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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f0f9e8dddd753fdedb3eb69de598630f.mp4
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ca0bd31b94ab41f77b41ced49b765f05.pdf
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Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Barry McAlpine
Vietnam War
Interview Length: (02:00:05:00)
Pre-enlistment Life / Training / Germany (00:00:16:00)
McAlpine was born in Cass City, Michigan in 1945, located in the “Thumb” region of the
lower peninsula of the state; McAlpine grew up in the “Thumb” region, living on a small
farm, the oldest of six children (00:00:16:00)
McAlpine graduated from high school in 1963 (00:00:32:00)
o After he graduated from high school, he briefly worked for General Motors before
attending Michigan State University (00:00:38:00)
However, his time at Michigan State did not work out too well and in 1965, McAlpine
received his draft notice (00:00:57:00)
o At the time, drafts notices were sent to everyone and both students and married
men had opportunities to use deferments; McAlpine chose not to use his student
deferment because he did not fully know what he wanted to do (00:01:11:00)
McAlpine viewed it was having a chance to serve in a war, which in his
mind, was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (00:01:38:00)
McAlpine recalls sitting around the kitchen table talking with his
uncle and grandfather about their respective experiences serving in
the military and he always wondered if he would ever had a similar
opportunity (00:01:51:00)
The conflict in Vietnam was just starting to intensify and
McAlpine viewed it as a good time to serve (00:02:01:00)
McAlpine married before deploying to Vietnam and could have received a
marriage deferment along with the student deferment (00:02:12:00)
o McAlpine is glad that he chose the route of going into the military when he did
because the experience was very interesting and fun (00:02:42:00)
After receiving his draft notice, McAlpine first went through an induction center in
Detroit, Michigan before traveling to Fort Knox, Kentucky to begin his basic training
(00:02:59:00)
o Although he does not recall the exact reception he received when he arrived at
Fort Knox, McAlpine does remember that it was a far different world than what
he had known growing up on a farm (00:03:44:00)
o At the time, McAlpine was pretty independent and he did not understand the idea
of someone else giving him orders (00:04:02:00)
To that end, McAlpine had some difficult encounters with his drill
instructors and they were forced to break him down a little bit; although it
took some time, the instructors eventually broke him down and began to
“rebuild” him (00:04:22:00)
For example, McAlpine had never seen a two-way loudspeaker
system and one night, an instructors came over the loudspeaker in
the barracks and told the men something; McAlpine made a
�
flippant remark and he remembers the instructors running up the
stairs, placing a bucket on McAlpine’s head and beating the
“h***” out of the bucket (00:04:47:00)
Following the incident with the bucket, McAlpine had more respect for his
superiors (00:05:32:00)
o The basic training started out with McAlpine and the other men learning the ways
of the Army, such as marching, map-reading, how to fire and clean weapons,
proper radio procedures, etc. (00:05:47:00)
On a typical day, the men were training from six in the morning until eight
or nine o’clock at night (00:06:14:00)
o The men also went through a lot of physical training, namely running and
calisthenics (00:06:25:00)
McAlpine was in pretty good shape when he first went into the military, so
the physical training helped build his strength and stamina (00:06:37:00)
As well, because he had been shooting guns since he was eleven
years old, McAlpine was confident firing the weapons, because he
had played baseball at Michigan State, McAlpine could throw
grenades further than most of the other soldiers, and because he
had been in the marching band in high school, McAlpine already
knew how to march (00:06:51:00)
o Basic training lasted for a total of eight weeks, at the beginning of which
McAlpine and the other men took a series of test to determine what their MOS
(Military Occupational Specialty) would be (00:07:20:00)
McAlpine’s MOS was military intelligence, so he was assigned to regular advanced
infantry training, which was also at Fort Knox (00:07:43:00)
o Specifically, McAlpine was assigned to train in an armored division to train as a
scout, part of a new wave of military intelligence having greater interaction with
unit scouts (00:08:12:00)
o McAlpine does not remember too much about his advanced training, except that it
involved more map reading; at the time, the Army was still operating under
concepts from the Korean war, so the curriculum for the advanced training was
pretty old-fashioned (00:08:47:00)
At the time, McAlpine and the other men were still training with the old
M-14 rifle; McAlpine did not see an M-16 rifle until he deployed to
Vietnam (00:09:30:00)
The second course at Fort Knox lasted for another eight weeks, after which McAlpine
was able to go home for a month before deploying to Germany (00:09:45:00)
o Receiving the orders for Germany was a surprise to McAlpine because he was not
even thinking about serving in Europe (00:10:02:00)
o Once his leave ended, McAlpine remembers taking a bus to New York City,
where he boarded a ship for the trip across the Atlantic Ocean (00:10:14:00)
On the first night, the ship's crew gave the men chili for dinner and
McAlpine remembers that within a couple of hours, all the men were
seasick (00:10:25:00)
The journey over to Europe was in November and the traditional
November storms on the Atlantic were in full force; one time, McAlpine
�stuck his head out a window and saw that some of the waves were taller
than the smokestack of the ship (00:10:42:00)
The storms were such as bad experience that when McAlpine
finally got off the ship in Bremerhaven, Germany, he kissed the
ground and promised himself that when he went home, he was
either going to fly home or desert the Army (00:11:09:00)
o After McAlpine arrived in Germany, he was assigned to a unit stationed of the
West German border with Czechoslovakia (00:11:30:00)
When the other soldiers found out McAlpine had played baseball at
Michigan State, he was recruited to join the unit’s baseball team
(00:12:06:00)
Because he was on the baseball team, McAlpine did not have to
stand in formation, a fact that his company first sergeant did not
appreciate (00:12:16:00)
Apart from the baseball team, McAlpine tried out as the only white guy
for the unit’s boxing team (00:12:36:00)
One night after boxing practice, McAlpine was surrounded by
black guys and they wanted to teach him the lesson that he was not
allowed in their gym (00:12:50:00)
The black men “taught” McAlpine his lesson and he ended up in
the infirmary, unable to move his arms for several days
(00:13:03:00)
Because he was unable to try out for the boxing team and the baseball
season had ended, the first sergeant was waiting for McAlpine
(00:13:26:00)
Meanwhile, McAlpine had requested deployment to Vietnam,
which was denied; McAlpine put in another request and again, the
unit commander turned the request down, largely because the
commander wanted McAlpine on the baseball team (00:13:38:00)
Once baseball season was over, McAlpine was finally under the control of
the company first sergeant and when McAlpine returned to his barracks
from the infirmary, the first sergeant was waiting to give his bunk an
inspection (00:14:03:00)
When McAlpine’s bunk failed the inspection, the first sergeant tore
up the bunk, looked at McAlpine in a “funny” manner, then went
and locked the door to the barracks (00:14:25:00)
McAlpine knew he was going to get into a fight with the first
sergeant, so as the first sergeant walked back to McAlpine’s bunk,
McAlpine punched him (00:14:41:00)
The fight ended when a group of other sergeants broke the
barracks’ door down and separated McAlpine from the first
sergeant (00:14:58:00)
Soon after his fight with the first sergeant, McAlpine’s request for
deployment to Vietnam came through and he was sent to Vietnam
(00:15:06:00)
�
While in Germany, McAlpine was officially assigned to an armored
personnel carrier (APC) and on occasion, his unit would go into the Black
Forest to take part in war games; however, because he was on the baseball
team, McAlpine never had to take part (00:15:38:00)
McAlpine finally left Germany in early fall, 1966 and had another month-long leave at
home before having to fly to Oakland, California to deploy to Vietnam (00:16:08:00)
o McAlpine spent a few days in Oakland before boarding a military transport that
first flew to Hawaii to refuel then to several other islands, also to refuel, before
finally arriving in Vietnam (00:16:48:00)
Vietnam (00:17:24:00)
McAlpine arrived in Saigon in the latter part of fall, 1966 (00:17:24:00)
o McAlpine remembers the flight to An Khe, which was where his new unit, the 1st.
Air Cavalry Division was stationed; McAlpine remembers that the pilots wanted
to avoid mortar strikes, so they initially approached the airfield at a very high
altitude then rapidly descended (00:18:10:00)
Once the plane had landed, McAlpine and the other men were told to go
out the door and were quickly hustled off the runway (00:18:41:00)
After arriving in An Khe, McAlpine needed to wait for additional orders and once the
orders arrived, he received an assignment to the 1st (Squadron) of the 9th (Cavalry
Regiment) (00:18:57:00)
o Before McAlpine reported to his new unit, he and the other new arrivals stood in a
group and the question was asked if any of the men were married, with any
married men made to take a step forward (00:19:09:00)
McAlpine figured that the commanders were going to send all the married
men to relatively safe assignments, which he did not want, so he did not
step forward (00:19:18:00)
The two groups were separated, with the married men go off in one
direction, while the other men, McAlpine included, went in another
direction, which was when McAlpine received his assignment to the 1st of
the 9th (00:19:34:00)
o At the time, the 1st of the 9th was the “most ambitious” unit in the 1st Air Cav.,
having started most, if not all, the fights that the division had been involved in up
to that point; as well, the squadron claimed more than 50% of the entire division’s
enemy kills (00:19:47:00)
o The 1st of the 9th was divided into four “troops”: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta,
with Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie being helicopter-borne, with each troop having
roughly twenty-five helicopters (00:20:21:00)
Normally, the composition of each troop was divided between several
different groups, such as pilots and mechanics, as well as support
personnel such as cooks and supply clerks (00:20:38:00)
Of the ninety personnel in the troop, roughly thirty were ground
scouts while ten or fifteen were airborne scouts using small scout
helicopters; apart from the scout and transport helicopters, the units
also had helicopter gunships, with a pilot, co-pilot and a pair of
door gunners (00:20:47:00)
�
The gunships and scouts were designated as three groups: Red for
gunships, White for airborne scouts, and Blue for ground scouts; when he
arrived at the unit, McAlpine was assigned to be a Blue (00:21:16:00)
The concept behind the composition of the battalion was that at first, a
scout team would go out and either try to entice the enemy to engage them
or would look for signs that the enemy was nearby (00:21:49:00)
The men on the scout team would write the information down and
in the following day or two, several squads of Blues would insert
into the area to figure out what was going on; in a sense, the Blues
would start the fight with the enemy (00:22:16:00)
o The men in the Blues would wake up in the morning and
know that on one day, they would make numerous air
assaults; during one particular day, the Blues made a total
of eleven air assaults (00:22:29:00)
o When McAlpine arrived at the 1st of the 9th, he did not receive any type of
orientation (00:22:58:00)
McAlpine remembers that the first night he was with the unit, he was
laying in his bunk when he felt something on his chest (00:23:21:00)
He got out of his bunk and turned the light on, but nothing was
around; he turned the light off and got back into his bunk but soon,
it felt like something was back on his chest (00:23:28:00)
o McAlpine had decided that if he felt something on his chest
again, he was going to pull the cord for the light and turn
the light on but not get out of bunk (00:28:37:00)
When he felt something on his chest again, McAlpine pulled the
cord and on his chest was a rat (00:23:44:00)
As the rat scurried away, McAlpine hopped out of his bunk,
grabbed a gun, and started shooting at the rat, which did not go
over too well with the other men in the compound because he was
shooting inside the perimeter (00:23:54:00)
o During his first couple of days with the 1st of the 9th, McAlpine met with the
supply sergeants and was assigned his equipment, as well as his personal weapon
and ammunition (00:24:13:00)
The Blues were always involved in firefights and there was always a
constant needed for new personnel, so within a couple of days of his
arrival, McAlpine was flown to a landing zone and introduced to his
commanding sergeant (00:24:27:00)
McAlpine and another soldier, a black kid from Chicago, were both sent to
the landing zone and the sergeant was in need of soldiers because he had
had some men wounded or KIA the previous couple of days (00:24:57:00)
Both McAlpine and the black kid were assigned to the 1st Squad of
“B” Troop (00:25:13:00)
McAlpine was initially issued an M-16 rifle but that rifle was eventually
replaced by at CAR-15 carbine (00:25:28:00)
The CAR-15 was a little bit shorter and a little bit lighter than the
M-16 but jammed just as frequently (00:25:36:00)
�
McAlpine preferred the CAR-15 because he was doing a lot of air
assaults and the smaller the weapon, the better; as well, the
environment where he and the other scouts tended to work largely
consisted of elephant grass and jungle and a longer weapon, such
as the M-16, was not the weapon to have (00:25:43:00)
All the men had the choice of which weapon they wanted to carry,
from the M-16 and CAR-15 to shotguns or B.A.R.s (Browning
Automatic Rifles), although not too many men chose to use a
B.A.R. (00:26:03:00)
o It was usually left to the individual squad leaders to tell the
men which weapons they should be carrying (00:26:25:00)
For the early part of their time with the squad, McAlpine and the black kid
tended to stick close to the veterans in the squad (00:26:54:00)
McAlpine had been an outdoors kid while growing up and the
“Cowboys & Indians” aspect of the squad’s operations was a
perfect fit for him (00:26:59:00)
McAlpine remembers the squad leader selecting him to be a point
man, so for several days, McAlpine walked with the squad leader
and the squad leader taught McAlpine the finer points necessary to
be the point man (00:27:15:00)
o After walking with the squad leader for several days,
McAlpine walked behind the point man for several more
days to study how the point man moved (00:27:31:00)
o The squad always needed a skilled soldier as the point man
to avoid ambushes; McAlpine did not mind walking into an
ambush, so long as he was by himself but he never wanted
to lead all the men into an ambush (00:27:45:00)
McAlpine and the other men in the squad encountered the enemy every
day because that was their job, to start fights (00:28:11:00)
When McAlpine first arrived at the squad, the squad leaders and
the pilots would have a meeting with the troop’s S-2, who was in
charge of intelligence (00:28:27:00)
o At the meeting, the men would develop a plan of action for
the entire day, although often, the plans changed within an
hour anyway (00:28:56:00)
o When McAlpine arrived, the Blues operated as a platoon-sized unit under the
commander of a captain-level officer, although the platoon never had a captain to
command it (00:29:31:00)
The platoon was broken down into four squads, none of which ever had a
full compliment of soldiers; normally, a squad was supposed to have eight
or nine soldiers but the most they ever had was six or seven (00:29:49:00)
o McAlpine recalls several distinct situations happening during his first full month
with his squad (00:30:27:00)
At one point, the Blues were stationed at some rubber plantations outside
the city of Pleiku (00:30:35:00)
�
Prior to McAlpine’s arrival, the Blues had a pet monkey that
stayed tied up in the platoon’s tent (00:30:44:00)
When the platoon was stationed on the rubber plantation, the
jungle butted right against the outside of the tent, with only a
single strip of barbed wire acting as the perimeter (00:30:59:00)
Whenever the platoon returned to the tent, the monkey would
always jump on the men but one night, the men came home and
found the monkey had accidentally hung himself (00:31:35:00)
o McAlpine remembers guarding the Bob Hope Christmas Tour when the tour
stopped in Pleiku (00:31:55:00)
The platoon was on the outside perimeter and were only supposed to
prevent anything from getting inside; if something happened inside the
perimeter, then another unit had to take care of the situation (00:32:00:00)
o The terrain where the platoon was operating was largely jungle (00:32:38:00)
o When the platoon would go out on missions, they could insert via either landing
zones or rappelling out of the helicopters, although for the most part, the
helicopters would fly to a pre-determined landing zone (00:33:16:00)
The squadron’s commanding officer was a colonel and prior to operations,
would fly in a helicopter about 3000’ off the ground and pick out a
specific landing zone for the Blues (00:33:24:00)
If the operation was set to begin at first light, the gunships would prep the
landing zone before the Blues' helicopters would go into the landing zone
(00:30:38:00)
In reality, the Blues' helicopters never actually landed on the
ground; instead, the Blues developed a method whereby they
jumped off the helicopter as the helicopter flew through the
landing zone (00:33:54:00)
o The men had to be very precise when jumping off because
if an entire side jump off together, then the helicopter
would tip to the other side (00:34:03:00)
Normally, the helicopter would be several feet off the ground,
depending on the terrain, and would fly into the landing zone, slow
down as much as they could, would hear the soldiers jump off, and
would fly out (00:34:18:00)
The commanders never wanted the helicopters to land because it
was too difficult for the helicopters to take off again and it was too
slow (00:34:46:00)
The helicopter pilots never carried any weapons because they
knew they were safe with the other soldiers around; the soldiers
took care of the pilots and the pilots took care of the soldiers
(00:34:55:00)
The Hueys used to carry the men were often early models and did not have
the power to take off; the gunships were often late models and did have
the power necessary to carry around the extra ammunition (00:35:09:00)
�
o
o
o
o
The early model Hueys only had enough power to carry the two
pilots and seven or eight soldiers, who were often loaded up with
ammunition and supplies (00:35:34:00)
There was not a tried and true method for avoiding injury when jumping
out of the helicopters; for the most part, it depended on the terrain of the
landing zone (00:35:51:00)
Sometimes, the men would hit the ground and roll and other times,
they were able to land on their feet (00:35:55:00)
McAlpine does not know of anyone specifically who was hurt
jumping out of the helicopters (00:35:59:00)
For the most part, it was 50/50 between landing in a hot LZ (Landing
Zone) as opposed to a cold LZ (00:36:17:00)
The men knew they were being sent into a specific area to look for
the enemy; therefore, they never really expected to land in a quiet
area (00:36:19:00)
o Instead, they would go into areas where the enemy had
been seen (00:36:31:00)
If the Blues could handle the situation, that was fine, but if they
could not take care of it, then additional forces would be brought
into the fight (00:36:41:00)
As far as McAlpine can remember, the Blues never had an aborted
flight, which was sometimes a detriment to the men (00:37:06:00)
o Helicopters were shot down all the time but in the minds of
the officers, they were acceptable loses (00:37:16:00)
During his first week or two with the unit, McAlpine noticed that some of the
younger soldiers took certain situations for granted; the young soldiers would be
on an ambush all night then have to do a landing the next morning (00:37:30:00)
McAlpine remembers that he could not believe they would be coming into
a hot LZ, the enemy was shooting at the helicopter, and some of the
younger soldiers would be asleep (00:37:51:00)
Standing on the skids of the helicopter going into an LZ was such
“mundane, normal act” that the soldiers were trying to get thirty
seconds of sleep (00:38:03:00)
However, after serving with the platoon for several weeks,
McAlpine understood what the soldiers were experiencing; the
constant missions just wore him down (00:38:15:00)
When McAlpine first joined his squad, he was the only white guy in the squad but
by the time he left, there was only one or two black guys remaining in the squad
(00:38:34:00)
Every squad on the platoon had a radio, while the platoon commander had two,
one radio to maintain contact with the colonel circling overhead and one radio to
maintain contact with the squads (00:39:14:00)
After they would land at a landing zone, the platoon would form up and begin
moving towards their mission objective, such as a village where a couple of days
before, scouts had seen uniformed NVA soldiers (00:39:32:00)
�
If the men had deployed into the mountains, their mission might involve
investigating a hut where, two nights before, smoke had been seen coming
out of the chimney (00:39:47:00)
o For the most part, the platoon’s operations occurred in the An Lao, A Shau, and Ia
Drang valleys; McAlpine spent 90% of his time working on operations in those
three valleys (00:40:01:00)
Working in the valleys was fun because the men knew they were going to
get their money's worth from the enemy by the end of the day
(00:40:16:00)
o Once the Blues were inserted, they were expected to handle to situation but if they
could not, then they were supposed to call in reinforcements, such as artillery or
air strikes (00:40:29:00)
o One man in McAlpine’s squad carried an M-60 machine gun, which represented
the heavy firepower, while every other man carried at least two hundred rounds of
ammunition for the M-60 (00:40:35:00)
However, the M-60 gunner would use the machine gun five or six times a
day, so the men always needed re-supply (00:41:01:00)
st
o The 1 of the 9th was extremely high-powered and the squadron had its own
gunships; the gunship pilots often knew the names of the men in the Blues and
they were not going to allow the Blues to be overrun by the enemy (00:41:33:00)
The Blues would normally have a forward artillery observer with them
and prior to going out on a mission, the observer would set up coordinates
with the men, so that if the men did run into trouble, there would be no
problems calling in artillery strikes (00:42:06:00)
As well, four or five times a week, the men would call in air strikes on
enemy positions (00:42:21:00)
Overall, there was a different fighting philosophy attached to the 1st Air Cav. opposed to
many other fighting units and the 1st of the 9th had a completely different philosophy
compared to the rest of the units in the 1st Air Cav. (00:42:58:00)
o The 1st of the 9th was acting almost as quasi-guinea pigs for their fighting
methodology and the pilots knew that for the 1st of the 9th’s methodology to work
properly, they needed to provide as much support as possible (00:43:07:00)
o To that end, a ready reaction force of a couple hundred men waited every day, in
case the Blues made contact with the enemy but were unable to completely handle
the situation (00:43:28:00)
If the Blues started something they could not finish, the commanders
determined how many men from the ready reaction force were needed and
those men were brought into the fight (00:43:35:00)
It was common for the Blues to start a fight alone but soon have back-up
from any number of other squadrons in the division (00:43:43:00)
o On some days, the Blues would be pulled out of one area and told they needed to
make an insertion into another hotspot (00:43:59:00)
When that happened, the men would get a drink of water, get more
ammunition, then insert into another area (00:44:12:00)
The men spent all their time in the field, never in the base camp (00:44:38:00)
�
o The men might have had a stand-down once every month but it always seemed
like something would come over the radio, saying that there was an assignment
for the men (00:44:48:00)
For the most part, the men largely operated out of forward fire bases (00:45:02:00)
o Because the men were always involved in intense fighting, their commanders did
not want to leave them in the field overnight (00:45:07:00)
Normally, the commanders would try to pull the men back to a semiprotected landing zone and during the night, the men would either have to
defend the perimeter, put of a listening post outside the perimeter, or go
out on an ambush outside the wire (00:45:17:00)
Many times, McAlpine’s men would set out an ambush but they
would be so tired that they would fall asleep as soon as they sat
down in the elephant grass (00:45:38:00)
Although the commanders would have liked all the men to stay
awake during the night, the men could ration it out so that only two
men were awake at a time throughout the night (00:46:08:00)
When McAlpine received promotion to staff sergeant, it was his
job to make sure everything was taken care of during the night and
at least one person was awake; however, he can also guarantee that
at some points, everyone in the squad was asleep (00:46:24:00)
Normally, the men would move along trails in the field, although it often depended on the
environment and situation (00:46:48:00)
o Often, if a situation looked too good to be true, then chances were, it was too
good to be true (00:46:54:00)
o The point man would often walk down the trail while two other soldiers would
advance along his flanks (00:47:08:00)
o As well, there was always at least one helicopter above the men; however, instead
of hovering directly over the squad’s position, the helicopter would criss-cross
over the area so that the enemy had no definitive way of knowing where the squad
was (00:47:14:00)
The helicopter could also see what was ahead of the soldiers and could if
there was enemy activity (00:47:45:00)
o Often, the men did not encounter too much of the prototypical triple canopy
jungle; the enemy might lose track of the squad’s movements, which is not
something they wanted to do with that group (00:48:05:00)
o Booby-traps along the trails were common but over time, the soldiers developed a
sense for where the traps might be (00:48:22:00)
o When a soldier walked the point or on the trail, he could not think about anything
else other than walking point (00:48:35:00)
A young man might be twenty-years-old when he goes over to Vietnam
but within two months, he is a forty-year-old man (00:48:41:00)
The man is in touch with himself and with his senses and his
awareness of particular situations; he knows that if he is not right,
then the consequences are tremendous (00:48:48:00)
It took McAlpine about three weeks with the squad before he began
walking point himself (00:49:11:00)
�
The squad’s old point man got hit, which was not unusual, so
McAlpine took the man’s place and walked point for the remainder
of his tour, even once he became a squad leader (00:49:14:00)
o The men would get a feel for the terrain and were able to sense ambushes and
booby-traps before they happened, even by smell (00:49:44:00)
Although the enemy could place booby-traps anywhere, they often did not
place them far away from something, usually villages; often the boobytraps were punji sticks, meant to only slow the soldiers down so that the
enemy could get away (00:50:04:00)
o Some of the areas where the men operated had a large numbers of tunnels and
other areas, such as mountains, did not have as many (00:50:42:00)
However, there were some mountains that were all tunnels and McAlpine
recalls collapsing an entire mountain that the enemy had honeycombed
with tunnels (00:51:03:00)
The men filled the tunnels with explosives and when they set the
explosives off, the whole mountain went up then came down,
which was a beautiful sight (00:51:12:00)
Marine forces had arrived at the mountain before McAlpine’s men
but McAlpine’s men were inserted with orders to get to the top of
the mountain to examine what sort of tunnels they were dealing
with (00:51:25:00)
The men encountered several ambushes and firefights on the way
to the top of the mountain; by the time they reached the top, there
were only five men left in the squad and two of the men, including
McAlpine, were suffering from heat stroke (00:51:38:00)
McAlpine was pulled off the mountaintop and taken to a hospital
in the rear area, where the medics placed him in a large metal tub
full of ice (00:51:50:00)
After McAlpine was with his squad for a couple of weeks, he received a promotion to E3 (00:53:17:00)
o At some point, one of the sergeants was killed and McAlpine was selected to take
the sergeant’s spot on the flank (00:53:29:00)
o Eventually, the squad was involved in a firefight where most of the squad
members were either wounded or killed, including the squad leader, who had been
wounded (00:53:38:00)
McAlpine carried the squad leader out of the firefight but as he had the
man on his shoulders, the man was shot again (00:54:01:00)
o After the firefight, McAlpine was the old man in the squad and he received both
promotion to E-4 and command of the squad, which was normally a position
reserved for an E-6; therefore, he received promotion to an E-5, a sergeant
(00:54:30:00)
o Within a very short period of time after McAlpine received his promotion, the
lieutenant commanding the platoon was killed and there were no available
lieutenants, so McAlpine took over as platoon leader until there was another
lieutenant available (00:55:01:00)
�
There were several career-oriented NCOs in the troop and McAlpine
believes that his promotion to replace the deceased lieutenant might have
rubbed them the wrong way (00:55:28:00)
For the most part, the senior NCOs were often squad leaders
(00:56:08:00)
o Eventually, McAlpine returned to commanding his squad, still as an E-5 in an E-6
slot (00:56:24:00)
After a couple of months, the E-7 came to McAlpine and said he was
being promoted to E-6 (00:56:34:00)
The promotion to E-6 meant that McAlpine was earning over six hundred
dollars a month, all of which he sent home (00:56:55:00)
The men tended to live off the land and there were never any stores
to actually shop at (00:57:16:00)
On occasion, enemy soldiers would have money in their pockets,
so any new soldiers were told not to shot the enemy in the pockets
because there might be money in them (00:57:21:00)
Because the 1st of the 9th was a very aggressive unit and the men were fighting every day,
they fought against both NVA regulars and Viet Cong (00:57:59:00)
o If the men fought every day for four days, McAlpine figures they fought against
the NVA on four or five of those days (00:58:18:00)
o Although the NVA did not always wear traditional NVA uniforms, they would be
wearing NVA backpacks and using NVA weapons, which was how the soldiers
were able to tell them from the Viet Cong (00:58:32:00)
One time, the men had deployed into Cambodia with specific orders not to cause
problems by engaging the enemy (00:59:21:00)
o One way or another, the mission was compromised, the men got into a firefight
and killed six Chinese soldiers (00:58:29:00)
o The colonel, who was circling above the area as always, asked if anyone had a
camera and when McAlpine said he did, the colonel said he wanted pictures of the
bodies and wanted the men to take the Chinese weapons (00:59:44:00)
o One interesting thing was that all the Chinese soldiers were over 6’2”
(01:00:10:00)
o Going into Cambodia was not a common mission; on occasion, the men would
accidentally stray across the border but the helicopter pilots would call down to
alert them (01:00:38:00)
Decorations / Misc. (01:01:40:00)
McAlpine earned several decorations for gallantry, including two Silver Stars and a
Bronze Star (01:01:40:00)
o McAlpine’s first silver star was earned when his squad was moving through a
valley and were ambushed (01:01:41:00)
During the course of the ambush, the squad leader and several squad
members had been either wounded or killed; eventually, only McAlpine
and one other soldier were the only two men in the squad who were not
wounded or killed (01:01:53:00)
�
McAlpine was giving first aid to the wounded soldiers around him, mostly
stopping the bleeding and dragging them out of the killing zone
(01:02:04:00)
The only other uninjured soldier happened to be the platoon’s supply
sergeant, who had previously asked McAlpine if, at some point, he could
go out in with McAlpine’s squad so he could earn his combat
infantryman’s badge (01:02:32:00)
After about fifteen minutes of fighting, McAlpine and the supply sergeant
were the only two men left (01:03:27:00)
Eventually, McAlpine told the supply sergeant that they needed to
clear out the enemy, who had hidden in some rocks; McAlpine told
the supply sergeant to take the high ground while McAlpine took
the low ground (01:03:35:00)
As the two soldiers progressed through the rocks, McAlpine heard the
sound of an AK-47 then a groan, which he interpreted as the supply
sergeant being shot by an AK-47 (01:04:04:00)
McAlpine then heard the sound of an M-16 falling through the
rocks, so he suspected that the supply sergeant had been killed as
well (01:04:26:00)
As time passed, McAlpine slowly filtered his way through the rocks,
trying to stay alive while simultaneously killing as many enemy as
possible (01:04:50:00)
At one point, he saw an enemy soldier climbing down the rocks
backwards but at the same time, saw another enemy soldier
coming from a different direction (01:05:04:00)
o McAlpine shot the second enemy soldier then turned
around and killed the enemy soldier who was climbing
down the rocks (01:05:22:00)
McAlpine was eventually wounded in the knee by a ricocheted
bullet (01:05:31:00)
McAlpine did eventually receive some re-enforcements, including a friend
of McAlpine who was in another squad (01:05:37:00)
With the friend’s help, McAlpine was able to finish driving the
enemy out of the rocks (01:06:07:00)
o Firefights with the enemy happened every day and McAlpine believes that all the
men in his unit should have, at one point or another, received some type of
decoration for their actions (01:07:22:00)
o McAlpine earned his second silver star in May, when his platoon had followed
some communication wire into a village and found itself embroiled in a massive
firefight with the enemy (01:07:37:00)
The soldiers had just gotten off the helicopters when the pilots saw the
communication wire leaving the village; the communication wire was a
big deal because it usually indicated that there was a NVA command post
of some sort in the village (01:07:47:00)
McAlpine’s squad was advancing on the left flank while another squad
was advancing along the trail itself (01:08:08:00)
�
Once the other squad made it into the village, they accidentally sprung an
enemy ambush and lost three or four soldiers right away with a couple
more being wounded (01:08:19:00)
The firefight lasted for most of the afternoon and the men eventually ran
out of both water and ammunition (01:08:37:00)
Re-enforcements were constantly being brought in to the soldier’s
rear and air strikes were being called in constantly (01:08:48:00)
At one point, a relief helicopter was being flown to the men carrying more
ammunition (01:09:00:00)
As the helicopter flew in, the crew were pushing the ammo crates
off the side of the helicopter; however, the pilot had the helicopter
100’ feet off the ground and between McAlpine’s squad and the
enemy (01:09:20:00)
The enemy managed to shoot the helicopter down and as the
helicopter came down, the crew chief and door gunner, who were
not strapped in, managed to jump out and run over to where
McAlpine’s squad was positioned (01:09:28:00)
In the meantime, the helicopter was on fire and starting to set the
ammunition off (01:09:45:00)
o Both pilots were out knocked out cold or wounded and
were hanging upside down in the helicopter (01:09:50:00)
As the other crewmen were running towards McAlpine, he was
running towards them to try and get the pilots out of the burning
wreckage (01:10:01:00)
McAlpine and two other men cut the pilots out and dragged both
men back to where the rest of the squad had taken up their
defensive positions (01:10:08:00)
Eventually, the squad managed to give the pilots to some reenforcements who had come in behind them (01:10:37:00)
o McAlpine remembers a young soldier in the reenforcements running up to grab a body but he made the
mistake of standing straight up and sure enough, a splitsecond later, his chest exploded (01:10:43:00)
o At the same time, McAlpine watched as the reenforcements came in and one of the men standing on a
helicopter’s skid was shot and ended up falling all the way
to the ground (01:11:07:00)
o McAlpine also earned three Purple Hearts, including one from the ricocheted
bullet in his knee when he moving to clear out the rock formation when he earned
his first Silver Star (01:11:27:00)
McAlpine received another when a piece of shrapnel went into his foot
and ankle; the shrapnel itself did not come out of McAlpine until several
years after his time in the military, when he was taking a shower and
rubbing his ankle (01:11:41:00)
�
Another time, McAlpine had a hand grenade landed near his face;
although the hand grenade was a dud, it still threw stuff into McAlpine’s
face, causing him to bleed (01:12:08:00)
McAlpine’s friends thought he was dying but he could not feel
anything, so when he rubbed his face and saw the blood, it came as
a surprise (01:12:26:00)
Although McAlpine did not think he was hurt, the other men told him he
