49 24 1541 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8d210618c51b05372960617886f9f831.mp4 f19d4d1639385f30ee84ec6ea653fa95 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f67c898b04d8d4e070573e818cdaf2f1.pdf 60f9485f522aa2734acff3df08eab661 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Albert Havinga 1:02:18 Background information (00:10)  Born in the city of Groningen, the Netherlands, in 1921 (00:17)  His father worked as a tool maker (00:17)  There were 5 children in his family, 4 boys and 1 girl. He was the 4th child in the family (1:04)  His father had job during the Great Depression in spite of economic hardship (1:27)  He was in school until age 15 but had to stop due to the start of the war in 1936 [the Germans invaded in 1940] (2:42)  He had chance a after the war to go to the U.S. and took it (3:26)  He attended evening School for 2 years (equivalency of High school) and worked several jobs before the invasion of Groningen in 1940 (4:19)  Resided with parents at this time (5:16)  much attention had been paid to the aggressive actives of Germany (5:37)  radio and news paper was used to inform public of German activates and advances (6:23)  Was married July 27th 1948 (47:00)  The following spring he moved to the U.S. (in 1949) (47:27) German Invasion (7:00)  German invasion of his town in May of 1940 had been unexpected (7:29)  Very little destruction had been witnessed during the invasion (8:14)  Germans seen on first day of offensive (8:40)  Germans appeared very orderly, and sang as they marched into town (8:48)  Originally there had been few demands imposed upon the native peoples by the Germans, but slowly buildings had been seized and a curfew was set at 8 o’clock (9:32)  Not known if any soldiers had had been stationed in his town, but many German soldiers were present (10:04)  Germans had not been very polite to the native people (10:44)  In May of 1940 the bank he worked at was told that 1 of 2 people had to be sent to Germany to work. This encouraged him to quit the bank and go into hiding (13:00)  He took a job at a mental institution as an orderly for a year (13:40)  Many Jews had been committed there pretending to be insane but were not (13:45)  Germans needed more men to fill jobs that had been left so that men could fight in the war (14:33)  Germans did not attempt to recruit the Dutch as troops but some had volunteered in support of Hitler (15:16) �    After working as an orderly he traveled to the northern part of Groningen and worked in a grocery store (16:13) His cousin was a state trooper and was asked to apprehend several individuals but did not want to. This lead to the imprisonment of him as well as his parents by the Germans (17:38) Havinga came back to central Groningen in 1944 (17:40) Returned to lives with his parents (18:00) Effects of the Occupation (20:11)  no news papers were circulated within the last two years of the occupation 19421944 (20:55)  no radios, Germans demanded all radios be turned in (21:01)  no cars were aloud (20:06)  there was very limited if any gas available (21:13)  no bikes, due to the German seizing of tires (21:15)  no negatives (film) (21:40)  there had been no public transpiration within the last two years of the occupation 1942-1944 (21:45)  no train transpiration (21:50)  no toilet paper (21:56)  no gas for home heating or cooking (except for 2 hours in the middle of the night) (22:11)  In spite of the ban on radios, a lot of people had still owned one. Often they were hidden so they would not be taken away (22:46)  collection days where set up by the Germans for resources such as copper (23:50)  Food was not as scarce as in other more populated areas but still limited during the occupation (24:35)  Some bartering of goods and food had been done in Groningen. (26:63)  almost every night bombing could be heard overhead (28:48)  no air attack had been directed against Groningen specifically but some bombs had been accidentally dropped on the location (28:57) German treatment of the Jews and foreigners (30:03)  A close family friend had hidden a Jew from the Germans. (30:31)  Paper stars had been used in the town to identify Jews. (31:47)  Future wife was apprehended in 1941 as a result of having lived in the U.S. She was transferred to Amersfoort then Germany then to a camp in France. She was freed in 1943 (33:12)  She had been arrested as a result of technically being a U.S. citizen as it was where she was born. (33:43) Near the end of the occupation (35:40)  nearing the end of the war, German attitudes had been more bitter due to losses in other nations (35:45) �   In one instance, he had been used to transfer ration coupons for the underground. These were to be used to feed individuals that the underground kept in hiding (36:33) Germans often interrupted with the actions of the train to “clean” cars or check them for suspicious individuals. (37:00) Some friends and family had been sent off to Germany in order to fill work positions (40:50) After the War (42:40)  He re-met with very few individuals who had been taken to Germany or prisoner camps during the occupation (42:48)  It had been very difficult to get around due to the disarray of the country and transportation (42:53)  After he got engaged to his future wife, there was great difficulty in finding a home because none had been built for ten years (43:13)  Residents with no children were forced to take couples in (43:22)  He was placed on a waiting list to move to the U.S. with a projection time of 5 years. However after marrying his wife who had already been a U.S. citizen, he was able to move in 1949. (43:36) The Liberation of Groningen on April 13th-16th of 1945 (44:30)  Mortars and other weaponry could be heard so he and others took cover on the floor of a house (45:01)  The House took a direct hit from an explosive round. When he went over to investigate another round hit the home and plaster shrapnel was blown into his eyes making him unable to see (45:30)  Small airplanes where spotted overhead (45:50)  The liberation of Groningen by the Canadian army could not be “enjoyed” by him as he was unable to see (46:20)  The day after when his eyesight returned there were still German bodies on the ground and others had been surrendering and were taken away (46:30) Life after the Liberation (48:00)  Worked as an inspector of the distribution of fresh fish (48:08)  Worked in the office for a wine business for a year (48:46)  In this shop, a false wall was constructed during the war to hide all the oldest wines (49:10)  Worked in a cigar shop (49:43)  Cigarettes had been scarce. To cope with this some people even smoked dried grass (50:00)  A short time after he came to the U.S. in 1949 (50:08)  Took private lessons at this time to become an accountant (50:17)  Regular jobs in Groningen had been scarce during the war however these businesses and positions quickly resurfaced after the war’s end. (50:57) �Life in the U.S. (52:48)  His first job was at a bakery (Moe’s bakery) in Grand Rapids (54:00)  He worked this job for about 6 months (55:17)  After words he worked at Mueller’s bakery on 28th street for 12-15 years (55:30)  Parents came to the U.S. from the Netherlands in 1956. (56:06)  at this time he had 3 kids (56 26)  he had been running low on funds so looked for a part time job (55:33)  began working at the post office (56:46)  Worked at the post office for 7-8 years for 3 hours at night (57:37)  he began working full time at the post office ~45 hours a week (58:00)  children went to colleges including Michigan State University and Hope College (58:45)  Was unable to speak English when arrived in the U.S. (1:00:03)  Wife stayed at home and took care of the children (1:00:27)  The first house he and his wife bought was a two family house on Madison Ave. in Grand Rapids (1:01:15)  They lived there for 22 years till it had been paid off (1:01:26)  After that at age 55 he purchased another home in 1976 (1:01:45) � 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 Havinga, Albert (Interview outline and video), 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Havinga, Albert Description An account of the resource Albert Havinga was a civilian residing in Groningen in the Netherlands during World War II. In this Interview Albert gives an account of the invasion, occupation, and liberation of his city from 1940-1945, as well as the recovery of the state after the occupation had ended. In addition, Albert describes many social and economic hardships that where encountered as a result of the Nazi invasion. He also briefly touches upon his immigration to the U.S. after the war had ended. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Video recordings World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives, American Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-10-18 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HavingaA1283V 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/72ebbba97c9749c8a3a038f29de89dcf.mp4 e967024c375b1a495df4ed4eb96fca73 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d0b55cba3fe8597a666cbb6202002d87.pdf 2107037f989728a32f81c88c97034517 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Robert Hartman (01:00:30) Interviewer: “Can you state your name, when you were born and the regiment you served with.” I served with Service Company and “E” Company of the 126th Infantry, 32nd Infantry Division, and the “Red Arrow” group. Interviewer: “Now, you’ve had an interview before and you went through your boot camp, so we’re going to jump ahead this time to when you left the United States. You were at the Cow Palace in California, can you tell me what happened there?” Well, the Cow Palace is what the name implies; it was where they had rodeos. It just had a dirt floor in the middle with cement seats around the sides and fold up chairs. We were there for a week or 10 days and it rained all the time we were in Frisco, the weather was miserable. 1:00 So I never had a good impression of San Francisco. We had to sleep in the seats and the lucky ones slept out on the floor in cots, but they gave us fold up cots and told us to stretch them across the seats and there was no way in the world, if you have ever been in a theater, you can stretch a folding cot across the seats and sleep, so we all slept sitting up with our coats and clothes on, that’s the way we stayed for the week or 10 days that we were there. 1:33. Interviewer: “Now, did you have any sense or idea where you would be going or what you would be doing?” We had no idea. We had no idea what country we were going to, we just knew we weren’t going to England like they planned. We knew we were headed some other place, 1 �but nobody had the faintest idea who we were going to fight, but we figured it would probably be the Japs seeing we weren’t going to be fighting the Germans. That’s about all we knew and that was just common sense to figure that out. 2:02 Interviewer: “Now, you were given orders to board the luxury liner the U.S.S. Lurline, can you tell us about that?” Well, the Lurline was a luxury liner that they hadn’t even completed converting to a troop-ship because they used the state rooms for the men and they were putting anywhere from 2 to 5 men in a state room and we were lucky because we got the ballroom up on the A deck where they had all of their dances and that and there was a hardwood floor and they had the big windows there and during the day they could roll those big windows down and we got this nice breeze. 2:43 The only thing was, myself and about 90% of the guys were seasick just about all the way across. Interviewer: “Was there anything you could take for that? What did you guys do to fight that?” Nothing. Ed Szudzk swears by lemon drops and the purser on the ship was going around selling jars of lemon drops and he said, “lemon drops will stop seasickness”, but what it did was made me sicker on the lemon drops, but Ed Szudzik swore by them and he said that they kept him healthy all the way across. Even my company commander, who told us that it is just a matter of mind over matter, for the first 2 or 3 days he was going around making fun of us and all of a sudden he’s just as sick as the rest of us, so we turned the tables on him that way. 3:40 Interviewer: “Now, when you crossed the equator was there a celebration?” 2 �Yes, we had what they called—one of the sailors was King Neptune and then you were a pollywog or, I’m trying to think what the other term was that—they shaved your head, a lot of them went around and grabbed a bunch of guys and shaved their heads and I thought it was so cool that I had mine shaved and I kept my head shaved for about 65 years after that. 4:13 I never did wear my hair long again. Interviewer: “So, were you initiated?” No, I wasn’t, they didn’t bother me, but they did some of the others, they pulled all kinds of pranks on them and I don’t remember what they all were, but they had us all up on deck going through this, but I was too seasick to even care what was going on. 4:35 Interviewer: “So you didn’t leave your room much? You just basically stayed in bed?” Not if I could help it, I lived on bread and coffee because they had fresh bread on board and they had coffee, but you went down into the mess hall and the food was all steam cooked like a pressure cooker and just the smell of it, I would leave the mess hall and grab a slice of bread and a cup of coffee and go back up on deck. 4:59 Interviewer: “How long did this trip take?” Well, roughly 30 days. I’ve heard every—if I go by my discharge papers it was 32 days, other guys got the same discharge papers, were on the same boat I was, they got on the same day, they got off the same day and some of them their discharge papers say 25 days. 5:24 It’s hard to tell, every time I read about it it’s a different time, so it’s anywhere from 25 to 32 days, but I have always said 30 days and in my mind that’s the way I figure it. Interviewer: “Did you have any idea where you were going?” 3 �We had no idea until we were almost to Australia and they told us we were going to land in Adelaide Australia. The reason we landed in Adelaide instead of Brisbane where we were supposed to, was because the battle of the Coral Sea was going on and the Americans were battling the Japanese for the Battle of the Coral Seas and we had to detour out around it to avoid getting caught in there with our troop ships because there were probably 5 troop ships in this convoy along with a bunch of other small cruisers that were there to convoy us over. 6:22 Interviewer: “You said you landed in Port Adelaide?” Yes, Port Adelaide was called the city of churches and it was a nice little town, but they didn’t expect us, but they treated us real well there. Interviewer: “What was your first impression when you landed? What did it smell like? What did it look like?” Well, it was just warm there and we got off the boat and we’re dressed in woolen clothes. They issued us woolen clothes to go to England and they issued them in Massachusetts and when we got to Adelaide the temperature was 85° roughly and we’re standing there with big overcoats on and woolen coats and all dressed up like we were going to the North Pole. 7:00 Interviewer: “Was there a crowd out there, people out?” No, just us, I don’t remember, but there probably were some other people around, but there wasn’t any welcoming committee or anything. We were just so happy to get back on land that we didn’t care; we just wanted to see dry land. Interviewer: “Where did you go from there?” 4 �We stayed at Sandy Creek for a couple of months and then we started up to Brisbane, Australia and we were loaded on trains and every state, there are 5 states in Australia, and every one has a different gauge track, so you go so far and you have to unload the train and load it onto the next train and go from there. We had all of our trucks and supplies and troops and it took us 4 or 5 days just to go from one end of Australia to the other. 7:58 Australia, of course, is as big as the United States. Interviewer: “Now, you said you stayed in Sandy Creek for a couple of months, what was that?” Yes, Sandy Creek was just the name of a place, I guess there was a town there or something, but it was just called Sandy Creek and where they got the—it was all sand I know that and it was a nice little place. 8:25 We were there in the summertime, our summer, but their winter and it got cold there and we didn’t have any stoves, but the coldest it got was if you put a bucket of water out at night, it would have a skim of ice on it in the morning, but by noon it was up to 75 or 80 again. We didn’t suffer or anything, we had nice warm bedding and that to sleep in and they did issue us summer clothing so we kept anything we wanted to of the warm stuff, so it wasn’t too bad. 9:03 The food was good there and there was a little German village right near us where they made wine, German wine from the people from Germany and a lot of the guys were buying wine by the barrel and drinking their wine, but I’m not much of a wine drinker, so I didn’t do much of that. It was nice there and we could go down to Adelaide once a month or so. 9:34 You took a train down there and coming back on the train, because they had added on so many cars to accommodate the soldiers that the train couldn’t make the hill coming back up. It wasn’t a big hill, it was just a long grade and we would have to get out and 5 �walk alongside the train so the train made the top of the hill and then we could get back on and ride again. 9:59 We would have maybe 4 or 5 thousand GI’s on the same train and they only had one little bitty engine and all the other good engines, of course, were hauling supplies for the war, but the Aussies were good people. 10:21 They are one of the countries that still thinks the United States is a pretty good country. Interviewer: “So, you guys got along, the soldiers and civilians?” We got along, especially with the soldiers when we met them in New Guinea. Of course, when we got there the soldiers, most of the soldiers of the Australian army were over in Africa fighting. They were fighting the Germans over there and they were called “The Rats of Tobruk” and they went through one heck of a thing over there and they brought them back and they rearmed them and sent them back up to New Guinea with us. 10:57 They had 2 separate armies in Australia, which differs from ours. When you sign up over there, you sign up for either part of the expeditionary forces or you can sign up for the militia. The militia never had to leave Australia, they were there for the duration and if you joined the AEL they could send you overseas, which they did. 11:28 There was quite a bit of antagonism between the 2 armies, the militia were looked down on, the others who had gone over to Africa and fought the Germans and then came back and had to rearm again and go right back up to New Guinea and help us, but they were terrific fighters, they were darn good men. 11:50 Interviewer: “What kind of interactions did you guys have when you were at Sandy Creek? Did they tell you about the fighting you might run into? Did they say anything about Japanese tactics?” 6 �No, nothing. We had no idea what we were going into, I don’t think anybody knew and we didn’t train for it, we just went out in the field. They didn’t do any special training for the jungle. I don’t even think they knew what the jungle was going to be like. 12:15 See, our company command was the one that did the training, it wasn’t—they didn’t bring in any Aussies from--there were a few Aussies up in New Guinea at that time already, trying to hold back the Japanese, but they couldn’t do it, there weren’t enough of them, so they needed our help in a hurry, so as soon as they could they flew “E” Company from Brisbane up into Port Moresby, which happened to be the first time in United States history that an American force had ever been flown into combat and that’s another first for the “Red Arrow”. 12:50 Interviewer: “Before we get to New Guinea, what kind of training exactly did they have? They didn’t quite prepare you for jungle warfare, but what were they preparing you for?” Just regular combat training like practicing with bayonets, which we never use, most of the guys threw their bayonets away, we marched back and forth and we listened to speeches and all that stuff, but they never really got into any real basic training. 13:21 One of the things we were trying to do was bring our group together because when we got on the Lurline we had a bunch of recruits that came out of California and they hadn’t even finished their basic training and they’re finishing up their basic training over in Australia. 13:42 So then we went up to Brisbane and from there we went on into New Guinea. Interviewer: “How long were you in Brisbane?” A month or two. 7 �Interviewer: “Just continued the same basic training?” Same thing, same thing all over again. Interviewer: “Did you have contact with the Aussies there also?” No, the officers might have had, or the high command might have had, the Generals or something, but as far as any of the men or—we never saw an Aussie soldier except the militia and they were no help because they never got into combat. 14:16 So, we never talked to anybody until we got up into combat and started talking to the Aussie troops that were up there and they told us what was going on and they gave us a lot of good information, but until then we were just as green as anybody coming off the boat. Interviewer: You left for New Guinea from Brisbane? Yes. Interviewer: “How did you get there? You said one company flew over, how did you get there?” We went by boat. Interviewer: “Can you tell me about that?” Well, they had liberty ships at that time, they were putting ships together that were welded instead of bolted and it was an innovation by a man—I’m trying to think of his name, it was Kaiser from the United States here and he started making the ships here in the United States and turning out 1 or 2 a day and they were just little tramp steamers all welded together and just solid steel all the way and there was nothing to them except the hold and the motor and that was it. 15:22 They put us down in this hold and just a steel plate between us and the ocean and you could see that steel would sweat from the cold water and it was warm on the inside and cold on the outside and the boat creaked and 8 �moaned all the way across there and it took us a couple of days to go from Brisbane up to Queensland and to Port Moresby. 15:51 Interviewer: “Where did you land in Port Moresby?” Well, Port Moresby was the port where we landed and there was nothing there except a couple metal sheds and one of them was a hotel, just a 2 story thing made out of rusted corrugated iron and I think it had a bar, we never got into the town really to look it over. They marched us right through the town and out on the—about 5 miles out of town and we stopped and everyone started walking over the Owen Stanley Mountains. Interviewer: “After you got off your ship and started walking farther inland where you guys were staying, did you have any contact with natives? Were there any Australians there? Did you see anybody? What did it look like?” Well, there wasn’t too much jungle around Port Moresby. 16:44 It was wide open and in fact they had an airstrip there and we were lucky enough, the first night there they sent us into this airstrip, right at the end of it and these Ausies, there were Americans there too on this airstrip and they were flying and trying to fight the Japanese in the air and at night the Japanese would come over and bomb this airstrip and they missed the airstrip and they were bombing us half of the time. 17:15 The first day there they told us that we better dig a foxhole and the ground was just as hard as a rock and we didn’t have pick axes so everybody just went out and dug a hole about 6 inches deep and said, “that’s enough” and that night they bombed us and they killed a couple of guys in the regiment and the next day everybody was out and the holes went down in a hurry that day. 17:42 We had big ones by nightfall, but just a few days later we started moving up. Interviewer: “How far out of Port Moresby were you camped?” 9 �Just 5 miles. Interviewer: “What was the name of the camp?” It had no name; we just called it the 5-mile airstrip. There must have been a name for it, but I don’t remember any. Interviewer: “How many days were you there?” Well, maybe 2 or 3 weeks. Everybody got dysentery that was there. The flies were so think, I have never seen flies that thick in all my life, it must have been the breeding season or something because you couldn’t eat your food, you had to keep waving the flies off your food all the way up to your mouth and everybody got dysentery and all of the sudden a breeze came up a few days later and all these flies were gone, just like they had never been there. 18:40 The wind just took them out into the ocean because they all disappeared and we never did know what happened. Interviewer: “For those of us who aren’t familiar with the symptoms of dysentery, can you explain that a little?” Well, it’s diarrhea and everybody knows what diarrhea is. Interviewer: “Did you have a cold? Did you have a fever?” No, no, nothing with it, just diarrhea and it was so bad that the men were passing blood some of them and they had nothing in those days to give them. The medics, they had nothing and they didn’t know what to do because they had never run into this before and they had run into cases of diarrhea and that in the states I suppose, where somebody would get sick and have diarrhea, but not where the whole regiment came down with diarrhea. When you got 2 or 3 thousand men with diarrhea there is nothing, the medics couldn’t—there was no store to go and get anything from. 19:38 They couldn’t get it 10 �from Australia because Australia didn’t have anything to help with it either and they would have to fly that if they could have got a plane to do it. Interviewer: “During that 3 weeks, were you waiting? Were you training? Were the Australians giving you any tips on how to fight the Japanese at that time?” No, there weren’t any Aussies there. Interviewer: “Did you have any information yet?” Nope, but the officers must have had some because they started moving up, the 2nd battalion started across the Owen Stanleys, the 3rd battalion and the 1st battalion and the artillery battalion stayed behind, but we were supposed to fly up later, which we did, but the 2nd battalion, plus the anti-tank, cannon company and part of the medics and part of the Signal Corps, all went over the Owen Stanley Mountains, which was a story in itself. 20:31 I wasn’t there, I didn’t go over—I didn’t walk over the Owen Stanley. Interviewer: “You flew in?” I flew in. After they came down the other side, they took the airstrip there and they enlarged it and they flew in these C47’s, which is just a 2 motor plane, but it was a big cargo plane at that time and it was the backbone of the army for years. 20:59 Interviewer: “So, when you flew in, can you explain that? Did you have to go back to Port Moresby to the airstrip or were you able to fly out from the 5 mile strip?” No, we were right at the end of the strip like 100 yards from the end of the strip and we just walked over the strip and got on the planes. Interviewer: “How long did it take you to get there?” Maybe 45 minutes. 21:23 Interviewer: “And it took them 45 days to get over the mountains?” 11 �Oh yes. It was a scary situation flying over because they flew between the mountains and we could look out the windows, there wasn’t any seating and we just sat on the floor because there wasn’t anyplace to sit in this plane, it was a cargo plane. They put us in there and we were just tight together, but we could look out the windows, a little bit of windows and you could se the mountain on one side and you looked out across the plane and you could see the mountain on the other side and it looked like the plane tips were almost touching, but they were probably a half a mile away, but to us it looked like they were going to crash any minute. These pilots deserve a lot of credit; we always said that, for flying the “hump” they called it. Interviewer: “Where did you land?” Dubador airstrip. Interviewer: “Was there any firing going on when you landed?” No, it had all been taken. It had been taken pretty mildly at first then once they got past that is when they really started running into trouble. 22:36 Interviewer: “When you landed did you stay there for a while?” No, we started right up for the front and we took one day of marching and we got up there and right away they put us right on the line and said, “well, this is it”. Interviewer: “while you were marching, what equipment did you have? What kind of gear did you have?” We had our full packs and we didn’t have to throw anything away, but it wasn’t long after that we found out that half of the stuff we didn’t need. We threw away our gas masks and blanket we started out with we threw away and rain gear we threw that away, we threw away—every day that you’re up there, every day that we were in combat we 12 �threw away more and more stuff. I would say that within a couple of weeks, January, I can’t remember, but in 2 or 3 weeks we were down to the bare necessities. Like myself, I just carried my rifle, my ammunition, my canteen, a first aid kit and a little pouch with some food in it. 23:54 Interviewer: “How were you getting food at this time?” They would bring it up by what we called them, the “Fuzzy Wuzzies”, the natives would bring it up and the Ausies who had worked with these natives, these were apparently missionary types that worked with these natives and the natives would bring the food up and the one thing that we lived on and I was lucky because we had these little cans, I would say a 4 inch can, one of them had beans and one of them had hash and one had stew and the 4th can had a little hardtack and a little soluble coffee and a couple of pieces of sugar and a couple of hard pieces of candy and that was it. And that was supposed to last us for 3 or 4 days and mainly what we wanted the most was just the coffee. We finally got them to bring us up some coffee in bagfuls and we would make our own coffee. Somebody would go back with a little Billy can and this was just an ordinary can with wire in it, and heat it over a fire, if you could get a fire going, and throw in a handful of coffee and drink it like that. We learned to drink it black and strong. 25:21 Interviewer: “From the airstrip, you said you began marching right away, where did you go and how long did it take?” Just one day, about 16 hours we marched straight and we got there and they bedded us down and the next day we started, I don’t remember exactly, they never told you too much because they didn’t know too much, they said, “ok here’s this line and there’s these 13 �guys over here and you guys gotta take this line here and hold it.” If we tell you to move up, you move up so that’s what we did. Interviewer: “What was the training like? You said down by Port Moresby there wasn’t too much of a jungle setting. Up there were you hitting dense jungle?” There was no training we just went into combat and that was our training, on the job training. 26:11 Interviewer: “The land, what was the land like?” Well, it was a jungle and a rain forest, a typical rain forest. When we were there, which happened to be during the monsoon and they get 300 inches of rain a year and most of it comes at this 3 months that we were there, October, November and December and part of January. Interviewer: “As you were marching in, was there a path for you to follow? What were you marching through?” Most of it was mud, but there was a path, probably an old—the natives had tracks allover New Guinea and you follow these tracks because the natives live there and it was a Buna village and it was where the natives had there little village and they had these little grass huts, they were made out of bamboo and they built them 4 or 5 feet off the ground and had little stepladders going up into them and they had a thatched roof on them and the natives would live in them a while and when they would get tired of them they move on. They just pick up their stuff, the women would carry it and they would walk ahead and somebody in this group always carried a little fire, a little bamboo with some moss in it and it had a little core of fire in there and when they would get to another place they would just dump some out and go on and start another fire. I don’t know what they did if 14 �they ever lost their fire because when we were around we would give them matches or anything they needed, in fact we were—the Americans were too good to them because we felt sorry for them and we would give them food and everything and the Aussies would tell us not to give them too much food because if we gave them enough food, they would just disappear for 2 or 3 days and they didn’t want to work. It was the natives way of doing things, they lived for the day not for the next week, they just lived for today. 28:18 They did, we called it the “betel nut smile” because they all had this—it’s an opiate of some type that they chewed on and their gums were all just bright red. It looked like they swallowed a cherry pit or something, we called it “the betel nut smile” because it was a betel nut they chewed, but it was an opiate of some type. I never did see it growing and I don’t think anybody tried it and nobody wanted to, but the natives probably needed it to keep going because the life expectancy was probably between 35 and 40 years old. 29:06 The girls would have babies at 12 or 13 because they matured early in the jungle there and by the time they were 25 they were down hill already. Interviewer: “Now, you were marching to Buna?” Well, we didn’t really march; we just followed one another through the jungle. Interviewer: “ Did you hear any sounds? Did you know you were getting closer to the front lines?” Well, almost from day one we could hear firing going on somewhere, it was just rifle fire mainly, machine guns, we could hear them, but the sound carried—sometimes it carried good and other times you couldn’t hear anything and you never knew which way it was coming from in the jungle. It was hard to know which direction was which. I would 15 �have gotten lost, but in my squad I had a guy that was pretty darn good at knowing which direction was north and south and I kept him close by me, so when they said to go over so and so, I would tell him, “we’re going to head south here for a ways” he would say, “ok’ and he would take off and meet me and he was usually right. 30:22 Everybody was getting lost at one time or other, there was nobody around to guide you unless you had a guide and half the time the guide couldn’t remember which trail he took because there are so many little trails that the natives had and the animals had theirs. We didn’t see many wild animals, but we did see the tracks of them. I heard there were lions and that, but I never heard of any, but I do know there was monkeys up around the tree tops and a lot of birds and a lot of little piglets like running around, but mostly those belonged to the natives. 31:07 Interviewer: “When you first got to Buna, did you go right into battle or was there a camp set up? What happened when you first arrived on the front lines?” No, we never had a camp set up, nobody ever had a camp set up and I don’t understand that myself. Everybody went in a different direction and everybody was fighting somebody and somebody knew where we were all the time, apparently somebody in the general headquarters knew. We had the maps that I showed you, but we had no idea and to this day I have talked to some of the guys and I would say that I didn’t know—they were talking about some of the guys were on the Sanananda Trail and some of them— like I was at the “bloody triangle”, that’s where I first got hit and I didn’t know how far that was from Buna Village, I don’t think I ever saw Buna Village. 31:55 We just called the whole area Buna like the whole area around here is Grand Rapids even though you never did get downtown to see Grand Rapids. I never saw the village, some of the guys 16 �did, but half the guys never saw Buna Village because all there was were just a few little native huts. There wasn’t any village; there wasn’t any staging area. Where the brass, the Generals stayed, I have no idea where they stayed. 32:29 I know we had Majors and Colonels with us, a Colonel from the regiment would be with the regiment and the Majors and the Captains and everything, but beyond that, I don’t know where the main headquarters was and I don’t think hardly anybody knew. We communicated by phone because we had radios, but they quit working after 2 days in the jungle because they weren’t made for the rain forest. 32:55 The instruments would get all wet and they would just fall apart and we would just throw them away, they weren’t any good, they were huge phones, they were probably 15 pounds apiece and if you tried to carry a cell phone that weighted 15 pounds apiece, you wouldn’t see many people using a cell phone. 33:15 Interviewer: “You said your first combat experience was at the “bloody triangle”?” Right, well, we fought some before that, but it was just piecemeal, at a distance, firing at vague shapes and stuff and we never really got into anything until we got to the “triangle” and that was on the 19th of December. 33:41 Interviewer: “Can you tell me about that?” Well, there was a pillbox up there and the Japs had been holding it and 2 or 3 outfits had tried to take it and because we were fresh troops they thought we could go in there and do it, but they just told me, “Sergeant, take your men and there’s a pillbox right up there (they pointed) and go out there and see if you can take it” so, I said’ “yes sir” and I said to my men, “let’s go” and we started, we got down and started crawling through the Kunai grass, which was probably 3 or 4 feet high, Kunai grass is just a sharp bladed grass 17 �and if you don’t watch it will cut you, it’s sharp on the edges and you have to be careful with it. 34:32 We had our long sleeves on and our jackets and we’re crawling along and all of a sudden, I’m in the lead, and I saw this place where the grass had been cut and I thought well, I’m going over here, it’s a lot better crawling so, I started crawling down around that and all of a sudden it dawned on me that this was a fire trail. It’s not cut for my benefit, it’s cut for somebody else’s benefit and it had to be the Japanese down at the end of it with a machine gun and when I thought of that I jumped for the side, from a prone position I leaped and they cut loose with their machine gun and I felt it hit my rifle and knock that out of my hand and I got hit in the arm and in the leg. 35:24 I got on the other side and I knew I was hit and I was scared to look because I didn’t want to know how bad it was, but finally I looked and it wasn’t that bad so, then I hollered at my men when I got over there,” for cripe sakes don’t jump across, don’t get in that fire trail”, so they stayed over there and after a while, I laid there a while, I jumped back across before they could start their machine gun again and I got to the other side again. 35:56 I went back and got a band-aid on it and came back and we crawled around there for a while trying to get close, but they kept us pinned down and we never did get up to the pillbox and finally they came and told us to come back, so we went back and I guess we tried again a couple of days later, we had reinforcements at that time and we still didn’t make it. 36:20 finally I don’t know how they did get that pillbox out of there, they took us out of there and put us over someplace else and like I say, they came along and said, “come on Sergeant get your men, were going over here”, of course I had a Captain, but I didn’t see him that often because he was busy with 2 or 3 other platoons out and he had to watch all 4 platoons of us. 18 �Interviewer: “Now go back a second, you said when you were in that precut fire lane it just dawned on you, you didn’t have any training or hadn’t talked to anybody who had warned you about these things, you just made sense out it, it was just common sense?” It made common sense because if I had laid there much longer they would have cut me up because that’s why they cut this fire lane and how they cut it I have no idea, but they had cut it real short, almost like my lawn, it was only about that high and I could crawl on it and I could see where I was going and in Kunai grass you can’t see 2 feet ahead of you, so I thought, “man, I can see where I’m going now” and all of a sudden I realized that this has been cut and it wasn’t cut for my benefit so it had to be for somebody’s and I was sure it wasn’t mine so, I knew right away that—those things flash through your mind in just an instant and it took me just long enough to gather myself and dive to the other side because I was closer to the other side than from where I started. 37:55 Interviewer: “How wide was the trail? Probably 10 feet wide. Interviewer: “You said you were hit in your arm and leg? Were those just flesh wounds, were they bad wounds?” No, they were just flesh wounds, they bled, but once I got back they put a band-aid on them and I never even got to see the medic or Captain, but somebody must have wrote it up. Interviewer: “Once you got back where?” I went back to the officers that sent me out there and I got a band- aid because I told them I got hit and they said, “that ain’t going to stop you” and I said, “no, but they got my rifle too.” They even clopped my bandolier of ammunition and I had to get a new bandolier, 19 �so they gave me another rifle and I went back up and joined my men. Of course I took a razzing from them because they didn’t know what a fire trail was either until I told them, but that’s the way we did things, you learn by experience and that’s what the whole thing was about, you either learn or die. 39:07 That’s what the whole Buna campaign was about. That’s why we had too many men die because you had to learn and if you didn’t learn you died. Interviewer: “How did the terrain affect your fighting?” The terrain? Interviewer: “The land.” Well, you couldn’t see anything. You could be 10 feet away from the Japanese line and you wouldn’t know they were there and at night one of the scary things was that at night we have to put up OP’s, listening post, and we put a man out there with a telephone 2 at a time and they had to sit out there all night long and report what was going on in case the Japs tried to come in during the night. 40:00 That was another thing that was scary and why we did it, I don’t know because I was out there myself a couple of times and you sit there just back to back with a buddy and that’s the way you sit there all night long. You sit there and your backs are touching each other, you’re leaning against each other and then you will say, “you sleep for a while and I will keep guard” and you take turns sleeping, but you don’t really sleep because if his back was to me and if I would shift a little bit, he would be wide awake and that’s the same thing I would be doing to him. 40:42 If he shifted a little bit, I would be wide awake and you would have your rifle up before you knew what was going on. 20 �Interviewer: “Now, I have heard the Japanese would tie themselves to the trees. Did you have any experience with this?” No, I never did. I never shot at a Japanese in a tree, I never go a chance to, I’ve shot at a lot of Japanese, but I never saw one in a tree. The one time I should have shot, I looked up in this tree and it looked like a guy was standing there on a limb and I said, “naw, that’s just my imagination” and I looked away and when I looked back there was an empty space there and I knew that I had missed him. 41:27 They did, at first they didn’t tie themselves to the trees and they would fall of course and that was it, but when they wound up tying themselves to the trees, they wouldn’t fall and then you didn’t know it and so you would keep on firing and firing and firing and then other Japanese would see you firing and then they would fire at you. 41:50 It was their way of getting back at you for firing at them I guess. They did a lot—we had one guy, kid, was killed because the Lieutenant told him to go up and see what he could see out of this tree and this kids name was Kent Frarry, he was from Grand Rapids here and Kent once told the Lieutenant, “Lieutenant, I don’t like climbing trees with the Japs” and the Lieutenant said, “don’t worry, I’ll be right here” and Kent climbed the tree and his own men shot him out of the tree, they thought he was a Jap. 42:31 That’s the way things went. Interviewer: “From Buna where did you go? How long were you in Buna?” Three months. Interviewer: “Just continuously going to the front lines and coming back?” No, we stayed on the front lines period. Interviewer: “How did you get supplies?” 21 �Somebody would bring them up or we would send somebody back to get just ammunition and food. We drank out of any stream that we found. Water was no problem of course, we would fill our canteens and we had little pills, I’m trying to think of the name of the pill, you put in your water to purify it. Interviewer: “Chlorine tablets?” Chlorine, that’s it, but after you drank enough out of your canteen you had to let the canteen dry out and you would have that much dirt in the bottom of your canteen because drinking out of holes and streams or whatever because we had no—they didn’t bring up any water to us, it didn’t make sense to bring up water to us when it rained every day. 43:42 It rained twice a day. You could figure on it raining about twice a day, especially about 4:00 in the afternoon, you could see the—we were between a mountain and the ocean and the land was real level or low there and the jungle was so just so thick that once you dug a foxhole and the tide was out, you could dig down a couple of feet and you could sit and when the tide came in, the water level would rise and pretty soon you’re sitting in 6 inches of water in your foxhole. 44:21 We complained, but it didn’t do us any good because nobody wanted to get up and run around and it wasn’t worth your life to get up and move, so you just stayed there and got wet. It would rain and it’s like when you get wet here in the rain, first the rain don’t feel bad, it’s 85 or 90 and the rain feels pretty good, but after you get soaked through and all of the sudden you get chilly even if it’s 90 degrees out and we would get there and the temperature wouldn’t drop very much, maybe down to 80 and your getting chilly and your clothes are all soaked and pretty soon they would dry and by the time they were dry the heat would come up and you would start sweating again and your clothes would get wet from the sweat. 45:17 Our clothes 22 �were damp almost all the time. Our shoes were damp and your shoes would rot right off of your feet, but it wasn’t just leather, it was the binding in the shoes that they sewed the soles on with that would just come apart and you would have the soles fall off of your shoes because they came right apart there. The bottoms would stay good and the sides would stay good, but it was the binding that they were sewn or glued with that just came apart. 45:52 Later on we did get jungle boots and that which wasn’t too bad, but that was over a year later before we got that stuff . Interviewer: “Were the men getting sick at this point?” A lot of them got sick. At first we lost a bunch of them due to malaria, dengue fever and there was another one that they got. They used to send them back with 100°, 101, they sent them back to Australia and the early guys were lucky, they got the fever right off the bat, malaria, they got sent back to Australia and they never did come back, but the rest of us, like myself, I didn’t catch malaria until way late and I’m up to 103° or better and I just went back to an aid station where they were bandaging people up and I told the aid man, cause he knew what I had, he sees me shaking and they give me 29 grains of quinine, laid me down on the ground and covered me up with a piece of canvas. 47:02 I stayed there for 24 hours and the fever broke and I went back to the line again. I wasn’t alone like that; we were getting to the point that we couldn’t afford to lose another man. We were outnumbered as it was by the Japanese to start with, but we whittled the odds down a lot, but we couldn’t afford to lose any more men. Interviewer: “So the men would stay on the front lines with malaria?” Oh yes, I stayed there—in fact I had reoccurring malaria, even after I got out of the service I would have reoccurring malaria. Every 30 days I would get sick. It would start 23 �with the chills and then you would have the fever and then the chills and then the fever and you would just lay in bed and suffer and I brought home—I was lucky, when I came home on furlough I went to my family doctor and he gave me a whole jar of quinine and so I was able to take that for quite a few years afterwards. 48:05 Interviewer: “How did it affect your fighting though if you’re in the middle of the jungle and you’re getting the chills and getting cold, how did this affect the battle?” I don’t know, you just hung on and you did what you could. You had to put it in the back of your mind I guess. I didn’t really have the chills up in the line, but I was weak because I was back there for 24 hours and you go back in the line and you’re as weak as a kitten and I don’t remember too much about it, but I know I went back in the line and I did my share and I had other guys come back and do the same thing. 48:50 Interviewer: “Did it make it difficult to hold your rifles, to do the marching and walking?” Ya, sure, oh yes, you’re just so darn tired, you just wanted to lay down and sleep and even if you could lay down you wouldn’t sleep anyway and everybody got the same stare and you could tell a man who had been in combat just by the look in his eyes. He just had that—his eyes were wide open and they just had sort of a glazed look to them and all I had to do was look at a guy and say, “That guy just came out of combat” you didn’t have to ask where he had been, you could just tell by looking at him. We got so we knew, it was sort of a brotherhood that we could look at each other and tell what this guy had been through. 49:38 Interviewer: “What happened after Buna?” 24 �Well, they took us back to Brisbane and then we started training there and they started training us to make beach landings. Interviewer: “Were you getting an introduction to jungle warfare training? You said that Australians at some point told you a little bit about it and were helpful.” Well that was when we were up there at Buna. Interviewer: “What did they tell you? What kind of advice did they give you?” Just everyday advice, keep your head down, I can’t remember all the things they taught you, it was just common sense things and nobody ever told me about the fire trail and I wish they had and I wouldn’t have crawled out there, but as it was, it was more of a good experience than a bad one. 50:34 Interviewer: “What kind of training did they give you in Brisbane then? Landings?” We had the ships, the small landing craft and we did beach landings and this is the way we were going to go on from there on. That was 6 months later and we landed at Saidor first and made a beach landing there and the navy was out there and the air corps and they bombed the beach and they raked it with these huge shells that the navy throws in there. It’s just like you see in a movie, all these little ships coming into the beach at once and the front end comes down and everybody rushes out and the only thing was that we didn’t run into too much opposition. 51:23 None of the beach landings that I made, I made 2 of them, there was no opposition, I won’t say none, but very little because the Japanese who had been there got out of there in a hurry when the navy started shelling and those that were left didn’t have much of a chance to put up much of a fight when we landed. 51:53 Interviewer: “Now when you landed and you got off the landing craft, where did you go? Did you go right into the jungle?” 25 �Oh ya, into the jungle, right—it was almost ridiculous, it looked like somebody had taken a bulldozer and went through there. Some of these big shells, they went through there and it was like taking a big bulldozer and clearing a path except that the stumps were this high where the shells had leveled them right off. They had gone through there and leveled them off pretty good. Like I say, the navy did quite a job for us and we were more worried over what we were going to get than what we got at that time. The first time we weren’t worried because we thought we were going into combat and we were going to go up there and show the Japs, we’re going to show them how to fight and they showed us, but we adapted, which is one thing that I think the American can do, they adapt and most of them are self reliant, they learn fast and it’s either learn or die and the Japanese are just more or less puppets. If you shot their officers they were at a standstill, if you shot their officers and they thought the same thing if they shot our officers, that we would come to a halt, but we didn’t because there was always somebody right there willing to take their place and I mean somebody capable of taking their place. 53:30 Maybe not as capable as the officer, but able to take over and stop things from going bad. Interviewer: “When you landed in Saidor, how long were you there? How long did this battle go on?” Maybe a month. Interviewer: “Did you go into the land quite a bit or was it on the outskirts?” No, we were just on the outskirts, up to the mountains and then we stopped there and we stayed there a while and we went back and we stayed there a while and then we got on the ships again and made another landing at Aitape. 26 �Interviewer: “Now as you were going into the jungle, you said you were at the base of the mountains, were there any rivers you had to cross? What was the land like?” There were always rivers. Interviewer: “How did you cross them? Did you just wade across?” Wade across or they put a rope across a lot of times and some of them were easy to cross and others were terrible because they would be in flood stage or something and if you didn’t hang onto this rope you fell in and we did lose a few men I suppose because you had your pack on and your rifle and everything and if you lost your footing and lost hold of the rope you could be swept out to sea before you knew what happened. 54:53 They tried to safeguard that, they had other guys down there below us trying to stop anybody that—I know they did that one time, they had some troops down there, back ups, if anyone lost their footing or lost their hold on the rope they would catch them farther down and drag them out. There was probably a stream every quarter mile or so because everything hit the mountains and started running down and it ran towards the ocean, but the jungle itself was just—I mean if it wasn’t for the tracks that the natives and the animals made you would have a hard time fighting. 55:40 As it was, I kept my bayonet and I sharpened that and used that and a lot of the guys were issued machetes which were 3 feet tall and had about 6 or 8 inches of blade and they were fine if you were just hacking your way through the jungle, but these things weighed 6 or 7 pounds and nobody wanted to carry anything on their back that weighed 6 or 7 pounds, when you’re going through the jungle you don’t need any extra weight on your back, so everybody dumped their machetes and they would either use little knives or a lot of them like myself and others, we sharpened our bayonets and used that if we had to hack our way through the 27 �jungle and so much of it was just green bamboo and green bamboo cuts fairly easy. 56:37 Interviewer: “Were you just being supplied by the troops that were coming in? Were there any airdrops? How did you get food?” They brought it up to us, especially from Aitape on, they had kitchens following us and at Aitape and Saidor we could go back and they actually brought the kitchens far enough up, but at Buna they couldn’t bring up any food, we had no hot food all the 3 months we were there we never had a hot meal, nobody. 57:05 I was lucky because I’m one of these people—I was brought up during the depression, but I like beans, I like stew and I like hash and those were the 3 main ingredients of the “C” rations that we had at Buna and to this day in my cupboard here, I’ve got cans of beans, I’ve got stew and I’ve got hash and I’ll make stew myself, I love stew and I love baked beans and some guys can’t stand that stuff, they can’t even stand to look at it. 57:46 Then we had bully beef, which was the secondary thing that came up, which is corned beef, I call it bully beef because a lot of it came from Australia and part of it is mutton and it’s greasy, but you eat it and you don’t like it, but when you get hungry you will eat most anything. That’s why everybody lost so much weight up there, I think the average weight loss they said, was like 40 pounds. I know I went out of there less than—(trouble with the microphone) I wasn’t much over that when I went in. I was just a little guy to start with. Interviewer: “How old were you when you went in?” How old? 21 58:30 Interviewer: “You said you were in Saidor for 1 month?” I believe it was about a month, yes. 28 �Interviewer: “What did you do from there?” We went to Aitape. Interviewer: “How did you get there?” By boat, we made another beach landing. Interviewer: “Was it the same? Did you have much opposition when you landed there?” No, the same thing as Aitape a little bit more there because they were—not on the beach landing, but later on they had some hard core Japanese there and I was moving up to the front and I got hit by a sniper and from then on I was out of it, so I didn’t see too much of Aitape after the first week or 2 I guess. 59:14 Interviewer: “How did you get hit by a sniper? What were you doing?” I was just walking up to the front and the sniper was behind our lines, so he got me and I always figured it had to be a sniper because I got hit and I don’t know how else I got hit. I was walking and the lines were 100 yards ahead of me yet and I’m walking along as carefree as anything and I’m going to the line and “boom” all of a sudden I get hit. The next thing I know I’m on a stretcher being carried out of there. 59:46 Interviewer: “Where were you hit?” In the stomach. Interviewer: “Did they get to you fast? Did they get you on a stretcher and brought you to where?” They took me to a base medic station there and operated on me and the only thing they did—the wound wasn’t too bad, the bullet—I was always curious—the bullet couldn’t go in too far because it hit my amo belt and went through—it forced it’s way between the 29 �cartridges of my amo belt and my regular belt and my clothing and into my stomach here and it only went in about an inch or 2 from what they tell me. 01:00:30 anyway, they dug it out and the next thing I know I was being shipped back to Australia and they patched me up and everything started going good and I got back to the states and I started having problems with, not gangrene, but anyway I had to go into the hospital every time and they put sulfa on it. They didn’t have penicillin in those days they used dry sulfa powder. 30 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hartman, Robert (Interview transcript and video), 2007 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hartman, Robert Description An account of the resource Robert Hartman joined the Michigan National Guard in 1938, and served in Company E, 126th Infantry Regiment during World War II. Originally trained and equipped to fight in Europe, his unit was sent to Australia and New Guinea in 1942, and fought at Buna, Saidor and Aitape. He was wounded at Aitape and shipped home, and was discharged in June, 1945. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Brockschmidt, Kelly (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans United States. 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 2007-08-06 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HartmanB1 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/0cede813881518c6b1a5cb59f9e0ca0b.mp4 4b8e0e92ca462d0c4e919138aa91b2e2 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1900dc3078474ed82f5aaa430982c1c1.pdf 0856db4386c7c04c0cc0bf4b71970484 PDF Text Text Interview Notes Interview Length (18:00) William Harrison Korean War US Navy Pre-Enlistment Was a grocery store clerk before joining the Navy (0:45) Joined the Navy at 17 years old (0:45) Enlisted because he wanted to serve his country (1:00) Family lived in Michigan (7:50) Training Had 13 weeks of basic training at Great Lakes, Illinois (1:20) Worst 13 weeks of his life (1:25) Had marches, learned about ships, learned about the Navy (1:40) Food was good during training (1:55) Enlistment Served from 1950-June 1954 (0:10) Served in Europe aboard ship (0:30) Wrote home every day (2:20) Spent most free time going to see movies, doing laundry (3:40) Spent holidays eating traditions holiday foods (3:45) Learned about engines and steam (4:25) Was very happy to leave the Navy (4:40) Passed a Russian battle cruiser, and had to rush to battle stations (7:00) Saw the Russian sailors at their battle stations, as well (7:30) Made water for the Navy (10:00) Bring seawater in, condense it. Repeat as necessary until it’s distilled (10:45) Was assigned to a landing party in case they needed to go ashore for battle, but never had to go (14:00) Served on a Light Cruiser, USS Worcester (16:30) Post-Enlistment Met many friends in the Navy (5:00) Had a job as a steel worker in Boston, Massachusetts after he got out of the Navy (5:30) Wasn’t too close to the war, but glad to be of service to his country (6:10) Meets up with his shipmates once a year (9:00) � 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 Harrison, William (Interview outline and video), 2005 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Harrison, William Description An account of the resource William Harrison served in the US Navy from 1950 to June of 1954. During his time in the Navy, he served on the Light Cruiser, the USS Worcester, in the North Atlantic. He was a machinist on the ship, and distilled sea water for use aboard the ship. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Risner, Shantel (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 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 2005-06-06 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HarrisonW 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/0ddca108327b9407310471839aa7fa1a.mp4 fdef60fa3ff6c333f1899d3405f8334f https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7e534765b5bbb87ceb287dad2a555f6d.pdf 247c58b87f14929056809627ff24246c PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW BEN HARRISON Born: 1928 -Arkansas Resides: Fieldton, Texas Interviewed by: James Smither PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project, Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, August 5, 2013 Interviewer: Can you start us off with some background on yourself, where and when were you born? I was born in July of 1928 in Arkansas, during the Depression. My father was an MD and he was sixty-two when I was born, which was very nice, but unfortunately he died at seventy-two, so at ten years old I had only my mother, who was thirty-nine when I was born, so I started off with very old parents, and I had a sister a little older than me. WWII started right after that and I saw what was called a draft board taking care of their friends and neighbors and drafting those they didn’t want in the community. I saw how that worked from an early point of view. Interviewer: You were still—now did you finish high school? No, I—we had a very small high school in Truman. 1:02 And in the big red brick building there was one water fountain on the main floor and no inside plumbing. We had a wooden john for the girls at one end of the block and one for the boys at the other end of the block. It was a two story building and it was very friendly school. I got a chance to go to Jonesboro High School, which was a much larger, nicer high school, and in 1944 the Air Force said they had too many pilots, so they took eighty thousand aviation cadets out of the aviation cadet program and sent them off to the infantry and stopped the program. So, Arkansas State College desperately needed students and they sent out the 1 �word that any junior in high school that the principal will recommend can go to college, so I went to college when I was sixteen. One semester at Arkansas State, one summer session at Arkansas State, and then I transferred to the University of Mississippi in Oxford when I’d just turned seventeen and was a sophomore at “Ole Miss”. 2:03 I got there and, of course, no money, my mother couldn’t work, my father had been a country doctor, but never got paid, so I desperately needed the GI Bill if I was going to finish school, so in February 1946 I enlisted at the age of seventeen. I enlisted for eighteen months and I really wanted to spend more time in school than what the GI bill provided, so I extended another eighteen months. I got out of the Army in January of 1949, went back to “Ole Miss” and graduated in 1951. Interviewer: Now, back up a little bit. What was your initial experience in the Army like? Well, as an enlisted man it was very interesting. Of course, I was a skinny little undernourished little runt and made it through basic training, had to dig one six by six foxhole for punishment from the platoon sergeant. 3:03 I went to clerk school and then got involved as a records clerk in personnel. I got in bad trouble with the first sergeant and he put me on permanent KP, so I had a friend of mine in personnel transfer me to the holding company and got transferred to a machines records unit in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, so I could go to Europe. I got down to Fort Oglethorpe and they disbanded the machines record unit and I got sent to the AG school and they moved to Pennsylvania where I was again in personnel and then I started teaching. Then we moved to Fort Lee, Virginia with the Adjutant General School and after three years I got out and went back to “Ole Miss”. 2 �Interviewer: What did they have you teach? I was teaching personnel management. Interviewer: Which you just had learned by practical experience at that point? Yeah, I had been the officer record clerk and I’d been in personnel for a year and a half, or so, so I had some experience, and then, of course, I’d been to the schools and all of a sudden I’m an expert. 