregard”, and he said, “Well get your stuff and get the hell out of here”, he was really unhappy I was leaving. A couple of other guys that were in my squad, from in town here, they thought about doing the same thing and whether they ever did, or not, I don‟t remember. Interviewer: Now, when was this that you made the switch? This would have been 19--Interviewer: Sometime in 1941 8 �Yeah, I‟m trying to think of the month. Springtime, no fall, fall of 1941, so I went to the hospital and got the operation, came back here and spent some time with my father and step mother in Glenside, where my father and I had built a house. It took three years to build it and we took pictures of it yesterday. It‟s still standing and in good shape, but of course, now there are houses everyplace. 17:01 In those days it was all woods from the Grand Trunk to our house, to Jenny Stimmer on the corner, it was all woods. Interviewer: So, you get to go home, you get a leave, and then where do you go from there? I went back to Kelly Field as a cadet. When I was at brought in there as an air corps sergeant, they took one look at me and said, “We can‟t put you on the line working on airplanes, because you don‟t know anything about them, but yo do have all your basic training, so what we‟re going to do is send you to bombardier school”. Wait a minute; I should back up a little. Just before this they said, “We‟ll send you to training”, and they hadn‟t decided yet that I was going to really be a bombardier. He said, “Well, find yourself a job here and we‟ll phone you in for work every day, so we know where you are, and yo don‟t have nothing to do”, so I went home and told my wife, “I got a job with nothing to do. All I‟ve got to do is report in every day and I can have Saturday and Sunday off”. 18:03 Well, we thought that was great, still getting sergeants pay, and we thought that was a pretty good deal. So, I did that for a while and then they shipped me to the aviation testing center in San Antonio, Texas. It‟s Lackland Air Force Base now and it used to be Kelly Field. At that time there were a thousand guys coming, just getting drafted, college guys and stuff that were going to be cadets. You went in there and three officers, air corps officer, asked you why you were there, you had to know what 9 �you wanted to do and all that sort of thing, how old you were and what you had done in the past. So, this one Captain said, “Well, what do you want to do?” I said to him, “Well, I‟m going to be the best God damn bombardier you ever saw”. 19:04 Nobody wanted to be a bombardier, they wanted to be a pilot, everybody wanted to fly an airplane. I didn‟t, I was outnumbered , so the other guy turned to the two Lieutenants and he said, “He wants to be a bombardier”, and the two Lieutenants said, “Let‟s let him”, so he said, “Okay, go out that door”, and he said, “We‟ll put your name on the transfer sheet today”. Normally you put your name on a transfer sheet and three days later it would appear and you had to come back and get in line to find out where you were going. When you walked out that door, names and the guy never knew where they were going, so when I came out of the door, the guy said, “Where are you going?” I said, “I‟m going to bombardier school someplace, I don‟t know”, and the Lieutenant said, “You‟re going to San Angelo, Texas”, so I went home where my wife was staying and talked to her and she said, “Okay, when do we start packing?” 20:01 She was pretty flexible, so we ended up going to bombardier school. In the meantime she found herself pregnant and I guess I had something to do with that. Then it appeared that she was going to have the baby about the same time as I was going to graduate and I was doing damn good in school. I was the number one bombardier in the class and there was another guy by the name of Olsen that was number two, so there were two of us and we had a fantastic circular air. I think he had a hundred and twenty five feet and I had a hundred and twenty four, and that‟s a hundred and twenty five feet from the aiming point whatever altitude yo bombed at up to eleven thousand feet, or down on the deck, so that was a good average. I said to my wife, “I think you better go home, because the baby is going to be due just 10 �about the time I graduate”, so she said, “Okay”, so we got ahold of my dad and he said, “Yeah, she can come and live with us until you come home”. 21:03 So, then I started training and finished up as a bombardier and a 2nd Lieutenant. Interviewer: Alright, now tell us a little bit about the training process itself. What kinds of planes were you flying in when you did this? We were flying the twin engine, I don‟t remember the name of it, a twin engine bomber, a training bomber and we only dropped about eight bombs at a time, which I don‟t remember---ET-6 was a single engine airplane, but I don‟t remember, I think it was—I just don‟t remember. Interviewer: But, it was a trainer, it wasn’t one of the regular combat aircraft you get later? No, it was a trainer with a pilot, co-pilot, two bombardiers and the loaded bombs, practice bombs. Interviewer: Now were you working—were you using a Norden bomb sight yet, or were you using other ones? No, we were working with the Norden from WWI and it was very interesting to see how it worked. 22:04 If yo did your things right, and put the data in right that came from charts and graphs and everything in the airplane is right, level, wings level, and everything like that, then the bombs hit where they were supposed to hit, otherwise god knows where they hit, but they hit the ground, fortunately. So, I stayed there then and went from—I graduated and then I went to Ellington Field in Texas to a B-26 organization, the B-26 twin engine bomber. We were supposed to go to the South Pacific, so we did maneuvers for a month and a half doing that in Texas and doing all air 11 �to ground machine gun firing, or torpedoes, or bombs. 23:00 then they called up one say and said, “Send you families home, because we‟re going someplace away from the base”, so I sent my wife back to my dad‟s place and gathered up stuff that I had, which wasn‟t very much, and the train came by and we got on the train and we thought we were going someplace to get a new airplane, and that‟s what everybody said the guys were doing. So, we rode on the train for about a day and a half. Well, we ended up in New Jersey. Interviewer: Along the way, did you have any idea where you were? No, we were on the train, a dark train and we never could get off. They might bring us some C rations and they might not, and the train was full of guys all going overseas and had to go to this station in New Jersey. We got in there and they said, “Okay, you B26ers are going to go to Nova Scotia and you‟re going to go to Europe, you‟re not going to go to the South Pacific. You‟re going to go to Europe, to England, or maybe Ireland before you start flying out of England”. 24:15 “You‟re going to start flying bombing missions out of England.” So, we got on a British transport, HMS City, a big British transport and it was a good old transport and the main thing I remember was that it was very crowded and secondly, we got creamed codfish balls on toast for breakfast. Interviewer: You got the British menu. Day after day, from the port and we also had a full American hospital, nurses and the works on that boat, and I probably don‟t want to put this in, a black engineer battalion. The engineer battalion was down as deep in the boat as they could put them and those poor guys couldn‟t go on deck, or anything, because of the nurses, that‟s the reasoning they gave us. 25:07 They put us in someplace to stay, there were sixteen of us in a 12 �stateroom and we had no more than got started out on the ocean and everyone got sick but me. Of course, I‟d done some, a lot of Sea Scout work, sailing and stuff and I didn‟t get sick. The guys were lying in their beds and puking in their helmets and stuff and I‟m dumping their God damn helmets and cleaning them out and bringing them back. Finally all those guys get to feeling good and then I got sick. Then I got my helmet and started to puke and they‟re taking care of me. The next thing you know, we ended up in northern England. Interviewer: Now, on the way over were you sailing in a convoy, or by yourself? Initially we were in a convoy and then for some reason we turned around and went back to Nova Scotia for a day and a half, and then we ended up in a four vessel convoy, four vessels and a destroyer. 26:03 We thought then that we were headed for England and that‟s where we ended up. Right away we went through an orientation, and then they said, “Your airfield for B-26‟s is not done yet, so we‟re going to send yo to Ireland to do some training there. They got some B-26‟s there where you can train. Interviewer: Alright, now when was this that you got there? Forty three, six—it was April—it might have been about November or December of 1943. So, we went to Ireland, we got there and they had two airplanes. There were thirty six B-26 crews already there and here comes nine or ten crews with me, so there‟s no way we can start flying very much. 27:00 This is kind of funny—as we started to come to the airfield I saw this sign and it said, OLD BUSHMILLS IRISH WHISKEY, a huge sign and the first night we were there we all went to the officers club to get a drink. Brand new 2nd Lieutenant‟s overseas with a pocket full of money and they ain‟t got anything to sell us. They got no beer, they got no booze and they said, “Sorry we got 13 �nothing, we can‟t get nothing”, and I said, “Bull shit, there‟s got to be booze, there‟s a sign right down here that say‟s OLD BUSHMILLS IRISH WHISKEY less than a mile. There was an officer sitting alongside of me, and I hadn‟t even noticed him, he was an air corps Bird Colonel, and he looked over at me and he said, “Lieutenant, you sound like you want to go and get some booze for us”, and I said, “I‟ll tell you what, I was a sergeant for a lot of years and I know that when I get some cigarettes”, and I had already found out there were no cigarettes in Ireland. 28:07 I said, “If I can get some cigarettes from the PX, I can take the cigarettes and trade them for booze”, and he shook his head and said, “I‟m not even going to ask about this, what do you want to do?” I said, “I want a Jeep, a trailer, a driver and as many big cartons of cigarettes of various kinds that you can give me.” So, he got a hold of somebody and here comes a young officer and he said, “What do you want?” I told him and he said, “What are you going to do with them?” I told him, “I‟m going to give them away”, and he said, “You can‟t give these cigarettes away”, and I said, “Yes I can, the Colonel said I could”. We loaded the trailer and went down to Old Bushmills. It was pretty neat when I think about it—went in and I talked to the boss man and told him what I wanted to do and the boss man said, “No way, we can‟t take your cigarettes and give you whiskey”. 29:02 I said, “Okay”, and we‟d seen another distillery down the road. We walked out of this place and here‟s three buildings shaped like big kegs, fifty feet high and eighty feet long, and this is where they were storing all the Old Bushmills. A little short guy came out of this one, he had black pants on, a black hat and an apron and he said, “Aye, what yah doing?” I said, “I came up to see if I could trade cigarettes for booze”, and he looked at me like this and said, “Did you say trade cigarettes for booze?” I said, “Yeah, but I saw the number one man in 14 �there and he said, “We can‟t do it”. He said, “Come with me”, and he took me through the door and we went inside. The first thing he did was reach up and get a barrel jar about that high, walked over to this big vat, huge vat, filled it with about this much Old Bushmills Irish whiskey in that class. 30:04 My sergeant‟s standing there with me, he filled his glass, and he said, “Here drink this”. I never drank Irish whiskey before in my life, and I drank very little of anything, but beer, because my dad wasn‟t a drinker. So, I drank a little bit of the stuff, and Jesus, it burned my mouth, burned my face and spilled it down my chest. He said, “I can trade you case for case, Irish whiskey for cigarettes. He said, “How many cases do you think you got?” I said, “I got thirty, there are thirty cases”, and he said, “What have yo got?” I said, “I got Lucky Strike, I got Pall Mall”, and he said, “We don‟t have to learn that, save more”, and he said something to another guy and he want and got another guy and pretty soon there‟s about ten guys there to get those cigarettes. By the time I could get out of there—in the meantime it started to rain and by the time I could get out to the Jeep it was pouring. 31:03 Fortunately I had a raincoat in the back of the Jeep and the Jeep had a canvas cover with no sides, so they loaded up the truck and all I know is they couldn‟t get any more in there and he said, “If you get anymore cigarettes, come back”. I didn‟t think I would ever be back over there, but I said, “Yes sir, I‟ll do that”, so I went back over to our airbase and went to the PX and got ahold of this young PX officer and I said, “I got some booze for you”, and he said, “How many bottles you got?” I said, “Were not talking about bottles, we‟re talking about cases”. I said, “The back of the trailer‟s full and the back of the Jeep is full”. He just shook his head and went to the telephone, and the next thing I know the Colonel‟s down there and the colonel said, “My God, how did yo do this?” I told him, “You trade 15 �cigarettes for booze”. 32:00 He said, “Now, we‟ll keep you around here for a while and we‟ll let you do that again next month”. I didn‟t want to sit there in Ireland doing nothing for another month, because there was nothing to do. There were no planes to train on, no training area, there were very few girls around and the guys that were already there had all the girls lined up. So we just kind of sat around for a couple days and in comes two C-54‟s, empty. A Colonel got out of one of them, an air corps Colonel, and they assembled all of the B-26 guys, and they said, “Did you guys come over here to fight in the war or fart around in Ireland?” We said, „We came to fight the war”, and they said, “We don‟t have B-26‟s for you, we don‟t have B-26 bases, but we got the hell shot out of us over in Germany the last three days and we lost something like thirty airplanes on both raids, and we need pilots, navigators, bombardiers, crewmen and anybody that can fly an airplane”. 33:06 he said, “We‟re going to take you over, if you want to go, transfer you to the 8th Air Force and put you in B-17‟s”. I looked at my pilot of the B26‟s and I like him anyhow, he was a kid just out of civilian life, no military training, he knew how to fly a B-26, but he was afraid of it, he was just afraid of it. The co-pilot, now, was an ex Texas crop duster, his name was Carroll Cooper, I think it was Carroll. Anyhow, he was the co-pilot and he could fly that airplane, and he wanted to go to the B17‟s, I wanted to go to the B-17‟s and when I said I was going to the B-17‟s, all the participants said, „We‟re coming too”, so we ended up in an assembly area, in England, where they could put crew together. 34:04 They formed us then into ten man groups that would be a full crew for a B-17 and started us to do some B-17 training. After about a week of that they shipped us out to various bomb groups and I ended up in 379. Interviewer: Where were they based? 16 �Kimballton, that‟s up close to Oxford, not too far away, a big base and they‟d been in operation, I‟d say, three months. They‟d taken some hits , so they took our whole—we had two crews of us, of B-26‟s and the group commander was a real smart West Point Officer, and he said, “I‟m not putting you guys in here together”. 35:01 He said, I‟m going to put you in other crews” and then he said, to the one officer, “Didn‟t you lose your bombardier yesterday?” And this guy said, “Yeah, I did Colonel”, and he said, “Here‟s your new bombardier”, and he grabbed me by the jacket and he said, “You‟re going to be his bombardier”, and I said, “Oh, good”, and he said, “Get your stuff”, and then this guy, his name was Arvin Dahl, and he had about twenty missions in already. In those days when you got twenty-five in you could get a Distinguished Service Flying Cross and you‟re allowed to go home. Of course, not many people got in twenty-five. They ended up either dead, or a POW, but this guy was a damn good pilot. I go assigned to him and flew a couple of practice missions, and as it turned out, the head bombardier of that squadron was a guy from Jackson, Michigan and when he found out I was from Muskegon we became buddies right away. 36:04 He was a Captain, a young Captain, and he said, “You stay with Dahl, because Dahl is a damn good pilot”, and he said, “ Get five or six missions in with him and we‟ll see if we can find a good job for you. He wasn‟t worth a damn with that bomb sight, but they didn‟t know anything about my abilities, so I rode with Dahl and we had three missions. I remember, we took off and went to regular formation, and the way we bombed was in a tight formation and when the lead ship dropped his bombs, everybody else kicked there‟s, so we got great pattern. So, it depended on the pilots to have everything level and the air speed exactly as planned and the same altitude and air speed and then the bombs all go together in a big pattern. 17 �So, I went with Dahl on two of these missions and we came back at the end of the second one and Dahl said, “How do you like this?” 37:00 I said, “Fine, but I‟m not doing anything that some sergeant couldn‟t do, kick a switch and kick these things out the door. Interviewer: Because you weren’t using your Norden bomb sight, only the lead plane did? It was there, and we were flying, at that period, we were flying deputy, off of the leader. I had nothing to do, I just sat there with the door open and when the lead opened his doors, I opened my doors. When his first bomb cracked the door, mine cracked, and all the rest of the guys cracked, so we‟re all doing the same thing. So, then on the third mission we were going to Kiel and we turned into a town called Flensburg, which was the initial point and we turned and got headed towards Kiel and the day before the group bombardier, who was a Major, had given me and the other bombardiers, a series of pictures and he said, “Here‟s some viable targets you‟re probably going to have to hit”, and one of them was Kiel and he had some circles on Kiel. 38:04 He told us what these probable target were, and as it turned out this target come to this Gestapo headquarters in the town of Kiel. We‟re turning off the I-V, with the leader, and the leader comes out of formation and went up about twenty feet and Dahl said we are now the lead group. He said, “The group leader can‟t control his airplane, so he‟s going to go to the back of the formation and we‟re now the group leader”. He said, “Olsen, you‟ve got to find the target town”, and I stuck my head down and fortunately I was a good navigator. I stuck my head down in the site and I see the town and they had smoke pots burning all around the town, so the smoke covered the whole town. 39:00 From thirty thousand—twentyfive thousand feet, actually, you couldn‟t see hardly at all. So, I stuck my head in the site 18 �and lo and behold, I had a crack in between the smoke and I looked in and I saw a park. I remembered from studying that target that the park was about a block from the Gestapo headquarters. In the center of the park there was a [?} lake and when I‟m looking at that thing, I‟m looking at the lake. I called Dahl and I said, “Level everything up”, and I did all the things that I had already prepared for, tightened it all down and shook my head, and I was thinking I was already on the lake. I said, “Tighten the formation up”. He didn‟t remember what he had to do to get these guys tight, closer, and I just rolled in a little bit of left turn and the site swung around like that and there‟s the cross, right on the Gestapo headquarters just as the bombs went away. 40:04 God was with me and I was just plain lucky, and we hit the target. We got home and there was this thing going on. We got back to the airfield from the raid and the leaders went to the Colonel's mess for being busy, just the leaders and what was good about that was that the colonel had a cow and he gave me a glass of milk. Nobody had milk the whole time they were on the base, but the Colonel, so if you were flying the lead ship you got a chance to get a glass of milk. We went in there and there were three groups like our group and no group in the 8th Air Force that day, as I remember it, hit the primary target, but us. A guy came in with a Corona and the Colonel said, “How did you do?” The guy shook his head and said, “Not very good Colonel, we only hit the target one out of three”. 41:04 And he said, “Okay, what target did Olsen do?” “He threw them in the dirt.” “What did Joe Brown do?” “He threw them in the dirt.” He said, “What did Dahl and Olsen do?” He said, “Olsen got lucky, he found it and fired”. The old man looked at me and said, “You‟re lucky and from now on, you‟re going to be a lead bombardier”. Dahl said, “Do you know what that means?” I said, “No”, and he said, “That means you‟re going to get 19 �promoted real rapidly”, and I had only been a Lieutenant about six months, a 2nd Lieutenant. Then I flew two more lead missions with Dahl and Dahl went down and he went home. Interviewer: Alright, about when were these missions going on? Early September of 1943 Interviewer: I’m trying to keep your timeline straight, because earlier we had you crossing the ocean after that. Is this before the landing in Europe and all that? 42:07 Yes Interviewer: Okay 6th of June, 1944, and incidentally, I was the last high two bombardiers who dropped that morning. Interviewer: I was just trying to make sure we have everything in order, so basically, September, or so, of 1943, you’ve flown eight missions with Dahl, you had one over Kiel, do you know where—were the other ones all over Germany? I was flying with all kinds of pilots and most of them were Lieutenant Colonels and Majors, good leading groups. I had a Captain navigator that had about eighteen missions, a guy by the name of Jack Firestone, he was a good navigator. We had a good navigator and a good pilot to get you to the vicinity of the target then it was up to you to do your thing with the Norden and whatever else had to be done. There are lots of things that had to be done, like taking the safety wires out of the bombs. Forget that, get hit with the safety wires in and they‟re not going to go off. 43:00 Somebody‟s got to do that and somebody‟s got to check and see that it‟s been done, but I enjoyed, really enjoyed what I 20 �was doing. I wasn‟t really scared. The flak would go off right in front of us and the airplane would go down and the fighters would come in and shoot at them and they would shoot at us, and as long as we weren‟t getting full of holes—I was real lucky, the guys in my airplane were not getting hurt and maybe it was because we were the lead duck and the rest of them were getting all the crap. Dahl finally finished and I started flying with these Majors and Colonels and finally the group executive officer, the Lieutenant Colonel, he said, “You‟re going to be my bombardier from now on”. I said, “How about Firestone, having Captain Firestone as navigator?” He said, “Firestone‟s got ten more, we just extended him for five”, and I said, “Can you do that?” He said, “We did it”. 44:00 It was good for me because it put me in a lead position, which was safer than most of the other airplanes. Did a good job, had good pilots, we did a tremendous record and I got a thing just the day before yesterday—what was that thing we got, was it last week, from the 379th? It was last week. I got a certificate about that big from the excommanding General of the 8th Air Force and it logs all the things I did while I was with the 379th. A beautiful certificate, and I was going to bring it along, but I forgot it, because I didn‟t know this was going to happen. Anyhow, it got down to D-Day and when we finally got to do it, they had put it off a couple of days; I got to be the last high altitude bombardier to drop before the guys hit the beach. 45:01 Nothing great shakes, and I wanted to make sure I didn‟t get the guys hitting the beach. When the cross hairs went like that the bombs are supposed to go away and I went like that and stopped them with my finger and said one, two, three, and I took my finger off so they could go, so I delayed the fall of the bombs, but they still hit France and still hit where some of the Germans might be down there. You never knew, because you couldn‟t see exactly. 21 �Interviewer: when you were flying that particular mission, had you done that kind of thing before? Trying to do that sort of high level ground support? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we had targets all over Germany and England, and things like that. I don‟t have my diary with me, so I couldn‟t tell you exactly. Interviewer: Over the months that were leading up to D-Day, the allies diverted a lot of their bomber forces to the transportation networks in northern Europe. And were you doing that, were you attacking railroad junctions and things like that, or bridges? We were attacking, basically, airfields and factories. 46:03 If we hit a town it was incidental. We didn‟t bomb any towns yet. Interviewer: Were you attacking things like rail lines and transportation systems? Yes Interviewer: Were you doing that in France and Belgium, or just doing it in Germany? No, France, Belgium, Holland, mostly Germany when we could get it. It depended a lot on the weather. The weather blew in kind of from England over Europe like that, so you start out on a clear day and it would be foggy by the time you got to your target and then you had to find the target. On one mission I couldn‟t find the target in time to turn to get home. Well, we had to take those bombs back and normally we don‟t want to do that, so I looked in the sight and it was a little bitty airfield in Germany, right on the edge of France. I looked at this airfield and I swear I saw three, FW-190‟s, fighter planes, on the rim. 47:02 So, I told the pilot what I had an he said, “Drop them”, so I synchronized on them and the rest of the guys didn‟t have—and this was the pilot in an eight year old 22 �aircraft, and didn‟t have time to tighten up and get a real tight pattern, so a bunch of them went in the woods beyond the airfield. You know what was in the woods? A hospital and we didn‟t know that until we got home and looked at the board. The guy came in and said, “Jesus Christ, you guys hit a German hospital”, and we said, “They‟re Germans, what else can you do about it. He said, “You didn‟t do it on purpose did you?” I said, “Hell no, we were just trying to get out of there”, and that was the end of that. Interviewer: Now, over the course of that time, what kind of losses, between late 1943 and the middle of 1944, what kind of losses was your bomb group taking? Were you losing a lot of planes then? Yes, very many and we were getting a lot of guys in that would be there less than thirty days. 48:02 Interviewer: So, they weren’t very experienced and in the experienced crews the experienced pilots would get hit? We had one guy, a friend of mine, and his name was Charlie Martin, he was a navigator and he flew a couple missions with me. Charlie would go up to these new crews that were coming in from the states, and they were big five pound notes, four dollars and five cents a pound at that time, and he‟s give these pound notes to these guys. As soon as they got on the base they wanted to meet the old guys, so they‟d go to the officers club, to the bar. Old Charlie Martin would go up to the bar and he‟d tell these guys he was short of money. Charlie had about eighteen or twenty missions on him at that time, and they‟d lend him some money. Hell, they‟re reaching in their pockets and they‟re taking out these five pound notes like they‟re toilet paper, they were big white things. Charlie would three or four of those from a new company crew and he‟d go out of there with 23 �five, or six, of them at the end of the night. 49:01 He‟s put them in his drawer, write they‟re name down and come payday, he knew damn well that he might not be there and they might not be there, so Charlie and I would go to town when we‟d get off and spend his money and come back. Come the end of the month if any of those guys were left Charlie would reach in there and with the money that was in the box, pay them back with their own money and then Charlie would borrow some more. Interviewer: Did you have fighter protection while you were flying these missions? Early on, the first ten, we had some and after that the 47‟s came in, the 38‟s came in, the 51‟s came in, and we had all kinds of fighters. Interviewer: Now, did that make the missions any safer? Yes, yeah, yeah, they kept the fighters away from us. Not a hundred percent because the Germans were flying in gaggles of about thirty fighters. 50:02 A big gaggle would form and they‟d swoop in as a group, but if they started as a group and fifteen of our fighters head towards them, then they fly in a group, one that wasn‟t tight, because if the group was tight they had a real heavy volume of defensive fire and if the group was loose they don‟t have that heavy volume. We lost a lot of guys, but I don‟t know anything about the numbers. Interviewer: Now, once you got—so basically you’re doing this for the better part of a year. Now, how long did you continue to fly bombing missions, because you made it as far as D-Day? Yeah, I flew thirty-two missions. Interviewer: So, how long did that go? Through the rest of the war, or did you get out? 24 �No, no, when I got my thirty-two in they sent me back to the states to train guys in B29‟s. Interviewer: When did they send you back to the states? 51:00 This would have been early 1944. The middle of 1944 Interviewer: The middle of 1944, because you made it to June. The 6th of June, 1944, no it was 1945, early 1945. Interviewer: Early 1945, all right I started training people at Drew Field in Florida and they joshed me about--the Germans gave up first and then the Japs gave up. Interviewer: How was flying In a B-29 different from flying in a B-17? It was bigger, slower, and I didn‟t really like it. I liked the B-17, because it was agile, and again, I didn‟t get a lot of practice in B-29‟s, I wasn‟t there that long. Interviewer: Right Again, I wanted to get into a different job, so I had done some things to do that before the Japs got done. Then they said, “The Japanese are done, we‟re done”, and they had a point system depending on how long you‟d been there. 52:01 I‟d been in since 1940, so I‟ve got five years in and how many decorations you had, and all that stuff. If you had a certain number of points you go now and within a week I was in Chicago and in two more days I‟m back in Muskegon, and they didn‟t even know I was coming, but the war was over as far as we were concerned. Interviewer: Once you got back home then, what did you do? First of all I had to find a place to put my wife and one child and we were just about ready to have another one. I had to arrange with Hackley Hospital to have her and find a 25 �place to live. That‟s kind of funny, because I had an uncle who was in real estate in Fruitport, his name was Reynolds. I told him about my problem and he found me a beautiful house on seven acres, and he took me out there. 53:00 It was empty and it had a little fire on the outside of the kitchen, because the person who had lived there before got accused of killing his wife, so somebody came and set fire to his house, but they put that fire out. That was the only thing that was wrong with that house, and it was adequate for us, my two kids and me. I had worked for Brunswick prior to the war and they wanted me to come back and work for them at thirty-five cents an hour. They weren‟t going to pay me for what I learned to do as a Captain, they just wanted to pay me, because they were required to pay me and give me my job back. Fortunately the guy that was—my father and I built a house in Glenside before the war, and the man that lived next door, his name was Coffman, he was the chief engineer for Brunswick. So, he gave me a job at forty-five cents an hour. Forty-five cents an hour, and that was the kind of money we were getting and it went not very far. 54:01 Then it was the time that they decided to reform the guard and I got the word asking, “Would you like to reform the guard battalion here and drill two nights a week, and draw Captain's pay two days?” So, in a month that would give yo sixteen days, almost, and that was good money in those days, so that‟s what I decided to do. Interviewer: So, did you work at Brunswick while doing this? Yeah Interviewer: So, you did both things. How long did that go on? About three years, actually, until 1948 Interviewer: What was involved with organizing a new guard battalion? 26 �The difficulty was, you were starting from scratch. All you had was an empty armory down here, you had no officers, no enlisted men, and no recruitment, so you had to get in all your equipment, all your officers, all your men and train them. I was pretty proficient at that and I got two accommodations from the Governor for my work there. 55:06 About the same time my wife was getting fed up with me going to the armory all the time. On days I wasn‟t getting paid I still had work to do, so I would go down to the armory and get behind my desk and do my work. She said, “Why don‟t you either get in the army, go back in the army, or get out of the guard, one of the two”, and she was right. In the meantime we had—she was pregnant with another child, I don‟t know why that happened, but it did, so I decided to resign from the guard. I tried and put my resignation in, but they wouldn‟t accept it. So, I wanted to get my air corps reserve commission back and I went down town here to the recruiting office, and they said they couldn‟t do it and I had to go to Kalamazoo, so I went to Kalamazoo to the office. In the meantime the Army Air Corps is turning into the U.S. Air Force. 56:04 These guys said, “Well, the best we can do is bring you in as a sergeant in the air force, and we can‟t bring you back in as a Captain. Across the street was the army recruiting office, so just for the hell of it I walked across the street to the young Lieutenant in that office, told them who I was, and he said, “What do you want to do?” I said, “I would like to go back on active duty as an infantry Captain”, and he said, “When?” I said, “What do you mean, when?” He said, “I can send you back to active duty as fast as you want to go”, and I said, “As an infantry Captain?” He said, “Yeah, would you like to go in the airborne?” I said, “Yeah”, so he said, “Okay, we‟ll have you on the way. How soon do you want to go?” I said, “Seven, eight, or ten days?” He said, “You‟ll be gone tomorrow”, and he cut orders the next day 27 �and made me a Captain, infantry/airborne. 57:03 He sent me to Fort Benning for two weeks to jump school, I come back and go to Japan. Interviewer: What year was this? 1948, and in Detroit we had this little house, put it up for sale, God it was a beautiful house, we went and looked at it the day before yesterday and you have never seen such a wreck in your life. Nobody‟s done a thing to it in fifty years, I‟m sure and we were just sick when we saw it, I was at least. So, I went to Japan, got to Japan and met the regular commander and he said, “Okay, you‟re going to be in the 180 search and rescue and stationed in Camp Shimofani, but I think something is going to happen in the next couple of days that will cause us both to change our minds”. Two days later he called me in his office and he said. “As of today, you and I are in the 17th Infantry”, and I said, “Not in the airborne?” 58:05 He said, “Not in the airborne, straight infantry. We now got orders to leave for the 7th Division and we‟re going to form the 17th Infantry here at Camp Shimofani, and I‟m going to be the commander of the 180th until they go home and I‟ll be the regimental commander of the 17th”. So I went back in the business of reorganizing again like I did in Muskegon, only now I got draftees coming in, I‟ve got soldiers coming in from other divisions that guys wanted to get rid of, a lot of AWOL‟s, and a lot of them should have been in jail. So, we brought them in and spent the next two years training them and dumping a lot of them out of the army because they weren‟t qualified for anything and none of them had been in the army. Interviewer: Were a lot of those men draftees” Yeah Interviewer: Now, what part of Japan were you in? Where was your camp? 59:01 28 �At that time we were stationed at Camp Shimofani, just outside of Sendai in northern Japan. Interviewer: What was the area around there like? Was it mostly rural? Oh yeah, rice paddies and we were about five miles from the ocean and the ocean kind of went like this, so you‟d go twenty miles north and go to a place where there were oysters and good fish from the ocean. But, we had to start from scratch and we got some soldiers for the regiment that had been in the 17th before it was downgraded to zero and in Korea, and had been an occupation period and reorganizing in Shimofani. Interviewer: So were there some men in that unit who had been in Korea after WWII? Yeah Interviewer: So, they had some people familiar with it. Yeah, yeah—we got a lot of draftees and a lot of sergeants from the states and officers from the states. 00:03 Interviewer: Now, were you having to build a camp or was it there already? We had to build—people had to build the unit with people and stuff and equipment. Stuff was there, but it had been brought in during the war and it was all over and stuff. There were plenty of Jeeps and plenty of everything, but you had to find it and get it legally yours and this was quite a battle. Interviewer: We’re continuing our story here with Charles Olsen and we had gotten to the point where you are now stationed in Japan with the 17th Regiment, 7th Division and what was your official job there? 29 �At that time I was the headquarters commander. I had been the C company commander when it was formed and I put in for a regular army commission. 1:01 In order to get a regular army commission rather than my National Guard one, army of the United States commission, and I didn‟t have a reserve commission yet then either, I had to take a series of tests. I did and the result of that was, I had to be in three different jobs in one year, three different commanders, and be rated by all three of them and then they would decide whether or not I was going to be a regular army 2nd Lieutenant and then they would give it to me after that. So, that‟s what was kind of in the back of my mind. I tried to go to school—I knew I didn‟t have any college, so I tried to go to school at night. I did this whenever I could at various places and you‟ll see as we go along. I had a couple jobs where I was able to control what was being taught by the colleges, locally, and I could get the courses in that I needed, whether anybody else could use them or not and that worked good for me. 2:00 Interviewer: While you’re there in Japan, before the Korean War starts, what kind of condition was Japan in, in the area that you were? Very poor, farming, people didn‟t have much to do at all, no way to make a living. The British trained all of us who had wives and kids over there, on how to use servants, and then the government gave us—I think we had six in our house to take care of the house, take care of the kids, and they couldn‟t just give the Japanese money, something about their psyche, so they gave them a job. One guy did nothing but fill the coal bin at our house and two other houses. He was the coal guy and he was getting money to feed his family. They did this for a lot of Japanese. 3:02 We had three girls, yeah, three girls, 30 �the coal guy and then I had a young man that was—I called him Junior, and Junior was good except he stole the cigarettes all the time. Interviewer: Alright, now was there a school on the base where your kids could go when they were old enough? Yeah, a nice school, a nice school, about a block and a half from where we lived. Good teachers from the states and then all of a sudden this thing happened with the North Koreans coming into South Korea and the stuff hit the fan then. Of course, the 7th division was then ordered to come into South Korea and in the meantime the 24th Division, 25th Division, 1st Cav Division were committed down there real early, so we went in, the 7th Division went in right behind the Marines at Inchon. 4:00 Interviewer: You go in at Inchon in the fall of 1950 then when they make that landing. Yeah Interviewer: All right now, can you describe landing at Inchon? It was funny because we were combat loaded. Combat loaded, they get their weapons off the boat and the only ones we were going to use as soon as we hit the beach. The Marines got off first and that cleared all the Japs out of the port area, so when our boat came in the first guy in the one vehicle was the battalion commander. His vehicle was way down here and for combat loading he didn‟t need a vehicle yet, so we had to get all of our guys off and our vehicles off and then we started to North Korea. Interviewer: Now, you’re landing at Inchon, and are you moving—were you facing much opposition as you went forward, or were you following other units? 31 �Some, yeah, the regulars in some companies were getting in fights now and then and a couple of my friends got killed. 5:01 Interviewer: How far did your unit go into North Korea? My company then—well, then I was transferred from Charlie Company to Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion and the battalion commander usually, kind of, is his assistant operations officer and he would send me out to the companies to do some other things. One of the companies I was working with was the first company to get to the Yalu River and there‟s an interesting thing you can read in here. In that company there was a pioneer platoon and they did demolitions and stuff like that. We got an order from headquarters to blow a hole in the ice of the Yalu River by eight o‟clock tomorrow morning, because there were some Generals coming in and they wanted to pee in the Yalu. Interviewer: Okay So, we got the stuff and I told Sergeant Hailes there‟ll be a hole in the river. 6:01 He said, “Captain, what do you want to blow a hole in the river for?” I said, “There‟s some God damn delegate coming down here to piss in it tomorrow morning and I hope no Chinese shoot across the river”, because the Chinese were on the other side of the river. The Chinese started shooting at the same time, so we blew a hole in the river and I went down there and looked and kicked it with my foot and said, “Yeah, we got water”, and I took a pee in the river myself. I was the first one to pee and then Hailes took the whole platoon. These Generals came in and got all their pictures taken from the PIO and then they went down and took a leak in the river. It‟s never been established that was why they were all there, but there‟s some famous pictures of these Generals standing looking at the river. 32 �Interviewer: Alright, now how long was it after that the Chinese counterattacked? They were in the process right then by attacking the 3rd Marines. They had, as I understand it from reading history, that our intelligence people had been told by the Chinese, “If you do anything along the Yalu River to harm our electrical generation plants”, and there‟s three of them up there, “we‟re going to knock the shit out of you”. 7:12 They had millions of Chinese and they still have. Interviewer: They had three hundred thousand of them, actually, in North Korea by that time. Yeah, and so, one of our guys got eager and started doing some things against one of their hydro-electric plants and then here they come. Then we got the word to leave the Yalu and go down to, I wasn‟t to say Inchon, but we hooked around the base like so, and we held the beach so the Marines could get out. Interviewer: That was— Hungnam Interviewer: Yeah We held them until the Marines could get out and then the navies come in and let us out. 8:04 Interesting sight, we were short of Jeeps and the navy were—we were ready to pull out and one of my master sergeants came up to me and said, “Captain, I know where there‟s thirteen marine corps Jeeps with radios on them that they can use to talk to the Marine corps fighters”, and I said, “Where are they?” He said, “They‟re in a warehouse down there and they‟re going to blow the God damn things up, because they couldn‟t get them out”. I said, “Go down there and get them all, put our markings on the bumpers, and take our and push them off the LSD to shove them in the water”. He said, “We can‟t 33 �do that”, and I said, “Just do it, I‟m going to end up going down to Inchon with new Jeeps as far as I can”, so we did just that, and it was good, because it gave me the opportunity to use the radio and talk to the fighters. Interviewer: Right As the rest of the war proceeded, so I kind of ended up as a forward air controller, because the Air Force took our forward air controllers all the way out of the battalion level and sent them all the way back to regimental level. 9:11 Regimental level is too far back, they got to be up front where they can see. Interviewer: They didn’t have air controllers or observers up on the front lines? No, all they had was us. Interviewer: During that time when you’re up in North Korea and you’ve gone from one side of the peninsula, kind of across, to the ocean on the other side, was your unit doing much fighting in that time, or mostly just moving? There was a certain amount of fighting. Interviewer: Did they have to defend against Chinese attacks when they ran onto them now? Oh yeah, and we lost, in one two day march across the river we called “No Name”. It was frozen about half through and we crossed it and it was about twenty miles in to [?], and we got in a good fight with the Chinese. 10:05 We lost three good officers, they made the same mistake, all three of them at the same time. Instead of staying on the ridges like they‟d been trained to do, and like they had been doing for several days and weeks, they cut down off the ridges and down through a flat valley, to get back up on the 34 �ridges over there and the Chinese were on the ridge there and just shot the hell out of them. Interviewer: After that phase, you get evacuated out of Hungnam. Does the 7th Division then go back on the line somewhere else? Yeah, then they pulled us all out and sent us back south and gradually launched us into the fray to go back up north. Interviewer: Now, did you stay with your unit as they went forward? Yeah, for another six months or so, and then my time came up to come back to the states. 11:05 Interviewer: So, in the meantime, were you with—were you doing much attacking or mostly in kind of defensive positions? Both, defense and attack and I got promoted to Major as a regimental intelligence officer by this time. Interviewer: What kind of work then did you have to do in that job? As a regimental intelligence officer? Keep track of what the “Gooks” were doing and what they were about to do to us, and do what we could do to make sure they do it. Interviewer: How would you get your information? Line crossers, we had one group of twelve boys and we called them “Buffalo Bill Scouts”. We sent them, they were Korean kids, and we sent them across the lines. The scouts would go up and they‟d be gone for two or three days, come back and tell us what they saw, so we were usually at forward control and the General—we got a new regiment of command and a guy by the name of Bill Quinn and he became a four star sooner or 35 �later, a damn good General. 12:06 He was a damn good officer and he could get vermin [?] with both hands. I never saw a guy get vermin like he could. Interviewer: Now, over the course of this time, did you come under fire? Were you in danger in certain points in this, or were you pretty well safe, because you were farther back? Well, I was far enough back that I didn‟t get hurt too bad. In one case I decided, my intelligence execs, eight men, went across the river to a little town and there was a school and a big school yard and they came back and said, “Every house in that town is made ten meters bigger by piling ammunition. The Chinese had piled ammunition around every single house, so literally that town is an ammunition dump. 13:00 I called my division two and they said, “What do you think you can do?” I said, “Blow the son of a bitch up”, and he said, “Do you want to do that?” I said, “I sure as hell do and if I don‟t they‟ll be shooting back at us within the next two or three days”. We were in the process of going forward and back, so I got a thing called my I & R platoon and I got them over there and they went from house to house and told these people that they had to get out of the village because they were going to be destroyed. Before they could go, they had to take all of this ammunition and there was more than you could imagine, mortar shells, machine guns, pistol and rifle shells. We piled them up in the middle of the soccer field and we dug about an eight foot deep hole, got some guys with shovels right away, we filled this hole and took the fuses off a bunch of stuff and put them down in the bottom and the villagers came and brought a huge pile of ammunition. 14:00 I sent the villagers out of the village and out of the way so they wouldn‟t get hurt, because I knew I was going to have one hell of an explosion. Then I got my guys over on the river side, in 36 �the vehicle and sent them across the river. We kept firing ammo and we got over on the beach where we wouldn‟t get hit by anything, we thought, and we fired the stuff. I blew a hole about twenty yards across and twenty yards down, and it blew a lot of this ammunition a hundred and fifty yards. Tanks shells that long and that big around flying through the air like this, and whenever they hit the ground they went off. Somehow we were across through the edge of the river bank and the damn thing went over our heads and went into the water and went off, but we latterly destroyed that town and fully destroyed the ammunition too. Interviewer: Was the town within your lines, or was it in the middle between where you were and the Chinese were? 15:01 At that time it was kind of in between. Interviewer: But, the Chinese didn’t interfere with the operation, or your guys going forward? They weren‟t in a position to do it, they were trying, but right at that spot they weren‟t. We kind of had the forward pressure. Interviewer: Are there other things, or incidents in Korea that kind of stand out in your mind there? No, I did my S-2 job and I could see—because my regimental commander had been a G2 in WWII and he kind of brought me along and taught me things I didn‟t know. One of the things I started to do was, we had two helicopters for taking casualties out and I said, “Wait a minute, these helicopters are going up sometimes looking for casualties and they‟re coming back empty, you know then, and I said, “I‟m going to use them to find “Gooks””, so the old man said, “Go ahead”. 