48 24 1541 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/18aee6790398d9815da14ce3ab6b3bf6.mp4 f5780e9716679f932f7f66dc6ee43c1d https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/16630ebeeecae13da335a75c3d052573.pdf 3c841239b092fc6e8364d2e5243a11bc PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Charles Hoffman World War II Total Time: 1:11:30 Childhood and Pre-Enlistment (0:00:12) • • • • • • Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1924. Father worked as a printer before the depression, however he lost his job during the depression. However, he was able to find work eventually. Also lived on an island in Jamaica Bay, New York for a time. He remembers that he was playing football when he heard about Pearl Harbor. He had a brother that was already in the service, so his parents refused to sign his release while he was underage. He heard that the Navy was about to stop enlistments, so he went to sign up in April 1943. Training (0:04:30) • • • • • • • • He was sent to Sampson Naval Training Center in upstate New York. They learned to march and swim while at Sampson. (0:05:25) They learned to swim in water with burning oil on the surface. He knew how to swim and row before he arrived. He had some trouble adjusting to the discipline of military life (0:08:04) He was then shipped to Newport, Rhode Island where he attended gunnery school. There, they had classes and practiced on the gunnery range. (0:10:15) They had some limited time off while they were there. (0:10:23) He was then sent to Norfolk, Virginia where he was trained in the practical aspects of being aboard a ship. (0:11:43) He experienced segregation for the first time while he was on liberty in Virginia. He sat down in the back of a bus and was looked at in a strange way. Active Duty (0:13:42) • • • He was assigned to the USS Garfield Thomas (DE-193). The ship was approximately 306 feet long and had a beam of 36 feet. They had a crew of around 200. The ship was brand new. He went from Norfolk to Brooklyn Naval Yard where they had a commissioning ceremony for the ship. His parents were able to attend, because they lived in Brooklyn. (0:15:45) The ship went for a shakedown cruise to Bermuda. During the shakedown, they fan into a terrible storm. (0:18:40) His first cruise was to Recife, Brazil where they were sent to deliver some ships and protect them from submarines. His ship was involved in anti- �• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • submarine operations, and they encountered several on the trip, but were never fired upon. There were 6 ships escorting the convoy. (0:20:30) He specifically recalls there being a lot of prostitutes in Recife. (0:22:10) His ship also took several trips to North Africa and England. He remembers there being a lot of submarine activity in the Mediterranean Sea. (0:24:05) At one point, they destroyed a Japanese submarine off the coast of South America. (0:25:05) His job was to work the forward gun. They had 8-hour shifts, and they would change the hours of the shift each week. (0:26:35) Each man on the ship had a small bunk that they slept on. (0:28:40) They did have a man go overboard at one point. The ship rolled while the man was on the railing and he fell off into the ocean. They tried to get the man, but the ship was unable to get to him. (0:32:02) He did see German submarines on a number of occasions. (0:32:25) They never lost a ship when his boat was on convoy duty. (0:33:50) He did sustain one injury on the ship. His hand was cut fairly badly at one point. (0:36:20) During his time in England, he recalls specifically the blackouts and going to the pubs. (0:38:20) When he traveled through the North Atlantic, he recalls the weather being fairly rough and stormy. He remembers a number of storms on several different crossings. (0:40:40) He was sailing off of the coast of Spain when D-Day occurred, and he was not part of the operation. (0:41:10) His ship stopped in Cherbourg and Le Havre after D-Day, but he did not go ashore. (0:42:50) He went through the Panama Canal after VE day, and proceeded on to San Diego. (0:43:40) When he crossed the equator for the first time, he was subject to some severe hazing, including electrical shocks. (0:45:10) He was then sent across the Pacific, and encountered some Japanese submarines in the process. (0:46:15) His ship would have participated in the invasion of Japan if the Atomic bombs had not been dropped. (0:47:00) After the war officially ended, his ship served as a weather ship in the Aleutians, where they were fired upon by some Japanese soldiers that were unaware the war was over. (0:49:10) After the war, they would sometimes spend their free time on the deck of the ship watching films. (0:52:50) He remembers icebergs making it difficult to maneuver and navigate, although the ship was easy to steer. (0:52:59) The ship had several African-American crewmen who worked for the officers doing daily tasks. (0:54:08) He did make a number of friends while he was on the ship. �• (0:54:35) He was shipped to Brooklyn Receiving Station, New York and then to Lido Beach, New York where he was discharged. Post-War (0:55:00) • When he got out of the Navy, he flew to Detroit, Michigan where he met the sister of the man who had fallen overboard, because he was good friends with this man and after he died he began corresponding with the man’s sister. While he was in Ann Arbor, his friend’s father offered him a job in construction, and he eventually married the sister. He eventually switched jobs and worked for AT&T. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hoffman, Charles (Interview outline and video), 2005 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hoffman, Charles Description An account of the resource Charles Hoffman was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1924, and served in the Navy during World War II. He was assigned to a destroyer which was used to guard convoys from submarines. He served initially in the Atlantic, but moved to the Pacific after VE day. He sailed to many places, including Brazil, North Africa, France, England, and the Philippines. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Video recordings United States. Navy World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005-08-29 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HoffmanC 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/34ec3e8b4d0d71c56407e316bd0ff820.mp4 237f8a12410fa3fa5b5f4bf9a8856110 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/144371f920aad62c24dbbad7ecb04925.pdf 469918e1758d87324720d9b1f17f0372 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project James W. Hoerner (01:29:00) Pre Enlistment • Born in Fort Wayne, IN • July 20, 1918 (0:17) • Attended St. Patrick’s Catholic in Fort Wayne and Catholic Central High School (0:40) • Attended International Business School in Fort Wayne for 2 years (0:40) • Attended U of M for 2 years after the war (1:00) • Intended to own a business or have a career in banking • Went into the service before he was able to finish school (1:50) • Was drafted in June of 1942 (2:00) • Was in his car driving through Ft. Wayne, IN when he heard about Pearl Harbor (2:20) • Knew America would go to war before Pearl Harbor (3:00) • Had no interest in getting involved in the military (4:00) Draft/Induction • Just received notice that he had to report for duty (4:30) • Given a date to report, and rode a bus with 40 or 50 guys to Toledo, OH (5:15) • Processed in Toledo, and then rode a train to Fort Harrison to be inducted (6:00) • Sworn in in a large group (6:17) • Took intelligence tests, and health testing (6:30) • Had no idea where he would be assigned (6:50) • Spent the first 5 days on KP (7:20) • First job was lining up the salt and pepper shakers and ketchup bottles in the mess hall (7:35) • Did it for 3 or 4 days (7:54) • Cooked for about 5,000 people, but then was a cook (8:30) • Cooked massive volumes of food, and couldn’t eat turkey for about twenty years after (9:00) • Officer told him to report to Finance School because of his IQ test (10:00) • Never underwent Basic Training (10:40) • Schooling took 3 months, with the intent to learn military finance (11:00) • A finance officer is always attached to an Infantry Division (11:20) • Was able to get reports of the war at school (13:00) • Did not dwell on the facts of the war, just on what needed to be done (13:30) • Most of his barracks buddies were from the Mid-West (14:20) • Had a graduation ceremony and a certificate (15:00) • Was bumped up to a T4 rank, a technical grade (15:20) Finance Officer �• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • After graduation, went to Camp Blanding to set up a finance office (15:50) Adjusted fine to military life (16:16) Had desks, typewriters in the office (16:50) A major was in charge (17:00) Sergeants ran the office (17:15) Jim would calculate the pay for a regiment or battalion by each man (17:30) Paid once a month (17:45) Took 2-3 weeks to get the payroll together (17:50) Had to determine how many individual bills to get from the bank (18:00) Gave the total pay for regiment to dispersing officer to pay the men (18:50) Stayed at Camp Blanding for 5 months (19:20) Army assigned him to a brand new division at Camp Howes in Texas (20:10) Camp was still under construction (20:25) Trained new men from the school (20:50) Formed friends and had time to visit places during the weekends (21:20) Wanted to be an officer to not wait in line at movies (22:15) Officer Candidate School • Volunteered and was accepted to go to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning (22:25) • Army probably looked through his file to establish eligibility (23:00) • No longer in Finance, but an Infantry environment (23:30) • Before training, there were 200 people in the class (23:50) • First Thursday he was there, they posted jobs for everybody, and Jim was assigned Company Commander (24:40) • An old Sergeant from Boston took him under his wing for the weekend before class started to help him (25:00) • Went to the woods to show him how to make his voice carry, and gave him a piece of paper with the instructions (25:30) • Everything went smoothly on his first day (26:50) • Until he put the men on trucks (27: 20) • Officers came and brought him to talk to the Major (27:40) • Major was unconcerned after he heard the explanation (28:00) • Jim was Company Commander for the rest of his time at school (29:00) • Jim was the assistant ammunition carrier for maneuvers (29:20) Training • After school, the Army sent Jim to 90th Infantry Division in the Mojave Desert (31:45) • Was not used to the desert (32:00) • Took him two weeks to find the unit, finally found them in November (32:50) • Was a second lieutenant (32:55) • Was first assigned to 357th Regiment, 1st Battalion (33:30) • Was in A Company, 1st Platoon, which was 39 men (34:15) • Still had no clue where they were going (35:00) • Carried a canteen, wore khakis, carried an M1, wore a pack (37:20) �• • • • • Did maneuvers against the 94th Division (38:00) Had no idea about the danger involved in warfare even while training, everything was put on (39:30) Training lasted until December 24th of 1943 (40:25) Division was moved by train to Fort Dix, NJ (40:45) Took 5 days to get from the desert to Fort Dix (41:45) Europe • Knew he was going to go somewhere in Europe by this time (42:20) • Traveled overseas on a British ship with the whole regiment (44:30) • Was in a convoy, which travels at the rate of the slowest ship (45:00) • Convoy had merchant ships, destroyers, submarines to protect the convoy (45:10) • Took 21 days to cross the Atlantic (45:15) • Arrived in Southampton in England (46:00) • Battalion was stationed on a huge farm called Gattacres (46:41) • Slept in two man tents (46:50) • Did calisthenics, took road marches (47:00) • Only interacted with the British in the pubs (47:15) • Received notice they were going to France (48: 15) D-Day Invasion • Still had no idea as to the scope of the invasion he was involved in (50: 40) • As soon as he stepped on the ship, he realized why he was trained to use the cargo net to depart the ship (51:30) • People would fall off the net, get knocked around by the LCI (52:00) • Day of invasion, suddenly realized the danger (54:00) • Had full packs (54:05) • Some of his guys slipped off the net getting into the LCI and drowned (54:50) • Had about 35 out of the original 39 men in his LCI (54:55) • The LCI gets in a waiting circle pattern until the whole group is ready to go then heads to shore (55:25) • Finally realized the scope of the invasion (55:40) • Still imagines the look on the Germans faces when they woke up on June 6th (56:00) • Every unit had a designated area they had to get to on the beaches (57:15) • Had Brig. Gen. Teddy Roosevelt as a commanding officer (57:35) [Ed. note: Gen Roosevelt was the assistant commander of the 4th Division, which landed at Utah Beach on D-Day. Elements of the 90th Division, including Hoerner’s unit, landed there in support of the 4th Division, and Roosevelt had command of them until the rest of the 90th landed on D+1.} • Navy put Jim’s group a mile and a half off the designated drop zone (57:50) • Had no fire coming at them (58:00) • Turned the whole unit around and headed to the fighting (58:30) • First round he heard thump into his area, he truly became an Infantry Officer (59:40) • Still had to land in the water and struggle ashore (01:00:20) �• • • • • All 35 of his guys made it ashore (01:01:30) Never kept people less than 5 yards apart so a mortar round would take out less people (01:02:15) Got to the assembly place and waited a day until they received orders (01:03:15) D-Day +1, but still could hear sounds of battle (01:04:00) Assigned to get organized and wait for further instructions (01:05:00) Fighting in Europe • Assigned to a sector, and had to attack in that sector (01:06:30) • Still lobbed shells in from ships (01:07:30) • Had one tank battalion attached to the division (01:08:30) • Had two tanks in his company (01:08:50) • Encountered heavy opposition as they went through their sector (01:09:05) • Was in hedgerow country for about a week (01:09:15) • If they gained 100 yards a day they were lucky (01:09:30) • Germans knew they could use hedgerows for good defense (01:10:50) • Used grenades, knee mortars to clear out the hedgerows (01:11:15) • Had a lighting outfit, and reflected the lights off clouds onto the battlefield (01:12:00) • Eventually stopped because they needed sleep (01:12:20) • Stayed light until 10 or 11 at night (01:12:50) • Hard to get weapons in position, mostly used grenades (01:14:00) • No artillery in this area because everyone was too close to each other (01:14:30) • Was in hedgerow country for weeks (01:14:45) • Received C, K and sometimes D rations (01:15:20) • Had officer meetings every night. Reported casualties and position and outlined the plan for the next day (01:16:15) • Casualties were evacuated very quickly (01:16:40) • After hedgerows, a line formed from Periers to St. Lo to Caen (01:17:45) • 2 Divisions would be on the line and bombing would happen in front of them (01:18:00) [refers to carpet bombing in St. Lo sector] • Happened in July (01:18:20) • Had a smoke line to show where Allied forces were, but wind blew the smoke back and accidentally bombed some Allied forces (01:18:50) • 5th and 79th Infantry Division b • Now fighting in open country (01:19:20) • Once Patton arrived, things moved quicker (01:19:50) • Mostly rode in trucks to the next point (01:20:00) • 4th Armored Division went crazy (01:20:22) • Not a massive front going forward, but usually a Division or so (01:20:30) • Got really excited to receive socks (01:22:00) • Germans took their casualties back, as well (01:23:05) • Moved in to the area that had been bombed (01:23:45) • Enemy was so stunned, they couldn’t fight back (01:24:00) • There was a constant stream of bombing (01: 24:30) • Went to LeMans, but ran out of gas there (01: 25:00) �• • • • • • Injured at Bocanraille on third or fourth day (01:25:12) Was evacuated (01:25:30) Out for a few days (01:25:50) Had a local boy that collected things from the 90th Division (01:26:30) He put museums and plaques up wherever the Division went (01:27:00) Wrote down things that happened in a book (01:28:00) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hoerner, Jim (Interview outline and video), 2004 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hoerner, Jim Description An account of the resource Jim Hoerner was drafted in the US Army in 1942, received financial training, and then attended officer candidate school. Upon graduating, he was assigned to the 90th Division as a platoon leader. He landed on Utah Beach on D-Day and fought in Normandy, across France, through the Bulge and into Germany, although the interview mostly focuses on his experiences through the Normandy campaign. 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 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 2004-09-08 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HoernerJ 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/e29409d27fa6b7fe4ed50404d1b3d4e2.mp4 fa7e810f6acbde1c1861e4b3c9120d8d https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/40d8119588306586a2f4291883461873.pdf dd77429cdec7d2688d98bea1c0d7b545 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Doug Hoekzema (20:58) Notes: „ Lived in Kentwood, Grand Rapids, Grandvillle. (:15) „ Knew Gerald Ford, raised his children a block away from Ford's childhood home. (:20) „ Worked for his father in a food distribution plant as a minor (1:15) „ Worked mostly in the summers and on Saturdays during High School (1:59) „ Enlisted in the service, was not drafted. (2:15) „ After graduating high school, he and a friend went on a hunting and fishing trip in Alaska. The trip lasted approximately seven months, at the end of which they were out of money and had to seek temporary employment to pay there way back home. (2:15) „ Enlisted in 1953, in the Navy as he thought it would be the safest branch of the military. (2:43) „ First assignment was to re-commission a destroyer which had been retired due to age and damage. (3:09) „ Started out active duty in either Guam or Midway, he is unsure (3:42) „ Truce was signed early on in the Korean War. His ship was then put on patrol duty along the coast for two months. He recounts that they were so close to the coast that he could see the Army maintaining order in Korea. (3:45) „ After patrol duty ended, the ship then was sent on a world tour. (4:08) „ Later on, he was transferred to Florida, where his first son was born. (4:19) „ He stayed on the naval station at Florida for about a year. (4:28) „ Discharged in 1955. (4:31) „ Most of his time on ship was taken up with military maneuvers and practices. He does not recall much free time while on ship (4:45) „ He had some free time while shore, during which he explored the different cultures. (5:02) „ During most of his period in the Navy, he was not involved in active duty. (5:20) „ He recounts that the most important event of his time in the service was the peace treaty. His comrades at the base were excited to hear the news of the treaty, and he recalls being relieved. �(5:45) „ He recounts that he made a few friends in the Navy, most of which he has lost contact with over the years. (6:35) „ He expresses grief at being unable to find his best friend from his Navy years, although he has not tried Navy or Veteran contacts as of yet. (6:35) „ He recounts that he and his friend watched out for each other during there shore leave. (7:58) „ Tried to sightsee while touring the world, but had to moderate due to his low pay and the money he sent home to his wife. (8:20) „ He recalls that of all the places he visited, he found Japan the most enjoyable, especially the food. (9:05) „ He doesn't believe that his time in the service impacted him very much. He was happy to be out of the service, and did not join the reserves. (9:34) „ He believes that most people, aside from those aiming for military careers are glad to be done with their time in the service. (10:04) „ He is somewhat bitter about his experience in the Navy. (10:19) „ After finishing with the Navy, he re-joined his father in his business. (10:33) „ Moves to East Grand Rapids. (10:54) „ He recalls that there were few life-threatening encounters during his period in the service. He did have some anxiety initially on his way to Korea, but the treaty served to allay his fears. (11:21) „ Doesn't remember celebrating any significant holidays. (12:00) „ Recalls his frustration with the cramped ship conditions. (12:18) „ He explains that during his time on ship he was in charge of accounting, and food services as a result of his prior experience in food services. (16:11) „ During his time in the Navy, he believes he was helped by Gerald Ford. He had known Ford through groups such as the Freemasons, Foundry Club, and the Lion's Club of which they were both members. After spending three years at sea, he had become sick of life on the “dumb ship” and wrote Ford a letter asking if he could somehow have him put on shore leave. Approximately six weeks after the letter, he was transferred to shore leave in Florida. Ford never sent him a letter confirming he was involved, but Mr. Hoekzema is certain he had something to do with his transfer. (13:04-16:49) „ During his time in Florida, he took advantage of the hunting and fishing of the area. (17:00) �„ Bought a new trailer, and raised his son during his stay in Florida. He also notes that he and his wife got their first dog. (17:35) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hoekzema, Doug (Interview outline and video), 2007 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hoekema, Doug E. Description An account of the resource Doug Hoekzema served in the US Navy between 1953 and 1955. He served on a destroyer in the Pacific, and his ship patrolled the Korean coastline shortly after the armistice there. The ship then toured the world, and Hoekzema got reassigned to shore duty after that, possibly due to the intervention of his congressman, Gerald Ford. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Novak, Hailey (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 United States. Navy Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Video recordings Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007-05-30 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HoekzemaD 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/7027e481a98279f4ccde70b8bec2d618.mp4 8c3305ddf53117f2ffd872b02d756685 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/293a30d05597f79a14bf978fbe7a7bc7.pdf 594f2b401888186673acb197f0888d00 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veteran’s History Project Vietnam War Jim Hodges Interview Length: (01:32:58:00) Preenlistment / Training (00:00:11:00)  Born in Houston, Texas in 1951 (00:00:11:00)  Dad was a radio/television repairman and owned his own business for 26 years and his mother helped his father with the business (00:00:17:00)  His family stayed in Houston, although he was pretty active himself and he stayed in the outlying communities and worked on the ranches, training horses and working cattle (00:00:31:00)  Graduated high school and thought about college (00:00:50:00) o Across the street from his house lived a Dr. Derm, a well-known doctor in Houston, who offered to pay Hodges to go to medical school (00:00:59:00) o All of his sisters were already nurses (00:01:09:00)  His vocation always seemed to be on the soldier side and he decided to join the Army and make it a career (00:01:30:00)  Enlisted in July, 1970 (00:01:40:00) o Assumed that he would be going over to Vietnam and although Hodges was a sole surviving son and did not have to go to Vietnam, he went anyway (00:01:50:00)  Grew up with not only the Vietnam War, but also the Cold War and every day in school, they had air raid drills, hid under their desks and were afraid of nuclear destruction (00:02:07:00) o Learned that you do not mess with bullies; when a bully raised his head, you better hit him and hit him hard and he saw a bully beating up on Vietnam (00:02:30:00) o His enlistment was the talk of the family (00:02:45:00)  Dad had served in both World War II and Korea, which gave Hodges a different spin on the story of the wars (00:02:47:00) o If you were going to be a soldier, you better do something and if there was a fight, you had better get in it (00:02:55:00)  Purpose was to help the Vietnamese people secure freedom, and being a cowboy, he knew what freedom was, better than anybody else (00:03:03:00) o Could not stand the sight of Vietnamese people on the television being bullied by a government (00:03:21:00) o Always been about people; could care less about governments because they come and go (00:03:30:00)  Father told him that he knew Hodges would enlist and he was not going to discourage him, but if Hodges enlisted, he had better be the best there ever was (00:03:46:00)  First stop in training was Fort Polk, Louisiana, where he did his basic training at the “North Fort”, where everyone knew where they were going (00:04:02:00)  Most of the soldiers were enlistees; they had a handful of draftees (00:04:18:00) o Rumors he heard when he got back from the war was that all the soldiers were drafted and used as cannon fodder, which was not true (00:04:27:00)  Some of the volunteers did very well, including being helicopter pilots (00:04:54:00) o Back then, being a helicopter pilot was good stuff because there was a good market for aviation jobs following a pilot’s enlistment (00:05:01:00) �              Some of the soldiers went into specialized fields that eventually helped them with business (00:05:11:00) o A friend of Hodges got his JD and worked as an attorney in the Army, even though he had never though about doing that; he enlisted because he had a low draft number and after a couple a years, someone influenced him towards the law (00:05:18:00) Some men enlisted and eventually realized that they were not what were needed to be a soldier (00:05:48:00) Did eight weeks of basic training (00:06:02:00) o At Fort Polk, they had North Fort and South Fort, which were separated by about 15 or 20 miles (00:06:06:00) o Infantry walked everyday with full pack and rifle in 114 degrees, 100% humidity, chewing 15 to 20 salt tablets a day (00:06:12:00) o Joked that if they were eating C-Rations and they wanted salt on their food, they just dusted of their normally green uniform, which was white from the salt (00:06:27:00) o Did the marching to get in shape for where they were going (00:06:39:00) Did PT everyday (00:06:45:00) Separated the men from the boys starting on the very first day (00:06:52:00) o Got called every name in the book (00:06:56:00) o Was rough and strict because they were at war (00:06:58:00) Did something that he noticed that the Army recently dropped (00:07:05:00) o Part of their focus was bayonet training, which not only taught them how to fight with the bayonet but also instilled a spirit that they do not quit or lay down; if their arm was blown off, they fight with the other one and they do not stop or fall (00:07:08:00) o Sorry to see the Army give the training up because it is an integral part of the spirit of a warrior; it has nothing to do with bayonets, it has to do with an idealism of what they were going to do and how to save their life and those around them (00:07:26:00) Broke down weapons; took them apart and put them back together (00:07:44:00) o Learned every light weapon in the military services, from the .45 pistol to the 106mm recoilless rifle (00:07:48:00) o Went to the firing range everyday and fired mostly the M16 and M60 machine gun (00:07:58:00) Had quite a bit of stuff to learn, including the Military Code of Justice (all the paperwork side of the military) (00:08:06:00) Marched in formation and learned all the cadence calls (00:08:16:00) If they were lucky, they got 15 minutes in the mess hall; if there was a long line, then they were out of luck (00:08:29:00) o Learned very quickly that they could do without a meal and not die, but they had to take care of themselves, including how to conserve water and do all the things that survival entailed (00:08:37:00) All of his drill instructors had been in Vietnam, so they knew what the trainees could expect once they got to Vietnam (00:08:58:00) Vietnam was far worse than the training; they could take somebody there, put them through what ever they could design and call it “hell” and they would not know what “hell” was until they got to Vietnam (00:09:07:00) All of the drill sergeants were well-seasoned, had been in the Army for years and were not only Vietnam veterans, but they were also combat veterans hand-picked by the brigade commander for outstanding service (00:09:20:00) After basic training, he split off and went to leadership preparation school at Fort Polk (00:09:47:00) �     o Went through eight more weeks of AIT (Advanced Individual Training) in infantry and when he got out of AIT, he was a Specialist 4th Class, light weapons specialist (00:09:57:00) Left Fort Polk and went to Fort Benning, Georgia, where he went to NCO school, which was an intense course (00:10:08:00) Halfway through the NCO course, he got in contact with a previous mentor who helped Hodges decide where he was going and who was a contract operator through the intelligence community (00:10:22:00) o They took a group of soldiers that they had been watching through training, the first group that Hodges had heard of, and cross-trained them at Ranger School at Fort Benning and at the Special Forces Camp at Fort Bragg, North Carolina (00:10:37:00) Finished the NCO course and graduated as a sergeant E-5 (00:10:52:00) o Told by the mentor and his group at the end of the course that at some point they might be called do some other type of mission and the group wanted to be sure that there were people already trained and ready in reserve so that when the mission came up, the soldiers had the special skills (00:10:57:00) o The mountains in northern Georgia seemed like the perfect place for the training and they practiced repelling and orienteering, among other things (00:11:15:00)  Went to the jump school and the other parts of special forces training, including a remarkable unit in hand to hand combat and bayonet fighting (00:11:25:00)  Proudest day of his life involved a drill sergeant named Rosas, the toughest guy Hodges ever met, who although small, was solid and was a bayonet fighter (00:11:40:00)  Hodges wanted to be like him, listened to him intently and they took the sheathed bayonets and covered them with shoe polish to simulate a cut (00:12:03:00)  Hodges got good at it and they day they left, Rosas stood in front of him and instead of saluting, put his hand on Hodge’s shoulder and said, “bayonet fighter”, which was the greatest award Hodges ever got (00:12:19:00) o The confidence course and orienteering course were the most difficult parts of training because in some cases, it was raining or the weather was bad (00:13:03:00) o Hodges had trouble with things that were high up because of a fear of heights and they would race to the top of the structure because if they were the last, then they would have to do the assignment again (00:13:18:00) Another difficult part was at Fort Polk going on the forced marches at night because the dried salt on their uniforms from the die acted like sandpaper, rubbing the skin raw (00:13:37:00) o The sand in North Fort was so deep that they would sink almost to their waste and if they lost sight of the other soldiers, then they were lost (00:14:04:00) A final difficult part was an infiltration course when they had to crawl under barbed wire while live rounds were shot over their heads from a mounted M60 (00:14:36:00) o The trainees did not know the fire could not hit them, which looked like strings of red kool-aid from the tracer rounds and things were blowing up everywhere from grenade simulators (00:15:00:00) o The course at Fort Benning was an eye-opener and prelude to the what Hodges would be getting involved in because one of the trainees panicked, crawled out of the main part of the wire and when one of the grenade simulator blew, it got him (00:15:16:00) �    Hodges ran over, grabbed the man, ran back and began performing first aid on the man, which was the first indication not only to himself, but those watching him, the Hodges was the man they wanted to do other things (00:15:39:00) Command was in a hurry to get Hodges to Vietnam because they had invested a large amount of time and money into him and they wanted a return on their investment (00:16:21:00) From his specialized training, he went back to Fort Polk and was a drill sergeant assigned to the 5th AIT training brigade (00:16:30:00) o Was there only on a temporary duty status, meaning that he was not a “true” drill sergeant, although he still did the job (00:16:40:00) o Was only there for five or ten days when, while at the machine gun range, a sergeant told him to report back and the company commander told him the levee came down and Hodges name was on it (00:16:47:00) Left Fort Polk for Houston, saw his parents and girlfriend, then head to Oakland and shipped out to Vietnam (00:16:59:00) Deployment (00:17:18:00)  They flew from Oakland to Vietnam via Alaska, Japan, and Saigon on a commercial airline (00:17:18:00) o The flight was long and nobody knew anybody, so they just sat there (00:17:49:00)  The very first time they flew in, they had to circle the runway because the enemy was mortaring the airfield (00:18:15:00) o Hodges looked out his window and saw a cratered surface below and all his expectations of high promotion went out the window (00:18:20:00) o Thought about what he had gotten himself into and how the hell he was going to get out of it (00:18:32:00) o When they landed, it was chaos; people were wounded, smoke and gunpowder in the air and the landing was rotten and everybody was scared to death coming of the plane (00:18:38:00)  They took the men immediately to a reception area where they did a quick physical, including pulling a group off to the side and giving them fluoride treatments for their teeth (00:18:58:00) o Gave them their jungle fatigues, helmets, and everything but anything to shoot with (00:19:22:00)  From the reception area, they took Hodges and six or seven other guys over to another airfield, where they were put on a C-130 and flown to Da Nang and from Da Nang, they flew by Huey helicopter to Hue (00:19:47:00)  From Hue, they split the group up and assigned them to different units, along with issuing them weapons, ammunition, and grenades, as well a C-Rations (00:20:31:00) o Being new in country, Hodges disregarded his training and loaded up with more food than water or ammo, which came back to haunt him a couple of days later (00:20:45:00)  They put Hodges into a jeep and he and the jeep driver left the camp in Hue and drove out into the countryside (00:21:01:00) o Ahead, he saw a hill ahead of him that looked like it had eroded off and he could see the cannons on the top of it; this was Firebase Birmingham (00:21:14:00)  They dropped him off at Firebase Birmingham and although Hodges looked around for someone to talk to, no one wanted to talk to him because he was the new guy; there was not a great deal of respect for the new guys because the respect had to be earned (00:21:23:00)  Eventually helicopters started coming in and on the first helicopter that came in, the soldiers motioned for Hodges, who ran over, and the soldiers pulled him in (00:21:40:00)  The helicopter took off without touching down (00:22:04:00) �         o Hodges, trying to figure out what was going on, yelled at the man next to him, but no one said anything and the next thing that Hodges knew, they were landing out in the middle of the jungle (00:22:10:00) When they came into the LZ, they knew that Hodges was a new guy, so the others grabbed him and threw him out of the helicopter (00:22:30:00) o He did not expect to be thrown out and he went out of the helicopter not very gracefully and in the process, lost his weapon (00:22:39:00) o The others hit the ground and everyone was shooting, so Hodges jumped up and after figuring if he had the barrel fixed the right way, tried to figure who was out in the jungle (00:22:46:00) Someone would yell at him but he could not hear them because the helicopters would have the door-gunners firing, along with the other soldiers (00:22:58:00) o Hodges did not fire immediately but he decided he ought to, unless everyone else think he was a chicken, but afraid to hit someone friendly, he waited and then fired where everyone else was firing (00:23:10:00) o Eventually, everyone else gradually quit firing and the other soldiers rolled onto their rucksacks and some either got out their pipes or rolled cigarettes (00:23:26:00) Hodges tried to see who was in charge and he realized that he was a sergeant and maybe they were expecting him to do something (00:23:53:00) o He was sitting there and asked where the men had come from but nobody answered and they ignored him (00:24:13:00) Later, they stood up, rucked-up and everyone else started walking (00:24:25:00) o Hodges watched as several men started walking and noticing a man with a radio on his back, walked up and asked if the radio operator was in charge, who told him to get back in the ranks and shut up (00:24:34:00) They walked and walked and finally, they stopped and someone told Hodges to eat (00:25:09:00) o Hodges thanked him and told the man that he was just trying to figure out what he was supposed to do; the other man said to start by staying alive (00:25:34:00) o Learned very quickly that he had to do it on his own (00:25:42:00) Hodges finally got it and that night, it rained and was freezing and the next day, the radio operator told Hodges to walk slack, the position directly behind the point man (00:26:01:00) o Hodges was to do everything the point man did, when he did it, and not to talk; if he talked, the radio operator would shoot him himself (00:26:19:00) The man giving Hodges directions turned out to be another sergeant, the squad leader (00:27:06:00) o Nickname was “Dutch” and he was only there a few months because he was short time and getting ready to go home (00:27:12:00) o Hodges discovered that both he and Dutch were from Texas (00:27:21:00) After about the third day, they had a little contact outside of Firebase Birmingham (00:27:34:00) o They were setting up ambush patrols around Birmingham to keep the fire base from getting hit (00:27:40:00) o The patrol found some rocket tubes and Dutch thought that the enemy would come back and arm them, so they set claymores on the tubes and bobby-trapped them (00:27:47:00) o Hodges helped set up the booby-traps, which he was good at; the special forces training helped and when Hodges showed the others how to set up a good trap, it endeared him to the other men (00:28:07:00) Dutch told him after a few days that he was short timed and when he left, Hodges would be the one taking over (00:28:34:00) �        o But he told Hodges not to think that he could ever get away with telling any of the other soldiers what to do because they will kill him (00:28:42:00) o Each man stays alive because each man does his job and they did not tolerate mistakes because mistakes mean somebody dies and Hodges had better not be the one who makes mistakes (00:28:52:00) o He watched Dutch and learned how to call artillery and air strikes (00:29:10:00) Learned from the first day that the men were not only hardcore, but they were like machines; everybody did exactly what their job was and there were no mistakes (00:29:34:00) They always worked in squads and the only time they worked as a company was during a Chinook helicopter crash when they went to it on Thanksgiving, 1971 (00:30:01:00) o Served as part of Delta Company, 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division (00:30:19:00) o Was part of 2nd platoon and he went from 2nd to 4th squad leader because they changed around a lot due to men getting injured (00:30:27:00) o Sometimes they combined squads and had a squad leader run both squads (00:30:44:00)  Squad size ranged from seven men to four men, depending on the combat strength at the time (00:30:47:00) Stayed around Firebase Birmingham for about a week, although a week there is like seventy years in civilian life (00:31:01:00) Focused on an azimuth drawn straight from Hue west into the A Shau valley (00:31:12:00) Earned the nickname “the King of the North” because he knew the country better than anybody (00:31:34:00) o Most people did not study terrain maps, but going back to his cowboy days, he already had a good foundation for reading maps and the land (00:31:42:00) o Knowing, more than knowing what they had to do, where they were at and where they were going and how to get out if needs be (00:32:16:00) o These where his three keys, which he drilled into his guys, something that upset the other soldiers (00:32:27:00) One of Hodges's mentors, other than his father, was General Patton (00:32:49:00) o Liked not only Patton’s hands on methodology but the fact that he was not afraid to lead and let everybody know that they need to put effort behind the preparation if they wanted to complete the mission (00:32:53:00) o Hodges instilled this ideal into his men which they did not have at the time; the soldiers lived in existence mode, stumbling around from day to day (00:33:11:00) o Goal was to not only live through the war but to accomplish their missions each and every time, just they way they had been laid out (00:33:28:00) Looking back, Hodges’ mentality distracted the men enough from the sheer terror and inspired them to set goals in their mind (00:33:41:00) Was with this group of soldiers only to get his feet wet and he was eventually pulled out for his special-ops missions between January and March (00:34:08:00) Special-Ops Missions (00:34:46:00)  Someone came out and flew Hodges back to Firebase Birmingham, then on to Da Nang for another briefing (00:34:46:00) o Briefing was in a room full of guys who were not in uniform and were not military (00:35:12:00)  The man who had originally mentored him was there and he said that this was where Hodges would see what he was really made out of (00:35:34:00) �       o Nixon was trying to pull the troops out but they were afraid of the possibility of another Tet offensive like the one in 1968 which would damage the credibility of the Americans and of Nixon (00:35:45:00) o Their job was to be inserted into Laos disrupt supply lines and give the enemy “hell” (00:36:05:00) o They did not want American troops involved, so the teams were dressed in Viet Cong outfits and used Viet Cong weapons (00:36:38:00) They had intelligence about specific unit movements and gave the team the coordinates and where they would be inserted into, where they would have to hump to immediately, and what they were going to do (00:37:03:00) o The rendezvous point was the key because they did not have a radio and if they missed the specific day and time, then they were left over there (00:37:20:00) o Everybody in his unit look the same; nobody over 5’8”, everyone had black hair and dark features (00:37:36:00) o They did not have any dog tags and if the enemy somehow identified he or his team as Americans, his commanders could say that they were selling drugs and they had been looking for the team (00:37:53:00) Did the special missions for a few weeks and came out; the missions did do their job (00:38:13:00) o They would follow an enemy unit, which was in larger groups because in Laos, they did not expect to encounter a formidable opponent (00:38:30:00) o Because of their mass numbers, it lulled them into a false sense of security (00:38:43:00) o They used elephants, mules, big trucks, and tanks in some cases (00:38:48:00) Hodges’ team would follow a unit for several days, see who they were and mark their vulnerabilities (00:38:57:00) o I.e. If the enemy had a couple elephants with a lot of equipment on them, the team could plant a pound C4 on each of the elephants (00:39:05:00) o In the morning was when they usually hit the enemy because that was when everyone was getting up and packing everything and their minds were not alert (00:39:15:00) The team mapped out directions if they saw movement in a particular direction and they would sneak in at night and set up a horseshoe ambush for the column (00:39:33:00) o They would have claymores around the road and two men at the rear with M60 machine guns, two men at the front with M203s and one man at the point with an M203 and if they had AKs, then they did the same thing (00:40:01:00) o Hodges always took the point (00:40:21:00) o They would set the detonators for self-detonation and each team member had one detonator (00:40:25:00) o By the time that the enemy got a hint, the M60s were the only things firing while the other three members of the team had run in separate directions so that if the enemy caught one, they only lost one team member versus losing the whole team (00:40:34:00) Everyone knew how to orienteer to get back to the rendezvous point and if someone made it to the rendezvous point, fine, if not, then they moved on (00:40:56:00) With a lot of the elephants, if they either laid on the ground at night or slept standing up, the team were able to walk up and hide the C4 in the straps of the pack used to haul the equipment (00:41:10:00) They would run the detonator out, which they could set to time-detonate, allowing the team to play “tricks” on the enemy (00:41:32:00) �  o One trick involved unscrewing the delay fuse on a hand grenade, putting a smoke grenade fuse in and spray painting it green to make it appear to only be a standard grenade (00:41:41:00)  When someone pulled the pin and released the spoon, the grenade exploded because there was no time delay and the team would lay a few of the special grenades around (00:41:59:00) o Another trick involved syncing the pin up to the elephant’s saddle straps and when the saddle was tightened, the grenade exploded (00:42:12:00) Darkness in the jungle varied in degrees and the team’s old saying was “everyone dies on a full moon” (00:42:39:00) o Hodges and his team had the same size and build as the enemy, so the elephants paid them little attention (00:42:51:00) The enemy was very laid back; they played music, sang, had campfires going and were cooking food (00:43:00:00) o Some units moved very quickly and expediently and they ate on the move and other units, especially ones with high ranking officers or important supplies, would cook elaborate meals (00:43:09:00) Seventy-Two Days Alone (00:43:45:00)  Hodges and his team ran about ten of these ambushes and on the last mission, Hodges made it to the rendezvous point and no one else did (00:43:45:00)  He waited about two days and nobody came for him; he realized that no one was coming for him and he needed to take off because the enemy was all around him (00:44:03:00)  Decided to orienteer, which was not hard because, being due west of Hue, all he did was turn due east and start to head back (00:44:16:00)  He made it seventy-two days by himself and got back to a road, QL-9, and the Army had brought up some artillery and ARVNs to support to border with Laos, who Hodges saw while he was walking (00:44:24:00)  He got excited when he saw the ARVNs and originally he was going to run over and ask them to get him out of there but he caught himself because he did not have a shirt left and he was in the black pajama pants with his NVA boots on and no dog tags (00:44:47:00) o He had blood over every square inch of his body and he was pretty filthy, with a long beard and long hair (00:45:03:00)  He was afraid that the ARVNs would shoot him even if he yelled out to them because he was in a free fire zone, meaning that the others shot anything that moved (00:45:11:00)  Finally, he figured that if he was going to get out of there, he was going to have to do something, so he followed the units for a little bit and saw some of the soldiers seemed jovial (00:45:21:00)  While they were taking a break, he went up to the ARVN unit first and walked up with his hands held high, saying that he was an American, and singing Yankee Doodle (00:45:38:00)  The ploy worked, although Hodges scared the ARVN soldiers and he was afraid that they were going to shoot him, they did not and finally relaxed before asking Hodges some questions, which he answered (00:46:06:00)  When the ARVNs finally took him in and gave him something to eat, they told Hodges that they had some trucks going back, so he stayed with the unit for one day before getting a ride on a deuce-and-a-half truck back to his base (00:46:20:00) o The truck got out onto another road and there was a large convoy of tank trucks, which Hodges hitched a ride on the back of one (00:46:34:00) o At the time, he had an M1903 Springfield with a Starlight 4x scope as his weapon and this was all he had left from the mission (00:46:48:00) �      When he got back to camp and the guards saw him on the back of the truck, they all “jumped to”; an MP ran back into his guard shack, grabbed his M16 and told Hodges to get off the truck (00:46:59:00) Hodges did and he tried to talk to the MP, who said that he was going to call one man and Hodges told the MP to call his commander, a colonel, and tell the colonel that Hodges was there and he wanted to know why he was left (00:47:15:00) o Hodges was mad, so the MP called the colonel, came back out and said that although he did not know who Hodges was, the men on the phone said they would be there (00:47:32:00) When the MPs came up, it was comical because they looked like Keystone Kops, white faced and weapons waving as they drove up (00:47:43:00) o They ordered Hodges to drop his weapon but he told them that he was not going to do that, making a tense moment because Hodges was mad and he might have killed them (00:47:54:00) o Hodges and the MPs had a little standoff before they finally took him to see the colonel, where he was told to shut up, sign an agreement, and that he did his job (00:48:15:00) They transferred him out of the base that day, reoutfitted him with a new uniform, rucksack, and M16, and flew him out to Da Nang, where he was assigned to the 196th Infantry Brigade (00:48:30:00) The seventy-two days of survival involved a lot of walking and a lot of mountain climbing (00:49:04:00) o One blessing was that up in the mountains, the water was crystal clear and he could drink right out of the streams; as well, there were large amounts of fish in the streams (00:49:08:00) o He would describe it as almost prehistoric because there were parts that people had never been in (00:49:20:00) o Hodges ate fish raw out of the streams, which is why he does not eat fish now, and he had to eat them like an animal would eat them, meaning through the scales and uncooked (00:49:29:00) o If he threw the fish down and the NVA found it, they would be able to track him and he did not have time to cover his tracks (00:49:42:00)  He was wearing NVA boots, so he was not worried about that, but if they saw the fish carcasses, they would know that there was a SOG group working in the area, who the NVA knew very well (00:49:51:00) o He survived off eating that fish, although there were times that all he had was sand, so he drank sand, just to keep something in his stomach and to keep going (00:50:04:00) o He would hide from the NVA during the daytime and would move a lot a night, at least when he could see at night (00:50:16:00) o Was very careful that the areas he went into were not marked areas, did not follow trails, and cut his own way with a machete he carried (00:50:27:00)  Still, he did not try to cut a lot of trail, instead he tried to slip through the jungle, so that if anyone was following him, it would slow them down and make it hard to catch him (00:50:42:00) o Getting angry helped, as well a being determined never to give up and lay down and to get the mission done, no matter what (00:50:56:00) While alone, he had someone step on his hand and trip over him in the middle of the night (00:51:09:00) �    o The bad part was that he was bleeding from shrapnel wounds in both arms and in his face, although he did not know about the wounds in his face until years later because when he had blood all over him, he did not know where it came from (00:51:16:00)  He did not care at the time; if he was vertical and breath, he did not ask any questions (00:51:32:00)  The infection in the wounds was bad and he got a serious infection to the point that it was burning him up and he was getting delirious (00:51:41:00) o All he remembers was laying down and the next thing he knew, a Montagnard or some other native tribesman stepped on him (00:51:51:00)  They did not speak English and he did not speak their dialect, although he knew a little Vietnamese (00:52:05:00)  The two groups had a strange understanding; Hodges knew they were trying to help him, which they did (00:52:17:00)  The potion that the women in the tribe created was unusual and it burned, but they packed it into the wounds, doctored Hodges up and sent him on his way (00:52:23:00)  They offered Hodges some food, but although he had been surviving off of eating raw fish, scales included, he could not bring himself to eat what they had in their pot (00:52:42:00) The natives were a big part of his survival and he does not think he would have made it past that day without their intervention (00:53:03:00) When everything was blowing up on their last mission, Hodges had exchanged his standard M203 for the M1903 Springfield and was taking potshots at the enemy, mainly to reach out and harass them (00:53:20:00) o More importantly, the Springfield gave him the ability to care more claymores and explosives, meaning that he could do his job better, indirect warfare and making booby traps (00:53:41:00)  Hodges’ team found out that booby traps worked more effectively against the enemy and made their job easier (00:53:51:00)  They had a pretty close mission prior to his last mission and there was a rumor that the team heard when they went back to get resupplied; another team had been completely decimated, which Hodges had on his mind (00:53:58:00) On the last mission, the team wanted to try to move back from the enemy because they realized that the enemy would eventually become wise to their tricks (00:54:12:00) The last mission went terribly wrong (00:54:23:00) o He imagines that because of the explosions, a couple of the team members were killed outright (00:54:24:00) o What happened afterwards he does not know because it turned into pure chaos and he was never aware that he was hit or had any injuries until several days later, when he started running a fever (00:54:34:00)  When he would lay down, the pain finally started to creep in (00:54:48:00) End of Tour (00:54:58:00)  The Army stopped the covert missions after the incident with Hodges’ team, although if they ran any more, Hodges was not aware of it (00:54:58:00) o He was not privy to the information and he did not know how many teams they would be using or if they were in close proximity to Hodges’ team (00:55:04:00) o They did not talk about those things and they did not use real names, only code-names and nicknames (00:55:12:00) �      You learn a lot about yourself when you go through an experience like that, as well as your enemy, making it not as clear cut as people would think (00:55:27:00) o Hodges’ belief is that it was not the warrior that started the fight, but the government and politicians and they left it up to the people to finish the fight (00:55:42:00) o He saw a lot of cases where NVA soldiers should have been killed but they happened to run into the right patrol, which allowed the NVA to live (00:56:01:00)  They were not supposed to take the NVA prisoner but the patrols did it anyway (00:56:12:00) o The human element creeps in when they would run into situations when they could see the raw soul of a human (00:56:17:00)  They found out real quick what type of character they had when nobody else was looking (00:56:37:00) He had been a cowboy all his life and he learned to focus, be his own man, and take care of himself (00:56:54:00) o For his first job when he was fourteen, he showed up on a ranch that he wanted to work at because the boss was a tough guy and everybody respected him (00:57:02:00)  The boss kept some nice horses and Hodges wanted to get his hands on them because he liked horses as well (00:57:13:00) o Hodges took the job and the first day he was there, he rode up next to the boss, trying to impress him; the boss was concentrating on the cattle operation and writing information down and when Hodges rode up next to him and asked what he want Hodges to do, the boss, with a wad of chewing tobacco in his mouth, spit on Hodges's horse and said that he could start by shutting up and doing what he was told, when he was told (00:57:22:00) o It was still a great day because Hodges got to talk to the boss, although he was only told to shut up (00:57:59:00)  This was the type of men that Hodges grew up with (00:58:09:00)  If he fell off his horse, he did not sit there and whine, he knew better than to even open his mouth; if something was wrong, he got up, got on his horse, and went to get help (00:58:13:00) o Doing this type of work was the precursor for the soldier that appeared and was able to do the job the way it needed to be done (00:58:38:00) Spent around five to six months with the 196th Infantry (00:59:18:00) Before he was assigned to the 196th, he got to go to the United States and the Army said that he would have a two week leave (00:59:24:00) o The rumor was that he was going home (00:59:35:00) o He got on the plane and this time, it was the first time he ever flew on a 747 and they flew a different route, from Vietnam to the Philippines to Hawaii and then to Oakland (00:59:41:00) o He went home for a week and a half before the Army said that he had to go back (00:59:57:00) When he loaded up, he went back and when he got back, the Army explained that they needed some men to lead the last infantry company in the field around Da Nang (01:00:04:00) o Da Nang was important and the military needed time to pull the units out (01:00:22:00) o The company ran ambush patrols, which was Hodges’s forte, and he and the other officers taught the men in the company (01:00:30:00) When Hodges got to the company, it was in terribly bad shape and he even wrote a letter to his dad saying that they needed to do a Congressional investigation because the company did not get resupplied on time or medevacs on time (01:00:40:00) �     o Hodges’s father wrote the letter to the president of the VFW post he belonged to and the president wrote another letter to President Nixon (01:01:01:00) o President Nixon initiated a Congressional investigation, although it was odd because Hodges did not receive any information until four years later (01:01:10:00) o