needed to be medevaced out, so he hopped in a helicopter (01:12:40:00)
Medievac helicopters would not come unless there had not been
any gunfire for several minutes but at the time, the firefight was
still going on, so McAlpine boarded one of the troop’s own
helicopters (01:12:56:00)
As the helicopter was flying away from the battle, they were flying
100mph+ down a canyon and as a bridge approached, McAlpine,
who was still laying in the back, kept willing the pilot to pull up;
instead, the pilot flew under the bridge (01:13:14:00)
Although he was originally supposed to receive two R&Rs, McAlpine only received one
and went to Bangkok, Thailand for a week (01:14:01:00)
o While in Bangkok, McAlpine ended up going to jail for two days, so he did not
have full, week-long R&R (01:14:13:00)
o Going on the R&R was a totally different experience than life in the field, where
the majority of the men fully expected to be wounded or killed (01:14:28:00)
o McAlpine remembers there was a merchant selling sugar cane from a cart pulled
by a donkey; McAlpine bought the whole cart and he and the merchant went
around, handing the sugar out to kids for free (01:14:54:00)
o Getting on the plane to go back to Vietnam was not difficult for McAlpine; he
was in jail and was happy to get out (01:15:35:00)
McAlpine was thrown in jail because he had a little bit of trouble at a local
nightclub (01:15:46:00)
The nightclub had an entire wall made of glass and McAlpine, who
had only ever seen glass in windows, accidentally knocked the
wall over and broke it; when the police were called, there was a
disagreement over who would pay for the broken glass
(01:15:56:00)
The police officers had McAlpine’s paperwork and knew he had to be at
the airport on a specific date at a specific time, so on that date and at that
time, the police made sure McAlpine was there (01:16:26:00)
As new men came into the squad, McAlpine and the other, more experienced men, felt
obligated to instruct the new men; however, McAlpine does have some regrets regarding
that particular process (01:17:05:00)
o Although the platoon was technically supposed to be military intelligence, none of
the men actually knew what they were going to be doing (01:17:13:00)
o When McAlpine would start looking for a replacement for his squad, he was
looking for a very specific type of individual (01:17:36:00)
At the base in An Khe, there was a large tent that all the soldiers stayed in;
McAlpine’s bunk was marked and the new soldiers were told they could
�
sleep anywhere but McAlpine’s bunk, since he would kick anyone’s butt
who slept in the bunk (01:17:43:00)
When he would periodically go back to An Khe, McAlpine would find out
who had slept in his bunk, because that was the type of soldier he wanted
in his squad (01:18:11:00)
o Once a new man joined the squad, McAlpine would train with the man every day
(01:18:36:00)
o If McAlpine needed a replacement, he would return to An Khe for a couple of
hours; however, he was eventually kicked out of An Khe and told that if he ever
came back, he would get thrown in jail (01:18:52:00)
McAlpine had such a bond with the men in his squad that he felt an
obligation to be fighting with them (01:19:40:00)
McAlpine would go into An Khe for a couple of hours, pick up two or
three replacements, then the group would hop aboard another helicopter
out to the squad (01:19:54:00)
Although McAlpine spent most of his time around An Khe, which was in the Central
Highlands and fell in II Corps’ jurisdiction, he also spent time further north, in I Corps’
area of operations (01:20:36:00)
One night, the platoon had set out for an ambush and while McAlpine’s squad was
supposed to move onto one side of a village, another sergeant was supposed to lead his
squad to the other side of the village (01:20:55:00)
o McAlpine remembers being told to go to radio silence and to only use the radios
if they ran into trouble (01:21:12:00)
o The other squad saw some enemy and decided to go into the village after them;
however, it turned out the group was a wedding, but the other squad did not know
this at the time (01:21:24:00)
The squad killed the VC soldiers in the group, shaved the head of the
bride, raped a couple of the women, and threw the dead VC bodies into a
well, along with a couple of grenades; at the time, everything except
raping the women was normal for the soldiers to do (01:21:54:00)
o When McAlpine later talked with the other sergeant and asked how everything
had gone, the sergeant said that everything was normal (01:22:48:00)
o A couple of days later, McAlpine was wounded and forced to go into the hospital
(01:22:52:00)
o As it turned out, the girl who had been getting married was the daughter of a
village chief; the chief complained to the MACV (Military Assistance Command
Vietnam, which oversaw American operations), who called up the 1st Air Cav.,
who came to the 1st of the 9th, and went through the after-action reports to see who
was in the village that night (01:23:01:00)
o Once McAlpine returned to his unit after healing for a couple of weeks in the
hospital, both his and the other squad were standing in line-ups (01:23:28:00)
The bride then came to identify the soldiers in the squads who had
attacked her (01:23:42:00)
The captain in charge of the company told McAlpine not to stand in the
line-up but when McAlpine asked why, the captain did not give him a
reason (01:24:01:00)
�
o The bride identified the other sergeant and his squad as having done everything,
so McAlpine’s squad was off the hook; however, the soldiers in the other squad
denied everything the bride said (01:24:18:00)
One of the men in the squad, who had been sent to infiltrate and
investigate the unit by higher command, given the unit’s growing
notoriety, subsequently stepped forward, identified himself, and said that
yes, what the woman was saying about the squad was true (01:24:37:00)
o The men in the other squad were supposed to be arrested but they were in the field
and the MPs did not want to come out there to get them because they were afraid
of the men (01:25:18:00)
Instead, the division asked McAlpine’s squad to guard the men in the
other squad; McAlpine’s squad said they would, so all they did for three or
four days was sit around their tent and play cards (01:25:30:00)
The MPs eventually came in force but the other squad surrendered and all
were sentenced to prison terms (01:25:57:00)
o Once the other squad had been arrested, the men in McAlpine’s squad drew
straws as to who would go to the rear area to kill the man who had turned the
other squad in (01:26:20:00)
Although he was the squad leader and controlled the straws, McAlpine
still drew the short straw (01:26:30:00)
o McAlpine went back to An Khe and began looking for the snitch; however, his
best friend from high school, who was serving as an MP, walked past
(01:26:49:00)
The friend asked McAlpine how everything was going and when the
friend asked McAlpine what unit he was with and McAlpine told him,
McAlpine saw a look of recognition on the friend’s face (01:27:06:00)
The friend offered the get McAlpine a cold Coca-Cola and returned with
four additional MPs, who escorted McAlpine to a general’s tent
(01:27:37:00)
The general interviewed McAlpine for a moment and asked why
McAlpine was in An Khe (01:27:55:00)
The general gave McAlpine a lecture and told him that if he ever
came back to An Khe again, then the general was going to put him
in jail (01:28:57:00)
The general had McAlpine placed on a helicopter and had him flown back
to his unit (01:29:06:00)
o It took a long time for McAlpine to get over the urge to settle the score with the
man who had snitched on the other squad (01:29:49:00)
When the squad would go into the field, they would encounter Vietnamese villages and
they would have to search through them (01:30:19:00)
o The soldiers also encounter Montagnard villages but because there was not much
action in those villages, the Montagnards were much more friendly towards the
soldiers (01:30:27:00)
Although McAlpine believes the NVA and VC constantly harassed the
Montagnards, he does not think that the NVA and VC set up specific
combat against them (01:31:03:00)
�
Just by looking at the Montagnards, the soldiers could tell that they were
ethnically different from the Vietnamese (01:31:31:00)
Late in McAlpine’s tour, his troop’s camp was moved north to I Corps; however, it was
not too long after that that McAlpine’s tour ended, so he does not recall too much about
the time in I Corps (01:31:59:00)
The various camps where McAlpine’s soldiers would spend the night only came under
mortar attack a handful of times (01:32:28:00)
o At one point, the squadron had just taken over an ammunition dump from a
Marine Corps unit and enemy forces had made it so that the Marines were unable
to get out of their own perimeter (01:32:38:00)
When the 1st of the 9th arrived at the ammunition dump, their arrival was
unlike anything the enemy soldiers had ever witnessed (01:33:09:00)
The daily kill ratio eventually reached one hundred dead enemy
soldiers for every one killed American soldier (01:33:27:00)
When the enemy began mortaring the ammunition dump, McAlpine took
his squad out and found the enemy mortar tubes, but not the enemy
mortarmen; the squad destroyed the mortar tubes then for the next couple
of nights, would slip out to there the tubes were, hoping to find the enemy
mortarmen (01:33:35:00)
o Although the enemy never launched mortar rounds onto the ammunition dump
again, they still managed to destroy the majority of the supplies being held at the
ammunition dump (01:34:36:00)
End of Deployment / Post-Military Life / Misc. / Reflections (01:35:44:00)
For the pilots in the unit, they were asked to go to the rear area thirty days before they
were set to rotate home; however, that was a luxury that McAlpine and the other ground
scouts did not have (01:35:44:00)
o McAlpine and the other the ground scouts never knew exactly when they would
be rotating out (01:35:58:00)
McAlpine remembers that on the day he rotated out, the first sergeant met him on the
flight line before the squad went out on its first assault and said that McAlpine was not
going out that day (01:36:01:00)
o When the first sergeant told him this, McAlpine started crying because he could
not believe he had made it through the tour (01:36:17:00)
o McAlpine said his good byes to his squad as the squad was flying off to do their
first assault of the day (01:36:34:00)
o After he said his good byes and the squad left, McAlpine returned to An Khe and
told the captain in charge of the rotations that he was going to be staying in a
bunker; McAlpine had made it through the tour and did not want to risk anything,
so he told the captain to just bring him food and beer (01:36:51:00)
The captain did as McAlpine requested but McAlpine got so drunk that he
missed his ride to the airport (01:37:10:00)
o McAlpine boarded a C-7 Caribou transport and the next thing he remembers, he
was in Fort Lewis, Washington (01:37:37:00)
�
McAlpine was the highest ranking person in his barracks at Fort Lewis, so
he was put in charge of making sure everyone in the barracks was in
formation in the morning (01:37:54:00)
At one point, a major want McAlpine to tell his men to police the area for
garbage but McAlpine said no (01:38:31:00)
From Fort Lewis, McAlpine flew to Chicago, where he took a taxi to Moline, Illinois and
began attending Palmer College the same day (01:39:09:00)
o McAlpine’s brother was already attending Palmer and had already enrolled
McAlpine, using McAlpine’s grades from Michigan State and from high school
(01:39:27:00)
While in Vietnam, McAlpine’s unit received mail usually once a week; however, getting
mail only once a week was not that big of a deal because all the men had more important
things to worry about (01:39:56:00)
For the most part, the men survived off C-Rations, although on occasion, when they
would return to their landing zone for the evening, there was a hot meal (01:40:18:00)
Although most all of the men suffered from one tropical disease or another at some point,
the men realized that there was not much they could do about it (01:41:01:00)
o After McAlpine had been home for a couple of months, he was talking with his
father about pain in his feet; however, his father waved it off, saying he had the
same thing working on the farm (01:41:09:00)
Having enough drinking water was never much of a problem because the men were
always operating near streams and rivers, so if they ever ran out of water, the could just
fill their canteens up there (01:41:36:00)
o Each man always carried two, if not three, canteens with him whenever the squad
went into the field (01:41:42:00)
o The monsoon season affected how well the squad could operate, mostly because
the low ceiling caused by the rain made it impossible for the helicopters to fly
properly (01:42:01:00)
Apart from assaulting positions, the squad was also assigned the job of
rescuing any downed pilots and securing the helicopters; however, the
monsoons made doing this job difficult (01:42:13:00)
At one point, one of McAlpine’s friends was shot down and the
rescuers could not reach him in time; instead, the friend was
captured and spent six years in the infamous North Vietnamese
POW camp, the Hanoi Hilton (01:42:47:00)
The friend was the troop’s flight surgeon and did not know what to
do once he was on the ground; his fear made him walk away from
the helicopter where, had he stayed there and hid, McAlpine and
his squad would have found him (01:43:14:00)
In the unit, it was more common for men to leave because they had been wounded as
opposed to finishing their tour (01:43:53:00)
o Almost everyone in the troop, at one point or another, received a Purple Heart;
McAlpine does not know of anyone in the Blues who did not receive one, or
several, Purple Hearts (01:43:57:00)
Receiving medals entirely depended on having an officer available to do a
proper write-up; McAlpine was twice recommended for the Medal of
�
Honor but both times, the decorations were reduced to Silver Stars
(01:44:17:00)
However, McAlpine did not even know he had received the medals
until he was on his way home (01:44:24:00)
Nevertheless, in his mind, the medals were less important than the
fact that he was going home alive, able to see and speak with his
parents and rest of his family (01:44:36:00)
While in Vietnam, the men vaguely knew a little bit about the anti-war movement in the
United States, but not too much (01:45:03:00)
o However, when he got back to United States and began attending college,
McAlpine did not comprehend the full extent of the anti-war sentiment in the
United States (01:45:06:00)
At first, McAlpine tried to ask the demonstrators why they were
demonstrating and what the problem was (01:45:18:00)
When the demonstrators could not give McAlpine a straight
answer, he tried talking with them but that method did not go
anywhere (01:45:26:00)
McAlpine would then physically confront the demonstrators, the police
would come, and McAlpine would go to jail (01:45:35:00)
McAlpine’s brother had to get McAlpine out of jail several times
because McAlpine was physically disrupting the demonstrations
(01:45:44:00)
McAlpine could not drive down a road and see people protesting about
something they knew nothing about without doing something, especially
having gone through what he had in Vietnam (01:45:59:00)
Although McAlpine initially tried to reason with the demonstrators, that
method never worked, so McAlpine eventually resorted to just grabbing
the protestors signs and posters and destroying them (01:46:24:00)
The police would inevitably be called and they knew McAlpine in
a very short period of time; although the police agreed with
McAlpine, it was still against the law for him to attack the
demonstrators (01:46:44:00)
o Eventually, the demonstrations stopped but McAlpine has still not calmed down
regarding the actions of the demonstrators (01:47:02:00)
When he returned home, McAlpine never openly talked about his experiences in Vietnam
(01:47:44:00)
o However, his reputation had preceded him to Palmer, where one of the
administrators had fought in the Korean War and had received the Silver Star, so
McAlpine had to talk with him (01:47:46:00)
When McAlpine pledged into his brother’s fraternity, a couple of the other
fraternity members called him Audie Murphy and McAlpine threw them
out a couple of windows; that was not a comparison that he wanted being
made about him (01:48:15:00)
o For the most part, McAlpine did not talk about his experiences because he did not
think anyone cared, which was true at the time (01:48:32:00)
�
o Those people who knew McAlpine had served in the military knew he was a man
of principles and would not break under pressure (01:48:36:00)
o More recently, McAlpine has done talks about his experiences at various colleges
and universities in Michigan, including Grand Valley State University, Michigan
State University, Western Michigan University, Central Michigan University, and
Hope College (01:49:04:00)
During on the recent reunions for the unit, McAlpine ran into one of the old helicopter
pilots; the two renewed acquaintances and stories, the friend mentioned he was looking
for a job, and McAlpine helped the man find a job in Michigan (01:49:59:00)
o At one point, the friend called McAlpine to say he was going back to Vietnam and
he wanted McAlpine to go with him and another pilot (01:50:27:00)
McAlpine said that he did not want to go and that he had no reason to go
back there (01:50:54:00)
The friend said he would call back the following week and when he did,
he told McAlpine that by the time McAlpine did want to go back, he
would be too old to appreciate going back (01:51:02:00)
The crack about McAlpine being too old hit home and McAlpine began
giving the trip serious consideration, eventually deciding it was a good
idea to go (01:51:18:00)
o McAlpine went with the two pilots back to Vietnam and the three had a great
time; during the trip, McAlpine saw Vietnam in a way that he had never seen
Vietnam before (01:51:37:00)
While serving there, he never saw a road or a city or electricity, never ate
their food or experienced their culture and, never saw them dressed in
anything other than black pajamas (01:51:45:00)
The trip rekindled a fire inside McAlpine that there was something in
Vietnam that he had missed while serving during the war and he owed it to
himself to look at the country differently (01:52:02:00)
o After McAlpine returned from the trip, he was asked to give a presentation to the
Rotary Club; one of the Rotary Club members was a Vietnamese expatriate who
was going to Vietnam in a couple of months and was wondering if McAlpine
would go with him (01:52:19:00)
The expatriate was going to Vietnam to do business, so McAlpine met
some Vietnamese business people (01:52:32:00)
While the other man was conducting business, McAlpine hired a car and
going up to Pleiku, visited a floor-making factory; having recently redone
the floors in his house, McAlpine saw how inexpensive production was
and formed the idea of starting a business (01:52:37:00)
McAlpine organized his finances, insured the entire operation and
began importing hardwood floors (01:53:16:00)
o The Vietnamese attitude towards the soldiers who return to visit Vietnam is one
of love and admiration (01:53:47:00)
o During one of his trips back to Vietnam, McAlpine traveled up to the city of
Hanoi (01:54:41:00)
McAlpine was working with a young lady as a guide and she took him to
the flooring company he was looking to do business with (01:54:50:00)
�
The head of the company wanted to know more about McAlpine,
specifically if he had been in the Army, had had served in Vietnam, and
had served near Pleiku (01:55:29:00)
The man’s father had served at Pleiku from 1966 until 1967 as the
general commanding the area for the NVA (01:55:45:00)
The man asked if McAlpine would like to meet his father and
McAlpine said he would love to; after questioning McAlpine, the
man said his father would be there in ten minutes (01:56:15:00)
Ten minutes later, the father showed up and he turned out to be a very nice
man; the father had not talked with an American since the 1960s, so his
son translated between he and McAlpine (01:56:50:00)
Looking back, when McAlpine returned home from Vietnam, he appreciated his family
more, as well as a hot shower and hot food (01:58:48:00)
o As well, McAlpine was more in tune, both with God and with himself; he
understood himself better and realized that he had been born as a warrior, could
control a lot of his own destiny, and he understands that he can control a lot of
things (01:58:58:00)
o McAlpine’s time in the service helped in defining him as a person (01:59:05:00)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Veterans History Project
Creator
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Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
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1914-
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
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Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
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RHC-27
Language
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eng
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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McAlpineB1378V
Title
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McAlpine, Barry (Interview outline and video), 2012
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
McAlpine, Barry
Description
An account of the resource
Barry McAlpine was born in Cass City, Michigan in 1945. After graduating from high school in 1963, McAlpine briefly worked at General Motors before attending Michigan State University. However, his time at Michigan State did not work out and in 1965, McAlpine received his draft notice. After going through the induction center in Detroit, McAlpine went to Fort Knox, Kentucky for his basic training. Once he completed the basic training at Fort Knox, McAlpine's MOS was military intelligence, which required him to go through advanced infantry training, also at Fort Knox. After finishing the advanced training at Fort Knox, McAlpine deployed to Germany, where he received an assignment to a unit stationed of the West German border with Czechoslovakia. McAlpine left Germany in 1966 and after a short leave, deployed to Vietnam. Once in Vietnam, McAlpine's orders sent him to "B" Troop, 1st of the 9th, 1st Air Cavalry Division. While with "B" Troop, McAlpine served as a member of the Blues, a ground scout section of the troop tasked with purposely finding and engaging the enemy. McAlpine spent his entire tour with "B" Troop, eventually becoming a squad leader. When his tour ended, McAlpine returned to the United States and began going back to college.
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
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eng
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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Moving Image
Text
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2012-04-26
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
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application/pdf
video/mp4
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2878f13b81293cb79952f6f6f5c4f070.mp4
48cba395d252b56f33a6a0eb57f78b5a
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f35326d18cd05f977d0d5295e4ebef2e.pdf
645fc4f028c97b227f10aedf3ef179c4
PDF Text
Text
McCarthy, Stacie
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Name of War: Iraq War
Interviewee’s Name: Stacie McCarthy
Length of Interview: (26:59)
Interviewed by: Koty Leroy-Rollins
Transcribed by: Maluhia Buhlman
Interviewer: “Hello this is a joint production between W.K T.V Voices and the Grand
Valley State Veterans History Project. My name is Koty Leroy-Rollins with the Grand
Valley State Veterans History Project, and I’m here with Stacie McCarthy of Grand
Rapids, Michigan. Alright, let’s go ahead and start, when and where were you born?”
I was born March 10th 1985 back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, in Framingham
Massachusetts.
Interviewer: Okay, so what was life like? How did you wind up joining the military?”
(1:03)
Well it’s interesting, I had about six years of a fairly normal childhood in a suburban
neighborhood and then my mother and father split up, basically mother took us kids and
unfortunately we had 60- we lived in a pretty bad situation. My dad got custody and married my
current mom who used to be in the Navy, so I was raised in Michigan from 12 to 20 and around
18 my mom started mentioning that the Navy might be good for me, and then I did a little
research and said “Hell yeah I wanna do this.”
Interviewer: “Alright, before we get into your Navy career with a lot of the younger
veterans we like to ask, do you remember 9/11? Do you remember what it was like seeing
that moment?”
�McCarthy, Stacie
Yes, I was in high school actually my junior year, and it was between- it was between classes,
I’m walking from one class to another and I noticed the T.V’s are on and there’s two buildings
and one of them’s on fire, and so we just- No classes happened the rest of the day we just sat
there in each class and just watched everything unfold and it was a shock at first. I didn’t know
how to feel and then the more we watched it the more everything like, the reality of it came and
it was pretty terrifying and devastating.
Interviewer: “Did that have any influence on your wanting to join the military?”
In a way yeah, I kind of wanted to help keep people safe, but I also wanted to get the hell out of
Michigan.
Interviewer: “That’s fair, so you moved from Massachussettes to Michigan with you dad
right?”
Mhmm.
Interviewer: “Okay, so what year did you enlist?” (2:48)
I enlisted in 2005, two years after high school.
Interviewer: “Okay, and what was boot camp like?”
It was interesting, it was very active, it was very stressful, I already had post-traumatic stress
disorder without realizing it so the yelling was not very well received by me, but I did my best to
kind of, you know bite down and keep going. So that was actually more stressful than anything
else, I didn’t mind the physical aspect at all because I was already running a lot beforehand, the
push-ups obviously were difficult and I ate so much food and lost weight. I kept having to
tighten up my shorts because we were moving all the time, you know got shin splints from
running in boots, the little shin high boot, we didn’t even have the big combat boots yet.
�McCarthy, Stacie
Interviewer: “Yeah, so after boot camp where’d you go?”
I went to the Presidio of Monterey, the Defense Language Institute, to learn Korean.
Interviewer: “Okay and did you- when you signed up did they tell you you were gonna be a
linguist or did they kind of spring it on you?”
I told them I wanted to be a linguist, so I took the D-lab, the Defense Language Aptitude Battery
Test and got- scored really high on it, I got a 140 out of 140 on that particular test, and so they
didn’t have any spots so- but I was delayed entry so we had me sign up as a sonar tech just in
case, and then within a month I was signing a new contract to be a linguist.
Interviewer: “Okay, and you were a Korean linguist?”
Yes.
Interviewer: “How long did that school take?” (4:30)
That one was…the schooling itself was a year and a half but I was there for two years because I
had to wait for the class to start.
Interviewer: “Okay, so that was quite a long time.”
Yeah I was in a school for way longer than a lot of people.
Interviewer: “How was that though?”
It was kind of awesome, it was stressful because you know, there’s a lot of aspects of military
that aren’t so great, but I loved learning the language, I loved making friends, I loved being able
to explore Monterey, and it was very interesting I’d wake up- I used to live in, when I lived in
�McCarthy, Stacie
the barracks on, at DLI we used to- I’d come out and the seals would be arf-ing away down at
the bay, you could hear them all the way up the hill.
Interviewer: “So what didn’t you like if you don’t mind me asking?”
There were certain chiefs and petty officers who were- they were a little overzealous and some of
their approaches they didn’t- they weren’t very human, if you know what I mean.
Interviewer: “Kind of like ‘Do this-Do that be on time all the time I don’t care’ that sort of
thing?”
Yeah exactly, they weren’t as open, they were more intimidating. When I went- actually after a
stint in Hawaii as a Korean linguist I went back there as a second class petty officer for Tagalog,
and that one was a little more fun because I lived off post, I had a car, but we had a really crappy
chief and I was a junior, or an assistant leading petty officer so that was kind of a nightmare but
the class part was great.
Interviewer: “Okay, so we jumped a little bit ahead-”
Yes we did, sorry about that.
Interviewer: “So let’s swing back, after your first stint in DLI that was two years you
learned Korean. Are you fluent in Korean or?” (6:25)
I wish, I was proficient to a point, I have lost a lot of that skill but I can retain it- I can regain it.
It’s not completely lost. I still have study materials at home if I wanted to pick it back up, I know
the basics so I can jump right back in.
Interviewer: “Did they teach you just like, how to actually speak Korean or is it just
interpreting certain things?”
�McCarthy, Stacie
Well they taught us how to actually speak Korean from introductions to- and ordering food all
the way to discussing news items and complex thoughts. They wanted us, the highest level they
were aiming for was a three which is discussing opinions and etc.
Interviewer: “Okay so after that you went to Hawaii?”
Yes.
Interviewer: “That was your first duty station.” (7:18)
That was my first duty station.
Interviewer: “What was that like?”
It was awesome, before I got a car it was kind of horrendous, because I always had to ask people
for rides to work because we didn’t have a busing system or anything like that, and I was fiercely
independent so it was really hard for me to ask for things. So I finally got my license and moved
off post because I was a third class and they didn’t want us in the barracks because they were
kind of overflowing, but the training was cool, getting the security clearance was really easy and
I got in- Well, easy for me, no issues, but we, we started to learn our job and it was discouraging
at first cause my job didn’t 100% involve language. So I was really frustrated but after a while I
got into the groove of things, I bonded with my coworkers, I enjoyed Hawaii and started training
par corps towards the end of my enlistment, my first enlistment.
Interviewer: “Yeah, so what was your job, can you talk about that?”
I was an analyst.
Interviewer: “Okay, so you were just listening to things and interpreting them?”
It was more of a- It was more of analyzing traffic.
�McCarthy, Stacie
Interviewer: “Okay, okay so just like a flow of information?”
Yeah.
Interviewer: “Okay and were you working out of Pearl Harbor?”
At first I was working out of, what did we call it, it wasn’t NC time it was…the tunnel.
Interviewer: “Yeah the little offshoot.”
Yeah it was the original NSA building there and we were, we were joint we worked with
everybody, worked with civilians, we worked with Navy, Army, Air Force, Coast Guard.
Interviewer: “Okay, and you just did your- how many years were you there?” (9:15)
I was there for three years.
Interviewer: “Okay, and then you reenlisted after that?”
I did because I didn’t know what the heck I wanted to do, after that first enlistment realized I
needed more time and I wanted to go back to California, and actually return to Hawaii so I- They
said “Okay well you have a choice between Indonesian and Tagalog” and I’m like “Oh well they
both sound great.” They said “Well we got a Tagalog class starting now or around this time.” I
said, “That’s perfect.” and the chief was funny he goes “You know you’re gonna come back to
Hawaii right?” As if I didn’t want to come back.
Interviewer: “Right cause why would you want to come back to Hawaii?”
Why would I- Well there were a lot of people who hated it there but I never understood it I
always, I never had an issue with the people in Hawaii. So, and I absolutely loved going to the
�McCarthy, Stacie
beach at any time of the year when I had time.
Interviewer: “Yeah, that’s the best part about Hawaii. So you learn Tagalog, that’s the
language of which country?”
The Philippines, it’s the main official dialect.
Interviewer: “Okay, was that harder or easier than Korean?”
It was harder for me to speak because there’s a lot of conjugations but it was easier to learn and
it’s easier to understand because it was a bit simpler. It had some roots in Spanish because of the
Spanish occupation of the Philippines, so that was helpful too.
Interviewer: “Okay and after- how long was that?” (10:40)
That was just a year.
Interviewer: “Okay, so not as intensive as Korean.”
No, I mean they were both- it was six to seven hours a day, five days a week, plus homework
and speaking. We had a lot more fun though because I was less scared.
Interviewer: “I mean it’s basically you’re cramming four years of language study into a
one or two year span right?”
Exactly, it's like drinking from a fire hose.
Interviewer: “Yep.”
Learning how to talk.
�McCarthy, Stacie
Interviewer: “So you have immersion training after each of those stints at school right?”
We have immersion training during those stints. We had like many immersions where we would
take everyone to Fort Ord and we’d spend the night, and we’d have like this whole couple days
of just straight up nothing but that language, and the Tagalog immersion wasn’t quite as
extensive as the Korean immersion but- So that was just a full day but it was funny because ourwhat was she, our department head was a Korean woman and she was also a Korean teacher at
one point and she knew that I was also a linguist in Korean, and so when I was working with her
on this one thing she had me translate between Filipino- or Tagalog, and Korean which was a lot
of fun. It was hard but it was a lot of fun.
Interviewer: “Yeah because you’re going from Korean to English to Tagalog to English to
Korean right?”
Exactly because- and that’s not how you’re supposed to think about it but that’s still how you
think about it because I was in my mid 20’s. I understand when you’re children, it’s a lot easier
to just absorb them as if it’s just another way of speaking, it’s harder to do that when you’re an
adult.
Interviewer: “Did you notice a lot of your classmates struggling with language?” (12:29)
I mean we all struggled, most of us- in my Tagalog class most of us excelled, we were very apt.
In Korean it was a little more difficult, I had a speaking partner in class at one point who just
stared at me when I said something in Korean and then it would just make me like exhausted and
frustrated because I wasn’t getting anything out of working with them. Like dude come on, help
me out here.
Interviewer: That’s funny.
Say something simple.
�McCarthy, Stacie
Interviewer: So, they sent you to Korea after your Korean class right?”
No.
Interviewer: “Was that during?”
There was an opportunity but I didn’t take it because I was an idiot at the time, I was a young
woman in love with an idiot. So I’m like “No I don’t wanna go.” cause I don’t wanna be away
from him that much you know that long, it was stupid, but when I was stationed in Hawaii I got
to go to Seoul for a refresher course where I studied at Kyung Hee University, and it was so cool.
Interviewer: “How far into your first tour was that?”
That was towards the end of my first tour, that was my last language training before I took the
last D.L.P.T Defense Language Proficiency Test and because I went to Korea I did really well.
Interviewer: “Okay, what was that like going to Korea?” (13:53)
It was cool, I mean I could read everything even if I didn’t understand everything so I was able
to ask “Hey what does this mean?” There were- There was Dunkin’ Donuts everywhere.
Interviewer: “That’s really weird.”
I know, but they had these really cool, they had really cool stuff that you didn’t really have here
like lentil filled croquettes and all that, it was actually kind of awesome.
Interviewer: “I’m sorry that sounds terrible.”
It sounds- you know I’m a weirdo with- I’m a big foodie so almost anything sounds good to me
but, I would take the subway and or the bus, or walk, there was a lot of that. During off time I
just- a lot of the time I just went off on my own and explored. Sometimes went with friends to
�McCarthy, Stacie
see some movies, friends that I came with, and we did- I went to the spa a lot because it’s really
cheap. You could just go in there and you hang out in the hot tubs, maybe get a body scrub or a
massage, and it was perfect because it was winter, it was cold as heck. So I went there a lot.
Interviewer: “That’s pretty cool.”
And then the school itself was- it was intense because you only spoke Korean. I was in a class by
myself with all these people from other countries who did not speak English. One of us knew
English, so she was actually pretty awesome, well she was awesome anyway but it sucked
because I was- I made friends with these classmates but couldn’t maintain a relationship with
them without having to declare it and it was really difficult so I had- I basically cut ties cause
someone freaked me out about it they’re like “Oh you’re gonna lose your clearance.” and I’m
like, it’s just easy for me to make friends.
Interviewer: “So how long were you in Seoul?” (15:44)
Six weeks.
Interviewer: “Okay so month and a half that sounds.”
Yep, I stayed in a dormitory with a heated floor.
Interviewer: “Oh, a heated floor.”
That was the heat and it actually kept the room really warm, and you had slippers for this- the
bathroom was this- there was a glass wall or what not like a shower wall, and you had your toilet
and sink and everything and then the showerhead was right there. So, and they expected us to
clean, you know keep the place clean so when I cleaned it I just sprayed the whole bathroom
down.
Interviewer: “So the other people in your class, did they know you were military?”
�McCarthy, Stacie
No, they weren’t supposed to know, the only people who knew were the people I came with and
we had a separate class in the afternoon that was just military topics.