16:02 So, I took one of these helicopter‟s 37 �and we‟d go up looking for “Gooks” and we‟d find a company, or a battalion with our Red Cross helicopter, and radio back where the “Gooks” were and shoot the hell out of them, or get somebody from one of the battleships, or somebody who could reach them and bring fire in on them. The old man thought that was great and he said, “I don‟t know why you decided to play bombardier again, but we sure killed a lot of “Gooks””, and we had “Gooks‟”, and we had “Gooks” spread all over the sides of the mountains. Interviewer: Weren’t they doing aerial observation by then? The Air Force was trying to do what they could do, but it wasn‟t good. I hate to have this go in writing, but the Air Force operation, in that phase, of close air support, was not as concentrated as it should have been. It wasn‟t as good as the Marines had. The Marines had their own coordinators and they talked to their own guys and they got guys so close it scared you. 17:03 I got one Bronze Star for doing just that, getting in a forward position with my Marine radio and we were getting the hell shot out of us from the Chinese on the ridge. I got down where I was exposed and I got six Marine Corsairs, they came in and found these guys, shot the hell out of them, while I sat there and talked to them and directed their fire. That allowed our guys to pull off that hill and the next day when we tried to go back up on that hill the “Gooks” had left, so we went up on the hill. Interviewer: All right We lost several people, in fact, Raymond Harvey got the Congressional Medal of Honor, and that‟s where he was hit, in that battle. Interviewer: The infantry divisions, at least in WWII, had their own aerial observers. They had guys in Piper Cubs who would go up, and now did the 7th Division have its own aerial observers? 18:02 38 �Not really Interviewer: So, you were kind of filling a role there that wasn’t being done otherwise at that time. Just because I had the experience to do it with Now, you get through that time served there, in the field in Korea, and then when that gets done, where do you go next? My wife is in Japan with the kids, she went home to Muskegon, and at that time she got an apartment out by Black Creek and I was going to come as soon as I could. Well, than I rotated and got an assignment with the 5th division, 2nd Infantry Regiment, at Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania. So, I went home, gathered up my family and went to doing that. I run that battalion, 2nd Battalion of the 2nd, for about two years, again training, a basics trainer, and training draftees to go to Korea at that time. 19:01 Then I went to The Commanding General Staff College, and when I finished the Commanding General Staff College, they sent me to the University of Washington ROTC and from there I went to Vietnam, Nam had started and I had a tour as an advisor, mainly to the Vietnamese Army Commander. Interviewer: When was that? I don‟t know when that was. Interviewer: Was it in the early sixties, at that point? Yeah, it would have been 1962, or 1963, things kind of run together there. Then I came out of that and went to Leavenworth again and this time as an instructor in leadership for the Commanding General Staff College. 39 �Interviewer: Tell me a little bit about the experience as a trainer in Vietnam. What were you doing and what was that like? 20:01 I was operations and intelligence advisor to the Vietnamese army commander and my orders were, “Where he went I went”, and I was informing on what he was doing and what he should be doing, and then our General would try to get him to do it, which sometime he could and sometimes he couldn‟t. Interviewer: What sort of impression did you have of this fellow or of the Vietnamese army at that point? The Vietnamese army sucked, because the North Vietnamese were not into it yet and their enemies didn‟t want to kill the VC. I said to General Duong, Tranh Van Duong‟s the name [more commonly known as Duong Van Minh], was the son of the Ambassador to France, so he was educated militarily in France. Militarily well educated and spoke English like a trooper, and everybody in Vietnam was little. 21:00 When the little guys got together with all the American guys then the American guys all of a sudden said, “This is my little guy”, and if they had to go to meeting they would bring their little guy along. Well, because I‟m little and General Duong was big, he called me his “Little guy”. That was funny, and the first dinner we had together he took his chop sticks and he reached over and took a big hot pepper and he ate it and said, “We love hot peppers”. I liked them, but I didn‟t love them, and I took my chop sticks and put a couple in my mouth. I mean it was fire, but I ate them and from then on the General would introduce me to other Vietnamese officers and he would say, “This is my little guy, and he likes hot peppers”, and that was funny. 40 �Interviewer: Were you there at the point when President Diem was assonated? 22:00 The night before he was assassinated, I had been doing something that afternoon with General Duong‟s operations officer and he said to me, he said, “Do not come to work tomorrow morning, stay in the hotel downtown”, the hotel downtown where we stayed. This guy was a dope user and you never knew whether he was straight, or whether he was under the influence of opium, this Vietnamese Colonel. You had to kind of sort out what was going on in his head, and I said, “What‟s going to happen?” He said, “Don‟t come out here to the airbase, we‟ll let you know when it‟s safe”. I said, “Is there some shooting going on tomorrow?” He looked at me like this and said, “I think so”, the day they were going to have the coup. 23:01 I decided to go to work anyway and hell, I sit downtown with a war going on five miles from me, so I went to my office, my boss was a armor type and he liked to stay inside and not get out. He‟d had a tank division, so I got the word then from General Duong‟s assistant to come across the street where General Duong‟s office was to see General Duong. So, I went over and saw him and he said, “There‟s been a coup and the Vietnamese Special Forces types, airborne, have killed the president and Mr. Nhu and the bodies are now in a 133 [M113] armored personnel carrier, and they‟re going to be here shortly and I would like to have you identify the president and Mr. Nhu, so you can tell your General that yes, they‟re dead and you saw them”. 24:04 So, I waited until 133 came and opened the door and there‟s these two guys and this Vietnamese major had just taken grenades and thrown them between these two guys and jumped. It was an armored vehicle and these two grenades went off and blew these guys all to hell. So I called my boss and went home and told my boss across 41 �the street, my boss called, and this was kind of funny, my boss called his boss, who was a Brigadier General, and he said, “Get Olsen to come up and see me”, so I went up to see him and I told him the same story I‟m telling you. He said, “You better tell General Harkins”, and at that time Westmoreland hadn‟t been there yet. Harkins was his commander, so we went over and saw General Harkins and General—I don‟t remember his name. I and my boss and he went in to see him and he said, “Who‟s got the story?” My one star said, “Olsen‟s got it”, and I looked at my boss, and he said, “What do you know about it? Why didn‟t Olsen tell me?” 25:07 Harkins said, “You get out of here I can‟t use you at all”, so he left. So, then he asked me what happened and he said, “You truly saw these vehicles?” I said, “I can take you to where they are right now”, and of course, they‟d hidden them, but he said, “Okay, that‟s good enough, get your ass out of here”, so I got out of there. That was kind of neat and then besides some other jobs I had to do, then I came home. Interviewer: How much longer did you stay in Vietnam at that point? Three months, about three months Interviewer: In general, what impression did you have of the situation there? Did you figure that things were going to get worse? Yeah, I thought that they were really going to go to pot unless we could get in there and do some work ourselves. So, I went back then to being an instructor at Leavenworth again, which I enjoyed, and it was good work. 26:02 I could take college work and in the meantime I was working on my tests and my college degrees. I had gotten a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Maryland, Military Science and Management, and I was working on the fringes of my masters, so I just kind of did my job. So, I went 42 �back to the commanding general staff college and I was there two years and then they sent me to Alaska to command Fort Greeley in Alaska, and that was a nothing job. I mean, three hundred thousand acres, but really nothing to do. Interviewer: Where is that in Alaska? It is a hundred and five miles south of Fairbanks. Interviewer: So, that’s not really anywhere. On the Alcan Highway, right on the road and the base is being used now more extensively than it was then. Interviewer: So, did you go up there? What? Interviewer: Did you go to Fort Greeley? Oh yeah, I went to do the job and got there and found out there was a new Bird Colonel that had just arrived to command it and they found out the second day that he was an alcoholic and didn‟t hardly draw a sober breath. 27:07 He couldn‟t say his name when I asked him what his God damn name was and that was a scary thing for about three months. The regular General from Fairbanks came in at the end of about three months and called me down to his helicopter and he said, “Olsen, what‟s going on with Cooper?” I said, “Sir, I can‟t talk about Cooper, he‟s my boss”, and he said, “I want you to tell me what the hell is going on”. This guy was an airborne General, and I said, “He‟s an alkie and he drinks morning, noon and night. You wouldn‟t know it until you talk to him, but he can‟t remember anything, he can‟t get anything done, and if you want anything done around here either the secretary‟s got to do it, or I‟ve got to go in and leave my work”, I was the operations officer, “and get the things done”. 28:00 He said, “Well, hang on 43 �and we‟ll get another Colonel in here as quick as we can”, so, they did, and they waited about six months and they got another Colonel in and I ran the post. This guy came in from Vietnam, yeah, from Vietnam and an artillery officer. I thought he was going to be good at first, but he turned out to be another drunk, so we had two drunks in a row. General Lemmon was the CO of the United States Army in Alaska, and came up and he said, “Olsen, how are you doing?” I said, “Sir, I‟m about to get out of the Army”, and he said, “Why?” I said, “I will not work for drunks and this guy is the second one you foisted off on to me”, and he said, “You know, just three days ago we heard it from the medics that this guy is a drunk and we‟re in the process of getting rid of him right now”. He said, “I‟m going to move you down to my headquarters as my logistician”, and I said, “I‟m not no God damn logistician, I‟m in operations”, and he said, “When I‟ve seen you, you do whatever you‟re told, you get the job done”. 29:06 He said, “That‟s what I want in my G4. I want somebody to get me whatever I want”. I said to him, “What do you really want right now, General?” He said, “I want sixteen, eighteen foot fishing boats for Valdez “. I said, “Do you want me to go get them?” He said, “Yup, when are you going to go?” I said, “I‟m going to go down to where the God damn things are made and get them shipped up here, just give me the funds to do it with”, and I said, “I‟m not a good G4”, and he said, “That‟s alright, just stay in the job”. But, then I found out I wasn‟t going to get promoted to “bird”, because of some other things that had happened, so my wife and I just quit. I had thirty years and I wasn‟t going to make anymore. It was a great career and I enjoyed it. Interviewer: Now, what kind of work did you do after you got out of the army? First I started teaching in colleges. 44 �Interviewer: What were you teaching? 30:02 Leadership, management, history, whatever was needed teaching, I taught. Interviewer: Where were you teaching? City University Interviewer: City University--City University Seattle, and I got a masters from them in Business Administration and I got another master‟s in Public Administration, but I found out that the team that I was teaching, really didn‟t want to learn, they wanted that VA check and they wanted the check they were getting from the welfare, so I said, “I don‟t need this anymore”, so I decided to be retired, and that was 1972, I think. Interviewer: To look back on the whole thing now, what would you say, maybe, was the most valuable, or most important thing you took out of your time in the army? A damn good paycheck at the end of every month until the day I die. 31:05 Free medical care for my wife and me and my kids, but we don‟t have any kids that are small anymore. Interviewer: Alright, anything else you would like to add to the record here, before we close out the interview? No, I think I‟ve told you about everything I can tell you. Interviewer: You told me quite a bit, that’s for sure. I‟ve told you things that she, my wife, hasn‟t heard before. Interviewer: That’s part of what we’re here for. Alright, thank you then for coming in and doing this, it’s been a real privilege. Are you going to make copies of this? 45 �Interviewer: Yes sir 31:32 46 �47 � 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 OlsenC0619V Title A name given to the resource Olson, Charles (Interview transcript and video), 2009 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Olson, Charles Description An account of the resource Charles Olson was born in Muskegon, Michigan in September of 1921. In 1940, he decided to join the National Guard, and shortly afterward, his unit was federalized and sent to Louisiana to train. He had wanted to fly, so while in Louisiana, he applied to join the Army Air Corps, and was accepted into bombardier school. He was sent to England at the end of 1943 and flew 32 missions in a B-26 over Europe before returning home to train B-29 crews in 1945. He left the Army briefly, but soon rejoined the Michigan National Guard, and went back on active duty in 1948. He was sent to Japan, and participated in the Inchon landing and the invasion and retreat from North Korea in 1950. He remained in the Army into the 1960s, and served as an adviser in Vietnam in 1963. While working at the MACV Headquarters in Saigon, he wound up having to identify the bodies of the assassinated Vietnamese President Diem and his brother. 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 Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American United States. Army Air Corps United States. National Guard 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/d73323d5d7c7033dd9309abcebe2e115.mp4 1b5566afe9bc62731a7413632fb9d9aa https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/33533107be4288122dde7798d9e7f66e.pdf 0c3988f92a3e3fd1256d1dc4b1e1994d PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans’ History Project Allan Owens Cold War 39 minutes 23 seconds (00:00:33) Early Life -Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1940 -Grew up in the Dearborn area outside of Detroit -Moved to Belleville, Michigan before high school -Attended Monroe Catholic Central -Father was a meat cutter and owned a butcher’s shop -When the shop closed they moved to Belleville and he opened a tavern -Had two sisters growing up -One has passed away -Graduated from high school in 1958 (00:01:20) Enlisting in the Air Force -Tried college -“Loved college, but didn’t like the classes.” -Attended Marquette University -Ran track while there -After college worked at a full service gas station -One night after work in 1961 he pulled into an Air Force Recruiting Station for no real reason -Cold War environment, but pre-Vietnam War -Enlisted in February 1961 -Enlisted on a Wednesday and left home that Friday -Told to report to Lackland Air Force Base, Texas for basic training (00:02:55) Family Background -Father had had a deferment during WWII because of being in the food business -Volunteered in Dearborn to be an air raid warden -Patrolled their neighborhood and the surrounding streets during air raid drills (00:03:38) Basic Training -All pre-deployment work was done in Fort Wayne, Detroit, Michigan -Left for Texas via train -Trip took two days and he got to see the undeveloped western U.S. -Arrived in San Antonio, Texas to go to Lackland Air Force Base -Greeted cordially by trainers -He was made a class leader because of his age (21) and college experience -Surprised by how relaxed it was compared to what he had heard about other branches -Key was to just pay attention and follow orders -Taught how to march in formation -Given firearms training -One day of “dry” (no ammo) fire training, one day of “live” (ammo) fire training -Training was scheduled to last six weeks -Ran obstacle courses a few times, but the main focus was on classroom work �(00:05:47) Tech School -Sent to Lowry Air Force Base, Denver, Colorado for technical school -Flown to Lowry AFB from Lackland AFB -Designation was to be an armament mechanic -Job was to load missiles onto aircraft -Training lasted six to nine months -Attended classes 6 PM to midnight -While not in class he cleaned the grounds, marched, and engaged in physical training -First part of the course was learning electronics -The base had a classified “black hangar” with mockups of all types of U.S. aircraft -Trained how to load missiles and bombs onto them -Extremely educational and professional environment -All of the trainers were NCOs (noncommissioned officers) (00:08:20) Conditions at Lowry AFB -Given a Class A pass because of his age (21) and class leader status -Got in trouble with sergeant for taking his class to mess hall via a shortcut -Got to know the sergeant better because of this -The same sergeant that he got in trouble with offered him a job tending bars in Central City -Worked that job on the weekend -Hands on training in the military suited him better than theoretical training in college (00:09:14) Deployment Orders -Deployments were based on class rank (higher class rank meant better choice for deployment) -Two men in his class were married -Rest of class decided to let those two have the two stateside deployments -He picked APO 132 because he wanted to see Europe -He was given APO 132 because of his high class standing -The rest of his class was sent to South Korea and Japan -Given a month of leave and he drove home -Stopped at Marquette University for a week to visit friends -Had to report to McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey in November to be flown to Germany (00:11:16) Bitburg, Germany-Overview -He was assigned to the 525th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Bitburg, Germany -F102 Delta Daggers -Part of Air Defense Command -They were a tenant unit to the 36th Air Wing -The 525th Squadron was mostly independent -Part of the largest firepower base in Europe at the time -525th Squadron alone had fifty F102’s -Ground crew was massive -Each aircraft could have up to twenty soldiers working on it -Being in Europe during peacetime was a phenomenal assignment -Base is now a commercial airport -They were part of the chain of bases that made up border patrol -Ironically enough their runway faced west instead of east �(00:15:00) Assignment and Conditions in Germany -Part of his duty was to safety wire the fire switches by soldering them -During scrambles they came back broken -Showed the urgency and organized nature during alerts -He was astounded by the level of professionalism that existed -Even younger soldiers operated well and with a high degree of professionalism -Soldiers came from a myriad of backgrounds and worked together well -Unit was largely white, but there was no racial tension with the black soldiers (00:17:41) German Civilians -Bitburg village was very friendly and welcoming with American soldiers -Every July 4th the base would have a festival and an open house -Germans were welcomed to come and celebrate -Thousands of civilians would show up -Two breweries operated in Bitburg (00:19:02) Traveling Europe -Bitburg was five hours away from Paris -Very close to Luxembourg -Traveled around Europe multiple times -Bought a 1952 Dodge from an officer for $400 -Every May he and four other soldiers would take a month of leave and travel -First trip they took they went to Rome, Italy -Met up with girls that had attended Marquette University -Whole twenty seven day trip cost $111 -Got gas at American bases for 11c/gallon -Camped out in tents and bought food at general stores on the bases (00:20:34) Playing Sports -Played on an organized basketball team for his base and traveled Europe with them as well -Assigned their own C-47 transport -Air Force Champions in 1963 -Army defeated them in a landslide victory in 1963 -They were supposed to play the Continental Championship in England -Cancelled due to President Kennedy being assassinated -Remembers being in a pub in London when he heard the news -English were sympathetic and extra friendly to Americans afterwards (00:22:25) Cuban Missile Crisis -Conditions on the base always changed during crisis moments -Alert siren went off at 2AM one morning -Aircraft were scrambled -Reported to his position and hooked up nuclear weapons to aircraft -Stayed in hangar for three days unaware of the situation until after the fact -The base was prepared for anything and he understood the severity of the Cold War (00:24:36) Security on Base -Trained for, and acted on, security breaches (7-Highs) -Occasionally someone would be caught trying to get into a locked down area -Remembers a colonel didn’t have the right paperwork and was jailed -He was taking pictures of the aircraft one time �-Air Force police approached him and he was put in jail for security reasons -Officer in charge was his basketball coach, got let out because of that -Film was confiscated and most likely destroyed though -No one was sure what the Russians were going to do and they wanted to be prepared (00:26:50) Visiting East Berlin -East Berlin was barren and depressing -Allowed to visit East Berlin as a part of a military tour -Never left the bus, but took pictures of the city -Given their tour right after an East Berliner was shot trying to escape and the Wall went up -No activity, no people, no public transportation -He and the other soldiers were afraid of being taken hostage -East Berlin was heavily occupied by communist soldiers -Compared to East Berlin the West German economy was booming and thriving (00:29:10) Reflection on Serving in Germany -Spent three full years in Germany -Considers himself lucky to have such a good deployment and getting to play sports -Always functioned rapidly, efficiently, and professionally as a unity -Everyone did their job well (00:29:46) Ramstein Basketball Game -Remembers wanting to go Ramstein, Germany to play in a basketball game -Could not go because of having alert duty -Base commander approached him while on duty and ordered him to go to Ramstein to play -Felt bad for the NCO that had to fill his position, apologized to him -After the game he was placed in charge of new soldiers, basic maintenance, and alert back up (00:31:48) Relationship between Soldiers -He and the rest of them were treated extremely well by the officers -Everyone met in a hangar each month to drink beers -Rotating tab (a different group paid each time) -Close knit and fairly equal community of soldiers -Some new officers tried to flex their rank but were quickly shut down by their superiors -He and other crewmen had closer contact with pilots than with administrators (00:33:44) Leaving the Air Force -Pressured to re-enlist when his enlistment was up -He declined -Wishes that he stayed in, but is also glad that he didn’t, especially with Vietnam starting -He was ready to go home when his enlistment was over -Reunions with his basketball team began in 1991 (00:35:12) Careers and Life Post-Military -Returned home and got a job working for the Great Lakes Steel Company in Detroit -Worked on a blast furnace -After the steel mill he worked for the piping industry -Worked in the steel mill for seven days a week from Thanksgiving 1964-March 1965 -Tried to go back to college -Veteran status got him into jobs quickly -Moved to Grand Rapids in 1966 to set up new branch for his company -Worked with that company for six years �-Biggest customer needed a replacement and he took the job -Worked in the piping industry for thirty four years all toll -Worked for GVSU in athletics part time as well and still does -Married his secretary -Been together for forty six years Reflections on Service -Military had a great effect on him -Helped him get on track with his life -Organized his life when there was a lack of organization -Feels lucky being in the right place at the right time for his service -Has tremendous respect for the veterans that saw combat � 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 OwensA1531V Title A name given to the resource Owens, Allan (Interview outline and video), 2013 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Owens, Allan Description An account of the resource Allan Owens is a Cold War era veteran born in Detroit, Michigan in 1940. He attended Marquette University for a time and enlisted in the Air Force in 1961. He took basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, tech school at Lowry Air Force Base, Denver, Colorado and he was deployed to Bitburg Air Force Base, Germany. He was assigned to the 525th Fighter Interceptor Squadron and was a weapons crewman. During the Cuban Missile Crisis he was placed on alert for three days and ordered to load nuclear weapons onto the aircraft. During his deployment he was also able to tour East Berlin and be witness to the desolation of the city. After he left the Air Force in 1964, he returned to Michigan and worked a variety of jobs, including with the Athletics Department at Grand Valley State University. 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 Other veterans & civilians--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 2013-10-01 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 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/b0c44551cad0ecd0c0cc8b51d76bd11d.mp4 97b4673756b6e3dcc86dfc37ae009a1a https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7a706a1e9ba42de09205dc5001544627.pdf 0b37cb3473974ee475f2544fddd0c233 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Calvin Owen (50:25) (00:20) Pre-service Born Columbus OH went to HS in Granville OH DePaul University, took French classes Trans OH ST took ROTC summer '41 deferment until '43 Involved in construction of Fort Custer lockmern AFB lived in Frat house Worked as cost accountant, and time keeping duties. AJ Bolthouse subcontractor out of Norwalk, Ohio (4:45) Service Initial training Camp Claiborne, MS Sent to Fort Ord, CA, to be sent to New Guinea with the 533rd Engineer Boat and Shore Battalion Shore battalion worked construction Boat battalion transport 37mm gun crew Bulldozer, (D4) building jetties, developing storage areas for munitions storage (8:45) Applied OCS 3 officer interview, recited formula for velocity of a free falling Object. Applications closed, but one interviewer brought him to s-2 intelligence ops Shipping out 10:00 5 day overseas journey on SS West Point, 15,000 troops, w/ o escort Destination Milne Bay, New Guinea (13:45) NEW GUINEA Took tablets to avoid sickness Became Reg Ops NCO by Japan Landing, assault planning, objective was cliff, 85% casuality rate anticipated Gained and lost material such as trucks and jeeps (18:00) Beach Landings (Philippines) Regimental CO = Beach Master Shore Battalion provides perimeter security �Boat ferries supplies Received harassment from Jap mobile howitzer on RR tracks concealed by day in a hut Landing beach was no-fly zone, ground artillery fired on anything in the air that moved, including friendlies (22:30) Japan 95th Div for landings in Japan, stationed in Hawaii, had A-1 pass. Atomic bomb dropped, landing was peaceful, Yokohama to Kure Jap reception warm, but girls turned their backs in the street in disdain/fear of GIs Made Friends with boy, had dinner with boy’s family. Visited Hiroshima, witnessed described desolation over wide expanse. Employed by merit of his experience to design fallout structures. Frank McKay had him design fallout shelter in Silver lake for cottage his cottage Created steel reinforced secure structure with toilet facilities. (31:06) Supplies/ Logistics General impression was that supply functioned adequately Corruption mitigated by organization, MPs CO became deputy director of CIA (34:25) Back to Hiroshima and Manila Visited Hiroshima by Jeep month after bombing Most of rubble/bodies previously removed Manila relatively unscathed, minimal rubble (38:00) Back to Ohio, Then Grand Rapids Returned to OSU Tuition was 38$ a quarter Worked for OAK Project Engineer Keebler Building John Hekman Was a great guy, took crackers seriously Earned 75$ a week Involved in various commercial development projects Involved in construction of St. Stephen’s Catholic Church, E. Grand Rapids made various ecclesiastical contacts. (48:10) Roosevelt’s death, politics Not very important �Father was a banker, Roosevelt closed his bank Republican Family, supports Bush (50:25) Reaction to PH Was home, heard it on the radio.   � 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 OwenC Title A name given to the resource Owen, Calvin (Interview outline and video), 2007 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Owen, Calvin Description An account of the resource Calvin Owen is an Ohio native. Owen saw action various locations in the Pacific theatre of WW II while serving in the 533rd Engineers Boat and Shore Regiment, an army unit involved in amphibious landings. He describes the occupation of Japan and describes the devastation wrought on Hiroshima. He later catalogs his occupational experiences in various projects across the greater Grand Rapids Area. He discussed his views, personal and political on Roosevelt and current administration. 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 World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American United States. Army 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 2007-07-05 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/b0f86b76b0db72f736ba9792104ffdfe.mp4 d43a5ba768ab9a59f905242786366f68 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/dfb4c50ddbc9021644ece2f414a57197.pdf 63861cdd91672ea30241618e6dc85934 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Fay Orvis (1:19:08) (00:16) Osceola County, Michigan-Highland Township • Fay was born a twin on December 10, 1919 • He was not expected to survive at under 3lbs • At 3 years old he moved to Greenville Michigan • His father mixed mortar for a sidewalk company • (2:17) His father was out of work due to the Depression • At 13 years old Fay was skiing and dislocated his shoulder. Without money, the doctors did nothing for 7 hours until receiving word that the county would pay for it • (4:40) Fay went to school thru the 8th grade • At 18 years old he worked on a farm driving a pair of horses who were 26 and 27 respectfully • He wasn’t paying much attention to the war in Europe at this time • He obtained a job with Gibson making crates • (7:05) Fay obtained a job at the foundry since they seemed to always have work to do even when others didn’t • They heard about Pearl Harbor over the radio. Fay was advised by his father to wait to be drafted. Once drafted, he was advised to go into the Navy (8:40) Drafted into the Navy-Spring 1942 • Fay went to the Great Lakes Training Station in Chicago • Fay chose to go to Submarine Sound School • While returning to his barracks from KP duty, he fell into the trash hole and hurt his back. He was sent to the doctors but called off to duty before it could be treated. • (10:30) Fay took a train to California. While at Great Lakes he had received basic training of marching and taking orders before separated out to different training schools. • (12:50) This was the first time that Fay was on a train. He remembered that the train had to go around sand dunes from the United States into Mexico and back to the United States and on to California to Submarine School (13:40) Submarine Sound School-California • Fay failed out of the sound school. They were taken on a WWI Submarine Tank where they were attempting to learn the sound �equipment. He failed to hear the difference between the repeater and the sound bouncing off of the bottom of the ocean. (14:40) Submarine Base-West Coast • Fay remembers the base was separated from a Marine base by a fence • Fay remembers watching the Marines and knowing he never wanted to join them • He said that the Navy fed well and you could go for 3rds if you wanted them • (17:00) Fay and his team of men were training to be minesweepers but they could have moved around to other positions if ordered by top officials. • Fay figures he was here around 5 weeks (17:50) Long Beach California • This was a waiting port till they were shipped up to Seattle Washington (18:30) Seattle Washington • Picked up a Mine Sweeper ship here. It had a wooden hull, 135 ft long, 16 ft wide, 85 tons fully loaded ready for invasion • There were 28 men and 4 officers • Living quarters were crowded • They spent a bit of time training on the ship • (20:05) Story about their ship and how they were kept back behind the other ships because the captain’s wife was aboard and pregnant. • The coast guard was sent out to train the guys how to sweep mines but had no idea how to do it himself • (21:50) The sky turned black and the ship was told to head to the southern part of the island, to the southernmost tip and stay there. Fay remembers that he could not open his eyes while looking into the wind. He was put on the hull of the ship to keep watch for the island. He was left there for 3 hours and remembered his father’s instructions on holding a ship in the wind. • (24:00) His father had sailed for years before getting married on a wooden hull steamer picking up lumber and taking it to Chicago • (25:39) This storm was just outside of Santa Barbara Harbor • (26:20) Fay’s team got a job on an oil dock. They filled ships up with oil. There was a rock on the opposite side of their dock that was named after the dock where they encountered a whale. They had to steer clear of the whale because it would capsize their wooden dock if they hit it. • (28:00) In the spring it was very foggy, this year they had to continuously blow their horn for a week straight because of the fog (29:00) Hawaii �Fay based here while the military was putting out special radar that could detect Japanese radar • Their ship held a specialist in radar at this time to use and teach how to use the equipment. This specialist stayed very close to the bow of the ship at all times. • Once in the trade winds there were huge swells that would throw you off course. • Once in Hawaii they were able to look around the state • (31:40) Fay was able to go aboard a battleship at Pearl Harbor with (4) 16 foot propellers, (4) turbines • Fay’s crew traveled from one island to the next, usually after they had been under attack • The first island they came to was about 3 to 4 feet above the ocean. Men were on the shore washing their clothes with plungers and ocean water. • The second island was a British island where they stopped for fuel. Fay was able to see sand burst for the first time on the island. There was another island visible while on this island. The men and women are kept on separate islands • (35:00) The next island they reached was secured by the time they arrived and the captain had won a movie on a bet. The men all went to one end of the boat to watch the movie and passerby boats tied up to their boat to watch it as well. • (37:00) The next island they reached had a crater with a black buoy on the right hand side. They were able to get water thru a 2-inch pipe coming from an inland lake. Here is where Fay had seen a Japanese shipwreck. • On the north side of New Guinea, there were great battles fought. The coastline had great cliffs on the edge. Fay’s company passed by here on the way to Saipan. (39:50) Sampan • Their executive officer whose cousin was executor of the island after it was taken brought their jeeps together to bring the men out on the island and show them where things were. • On the island where they were at, the Atom Bomb was kept here with guards, two wide, close enough to touch hands in order to protect the bomb. This all occurred before Fay and his crew arrived. • From here they went to Okinawa (41:15) Okinawa • Because of previous shots taken on minesweepers in the Philippines’, the crew brought a Destroyer with them for protection on Okinawa. • �• While approaching the island, the destroyer started shooting upward into the air. There was a kamikaze fighter pilot over them. The destroyer was able to distract it enough that the bomb dropped missed them and landed into the water. • (42:40) For minesweeping, the back of the ship is basically square with a wench up high holding large cables. The pulling takes the cable down about 20 feet below the water. The pulley has three wires attached as to adjust them accordingly which runs out to another pulley called a paravane. The paravane drags the wire with a cutter at the end and sometimes between also. It pulls the wire at 23 degrees. If you go beyond 23 degrees it will skip above the water or go straight down into the water. The paravane was 4 foot square with 3 curved blades welded end to end. They were contact mines, so the blades would cut any cable attached to it and the mine would pop up. • (46:00) As with contact mines, magnetic mines you had to go over before you could sweep them. They had copper cables 100 to 150 feet long using straight 8 diesel GM engine both right hand and left hand with another one for the generator both with 500 horsepower but this one with faster RPM's. It was made to run at 1370 RPM. The power would be off for 5 seconds, jump thru the water and come back into the engines then the power would go back off for 5 seconds and jump thru the water opposite of the first to create an alternating current. When the power came on at 1270 RPM, they had a 7-ton flywheel during 1372. Before it could open up it would pull that down to 700. This created a magnetic field that would set off the mine. • (48:23) The minesweeper’s hole was made of wood because the strong magnetic force was drawn toward steel. • Fay said they would report on any submarines they would locate. He remembers that dolphins could swim so fast they looked like torpedoes coming right at you. • (49:50) On one of the British islands, their monitors was reading 13 fathoms deep, but there was a coral head they didn’t see which they backed into. It completely destroyed the right hand propeller. It damaged the left hand propeller but they bent it back into place. They were able to hook up to a floating dock, which managed to locate a propeller to fix their ship with. �• (51:30) On November 10 1943 the ship hit a mine. Fay wasn’t sure what had happened at first then he was knocked out. When he came to everything was black and he thought he was below deck when actually he was on deck. When the smoke cleared he heard a man moaning under a boat and the guy had his knees cut in two. He took off his belt and made a tourniquet out of it to hold onto one of the guy’s knees. Nobody else would take off their belt to help the other leg. They brought the sick and dead from under the deck and put them on one side of the ship. Fay returned to his own ship where they waited a month to have their cylinders replaced. • (55:28) On the west side of Okinawa, Fay was on watch while the ship was sweeping. While on watch, Japanese training planes came overhead. Fay saw a big cloud of smoke and assumed they must have sunk a tanker. He said that he still remembers learning about Japanese planes while in the service. • (57:10) Fay says that he stayed pretty busy since his equipment was all five feet above the water. It was often wet so there was not much free time in his schedule although other men would play cards. • Men tended to get along well aboard ship. Calling the captains by their first name was not allowed and could be demoted because of such conduct. • (01:01:00) Fay’s first captain was a friend of the Admiral. He was also a Jew who was put on special assignment and sent over seas apart from his crew. • Fay’s captain going over to the Pacific was from Portland Oregon. • (01:05:12) Fay said he [the captain] never made it to Japan because his parents had money unlike many of the other guys (106:30) Back home in the States • Fay was back home when he heard about the end of the war • He had been working on a floating dock. During a rainstorm in Saipan the Japanese prisoners would drive the trucks back and forth to the port. The gravel would wash right out and they drivers would get stuck. A plane finally flew over there and landed. Fay took a boat out to the plane and climbed a ladder 70 feet up to the plane to be shipped home �(1:10:33) Back in Michigan • Fay came home with $800 to a lot he had bought back in 1940. He started building the same house he lives in today. He didn’t work and couldn’t get unemployment because he told them he was building a house. • (01:16:30) Fay often wonders why it wasn’t him that died during the war when many nice guys did � 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 OrvisF Title A name given to the resource Orvis, Fay (Interview outline and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Orvis, Fay Description An account of the resource Fay Orvis was a soldier during World War II in the United States Navy. He worked as a minesweeper during his time in the service and spent time in Okinawa and Saipan. His account describes different duties performed on the minesweeper and onshore in California and on various islands, as well as incidents involving kamikaze attacks and mine explosions. 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. Navy World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Video recordings Women Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008-04-03 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/33de211d072b2a549acedda429700931.mp4 23a87f65be6f6703b667b30ee7490c8b https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f86e47e55768dd9310360531bf394f62.pdf 7ed07c39983a2822424d2288a6a37d8e PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Name of Interviewee: Al Orr Name of War: Vietnam War Length of Interview: (00:40:16) (00:20) Background Information • Al was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan on November 5, 1935 • Al graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1960 • He was in Vietnam from March 1966 through April 1967 (2:10) Marines • Al enlisted in November 1952 when he was 17 years old • He is now not sure why he enlisted, but has never regretted it • He had chosen to enlist in the Marines because his father and friend had encouraged him to do so • Boot camp was terribly impossible • Al went through 12 weeks of training and felt very isolated from the real world (5:50) Vietnam • Al was a captain when he arrived in Da Nang • He had first gone to Okinawa where he was assigned to a unit and then sent to Vietnam • All was an assistant operations officer in his battalion • He was often involved in combat, but the casualty rate was “normal” for the first 10 months • About 40 men were injured a month and there were a few deaths • Al worked on patrolling the area of operations in Da Nang (10:15) Southern Vietnam • Al was sent south of Da Nang to take over security from the Vietnamese �• The area had been occupied by indigenous Viet Cong • The operation lasted 63 days and there were about 1100 casualties • They were able to eliminate all the Viet Cong in the area with combined air and artillery • The men were later replaced by Vietnamese troops (15:00) After Vietnam • Al went back to school and got his masters degree in computer technology • He later found that the Marines Corps seems to be harder on families than it is on the actual men in the service (17:30) Vietnam • Al received a bronze star and a purple heart • His base camp had been a supply area for fuel at a strategic location • They had 63,000 gallons of fuel on the base • In February 1967 the Viet Cong attacked their base with rocket mortars and small arms • All of their ammunition and fuel was set on fire; the sight was spectacular • It was very hard to repel the attack and try to put the fire out • Many people companies donated products to the troops in Vietnam • Every unit received a brand new refrigerator from an appliance company, but they had no electricity • A toy company donated a bunch of rubber ducks to give to Vietnamese children, but the Viet Cong cut them up and made grenades out of them (25:30) Average Days • After the base was attacked and blown up, the men still had plenty of supplies • The c-rations meals they ate had about 2,000 calories each per meal • They had no fresh vegetables or milk • The men drank warm beer, which they stored in their refrigerators with no electricity • The men constantly listened to the radio did not get to see any USO shows �• Al received 5 days leave to rest and he went to Hong Kong (30:30) End of Service • Al was flown out of southern Vietnam and into Da Nang • The men then went back to Okinawa and were all then in their civilian clothes • He took a ship and landed back on San Francisco • Al kept in contact with a few of the men from his battalion � 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 OrrA Title A name given to the resource Orr, Al (Interview outline and video), 2004 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Orr, Al Description An account of the resource Al Orr was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan on November 5, 1935. He enlisted in the Marines Corps in November 1952 when he was only 17 years old. Al was sent to the Pacific in March 1966 and first arrived in Okinawa where he was assigned to a unit. He was then sent into Da Nang where he worked as an assistant operations officer of his battalion. Al was in Vietnam for a little over a year and was engaged in a campaign against the Viet Cong in his sector. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Echtinaw, Josh (Interviewer) Jonkhoff, Katie (Interviewer) Shelton, Jessica (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 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 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/1e9deee3f2cc4b49095d8cf78c4b9711.mp4 5cdbf181680e9d6f5e05fcf2b59f59c6 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cac3d83eea493cdbee1b92b1b7541a48.pdf ff5774227fc072b6e558ef35953f2d95 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Roger Oppenhuizen Vietnam War Interview Length: (01:06:25:00) Pre-enlistment / Training (00:00:32:00)  Oppenhuizen was born in inner-city Grand Rapids, Michigan and lived there until he finished college and married, at which point he moved away (00:00:32:00) o Oppenhuizen attended Christian schools all the way through high school then attended Grand Rapids Junior College before going to Western Michigan University to earn his bachelors degree (00:00:47:00) o While Oppenhuizen was growing up, his father worked at a number of different jobs, including in a meat market and selling cars (00:01:09:00) o There were five children total in Oppenhuizen’s family, with Oppenhuizen having an older brother and three younger sisters (00:01:28:00) o Oppenhuizen’s father had served in Germany during World War II (00:01:38:00)  Oppenhuizen graduated from high school in 1964 (00:01:52:00) o After graduating from high school, Oppenhuizen’s first goal was to go to college but at the same time, he kept looking over his shoulder because he knew the draft was going on (00:02:07:00)  During the time Oppenhuizen was in college, the draft boards carefully monitored all the eligible men who were in college (00:02:40:00)  While Oppenhuizen was in junior college, he dropped one course, placing his credits hours one hour under the limit for a full-time student, thus classifying him as a part-time student (00:02:45:00) o Within a month, Oppenhuizen had a notice for his draft physical because he was a part-time student (00:03:02:00) o When Oppenhuizen went to Detroit for his physical, there were other men trying everything they could to get a classification other than 1A, which meant they were physically able to be drafted (00:03:24:00)  However, most of the time, the doctors giving the physicals passed the men anyway (00:03:36:00)  As soon as Oppenhuizen returned from Detroit, he appealed the decision and when he explained that he was planning to take an extra class the following semester so he could still graduate within the four-year limit, the draft board relented (00:03:46:00) o Oppenhuizen finally graduated from Western Michigan University in June 1968, which meant he made it under the four-year threshold imposed by the draft board, although when Oppenhuizen had appealed their decision early, the draft board had given him until August to graduate (00:04:12:00)  After graduating, Oppenhuizen knew he was going to receive his draft notice because he had already been called in twice for physicals (00:04:34:00) �  o After looking at the situation, Oppenhuizen decided he wanted to use his accounting major to find a finance position in military instead of joining the infantry (00:04:44:00)  Therefore, Oppenhuizen enlisted in OCS (Officer Candidate School) intending to become an officer and getting into finance (00:04:59:00) o Three days after he had chosen to enlist in OCS, Oppenhuizen received his draft notice (00:05:10:00) Most of the people who were drafted from Michigan went to Fort Knox, Kentucky for their basic training but because Oppenhuizen enlisted directly into OCS, the Army sent him to Fort Dix, New Jersey (00:05:28:00) o Oppenhuizen reported to Fort Dix the day after Thanksgiving and started basic training (00:05:40:00) o Oppenhuizen was lucky that he went to Fort Dix when he did because although most men went through their basic training in one whole shot, Fort Dix closed for a week around Christmas, so Oppenhuizen was able to go home for the week before finishing his basic training (00:05:48:00) o Although the basic training program at Fort Dix was not geared towards men enlisting into OCS, they were the type of men who went through it (00:06:13:00)  The program consisted of learning the basics of military exercises and formations and learning to follow orders (00:06:23:00)  The drill instructors were “tough as nails” but Oppenhuizen learned that he just had to roll with the punches; Oppenhuizen had already made up his mind that it was going to be rough and he knew that the drill instructors were only doing their jobs (00:06:40:00)  Oppenhuizen believes that the drill instructors were fair, treating everyone the same (00:07:04:00) o Every so often, someone would screw up, but the drill instructors did not punish the whole group, only the individual (00:07:11:00)  Oppenhuizen believes that most of the other men he was training with were just barely out of high school while he was just out of college, which meant he was several years older than all of them (00:07:27:00)  Most of the men came from the area around Fort Dix, the lower part of the Northeast (00:07:38:00)  Although there was ethnic diversity amongst the soldiers, Oppenhuizen would say that the majority of the men were either Caucasian-American or African-American (00:07:48:00) o Oppenhuizen encountered a larger number of men who were Puerto Rican-Americans when he attended his advanced training (00:08:08:00) Once Oppenhuizen completed his basic training, the Army sent him to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri (00:08:14:00) o By the time he reached Fort Leonard Wood, Oppenhuizen had realized that everything in the Army operated around a quota system and a lot of the time, regardless of what a soldier’s background was, he was a number and could be used to fill up an empty slot (00:08:19:00) �     o Fort Leonard Wood was home to the Combat Engineers Advanced Training course and Oppenhuizen spent eight weeks in the course, being taught how to be a combat engineer (00:08:46:00)  The training included: learning how to build airstrips out of eight-foot metal strips hooked together, learning how to build temporary bridges for soldiers and equipment to cross over, learning how both place and disarm land mines and booby traps, etc. (00:08:58:00)  All of the training was geared towards situations that the soldiers might encounter in Vietnam (00:09:26:00)  In regards to the booby traps, the training was much more generic and did not focus on all the individual traps that the soldiers might encounter in Vietnam (00:09:39:00)  In eight weeks, the instructors did not have much time to focus on specifics, spending only a couple of days on each topic before moving to another (00:09:45:00) o Oppenhuizen thought life at Fort Leonard Wood was a little bit easier because by then, he was used to life in the military and had gotten into a regiment for what he needed to do every day (00:10:01:00) o Oppenhuizen was allowed to go off-base and at one point, when former President Eisenhower passed away, all the soldiers were given the weekend off, so Oppenhuizen took a flight home from St. Louis to Grand Rapids (00:10:20:00) Oppenhuizen married his fiancée after he finished his advanced training but before he deployed to Vietnam (00:10:58:00) The advanced training course lasted for another eight weeks and once he finished the training, Oppenhuizen received orders to go to OCS; although he had hoped to go to the finance OCS, Oppenhuizen instead received orders to report to Fort Benning, Georgia for Infantry OCS (00:11:08:00) o Oppenhuizen looked at the orders as a further nine months of additional training to become an officer then an immediate deployment to Vietnam and questioned if he wanted to go through that all (00:11:34:00) o At the time, Oppenhuizen had the option of refusing the orders to OCS and instead going wherever the Army sent him, which was the option he chose (00:11:45:00) After refusing to go to OCS, Oppenhuizen was immediately sent to Vietnam as a combat engineer, which was not much better then going as an infantry officer (00:11:56:00) Before deploying to Vietnam, Oppenhuizen was allowed to go home for a couple of days before reporting to Oakland, California (00:12:29:00) o Most of the time, whenever he traveled, Oppenhuizen wore his uniform because in those days, airlines gave half-price fares in standby to any military personnel who were in uniform (00:12:52:00) Prior to actually deploying to Vietnam, Oppenhuizen did not know too much about the war in Vietnam or the anti-war movement in the United States (00:13:30:00) o When Oppenhuizen was in college, he was busy both studying and working, which meant he did not pay too much attention to what was happening with the war effort (00:13:33:00) � o Once he went to basic training and advanced training, Oppenhuizen did not hear anything because he and the other soldiers were kept completely out of the news loop (00:13:42:00)  Oppenhuizen would occasionally catch bits and pieces of news, enough to know about both the war and the anti-war movement (00:13:48:00) o At the time, Oppenhuizen felt that the war was appropriate; the President had said that the United States needed to fight and it was Oppenhuizen and the other soldiers’ duty to do the fighting (00:14:10:00) Once in Oakland, Oppenhuizen boarded an airplane to fly to Vietnam, although he found it interesting that once the flight initially left Oakland, it flew to Fairbanks, Alaska before going to Vietnam (00:14:33:00) o After a fifteen hour journey, the flight landed in Vietnam; although Oppenhuizen does not remember where exactly in Vietnam the flight landed, he remembers that it was close to Saigon (00:15:02:00) o The flight to Vietnam was on a commercial Pan-Am jet airplane filled with 310 soldiers deploying to Vietnam (00:15:20:00)  The mood on the flight was fairly quiet, with all the men wondering what was going to happen and where exactly they would be going once they were in Vietnam (00:15:29:00) Vietnam (00:15:45:00)  Oppenhuizen arrived in Vietnam in May 1969 (00:15:45:00)  Once Oppenhuizen arrived in Vietnam, he went through in-processing, although he had no idea what was going to happen or where he was going to be going (00:15:56:00) o Again, the numbers game popped up and at one point, the request was made for a certain number of personnel to join an engineer group stationed in the Mekong Delta (00:16:04:00) o Oppenhuizen happened to be in the group that was selected to go to the Mekong Delta and once the groups’ in-processing was finished, they were all flown to Can Tho, which was the headquarters of the 35th Engineer Battalion (00:16:23:00) o Oppenhuizen spent another day processing through the 35th Engineers, after which he and three other soldiers were in the back of a deuce-and-a-half truck with supplies headed to “D” Company in Soc Trang, which was fifty miles away from Can Tho (00:16:50:00)  The only impression Oppenhuizen really remembers of when he first arrived in Vietnam was of how the tarmac around the airplane was full of storage containers and looked like a major supply area (00:17:41:00)  The countryside Oppenhuizen and the other soldiers saw as they went out to their company was neither jungle or city; instead, it was a mixture of trees, fields, and small collections of tiny huts (00:18:18:00) o Oppenhuizen noticed that the road the truck was driving on was similar to a gravel road in the United States (00:18:34:00) o Oppenhuizen only saw a handful of rice paddies during the trip from Can Tho to Soc Trang (00:18:47:00) o Most of the time, the road between Can Tho and Soc Trang ran alongside a river, when the road did veer away from the river, it quickly returned (00:18:50:00) �   “D” Company was located on the south end of Soc Trang and although with their sister company, “A” Company, helped form part of the perimeter of an airbase (00:19:17:00) o The engineers slept in eight-man tents while the personnel on the airbase itself typically had nicer living quarters (00:19:44:00) o Although there were bunkers designated for the company to use, there were also two rows of sandbags stacked four feet high, effectively creating a trench around the entire perimeter of the airbase (00:20:08:00)  At preset intervals in the sandbag trench, guard stations were built out of sandbags as well and they too acted as bunkers (00:20:28:00) o A couple of feet outside the sandbags were a couple of layers of rolled concertina wire that would take a lot of work for the enemy to get through (00:20:36:00)  Claymore mines where then periodically placed on the outside of the concertina wire (00:20:53:00) o The engineers were the only military forces guarding the perimeter of the airbase (00:21:02:00)  Nevertheless, the engineers felt fairly safe because the airbase was an assault helicopter airbase, which meant there was a large contingent of helicopters always on the base (00:21:06:00)  During the day, there was never much trouble but a couple of times at night, the enemy would attack the perimeter (00:21:17:00)  Apart from the engineers who were always manning the sandbag bunkers on the perimeter, the airbase itself had a couple of larger towers that guards would be placed in (00:21:24:00)  The minute the guards spotted anything, they called it in and the two helicopters were always on standby would be in the sky within minutes (00:21:38:00)  Once the two helicopters were circling the perimeter, if they saw anything suspicious, they opened fire (00:21:51:00)  The enemy attacks mostly came from snipers (00:22:14:00) Oppenhuizen did not receive much in the way of a reception when he joined the company; when he arrived, Oppenhuizen walked into the orderly room, signed in, and was assigned to the 1st Platoon (00:22:23:00) o When the platoon came off the road that day, Oppenhuizen met the rest of the soldiers and the next day, he too was ready to go to work (00:22:37:00) Both “A” Company and “D” Company were working on building a highway because they had been attached to a construction group (00:22:51:00) o The highway had the designation of QL-4 and although Oppenhuizen originally thought the highway only ran from Can Tho to Soc Trang, later on, he found out that the highway from all the way from Saigon through Soc Trang and on to the tip of the Mekong Delta (00:23:10:00) o The goal of the project was to build a two-lane, paved highway out of a preexisting gravel road (00:23:33:00)  The purpose of the project was two-fold: Oppenhuizen initially assumed construction of the road was meant to help the local population move about but later research showed the second purpose of the highway was �o o o o moving military supplies and equipment back and forth between Saigon and the Mekong Delta (00:23:42:00) Building the highway was not an easy task because most of the area was at least eight inches below sea level, which meant there were stabilization issues (00:24:15:00)  To solve the problem, the engineers crushed rocks into certain, predetermined sizes and began stacking them, beginning with the largest rocks as a base and ending with the smallest rocks (00:24:28:00)  In the areas where the stabilization was really tough, the engineers used powdered cement and lime, which they stuffed between the cracks in the layers of rocks; once the mixture was wet, it would harden and help hold the rocks together (00:24:53:00) Once the roadbed was stabilized, the engineers would bring in asphalt machines to set a layer of asphalt over the top of the rocks (00:25:09:00) During the first three months Oppenhuizen was there, he was stuck in the platoon that had the job of off-loading the rocks (00:25:16:00)  The engineers used several quarries, with the largest to the north, closer to Saigon, and they would load barges full of rocks, float them down the Saigon River, into the ocean, then up the Mekong river to where the engineers were working on the highway, a little village call Phun Tao, which was halfway between Can Tho and Soc Trang (00:25:29:00)  Every day, Oppenhuizen’s platoon had to drive to Vung Tau, where there was an off-loading site for the barges and unload the barges, stockpiling the rock that they took off (00:25:57:00)  Eventually, the Army decided the engineers could not waste any of the materials and the crane Oppenhuizen’s platoon used to unload the barges often left rocks behind, so Oppenhuizen’s platoon had to follow behind the crane using shovels to pick up the excess (00:26:28:00)  The temperatures were often over 100°, so the engineers would have to work and rest in intervals (00:26:53:00)  The engineers often became dehydrated but they could not drink the local water, so the Army supplied them with trucks loads of pop, either 7-Up or Coca-Cola (00:27:09:00) o However, because there was no ice, the pop was always warm; nevertheless, although the pop was warm, it was wet and the engineers drank it by the gallons (00:27:21:00)  Although they wore hats to keep the sun from beating down of them, the engineers still sweated profusely (00:27:36:00)  The engineers often prayed for the monsoons to come so that there would be rain (00:27:44:00) o Every so often, it would rain and the men would just stand in it because it felt good (00:27:48:00) The area where the engineers were building the highway was pretty quiet in regards to enemy activity because the South Vietnamese ARVNs had a large contingent of soldiers stationed in Vung Tau (00:28:02:00) �   The Army had set up a deal with the ARVNs that their forces would heavily patrol the town while the engineers built the road (00:28:15:00)  At the end of the day, most of the engineers returned to their compound, leaving three engineers behind to guard all the heavy equipment that the engineers used (00:28:28:00)  Oppenhuizen had the guard duty a couple of times during his first couple of months in Vietnam and those times were very nervewracking and risky because the closest American forces were thirty miles away in either direction and the engineers were relying on the South Vietnamese forces (00:28:38:00)  For the most part, the ARVN patrols focused on the river out of fear that mines would be floated down the river by the enemy to explode underneath the bridge (00:29:58:00) The South Vietnamese, both civilian and military, tended to ignore Oppenhuizen and the other engineers working in the village (00:30:52:00) o Because of the location where they had to unload the barges, the engineers had to drive down and under the bridge, which largely shielded them from the South Vietnamese; as well, the entire area was fenced off (00:30:55:00)  Oppenhuizen and most of the other engineers did not actually have too much contact with the South Vietnamese; for the most part, if any contact did happen, it was between the leaders, such as the first sergeant or the platoon leaders (00:31:34:00) o On the other hand, on the base at Soc Trang, there were South Vietnamese girls who would come in the morning and clean the engineers’ tents, do the engineers’ laundry, etc. and would leaving in the late afternoon (00:31:54:00)  All the girls had proper identification and they needed to check in and out at the gate every time they went on or off the base (00:32:21:00)  In addition to the girls, the Army also hired several young men to work on the base burning the human waste from the latrines (00:32:34:00) o Oppenhuizen and the other engineers were allowed to freely go into Soc Trang, which was a fairly good-sized town (00:33:07:00)  However, the Army warned the engineers not to drink any of the local beer or water because it had not been sterilized (00:33:16:00) The Army also warned the engineers against taking drugs, which was a major problem in the military in general, with marijuana being the most prevalent in the area where Oppenhuizen was stationed (00:33:53:00) o On some occasions, engineers took the military scrip that was only supposed to be used by military personnel and used the scrip to pay off the South Vietnamese workers to bring the marijuana to the base the following day (00:34:05:00) o Some of the engineers used drugs quite frequently while others did so only occasionally (00:34:27:00)  During one time, it was very early in the morning and all the men in Oppenhuizen’s tent were asleep when one of the other men in the tent came running in, turned on the lights, and told everyone to get going or else he was going to shoot them all (00:34:34:00) �   It took a couple of guys to wrestle the man to the ground, after which the man was hauled away (00:34:57:00) o Overall, Oppenhuizen does not believe the drug use made too much of a different in the performance of his unit was a whole because there were only a few drug users and they were often the poorer performers to begin with (00:35:17:00) Overall, the morale of Oppenhuizen’s unit was fairly good (00:35:42:00) o When Oppenhuizen first arrived in the unit, a couple of the other men were already serving their second or third tour in Vietnam (00:35:46:00)  Oppenhuizen could tell that these were the more downtrodden men in the unit and that they were just going through the motions (00:35:53:00) Eventually, working at unloading the barges became old hat for Oppenhuizen and one day, the First Sergeant called Oppenhuizen into his office to ask if Oppenhuizen would come into the office to take over for the operations sergeant, who was going on a sevenday leave (00:36:29:00) o The First Sergeant said the reason he picked Oppenhuizen to fill the position was because Oppenhuizen was the only person in his unit who was a college graduate; there were a couple of other men in the unit who were high school graduates but the bulk were high school drop-outs (00:37:00:00) o Oppenhuizen said he would gladly take the position, so he came off of working on the road and spent a week learning the operations sergeant’s job, coordinating the unit’s operations (00:37:23:00) o When the normal operations sergeant came back from his leave, he took his job back and Oppenhuizen had the options of either going back to work on the road or looking for another opening (00:37:37:00) o The First Sergeant said in a month, the company clerk was going on R&R in a month and when the First Sergeant asked if Oppenhuizen could type, Oppenhuizen said could (00:37:44:00)  The First Sergeant told Oppenhuizen to just stay in the office and work with the clerk for a month to learn his job and when the clerk went on R&R, Oppenhuizen could fill the position (00:38:09:00)  Then, once the clerk came back, Oppenhuizen would just stay in the office because a month after his R&R, the current clerk was rotating back to the United States (00:38:18:00) o When he worked as the operations sergeant, Oppenhuizen had to track every operation that the company did or was a part of (00:38:42:00)  Apart from Oppenhuizen’s old platoon, which unloaded the barges, the other platoons in the company worked on the actual highway, building the road (00:38:51:00)  The operations sergeant stayed in radio contact with the men on the road in case they needed supplies as well as had the men make a daily report as to how much they had accomplished that day (00:39:03:00) o The company clerk’s job was multi-faceted, with the largest job being in the morning, when he had to create a daily morning report (00:39:27:00)  The morning report had to be typed and could not have more than two mistakes, from a smudge to a typeover to an erasure mark (00:39:38:00) �   If there were more than two mistakes, the clerk had to rip up the report and start again, doing the report as many times as necessary until he got it right (00:39:50:00)  The morning report tracked the company and was how the military kept track of all their personnel (00:40:05:00)  In every report, the clerk had to list all the personnel in the company and where individuals were if they were not with the company, such as being on R&R or on leave, being at battalion headquarters, etc. (00:40:14:00) o When someone new joined the company or someone left the company, the clerk to document the change in the report; if someone was on leave, then the clerk had to put down that person’s orders that said where they were going and their time, both in and out (00:40:36:00)  Once the clerk completed the report, it was sent to the battalion headquarters, where it was complied with all the other units into the battalion in another report, which was sent by noon to a higherranking unit (00:40:55:00)  Apart from doing the morning report, the clerk also typed various letters and helped track activities (00:40:14:00)  In mid-afternoon, the clerk had to go to the airbase to pick up the mail, which he then sorted and waited for the others to return to the compound at supper time before delivering it (00:40:25:00) o Oppenhuizen would take a duffel bag to pick up the mail with and would normally return with around half the bag full (00:41:49:00)  In the time that Oppenhuizen was there, the company never numbered more than a little over one hundred men total (00:42:09:00) Oppenhuizen tried to write home whenever he had a chance to; conversely, Oppenhuizen received letters from home every so often as well as a couple of care packages, which were really nice (00:42:18:00)  However, on several occasions, there were leftover care packages that other soldiers either did not claim or did not want and Oppenhuizen was able to take those as well (00:42:44:00) The company had a mess hall that was pretty good and the mess sergeant in the company had a knack for trading supplies (00:43:10:00) o Being where they were in Soc Trang, the company was almost at the end of the line in terms of supplies, which meant the company did not receive too much in the way of supplies and food (00:43:20:00) o Periodically, the mess sergeant took trips to Saigon and other places to trade and would return with several boxes of steak, so that on several Sunday afternoons, the men in the company would sit outside and grill steaks (00:43:39:00) o Apart from the mess hall, the men had built a small hooch that they put a bar in and they were able to get a little bit of beer and alcohol (00:44:03:00)  However, the men could only visit the “bar” at night, after they were finished working for the day (00:44:29:00) �     The personnel working on the airbase were totally separate from the engineers and the engineers never socially went onto the airbase and vice versa (00:44:47:00) o At times, some of the engineers went onto the airbase, such as Oppenhuizen when he went to pick up the mail and when the engineers would go to get water from a purifying machine that the Air Force personnel had (00:45:25:00) Very few people visited the airbase because the airbase was at the “end of the line”, although once or twice, the battalion commander did visit (00:46:46:00) o Conversely, most the men never went anywhere else in Vietnam; the supply men often had to travel to Can Tho to pick up the supplies for the unit (00:47:31:00) The best the majority of the men could do in-country was get a three-hour pass to go into Soc Trang; outside of that, they only had their R&Rs and seven-day leaves; each man received one week-long R&R and one seven-day leave (00:47:46:00) o Oppenhuizen took his R&R in January and went to Hawaii, where he met up with his wife and spent a week with her (00:48:30:00) o Later, in May, Oppenhuizen took a seven-day leave to Japan and visited the 1970 World's Fair (00:48:48:00)  When he flew to Japan, Oppenhuizen and some other men were dropped off at an airbase just outside Tokyo and were told that the first thing they had to do was get rid of their military uniforms (00:49:09:00)  The men were told to travel in civilian clothes because there were anti-war movements in Japan that were similar to the movements happening in the United States (00:49:20:00)  From the airbase, Oppenhuizen boarded a bus that took him to downtown Tokyo and dropped him off at the USO club there (00:49:36:00)  Inside the USO club, Oppenhuizen picked up a stack of flashcards with English on one side and Japanese on the other; once outside, Oppenhuizen could hold up the card to hail a taxi (00:49:45:00)  Oppenhuizen took a taxi to the train station, boarded a bullet train and three hours later, was in Osaka, where the World’s Fair was (00:49:57:00)  Oppenhuizen spent a couple of nights in Osaka and went through the entire World’s Fair before returning to Tokyo (00:50:09:00) When Oppenhuizen returned to Vietnam from his leave to Japan, it was getting close to his tour ending (00:50:21:00) o As the end neared, Oppenhuizen had a decision to make because at that time, if someone returned from Vietnam with less than five months remaining on their enlistment, the Army would grant the person an early discharge (00:50:26:00)  Conversely, if someone had more than five months, they had to serve all the remaining time stateside (00:50:42:00) o If Oppenhuizen returned in the mid-May, there were seven months remaining on his enlistment, so he voluntarily extended his tour in Vietnam for an additional two months; thus, when he returned home, he would have exactly five months remaining on his enlistment and he could get out of the military (00:50:48:00)  Oppenhuizen had a fairly safe job and he was working in a pretty decent routine doing work that he felt comfortable with (00:51:13:00) Oppenhuizen and the other men were not too aware of what was happening in other parts of Vietnam or back in the United States (00:51:40:00) �    o The men occasionally received newspapers and they would read the stories in there but that was the extent of it (00:51:44:00) o Oppenhuizen and the other men did not really have a sense of how the overall war effort was going or what was happening because the main part of the war effort was in the north and the men were in no way connected with it (00:51:56:00) o Although the men did occasionally have problems with enemy insurgents, it was isolated incidents (00:52:26:00)  Most of the time, the men paved several miles of road and the following day, would be driving over the new section and would find a massive hole in the middle of road with landmines in the bottom (00:52:34:00)  The men would have to disarm the mines before filling to hole in and repaving the road (00:53:08:00) o The area around the airbase had been hit earlier in the war, specifically during the 1966/1967 enemy operations (00:53:31:00) o Oppenhuizen believes the fact that the airbase was an attack helicopter airbase helped in some way deter whatever enemy forces might have been in the area from attacking the base (00:54:36:00)  There was always a constant stream of helicopters taking and landing at the base that started in the morning and continued throughout the rest of the day (00:54:55:00) Oppenhuizen does not believe there were any racial tensions amongst the soldiers, most of which was kept under control (00:55:26:00) o There were not a lot of African-Americans in the unit to begin with but those that were mingled with the other men, regardless of skin color (00:55:46:00) Oppenhuizen thought quite highly of both the officers and the NCOs leading the company; they did a pretty good job, tried very hard to keep peace and order amongst the rest of the men, kept the men busy but did not place too great of demands on them, and tried to give the men as much leeway as they possibly could (00:56:04:00) o Because they were still in a combat zone, the officers and NCOs could not be too strict, but they had to be strict enough when times and situations warranted it (00:56:31:00) Oppenhuizen believes that overall, his unit did a really good job, not only working on the road but keeping all the equipment maintained and running properly (00:56:54:00) A couple of times, Oppenhuizen did have to pull guard duty on the perimeter, although it was during the early months of his tour (00:57:48:00) o When he became company clerk, Oppenhuizen was exempted from having to do guard duty as well as morning formation (00:57:57:00) o A couple of the other men did not like the exceptions that were made for Oppenhuizen and although he was threatened a couple of times, Oppenhuizen managed to work through it (00:58:26:00)  Oppenhuizen had been living with the 1st Platoon while he was part of the rock detail and when he moved to be the company clerk, he kept living with the 1st Platoon (00:58:41:00)  The other men in the platoon would curse at Oppenhuizen and make idle little treats against him (00:59:00:00) �  To finally resolve the situation, Oppenhuizen moved out of the tent and moved into the headquarters tent with the remainder of the headquarters personnel (00:59:10:00) Oppenhuizen recalls that a couple of the night “attacks” by the enemy were somewhat nerve-wracking while the soldiers waited for the helicopters that were on standby to arrive and then watching those helicopters launch tracer rounds into the fields outside the perimeter of the base (00:59:56:00) o Those were some of the most nervous times, along with whenever Oppenhuizen had to guard the equipment in the village, when he and two other men were placing all their trust in the South Vietnamese army (01:00:21:00) End of Tour / Post-Military Life / Reflections (01:00:49:00)  Once his tour finally came to an end, Oppenhuizen took a helicopter from Soc Trang to Can Tho, were he went through processing (01:00:49:00) o After spending one night in Can Tho, Oppenhuizen flew to another airbase in the north and boarded another commercial airplane for the flight home to the United States (01:00:55:00) o The flight landed in Oakland and Oppenhuizen went through additional processing, spent a night in Oakland, went through his out-processing from the Army and took an airplane home (01:01:22:00)  Oppenhuizen did not really notice any anti-war protestors at the airport in Oakland; however, he was not traveling in his uniform (01:01:37:00)  The second day Oppenhuizen was home, he remembers going to the car lot where his father worked and using his back pay, bought a brand-new Dodge Charger (01:01:52:00)  Prior to enlisting, Oppenhuizen had been working at a Meijer supermarket and when he returned, the store was obligated to give him a job (01:02:34:00) o Oppenhuizen waited for about two weeks after he returned home before he went back the other store and got his job back (01:02:50:00) o Oppenhuizen worked at the store for a little while before he began the process of looking for a CPA job that used his accounting degree, which he finally found in February of the following year (01:02:56:00)  The one big thing that Oppenhuizen focuses on when looking back at his time in Army was that he actually did something constructive whereas most of the time, people have the assumption that all the Army does is destructive (01:03:37:00) o Oppenhuizen and the other men in his unit built a two-lane, fifty-mile stretch of highway that helped the local population; once the highway was built, people living in Soc Trang could travel to Can Tho and back to Soc Trang in a day, whereas using the old road, they could not (01:04:01:00) o Oppenhuizen felt good about his work because he was doing something constructive and helping people, rather than tearing it down (01:04:41:00)  Once he returned home, Oppenhuizen saw more of the public’s reaction to the war, especially in the newspaper (01:05:21:00) o However, he tended to look past the negativity and saw the war for what it was, paying more attention as the war was winding down (01:05:38:00) o Oppenhuizen realized it was not the mainstream of Americans who were opposed to the war but a smaller group (01:05:55:00) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OppenhuizenR1286V Title A name given to the resource Oppenhuizen, Roger (Interview outline and video), 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Oppenhuizen, Roger Description An account of the resource Roger Oppenhuizen was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1946. After completing college in 1968, he enlisted in the Army to stay ahead of the draft, and signed up for Officer Candidate School. He did his basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and then trained as a combat engineer at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. The Army assigned him to Infantry OCS instead of Finance, so he decided not to enter the program, so he was sent directly to Vietnam as a combat engineer in May, 1969. In Vietnam, he served with D Company, 35th Engineer Battalion, which was based at Soc Trang in the Mekong Delta and working on constructing a two-lane highway connecting the Delta to Saigon. For the first three months, Oppenhuizen worked on constructing the highway. However, because he knew how to type, Oppenhuizen eventually moved up to the company headquarters first to replace the operations sergeant while he was on leave, and then to replace the departing company clerk. 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. Army Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-10-25 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/6319b3b7cf764c79030db677055c6ce6.mp4 d4c1957ec3c69803688930e1256939d7 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a5fb2d2991ac53905fad4aa0aaaaaa74.pdf c44173c261a07fc038aec5f13e7040e2 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Raymond Paul Opeka (01:23:54) (00:20) Background Information • Raymond was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1856 • His mother was an accountant and his father worked in a factory • When Ray was only 17 years old he got his mother’s permission to leave high school early and join the Army • He felt obligated to join the Army while many others around him were being drafted • There were many minorities and poor people being drafted, while middle and upper class whites seemed to avoid the draft • Raymond also felt very lucky to have been born in the US and wanted to fight for all his freedoms (07:25) Basic Infantry Training 6 Weeks • Raymond flew to Louisiana and then took a bus to Fort Polk • He stayed in a very old barracks that was “mosquito infested” and “very unpleasant” • No one washed out during training because there were not enough men in the Army • Some men got caught trying to kill or harm others, or selling drugs, but they still remained in training • Raymond did very badly at some of the training courses and should have failed them, but the sergeant would change his scores around so that he would pass • 75% of the soldiers were doing “soft drugs” and about 10% were doing “hard drugs” (17:55) Advanced Infantry Training • Here Raymond began working more with weapons, tactical situations, and patrolling • He still did poorly in his training, but the Army was still short on men • Raymond flunked many physical tests, but did well with grenade launchers and land navigation • The drill sergeants were not as mean to the men during training as others might have been during the Korean War or WWII because they had realized that the majority of the men did not want to be there • The Army needed to learn to conform to the people that it was training • He was in advanced training for 6 weeks and then waited around for a week to be stationed overseas (23:55) Germany • Raymond spent a few days living in a castle while stationed near an air base in Frankfurt • He was assigned to the 8th Infantry Division and lived in an old barracks that SS Troops had stayed in during WWII �In Germany they continued infantry combat training at squad, platoon and company level • The German civilians were very nice and gave the Americans bread and wine • They were always short on supplies, equipment, weapons, and food (37:40) Cold War • The Russians that were stationed in East Germany had better equipment then the Americans in Germany and there were many more Russians • Raymond never felt that the Russians would attack in Germany because the majority of the country had been working with the Americans • Germany had many well disciplined troops • The US troops were very unmotivated and had negative morale (43:40) Negative Morale • Raymond felt great pressure to do drugs and even greater pressure to avoid them; he had been taught well in school that they were bad for you • He did not want to do drugs and become like all the other men around him • There were many soldiers on LSD while they were on duty with loaded weapons guarding missiles • There were many race riots within the Army and as well as within the civilians around them • They had segregated bars for Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Southern Whites, Urban Blacks…. • Sometimes racist people would go into a bar where they were not welcome just to start a fight • The fights would get so out of hand that they could not be stopped by the MPs or the German Police; they would have to call in the Post Guard Company • Raymond never turned anyone in himself for being racist or on drugs because he also felt that those same men were watching his back (01:02:30) Homosexuality in the Military • Raymond knew of 2 or 3 men that he was working with that were gay • He knew a special forces sergeant that had been working in his position for 12 years • The sergeant told him he would expect sexual favors for special training and promotion, but Raymond told him he was not interested • He could tell that others were gay, but they did not bother him if they did not cause a scene • The German Army allowed homosexuals to enlist • Raymond now feels that the “don’t ask, don’t tell” is a reasonable policy (01:10:15) Air Defense in Northern Germany • Raymond was working in a base with about only 25 Americans and 400 Germans • There were still a few Germans in the North that were into Hitler • He was able to go to Catholic Mass on Sunday • They spent some weekends and holidays with German civilians and had to be on the lookout for spies • The Greek military had tried to invade Cyprus in 1974 and his unit was brought to the Ramstein Air Base to remain on alert in case of being sent to Cyprus (01:21:20) Discharged • �• • • Raymond had been looking forward to being done with his service and going to college He was not asked to re-enlist because he was in such poor physical condition Raymond went to school for business administration and received his bachelor’s degree from Kent State University in Ohio � 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 OpekaR Title A name given to the resource Opeka, Raymond (Interview outline and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Opeka, Raymond Description An account of the resource Raymond Paul Opeka was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1956. He convinced his mother to give him written permission to join the Army before he graduated from high school. He was sent to Fort Polk for basic training where he did very poorly on many of the physical tests and activities, and in the advanced training. Opeka was able to remain in the Army at that time because of the shortage of enlisted men. Raymond was sent to Germany, where he continued training. Many of the men he was stationed with were doing lots of drugs and there were also many racial fights. 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 Other veterans & civilians--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 2008-09-04 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/6f2bcdb6fc35024b72bd7aaef36cc0a3.mp4 886f2168e4962e6c9fef99ec3cb32b65 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/49a6cfc2c546660ce9eef9f597f5ea39.pdf 3b73e184bae8818afd39b7338b9a6b25 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Cornelia Ooms Interviewer: Frank Boring Transcribed by Emilee G. Johnson, Western Michigan University Length: 41:14 Frank Boring: Well, let’s begin, if you could tell us your full name and where you were born. Cornelia Ooms: My name is Cornelia Lucretia Cook Ooms. That’s a long name! [laughs] Frank Boring: But you’re know as…? Cornelia Ooms: I’m known as Cookie. I have been for many years. Frank Boring: And when were you born? Cornelia Ooms: February 26, 1913. Frank Boring: And you grew up here in Grand Rapids, is that right? Cornelia Ooms: In Grand Rapids, I attended Christian schools. We lived in the Southwest part of Grand Rapids around Grandville Avenue, Hall Street, and so. 1:00 Frank Boring: What was your early schooling like? Cornelia Ooms: I went to Franklin Street Christian School and Grandville Avenue Junior High Christian School and then I went to Grand Rapids Christian High. And then after I graduated from there, I went into nurses’ training, right from school. Frank Boring: What was your interest in nursing? Did you have that from early on? Cornelia Ooms: No, I think, about the last year I was in high school, another girl and I talked about it. She didn’t go into nursing, but I did, we were going to go together, but she flunked out. [laughs] But I went into nursing, and so… I went to Blodgett Hospital. Frank Boring: Ok, all right. And what was your training like? Your schooling for nursing, what was that like? Cornelia Ooms: Well, it was good, Blodgett was known as a good hospital. 2:00 And we went, we had, the first year we were there, we went to junior college for a couple of courses. Otherwise, we had courses right at the hospital there, and learned how to do things, you know. �Frank Boring: Did you have any inkling that there was going to be a war coming up during that period of time? Cornelia Ooms: No. We were surprised when Pearl Harbor came. Frank Boring: Do you remember that day? Cornelia Ooms: Oh, I sure do! Sunday. Frank Boring: Tell us about it. What happened? Cornelia Ooms: Well, we were at another house, we were with some other young people and it came in the radio, and we were real surprised and then the next day, they declared war. Frank Boring: What was your reaction? Cornelia Ooms: Well, we all felt real bad about it. 3:00 We tried to do as much as we could, I was doing public health nursing at the time, I was in public health nursing. So I don’t know, just everybody was surprised, I think. Frank Boring: Did you feel like you wanted to join the military at that time, or did that come later? Cornelia Ooms: Not then. Later we talked about it, we three girls talked about it. And we felt we would like to do it. I think it was a matter of adventure too. [laughs] To get away, get out, you know. Frank Boring: So what is the process of joining the military, as a woman, as a nurse, at that time, what did you have to do? Cornelia Ooms: Well we, you know, I can’t even remember where we went to sign up, I think we went to Detroit to sign up. And we signed up 4:00 to go overseas, which my Dad laughed about, he said, “Yeah, that’ll never happen.” But anyway, two weeks we were sent to Camp Grant in Illinois, and we worked there as a nurse in the hospital, for about two weeks and then we got our notice to go overseas. Frank Boring: During that two weeks, what were you treating, just people that had colds and flues and things or were these actually…? Cornelia Ooms: Well it was just a Army hospital, I don’t remember much about that. Yeah, I don’t. Frank Boring: So, you got the notice then, that you were going to be going overseas… �Cornelia Ooms: And it was, they needed nurses so badly, I had a, some of the girls that went, they needed to go in uniform, they didn’t get their uniform till they got to New York. And I know, my mother and father and my sister and her husband, 5:00 came to Camp Grant to say goodbye to us, to me. And my mother sewed all Sunday, fixing the uniforms to make them fit for the other, my uniform was all right, but the other girls needed a little work done. So she was busy doing that. And we went to Camp Shanks in New York. Frank Boring: Did you have to do any kind of basic training, or did you have any military training? Cornelia Ooms: Well, no, they didn’t have time to do it. So when we were in, after we got to North Africa, we were there for about six weeks, I guess, they sent us to Sidi Bel Bes, Algeria, I don’t know if you, that’s the place where the French Foreign Legion was, in North Africa, and they had a big Army hospital there. And they sent the girls who were 6:00 going to be in charge of wards and some enlisted men, we went to that big hospital for about a month. And we worked there and learned how to do the records and all that stuff. That’s the only training we had for Army nurse. Frank Boring: Let’s go back for just a brief bit to your arrival in North Africa, you’d never been outside of the country, is that right? Cornelia Ooms: No. It was real funny, when we, well at Camp Shanks, they kept giving us more equipment all the time, they’d get us out of bed even during the night to hand out stuff. Anyway, we were lined up in a big shed to go on this ship, and I looked around, the Red Cross was handing out donuts and coffee. 7:00 And there I saw a guy who was our neighbor! And I thought, well that can’t be him, so I looked away, I thought if I look again, I won’t see him, just imagined it. But it was him. He was, we were on the same ship for a month, going overseas. And now he’s here in Sidi Bel Bes with me again. Frank Boring: So what was the arrival in North Africa like? I mean, I’ve been to foreign countries, and I know it’s very different in terms of the smells, in terms of the… Cornelia Ooms: Well, yeah, well, we landed in Oran. And at night, they put us on these big trucks, and we rode for a long time inland, you know, so we didn’t see much of the country then at all. But we were on a hill, they called it Goat Hill, 8:00 it was a big, big, thing, and they had about, oh, I bet five different groups of nurses there. [pause] The officers and the nurses were on one side of the road and enlisted men were on the other side, it was a big encampment there. We slept in tents, big tents, about ten or fifteen girls in a tent. �Frank Boring: Cots? Cornelia Ooms: No, not at first. We slept on the ground, at first, on our sleeping bags, our bedroll, that they called it. Frank Boring: Did you have a rank? Cornelia Ooms: Second lieutenant. Frank Boring: So you went in as a second lieutenant? Cornelia Ooms: Everybody, all the nurses went in as second lieutenants. Yeah. Frank Boring: And what were your first jobs, 9:00 what were the first jobs that you were doing when you arrived in North Africa? Cornelia Ooms: Well, when we were on Goat Hill, we didn’t work at all, we were just waiting, to be assigned. Then we stayed there for a long time. It was really something when we were on Goat Hill, it was so hot, terrible hot and so they made, well, I don’t know if I should tell this or not, but they made showers for everybody. And there were just pipes with holes in them, you know, and they had just canvas stripped around, not over the top, just around the bottom. Well, the enlisted men had a certain time when they could take showers, the officers had a certain time, and the nurses. When the nurses had 10:00 their time to go shower, it was all open, you know, everything was open. All the enlisted men had to come to get water, so they could look down on us. And we even had an airplane flying over us, taking pictures, we heard. And, we didn’t care, we were so hot, we didn’t care, what’s the difference, when there’s fifty, sixty, women are all together, they all look the same anyway, so. But they finally, they changed the time, and they put fellows there, to keep the enlisted men away, so, funny things like that happened. Frank Boring: What was your daily routine like? Cornelia Ooms: At…? Frank Boring: At Goat Hill, the routine was, you were just sitting around and play cards, or, what are you doing? Cornelia Ooms: Well, yeah, I guess, we would have breakfast, we’d wash ourself, you’d have to use a helmet, we used 11:00 the outside of the helmet as a basin of water. They had big tin cans, we’d wash our clothes in them and hang them on the bushes or whatever we could find. Frank Boring: This is a desolate area, I take it? �Cornelia Ooms: Oh, terrible, there’s no trees around at all. No trees at all. Frank Boring: And very, very hot. Cornelia Ooms: And about five o’clock, well, we’d have to walk to go get our food, we had to walk over to the mess, they had the mess, we just ate out of the mess kits, C-ration, some of us just ate at our own place with C-ration. It wasn’t very good. And, but about five o’clock, it was just like Grand Central Station, you’d see all the jeeps coming, all the different people would come pick up nurses. I had a fellow too, he would come take me for a ride all 12:00 around the country and… Yeah, we, and then we just, we would sing a lot together, and we’d talk, and yeah, there was nothing really to do, you just hung around. Frank Boring: Did you have any idea where you were going to be assigned? Cornelia Ooms: No. We didn’t know. We were assigned to Bizerte. We went on a big train, they had a big, long train, and we, you know, it was a French cars, I don’t know if you know they have two seats, two rows of seats and then there’s a row and then there’s a window and there’s outside of the train and with this little compartment. Six girls in one compartment, we were knee to knee, that’s how we sat, and that was sleeping too! And they would stop 13:00 quite often to get coal and water for this huge train, and the people that live around there would know that we were coming, course, and they would be lined up on the track, with eggs and bread, some bread, and stuff. Well we would, my friend and I, we sat by the window. And we’d put our helmet out, and they’d give us some hot water, in the helmet. And the people were sitting right by the window, I mean, we didn’t care. So we’d start to wash, first one would wash their face, and then the other one and then they’d wash their arms and that’s how we took our bath every day out of the helmet with everybody watching us. But we didn’t care, we got, at least, we were clean. 14:00 And we were in overalls, you know, jump suits. Frank Boring: Now, where did you arrive, eventually, where did you end up? At the end of that train trip? Cornelia Ooms: In Bizerte. And then we went to a big field, with big tents again. The hospital wasn’t quite set up yet when we got there. So we had to wait there for, I don’t know, a couple weeks, I guess, or a week, I don’t know. And then we went to our own hospital, that’s how it was set up. Frank Boring: Give us an idea of what this looks like. Cornelia Ooms: Well, it was called the 81st Station Hospital. And it had, there was a road, down the middle. On one side was all the hospital, they were big tents, four in a row, and it �went way down, and it was medical and surgical. 15:00 I was in a surgical tent. And on the other side of the road were the tents where the officers lived. And then they had a big recreation tent in the middle, and then the nurses tents on that other side, we all had bigger tents, we did have cots. [unintelligible] cots. Frank Boring: Now the tents you were sleeping in, these were not pup tents, right, these were…? Cornelia Ooms: Four ladies at a time, four beds. And we had a little stove in the middle, which, they’d burn some oil in it to heat in the winter time. Frank Boring: Are you familiar with the television series M*A*S*H*? Cornelia Ooms: Oh, yeah! Frank Boring: Is the tent sort of like that? Cornelia Ooms: Sort of like that. Yeah. Frank Boring: Ok. So, I think they had three to a tent, on the TV show, but you had four. Cornelia Ooms: We had four to a tent. Frank Boring: Approximately how many people were out there, are we talking thousands of people,16:00 or hundreds of people? Cornelia Ooms: Oh, there were…you mean in our group? Frank Boring: Just in your immediate hospital area. Between the officers and the support people… Cornelia Ooms: Well, yeah, there were about fifty nurses. And a lot of officers, I don’t know how many, but… Frank Boring: So this is a large area… Cornelia Ooms: So a couple hundred at least, two or three hundred people. Frank Boring: Now what was your responsibility, what was your job? Cornelia Ooms: I was the head nurse of this one ward. And we had very sick patients and some that weren’t too sick. Frank Boring: By sick, what kind of sickness are we talking about? These are war wounds? Cornelia Ooms: Just come from surgery, some were wounded, and they had a lot of dressings to do and IVs, it was very, and I, as a public health nurse, 17:00 I never learned how to �give intravenous injection. And I told our commander, the officer, reverend, I mean, Captain Gere, was our doctor in that..our tents and I told him, I said, I’m willing to learn if you want to teach me how to do it. “Aw,” he said, “I’ll just do it. You get everything ready, you know who has to have intravenous fluid, and when I go to surgery, I’ll stop by and stick the needle in.” He said, “Those boys have been through enough! They don’t have to go, they don’t have to have you poking them trying to hit a vein.” So, I never did learn to do intravenous, 18:00 put a needle in the vein, I… At public health, they didn’t want you to, it was too much responsibility, away from a doctor, and you know, in a home. Frank Boring: Why were you made the head nurse? Cornelia Ooms: Well, I don’t know, I had more experience. Some of the nurses there were just out of nurses training. They came right from nurses training into the Army. And I was older, we were older. We had had experience in the nursing field. Frank Boring: So as a head nurse in this particular ward, what was your responsibility? Cornelia Ooms: See that everything was done good, assign the nurses to the tents, the people they had to take care of, the baths that had to be given and see that the ward men did the work that they had to do. And we also did baths. 