The investigation substantiated the claims, but in typical military fashion, at the end of each allegation, it said that the commander was reminded of this and steps were taken to ensure that it would never happen again (01:01:18:00) o They were already out of the country, so what was the point (01:01:35:00) o The Army did eventually give the company assistance (01:01:42:00) Things were not terribly active then, everything was gearing down, and Hodges believes that the NVA realized that the U.S. was going to go with a different strategy (01:01:46:00) o Their new strategy was to let the U.S. pull out and they would deal with the South Vietnamese on their own terms (01:01:58:00) o The NVA were beaten down and one of the NVA generals questioned why the U.S. pulled out, because they had the NVA on the ropes (01:02:09:00) The last combat soldiers left in the field in 1972 were the 196th Infantry (01:02:34:00) o The 196th flew from Da Nang into Hue and they helped clear out the city during the North Vietnamese offensive in 1972 (01:02:48:00) o The 196th pushed the ARVNs in front of them while they supplied covering fire and American pilots flew bombing runs (01:02:55:00) o They then pulled the 196th back to Da Nang and the mission to Hue was short-lived; Hodges believes that the mission went off “half-cocked” because someone got the wrong orders from somewhere (01:03:06:00)  The NVA gave up too easy, although they were known for standing and fighting (01:03:22:00) They finished working at Da Nang and the Army pulled them and all the support personnel out of the field and two years later, the NVA moved into Saigon (01:03:32:00) He saw some of the ARVN units that looked similar to the U.S. units and others where, generically, the soldiers would throw down their guns and run (01:04:05:00) o The ARVNs really did not have the will to fight as determinedly as the NVA or the VC (01:04:15:00) o They had special forces units with the ARVN and they were good and they worked well with the American units (01:04:28:00) o The regular line infantry were questionable and they did not have a lot of artillery to speak of (01:04:40:00) o Some of the pilots did very well; a lot flew single-engine aircraft and did close-in support for some of the special ops missions (01:04:51:00)  Others flew helicopters and the Americans did not like flying in their helicopters (01:05:05:00)  They made the Vietnamese pilots wear white helmets and if the men saw a pilot with a white helmet, they would tell him that they would take the next helicopter (01:05:09:00) o The men respected the Vietnamese as people and they tired to help the Vietnamese out and give them the idea of free men and what they could be (01:05:20:00) They were all out in the jungle and he can count on the number of hands the times he saw a base camp or fire base (01:05:42:00) o If they were at one, they were there for thirty minutes to an hour to get resupplied before flying back out (01:05:48:00) �     He was in love with Joey Heatherton, a blonde bombshell, and he found out that she would be at the division's base camp at Christmas, 1971 (01:06:06:00) o Hodges was out in the field doing push-ups to get buff to impress her and telling everyone that he was going to get a date with her (01:06:12:00) o The day that they were supposed to come out of the field, he was waiting for the helicopter to come pick him up when his Lieutenant called him back and told him hold the units position and they would be doing patrols in the “rocket belt” outside the camp to make sure no one rocketed the show (01:06:25:00) o He never did get to see Joey Heatherton, although everybody else got to (01:06:48:00) He felt sorry for Vietnamese people because the war was a hard thing to watch (01:07:05:00) o They had no hope, not matter which way the war went because one way or another, they were still going to be in the same condition as before the Americans ever arrived (01:07:18:00) o They were people victimized by others who had a lot of money and they treated the Vietnamese like dirt, although they were so used to it, Hodges believes it is engrained in the culture and in some cases, they did not seem to mind it (01:07:28:00) o The men saw humans that never truly lived; they just existed from one day to the next (01:07:46:00) o Now, they are capitalist and are prosperous, although there are people in the remote areas that are in poorer conditions (01:08:02:00) o Rough to watch humans suffering and being powerless to do anything for them and doing the little things, such as running the VC out of a village or an area, were important (01:08:21:00) The situation at that time was stopping the domino effect from taking place, which his friends in intelligence explained from the beginning (01:08:57:00) o When they looked at an outline of Vietnam and saw China right above it, and the Soviet Union next, they knew that they had made since that day and their efforts to take over the Eastern Hemisphere (01:09:10:00) He still calls Russians “Soviets” because it is a mentality that there is one side called freedom and another side for something else and in his book, freedom is the only side he would be on (01:09:49:00) o They can call him or themselves whatever they want, he is going to stand on the side that he is on, the side of freedom and human dignity, and if they gave him any other thing on the plate, then they have got a fight (01:10:05:00) o Believes that the NVA understood this because the United States defeated them in every conflict they had, especially the Tet offensive (01:10:18:00) o Armies that are brainwashed into following are like bullies and the only way to deal with bullies is to smack them hard whenever they show up (01:10:38:00) o If they had to do it again, he would be the first in line and if they would let him, he would be with the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan (01:10:55:00) When the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam, he still had about nine or ten months left on his tour, which was like torture because of the assignments they had done and who they had become (01:11:16:00) o They were about the farthest thing from garrison soldiers there were; they were probably closer to mad dogs than anything (01:11:28:00) o The military “threw” away the soldiers at Fort Hood, which served as a repository for everyone like Hodges; their military careers were done because Nixon had started the new “volunteer” Army and there was no room for men like Hodges, the old school (01:10:05:00) �  o Made Hodges mad at the time because he did not understand what they were doing, although he understands it now (01:12:00:00) The politicians wanted to manipulate the military, specifically the Army, and the men were resistant to it, although there was no longer a function for them and their special skills were no longer needed (01:12:10:00) o The politicians put a lot of pressure on the men by making them sit in a motor pool all day, although they lived in barracks quite modern compared to the ones they had trained in and had a mess hall that was almost like gourmet food (01:12:33:00) o The men were like an old work horse on the ranch; they got whatever the could out of it and in the end, they forced it out into the field because he had become a liability (01:13:22:00) Finished out his tour, although it had a pretty rough ending (01:13:40:00) Post-Military (01:13:46:00)  Once he got out of the military, then the real horror started with the way that other people treated them (01:13:46:00) o The men were told to keep their mouth shut and not let anyone know that they had served in Vietnam because the people did not like the war (01:13:58:00)  That sentiment has not gone away and Hodges’ has four clients at his current job that resent him for having served in the military, let alone Vietnam (01:14:06:00)  One of the men said that when he heard Hodges had served in Vietnam, he did not want to hear about that crap and that those baby killers need to take their due and go on home (01:14:17:00)  The old clichés and believes are hard to die because people believe it is a fact and they have been misinformed (01:14:32:00) o If he went to apply for a job, he never put Vietnam veteran on the application or resume and every time others talked about the war, they got the hell beat out of them (01:14:47:00)  He started drinking a fifth and a half of Jack Daniels a day, chewed tobacco all day, smoked about four packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day and was on a collision course with himself (01:15:16:00)  He technically was homeless because he could not go home to his family because he was no longer himself (01:15:33:00) o He could not eat anything except for Jack-in-the-Box tacos; everything else he threw-up, so he bought C-Rations from a surplus store in Galveston, Texas and would fill his truck, eating only them (01:15:44:00) o He roamed around for a while before he had to sell his truck and then he thumbed rides and killed coyotes for bounties at one point (01:16:04:00)  All of the sudden, he got into security work, which he liked and got into armored car operations (01:16:20:00)  He worked every phase of security that he could and then left there and went into law enforcement, were he stayed for twenty years (01:16:33:00) o He became a lead investigator in the Alamo Bay incident when Vietnamese and American shrimpers went to war of the Vietnamese coast (01:16:43:00) o Worked on the federal task force for about sixteen years as an intelligence officer and as a detective (01:16:56:00) �    o Had a lot of very great jobs and some unbelievable experiences that were brought to him because of who he was and he got to use the experience that he though at that time was a bad thing and turn it into a good thing (01:17:07:00) o They say about warriors that they continue to march and this was how Hodges continued to march (01:17:30:00) He might not have been able to retire from the military but in a way, he had spent all of his life soldiering, which is what he started out to do (01:17:36:00) When he first got into law enforcement, during training, an instructor was teaching how to go through a building to get the bad guy with the gun (01:18:27:00) o The instructor was showing dramatic moves with the gun and a flashlight and Hodges was sitting and looking and wondering what was the matter with the instructor (01:18:35:00) o Finally, on a break, the instructor talked to Hodges and said that he had noticed Hodges’ sour look on his face (01:18:45:00) o Hodges said that he did not know why they were teaching the trainees this; the instructor said that he was trying to save their lives and Hodges said that the instructor might be taking them because when they turned the flashlight on, the bad guys will know how many cops there are and where the cops are (01:18:53:00)  Hodges said that he did not care how tactically they held the flashlight and gun, all the bad guys had to do was start spraying bullets and the cops would probably get hit (01:19:07:00) o That method was not in Hodges’ book on how to do it, so the instructor backed up and asked Hodges how he would do it (01:19:16:00) o They went and Hodges told them to put a man in the building; a man did and the instructor offered Hodges his flashlight (01:19:24:00) o Hodges declined and when the instructor asked how Hodges would find the man, Hodges said that he would sense him (01:19:36:00) o He went into the building and came out with the man in handcuffs with no shoots fired (01:19:42:00)  When the instructor asked how Hodges did it, he said “the same way Ray Charles plays the piano, without looking” (01:19:47:00) o They sense things, although they use their eyes too much, and this was the one thing that Hodges learned during the war, the majority of his senses were not used because before there was never a need for him to use them (01:19:57:00)  People are brainwashed as kids into they need to see something when they really did not (01:20:16:00) o He started teaching law enforcement officers and he was surprised that the instructor who thought he was being a smart-ass wanted to learn right then (01:20:23:00) o Hodges showed him and the others and this lead him to one of the most successful entrepreneurships he had, which was designing some of the first formulas for pepperspray (01:20:35:00) He used his summation of what he had seen tribal women in Vietnam and he figured it was what his grandfather had used on himself and horses, a mixture of chewing tobacco, cayenne pepper and whiskey (01:20:50:00) o He developed on that and came up with a formula that sold like hot cakes (01:21:19:00) He also developed the first decontamination spray for the people who had been sprayed by pepper spray (01:21:32:00) o He remembered an old woman who gave him a salsa after he had gotten hunger over and told him to eat and he would be sober (01:22:00:00) �        o The salsa was hot and so the old woman gave him a cup of coffee and a chocolate bar, which Hodges later realized help limit the heat, which he used in the decontamination spray (01:20:25:00) o The first time he tried it, the spray did not work and on a flight home from Phoenix, it hit him to balance the Ph of the spray and the next time, the spray worked (01:23:16:00) These endeavors all came directly from the war and he began to realize that even though he is not fighting the war anymore, he can still fight by using the techniques and tactics he had learned in a quasi-military role (01:23:40:00) o Law enforcement and security paved the way and he still does that type of work today, including counter-terrorism and cyber warfare, which he took a month long school for and learned how to be a systems administrator (01:24:00:00) o They bring a lot of baggage out of the war zone but at some point in time, they had to get their head straight and realize that some of the stuff could be used (01:24:27:00) He sat silent for thirty-six years and never told anyone what had happened (01:25:00:00) Eventually he met the director of the Hauenstein Center in the middle of cow pasture working cattle when the director’s family went to Hodges's ranch for a vacation (01:25:08:00) o The director and Hodges became friends and the director and his family went down to Hodges’ regularly (01:25:22:00) The only reason that Hodges talked to the director was that the director could tell that Hodges had something bothering him and vice versa (01:26:03:00) o The two played cat and mouse, telling each other their stories (01:26:12:00) o The director’s dad had been in World War II and he had questions about why his dad acted certain ways, some of which Hodges was able to answer (01:26:19:00) Eventually, Hodges gave up a little more of his story and the director had Hodges come up to Michigan in August, 2006; Hodges originally refused, saying that he was not supposed to talk about what he had done but the director kept prodding (01:26:31:00) o Hodges talked with his dad and he told Hodges that if he had kept the secret for thirtysix years, he was doing better than the rest of them and the dad did not think anybody would care anymore (01:26:49:00) o Hodges’ dad told him to come up Michigan and tell the story (01:27:11:00) o This was the first time Hodges had ever opened up to anyone and he thinks that no one was more shocked about it than his family because they never knew what he had done and his dad knew better than to ask him any questions (01:27:15:00) o His family just left his story alone and figured that he would eventually come around (01:27:28:00) He kept those things inside and some people wanted to know what had happened and some people did not because his story either helped from their beliefs right or wrong (01:27:37:00) It was thirty-six years and it was the greatest day that he could remember and he came back in 2008 to do a PTSD conference, a three person discussion and a Q & A session (01:27:58:00) The things became so powerful and during his speech in 2006, a lady in the audience and as he kept talking, he kept watching her sitting in the middle of the room (01:28:19:00) o The woman was fiddling with envelopes, which made Hodges think she was a reporter and when Hodges finished speaking, they had a Q & A session (01:28:44:00) o The woman had either the third or fourth question and it became apparent that she had heard Hodges talking on the radio before the speech (01:28:52:00) o Her husband was dead and she never knew what had happened, so she brought his letters home with her and Hodges went off the stage, gave her the microphone, and she read the letters out loud (01:29:08:00) �   Her husband mentioned that she would be the first woman on the block to know that her husband was in Laos, so Hodges’ presentation made it full circle for her and she understood (01:29:34:00) o The woman reinforced the idea in Hodges that if he did not tell the stories, then he does not help other people that are out there (01:30:17:00) The first presentation lit the fuse and Hodges now has two books started, one on PTSD and one on himself and got invited back to Michigan to do another presentation (01:30:31:00) o He has recontacted the only people that he knew the names of in one of their operations and is trying to get the whole team back together on film and get them to discuss what they had done, so that it is not just Hodges’ story, but their story (01:31:10:00)  This is the way that Hodges would rather tell it, because that is the way that it was (01:31:27:00) o It is important for Hodges to know that someone fifty years in the future will not pull out some book where the author has his own agenda (01:31:38:00) He appreciates projects where people can hear it “straight from the horse’s mouth” and they understand the emotion and the compelling reason why the men did what they did (01:31:54:00) o His destiny was to be a soldier and that was what he was and in the process, they help other people (01:32:16:00) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hodges, Jim (Interview outline and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hodges, Jim Description An account of the resource Born in Houston, Texas in 1951, Jim Hodges worked on ranches as a teen before enlisting in the Army in 1970. During his training, the Army selected him to cross-train for special operations missions and following the completion of his training, the Army shipped him to Vietnam. After several months, he began to perform the missions. He performed several special-ops missions in Laos and when his last mission went wrong, Hodges spent seventy-two days alone working his way back to a friendly location. He spent a further couple of months in Vietnam, serving with one of the last infantry units in the field, before returning to the United States and eventually receiving his discharge. 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 2010-07-01 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HodgesJ 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/c2874f30f4ec04415fb0a8f2bec044ea.mp4 d8794ee77bc84b87fbcf3ebb7d309325 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ed4085939fb958dbbd2b54f866315aae.pdf 5ec92afa308fe749aeb0bc2f08fee8b2 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Name of War: World War II Interviewee: Morris Hinken Length of Interview: 01:13:33 Disc 1 Background:  Mr. Hinken was born in Ottawa County, in Allendale, Michigan, in 1922.  He grew up living on his family farm until he went to work at Michigan Bell Telephone Company in 1940.  He only went through two years of high school.  Before he worked at the phone company, he worked on the farm. They grew some general things. It was a dairy farm, so they grew a lot of stuff to feed the cows and horses.  Relative to the current Grand Valley campus, that farm was a half a mile west, on the corner of 52nd and Lake Michigan Drive. It is all gone now.  He was one of 12 children; 3rd from the bottom. However, he is the only one of the 12 that is still living yet. (2:10)  He always says that his brothers and sisters are all in heaven saying “What takes that guy so long?”  His first job with the phone company was he was one of a line crew. They put up pole and string wires.  He really enjoyed his job and loved working outside. Now he looks at the workers today and would not want to do it at all.  When he worked, if it rained, you got time off to sleep or whatever you wanted to do.  When he used to work on the farm, he and a bunch of other farmers got together on a farm and get stuff done.  One day they were all sitting down, drinking coffee and one of them said “You are all going to be in the Army because one day soon here Germany, Japan, and Italy are all going to get together, and they think they are going to rule the world”  That’s the only think he can remember about the war before he was in it.  He heard about Pearl Harbor when he was at a Sunday service. No one had televisions then and not many had radios.  Many people did not hear about it until that night, when the pastor announced the news.  At the time, he had not thought about signing up for the Army because he did not know what was going on in the world and what it meant. Later on, he would come to understand what the attacks meant. (4:20)  There was also a draft going on at the time, and he was quite aware of that.  He had a Sunday school teacher who always told him and the other kids that they were going to be in the Army one day. It turned out to be true.  Eventually he was drafted in 1942 and had to appear in Grand Haven and all that stuff �The Induction process (5:10)           After receiving his draft notice he had to report to Grand Haven. Before he did that though, he went to Lansing to have his physical done. It would be a few days before they had to return to Grand Haven. Then they took a bus to Fort Custer, in Battle Creek, Michigan. When they got to Fort Custer, they went through a list of things. They were issued new uniforms and other things. They were also put through some training. To being with, they peeled a lot of potatoes. They were also taught how to do many of the chores that they would have to be doing as well. He was at Fort Custer for about 3-4 weeks and then he was sent to Camp Crowder, Missouri. He was sent to Fort Custer on a bus. He remembers the weather being bad. The trip itself was rather solemn. You did not know if you would see your family or friends again or even your country. He got to Camp Crowder by train. He had never been on a train before that. In fact, he does not recall being outside of the state before. Camp Crowder (7:30)              Camp Crowder was a brand new camp. It was built right after the attacks on Pearl Harbor. A lot of things were not finished yet. For example, the roads that were in between the new barracks buildings were not completed when he got there. They even had to expand their camp. They built what he called “tar paper shacks” to expand the camp. Camp Crowder had the special function of being a place of training for the Signal Corps. They trained with telephones, radio and even homing pigeons. Every once in a while a pigeon would come flying in with a note on it that it was time for you to leave your training. They also trained a lot of WACs there too. The WACs were kept separately in their own camp. While he was there, he did a lot of marching. But the good thing about that was when it was over you got to go to the rifle range. There were a lot of jokes out there too, because they wanted your whole group to qualify. So if one of the guys missed the target, they pulled it down and poked a hole through it with a pencil, so they all qualified. (9:45) He used to hunt on the farm, which gave him experience with a gun. He was also in physical shape at the time. There were no problems adjusting to the military discipline for him. But there were some guys had trouble though, physically. Some nights they would go on long marches and some of the guys had to quit after a couple of miles. The rest had to carry them the rest of the way until they got back. �                         Some of those hikes were really long. One was 22 miles. They got back in the morning and he is pretty sure that they let them all go to bed. There were a lot of Southerners who trained with him. Not too many people were from Michigan. He had some trouble understanding them at first, but he got used to them eventually. The Southerners must have come as one big group because one day they all left. Just a few had the same kind of experience that he did when he entered the service. His work with phone lines sure gave him a step up. There were also some officers there who knew a little more, but they were a little higher up. He does have to say though that some people from the south, like Georgia and Mississippi did not even have a phone in their home. So this was all a brand new experience for them, learning about phones and radios. (12:05) Most of them were average guys and learned things ok in time. Boot camp lasted about a month or two. He really liked the marching part of it. He was the second tallest in his group and was therefore at the front when people turned right. Everyone was supposed to follow him because he was supposed to know that to do. After basic was over he went into training for more specific things, like switchboards and phones. He was trained in a variety of things from phones to switchboards. He even got trained in the radio a little bit. He did not learn code during his training. In fact, the people at the other end of the camp, in the tar shacks were the ones who were learning Morse code. In fact, one of the people who did learn was a good friend who lived next to him at home. They got together one time in France. He had passed a vehicle carrying his friend and they talked for a second. But he never did catch up to him after that. (14:15) His main job was to string wire lines on cross arms. He used it too, over in France. He was done with training in Camp Crowder until November 1943. He was there around 8 months. He was training as part of a specific outfit or unit. He was in the 32nd Signal Battalion, attached to 1st Army. They were not attached to any one specific unit within the army, so they could float to where they were needed. His battalion was divided into ten units, and each day they would send a new unit out to where it needed to go. While he was at Camp Crowder, he was allowed to go off the base to have some fun. He loved to bowl. He and some of the other guys would often go to the local bowling alley to bowl together and have some fun. (16:30) Other than that, there was not much to do. Some people did leave the base to attend the local churches for mass, but he always went to the one they had on the base. He did have a chance to go home before he was shipped overseas. He went home in November for about 10 days. He remembers when he went home there was snow, and a lot of it! �  One reason he did go home was his brother and sister-in-law were going to have a military wedding, and he wanted to be there for it. After that though, he shipped back to Camp Crowder. When they got back, they were off. Active Duty (18:10)               They were sent to Camp Shanks, New York. He was put on a liberty ship, which was not very good. When they left, he barely saw the Statue of Liberty. While he was leaving, he wondered if he was ever going to see home again. (18:40) The trip over was terrible. It was very stormy and the boat was always going up and down. He always good thought, if you could not stab good, you certainly would learn to when your tray of food slid by, back and forth. A lot of men, including him, got sick. He started out good, but eventually got sea sick and remained sick the whole trip. His bunk was right next to the hatch that the sailors would use to get out of the bunk room. He was always wet from the hatch being open. He got so sick that they put him in the hospital when they landed at Liverpool. He got over it fairly soon. The hospital that he stayed at was an English hospital. It was very different from the hospitals that he was used to. If you were well enough to get up, you had to help with sweeping the floors, doing dishes, etc. He was there with two Scottish soldiers, friends, who were serving in the English Army. They were complaining that they did not want to go back to their units. Hinken wanted to go back to his, because he did not want to start out in a new one. Those who guys found out that if you put lye soap under your armpit, it brought your temperature up. Every time that doctor came through in the morning, he checked them and told them they had to stay a couple more days. (21:05) Eventually, he joined their battalion. He did not know how they knew where it was as it was a long ways away by the time he was fit to join them. He figured the communications were really good. He was based in England near Coventry. Coventry    At his base, the soldiers lived in Quonset huts. He described them as paper huts [actually sheet metal, of course, but flimsy-looking]. However, they were not too bad; they kept you out of the weather. While he was there, his unit did some training just to keep sharp, but nothing to extravagant. Since they did not have a lot to do, the soldiers got a lot of time off. He and a buddy used to take their time to traverse the countryside. �        One time, when they were on one of these trips, they came over a hill and saw fencing everywhere and police dogs. They turned around right away. There was a lot of stuff to see there, but he never went into London. Coventry was bombed pretty bad during the war; they had started bombing it before he arrived. The English had radar that helped them fight the German fighter planes. Germany did not have this technology at the time. (23:15) He cannot recall if he celebrated Christmas in England. One thing he can remember when he was stationed in England, he and others would always go to a little town called Atherstone and play darts in the Taverns. One thing they served a lot was fish and chips, it was some good stuff. They served this food in newspaper, because that is all they had. When they ran out of paper, they locked the place up. He went to a staging area before he left for Normandy. His staging area was South Hampton. Omaha Beach            It was so stormy that time. It was right after D-Day. The docks kept rolling up and down with the waves and they were having difficulty loading all the truck and equipment on the ship. (25:10) They were loading the equipment on an English ship; it had two ramps in the front. It was a big ship, like a ferry. When they got aboard the ship, they were given two pills, one for when you left and one for when you landed, because you would need it then. And he took them, too, and they really helped him. When they landed, none of them knew what they were getting into. That was the only thing that kept them going. If they had known, they would not have wanted to land. When they were in Southampton, they knew it was D-Day because they saw all these planes flying back with smoke coming out of their engines, and really beat up. Although he did not know exactly what was going on, on D-Day, he did know where he was headed. (27:03) There was an officer in his unit who was always bragging that he would be the first in his unit to land on Omaha Beach in their outfits. It turned out that they put those two ramps down on the beach, and they were ok, on fairly hard sand, but his sand had been disturbed, so it was loose. He went down right away, and they had to pull him out. He heard, but never saw, that some of those big trucks got so stuck in the sand, that when they tried to pull them out the front bumper or the front wheels would come off, but the rest just had to stay there. There was nothing they could do. Omaha Beach was peaceful, but there was lots of equipment being loaded and unloaded. All the balloons had been placed securely in the sand and that kept the German planes away because they could not get in close enough to attack them. �               Wounded soldiers were also being loaded and taken back. Just down the road was a Red Cross that was caring for them, and bringing them to the ships, to bring them back to England. Once his unit unloaded onto the beach, they took off, meeting at their required place. They took some newly built roads that were made, and packed down nicely. Before they left Southampton, they had put some gook [cosmoline] on the motors of the truck engines so they could drive in the water without being disturbed. However, after they landed, they forgot to take the gook off. So about halfway up the hill, the trucks were hotter than heck. They finally pulled all of it off, but Murphy’s Law finally went into effect after that, because everything they touched after that was wrong. (29:55) Once they got the gook off, they continued to the top of the hill, where they were supposed to meet. It was dusk when they got there, which meant they were late. When they got to the top, some of the officers were there. Most of the unit had gone on ahead without them, but they finally found it that night. They stayed in a little ditch and found some coffee pots and that’s when he knew they had caught up with them. They took some time to get organized because not all of the units showed up. No one knew where they were. His best friend, Peterson, had been with him since he got his draft notice. After they landed on the beach, he never saw his friend again. He had people looking for him; he went through all the registers and never did find him. (31:40) He went to the hospital where he would have been, went back to his home, and never found out anything. When he was over there, a speaker had told the group that if they needed help finding someone, she would help. Well, she never came back, so he thought she did not find anything. At the time, he was a tech sergeant, so he had his own squad. Once they got organized, the first thing they had to do was tie Omaha Beach with Utah Beach. It was difficult to do because there was a waterway and they had to go around it. Other men were ordered to tie it somewhere else. There were all kinds of orders being issued, so they wanted big cables too, not tiny lines. The French countryside is much like here [West Michigan] where they were. One thing he did notice is that all of their cows were red and white. He never saw a black and white cow while he was there. Going Through France (33:40)    He did not know much about the actual fighting that was going on. It was a few miles ahead of where they were. Sometimes they would get too close to the fighting and got sent back. Especially when they went to Cherbourg. They went to Cherbourg to rehabilitate a French line. When they got there, there were signs saying “This side road has not been cleared of mines” and that’s where they had to work. �                     They ended up doing the work anyway and without incident. Although he never went into the town of Cherbourg, he did hear that it was a little bit destroyed too. He saw many French civilians while he was there. They were out working, plowing fields and other things. There was a gal out there who had a tractor hooked up to a milker and she milked a herd of cows. There was not much contact with them, no one could understand anybody. They did have a few run-ins with them, but nothing big. (35:40) There was lots of evidence that a war was going on. There were supply rings, with trucks going everywhere. When you saw that red ball you got out of their way. He does not recall them being driven by black units, as was done later on in the war. He arrived in Normandy when the Allied Forces were stagnant in their attacks against the Nazis. This would last a couple of months. He kept himself busy until they were ready to head to St. Lo. It took them 20 miles and 40 days to get from where they were at to St. Lo. (37:10) When he arrived, he worked on fixing the lines in St. Lo. By the time they got there, the city was flattened. You could not see anything; a few walls stuck up here and there. He took a trip back there later on and it was a beautiful city. Of course, we (America) paid for a lot of that. Although there was a major bombing at St. Lo, he was not there for it. The planes that were bombing, did not bomb where they should have. Bombs were hitting a lot of American troops. Not long after that, the breakout happened, and they moved through Northern France quickly. He followed the front lines, but did not know how far back they were. They moved quickly, especially after Patton got over there. They finally got up to Versailles, where the WWI Peace Treaty was signed. After they got there, rumors started that Germany surrendered and they were going to sign a new peace treaty at the same place as WWI. But it never happened. (39:25) When they got there is was so wet and rainy. The mud made it difficult to move, but they kept on going. When they were done, not long after they moved on to Paris. They went through at night. There were all the fancy window displays, and there they were, dragging themselves through the city. It was blacked out, though he did not know why, since there were not to many planes around there anymore. They went through Paris and continued heading east, to Luxembourg. Luxembourg and Belgium (41:05)    He remembers they stayed over there one night. They found a little place to stay, it was a school. He found a bunch of little toys in the building. Right next to the school was a slaughter house. Eventually he left Luxembourg and headed for Belgium. �                      In the fall just before winter, everything was shut down. No one was going to work for the winter. The Americans were not going to do anything, and they thought that the Germans would not do anything either. However, the Germans were doing something during the winter. He talked to a soldier who was one patrol one night who had heard a strange noise, sounded like a different type of engine they had never heard before. He tried to tell an officer that they should investigate it, but the officer would not do it. He figured that they were just going to sit for the winter. A couple of days before the Battle of the Bulge, he and his unit were in Bastogne. They left and went to a small town, which did not have any importance, so they were just left over there. Eventually, the Americans were pushed back and they had to move again. They were still driving around, putting up lines, which is why they were in Bastogne. He remembers being in a tower at Bastogne and seeing how all the lines were connected at this one tower and spread throughout the city. (45:50) Christmas came about that time. They did not have a lot of food. He wrote home around the time, comparing Christmas at home to his Christmas there. There were no lights, music or food. All they had were K-rations. He also remembers a night when it snowed so badly. They had whitewashed the tanks the night before so they could blend in with the snow, and they did. Winter was very harsh. Snow was deeper than he had ever seen in America, and they were running out of supplies quickly. Guys were running out of boots, socks and long underwear. They just did not have it. Many of them got frostbite. Some of them were hurting so much, they did not know if their toes were going to come back again. A friend of his had the whole front of his foot frostbitten. When they were discharged, he was sent to see if there was anything to be done. He, himself, did not get any frostbite, but his toes were always cold. It was wet all the time. He remembers they found a shack one night to sleep in. It was so small there was no room for everyone. He ended up sleeping on a dining room table. (47:10) He was always moving, despite the fact that things had slowed down in the war. They worked for different outfits rehabilitating cables everywhere. When they crossed the Rhine, they found a really big German cable. They did not have many of those, so they used that for a long time. Made good use of it. When they moved into Germany. It did not look much different than what he had seen so far. Germany (48:16)    He did remember seeing a lot of grapevines across the hills. As he travelled through the many places across Europe, he did see a lot of the civilian population. Some of the guys in the unit knew a fair amount of French, and they conversed via these men. �            Some of the towns they wanted to go through had traffics issues they had to deal with. American vehicles would want to go this way, others want to go that. The medic assigned to his unit found a siren, though he does not know where. Sometimes at night, when they wanted to get through a town, he cranked that siren and the MP’s would scream “Let these guys through!” It was different in Germany. When he got there, there were these big signs out that said “NO CONTACT WITH THE GERMANS” That did not last two hours. People were back at it again. They crossed the Rhine at Remagen by train. He often wondered what happened to the Germans who let them all by. When he crossed, the MPs on it yelled “Keep Going!” because if anyone stopped, there was a lot of stress put on the bridge. (50:55) After they were across they went with the infantry and artillery units, straight into Germany. They kept moving until the Germans surrendered. In fact, when the Germans did surrender, they were in Czechoslovakia. He does not remember why there were so many troops sent to Czechoslovakia, but they were there. When they were there, they were kind of separated from many other people. But he did find out that his cousin was in another unit there. Unfortunately by the time he caught up to him, Andy was gone. He never did manage to contact him. After the surrender, they moved out pretty quick. They were sent to Marseilles, France. That trip took a while to move that convoy. After the German Surrender (53:20)          That was not a fun trip either. On the way down, they crossed a river. When they got to the bridge, it had a sign on it saying “This bridge was built by the 693rd Engineers.” This happened to be the unit his brother-in-law was in. They stopped there for the night and on the other side of the bridge, was the Engineers outfit. He finally wiggled his way into getting a Jeep from an officer and a driver. He went over there and looked him up. The man was quite surprised. It was nice to see a familiar face from home. During that time, he spent most of his time with the same people. Although no one sticks out in his mind, he always thought they were average guys, and very nice. But you almost had to be nice in the Army. Once he got to Marseille, they were given a few days off. They set up camp, and he met up with his cousin that he missed in Czechoslovakia. They would go shooting at a rifle range. They both had a .45 and they got some ammunition and go shoot out at the range every other day or so. It was not too bad there. They did not do any training at all. Mostly, they were just waiting for a ship. �     When it arrived, it was a big one. It held 5000 soldiers. He thinks it was a troop ship, though it held more than troops. When they went through the Panama Canal, they picked up even more soldiers. They left port July 2 from Marseille. And no one knew where they were going. Finally, when they passed the Rock of Gibraltar, Spain, they figured out that they were headed to Okinawa. They did not even know where Okinawa was. Okinawa was 400-500 miles South of Japan, and was their landing point. Okinawa (57:15)                When he got there, he never saw so much devastation in all his life. There was nothing. Some civilians would come out of some bunkers in the hills. God knows how long they were in there, while the Americans were just obliterating the place. By the time they landed, it was September 1. He went to work rebuilding some of the communication lines for some of the American outfits that were already there. He has a picture at home of a pole almost horizontal from different units climbing and leaning on it for work. It used to stand almost vertical. The voyage over there was 58 day on the water. That’s two months. There was not a lot of room to do much. Some of them did exercises, if they found room. Once in a while some guys lay under a piece of the ship, in shadow, and did some reading. This is what he did most of his time. He tried to avoid going down into the hold as much as possible. Sometimes though, on a Friday or Saturday evening the troops would put on a program or boxing matches. As soon as they got on the ship, one of his officers volunteered them to do KP. They hated doing KP back in the states, but when they were done with KP on the ship, they got to take a shower in fresh water. It was really nice. They ended up volunteering for the whole way and they kept it too. (1:00:04) They also had a chance to get the food they wanted and more food as well. They were sent to Okinawa to assist in the invasion of Japan. When they got there, they put his unit into the 147th Infantry Division [Regiment]. He does not know why. They may have broken up his unit and assigned them to different squads. Once they got there and heard that Japan had surrendered, it did not make much of a difference if they were in the 147th or not. He did not know how long he was in Okinawa, but he remembers boarding a ship and heading for the USA. Headed Home (1:02:01)    There was also bad weather on that ship ride home, but they finally landed in Tacoma, Washington, on Christmas Eve. On the next day, there were a cars lined up on the dock waiting to take some of the soldiers home for Christmas. That was so nice. So they did that too. This couple had two little kids and they were so funny. �                      A couple days later, they went into town and asked for the biggest steak they had. They were processed at Tacoma. When he was there, he went to the bathroom and left a small box of trinkets on a shelf. When he returned, they were gone. It was the first thing that had been stolen since he had first left home for training. There was a lot of nice stuff in there too. One thing was a star that they took off a Japanese officer. (1:04:08) After they were finished processing at Tacoma, they crossed the USA to get to Fort Sheridan, IL. When they got there, they got paid and sent home. It took a long time to reach Fort Sheridan by train. Most of the guys on the train smoked, and he did not. It was awful breathing in all that smoke. You could not open a window either because it was too cold and snowy. After he got home, he went back to work right away. However, he did not have a way to get to work, since he sold his brother his car when he left. So he got a car and went back to work. There was a special offer for him to earn a certain amount more for a year when he returned. He ended up returning to Michigan Bell. He worked there for a while. He did a bunch of different jobs. He worked as a liner, and in installation. Then he worked as an inspector for a while and different things like that. He really liked that those jobs gave him the experience needed in order to get another job in Grand Haven, at a toll place. (1:06:40) His experience in the Army gave him the ability to handle more responsibility. He would not have been able to handle that before any of his training. He recalled a story from when he was in Germany. They had autobahns and cloverleaves; they got on one of the cloverleaves and got extremely lost. They were trying to cross a bridge, but ended up in Holland, a long way off course. No one knew where they were, there was no compass or anything. They were stopped on a bridge by some Dutch underground, but they could not talk because no one knew Dutch. After they were satisfied that they were American troops they let them go across the bridge. It was a long night. (1:09:35) They finally got back on track and the captain was furious. When they went back to visit, his son-in-law played basketball for Calvin and was invited to play in Germany for a year. They brought him over for a visit. It was nice to visit things back. There is a cemetery in Normandy that has a shocking number of graves. 9,376 American war heads buried there. Approximately 300 are unknown and 14,000 others who died there but were sent home. A father and son are buried there, side-by-side; and 33 instances of two brothers buried side-by-side. (1:12:45) Disc 2 Supplemental Information (37:42) �                         Quick overview of first interview. When they were in Belgium, they came across Kaiser Wilhelm’s headquarters from WW I. It was way back in the woods; it was a beautiful place, kind of like a palace. Not only were they his offices and headquarters, but he had a lot of people around as well. There were pictures they found in there of the different Generals that served under him. He remembers a picture of Ludendorff; who was a principal commander. When he got there, it was pretty quiet. When you got into the building, there was a lot of stuff in the office, like the Kaiser’s telephone. It was almost set up like a museum, though he does not know for sure. (2:00) They used those headquarters as a place to rest. Before the Kaiser had taken it over, it was an orphanage. There were a lot of little crib-size mattresses, and they had not slept on a mattress in a while. It was very nice. The building was in nice shape too. Someone had been taken care of that place. Other Americans were coming, so they moved into the horse barn. It was a real nice barn. A couple of units stayed in there, since they had moved from the home. It was kind of sad. Quite a few years later, they went back to visit it. Although he knew about where it was, he did not remember exactly. They ended up asking another group of visitors for help finding it. They ended up taking them to the Kaiser’s place. The horse barns were all dismantled. He shared his story of having stayed there, and the gal said “you may have stayed in the horse barn, but we ate the horses,” they probably did too. (4:05) He was there around the winter, in late 1944. Another story… Just before they left the Battle of the Bulge, they were leaving and they saw a side valley with beautiful road and beautiful trees. It was just a beautiful place. His outfit got stopped there. They had knocked down a railroad bridge and they were clearing it out. They were there quite a while, and got really bored. So, they took their big jackknife and carved their initial in the trees. Soon, most of the soldiers were all carving their initials. They ruined a lot of really nice trees. 24 years later they went back and he was going down the same road and his initials were still there, clear as day. (6:15) He wishes to apologize to the Belgians, because he ruined a lot of trees. Next on the list… Gals in the white bathing suits He left the beach, and was headed to St. Lo. They took some back roads and ended up in a small village. On the outside of the village, there were two swimming pools. They could not read the signs, so they went in and the guys washed up in the swimming pools. In the other pool, there stood two French beauties in bright white bathing suits. Not skimpy ones like they have today, but they were sharp. �                         Finally, they jump into the pool and when they were done, they got out of the pool and sat on the edge. They looked at each other, and when those suits got wet, they were transparent. Turns out they were made of parachute cloth. So those soldiers booked it out of there. Many of the French people used the parachutes that troopers left behind. He saw some farmers cover up their hay with it. (8:50) While they were in Germany too, they found a German youth camp; specifically for 12 year olds. He confiscated one of their small helmets. You could not wear it, but he still has it today. They also had a lot of flags there as well, but he did not have a chance to get one of those. The camp was all boys. There could have been other places where girls and boys mixed, he does not know. It was quite a big camp. It was one of the Hitler Youth Camps. There were swastikas all over the flags and the helmets. He felt sorry for those boys, specifically one young fellow. When they went into towns they would confiscate all the guns. Well, they got into one town and the Burgomaster ordered everyone to just throw their guns into the truck. Well, this one fellow, about 10-12 years old ended up throwing his air rifle in the truck as well. He found it, but they were miles from the town. Poor kid, it must have broken his heart to throw that away. (11:00) Everything that he found and kept was mailed home, so they did not take it away from him when he was being checked to go home. He had a friend at the post office who said that he would make sure it all got sent home. The next story… bull fights. When they were still in Marseille, bull fights were a big thing over there. Advertising was all over for different matadors. One day, one of the guys asked if anyone wanted to go to a bull fight. So he figured why not. Truckloads of GIs went. He figured they must have known they were coming, because they set up a side of the arena where they all sat. When matador got the best of the bull, all of the French people cheered. But, whenever the bull got the best of the man, all the American soldiers would chime in. (12:25) He saw another bull fight where the bull got the best of the matador, and he did not know where to go. So the matador ran and jumped halfway up one of the wall and that bull charged after him. He thought the bull may have crushed his feet, but he does not know for sure what happened. Next story… Rope Ladders and Okinawa. When they got to Okinawa, the ship of theirs could not reach the docks. So to get to land they had to get down these rope ladders to smaller boats that took them to land. Guys from his unit had to go first. So many of the men were so weak that they could not hold on to those ropes. �                         They had to carry their duffle bags down as well, which did not help any. Some of the guys ended up dropping their duffle bags, and when they hit the boat, their stuff went everywhere. Men already on the boat helped collect the soldiers’ special stuff and put it back. It was kind of sad to see it all happening, and even more sad because some of the soldiers would lose some of their stuff. (14:00) Most of the men were weak because of the two-month journey and there was no place to exercise. Many of the fellows who lost their stuff were smaller guys anyway who were not used to carrying a lot of weight. When they got to the shore, they got into some trucks and went right under the wings of B-29s. They were astounded by the size of the planes. They were huge! They got the men out of the airport and got them to a field and told them to set up for the night. The next morning some of the natives were digging at the ground all around the men. It turned out to be a potato patch that they slept on. They did not sleep too well that night, because they did not know what to expect from the Japanese. He was scared. They waited for daylight, but when it came they waited for something else to happen. They got up and got to chow, and they found out, on a side hill by them, a group of Japanese with a sign. They wanted to surrender. The sign they carried said “NO SHEET” He knew they meant “no shoot” They did not know what to do with them. Luckily another unit came to their rescue. They got all 26 of the Japanese processed and the commanding officer said “ONE” and he put his finger up and motioned for one to come. So one at a time, they came fully armed to get processed. This happened after the Japanese surrendered and signed the treaty aboard the Missouri. (17:20) So these had been Japanese hiding in the hills, watching and waiting for a group of “green troops,” they did not want to surrender to anyone who served on Okinawa. So they waited until fresh troops had come. He figured they did that otherwise they would not have lasted very long. When he got there, he had planned on working on communications, but there was so much else going on, he could not keep up with it all. There was one fellow who had gangrene all over one of his arms. He figured that the man thought it would be the end of him, because what use was he? Instead they sent the man to the Army hospital to see what could be done. The Japanese seemed in pretty good condition, with a few exceptions, such as gangrene. When he got there, he was warned that the Japanese in the hills would come into the camp at night, dressed as Americans and steal food. (19:03) One of the men who were brought to Okinawa had a brother die there. He was really mean to the Japanese who had surrendered, though he understood why he was so upset. Next story… 90 days, no mail. �                     He had gone to Okinawa from France. It was 21,000 miles and 58 days. They could not send mail while they were on the ship, a little time before in France and sometime after when they reached Okinawa. So all the mail he received as at least 90 days old. His mother was so faithful in checking her mailbox, hoping for a letter. After 3 months, she finally got one. He wrote home quite a bit, much more than some of the others he was with. He would get letter in return from his mother, his pastor, and finally many different members of the church. Every month, his pastor would send a letter to all the service men in his church. There were 37 of them. It was so nice to get news. (21:35) During those 90 days, he did not receive any mail either. When he got to Okinawa, he received some, but he had to write home first. When he did send letters home, he only had a small piece of paper to write on, so he never sent a lot. Next story….. I’ll Be home for Christmas. When he first got into the Army, when he was at Fort Custer, he wrote home that he would be home for Christmas. And he did go home for a day. When he was in Europe, before the Battle of the Bulge, he wrote home that he would be home for Christmas, because he thought the war was ending. Unfortunately, it did not happen. When he got to Okinawa, he wrote home that he would be home for Christmas. He made it as far as Tacoma, Washington. And that is where he was for that Christmas. (23:25) The most scared he had ever been, was that first night at Okinawa. Also on the first night there, mongooses were running around. They did not know what to do with them, so they left them alone. Japanese were so good at stealing food from Americans that they would get into the chow line to get it. In, order to stop this, you had to know the guy in front of you and the guy behind you. Same went for the other soldiers. When he was in Okinawa, he did not see much of the local population. He saw one of them walking around now and then, plus the potato guys, but not really any more than that. (25:30) After the first round of infantry had come, many of the local population ran for the hills too. After a while, they did come out. He saw pictures of families that were coming out of these holes that they had lived in for a while. After the war was over, Japanese women were sent to get both families and soldiers out from the hills. Some of them did not come out for a long time. When he was serving in Europe, when it came to figuring out where he was, in relation to what was going on, all he could do is assume that they were where they were supposed to be. Many of the soldiers were not kept informed on what was going on throughout the war. (27:25) �                   Back at Camp Crowder, they had a real good marching outfit. They followed commands really well. Then, one Saturday, they had a dress parade one afternoon and all the big officers were there. One of the commanders forgot what they were supposed to say. So instead of yelling “Halt” he said “Whoa.” Some of the soldiers kept going and some of them stopped. It was a big mess, but really funny. They spent all that time training to get it right, and they messed up right in front of all those officers. The lieutenant who marched them up there was the one who forgot. It took time to get them all set up again. Another story… he held up a convoy. It was when he was in Atherstone, England. They were moving to Southampton to load up the vessels. They had a long ways to go and it had been dark. They had cat eyes, which were lights that had covers with narrow slits cut into them to let light through, on the vehicles. You were supposed to follow the cat eyes in front of you so that you did not lose your convoy. Well, he ended up falling asleep, and so did the driver of his Jeep, after they had come to a stop. Well, the vehicle in front of him kept going, but he did not move. So the vehicles behind him did not go either. Eventually, his commanding officer came around and he was so mad. He was glad that he had his helmet on so the officer could not recognize him. (32:20) When they went back to the Kaiser’s place, he took his son-in-law’s car, a small Volkswagen. When he got there, he had just gotten back from Australia and his daughter asked him to come to Germany. He wondered if he would have a job when he got back, because he was gone 6 weeks that summer. (34:00) When they came up to the gate of the house, the caretaker let them in. Before that, she was kind of scared of them, and tried to let the police dogs there out. But when he showed her a photo of him and she let them in. She showed them all around, but when he asked about the wine cellar, she said he was not allowed down there. At that time, it was a retreat for some organization and they were using it. While he was at the Kaiser’s house, during the war, the sleeping bag that had a full body zipper was introduced. Many of the men had issues with the zipper. He always had good food when he was in Europe. However, when he was in Okinawa, he always had Australian beef, which tasted like mutton. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hinken, Morris (Interview outline and video), 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hinken, Morris Description An account of the resource Morris Hinken served as a communications technician during World War II. He trained at Camp Crowder, Missouri, and deployed to England with the 32nd Signal Battalion at the end of 1943. He was based near Coventry, and went to Normandy shortly after D-Day. His unit laid and repaired telephone cables across northern Europe. He worked in Bastogne shortly before the Battle of the Bulge, and followed the army into Germany. Shortly after the German surrender, he was sent to Okinawa, arriving just after the Japanese surrender. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Byron Area Historic Museum (Byron Center, Mich.) BCTV Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Video recordings 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 2011-02-22 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HinkenM1079V 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/2d40063d897abb85ce9137e3dd240180.mp4 c542011c56061fea5fd1ebe66647c1ed https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d6d22cdf9f04a081add0ab02d83581ae.pdf a8218d49b9bd6490227280dff54df8fa PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Richard Hines World War II Total Time: 0:56:30 Childhood and Pre-Enlistment (0:00:16) • • • • Born in Bradley, Michigan on October 2, 1922. Went to Wayland High School and graduated in 1941. Father was a farmer and his grandfather was a depot agent for the Grand Rapids and Indianapolis Railroad. Father eventually followed his grandfather as a depot agent. Went to work, got married and was eventually drafted in February, 1943. Training (0:04:50) • • • • • Reported to Fort Custer in Battle Creek, Michigan and was there for 2 days before he was shipped off for Fort Lewis, Washington. Was in basic at Fort Lewis for 13 weeks as an acting corporal, and was then sent to advanced basic training at Fort Lewis where he was a sergeant, he then went to Army Maneuvers in Louisiana near Camp Polk where he was the staff sergeant and section leader of the 81mm mortars. He was then sent to Camp Phillips in Kansas to POE. In basic, he was trained by a New York/New Jersey National Guard Unit. He got some time off with 3 day passes. Learned the skills to operate his mortar while he was in training. He explains how he fired his mortar with his team. Active Duty (0:16:20) • • • • • • • Their mortar company always backed up a rifle company. He carried a radio to direct his mortar section and sometimes a machine gun section. (0:23:35) Was sent to New York and was shipped out to Europe on a troop ship with 15,000 men. At one point, the ship was attacked by the Germans. Landed at Cherbourg, France on September 15th, 1944. Walked throughout most of his service. When he replaced the 315th Infantry Regiment, he happened to meet his cousin, who was in this unit. They were in Lunéville, France and stayed there for a couple of days. Remembers the people of France being very kind to them as they passed through the various villages along the way. Got to the front in September. There was only one circumstance that they could remember that their mortar team was involved in close combat. �• • • • • • • • • (0:35:50) In January, 1945 he got a battlefield promotion. During battle he was taken to regimental HQ, discharged from the Army, and then sworn straight back in and promoted to Second Lieutenant. This became when he was an observer and took on some other duties. After the Battle of the Bulge, his unit [324th Infantry Regiment, 44th Division] was moved to give reinforcement for Patton’s 3rd Army. (0:40:50) Followed up other units when he moved into Southern Germany. (0:42:00) Got into Ulm, Germany and only encountered only very little resistance. Passed on into Austria (0:45:30) Saw Germans as they were surrendering, remembers the Germans being very young. Their unit took varying casualty amounts. There were times where they took heavy casualties but this was not the normal case3 (0:50:00) Was in Europe for a month after the War ended before he shipped back to the US Shipped to Camp Campbell, Kentucky, and was then given 30 days terminal leave until he was discharged. Post-Service (0:55:08) • Worked in the Trucking business after he got back and raised a family. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hines, Richard (Interview outline and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hines, Richard Description An account of the resource Richard Hines was born in 1922 in Bradley, Michigan, and served in the Army during World War II. During his time in the service, he worked as a mortar man in the 324th Regiment, 44th Division, eventually commanding a mortar company. He was in Europe, specifically Northern France and Germany. He spent some time in Europe after the War before he was discharged. He worked in the trucking industry. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Kentwood Historic Preservation Commission (Kentwood, Mich.) WKTV 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 2008-06-30 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HinesR 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/24efc9eb6291cc5e07de5cb27b76d4d3.mp4 4236eb314e43981fc352f40e3faa46b5 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0c5c8eda4a1fcbf98361360db671b817.pdf 1107c6ac2ca180196fe98e86c0c6a565 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Steven K. Hillock (28:00) Before the Service • Born on February 11, 1946 • Born in Clovis, NM (1:00) • Lived in Texas (1:15) • Farmed, raised cattle (1:15) The Navy • Joined the Navy when he was 17 years old (1:20) • Didn’t want to farm anymore (1:30) • Sent to Great Lakes, IL for boot camp (1:50) • Should’ve gone to San Diego for boot camp, but it was closed due to an outbreak of meningitis (1:55) • Very crowded (2:00) • Probably more afraid of failing and being sent home than anything else (2:40) • First day just passed out clothes and was assigned a barracks (3:20) • No special training (3:45) • Assigned to various ships throughout his career in the Navy (4:00) • Asked to be assigned to a gunboat in Vietnam, but it might’ve upset his superiors (4:30) • Was actually assigned to an icebreaker in Alaska (4:35) • Received a commendation from the Navy for helping a civilian ship during this time (5:20) • The work was usually very boring (6:30) US Army • Transferred to the Army after he got out of the Navy (6:35) • Went to Fort Bliss in Texas for boot camp (7:00) • Went to Fort McClellan in Alabama for Advanced Infantry Training (7:08) • Sent to Airborne School at Fort Benning in Georgia (7:30) • Broke his toes afterwards, preventing him from going to Vietnam initially (7:45) • Vietnam was cold, wet and dark (8:00) • Got in to a fight with a sergeant about being assigned to a leg unit, instead of an airborne unit (8:45) • Colonel stepped in, invited him to join the Tracers, a recon unit (9:00) • Tracers worked in 4 man teams (9:15) • Sent up to Forward Base 6, still with broken toes. Didn’t tell anybody about his toes because he didn’t want to be sent home (9:50) • First mission was rainy and muddy, high in the mountains (9:55) • Couldn’t stand up straight because it was so rainy and muddy. Slipped most of the time (10:15) �• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • By the time they reached the bottom of the mountain, he had a fever of 106, but didn’t let them call for a medic (10:25) Fever broke the next day, never got sick again in Vietnam (10:30) Mostly wrote letters to his family. Got a letter once every couple of weeks (10:50) Didn’t eat most food on base, never got back to base in time (11:00) Mostly at LARP rations, sometimes traded for C rations (11:20) Had plenty of supplies (11:50) Usually wore Tiger fatigues, just picked out what fit you (12:00) Wasn’t a whole lot of difference between a lake back home and Vietnam (13:00) Set up traps back at the watering hole, just like in Vietnam (14:00) Always went in 4 man teams, never solo (14:45) Went out for 4 ½ days, would come back for a day, then go back out again (15:00) Had many skirmishes, but few battles (15:50) One battle in 1968 involved the whole battalion (16:00) Went in, and several companies got hit at the same time (16:30) On mission, setting up an ambush they saw Ron Ely, who played Tarzan on TV (17:25) Was upset because he ruined their ambush (17:30) Went the most places with the Navy: Japan, Philippines, Australia, Alaska, Okinawa, Germany, France and England (18:45) Went to help Alpha Company, and there was a man who was shot in the side (20:00) Kept screaming for someone to help (20:15) Went, under heavy fire to go get the guy, brought him to safety (21:00) A week later he got a letter from his mom, saying they had a prayer meeting for him at the exact time that happened (21:45) Most of the men he worked with he had no problems with (22:19) After the Military • Angry at the military because the military wouldn’t give him leave to see his hospitalized daughter (23:00) • Left the Army over the incident (23:20) • Worked for Warner Bros. (asphalt plant) moving heavy machinery (23:50) • Doesn’t really keep in touch with many people from the military except for 2 of them (24:00) • Did not join any veterans groups after the war (24:30) • End of video shows military history and where he served (28:17) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hillock, Steven (Interview outline and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hillock, Steven Description An account of the resource Steven Hillock initially joined the US Navy in 1963 to get out of farming. After his duty was up with the Navy, he joined the Army to fight in Vietnam. Initially trained as an airborne trooper, he joined the Tracers Recon unit. They fought in minor skirmishes, and took part in some battles. While he initially left the military very angry, he does not regret his time in the military. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource TenHauf, Dustin (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 United States. Army United States. Navy 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 2008-05-06 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HillockS 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/d0d56568b45cab8eb390522f3a20cf72.mp4 5eadad01d8dd9b57618c1cd8180a5c89 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9b7fd262bf18a6f95bc92a766dca4a30.pdf 6bd9de863bf895d66262a8dab9588dad PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veteran’s History Project Name of War: World War II Interviewee Name: Armond Hillock Length of Interview (00:23:06) (00:00:23)Pre-Enlistment  Background o Took part in World War II.  Education o After graduating high school, in 1940, he started work at a telephone company (Michigan Valley) as a truck driver in Port Huron, Michigan. o Went into service in January 1943. o Lived in Jetto, Michigan, north of Port Huron. Enlistment and Training  Why he joined o Drafted into the Army. o Knew he was going into Sigma Corps and waited until he was drafted into Camp Crowder, Missouri.  (00:02:14)Training o Would hold a stone in his left hand to remember which foot to step out with first when marching. o Did menial duties (cleaning latrines with toothbrushes.) o (00:03:03)Marches, firing ranges (Hillock was qualified as an expert rifleman.) o (00:03:56)Was at home when Pearl Harbor (Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941) happened, already a year of service, but was sick with the mumps. Active Duty  Campaign Background o Served with the Army in Europe.  Duties o Stringing Wire was his main job, connecting Headquarters. o Didn’t see much combat. o Lost many men in his outfit to land mines.  Battles o (00:05:28)Battle on Rhine River, once had a shell hit the barn his outfit was occupying.  Other experiences o Didn’t mind the food, K-rations. o Didn’t have any recreational activities, played cards mostly. o (00:07:12)Would write letters to keep in touch with his family o Wrote his brother and mother the most often. o Was in Luxembourg during one Christmas in his last year, had pork chops dropped from an airplane. (3 days worth) o Didn’t bring back many skills that could apply to civilian life. �o His sergeant could speak fluent German so he would go into houses to ask for quarter. o Collected some German Iron Crosses and an armband with the German Swastika and some medals pinned to it (1917); medals from WWI and WWII; a Luxembourg flag. (00:10:15) o Was once headquartered in a town called Straubing, Bavaria. (00:12:06) o Remembers the midnight he left from New York to Edinburgh, Scotland, in the Queen Elizabeth (33 knots, 3 ½ days) when leaving for the war; remembers coming back to New York, as well. After the Service (00:13:28)  Going Home o Was in Camp Atterbury, Indiana; took a train from New York. o Was processed, paid, and discharged there. o Was still in Europe when the war ended, on the border of Austria. (00:14:23) o Had breakfast with the Russian soldiers, good soldiers.  Adjusting to Home (00:15:05) o Got back home and went back to work the Michigan Valley Phone Company. o Had some friends who had been with him from Camp Crowder to New Jersey to New Desert in California. (all of Hillock’s service time)  Other experiences o Belongs to the American Legion (00:18:30) o During the war, German soldiers tried to surrender to Hillock’s outfit, his Sergeant sent them down the road to surrender, instead. (00:19:14) o Took two hours for the columns of German soldiers to pass. o Feels lucky he never got hurt during the war. (00:22:35) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hillock, Armond L. (Interview outline and video), 2005 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hillock, Armond L. Description An account of the resource Armond Hillock is a World War II veteran who served with the Sigma Corps within the U.S. Army from January 1943 to an undisclosed date. Hillock discusses his pre-enlistment, enlistment and training in the U.S. He briefly discusses where his active duty took him; among many places he served were France, Luxembourg, and Germany. In addition, he briefly describes his battle experience along the Rhine. Hillock concludes by sharing some final thoughts about his time in the service and what his time after the service involved. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Claflin, Amanda (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 2005-05-03 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HillockA 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/7f0a13faab25132364d71385125a195c.mp4 e6e3551099a1d5197170ffe9b63d5ec8 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f1bb0a1b8c9075a50d13ccb4d1fa9862.pdf 3ce1e9b3e8db8494753d5197cb14eb24 PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW Jack Hill #2 Transcribed by: Joan Raymer August 13, 2007 Interviewer: “He is going to tell that story again, and when you grab your gun, don’t grab the microphone”. OK. It was dark, when it’s dark you don’t move at night, nobody moves because you’re always thinking the Japs will be coming in at you. This one night it was pitch black and I am in my hammock and I felt somebody touching my screen and I always slept with my .45 right on my breast here and I cocked it real quick and I was ready to fire it and Sawicki heard that cock and he started stuttering, he stuttered anyway, dddda, he says, mmmme, it’s me and I said, “what are you doing Al?” He said. “I was taking a leak and I can’t find my way back”. He didn’t want to pee by his own place. I’ll tell you another one about the hammock. They dropped down so matter where you had them, you had them tight and the trees would bend down and down you would be on the floor. 1:16 This one time I woke up in the morning, the sun had come up real fast and I looked up about this high, the top of my hammock and there was this big, big spider, a Black Widow and I could see the yellow and he was so damn big I could see him moving his mouth and you can’t get out of that damn hammock because it had a zipper and he was looking at me and I thought oh, oh, oh, and I had a pistol right here so I just went “poom” and he went all over and about everybody and his brother was running over to see what had happened to me. I had a hole in my hammock now and I don’t know how he got in there, but I was glad to get him out of there. 2:15 1 �Interviewer: “ You said the Japanese often came in at night and were a threat to you while you were sleeping. How often did that occur?” Not very often, but they tried to, but we got pretty sharp too, we saved tin cans, our ration cans, “C” cans and we rigged a line up so they would jiggle at night then. The wild pigs would run around and they were hitting them and we would think they were Japs coming in, but they never really—unless we were on the line fighting, but in the staging area, no, we were all right. Interviewer: “Did you guys ever use the native people for anything?” All the time, yeah, yeah. 3:15 They carried our ammunition and carried our wounded and took care of everything real good. I have a picture I’ll have to show you of this one, he was a white haired guy and he was the head guy of the tribe and I was smoking a cigarette and the one native he could speak English and the white haired guy was going like this (moving his hands) and I said, “Frank what’s he want?” He said, “He’s going to put a “voodoo” on you if you don’t give him a cigarette” and I had a Thompson submachine gun you know and I was sitting there like you are and I just took it and went “phoom” and put about 3 slugs right in front of him. I said, “you tell him, I’ll put them right in his head the next time if you don’t take that damn thing off of me” because they are superstitious, those natives are, they do a “voodoo” on ya and they say, they can kill a guy, one of the tribesmen, just by doing that and I guess they can. I don’t know how they did it, but he took it right off real quick. 4:39 Interviewer: “Ok, let’s go on to Leyte. Can you tell us about your experiences there?” On Leyte? Interviewer: “Yes”. 2 �I had a lot of them besides shooting the plane down, but when we first went in there we had sandbags, there were probably 100 in a bundle and we had a pile of them almost as high as this room, bundles. Interviewer: “I’m sorry, for the viewers, they won’t be able to see how big this room is, is there a feet measurement that you could use?” I would say it’s a good 20-30 feet tall and maybe 30 feet wide, in bundles for replacement, gun replacements and whatnot. These natives, they would come up, Filipinos come up and they knew I had charge of them too and they would ask me for one, a sandbag and I said, “no, I can’t give them away”, “you are de one” they would say, “you are de one”, well, I started giving them out you know and pretty soon they were all gone and he had made a suit out of them and dyed it white and you would think it came right out of a department store. 6:07 They didn’t have any clothes or nothing so, they made their own clothes out of these bags. They did a good job and they were good bags too, they weren’t no cheap bags, sandbags, and when we were leaving the Philippines, old General Gill said to me, “ say, by the way, where did you move all those sandbags?” I said, “uh, oh, I don’t know General, they’re someplace around here”. You know, he was pulling my chain, he could see the natives all had clothes. 6:45 It was interesting there. I felt sorry for the poor buggers that had nothing, in fact, Dave Ramotos, he showed me a lot of things about the Philippines; he sort of hung around by me and showed me things because I didn’t know a lot of stuff. 7:13 There was a main street there and a big house on stilts, they all had stilts under them and he said, “Jack, I’d like to—I wish I had some money, I’d like to buy that house” and I said, “how much is it?” and he said, “$15.00” and I said, “I’ll buy it” and I bought it for him. He couldn’t get— 3 �the whole tribe came over and had a chicken dinner for me. We sat there and they had coconuts and they cut them in half and put water in there and that’s what their drinking cups were. 7:51 I imagine their whole—uncles and aunts and everybody was living in that thing then. It was well built; it had a nice roof on it and everything. I always figured I owned and still own a home in the Philippines. It’s probably all down by now. Interviewer: “The Japanese resistance, the closer you got to the Philippines, what was it like? Were they tougher and stronger?” They were always tough. They were mean “son of a guns”. When I was in Australia, I talked to some Aussies, British people came in, escaped there and said that in Singapore they bayoneted pregnant women, with their bayonets, just rip them right open. They were mean bastards. Bataan, they bayoneted our guys, they called it the Bataan death march and it was something, you can’t describe it, you never—I could never tell you the horrors we went through. 9:05 There is no way you could tell anybody. I give you a little bit, but you have to see it, it would make you sick, make you sick. Interviewer: “Now are you a non commissioned officer? What responsibilities did you have and the other—the privates, did they look up to you? What kind of a relationship did you have with the privates?” Well, years ago, when I first joined the guard, they had a Major McNaughton who use’ to be the principal of Ottawa Hills High School and he was in the guards and he was in the first war. He didn’t go overseas with us, but he said, “I want you to remember something. Always take care of your men, make sure they got a place—something to eat and a place to sleep” and I never forgot that. I don’t know why he told me that, at the time I thought, “why is he telling me that, I’m just an old private you know”. 10:06 It 4 �ended up that I got to be the regimental Sergeant Major, Staff Sergeant and I had—my one buddy was General Snipke, he was a Major at that time and he ended up a 3 star General and after the war he wanted me to come back and join the guards, stay with the guards and I said, “no, I’ve had it up to here” and he said, “Jack, I’ll give you a commission right now as a Major and you’ll go right up the line with me” and I said, “thank you, but I’ve had enough of it”. 10:46 He stayed in and we stayed good friends, always friends and he got to be a Lieutenant General and he got sick later on so I made sure he was taken care of and one time I had him up to the hospital there, he had to go in for some operation, and I stayed with him and we were on the elevator and the nurse said—he always told me, “if you would have stayed with me, you would be a General” and I said, “I know that, yeah” and this nurse said to him, “I understand you’re some kind of a General, what kind of a General are you?” 11:31 He said, “I’m a 3 Star General, that’s a Lieutenant General” and I’m just standing there and she said, “what are you?” I thought, she didn’t know me, I said, “I’m a 4” and he started cackling and laughing and he never said a damn word you know. He was a nice guy and I buried him too. I buried a lot of my buddies, in fact, most of them. Interviewer: “Let’s go back to before the war, before you joined the National Guard. What was your life like?” Before I joined the guards? Well, I was a student. I went to school. The depression, we were coming out of the depression and there were no jobs and there just wasn’t a job. If you could make a dollar, you could make a dollar, so I joined the guards. Interviewer: “Would you like to say anything more about Leyte? Do you have anything else you would like to share? 12:56 Was there any urban fighting? Did it switch at all? 5 �We saw a documentary where they were doing a lot of building fighting instead of jungle fighting. Did you guys have that at all, or no?” I didn’t, no. No, ours was all jungle. Interviewer: “How did you feel about the men who came in to bolster the ranks, the replacements?” Replacements? They weren’t trained. You mention that and I had a chance to get 10 extra guys and so I went down to where the landing was and I picked up the 10 guys and one was a Sergeant and I thought, “boy oh boy, I got a guy who knows something” and he had been over in Europe and had been in the battle and got wounded and then they shipped him back to our outfit, but the other guys, they were young guys and one of them had glasses that were as thick as the bottom of a beer bottle and I looked at him and said, “Jesus that’s—are they getting short over there in the United States?”. 14:27 Anyway, I said, “were going up to the front now and you guys haven’t been in it and watch your step. When I tell you to duck, duck.” And so we went up and all of the sudden we got hell—it was the wrong time and the Japs were making a counter attack and I said, “duck guys” and this one Sergeant, I thought would take a lot of responsibility off of me, went bananas. 15:03 He went absolutely bananas. He started foaming at the mouth, he went right out of his tree. He hollered for a medic and I said, “give him a shot of morphine”, he knew what to do, he gave him a shot and it took 3 guys to hold him down. I said, “give him another one”, so the medic gave him another one. 15:19 I said, “take him back home, take him back to the landing”, so I sent him back, he was—he went—when it happens, it happens, that’s all. 6 �Interviewer: “Did you ever notice that in yourself or any of your men? The post traumatic stress of it all?” We always had stress, yeah, but we didn’t have that word for it. We just—you were scared, your damn right you were scared and anybody who says he wasn’t scared is a liar or wasn’t there. You’re scared all the time and if your not there is something wrong because you can’t describe it especially if one of your buddies gets killed, you wonder why in the hell you didn’t get it. When I left the Philippines I was going down to get that liberty ship and I got down by the beach and there’s the damn Jap Zeros strafing and they had some bomb craters, 2 or 3 of them there and I jumped in one and this other Sergeant by the name of Borgman, he jumped in the other one and he got killed right there. 16:31 I came up and I guess that’s the way the odds are I guess. You always think, “is this the time that I’m going to get it though”. You never know. I’m still kickin’. I still think I got that angel with me. Interviewer: “How many medals did you have by that time?” I had 29 all together. You know the best one I got though? I’ll tell you the best one I got, it’s from that tribe I was telling you about in New Guinea. Frank’s son is a banker now and he came to the United States and came to Grand Rapids and my son-in-law is a banker and he was getting homesick so my son-in-law said, “I’ll fix you up with a guy that knows your country”, so I got hold of him, he got hold of me and I took him down to the vet club and he was so happy to see me, that I knew his country and that I knew especially his dad and anyway, he went back home and later on I got a nice set of cuff links. 17:57 Those cuff links cost more than that whole tribe will ever make in 10 years, 7 �I know that, it’s a Bird of Paradise, their national emblem. I got them mounted too. They all remembered me. Interviewer: “When you got back to the states did you have problems with memories? Did you have trouble adjusting?” No, I had trouble staying out of the hospital. I ended up in the Fort Wayne Hospital, ya Fort Wayne in Detroit. They hauled me in there in the winter and the ambulance came to get me—cold, I’m from the southern hot weather and they hauled me in there with no heat in the damn ambulance and it ended up my 30 day furlough ended up 60 days. 18:56 So, I had to report back to Fort Sheridan and the Colonel said, ”Hill, you got a reservation on the train, the Chief, this afternoon, you got a compartment, General Gill wants you—you got a ship you gotta catch in San Francisco and he wants you on that”, this was when we were getting ready to join the—getting ready for the Japan invasion see and I said, “ok, I’m ready” so, the trains, people were standing up and I get a compartment. 19:39 So, I leave the door open and I didn’t care if people come in and sit down, that was all right, but I got as far—I remember getting to Denver and that’s the last I remember. 19:51 I had malaria bad and I ended up in Camp Stoneman in California, I don’t know how I got there, I don’t know who took me off the train or if the army came and got me or what not. When I woke up the doctor was working on me and I said, “I gotta catch a ship out here” and he said, “that ships gone” and I said, “boy oh boy, I’m going to be in trouble” and he said, “no you aren’t going to be in trouble, I’m discharging you” and I said, “you can’t do that” and he said, “I’ve already done it”. 20:28 About 3 or 4 days later, I’m headed back home on the same train and that’s how I got out. Interviewer: “so, how did you feel about the nuclear bomb drop on Japan?” 8 �Harry Truman saved our lives. All of us. They wouldn’t have gave up, those people were brain washed, just like right now over there. They had little kids fighting against us and he dropped the bomb and it saved me and saved a lot of guys too. 21:17 It saved a lot of people in Japan too. That was a bad one. You’re never going to change it. That’s one thing, we all bitched about MacArthur, but look what he did for Japan. The people forget that, some of the soldiers forget that, but he only had what he had to work with and guys forget that and we were the guys that he had to work with and we weren’t very damn good either. 21:47 A lot of guys they hated MacArthur and I did too at times, but then you start looking at the record of what he had to do with and I think he did a hell of a good job. He saved Australia and he saved Japan. Interviewer: “After you got home, did you continue to have memories about the war?” I still have them. Interviewer: “Can you talk about that just a little bit?” You have dreams; I have dreams a lot about it, about guys getting killed. There not good ones, there bad ones. You wake up and you’re still sweating and that’s after 60 some years, but you never forget that, it’s like a photograph back there, like a camera, you probably do too, you can think of things back. Maybe you’re too young yet. They’re not good ones, I shouldn’t say that, there are a lot of good ones, I think of a lot of the good times we had too, with the guys, you know. I’m very fortunate, I’m very fortunate, I met more people in my lifetime than anybody and that’s a fact. I’m privileged. 23:33 I don’t know what else to tell you. Interviewer: “I think that was perfect right there. 9 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hill, Jack (Interview transcript and video, 2 of 2), 2007 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hill, Jack Description An account of the resource Jack Hill joined the Michigan National Guard before World War II and served in the 126th Infantry Regiment, 32nd Division, throughout the war. He fought in every major action that his unit was involved in on New Guinea, Morotai and Leyte, and provides detailed descriptions of combat and army life at the time. 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 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 2007-08-01 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HillJ2 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/e0dddfab97dd2ddcef2d2eaf4c73d09e.mp4 955f68310c80bd4635e3828e1f856746 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3f7169a657a9d91c6912f60e04162f6e.pdf cbc64bc124c5f8edcbab56c164b384f3 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Jack Hill #1 (00:56:20) Transcribed by: Joan Raymer July 25, 2007 Interviewer: “When the war came around were you in the army beforehand, did you join or were you drafted?” I was in the Michigan National Guard. Interviewer: “For what? Why did you join?” Well, we were coming out of a deep depression and there were no jobs. Colonel Hayes was in charge of the guards at that time and he knew my folks and he said, “why don’t you come down and I’ll put you to work”, he said, “ you can join the guards and make a dollar a week, come down one time for a drill”. That sounded pretty good you know, no one else was working’ so that’s what we did. Interviewer: “Is that the only thing you had to do once you joined? You just had to do that one drill or what kind of jobs did they have for you guys to do?” Anything that came along, we went on maneuvers, first time and just basic training is what it was. 1:45 Interviewer: “Did you ever leave Michigan before?” No, we went over to Wisconsin on our first maneuver. Interviewer: “When were you guys sent overseas? Did you do anything before that? Were you sent anywhere else? What was your training like before you were sent overseas to prepare you for what came?” For the army? 1 �Interviewer: “Right.” We were federalized on October 15th 1940 and from there we went to Beaureguard Louisiana for training for 1 year. It ended up that I was in it for 5 years and at that time we made $21.00 a month and that was pretty good money. Camp Beaureguard wasn’t ready for us, it was just a big field and we had tents. 2:41 Then they got Camp Livingston which was about 15 miles down the road and we had bathrooms and good facilities. Interviewer: “How old were you when all this happened?” When I joined I was 17. When I got down to Louisiana I was 18, I had just turned 18. Interviewer: “Do you remember, form your basic training in the states, where did you go from there? What was your first overseas assignment?” From Louisiana? Interviewer: “Right.” Well, war was declared on December 7th and we were ready to go to Europe, but they sent us to Boston to Camp Devens and from Devens, General MacArthur wanted us. Japan had declared war on us so they switched us and sent us all the way to San Francisco and from San Francisco we went to Australia and at San Francisco they had no place to put us, we had a regiment, so they had a Cow Palace there and that’s where they stuck us until we got on the boat. Nothing was ready everything was always behind time. 4:02 The Cow Palace smelled just like a Cow Palace too and we were there for about 4 days I think, sitting in the seats, that’s where we slept. Interviewer: “What was your reaction to Pearl Harbor? What did you think?” Well, I don’t think anybody knew it was coming. It happened and we made the best of it. 2 �Interviewer: “So, you’re first overseas deployment was to Australia and from Australia, what happened next?” I can only tell you a little bit, on the boat if you would like to know, on the ship the Lurrline, we finally got loaded, they had to paint the thing white or gray, from white to gray and we left the harbor there and it was just getting dusk and it was—the waves were about 20 feet high and the boat was going like this and have you ever seen everybody seasick? If you didn’t get seasick, watching these guys throwing up, you’ll get seasick. I happen to not get sick. 5:18 We went down in—they had waiters down in the cafeteria, the dining room and this was a civilian ship, so they had waiters waiting on you and we had good food, but it took about 5 or 6 days for the rest of the guys to settle down from turning green so they could eat something. We crossed the International Date Line, May 7, that happened to be my birthday, so skip to the 8th and I asked the captain, I said, “does that make me a day younger?” He said no, he got a kick out of it. 6:03 After that it came over the radio that Bataan and Corregidor were lost and MacArthur, at that time I think he took 6 PT boats, his wife and some of his staff and he was ordered to get to Australia and we were quite concerned then because we were out there and had no backup in case we got sunk. 6:39 I’ll tell ya, there was one of the crew, Merchant Marines, that died and they buried him at sea. These sailors are superstitious guys you know and they came around and bet that we would never hit Australia, never make it and they started making bets with us, so I figured fine, if were going to make it I got the “Who’s” so I bet and made about $20.00 off them. When we got to Adelaide Australia they sure hated to pay us and we had to chase them all over the deck to find them. 7:26 Interviewer: “So, once you landed in Australia, you were shipped up north weren’t ya?” 3 �Well, we landed in Adelaide and the first thing they did, they put us on a train and the damn thing didn’t go more than 5 feet and it jumped the track, so we had to unload us and they brought some trucks in there, we call them “lorries”, they are charcoal burners and it took them about 10 hours to get us back to a camp, it was an open field again and so we stayed there for a while and then we took a convoy up to Brisbane and started Camp Cable. Interviewer: “What were the Australians like toward you Americans coming in?” We were their saviors. 8:16 Their regular army was over in Africa fighting, so they only had a few ground troops there left. They had nobody, the Japanese made a mistake and instead of going to New Guinea they should have went right to Australia. The Australians had given up half their country already; they anticipated they were going to lose that. Interviewer: “So, your experiences with them were generally pretty good? The troops themselves, the Australian troops that were there did they? ” 8:58 What they had, what troops they had were over in New Guinea and they were getting beaten up pretty bad. Interviewer: “So, from the north coast of Australia, from there you went to Buna, New Guinea and tell us about your experience going over there and what you thought when you got there.” Well, we had 3 liberty ships and everything had to be by 3’s so if we lost one, you didn’t lose everything even if we had a comb or a toothbrush or whatever, one was on----and MacArthur gave the order to pay us, I don’t know what the hell we were going to do with the money, no place to spend it so we all got in card games and we played cards. I 4 �remember one time I made—I think I had over $5,000.00 and I went to my Major, Snipke, a good friend of mine and I said, “Snip I said, will you see that this $5,000.00 gets to my folks because they could buy a home in Breton Village for about $5,000.00 brand new” and he looked at me and said, “Ok, on one condition, don’t come back and ask for any” and I said, “Ok”. So, I had about $500.00 left and I went back and about 2 hours later I was broke. 10:37 I went back to the General, he ended up being a General and I said, “Snip, can I have a little money?” and he said, “not on your life”, so we started playing for matches and whatnot, but we got to Port Moresby and unloaded the ships and then we started setting up the camp , tents and whatnot at Camp Moresby. Interviewer: “What were the conditions like at camp?” We were pretty good soldiers by then and we could get along with most anything. One thing, we had a little shovel to dig a slit trench or something with and we thought, “what the hell, we don’t need that” and we didn’t dig one. The Japs use to come over in planes at night and they were trying to bomb us or the airport, I think it was mostly the airstrip, and we would sit there looking up watching them and pretty soon our necks would get stiff and somebody decided to lay down and we won’t have to bend our necks and that got along alright and about 2 days or 3 days later they missed the airport and the daisy cutters came down and I was sleeping and I woke up, I was up in the air and everything was red around me, that blast, you could hear it, you couldn’t believe it. 12:15 You could hear it for a while, but I came down on the ground and you could hear a lot of the guys screaming and hollering and they got it bad, they were cut up bad. One guy by the name of Fletcher, he lost his kneecap and we had a doctor here from Grand Rapids, I’m not going to mention his name, but he was one of the bravest guys I ever saw. I helped 5 �him, I had to hold a tourniquet on him, it took the kneecap right off and the burnt flesh was stinking and he was crying and the doc had to take the rest of his leg off, which he did. 13:07 There was a whole bunch of other guys there that were bad and I told Fletcher then that the war is all over of you, you’re going home, but he didn’t feel any better. I was going around to see what I could do and I came to this one guy, he was cut up so damn bad, he just begged me, “shoot me” and I looked at him and I started to pull my pistol out and I almost had it out of there and I said, “no, damn it, I ain’t going to do it”, so I hollered for a medic and the medic came over there and I never saw that guy again and I never knew if he made it or not, but 30 years later we had a reunion and I saw this and I thought, ”gee, he looks familiar” and he came up to me and he said. “do you remember me?” and I knew who it was then and I said, “do you want me to shoot ya?” and he gave me a big hug. 14:10 I talked to him and he’s from Arizona now and he’s married and got 3 kids and we sat the rest of the night there talking and shooting the bull. Interviewer: “Do you remember when the first man died in your platoon? Who that was and how that happened?” Well, the first guy we lost was Cable and they named the camp after him that was in Australia. In Port Moresby, not Port Moresby, in Buna, going to Buna we lost quite a few guys. Ya, I held a couple guys in my arms, Captain Nummer and John Trill, he was a Captain and it always seems the commissioned officers got the killed quicker, it just seemed that way and they always are guys that---I was a Corporal at that time and I was offered a commission, our battle wasn’t going worth a darn, we were not trained or equipped right. We didn’t have the food, we should never been in that battle. 15:39 We weren’t ready for it, we weren’t jungle fighters. We had no training, we had equipment 6 �that was for fighting in Europe, not the jungle and no body knew anything about the jungle the officers didn’t either. For the first month there, it was bad. MacArthur wanted to win that battle; he wanted to win that battle period and we weren’t going that road. 16:14 Interviewer: “So, what did you personally think of MacArthur?” Well, A lot of guys didn’t like him, but they didn’t realize that he didn’t have nothing either. He had no equipment; he had nothing, he had just us guys. I know he wanted to win that battle, we had a General by the name of Harding, he was a nice guy, and he didn’t want us to go against the pillboxes, we were getting slaughtered, we were inexperienced to begin with. He sent General Echelbarger up, he was a 3 star General and he told him, he said, “I want to go up there and win this thing and relieve the Generals up there, I want you to win this battle or don’t come back” and Echelbarger he came up and he didn’t realize what the war was about and MacArthur didn’t either. 17:21 We finally won the damn battle, Macarthur told the General he said, “take the Sergeants and the corporals and make them officers, take the officers that won’t fight and relieve them”. I don’t think we had to relieve any of them. I think all of them were scared, hell, I was scared, and everyone was scared. Anybody that tells you they weren’t scared is full of bull. 17:51 When he come up there, he had 3 stars on his hat and I told him when he bumped into me, he said,”where is General Harding?” I said, “down here” where the headquarters was and he had his staff with him and I said, “General, you better take those stars off, you won’t be here the rest of the day, they will get ya, there’s snipers all over the place”. He looked down at me, he was a tall guy and said,”what rank were 7 �you?” I’m a Corporal”, and he said, “you’re a Sergeant right now”, but he got things organized and we finally won the battle. 18:37 Interviewer: “What did you think your chances of surviving were at that time?” Not worth a damn, I carried a Thompson sub-machine gun and a 45 and I got in a lot of scraps. I was with the Ausies one time on the line there and the Japs had us pinned down and I was just firing a Thompson sub-machine gun you know and some of the ammunition wasn’t worth a damn either, pardon my French, but I was firing it and all of a sudden it jammed so, I had to reach up like this and jack that shell out and as soon as I did, I had my hand on the trigger and it goes off and the Australian he was looking over to see what was the matter with me and he said, “Jesus mate, you almost knocked my head off”. I said, “what the hell are you doing standing for?” Well later on you know, I got a kick out of him and I got to know him pretty well. He came back after the war to Washington as an observer on the staff. 20:02 He came to Grand Rapids and he looked me up and he gave me the “Golden Kangaroo Cross”, not a cross but a Kangaroo. We shot the bull and sat and had dinner and it was interesting. 20:21 Interviewer: “What did you think of the Australian troops overall, do you think they helped you?” Good, you couldn’t beat them, couldn’t beat them. They were going through hell too. They had equipment like we had; we should have had tanks and whatnot when we started there. They had nothing. Interviewer: “Do you remember the sounds and the smells of the jungle? You said the jungle had a smell to it.” 8 �Not only the smell, but bodies, they would bloat right up you know in that hot sun. Dysentery we had, we didn’t have latrines, nothing, in fact half the time we didn’t have water to drink. 21:17 Interviewer: “Malaria, did you ever get malaria?” I had it bad. I ended up in the field hospital after we won the battle, I had another job I didn’t like, I was on the S4 staff and the Colonel said, “we got to do something with these bodies” and this was before we won the battle, so he said, “take care of this and make sure we get some graves started here” and I said, “well we got to get some”, we had some high ground there and that is what I had picked out, I’ll tell you a little later about the low ground, you don’t want to dig in that because it fills right up with water, but we had these graves all set and the body bags and getting these guys and putting them in a bag, it wasn’t fun. 22:33 We got some crosses and we kept on serial number in his bag and one on the cross, so we would know who was in the grave and I did that for quite a while and one time we were burying some of these guys and the damn Jap Zero’s came over and they strafed the hell out of us and we had a slit trench there and I jumped right in the slit trench, in the graves on tope of this guy and laying in there those damn Jap Zero’s kept shooting us and they were coming about this far above me so, I just reached around and pulled the body right over the top of me and I got below him, but we got that job done and the body’s—the stink was real bad. 23:35 Interviewer: “What did you think of the Japanese soldiers as soldiers on duty?” Good fighters. They were ruthless bastards. We were up against the Japanese Imperial Army; I think it was the 18th army. They had come all the way from—they went through china, Japan and all the way down through Burma into the Philippines and they were 9 �good fighters and they were ruthless bastards. 24:17 They would cut you with a bayonet just as soon as anything. They were well trained too, they had been through this and we were—they had foxholes that—and machine gun pits, bunkers and they had brains enough, they had been through it long enough, they chose the high ground, but we were stupid, not stupid, but we didn’t know, we would dig anyplace low and it would fill right up with water. 24:57 At Moresby, when we got bombed that time, everybody started using those shovels and started making slit trenches then, they knew what the hell was going on then, but we made a great big bunker. We cut down some cocoanut trees and put a top on it and we thought it would take a bomb. 25:22 Little did we know, they came over and started bombing us and we jumped in that damn thing and it was full of water and all the mosquitoes in the world in there having a field day on us. So after that we waited until we heard the whistle of the bomb coming down and we knew it was going to be close to us, so then we jumped in with the mosquitoes. We learned, that was just something we didn’t know. Interviewer: “So, what about prisoners then? Did they refuse to surrender then?” No, we didn’t like them and they didn’t like us. I remember back in Port Moresby, before Buna, this Australian or somebody brought a Jap up and he had taken him prisoner and was taking him back to Australia and this Aussie came over and said, “step aside, Yank” and the guy said, “what are you going to do?” and he said, “I’m going to shoot that bastard” and I didn’t like that at all. 28:08 He shot him and I didn’t go that. Afterwards when you get to know what they are doing to you, it’s a different ball game then. 10 �Interviewer: ‘So, from the Buna campaign and whatnot, you guys moved on from there, after that whole campaign wrapped up, where did you go from there?” After that, I ended up somehow, I don’t know what happened to me, but I ended up on the hospital, the field hospital, and I had malaria bad, It does knock you down, it blanks you out, and I’m in this field hospital and this guy—we were getting strafed one day and I must have come to then—there was a slit trench right here and I was laying on this cot and this old guy, he looked old to me, he was probably a young guy you know, about 35 and that was old and he said, “Jack you’re in bad shape and I want you to make sure you take that Atabrine and if you start to throw up, I want you to put your hand over your mouth and swallow it” and I said, “Ok” and we started getting strafed and he sat there and I said, “Ok, Ok” and most of the guys were getting in slit trenches there and I got to thinking later “now who is that old guy?” and they said, “what guy”, so I had a guardian angel. 29:56 I think he was with me all the way because I could of got killed a hundred times. I should have gotten killed, but I didn’t. Interviewer: “What was a slit trench? What did it look like?” Well, you dig a hole and if you didn’t want to go down because of the water, you dig it this way just so you can creep up and get in there about 4 feet down so if you got strafed or a Jap was shooting at you, he couldn’t hit you. It was just a safety net. 30:32 Interviewer: “What was religion like it you guys platoon? Were there a lot of Christian guys over here and the guys?” I’ll tell in there, you’re going to be a Christian in a hell of a hurry. Now that you mention that, we had a priest and they named him “the jungle priest”, from Wyandotte and I can’t remember his name no, he got hit and this is in the first part in New Guinea. He had his 11 �little bag there and there were 2 bottles of wine, so we figured hell, he didn’t need those so Gedris, Swickey and I, we decided to drink them and they’re both catholic, I wasn’t, so they started feeling guilty the next day and we decided we better go see the padre, so I said, “I’ll go along with you” and there was the old padre and they started confession to him and I said, “It was really my fault padre, I’m the one that got it started” and he said, “don’t worry about that, that was just wine”. You know, they do their thing over the wine they bless it and whatnot. 31:51 I think everybody is a Christian then. Interviewer: “So did you not go back with the division, back to Australia for that year?” Ya sure, I was probably one of the oldest guys with the outfit. I made every landing and from there we went to Saidor and then we went to Aitape, Hollandia, and Morotai Island and from there to Leyte and that was the longest I think. Interviewer: “What were those campaigns like in comparison to Buna?” Starting with Saidor, we had more and better equipment, we had something to eat, we had more and MacArthur was getting his things in, before that Macarthur had nothing. We had planes then, we were coming up good. Saidor, we had to go in by barge and we had practice before that at New Castle in Australia and we practiced on barges going in and I learned one thing, when that barge went down, you make sure you’re going off it, that you’re not going off in deep water, which happens a lot. 33:36 We had a guy, Al Swicky, he was short and we always jumped him in first and if the water came up too far, we’d pull him back. One time we were way out and I told the guy to get us in a little closer and he was afraid of getting bogged down and I called them the “damn Navy guys” and he said, “don’t you call me a Navy guy, I’m a Coast Guard” and we laughed about that one. 34:10 We landed and set-up a headquarters there, we had a radio and turned 12 �the radio on and here comes “Tokyo Rose” and she said, “we know you’re here, why don’t you just surrender now? We’re going to be over tonight and we’re going to bomb the hell out of you” and she was right, they did. I got it written down how many days we were there it worked out pretty good. At least we had hammocks to sleep in then and we set up a perimeter with cans, the pigs used to come around and they would rattle the cans and we would think the Japs were coming back to counter attack. 35:13 Interviewer: “What role did artillery play in the combat that you were in?” Not very much, I don’t even remember having artillery, but I think we did, but I don’t remember it, that’s at Saidor. We may have had it later, but I don’t remember any. Interviewer: “Can you tell us about your experiences at Aitape?” Aitape? Saidor, I’ll tell you a couple of nice ones later, we had these hammocks you know, we tied them on what looked like trees and you got your hammock on there and by morning the things would bend right over and you would be on the ground there good. There were a couple, Swicki and Gedris would pull jokes too and one time there was a bright moon and I had my hammock all set over here over here and I went to get in the hammock and I had my blanket back here behind my neck and I laid down and something was there and I thought it was my canteen and I pulled my blanket back and it was a Japs head that those damn guys put under there and soon as move fast that thing would just spin around, those hammocks. So, I got even a couple—we pulled jokes on each other every once in a while you know. This Al Swicki, he stuttered and it was dark, when there is no moon it is dark and you don’t move, you stay right where you are see and I always slept-- my 45, I had my 45 here and I don’t know, it was early in the morning and darker than hell and I could feel someone on my hammock, on my screen and I cocked that thing 13 �right away and whoever it was, he shouldn’t have been there and it was Al Swicki and he got up to take a leak and he got lost and he stuttered ddddddon’t shshshshshoot and I almost did too. 37:40 Those Japs will put a bayonet in you real quick, we had some good times there. About Saidor, we made a—between 2 mountains there was a big strip and we had B50’s, there were 6 of them that were running out of gas and we didn’t think we were there yet, in Saidor, and so they came in and they belly landed them as they came in, one would go this way and one would go that way, this way and that way and we were counting up the dollars and not one guy got hurt. 38:25 One of them didn’t make it and I see in the paper the other day that they had a picture, these guys were, military men, had this casket with a flag on it and it was one of the bodies of these guys in that plane in New Guinea after all these years and they were burying him at Arlington. Interviewer: “Did the government ever send out any entertainment to you guys?” Bob Hope, Ya, he was in Australia, Jerry Colonna but getting back to Aitape there, that was another one. Then we heard that the Japs were back and landing back of the Marines so, at that time we had anti-tank guns now, that’s another thing we never had before. 