Interviewer: “Okay was that taught by-”
That was taught by a Korean teacher, he’s a civilian but he knew, like the teachers were all in the
know, but yeah we were supposed to kind of keep it quiet forInterviewer: “For obvious reasons.”
Yeah.
Interviewer: “You didn’t want people to know you were U.S military because then they’d
be like, trying to follow you or get information or something, the paranoia.” (17:00)
Exactly, that was the thing you never knew who is going to be that person, and I had classmates
from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, she was a, what they called a “kyo-po” she was ethnically
Korean but she lived overseas, and she worked at the Seoul embassy. She was awesome, I loved
Elena, I miss her. We had people from Japan and China, everyone was just really sweet so it was
really hard to be suspicious.
Interviewer: “Yeah. So, just so I got the timeline right, you went to Hawaii for three years,
then you went to Korea for a month and a half.”
Correct, Korea was during the three year stay.
Interviewer: “And then from there you went back to Hawaii for a little bit, then you went
back to Monterey to do Tagalog.”
Yeah, yes.
�McCarthy, Stacie
Interviewer: “What happened after the Tagalog?”
I went back to Hawaii for three and a half years and for a month out of that I was loaned out to a
ship.
Interviewer: “So what did you do in Hawaii the second time?”
Pretty much the same thing except for in the beginning I was placed in the defense travel system
portion of our command. I was the one in charge of getting sailors their government credit card
accounts and making sure that their travel vouchers were good to go and all that fun stuff
Interviewer: “And this was when you were back with Nyack naval information operations
command.” (18:27)
Yes they put me in direct support.
Interviewer: “Okay and what is direct support?”
These are sailors who are, they work intelligence but they are, they can be loaned out basically to
the shore side like the national side in Hawaii, or out to ships.
Interviewer: “Okay and for most of your time there you did the DTS and then you went to
work-”
I got hurt.
Interviewer: “How’d you get hurt?”
I got hit by a wave.
�McCarthy, Stacie
Interviewer: “How very naval of you.”
I was on the beach and I was goofing off in the water and I got lifted up by a very big wave up at
North Shore and it dislocated my knee, so I had to have a full patella reconstruction. They put me
in the transient personnel unit on Pearl Harbor cause I wasn’t deployable, and when I was back
from limited duty, even though I always had pain after that, they put me back in direct support
but I didn’t get to go back to DTS. Which was something I knew like the back of my hand at that
point, and so that was really frustrating because half the time we were either doing some dumb
training or just sitting there bored out of our skulls cause we didn’t have a job to do, and I needed
to be utilized. They sent me to the…what did we call it, they sent me to the watch a few times
where you and I hung out quite a bit, worked together and I loved being there because I had
something to do.
Interviewer: “Yeah, and this was on NCTAMS, right?”
Yes
Interviewer: “Which is naval…it’s a big acronym.” (20:12)
It is a big acronym and that was where the new NSA building was.
Interviewer: “Naval something telecommunication and…we should’ve looked this up
before this.”
We really should have but it’s okay, they’ll understand it was, it was intelligence things.
Interviewer: “It’s the second naval base on Hawaii.”
Yeah, it is.
Interviewer: “And you worked on the watch floor pretty much on and off for how long?”
�McCarthy, Stacie
Oh my goodness, a couple years, pretty sure. Yeah and they, during my last year they deployed
me to the Shiloh.
Interviewer: “Okay, and what is the Shiloh?”
It’s a cruiser.
Interviewer: “Okay and what did you do on the Shiloh?” (20:54)
I read a lot.
Interviewer: “Okay and you were off of South Korea right? But you never-”
We met- I met them in Singapore and we just kind of cruised around the Pacific, and we docked
in Singa- I know that’s not right, we docked in Korea and we docked in Japan which was kind of
awesome.
Interviewer: “Okay so you got to experience Korea one last time right?”
Right, yeah, yep. I would love to go back for vacation if and when I have enough money.
Interviewer: “So your second tour in Hawaii was a lot less eventful than your first one
other than getting injured and sent to a boat for a little bit.”
Yeah, although I did enjoy it a little more, except when in, you remember direct support, we had
a couple leaders that weren’t really good at what they did and kind of made our lives miserable.
Once I became a first class petty officer it was evident.
Interviewer: “Yeah we had some truly terrible leaders, if you’re watching you know who
you are.”
�McCarthy, Stacie
But we had really good leaders too.
Interviewer: “That’s true.”
There was a new master chief, I met him when he was a senior chief and I was first coming to
Hawaii and a Korean linguist, and he messaged me on Facebook and said “What can I do to keep
you in?” When I was getting out, I’m like “It’s already too late but thank you.”
Interviewer: “So when did you rank up actually? When did you get third class?” (22:20)
Third class…oh I got third class upon graduating Korean, that was the deal.
Interviewer: “Okay so it’s an automatic thing.”
Yeah it was an automatic thing. Now the second class I had to take a test, and first class I had to
take a test and I ranked up to second class pretty quickly too. I was, I think I was a second class
almost as soon as I got on the watch floor.
Interviewer: “Okay, so that was during your first-”
First yeahInterviewer: “Sorry, go.”
They ranked us up really fast especially Korean linguists, we had like 100%Interviewer: “Rank up?”
Yes, promotion.
�McCarthy, Stacie
Interviewer: “Okay, and when did you make first? Was that during your first tour?”
No, it was during my second tour when I was coming back from the transient personnel unit. I
was injured and becoming a first class.
Interviewer: “That’s kind of funny. Why did they rank you up then?”
Because I did well on the test and it was my turn.
Interviewer: “Alright then.”
It’s not- you know my injury wasn’t exactly, it wasn’t 100% my fault, but yeah of course some
of our duties, being on the ship and having to run in formation and other things did aggravate the
condition so.
Interviewer: “So what made you get out?” (23:39)
I was ready, I needed to move on, I wanted to go to music school and be a musician, and so I’m
working on that. I was tired and yeah I needed to do something else, and I was already planning
on getting out, I just didn’t get out as early as I initially planned.
Interviewer: “Okay, and what’s life been like on the outside?”
It’s been pretty awesome, I mean there’s a lot less undue stress. I mean I still get stressed out
because school is a lot of work and life is- life can be pretty difficult. It’s expensive, I do miss
that paycheck, and those allowances but- and I do miss some friends from, you know certain
duty stations, and I miss having a guaranteed job, but overall I’m actually really happy with
where it’s, where I’ve been lately.
Interviewer: “Alright, have you maintained Tagalog at all? I know you said you didn’t do
much with Korean but-”
�McCarthy, Stacie
Little bit, actually my Tagalog is not as good as my Korean. It doesn’t roll off the tongue as
easily, although I can figure out what’s going on.
Interviewer: “Okay, few more questions then we’ll get outta here. Has your military
experience really affected you now that you’re out, like have you noticed anything like
that?”
Well, I feel like I have a higher work ethic in some cases, in others I stress certain things a lot
less cause it’s not as big of a deal. When I first got out, I think the biggest part is addressing
people who are higher ranking than you in the civilian world as far as jobs and school classes.
It’s a lot different, it’s a lot more relaxed, I don’t have to be as formal. People used to laugh at
me because I was so formal. It hasn’t been that hard of an adjustment.
Interviewer: “Okay, knowing everything that you know now, would you do it again?”
(25:55)
Yeah, actually knowing everything that I know now I would’ve gotten, I would’ve gotten some
psychiatric help for my PTSD and depression.
Interviewer: “Okay, and in the future if you have a kid and they come to you and they say
they want to join the military, what would you say?”
Depending on the kid, which isn’t happening by the way, but if I were to be caring for a kid or
anyone that came up to me I would look at who they are, what their disposition is, and advise
based on that because it’s not for everybody. I mean I did well, I was frustrated a lot but I did
well, and someone like me I would say “Hell yeah, go for it.”
Interviewer: “Alright, so anything else you wanna talk about? Anything cool that
happened that I missed?”
�McCarthy, Stacie
I don’t know, eh that’s not that cool. Nothing that cool happened after that.
Interviewer: “Okay, well I guess that’s it for that.”
Thank you very much.
Interviewer: “Thank you.”
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McCarthyS2300V
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
McCarthy, Stacie
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-04
Title
A name given to the resource
McCarthy, Stacie (Interview transcript and video), 2019
Description
An account of the resource
Stacie McCarthy was born on March 10, 1985, in Framingham, Massachusetts, where she lived a normal suburban childhood. When her parents divorced, her father married her stepmother, who was in the Navy, and moved his family to Michigan. McCarthy was in her junior year of high school when she watched the televised 9/11 attacks on her school’s televisions. This influenced her later decision to join the Navy so that she could help protect people as well as escape a mundane life in Michigan. McCarthy enlisted into the Navy two years after graduating high school in 2005. Boot camp was very stressful and strenuous for her since she had preexisting Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, making the yelling and vocal discipline difficult for her. After Boot Camp, she chose to become a Navy linguist and attended the Defense Language Institute in the Presidio of Monterey to study Korean. For her first assignment, McCarthy was deployed to Hawaii for three years where she worked as an information analyst between all military branches and civilian society. While stationed in Hawaii, she attended Kyung Hee University for six weeks in South Korea for a refresher course in Korean. McCarthy then reenlisted since she was still unsure about the direction of her career. For her second assignment, she learned the Tagalog language, a prominent dialect in the Philippines, for deployment to Tegale, Indonesia, for a year. After her assignment in Tegale, she returned to Hawaii for three years where she worked as an analyst for the Navy’s Direct Support program. She was also briefly injured after being hit, ironically, by a strong wave while visiting the beach. During her last year of deployment, McCarthy was transferred to the naval cruiser USS Shiloh where she traveled around the Pacific, docking in various countries across Southeast Asia. When she made the decision to leave the service, McCarthy felt it was the appropriate time for her to move on and pursue a higher education in music performance. She enjoyed reentering civilian life, even though she missed her military friends, her assured employment, and consistent pay. Reflecting upon her military service, McCarthy believed the Navy installed in her a greater work ethic, ability to endure stress, and a recognition and respect of authority. She also concluded that she would join the service again if given the chance and would recommend entering the service to anyone able and willing to commit.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Leroy-Rollins, Koty (Interviewer)
WKTV (Wyoming, Mich.)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States—History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
Iraq War, 2003-2011—Personal narratives, American
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Veterans History Project collection, (RHC-27)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections & University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401.
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In Copyright
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
video/mp4
application/pdf
Language
A language of the resource
eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8f8102e6706616e16bda56d9633165bf.pdf
7982921f1df87a8e863f93a3a89c28bf
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Richard McCarty
(7:17)
Background Information (00:35)
Before joining the Service he worked in the Printing department. (00:40)
At the age of 21 Richard received his draft notice. (00:51)
At the time of his draft, he was living in Grand Rapids Michigan. (00:54)
Training (1:05)
The first days in the service were very exciting for Richard. (1:06)
Richard attended basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri (1:34)
Service (1:37)
After completing basic, Richard was assigned as a truck driver at Fort Leonard Wood (1:40)
The men would wake up every morning and run. Because of the heat, the men were made to
wake up an entire hour earlier (3 AM) to run. (2:00)
Richard was to be sent to Korea, however was discharged and aloud to spend the remainder of
his service in the National Guard. (3:39)
The men had very little free time while in service. (4:11)
Exiting Service (4:48)
Richard was very sick the day he was released from service. He was very happy to return home.
(4:52)
After being released, Richard served in the National Guard in Grand Rapids. (5:20)
He did make some close friends while in the service. He is no longer in touch with them. (5:35)
He is a member of the American Legion. (5:58)
Documents (6:08)
Discharge papers. (6:39)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McCartyRT
Title
A name given to the resource
McCarty, Richard (Interview outline), 2010
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
McCarty, Richard
Description
An account of the resource
Richard McCarty served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War (approx. 1951-1953). After completing his basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, he was employed as a truck driver on base. Richard was assigned to be sent to Korea but was discharged before being sent out. He served in the National Guard after completing his military service.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kimes, Nathan (Interviewer)
McCarty, Richard (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives, American
United States. National Guard
United States. Army
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
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2010-05-09
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
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/0db393dc3ccc4215e418ff7a51921646.m4v
4b2c4b159e958aa5d2c28b7edb324255
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/5cd64fa81870e82212f9ae359c158be0.pdf
8a584d5eeb9f4417074466910f738023
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans' History Project
Kenneth McCloud
World War II
59 minutes 55 seconds
(00:00:18) Early Life
-Born on May 5, 1920 in Tennessee
-Grew up in Tennessee
-Neighbor was Sergeant York
-World War I hero
-Means that Kenneth most likely lived and grew up in Pall Mall, Tennessee
-Sergeant York served as the commander of the local Civilian Conservation Corps
(CCC)
-Father was a teacher
-Able to do it with a high school education
-Mother had met his father in school
-He had two brothers and three sisters
-One brother was severely wounded in Germany during the war
-Worked at the Oak Ridge Nuclear Plant after the war
-Other brother served in the Air Force and made a career out of it
-Ran an Air Force hotel in Libya until Gaddafi seized control
-Father helped save his grandfather's farm
-Never got paid back for that
-Father had to stop teaching in 1935 because a college education became a requirement
-State still granted him a pension
-The Great Depression was horrible and many people were truly hungry
-Father was seen as a leader in the community and helped whenever he could
-Only man in town that had a high school education
-Everyone went to him to resolve issues
-Also worked as a justice of the peace and presided in a small
claims court
-Another neighbor became the Secretary of State during the war
(00:10:38) Start of the War
-Father kept up with news about the fighting in Europe and Asia
-When Kenneth got out of high school he wanted to enlist in the Navy
-Father advised him that the war would eventually come for him anyway
-Father could see that a war was coming to the United States
-Father got a weekly paper from Washington D.C. whick kept him up to date on current
events
-Working in Alcoa, Tennessee when he heard news about the attack on Pearl Harbor
(00:13:10) Enlisting in the Army
-Tried to get into the Army Air Force as a pilot, but he didn't have good enough depth
perception
-Enlisted in the Army on February 10, 1942
�-Placed in the Signal Corps because he had some electrical skills
(00:14:27) Work with the Army Air Force Overseas
-Went overseas with a P-38 unit
-Had famed aces Richard Bong and Thomas McGuire and he knew both of them
-Bong died after the war while testing flying the P-80 Shooting Star
-McGuire died during the war over Negros Island
-During the Battle of the Philippine Sea
-Remembers when a plane crashed and destroyed a bunch of tents, but only the pilot died
(00:16:30) Basic Training & Signal Corps Training
-Went to Fort Oglethorpe for processing and induction
-Note: In the interview Mr. McCloud says it is in Tennessee, but it is actually in
Georgia
-Stayed there for a week
-Sent to Joplin, Missouri for basic training and Signal Corps training
-Possibly Camp Crowder
-Had trouble adjusting to the Army and got in trouble a lot
-Punished with picking up and piling heavy rocks
-Introduced to radar in Signal Corps training
-Trained with older British radar
-Learned how to plot targets and the location of friendly aircraft
-Sent down to Florida for telephone training
(00:21:40) Overseas Duty in the Pacific Theatre Pt. 1
-Took part in the liberation of the Philippines
-Got deployed to New Guinea in late 1943 or early 1944
-Deployed with a signal unit
-His duty was to maintain the generators used for radar
-Went in once an area was secured, but not void of enemy forces
-Flew from island to island via C-47 cargo planes
-Helped transport jeeps
-Could fit two jeeps on a C-47
-Had to make sure the jeeps were tied down or it would cause
problems
(00:24:32) Deployment to the Pacific Theatre
-Went by ship to New Guinea
-Took 21 days to reach New Guinea
-Seas were rough at times
-Got seasick on deployment and returning home
-Sailed to New Guinea on the USS Carlisle
-Had submarine alerts
-One time it was only a whale
-Always happened in the early morning
-Did submarine drills almost every day
-Sailed from San Francisco to New Caledonia to Australia then to Finschafen, New
Guinea
(00:27:08) Overseas Duty in the Pacific Theatre Pt. 2
-Stayed in Finschaefen, New Guinea until the invasion of Hollandia
�-Spring of 1944
-Gradually pushing Japanese forces back toward Japan
-Remembers flying down a valley on one island in a C-47
-Close enough to the ground that the Japanese could shoot at them with rifles
-When they landed there were 45 holes in the plane
-Made sure to get out of that valley in a hurry
-Japanese were deeply entrenched on the islands, especially in New Guinea
(00:29:53) Living Conditions Pt. 1
-Living conditions were pretty rough
-A lot of times they would be in mud up to their knees
-Remembers driving a jeep through mud and he started sinking
-Mud went up to his waist
-Australians and Americans pulled him out
(00:31:21) Interactions with Australian Troops & Natives
-Australians were good men
-Only country he would ever want to move to because they were rugged like
Americans
-Had no contact with the natives in New Guinea
(00:33:00) Combat in the Pacific
-Japanese would attack their camps
-Sneak in at night and slit a few soldiers' throats
-Wake up in the morning and find the soldier next to you door
-Demoralizing, but you had to keep going
-Japanese forces would get pushed up into the hills
-They would come out of the hills and harass American camps
(00:34:42) Unit Assignments
-Part of the 553d Signal Aircraft Warning Battalion
-Eventually got reassigned to the 559th Signal Aircraft Warning Battalion
(00:35:15) Overseas Duty in the Pacific Theatre Pt. 3
-From Finschaefen, New Guinea flew to Hollandia, New Guinea
-Went there once an airstrip was secured
-Had fighter escorts when they flew from one island to the next
-Got to Hollandia in spring/summer 1944 after the initial invasion
(00:37:14) Living Conditions Pt. 2
-Living conditions were slightly better in Hollandia, New Guinea
-There was more material available in Hollandia
-Never short on supplies
-Anything they needed they could get
-Got supplies shipped shipped from the U.S. via Australia
-Realized that the U.S. has always been able to take care of itself
(00:38:53) Liberation of the Philippines
-Stayed in Hollandia for about six months then went to the Philippines
-The worst fighting he saw was when the Japanese sent in paratroopers from Formosa
(Taiwan)
-Didn't know how to fight them
-Marines were sent in to help fight off the paratroopers
�-Captured a few and learned that it was a suicide mission
-Didn't see many Japanese prisoners of war until they got to the Philippines
-Most Japanese forces were killed in action though
-Used the Japanese prisoners for manual labor
-Treated with respect even though they were the enemy
-Filipinos were scolded for spitting on Japanese prisoners
-Stationed on Leyte in the Philippines
-Remembers visiting BayBay, Leyte
-Nice place that had restaurants and hadn't been damaged by the Japanese
-Transported Filipino civilians
-Relationship between Filipinos and Americans was good
-Still has a lot of respect for the Filipinos
-Especially after everything they endured under Japanese rule
-Got to the Philippines in November 1944 shortly after the invasion of the Philippines in
October
-Transported jeeps from New Guinea to the Philippines
-Stayed in the Philippines until the end of the war
(00:47:42) Occupation Duty in Japan
-Sent to Japan for occupation duty in Osaka
-Had to use pontoon bridges to transport vehicles from ship to shore
-Then had to drive over a mountain to Osaka
-Japanese civilians never attacked American soldiers
-Treated American soldiers with deference and honored a conqueror
-There were miles of rubble in Osaka
-Industrial sectors were destroyed, but residential areas were (mostly) spared
-Got to visit Kobe and Tokyo
-Stayed in Japan for only five weeks
-Means that he probably got to Japan in October 1945
(00:53:06) Coming Home & End of Service
-Went to Yokohama for a week then boarded the SS Ernie Pyle
-Sailed home with some of the men that had been with Ernie Pyle when he was
killed
-Seas were rough on the way home
-Felt like riding an elevator
-Had Thanksgiving Dinner 1945 on the way back to the U.S.
-Didn't get seasick until the man next to him threw up at dinner
-Pulled into Seattle in late November/early December 1945
-Sent to Camp Chaffee, Arkansas
-Stayed there for a week
-Got discharged on December 15, 1945
-Got home in time to celebrate Christmas 1945 with his wife
-Married for more than 70 years
Interview Ends at 00:59:55
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27_McCloudK1760V
Title
A name given to the resource
McCloud, Kenneth Edward (Interview outline and video), 2015
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-05
Description
An account of the resource
Kenneth McCloud was born on May 5, 1920 in Tennessee. On February 10, 1942 he enlisted in the Army and was placed in the Signal Corps. He was processed and inducted at Fort Oglethorpe then went to Joplin, Missouri (most likely Camp Crowder) for basic training and signal training. He was deployed to the Pacific Theatre in either late 1943, or early 1944, and was sent to Finschaefen, New Guinea. He stayed at Finschafen until spring 1944 following the invasion of Hollandia. During his time in the Pacific he was part of the 553rd Signal Aircraft Warning Battalion and later the 559th Signal Aircraft Warning Battalion and his duty was to maintain the generators used for radar installations. In November 1944 he was sent to the Philippines and was stationed on the island of Leyte until the end of the war. Following Japan's surrender in August 1945 he was sent to Osaka, Japan for occupation duty (most likely in late September/October 1945). He stayed in Japan for five weeks then returned to the United States. He was sent to Camp Chaffee, Arkansas and was discharged on December 15, 1945.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
McCloud, Kenneth Edward
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jones, Adam (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
United States. Army
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Moving Image
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>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a>
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University Libraries. Allendale, Michigan
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
video/x-m4v
application/pdf
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/742ade047db221ec0c5326d3efa42bb9.mp4
3286ed4dd1ef2ff8abd488b18cef7535
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/08f90ed333dada156955a3c9c3d143f0.pdf
e7ec639ee85c9a76aea5b866172ce8e6
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans’ History Project Interview
Vietnam War
Jim McCloughan
1 hour 44 minutes
(1:03) – Background
-Born May 30, 1946 in the hospital in South Haven, Michigan
-Parents took over grandparents’ farm in rural Bangor, Michigan
-Grew up in Bangor, MI
-Attended one room school house “about a mile down the road” until 6th grade
-Junior High School and High School in Bangor
-Graduated in 1964
-Went to Olivet College
-Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology as well as a teaching degree
-Played 4 years of football, wrestled for 4 years, and played 2 years of baseball
-Graduated in June 1968
-Told to report for a physical
-Had signed up for draft when he was 18
-Was told he would be drafted that July (1968)
-Had already signed contract with South Haven Schools in May to teach, desperately
needed teachers
-School board appealed to draft board, but the draft board said he had already had
his deferment
(4:17) – Basic Training (Fort Knox portion)
-Sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky for basic training
-1st week housed with 30-35 men
-E5 Spec. 5 Medic was in charge
-Medic finds out he has medical knowledge, most likely requested for him to be
sent to Ft. Sam Houston for medic training after basic
-Only one to go to Ft. Sam Houston
-Most medics were not draftees
-Training wasn’t very difficult (physically)
-Had to emotionally adjust to not being in a small community
-Mentally disciplined from sports, prepared him for distractions and drilling
-Appointed squad leader because he was older
-Sense of maturity, majority of draftees were high school graduates
-8 weeks of basic training ends
(10:35) Fort Sam Houston portion
-Rode on bus to Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio Texas
�-Met Marty Romine
-Arrived 2 weeks early, attached to transportation unit in the country
-Had barracks to themselves
-Drove every kind of vehicle they had, said it reminded him of home
-10 weeks of medic training
-Lots of classwork
-Marty was training partner
-Learned how to give shots and apply bandages knew other basic medicine
from being in sports
-Interviewed to get a trainer position, thought he would get it and stay out of Vietnam
(13:00) Last Day of Training
-Deployment orders: Southeast Asia, Vietnam
-Thought it was mistake, asked command, not a mistake, Army regular (enlistee) got the
training job
-Offered to “re up” by joining Airborne, Special Forces, or OCS (Officer Candidate
School), but declined because it would mean an additional year of service
(15:15) More Talk about Training
- Prepared for hospital work as well
-Was assigned as a combat medic because the Army needed them
-Went to Ft. Sam Houston in November
-Got 2 weeks of leave for Christmas
-Graduated from medic training in February
-2 weeks leave in February
-Worked with wrestling team in South Haven for the championships
-Visited wife
(16:35) Deployment
-Sent to Oakland California
-Gates in sorting area locked to keep soldiers in
(17:35) More Talk about Training
-Had only one conscientious objector
-Some men claimed they were but in Vietnam that changed
-First time medics were allowed to be combatants
(19:10) More about Deployment
- Layover in Oakland for a few days
-Flew up to Alaska
-Brother lived in Alaska with wife and child, wanted to visit them, but the plane
was only there for 20 minutes
-Flew in military transport (very uncomfortable)
-First thing he noticed about Vietnam is that it stunk because it was humid mixed with the
smell of human feces
(21:20) (Added Step) Went from Alaska to Guam, and from Guam boarded military transport
and flew to Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam)
�(21:55) Arrival in Vietnam
-Orientation for 2 days
-Booby traps
-Snakes
-Division headquarters was in Chu Lai
-Part of 3rd Battalion, 21st Regiment, 196th Light Infantry Brigade, 23rd (Americal)
Division
-Introduced to Captain Jim Foster who was in charge of medics
-Taught him how to create a practical medical kit for the field
-Was attached to Charlie (“C”) Company just outside of LZ Center
-Flew out in helicopter
-Met the soldier he was replacing, one Pat Rocco
-First person he met in Charlie Company was Sergeant Doug Hatton who “talked
real slow,” “was missing a front tooth,” and “had his helmet on crooked.”
-Grew to like him
-“I was a kindergartener in fighting war, but he (Sgt. Hatton) had a
master’s degree.”
-Became best friends
-Company was stationed in a thick tree area, but not dense enough to be considered a
jungle
(27:50) First Contact
-Arrived in LZ Center on the 7th of March and the company was ambushed on the 10th
-In the ambush lost two men, but not from his platoon (2nd platoon)
-Immediately got used to hearing, and reacting to, people calling for a medic
(30:00) Basic Duties
-Was in charge of making sure that men took daily and weekly anti-malarial pills
-Tended to still healing wounds
-Impetigo was rampant (bacterial skin infection)
-Hydrogen peroxide and nitrous ointment used to treat it
-Took about 5 to 6 days to heal
-Also took care of sprains, strains, boils, and rashes
(31:19) Daily Routine
-Got up before dawn and started moving
-At sunrise stop and eat
-He (Jim) would go around and check on soldiers
-Get to destination and establish perimeter before dark
-More patrols meant less contact
-Normally moved as a company
(35:10) Conditions
-Rice paddies
-Jungle in the mountains
-Not a lot of civilians
-“Not a good country for a democracy”
-Very rural, very primitive
-In the beginning thought the people were friendly, over time sensed bitterness
-Booby traps in the rice paddies
�-OED’s (“other explosive devices”), not IED’s like in Iraq or Afghanistan
-Caused gruesome injuries
-Hated being in the rice paddies because of vulnerability and booby traps
-Occasionally fought alongside Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN’s)
-Inept and unhelpful soldiers
(43:40) Jungle Conditions
-Humid in the jungle, lots of leeches, lots of spiders
-Never saw snakes or tigers
(45:10) Return to LZ Center
-Return to LZ Center for a week
-Resupply
-Shower (only allowed 5 gallons of cold water)
-New set of clothes
-Get more rations
-Access to warm meals
-Got to sleep on a cot instead of on the ground
(46:40) Battle of Tam Ky (Prologue)
-4th Day of 7 Day rotation at LZ Center they were attacked
-May 12th at 1:30 AM the north end of LZ Center was attacked by North Vietnamese
sappers
-2 U.S. troops killed
-Evening of May 12th Lt. Carrier (company commander) was called into TOC (tactical
operations center)
-Being sent to Tam Ky (large town that was being attacked)
-No idea on enemy troop strength
-Lt. Carrier argued that the mission was flawed, but was threatened with court
martial if refused to go
(49:30) Battle of Tam Ky – Securing the Landing Zone
-Left for Tam Ky at 10:10 AM on May 13th via helicopter
-Landing Zone was “hot” (under fire)
-Had to jump from helicopters
-2 helicopters were shot down
-Established perimeter to help with extraction of wounded
-Helped one man who had managed to hurt himself in the jump
-Secured landing zone and regrouped
(52:30) Battle of Tam Ky – Nui Yon Hill Pt. 1
-At 4 PM command wanted scouting platoon to go to Nui Yon Hill
-Massive fortification south of Tam Ky
-About 1500 North Vietnamese
-Scouting platoon was made up of 19 U.S. soldiers and 1 South Vietnamese
interpreter
-Entered trench surrounding Nui Yon Hill
-Noticed two contacts stringing wire in the distance
-Opened fire on them with Sgt. Hatton
-Immediate NVA retaliation, point man killed
-2 soldiers wounded in the open
�-Went to help them, realized they were shell-shocked, not wounded
-One wound up getting killed, the other captured
-Left trench four or five times to retrieve wounded troops
-Airstrike was imminent, tons of crossfire
-Helped load wounded onto medevac
-Lt. Carrier suggests that he (Jim) goes as well since he was wounded
-Refuses, wants to stay behind and continue to help
(1:06:58) Battle of Tam Ki – Nui Yon Hill Pt. 2
-Next day was uneventful
-Hungry, tired, and wounded
-By evening the company was told to move, 1st Platoon would lead instead of 2nd
-Engaged again
-Goes back into crossfire again to retrieve wounded soldiers
-Spooky (AC 130 gunship) provided flares for light, and heavy covering fire
-NVA failed to win because they didn’t totally surround the U.S. forces
-169 NVA killed, minimal U.S. losses
-Extracted by helicopter
(1:12:15) Stand Down in June
-Returned to LZ Center for a break from the field
-Patrols and search and clear missions continued though
-Did not reach full company strength again until July
-Tried to welcome replacements, make them feel included
(1:15:10) Battle of LZ East
-LZ East was getting probed by NVA
-June 10th volunteers were asked to go assist LZ East in establishing a perimeter
-2:35 AM NVA sappers attacked
-Bunker hit, saved 2 men
-NVA began to bombard position with mortars
-Sappers effectively overran base
-Destroyed key positions
-Artillery
-Medical bunker
-High ranking officers killed
-Lost 17 U.S. soldiers
-Treated wounded NVA as well
-Fighting lasted 30 minutes
-Returned to LZ Center
(1:22:10) Deployment to Chu Lai
-Had to provide positive ID for rescued POW at the hospital in Chu Lai
-While at the hospital was offered position at the hospital in Chu Lai
-Asked Lt. Carrier for permission, response, “What the hell are you still doing
here?”
-Emotional, bittersweet moment
-Attached to 91st Evacuation Hospital in Chu Lai
-Got own bunker and locker
�-Helped in the hospital
-Emergency room work
-Paperwork
-Interviewed patients
-December 1969 Bob Hope performed in Chu Lai, opted out of seeing him
-Occasional rocket strikes happened, but Chu Lai was relatively safe
-Extremely competent medical personnel
(1:31:25) Morale and Relations
-Morale constantly fluctuated between good and bad
-Troops nearing the end of their tour had high anxiety
-Competent officers improved morale
-No problems with insubordination
-Fairly high drug use
-Pills
-Marijuana
-No heroin yet
-African Americans kept to themselves out of choice
-Race relations were good though
(1:38:40) Coming Home
-Came into Chicago
-No welcome committee
-Father and wife were sent to the wrong gate
-Wanted to tell family and friends “goodbye” and “I love you” from then on
-Was not hassled, but not welcomed either
-People didn’t want to talk about Vietnam with veterans
-Rehired by South Haven Schools
-Head coach there for 38 years as well
-Coached 35 summers with the American Legion Baseball
-Worked a lot
-Loved his various jobs
-Staying busy kept his mind off memories
-Retirement allowed for the memories to start to come back
-Proud to have served alongside who he did
-Highest respect for those he served with
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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McCloughanJ1554V
Title
A name given to the resource
McCloughan, James (Interview outline and video), 2013
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
McCloughan, James
Description
An account of the resource
Jim McCloughan is a Vietnam War veteran who was born in South Haven, MI in 1946 and was drafted after college in 1968. He served with the 3/21st Infantry in the 196th Light Infantry Brigade, 23rd (Americal) Division as a combat medic. He fought in several major battles, including Tam Ky, and received two purple hearts during his tour.