19:00 I worked all the time too. We didn’t just sit around. Frank Boring: Were you responsible for ordering medicines or was all that taken care of? Cornelia Ooms: The doctor did that. We had to give the medicine. We gave a lot, used a lot of sulfa. Frank Boring: What kind of wounds are we talking about here, what variety of…? Cornelia Ooms: Well they were gunshot wounds in the abdomen and the back, and we had some, a couple fellows that were burned real badly and had a couple of amputations. So that sort of, just general surgery. They had a, they called it hospital row, there were about four hospitals set up. Some took lung cases. 20:00 [pause] Some took lung cases, some had head wounds, others had different things, but we had general surgery. Frank Boring: This could not have been a very pleasant place to work. Cornelia Ooms: No, but the fellows were real nice. They never, when they first would come off the field, in from the airplane, they would be very dirty and we’d get them all cleaned up �and some of them would use bad words once in a while and they would apologize for it. They’d say, “Oh, we haven’t seen women for so long, we forget.” But they were real good fellows. Frank Boring: Um, did you treat just Americans or were there other nationalities? Cornelia Ooms: No, well, we had one fellow die and 21:00 he was from Britain. He was English. Most of us we were Americans, yes. Frank Boring: How long did you stay at that particular ward? Were you there for a year, or? Cornelia Ooms: Yeah. All the while we were in Africa, we were… [unintelligible] When we got to Italy, then I wasn’t, I just worked in the ward, I wasn’t ever responsible for it. Frank Boring: How did you get your news? Did you have newspapers, radio, how did you know what was going on in the war? Cornelia Ooms: Well, they had the Stars and Stripes, that was the newspaper, we would get that. And they had a radio, some of them had radios. Frank Boring: Did you have any idea that we were winning the war or losing the war, did you have any sense of how the war was going? Cornelia Ooms: No, I don’t think so. Course, in Italy, when we got to Italy, then we 22:00 took care of the French Army and different, we had more diverse people, more than Americans. We had Arabs and we had people who worked for the French Army. [pause] Frank Boring: So in Italy, you were not the head nurse. Cornelia Ooms: No, no. Frank Boring: So your responsibilities were just the same as any other nurse. Cornelia Ooms: Yeah. Frank Boring: Dispense medicine. Cornelia Ooms: Give baths. Frank Boring: Give baths, ok. Cornelia Ooms: That’s right. �Frank Boring: Were there any particular incidents that stuck out? I mean, I know this is a daily routine of wounds and people, but were there stories that you remember from that period that…? Cornelia Ooms: Well, one day, there was, he was from 23:00 Morocco, I guess, anyway, he was from the French Army, he wanted something else to eat, we couldn’t figure out what he wanted. So finally, he made a noise like a chicken, then we knew he wanted an egg. And another time, we had a black man we called Yah Yah, he was a huge fellow, and we also had another little guy whose leg had been amputated and the French didn’t do a very good job on people when the operated, so they were, had weights on his leg to pull, so they could fix it better, so he could use the prosthesis, and that was painful for him to have those weights on there but it was necessary. 24:00 But his friend would come along and stick the weights under the mattress to take the, relieve the pulling, you know. Well, one day, I got him all ready, I had him all fixed up, and had it all settled, and then I came back, the weights were under the mattress again, so I fixed it again and I was going this way [motions]. He couldn’t understand me and I couldn’t understand him but I was going this way [motions], shaking my head. And one of his friends came along and started talking to me in Arabic, I guess, I don’t know, anyway, and all of the sudden this little guy, he was raised right off the floor, here was Yah Yah, he had him by the scruff of the neck and just lift him right up and looked him in the eye and he said something 25:00 to him, I don’t know what, but we didn’t see the guy for two days after that, he must’ve scared him really bad, but we always felt we didn’t have to worry as long as we had Yah Yah around. He was, he knew what he was saying to him, probably wasn’t nice. Frank Boring: What was the procedure for a patient coming in and then finally getting discharged? Give us an idea of what the… Cornelia Ooms: Well, when we were in Africa, of course, all the records were in English. In Italy, we had young people working for us on the ward who were Italian, didn’t speak any English. These people came in from the French Army, they didn’t speak English either. 26:00 So, the ward doctor would take the medicine chart, cart, and he cut off all the bandages of this one fellow and rewrite all the orders in English, that was the only way they could do it. And somebody would take tetanus, and give everybody a tetanus shot. Just under the skin, you know, test them if they needed it. And when we had, if they were going to have surgery, they weren’t to have breakfast, they had a certain color card that we laid on their bed, and then these Italians would know that would mean they didn’t get a breakfast. That’s how we had to work. Lot of hand, head shaking and hand shaking and, but it worked, 27:00 it worked. Frank Boring: Would you say that the pace was hectic? �Cornelia Ooms: No, no. It was busy, but not hectic. We never stressed, I don’t think, I never felt that way, anyway. Frank Boring: So, from your knowledge of how all this works, a soldier would get injured in battle, the medics would bring him to— Cornelia Ooms: Our hospital. Frank Boring: Ok, so you were getting them fresh from the battle. Cornelia Ooms: We got those from the French Army, we did, yeah. And they had much different wounds than our fellows did, you could tell they had hand-to-hand combat. They would come, these guys, from, you know, the Arabs, with these knives that were crooked, you know, I mean, the big curled-over, they would go under the mattress, they still had them with them. And their wounds were a lot different, 28:01 all sliced and, they weren’t gunshot wounds like the Americans. Frank Boring: Was it during this period of time that you met a young lieutenant, I believe he was a lieutenant at the time, Dole, is that the same period of time or is that much later? Cornelia Ooms: No, no, that was after I came home. Frank Boring: Oh, ok. Cornelia Ooms: No, I didn’t see him in Africa, no. Frank Boring: So, you were then in Africa and then in Italy and what happened after Italy, where did you go from there? Cornelia Ooms: Well, I, see I injured my back when we got to Italy. Frank Boring: Let’s talk about that. Cornelia Ooms: So I worked for six months. But I was, my body was real crooked, I was trying to save my back, you know. Frank Boring: Well, let’s talk about that incident, what happened, actually? Cornelia Ooms: Well, as I said, when we got from the ship, to our place where we were going to live, we had to get on a big truck, 29:00 it was 6x6. And we had all our heavy clothes on and a tent bag and a helmet on our head. And I was the first one off the truck. And the fellow who, there were no steps, we just had to jump off, and that’s a long ways down. But the fellows would always put their hands up like this [motions] and we could put our hands on theirs and they would spring us, and we wouldn’t hurt. But this little fellow who helped me, didn’t give me any support, so when I landed on my feet, my back twisted. �And I called to the nurses, the other girls and I said, “Be careful when you get off, he doesn’t help you enough.” But then I didn’t think any more of it, but as the time went on, it’d get worse. And one night, I was supposed to have a date, and he didn’t come, which wasn’t unusual, they had 30:00 other assignments, so… But I started to get sciatica, a pain in my leg, it was just terrible. And everybody was out and when they came back in, I was walking around all crumpled up. They gave me pain pills and put me to sleep and in the morning it was still there, so then I went to the hospital. And I was in traction there for maybe a month. And I was sent home on a hospital ship. And I went to Springfield, Missouri, then, we came home and landed in Savannah, and then I was sent to Springfield, Missouri, to the hospital there and had a laminectomy for my back and I was there for a while and then I went to Percy, then I went 31:00 to Fort Custer, I was on assignment, I went back then to Miami for reassignment, and I chose Fort Custer, Percy Jones, because that was near where I lived, you know, and I had a car waiting for me in Grand Rapids and so I went there but I was only there about six months and my back went out again and I had a second operation there. And that’s when I met Dole, I was recuperating from that second operation, and I helped him and I volunteered to feed him. Frank Boring: Now, you were telling me there was two officers there that were in pretty bad shape, tell us about meeting Bob Dole. What kind of shape was he in? 32:00 Cornelia Ooms: Oh, he was so thin! He’s a big, tall guy, you know, and he was real thin, he couldn’t use his one arm and his other arm he couldn’t use to eat with. He was very, very thin. And he wasn’t eating, that’s why they asked us if we would feed him. To feed him while the food was hot. So every, every three times a day, we would go, before we went our own meal, we would go and feed this fellow, these fellows, this other nurse and I. And she fed a fellow who was a paraplegic and I had Dole. So, that way, he did start to get better then. By the time I left, when I was discharged from there, he was still a patient there when I was discharged. Frank Boring: What was he 33:00 like as a patient? Cornelia Ooms: I never saw him, I just went in to feed and would go away again, you know, we didn’t… But he was real nice, we had a lot of nice talks together. Yeah. Had a good sense of humor. Frank Boring: Course, you didn’t know who he was from anybody else at that time, he was just— Cornelia Ooms: Oh no, he was just, he was a lieutenant. Yeah. There were, Senator Inouye was there, at that same time. Frank Boring: Oh, wow. �Cornelia Ooms: And there was another man, I can’t think of his town, but he was from Michigan, he was there, they all became senators! Three of them that were there at the same time. Course they didn’t know it at that time. Frank Boring: When did you first find out that the guy that you were feeding was a— Cornelia Ooms: Well, when I was, lived in California, we lived, I, we moved there, and after I had finished school and my husband finished school, 34:00 we moved out to California. And his picture was on Life Magazine, he was running for senator then. And I wrote to him and told him who I was, and he wrote back to me and invited me to come to Washington, and show me around. But then a year or so later, I got another letter from him, he had been in San Diego, but he hadn’t had time to come to see me or to contact me. So that was when I saw him, and then I saw him, course, later in Grand Rapids, at that political luncheon. Frank Boring: Now, once your back, it was hurt you’re— Cornelia Ooms: When I was, when we were in, when we were going to school 35:00 in Seattle, I was married and I was going to school, getting my degree in public health nursing, then my back went out again, and then I went through the veterans’, I went to the public health hospital, and I had a big operation and I had a spinal fusion. And then they injured the nerve in this leg, [motion to right] my right leg, which was more sensation than movement, I could use it, but it was the sensation. It was so terrible cold, I had, I started getting terrible cramps, and it was so cold, my foot was, my leg was always ice cold. So I went back to this hospital and saw the doctor, and they did a ?????? which, 36:00 they directed more blood through another vein, a vessel, and then I didn’t have any more trouble with it. It’s always been weak, this leg has always been weak, I’ve fallen many times. But never really got hurt real bad. Skinned up a lot. [laughs] Frank Boring: Yeah. How about your discharge from the military, was that a fairly simple thing? Cornelia Ooms: Yes. You are, I was discharged when the Army hospital said you’re able to go work, or be around, you know. So, I was discharge and then I went back to Camp Grant, and got my final discharge there, I was only there a day or two, and I was discharged. Frank Boring: Did you find that your military experience helped you, later in your life? Cornelia Ooms: Oh, yes! 37:00 Made me grow up. Oh yeah. I found out I could do things I never thought I could do. Take responsibility I never thought I could do. I had always lived at home with my parents and very secluded, always the same friends, didn’t have to do anything different. But I found out I could do it. I really grew up. �Frank Boring: Did you have moments of real… I guess the word I looking for is when you think about nurses, there are times when the life of that person is in your hands. Were there close calls that you can recall? Cornelia Ooms: No, I don’t ever think so. Except that one time in Africa when the little boy died, and we all felt really bad about it, but— Frank Boring: What was that, what happened there? What happened to the little boy? Cornelia Ooms: Well he was wounded 38:00 very badly and he died, he couldn’t make it, the doctor tried everything to save him, he couldn’t do it, I don’t know what happened to him [unintelligible] That’s the only casualty we had in our ward. I don’t think we had too many in our whole hospital. Frank Boring: You guys did a good job. [laughs] Cornelia Ooms: I think so. I think we did. Frank Boring: Well, I guess we can wind down the interview now, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate you letting us come and talk to you. Cornelia Ooms: Well it’s been fun talking about it again. Frank Boring: Yeah. Cornelia Ooms: Yeah. Frank Boring: Well, make sure to keep in contact, because I’d like you to get a copy of this video. Cornelia Ooms: Ok, thank you. Frank Boring: And we’ll make sure to have that for you. And when Bob Dole comes to town, let’s see what we can do about it. Cornelia Ooms: Oh, I hope, I sure hope I can see him again. Frank Boring: I have one more question. I interviewed a Navy nurse, ok, and not a Navy nurse, excuse me, she was in the Navy. She had actually been offered to be in the 39:00 Army. And she chose the Navy cause she heard that the Army nurses wore khaki underwear. Cornelia Ooms: [laughs] Oh, no, we didn’t! [laughs] No. But we did a lot, we did a lot more actual nursing than the Navy nurse did, that’s what I was told. I talked to a Navy nurse, they get a lot of bookwork. And they told other people what to do. The Army nurse, we �did the actual nursing too, we gave baths and we did all that kind of work. And, but, the Navy nurses probably ate better than we did too. [laughs] One thing, I went with a, he was a lawyer, and he’d come once a week to the hospital and come and pick me up and take me to Bizerte, to his place, 40:00 where they had… And the first time I went, they were all sitting at a big, long table, all men, of course, I was the only woman. And I sat down and I looked, and I said, “Butter!” And they said, “Butter?” I said, “Butter, we don’t get butter.” They said, “You don’t?” I said, “No, we get…” stuff, I don’t know what it was. Anyway, before I knew it, I had all the butter of the table in front of me. And every time I came, everybody would give me butter. They all brought butter to me. [laughs] Now, they, some of those people ate pretty good. Army didn’t eat so good. Oh, we ate all right, but it was a lot of C-rations and K-rations and… Frank Boring: I actually know what those are. I’ve eaten them myself. Cornelia Ooms: [laughs] Yeah. 41:00 Frank Boring: Well, Cookie, thank you so much for this interview, and I guess we can wind it down now and… Cornelia Ooms: Well, thank you for doing it, I never knew it was going to be like this. 41:14 � 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 OomsC Title A name given to the resource Ooms, Cornelia (Interview transcript and video), 2004 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ooms, Cornelia Description An account of the resource Cornelia Ooms was a nurse in the U.S. Army during World War II. She was stationed in Italy and worked in the field hospitals with French, North African, British and American soldiers. She hurt her back in Italy and had to return back home to the states where she finished school and married. While she spent time in Italy in a hospital, Cornelia met Bob Dole and two other soon to be senators. She volunteered to feed Mr. Dole, who at the time could not use his arms to feed himself. 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 Video recordings United States. Army World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives Women Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 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/7e3adf108605ebfcb184d4f396536129.mp4 5b08c8e813eb60224c1ff281a2efaaca https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2ea0610de2abee51b10763efb86a86d6.pdf f0f77d9c94b4f843b4dc64f3ea12775d PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW PETER ONDERSMA Born: Orlando, Florida Resides: Byron Center, Michigan Interviewed by: James Smither PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project, Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, November 4, 2013 Interviewer: Mr. Ondersma, can you start out my telling us a little bit about your own background, for instance, were you born in Byron Center? No, I was born in Orlando, Florida. My folks had a business there and then they—my grandma became ill and then they moved back to Grand Rapids. Interviewer: How old were you when you moved up here? Out to Byron Center? Interviewer: Yeah I was five years old, I believe—no, I was eight probably, in 1955 we moved to Byron Center. Interviewer: And what did your family do up here once they got here? What did your father do for a living? What did my father do for a living? He worked in a factory, Harrod Meat Company, and we lived on 72nd Street, the same place—I live in the same place I grew up in and I went to school in Byron Center and graduated from high school. 1:07 Byron Center was a small town in those days. It had a blacksmith shop, we had a pony and we use to ride the pony to Byron Center to get it shod. Interviewer: Now, what year did you finish high school? 1966 1 �Interviewer: What did you do after you graduated? I went to work for Harrod Meat Company, the same place my dad did and when I got my first notice for a physical for the draft they quickly, of course, laid me off , because they didn’t want to have to take me back. So, I went for my physical and then there was this waiting period, so I went to work for Oven Fresh part the Oven Fresh Bakery. 2:00 Interviewer: in this period here, after you’ve gotten your notice and you know you’re going to get called up, or whatever, what was your reaction to that, when you got the first notice, or whatever? Ahh, being in a small town you really didn’t know anything about this draft bill. I didn’t know, being that young and I was working two jobs and I didn’t really know anything about Vietnam except bits and pieces, and then I started watching the news, I thought I’d better see what’s going on, and I hear all these reports of how we’re whipping the Vietcong and it didn’t sound too bad. Interviewer: You had the impression, at that point that we were winning? It sounded like we were winning with terrific foreign enemy casualties and very few American casualties, so I thought, “If I gotta do it, I guess it won’t be so bad”. 3:00 So, I got drafted and I remember eight, 1966 when I was inducted into the service at Fort Wayne, Detroit. Interviewer: Where did they send you from there? Fort Knox, Kentucky for basic training Interviewer: Now, what did that consist of? 2 �Basic training was riflery, and teaching you to follow orders. That was pretty simple for me, I didn’t have a—I didn’t find it bad. It was a lot of physical activity, but I was a tough kid, at the time, and I could handle that and it was no big deal. Interviewer: Now, the business of discipline and following orders, were you used to that from having real jobs and things? Pardon? Interviewer: The whole issue of discipline, some people have real troubles with that? We had a lot of –in our basic training unit we had a lot of fellows that were told by the judge that either they go in the military, or they go to jail. 4:09 Interviewer: For what kinds of things, or do you not know that? Pardon? Interviewer: What did they do, do you think? Stealing? I don’t know, misdemeanors I suppose, so most of them went in the service, of course, so it was—basic training wasn’t bad. It was a hundred and—when we left Grand Rapids on a Greyhound it was a hundred and sixty from Grand Rapids drafted the same day, and we all went to Fort Wayne and then they lined you up and then, I think, every third one went to the Marine Corps, because at that time they were even drafting for the Marine Corps, which was really unheard of. Every fifth one was going in the Navy, and I got drafted with a kid that I’ve been friends with ever since, from Grand Rapids. 5:05 He made sure we weren’t every third one, so we didn’t get in the Marine Corps. He was older, five years older than me, so he was a little more educated in the ways of the world, so he—I 3 �was just kind of dumb and standing around like a sheep and he made sure we were the right numbers. Interviewer: Right So, we went together to Fort Knox and that was quite a shock for some of these guys. I remember we got off the bus, after the train ride we got off the bus and we had to stand in footprints and they were cocky little eighteen year olds and I remember this one kid named—now I can’t remember his name, but he—it was in the middle of the night and we were standing in these lines and they were yelling and hollering around there and he was talking and he kept talking, and this drill sergeant came up and hit him right in the face and knocked him out. 6:06 That ended all the talking and that was the end of that. So, we were inducted into the service there and we went through getting all our clothing and our bedding and started out with getting up at five o’clock and cleaning the barracks and all the stuff that goes on with it. Interviewer: Were they giving you any kind of testing, or figuring out what specialization to put you in? Yeah, I don’t remember in basic, I suppose we had testing, but I’m not really sure of that part any more. I know we had testing, but that was in basic probably, I suppose it was. Interviewer: It might have been if you stayed in Fort Wayne long enough for any aptitude tests. No, it was just a—they just loaded us on a train, that’s all we did there, and signed some papers and raised our hand. 7:03 Interviewer: Now, how long was the basic training at Fort Knox? I think it was eight weeks, as I remember. 4 �Interviewer: Did you stay on there for advanced training, or did they move you someplace else? No, I was moved to Fort Leonard Wood for combat engineer training. Interviewer: Is that in Missouri? Yeah, Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, yes Interviewer: Now, combat engineer training, what did that consist of? A lot of demolition work, laying mine fields, learning how to sweep roads for mines, disarm mines, and we built some floating bridges, they never used those and I never saw that again, use of weapons, more intense use of weapons, and that’s pretty much it. 8:06 It was just more intensive weapons training. Interviewer: While you were there at Fort Leonard Wood, did you get much of a chance to go off base? Did you get liberty or leave, or anything like that? For a few weeks we didn’t, but we got a Christmas leave in December, seventeen days, because they pretty much closed the fort down in those days. My cousin had an airplane at South Kent Airport, which was off 64th and Burlingame, a Cessna, and he picked me up from Fort Knox and flew me home in two hours. My buddy was supposed to go with me, but he got nervous, because they couldn’t leave town here because it was kind of foggy, so he was afraid that he wouldn’t get home. He had a girlfriend, so he got on a Greyhound. 9:05 I was home—they picked me up at eleven and I walked in the house at two-thirty and he got home at midnight. So, we had seventeen days and then It was back to Leonard Wood and it was a cold place and we never—it was a—it’s a bitter cold state in the winter. 5 �Interviewer: It can be in the winter, yup. So, you didn’t get to go into town much, or anything else like that? I never went into any of the towns on these bases. They always—well, they had trouble with—the townspeople didn’t like the military much and I thought I’d just as soon stay away from all the hassle and the sitting in the bars and drinking and ending up in jail, and a lot of my buddies ended up in jail in town. 10:06 Interviewer: Now, when you were in the engineer training, were there many people who were washing out, or did most people get through everything and keep going? A lot of people that had health problems, but they didn’t wash many people out, they just gave them a different job. The Marine Corps is mostly combat arms and there are no other jobs to give them, so if they can’t do that they’re out, and in fact, usually they’re out in a couple weeks, but the army was always able to find something else for them to do. Interviewer: How long did they have you at Fort Leonard Wood? I think about eight weeks. Interviewer: So, about what time of the year was it when you finished there? Was it in the spring sometime, or the summer? It was sometime in the spring, February maybe, but I can’t remember exactly. 11:00 I think I had a thirty day leave, or a two week leave, or something, and then I had to report to San Diego for out processing for Vietnam. Well, at Fort Leonard Wood, I got orders for Vietnam. Interviewer: Now, at that point had you been assigned to a unit yet, or were you just going to be a replacement? 6 �I was a replacement. Interviewer: So, you didn’t know what, exactly, you’d be doing or who you’d be assigned to? No, just that I was going to be a combat engineer somewhere, but some guys found they were going to be something else, but I ended up the same thing as a combat engineer. Interviewer: Now, were most of the guys you were training with sent to Vietnam, or was there a split? I would say that eighty percent went to Vietnam, and twenty percent went to Korea, or Germany, or somewhere. 12:00 Pretty much, when we looked at the roster, it was pretty much cut and dried where you were going. Interviewer: What was it like, did you go back home on that leave, that second leave? Yeah Interviewer: What was it like to kind of go back there with the idea that you were going to ship out to Vietnam after it? Well, Vietnam didn’t really dawn on me as being so bad. I never had it in my head that it was going to be that bad, so I really—sense I didn’t know anything about it, I thought it would be quite an experience, so we kind of considered that our class trip. Interviewer: How did they get you out to San Diego? Did you fly out there? I flew to San Francisco and then, I forget, I took a cab or a bus to San Diego, which was an army terminal, a big warehouse with rows of bunks. 13:06 When they had a planeload, or a couple of planeloads of, then they would fly us. commercially over to Vietnam. 7 They flew us �Interviewer: How did that work? Did you stop places on way to get out there? On the way to Vietnam we stopped in Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines for refueling. Interviewer: Did you get much of a chance to get off the plane, or was it just in the terminal and back on the plane again? In Hawaii we had plane trouble, so we had a day, so I wandered around Hawaii a little bit. They gave us so many hours, I forget, twelve or fifteen hours and then we had to be back, so I got to see a little of Hawaii. Interviewer: But, mostly, they were moving you straight through. Now, when you got to Vietnam, what was it like? 14:00 When you go in and you land there, describe that scene when you get there? Well, when they opened the door on the plane and we stepped out, it was just like walking into a steam bath. It was unbelievable, you couldn’t believe how oppressive the heat and humidity was. You just broke out in a sweat, just immediately, and they hustled us out of the sun and sent us to a holding barracks until we were assigned to a certain unit. Interviewer: What was that barracks or facility like? Those were wood barracks with a steel roof over them, corrugated, some kind of steel roof, and no air, it was just to get you acclimated to the heat more or less. 15:02 It was at Tan Son Nhut Air force Base and the funny thing—the big shocker when I got there was they took some of us and took us into a hangar and they had rows and rows of body bags of bodies they were loading back on a plane and this Air Force, I don’t know what rank he was, but he opened a body bag and he pulled out a head and he said, “This is how you guys are going home”, and that was quite a shock. I didn’t expect anything like that. 8 �There were—it was an air conditioned building and they were putting them all in some kind of shipping containers and it was horrendous and I was shocked. 16:02 Interviewer: I take it that was sort of an extracurricular activity? Yeah, that was wasn’t part of the program. That was just some sadistic individual trying to scare us to death, which he did. Interviewer: While you were there were there any security concerns? Mortar attacks, or was it quiet while you were there? Tan Son Nhut was pretty secure. They got rocketed, I guess, but not while we were there. Interviewer: Now, how long was it before they moved you out of Ton Son Nhut? I think two days and we were on our way to different units. Interviewer: What unit were you attached to? The 70th Combat Engineers Battalion Interviewer: And where were they stationed? They were stationed at first with the 1st Air Cav Division in An Khe, because we had line companies that did—laid runways for the—and An Khe had a big runway on the base and they were enlarging that for bigger planes. 17:10 So, we were there during—I don’t know, three or four months and that was quite a place. It was probably five or six miles square, it was huge place. I never heard any gunfire, even, there, because it was so far from the barbed wire. Interviewer: And you mostly were working on the runway, was that your main job? Nothing like that, I did nothing, actually for the four months. Interviewer: How did you spend your time? 9 �I cooked midnight chow for—I was in Headquarters Company at the time and they had nothing for me to do, so they asked me if I’d like something to do and I said, “Sure”, so I cooked midnight chow for the Navy Seabees that were working there. 18:04 The second shift, so they gave control of a mess hall and a couple KP’s to take care of the mess and I just cooked midnight chow for eight or ten Seabees. They were drilling wells around the area for the locals, the civilians. Interviewer: Now did you get off the base much at all, or did you just stay there? Very little, I got off a few times, but I didn’t—they didn’t recommend it, but it was a pretty secure area and the times I did go to the town it was tons of GI’s and every bar was full, everything was a bar. 19:00 Bars next door to each other. Interviewer: This is kind of the middle of 1967 at this point? Yeah, that was probably June and July of 1967. Interviewer: Now, on the base itself, were there a lot of Vietnamese military or civilian people there, or how did that work? They had people working there, sure. Interviewer: What kind of jobs? At that place they seemed to wash military trucks a lot, I don’t know they’d drive them into the river and wash them. That was strange and I don’t know why they washed all the trucks all the time. They had pretty good living, they had wood sided buildings with tin roofs and it wasn’t bad. We were there until the monsoon came and then the engineers move out and go to someplace where they can work again. 20:01 So, we moved to Pleiku, which was in the Central Highlands. The monsoon was over there and the mud was two feet deep and it was all red clay like in Georgia. It looked like the same kind of 10 �clay and when it dried out it was just clouds of dust. Then we had tents, just plain ten men army tents we lived in the rest of the time I was there. Interviewer: What kind of work did you do? I went out on patrol when we got calls. I went out with two other guys, we were a squad, and we went out to different bases and we checked their security, laid minefields, made maps of the minefields and updated their security. A lot of them were kind of hap hazard and they just laid mines here and there. 21:07 There was no way to service them, there were no maps, so we had to go and dig for all the old mines, dig them up and replace them and make a map. Interviewer: Now, was that very dangerous work? Would these mines go off? Oh, a mine can go off any time, but we’d go in there with a knife and we’d prod for them. We’d find them with a mine detector and then we’d prod for the mine and then slowly dig it up and disarm it. Interviewer: Now, did you find, at all, if any of the minefields had been interfered by anybody, the Vietcong, or anyone, or were they just where the guys had buried them? Well, when the first troops came to Vietnam, they just put mines around their compounds and there was really no rhyme or reason to it. 22:06 The military, all of a sudden, wanted maps of the stuff, so we went and that was one of the things we did, or if an infantry came across some tunnels, they’d chopper us in to blow the tunnels. Interviewer: How did that work? What would you do if you find a tunnel, what do you do? 11 �We’d take C-4 plastic explosives, maybe ten pounds of it, and string it around. If they could find another tunnel opening, we’d drop some down there too and then we’d run detonating cord up and blow the tunnels, but you could never really blow them, because they were on different levels and they went all over. 23:02 Interviewer: There were some pretty elaborate networks in places, so you were sealing off entrances at least, and making things a little bit harder for them for a while. Well, they’d just come back the next day and dig them all out. There was no way—I think we just blew up a few people that just happened to be in the wrong spot when it went off, but it was pretty elaborate systems we had. We’d talk to tunnel rats that had been down part of them and they’d give us an idea of how much explosive we needed and sometimes the tunnel rats would take the explosives down and run the wire back for us. Interviewer: You wouldn’t go very far into a tunnel; you might go into the entrance or opening area? I was too big, I couldn’t go in those. Interviewer: How wide were those tunnels? Physically, how large were they, the entrances? Maybe about this big 24:03 Interviewer: Maybe about two feet? You know what the Vietnamese look like. Even today they’re pretty small people and they could slip down those things. Our tunnel rats were a little bit bigger, but you couldn’t be a big person. I was too tall, I could never go down one of those things, 12 �besides I was a little bit claustrophobic when it came to—I just couldn’t picture myself down in there, but these little guys could do it, a flashlight in one hand and a forty-five in the other. I saw them do it, they were crazy. Interviewer: About how long were you stationed in Vietnam total? Was it about a year? One year Interviewer: Did the situation change while you were there? You get there in 1967, it seemed fairly quiet. The Tet Offensive of 1968 and it was the end of January, I believe, and the military knew that something was going on. 25:05 So, they pulled a lot of people out of the field, so we didn’t go out much, but we did a lot of reinforcing of our own compound and then one night it all—the Tet Offensive started, it started all over Vietnam at one time, so it just went crazy, the military, and— Interviewer: Now were you at Pleiku at this point? I was at Pleiku, I was at base camp, and we got overrun one night and we had the NVA and the Vietcong running all around the base, so people were shooting. Interviewer: So, they were actually on the base? They were on the base and killed some guards breeched the barbed wire and a lot of them had died in the claymore mines and anti-personnel mines we had and they just kept coming. 26:11 Interviewer: So, they were actually coming in and attacking, they weren’t just coming out from tunnels underneath or something like that? 13 �They didn’t come—some of the places they had tunnels in the bases, but they didn’t in ours, because Pleiku is pretty rocky and you couldn’t dig in that. They walked over their dead in the barbed wire and came through it. They streamed through in swarms. Interviewer: What were you doing while this was happening? Well, I wasn’t on duty or anything and I was just lying on my cot and when the rockets started coming in I started running out and they were shooting 122mm Russian rockets. 27:02 One came down about ten feet from me, but it was it was a metal shed on the other side, between us, and it was full of stuff, it was a good thing, because when that went off it knocked me to the ground, blew my eardrums out, gave me brain damage, and when I got up I thought I was dead, because the concussion was so horrendous that I couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t hear anything, blood was running out of my nose and out of my ears, but it was night and the flares were going off. When the next parachute flare came down I could see that I wasn’t bleeding all over, so I got up and I carried a Thompson 45 machine gun. 28:03 Just at that point a Vietcong stood up from behind a tent and I shot him in the chest and I’ll never forget the sound of that, because the Thompson shot 45 caliber ammunition, and it was soft core, just lead. It sounded just like I had hit him with a baseball bat. He went down and I couldn’t move much, because It seemed like every bone in my body was broken. I’m lying there and every flare that came down it looked like this Vietcong was moving, because those parachute flares, they swing in the air current and gives eerie shadows. I kept looking at that Vietcong thinking he was still moving. 29:01 I couldn’t believe it, but it took until the next afternoon for them to kill all the Vietcong that were on there, they were hiding everywhere. That was a big base and they were all over the place. 14 �Interviewer: How long do you stay down there on the ground watching the flares? Most of the night, there was no place to run and you didn’t know where to go. I was headed, originally, for the barrier to help secure it, but I didn’t dare go that way anymore, not after I saw the Vietcong. I thought this is—mostly what everybody did was stay in the position they were at and tried not to shoot their buddies. There was ammo flung back and forth across the compound, so you just lay on the ground. Interviewer: Right, now when you finally get up and move, is that because some other guys were coming by, or everything just got quiet? 30:01 It got to be morning and then they had a whole—they had a couple companies of infantry come through and they cleaned it up. We weren’t actually infantry, we just—we went with the infantry, but we never had to go on point or anything. Interviewer: You weren’t trained to fight as a unit or anything like that? No, there would only be two or three of us together going and they kept us in the middle, because they wanted us alive, but it was a long night and many nights after that were long, because they attacked every night. Interviewer: Were they able to break into the base again, or after that were you on guard? 31:00 After that they didn’t, no it was just a onetime thing. They, of course, they tripled the guards then and this particular place had big spotlights that came together at a point, but they came through, it was probably a breach of security, somebody sleeping originally, which happened, somebody sleeping and not paying attention, or not there and that’s how they got through. 15 �Interviewer: Now, before the Tet Offensive started, do you have any sense of, sort of, how the war was going, or were people still thinking like they were winning, or did it just seem like an endless thing that was just going on and on? Well, we had heard that there was a lot of troop movement by the Vietcong, but nobody really thought they could take on the U.S. military and such a big amount of troops. 32:08 We didn’t realize they had that many troops available. Interviewer: After you fight off the attacks, it becomes clear that ultimately the offensive is not going to succeed in taking over the country, or chasing you out, what was the morale like on the base? Were people optimistic about what was going to happen, or were they just worried about things? Nobody got any sleep from then on and it went on for a week, or two weeks, I don’t remember how long it was, but you’d just lay there. The night they breached our security there were so many of them that they called in “Puff the Magic Dragon”. Those little two prop airplanes that had miniguns. 33:01 They came in and went around and around and it was just like a fireworks display that whole night. That plane was dropping parachute flares and the artillery on the base was shooting up our flares, and that’s all they were shooting, they couldn’t shoot anything else, because they didn’t know where to shoot. They couldn’t shoot low enough to do any good anywhere else, and we had gunships coming through. It was really quite a fireworks display from the tracers from so many guns, just like a straight red streak and then all the green streaks of the enemy going back at the plane. It was just a terrific fireworks display. 34:00 Then the next day, when they finally secured the compound, we went out and picked all the bodies out of the barbed wire. There were probably a hundred and fifty, just pieces, and with so 16 �many guns they hit every square inch with bullets. There are all these bodies in just all pieces. You couldn’t pick it all up in a couple days and it was all rotting and just a horrific smell in the place. You couldn’t find enough to—it was stuck in the barbed wire and it was in the ground and anybody on guard duty around there was sick. We went through here with trash bags and picked up as much of the big pieces as we could. Interviewer: Do you have any idea how many casualties your own units took? I really don’t know, my hearing was gone, both of my eardrums were blown out and I couldn’t hear a thing. 35:07 I didn’t have any idea what was going on. Interviewer: So, what did they have you do at that point? There wasn’t much I could do. Interviewer: Were you getting medical treatment at all? Were they doing anything for you? Yeah, well there’s not much you can do for blown eardrums. The head injury, at that time, they didn’t know about that, but it was quite a while before—after that I always had ear infections too from the dirt. I got dirt in them from shell casings and all the dust from the equipment. We had some tanks and APC’s running through the compound and I got infection right away and always had trouble after that. Interviewer: How long was it before you could hear at all? 36:00 A few weeks, at least and then I lost eighty percent of my hearing in my left ear and I never got that back, that much of it I never got back. The other, I lost about forty percent in that one so, it wasn’t all that nice. Interviewer: How long did you stay in Vietnam after that attack? 17 �That ended in February—until November, no, that’s not right either. I had five months to go when I got—when my ear was—then I had a thirty day leave home and then I reported to Fort Bragg and they had no jobs for us. 37:07 I was with the 82nd Airborne there and the only thing we did was run five miles every morning. I could walk forever, but starting to run with those guys, that was a killer. It took weeks for me to be able to run the five miles, and I only weighed, when I got out of Vietnam, I weighed a hundred and fifty-three pounds, but those guys—we’d run in our underwear around the base at Fort Bragg, every morning, five miles and then after that I’d run with the regular unit. I wasn’t assigned to a regular unit, so they stuck me in a warehouse with all new trucks and they asked me to preform preventive maintenance. 38:01 So, I’d just walk around these trucks in this big warehouse all day and look at them. They were all brand new, so they didn’t need anything and that’s what I did every morning and all day long, just wander around this warehouse with a tool man and if I wasn’t visiting with him I’d just be sitting on a fender of a truck reading a book. Interviewer: To go back to Vietnam again, after you’re injured in the attack and so forth, and starting to hear and so forth, did you simply stay at Pleiku the rest of the time until you left, or did they ship you someplace else? No, I stayed in Pleiku. Interviewer: Did you help repair the mine fields, or were you not able to do that? Yeah, I went back out and I went to a lot of—I got all over the country, not all over the country, but in the general area I did a lot of towns, a lot of old bases. 39:00 Interviewer: When you’re traveling around the countryside, what did it look like, or what impressions did you have? 18 �It’s beautiful country when you’re in the air, sitting in a Huey with your legs hanging out the door and it’s gorgeous, lush and beautiful and it looked like it had a million lakes, but they were all bomb craters filled with water. Interviewer: What was it like on the ground? On the ground it was a lot different. It was rough; the countryside was rough, a lot of dirt roads and a lot of little towns. I walked through some towns; little villages and they’d have dogs hanging there for sale and if we came back that way the next day, there would still be the dog hanging there in a hundred and ten degrees. They may have cut some of the dog off for somebody, but the dog would still be hanging there. 40:07 It was really weird and something you never expected. Interviewer: Now, patrolling around the countryside, was that dangerous? Were you getting shot at, or were there booby traps and those kinds of things? I can’t say that in my travels in a helicopter that we ever got shot at, but we flew pretty high, because we didn’t get dropped--I never got dropped in any hot LZ’s or anything, but I got dropped off at a point and would be picked up by an infantry unit headed somewhere that needed something done. What we carried mostly was a rifle and a pack full of explosives, a detonating cord and C4’s and rolls of wire. 41:05 Interviewer: So, what were you using it for? Was it still blowing up tunnel entrances, or what other kind of work would you do for an infantry unit when you went out with it? What kind of work did we do? We just walked with them until they came to a place where they needed something done. Sometimes they wanted trails blocked, or trails opened. We were on the Ho Chi Minh Trail and they wanted some of that blown up and 19 �sometimes the B-52’s didn’t hit it and then they’d want something closed, maybe little paths that they’d come through on bicycles at night, so we’d blow the place. It didn’t matter because they were ingenious people and they’d be out there clearing it all out. 42:07 Interviewer: While you were there, particularly in those last months, what kind of understanding did you have of why you were there or what you were supposed to be accomplishing on a larger scale? We were in the dark, we didn’t really know, we—I saw one copy of the Stars and Stripes once and it had said how many Vietcong were killed and how few GI’s, but boy, when I saw the bodies come in on the choppers, I thought, “Boy that just doesn’t seem like these number match right”, but you really don’t see the whole picture because you’re not in all these areas. Some of the choppers that came in, I know that when I was there, they’d hose them out with a hose every time, because they were full of blood. 43:01 They would have the bodies stacked in there and it seemed surreal, it was something that you couldn’t-Interviewer: Did you have any sense of what the war, it self, was supposed to be accomplishing, or why we were there in the first place? I had no idea, really, and we did understand that it was supposed to be a communist thing, but they kept us in the dark, it was a need to know thing. The low echelon GI didn’t have to know anything, he just had to do his job. Interviewer: While you were there, were you with a lot of the same guys the whole time, or was it you were just kind of on your own and people rotating in and out? 20 �They were rotating, and I was trained by one guy and he was only two months and then he was gone and then it was different people all the time, and some were good and some bad. 44:02 The most interesting thing I saw there was one night we heard Hanoi Hannah on the radio and that was pretty interesting. She was saying something about, “The 1st Cav, you’re going to some place tomorrow and you’re going to die there”, and she knew more about it than the guys in the 1st Cav did, and she spoke perfect English and that was eerie. She was talking about different units and how they were waiting for them. “You GI’s want to die for nothing?” All that kind of psychological stuff, it was really pretty eerie to hear the enemy talk in English so well and knowing so much. You don’t really expect her to know that. Interviewer: Now, were you in a place where they brought in USO shows and that sort of stuff? Right, I saw Bob Hope once. 45:02 I don’t remember where it was, but I was at a place where Bob Hope was and I did see that. There were different shows that came through, but I don’t remember many of them, but I do remember bob Hope being there, yeah. Interviewer: Once you’re out all that and you’re back at Fort Bragg and you finish up your time, what did you do then, once you were discharged? I was discharged on November 7th, one day less than two years, that’s how it worked and I did my one year less than two years. I got out on the 7th of November and I had met a family near fort Bragg and he worked at a dealer near Fayetteville, North Carolina. The father worked at the Chrysler dealer and I met them at a lake there and my buddy and I, we went to their house every weekend. 