39:35 We kept about 4 of them on the-- where we landed, pointing out, in case they did come around us, we had some ammunition there for them. Interviewer: “Did they bring up tanks against you a lot?” The Japs? No. No. Interviewer: “So you were using the anti-tank as anti-infantry?” Yes, and barges anything that come in, they had tanks in the Philippines, that’s what you’re referring to, that’s when they come after us. Hollandia, that was another landing, that was on the coast, these were up the coast of New Guinea. That wasn’t a bad deal, 14 �they made that a—there used to be a big missionary there, it was Dutch. 40:38 Up on the hill there was building, a wooden building, pretty banged up, that’s where the nuns were. One of my guys Klocko, Aloysius Alfonso Klocko, he was getting up that way and one of those snipers was pinning him down and Klocko wasn’t that good of a shot, I shouldn’t be telling you about him, he’ll get mad at me, but anyway, I carried a Thompson sub-machine gun and I couldn’t reach them with that and Klocko said, “Hill, come on over here” and I said, “what’s the matter Klocko?” and he said, “that damn Japs up there and I can’t get em, you’re the expert shot” and I said, “give me that 45, give me that M1” and I’m pointing and watching and he would stick his head out and then he would shoot down and I said, “Klocko what eye do you want me to get?” We were just shooting the bull see and he said, “$5 bucks” and I said, “$5 bucks in the left eye” and he looks at me and said, “one shot” and I said, “Ok” and I made damn sure I zeroed in on him and I said, “damn it, I pulled back too fast and I got him in the right eye”. 42:09 That cost me $5 bucks and I never forgot that, but he was after us. Interviewer: “Were you ever in any trouble at all in the military?” Ya, I got court martialed back in Brisbane. I got on the Colonel’s staff and I used to drive him in the command car and there were a lot of accidents. We had a General Gill and he was getting ticked off at all the trucks getting in accidents and he wanted the M.P.’s to start giving tickets out so, I had the Colonel and Major Snipke, he ended up a 3 star General and he was a buddy of mine too now, they wanted to go to town so, I drove and I don’t know what they had to do, but they were in a hurry and I was going about 45 miles an hour, as fast as that damn car would go and the M.P.’s pulled me over you know and they saw who I had in the back seat and they saluted and wrote me out a ticket and I 15 �explained to him that the General gave the order and I got the ticket. 43:37 I figured I would throw it out, but 2 weeks went by and I got a call, this was in Brisbane at Camp Cable, to report to headquarters for a summary court martial. I said, “court martial, what the hell” so, I went up there and there was a whole bunch of guys, whoever drove a truck or a car got a ticket so, I went in there and there’s our General, a couple of Captains and a Major and some lieutenants you know, they really dolled it up. So, I went in there and saluted the Colonel and he starts reading me this article and I looked at him and he said, “how do you plead?” I said, “what is that for, I don’t understand it” and he said, “for speeding” and I said, “guilty”. 44:35 He’s with me and he gets up and takes his hammer and knocks it down there and says, “I fine you $15.00” and he reaches in his pocket and says, “here’s my half Jack”. Now that’s the kind of guy—he got killed, but that’s the kind of guy he was, a real prince of a guy. He was a West Pointer and he—when he first joined us he didn’t think much of the National Guards, he was a regular army guy, but he got to like us all. I got that court marshal and then I got another one. We were in the Philippines and we had all the—we had aircraft carriers, battleships, you can’t believe what we had there, we had the whole Navy. I looked out there at duck and I said, “I can’t believe it, were going into Leyte” and my barge was the first one going in and I’m going down the rope ladder and got in the barge and I said, “what the hell, there can’t be anybody alive”, they were blasting away. We got in there and some of the guys wanted to go down the road and I said, “stay off the damn road, were going in the bushes” and that’s where we went and the Japs, they were there and so we got in there and we got a headquarters and we started making the drive and 2 or 3 days later I was up in the front and I had 2 of my buddies and we had two 50 caliber guns, aircraft guns and I knew and 16 �any guy who had any experience knew the Jap engines, they run in reverse and sound all together different and it was nice light, just getting dusk and here comes this damn Jap bomber or transport, we couldn’t tell which it was, but we knew by the engine and my 2 buddies said, “Hill, what do you want to do?” and I said, “take it” and every other bullet is a red tracer so you know you’re hitting it see and we just riddled the hell out of it, you could hear it spit and sputter when it went by us and about 15 minutes later up comes the Colonel and “oh boy” you could tell by the nice uniform he had on, not greens like we had on, “who gave orders to shoot one of our planes down?” and I said, “I did, but it wasn’t one of ours, it was a Jap plane” and he said, “that was one of our planes, all of our Navy is out there, they all got radar equipment and did you hear them firing? You gave the order to shoot one of our planes down and you’re going to get one of the biggest damn court martial the army has ever had”. 47:55 I thought, “ maybe I was wrong” and he said, “I’ll be back tomorrow morning and don’t you leave this spot” and he turned around and went and “oh boy” It was my fault and I felt sorry and I said, “gee, I could swear that was a Jap”. You never know, he convinced us, but what he forgot was that it was a Jap bomber and it was below the radar, it came in low. Well, he came up the next day, next morning and he said, “Sergeant, that was a Jap bomber or Jap transport bomber and what they were going to do was try to take the airfield back” and he said, “I’m going to put you in for the medal” and I said, “I don’t need a medal, I’m getting the hell out of here”. I was mad and I felt bad all the rest of the night—killed your own guys. So, I went to our General Gill and he had that order out that he could keep you if you had a court martial, a summary court martial, in other words I had points, I had 300 and some points and it only took 125 to get home or get on furlough, home permanently, rotation is 17 �what they call it today, but I couldn’t, I had all those points but he wanted to keep us, the seasoned guys, so when we went into Japan he had the seasoned guys. 49:39 I went up and told him, I said, and he knew what happened already, “General, I’m going home on that furlough” and he said, “I don’t blame you” and he said, “there’s a liberty ship out here and you can be on it and go this afternoon”. I got the hell out of there and I got on this Liberty Ship and I think I’m going right back to the states and I could smell some nice bread so I went over and said, “guys can I have a slice of that bread?” I hadn’t had a slice of bread in 2 years” and they said, “no, no, can’t do that” and I didn’t get one so, I had a cup of coffee and we were on there a couple of hours and all of a sudden I look up and here come this damn Jap bomber right over the stack and I looked up and there’s the bomb bay doors open and I could see that damn bomb and I thought to myself, “this is the way I’m going to get it, on my way home”. 50:45 Well, he pulled that button a little too late and it went right over the bow and boy what a blast and then he circled and he was going to come in on the side so, I got on one gun and one of the other guys got on the other gun, the were 50 calibers, and we knew how to work them and we had both of those guns—every damn bullet going dead head right onto him and I bet it wasn’t 200 yards away from us and I kept thinking, “what the hell is keeping him up, he’s going to end up hitting us” and all of a sudden “Pfff” we blew him up. 51:31 At this time we’re mad as hell because they didn’t have anybody on the ship to take care of that stuff. We went to find the Captain and it was an Ensign, he was a young black sailor, Captain, we called him the Captain and he said, “this is my first time out” and we were surprised because very seldom would you see a black officer and I said, “well whatever you’re doing, just get us going” and I said, “if he radioed back we’re going to have some more problems, so 18 �we’ll take care of the guns” and he said, “Ok” and he had radioed down and that liberty ship was going like hell. 52:20 I said, “where you headed for?” and he said, “I’m headed for landing in Hollandia, New Guinea” and I said, “you’re not either” and he said, “Ya” and I said, “I’m supposed to go to the United States” , well that’s where we went and we didn’t get hit again, we made a safe trip. Anyway, getting back to that bread, I said, “I sure would like a slice of bread” and he said, “I’ll give you a whole damn loaf” so, we got some bread. 52:50 We got back to Hollandia and then we waited and I had to get on the Lurrline, the Lurrline, I couldn’t wait, that was going to the United States, but there was a whole bunch of Canadians on there so, we get on the Lurrline, it’s the big ship we came over on and it’s going back to Brisbane to take these sailors so, I went back to Brisbane. Well, I ended up in the hospital, I never made it any farther, I never made it off the boat and we sailed back to the United States. 53:24 I have another cute little story. The Captain of the Lurrline, he always said, “if a man goes overboard we’re not stopping to pick him up”, you know, Jap subs, and we had a couple of guys that were shell shocked and he had a pair of short on, white shorts and somehow he got out and he jumped off the boat, off the ship, someone threw him a life preserver, one of those round ones and he’s paddling away from the ship and we stopped the damn ship and turned around and lowered a life boat and 2 of the sailors got on and went after him and one sailor watched him and he took his oar and hit him in the back of the head, “pow”. We thought, he really had to be nuts doing that going home, going over it would have been different. 54:26 Interviewer: “Can you tell us about your experiences at Morotai?” 19 �Ya, that was an island about oh let’s see, maybe about 20 miles long and I’m guessing now, maybe 4 miles wide and it use to be an airstrip and we needed to take that landing strip so the planes could from there go to the Philippines, they couldn’t reach the Philippines without that. So, they took photographs of it and it looked just like a nice landing strip. 55:18 They dropped us off there and it looked pretty, but the Kunai grass is up to here and that’s like a razor that grass. The photographs showed just the bottom part of the field so, we went in and hacked our way in and about halfway in we set up a headquarters and the Colonel said, “well, where are we?” and I said, “ right about here sir”, I had the maps and he said, “oh, ok, how did you know that?” I said, “I got the map” and he said, “oh”. He was our West Pointer and he always said, when he got this job, when I got the job for him, he said, “Jack, I’ll tell you one thing, when I ask you something don’t ever, ever tell me you don’t know, say I’ll find out”. 56:20 When I told him that, he looked at me and he got that grin on his face and he knew what I meant. He was just—I didn’t say, “I don’t know”. We took that and about 2 days later the engineers came in, the army engineers, they mowed that stuff down and we had planes flying out of there. Continued Jack Hill tape #2 20 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hill, Jack (Interview transcript and video, 1 of 2), 2007 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hill, Jack Description An account of the resource Jack Hill joined the Michigan National Guard before World War II and served in the 126th Infantry Regiment, 32nd Division, throughout the war. He fought in every major action that his unit was involved in on New Guinea, Morotai and Leyte, and provides detailed descriptions of combat and army life at the time. 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.) Video recordings United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans 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 2007-08-01 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HillJ1 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/cb983248322404a5d9b5a54f3d9ff170.mp4 a198cbddd4e57758bd312c89b9d90da8 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d7a5b892b306ecb002931ff83d090151.pdf cce50073698c7906c73a317c29fe4075 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Kenneth Hicks (1:11:21) (00:05) Background Information • • • • • • Kenneth had always wanted to fly when he was a little boy He built model airplanes with his father After high school he went to Michigan State University and trained in the ROTC He took classes in mechanical engineering, but they were boring That October he volunteered for the Air Force in Lansing He received his acceptance letter in February (2:20) Air Force Cadet • • • • Kenneth took a train from Detroit to Miami beach and stayed in a hotel right on the beach He only went through basic training for a short while and then was sent to Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania There they tested the men’s intelligence to see if they would be able to fly well Kenneth made the top twenty percent (4:20) Tennessee • • • • Kenneth went to Nashville, Tennessee for classification They stayed on an Army base that had been hastily thrown together They went through physical training and testing They also had depth perception testing (6:00) Alabama • • • • He was then sent to the Maxwell Air Force base in Montgomery, Alabama They had a class system and all the new guys were on the very bottom The inspections were rough and people were de-merited for a penalty They went through more physical training, took classes, went through more testing, and worked on plane identification (8:25) First Primary Flying School • Here they had civilian instructors who knew many different languages �• • • They were attempted to teach each many to fly solo within 8 hours of actual flight training Kenneth did not get along well with his flight instructor, but was able to learn the techniques within the 8 hours They only spent 60 hours in flying school altogether (10:40) Basic Training • • • • Kenneth worked with BT-13s and BT-15s; the 13s had the best engines He had an oil leak once and had to call the control center for help and ended up landing in the grass next to the run way They practiced night flying and he got vertigo; then he learned it was always best to just trust what the plane instruments are reading Another time flying he got stuck in a spin at 4,000 feet in the air and was diving right towards the ground (14:15) Arkansas • • • • • • • Kenneth went through advanced training in Arkansas He was able to fly a AT-10 twin engine, which was very light While flying he got stuck in 70 mile winds and could not land; he had to fly in circles for a long amount of time They received their wings and were now “real pilots” Then they had to decide whether they wanted to be a fighter pilot or work with multiengine bombers Kenneth went to Sebring, Florida for transitional training to work on multi-engine bombers They worked with old planes, but they had very good instructors (19:20) Avon Park, Florida • In Florida his crew was being formed with a bomber, navigator, co-pilot, etc… • There were ten people in a crew, with six enlisted men • His crew was then sent to Savannah, Georgia to an air base • They received a new B-17 straight from the factory and had to calibrate all the instruments • They were ordered to fly the plane to England (22:45) The Flight to England • They had to stop in Maine first for a few days due to the weather • Then they stopped in Labrador and then stayed in Greenland for a week • They went to Iceland and then to Wales and England �(27:30) The 447th Bomb Group of the 3rd Division • They took a train across England and arrived at an air base • All their assigned missions were hung up in the barracks • At the time London was being bombed by Germans, but the Germans were running low on oil • They started on some practice missions and the crew was divided in half • Kenneth did not like being divided, and then they decided to always fly as a whole crew (38:55) German Fighting • Most of the German fighters were gone and they mostly just faced flak • The Germans had started out with 88 mm guns, then went to 105 mm guns, and had 150 mm guns at the end of the war • There was no heat in the planes and they wore suits that plugged into the planes (52:00) His Premonition • Kenneth felt that he would die on the next mission that was assigned to him • He wrote his mother a letter asking her to propose to his girlfriend for him; she did not • Strangely his next mission was cancelled due to bad weather (55:00) Florida • Kenneth went to see a fortune teller in Orlando • She told him that he would come back safely and that his highest rank would be captain; she was right • On his second tour, Kenneth became an operations manager • He remembers his last mission well because it was so long; more than 9 hours • He had to pick up twenty men and bring them out of Germany • At the airport, someone stole his 45-automatic (1:01:45) Back in the US • Kenneth was worried that he would not be able to find a job because he viewed pilots as a “dime a dozen” • He got married and has been with his wife Virginia for sixty years (1:03:50) Selecting Targets • They were told of their route during briefing where they would be given their targets • The whole crew went to the briefing to be told their separate duties • A lead ship would drop a smoke bomb near the target to mark it • Sometimes the head ship would drop bombs in the wrong spot �• They also had to occasionally drop down leaflets to German citizens � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hicks, Kenneth (Interview outline and video), 2007 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hicks, Kenneth Description An account of the resource Kenneth Hicks served in the 8th Air Force as a B-17 pilot based in England in 1944-45. He provides extensive descriptions of the training process and his experience with bombing missions in the later stages of the war. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans United States. Air Force World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Video recordings Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007-07-02 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HicksK 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/e6db6f3f9f9248df2432092036687175.mp4 0f9ac118eb0e9b9509f94d39d7b9e9fe https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/564cdf62834accd5a2dc8f405a3761bd.pdf a282db51d703db4e02f12bf0789f09cc PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Steve Hickel (00:30:26) (00:10) Background Information • • • • • Steve was born in Cleveland, OH in 1956 He attended Duquesne University, Notre Dame University, and another university overseas Steve was able to receive a student deferment during the Vietnam War He attempted to become an officer in the Coast Guard but they weren’t accepting many at the time On June 6, 1975 Steve joined the Navy as a Sonar Technician (02:15) Boot Camp and Training • • • Steve was on Recruit and Training Command in San Diego, CA for 16 weeks He was in charge of liberty passes and paperwork After boot camp Steve went to a sonar basic school called Fleet Anti-Submarine Warfare Training Pacific Fleet • (05:05) Active Duty • • • • • • • After sonar basic Steve made 3rd class Petty Officer (E4) Steve then boarded a submarine in Groton, CT called the USS Whale SSN 638 which was a fast attack nuclear sub The submarine traveled went to La Molina, Italy and deployed to the Mediterranean Sea They conducted under water operations and went to various ports, such as Naples, Italy The sub then returned to the US at Portsmouth, NH, a repair station for subs The goal for a fast attack sub was to find enemy subs, monitor them and if necessary blow them up The best defense against a sub was another sub (09:35) 2nd Deployment • • The Submarine traveled to many other areas throughout the Pacific The only casualty was on a sub docked next to theirs when a topside watch fell overboard at night and drowned (11:30) Memorable Experiences �• • • • • • • Steve enjoyed eating different food when on leave in different countries On leave he went to Perth, Australia, Guam, Naples, and Subic Bay in the Philippines He also traveled to New Zealand with his wife They did emergency blows, where they would blow the subs ballast tanks and shoot up out of the water Sometimes they were able to listen to whales with the sonar They often attempted to listen to and record enemy subs and identify them He spent a lot of time overseas and became qualified for Sub Enlisted, Sub Officer and then Supply Officer (14:50) Medals • • • • Steve received a Navy Commendation Medal in Philadelphia for services as a Transportation Officer and a Traffic Manager for the base As a reservist working for the Defense and Finance Accounting Service, he got the Defense Meritorious Service medal He was called up to be a Commander in 1995 working for Admiral Smith who was in charge of Bosnia He put in computer systems in 4 or 5 different countries for foreign currencies so they could pay their bills and received another Meritorious Service Medal (16:25) Keeping in Touch with Family • • • Steve called his wife once on a phone attached to a buoy from 200 feet under water His wife had an accident and when they surfaced he received a radio transmission of the news In Europe he could use phone, Email and fax (18:05) Food • • • When Steve was the Supply Officer he had to make sure the galley ran and the crew got fed They had steak and lobster occasionally The subs got more money for food so they had better quality and variety (19:45) Stress • • Steve had to oversee many qualifications, learn the systems, order parts, manage the budget, make sure the food was served on time, deal with personnel problems, stand watch and get ready for inspections He did not get a lot of sleep; he sometimes had to go 18 hours without sleep �• They sometimes went through secret drills meant to train people to act in stressful situations with little sleep (21:45) Entertainment • • • • • Everyone smoked but the sub had an air filtration system He ate a lot and watched films in the evening after dinner They would go to bars and discotheques and drink sometimes There were drug issues and one third of his crew got kicked off for smoking marijuana He took some pictures that he still has many of � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hickel, Steve (Interview outline and video), 2005 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hickel, Steve Description An account of the resource Steve Hickel was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1956. He attended several colleges and then enlisted in the Navy on June 6, 1975. He started out as a Sonar Technician on a nuclear fast attack submarine. Their mission was to find enemy subs, monitor and record them and if necessary destroy them during the Cold War. He was first sent to the Mediterranean Sea where he became an officer and then traveled around on the Pacific Ocean. Steve was called back as a Commander in 1995 and went to Europe to install computer systems. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Gascho, Luke (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 United States. Navy 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 2005-05-29 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HickelS 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/2e313e1b25df81ccc9306036309b3d4c.mp4 3256d00907c05a802539a39590fbcf9c https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d51577222e23d8c67e1e877a3d29cfb7.pdf 5ceef65ddb311694906694823a01b50d PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Todd Herrick (32:59) (00:35) Army Reserve • • • • • Todd was born on January 19, 1971 and enlisted in the Army Reserve in 1989 He started as a Private E-1 training in Jackson, SC He was promoted to Sergeant First Class E-7 Todd got his Masters Degree at the University of Notre Dame and then became a commissioned officer He took command of the 855th Quartermaster Company in August of 2002 (1:15) Training • • • • • • Todd went to basic officer training in Virginia He was the detachment commander of an oil platoon He took over the quartermaster position after that They were mobilized January 23, 2003 and began their MOS training Many men trained in marksmanship, survival skill, communications, and first-aid It was different and unique being in command; Todd felt more comfortable and confident (3:20) Iraq • The Army had initially prepared to enter the country through Turkey, but Turkey’s government had changed their mind • The Army re-routed their operation to go through Kuwait, but the country had not been equipped for that amount of land traffic • They spent a lot of time on the road and Todd spent much time keeping track of supplies • He made many good friends, especially with the platoon leaders, but had to also keep a professional distance from the younger soldiers • The base camp was not yet well developed and communication was difficult, but it was running very smoothly after one year (8:15) Similarities between Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom • Both conflicts were different in the way that that civilian population interacted with the soldiers, the landscape and architecture did not change much • The second time Todd went much farther into Iraq and saw a lot more of the country • He had lots more responsibilities and freedom of movement • Memories from his second time seem to be much more vivid �(10:33) Conditions in Iraq • Many of the civilians were living in poor conditions that we would consider uncivilized • The breaking down of vehicles was always scary, even during the day • They were never lacking in fuel, water or food, but did not always have the best equipment (13:40) Desert Storm • Desert Storm started with Desert Shield, which was a long logistical build up within Saudi Arabia • Todd was in college waiting for his reserve company to be mobilized • He got a call while home on Christmas break asking if he would join a different company in Tennessee that was short on men • Todd volunteered to join the 346th MP Detachment, leaving the 478th Engineering Battalion • The transfer was hard for Todd because he was inexperienced and naïve • He became a supply sergeant and had to learn his duties very quickly (19:20) Beginning of Desert Storm • There had been disputes regarding the oil reserves near Kuwait, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia • Iraq had annexed Kuwait and there was much anxiety that they would move on South into Saudi Arabia • US troops entered into Saudi Arabia on August 10, 1990 and continued to build up for 7 months • The UN demanded that Iraq recognize the sovereignty of Kuwait and later authorized other organizations and states to use military force against Iraq • Iraq was out of Kuwait by January, with the operation barely lasting one month • Todd had arrived in Iraq at midnight and it was well over one hundred degrees and was later attacked within a few hours after arriving • He had been the youngest soldier in his group and therefore had the default assignment of driving and maintaining the vehicles (25:10) Closing of Desert Storm • Todd had been working with the support unit of the 800 MP Brigade, processing prisoners • The prisoners were later sent back to Iraq or left in the hands of the Saudi government and they no longer had much to do in the area • Todd had arrived in the area on January 27th and was already out by May • Upon arrival in the US, there was much excitement, euphoria, and patriotism • On the way home, the airline gave them everything and anything they wanted to eat and drink �• His parents threw him a big party and he had a great time (30:15) Reflection • Todd had been in the Army Reserve for 19 years and would soon be retiring • Looking back, he would not change a thing regarding his military experience • He has had great success, together with huge losses � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Herrick, Todd (Interview outline and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Herrick, Todd Description An account of the resource Todd Herrick was born on January 19, 1971 and joined the Army Reserve in 1989. He served in transportation and military police units, and went on active duty and served in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq during the Gulf War of 1991 and again during the Iraq war in 2003. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Herrick, Taryn (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans United States. Army Reserve Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American Iraq War, 2003-2011--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 2008-05-24 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HerrickT 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/7732fed5a64c6608ce06485bf842a92a.mp4 bec3257f037a4f140b1321a5d47fd1ef https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e873bb8d5458dd399169283f7f1272b5.pdf 5aa64e6feccc819a4d5d7476ed01f31f PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Vietnam War Michael Hennessy 1:21:47 Introduction (00:20)        Mike was born January 6, 1949 in Savannah, Georgia. His father was a World War II veteran who served in the artillery as a second lieutenant. After the war, he went to business school and joined the Georgia National Guard; he retired from the Army Reserves in 1973 a full colonel. His mother was from Savannah, and was a registered nurse but she stayed home with Mike and his two siblings, a brother and sister. When he was in high school, he attended Benedictine Military School and graduated in 1967. (02:43) Since it was a military school, it was also an ROTC. His senior year he was the cadet colonel and commanded the cadet brigade. After high school, Mike went to the University of Georgia for a while but returned home and went to the Armstrong State College. At the end of 1968, he was getting tired of school. During his sophomore year of college, Mike decided to enlist in the United States Army. Military Training (04:03)    Mike went to basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina and then attended Airborne AIT (Advanced Infantry Training) at Fort Gordon, Georgia and then went to OCS (Officer Candidates School) at Fort Benning, Georgia aka Benning School for Boys. (04:23) He spent 22 of the 24 weeks at OCS, when he decided that he did not want to go to Vietnam as a second lieutenant, so he turned down his commission and was assigned to be a eleven bravo ten (light weapons infantryman). Mike was given thirty days leave and then reported to Fort Lewis, Washington and flew out on May 15, 1970. Vietnam (05:48)    He arrived in Vietnam through Cam Ranh Bay, and after being processed he was assigned to the 101st Airborne. Mike attended SERTS (Screaming Eagle Replacement Training School) when he first arrived at the 101st. After that, he was assigned to Delta Company, 1/506th Infantry at Camp Evans. Evans was located north of the city of Hue. Mike joined the company around the 29th of May with several other new men that were also assigned to the 101st, including Lieutenant John Smith who became Mike‟s platoon leader. (07:08) He was flown out to Firebase Katherine, and it was there that he finally met up with his company. Mike was sent to the 2nd Platoon, 2nd Squad. �               Life on Katherine was boring, but they had a place to sleep, and they got at least one hot meal a day. They were there a couple of weeks and during that time he was able to get to know the men he was serving with and they got to know him. When they left Katherine in June, they went to Firebase Ripcord. It was quiet on Ripcord. They knew the enemy was outside the wire, but they did not engage them. The unit was then sent to Firebase Bastogne, down in the southern part of the 101st AO (Area of Operation). Around that firebase, they conducted patrols through the jungle, but were shortly after sent back to Ripcord. Due to inclement weather, they were detoured to Camp Evans and had a short stand down that resulted in a party with steaks and lots of drinking. (09:53) The next day when they flew out of Evans, the majority of the company was hung over. They arrived on July 18 and landed on a hilltop near Ripcord. That same afternoon, a Chinook helicopter crashed on Ripcord, which could be seen in the distance. The helicopter landed on the 105mm Howitzer Battery that was stationed there and it also destroyed the ammo dump. On July 19, Mike was sent on a reconnaissance patrol that walked down into a valley and discovered a cave that had about a dozen dead NVA soldiers that had been there for a while. (12:08) After searching the bodies, they brought back some documents that were written in Vietnamese. The climb back up the hill was difficult. Since he had not been in combat, he and the other new guys were very jumpy. When they were dropped in a hot LZ, Mike was riding in the helicopter and he saw what looked like Christmas lights coming out of the jungle, which turned out to be people shooting at him. One of the choppers was hit going in but made it back to Camp Evans. On the side of the LZ were large trees followed by the tree line. They were instructed to get to the wood line and he had to hurdle downed trees to make it there. (15:37) 1st and 2nd platoons set up a defensive position on the right side of the LZ and then broke for lunch. As Mike was eating his c-rations, the machine gunner that was watching a nearby trail jumped up and yelled “Chieu Hoi Mother Fucker” and began firing. There were three NVA soldiers coming down the trail just talking and jabbering because they had no idea that Delta Company was there. (17:06) They later learned that the three NVA were on a work detail digging what seemed to be a mortar pit. That night, Mike and some others were sent out from their NDP (Nighttime Defensive Position) and set up an LP (Listening Post) to monitor enemy activity. They spent the whole night listening to the NVA moving and talking all around them. The next morning around 6 am, they pulled back in and joined the company. Shortly after that, Mike heard incoming mortar rounds and soon realized that they were being hit with CS gas. (19:30) Thirty seconds after the gas attack, they were hit with a whole slew of HE (High Explosive) mortar rounds. During the attack, Mike was hit in the butt with some shrapnel. They fell back to the LZ and Mike was told to get in a foxhole with their Kit Carson Scout. (23:15) �            The NVA tried to come up the hill and push them out, but once they got to the LZ and dug in, they were able to hold the hill. As Mike stood in his hole, he saw an American baseball grenade coming at him. He claims that he could read the yellow writing on the green grenade. However, it was overthrown and went off behind him. Next, a satchel charge was thrown at him and it fell short and exploded just in front of the hole. Mike was firing at the tree he knew the NVA was hiding behind on full auto, and when he saw the man‟s arm come around the tree with another grenade, he shot it off with his M-16. (26:31) This all happened on July 21st. Because they were using so much ammo and taking so many casualties, there was an almost constant supply of choppers coming in and dropping off ammo and supplies and medevacs coming in and taking the wounded. Once they broke contact, Mike and several others were tasked with going out and getting the ammo and bringing it back. Mike told the sergeant that it was best to lead from the front, and that when he ran out there to get some ammo, they would too. So the sergeant ran out and grabbed some and the rest of the men followed. (28:15) Things were quiet for that morning with some mortar rounds. Later in the day a helicopter was shot down. After the last supply chopper left, someone yelled “That‟s it till morning”. That was as lonely as Mike has ever felt. He was sure that they would be overrun during the night. (31:57) Mike was tasked with some others to go back to their NDP from the night before to gather weapons and ammunition and some of the bodies of the men killed. Mike functioned as the radioman for the patrol. They received word that Delta Company, 2/506th had landed on a LZ two clicks up the hill past the NDP to help secure their position and provide reinforcements. At that point, Delta Company, 1/506th had about 20 men, while Delta 2/506th had about 80-90. (35:10) About 3:30pm that afternoon a message came through telling the men to get ready because they were being extracted. As a squad radio operator, Mike had one of two working radios in the entire company. Once they were extracted, the men were brought back to Camp Evans. (37:50) Out of the two birds that arrived at Camp Evans, only eight men had made it back. The third bird leaving the LZ was for Captain Workman and the remaining men, however, mortars came in near the chopper and the rotor blade came down and either decapitated him or just cut him in half, either way he was dead with only twenty two days left in country. Everyone in the company thought the world of Captain Workman. His replacement was already in country, but he chose to stay with the men because he didn‟t trust the new guy to bring out his men. (39:55) When the chopper that killed Captain Workman crashed, the door gunner was thrown out and had the skid of the helicopter land across his legs. James Fowler, a man from East St. Louis, Illinois ran out and lifted the skid while taking mortar fire and freed the door gunner. Jim Fowler was later awarded the Silver Star for that act of bravery. (41:30) The next day during muster, they had 15 men left in the company. It was July 22. The company was put on stand down until August when they received enough replacements to refill the company‟s ranks. Before the 15th of August they were able to be combat effective again and returned to the field. When they returned to the field, Mike did not want to be radioman anymore so he �      passed it off to one of the new guys. Mike choose to become the point man for the 2nd Platoon, he did this until two weeks before he left in April. (44:10) They had to cross a river that was 75 yards wide, and someone asked if anyone was a lifeguard, and Mike said that he was. He striped down, tied a rope around his waist and began to swim across. When he was about half way through, he looked up and saw some Vietnamese on the other shore. They turned out to be ARVN soldiers. He got across and tied the rope off and the rest of the men and Mike‟s gear were brought over. (48:03) In November, Mike was able to go on a three day in-country R&R to China Beach. He had been in the bush since May, and had more field time than anyone else in the company. He had a great time and was able to sleep on clean sheets, plus they served beer with breakfast. He began talking to one of the lifeguards there and he told him about his lifeguarding and water safety training and experience. He was told to go and talk to the NCOIC (Non Commissioned Officer In Charge) about getting a job as a lifeguard. Mike was told that if he would extend for six months, he would be given a job as a lifeguard there in China Beach. He decided not to go through with it. (50:18) Once he was too short to be in the field, he quit walking point. On one mission they were conducting a patrol south of Camp Evans when they began taking rifle fire from a hedge of trees ahead. Mike was at the end of the patrol and he grabbed a couple guys and tried to flank them. He threw a hand grenade that resulted in three explosions. The remaining enemy ran away. (52:20) When Mike had left the field, he was attending an award ceremony. He was standing in formation with a filthy uniform and an Irish flag in his helmet sweat band. The Division Sergeant Major began to yell at Mike because of his uniform and he told him to take off the flag. Mike told him „no‟. After explaining some history to the Sergeant Major and that he had the same last name as the Division Commander, the Sergeant Major gave up and stormed away. (54:54) Mike was at Division Headquarters being processed out of country on Easter 1971. After a little Easter party, he ended up sleeping in the post office on bags of mail. Mike had gone through SERTS with the mail clerk. Back in the States (55:35)      Mike left Vietnam at 6:15am on the morning of April 15, 1971. He flew back to Seattle, and arrived at 6:10am the morning of April 15, 1971. He arrived in the states five minutes before he left. The next day he made it back home to Savannah, Georgia. (56:28) On the plane from Atlanta, he sat in the front of coach so that he would be the first one off the plane, shortly after he fell asleep. Sometime later he was shaken awake by someone asking if he was going to get off the plane, he looked around and he was the only person left on board. After returning home, he still had some time in service so he was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division, Alpha Company, 1/2nd Infantry. He was there until January 1972. Mike carried two books in his rucksack the entire time he was in Vietnam, Norton‟s Anthology of Poetry and The Complete Works of William Butler Yeats. (58:53) The day he got home, he was awake for 48 hours. That afternoon, a friend that he had known since the 7th grade came over to visit. While there, she asked Mike how many �   babies he killed over there. He told her to get up and get out or he was going to throw her out. (1:00:33) When he went to the 1/2nd Infantry, he was stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. Mike was given a job as the Battalion Finance NCO. He addressed complaints and set up allotments for people in the unit. It was an 8-5, Monday through Friday job with no formations, extra duty or PT. (1:02:30) In October 1971 he flew to Germany with the whole Division, picked up some equipment and did some maneuvers for about a week of the four weeks that he was there. He had a blast. They were able to go into the villages and try the beer and food. Mike was given an early out January 5, 1972 because he had been accepted to go back to school. He arrived home the next day, which was his birthday. National Guard (1:04:40)            Mike went back to Armstrong State College in Savannah. He found a job as a lab tech at a quality control lab. In September, he thought that maybe he should join the National Guard. He went over and signed up with a field artillery unit. Mike went to OCS and served one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer. He received his commission as a second lieutenant in August 1974. He never went to Fort Sill for his basic field artillery course; instead he took them all by correspondence. (1:06:40) After spending some time as an observer, he was then transferred to a firing battery and went in as the FDO (Fire Direction Officer) with a 155mm Self Propelled gun unit. Mike went to Charlie Battery, 1/230th; which was the unit that his father was the battery commander for in 1951. Mike became the executive officer of that battery. He was there until 1980. He was asked to leave because he could not make the weight standards. (1:08:42) He went back into the Reserves and made his commission as captain. In 1985 he came back in after he got his weight down. In 1989, he was hard up against the move to major. January 1990, Mike resigned his commission and enlisted in the Georgia National Guard as an E-5. He was there when his unit was mobilized for Desert Storm. (1:11:06) He was at summer camp when Kuwait was invaded. The rumor was that they were going to go from summer camp straight to the Middle East. They were mobilized in November 1990; after going to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin they were deemed not to be combat ready. They were never sent overseas, and were processed out of the Army in April. (1:14:53) Mike retired from the National Guard in January 1994. In 2009, he started receiving his retirement benefits which include a check each month, plus medical and travel benefits. (1:17:42) His father retired from the National Guard and the IRS and he was living very well, so Mike wanted to stay in the Guard until he too qualified for retirement benefits. If he had to go back and do it again, he would have stayed active duty and finished OCS and served his time there. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hennessy, Michael (Interview outline and video), 2013 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hennessy, Michael Description An account of the resource Mike was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1949. He graduated from the Benedictine Military School in 1967 and started college at the University of Georgia. Eventually Mike tired of school and enlisted in the United States Army in 1968. He started OCS but later dropped out. He went to Vietnam in May 1970 and was assigned to Delta Company, 1/506th, 101st Airborne. Mike operated around Camp Evans and Firebase Ripcord. He left Vietnam in 1971 after spending a year in country. After he got out of the regular army, Mike joined the National Guard as an officer. After resigning his commission, he retired from the Georgia National Guard as an enlisted man in January 1994. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource McGregor, Michael (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American United States. Army 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 2013-10-11 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HennessyM1535V 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/cfebfecc45a575dbc9fa4e59e778e20c.mp4 fd719438581a0f8eeed37d7f77d218bc https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/46902beb2d99d6394fa3f7d2dace6a5e.pdf 8c80cee37ffabec7596445a35c807d5c PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Charles Hennesen World War II Total Time: ~1:27:00 Childhood and Pre-Enlistment (00:00:00) • • • • • • • Born in Fort Erie, Canada on August 27th, 1920 Born to an American mother from Buffalo Grew up in Buffalo, NY Attended Buffalo Polytechnic High School Attended Canisius College in New York Tried to get into the Air Force [Army Air Corps] when the war broke out, but eyesight was to poor. (00:01:50) Was in the Reserve Corps during his time in College. Training (00:02:46) • • • • • • • When he was moved to Active Duty from the Army Reserve, he was transferred to Fort Niagara in New York. Was there for a couple of weeks. Got sick from a Typhoid shot and was in the hospital for several weeks. Became a Platoon Sergeant and stayed at Fort Niagara until it was closed. Transferred to a Camp in Macon, GA. Did not enjoy this experience. Recalled how hot and clammy it was. Applied for officer school. Deployed from Camp Shanks in December 1943. (00:09:00) While in GA, was trained to be a replacement for units which had lost men and needed to be brought up to full strength. Active Duty (00:09:30) • • • • • • • Crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Elizabeth with 15,000 other troops. The ship was alone but was escorted by submarines. Landed in Glasgow, Scotland and was railroaded to England. This was at the end of 1943. (00:10:46)Assigned to the 39th Regiment during his time in England. Some of the men in the company were veterans of campaigns in North Africa and Sicily. (00:13:20) Spent some time helping to clean up London after the blitz. (00:15:48) Shipped out from Southampton, England June 9th 1944. (00:16:25) Landed on June 10th in Normandy. Landed in water that was too deep and several of the men drowned. Landed under some German fire. Stayed with the landing force once they landed. The Germans had flooded the farmland so they had to stay on the roads. Tried to wade across the canals. �• • • • • • • • • • • • (00:19:50) Moved inland and towards Fort Octeville [Quinéville}. He was one of the first people into the fort after his team took it. After Octeville moved to Cherbourg and then on Cape De La Hogue. Had four day leave there. Most of the troops that they fought in this are were troops from Nazi satellite states. (00:29:08) After leave, was sent to Le Désert. This was where his unit got a Presidential citation. Recalls firing his bazooka at a tank for the first time. Knocked the track off of the tank. (00:31:54) Moved on to Saint Lô. American bombers attacked the town, but hit many of their own men. (00:32:50) Moved from St. Lô to Mortain. His company was ahead of the others and got attacked. One of his Lieutenants got hit in the torso by a mortar and thought he was dead, however the man lived. Over the campaign in Normandy, their company took around 50% casualties. Company took on replacements at Saint Lô. While in Sainte Lô, was in a Jeep that hit a mine. He was thrown in the air in and landed in his spine. Only he and another man survived the episode. (00:39:50) After Mortain, his unit moved to Versailles, and then moved into Paris. They then moved into Belgium and on to Philippeville, where he shot a tank. (00:43:35) After Philippeville, moved on to the Meuse River, where German resistance prevented their crossing for a time. Then they moved on to Theaux, where they meet a civilian that feed them eggs. Described the different forms of resistance the Germans gave them, especially in the Hurtgen Forest. He remembered the fighting here to be very heavy and casualties were very high. From Hurtganen Forest, moved into Germany. (00:54:45) He was wounded while advancing on Aachen. He was sent to break up a German roadblock and was fortifying a bivouac position after the attack, when he was hit in the hip by a German railroad gun. He had a wristwatch in his pocket which he still has some of in his body. The watch likely saved his leg. He had a hole about the size of his head in his hip. He denied the medic’s offer of morphine. He had emergency surgery on his leg, where they removed the shrapnel. He spent a year and a half in the hospital. Put in a body cast and then in traction. (1:01:30) Made the trip home on the Queen Elizabeth one bunk over from the bunk on the trip over. Made it back to the states in January 1945. Spent time in hospitals in the United States until November 1945. Lost his gluteus maximus and medius. Post-Enlistment (1:05:55) • • Took a job coaching football at Canisius and then worked in the printing business in New York. Then worked at the VA hospital in Geneva, NY. Also worked in Real Estate, and as a Manufacturing Agent. Has recently had surgery on his hip to replace it. �• Sees his experience in the military as a good one, however he would not do it over again. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hennesen, Charles (Interview outline and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hennesen, Charles Description An account of the resource Charles Hennesen was born in Fort Erie, Ontario and grew up in Buffalo, New York. He joined the Army Reserves while in college and was then called into Active Duty upon graduation. He served in 39th Regiment, 9th Division, in the European Theatre, specifically in Normandy, Northern France, Belgium, and Germany. He was wounded in the hip during an assault on the town of Aachen, and spent around a year and a half in hospitals in both Europe and the United States. 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 2008-08-26 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HennesienC 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/9d5272cc2a8bdd156662fdcf74c6d9bf.mp4 661ba34cf083a3d11e7f2663fcb48326 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a65390414257ae455963769a52f4df91.pdf 39ed359071f223b6a171be905808a2f9 PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW Ed Henk Born: June 21, 1944 Grand Rapids, Michigan Interviewed by: James Smither PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project, Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, May 28, 2012 Interviewer: Now Ed, can you start us off with some basic background? Where and when were you born? I was born in Grand Rapids on June 21st, the first day of summer in 1944, on the West side of Grand Rapids. I graduated in 1962 from Union High School, and right afterwards I went to Grand Rapids Junior College. I spent about three semesters there realizing, even at that time that a two year degree wasn‘t going to be enough, so I transferred up to Ferris. At that time I was getting into what they called data processing. Basically, I was going to be a systems analyst, and at that time there was really only two places in west Michigan that really had anything to do with it on a four year degree, Michigan State University and Ferris, so Michigan State had more of an engineering and scientific, and I wanted more of a business and that‘s why I ended up basically at Ferris. 1:12 Interviewer: To back up a little bit, what did your family do for a living while you were growing up? My dad was a salesman for a butcher supply and eventually went into what they call—he did the spices like that, but it was custom and bulk. He worked for—sold to places like what was it, Farmer Peet's, processing plants, Kroger, did everything in carloads or tank loads. His territory was pretty much all of the Midwest from—he did all of Michigan down to Indiana and Ohio. Being German, he worked with a lot of the German sausage makers and stuff like that 1 �Interviewer: had he been in the service? Yes, he was in WWII. He happened to be in Germany and my grandparents came from Germany, and my grandfather worked as a foreman in the twenties and thirties in the furniture industry. He brought my grandmother in from Germany, and up until—even until she passed away-- she was in her nineties and still had a real broken German accent. 2:18 It was one hundred percent German on that side of the family. He ended up in the Aleutian Islands and when he finished with that he ended up in an airborne unit. He was an instructor in Fort Benning, and that‘s one reason I went to fort Benning for OCS. We both kind of relate to what he was back there then too. Interviewer: In the period there where you’re going to college, did you have much awareness of what was going on in Vietnam? Oh yeah, at Union High School I was in the ROTC for three years, so I was very familiar with what was going on at that time. 3:00 Interviewer: During your ROTC training, did you give any thought to enlisting? Yes I did, I thought that—the draft was going on, and that has always been my idea because we had talked before that, and I was always kind of thinking ahead what it‘s going to be like. I knew anybody that was going to get drafted, the first place they‘re going to go is Vietnam, and so I wanted to be prepared. I was probably that good Boy Scout and I wanted to make sure I had my bases covered, so I was at Union for my sophomore and junior year, and senior year, so basically I had three years in the ROTC. Basically that was basic training because I had all the—I knew how to march, I was on the rifle team, I was on the drill team, and did some color guard work at the basketball games and that kind of thing. 4:00 So, I was pretty much aware of what the military 2 �was at the time. But, that was one reason I wanted to go to college, first get my four year degree because I figured that once I was drafted and came back home—with the people coming back and what the situation was at the time, I‘d never finish up. I wanted to get my four year degree in, so basically I went in and got my exemption for college, and that‘s when I got drafted out of college. I was actually a junior, in my third year at Ferris. Interviewer: So, how was it that you could get drafted while you’re still in school? They give you four years to get a four year degree. Interviewer: Ok, because you switched? I transferred, and when you transfer, and I was in a two year and I was taking technical English, so I didn‘t have enough regular English, and that was kind of funny because I did finish up when I came back in November of 1968, and in February I was back up to Ferris for the winter term. 5:04 I was—in 1968 when they had all the race riots, I was up in the Starr Education Building taking a humanities class because they didn‘t have it at the—at the time they didn‘t have it at JC, and when I was going up to Ferris I was going into data processing, Business Administration, majoring in data processing. At that time it was so small that you took Data Processing 101 in the fall, you took Data Processing 102 in the winter term and in the spring term you took Data Processing 103. You couldn‘t take it in the spring because you couldn‘t take Data Processing 101 at that time, so you had to be taking a certain area at that time, so I had to give up a lot of the freshman classes, and when I reached my senior year, in order to graduate, I had to have humanities and all my social studies classes, so I ended up being twenty-two years old in a freshman class, in 1968, in the Starr Education Building, on one of the nights they had the race riots there. 6:12 3 �Interviewer: All right, so that’s after you’re back from Vietnam. I was going to back up to the other end of it, so basically you’ve had your four year deferment and that was, as far as the Army, done? Your draft board said, ―You‘ve had four years to get a four year degree‖, and that ended up being, probably, September of 1966, and I was drafted in December of 1966. Interviewer: Take us then through the process at that point. You get the draft notice and what’s the sequence of events in terms of induction and testing and all that stuff? Well, I knew pretty much what I was doing at that time, I was just doing—I was working at the Spartan Stores in the warehouse, and it was just more of a part time job, we were just loading trucks, and actually it was just a normal type thing and I just went home—we quit one night and I went home. 7:11 I packed my bags and my mother took me down to the bus station, and the Salvation Army gave me a little New Testament Bible, got on the bus, went to Detroit, did all my, whatever they do, the physical and everything, and we took a train down to—actually it was St. Louis, and we took a bus down to Fort Leonard Wood. I took my basic training down there, did everything for basic training there, I was thinking I was going to be there for two years and decided what I was going to do. I was down there in basic training and I saw all these guys coming back from Vietnam, and I thought the vast majority of them were pretty messed up. 8:02 There was no psychological evaluation for these guys or anything. Once they got their orders they just went and stuck them into some kind of basic training unit and the guys didn‘t know what to do with them, so they pretty much sat off to the side and they were pretty much sitting around day after day doing nothing. No one would have anything to do with 4 �them, so they pretty much sat off to the side, and they sat around day after day doing nothing, sitting around the day room or whatever and we were doing our training. We came back and I would maybe talk to some of the guys and getting some really pretty good advice from them. One guy I got a kick out of, he said, ―whatever you do, always take your field jacket‖. This was the wintertime when I was down there and everything, and he said, ―When you go to Vietnam they don‘t give you a field jacket. Everybody thinks its a hundred and twenty degrees, and sometimes it gets down to fifty degrees, and you think it‘s fifty degrees in Vietnam, you think it‘s going to snow‖, so I brought—that was one of the things I always brought with me. It‘s the best thing, especially in the monsoon season when at night it gets really, really cold and it gets awfully, awfully damp there. 9:04 Interviewer: Basically these were men who completed their two years, they had been drafted or whatever, they spent their year in Vietnam, and now they have to park them someplace for the last few months of their term? They‘re in there for two years, so you‘re spending eight weeks in basic training, another eight weeks in in the IT, they ship you to Vietnam, by the time you come back you got, probably, another four or five months to go, so what are they going to do with them. You couldn‘t put them in a regular unit for only three or four months, so what they were doing at that time was putting them in, like with training units. Well, you had a lot of company commanders, all they were was National Guard, and they didn‘t know how to deal with these guys. There was no way—like they process today, you go through probably two months of some type of therapy. For me, when I came back and went up to Ferris, the best thing for me was, we had a vets club up there, and there were about two hundred 5 �vets. 10:06 We got to talk and that and one guy said, ―I have these strange dreams and everything like that‖, and someone else would say ―you think those are strange, you ought to see what mine are like‖, and someone would say, ―that‘s nothing, you ought to see what I‘m having‖, and I‘m thinking, ―oh, we must be normal‖, because everybody was having these weird dreams, but it was post-traumatic stress, and at that time nobody knew what that was, or wouldn‘t tell you what it was. I think they knew, but wouldn‘t say. Interviewer: The military had been aware, even in WWII they were aware, that there were various kinds of effects. They weren’t quite sure what to do with it, and called it combat fatigue and so forth. They didn’t know what to do with it and there wasn’t much of any kind of a system for engaging it, they had to kind of figure it out as they went. Right, they just threw you out into the general public. Interviewer: To go back into your story, describe what life was like at Leonard Wood. 11:03 It was different because when we were down, Leonard was in the southern part of Missouri, and when I graduated from basic I stayed down there for combat engineering school. I wanted to get into demolition work, and when I was in basic I decided to go into OCS. I had this three or four month period I wanted to use up, so instead of using it on the back side, I‘ll go into Vietnam and instead I‘ll use it on the front side, so I thought, ―I‘ll go to OCS‖ because at the time you could sign up for it. The thing I wanted—I said, ―Can I quit anytime‖? If I signed up for it I‘d want to be—they said, ―Oh, no problem, as long as you‘ll sign up, you‘re still in for two years by the time you‘ve graduated, once 6 �you graduate you have to re- up for four more years‖. 12:01 ―That‘s no problem on that‖, so I figured I‘d go—and one the reason I wanted to go in there is you‘re trained by Rangers in patrolling and guerrilla tactics, you fire every weapon in infantry inventory, I could call in artillery, I could call in air strikes, the whole nine yards, so that‘s what I wanted to do. So, I passed the test and you had to have and infantry MOS, so I was already down in Fort Leonard Wood, so I said, ―Can‘t I just go into Combat Engineering?‖ That was no problem really, and even down there we were getting a lot of people from the hills of Kentucky and Tennessee, and you have to remember this is 1968 and it was for me really a culture shock, because coming from the West Side of Grand Rapids, and in 1968 we were having all these race riots, that was bad enough. 13:04 1966,1967 and 1968 they were all in-- and people-- and that was another thing, some of my best friends, even in Vietnam were black and I came home and all these people said they were having race riots in Vietnam and I said, ―no‖, and that was really throwing me off when I came back because people were looking at the news and said they knew what was going on from the five o‘clock news, and they didn‘t know anything, it was completely the opposite. I don‘t know who was feeding these various news media or where they were coming up with this. Interviewer: So, you were training alongside people from all parts of the country, and there were black soldiers etc. there. Were there white southerners there as well? Oh, very much Interviewer: What kind of dynamic was there between the southerners and the black soldiers? 14:01 7 �Actually it wasn‘t that bad. There was to a certain extent, and I think it was more—I don‘t know if it was more with the southerners, they—I don‘t know how to explain it on that, it was different. There was a tension between them more than anything else. There was no aggression like, ―I hate you‖, or that. I think what everybody did—we all trained together and when we went back to the barracks everybody went in their own groups, and it actually ended up more like cliques. You had the black clique, you had the southern clique, and you had us with the northern white clique basically, that‘s how it ended up. Interviewer: Did the drill instructors just treat everybody the same or was there a difference? Pretty much the same, I never had that much in both basic and AIT, but the thing is, we were so busy you rarely ran into problems. 15:04 It was not so much at night because everybody was tired because they ran you eight to ten hours a day and more was on week-ends especially towards the end of the program. They give you more time to go off base, so everybody left, they couldn‘t wait, so everybody just left and came back on Sunday night, so even at that I didn‘t have that much of a problem in the barracks or anything like that at that time. Interviewer: If you went off base, out of Leonard Wood, what was there? There was nothing in Leonard Wood. It‘s nothing like if you had to go up to St. Louis or something, that would probably be a little different, but there wasn‘t really that much going on around there. That‘s what they call ―lost in the woods‖ because there‘s nothing down there. Interviewer: Like Joplin or something? 16:00 8 �Yeah, in fact one time we—one of the guys in our unit was, and I can‘t think of it, just a little town down there and we went down there, and we‘re northerners and we‘re going down to these southern people, and they just welcomed us. We were eating all this southern food and I didn‘t know what it was. Some of it was Opossum and Raccoon, and I said, ―This is better than the food we had there at camp‖. My idea of a diet is a see-food diet. I see the food and I eat it, so I wasn‘t that fussy about what I had to eat, I was having a good time down there. Interviewer: So you have the basic now. Was the basic training fairly easy for you to adjust to? Yes, because I had three years in ROTC. That was just—that was nothing. I was in a drill team, I had the rifle team and everything, and in fact, I went in in December and they gave us leave for Christmas for about ten days, but by the time we came back it was almost two weeks or well into January. 17:03 When we came back everybody forgot what they were taught the couple weeks before that, so I helped the drill sergeant out with that. These guys from—a lot of these southern guys didn‘t know how to drill; they didn‘t know their left from their right. You‘re supposed to start out with your left foot and they‘re starting out with their right foot, so what I did, and they would come up and ask me because I knew my drill, ―Would I take a couple?‖ Most of the guys in the unit, and there were about thirty of us in there, and there were about five or six that just weren‘t getting it. In fact, they had to learn how to do their left and their right by taking a garbage can cover and putting it in their right hand and telling them, ―This is your right, you start out with your left foot and do this, and then you go to your right where the garbage can cover is‖. So, when we came back, we were getting so far behind with what 9 �they had to have to graduate, they gave me some time to work with some of these southerners. 18:06 I knew some of these drill things, and actually, once we got going on it there, they were kind of smart and picked up on it. I looked around and said, ―We got some time to kill around here‖, so I taught them some of these drill movements like the drill team used and instead of taking the right shoulder arm we take it and rotate it and throw it up on there, so we went out there a couple times and they said, ―What did you teach these guys?‖ Interviewer: Your Advanced Individual Training, did you do that at Leonard Wood also? Yes, Combat Engineering Interviewer: That was the engineering part? Yes Interviewer: So, what are they actually teaching you then at that stage? Actually a little bit of everything because Combat Engineer is pretty much of a broad thing, almost like an infantry thing, and you learn everything from—in infantry you got, you know, learning how to run a machine gun, individual weapons, 45‘s and that type of thing. 19:04 Well, we did a lot of bridge building and that, that‘s what they do. We make a lot of—our main job was up in, even in Vietnam, we opened up the landing zones, built all the security, what we call the green lines, put out all the barbed wire, all the mines, we used a lot of Claymore mines, put out all the foo gas and this type of thing out there. So, we learned a lot of that, and while I was waiting for my orders for OCS they had a class just on demolitions and mines, and they had an area on trip wires and 10 �how to find trip wires and deactivate the mines and everything, so that was a specialty there. Interviewer: Now, were they gearing this very much towards the things that you would be doing in Vietnam? Yes, very much, a hundred percent. Interviewer: Were you being taught by people who had been there or not yet? 20:04 Well, these were older NCO‘s and a lot of them were from Korea and that type of thing. Interviewer: So, you complete this and as part of the master plan to not go to Vietnam right away. Now you go from AIT into OCS? Infantry officer school Interviewer: And where do they send you for that? Fort Benning, Georgia, on that, that was the infantry school down there. Interviewer: Was the base basically the same kind of place as Leonard Wood? No, this was a whole different ball game. The bigger town of Columbus down there in Georgia had—it was a whole different thing down there. It was the airborne school, they had the ranger school there and it was probably ten times bigger than what Leonard Wood was. Actually, it was quite small, like I said Fort Lawson was out in the middle of nowhere. Interviewer: What was the actual curriculum like, what were you doing? 21:03 Well, you were—the first twelve weeks it was just basic and twelve to eighteen weeks you were intermediate and then after eighteen to twenty-one weeks you were a senior, and that‘s when you wore a kind of infantry blue thing and walked everything. You were 11 �basically like a 3rd Lieutenant, and that‘s when you had to learn to be an officer. Everything from basic—intermediate was strictly—you learned how to fire every weapon in the infantry inventory, you called mortars—fired—called in air strikes, called in different artillery and that‘s all I concentrated on. All this other harassment, especially in basic, they—we were running everywhere, and in Georgia the summer of 1967 it‘s eighty degrees out there with eighty or ninety percent humidity and all the marches and all. 22:08 They ran us all pretty good there the first sixteen or eighteen weeks we were there. Interviewer: So, this was more intense than what your basic had been? Yes, very much Interviewer: At that stage were you being trained by people who had been to Vietnam? No, like I said, my tac officer, his name was Lieutenant Hughes, they called him ―Hughes horrible‖, and he wasn‘t in Vietnam, but he had just finished his Ranger and airborne training and he was a 1st Lieutenant. The company commander was actually from Germany. He came to the United States and enlisted or whatever and we never found out how much training he had. 23:07 He had a lot of infantry training in Germany. I don‘t know what his career credentials were or anything like that. The other officers, I think two of them had just graduated themselves from OCS and they were waiting to go into Ranger training, so we never had anybody, at that time, in our unit that had been to Vietnam. Interviewer: Now, in the training itself, did they try to simulate situations you would encounter in Vietnam? 12 �Where we got the training, where I enjoyed it, we were trained by Rangers, and that‘s where we got the nitty gritty, it was the training. They took us a couple times to the southern part of Georgia where the swamps and the low parts are. 24:02 They put you down there probably for about two or three—I think one was about ten days down there, the big training down there. They had what they call lane graders and every once in a while you would look around and it was a different guy, and what the idea was, you could see them, but they couldn‘t talk to you or converse with you, they were just there to observe. You ended up with a radio and some mortars and there were different exercises that you had to do. Then for re-supply they tell you to go to a certain area and that‘s where you got your water, your food, additional information, and then you got orders for the next exercise and what to do, and what the next mission was going to be. Once in a while what they do is they booby trap it, he‘s dead, he‘s dead and that type of thing, so we got kind of tired of that. 25:00 Being a demolition specialist, I just came through that class there, not that I had any big explosions or anything, I just had small ones from anti-lift devices that went bang and that type of thing, so I kind of looked around and found an anti-lift device is just like a mouse trap, you pick the thing up, the thing goes up and goes bang on it. If you stick a wire down through that thing you keep it from going up, so we just picked up the thing we wanted to go out and I reset the booby traps and booby trapped the guys that picked up on it, so we just put another box in and pulled the wire out. Interviewer: So, in general, how long did you actually stay in officer training? About fifteen or sixteen--the idea when I first went in there was I was only going to be in there about eight to ten weeks and then leave, but the longer I was there I figured this 13 �might not be too bad. I had my uniform and everything all ordered and about the sixteenth or seventeenth week I woke up and thought, ―What am I doing? The bottom line is I was going to be here four years‖. 26:10 I was still interested in going back to school and finishing up and I didn‘t want to make the military a career, but I was in the top five percent of my class and they didn‘t want you to go. If you were on the bottom five percent they were glad to get rid of you because by the eighteenth week they had weeded out a lot of people. I would say a good twenty-five to thirty percent of our class was gone by the eighteenth week. I put my letter of resignation in and of course they were giving me all kinds of a hard time, talking to the battalion commander and everything and the only way I got out of it was, I went to the company commander one night and I just basically told him, I said, ―Sir, basically going through all of this I finally realized the difference is between the Boy Scouts of America and the United States Army‖, and he said, ―What‘s that?‖ I said, ―At least the Boy Scouts of America has adult leadership‖, and that little German turned into a real German. 27:09 His Captain's bars there turned into SS‘s, and he said, ―out‖, and I ran out the door, went past my--all the people around there, up the stairs and I was gone bag and baggage the next morning out there. I ended up in an airborne holding company to wait for my orders and that took about two weeks, I had about a two week leave and then I went to Vietnam. Interviewer: How do they physically get you out to Vietnam? Well, I met a friend of mine, John Tegmeyer, he was in New York, so I spent—I had two weeks, so I spent a week home, a little more than that, and I went with him for a weekend and we went out of New Jersey. 28:05 What‘s that one in New Jersey? I can‘t remember the name right now. 14 �Interviewer: Do you mean the airport? No, no, the base Interviewer: Fort Dix? No, that‘s in California Interviewer: Fort Dix is in New Jersey. Fort Ord is in California. Ok, it was Fort Dix then, and we got on a plane there and went up to Anchorage, Alaska, went over Yokohama, and then over to Bien Hoa. Interviewer: Now, were these all military aircraft? No, this was civilian; I think it was charter, Tiger Airline we went over on. Interviewer: What was you first impression of Vietnam when you landed there? Oh, the smell. We walked off there and it was November of 1967 and the heat and humidity and just the smell. The guys were telling us, one of the guys I was going over there with was a Korean War vet and he was a medic and said he had been in Korea, and he has been in Japan and this was his second tour in Vietnam. 29:11 he said, ―This is the dirtiest country I have ever been in‖. We walked out and even just everything smelled like everything was decaying. That was my first impression of it. Interviewer: Now, you get off the airplane and what happens to you? We got on these buses, and it was kind of interesting, they were just regular buses, but they were all OD and they had barbed wire, not barbed wire, but all the windows were all fenced off. Then we went into a holding company and we were there about a week or so just to acclimate ourselves because in November up north it was pretty cold there at Fort Dix. 30:01 We just did a bunch of little odd ball things like we would collect things 15 �from a supply unit, pick-up things and take them to different PX‘s, picked up food and took it to the different mess halls and that type of thing. Interviewer: Was there any kind of specialized gear or equipment they were issuing to you, or just the regular stuff? No, pretty much everything I had. I thought I was going to have it pretty much made. I was supposed to go originally to the artillery unit south of Saigon, so I figured being a combat engineer there isn‘t that much to do in those areas, and I figured I would just be filling sandbags and working around the area just doing things like that. I didn‘t think that would be too bad and maybe I could get into Saigon a few times like that. Well, that didn‘t last long. I was waiting for my orders then and that‘s when I found out—they cut my orders to go to the 1st Cavalry, and I said, ―Where‘s the 1st Cav?‖ 31:05 They said, ―Well, that‘s up in the Central Highlands and that‘s where all the action is‖, and I thought, ―Oh, brother, you might know‖. Interviewer: Where did you actually then go? From Bien Hoa I went to An Khe and that‘s where the 8th Engineers headquarters were. They had what they called a charm school and being in the 1st Cav everything was done by helicopters and that‘s where we learned how to rappel out of helicopters. They had a big tower on that and they sent you out for a day or a night. You would go out and there were about twelve of us in a unit and we would stay out overnight. We set out our trip flares and everything like that and came back. That lasted about a week or so, and then shipped out to Bong Son, up to Camp Evans. 32:05 Interviewer: Where in Vietnam is Camp Evans located? On a map, where would it be? 16 �It‘s right along the east—the northern part of the Central Highlands. More along the east side, we were right off QL-1. Interviewer: Is that then where you were based out of? For that portion of the time, I ended up in the headquarters company and they put me out in another unit, I think it was B Company and it was working with the 173rd Airborne [Brigade], and that‘s where I ended up in a little bit of trouble. Like we were talking before--up until that point they were drafting people-- they were drafting people out of the ghetto and everybody they could get. 33:06 By the time myself and everybody else, that‘s when I found out while I was in my holding company at Fort Benning, I thought I was the only one doing this. Well, there were about twelve of us in the unit that felt the same way, everybody quit and was ready to get their orders for Vietnam. Unlike today, and that‘s why I don‘t think they‘ll have another draft. There are many reasons why they don‘t have a draft today and I‘m one of them, just one of them. I went into the unit and I went up to the platoon sergeant and the platoon leader, and the platoon leader at that time was a 2nd lieutenant and he came out of Fort Belvedere, and he‘s strictly an engineer. 34:06 I came out of Fort Leonard Wood, so I knew a lot more than he did, so I came up to him and to put it nicely, I said, ―Don‘t mess up because I will take over‖. Interviewer: You told him that? I told him that Interviewer: And you’re a private at this point. Yeah, I‘m an E-3on him, and we were having a—it wasn‘t really going over that great, and a couple days later, in the company area, a unit of the 173nd, a platoon, was like a lost platoon and they were getting hit pretty hard. They didn‘t have anybody that was 17 �close enough to get in there. They wanted somebody—the 1st Cav, and we had to rappel in there because it was a double and triple canopy jungle in there. 35:03 So, the way they—I forgot what unit it was—they took the platoon leader, the platoon sergeant, myself and three or four other guys. I had never been on—this was my first combat thing and I didn‘t have a clue to what was going on. Everybody else was pretty well seasoned. To make a long story short, we were coming in and we had to rappel in. The idea for us to get in there we needed some combat engineers to blow out an area, a landing zone, to get the wounded and everything out. We‘re coming in there and we had to make two trips and there‘s usually about five or six choppers in there, and when you rappel out only four people can go out, and there are eight or ten people in there. When you rappel all four have to go off at the same time because the plane is going up and down. 36:05 so, I didn‘t realize it, but when you--they had it all planned out, but I‘m coming in on a second thought on this thing here. I was sitting in the doorway, they give the thumbs up to get ready, we had a Swiss seat on with a D-ring and I hook up, I‘m out on a line and everybody is kind of looking at me like, ―What are you doing?‖ They give the signal to go, so I go down. Well, I didn‘t realize it that they were going to make another pass and they want the infantry to go down first, clear out the area and everything and come in. We were considered what they call a log ship, usually your second or third back in the line and that‘s why they had the four extra guys and they wanted in. We were supposed to go around and then the company engineers are supposed to go down in it, and they were supposed to have it all cleared out. 37:01 Well, I went down there and fortunately I ended up in a little valley and I had my pack and my M-16 and all I saw were green tracers just going over my nose and that. This Lieutenant said, ―Ok trooper, don‘t move‖, 18 �and I thought, ―oh, I‘m not moving out of this thing, not here‖. The next thing, they came in with ARA and gunships and they were just literally thirty feet off the ground, in fact, when the ARA goes the 2.75 rocket‘s about equivalent to a 105 round. Well, every time one of those rounds are going off the ground would shake, and I‘m going up and down and these tracers are going over the top of me. They finally got them pretty much cleared and the tracers all stopped, so everybody had to get up and go on it. So, they‘re taking this little hill, positions where the NVA were in there, 38:09 and the sergeant, platoon sergeant, told me, he said, ―Ed, stay behind me on that‖, once they went through there we had to basically clean up and make sure nobody was around there or anything like that. I said, ―What?‖ He said, ―We don‘t take any prisoners here‖, because we didn‘t have enough time to go back, because we had to go back to the 173rd and clear out an area. So, I‘m going and making sure no one is there and right afterwards he comes up to me and he said, ―you‘re just wasting ammunition‖, and I said, ―what do you mean?‖ He said, ―That severed head there that you were shooting at‖, and I said, ―Well, yeah‖, and he said, ―That was just a waste of ammunition‖. I thought he was just kidding and after a while I—because while we were going up there I saw this severed head and the eyes were open, and at that time the only dead person I ever saw was in a funeral home with their eyes closed. 39:04 So, you had to make a split decision like that, so I‘m going like that bang, bang, bang. Interviewer: You saw a head and didn’t think about the fact that there was nothing attached to it. Yeah, so I just blew it away and kept right on going, and all of a sudden this thing started—and I‘m on my down spiral pretty much from then on. That‘s why after a while 19 �you get to a point where life doesn‘t really mean that much and everything. You have to remember we had a lot of the mini guns, we had 227 and everything, well they‘re going out at three or four hundred rounds a minute, well, do you know what a body, what it looks like when it gets hit with a hundred rounds in one second? It turns into a red mist. Interviewer: You really hadn’t had any exposure to any of this kind of stuff and there it was, just all of a sudden? Just like that and all of a sudden I‘m being chewed out for shooting a severed head. 40:05 ―You‘re wasting ammunition‖ Interviewer: Did you get to what you were actually supposed to do? Did you get to be an engineer at that point? That was the other thing on it, 1st Lieutenant said, ―Well you‘re the engineer aren‘t you, eh, trooper?‖ They called us troopers, and he grabbed me and he said, ―I want the landing zone right over there‖, and I had the det cord and some of the blasting caps and everything so I started—what you do on that is, it was real thin trees and you wrap det cord, C4, only in cord, and you put it around and wherever you wrap it the second time is where it blows off and that‘s where the tree falls, so you can control on it. I‘m going around and in the meantime the other engineers were coming down there and they had to come to me to find out what was going on. Well, here‘s the platoon sergeant and the 1st Lieutenant come to me and I‘m telling them exactly what to do. 41:05 Well, that didn‘t go over very good, so a couple of days later, bag and baggage I went back to headquarters, to the company at Camp Evans. Interviewer: So, they felt like you were showing them up? 20 �Well, I—yeah, I guess. They just didn‘t go over that well on it, and see you have to remember too that draftees were basically a second class set, you ain't going to have— these were regular army officers on it and they aren‘t going to have some draftee, an E3, telling them what to do. Interviewer: Even though you had been assigned to go do it, right? Yeah, well—you know, but it‘s not—we didn‘t have a confrontation at the time. I told them what to do and when I found out later I talked to the company commander and everything, so he said, ―You‘re not going to work out here too well‖, so I said, ―Don‘t mess up because I‘m going to stay in corps‖, so that‘s basically what we did. 42:02 At another time we went out, we‘re usually one of the first ones out in the area, especially if we‘re making landing zones, we‘re engineers. Like on D-Day, actually combat engineers were the first to land on the thing to take out all the obstacles. In Vietnam, especially in the air cav‘s, especially in the landing zones, we were the first ones in, and we blew out the area, or cleaned it out and put in oppositions for whatever, the artillery or the mortars and everything and then we set up the perimeters and everything. The first one, when I had my own demolition team, was the Lieutenant came in there and we got on the ground and everything and with—everybody has to work, because--like at the time I was E-4 or if somebody‘s E-5. 43:07 That‘s what I liked about the 1st Cav, or actually being in the U.S. Army and everything, rank really didn‘t—when it gets to a point like that it really doesn‘t matter. We went out and we were a team and everybody had their own job and we had demolition people, but usually what you did was you only want one or two people doing demolition work because there‘s only certain ways—and you don‘t have too many chances to make mistakes, you only have one chance at making one mistake, or 21 �something like that and you don‘t want to do that. So, generally, and especially the teams that I had, there was just two people that did the demolition work and we did everything else to clean the area out. When we set up the C-4 we had different—we had kinds, we had linear charges and we had regular C-4 bricks and usually det cord that was C-4, just depending on what the situation was and what you wanted for how big it was. 44:11 To set it all off we used ten cap blasting machines. We never used fuses or anything like that because we wanted something that if it didn‘t work right away we could go and check it. If you used fuses you had to usually wait like an hour or forty-five minutes and go and check the thing out, so everything was all—what we did was work off ten caps blasting machines. To make the blasting caps—they came in a little box about that big and came all wrapped up with wire and it took time because you had to take each individual one out, take it apart, and it only took about a half of an anth to blow a cap up, so what you had to do is put the wires together and basically shorten it out. 45:01 So, the lieutenant would usually work on that and that‘s when he told me, ―Well, I‘m an officer and I don‘t have to work‖. I said, ―I wouldn‘t be sitting around here‖. He was just out of OCS and I said, ―Sir, you‘re going to have to‖, and I said, ―Ok, there‘s a tree over there, just sit down‖. Well, up there we had all kinds—the biggest thing of all up there was snipers, and if you‘re a sniper and you‘re up in a tree and you see all these guys running around working and you see somebody sitting off to the side, who‘s going to be your first target? You figure it‘s going to be that officer. 46:00 We‘re working and the way I treated snipers, I learned this in—that‘s one of the reasons I wanted to go to OCS—it‘s what they call the ―crack and thud method‖. Interviewer: Which is? 22 �This is the first time you hear—you never hear—I‘ve always used this and everybody I‘ve tried to explain this to never heard this thing on it. Anyway, the first thing you hear is the crack of the bullet going overhead, the second sound is the rifle going off. You put the two together it gives you the direction. Then you take a quick count, you go 1, 2,3,4,5 and that tells you how many hundreds of yards, or in this case, how many hundreds of meters, it‘s a different sound. So, you try to train your guys because you have to count it really fast. We were out maybe two hundred meters or something like that, or three hundred and that will tell you the direction and everything on it. 47:01 Then when we did our pre-op of the area, I worked with the artillery. When I was in OCS I had a seeker security and I could go with the division artillery and I could set up different targets, 1,2,3,4,5 and we used variable time, that‘s what they call ―Victor Tango‖ variable time. That‘s where a round goes off about three feet in the air. Did you watch the Band of Brothers when they were in the Ardennes Forest with those rounds going off, those air bursts? Well, can you imagine being a sniper? That‘s how we got rid of our snipers. Interviewer: Basically, you figured out where they were, estimate a distance and direction, and then you can call in artillery? Yeah, we can call in artillery, and we had two M-60 machine guns, we always carried two M-60 machine guns and everybody gets to---when we hear the shot, everybody‘s making the quick count. 48:08 I‘ve got two and a half, I‘ve got three, so were figuring two and a half to three hundred meters out and usually that‘s where they were anyway. Then I get on the horn for the artillery and the way I worked was that the battery, I like to use a three tube battery and I say, target five, one round or one tube, target five, second 23 �round, one click to the left and the third round, maybe another up one, so we kind of cover with three rounds in there. Usually ninety nine percent of the time it gets most of them because it will blow them right out of the trees. They come down and you take an M-60 machine gun, one on each side, keep it eighteen inches off the ground because usually they bounce and we didn‘t even have to go and clean them up. 49:04 Interviewer: A highly specialized technique. I know, we used this all the time and nobody on it, so by the time you‘re all done and headed back home, you bring him back in a body bag. You got a 2nd Lieutenant with a bullet in the head. Interviewer: Let’s try to go and put together your sequence here. Initially, you’re sent out and you’re assigned to 1st Cav with the 8th Engineer Battalion, and you’re assigned to support the 173rd Brigade, and that’s where you don’t fit in. Then you’re back to Headquarters Company? I came back to headquarters and the way the 8th Engineers are is with the 1st Cav, we didn‘t have a brigade, because a lot of times they‘ll have three battalions to a brigade and the brigade goes in. We were the only engineering unit in the 1st Cav that was a Battalion. 50:06 We had three maneuvering companies with the three brigades. Company A went with the 1st Brigade, Company B went with the 2nd Brigade and Company C went with the 3rd Brigade, and then we had headquarters and Headquarter s Company was in support of the whole division. So, I ended up coming back and basically they didn‘t know what to do with me and the only nice saving grace was when I was going to college I was doing some computer programing. At that time we had eighty column cards. Well, the only way you could get an eighty column card was by knowing 24 �how to type, so I had to take a typing class. Well, in 1968 and there‘s no women in the unit and nobody knew how to type. Here I had all this training and everything, so I ended up basically in personnel. Basically it was personnel in S3, supply, and I did a lot of clerk typing. 51:06 Here again we were in general support of the division, so I kind of went out when they had to have a specialty for whatever reason. Go out when they needed something right away and that‘s why I like to say I ended up being like a janitor. They had a job or something to clean-up that‘s what I usually ended up doing, depending on what they had to do. I did little small jobs like that. Interviewer: What kind of job assignments would that be? Basically starting out in—well, most of my time was right after the Tet Offensive, we were up at the DMZ up there, and actually in the summer of 1968 we had—a lot of people don‘t realize it, but we had it fairly easy—once the Tet Offensive and Khe Sanh was over, our main job was to watch the Ho Chi Minh Trail. 52:01 Like I say, after the Tet Offensive people don‘t realize, we actually won the war, and in fact, the mentality at that time was it was just a matter of cleaning this thing up because after the Tet Offensive you never heard of the Viet Cong, we basically wiped them off the face of the earth. Most of the big units ended up like small guerilla units, and it took them pretty many four years to even mount another large attack like that again. So, our main job was just to keep—well, we had long range recon patrol, rangers going out checking out the—along the ocean port and everything. Once in a while we‘d get called—one time they called and it was a suspected prison holding POW‘s in it. 53.02 We had to go and clean them out, or on it, and they usually did their own demo work, but they didn‘t have enough people, so I, it was like one of those last minute jobs, went out there and helped them. It 25 �was just a small village and we just cleaned that out and made sure everything was—got all the intel they wanted out of it and I just kind of booby trapped it, like on a door, put a shaped charge about head high and when flipped it would take a head off. I took a lot of—one I liked doing was, because they always used fireplaces again, I took a C4 in a chimney off to the side and run det cord and used a little fuse down below, and when they started a fire that thing would go up there and blow the hooch up. Interviewer: You’re basically going to places the enemy had used for bases and that kind of thing, and they run away when you show up? 54:05 Yeah, yeah, and they had this incredible intelligence that American POW‘s were in there and they said they needed some volunteers and I said, ―Well, I‘ll do that one‖. Interviewer: Did they find any Americans? No, as far as I know they didn‘t. By the time I was always there, I talked to the guys they said they thought they took them out. This was right after the Tet Offensive and there were a lot of POW‖s and they were figuring they were trying to work them out and back up to-Interviewer: Move them out of the area. Let’s back up to the Tet Offensive itself. The time that happened, where are you and what are you doing when that starts? So, it’s early 1968, Khe Sanh is already going at that point. Yeah, that‘s another thing; I never knew where Khe Sanh was. When we were in Camp Evans the whole division was going to pick up and go up to the DMZ. About twelve thousand guys, we just picked up and all headed up north. 55:00 We were going land, sea and air, so I was with the Headquarters Company at the time and we took a convoy down to Qui Nhon, which was about thirty five miles south of us. Went down there and 26 �got onto a LST, they loaded us onto one of those big LST‘s, took the LST up to Da Nang, got off at Da Nang, took a convoy—we were going to go—the unit I was on, we were going to go up to Camp Evans, that‘s thirty eight miles from the DMZ, it was an old Marine base camp. Well, on the way up we had to go through Hue. We went through Hue and we stopped just north of it and we were told by the battalion commander there was another convoy coming up in a day or two and they needed some guys to help them with conexes because they had to ship them or put them on trailers or use different-Interviewer: What is a conex? 56:03 Conex are basically big storage units, metal storage units just like they put on ships only smaller. Interviewer: Small metal containers. Yes, metal containers, they call them conex. There was myself and I think there were three equipment operators; we had a battalion barber, a couple clerks on that. So, they got us on a Jeep and went back to the MACV compound and that was the night before the Tet Offensive. We‘re lying around and, in fact, I was going on guard duty and that‘s basically when the Tet Offensive started on that. Interviewer: Now, the headquarters that you’re with, is that in the city of Hue? No, that was—there‘s two parts of Hue, the older part where the citadel and everything else was the old city and just south of the Perfume River is basically what they call the new Hue. 57:10 Interviewer: Is that where you were? That‘s where I was. The MACV compound is the Military Advisory Command and it was almost like an Embassy. In Hue, and I found out later on that, was very lightly 27 �defended because they always said—the old Hue was centuries old, and from what I understand there was a mutual agreement that Hue was going to try to keep that intact. There was very little, I think there was only one unit, one unit, ARVN unit, that was really in charge of the area. MACV compound was more of a—like an Embassy, it had a wall around it and it had a couple of buildings for offices and dormitories. 58:06 Even Australians used that for their play in there and the only saving grace was that they had an armory in there. The used that for their base of operations when they were up in—I never worked with them, but I know—when we were there we didn‘t even see any Australian officers or unit, but that was their headquarters. Interviewer: So, basically what happens at the point when the attack starts? Well, I was going on guard duty and there was three captains for the Air Force, they flew reconnaissance planes, and in the old city, the airport there, they had their base. They were reconnaissance and they were stationed out of there and they stayed in the MACV compound. Like I said, there were dormitories and mess halls and everything like that. Interviewer: So, you’re on guard duty and what happens? 59:06 Basically hell breaks loose and everything. One of the captains, he knocks out one of the VC that was coming in and you have to remember it was the MACV compound and we had a set of officers, intelligence officers and that type of thing, a lot of clerks and myself and a couple of heavy equipment operators and that was the only thing that ever saw any combat. So, that night we got everybody all together, surrounded what we could. We got into the armory, or the Australian armory in there, and got whatever weapons we could and surrounded the whole thing and we basically held the thing for that night. 00:01 28 �Interviewer: What kind of physical defenses did you have? The compound had a wall? It was just a small wall; you could look over the top of it. It wasn‘t to hold anything; it was more of a decorative wall than anything else. Interviewer: Did you have barbed wire or anything around you? It was just a wall? It was just a wall and you‘re hanging and in order to sit on it, there were no guard posts, we were just—you had to kneel down and put—and you didn‘t want to look over the wall that much. Interviewer: About how many people were attacking you initially? At the time we didn‘t know. Actually, like we were talking about before, I knew war was bad, but until afterwards, I didn‘t really know how bad it was. The people we had on it, they had sapper units and everything around there. Interviewer: So I guess basically you—what was the initial indication something was happening? Oh yeah, one of the gunnery sergeants went up to take a look around to see what was going on and he got a bullet in the head. 1:11 It didn‘t take too long to figure things were going—you have to remember, at that time we knew something might happen, because even at Christmas we were in Bong Son, we were on guard duty, and they doubled the guards because they knew something was—like they say credible intelligence, something big was going to happen. In Bong Son, I remember, on Christmas Eve I was sitting behind an M60 machine gun listening to—they had a chopper up there with Christmas carols. 29 �Interviewer: So the sergeant gets shot, or whatever, and was that the first warning? Pretty much, yeah—the first night we—actually the first wave came in and we pushed them back and then there was kind of a lull. 2:10 Over in the old city you could hear, I mean we could hear what was going on, that was—they weren‘t all just coming for us, it was in the whole city and mainly in the old city, and you could hear all the civilians yelling and screaming, all the gunfire and everything going on over there, but we didn‘t know what was going on exactly at that time. The next morning I talked to one of the gunnery sergeants, Marine gunnery sergeants, and he was kind of white and he was—I think he knew more of what was going on because they had the communications at that time, and I think they knew by eight or nine o‘clock that next morning, I think they had a pretty good idea, but they weren‘t sending anything on that to us. 3:03 I was talking to one gunnery sergeant and I said, ―Well, how bad is it? What‘s going on?‖ He said, ―Well, were going to have to defend the area and were going to have to go where the buildings are down there‖, because that‘s where the snipers, or NVA and VC were going. He said, ―To protect ourselves we‘re going to have to go and clear these areas out‖. Interviewer: So, what kind of force did you have to go and do that with? I told you, there were about two hundred of us and nobody had that kind of combat experience and nobody had street fighting or urban experience on that, so we had to do it by anyway we could. So, by that time I was an E3, I think I just got to E4, anyway, they put one of the heavy equipment operators, and he was an E5, no E6. 4:02 ―Sergeant James you‘re an E6, you‘re in charge, I want to see you to go out and clear that building out‖ and he goes ―I don‘t have—I‘m an equipment operator‖, and he was a black guy and he just went white. I told the sergeant, ―Don‘t worry about it‖. When I was in OCS one 30 �of the things they gave us was a short—one of the things we had to go through was how to take a fortified position, and the only thing I remember back then is they gave it to us like in WWII. You never went through a door and you never went through a window. Like if you‘re going to kick a door down or something and there is going to be a guy with a machine gun on the back end of it. These were like two stories with big, flat windows on it. Well, I went into the armory there and fortunately they had some Claymore mines and some grenades, and they also had 12 gauge sawed off shotguns with military loads. 5:04 Sixteen‘s, I realized, weren‘t—because if a sniper or NVA come out and you were there and I shoot him or they come between us, I could also hit you. That‘s why I said, ―Let‘s grab these 12 Gauge shotguns‖. I didn‘t know what a 12 gauge with military load was. I shot shotguns before, but I didn‘t know how powerful these were until I started using it. They started kicking down doors and everything. Marines took one side and we took the other side of the street. I said, ―We‘re not going to start kicking down doors‖, so what I did was we went up to the top, to the roof, and we took grenades and Claymores, bored a hole in the roof and jumped down there, or made a hole and dropped the grenade down there and then dropped down there and cleaned out the room there and took the shotgun and blew a hole inside the walls to the other side and threw a grenade and kind of worked our way down. 6:02 Actually, it worked out really well. It worked out really well because they didn‘t know what we were going to do and it really surprised them because. From what I understand later on, they were training to do this. The Vietcong, months before, they had everything, all the equipment, all the stuff and they were training, and waiting for us to come in. So, we ended up putting M60‘s on each side and as we were jumping out the windows there, and that‘s how we cleaned them out. So, 31 �after the first day we came back and the Marines, they were all shot up and everything and I never lost a guy. Then we came back from there and we got it cleaned out again. Then the trouble is, then we came back in, we had to stand guard again, so everybody was on the walls all night long. Interviewer: Did they try to attack the compound? No, not really, we got—the problem here again was with the snipers. Basically we owned the area at daytime and at night we came out. Interviewer: They weren’t bringing in a large unit trying to storm the place? 7:04 No, I didn‘t get the thing on there, I think what they were more interested in—I think, in retrospect, they thought they could run us over the first night and they couldn‘t. Interviewer: So, there was no plan B? No plan B, and you have to remember, and what I always found about the NVA, they were very, very regimented. They did this, they did that, even when they went to attack an outpost, they practiced it, and practiced it, and practiced it, and this is the way—they went into a form, or a V or whatever, and that‘s why I found out if you could break that formation up, whatever they were doing, that‘s where you could get your edge from, and I think that‘s what we did that night, or the next couple days, because it took, before we were relieved, I think it was three or four days. Before a regular Marine unit came up and relieved us, so we did this for about three days. 8:08 Interviewer: Basically you’re attacked at night, the next day you go out; you chase them out of the building, you go after—but then after do you go out again to do the same thing? Yes, only this time we didn‘t have to blow the wall out. 32 �Interviewer: So, you’re trying to clear out the area? We didn‘t have enough force to hold them, so we had to go back to MACV compound and they said, to just hold them until we get some relief and reinforcements. Well, everybody else from Da Nang all the way up—in my unit its self, I found out later, they went up to Camp Evans, and at Camp Evans they were just out in a big field. They didn‘t even have any wire out at the time the Tet Offensive started. The only fortunate thing for them was that the NVA didn‘t realize what was happening at the time. 9:03 But, that‘s what happened with Quang Tri and they were trying to get with Khe Sanh, and that was a different scenario, but basically at the same time. Interviewer: When you do get relieved, who shows up first? The Marines and it‘s kind of funny because they always took credit for everything up there anyway, so we might as well give them credit. Interviewer: Once that’s over, do you get to go back to your battalion? No, we fought our way out of there because you have to remember that lasted about three weeks. About three or four days into it, we‘re still doing this, even with the Marines in there. We were just kind of backing them up a little bit, and they said, ―You take this area‖, and that. 10:01 Sergeant James and I, one time we were—we got in this one building, went through the roof and everything on that and after a while they were, the NVA, were kind of getting an idea of what we were doing by coming through the roof and everything on that, and especially the hard part, we could always clear the top, but the second floor, we were throwing grenades down the steps and you could hear the metal grenade going down, so the grenade would go off and they would wait and then they would jump out. We were playing these cat and mouse games and everything, and this 33 �one house, it was a two story house and we went down through it, we were cleaning out, got two of the guys, two VC, and we found them in a closet and that‘s what I liked about the shot guns and everything—we cleaned out the closet pretty good with all the clothes and everything in it. 11:02 Some were down stairs and I said, ―Well, you don‘t want to throw a grenade down there, you can tell if someone is walking down a stairway‖. If you throw a grenade down you could hear the grenade coming down, so we got one of these dead ―gooks‖, and I said, ―I‘ll just throw him down there and we‘ll follow him down‖. Since I had a grenade—this was one of the biggest mistakes I made, I made a lot of mistakes in my life and this is probably one of the biggest ones, so I opened up the bottom of his pajamas and put the grenade in there and threw him down the steps. We cleaned it up, and we were—we found out too, things about a twelve gauge shotgun, they‘re hard to load with four or five rounds. You have to do it individually instead of putting a clip in there. So, by the time we got down to the bottom we were out of ammunition and we had to do hand to hand fighting. 12:01 Sergeant James was probably a little bigger than I was, and he would pick them up and he would slam them down and what I would do was I kicked their bottom jaw up into their sinuses and took my heel and pushed the nose back into it. We were covered with blood and body fluids and everything and the guys on the outside just couldn‘t believe what was going on. We heard about it later and we said, ―Why didn‘t you guys come in and help us?‖ They said, ―We never knew where you were, you were fighting up on top and all of a sudden you‘re down stairs‖. We heard the grenades going off‖, and we just sat around and all we could do was just start laughing. There was no way to get cleaned up either; we had to go back to the MACV compound even to take showers and everything. We looked at each other 34 �and I said, ―We have to get ourselves out of here‖. There was, at that time, only one way out and it was through the Perfume River. They had these LCU‘s; they‘re a little landing craft. 13:03 They are a little bit bigger than the landing craft they used in Vietnam for landing on it, but they were smaller than the big LST‘s with the brink on them and they had two 20mm cannons on each side and for the longest time that was the only way out because you couldn‘t—that was another thing we did while we were at the MACV compound just south of—like I said the 8th Engineers opened up landing zones and everything. We couldn‘t get the wounded out and like I said they controlled the area. We did it in the daytime, but at night we had to go back in there and we were just out by this Perfume River, just south of there and we opened up a little landing zone. You couldn‘t bring in—they had anti-aircraft all the way around it, so they couldn‘t bring in Chinooks and it was just enough to bring in a Huey. 14:05 So, they could bring some supplies in, and that‘s how we got most of the wounded out at the time. So, the LCU‘s would be coming in and they had a ramp on there and that‘s how we would get supplies in and out and basically we‘d literally have to fire our way. We got ourselves into, our whole unit into a LCU that was going out and we had two boats that were going out and on each side with weapons, M16‘s or M60‘s or everything on that and literally went out and ended up on the Perfume River and docked up at Dong Ha by the DMZ, there was a port up there and that was north of Quang Tri and then we had to come down to Q-01 and that‘s how I got back into Camp Evans. Interviewer: In order to do that, basically, did you have to get permission from the MACV commanders or something like that or did you just decide you were going to go? 15:09 35 �We just looked at each other and said, ―We‘re getting ourselves out of here‖. Interviewer: So, you just walked right out? No, once we got to the landing zone and everything, we just said, ―We got to get on‖. Interviewer: So, you had done whatever job an engineer could do at that point? Pretty much, yeah, we didn‘t get permission, they knew we were going. Well, like I said, we had three Air Force Captains, they were with us and they had their reconnaissance plane. Well, they knew they couldn‘t get to their thing and they had to get back to their flight, so they had to get out, they were trying to get up to Da Nang, back to Da Nang, so we were basically the only way out. By that time more Marines were coming in, so they really didn‘t need us as a unit. In fact, I don‘t think the wanted us being in a unit anyway. like I said the first three or four days—until they got relief in columns up in there. 16:08 That‘s when we really started finding out that things were really bad. More at night because when we were sitting there you could hear all the fighting that was going on and later we found out that they were actually executing all the counter revolutionaries. I found out later they were finding graves and we could hear all that going on, but we didn‘t know exactly what was going on. You can sit behind that wall and know what was going on, but you couldn‘t do anything about it. Interviewer: Did the Marines who came into the compound... did they tell you what they saw on the way in? Yeah, we had one that came in from more to the south and different villages and he said it was just bizarre. He said there were so many severed heads when they came down through this one village; they had kids in there ten and twelve years old kicking them around like they were soccer balls. 17:09 People around here worry about a little thing, 36 �but can you imagine kids ten or twelve years old doing that? And they were— whole families, decent families and everything and they were just taking those small villages and just wiping them right out. Interviewer: One of the things one loses track of sometimes is that the communists were not very nice people and they had very, very harsh policies. No they weren‘t and that‘s why I always say if you ever saw that movie ―We were Soldiers‖, that first scene, not only was that the enemy we were facing at the time, because anybody that was coming into that valley wasn‘t coming out alive, and we‘re finding out that was the same thing with us with the MACV compound, because we had a sapper battalion, a couple of sapper battalions out there and nobody was going to come out alive. Interviewer: They weren’t kidding. Now, finally you make it back to your unit, and did you get any particular kind of reception or was it just, “ok, you’re back now”? 18:14 It was kind of interesting. When we went back the third brigade was going back to relieve. They were on the west side of Hue at the time, so the other guys that were with me and everything, they went back to their own unit, they‘re heavy equipment operators and supply clerks. We went to Technical Operations because we were being debriefed in there, so their idea was, well, you know what Hue is like and everything on that, so I end up with a 5th and 7th Cav I was supposed to talk to. They had an intelligence guy there and everything, so I went back to Hue, they were west of there and we were—they thought I knew everything about Hue and everything and I didn‘t know anything. 19:15 I didn‘t know anything, show me a map and I know maybe a couple of blocks on that, 37 �and they thought I was more expert at it than what they were, so I went in on kind of an advisory type of thing. They were trying to find out a different—a place to figure out a place to put a landing zone, and more fire bases in there, and I was there—I worked around with them a couple days and everything and we ended up on one of the gates on the northwest side and that was kind of another interesting thing. We were bringing in artillery because at that time it was towards the end, this was the late—I would say the 20th or so of February. 20:10 We couldn‘t get any artillery support and one of the guys, somehow, got ahold of some naval artillery, a coordinator, and at that time the NVA were chaining all their people to their posts. There was—they had these small alleyways like I said, there were these two big tall buildings, two story buildings, and we called in for one round for spotting at the time—when you call it in the last thing you hear is ―shot out‖ and that means the shot is on the way. So, we‘re sitting there waiting, and waiting, for twenty seconds, ―Are you sure he said shot out?‖ We heard a thump, thump, thump thump, and here it comes, and we said, ―What is that? I never heard anything like that‖, well it came around the roof of one building and we heard a crunch, crunch, crack, and it came out and landed between the alleyways. 21:18 By the time the explosion both buildings were just flattened. I said, ―Boy this is good‖, and we were cleaning out, basically, this block there and we had this Marine Major come up and he was talking— we saw him come up and talk to the battalion commander and all of a sudden he‘s yelling, ―Stop, put a hold on it‖, and I said, ―What do you mean, you don‘t want it?‖ The Lieutenant I was working with at the time there, we were trying to coordinate this all together, and this Marine Major said we have to stop everything we were doing in there. This was the way, it was the agency of Indochina at the time and we were destroying it 38 �and we can‘t do that anymore. 22:08 I said, ―What do you mean?‖ They were chaining—on that, so they had to get them all together and I basically had to show them, ―This is what we did‖. Like I said, nobody knew how to do any street fighting at the time. Interviewer: Basically, the idea was, they were under orders not to destroy the buildings? They didn‘t care what we did with them, because by that time we were in the ancient city, the old city, and we were getting near the citadel and everything and they wanted to keep that in tact as much as possible. This was, like I said, around the 20th of February and they were still trying to save the city, and by that time it was just a disaster. And that‘s what I was kind of getting—I‘ve been kind of researching it for this interview and like I said, the only way we were getting any supplies in safely was from these LCU‘s going up and down the Perfume River. 23:08 You couldn‘t use the airstrip. There were all kinds of anti-aircraft around it, and they mined the roads every night, Highway 1 with mines and everything. So, when Walter Cronkite was supposed to make his famous thing, you know, the thing in Hue, and I‘ve been trying to get it on the internet, U-Tube, and I can‘t find it. I only saw it one time and, of course being in Hue, I was always looking in the back of the picture on there, and I thought, ―I wonder where he was in Hue, if he was in the old part or the new part?‖ I could never recognize it and like I said, the only way to go in was in these LCU‘s, the only safe way in. I was always thinking, ―There‘s no way they‘re going to let Walter Cronkite go up and down that Perfume River in an LCU. I don‘t think he ever was in Hue at that time. 24:06 39 �Interviewer: I guess he was—I heard of him being in Saigon, but not necessarily in Hue. I think he was in Hue, but in what they call ―Hue Phu Bao‖, because they always said he was in Hue, but if you really look at it—and there was really no safe way in for a civilian to get in there. I gave you that PowerPoint presentation. I found on U-Tube—there was a British film crew that was the only way, I found out, that was the only way they could get in there. It was showing them shooting twin twenties, and everything, on there, and I said, ―There‘s no way he could get in there at that time‖, and it‘s really bizarre. 25:10 Interviewer: You really kind of got in the middle of everything there. It got even worse than that after--when we finished and switched to the 7th we finally got a convoy and convoyed up to Camp Evans and that‘s when the A Shau Valley started, they wanted to clean that out. Well, since I did all this other thing, they wanted me to be the first one in. Well, let‘s call Signal Hill to go in—they said April 1st was the perfect time to get into the A Shau Valley and everything. You have to get with the 13th Signal Battalion and they set up—they wanted to set up communications and everything. Well, by time we were coming in there the fog was coming in too, and it was the middle of the monsoon season. It was towards the end, but it was still the monsoon season, so I got caught in that too a little bit. 26:04 Then we finally got into the floor of the valley, and there was just a bombed out airstrip and everything. We found two Russian bulldozers and we worked on them. We cannibalized one and got the other one going, and there were a couple trucks in there, I think they were Russian trucks, and we got those and we were able to use that. We were just starting to get the airstrip up and they brought in replacements, a fresher group for the group that was in there, a platoon in there. They 40 �took us back out and I was back in Nha Toc again and at this time Khe Sanh was still pretty much going on and that‘s when-- I think it was operation Pegasus that was starting up. They wanted me to go to this place called LZ Peanuts, and just south and west of Khe Sanh. 27:09 I had never even heard of Khe Sanh at this time or anything, and this was a Marine artillery base. They had credible intelligence that the thing was going to be overrun and they were almost overrun a couple of other times. Apparently there was a Special Forces unit or a village around the area that was overrun prior to that. Interviewer: There was one outside of Khe Sanh that did fall, yes. LZ Peanuts was just west of there and they needed some help there. At that time it was a Marine thing and eventually, I think the Cav took it over while another unit took it over anyway. So, we got in there and I went to the gunnery sergeant, and this thing sits on kind of a hill and I said, ―This is a piss poor place to put a thing. Usually we like it flat so you can set your fields of fire and that type of thing‖. 28:10 He said, ―Well, we're a fire support base for Khe Sanh‖, and I said, ―What the hell is Khe Sanh?‖ I never knew, even with all this going on you don‘t know all that‘s going on—I was in my little-Interviewer: You had been a little bit busy. With all that going on I didn‘t know Khe Sanh was going on, so when he said, ―We‘re fire support‖, it didn‘t mean that much to me anyway. So, we had to re-do what we called the ―green zone‖, security for the base, and Marines always like—they use these ―bouncing betty‘s‖ where they go up and I always like to use Claymore mines. They strung their barbed wire, or whatever you want to call it, with everything in straight lines. Well, I never liked to that because I always said these guys like to go and break up a formation. 29:05 They either come in a V or on. There were three, four sapper 41 �battalions out there, and the makeup of a sapper battalion is basically, I think they call them cells, I call them waves. The first one is the penetrator, and sapper is basically just a suicide mission, a Kamikaze type of operation, and all they are is, they just dressed up in—they put black soot over them because they‘re coming at night, and they have on little boxer shorts and little helmets on and the first wave was what they call the penetrator and they came in with Bangalore Torpedoes to blow the wire and everything up and the next couple waves were the attack waves and they usually carry a side arm with them, usually an AK47 or a RPG round, and they had probably eight pounds of satchel charges, one on each side, and we were trying to stop them and the fourth wave, fortunately we never got to it, it was the back and they came in with the heavy machine guns and the mortars and everything to take over the base camp or whatever they are going to take over. 30:19 Usually when they come in they come in either a V shape or head on depending on how they do it, and also, they practice these things until they get it down perfect. My idea was to break it up a little bit, so what I did, instead of making the barbed wire fences in a straight line, I funnel them in. Then I put my Claymore mines basically like an ambush, either in an L shape or you put it on one side and you put two or three of them right in front, so basically you stop them in front and you blow the sides on them, and get them on the side. 31:07 What we did is we set those up and we camouflaged them with old sandbags that had the color and everything on it and we would break those up and put them on the sides, put them on a rock with these sandbags, so when they came in we funneled them all in, so basically they were up in a straight line. Well, they came in a straight line and we fired the ambush off, and what we would do was I‘d shoot the first one off in the front and that would stand them up on it, and you 42 �have to remember that C4 blasted 25,000 feet per second, that‘s five miles in one second, and you got these Claymores that have centers with ball bearings that big, so you‘re getting somebody that‘s—if you ever seen somebody after a Claymore goes off, when we go to clean them up, all that‘s usually is just the front shell because the round is going in that big and it‘s coming out this big. 32:08 You can flip them over and the whole back side is just gone, so the idea was to—we‘d put a delay on one, about a tenth of a second, and that would stand them up and the other one would just blow them out, so you got those body fluids and everything going up. We made our own fougas, Napalm, and I put them in fifty-five gallon drums, and we mixed jet fuel with stuff like Knox gelatin, and blow that off at the same time, so that would set them up on that and then we would have the foo gas come over on top of them, and I got that on that PowerPoint presentation. You can see where the areas were all burned off. Basically you didn‘t have to clean up afterwards. Can you imagine all that body fluid and everything? 33:06 That was why, I like to say, when Robert Duvall said he like the smell of Napalm in the morning, well we liked the smell of burning bodies at night because then that meant we could go to sleep at night. Interviewer: How long did you stay out there at this LZ Peanuts place? Not very long Interviewer: Long enough to do the job? Yeah, that was basically that‘s what we did and then went back home. I forgot that our artillery unit would come in and take over. Interviewer: After that were you kind of—you get to the phase where things have quieted down a little? You were saying that eventually they did. 43 �Yeah, the summer of, I would say from about May on, was actually pretty easy because our main, like I said, from then on was to stop the traffic coming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. 34:05 Which was, like I say, after the Tet Offensive there everybody thought the war was pretty much over with. You never heard of a Viet Cong unit or anything because we basically wiped them off the face of the earth. Any other big NVA units were basically, what was left, was nothing more than a guerilla unit. There were still a lot of—they were trying to re-supply coming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. I went out, basically, like I said, I was like a janitor and anything they had to clean up, I would go do and everything. I had my own demo team and we would go up and do basically whatever we had to do. We would re-work a landing zone if they wanted to make it bigger or whatever, and even around camp its self because Camp Evens, even at the time, was relatively small, then it was division headquarters and it was basically getting bigger and bigger. 35:06 Our areas, the airfield had to be re-worked, the perimeters had to be expanded, and we did a lot of that work and a lot of landing zone work. We‘d usually go out for an operation and that was what was nice about the 1st Cav because you would have a landing zone going up, but the guys would usually have three or four fire bases that were supporting them, so we were building up all these things. A lot of times we‘d go in there and it would only last two or three days, you clean it all up and you go someplace else, a landing zone or anything, bring in four tubes of artillery or mortars, they‘re there a week or two and close it up. Actually we were quite successful, I was talking to one of our intelligence, S2, there and this is probably towards the end of— probably August or September there and they said the operation was going. 36:09 They were figuring for every thousand troops that were coming down the Ho chi Minh Trail, 44 �especially in the I Corps area, they were figuring eight hundred were dead within thirty days. The other two hundred or so wished they were, so it was really quite successful. Like I said, it took them three or four years just to come back, and anything to bring a big enough force down, I don‘t know what kind of forces they were bringing down. I don‘t know if they were more of a VC unit or if they were—they were NVA units, but I don‘t know what kind of units they were. Interviewer: Well, they were rebuilding in different parts of the country, so they would operate in various areas and it was difficult for people, but they were not launching the large scale operations. 37:07 No, we didn‘t have anything like the Tet Offensive or anything like that. Everything was really, really small time. Interviewer: During the time you were over there, did you ever have any leave time or R&R? Yes, to Bangkok, once on that. Interviewer: How did they organize that or work that? For us that was basically we were allocated—that‘s why I got kind of involved with that, because I worked with S1 because I knew how to type, so I ended up more-- when I wasn‘t working out in the field I came back to the area and I helped them type up orders and did that. One of the things we did was R&R type of things and making rosters. Basically we got an allocation every month for places Kuala Lampur, Singapore, Australia, Bangkok, Hong Kong, and I forget. Interviewer: Hawaii 38:00 45 �Yeah, Hawaii, for Hawaii it was usually for anybody that was married that went back to Hawaii. Nobody that was single went to Hawaii; it was anybody that was married went back to Hawaii. Interviewer: Their wives could come out to Hawaii. Yeah, they would fly them in and everything else. All the singles, which was probably about ninety percent, all went elsewhere. I went to Bangkok, and you had one in country R&R for about three or four days. That ended up, by the time you took the R&R and travel time it added up to ten days to two weeks. You needed to play it to get two weeks out of it. What would happen is, you get an allocation every month and it went basically by seniority, not so much by rank, but by seniority on that. You signed up and you‘re basically kept on that list. Interviewer: So, what did it feel like to get out of Vietnam for a few days? Oh, that was bizarre, especially in Bangkok that was just—we‘d go out. 39:08 The first thing we did, in fact, I went with Sergeant James, he was the guy I was with in Hue and he wanted to go together. You have to remember that this was in 1968 and he‘s black. A white and a black guy were buddy, buddies, going—we didn‘t room together, we each had a room. We went to the movies, we went to different places, different tourist things around and we did all that together. We went out to dinner a couple of times to these fancy restaurants and that was really bizarre. What I got a kick out of, they have these food vendors going around and all we had were C rations and Spam. We had Spam every which way you could think of, breaded, boiled, and barbecued, you name it. 40:04 And we‘re going around eating off all these things and the guys that are with us were saying, ―That might be monkey meat or something‖, but we didn‘t care, it was beef or something 46 �on that. What I liked was the fresh fruit. We went around and got pineapple, and their regular sugar was real coarse, but it had a little bit of cinnamon and you dipped that in there and oh, it was vine ripened and we thought we were in seventh heaven. Then you, we went to the movies and they had beer, cold beer, even at these theaters. They had regular theaters and American movies there at the time and you could buy the Thai beer and they sold it by the quart, ice cold and I forgot, but it was really high proof, it was like 12, 13, or 14 percent. Like I said, when we first went in there, in our hotel, we hired ourselves a—for a couple bucks a day or like ten or twenty bucks a day you can get a cab driver 41:10 We had our own cab driver take us all over the place. Interviewer: And then you have to go back. Actually that was pretty—because when I went on R&R it was towards the end of May and that was when everything was just kind of going down and I stayed primarily, at that time, in the summertime, with S1. I did a lot of oddball things on that and in fact, one of the things was kind interesting, and we never go to use it, was—because I had a secret security clearance. I was working in S1 and S2, well the Tactical Operation Center; the division was making contingency plans for invading the north at Hanoi. 42:06 The object of all that, I think, was the Cav, the 1st Marine Division, and I think the backup was going to be the 101st Airborne Division, but the idea was, they wanted 100% air superiority. That means we had to knock out every SAM missile site between the DMZ and Hanoi. So, we were getting pictures of their—how they set up these SAM missile sites. That was one of the things they did was they sent in a –they wanted to—there‘s a rail system that they had, they had a radar system that they had set up, they had a place for their barracks and they had their mess halls and everything. 43:11 They had it all 47 �pretty well set up, but the idea was for the SAM missile site, they had them on rail systems, so they slid up to the launchers on there. Well, they wanted to know how to destroy them. Well, you can‘t go in and bomb them because then you need bomb assistance going on. Our idea is if we went in there, one demolition team had to knock out two SAM missile sites the first day. So, they wanted to get an idea how these things were developed, or how they‘re made and everything, because the idea is, you wanted to blow the welded seams. If you blow anything that‘s bolted together, these guys take a little file and they hand make their own, and try to put the thing back together again. 44:06 I got a Ranger unit and another, I can‘t remember, they had all different special— their assignments basically is what they amounted to. So, they found one of the closer SAM missile sites and they went in there and destroyed that thing, and took a bunch of pictures. We came back in there and we made mock ups. Interviewer: So, they went into North Vietnamese territory to go and attack them? That‘s one of the things that are never supposed to happen. They weren‘t supposed to go over the DMZ. The only way really to find out is to actually destroy one, so they had to go in and they took the pictures and we ended up building a mock up and everything to figure out how to do it. 45:06 We were basically—and that‘s why we thought, ―If they‘re going to do that, this could be the end of the war‖. By the time you knock out Haiphong Harbor you got in Hanoi and everything on it. The idea was we were supposed to knock out all the SAM missile sites that gave you 100% air superiority and the 1st ARVN division can just walk in and basically take it over. Well, that never really came to—it was the end of October in 1968, that‘s when Johnson stopped bombing the north and I think that—see, this is what happened with Walter Cronkite, all this—we didn‘t 48 �know all this stuff was going back in there and that was the presidential elections and the whole nine yards. I don‘t think we even knew that Johnson wasn‘t going to run again because we didn‘t get that much information back, even from the states at the time. 46:09 We were all ready—the war‘s going to end, we‘ll go take the north and by Christmas time we could all be going home type of thing. All of a sudden Johnson decided to stop the bombing and then we got orders that we were heading south. They took the whole division, the whole 1st Air Cav, and headed south down to Phouc Vinh, south of, or down by Saigon, we were going to be a buffer between Saigon and Cambodia. Interviewer: Not too long after that you’re tour is up? That was November then. Interviewer: Did you do much when you got down south? No, because I went out about the 15th of November, I think, and the 20th or so of October we were all getting ready to head back. 47:09 It took us a couple days and then the 101st came in and took our area over, the 1st Cav was down by Phouc Vinh. I was down there—that was really strange too because when we were up at Camp Evans we were in the middle of nowhere. If you looked, I have some pictures of Camp Evans, you don‘t see any guard towers and that was a pretty good size camp at the time. We go down to Phouc Vinh and there‘s roads around the place, fences, guard towers and for whatever reason, they had a mine field going between Phouc Vinh and there and I‘m thinking, ―Why would you cut yourself off?‖ That was one of the first things when the Cav went in it; they took out that mine field. 48:04 Here I‘m watching all these people running around. We never had, like most units, I realized this afterwards, most units had a lot of 49 �civilians, and we never did out in the middle of nowhere, even when we were in Bong Son we never had civilian help. We‘d bring them in to help with the roads and some of those things, but we‘d pack them up we basically shipped them all out. We never—when we were in An Khe, that was more of a fortified position, they were using some, but when we were out in the field we never had civilian—well basically, in my demo teams, we never, that‘s what I learned in Hue, you never took prisoners. Standing orders were that if you took a prisoner, you took care of it. 49:05 If it escaped, you had to go after it. They know who you are, what you are doing, and how many there are, and like I said, with what kind of weapons or not, if we had that kind of information with a VA unit at least you know something to do with it —we never took any prisoners and number two, we has nobody to take care of them either, especially during the Tet Offensive. You were outnumbered and you have to figure that if you‘re outnumbered eight to one, you have to remember to waste the first four or five people because you got more people coming right behind them. Interviewer: Now, were you ever in a setting where you had a civilian population around you? That was the first time basically—well, when in An Khe, and when we were in An Khe, that was always considered a rear area, and when I was in English we had that. That was still the first time. 50:02 That was kind of, for us, we were kind of on-- the 8th Engineers was on the outside of the perimeter and we had some of the civilians do our laundry. We had the big concertina wire, we had our bags and everything and we‘d wrap it up and throw it over the thing, and they‘d come back the next day with it and we‘d put the money in a stone and throw it over and they would throw the laundry back over to us. 50 �There were no laundry facilities or anything on that, we just wore the stuff until it rotted off and went to the supply and got new clothes on. Interviewer: At what point do you get the orders telling you to go home? I was in Phouc Vinh and they call—I was working in S1, so I didn‘t have any problem there. In fact, I cut my own orders to go back. Interviewer: Once you got back to the states, did you get discharged right away or did you go to a base or what happened? 51:02 I went back to Fort Lewis, I went back to—I went to Cam Rhan Bay and then flew to Fort Lewis. This was in November of 1968 and it was seven or eight o‘clock at night and they told us, well, we could wait until the next morning, they work twenty-four hours a day, or you guys can start processing our right away. Hey, we had been sleeping for twenty-four hours; we‘re ready to go, so I was out pretty much the next day. We didn‘t have—like I said, by the time we went through processing and got out checks, through finance and everything, we pretty much got our orders to go.. In fact, they made a whole set of class A uniforms in less than twenty-four hours and everything. We were in our class A‘s, had our orders, and took us by bus right to the airport. 52.05 Interviewer: All right, we’ve gotten to the point where you get sent back to the states. Before we go further with that, are there other particular things about the time you spent in Vietnam, any experiences that you haven’t brought into the story yet? Oh well, there was—one of the things we had to do that I thought was—I got a call one time on pacification, they were taking villages and trying to relocate them. This is more when I was down in English in the Bong Son area, and it was one of the last things we 51 �were doing before we moved. I got a call from headquarters there, got a call from a bunch of MP‘s. 53:07 They were taking down a village, or basically relocating them and what they do is they take them in helicopters and drop them off to a point and we had to, because there were VC in there, we had to separate out VC, and basically not bringing in any weapons or anything and then they move them to another place like that. Well, they were bringing in—they had a squad of eight to ten MP‘s., well, they thought it was just a small village, just a little bigger than what they had, well; they were overwhelmed with all these people. Of course, they‘re extremely hostile and you have to search each individual person and basically pat them down. You think it‘s bad getting on an airplane today and getting strip searched, just trying to get on an airplane with x-ray, we had physically search them, men, women, children, everybody. 54:02 So, they called us up and said they needed some help on it. There was nobody else around and so they took me and a bunch of other guys and what we did was we took some concertina wire, we put them in the concertina, the rolled wire, just to hold them and we took Claymore mines, because they were having problems, they were trying to rush them and they didn‘t want to shoot them, they were civilians, but they didn‘t know is a civilian and who isn‘t. That was the problem in Vietnam, you didn‘t know who was who until they kind of search them out a little bit. That‘s what I found out with MP‘s, they profile really well, they knew how—they were trained at what to look for and who the VC was. Interviewer: Did they have any Vietnamese military assisting them? No Interviewer: They were just doing this on their own? 52 �At this time we were just on our own. They tried to get some and they had an interpreter, but usually it was our own interpreters that were in there. 55:02 Basically they didn‘t trust them, even the ones from intelligence, they wouldn‘t trust those guys, so we had our own, and each battalion had their own interpreters. They had our own interpreters; they had medics, because some people were having health issues and that type of thing. There were so many people and you‘re trying to have them stay back because you didn‘t want to get overwhelmed, so we brought in the concertina wire and just made a circle. They had, we call them pens, but sections, they roll it up and they had gates in it, and it was just a temporary one just to hold them because they had to check them all, they gave them clothes, food and everything and then they segregate them in whatever way they wanted. These were the VC, or maybe possible, and that type of thing, these are the ones that are going to be shipped out. 56:07 They brought the Chinooks in and took these people. The ARVN pretty much controlled that, but we were bringing them in and we wanted to do that pretty much ourselves on that, so what we did was just put a big circle and put them in there and we put Claymore mines, because they knew what Claymore mines were , we put them around. We brought them in through a gate and one or two of the MP‘s would strip down to their—because they would grab onto anything they could on you, if you had a weapon or anything to grab. So, we‘d get the bigger MP‘s and strip them down to the waist and they would go around and check them and you‘d be surprised what we found and where we found it. I asked them, ―How do you know what‘s VC and what‘s not, and basically that‘s where you‘ve got to do a little bit of profiling. You just watch them and look in their eyes. 57:07 You tell them you would like to talk to them and we have an interpreter over here, and that‘s when the MP‘s would kind of do an 53 �initial interrogation. A lot times, when I was there it was kind of interesting—a guy came up, pointed at another guy and said, ―VC, VC‖. The MP said, ―You have to kind of watch it because these groups, they‘re neighbors, but a lot of times they‘re a family in the group and they don‘t like each other and just because one guy says he‘s a VC, you don‘t yank them out or anything unless someone else says they‘re VC, and then they interrogate them. There were quite a few VC in there. There was one time—they put them in the pens and everything, and we had the MP‘s and everything, and there was a big commotion going off in one area on that. 58:08 He goes over there and he said— they had sanitary packs with a lot of toiletries, soaps, tooth brushes and that type of thing, and he said, ―Go over to the sanitary pack and get a bunch of these Kotexes‖, and he throws them in. I said, ―What‘s going on?‖ He said, ―They tell me one of these gals was bleeding over there‖, well, she was having a---- and I said, ―Do they actually know how to use those things?‖ He said, ―Are you going to go in there and show them?‖ I said, ―That‘s not my‖, and he said, ―Don‘t worry they know how to use them‖. So, you end up with interesting things like that. Interviewer: But that’s sort of a strange kind of contact to have with the civilian population. 59:00 But actually when I was in the Central Highlands and that, I think that‘s where I‘m a little bit different. My experience is more out in the field. When we were up in the I Corps area we were out by ourselves. Interviewer: Right, there were not a whole lot of civilians out there anyway. When we went out in an area it was a free fire zone, basically anything that was moving because we were watching everything coming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Ho chi 54 �Minh Trail, basically, ninety-nine percent was a free fire. That‘s why I was kind of glad I could do it that way rather than be back. I was glad I went with the 1st Cav rather than staying down south around Saigon. I can see where you could run into a lot more complicated problems, yeah. Interviewer: You get back to the states, it’s the end of 1968, you get to go home, and you mentioned that you started back up in school pretty quickly. Yeah, I was drafted in my junior year. 00:08 I came back in November of 1968 and Ferris had tri-semesters, so I was up there in the winter. I went back right away on there and I was back in January of 1969. Interviewer: You had mentioned earlier kind of, it was your—back at the beginning of your story you were talking about the race riots. Yeah, that‘s when they had the race riots up in Big Rapids, up on campus—I was taking a night class up at the Starr Education Building and I was in there with another Marine. Here I was, I was a junior or a senior, and I was—because transferring from junior college, going to Ferris, I didn‘t have a lot of freshman classes, so in order to graduate I had to take these freshman classes, and here I was twenty-one or twenty-two, and I‘m a Vietnam vet sitting in a class with forty or fifty freshman. 1:08 there was myself and another Marine vet there. Interviewer: Then what happened? Well, this was when we were taking a humanities class and it was from 6 to 8 o‘clock on Tuesday and Thursday night and this must have been Tuesday they had all these race riots. These guys came into the Starr Educational building and they were locking up all the doors and everything around eight o‘clock because the class was just leaving. This 55 �other guy and I were talking to the professor when we were leaving and a couple colored guys were—they said, ―You‘re locked in for the night‖, and we looked at each other and said, ―No way‖, and we kind of pushed our way through, grabbed one guy myself, on one shoulder and he on the other shoulder, dragged them all the way down the stairway, we kicked the door open, and these young—―open up the doors‖, so they opened up the doors and kind of let us go out. 2:10 We went to the commons down there where you meet up with other guys there and the next thing you knew they had state police there, the Sheriff and everything. About an hour or so later there was a school bus, chanting and everything and bouncing back and forth. Interviewer: What was it like to come back to the U.S. in 1968? It was different. Interviewer: How did you—what kind of a reception did you get when you got back? It wasn‘t too bad coming back to West Michigan. We got a lot of—I don‘t want to criticize, but there was a lot of debate and that kind of thing, but at Ferris at that time, we had the vets club and there were about two hundred people and that was probably one of the biggest organizations on campus at that time. 3:04 Interviewer: So that wasn’t a place where there was a lot of hostility? No, even if there was we didn‘t care. Like I was saying before, for me, that was a lot of therapeutic—we were, not bonding, but working with other vets and everybody was saying PTSD and nobody knew what that was at the time. Everybody was saying, ―At night I get these weird dreams‖, and they kind of explain the weird dream and another guy said, ―If you think that‘s bad, you ought to see what my weird dream is‖, and another 56 �guy said, ―That‘s nothing, I had a worse one than that one‖, and after a while everybody‘s telling about having weird dreams‖, so we‘re kind of doing our own therapy together. That really worked out well and that was the best thing we did. Interviewer: Now, once that you’re back are you paying much attention to the news and things like that. The way the war was being covered? 4:01 Oh, yeah, that‘s what I said before, after the Tet Offensive we thought the thing was over. That‘s one reason, I think, that a lot of guys voted for Nixon at the time, because we did absentee ballots and everything. At the time, I think the mass majority, other than regular army guy—regular army guys, officers and everything, were all voting for Humphrey, and all of the others were voting for Nixon. We were thinking, ―He‘s going to end the war and everything and we‘re going to be marching out of here‖. Well, he just extended it and probably made it worse than anything else. Interviewer: Well, the politics behind it were, both before and after that, were just enormously complicated. Oh yeah, and it was nothing relative to what we were doing at the time. We‘re coming back here and it was on the television, you could see everything and it was nothing, just propaganda. Interviewer: Or the way journalists will do things, you get an isolated snapshot of something and then they make up the rest of story. Yeah, well, the thing that got me, and I think about it more now, was Walter Cronkite. 5:10 Like we were talking before. Well, he‘s going in—well it was a stalemate—there was no stalemate. Well, I realized it was political, there was really two reasons for war, either economic or political and this was strictly political. There‘s no oil, or no fighting 57 �for oil like we are now. This was strictly a political was, so how can you win a political war? Interviewer: Yeah, and that ultimately was the larger problem. Now, another little story or quip, was when I was up north I had a chance to take a—there was a two star General and he was in charge of the I Corps out of the engineers and they wanted me to take him back, when we were up at Camp Evans, to go back to Saigon. We had a few minutes, so I was sitting in with him in a Jeep and I said, ‗Sir, what‘s going on with the war? What do we consider—how do we win this thing?‖ 6:07 ―What‘s going to happen once we leave?‖ What‘s the end game with this thing here?‖ He said, ―Basically it‘s going to end up being like the old west. The idea was to have places like Hue, Da Nang, and Qui Nhon, everything being like we have now, big base camps. Like the forts out west, when things were good the civilians would go out and do their farming or whatever, and when things went bad, bring everybody back in the gates and if they need some reinforcements, bring them up from Saigon or Hue or you know, Da Nang and everything and go out—basically that‘s what it was going to be, just like the old west‖, and I said, ―That‘s it? That‘s the best hope we could get?‖ 7:04 They weren‘t trying to control anything, they were just trying to keep the DMZ. I thought maybe they were trying to take over the north, or that, but they were just happy—just like Korea. Korea was basically a blueprint. Interviewer: Except Korea was a peninsula and Vietnam wasn’t. Yeah, that was the kicker on it and that‘s why you got into Cambodia and everything else on that. 58 �Interviewer: Now, for you, you go and you get your degree and then what do you do after that? You get out of school. That was another trip because I had all my background, I had my own demo teams and everything, I didn‘t graduate, but I was in OCS and everything, I was going back and I got my degree, a BS degree in business administration, so I thought, ―Well, I had it made in the shade‖, so we had—when I was graduating in my senior year, I had my resume and everything, we had people from Caterpillar, and everything, come in on campus to do the interviews and everything on that. 8:10 They didn‘t want anything to do with us on that. I would go in there, they would look at my resume and say, ―Well, that‘s not exactly what we were looking for, we‘re thinking of going in a little bit different direction‖, so I kind of found out and within about six months I took all my experience off of Vietnam and everything and I just put-Military-U.S. Army, duty area, Vietnam. That‘s all I put on there. I didn‘t put anything else or any explanations on that. Interviewer: Did that help? No, because it was more of a network. I got a job at Lear Siegler at the time as a data coordinator and it‘s not what I know, and I had the background and everything, but I knew a couple of people that worked in there. 9:02 From there—I was laid off, because this was back in the 1970‘s, and off course of you know anything about the economic conditions of the seventies, that was the world‘s worst time, you couldn‘t find anything. Economic conditions were bad enough, back then you had inflation, double digits, unemployment, double digits, and the whole nine yards. Interviewer: Not a great time. 59 �No it wasn‘t‘, so that wasn‘t a good time at all economically. I was just married, in fact, I met my wife the day I got, almost the day I got out of Vietnam and that was November of 1968 and we were married in September of 1970. I was going—my last year up at school and I had a semester to go and I was driving back and forth with a couple of guys up to Ferris. I worked at, like I said, Lear Siegler, and then I got laid off because I was the last one in and the first one out. 10:02 A neighbor of mine worked for Clark Equipment and it was on Richmond and Leonard, metal fabrication. He said, ―Well, do you know how to do grinders and stuff?‖ We need people like that‖, and I said, ―I‘m not that fussy‖, and I didn‘t know how long I was going to be laid off, so I went with them and had an interview and they didn‘t care what kind of background I had, they didn‘t hardly even look at my resume. They took me out on the shop floor and they were showing me these grinders and said, ―Can you do this?‖ I said, ―Well sure‖, and then I was working there a couple weeks and I had to join the union, so I joined the union and they put the job posting up, so I go—they had a job for a welder, with set-up and everything, so I sign for that on there and nobody else wanted to do it, so I ended up—I never had a welding hood on in my life. 11:07 So, it was on the job training, so for a week or so I was learning how to do some link welding and they said, ―Well we got a job‖, and one thing leads to another and about six or eight months down the line I get a call back from Lear Siegler and they wanted me to come back to work. I‘m going—I said, ―Sorry bob, I don‘t think I can do that, I‘m making too much money now‖, and he said, ―No, no, I want to talk to you‖. So, I sat down there and what It was doing was working a ton of overtime, and he said, ―Well, you don‘t want to be in a union anyway‖, and even with Lear Sieger they had a union, but I was in the administration end of it on that and he said, 60 �―You have to pay all those union dues‖, and I said, ―I don‘t worry about it‖, because I actually ended up with better health benefits than they did. I had dental and vision with it. We were working so much overtime, and couldn‘t get enough people in there. 12:02 What I was doing was I was working a double shift on Friday nights and everything was piece rate, was rated, and I knew the jobs we were doing. In the first eight hours I could make up enough, so when I was working the second shift, we were working on third shift and all I had to do was work four or five hours and I could have two or three hours off because the supervisor said, ―If you can make a hundred percent, you can‘t do any more‖, so I had it made in the shade and everything. Then we were working Saturdays and Sundays, with time and a half for Saturday and Double time for Sundays. We were going down there and he said, ―You‘re making more money than I was as a supervisor at Lear Siegler‖, and everything on that. After that, I was there for about a year, no eighteen months, they took the whole plant and moved it up to Tennessee and they wouldn‘t let anybody move down there with them. 13:06 That is when everybody was starting to outsource and everything on that. So, my wife was an LPN and she worked for a doctor and he was doing some work with Steelcase, so I worked there for about a year at Steelcase, this was 1979 to about 1980, 1981 there, and I walked in there the first time and I—everybody thought it was the greatest place to work and they had some piece work there but it worked out to just be back pay, and they had the day rate, and second shift all you were doing was cleaning up these schedules and everything on there and at the end of the week, I basically had just enough money to pay my bills, had enough money to put in my pocket to use for gas money and I had to have the bonus and everything just to pay the house payment. I had to pay the house payments three or 61 �four—then I just moved out to Coopersville when they were still building the Coopersville plant. 14:12 So, I thought I would try to get into GM out there. They were running a jobs fair at, I think it was, the Army Reserve out there on Michigan Street and College, out in that area, so the first couple days you couldn‘t even get near the place, especially in and around that area, they were—Wednesday and Thursday was—and my wife said, ‗Why don‘t you give it another try?‖ So I went and there was nobody around there, I just drove up to the Army, walked in there, gave them my resume, filled out the paperwork and they said, ―See those two guys over there, go and talk to them‖. There were two guys from Coopersville over there and I talked to them for a while and told them I lived out there and they said, ―Oh, that‘s good‖, and they were all nice and smiles and they just put the thing on a pile. 15:07 I thought I would never hear from them again and about a couple weeks later, this was around February. It was the first of March, I was out raking my lawn, this was on a Saturday morning, and my wife comes out and said, ―There is a guy from General Motors that wants to talk to you‖, and I said, ―At nine o‘clock on Saturday morning?‖ and I thought it was Arnie down there, down on the corner and he‘s kidding around with me, so I‘m going to—I was kidding around with him on the phone and started talking to him, you know and realize that this guy is for real. So, here again, I went down there and did an interview and at that time the only thing that helped was my Vietnam experience. They were more interested in giving Vietnam vets preferential treatment. It wasn‘t anything I did and that‘s how I ended up working for General Motors. 16:06 I tried to get into Coopersville, but it was still being completed, it was still under construction, so I worked in the Burlingame plant for a while in that. You had to be in the union and after ninety days then you could transfer 62 �out. Well, I didn‘t even make it to ninety days and I got laid off and ended up on 36th Street and I was there for twenty-eight years until they closed the plant. I ended up, I was working production at the time and myself and a neighbor and I, we went back and forth and traded off driving, did our own carpooling and everything, and we looked at each other and said, ―We‘re not going to be doing this for thirty years‖, because I was thirtysix at the time, when I went in. 17:03 ―I‘m going to be sixty-six when I get out. If I stay here for thirty years, I‘m going to be sixty-six, and there is no way I‘m going to be able to do this production‖. I ended up taking pre-apprentice classes and when I finished up this, I ended up being a welder. I liked the welding portion of it and they tried to talk me into doing the tool and die and that type of thing and I decided not to, so that‘s when I took the Millwright Welder classification and everybody said, ―Well, with all your background and everything‖, and I said—here again I did the same thing as—I didn‘t realize, but that‘s part of my PTSD type of thing. I didn‘t like anybody in management, so here again—it was probably a good thing I was in a union shop and everything on that. But the same thing with me is what they call steel stores and that‘s where they bring in the coils and everything and this kind of put me as the only Millwright on first shift. 18:11 Interviewer: They kind of left you alone. They let me do my thing. I worked with the set-up guys and everything and the idea was that they wanted somebody in maintenance, if something went wrong right away, to get out there and figure out what was wrong with it and analyze on it. Well, you had a lot of free time in-between and I don‘t sit around too well, so I worked with some of the set-up guys and we would walk and see the different operators and the different set-up and 63 �everything on that. I ended up doing a lot of the ergonomics and safety thing. You have a lot of safety inspections and things that have to be done, things of that type, so I ended up doing a lot of that work, and a lot of small stuff. Interviewer: Now, to look back at the whole thing, you mentioned some of the effects of your time in the service had on you. You notice that you did take a certain amount of PTSD with you and there are certain memories and things like that. How else do you think your time in the service wound up affecting you, either positively or negatively? 19:07 Oh yeah, positively or negatively, I don‘t ever really try to look on the negative ends of it. I try always to be positive because people always say, ―well with your background in data processing or business administration and everything, how did you end up doing welding and stuff like that?‖ But working as an engineer, I wasn‘t that mechanically inclined. I always try to kind of look ahead because I couldn‘t design a car or a motor, but try to put a car together; you know all the nuts and bolts and that type of thing. The same thing with ergonomics, that‘s how I got involved in ergonomics and safety, because if you get an engineer he would try to analyze it too much, and being a combat engineer, we used everything we had around us. I didn‘t care too much about ordering parts, I just kind of looked around and if we needed some safety rail, I wouldn‘t order the pipe and everything, I would go out in the back pipe, or go to our—whatever was available. 20:17 That‘s what a combat engineer did. I explained to you too, when we were in English and Bong Son there we were making hooches and places to live, well, we didn‘t have lumber, two by fours, two by sixes or twelve, we would take ammo cases, and in this case the cases they were using for 2.5 rockets for gunships and there were hundreds of these 64 �things laying around. We would literally take them apart; we would build our own hooch‘s and everything. We would put sandbags in like about six feet high and put them all the way up and put a flat roof and these cases, they had asphalt and plastic and we made our own water proof roofs and used, they had a name for it, it was kind of like fortified asphalt we put on top of it. 21:12 Then we had walls between each one. Well, the case would open up, so we put it sideways, so when you opened it up you had a place for storage and you had a lid, so you could put it up and lock it up. So, we had that and we even had an indoor shower and everything. We put a big gas tank an old fuel tank from a jet plane, or fighter, and fill that full of water and put it up on top of the roof. We made our own support and used the sun to heat it up in the daytime and that was our hot water at night. Interviewer: So, you learned how to make things work. Yeah Interviewer: Well, it makes for a good story. Basically we were jacks of all trades and a master of none. Interviewer: Well, thanks for coming in and telling me about it today. 21:58 I hope you learned something. Interviewer: I certainly did. 65 �66 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Henk, Edward (Interview transcript and video), 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Henk, Edward Description An account of the resource Ed Henk was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan on June 21st, 1944. After graduating from high school, Henk attended Grand Rapids Junior College for three semesters before transferring to Ferris State University to study data processing. However, in 1966, the middle of his junior year at Ferris State, Henk received his draft notice. Following basic training and Advanced Individual Training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri for combat engineering, Henk attended OCS at Fort Benning, Georgia for sixteen weeks, although he never completed the school. After leaving OCS, Henk deployed to Vietnam in 1967 and served with the 1st Air Cavalry Division. While in Vietnam, Henk fought through the Tet Offensive, including the defense of the MACV compound in Hue. Following the completion of his tour, Henk returned to the United States and received his discharge. 