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
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2013-10-24
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
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application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7dcf22d32992a9f34b60a7fb9501f8ba.jpg
fd4864f480d2488a9f6316d6af28f3d4
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Faces of Grand Valley
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
University Communications
Description
An account of the resource
A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1960s - 1990s
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In Copryight
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University
College administrators
College teachers
Colleges and universities -- Faculty
Michigan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives
Identifier
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GV012-03
Format
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image/jpeg
Type
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Image
Language
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eng
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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McConeghyGary
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. University Communications
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1965
Title
A name given to the resource
McConeghy, Gary
Description
An account of the resource
Gary McConeghy, TV and AV Director
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University – History
Michigan
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In Copyright
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
image/jpeg
Language
A language of the resource
eng
1965s
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a0d0bffb364664fda00bdcdefd1d48a1.m4v
47d4d1cc31fc5006de4b50082a71f166
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/08dbc3c3bbf0e20bff5b8528295dc09c.pdf
4952d3f007fec17676d2434f645c3db0
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
James McConnon
Length: 36:08
(00:25) Training
James was drafted into the Army in October of 1971; he had been living in Caledonia,
Michigan
He went through many physicals in Detroit and then was sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky for
basic training for 8 weeks
James went through secondary advanced individual training at Fort Bliss, Texas where he
worked on an Air Defense Missile System
(3:50) South Korea
James was sent to South Korea to work as an Air Defense Artilleryman in April of 1972
He became squad leader and was working with vehicles that carried the missile launching
system
Most of the time in Korea James just spent field training at Camp Casey in the North
He worked on the Air Defense System near the DMZ for 14 months
James felt it was nice to live in a different country and learn about another culture
Plus his father had fought in the Korean War and James was able to learn more about
some of the things his father had experienced
(9:20) Average Days
The men used an HAM Radio to call home and James also wrote his friends and family
often
They had cafeteria style food, which wasn’t terrible, but they got sick of it pretty quickly
They were told not to eat the local food because they could easily get sick from it and
have serious health issues
James was able to see a few USO shows with Bob Hope
They men often played softball and other games on the base
(13:22) After Korea
After serving his time in South Korea James was shipped to Fort Hood, Texas and he
worked there for a short time before he was discharged
He did not enjoy working on the base in Texas because he had grown accustomed to such
a different environment
James then went to college and earned his Associates Degree and also became a member
of the American Legion
�
Being in the service helped him to become a more open-minded person and he was able
to work with many different types of people
James made many good friends in the Army and overall had a very positive experience
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McConnonJ
Title
A name given to the resource
McConnon, James (Interview outline and video), 2009
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
McConnon, James
Description
An account of the resource
James McConnon was drafted into the Army in October of 1971 and went through basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky for 8 weeks. He then went through secondary advanced individual training at Fort Bliss, Texas where he worked with the Air Defense Missile System. After training James was sent to South Korea in April of 1972 to work with Air Defense Artillery. James spent 14 months in the Northern area of South Korea working on air defense where he spent most of his time in field training.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Farhadi, Matthew (Interviewer)
Caledonia High School (Caledonia, Mich.)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
United States. Army
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2009-05-29
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/83ca9c502c623b8c503a114ca222a489.mp4
9d6e6748865e5685316aaba4824567da
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2212eb8aa430a7c9fb8619da7aa9aeae.pdf
72938683581d790aacac15d9a2cc1647
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Vietnam
Ted McCormick
Total Time – (01:34:22)
Background
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He was born in Standish, Michigan (00:31)
o He was born when there was not a hospital in town
He grew up in Flint, Michigan (01:06)
Went to Flint Public Schools
His father was in the automotive industry (01:15)
There were 4 children in the family
o He was the second oldest (01:32)
He finished high school in 1968
He worked at Buick in 1968 (02:11)
At this point, he was indifferent to Vietnam
o He believed it would be over by the time he would be at the drafting age
(02:32)
He knew others that had been to Vietnam
o They did not talk about the war too much
Enlistment/Training – (03:39)
•
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He received his draft notice in 1969 (03:47)
He went to Detroit, Michigan for his physical (05:11)
o The majority of the men getting their physical were looking for a way out
of going to the war
Not very many of them got out of it
After Detroit, he was bused to Fort Knox (06:54)
They arrived at Fort Knox in June, 1969
When they arrived, they got the typical rude welcome
He had no idea of what to expect when he got there (07:35)
They had to take aptitude tests, but they did not necessarily dictate where soldiers
went
Basic training was not very difficult for him (08:38)
He was familiar with weapons before he entered camp
o There were some men who found training extremely difficult (09:05)
The majority of the men in his training company were primarily from Michigan
o There were some blacks in his company (09:55)
�•
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They made it a similar percentage to the population as a whole
Basic Training lasted 3 months (10:23)
After basic training, you receive your orders – advance individual training
He was then flown to Fort Polk, Louisiana (11:04)
Fort Polk was very similar to For Knox
o It was maybe more advanced in some areas
Fort Polk had mock Vietnam villages and mock scenarios for training (12:04)
The instructors were soldiers that previously served in Vietnam
o The instructors had a lot of apathy while training (13:34)
He was offered the option of becoming a helicopter pilot but he declined it
because he did not want to extend his two years (14:34)
He trained on the M16, M14, M60 machine gun, 45, grenade launchers, etc.
(15:20)
He spent 3 months in Advanced Individual Training (AIT) (15:39)
He was able to go home for Thanksgiving in November, 1969
After his leave, he was sent to Fort Lewis, Washington (16:12)
They were in Washington waiting to replace others in Vietnam
o It was extremely depressing – they were at the end of the war and many of
the soldiers knew what was going on
o They were waiting around for three days
Active Duty – (17:18)
•
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•
He is then sent to Vietnam via charter plane (17:25)
o They went through Alaska, Japan, and Cam Ranh Bay (17:37)
o The ride was extremely depressing
o There were stewardesses on the flight – they tried to cheer the soldiers up
(18:11)
They landed at Cam Ranh Bay during the day (18:29)
It was extremely hot
After he gets off the plane, they went to their replacement company (19:15)
They were taken on cattle trucks up the coastline of South Vietnam
o He was able to see how poor the people were and experience the culture
They had armed escorts in a convoy (20:29)
The drive took 3-4 hours (21:32)
He found out when he was in Cam Ranh that he was assigned to the 101st Infantry
He was first assigned to Bravo company 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment
(22:37)
There were men who took pills that they thought would give them symptoms of
malaria when they were out on the field
o All three of the men died soon after taking the pills (23:29)
The unit stayed for 5-6 days in the camp before heading out (25:06)
The new soldiers are shunned when they first arrived (25:28)
o You are considered an idiot until you have proved yourself
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The first mission he went on, he saw a woman hit with an M79 grenade round
(27:00)
o The round did not go off (27:06)
o The decision was made to not report the incident – the woman and her
child were both murdered
o This was part of an ambush outfit (27:50)
They were on high alert and the observation post shot
He initially operated in the Triple Canopy jungle (30:16)
When he is sent up to the triple canopy jungle, they were trying to locate
movement at night and locate positions or activity (31:12)
o They were the average recon unit
o The platoon was 30 men
On their reinforce recon missions, they were locating the enemy (32:33)
He remembers seeing a young soldier cut in half by an M60
The first time he was in regular combat situation was in April, 1970
There had been a previous company that had gone into an area and had been cut
up (35:42)
On April 14, 1970, his unit was being hit with mortars all day
The wounded could not be extracted from this fight because everything was
socked in (38:29)
His platoon went in to locate the base (38:41)
They could not find it for four days, so they sent out a dog ahead of them
The Vietnamese waited until his platoon walked into their position (39:58)
They were hit with napalm
There were 200 mortars electrically wired together to wipe out his platoon, but
because they moved in so fast, they did not have the time to set it up (41:13)
The order to attack quickly, though it sounded crazy, actually worked
o The Vietnamese did not have time to get ready
Just before the battle they were being resupplied (42:11)
When they went in, they were short on supplies (42:33)
The majority of his tour was spent doing many of these kinds of missions
They always seemed to use the same tactics (43:12)
o Move at night, reinforce recon, etc.
They were still operating in the triple canopy jungle
o He was primarily on the eastern side – Elephant Valley
Missions were meant to find any kind of contact activity (44:18)
He rarely saw the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) – they were extremely
disciplined
The NVA used bunkers and caves
He would spend 7-30 days on different missions (47:02)
o Depending on the commander, but they would often get a break after 30
days
When on patrol, the men in the platoon were generally extremely disciplined and
focused on the job (48:06)
�•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
In order to stay safe while marching at night, you have to maintain contact with
the person in front of you (48:44)
o They would move on trails at night
o There were many problems with booby-traps and ambushes (49:15)
The point man would have to look for them
They seldom cut directly through the jungle
He remembers seeing rock apes and getting rocks thrown at them (50:42)
o There were tigers that caused troubles for troops
o There were extremely poisonous snakes
o It was like fighting in the Garden of Eden (52:14)
o There were fox bats that would turn the sky black (52:25)
It was extremely common for men to get diseases from being in the jungle
He developed cellulitis (53:25)
When men would return to camp, they would typically get drunk or smoke pot
(55:22)
o This was before heroin became available
o After heroin arrived, there were racial problems as well as many other
problems
o He noticed the heroin problem in August, 1970 (55:56)
o After returning from R&R, he noticed the heroin abuse
Before heroin there was some racial tension, but it was isolated – it was profound
once heroine addictions began
o The heroin did not follow the soldiers into the field (56:49)
There was a lot of marijuana abuse (57:11)
He got the cellulitis in February, 1970 (58:03)
Once he got sick, he was sent back to Camp Eagle
When he was on R&R he went to Sydney, Australia (58:55)
o He was able to pick his destination
o It was culture shock to experience Australia after spending nearly half a
year in Vietnam
o The Australians were extremely nice to American soldiers
o It was incredibly difficult to get back on the plane to go back to Vietnam
(59:40)
He did not have any idea what was going on with the war at large (01:01:19)
The last mission he remembers was in October, 1970 (01:03:09)
His unit was close to the Laotian border
o They were protecting the artillery units that were firing into Laos
One of the most dramatic parts of his service was the battle of Hill 882 along with
the 502nd infantry – the battle lasted from April until June (01:04:30)
o The 502nd infantry never had historical explanations as to what happened
to their unit
He believes the 101st underestimated the commitment of the NVA (01:06:20)
o The military changed from an offensive position to a defensive posture
He never lost respect for the NVA
�•
•
•
•
•
o Remembers seeing them standing up and trying to shoot down jets with
their AK-47s (01:09:42)
When he was out on the field, he typically carried a machine gun or an M16
The air support that the Americans would call in was superb
o The NVA would try to get as close to the Americans as possible in order
to negate the air power (01:10:58)
o They would sometimes have to call in air support on themselves
o They support was generally quick and accurate
After R&R, he went through a period of depression and remorse (01:12:34)
He was able to get close with some of the men in his unit (01:13:36)
Some of the sergeants he served under were “shake ‘n bake”, but they did the job
(01:15:45)
o The sergeants and lieutenants usually provided great leadership (01:16:17)
After the Service – (01:17:05)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
He was able to go home a little bit early from his tour – October, 1970 (01:17:13)
He spent a week in Phu Bai, Vietnam before he got on a plane to return to
America
o When waiting to find out when he would leave he just hung out (01:18:19)
o The atmosphere on the plane was extremely depressing (01:18:50)
His first landing was at Fort Lewis, Washington
He had changed out of his military clothing into civilian clothing
On his leave home, he spent time getting drunk (01:20:42)
After his leave back home he was sent back to Fort Knox
He was encouraged to re-enlist after he was discharged (01:22:46)
o They offered to make him a sergeant
In general, he had not had much contact with civilians in Vietnam (01:24:31)
There were Vietnamese spies within his units (01:25:20)
o There was an old man
o Some of the men were useful but some were not
He saw one of them selling heroin
When he came home, he went crazy for a couple of years doing crazy things
(01:26:34)
o He suffers from PTSD – it was dormant until it was triggered in 1976
It was triggered when he knew and saw someone that was hit by a
car
He was compensated for PTSD
He believes the Army made him have a deeper feeling for religion (01:32:37)
o He is not necessarily religious, but he understands it better now
o It has been one of the largest influences on his life
He does not like to dwell on the negative things in the war (01:33:13)
o He did certain things for his fellow soldiers not because he wanted to
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
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
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
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RHC-27
Language
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eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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McCormickTNoId
Title
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McCormick, Theodore (Interview outline and video), 2012
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
McCormick, Theodore
Description
An account of the resource
Ted McCormick was born in Standish, Michigan and grew up in Flint, Michigan. He graduated from high school in 1968 and received his draft notice in 1969. He took basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and infantry training at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Sent to Vietnam, he was assigned to an infantry company in the 101st Airborne Division. His unit went on patrols in the jungles of northern South Vietnam and encountered its share of firefights, ambushes and booby traps. In the last few months of his tour, which ended in October, 1970, he observed the effects of readily available heroin in the rear areas, and an escalation of racial tensions.
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
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eng
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2012-04
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
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application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c40be73e065f80db25aa63db2079b377.mp4
cbd4d77be6efeaf4ef56f8c4bf17ca94
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ba4b0193b69cc987cf5531f43dd34a78.pdf
dd0616e88f18a1769f8045196f494507
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Vietnam War
Jim McCoy
1:31:51
Introduction (00:19)
Jim was born on August 29, 1951 in Santee, California, which is about twenty miles east
of San Diego.
He grew up in Santee and graduated from high school there in 1969.
In high school, everyone was aware of the war, and most of the guys in his class all had
plans of joining one of the branches of armed forces after graduation.
College was not an option for Jim, but he later attended junior college.
Growing up, his dad was a machinist at Ryan Aeronautical which is famous for their part
in developing Lindbergh‟s airplane. He worked there until the day he died.
Looking back on his childhood, they were lower middle class like many other families in
that day.
During high school, he saw the movie “The Green Berets” starring John Wayne and
thought it would be fun, so in order to beat the draft, he and another guy went down and
enlisted in the United States Army. (02:39)
Jim enlisted for three years thinking that he was going into Special Forces.
Prior to his enlistment, he did not participate in the anti-war movement nor did anyone in
his town. The two biggest employers in the area were all defense companies.
Jim enlisted in December 1969.
Military Training (03:55)
Jim was sent to Fort Ord, California for his basic training.
He was sent to Los Angeles for his induction and physical. This was where all inductees
from all the branches were sent including draftees.
For the most part, not many people were trying to scam the system to get out of service,
but Jim does remember standing in line and someone calling ten names and saying
“Congratulations, you‟re going in the Marine Corps”. (04:46)
Jim‟s parents were extremely disappointed that he joined the Army instead of the Navy
because San Diego was a Navy town.
They were bussed all the way north to Fort Ord, which is in the Monterey area. When
they got there, the drill sergeants got on the bus and started yelling at everyone.
He was there for two weeks and then everyone was sent home for two weeks for
Christmas.
His company in basic training was comprised mostly of draftees with a few other
enlistees like himself. (06:53)
The draftees had bad attitudes, with one of them jumping out of a third story window and
breaking his leg to get out of military service.
Basic training was about learning how to be a soldier, marching and getting along.
�
Physical aspects of basic training were relatively easy for Jim because he was 18 years
old and in good shape, he also did not have much problem learning the discipline; since
he volunteered for it he knew what he was getting himself into.
For the people that caused trouble, the drill sergeant will single them out and give them
extra duties and yell at them. (08:44)
The drill sergeants were fair to everyone and treated everyone equally. Jim was chewed
out a few times himself, whether he deserved it or not.
Basic training lasted for eight weeks. Once that was completed he was sent to Fort
Jackson, South Carolina to attend AIT (Advanced Infantry Training).
AIT was not very pleasant, since they were treated very poorly by the sergeants who were
all southern boys that were shake and bake‟s. Jim and the other guys from California
were given all the KP duty and other jobs that nobody else wanted to do.
Because he planned on joining Special Forces, Jim had signed up for jump school. He
later learned that to be in SF you had to be at least nineteen and a half years old. Jim was
still only eighteen and he also became fed up with the treatment that he was given at AIT
so he signed a waiver saying that he did not want to go to jump school. (10:45)
Only a few of the instructors there were Vietnam veterans. It was the assumption during
training that they were all going to Vietnam. Most of the training was also geared in that
direction teaching them some of the basics that they would need to know in country.
AIT lasted another eight weeks. After that, 24 of the men were sent to Panama at Fort
Sherman to go through jungle school, which lasted two weeks and was conducted in the
Panama Canal Zone. This training was fun, and Jim really enjoyed it.
Once they got there they were split into squads, each man had their rank taken away and
everyone was put in the jungle and learned how to cut trails, eat food found in the jungle,
ride on a slide for life over a river, make rafts for river crossing and rappelling.
None of which actually helped in Vietnam except for getting a head start for SERTS
(Screaming Eagle Replacement Training School) in Vietnam.
Some of the physical conditioning helped though, because it was hot and humid in
Panama like Vietnam and it rained a lot. (14:33)
After he finished this training, he was given a three day leave. On that leave period, Jim
told his parents that he was going to Vietnam.
Vietnam (15:34)
Jim went to Travis Air Force Base in California and was issued some clothing and
received some shots before being put on an airline and flown to Hawaii where he bought
a pack of cigarettes for sixty cents (which was a lot back then for smokes). From Hawaii
they were flown to Thompson Airport in Saigon.
The plane ride over was quiet and not upbeat at all. It was a chartered commercial airline
that they were flown over on. (16:53)
They landed in Vietnam in the afternoon, and he remembers when they first opened the
door of the plane they could feel the heat rush in.
Jim was sent to Bien Hoa, which was the main processing center for people coming into
country. While there, they asked for volunteers to pull guard duty and they were
promised a good assignment, and that they wouldn‟t be sent to the 101st.
He volunteered and stayed there for three weeks standing this duty.
�
Jim arrived in Vietnam in May 1970. (18:10)
Other operations were going on in Vietnam, but Jim did not pay much attention to them
and he did not bother with the news. He just focused on doing his job. He heard rumors
about what was going on up north.
While in Bien Hoa he never left the base and he doesn‟t remember any attacks or
incomings there.
Ripcord (20:20)
Jim was reassigned to Phu Bai which was to the north and was in the AO (Area of
Operations) for the 101st Airborne.
They were flown in on C-130‟s and they were processed into the 101st. He did not have a
weapon at that point but was given one once he started SERTS.
SERTS consisted of classes on booby traps, cultural issues in Vietnam and dealing with
the locals.
After the training, Jim was assigned to Delta Company, 1/506th. When he met up with
his unit, they were on a stand down having a party. (22:47)
The first thing that he did was throw away all the gear that he didn‟t need like mosquito
netting.
He fell right in with 1st platoon and was sent out on his first mission. Since he was a new
guy called a „cherry‟ he was assigned to be an ammo bearer for a machine gun team. His
machine gunner, Brian Redfern, took Jim under his wing and taught him what he needed
to know. (24:37)
After the company party, they left the next morning on their first mission. Jim got his
rucksack on and they all moved out to the LZ for the helicopters at Camp Evans. They
were given their flight assignments and some of the guys gave him some last minute
advice while in the air.
Jim was scared because he was sitting on the edge of the door with his feet dangling out
with his rifle pointed outwards. The heavy rucksack on his back helped keep him
balanced in the chopper. (26:56)
They landed on Triple Hill, and they got out and looked around. The jungle was all
chewed up from all of the incomings and shooting. Immediately after landing, they
started sending out patrols. This was his first day in the field.
During that patrol, they found underground bunkers that included hospitals and artillery
positions. They did not take any fire at that time and did not see the enemy.
Once they finish their patrol they set up a NDP (Nighttime Defensive Position). The
company had about 86 men. Each platoon had about 20-25 men in them. (29:54)
That first night, Jim was on fire watch and he heard something that sounded like “Fuck
You”, which turned out to be the call of a gecko lizard.
They found lots of new bunkers and fortifications but still had not found any NVA or
Viet Cong.
Four days into the field mission, they were picked up by helicopter and taken just outside
Firebase Ripcord, which was under bombardment from the enemy. Jim remembers
flying around it and seeing that it had such steep edges going around it. (32:56)
�
While flying around the LZ, they saw red smoke, which means that it was a hot LZ. Jim
jumped out of the bird as soon as it landed and ran to the side of a hill. He could hear the
AK-47 fire, and Jim was still carrying the ammo for the machine gunner.
Captain Workman was his company commander, and he reported to higher that all his
cherries survived the landing.
Jim and his machine gunner set up a position covering a trail leading up the hill. Jim saw
the top of a boonie hat coming down towards them and asked if they had any friendlies
up there, which they did not. His machine gunner then opened up on the trail. (37:35)
Jim looked over to another soldier, Tommy Smith, and he wondered why he wasn‟t
firing so he threw him some ammo. Jim looked over to him and asked if he was ok, and
he said his gun jammed. He told Jim that a NVA soldier was so close to him he could
have reached out and shook his hand.
Things got worse as the day went on. They formed up a patrol and began going up the
hill. Once they got to the top, they found a trench with trails going to and from it into the
jungle. (39:30)
Jim was sitting on a trail watching below when he saw an enemy soldier crawling up the
trail on his belly. Jim raised his rifle and the NVA saw him and sat up on all fours, then
Jim switched his M-16 to fully automatic and began firing. He doesn‟t know if he killed
him or not, but it was very weird firing at another human being for the first time, it was a
life changing experience. (41:58)
That afternoon, a patrol was ambushed and several were killed along that same trail that
Jim had shot down.
Another patrol was sent down to gather the wounded and the dead. The worst memories
that Jim has of Vietnam were hearing the moans of the wounded men before the NVA
finished them off. (44:35)
They came back down the hill to the LZ and gathered their wounded and brought them
down to be flown back. Ripcord was firing illumination rounds to aid in the extraction.
They did not take any fire while they were getting the wounded out. (46:35)
That night was quiet, with the only activity that could be heard was far off in the distance.
In the morning, they began taking incoming mortar rounds. Nobody was dug in and it
was chaos when the NVA realized that they were zeroed in on Delta Companies position.
They began firing mortar round after mortar round. It was during this barrage that most
of the men they lost in the battle were killed. (48:49)
During the attack, Jim was huddled under his rucksack waiting it out. The man next to
him was hit and Jim took out one of his bandages and helped the man.
One man stood up and yelled “Let‟s get out of here!” so they began to grab gear and
bodies and started heading down the hill.
Jim was one of the few guys that was not wounded at that time, so he helped get some of
the wounded down to the waiting helicopters.
Helicopter pilots were radioing them and telling them that they had 500 NVA moving
towards their position. (52:52)
They had airstrikes coming in and dropping bombs all day long. Jim was on the
perimeter protecting the group of survivors during this battle. At one point, their
company was down to 14 men. Jim was extracted later that day; Captain Workman made
him run out to the LZ to get on the bird. When he got in the bird everyone was cheering
�
and happy that they made it out. The door gunner told them that the bird just behind
them did not make it out, and Jim later found out that Captain Workman was killed by the
rotors of one of the choppers as he was trying to bring in the last bird. (57:37)
Once they returned to Camp Evans, Jim felt numb and in shock. His first sergeant came
up to him and told Jim that he wasn‟t a cherry anymore. One soldier took off his
rucksack and realized that he had a piece of shrapnel sticking out of his back and he
didn‟t even know it.
A couple of days after getting back to base, they had a memorial service for Captain
Workman. (59:44)
At that point, the company size was 33 men, and that was after they got their
replacements.
They spent the next three months trying to build up their unit again and conducted
firebase duty. After that they were tasked with blowing out landing zones for helicopters.
Eventually, they were up to strength to where they could go back out on missions. During
this buildup period, they did not have any engagements with the enemy and things were
relatively quiet. (1:02:16)
After Ripcord, they didn‟t find much on their patrols and most of the enemy contact was
in the form of booby traps.
After Ripcord (1:04:20)
They spent up to two months at a time in the field.
Jungle rot was a big problem with most guys, and some also got dysentery and cellulitis.
At that point, they were still operating with Vietnamese scouts, which Jim found to be
worthless. He had one assigned to him once he was promoted to sergeant. (1:06:55)
When Jim was recommended for the promotion, he was taken back to the rear, cleaned
up, took some tests and then sent him back out. He received his orders in December
saying that he had been promoted. (1:08:32)
They got letters from home whenever they could get the mail out to them. When the
choppers could not land, they would sometimes hover over the men and just kick out the
mail and go.
Almost all of Jim‟s time in country was done in the field. He was told that he could go
home for R&R, so he did. Although he wishes that he would have gone to Bangkok or
some other place instead of going home. (1:10:25)
Going from the jungle to the civilian world was weird for him and he did not talk about it
much with anybody. While home, he saw all the protesting that was happening back in
the states.
After he got back to Vietnam, he had a couple more months to go before his tour was up.
Jim did not spend much time with the civilian population. He once spent two weeks
guarding a village that was about to hold a democratic election. On that mission he went
out on a sniper mission with two other guys. (1:13:39)
Racial tensions were very high, especially in the rear. It was always blacks against
whites on base, but in the field it was all gone. Most of the men in the rear were black
men that found ways to stay out of the field or were drug addicts.
There were no drugs or drinking in the field and no smoking in the field after dark.
�
Some fights would break out between whites and blacks. On one occasion a white
soldier shot and killed a black soldier over drugs. (1:15:44)
They also had men that would shoot themselves in the foot to stay out of the jungle.
Each man was given a leave home, which he already took and they were also given an
R&R. Jim signed up to go to Sydney, Australia without a dime to his name. (1:17:57)
When he was getting ready to get on the bird to go, his friend came out and told him that
he only had ten days left in country.
He was processed out in Phu Bai and then he flew home. The mood on the plane was
great, people were yelling and screaming and jumping for joy.
Back in the States (1:19:41)
They first landed in Tokyo, and then they flew straight in to Fort Lewis, Washington.
When they got there they were all given a steak dinner. Each man was given a class A
green uniform with all their ribbons and stripes ready for them. (1:20:20)
Jim flew home to San Diego in uniform, but he did not have any troubles with protestors.
He was given a thirty day leave once he got home, before he had to report back in. After
living in the environment of Vietnam, it took some time to readjust.
Jim was originally slated to go to Fort Benning, Georgia to be an instructor at the infantry
school, however, at the last minute he was sent to Fort Riley with the 1st Infantry
Division. They went to Germany for a month and conducted war games with several
other nations. (1:22:50)
While in Germany, they were convoyed with their tanks and they did have some
opportunities to visit local villages and try the beer and the food.
They were able to spend one night in Nuremburg for R&R.
Jim was later offered a chance to get out of the army early if he was willing to spend a
year in the active reserves. When he got out, he had spent a little more than two years
active duty. (1:24:20)
Civilian Life (1:24:24)
When he got home to San Diego, he got a job working as a custodian at a recreational
club.
He started attending junior college and became interested in law enforcement.
Eventually he wound up joining the California Highway Patrol and was stationed in
Central Los Angeles. Jim stayed with the CHP for twenty eight years. He retired after
that and spent one year in Iraq and one year in Afghanistan as a police advisor. (1:26:14)
His first tour was in Afghanistan and his second was to Iraq. He went in to villages and
worked with local police officers and taught them how to do different things. Jim would
also talk with them about their criminal justice system and went on patrol with them on
the streets. (1:28:41)
When he was in Iraq, his first sergeant found out about his Vietnam experience and
presented him with a 101st Airborne patch.
Both of his tours were horrible and he would not recommend people to do that, but he did
learn about those cultures and a little bit of the language.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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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
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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Smither, James
Boring, Frank
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
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RHC-27
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eng
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
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MCCoyJ1551V
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McCoy, James (Interview outline and video), 2013
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McCoy, James
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Jim was born in Santee, California on August 29, 1951. After Jim graduated from high school in 1969, he decided to beat the draft and enlist in the United States Army. He was sent to Vietnam in May 1970 and worked as a base guard at Bien Hoa. After some time, he was reassigned to 1st Platoon, Delta Company, 1/506th, 101st Airborne out of Camp Evans. Jim took part in the attack at Firebase Ripcord. After getting out of the army, Jim joined the California Highway Patrol and served for twenty eight years. After retirement from the CHP, Jim went to Iraq and Afghanistan and worked as a police advisor to local police departments.
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Smither, James (Interviewer)
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Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Army
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
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eng
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
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2013-10-10
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project collection, (RHC-27)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/17114e18c67f0d9cecc0d8807b0e65e9.mp4
f431b2f42b08a727037ee572400ac60d
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/92c8cf0a53f5a8d748c2e575d0bfbaaa.pdf
53619c66253afeef71e5004a43ba3880
PDF Text
Text
ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW
JOYCE BARNES McCOY
A player in the first year of the league 1943
Women in Baseball
Born: 1925 Hutchinson, Kansas
Resides:
Interviewed by: Gordon Olson, GVSU Veterans History Project, September 27, 2009,
Milwaukee, WI at the All American Girls Professional Baseball League reunion.
Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, September 16, 2010
Interviewer: “Now Joyce, before we get into talking about that first year of the
league let‟s put some background information on the table. Tell me, if you will,
when and where you were born and a little bit about your family, your parents, and
that sort of thing.”
I was born on a farm south of Hutchinson, Kansas. My father was a farmer and my
mother had an uncle that had been in the oil business down in Louisiana and he became
ill and couldn‘t work any longer, so he bought this farm and he needed somebody to run
his farm, so that‘s where I was born, was on this farm.
Interviewer: “And what year was that?”
1925
Interviewer: “October?”
October 18th
Interviewer: “October 18th 1925. Your parents‟ names?”
Edward J. Barnes and Ethyl Amy Chase. 2:06
Interviewer: “All right now, we‟ll jump right into your youth. At some point you
start playing ball. You obviously enjoyed playing ball and how did it come about—
because it wasn‟t always what young girls did at that time, out playing ball.”
1
�I had two older brothers, a younger sister and a younger brother and those days were kind
of hard times. You didn‘t have a lot of money, but we were happy and we played and we
played ball.
Interviewer: “What kind of equipment did you have to play?”
Not very fancy and I didn‘t even have a ball glove until I was in grade school and got on
a ball team.
Interviewer: “The ball got batted around and you would stick it back together?”
Yes, we played with whatever we could find.
Interviewer: “If the bat broke you tapped it back together. You developed some
skill at the game though?” 3:06
Well, when I was in sixth grade we moved to—we had lived in a little settlement close to
the city of Hutchinson and then we moved farther out into the country and I went to a
little country school and I guess I was the biggest girl in the sixth grade, so the teacher
just decided I was to be the pitcher and that‘s when I really got started.
Interviewer: “Kept playing—did you play in any kind of organized teams or
leagues during that period of your life?”
No, we played against the other grade schools, all the other little country grade schools.
Interviewer: “And they would bus you I guess, or take from one school to another.”
By car
Interviewer: “By car from one school to another?”
Yes
Interviewer: “that can get to be some pretty intense rivalry once and a while?”
2
�Yes it was, I had some cousins in another grade school and they were pretty competitive.
One of the girls was older than me and she was a little better. 4:16
Interviewer: „You had to establish who was in charge there. Ok now, you play ball
and you‟re getting pretty good at it. At what point did it go--?”
When I went to high school the girls couldn‘t compete, they were not allow, they thought
it was too strenuous for girls to play ball and I know, I was a freshman in high school and
my oldest brother was a senior and the basketball coach told him that he sure wished I
was a boy.
Interviewer: “What was permitted for the girls?”
Well, we played tennis, we could play some tennis and we had one year of physical
education and that was all and we had intramural, but we couldn‘t compete with other
schools. 5:05
Interviewer: “Did you play any version of basketball?”
Yes, when I played there I had to play the girls rules, but when I was out in a—I was in a
country school where they had—the goals were outside and we played in the dirt and we
played boys rules then.
Interviewer: “I think for some of the people that will look at this interview, we may
have to explain just a little bit what girls rules were. Can you do that?”
The forwards played—they had a line at the half court and the forwards played on the
front and the guards played on the back part and guarded the forwards of the other team.
5:52
Interviewer: “So the guards could only come up to half court and had to pass the
ball into the offensive zone really.”
3
�When I was a freshman in high school they had a tournament in a little grade school
called Willis, which was east of my high school and the teacher, one of the teachers
wanted me to come and referee the game, so they let me out of school and I went over
and refereed the grade school game and if a person, a girl, had a hold of the ball and the
other one came up and put their hand on it, that was a foul.
Interviewer: “Didn‟t have to touch the person, just touch the ball?”
Just touch the ball, that was a foul. They didn‘t have any-Interviewer: “Certainly no type guarding or anything of that sort.”
No, no
Interviewer: “And that form of basketball persisted for quite a while actually in
some states I know. Before they finally decided girls could stand a little more
strenuous activity.” 6:57
When I was out of high school I went to work at the American Optical Company as an
optician and there were several women about my age and we rented a junior high gym
and we played boys rules and one night a Catholic Priest came in and he said, ―can I
bring my young boys over to play a game with you?‖ We said, ―sure, come ahead‖, so
they came over a few times. The first night they came we were there practicing and I
said, ―they probably want a basketball‘, so I dribbled to the halfway mark and threw the
ball and it went through the hoop.
Interviewer: “That‟s known as intimidation, that‟s what that is.”