46:06 They took us in as foster kids, and he took us fishing and he took us hunting. 21 �Interviewer: So the atmosphere in the area around fort Bragg was better than it was around Fort Leonard Wood then, or was it just an unusual family? It was just an unusual deal. GI’s aren’t liked much in a military town and they capitalize on GI’s pretty much. We didn’t go into town, we had gone to a lake that was a little way away from Fayetteville and that’s where I met the family. We got talking and they invited us over and for the next five months he and I spent the weekends at their house and it was pretty nice. We went dove hunting, fishing and he worked on my car for me and it was pretty nice. 47:00 When I got out of the service I stayed with them for two months until my mother started saying, “When are you coming home?” So, then I went home. I was pretty screwed up and I couldn’t work. It just seemed like I wanted to hide and for a month I didn’t go to work. I got—while I was in Fort Bragg they also had a program called Operation Transition to fix you up with a career and I didn’t know what to take, so I took the postal service. I didn’t know what to do, so I went through a course and they took us to the Fayetteville Post Office and I took the Civil Service exam there. I was home two days after I left Fayetteville and I got called to the post office. 48:03 So evidently they know—it was probably some WWII guy said—I said, “I don’t know if I can work right now”, and he said, “You just come in whenever you want”, so it was a month later, it was, I think it was December 23, or something, before I even went to work, or maybe after Christmas. But, I never even went to work and my mother was hounding me to go to work saying, “You better go to work”, and she had no idea I was so screwed up. Interviewer: Do you think it was a psychological thing or was it the effects of the concussion and the rest of that, or was it hard to tell? 22 �I don’t know what the problem was; I couldn’t deal with people at the time. I didn’t want to go home, actually. 49:02 While I was in Vietnam, to get by, I put my parents out of my mind. I never ever called them and I didn’t write them until my commanding officer gave me a direct order to write once a week and I had to go and show him the letter. My mom had called the Red Cross and the Red Cross called him and then we got the pressure on. I found that if I didn’t think about home I was a whole lot better off, and we had R&R’s to go to Bangkok or someplace, but I never took one because I thought, “If I ever leave this place, I’ll never come back”. Interviewer: There were plenty of guys who just did that. Did run—they didn’t give single guys R&R to Hawaii, because they would, and then you’d be in the states and yo could get a commercial flight. 50:02 So, they didn’t give you that option, but I thought, “Even if I go to Bangkok, I’ll never come back”. I didn’t think I could do it, so I never took an R&R even, not even and in country R&R. I just blocked everything out except what I was doing and I had it in my head there was nobody else to worry about except me and my buddies and it made it a lot easier for me. Interviewer: But, then you had to switch back out of that in civilian life. I couldn’t deal with my parents. It was hard, and I didn’t deal with anybody very good, but it was a long haul for years, and then, finally, in the eighties I ended up going to therapy, group therapy with other Vietnam vets. I was in therapy for five or six years, probably. 51:00 I went to a stress recovery program in North Chicago at the Great Lakes Naval Base and that was a thirty –five day program. That was tough to do too, because at first you can’t—you’re basically locked up and at first you can walk around base, but you can’t get off base, you couldn’t go home for the first week and the second 23 �weekend you could go home. It was—for me it was—you could walk out of it if you wanted to and tell them, “I can’t do it”. I was close, but I met a guy from Muskegon and he kept me in the program. He had there a week longer than me and he said, “Oh, you can do it, you can do it”, because I was ready to go home, that was too much of the military for me and it was just driving me crazy. Interviewer: So, what would they do that would actually help relieve stress? 52:00 We had a trauma group with about seven people in each trauma group. You’d tell them your trauma and they’d talk about it and it was really a wonderful program, but it was just tough for me, initially, to be in that kind of a structured thing, but I—there were guys that were worse than me. Interviewer: But, when you were initially getting out, or you were at Fort Bragg, or that kind of thing, was the army making much available, or was there stuff out there that you could have turned to earlier that you didn’t really think about? I have no idea, and they never mentioned anything, the military never mentioned anything about anything like that. Interviewer: Now, a lot of the guys, when they come out of Vietnam, they found that they, generally, didn’t even want anybody to know that they had been there. No one talked about it, no. 53:01 Interviewer: Why didn’t you talk about it? That’s a good question, why didn’t they talk about it? I drank beer with guys I worked with that were in Vietnam and they were hurt too and they—it’s a funny thing, we never, ever mentioned it, nobody ever mentioned it. I didn’t know any of them were even veterans, and I never thought of it to ask, it didn’t come to my head. It was really strange 24 �until one day I was walking with—a guy and I were carpooling and we were walking down the ramp, downtown in Grand Rapids, down the side ramp along the river and right below us was a Vietnamese in a row boat, fishing. 54:00 This guy I rode with, we took turns driving, he said to me, he said, “What I wouldn’t give for a frag right now”, and I looked down and it was a Vietnamese and I said, “Man, I never thought I’d see a Vietnamese again”. And that was another thing when the Vietnamese started coming over, that was really tough to take, I just couldn’t—I had a hard time with that. I never expected to see another one, but of course, the young generation now, they know nothing about the war, so I’ve kind of come to grips with that, but it’s—I never quite get over them. Interviewer: To look back on the whole thing now, do you see any positive effects from the time that you spent in the military? Oh, the military itself, I think, is fine. I think a lot of kids should have it and I think my own son should be in it. 55:02 With these wars that they now, like Vietnam was all a fake thing, the Gulf of Tonkin was all a fiasco, that was just a big lie just to get us in there, and all the dead bodies from Vietnam, fifty eight thousand plus, it’s pretty sad. Now I see, now I’m the chairman of the Kent County Soldiers and Sailors Relief Commission, and now I see a lot of these younger Gulf War vets that have problems and it’s the same thing, the same problems they have. A lot of them can’t work. Interviewer: Are they getting better support, at least, than you were getting coming out of Vietnam? Are there more places they can go and more people who can help them? 25 �They don’t think so, it’s more in the forefront now, there’s more opportunity to get help, but the military and the VA doesn’t look for these guys, they’d rather not see them. 56:09 But, if they do end up there, they will help them. They should have helped them earlier, or given them an option for help, but the only thing they did for me when I—I was going to reenlist, they kept thinking I was going to, so they were pretty happy with me. I was going to go up in rank right away and then I got to thinking about it and thought, “Boy, this is only 1968 and I could go back to Vietnam again”, and I thought, “I made it out once and I’m not sure I could make it out twice”, so up until the last day, they thought I was going to reenlist and then I said, “No, out the door”. 57:00 I did get a physical and I did get a service number for compensation and that was good, because years later when my hearing got a lot worse, I needed it then. It was hard getting it, because the old card they gave me, in Battle Creek they said, “We never saw a card like this”, and then I put in a claim for compensation and I did—I saw a doctor and I never heard anything for a year, not a word, so I—Paul Henry was a Representative and my cousin, Walt DeLange, was a Representative, so I wrote my cousin, Walt DeLange, a letter saying, “It’s a funny thing, it didn’t take them long to draft me, but when I got a claim I don’t hear a thing”. 58:06 He sent it right to Paul Henry and three days later the VA in Detroit called me, isn’t that a miracle? Then things started to roll, but for one solid year I never heard one word, one letter, nothing. I had no idea if they ever got my paperwork, or anything, but once you get ahold of a representative thing change. Interviewer: To conclude here, I’d like you to tell me a little bit about the work you’re doing now and the kinds of things you’re doing to support veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan and all that. 26 �We help wartime veterans, which would be Iraq or—there’s different dates and, of course, Iraq is still going on, so we help them if they get behind on utilities or if they have a major catastrophe. 59:08 If they need something, we help with fuel bills, if they need a car fixed to go to work, that s what the Kent County Soldiers Relief Commission does and it’s funded by Kent County. We have one fulltime man in the office that deals with this and if there’s a question about something he calls one of us, usually me, because I’m chairman, but if I’m not available one of the other members, and I deal with the Kent County Commission, Paul Mayhue, I had a meeting with him lately and Judge Murkowski, who’s in charge of the—kind of oversees, but he really has nothing to say, he’s just kind of a figurehead. 00:04 If he has a question about—Oh, we get complaints from people that think they should have help, but they either don’t qualify, because of the money they make, or they’ve been helped recently, so then, usually the commissioners get a—Kent county commissioners get a letter and then if it gets real serious Judge Murkowski calls me and I meet with him and we go through it, but it’s a good thing, it’s really a good program and a lot of counties don’t have much of that, Kent County is about the best one. Interviewer: About how many people do you think you, maybe, help, or work with in a year? Oh, a couple hundred, we have plenty of phone calls. 1:01 And if we can’t help them our man will tell them to contact DSS, or sometimes the Salvation Army has a program that will help them. There’s different—a lot of them are veterans, but they don’t qualify in the timeframe and then we ship them to some other organization the, possibly, can help them. 27 �Interviewer: You’re talking timeframes, within a certain time since they were discharged? Vietnam was, I think, 1962 to 1975; if you were in the service during that time we can help. Interviewer: Then would you cover the Gulf, the 1991 Gulf War? Right, up to when the first Gulf War ended and then now, of course with Iraq it’s continuing. 2:08 We don’t see a lot of the new ones yet, but we deal with—we tell them how to get—a lot of times they deserve compensation and we steer them to a service officer that we know that will take care of it and that helps, because the military and the VA, doesn’t just come out and tell you what you can do. You’ve got to find this out for yourself, and it’s kind of a hide and seek thing. If yo don’t know it they’re going to put you off. They’re not going to give you anything unless you know where to go, and that’s what we try to do, we try to help the ones that need it. 3:00 of course, some you have— often you have people who come back that are just chronic users of the system and they cause the most trouble, but other than that, we help a lot of people. It’s just Kent County and the trouble is, you get calls from Ottawa County or Allegan County and they just live across the border, but it’s a shame, but you can’t help them. Ottawa County doesn’t have much of anything and most counties don’t. Interviewer: Given where state budgets are and things like that, there are not a whole lot of resources for some of these things. Right and I sign the burials for all the veterans, a lot of WWII now, and I sign, if they’re under certain, have a certain limited amount of money, we give them money for a burial. 28 �4:03 We see to it they get a military bronze plaque, so I see a lot of burials now for WWII. Interviewer: We’re doing our best to catch up with them while we still can. It’s about eighteen hundred a day, now, I guess. Interviewer: Well, it sound like it’s good work that you’re doing and thank you for coming in and talking to us today. Thank you very much. 4:28 29 �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 OndersmaP Title A name given to the resource Ondersma, Peter (Interview transcript and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ondersma, Peter Description An account of the resource Peter Ondersma was born in Orlando, Florida and moved to Michigan in 1955 when he was 8 years old. Peter went to school in Grand Rapids, Michigan and graduated in 1966 and was drafted into the Army shortly after graduation. He began basic training in Fort Knox, Kentucky and then moved on to combat engineer training in Missouri. While in Vietnam Peter worked on maintaining the security of bases, sweeping and laying mines, and destroying underground tunnels. He was injured by mortar fire during the Tet Offensive and kept on limited duty for the rest of his service. Peter is now the chairman of the Kent County Soldiers Relief Commission where he works to help veterans with financial problems. 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 United States. Army Vietnam War, 1961-1975--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 2008-06-24 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/f24aec8960b328ffe84a7d2a7ecb3d54.mp4 3dda262550d8baea9722b30db14f4438 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d275f72e77a042db08aa66553216c164.pdf b7817589861323b867b0f827f9019dde PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Roy Olson (36:06) (00:10) Background Information • Roy was born in 1922 in Minneapolis • His father had been from Sweden and his mother from Norway; they met in Arizona • Roy’s father died when he was 7 years old and he left with his mother and brother to live in Michigan • His mother was able to make it through the Depression on his father’s pension checks from WWI • Roy graduated from high school in 1941 and began taking pre-dental classes at college • Roy had been taking classes for 2 years when he was drafted into the Army Medical Corps (03:50) Training • Roy was sent to Fort Custer in Battle Creek, MI for induction and then to Camp Grant in Illinois for training • Roy was in Illinois for 6 weeks and decided to volunteer to lay a snare drum in the bugle corps • He was then transferred to Company C and began working at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington DC • Roy became a corpsman and was in charge of the venereal disease clinic (06:20) Walter Reed Medical Center 1943-1944 • Roy described the medical center as “a monstrous place” with a campus, various departments, and a hospital • He stayed in a barracks with about 30 other men and they all got along well • They often played pool at the community center and were allowed to leave the base on their time off • Roy worked with mostly outpatient cases • Penicillin had just been invited and he was dealing with many cases of gonorrhea and syphilis • He also volunteered to help transfer some men to other hospitals and traveled to New York City and San Diego • Roy occasionally had duty in the psych ward (15:00) Transferred • Roy was told he was being sent to the Pacific and had to go through basic training again in Texas • In training they had some long marches, crawled under barbed wire fences while being shot at, climbed many walls, and went bib whacking �• • • • Roy took a troop train to Seattle and then boarded a liberty ship headed to Hawaii There were about 3,000 others on the ship and they hit rough storms on their trip; everyone got sick and the trip took much longer than expected Everyone was going to be leaving for Australia, but Roy was told he had to remain with 4 others of the original 3,000 men They were to stay in Hawaii and work at an emergency hospital for 1 year (20:20) Hawaii • Roy worked 2 jobs while at the hospital; one as a clerk and the other in orthopedics • After the bombs were dropped in Japan he was transferred to a different larger hospital in Hawaii • Roy continued to do clerical work in the other hospital (23:15) Discharged • Roy went back to Michigan and took the summer off before going back to college • After finishing pre-dental in one year he continued on to dental school and ran his private practice for 10 years • Roy then decided that he wanted to get back into dental surgery and went back to grad school • He then began teaching at the University of Chicago for 10 years • Roy again began running his private practice, but this time in Illinois for about 15 years • He retired in 1991 and moved back to Michigan (25:50) Hawaiian Hospitals • Roy had occasionally worked night duty assistant doctors • He also helped to run errands for patients • They were working near Waikiki Beach and he often spent time there swimming • Roy went to church on the weekends and traveled all along the islands • He remained working in the hospital for 4 months after the war had ended • Wingdings � 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 OlsonR Title A name given to the resource Olson, Roy (Interview outline and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Olson, Roy Description An account of the resource Roy Olson was born in Minneapolis in 1922 and later moved to Michigan where he graduated from high school in 1941. He then began taking pre-dental classes at college and was a sophomore when he was drafted into the Army Medical Corps. Roy had basic training in Illinois for 6 weeks and was then transferred to work at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington DC. Roy worked in DC for a year and was then sent to work in two other hospitals in Hawaii for about another year. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource McCauslin, Kelly (Interviewer) Spring Lake District Library (Spring Lake, 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. Medical 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 2008-11-21 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/f3dbccc7c6efb60e5d7df43684b53b79.mp4 6aaf3b939bf4ee136c8a662effa72689 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0ee5db9ac461ce5de8348f596bc510a6.pdf ce74aed867347c6c7e837302f5a1f273 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Name of War: World War II Interviewee’s Name: Andrew M. Olah Length of interview (00:10:10) (00:00) Background Born March 4, 1944 (00:01) Served in the army during World War II (00:06) Had basic training in Tacoma, WA and served in England, France, Luxembourg, and Germany as a sergeant. (00:11) Was drafted while living in Muskegon, MI. (00:29) Went to Fort Custer, MI with thousands of other men before being sent to Tacoma, WA for basic training. Recalls that it was very scary and nerve-wracking. (01:05) (01:27) Service in World War II Recalls that “war is hell” and that three years of shooting wasn’t very fun. (01:31) Leaving the United States for the first time to head overseas was his most memorable experience. Recalls seeing countries that he never would’ve seen without the service. (01:47) Saw a lot of combat, but his unit was usually behind the lines. (02:11) Was selected by the government for special duty to help plan for the Invasion of Normandy two months before the invasion. (08:22) Rejoined his unit. Describes his experience with the invasion. (09:18) Overall, there weren’t many casualties in his unit. But during the Battle of the Bulge they were close enough where several men were injured. (02:22) Was never in any combat because his job primarily dealt with taking care of records. (02:43) Wrote several letters to keep in touch with his family. (02:55) Recalls that the food was all right. (03:07) Describes some of the pranks that they pulled and his relationship with the officers. (03:23) (04:49) Post-Service Was released from service after the war ended in Germany in November 1945. (04:52) Instead of continuing his education, he got married six months after returning home and went to work. (05:25) Made several friends from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virgina. (05:37) Joined the VFW. (05:50) Upon returning home, he took two weeks off and then got his old job back. (05:57) Experience in the service fostered a distaste for war in general and respect for those who serve their country. Says that he would be proud to serve his country again, but doesn’t approve of the actions taken in Korean War, Vietnam War, or the War in Iraq. (06:16) His experience in office work while in the service helped him later with his job Coppergrass Sales, where he worked for 33 years. (06:54) Describes his involvement with the VFW. (07:28) Has attended several reuinions in Philadelphia, Illinois, Virginia, and Detroit. (07:49) �Interview Ends (08:22) � 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 OlahA Title A name given to the resource Olah, Andrew M. (Interview outline and video), 2005 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Olah, Andrew M. Description An account of the resource Andrew M. Olah was born on March 4, 1924 and grew up in Muskegon, MI. After being drafted, Andrew served as a sergeant for the U.S. Army. He served in England, France, Luxembourg, and Germany. During his service, Andrew was selected by the government for special duty to help plan for the Invasion of Normandy. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jones, Kaylee (Interviewer) Poliski, Jeni (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 2005-05-27 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/ef9e3123b4f848f9e35f782825da4796.mp4 551191b43d257773b84ba2de7a4ee8ad https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f6839eada357761a18d548fee34d4dbd.pdf ffa0df2f89e68baf63d84f23079191e2 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Notes Length: 58:00 Charles H. Ohanesian WWII Veteran 2nd Armored Div., 41st Armored Infantry Regiment, October 1942 to May 1945 Introduction (00:06) Family and childhood (00:21) • Parents were Armenian Christians that fled the Turkish genocide and settled in Grand Rapids. • Grew up poor with three sisters and a brother in a mostly Polish, German, and Dutch area of Grand Rapids. Pre-enlistment (2:54) • Graduated with honors from Union High School in 1942.Wanted to pursue archaeology at U of M. Wanted to get educated, not get out of service. Father wouldn’t pay, so he rebelled and forged his parents’ signatures to enlist early. Enlistment and Training (4:36) • Went to Kalamazoo to be sworn in and ended up being sworn in twice, once as an enlistee and once as a draftee, by standing in one too many lines. Then went to Fort Custer in Battle Creek where he was told he was a draftee due to a mix-up (6:02) • Most new soldiers sent by train to Camp Walters near Dallas, TX. There Ohanesian underwent basic training as well as two weeks of first aid training on his own time. (6:44) • Was then sent to Pennsylvania for three weeks or so. (7:57) • Afterwards sent to Camp Patrick Henry in VA for four or five days. Camp Henry was surrounded by wire and patrolled by soldiers with machineguns in case and soldiers tried to escape to avoid going overseas. (8:10) • From Camp Henry Ohanesian shipped out on convoy bound for Africa as a replacement. He was assigned to the 2nd Armored Division, 41st Armored Infantry Regiment, Company H. When the division was later divided into Combat Commands A & B, he served with CCB. (8:57) At 18 Ohanesian was the �youngest man both in his squad and his company and was assigned to carry a bazooka. �Weapon Anecdotes (10:05) • Ohanesian talks about firing the M-1 Garand left-handed and being assigned a Springfield 1903 rifle with a grenade launcher, since he couldn’t throw hand grenades as far as the other men. He also talked about dismounting from moving tanks in combat as well as manning a machine gun on a half-track. North Africa (12:47) • Ohanesian tells of the entire division being assembled for an address by General Patton in the heat of the desert while wearing the wrong uniforms. Patton referred to the men as “bastards,” and the men in turn hated and feared him, though Ohanesian mentions that later he understood that Patton was a genius. Ohanesian also mentions other places in North Africa that he saw. Sicily (14:56) • Landed on July 10, 1943. Believed they were going to mainland Italy. Spent 4 months in Sicily, 2 of those in combat. • Ohanesian describes how his unit was strafed by German aircraft while attacking a town, and how he carried a wounded man from his squad back to the rear for treatment and how he didn’t want the citation he was offered since he “was just doing his job.” (15:23) • Detailed description of his sergeant, himself, and two others engaging a hidden 88 mm gun that was shelling his company about five miles outside Palermo, using a bazooka and inadvertently causing a rockslide which covered the opening the gun was firing from. (17:18) • Ohanesian tells of an encounter approximately two miles away from Palermo in which he captured a group of enemy troops. After he and his sergeant disarmed the prisoners he brought them back to a lieutenant who wanted to know why he hadn’t killed them. Ohanesian brought the prisoners down the road to MPs. The next day he was in Palermo (20:21) • Ohanesian talks about the race for Messina and Patton’s hatred of Montgomery. Ohanesian’s company wasn’t chosen since it had been in heavy fighting and arrived later. Also mentions that it was believed that British soldiers stopped fighting at 4:00pm everyday for tea. (24:30) �• After fighting ended in Sicily, Ohanesian remained for two months. When they reboarded ships they believed they were going to Italy. Actually went though the Mediterranean. Ohanesian describes experience at Gibraltar. After Gibraltar, they sailed west, and Ohanesian believed that they were headed back to the U.S. to refit. About 300 miles from Newfoundland, the convoy made a turn at night and headed to Liverpool, England. (25:19) Normandy (27:02) • When they arrived in Britain, they were housed in British barracks and underwent more training and many forced marches. On June 3rd, 1944 they sailed in a convoy they believed was bound for Calais. After the convoy turned south, one of ships behind his hit a mine and exploded. Ohanesian believed his ship would be next since the area was heavily mined. • Ohanesian’s unit landed on Omaha Beach on June 7th, 1944. Onboard ship they had been told that allied forced had advanced five miles inland, which wasn’t true. The sailor piloting the landing craft tried to have the men get out in neckdeep water, at which point the officer in charge of the men pulled his service pistol and threatened the sailor, who took the craft further in to knee-deep water where they disembarked. The unit was force-marched halfway up the beach where they were shelled and spent the night. The next day the division’s tanks were unloaded and they resumed their advance. (28:09) • When the British attacked Caen Ohanesian’s unit occupied the British positions. Ohanesian tells of being on night patrol and how terrifying it was as well as describing an incident where they were almost discovered by a German patrol which they let pass. Three days later they moved out. (29:58) • Ohanesian tells of himself, a sergeant from a different platoon, and two others capturing an enemy finance officer, who was carrying approximately $2,000,000. The four men decided to keep the money with the sergeant carrying it all himself to split up after the war, over Ohanesian’s objections. Ohanesian believes that one of the other men killed the paymaster rather than turn him in as a prisoner. Ohanesian never received any of the money. (32:10) • Ohanesian talks about being wounded while in bocage country when his company was surronded. 20 tanks from the division arrived but they adavanced too and took casulties. Ohanesian suffered shrapnel wounds to the leg on August 3, 1944. Doctors told him that he had to stay off his feet for a week, but he convinced them to left him go back to his unit. (34:23) • Two days later an officer had a sergeant take Ohanesian and a few men to draw fire from the enemy while the rest of the men dug in. They advanced along with three tanks and got to the last hedgerow. Ohanesian describes being seriously �wounded along with most of the men and lying for hours while the tanks shelled the Germans, and machine-gunned a soldier about to kill him. • Ohanesian was brought back to the rear where he “went a little berserk” and threatened the doctor with his rifle not to touch him. He was then taken to field hospital where he again threatened a nurse and was eventually knocked out, waking up on a plane bound for England. Going Home (41:02) • Towards the end of November 1944, Ohanesian was told he was going to be sent home. He describes his trip home by sea on a hospital ship and an incident with a German U-Boat where the submarine surfaced and the officers and sailors waved at the men onboard the hospital ship. • Arriving at Charleston, SC, they were met by a crowd of hundreds. Ohanesian describes his feelings on arriving home. Had choice of hospitals in Battle Creek, San Diego, or Tampa for surgery. Left by train on December 19, 1944 for Percy Jones hospital in Battle Creek, MI. Ohanesian tells how he convinced doctor to let him leave the hospital to spend Christmas with his family and hitching rides from Battle Creek to Grand Rapids, and his family and neighborhood reaction to his return, including having his picture taken for the Grand Rapids Press. (43:03) After the War (48:15) • Ohanesian shares his feelings on the United States. • After his discharge, Ohanesian couldn’t afford to be married and attend U of M, so he used the G.I. Bill to learn about upholstery and clocks, which were tow of the few things available in Grand Rapids. He worked for the City of Grand Rapids for 5 years with parking meters and was an upholsterer for 78. Also bought and sold real estate, and tells of the state’s attempt to buy his land at Wilson and 28th for the new expressway (I-196). Also discusses the importance of education. (49:58) � 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 OhanesianC Title A name given to the resource Ohanesian, Charles H. (Interview outline and video), 2007 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ohanesian, Charles H. Description An account of the resource Charles Ohanesian is a WW II veteran who served in the U.S. Army with the 2nd Armored Division from 1942 until being seriously wounded in 1944, arriving in North Africa after the German surrender there, and participating in the campaigns in Sicily and Normandy. In this account, Ohanesian discusses rebelling against his parents by forging their signatures to enlist early, training in the U.S, combat experiences in Sicily and Normandy, and his life after the war. Ohanesian also recounts aspects of war often not talked about on the Allied side, such as the confusion of the Normandy invasion, the execution of prisoners, and keeping of contraband. 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 World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American United States. Army Veterans Video recordings Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007-06-28 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/8184451d6065abd85abff5aacb428f95.mp4 6821791b10f0be352cd716c9bbbf3510 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/91c7732c08aaf818549fccfc9bf0a411.pdf f240e4b8c293db50c228365fa91d2ecf PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Albert Ohanesian (1:22:12) Background Information (00:06)          Born in Grand Rapids Michigan on October 27th 1924. (00:12) He was a child of immigrant parents who arrived in their U.S. in 1914. (00:19) His father’s older brother lived in Grand Rapids before his father arrived. (00:59) Though his brother was older, he and his older brother graduated at the same time from high school. Is brother immediately enlisted after graduation; however Albert could not because he was only 17. (1:38) In November of 1942, Albert received his draft notice. (2:00) His father sold concessions from a horsedrawn cart. (2:10) His family struggled during the 1930s. (3:00) Albert and his siblings often aided in his father concession business. (4:00) He heard about Pearl Harbor while on a date with a girl. (4:47) Basic training (6:30)           He had his induction in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and then was sent to Camp Grant, Illinois, for his basic training. (6:32) He was then sent to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, where he was assigned to the 75th Infantry Division. Albert wanted to be a fighter pilot but this was difficult due to his young age of 18. (6:44) He thought basic was fairly difficult. (7:03) During basic he was appointed as a PFC and made a driver for the commander. He was paid 44 dollars a month. (7:44) The physical aspects of basic training were particularly difficult for Albert. (8:50) He was then assigned to Army Air Corps training and sent to Shepherd Field, Texas, and from there to Butler University to take courses in preparation for flight training. (9:18) He spent most of his time at Butler University taking advanced classes in chemistry and mathematics. (10:19) Upon graduating Albert and others were informed that if they had ground training to report back to their units due to the demand for infantrymen. (10:55) He was then sent to Camp Polk, Louisiana, in July of 1944 to fill in the holes in the 8th Armored Division before being sent overseas. (11:25) Albert was in the 3rd Squad, 2nd Platoon, B company 58th AImored Infantry Battalion, 8th Armored Division. (12:24) Voyage to Europe (12:40)    He was then sent to New York where he was to be sent to Europe in a 100 ship convoy. (12:50) He arrived in Southampton, England, in November of 1944. (13:16) The ship was dirty and the water was very stormy. Albert spent the 12 day journey ill. (13:24) �  In Late January early February of 1945 he was sent to France. He recalls the men having to climb down a rope later to get into landing craft in order to go ashore. (15:25) The men rode halftracks farther into France to Reims. (16:12) Service in Europe (16:50)            There was a lot of war damage in the cities he saw in France. (16:54) His division was then assigned to General Montgomery. (17:04) In late January 1945, his company arrived in Bastogne and he saw frozen Germans there. (17:15) While walking behind a tank, the tank in front of him hit a land mine. All the men on top of the tank were wounded or killed. This took 6 men out of a 12 man squad. (19:05) During a battle his squad was decimated and new leadership positions were open due to casualties. Albert did not volunteer himself due to the danger of a sergeant's position. (21:05) His company experienced minor battles in Holland. (22:40) The Dutch people treated the American soldiers very kindly. (22:54) The company regrouped for approx. 1 week near the Rhine River till orders of a push came. (23:48) The division was switched to the command of General Simpson (US 9th Army) rather than General Montgomery due to the desire to have American units under American generals. (24:03) While crossing the Rhine River several German planes flew over head but did not fire. (25:00) After crossing the Rhine the unit stopped in Cologne, Germany. (25:40) Action in Europe (25:50)             The platoon took fire from artillery and rocket launchers. A tank and a halftrack were destroyed. (26:00) One of Albert’s good friends was wounded during the artillery fire. Albert retrieved him from the wreckage of the halftrack. (27:13) Albert was very impressed with the weapons of the Germans. (28:43) The men next went to Dusseldorf Germany. Here Albert spotted a tank and was order to destroy it with a bazooka. (29:08) The tank spotted was actually part of a platoon of five tanks and was accompanied by infantry. Albert’s platoon decided to retreat. (30:24) While falling back Albert was hit in the finger. (31:28) Albert’s platoon later regrouped and attacked the German infantry they had encountered. (32:30) After encountering a German tank and finding his platoon outnumbered, Albert attempted to surrender. When he did so he discovered that actually it was the platoon he had encountered that wanted to surrender. (34:00) In all 200 men that surrendered from the German infantry not one was an officer. (35:00) He aided in the freeing of Buchenwald, which consisted of several smaller camps not just one large one. The people discovered there looked very ill. The men were quick to give them K rations and cigarettes if the prisoners desired it. (36:26) He had known about the concentration camps before the discovery of one. (37:23) He was than assigned to clear the Harz Mountains. His platoon was told that there where snipers in the mountains. (38:00) �  The war ended while he and his platoon were in the Harz Mountains. (40:45) His platoon was than assigned to a German town where there was a liquor stockpile. The men were assigned to give the alcohol to any Allied man who came to get some. (40:40) Service after Surrender (41:35)     He was then sent to a captured prisoner of war camp in Czechoslovakia. Here they met Russian soldiers. (41:38) He was next sent to Camp Lucky Strike in France. Here the men were preparing to be sent to Japan. Here he heard of the Atomic Bomb and the end of the war. (42:59) While in service Albert was married while on furlough and had a son during his year in Europe. (43:42) He did have the opportunity to see a USO shows. (46:40) Life after Service (46:58)      He still keeps in touch with men he met in service. (47:00) After rerunning Home he attended college at Davenport University. (47:40) He took flying lessons. (47:45) He worked in concessions and a carnival business much like his father for over 20 years. (48:55) He retired in 1985. (50:55) Experiences in Europe (51:31)      He did not have very much contact with the German people. When he did he thought they were intelligent. (51:46) He thought the Russian soldiers were crude, rude, and had no class. (52:30) The Czech people liked the American soldiers better than the Russians. (52:53) He thought the German soldiers were about the same age as the Americans. They did however, split themselves up even in the camp by rank. (53:52) He received a Bronze Star for saving his friend Tony from a wrecked halftrack(56:28) Thoughts on Military Service and Final Thoughts (57:34)          He was very nervous after returning from service. He is often reminded of his service through every day experience. (57:41) He returned back to the U.S. aboard the Queen Mary. The trip took 4 days. There was a band and singers when arriving in New York. (59:06) He was processed through Fort Grant, Illinois. After returning from Europe he was given a 45 day furlough. When returning he was discharged. (approx. late 1945) (59:42) He was urged to join the Army Reserves but did not. (1:00:07) He recalls when German Buzz Bombs were fired near his unit and shook the ground. (1:01:22) He was given the opportunity to be a tourist and see sights in England during his service. (1:04:00) In spite the Germans having better equipment than the Americans, Albert believes it was American surprise and cunning that one the war. (1:05:48) Whenever the platoon stopped Albert believed it best to dig a foxhole. (1:07:57) The USO provided a system for finding soldiers if another soldier wanted to see them. (1:09:45) � While in France he did have the opportunity to sightsee in Paris. (1:11:36) Revisiting Europe (1:12:00)      In 2000 Albert went back to Europe as part of a reunion with the 8th Armored Division. They visited Holland, Belgium, and Germany. (1:12:12) The men did not get waited on in one location in Germany because they were Americans. (1:15:08) He stayed in Bastogne , Belgium, for 2 days. (1:16:23) There were many memorials in Germany for both American soldiers and German soldiers. (1:17:48) He wishes the troops in the Middle East would be pulled out. He does not believe the conflict can be solved. (1:18:00) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OhanesianA0616V Title A name given to the resource Ohanesian, Albert (Interview outline and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ohanesian, Albert Description An account of the resource Albert Ohanesian was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1924. He wanted to enlist in the Army immediately after Pearl Harbor, but was too young, and was drafted late in 1942. He tried to get into the Army Air Corps, and tested well enough while in basic training at Camp Grant, Illinois, to qualify, and was put into a program to give some college training for flight school candidates and sent to Butler University. He did well there, but his program was shut down and he wound up at Camp Polk, Louisiana, assigned to the 58th Armored Infantry Battalion in the 8th Armored Division. He sailed for England at the end of 1944, then shipped over to France in early 1945. His division passed through Belgium and joined the 9th Army in the Netherlands before crossing the Rhine and proceeding across Germany and into Czechoslovakia. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Video recordings United States. Army World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-31 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 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/55da473c127980e032dffbea3e45bdb8.m4v 285815c86b4af2aae3b2531d83d42edc https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e115baeaf90f4d2d3973f8bbd2397a37.pdf c9ffb1a832f0e34da829ce68f60a402e PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Donald Oderkirk Length: 32:46 (00:20) Background Information       Donald grew up in upstate New York and went to college at Central Michigan University in the early 60s He later went to Michigan State University for grad school where he later received his draft notice Donald enlisted in the Navy so that he would not get drafted into the Army The men there recommended that he take a test to go through Officer Candidate School, since he had already earned a college degree Donald passed the test and instead of going to Great Lakes Naval Station for training he was sent to Newport, Rhode Island Donald arrived in May and trained for 90 days; once finished with training he requested to be sent to Southeast Asia (2:30) First Assignment  Donald was assigned to a Landing Ship Medium Rocket (LSMR), which was a WWII vessel re-commissioned for Vietnam  He boarded the ship in November of 1965 in San Diego and they headed for Japan  Donald served as the communications director on the ship  It took them 35 days to get to Japan and the majority of the people got seasick  Donald then worked as a Korean Liaison Officer, and only because he knew a small amount of Korean  The Koreans were very ruthless; their interrogators never kept any of their prisoners alive  Donald spent 4 months in that position before he was sent back to Japan (10:00) Amphibious Work  Donald stopped in Hong Kong to get his ship repainted and to trade ammunition before going back to Japan  He remained in Japan for 2 months and then was sent to Vietnam and alternated back and forth between Japan and Vietnam for 2 years  Donald began worked on amphibious operations on his 2nd trip to Vietnam  It was hard work with all the tides coming in and the swift boats coming in back and forth  They were often shot at by machine guns and threatened with other attacks (16:00) Leaving Vietnam �   After the Tet Offensive the United States Government became preoccupied with collateral damage in Vietnam They would have to get clearance to take out any target and sometimes it would take up to 15 minutes to get clearance Donald had been on his 4th trip to Vietnam in March of 1968, when he was reassigned (19:15) Communications Instructor  Donald took a plane from Vietnam to Okinawa where he visited his wife and they later took a plane to Grand Rapids, Michigan  He had 2 weeks off on leave and then had to go to Newport, Rhode Island for instructor school  Donald later became an instructor in communications and taught classes in cryptology and secure communications (21:30) End of Service  The war began to wind down in 1969 and Donald decided that he would not re-enlist, but stay in the reserves  He moved back to Michigan to finish his masters degree and continued training one weekend a month  Altogether Donald spent 21 years in the service and after finishing his degree began working for the County Health Departments in Michigan  Donald retired when he was 58 years old and has many fond memories of his time in the service  He learned a lot of self discipline, gained confidence, and became a better person � 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 OderkirkD Title A name given to the resource Oderkirk, Donald (Interview outline and video), 2009 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Oderkirk, Donald Description An account of the resource Donald Oderkirk grew up in upstate New York and attended college at Central Michigan University in the early 60s. He then went to Michigan State University for grad school until he received his draft notice. Rather than being drafted into the Army, Donald enlisted in the Navy and passed the exam for Officer Candidate School. He was sent to Newport, Rhode Island for 90 days of officer training before he was assigned to go overseas. Donald had requested to work in Southeast Asia and he worked back and forth between Japan and Vietnam for about 2 years before being sent back to the United States. His duties in Vietnam included working on a rocket-launching landing craft and serving as an interpreter with Korean forces. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lee, Patti (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. Navy Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-12-01 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 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/2e5efb0959e5499a3c01ca36dcab811b.mp4 fd03315429e6c141f8b4d256665e0bef https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fa85e3491568bd039221aab0b4662ac8.pdf 486b3b04175b11797f3dc453d1833473 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veteran’s History Project World War II Jim Ochs Interview Length (01:25:03:00) Pre-enlistment / Training (00:00:12:00)  Born in Charlevoix, Michigan on June 1st, 1922 (00:00:12:00) o Ochs grew up in Charlevoix and graduated from high school in 1940 (00:00:19:00) o His father worked as a pharmacist in a drug store he had purchased in September 1929 (00:00:25:00)  The Great Depression began in October 1929 and Ochs’ father had a hard time keeping hold of the drug store; he kept the store but he borrowed money from everyone (00:00:34:00)  He went to work at seven o’clock in the morning and closed the store between eleven and twelve o’clock at night (00:00:49:00)  From the time he was eleven years old, during the summer, Ochs worked at the drug store (00:01:01:00) o Ochs was a young kid during the Depression and he did not even know there was an economic depression occurring (00:01:31:00)  Oakes and his older brother had bread and milk for lunch, so everything seemed normal to them (00:01:36:00) o Ochs was on the football team in high school (00:02:00:00)  One time, when he was going home, Ochs rode on the running board on a car and when the car side-swiped a truck, Ochs ended up between the two vehicles; the accident was the end of Ochs’ football career (00:02:03:00)  After graduating from high school, Ochs attended Ferris Institute, modern-day Ferris State University (00:02:27:00) o He wanted to play football, so he went out for the football team and during the first game of the season, he started and played three quarters (00:02:35:00) o Ochs stayed at the school for a year before transferring to Michigan State University (00:02:52:00)  He transferred to Michigan State partly because he did not like the process necessary to get an athletic letter from Ferris (00:03:08:00)  When he transferred to Michigan State, he became a freshman again because Ferris was not an accredited institution (00:03:43:00) o Ochs went to Ferris to major in accounting and he continued that major when he transferred to Michigan State (00:03:53:00)  Photography had been a hobby of Ochs for several years, including getting pictures in the Detroit Free Press (00:04:08:00) o Around Christmas 1941, Ochs was making Christmas cards for other students in the dorm and while working in a makeshift dark room and listening to the radio, he heard the original broadcast about the Pearl Harbor bombing (00:04:23:00) �    o When he heard the broadcast, Ochs immediately went out of the dark room and began spreading the news around the dormitory (00:04:49:00) Ochs’ brother had enlisted in the Navy the previous January and when he tried to enlist in the Navy reserve corps, Ochs was denied because he could not pass the eye exam (00:04:56:00) He did not sign up the Army right away and instead was drafted in early November (00:05:45:00) o After receiving his draft notice, Ochs went to Battle Creek, Michigan for his physical before going home for two weeks, then returning to Battle Creek for induction (00:06:14:00) From Battle Creek, he went by train to Camp Crowder, Missouri (00:06:23:00) o Ochs went to Camp Crowder because he wanted to go into photography, so the Army sent him to the Signal Corps (00:06:41:00) o He did his basic training at Camp Crowder, which lasted for about four weeks (00:06:56:00) o The officer who interviewed for photography had just been on base when Ochs arrived, so Ochs went to Officer Cadet Preparatory School; when the photography officer came back, he gave Ochs the option of going to the photography school or staying with the officer school (00:07:04:00)  Ochs knew he would not pass the eye exam from the officer school, so he took photography school (00:07:29:00)  After two weeks, Ochs talked with the commanding officer of the officer school, who asked why Ochs was leaving the school; when Ochs explained, the officer said he understood, he wanted to get into photography as well, and he did not blame Ochs for leaving (00:07:52:00) Ochs went to the photography school and completed it (00:08:08:00) o The school lasted for three months and part of the training involved the students taking pictures in downtown New York City (00:08:13:00) o The school was built on the grounds of the old Paramount Studios in Flushing, New York; the Army built barracks right on the grounds and almost every night, the men were able to go into New York City (00:08:19:00) o One time, while taking pictures of a military parade on a rainy day, the men noticed all the professional photographers using their flash guns, so the students used their flash guns as well; when they got the pictures back, the men were asked if they would use flash photography while in the field (00:08:44:00)  The students were expected to learn how to take pictures without using flash, or light meters; they had to judge it all for themselves (00:09:20:00) o Another time, Ochs took pictures of a medal ceremony, and afterwards, the Mayor of New York City, LaGuardia, who was at the ceremony, wanted to pose with the general in charge of the ceremony and Ochs had to pose the two men for the picture (00:09:48:00)  When Ochs was taking the photo, another photographer came up an took a picture of the two men and the picture ended up on the front page of the next day’s newspaper (00:10:17:00) �    One time while in the school, the men were told they had to take an examine that they did not know about; Ochs scored the highest out of everyone and the Army told him that they were sending him to Princeton University (00:10:41:00) o Ochs was one of the first eighteen servicemen to arrive at the university (00:11:01:00) o As it turned out, those eighteen men were the first unit of the ASTP (Army Specialized Training Program) (00:11:07:00) o When the men arrived at the university, the commanding officer said that he did not know what the Army’s plans were for the men, but he did know that they would all come out of it was officers (00:11:21:00)  He then said that he would be going to Washington D.C. to learn more and three months later, he said that he still did not know the Army’s plans, but that the men would now come out of the experience as high ranking NCOs (00:11:34:00) o Three months later, the commanding officer said that they were closing down the unit; all the men who flunked out went back to their old units and all those who passed would go on to infantry school (00:12:02:00) Ochs was then sent to Fort Campbell, Kentucky (00:12:23:00) o Because he had been in the Signal Corps before, Ochs was able to go into a signal company while most of the other men went into line infantry companies; however, all the jobs had been filled, so Ochs was still a private (00:12:30:00) o Two weeks after he arrived at the base, Ochs’ unit went a maneuvers into Tennessee, during which Ochs did KP, guard duty and latrine duty for three months, because he had not official job (00:13:13:00) After three months, Ochs transferred to Fort Jackson; however, there was nothing for the men to day at the base, so they spent their time “policing the area” and picking up discarded cigarette butts (00:13:34:00) o Other times, they had Ochs take a rag down to the motor pool and wipe mud off the bottoms of the different vehicles (00:13:57:00)  Ochs was not happy doing these jobs; he had been to college, so the jobs seemed demeaning (00:14:04:00) o Finally, he got a job as a message center runner, which was essentially nothing more than a mail-boy (00:14:08:00) Ochs was assigned to the 26th Infantry Division, a New England National Guard unit; when he got to the unit, the men in the unit did not know where they were going to be fighting in Europe (00:14:26:00) Deployment / Battle of the Bulge (00:14:50:00)  The unit eventually shipped up to New York and boarded a ship in New York harbor (00:14:50:00) o When they sailed across the Atlantic, the men sailed through a large storm; Ochs did not get seasick, but he came close (00:15:02:00) o The men were never told where exactly they were going; it could have been Africa or Italy, they just did not know (00:15:11:00) �   o The men designated the ship they sailed on as a “banana boat” because it had sailed in the Caribbean trade before the war and had been converted into a troop ship (00:15:23:00) o The convoy the ship sailed in was large, with one hundred or so ships, including three small aircraft carriers (00:15:40:00)  The aircraft carriers were transporting planes and when they left with half the convoy, they went into southern England (00:15:53:00) o By the time the aircraft carriers left, the men knew where they were going, to France (00:16:05:00) When the men arrived in France, they saw the cliffs behind the D-Day landing beach at Omaha and when he saw the cliffs, Ochs wondered how they ever successfully took the cliffs (00:16:12:00) o The men arrived in France about three months after the D-Day invasion in June (00:16:22:00) o The ships continued around to Utah beach and the men landed there; when they landed, the men went over the sides of the ship and down cargo nets into landing craft, which they took up to the temporary floating docks (00:16:38:00)  The floating dock was very long and when the men started unloading, it was the morning and by the time they stopped that night, it was eleven o’clock at night (00:16:58:00)  It was raining, there was mud everywhere, and everyone fell in the mud (00:17:23:00) o When the men reached the location where the trucks were supposed to pick them up, most of the men laid down without even bothering to take the packs off their backs; Ochs had never been so tired in his entire life (00:17:34:00) o Finally, the men reached a location where they could set up their tents (00:17:53:00) Ochs’ division’s assignment was the guard against Germany forces still on islands off the Cotentin Peninsula; however, the Army had taken away all their trucks for use by the Red Ball Express (00:18:03:00) o While the men were sailing to France, the Allies had managed to break out from Normandy and took Paris (00:18:18:00) o When the unit finally went into combat, the men moved northeast of Paris, where they became involved in very hard combat and took very heavy casualties (00:18:38:00) Just after the unit arrived in France, Ochs received an assignment to go down and help sort the supply boxes coming into France; Ochs and five or six other men had to go and unload and reload trucks (00:19:01:00) o In the signal company, there were two hundred and forty big reels of wire, each weighing around two hundred and fifty pounds and the men had to left the reels off of one truck and put it on another (00:19:27:00) o The men also had to unload and reload generators that weighed twelve hundred pounds and the officers expected the men to manually unload the equipment; although there were cranes, the officers thought that doing the loading and unloading manually was faster (00:19:42:00) � o One night while the men were sleeping, they heard dogs barking and the sound of rifle fire; a German prisoner had escaped (00:20:06:00)  They eventually found the prisoner laying on the ground near them; of the three men, one had an M1, one had a carbine, and Ochs had a carbine, but no ammunition (00:20:25:00)  One of the men spoke German and when he told the German to stay where he was, the German charged the men; both the other men fired and the German fell, but none of the men could see any blood (00:20:41:00)  Ochs cut away the German’s clothes and found two flesh wounds, one in his back and one on his side, but no blood (00:21:00:00)  A medic eventually came and dressed the wounds, something none of the men had thought of doing; eventually, someone had to go to the hospital unit and create a report of what happened and Ochs was chosen to do so (00:21:27:00)  When they took the bandage off at the hospital unit, the blood began flowing out and the German was dead (00:21:47:00) o The incident with the prisoner taught Ochs to stop and think about a situation (00:22:04:00)  On the first day that the unit went into combat, the message center and telephone center were on opposite sides of the road in a village and on that day, three artillery shells came in (00:22:42:00)  One of the shells impacted in the middle of the street while Ochs and some other men were eating dinner in one of the houses; the shrapnel from the shell came through the front window, a door, cut open the shoe of the man sitting next to Ochs, bruising his foot, deflected off the floor, and went through a leg bone in the man on the other side of Ochs and embedded in his other leg (00:23:11:00)  Ochs immediately got his bandage out and bandaged the wound before the medics even came because he stopped and thought about the situation (00:23:55:00)  When the other men said that they had not even thought about using a bandage, Ochs chalked it up to experience (00:24:07:00) On one occasion, an officer heard that the Germans had an underground aircraft factory in the city of Sourdeville, which was on the other side of the city of Metz from the unit (00:24:20:00) o There were badly needed aluminum sheets at the factory, so five or six men set out with an NCO and planned to go through Metz to get to the factory (00:24:49:00) o However, when they got near Metz, the men started hearing rifle fire and when they inquired as to why, they were told that Metz was still in German hands, which meant the men had to find another way around the city (00:25:07:00) o The men finally got into Sourdeville at around six o’clock at night and their commanders had expected them back the same day; however, by the time they had loaded the aluminum sheets onto the truck, it was dark (00:25:21:00) �    o The men were not going to make the journey back in the dark, not knowing the route needed; so, one of the men who spoke Polish yelled up to people on a balcony and received a reply in Polish (00:25:39:00)  The group spent the night in the house with their truck parked around back and two men standing watch at all times because the Polish kids had said there was a former SS garrison down the street and some SS might still be around (00:25:57:00) o The men got back to the company in late afternoon and under normal conditions, if they had been reported properly, the men would have been reported “missing in action” in the morning report; however, Ochs does not know if their captain even knew the men were gone because another officer had made arrangements (00:26:16:00) Ochs was never in very serious fighting because he was behind the frontlines; he was within artillery range but not on the actual front lines (00:26:50:00) Eventually, around December 14th or 15th, the entire unit was taken off the line and into Metz, which had finally been taken, for rest and to replace the casualties (00:26:59:00) o The unit was to have about two weeks of rest but on December 16th, when Ochs had a pass into town, Ochs had his pictures taken and was told to be ready to move out in three days (00:27:16:00) o The next day, the men were notified that they needed to be ready to move; luckily, when Ochs went into town, his pictures were ready (00:27:42:00) On the 19th, the men started moving but they did not know where they were going, except that they were going north by northwest (00:27:59:00) o There where three divisions on the roads, one armor and two infantry, and the armored division had the priority of the good roads; the infantry divisions went back and forth on country back-roads (00:28:12:00)  When the Red Ball Express was carrying supplies, when they got bumper to bumper, they merely unloaded their cargo on the side of the road, so there were points when, for ten miles, there was supplies along the side of the road (00:28:29:00) The unit finally reached Arlon, Belgium at about eleven o’clock on a rainy, miserable night (00:28:54:00) o The next morning, the line infantry began marching early in the morning to find the Germans because they were not in contact with them yet (00:29:13:00) o Meanwhile, Ochs and other men went to Redange, Luxembourg, a village about eight miles away from Arlon and they set up a message center and company headquarters (00:29:26:00)  While the men were cleaning a room for accommodations in Redange, a company officer came into the room and took it, even though the men had cleaned it for themselves (00:29:48:00)  The house the men eventually stayed in was owned by two old ladies and the eight men slept on the living room floor (00:30:09:00)  The old ladies were glad to see the men because they were deathly afraid of the Germans coming back (00:30:18:00)  One day, the river near the house froze over, so the two ladies made ice cream for the men (00:30:50:00) �   o On Christmas Day, when Ochs went to get his meal from the mess truck, a flight off one thousand planes flew overhead; by the time the last plane flew over, the first ones were coming back (00:31:03:00) The fighting in Belgium and Luxembourg was part of the Battle of the Bulge (00:31:40:00) The men stayed with the old ladies for three or four days and when they left, the ladies asked Ochs if he had a picture he could give them (00:31:47:00) o The men then made a short move to another position in Luxembourg (00:32:10:00) o At the time, the Germans had a artillery shell nicknamed the “Screaming Meemie” because as it got closer, it got louder; whenever Ochs heard the round coming, he hit the deck (00:32:20:00)  The round exploded on the hillside and the men were told not to worry, if they heard the shell, then they were not going to get hit (00:32:36:00) The Battle of the Bulge ended sometime around January 20th but the men were cleaning up the area until March 1st and they were able to push the Germans back to their starting points (00:32:50:00) o As the men moved from place to place, they moved from house to house and they saw different conditions at each one, including the dead laying on the ground (00:33:07:00) o At one point, one of the men in the unit upset the captain, who sent the man to an infantry line company (00:33:15:00)  The next time Ochs saw the man, he was working for Graves Registration and when Ochs asked how he got that job, the man said he volunteered (00:33:35:00)  The man said he would rather pick up the dead than have someone pick up him (00:34:01:00) Into German / The End of the War (00:34:14:00)  In the 1st week of March, the unit moved back to area around Saarbrücken and from there, they set off for a bridge over the Rhine river (00:34:14:00) o Because they were messengers, the men received different information and they heard another division had reached the Rhine and radioed back to General Patton asking for advice (00:34:44:00)  Patton’s response was to get the hell across the Rhine (00:35:00:00) o The next day at noon, Ochs’ unit crossed the Rhine (00:35:05:00)  The unit did not cross at the captured bridge in Remagen; the crossed on a pontoon bridge further along the river (00:35:18:00) o The unit kept moving across Germany and when they eventually came upon a German Air Corps warehouse, with the name of a company from Detroit, Ochs managed to get a suede jacket and pants, which he sent home (00:31:28:00)  While moving across Germany, there were two units kept as message centers; one unit would set up for headquarters, headquarters would move in, and the other unit would advance further and set up for a headquarters move and so on (00:36:28:00) o In one town, headquarters had moved out and there was a small MP prisoner of war group; as Ochs’ unit prepared to move out, the captain said things were �    moving quickly at the front, so the men were going to move that night, instead of the next morning (00:36:50:00)  The captain made the decision at six o’clock and at six fifteen, the unit moved (00:37:22:00)  The men later learned that at six thirty, an SS unit came into the town and captured the entire prisoner of war group; if Ochs’ unit had stayed until the next morning, they would have been in the middle (00:31:27:00) o The Americans bypassed a lot of German forces as they advanced (00:37:48:00) The advance eventually reached the border with Czechoslovakia and from there, the advance turned south and followed the Danube to Linz, Austria (00:38:00:00) o From Linz, they moved into the southern flank of Czechoslovakia and the men were on the border of Czechoslovakia and Austria when the war in Europe ended (00:38:12:00) o At one German barracks where the men stayed, there were straw mattresses and after Ochs slept on one, the next morning he had to itch all over himself; eventually, he emptied almost an entire can of DDT into his sleep roll and after that, he never had a problem (00:38:31:00)  When the men heard the war was over, they opened up their bed rolls to air them out and when Ochs opened his, it was white inside from the DDT (00:39:06:00) When the fighting in Europe ended, Ochs was unhappy with the experience, so he volunteered to go back to photography school (00:39:59:00) o He eventually transferred to a photo company in June that was stationed at a resort south of Munich (00:40:25:00) o The company stayed at the resort for awhile and Ochs managed to climb into the foothills of the Alps for pictures (00:40:47:00) The war with Japan was still going on and as a company, the men were scheduled to go to Japan for the Japanese invasion (00:40:59:00) o They were going to go through the Panama Canal and join the invasion fleet directly (00:41:11:00) o The men transferred to France for re-deployment camp in a barren part of the country and while they were in the camp, the war with Japan ended (00:41:18:00) o When the war ended, the only way to get a three day pass was if the soldier knew someone in Europe, which Ochs did not (00:41:45:00)  Ochs eventually decided to see one of the old ladies in Luxembourg; as he was walking from Arlon, Belgium, a girl, a boy, and older woman passed him on bikes and the girl pointed at Ochs and said “Jim” (00:41:56:00)  The boy gave Ochs his bike and he rode to see the women; as it turned out, the girl, boy, and woman were visiting the older women and had come from Paris because of a lack of food (00:42:31:00)  The older woman was a nursemaid to the girl and boy; Ochs got to know them all and it was nice to know some civilians (00:42:58:00)  They told Ochs if he ever got to Paris to come visit them and they gave him their address (00:43:40:00) At the time, Ochs had sixty-nine points; the Army started sending men home who had one hundred points, then ninety points, and so on (00:43:49:00) �  Most of the men in Ochs’ company were in the seventy point range, but Ochs had sixty-nine for some reason (00:43:58:00)  All the seventy point men left, leaving only ten or twelve men in the company, so the Army decided to break up the company (00:44:07:00) o Ochs received several passes into Paris during this period and when he did so, he looked up the home of the two children and discovered they lived in a four-story home (00:44:11:00)  As it turned out, the girl was the great-granddaughter of Ferdinand De Lesseps, the man who built the Suez Canal and attempted to build the Panama Canal (00:44:21:00)  When the company was breaking up, there were surplus supplies and Ochs would take the supplies to the family and although the food was lousy, they loved it (00:44:50:00)  The granddaughter was active in the Red Cross and during World War I, she meet a Lieutenant and during World War II, he was a General in the Air Corps, Carl Spaatz (00:45:19:00)  Ochs, the two kids, and the nurse made went all over Paris and it was nice getting out of the Army lifestyle (00:46:22:00) o One time, Ochs went in and they told him he had an overnight pass and when he got to Paris, the family said they were going to a wedding reception; when Ochs said he would leave, they told him to come with them (00:46:37:00)  Ochs went and the reception had a lot of food, an orchestra, and a lot of high ranking French military officers; meanwhile, Ochs was only a PFC in the America army (00:46:55:00)  He ended up dancing with a Countess, although he does not know who it was (00:47:17:00)  As it turned out, a personal friend of the granddaughters was Madame Chanel; in the corner of the mirror in the room Ochs stayed in was an invitation to dinner with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (00:47:27:00) o Ochs’ after war experiences were wonderful (00:48:11:00) The company eventually broke up and Ochs was sent to another photography company, this time a headquarters company of a dozen men under a lieutenant (00:48:25:00) o While in the company, the Army tired to get each man a special assignment at Val D’Isere, a French ski area (00:48:40:00)  Ochs had a week to go down there and on the first two days, he got all the pictures he needed; he then went skiing and on the fifth day, he received word that he was going home (00:48:57:00) o When he went back to the company, they transferred him to a division that was going home and as it turned out, the division was the 26th Infantry, the same division he came over to Europe with (00:49:23:00)  However, Ochs joined an infantry line company that had a turnover rate of three hundred percent (00:49:41:00)  According to a book Ochs owns, the 26th Infantry had taken eighteen thousand casualties, although there were only fifteen thousand men in the division originally; there were forty-five hundred deaths total for the division (00:49:49:00) �  To begin the journey home, Ochs took a train down to Marseille (00:50:09:00) o The camp in Marseille was up on a bluff above the city and one morning when Ochs woke up, there was snow on the ground; he could not believe that there would be snow in southern France (00:50:12:00) o From Marseille, the men boarded a ship and sailed through the straits of Gibraltar (00:50:24:00)  On the voyage back, the ship sailed through some really bad weather; the ship’s captain said there were about fifty foot tall waves, while the radio man said they were about one hundred feet (00:50:34:00)  While the men were in the bottom of the ship, water kept moving back and forth as the ship rocked; the men found out the next morning that the water had come through the ventilators on deck (00:50:59:00)  The ship lost a good number of its life boats and another ship in the area had men go overboard (00:51:12:00)  The storm was so bad that the captain had other ships in the area stand-by in case his ship sank; according to the captain, who had spent several years in the Navy, that was the worst storm he had ever been in (00:51:28:00) o The men were extremely glad when they finally arrived in Boston (00:51:42:00)  The 26th Infantry was a National Guard unit from New England and when they got to Boston harbor, the ship had to go in circles waiting for a welcoming boat that carried the governor and mayor of Boston (00:51:46:00)  The men did not want to be welcomed, they wanted to get to shore (00:52:08:00)  Ochs stayed overnight in Boston then took a train to Camp Atterbury, Indiana and arrived on New Years Eve (00:52:12:00)  There was a three-day weekend where nothing happened and the men were sitting there, waiting to be discharged (00:52:28:00) o Ochs finally received his discharge from the military on either the third or fourth of January (00:52:35:00) The large majority of the pictures Ochs took were at Val D’Isere (00:52:58:00) o Apart from the regular photography, Ochs also took a folding Kodak camera with him (00:53:10:00) o Ochs did not have a light meter with him, so he had to guess on all the measurements needed to take a picture (00:53:22:00) o At one point, Ochs’ father sent him some chemicals to develop the pictures because Ochs had no way of doing it himself; once he developed the pictures, he crudely placed the pictures on paper by holding the contact paper with the negative over it in the dark and quickly flashing light on it (00:53:48:00)  Some of these pictures did not turn out so well (00:54:24:00) o Later, Ochs was able to take better pictures in Paris and at Val D’Isere (00:54:41:00) o [Note: He saved his pictures, and many are part of his file. He has donated his albums of pictures and documents to GVSU's Special Collections.] �    o As an enlisted man, Ochs could have the camera but he could not take pictures of anything the Army did not want photographed; therefore, he has few pictures of the Battle of the Bulge (00:54:54:00) o If someone has a day-by-day diary, you can almost bet that they were officers; if the enlisted man got caught with a diary, then they got in trouble (00:55:08:00)  If the enlisted man was captured, then the Germans would have all the information that was in the diary (00:55:25:00)  They did not police the officers like they did with the enlisted men (00:55:32:00) o Ochs made an album of his photos in the late 1940’s but he did not write anything; his write-ups did not come until the last ten years (00:55:49:00) On one occasion, Ochs’ unit was in northeast France and one man was sitting in a basement, writing a letter home when an eighty-eight mm artillery shell came down some stairs and went through the man’s table; luckily, the shell was a dud (00:53:11:00) Another time, the men went through a house that had a large table in a room and on the table was a German World War I helmet; however, the room was spotless and Ochs assumed that the helmet was bobby-trapped, so he left it alone (00:56:38:00) As they traveled through Germany, all the cities were badly destroyed; some were just heaps of rock from the brick houses (00:57:23:00) o All the people had shelters and Ochs wonders home many people were buried under the rubble (00:57:57:00) o There was not as much damage in the countryside, unless there had been a fight in the area (00:58:14:00)  In one town, Ochs has an early picture of a building and in a later picture, half the building had collapsed due to the vibrations from guns firing (00:58:22:00)  In the same town, on one Sunday, a trio of teenagers, two boys and a girl, went past the men; the boy went to the fence and relieved himself; afterwards, they continued on to church (00:58:51:00) o While moving through Germany, the men caught a glimpse of a German jet aircraft (00:59:49:00)  The aircraft dropped a bomb nearby and two American fighters came out of the clouds, but the jet simply out flew them (00:59:38:00) Ochs’ unit did not have any deaths; a friend of Ochs was wounded but no one died (01:00:15:00) Training cont’d / Misc. / Post-Military Life (01:01:05:00)  While in basic training, Ochs did marching and fired weapons (01:01:05:00) o The Army emphasized discipline; the men did what they were told to do and that was it (01:01:22:00) o The discipline was part of the Army that the men hated (01:01:33:00)  Most of the men at the photography school in New York had some photography training (01:02:04:00) o Apart from training for both filming and still photography, men trained at the school to create training films (01:02:08:00) �          o The men developed their own film in the dark room and would go out on an assignment; when they returned from the assignment, they were criticized because they were not supposed to use light meters and were supposed to do their adjustments in their mind (01:02:28:00) Ochs’ camera in Europe had the ability for different settings but when he was riding in the back of a truck, Ochs did not have the time to make the necessary changes (01:03:08:00) o One picture Ochs managed to get was of entertainer Mickey Rooney; Rooney was set to perform for the troops but the Army would not let him because there was too much action at the time (01:03:44:00) o After the war, several other people performed for the soldiers (01:04:46:00) Ochs never personally encountered the Russians but some of the soldiers took a jeep and went to meet the Russians (01:05:33:00) One time, when the unit was held up on a road, a German fighter plane came to strafe the parked vehicles; however, most of the men were by a stone farm building (01:06:31:00) o One man was sleeping in a jeep and when the firing woke him up, he ran as fast as he could to get away from the jeep (01:07:05:00) The men did not know the details of the overall campaign, but they did know how the campaign in general (01:07:34:00) o There were numerous divisions but Ochs’ was assigned to only a small section; the men knew that the other divisions were experiencing the exact same conditions (01:07:54:00) Ochs did see a slave labor camp and has pictures of rows of dead bodies lying on the ground (01:08:15:00) o There was a small town near the camp and the soldiers made the residents make wooden coffins; the residents worked all night and the next day, the soldiers made them put all the dead bodies into the coffins and bury them (01:08:31:00) While traveling through Germany, the men would see bodies in the field, but the dead were mostly Germans because the Americans gathered their own dead as quickly as they could (01:09:02:00) o One place where the men stopped had a dead German in the ditch and a man in another unit wanted the gold ring on the man’s finger; it got to the point that the man said he would cut the finger off to get the ring (01:09:15:00) o The GIs were out for everything they could; however, Ochs would never think of doing anything like that (01:09:41:00) In 1991, Ochs found out that some of the men in the company were planning to get together; every year since, the men had gotten together (01:10:15:00) Most of the pictures Ochs took in Paris was before he meet the De Lesseps family because he wanted to see the sights (01:10:55:00) o Most of the men would get off the truck and go to the nearest bar but Ochs wanted to see Paris (01:11:02:00) Because Ochs moved from place to place, he served with a larger number of soldiers; he never served with the same people for his entire service (01:11:17:00) When Ochs returned to the United States in January, a cousin was making maple syrup and when he had enough for himself, the cousin asked Ochs if he wanted to do it, and Ochs did, for two years (01:11:50:00) �     o Ochs managed to get several gallons of syrup each year (01:12:18:00) When he returned home, Ochs intended to go back to college, but because he returned in January, going back at that moment did not seem practical (01:12:22:00) o The new term had started and Ochs wanted to rest for a little bit (01:12:33:00) o Instead, he got a job with a survey crew, which he did until he went back to Michigan State in the fall; the next year, Ochs did the same thing (01:12:40:00) o When Ochs went back to school, he became a junior; since he had course from Ferris, Ochs retook the classes for no credit, which meant he had to take a fifth year of courses to have enough credits for graduation (01:13:27:00) Once he finally graduated, Ochs began working for a private accounting firm in Detroit (01:14:04:00) o At some point, Ochs ruptured a disk in his back but waited to have surgery on it until after the following year’s tax season (01:14:17:00) o When Ochs went in and told his boss he was going to have the surgery, the boss told Ochs that they were laying him off (01:15:03:00) o Ochs was unemployed for a few months before he got a job as a cost accountant for a company; he stayed with the company for a few months, moved to another company for three years, and then went to work for Ford (01:15:31:00)  He stayed with Ford for twenty-seven years before retirement (01:15:47:00) When Ochs came home, he found that his “girlfriend” had gotten another boyfriend, a fact which “changed” his whole life (01:16:40:00) While he was working in Detroit, Ochs rented a room but he did not know anyone, so he was lonely; he eventually met his aunt and she had had a girl living with her in Ann Arbor who was renting a room while going to school (01:17:13:00) o The aunt saw the girl in Detroit after she had graduated and she suggested Ochs call her and go out with the girl (01:17:38:00) o Ochs originally did not want to call the girl, but he was lonesome, so he did; they went out on a date to a movie and a year and a half later, the two were married (01:17:52:00) o After finishing school, Ochs’ wife had joined the Navy as a WAVE; at the time, the Navy only sent WAVEs to Alaska and Hawaii and she knew that every other WAVE wanted to go to Hawaii, so she volunteered for Alaska (01:18:31:00)  At one point, her commander called her into their office and asked if she would be willing to go to Hawaii, despite having volunteered to go to Alaska (01:19:14:00)  She spent thirty months in the service; on their first house, they used Ochs’ GI bill and they used her GI bill on their second (01:19:25:00) Ochs’ wife had a business degree and she originally worked for Detroit-Edison; however, the company had a policy that when a woman got married, they got fired (01:19:48:00) o She then worked at a insurance company for a few months but was unhappy, so she started working at Ford in the Lincoln-Mercury division (01:20:08:00) o Eventually, her boss wanted her to do typing and when she did not want to, the boss promised a raise; however, when the time came for the raise, the boss said that there would be men in the department making less than her, so she did not get the raise (01:20:28:00) � o A few months later, Ochs convinced her to put in an application for a teaching job in Ypsilanti, Michigan; she received a call and two weeks later was teaching first grade in Garden City, Michigan (01:20:53:00) o She worked her way up, from elementary to junior high to high school and taught at the schools for a few years before taking a job at Schoolcraft Community College to teach business courses (01:21:08:00) o She taught until retiring in 1980 and when both she and Ochs retired, they made it so that if one died, the other would receive part of the dead person’s pension, at the cost of receiving a smaller paycheck (01:21:43:00) All the soldiers serving grew up in the military; they grew up and became men (01:22:39:00) o All the kids going into college were not grown up ye t because they played around too much (01:22:45:00) o The men coming back from the war and going into college did not play around; if they were invited to a party, they did not wear any fancy suit, they wore what they had (01:23:32:00) o Most of the men that Ochs got together with went back school and became professionals (01:24:09:00) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OchsJ Title A name given to the resource Ochs, James (Interview outline and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ochs, James Description An account of the resource Born in Charlevoix, Michigan in 1922, Jim Ochs grew up through the Depression. After graduating from high school in 1940, he attended college for a couple of years before receiving his draft notice in late 1942. He received training as a photographer, but was shuttled around between different training programs and eventually wound up with a signal company attached to the 26th Division as a message center runner. His division went to France in the fall of 1944, and was in action around Metz, in the Bulge counterattack, and Patton's advance into Germany. Ochs managed to acquire a camera and improvised a darkroom to develop his pictures while on campaign. After the war, he was able to develop his pictures properly. Ochs donated his photographs and personal papers to GVSU. 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 2010-12-15 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 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/3631c8d66e5e574cc54f3c0e68f0376a.mp4 7642e4caff41df9a4877f552ed6ca233 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b1b3f65454f8dcb7335e5bf3270e6a3f.pdf 7834fc6fe97417cb06a4016c6167c6b2 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Frank O’Boyle (00:37:52) (00:22) – Background -Born in Detroit on 29 June 1924 -Has no memories of his mother, as she died when he was very young -Raised by father and aunts & uncles -Moved to West Michigan to live with aunt and uncle -Came when he was young -Stayed until he was thirteen -Moved back to Detroit area -Lived in Ecorse, MI with aunt and uncle -West [actually south, ed.] of Detroit -Near steel mills -Moved back in with his father after he remarried -Father was the superintendent of schools in Ecorse -Later became a lawyer -Graduated from Detroit’s Central High School in 1942 -Was accepted to attend Harvard after high school -$400 tuition -$400 room & board (05:53) – Pearl Harbor -Was still in high school -Was working at Grosse Pointe Yacht Club on that Sunday -Did not know where Pearl Harbor was before that day -Describes Harvard and people at Harvard (10:18) – Joining the US Navy -Stated that, at the time, “everybody joined” the military -Did not go to boot camp -Enlisted while at Harvard -Went to pre-midshipman school for a couple weeks -Was on a ship for most of his Navy experience -Had to make repairs on ship before it was ready to be used -Was a communications officer (16:08) – VE Day -Was on his ship when he heard about it -Was probably on the ship for VJ Day, but does not remember -Left service in 1946 (16:45) – Finishing up at Harvard and Law School �-Describes himself as a “True Harvard Grad” -Earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Liberal Arts -Other Harvard grads only attend one of Harvard’s colleges -Went to Northwestern University College of Law in Chicago -There was a long wait to get into Harvard Law School -Northwestern’s program was recommended by one of his professors -Applied to University of Michigan’s Law School, but decided not to attend -Originally wanted to be a doctor, but his father wanted him to be a lawyer (21:17) – Life after Law School -Went back to Michigan -Worked for road commission -Started in engineering -Later worked for real estate department -Retired after 35 years (22:43) – Life after retirement -Job as recorder of Detroit Commandery until 1993 -Woke up and “couldn’t move” after 80th birthday party -A friend, named Phillip, took him to Beaumont hospital in Royal Oak, MI -Stayed at Beaumont for a few nights, because he had no one to take care of him -Put on blood thinner -Checked into a nursing home for a week -Underwent operation on his back to save his leg -Has moved into a nursing home for the time being -Was always too busy to get married -Joined Masonry (31:26) -50 years ago -Joined shrine in 1973 -Describes his upward mobility within the Masons -His friend, Phillip, got divorced after 26 years -Bought a house near Traverse City -Frank prefers to live in apartments -Has a girlfriend that lives in Lansing -Phillip visits Frank about once a week -Was once Attorney General for the State Highway (37:11) (37:52) – End � 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 OBoyleF Title A name given to the resource O'Boyle Frank (Interview outline and video), 2005 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource O'Boyle, Frank A. Description An account of the resource Frank O'Boyle joined the US Navy after enrolling at Harvard University in 1942. He served as a communications officer on board his ship during the war and returned to Harvard in 1946. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Collins Sr., Charles E. (Interviewer) Collins, Carol (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans United States. Navy 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 2005-08-03 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/1cb72cf92e54854a1f616403ff9b2dd9.mp4 a0f2eeb38469c8a4dda61c0ae6b50c64 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e13ea8082a486e1eb34fa8979552ee6d.pdf ceb907f610dcb61de1ac9273a713b1fe PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veteran’s History Project Iraq War Ron Oakes Interview Length: (02:10:09:00) Joining the Guard / the 1996 Summer Olympics (00:00:23:00)  Oakes returned from Vietnam in April 1969 (00:00:23:00) o He went back to Grand Rapids Junior College and began looking for a job; although he did find a job work at a GM plant, it only lasted two months (00:00:34:00)  Oakes found that he was not an inside worker; the day-to-day grind of working inside a factory after being in Vietnam did not appeal to him (00:00:48:00) o Oakes went back to working for Herpolsheimers, a department store in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan and going to school (00:01:01:00)  Oakes had worked for Herpolsheimers before serving in Vietnam (00:01:09:00) o He also went back to dating and meeting people; his wife had been a blind-date the day before Oakes had shipped out to Vietnam in October 1967 (00:01:27:00)  He looked her up when he came back because they had corresponded while he was in Vietnam and eighteen months later, they married (00:01:47:00) o Eventually, by using his GI bill, Oakes went to United Electronics Institute for ninety-nine weeks and earned a degree in electronics (00:02:13:00)  After getting his degree, Oakes was hired by Montgomery Ward and his first job was down on the South Side of Chicago, where he worked for the better part of five years (00:02:28:00)  Following Chicago, Oakes transferred to Grand Ledge, Michigan, worked there for another three or four years, then transferred to Davenport, Iowa (00:02:38:00)  The company went through some downsizing and in 1985, Oakes lost his job, so he and his family moved back to Grand Rapids (00:02:51:00) o Oakes tried several different jobs and eventually got into computers working for his brother, who he worked for five years before a position opened up at Grand Rapids Public Schools doing computer repair; he took the job and worked with the school system for seventeen years before retirement (00:02:59:00)  During his first thirteen years of marriage, Oakes and his family moved ten times; however, when they moved back to Michigan, they settled, bought a house and after about a year, Oakes decided he needed a little extra income when he retired, so he considered joining the Michigan National Guard (00:03:34:00) o In December 1985, he joined the Michigan National Guard in Grand Rapids, specifically the 46th Infantry Brigade Headquarters as a truck driver for the Brigade commander (00:03:56:00) �  o Because he had already been in the service, when they sent him to MEPs in Lansing, Michigan, it was a walk-through; they put him at the front of every line and he went though the process quickly (00:04:09:00)  MEPS = the medical evaluation prior to join the Guard (00:04:30:00) o Oakes had the choice of either Army or Air National Guard, although the Air National Guard was primarily prior-service Air Force personnel (00:05:01:00) o The difference between the Guard and the Reserves is that in the Guard, they mobilized the entire unit, whereas in the Reserves, they could take individuals to back-fill someone who went on leave (00:05:09:00)  If they were needed, then the Guard mobilized the entire unit (00:05:39:00) The first few years in the Guard consisted of weekends drills and two weeks at Camp Grayling, Michigan (00:06:01:00) o After joining in 1985, Oakes went through a cold-weather school in 1989 and in 1991, during the Gulf War; Oakes unit was put on alert to be mobilized (00:06:07:00)  However, when the President shut the operation down after one hundred hours, all the mobilizations and alerts reversed (00:06:21:00)  Had they needed to go, the unit would have gone to Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, where they would have spent six weeks getting additional training before shipping out (00:06:31:00) In 1996, Oakes and his unit provided security for the 1996 Summer Olympics, a experience a lot of the people in the unit enjoyed (00:06:53:00) o Oakes’ unit’s headquarters company did not go, but most of their companies did, so Oakes served as backfill with them (00:07:04:00) o It was a fun experience; Oakes enjoyed meeting people from other countries and seeing how the Olympics ran from the inside (00:07:19:00) o Oakes’ unit provided security for a lot of venues, including marksmanship and badminton, and their last few days were spent guarding the Marriott in downtown Atlanta, which was the headquarters of the Olympic Committee (00:07:27:00)  They inspected vehicles for bombs and contraband; they found two concealed weapons while they were there and there was one person who was unfamiliar with the packing garage layout and came out the wrong way (00:08:01:00) o They used a lot of different facilities to house the Guard units, including an old Delta hanger at the airport, as well as public schools on the outskirts of the city; Oakes’ unit stayed at Peachtree Elementary in the city of Peachtree (00:08:40:00)  In the school, they took all the desks out of most of the classrooms and put about sixteen cots and a hanging rack in the room, converting the classroom into a squad bay (00:09:05:00)  They used the kitchen and gym floor for eating around the clock because there were always people leaving (00:09:25:00)  The soldiers’ days usually began at three in the morning and ended around six in the evening; after getting up, cleaning, eating and getting dressed, the soldiers got on a bus that took them to their venue (00:09:34:00) �   The soldiers arrived at the venue an hour before the competition started so they could receive different security briefs before they got to their position; when they were leaving, the soldiers had to brief the people coming to replace them (00:09:46:00)  It was typically fourteen hour days, plus an hour and a half bus ride from the barracks to the venue (00:10:06:00)  The city contracted with the local schools and used their buses to move the soldiers; naturally, traffic in the city was heavy (00:10:28:00) o All the soldiers had to wear name-badges, large placards with their name and picture on them (00:10:38:00)  If the soldiers took the subway on a day off, the badge got them free transportation on the Atlanta subway system (00:10:49:00) o The soldiers did try and get in to see the diving competition; there were tickets reserved for the security forces but they were seven to eight hundred dollars, discounted, so not a lot of the soldiers bought any (00:11:04:00) o The soldiers did walk around, including going through the park where the bomb went off about two hours before the explosion (00:11:24:00)  They woke the soldiers up that night and did a headcount to make sure everyone was accounted for; after the headcount, Oakes called home and his whole family was up watching the Games, so they knew about the explosion before he did (00:11:30:00)  Oakes let his family know he was fine; he was in the park but he got out before the explosion (00:11:49:00)  The troops’ concern was they were going to have to stay a little longer because they were going to beef up security; however, the next morning, the unit was due to rotate back to Michigan and the next day, the unit went down to the airport and back to Michigan (00:11:54:00) Oakes was thirty-five years old when he joined the Guard in 1985 (00:12:38:00) o There was a range in the ages of the soldiers in the unit; there were a few Vietnam veterans, including Oakes (00:12:46:00) o A person’s entry into the Guard depended on when they could retire and Oakes made it in by seven months; they took a person’s age and added twenty to it and that number had to be less than fifty-five (00:12:54:00)  The mandatory retirement age in the Guard is sixty and when Oakes turned sixty, at the end of the month, he was retired (00:13:06:00) o Oakes entered the Guard as an E-4, a specialist; he got out of the Marine Corps as an E-4 Corporal and in the Guard, he went from an E-4 to and E-8 (Master Sergeant or First Sergeant) before he retired (00:13:21:00) There were people in the unit who were just out of high school and the people with higher ranks were generally people who had been around longer because it took a long time to reach those ranks (00:13:53:00) o A lot of people who joined were also the veterans because at that time, Vietnam had only been over for about twenty years (00:14:06:00) �  o On the other hand, there are a lot of soldiers in the Guard who have never been in combat or deployed, through no fault of their own; because of the field they had chosen, such as logistics, there is not combat requirement (00:14:15:00)  There are presently even one-star generals in the Michigan National Guard who have never mobilized because their job has never called for it, despite them being excellent leaders (00:14:35:00) The Michigan National Guard currently has some really good leadership and had Oakes not been forced to retire, he would still be in the Guard; presently, he does contract work with the state logistics department (00:14:51:00) The standard commitment for anyone in the Guard is one weekend a month, both Saturday and Sunday with the possibility of Friday depending on the circumstances, and fifteen days of annual training at Camp Grayling (00:16:14:00) o Because of the on-going conflicts, the Army has changed the process to the point that some units have annual training three or four times a year, cutting down on the amount of time they need to spend at another base, allowing a unit to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan in half the time (00:17:04:00) o Any problems are solved before the unit deploys to its advanced base (00:17:29:00) Post-9/11 Operations / Iraq Deployment (00:18:05:00)  When the attacks on 9/11 happened, things “really started popping” (00:18:05:00) o Not much happened in Oakes’ unit specifically, apart from being command and control for the entire brigade; however, a lot of their infantry units were called up as well as some of their support units, such as: engineering units, transportation units and maintenance units (00:18:09:00)  At that time, the brigade also had some armored units and they were called up along with the infantry battalions, many of whom ended up in combat zones overseas (00:18:23:00) o Every day, the soldiers in the unit were waiting for the phone call saying that the orders had come down and to stand-by for mobilization (00:18:39:00) o In the Guard, different components of a brigade can be called up at different times and after 9/11, the transportation units were called up first, just a matter of days after the attacks (00:19:22:00)  The brigade’s support units went first because the Army needed transportation and maintenance before the infantry arrived (00:19:50:00)  The last two units in the brigade were the last two units that the Army needed; a lot of the units in the Guard were support units that the Army did not need during peace-time on a base because there were civilian contractors already doing the jobs (00:20:04:00) o Once a unit was called up, after a certain amount of time, the brigade was no longer in command of them; they could still communicate with the unit but the unit now belonged to the U.S. Army (00:21:09:00) o In the beginning, the units were typically going for thirteen months with the knowledge that it could increase to eighteen months depending on the requirements (00:21:44:00) �    If it was going to be a long, drawn-out war akin to World War II, the commitment could be open-ended (00:21:55:00)  Oakes’ orders when he want to Iraq in 2005 said he was activated for up to seven hundred and sixty-five days, well over two years; the Army could have kept him and the other soldiers in his unit for that long but a normal mobilization was for twelve months (00:21:57:00) A few years ago, Oakes’ old brigade deactivated and its units moved to other brigades throughout the state; different Guard units are constantly moving from different commands (00:22:51:00) o A unit would deploy, come home for two or three years at the most, then deploy again; just about every Guard unit in Michigan has served time in Iraq at least once and some as many as three times (00:23:06:00) o Presently, most of the Guard units preparing to deploy are deploying to Afghanistan instead of Iraq (00:23:22:00) o On occasion, the Guard does move a single soldier from unit to unit based on his or her commitment (00:23:42:00)  One time, there was a transportation unit in Kansas that could only field one platoon out of three, so Guard units in Michigan and Massachusetts each sent a platoon; when the unit deployed overseas, the