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 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 2011-03-03 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HenkE 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/40ee45d4b98d5bd09b354c7af84743b8.mp4 290d8991d7b840badb5c9132427caa7e https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ec0cd24b539d9181afda52006f097676.pdf 7c8449b2586fb6c2209993f94808864b PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Vietnam Richard Hency Total Time – (01:58:15) Background      He was born in Battle Creek, Michigan on July 17, 1949 (00:23) o He grew up in Battle Creek and graduated from Battle Creek Central High School His father was a fabricator and his mother was a waitress until she was forty – she went back to school and became a schoolteacher (00:36) He has an older sister and two half brothers He graduated from high school in 1968 (01:07) o At this point he knew quite a bit about the Vietnam War  He was taking a course in high school that subscribed to Newsweek – they had to read it every week (01:34)  While he did not know what the real issues were, he was well aware of the current events of the situation  He did not know anyone that was in the war (02:16)  The course was only during his senior year of high school Once he graduated from high school, he went to work where his father worked (03:06) o He worked there from June – April of 1969 Enlistment/Training – (03:28)      He had received his draft notice in November of 1968 o He took his physical when he received his notice (03:42) o His physical was at Fort Wayne in Detroit, Michigan When he went for the physical it did not seem like they were doing much (04:01) o There were some that tried to beat the system – they would act weird, do drugs and then go to the physical, etc. (04:13) He went to Fort Knox, Kentucky for Basic Training (05:03) o The soldiers took a bus (05:10) o He traveled with some of his friends from school He had no idea what he was getting into when he went to Basic Training In the first few days the soldiers receive fatigues and he had to do KP duty (Kitchen Police) (06:20) �                  o His uncles had told him that KP duty is for soldiers that had done something wrong After a few days of processing he was assigned for training (07:54) The training consists of learning how to stand, dress right, line up properly, how to have your uniform look, and other basic things There was some physical training – running, obstacle courses, etc. (08:45) There was one Drill instructor that had been to Vietnam and every time the soldiers saw him he had a freshly pressed shirt (09:19) Discipline was highly stressed o If you were not talked to, you do not talk (10:08) Many of the men in basic training were from Michigan (10:48) o There were not too many from the east or the west of the United States There were some soldiers in basic training that could not salute, do a right turn, could not keep up, etc. (11:13) o They almost could not tell right from left Basic Training lasted for eight weeks (12:00) At the end of Basic Training the Drill instructor calls your name and tells you where your AIT (Advanced Individual Training) training would be o Soldiers knew that if they were sent to Fort Polk, they were going to be in the infantry (12:29) He was flown to Fort Polk, Louisiana (12:40) o He landed during the night o The soldiers were loaded into trailers that looked like they would be used for cattle – they were sent to their base (12:48) AIT training had a lot more physical training o There was a survival exercise where a team of soldiers were forced to find their way to a certain place during the night (13:18) There was a lot more training with weapons o They trained with a .45 Caliber handgun (13:55)  They learned how to use it, clean it, tear it apart and put it back together o They trained on the M16 as well o He did not train on grenade launchers (14:16) Most of the Drill instructors were back from Vietnam o They were trying their hardest to make the soldiers as tough as they could be (14:48) o They knew what Vietnam was like o They would not actually tell the soldiers about their experiences (15:01)  They would sometimes say “you could get killed for that” There were no Vietnamese villages set up for training (15:26) On one night patrol he had to go through a swamp – that was the closest activity to Vietnam that he experienced AIT training was eight weeks long (16:48) After AIT, he was sent home on leave for a week After leave, he went to Fort Lewis, Washington (17:05) � o He was there until he received his orders for Vietnam During his week in Washington he did some sight seeing, drank, played cards, etc. Active Duty – Part I – First Experiences – (17:39)            He actually leaves for Vietnam in September of 1969 (17:43) o En route to Vietnam, they landed and fueled in Alaska before flying straight to Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam o When he was 10,000 feet in the air he could see a big smoke cloud coming up (18:21) When he landed, his first impression was that Vietnam was hot and a lot was going on (19:00) When he got off the plane he was assigned to some group (19:33) o He remembers pulling Guard Duty on an elevated bunker – he had a weapon and ammo o He quickly realized that he had nothing to worry about while at Cam Ranh Bay He was around Cam Ranh Bay for only three or four days before being assigned to his unit (20:50) o He was assigned to the Americal Division (20:57) After he was assigned he was sent to Chu Lai, Vietnam for orientation (21:14) o He was sent on a chopper from Cam Ranh Bay to Chu Lai (21:22)  It was a Chinook The orientation consisted of the rules – how to treat Vietnamese citizens, how to understand them, what to watch for, what to not do, and other things like that (21:54) At this point he was wearing his lightweight jungle fatigues He is then sent to Duc Pho, Vietnam (Duc Pho is a rural district of Quang Ngai) where he is loaded up with his M16 (23:02) o He is also given four claymore mines, six or eight hand grenades, a couple of bandoliers of M60 ammunition, and a steel pot o He felt like he was about to blow up at any minute (23:40) He was taken out to a firebase on a resupply Chinook (24:13) o The Chinook had a big hole in the bottom because it was a resupply chopper o He thought he was going to die before he got to the firebase When he arrived at the firebase he was taken to his company that was out in the field (24:44) o The company took most of the claymore mines, hand grenades and ammo off of him o He was then assigned a buddy (25:20) o They were in an open area during his first night (25:26) On his first night he received the midnight – 6 A.M. Guard Duty (25:43) �            o He remembers sitting there and seeing movement that turned out to be bushes At that time the firebase had four infantry companies operating around it (27:08) o Three would be sent into the field for thirty days (27:21) o There was a rotation His company set up an ambush against the enemy o They did a good job (28:12) o It was the only contact he had the with the enemy during his first time in the field o During the ambush, the Americans and Vietnamese soldiers did not know where each other were (29:08) The company had roughly 120 men in it when he joined (29:29) There was not a lot of effort made by the men in the company to meet the new guys o They are given the label FNG (Fucking New Guy) (29:46) o The other soldiers do not want to spend time getting to know the FNG‟s because they are more apt to get wounded or killed (30:02) o The new guys watch the older guys to know what to do Most of the time they operated as a company (30:42) o They had a mortar platoon that would set up the mortars at night o The rest were rifle platoons (31:00)  They all had at least one M16 The country that they were operating in was primarily mountainous (31:26) They had a Kit Carson Scout (Vietnamese scout) o He believed that the scouts were great (31:58) o They could communicate with villages o In one village they found out that there was a man eating tiger nearby (32:16) o The scout provided information – some military and some local information When he goes in for his first stand down, he returns to the same firebase that he first landed on (32:58) o The duties were to supply a perimeter of fire comprised of many infantry men (33:22) o The men would receive their care packages while on stand down o They were able to eat out of a mess hall o There was an artillery battery on the base (34:33) The firebase never received very much attention from the enemy (35:01) o There was one time, when he was not there, when the firebase had a few rounds dropped on it The time on the firebase was relatively safe (35:56) o They were still surrounded by the enemy When the soldiers were not on perimeter duty they could do almost anything they wanted (36:30) o On rare occasions they played movies There tended to be two types of soldiers in the infantry: the juicers and the heads �  o The juicers were the guys that drank warm beer (37:13) o The heads were the guys that smoked cheap dope (37:18)  The men never smoked when they were in the field One time he was high and he started shooting a Quad .50 just to watch the tracers (38:09) When in the field it was not uncommon to pitch a tent at night and to be in a cloud or above a cloud the next morning Active Duty – Part II – Terrain/Search & Destroy – (39:38)         His company never had any prolonged firefights (39:47) o One time they flew into a hot LZ and when they arrived, everything had settled down o The fighting usually occurred when the enemy decided they wanted to shoot (41:15) o He is still scared of “thump” sounds when he hears them There was one night when he went on a recon operation and they walked into an NVA (North Vietnamese Army) company (43:12) o He had to call artillery strikes in that were close enough to hit the enemy but not him themselves o They would not leave their position until daylight (43:43) The terrain was primarily jungle (44:14) o Most of the time it was double and triple canopy o They could never walk on existing trails  They used machetes to clear trails (44:49)  It was rarely open enough in the jungle to walk o When the terrain was open, they never even walked on the dikes (45:05) o They would walk through the rice paddies rather than along the dikes– it was better to get a leech on you than have your foot blown off In another incident they called in napalm on the enemy (46:01) o As soon as they made contact with the enemy, they fought and the NVA disappeared o When they went back in after the napalm, they did not find any bodies (46:27) o The NVA probably went underground or “got the hell out because they knew what was coming” The enemy had a lot of bunkers, tunnels and spider holes (46:50) o They would sometimes find them His company never had anyone die from a booby trap (47:48) o He saw a hooch booby trapped For a while he had a lot of contact with civilians while he was there (48:35) At one point he was instructed that they were operating in a search and destroy o This meant that anyone that the soldiers came in contact with was considered the enemy (49:02) �    o They moved people to a refugee camp and burned their homes With some of the locals, they could be “your friend during the day and your enemy at night” (50:15) They would sometimes find models of their firebases in Vietnamese villages o The only way they could do this is by having someone on the firebase (50:44) There were some Vietnamese that would work on the firebase during the day They saw some ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) (51:36) o During the Vietnamization, some of the Vietnamese soldiers were good but many were not  With the bad soldiers they thought, “Someone was going to shoot „em. Might be us!” (52:22)  He did not trust the ARVN soldiers Active Duty – Part III – Refugee Camps/Cambodia – (53:08)     He was in Duc Pho, Vietnam for some of his stand down time (53:18) o He would have pull Guard Duty, but he remembers walking down the street with some other soldiers – they all had uniforms on that were not there own  They would be resupplied with uniforms that had other soldiers names on them He was jealous of the men that did not have to serve in the field (55:19) At a certain point in his tour he was working to clear out civilian populations and bringing them to refugee camps (56:01) o At this point he is allowed to shoot whatever he saw o He was part of the physical removal of people from the villages – they would also have to burn their villages (56:14) o After a while, the soldiers get numb and detached from their assignments o He knows that the people were not happy with what they were doing (56:47) o The American government decided that the only way to manage the areas was to eliminate the friendly‟s so that the only people out there were the enemy (57:12)  “The bad guys could no longer hide with the friendlies” o There were many enemies (57:55)  Most of the enemies were Viet Cong (58:12)  There were some NVA in the are  The Viet Cong were just in rags or normal civilian clothes (58:42)  Their goal was to cause as many casualties through booby traps, mortars, mines, trip wires, snipers, quick ambushes, etc. Within his own unit, there were not many casualties (59:54) o Things eventually got more busy �           A few months into his time in the field, his company changed commanders (01:00:22) o The first commander was easy-going and seemed to care about his company  He carried the radio for his commander (01:00:39) o There was one time during a monsoon when his M16 rusted – his commander told him that he needed to clean his rifle (01:01:18) o The soldiers did not get into a lot of trouble with the first commander (01:02:01) When he was the radio operator he was in contact with the other battalions (01:02:06) o He would call in artillery, air strikes, medevacs, etc. o A lot of the time his commander took the phone to make the calls (01:02:22) o There was only one radio for everyone o The platoon radios would not call in air strikes (01:03:08) The first commander rotated out The second commander was, in his opinion, overweight (01:03:47) o He was Airborne Ranger and he was commanding a drafted “grunt company” He did not get along with his second commander When they were on the firebase one night getting high, they were pretending to be chopper pilots (01:04:27) o He and a couple of guys were making jokes, but the battalion thought they were serious – he got in trouble and no longer carried the radio On one evening the commander wanted the men to go to a mountain range and fight the NVA (01:05:31) o It was not an actual order – the commander just wanted recognition o The soldiers told them that if they go, the commander may not come back (01:06:00) o The commander eventually left There was a tension at that stage of the war between some commanders and his men Near the end of the war he was carrying an M16 – his helmet had a peace sign on it (01:07:00) o He had decided that the war itself had no real objective (01:07:23) o After three or four months it no longer was about winning the war, but rather, about going home (01:07:53)  That mentality changes the morale of the soldiers  He does not remember any soldier that went to the field that believed they were not going to fight (01:08:19)  After some time, there were a lot of soldiers that no longer wanted to fight (01:08:25) They tried to maintain roughly 125 men in the company at all times (01:09:18) There was one time in his experiences where the soldiers were flown to the Cambodian border before they were supposed to be there �o They were put on choppers and flown to Cambodia (01:10:07) o The soldiers got off the choppers and were going to take out an NVA camp (01:10:24)  When they arrived, the fires were still warm o They found caches, weapons, food (01:10:45)  There was a lot of supplies and other things that the NVA needed o They thought they were being set up for an ambush Active Duty – Part IV – R&R/Injuries/Last Experiences of Service – (01:11:37)     While he was in Vietnam he received an R&R (Rest and Relaxation) – He went to Bangkok, Thailand (01:11:44) o He landed in Bangkok and when he got off the plane, there were many men that had cars that wanted to be a chauffer for the week  He and a few other soldiers picked a guy that had a ‟57 Chevy (01:12:14)  He bought some gold plated silverware from Bangkok o It was not very difficult getting back on the plane to go to Vietnam (01:12:56)  He knew that he did not want to live in Bangkok o He took the R&R roughly six months into his tour (01:13:27) The first time he was wounded in Vietnam it was determined that he was injured by friendly fire o The medic was going to put him in for a Purple Heart – the captain decided that it was friendly fire (01:13:51) He was injured for a second time on a light day patrol o One of his captains decided that they needed to go on patrol in Horseshoe Valley (01:14:40) o They were walking in the open on dry rice paddy field and were opened up on (01:15:16)  The Americans returned fire o The NVA try to take out the radio and M16 as quick as possible (01:15:46)  One of his friends took cover behind a tall dike  He was near the M60 gunner, feeding him ammo  Something blew up in front of them and knocked him out (01:16:14)  When he realized he had been hit he stood up and screamed (01:16:36) Because they were so close to the firebase, the commander's chopper came out and picked him up o He was flown to Chu Lai, Vietnam and then over to Saigon, Vietnam (01:17:35) �       He rode a bus into Saigon He stayed at the hospital for a couple of weeks while they took the shrapnel out (01:17:59) o He then flew to Tokyo, Japan to be sewn up  He had been hit in the arm (01:18:32)  He still has shrapnel near his heart (01:18:41)  He had shrapnel in both shoulders, on his neck, in between his eyes, etc.  He was lucky that he was not killed  When he was injured he only had 63 days remaining in Vietnam (01:19:46) When he first arrived in Chu Lai, everyone was “just getting after it” (01:20:06) o They tore his clothes off, found where the wounds were, put an IV in, etc. o He was conscious for the whole thing (01:20:30) o He does not remember exactly how he got from Chu Lai to Saigon When he woke up from his operation in Saigon, he was in a large ward (01:20:57) o He did not even know if he had a hand because there was a huge wrapping of gauze over his hand o The nurses were great (01:21:23) o He was treated very well He walked rear security at one point – his job was to make sure that nothing snuck up behind his company (01:22:19) o One day they were going from grassland to double canopy o The company went into the woods and he heard something in the elephant grass (01:22:57) o He stopped and the voices got louder  He raised his weapon ready to fire on anything that would come out of the grass  It was the Viet Cong (01:23:32)  He had to shoot the Viet Cong soldier (01:23:51)  In the moment you do what you have to do, but later it is more difficult to deal with  He was only 10-15 feet from the Viet Cong soldier (01:24:43)  The FNG that he was with sat and watched the whole thing happen (01:25:30) The funniest thing he ever saw in Vietnam was when he and his best friend were on the side of a mountain o A chopper came in to drop off sundries when his friend went running down to pick them up (01:26:56) o The blade from the chopper hit his helmet and shot it off (01:27:01) There was another time when they killed a green snake called a “two-step snake” o If you got bit by it, you had about two steps before you were falling on the ground (01:27:38)  You would eventually die from it (01:27:43) �           o The head of the snake was cut off with a machete – one soldier tied the head onto his M16 – the snake head began to smell really bad The ethnic makeup of his company was similar to his hometown of Battle Creek, Michigan (01:29:01) o It was 30-40% black He was made an honorary member of the “brothers” – they gave him a nylon bracelet to show that he was virtually adopted into their group (01:29:40) o The bracelet was cut off at Chu Lai There were some men that would try to come up with reasons to get out of the field (01:30:27) o He did not have a lot of respect for those people (01:30:35) o Intelligently, they were weighing their odds  The black soldiers did that more often than the white soldiers (01:30:58) The black men that were in the field were tough fighters (01:31:27) Heroin had not reached his area before he had left (01:31:46) o If there was, he did not know of it o There was a lot of liquid speed  It was popular and highly addictive (01:32:09)  He became addicted to it He was in Japan for roughly one month (01:32:39) o He had been wounded on July 24 o He spent two weeks in Saigon before Japan (01:32:57) He remembers the flight out of Japan being on a cargo plane (01:33:32) o The soldiers sat on jump seats (01:33:46) He received a leave – one of his brothers picked him up from Naval Station Great Lakes in Illinois (01:34:20) o He went back to Battle Creek (01:34:34) o It was the first time that he realized that the person in the car was not the person that went to Vietnam (01:34:51)  It was a weird experience  At one point he thought that the blood transfusions could have changed him (01:35:08)  There was debriefing time and you are supposed to be the same person When he went to Fort Benning, Georgia he started doing drugs to deal with his problems (01:35:37) o He was at Fort Benning to finish out his time in the service o He had to complete his two year commitment (01:35:51) There was one time when they were given M14‟s with bayonets – they were practicing crowd control o He thought, “Do they seriously think that we will lunge at people with these bayonets? I would probably give them my bayonet.” (01:36:22) o He was that bitter about everything (01:36:39)  He believed that the soldiers were simply pawns He spent six months at Fort Benning (01:37:14) �   o He was left alone for the majority of his time there o He bought a Triumph Spitfire – he and his friends would go to Columbus, Georgia (01:37:30)  They would get messed up on hash and LSD  When they would return to their barracks there would be no check in and no one cared (01:37:48)  There was a roll call every morning There was one time where he had to participate in a forced march (01:38:38) o He contracted his second experience of malaria o He was doing a lot of drugs – this forced him to not eat and sleep (01:39:04) o Halfway through the march, he passed out When he was in Vietnam he was given anti-Malaria drugs (01:39:35) o The mosquitoes were unbelievable o They had very good repellent but the soldiers could not hit every spot on their body (01:40:00) o Fortunately he contracted the malaria that is not lethal The soldiers had pills that helped them deal with the sweat and heat, water pills, malaria pills (01:40:46) After the Service – PTSD – (01:41:36)     After he finished at Fort Benning, he knew that he was not the same kid he was when he went into the military (01:41:41) o He did not do drugs before he went to Vietnam o A lot of people did not know how to deal with him being different – he did not either o He wore an Army coat that he got from Salvation Army (01:42:08)  There was a patch on it that said, “Don‟t tread on me”  He was bitter He started doing drugs and go to the point where he was no longer eligible for unemployment (01:42:50) o He started being a drug dealer o He would make money by selling and trading (01:43:09) There was a whole year where he was high every single day o It was an escape (01:43:37) Some of the other guys that had gone to Vietnam were dealing with the same issues (01:43:51) o They would go to his house and preach to him (01:44:19)  They would aggressively preach  He listened to them (01:44:33) o They were becoming part of the Jehovah‟s Witness group  He did not become a Jehovah‟s Witness but he started going to church and the bible studies (01:44:55) �            He would go to the drug houses where he used to sell with a bible and try to convert the people  He was zealous about his new faith (01:45:23) At that point he had tried to go back to the fabricator work (01:46:03) He eventually got a job delivering shop rags for a cleaning company (01:46:39) He then got a job at a gas station o He would pump gas, wash windows, try to sell oil changes, etc. o The owner had told him that he would get a certain commission (01:47:26)  He never got the commission Once he left the job at the gas station he became a milk man o It was 1974 when he took the job (01:48:20) o He would go door to door and his customers loved him o He started with the lowest route and ended, after thirty years, with the largest route (01:48:58) Holsum Bread Company recruited him to go and work for them (01:49:06) o He was made a supervisor o He thought that he no longer struggled with the issues from Vietnam (01:49:23) He walked away from his job, wife, home, and happy life It took him 35 years to accept that he might have an issue with PTSD (PostTraumatic Stress Disorder) (01:50:18) He joined the Proud Veterans Motorcycle Club (01:50:33) o They were all veterans – some were from Vietnam o They asked him how much money he was getting from the VA for his PTSD (01:50:43)  He would tell them that he did not have PTSD o He called the VA and talked to five social workers and in one day he was considered a candidate for someone with PTSD (01:51:22) o That was the beginning of his recovery o He was with a group of veterans that were proud of being veterans o He was being directed in the right direction confront the effects of his experiences (01:52:18) He thinks it is great that a veteran does not have to waste 35 years of their life trying to reconcile who they are with their experiences (01:54:37) o The VA has stepped up to their responsibility of treating veterans o The VA is taking responsibility for what is happening to soldiers when they serve the country (01:55:56) He has had numerous things diagnosed that he did not know he had Soldiers today are volunteer (01:56:56) o When soldiers from Iraqi or Afghanistan thank him he tells them that they are the real heroes. They were not drafted, but instead, new of the dangers and volunteered (01:57:11) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hency, Richard (Interview outline and video), 2012 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hency, Richard Description An account of the resource Richard Hency was born in Battle Creek, Michigan in 1949. He received his draft notice in November of 1968 and was then sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky for eight weeks of Basic Training before eight weeks of AIT (Advanced Individual Training) at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Richard flew into Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam in September of 1969. He was initially sent to Duc Pho, Vietnam until he met up with his field unit that primarily operated in jungle terrain. In a Search & Destroy mission, every Vietnamese person that they came into contact with was moved to a refugee camp. Richard was, near the end of his experiences in Vietnam, flown and dropped off inside of Cambodia before American forces were supposed to be there. Richard was wounded on two separate occasions in Vietnam. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource 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 2012-11-13 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HencyR1464V 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/ff52b58eecaa9685f9d352dddbf64426.mp4 79026dc4ce61de880dd45fd449dc873c https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ecc6f2d727d7e1eccaf4d579f7d501b2.pdf 3265fdbd7964f4cf4adaa4e00b6fde9c PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Name of War: World War II Interviewee name: Bill Heintzelman Length of Interview (00:47:15) (00:00:12)Pre-Enlistment  Background o Born August 7, 1943, enlisted in 1961. o Born in Grand Rapids, MI, St. Mary’s Hospital.  Family o Father was a metal finisher, had been drafted into WWII after Heintzelman was born, mother was a housewife. o Had a brother and two sisters.  Education o Went to Godwin Heights High School. o 10 days after graduating, went to Great Lakes. (00:02:00)Enlistment and Training  Why he joined o Family tradition to join the Navy.  Where he went o Enlisted in Downtown Grand Rapids, 1961, before graduating. o Sent to Great Lakes, Illinois. o Entailed a lot about military courtesy and physical fitness, utilizing space on a ship. o In Great Lakes for six to nine weeks for basic training. o (00:03:55)Went to Radioman “A” School, a code school, in VA  There for 16 weeks.  Primarily drilled in Morse code; 22 words a minute, copy and send.  Didn’t use it after training.  Skills Learned o (00:04:46)Was taught the basics of transmitters. o When Heintzelman became a Naval Communication Station Balboa, wound up working with transmitters with high, low, and medium frequencies; time transmitters o Time transmitter- beeps every second, controlled by the atomic clock, exactly on time o (00:05:50)Was also a part of a drill team; marching and “rifle tricks” Active Duty  (00:06:07)Panama Canal o From VA, he went to a Naval Communication Station near the Panama Canal, Naval Communication Station Balboa. o (00:06:33)Day to day duty; watch-standing duty. o Had three buildings, each dealt with different speeds of frequency. �o Definitions  Low frequency (VLF) - meter readings, preventative maintenance, retuning it.  Mid frequency (VHF) - like the VLF, took transmitter readings, kept it in tune; all done by ear/guesstimate.  High frequency - changing frequencies, loading transmitters (30 or 40 different antennae); a very tough job.  Low frequency for submarines; mid frequency for normal transmissions, navigation information for both merchant ships and naval ships  o Work Responsibilities & experiences  A lot of coded messages very top secret but too “garbled” to understand; each frequency had side bands with opposing signals.  120-130 messages could go out simultaneously.  Dreadfully hot in Panama.  Transmitter site located in the jungle itself.  Dealt with a lot of snakes and scorpions.  Once ran across a 14ft. Boa. (00:11:45)Cuban Missile Crisis o Background & Experiences  October 21, 1962; everyone was called out to the High Frequency Building.  At 7o’clock PM, heard Kennedy’s speech about the Naval Blockade.  Any attack on any country in the Western Hemisphere would be considered an attack by the Soviets on the U.S.; U.S. would retaliate.  Ordered the missiles out, went to DEFCON 2 in Panama (DEFCON 1 = all out war, DEFCON 4 = peace)  Was at DEFCON 2 due to the possibility of Russian ships using the channel.  When put into DEFCON 2 had to trade his transmitting duties for patrolling duties.  Had a rifle and went along the canal watching ships then boarding a few to identify them; ship’s wheel given to a harbor pilot to go through the Panama Canal.  Went aboard Russian ships and Communist ships.  One time, the whole canal was shut down to allow fleets Destroyers and Cruisers to go through.  When aboard Communist ships, made sure radios were off and proper flags flying (American Flag or Flag of Origin); had Marines strategically placed to prevent “scuttling” or the sinking of ships.  Communist ships could sink themselves to block the canal.  (00:15:42)DEFCON 2 lasted a couple of months, even after the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis  At the time, people were afraid of Nuclear War, but believed it wouldn’t happen.  Confident in the President � (00:16:30)At the time, had an “Atomic Clock”, set five minutes to midnight; midnight meaning Nuclear War.  During the Cuban Missile Crisis, this clock was set one minute before midnight. o (00:17:50)U.S.S. Thresher  Transmitters were used to calibrate search gear for a Nuclear Submarine that had imploded when submerging.  Used VLF transmitter; delay of beeps helped with finding it.  Lasted about a week to find the remains of the sub.  No tension afterwards because it was a design flaw that caused the implosion, not sabotage. o General Feelings of the U.S. to Kennedy’s Assassination  (00:20:33)When Kennedy was assassinated, was put on alert once more, DEFCON Mode.  Rifle patrol and gun patrol for a while.  (00:21:05)Whenever something of significance happened, Panama Canal was put on alert due to its strategic importance.  The general feeling, in the U.S., about Kennedy’s assassination was grief. o Going Home  (00:22:36)They day after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, 1964, Heintzelman ended his first term of service.  Didn’t reenlist because he didn’t want to continue as a radioman; very critical job in the Navy, had a low retention rate. Further Military Experiences  Background o (00:23:28)Was previously denied to become a journalist in the Navy, but ten years later, went back and was given the job. o (00:23:46)During his ten years away, was a radio news reporter, then a radio news director in Grand Rapids. o Also did a little retail, anything to get by.  (00:24:23)Armed Forces Broadcast o In ’74 was given the opportunity to work for the Armed Forces Radio/Television Service o No military training. o Went Defense Information School. o Learned how to report, camera positions, video/audio tape editing. o Other places he served  Fort Harrison, Indiana.  (00:25:19)First duty station was in Japan.  Also went to: Adak, Alaska; then Keflavik, Iceland; then Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; back to Adak.  Finally wound up with a tour of duty in Germany, and then ended up in Washington, D.C.  (00:26:05)In Japan, they were building a T.V. station at a naval base in Sasabo from a broken down movie theater.  1st T.V. station, in that area, to broadcast television in English. �   There for about one year and a half. Was the Station Manager; mostly trained cadets coming from the Defense Information School. o (00:27:40)Armed Forces Television’s goal was to bring a little bit of home to the men overseas.  Also used to get out command information, replaced commercials/ o (00:29:15)Adak, Alaska was the same duties as in Japan, there for about one year.  Very isolated, nearest landmass was Siberia; very lonely. o (00:30:15)Loved his time in Japan, had an orientation/classes; cultural orientation, spoken language, manners.  (00:31:51)When in town, in Japan, did a little drinking, heck-raising, and sight-seeing; saw the Thousand Islands, went to the Nagasaki Bomb site. o Kind of weird, shadows of people burned into the sidewalks; area called Ground Zero, made into a Peace Park; felt sacred. o (00:33:44)Iceland was a tough duty (similar to Adak); no trees, hostile weather, people were very independent minded; not encouraged to go into the city. o One Air Station was restricted from going into town because it was dangerous. o There for one year. o (00:35:10)Went back to Adak where he met his wife; she was the Officer in Charge. o Navy has rules against fraternization, her superiors didn’t approve of the marriage, but she married him anyway. o (00:36:12)Spend another year in Adak. (00:36:21)Germany: Armed Forces Network, Europe o Went to Germany; became the Broadcast Manager for Armed Forces Network: Europe. o Included all sites in Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, nothing with Italy; all of mainland Europe. o Responsibilities & Experiences  Monitored stations; had a lot of sensitivities in Europe.  One time had a woman that commented on the radio not having good Rock N’ Roll music in Austria, which nearly caused an International uproar; made her apologize on air.  In Iceland, couldn’t talk about alcohol or dogs on air.  (00:38:45)After the incident with the Austrian girl, had a Command Assist Visit in which Heintzelman and the Major made rounds and held classes on “Area Sensitivities.”  (00:39:12)Did not have this type of trouble in Japan; they didn’t like the mentioning of nuclear power and wouldn’t allow ships with nuclear power/devices in.  The U.S. Navy and Japan recently have an agreement to allow one carrier with nuclear devices in because it is being “moth-balled.”  (00:40:30)After being married, his wife resigned her commission; first child born in Germany.  His wife couldn’t attend classes with him because she was “too pregnant” to do so; no cultural orientation. �  Traveled quite a bit in Germany. (00:41:52)Talks about his father being in WWII; explains propaganda against the Japanese.  (00:43:34)Didn’t get a chance to visit his family roots, where his family is from, because of the split between West and East; did see the Berlin Wall, visited Checkpoint Charlie.  Gave a hopeless feeling.  Between the walls was white so guards, at night, could spot a target by watching silhouettes. (00:45:33)After the Service  In Germany for one year and a half  Went back to Washington, D.C.; retired from the Navy after two years.  Mainly did office work.  After retiring, went to work in Muskegon for a radio station; there for five years.  Went back to school, Grand Valley, and got his B.A. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Heintzelman, William L. (Interview outline and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Heintzelman, William L. Description An account of the resource Bill Heintzelman enlisted in 1961 and trained as a radioman in the Navy. He was stationed at the Panama Canal during the Cuban Missile Crisis where he patrolled aboard ships and along the canal. When Heintzelman went back into the Navy after a ten year gap between his first and second term of service, he worked as a journalist at several stations around the world. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Natte, Jeremiah (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. 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 2008-08-24 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HeintzelmanW 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/579646f414faeb7faee73262740e5f01.mp4 f6e5013fa5964cdacbc31943a1dfccc0 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ec311636b6bf43fb987b769506b8d098.pdf 83408bb4514af8526976dc3d30caf201 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project The Iraq War Bob Heine Interview Length: (01:49:35:00) Pre-enlistment / Training (00:00:17:00)  Heine was born in 1947 in Bronx, New York (00:00:17:00) o However, Heine mostly grew up on Long Island, New York before moving to Auburn, Alabama to attend Auburn University (00:00:24:00) o While Heine was growing up, his father worked as a construction superintendent for a good-sized construction firm; in 1964, the year Heine graduated from high school, his father joined the New York City school system as the superintendent for buildings and grounds (00:00:34:00)  After graduating from high school, Heine did not like what he saw in the beginnings of the “hippie” culture in and around New York and the Northeast and was simultaneously looking to get into a good engineering program, so he elected to attend Auburn University in Alabama (00:00:57:00) o Once Heine arrived in Alabama, he picked up a southern accent very quickly to blend in with the others (00:01:25:00) o The biggest shock for Heine when he arrived at the university was the blatant racism (00:01:31:00)  During Heine’s first day on campus, he was walking outside the dorms where he was staying and an elderly black man was walking in the opposite direction (00:01:36:00)  As Heine and the black man approached each other, the black man walked off the path and onto the grass while looking down at the ground (00:01:51:00)  That seemed odd to Heine and when the two had passed each other, Heine turned around and saw that the man had walked back onto the path (00:02:01:00)  When Heine later mentioned this situation to other people on campus, they were surprised that he would not expect that kind of behavior; a black person was not supposed to walk on the same sidewalk as he was walking on (00:02:12:00)  When Heine first arrived, the university did not have any black students; in fact, the university ended up getting its first black student while Heine was attending (00:02:31:00) o In the time Heine was at the university, there was very little in the way of anti-war protests, unlike schools in the north-east and western parts of the nation, where such protests were commonplace (00:02:53:00)  In fact, the university maintained a mandatory two-year ROTC program for its students (00:03:06:00)  Many of the students in the ROTC program wore their uniforms for the entire day on the days they had to do drills (00:03:13:00) �   Although the first two years of the ROTC program were mandatory, Heine elected to continue on and join the advanced ROTC program (00:03:26:00) o Heine figured he would go to Vietnam one way or another and he wanted to go as an officer, so going through the ROTC program seemed like a logical choice (00:03:36:00) o Heine ended up being the cadet brigade commander, the top cadet in the program (00:03:47:00) o When he completed the program, Heine received his commission but also received a deferment, allowing him to attend graduate school (00:03:57:00)  The first two years of the program consisted of very basic introductions to life in the Army, as well as a “lab” twice a week that consisted of drill and ceremonies (00:04:19:00)  During the last two years, Heine and the other cadets took a series of courses to learn more about the Army in-depth, all in preparation for becoming an officer (00:04:38:00) o During the drill and ceremonies portion, the older cadets took on leadership roles, where they would train and direct the younger cadets (00:04:48:00)  As well, there was a six-week summer camp where the cadets would have more in-depth training, including training with various weapons and learning infantry maneuvers (00:05:04:00) o The summer camp took place at Fort Bragg, North Carolina (00:05:20:00) o Apart from Heine’s group, there were ROTC cadets from programs all across the country (00:05:33:00) While at Auburn, Heine fully expected that once he graduated from the university, he would be going to Vietnam (00:05:50:00) o From his junior year in high school, Heine had friends who had been called up to serve in Vietnam, a couple of whom were killed in action (00:05:58:00)  As a result of this, Heine followed what happened with Vietnam very closely (00:06:13:00) After completing his undergraduate degree, Heine stayed at Auburn to earn his Master’s degree, after which, he received orders for two years of active-duty service (00:06:20:00) o However, before Heine reported in to begin his two years of active-duty, he received a letter saying that he would instead be going through a basic officer course before going to reserve-duty (00:06:34:00)  The Army had built their officer training programs too high in Vietnam and they suddenly had too many officers coming in (00:06:54:00)  Out of the thirty-nine officers in Heine’s basic officer class, only two stayed on for two years of active-duty (00:07:05:00)  Conversely, the country was going through a recession at the time and some of the officers wanted to stay behind; those who did stay had to sign on for “voluntary indefinite”, which meant at least a three-year �  commitment, although the officers had to stay until the Army was ready to release them (00:07:18:00) Heine received his officer commission in December 1968, earned his Master’s degree in August 1970, and reported for his initial officer training in March 1971 (00:07:38:00) o In the time between his graduation in 1970 and beginning the officer training in 1971, Heine moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to work as a process engineer for Proctor and Gamble (00:07:55:00) Heine was commissioned in the Army Chemical Corps, so he went to Fort McClellan, Alabama for his basic officer course; the fort ended up being only one hundred miles from Auburn (00:08:04:00) o The course was meant to train Heine and the other officers in everything they needed to do to be a platoon leader in the Army (00:08:32:00) o Each basic officer course was focused on what branch of the Army the officers were going into, be it the chemical corps, the infantry, etc. (00:08:54:00) o At the time, the Army Chemical Corps was responsible for chemical, biological, and radiological defense; the United States has a national policy that does not allow the Army to use those types of weapons offensively (00:09:08:00)  However, the soldiers still needed to be protected against those types of weapons (00:09:21:00)  For example, soldiers in the chemical corps might work in an infantry unit’s chemical section to predict the effects of possible attacks using chemical, biological or radiological weapons and advise the unit’s commander accordingly (00:09:25:00)  As well, Heine and the other officers might lead units responsible for decontamination, etc. (00:09:47:00)  Some of the work done in the corps was related to protecting against chemical weapons because they had been used previously by enemy forces; it was not based solely on what had happened in Vietnam, but what had happened in previous wars (00:10:11:00) o The instructors for the basic officer course were more senior members of the Army and most were primarily part of the chemical corps (00:10:35:00)  At the time, the chemical corps had the highest education level out of all the separate branches of the military; over half of Heine class in the basic officer course had a Master’s degree, while seven or eight either already had or were very close to their doctorates in chemistry or chemical engineering (00:10:43:00)  Of the seven or eight men named as honor graduates from the course, Heine was the only one who did not already have a doctorate (00:11:14:00) Reserve Duty (00:11:31:00)  The basic officer course lasted for three months, after which Heine returned home and began his reserve duty (00:11:31:00) o However, Heine was unable to find a chemical unit to join for his reserve duty, so he ended up joining an engineering unit; Heine transferred from the Chemical Corps to the Engineering Corps and stayed there until he retired (00:11:41:00) �   Heine made the switch between the two corps shortly after returning from his basic officer course in 1974 (00:11:55:00)  Although the Army can assign individuals to a specific unit if they have an obligation, since Heine was a volunteer, he was able to look around for a unit of his liking (00:12:17:00) Typically, Heine’s unit would meet one weekend a month, with an unpaid staff meeting on Friday night, followed by paid drill on Saturday and Sunday (00:12:43:00) o The unit’s higher headquarters were located in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati; Heine and the other officers would spend one or two nights a month at the base to meet with the battalion commander and the battalion staff (00:12:59:00) o Initially, Heine was a platoon leader and company executive officer but as he advanced and took a company command, he started having to spend more time at the battalion’s higher headquarters, in Columbus, Ohio (00:13:20:00)  Eventually, it reached the point that, in the fall, it seemed like for seven straight weeks, Heine was traveling to something (00:13:47:00) o The meetings at headquarters consisted of planning, reviewing training from the previous year, looking at training for the upcoming year, etc. (00:13:49:00) When Heine first joined his new unit, there was a very interesting mix of personnel already in the unit (00:14:07:00) o There were still remnants of the draft, including soldiers who had been drafted and voluntarily stayed in the reserves, as well as people who had signed up with the reserves in order to avoid going to Vietnam (00:14:10:00)  Heine served with some very talented individuals in the unit who had signed up with the reserves hoping to not go to Vietnam (00:14:36:00)  Some of the personnel were even professional athletes who played for the Cincinnati Reds and Cincinnati Bengals (00:14:52:00)  Typically, the professional athletes were very much involved in recruiting for the reserves (00:15:25:00)  Heine did not see any tension between the soldiers who had gone to Vietnam and those who had enlisted in the reserves in order to avoid going to Vietnam (00:15:38:00)  For most of them, volunteering to serve in the military, for whatever reason, was honorable enough (00:15:42:00) o At one point, Heine had a private, first class in his unit who Heine placed incharge of creating the detailed aspects of Heine’s training program for the rest of the year (00:16:04:00)  At any one point, Heine had to have a detailed plan for that year’s training program plus outlines for the following two years (00:16:23:00)  When he gave the assignment, Heine sat down with the private and discussed exactly what Heine wanted from the assignment (00:16:32:00)  Heine’s training officer, one of the platoon leaders in the company, did not have to worry about doing anything because the private was doing the whole program (00:16:41:00)  At one point, the training officer came to Heine and asked why the private was doing all the work; Heine explained that the private �   had a Bachelor’s Degree in chemistry, a Master’s Degree in Business Administration, and had more credentials to do the job than the training officer did (00:17:11:00) During the 1970s, Heine and the other officers in the unit stayed very much aware of what was going on in the Army, although they lived in a very different culture from the active-duty Army (00:18:06:00) o During the Vietnam War, very few Reserve or National Guard units were called up to serve in Vietnam; following the end of the war, this created a significant chasm between the active-duty Army and the Reserve Army (00:18:15:00)  This was the period in which the members of the Reserve Army became known as “weekend warriors” (00:18:33:00) o Most of the contact that Heine and the other officers had with the active-duty Army was through advisors assigned to the unit (00:18:37:00)  For the most part, the “advisors” were seen as outsiders and evaluators/inspectors within the unit (00:18:47:00)  As well, the men also encountered active-duty personnel during their training exercises; sometimes those active-duty personnel worked well with the reserve personnel and sometimes they did not (00:19:01:00) o At the time, there was a culture within the Army that perceived that receiving an assignment to be an advisor to a reserve unit was a very negative thing for a soldier’s career (00:19:10:00) o Therefore, the advisors came into the reserve units feelings upset that they had been sent there and in many cases, the personnel in the reserve units did not fully accept the advisors into the units (00:19:31:00) o For the most part, the antagonism between the active-duty and reserve personnel would continue up until Desert Storm (00:19:42:00) Although Heine himself served in a combat engineer unit, which did not have any women members, the higher headquarters was opened up to women personnel (00:20:04:00) o The headquarters did eventually receive some women personnel and there were some problems as a result (00:20:32:00)  The problems did not result from poor job performance by the female personnel but from the female personnel spending too much time with male personnel (00:20:36:00) o Although Heine does not condemn female personnel and acknowledges they are more than capable of doing the job, the handful that the higher headquarters received just happened to cause problems (00:20:59:00) o As time went on and by the time Heine reached the level of battalion commander, most of the specialties within the unit were open to women and there were some very talented women at all levels (00:21:20:00) For officer promotions, there was a regular schedule for an officer to earn a promotion; just like in the active-duty, it was an “up-or-out” system (00:21:52:00) o “Up-or-out” meant that if an officer was passed over for promotion twice, then he was given his discharge; although promotions were slower in the reserves, if an officer did not make the cut, he was out (00:22:03:00) o Although of officers end up missing their promotions because they did not keep up on their military education (00:22:24:00) � At the time, there were a series of courses that officers and/or NCOs had to take; if someone did not take the courses, then they would not be selected form promotion (00:22:28:00)  Personnel could take the courses either through correspondence or going to courses at the various military schools (00:22:48:00) o After completing the basic officer course, Heine’s next course was the Advanced/Career Course (00:23:15:00)  For a variety of reasons, Heine ended up taking four different Advanced Courses; normally, an officer only needed to take one Advanced Course (00:23:24:00)  Following the Advanced Course, Heine’s next step was attending the Command and General Staff College (00:23:32:00)  Heine’s final step was attending the Army War College (00:23:39:00) o Heine did some of the courses by correspondence and some of the courses as a two-week, active-duty tour (00:23:47:00)  The active-duty tours largely consisted of going through the various courses (00:24:07:00)  The tours for the Advanced Course and the Command and General Staff College were easier (00:24:14:00)  Typically, each tour was two weeks, with eight hours of classes every day, followed by several hours of studying (00:24:18:00)  The courses could take place on any base that had the capability to hold them (00:24:35:00)  Some of Heine’s courses took place at Fort Lee, Virginia while others were at Reserve bases, such as Fort McCoy, Wisconsin (00:24:43:00) o On the other hand, the Army War College was much more intense course than the Advanced Course and Command and General Staff College; the two, two-week active-duty tours to complete the course were misery (00:24:51:00)  This course took place at the Army War College itself, located at Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania (00:25:02:00)  The Army War College is the highest level of education in the Army and was so intense that by completing it, Heine was able to earn a Master’s Degree in Strategic Studies (00:25:09:00)  The course was a two-year, ultra-intensive correspondence course where Heine focused on nothing but his civilian job and studying through a box of books about two feet thick, one box every six weeks (00:25:41:00)  After finishing with all the books, Heine ended up writing three research papers (00:25:53:00)  Apart from the papers, at the mid-point of the course, there was a two-week residence course in Pennsylvania and another two-week residence course at the end of the two years (00:26:07:00)  Heine’s papers ended up covering a variety of topics: the papers began by looking at management vs. leadership then continued on to studies at the strategic level, looking at the American military and political systems (00:26:22:00) �o In the papers, Heine did not look at military history just for the sake of looking at history; instead, he used the history to gain information about the strategic implications for the studies (00:27:14:00)  By the time he graduated from the War College in 1997, Heine had reached the rank of colonel (00:27:37:00) Persian Gulf War / Staff-Level Assignments / 9-11 (00:27:56:00)  When the First Persian Gulf War started in 1990, Heine was a Lieutenant-Colonel and a commander of a combat-heavy engineering battalion (00:27:56:00) o At the start of the war, Heine’s unit was very high on the list for their specific type of unit; the Reserves sent the first unit on the list to participate while placing the second unit on the list on and off alert several times (00:28:07:00) o Heine’s unit was third on the list and he largely followed what the second unit did, although without the “assistance” of the Army, a fact he figures was to his advantage (00:28:27:00)  Instead of having people coming in and telling him three different ways to do a specific task, Heine could look at the end result and attain it internally (00:28:48:00) o Heine’s unit ended up not being deployed; however, had the ground war gone for weeks instead of days, the unit would have probably mobilized (00:29:03:00)  Heine knew where his unit was in the mobilization list and was able to follow what happened with the second unit on the list (00:29:27:00)  Because Heine’s unit was located in Toledo, Ohio, not far away from the large Muslim population in Dearborn, MI, the unit received additional intelligence from them (00:30:02:00)  Since the Persian Gulf War and prior to 9/11, both the Reserves and the National Guard were heavily utilized; the war itself was a watershed in terms of the coordination and attitude between the Active-Duty and Reserves (00:30:36:00) o There were a large number of mobilizations that did not involve either the Reserves or the National Guard actually going to war (00:31:12:00) o As well, the United States’ continued operations in Bosnia and Kosovo utilized a large portion of Reserve and National Guard personnel (00:31:25:00)  Heine happened to be in the Pentagon when the hijacked airplane hit the building during 9/11; Heine was able to get out of the building and able to go home, courtesy of the National Guard (00:31:35:00) o At the time, Heine was on a committee called the Army Reserve Forces Policy Committee, an advisor committee on Reserve affairs for the Secretary of the Army (00:31:51:00) o On 9/11, Heine and the other members of the committee were in groups preparing to give a presentation to the Secretary of the Army (00:32:02:00) o When the airplane stuck the building, Heine was one side of the building away from the impact (00:32:37:00)  Although Heine and the other members did not hear the airplane flying in, they felt a shudder, heard a thump and the door of the room, which was not full closed, was pushed open (00:32:46:00) �  The man sitting next to the door pushed the door closed and the members continued on preparing for the presentation (00:33:11:00)  During a break in the preparation, the group’s note taker saw the news about an airplane hitting the first World Trade Center tower and when the group reconvened, the note taker told the others that a Piper Cub had hit the trade center (00:33:18:00)  Heine had flown Piper Cubs before and it would not have been as big a deal as it was, so he sent the note taker to find out what was going on (00:33:42:00)  Shortly thereafter, Heine and the committee meet in the note taker’s boss’ office, which had a television, just in time to see the airplane hit the second World Trade Center tower (00:33:52:00)  The group returned to work, shortly after which the airplane hit the Pentagon, which ended the meeting and forced the group to evacuate from the building (00:34:03:00)  Most of the group ended up getting home either by renting a car or flying home, which Heine himself did (00:34:13:00)  Heine flew back with a group of high-ranking National Guard personnel who were the emergency managers for their individual states (00:34:28:00)  The group received permission from the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and DoD (Department of Defense) to fly a D.C. National Guard airplane to Detroit, where Heine and the commander of the Michigan National Guard got off; the two men board another airplane to Lansing, where the one of the commander’s subordinates drove Heine home (00:34:33:00) After he returned home from Washington, Heine was assigned to be the deputy commanding officer of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri (00:35:01:00) o Heine managed to make it home on Wednesday, September 12th, and called his boss, the commanding general of the base, the following morning to see if they needed him to go to the base (00:35:12:00)  Although the general was the only one of the five general officers assigned to the fort, the other two were making plans to return, so they did not need Heine to travel to the base (00:35:23:00)  Heine called again on Friday and again, the commanding general said that they had things under control (00:35:37:00)  On Monday morning, Heine was paged as work, which did not happen very often; when Heine picked up the phone, it was the commanding general, who asked what it would take to get Heine to the fort because he was needed (00:35:44:00)  Heine made another phone call and within fifteen minutes, had orders in hand, so he left work, went home, packed his car, and left (00:36:01:00) o Heine stayed at Leonard Wood from the Monday following 9/11 through the end of October (00:36:14:00)  Although Heine expected to be mobilized, he never was and, ended up staying at Leonard Wood until the following May (00:36:21:00) � While at the base, Heine’s job was helping coordinate all the activities on the base and assisting with security, mobilizing both a National Guard military police company and an Army Reserve police company (00:36:44:00)  As well, the base underwent “Training Base Expansion”, which involved bringing aspects of both the National Guard and Army Reserve to the base to increase the capabilities of the base, in anticipation of an influx of soldiers necessary for any operations that would follow (00:37:08:00)  Including Heine, there were five general officers assigned to the base: the commanding general, the deputy commandant of the Engineering school, the commandant of the Military Police school, the commandant of the Chemical school, and Heine (00:37:57:00)  The commandant of the Military Police school was pulled away and assigned to oversee force protection for all the training/indoctrination posts in the Army (00:38:15:00)  The commandant of the Chemical School was pulled to Washington D.C. to work protection of critical assists throughout the country to could be potential targets (00:38:24:00)  The deputy commandant of the Engineer school was pulled away to work as part of a counter-IED (improvised explosive device) task force (00:38:42:00)  Because none of the active deputy commanders were on the base, Heine had to do all of their duties (00:38:52:00) o Heine stayed at Leonard Wood full time until the end of October, when he switch to third time and began traveling back and forth between the base and his home, through the end of May, 2002 (00:39:10:00) Pre-Invasion / The Iraq War (00:39:23:00)  On June 1st, 2002, Heine received his second star and took command of a theater-level engineer command, the 416th Engineer Command in Chicago (00:39:23:00) o When Heine received the initial phone call about the promotion, the general who he would be replacing told him “congratulations, he was receiving his second star and a command, so pack your bags” (00:39:35:00) o Heine took command of his new unit on June 1st and immediately immersed himself in the formation of war plans for the possibility of an upcoming invasion of Iraq; although the orders to invade had not officially been given, the Department of the Army still formulated contingency plans (00:40:01:00)  The unit Heine took command of was the engineering unit responsible for support to U.S. Central Command, which meant the unit was heavily involved in developing and refine the engineering components for any invasion contingency plans (00:40:24:00)  By the time Heine took command, the unit had already had a small cell mobilized that deployed on December 1st, 2001 to Kuwait along with other portions of Central Command (00:40:58:00) � The cell was actively involved in all the engineer planning while in Kuwait (00:41:13:00)  Heine had a secure telephone line to the cell and would spend roughly an hour to an hour and a half each morning reviewing the various engineer support plans for any possible invasion route into Iraq (00:41:19:00) o From the time he took command of the unit, Heine reviewed the invasion plans until he deployed to Kuwait (00:41:37:00)  Initially, Heine went to Kuwait for ten days in August, where he met with the engineering cell; as well, he went to the CentCom (Central Command) Forward Headquarters in Qatar and Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan (00:41:47:00)  As part of his command, Heine was responsible for all the Army facility engineer teams in the region and had teams deployed to: Kuwait, Qatar, Bagram, Kandahar Airport, and a support nod at Karshi-Kanabad Airfield in Uzbekistan (00:42:03:00)  During the ten days he was in the region, Heine visited all of those teams and also worked on the war plans (00:42:22:00)  As he traveled to the various locations, Heine’s mind was always on doing the mission (00:43:02:00)  When Heine was a Lieutenant-Colonel during Desert Storm, he thought about how much time he had spent in the military and lamented the fact that he would not be deploy to take part in the operation (00:43:08:00) o In Heine’s mind, if he did not deploy, as he moved forward in his career, what accolades/achievements/experiences would he have to help him deal with those men who had actually deployed (00:43:33:00)  In a way, once the situation came up that Heine would deploy to Kuwait, in a way, it was kind of exciting for him, the possibility that he might be going (00:43:49:00)  Each of the locations Heine visited was physically different from each of the other locations (00:44:05:00)  However, at each location, the soldiers were all doing their work exceptionally well; from what Heine saw, he was unable to tell the difference between which soldiers were active duty and which soldiers were reservists (00:44:09:00) o Within the engineering component of the Army, the reservists often had more engineering skills, both at the officer and enlisted levels, because that was often their job in the civilian world (00:44:18:00)  During the planning phase, Heine’s unit actually had more engineers within their small cell than the rest of Third Army at CentCom Headquarters did combined (00:44:42:00) �o For the most part, Heine did not have too much to worry about in terms of operations in Afghanistan other than the rotation of his units (00:45:48:00)  The specific operations for each individual units were decided once the units were at their assigned locations (00:46:07:00)  The only real issue Heine had with any of the units in Afghanistan was a leadership issue with a couple of the teams (00:46:12:00)  Heine had to make long-distance decisions regarding the teams and ended up taking the team leader from Kuwait and a LieutenantColonel, sending them to Afghanistan, and having them take command of the two teams (00:46:24:00) o During this command, Heine did not see any problems in regards to the leadership of the units adapting to being in a legitimate shooting conflict (00:47:38:00) o Heine eventually officially deployed to Kuwait in