Well, they came a few times and one night we went to play them and here came the priest
by himself and he said the nuns found out they were playing against the girls, so that was
4
�a no, no, but I did join a—we had a group of girls that—I think the Adla Hale Business
College kind of sponsored a team and I played against them some. 8:12
Interviewer: “You continued—were jumping ahead, but we‟ll finish this thought.
You continued in sports after you had played as a professional baseball player for a
year?”
I wasn‘t there a year; I was just there a short time. I read an article in the Hutchinson
News, I was still in high school and Fred Mendel was a sports writer and he said that
Phillip Wrigley was starting this professional women‘s softball team, so I wrote him a
letter and he answered me, Ken Sells was—and said they wouldn‘t have any coaches or
scouts in my area, but they would pay my transportation and that was during the war and
my mother didn‘t want me to ride on the train by myself. 9:09 I wrote him another letter
and they said your mother is welcome to come, but we won‘t pay her expenses, so we got
on the train and went up there and-Interviewer: “Up there being Chicago?”
Yes, to Chicago and we went to the Wrigley Building and Ken Sells interviewed me and
he said, ―well, we‘re going to put you with the Kenosha team and they‘re in Rockford
right now. He said, ―I‘ll be off work at five o‘clock‖, and he took us up to a room that
had a lot of beds and he said, ―you better go to bed and rest‖, and I thought my mother
needed it worse than I did and he said, ―I‘ll come and get you and put you on the train to
Rockford‖, so then we went to Rockford and she met—there was some older man that
was kind of a scout and then she met the coach and the chaperone and she decided that I
was safe, so she went home. 10:10
5
�Interviewer: “I wonder if that older man was Johnny Gottselig, he did a lot and
represented Wrigley in a—it wasn‟t a tight well run organization at first. They
were just putting it together.”
It could have been him and that team coach, manager, was--he said he had been in
Topeka, Kansas and I can‘t—I‘m having a senior moment and I can‘t think of his name
right now, but he didn‘t stay any longer than I did.
Interviewer: “he decided his future wasn‟t managing a women‟s baseball team?”
Well I don‘t think they gave me took much of a tryout. They let me pitch. I went to the
field and they gave me an outfit and shoes and their little dresses and things and I
practiced with them and we went to South Bend, Indiana and played and see, there were
just four teams, and we went to Racine and I think I pitched at Racine, but then I was
there three weeks and they paid me forty dollars while I was there and then they finally—
some young woman, she was older than I, came and they decided they wanted her instead
of me, so they-- 11:42
Interviewer: “You got your release.”
Yes
Interviewer: “How old were you at this point?”
Seventeen
Interviewer: “Seventeen years old.”
I was a roommate of Audrey Wagner. She and I were—she was just a little bit younger
than I, maybe not quite a year.
Interviewer: “When you say roommates, where did you stay?”
6
�We roomed with the Hill family. Mr. Hill had been a circus performer and he had been
in an accident and both of his legs were broken, so they had a house and they rented out
rooms. There was a lady, a corset sales lady, and she took Audrey and I to the picture
show one night and they also took me to a beer joint. It wasn‘t a very good place and I
wasn‘t use to that sort of thing.
Interviewer: “That‟s all part of growing up.”
I got kind of sick, of course Audrey, she was a German and used to drinking beer and it
didn‘t bother her. 12:46
Interviewer: “So that was one of your first introductions to drinking beer?”
Right
Interviewer: “The league is responsible for so many things.”
We sure had a good time. There was a lady from Canada, she was twenty-four years old,
Kay Bennett, and she roomed in the same house and she looked after Audrey and I and
kept us out of trouble.
Interviewer: “Now you said you pitched, had you been playing, like in high school,
on summer teams or anything like that?”
Well, just on summers teams, pitching.
Interviewer: “So you had experience as a pitcher?”
Yes, when I was thirteen years old, I take that back, when I was thirteen years old , still in
grade school, I could run so fast—they had ten players on the softball team at that time
and they had a roving short which played in-between the outfield and the infield and I
covered that whole area. 13:39
Interviewer: “You were what they call the short fielder.”
7
�Yeah, and I covered that whole area because I could run fast.
Interviewer: “That also means you probably could throw pretty well because that‟s
the other job of the short fielder. Cover the ground, get to the ball and in some
cases even throw people out at first if they‟re not hurrying down to the base.”
Correct, and I played every position but catcher.
Interviewer: “Let‟s talk about the game that you got introduced to during that time
that you were part of the All American Girls because it‟s not quite softball. They
were starting to move away a little bit weren‟t they in terms of the length of the
bases?”
I don‘t think so, not when I was there. I think it was what I was used to playing on.
Interviewer: “Ok, ok.”
And the ball was about the same.
Interviewer: “The leadership of league, Wrigley and those around him, grappling
with just what they wanted to present as entertainment and trying to sort out if it
was going to be baseball or softball or how it was going to be distinctive.” 14:58
They were still doing softball. Ms. Harney, she pitched more like I did—they didn‘t do
the ―windmill‖.
Interviewer: “So how did they—if they didn‟t do the “windmill” how did they?”
You just threw it. There at home, my catcher, she‘d take her glove off and she had a
pretty sore hand.
Interviewer: “So even though it was underhand, you weren‟t allowed to come up
and throw sidearm, strictly underhand?”
Well, in the league there they let them throw sidearm I think.
8
�Interviewer: “So can you throw a breaking pitch just drawing back and throwing
like that?”
Well, I had a little bit of stuff on it.
Interviewer: “Ok, ok.”
I know some of them couldn‘t hit it.
Interviewer: “That‟s what matters. 15:50 Well, another way—one more question,
a little bit more about that, is that the best quality softball you ever encountered at
that point, hitting better?”
Yes, they were all good players. Let‘s see, Mary Lou Lester was the short stop, Shirley
Jamison played, Janice O‘Hara was the first baseman, Peewee Westerman was the
catcher, she was younger than I was and he let her—and Helen Nicole from Canada, I
think they pitched her so much that she had a sore arm.
Interviewer: “Which is not a good thing. A sixteen year old catcher, she had to
know what she was doing back there.”
She was good. She‘s no longer living.
Interviewer: “Catchers pretty much run the show when they‟re out there.”
That‘s right.
Interviewer: “That‟s a lot of responsibility for someone that young.” 16:44
Audrey Wagner was a catcher, but they had her in center field. She didn‘t ever pitch
when I was there.
Interviewer: “So you had to be able to play more than one position?”
Yes
Interviewer: “Did you play other positions?”
9
�No, they just had me pitch, that‘s about it.
Interviewer: “Ok, how about the field itself, was it a pretty good place to play?”
Yes, it was a nice field.
Interviewer: “Well groomed?”
Right there in Kenosha, the Hills lived right on the lake, but after I was married we drove
up there and it had all changed. The field that I played on in Kenosha is not there.
Interviewer: “That happens unfortunately.”
Right
Interviewer: “I went back to a field that I once played on and there were forty foot
trees and it wasn‟t that long ago.”
I think they built houses in there now and the parks all gone. We would go down to the
lake and Mr. Hill, he got his lawn chair; he had to watch after us. He said, ―you have to
be careful there‘s maybe glass out there, so watch where you –you know people were
careless. Pauline, what was her name? She was from Chicago, she‘s go out there and get
on that pier and just dive in that cold water. I‘d step in there and my legs would hurt it
was so cold. 18:05
Interviewer: “She was more used to it. How about the fans, did you have good
crowds come out to watch the games?”
Yes
Interviewer: “Did they heckle or people questioning whether it was appropriate
activity for women?”
10
�Yeah, we had a lot. I think we felt, I did anyway, more patriotic at that time, so when we
went out on the field, the first thing we did was march out in a V for victory for the
armed forces, that was more my idea.
Interviewer: “That‟s how you started every game? With the national anthem?”
Yes
Interviewer: “That‟s a good point. You‟re seventeen; to what extent were you
aware that in a way you were part of the war effort. Did you think about that or did
they talk to you about that idea.”
Not so much that, I thought about it, I thought our purpose was to entertain the troops and
the defense workers, that‘s my idea. 19:15
Interviewer: “Did you have any perception at that point that Mr. Wrigley was also
concerned that they were going to cancel regular, not regular, men‟s professional
baseball?”
Oh no, no, no, we were—not to do that.
Interviewer: “That‟s not something he chose to share with all of you.”
No, that wasn‘t my idea. I‘m not a women‘s libber, if that‘s what you want to know.
Interviewer: “Well, that‟s a part of it—yeah, that‟s an interesting question because
those who choose to look back now, see you in that role, those of you who played
professional baseball.”
That wasn‘t my idea.
Interviewer: “Ok, it was just a chance to play ball?”
Yes 20:05
11
�Interviewer: “It takes a certain amount of gumption for a girl in Kansas to just sit
down and write a letter to Mr. Wrigley and say, “I want to come and play baseball
or softball for you”. Did you tell your mother you were sending the letter?”
She knew it.
Interviewer: “Your mother supported you in all of this?”
Yes, my dad, he was a fan of baseball. When we were in grade school the Phillies and
the Athletics came, Connie Mack was there. Vince DiMaggio was in the outfield for one
of the teams and daddy took us to the game and we saw all that.
Interviewer: “After the seasons were over they would often do that and if you lived
in Hutchinson, Kansas that was your chance to see major leaguers.”
Mickey Mantle was from Oklahoma and he played on a Joplin minor farm team and we
had a farm team and I quite often saw him play. He played shortstop. 20:58
Interviewer: “At that point. Did you have an inkling that this was a pretty good
ball player even then, in the case of Mantle?”
Yes, yes we did. 21:06 Bob Swanson was the pitcher for the Hutchinson team and he
said he struck him out.
Interviewer: “Well, he did strike out once in a while.”
A friend of mine, Lauren Arnold, he said he played on the—and he said, ‗I made up my
mind I wasn‘t going to let him get a hit off of me‖, but he said, ―I walked him‖.
Interviewer: “One way to do it. So you‟re time on the team was how long?”
Three weeks
Interviewer: “Three weeks and then they decided they wanted a different pitcher,
what did you do?”
12
�Well, I went into Chicago and I went to a game there, women played, and then I didn‘t
tell my mother I was doing this, I left Chicago and I had an aunt in Jefferson City and I
got on the train and went to Jefferson City. If my daughter would do that I‘d be frantic.
My brother was there, my aunt worked in a bakery there and I didn‘t even know my
aunt‘s address, but I knew the bakery‘s address, so I went there and they happened to be
working. I‘m very adventuresome. 22:21
Interviewer: “so you stayed there for—“
A couple of weeks and then my brother and I got on the train to got home. He had to go
into the service. He was going into the V12 training and so, what‘s this drummer, Gene
Krupa, he was going to put on a show in a Kansas City theater, so we got off the train in
Kansas City and went to that show and it was really fun.
Interviewer: “A little hard to go back to the farm after those experiences?”
Yes
Interviewer: “But you did and---“
We didn‘t live on a farm, we had four acres and we had a milk cow and chickens etc. My
dad helped—it was hard to find jobs and he helped build the first nine holes of Prairie
Dunes golf course. He said he needed a job and they said they were building this golf
course, so he went over there and Claude Morris was the foreman and he said, ―well,
you‘ll have to get you a Social Security Card‖, and it was in 1937 and he said, ―I can do
that‖, and he went to work. 23:35 I was trying to think who the fella that laid out that
course—the Carey family, the Emerson Carey family was big in Hutchinson and they
started Prairie Dunes. You probably heard of it haven‘t you?
Interviewer: “Yes, it‟s a well known course.”
13
�This fellow would come and he‘d drive out there and his big Pontiac car and he‘d say,
―Claude, I‘d like to have one of your men ride around with me, we want to look the sand
hills over‖, and he said, ―ok‖ and he said, ―I‘ll take Ed Barnes‖, and my dad was really
thrilled about that. He got to drive all over.
Interviewer: “Get to consultant on the layout of the course a bit.”
He was the waterman and they watered at night. He worked at night and he‘d walk the
course and the pro lived there above the clubhouse and his wife would come down, she
knew about what time my father would pass the clubhouse, and she would usually meet
him with a cup of coffee and a piece of pie or something. 24:33
Interviewer: “Nice to be appreciated a little bit. Ultimately within a relatively short
period of time, you‟ve gone to Chicago, tried out, very short tryout, been in the
league, you‟re out of the league, you‟re back home. Tell me what came next?”
Well, I had to finish high school.
Interviewer: “It‟s remarkable to me that you young women were doing all that, so
you went back and finished high school?”
Yes
Interviewer: “Did you continue in sports thereafter?”
Just sandlot stuff and I played a lot of basketball.
Interviewer: “Softball?”
Yes, a lot of softball. 25:28 My class, we had intramural sports in high school, and when
I was a freshman we won the basketball and we beat all of them even the seniors and we
won the softball too. I have a little—it has Pepsi-Cola on there and a little softball and
the year and I‘ve kept that.
14
�Interviewer: ―That was your trophy. How about other aspects of your life, you
married at some point?”
Well, after high school, my parents weren‘t wealthy and you had to pay tuition to go to
college, so I went to work at the American Optical Company and we made army glasses.
We put out a hundred pair a day. 26:30
Interviewer: “The army would outfit the soldiers.”
And the families and we would get orders from Fort Sill; see it was in Hutchinson,
American Optical Company. Fort Sill and different ones, Fort Leonard [Wood], I think,
was in Missouri. I worked in the finishing lab and I enjoyed that work.
Interviewer: “You stayed with them?”
I worked until, even for a short time after I was married.
Interviewer. “You married in?”
1947
Interviewer: “1947 and your husband had been in the service? Was he in the
service?”
He went into the service before the war started. He was six years older than me. I didn‘t
know him until after he had come home from the service and that was in 1945.
Interviewer: “Where did he serve?”
He was a fourth class—see they started training pilots in Corpus Christi and he was the
fourth class to go through Corpus Christi and they could choose if they wanted to go into
the navy or the marines and he chose the navy because he thought he‘d have a good bed
and good food. 27:33 They sent him to Alaska and on his way to Alaska, he was to fly
sub patrol--
15
�Interviewer: “They were concerned about submarines.”
The Japs had sent some torpedoes in you know. When he got to the state of Washington
they sent him out on a Coast Guard station and they had two fellas get in a plane and one
fella tied a rope around his waist and he had a bomb here, we weren‘t prepared for war,
and they flew out along the coast and if they saw a sub he was supposed to open that door
and kick the bomb out.
Interviewer: “Bombs away!”
He said it was—those fellas really—it was frightening, it was frightening, but young
fellas don‘t have the fear that the older ones do. 28:33
Interviewer: “Young women obviously don‟t either.”
He said that was really a dangerous duty he had up there because there was so much fog.
You had to fly by instruments because of the fog and also the mountains. You had to
know so you didn‘t crash into a mountain.
Interviewer: “You didn‟t have all of the devices they have on planes now.”
They had seaplanes and he told one story about a pilot and his co-pilot, they went down
and the pilot got—hypothermia sets in and he was gone, but the co-pilot, they were able
to rescue him, so it was dangerous.
Interviewer: “Yes, and all part of the war effort and all contributions in all
different ways. Did he stay in the military then?”
No, after he served eighteen months up there they sent him to—taught him to fly off a
carrier, it was a Jeep Carrier, I don‘t know if you know what that is or not, it was a
smaller carrier and they took tankers and destroyers, they took care of them. 29:55
Interviewer: “Now, they sailed as part of the—“
16
�They went in the south Pacific and he flew a Wildcat, which is a F4 fighter plane, and he
strafed the islands, Guam, Tinian, and I‘ve got his log book, the first flight he ever took,
and strafed those islands before the landing crews went in. They also had torpedo
bombers and there were two on that plane, he was alone. One reunion we went to they
were talking and he said he was chasing this Jap Zero plane and all of a sudden he lost it
and pretty soon the shells began exploding around him and he said, ―I knew that plane
was around there somewhere‖, and he was looking for it and this other fighter pilot said,
―our own ships were shooting at McCoy‖. 30:54
Interviewer: “That‟s kind of discouraging.”
He was in that terrible typhoon and it bent the flight deck down over the bow of the ship,
the weight of the ocean came over, so they had to go into Hawaii. He served nine months
there and they sent him to the south part of—in the desert of California and he was an
instructor and then he flew a Hellcat, which is a F6, it was a little faster plane and he was
an instructor there. He was just lucky to get home, he didn‘t get his discharge though
until 1956.
Interviewer: “He had a long commitment to the military.”
He didn‘t serve any.
Interviewer: The reserve? Some of the reserve?”
Well, he didn‘t—he thought he would get into a—the first year we were married he went
to Kansas City and took a physical, we had a Naval Air Station there in Hutchinson and
they thought they could form a group there and fly. 31:57 They wouldn‘t pay him, so he
said he wasn‘t flying.
17
�Interviewer: “Ok, that makes some sense. Did you continue to live in Hutchinson,
Kansas?”
No, we lived in Partridge; it‘s a little town southwest of Hutchinson.
Interviewer: “Same area though?”
Yes, the same area.
Interviewer: “And it‟s still there?”
Still there and we lived—our road was named McCoy, it was a mile long and on the north
side of the town. We had a quarter section we lived on.
Interviewer: “Did anyone in that area know that you played professional
baseball?”
Yeah, they found out.
Interviewer: “How did they find out?”
Well, I guess I told them and they had a museum there in Hutchinson. 32:45 The way
they found me—the curator of the museum in Hutchinson knew that I had played and
Dottie Key and her husband came to Hutchinson for a big –we had a big showing at the
mall. Jack Banna, he had played, he was a Hutchinson man and he played for the
Dodgers and he won a game in the World Series for the Dodgers and we took our
memorabilia into the mall, so he introduced me to Dottie.
Interviewer: “Now, was this before or after the movie?”
This was after. 1996.
Interviewer: “There was a period of time in there before the movie where not too
many folks knew about the league and the women who had played and you just kind
of went on with the rest of your life, right?”
18
�Right, my nephew lives here in Milwaukee and he read an article in the newspaper in
Milwaukee and he sent me the paper and said, ―Aunt Joyce, those girls you played with,
they‘ve got an association‖, and then I met Dottie Key after that. 34:02 She came from,
they have a big complex out on the west side of Hutchinson where they have tournaments
and teams from all over the country and she came and was a guest there.
Interviewer: “Ok, you saw the movie then and do you have an opinion of the
movie?”
Yes, I saw the movie and it was a movie.
Interviewer: ―Parts of it you like and parts of it you don‘t like?‖
Those girls, they were supposed to be sisters, and they lived on a farm.
Interviewer: “The Weavers?”
I don‘t know who they were, but they had never been on a farm, they didn‘t even know
what a cow looked like. They didn‘t tell that in the movie, but that‘s right.
Interviewer: “A farm girl would know.”
Yes, and we didn‘t have a drunk coach either in our dressing room. 35:02
Interviewer: ―You know, that‟s one aspect of the movie that an awful lot of you
commented on. That was too Hollywood. How about since the movie, people are
aware again of it, how has that affected you?”
Oh, they think I‘m an icon I guess.
Interviewer: “Do you enjoy that?”
Some of it and they asked me to come and throw out a pitch at this complex there and I
never experienced anything like that. The officials, officials of Hutchinson, the Mayor
and some of those were there, so they introduced us and when they introduced me I stood
19
�up and the whole grandstand was alive and yelling and hollering, so I took my hat and
waved at them and then they started in again. All the umpires and things, they took their
hats off and I had to autograph everything. I had my picture taken. 36:10
Interviewer: “Well, overdue recognition I think.”
It was a little bit overdone.
Interviewer: “Well, but it was time to recognize that very unique experience that
you women had during and after WWII. I think that‟s what people were doing,
saying, “we almost forgot and now we‟re glad we didn‟t”.”
Well, I didn‘t really think I was that great.
Interviewer: “Since then have you done other kinds of activities? Speak to groups,
talk to young women who want to be in athletics, any of that sort of thing?”
Well, a young girl in Haven, Kansas was doing a history project on women in baseball
and she got in contact with the league and they said, ―well, the only one we have in
Kansas is Joyce McCoy‖. 37:03 She lived in the little town of Haven, which is about
fifteen miles from me, so she came to see me and we had a good time and she did a good
job and she went to the University of Maryland and then finally she went to the
Smithsonian Institute with her--she just graduated from high school and she‘s in college
this year and she‘s quite a baseball player. My goodness, she can pitch. She can throw
the softball sixty miles an hour and they say that‘s equivalent to ninety miles and hour
with a baseball.
Interviewer: “She‟s pretty close.”
But she does that windmill.
20
�Interviewer: “You do get a little more speed on the ball that way. Do you see
yourself as a roll model?”
No, not really, I play golf and I bowl, I‘m too old to play baseball now. 38:02
Interviewer: “you still stay active in sports? It sounds to me like sports have always
been an important part of your life?”
My granddaughter and grandson were swimmers. My granddaughter was pretty good in
swimming and her times are still in the high school there in Wichita.
Interviewer: “It‟s in the family.”
And then her children—my great grandson is thirteen years old and he‘s a wrestler and a
football player, baseball player and in wrestling he went to the University of Missouri in
Columbia, he lives in Parkville, and he got third in the state and he‘s thirteen years old.
Interviewer: “Now, do they all know that grandma was a ball player too?”
Yes
Interviewer: “Do they like that?”
Christopher, the next little boy, he was only two years old and I was the only one who
could pitch to him right so he could hit the ball. You know they thought he was little and
they would throw the ball and it would go down like this. 39:02 You have to throw it
straight so they can hit it and he‘d hit the ball when he was two years old.
Interviewer: “Grandma‟s still teaching?”
Yes
Interviewer: “Great and thanks for taking time to talk to me. I really appreciate it
and gentlemen you‟ve been sitting here, anything occur to you that we didn‟t cover
that we should cover?
21
�Thank you
Interviewer: “Thank you very much.”
22
�23
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Sports for women
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives
Oral history
Baseball players--Minnesota
Baseball players--Indiana
Baseball players--Wisconsin
Baseball players--Michigan
Baseball players--Illinois
Baseball for women--United States
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401
Identifier
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RHC-58
Format
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Language
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eng
Date
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2017-10-02
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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RHC-58_JBarnes
Title
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McCoy, Joyce Barnes (Interview transcript and video), 2009
Creator
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McCoy, Joyce Barnes
Description
An account of the resource
Joyce Barnes McCoy was born in on a farm south of Hutchinson, Kansas on October 18, 1925. She played softball with her siblings and then played various sports throughout grade and high schools. One day while still in high school she was reading a Hutchinson News article in which read that Phillip Wrigley was looking for girls to try-out for women's softball teams up in Chicago. After one correspondence—Mr. Wrigley paid Barnes' way to the tryout in Chicago. She started and ended her professional career by playing with the Kenosha Comets in 1943. She played as a pitcher while there.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Olson, Gordon (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Video recordings
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives
Baseball for women--United States
Baseball
Sports for women
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Baseball players--Wisconsin
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2009-09-27
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a>
Format
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application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
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PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Todd McCrumb
(22:20)
(00:17) Background Information
• Todd was born in Lansing, Michigan in 1965
• His father was a state policeman and was often transferred all over Michigan
• Todd graduated from high school in 1984
• He had not been interested in going to college right away and the unemployment
rate was at 16%, so he joined the Air Force in August of 1984
(2:45) First Days in the Air Force
• There were many angry people in the Air Force that he had to train with
• Training was intense and the drill sergeants were mostly left over from Vietnam;
they were all very mean
• Todd was sent to South Korea near the DMZ where he worked with the security
police guarding F-16s with nuclear weapons and U2 spy planes
• They also worked with the South Koreans
• There was one South Korean guard for every American that was there
• Every young man in South Korea has to join the military for two years after
graduating
• Much was lost in translation and problems were caused by miscommunication
(6:50) Every Day Activities
• Long distance cost about $3/minute so Todd preferred to write letters
• He made only $600/month and could not afford the phone calls
• They always got free rides on planes and had great food
• Todd said that it was “like eating at Big Boy every day,” and that he gained a lot
of weight
• There were many activities at the recreational centers, they received many free
concert tickets, and free hunting/fishing licenses
(11:15) The End of His Time in the Service
• A bill had recently been passed that sought to cut military costs and decrease the
size of the military
• Todd had though about re-enlisting, but wanted to be stationed somewhere other
than Montana because it was very boring
• He had even offered to go back to the DMZ in South Korea
• They told him that if he re-enlisted he would be in Montana for another 6 years
• Todd was off the base in Montana in 4 days and back in Michigan
• He was unsure of what he wanted to do for his future and had thought about
becoming a state policeman
• He later decided to take classes at Grand Valley State University, where he
received his Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree and is now a teacher
�(15:15) Effects of His Military Experience
• Todd is now much more involved in international news, but feels that much is
spinned to promote special interests
• There are some in the military that are just war-mongers and looking to kill
• Todd was trained more in helping people than in hurting people
• In the reserve he spent a lot of time working with first-aid and providing help
during disasters
• Todd feels that peace is not the absence of war, but the result of war because there
are a lot of bad people out there
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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McCrumbT
Title
A name given to the resource
McCrumb, Todd (Interview outline and video), 2008
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
McCrumb, Todd
Description
An account of the resource
Todd McCrumb was born in Lansing, Michigan in 1965 and enlisted in the Air Force in 1984 shortly after graduating from high school. He had been unsure of what he wanted to do in his life, not ready for college, and unemployment in the area was at 16%. Todd spent time working with the security police near the DMZ in South Korea. He was later stationed in Montana. Todd did not re-enlist because he was told he would have to spend another 6 years in Montana. He later graduated from Grand Valley State University and is now a teacher.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Davidson, Matt (Interviewer)
Nosanvo, Catlin (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. Air Force
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
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2008-06-02
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/967aebab829e65b53a24e8538cf2e089.jpg
4787be84ccfb1c8077a038b5736b78b8
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
Faces of Grand Valley
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
University Communications
Description
An account of the resource
A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1960s - 1990s
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In Copryight
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University
College administrators
College teachers
Colleges and universities -- Faculty
Michigan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
GV012-03
Format
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image/jpeg
Type
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Image
Language
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eng
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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McCulloughJohn
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. University Communications
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1971
Title
A name given to the resource
McCullough, John
Description
An account of the resource
John McCullough, Chemistry
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University – History
College teachers
Universities and colleges – Faculty
Michigan
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In Copyright
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
image/jpeg
Language
A language of the resource
eng
1971s
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1a59847a441e525ee5cda00376339d77.jpg
6f9b4509d18d3bc98e74221c40af6904
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Faces of Grand Valley
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
University Communications
Description
An account of the resource
A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1960s - 1990s
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In Copryight
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University
College administrators
College teachers
Colleges and universities -- Faculty
Michigan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
GV012-03
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
image/jpeg
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Image
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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McCurleyJill
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. University Communications
Title
A name given to the resource
McCurley, Jill
Description
An account of the resource
Jill McCurley. WGVC-TV Production Director
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University – History
Michigan
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03)
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives
Rights
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In Copyright
Type
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Image
Format
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image/jpeg
Language
A language of the resource
eng
-
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PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
World War II
Lewis McDonald
Length of Interview (0:00:00- 1:23:17)
(0:00:00 – 0:03:10) Background
Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in December 1922 (0:00:16)
Went to St. Francis parochial school for 10 grades, and then South High School. Graduated
in 1940 (0:00:36)
Father was a streetcar operator, and after streetcars were taken off worked for the new bus
company in the shop (0:01:06)
After high school worked for the A&P grocery store (0:03:10)
(0:03:15 – 0:05:20) Enlistment
Motivation for enlistment (0:03:15- 0:05:50)
Decided to go into the service as sister was serving as a nurse, and brother was a gunner
(0:03:25)
Had heard about Pearl Harbor while at a bar, but didn’t initially think about going into the
service (0:04:15)
He and a friend chose to enlist so that they could possibly choose their branch of service
(0:05:00)
He enlisted in December 1942 (0:05:20)
Basic Training (0:05:20 – 0:10:20)
Went to Fort Custer in Battle Creek, Michigan, and completed basic training at Fort Sill,
Oklahoma (0:05:50)
Enjoyed the train trip to Oklahoma, states that war was not on anyone’s mind (0:06:20)
Once at the camp the shorter men were separated from taller boys for work placement, he
was placed with the taller group (0:6:50)
Had flat feet, but didn’t tell the doctor(0:07:25)
Was assigned to the mule pack during basic training for 4 months, spent a lot of time
outdoors, walking and traveling (0:08:30)
Air Corps Training (0:10:20 – 0:21;50)
Recruited for the Air Corps (0:10:20)
Trained for Air Corps at Wichita Falls, Texas (0:11:00)
From there went to Santa Ana, California (0:11:15)
Took a college course while waiting for cadet program to start (0:11:35)
�
Went to Santa Ana and started the cadet program, stayed in wooden barracks (0:12:08)
Went to school all the time, and then spent time flying PT-22 tandem front and back open
cock pit, over 100 horsepower engine monoplane (0:12:24)
The planes had no radios, so the radioman sat in the back and relayed messages through a
tube (0:13:05)
He and others experienced constant worry about getting “washed out” if you didn’t meet
qualifications (0:13:58)
Stayed for 8 months which included three training stages, primary, secondary, and
advanced (0:14:30)
In the classes learned about aviation, navigation, mechanics, and Morse code (0:15:00)
Advanced training was in Pecos, Texas (0:16:20)
Had the choice to fly fighters or bombers, he chose bombers (0:16:45)
Graduated as Class 44F (44 is 1944, the year he graduated, F was the number of the class)
(0:16:50)
From there he went to Roswell, Mexico for training in a B-17 (0:17:05)
Most flight instructors were civilians (0:18:20)
For entertainment, they went to bars and to dances (0:20:00)
At times there were USO shows (0:20:35)
First impression of flying a B-17 which had a 100 ft. wingspan, was it felt like flying the
house around (0:21:50)
(0:23:00 – Active Duty
Deployment to Europe (0:23:00 – 0:31:50)
Went to Tampa, Florida, as a flight officer, which is equivalent to a warrant officer. They
were not considered commissioned officers, but they were officers (0:23:00)
Once they got a crew together, went over on the ship Queen Elizabeth (1994) (0:24:25)
While on the ship the four officers were treated like kings while the enlisted men were not,
who packed five decks below (0:24:40)
Landed in Scotland and took a train to the base, 50 miles north of London in
Ridgewell(0:25:05)
During training practiced a lot of formation flying (0:25:25)
Bombing focused on German airfields and train tracks to cut out all methods of
transportation (0:25:50)
Never saw a German air fighter the entire time he was there (0:26:14)
Missions were often 10 hours long in duration (0:28:30)
His main base was at Ridgewell
The base had an officer’s club, a mess hall, a PX, and hospital, and Quonset huts for
housing(0:28:40)
Explains the importance of flying in formation, formation was a defense mechanism to
prevent fighter planes from attacking (0:31:52)
First combat mission (0:31:50 – 0:50:18)
�
For the first mission he flied Tail End Charlie, where you fly low below and behind
everyone in the squadron (0:32:40)
Describes missions as exciting, your adrenaline pumping (0:32:55)
Describes it as fun and thrilling, dangerous but still a thrill (0:33:40)
Describes shock at being able to fly a bomber while in his early twenties (0:34:22)
Did not lose many aircraft at this time in the war (0:35:00)
Lieutenant Bob Jankovic was the only one that the troop lost during this mission. His plane
was shot down, and he did not know it was Jankovic’s plane until 30 years later when he read
a history book on the Eighth Air Force, which was his combat unit (0:36:39)
Jankovic’s parachute opened too soon after he bailed from the plane, and caught on the tail
of the plane, though Jankovic landed alive, his leg was broken, and he was captured by
Germans and spent the rest of the war in a POW camp (0:38:12)
Mission to Pilsen, Czechoslovakia (0:38:50 – 0:45:00)
Pilsen, Czechoslovakia was a very dangerous place to fly because they had a big munitions
factory, The Skoda industrial plant (0:40:35)
He underwent training to be a squadron lead pilot (0:41:00)
While flying to Pilsen, the radio announced that the Eighth Air Force was coming in to
bomb the Skoda Works in Pilsen (0:41:20)
When the unit got there everyone at the works was prepared and on guns (0:41:45)
They dropped bombs on the secondary target (0:42:32)
As a bomber, he had no idea if he hit his target or not, so they would send planes overhead
before and after to take photographs (0:43:22)
Post European Tour (0:50:18 – 1:06:00)
His crew had been a replacement crew and the last one over, so they were to be the first
to leave and return to the United States to retrain with B-29s (0:51:25)
Went back to the States three weeks after the war was over in June (0:51:50)
Went to Tampa, Florida at MacDill Air Force Base where he started flying 29s (0:52:00)
The war ended before he ever was deployed again (0:52:40)
To get his 3 hours a month of flight time to get fly pay, he would fly an L-5, a field
artillery spotter plane around (0:52:00)
It took 200 gallons of gas to get off the ground, and was expensive (0:53:00)
Had a lot of fun flying, would go out Sunday morning to get flying time in (0:54:10)
Photo Reconnaissance Unit (0:56:00 – 1:00:00)
He ended up in Greenland as a crew pilot (0:56:30)
Any state that wanted mapping would contract the Army to get aerial photos (0:57:05)
Spent time in Little Rock, Arkansas doing mapping for a summer (0:57:10)
�Pause in tape at (0:58:10)
Joined a Photo Reconnaissance Unit to Greenland to make new maps of Greenland,
building a new base in Thule (0:58:15)
Took two B-17s to Greenland, spent a whole summer there (0:59:00)
The plan was to send all the photos back to the United States and make new maps from
them (0:59:40)
The base at Thule is now fully operating today, and the Strategic Air Command has a big
base there (0:59:40)
The base is built on refrigerated bases to keep the structure solid so it wouldn’t sink in the
spring and summertime (1:00:45)
Describes his and other reservists' relationship with West Point graduates as being
somewhat unfriendly (1:05:15)
Was offered three options after the war: stay in at his current rank and continue to serve
indefinitely, get out, or take the rank of a Master Sergeant and stay in the regular Army
(1:05:45)
Life after the military (1:05:50- 1:23:17)
He got out in January 1947, and began looking for a job (1:06:15)
Gave up hopes of being a commercial pilot because the job market was nonexistent and the
pay was low (1:09:15)
Became a plumber and began the apprenticeship program, and then joined his friend’s
company (1:09:30)
Stayed with his friend’s company for three years, then joined the union as a commercial
plumber, hoping to work on larger projects (1:11:00)
Was laid off after a year, and went to work for himself, working mostly remodeling and
houses for 35 years (1:12:11)
Describes of his time in the service: “You got to know people a little bit better,” says “it
was a great experience.” (1:16:45)
Ends at 1:23:17
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
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eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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McDonaldL0568V
Title
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McDonald, Lewis (Interview outline and video), 2007
Creator
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McDonald, Lewis
Description
An account of the resource
Lewis McDonald of Grand Rapids, Michigan, is a World War II veteran who served as a pilot with the Eighth Air Force. Lewis was drafted in 1943 and went to Fort Sill, Oklahoma for basic training. While there, he was recruited into a pilot training program, and was sent to England in late 1944 to be a B-17 pilot. He flew regular missions over Central Europe until the German surrender, at which point he was sent back home to train as a B-29 pilot, but the war ended before he was to deploy to the Pacific. After the war, he remained in the Army Air Corps for a year and a half, mostly flying B-17 on aerial photography missions, and spent the summer of 1946 doing this at Thule, Greenland.