unit had three platoons from three different states (00:23:53:00)  Guard units in different states all training on the same equipment, so it was not difficult to insert the out-of-state platoons (00:24:22:00) Following 9/11, the number of people attempting to join the Guard increased (00:24:42:00) o Even now, there is still higher levels of enlistment; a few years ago the Guard had to shut down enlistments sixty days early because they had completed their yearly quotas (00:25:01:00) o Enlistments had stayed up because a lot of kids coming out of high school join because of the educational benefits; a lot of colleges end up giving discounts to military personnel apart from the regular GI bill (00:25:46:00)  When Oakes attended college, his GI bill paid for part and the college had a program that paid for the rest; Oakes joked with his wife that he did not pay more than two thousand dollars for his education, although on the flipside, it took him eleven years of a single course a semester to obtain his degree (00:26:09:00) Eventually, Oakes was called to active duty to assist in shuffling units around throughout the state (00:26:48:00) o However, because he needed additional training, Oakes went to a base in Helena, Montana and trained at an Army Reserve course in the end of July / beginning of August for two two-week classes (00:27:04:00) o He came back to Michigan on a Wednesday, went back to working at the National Guard Armory, and as he was leaving on Friday, a soldier ran out and told him he had been mobilized, although Oakes did not believe him (00:27:43:00)  Oakes went back into the armory and read the e-mail, which told him and another soldier to stand-by (00:28:04:00) �    Oakes started driving back and forth to Detroit because it was September and the unit’s activation date was Oct. 8th and its movement date was Oct. 11th to Fort McCoy, Wisconsin (00:28:13:00) o Realizing he did not have much time before he deployed, Oakes spent three days at home organizing his personal affairs and four days in Detroit with the Guard unit; Oakes knew what his MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) was within the new unit but he needed time to get to know the other soldiers (00:28:33:00) o The new unit was around sixty members strong and Oakes and two others ended up leaving on Oct. 8th as an advanced team to Fort McCoy, while the rest of the unit came over on the 11th (00:29:04:00)  Going away at the airport was better than when Oakes left for Vietnam; he had around fourteen family members at the airport when he flew from Grand Rapids to Chicago (00:29:18:00) Oakes flew from Grand Rapids to Chicago, meet the other two advanced team members from Detroit, and all three flew to an airport near Fort McCoy (00:29:30:00) o While the unit was at the base, they received additional soldiers and equipment, packed their equipment and received extended training, which included “liveconvoy training”, when the soldiers used live ammunition against the targets (00:29:46:00) o The unit was at the base for Thanksgiving, although Oakes’ family ended up visiting the weekend before Thanksgiving (00:30:15:00) On Dec. 1st, the unit’s advanced team of twenty soldiers, which Oakes was part of, took off from Wisconsin on a Miami Air commercial airline that the government had contracted (00:30:30:00) o The flight had to land early because the battalion commander had a heart attack, so the plane landed in Buffalo, New York; the commander and a sergeant stayed behind and both eventually got transportation from Fort Drum and arrived in Kuwait about three days after the rest of the soldiers (00:30:55:00)  Because he was the First Sergeant, Oakes ended up carrying the commander’s 9mm pistol over to Kuwait (00:31:41:00) o The flight also stopped in Iceland for refueling around one or two o’clock in the morning and in Budapest, Hungary (00:31:53:00)  Normally, the plane is allowed to taxi to the ramp for the terminal and the soldiers allowed to deplane, walk around the terminal, and buy souvenirs, etc. but for some reason, in Hungary, that was not the case (00:32:08:00)  They left the plane on the tarmac and had a cleaning crew come out to clean the plane, as well as restock it with water and food, before the plane took off again (00:32:20:00) o The route of the flight took the soldiers over Iraq and they flew over Baghdad in the dark before landing at the Kuwait International Airport (00:32:33:00) At the airport, the soldiers boarded buses that took them to Camp Virginia, which was a staging area for all soldiers going into Iraq; even foreign soldiers from NATO traveled through the camp before going into Iraq (00:32:47:00) o The soldiers could tell the NATO soldiers because of their uniforms and like the Americans, they had their nation’s flag on their sleeve (00:33:03:00) �  o The advanced team stayed at Camp Virginia for two weeks before heading into Iraq proper (00:33:12:00)  While at the camp, the soldiers went through live-fire training again, although this time they spent the night in the desert (00:33:20:00)  The first night the soldiers spent in the field, there was a rather powerful thunderstorm and they were all worried because they were sleeping on cots under ponchos next to the trucks made out of metal (00:33:36:00)  Before the storm happened, the soldiers saw light darting around in the sky and at first, they thought the lights were long-distance aircraft but several years later, Oakes deduced that they were small, unmanned observation drones used for security along the Iraqi border (00:34:06:00)  They made it through the training and on Dec. 15th, “went over the berm” and into Iraq (00:35:16:00) There were four soldiers, Oakes included, in the unit called “the crusty four”, who were the four oldest members of the unit; everyone else was much younger than them (00:35:35:00) o Three of the four had been Vietnam veterans and they all managed to take everything that was happening in stride (00:35:43:00) o Once the soldiers finally got to their base and got settled, it became just like any other day-to-day living routine; they got up in the morning, ate breakfast, worked for most of the morning, ate lunch, worked during the afternoon, ate dinner, and if they were off-duty, went back to their quarters and either watched TV, exercised, etc. (00:35:59:00) o The four older soldiers hung together and did their physical training together, mostly a lot of walks (00:36:23:00) The name of the base where the unit was stationed was “Q-West” and the base was on an old Iraqi jet fighter base (00:36:31:00) o After the 1991 Gulf War, the base fell under the imposed no-fly-zone and although it had been the most modern base the Iraqis had, no aircraft could fly from it (00:36:41:00)  During the 1991 Gulf War, the Americans had cratered the runway so nothing would fly and those craters still existed when Oakes first arrived there and caused problems later on (00:36:56:00) o When the soldiers arrived at the base, it was late in the day and they expected it to be a functional base; instead, they were told to keep their weapons handy because the perimeter was full of holes and although there were guard towers, they were manned by the Iraqi National Guard (00:37:07:00)  The perimeter was fourteen and a half miles long and encompassed the entire base (00:37:32:00) o The base had a ten thousand foot, heavy-duty runway, thirty-three clamshell hangars with doors two feet thick to withstand bomb blasts, and various support buildings, including a computer building and a personnel center (00:37:36:00) �  The soldiers later discovered several bomb-manufacturing buildings on the base and there was also an Iraqi ammo dump outside the base itself that took up two or three square miles (00:37:59:00) o The base was pretty much self-sufficient, although nothing worked at that time; when everything did work, the base had its own sewage treatment plant as well as underground power and communication lines (00:38:15:00)  For the power and communication lines, the Iraqis had buried between eight and sixteen six-inch PVC pipes and ran the wires through them, with the only way to access them through manhole covers (00:38:52:00)  The soldiers could drive along the perimeter road and every fifty meters was a manhole and inside every manhole was a conduit running in one direction and a conduit running in the opposite direction (00:39:10:00)  When the base was shut down in 1991, there was nobody there, so Turkish Kurds came over the border and stripped everything, including the copper from the wires in the manholes (00:39:23:00)  They even tipped over power transformers about the size of a VW Bug, took the copper from inside, and left the shell (00:38:49:00)  Anything that was too big to carry they left and stripped out of it what they could (00:40:02:00)  The Iraqis also left a handful of MiG-21 fighter jets and soldiers from the 101st Airborne, which had occupied the base before Oakes’ unit, had drug the planes, parked them in front of various buildings they had renovated and used them as war trophies (00:40:17:00) o The base had an underground power plant buried under twenty-four feet of sand, although the fuel tanks were aboveground (00:40:48:00)  The Americans took the fuel tanks out in 1991, effectively shutting off power to the base (00:40:56:00) o None of the bunkers were damaged and outside of the bomb damage to the runway, only two buildings on the base suffered damage (00:41:24:00)  One of the buildings was two stories tall, had an elevator in it, and was used as a VIP building; the building had taken a cruise missile strike because on one side, the roof had fallen on the second floor, causing the second floor to collapse onto the first (00:41:32:00)  The other building was what Oakes assumes was the communication center and it too took a precision-guided strike on it; the soldiers could tell because there was pieces of rebar but the concrete had been blown off (00:41:55:00) o By the time Oakes’ unit arrived, all the buildings on the base had been gutted by one group or another (00:42:10:00) When the unit first arrived on the base, Oakes’ main duty was, because he was the First Sergeant, maintaining personnel and taking care of day-to-day issues; however, there was really not a lot of work at the beginning because everyone was trying to get settled (00:42:38:00) o The unit had a TOA (Transfer of Authority) with the unit who had occupied the base in which the units exchange flag and the older unit board airplanes and goes home (00:42:51:00) �  The previous unit had started renovating one building but stopped because they ran out of building supplies, so Oakes unit worked to get the supplies and they built new desks and cubicles (00:43:07:00) o In terms of living quarters, some of the soldiers had to double-up because there were initially not enough personal quarters to go around; the individual quarters were built in Turkey then trucked down to the base (00:43:33:00) o It took the soldiers a few weeks to get everything organized to the point that they were able to work properly (00:43:49:00) Convoys eventually started steadily arrived at the base, coming down from Turkey and up from Baghdad (00:43:53:00) o They were rebuilding the American Embassy in Baghdad and some of the supplies were coming out of Turkey (00:44:00:00)  One day, Oakes went for a drive and on one of the side roads was a convoy with massive spools of wire, all bound for Baghdad and the Embassy (00:44:05:00) o Most of the convoys coming out of Turkey were fuel (00:44:26:00)  They were civilian convoys of tanker trucks and although they were all the same model truck, each truck was painted a different color and the convoy looked like a circus coming down the road (00:44:33:00)  The soldier designated these “white convoys” because they were civilian and were guarded by NATO soldiers (00:44:57:00) o There were convoys at all of hours of the day, both day and night, and the convoy arrivals were irregular so that the insurgents could not pick out a set time when a convoy would be on the base (00:45:06:00) o There were also line convoys that came from the south and brought the soldiers supplies, such as food (00:45:20:00) o Once the fuel arrived from Turkey, it went into a four million gallon fuel farm on the base, which consisted of large fuel bladders buried under the sand (00:45:28:00)  A tanker would pull up to the bladder and pump its fuel through a filter; the people in Turkey had a tendency to fill the tankers with both water and fuel figuring they could get more money (00:45:42:00)  At that time, the black market for fuel was very high because the civilian Iraqi population needed fuel; even though the country had a large number of oil wells, all of the refineries had been knocked out (00:46:02:00) o The soldiers had to watch the convoys carefully because the drivers would have hidden compartments and they would try to smuggle in weapons, booze, or drugs (00:46:26:00)  All the trucks drove in front of a side-scanning x-ray the soldiers had set up and they were able to see everything within the trucks, even the smuggled items (00:46:52:00)  The soldiers checked all the trucks for bombs, as well as the IDs of everyone in the truck and if they found contraband, they simply told the driver to leave, which often scared them enough because the drivers were Turks and there was animosity between them and the Iraqis (00:47:07:00) �     It only happened a couple of times, but that did not deter others from trying to smuggle goods in (00:47:35:00)  Later on, more booze was confiscated than anything, including entire cases of Jack Daniels whisky, because all of Iraq was a dry country (00:47:42:00)  In the mess hall, the soldiers generally drank pop, Gatorade, and non-alcoholic beer (00:47:52:00) Oakes’ unit was attached to the 917th Support Group, which was then attached to a Division, which in turn was attached to the Theater and finally the Southern Command in Kuwait and Miami (00:48:29:00) o A normal battalion ran between three and four companies but Oakes’ battalion eventually reached eleven (00:49:05:00) o About four weeks into the operation, the battalion commander re-organized the command structure (00:49:12:00)  Oakes’ unit was three people short when they left Michigan, so the commander ended up bringing twelve soldiers from the different companies to “beef-up” Oakes’ unit (00:49:20:00)  Over time, the commander moved the experienced soldiers around and put them into positions that maximized their particular skill sets (00:49:52:00) Around the end of February, Oakes became the property-book NCO for all eleven companies in the battalion, which meant he had to get all their information transferred from the States to his system (00:49:57:00) o The system was an Internet system out of Birmingham, Alabama and over time, Oakes had to get everyone into the system; however, not all the units used the same software and as the other units converted, Oakes transferred the information into the existing system (00:50:12:00) o Oakes ended up getting all the units except the unit working in the ammo dump because they were not going to convert their software until after the unit had returned home (00:50:35:00)  At some point, the unit converted early and when all the units were preparing to leave, the unit came to Oakes asking for help (00:50:51:00)  At the time, serialization accountability about sensitive materials was high priority and some of the unit’s serial numbers did not match with what was in their books (00:51:01:00)  However, Oakes could not help them because he did not have their paperwork (00:51:16:00) As time progressed, the soldiers slowly improved the base and made things better for themselves (00:51:24:00) o The Airborne forces had already built a repair center and started using some of the bunkers; the base served as the rear-area for all the helicopters stationed in Mosul (00:51:35:00) Over time, more and more units arrived on the base; when Oakes and the advanced time first arrived, they were told that there was around eight hundred people on the base; by the time their unit left, there were around five thousand soldiers per meal (00:52:06:00) o The perimeter security changed over time as well; the Iraqi National Guard eventually became the Iraqi Army (00:52:31:00) �  Iraqi forces manned the guard posts during the day and at night, American forces guarded the perimeter (00:52:42:00) o A single man, nicknamed “the Mayor”, had the task of strictly running the base and he acted as a liaison between the base and the various civilian support units (00:52:51:00)  The mayor already dictated which units would receive which buildings and if a unit wanted another building, they had to talk with him as he assigning buildings (00:53:19:00)  Although there were only two damaged buildings on the base, all the other buildings had been gutted; even the underground power plant had been wrecked (00:53:31:00)  After each unit received a building assignment, they moved their living quarters near it and built dirt berms and as part of this, each unit received its own generator (00:53:49:00)  The generators were maintained by a civilian company, KBR, and once a day, they would turn each machine off and check to make sure it was running properly (00:54:01:00)  The generators were huge because they had to supply power for around one hundred living quarters apiece (00:54:07:00) o The soldiers eventually improved the front gate security (00:54:34:00)  At first, it was just a straight drive through the gate and the soldiers modified it to create lanes divided by walls of sand so that if a truck was a suicide bomber and it went off, the explosion would not affect the trucks on either side (00:54:37:00)  They also angled traffic barriers so that a vehicle had to go around each barrier (00:54:59:00) The soldiers did not have any incidents with insurgents apart from a couple of rockets; one rocket exploded in the sand in the middle of the base and the other was a dud and it landed in the sand as well (00:55:17:00) o In the beginning, each unit was assigned a guard tower at night; however, because there were not enough units to man each tower individually, each unit had to man two or three towers (00:55:42:00)  Part of the Sergeant Major and Oakes’ job was to take hot food out to the soldiers in the guard towers and check on them (00:55:55:00)  One night, the two men went out to a tower where there were two young females standing guard; both the Sergeant Major and Oakes were Vietnam veterans, so they were cautious whereas the two females were sitting in the guard tower, smoking by flashlight (00:56:03:00)  However, neither had been trained properly in the manning a guard post because they were both clerks, so the Sergeant Major and Oakes showed them what they were doing wrong and explained that if they wanted to smoke, do it in the corner with the flashlight pointed down (00:56:35:00)  They never wanted to fully expose themselves in the guard tower because if someone came through the wire, the guards could easily be seen (00:57:06:00) � On the way back to the compound, the radio rang out “shots fired” and both men realized that it was close of where they were currently driving (00:57:26:00) (00:58:33:00) - (01:00:15:00) Technical Difficulties  In the beginning, there was an Iraqi training battalion on the base, so there were already Iraqi soldiers on the base (01:00:32:00)  The night that the Sergeant Major and Oakes had delivered food to the two female clerks in the guard tower, Oakes thought he heard gunfire when he was walking down from the tower (01:03:39:00)  There was an Iraqi village a few miles away from the base and Oakes initially assumed the gunfire was someone in the village firing into the base (01:03:47:00)  All of the sudden, news came across the radio that there was a wounded soldiers at the fuel dump, about one hundred yards from where the Sergeant Major ad Oakes were driving (01:04:09:00)  They turned around and went back to the guard tower to make sure the two females were aware of the situation and to look out the back of the tower, not the front (01:04:31:00)  The two sergeants stayed at the guard tower with the two clerks for a while, watching as vehicles moved around looking for whoever fired the shots (01:04:48:00)  They never did find the person who fired the shots although the soldiers knew it was an AK-47 based on the sound it made (01:05:39:00)  The next morning, the soldiers found an empty C-Ration container and several empty AK-47 shells on top of a bunker (01:05:46:00)  They could not track anyone in the desert if they wanted to unless the had a dog, which the base did not have (01:06:03:00)  As best anyone could figure, a soldier in the Iraqi training battalion did not like the Americans being there and had decided to take some potshots then sneak out through the wire (01:06:12:00) o The base’s rear gate was not that far from where the shooting occurred and was manned twenty-four hours a day by Iraqi soldiers, so the shooter could have easily slipped out of the base (01:06:22:00) o Several years later, Oakes learned that the same bunkers the men were investigating for souvenirs had trapdoors in them and the base was lined with underground tunnels that none of the soldiers knew about (01:06:50:00)  A soldier Oakes had trained with was going around taking pictures on the inside of a bunker when he noticed a wooden chair; a couple of days later, the soldier went back and the chair had moved (01:07:09:00)  The soldiers put someone up on one of the other bunkers with night vision to watch the bunker and sure enough, after two or three days, there were people coming out of the bunker (01:07:34:00) �  As it turned out, one the cooks at the mess hall was supplying the people hiding in the bunker with food (01:07:45:00)  The cooks working the mess hall were neither Iraqi nor Americans, they were foreigners (01:09:08:00) On Dec. 30th, a Special Forces C-130 landed on the base’s airstrip; although the airstrip was not yet operational, planes could land on parts of it (01:09:28:00) o The plane had come straight from Baghdad and just landed on the airstrip (01:09:43:00) o Normally, a pilot was supposed to circle the runway and observe it through his or her night vision goggles to check the condition of the runway and to make sure there were not obstacles on the runway (01:09:49:00)  Special Forces did not act that way; they just came in and landed without waiting (01:09:58:00) o However, there was hole in the runway about one hundred yards from where the plane touched down; the engineers had cleared away debris but there was still a hole three feet deep, the width of the runway and one hundred and fifty feet long (01:10:04:00) o The plane landed and although the pilot tried to brake, the front wheel went into the hole, hit the three-foot bank, and sheered off the front wheel as well as part of the fuselage before continuing for another one hundred feet (01:10:26:00)  Part of a wing came off and caught fire but there was only a single small Iraqi fire truck on the base; other men were hauling handheld fire extinguishers to put the fire out (01:10:41:00) o There was between seven and nine people on board the plane and in the back was a “sterile” HUMVEE without identification (01:10:55:00)  The C-130 was also “sterile”; the numbers had been subdued to the point that anyone could not tell who operated the plane (01:11:04:00) o Naturally, the plane was totaled and out of the people who were on board, a chaplain lost both his legs and died before he got to hospital in Baghdad while the others were taken up to Mosul for injuries (01:11:13:00) o The next day, the higher-ranking personnel were able to look at the wreckage and as it turned out, a firefighting unit who had come from Mosul to watch against flare-ups was from the Michigan National Guard out of Grayling (01:11:31:00) o The wreckage sat on the runway for a couple of weeks although no one could land on the runway anyway because it still had not been repaired (01:12:18:00)  When they finally decided what to do with the wreckage, they first destroyed what remained of nose and the front end, where all the sensitive equipment was, and then dug a large hole, pushed the remaining wreckage into it, and buried it all (01:12:26:00) Operations in Iraq (01:13:13:00)  Once Oakes became the PVO NCO, he began flying up regularly to Mosul for meetings with the Theater property books; his job involved keeping track of all the equipment coming in and out off of the base (01:13:13:00)  There was a constant stream of trucks going south from the base to another jet fighter base at Balad (01:13:28:00) �  When the trucks left Oakes’ base, they were unarmored and some independent contractors had begun armoring trucks a the base in Balad; when the armored trucks returned to the base, Oakes had to re-identify them (01:13:32:00) o FOB (Forward Operating Base) Diamondback was basically the Mosul Municipal Airport, which American soldiers had turned into a military base (01:14:14:00)  There were not many units assigned to the base itself, apart from a medivac squadron and a MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) (01:14:28:00)  The helicopters were always coming and going, bringing people in and out of the hospital (01:14:39:00)  After a while, Oakes also noticed that remote-controlled drones also operated out of the base (01:14:45:00)  One evening, Oakes and some other soldiers are sitting around and a man was guiding a drone on a tether out to the runway; on the runway, the man unhooked the tether, walked away, and the next thing the soldiers knew, the drone was moving (01:14:52:00) Most of Oakes’ trips around were done by helicopter, although he did travel with a couple of convoys (01:16:02:00) o During the first convoy, the soldiers took some equipment down to the military junkyard in Balad (01:16:06:00)  Oakes and two other men rode in a truck together; one man manned the gun turret, one acted as the truck commander and the other drove (01:16:17:00)  Oakes’ smaller convoy ended up linking up with a much larger convoy heading south carrying vehicles for rebuild, empty containers, and a couple of damaged vehicles (01:16:28:00)  The trip took around six hours and on the way down, the convoy passed another convoy of HETs (Heavy Equipment Transport) carrying tanks and artillery pieces headed north (01:16:48:00)  While the men were in Balad, they turned in all their old canvas, including their tents, because they could sleep in the bunkers (01:17:06:00)  However, all the canvas stayed in-country and was given to the Iraqi Army because the Americans would not risk bringing anything back due to the bug infestations (01:17:19:00)  Even the soldiers’ uniforms were checked very closely when they left the country and returned home (01:17:33:00)  The men also turned in some inoperative refrigerators and computers left by the pervious soldiers who occupied the base (01:17:44:00)  The junkyard in Balad was massive, everything from broken computers up to tanks that had been hit by land mines, as well as wreckage other damaged and destroyed vehicles (01:17:51:00) o Oakes also went on a couple of convoys to Mosul because they needed lumber for building (01:18:13:00) o Going out on convoys broke up the repetition of the day-to-day routine, which would occasionally wear on Oakes (01:18:23:00) �     He would wake up in the morning, eat his breakfast and then sit in front of the computer, do paperwork, wait for an e-mail, repair something, or send e-mails back home (01:18:29:00) Oakes was thankful that they had computers on the base because unlike Vietnam, he and the other soldiers were able to communicate easily with home (01:18:38:00) o He used the computers on Sundays to call his wife at home; Oakes was eight hours ahead of Michigan, so he waited until around four in the afternoon before calling (01:18:43:00)  Occasionally, Oakes called his daughter at her work as well as his other daughter and son periodically just to talk with them (01:19:05:00) o One of the soldiers had set up a web-cam to talk with people at home but the others did not condone that because they had a very limited bandwidth in Iraq and it had to be routed through the Netherlands (01:19:33:00)  The soldiers could tell when there was a lot of people using the Internet because the system bogged down (01:19:57:00) o If someone was wounded or killed on the base, the commanders immediately turned the Internet off because they did not want the information leaking out before the next-of-kin were notified (01:20:05:00) There was not just the eleven companies in Oakes’ battalion on the base and they had to be sensitive to those units as well (01:20:24:00) o One of the units was an infantry unit and every night, they would go out on patrols of half American / half Iraqi soldiers looking for insurgents and every morning, they would come back with somebody (01:20:05:00) Oakes was in Iraq before the much-publicized “surge” began (01:20:54:00) o He was in the country when the Iraqis had their first vote and has pictures of all the ballots traveling through the base to be counted; all the villages in the area brought their ballots to the base, where they were loaded on a helicopter then flown to Baghdad for counting (01:20:57:00) In some places, traveling in a convoy was very dangerous (01:21:31:00) o The route down to Balad took the soldiers past the city of Tikrit; they had to build a wall between the city and the road running around it because the inhabitants did not like the Americans (01:21:32:00)  The convoy did not stop or slow down there because Iraqis would throw hand grenades over the wall, although the grenades would not do much damage to the vehicles (01:22:01:00) o The highways were dual-lane expressways designed to have trees on both sides and in the middle; however, since the war was over, the locals had cut down some of the trees for firewood (01:22:28:00)  On the way back from the trip to Balad, the convoy received word that another convoy in front of them had been hit with an IED (Improvised Explosive Device), although the convoy was on the other side of the highway (01:22:50:00)  Oakes’ convoy had come down that side the day before, which meant the IED was either planted in between or had been planted much earlier; sometimes, an insurgent would plant an IED and let it sit for a couple of days (01:23:03:00) �  o After awhile, the soldiers began looking for signs of something being out of place, like a pile of dirt and/or rocks, an abandoned vehicle on the side of the road, etc. (01:23:20:00)  If they saw something suspicious, the lead gun truck would call back to the convoy so the convoy would either move cautiously or stop all together while the gun truck investigated (01:23:40:00)  There might be something else a mile down the road and they would do it all over again (01:23:57:00) o However, the insurgents began to adapt to the tactics; they realized that a convoy would swing to the side to avoid an abandoned vehicle, so the insurgents would place the IED across the road from the vehicle (01:24:05:00)  The insurgents knew what was happening and were watching the soldiers all the time (01:24:16:00) o Along the convoy routes, the soldiers could see where the power lines had been destroyed (01:24:33:00)  The Iraqi infrastructure was very similar to the American infrastructure, including power lines on the steel towers (01:24:37:00) On occasion, there were black patches on the ground and Oakes initially assumed they were where a vehicle had crashed or burned; however, as the patches got closer to the road, he saw that it was oil seeping up through the ground and pooling (01:25:02:00) o They were digging water wells on the base and had to dig five or six before they found water; they kept finding oil (01:25:26:00)  The majority of the base’s water came through a pipeline from the Tigris River and went through purification (01:25:41:00)  However, the problem with the pipeline was that it was old and every village it passed through tapped into it so that by the time water got to the base, there was barely anything left (01:25:48:00)  One time, the pipe cracked and water was spraying up in the desert like a fountain (01:26:02:00) The convoys that Oakes went out on were during the daytime, although the base had convoys going in and out scattered throughout both day and night (01:26:56:00) o Each vehicle in a convoy had a GPS locator in it, so the people back on the base knew where the convoy was at all times (01:27:06:00) o If a convoy got hit, they would hit a panic button, turning their icon on a television screen back at the base red and the base would get the reaction force to the convoy as fast as they could (01:27:12:00)  There were smaller bases all along the MSR (Main Supply Route), each had its own reaction force and they would send the reaction force from the nearest base to help a convoy (01:27:27:00) o It threw the insurgents off a little bit not knowing when the base would send out convoys but generally, at night they could not see the vehicles in the convoy (01:27:57:00)  The Americans could see any insurgents because they had night vision goggles, which the insurgents did not (01:28:08:00) � o During the day, the soldiers might see someone walking around but could do nothing about it, whereas if they saw someone walking around at night, that person might be a free-fire target and the Iraqis knew this (01:28:15:00) o There was so much supplies and fuel on the base that the soldiers had to run convoys all the time (01:28:31:00)  The soldiers could also only put so much traffic on the MSR; they did not want it wall to wall with trucks because then it is akin to “shooting ducks in a barrel” for the insurgents (01:28:41:00) o The base also built up supplies for various operations (01:28:53:00)  On one occasion, the Army moved into an area near the Iranian border; one day, there is nothing there and the next morning, there is a fullyfunctioning combat base (01:28:57:00)  All the supplies for the base had been built up at Oakes’ base, which was sending convoys every five minutes (01:29:04:00)  Once the convoys reached the desert, they drove side by side, causing some of the Freightliner trucks, designed only to run on hardtop roads, to get stuck in the sand (01:29:13:00)  Oakes’ base supplied almost all the coalition forces stationed north of Baghdad and they moved fuel to Balad, which supplied all the forces within Baghdad itself (01:29:36:00) The IEDs employed by the insurgents could do major damage depending on what they hit (01:30:10:00) o The devices that exploded around Oakes’ convoys tended to put holes in the vehicles or destroyed engine compartments (01:30:15:00) o At the time, most of the devices were ordinance left by the Iraqi Army but as Oakes now understands it, the insurgents are employing more fuel and fertilizer bombs (01:30:23:00)  When the Iraqi Army disbanded, they left ordinance everywhere; every week, the soldiers destroyed all the ordinance they had captured for that week in an explosion, although sometimes, not everyone received word that the explosion would be happening (01:30:36:00)  In Vietnam, if someone heard an explosion, they hit the ground; in Iraq, if someone heard an explosion, they turned and looked at it (01:31:11:00) o In the beginning of the fighting, a lot of the IEDs were 155 mm artillery shells and the insurgents had a knack for putting them behind guardrails on the highway, which added shrapnel to the mix (01:31:21:00)  When Oakes went on his first convoy, someone had gone through and cut down all the guardrails; the post were still there but the metal was gone, even on some of the bridges (01:31:32:00) o There were holes just outside the main gate where early on, someone had snuck in and planted an IED (01:32:10:00) o In two of the guard towers later on, the units had LRADs, which were high quality night vision devices normally mounted on tanks (01:32:21:00)  The “mayor” of the base had been a tanker in Baghdad and brought the two devices to the base for security (01:32:37:00) �     Where the LRADs were located, in a two-story guard tower and on top of a repelling training tower, the soldiers could see the road leading into the base and if anyone was out there (01:33:02:00)  More than once, someone alerted someone else that there were three people on the road, two carrying weapons and one carrying a shovel, and they were about a mile away from the base; the base would send out the infantry (01:33:05:00) The insurgents also launched mortar strikes into Mosul itself (01:33:36:00) o When Oakes’ unit first arrived in Iraq, they sent a four-man team to the FOB next to the Mosul airport and another team to a different FOB (01:33:40:00) o The team at the FOB in Mosul had not been there for more than tens days when a suicide bomber attacked the mess hall (01:33:54:00)  The bomber had worked in the mess hall but was let go; the next day, he went to the mess hall wearing a bomb suit, sat down to talk with someone, and pulled the detonator, wiping out an entire group of people (01:34:08:00)  Luckily, although there were some American casualties, none were from Oakes’ unit; they had already eaten and left (01:34:20:00)  The bomber had used a lot of ball bearings and the soldiers could tell exactly where he was sitting because the ground is peeled back and everything around it has holes in it (01:34:33:00) Even as late as 2005 when Oakes unit first arrived, most of the bases where still being built; Oakes’ unit and similar units were taking the bases over from the active-duty forces that had occupied them since the war began (01:35:05:00) Out of the entire time they were there, Oakes’ battalion only lost six soldiers, three to IEDs and three to traffic accidents (01:35:26:00) o During one the traffic accidents, a tanker truck went off the side of the road, and rolled; the door of the truck had been pulled opened and the driver flung partially out and when the truck rolled, the door closed and killed the driver (01:35:33:00) o In the other traffic accident, two soldiers in a HUMVEE went to avoid an overpass over railroad tracks being repaired by going down the hill, over the tracks, and back up; however, it was dusty and they ended up rolling, killing the gunner and the driver (01:35:54:00) o The IED deaths were cause mainly from shrapnel that took out the truck (01:36:55:00) o There were other times that IEDs exploded but no one was killed, although the vehicles tended to be destroyed (01:37:01:00)  Oakes has pictures of a tractor trailer that was full of holes from shrapnel and even when they got it back to the base, it was still leaking diesel fuel (01:37:08:00) The base was removed enough from any settlements, with the nearest village being three miles away, that they did not receive a lot of incoming enemy gunfire (01:37:37:00) o When they watched the villages through the LRADs, Oakes commented to another Sergeant that it looked like a game on Atari because all the buildings were green blocks (01:38:03:00) �    o Another time, Oakes was in the guard tower and a soldier told him to look through the LRAD, which was pointed at a village five miles away from the base; someone in the village had started a bonfire and seven Iraqi men armed with AK47s were standing around it for warmth (01:38:25:00)  The soldier told Oakes to keep watching a nearby bush and he saw a rabbit, which a dog near the fire chased away (01:38:57:00)  The soldier wanted to know what to do about the Iraqis carrying weapons but there was nothing the soldiers could so (01:39:19:00)  All the Iraqis carried weapons, including those who worked on the base; they had to check the weapon into a vault at the front gate and when left, the Iraqis got their weapon out (01:39:27:00) Every Iraqi drove a white vehicle, both cars and pick-up trucks, although taxi cabs were white with an orange roof (01:39:40:00) In the middle of August, Oakes looked at a thermometer outside their building and it read 130° in the shade (01:40:01:00) o The facilities that had living quarters in them were air-conditioned, as well as working space; there first things the soldiers did when the arrived was to put window air conditioners in the buildings they were using (01:40:16:00) o The soldiers did not care about the cosmetics of an installation; if it worked, then it worked (01:40:25:00) The morale in Oakes’ unit was good, although some of the units they supplied did have different problems (01:40:41:00) o Oakes believes part of the unit’s high morale came from the food that the soldiers received in the mess hall, which was great (01:41:14:00)  Every Sunday was surf’n’turf; the soldiers spent a lot of taxpayers money eating lobster and t-bone steak on Sunday (01:41:16:00)  The soldiers still kept MREs in the vehicles for convoy duty as well as some snack food from home but the mess hall in general tended to serve really good food (01:41:32:00)  The soldiers drank bottled water everywhere, never the local water (01:41:44:00) In early April, Oakes got an infection near his throat (01:41:58:00) o When he went to see the doctor, she said she was not going to touch the infection because it was near his throat; instead, she had her assistant wake the medi-vac helicopter crew to fly Oakes to Mosul (01:42:21:00) o While the helicopter crew was waking up, Oakes went back to his area, got his overnight bag, got on the helicopter and flew up to the hospital in Mosul; after dropping Oakes off, the helicopter crew made it a worthwhile trip and picked up some supplies they needed back at the base (01:42:37:00) o Oakes had anticipated that he was only going to be in Mosul overnight but it took the doctors three times to lance the boil on his neck (01:42:54:00)  When he finally got back to his base, he had to have the area checked every day for two weeks (01:43:23:00)  They made him were a large bandage over the wound, even when he was promoted from E-7 to E-8 but luckily, the doctors got everything out before he left for leave (01:43:47:00) �   On May 6th, Oakes left for leave to meet his family in Ireland (01:44:01:00) o From his base, Oakes went to Balad, took a C-130 down to Kuwait, were he went through the process of turning all his equipment in for storage, flew from Kuwait to Frankfurt, Germany, spent the night there, then finally flew to England and on to Shannon, Ireland (01:44:06:00) o Oakes’ family ended up landing in Ireland forty-five minutes before he did (01:44:50:00)  Oakes stayed in Ireland for two weeks; his kids stayed for the first week before returning to the United States, while Oakes and his wife spent the second week (01:45:16:00) o On the way back, the route reversed but when he got back to Balad and tried to arrange from transport back to his base, no one knew the base Oakes was talking about (01:45:24:00)  He ended up getting a flight on a Sherpa aircraft, a small aircraft used to transport freight around (01:45:42:00)  The Sherpa pilots flew along the knap of the earth, about one hundred feet of the ground; when they came to a power line, they simply flew up and over (01:46:26:00)  Oakes had flown on a Sherpa aircraft going down to Balad when he started his leave and the pilot warned the passengers that if they heard a snap-pop, it was just a flare; there was a short somewhere on the plane and it was causing the plane to release anti-missile flares (01:46:34:00) o Sure enough, the passengers heard a pop and looking out the window, saw flares all over the place (01:46:50:00) o Oakes finally did get back to base, although it took him a couple of extra days because of the complications with arranging a flight (01:47:03:00) o Oakes had been promoted from E-7 to and E-8 just before he left to go on his leave to Ireland (01:47:17:00) When he returned, the soldiers were still building different parts of the base, cleaning out and renovating buildings, etc. (01:47:22:00) o They eventually destroyed the damaged VIP building and buried it and they knocked down only the part that was damaged (01:47:34:00) o On some of the buildings, they simply dropped canvas down to act as the wall, which did nothing during dust storms (01:48:01:00)  The base would get dust storms that made visibility near zero and because the sand was so fine, it caused a lot of maintenance and respiratory problems (01:48:07:00)  When it rained, all the sand turned to muck (01:48:35:00) Luckily, the soldiers arrived in the winter season in November and December, which meant it was cool (01:48:42:00) o They actually received snow in Mosul the first weekend they were there; the team located in Mosul sent back pictures of them having snowball fights (01:48:48:00) o A couple of mornings, the soldiers would wake up and find ice covering the various mud puddles around the base (01:48:57:00) �  o It would get up to 70° during the day but at night, the temperature might go as low as 20°; thankfully, all the living quarters already had heat/cool units installed (01:49:11:00) The living quarters were converted conex containers; they put a floor down, linoleum on top of that and paneling up the walls (01:49:32:00) o All the electrical outlets were 120 volts and the soldiers had to buy transformers for some of the equipment that was 110 volts so they could work (01:49:44:00) o The generators all put out 120 volts and most were covered with a canopy to keep the hot summer sun off of them (01:49:56:00)  Oakes also noticed that all the buildings had a parking area covered with a canopy to keep the sun off the vehicles (01:50:04:00) Oakes did not meet too many Iraqis apart from those who worked on the base and ran little shops near where he worked but in general, they were glad that the Americans were there (01:50:36:00) o Oakes had dinner with an Iraqi general who had spent seven years in prison because he had been considered unfriendly with Saddam’s regime; the general was in charge of the Iraqi training battalion and on time, the battalion invited Oakes’ entire unit up to eat with them at their mess hall (01:50:50:00) o Oakes does not recall running into anyone who was upset with the Americans being in the country because the soldiers were helping them and the Iraqi economy (01:51:16:00) o They had been a country without leadership for an extended period, which led to a lot of black market activities, such as stealing water, gasoline, etc. (01:51:25:00) o The economic structures along the highway were similar to those in the United States, meaning the soldiers could travel down a highway and see a strip mall; however, the strip mall might not be up to the same standards as those in the United States (01:51:36:00)  None of the stores in the mall would have run on electricity because there were no power lines running to the building (01:51:55:00)  The fuel stations consisted of nothing more than the hoses and a meter device with a hill behind the station, on top of which was a storage tank (01:51:58:00)  A road led up above the storage tank so that a only gravity was needed to get the fuel from the tanker truck into the tank and to get from the storage tank to the vehicles (01:52:11:00) o All of the homes had high walls around them because of the Muslim belief that the women are not to be looked at by anyone but the husband (01:52:28:00) o They had houses, apartment buildings, etc. (01:52:56:00)  Their building material was different because they had to building in the desert and was built to withstand both the high heat of the summer and the wetness of the rainy season (01:52:59:00)  Believe it or not, the desert turned green during the rainy season (01:53:09:00) o Gypsy farmers would go through the desert and harvest wheat they had planted in an area before (01:53:17:00) �  o Closer to the Tigris or Euphrates, there were farms along the both rivers with irrigation ditches; the Iraqis elevated the plants and the let the water run alongside the mound (01:53:35:00)  They did not want to spray water because the water would immediately evaporate (01:50:04:00) o Even cities such as Balad, watering was done with irrigation ditches (01:53:52:00) o The only time Oakes saw water being sprayed was at the one car wash he saw (01:54:09:00) o On one convoy returned from Balad, the soldiers passed three kids dressed in Western-style clothing waiting for the school bus, which surprised Oakes (01:54:20:00) o A lot of the shops on base were run by people from Turkey (01:54:49:00)  The shop keepers sold a lot of pirated DVDs; the soldiers might get three DVDs for a dollar (01:54:55:00)  They could tell a DVD was pirated because they would be watching it and all of the sudden, someone would stand up and leave the movie theater (01:55:02:00)  Other shops would sell sandwiches and pop always in sealed bottles and cans; the soldiers never drank anything out of a fountain (01:55:12:00) The government spent some money trying to make some things similar to the United States (01:55:28:00) o In Mosul, there was one little square that a restaurant that sold chicken, one that sold hamburgers, another that sold fish and a final one that sold pizza (01:55:36:00) o Even in the mess hall, a major ice cream company came in and supplied ice cream to the base (01:55:56:00) o The soldiers did not pay for any of the food; there was tons of food in the mess hall and the soldiers could eat all they wanted (01:56:14:00) The soldiers eventually built a center for the convoys where everyone going on a convoy could congregate and receive a security briefing as a group (01:56:37:00) o They showed where the last attacks, gunfire, IEDs, etc. had occurred in the past twenty-four hours or if there was a major battle occurring, an alternate route the convoy would take (01:56:54:00) o There were also refrigerators and freezers of ice, as well as cases of various food and bottled water the soldiers could take with them on the convoy (01:57:08:00)  The soldiers could only take so much because the vehicles tended to be full of equipment; between ammunition and communications gear, there was not a lot of space to move around (01:57:23:00) Return Home (01:57:36:00)  The soldiers arrived on the base on Dec. 15th and left on Nov. 10th (01:57:36:00) o When the soldiers left the base, they went back to Camp Victory in Kuwait to wait for transport (01:57:58:00) �o Eventually, the soldiers were picked up and transported on buses to the Kuwaiti International Airport; once they arrived at the airport during daylight, the soldiers sat in the buses in a parking lot for several hours (01:58:05:00)  They did not put the soldiers on a plane during daylight; the 747 airliners were parked on the tarmac but nobody was in them (01:58:19:00) o The soldiers eventually loaded up with five hundred people to a plane; one plane was going west and landing in Dallas and the other plane was going east and landing in Atlanta (01:58:34:00)  Oakes’ plane ended up making a special trip and went to Fort McCoy, unload the around one hundred soldiers from his unit, then continued on to Fort Lewis, Washington to unload the rest of the soldiers (01:58:51:00) o From Kuwait, the plane stopped in Shannon, Ireland for refueling and while in Shannon, they opened the bar for the soldiers and everyone went there (01:59:13:00)  It took about an hour to refuel the plane, after which everyone got back aboard and they did a headcount to make sure everyone was there; once they were sure, they closed the door and continued the trip (01:59:31:00) o The plane stopped next at JFK in New York City at four in the morning and again, the soldiers open a bar (01:59:39:00) o Finally, the plane arrives at Volk Field, a Wisconsin Air National Guard base near Fort McCoy (02:00:01:00)  It was getting cooler outside the further west they went and by the time the plane landing in Wisconsin, it was snowing; however, all the soldiers’ gear was packed and all they were wearing was the desert fatigues, which did not offer a lot of warmth (02:00:09:00)  They eventually walked to a hangar through the snow and turned in their weapons; there were soldiers there from Michigan and they took the weapons, boxed them up, and shipped them back to Michigan so the other soldiers did not have to carry them any more (02:00:34:00) o Once the soldiers get to Fort McCoy, they are placed in barracks and the next day, they go through medical inspection and then waited for transport (02:01:06:00) o Two days later, the soldier get on buses around midnight on the 18th and as the buses left, most of the soldiers fell asleep (02:01:33:00)  Around daylight, they reached the Michigan state line and stopped at a McDonalds to get breakfast; some soldiers went to a gas station next door to get some food and the workers told them to take as much as they wanted, it was on the house (02:02:11:00)  When the buses got back on the road, a state trooper had his lights going and he saluted the soldiers as they passed (02:03:53:00) o When they got back, Oakes wife had rented a stretch limo HUMVEE that Oakes did not know about (02:03:26:00) o The reception the soldiers received was a lot better than the reception Oakes received when he returned from Vietnam (02:04:04:00)  The same four who hung out together in Iraq were all Vietnam veterans and three were on the bus; one stayed at Fort McCoy because his wife had a new job working in Kansas as a librarian (02:04:13:00) �    o A few months after returning home, the unit had a ceremony and handed out flags, trophies and plaques; a month after the ceremony, Oakes transferred out of the unit (02:04:38:00) o The Guard had a new job lined up for Oakes, so he went through more training for a month and then began working as an Equal Opportunity Advisor, which meant he made sure soldiers did things appropriately (02:04:54:00) Oakes left active duty for a year but was called back in Apr. 2007 and was active duty for twenty more months, until Dec. 2009 (02:05:26:00) o He left the Guard and went back to his civilian job and retired from that job in July; Oakes retired from the Guard on March 31st 2009 when he turned sixty years old (02:05:43:00) After Iraq, Oakes initially went back to the 1225th in Detroit for a month then transferred to Jackson, Michigan as an equal opportunity advisor (EOA) (02:06:04:00) o He needed training to be an advisor, so Oakes spent thirty days at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida; EOA training is some of the most difficult in the military because the soldiers were dealing with people emotions and feelings (02:06:20:00) o After coming home for a month, the unit in Jackson transferred to Grand Rapids, Michigan and the commander wanted Oakes to come with him, so Oakes did so (02:06:38:00) o However, Oakes had not been home a month when he transferred out of the job and into the logistics section for the state of Michigan (02:07:01:00) o In Apr. 2007, Oakes was re-activated to do the property book duties for the 177th MP Brigade that had been mobilized (02:07:18:00) o The 177th came home a year later but Oakes stayed with the unit because their property book officer for whatever reason could not perform the job; Oakes stayed with the unit until Dec. 2008 before going back to his civilian job working for a local school system in January (02:07:30:00)  When the school year ended in July, Oakes retired from the school system (02:08:01:00) o When Oakes reached the age of sixty in Mar. 2009, the Guard forcibly made him retire (02:08:08:00) While Oakes was in Iraq, he would have liked to have seen more people, including going to their homes and becoming friendlier with them (02:08:22:00) o The hardest part was not being able to get to know any Iraqis and what their lifestyle was like; very few of the soldiers were able to do this (02:08:32:00) o On a couple of occasions, they sent out teams to distribute soccer balls, supplies, etc. but Oakes’ job kept him from being able to do that (02:08:42:00) o He also would have simply liked to get out more; in the beginning, it was a little more hazardous to go out but in the last two or three months, it was probably safer (02:08:59:00) The biggest response Oakes receives when people find out he had served in Iraq is they thank him for his service, although Oakes does not advertise that fact (02:09:38:00) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OakesR2 Title A name given to the resource Oakes, Ronald (Interview outline and video, 2 of 2), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Oakes, Ronald Description An account of the resource After returning from Vietnam in 1969, Ron Oakes married, earned a degree in electronics and traveled around the Midwest working. Eventually, he and his family moved back to Michigan, where Oakes joined the National Guard. As part of the Guard, Oakes helped provide security for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia and deployed to Iraq in 2005 for eleven months. While in Iraq, Oakes performed a variety of jobs, including being a property book manager for his entire brigade stationed at FOB "Q-West", a former Iraqi Air Force base between Balad and Mosul. After the eleven-month deployment, Oakes returned to the United States with the rest of his unit and continued serving in the Guard until March 2009, when he retired at the age of sixty. 