4:06 I was promoted to sergeant first class at age nineteen, well actually I was tech sergeant and then they changed it to sergeant first class, so I had a permanent warrant that I was sergeant first class at nineteen. Interviewer: And this is in the post WWII army. Where there were no promotions. Interviewer: Right I was pretty proud, I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Interviewer: So then, let’s make sure we got the sequence right, and then you go back to college at this point? I went back to college and took ROTC because I needed the money. Interviewer: When did you finish college? Two years later, in 1951. Interviewer: Now, at that point—you finish and you do the ROTC, do you get another round of officer training next, is that the sequence? Well, in this case I had been, of course, to the Adjutant General School. 5:03 And I had already been accepted at the Harvard Business School where I wanted to go to, so I had a choice, do I marry my sweetheart or do I go to Harvard Business School? If I marry my sweetheart I can’t go to Harvard Business School, so I’ll go on active duty in 3 �the army, so as an ROTC commission, I applied for active duty as a military personnel psychologist. I’d majored in psychology, and that’s all it took in those days. ‘Okay you’re a psychologist” and went up to Adjutant General School at Fort Harrison right here in Indianapolis, and then my first posting was in Alabama. It was pathetic, this was the Korean War, everybody getting drafted, and thirty-five guys come on a bus, none of them pass the mental test, send them all back, so my boss comes to me and says, ‘We got a real problem, because Willie Mays flunked the mental test”. 6:03 I said, “Well, I’ll get a hold of his records”, so I got a hold of his record and in those days it took ninety two questions on the exam and you had to get twenty eight right to get CAP 4 to be eligible for the draft. He got twenty--twenty five right, not twenty eight, so I knew he wasn’t malingering, or he wouldn’t have cut it that close. I said, “Call him back for re-exam and I’ll take care of it”, and they said, “What do you mean?” I said, “I have the authority to take him in, just on my word’, and the Colonel said, “Are you sure?” I said, “Yes sir, I’m sure”, so I called Willie Mays back up, I accepted him, he was drafted and went to Fort Eustis, Virginia and played baseball until the end of the Korean War. I got tired of all that after just a few months of examining guys, after guys, and not enough of them ever passed, so I applied for my Army commission, which I was eligible for as a distinguished graduate and they put me back in the infantry. 7:03 I wanted to go to the 82nd since I was Airborne qualified as an enlisted man, so I went to the 82nd Airborne Division. Interviewer: Where were they based at the time? Fort Bragg Interviewer: Now, had you wanted to go over to Korea? 4 �Oh yeah, I applied several times, but they said, “You’re in the 82nd, a priority unit, strategic reserve”, he loses the application, so I never got to Korea. Interviewer: What was the Army, at that point, worrying about, the politicians above them, why were they keeping you there? Well, the 82nd was in strategic reserve, and in the Korean War they were still worrying about the Soviets coming in Europe, so they didn’t want to get the 82nd Airborne under strength. They wanted them to be combat ready to go to Europe in case the Soviets came across, so I couldn’t get out of the 82nd. Interviewer: Okay, then how long did you stay with the 82nd? 8:00 Well, I was assigned as infantry platoon leader for a very, very short period of time and finally they found out I could read and write and that’s the reason why I became assistant adjutant of the regiment and I was the courts and boards officer, so I did all the special court martials. I didn’t have to be a lawyer to do it. I didn’t have to be a lawyer there, I just summoned Court Martials and the Court Martial Board and everything. I really didn’t like that, so I asked the regimental commander for an interview and I told him, I said, “I’m depriving all these other Lieutenants of any experience at all in the courts and boards business, so I recommend that you demolish my position and when you need a Court Martial officer you appoint one and rotate it, so all the Lieutenants get this experience”. He said, “Okay”, so they eliminated my job. The greatest thing I ever did in the army, I eliminated one job. Interviewer: Now that you’ve eliminated your job, what assignment do you take next? 5 �I went back to the rifle company, I was there about a week and they made me the battalion adjutant, still a 2nd Lieutenant with a Captain's job. 9:03 So then a friend of mine said, “How would you like to be an aide to camp? I said, “What’s that?” He said, “Well, that’s your aide to the General”, and he was an aide to the General. He said, “The General wants another aide and he would like to interview you”, so I went up for the interview with General Aubrey S. Newman, who was a 1928 Olympic champion. He said, “I’ll give you a thirty day trial and if at the end of thirty days I still want you, you’ll be my aide, if you still want the job, and in the meantime keep your regimental brass, you’re not going to be transferred, you’ll just be up here on special duty”. So, in about two weeks later he said, “I’ve seen enough, do you want the job?” I said, “Yes”, so I was the General’s aide and this was Aubrey S. Newman, and a few months after that, did some exercises and he got transferred to Fort Benning as the deputy commander at the infantry school at Fort Benning, Georgia. 10:00 So, he asked me to go down there and help him move, so, “Yes sir, I’ll do that providing you let me go in no more than ninety days”, and he said, “Oh yes, that’s fine. I’ll get you a job on the faculty, because you shouldn’t be an aide too long”, so after the ninety days he let me go, and I started teaching operations at the infantry school. By this time I’m a 1st Lieutenant, not very old for a 1st Lieutenant, so I get a message that he wants to see me and that was about four months later. So, I want to see him and he said that he just got orders for Germany and he was going to be the assistant commander of the 5th Infantry Division in Germany and he wanted me to go with him as his aide and help him move him and his wife over there. I said, “Sir, I don’t think I can do that”, and he said, “Why?’ I said, “Well, when I left you, you told me I did a good job for you, but with my personality I should never be an 6 �aide”. 11:02 He said, “Oh yeah, that was just for me, I meant the for somebody else, You’ll be alright for me”, and I said, “Well sir, I still can’t do it because I’ve just been trained to be an instructor, I’m teaching now and I owe my loyalty to my current boss, so I’m sorry, but I can’t go to Germany”. He said, “Well, I understand”, so he went back around and a couple days later my boss came to see me, Lieutenant Colonel, and he said, “Harrison I understand you went around to see General Newman”, and I said, “Yes, he sent for me”, and he said, “What did he want?” I said, he wanted me to go with him as his aide to Augsburg, Germany”, and he said, “When are you leaving?” I said, “I told him I couldn’t go”, and he said, “You couldn’t go, why?” I said, “Because I owe my loyalty to you now, I need to teach here, I’ve been trained to teach”, and he said, “You dumb son of a bitch, get back there and tell him you’re going” , so I went back around the office and told him I was going, so I went to Augsburg, Germany. 12:00 Interviewer: Now, did you go and stay as his aide? No, he said he would let me go after three months and then I could go to a rifle company, which I did, and went with the 2nd Infantry down in Munich. The headquarters was in Augsburg, but the 2nd Infantry was in Munich, so I was a rifle platoon leader in the company there. Interviewer: How long did you stay in Germany? Well again, with my typical screwed up career, they decided to gyroscope, so the 5th Infantry Division was going to gyroscope with the 11th Airborne Division. They were coming over to Germany and we were going to Fort Campbell, Kentucky. This time I got myself transferred to a tank company and in those days they had one tank company per infantry division and I wanted to learn about tanks too, so I was the exec of the tank 7 �company and they sent me as the advance party for the tank company for the 2nd Infantry Division. We were the first ones to get to Fort Campbell, got there, got married housing, got the TV antenna up on the roof, started checking the property books, and they weren’t right. 13:04 The tank company, a very complicated book for a tank company, and they just weren’t right, and I told my boss, “I’m not planning a problem, but somebody screwed up here”, and he said, “Well, you ought to work with it”, and I said, “Sir, I can’t, I can’t accept this property”, and he said, “God damn it Harrison, why do you make trouble everyplace you go?” I said, “Sir, this property is screwed up, I can’t do it”, so he said, “Okay”, so he reported it to the 503rd regimental commander that I couldn’t accept the tank company property, so they did an investigation, and they sent the supply sergeant to prison and they relieved the company commander, because they were lying and screwed up. Then about another week later they said, “Uh, you’re supposed to be in Fort Ord, California, so the 5th Infantry division did not stay at Fort Campbell, the 5th Infantry Division went to Fort Ord, California. 14:01 I got out there and then I was assistant S3 like I’d been before and we got the rifle company out at Fort Ord and we were the first company TOE company to train raw recruits, so we took them all the way through the basic cycle, advanced cycle, and by that time I finally got promoted to Captain, because they said, “You’re the only Lieutenant commanding a company in the whole division, so I stay with my company, got promoted to Captain and then went to Fort Benning to the infantry advanced course. Interviewer: Now, when was that that you went to Fort Benning? I went there in December of 1956 and the advance course started in January. Interviewer: Now, you’ve been married all this time. 8 �Oh yeah, married Interviewer: Now, did you take your wife place to place, or did she go sometimes with others? We were always together. We had one child born at Fort Bragg, and we had another child born at Fort Ord, so we took two children to Fort Benning to the infantry advanced course. 15:00 Interviewer: What did the infantry course consist of at that time, what were they making you do? Well, the infantry advanced course was just one of those things that every infantry officer has to go through. Your first one is basic, or associate, depending on when and how you were commissioned, but if you’re a regular officer, in all branches, after about four or five years you go to the advanced course and now they call it the career course, or something, I don’t know what they call it, but at one time it was about nine or ten months long, ours, I think, was six or seven months long. By that time I had applied to the Harvard Business School while I was on active duty and they said, “We don’t send Lieutenants to the Harvard business School, reapply when you’re a Major”, so, okay give it up, so I applied for flight school five times. 16:00 Just as I got to the infantry advanced course my application for flight school was approved. I have a tendency to get airsick, so I took flight lessons there in Columbus, Georgia, soloed and got my private pilot’s license, so when I threw up going through flight school they would say, “Well, he still can fly”, so after the advanced course I went to flight school down at San Marcos, Texas, and graduated number one in the flight school. Interviewer: Now, this was regular fixed wing flight school, right? 9 �L-19 Bird Dog fixed wing, tail dragger. I still got airsick and I always carried a plastic bag with me, so my flight instructor said, “You need to go on sick call and tell them that you went to a party because everybody can see you carrying this plastic bag filling up”, so through that. 17:02 In a fixed wing you go up and you cut the power and you do a spin. Okay, the instructor showed me how to do a spin and he said, “Okay, now you take it up and do three, three hundred and sixty degree spins and pull out”, so I took it up, turned in the spin, scared to death, pulled it out, and when I pulled up smoke rushed up into the front of the cockpit and I said, “Holy cow”. I turned around and my instructor had lighted a cigarette while we were in a spin. Interviewer: I guess that was one cool customer then. Yeah, he was quite a character. Anyway I graduated number one in flight school and I was supposed to be teaching tactics at the flight school at Fort Rucker, Alabama, but I wrote a seven page critique of the course about all that was screwed up in that flight school, so they threw me out of the aviation school and put me in an infantry unit at Fort Rucker. 18:02 Interviewer: I guess you were a troublemaker then. Yeah, and I was still a 1st Lieutenant too—no, no, I was a Captain by then. Interviewer: Where are we talking to in time now, what year is that? This is 1958 and I graduated from flight school, number one in my class, and at that time Lebanon happened, they blew up the Marine barracks, so we got a top secret message down at Fort Rucker that they wanted to send the 7292nd Air Combat Reconnaissance Company alerted to go to Lebanon. They were a bunch of instructors and other guys that just put on demo’s and didn’t know anything about tactics, didn’t know how to arm 10 �helicopter companies, and the first one in the army, so since I was the only one they could find that had a top secret clearance and could understand all this, instead of becoming the battalion adjutant, I became the trainer for 7292nd Air Combat Reconnaissance Company. 19:00 Interviewer: They were using helicopters you said? Yup, armed helicopters Interviewer: Now, did you have any experience in helicopters at this point? I wasn’t a helicopter pilot. Interviewer: I didn’t think so, yeah okay. I trained this and I took them over to Fort Stern and I took them over to Fort Benning, we planned exercises and got them combat ready and then they didn’t go. By that time the infantry manager was telling me, “You should be getting a short tour over with because you should be going to Leavenworth pretty soon, but we can’t send you until you get your short tour”, and I had the long tour, supposedly, in Germany, only eighteen months, but a long tour. So, I hitchhiked to Washington and volunteered for the hardship area. No vacancy, and I said, “You surly go to need somebody someplace for a short tour”, and he said, “The only thing we got one requirement up in Iceland”, and I said, “Okay, send me to Iceland”, and he said, “I got three records on my desk here that they’ve been back from a long tour a lot longer than you have”. 20:04 I said, “You got a volunteer?” He said, “No”, and I said, “Okay I volunteer”, and he said, “Okay, you’re going to Iceland”. He’s looking at my records and said, “You’re not helicopter qualified, we got helicopters up there”, and I said, “Great, send me to helicopter school”, so en route to Iceland I went to helicopter school. 11 �Interviewer: Having done regular fixed wing aircraft, how hard was it to learn helicopters? Not a problem, it’s a little tricky, but it’s not a big deal. Interviewer: Now, do you get sick in helicopters? No, never Interviewer: That’s a good transition then? Yeah Interviewer: How long did the helicopter training take? Since we were already qualified aviators to start with, I may have been nine weeks, it may have been twelve weeks, it wasn’t really any big deal--it was just a lot of fun flying around. Interviewer: then what did you end up doing in Iceland? Well, I was the commander and chief of army aviation North Atlantic, two helicopters and one Beaver. 21:06 It was an infantry combat team of thirteen hundred people, had an engineer platoon, a tank platoon, an aviation section and an infantry battalion, and we were the Army troops there. There wasn’t anything to do, there wasn’t any place you could go, so I set up the training program and I taught everybody in the battalion air mobile operation, how to hook up and load in and out of helicopters, and with my two helicopters I took every person up in the entire combat team for a flight around Iceland, a great stint. I took them to the geyser; you know there are three places in the world with geysers and they start at Geyser, Iceland, that’s the name of the town, and we flew over the geyser, just took them up and took the families up, you know. Nobody knew, I was 12 �the commander and chief and nobody knew anything about aviation and I could do anything I wanted to. Interviewer: Were there many of the men assigned there that had their families with them? No, because it was a short tour, it was out of country tour, but you could come up on a tourist visa and bring your family, which I did. 22:06 There were probably ten or fifteen families up there and there were also quarters on the base, but you had to stay two years to get quarters on the base. Interviewer: So, where did everybody else live? They lived in a hole in the wall there in a little bitty village and it’s very, very primitive. Interviewer: How did the local population treat you people? They hated the Americans. They hate everybody. They hate each other. Iceland is the oldest republic in the world, the oldest republic in the world and never had a majority government, it always a coalition. They just can’t get along with anybody. Interviewer: It started with a bunch of quarrelsome Vikings and stayed that way. Yes, they’re all of Scandinavian descent, and the women are absolutely beautiful. It’s a beautiful bunch of people, but they don’t like each other. 23:00 They certainly didn’t like the Americans. And another weird thing, it was 19—where am I now—1959-1960, and our state department signed a status of forces agreement that would not allow any blacks to be stationed in Iceland. Iceland didn’t want any blacks, 1959-60, no blacks allowed, weird. Interviewer: So, you have a short tour, how long is a short tour? 13 �Well, it was twelve month, but fortunately they decided to pull out of NATO and move back to the states, so I only spent nine months there, lucky. Interviewer: Alright, so what do you get next? Well, since my wife came up on a tourist visa, I didn’t take the ship back home with all the troops, I bought a commercial ticket and we flew there and sure enough, I’d been selected to go to Grand General Staff College, so we went from Iceland to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. 24:03 Our son, who was our first born, went to three different first grades. Interviewer: So, how long does the course in Leavenworth go? Well, I was there as what they call a “snowbird”, because I got there in about March and the class didn’t really start until the end of August, so they assigned me to the allied personnel section to help bring in a hundred foreign students from all over the world. Most all of them were top graduates of their staff college in their army and I taught an English class to those that already knew how to speak, but they needed some improvement. I asked my boss about speed reading and he said, “Yeah, we used to teach that here, go get a Tachistoscope and you can do it yourself”. Do you know what a Tachistoscope is? Interviewer: No 25:00 It’s a little panel about like that and you set the speed and it uncovers the lines and you can set it for how fast you want to read or whatever. It covers the lines up, so you have to read or you miss the lines. I finally located the Tachistoscope’s; they were stored in the closet someplace over in the lab, and he said, “That’s great, I want you to set up a speed 14 �reading class for all the advanced English speaking people”, so I taught speed reading until the class started in August of 1960. Interviewer: How well did that work? It worked pretty well. I had a Dutch officer that—he tested out at two hundred and fifty words a minute and finished at seven hundred words a minute. Interviewer: Now, you actually get to take a course yourself? Yeah, see I enrolled with all the rest of the students and went through the regular course, and then they kept me on the faculty. 26:01 It spite of all my protest, I wanted to go back to crew, but they kept me on the faculty. That lasted for about a year and a half and then they started the air assault tests in Fort Benning and I was one of the aviators that could read and write, so they sent me down to test headquarters to design the test, the air assault test, so I did the reconnaissance clearance and functional areas. It was the first test of that kind they ever did on functional areas, logistics, reconnaissance, security, artillery, fire support and that sort of thing. It was a very interesting tour. We tested the 11th Air Assault Division, which later became the 1st Cav Division. Interviewer: So, you’re kind there on the ground floor with a lot of organizing of airmobile operations and all of that. Yeah, I wrote a lot of the final report. Interviewer: Did you stay on down there after you finished that, or what did you do next? 27:00 No, I went to the Armed Forces Staff College. Interviewer: Where is that? 15 �It’s in Norfolk, Virginia, it’s in the air/naval base, and I was just telling Mike I got a haircut there and the Navy has regular seamen that give, they’re barbers, and they do that on ship, and it cost me thirty cents. Interviewer: What rank have you made it to by this time? By that time—I was a Major when I went down there. Then while I was in the Armed Forces Staff College, I think it was in there, I was selected for a promotion to Lieutenant Colonel. Interviewer: Once you complete the staff college training, now what are you eligible for and what do you go and do next? I had a friend in personnel, of course, there in Washington, and I got him to assign me to Hawaii. 28:01 I was on the staff of commander-in-chief of the Pacific, Admiral Sharp, in Hawaii, and I was in the Southeast Asia section of the policy division J5, so we had Cambodia and Vietnam in my little section. There were four of us there, one from each branch of the service and I was kind of the ground guy for the policy section. Interviewer: So, when did you arrive out there? That would have been in the summer of 1965. Interviewer: Okay, that would probably be a fairly interesting time to walk into that job. It was very interesting, and the 1st Cav Division was deploying by boat at that time and I saw some of the guys when they stopped there for a rest stop in Hawaii. They were headed around to Southeast Asia. Interviewer: If Southeast Asia was your territory, did that mean that you actually go over to Vietnam yourself at this point to take a look at things? 16 �I was supposed to, but there was always something and they would never let me go. 29:01 I had to do this and do that and different thing. Like, I had to rewrite the plan for defending Thailand and I had that reviewed and I had to write a plan to invade North Vietnam, which I did and that was reviewed, so I just had to do all kinds of stuff like that. One of the guys that I had known during air assault test was now the commander of the 1st Aviation Brigade in Vietnam, Fitzsimons, Major General, and his wife was there in Hawaii, who we knew before, so he came back to visit every once in a while. He said, “I’ve got a battalion that really needs a command change and I would like you to volunteer to come to Vietnam, and I want you to command the battalion”, and I said, “Yes sir’, and I volunteered for Vietnam right after I got to Hawaii. I didn’t know it at the time, but it took them months and months to decide that, because when you go through a joint assignment It’s stabilized and you’re there for three years. 30:06 Well, the Chief of Staff of the Army, Harold J. Johnson, said, “Anyone in the army that volunteers for Vietnam will go”, so I knew nothing about this, but for months they argued over that policy and they finally let the Army have its way. Stabilized tours don’t count, and if a guy volunteers for Vietnam he can go, so after a just little less than a year staying back in Hawaii, I went to Vietnam. After bringing my family back to the states I go to Vietnam. Interviewer: Where do you arrive in Vietnam? In Saigon, at Tan Son Nhut, the big base Interviewer: What was your impression of Vietnam when you got there? Screwed up, busy, everybody going in different directions, and you know, this was the start of the big buildup. 17 �Interviewer: What units, specifically, were you assigned to? To the 10th Aviation Battalion 31:00 I was processing in and an old friend of mine was there and he was assigned Lieutenant Colonel and we had been class mates at Leavenworth. I said, “Well Ben, I guess you want a battalion?” He said, “I’m supposed to get a battalion”, and I said, “Yeah, you and everybody else”. So, I had lunch with him and that afternoon he sent for me and he said, “You really are going to get a battalion. General Senna has sent a helicopter for you to take you out right now”, so I went right up and took immediate command of the 10th Combat Aviation Battalion. Interviewer: Can you describe, a little bit, what the makeup of that battalion was and what its mission was? Yeah, it a—the aviation brigade had all separate aviation units. There was an aviation battalion in each division at that time, now they got a brigade in every aviation battalion and then they had several battalions, and at that time they had, probably, six other battalions and they were under the 1st Aviation Brigade commanded by a two star aviation brigade commander. 32:00 He assigned me to the 10th Battalion, which was up near Nha Trang and one of my companies in the 10th Battalion OPCON to the 5th Special Forces group and the other four companies. I had command of the other three, so that’s what we did and I supported the 1st Brigade of the 101st as my first priority then the two Korean divisions, and a Korean marine brigade and all of the ARVN units in a two corps area near Tuy Hoa, Nha Trang. Interviewer: What kind of aircraft did you have in your battalion? All Hueys, and had one company of Chinooks, but all Hueys after that. 18 �Interviewer: And were these all used for transportation purposes or did some of them carry guns? Each company had a gun platoon and I think there were eight guns in each company. Interviewer: So you had sort of your own gunships that could go to protect the other ones. Oh yeah, each company had three platoons to lift and one gun platoon. 33:00 Interviewer: And what sort of stands out in your mind about your operations that got performed or did a useful job or got screwed up, or whatever? Early on when I got there a crew took off at about nine or ten at night, in the dark and light rain and crashed and killed everybody on board, and I asked if his instrument ticket was up to date, if he was instrument qualified and they said, “No, no, in Vietnam you don’t have to keep your instruments up to date, that’s all waived and we don’t take enough of them”, so I immediately established a policy that everyone would be instrument qualified and they must be instrument qualified to be the command pilot and in command of that helicopter, and, also, that we would all have night training, because they took off at night, poor weather, crashed and killed everybody, so that was a big change for everybody and here this new chickenshit Colonel’s going to make everybody take their flight exam, when the army says you don’t have to do that, but in my battalion they did. 34:01 So, we took night training and we took instrument training. Interviewer: Did that have a notable effect? Absolutely, we had super qualified guys and another thing, the way the Huey is designed the best instrument is in the right seat. Well, by practice over there the senior pilot, command pilot, would sit in the left seat and the new guy would sit in the right seat, so I 19 �had to change that and said, “During weather and at night, the most experienced pilot sits in the right seat where the instruments are”, and I kind of got that going, and there were a lot of interesting little things. Interviewer: Now, helicopter pilots have a reputation as being kind of a crazy, or maybe, undisciplined bunch. How easy, or hard, was it to convince them to go along with that kind of regulation? I wasn’t hard Interviewer: Could they see the logic of it? They pretty well saw the logic of it, but there was no room for argument. They did what I told them to. 35:03 If they didn’t like it they’re out. Interviewer: And overall, how would you kind of rate the performance level or efficiency of your unit while you were running it? Oh, they were superb, really, really good. Like I say, you got an experienced pilot and then the junior pilot and they work up and everybody wants to be the first pilot over there, but they were highly motivated. The problem was, there was a pilot shortage and they didn’t have enough pilots to fill all the seats, in spite of the fact that in the news conference in Saigon, McNamara was asked the question, “What about the pilot shortage?” He said, there’s no pilot shortage in Vietnam. Every aircraft flying has a pilot”, that’s what he said. Interviewer: I suppose it did. The Army had to have programs in place, and they’re trying to train more pilots at this time, right? 36:01 Oh yeah, they’re pushing them through as fast as they could, but, you know, they would arrive in the country with a minimum of two hundred and fifty and some of them four 20 �hundred hours, and, of course, by that time I had a couple thousand and I really learned how to fly helicopters in Iceland. High winds, bad weather and I was very arrogant and proud of my ability to fly helicopters. Interviewer: Were there any particular difficulties, or challenges involved when you were working with the Koreans? With who? Interviewer: The Koreans Oh, they were great, great troops, they were very disciplined, and no, it was much easier working with them than with the Americans. Interviewer: So, how long have you spent commanding that battalion? As far as I know, I’m the only one that commanded a battalion twelve months. Normal was six months , but what happened was, my boss in Saigon, when my six months was up, he was worried about me getting killed or wounded or something, because we’d lost a couple of battalion commanders. 37:04 They were wounded, so he sent my replacement up and the 1st Brigade commander of the Airborne, Joe Matheson, looked at him and said, “You don’t have any jump wings on”, and he said, “No sir, I’m an aviator”, and he said, “This is an airborne unit”, and he sent him back to Saigon. That happened a couple of times, not for the same thing, but the commander of the 1st Brigade of the 101st, would not accept any replacement, so my boss said he’d leave me in command if I promised never to leave this hall and never to mark a LZ, and I said, “No sweat sir”. Interviewer: How dangerous was your job? Well, I lost twenty nine guys and thirty five helicopters. 21 �Interviewer: And what was the normal full complement to the amount of helicopter you had at one time? 38:00 Let’s see, the total number of helicopters, which would have been over two hundred, but I can’t remember the exact number off hand. Interviewer: You notice as a whole, most of them come back, but stuff can happen, and at this stage you’re going into LZ’s all over the place and different parts of the country and people are shooting at you from anywhere. Yeah, the real dangerous places were when you go in a single ship to pick up a wounded guy and you have to stay up there or hover down and let a rope down, because we rarely had the medevac helicopters where we were. They were very rare, because we were always with the 1st of the 101st on some special mission places like Dak To, Pleiku, out in the boonies, so we did a lot of medevac. Interviewer: What’s the difference between a medevac helicopter and just a regular Huey? 39:04 Well, the main difference is, on a medevac helicopter you got an aid man there that can help out, so the preference is always a medevac helicopter, but if they’re not around, you get them out and get them to an aid station as quickly as you can. Interviewer: But, otherwise the physical machinery is in the interest of how you load them up possibly and so forth. Yes and the medevac helicopters have a winch out on the side where we didn’t have that. Interviewer: So, because you were somebody who came in as a very experienced helicopter pilot and fly a lot of conditions, were you putting yourself in situations that were pretty dangerous? 22 �Every day Interviewer: So, you would go right into the LZ’s. Yeah, yeah, well, what I would do is, with each company, I would tell my S3 to take command of the controls and run the operation and I would go as “Peter Pilot” and we’d land in formation with the other troops. 40:01 Just to show them I could do it and to let them know that I knew what they were going through and that I could be as scared as they could. I flew with every company, including the Chinooks. Interviewer: It’s really the equivalent of what a line company commander would do and take the same risks his men do. Oh yeah, and again, I had a requirement for night training and I made each company conduct their own night training, as least one assault a month and then we would do one whole battalion night assault, just for training, no troops on board, just for practice, and I was told by the Chinook company, “We can’t fly at night, particularly in formation”, and I said, “Why not?” They said, “The windscreen is at such an angle that the light reflects up and it’s hard to see the instruments”. I said, “No problem, I’ll fly the lead Chinook”. I wasn’t Chinook qualified, I flew the lead Chinook, scared the shit out of them and I never had a problem again and they were ready to go the next time I told them to. 41:02 Interviewer: Now, you got to the end of that year's assignment and were you sad to see that come to an end, or were you ready to go on to something else? No, I was ready to go home. Interviewer: How much contact did you have with your family while you were over in Vietnam? 23 �None at all--on my second tour I got a chance, when I was flying one time, to get an air patch with some guy in Peru and make a telephone call back to my wife and that was the only contact I had, other than the daily letters. Interviewer: You would write to each other. They didn’t get them daily, but we wrote daily. Interviewer: So, when do you leave Vietnam then on that first tour? The first tour--that would have been July of 1967. Interviewer: What assignment do you get then when you come back? Okay, from there I went to—again my friend gave me a good assignment—went to McNamara’s office so I could get the joint staff duty and all that sort of thing. 42:02 I was the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, in the training division of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower. Interviewer: Were you at the Pentagon? I was at the Pentagon--yeah, there were four of us, one for each service. Interviewer: What was that experience like? Well, it was pretty disgusting, and the first thing I was disgusted about it—McNamara had this thing with, “I’ve got a civilian staff”, so we were not allowed to wear our uniform to work, so we had to buy a whole wardrobe of civilian clothes to go to work every day and we were used to going to work at six thirty or seven o’clock, seven thirty at the latest, and I’d get in the office and the civilians would start dragging in about eight thirty or nine o’clock, so I said, “Okay, I’m going to do that too, I wear civilian clothes”, so the guy across the street from me there at Norfolk, Virginia, he was an Air Force two 24 �star General and he went to work at six thirty and I went to work at eight thirty, so I just went along with the game. 43:06 Interviewer: How much of what you were doing was political as opposed to practical, or how much political stuff did you have to deal with at your level? Not so much political because we were in the training part, but Project One Hundred Thousand was going at that time and the guy that did that was a civilian across the hall from me and that was pretty disgusting. Interviewer: Can you explain was the purpose of Project One Hundred Thousand was? Political—equal opportunity for all the dummies that come in and screwed up all the military and it was really a disaster. It cost a lot of extra money for training and it did cause a lot of problems—it was a total failure in my view. Interviewer: Did it basically take people who did not qualify for the service on the aptitude tests? Not aptitude, it was intelligence tests. Interviewer: Intelligence, yes—and then somehow or other, in principle, making them qualify at least. Did they get any kind of training or education? 44:02 Yeah, yeah, they had training programs for them and some would turn out okay, but I would say the majority of them were a problem, and we were better off without them, that’s for sure. Interviewer: In terms of investment of resources maybe not that great a idea. Exactly 25 �Interviewer: So you’re seeing that from the inside in terms of how would actually play out. Yeah Interviewer: How long did you have to do that kind of work? Well again, they’re lucky; I was there for a year and was selected to go to the War College. In those days, once you’re selected for college you went out of the Pentagon. Now, and not long after that, you have to do your full three years, get deferred and go to college and do another three years, but I got to go after one year, so I got out after one year of my first tour at the Pentagon and got out after one year of my second tour at the Pentagon, and then I had a third tour and that’s later on. Interviewer: Now, when you’re going to the college are you going there to teach at this point or study some more? 45:04 It’s a—everybody goes through the advanced course and everybody’s going to get promoted that goes to the war college, and you may go to your service war college or some other service war college, in the meantime you may got to the Armed Forces Staff College, but that’s not something that’s in the line that you have to do, but everybody that’s a professional career guy goes to the advanced course and then the war college. Interviewer: Is this sort of the process to get you from Lieutenant Colonel to Colonel? Oh yes, definitely, and it’s just part of the professional military education system. Interviewer: All right and when did you complete that course? I completed that in 1969 and went to the Air War College which was totally unchallenging. It—the air force had a policy that everybody would go to Southeast Asia 26 �before anyone would go the second time. 46:01 All the top guys, the professional level, the air force people they were with there with all of the army, navy, coast guard, marines, was below standard, it was a snap course, and so much so that I enrolled in Auburn University and got a master’s in business while I was going to the Air War College. Interviewer: And the Air War College, is that at Montgomery? Yeah, and they had a little way you could do that, so I went to night school and we had Saturdays off, so I went to Auburn and got my MBA at Auburn. Interviewer: Was that any harder than the air force program? Yeah, oh yeah, because I had to take business statistics and in those days, we’re talking 1968, they hadn’t invented little calculators yet, so I had to do all the calculations with a slide rule. 47:00 That was my biggest challenge. Interviewer: Having gone and done all that and gotten to that level, what did they send you for next? I got assigned back to the Pentagon and this time I was chief of doctrine. This time I had come out on the promotion list as a Colonel, so I was the branch chief and assistant of air force development. They have a doctrine division there and I was chief of doctrine. Interviewer: And doctrine for all kinds of air units or helicopters? No, Army Interviewer: So it’s Army Air Doctrine? Army wide yeah Interviewer: Were you making an effort to try to adjust doctrine, or whatever to fit what you learned in Vietnam? 27 �Just kind of routine stuff, special consideration and this and that, no big deal, and then I volunteered for Vietnam to command an infantry brigade as soon as I got there. 48:02 A friend of mine who was in charge of assigning infantry Colonels said, “Man, you know we got guys that have been back from Vietnam a lot longer than you have and we’ve got hundreds of guys that have applied to command a brigade in Vietnam, you’re never going to get to go”, and I said, “Okay”, so I sent a message to my old mentor, General Senna, telling him that I wanted to go to Vietnam and I would appreciate some help. So he contacted his friend who commanded the 101st Airborne Division and I was requested by name to command the 3rd Brigade of the 101st. So, I found out that my boss turned it down and didn’t even let me know when the request came in, so I called the secretary and asked for an appointment and the secretary came back and said, “He knows why you want to see him and he doesn’t want to see you”, and I said, “Tell him that I really need to see him”. 49:03 So, he finally lets me come in and he said, “Don’t bother to sit down because it’s not going to take long. You want to go to Vietnam, you’re not going to go”, and I said, “But sir”, and he said, “I’ve got thirty two Colonels in this building and you’re my best Colonel and you’re not going”, and I said, “But sir, I want to command an infantry brigade”, and he said, “I will guarantee you command an infantry brigade”, and I said, “Sir, combat might be over then and number two, I’m an aviator”, and he said, “Oh, that’s right”, and he said, “Well, okay, but if you don’t go to that brigade command, I’m going to get you”. So, he let me go after one year there and then I went to the 3rd Brigade of the 101st. Interviewer: And when did you arrive to take command? In June of 1970 28 �Interviewer: 1970, and what was the situation there of the brigade, or the brigade's mission, at the time you joined it? 50:00 The brigade was given orders to conduct an operation in the A Shau Valley area where the North Vietnamese were bringing all there troops and supplies and everything else down to. The North Vietnamese were bringing all there troops and supplies down there and it was called “operation Texas Star” and we were the brigade to conduct it and my predecessor knew they had gotten the orders and prepared for that just before I took command. Told the division commander that’s a bad area and we need more troops and he said, “Nah, nah, just one brigade, so go out there”, so that was it, that was our brigade assignment, “operation Texas Star”, and we established, before I got there, they established Firebase Ripcord and that was in April. When I got there in June there was a lot of fighting going on, it wasn’t really massive, but there was fighting going on out there and then they really started concentrating on Ripcord and I would get extra battalions. 51:03 At one time I had four of the eight battalions in the division on my operation control, I always had at least three battalions, but we just didn’t have enough troops out there because the NVA were all over the place. It was their area, their supplies and their weapon caches and they just didn’t want us there. Interviewer: At the time the Ripcord operation was going on how much did you know about enemy strength in the area, or what did you think they had at the time? Well, we knew they had a lot there, but we didn’t know where--like one time we got word that 29, I think it was 29, NVA regiment were coming across the line and the Air Cav squad went out and just wiped them out, caught them out in the open, so we knew 29 �there were a lot of them there. We didn’t know exactly how many, but we had a good idea that there were lots of them there. Interviewer: Now, were there manpower issues in the line companies by this time? Yeah, yeah, a typical company would have ninety five people in the field instead of a hundred and sixty. 52:08 Interviewer: At Ripcord some of them eventually had less than that too didn’t they? Oh yeah Interviewer: Were you getting fewer replacements coming in than they in earlier years? Well, we were getting in country transfer replacements, so we were getting fewer replacements than—we were just short of people, everybody was. Interviewer: How much contact did you have with the people on Ripcord, or how often did you go out there? Oh, every day, every day and then when they started the siege on the first of July--and I saw the buildup we were getting around there. We lost a Chinook in the middle of it, a guy killed right there and blew up a 105 battery and that was on the seventeenth of July as I recall [actually July 18]. 53:00 And then I decided to spend the night out there every night, so the last five nights we were there I stayed on Ripcord during the night so I could talk with the Navy, the Air Force and the Marines air guys and speak their language and tell them that, “No, we’ve cut the artillery off, you don’t have to worry about artillery fire, come on in and hit the targets or whatever”. Interviewer: Physically, what was that experience like? You’re on a base that’s under siege; describe a little bit just the layout of Ripcord and the terrain around it. 30 �Well, it was a sharp hill and it had been cleared off and Captain Vazquez's was the first rifle company that had to go in there and had to set it up. He was an absolutely superb rifle company commander and he just worked the hall out of his troops. Barb wire, trip wires, claymore mines and in fact, that base was never penetrated, not a single enemy ever got onto that base. 54:03 Interviewer: No sappers got inside the wire or anything like that? No, in fact none of my bases, in basecamp, were we ever surprised, because I read the action reports of all these disasters and they were always someone was sleeping and a complete surprise, so I established the policy of no overhead bunkers so they could go to sleep in and the upset a lot of people, and also that a NCO had to walk the perimeter every hour and an officer had to walk the perimeter every three hours. This was all night long, so that if you’re standing up awake and walking you’re a lot more alert. Interviewer: Those were procedures that Captain Vazquez was using with his own company before you’d gotten there. Did you pick that up from him, or did you just know that anyway? No, I just knew that’s what you had to do. I read all the action reports and they were caught napping. Interviewer: Now, you’re there, so physically what was—I guess you’re on top of this hill, where was the enemy relative to you? 55:09 Completely around us, plus we were on Hill 923 or 937, something like that, and just adjacent to us within mortar range was Hill 1000, so they had optimum terrain and they were dug into that hill and we never got them out. We bombed, and bombed, and bombed, and bombed used mortars and attacked the hill; we could never get them out of 31 �the hill. There was a bunch over there at Hill 805, the other side of them, they had troops over there, they were all around us , Hill 1000, they were in there and we were on Hill 917, or whatever, Hill 923, but we were a little bit lower and, of course, our hill was totally barren because we had the 105 battery and the 155 battery and it was all cleared out and we had bunkers and the battalion command bunker of the 2-506 was underground and sandbagged and was the aid station. 56:09 So, it was pretty well fortified up there, but there again where the troops were, no overhead cover and what we had were things they could crawl under if we got incoming mortars, but they couldn’t stand up and be covered and they had to stand up to be able to see out, so they could see. It was pretty barren and, of course, the disaster was on the seventeenth of July, I think that’s when it was, when the Chinook came in and blew up and wiped out the whole 105 battery, and a lot of shells. Interviewer: And then were they also firing certain direct fire rounds on the base with those rifles and things like that? Yeah Interviewer: They couldn’t force you off the hill by ground assault, but they could just shoot down into the position and make it—57:03 A lot of mortars and rockets and particularly the 120(mm) mortars, the 120 is really, really bad. Interviewer: And they could also hide a lot of their ordnance inside of caves and bunkers built into the side of the mountains. They had a huge supply depot right at A Shau. 32 �Interviewer: So, your artillery, or air strikes, by and large when falling, it’s not going to get them. You needed the right kind—these days we have the self-guided missiles that night go in from the front, but we’re not quite there yet. Yeah Interviewer: How close did you come to getting hit yourself? You’re on that firebase at the end of the siege. Well, I was standing just outside the TOC with four ammo boxes filled with sand and on the other side there were sandbags and a 120 mortar landed right in front of this where I was leaning and it threw me back and they guy I was talking to back about eight or ten feet, just right straight back into the bunker. 58:02 When we got up and shook off he had blood coming out of both ears and he was evacuated. I had a rather bad headache and the guy to my right who was standing behind a bunker just like that, he was killed instantly, and that was the closest call I had. Interviewer: Now, while you’re there at the end of the operation, Lieutenant Colonel Lucas is the battalion commander, so you’re right there with him pretty much? It was his TOC I was standing in front of and I slept in his TOC. Interviewer: How did he handle the situation in the last days when they were under siege, what was he doing at that time? Well, of course, we were all up very, very early. They made an early daylight extraction of A Company and he came back to Ripcord, looking around, and he was standing out in the open and not behind a thing like I was, watching the artillery over there and a round hit him in the leg and they took him out and he died before he got to the medevac. 59:03 33 �Interviewer: Before that when his—earlier on in the campaign he’s up in the helicopter observing and so forth, but then as the line companies are sort of more down—in the book he’s spending a lot more time on the ground on the firebase. Who is? Interviewer: Lucas He was in the helicopter all the time. Interviewer: Even in the very last days? Yeah, he’s in the Hiller’s H-23, which has one person and then the pilot and there’s a seat in the back. He was out there in that all the time flying at low level and right down in it. He was in the action all the time. Interviewer: You still have line units out there in the hills and in between them still? Yeah, they were patrolling and we had another battalion out there on the ground with him. We had an extra company that was OPCON to his battalion on hill 805. He was very, very much out with it all the time and he scared the hell out of his pilot. 00:03 Interviewer: You also got—now General Berry was the assistant Division commander at that time. Yes, he was the acting division commander because Hennessey was on leave in the states. Interviewer: What role did General Berry play in things, or how much did you see of him? Interviewer: Every day, didn’t miss a day chewing my ass. 34 �Interviewer: Was he able to—I guess one of the wider issues around Ripcord, sort of, that was the place where eventually a decision comes down to evacuate, and now the question is do we put more people in and actually try to secure the area and chase the enemy out, or take ourselves out? And, at least in the book version of things, most of the officers, Lucas, yourself, and Berry, were of the inclination, of course we should keep going, and eventually it goes the other way. 1:01 Was there a point where you decided, just yourself, that it just doesn’t make sense for us to stay? No, I never came to that conclusion, we had the mission to push on in to A Shau and that’s what we were doing. Closing the base never occurred to me until Berry came to that decision, and one of the main reasons he came to that decision was because we lost our 105 battery. They took them out and we couldn’t have that direct fire support that was very important and as soon as that happened that day, I requested another battalion, artillery battery, and opened up the firebase right next door there, the firebase, it started with a G—Gladiator, and I requested an engineer platoon go in and check it for mines and booby traps and requested another battery, and by about six o’clock that night we had 105 support, so we were without 105 support for just a matter of a few hours. 2:06 Interviewer: And once you have Gladiator set up, does that alleviate some of the need to be using Ripcord? No, you need both of them, we had the 155’s on Ripcord because it was a bigger place and they had the aid station there. Interviewer: Was Ripcord also becoming kind of a dangerous place? Oh--- 35 �Interviewer: Kind of hard to work out of? Oh yeah, it was very hard, because, you know, we had mortars all around us and when they started getting the 120 mortars that was when it was really bad. Interviewer: We’ve been talking about—kind of the end of firebase Ripcord and the withdrawal form there and then sort of the prospects for what might have happened. Now, having left Ripcord, I guess on some level it kind of stayed with you, because well afterwards you managed to locate your Vietnamese counterpart from that battle. 3:02 And you actually talked to him about the Vietnamese side of what went on. Now, can you describe a little bit your contact with him and what you learned from him? Yes, I got in touch with a fella by the name of Frobenius, Courtney Frobenius, and he had gone back to Vietnam and studied Vietnamese and he was there about six years and married a lovely Vietnamese lady whose father ran an English school in Saigon. He traveled all over the country by motor cycle and he was the guy who could possibly find some of these people for me, so he set up a tour for me in 2001 to go and visit the people who had been fighting against us and I made a number of contacts there, called the Ambassador and all that sort of thing, but I could not get the commanding General of the 324 NVA Division to meet me. 4:02 He was living in a little town up on the Chinese border two hundred miles north of Hanoi. It was a little dirt road, it wasn’t all dirt, but it was a little road, and no airport there that I could fly into. I got a message to him that if he would come to Hanoi that I would pay him a consulting fee and I would pay his expenses and he sent a message back to me, “If you want to talk to me you’ve got to come to my house”. There was no way I could do that, I didn’t have time and it just 36 �wouldn’t work out, because it would take at least three days to do that. A day to get up there, a day to talk to him, and a day to get back, so that was it. Then in 2004 I was contacted by the University of Southern Mississippi again, and they asked me to be one of their visiting professors and take a group of their graduate students over on a tour. I said, “If you can guarantee me that I’ll be able to interview in Hanoi, I’ll go”. It took them a while, but Courtney Frobenius said he had it set up, and he did. He provided the guide and everything for the whole tour of Vietnam. 5:02 I went back in 2004 and I left the group of students and flew up to Hanoi and got a driver. We drove two hundred miles up this little road and got to the hotel, which was so far up there they wouldn’t take credit cards and they wouldn’t take American money and that’s pretty far out in the sticks when people won’t take American money. I went out, and I had prepared a nice gift for his wife, beautifully wrapped--they think more of the wrapping than they do of the gift, and also, a gift for his daughter and I got about a sixty dollar bottle of brandy for him. So, I took those gifts out to him in the evening and he was still a little formal, a little cold. We sat around and talked and he didn’t open the brandy, we drank beer, so he probably is going to sell the brandy. 6:00 But, we talked and we talked and he got a little more friendly, so he agreed, okay, he would come to the hotel tomorrow for the interview. The next morning he came to the hotel and he said, “I can only stay one hour” through an interpreter, who was my driver so, after about three hours he said, “I must go”, and I said, “ Chung Nuy, If we had not left Ripcord, what would you have done?” He said, “Well I still had one battalion left”, he said, “We would have kept pushing in, just like we did at Dien Bien Phu and we would have kept coming in”, and that’s when he admitted that we 37 �destroyed eight of his nine battalions and it hurt, but he still had one battalion left, but that made my whole trip. Interviewer: So, the operation cost them quite a bit. Oh yes Interviewer: While they may have interfered with our own plans to go into the A Shau Valley at that point, it also interrupted whatever they were sending. Absolutely, it was very, very costly for them. 7:02 Interviewer: Now, once the Ripcord operation was over, what happened with you and the brigade? Well, we just kept on going to another firebase and we took over O’Reilly for a while, which was a joint base, and we just continued to operate, and just pulled back because, number one, the monsoon season was coming in and that helped us pull back and it got a lot quieter. Interviewer: So, you’re basically there with them for a six month tour, so you’re there until the send back? We opened a firebase in a lot closer in to Camp Evans because of the weather, it was raining all the time, and that’s when I had a little problem with the battalion commander, who wasn’t doing a good job at all. 8:00 He didn’t take the right equipment out there, he would come into basecamp, to Camp Evans, just and just stand out there on the firebase with his troops, and then I found out that two of the company commanders just happened to run into each other in Thailand, Bangkok on R&R and my exec comes to see me at the six o’clock briefing with a smile on his face and said, “Sir, we got a problem”, and I said, “What’s that?” He said, “One of your battalion commanders is queer”, and I 38 �said, “Okay, I know which one”, so I went to see the division commander, tried to call him on the emergency channel and finally got him on the emergency channel, and told him I needed to talk to him and of course, he was mad as hell and he said, “Okay, meet me back at Camp Evans”, so I went to Camp Evans. 9:03 I saw him coming down and I came alongside with my helicopter a little bit and I let him land and then I landed mine. He saw me and he put his hands on his hips and said, “Okay Harrison, what is so God damn important right now?” I said, “Just a minute sir”, so I came up to him and told him that one of my battalion commander was alleged to be queer and is making mover on his company commander. “Jesus Christ you have to talk to him. I’ll appoint the IG to investigate this and I’ll have him personally investigated”, and I said, “Sir, I need to relieve the battalion commander today”, and he said, “What do you mean? We’ve got to investigate it”, and I said, “Sir, I have two rifle company commanders and I don’t have any others and they refuse to go in the field with him. I’ve got to relieve a lot of company commanders and other people because of the battalion commander, and I recommend the battalion commander be relieved”, so he relieved him that day. Interviewer: Aside from that particular situation, how would you rate the overall effectiveness or quality of the officers in your command? 10:06 Very high, very high Interviewer: And do you think that extended down to the level of the enlisted men as well? Was the performance level of the brigade pretty good? At the company level, by that time, NCO’s are coming back for a second tour and were smart enough to avoid a rifle company, so you had to “shake and bake” the young guys being squad leaders and we suffered for NCO’s in the rifle companies because the guys 39 �on their second tour knew how to get out of it, most of them, not all of them. I didn’t even have a Sergeant Major, a brigade Sergeant Major. He was killed in fighting over Firebase Henderson. Interviewer: Now, at what point did you really start to notice the effects of this, was this event when you first got there? Every day, every day 11:01 Interviewer: This is also a period when the Americans are still drawing units out of Vietnam at this point, and my impression is, at least, that they would then take the units that were left and assign them more and more responsibilities, or larger and larger areas to cover, is that what happened? Oh sure, sure, we were covering an area that had been covered by the 101st and two Marine divisions and the two Marine divisions were gone. Yeah, we were short of people and we were short of people in our unit- more area, more problems, more NVA coming down. Interviewer: In principle, it was supposed to be happening in the Vietnamization process, was that Vietnamese army, the ARVNs, would be coming in and filling in for, and replacing American units, and to what extent was that happening? Well it happened with Lam Son 719, this was going to prove that the Vietnamization program was working and they were going to go into Laos and destroy the two big major supply areas there in Laos. 12:05 So they assigned the 1st Division, the airborne division, and the marine division to make that invasion, and the U.S. provided all the fire support, not all, they had their own artillery, but we provided all the helicopter support 40 �with air cav and lift ships and everything, and this was going to be the big proof that Vietnamization was working, well it didn’t work too well. Interviewer: What connection did you have with that operation? Well, my reward for commanding the 3rd Brigade in the last major battle in the war for U.S. forces was to be the senior advisor of the 1st Division to go into Laos. Interviewer: That was in the spring of 1971 when that’s happening? Well, I turned over command in December, came back the first of January, and became the senior advisor for the 1st Infantry Division, and by that time, the operation had already been compromised down in Saigon, the North Vietnamese knew we were coming and they poured everybody in there to greet us. 13:07 Interviewer: How well would you say that the Vietnamese 1st Division performed in that, that’s the one you had contact with? The 1st Division, where I was the senior advisor, did a superb job. They were very well trained, highly motivated, unfortunately they lost their divisional commander and two battalion commanders, they took a lot of tough fighting and the airborne division, they got across the line a little ways, but they didn’t perform all that well, and the marine division, the same way, they got across, took a hill or two, but didn’t go very far. The rangers did real well, and the marine division and the airborne division were commanded by Three Star Generals. 14:00 I Corps, who was supposedly running the operation, was commanded by a three star, but the marine division commander and the airborne division commander refused to come to the field, they stayed in Saigon. They sent the division up there, but they never came up there, so that was a little lack of leadership, and then the I Corps commander, General Lam, was a “limp dick” if there ever was one, he didn’t do 41 �anything, so he located his forward command post in the same little hole in the mountain where we were with the 1st Division, so the 1st Division kind of ran the operation, because that was the I Corps headquarters and the 1st Division, so it lacked a lot of leadership from the top, and I’d say the whole thing was compromised. Interviewer: Were you in a position to do anything to help in any way, or did you just watch? I spent a lot of time around the TOC, because the I Corps commander, General Sutherland, came to me, punched his finger in my chest and said, “You or none of your advisors will ever go across that line, not even in a helicopter. We have direct orders from Congress there will be no advisors in Laos”. 15:12 I couldn’t go out on the battlefield, but General Thieu, who was commanding the 1st Division, he went out every day and he did a lot, he did a good job. Interviewer: So you could see, in places, where the Vietnamese, if they had the right kind leadership and material they could be effective? Oh yeah, the 1st Division was as good as the 101st in my mind, they were good. Interviewer: When did your assignment in Vietnam come to an end? One year later in the fourth of July. Interviewer: So, that’s in 1971? Yeah, 1971, you know when we got back from Lam Son 719, instead of taking an hour and a half or two hours for lunch, they took three hours for lunch, so I just didn’t have much to do after Lam Son 719. 16:05 Interviewer: Now, at this point did you think the writing was on the wall for South Vietnam or what did you think was going to happen? 42 �Well, I didn’t know at the time, but in 1972 when they had the North Vietnamese Easter offensive, the 1st Division performed superbly and drove them out a way, finally, and they defended all across South Vietnam, so they proved that with U.S. air support and U.S. supplies, they could beat the North Vietnamese invasion, and they did., they defeated the 1972 invasion. Then Church and that bunch of his idiot ass holes in Congress cut off all their supplies, cut off all their equipment, and our support, and we reneged on our agreement, we let them down. We caused the defeat. Interviewer: Ultimately the politics caught up with the whole thing. 17:02 All right, now once you left Vietnam then, at the end of that tour as an advisor, you were still in the army a while longer after that. Yeah Interviewer: What other kind of assignments did you hold? Well, my mentor and my old boss, General Senna, said that he would like me to come to Fort Hood, Texas to Project Master and I said, “Sir, Fort Hood has never been on my preference statement, but I’ll be there”, so I volunteered for Fort Hood and I went down worked for him for two years when we reconducted the air assault test when the formal testing then created the air cav brigade, the 600 Air Cav Brigade, and I was in charge of field tests for the project master, the Colonel. Interviewer: And after that? Well, I got asked to be chief of the infantry branch, which I would have been the first aviator to be chief of an infantry branch and I thought that was pretty neat, so I went to my boss, general Senna, and told him about it. 18:06 He said, “Oh, bullshit, you’re 43 �going to be promoted to brigadier next summer anyway”, so he wouldn’t let me go and fortunately I was promoted to brigadier the next summer. Interviewer: Did you stay on Fort Hood or did you get another assignment? I went to Leavenworth, Kansas to be the deputy commandant running the Infantry Staff College. Interviewer: Was that your last assignment? No, almost though, and the reason I was there was because Joe Hennessey was the commandant, he was my boss in Vietnam and he asked me to be the deputy commandant, so I got to prepare for that. Then he was replaced by General Kuschman, who was a pretty wild man and I was running the college as his deputy and he had the whole combined arms center there and then what was normally a one or two year tour, I spent three years there, Kuschman left and then I ran the college for a while. I was the acting commandant and then it was finally decided that I could go to Fort Rucker to be DCG and then the CG at the Fort Rucker and run the aviation center. 