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 Air Corps
Language
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eng
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2007-12-01
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
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application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b84e2a2de865ed140335b0b5b8a2d196.jpg
20962fd6f21da0ed732a582d02ffd92b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Faces of Grand Valley
Creator
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Grand Valley State University
Contributor
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University Communications
Description
An account of the resource
A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1960s - 1990s
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In Copryight
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University
College administrators
College teachers
Colleges and universities -- Faculty
Michigan
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives
Identifier
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GV012-03
Format
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image/jpeg
Type
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Image
Language
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eng
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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McGeeNellie
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. University Communications
Title
A name given to the resource
McGee, Nellie
Description
An account of the resource
Nellie McGee, Student Life Assistant
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University – History
College administrators
Michigan
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03)
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives
Rights
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In Copyright
Type
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Image
Format
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image/jpeg
Language
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eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b7cd56396d8d29a14ebb35e676557401.mp4
07df1d3520e6d4200fd06ffd65b45e28
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PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Vietnam War
Madelaine McGregor
Length: 38 Minutes
Pre War
She was born in South Bend, Indiana (0:30)
Her maiden name is Schrader and she has one older brother (0:38)
She went to high school in South Bend (0:44)
She meet her husband [Michael McGregor, whose interview is also in our archive] when she was
15 in high school in blind date on Halloween, she married him at the age 19 )1:29)
She was working for an insurance company, she had been in co-op in high school where she
worked half a day and went school for the other half (1:48)
She thought about going to college but her family did not have enough money (2:01)
She would have gone into nursing had she gone to college and she had volunteered at hospital in
middle and high school (2:32)
She got married in 1965 her husband had graduated from the university of Indiana and had
accepted a job in Columbus, Ohio (2:44)
The wedding was moved up by two weeks so that her husband could be exempted from the draft
that had just been announced (3:28)
They had their honeymoon in Saint Joseph, Michigan and then they moved Ohio where her
husband started his job as a syphilis epidemiologist (4:44)
�She was going to find a job, but her husband Mike did not want her to work so she did not, after
a few months they moved back Indiana where her husband got a job with the Bendix Corporation
(5:23)
The Draft
Her husband was drafted in the fall, because by that point they had started to draft married men
with no children (6:02)
She moved in with her parents, and soon found out that she was pregnant (6:35)
She was in shocked that she was pregnant (6:48)
On her husband's side of the family this was the first baby born in 22 years (7:20)
She told her husband after basic (7:56)
Working and Pregnancy
She started working in an office in order to pay for the car and because her allotment from the
military was very small ( 8:37)
They sold typewriters and office machines, and hid her pregnancy as long as possible but she had
to tell her boss eventually, which led to her having to sit in the back of the room and she could
not work with customers (9:43)
She felt that it was unfair, but they did help her as much as possible, but the day after she left the
job she had the baby (11:47)
She needed the money to help pay for the baby (12:07)
�After the bay was born she got more money from the military and she saw her husband during
the third trimester, She was later able to take the bus to see him (12:21)
Communication
Her husband Mike was originally be sent to Germany but he wanted to be stateside to see his son
be born, after Mike Jr. was born, he got papers to be sent to Vietnam (12:54)
Mike’s father had died during D-Day and he was raised by his Mother and Aunt. His brother
served in the Marines and got out just before Mike was drafted (13:38)
She did not see Mike until next June when Mike came on leave, by that time Mike Jr. was 1
(14:43)
They kept in touch by sending letters and tape recordings (15L36)
It was difficult to write the letters because she was not sure what to tell him about because how
normal her day to day was compared to what was happening in Vietnam (15 48)
Mike’s letters were largely positive and did not mention the fighting, his only compliant was
about the food and she sent him care packages every month 16:15)
She was able to see him for 10 days in Hawaii and the people treated them very well, and Mike
was able to do many things that he had missed (17:03)
Mike had changed a lot. He was he was much quiteer and did not like crowds because the effect
of the war he was even suspicion of children and had difficultly interacting with other people
(18:17)
He very observant of any room they were in (18:34)
�She went home, and was receiving enough money not need to work, because she got a larger
allotment after the birth of Mike Jr. Mike was able to leave the service several months early, with
no explanation (21:01)
After the War
She and the baby went to go meet Mike, there was sense that people looked down on them
(22”31)
Early when they had dinner near the base people treated them very poorly and were did not want
serve them at all.(23:38)
They were treated well in South Bend, but Mike continued to have nightmares and other problem
for a couple of months (24”23)
They decide to take a vacation to reconnect and they went to Niagara Falls, and they felt much
better (25:52)
Mike got a job and they moved to Niles, Michigan (25:48)
Mike became a Human Resources director which was something that he liked more than being
an epidemiologist (26:14)
They had another child named Melissa, and Madeline was a stay home mother because that was
what they though was best for the family (27:34)
She disagreed with the anti-war protestors and would argue with them (29:24)
They children kind of knew that their father was in Vietnam nut they were very young at the time
(29:45)
�She was very removed from the women women’s movement, was more effect by the civil rights
movement that they supported because they grew up in desegregated community (31:34)
One of the Mikes friends from the war was an African American man who in an interracial
marriage, was disliked by the McGregors’s neighbors when the couple came to visit (32:02)
She also noticed segregation when they went to Kentucky to meet her husband and that affected
her greatly(33:23)
She happy that troops were treated better now, but she is unhappy that her husband was treated
poorly at the time (35:03)
She was not sure why they were in Vietnam and disliked the war but did not talk to Mike about
that (35:57)
Her husband as still effected by the aftereffects of the war such as bouts of fear and alertness but
it was lessened over time (36:45)
She talked to a friend about it a little bit but there was not support groups or consular to go to so
she dealt with it as best as they could (37:43)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27_McGregorM1680V
Title
A name given to the resource
McGregor, Madelaine (Interview outline and video), 2014
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2014-10-09
Description
An account of the resource
Madeline McGregor was born in 1946 in South Bend Indiana. She married her husband Mike McGregor in 1965, at age 19, and her husband was drafted the next year. Around the same time she became pregnant, and had her son Mike Jr shortly before her husband left for Vietnam. While her husband was training but before her son was born Madeline sold typewriters at a store. After he served his two years Mike returned and they had another child named Melissa.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
McGregor, Madelaine
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Coryell, Janet (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives, American
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
United States. Army
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Moving Image
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>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University Libraries. Allendale, Michigan
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3082209a6ff62d35615fe995891c6412.mp4
3318ec7b3bd84c492b20c50537e02575
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PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Michael McGregor
(2:23:37)
Background Information (00:03)
Born in Indiana on February 5th 1943. (00:04)
His father was a career soldier in the Army. He died in World War II. (00:10)
His parents met at a Military Academy were Michael’s father was running the ROTC. (1:25)
His brother was born in 1941 while his father worked at Fort Hayes, Ohio. (2:41)
He graduated from South Bend Central High School. (3:06)
He attended college with VA assistance and graduated in 1965. (3:15)
Michael majored in history and had the intention of becoming a teacher. (3:40)
He later began working for the U.S. public health service where he interviewed people
diagnosed with syphilis to help control its spread. (4:06)
He married his wife early to avoid the draft. (5:03)
He then began making fuel controls for the F111 at Bendix Aerospace. (6:25)
In September of 1966 Michael received his draft notice. (6:40)
In November of 1966 he reported at the Chicago induction center where he was processed.
(6:55)
Basic Training (7:20)
He began his basic at Fort Campbell, Kentucky (7:26)
The men stayed in World War II barracks. (7:55)
Basic lasted 8 weeks. The training consisted of close order drills, hand to hand combat, physical
training, and an emphasis on decline. (8:12)
If detractions were no followed, men were often “volunteered” for hand to hand combat
demonstrations. (9:14)
Michael’s company consisted mainly of National Guard and Reserve men. (9:55)
Being at almost 23 years of age, Michael was older than most of his fellow soldiers. (10:43)
While in basic, Michael was given a pay of 90 dollars a month, of which 50 dollars when home to
his wife. (11:37)
He was OCS (Officer Candidate School) qualified and opted for it. (12:25)
He was then sent to Advanced Individual Training for artillery at Fort Sill Oklahoma. He later
dropped this OCS training due to his wife’s unexpected pregnancy. As a result of dropping OCS,
Michael was placed in an artillery unit. (13:30)
Service at Fort Sill (14:00)
He trained in a brand new area with brand new barracks and squad bays. (14:01)
The training at Fort Sill was not as rigorous as his basic. (14:27)
He was placed in field artillery operations and intelligence. This trained Michael to locate
targets, and calculate quadrant and deflection for the gun. (14:41)
He was very good at this job, due primarily to his background in math and map reading. (16:14)
�
The training process at Fort Sill took 4 months. (18:04)
He was assigned to go to Germany. However, he preferred to stay stateside until the birth of his
child. Due to this, he was placed in a holding company. He was used primarily in training
exercises. (18:19)
On July 29th 1967 Michael’s son was born and he was given leave. After returning he assigned to
go to Vietnam. (20:14)
At the time of his deployment, Michael knew that Vietnam War was going on but he could not
fathom the reality of being sent there. (20:52)
At the time, he men that Michael knew from training who went to Vietnam went because they
volunteered to go. (22:37)
There were no newspapers readily available that the soldiers could easily access. (22:54)
He did not want to travel to Vietnam, but he was not willing to abandon his family to avoid
being sent. (25:34)
Voyage to Vietnam (26:01)
He was first sent to RVN (Republic of Vietnam) training at Ft. Sill for 3 weeks before being sent
overseas. This consisted of class room training were the men were instructed on cultures,
practices, and environment of Vietnam. (26:05)
In basic Michael was trained on the M14. In RVN he had to qualify with the M16. (27:04)
Anti-ambush training was also taught. (27:12)
After finishing RVN, the men were sent home on leave. (27:35)
While reporting in Oakland, California, Michael did encounter some protesters. (28:06)
He was sent out of Travis Air Force Base by plane to Vietnam. He left at 10:00 at night. (28:57)
At approx. 2 AM the plane landed in Honolulu, Hawaii. The plane then landed in Japan and then
Cam Ranh Bay. (29:39)
The heat and the humidity were the first things that the soldiers noticed. Michael was also very
scared. (30:10)
Arrival in Vietnam (31:30)
The base was much like any other army base. However, the building did look very fragile. (31:34)
Upon his arrival, Cam Ranh Bay did not seem to look much like a war setting; it was surprisingly
calm. (32:50)
It took 2-3 days to be processed. After being assigned Michael was sent to Camp Ratcliff where
he was assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division. (33:06)
Every man joining the division had to go through a 1 week jungle school. (34:30)
The men were made to go through booby trap courses. (35:28)
While on perimeter duty at night, Michael heard what he thought was an enemy in the bush and
opened fire, only to be stopped by a sergeant. What he had heard was something known as the
“Fuck you Lizard.”(36:00)
The men repelled out of towers and then practice repelling out of helicopters. (37:53)
Michael was then taken by plane to the 1st Battalion of the 21st Artillery. (39:03)
Service in the 1st Cavalry (39:56)
�
The cavalry battalions had did not have any heavy weapons companies at the time but only 4
rifle companies. They were then given 4 howitzers. [McGregor's battery of 1/21 artillery was
thus attached to the 2/7 Cavalry] (40:25)
The Air cavalry had 3 practice maneuvers a day. One in the morning, one in the afternoon, one
at night. (41:58)
He stayed in FDC (the battery's fire direction control) for about 10 days. (43:50)
Early Action in Vietnam : Operation Byrd (44:03)
During this operation the men went on “raids” or a “hip shoots.” This is when one or more of
the battery's guns were flown to temporary positions to support the infantry when they went
beyond the range of the guns in the more permanent position. A raid was completed in a day,
but on a hip shoot they would stay for one or more nights in the new position. After 10 days in
his unit, Michael was sent on a “hip shoot” here he was shot at. (44:20)
Often times the men went in with a senior NCO. The men would then assault the area and set
up a perimeter. (46:00)
There was often an artillery preparation before the men landed. (46:48)
The men often only had a matter of seconds to get off the helicopter before it would lift off
again. (48:26)
His first night on his first “hipsho0t” Michael fell asleep. He awoke to a trip flare. (49:29)
Michael and his unit were working to break the influence of the Vietcong in the area and
protect the rice harvest. (51:14)
There was a city near where Michael was stationed. This meant there was a large amount of
people who needed a large rice harvest. (53:26)
Because there was a town nearby, the men were able to get leave if they were good soldiers. In
town the men often drank. (54:29)
When he arrived in Vietnam, Michael had the intention of keeping a diary. (57:43)
He was in Phan Thiet form October 1st 1967- January of 1968. (58:55)
The native people didn’t pay much attention to the soldiers unless they were spending money.
(59:10)
There were only 2 rough incidents while in this area of Vietnam. (1:00:50)
There was some friendly fire. Several U.S. soldiers were killed by a napalm strike. (1:02:54)
Most of the heavy fighting was done with by the time Michael arrived. There were still some
snipers in the area. (1:04:58)
His unit was moved out of Phan Thiet in October of 1967 before the Tet Offensive stated. He
was moved near Bong Son in LZ Mustang. (1:06:41)
While at LZ Mustang the men were attacked almost every night. (1:09:11)
A U.S. trap set around the perimeter consisted of wire connected to claymore mines. (1:10:45)
Michael felt sympathy for a North Vietnamese soldier who was killed by a detonated claymore
booby-trap. He admired his courage to go and fulfill an objective that would most certainly get
him killed. (1:12:03)
The Tet Offensive (1:13:04)
The Tet offensive began while Michael was at LZ Mustang. He was later moved to the Northern
part of Vietnam to take part in the counter attack. (1:13:07)
�
His unit was given the task of blocking to the North. There was a bridge and a river that was to
be secured just north of Hue. Once secured, they were also to provide fire support. (1:15:10)
Michael was fortunate to miss the bulk of the fighting during the securing of the bridge. The
men did, however, come under fire on multiple occasions. (1:16:20)
The men spent approx. 1 week securing and protecting the bridge at Hue. (1:18:47)
Operation Pegasus (1:20:04)
Michael missed the initial deployment by one day due to his R&R in Da Nang. (1:20:15)
The North Vietnamese set up several strong points on hill tops anticipating the men to travel in
on the road. Instead they air assaulted in. (1:20:16)
He rejoined his unit at LZ Thor. (1:22:27)
Marines were sent in initially to clear the area. After hitting intense resistance they fell back.
(1:22:47)
When he arrived in Khe Sanh, it looked as though there had been some fighting a
bombardment, but most of its appearance was typical to any other LZ. (1:24:43)
The men were them moved to LZ Stud. While here several men hijacked the mess truck of
another company. (1:26:11)
Often, long delay fuses were placed on buried supplies such as nails from ammo boxes when the
men left an area. This was to stop the North Vietnamese form digging up the supplies and using
them in booby-traps. (1:27:05)
Operation Delaware (1:29:09)
After the completion of Operation Pegasus the men were sent back to Camp Evans. (1:28:09)
The one thing that Michael had heard about Vietnam was of a rescue attempt made in the A
Shau Valley. This was the location that Michael was sent next. (1:28:25)
He was first sent to LZ Pepper. While being dropped, the helicopter took fire and crashed. No
men were injured. (1:30:34)
Because the Vietnamese were caught of guard during operation Delaware, often times Michael
encountered enemy soldiers and had to fire upon them. (1:33:50)
For approx. 1 week, Michael and his unit still saw Vietnamese soldiers wander toward their unit,
ignorant to the fact they were there. (1:35:55)
Michael worked with 3 howitzers during this operation. (1:36:45)
His unit was in the A Shau Valley for approx. 2 weeks. Then he was moved to an area east of
Camp Evans. There the men simple secured the area. Often the men had to force North
Vietnamese out of tunnels. (1:38:00)
He stayed near the China Sea till he came back to the U.S. in September of 1968. (1:40:46)
While in Vietnam Michael had his hands cut up by barbed wire and took some shrapnel. Aside
from that, he was left relatively unharmed. (1:41:20)
Life in Vietnam (1:41:58)
His wife attempted to write him every day. His mom also wrote often. Michael had trouble
receiving mail only if he was being moved to another location. (1:42:01)
He worried that if his family knew where he was then they would be very worried about him,
more so then they already were. (1:43:15)
�
During some R&R in Hawaii in June of 1968 (after 9 months in Vietnam), Michael was able to
meet with his wife. (1:43:47)
The people in Hawaii were very gracious of Michael’s service. He was often offered discounts at
hotels and free drinks. (1:44:52)
Michael received a tape from his wife while in Vietnam. The reality of having a piece of his life
that was not in the Army was difficult to grasp. (1:46:53)
Discharge (1:48:50)
He landed in U.S. at Fort Lewis Washington at 9AM. At then PM of the same day he was
discharge. (1:49:32)
There were offers made to Michael to reenlist. He had no interest in doing so. (1:51:18)
Life in Vietnam (cont.) (1:53:00)
Because he went in to a unit of soldiers who have been in the field for a while, he joined a unit
of strangers. (1:53:01)
Michael did have some mentors which helped him get assimilated with the other soldiers.
(1:54:30)
The rotation of high command men was often viewed as ridiculous. The reason was that this
often resulted in the change of company structure every 6 months. (1:55:38)
There was a lot of resentment over what the higher command soldiers had verses the average
soldiers and the pay that different solders had. (1:58:44)
While napping before a flight in Cam Ranh Bay, Michael and one of his fellow soldiers was yelled
at by a Sergeant Major for napping and wearing dirty uniforms. The Sergeant Major was
dressed well and wore a flak jacket with shined shoes while Michael whore tattered clothes. The
conversation was then interrupted by a pair of pilots, who outranked the Sergeant Major, and
informed him that “where those men are going they shoot pricks like you.” (2:00:05)
The pilots then bought the two soldiers drinks and asked them about how well they thought the
air units helped them in the field, since they didn't get much feedback from the troops.
He felt that the inequality that existed in the military had the solders on the ground taken
advantage of. (2:04:57)
Life after Service (2:05:03)
When he arrived home he was greeted by his wife, some, brother, and sister in law. (2:05:26)
He began working in humans recourses. (2:07:24)
He was hired at a plant to instill a sense of discipline. He was hired due to his military
background and height being 6’4”.(2:08:01)
Michael was unable to take advantage of the G.I. bill after he returned to the U.S. a bill was later
passed that allowed him to take it. (2:09:36)
Thoughts on Service (2:11:20)]
He met a lot of good people and had a lot of good times, but he also had some of his worst
times while in the service. (2:11:24)
He wished he had gotten more contact information. When he left the military he recognized
some men only by their call sign. (2:12:12)
�
One man he did meet while in the Army he did keep in contact with later became an air line
Pilot. (2:14:00)
Michael was not exposed to much of the protests in the late 1960s. He did follow the war after
he was discharged. (2:16:39)
He did not know why the men were fighting in Vietnam. He came to the conclusion that it was a
colossal waste. (2:17:15)
He didn’t like how the protests vilified the soldiers. (2:18:54)
There was a lot of pride within the 1st Cavalry. (2:20:47)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
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Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
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RHC-27
Language
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eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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McGregorM0561V
Title
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McGregor, Michael (Interview outline and video), 2010
Creator
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McGregor, Michael
Description
An account of the resource
Michael McGregor, born in Indiana in 1943, served in the U.S. Army from November of 1966 through late 1968 in the 1st Cavalry Division in the Vietnam War. After receiving his draft notice, Michael trained at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He was then sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where he began his work in field artillery. In the fall of 1967 Michael was sent to Vietnam and was placed in the 1st Cavalry. He served in the Phan Thiet area at the end of Operation Byrd, and moved up to the Hue area after the start of the Tet Offensive, and later in the Khe Sanh area and the A Shau Valley.
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
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eng
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2010-05-06
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
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application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a89747d353bce3611824e3eacfbf6109.jpg
39e9f8276ecca0e733b693b9edf5f861
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Faces of Grand Valley
Creator
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Grand Valley State University
Contributor
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University Communications
Description
An account of the resource
A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1960s - 1990s
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files
Rights
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In Copryight
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University
College administrators
College teachers
Colleges and universities -- Faculty
Michigan
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives
Identifier
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GV012-03
Format
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image/jpeg
Type
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Image
Language
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eng
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McHenryDelbertSmith
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. University Communications
Title
A name given to the resource
McHenry, Delbert
Description
An account of the resource
Delbert McHenry, Psychology
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University – History
College teachers
Universities and colleges – Faculty
Michigan
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In Copyright
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Image
Format
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image/jpeg
Language
A language of the resource
eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e3a5648f27266025fea75f33c55dfb4f.mp4
03281c02f51ed3740b55ddbc4f15cf5b
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c8f1071931490e7dd8e604d147edb3f1.pdf
95e5f3400ed2c2c722c44062507b0fbd
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Name of Interviewee: Thomas McIntire
Name of War: Vietnam War Era
Interview Length (00:12:15)
Pre-Enlistment
Graduated from high school, but the draft was still in effect (1:00)
Figured that enlisting would be easier than getting drafted (1:15)
Enlisted in the Army in June of 1965 (4:20)
Training
Was not in good shape for boot camp, struggled with it (1:40)
Had a drill sergeant that chewed tobacco all the time, but was a pretty nice guy (2:20)
Did what he was supposed to do to pass boot camp (2:30)
Wasn’t too hard (2:45)
Basic training was eight weeks long at Fort Knox, KY (3:10)
Came home on leave for several weeks, but went back to Fort Knox for truck mechanic
school for another 6-8 weeks (3:15)
Was sent to Germany after that (3:25)
Went out to learn how to drive trucks one day, but he had never driven a manual truck
before. It was a quick learning process (5:00)
Enlistment
Discharged as a Specialist, 4th Class (0:20)
Was a truck mechanic in Germany (0:30)
Enjoyed the scenery in Germany (3:35)
Went to the motor pool every day to work on whichever trucks needed fixing (4:00)
Stayed in touch with family by writing letters, also took pictures (5:50)
Never came home while in Germany (6:20)
Food was nothing exciting, but got used to it because there was nothing better (6:35)
There was a nightclub on base (7:00)
Also had a car, so he could travel through Germany (7:20)
Always had pranks going on in the motor pool (8:10)
Was discharged from the Army in June of 1968 in Fort Dix, New Jersey (9:30)
Post-Enlistment
Hung around his house after discharge (9:45)
Got bored quickly and looked for a job (10:00)
Made a few friends, but doesn’t talk to any of them anymore (10:15)
Got a job, but also went back to school (10:45)
Was a tool and die maker (11:00)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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McIntyreT
Title
A name given to the resource
McIntyre, Thomas V. (Interview outline and video), 2005
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
McIntyre, Thomas V.
Description
An account of the resource
Thomas McIntire enlisted in the US Army three days after his graduation from high school. He was sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky for boot camp, and later for truck mechanic school. The Army sent Thomas to Germany, where he worked in the motor pool on a base there. Thomas was discharged in June of 1968, and came back to Michigan to become a tool and die maker.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Velting, Stacy (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
2005-05-26
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/381c179c1cf4025a2c25b2208d2939d0.jpg
3ad82b51f96b1ac792efc4f2e46486f3
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
Faces of Grand Valley
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
University Communications
Description
An account of the resource
A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1960s - 1990s
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In Copryight
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University
College administrators
College teachers
Colleges and universities -- Faculty
Michigan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
GV012-03
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
image/jpeg
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Image
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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McKeeSteve
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. University Communications
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1977
Title
A name given to the resource
McKee, Steve
Description
An account of the resource
Steve McKee
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University – History
College teachers
Universities and colleges – Faculty
Michigan
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In Copyright
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
image/jpeg
Language
A language of the resource
eng
1977s
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7bfc0958a03c94fcca1055e9cd68d101.mp4
2b6785eefaafffa29eebad04126ee4ca
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ab4874972adeb6aba47193e47bdadb3c.pdf
fd072d861047d095bbf084e217a7e160
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview Notes
Length: 44:46
Donald McKersie
WWII Veteran
United States Army; February 1943 to January 1946
87th Division, 347th Infantry, 3rd Army
(0:33)
•
•
•
•
•
Pre-Army Background
Born in Grand Rapids, MI in 1924
Graduated from South High school in 1942
His father was a farmer, whom he learned to be a hard worker from
Worked for Michigan Bell before joining the army
Inducted into the army on February 1st
(3:15)
•
•
•
•
Notions of World War Two Before Joining the Army
Remembers hearing about Pearl Harbor
All the news he gathered was from the radio
Did not follow news of the war very closely
He had expected to be drafted in the near future
(4:00)
•
•
•
•
•
•
Pre-War Training
First sent to Fort Custer in Battle Creek, MI
Next sent to Camp Roberts in CA
Spent 90 days in infantry training
He passed a test that made him eligible for Officer Candidate School
Joined a Special Education program
Was later sent to Stanford in CA for engineering classes
(5:25)
•
•
•
•
•
•
Nazis Invade Europe
Promptly removed from Stanford and sent to Fort Benning in GA
Learned maneuvers for additional assignments
Assigned to the 71st Infantry Division, which was a light division from Panama
Very few of the men in his division could read or write
He first spent six weeks doing KP and Guard Duty, which he did not like
Finally complained to Captain Swope, who in return asked him to sign a
document, in which Donald unknowingly volunteered to go over-seas
(9:10)
•
•
•
•
87th Division
Traveled from Fort Dicks to England on the Queen Elizabeth
There were 10,000 division troops on the ship
Spent five weeks in England and then traveled to France
Walked across France, Belgium, Germany, and Luxembourg
�(11:25) Experience in Europe Differed from Training Experience
• Training is not even comparable to combat
• He lost several of his friends in Europe
(12:30) Experience of Combat
• Combat is “One day after another of fear”
• Carried a running automatic rifle
• Combat = killing, being shot at, automatic rifles
• He had a mortar experience in which he believes a guardian angel protected him
(17:00) Experience of Front Lines in Campaign
• Was not completely aware of what was going on with the War in other parts of
Europe
• Read the Stars and Stripes newspaper to learn more of his surroundings
• He did not know much of the German attack in the Battle of the Bulge before
getting involved
• He acquired frost bite on his feet at the Battle of the Bulge
• His division spent 3-4 weeks in the freezing cold before they were able to sleep
somewhere warm
• The enemy was actually about 500 yards to a half mile away, so there was no
close-hand combat
• They were always very happy to see the “flyboys,” who helped support the
artillery
• There were so many of the “flyboy” bombers that they turned the sky black
(21:00) End of the War
• By the end of the war, his division had pushed all the war through Czechoslovakia
• His division had gathered up thousands of prisoners
(21:30) Battle of the Bulge
• Can’t recall much of the experience because he blocked most of the memories out
• Does remember crossing over the Rhine
• While staying at an inn in Germany, the building was attacked and all the
windows broke. The inn-keeper was crying and Donald felt very sorry for him.
He said it was pitiful.
(23:20) Relations with Europeans
• Many Americans did not get along with the French
• They had good relations with German citizens and Donald enjoyed the country of
Germany
• Encountered evidence of concentration camps and saw lamp shades made of
human skin
• While in training, he had been taught to fear the SS, yet had not gathered much
information regarding the Nazi regime
�(26:20) The Last Stages of the War
• His division had taken in many prisoners
• The violence had stopped instantly
• His division accepted the prisoners and were thrilled to see so many surrender
• Donald left Czechoslovakia and headed to New York, eventually leaving for
Japan
• His division left the prisoners with the Russians
(28:20) The Last Six Months of Being in the Army
• Donald was on a 30 day furlough when the war in Japan ended, which was in July
• He had been re-assigned to the Finance Corps in New Jersey where he helped to
pay other soldiers that had been discharged
• The government had tried to convince him to stay in the army longer, yet he felt
that he could never get out fast enough
• He had been shipped back to Grand Rapids where he met his future wife
• Afterwards Donald attended classes at Michigan State University with his GI
benefits, yet he eventually dropped out when his old job at Michigan Bell offered
his a raise. He continued to work there for 27 more years
(31:00) Description of General Army Experience
• Donald disliked being a soldier because he had been taught to kill
• He respects all men who have served in the armed forces and has a great loyalty
to the flag and the United States as a country
• His army experience had a major effect on his life afterwards, which helped him
to start his own business where he sold and installed telephone systems for 19
years; his son now runs the business
• Donald is personally responsible for the break-up of Michigan Bell because he
brought the company to court regarding their monopoly over phone service
(36:00) Prisoner Experience
• Did not witness any maltreatment of prisoners
(37:00) Experience of Training
• Similar comparison to present-day training
(38:40) Bombing of Japan
• Donald was very excited when he had heard the bombs had been dropped
• The city of Grand Rapids was booming with excitement; they had even set off
fireworks, which had startled him because it reminded him of his combat
experience
(40:20) World War Two Movies
• The movies really bring back old memories and experiences
• Donald thinks that every American should see “Saving Private Ryan”
�(42:00) Guardian Angel
• He had four major operations in the past fourteen years and has made it through
all of them relatively well
• Recalls the mortar experience in the war and believes that he was protected by a
guardian angel
• While in the war, he never once thought that he might not make it home
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
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1914-
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
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Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
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RHC-27
Language
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eng
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
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McKersieD
Title
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McKersie, Donald V. (Interview outline and video), 2007
Creator
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McKersie, Donald V.
Description
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Donald McKersie is a WW II Army veteran who served in the European Theater and in Japan. He took part in the Battle of the Bulge, and talks about the disposition of prisoners by his division. After being sent to Japan, he was on furlough when the war in Japan ended. McKersie discusses the effect serving in the Army had on his life and on his success as a businessman.