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 Iraq War, 2003-2011--Personal narratives, American United States. National Guard Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-06-15 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 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/169226bf749fed62cb67a682b2130c87.pdf a6c81f81d0b9014a54f07baa13e07f13 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Chuck O’Conner (4:22) Background Information (00:02)    Chuck served in the Marines during the Vietnam War (00:03) He received the 3 purple hearts and was awarded the Silver Star for his service. (00:12) He enlisted in the Marines. He served for a total of 3.5 years. His highest rank was staff sergeant. (00:26) Overview of Service (00:50)    The largest battle Chuck was evolved in was Khe Sanh. (00:50) He was missing in action for 4 months. (00:57) He saw a lot of action in Vietnam. (1:12) Background Information (cont) (1:25)  He enlisted right out of high school in Illinois. (1:28) Return from service (1:40)        He was spit on when he returned from Vietnam to the U.S. (1:40) He was very happy and honored when the Vietnam memorial was constructed in Washington D.C. He would serve again if he had the choice to. (2:10) He made many close friends while in Vietnam. (2:40) He still attends reunions. He is a member of the American Legion, and the VFW. (3:05) Chuck was frightened his first day of service. (3:30) Chuck did see napalm but was luckily never exposed to Agent Orange. (4:00) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OConnerCT Title A name given to the resource O'Conner, Charles (Interview outline), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource O'Conner, Charles Description An account of the resource Chuck O'Conner enlisted in the U.S. Marines while living in Illinois and served 3.5 years in the service. During his service Chuck obtained the rank of Staff Sergeant and fought in the field during the Vietnam War. He was involved in the battle at Khe Sanh, but does not say much about it. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Skrijelj, Sanel (Interviewer) Snyder, Zachary (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. Marine Corps 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 2010-05-15 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 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/696794bb5b81a4c3fe722b2df3551b2c.m4v edcaab3f6debe933a5db467889a1fe67 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4a4d153d187f5c3115f0db78fbdeb459.pdf 822b80ea992695fb18ddd2f45e86c754 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Interviewee’s Name: Daniel J. Morley Name of War: Other veterans & civilians Length of Interview: (00:16:00) Pre-West Point Born in 1968 in Youngstown, OH (0:06) Went to an all Catholic private school (0:20) Went to West Point in 1987 after a year at the University of Michigan (0:38) Military was his first choice, but had to try twice to get in (0:57) West Point Loved training, and West Point had the money to let them be trained on anything they might encounter in the military (1:05) Very professional training (1:30) Was at West Point for four years (1:45) It was partially educational, but also had to do many physical things like obstacle courses (1:50) Also had to do military-related things in the summers: Drill sergeant, worked with a mayor (2:15) Single mission of West Point is to build leaders (2:30) Totally different world in West Point (3:00) Food was pretty good at West Point, very nutritious (3:35) Went through 4 years at West Point through the same class, made many friends (4:15) Freshman year is purposefully stressful (8:20) Have to memorize an incredible amount of things (8:30) Many great opportunities while at West Point (9:00) Went to airborne school after West Point (13:30) Went to El Paso so he could work with the Patriot Missile system (13:40) Spent 2 years in Washington, never saw combat (14:00) Post-West Point Military isn’t a good family job, became a teacher after West Point (4:30) Easy transition, got his current job because he went to West Point (5:00) Wants his kids to serve, but also doesn’t want them to die (5:40) Went to the University of Puget Sound for his teaching degree (14:30) �Returned to the Midwest to teach (14:45) Would never go back, but it was a great experience (15:30) � 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 MorleyD2 Title A name given to the resource Morley, Daniel J. (Interview outline and video, 2 of 2), 2007 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Morley, John D. Description An account of the resource Dan Morley was born in 1968 in Youngstown, Ohio. After a year at the University of Michigan, he was accepted at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He served in the United States Army from 1987 to 1993, earning the title of 2nd Lieutenant. Morley never saw combat. After the service, he became a teacher. After his time at West Point was over, he received his teaching degree from the University of Puget Sound and teaches in Michigan. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Brandyn Hoekstra (Interviewer) Forest Hills Eastern High School (Ada, Mich.) 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. Army Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007-05-27 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/f2441f8e47457b36aeb0755d80bacf0d.m4v 96363b8c478746192431faf0e759d8ea https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/35c0fb55099a41fb638926dd191dd4a3.pdf 4a8e13e888652303cc21960cde3925a1 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Name of Interviewee: George Meyers Name of War: World War II Length of Interview: (00:23:02) (00:15) Background Information  George was born in Coloma, Michigan on August 6, 1926  George spent his younger years on his parents farm, but they eventually lost it during the Depression  His father then began working on contract work for construction and actually made more money than he had on the farm  In 1942 both of George’s older brothers were in the service in Europe and Asia  George was still in high school when he received his draft papers in 1944  He was no longer interested in school and left for the Army before graduating (2:20) Pacific  George went through basic training at Camp Hood, Texas  He went through extended training after that and then was shipped to Luzon  They boarded a troop ship in San Francisco that held 3,000 troops  It took them 31 days to make it to their destination because they had to take a zig zag course to avoid enemy submarines  Traveling on the way home on a normal route only took 6 days  George and others were sent as replacements for the 32nd Infantry Division  He was very confused when he had first arrived and had not been trained properly  He was lucky to arrive near the end of the war and was glad they he did not have to fight for years (5:00) Luzon  George had spent 18 months in Luzon � He did not come into contact with many civilians, but the ones he did meet were very friendly  George had been injured by a grenade and had to go to a hospital in the capital of Luzon  He only had 60 points when the war was over, but 165 were needed to be discharged  His brother was able to travel around in Japan and see the ruins from the bombs (7:50) After Service  George was shipped back to California and then took a train to Port Sheridan  He was allowed 60 days leave to go home and then called back to Illinois to be discharged  Both his brothers had been back from the service when he got home  George got married in 1949 and later had 6 children (12:40) Business  After the service George had began working with his father repairing and building septic tanks  He later decided to start his own business and did well  One of his sons now helps him run the business and George has been living in the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans since 2002 � 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 MeyersG Title A name given to the resource Meyers, George O. (Interview outline and video), 2007 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Meyers, George O. Description An account of the resource George Meyers was born in Coloma, Michigan on August 6, 1926. George spent his early years on his parent's farm, but they had lost it during the Depression. Both of George's older brothers were already in the service and fighting when he received his draft papers in 1944. George went through basic training for the Army at Camp Hood in Texas and then went through extended training before being sent to Luzon. George served as a replacement in the 32nd Infantry Division and was later sent home after being injured by a grenade. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Collins Sr., Charles E. (Interviewer) Collins, Carol (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 2007-07-30 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/c40be73e065f80db25aa63db2079b377.mp4 cbd4d77be6efeaf4ef56f8c4bf17ca94 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ba4b0193b69cc987cf5531f43dd34a78.pdf dd0616e88f18a1769f8045196f494507 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Vietnam War Jim McCoy 1:31:51 Introduction (00:19)           Jim was born on August 29, 1951 in Santee, California, which is about twenty miles east of San Diego. He grew up in Santee and graduated from high school there in 1969. In high school, everyone was aware of the war, and most of the guys in his class all had plans of joining one of the branches of armed forces after graduation. College was not an option for Jim, but he later attended junior college. Growing up, his dad was a machinist at Ryan Aeronautical which is famous for their part in developing Lindbergh‟s airplane. He worked there until the day he died. Looking back on his childhood, they were lower middle class like many other families in that day. During high school, he saw the movie “The Green Berets” starring John Wayne and thought it would be fun, so in order to beat the draft, he and another guy went down and enlisted in the United States Army. (02:39) Jim enlisted for three years thinking that he was going into Special Forces. Prior to his enlistment, he did not participate in the anti-war movement nor did anyone in his town. The two biggest employers in the area were all defense companies. Jim enlisted in December 1969. Military Training (03:55)          Jim was sent to Fort Ord, California for his basic training. He was sent to Los Angeles for his induction and physical. This was where all inductees from all the branches were sent including draftees. For the most part, not many people were trying to scam the system to get out of service, but Jim does remember standing in line and someone calling ten names and saying “Congratulations, you‟re going in the Marine Corps”. (04:46) Jim‟s parents were extremely disappointed that he joined the Army instead of the Navy because San Diego was a Navy town. They were bussed all the way north to Fort Ord, which is in the Monterey area. When they got there, the drill sergeants got on the bus and started yelling at everyone. He was there for two weeks and then everyone was sent home for two weeks for Christmas. His company in basic training was comprised mostly of draftees with a few other enlistees like himself. (06:53) The draftees had bad attitudes, with one of them jumping out of a third story window and breaking his leg to get out of military service. Basic training was about learning how to be a soldier, marching and getting along. �            Physical aspects of basic training were relatively easy for Jim because he was 18 years old and in good shape, he also did not have much problem learning the discipline; since he volunteered for it he knew what he was getting himself into. For the people that caused trouble, the drill sergeant will single them out and give them extra duties and yell at them. (08:44) The drill sergeants were fair to everyone and treated everyone equally. Jim was chewed out a few times himself, whether he deserved it or not. Basic training lasted for eight weeks. Once that was completed he was sent to Fort Jackson, South Carolina to attend AIT (Advanced Infantry Training). AIT was not very pleasant, since they were treated very poorly by the sergeants who were all southern boys that were shake and bake‟s. Jim and the other guys from California were given all the KP duty and other jobs that nobody else wanted to do. Because he planned on joining Special Forces, Jim had signed up for jump school. He later learned that to be in SF you had to be at least nineteen and a half years old. Jim was still only eighteen and he also became fed up with the treatment that he was given at AIT so he signed a waiver saying that he did not want to go to jump school. (10:45) Only a few of the instructors there were Vietnam veterans. It was the assumption during training that they were all going to Vietnam. Most of the training was also geared in that direction teaching them some of the basics that they would need to know in country. AIT lasted another eight weeks. After that, 24 of the men were sent to Panama at Fort Sherman to go through jungle school, which lasted two weeks and was conducted in the Panama Canal Zone. This training was fun, and Jim really enjoyed it. Once they got there they were split into squads, each man had their rank taken away and everyone was put in the jungle and learned how to cut trails, eat food found in the jungle, ride on a slide for life over a river, make rafts for river crossing and rappelling. None of which actually helped in Vietnam except for getting a head start for SERTS (Screaming Eagle Replacement Training School) in Vietnam. Some of the physical conditioning helped though, because it was hot and humid in Panama like Vietnam and it rained a lot. (14:33) After he finished this training, he was given a three day leave. On that leave period, Jim told his parents that he was going to Vietnam. Vietnam (15:34)      Jim went to Travis Air Force Base in California and was issued some clothing and received some shots before being put on an airline and flown to Hawaii where he bought a pack of cigarettes for sixty cents (which was a lot back then for smokes). From Hawaii they were flown to Thompson Airport in Saigon. The plane ride over was quiet and not upbeat at all. It was a chartered commercial airline that they were flown over on. (16:53) They landed in Vietnam in the afternoon, and he remembers when they first opened the door of the plane they could feel the heat rush in. Jim was sent to Bien Hoa, which was the main processing center for people coming into country. While there, they asked for volunteers to pull guard duty and they were promised a good assignment, and that they wouldn‟t be sent to the 101st. He volunteered and stayed there for three weeks standing this duty. �   Jim arrived in Vietnam in May 1970. (18:10) Other operations were going on in Vietnam, but Jim did not pay much attention to them and he did not bother with the news. He just focused on doing his job. He heard rumors about what was going on up north. While in Bien Hoa he never left the base and he doesn‟t remember any attacks or incomings there. Ripcord (20:20)               Jim was reassigned to Phu Bai which was to the north and was in the AO (Area of Operations) for the 101st Airborne. They were flown in on C-130‟s and they were processed into the 101st. He did not have a weapon at that point but was given one once he started SERTS. SERTS consisted of classes on booby traps, cultural issues in Vietnam and dealing with the locals. After the training, Jim was assigned to Delta Company, 1/506th. When he met up with his unit, they were on a stand down having a party. (22:47) The first thing that he did was throw away all the gear that he didn‟t need like mosquito netting. He fell right in with 1st platoon and was sent out on his first mission. Since he was a new guy called a „cherry‟ he was assigned to be an ammo bearer for a machine gun team. His machine gunner, Brian Redfern, took Jim under his wing and taught him what he needed to know. (24:37) After the company party, they left the next morning on their first mission. Jim got his rucksack on and they all moved out to the LZ for the helicopters at Camp Evans. They were given their flight assignments and some of the guys gave him some last minute advice while in the air. Jim was scared because he was sitting on the edge of the door with his feet dangling out with his rifle pointed outwards. The heavy rucksack on his back helped keep him balanced in the chopper. (26:56) They landed on Triple Hill, and they got out and looked around. The jungle was all chewed up from all of the incomings and shooting. Immediately after landing, they started sending out patrols. This was his first day in the field. During that patrol, they found underground bunkers that included hospitals and artillery positions. They did not take any fire at that time and did not see the enemy. Once they finish their patrol they set up a NDP (Nighttime Defensive Position). The company had about 86 men. Each platoon had about 20-25 men in them. (29:54) That first night, Jim was on fire watch and he heard something that sounded like “Fuck You”, which turned out to be the call of a gecko lizard. They found lots of new bunkers and fortifications but still had not found any NVA or Viet Cong. Four days into the field mission, they were picked up by helicopter and taken just outside Firebase Ripcord, which was under bombardment from the enemy. Jim remembers flying around it and seeing that it had such steep edges going around it. (32:56) �                While flying around the LZ, they saw red smoke, which means that it was a hot LZ. Jim jumped out of the bird as soon as it landed and ran to the side of a hill. He could hear the AK-47 fire, and Jim was still carrying the ammo for the machine gunner. Captain Workman was his company commander, and he reported to higher that all his cherries survived the landing. Jim and his machine gunner set up a position covering a trail leading up the hill. Jim saw the top of a boonie hat coming down towards them and asked if they had any friendlies up there, which they did not. His machine gunner then opened up on the trail. (37:35) Jim looked over to another soldier, Tommy Smith, and he wondered why he wasn‟t firing so he threw him some ammo. Jim looked over to him and asked if he was ok, and he said his gun jammed. He told Jim that a NVA soldier was so close to him he could have reached out and shook his hand. Things got worse as the day went on. They formed up a patrol and began going up the hill. Once they got to the top, they found a trench with trails going to and from it into the jungle. (39:30) Jim was sitting on a trail watching below when he saw an enemy soldier crawling up the trail on his belly. Jim raised his rifle and the NVA saw him and sat up on all fours, then Jim switched his M-16 to fully automatic and began firing. He doesn‟t know if he killed him or not, but it was very weird firing at another human being for the first time, it was a life changing experience. (41:58) That afternoon, a patrol was ambushed and several were killed along that same trail that Jim had shot down. Another patrol was sent down to gather the wounded and the dead. The worst memories that Jim has of Vietnam were hearing the moans of the wounded men before the NVA finished them off. (44:35) They came back down the hill to the LZ and gathered their wounded and brought them down to be flown back. Ripcord was firing illumination rounds to aid in the extraction. They did not take any fire while they were getting the wounded out. (46:35) That night was quiet, with the only activity that could be heard was far off in the distance. In the morning, they began taking incoming mortar rounds. Nobody was dug in and it was chaos when the NVA realized that they were zeroed in on Delta Companies position. They began firing mortar round after mortar round. It was during this barrage that most of the men they lost in the battle were killed. (48:49) During the attack, Jim was huddled under his rucksack waiting it out. The man next to him was hit and Jim took out one of his bandages and helped the man. One man stood up and yelled “Let‟s get out of here!” so they began to grab gear and bodies and started heading down the hill. Jim was one of the few guys that was not wounded at that time, so he helped get some of the wounded down to the waiting helicopters. Helicopter pilots were radioing them and telling them that they had 500 NVA moving towards their position. (52:52) They had airstrikes coming in and dropping bombs all day long. Jim was on the perimeter protecting the group of survivors during this battle. At one point, their company was down to 14 men. Jim was extracted later that day; Captain Workman made him run out to the LZ to get on the bird. When he got in the bird everyone was cheering �     and happy that they made it out. The door gunner told them that the bird just behind them did not make it out, and Jim later found out that Captain Workman was killed by the rotors of one of the choppers as he was trying to bring in the last bird. (57:37) Once they returned to Camp Evans, Jim felt numb and in shock. His first sergeant came up to him and told Jim that he wasn‟t a cherry anymore. One soldier took off his rucksack and realized that he had a piece of shrapnel sticking out of his back and he didn‟t even know it. A couple of days after getting back to base, they had a memorial service for Captain Workman. (59:44) At that point, the company size was 33 men, and that was after they got their replacements. They spent the next three months trying to build up their unit again and conducted firebase duty. After that they were tasked with blowing out landing zones for helicopters. Eventually, they were up to strength to where they could go back out on missions. During this buildup period, they did not have any engagements with the enemy and things were relatively quiet. (1:02:16) After Ripcord, they didn‟t find much on their patrols and most of the enemy contact was in the form of booby traps. After Ripcord (1:04:20)            They spent up to two months at a time in the field. Jungle rot was a big problem with most guys, and some also got dysentery and cellulitis. At that point, they were still operating with Vietnamese scouts, which Jim found to be worthless. He had one assigned to him once he was promoted to sergeant. (1:06:55) When Jim was recommended for the promotion, he was taken back to the rear, cleaned up, took some tests and then sent him back out. He received his orders in December saying that he had been promoted. (1:08:32) They got letters from home whenever they could get the mail out to them. When the choppers could not land, they would sometimes hover over the men and just kick out the mail and go. Almost all of Jim‟s time in country was done in the field. He was told that he could go home for R&R, so he did. Although he wishes that he would have gone to Bangkok or some other place instead of going home. (1:10:25) Going from the jungle to the civilian world was weird for him and he did not talk about it much with anybody. While home, he saw all the protesting that was happening back in the states. After he got back to Vietnam, he had a couple more months to go before his tour was up. Jim did not spend much time with the civilian population. He once spent two weeks guarding a village that was about to hold a democratic election. On that mission he went out on a sniper mission with two other guys. (1:13:39) Racial tensions were very high, especially in the rear. It was always blacks against whites on base, but in the field it was all gone. Most of the men in the rear were black men that found ways to stay out of the field or were drug addicts. There were no drugs or drinking in the field and no smoking in the field after dark. �     Some fights would break out between whites and blacks. On one occasion a white soldier shot and killed a black soldier over drugs. (1:15:44) They also had men that would shoot themselves in the foot to stay out of the jungle. Each man was given a leave home, which he already took and they were also given an R&R. Jim signed up to go to Sydney, Australia without a dime to his name. (1:17:57) When he was getting ready to get on the bird to go, his friend came out and told him that he only had ten days left in country. He was processed out in Phu Bai and then he flew home. The mood on the plane was great, people were yelling and screaming and jumping for joy. Back in the States (1:19:41)        They first landed in Tokyo, and then they flew straight in to Fort Lewis, Washington. When they got there they were all given a steak dinner. Each man was given a class A green uniform with all their ribbons and stripes ready for them. (1:20:20) Jim flew home to San Diego in uniform, but he did not have any troubles with protestors. He was given a thirty day leave once he got home, before he had to report back in. After living in the environment of Vietnam, it took some time to readjust. Jim was originally slated to go to Fort Benning, Georgia to be an instructor at the infantry school, however, at the last minute he was sent to Fort Riley with the 1st Infantry Division. They went to Germany for a month and conducted war games with several other nations. (1:22:50) While in Germany, they were convoyed with their tanks and they did have some opportunities to visit local villages and try the beer and the food. They were able to spend one night in Nuremburg for R&R. Jim was later offered a chance to get out of the army early if he was willing to spend a year in the active reserves. When he got out, he had spent a little more than two years active duty. (1:24:20) Civilian Life (1:24:24)      When he got home to San Diego, he got a job working as a custodian at a recreational club. He started attending junior college and became interested in law enforcement. Eventually he wound up joining the California Highway Patrol and was stationed in Central Los Angeles. Jim stayed with the CHP for twenty eight years. He retired after that and spent one year in Iraq and one year in Afghanistan as a police advisor. (1:26:14) His first tour was in Afghanistan and his second was to Iraq. He went in to villages and worked with local police officers and taught them how to do different things. Jim would also talk with them about their criminal justice system and went on patrol with them on the streets. (1:28:41) When he was in Iraq, his first sergeant found out about his Vietnam experience and presented him with a 101st Airborne patch. Both of his tours were horrible and he would not recommend people to do that, but he did learn about those cultures and a little bit of the language. � 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 MCCoyJ1551V Title A name given to the resource McCoy, James (Interview outline and video), 2013 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McCoy, James Description An account of the resource Jim was born in Santee, California on August 29, 1951. After Jim graduated from high school in 1969, he decided to beat the draft and enlist in the United States Army. He was sent to Vietnam in May 1970 and worked as a base guard at Bien Hoa. After some time, he was reassigned to 1st Platoon, Delta Company, 1/506th, 101st Airborne out of Camp Evans. Jim took part in the attack at Firebase Ripcord. After getting out of the army, Jim joined the California Highway Patrol and served for twenty eight years. After retirement from the CHP, Jim went to Iraq and Afghanistan and worked as a police advisor to local police departments. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Video recordings United States. Army 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 2013-10-10 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/fe0140230aa66de31b063c10e6895d0c.mp4 441d74eee3c54a7ecbe3274fa01effa3 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d1fc9f8c68c480929ae23280af28f393.pdf 5ef84148d9e6aae11ef27c6b1f7f2351 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project (51:31) Johnnie Myles Background information (00:16)             Born in Natchez, Mississippi, in 1929. (00:18) Part of his family lived in Mississippi and part of it lived in Louisiana (00:54) His family was mostly farmers working primarily share cropping. (1:05) His mother passed when he was 5 months old. He was then raised by his aunt in Natchez. He lived with 2 boys and 2 girls. (1:24) Attended Catholic school in Mississippi through elementary school. (2:16) He was later removed from Catholic school and placed in public school in the 8 grade. He was ahead of his class when he began to attend public school. (2:36) The Catholic school he attended had white nuns for teachers, but the students were primarily black. (4:33) He attended school through the 10 grade. He was 16 when he left school and volunteered for the armed forces. (5:40) Due to his age, Johnnie needed consent form his legal guardians before he could go into the service. (6:15) He had family in the military. This inspired him to also enlist in the armed forces. (6:50) He wanted to be a soldier like other members of his family. (7:30) At age 17 in 1946 Johnnie was enlisted in the Army. (8:26) th th Basic Training (8:40)      He was then sent to Fort Sam Houston. (8:44) Due to his selection of the medical corps he was sent to school for extra training. (9:30) Basic training included a lot of marching. (9:49) During his basic training the military was not yet intergraded. His training unit was all black including the drill sergeants. (10:08) When he arrived at Fort Sam Huston there were some men there who were waiting to be discharged who had served during World War II. (11:26) Desegregation of the Military (11:43)   Desegregation of the military was ordered while Johnnie was at Fort Sam Houston for basic training. (11:43) His unit was chosen to be one of the first to be broken up and desegregated. His unit, the 25th Infantry Regiment, was broken up and placed into the 15 Infantry Division, which was desegregated. (12:00) The desegregation required some adjusting and was “touchy” at first. Over the all, unit was united as one over time. (12:43) When the unit was allowed to go into town and leave the base, the blacks and whites rarely socialized with one another. (13:27) th   �  The Fort did put forth efforts to east the tension of the desegregated unit. (13:58) He was still a medical aide when placed in the 15 Division. (14:40) th Basic Training cont. (14:45)       He was trained on how to apply bandages and recognize specific wounds. (14:50) He was trained to work in a field hospital. (15:15) The men were given medical supplies and a helmet with a red cross but no weapons. (15:55) He served at Fort Sam Houston (16:16) The men he served with were from all over the nation. (16:50) There was a stark contrast between soldiers from the north and soldiers from the south. Soldiers from the north were much less accepting of segregation that existed in southern society. (17:23) Service at Fort Belvoir Virginia. (18:30)            He was reassigned to the 92 Transport Battalion. He was still a medic. (18:39) At this base there was a total mixture of black and white soldiers. (19:27) Here, Johnnie served as a medical technician. (20:30) He mostly preformed simple first aid at this Fort. If there was a serious injury the individual would be transferred to a hospital. (21:33) He would often travel to Washington when given a pass. He believes the segregation in the capital was equally as bad as in Mississippi. (22:33) The treatment of segregation was not seen as an oddity to Johnnie due to his exposure to it during his childhood in the south. (23:21) Blacks from the north where often easily frustrated with the lack of freedom available to blacks in the south. (24:10) He originally enlisted for 3 years. He was discharged in 1949 (24:33)] After having been discharged, Johnnie attended trade school in Natchez on the GI Bill. (26:00) He lived with his aunt and uncle, however, attended school for 6-7 hours a day. (26:47) After having completed his schooling, he got a job in a cobbler shop in Natchez. He held this job for 18 months. (27:30) nd Reenlistment in the Army (29:21)  In 1952, he reenlisted in the Army (28:21)  He reenlisted due to his interest in having more experiences in other places aside from his home town in Mississippi. (28:35) He was then sent to Arkansas. Here he was an administrative man in a military hospital. (29:16) At this time (1952) he was a Tech Sergeant. (29:44)   �       The pay was better than what he maed while working in the shoe shop. (30:36) Before working in Arkansas, he had gotten married. He was given a special quarters where married personnel were stationed. (31:03) The hospital he was employed in did serve badly wounded soldiers [the Korean War was going on at the time] who needed increased time to recover. (31:44) Being a sergeant and working in the administrative part of the hospital, he had approx. 4-5 workers under him. These men were not all black. (32:37) Integration at this time (approx. 1953) was much more accepted. However in the Southern states, some still struggled. (33:00) During his second enlistment (1952-1958) he spent his entire service in Arkansas. (53:19) The army only allowed so many dependents per soldier. After he became married and had kids Johnnie had too many dependents. (36:18) Life after Service (37:00)      After leaving the service, Johnnie moved to Grand Rapids Michigan. (37:01) In Grand Rapids Michigan he started 2 shoe shops. (37:53) He did not buy a home but did buy a shop. (38:59) He worked in the shoe business for almost 30 years in Grand Rapids Michigan (approx. 1959-1989). (39:42) He fathered 4 girls and 1 boy who later served in the Marines. (40:48) Thoughts on service (41:20)       He believes he received a lot of education as a result of his military experience. (41:23) He made long term friends as a result of his military service. (43:05) He met one of the Tuskegee Airmen. (44:00) He was at Fort Benning, Georgia before the military was desegregated. (45:21) After the military was desegregated, the black soldiers where given better facilities. (46:50) He went into the military at a young age (17) and was able to learn how to be an adult as a result of his military experience. (49:07) � 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 MylesJ1182V Title A name given to the resource Myles, Johnnie (Interview outline and video), 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Myles, Johnnie Description An account of the resource Johnnie Myles, born in Natchez Mississippi in 1929, enlisted in the Army in 1946 at the age of seventeen. He qualified for training as a medic, and did both basic and medical training at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. While he was there, the Army began to desegregate, and the all-black unit that he was initially assigned to was broken up, and he was placed in an integrated unit. After completing his training, he was assigned to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, where he served in an integrated transportation unit as a medic until his discharge in 1949. After returning to Natchez, attending trade school and getting job in a shoe shop, he decided to reenlist in 1952 in order to see more of the world and make a better life for himself. He was assigned to a base in Arkansas, and was now a sergeant supervising several soldiers in a medical unit. He stayed there for two tours, and was discharged in 1958. 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 Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives, American United States. Army Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-08-25 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/89f9b7a8fd34e543ea49830ece401470.m4v b4c139d81dd8fdefdc2212edebd3211d https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e1b5e50c88bf45f5227047eb6df4db10.pdf dc1d8cf1678d2f69d1e919e7caf2a3d6 PDF Text Text William (Bill) Myers (1:00:22) (0:19)  Born in Chicago in 1928 March 18 (0:34)  His Father died when he was ten years old and his mother died when he was eleven (0:40)  His Aunt and Uncle brought him and his three sisters to Michigan (0:52)  His aunt and uncle adopted him and his 3 sisters o Name changed from Paul to Myers (0:59)  Grand Rapids, Michigan o Spent most of his life in Grand Rapids (1:08)  He joined the Merchant Marine (1:21)  His cousins and friends joined the Navy during World War II o He wanted to join too but he was too young (1:36)  He looked around and found out that he could join the Merchant Marines at 16 (1:46)  Sent to Sheepshead Bay and Hoffman Island in New York Haror for radio school (2:14)  Boot camp for merchant marine was run by the Navy o Couldn’t have armed rifles due to international law o They used sticks and brooms to practice o Training was very similar to Navy training  Obstacle course, water jumping, etc (3:22)  It was a big adventure to all of the guys many were 18 or younger  They did not realize the danger that they would be in once they got out of basic (3:30)  Radio school was hard because he was only 16 and did not have a very strong educational background o He only had up to 10th grade at Creston High School (3:47)  The training involved a lot of mathematics (4:37)  Worked as a propeller hauler during the summer o He studied Algebra while doing this o He didn’t do well with math at Creston High School, but did very well on his own when he had the proper motivation �(5:06)  Told he had to pass a test to get into the radio school because he was too young o He passed the test because he studied very hard for it (5:32)  He was taught Morse Code o It was easier because he had a music background  He played the Harmonica (5:55)  He passed the code test o Technical part: radio transmitters, theory of radio, rules & regulations of international communication, and other currencies o Main thing was how to decipher code books  All messages were in codes  Took hours to decipher the codes sometimes (6:59)  Took three radio operators 8 hours to decipher the messages detailing the end of the World War (7:15)  He was in radio school for 6 months (7:24)  He had tests every week to test progress o If they passed the would spend the weekend in New York City (8:06)  He went roller-skating a lot o New York City looked like a Metropolis compared to Grand Rapids (8:29)  Couldn’t make a lot of friends due to the intensive studying o Dire need for radio operatives at the time  Needed 3 radio operators on every ship (9:38)  Got up around 5:30 am, clean up, march to breakfast, start class around 8 am until night, then did homework o It was an intense program which was shortened in length due to the high demand (10:25)  Never sent to a ship to practice the radio (10:48)  April 1945 he graduated (10:58)  First sent out on the SS John W. McKay from Mobile, Alabama (11:15)  In Central Caribbean he was headed for Okinawa when war with Germany ended (11:20)  Had a lot of messages to decipher �o Had messages detailing end of the war with Germany, but they were to continue with orders to the Pacific (11:57)  They had no concern for U-boats o Mostly concerned about crossing the Pacific in a convoy (12:15)  John W. McKay was a liberty ship o He was mostly stationed on liberty ships through his military career (12:28)  Liberty Ships were built post haste o Could be finished building 1 in 2 days  Henry Kaiser designed and engineered them  Accommodations were not bad, they were slower than most ships o Victory ships were much faster (13:14)  They were produced en masse, made almost 200 liberty ships  Liberty ships delivered almost all of the military supplies for the entire war o Delivered cargo to Europe and Far East under the Marshall Plan after the war as well (13:44)  First voyage was an adventure o Went through the Panama Canal and into the Pacific in a convoy (14:10)  He was in the Caroline Islands o Almost 1000 ships mustering there o Preparing for an invasion of Okinawa (14:24)  The island was necessary for the land invasion of Japan (14:32)  Could listen to music as a radio operative o He loved Tokyo Rose as well as the other shipmates (15:44)  Navy Gunman would send up black balloons to practice shooting o They never hit anything (16:17)  Got caught in a typhoon en route to Okinawa o It was his first experience in bad weather (16:42)  They were transporting a makeshift airport and folding aircraft o The lines securing the cargo during the storm broke  He had to help secure them  Nobody got hurt  It was an amazing sight to see/experience (17:32)  Sent to Manilla, Shell Harbor �o The Japanese submarines were the threat, not the air force (18:25)  Liberty ships that were sent ahead of their boat were torpedoed by Japanese Uboats o He ship was not when they went through the same area (18:54)  It took them 6 weeks to unload the cargo o Tied up to a sunken Japanese ship  They were sent back to the States once they were unloaded (19:25)  A lot of ships were loading and unloading at the bay o Lots of ships were diverted to Manila because Okinawa (after the victory) couldn’t support the ships (19:58)  They were given a course through the Philippines once cargo was emptied (20:19)  The port authority wouldn’t give the ship food due to rationing in Manila (23:32)  The ship hit an unmarked coral reef o Navy sent a ship to haul them off and check the ship over  Took 4 days (24:22)  While heading to the Panama Canal, the war with Japan ended o They also ran out of food before they reached the canal (24:33)  The cook kneaded bugs into what was left of the flour to make bread (25:11)  The end of the war was an amazing celebration (25:20)  They were diverted to Chile (25:28)  They loaded up copper ore that was going to be delivered to Savannah, Georgia  They were sent straight to Chile o Spent three weeks in Chile and celebrated the end of the war there (26:58)  Decided to stay with the merchant marines delivering cargo all over the world after the war to help rehabilitate the nations (27:12)  He went to Italy, China, Japan, Canada, all over the US, South America, South Africa, Costa Rico, and the Philippines (28:11)  In Italy the was had devastated the area around Rome o Italians were not adapt at cleaning up o He toured Rome while there (29:34) � He went to Genoa and Savona to drop off cargo (30:38)  Saw military and the devastated areas (31:51)  In North Africa there was a different situation o They were French protectorates  He went to a dance  The girls wouldn’t dance wth the Americans, only the British o Eisenhower had bombed that area, and the Germans never bombed them, they had anger towards the Americas  He did not see any Arabs (34:48)  He went to the Philippines o He drank here o Asked to go to a Philippines Independence party  Very friendly towards Americans o They picked up copper ore and tobacco during stay (37:58)  Went through the Indian Ocean (38:21)  He attended yearly reunions  Talked a lot about his sea adventures o Good memories (38:36)  Two trips to Shanghai, China o The area changed drastically from his first visit to his second o It had been a very modern but primitive setting before  One of the best movie theatres he had ever been too  Large contrast between luxury and poverty (40:14)  Would throw garbage overboard o People would sift through their garbage  They shipped lumber to Shanghai o They worried it would go to the communists (41:46)  6 weeks after they left China from the second voyage, the communists took over o Rise in currency exchange rate (47:15)  Many Japanese were angry that America occupied and bombed their country (48:27)  Ate in the officers lounge o Only friends were other officers  Due to association o Liked the navigate the ship (49:43) � Officers were friendly, met lots of people from New Orleans, various backgrounds o Went crawfishing with people New Orleans after he retired (52:05)  Not many people left after the war was over o Not many people came in after the war ended either o They closed the radio school once the war was over (52:59) o Need for ships in the merchant marines was dwindling and many liberty ships were being scraped, needed less radio men o It became harder to find jobs on ships as radiomen (54:50) o Couldn’t support his girlfriend on the merchant marine salary (55:01) o He married when he was 23 (55:07) o He took a job with the US Tobacco Company o Put up advertisements, samples and such (55:51) o He never thought about going to college (56:04) o He bought a store in Benton Harbor o His wife did not want to leave her job in Grand Rapids (56:24) o He sold his store, lost half of his money (56:30) o William P. Lear, worked in his engineering model shop o He was promoted to an engineer without a degree (56:52) o He made a few patents o He became a contract engineer o Worked for 14 compnaies o He wanted the experience (57:36) o With out a degree, he feels that he did very well for himself (57:49) o He grew up in the Merchant Marines and became a man o He learned a lot about the world o Amazing to see how much things were devastated by the war � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context MyersW Title A name given to the resource Myers, William (Interview outline and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Myers, William Description An account of the resource William Myers was born in Chicago in 1928. He enlisted in the Merchant Marines at the age of 16 and trained as a radio operator on Hoffman Island in New York Harbor. He sailed in the Atlantic, Pacific and Mediterranean during the last months of the war and for several years afterward as the US was providing aid to and helping to rebuild countries affected by 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 Merchant marine--United States 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 2008-04-17 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