19:13 So, after my three years at Fort Leavenworth, I went to Fort Rucker. I was there for about five months when they said, “Nope, you need to go to Washington”. My congressman called me and said, “Ben, I’ve done everything I can, but I can’t stop it”, and I said, “Stop what?” He said, “You haven’t heard? Well, you’re being transferred to Washington”, and so, I went to Washington and did a special study for the chief of staff, Bernie Rogers. I did a review of the educational and professional growth program for officers. So, I did that for a year and then I was supposed to command the 25th Division in Hawaii and that got changed while the commander en route to Fort Harrison, when he was on leave, decided to retire, so they changed my orders and instead of going to command the division I got a phone 44 �call from the director of the staff, a Three Star General. 20:08 He said, “Ben Harrison, you’re going to go and command Fort Ben Harrison”, and I said, “Thank you sir”, I got up and turned to my wife and said, “Were going to Indianapolis and I’m retiring next summer”. I was pissed and that was it, so I retired the next summer, several years early, about seven years early, actually. Interviewer: But you didn’t necessarily stop working at that point? Oh, no, no Interviewer: What did you do after that? Well, I did some training studies that created some simulations for unit training and working for the Department of Defense, the DOD, Department of Defense and DRE, research and engineering. Interviewer: So you’re doing this on a contract basis? Yes, yes, defense contract consulting and traveling all over the country, doing that sort of thing. 21:00 Interviewer: So, were you also signing up with Southern Mississippi University? No, no, Southern Mississippi was just to take those tours to Vietnam that was just a short tour. Interviewer: Now, to look back on things and you look at yourself as a seventeen year old army recruit and if somebody had told you at that time that you were going to have the kind of career in the army that you wound up having, would you have believed them? Of course not, even when I was a lieutenant I wouldn’t have believed it, because my idea was to just go on active duty, marry my wife, get out after a short term of active duty, and 45 �go to the Harvard Business School. I had already been accepted and I’ll tell you about getting accepted to the Harvard business School, I was only a student at the University of Mississippi, I applied to the Harvard Business School and I got a letter saying that you have to appear before the board of admissions, but instead of coming to Harvard, we have a representative who is going to be in New Orleans on a certain date and if you like you can go to New Orleans and be interviewed there. 22:06 I went down to New Orleans, interviewed and the guy said, “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but I can guarantee that you’ll be accepted in the Harvard Business School”. Well, my head was really big and then he said, “We like to have geographical representation, and right now we don’t have a single person from Mississippi at Harvard”. Okay, so I’m the token for Mississippi. Interviewer: You get an award for showing up. Then finally the army sent me to the Harvard Business School. Interviewer: So, you did manage to get there at some point? Yes, but only for one semester for, they call it the advanced management program, but it was fun. Interviewer: Well, it makes for a heck of a story here. Is there anything else you want to throw on the record before we close out the interview, is there anything else? I’m happy. 23:48 46 � 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 Harrison, Ben (Interview transcript and video), 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Harrison, Ben Description An account of the resource Ben Harrison was born in Truman, Arkansas in 1926. After first attending Arkansas State College then the University of Mississippi, Harrison enlisted in the Army because he needed the money from the G.I. Bill to help finish his school. After finishing his first enlistment, Harrison returned to school, where he enrolled in the ROTC before eventually graduating. Once he graduated from college, Harrison re-enlisted into the Army as an officer and held a variety of positions, including as an aide-de-camp to a general in a variety of locations, including Iceland and Germany. Eventually, Harrison deployed to Vietnam to take command of the 10th Aviation Battalion. Once his first tour in Vietnam ended, Harrison went to Washington D.C. and worked in the office of the Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Eventually, Harrison returned to Vietnam as commander of the 3rd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division. While Harrison was commander, part of the 3rd Brigade fought in one of the last major battles involving American forces in Vietnam, the battle for Firebase Ripcord. After his tour as the brigade commander ended, Harrison served as deputy commandant and commandant for several military colleges and bases throughout the U.S. before retiring. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Video recordings United States. Army Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-10-07 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HarrisonB1273V 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/8fbec366d00f3b37d3a214da662e86f8.mp4 b3c9099ccb4a40f2d428acd9be79bebf https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e2921711c414a2a19669c9db1165c09f.pdf 12450809fb98c84db80fa273d82f376a PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Arthur Harnish (01:31:16) (00:10) Background Information • • • • • Arthur was born in Michigan in 1922 His dad was a farmer and a WW1 veteran They lost the farm during the depression and had to move to another town He had to hitch hike to school every day because the small town he lived in had no high school Arthur graduated in 1940 (4:00) The Service • • He had been a welder in Allegan during the attack on Pearl Harbor and after that he knew he would soon be drafted, even though many welders had been deferred from the draft At that time many of his friends had already been drafted (5:30) Training • • • • Arthur was sworn into service on January 18, 1943 He was then sent to Camp Grant in Illinois and assigned to the Corps of Engineers and went to Virginia There he went through combat engineer training and demolition building training for portable bridges Arthur was in Virginia for three months and then sent to Pennsylvania (12:05) Pennsylvania • • • • They were gathering men to ship overseas for replacements Here he had no regular duties, except to wait to leave for Europe They then went to New York in Camp Shanks where they cooked for 2500 GIs three times a day He was on KP, but always got to eat whatever he wanted (16:20) The Trip on the Queen Mary • • • • • On this ship, there were 19,000 GIs plus the crew 16 men had to share one room, which only 8 men could fit in at a time The ship had to zig zag along course to avoid German submarines They had left in May so there was good weather without any storms They were not traveling with a convoy and the ship was quite fast �• They never encountered any submarine scares • There were two fighter planes above them to watch for subs (20:50) Glasgow • The men were unloaded into an old prison • They then went to southern England near the Salisbury plains • They joined with the 347th engineer, which needed replacements because its A and B companies had gone to Africa (23:00) Duties • Arthur worked with a portable welder in a trailer and motor pool where he fixed equipment • The 347th moved around a lot and built places to store supplies and roads in the countryside (26:20) One week in London • He received a pass that he won through a lottery and was allowed leave in London • He saw Winston Churchill in a funeral parade for the Navy • Arthur visited St. Paul’s Cathedral • He also met some British soldiers that had been POWs (35:15) D Day • They had been in southern England and knew that something big was happening because airplanes had been flying all over the place (37:15) France • They crossed into France near Southampton • There had been three air raids the night before • They all had to take sea sick pills for the crossing of the channel, which made them very sleepy • They landed on Omaha Beach and it was a mess • They camped on shore because it was dark already, but it was still nice because it was June • The next day they traveled to areas where they had to fix bombed railroads • They worked dusk till dawn • None of the men really knew what was going on with any of the battles around them in other parts of Europe • They moved to another town than was completely devastated where they were building temporary bridges (49:00) Progress Across France �• • • They ended up 18 miles outside of Paris, which had not been liberated yet The sergeant later gave him a pass to go to Paris They just worked on small jobs while in France and while they were on their way towards the Rhine (56:30) Guard Duty in the Winter • Many Germans had American uniforms [at the time of the Battle of the Bulge] and he was told to not trust anyone • Arthur had been guarding a rail yard and was on midnight shift • He heard a vehicle coming, which he had not been expecting; it was a Jeep • He yelled at them to halt and they claimed that they were Americans, though they did not know the password or the answers to general questions, which was suspicious • They claimed they were from the 26th division, which was in combat at the time • He eventually let them through and found that they were telling the truth (1:01:40) Belgium • The US Air Corps had stopped many convoys and trains • A young boy had been stealing food and equipment from their trucks (1:07:25) The Railroad Bridge Across the Rhine • The bridge was a mangled mess and they could not rebuild it, so they had to start from scratch • It was a long and hard job that took 9 days to build • Roosevelt had died while they were building the bridge, so they ended up naming it the Franklin D Roosevelt Memorial Bridge • General Patton had visited them to give them a pep talk (1:13:20) Germany • They got through Nuremburg when the war had ended • Once again his name was drawn for a pass to see Hitler’s hideout • There was not much left because it was all burned out • They did not do much work while in Germany • Many men talked about the possibility of going to Japan after Europe • Arthur had been in Belgium on guard duty when Japan was bombed (1:17:40) The End of the War • Anyone over forty years old automatically got to go home • Arthur had worked with most of the same men throughout the war • He traveled back on a victory ship and the voyage was rough • They passed the Army of Occupation on their way back �(1:24:45) Back in the US • They went back to the camp in New York and they all received a “Welcome Back Steak” • They took a train home that was very slow • They stopped in Ohio where everyone got a haircut and a shave • He was discharged on November 19, 1945 • He went back to doing welding work and business was good � 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 Harnish, Arthur (Interview outline and video), 2007 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Harnish, Arthur Description An account of the resource Arthur Harnish served in the 347th Engineer Regiment between 1943 and 1945. He provides detailed descriptions of training and his service in Europe. He landed in Normandy shortly after D-Day and helped his unit rebuild bridges in France, Belgium and Germany, including bridges on the Rhine. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Byron Area Historic Museum (Byron Center, Mich.) BCTV Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans United States. Army 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 2007-11-27 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HarnishA 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/1ba4947bf07b1071f592ded87a7b87c5.mp4 af948381824c72611dab276ff60a1fe2 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7039e87e236432e8f4cbc926b83126ae.pdf 9dba44d80c67eb2d8f9a290a30e58475 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Tony Ten Harmsel World War II (1:18:27) Background Information (00:08)            Born February 11 1919 in Iowa. At the age of 7 in 1928 he and his family moved to Holland, Michigan. (20:00) His family bought a house in Holland but lost it during the depression. (00:28) His family than lived in Blendon, Michigan for 2 years before moving to Hudsonville, Michigan. (00:33) He lived on farms for most of his life. His father was a farmer. (00:54) He attended Hudsonville Christian School until he graduated from 8 grade in 1933/1934. (1:18) He then worked jobs on farms until the age of 18 when he got a job at General Motors. (1:40) In May of 1942 he received his draft notice. (1:55) There were 5 boys in his family. Tony was the middle child. (2:25) He lived at home until he was drafted. (3:10) Tony heard of Pearl Harbor over the radio while at dinner. He was sure after this notice that he would be drafted. He almost enlisted. (3:30) th th Basic Training (4:20)   First he was sent to Grand Haven, Michigan. Then, via bus, he was sent to Kalamazoo, Michigan, where the men received physicals. (4:25) He was then sent to Fort Custer, Michigan, for 1 night. He was then sent via train to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, on June 1 1942. (4:43) The train to Fort Sill was a cattle train but beds were placed in it for sleeping. (5:47) He was supposed to have basic training at Fort Sill but he was later assigned to be a truck driver for a general. (6:36) Some of the men who arrived at the base with Tony arrived without shoes on. (7:25) During exercises, Tony was order to stay with his truck so that it wouldn’t be taken. (8:20) He did participate in rifle training but he was excused from all other training. (9:00) He wasn’t assigned to an outfit until overseas. (9:30) He left for Europe in the spring of 1944. (10:28) In June of 1943 he was married to his wife while on furlough. He was given a furlough in the winter and in the summer. (10:40) He and his wife rented an apartment outside of Fort Sill Oklahoma. (11:00) As a general's driver, there were a lot of men jealous of him. When he sat down to pray before a meal other men would take his food. (11:49) One time the general offered him free theater tickets but he turned them down because of his religious upbringing. The general offered him protection from other soldiers if he was harassed about his religion. (12:49) st            �    Every Wednesday night he attended a young Calvinist meeting. Sometimes these men got in trouble and had to scrub floors. (14:30) The general heard of this and sure that the others would never harass him again. (16:27) He was told to report to Boston, Massachusetts, when he was to be sent overseas. (18:08) In March of 1944 he was sent to work in warehouses and in a shipyard loading ships to go overseas. (19:00) Voyage Overseas (19:40)  He was sent overseas on a modified luxury liner. There were approx. 8000 men on the ship. (19:42)  The ship was too fast to be in a convoy. The ship was constantly circling to lose U boats. (20:15) The weather was good on the way over but rough on the way back. It took 4 days to get over. (21:12) He landed in Liverpool, England. (21:50) He was sent over without assignment as a replacement. It took about a week for him to be assigned. (22:44) He joined the 18 Artillery at their base camp. (23:16) On June 6 he was assigned to be sent to Europe. Eisenhower shook hands with every man who went across the English Channel. (23:40)      th th Service in Europe (24:20)        He landed on Utah Beach. His unit was in action 5 minutes after landing. (24:54) The men dug foxholes as soon as they got far enough inland. (26:00) He did not have an assignment, only a rifle. (26:24) There was a house with a French couple and two daughters by Tony’s position once while his battery was in Normandy. For several days, enemy artillery fire against their positions was highly accurate, even though the enemy could not observe their positions. The captain noticed that every time one daughter came out to work in the garden the firing ceased, and then started up when she went inside. He told Tony that the next time the girl came out, he should shoot her. Tony protested and suggested that the captain shoot her himself, but was told that while the captain could not shoot her, Tony could do so if he was ordered to. He told Tony to wait until she turned her back to them and bent over, and to use her substantial rear end as a target. Tony followed the order. After he shot the girl, her parents came out and started screaming at them, but the Americans then went into the house and discovered that it was full of German radio equipment. The girl had been noting the American positions and sending them to the Germans. (26:43) His unit moved often. They never moved more than 10 miles in a day, however. (30:04) He didn’t have much of an idea of what was happening in the campaign. He only followed orders. (30:35) He was trained on the artillery gun in the field. He was the lanyard keeper. (31:00) �             He drove the truck that carried the guns. After another truck driver was injured he was switched from his company. (32:00) The men slept outside in foxholes. (32:35) His unit came under fire from both artillery and mortars. (33:00) While manning a .50 cal. machine gun he shot down a German aircraft. (34:00) He was, at one time, shot in the helmet by a sniper. (34:50) Bombers performing carpet bombings over Normandy came in so thick that they blocked the sun. The shake from the bombs could be felt by Tony’s unit. (35:45) In the Normandy breakout of the summer of 1944 it was not uncommon for Tony and his unit to move every day and even get ahead of the infantry in some occasions. (37:28) It was not uncommon for the unit to run short on supplies. (38:00) The Germans frequently attacked at night. (38:12) The unit never stayed in one place or settled. (40:00) He was involved in the fighting in the Hurtgen Forest. (40:20) The Belgians treated the American more kindly than did the French. There were even French women in upper stories of buildings who would shoot at the Americans passing through cities. (41:05) In Belgium there was a civilian who offered to aid in the liberation of a prisoner camp. (41:45) The Hurtgen Forest (42:30)        The fighting was more intense in the forest. There was a great concern over shrapnel from trees in the forest. (42:33) One once occasion when order came to fall back, Tony and his buddy stayed behind on their own initiative and manned a machine gun and took out assaulting Germans. The Colonel who gave the order to fall back did not reprimand them. (45:30) While in open fields moving it was not uncommon for the soldiers to be fired upon by snipers. (45:50) Tony and his buddy once killed a sniper to find that he was using a .30 cal. gun with a 50 round magazine. It had remarkable accuracy. (47:00) When in the Hurtgen Forest the soldiers were very scared due to the possibility of fatal shrapnel coming from the trees. (47:47) The weather was damp and cool. (48:30) He was in Hurtgen Forest for several weeks before being sent somewhere else. (48:56) The Battle of the Bulge (Winter of 1944/1945) (49:07)       He was on the North end of the battle when the Battle of the Bulge occurred. Tony was on guard manning a .50 cal. machine gun. (49:23) After encountering a German tank, the unit changed course to go around it. (50:56) The artillery had anti-tank rounds and would fire at tanks. (51:24) To keep warm the men wore big wool over coats. The snow was also used as an insulator. (52:57) The men had to shave every morning. The water was cold. (53:35) If the men kept their shoes on at night they ran the risk of freezing their feet. (53:53) �   The men had access to a kitchen truck for food. (54:25) Even during the Battle of the Bulge the men moved often. The men had to wait a little while before they began moving forward. (55:12) Tanks were the first to move through the German lines. Infantry followed after. (55:45) Late Service (56:20)          Fighting stayed pretty heavy for his unit even after the Battle of the Bulge. (56:38) He encountered an older German soldier (mid 30s) who wanted to give up because if he went to a POW camp there was a better chance he would return home. (57:34) His unit encountered the Russian soldiers. He thought they were heavy drinkers. (59:05) Being a truck driver, Tony was assigned to take captured Russian soldiers back to the Russian Army. They would sing and drink. It was not uncommon for Tony to have to stop because one soldier had fallen off. (59:35) There were many displaced persons who had their homes destroyed. (1:00:30) Most Germans appeared happy the war was over. (1:01:04) His unit liberated a concentration camp. (1:01:49) There were no prisoners left. They were released or dead before the Americans arrived. (1:02:16) There were still German guards there when Tony arrived. (1:02:43) Service after German Surrender (May 1945) (1:03:59)             After the war ended in May of 1945 the unit was stationed at a camp. The men mostly rested here. There was talk of the men being sent to Japan. (1:04:38) Tony left Europe in October of 1945. (1:05:39) Tony was able to travel around Germany and see sights (1:05:47) They stayed in Nice, France, for a week. (1:06:25) He wrote home as often as possible and he often got letters back. (1:07:00) He often had to pay the Red Cross for packages. (1:08:00) He was paid 66 dollars a month. (1:08:35) The men were happy to hear about the dropping of the atomic bomb. (1:09:00) He left his unit to return to the U.S after having acquired enough points. (1:09:45) He voyaged home on the USS Parker. There were 2000 men aboard the ship. Some men were forced to stay on the deck because the ship was overloaded. (1:10:44) One man was washed overboard on the journey back to the U.S. (1:12:50) After arriving in New York he was given a ticket to send him back home too Michigan. (1:15:15) Life after Service (1:15:30)      He once again began working for General Motors. (1:15:33) He then worked for several furniture factories. (1:16:16) He then worked for a bakery in Holland, Michigan. (1:16:46) After 7 years of working in his own bakery, he retired. (1:17:00) He drove school buses for 11 years after baking. (1:17:20) � His service taught him the value of peace. (1:17:50) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Harmsel, Tony Ten (Interview outline and video), 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Harmsel, Tony Ten Description An account of the resource Tony Ten Harmsel was born in Iowa in 1919 and grew up in Michigan. He was working at General Motors when Pearl Harbor happened, and was drafted into the Army in 1942. Having grown up on a farm and being experienced with trucks, he was pulled out of basic training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to drive a truck for a general on the base, and stayed at Fort Sill until the spring of 1944, when he was shipped to England and assigned to a battalion of the 18th Artillery. His unit landed on Utah Beach on or shortly after D-Day, and went into action right away. His unit fought in Normandy, in northern France, in the Hurtgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge, and the invasion of Germany. They went through a concentration camp and ferried Russian POWs back to the Soviet lines at the end of the war. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Video recordings 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 2011-11-08 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HarmselT1298V 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/4752d56e82ccd43c487835b773573735.mp4 755064b5d68f41a1793168a937a09cd2 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/113aa41a510666424e9b11d6f1f2864e.pdf bf0aacd81b504ac82d2856c9ed0cf08d PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Charles Harlan Vietnam War Interview Length: (01:25:37:00) Pre-Enlistment Life / Training (00:00:38:00)  Harlan was born on December 10th, 1948, in Mancelona, Michigan, in the northwestern part of the Lower Peninsula, near Traverse City (00:00:38:00) o Harlan’s father worked as a truck driver and his mother did itinerant labor, mostly selling time shares from the family’s home (00:00:59:00)  Harlan grew up in the Mancelona area and graduated from Mancelona High School in 1966 (00:01:10:00)  Before he graduated from high school, Harlan chose to enlist in the military; he initially enlisted in May of 1966 but had to wait until he graduated from high school before he could formally join the service (00:01:21:00) o Before Harlan even enlisted, others around him were being drafted; half a dozen men from the 1965 graduating class from Mancelona were drafted (00:01:56:00)  Harlan himself could see that his getting drafted was inevitable, so he chose to go ahead and enlist (00:02:16:00) o When Harlan enlisted in 1966, the Vietnam War was not the news item it would become in 1969 and 1970; the war was kind of distant and not too many people talked about it (00:02:26:00)  However, while in high school, Harlan had a history teacher who was very interested in world affairs and Harlan remembers that at least one time, the teacher said that many of the young men sitting in the classroom that day would end up in Vietnam (00:02:40:00) o Part of Harlan’s rationale for enlisting was he would some choice as to what type of training he would receive; although the training was not the type of work Harlan eventually did in the military, he was still afforded the opportunity to chose his own training (00:03:26:00) o Harlan enlisted in the Army for a three-year enlistment, the mandatory length for enlistees, while draftees only had to do a two-year enlistment (00:03:54:00)  A month before he was actually inducted into the Army, Harlan went to Fort Wayne in Detroit for a physical and some tests (00:04:21:00) o A month later, Harlan reported again to Fort Wayne for additional tests and his official induction into the Army (00:04:34:00) o During the initial phase, Harlan was not aware of the Army making any active effort to “weed out” any lesser-quality individuals; as well, he is also unaware of anyone trying to purposely fail the tests to avoid military service (00:05:01:00)  From Fort Wayne, Harlan and the other newly-inducted men boarded a train that took them to Fort Knox, Kentucky for their basic training (00:05:33:00) o Harlan and the other men arrived at Fort Knox on a hot June afternoon and were greeted by the stereotypical yelling drill sergeant, which was quite an awakening and quite an adjustment for the men (00:05:41:00) � o o o o Harlan himself did not have any idea what to expect when he went to Fort Knox (00:06:06:00)  The first thing Harlan remembers when he stepped off the bus onto the base was the men were ordered to stand in a straight line and were told to stand tall (00:06:32:00)  After the men arrived at the base, they went through a battery of medical shots, went through another medical exam, had their military clothing issued while simultaneously shipping their civilian clothes home, and assignment to temporary barracks until they were assigned to a permanent training company (00:06:55:00) Prior to traveling to Fort Knox, Harlan and the other men went through a series of aptitude tests while at Fort Wayne; each man had to go through a qualification process to attend his school of choice for training (00:07:33:00)  Harlan’s choice of training was in marine diesel engineering (00:07:50:00)  Harlan knew he wanted to serve on boats and almost joined the Navy before he found out the Army had a marine branch as well; also, since Harlan’s father had previously served in the Army, Harlan was following in his footsteps and because Harlan’s father was a truck driver, Harlan had already spent time working around diesel engines (00:07:58:00) There were certain basics that were involved in the basic training, such as indoctrination into the military code of justice, learning about handling certain behavioral situations, learning how to salute and stand at attention, how to properly eat, how to dress and clean uniforms, etc. (00:08:49:00)  All of these were geared towards both teaching the men what military life was like and breaking each man down, removing their individuality and getting them to think as part of a team (00:09:34:00) Apart from the mental training, the men also had daily physical training; every day after breakfast was an hour of intensive PT (physical training) (00:09:59:00)  After the initial PT, a typical day might include some classroom training, a trip to the rifle range, a march, etc. (00:10:20:00) Harlan does not think he had much in the way of trouble adjusting to life in the Army, although there were certainly some hard times for him (00:10:45:00)  Harlan remembers one incident in particular when he and his training company were bivouac training (00:10:52:00)  After the men had progressed a certain number of weeks into the training, they would actually go and live in the field for a week, where they would do a number of exercises (00:11:00:00)  One of the exercises the men had to do was a forced march and Harlan remembers that while marching up one particular hill, he was exhausted but had to keep telling himself that he was not going to quit (00:11:09:00)  There were two men in Harlan’s training company who did not make it through basic training (00:11:58:00) �    Looking back, Harlan feels that in his young mind, none of the training probably ever made any real sense; however, looking back now, he sees that in hindsight, all the training was for something (00:12:35:00) The basic training lasted for eight weeks and once Harlan finished, he received a weeklong leave before the Army sent him to AIT (Advanced Individual Training) at Fort Eustis, Virginia for marine diesel engineer (00:12:58:00) o Fort Eustis was located right next to the James River, near Newport News, Virginia (00:13:43:00) o The training at Fort Eustis was all schooling (00:13:53:00)  For the first two weeks, all the men went through a basic seamanship course, where they learned basic nautical skills (00:13:57:00)  After the initial two week course, there were five or six weeks of in-depth training into the marine diesel engine (00:14:05:00)  The in-depth training was all-inclusive, which meant once the men had the knowledge of working with the diesel engine, they would wind up working on anything from an LCM-8 (Landing Craft Mechanized – Mark 8) to a 100-foot tug boat to a fuel tanker (00:14:18:00)  Apart from training with just the engine, the men did were practical exercises where they went out on working craft to get hands-on experience as the engines were running (00:14:58:00) o Harlan remembers that life during AIT was pretty good compared to basic training; there was some PT but not a whole lot and there was not always someone in his face yelling at him (00:15:25:00) o The men had evenings and most weekends to themselves unless they had extra duty, such as KP (Kitchen Police) or guard duty (00:16:06:00)  The men were able to go off base and once off base, they could go to the movies, etc. (00:16:17:00)  One time, Harlan went to Norfolk, Virginia for a weekend there, seeing the sights, such as the Douglas MacArthur memorial (00:16:31:00) Although the AIT lasted for another eight weeks, Harlan ended up staying at Fort Eustis until May 1967 (00:16:53:00) o Once they finished the AIT, Harlan and the other men were assigned to static companies, where they stayed in a holding pattern until a letter from higher up came requesting a certain amount of men in an area (00:17:15:00) o As chance would have it, Harlan was assigned to the base motor pool and worked as the radio dispatcher for the base taxis; apart from being the dispatcher, Harlan was also a chauffeur several times for various officers on the base (00:17:49:00) o At that time, all the men were thinking that they were going to eventually end up in Vietnam (00:18:23:00)  Although he did not meet anyone who had actually served in Vietnam while at Fort Eustis, Harlan was nevertheless becoming more aware of the war and realizing that the war was growing (00:18:38:00) When Harlan received his orders to Vietnam in May 1967, the Army allowed him to go home for a week on leave, which he spent with family and friends (00:19:14:00) � o When the leave had finished, Harlan headed out to Oakland, California on Mother’s Day, 1967 (00:19:33:00) Once Harlan was in Oakland, prior to boarding the flight to Vietnam, he had to go through a host of different things that slowly filtered the men until Harlan was actually able to get on the flight (00:19:57:00) o The place in Oakland that Harlan arrived at was a large military depot and once the men were on the depot, they were not allowed off (00:20:34:00) o The flight to Vietnam stopped very briefly in Hawaii, not enough time to do any sight-seeing, then at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, where Harlan had his first introduction to tropical humidity (00:20:48:00)  At Clark, the men transferred from the chartered airplane to a series of smaller airplanes, each of which would take some of them to a different destination in Vietnam (00:21:06:00)  Harlan remembers that as they transferred between the two airplanes, it was a hot afternoon and the humidity blanketed him like he could not believe (00:21:16:00) Vietnam Deployment (00:21:42:00)  From Clark, it was a short flight to Pleiku, Vietnam, which was located in the Central Highlands, and an in-country processing center (00:21:42:00) o Harlan and the other men spent the night at the processing center before boarding another flight to their unit (00:21:56:00) o The night spent at Pleiku was Harlan’s first introduction to life in Vietnam because that night, the men were billeted in a building across the road from a battery of howitzers that came into action during the night (00:22:04:00)  When the guns fired, the ground shook, windows and walls rattled, and Harlan realized that it was no longer just the evening news (00:22:23:00) o When he first arrived at Pleiku, Harlan did not have a final destination or unit assignment (00:22:46:00) o The area around Pleiku consisted of forest-covered hills and red-colored clay, which Harlan felt, made the area look like the state of Georgia (00:22:52:00)  While in Pleiku, Harlan was assigned to the 1099th Boat Company, which was located to the south, near Saigon (00:23:29:00) o When he left Pleiku, Harlan took a flight south to Saigon and then boarded a truck for the trip out to Cat Lai, where the company was stationed (00:23:37:00)  Cat Lai was situated on the Dong Ngai river, a few miles east of the confluence of the Dong Ngai and Saigon rivers and about twenty miles east of Saigon (00:23:40:00) o Harlan remembers that when he and the other men arrived at the company, they went into the orderly room, where the company first sergeant greeted them and asked if anyone had any radio experience (00:24:26:00)  Harking back to his experience working as the radio dispatcher at Fort Eustis, Harlan raised his hand and was told he would be working in operators for awhile as a radio operator (00:24:44:00) o Harlan stayed in Cat Lai for awhile, working in the operations room and helping keep track of the thirty plus boats assigned to the company (00:25:14:00) � o At the time Harlan arrived, the 1099th was using LCM-8s (00:25:20:00)  The LCM-8 was a 76’ long by 20’ wide and was propelled by two banks of four Detroit diesel engines (00:25:44:00)  The boat was flat-bottomed with a landing platform at the front that lowered and acted as a ramp (00:26:01:00)  In Vietnam, the medium boat companies were mostly used in support of combat operations; however, the boats did occasionally haul various cargo, with Harlan’s boat one time hauling 1000 lb. bombs (00:26:33:00)  In supporting combat operations, the boats might be used in insertion operations, placing troops in an area, then in interdiction operations, as the troops flushed the enemy towards an area where the boat was positioned (00:27:19:00)  All of the boats were equipped with two .50 caliber machine guns, two M60 machine guns and a lot of the boats carried M-79 grenade launchers and various small arms (00:27:48:00) Harlan worked in the operations center at Cat Lai until September 1967, when he began regularly working on the boats; although he took part in some operations while working in the operations center, Harlan was not assigned to a specific boat (00:28:18:00) o Eventually, while Harlan was still in the operations center, a logistical situation developed where there were not enough coxswains (drivers) for all of the boats in the company (00:28:38:00)  After Harlan transferred, he spent a couple of weeks in on-the-job training before becoming a coxswain (00:28:51:00) o In the summer 1967 while Harlan was working in the operations center, there was a lot of contact with enemy forces in the area (00:29:14:00) o For the most part, the 1099th worked a lot with elements of the 9th Infantry Division, as well as elements of the 1st Infantry Division and the 199th Light Infantry Brigade (00:29:21:00) o Although there were NVA forces in the area, the elements that the 1099th worked with never came into contact with them; however, the Viet Cong forces had become more organized than they had previously been (00:29:44:00)  Before Harlan arrived and even during the early part of his tour, enemy forces were divided into three “divisions”, divided between insurgents, main force battalions, and NVA regulars; most of the time, Harlan’s unit faced off against main force battalions (00:30:03:00) o The 1009th’s base at Cat Lai was very small, built on the remains of an old French fort; the base had three sides, with the fourth side opening to the river, and most of the countryside around the base was flat, with the small village of Cat Lai to the south of the base (00:30:44:00)  The base itself came under attack by enemy mortar strikes, although it was largely harassing fire (00:31:06:00)  Cat Lai was a major discharge point for all the ammunition coming into the III and IV Corps zones, which made the base a prime target for enemy attacks (00:31:15:00) o As a result of the base being a prime target, it was fairly well-protected (00:31:30:00) �     In the time Harlan was stationed on the base, although there were numerous mortar strikes, there was never a direct hit on any ammunition storage or boat (00:31:38:00)  The men stationed on the base lived above ground, in a series of very basic tent barracks, although they did have bunkers to take shelter in if necessary during any mortar attacks (00:31:59:00) At the time, the Army was experimenting with the concept of placing artillery on barges that the 1099th would then ferry around to certain areas to act as fire support for any infantry operations that were happening nearby (00:32:35:00) o The concept worked so well that the Army pulled another boat company from near Cam Ranh Bay into the area and permanently assigned them the duty of ferrying around the artillery (00:33:03:00) Whenever Harlan was working as a radio operator on a boat, he was stationed in the boat’s wheelhouse, which was only big enough to fit two men (00:33:30:00) The boats were often prime targets for the enemy to fire at, largely because they were an easy target; the fastest a boat could move empty was only twelve knots, which was not very fast at all (00:34:05:00) o The gun platforms mounted on the boats were surrounded by armor plating and some of the guns themselves were covered with an armored shield (00:34:32:00) o Although the boats were not as armored as some of the equipment used today, the crews felt that they were adequately protected (00:34:47:00) o Because an enemy soldier stationed along the riverbank could cause a lot of damage to the boats, that was why the boats had as much firepower as they did (00:35:05:00)  Usually during operations, the boats were either escorted by air support or the air support was not too far away (00:35:16:00) Although the base of operations for the company was always at Cat Lai, sometimes the boats would be out of base for weeks at a time (00:35:44:00) o As well, the boats were not confined to working in just the area around the base and would often travel into other areas of operation for extended periods of time; however, when they worked in different areas, the boats still maintained a base of operations (00:35:56:00) o Typically during the night, if the boats were at a base of operations, they would tie up at a “secure location”; if the boats were not at a base of operations, they would find a secure point in the middle of the river, drop their anchors, tie together as best they could, and wait out the night (00:36:44:00)  During the night, guards would be posted and as a precaution, the guards would often drop concussion grenades into the water to deter sappers from swimming out to the boat (00:37:15:00)  The boats were mined a couple of times by the enemy but there was never an active attempt by someone to swim out to the boats; instead, the enemy would place the mines away from the boats and wait (00:37:39:00)  The mines that the enemy used could cause enough damage to sink a boat (00:37:59:00) o The boats always traveled in groups and there was never a situation were a single boat went out by itself (00:38:08:00) �       Sometimes, the boats traveled with support from a heavier Navy gunboat that was armed with 40mm cannons or 81mm mortars and heavier machine guns than what were mounted on the Army boats (00:38:16:00) During the latter part of 1967, when Harlan was serving aboard a boat, the level of enemy activity was never at a high enough level for Harlan to be able to tell if the activity ever increased or decreased (00:39:08:00) o Regardless, it seemed like there was always something going on and the men were always on guard; there was always the feeling of tension and expectation that something would happen, so the men were ever vigilant (00:39:21:00) o The idea of “winning” was not a subject that was of interest to any of the men; instead, they were just interested in surviving and get out of there (00:39:44:00) The morale and sense of bonding amongst the men in the unit was very high; it was amazing to Harlan how close some the men became (00:40:03:00) o For the most part, some of the men were with other men in the unit for the better part of seven or eight months before one of the men’s tours ended and he rotated home (00:40:25:00) o The unit did not suffer too many combat losses; in the time Harlan was with the unit, only six men were killed in action (00:40:44:00)  There were a large number of wounded and in the same time, the unit lost two boats and had three or four damaged (00:40:54:00) o For the most part, the concept of the older men training the newly-arrived men worked fairly well; however, Harlan himself does not recall ever training a replacement for himself (00:41:25:00) When Harlan was actually stationed on the base at Cat Lai, on occasion, he and some of the other men would make the short trip up to river to Saigon for business; when he would go on the trips, Harlan liked to get in and get the job done because he did not like being in the big city and having so many people around (00:41:55:00) Harlan recalls civilian Vietnamese worked on the base at Cat Lai, with one working as a translator in the operations and others doing cleaning and laundry, giving haircuts to the men, etc. (00:42:34:00) o Harlan did not think that those Vietnamese could be members of the VC (Viet Cong); the civilians could have been informers but Harlan did not think about it at the time (00:43:05:00) As well, the 1099th worked extensively with the South Vietnamese Navy, in situations where the South Vietnamese provided gunboats to act as security for the LCMs (00:43:19:00) o Contrary to the views of most Vietnam veterans, Harlan was always impressed with the South Vietnamese personnel (00:43:29:00)  On many occasions, Harlan saw the South Vietnamese personnel right in the thick of the fighting next to the Americans and he never saw them blink or back away (00:43:41:00)  Harlan knows of several situations when South Vietnamese forces were instrumental in turning the tide of battle in particular situations (00:43:55:00) Harlan himself had several close chances with enemy gunfire coming in from the shoreline (00:44:22:00) �  o When they would attack the boats, a favorite weapon of the enemy was RPGs (Rocket-Propelled Grenades) because the actually hull of the boat was only a quarter-inch of steel (00:44:42:00)  For the most part, the enemy aimed the RPGs at the hull of the ship, intending to sink the ship; however, this meant hitting the hull close the water line and whenever they aimed too high, they just made holes in the sides of the boats, so there were often boats sailing around with RPG holes in them (00:45:06:00) Towards the end of Harlan’s tour, eleven boats in the company, Harlan’s included, were reassigned to help support elements of 69th Engineer Battalion, 9th Infantry, which was stationed at Dong Tam (00:45:41:00) o When the boats transferred, they began operating in the heart of the Mekong River Delta region (00:46:19:00) o The activities that the boats did in the Delta were mostly in support of a construction battalion, which was different in and of itself; however, there were still times when the boats were called to support infantry elements (00:49:30:00)  The construction battalion was building a new air base to the south of Can Tho and the boats hauled supplies and provided security from enemy harassment fire (00:46:54:00) There was just as much enemy activity in the Mekong Delta as there had been around Saigon, especially during the Tet Offensive in 1968 (00:47:28:00) o When the offensive began, Harlan remembers being woken up in the middle of the night and being told that they needed to move the boats into the middle of the river as well as set up extra security (00:47:55:00)  Harlan remembers a sergeant saying that “every place in the country was lit up” (00:48:18:00) o During the offensive, the boats were called back to the Dong Tam area to support elements of the 9th Infantry as the elements moved into various areas that were under enemy attack (00:48:30:00) o There was an airbase near Can Tho that was heavily mortared and the boats operated in support of that base on several occasions (00:48:52:00) o Although the boats were not initially targeted by the enemy, when they moved in support of the 9th Infantry, they moved into a man-made harbor and at night, the harbor was heavily mortared by the enemy; the men had to rush to untie the boats then scatter them around the harbor (00:49:10:00) o For the most part, the enemy launched mortar rounds in groups and then adjusted the mortars before firing again; the enemy would not launching individual rounds then adjust the mortars after every round but would instead “walk” the mortars along a pre-set line (00:49:45:00)  The length of the mortar attacks depended on the size of the force that the boats were opposing; when the boats were stationed at Cat Lai, some mortar attacks lasted for twenty minutes while the attack during the night at Dong Tam lasted for around five or ten minutes (00:50:36:00)  During the night attack, the personnel on the base had some way of responding to the mortar fire but because the boats were in the �     harbor and they were in an unfamiliar area, their crews did not fully know what to do (00:51:03:00) o The high intensity level of the offensive did not last too long; Harlan would figures it lasted for about a month before it peaked and started going down (00:51:33:00) Harlan saw a large amount of the South Vietnamese civilian population, especially while in the Mekong Delta, where the majority of population tended to live along with shoreline of the river and canals (00:52:46:00) o Harlan remembers that one time, when they were making a run to the airbase near Can Tho, as they turned to go down the canal that ran next to the airbase, at the conjunction of the river and the canal was a schoolhouse (00:53:01:00)  Harlan remembers seeing kids poke their heads out of the window and he remembers thinking what it must have been like for them, seeing all the combat going on around them (00:53:28:00)  It was surreal to Harlan how the civilians were able to continue going about their lives (00:53:56:00) o At the time, Harlan could only really wonder how the South Vietnamese civilians and military viewed the Americans; however, as chance would have it, he has run into former South Vietnamese military personnel in the United States who came as refugees and who he has talked with (00:54:08:00)  Whenever he has talked with the South Vietnamese refugees, they have always talked highly of the Americans (00:54:27:00) On the crew of Harlan’s boat, apart from Harlan, there was one guy from California, another was from Texas, and another was from Chicago (00:55:20:00) o All in all, throughout the entire unit, there was a mixture of men from all over the country, with a wide array of ethnicities (00:55:43:00)  Harlan does not recall anyone having any real trouble with any of the other soldiers (00:56:13:00) o Although Harlan remembers hearing about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in March 1968, he remembers it was not a big news item and none of the men were so affected that they needed to have more information; as tragic as the assassination was, there was still a bigger priority in their lives (00:56:27:00) o It was a tradition amongst the men to keep short-timer calendars, which they would start up thirty days before they would leave (00:57:08:00) When the boats where in the Can Tho region, about two or three weeks before Harlan was set to rotate home, he was flown back to Saigon and trucked out to Cat Lai, where he would go through his out-processing (00:57:23:00) In the time Harlan was there, there was not much in the way of drug usage on the base; he does not recall more than one or two men experimenting with drugs (00:58:07:00) o Then, when the men did use drugs, they were often shunned by the other men in the unit, those who wanted to live through the ordeal (00:58:26:00) For the most part, the individual boat crews were responsible for themselves; if they screwed up, then they were the ones who were punished (00:59:07:00) o Typically, the crew would receive their assignment for the day that would lay out where the crew would go and what they would do and once they arrived, who �        they would report to; it was often that person who coordinated the activities of the boat(s) (00:59:19:00) o On an actual command level, there were sergeants and lieutenants who the crews answered to and coordinated the boats; however, when the boats were out there operating, the crews were in charge of the boats (00:59:44:00) o Harlan does not recall any having any disappointments with the NCOs and officers that he served with (01:00:10:00)  While in Vietnam, the NCOs and officers did not worry about the “spit and polish” side of the Army; in fact, most of the officers would go without wearing their rank insignia (01:00:32:00) The men were not required to wear helmets and flak jackets all the time but they did whenever they were moving along the river or on an operation; if the boat was tied up, then most of the men wore shorts and flip-flops (01:00:48:00) In Harlan’s mind, the time spent in Vietnam is just one long episode; there are not any peaks or valleys (01:01:37:00) At one point, Harlan received an R&R and went down to Australia, which was his first choice of R&R destination (01:01:49:00) o While in Australia, Harlan went sight-seeing, relaxed, went out drinking and clubbing (01:02:00:00) o The Australians that Harlan would encounter knew he was an American serviceman and they were very welcoming to him (01:02:10:00) o Harlan received the R&R roughly six or seven months into his tour (01:02:22:00) o Returning to Vietnam at the end of the R&R was surreal because Harlan was sitting on the plane, wondering why he was going back (01:02:31:00) For the most part, when the men had to stay on the boats overnight, they would eat CRations, although once every couple of days, the men received a days worth supply of ARations, usually fresh meat and fruit (01:02:55:00) o On occasion, the men also bought food from local markets (01:03:21:00) o The food at the base camps was usually better, insofar as the food was actually cooked up and fresh (01:03:37:00) Most of the base camps that Harlan spent time at had their own small clubs for the men to visit; the base camp at Cat Lai even had a small, open-air theater (01:03:53:00) o Harlan remembers that one time, the men watched Doctor Zhivago, a cold weather movie in the midst of the Vietnamese heat (01:04:02:00) The boats had bunk areas built behind the wheelhouse; although not originally intended as a bunkhouse, there was a small area behind the wheelhouse that the men engineered to serve as the bunkhouse, large enough for four men to sleep comfortably (01:04:35:00) Although the boats did do operations where they inserted infantry, the landing zones were often not under fire by the enemy (01:05:19:00) o Nevertheless, on a couple of occasions, the boats were attacked by the enemy on their way to a landing zone (01:05:42:00) Harlan was never wounded during his tour and he never picked up any of the common tropical diseases; the only physical change Harlan experienced was that he lost a lot of weight (01:05:56:00) �   Harlan has talked with men who had served in the infantry and when Harlan explains what he did for his tour, some of the other men said that they would not have traded places with him (01:06:24:00) o On the other hand, when Harlan’s boat would go out and pick up a group of infantry who had been in the field for a week, Harlan did not want to trade places with them, either (01:06:38:00) o According to the men who served in the infantry, the boats were big, slowmoving and out in the open (01:06:58:00)  However, being able to move was key to Harlan because unless there was something holding the boat to a specific spot, the men could move it if necessary (01:07:08:00) Although the enemy did not have any “naval forces” of their own, there were still civilian boats on the rivers and canals and the men had to watch them (01:07:18:00) o Quite often, Harlan and the other men would stop the civilian boats to search through the boat (01:07:31:00) o Harlan does not recall ever having interpreters on the boat when they would stop to search a civilian boat; the civilians knew why they were stopped and they would just let the men search the boat (01:07:44:00) When the day finally came for Harlan to leave, he went through out-processing out of the company, which was mostly turning in his weapon and equipment as well as signing some paperwork (01:08:13:00) o After out-processing, Harlan was trucked to Tan Son Nhut Air Force base, where he stayed overnight before flying out the next day (01:08:33:00)  While at Tan Son Nhut, Harlan remembers being gathered with other soldiers in a massive building as they all waited for various flights out of the country (01:08:47:00) o Harlan remembers the plane sitting on the tarmac and he could not wait to get on it and get started home (01:09:01:00)  When the plane took off and the men saw the ocean, that was when they knew that the war was behind them (01:09:18:00) o The flight back to the United States leap-frogged across the Pacific Ocean, stopping at Guam, Wake Island, and Hawaii before finally arriving at Travis Air Force Base outside San Francisco (01:09:34:00) Post-Vietnam Military Service / Post-Military Life / Reflections (01:10:04:00)  Harlan still had a year remaining on his enlistment but once he was back in the United States, the Army allowed him to take a month leave to go back home (01:10:04:00) o When he returned to the United States, Harlan did not have trouble with anti-war protestors (01:10:30:00)  The flight from Vietnam arrived at Travis late in the evening and by the time the men finished at Travis and made it down to San Francisco International Airport, it was late at night and there were not any flights going out (01:10:36:00)  As it turned out, there was a USO center in the airport and the staff happily gave the group of men beds (01:10:52:00) �   Harlan woke up early the next morning but nothing was happening yet and as he walked around the airport, he noticed a small barber shop was open that also offered showers and shaves (01:11:08:00)  The owner of the barber shop saw Harlan walking past and asked if Harlan was just getting back; when Harlan said he was, the man offered a shower and shave, on the house (01:11:31:00)  Contrary to what most other returning soldiers experienced, Harlan’s first experience back was a free hot shower, haircut and shave (01:11:48:00) Once his leave was over, Harlan received an assignment to an infantry unit stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, as a radio operator (01:12:28:00) o Harlan was assigned the Headquarters Company, which meant he did not have to go slogging into the field with a radio strapped to his back; instead, he was part of a support section doing radio repair and maintenance (01:12:48:00) o Harlan was officially assigned to Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 34th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division (01:13:10:00)  The unit was active duty, with one of the 24th Division’s brigades stationed at Fort Riley and the other stationed at a base in Germany; the brigade would rotate between being at Fort Reilly and being deployed to the base in Germany (01:13:26:00) o Harlan ran into a lot of men stationed at Fort Riley who had also served in Vietnam (01:13:47:00) o Apart from the active duty forces stationed on the base, there also training units at Fort Riley, which was somewhat surreal for Harlan (01:13:58:00)  The anti-war movement had started to pick up in the country and a lot of the training done at Fort Riley was in riot control (01:14:01:00) o The units at the base were constantly on the move, either training or conducting exercises and equipment was always being returned or taken out (01:14:59:00) Harlan stayed with the headquarters company until September 1968, when he received reassignment to 1st Battalion, 63rd Armored Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, which was the only unit of the 1st Infantry still in the United States; the remainder of the division had deployed to Vietnam (01:15:21:00) o Harlan’s company in the battalion was one of three equipped with the M551 Sheridan tank and were tasked with testing whether the tank wcould be air mobile, able to deploy with paratroopers (01:15:53:00)  The M551 was unique at the time because it could fire both conventional ammunition and laser-guided missiles (01:16:18:00)  In tests, the men did successfully launch the tank via parachute from a plane and had the tank land and still be fully operational (01:16:34:00) o When Harlan was with the headquarters company, he did a lot of radio repair and when the time came for him to receive a promotion, the Army changed his MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) to radio repairman (01:17:20:00)  Therefore, when Harlan was assigned to A Company, 1st Battalion, 63rd Armored, it was as a radio repairman (01:17:36:00)  However, when the unit went on temporary duty to Fort Irwin, California for testing and training, Harlan filled in as a loader aboard one of the M551s (01:17:43:00) �      As far as Harlan could tell, there was a good mix in the units between enlistees and draftees (01:18:35:00) o For the most part, the men in the units had good morale; in particular, in the tank crew Harlan served with, two of the other men had also served tours in Vietnam and all three were upbeat about not having to go back to Vietnam (01:18:47:00) o Even among the men who had not been to Vietnam, there was still good morale and all the men were upbeat about their situation (01:19:04:00) Even though the Army made an effort to convince Harlan to re-enlist, Harlan would describe it as only a half-hearted effort (01:19:22:00) Although Harlan was not officially discharged from the military until June 1972, he was off active duty in June 1969; at that time, everyone was obligated to serve some period on inactive reserve (01:20:18:00) Once he was off active duty, Harlan returned home and tried to pick up anything he could in civilian life in order to make a living (01:20:51:00) o Harlan eventually found a job working in land surveying, which he found by chance through a friend from high school who had also just returned from serving in Vietnam (01:21:10:00)  The friend had already been working for the company when Harlan returned and one day, the friend told Harlan that the company was looking to hire, so Harlan interviewed for the job (01:21:27:00) o For the most part, Harlan continued doing land surveying for the remainder of his working life (01:21:41:00) When he returned home, Harlan did not talk too much with others about his experiences in Vietnam (01:22:28:00) o Harlan did not really talk about his experiences until the latter part of the 1980s and early 1990s; Harlan first opened up about his experiences while looking following his son’s deployment during the First Persian Gulf War (01:22:48:00) o Harlan still goes to the VA regularly as well as attends a support group for veterans; overall, the VA offers so much more now than they did when Harlan first returned from Vietnam (01:23:40:00)  When Harlan first returned from Vietnam, PSTD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) was unheard of (01:24:08:00) Looking back on his time in the service, Harlan would say that the time ended up affecting him for the good (01:24:41:00) o To this day, Harlan has the attitude that someone should just do what they have to do and do whatever it is right and everyone should be treated fairly and with respect; although Harlan had somewhat learned these before going into the military, the military helped cement them in his mind (01:24:44:00) � 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 Harlan, Charles (Interview outline and video), 2012 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Harlan, Charles Description An account of the resource Charles Harlan grew up in Mancelona, Michigan, and enlisted in the Army as soon as he finished high school in 1966 in order to stay ahead of the draft and have some say in his assignment. After basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky, he went to Fort Eustis, Virginia, for training in marine diesel engines. Deploying to Vietnam in May, 1967, he went first to Pleiku in the Central Highlands, but was then assigned to the 1099th Transportation Company based at Cat Lai, east of Saigon, which operated landing craft along the rivers. At first, Harlan worked in the operations center at Cat Lai before become a coxswain aboard an LCM-8. While working as a coxswain, Harlan helped in the movement of supplies up and down the rivers around Saigon and the deployment of infantry from the 9th and 1st Infantry Divisions. Towards the end of Harlan's tour, eleven of the company's LCM-8s moved down to the Mekong Delta, just in time for the start of the enemy's 1968 Tet Offensive. During the offensive, Harlan's LCM-8 continued moving men and supplies, as well as provided support to besieged American units along the shore. Upon his return from Vietnam in 1968, he was sent to Fort Riley, Kansas, where he worked first as a radio operator for a unit of the 24th Division, and then with a battalion of the 1st Infantry Division that was testing the airmobile capacity of the new Sheridan tank. 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 2012-03-28 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HarlanC1370V 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/47fe7fdf292e353ddcbabe52c287302b.mp4 5f864bcd72d94ed3fb94b512ab9fd369 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e307c6a112971b1d96799f7ca6d07e42.pdf 179d9a98f3272e803d66d7f667cefb7a PDF Text Text We are talking today with Mr. Harold Harig of Wyoming, Michigan. The  interviewer is James Smither of the Grand Valley State University Veteran’s  History Project. Now, Mr. Harig ,can you begin by telling us a little bit about  yourself? Just start with where and when you were born. (00:03:21)  Well, I don’t remember when I was born, but shortly after, maybe a couple years…   But what year were you born?(00:31:18)  1925. November 10, 1925.  And where were you born? (00:39:06)  At Northdoor.  What did your family do? Were they farmers or something else? (00:43:12)  Well, my father started farming, and then he went to Grand Rapids American Box to  work. After several years at the Box Store, he started working at Spartan Stores.  That’s where he spent the rest of his life until he retired.  Was he able to keep his jobs through the depression? Did he always have  work? (01:15)  Yes, at the box store, but they worked just a few days a week, just enough to put  food on the table.  How many kids were in your family? (01:25)  Six. Gotta stop and think.  Did you finish high school? (01:37)  No, I didn’t.  Did you finish eighth grade or how long? (01:41)  I took several courses where I worked and just basically that is all I wanted to do.  Where did you work then, before the war? (01:56)  In Grandville. Which, at the time was Winters Crampton. And then they changed the  name to Jervis, and the last time, when I retired, it was Alloy Tech.  When did you start working, then? (02:13)  I worked there probably four or five months, before I went into the service, where I  joined the Navy.  What did you do before that? (02:26)  I worked in a grocery store.  �Do you remember hearing about Pearl Harbor? (02:34)  Oh I sure do.  Can you tell me about that? (02:40)  It was on a Sunday afternoon when we heard it. It was kind of a big surprise to us.  We couldn’t believe it to begin with. We knew it was something we were going to  have a problem with.  So at that point, you were sixteen then? 1941? (03:05)  Fifteen.  Did you expect you would end up in the war yourself? (03:14)  Well, I tell you, our family was more or less a military family. If we were called, we  went. Not only us, but our father and his father. Most of them served one way or  another. My father served. He was in World War I. That’s about all, you know. I  worked awhile before I joined the service.  What motivated you to enlist? (03:59)  Patrioty I guess. I wanted to do something for my country.  So you didn’t want to wait to be drafted, you just went ahead and signed up.  (04:15)  In fact, all the kids around there my age, every one of them joined. And most of them  joined with me. They were farm boys, out in the country, and most of them joined  the Navy.  Why did you join the Navy? (04:32)  Well, I like the water for one thing. We always went swimming. A lot of times, all we  had was a creek, but we damned it up a little bit and swam in it. Now I don’t think  any kid would do that anymore.  Well, we don’t know what’s in that water anymore. Had you ever been out on  Lake Michigan in a boat or anything like that? (05:01)  Oh, definitely. In fact, up until probably five years ago, I used to go out there fishing.  Before you joined the Navy, had you been out on Lake Michigan in a boat?  (05:24)  No. In fact, I didn’t even know where it was. Because we didn’t have much except  work.  When did you enlist? (05:41)  �1944.  Your service record shows that you enlisted, I think, in ’43. (05:53)  Well, that’s why I brought my book along. Because for me to remember things  anymore, that’s long ago. 65 years!  After you enlisted, where did they send you then for training? (06:11)  Farragut, Idaho.  How did you get out there? (06:22)  I think we went by train that time. First, I went to Detroit for examining. Then, from  there we got the train and went to Farragut, Idaho.  Alright. Now, what do you remember about Farragut, Idaho? (6:46)  Some things not too good because the first thing I contracted this Rocky Mountain  spotted fever. And I was laid in the hospital for days, a base hospital. When I got out,  I was on kind of limited duty. All the guys I went with, they were way ahead of me.  So I had a whole new outlook as far as training goes. But it was a good camp at that  time. I enjoyed being there.  Was it a very big place? Were there a lot of people there? (07:26)  It was a pretty good‐sized camp. To know how many people were there, I couldn’t  tell you. They closed it up, I think, before the war was over. They closed it up  because there was a lot of sickness out there with this Rocky Mountain spotted  fever. A lot of men died there.  Was there a town nearby of any size? (08:02)  Sand Point, Idaho. But that was just a little rural town then.  Why were they having a naval station in Farragut, Idaho? (08:16)  Well, I never did figure that out because everyone else went to the Great Lakes.  Then, I would have seen Lake Michigan! But where I was, I still hadn’t seen Lake  Michigan!  What kind of training did they give you? What did you do there? (08:34)  Basically just general training. How to sweep decks and mop decks and paint guns  and things like that. Basically physical fitness, you know, how to take care of  yourself. Everything like that.  How much discipline was there? Learning to follow orders? (09:04)  It was a very disciplinarian camp. It was very disciplined.   �Did you adjust well to that? (09:16)  Yes, a lot of people didn’t because these kids that come from Chicago, New York,  places like that, they didn’t adjust to well. But for us, it was just another day at home  because you worked jobs.  How long did they keep you there in Idaho? (09:41)  Pretty close to two months, I think.  Where did you go from there? (09:52)  Tacoma, Washington.  Why did you go to Tacoma, what was there? (09:58)  Well, that was a military instillation there. Navy, Army, everything. That was one of  the reasons I guess that’s why I was sent there.  Did you get more training there? (10:12)  Yes, we did. We had a lot of gunnery practice on gunnery ranges. We went out  almost daily checking the gun ranges and learning how to use the weapons, things  like that.  Did you do target practice with area targets or were you just shooting at things  that were on the ground? (10:33)  We did area targets, we did plain targets from pulling these sleeves, so we called  them at that time. They would pull the sleeves and we would shoot at the sleeves,  hopefully missing the plank.  Did you do well at that? Could you hit the sleeve? (11:00)  Yes, I think we did pretty good because when I got on the ship I was  Director/Operator, operating twin 40 mm guns. So, I guess I must have done pretty  good.  Do you remember how long you were in Tacoma? (11:28)  Probably a month or two.  Were you there until about April of ’44? (11:37)  Yes.  Once you finished in Tacoma, were you put on a ship at that point? (11:45)  Yeah, went to Vancouver, Astoria and that area. It was just a commission.  What was the name of the ship? (12:01)  �USS Shamrock Bay.  What kind of ship was it? (12:06)  AV Flat top we called it. See, during that time, our big carriers were getting hit pretty  hard. They had to have more carriers but they didn’t know how to have more  carriers without converting some of these merchant ships to aircraft carriers. At the  time we got on there, the first thing we heard was Kaiser coffins. It really never  happened that way unless they got hit by a kamikaze or a torpedo from a submarine.  But they was basically a decent ship.  Basically you were on an escort carrier. About how big was it? (12:56)  It was around…I can’t really tell you the size of it. I know I got it in those books I got,  but I can’t tell you offhand. All I know is it was a baby flat top. It was probably in the  neighborhood of six hundred feet or more.  They were not as long as the full­sized ones? (13:33)  No.  How many planes would you carry? (13:37)  I think we had about thirty planes. We had torpedo bombers and fighter planes.  Do you remember going out on the water the first time? (13:49)  We did a shake down cruise on the ship to make sure the ship was operating  decently so everything seemed to go pretty good from there on. We were on our  way.  Where did you take the shake down cruise? Did you go from Tacoma  somewhere else, or did you just come back to Tacoma again? (14:13)  I came back, but I think I had to take the train or rode a bus back to Tacoma. I think  the ship was in Astoria.  So it was just a short trip around the Pacific coast? (14:37)  Yes.  Did you get to go on leave or go home before you went overseas or did you just  stay out there? (14:42)  No, I did when we got back to the States maybe a year or year and a half later I got  home on a short leave. The doggone ship was in dry dock there, having it sprayed  and repainted. So I was able to go home for a little while. The rest of the time you  spent on the ship, scraping. That was normal procedure anyway. Everyday when  you weren’t manning a gun or target practice or anything, to scrape the guns. Clean  them and take them out. When you got in the war zone, that all ended.  �Tell us a little bit about going out to sea for the first time. Did you have any  problems getting sea sick? (15:53)  No. A lot of them did. We had a couple of them that as soon as the ship started  moving they were sick. They couldn’t stand sea duty, so they were taken off the ship  because it was just too much. There was a lot to learn when you got on the ship. You  still had thieves and everything else on‐ship. One guy got up in the morning and felt  his back pants pocket. The doggone wallet was gone. Somebody cut halfway around  it during the night and stole his wallet. This was when were out at sea, what was a  guy going to do with the money? He got the money. I guess there was a little  gambling going on. I never participated in it, but some of these guys knew  everything about gambling, but not me.  Those were the guys from New York and Chicago? (17:06)  Chicago mostly. New York, Chicago. There was not too much Detroit then. But those  guys from Chicago and New York, those guys were ruthless. They were really bad.  Especially for me being a little hick. You didn’t know anything. You just did not grow  up that way. You listened to your parents. And I don’t think half of those guys from  New York had parents, or who they were. But it was different.   Once you go out on your first real cruise, you leave Tacoma. Where did you go  on your first trip? Around the Atlantic? (18:01)  We went basically right out to the warzone, from what I remember. That’s where we  were for a period of time.   Your carrier makes your first trip; you go through the Panama Canal. Do you  remember that? (18:25)  That I do remember, we went through that twice. It was quite an exciting thing to  see…how it was built, how they maintained it, how they could lower the ship, drop it  down. I never saw that again until we went to the Upper Peninsula and saw it up at  Sault Ste. Marie. Saw how the locks worked. There were more locks at the Panama  Canal than there were at Sault Ste. Marie.  So basically, you go through the Panama Canal, you go into the Caribbean. Do  you remember sailing in the Caribbean? (19:28)  No, we went up to Norfolk, Virginia. Then we went to New York, up to New York for  a day or two, which was long enough for me.  And from there we went to  Casablanca.   Now did you sail with a convoy to go to Casablanca? (19:56)  Well, no, we with were merchant ships and, oh there was a couple other carriers  with us. We were basically sub patrol. Course the Germans, that’s the only thing they  had going anymore, was the submarine, so that was kind of a hairy thing times two  when you’d get these beeps, and a submarine. Course we had destroyers that were  �along that carried the Depth Charges, and a lot of time they did throw out Depth  Charges. You really don’t know if hit a ship or a submarine or not, but it sure would  make a lot of water go up in they air when they would do that.  So did they attack submarines several different times on that trip? Did they  have many encounters with submarines?  (21:07)  Well, we had more in the Pacific than we did in the Atlantic. I think in the two trips  we made, they only had it three, four times at the most.  And then they didn’t know if  they were near or real or whether there were just a few whales down there  somewhere. They were picking them up, so I don’t know.  So you don’t even know for sure if there were any submarines there? So you  didn’t see any yourself or anything like that? (21:45)  No. Well, if there were whales, there probably weren’t no whales anymore.   Now, when you got to North Africa did you just stay on the ship and turn  around and come back? (21:59)  Yes, we were there probably a couple days. A lot of guys learned lessons there  because one of the first things that would happen. They would get about twenty  dollars for what we called, I don’t know if I should say this or not, they were “fart  sheets.” Anyway, these guys would take those off ship, they’d wrap them around  their waist, then take them off and sell them for twenty dollars. ‘Cause these women,  they all wore these things, ya know, over there. Sometimes, by the time they got  done with giving the person the thing, the sheet, that they had wrapped around their  waist, course they had to take some clothes off to do that. When they took the  clothes off, they’d have some Arab over there, would hold his clothes. So you know  how the guy wound up, he didn’t have any clothes when he got back to the ship. So  he was walkin’ around tryin’ to hide, around buildings, and everything like that.  Course, we always had shore patrol whenever we got into a port. We tried to get our  own people, course I was on shore patrol part time, and you try to get ‘em back on  the ship before the local people would get ahold of them. If they were kinda  inebriated and so on and so forth, so, that’s about it.  So then after, so you make two trips across the Atlantic, and at that point, your  ship is transferred over to Pacific theater.  And when you go on the Pacific,  where did you go? (24:02)  Oh, I don’t remember. Philippines, I guess. Down there.  In the unit history you’ve got, it says you went to Luzon, the northern island in  the Philippines, and you were in the Surigao Strait and you went to Lingayen  Gulf, which is one of the places where we made a landing. Now, when you got  to the Philippines, did you encounter Japanese aircraft or submarines at that  point? (24:23)  �Yes. Not a lot of them at that point, but they were there. Course our ships were more  or less starting to build up now where they could handle themselves without. And at  first, we did not see or hear anything about kamikazes.  I mean it was just dog fights  up in the air. We’d sit there below and watch the planes above trying to knock one  another down.  It was sort of just, you know, you couldn’t believe what was  happening. A little later on, we never had much trouble with them, until the  kamikazes came. That’s when we were, I know we used to shoot at them ya know,  when they would start coming in. Course they would tell us when to start firing, and  when to cease, because sometimes we didn’t get cease firing in time. It was an awful,  harried experience because some of these bullets would get into the other ships I  know they did, ‘cause we saw where, before they got stopped, bullets that they  would be shooting at the planes would be headed toward other ships. You don’t  know just…what happened. We did have the order to cease fire.  Ya know, we had  the gunnery officer up on the bridge. He would notify us to cease fire, that’s about all  we could do. Just quit firing and hope that the ship, well we had them coming within  five inch gun shoot, we’d knock one down. But as far as we were concerned, we shot  at different kamikazes because they’d be headed for your ship and all of a sudden  make a sharp turn toward another ship that was not too much of a danger to them I  would say. So, it did, it was something to look at those sights, and have those  airplanes come toward you and then veer off.  Now did most of them get shot down before they hit ships, or what happened?  (27:35)  They did hit ships. They hit ships. In fact, one of the destroyers that a friend of mine  was on got hit. He was up on the bridge, a lookout, and he got killed. a kamikaze hit  the bridge. They usually try to avoid the destroyers because they were guarding us.  They were keeping us supposedly safe, but it didn’t always work. Some of these Japs,  I think what they were doing then was, if it was getting awful hot for them, and they  were gonna get shot down, they were gonna go to the closest ship they could find.  And that’s what would happen.   As far as you could tell, did they have priorities in terms of what they wanted  to hit? Did they go after tankers first, or aircraft carriers? (28:31)  You mean the Japs?  Yes. (28:40)  Yes, they hit aircraft carriers.  But did the kamikazes have preferred targets, were there certain ships?  (28:43)  The kamikazes, the aircraft carriers were the prime target.  Did your ship ever get hit? (28:56)  �No, we were very fortunate. We had them hit all around us, but we were, like they  used to say, the captain of our ship: “The luck of the Irish.” That’s one of the things  he always said. Either they would vear off, or get shot down before they got to us,  and then, well like up at Iwo Jima, we were out about fifty miles from shore, and our  planes, see, were going in then. We didn’t, we were out, and the battleships were in  close, and the cruisers, things like that. Well, they tried to keep us kind of segregated  so that our planes could do the dirty work and we could sit back and watch the  circus, so to speak.  So if were a little farther away from the island and away from the rest of the  fleet, then maybe the kamikazes or whatever wouldn’t find you? (30:02)  What was that?  Well, if your escort carriers were away from the rest of the fleet, it might have  been harder for the kamikazes to find you, or they’d all go to the main fleet  and, or did you get attacked when you were off of Iwo Jima, or was that quiet  for you? (30:11)  No, we had no problems at Iwo Jima, and uh, it was, uh, like I said, we were out far  enough, there were Japanese ships around there, but they didn’t bother us too much  at Iwo Jima.  Now, you also went to Okinawa, then, after that. Can you describe that?  (30:48)  It was a little rough. I mean, we were lucky, like I said, we were lucky with not  getting hit by ‘em, ‘cause if you got hit, you know what was gonna happen. I mean  with all the gasoline on board for the planes, and they would try to come down right  on the deck, see that was all the wood, and they were usually loaded with gasoline,  so that would start a big fire, so, you know it was, I don’t know. A lot of things that  are hard to explain, or even remember.  Do you remember seeing any other carriers get hit? (31:41)  Yes.  And what would happen if a carrier got hit? (31:47)  It would blow up. Not completely, but they were out of commission. In fact, in my  books, those two books I got, it tells you about some of ‘em were put out of  commission, we would have to take on their planes. And some of it was after…we  used to always have the biggest problem before dark at night, that’s when it seemed  to be the worst for us.  And, after dark, we had to take on several other planes from  two other carriers that got hit. And doing that, well the captain was trying to save  our ship, and save the men in their planes. So what he would do was, we had to turn  on landing lights on the side of the ships for the planes to land, and then the deck  and hanger deck got so full of planes, we had to push a few of them over board, that  �one night. Just for the night, that happened, where we had to…I think there were  seven or eight planes that they pushed overboard once the pilots got on ship.  Because they were trying to save the pilots, that was a very important thing. So,  other than that, yeah, we did take on several other planes from other big ships.    Did you also ever fish men out of the water, did you rescue sailors or crewmen  who went in the water? (33:25)  Oh you mean the men that were in the water? No, they usually had destroyers doing  that. And they could run right up there, they were fast, and no, we never picked  up…we probably picked up three, four of our own pilots when their catapult didn’t  work. They caught the tail end of the fifth ship into the water and, uh, we’d have to  pick them up, but other than that, no. Most of the time the catapult worked pretty  good.  Did you have other accidents, would planes crash on the deck, or…? (34:14)  Oh, yes, yes. A lot of times, if they, they’d come in and they’d have a wheel off, or a  drop off a propeller, would hit the deck. Yes, we had quite a few accidents; they were  always putting in new deck plank, ya know, because it’d get chewed up from planes  landing. And yeah, every once in a while, they’d come in, you knew there would be  problems before they landed because they were probably hit from Japanese ships,  and they were limping in, so to speak. Most of the time, the pilots were saved, we did  lose a few of ‘em in combat, aerial flights, ya know. I think it was only four or five or  something like that we lost.  You mentioned earlier that you did have some contact with Japanese  submarines? (35:31)  Oh yes, ya know, this was something that every once in a while it was like in the  Atlantic. We would, uh, have general quarters and submarines. And the Japanese, to  them, we’d have two, three doggone destroyers. They’d be right there and they’d be  dropping ash cans and it wouldn’t be long, you’d see this stuff fly up in the air, they  figured they’d got some since they’d seen oil slick. So, ya know, I don’t think the  Japanese had too much left in anything once we got done. The way it appeared to  me. Now, in Okinawa, after that was all settled, we could watch ‘em from the ship  because we were anchored in the bay so we could watch the marines and soldiers  on the high hills, I called ‘em hills, they were small mountains, with flame throwers.  All they were doin’ was goin to all these little holes and that in the side of the  mountain, and they were shootin down planes. Aboard ship, we had a problem then  that we had to use our regular rifles to shoot anything that was floatin in the water  or comin toward the ship because it could have been a Jap with explosives. We  would be shootin’ at anything—a box, a crate—anything at all that would be in the  water. We would see it, we would have to shoot at it, make sure if there was a man  there, he wasn’t going to be anymore.  Were there problems with Japanese mines as well, mines floating in the  water? (37:50)  �There were some, but we never had a lot. See, they had minesweepers whenever we  went in close to the borders. They always had minesweepers clearing that. A lot of  times, we did get supplies there in the Phillipines, and supplies, ammunition, bombs  and stuff like that that we had to put down in the holes. And sometimes, as far as  refueling we did that right at sea. You had a gun‐that was part of our job too as  gunners‐they’d put a rod, a brass rod, down into the barrel with a doggone line into  it, I called it chalk line but it was thicker than that. And then you’d shoot that over to  the oil tanker and they’d pull that across and they’d pull the line. Finally, that would  hook up to fuel the ship. Refueling at sea is all it was.  While you were out on these trips, did you ever encounter really bad weather?   (39:23)  Bad weather, gee! You ought to see that one picture where our ship or one of our  ships, you don’t see the front of it at all, it’s under the water, and finally they come  back up again. As far as eating, no, that’s out. You wouldn’t have a cup of coffee for  anything because it wouldn’t be with you two seconds. Either you’d try to put it in  your mouth, or it was flying away from you. We were in two typhoons.  When you were in those typhoons were you in port or at sea? (40:14)  We were out at sea, way out. And the weather report would tell us that we’re gonna  be in a typhoon. And that really, it was really rough on ships. The bow of our ship,  the aircrafter, the top of it backed right up on one of them. Course, right away after it  was over, the men were up there straightening it out, torching it. We carried a lot of  supplies on ship, like lumber for the deck, and metal, and a lot of airplane parts. And  another thing, they put all the airplanes down below on the hangar deck when the  weather would get like that, and they’d drop the elevators. The one time, I don’t  know why, but I was in my bunk, and so was probably twenty other guys in that  compartment that we were in. When we hit one of those, it just went right under  and the water all came down from the elevator shaft on to the hangar deck and one  guy hollered, I shouldn’t swear, but, “the son‐of‐a‐bitch is sinking,” he says, and we  all went for top side right now. If we’re gonna die, it’s not gonna be down in the hole,  but that was, that only happened once, and that was when they were calling ‘em  Kaiser coffins. And boy, it didn’t take long to get up on deck, let me tell you.  Were you ever manning a gun position during one of these storms? (42:27)  No, it was pretty quiet, yeah. No, in fact most of the guys were, if you were up on  deck like that, you were tied to something, you know, you didn’t just stand around  and wait to get swept overboard.  Now, when you’re out in the Pacific, you mentioned that you did shore patrol  in a few places. Did you do shore patrol out in the Pacific? (42:57)  No, the only place I did shore patrol was Panama and over in the Middle East.  Otherwise, no, when we got ashore anywhere, we had duty aboard ship. Especially  out in the Pacific, any place we were anchored, they didn’t have too much trouble  �with shore patrol there. It was once we got back to the States, and then when we got  to the States, no, the majority of us were able to get off‐ship and go home, or do  something other than that. They had their own shore patrol and the Army had their  men out there and the Marines. Course, the big thing then, was, for the shore patrol  and those people, was watchin the bars, ‘cause that’s where 99% of the guys went.  Found the first bar, and that’s where they stayed ‘til they were inebriated and got  back into the Jeep to go back to the ship or get into trouble, wind up in a great brig.   Now, when you were on the ship, what were the living conditions like on an  escort carrier? What was the food like, or accommodations? (44:36)  Ah. You didn’t have air conditioning then. The only thing you…sometimes, as soon as  the sun would go down, you’d be up top side, catching some of that breeze. a lot of  days, you had to stay top side because of your duty, gun duty or whatever, so, but  you did, we would be relieved…if things looked pretty normal, then we pretty much  took it easy, other than keeping things clean and things like that. Otherwise it was  just part of your life.  Did they provide any kind of things for you to do when you were off­duty? Did  they have movies on the ship or anything like that? (45:42)  Well, yes, after the war was winding down good, they had some netting put up for  baseball or softball up on the flight deck. Course, guys that could really hit a ball, it’d  go over that net and into the ocean, and then start with another ball. And, of course,  they did have some basketball on the hangar deck, and some guys would play  basketball, things like that. Other than that, you mostly just pass the day by. We had  one group, and they were from down south, but they used to make moonshine.  There was a little of that made aboard ship, too.  Did you know what they made it out of? (46:50)  No, I really didn’t know. I imagine, I don’t know where they got the stuff, but some of  them were cooks and worked in places like that. but, I know that one group made  some one time and they had them in these 40 mm gun cases, and I guess it blew up,  and, boy, it didn’t go too good around there for a while, ‘cause it was sticky, I guess,  and smelly.   Yeah, they would have used sugar, probably, things with sugar in it. (47:28)  Yeah, they were using all the things that they could get down on the commissary on  the ship, but it was just, I think it was four of them, that were from Alabama, or some  place down there. In fact, when they went ashore, if it was like in Norfolk, they’d  come back with they had cork cans. Clear, cork canning cans, jars. White lightning,  that’s what it was.  In general, how good was the discipline on ship? (48:12)  �Te discipline was quite good. Course you’d always get these guys that wanted to do  something that shouldn’t be done, like gambling—they wasn’t supposed to be  gamblin’ either. Well, ya know, they just couldn’t stop all of ‘em. Some of them would  be on the look out and they’d be gambling and: “hey, officer‐of‐the‐day is comin’”  boy, everyone would be goin, “hi, Sergeant” or whatever it was, commissions officer.  “How you guys doin’.” Course they knew what you were doin.’ They didn’t want to  get involved, ‘cause if they saw you and you were gamblin’, they’d have to do  something about it, ya know. We did have a brig aboard ship, we had a place where,  if they got unruly, they could put ‘em in a brig. And we did have a marine  attachment‐I think there were four of them on our ship‐ that would have been their  job to keep these guys in a brig. Other than that, things were just normal. And I  guess that was a time that I didn’t regret I guess, but I wouldn’t do it again. I would  have never done it again, unless I was called, ya know.  Were you able to keep up with the news of the war, the progress of the war  while you were on ship? (50:00)  No, you know, I’ve told my wife different times…it wouldn’t have been hard to make  a diary, a daily diary of what you did that day and what happened. It would have  been easy to do, but I don’t think anybody ever did it. At least none that I knew of.  You know, you could have taken a little notebook and wrote down everything that  you did that day, what happened that day, and it would have meant a lot to me now,  but then, you know, you don’t think of those things.  Were you able to get any news or information from the outside? (50:55)  Tokyo Rose. We used to get her news almost every day. But yeah, we pretty much  got our news, we got our movies, and, ‘course Porky the Pig and stuff like that.  That’s what the guys were waiting for to watch, what did they call that…and then  they’d have a movie go on, and the ships would change movies. From one ship to  another, they’d come up and then switch the movies. Usually a destroyer would do  that, and then they could come pretty close to the ship, and that’s if the weather  conditions…if the water was smooth and everything. So we were kept pretty much  in the movies and ya know, up to date movies, too.  Do you remember where you were when the war ended, when the Japanese  surrendered? (52:12)  I think I was out to sea, I’m almost certain. Okinawa or someplace. Then from there,  we went right into Tokyo and you can’t believe what that looked like. It was a mess.  Everything was black. Once in a while you’d see a building. And, like everything else,  we were treated royally over there. They would bomb ‘em all the time. I don’t know,  it was just one of those things that we got involved in. By their doings, by the  Japanese doings, they got us into it.  Were you surprised when you got to Japan that the people treated you as well  as they did? (53:25)  �No, I kinda figured they’d be that way. They were bowing and stuff, as far as I’m  concerned, too much, ya know? There was too much of it. They could have went  about their business and we were more and less sight‐seers. They did, they bent  over backwards for us. ‘Course, there was no drinks or anything to speak of there, as  far as these guys goin’ ashore and getting snockered or none of that. But it wasn’t  bad, it was…yes as far as the damage that was done, it was, I don’t know,  catastrophic. Just, bad. Like, now with all these weapons they have, you hate to think  what would happen if the war started again, and it should never happen.   Now, where did you go in Japan? You went to Yokohama and then did you go  down to Hiroshima or Tokyo? (54:44)  Yeah, Hiroshima, and I tell ya everybody was so bad, a lot of people don’t see it that  way nowadays, but when we were over there, they didn’t bother us at all. I don’t  know if anybody was bothered over there, any of the men that were there. Because  we knew what it was. It was bad for us, but they had a warning, they had a time and  knew what was going to happen if they didn’t surrender, but they didn’t do it right  away, I guess it took two of them to do it.  Did you hear about the bombs themselves, after they were dropped? Was that  part of the news or the information?  (55:47)  Later, yes, we heard it. We didn’t have any idea how damaging they were. We had no  idea. But, we knew it was bad because when they surrendered then, we just heard  over the news that the war was over right now.  What happened on your ship when you heard the war was over? (56:20)  If we could have had a beer, we would have had a beer. They had it aboard ship, but  we were not allowed to have it unless we got to some island and then, you got off‐ ship and you were allowed to warm beers, because there was no such thing as cold  beer then. So then, you’d go ashore, get two warm beers, and go back aboard ship.  Now, once the war is over, you’ve been to Japan, and they ship you back  home…do you remember when you got back to the States? Was it early ’46 or  still ’45? (57:05)  January 24, 1946…something like that. We wound up in Boston, that’s where our  ship was decommissioned. That’s when I was able to get off and go home for a  couple weeks and then I went out to Tacoma, Washington, and married my wife. So  that’s our story.  Once the war was over, what did you do? (57:47)  I came home, I went to work right away because I had seniority rights. All the  service men had seniority rights so I just thought I better get back to work and see  what happens, so I went back to work and things were pretty good for us ever since.  �We never had a lot of problems or anything; it just went back to normal everything I  guess.  To look back on the whole thing now, how do you think that your time in the  service wound up affecting you? Were you a different person when you got out  than when you went in? (58:23)  I don’t think so, I don’t think I was. No, I went back to livin’ just the way we lived  before I went in the service. No, it didn’t bother me really too much. I guess it was,  just the thought of it was something that you had to do and now it’s over so you  were back home again.   Well, thank you very much for coming and telling us about it. You made it a  whole hour, so I guess you had something to say after all.  (58:57)  Oh boy, I don’t know.   (59:08)        � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage 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 Harig, Harold (Interview outline and video), 2009 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Harig, Harold Description An account of the resource Harold Harig served in the US Navy from 1943 to 1946. He trained as an anti-aircraft gunner and served aboard the escort carrier USS Shamrock Bay. He sailed on convoy escort duty to North Africa, and later served in the Pacific in the Philippines, Iwo Jima and Okinawa campaigns, and was later based in Japan. 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. Navy World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-05-19 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HarigH 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/60bd104750b284c4e2af7ed94fbb62c1.mp4 57085fda168acdccda64a317121800ee https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/491c16063f3546b926c1fdc30e8d9247.pdf 877e01d16ddbe9650a147e76d610a9eb PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW BILL HARDIMAN Born: May 26, 1947 in Pontiac, Michigan Resides: Kentwood, Michigan Interviewed by: James Smither PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project, Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, September 21, 2013 Interviewer: Now Bill, can you start us off with some background on yourself? To begin with, where and when were you born? Frist of all, my full name is Clyde Preston William Hardiman the third. I was born without the William part, but being named after my father, for some reason they called him bill and they called me Billy when I was a kid. I’m hoping no one will call be Billy now when I ran, folks knew me as, ran for public office, people knew me as Bill, so I added William to my name, so I was born Clyde Preston Hardiman, now William Hardiman III. I was born in Pontiac, Michigan in 1947, May 26th, 1947. Interviewer: What did your family do for a living in those days? Well, my dad painted signs, which, of course, doesn’t happen anymore. Everything is kind of printed up or done electronically, but he was quite a sign painter. 1:00 He would go out and paint the windows of gas stations or buildings, or whatever, and paint some advertisement for whatever business it was, and he was very good at it. We had a pretty large family, we were poor and you had to paint a lot of signs to take care of eight kids, I guess, but that’s what he did with—when I was two years old my family moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan. Interviewer: Did he continue on as a sign painter when he did that? 1 �He did, he did and my parents separated when I was about fourteen years old, so mom raised eight kids herself and she just did a phenomenal job under some very difficult circumstances. Interviewer: Where did you come in the sequence of kids? I was the third oldest of those living, I had a sister who died at childbirth, but I was the third oldest and I had two sisters older than me. 2:04 So, I was the oldest guy, so I kind of needed to be the man of the family, so that’s what I was, the oldest brother. Interviewer: Then how much education did you have? Well, a good education, I went to Franklin Elementary School right in Grand Rapids, and then South High School. The same school as Gerry Ford, but not at the same time, and then college, and I went to Grand Rapids Junior College, which it was back then and now it’s Grand Rapids Community College, then Grand Valley State University where I received my undergrad degree and then Western where I received my master’s in public administration. Interviewer: How far had you gotten in school when you were drafted? Were you entered in college or had you done some of that? That’s an excellent point, I really graduated from high school, went down to Junior College, it was called at that point in time, did a semester and didn’t really know what I wanted to do. 3:07 I got out and I was drafted, and went back to school once I came back and was a bit more focused and serious about life. Interviewer: At the time you got drafted, did you have much of an awareness of what was going on in the world or that there was a war in Vietnam or any of that kind of thing? 2 �You know it seem kind of amazing now to look back at that time, but I can remember growing up and thinking, “I don’t even know who the mayor is, or what a mayor is”, and I wasn’t as aware, I mean I knew there was a war going on and that became more, and more real to me once I was drafted and in the army, but didn’t know much about it and didn’t know the politics around it. I was just a young kid and I was drafted. Interviewer: When did you get your draft notice? 4:02 Boy, I don’t know, I mean I went into the army in October of 1966, so sometime, a little while before that. I went down, I think it was Fort Knox, Kentucky, and I was at that time a conscientious objector, so I went down to Fort Sam Houston and became a medic. Interviewer: How did you go about the business of getting yourself classified as a conscientious objector? I don’t know, it was through my church, it was The Church of God at the time and again, I was learning about life. Once I went over to Vietnam—I remember going over and one of the sergeants, or whatever, was handing out weapons and I said, “No”, and he said, “You’re going now, so there’s no sense in claiming that”, and I said, “Well, that’s what I believe”. Once I was over there I kind of began to think about it for myself and not just my church. 5:05 I’m a very strong Christ follower, but sometimes a church can dictate a certain thing and I thought, “You know what, I would—I love my country, I want to protect my country, but I would certainly protect my patients and myself, being a medic”, so I realized I was always looking to see whether, as we traveled, where the nearest firearm was in case I needed to grab it and protect, so I thought, “Good grief, you might as well carry a weapon”, so after about nine months in Vietnam, I did carry a forty-five for that protection. 3 �Interviewer: We’re going to go back sort of to—you get inducted, were you processed on Fort Knox, or were you processed in Michigan first and given test and things like that in Detroit or someplace? 6:00 It’s kind of hazy because of the years, but I think there were some test that there and then I went to Fort Knox for induction and then they sent us over to Fort Sam Houston for basic training, and also AIT training. Interviewer: What did your basic training consist of? Everything except the firearms, and I tell a story quite often about that, because I think I learned so much, and really grew as a person and matured into manhood from my time in the army. I remember going down to Fort Sam Houston and we were going through our basic training. We’re out in the field and the sergeant started yelling at us and jumping us just like they do everyone else and the pressure was very hard initially, being a young kid and I have never been away from home to speak of and had never been out of the state of Michigan. 7:00 Here I am, away from family, away from home, and there’s all this pressure on me. But, I kind of knew how to behave myself, so I was just dealing with it, but I remember one day we were out in the field and we were doing the low crawl, and crawling under barbed wire and our elbows and knees were boing skinned up and the barbed wire was catching and it was pretty miserable, we were working hard and we stopped and took a break, and I remember folks sitting out in the field under this tree and the sergeant started to talk to us. This was after a few weeks after we have been in and one of the guys said to the sergeant, “Hey, you guys are so bad, you’re almost being inhuman. Why are you so hard on us?” I’ll never forget what the sergeant said, and it has helped me in life, he said, “When you leave here, some of you will go to Vietnam and 4 �you’re going to be in a war zone. 8:03 And I sense you’re not used to being in a war zone, so you have to learn how to obey orders and do them immediately without question. I’m not saying that everything in life you obey orders immediately, but you have to be able to move quickly, and if you take time to stand up and say, “Oh, I object to that order”, you can be killed, so we’re going to put pressure on you, so you’ll know how to respond to that pressure when you get into the war zone”, and that did something to me. In fact, right after that when we went back to doing the low crawl and we were crawling under the barbed wire, my knees and elbows were being skinned up and I was getting scratched from the barbed wire, there was almost a sense of joy, or delight in here, because I knew it was for a good purpose, and for me, and again, my faith is very important, that relates back to my heavenly father. 9:00 Sometimes we go through things that are very difficult, but they’re really for our own good, and I’ve seen that in my life, so that is one experience that I keep with me. Interviewer: Now, was the company that you were training with, were these all people that were classified as conscientious objectors, or did you just kind of not do the weapons drills that the rest of them did? I believe—this was at Fort Sam Houston, so we were all conscientious objectors at that point in time. Interviewer: What kind—how did they otherwise treat you? You got the drill sergeants and people like that, and at that point did they sort of respect your decision and just treat you like anybody else, or did you have any kind of negativity from, you know, suggesting that you were trying to get out of something? 5 �I think they treated us pretty much the same. I had nothing to compare it with, but it was when I went over to Vietnam and got to Vietnam and someone said, “Well, the gig’s up, you know, you’re here now, so you might as well take a rifle”, and I did, as I said, until I began to examine my own feeling about it. 10:07 Then nine months into it I did, because I knew that I would fight to defend my patients and myself and now I love my country, so I understand it a little bit differently than I did back then, when I was a kid, basically. Interviewer: what kind of people were you training alongside when you were down there? Where were they from and what kinds of backgrounds did they have? All over, all over this region I guess, that’s where we went and I don’t remember the training as much again—some of it’s kind of hazy because of the years. I do remember going off site and ended up going to a church where I got to know some people there, and really enjoyed that. 11:00 About the only other thing I remember very distinctly is standing in formation when we were going to be told where we were going, and I was, quite frankly, hoping to go to someplace where there wasn’t necessarily war. I remember we were all standing in line, and we stood in line as parade rest and when our name was called we had to come to attention. The called my name and said, “Private Hardiman, Southeast Asia”, and there was a lot of concern and weight on my shoulders up to that time, and once they said that I knew where I was going and it was almost like the weight was taken off and I was at attention, I saluted and I said, “Yes sir”, and went back to parade rest and I knew where I was going and the good lord took care of me very well. 12:00 Interviewer: So, that happened after the AIT? 6 �Right, after the training and the time when you get your assignment and we got our assignment, so we were able to come back home and then ship out. Interviewer: Did your AIT go beyond just regular infantry training, and were you now getting more specialized training? Yes, training as a medic—although it wasn’t very appropriate for where I was going. It was training to work in a hospital. We knew how to make those beds real tight and move the bed pans around and all that kind of thing, which—and give shots, and most of that I didn’t use when I was in Vietnam. When I went to Vietnam, if I could talk about that part, and I will say this, I still remember going out and believe it was, I was shipped out, was shipped over to Oakland—we went through Oakland and I remember being on this bus and I believe it was Easter. 13:07 I haven’t checked back on any calendar to see, but I believe it was Easter, it was a Sunday and the bus was going through town and it was going past this church and I saw the people in their Easter clothes with little girls dressed up in their dresses and everything looked very nice. I was yearning to go to church right then, but I was on my way over to a place that I didn’t know if I would come back from. But, I remember that, and then we went to Vietnam. Interviewer: How did they get you to Vietnam? Did you fly or take a ship? I think it was a ship, it was a ship or—I believe it was a ship and then we went up the coast to Chu Lai. 14:00 I remember sleeping out on the beach there the first night we landed and I’m wondering, “Aren’t we out in the open here? I suppose my superiors know what they’re doing, but it seems like we’re vulnerable”. Then we went up to Chu Lai where there was an actual sort of hospital there and a real doctor. Then we were moved out to the line barrier and I can’t remember if it was Duc Pho or Mo Duc, but it 7 �was one of the smaller towns and I was with an artillery unit. I was attached to an infantry unit and we were on a hill, a big gun. When we first landed we were at this hospital, and I remember this incident, there were six medics in this ten—I was one of six medics in this tent, and some had been there for quite some time, I was brand new and they were kind of telling us what would happen and all of a sudden we were hit by mortar attack. 15:06 There was this hill next to us and on the other side of that hill was the ammo dump. Well, I didn’t know much about weapons and warfare, but the Cong , with their mortars, hit the ammo dump and it started to explode and someone said, “Hit the deck”, and they didn’t have to invite me twice, and like all the other folks in the tent, I dropped to the ground and I was so afraid, and the ground was hard, but I felt my fingers, I could almost still feel them, I wanted to dig into the dirt and cover myself up, and I looked up through the opening in the tent and it looked like the fourth of July, because I thought, “Boy these mortars are really incredible”, but actually they had hit the ammo dump and tracers, and whatnot, were just exploding. 16:00 I don’t know how long we were there, but something happened that changed everything. Someone ran by the tent and yelled one word, “Medic”, and every one of those guys jumped up and grabbed their aid bag and ran out to help someone. I had just landed, didn’t know what I was doing, but I thought, “I am not going to shirk my duty, I’m not going to be left here”, so I grabbed my bag and ran out, didn’t know where I was going, and running toward our perimeter just looking for someone to help. I realized something, that courage is not the absence of fear, I don’t think you can be courageous if you don’t fear, it’s overcoming that fear and doing the right thing regardless. I remember running toward the perimeter and this guy was in this foxhole, and he said, “Are you nuts? Get in here”. 17:00 He 8 �didn’t have to invite me twice, I got in the foxhole, but that was my, kind of my initiation and then I was moved out to the line battery where I actually became—everyone called me “doc”, I was the doctor. I wasn’t a medical doctor, but everyone knew that if you get hurt, this is the guy, so I had pretty good treatment while I was out there and I took my responsibility very seriously. Interviewer: Describe the position where you were assigned. What was there and what was the country like around it? We were on a hill with our hooches, huts there, sandbagged, we had sandbags and that’s where we lived. There was a perimeter around the edge of the hill, there were hardened ground walkways to the various sites, mess hall and others, and there was a road that led down to the village below. 18:06 We were, I guess, protecting that village, Vietnamese village, and there were kind of woods and jungle around us. The infantry was there and every once in a while they would have to go out and march down that hill and you never knew who was coming back. Someone had—I love basketball and someone had set up a couple of baskets, and the ground was hard because they had played on it so often. You could actually bounce the ball, it might not come up very straight, but you could bounce the ball. I remember playing basketball and I loved doing it because I actually escaped Vietnam when I did that. I’m very competitive, so I was only on the basketball court, I wasn’t in Vietnam, I wasn’t in the United States, I was just on the basketball court and I wanted to win that game. 19:00 Sometimes the game was interrupted, I remember one time a guy was handling a land mine and he didn’t disconnect it. I don’t know if he was just lazy, or what, and the cry for a medic went out. I ran over and by the time I got over there they were picking up body parts and throwing them on a rubber bag, so I just helped 9 �them do that. Another time we were interrupted and the infantry had to go out and I saw them grab their equipment and didn’t know if they would come back, so it was sort of surreal in that way that all of a sudden you’re playing basketball, you’re only on the basketball court and then immediately you’re brought right back to Vietnam. At times there were firefights, our big guns were there and could shoot quite a distance, and sometimes we’d see over on a distant hill that maybe Charlie was out there, and you’d see these helicopters and it was pretty incredible. 20:07 You would see the copters come out and at night it was almost like a fire show and they would just pepper the area and you could see the tracers and you’d just watch the whole thing. Sometimes the jets would come out and it was incredible because they would go faster than the speed of sound, so they’d come out and they’d swing down and pepper an area and swing back up. The idea was that Charlie would come out once it stopped and all of a sudden they’d come back again and pepper the area again and you could see the tracers. Then sometimes we had to deal with an attack ourselves. Sometimes an attack came from another area and they called it the General scare. The word would get out that the General was coming and we got to fix this place up. 21:00 And I always thought it was kind of--a little strange that we were trying to clean up the dirt and our houses were made of dirt sandbags, but we wanted to clean it up so the General would think it looked nice. We’re in a war, but anyway, I did it because that’s what we were supposed to do. Interviewer: We’re you in the same place for your full tour, or did they move you around? I was in the same place and we were about to be moved when I was leaving. Our unit was going up close to the DMZ, but I think what was very meaningful to me was, as the 10 �“doc” It was—you think of the bartender, I was the guy that people would come and talk to, or I would do things that I had never done before. Like I said, my training was more for a hospital and that’s not where I was. 22:00 When I got there, the medic leaving said, “Well, here’s some more equipment”, and it was a suturing kit and I don’t know where they picked it up and I know someone brought me and I don’t know if it was old, I think it was because I remember, and I sewed people up, you just did what you had to do. I dealt with an ingrown toenail, I had never seen and ingrown toenail before, but I was kind of calm enough to let folks know that I thought I knew what I was doing and could figure something out and do it. There was this 2nd Lieutenant and he was gung ho, like 2nd Lieutenants seem to be, and he came and woke me up in my hut one time and he said, “Doc, get up, get up, I’ve got this cut on my eye, fix me up”, and I said, “Sir, I can call in a chopper and send you back to a real doctor”, and he said, “No, no that, I’ve got to get back to work and my men,”, and I said, “Are you sure?” 23:00 He said, “Yup, yup, just fix me up” so I got out my little suturing kit and I said, “Let me give you a little something to kill the pain”, and he said, “No, no, just sew it up”. I said, “Sir, are you sure?” He said, “Yes, yes, just take care of it”, so I started suturing him up and unfortunately the needles were old and the needle broke. One of them I put a stitch inside and, I said, “Oh, excuse me sir just one moment”, and I went and got another one and took that one out and sewed it up. He came back later on and said, “Hey doc, you did a great job, I don’t even have a scar”, and I said, “Thank you, thank you sir”. It was the kids; I think that I was very impressed with. I love kids, and the kids would come up the road. Interviewer: Vietnamese kids from the village? 11 �They were Vietnamese kids, and I remember that some organization sent us a big box of candy every month. 24:05 They were trying to be nice , but if we ate all that candy our teeth would rot and fall out, so I started going to the gate and giving the kids some candy. The first day there might be three kids there and the second day—they all knew me as “doc”, and there might be six kids there, the third day twelve kids, and the crowd just kept growing and growing. We had our green fatigue jackets and I use to put candy in my pockets and I’d go there. Well, after a while it got so big and I had my aid bag, and I had another bag full of candy and I started going to the other soldiers and said, “Are you going to eat that candy?” “Of course not doc, take it”, so I had tons of candy in the supply and I just started going and befriending the kids and talking to them and giving them candy and after a while I met a couple of kids that I adopted. I didn’t actually adopt them, but they were my kids. 25:03 There was Song and Duc and I loved those two little girls and later a little boy that had been hit by white phosphorous, his name was Mot. I can’t remember his sister’s name, but I have a picture at home. I would start treating his wounds and I almost wanted to adopt him, but I would have had to extend to adopt him and I just felt like, “Okay, if you buy it now that’s okay, there’s nothing you can do, but if I extend and buy it, that’s my fault”, so that’s the way I felt back then, so— but Song and Duc, they were beautiful little girls and I they might have been ten or twelve, but they seemed so little, I use to pick them up and hold them, they just seemed little, and after a while I kind of organized it where the other soldiers sort of adopted kids too. 26:01 We would bring them on the hill sometimes on Saturday and give them candy and just befriend them, and even to the point where one was sick and one of the soldiers woke me up and said, “Doc, you’ve got to come and help my son, my boy”, and 12 �he took me down to the village and I’m walking and, “Does someone have a rifle, or something?” We could be taken out, but we went down and I tried to help his little boy. I ended up sending him to the hospital, but anyway, Song and Duc were two beautiful young kids. I’ve told this story many times to many classes when I speak in schools. Song was rather impetuous, she just did things, but Duc, she could wrap me around her little finger. She would look at me with those pretty eyes and she would say, “Doc, I do what you say”, and I’d say, “I know, and you’re such a good little girl”. Here’s an example, one day I was walking down the hill, going to the village, and on the side of the road there was a house of ill repute. 27:04 I looked over and I saw my two little girls outside, and I said, “Song and Duc, what are you doing over here? You know you shouldn’t be over here, Doc doesn’t like that ”, and they said, “Oh, we no do nothing”, and I walked up to Song and I said, “Song, are you smoking?” she said, “No Doc, I don’t smoke”, and she had her arms behind her back like that with smoke coming up from behind her back, and I said, “Song, you throw that cigarette away, that’s not for you, Doc doesn’t like that”, so she threw it away, but Duc came up to me and she looked at me with her pretty little eyes and she said, “Doc, I no smoke”, and I said, “I know, you’re such a good little girl”. Let’s go back to the candy. I would come down, hand out the candy, but sometimes the crowd got so large that they started to press up against me and try to put their hands in my bag to try to get the candy, so I’d take a handful of candy and throw it on the ground. 28:02 That sounds horrible, but they were almost knocking me over. They would dive on the ground and scratch around in the dirt, the candy was covered with paper, but still—you know—so I could stand up and keep passing out candy. I told my girls, “Listen, you’re Doc’s girls and I don’t want you to scratch around 13 �in the dirt for candy, so if you trust me, and if you wait, I’ll give you the most and I’ll give you the best”. They said, “Okay Doc”, so I did that again and again and one day I saw that Song was excited when the kids would scratch around in the dirt for candy. I’d come out and start passing out candy, first they were okay and after a while the crowd would press up against me and were about to knock me over. I’d put my hand in the bag and throw the candy on the ground and the kids would dive on the ground and get the candy. I’d start passing out candy and Duc would just stand there, she wasn’t even watching, she knew I’d take care of her because I did. Song would too, but she was excited by watching the kids scratch around in the dirt for that candy. 29:04 After three or four days, one day I was passing out candy and after I’d thrown some on the ground and Duc [Song?] saw the kids getting the candy first and she’s look at me, and she’d look at the kids, and she’s look at me and look at the kids, and pretty soon she was rocking, she was trying to decide, and our of the corner of my eye I saw her dive down in the dirt to get that candy. I thought, “Oh, Song, why did you do that?” Afterwards, I wouldn’t give her any more candy because I wanted her to learn a lesson. Duc would come up to me and say, “Doc, I do what you say”, and I said, “I know you do honey, and here’s the most and best”. I’ve told that story so many times to kids, and say, “Wait for the best thing, wait for the right thing”, and I’ve had kids come back to me, even after a couple of years, and remind me of that story, so, that was one of the things I picked up in Vietnam. Interviewer: How regular was it to go into the village and that kind of thing? Did you go down during the day, or whenever you wanted to? 30:00 I usually didn’t go very often, some of the guys did, some of the guys stopped off at the house there, but I didn’t go down very much, usually if there was a reason. If someone 14 �needed my help, or—one time someone was pregnant and I thought, “Wait, this is way outside my understanding”, but any rate we tried to help out where we could. So, once in a while I would go down, but most of the time I was up on the hill. Interviewer: So, most of the stuff with the kids was they would come up to the hill to get the candy? They would come to the hill to get the candy and sometimes I would go down, but just for recreation. Interviewer: Then did any of the Vietnamese civilians come onto the base and do any work for you or anything like that? They did, and I can still remember the barber, the guy that shaved us and cut our hair and I still remember this blade that he had and he’s coming up my neck. I’m thinking, “this really could be a Vietcong and he could just take my life right now”, but he didn’t, thank God. 31:07 What seemed amazing to me was we were there fighting and this war, to me, was different than other wars. In other wars you’re taking territory. What was morbid about Vietnam, because it was the first war that this terrorist thing seemed to enter, was that you couldn’t tell if you were winning the war by taking ground, because you didn’t take ground, so you had to use body count, which was very morbid. The other thing was, you know, who knew who was who. Sometime you’re fighting and if a guy's out there with a rifle you shoot at him. If he puts it down and picks up a hoe you protect him, so who really knew if, these folks that were coming into camp and were shaving us, were Vietcong, or not. 32:05 It wasn’t like the suicide missions of today, because you just wouldn’t allow that, because—but that was the strange part of the war to me. 15 �Interviewer: Now, was the Vietcong active enough in the area to cause any problems in the village, or with the villagers that you were aware of? I think so, I don’t remember all the specifics, but they seemed to be all over. Interviewer: Now, as a medic for the artillery unit, did you look after, to some extent, just the people in the village and the area, and then the men in the unit you were assigned to, would you also help out the infantry if they had patrols and had casualties? Right, any soldier, any armed forces that was there I would look after. I don’t think we had to, but I tried to help the people that were there, because they were people. 33:01 I do remember, after a while, a year seemed like such a long time, I mean, I was a kid and the other guys were kids. I remember there were some nurses from Canada, I don’t know where I saw them, but I just remember listening to them and it was amazing to hear someone, a woman who spoke English, but I mean it was just kind of delightful to get to hear that after a while, and after a while, ten months, eleven months. The other thing was, you didn’t go over to fight with your unit until the war was won, you went over for a year, so people were coming and going all the time, and I think that also was another element with Vietnam that helped to change the nature, there’s something about the camaraderie that you build with the unit. Here the goal was to make it for a year and then you could go home. 34: 04 I’m proud to have served my country. There were some that took off to Canada and didn’t do it, but I was proud to serve my country even in a kind of crazy war like that, but I was anxious to go home. I remember getting stuff in the mail. I think my little sister sent popcorn, or something, which by the time it got there was stale, or dry, but it was really wonderful and I wanted to see my family and I 16 �remember when we got short, our time was short, we carried around this little stick they make over there, it’s called a “short timer's stick” and I remember walking proudly around like the other guy had done when he was short and everyone knew that my time was short. I still remember leaving and when I got down to the place where we were going to fly out from, I remember walking up to the plane and thinking, “Man, I’d hate to get it right now when I’m almost on the plane”. 35:07 It was quite an experience and I learned a lot about life and I served my country. There’s something about being a soldier and I admire those who served their country back then, prior to that, and those who serve their country now, and even in the Michigan Senate, where I served for eight years, we had a Memorial Day service and as veterans we would stand there, everyone would get a flag that was folded if someone from your district gave his life. I’ve had to walk up and put my flag in the basket. It represents a whole life and all the people that know and loved that individual. 36:00 It was a very meaningful time, and then, because I was a veteran, I would stand next to the basket as others came and we would receive those flags. I would stand at attention knowing that hearts were breaking in the people in the audience, because they were seeing the power of that moment, but I realized that I was there to do what’s right, to serve even through difficult times, because we had served in a difficult time in Vietnam and done the right thing, what I felt we were called upon to do and I was still serving and still a soldier trying to do the right thing, even now in life. So that time taught me a lot about life. Interviewer: I want to go back and kind of fill in some of the other pieces of the picture and the experience here. One thing was, you, in a way, were in kind of an unusual situation in that you did stay in the same place the whole time and with the 17 �same unit the whole year. 37:00 You weren’t moving around and that sort of thing, and my impression, just in passing, was that you weren’t taking a whole lot of casualties out of there. Did you get hit by mortars periodically or things like that? Sometimes, yes Interviewer: Were there ever like sappers trying to get into the base, or ground attacks that you can recall? I can remember preparing for some of the things, and I don’t know if I blocked our a few things, but I don’t remember anyone getting into the base. We were pretty well fortified and most of our efforts seemed to be shooting our big guns quite a distance and sending down the infantry that actually fought. I do remember as Tet was beginning, I guess beginning, and the preparation and the tension there rose quite a bit. 38:03 I think that’s why my time to leave seemed to be right in one situation, although, I didn’t want to leave—you hate to leave the people that you care about, including Mot. I asked the medic who was coming in to replace me, “Would you please take care of the boy, I don’t know if he did or not, and I hope he did. Interviewer: You also mentioned, and I was also going to ask you that in part because you were talking about—because everyone was on their own clock, or their own calendar, yo don’t have quite the same kind of camaraderie you do if yo train with people and go over as a unit, but you would have had a certain amount of continuity at least. There are people there alongside for a number of months and you’re not taking large numbers of casualties, which means there is, at least, some room for guys to get oriented and to learn how to do it well, so in a way, that side of the replacement system functions reasonably well. 39:04 18 �Absolutely, there were folks that we obviously got to know, and like I said, I was known as Doc, so people would come to me, not only with their ailments and what not, but with the stories of what was going on in their life and I would talk to them about that. But, I think there’s something to be said that here’s a unit that’s going over to accomplish a purpose and we’re going to stick to it until we accomplish the purpose. We may lose some, but then we’re going to go home together, that part was different. Again, all I’ve experienced is Vietnam. Interviewer: Did you have kind of a daily routine while you were living on the base? Yes, but I can’t remember it very much. I think, mostly, my duty was just taking care of folks and dealing with emergencies as they came up. 40:05 Where a lot of guys had to take turns doing something that I thought was a joke when I first heard it. When I first landed over they said they burned the manure, that’s not what they called it, but anyway, and I thought, “Oh come on, you’re pulling my leg because I’m new”, and then in formation they said they were going to start picking out guys to go and that’s their duty. I think I’d rather have KP, and I remember trying to be rather inconspicuous in the crowd as people actually did that, I thought, “This is crazy”. Of course we didn’t have plumbing over there, so that’s what they did. Interviewer: Pouring Diesel fuel onto barrels of waste and setting fire to it? Right, you had a big pot and the latrines were there and that’s where everything went and you burned it, which I’d never heard of that. 41:00 So, there were various duties and once I went to the line battery I was excluded from all of that, so it was mainly being on hand and working with folks and ready to help. 19 �Interviewer: To a certain extent, your job was mainly waiting for something to happen; they had to generate business for you. Right, and perhaps that’s why I kind of became the counselor and the befriender of the kids and everything else, because we did have free time, but when we got busy, and there were times that things happened, then you were busy. Interviewer: Now, did you get any R&R time during that year? Did you get to go off the base? Actually, I didn’t go off the base during that—I remember some guys were going certain places. 42:02 They were talking about some of the things they liked to do, which some of them I didn’t do because of my beliefs and what not. But, I didn’t really—I don’t think that I ever when off the base, I mean, I went down to the village, but not to another site. Interviewer: Would you ever get sent back to the hospital or anything like that, or just stay at your post? We did travel some, because I remember being in a chopper, I remember traveling down the road in a Jeep, and that’s kind of where I thought through—yes, come to think of it, some of it’s coming back now, and we did travel some and that’s where I really started to think through, because I found myself before, when I wasn’t carrying a firearm, I found myself, and it’s just the way I think, “What am I going to do if this happens, or that happens? If guys get hit, I’m going to grab this gun and protect”. 43:02 Then I thought, “Wait a minute, bill, you kind of answered your own question, you will protect”, so I took, like I said, about nine months into it I took a forty-five, so I could protect my patients and myself. So, we did travel, I do remember traveling on a chopper, I 20 �remember going up and I don’t know if we were heading back to the base, or taking folks somewhere, but I remember looking at the puffs of smoke as Charlie was shooting at us and I remember wanting to move myself around, but where can you go, you know. I thought it would be pretty bad to get hit in the butt while you’re flying up here, but anyway, that’s just what happened. So, yes, I did travel somewhat and come to think of it, I do remember the old Jeep like medic trucks with the big red cross on it. 44:00 Almost like what you see in M.A.S.H., which is kind of amazing that we didn’t change very much, but yes, even as I talk about it, some of that’s coming back to me. Interviewer: So, you might take patients to a hospital or to an aid station, someplace where they brought casualties, and you could help out, so there is some movement back and forth there? Right, yes I did do that, yes and thank you, you’re very good. Interviewer: We do our best. Now, on a different side of things, you played basketball, was there anything else to do for entertainment, or to kill time when there wasn’t much going on? I’m sure there was, I just-Interviewer: Did you guys play cards or that kind of thing? Yeah, yeah, so I—yes, I did play cards. I loved playing Tonk and this got me off—this guy just seemed to—he knew right when to come down and I was thrilled if I could beat him just a little, a few games. 45:03 But, so yes, we would do things like that and like I said, there were other activities that some of the guys did. Interviewer: Now you said you got some packages from home once in a while, would you write home regularly, or did they write you, how did that work? 21 �I think I wrote some time and they would write me, my sister and my mom. It’s amazing, I don’t know how healthy some of the things were that had to take that much time to get there, but it tasted good, because it was from home, but yes, and that was very meaningful to get things from other people. I think there was a group that would send cards, or letters out to some of the soldiers, which was also meaningful. Anytime you got anything from home it meant something, whether you knew the person or not, but certainly from those that you know and love. Interviewer: Some of the larger bases, they might actually bring entertainment in of one kind or another, out there, whether it was bands from the Philippines, or USO things. 46:06 Was your base too small for that kind of thing? Yeah, it was too small and most of our visitors were Generals coming through to inspect and then we’d have the General scare, as I called it. Interviewer: Did you have much of a sense of what was actually going on in the war while you were there, or did you just stay focused on your own immediate area? Again, it’s pretty haze because of the years, but I think we had some sense, we’d hear reports, we knew that things were cranking up, Tet, we knew some of the things that were happening up at the DMZ, but that was just—you’d hear from the infantry usually, because they were moving around and come in, so we did have some sense. I don’t have a sense that I was really that well informed, not at all. 47:02 Interviewer: Did you have sources of information beyond just what other soldiers said? I mean, were you reading Stars and Stripes, or was there radio you could listen to? 22 �I think there was, but that’s not what stood out with me over the years. I guess it’s funny, the things that do stand out, or don’t. Interviewer: How would you characterize morale in the unit that you were with, and the attitudes of the guys around you? I think it was pretty decent for the situation that we were in, and obviously some of the folks were very gung hoe like the 2nd Louie, some were doing okay and bidding their time. I think some liked army life, but most folks wanted to get back home to what we call the real world. 48:00 We heard the different songs—I think the one song, I can’t remember the group, but it said, “Give me a ticket on an airplane, ain’t got time to take a fast train”, I mean, that was real big about the time I was getting ready to go back home and I don’t know when it came out. I remember at South High School there were a few folks that were famous, obviously President Ford went there, and Al Green went there about the same time I did. He’s a singer and I remember getting back home later on and he had hit it big. I’d—his brother use to sing in these gospel quartets that I use to sing in, you know, in a group, and I guess he did too early on and then all of a sudden I got back home and I heard his song and someone was giving me a ride, I think he was, and I said, “That’s your song”. “Where have you been?” “Well, I’ve been in Vietnam”, but now it’s being played on popular music, so there are a lot of things you miss. 49:02 Yeah, there is a lot that I missed, obviously. Interviewer: Now, there are stereotype images of Vietnam and what went on in Vietnam and a certain kind of standard list of things, and one is racial tensions and also, issues of drug use, and people going out of the way and behaving badly and trying to get kicked out of the military and a lot of that kind of thing, or even 23 �fragging officers and that sort of stuff. Were you aware of any of that going on around you? Racial tensions, yes—yes, drug use, I was aware more of alcohol use, but I didn’t drink alcohol, so I wasn’t as in tune to all of that, but I think there were some who—I don’t remember any specific situations, but just were misbehaving, because that’s what they did in general. 50:08 Interviewer: Can you talk a little bit about what form racial tensions played themselves out in, or what way you were aware of people’s attitudes, or that kind of thing? I just remember one of the docs, he seemed to be a nice guy , but when he drank a little bit too much he’s start to make some comments toward me. Unfortunate, but that’s what happened, but I figured I got to survive and keep pushing and do what I’m here to do, so I did. Fortunately, I didn’t have to spend my whole year there, it was just initially when I first came in and was at the hospital, or it was at the unit that I was from. Interviewer: But, when you were out there in the field, out on that firebase, did they worry about that kind of stuff? 51:05 I did not notice a whole lot out there. I’m not saying that it didn’t take place at all, but I didn’t pick up on it so much there. I think. From my standpoint, that people were trying to survive and there were some—I remember this African American sergeant who seemed like a real standup guy, a big strong real leader, actually I remember playing basketball with him and he did these behind the back passes, so I think people were there trying to survive at that point in time. Interviewer: That does seem to be a fairly consistent pattern, I mean, the farther away you get from the rear areas and the safe areas, and you’re more out there, you 24 �need each other more than most of the rest of the stuff and you don’t worry about it as much. Absolutely, I think the—I don’t know if people saw color when they saw me, they saw Doc. 52:00 And whether it’s a 2nd Lieutenant waking me up it’s the African American soldier that wakes me up and says, “Hey, my kid is sick, come and help him”, meaning his Vietnamese kid that he adopted. I was just the Doc and I think people saw each other that way a little bit more, again away from the higher ranking superiors. Interviewer: As your time was coming to an end, did anyone make an effort to encourage you to reup and do another tour or anything like that? They may have, but I don’t remember it. I’m a pretty independent thinker, again I thought about just extending this to the adoption, but I decided against it. I do miss—I missed some of those kids after a while, but I’m a single guy and I think I was eighteen when I went over, or nineteen, so what did I know. 53:10 Interviewer: Once your tour was over and they’re sending you back to the states, did you still have time left on your enlistment? I had six months, which I served in Wilmington, Ohio, so it was six hours away from home. I know, because I’d come home as often as I could and I wanted to be home so badly that we had to be there at six o’clock in the morning and try as I might it seemed like I was always leaving around twelve o’clock midnight and driving like crazy to get back in time, but it was just hard to get away from home before that time. 54:00 Interviewer: Now, at the point when your tour ends, your year is up, you get to leave the base and go back home, do you remember anything about that trip, or leaving the base, or crossing the ocean? Did you fly back? 25 �We flew back and I remember, as I said, I was about to get on the plane and take off and I’m thinking, “Boy, I hope I don’t get it here”, because I was just almost in the plane, and then I remember we landed in Washington, I think it was Washington. Interviewer: It might have been because a lot of people landed at the SeattleTacoma. I remember a couple things—we landed and I was so thrilled to be back in the United States of America and I remember that I seemed to love the country more when I came back that I did when I left. 55:01 I think when you give something, just like our families, when you sacrifice and give, it’s just like you loved them more, well, “Where your treasure is, may your heart be also”, so we gave the treasure of risking our lives and our time, but I remember when I landed I wanted so badly to just get out and get down and kiss the ground. I didn’t because I thought certain people would probably be looking, but we were at the airport, but I had this urge to just drop down and kiss the concrete, or something. I didn’t kiss it, but I remember walking in the airport and I saw this young lady with these shoes and the straps came up this high on her ankles and I thought, “Boy the styles have really changed a lot in a year”, but it may have been that it was the west coast and I was from Michigan, but you notice those kind of different things. It’s just, “What a thrill and a joy to be back home”. 56:00 Interviewer: So, there they didn’t have any anti-war protestors around when you got in, or anything like that? I don’t remember them, now I know that it was a very unpopular war and sometimes people took it out— 26 �Interviewer: A lot happened in Oakland and to the people who would fly into Oakland talk about it, but maybe not necessarily up in Washington. I think that I was probably saved from that. Now, I do know that we understood that being Vietnam veterans was not popular, so you just didn’t mention that you served, which is a shame, even if it could be another Vietnam vet. I’ve heard of people working next to each other in a factory with one machine next to the other for ten to twelve years and one not mentioning to the other that they served in Vietnam. I talk about it a lot now, because I just think we ought to honor those who serve even if we don’t like the war. 57:00 But, I do remember experiencing that and seen some of the disdain, but I don’t remember a lot of the protest, personally, I mean, I’ve seen it on TV of course. Interviewer: Now, when they send you out to Wilmington, Ohio what were you doing there? It’s funny, but I remember very little of what I did there. I was at the base and I think there was a medical unit there, or something, and it was pretty boring compared to Vietnam. Mainly, I remember getting off base and coming home, those were my big memories and I remember hardly anything of being there. Interviewer: That’s also a period, I mean this is—you come back in the spring of 1968 and then that middle part of 1968 was a pretty crazy time in this country. Martin Luther King gets killed, Johnson decides he’s not going to run, you get Robert Kennedy getting killed and the election and all the rest of that stuff going on. 58:07 Did you pay much attention to that? Oh yes, and I was very attuned to it, because the riots—I was just trying to understand it all and thinking, “Why are blacks rioting in their own areas?” I mean, if—not that I 27 �wanted them to hurt anyone else, but it just doesn’t seem to make any sense. But, I think the anger; the—sometimes it’s not always logical. I remember the Kennedy’s, I remember thinking that— I mean, I’m a republican now, but I thought Bobby Kennedy was a pretty good guy and thought he might have been a better president than his brother John. 59:10 But, then he was shot too and Ted was left and I didn’t want him to be president, but then that’s just my own opinion. Then, of course, Doctor King and all that went around there. It was an incredible time, just an absolutely incredible time, and that’s probably why just being on the base didn’t’ seem to—I hardly have—I don’t have much memory at all of that. Interviewer: Now, when yo finally do get discharged then, later in 1968, do yo go back home then to Grand Rapids and try to pick up where you left off? Right, right, I remember wanting to get a GTO. 00:06 I remember I sent money home, but I think it was a 1968 and I love white cars, I still buy a white car now, but I remember wanting to get a GTO, Go, and I think when I first got back I got a Mustang to drive back and forth and I couldn’t afford a GTO, so I got a Le Mans, the same body, but it doesn’t have the big engine and what not. But, it had the bucket seats, so that was cool and then just went back to work and eventually went back to school. Interviewer: What kind of job did yo get when you got back? Well, let’s see, I think I worked at Dexter Lock, I think I worked there—I can’t remember if I worked there just when I got back, or if I worked at GM. 1:11 I know I worked at GM when I started school again, and I worked full time and went to school full time. I think I was married by that time and just trying to catch up on life. It was like I had let some time slip away, so it was time to knuckle down, so full time doing both. 28 �Interviewer: Were you able to use GI benefits for tuition and things like that? Yes, yes I was, but that was a little while later, so—that was much later, come to think of it, so I think for a while I just went back to work. Interviewer: So, did you finish up at Junior College first and then go on to Grand Valley, or did you just go to Grand Valley after you started up? 2:00 Actually, it was a while before I went back. I went through a three and a half year marriage and then I married Clova, my wife now of thirty seven years, and she went back to school and got her masters from Western and she really encouraged me. She said, “Bill, you got a lot to offer, you should go back to school”, and then I went back and I just went straight through to get my masters, but that was back in 1973, I think it was, and then I just did two years Junior College, two years, Grand Valley, and I even started at Western before I finished at Grand Valley. I was just determined, I was going to go full time whether I’m working or not, and get the degree. Interviewer: And once you got the degrees what kind of job were you looking for? Well, my undergrad degree was in behavioral science and public administration and my master’s in public administration, so I wanted something in that arena. 3:03 I got a job working for Kent County Community Health and that kind of started that part of my public service career and later on, some years after that, I didn’t know when I was going for my degree that I’d get in elective office, but we got involved with that in the 80’s. Interviewer: Where did you start, was it sort of city council or Mayor of Kentwood at one point, what’s the sequence there? This was much later; this was in around '80 for me after doing some other things I began to pray and think about, “What am I here for? What do I need to accomplish?” This was 29 �a big issue for me and I think we’re all here for a purpose. 4:02 I felt like some area of public service was mine, so I just wrote the Mayor of Kentwood, we lived in Kentwood at the time, and said, “I’d like to serve anywhere you think I could be helpful”, and he appointed me to the Parks and Recreation Commission and I served there for a little while, two and a half years, then I went on the Board of Appeals and did that for about a year and a half and then I was City Commissioner, which is elective, for about five to five and a half years, but eleven years in those before going to serve as Mayor for ten years and then in the Michigan State Senate for eight years. Interviewer: Alright, and then you did run for congress this past year and lost in the primary at that point. Do you have regular work now, or what are you doing? Well, now we’re involved in the—I do some speaking; I’m going to do some teaching at Community College. 5:02 We’re talking about doing some public policy work, which could be starting in a few weeks as well, so a variety of things, but I’m still involved in public policy and staying close to, and involved in public service, so I will continue to do that for a while, but I’ve always enjoyed and felt like part of what I do is speak on issues I’m passionate about and upstart organization. On marriage, we pushed mentoring, so I enjoy speaking about that as well as veterans’ issues as well. Interviewer: Well, you’ve got a pretty consistent record here that seems to go back to your time in the service and that is you’re dedicated to public service and trying to help the people around you and that seems to be a pretty consistent pattern. 6:00 Aside from kind helping develop that commitment, what do you think the effect of your military service was on you? 30 �I think it taught me real lessons about discipline. I remember seeing some folks there that just couldn’t take orders. I don’t mean that you do everything blindly, but as I said, the sergeants were teaching us you can’t get up and argue about everything. I saw some that had a pretty brutal time because they just weren’t disciplined. It taught me about perseverance, as I said, “I feel like I’m still a soldier”. Sometimes you just have to set your jaw and even though it’s painful, it may be painful to watch what’s going on, to watch those flags go in the basket, because you know what they represent, but you’ve got to continue to fight for this country. 7:00 I feel like, in my own way, that’s what I’m doing. Interviewer: Alright, and thank you for a good story and thank you for taking the time to tell it to me. Thank you very much, I’ve enjoyed being interviewed. 31 �32 � 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 Hardiman, Bill (Interview transcript and video), 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hardiman, Bill Description An account of the resource Bill Hardiman was born in 1947 in Pontiac, Michigan, and grew up in Grand Rapids. After graduating from high school, Hardiman briefly attended Grand Rapids Junior College, then left school and received his draft notice in 1966. Through efforts made by his church, Hardiman received the label of "conscientious objector", so when he reported in 1966, the Army sent Hardiman to Fort Sam Houston in Texas for both his basic training and advanced training to be a medic. Once Hardiman finished at Fort Sam Houston, he deployed to Vietnam, where he received an assignment to an artillery section stationed on a hilltop firebase near the city of Chu Lai. While on the firebase, Hardiman not only treated the wounded in his artillery section, but also wounded soldiers in the infantry unit also stationed on the firebase, as well as Vietnamese civilians living in a village at the base of the hill the firebase was on. Once his tour in Vietnam ended, Hardiman returned to the United States and finished his enlistment, finally leaving the military in 1968. He eventually returned to college and went on to an extended career in public service. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Kentwood Historic Preservation Commission (Kentwood, Mich.) WKTV WKTV (Wyoming, Mich.) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Video recordings United States. Army Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type 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 2011-05-11 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HardimanB1108V 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/6a2b0a120534b8fd7da2c4ff120857c2.mp4 aac6eb40046431c0ad6f836431124957 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/05e9d6207abb2abdc346d24d05bb062c.pdf 94fa6c9048e7d3ffb3bd5013d5f25deb PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview World War II Lloyd Hansen 1:21:02 Introduction (00:21)                    Lloyd was born on July 4, 1925 in Jamestown, North Dakota. He was the family’s sixth child and before he was three months old they moved to California. They eventually settled in Michigan. His father was working for the Jamestown Sun as a newspaper writer when Lloyd was born. Later, he became the General Missionary for the American Sunday School Union. They went out into rural areas and started Sunday school programs in the local school houses. The family moved to Michigan when Lloyd was in fourth grade, but he does not have much memory before that time. (02:40) Lloyd moved into the Lincoln Consolidated School District south of Ypsilanti. At the time, everybody came to school by bus, no one walked. Lloyd and his family were considered poor and received clothes and food boxes from local churches to help support them. By this time, they had nine children in the family. (04:55) Once the war started, Lloyd’s mother and his wife’s father both worked at the bomber plant in Ypsilanti. At the time, anybody who lived in the country was considered a farm family and they could get a driver's license at age fourteen. This was the age Lloyd was when his father took him down to the court house and signed for him to get his license. (07:14) Because he had so much driving experience, once he was drafted, he volunteered to become a truck driver. Lloyd went to school and church with his future wife. They grew up together, but she was two years younger than he was. He doesn’t remember hearing about Pearl Harbor on the radio. By the time he graduated, most of the boys in his class had already enlisted. Lloyd’s older brother joined the Air Force, so when Lloyd was a senior he went to Selfridge Field and took the entry exams so he could join himself once he graduated high school. He failed because of his depth perception. (09:29) At age eighteen, every man had to register for the draft. Lloyd did this in July and he was drafted in November 1943. Before he left for basic training, he went to work in Ypsilanti in a foundry. Lloyd was planning on becoming a pastor, and his church sent the appropriate forms to the draft board to get him a waiver, but the board did not recognize them. (11:07) �In the Army (11:19)  He was drafted in Ann Arbor, then sent to Battle Creek and went to Fort Custer where he was issued his uniforms.  He was then transported by train to California for basic training. The train headed north into the mountains and went to Camp Roberts, which was an infantry training base. Two train cars were cut loose there and Lloyd was on one of them. He was sent to the artillery training there, not the infantry that he had expected. (13:01)  After he arrived, they were taken off the train car, conducted a roll call and separated the men for the artillery from the infantryman and then taken to their barracks.  They asked if anyone wanted to be a truck driver, and Lloyd raised his hand and volunteered. Because of that, his basic training was easier than most because he did not have to march or conduct combat training.  An emphasis was placed on discipline and following orders. Lloyd did well with that aspect and as a result only had to pull KP Duty once. (15:45)  The men with him in basic training were from all over the United States. He didn’t know anybody when he got there.  After basic training, he was sent to a base outside of Boston. (17:55)  He was only there for about a month. Truck drivers were sent to the docks to run fork lifts that were being used to load bombs onto ships.  Lloyd spent about six months at Camp Roberts in California.  His uncle was a colonel at Camp Roberts, and was in charge of the court martial board. (20:34) Overseas (21:37)         Lloyd was shipped overseas and took a luxury liner, which arrived in London in nine days. He left the states in the spring of 1944. The weather was fine during the crossing, and the ocean looked almost solid to him like you could step right onto it. On the trip, the ship began to zigzag and he was told they had to take evasive maneuvers to avoid German U-boats. (23:05) At that point, he was not assigned to a unit, he was just a replacement. When D-Day happened, he had been sent away to radio school, but he couldn’t pass the Morse code test. He was then sent back to the motor pool as a truck driver. Later he was sent out to the Salisbury Plains for six weeks of infantry and rifleman training. The ground was flat with limestone underneath, which made it impossible to dig a foxhole. So instead they just made a mark on the ground that was supposed to symbolize their foxhole. (25:42) When they came back from that training, they were sent as replacements to France. They were put onto ships and they crossed the English Channel. The water was very rough on the trip, and to avoid seasickness Lloyd went to the lowest part of the ship. (27:00) While in England, they had little contact with the local people. Once he remembers having to ride an English train and he sat in a compartment with an English family. � He got their address, and when he was at one of the training camps he got a day pass to visit the family and brought the kids a bag of oranges. That was the only contact he had with civilians. France (29:25)  Lloyd was shipped across the English Channel on a small transport ship. They landed in a harbor and got into trucks and headed inland. This was around July or August.  He wrote home and said that the lieutenant that he had was drunk and couldn’t march. His captain threatened to court martial him for the letter, and Lloyd reminded him that he was breaking the law by keeping the letter and not sending it out. (32:05)  This captain later asked one of the sergeants to beat up Lloyd for the incident and the sergeant said that he couldn’t beat him up because he was so little.  Going from one replacement camp to another took several months and they eventually made it to a line company. During this time they read or found something else to do.  No real training occurred, just rifle maintenance and physical training to stay in shape.  The French countryside was beautiful and he saw lots of hedgerows. (34:32)  He was finally assigned to a line unit that was in northern France. Their headquarters was located in a cave.  Lloyd was put behind a machine gun because the CO thought he was a heavy weapons expert.  His infantry rifle training was only with the M-1 rifle. He didn’t have any training on machine guns. (36:58)  The first night he was there, he was sent to cut a hole in the hedgerow and place a .50 caliber machine gun in the position to cover the infantry movement the next day. They dug a deep foxhole behind the gun. Once they started firing, they heard a mortar shell coming in and they took cover and they discovered that the machine gun and hedgerow were completely destroyed. (38:46)  From there, they began moving up the line as part of the H Company (heavy weapons).  Lloyd did not want to be a machine gunner, so he just carried the ammunition. Five men made up the machine gun crew.  The nice thing about being on a machine gun crew was that they did not have to go out on night missions. Instead, they stayed back and set up gun positions and remained there all night long. (41:18)  Lloyd was with the 79th Division, 315th Regiment, Heavy Weapons Company operating in the Vosges Mountains near Germany.  While campaigning, Lloyd does not remember any bad weather.  His unit was continuously moving forward and he wasn’t with the division long before they were sent on R&R. (43:56)  They went to an old chicory plant to rest and conduct some training.  One day, the Chaplin asked Lloyd to help him with some baptisms. The pair went down to the river which was feed from the mountains and it was very cold. They baptized five men that day in the river. (45:03)  Once they returned to the front, they were kept in reserve. After a while, they were ordered to move up to the front and replace the Rainbow Division in Hotton. Lloyd was �told that they were a fresh division from the United States. They were pushed out by the Germans. It was there that Lloyd was wounded. Wounded (46:48)  Years later, Lloyd returned to that town and took pictures of the town and the barn that he was in when he was hit.  He was standing guard in a barn and a mortar shell blew the barn wall into his face, he was then sent back to the hospital. The town is located in France. (47:50)  They were in the town for a week or so before he was wounded.  Lloyd never saw the Germans except for dead bodies.  He doesn’t remember any air or artillery support with his unit. (49:51)  They had a French outfit to their right, and at night they were loud and ran their jeep. Later, the French took a hill that had a German 88 Artillery piece. Lloyd found out that the gun was pointed right at the road they came up.  When he was wounded, the shell that hit him was the first and only one that came in. (51:33)  After being hit, the medics came and took him down into the basement, but doesn’t remember anything after that. They cleaned him up and was given a sedative; he was taken on a half track back to the hospital. He was sent to three hospitals one of which was in Paris. (54:26)  He remembers being taken to a doctor and having him check out his eyes and put new gauze and bandages on his face.  From there, he was flown to the First General Hospital in England and performed operations on his eyes to allow him to see again. (56:13)  One procedure that they did was to put gauze under his eyelids, and someone would reach down and check his pulse every so often. He learned that this spread the top part of the eye which pulled apart the scar tissue making it possible to see through.  Lloyd was allergic to the medicine they used to dilate his eyes.  In England the Red Cross was supposed to come and help him write letters, but they never did. He learned that if he put a pin hole in a card and looked through it, it helped him to see through his scar tissue and be able to write letters home. (58:41)  On Easter Sunday, 1945, Lloyd was able to see well enough to go down to church. He was in bed most of the time, but he was taken on walks often.  He was given a shot that caused him to have a fever. Lloyd was later told that by having a fever helped his eyes heal. (1:01:24) Shipped Home (1:01:49)  Shortly after Easter, he was considered a walking patient and he was put back on a luxury liner that had been converted into a hospital ship and taken home. On the way home, the ship sailed straight without zigzagging.  From England the ship went to Canada and from there they were loaded onto a train and taken to Camp Miles Standish. From there, he was put on a bus and taken to Valley Forge General Hospital. (1:03:36) � When Lloyd got a weekend pass which was good from Friday night to Monday morning, he went out of bounds for his pass and got on a bus to Ann Arbor, Michigan. (1:05:12)  He surprised his parents and had breakfast. He then went to see his girlfriend, Beth. They had been dating for a while, and the second weekend that he went home they decided to get married. (1:08:07)  He applied for a furlough from the Red Cross and was approved.  When he was being examined by the doctor, he suggested that he have a cornea replacement, which fell on the same day that he was supposed to be married. He decided to get married instead. Later examinations said that his eyes had healed so well that he didn’t need the operation. (1:10:40)  Lloyd was discharged in July 1945. He was married on May 7.  His wife Beth hadn’t graduated high school yet, so she stayed and graduated.  After being discharged, they moved back to Michigan. That fall, he went to Eastern Michigan University for one year, three years at North Central University in Illinois and three years at the Evangelical Theological Seminary. (1:13:50)  Because he was wounded and had a medical discharge, that put him under Public Law 16 and not just G.I. Bill. That paid for four years of college and one year of seminary.  While he went to school, Beth worked as a waitress at the truck stop.  Serving with the Methodist church, he was moved every four years. (1:16:20)  Looking back at his time in the military, the service didn’t bother him like it did others. He had faith that God’s plan was good enough for him and he just went along with it.  If he hadn’t been drafted, served and wounded, he does not think he would be a pastor because they wouldn’t have been able to afford the school.  While in Hotton, the Germans had the area surrounded. An American halftrack used to come in from the woods and brought out the wounded. He heard later that during a snow storm the rest of the Americans in the town had been brought out after he had been wounded and evacuated. (1:19:36) � 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 Hansen, Lloyd (Interview outline and video), 2013 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hansen, Lloyd Description An account of the resource Lloyd was born on July 4, 1925 in Jamestown, North Dakota. His family moved to California before they settled in Michigan. His father was a missionary with the American Sunday School Union. When Lloyd was a senior in high school he took the entrance exams to join the Air Force but was turned down because of his depth perception. He was later drafted into the Army in November 1943. He was sent to Europe as a replacement after D-Day and served in a heavy weapons company in the 79th Division until wounded in northeastern France late in 1944. 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 2013-08-14 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HansenL1490V 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/75fe00fe83fed7feebeb24a3c9de6564.mp4 f98acaabce1d153877e620a62c5a4342 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c3e033bfcbed3f88e13f48969030c2f6.pdf c44161ab8a8e2279b189251341e6fcc0 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Harold Hanselman (01:05:35) (00:19) Introduction: • Born in 1924 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. • Graduated high school in 1942. • Attended Western Michigan University. • Father was a real-estate manager for property that he inherited from his father. • Grandfather’s candy company invented the first ice-cream bar. (04:32) Learning of Pearl Harbor: • Was listening to the radio when it was announced. • Remembered thinking that the United States could not be that vulnerable. • He knew about the conflict between Hitler and Chamberlain, but not much more. • Because the conflict in Europe seemed so far away, he did not pay much attention to the issue. (06:07) Enlistment: • The reserve corps offered to keep him in college if he enlisted with the reserve. • They called him up after only one term of college. (07:02) Training: • Went to Camp Grant, Illinois for a few days. • He first received a large overcoat and boots. • None of his original uniform was tailored to his size. • Many of his colleagues were washouts from pilot training. • He was sent to the air corps. • After basic training he was sent to radio and gunnery school. • He was sent to basic training to Florida via train. • His basic training was in the swamps near Fort Myers, Florida. • The men were housed in tents. • The army brought king snakes in to eat rattlesnakes and coral snakes. • Remembers having king snakes sneak into cots at night. • Because of the poor health conditions, the men were sent to Clearwater, Florida. • Basic training lasted three or four months. (12:00) Radio School: • Scott Field, Illinois. • The barracks were very nice. • He was schooled in Morse code, which he enjoyed. (12:39) Gunnery School: • Went to Georgia. • He learned how to use .30 caliber and .50 caliber machine guns. • To graduate, he had to dismantle a .50 caliber machine gun and put it back together while blindfolded. • Accidentally insulted an officer while in training, and was not punished. �• Finished school in fall 1943. (16:20) Finding a Pilot and Training in Alaska: • Went to a large gymnasium in Columbia, South Carolina. • Because pilots could take their planes home for a long weekend, he saw a pilot who was from Detroit, Michigan so he could also take a long weekend before leaving. • The men went to Seattle, Washington and then Anchorage, Alaska for cold weather flying and training. • The cold weather training was difficult. His heavy gloves made it difficult to complete Morse code, so he had to do it without gloves. • At one point it reached 60 degrees below zero. • On a night training mission, the men flew to Nome, Alaska and encountered a large group of Soviet soldiers who were guarding Soviet military equipment. • During the evenings, the men would walk into town. • Watched a prospector come into a bar one night and pay for his alcohol with gold. (22:38) Aleutian Islands and Missions: - After three weeks in Alaska, he was sent to the Aleutian Islands. • They traveled by transport plane. • He lived in a hut with 18 men total. Three six-man crews to each hut. • Realized how dangerous his position was when he saw the amount of gold stars hanging in the hut to represent the fallen airmen. • He was stationed on Attu Island. • Missions would last nine or more hours. • He flew a B-25. • The only encounter with the Navy consisted of World War I ships. • He would sometimes fly fleet coverage to help the Navy ships, however they would have to turn around very quickly. • There were P-38 planes also stationed on Attu Island. • The main targets were canneries with anti aircraft fortifications. • He would bomb the Kurile Islands, the northern most islands of Japan, very close to Russia. • The men would occasionally be hit with Soviet anti aircraft fire while on their missions to Japan, while they were still allies with the Americans in Europe. • The Soviet fire shot down at least one crew. • The men were scared of flying through the narrow straits between two particular islands, where the canneries were, due to the danger level intensified by the Soviets. • Earlier in the campaigns, 8 planes would go on each mission; later on they would only send 4. • He was always a member of the lead plane because his pilot was a senior pilot. • He had to maintain radio silence while on missions until they reached their position, but had to listen to all of the other codes coming in to see if they were to abandon their mission; this only occurred once. • He would listen to codes relating to weather or the breakdown of Japanese codes. �Once the mission was completed on the way back to the base, he would compile all information about the other planes on the mission and send a report back to the ground crew. • The missions usually consisted of eliminating anti aircraft guns and RADAR stations. • The plane would drop to 200-300 feet to try to surprise the enemy. • One return trip proved to be very dangerous. After a bombing raid, only one bomb was dropped, after trying to shake the other ones loose, and failing, the men had to shut the bomb bay door, to reduce drag on the aircraft. The bombs eventually came loose and jammed the bomb bay door. The bombs were all armed and did not explode during the whole flight home. • Freighters and fishing ships were also potential bombing targets. • The men were allowed their own judgment whether to fly or not due to weather. • Any interaction with Japanese zeroes would only bring four to five planes in. It was usually a flight instructor teaching the other Japanese fighter pilots to fly. • He came to recognize the flight instructor, who was a much better pilot that the others. The instructor would wave at the Americans as he flew past, and for a long time eluded their gunfire. • He finally came up with a plan to catch the instructor on his approach, and shot the instructor down. • Severe storms would well up because of the interaction due to the meeting of the Northern Pacific warm waters, with the Bering Sea. • Visual contact was the only way to know where the other planes were located. • He believes that the Japanese always knew the men were coming, and never really surprised them. (40:25) Life on Attu Island: • He describes life on Attu Island as very boring. • While rummaging through a storage closet, a friend and he found a few fishing rods and caught some very large trout in a lake. The army asked for more fishing tools to be sent to the Island for the men to fish. • He also found an old piano in storage and was allowed to clean it up. The men would have parties with the singing and piano playing. • The men would have beer provided by the military, and smuggled whiskey with the military looking the other day. • Playing cards was a large aspect of life. The games would continue to run for days and days, taking breaks when missions and sleep were needed. • The men especially enjoyed playing the game “Old Maid.” • There were many types of men stationed at Attu. A RADAR calibration team, the Navy, B-24 pilots and B-25 pilots. • There were no Japanese threats while he was on the Island. • The rubble from the battle of Attu was still visible. • The American Government throughout the war kept Native Americans who originally lived on Attu Island in the mainland of Alaska. • The Aleutian Islands are also amazing for bird watching. • There is nothing but a weather station on Attu Island currently. • �• • • • • • • • • • • The snow would become very deep due to storms, including huts becoming completely buried. The huts were outfitted with telephones for the men to request help once the huts were buried. The men would trade their bottles of whisky to the members of the Navy for frozen steaks because the Navy was not allowed to get alcohol. The men could hear the radio broadcasts from Tokyo Rose, who constantly attempted to break the morale. The largest morale breaker was the consistent boredom, especially for the ground crew. His crew maintained stimulation because of their numerous missions. He believes he flew around 25 missions, but he is not positive. He received mail, although it took weeks to reach him. Before leaving for the Aleutians, a wealthy man met Harold, on the train from South Carolina to Seattle, who called his family and told them to meet Harold in Chicago during an 11-hour layover. After the atomic bombs were dropped, the men were ordered to fly their planes to Seattle immediately. He was sent home for a 60-day furlough before going to San Antonio, Texas for discharge. While in San Antonio, he saw a man who he thought had been killed in battle, who had lived. (59:00) After the Service: • He enrolled in Western Michigan University. • He became a salesman after finishing school. • He did not retire until he was 69 years old because he liked the work. • Does not believe that wars do not solve large issues. � 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 Hanselman, Harold G. (Interview outline and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanselman, Harold G. Description An account of the resource Harold Hanselman served in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II. He was stationed on Attu Island in the Aleutian chain in the northern Pacific ocean. He was a radio operator in a B-25 bomber that would fly bombing missions in the Kurile Islands north of Japan. He discusses both the living conditions on Attu and the experience of flying missions in that area, where the Soviets and the weather added to the problems caused by the Japanese. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans United States. Army. Air Corps World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Video recordings Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008-03-19 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HanselmanH 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/f1360484c98d87f3825390e21cac72a2.mp4 6a62c1c48ce184ce6f50425a57aaa532 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/5e24cf8900ead08de1c919f405fafef2.pdf b1932eb343ff94b8355fef428163a046 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veteran’s History Project Vietnam War Era Ward Haner Interview Total Time: 2:31:00 Background:  (00:38) Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on October 12 th, 1946  (00:49) His father was a World War II vet  (1:10) Spent five years in Scottville, Michigan, where his grandfather had a store  (1:35) Moved back to the Grand Rapids area  (1:56) Father was a mechanic before, during and after the army  (2:10) Mr. Haner says this is why he decided to become a mechanic  (2:40) Had three sisters  (3:10) Graduated from Kentwood High School in June 1965  (3:19) Only had one month before going overseas  (3:33) Enlisted in the Navy Reserves when JFK was killed  (3:50) Trained in the Navy & Marine center on Monroe Avenue in Grand Rapids  (4:10) Wanted to do something for his country, so decided to enlist o Looked up to his father who was in the army o Chose the Navy because he hates snakes  (4:48) Looked at Vietnam as a possibility; it was in the back of his mind but he didn’t know for sure  (5:22) The reason he was interested was because of his grandfather in World War I and father in World War II Training  (5:51) Went to Great Lakes Naval Base in Illinois  (6:19) When he arrived at the Naval Base, said it was scary � (6:42) When he got to boot camp, they “let us know who was boss”  (6:58) Expecting the discipline  (7:08) Adjusting to military life was hard  (7:53) Boot camp was 6 weeks  (8:00) A lot of marching and drilling  (8:17) Got married 6-7 months into the service  (8:31) Wasn’t engaged when he went to boot camp yet  (8:54) Got a bit of liberty time in Chicago, but didn’t go far  (9:07) Thousands of guys training with him; couldn’t describe how big the base was  (9:21) Barracks was 100ft by 60ft  (9:32) Company AO 70  (9:43) Guys from all over the country came there to train, talks about how different everyone was  (10:04) Both enlistees and draftees  (10:13) Next, went to Norfolk, Virginia  (10:23) Flew from Great Lakes to a training ship to San Diego o Went on USS Walton, got very sick o The ship was a destroyer escort o Three weeks on the ship o (11:30) Remembers smells set him off o If you weren’t sick, eventually got sick from watching others o (11:48) Remembers a friend waking him up when they were pulling into port o (12:08) There was a bad storm that made Mr. Haner think they wouldn’t make it over  (12:53) Had time at home, had “sea legs”  (13:20) Graduated from high school after this  (13:33) Supposed to graduate in 1964, but short just a few credits  (14:01) The lieutenant allowed him to have 6 months to get his diploma or go to Vietnam � (14:40) Now he was in the Navy full time  (14:53) When he went back to school, met his wife Norfolk and First Assignment  (15:26) Made the mistake of eating on the plane, crab meat was spoiled  (15:41) Sick at the airport and on the cab  (15:52) They wanted to take him to the hospital when he got to the base, but he didn’t want to do that on his first night  (16:20) Stayed in transit until he got a ship  (16:27) Went on USS Forrestal, an aircraft carrier  (16:57) The Forrestal was the biggest and newest warship at the time o Flight deck was 4 football fields long  (18:32) Saw his name on a list, was in the 3rd division o He was in the starboard side mess decks  (19:04) Got indoctrinated o 14 different duties: air defense, general quarters, etc. o For these two he went 6 decks below mess decks in a tunnel, went to next one, each was 6-7 feet down o Side door was opened, 75 pound projectiles stacked on the walls for gun mounts o Had to load magazines o (20:29) Mr. Haner said there were tubes that went all over the ships to reload  (21:13) Anything that dropped over 6 ft in the Navy was considered dangerous  (21:49) Mr. Haner was on a man overboard team  (22:00) His team drove the ship o An hour on the helm, and lee helm o Witnessed 3 jets and 1 helicopter crash  (22:32) This was during Vietnam conflict; 1965 o Their next mission was to go to Vietnam  (22:51) Went aboard the ship on Friday, August 13th, and left on the 27th of August �o Mentions that during this time he bought a ring for his wife and sent it home o Wanted to go home before going to sea, and got 7 days leave after asking lieutenant o Found out the ring didn’t come; but she got it after he left back for the ship  (24:19) They pulled out from Chesapeake Bay and went south o Learned how to do different duties o Went down to St. Thomas, Virgin Islands  (25:50) At this point everybody was still training  (26:50) Rotated off and on  (27:26) Crew of 5,000 men on the ship  (28:16) Remembers rescuing a yacht in the Caribbean, someone had a heart attack and they brought the person on the ship  (28:49) Headed north after the Caribbean to Beirut, Lebanon  (29:00) Took a week to get there  (29:36) At that point they hadn’t had any liberty; Mr. Haner was too new  (29:57) The first port he got to leave the ship on was Naples, Italy o Mentioned that all the bars there were named after American cities  (30:54) Got little books that told them things about the towns of the ports they were in; what to do, what not to do, etc.  (31:47) A lot of sailors in that town  (32:26) Went to Genoa, Italy and met some college students from America  (33:20) Malta was next, he really enjoyed it  (33:47) Mentions that there was a colony of Little People on the island  (34:09) Went on a taxi ride in Malta  (34:35) Hit a few ports on the way to Lebanon, they landed on Morocco o Said it was dangerous to go to Morocco at that time o After this, went through the straits of Gibraltar  (35:20) Talks about a plane crash  (36:55) Always heard jet engines, but heard the explosion �o Saw the plane land in front of him on its side  (38:42) The crash that he just described was November 11 th, 1965  (39:02) Mr. Haner said they talked about things like that; took it in stride, but not everyone on the ship knew that it happened depending on where they were  (39:42) Pulled into Beirut o 7 days here o They were told not to go ashore alone, Mr. Haner went anyway o Saw something he wanted to take a picture of o As he was doing this, a guy on a horse blocked him from doing this; was holding an AK-47 and a huge sword o (41:15) There was a Christmas flight going out of Beirut for them to go home o Mr. Haner went home to get married; got the first flight out  (42:31) Rejoined the ship in Athens, Greece  (45:15) Went to Palermo, Italy and found out he had cousins there  (45:29) Went to Cyprus and Italy  (45:48) They were supposed to be gone for 12 months, but were gone for 10  (46:16) As the anchor was being pulled up, everyone could hear them  (46:42) Saw all the white hats go up in the air and land on the ocean o Every time you leave a port for the last time, it was a tradition  (47:20) Went back to Norfolk o 6-7k people on the pier welcoming them home  (48:26) Found out that they were going into dry dock when they were supposed to go to Vietnam  (48:42) There was only one fresh water evaporator left by the time they got back  (49:36) Went to a dock in Portsmouth, Virginia and water was pumped out  (49:58) Mentions that he was a firefighter on the ship o He had to go down with a yardbird, another guy went with him underneath the ship to fix the problem  (51:34) Still living on the ship while it was in dry dock � (52:07) He and his wife got an apartment near this place  (53:03) They were on the ship over Christmas, and pulled out in February  (53:26) They did a shakedown o He was on the lee helm, and the captain told him to go all engines full reverse o Captain told the helmsman to go 15 degrees left rudder, and the ship turned o They were trying to find out if it would brake o He was told to go engines full ahead o Then it was time to switch teams  (55:28) About 15 minutes later, ship started to shudder and he knew they were stopping; took 7 miles to make it go forward again  (56:00) Purpose of a shakedown cruise is to see what the ship’s got, if it will fail in any way  (56:54) Mr. Haner mentions that someone went to prison for lighting up a cigarette on the ship because it risked the whole ship being blown up  (57:05) Every week there was a fire on the ship o Usually from smokers o One time it was especially bad, they were down there for 8 hours o Ate C-rations, and Mr. Haner enjoyed them o The captain commended them for doing a great job firefighting; it was across from the nuclear bomb storage  (59:52) Came back to port after being on shakedown for two days  (1:00:28) Talked about drones that were launched for practice  (1:00:41) A pickup truck was shot off  (1:01:38) Mentions that he was nervous to be out at sea when his son was about to be born  (1:02:40) Received a telegram about his son  (1:03:03) About a month later they went home, and because Mr. Haner was a new father, he got leave on arrival  (1:05:20) Talks about how he jumped ship, friends helped him � (1:05:45) Almost missed his flight home  (1:06:00) Got a 7 day leave  (1:06:10) Ship then was headed towards Vietnam  (1:06: 20) While they were on a cruise, there had been a shortage of crews for the boats used on Vietnamese rivers (swift boats, etc.) and he found out that anyone with 10 months of service or more was subject to transfer o This was before the Cuba cruise  (1:07:25) They got a list of things to do  (1:07:45) They were supposed to be sent to a province at the DMZ o He had a good friend who was over there already o Mr. Haner was ready to go, but he never was sent to Vietnam  (1:08:15) Never found out why he never got orders  (1:08:58) The first Mediterranean cruise he was on was when he found out about the possibility of being sent to Vietnam  (1:09:08) The ship that Mr. Haner was on did go to Vietnam  (1:09:23) In 1967, there was an uprising in Beirut which caused their leave to be cancelled o They ran support for getting all of the Americans out o It took them about two weeks, went through 7 different time zones o Marines also helped with this o They were in port when they got the call to go to Beirut o After this, the ship went to Vietnam  (1:11:00) Mr. Haner was on an ammunition on-load; he never saw so many different weapons at one time before  (1:12:19) Carried boxes of 20mm for the jets, put them on a hook o They were sent to voids, and while opening the voids, some guys died because of the poison; hadn’t been opened in a very long time o Another guy hung himself � (1:13:20) One of Mr. Haner’s duties was to clean showers in their division, a friend helped him o A guy came in from off duty, he heard screaming o The guy passed out and hit his head on the shower and died o Had to re clean the area  (1:14:35) One time there was a fire in his area and he had to pick up a guy who’d been burned bad  (1:15:25) By the time they were going to Vietnam, Mr. Haner’s time in the service was running out o Was told if he didn’t reenlist, they would come and get him o Offered a lot of money to reenlist o At this point he just wanted to go home and work and be with his family Going Home  (1:16:30) Went home, July 15th o Over the radio he heard about his ship having a major explosion at sea a few weeks after he left o Felt guilty o Talked about John McCain’s jet  (1:18:48) This was 1967  (1:19:06) He had two more years left where the Navy could call him in  (1:19:30) Says that he was put on the USS Independence until he was officially discharged  (1:20:07) The USS Forrestal didn’t sink from the explosion; but was badly damaged and came close to sinking  (1:20:22) In August 16th, 1966, he remembers hearing that a psychic (Jeane Dixon) predicted when and how their ship would sink o Blew up on July 29th, 1967  (1:21:50) Applied for different places around town to work � (1:22:03) A family friend gave him a job on 36th street  (1:22:16) Mr. Haner had trouble readjusting to civilian life o 9 W2 forms in one year; couldn’t stay in one place  (1:22:48) Drag raced; eventually went into circle track racing  (1:23:26) Started a business later in life  (1:23:50) Went to a VFW  (1:24:25) Went to VA in Battle Creek; took care of health needs o Found out that PTSD was on his papers o He handled Agent Orange  (1:25:55) Was a service manager at a Ford dealership in Wayland  (1:27:07) Says he would go back and do it all over again o Would have gone to Vietnam, was always ready  (1:27:53) Says going into the Navy helped him grow up and see that important things were going on  (1:29:17) Mentioned when he was about 30 he tried to go back into the Navy, but they wouldn’t take him  (1:29:55) Has been to Forrestal reunions  (1:32:10) Remembers when he was on the ship after he found out his son was born, the captain talked to him; which was rare More Information  (1:33:48) Went aboard the Forrestal Friday the 13th, 1965, got out on July 15th, 1967  (1:34:09) Went to the Caribbean, Virgin Islands, went up the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, took a right, went to Beirut, and stopped at places in between  (1:34:55) Also went through the Pacific  (1:35:15) The Forrestal went all the way to Vietnam  (1:35:22) Mentions that right after he got aboard the ship it was supposed to go to Vietnam, but it needed some repairs  (1:35:36) They were on station for awhile when it was being repaired �o Still needed work, then dry dock at Portsmouth, Virginia o This was when he had to go underneath the ship the next day o Black, creaky elevator o Cut hole in the bottom of the ship; had to fix the freshwater evaporator issue  (1:37:05) They did make it to the shores of Vietnam before Mr. Haner rotated out  (1:40:33) Talks about a C-130: cargo plane, 4 engines, they have ramps in the back, cargo nets for ships to sit in o It could land on the deck of the carrier  (1:42:31) They had 250 million gallons of crude oil running the ship; it had to maintain 80% of the fuel o Median grade crude oil o They had to put a new gasket in o They were barefoot, almost up to their waists in the crude oil o He had a friend named Bob who was starting to slip in the hole, they made a chain of people to help o Nobody was able to swim in it; not dense enough to hold a person up  (1:45:38) Alpha working party and Bravo working party o Mr. Haner was on Alpha o Whenever they went to a port, they would go inland to the airports to pick up mail, jet engines, parts, etc. o They had to bring it back to the fleet landing where liberty boats came in o Bravo party would bring it from fleet landing to the ship o Because of this, Mr. Haner got to see a lot of extra country o Got a 45 pistol with one clip o Had to guard things overnight o He and his friends got food, made a little camp o People were shooting a movie near the runway o Saw Israeli commandos o This was in France � (1:48:55) In Cannes, France, they almost were shot after trying to get a picture of their ship from the bay o Probably because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time; not so much because they were American  (1:50:45) Talks about the time he had leave on arrival after the birth of his son o Went to his sister’s house o March 1967, bad storm; he couldn’t get out, and he go to the ship later o Fortunately the ship was still in port  (1:52:00) During the major overhaul, ship fitters lit torches, cut pieces of steel, this was when they had the freshwater evaporator issue o Signs up warning sailors to be careful and not fall o As Mr. Haner ran over the edge, he saw a sailor who fell o They rescued him, his eye was out of his socket o Ended up surviving o The drop was 25-30 feet  (1:54:50) Talks about the E he wore w/hash marks o For every E they break, they would get more days of liberty at Guantanamo Bay o The captain had steak and beer for them o This was his work crew  (1:56:20) Pistol incident o His wife was there, and he wanted to get her a pistol because he was worried about her being by herself o He asked his friend to take the clip out; the gun went off, almost went into a compartment o Mr. Haner went to his workstation and the ship’s police were there o (1:57:49) Went to the executive’s office, asked him questions, etc o Mr. Haner had powder burns on his thumb, told him the gun went off by accident o Guns were not allowed on the ship �o The guy was put in the brig on the ship for 30 days o “Marines worked them to death”  (2:00:35) They spent about 10 days searching for bombs that went down o Eventually they did o They were off the coast of Spain, this was 1966  (2:01:25) Mentions that there were Russians out at sea also; harassed them o A Russian sub crossed, their captain sent it in front of them; almost hit it o The bombers were called “The Bear”, it went over them with the doors open o There was a Russian Navy warship that followed them closely o Mr. Haner made a movie that showed the Americans and Russians looking at each other with binoculars  (2:04:03) Mentions that his family brought him back to the ship years later and they weren’t allowed to take pictures  (2:04:45) The Forrestal and another ship were anchored in Portsmouth, remembers a big building that made propellers o Mr. Haner was painting a part on the ship, and a helicopter overthrusted and the rotors hit the flight deck o So many were wounded that they needed a blood drive  (2:06:36) When Mr. Haner was standing watch somewhere near Cuba as they were anchored: o His duty was to look for anybody that may want to sabotage the ship o He had a search light o Saw a picket boat with guys who had weapons, rode around perimeter for a few hours o He went down by the straight side of the ship o A big white snake appeared in front of his flashlight o A tarpon came out of the water and ate the snake  (2:08:25) Remembers one night they partied before the ship left very early in the morning �o Oceanview in Norfolk o Mr. Haner didn’t have money for cab fare, so he gave the cab driver his class ring as he went to get more money o When he came back, the taxi was gone o Mr. Haner found out eventually who the guy was, took some other guys, went over to his house and demanded the ring back, but it was gone  (2:09:54) During the overhaul, when they were alongside the pier after being in dry dock, Mr. Haner’s wife was there in the apartment they bought o Got to sneak off the ship; hid his uniform in a bag, changed into it near the propeller o Went home wearing his whites o He couldn’t get past the gate when he was called back o Saw another sailor climb over the gate o Mr. Haner did the same  (2:12:44) One time in France, he was on shore patrol o There were a bunch of sailors in a restricted area o He had to get them out, they were under arrest o 10 of them on shore patrol, picked up 10-12 men o When they had to cross a bridge, there were a bunch of people blocking them and protesting  Threw stones and bottles o They were warned by the lieutenant not to reach for their pistols  (2:14:42) One night they were rearming o Took fuel on their ship for a few hours, destroyer ships refueled from them, etc. o This time they were taking on ammunition o One night it was particularly rough o It was Mr. Haner’s job to take the net off the bombs and put them on the carrier o The bombs hit the elevator so hard it hit the pipe o Swung around and hit underneath �o Mentions that it takes 4 guys to swing the bombs on the cart o Anything dropped over 6 feet had to go over the side  (2:17:18) Mentions that he played division football o They won every game o On the last one, 4 minutes left, he played linebacker, hurt his ankle very badly o He was sent to the hospital, his friends wanted to bring him a trophy but it was stolen o The guy who took it faced him in a boxing tournament o Mr. Haner chipped 14 teeth  (2:19:17) Mr. Haner mentions that their ship lost steering often o Once, they were tied to a refueling ship full of crude oil o Steering at 6 knots o Heard ropes cracking, Mr. Haner’s job as to cut ropes in the case of emergency o He had an axe, went to cut them, and crude oil and JP5 was all over the place o He and his friend got hit  (2:21:25) There was a time when they were on a crew taking sailors in and out, weather was rough o Liberty boat held about 65 men o A friend fell in between the boat and the gangway o They hoisted him back up o He eventually jumped off the flight deck when someone jokingly told him to do so another night o A ‘tin can’ picked him up  (2:23:28) The Russians they came in contact with were in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic o They stayed at a distance o The closest calls were with the submarines o They did stay below the surface, though  (2:27:50) Sometimes there were fires on board twice a week �o Mostly caused by smoking o There were voids on the ship that would catch fire, they had hatches o “spontaneous combustion”, Mr. Haner was sure it was from smoking though  (2:30:15) Would like people to know about and remember the Forrestal tragedy � 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 Haner, Ward (Interview outline and video), 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Haner, Ward Description An account of the resource Ward Haner was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1946. He enlisted in the Navy after high school. He received his training at Great Lakes Naval Base. Ward Haner was assigned to the 3rd division on the USS Forrestal. On the ship, he had many duties that included cleaning the quarters, air defense, and loading magazines. His team also drove the ship. There were many times on the Forrestal when Mr. Haner had to put out fires. He went on cruises through the Caribbean, Virgin Islands, up the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, going to Lebanon during the crisis in 1967, but narrowly missed being sent to Vietnam. 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 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 2011-09-06 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HanerW1247V 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/ea9a5ea5e401ed871fa989c41a394a24.mp4 93147bf5ec93b5579a28c15fe1bdae17 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7c4eb328adf662ed275e93f02c263fd4.pdf a4918e38725dfe276140b0d331f1b634 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Vietnam War Terry Handley 2:02:34 Introduction (00:26)        Terry was born in Niles, Michigan. The first of two sons to Elmer and Eileen Handley on December 30, 1947. His father was in the skilled trade at Clark Equipment Company as a welder. He later worked in the testing department on earth moving machines. His mother went to work at Electro-Voice, which was a speaker manufacturer in Buchanan, Michigan. When Terry and his brother were out of school, his mother went back to school and became a registered nurse. He grew up north of Buchanan, and that is where he went to high school. (02:16) Terry played football growing up, and he graduated from high school in 1966. After high school, he attended LMC (Lake Michigan College) for business administration. He obtained his associates degree. In 1968, Terry enlisted for two years because he knew he was going to be drafted. He wanted to be thought of as regular army instead of being a draftee. Military Service (04:03)          Terry planned on doing what he needed to succeed and ended up being a squad leader and then a platoon guide. When he was eighteen, he went to Detroit to register for the draft and they stayed at the Pontchartrain Hotel. While there, he went down to a bar to get some drinks and he later learned that the bar was predominantly black and the neighborhood was not safe for him. Having grown up with other minorities, he was not prejudiced and did not look at people‟s skin color. He never used the „N‟ word growing up and neither did his family. (06:19) At Detroit, he had his physical and he could see many people that were trying to fail so they wouldn‟t be drafted. Terry went to Detroit in 1966, and was given a college deferment for two years while he was going to school. At the time, he did not pay much attention to world events and was just trying to focus on his career in retail. (08:29) He was not anti-Vietnam. Terry had a friend that was a Green Beret and made it home unscathed. Another friend from high school went to Vietnam and was killed within three months of being there. Still, he did not have any animosity with the war. Terry felt that he was being sent to Vietnam to protect his homeland. (10:19) � After the war, Terry learned that over 1.5 million people were slaughtered after the United States pulled out of Vietnam. Basic Training (11:55)            He reported to Chicago and was sent to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. His training lasted 12-13 weeks. When he first arrived, they tried to tear each man down mentally and physically. Terry refused to let them do that to him. Terry was asked if he wanted to be a driver and he volunteered for it. He got his military drivers license and as a result of being a driver only pulled KP duty once while in basic training, and later did not have to do guard duty. His duties included waking up early to transport the company to various ranges and other forms of training. (14:53) In basic training, it was all about conditioning. With some elementary aspects of military maneuvering and combat training. (17:21) Towards the end of basic, they were given their first pass, which allowed them to move around the base. He met a man that was 25 or 26 named Richard Hamilton. He was a very smart man, who brought life back to reality. Terry was good friends with him. Terry would lock his brain out to things that were going on around him in order to keep fit mentally. He still refused to let them get in his head even though they tried. (19:28) Their goal was to break you down to build you back up. It culminated during AIT (Advanced Infantry Training). After NCO school, four or five of the people with him were asked to consider OCS (Officer Candidates School). This was appealing because it was another few months that he wouldn‟t be in Vietnam. (21:00) The advanced training in map reading and combat was something that he wanted. He thought about doing it but he found out that he would‟ve had to extend his enlistment for two or three years. AIT (22:10)      Terry was sent to Fort Lewis, Washington for AIT. The environment was very different than basic. One major difference was the granting of passes that allowed them to go to Seattle and other cities nearby. They training primarily with the M-14 and a little with the M-16. Terry also learned more about the safe handling of the weapons and how to break them down and clean them. (24:44) Fort Lewis was a good experience for Terry, and while he was there he met Leon Hendrix who was the brother of Jimi Hendrix. He would be picked up by a limo when he had a pass and taken off by his brother. The instructors were mostly Vietnam veterans, and they treated you well if you treated them well. They wanted the men to learn because they knew where they were going. (26:45) �  Almost all of AIT was geared towards Vietnam. They learned about guerilla tactics, mines and booby traps and things that they would encounter in country. The Vietnam veterans would talk with them and tell them about what to expect. NCO School (28:24)           When he volunteered to go to NCO school, he did not have to extend his two year enlistment. He wanted to go because he was interested in gaining the additional experience and training with compass and map reading, marksmanship, land navigation, medical training and radio procedures. One man that he trained with ended up going on to OCS, but most chose not to go because they did not want to extend. The emphasis on physical training increased at NCO School. (30:46) This school was conducted in southern Georgia at Fort Benning during the summer. While there, he met chiggers. Which are almost invisible little insects that bite and are not fun. There was also an increase in forced marches. Their goal was to build up the men mentally because they were soon going to be leading others. (32:18) At Ranger training, they went down for a week in the swamp and had to survive off the land. The instructors also pulled ambushes and things to keep them on their toes while they were out. It was here that they gained experience and learned what to expect when they got to Vietnam. Sometimes he would have people that refused to walk point, so he would do it. After a little while someone would tap him on the shoulder and tell him he better move back in the line. (34:17) Terry graduated from NCO School in November 1969. After NCO school he was sent to Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina. It was there that Terry became an instructor. Fort Jackson (35:05)       At Fort Jackson he was training AIT recruits and was given a company. The four of the men that he was with decided that they were going to discipline their students differently than they had been treated. After meeting together, they decided to give their recruits post privileges for the rest of that day, which was a Saturday. Monday morning they had an inspection and they demanded that they be number one. With that mindset, they only went one week not being rated first for their inspections. (36:15) Terry‟s superiors were curious about their new training techniques, but they allowed him to continue. The results showed them that it was working. (38:30) Terry met John Fraser at NCO school. He was from Maine, and he was a backwoods country boy. He had amazing grip strength. The group that Terry bonded with was John Fraser, Richard Hamilton, and Chuck Kearse. It was the four of them that trained the recruits at Fort Jackson. (40:02) After they finished training, they were given a few weeks leave. They reported back to O‟Hare Airport in Chicago to ship out to Vietnam. � On the drive to the airport, Terry heard a voice that he believes was God that said “Don‟t worry son, I will take care of you.” He trusted that when he went overseas. Vietnam (42:30)                    From Chicago, he met up with John at Fort Lewis and they flew together to Anchorage, Alaska. Then they went to Hawaii before they made it to Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam. Once they arrived, they both were issued orders to the 101st Airborne Division. They arrived in Vietnam during the day and he remembers the smell, the humidity and the heat. Helicopters could always be heard, and that lasted until he got home. It was a constant drone day and night. They spent a day or two at Cam Ranh Bay before being trucked up north to Phu Bai. Camp Evans was the headquarters for the 101st. (44:21) A few trucks went together along Highway 1, and they had no incidents on the trip up. He didn‟t know what to expect when he was there. But thought initially it would be like an Audie Murphy movie, which it wasn‟t. He and John were both assigned to the same battalion and company but different platoons. Terry went to Delta Company, 1/506th. They were nicknamed the „Delta Death Dealers‟. (46:26) When he arrived at Camp Evans, he was issued his weapon, clothing and other equipment. They didn‟t wear any markings of rank, except for officers who would on occasion, but mostly just the higher ranking men. At the beginning, they carried a rucksack with lots of food, and a little bit of ammunition. Towards the end, the ammo took the place of the food. (48:40) The company had come back to base for Christmas when Terry got there. That night, they set up NDP‟s (night deployment positions). They found a trail and set up ambush positions. It was after dark so they didn‟t dig in. Terry couldn‟t sleep and didn‟t know what to expect. In the middle of the night, someone was talking to them. He was Viet Cong and he thought they were friendly. The machine gunner fired at him and he ran off. (50:55) The next morning, they found the man wounded. He tried to attack them and was then killed. Terry asked if that happens every night and his men told him no. He found a 9mm Russian revolver during his time but was not able to bring it home. After his first night, things quieted down. (52:50) Terry experienced that the lulls in action would cause some to become complacent and that‟s when you got hit. They were out for a month to a month and a half before they came back to base. The 101st was present on Hamburger Hill. Terry knew a man, Ted Tees, who won two Silver Stars at that battle. He also saved Terry‟s life . (54:37) During a patrol, Terry led thirteen men with no medic. At night, they could hear the VC looking for them in the jungle. �        One night, Terry prayed to God and asked that if he was going to be killed or wounded he wanted to be done that night. The next morning Terry got a radio call from Ted and he told him that his grandmother had died and he arranged for emergency leave home. Ted was the RTO to the Battalion Commander. (56:59) Ted was given that job as a reward for his actions on Hamburger Hill. Terry‟s RTO, a Puerto Rican named Shorty, claimed that he could not speak much English, towards the end of his time there, he told Terry he could speak English just as well as he could. (58:39) He did that so he didn‟t have to do as much. Shorty was told to move a boulder and stump by using a rocket launcher. That didn‟t work so he used „det‟ cord (detonation) to blow them out of the ground. They were blown so high part of the stump went through the TOC (Tactical Operations Center) tent and almost killed the Lieutenant Colonel. (1:00:23) They never stayed in the same place twice. During a patrol, they saw heads bobbing in the distance so they triggered their claymore mines and set off their ambush. When they went down there and checked for bodies, blood or hair, they were unable to find anything. Terry remembered that once they set off their mines, a family of monkeys that were in that same vicinity climbed to the tops of the trees. (1:02:55) A day later, while on a night patrol, Terry was awoken because of a fire that was a kilometer away. He requested a fire mission and the fire went out. Thirty minutes later, the fire reappeared. He ordered another fire mission and the fire went out again. Thirty to forty-five minutes the fire appeared again and he called in another fire mission. The company commander asked Terry what was going on up there and he explained it. The next morning, they could not find anything and Terry believes that the fire was in a cave and was covered by a cloth once the incoming fire came in. (1:04:58) Emergency Leave (1:05:28)     Terry went on his emergency leave at the end of March, because of his grandmother passing away. He wasn‟t home in time for the funeral, but it took 18 hours to get from Vietnam to Chicago. And another 18 hours for him to get home. The delay was because of a terrible blizzard that occurred that year in 1970. When his leave was up, he got back to Vietnam and he ran into two of his men at Cam Ranh Bay. He learned that they had re-enlisted to get out of the field because their unit had been hit really hard while Terry was away. (1:07:43) To this day, he feels guilty that he wasn‟t there, because he may have been able to make better decisions that could have saved the lives of his men. Ripcord (1:09:36)   Come May, the Texas Star and Ripcord operations began. Terry witnessed from afar the shelling and destruction of Ripcord. (1:09:45) Once he got back into country, he did not get back into the field for a few weeks because of restructuring in the unit. �                 Terry and his unit went to Eagle Beach for R&R for a couple of days. In the village, they paid the MP so they could pass through the gate. The reason for going into the village was to see the women. After finding only one woman, they decided to just go back to the beach and drink beer. (1:13:04) While out in the field, they would sometimes stay at firebases. Most of the time however, they stayed out in the boonies. On one field mission, they saw smoke in the distance, so Terry and his men were tasked with investigating it. When they made it to the location, they discovered that it was steam from a hot spring running into a cold river. They set up a NDP and stayed for the night. (1:15:48) Since they were operating a night ambush, come morning the group didn‟t have anything to do so they spread out and formed a perimeter and they all took turns taking a hot bath in the spring. They liked the spot so much, that they stayed in the vicinity for three days. (1:17:40) Terry also enjoyed finding 1,000 pound bomb craters because they made instant swimming pools. Back at Camp Evans, they were attacked on occasion, so there was an established guard set up. Some men would smoke drugs and other things while back at the rear. (1:19:14) A platoon size varied, but was usually between 25-30 men. Sometimes they would be as low as 12-14. Terry had to harden his heart and tried to not get too close to his men because he never knew if they would be rotated out or be killed. (1:21:13) For the new guys coming in to the unit, they would tell them some of their folk tales about monsters or fictional things, but they worked with them and taught them how to survive. It was important to learn the system and how to operate together. For most of their AO (Area of Operations) they could see Ripcord because it was one of the highest points around. (1:25:07) They didn‟t know at the time how many NVA they were up against but Terry learned later that there were two regiments attacking Ripcord. When they landed at a hot LZ, Terry led his men to one side and John led his to the other. They were being attacked just enough that they were unable to dig in. John lost a couple of men, but Terry did not lose any. (1:27:03) One of Terry‟s men came up to him and asked him for help with his arm. Between his wrist and his elbow his arm was bent downwards. Terry asked him how he did it, and the man told him that a mortar round landed on his arm and did not explode. One of his new medics died of shock in the battle. Some time later, Terry found an article written by a helicopter pilot that was there that day flying out the wounded. In the article he mentions a sergeant that was running out and bringing the casualties from the battle to the landing zone. Terry realized that he was that sergeant. He e-mailed the pilot and thanked him for everything he did that day. (1:30:22) Another helicopter that day was hit by an RPG in the tail rotor. The pilots landed it and got away from it in case it exploded. Terry was told to go down and shut it off because it was on fire. He brought a pilot with him and they shut it off. (1:32:00) �   When it was time for him to be extracted, a medic came running out and grabbed onto one of the skids of the helicopter and held on until the wind became to strong he was blown off and fell into the jungle. (1:34:08) Terry was wounded himself, and another helicopter eventually came and picked him up. He took shrapnel from a mortar round earlier in the day, and still was able to work through it and help his men. Terry‟s captain was killed the day after Terry left the field [July 21]. He was killed by the rotors from a helicopter. (1:36:26) Wounded (1:37:25)       The same day that Terry was wounded, John Fraser was also wounded. Back at Camp Evans, the men were all happy to be out of the field. John was sent to Guam for his injuries and Terry was sent out to a hospital ship. On board the ship, they had an award ceremony where he received the Purple Heart and some other awards. (1:38:26) After he left the ship, he was sent to Japan to recover. While there he met up with John Fraser and the two walked up to the NCO club wearing their hospital robes. Terry was told to shave his mustache but he told them no. At the club, they had to use the latrine so they went in to go but John was in a wheel chair and couldn‟t get in the stall by himself. Terry helped him and when he did the stall door shut behind them. Realizing how stupid they must have looked, they began to laugh. While this was going on, two men came into the latrine and heard the two laughing in the stall. They quickly exited and when Terry and John came back out, every eye in the club was on them. (1:41:10) Terry was in Japan for only about a week or so. From there, he was sent to the Great Lakes Naval Hospital in Illinois. They informed him that he was eligible for disability. Today, he still has ringing in his ears and has to wear hearing aids. (1:43:50) Instead of waiting the extra month to get his disability, he decided to just go home. He was discharged at the end of August 1970. Civilian Life (1:44:55)        Terry was married before he went into the service but it ended up in a divorce. He also took more college classes and continued with the business major. While attending Western Michigan University, Terry met his wife and they were married after ten months of dating. (1:46:06) Before he had graduated, he found a job with the Michelin Tire Corporation. He went in for an interview and he was asked to shave his mustache, which he did. He had a choice between Atlanta and Detroit, and he chose to move down to Atlanta. They later moved back to Michigan and Terry became an apprentice at a tool and die company and started a landscaping business on the side. (1:48:28) Terry finished his apprenticeship and began working for a company named RJ Tower and worked as a tool engineer. The company had two customers, Ford and Honda. His father-in-law later offered him a sales position at his company so that his daughter would be closer to home. He later became one of his role models because of his integrity. (1:52:00) Terry spent twenty five years working with Honda as a tool supplier. �      After Vietnam, Terry would wake up in the middle of the night with dreams about the war. He never slept with a weapon but he did have a problem with his temper. (1:55:05) He learned to control it because he wanted to be a successful businessman. His military service helped him develop loyalty, and he loves to talk to people. It also strengthened his faith in God and Jesus Christ. Vietnam also helped him realize that he shouldn‟t worry about things that he can‟t control. (1:58:43) He has compassion for the people that blame the problems in their lives to their military service, he doesn‟t accept it, but he has compassion for those people. For treating PTSD, the answer is not drugs, but instead to have other veterans that made the same sacrifices come along side them and help them to understand that life can move forward. (2:00:38) � 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 Handley, Terry (Interview outline and video), 2013 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Handley, Terry Description An account of the resource Terry was born on December 30, 1947 in Niles, Michigan. He graduated from high school in 1966 and went to Lake Michigan College where he earned his associates degree in business administration. Because of the threat of being drafted, Terry chose to enlist for two years in the United States Army. After basic training and advanced infantry training, Terry volunteered to go to NCO School and then became an infantry instructor at Fort Jackson. Terry was sent to Vietnam in 1970 and served with the 101st Airborne 1/506th, Delta Company. He was present for the battle for Ripcord and was wounded by mortar shrapnel. He was discharged in August 1970. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Video recordings United States. Army Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013-07-09 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HandleyT1487V 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/02dcb3f2b4d83366fd6233609ecb7f01.mp4 0ff354fbd15bd24f8784d4f0482e873e https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/21faada1347b8b9df606f7d61ef4200b.pdf e1a6b699dc70c5391297c63a08eb38a9 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veteran's History Project Vietnam William Hand Total Time (00:47:18) Introduction (00:00:30)  Bill was born in 1946 in Dallas, Texas; his father was in the Marine Corps as his family bounced around until Bill was ten years old when his family settled down in Houston, Texas (00:01:01) ◦ His father was the sergeant major of the recruiting station in Houston, Texas (00:01:15) ▪ Bill graduated from Spring Ranch High School in Houston and went on to the University of Houston (00:01:32)  Bill majored in accounting at the University of Houston although his focus was to go into the Army and receive his commission; the degree was secondary to getting his commission (00:02:17) ◦ He went into the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) through the University of Houston and graduated as a distinguished military graduate which earned him a regular army commission; he graduated in 1969 (00:03:07) ◦ Bill went to Ft. Benning in Columbus, Georgia for infantry officer basic corps and then to airborne school and spent five months in the 82nd airborne until he received his orders to go to Vietnam (00:03:28) Arrival & Time in Vietnam (00:03:28)  Bill arrived in Vietnam in June of 1970 and became a platoon leader in the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment in the 101st Airborne Division (00:03:42) ◦ Bill never had more than 24 men in his platoon while in Vietnam; it was more of two reinforced squads than a full strength platoon (00:05:13) ▪ The 2nd day he was in Vietnam, Bill and his platoon went into Ripcord Fire Base as they rotated companies around the firebase periodically (00:06:47)  Their main mission was to protect the artillery batteries and the battalion headquarters (00:07:28)  Bill felt he was accepted quite well once he got into Vietnam and mentions at the Ripcord reunions that his reception went over fine as well (00:09:13) ◦ Bill's goal was to get the mission done and protect his men; he never wanted to lose a man to a booby trap- he was fairly successful and only lost two men while he was a platoon leader (00:09:47) ◦ Bill describes how he lost those two men and how they could have been prevented- although it is just one of those things you have to live with and you cannot tear yourself apart about it (00:11:33) ▪ Once Bill's unit was evacuated from Ripcord, he notes that every time his company got into something, they were brought out because they did not want his group to experience what they did at Ripcord- they didn't want his group to incur anymore major losses (00:12:34) ▪ Bill mentions one of his biggest problems while in Vietnam was to keep drug dealers from selling to his troops (00:16:46) ▪ He nor his troops never had any problems with drug use once they went out �▪ ▪ into the field; the troops policed themselves in a way (00:17:04) One of Bill's medics noted that he did not want to go to the rear area because it was notorious for drinking; once the medic came back from the rear he did not have withdrawal problems (00:18:14) Bill found marijuana, heroin, and opium in an ammunition container one time; that was the only time Bill encountered something like that in his sector (00:20:07)  Bill went to Jungle School for two weeks in Panama after Vietnam (00:22:47) ◦ He was taught how to survive in the jungle, how to operate land navigation, defensive positions and other positions as well (00:23:06) ▪ Bill mentioned some of the other fire bases acquired beer occasionally but that never happened for him (00:25:15) ▪ Other than letters, Bill would send cassettes back to keep in touch with family and friends (00:27:08) ◦ At Camp Evans in Vietnam, the air force had air condition, cold beers, movies- all in the rear; he mentions the air force had all the good stuff everywhere you went (00:28:32) Coming Home /Race Relations/Back to Duty (00:28:34)  Bill came home in June of 1971; when Bill came back from Vietnam he felt unlike how soldiers feel today: parades and affection, there was none of that and people would often stare at soldiers if they were in uniform- people made nasty comments as well (00:29:16) ◦ The worst experience for Bill was seeing wounded soldiers come home and how much nobody cared about it (00:29:28) ▪ A few years ago, Bill experienced thank you celebration to Vietnam veterans from Ft. Benning in Columbus, Georgia (00:30:07)  Race relations were okay while in Vietnam except the rear; Bill mentions there wasn't much interplay between blacks and whites (00:31:56) ◦ For Bill, the only issues that ever happened between race was in the rear; in the field, everyone was tight and if they weren't the people in the platoon would take care of it- black or white (00:32:26) ◦ Bill would not put up with any racial problems- he told his men that they were “one army, one unit, and if you can't live with that then you don't need to be here” (00:33:50)  After Vietnam, Bill went to Ft. Benning and then on to Germany for three years (00:35:28) ◦ Bill was stuck in a headquarters in Heidelberg, Germany; he became the commander of the headquarters company (00:35:54) ◦ It took about eight or nine years to make major after he had made captain status (00:36:51) ▪ After Germany, Bill went to Ft. Hood located in Killeen, Texas (00:37:52)  After Ft. Hood, Bill came back to Ft. Benning; he became the Deputy Chief of a mechanized unit for three years (00:39:32)  After Ft. Benning, he went to Egypt for a year; he was the Deputy Chief of the liaison system in Sinai (00:40:02)  After Egypt, he worked with the 3rd Army in the G3 for three years (00:40:50) ◦ After retirement, Bill said he couldn't complain about his 23 years in the military �(00:44:00) Retirement & Beyond (00:44:00)  Bill retired in 1992 (00:44:14)  One of Bill's first jobs after his retirement was to help train Saudi Arabians with equipment (00:44:29) ◦ Bill mentions he was missing too much of family life and decided to resign while in Saudi Arabia; the Prince of Saudi Arabia was disappointed initially but then supportive of Bill's decisions once he learned why (00:46:16) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hand, William (Interview outline and video), 2013 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hand, William Description An account of the resource William "Bill" Hand was born in 1946 in Dallas, Texas. He took ROTC training while at the University of Houston, and did well enough to receive a regular army commission upon completion of the program in 1969. He served with the 82nd Airborne Division for several months, and then went to vietnam, where he was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, and took part in the final stages of the fighting at Firebase Ripcord in June-July 1970. After Vietnam, he remained in the Army until retiring in 1992. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource McGregor, Michael (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American United States. Army Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type 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 HandW1534V 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/61e6b67080ebd0b9ad7b43db1609c219.mp4 eb1630084b82de539351d8c5c8de8367 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0c1a5a5fd403ff38bbf7f3dec7b69723.pdf 460442cae824640f4a15eea53824cd1f PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Bob Hammond (1:21:34) (00:30) Background Information • • • • Bob was born on February 18, 1923 in Grand Rapids, Michigan He went to South High School Bob joined the Navy one year after Pearl Harbor had been attacked He was 18 years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked and it had been a real shock (02:10) The Navy • Bob went to Great Lakes Naval Academy training in Chicago • They were not here very long; just enough time to get their shots and do some marching • They were tested for placement and Bob was placed into radio school • He said that he got practically no training as a soldier (03:18) Radio School in Jacksonville, Florida • Bob was assigned to be a monitor • He learned lessons in Morse Code, but did not like working with it • He also learned to type 60 words a minute and took flag training • They had to wake up every day at 6am five days a week • Many of the men spent the weekends in Jacksonville (06:16) Gunnery School • Bob worked with 50 and 30 caliber machine guns • He was given a choice of whether he wanted to work in planes or subs • Bob thought that flying would be much more exciting • He then began working with TBFs, or torpedo bombers • He would fly with a pilot, himself as the radio gunner, and another gunner/mechanic • They often flew over the ocean very close to the water (9:40) Radar School • This took place in Virginia in which Bob had more training with torpedo and dive bombing (13:35) The Intrepid Air Craft Carrier, CB-11 • This was a nice and brand new ship �• • • • • • Bob had a bad area for his bunk, which was right below the hangar deck They still had to get up every day at 6 Bob began flying out with a crew looking for subs near Africa and spent a few days in Trinidad They also traveled through the Panama Canal and the captain actually ran right into the canal on accident Bob was assigned to shore patrol with Panama MPs They then went to San Francisco and flew right under the Golden Gate Bridge (20:11) Maui • Here Bob was on the Franklin air craft carrier • They learned about the Norton Bomb Sight • They went on night training flights and one pilot got vertigo, crashed, and died (25:05) Palau • They traveled to this Pacific island and attacked the ships in the harbor • Bob had traveled with a fighter and bomber squadron • The fighter sweep went in first, then the dive bombers, and last the torpedo planes • They had been hit and had to make a one wheel landing on the carrier • The plain was covered in holes from all the bullets • They bombs that they used weighted 500-1000 pounds (42:00) Saipan • Bob and his crew would dive bomb here wherever directed to by the Marines • The US had been trying to take back numerous islands from the Japanese • Bob and many others were being attacked by Japanese fighter plains • This was a very intense battle compared to his past experiences • They were to provide air support for Marines against sea and land targets (48:10) Guam • Here Bob went on bomb strikes 5 times • He felt more safe in this area • They had been taking one island at a time and Bob felt that they were progressing (54:50) The Philippines • Bob began to feel mentally unstable this far into the war • They took many prisoners in the Philippines • Bob helped take a Japanese airfield out of commission �(56:50) Okinawa and Formosa • Here Bob hit many ships, but the experience is quite vague • His last battle was at Formosa (57:40) TDD Squadron near Alaska • TDD was a target drone dummy based on a movie character • Bob was headed towards Alaska when the bombs were dropped on Japan • He was very grateful because he feared that he would soon have to go back to the Pacific • He had seen so many battles and was not well enough to do it again • They had been pulled out of the Pacific and on their way to Alaska because Bob and many other men could no longer pass any physicals • Bob had been on 39 flight missions and was so relieved to hear that it was over • He often had migraine headaches and trouble sleeping (1:05:00) Bob is Honorably Discharged • Bob traveled from Alaska to San Diego, and then to Chicago where he was discharged • He hitch-hiked back to Michigan and his parents were very surprised and pleased to see him �l'lUTICE OF SEPARATION FROM U. S. NAVAL SERVICE '(REV. 8-45) NAVPERS-553 I. z, SERIAL' OR FILE NO. NAME RANK ANO CL.ASSIFICATJON 4. (I.AST) (FIRST) (MIDDLE) 3. ARM2C CCL-34 56 SUTTON ST. S. W. lQ1?-~4;-~O Gil.AND RAPIDS, SEX ~ ~ In.. - '" "! te. M n 'j REGlSTE!:RED I:J 1.211 YES MARITJ\L. STATUS '0 .1 U. u.s. I!J '!7'V'-m ]r.T"H". .l~l~lVi.L"'; DATE ~h I. fl.? JNDUCTED D 2/1$/23 I'"~ I GRAND RPl'IDS, MIG. NET SERVIC:E (F,QR PAY PURPOSES) • (VRS •• MOS•• DAYS) s/llc/42 COMMiSSiONED 11. 3-2-1 P1.ACE OF ENTRY 'INTO ACTIVE SERVICE GRAND RAJ. IDS , I'iIICH. .Lj;3 SEE RATING DESCRIT'I'ION BOOKLETS .AS GillJ.']) FJJ?ID;~; J ~uCH. S45 PE.A.CE ED. -118. II. RATIN'GS HELD .. .&S. SER,V1CE SCHOOL.S COMPL.ETED . HOME ADDRESS AT TIME OF ENTRY INTO SERVICE t7. DA.TE OF ENTRY INTO ACTIVE SER'YICE DATE DATE·:;, 10 HOlIOR.illLE U. OA.TE; AND PLACE OF'BIRTH YES 14. SE.L.ECTIYE S-E'RVJCE" BOARO OF -REGISTRATION NO o ENLISTED I CITlZEN {YES OR 'NO) MEANS OF ENTRY (INDICATE" BY CHECK IN APPROPRIATE BOX) . # S. CHARACTER OF SEPARATION MICH. ' ILL. GREi'3 L"j\ES, l lO-~t uSIa aaS(COG} mUT USN PerSenGen HAMMOND, ROBERT N. 623 33 54 I. RACE 5 PL,ACE OF SEPARATION RATE AND CL.ASS!OR PE:RMANENT ADDRESS FOR MAILiNG PURPOSES j....PJ~ S2c .4.F-M 3c 2.c 2.2.: FOREIGN AND/OR SEA SERVICE WORLD WAR II 'rx! YES WEEKS GRELT l,r.:.-irSs, rI,L. J.b.CKSONVILLE, FLA • NAGS JACKSOJlJvlLLE, FLA. VTB OTU#2. - US._, SAvo ISLAJ.'ID SQD. 11 CASU 21- TORPEDO SQD. g HAS OLllUON, 0 USNTC SCHOOL lIT..:1S 14 : 520027 Sot. REMARKS j,~-.';"""" asiatic pacific 8 stars JJI'JERICill'{ THEATER PHILIPPINE 1 STAR LIE liiiEDP.L - PJillIO sen. 16 VrF'.£KS PP.EDIDEI'Tl'If:..1 UNIT CITATION 36. NAME. AND ADDRESS OF L.AST EMPLOYER 37. DATES OP' LAST EMPL.' MT. NASH KELVINATOR ~ , GB.JJID Pl.p}' DB , MlCH 6/5/40 FROM 2/15/42 38. MAIN CIVILIAN CK:'CUPATION AND D. O. T. NO. LABORER TO ~ I-----:-:-=-====-==~::::-::=---:-::"':":":':::::--::::-::=:-:-:--=-=::-;------'-....::..;:--'---;-::--:====-=::'-:-:=----:-:-::----;-­ :a9. JOB PREFERENCE (LIST TYPE, LOCAt.:ITY. AND GENERAL. AREA) 40... PRE:FERENCE FOR ADDITIONAL,. TRA1NING (TYPE- OF TRAINING) Z o ow~ Q Z < L.lK CO:NDITIONIHG REFRlGER. IDIDECIDED ~ I-------,-------;----~------::---I 41. NON~5ERVIC;:: EOU. (YRS. SUCCESS­ FULLY COMPL.~£O) 44. VOCATIONAL. OR TRADE COURSES (NATURE AND LENGTH OF COURsE) AIR CPJlFT EIVETT,~'G &. IacTl..1 8 I 3 I ASSEMBLY 1 MO. I-==~'-'_'_"_:-.::..,-===;==-:_::::_==::::_:=~===_==_==_---'----...... ~~""'-"''-.............".,..'------''-----­ GRAM.' 45. H. ''"' COl."", RIGHT INDEX FINGERPRINT .4e. F-c tJ-" ~; o>­ NOl\iE '" ...l Q., ~ w 47. DATE·OF SEPARATION 10/14/45 o �THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY WASHINGTON The President of the United states takes pleasure in presenting the PRESIDENITAL UNIT CITATION to the U.S.S. BUNKER HILL and her attached Air Groups participating in the following operations: November 11, 1943, to February 23, 1944, Rabaul, Gilberts, Nauru, Kavieng, Marshalls, Truk, Marianas: AG-17 (VF-18, VB-17, VT-17, Part of VFN:~76). March 29 to April 30, 1944, Palau, Hollandia, Truk; June 11 to August 5, 1944, Marianas, Bonins, Palau; September 6to October 21, 1944, Philippines, Palau, Yap, Ryukyus, Formosa: AG-8 (VF-8, VB-8, VT-8, Part of VFN-76). November 11 to 25, 1944, Luzon: AG-4 (VF-4, VB-4, VT-4). February 16 to May 11, 1945, Japan, Bonine, Ryukyus: AG-84 (VF-84, VB-84, VT-84, VMF-221, VMF-451). for service as set forth in the following CITATION: "For extraordinary heroism in action against enemy . Japanese forces in the air, ashore and afloat in the South, Central, Southwest and Western Pacific, from November 11, 1943, to MayIl, 1945. Spearheading our concentrated carrier-warfare in the most forward areas, the U.S;S. BUNKER HILL and her air groups struck crushing blows toward annihilating Japanese fighting power; they provided air cover for our amphibious fqrces;theyfiercely countered the enemy's aerial attacks and destroyed his planes; and they in­ flicted terrific losses on the Japanese in Fleet and merchant marine units sunk or damaged, Daring and dependable in combat, the / BUNKER HILL with her gallant officers and men rendered loyal service in achieving the ultimate defeat- of the Japanese Empire." For the President, ~~w Secretary of the Navy . C-73273 �THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY WASHINGTON The President of the United States takes plea­ sure in presenting the DISTINGUISHED FLYING CROSS to ROBERT NELSON HAMMOND AVIATION R.A..DIOMAN SEOOND OLASS DNTTED STATES NAVAL RESERVE tor service as set forth in the following CITATION: "'.,Ojoo ttFor heroism and extraordinary achievement in aerial flight as Radioman of a Torpedo Plane in Tor­ pedo SquadroriEIGRT~ attached to the U.S.S. BUNKER HILL,. during operations against enemy Japanese forces on Guam from March 30 to October 13~ 1944. Completing his twentieth mission during this period, HAMMOND participated in bombing attacks against ground installations and assisted in furnishing support for friendly ships, thereby contributing materially to the success of his plane. His skill and courageous devotion to duty in the face of anti­ aircraft fire were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service." (\ For the President, \L-~P ~ .[ . .' ./f~("S~~ LJ secretaF:r-~f the Navy . �THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY WASHINGTON The President of the United states takes plea­ sure in presenting the AIR MEDAL to ROBERT IiJELSON HAMMOND AVIATION RADIOMAN SECOND CLASS UNITED STATES NAVAL RESERVE for service as set forth in the following CITATIOIiI : "'..... "For meritorious achievement in aerial flight as Radioman Of a Torpedo Plane in Torpedo Squadron EIGHT, attached to the U~S.S. BUNKER HILL, during operations against enemy Japanese forces on woleai and New Guinea and the Palau Islands from March 30 to October 13, 1944. Completing his fifth mission during this period, HAMMOND rendered valuable as­ sistance to his pilot in carrying out bombing at­ tacks against hostile minlng, shipping and ground 'installations, thereby contributing materially to the success of his plane. His skill and courageous devotion to duty in the face of antiaircraft fire were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service." .1\ For the Pres ident , , \ (" »-e~~i:~ Usecretc;;,-df the Navy �THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY WASHINGTON The President or the United States takes pleasure . in pr-es ent.Lng the AIR MEDAL to ROBERT NELSON HAMMOND AVIATION RADIOMAN SECOND CLASS UNITED STATES NAVAL RESERVE ror service as set forth in the following CITATION: ;('" ...."'" UFor meritorious achievement in aerial r1ight as Radioman Gunner of a Torpedo Bomber in Torpedo Squadron EIGHT, attached to the U.S .S. BUNKER HILL, during action against enemy Japanese rorces in'the Pacific War . Area, from March 15 to Oct ober 22, 1944. Undaunted by hazardous weather conditions, withering antiaircraft. :fire and strongf'ighter opposition, HAMMOND success­ :fully participated in daring strikes against enemy ship­ ping and installations at or near the Palans, Bonins, Volcanos, Philippines and Rjulcyus, and the islands of 'Woleai, Truk and Formosa and assisted in strategic and tactical support. maneuvers for landings by United States rorces at Hollandia, :Saipan, Tinian, Guam, Palau and the Philippines. By his initiative, skill and cour­ age, he continually rendered aid to nis pilot and was a constant inspiration to the other members of his combat team. His resolute conduct~ aggressive spirit and un­ wavering devotion to duty throughout this period of in-' tense aerial actiVity reflect the highest credit upon 'HAMMOND and the United states Naval Service. tJ For the President, d~~~ Secretary of the Navy �THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY WASHINGTON The President of the United states takes olea­ sure in presenting the GOLD STAR in lieu of the Second Air Medal to ROBERT NELSON Rl1.MM:OND AVIATION RADIOMAN SECOND ClASS UNITED STATES NAVAL RESERVE for serv~ce as set forth in the following CITATION: : "For meritorious achievement in aerial flight as Radioman of a Torpedo Plane in Torpedo Squadron EIGHT, attached to theU.S.S. BUNKER HILL, during operations against enemy Japanese forces in the Caroline Islands from March 30 to October 13~ 1944. Cgm.,~leting his tenth mission during this period, HAMMOND participated in bombing attacks against hostile shipping and ground installations~ thereby contributing materially to the success of his plane. By his skill and courageous devotion to duty in the face of antiaircraft fire, HAMMOND upheld the high­ est ·traditions of the United States Naval Service." ~or the President, .~. .l;;. -e r. creta~the . ,~---~ Navy . �THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY WASHINGTON The President of the United States takes plea­ sure in presenting the GOIJ) STAR in lieu of the Third . Air Medal to BOBERJ: NELSON HAMIvIOND AVIATION RADIOMAN SEOOND CLASS UNITED STATES NAVAL RESERVE for service as set forth in the following . CITATION: "For meritorious achievement, in aerial:flight as Radioman of a Torpedo Plane in Torpedo Squadron EIGHT, attached to the U.S.S. BUNKER HILL, during operations against enemy Japanese forces in the Marianas Islands from March 30 to October 13, 1944. 'Oompleting his fifteenth mission during this period, HAMMOND assisted' his pilot in carrying out bombing attacks against ground installations on Saipan and Tinian and assisted in furnishing support for friendly ships, thereby contributing materially to the success of his plane. His skill and courageous devotion to duty in the face of antiaircraft fire were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service. fl i'\ ( For the President, n -p ( . ~~ y.)A~~~d"" U secr~i;.ar:J of the Navy �THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY WASHINGTON The President of the United States takes plea­ sure in presenting th~ GOLD STAR in lieu of the Fourth Air medal to ROBERT NELSON H.A.MMOND AVIATION RADIOMAN SECOND CLASS UNITED STATES NAVAL RESERVE for service as set forth in the following CITATION: "For meritorious achievement in aerial flight as Radioman of a Torpedo Plane in Torpedo Squadron EIGHT~ attached to the U.S.S. BUNKER HILL, during operations against enemy Japanese forces on Guam and in the Palau and Bonin Islands from March 30 to October 13, 1944. Completing his twenty-fifth mission during this period, RAMMONDassisted his pilot, iil carrying out bombing attacks against enemy shipping and ground installations, thereby contrib-, uting materially 'to the success of his plane. His skill. and courageous devotion to duty in the face of antiaircraft fire were in keeping with the high­ est traditions of. the United States Naval Service. If t For the President" \) 1) -P C~~ ~:<i' /r~~ I .>: ) C, / I -, Secreta"ry..../of the Navy r-, �THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY WASHINGTON The President of the United States takes plea­ sure in pr-eaent Lng the GOLD STAR in lieu of the Fifth 'Air Medal to ROBERT NELSON HAMMOND AVIATION RADIOMAN SECOND CLASS UNITED STATES :NAVAL RESERVE for service as set forth in the following CITATION: UFoI' meri tarious -achievement in aerial flight as Radioman of a Torpedo Plane in Torpedo Squadron EIGHT" attached to the U.S.S. BUNKER HILL; during operations against enemy Japanese forces in the Palau and Philippine Islands from March 30 to Oc­ tober 13" 1944. Completing his thirtieth mission during this period" HAMMOND rendered valuable as­ sistance to his pilot in carrying out bombing at­ tacks, against hostile shipping and ground instal­ lations" thereby contributing materially to the suc­ cess of his plane in the infliction of damage on the enemy. His skill and courageous devotion to duty in the face of antiaircraft fire were in keep­ ing with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service." For the President, r . VIJ\"~' ..D secret"a-~~f the Navy �THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY WASHINGTON The President of the United States takes plea­ sure in presenting the GOLD STAR in lieu of the Sixth Air Medal to ROBERT NELSON HAMMOI~D AVIATION RADIOMAN SECOND CLASS UNITED STATES NAVAL RESERVE for service as set forth in the following CITATION: "For meritorious achisvement in aerial flight as Radioman of a Torpedo Plane in Torpedo Squadron EIGHT., attached to the U.S:.S. BUNKER HILL, during operations against enemy Japanese forces in the Philippine and Palau Islands from March 30 to Octo­ ber 13, 1944. Completing his thirty-fifth mission during this period, HAMMOND participated in bombing attacks against hostile shipping, aircraft and ground installations and assisted in furnishing support for friendly ships., thereby contributing materially to the success of his plane. His skill and courageous devotion to duty in the face of anti-­ aircraft fire were in keeping with the highest tra­ ditions of the United States Naval Service." � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hammond, Robert (Bob) N. (Interview outline, video, and papers), 2004 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hammond, Robert N. Description An account of the resource Robert Hammond was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan on February 18, 1923. Robert enlisted in the Navy about one year after Pearl Harbor was attacked and went through basic training in Chicago. After basic training, Robert went to radio, gunnery and flight schools. He went on 39 flight missions as a radioman/gunner on TBF fighter bombers, seeing action at Palau, Saipan, Guam, the Philippines, Okinawa and Formosa. Eventually Robert and the others in his crew were in such bad shape, they could no longer pass their physicals. They had been pulled from their flight missions shortly before the bombs were dropped on Japan. Military records are appended to interview outline. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boring, Frank (Interviewer) Michigan Military Preservation Society (Grand Rapids, Mich.) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans United States. Navy World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004-06-26 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HammondR 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/877270b11761d19915e67be4332c9861.mp4 e72d06cad8a63c884848fa101e522730 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/04b02b40db01d717d33b2dcfdf6b26c5.pdf 4a34ed8355c7f3c37dcbf7e76e4b433a PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Charles Hammond (00:29:35) Background (00:00:00) • • • • Born August 24, 1919, in Bridgedale, Ohio (00:23) Moved to Columbus, near Eureka Island (00:55) Parents worked various jobs during the depression. His dad held an insurance job and his family owned a bakery o They lost both of these and their house during the Depression o They did farming work with his two other siblings ƒ They are both dead now (01:11) • Attended West High School in Columbus • Moved to Mt. Vernon, Ohio and finished school there o Graduated in 1939(01:58) • He did not think too much about the war starting in Europe in 1939. He was aware of it though. (02:18) Enlistment/ Training (00:02:32) • Was drafted into the army (02:32) • Worked for the SS Kresge Company and in a stock room at a dime store after graduation in 1940 (02:40) • Drafted in 1940 (03:00) • Trained in Mort McClellan, Alabama o Basic infantry training(03:09) • Rifle training, physical training, trained for with a variety of guns (03:14) • Went to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey (03:51) • Spent sixteen weeks in basic training before he was sent over seas. (04:03) Deployment/Active Duty (00:04:14) • Set out for Scotland on the Queen Elizabeth o Was basically a giant floating hotel • The ship did not travel in a convoy because it was fast enough to where it could avoid the German submarines. o Took six days to reach the destination (04:14) • Played a lot of cards and bummed around the ship for the six days as entertainment (04:47) • No threats of German Submarines that he knew of, smooth sailing (05:16) • Once in Scotland, he and the other troops boarded trains an set out for Southern England o Older trains (05:28) • Went to a camp near Southampton �• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • o It was a tent camp for processing o Gives troops assignments and munitions (06:08) He was assigned to military police o Evacuate P.O.W.s from the battlefield ƒ Dealt with German soldiers a lot (06:38) Crossed the Channel into Normandy thirty days after D-Day(07:15) Referred to his time in France as an “Adventure” Moved through France very rapidly, troop movement slowed down a lot when they reached the Alsace-Lorraine region o July to September (07:48) Alsace-Lorraine region had a lot of bad weather, coupled with supply issues, his platoon was stuck there for thirty days (08:17) He was with the 4th armored division in the 3rd Army (08:33) Was in Luxembourg when his regiment was given the order to go in a different direction o Told to go to Bastogne in December of 1944 ƒ Cold and snowy, “Just like Michigan, but worse” (08:43) Stayed in a blown-out tavern for Christmas Eve o Moved into the region the next day (09:27) Air Force dropped in supplies to make a break through the German lines (09:46) Was not in that area for long before his regiment was ordered back to the first plan to get into Germany through Luxembourg (10:26) Doesn’t know where prisoners were sent They would take them to the Allied Headquarters in the area for questioning and interrogating o In the beginning of the war they would be sent back stateside for imprisonment, but once territory was gained on the European mainland they were dispersed to areas in France (10:35) Majority of soldiers that he had to deal with were older men, and they were happy that the war was over for them, they were well behaved and good mannered, not much trouble at all, even when there were more German P.O.W.s than Allied people (11:15) Did not deal with the locals all that much (12:15) Was in Czechoslovakia when they met up with the Russians o Big celebration (12:48) Sent to southern Bavaria for occupation measures o Had civilian contact there (13:19) September of 1945 was when he stopped being part of the army of occupation in Bavaria (14:00) Not a lot to do while in the occupation army, they were there as a deterrent for the people to not do anything, the SS children were the biggest problem because they were raised in the Hitler nation and ideals (14:15) Lots of destruction, totally demolished o He saw a lot more destruction in France (15:00) Got an emergency furloughed to come home �• o (Tape paused so he could collect his emotions at this point) (15:34) Returned to camp Kilmer, given a thirty day leave o He returned home to Mt. Vernon and saw his family and worked for a few days o He couldn’t get an extension so he returned to the base (16:05) Discharge (00:16:47) • December 24, got discharged, couldn’t get home via the transportation was all booked up because it was the day before Christmas (16:47) • Pooled their money with a few other guys and got a cab to Pittsburgh, then took a train from there to Columbus. o He got home early Christmas morning (17:28) Post Service Life (00:18:00) s • Went back to the express company he worked at before the war, as a truck driver (18:00) • Got promoted to a supervision position o He went to various locations and relieved people that were quitting or being fired (18:17) • First office was in a city in northern Ohio (19:00) • Moved his office to Wellington, Ohio • Then to Finley, Ohio • Then to Jacksonville, Michigan • Then to Hastings, Michigan • Then to Muskegon, Michigan, where he retired (19:16) • Company started to show signs of collapsing in 1969 (19:54) • Started work with Shaw and Walker Company o As a travel manager (20:11) • Retired in 1983 (20:21) • Wife died of cancer, he remarried in 1994 (21:12) • Got in a motorcycle accident in 1995, that involved a lot of surgery, that hinders what they do in their late ages with each other (21:35) • Travels a lot with his wife (22:15) • Sent lots of letters to family during war. • Explains how that worked, and how the people receiving the messages get photocopies of the note, not the actual thing (22:25) • Had time off to go to a Riviera while in Europe, it was very nice (23:09) � 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 Hammond, Charles (Interview outline and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hammond, Charles E. (Bob) Description An account of the resource Charles Hammond was born in Columbus, Ohio on August 24, 1919 and was drafted in 1940. He trained at Fort McClellan in Alabama. He was assigned to the 4th Armored Division and served in France, Belgium, Germany and Czechoslovakia as a military policeman who dealt with prisoners of war. He traveled through France, Germany, and Czechoslovakia. The prisoners that he dealt with were very well behaved and did not have many troubles with them, the only problem he complained about was the sheer size of some of the groups that they had to escort. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource McCauslin, Kelly (Interviewer) Spring Lake District Library (Spring Lake, Mich.) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans United States. Army 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 2008-02-02 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HammondC 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/d28abb6fe1ac41fba85600b3dd595049.mp4 d48af77d5f535d94e88772fe137a84c9 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/dbaeb7f4fda6a683975d135b988dbeec.pdf 56b35597f0241fcd8695ec18e1e99c8e PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Robert Halle (00:01:02) Background • • • • • • • • • • Goes by Bob. (:02) Born in 1932 in Berlin, NH. (0:28) When he was ten years old, his family moved to Michigan. His parents had seven children and his father needed a better job. His father worked for Ford Motor Company. (0:28) At Berlin, his father had been an assistant Fire Chief. (:50) In Detroit, Michigan, he worked as plant protection for Ford. He also sometimes drove trucks. (:58) Next they moved to Taylor, Michigan. His mother worked for Kaiser in the cafeteria. She hadn't worked in NH. (1:24) Bob was the middle of the five boys. (1:50) His older brother was in the Merchant Marines in WWII, and then the Marines. (2:07) He knew a little bit about WWII because of his brother. (2:25) He finished elementary school and junior high in Taylor, MI. For high school he was bussed into Winstead, to Roosevelt High School. (2:34) Enlistment • • • He joined the Marine Corps Reserve at the age of seventeen, while still in high school. The Reserve gave him about $30 every few weeks. (3:00) After his junior year (1950), his reserve unit was called in for the Korean War. He recalls having a choice in the matter, and decided to go. His parents may have pressured him into going, but he is unsure. (3:25) Was in the US Marine Corps Reserve. He picked the Marines because of his older brother, whom he had admired. (4:23) Training/Deployment • Was sent to San Diego, CA for boot camp. (5:09) • After boot camp, was sent to Camp Pendleton for advanced military training. (5:21) • Traveled by train, which took about three days. (5:38) • Basic training consisted of weapons training—rifles and machine guns. (5:51) • Physical training was important as well, they had to be in shape. (6:22) • Found the training difficult. He was not a large man, and he was only seventeen. (6:31) • He felt good about the experience. (6:52) • Some of his drill instructors had served in WWII. (6:58) • Advance training was more intensive, and emphasized outdoor training such as hiking more. It also included winter training, in the California mountains. Advance training also included stimulated combat. (7:20) • The Korean War was seen as part of the “war on communism” but it was not referred to as the “Cold War” at that time. (8:02) • Training took place in California, mostly near San Diego. (8:31) • Trained from mid-August to about December. (9:09) • He was shipped to Korea in 1951, after coming home for Christmas. (9:49) �• • • • • • • • • • • His older brother was called back into service, and another brother joined the Marines as well. All three of them were home for Christmas. (10:10) He had about ten days for leave after training. Leave after training was rather common. (10:42) Next he was sent back to California, possibly for more training. He is unsure. (11:03) Arrived in Korea mid February, or early March. It was around his eighteenth birthday. (11:16) Shipped out of San Diego on a large ship. It may have been the U.S.S. Lincoln, but he is unsure. (12:03) He found the experience very moving. He was also afraid of the ocean at night. (12:21) The uncertainty of the situation was worrisome. (12:55) The ship was not joined by any others. (13:04) On deck they completed more physical training. He does not recall having any job on particular on board. (13:24) The water was rough, many of the men were seasick. (13:39) The voyage was about two weeks. Ten to fourteen days. (14:11) Arrival • • • • • • • • He was a private. (14:29) He joined a weapons company, a section of machine guns. The unit had a 30 caliber water-cooled machine gun. He was an ammo carrier. (14:35) The sections consisted of about sixteen people. (15:22) They had two heavy machine guns, five to six ammo carriers. (15:24) Landed in the southern part of Korea, near Pusan, a common port (15:45) He was assigned to a reserve unit. (16:35) they were near the 38th parallel. (16:47) Shortly after arriving, they were moved toward the North and the combat zone. (17:14) Active Duty • • • • • • • • • • • • His first combat experience was on a hill. There was a large fire-fight on a hill ahead of them. The battle took place at night. His unit's objective was to assist the other men, as they were being hit badly. There first objective was to bring the wounded back to their area. He had trained with some of the wounded men. They also brought the bodies of the dead back. (17:47) The experience was very unpleasant., especially seeing the dead men. (19:36) They used body bags for the killed men. (19:48) Korea was very warm. (19:56) He had another combat in early June. (20:24) This combat was closer, and shells were used. One of the shells landed near him. (20:43) At the time, he was relieving himself to the side of a tree. When he heard the shell, he moved behind the tree. (20:57) The tree saved his life, but he was wounded by wood shrapnel. (21:21) He got stitches, it was not a severe wound. (21:53) He was wounded around June 20th, and was back the first of July. He was only out of duty for a few weeks. (22:06) Not sure about the quality of the enemy weapons. Believes they were probably similar to what they used. (22:27) The Marines were using WWII era weapons. Although the US had higher quality �weapons than the enemy forces, in practice older weapons were used in the field. (23:13) The Chinese Troops • He came in contact with some Chinese troops in September of 1951. He was with two men in a bunker on a hill. Inside the bunker were some dead Chinese troops. North Korean troops were also in the area, although in this instance it was mostly Chinese troops. The experience was his first contact with Chinese troops. (24:00) • Many of the troops were worried about the Chinese involvement. Especially at Hill 749—the same hill he had been at the first time. He returned again for two to three days. The men in the unit they were relieving had taken many injuries. (25:10) • This time around he was the gunner, and had an assistant gunner. (26:24) • They expected an attack by the Chinese. (26:40) • They set up a perimeter, putting the machine guns at a point of defense. The machine gun was used to cover the riflemen. (26:53) • Three attacks came in the night. The Chinese used grenades, machine guns, and mortars. (27:21) • This was his first experience with such a direct attack. (27:50) Korean Troops • He worked with South Korean troops, they helped carry supplies. (28:00) • They got along with the Korean troops. (28:32) • He did not go on leave while in Korea, unless his hospital stays could be considered leave. (28:59) • He started opening the machine gun, in a hole with the assistant gunner fifteen feet away. (29:40) • As the battle accelerated, one of the men was hit in the neck. He pleaded “Please, don't me die” (29:59) • A grenade was thrown in the hole. (30:42) • He opened fire with the machine gun. They used tracers, which lit up. (30:50) Wounded/Hospital Stay • He was hit in the head and knocked out. He has a plate in his head because of the wound. (31:18) • The assistant gunner called in Dick Blassingame, who became a hero at this battle. Dick field dressed his head,and took over the gun. (31:36) • He was wounded around 1:00 AM. (32:21) • When he woke up, it was daylight. His head felt bad. He could feel the dressing on his wound. He was able to hear the voices of the men. (32:30) • He felt around near the hole, and found a dead Chinese man. (32:55) • His right side was paralyzed. He was able to see, and he yelled. He was then carried to the Aid station, then put on a helicopter (with an open side). He was conscious during the experience. Shortly after, he was sent to a hospital ship. (33:20) • He was in the Aid Center for a few hours, not very long. (34:05) • Other men in the center had worse wounds. (34:30) • He was wounded in September. (34:57) • He went from the Aid Station to a hospital in Seoul, to a hospital ship in Pusan, to a hospital in Kobe, Japan. Next, he was sent to a hospital in Hawaii for a day or two, and then he was flown into the San Francisco Oakland hospital, where he stayed for around a month. (35:02) • He was then sent home. (36:04) �• • • • • The Japanese and Korean hospital were high quality. He was not worried about them. (36:12) He needed to use a walker for a brief time, about a month and a half. (36:33) He wrote letters while in Korea, but after being wounded his bad handwriting was worsened. He had a relative in the area, who kept contact with his family. (37:20) They mostly read military newspapers in Korea. The papers were mostly on military subjects. (38:05) Doesn't recall men being worried about Russian involvement in the Korean War. (38:44) Pictures/Documents • A picture of his reserve unit he joined in July 1959. (39:24) • Picture of himself in boot camp. He is on the far right. (40:02) • Picture of his friends. (40:35) • Picture of advance training. (40:40) • Picture of him and his brothers who enlisted in the Marines. His oldest brother Fred, and his next older brother Bruce both enlisted. (40:51) • Fred trained other Marines, and himself and Bruce both served in Korea. (41:08) • A newspaper clipping on his family, notes his fathers pride in his sons. (41:25) • Picture of his family. (41:46) • Telegrams sent to his family regarding his first injury. He reported back from the first wound on June 27th, not July 1st. (41:56) • Sketch of him at the hospital. The sketch was drawn by a Korean at the hospital. (42:24) • Picture of his first Purple Heart. (42:49) • Picture of himself and his section leader, Dick Blassingame. (43:00) • Picture of the machine gun. (43:14) • Picture of his comrades. (43:20) • Picture of his section of gunners, prior to Hill 749. A result of the battle is included. Most of the men were wounded, three or four were killed, and three others were rendered unfit for combat as a result of shell shock. (43:27) • Another picture of himself and Dick, eating dinner with Liz Taylor. The picture is in a book (We Claim the Title) about the Korean War. His name is misspelled as “Holly” (44:35) • He was close friends with Dick, who called him “Buddy” or “Buddy Holly.” The book author had interviewed Dick, and Dick had given him the incorrect spelling. (45:27) • He left the hill in September of 1951. He heard about the book in the nineties. (46:11) • He bought the book, and read it on a trip with his wife. He found the book very moving. He called the publishing company, then the author, and was able to get in touch with Dick again. (47:05) • Talked with Dick over the phone, it was very emotional for him. They met again in 2000, and again a month or so ago. (48:60) • An article in the paper about his head wound. (48:38) • Newsletter about Hill 749. Many men were killed. (48:45) • Telegrams related to his second wound. He had been hit in the left side of the head. (49:53) • The Lieutenant sent a letter full of praise to his parents, and also mentioned Blasongsame. (50:13) • Picture of his second Purple Heart. (51:10) • Picture of himself in the hospital. (51:17) �• • • • • • • • • • • • • He was in a wheelchair for a bit after he wound. (51:29) He was discharged in January, and went back to school. (15:58) He had the plate put in at Grey's Hospital in Detroit. (52:25) Blassingame had earned the Navy Cross. He had maintained perfect gun control, rendered First Aid, and had supervised the troops. (52:50) Picture of assistant gunner Bob Dilquist, who was not at Hill 749. (53:46) His discharge papers. He had served seven months in Korea, and two years in the Marine Corps. (54:25) Picture of himself and Blassingame when they met again in 1994. Dick remembered him fondly. The picture is near a church in California. Dick had been worried about his head injury causing brain damage. (54:48) Picture of his family, wife and eldest daughter. (56:12) He and his wife climbed Macchu Picchu. He had had knee replacement surgery recently. (56:23) Picture of his daughters Michelle, and Danette (56:47) Picture of his son Rob, his wife and three sons. (56:57) Picture of Michelle again. (57:03) Family picture in Dominican Republic, Spring of 2007. He has three children and eight grandchildren. (57:10) Post-War Life • He went back to Michigan after the war. He had been discharged for medical reasons. (57:53) • He graduated high school in 1953. Then he went to college at Eastern Michigan. Earned his bachelors degree in 1957, and began teaching in Dearborn. (58:09) • Earned his master's degree in 1959. (58:38) • Taught elementary school for three years. (58:40) • Became a “supervising teacher: at Eastern Michigan University. He trained student teachers. (58:53) • Married 1961. He was a principal for a year in Homer, MI and then again in Royal Oak for eight years. (59:33) • Spent three years as an assistant superintendent in Constance. (59:51) • Worked on his PhD at MSU. He was superintendent for four years. Then he was a superintendent at Kent City for eight years. He then worked at Jackson, MI for eight years and retired 1994. (1:00:00) • The possibility of a draft for the current war is very controversial, but he is opposed to it. He thinks the main reason that it has not been used it because the administration has outsourced military activity to corporations, such as Blackwater. (1:02) � 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 Halle, Robert A. (Interview outline and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Halle, Robert A. Description An account of the resource Robert Halle served in the Marine Corps during the Korean War. Robert and Bruce both served in Korea. Robert enlisted in the Marine Reserves at the age of seventeen, and was called to active duty during his junior year of high school. He trained in California. He served for seven months, and was wounded twice. One of these wounds was a minor shrapnel wound, the other was a significant wound on the left side of his head. Robert discusses at length his experience at Hill 749, praises his friend and section leader Dick Blassingame, and discusses his lifelong post-war career in education. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource McCauslin, Kelly (Interviewer) Spring Lake District Library (Spring Lake, Mich.) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans United States. Marine Corps Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Video recordings Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008-01-31 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HalleR 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/202e696435f2f9033567b7c37230bbed.mp4 bddcf49e6aa114e3d01d3e731597fc87 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7d79826991d94ef79c0c3c207592afe3.pdf 472b42e186ab17f29f1ea95410e4c3cf PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans’ History Project Mike Hale Vietnam War 1 hour 28 minutes 51 seconds (00:00:41) Early Life -Born in Muskegon, Michigan in 1946 -Lived there all his life -Attended Muskegon schools until eighth grade -Attended Barbour Hall Academy (junior military academy) in Nazareth, Michigan -Went to Marmion Military Academy for high school in Aurora, Illinois -Father was a dentist -Mother was a stay at home mom (00:01:30) Military Academies -IQ tested and decided to attend the military academies for the challenge -Public schools wouldn’t have been difficult enough -Spent five years all toll in military academies -Introduced him to military life and the concept of survival -Twenty four hours military -Regimented living -Woken up at a certain time every day -Inspected before each class -Received rudimentary military training -Similar to ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) training -Graduated in June 1964 (00:03:44) Enlisting in the Army -Returned to Muskegon to attend Muskegon Community College for a year -In July 1965 after President Johnson began Vietnam War he decided to enlist -Thought that he would be safer as an enlistee as opposed to being a draftee -August 1965 enlisted in the Army to go into communications (00:05:45) Awareness of Vietnam War -Didn’t know a lot about Vietnam War -Knew there was combat going on -Aware of the fact that soldiers were getting killed and wounded -Knew that there would be a low chance for survival if he was sent to Vietnam -Wanted to avoid becoming an officer (00:07:06) Army Physical and Basic Training -Given an Army physical in Fort Wayne (outside of Detroit), Michigan -Standard physical as well as other tests -Took two days -Lots of shots and paperwork involved -Sent to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri for basic training shortly after August 1965 -Got assigned to a training company -Some repetition of what he had already learned in the military academies �-Took part in live fire training exercises, marksmanship training, and grenade training -Hand to hand combat courses and obstacle course training -They stayed in WWII barracks -Assigned to be a “fireman”: Loaded coal into furnaces -Being a “fireman” meant he didn’t have to go through as much training -Training emphasized killing -Shocking for a late teenager, early twenty year old -Finished basic training in November 1965 (00:11:00) Advanced Infantry Training -Sent to Fort Devens, Massachusetts for advanced infantry training -Focus was on radio training and cryptology training -Official job designation was Morse code interceptor -Sitting for eight hours listening to Morse code and writing it down -Washed out -Kept in communications by the Army (00:12:34) Back to Fort Leonard Wood and Deployment Orders -Sent back to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri -Attached to radio unit in training -Stayed there from February 1966 to June 1966 -Got orders to report to Fort Riley, Kansas with the 9th Division for deployment to Vietnam -Trained how to use large transmitters for base to base communications -Radio operator not a radio repair man (00:14:02) Fort Riley, Kansas -Reported to Fort Riley, Kansas and was attached to the 9th Division (formed in February 1966) -Assigned to be in Headquarters Company of the 15th Combat Engineer Battalion, 9th Division -Close friend from Fort Devens was assigned to HQ Company as well -Trained as a unit at Fort Riley -Command wanted to make sure they could function together as a unit -Instrumental in forming a bond between them -Vehicles were sent to Vietnam before the soldiers were -Remembers the Fort Riley PX (general store) having great pizza and great beer -Did field training to prepare for Vietnam -The cold and the rain in Kansas didn’t match with Vietnamese weather -Conducted training for Vietnam in the winter while in Massachusetts -Neither scenario made sense to him -Some experienced men in the unit, but for the most part they were all fresh soldiers (00:18:25) Deployment to Vietnam -Went over by boat to Vietnam with the primary task of building a base camp for rest of division -Departed mid-October -On the trip over they were trained to be in the proper mindset -Trained to believe that the Vietnamese were subhuman -Weather wasn’t bad on crossing -Took eighteen days to cross over -Traveled with Marines -There was camaraderie with a slight hint of friendly rivalry -Stopped in Okinawa, Japan and took a twenty four hour liberty there �(00:22:17) Arriving in Vietnam -Offloaded the Marines at Da Nang -Traveled south to Vung Tau -Left ship by barge and then taken to an airstrip by truck -Left by the airstrip for a few hours completely exposed without ammo -Flown to Bearcat outside of Long Thanh -Bearcat was attached to Camp Martin Cox of the 4th Infantry Division -Later worked in conjunction with the 18th Engineering Brigade -Worked there from mid-October 1966 to December 1966 when the rest of the division arrived (00:25:07) Adjusting to Vietnam Pt. 1 -Three weeks after arriving the monsoon season began -Filled sand bags constantly -One night after dinner he heard a boom and saw a fireball rising on the horizon -Shocking and gut wrenching to see that and know he had a year left of being there (00:27:15) Main Assignments in Vietnam -Main assignment was to build the base for the rest of their battalion -Also conducted some basic engineering patrols -First objective was to get a drainage system established to contend with the monsoons -Built wooden platforms to put their tents on -Underneath the platforms they built mortar trenches for cover from bombardments -Main field task was to clear the jungle -Used modified bulldozers and Agent Orange to clear foliage (00:30:35) Adjusting to Vietnam Pt. 2 -Terrain was mostly flat with sporadic hills and mountains -Beautiful country when it wasn’t raining or hot -Dry season caused it to be unbearably hot and dusty -Adjusted to Vietnamese weather relatively quickly -Considered seventy degrees to be cold (00:32:46) Life at Bearcat Pt. 1 -Spent a lot of time on the base -Went into the field to provide support for construction crews -Bridge builders, road builders, jungle clearing crews -Stayed at Bearcat until January or February 1968 (00:34:21) Mekong Delta Pt. 1 -Moved to the Mekong Delta to Dong Thap to build up base there -Brought dredges in to drain the sand from the river and build a base there (00:34:45) Life at Bearcat Pt. 2 -At Bearcat they had a pool, library, large PX, an average sized hospital, helipad -Safer assignment than being elsewhere, but still vulnerable to attack -Being in communications offered even more protection (00:36:02) Being in Communications -Learned to concentrate while on radio -Felt fortunate not having to be in the field after hearing transmissions from the field -Engineering units did get ambushed and sniped at -Knew how to defend themselves and bulldozers offered protection -Focused on staying alive and getting home in one piece �-Knew that they took casualties -He and his friends kept each other alive (00:39:27) Supporting the 173rd Airborne Brigade -Assigned to help the 173rd Airborne Brigade in the field -Communications were placed in vulnerable position on the perimeter, didn’t make sense -Remembers hearing something in the bushes during a late night watch -In the morning saw that nothing had been actually been there -APCs (armored personnel carriers) had flamethrowers attached to them -Felt secure being behind that kind of firepower -Radio antennas made them exposed -Constantly worked to make them as inconspicuous as possible -Primary target of Vietnamese snipers (00:42:56) Traveling in Vietnam Pt. 1 -Traveled via trucks and helicopters -Thrilling to travel 150mph at treetop level in a helicopter -Rode in Caribou transports and Huey, and Chinook helicopters -Riding in a Chinook was like riding in a washing machine -On the Mekong Delta they lived and traveled on boats -Barges that had been turned into barracks -Landing craft that were used like trucks -Gunboats that could move quickly, but drew a lot of fire (00:45:20) Mekong Delta Pt. 2 -Managed to, to his amazement, build a two story wooden barrack on the Mekong Delta -Took enemy fire pretty regularly (nightly or bi-nightly basis) -Built rocket shelters while on the Mekong Delta -During one bombardment ran from his tent to a shelter -Determined to survive -Bombardments were slightly organized, but also random (00:47:37) Relations with the Vietnamese -At Bearcat during the Tet Offensive there were Vietnamese workers -After the Tet Offensive those workers seemed to vanish -Suspected them of being Viet Cong -Suspected that members of the South Vietnamese Army were part of the Viet Cong -Got to see the lifestyle of the Vietnamese civilians during R&R and traveling -Could smell a village before you actually saw it (00:50:42) Leave in 1967 -Didn’t feel disconnect with friends on returning home for leave -Lost contact with them and just wanted to enjoy life while home -Busy with going to Chicago on the weekends to meet with girl there -Wanted to spend as much time with his family as possible -Always knew in the back of his mind that he would have to go back to Vietnam (00:51:40) Returning to Vietnam -Traveled to Fort Dix, New Jersey -From Fort Dix went to Anchorage, Alaska for refueling -Flew over the Pacific to Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon, Vietnam -Took a convoy back to base �-Got back to Vietnam in August 1967 -Saw Bob Hope perform for Christmas -Not a lot of guys got to see him -Show lasted an hour or two -Kept their mind off of things -Humor was a morale boost (00:54:50) Replacements -New soldiers were apprehensive -His job was to train, watch over, and essentially protect them -Still had to carry out his own duties -New soldiers still had to fine tune their combat abilities -Being in combat situations with new soldiers caused a great deal of stress -Had to answer their questions and carry out your own duty (00:57:09) Drugs and Race Relations in Vietnam -Drugs weren’t a problem while he was in Vietnam -Racial issues didn’t come about during his deployment -Saw each other as equals in combat -There were a few minorities in his communications unit -Camaraderie eased, if not erased, tensions -Tremendous reliance on one another to survive -Increase in draft led to an increase in tension and a drop in morale -This didn’t happen during his deployment (00:59:40) Death of a Friend -Close friend from Fort Devens and Fort Riley was killed in April 1968 during bombardment -He had swapped assignments with him -Survivor’s guilt has haunted him for years -Their mutual friend escorted the remains home -Remains were lost in transition -Deceased friend’s father worked for Pentagon and had had them taken to Arlington -Eventually got the chance to get closure at the Vietnam Memorial and at the grave site (01:03:24) Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination -The MLKJ assassination was shocking and unbelievable to him -Northerners were mortified by the aggression -Doesn’t recall the way black soldiers reacted to it -Primary focus at the time was getting home in April (01:04:47) Traveling in Vietnam Pt. 2 -Traveling in well defended convoys led to safer travels -Improvised explosives and landmines were still a threat (01:06:00) A Company at Bearcat -Worked with A Company briefly at Bearcat shortly before moving to Mekong Delta -Placed in charge of communications -Much smaller scale than base sized communications -Localized work with platoons, not nearly as extensive as at battalion headquarters �(01:07:02) Movies about Vietnam War -Ending of “Platoon” always brings up survivor guilt about his friend -Movies are accurate, but also dramatized and thematic -“We Were Soldiers” is, in his opinion, the most accurate depiction of combat in Vietnam -Actually met the writer of the book, Joseph Galloway (01:09:11) Coming Home -Returned to the United States in mid-April 1968 -Midst of high anti-war sentiments -Landed in Oakland, California at 2 A.M. -Advised (unofficially) to change into civilian clothes upon leaving the base -Didn’t have to deal with name calling or harassment from protestors upon returning home -Flew from California, to Chicago, to Muskegon -Didn’t run into many protestors -When they departed from Vietnam everyone was in great spirits -Given thirty days of leave upon returning home -Focused on getting used to being a civilian again -Didn’t tell people that he was a Vietnam veteran (01:12:08) Fort Sheridan, Illinois -He was going to be sent to Germany for a year as part of enlistment -Got sent to Fort Sheridan, Illinois (north of Chicago) instead -Headquarters of the 5th Army -Worked communications there -Easy assignment -Eight hour shifts -Could go into Chicago after work if you had the first or second shift -Made shift supervisor which meant that he and the other soldier on duty could relax (01:13:51) Democratic National Convention 1968 and Anti-War Sentiments -Stationed at Fort Sheridan at the time of the Democratic National Convention of 1968 -Placed on alert in case the National Guard needed back up dealing with the protests -Believes there was some righteous indignation felt by the protestors there -Shocked by the anti-war sentiments -Felt that the troops were being wrongly persecuted -You don’t have to support the war or the government, but the troops you should (01:15:40) Leaving the Army -Got out of the Army early in May 1969 to go back to college -Younger soldiers on base had been asking questions about Vietnam before he left -What could they expect over there? -Most of them were anxious about being deployed (01:17:10) Muskegon Community College -Went back to Muskegon Community College after the Army -Stood out because of being former military -Older than most students (he was twenty two or twenty three years old) -Still had a military haircut -Professor asked him to do a class on Vietnam after finding out that he had been in Vietnam -History of Vietnam, not his own personal experiences -Students were in awe of him having served in Vietnam �(01:18:30) Careers Post-Army -Got a part time job in radio broadcasting -Muskegon in 1969 or 1970 -Disc jockeying -Enjoyed the work -Got his 1st Class Radio Telephone License to be a broadcast engineer -Meant job security, more money, and more responsibility -Stayed in radio for about eight years -Moved to Grand Rapids after college in Muskegon for a while -Wound up helping Wyoming Public Schools in 1973 building up communications -Got a job in public relations -Worked with them for twenty years (01:21:03) Reflections on Service and Veteran Involvement -Positives of service were being able to serve his country, doing his duty, and surviving -Started getting involved with other veterans in the early 1990s -Rise of pride of having been in the military -Asked questions by other veterans -Usually asked if he had PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) -Finally went to veterans’ center and got counseling -Much to his surprise he realized that he had PTSD -Recognizes now how inaction in dealing with it could be tremendously negative -Now attends group and individual therapy -Negative of realizing that was that he now looks back on all the mistakes he had made -Also had to have his wife go through rough times with him -Healthy, open, and helpful therapeutic sessions -Has learned how to manage his triggers and his temper -Proud to have been a part of the veterans that pushed government to help soldiers -Now the government actually helps new veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan -Believes that the government needs to reevaluate how quickly they get into war -Being a Vietnam veteran now has pride attached to it -Helped force positive reform in the government � 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 Hale, Michael (Interview outline and video), 2013 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hale, Michael Description An account of the resource Mike Hale was born in Muskegon, Michigan in 1946. He attended Barbour Hall Academy and Marmion Military Academy until graduating in 1964. In August 1965 he enlisted in the Army for communications and attended training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, Fort Devens, Massachusetts, and Fort Riley, Kansas. He was attached to Headquarters Company of the 15th Combat Engineer Battalion of the 9th Division at Fort Riley and was deployed to Vietnam in mid-October 1966 where he served at Bearcat and at Dong Thap in the Mekong Delta until he was sent home in April 1968. Upon returning home he served at Fort Sheridan, Illinois until May 1969. 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 2013-12-05 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HaleM1562V 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/4bc1d122e95ece073ec56957f8e72efa.mp4 87860f15eafe3d4838a2c75a97b05608 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1cf6729296125591adde70f8b8a8aabd.pdf a19394e27589f866daff55bfc928de93 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Lynn Hahn (1:41:05) (00:20) Background Information • • Lynn was born in 1931 in Beaverton, MI His parents were both Methodist ministers and he moved around a lot when he was younger (1:40) World War Two • • Lynn had been in boy scouts and remembered often gathering canned goods for the war effort He also remembered rationing of sugar, tires, and gasoline (2:40) Graduation from High School 1949 • • • • • Lynn attended Alma College where he played football, basketball, and baseball Lynn got bad grades and was put on probation He quit school and began working in a factory He met his future wife and they began talking about marriage, but were worried that he would be drafted Lynn had many friends that were being drafted, but decided to get married before his time in the service (5:00) Lynn Received his draft papers in December of 1951 • He was inducted on January 2nd at Fort Custer in Battle Creek, MI • Lynn was brought into an office to help type release records • He was told he could only keep that position for 30 days (8:30) Basic Training in Virginia • Lynn began quartermaster training and spent 8 weeks in Virginia • Training took severe discipline to wake up every day at 5 am • Lynn continued with school for graves registration • He was told he would be categorizing bodies in cemeteries in Europe • Graves registration lasted another 8 weeks in which they were handling actual bodies • They learned how to evacuate the dead, search battlefields for bodies, and identify bodies • Lynn began realizing that he would be going to Korea and not Europe (15:40) Lynn arrived in Korea in 1952 • He traveled on a victory ship to Korea that was about 500 feet long • The ship was jam packed with troops and many of them were sea sick before the ship even took off • Lynn was often worried about being hit by a torpedo • Once in Korea, the soldiers were told they were there to stop communism from spreading �• Many were worried that Russia may get further involved in the war (24:20) North Korea • Lynn was working at the 23rd group headquarters near the middle of the peninsula, about 15 miles from the front line • He then began working for 148th graves registration • They were staying in Quonset huts and the area smelled horrible because the natives used human waste for fertilizer • Lynn got started working in the mortuary and found that it was very different from his training • They had to remove the clothes from the body, take fingerprints, and record all their work • The bodies were refrigerated until there were enough of them to put in a flight to Japan • In Japan the bodies were identified, embalmed, and sent in a casket back to the US (30:50) Search and Recovery • There were many dead left to recover from fighting with the Chinese • Lynn would receive a battle report of all the men that were missing • They would travel with South Korean interpreters and first ask natives if they had seen any of the missing men • Then they would travel to the area where the battle took place to look for bodies • Lynn worked every day of the week and barely had time for church on Sundays • They had no contact with the Chinese, but gathered many Chinese bodies • They handled the foreign bodies the same and established temporary cemeteries for them (35:00) One Week Trip to Japan • Lynn stayed in a nice hotel, got to take a warm shower, shave, and change into clean clothes • He spent time swimming, bicycling, and riding a motor cycle • He wrote to his wife and parents almost every day and his wife kept all the letters (37:50) War Progression • Lynn continued on many search and recovery missions • Often there were air alerts when unidentified planes flew over the area • The men would then hurry and jump into their fox holes, but it was always a false alarm • Activity had begun to slow near the cease fire • About 3 months before the cease fire, the men began separating all the foreign bodies so that the exchange would go more smoothly (42:00) Operations Section of Graves Registration • Lynn received a new job at the end of the war working in an office • This occurred during Operation Glory, which was the exchange of foreign bodies with Koreans and Chinese • About 4,000 American bodies were obtained from the Chinese, and the Americans exchanged about 15,000 Chinese (45:00) Passing of Time �• • • • • • Many men had to remain in Korea for another six months before they would be discharged They spent time building a club house and a bar Lynn continued working in the office and filling out paperwork He took an even larger liberty ship home and got sick again The ship arrived in San Francisco and Lynn took a train to Chicago He waited a long time to be discharged (49:00) Time After the Service • Lynn and his wife saved a lot of money and bought a new house and car • He went back to school and paid for it with the GI Bill • Lynn got better grades the second time around and made the Dean’s List • He majored in chemistry and continued to play baseball • After graduation, Lynn began working for the Michigan Chemical Corporation (56:00) Research facility • Lynn worked in a different research facility in 1957 in Saint Louis • He moved to Ann Arbor in 1975, and then moved again to Chicago • He became the chief chemist in Whitehall and worked there for 13 years before retiring in 1993 (58:03) Civil War Activities • Lynn had family members that fought in the Civil War with Sherman • His great grandfather was captured by confederates for foraging • Lynn did lots of research on his family history and their involvement in the Civil War (1:01:00) Reunions • Lynn wrote an article in 1996 for the Korean War Memorial in Washington DC • He has gone to many graves registration reunions • Showing of pictures �Co A 15-J-5 CtlARACtER or SEl'ARAnon lIO;iOH..f8LE I. LAST NA~IE I - fiRST /lAME - MIDOLE NAME 1.• ~ ! .., ~ :;c ..... .., c c 1> ;;; ~ ffi c <n 28. I.IOST SlGNlFlCAtfT DUTY ASSICtlMElfT .: 29. 148 Qm Grvs Rec Co ~ ~ io WOUNDS RECElI/EO AS A RESULT Of AI;TlOri Willi (NL',W rOfrlis (PI"...-·~",/ du/e. ;f known)' i".jJJ. 30. SERVICE _~CII110LS OR COlUGES. COLLEGE TRAINltlC COIJll&S AND/OR DATES 31. :;niVIC( TRAIIiIlIG COURSES sue .. £SSrUllY MAJOR COURSES (Fro~~1"o) POST·CRAD mURS<S SOCCESSfU1LY COMPlET<O r.n r.t,~lPL( ~ ..... ~lJ School ~ e ~ ~ .. .L. l_ .~ ~ .. ---.. - - - - . - - - - - - . GOVERNMENT IUSURANCE INFORMATIO": (A) Pem,anenl plan premium must CQlllinae to be paid when dll~. Dr within)1 dJY:'; 'h·:l~JfI('[.I)( InSUfJJli:t: \"/;11IJp5.e. (B) felli' l:)sm"I~';'" roel unite, WJiVtf snne J'\(,i) at:wle ~ (C) Term insllr.Jnte under waiver_ plemium polyment must be lesumtd wiU,ir, 120days after se~1'alion. Fcrw.ud premiums un U~1I10 \'l!lefan't AI:!illlll~trJlivn DI;;III(1 (;lil~'': iIJVUI~ Jl'llSdiLtI'-:::1 OVIOI lh~ .!IC3~hnwn in Hem c ~ .n. F;l'.3.d premiu:n, on USGU ID Veterans Administralion. W.1shlngt$ 25. D. C. (See VA Pamphh:1 9-3l-When payine: prcnJl1Jm: give I~U f1.Jm". adcfu:$.:;. Se"I;('l Ih:1I1i.l.lI. PlJl,t)' hWHli=I(S), B'Jnch "' $cl'.ICC. dile ::: ecce 01 separatioa. Ccntact ReJrat VA office lor inform:UJ::JQ toncerninc Covernment life Insurance. .. t;!~ J2A. KinD & AMT. or INSURANCE & MTIIlV. PRE1IlIUhIP20. ACTI'IE SERVICE PRIOR TO 26 APRIL 31 MONTii AUl1rMt:llI DISl;OfHltlUrO--- J'.i.i.iiiT:t·'ILU PRfMiUMiiu(-"- - ­ I--t--------------~ ~ ~~ "" :5 r 35. TOTAL PAVIAEtlT UPON ¥ARATIOII l~A 311. R[MAJlJlS (Cont;nuo 01' b YEs -I l9 Hone Ind 136.. EJNO DUNKNOWrl 1M. --------_._.+----_ .. J). Olseur.~IIlG orncurs _._.~ TRAVEL ORtallEAGr AlWIVAllCE IHCLUDro iii TOTAL PAvraEIlT lilA ""'.". .,·it!dl"l 120 d ays - _-,.._._._- _.-.- - - ­ /W.ll Mil SHfol·(iL IlUMI'i R l·lA leverse) .. '3i-·~i;[.. iif-OfFh:r;/ pii~oSiGN--- z: s.., Blood Group 0 time lost. under sec 6a Api) 2b!::C1'~ 1~'51 Ho .... ::c Hal fr a ctive rail svc de. trfd to USAR to c 0\111;16 toe >~ eight (U) yrs svc under- u£.'£ 6. Svc Act u ;:: z: 1-+-::--:-:-.,.....".====-:-="""'""==-=-....,.,...-.,....-,....­ L---L See If I J.s-1r-.Lt / 20 DO 1 ~~~"n 214 E."~~~O~B~~~E~~~ , /.' ~ _ _,l_.;...!:'? ....~; ........ {:.::..:...........:..-._ INDIVIDUAL'S COPY (TO BE DELIVERED TO THE IND.IV£;;At BEING SEPARAfEDl 0- • ---AGG----­ , ./ ·'r.''':' ...'. " / ,_/'..;f_ " ,;../­ _ .._. ,_..:._ � 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 Hahn, Lynn (Interview outline and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hahn, Lynn Description An account of the resource Lynn Hahn was born in Michigan in 1931. He attended college shortly after high school before being drafted into the Army. Lynn attended quarter master training in Virginia and trained in graves registration. Lynn was shipped to Korea in August of 1952 and stayed about 15 miles from the front working in a mortuary. Lynn spent much time identifying bodies and going on search and recovery missions after battles took place. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource McCauslin, Kelly (Interviewer) Spring Lake District Library (Spring Lake, Mich.) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans United States. Army 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 2008-04-12 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HahnL 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/999851a8caf25db287393388081fa9f5.mp4 98ee4065064ddf72c1ffbbe29045cf56 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/5e8f52636851ce7856a0ff87002c2a03.pdf 40212342d97e31795ad8206a74ecc2c4 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Russell Hage (02:37:00) Pre-Enlistment (00:10) • Childhood (00:11) o • Hage was born on May 20th, 1919 near Ravenna, MI. (00:26) Family (00:48) o Father served @ Fort Custer for 7 months during WWI. Grew up in East Muskegon with 3 younger sisters. (01:20) o • After the war, his father worked at a jewelry store. Discusses his father’s childhood and his family in general. (03:58) Education (02:22) o Graduated high school in 1937. Mentions extra-curricular activities. (02:27) • His Job (04:22) o After graduation, he went and worked in his dad’s jewelry store and played baseball. Discusses his work responsibilities. (04:22) Enlistment/Training (06:54) • Background (06:35) o 1940: Hage describes the pre-war sentiments of friends and family alike. (06:36) • • Why he joined (06:54) o Hage mentions that he and his whole group volunteered ahead of time before the draft was instituted. (07:43) o When he enlisted, the army was the only service recruiting men, so Hage joined the army. (07:55) Where they trained and what company they were in (08:54) �o Went to Fort Custer where he was for a few days. (09:01) o From there, he went by train to Chicago, where he joined up with other recruits, (10:16) and from there went to Fort Worden, Washington where he underwent basic training. (10:53) o Briefly describes the chain of command in battalions. (11:05) o Received his basic training at Fort Worden but briefly waited at Fort Flagler until it was built. (12:23) Was pulled from G-battery to the newly formed L-battery. (12:44) o Went to Puget Sound after basic training. Briefly describes its defensive features. (13:38) Mentions in brief detail command exercises and then mentions that his main job was to put fused into 12-in. mortar shells & 12in gun shells. (15:47) Briefly mentions that they were issued WWI uniforms. (16:18) o Hage briefly describes the army’s battlefield readiness at the brink of WWII. (17:12) o Briefly mentions what the effects of tide conditions were like on Puget Sound for various ships coming into the sound. (19:30) o October ’41 - Briefly goes into some detail regarding an instance of the British battleship Warspite entering Puget Sound unnoticed. (21:28) o A week later a message was intercepted from the navy informing them that an unidentified submarine possibly German was entering the sound. (23:36) This news was never broadcast. (25:47) o December 1941, all Army and Navy personnel’s shore leave was cancelled before the attack on Pearl Harbor. (27:40) The general American feeling was that something big was going to happen. (28:45) Army personnel had 6 hrs shifts daily 24/7. (29:40) o Hage mentions that he was trained in the use of 50-caliber machine guns and the building of underground shelters 15ft. deep which were built at Puget Sound. (30:02) • Other training (31:05) o At this point, Hage backs up and mentions that following basic training he changed to hydraulic duties. (31:20) It was that this point that Hage applied and was accepted into officer’s training. (32:29) o May ’41 – Hage received orders to report to Camp Davis near Wellington, NC. (33:14) Stayed there for 3 months and training to be an �anti-aircraft officer. (33:35) Conditions on base were very stringent because the army didn’t have many junior officers. Trainees lived in 4 assigned barracks. About ½ of them dropped out, while the other ½ stayed and took advanced math & other subjects near Holly Ridge, NC. (35:22) o In his 1st month there, officers learned how to show common soldiers how to carry rifles, achieve discipline, and marching. (36:30) o Hage further mentions working with 90 and 40-mm anti-aircraft guns at Camp Fisher learning how to operate and repair them. (37:16) Graduated anti-aircraft officer training in 1942. (37:31) o Took a 2-week leave afterwards to marry his school sweetheart. (37:52) o Afterwards, Hage and some friends went by car to Camp Hahn, CA. (39:50) It was here that the army organized the formation of units and battalions. (40:24) o July ’42 -- While stationed here, Hage was assigned to the 440th Antiaircraft battalion which was a 40-mm gun unit. (41:11) Mentions that he was assigned to C battery. o The 440th was formed @ Camp Hahn & the first of its kind. (42:10) o Camp Irwin/Desert training (47:35)  Describes in some detail his training with the 40-mm anti-aircraft gun at Camp Irwin in the California desert. (44:35) Briefly discusses what training entailed here. (47:35)  In one instance, the 440th anti-aircraft unit accompanied a convoy to Camp Young where Patton set up a desert training center. (49:12) Further mentions the various military installations that dotted the California desert region. (49:43).  Oct. ’42 -- Conducted a training maneuver towards Iron Mt. where 4th Armored Division was posted, to condition themselves for conditions in desert environment. (53:03)  From there they moved up to the bullhead border b/w California, Nevada, & Utah with the 9th Armored Division. (53:40) Stayed at Camp Ibis for a short time. (54:46) Mentions a variety of other desert exercises they conducted for that year. (55:51) o Getting ready to disembark (56:15) � Traveled by train to Michigan and then by air on to Camp Pickett, VA. Later on he underwent the final phase of his training at Camp Stuart, VA. (56:36)  Went down to Savannah, Georgia & trained there for 5 weeks. (56:50) Spent 20 months here. (57:30)  Afterwards, went to Camp Shanks, NY in preparation for overseas journey. (57:40) Active Duty (59:05) • Where the subject went and how they got there (59:34) o Spent Christmas crossing the Atlantic not knowing where he was end up. (57:50) Traveled by convoy and arrived at Liverpool, England. (59:05) o From there he went by train to southern England. (59:25 • In England (1:00:45) o Upon landing, he took a train from Liverpool for Dartmouth on the coast, up to Reading. Underwent further training here. (1:01:20) o Afterwards, went to the west side of England. Used the training ground here for various combat units of the armed forces to practice different drills. (1:02:42) o Hage and a friend from battery A underwent further training in landing craft operations. (1:03:46) Landing crews were assigned to officers who would be able to work well with their crews. (1:04:41) Hage was soon training units in landing craft operations (1:05:37) o Soon afterwards, his battalion transported batteries to Paton, England. (1:09:30) • • Activities in England (1:10:20) o During his training breaks he often made visits to Oxford. (1:10:20) . o June ‘44 – The details of June 6th are described in brief detail. (1:16:54) Normandy (1:11:12) o June 8 – Normandy: The previous day, the Allies had climbed Utah cliffs and pushed inland for about a mile until being stopped by German opposition. (1:20:02) Hage & his unit landed at Omaha Beach when they �were supposed to have landed on Utah. Mentions what they did to solve this. (1:19:29) o While in the hedgerows his unit briefly stopped to light up an area so bombers would know where to drop their payload. (1:21:16) o After pushing up the Normandy peninsula & through the hedgerows, they were called upon to protect an airstrip so fighter planes could land. (1:22:34) Part of his unit’s job was to protect some of the airstrips in the area so fighters could land. If German artillery was positioned in the area they would fell trees to make room for gun emplacements. (1:23:00) o Briefly mentions the bombing on St. Lo that Omar Bradley had ordered. Hage describes what the shear sound of thousands of fighters and bombers flying overhead sounded like. Goes on to mention his part in protecting another airstrip. (1:26:28) o • In his next encounter, Hage is positioned at a chateau overlooking a bridge that crosses the Seine River at Melun. His job here was to safeguard this bridge so the Allies could cross safely. (1:27:21) On the March through France (1:27:47) o In preparation of a massive tank advance, Patton was gathering up gasoline. (1:27:47) The 79th Inf. Division, meanwhile, took the road north in pursuit of the retreating Germans. (1:28:42) o In one single day the Allies pushed 60 miles going through the towns of Charleroi, Paris and on into Belgium. (1:28:20) • Descriptions of various missions in France (1:29:20) o Hage and his unit were given a mission to protect an important bridge over the Meuse River so the 9th Inf. Div. could cross. (1:29:20) o While on reconnaissance through Charleroi, Hage and his unit decided to cut through the city itself to avoid the heavy-congested traffic situation. (1:29:56) After being welcomed by locals (1:30:14) his battery unit turned alongside the Meuse River out in the open, where they were exposed & started getting shelled by German artillery firing from across the river. (1:30:58)  Hage, meanwhile, ordered one of his gunners to direct their fire on specific machine-gun emplacements and a church emplacement �which he took out. (1:31:40) All the while Hage was loading 4 to 5 guns at a time while his gunner was firing. (1:32:46)  In that same experience, a sniper took out one of his gunners and injured 3 others. (1:33:56) His unit finally pulled back to the safety of the woods. (1:34:34) o Briefly mentions that a unit of non-combatants captured 12 Germans who surrendered to them. (1:35:39) • Belgium (1:36:02) o Hage’s experience here was in protecting various ammunition dumps, corps artillery, self-and propelled artillery, while getting often times getting shelled by German artillery in the area. (1:36:18) o On one occasion, German guns shelled and destroyed a few of their jeeps very close to Hage’s position. (1:37:54) o Briefly mentions that he had been stationed in the field as an executive officer with his men from August 1942 to October 1945. (1:38:10) • o From Aachen, the Army went into the Hurtgen Forest region where they buckled down for the winter. (1:39:02) Hage & his unit only stayed here a week and then were moved back to the town of Honsfeld, Belgium. (1:39:59) His mission here was to shoot V-1s (a robotic-aircraft attached with explosives) down from reaching their destinations. (1:40:56) His unit stayed here for 2 weeks. (1:41:34) o Hage describes what it was like marching over those dusty roads; all the while the line of the Army’s deployment was spread out for a mile. The 106th Inf. Div. & 99th Div., fresh divisions from the U.S. were in the front. (1:41:58) Hage’s unit was positioned very close to the 106th when the Battle of the Bulge began. (1:42:40) Battle of the Bulge (1:43:24) o On the 16th of December they heard the sound of 12 V-1s exploding nearby. (1:44:06) They soon realized that something big was going to happen. They soon got orders to move up to Honsfeld. (1:45:10) o Briefly discusses the book “The Longest Winter” which talks about the course of events as seen through the eyes of the 99 Inf. Div. (1:45:51) �o Makes mention of another book “We were each other’s Prisoners” which discusses some more things. (1:48:15) o Hage mentions receiving minor shrapnel wounds & is treated in a hospital. (1:48:47) From Malmédy they started heading down a dirt road towards St. Vith when Battery B came into contact with a contingent of Germans. (1:50:47) The 7th Armored & 106th with the 99th faced off with the Germans. The 99th Inf. Div. suffered heavy causalities. (1:51:20) o Christmas Eve – Hage & unit made contact with the 75th Div. who were the next division that they were assigned too. (1:52:22) The 75th Div. got assigned the northern section of the Bulge. The fighting at the Bulge as Hage mentions a little touch & go for a while. (1:53:24) Hage mentions that his unit supported the tanks & field artillery of 105-mm guns. (1:54:06) • • Other missions/activities in Europe (1:54:21) o Afterwards, the 75th Div. was given a clean-up mission in the Colmar sector, about 30 miles from the Swiss border which it was attached to the French Army. (1:54:22) The 75th Div. took position in the center line; the 28th Div on another side; & another division coming up from Italy on the other. (1:55:33) o Hage’s next mission took him to the Netherlands where the 2nd British Army was stationed. While here they placed different color banners on their trucks so they were able to differentiate between the trucks. (1:56:43) Rhine River Campaign (1:56:58) o The Allies were building pontoon bridges up near Wesel to cross the river. Hage describes briefly the various encounters he had on their side of the river. (1:58:04) o • Hage went to 
Duisberg where they blew up the factories there. From there the 75th Div. went to a camp @ Siegen near Frankfurt. Hage’s mission here was to take care of 32,000 displaced detainees which included many different nationalities. (1:59:30) Stayed here for quite a while. (2:02:42) Germany (2:07:09) o Briefly describes what daily life was like in the various camps he was stationed at in Germany. (2:03:54) �o Went to Bonn, Germany for a short time to protect a supply line that ran from there to Bingen, Germany. Afterwards, he made preparations to go home. (2:09:07) • Going Home (2:09:59) o Briefly highlights some of his interesting experiences on his 12 day trip from Antwerp to England and then 10 day passage across the Atlantic home to America. (2:10:56) o Landed at Camp Shanks, NY, where he briefly celebrate d with a steak dinner the end of the war. (2:11:46) Oct. 1945 - Soon after, Hage reported at Indiantown, PA where he was discharged. (2:11:37) o Rising tensions & fear in the US with Russian communism were very high. (2:11:47) After the Service (2:13:26) • Adjusting to Home (2:13:27) o Upon being discharged, Hage goes into accounting for several years (2:13:45) Also mentions how he developed his interest for it. (2:15:40) • Military involvement after the service (2:17:29) o Hage joins the U.S.Reserves & ends up with a service-type of unit whose job it is to take care of exploded ammunition (2:17:46) Trained in Grand Rapids for a year in these duties and then spent 3 years around the areas of Indiana, Savannah, & Chicago. (2:18:09) o 1954 -- Hage became a major and was stationed at Camp McCoy near Muskegon for the next 13 years. (2:19:46) Much of his service here, Hage describes the various units he commanded, the places he often visited, & his promotion to lieutenant colonel. (2:21:30) o 1969 -- Hage became a colonel. Briefly discusses the national discussion of combining the Reserves with the National Guard. (2:24:30) o • Previously in 1967, Hage had an encounter with a Frenchman who discussed his experience in Vietnam. (2:27:30) Concluding thoughts (2:28:57) �o Mentions a variety of his achievements, specifically playing ball in Belgium & Germany. (2:30:20) o Hage wrapped up first, by mentioning that his 34-yrs of military service helped him to become a good businessman and secondly, of his recommendation to young people about spending some time in the armed services. (2:30:40) o Backs up and further mentions more of his Camp Hahn days (2:33:05) & discusses various comrades in the process. (2:35:27) End – (2:37:10) �~MAI4ENT 1 CAlWELL Four 2 REVERE 3 WILHELM 4 5 RAWLINS DOWNES Two Twa Twa Two 6 LEE Two ­ 6- Dis. GIRlS 10" Non Dh. 12" AIL Gun-Lift 10" Non Dis. 3" Ped Maunt S"B.P. 7 - - - - ,. GRATTEN Two 6" Dis. Guns s' WANSBORO Two 3" Ped Mount -9-9------&BAN-KHEAD-- --- --Eighl--1-2.!!-Morws- --~;;'~II--4k'UARROWSTDNE LIGHT RMGER'S RESIDENCE t='ORT FLAGLER ,- I=ort Flagier State Park is located on the northeast comer of the Olympic Peninsula at the entrance to Admiralty Inlet and Puget Sound near Port Townsend. It is one of nearly forty herltage sites administered by the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission. Its 800 pius acres are virtually surrounded by water. Facilities include picnic tables,_ stoves, campsites, boat launch, moorage, and a group camp. Swimming, fishing, clamming, and hiking: are popular activities. Space is available for .trailers although there ar~ no hook­ ups. A display Shelter interprets the history of this one-time coastal defense fort and its two counterparts, Forts Casey and Worden. Two 3-inch guns, obtained from Fort Wint in the PhilippineS, have been installed as a reminder to the visitor of the weapons that were once a vital part of Fort Flagler. For furthur infonnation contact: • � 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 Hage, Russell (Interview outline, video, and papers), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hage, Russell Description An account of the resource Russell Hage is a World War II veteran who served in the U.S. Army from early 1940 to October 1945. In this account Hage discusses his pre-enlistment; enlistment and training in the U.S. and abroad in England; and combat experiences throughout, France, Belgium & Germany. Hage served with the 440th Anti-Aircraft battalion, in which he commanded a battery of 40mm guns. His unit was attached to several different divisions, including the 4th Armored Division in Normandy, and later the 106th and 75th Divisions during the Battle of the Bulge, before supporting the British 2nd Army in its attacks across the Rhine and into the Ruhr. Map of Fort Flagler State Park appended to interview outline. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource McCauslin, Kelly (Interviewer) Spring Lake District Library (Spring Lake, Mich.) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans United States. Army 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 2008-01-17 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HageR 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/98c122d7e496088ac5b86857407dfd26.mp4 d16533e208b57064c1e7fda6eef8534e https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1bd1232c3678ba5eff2f53c29b33aa4e.pdf 8a217ed0f051a01828699dbdc7e02b32 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview World War II Mary Ann Gwatkin Total Time – (58:27) Background • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • She was born November 10, 1920, in Grand Rapids, Michigan (01:47) There were seven children in her family Her older sister died at the age of 13 from strep throat She her father was the mayor of East Grand Rapids, Michigan for 22 years (04:03) She attended elementary school at St. Stephen's School (04:51) o It was only half of a block from her home o Every day was started by going to mass (05:53) o There were only thirteen students in her class After she graduated in 1933, she went to Marywood Academy in Grand Rapids, Michigan (07:10) She played basketball in school She graduated in 1938 (07:59) During the summers her father rented a cottage in Grand Haven, Michigan Her dad frequently asked her what she was going to do (08:58) o She told him that she wanted to become a nurse (09:05) She went into nurses training at St. Mary’s School (09:21) o It was called the Mercy Central School of Nursing (09:29) She was in nursing school for three years She graduated in 1941 (10:12) After she worked at St. Mary’s, she received a position at Ferguson’s Sanitarium (11:25) o She made seventy dollars every month In 1941, the general feeling was that everyone wanted to help (13:44) o She had a younger brother that was drafted into the war before the attacks on Pearl Harbor Enlistment/Active Duty – (14:35) • • She quit her job and enlisted in 1943 (14:38) She enlisted into the Army Nurse Corps (14:44) �• • • • • • She chose to go to Gulfport, Mississippi where she received her uniform (16:08) o She automatically became a second lieutenant by taking the oath  It was probably an incentive to have women join the Nurse Corps There were nearly 120 women at Gulfport (17:03) The women had easy access to New Orleans, Louisiana, and would go into town after work She was working in a hospital at Gulfport (17:25) She served in both the Surgical and Contagious Wards (17:33) At this time, she was 23 years old Active Duty – Overseas Duty – (18:53) • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • She then had the option of volunteering for overseas duty (18:56) o She decided to sign up In March of 1944, there were ten women that went up to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to prepare to go overseas (19:18) She learned basic marching skills in Fort Bragg After Fort Bragg, she was sent to Fort Kilmer, New Jersey (20:34) o She lived in barracks while in New Jersey  They were there for nearly three weeks  The women were able to travel and visit New York City (21:04) She then got on the Queen Mary to head overseas On the Queen Mary she stayed in a small, single, state room (22:33) There was no fresh water on board to bathe with There were 15,000 troops on board the ship (23:19) The trip only took four and a half days (24:41) On the last day, some of the sailors were given tea o It was the best tea she had ever had She met a fellow sailor on board from Charlevoix, Michigan whose sister she was friends with (25:18) The ship landed in the Firth of Clyde off the coast of England [Scotland] (25:40) When the sailors woke up they could see the English fog o They were taken by tanker into shore (25:56) Once she was ashore, she then took a train south to Colwyn Bay, Wales (26:52) The military paid families to house the women by giving them money and coal to keep their homes warm She was assigned to the third floor of a home o She took a bath in cold water o The home owner turned off their electricity at 9:00 at night (27:56) Every morning all of the soldiers would meet at a mess hall for breakfast (28:13) The Army had lectures every day that were mandatory They would go to mass on Sundays (28:58) o Some of the church members opened up their homes for soldiers to be able to take baths �• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Once she left Colwyn Bay, she was sent to Oswestry, England (29:35) o At Oswestry, she was assigned to the 68th General Hospital The 68th General Hospital was a new hospital that had recently been built The nurses quarters were extremely nice She went to Liverpool, England while she was in Colwyn Bay (32:31) Before she went to Oswestry, she was on detached service in Hatfield, England (32:56) In Hatfield there was a huge tent that had cots along all the walls When she was there she could see the B-17 turning from the continent on their flights (34:15) There was one time when an air raid made her wet her pants because she was so scared (35:01) After Hatfield, she was then assigned to the 68th General Hospital (35:36) She was assigned to a psychiatrist (35:41) o She did not know anything about psychiatry She applied for a leave on what would have been D-Day When she was signing in to a hotel she heard Winston Churchill speaking on the radio about the invasion of Normandy (36:35) The American soldiers were not supposed to be in London at this time When she returned to the hospital, they began receiving casualties and injuries (38:41) o They were flown back o The triage was out on the lawn of the hospital o Doctors would go along and decide who goes where (39:00) As troops moved forward in Europe, the hospitals nearer the coast would receive more soldiers than their hospital would One of the Major’s at the hospital would use medicines and battle re-enactments to relate to soldiers and get them to talk about their experiences She was sent on detachment to train for two weeks in Portsmouth, England (41:53) She crossed the English Channel during the summer of 1945 (43:21) o They landed in Le Havre, France o The buildings were bombed out (44:53) She was sent to Neufchatel, France One night she was invited to an Air Corps party where there was great food and beer There were no patients in Neufchatel She was then sent to a staging area that had a hospital in Mourmelon-le-Grand, France (47:06) She worked at the hospitals in Mourmelon-le-Grand It was here where she met up with her brother (48:08) o She continuously tried to communicate with her brother so that she could meet up with him She was invited to a party when he brother was visiting and she was able to bring him along (49:36) �• • • After her time with her brother, she received a 3-day pass to Paris (50:38) o It was V-J Day when she went o She enjoyed her time in Paris Before V-J Day, it was rumored that the European forces would go through the Panama Canal and invade Japan (52:20) She then traveled back to Mourmelon-le-Grand and then boarded a ship to leave After the Service – (53:25) • • • • • • • • • Her ship landed in Boston, Massachusetts (53:30) o It was an extremely thrilling day From Boston, she traveled by train to Fort Dix, New Jersey where she received her discharge papers (54:07) She was then put on another train and traveled to Detroit, Michigan and then eventually to Grand Rapids, Michigan (54:26) o She was in home for Christmas of 1945 Because of the pension that she received from the military, she took a couple of months to enjoy her time (55:39) o Her father continued to ask her if she was going to go to work Once her money ran out she went to St. Mary’s and took a position there She worked at St. Mary’s for nearly a year and a half She was asked by another local doctor to go and work for him (56:24) o She began working for him in Lowell, Michigan in 1947 She did not have a way of getting back and forth to work so she went and bought a car with her savings (58:01) The car salesman and her began dating and got married a year later in 1948 (58:27) � 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 Gwatkin, Mary Ann (Interview outline and video), 2004 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gwatkin, Mary Ann Description An account of the resource Mary Ann Gwatkin was born in 1920 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She trained as a nurse, and enlisted in the Army after Pearl Harbor. She worked initially in Gulfport, Mississippi, and was then sent to Europe, where she worked at several assignments in Wales and England, and eventually transferred to France, ending up at the American base at Mourmelon. Along the way, she helped to treat casualties from the battles in France from Normandy to the end of the war. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lowell Area Historical Museum (Lowell, Mich.) Blough, Ivan (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 2004-11-26 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GwatkinM1300V 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/999964f4d929646718c5525057e1d645.mp4 d57ca978adafc8ddf81ac1d716e0405d https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8173d08a54fbf2c86061a52aacf0a746.pdf dc080f9189cc92fcab1a020c23986814 PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW FELIX GULLICK Born: Haskell, Oklahoma Resides: Grand Rapids, Michigan Interviewed by: James Smither and Louis Moore Grand Valley State University History Dept. Transcribed by: Joan Raymer February 11, 2009 Interviewer: ―Mr. Gullick, can you start by telling us a little bit about yourself? To begin with, where and when you were born?” I was born in Oklahoma in a little town they call Haskell. It was March 12, 1922. My mother and dad lived there about four years and we moved to Kansas. At that time, if you had more than one child, you had to pay five bucks for each kid to go to school, but they had free school in Kansas, so my family all moved to Kansas. :55 That’s where I grew up. I was about four years old when we moved there. I stayed there until I was seventeen and that’s when I came to Grand Rapids. Interviewer: “What did your family do for a living?” They were farmers like most people back in them days… were farmers. Interviewer: “Did they have their own land, or did they work on someone else’s farm?” Well, my grandfather left Tennessee when Oklahoma was a territory and he had two farms in Tennessee and he would rent one of them out. When Tennessee [Oklahoma] was a territory, if you went out there you got land, the government let you stake for land, so my grandfather sold his dang land and went out there and after he got out there, because he wasn’t born and raised out there, he couldn’t get land. 1:39 He had to start share cropping himself. That’s where my dad grew up and got married. My grandmother and grandfather had sixteen kids, eight girls and eight boys. 1 �Interviewer: “Now how much… did you go through high school, or did you leave school?” 1:59 I quit school when I was in the eighth grade, seventh or eighth grade out in Kansas. A little old high school they called Wayside. We didn’t have a football team there, but we played softball. That’s how I got interested in softball and baseball. My uncle played baseball. My uncle was a pitcher and he could pitch eight innings with his right hand and go nine innings with either hand, and he had a brother who was a left handed catcher and the Kansas City Monarchs wanted to sign him to play in that league. The Monarchs was organized back in 1922, I think it was, but my uncle wouldn’t sign with the Monarchs because they wouldn’t take his brother as a catcher because he was left handed. 2:47 My uncles and my dad, all of them were baseball players. Back in those days, there wasn’t any tennis or golf and you either went to the poolroom and played pool or you played baseball. It worked. Interviewer: “Did you go to work after you left school?” Oh yes, I was working before I got out of school. We worked on the farm and I had to stay out of school sometime, two days a week. I would go to school on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, I worked the farm. 3:22 That was before I came to Michigan. After I came here, I worked in the foundry. I was seventeen years old and I worked at that old foundry over there on Front St. They called it Libman and Geidem, a couple of Jews owned it, but they gave a lot of black guys jobs. They would go south and pick up a black guy and bring him here and put him to work. I had a couple of uncles, one of them was in WWI and he came in and worked for the city 2 �and that’s how my family got here. 3:54 He came in 1918 or 1919, somewhere around there. Interviewer: “Now, when your family moved out here to Michigan, where did you live?” When I first moved here they had a street down there off Ionia that they called Millis Court, now they got factories and stuff in there, then I lived on Grant Street and my aunt and uncle bought a place on Logan near Eastern and that’s where I lived until I was drafted. 4:17 When I went into the army and came out, my brother got married and he had a place up there on Neland and I stayed with him for a while before I got married and the next thing I knew I was nuts. Interviewer: “Let’s go back to the period before the war started. What year did you come to Grand Rapids?” 1939. Interviewer: “You got a job in the foundry etc., now do you remember hearing about Pearl Harbor and America entering the war?” 4:49 I lived it. Pearl Harbor was born on December 7th, 1941. I lived on Miller Street and I heard it on the radio. I’ll never forget, Roosevelt got on the radio and he said, ―your sons and my sons will go to war‖, and I was eighteen or nineteen at the most and I said, ―well, it will last six or eight months like WWI, and I’m not old enough to go into the army, I’ll never make it‖. Well, that dang war went on four or five years. 5:26 Interviewer: “Did you have friends or know people who actually enlisted after Pearl Harbor or did most of the guys you knew wait to be called to go?” 3 �Before the war they had a draft and if you were twenty or twenty-one years old, you went into the service and were supposed to stay 6 months or a year and you get out of the army, but a lot of them went in the dang army, the war got worse so they froze them and they had to stay in there. Way late they started drafting guys twenty years old or older and that’s how they got me. 6:07 Interviewer: “With the job you had, were you still working in the foundry until you got drafted?” No, I left that and went to the hotel. The Rowe Hotel, down there by the Post Office now, but I ran the elevator down there for a while and they were good jobs then. Working in a hotel was like a professional job. I worked there for a few weeks and months and then I went to the Morton Hotel and I started bussing dishes up there, bus boy, and that’s how I started and learned how to wait tables. I went to Mackinac Island and served up there at the Grand Hotel. About eleven or twelve of us went up there and they closed up for the season. That was in 1948 I believe. It was right after I came out of the service. 6:47 Interviewer: “If you had been in the foundry, it’s possible that you had a job that was more essential and maybe there’s a deferment or something like that, but with the other jobs, once your number comes up you get drafted, so you’re drafted in early 1943 then, is that right?” I stayed at the foundry, you see they had a pouring gang over there, they would melt brass and they would pour it and they had a pouring gang and the guys worked every other day. They would close the furnace up every so often to brick it. That’s why I got out of the foundry, I got laid off. A friend of mine came from Kansas City, but he was 4 �one of the head men down there at the Rowe Hotel and he heard about me looking for a job and that I was from Kansas City and he gave me a job running the damn elevator. 7:40 Interviewer: “While you were living in Grand Rapids before the war, did you also play some baseball or catch on with any of the teams? Oh ya, I tried to play baseball. We had a guy out here, he was from East Grand Rapids and they called him Stricklin or something like that, anyway I was down in Kalkaska, not Kalkaska, but about ninety miles south of here? Interviewer: “Kalamazoo? No, further south. Interviewer: Cassopolis? Ya, that’s it, Cassopolis, they had a lake down there, Paradise Lake, and this one guy would take teams down there and play, so I went down and played with him once or twice. That was before the war too. 8:31 He wasn’t known like Jesse Elser was, Jesse was known all over the United States it looked like. Interviewer: “Now, when you were living in Grand Rapids, was there a black team based there? Were there negro teams in Grand Rapids before the war? No, well they did, old Jesse Elser, the guy I played with, he’d have a team every year and he would get the better black ball players to play with him and then he would go to different towns every year. In 1946 when Frank Lamar and Ted Raspberry came in existence, they organized the Black Sox. 9:12 They took the better ball players. See, they went all over the United States and got ball players. We had a league here that they called The Grand Rapids---I know Muskegon had a team in that league and Flint had a 5 �team in that league. Elston Howard, he played with the Yankees. He was with one of those teams here and I sue to go out and watch him play. 9:40 Interviewer: “I was going to go back to the wartime story. We get to the point where you get drafted. Now, tell us what’s the process, you get a letter in the mail saying Uncle Sam wants you or…?” No, what happened was, you had to go down and get a classification and I had a couple of old religious aunts here and I hadn’t been classified and it worried the hell out of me every day. I would go to the draft board to see what my classification was. They could put you in 1-A as a single and they had another classification if you were married and had a kid, if you had two they put you in another classification, but they misplaced my classification when I applied for my registration. 10:23 One day during lunch hour, I went down there to check it out and the old gal had misplaced the thing. A week later I got a notice to report to the draft board here and be sent to Detroit for an exam for the army. There were ten or fifteen of us and we went down there. Well, I’d had pneumonia and I had a spot on my lung and when they x-rayed me that spot showed up. When we came back, they were telling guys, ―you’re in the army now, get in this line‖, or they would tell you to wait and they would send you home. Well, they run me back through the line and the thing showed that everything was ok. 11:06 He told me, ―you stay in this line and go home for a week and then go to Battle Creek‖. Interviewer: “Were they putting you on buses to get you to Detroit and Battle Creek?” 6 �Oh we had a train, Pere Marquette, the station was over where the Post Office is at now, I believe it was, and they had the New York Central and they were downtown. Most of the people going in and out of Grand Rapids came on the New York Central. 11:43 Interviewer: “So, they sent you down to Battle Creek? They sent me down to Detroit first and I came back here and stayed a week and then went to Battle Creek. Interviewer: “When you got to Battle Creek, what did you do there? They stayed there two or three days, they issued you a bunch of GI equipment, clothing and all that crap, and I was down there about a week and they put us on a troop train and sent us to Frisco. 12:07 Interviewer: “Now, before you made that trip, had you ever---you had taken the trip to get from Kansas to Michigan— That was by car. My folks would come to visit my grandmother and a lot of them came by automobile and that’s how I came, by automobile. Interviewer: ―Ok.” My brother and one of my cousins, some relative died in Kansas City they went to the funeral, and after they came for the funeral, I was wanting out of Kansas City, so they came by and picked me up and that’s how I got to Grand Rapids. 12:37 Interviewer: “So this was the first really long train trip you had taken, out to San Francisco?” Oh ya, back in them days, the only way you could take a train was you had to hobo. A young fellow would leave Kansas and hobo to California. Oh my, them dicks would knock you off them trains and beat you up and whatever. I was going to go hoboing 7 �myself once to California, but one of my buddies got killed on the railroad track up there near Kansas City and after that train derailed the track and he got killed, I said, ―heck with that hoboin’ business‖. 13:11 Interviewer: “With every trip you took from Grand Rapids to Detroit and then from Battle Creek to San Francisco with the draftees, were you guys segregated?” Oh yeah, see when I went in service they had a hotel in Detroit where all the black guys would have to stay at. It was called the Gotham Hotel and you would stay down there a day or two, well hell I had been around here and worked at a hotel. So all the guys get up in the morning and go to be examined and classified and I’m laying in bed being asleep and I call the desk and ask what time they serve breakfast and they ask if I was one of the guys to be examined with that group from Grand Rapids? I said yes and they said, ―Man, get the hell down here because everybody’s going to get an exam and classification whatever.‖ 14:00 Interviewer: “When you were being examined and when whatever else they were doing in Detroit and Fort Custer, did they always keep the black troops separate from the white ones or were there places where you were all kind of mixed together?” Oh no, see when I went in the service we were segregated and I’ll never forget when we got out in Texas, maybe Oklahoma, Arizona, well you pull the shade down at night because the damn Japs had just bombed Pearl Harbor and they thought they were going to hit the west coast. Man we went to bed that night and the next morning I woke up I was in Frisco. 14:41 I left here February 10th I think it was, cold, snow and ice 8 �everywhere, and when I got to Frisco the grass green and the sun was shining, I thought I was in heaven. I said, ―oh my god, where am I at now?‖ Interviewer: “What happened then? You get off the train, where did you go and what did you do next?” I got to California and we were there a few days, we didn’t have basic so they gave us basic training. We had a C.O. sixty five years old, he was too old to take troops back overseas and he had a young bunch, we was 541st Engineer Quartermaster [Battalion], we must have had 250 guys in there. We had an A and B Company, maybe another company, but he knew the commander-in-chief down in Los Angeles that ran the port of embarkation cause they were both West Point men and when he found out they needed soldiers down there to load and unload them dang ships, he had us sent to L.A. 15:48. I stayed down there a year. The only reason I had to go overseas—some dummy up there in Washington got the bright idea—them guys been over there two or three years and they need replacement. If you were a 1-A man here in the service, man they would send you over there as a replacement and that’s how I happened to get sent overseas. 16:08 Interviewer: “In Los Angeles, did you have time to go out to the city? Did you go like to Central Avenue? Oh yeah man, I use to be up there on 45th and Central, Dorothy Lamour and Hedy Lamarr was two white girls in the movies and they use to come to them theaters regular. I stayed in this little town they called Wilmington, we built tents down there and I stayed down there a year and I’d drive a truck hauling different soldiers and stuff from Long Beach to L.A., San Pedro and different places, but I was in L.A. about a year before they had any expressway down there. 16:50 9 �Interviewer: “Let’s back up a little bit to the training part. Where did you actually do your basic training?” I got it up there in Frisco, in Oakland. See [Camp] Stoneman was in Oakland, you crossed the bridge and you was in Frisco. We got our basic training and after I got my basic training—we had been in the army like six months and we hadn’t had a furlough home and you was entitled to one before they sent you overseas, so I was in that category. I finished getting my basic and I went on the rifle range and I qualified, so they give me a furlough home. 17:30 Interviewer: “But you hadn’t been in six months at that point.” I had been in long enough to get basic training and then get a furlough home before they sent me overseas. Interviewer: “Describe the basic training process a little bit. What sis they have you do in basic training?” Oh my god, the first thing you have to do is to learn how to stand up like a soldier and salute your dang officers. Then you had to respect your officers. They court martialed you if you didn’t do right in the dang army and put you in prison for the rest of your natural life. I was one of those young guys that was taught to always obey, so I didn’t have a problem or nothing like that. There was a boy in my outfit, they would go out drinking and come back at night at eleven or twelve o’clock at night and raise a lot of hell. The CO told them, ―you got guys in the army here, they got to get their rest because they got to get up in the morning and they got to sleep. When you guys come in from pass be sure you’re quiet.‖ Some of them didn’t do it and the first outfit comes through, going overseas, they was short of men, so they took ten guys and put them in 10 �outfits and sent them down there. One boy from Grand Rapids went in there with me and his ship got blowed up down there around Australia somewhere and we never seen or heard of him any more, but I know his brothers and stuff. 18:48 Interviewer: “All right, so after that happened, guys who made too much noise or got themselves in trouble, they get sent overseas. Did the other guys figure out that it was a good idea to behave, or did they keep on making trouble?” Well, there was just a few of them and we was in Frisco at that time, so I didn’t stay there much longer and we went down there to Los Angeles and when I got on that, peaches and cream. 19:13 The C.O. told us, ―if you guys got a wife or a girl friend, and you want them to come out and spend some time with you, send for her because we’ll be here for the duration.‖ I thought I would never go overseas, but I was there eleven months. Interviewer: “What kind of pay did you draw when you were down there?” Well, went I went in the service I think they were paying a buck private fifty dollars a month and out of that you had to take your insurance, which was five or six bucks, and maybe you got the rest, but if you had a family, you could sign up and I sent my dad an allotment and he got thirty seven dollars and some cents a month for three years and they probably take eight, ten or twelve dollars out of my check and put in the rest to send him this allotment. He got thirty-seven bucks a month. 20:08 The army did a lot of people a lot of good if they took advantage of the----I’ll tell you another thing. See, when I got married that GI Bill of Rights was the worst thing that ever happened because you take Monroe Avenue from down town, Michigan, and go out toward the Old Soldiers Home, all them homes was being built and you go out Lake Michigan Drive up on the hill there, all them homes were being built. Well, I got married and had two kids and I went to a 11 �bank to apply for a G.I. loan and that sucker wouldn’t loan me no money to buy a house in them areas. I had to buy a house between Division and Fuller, from Fulton down Hall Street. Interviewer: “Is that where the black people lived?” That’s where all of them lived. Interviewer: ―You weren’t allowed to—you basically had red lines, there were certain places where—“ If you were a doctor or something, he might have had a home in East Grand Rapids or something, but the majority of them, 98% of them lived in this area. 21:15 Interviewer: “Now when you guys were on base in San Francisco and Los Angeles, did you notice any types of difference between like racial treatment than here in Grand Rapids?” Oh man, L.A. as far as that racial business is concerned, was 20 years ahead of Grand Rapids. The white girls and the black guys got together out there then and how they got over---see, the Japanese use to own a lot of homes, a lot of businesses, they run that port of embarkation in L.A. and when the war started the government took all them Japanese and put them in a concentration camp there somewhere and the Japs let the black people have them home, cars and everything else. 22:04 When I got out there I see these blacks with all these nice homes and I wondered, what the hell is going on here?‖ I found out that the Japs owned a lot of that stuff and practically gave it to the blacks. Integration was well under way back in 1945 and 1946 when I was out there, much better than it is here. 22:23 I know at night, when I was in Pittsburg, California, we’d get a pass to go to Oakland. Service men first and the bus would come up out there and the women worked, 12 �they had a lot of white girls, they’d be working and GI’s would get on the dang bus and get all the seats and stuff and a white girl would get on and she would have to stand up and pull her dang shoes off, but that’s the way it was when I was out there, but back here--never happen. 22:54 Interviewer: “You’re in L.A. for the better part of a year, was there a group of guys, a platoon or section of men that you normally worked with, so did you have a group of friends among them that you would go out and do things with or hang with?” One of the experiences I had when I was in L.A. was—we was in a camp down there and they captured a lot of Italian soldiers and one German and they treated them damn Italian soldiers much better than they did black guys, because every night they would get a pass and go to Long Beach, come back—they dressed them good and everything and we would maybe get a pass once a week and I asked them, ―how the hell you guys get captured?‖ The one German fella, I’ll never forget him, he drove an old tank and they had him down in the valley like and had him surrounded and I said, ―How did you let these American capture you?‖ He had a white flag and he waved that flag and they captured him and sent him out there. 24:09 At that time the Italian prisoners of war were treated a hell of a lot better than the black soldiers Interviewer: “Did you guys talk about that? How upset you were about it?” Oh man yes, well you see, if you were from the south—you probably heard stories about the southern states bases and that—you got to L.A. and I talked to guys from Mississippi, Alabama—things were so nice out there, one of them told me, ―Gullick, I’ll never go back to Alabama‖, because he was treated so nice out there. A lot of them out there was 13 �born and raised on a farm and they did a lot of logging and they had a white guy riding around on a horse telling them what to do and that they better do it otherwise they put them in prison and they might kill them. 24:59 Interviewer: “The unit you were serving with there, the quartermaster unit, so the soldiers were all black, the enlisted men were all black?” Everybody was black except the officers. We had white officers and if you were intelligent in the service—when I got overseas I run my outfit because I had a little Lieutenant, he was a young fella and I think he was afraid of the black guys because he let me run the motor pool. See, I was, let me see, what was my job? Anyway, I assigned trucks, all the vehicles that it took to build a road and maintain a road, I was in charge of that equipment and I had a Lieutenant, I had a Jeep and I run him down the road every day in the Jeep. 25:49 Different guys, I would assign them to a job and that’s what they had to do. I would take my Jeep and go out on the road and see how they were doing at everything. Interviewer: “that’s getting a little bit ahead of the story because that’s the stuff overseas, but back in California, your officers, were they mostly older men or kind of like that fellow back in Stoneman or were they men in their twenties and just recruits too?” 26:10 Well, we had some guys that just came out of—what did they call it? Interviewer: “Officers candidate school? Ninety-day wonders? West Point? West Point, I’ve had young guys in the service about twenty, twenty-one, they might have been twenty-eight or thirty, but you talk about some nice fellows—man them guys, West Pointers, some of them were excellent just like the guys are right now. 26:37 It is 14 �kind of hard to believe—now them older fellows you run into one forty, fifty years old, oh, he’s nuts anyway and they treat you like you are a fool. But, that’s the way it was and we had some real nice officers when I was in Stoneman—not Stoneman, but when I was down there in L.A. Interviewer: “When you got the news that you had to ship out overseas, what was your reaction to that?” Interviewer: I’ll tell ya, I had left L.A. and was in Sacramento and they had a detail there where you could go out and pick peaches every day and the government paid you. Well hell, I’d shoot craps and play poker and I made more money than the guys working, so I wouldn’t go pick no damn peaches. 27:24 I had an old first sergeant and he begged me to go out and pick some peaches. He said, ―Gullick, if you don’t go out and pick peaches, I’m going to put you on special orders and send you overseas‖. I’d been in the army over a year and wasn’t overseas. I didn’t think I would ever go, but I wasn’t going to go pick no damn peaches. So, one day they called us at attention and they said, ―the following names of enlisted men will report to the orderly room and get a new issue of equipment because you are going to be shipped overseas‖. They called my name, Corporal Felix Gullick, 36566937, that was my old dog tag number, report to the orderly room to get shipped overseas. Man, it was like I had a heart attack, but I went over there and got my crap and the next thing they shipped me right back to L.A, and we got on the boat, I think, the twenty fifth of September in 1944 and I went to Bombay, India. 28:26 Interviewer: “What kind of boat did they put you on? Was it an old Liberty Ship or a converted liner or something else?” 15 �Well, it was the S.S. General A.E. Anderson and I think the thing had been converted to all passengers. It might have been a… I don’t know. Interviewer: “A freighter or something like that?” Something like that, But I went to Melbourne, Australia, we left L.A. in September and got to Melbourne, Australia, we got off the boat—we had to be there two and a half days to refuel that ship, so they wouldn’t let the black soldiers off, they put a rope around this area and you could get in that area and that was it. You go down there in Australia and the white girls go crazy about the black boys. Anyway, we were there two and a half days and Tokyo Rose, you heard of her? She was with the Japanese, she got on the damn radio one morning and said, ―you guys left L.A. the 25th of September, you’re in Melbourne, Australia and your destination is Bombay, India‖. We didn’t know where the hell we were going and she wished us a lot of luck. 29:39 She said our buddies that were supposed to leave L.A. the next day will never make it because them damn Japs blew them out of the ocean down there last night. No kidding, they never got over there. We were torpedoed the first night I left Melbourne, Australia going to Bombay, but the dang thing missed us. 30:02 We survived. Another thing, see back in those days they convoyed all the soldiers; five, eight, ten of those ships would get together. The sent us over there on a boat by our dang selves and we didn’t have any escort until we got within four days of Bombay. We were very fortunate, I went through Corregidor, Bataan, not Bataan, let me see, I forgot some of those names. Interviewer: “That’s in the Philippines, was that on the way home?” That was on the way over there. We left Melbourne, Australia and I went through Singapore, and different islands like that. 16 �Interviewer: “A lot of those places at that time were still controlled by the Japanese. Singapore, they held on to until the end of the war. [The ship may have gone past parts of Indonesia and Sri Lanka, but not Singapore or the Philippines—ed.] Anyway, tell me a little bit about the trip on the boat. What was that like?” 30:56 Oh my god, we were in a damn hurricane—three days it was. Man, that damn boat would go straight up and come back down, we couldn’t go from here downtown in eight hours, that’s about how far that thing would go. They had to close off the compartments and they would lock them doors and stuff, but this one guy would get in the crow’s nest, you know they go a crow’s nest that’s up there and that guy would come out on deck and he had to crawl around to get on this ladder to go up in there, but we couldn’t even come up on deck for about three days. 31:54 During that storm, we ate seagulls and baked beans for breakfast. They’d tell us we had chicken or something. They fed you twice a day, but I was twenty one or two years old in good health and everything, I could eat anything and never go seasick, but a lot of guys with a weak stomach, well they probably didn’t follow orders anyway, but we would go to the mess hall and you had to stand up and you’d get a tray and I seen guys heave in the trays all the way back down to the compartment and you would walk in that crap. I stayed on that damn boat thirty some days and never got seasick and I did real good. 32:35 Then coming back, see we stopped in Guam to refuel, and come back, but I went through Melbourne, Australia and I don’t know how many islands we went through and you could see land and on one of those islands you didn’t have to have no permission to dock a boat there. I forget the name of that dang thing, but most places if you docked a ship anywhere, you had to get permission. When I came back home from overseas we stopped out there within three 17 �blocks of Alcatraz. An officer was supposed to come and inspect the boat and let us get off the thing, but them suckers were uptown there having fun and we had to stay there all night looking over there at Alcatraz. The next day they examined the thing and let us get off the ship. 33:26 Interviewer: “Let’s go back to your trip there. You left Melbourne and the Japanese submarine tried to torpedo your ship and you kept going and you sail on up to Bombay. Is that where you get off? What impression did you have of Bombay when you got off the ship?” Oh my god, that’s one of the worst, the poorest nation on earth because those natives over there—you see kids running up and down the railroad tracks, three, five, six years old and on up, without a stitch on and ain’t seen their mother or father in six or eight months and here’s Americans, we have a lot of coins and we’d throw coins out in the damn river and they would dive down and get the coin. I was in Bombay overnight or something like that and we got on troop trains and went up to India and Burma—there was a station up there, but they were narrow gauge tracks, they didn’t have no wide railroad tracks and man, it would take you a whole damn day to go forty miles. They got kids running up and down the railroad tracks every day without a stitch on begging you for something. 34:48 ―Give me something please, you very rich, me very poor, no mama, no papa, no sister, no brother, nothing, please give me something‖. I gave them all the coins I had in my pocket and one woman came up to me one day and she had a baby and I hadn’t seen no lady and a baby in I don’t know how long, so I’m just standing there admiring the baby and I asked her to let me hold the baby. She did. See over there they had rupees and a rupee was like a dollar bill and it wasn’t worth but thirty three cents, so I run out of 18 �coins and I gave her one of them dang rupees and she left me with the baby and started away from there. 35:28 I asked somebody what happened to the mother of the child and they said, ―man you just bought that baby‖, and I said, ―hell no‖, I had to go catch her and give the baby back to her, but I’d bought me a baby over there for thirty some cents. Interviewer: “All right, now you get up onto Burma and you’re going out—what unit did you join when you got up there?” I got with the 45th Engineers and they were building and maintaining about sixty-five or seventy miles of that road. In the Himalaya Mountains and it was in what they called the ―hump‖. That’s the lower part of the Himalayas and after you went through a certain level part of the country there, you went through the bump; the high part and you’re getting up near China then. I was up there in-between there because we built and maintained about sixty-five miles of that road. 36:21 Of course we had six outfits in my regiment and I was in F Company. I happened to be a dispatcher in the motor pool, that’s how I got to know all the vehicles and everything. Interviewer: “How many men were you in charge of at this point?” Oh, at that time—I’ve had seventy-five dump truck drivers under me in one day. My mechanics, the guys that run the heavy equipment – Caterpillar graders, low range shovels and all that kind of crap, all that was under the motor pool. My first, not my first sergeant, but my Lieutenant, he allowed me to run the dang motor pool. So, I was in charge of practically all of them guys. 37:07 Interviewer: “Now the 45th was that an all black unit or were there black companies in it?” 19 �It was all black. They had white officers and after the war, after old Roosevelt died and old Truman got to be the president of the United States, the war is over now and I’m getting ready to come home, but a lot of guys came home a lot sooner than I did. He integrated the dang army. You’re in the army according to your last name A, B, C etc. and they put you in outfits according to that. I’m in an outfit in the service with I think, three or four white boys. When I left Calcutta coming back to the states. We had one boy, I called him ―little rebel‖, he was from Missouri and another guy, one of them was from Pittsburgh or maybe from New York, but you know the white boys, north at that time were much different than those from the south. 38:03 This young white fellow from Missouri, he was very timid and everything and we get ready to go to lunch and I said, ―come on get your mess kit and let’s go eat‖ and them other two white boys said they already had gone, but I took him like a brother and his mother had gave him a bible and he gave me the bible and told me he wanted me to keep it and I never forget him, but he was a nice kid. I was three or four years older, but I have been around and had experience. I had a lot of life before I went in the army and a lot of them guys eighteen, nineteen years old ain’t been nowhere. 38:42 They were way away from home and didn’t know what the heck to do. My mother died when I was seven and I lived with my grandmother and my aunts and I never did see my dad much, so I’d been out there in the world getting it for myself. Interviewer: “Tell us a little bit what life was like up there in Burma. What did you do?” Well, it rained like a son of a gun, the monsoon, man you would go to bed at night wet and you get up wet. They had these old tents, they had American tents and British tents 20 �and like it rained today and the sun would come out and it would be hot as heck. The ground might crack it was just that hot. Then too, them old tents would rot and water come through tem things. I know the Air Force had a parachute and I got me a parachute and I put it up over my bed at night and the water would come through and hit that parachute it would drain off. I was up there a year and a half and we would take a five gallon container of fuel and light it and set it right by your tent cause at that time the animals, tigers and lions and whatever, man they would attack some of them guys. Three guys in my outfit got attacked by lions and tigers. 40:08 So that one morning I knew I’d take me that five-gallon thing and I would light it at night and put it right by the head of my bed. One morning I got up and got ready to go to breakfast and I looked at the side of my tent and a lion or tiger or something his old paw marks were up there and he was going to get in there and attack me I guess. One thing about the service, we had our rifles you know, it’s a piece they call it, but I had an M-1, boy, I could hit you as long as I could see you. That was my ―piece‖ and that was my brother and I kept that old rifle along side of my bed at night. 40:51 That’s the way it was up there and during the day things were a little different because I would make out trip tickets and give them out to the guys telling what they had to do and everything. We would be at the motor pool seven or eight o’clock in the morning and they would go out on the road and go to work. I had to go out there and see of all them vehicles were still in good shape and if they wasn’t I’d dead line them and have a mechanic come and take them—it had a name—we had a place where we sent stuff –1st, 2nd, 3rd echelon and if it wasn’t bad the mechanic would do it right there in my motor pool and if it was, they might have to send it to one of them other places. 41:27 If the transmission or something would go out on it. 21 �Interviewer: “Working on the road, were both blacks and whites working to build that road?” Well, we had thirty-three engineering outfits up there. Thirty of them were black and did most of the work. Now, the white boys, they might have built the bridges across them rivers and stuff, but there wasn’t too damn many of them. Interviewer: “Did you have either Chinese or Indian laborers who were doing a lot of the manual work? No, I seen Japanese one day. I was on the road—I thought he was a damn Chinaman and when I got to him I said, ―Boy, how you doing?‖ Interviewer: “Was he a Japanese prisoner?” He got lost from his outfit and he was lost up there in the jungles and he was trying to find his outfit I guess cause I passed him on the road and I spoke to him and I said, ―Hey Joe, how ya doing?‖ He spoke, but kept going. That guy had ammunition and I don’t know what all he didn’t have on him. I walked on up to my company and he did too and he went down the road about a quarter of a mile and the next thing I heard were shots. Well, some of them Americans seen him and they recognized him and they killed him. 43:18 They knew he was Japanese—I didn’t know he was Japanese. He had been up in them jungles I don’t know how long, but he got lost from his outfit. Interviewer: “When you were out there in the jungles, did you see anything of the local population? Were there any villages around or anything like that?” Well, they had a village quite away from us and they had—I called them the whores up there and they was socking it to you for 35 Rupees or something. I was 20 or 30 miles from a village where they had any women. I was up there twelve months and never seen 22 �a woman. When I did see one, she was like a half-mile or so from me and she dressed like the men. 44:00 She had on a damn uniform and you couldn’t tell whether she was a man or a woman. Interviewer: While you were up there working on the road, did you have much— did you know much about what was going on in the rest of the war or anything, or did someone just tell you one day that the was over?” Well see, I had a radio and we had newspapers come out occasionally. I had a radio and I could get the news darn near every day. I kept up with the war especially in Europe and down there in the Pacific and I know when the war ended. Well, the war ended in Europe and they were sending all those guys from Europe over to Burma and a lot of them didn’t get there before the war ended in the CBI, China, Burma, India and they let them go home. 44:58 I know when they dropped that bomb on Nagasaki, they blowed that damn thing right out of the face of the earth and we celebrated like the war’s over. And that was the greatest thing that ever happened during the time that I was in the army because the Japs said, ―to hell with ya, if you want the war that bad you can have it‖, and they quit. 45:21 Interviewer: “Once the war ended, did you continue working on the roads and doing the same things?” When the war ended, I’ll tell you what the federal government did, now they tore up the damn roads, see I was over there when they took graders and everything, the highways, the road we built going through Burma and India, they cut that thing up and destroyed it so the people couldn’t use it no more. A lot of the equipment we used to build that road with, some of them guys, they might have been rich Indians or something, but they 23 �bought a lot of the equipment and when I left, I was one of the last guys that left, I went to a staging area in Calcutta and we had to wait two or three weeks for a boat to come there and pick us up and bring us back to the states. 46:08 A lot of my guys got away from there a lot sooner than I did. Interviewer. “Why do you think you had to stay so long?” Well you see, they let you go home on a point system. If you had a wife and babies you got fifteen or twenty points for each one of them and I didn’t have a wife or baby or nothing. You got one point for being in the army and maybe two points for each year, each month you were overseas. Well, I didn’t have enough points, so I was one of the last guys that got to go home. Interviewer: “When you were in the staging area in Calcutta, did they make you stay there, could you go into the city or what did you do?” 46:52 Oh no, we was in a camp and they had women that drove around in them rickshaws, them old Chinese gals that had them slits in their dresses and man, they would ride by the camp and they would pull their dress up and you could see those big thighs and shit and a lot of my guys jumped over the fence and go down to the whore camp and buy a piece of ass. I said to heck with it. The Chinese women carried a disease they called the ―Chinese rots‖ and your privacies would drop off and I’ve been in the hospital and seen some of them that lost their privacies and nuts and the whole damn thing—they got a big sore spot down there. The Chinese women only have one kid. I said to heck with the Chinese. I would fuck anything over there but the dang Chinese. One day I seen one come by there and I had to go over the damn fence myself. They had a prophylactic; a place where you could go and take a pro kit and I did and I went to praying to god I kept clean. 47:55 I 24 �did alright. That malaria fever, they give you a pill in the morning before breakfast and it was a yellow tablet. It turns your skin yellow and a lot of guys would take that dang pill and throw it behind them, but I took that pill every day and I never got the malaria. 48:13 Interviewer: “That was the atabrine and that was the stuff that was intended to prevent you from getting it. Once you got it, it didn’t help you much. For you anyway it worked. Now, did you need to take those pills when you were up in the jungle, or was that above where the mosquitoes were?” When I was in Burma. All the while I was in Burma, I remember taking them pills every day. 48:32 We had a medic, the guy was a medical man, when you got ready to get in line to get your food you were supposed to have some water in your mess kit—it might have been—but some container that had water in it and you were supposed to have water and when you got to that medic he gave you that dang pill and you were supposed to take it when you went in there to get your food. I did. 48:58 Interviewer: “Now, were their other diseases or medical problems that the men up in Burma had? Were their other jungle diseases and things they got?” Man at that time they had more different diseases that our medical people in this country have never heard of and I don’t know half of them. Interviewer: “Did you have a lot of guys that wound up being sick and they couldn’t go out to work or would they just go out anyway?” When you got sick up there, they put you in the hospital, but you didn’t have to go to work, especially if you had a fever and were sick enough. I was very fortunate, I stayed 25 �over there a year and a half and man I worked every day. Rain like a son of a gun, Jesus Christ, that monsoon season lasts about six months a year and it rained every day. 49:55 Interviewer: “Now the time you were up there working on the road, did they ever give you a leave or a furlough?” Ya, I got one after I was up there a year and I went to Calcutta and man I think I had 1500 or 1800 Rupees when I got down there. When I got down there, man things were so good and shit, I threw them Rupees away so fast and after I was there about a week I took inventory and I said, ―I got to ease up on the money otherwise I’ll be broke before I even leave here.‖ I did some touring in Calcutta. See, I went to the temple down there and you talk about some beautiful churches, the temples—those Indians, they put out some marvelous work and some of those places you to, you couldn’t wear shoes, you had to pull off your dang shoes and the largest tree in the world, I bet it is as big around as this dang room almost, but I seen that in India. Another thing, Hindustani, Hindu people over there—Mohammad and Anglo are the three main tribes of India, now the Hindustani are the poorest ones out of the bunch and they call them natives. 51:11 When somebody died they take and build a dang place up there like that and they burn him and they tell me—everything burns on a human being but his navel string and those dang old Indians over there, they believe this shit. When somebody dies they take that navel string and throw it out there in the middle of the river and call it washing the sins away, but it was quite an experience over there. 51:41 Interviewer: “Now, you get to the end of the time, you come back down to Calcutta, what kind of a boat did they put you on to send you home?” 26 �Well, I’ll say there was a passenger ship because it was built for a lot of men, but the boat we was on was like that too. Now, you take that Queen Mary, it was one of the largest ships afloat at that time, well, it wasn’t nothing but a passenger ship and some of the boats I was on, two different ships, the U.S.S. General A.E. Anderson and I forget the name of the other boat I was on coming back, but they were both nice. 52:20 Interviewer: “Was it on the ship going back then, was the segregation breaking down, did you have black and white soldiers on the same ship?” Oh ya, see, when I left Calcutta they put you on a boat according to your last name and we were together, go eat together, you had a bunk, either me on top of you or you on top of me and stuff like that. Harry Truman, he made it possible. [Truman ordered the desegregation of the armed forces in 1947—ed.] Truman made that statement when he got to be president of the United States. When he got to his desk he said, ―the buck stops here‖, that means the bullshit to someone else. I’ve been to his museum down in Kansas City once or twice, but he’s got a heck of a lot nicer one than the one we got here in Grand Rapids. 53:09 It’s a whole lot better than that Gerald Ford thing we got. Interviewer: “Now you sail back, you stop off at Guam, were there other stops along the way? No, that’s the only place we stopped coming back and we got within two hundred miles of the Hawaiian Islands and there was a floating mine out there and it looked like a tea kettle and that dang old boat stopped and started circling and the guys on there that was in the navy and in the other branch of the service-Interviewer: “The Marines?” 27 �Yeah, the Marines, they started firing at this thing, I’ll bet they fired at that thing twentyone times before they hit it. The waves were bobbing up and down and the ship—finally that thing blew up and man, I was standing out on the edge of the ship and it knocked me back up against the rail on the back of the boat and we were 2000 miles out of Hawaii and I came on in Frisco and we spent the night up there watching that dog gone Alcatraz. 54:23 I had been stationed in Oakland and I could see Alcatraz every day and we’d go to Frisco at night. Well, on the train we would go by where you could see Alcatraz real easy. Interviewer: “So, they get you home and they finally let you off the ship in San Francisco, then, how long before you got to go home?” Well, I’d say two to three days maybe. The doctors would examine you to be sure you didn’t have no disease or whatever. The next thing you knew, they would send you to your nearest separation center. Well, I went into the army from Battle Creek, but there were so many guys being discharged in Battle Creek, they had to send me to Atterbury, down in Indiana somewhere or to McCoy in Wisconsin, so they sent me to McCoy. My brother, he had been overseas in Germany and I hadn’t seen him in three or four years and he and a friend of mind, they met me in Chicago and we got together and came home here to Grand Rapids. Interviewer: “Now, once you came back home again, were you staying with family again once you got back to Grand Rapids?” 55:32 Ya, I stayed with my brother. I lived with my aunt and uncle before I went in the service and my brother, he was married and had an apartment and I stayed with him, I don’t 28 �know, two or three months or something. The next thing you know I got a girl pregnant and I had to get married and then I got my own place. Interviewer: “Tell us about some of the things you did when you got back, what kind of jobs you were working.” Let me see, when I came out of the service--well see, they had a program, the government had a program and they called it ―the fifty-two twenty club‖ and if they didn’t give you the type of job you had in the army you didn’t have to accept it and you could draw that unemployment, every week for fifty-two weeks. So, I applied for a dispatcher job—they wouldn’t hire no black guys in this town doing that type of work, so I drawed unemployment for seven months. 56:23 The old bank roll was getting bad and I blew $2,000.00 dollars down to about $500.00 and I said, ―I better get me a job and go to work‖, so I went to work at General Motors right over here, the one fixin’ to close up, man I got out there and they told me about all the type of opportunities for advancements and what not—so I believed them—so I got out there and they give me a job that was nasty—I was just grinding metal on the side of a car—me and another guy, but they hired the white boys and they gave them a much better job than I had. 56:59 I never did get there until on a Monday, so that third week I went out there, I’d been sick with a strep throat or something and I had been sick for two or three days and the foreman said, ―Gullick, you’re taking too much time off work‖. Well, he didn’t know I had just got up from a poker table that night, went home and got dressed, I’d been drinking all night and I said, ―man what you talking about, you look, I’m right here now‖. Well they had been going south, picking up black guys and bringing them back and giving them jobs and stuff, so me and him had a few words and I asked him, ―can you go to the office and get 29 �my check?‖ He said, ―oh no, we can’t do that‖, and I said, ―well, that’s the only thing you can do for me because I’m leaving this god damn place. I ain’t staying in the army no three years and two months and come back out here and try to make these damn cars in one day and that’s what you people are trying to do‖. 57:48 If you went to the restroom, the foreman would work in your place while you’re gone. After three weeks I quit. My brother, I told him about it and he quit the same day I did, but he had been there three or four months. We got on the bus right out here at 36th and Division going downtown the old bus driver kept looking in the mirror—me and my brother were sitting in the back and we got down around 28th Street somewhere and the old bus driver said, ―well fellas you don’t have to tell me what happened, I used to work there myself and I wouldn’t go back out there if they gave me half interest in the place‖. 58:30 That’s when I started driving cab for the black guys. Interviewer: “That was for the Victory Cab Co., the black cab company?” Yes. I stayed there until they went out of business and then I went to Diesel in 1950. I stayed there until 1980 and I retired. I’ve been out for twenty-eight years. Interviewer: “That second job was a better one than the stuff they had down at GM?” At Diesel man, everything was nice. Precision work, clean—everything, but over there at General Motors, hell, all they built was top and doors and crap and you had to lift them and do all that crap and on top of that, you didn’t get no break. See, in the army they give you a ten minute break every hour whatever you did, but here you just kept on working. 59:17 If you had to go to the restroom, the dang old foreman would work in your place, so I said, ―to hell with this noise‖. 30 �Interviewer: “Tell us a little bit about how you wind up getting involved with the baseball club?” Well, when I came out of the service—I always loved baseball see, before I got in the service and I played a little before I went in the army. After I got out, they had this team and I got involved with them and every week-end they would go somewhere to play baseball and you would get two or three bucks, maybe seven or eight at the most, and I got to know a lot of the guys and I got to know the old manager because we had a pool room around here where we all met and they had a restaurant there and a hotel upstairs and everybody would be there and those guys would be playing ball somewhere this week-end and they asked me if I wanted to go and I said, ―heck ya‖, and I went. That’s how I got involved with baseball, but I was up there in Kalkaska and Traverse City. I was up there two days and come back to Bowen and the third day I was away from here playing ball and I got seven or eight bucks up there and I got three dollars in Bowen and I said, ―to heck with the ball business‖, because I was married and had two kids and they would rather have food than baseball. I came back here and I went to work for General Motors Diesel and they had a softball team and I played softball with them until I was forty-five years old. :43 When I went there, the ball team, everybody was on the team and I met the manager and after I met him we started talking about the game and I said, ―everybody out here is trying to manage the team, why don’t you give one of them the job and you be a player?‖ He made me the captain, so I told them, ―look fellas, we’re going to play ball, now you’re either going to play or you’re not‖, and I had my own team around here once and I told them then, there aint going to be only one manager and I be the manager‖. I had a raffle and bought them all Cincinnati red uniforms and give them 31 �to them and stuff. 1:23 I had three black guys and the bastards wouldn’t do right, so I fired them and got three white boys in their place. We had a lot of fun back in them days. Interviewer: “Now, when you played and went to colored baseball games for the Negro leagues, did they play on Sunday or Saturday and Sunday?” See the Black Sox and Bob Sullivan’s team, I forget the name of them now, but they used to have baseball here every Sunday because different teams from out of town played. I seen Homestead Braves and the Kansas City Monarchs, they was a traveling team and they come through here every year and I would see them play. They had a softball team here they called King and His Court, have you ever heard of them? Interviewer: “No .” 2:05 It was a four man team, Ed Finger was the pitcher and his right arm was dang near twice as big as his left arm and he traveled all over the United States pitching softball and I seen him play three or four times. Baseball use to be the thing if you was working and living in Grand Rapids on a Sunday when them ball teams came in here to play, you had to be there. Interviewer: “Everybody look’n their best, their best clothes?” Ya, ya, and old Ted Raspberry, you heard of him, see he use to have an east, west game in Kaminski Park every year and old Paul Goebel, when he got to be the mayor of Grand Rapids—he was a republican and he tried to get Ted Raspberry to campaign for him. Ted was a democrat and Ted wouldn’t do it, but he would have his All Star game in Chicago every year at Comiskey Park and Ted would make five or ten thousand dollars from that one game, so old Goebel told him, ―if you don’t campaign and support me in this election coming up and if I get to be the mayor, I’m going to bust you‖, and Ted 32 �worked up to have a team in new York in Yankee Stadium. 3:25 One day him and me was talking and he told me he was going to New York and he was going to make eighteen thousand dollars off of that one game in Yankee Stadium and the next thing you know, Goebel got to be the mayor and he busted Ted and he had to pay ten thousand dollars cash money because Ted had prostitutes, teams, a basketball team, a baseball team, a football team, running the numbers and all that kind of crap, so they popped him and he paid ten thousand like that and two or three weeks later he popped him again—he had to pay five thousand and he couldn’t handle this, so they stopped his action and Ted had to go to selling cars around here. 4:08 He introduced me to Buck O’Neill, then on the Monarchs, and I go to Kansas City and Buck died a couple of years ago and when I’d go down there he would let me and any of my friends go through there. They got a heck of a nice museum in Kansas city and that Hall of Fame, Ted Turner was the first man that invested some money starting that hall of Fame because ABC, CBS, NBC, none of them wouldn’t invest even a quarter. After Ted Turner made his investment, these other businesses started doing likewise. Man, they got a beautiful place down there. Interviewer: “When Jackie integrated baseball, how did you feel about that?” Well, I didn’t know what to think, but I figured it was going to happen eventually. Just like this old boy now that is running for president, who the hell ever thought he would make it to be the president. It was amazing when he came out of Pasadena. See, Jackie Robinson played with the Monarchs too, I think, before he got in the majors, but Jackie was an educated man just like Obama, and Branch Rickey, who owned the Dodgers, knew Jackie’s background and everything and told him what to do and how to do things. 5:23 He joined the Brooklyn Dodgers and man I’m telling you, he made the game a 33 �whole lot better than it was and he did some things on the diamond that a lot of people never seen or heard of. I seen Jackie play two or three times. Old Roy Capanella and Duke Snyder and I forget all them guy’s names. Anytime they would be in Detroit I would come down to see them. The All Star game, if I could get tickets to the game, I’d be going. Interviewer: “Now, back in Grand Rapids there was also a women’s baseball team, the Grand Rapids Chicks, did you ever see any of their games or know any of those players?” I seen Marian Ladwig, she played with the Chicks before she turned to bowling, but when I met her she was down at the Sanatorium and Morrisey, he’d sit in a chair like this and every time she would go up there and roll the ball she would come back and he would say something to her. I got to know his sons real well, a couple of them especially and then I got to know Marian Ladwig. 6:28 We was at a Hall of Fame thing here, I say for or five years ago, the last time I seen Marian Ladwig to talk to. She was interested in one of these bowling alleys and bought an interest in that thing. A while back I asked somebody about it and she is still living. I’m 86—86 now, but she’s close to 90years old. That hall of Fame, that Bowling Hall of Fame there in Kansas City and now they are building a new one in Dallas Texas, Fort Worth and I intend to go down there next spring and see what it is like. I bowled in New Orleans, New Jersey, California, Detroit and darn near everywhere in-between. I followed that circuit man, I been doing it man for thirty some years. 7:21 Interviewer: “You have certainly done quite a few different things—think back to the time you spent in the army, how do you think that wound up affecting you in the 34 �way you see the world or deal with people, what sort of effect do you think it had on you? I think if you travel and meet different people, it’s the best education you can get. I heard once that if you could afford get your kids graduated from high school and give them a trip around the world, it’s equivalent to four years in college, but I was fortunate enough to be half way around the world, I met a lot of people and one thing about me, I’ve always tried to increase my education. I read papers, the Washington news, go places, see things and do things and I believe that contributes to my good health and my way of being now. A lot of people retire like I did and they go sit on the porch and watch the birds fly by and watch television and All in the Family and that kind of crap. I promised God when I retired I would never be a couch potato and sit there and watch TV all the time. I’m going to find something to do, go somewhere and be active. I love to bowl, I love to play golf and I play baseball and stuff and I been going practically all my life. I really enjoy going and I think one of the best things in the world a man can do is meet different people. Interviewer: “Thank you very much for coming in and talking to us today.” It’s been a pleasure, I enjoyed it because that baseball career I had and I think about some of those boys get twenty million a year to play baseball and a lot of them after they get that money, like the Tigers here, man the payroll they had last year, they give some them people all that money and they aint played a game, they didn’t do a damn thing, but they got paid. I think about the times I played and I was out in that hot sun boy, it was something, but we made it possible for them to do what they’re doing. Interviewer: “You certainly did.” 35 �36 � 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 Gullick, Felix (Interview transcript and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gullick, Felix Description An account of the resource Felix Gullick spent most of his childhood on a farm in Kansas, and then moved to Muskegon, Michigan in 1939. He was drafted and served in the US Army between 1943 and 1946. He did his basic training in California, and spent about a year working on the docks in Los Angeles and Long Beach, and later was shipped to India and spent the last year of the war with the 45th Engineer Battalion, which was building and maintaining part of the Burma Road. He was the dispatcher for his company, and effectively commanded his unit much of the time. After the war, he returned to Michigan and played semiprofessional baseball during the last days of the Negro Leagues. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Moore, Louis (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Video recordings World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American United States. Army Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008-11-20 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GullickF 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/7d8518707a05a5013fbd64b64dba31e6.mp4 fa847e95c8102d65bfb45fe903a04264 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1bdf99a74d6e1d41758cb72bba4768d8.pdf be684c1e033267528137a35bca0e7fbb PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veteran’s History Project David Guevara Interview Total Time: 54:47 Background  (00:18) Born in Martin, Michigan on October 19th, 1947 o Parents were migrant workers so they moved around a lot  (00:50) They moved to different states, picked crops, and then went back home  (1:06) Went to school, sometimes fell behind but would make it up o Went to school in Pullman, Michigan, but when he got older he worked in the fields, so it was hard to get an education that way  (1:42) Mostly spoke Spanish growing up, sometimes English  (2:08) Went to school up to 7th grade when he was 14  (2:15) He got his GED after he joined the Marine Corps  (2:41) Once he was 18 he got a job in a factory, and also worked in the fields to help his dad  (3:08) Mr. Guevara didn’t go back home to Texas because the jobs were mostly in the fields, and the factory paid him well Drafted/Training  (3:21) Mr. Guevara got his draft notice in 1968 and went to Detroit for the physical  (3:45) He mentions that his brother didn’t get drafted because he had recently gotten married  (3:55) Within two months he had to report for service in the Army  (4:07) He said many people at the induction center had excuses and were trying to get out of going to Vietnam o Some were successful in their attempts and some weren’t � (4:41) He liked it because he worked in factories and he hadn’t seen California, etc [this was after he decided to enlist in the Marines, who trained in San Diego]; he wanted an adventure  (5:00) Mr. Guevara says he didn’t know much about Vietnam other than what was on TV  (5:15) He went back to Texas to visit his family after he got his draft notice o About eight people in his family had been drafted; Mr. Guevara and two other guys enlisted in the Marine Corps before he had to report to the Army o (6:15) One reason he decided to join the Marines was because it would be more of a challenge  (6:27) He did basic training in San Diego, and then went to El Toro, California, for AIT  (6:42) He said the reception he got when they first arrived at boot camp was terrible o Remembers a lot of running  (7:22) He said he was in decent shape but the training was a challenge  (8:22) Mr. Guevara said they put a lot of emphasis on discipline  (8:35) They wanted them to obey, because out in the field they could lose their lives if they did otherwise  (8:45) Remembers when they were marching before graduating, someone made a wrong turn and everybody had to do push-ups  (9:18) He said that he didn’t have a hard time adjusting; understood the schedule, learned quickly  (10:10) Average age of the guys he trained with were about 22; most were in their 20’s o A lot of them signed up to be in the Marine Corps o They were from all over the country  (10:55) The guys that trained him had Vietnam experience; showed them scars  (11:18) After basic, went to AIT o In AIT he learned how to escape a prison camp, all they had to eat was rice o They learned how to fight in hand to hand combat �o (12:15) Mr. Guevara describes a method they used to train them when during their sleep, if they did not have their rifles together, the trainers would take them and make them exercise o (12:35) After this, Mr. Guevara slept on top of it o It was a test to see how much they learned from training  (13:19) He was assigned to be a wireman, got training for it  (14:03) There was a variety of educated people that he trained with  (14:30) Found out that some soldiers had fathers that were senators or representatives, so it was a good idea to “hang around with them” o They wouldn’t make them work as hard  (15:08) He was in training for about 5-6 months, ended in about August of 1968  (15:30) Visited home for a couple weeks  (15:41) 185 Marines including Mr. Guevara got on the same plane and took off o Stopped in Hawaii to refuel, remembers eating treats that were sitting out o (16:25) Stayed at Guam for about 2 weeks, more training o (16:35) Went to Da Nang, Vietnam Vietnam  (17:00) Remembers it feeling like 120 degrees outside when they got off the plane in Vietnam  (17:53) Within 20 minutes he got a jeep and went to an airport  (18:18) Marble Mountain was to his right when they arrived, and it was being overrun by the Viet Cong, remembers seeing machine gun tracers  (19:00) Remembers reading that there was a hospital for the Viet Cong under Marble Mountain  (19:20) Remembers his base being surrounded by other military branches, but it was attacked almost every night because the enemy wanted to destroy the planes  (20:30) He was in communications, so his duty was to replace telephones  (20:46) He also did security once a month � (21:47) He was also a radioman, and was told to speak Spanish because the Vietnamese couldn’t understand it  (22:25) When they got off the plane, the sergeant sent them to a bunker and he started working  (22:57) There were about 50 of the guys in his unit altogether  (23:54) He remember the other guys in his unit being surprised that he only completed 7th grade  (24:28) He was offered $50 more to be a door gunner for a Huey but he said no because too many people were getting killed that way  (24:40) In the quarters, they had about 10 bunks o They all worked in different shifts o Different ethnicities from different states o They all got along well  (25:51) Mr. Guevara remembers guys in his unit getting letters from their wives saying they didn’t want to be married any more o There was a guy who had this happen and swallowed razorblades so he could go back home  (26:57) He noticed a lot of marijuana use o He knew he could go to jail so he didn’t use it o A lot of beer, only 14 or 15 cents a bottle o Mr. Guevara did drink beer sometimes  (28:05) USO came to Da Nang, drew numbers and those were the ones who would get to see entertainment o Remembers Bob Hope being there o Nothing was brought to the base, though  (28:38) Mr. Guevara started working by installing telephones, was taught how to use switchboards o He wanted to do something outside, so learned how to do those kinds of communications �o Had contest with other men to see how long they could stand on top of poles without falling off  (29:50) Because of where he was located, there was a low chance of someone trying to shoot him o At night was when they got rocket and mortar attacks, though  (30:07) Remembers being on the beach near South China Sea and all the sudden they heard a boom, and saw that it was coming closer and they ran to the bunkers o After that, they were sent to pick up what was left there o Two or three were killed, remembers picking up pieces of scalps and realizing how close they were to being attacked  (32:07) Mr. Guevara said the rocket and mortar attacks did a lot of damage; they were 122’s, created a big hole o Shrapnel would get someone if they weren’t in their bunker  (33:00) He said out of the whole time he was there, only one plane was hit  (33:26) Remembers sappers trying to get into his base and that’s why they had security  (34:34) There were Vietnamese civilians who worked on the base o Remembers feeling bad because he saw the people who picked up their food eating the leftovers  (35:57) He didn’t want to go off the base that much, but remembers going to deliver stuff in a truck to Da Nang  (36:34) Da Nang was a big city, saw a lot of friendly people  (37:20) There were instructions not to go to certain places in Da Nang, they were told to go in groups, and not to go out with women  (38:00) Mr. Guevara went to China Beach, often swam  (38:41) He heard from others who had been in the jungles that they were not going to win the war  (39:30) Some guys didn’t know why they were there, but still did their jobs well  (39:45) If they did a good job, they would be allowed to go to the bar sometimes  (40:00) Pot smoking would happen while they were off duty � (40:17) He had sergeants of different ethnicities and they all got along well o Recalls enjoying themselves  (41:25) Noticed men rotating in and out  (41:41) For his kind of unit, the rotation system worked well  (42:00) The most casualties they had were about 3, he said they were prepared most of the time  (42:12) Stayed in Vietnam for 12 months  (42:30) He was offered to stay, but he declined  (42:41) He and the other guys in his unit counted down the days until they could go home, especially after 7 months  (43:06) He had a friend that would write letters for him to his family  (43:30) Remembers his and another Spanish friend’s mothers sending them tortillas and Mexican candy  (44:35) Remembers hearing about a helicopter that veered off to the left during fog and the crew was killed because they ran into a mountain  (46:00) The worst thing he noticed was the “Dear John” letters to the guys Going Home  (46:18) Got to leave in 1969, remembers landing in Okinawa  (46:37) After Okinawa they didn’t stop, continued to fly for 14-15 hours  (46:55) They flew on a commercial plane home  (47:00) Everyone was happy on the plane going home  (47:14) Once they landed in San Francisco, they went to the bars to celebrate  (47:30) Remembers hearing about the protestors and feeling bad that it happened; they had to take their uniforms off to avoid trouble  (47:58) Once he got back to El Toro he had another 3 or 4 months left  (48:20) He stayed on the base and did more wiring and communications work  (48:50) Remembers encountering a strange woman at the bar, after running away he found out that she was part of a gang � (49:58) After his time was done at the base, he flew back to Houston, Texas and went home to his mom, brothers and sisters  (50:10) He got his GED while at El Toro  (50:40) He went back to Michigan and started working in a factory again  (51:04) Mr. Guevara learned to always watch everything that’s going on around him  (52:15) He never got into fights after getting out of the service, knows people who did though  (52:35) He still gets up early in the morning because of his Marine Corps experience  (53:00) Mr. Guevara does migrant ministry; bringing them food and clothes o He has been doing this for the past 20 years � 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 Guevara, David (Interview outline and video), 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Guevara, David Description An account of the resource David Guevara was born in Martin, Michigan on October 19th 1947. He grew up moving around a lot because his parents were migrant workers. He went to school when he could and worked in a factory. In 1968, he was drafted into the Army, but enlisted in the Marine Corps before he had to report. He trained in California and became a wireman for a communications unit. He was assigned to the Marine air base at Marble Mountain, near Da Nang. He mostly worked on the base laying communications lines, but also did some radio work, at times communicating with other Hispanic soldiers in Spanish, which the Vietnamese could not understand. 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. Marine Corps Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-11-02 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GuevaraD1288V 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/0d8beb3d73466696a631308f592427b3.mp4 83115932a371edc4908a4e01d6d60dce https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2d1aff1da65e8fff1635d59888000a33.pdf 09be6087f7ad651e7fc472d872b837e9 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Tom Grosser (00:15:50) (00:14) Introduction • Born in Wayne, Michigan. • Adopted by his parents at a young age. • His father worked for Sears Roebuck in Detroit, Michigan. • His family moved to Houghton Lake, Michigan when he was five years old. • Attended a special education program at Okemos High School in Okemos, Michigan. (07:50) • Drafted right out of high school. • Was first sent to Fort Knox. • He was scared when he first arrived. • The men were polite to him. • Remembers marching quite a bit during his basic training. • After basic, was sent to Fort Custer, Colorado for two weeks. • He received orders to go to Vietnam. (10:30) Vietnam • Flew to Vietnam. • Cannot remember his first memories of Vietnam. • Does not want to talk about most of his experiences at Vietnam, because they scare him. • He was supposed to be a mechanics assistant, but was sent to DaNang. • He had to guard men who were working on a satellite dish. • He was very close to the DMZ. • Remembers being attacked, and being afraid. • The Vietnamese were fair towards him. • He cannot remember seeing any children while in Vietnam. • Lived in a tin shack while in Vietnam. • Ate Chinese food while in Vietnam, but does not eat it anymore. • Stayed in the same place the entire time he was in the service. (15:50) After the Service • Flew into Oakland, California when he arrived back in the states. • He received his discharge while Oakland. • He was supposed to fly to Detroit when he flew home, but was sent to Lansing instead. • He had to wait until his parents arrived home so he could call them and tell them that he was in Lansing. • His grandmother thought he was a ghost when he arrived home. • Worked as a custodian at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan. � 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 Grosser, Tom (Interview outline and video), 2007 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grosser, Tom Description An account of the resource Tom Grosser served in the US Army between 1971 and 1973. He served in Vietnam and saw some combat, but is still suffering the effects of PTSD and is reluctant to talk about 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. Army Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American Video recordings Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007-03-26 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GrosserT 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