Contributor
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Smither, James (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Video recordings
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Prisoners of war--Germany
Veterans
Language
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eng
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2007-07-02
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
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application/pdf
video/mp4
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/92f2dd4fb06f51de15cca08d2dabece4.jpg
d57b991110fe1a4beee9d29e7780361b
Dublin Core
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Title
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Faces of Grand Valley
Creator
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Grand Valley State University
Contributor
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University Communications
Description
An account of the resource
A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1960s - 1990s
Source
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GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files
Rights
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In Copryight
Subject
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Grand Valley State University
College administrators
College teachers
Colleges and universities -- Faculty
Michigan
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives
Identifier
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GV012-03
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image/jpeg
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Image
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eng
Still Image
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McKimmeyPaul
Creator
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Grand Valley State University. University Communications
Title
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McKimmey, Paul
Description
An account of the resource
Paul McKimmey
Subject
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Grand Valley State University – History
College teachers
Universities and colleges – Faculty
Michigan
Source
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University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03)
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Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives
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In Copyright
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Image
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image/jpeg
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eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/78fd9314cf47f90f06fb841e85bd25cc.mp4
46ab2eee2323376b39aa310f472b2680
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3bd05776d1866a0e4acf235cc7f11b3c.pdf
79bb6088b723dfa36f2a9f0c3f55326f
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veteran's History Project
WWII
Jack McKindley
Total Time (00:27:43)
Introduction / Service (00:00:10)
Jack was born March 23rd, 1925 in Kalamazoo, Michigan (00:00:33)
He graduated from Mendon High School in 1943; he remembers his family were together when
they first heard about the Pearl Harbor attacks and was very shocked (00:02:13)
◦ Although Jack was drafted, many of the older guys in his high school enlisted after Pearl
Harbor (00:02:50)
◦ He was sent to Keesler Air Force Base for basic training in Biloxi, Mississippi (00:03:38)
◦ At that point he was designated as Army/Air Force (00:04:24)
▪ Jack's drill sergeant was a corporal and was very loud and strict; he said they were all
afraid of him because of the consequences they would suffer if they made mistakes
(00:06:01)
▪ Jack and a few others were sent to Arkansas to be a part of the military band; he played
trumpet for them (00:07:02)
He played trumpet as a child and this was seen on his application for the military
(00:08:20)
He was at the Air-force base in Arkansas for about a year and a half and spent about
eight hours a day either playing or practicing trumpet (00:09:18)
◦ Jack didn't think much about how the bars in Memphis, Tennessee were racially
segregated; he didn't really notice or pay much attention to it (00:10:24)
◦ In addition to being trained as a musician, Jack was also trained for medical
responsibilities as well (00:12:42)
◦ He was part of the 469th Air-force Band; there were 28 members in total
(00:13:30)
▪ Jack and his band arrived at Newport News, Virginia in early 1945; they
were placed at Camp Patrick Henry, Virginia (00:14:07)
▪ Most of the men in his band were young but he did have a master sergeant
who was about 15 years older than him at the time (00:16:28)
They played all kinds of music: classical, dance, swing and military
marches (00:17:10)
Jack remembers when the Germans surrendered in 1945 while he was at
Newport News and he describes it as a thrilling experience (00:19:01)
◦ He was stationed in Virginia through 1945 and into 1946; he was
discharged in March of 1946 (00:20:10)
◦ Red Skelton came through Patrick Henry along with other celebrities
to perform at USO shows (00:22:00)
▪ Jack remembers he and a few others had to give a stubborn, rich
recruit what they called a “GI Bath” to teach him a lesson
(00:23:56)
▪ Jack's mother used to write him page after pages of letters; he had
two brothers in the Navy as well (00:24:45)
�▪
He received one leave to go home while at Newport News
(00:25:17)
Back Home (00:25:22)
Jack got a job in Mendon working with batteries and cables; after that he enrolled at Western
Michigan University- he received his Bachelor’s in Music in 1950 (00:25:56)
He and his wife taught in Howard City and then ended up in the Wyoming, Michigan school
system in Grandville (00:26:36)
He played with the Grand Rapids Symphony for a year and then went onto the Grand Rapids
Symphonic Band for six years (00:27:10)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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McKindleyJ1593V
Title
A name given to the resource
McKindley, Jack (Interview outline and video), 2014
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
McKindley, Jack
Description
An account of the resource
Jack McKindley was born in 1925 in Kalamazoo Michigan. He graduated from Mendon High School in 1943 and was drafted to the United States Army. After doing his basic training at Keesler Air-force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, he was sent to Arkansas to be part of the military band. He played trumpet for the 469th Air-force band with 27 other members. They were stationed outside of Newport News at Camp Patrick Henry in Virginia during the end of the war. He was discharged in March of 1946.
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
2014-04-17
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cce4fd468b90d1cc20ebe196f5384581.pdf
7458ebb0199cafd172e0d47ca039207e
PDF Text
Text
1
Grand Valley State University Special Collections
Kent County Oral History collection, RHC-23
Mrs. Ford McLachlan
Interviewed in 1974
Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010-bryant@wellswooster.com
Tape #54 (1:02:34)
Biographical Information
Mrs. McLachlan was born Veronica Elizabeth Josephine Jungbaecker on 1 August 1883 in
Grand Rapids, Michigan. The family name is pronounced ―Youngbaker.‖ She was the daughter
of John Jungbaecker and Johanna Frances Keister. The parents were married in the Netherlands
about 1872. John Jungbaecker died 20 November 1923 in Grand Rapids, Michigan at the age of
77. Johanna died in Grand Rapids 5 May 1936 in Grand Rapids at the age of 87. Both of Mrs.
McLachlan’s parents were buried in Mt. Calvary Cemetery.
Veronica was married 20 February 1920 in Grand Rapids to Ford H. McLachlan. Ford was born
in Grand Rapids in August 1887, the son of John Norman and Harriett E. (Hooker) McLachlan
who were married in Grand Rapids on 27 April 1882. John McLachlan was born in Canada April
1860 and died in Grand Rapids on 11 September 1944 at the age of 84. Harriet was born in
Michigan in 1859 and died in Grand Rapids on 24 April 1943. John and Harriet were buried in
Fulton Street Cemetery in Grand Rapids.
Ford McLachlan died in Grand Rapids on 14 January 1943. Veronica died in Grand Rapids on
21 December 1988. Both were buried in Mt. Calvary Cemetery.
___________
Interviewer: You said you and your sisters would go there [Crescent Mill] collecting.
Mrs. McLachlan: Well, when Dad used to do work for them before he built that house, you see…
Interviewer: I see.
Mrs. McLachlan: And the Voigt family lived on the West Side.
Interviewer: I see, before they built the Voigt House they lived over on the West Side.
Mrs. McLachlan: Near the mill you see. The mill was on the corner. [She is talking to another
person here]
Interviewer: And he worked for them. Before the building, what kind of work did he do before
building? Always building or just carpentry?
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, when he was a young man and after he left school he took up carpentry
work. When he was eighteen, he went into the army, of course, that was compulsory over in
�2
Germany. When he was through with the army, he emigrated into Holland. His father had
preceded him, because his farther was living in Middleburg. Dad was working in Vlissingen? on
a big railway station, depots they call them here. And that’s where he met my mother was in
Holland.
Interviewer: Yes, And when did they come to this country?
Mrs. McLachlan: In eighteen seventy-three.
Interviewer: Yes,
Mrs. McLachlan: They settled in Grand Haven, and my older sister Mary was born there. Then
after a year or so there, Dad said there were no prospects here so I am going to move on to the
bigger city. Of course, he heard Grand Rapids was a bigger city than Grand Haven.
Interviewer: Did he come to this part of the country mainly because of his wife’s Holland
connection? How did they happen to come to Michigan?
Mrs. McLachlan: I will tell you what, when my mother was ten years old, of course her father
died, and she had a little brother seven. They had gone into another city to collect some money;
you know how they did that years ago - they didn’t mail it. You had to go and collect it. Some
little inheritance, maybe it was—I never knew. They contracted, there was an epidemic in the
city, and they both contracted this disease and they came home and they both died.
Interviewer: Oh, my.
Mrs. McLachlan: Her mother meanwhile had met a Hollander from Grand Haven, who was
traveling over there. He was a widower, a Mr. Ball, and he wanted to marry my grandmother, so
she said alright and so she came to this country and she left my mother there alone with the
grandparents.
Interviewer: Oh, I see, so she had a natural want to come over here.
Mrs. McLachlan: When she came here, she hadn’t seen her mother in fifteen years.
Interviewer: Then, your father came up to Grand Rapids because there was more work here.
Mrs. McLachlan: He thought there would be. He was working on boat down there; you know
finishing up the cabins and that.
Interviewer: So he was a skilled finish carpenter.
Mrs. McLachlan: Oh yes, of course that was German legendary know how. Even Ralph Voigt
said that in his letter, in his article in the ―Wonderland‖. When they came to Grand Rapids the
population was only sixteen thousand five-hundred here in eighteen seventy-four. I read that in
the paper a year or so ago, so I kept track of all that.
�3
Interviewer: Not a big city, but it seemed like a big city for this part of the country then.
Mrs. McLachlan: And there were Indians here on the island in the Grand River and Campau, if
you read the story of Campau.
Interviewer: They used to get paid off every year. They paid off the Indians every year. Your
father then became a builder as soon as he got here.
Mrs. McLachlan: Now right away, he worked as a carpenter, and I think when I was born in
eighteen eighty-three, he just started his business.
Interviewer: My, are you ninety-one years old?
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, I will be ninety-two in a few months.
Interviewer: You’re remarkable.
Mrs. McLachlan: I don’t know.
Interviewer: You don’t know, I’ve seen some people ten or fifteen years younger that didn’t look
as good.
Mrs. McLachlan: That’s a good age too in the seventies, of course, I think that is young, because
I was active in my seventies and eighties. Just my eyesight now that has… I can read the finest
print; I could until just a few weeks ago but now I am using (?), but sometimes I am better off
not using it.
Interviewer: What did your father do when he (?)
Mrs. McLachlan: Well, he was a carpenter for about ten years after he came here. See the
language barrier was what held him up. He learned the English language. Then he told my
mother I am going into business and she said, ―I will tell you something.‖ (Dad was awfully
quiet) ―Dad if you are going into business, you are going to have to start talking.‖ She said he
never stopped after that.
Interviewer: Did you speak English at home?
Mrs. McLachlan: Always, I still don’t see how they learned to read and write. I just don’t know.
Interviewer: As far as you’re concerned, when you were growing up you spoke English at home.
Mrs. McLachlan: I never remember them speaking German except when some of their German
friends came over.
Interviewer: And they didn’t teach you German either?
Mrs. McLachlan: No, we went to a German school.
�4
Interviewer: You did?
Mrs. McLachlan: We went to German Parochial School. And they kept up these old languages,
like the Polish school taught Polish, they wanted their children... Well some of them they had to
because they couldn’t communicate with their children unless they knew how to talk Polish or
German or something. My folks they started to learn right away. Anyway my father was the
progressive one in our family.
Interviewer: Because he went into business for himself. When he went into business for himself,
did he go into it as a builder?
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, a contractor and builder. Well, you saw, this is one of the last billheads
and it is all yellow with age. The first decade of this century,
Interviewer: That’s right, it would be nineteen ten and on up.
Mrs. McLachlan: And he retired in nineteen eleven. Oh, quite a while ago, Mrs. [Barbara]
Roelofs, when I talked with her which was three or four years ago, or three, anyway it was
before Ralph Voigt died, because I went over to the Voigt House because he invited me over
there…
Interviewer: Oh, did he?
Mrs. McLachlan: …after that article came out in the ―Wonderland‖. What he said to the reporter
from the Press was, he said, ―They don’t build houses like this anymore. This was built by
artists.‖ Well, I just couldn’t resist the next day, I called him up and told him who I was and said
I am the last member of this family, of my father’s. I told him that and I couldn’t help but call
him up. He said, ―I want you to come over and see this house. If anybody’s entitled to see it you
are.‖ We had pictures, Ralph’s father had given my dad two pictures, oh they were about this
size; one was of the outside of the house and one of the beautiful stairway. And my mother had
them framed in little gold frames. And they hung in our dining room there was a sort of a niche
toward the living room where my father’s safe was. And she had hung them over the safe. And I
can remember looking at those pictures a hundred times. When they sold the old house and built
the new one, I don’t know what became of all these old pictures. I didn’t help my mother move
and I never knew what became of them. Unless they were put in a dresser in the attic at the new
house, but I never went up there.
Interviewer: Was the stairway special and did your father do that himself?
Mrs. McLachlan: No, he didn’t work at all, he never worked at the trade after he went into his
business.
Interviewer: I see, just a contractor, then?
�5
Mrs. McLachlan: He had some of the finest carpenters, craftsmen I would call them. One of
them was Ralph Lypse, he was good on stairways and mantelpieces and stuff like that.
Interviewer: And he carved them himself, that man carved the round…
Mrs. McLachlan: No they didn’t do any carving. That was all done in the factories by expert
carvers. Our factory that got out this work.
Interviewer: Yes.
Mrs. McLachlan: I was too young to tell who got out all this interior finish. The Ocker and Ford
Company were the ones that did it. And my father was the president of that company for twenty
years.
Interviewer: I see.
Mrs. McLachlan: He started that company, he and Mr. Clark bought the land, built the factory
and had the stocked subscribed for.
Interviewer: I see.
Mrs. McLachlan: That was in the early eighties, before eighteen eighty-six because he went to
Germany in eighty-six, when my sister Anna was born. Anyway.
Interviewer: What was the name of the company again? Ocker and Ford.
Mrs. McLachlan: On Fourth Street, and the Voigts lived right there in our corner of Mount
Vernon, You know where Front Street is, all these people had their homes right along near the
factories where they worked because they had no transportation.
Interviewer: You had better be there.
Mrs. McLachlan: You had horses and buggies and the streetcar, that was all; and my dad bought
his first horse and buggy at that time and then, of course as the family grew so does the vehicle.
We had a two-seated cutter and a double-seated phaetons with the fringe on top. And then he had
two single buggies. We always had two horses as long as I can remember until the day he retired
and then he had a horse yet. Even after he had bought his cars, we had two cars later on and he
learned to drive he still had a horse. He was getting older, sixty five you know and he was
coming around the corner of Monroe and Bridge Street and he was going to cross the bridge and
he put his foot on the accelerator to get around the corner and a policeman stopped him and said
you are going too fast. But I wanted to get around the corner, the policeman told him you have to
slow down when you go around the corner,.
Interviewer: ...instead speeding up?
�6
Mrs. McLachlan: He was the funniest guy, full of life you know, wonderful sense of humor.
This lady wanted me to make up a list of the different homes that he built in the [thirties?].
These are old, I wrote these, this has been revised, there are a lot of things I didn’t think of until
later. That was my first copy; then I wrote this one over. Did I tell you he built the house that
Jack built out at Reed’s Lake?
Interviewer: No, I didn’t know that.
Mrs. McLachlan: That was sold, that was William Jack that owned the American Boxboard
Company.
Interviewer: Yes, yes.
Mrs. McLachlan: He had a awfully hard time getting started because he had no capital, he went
to the Goodspeeds, John. And he didn’t want any part of it. See, he didn’t know who to go to, of
course the Goodspeeds were in the real estate business and they made all kinds of money. And
later on in thirty-six when I worked for Harrison Goodspeed, just temporarily you know, to catch
up on some of the work. Mr. Perkins, who was a state bank examiner, was John Goodspeed’s
bookkeeper. He worked half days, that’s the way they were hired, but I was on full time. And
then Harrison, when I worked for him, I found out from their statements that Harrison had threehundred thousand dollars in that company and his father had five-hundred thousand dollars. You
see, they kept putting in money after it got going. They practically owned the thing.
Interviewer: Oh, for heaven’s sake.
Mrs. McLachlan: Of course the Jacks were quite well to do. I knew William Jack because, I’d
forgotten that my dad had built that house, that was when he was semi-retired and my brother
was taking care of it and his foremen. Mr. Jack came up to see me when I was working in the
Metz Building for Mr. Dykhouse lumber. He said to me, ―Are you Miss Jungbaecker? And I
said, ―Yes, I am.‖ He said, ―I’m Mr. Jack and I wanted to tell you that your brother wasn’t taking
care of his work out to the house.‖ ―Well‖, I said, ―the foremen are there, and Dad has good
foremen.‖ You see, Dad just financing the thing, he wasn’t really wasn’t active anymore and
wasn’t inspecting anymore. ―Well,‖ I said, ―I will go home tonight and tell my father.‖ But they
finished the job and …it’s a very beautiful home. I guess I was never in it.
Interviewer: Were you ever in Dr. Hake’s house?
Mrs. McLachlan: No, but that was sold to Judge Raymond Starr,
Interviewer: Raymond Starr, you said, yes!
Mrs. McLachlan: I don’t know who bought it when he retired and was in the nursing home, he
was at Olds Manor. Then his wife Minnie was out to Pilgrim Manor, not Pilgrim Manor the other
one the Porter Hills and she died. And I don’t know if this Judge Raymond Starr was, he was the
�7
last one. That’s right. Then there was the Wenzel Cuckerski home. Then there was the Bernhard
May home, the brother of Meyer May of the May Company downtown. Bernhard was from New
York, married a New York girl, he came back here to Grand Rapids with his wife and he wanted
to build a home so they got a hold of my dad and they built that house, and I’ve never seen it.
But his wife didn’t like it here so she wanted to move back to New York.
Interviewer: So they went back to New York, and sold the house.
Mrs. McLachlan: Sold the house to a Mr. Godfrey.
Interviewer: Yes.
Mrs. McLachlan: He went through there and said, ―Who was the contractor and builder?‖ He
said, ―Mr. Jungbaecker.‖ ―I want to get in touch with him because he knew his business and I
want to remodel a few things and change a few things.‖
Interviewer: Now, were those houses built after the Voigt House?
Mrs. McLachlan: I know the Voigt [house] was because she was a Voigt girl you know?
Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. Hake was Clara Voigt.
Mrs. McLachlan: And she was Ralph’s sister. And the Meyer [Bernhard?] May house? I was
quite young, because I remember him coming home to mother and saying what is a French
toilet?
Interviewer: Oh, oh.
Mrs. McLachlan: She said how would I know if you don’t. She said the plumbers and fitters will
know what it is.
Interviewer: They wanted a French toilet, huh?
Mrs. McLachlan: I never knew what that was at my age and my father didn’t know, and I got
down to Cuba in nineteen twenty-eight, I was in the Imperial hotel, three of us women and I
went to the bathroom and my gosh I must have pushed the wrong button or something and I got
all wet.
Interviewer: Oh, you had a bidet!
Mrs. McLachlan: So I found out what that was. I told them I got all wet and they said well that is
a French toilet. Well, my father never knew…
Interviewer: Were you in the Voigt House when it was being built? Were you around, then?
�8
Mrs. McLachlan: Ralph told me, he was going to Union High School when I was going to St.
Mary’s on the west side same street a couple of blocks away. And I use to see him as a kid, he
was a year older than I was. He told me that after school he went over there every night, every
afternoon after school and would talk to my father. All he could remember was that his name
was John. He said he had the plans up in the attic and he could find out. I said I can tell you what
his name was, and it is a hard one to remember and I spelled it out for him and he said yep, that’s
it. I said I suppose Ocker and Ford did the interior work and I said yes, my father was the
president over there and turned all the work over to them and I said yes he would. There was
something else here, the Bernhard May house. The C. A. Lindner home too, he was the manager
of Ocker and Ford Company when I worked there. I worked there, that was my first job. My
father put me in his office when I was sixteen years old. I worked there until I was about twentyfour and then they went into receivership. Mr. Dykhouse was one of the vice-presidents and so
was Mr. Robert Sherwood. Mr. Dykhouse and Dad and Mr. Sherwood were the receivers. Then
later on I went to work for Mr. Dykhouse when I was thirty years old. I have a long history of
my own life. The Maurice Shanahan home on Plainfield Avenue; I don’t know what Dad did up
there but I can remember him saying he was out in the yard and talking with Mr. Shanahan,
planning what they were going to do. But what he did there, I don’t remember. That’s the big
home, the Creston Mortuary bought this home way up on the hill and it was too hard getting up
there, so they built the mortuary down below. Why they kept the home for, I don’t know. But
Maurice Shanahan was with the Bissell Company. He was president of the Bissell Company for
years. We had a lot of good people, built the Evangeline Home.
Interviewer: I saw that, wasn’t that the predecessor to the Booth Memorial Hospital.
Mrs. McLachlan: That’s a lovely old building, the architecture was so much nicer than the
buildings are today. Take the buildings downtown they look like cracker boxes to me. Take the
old City Hall, that was architecture. Take the Voigt home, they call that a Queen Anne but I can’t
associate that with Queen Anne; I didn’t know they had homes built like that.
Interviewer: They can’t seem to be able to afford to do is any of that really elegant decorative
work on buildings nowadays. It looks very plain and functional.
Mrs. McLachlan: They used to do a lot more of something they call ????, not cheesecake, but
another name for it
Interviewer: I know, that jigsaw work, well it will come to me in the course
Mrs. McLachlan: Decoration on the…
Interviewer: Gingerbread.
�9
Mrs. McLachlan: Gingerbread and that’s right and that porch is so beautiful, that they had a
flooring of wood on that porch, and wondered how they could keep wood from, course they
used cypress for outdoors.
Interviewer: Is that what they used in that?
Mrs. McLachlan: Because that takes care water and stuff.
Interviewer: Do you remember how much it cost to build the Voigt House?
Mrs. McLachlan: No, I don’t.
Interviewer: I suppose at that time …
Mrs. McLachlan: It was a recession, in 1895 there was a terrific recession on.
Interviewer: That is interesting.
Mrs. McLachlan: Of course during that time, I can remember my mother saying… I was going to
have a white dress for my first communion, and Mary my older sister was going to make it for
me. You know we all made our own clothes in those days. There were no ready-made garments.
Interviewer: That’s right.
Mrs. McLachlan: And Mary was to make this white dress, and Mother said all your going to
have is a plain white dress. I said that’s alright who cares, I didn’t care about clothes. So I went
downtown a couple of days after that, with a girlfriend of mine from school. I went into the
Boston Store and saw this collaret with embroidery and a little lace and it would fit right over the
top of the dress and it was quite pretty. I said how much is that, she said that’s two dollars. And I
came home and told my mother about it, and I had never asked for anything. And I said to her,
Mother I saw a little collaret downtown that I thought it would look nice on this….I said that’s
alright it’s too much money and she said how much was it? And I said it was two dollars. She
stood and looked at me for the longest time, and then said you a are going to have that collaret, I
will give that money to you tomorrow and you go down and get that collaret.
Interviewer: When you went downtown in those days, you lived on the West side and you went
across Bridge Street?
Mrs. McLachlan: And then to the school and then across Bridge Street, turn north on Turner just
one block, really a block and a half and walk downtown over the Bridge Street Bridge and then
walk back home to the west side.
Interviewer: Did you know any other of the other Voigts, except Ralph.
Mrs. McLachlan: No, I knew Carl and Frank, and the oldest one was Frank and he was married
to a Miss Seyferth.
�10
Interviewer: Seyferth.
Mrs. McLachlan: Beautiful blonde woman, I used to see her so much on the west side they lived
on the west side too. And I even mentioned that to Carl, to Ralph, I remember your brother Frank
and his wife the blonde woman and he said wasn’t she beautiful and I said, I’ll say she was!
Interviewer: He was considerably older than Ralph, though Frank was, he was the oldest.
Mrs. McLachlan: You see there were three girls too in that family.
Interviewer: The girls were all in the middle and Frank and Carl and then the girls and then
Ralph. Ralph was the youngest.
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, he was, he told me that.
Interviewer: And he never married.
Mrs. McLachlan: No, Carl did, then his wife died. When they got married the father said this is
it. You can never come back home.
Interviewer: Oh, really.
Mrs. McLachlan: He meant, if anything happened to them.
Interviewer: They would have to live away from home.
Mrs. McLachlan: And then (?) lost her husband.
Interviewer: But Clara did you go back home, after Dr. Hake died.
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, she did.
Interviewer: Was that before her folks died?
Mrs. McLachlan: No, her father was dead. She came to our house and he (her dad, not Voigt
father). He was semi-retired but he would figure the jobs and that. She came over to the house
and said I want you to figure a plan I want to build a house. And dad said alright I’ll figure it for
you. And she came back and said oh, that’s way too high. Well, her father was the same way.
Dad said well if you want good work, that’s what I have to have, that much money. So she said
I’m going to forget about it. So the next year she came back again with another plan. And Dad
said didn’t you get anybody to build that house, yet? She said nope, I am not going to have
anybody else build it. I want you to figure this one.
Interviewer: So Mr. Voigt was close with his money too?
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, well of course, I wouldn’t say they were tight. He was just that type that
would say, oh. Gosh when we would go and collect some small bill, when Dad did some work
�11
for him on the old home on the west side. Dad would warn us, ―Don’t say one word. Now he’s
going to say what’s the matter with this John, he is trying to rob me.‖ Just sit still and he will pay
it. So, I went there a couple of times and presented the bill. He’d look at it and frown and say,
―My goodness that man is trying to rob me.‖ I would sit there and look at him and not say a word
and finally he’d say, ―Okay go downstairs and get the money.‖
Interviewer: The office was downstairs in the old house on the west side?
Mrs. McLachlan: No, the Crescent Mill.
Interviewer: Oh I see you went to the mill to collect.
Mrs. McLachlan: His office was upstairs in the mill. The bookkeeper and the other office help
were downstairs.
Interviewer: Oh, I see.
Mrs. McLachlan: That was before Ralph was in charge. Ralph went to colleges in the East, he
went to Andover and either Harvard or Yale. He told me that he had two Masters, he had two
degrees, anyway.
Interviewer: And he came back and was actively engaged in the mill.
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes.
Interviewer: Was Carl also in the Milling business with his father?
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes.
Interviewer: Now his wife, did his wife die?
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, very nice looking woman too, I remember her.
Interviewer: Yes.
Mrs. McLachlan: I use to see her in the mill, I knew people in the office there. Miss Annette
Klanderman worked there a long time, she was lame. And a Miss Diver. I didn’t know her as
well as I knew her sister but I knew who she was. They were good looking girls.
Interviewer: Somebody told us Mr. Voigt didn’t like to spend money on electric light either.
Mrs. McLachlan: Didn’t he?
Interviewer: No, he used to tell them hang a bare bulb in the office and put all three desks around
that light bulb because they only could have one bulb for three people. Maybe that was just a
story.
�12
Mrs. McLachlan: (?) he was quite frugal like all the Germans are.
Interviewer: He wanted value for his money’s worth, obviously.
Mrs. McLachlan: …He came over with the Herpolsheimers. He started in the Herpolsheimer
building. I was in that store.
Interviewer: I see you put a note on this saying your father put the first escalator in
Herpolsheimer’s.
Mrs. McLachlan: That was in the first Herpolsheimer building. You see the old
HerpolsheimerError! Bookmark not defined. when he was with Voigt, was up there further
near where the ? drug store was later on, right in the middle of that next block between Ionia and
Ottawa. And I used to go in there and shop and they still have that name up on the building if
you go down East Fulton Street you can see it up there Herpolsheimer, Voigt-Herpolsheimer.
Interviewer: It is still up there? I would like to see that.
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes. My nephew told me that. I’ve seen that name up there too a good many
times, but never gave it a thought. If I had known this was going to happen, I would have saved
those pictures that Mr. Voigt gave me.
Interviewer: Too bad you didn’t save the pictures of the interior of the house.
Mrs. McLachlan: Well it was just the stairway.
Interviewer: That is such a beautiful stairway.
Mrs. McLachlan: I can remember my dad coming home, I was twelve and my dad would come
home telling my mother, he used to talk about things once in a while and we kids would hear it.
He said, ―Mother, you know what the people are doing, they are laying the flooring in the Voigt
House. You know they have to walk around in their stocking feet. There might be nails and
cleats on the bottoms of their shoes. And that wood didn’t dare to be scratched.‖ It had this
parquet flooring, just the border around in the foyer. That was imported.
Interviewer: It was?
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, it was.
Interviewer: Where did they get that from, Germany then?
Mrs. McLachlan: I imagine so. They came from Bavaria. He told me that.
Interviewer: But the rest of the wood, the regular oak for the flooring came from this country.
And you said cypress for the outside.
�13
Mrs. McLachlan: Well, that’s what they used to use for porches, because it holds water and
won’t break down. I would think in that length of time that they would have to put on new
flooring on that porch. It wouldn’t last that long.
Interviewer: Maybe, I don’t know. We’ll ask about that. It may be that’s the original flooring.
That building is so sound, it really doesn’t deteriorate.
Mrs. McLachlan: That’s the way things were built, years go.
Interviewer: Yes,
Mrs. McLachlan: Everybody built their homes that way. And in their basement they have walnut
beams.
Interviewer: The interior of the house has beautiful woodwork in it. And it is beautifully kept up.
Mrs. McLachlan: Is it oak?
Interviewer: Well, what interested me was in the drawing room, the library and the hall it is oak.
In the downstairs bedroom it looks to me like cherry, It is beautiful, beautiful wood, polished.
Mrs. McLachlan: What color is it?
Interviewer: The cherry in the bedroom is the regular red cherry color, beautiful and very close
grained like cherry, and it is the deep rich red.
Mrs. McLachlan: Cherry is wonderful.
Interviewer: And it is so close grained that you know it is not mahogany, No mahogany is a
wider grain. Looks to me like cherry wood and it looks so pretty how could they left it out
of…..You know they have oak in the Music Room and …
Mrs. McLachlan: Oak was a big thing in those days.
Interviewer: Yes.
Mrs. McLachlan: Especially quarter-sawed oak.
Interviewer: Quarter-sawed oak.
Mrs. McLachlan: We had it in our home, too.
Interviewer: Do you know anything about that stenciling around the top in the library? Who did
that?
Mrs. McLachlan: I don’t even remember that.
�14
Interviewer: Well, there is some kind of stencil pattern up around the edge of the library.
Mrs. McLachlan: Didn’t they say one time, that one of the girls did that?
Interviewer: They did say the family did some in either the dining room or library.
Mrs. McLachlan: Oh, they have some in the dining room too.
Interviewer: There is some painted work up around the top of the dining room. Then there is
some wall paper, no, not paper, this looks like fabric on the walls.
Mrs. McLachlan: It is fabric, it is tapestry.
Interviewer: Yes, tapestry, there is furring strips behind it.
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, they need that to hold it. But they’ve got the damask in the living room.
The walls are all covered in damask. The second living room was the music room.
Interviewer: Yes,
Mrs. McLachlan: And that had a piano in it -- an upright. The thing I missed in the home like
that would be a beautiful grandfather clock. Instead they have this big giant mirror, this huge
thing. On the other landing there were some plants, artificial plants of some kind.
Interviewer: There is a grandfather’s clock, but it is down in the hall.
Mrs. McLachlan: Where is it?
Interviewer: Now, is that the one you remember seeing?
Mrs. McLachlan: I don’t remember seeing a grandfather’s clock
Interviewer: There is one in the hall.
Mrs. McLachlan: See, there were so many things we saw that I probably forgot.
Interviewer: I think if you go with more than one or two people I think it is hard to see
everything.
Mrs. McLachlan: Well, there was just my niece and I.
Interviewer: Just you and your niece?
Mrs. McLachlan: Oh yes, we didn’t go on [a tour], it wasn’t open then yet…
Interviewer: You went before it was even open.
Mrs. McLachlan: He was still alive.
�15
Interviewer: Oh, I see.
Mrs. McLachlan: He was sick.
[END OF SECTION ONE]
[SECTION TWO]
Mrs. McLachlan: You will revise that?
Interviewer: No, it’s alright; I’ll just take off the part that had to do with the Voigt House off the
tape, if that’s alright.
Mrs. McLachlan: Is it off now?
Interviewer: It’s on.
Mrs. McLachlan: It is?
Interviewer: It won’t bother you, I hope. What we’ll just take the stuff to do with the Voigt
House off the tape. Sometimes if you just sit and talk, you learn more about. When did you go
with your niece to the house?
Mrs. McLachlan: Well, when I called him (Mr. Voigt), this was in the paper earlier about
nineteen seventy, in the Wonderland. And he wanted me to come over. Well, I have been having
trouble with my eyes and it hadn’t been operated on yet, I didn’t think about it until later and I
thought my nephew would go with me, Arthur, who died in January. He wanted to see it and all
that, but he, I couldn’t pin him down to an appointment. So in the fall, I said to my niece, not
Mrs. Buist, will you take me over to the Voigt House? And she said, I sure will. I called up and
this housekeeper answered and she said just a minute, I’ll call the nurse. I thought, gee a nurse,
and so she called the nurse, and she said ―Mr. Voigt has been in the hospital and he’s had had a
heart attack. He’s home now but I am here taking care of him.‖ I said ―Well, I’ll just have to
forget about it.‖ She said, ―No, no don’t say that‖ she said, ―I’ll talk to him about it and you call
me back Monday morning.‖ This was on a Saturday morning when I called him. So I said
alright. So I called her about eleven o’clock and she said, ―Mr. Voigt said you should come in
about two o’clock and I will take you through.‖ Between two and four, anyway. So we went over
there, she took us through and showed us a lot of things, I was intrigued with the dining room
quite a bit, and also that brass bed and that huge dresser in that one bedroom.