November 2002 along with a fairly good-sized group of reserve leadership who had been deployed to participate in war game exercises at both the Third Army level and the Central Command level (00:47:54:00)  The war games were meant to test the invasions plans that he already been developed (00:48:24:00)  Although a couple of the officers were able to leave relatively quickly due to reserve orders, the majority were involved in a fight between the active-duty component and the reserve component over who would pay to the exercises (00:48:29:00)  Most of the officers ended up being mobilized, which meant they had to go through pre-deployment training, then deploy, then get back in time to go through another process (00:48:44:00)  However, because the Army wanted to limit the officers to twentynine days of mobilization, after the pre-deployment training, the officers arrived in Kuwait on about the tenth day and had to leave by the twentieth day (00:49:00:00)  Heine himself left for Kuwait a couple of days before the other officers; because it was so close to his actual deployment date, he did not have to go through the training (00:49:19:00)  Heine believes that he and his sergeant major were the first of the group to arrive in-country and they were the only ones of the group to participate in the first war games exercise (00:49:38:00)  It was a fascinating experience for Heine to participate in the two different exercises (00:49:59:00)  At the end of the exercises, Heine’s commander, General David McKiernan, kept Heine on for a little bit longer to help with additional planning (00:50:05:00)  Heine ended up staying in Kuwait and offering assistance until just before Christmas 2002 (00:50:24:00)  Before he deployed, Heine had been warned to pack heavy because he might not be going home for an extended period of time (00:50:28:00) �   Heine took the advice and brought everything he needed, so that when he returned home, he left all his supplies in Kuwait and only brought home a small overnight bag (00:50:35:00) Heine returned home just before Christmas 2002 and was officially mobilized on January 2nd, 2003 (00:50:46:00) During planning for the invasion, the engineers were responsible for preparing information on mobility, counter-mobility, and general engineering (00:51:10:00) o The Army forces had to be able to go where they needed to go (mobility), the enemy could not go where the Army did not want them to go (counter-mobility) and the forces needed the proper facilities to make that happen (general engineering) (00:51:19:00) o Heine’s role in the planning was at the theater-level and he reported directly to Gen. McKiernan, who was the commander of Third Army, Army Component Central Command, Coalition Force Land Component Command (00:51:36:00)  Gen. McKiernan was the overall commander for the grounds forces for the invasion (00:51:47:00) o The engineers were responsible for building all of the facilities needed for the influx of soldiers and equipment coming into Kuwait (00:51:54:00)  One of the most important parts of this was constructing landing and parking areas for helicopters; without a proper landing pad, a helicopter could kick up enough dirt that the pilots would lose their frame of reference and crash (00:52:05:00)  Another key aspect that the engineers dealt with during the planning was how to get enough fuel to the forward units of the invasion (00:52:27:00)  Although Coalition forces drew fuel directly from a Kuwaiti oil refinery, the overall fuel requirements for the invasion force was roughly four million gallons per day, and neither the Army or Marine Corps had the haul capacity to carry that much fuel during the invasion (00:52:32:00)  Therefore, the engineers built pipelines that carried two million gallons of fuel a day directly to the Kuwaiti-Iraqi border (00:52:53:00)  The unit assigned to constructing the pipelines was the further deployed unit prior to the invasion, other than various Special Forces units (00:53:06:00) o The unit was well within range of Iraqi artillery and was working to store jet fuel (00:53:15:00)  The engineers also had to develop all of the plans to immediately move all of the logistic capabilities forward, move additional fuel forward, and how to deal with any prisoners of war (00:53:22:00)  During Operation Desert Shield¸ the build-up prior to Operation Desert Storm, one of the limiting factors of the timing of the invasion was the lack of availability of proper housing facilities of any POWs (00:53:36:00) �  The Kuwaitis did not want Iraqi POWs on their soil, so prior to the invasion in 2003, the engineers were unable to build facilities in Iraq (00:53:58:00) o Instead, they prepared plans to build the POW facilities in Iraq after the invasion started, which was a difficult process to plan (00:54:22:00)  The invasion route into Iraq was covered with various rivers and canals and if the Iraqi forces were able to successfully destroy the crossings over the rivers and canals, the engineers would need all of the Army and Marine Corps bridge assets to continue the operation (00:54:36:00)  In some cases, the engineers would have to put a bridge in, let the attacking force cross, remove the bridge, get ahead of the attacking force, and set the bridge up again (00:54:55:00)  However, the Iraqis were unable to destroy the bridges, so the engineers did not have to worry about that (00:55:05:00) o For Heine, prior to the invasion, there was not a period when he knew the invasion would be happening and that it was only a matter of time (00:55:27:00)  Although it looked like the forces would be going in, the actual decision to invade was not made until around the day before the beginning of the invasion actually took place (00:55:33:00)  A small group of officers, Heine included, received a phone call soon after the president had made the decision to invade (00:55:52:00) o Although Heine did not have any direct supervision over develop plans if the Iraqis used chemical or biological weapons, one of the things that he and the other commanders always made sure of was that their soldiers were properly trained in the use of their protective equipment (00:56:21:00)  During the build-up prior to the invasion, the soldiers initially carried only some of their protective equipment but eventually started carrying all of the protective equipment; at the time, the Iraqis were launching SCUD missiles and the soldiers had no way of knowing if the missiles carried chemical or biological weapons (00:56:36:00)  One of Heine’s units was given the assignment of building facilities to house Patriot missiles, which were used to shoot down incoming SCUDs (00:57:15:00) Once the invasion started, the lack of use of chemical weapons by the Iraqis came as a surprise; as well, the speed by which the invasion force was able to advance was a very pleasant surprise (00:57:35:00) o The commanders had anticipated that the invasion would take quite a bit longer than it did (00:57:46:00) o Because he took part in the support planning for the invasion, Heine knew how each of the units was supposed to work (00:57:56:00)  One of the “neatest” briefings Heine saw was when Gen. McKiernan, prior to giving a briefing to General Tommy Franks and the Secretary of Defense, had one finally rehearsal briefing (00:58:04:00)  During the briefing, McKiernan had the Army Corps Commander and the Marines Expeditionary Force Commander, commanders � of the two primary attacking forces, seated at a table at the front of the room, while Heine himself was seated in the first row (00:58:31:00)  At one point during the briefing, McKiernan had a slide where he paused for a second and his civilian contractor said, “Sir, it is on the next slide” (00:58:54:00)  At other times, Heine took part in sand table exercises, which involved massive maps that made up the entire floor of a room, where the officers laid out exactly how each individual unit was going to operate during the invasion (00:59:18:00) o The only aspect of the invasion that really surprised Heine was the collapse of the Iraqi Army and the speed with which the invasion force moved in (01:00:08:00) o There are a number of good books by the senior leaders of the invasion that talk about the pressure from the Department of Defense and Secretary of Defense to use a smaller invasion force than the Army and Marines had used during Desert Storm (01:01:32:00)  However, there was a lot of resistance to that, especially amongst the ground forces (01:01:51:00)  According to Gen. McKiernan, use of a smaller invasion force would result in a “catastrophic success” (01:01:59:00)  The fear was that a smaller invasion force would be able to defeat Saddam Hussein and his government but would be unable to maintain control of the country (01:02:12:00)  Prior to the invasion, Heine believes that McKiernan put his entire career on the line in an effort to obtain more ground forces for the invasion (01:02:34:00) Once the invasion officially started, Heine and the engineering component had responsibility for maintaining the main roads going into Iraq (01:03:32:00) o The Kuwaitis wanted as little traffic as was necessary on their one road north into Iraq, so the invasion forces used the remnants of a road that Iraqi forces had built during their invasion of Kuwait prior to Desert Storm (01:03:43:00)  A large portion of the base camps for the various invasion units were constructed along this road and would use the road once the invasion had started (01:04:11:00) o As well, the engineers had to quickly construct the pipelines out of Kuwait, theater sustainment nodes for both the Army and Marines, and the primary prisoner of war camp (01:04:25:00) o The engineers were also told to begin constructing re-deployment facilities for the equipment that needed to be sent home (01:04:45:00)  All vehicles destined to return to the United States had to rigorously cleaned and pass a United States Department of Agriculture inspection before actually being sent back to the United States (01:05:01:00)  The expectation in June 2003 was that the invasion forces would only be in-country for a short period of time, so the re-deployment facilities needed to be constructed quickly (01:05:12:00) �o The engineers under Heine’s command were not responsible for constructing the defenses around the Green Zone, a fortified area within Baghdad (01:06:12:00)  The plan was for Heine’s engineers to provide support for the invasion forces while a fortified engineering brigade would provide support once the invasion forces had pushed further into Iraq (01:06:16:00)  However, having worked together prior to the invasion, both the brigade commander and Heine sent requests to their superiors asking that the bulk of Heine’s forces be transferred into Iraq to assist the brigade’s operations (01:06:39:00)  At the time, Heine’s forces had much more planning and design capability than the brigade forces did (01:07:11:00)  However, the decision was made above Gen. McKiernan’s level that Heine’s forces would not transfer soldiers to assist the brigade (01:07:29:00)  Instead, Heine was given very clear instructions that as his individual units finished their assignments in Iraq, they were supposed to return to Kuwait (01:07:41:00)  As the units returned to Kuwait, Heine laid out what assignments still remained in Kuwait, which units would be assigned to them, and which units could be sent home (01:07:52:00) o Once the overview was complete, Heine turned over command to a colonel and returned home himself, returning to the United States in July 2003 (01:08:17:00) o Going into the invasion, Heine and the other commanders knew that nothing was going to be easy (01:08:53:00)  As part of developing the war plans, the commanders had the “capstone program”, which involved targeting specific units to complete specific missions (01:09:04:00)  Heine and the commanders knew one of their key assignments was completing the pipeline into Iraq, so a couple of units were specifically trained on constructing the pipeline (01:09:32:00)  However, both units were reservists and the decision was made at the DoD level to not mobilize the reserve units until absolutely necessary; therefore, Heine ended up using an active-duty battalion which had not received any of the specialized training to complete the pipeline (01:10:02:00)  Another large challenge that Heine and the other commanders faced was having enough spare parts for all of their equipment (01:10:53:00)  The Army’s policy was to look at an individual unit’s history in regards to using repair parts and would then authorize additional parts based on that history (01:11:01:00)  However, neither the National Guard or reserve units were authorized to receive repair parts, so none of the mobilized reserve units deployed with any repair parts (01:11:21:00) o Some of the units were able to receive some parts from active-duty support facilities, but not near enough to cover the demand (01:11:34:00) � The active-duty units did not use their equipment all that often, so there was not a large supply of repair parts (01:11:44:00)  Operating in the desert meant that the filters and hydraulic lines on the equipment, as well as the cutting edges on diggers and bulldozers, wore out much fast and there was no provision for units to receive repair parts (01:11:58:00)  Heine’s unit ended up making massive, blanket purchase orders to bring in the repair parts; within days, the orders wiped out the supply of parts in both the Middle East and Europe (01:12:16:00) o Heine never referred to the invasion as “Mission Accomplished” and that statement was frustrating to many of the commanders because they knew the tremendous amount of work that still needed to be done (01:13:37:00) Second Deployment / Post-Military Observations (01:13:52:00) Heine was kept on active-duty through August 2003 and two days after he left active-duty, he received a phone call from the Deputy Chief of Engineers saying that the Chief of Engineers wanted to talk to him (01:13:52:00) o Heine went in the next week to speak with the Chief and found out he was being sent back to Iraq (01:14:05:00) o The Chief informed Heine that the Army was considering establishing a four-star General-level command in Iraq and if/when that happened, Heine was going to “volunteer” to go back (01:14:26:00) o After receiving the news, Heine immediately began working with the senior engineer in Iraq, a one-star reserve general, to lay the groundwork for what the Multi-National Force, Iraq Engineer Section would look like (01:14:39:00)  Part of the section would come from Heine’s headquarters while the remainder would come from other parts of the Army and the other armed forces (01:15:02:00) o Heine expected that once the section was officially formed, he would deploy to Iraq to act as the section commander (01:15:10:00)  Heine received the call that he would be deploying to Iraq to take command of the engineering section in March 2004, on the same day he found out he needed to have open-heart surgery (01:15:22:00) o Heine had his open-heart surgery in April, in June his former Deputy deployed on a short tour to officially organized the engineering section, and a couple of months later, the overall commander made the decision to move the engineer responsibility back to the corps-level, while keeping Heine’s position to act as the head of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office (01:15:31:00) o Heine deployed the following January after spending about a week receiving additional training (01:16:25:00)  Once reconstruction funding for Iraq passed in a supplemental budget, the President decided to form several new organizations, one of �which was the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office (IRMO) working out of the U.S. Embassy in Iraq (01:16:49:00) o The IRMO had the responsibility to oversee the allocation and utilization of the $18.4 Billion that had been authorized for reconstruction funding; the IRMO also had the lead role in working with the various Iraqi ministries to help develop the ministries’ ability to govern (01:17:11:00) o The original leader of the IRMO was a retired two-star Navy Admiral, who was replaced by an ambassador (01:17:34:00) o The IRMO consisted of advisory teams supporting each of the Iraqi Ministries and personnel working on the allocation of the reconstruction funding in accordance with the Congressional intent (01:18:03:00) o Heine himself was the deputy director for the entire organization and was the director of operations (01:18:25:00)  His primary job was providing leadership to all of the various advisory teams, including those assigned to the Iraqi Defense Ministry and the Interior Ministry (01:18:30:00)  However, the leadership for the Defense Ministry was meant to be led by the military, so after Heine had been at the IRMO for about six months, the leadership of the Defense ministry was transferred back to the military (01:18:45:00) o As well, four Iraqi Ministries had been formed solely to work on the reconstruction of the cities hit hardest by the fighting: Fallujah, Sadr City, Baghdad, etc. (01:19:20:00) o The IRMO constantly monitored the needs of the Iraqis to determine how to best allocate the reconstruction funding and then work with the Iraqi Ministries and the implementation agencies to ensure the funds were properly utilized (01:19:54:00)  Concurrently, the IRMO was using its own resources to encourage the Iraqi government to utilize its own resources (01:20:21:00) o While in the IRMO, Heine had daily interaction with Iraqi officials (01:20:41:00)  The Iraqi government had assigned one of their deputy Prime Minister to be in-charge of reconstruction and Heine met with the official several times a week (01:20:44:00)  One of the deputy Prime Ministers, Ahmed Chalabi, ended up forming a National Energy Committee, which oversaw oil, electricity, water, etc.; Heine himself was a part of that committee (01:21:02:00) o The biggest challenge with Heine’s job was finding ways to get the Iraqis to take additional responsibilities for making their own improvements (01:21:48:00)  The Iraqi system was rather dysfunctional, especially after the order was given to wipe out the Ba’ath party, which effectively removed the entire Iraqi civil service (01:21:58:00) �     It was very difficult to reestablish the civil service capabilities within the Iraqi ministries (01:22:24:00)  The personnel in the IRMO tried as much as possible to use the reconstruction funds and American contractors to work with the Iraqis to improve the Iraqis’ capabilities to plan and manage their own reconstruction (01:22:28:00)  The political situation and in-fighting between the various political parties made the work very difficult (01:22:50:00) The well-known “Surge” occurred after Heine had already returned home from his deployment; Heine himself returned home in June 2006 (01:23:18:00) o However, Heine sees the origins of the turnaround that happened as a result of the Surge in the work done with Sunni leadership in the Anbar province located in western Iraq (01:23:24:00)  During the time period after the invasion, Marine forces were deployed in Anbar and in both Fallujah and Ramadi (the capital of the province), the Marines were attempting to hold town meetings but were struggling to involve the city leadership (01:23:45:00)  However, over time, the Marines were more and more successful in getting the Iraqis involved, so that by the time Heine left, the Marines were sitting around the outside of the meetings while the Iraqis were running the meetings (01:24:29:00) The issue of IEDs was handled primarily at the corps level; the major effect that IRMO felt was the increase in security requirements for the contractors (01:25:45:00) o The increased security requirements were very costly and ended up forcing the IRMO to restructure the program and scale back some of the work that the organization had been planning to do (01:26:08:00) o As time passed, the IRMO tried more and more to get the Iraqis involved in the reconstruction and have Iraqi firms do the majority of the work (01:26:45:00)  One method the IRMO used to do this was posting all upcoming projects and having the various Iraqi firms bid on the projects; however, the postings were in Baghdad but a lot of people did not want firms located in Baghdad (01:27:03:00) There was a lot of politics involved in Heine’s job and he does not know a way in which he could fully train for it (01:27:34:00) From a personal stand point, after spending seventeen months on his second deployment, by the time the deployment ended, Heine was ready to go home; however, the IRMO’s mission was not complete when Heine returned home (01:27:54:00) o By the time Heine returned home, the official mission for IRMO, the allocation of the $18.4 billion, was coming to a close; the majority of the money had been allocated and remaining funds would be used on projects to had been developed after others had been canceled (01:28:08:00) �  Normally, Heine was in the office by 6:45 in the morning, unless something happened during the night that required him to be there earlier (01:28:51:00) o Every morning, Heine would go to a Battle Update Assessment (BUA) briefing every morning at 7:30, which gave him forty-five minutes to review everything that had happened overnight and be prepared for any issues that might come up in the briefing (01:29:03:00)  A couple of slides in the briefing would talk about the essential services in Iraq; if anything happened with the services during the night, Heine would wake up earlier to be “brought up to speed” (01:29:31:00) o After the BUA briefing, Heine would attend another briefing with a handful of other senior leaders, where they discussed in-depth any key issues that had developed in the previous twenty-four hours (01:29:59:00) o The remainder of Heine’s day consisted of going out to meet with various Iraqi ministries, visiting some of the construction projects on Fridays and Saturdays, and meeting with the various American units (01:30:18:00) o Typically, Heine would work until around ten or eleven o’clock at night, when he would go to sleep until early the next morning, then get up and do the same routine over again (01:30:45:00) Heine feels that he was somewhat fortunate because IRMO received “first dibs” on security teams; IRMO received a security team from Blackwater, a private military contractor (01:31:01:00) o The security team would travel with any of the four senior leaders of IRMO whenever one of the leaders went into the field; given the nature of their jobs, out of the four, Heine was in the field ninety percent of the time and the remaining three were ten percent (01:31:18:00) o The members of the security team assigned to IRMO were very talented, very through, and were not very aggressive; Heine felt safer going out with a Blackwater team than with any other contractor (01:31:37:00)  Heine was meeting with various Iraqi ministries and if the security team assigned to him was very aggressive in their approach, the Iraqis would be upset with Heine before they had even met him (01:32:11:00) o The civilians working in IRMO were often out in the field more than a lot of the other personnel in the Green Zone (01:33:08:00) o The two closest calls Heine experienced were when a suicide bomber who’s bomb failed to go off and when he and his team came under mortar attack while in the middle of the largest oil refinery in Iraq (01:33:37:00)  Heine was at the refinery with Deputy Prime Minister Chalabi and the helicopters were just coming in to pick the group up when the mortars started coming in (01:34:03:00) �  The helicopters pulled out and the group got into their vehicles to take one member who had been wounded to the nearest medical facility (01:34:18:00) Looking back, although the assignment at IRMO was very challenging for Heine, it was also very fascinating for him (01:35:10:00) o Heine was amazed to have to opportunities that he did, especially working with the senior-level Iraqi officials and just being able to view history at an up close, personal level (01:35:18:00)  Heine was in Iraq when the Iraqis held elections for the interim government, ratification of the new Iraqi Constitution, and the election of the constitutional government (01:35:40:00)  By the time of the constitutional elections, only three general officers had been in Iraq for all three of the elections, the overall commander, General George W. Casey, Jr., Heine and one other general, who ended up returning home two weeks after the final election (01:35:55:00) o Working at the U.S. Embassy as a soldier was a very interesting experience, largely due to the different philosophies of the Department of Defense and the Department of State (01:36:16:00)  One time, Heine was preparing the ambassador for a briefing to the Principles Committee, which was basically the National Security Council minus the President and Vice President (01:36:43:00)  Few military personnel were allowed to attend the briefing and just as it was getting time from the ambassador to leave for the briefing, the Deputy ambassador asked if the ambassador would like Heine to go with him, in case there were any additional questions (01:37:07:00) o Heine knew he was not supposed to be at the briefing and was hoping the ambassador would say “no” (01:37:39:00)  The ambassador said “yes”, so he and Heine walked to the room where the briefing was taking place; inside the room was a fairly wide table with seats in the back (01:37:46:00) o Heine walked into the room and went to the back with the Deputy ambassador but the ambassador motioned for Heine to sit next to him at the table (01:38:01:00)  When the briefing began, the National Security Advisor, Dr. Stephen Hadley, who was leading the briefing, gave his opening remarks and then subsequently turned the briefing over to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (01:38:40:00)  Once Secretary Rice finished her remarks, she told the ambassador to begin and the next thing Heine heard, the ambassador said that he was going to have Heine give the briefing, which was not part of the plan (01:38:56:00) �o   Roughly eighty percent of the information in the briefing was work Heine had developed and fortunately, he had been at the practice sessions so he could know about the other twenty percent (01:39:06:00)  Heine ended up giving the entire briefing and answered whatever questions were asked (01:39:18:00)  Once the briefing was over, Heine returned to his office and was not back for more than five minutes when he received a phone call from Gen. Casey’s office, telling Heine to come to the general’s office (01:39:30:00)  Heine went to talk with the general, who explained that Secretary Rumsfeld had called about Heine being at the briefing and the general explained that Heine worked for the embassy and the embassy wanted him to be there (01:39:43:00)  As a result of giving the briefing to the Principles Committee, Heine was then assigned the job of giving any reconstruction briefings, which meant he gave several briefings to Secretary Rice and met several times one-on-one with Secretary Rumsfeld (01:40:18:00) Heine believes that Gen. Casey did a better job in his assignment than Heine believes the general receives credit for (01:40:54:00) o All of the senior military leaders whom Heine worked with were outstanding, proving time and again that the military had a very good selection process for choosing its leadership (01:41:05:00) o Heine believes that Gen. Casey in particular received unfair criticism from politicians which was not warranted (01:41:40:00)  Heine believes the military provided significant leadership not just in the military effort but in the entire coalition effort (01:42:02:00)  Gen. Casey faced difficult (Heine would define it was almost hostile) questioning in his confirmation to be the Army Chief of Staff, based largely on his service in Iraq (01:42:24:00) o Nevertheless, Heine worked with a lot of good individuals who did a lot of good work and were heavily invested (01:42:41:00)  Every Wednesday, the commander of the forces stationed in Baghdad would have a three-hour briefing on the reconstruction efforts and would have details about every single project (01:43:37:00)  If the details were not up to the level that he commander wanted, then he wanted to know why (01:43:58:00)  The commander made the connection that the reconstruction efforts in Baghdad would help the overall security; not just the improved facilities but also the process of improving the facilities was beneficial (01:44:29:00) Heine returned home in June 2006 and retired from the Army at the end of July 2006 (01:45:04:00) �o   According to Army policy, as a general officer, if Heine did not have another assignment to go to after returning home, he would retire (01:45:16:00)  By the time his second deployment ended, Heine was too old to be considered for another full assignment; however, he had been considered for as Chief Army Reserve but was not selected (01:45:25:00) o After he retired, Heine was fortunate enough to be selected to assist in training senior National Guard and Reserve engineer units who would be deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan (01:46:01:00)  Heine was a contractor and traveled to wherever the various units were mobilizing out of; primarily, it was: Fort McCoy, Wisconsin; Camp Shelby, Mississippi; and Fort Hood, Texas (01:46:18:00)  Heine’s job involved working with general-led units who were going through a series of very intense exercises that placed the units in the area they would be assigned and having them go through real missions and working with real-world intelligence (01:46:37:00)  Heine’s specific job was as the senior mentor who would coach the various units through the exercises (01:47:02:00) While he was working as the mentor, Heine had to stay abreast of what was happening in Iraq, including at a classified level (01:47:22:00) o Overall, events in Iraq since he left have happened at a level where Heine expected them to happen; however, he would like to see more progress and in his mind, it is disappointing that Shia-led government has not been more accommodating of the Sunni (01:47:55:00) Heine does very little work now-in-days, spending a few hours a week consulting for a non-profit professional services company; as well, he remains in contact with the Army engineers (01:49:05:00) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Heine, Robert (Interview outline and video), 2012 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Heine, Robert Description An account of the resource Bob Heine was born in 1947 in the Bronx, New York. After high school, he enrolled in the engineering program at Auburn University in Alabama, and completed four years of ROTC training. Instead of going to Vietnam, he was sent to graduate school for two years, and then received specialized chemical training, after which he went into the reserves rather than active duty. He soon switched to the Engineer Corps, and pursued a professional career while advancing through the ranks in the reserves. He was assigned to command an engineer battalion during Desert Storm, but the unit was not deployed due to the brevity of the war. After 9/11, however, he was activated, working initially at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, and then being deployed to Kuwait and Iraq in command of a unit supporting American forces in those countries, and wound up doing two tours in Iraq as a major general and working with high ranking American and Iraqi officials. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Kentwood Historic Preservation Commission (Kentwood, Mich.) WKTV WKTV (Wyoming, Mich.) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Video recordings United States. Army Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives, American Iraq War, 2003-2011--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 2012-05-09 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HeineB1379V 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/e5b32a58c96dc9c518120b9a845f45d2.mp4 7f2759924d4de1d34ea93f94c9193e1d https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ca08648a825f2583d3a8d1773f641352.pdf afc98cf70f604179f924b9a3514d4b10 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Kevin Heine Disc One (01:01:07) (00:33) Background Information • Kevin was born in Flint, Michigan on October 1, 1964 • In 1952 [1852?] Jacob Heine migrated from Germany to the US • He had a long family military history that dates back the Civil War • There were six children in his family, five of which joined the service • Kevin played baseball, football, and ran in track while in school • He graduated from Osceota high school in 1982 • About 25% of his graduating class entered into the service; it was an Air Force town and the economy was also bad, so there were no jobs (18:15) The Navy • Kevin went to basic training at Great Lakes Naval Base in Chicago for 9 weeks • After basic training he had basic engineering school in Chicago • The first two weeks of basic training were pretty rough • Kevin had enlisted in the Navy in 1982 and had not graduated yet • He remained in the reserve while finishing high school • When he was only 16 years old he knew that he wanted to be in the service (28:20) Basic Engineering • Kevin was training to be a Machinery Maintenance and Repair Technician • He trained for 13 weeks and then was allowed to go out to sea • He washed out of nuclear power school, but would have done better if he was older and more mature • Kevin was assigned to a ship outside of Georgia where he was working in a crane shop with missiles • He was also working on small arms in the weapons department (33:45) USS Julius A. Fuehrer • The ship was based out of South Carolina; it was a small frigate • Kevin was working in the engine room as a crewmember with a forward five inch gun mount while in the Persian Gulf • He later qualified as a service warfare specialist (43:10) Re-Enlistment 1988 • Kevin re-enlisted because they had offered him a very large bonus; he was married and had young children at the time • He was also provided with a college education • Kevin began working in cryogenics systems engineering; the classes were very hard • He dealt with distillation, storage, and distribution of liquefied gasses �• • The classes were demanding and he was dealing with planes hands on The classes were in Norfolk, Virginia for two years (54:50) Key West • Kevin was assigned shore duty in Florida because his superiors felt that he needed a break • He was working in the Naval air station with two others and one chief • They would go to work at 8 am and then for lunch at noon • After lunch they would mess around or play basketball; only one person would have to go back to the shop to work until 4 • Kevin was taking computer technician classes at a community college in Florida • He received his associates degree in 1994 and also re-enlisted that year Disc Two (01:04:27) (00:15) Millennium Deployment • Kevin was on the only carrier battle group that was deployed during the millennium shift • The skipper was often out of hand and drank a lot • Many in the electrical division got punishment for screwing up or sleeping on duty (06:05) Ship Duties • Kevin was temporarily assigned to the safety office as a representative from engineering • He was doing Naval occupational safety and health work • Working with noise surveys, emergency asbestos removal, and other “boring administrative crap.” • They were at sea for New Year’s Eve and had their own on board fireworks display • They were in Dubai for the Super bowl, drinking lots of beer (13:20) Naval and Marine Corps Center, Indiana • Kevin was transferred to Indiana; it would be his last assignment before retirement • He had been discharged in June, 2002 but was still on the recall list until 2012 • He had to be ready to deploy if needed on 96 hour notice (15:30) Davenport University • Kevin began taking more classes in Indiana for business administration and computer science • He graduated with a double major in 2005 • There were many other vets in the program he took part in • He was going through a divorce while taking his classes • Kevin had been a staff duty officer during the attacks of 9/11 • Everyone at the Navy base was sent home because they felt that would be more �safe than the base (26:15) Reserve Called • Kevin had to contact many men from the reserve to make sure he had their correct contact information if they had to be called to service after 9/11 • Many men were called back to active duty to serve in Iraq • Kevin had to spend about 12 hours calling people in the reserve during 9/11 • By the end of the day he had been able to contact 90% of the people on his list (35:00) Finished with College • Kevin had bad times with the economy in Michigan and Indiana in 2005 • He became more politically active • Kevin joined a citizens’ rights group and fought for sustainable energy • He also tried to help pass the Michigan Fair Tax, but had not got enough signatures to get the proposal on the 2008 ballot � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Heine, Kevin (Interview outline and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Heine, Kevin Description An account of the resource Kevin Heine was born in Flint, Michigan on October 1, 1964. About 25% of his graduating class joined some form of the service in Osceota because it was an Air Force town and the economy was terrible in Michigan during the 80s. Kevin joined the Navy after high school and was able to take many classes in many areas during his 20 year career. Kevin took engineering classes, cryogenics, business administration, computer science, and many others. 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 2008-08-17 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HeineK 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/fc05f2909c3f3b6faa036c457441be2b.mp4 386cf3bc8ecb3a80b74ab42c6f7df5a0 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/78d560eddfc63223d0b38808b92e349a.pdf 824e278aceb5113f6eee2ee65eecf29c PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Name of War: Korea Interviewee: Lloyd Heibel Length of Interview: 00:34:44 (00:18) Family Information and Enlistment  Lloyd was born August 19, 1931. He served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War and his highest rank was gunners mate 2nd class (00:20).  He was born in Dorr, Michigan (00:56)  Lloyd and his brother joined the service together (01:07).  Lloyd enlisted into the service because he did not like school. He was expelled when he was 15. He wanted to join the Navy, but was too young. He convinced his reluctant father to sign for him. He signed when he was 16 and they took him 1 month after his 17th birthday (01:18).  He and his brother were shipped out to the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. They travelled by bus (02:40). (02:56) Active Duty Overview  After completing boot camp, his brother signed up for Class training in engineering. He would end up working on a ship as an engine technician (03:03).  Lloyd was supposed to attend storekeeper’s school in Bayonne, New Jersey and San Diego, California, but they were both full (03:23).  They decided to send him to the [aircraft carrier] USS Midway. Within a few weeks they were headed out to the Mediterranean Sea (03:48).  He accumulated 2 years of leave in 2 years, because they were consistently underway (04:10).  He requested a transfer the ship his brother was stationed on, the Shenandoah, because they were always and dock. The transfer was approved. (04:26)  As soon as he got aboard, they left for the Mediterranean (04:41).  He participated in 4 six months cruises, which took him as far as Panama and also along eastern seaboard of the U.S. (04:50).  They would also take congressmen out on a weekend getaway (05:20).  Most of his sea time was accumulated on the Midway. It was a very good experience (05:28).  One time, while still on the Midway, the commanders were thinking about going through the Red Sea to attack Korea, but the plan was nixed fairly quickly (05:36).  When they came back to Norfolk, Virginia for an overhaul of the ship that is when he transferred to his brother’s ship (05:55).  The Midway would continue on around the southern tip of South America to serve in the Pacific. There would be many accomplishments that those on the Midway would be remembered for (06:15).  He spent 4 years total in the Navy and believed that it was a good learning experience for him (06:58). � He would finish high school while in the Navy. He would complete two and a half years of high school work in two days, getting the GED equivalent of a high school diploma (07:06). (07:48) Life and Duty on the Midway  On the Midway Lloyd worked in the deck crew. His job was to maintain the sailing part of the ship (07:51).  He stood wheel watch on the main deck and had the opportunity to steer the ship. Although they made a big deal of it, he said there was nothing special about it. In fact, the job changes hands every four hours (08:05).  When the ship needed to be fueled, then someone with more experience would come in and control the ship (08:28).  He would end up doing many different types of jobs while he served on the Midway. It was mostly whatever they needed him for. He explained that when they would dock, he would sometimes work on the anchor detail. He describes what happens when the anchor is let down. He would take a sledgehammer to a pelican hook and jump out of the way. If you slipped, you were dead (09:05).  Ran motor launches during liberty (10:58).  Another job he did was to work with the guns on the ship, either loading or firing (11:20).  He would help maintain the ship. Since it was made of iron, it would rust very easily in salt water, so it had to be maintained very vigorously (11:30).  He would also play games sometimes, saying that there were basketball courts and exercise rooms. There was also a big band aboard the ship to entertain them as well as a few movies (11:49).  Living on the ship was the best of life to him. You always had a clean bed, hot food, dentists, barbers, and their laundry would always be done (12:10).  After his four years were up, they tried to get him to reenlist, offering him $1200 and 42 months gunnery school in Washington D.C. where he would have achieved chief gunnery’s mate (12:35).  However, he would decide that was enough (13:30).  He has with him some documents from when he was on the ship. Since Midway was like a floating city, they had everything. One of the things he shows is a Newsletter that the soldiers would get to keep them informed on what was happening (13:36).  He would also send stuff to his parent to keep them informed of what was happening as well. They had kept all the documents, which is how he has them today (14:11).  He describes a time when they were running a fueling operation and one of the fuel lines burst, a guy was thrown off the ship and into the ocean. A helicopter would save him. He also said the guy was not wearing a life jacket, which was a sin aboard the ship, especially during fueling operations. This particular event was illustrated in a comic book (14:47).  He also has some other items collected over the years from when he would dock and explore the place they landed (15:38).  Most of the places he visited were still damaged from WWII. In fact, the soldiers were given cash, which they were expected to spend to help the towns they stopped in. Essentially, an economic recovery program in postwar era (16:26). � He has a book that shows, with much pictorial representation, the last cruise that he went on before transferring off the Midway. Pictures of events the crew participated in and pictures of the personnel on board. Timeline of activity (17:30).  While he was anchored in Italy, he experienced an earthquake (18:45). (20:30) The Shenandoah  When he first entered the Navy, it was not possible for brothers to be aboard the same ship. He said that in WWII, five brothers were aboard a ship and all of them were lost. In the 1950’s things changed and brothers could be on the same ship if requested (20:40).  While he was on the Shenandoah, he serves as a gunner’s mate (21:28).  Lloyd was in charge of five 20mm batteries. He would also work on a 5-inch forward gun and he was attached to the armory, which had the small arms. Small arms were utilized by landing parties (21:36).  Armory issued weapon to men and held them until needed. Explanation of Armory (22:40).  He would also train on a radio-controlled aircraft (23:30).  Description of drones (24:20).  He would spend a lot of his time training with the different types of guns on the ship. One time while they were training and live round got jammed into a hot gun barrel. It was very dangerous, but with some caution they were able to get things right again (23:50). (28:50) Life after the Navy  After he got out of the Navy, he said that life was good. It was a civilian at age 21 (28:58).  He had to apply for the draft, where he got a classification of 5A. (29:10). � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Heibel, Lloyd (Interview outline and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Heibel, Lloyd Description An account of the resource Lloyd Heibel enlisted in the Navy in 1948 at the age of 17. He trained as a gunner and served on the USS Midway and USS Shenandoah, operating in the Atlantic and Mediterranean at the time of the Korean War. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Poff, Chris (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Video recordings Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American United States. 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 2010-06-02 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HeibelL 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/a8b8ad7bffecd1966e1a8d804462ac83.mp4 ca206f71aef7ffbc6c7e28085de1a4e5 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/03ae64d32e0b007d498e3f3b83d01123.pdf b80a36d82f3776e145a0e4e6bc5dc98e PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project John Heflin (01:00:07) (00:01) Background Information • • • • • • • John was born in Bellevue, MI He graduated high school and received his draft notice shortly afterwards Instead of being drafted he enlisted in the Air Force John trained to be a mechanic for 3 months He was then sent to Columbus, OH for 2.5 years In Columbus he worked on C-130s John was married in September 1967 and received his orders for deployment 10 days after (02:26) Deployment • • • • • • • In January 1968 he flew out to a small island in the Philippines called Mack 10 On the way they stopped in Alaska and Japan When he got to Clark Air Force Base on Mack 10 he heard about the Tet Offensive Tan Son Nhut Airbase, Vietnam was being overrun by the Viet Cong, so he had to stay in the Philippines John was the crew chief of the mechanics The planes had a crew of 5 operators Every three months they would rotate people from the Philippines to Vietnam (06:10) Vietnam • • • • • • • • • • The Tet Offensive was over in April 1968 Most people were afraid to go to war when they were drafted John didn’t know anyone who enlisted by choice He had pretty good pay when he got to Vietnam because he received overseas, hazard, combat and flight pay Most of the US troops came to Tan Son Nhut Airbase At about 1am every morning they would get mortar fire on the base from the Viet Cong John worked from 6pm to 6am He had to make sure the planes were always ready to go The Viet Cong knew where mortar and rocket targets on the base were because the Vietnamese worked on the base during the day On one occasion he had to go to Dong Ha by the DMZ to fix a tire �(25:45) How the Soldiers Felt About the War There was a lot of tension People would say that the US was not trying to win the war They asked why we didn’t just bomb Hanoi Some thought that the US was just trying to get young people killed to quiet the civil rights movement • A lot of guys went AWOL and stayed over there • The general feeling was “we got to get out of this place” • • • • (27:38) Discharge On February 26, 1969 John received orders to leave Vietnam He had just made sergeant Most people wanted out and didn’t even think about re-enlisting John was discharged as soon as he got back to the US There was a lot of drug use in Vietnam While he was in Vietnam John had heard about people shooting their commanding officers during battle because of racism, they called it fragging • The Military was segregated • • • • • • (36:47) After Being Discharged • • • • • • • • • • John went to get his wife from Ohio and they went to Detroit He went back to his old job at the hospital and worked nights at the Chevrolet plant When Martin Luther King was killed there were riots in Vietnam He joined the Black Panther Party in Detroit There were white sympathizers that helped the BPP The FBI broke them up Heroin had hit the Detroit community hard John was proud to have served in the Air Force He had a family member that was incarcerated in a prison in Muskegon, MI so he would go there to visit and really liked the area John and his wife moved there recently � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Heflin, John (Interview outline and video), 2009 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Heflin, John Description An account of the resource John Heflin was born in Bellevue, Michigan and after high school enlisted in the Air Force. He was assigned to be a mechanic and trained in Columbus, Ohio. John was deployed in January 1968 to the Philippines during the Tet Offensive. After the Tet Offensive he was stationed at Tan Son Nhut Airbase, Vietnam. It was his job as crew chief to make sure that the planes were ready to go at all times. He discusses soldiers' attitudes toward the war, racial tensions and drug use. After leaving Vietnam in 1969, he worked in Detroit and joined the Black Panther Party. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Montagna, Douglas (Interviewer) Great Lakes Naval Memorial & Museum (Muskegon, Mich.) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans African-American soldiers United States. Air Force 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 Text Moving Image 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 2009-02-16 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HeflinJ 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/ab6f4dc7a6e9b5280aaab02e5f8bf30c.mp4 93ec9b0a7fea3af7a028db9feafe1254 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f15c28e14ac1fc8733d7d80f73f8497a.pdf 98c2c912f3282b8b7212fb4bb3ecb43a PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Timothy Heffron (00:28:09) (00:06) Background Information • Timothy was born in Kirkwood, Missouri on November 13, 1957 • He was raised in Pennsylvania • Went to live with his father in Grand Rapids, MI • Timothy went to Forest Hills High School • When he finished high school he joined the Marines (03:49) Training • After boot camp Timothy was a Private First Class • He joined their wrestling team because he was a wrestler in high school • Timothy graduated 3rd in his class in communications school • A major said that he would catch him with a bad drug test so he went home without permission for 38 days and got a lawyer • When he went back he was court martialed and received a 50 dollar fine and a demotion to private • They asked him if he wanted to take an honorable discharge and he agreed (10:45) After Discharge • Timothy had 2 heart attacks and on February 24, 2004 he went to live at the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans • Right after his discharge he became a chef and travelled to different cities • He got a license to be a certified industrial cook • Timothy got married right after the Marines and divorced a few years later • He then worked for a circus • His father got sick and he had to take care of him for a couple years �• Timothy bought some taxis and ran a taxi business until he sold it in 1996 • He says that boot camp made him a stronger person • Timothy thinks they are working the troops too much and wearing them out in Iraq � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Heffron, Timothy (Interview outline and video), 2007 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Heffron, Timothy Description An account of the resource Timothy Heffron was born in Kirkwood, Missouri on November 13, 1957. He was raised in Pennsylvania and then moved to Grand Rapids with his father during high school. After high school he joined the Marines. He went to boot camp and then finished 3rd in his communications school class. He didn't get along with a major and ended up leaving without permission and was court martialed when he returned. He received a 50 dollar fine and was moved from private first class to private. Then they offered him an honorable discharge and he took it. 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. Marine Corps 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 2007-01-29 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HeffronT 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/8de518680720f73b32a93ce6bd9dc291.mp4 452adf839826a8c6f61e129da18f9abd https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/748b59d1ec75a01f8dc07b8b8022acd7.pdf dc8f86aa77762e105228fda1e8559f49 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Richard Hawley (33:22) Background information (00:10)         Born in Michigan in 1932 (00:12) He lived with his grandparents who farmed (00:20) He went to live with his mother in Traverse City, Michigan, in 1937. (00:50) He then moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan, where he attended school until 11 grade. He then dropped out and joined the Air Force at age 17. (approx. 1949) (1:10) He picked the Air Force over the Army. (1:46) He decided to enlist due to his fear of eventually being drafted. (2:06) During his childhood he paid close attention to the conflicts in Europe and in the Pacific. (2:30) He had family in the armed forces. (2:48) th Basic training (3:15)  For basic training he was sent to Lackland Field in San Antonio Texas. (3:16)     Basic lasted 12 weeks and consisted of shooting, marching, and learning discipline. (3:20) He was able to adjust to the discipline but other men had more difficulty. (3:40) He attended basic in January of 1950. (4:30) During basic, Richard was given aptitude tests. He was originally assigned to engineering but later became a welder for aircrafts. (4:58) He was next sent to Selfridge Michigan where he worked as a welder on maintenance. (5:34) He was in Selfridge Michigan for approx. 6 months. (6:06) He was in Selfridge Michigan at the beginning of Korean War in June of 1950. Most of the soldiers were “fired up” about this news. (6:32) He spent 19 weeks at a welding school before being assigned to Selfridge. (7:27) Richard Volunteered to serve in the Far East. He was hoping to work in Japan but instead was sent to Korea. (7:48)      Service in Korea (8:14)     He sailed on a troop carrier to Japan and then was flown to from Japan to Korea. (8:16) The voyage to Yokohama, Japan, took 9 days in spite encountering 2 typhoons. (9:38) He was stationed in K-2 (10:15) Bombers primarily flew missions out of this air field. (10:38) �     He worked on aircrafts as well as on the runways, particularly on the runway planking. (10:54) The pressure of a heavy aircraft was what did most of the wear on the runway. (11:48) Every night K-2 came under fire. (12:05) The Air field was hit about twice a week by aircraft. (12:44) K-2 was located about 150 miles from the front lines at the time of Richards’s service. (13:23) Life in Korea (13:42)                   At K-2 the men lived in tents. The men were often cold and wet with oil heaters used for warmth. There were about 8 beds in a tent. (13:45) There was a mess hall for food. (14:20) There were many Koreans working on the bases, one of whom Richard taught how to weld. (14:45) Richard picked up pieces of Korean as well as Chinese during his service in the Far East. (15:23) Korean soldiers were used to guard the base as well. (16:04) There were about 200-300 aircraft stationed at K-2. (16:24) Richard spoke often to the pilots and the officers and as a result had a good perception of what they were doing. (17:11) Several air craft where lost a day at K-2. (17:56) Some pilots had shot down 20-30 MIG fighters. The pilots often thought that the MIG pilots were Chinese because the North Koreans were not as good at maneuvers. They did not think they were Russian. (18:29) For R and R the men at K-2 often went to Japan. During this time most men went to bars. (19:00) Richard thinks that most of the Koreans were surprisingly kind to the U.S. soldiers. He thinks this in spite of being hit by a jeep by a Korean and being out of service for 1 week as a result. (19:52) Most men Richard worked under were career officers and mostly disciplined. (22:26) He spent 1 year in Korea (approx 1950-1951). (23:06) The base had trouble with crime. One soldier sold his truck 3 different times. (24:00) Richard used the radio to inform himself on the state of the Korean War. (24:34) He thought that the reason for the war was to protect South Korea not to stop Communism from spreading. (25:30) Men were constantly being cycled out. This, however, led to trouble with training new men because too many experienced soldiers would leave at one time. (25:49) He was very anxious to return home. When he returned home he was taken by boat. (27:49) Service in the U.S. (approx. 1951-1953) (28:17)   After returning to the U.S. Richard continued his work as a welder and maintenance man. (28:34) He left the military 4 months early in approx. 1953. (29:12) �Life after Service (29:40)    Richard worked as a welder after service. He did many contracts for different (29:48) He believes that the military gave him much more experience and a different perspective of the world. (30:25) After Korea he arrived in San Francisco, California. He then took a train to Michigan but it ran in to trouble when the track was damaged due to an earthquake. (31:39) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hawley, Richard (Interview outline and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hawley, Richard Description An account of the resource Richard Hawley, born in Michigan in 1932, served in the U.S. Air Force from 1949-1953 in both the U.S. and Korea during the Korean Conflict. During his service in Korea, Richard worked as a welder and maintenance man at the K-2 air base, mainly repairing runways and aircraft. After returning to the U.S. he continued his job as a welder in Selfridge Michigan. 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. Air Force Korean War, 1950-1953--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 2010-03-26 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HawleyR0343V 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