Interviewer: Isn’t that pretty?
Mrs. McLachlan: I didn’t even notice what kind of spread he had on there. I was so intrigued
with the bed and the dresser; I didn’t know what else was in the room at all.
Interviewer: Was he in the downstairs bedroom at that time?
�16
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, he was, but I didn’t see him.
Interviewer: Yes.
Mrs. McLachlan: And so she took us through Dr. and Mrs. Hake’s room, and she called attention
to this beautiful secretary that the doctor had, and then we went down through the dining room
and the other rooms. I don’t remember what I was going to say. Yes, and another thing was in
the library, but I must have missed it, but I was always crazy about these big world globes, you
know. I always thought when I grew up I wanted one of those and a big dictionary, an
unabridged dictionary. I couldn’t remember seeing one there. I didn’t remember too much what
was in that room except the fireplace and this housekeeper was watching TV (television) and we
didn’t stand there long, but there was a beautiful bookcase there.
Interviewer: Yes, full of old books.
Mrs. McLachlan: There was another bookcase in another room somewhere that was filled with
books too.
Interviewer: After Mr. Voigt died, some of the furniture that was in there when you saw it was
taken by relatives, but all the old furniture was upstairs in the attic so they brought that down.
The furniture that is in there now, is the old furniture that was in the house when Mr. and Mrs.
Voigt were alive.
Mrs. McLachlan: They had a lot of Louis the Fifteenth, is it?
Interviewer: Yeah and they had some of the horsehair sofas, that sort of thing. And then some
beautiful imported stuff, I guess.
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, they had two imported chairs they were carved, little straight back chairs,
you know.
Interviewer: That stuff went to the relatives.
Mrs. McLachlan: Those were very valuable I thought; and there was a music box underneath a
seat of one. And this nurse, she played it
Interviewer: She did?
Mrs. McLachlan: After she took us, I thought the house looked kind of cluttered, there was so
much furniture in those two little rooms, it looked to me like they shoved lots of stuff in there,
with….
Interviewer: Without taking anything else out.
�17
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, and without getting it arranged in a proper way. Well, that was my
impression anyway. But those two chairs intrigued me, and there was a beautiful big rocker that
was carved, a high backed rocker.
Interviewer: Is that the one with corn ears on top; that has the ears of corn on the top?
Mrs. McLachlan: I don’t remember that.
Interviewer: There is a beautiful high back rocker that has corn…
Mrs. McLachlan: Is that still there?
Interviewer: Yes, that’s still there.
Mrs. McLachlan: I was intrigued with those cotton curtains at the windows, with the wide lace.
Interviewer: Beautiful lace all….
Mrs. McLachlan: How could they wash those and keep them from…
Interviewer: I think probably they were washed by hand.
Mrs. McLachlan: Must have been.
Interviewer: The story we have is that there were two sets of curtains for each window.
Mrs. McLachlan: I thought it was two sets of shades?
Interviewer: Well now, the story to us was that there two sets of curtains to each window. So
when one was taken down to be washed they put the other set up. This meant that there wasn’t as
much wear on each set…
Mrs. McLachlan: No, probably not.
Interviewer: This meant that they were in good condition.
Mrs. McLachlan: Cotton, they must have been wonderful cotton.
Interviewer: I don’t know because I can’t tell cotton or linen in a case like that, but I think most
were cotton. A lot of that was handmade lace you know, the old Battenberg lace on some of
those beautiful curtains.
Mrs. McLachlan: They had a lot of beautiful things in there but today the people today don’t
appreciate those things. But, I lived in that period and I know they were an affluent society, when
you had lace curtains at your windows you were considered affluent.
Interviewer: Yes…You father must have been pretty affluent, wasn’t he himself…?
�18
Mrs. McLachlan: Pretty what?
Interviewer: You father must have been a pretty affluent himself, if he was a good builder.
Mrs. McLachlan: At one time, yes. He had quite a bit of money.
Interviewer: Yes, because…
Mrs. McLachlan: But you see there was no Social Security in those days, no nothing; and they
had to save their money and he had at all in real estate. It seemed to me that everything he sold,
he had quite a bit of real estate and a cottage down at Spring Lake which we loved.
Interviewer: How did you get out to the cottage?
Mrs. McLachlan: Not the Greyhound, but the interurban.
Interviewer: It was a railway then or a bus?
Mrs. McLachlan: No, it was a big bus, just like the Greyhounds, but bigger I think. They went on
this electric rail. I think the tracks were electric.
Interviewer: It was like electric a railway, I know there was an interurban between here and
Spring Lake.
Mrs. McLachlan: This was to Spring Lake and Muskegon.
Interviewer: Now when did your father pass on?
Mrs. McLachlan: In twenty, no, nineteen twenty-three.
Interviewer: So he retired in nineteen eleven.
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes.
Interviewer: And lived about twelve years after that. Was your mother alive all those years?
Mrs. McLachlan: Oh, yes she died when she was eighty-eight, almost eighty-eight.
Interviewer: Oh, she stayed on.
Mrs. McLachlan: Well, I came from pretty good stock …
Interviewer: How many children in the family? You mentioned a couple.
Mrs. McLachlan: Nine, three of them died before I was born, they all died in one week,
diphtheria.
Interviewer: That’s when they had those terrible…
�19
Mrs. McLachlan: My little sister and the two next oldest sisters, so my mother raised three, six of
us I mean.
Interviewer: Do you know how many men worked on that house when your father was building
it? Any idea?
Mrs. McLachlan: Well, at that time, he had about thirty six men, but he had other jobs, too, you
know.
Interviewer: Not all of them were working on the Voigt House?
Mrs. McLachlan: I imagine about twelve, or maybe more? I wouldn’t know. He had two good
foremen the Dengler Brothers, Fred and John Dengler, his first foremen, when he first went into
business. He had others when they they started to retire.
Interviewer: The brick, for the outside of the building. Do you know where that came from?
Mrs. McLachlan: Well, I…
Interviewer: Some of that tile work is really beautiful.
Mrs. McLachlan: Tile work?
Interviewer: Well, that sort of decorative tile work.
Mrs. McLachlan: Is there some tile work? Ceramics is it?
Interviewer: Well, it looks to be…
Mrs. McLachlan: More shiny than ceramic?
Interviewer: Well. It looks to be the same color as the brick; there is some circular decorative
piece, I think, that is in the top of one…
Mrs. McLachlan: That is the mason work, then.
Interviewer: Yes. You don’t know how much a mason made in those days, do you?
Mrs. McLachlan: How much what?
Interviewer: What they paid a mason a day, a brick layer?
Mrs. McLachlan: I wouldn’t know what a bricklayer made. I wouldn’t know what my father’s
men made, but when I worked at Ocker and Fords, I know what those men made. They did all
this interior finish. The foreman on the three floors each made thirty cents an hour.
Interviewer: That was a great rate, wasn’t it?
�20
Mrs. McLachlan: Eighteen dollars a week, for sixty hours work. I made up the payroll, so I
remember. Of course, my dad later on…
Interviewer: You remember that. That was for a foreman, not just one of the men?
Mrs. McLachlan: Then the next scale down, would be sixteen fifty. And Charlie VanderVelde,
that started this Grand Rapids Camera Club, was one of the fine craftsmen, up on the third floor,
under Ralph Fosget, he made sixteen fifty a week. The next scale down was fifteen and the next
was thirteen fifty and then there was twelve and there was a ten fifty. And my uncle ran the
freight elevator and he was getting nine dollars a week.
Interviewer: How much of a family did he have?
Mrs. McLachlan: Well, there was Jenny, Anna, and Francis and of course John, by that time.
John was still going to school, I think. There were six children, there were seven children, the
older ones were working you see.
Interviewer: My goodness, that’s not much to bring up a whole family. How long did it take to
build a house in those days? How long from the time they started to dig until they finished it?
Mrs. McLachlan: I can imagine this house took a couple of years, wouldn’t you say so?
Interviewer: I have no idea how long it would take, I am just curious if you were aware of how
long it would take to do a job like that?
Mrs. McLachlan: The mason work, the whole front of the building is beautiful.
Interviewer: Oh yes, it is a very handsome building, and there is a lot of hand work in it.
Mrs. McLachlan: Would they call that an estate, if it is just on a big lot?
Interviewer: I doubt it, just a big house, maybe a townhouse.
Mrs. McLachlan: It might be a mansion; they’ve got a carriage house and all that. Miss Lindner
had a ten acre estate out on Reed’s Lake. The house wasn’t anything like the Voigt House, and
she had spent thirty-thousand dollars to build on this big living room, on the one room but it
included the furniture that she bought, carpets and drapes. It was my first job to check on it, I
was with her for ten years. That house was a more livable home than the Voigt home. What I
mean by that is, it had more of a woman’s touch, of course she lived there alone.
Interviewer: Did Mr. Voigt make most of the decisions about what was to go into the house?
Mrs. McLachlan: You mean the old man?
Interviewer: Did he get to decide or did Mother get to say what she wanted?
�21
Mrs. McLachlan: I wouldn’t know that, but I imagine he had a lot of ideas. You know this house
was copied from a chateau in France.
Interviewer: Yes, I heard.
Mrs. McLachlan: Not exactly but parts of it, I think it is more Victorian than it is Queen Anne,
don’t you think so?
Interviewer: I am not very up on architecture.
Mrs. McLachlan: I think so, but I am not either. As long as I have been with my father, and even
with all that and even in the lumber business so many years, I still don’t know that. I did know a
lot more about furniture because I was in the furniture business, too. I worked for Robert Irwin
Furniture Company for ten years.
Interviewer: Did you really?
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes,
Interviewer: Did you know Mr. Irwin?
Mrs. McLachlan: Heavens yes, he would come over to my desk and talk to me.
Interviewer: He was a remarkable man.
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, he was, he was in his eighties when he sold out there, you see. Sold the
factory; they sold the one on Fulton Street first. They still had the Royal on Bond Avenue where
he started. He started as a bookkeeper and so did Mr. Dykhouse. And they went into the lumber
business later on. Mr. Dykhouse worked for the Ball-Barnard-Putnam groceries, delivering
groceries. I was with him eight years.
Interviewer: You were a bookkeeper?
Mrs. McLachlan: Well, I was secretary, too, and also went into accounting.
Interviewer: Did you learn to use a typewriter or did you write everything by hand?
Mrs. McLachlan: No, I used a typewriter, I was sixteen years old I used a typewriter. But we
didn’t have any carbon copies.
Interviewer: What would you do, did you have to make two copies?
Mrs. McLachlan: No, we had a machine, well, it was a funny thing. It was a big machine with a
wheel on it. First of all it was a tissue paper book. And we put this, we had a tank with water in it
and a wringer. And we would wring out this, it was made of, what’s this stuff. Heavy stuff, but
pliable and you would put it thru the wringer. And we would put this wet thing in this tissue
�22
paper book and put this tissue paper over this wet, a kind of like cardboard, I’d call it and then
letter on top of that this way, you know upside down. And then we’d put another wet pad on top
of that and put another sheet of tissue paper, and I would have four or five letters, and then you
put them into this, all I can think of is this compress. You put it in there and then turn this wheel
and then press down. Sometimes it would smear and you would have to do the letter over again.
Interviewer: Oh, dear.
Mrs. McLachlan: Shortly after that there was a girl at the city hall, she was an Irish girl, Miss
O’Connor or something like that. I think that was the first thing, she used to make perfect copies,
you know. But, she had carbon paper then and she used to make perfect copies.
Interviewer: And that was a great thing.
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes. And then I learned about carbon paper, it just came out. I was about
seventeen or eighteen, probably.
Interviewer: That would have been the turn of the century, wouldn’t it? The late eighteen
hundreds.
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, I was seventeen years old at the turn of the century. I remember all the
factory whistles and church bells all ringing.
Interviewer: It was big excitement.
Mrs. McLachlan: It was just terrible.
Interviewer: Now, you’re about to live to see the bi-centennial of the United States.
Mrs. McLachlan: I hope I live that long.
Interviewer: Sure, you will, you’re in good health.
Mrs. McLachlan: Well, all but my eyesight. I had my eye operated on then, after, I went there
before yes.
Interviewer: I see here, you have something about Mrs. Charles Roelofs residence.
Mrs. McLachlan: No I haven’t she was very, very gracious on the phone, and she was to send
some lady over here with a tape recorder. And she never came.
Interviewer: Oh, I know who Mrs. [Barbara] Roelofs is, she is the Heritage Hill lady. She is the
one that was the head of the Heritage Hill.
Mrs. McLachlan: Mrs. Roelofs? Yes, didn’t you know her father?
�23
Interviewer: No, I don’t know her, I’ve always worked just at the Voigt House, and I’ve never
been an official. The name was familiar to me and I was just….
Mrs. McLachlan: She is Dr. Roelofs’ wife and then there is Dr. Pilling’s wife.
Interviewer: I have met Dr. Pilling’s wife, I’ve worked with her.
Mrs. McLachlan: I’ve saw her in the picture in the paper in the foyer of the Voigt home.
Interviewer: This one home that you mention is later known as the Edmund Wurzburg home, and
sold to the Franciscan Fathers, that is on Lake Drive, isn’t it?
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, my father built that picture gallery for Mrs. Clark, Melvin Clark’s wife. Is
that the name?
Interviewer: Yes, Melvin Clark….
Mrs. McLachlan: I met him too when I was over at one office. He came in there and that was
before my father built that, yes. He said, ―You know what, Margaret my daughter,‖ (she was his
daughter Mrs. Edmund Wurzburg) ―wants me to buy her a car.‖
Interviewer: Oh,
Mrs. McLachlan: I said, ―Well, why don’t you?‖ He said, ―You mean that?‖ I said, ‖Yes, why
don’t you buy her a car?‖ I was in my twenties then. He said, ―I guess I will.‖
Interviewer: Oh, dear.
Mrs. McLachlan: Another one was the old Claredon Hotel, where Olds Manor is today? My
father built that.
Interviewer: He built that?
Mrs. McLachlan: The Claredon and then it was razed and Rowe brothers who owned the Valley
City Milling Company right next door, right across the canal. Or was there a canal? Not on the
east side, there wasn’t. They bought that and built the Rowe Hotel, because at that time there
were these furniture men were all coming to town and ..
Interviewer: Oh, for the exhibitions, yes.
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, exhibitions they had to have more hotels. So they built the Rowe Hotel
and later on it was changed to the Olds Manor for the elderly and it was taken over by Fountain
Street Baptist Church first, and then I don’t know who is running that now. But they didn’t have
too much luck with it, Fountain Street Church.
Interviewer: No, they tried to run it as an old people’s home, didn’t they?
�24
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes,
Interviewer: It’s a commercial thing now, isn’t it?
Mrs. McLachlan: I guess, my brother in law was there for awhile, so was Judge Raymond Starr.
Interviewer: Is there a North Star Hotel, too?
Mrs. McLachlan: Over in Comstock Park, that wasn’t much of a hotel but for a small place like
Comstock Park, it was.
Interviewer: Yes.
Mrs. McLachlan: And Mr. Teele, Joseph Teele ran it. I knew that family, the whole family, they
had the Watson House before they went out there. They owned the Watson House was on the
corner of Bridge Street and Lexington.
Interviewer: Yes.
Mrs. McLachlan: And that old building, I don’t know if it is still there or not. I don’t get over to
the West side at all.
Interviewer: To get back and forth over there now….
Mrs. McLachlan: I have a niece over living in my sister’s house and she stayed right there,
bought it when my brother-in-law died, she and her husband bought it and she lives there all
alone now in that big house. And I haven’t been in that house in ten years, and she is right in the
city. We talk to each other over the phone.
Interviewer: well, it is probably just as hard for her to get back and forth as it is for you.
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, she has a busy life, and doesn’t drive anymore. She’s seventy-five now. I
was raised over on the West side.
Interviewer: Now, were you, you mentioned you went to St. Mary’s when Ralph was going to
Union High School. Did he go to Union High before he went off to Andover then?
Mrs. McLachlan: Oh yes, Union High, they call it Union High, it was a high school at one time,
if there was elementary classes there I don’t know that.
Interviewer: Yes.
Mrs. McLachlan: They called it Union High.
Interviewer: I remember reading about it.
�25
Mrs. McLachlan: It was located on Turner Street. So was St. Mary’s School. My father built St.
Mary’s School, the Convent and the Rectory. Then he built the Palmer and Buchanan Street
Schools for the Board of Education. But those have all been replaced, not St. Mary’s.
Interviewer: But the public schools have been.
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, the man next door went to the original Palmer Street School.
Interviewer: The Palmer Street School and the Buchanan Street School.
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, I got that on my list. I guess, I gave you the one that has Charles
Greenway’s name on it. No, this is the one I want you to have. You want to take this?
Interviewer: I would love to, if you don’t mind parting with it?
Mrs. McLachlan: No, I don’t need it for anything. I got these other two copies, which is that one?
The little one?
Interviewer: That is the little one, you’d better keep that.
Mrs. McLachlan: I added more to it, that’s why.
Interviewer: Yes, there is a lot more.
Mrs. McLachlan: Do you want to take it along?
Interviewer: I am afraid, do you have several copies there?
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, I have several.
Interviewer: I would like to have that.
Mrs. McLachlan: That name is so hard to remember. It is pronounced Youngbaker
(Jungbaecker)? You know the Knape and Vogt Company? Well, the German name was Knapee.
From that original John Knape that got up that firm, that started that firm, his wife Dina was in
the same Whist Club that my mother was.
Interviewer: Oh, really.
Mrs. McLachlan: We knew all these people.
Interviewer: It was nice because Grand Rapids was smaller then.
Mrs. McLachlan: Of course it was, I went around collecting, too and I met so many businessmen,
lumbermen like Orin Ward. Orin A. Ward’s daughter married this Harrison Goodspeed. And this
old man Ward was one of the nicest men you could ever meet; he was so nice to me and I was
just a youngster in my teens then. Then there was old man [Frank] Chickering was in the lumber
�26
business. He was in the Tower Building right across from the Pantlind Hotel where the
Woolworths are today; and I used to go up to see him. I don’t know whether I collected, it must
have been that; or whether they bought things from our firm or what. This Mr. Chickering was so
nice.
Interviewer: Is that when you were with Ocker & Ford?
Mrs. McLachlan: That was my first office job, that’s where I learned all the office procedures.
Interviewer: All that you needed to know.
Mrs. McLachlan: Mr. Moore, was the bookkeeper, he came up from Widdicombe’s, and came
over there and was our bookkeeper. Mr. Lindner(?) was the manager, then there were a lot of
stockholders, Mr. [Clark H.] Gleason the lawyer. Old man Thayer, George W. Thayer was mayor
of Grand Rapids at one time. The old house on Ottawa Street that was his; that should have been
preserved.
Interviewer: Yes.
Mrs. McLachlan: It was a one-story kind of stone house.
Interviewer: Oh, it’s always a shame to see those beautiful old places go, isn’t it?
Mrs. McLachlan: There is one on Front Street, too, it was all made of cobblestone or something.
Interviewer: Yes, yes.
Mrs. McLachlan: Then there was Mr. Sherwood, Robert Sherwood, was a nephew of the Mr.
Thayer, and he was one of the biggest fruit growers in Michigan. He had this big farm in
Watervliet.
Interviewer: Yes,
Mrs. McLachlan: He was vice-president of this firm. But that was before I went with them.
Interviewer: I see, your father was an officer of Ocker and Ford at one time?
Mrs. McLachlan: President
Interviewer: President of it.
Mrs. McLachlan: Twenty years.
Interviewer: Twenty years, that is a long time. Was he doing building and being president at the
same time? Both companies at the same time?
�27
Mrs. McLachlan: But you see he wasn’t active in that business, he just took his business over
there.
Interviewer: I see.
Mrs. McLachlan: That’s why he started this business because he was affiliated with his
contracting business.
Interviewer: It was to get all the finished carpentry done and finish all the millwork.
Mrs. McLachlan: But the factories got out all the mantels and stuff, and like that.
Interviewer: Was that mostly hand done or was it done on lathe?
Mrs. McLachlan: No, most ,well some of it might have been done on lathes, but they did a lot of
handwork.
Interviewer: A lot of handwork, hand rubbed and polished?
Mrs. McLachlan: This great big band saw, and [Alexander] Barbey was this little fellow, and I’d
go up there, and run up and down those stairs two or three times a day, you know a couple of
flights. I would go up there for some reason and Barbey would say, ―Want me to make you a
little chair, cut you out a little wooden chair?‖ He would put a little chunk of wood on that band
saw and in a few minutes, there would be a little chair. I wish I had saved all these things.
Interviewer: Oh, yes. When they put the parquet floor in, was that put in on the spot, when they
built the parquet floor, do you know? In the Voigt House?
Mrs. McLachlan: Did they what?
Interviewer: Did they fit the pieces as they laid it or was it already cut?
Mrs. McLachlan: I would think it came in a certain design.
Interviewer: I don’t know, I was just curious? Do you know anything about that?
Mrs. McLachlan: They used to call the first floor of the Power’s Theatre the ―parquet circle‖. I
often wondered why.
Interviewer: Maybe the floors? I don’t know either. I think it is nice we are preserving the Voigt
House, I think. It is certainly an example.
Mrs. McLachlan: There were other houses that were beautiful, too here in town.
Interviewer: Or prettier houses, but this is so complete though.
Mrs. McLachlan: You take that McInerney home...
�28
Interviewer: Yes.
Mrs. McLachlan: …and some of the others, the one that always like so much was on the corner
of Union and Cherry. It was a man by the name of Friant, a lumberman that built that. That was
always my favorite and right across the street was the Metz home – of the Metz Building. And
there was another one that Mr. Lemmon once lived in. It was her home, she was Mrs. Cramer
and then he married her after his wife died. Leavenworth was the head of the G R & I Railway
and that was right next to, on the corner is the Jonkhoff Funeral Home. Before that was Mr.
Straight, he was the manager of the Majestic Theatre anyway, whatever his name was; he built
that house. And right next door to this was the Cramer home and that was one of my pet ones.
Just the kind of house I would have liked, you know. And later on it was sold to the St. Andrew’s
Cathedral, to the parish I mean.
Interviewer: Yes, is that where the bishop lives now?
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes Bishop Kelly lived there.
Interviewer: That’s a beautiful house.
Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, it is.
Interviewer: Actually the Voigt House may not be the prettiest house in town, but it is
beautifully preserved and everything is in it.
Mrs. McLachlan: Well, they kept it like it was in those days.
Interviewer: Yes and when you go into it now and you can see what it looked like in nineteen
five, you know.
Mrs. McLachlan: Eighteen ninety-five.
Interviewer: Yes.
Mrs. McLachlan: And they never even remodeled the bathrooms, and the old-fashioned tubs,
and the marble-topped lavatories. That’s what we had too, the marble topped lavatories too.
Interviewer: The downstairs bathroom has what looks like to me to be like a sitz bath in it.
Mrs. McLachlan: Well, I didn’t see that.
Interviewer: No, must have been off the bedroom …
Mrs. McLachlan: Off the bedroom.
Interviewer: Off the bedroom where he was, and you wouldn’t have seen that.
Mrs. McLachlan: I didn’t see the kitchen or the ballroom.
�29
Interviewer: Now the ballroom is not open to the public, that’s way upstairs, right.
Mrs. McLachlan: Well, I don’t blame them.
Interviewer: Well, I think the trouble is there is so much stored up there, you know, they found
dresses from way back.
Mrs. McLachlan: They kept everything.
Interviewer: It’s nice because you can see a picture of Mrs. Voigt; well we have the dress she is
wearing. You know, down there they will have a model will wear the dress she is wearing in the
picture. Oh, their beautiful.
Mrs. McLachlan: Are they that well preserved, they probably have closets up there.
Interviewer: Oh, beautiful wardrobes to keep them.
Mrs. McLachlan: Miss Lindner had them too.
Interviewer: Gorgeous handwork.
Mrs. McLachlan: The dressmakers did a lot of that, they were proud of their trade.
Interviewer: Did you make your first communion dress? You had to have a sewing machine for
that, didn’t you? You didn’t have to make it all by hand?
Mrs. McLachlan: My sister Mary made it. I was only twelve. She was nine years older.
Interviewer: She made it for you.
Mrs. McLachlan: She made this plain white dress. I had my picture taken. I got to thinking
about that collaret one night, oh two or three years ago, and wondered if it shows on the picture
and it does. I paid two dollars for it.
Interviewer: I would hope it shows. Two dollar collaret, well that’s a lot of money. When you
think the men worked the whole week for eighteen dollars, then a two dollar collaret is pretty
much.
Mrs. McLachlan: And a foreman, and when he hired this one young man, the Heller Brothers, of
Youngstown, Ohio used to throw a lot of work to us and Mr. Lindner would go down there and
he met this young man just come back from Europe, educated in Europe and he’d speak four
different languages. And he hired him to come up and do the drafting. Lay out the work and
everything; we had a drafting room in back of the office, all in one building. He paid him fifteen
dollars a week.
Interviewer: Oh, my.
�30
Mrs. McLachlan: With that kind of education, he was very well educated, and I kind of liked him
too, he would come over to the house. It was natural for him to take me out because he didn’t
know anybody else, you know. Very handsome looking, I have a picture of him in the drafting
room, he took mine and I took his.
Interviewer: Yes.
Mrs. McLachlan: There were the men in the upper floor were interested in photography, so they
had the two top floors. The original Grand Rapids Camera Club. Later on I was in that too.
Interviewer: For goodness sakes.
Mrs. McLachlan: Later on I was on the board of directors.
Interviewer: So you used to take a lot of pictures yourself.
Mrs. McLachlan: I have just oodles of them, they’re seventy years old, just snap shot after snap
shot. I bought a camera when I was about eighteen or nineteen years old. And then, when we
bought the cottage, most of pictures were from down there.
Interviewer: That’s the trouble, when you are at home you forget to take pictures of everything
around you, don’t you, as it was.
Mrs. McLachlan: I had pictures of my new house, my bedroom and I had a brass bed there. I
don’t know what happened; I think I tore that up. Pictures of the inside upstairs and lot of them
of downstairs, pictures of the rooms downstairs but Arthur said don’t you give those pictures
away. Of course, he’s in some of them, he was young boy then.
Interviewer: They are very precious then and they sure are.
Mrs. McLachlan: Some of the old bathing suits I had.
Interviewer: Now, how long, did everybody work sixty hours a week then? They worked six
days a week, right, ten hours a day?
Mrs. McLachlan: Ten hour and ten minutes a day, so they could get out at five o’clock on
Saturday afternoons. And they just looked forward to that extra hour. Of course, they put it in
during the week, but they looked forward to getting off a little early.
Interviewer: Yes.
Mrs. McLachlan: I was the same. I got there at quarter to seven in the morning.
Interviewer: Oh my goodness,
�31
Mrs. McLachlan: I gave out the clock tickets, we had a watchman’s clock, and my husband’s
uncle ran that watchman’s clock. He had an office in… the not the Pantlind but the Sweet’s
Hotel in the basement. The stairs were on the outside, and the offices were the coal office down
there…
INDEX
A
F
American Boxboard Company · 6
B
Ball-Barnard-Putnam Wholesale Grocery Company · 22
Barbey, Alexander · 28
Bissell Company · 8
Booth Memorial Hospital · 9
Boston Store · 10
Buchanan Street School · 26
Buist, Mrs. · 16
C
Chickering, Frank · 27
City Hall · 9
Claredon Hotel · 24
Clark, Mr. · 5
Clark, Mrs. Melvin · 24
Cramer, Mrs. · 29
Crescent Mill · 1, 11
Creston Mortuary · 8
D
Dengler Brothers (Fred and John) · 20
Diver, Miss · 12
Dykhouse, Mr. · 6, 8, 22
Fosget, Ralph · 20
Fountain Street Baptist Church · 24
Friant (home) · 29
G
G R & I Railway · 29
German Parochial School · 4
Gleason, Mr. Clark H. · 27
Goodspeed family · 6
Goodspeed, Harrison · 6, 27
Goodspeed, John · 6
Grand Rapids Camera Club · 20, 31
Greenway, Charles · 26
H
Hake, Dr. · 7, 11
Hake, Dr. and Mrs. · 16
Herpolsheimer family · 12
Herpolsheimer store · 12
Hooker, Harriett E. · 1
I
Irwin, Mr. Robert · 22
J
E
Evangeline Home · 8
Jack, Mr. (William) · 6
Jack, William · 6
Jonkhoff Funeral Home · 29
Jungbaecker, Anna · 5
Jungbaecker, John · 1
Jungbaecker, Mary · 2, 9, 31
�32
Jungbaecker, Veronica Elizabeth Josephine · 1
K
Keister, Johanna Frances · 1
Kelly, Bishop · 29
Klanderman, Miss Annette · 12
Knape and Vogt Company · 26
Knape, John · 26
L
Leavenworth, Mr. · 29
Lemmon, Mr. · 29
Lindner, C. A. · 8
Lindner, Miss · 21, 30
Lindner, Mr. · 27, 31
Lypse, Ralph · 5
M
Majestic Theatre · 29
May Company · 7
May, Bernhard · 7, 8
May, Meyer · 7
McInerney (home) · 29
McLachlan, Ford H. · 1
McLachlan, John Norman · 1
Metz (home) · 29
Metz Building · 6, 29
Perkins, Mr. · 6
Pilling, Dr. (wife) · 24
Power’s Theatre · 29
R
Reed’s Lake · 6, 21
Robert Irwin Furniture Company · 22
Roelofs, Dr. · 24
Roelofs, Mrs. [Barbara] · 4, 23
Roelofs, Mrs. Charles · 23
Rowe Hotel · 24
Royal Furniture Company · 22
S
Shanahan, Maurice · 8
Sherwood, Robert · 8, 27
St. Andrew’s Cathedral · 29
St. Mary’s School · 25, 26
Starr, Judge Raymond · 7, 25
Starr, Minnie · 7
Straight, Mr. (home) · 29
Sweet’s Hotel · 32
T
Teele, Joseph · 25
Thayer, George W. · 27
Tower Building · 27
N
U
North Star Hotel (Comstock Park) · 25
Union High School · 8, 25
O
V
O’Connor, Miss · 23
Ocker and Ford Company · 5, 8, 20, 27, 28
Olds Manor · 7, 24
Valley City Milling Company · 24
VanderVelde, Charlie · 20
Voigt family · 5, 10
Voigt House · 1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 13, 15, 16, 19, 21, 23, 28, 29
Voigt, Carl · 10, 12
Voigt, Clara · 7, 11
Voigt, Frank · 10
Voigt, Mr. and Mrs. C. A. · 17
Voigt, Mr. C. A. · 11, 12, 21
P
Palmer Street School · 26
Pantlind Hotel · 27
�33
Voigt, Mrs. · 30
Voigt, Ralph · 3, 4, 8, 10, 12, 16, 17, 25
Voigt-Herpolsheimer store · 13
W
Ward, Orin A. · 27
Watson House · 25
Woolworths · 27
Wurzburg, Edmund (home) · 24
Wurzburg, Margaret (Clark) · 24
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/906c598f489cd2ee0e412016141fc2b0.mp3
93b67ddc1a8125ef218596d49900e890
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
Grand Rapids Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Heritage Hill (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
Local histories
Memoirs
Michigan--History
Oral histories (document genre)
Description
An account of the resource
Taped and transcribed interviews conducted in the early 1970s primarily of the children and grandchildren of many of the founders of Grand Rapids, Michigan; many of whom were residents of the Heritage Hill neighborhood. Interviews were collected to develop a significant collection of oral resources that would supplement other primary and secondary local history materials. Initially funded as a private project, Grand Valley State College (now University) assumed responsibility for continuing the project until 1977.
Creator
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Various
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/452">Grand Rapids oral history collection (RHC-23)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Format
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application/pdf; audio/mp3
Language
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eng
Type
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Text; Sound
Identifier
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RHC-23
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1971 - 1977
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-23_54McLachlan
Title
A name given to the resource
McLachlan, Veronica
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
McLachlan, Veronica
Description
An account of the resource
Veronica Jungbaecker was born on August 1, 1883 in Grand Rapids. Her father, John Jungbaecker, was the building contractor for the Voigt House. She married Ford McLachlan in 1920. She worked at the Robert Irwin Furniture Company as a secretary/bookkeeper. Mrs. McLachlan died on December 21, 1988.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Michigan--History
Local histories
Memoirs
Oral histories (document genre)
Grand Rapids (Mich.)
Personal narratives
Heritage Hill (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
Grand Valley State University
Women
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
audio/mp3
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Grand Rapids oral history collection (RHC-23)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1974
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives