893 24 26018 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/33a04d8f1554f15b931da730fd2c3a0f.jpg 2bbd376187fcf7b3976d97ae65848db6 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 Naval Recognition Training Slides Subject The topic of the resource Slides Military education Airplanes, Military--Recognition Warships--Recognition World War, 1939-1945 Description An account of the resource Slides developed during World War II as a training tool, for top-side battle-station personnel on board ship and for all aircraft personnel, by the US Navy. In 1942 a Recognition School was established by the Navy at Ohio State University where the method of identification was developed. In 1943 the school was taken over by the US Navy. The importance of training in visual recognition of ships and aircraft became even more evident during World War II. Mistakes resulting in costly errors and loss of life led to an increased emphasis on recognition as a vital skill. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides (RHC-50)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1943-1953 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. Source <a href="http://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides, RHC-50</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50_1279 Title A name given to the resource Southampton class British cruiser Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Description An account of the resource Southampton class British cruiser, October 1, 1947. Subject The topic of the resource United States. Navy Military education Warships--Recognition World War, 1939-1945 Slides Great Britain Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Naval recognition slides (RHC-50) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1947-10-01 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/0c3a9c7554828508d69423b03d37e12c.jpg 428053b79669b981fee82beb16716dba 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 Naval Recognition Training Slides Subject The topic of the resource Slides Military education Airplanes, Military--Recognition Warships--Recognition World War, 1939-1945 Description An account of the resource Slides developed during World War II as a training tool, for top-side battle-station personnel on board ship and for all aircraft personnel, by the US Navy. In 1942 a Recognition School was established by the Navy at Ohio State University where the method of identification was developed. In 1943 the school was taken over by the US Navy. The importance of training in visual recognition of ships and aircraft became even more evident during World War II. Mistakes resulting in costly errors and loss of life led to an increased emphasis on recognition as a vital skill. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides (RHC-50)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1943-1953 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. Source <a href="http://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides, RHC-50</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50_1280 Title A name given to the resource Southampton class British cruiser Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Description An account of the resource Southampton class British cruiser, October 1, 1947. Subject The topic of the resource United States. Navy Military education Warships--Recognition World War, 1939-1945 Slides Great Britain Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Naval recognition slides (RHC-50) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1947-10-01 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/6421bfd1e2e17d2773ba2c5ef95810ff.jpg dec2232314ec017771514ba73fe70e9e 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 Naval Recognition Training Slides Subject The topic of the resource Slides Military education Airplanes, Military--Recognition Warships--Recognition World War, 1939-1945 Description An account of the resource Slides developed during World War II as a training tool, for top-side battle-station personnel on board ship and for all aircraft personnel, by the US Navy. In 1942 a Recognition School was established by the Navy at Ohio State University where the method of identification was developed. In 1943 the school was taken over by the US Navy. The importance of training in visual recognition of ships and aircraft became even more evident during World War II. Mistakes resulting in costly errors and loss of life led to an increased emphasis on recognition as a vital skill. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides (RHC-50)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1943-1953 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. Source <a href="http://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides, RHC-50</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50_1273 Title A name given to the resource Southampton class British light cruiser Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Description An account of the resource Southampton class British CL (light cruiser), April 1, 1953. Subject The topic of the resource United States. Navy Military education Warships--Recognition World War, 1939-1945 Slides Great Britain Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Naval recognition slides (RHC-50) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1953-04-01 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/8e7dc47545661f5c65b7d2157586518c.jpg 718955bdafe7b360b87ae2b72fe793e1 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 Naval Recognition Training Slides Subject The topic of the resource Slides Military education Airplanes, Military--Recognition Warships--Recognition World War, 1939-1945 Description An account of the resource Slides developed during World War II as a training tool, for top-side battle-station personnel on board ship and for all aircraft personnel, by the US Navy. In 1942 a Recognition School was established by the Navy at Ohio State University where the method of identification was developed. In 1943 the school was taken over by the US Navy. The importance of training in visual recognition of ships and aircraft became even more evident during World War II. Mistakes resulting in costly errors and loss of life led to an increased emphasis on recognition as a vital skill. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides (RHC-50)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1943-1953 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. Source <a href="http://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides, RHC-50</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50_MX1078 Title A name given to the resource Southampton class light cruiser Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Description An account of the resource Southampton class, British CL (light cruiser), May 1, 1945. Subject The topic of the resource United States. Navy World War, 1939-1945 Great Britain Military education Warships--Recognition Slides Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Naval recognition slides (RHC-50) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1945-05-01 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/cf1b3daba5147feaf3c2645f6aa2b9de.jpg 31b14f6837c4720daf895a73f6d0266b 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 Naval Recognition Training Slides Subject The topic of the resource Slides Military education Airplanes, Military--Recognition Warships--Recognition World War, 1939-1945 Description An account of the resource Slides developed during World War II as a training tool, for top-side battle-station personnel on board ship and for all aircraft personnel, by the US Navy. In 1942 a Recognition School was established by the Navy at Ohio State University where the method of identification was developed. In 1943 the school was taken over by the US Navy. The importance of training in visual recognition of ships and aircraft became even more evident during World War II. Mistakes resulting in costly errors and loss of life led to an increased emphasis on recognition as a vital skill. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides (RHC-50)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1943-1953 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. Source <a href="http://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides, RHC-50</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50_1275 Title A name given to the resource Southampton class, Belfast class British cruiser improved Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Description An account of the resource Southampton class, belfast class British cruiser improved, October 1, 1947. Subject The topic of the resource United States. Navy Military education Warships--Recognition World War, 1939-1945 Slides Great Britain Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Naval recognition slides (RHC-50) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1947-10-01 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/f0d72dabe8bd81556eadabd81c9f0cbd.mp4 0665e4de7f68fe62fa53478c51fac876 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ab0c8e563bd8291b7fca14bdd15afc1b.pdf 2ff2eeb0cc705661baecd82f540f906a PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Bradford Sutherland (00:32:40) (00:00:00) Background • Born on 29 June 1936 at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, MI • Lived in a trailer in back of his grandmother’s farm o Two siblings and his parents o Land that he lived on is now owned by Michigan State University • Moved to Clemens St., across from Potter Park Zoo • Later moved back to the country, which he liked better than the city • Discovered a gift for painting • Went to Diamondale High School o Was an unruly student o Later went to Charlotte High School, to increase his chances of getting into college • Worked for the Knights of Columbus from 10th through 12th grade o Intensive labor o Prepared him for factory work • Worked for Oldsmobile after high school • 1956-1957 – attended Michigan State University as an art major o Required to do officer’s training o Decided to try a career in the Air Force � Stationed at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas • Went through tech school • Went through basic training � Later stationed outside of Spokane, WA • Fought fires • Went to church each Sunday • Made ceramics at a hobby shop that was run by a Sergeant’s wife (00:07:58) England • Chose to go to England for overseas duty o Did not want to go to a country where the language was different o “Wanted to see England.” • Stopped in Michigan, before going overseas, to get engaged • His captain flew B-52s o While the captain was on leave, his crew hit a mountain and died o Stopped flying immediately after that incident • Worked in the munitions squadron o Originally had a “dull” job on the base o Job in the munitions squadron left him isolated �Wanted to go back to college after the service, but never did o Did not do much painting while in the service • Saw a lot of Europe o Traveled during his leave time • Drove a Volkswagen that he bought for $1143 (00:12:12) Leaving the military • Came home in 1963, the same year JFK was assassinated • Stayed in bunkers during Cuban Missile Crisis • Flew on a 707 back to McGuire Air Force Base o His family went back to Michigan o Drove two men back to Grand Rapids before returning to Lansing • Lived in an apartment in Lansing o Got a job at a post office � Hurt his back on the job � Had a hard time finding a job after his injury o The government sent him to drafting school, and did some drafting jobs • Went through a period of doing temporary jobs • Moved to Grand Rapids o Always wanted to live in Grand Rapids o Lived in a trailer park o Held a job as an inspector � Held the job for thirteen years � A heart operation caused him to quit the job • Did not have much insurance • The military paid for the operation • (00:17:55) Moving into the Veterans’ home • Moved in due to health and money problems • Started painting again o Mostly with acrylics � Acrylic paint dries faster than oil-based paints � Allows him to work faster o Discusses his uncle � World War II Marine � Was a designer for General Motors, and introduced him to acrylic paints • His mother is 90 years old o In perfect health o Never smoked or drank • Describes doing portraits and other types of painting that he enjoys o Once did a portrait of a friend, who later drowned o Did not do portraits for a long time afterward (00:23:35) Marriage • Got married overseas �• • • Divorced in 1975 Has two daughters o One lives in Byron Center, MI o The other moved to Florida His ex-wife is on her fourth marriage (00:26:25) Back surgery • Was told that he could not work overtime • Had a 35 lbs. lifting limitation • Did not prosecute the Post Office o No union there to help him o Did not seek worker’s comp. • Went to a psychologist, who referred him to a lawyer o The lawyer was unwilling to help him o The injury caused him to lose all of his money, because he could not get a job • • • • • • (00:29:26) “Anything you want to mention to your daughters?” Does not know what to say to them He is grateful that he never “laid a hand” on them Is proud that they married good men o Refers to them as “good Christians” o Shows extreme fondness for the son-in-law that lives in Florida Is glad that he is in the Veterans’ home, so that he is not a burden on his children Recommends the Air Force to anyone End (00:32:40) � 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 SoutherlandB Title A name given to the resource Southerland, Bradford (Interview outline and video), 2007 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Southerland, Bradford Description An account of the resource Bradford Sutherland is an Air Force veteran who entered the military after completing two years at Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI as an art student. His introduction to the military was through an officer's training course that was required by the university, causing him to take an interest in having a career with the Air Force. He spent his time in the US Air Force at bases in Texas, Washington, and in England. In this interview, Sutherland describes his experiences in the service, including the time that he spent traveling throughout Europe. Sutherland also describes many of the hardships that veterans endure once their time in the service has expired. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Collins Sr., Charles E. (Interviewer) Warren, Alvin (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans United States. Air Force Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American Video recordings Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007-06-29 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/a6ea6bd471ddf35d72d9c00a3b2da105.mp4 94357a92102d0cae8364fc8a6832ae7c https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2e444e6154ec41a0c9be2e3c95d3763f.pdf 44ebfafb2ac8fb69c441503ad7b8c148 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Oral History Interview Veteran: Jim Southerland Interviewed by James Smither Transcribed by Grace Balog Interviewer: We are talking today with Jim Southerland of Nashville, Tennessee. And the interviewer is James Smither of the Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project. Okay Jim, start us off with a little bit of background on yourself, and to begin with, where and when were you born? Veteran: Okay, I was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1946 to—my mother was a stay-at-home mother and my father was a technician with Bell Telephone. Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: And in ’54, ’55, he moved to a transfer in Arkansas. And that’s basically where I grew up. Interviewer: Okay. And what town in Arkansas did you go to school in? Veteran: Stuttgart. Interviewer: Okay, and where is that in the state? Veteran: It’s…The middle of the east part. Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: Rice end, swamp end, duck and gator country. Interviewer: Alright. Veteran: Good training for Vietnam. Interviewer: Okay. And now, did you finish high school? �Veteran: I did. Interviewer: And what year did you graduate? Veteran: ’64. Interviewer: Okay, and what did you do when you got out of high school? Veteran: Well, I had—I was working as a surveyor. Was in a surveyor crew and then I worked for a timber crew there. And then I tried to go to college for a semester and that didn’t work. Then I joined the Army. Interviewer: Okay. So, when did you actually join the Army? Veteran: May 19th, ’65. Interviewer: Okay. At the time you joined, did you have any idea that things were heating up in Vietnam? Or there might be a war to get into? Veteran: That was sort of a glimmer off in the distance. You read about it every now and then and you knew things were getting ready to happen. Interviewer: Okay. And did you, when you did this, did you think hey, that would be interesting to get involved in? Veteran: That’s why I joined. Interviewer: Okay. So, you went looking for the action rather than— Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: Okay. Alright, now once you enlist, where do they send you for basic training? Veteran: Went to Fort Polk, Louisiana for basic training then Fort Gordon, Georgia, which is just outside of Augusta for U.S. infantry training. Then 3 weeks at Fort Benning for jump school. And then I went to Germany. �Interviewer: Alright. Now, we will back up here to Fort Polk. When you show up for basic training, what kind of reception do you get? Veteran: Well, it’s nothing like Full Metal Jacket. There’s a specialist with a clipboard under his arm, he says, “Okay men, get off the bus. I am going to call off your name, answer. When I call you, move over here. And then go have a seat.” That’s it. (00:02:19) Interviewer: Okay, so some relatively polite at that point— Veteran: Nothing dramatic. Yeah, oh yeah. Interviewer: Okay. And once they—now, do they have a kind—do they have a processing where they cut your hair, all that kind of stuff? Veteran: Oh yeah. And they issue—there’s a rep—if I recall, it’s called a replacement detachment, where you go spend 2 or 3 days and you are issued uniforms and they start your shots and that sort of thing. Interviewer: Okay. Now, how long was the actual training once you started it? Veteran: There was 8 weeks of basic. Interviewer: Okay, so you’re down to 8 weeks by that time. Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: Okay. Now, what did the basic training consist of? Because not everybody knows that. Veteran: Well, it’s…Okay, close order drill, marching, and that’s more important than we realized at the time. When you got to operate as a unit, in unison. Sanitation, military justice, physical training, riflery, rifle marksmanship, gas training, going through just the rudiments. Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: And everybody gets to throw 1 grenade. I got to throw 2. �Interviewer: Alright, why did you get 2? Veteran: Because I wanted 2. Interviewer: Okay. Alright, you laughed at sanitation. Were there guys who didn’t know how to bathe? Veteran: Well, it’s—there were some…Yeah. Yeah. And I, actually, when I said sanitation, I was talking perhaps in the bigger plane of field sanitation where you put the latrine over here and kitchen over here. Interviewer: Right. Veteran: You wash—yeah, so. But yeah, there were some…A couple who couldn’t read or write. And they sent them off somewhere. And some people had not been raised with the rudiments of personal hygiene and they got special attention until they learned the rudiments of personal hygiene. (00:04:12) Interviewer: Alright. How easy or hard was it for you to adjust to life in the Army? Veteran: I didn’t have a bit of problem. Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: I was expecting it to be more rigorous. Interviewer: Okay. Did you have people who had told you they were going to be tough on you or how it would work? Or you just kind of assumed? Veteran: They just—there’s drill instruct—drill sergeants. They don’t have drill instructors in the Army. Drill sergeants have a lesson plan every day and they present it and you do what they tell you and if you do it, they leave you alone. Interviewer: Now, were there guys who had more trouble? Veteran: Oh yeah. People who didn’t want to do it or people with poor coordination or low IQ. �Interviewer: And what would they do with people who weren’t doing it right? Veteran: Well, usually they would leave it up to members of the squad. Say okay when this guy gets it right, you get to go to chow. Interviewer: Okay. So, they are building teamwork. Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: Alright. Now did you, when you enlist, were you asked to have any—express any kind of preference for what sort of training you were going to get? Veteran: Oh yeah. Interviewer: Okay and so what did you ask for? Veteran: I want to be a paratrooper. Interviewer: Okay. And they were happy to oblige you? Veteran: Oh yeah. Interviewer: Alright. So, let’s take us on to Fort Gordon then. What goes on there? Veteran: Fort Gordon is infantry training. You learn infantry school—tactics up through the squad and familiarization with weapons that a squad would use: rifles, automatic rifles, machine guns. And they put me in a mortar squad. So, where I trained with mortars every day. Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: And then there’s more close order drill. Interviewer: Alright. Veteran: More marching, more PT. Interviewer: What size mortar did they train you on? Veteran: 81. That’s the only—okay, I started to say that. That was the standard infantry company level mortar. 81. It’s changed now, I understand, but we had 81 mortar. �Interviewer: Okay. Because in World War 2 they had 60 millimeter. Veteran: They now have 60s at the company now. Interviewer: And then there are heavier ones but that’s artillery stuff. Veteran: Oh yeah. Interviewer: But light ones or whatever. Veteran: The battalion level mortars they call 107, they used to be called 4.2 inch. Interviewer: Yeah. Veteran: And that’s what I wound up doing in Germany. (00:06:27) Interviewer: Okay. Alright, so you’ve got mortar training as well as infantry training. And is that another 8 weeks? Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: Okay. Alright, and then you said from there you go on to jump school? Veteran: Go to jump school. Interviewer: Okay, and where was that? Veteran: Fort Benning, Georgia. Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: 42nd student company. Interviewer: Okay. And then how does the process work? Veteran: That’s pretty rigorous. You start off with a week of intense PT and then you get a week in the harnesses towers and then you get a week jumping. Interviewer: Okay. Explain the harnesses towers part. �Veteran: Okay, there’s 2 towers. There’s a 34-foot tower and there’s this who was explaining to me the purpose of jumping out of that 20-foot—34-foot tower, is to overcome the natural human reluctance to jump into thin air. And the first time you do it, that reluctance is there. Interviewer: Alright. And now what is protecting you when you jump off? What keeps you from— Veteran: You got a harness. Interviewer: Is that kind of like— Veteran: You slide down a rope. Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: Is there—is there something that’s elastic that will…Like a giant bungee cord kind of thing or…? Veteran: Yeah, just a rope you slide down. Now, to put that in perspective, we had people—we had troops who couldn’t do it. They refused. They walked down. Now, some years later, I went to a reunion where they let us play with the tower. And we had 10-year old kids that jumped off the tower 22 times in 30 minutes. Interviewer: Now, it’s just great fun. Okay. Alright, so you do the towers. You have the 34foot tower and there’s a taller tower? Veteran: There’s a 250-foot tower that came from the world fair in the—somewhere in New Jersey. And they have a steel ring inside a parachute canopy to keep it extended. They pull you up to the top and they release you and you practice guiding the parachute to the ground. And that’s fun. (00:08:22) Interviewer: Okay. And then you get the real thing? �Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: Okay, so what is the first jump like? Veteran: Okay. If an instructor got up on the platform, he said, “Okay, I need 100 men to jump without a parachute.” He’d have got 200. You’re pretty well indoctrinated by the end. You got it straight on the basics. Safety. Good exit. Good recover. Interviewer: So, do you remember your first jump out of a plane? Veteran: Oh yeah. Interviewer: Okay. What was that like? Veteran: I was so busy making sure that I had proper form and could—I was going to do the execute the drop right. Really didn’t pay much attention to the drop, to the fall. I did not enjoy the—did not have a chance to enjoy the scenery. Interviewer: Alright. Well, how high up do they drop you from? Veteran: About 1000-1200 feet. Something like that. Interviewer: Okay, so there’s not a lot of time to think about it then? Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: Alright. Now, is this something where the ripcord is pulled for you as you jump out of the plane or do you do that yourself? Veteran: Well, there’s really no—the ripcord is a static line that is hooked to your pack tray and I am trying to remember how…It’s 12 feet or 18 feet long. It’s a yellow nylon cord. It’s got a hook on the end of it. You hook it up over a cable. I give you the proper command. Hook up and there’s a pin that goes through to secure it. And a jump master does this and that says okay, secure the pin. And then you—jump master does this, which the command is sound off. And you sound off, make sure you inspect the man in front of you and his safety. And then the jump �master opens the door and he’s standing waiting for the red light to go green. When the green light goes, he pats you on the back and you go out the door. (00:10:18) Interviewer: Right. But then are you connected so that the parachute opens automatically. Veteran: Oh yeah. Yeah, when you go out the door, that static line pulls your pack, or your chute, open. Now, you have a reserve right here on your harness. And right here is a ripcord for that. And supposedly at that altitude, 1000s or 1200 feet, if you have a malfunction, you’ve got time to react with the reserve. Interviewer: Right. Okay, now how many jumps do you make then? Veteran: 5. Interviewer: Okay. And is it always the same way? I mean, is it always the automatic opening of the chute as you go out? Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: That’s just the standard way they do it? Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: Okay. Alright. Okay, so now you have gotten through that. Were there guys who were getting hurt doing those jumps? I mean, could you break things when you land? Veteran: We had more people get hurt in the physical training. Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: Plenty of PT, so…I don’t recall any injuries… Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: …In the jump week. Interviewer: Very good. Okay, you have done all of this. And now, do they send you home before you go to Germany or…? �Veteran: Yeah, I went home for a couple weeks. And then I went to Fort Dix, New Jersey. Waited around for about 2 or 3 weeks for a replacement detachment. And then we boarded a ship. Boarded a ship and went to Bremerhaven. Took 8 days. Interviewer: Alright. Now, during your time when you were sitting around in New Jersey, could you go into New York City? Or you just sit around? Veteran: You were supposed to sit there. It was pretty easy to get out the gate though. Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: Yeah, I went to New York a couple of times. Interviewer: Alright. Okay, now you’re on a boat so describe that trip. Veteran: Oh, that’s the worst experience I have ever had in my life. Just 2 or 3 or, I don’t know, 3 or 4000 G.I.s on this troop ship and they are sleeping in bunks 3 or 4 high. You stand in line for hours to get any chow. The chow is nasty. People throwing up in the chow. People throwing up in the dining hall. Food is terrible. Half the people on KP, half the people on guard duty. I used to hide out in the welding shop. (00:12:31) Interviewer: Alright. How long was the trip? Veteran: 8 days. Interviewer: 8 days, okay. And what time of year was this now? Veteran: November. Interviewer: Okay, so north Atlantic, November…maybe not a great place to be? Veteran: Well, you could stand on the rail. You stand on the rail like this, and maybe—you see maybe 30-40-foot seas. And the ship would lift up and come down. And you could see those waves coming at you. And that’s all you see is waves for 1000s of miles. Feels kind of lonely and exposed out there. �Interviewer: So, just as well you didn’t pick the Navy at that point. Veteran: Yeah. The water temperature was probably 50 degrees, 40 degrees that time of year. And we—supposedly, our trip to this was 300 miles to Iceland. Interviewer: Okay. So, now you get into Bremerhaven. What happens? Veteran: You get out. They get the cattle off, cattle boat. And they pack you on trains. And they send you to the various division replacement training centers. Interviewer: Okay. So where did— Veteran: I was the 8th Division in Karlsruhe, which is, I would say, due west 30 or 40 miles from Frankfurt. Interviewer: Okay. Alright. Veteran: That was headquarters, the 8th Division. Interviewer: Okay. And then once you got there, what did they do with you? Veteran: Oh, you stand in line and get—we got new kits—certain equipment and indoctrination and familiarization on Europe and KP and painted and did details. And finally, got out of there after 3 or 4 days and got to the unit. (00:14:12) Interviewer: Okay. And so, what unit now do you join? Veteran: I was in the same thing, 509th airborne in the Robert E. Lee barracks, MainzGonsenheim. Interviewer: Alright. And now that you’re there, what’s your job? Veteran: Oh, they put me in a mortar platoon. And they found out I had an IQ of 70 or 80 or above and understood the basic 4 functions of math, they made me a fire computer. Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: The computer, it had an actual computer for air and elevation for the guns. �Interviewer: Alright. Now, when we’re saying computer, are we talking about what we think of as a computer now or you are doing the calculations? Veteran: No, it’s—you, you’re doing it on a piece of graph paper. Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: And you got a slide rule, it’s not a slide rule. I forget what it’s called. Looks like a slide rule and it’s got the charges on it. And then, you got a range—range tables to give you elevation. And so, they give you—you figure out the target and you knew where the guns are and you plot the arrows with the guns set on their sights and the charges make it go so far. Interviewer: So, you could—charges, so you X amount of powder, explosives, propels it, and you have more if you are going to shoot farther and less for less? Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: Same with larger artillery? Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: Okay so, were these the larger mortars you had? Veteran: These were 107s, yeah. And as a matter of fact, they—the training for the 107s was done on a standard artillery plotting kit and it was conducted by division artillery. Whereas the 81s were conducted at the company level. Interviewer: Okay. So now, what sort of reception do you get within the mortar platoon? How do they treat the new guys when they come in? Veteran: Brutal. It was brutal. “Boy, you’re going to die. You’re little. You won’t last here. You’ll be gone in 6 months.” (00:16:11) Interviewer: So, what actually happens in those first few weeks? �Veteran: Oh, you learn—you learn your spot. But now the unit was out in the field when I first got there and I was on KP every day. Finally, the 1st sergeant comes by. I had been on KP for about 8 days and it’s from sun-up until midnight. I said, “1st Sergeant, how do I get off KP?” He said, “Boy, you want to get off KP?” And I said “Uh-huh.” He said, “When you get off KP, come see me between 2 and 5 in the afternoon.” So, couple days later I go in his office and he said, “I didn’t think you’d show up but come in here.” And he reached down and he got out a stack of field manuals like this. And he said, “Read those, learn how to shine your boots, and get a haircut, and you go up to soldier of the month. You make soldier of the month, you’ll be ED— exempt from duty for 1 month.” So, I shined my boots. I had 2 pairs of jump boots. I shined them both every night. Kept my hair shaved like—almost like this. And read those—read and committed those manuals to memory. And I made soldier of the month. First time a buck private ever made soldier of the month. And I was off—I was exempt from duty for the next month. Interviewer: Okay. How did the guys in your unit feel about that? Veteran: Like chicken shit. Life were—suck ass. I made everybody look bad. And that was right off the bat. So, it was a…It was an interesting experience. I had respect for my superiors and the derision of my cohorts. Interviewer: Alright. Now, does the—how long did you wind up spending with them? Veteran: Oh, almost a year. (00:18:00) Interviewer: Okay. Now, how did your relationship—or, does your relationship with the guys change over the course of that year? Veteran: Yeah, because I got to be their boss in a couple days. Interviewer: So…So, what do you wind up—I mean, how are you spending most of your time then with them? When you’re with that unit, what are you doing day to day? �Veteran: Oh…Endless maintenance. Motor pool every day. Trying to keep that junk hanging together and operating. And there’s daily training on common subjects like nuclear warfare, chemical warfare, drills with chemical warfare and drills with biological drills. The first—you take 2 or 3 first aid classes a week. Interviewer: And would you also get field exercises? Veteran: Oh yeah, you get to go to the field for a month at a time. Interviewer: Okay. And where would you go? Veteran: We would go to, there was—it was training area that belonged to the 8th division called Baumholder. And then there was a 7th Army training area where we’d jump, Grafenberg. That was 7th Army eastern training area and I think we went to a training area called Wildefliecken a couple times. And then right across the river from us, there was a—the 8th division had an airfield, 5th Army airfield. And we would go down there and do a lot of training practice. And that’s also—now, in Germany, you got these ammunition dumps all over the place, left over from World War 2, built since then. And any given time, a 30 company is going to be on guard site. They’re going to be out guarding one of these ammo dumps or quarter master depot. They finally got smart and hired civilians to do that because we stole too much stuff. The quarter master dumped us. (00:20:05) Interviewer: Now— Veteran: At that airfield, there was also the special ammo supply point, which is an Army euphemism for nuclear weapons storage. In any infantry division at that time, you had these small nukes, SASP—we called them Davy Crocket. They had the yield on that weapon is about this big around, like this. I think it’s a tenth of a kiloton. And the ground zero was 5000 meters. And the maximum range is 4000 meters. Do the math on that one. �Interviewer: Well, the 5000 meter is a diameter as opposed to radius so you’re automatically shooting yourself. Veteran: Yeah. Yeah and then let’s see, we had artillery. We had—I think we had 155, 8-inch artillery pieces that had nuclear projectiles. And maybe some—maybe like an honest—I don’t if we had honest, I don’t know if the division had Honest John missiles or not. But anyway, we got—the parachute units got to guard that, the SASP a lot. Interviewer: Okay. Now, did they tell you what your job would be if the Soviets came over the border? Veteran: You know, they never articulated that. They never articulate—and we used to have these alerts. 3 o’clock in the morning, the alert sirens would go off and you’d turn to and get your weapons and get on the vehicle and go to the assembly area. And the assembly area would be some spot you had never gone to before. You get to the assembly area and you do some kind of Mickey Mouse and then about noon you would head back. And from the assembly area, which might be 20 kilometers, to your concern, you could almost walk back on dead vehicles. I knew the Russians were laughing their ass off every time they watched one of these alarms. (00:22:05) Interviewer: Alright. Now, I guess as a parachute unit, you might well be some kind of reaction or reserve force? Veteran: Indeed. Now, we used to have a mini reaction and quick reaction. The mini quick reaction is—they are sitting in a pair and their trailer is outside with weapons and explosives on. And the planes are sitting on the ramp. And there’s trailers with parachutes on. And I think you could be out of there in 15 minutes. The main, it was 24 hours or something like that. And we used to go up to this air force base and some time before I got there, some hooligans—I am not �sure what—I understand they took over the EM club and they had started fights and so. So, when we went on up, they locked us in the hangar. Interviewer: Alright. Now, you were still expected to function actually as a parachute unit? Veteran: Oh yeah. Interviewer: You would drop into places and parachute places. So, you’re not getting helicopters at this point? Veteran: They didn’t really have too many helicopters. 8th division probably had…I would think they would be hard put to lift a company, 200-man company. Interviewer: Okay. Of course, we are now kind of early ’66 for a lot of this and then the helicopter— Veteran: Before air mobile really got—the concept really got going and they had the equipment to do it. Interviewer: Yeah. And the helicopters were mostly in Vietnam. Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: They are over there, so you don’t have that kind of thing where you are. Different kind of war expected on someone. Veteran: And we had—we walked a lot. But now on one of the walks, in March or April, I volunteered for it. Nijmegen in Holland…Make a note of this and google it up: Nijmegen March. They had marching units from all over the world. Most of them are civilians that participate in the marches. And the 8th Division made a composite platoon or company. I guess it was a couple—50 or 60 guys who would march from division headquarters to Nijmegen in uniform, full dress uniform. And that took, that was two good days. (00:24:28) Interviewer: Alright. And what was the purpose of that? Or do you not know? �Veteran: Participating in the march. Interviewer: Okay. But why were they having a march? Veteran: You know, I thought it was some kind of war—commemorative of the end of the war or the jump in Nijmegen or the defeat of the Germans or something. I need to look at that better because there were all these civilians there. And you had 100 civilians marching up and down the hill. Norway and Sweden. Yeah it—I am sure the message for it perhaps goes back further than what I imagine. Interviewer: Alright. Now, did you—what did you do when you were off duty? Did you go off base and go anywhere? Veteran: Seldom. Money was the major constraint. You go off maybe once a week and drink a couple beers and come back before you got in trouble. Now payday, payday I didn’t go anywhere on payday but that’s when all the hooligans were out. MPs would be out beating people. They’d be beating MPs and beating the whores and fighting with cab drivers. Yeah, payday was a good day to stay at home. Interviewer: Okay. And when you did go, I mean what impression did you have of the local population there? Veteran: Oh, they were great people. There was one guest house I used to go in and the owner finally confided in me that he was an executive officer on a U boat but he only sank British ships. Interviewer: Good of you. Alright, now are you getting promoted while you’re there? (00:26:04) Veteran: Yep. Interviewer: Okay. �Veteran: I get my little stripe when I got—I got my little stripe about a month ahead of time because I made soldier of the month. And then…July or Sept—June or July, I made brigade soldier of the month and I got promoted to spec 4, which is about 2 years ahead of time. Interviewer: Right. Veteran: And that gave reason—gave a lot of people reason to resent me even more. There’s some people, they are on their second hitch waiting to be promoted to E-4. They hadn’t made it yet. Interviewer: Alright. Now, promotions in Vietnam were pretty quick. Veteran: Oh, it’s just— Interviewer: But that’s a combat zone though, when— Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: Okay. Now, did you have a lot of people who were being pulled out of Germany and sent to Vietnam while you were there? Veteran: Not at that time. Interviewer: Okay. So, at that point you’re in your unit in Germany. That’s where you’re going to be, for the most part? Veteran: Basically 3 more years of that. I hated—I just couldn’t stay in. Interviewer: Now, were they making any effort to recruit volunteers for Vietnam? Veteran: No, not in Germany. Interviewer: Okay. So, how do you wind up then eventually going on to Vietnam? Veteran: I yelled and kicked—yelling and screaming and kick and fight and finally they said, “Okay, if you re-enlist, we will send you to Vietnam.” I re-enlisted and they sent me to Vietnam. Interviewer: Alright. So, why didn’t they want you to go? �Veteran: Well, they were seriously short—they were the last ones to get replacements. And there were budgetary constraints on the manpower levels and they didn’t really give up anybody once they got them. Interviewer: And even if some of your guys didn’t like you that much, you knew what you were doing? Veteran: Yeah. I mean, I didn’t worry about them. I was worried about keeping my boss happy. Interviewer: Right. Veteran: I had nothing to gain by keeping those shitheads happy. Interviewer: Alright. Now, I mean did they—did they try to bully you or anything like that? (00:28:03) Veteran: Oh my god, yeah. They’d throw my footlocker down the stairs and fold my bunk up. Good training. Interviewer: Okay. Alright, so now when do you actually leave Germany then? Veteran: I left Germany in early September. Early September, I went home for a month. I went to Oakland. Now, at that time they had this stupid policy: I wasn’t good enough to play in the game to take advantage of this, but you had to take all of your field equipment with you. Helmet, web gear, then you didn’t have to take a sleeping bag or tent, but all of your web gear. We had an extra duffel bag and you had authorization to have two duffel bags, helmet, all that stuff. So, I dragged this stuff all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. All the way across the U.S. I get to Oakland and I go to the replacement detachment and I said, “Oh, I got my field gear.” He said, “Throw that shit over in the corner. You’re going to get a new one when you go to Vietnam.” Well, I never did. Stuff I got was hand me down that should have been exchanged a long time �ago. If I had been smart, I’d have left that duffel bag at home and opened that up in 30 years and had a nice trove for a military collector. Interviewer: Alright. So now, how do they physically get you to Vietnam? Veteran: Well, I was assigned to 1st Brigade 1st Cavalry division. And we left Travis Air Force Base on this is the expedited—this expedited trip. Left Travis Air Force Base on these 141s flying backwards and landed twice to refuel. And we landed at Pleiku Air Force Base. And when we got off, there are helicopters and Caribou transports to take us to An Khe, the division headquarters. Interviewer: Right. Okay, so you were going over with the unit at that point? (00:30:06) Veteran: The people—no, all the people that were on those 3 or 4 airplanes were going to replacements in the same place. Interviewer: Okay. You were replacements but you were all replacements heading for the same division? Veteran: Yeah. Right. Interviewer: Okay. And were you all for the same brigade or just the same division? Veteran: All through the division. Interviewer: Okay. Alright, now then the transports were military transports? Veteran: C-141s, Starlifters, which not an uncomfortable way to fly. You fly backwards. Matter of fact, I have jumped out of a couple of them. They are not a bad way to go. Interviewer: Okay. But there is some form of actual seat there? Veteran: Yeah, they are actual seats like in an airliner. Interviewer: Okay, because I guess the C-130s, some of them that people flew on didn’t always have that kind of thing. �Veteran: Oh, fold down bench seats on the side. Interviewer: Right. Okay. What’s you first impression of Vietnam? Veteran: It’s hot and humid. And we get on these planes and we fly over the mountains and we land it at the division base camp at An Khe and it’s hot and humid. And we are there about 5 minutes and it starts raining. And it rained for the next 2 or 3 weeks. Interviewer: Alright. Veteran: So, we go to replacement center, they process us, I don’t know, a day and a night, and we go to our units. And of course, the units are all out—troops are all out in the field. And so…I don’t know. They did some bully rag to you back in there. You had double time and people called you a cherry. Interviewer: Did they have any kind of in country orientation or anything like that? Veteran: Well, after we got issued—at that time, it was pretty primitive. We were being issued our gear in the company battalion and then we went to this training school for 3 days. Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: And other than handling an M-16 for the first time and listening to some horror stories from people, I…It was pretty much useless. Interviewer: Okay. They didn’t take you out on a patrol or anything like that? Veteran: We actually went out on a patrol outside the green line. And they gave me the—I was the radio operator. And there was this staff sergeant that was patrol leader. We walked a mile out and a mile back. And there was no real training, just a walk in the woods. (00:32:19) Interviewer: Do you have any sense of what the purpose of all that was? Veteran: Busy work so somebody could check off a box on a form somewhere. �Interviewer: Right. Because I had different descriptions of that depending on when you came through. Although, I mean at some point, it had the title of First Team Academy or something like that. Veteran: That was a lot later on. Interviewer: It was ’67. I think someone went in in ’67 and talked about that. Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: So, you are a year earlier. Okay. So, you get a little bit of that. But now you’re kind of rejoining, you’re going back to your unit. Veteran: Going back to the unit we get on Caribous. We go to a firebase or a landing some called in English, out in the Bong Son plain. And then from there we helicopter—we go to our company rear areas and they get us a helicopter out to the company. Interviewer: Okay. About how large was the company, in terms of man power, do you think when you joined it? Veteran: TOE of an infantry company was 152 or 154, something like that. And we were, we would be doing good to put 90 boots—90 sets of boots on the ground. Interviewer: Okay. And what sort of reception do you get when you actually join the unit in the field? Veteran: Well, when I got off the helicopter, the first person I saw was somebody I went to college with and he said, “Here, you take this.” I said, “What is this?” And it was a platoon leader’s radio. So, platoon leader calls me over. He says, “Dial me up so and so.” I said, “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.” So, he takes the radio, he sets the frequency. He makes a phone call. He says, “Here, put that on and follow me.” (00:34:02) Interviewer: Alright. Now did you wind up staying an RTO? Is that your job? �Veteran: Yeah, that was my job. Now, a couple months later I got promoted to sergeant and they made me a squad leader. And that was a much easier job than carrying that radio. Much less visible, much less visible target. Interviewer: Alright. Let’s talk a little about that time when you are an RTO then. What did you make of your lieutenant? Veteran: His name was—he was a good guy. He was a country boy from West Virginia. Went to Berea College in Kentucky. And he had—he was a solid guy, had both feet on the ground. Little rough around the edges. If you needed a smacking around, he might take care of that. He certainly left the impression he would. But he was very concerned about the welfare of his troops. Were they getting clean clothes and so on. But certainly, the platoon sergeant was a known brawler. He was a typical airborne soldier. Been at it 20 something years. Been in 2 wars, been in the Army, out of the Army, been busted a couple times. Drank too much. But he was good. He was good. And he gave you the right incentive to follow him, do what he told you to. He would keep you in line. He might kick your ass if you didn’t. Interviewer: Right. Now, were you basically just kind of conducting patrols outside of English and that kind of thing? Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: Alright. And what’s the terrain like there? Veteran: Well, where we were it was pretty mountainous. Yeah, real mountainous. Interviewer: Alright. And was there much going on at that point? Was there much enemy activity? Veteran: We didn’t—we really didn’t get any, into anything too much until a couple of platoons would get into a little fire fight. That died down. Let me see, November we got in the big fight. �Had some casual—first time I had seen a lot of casualties. And then the end of December, when we were having a Christmas truce. One of our sister companies gets ambushed. They got all— most of them got annihilated. We had a lot of casualties there. And we lost a platoon leader there. And the platoon sergeant took over as platoon leader and the platoon sergeant got shot the next day and I became the platoon sergeant, for a day or two. (00:36:32) Interviewer: Alright. Now, let’s see, I guess for the record here, I am not sure we had mentioned this. What specific company, platoon, and so forth are you with? Veteran: I was in the mortar platoon. Oh wait. It’s the 4th platoon, which is a designated weapons platoon. And the weapons platoon is supposed to have mortars and recoilless rifles. And we had only mortars and we only had them in the base camp. And we only brought them out in the field as needed. And the platoon sergeant was an old mortarman. The old guys were all good mortarmen. The replacements we got in didn’t have any experience. And it was less and less often that we would bring mortars out in the field and actually set up and use them. Interviewer: Okay. So, but now is it then your mortar platoon leader that gets killed? Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: And is— Veteran: But I mean, for all intents and purposes, it’s the 4th rifle platoon. Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: From day to day operations. Interviewer: So, you would go out in the field with the other line units then? Veteran: Oh yeah. Interviewer: Okay. And so, you just function—and so, they use the manpower as extra riflemen? �Veteran: Yeah. The company—yeah. The company commander would say—he would designate the lead platoon for the night and day. He would rotate them among all platoons. And we had a guy named—I forget his name, but he was a good point man. And we spent more than our fair share of time being point. But that’s okay because the point man was very good and the platoon leader and platoon sergeant were very good. (00:38:09) Interviewer: Alright. And then as the platoon leader’s RTO, what are you doing? Veteran: Well…I am trying to keep up with him. He’s 6’4’’ and got legs that come up to here on me. And I am burdened with about twice as much gear as he is. I am carrying all of my gear, all ammo and frags I can carry, and for some stupid reason I had a 45 I later got rid of, and I have got the radio, I’ve got—there’s a long antenna and a case you carry. You got to carry 3 or 4 batteries. Got to carry a lot of smoke grenades. It was a pretty good burden. So, mostly I tried to keep up with him. When the company commander would call him, I would try to get up to him so he could take the call. Interviewer: Okay. And did you sort of learn to operate the radio pretty quickly? Veteran: Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean and—part of my job in the FDO in the mortar platoon in Germany, you’re on constantly, you’ve got a radio handset in your hand constantly. So yeah, that was no big deal. Just—I didn’t have the signal operation instructions which was a little booklet that you carry. It’s supposed to be a classified document. It’s got call signs and frequencies of all the sister companies, the battalion, brigade and so on. Interviewer: So, you were just supposed to know those things? Veteran: No, you’re supposed to keep it close. Yeah, you learn the call signs of the 4 companies. Each company has got its own call sign. We were pistol belt. There was pig iron and canteen cup and those change every couple months. And the battalion commander, his call sign was shiny �boots. The battalion call sign was shiny boots. Now, you have a hierarchy. The number 6 designates the commander, at whatever level. 6 could be platoon leader, could be company commander, could be division commander. 3 is operations, 2 is intelligence, 5 is communication, 4 is supply, 5 is civil affairs. Why would I still know that? (00:40:30) Interviewer: Well, good training at some level. Okay. So, you’re only really doing that kind of thing then for just a couple of months? Veteran: Yeah. And at night, you dig in. The medic—you and—okay, you got an RTO for the platoon sergeant, one for the platoon leader, and you got one for—and the medic. The 3 of you are camped together at night and take turns monitoring radios. And that usually didn’t work too well. Somebody would always fall asleep. Never had any repercussion for it. Interviewer: Alright. And now when you were out at night, I mean would you have anybody trying to probe your position? Or would they leave you alone? Veteran: Where we were at that particular time, it was rare. Much of the time it was just random shots just to keep us—they thought they’d keep us jittery or something. But you’d get jittery if they didn’t shoot at you. Interviewer: Now, when you were out in the field, do you go on the trails or off them? Or…? Veteran: We didn’t—we didn’t go on trails. We made our own. Interviewer: How dense was the under growth in these places? Veteran: It—you had to cut your way through sometimes with machetes. And I never figured…Okay, as much noise as a company makes in the bush, you got equipment rattling, you got people talking and yelling at each other and you got radios…You’re not going to—you will �not arrive unannounced. And then when you start chopping through jungle foliage and bamboo? They can hear you coming 2 miles away. (00:42:00) Interviewer: So, did you only have contact when they felt like making contact? Veteran: You know, that’s always—when there was a significant battle, it was an ambush that they set up. At a time and a place of their choosing. Now, there were random encounters like there would be a messenger coming down a trail and we would pick him off. We tried to stay off trails, though. And then at night, we would—okay, every night you set up a perimeter. And you say well, we got this hill up here and a little stream coming down here. Let’s put 3 guys up there on a listening post. And there’s a trail crossing a stream down here. Let’s put 4 or 5 guys down there and set up an ambush. And that’s where the fun usually started, with the ambush. And I think we had a psychological advantage. When they ran into one of our ambushes, they would break contact and run as hard as they could because they had no idea what they were running into. Interviewer: And when they made contact with you, would they break off once too much return fire came? Veteran: Yeah. Their job was to inflict casualties and run away. Fight another day. Interviewer: Okay. Now, do you know if you were up against Viet Cong or NVA? Veteran: Well, now. We could identify them pretty easy. There was a main force VC unit that would be like a national guard on active duty. And then there were NVA units. And you could tell by the uniforms and equipment they had. NVA were much better armed. They had uniforms. Interviewer: Okay. Did the VC have kind of Soviet type weapons? Or were they using stuff they took from us? Or...? �Veteran: They had—it was interesting. They would pick up weapons and use them as needed but someday the supply chain would bring weapons down and they would turn all the captured stuff in or all the old stuff in and they’d get better weapons down. If we found out—we got in their cache one time. We found where they had turned in all of the captured weapons they had and all the junk that the Chinese had given them. There was British, Chinese, German, everything, stacked up there. The local VC had turned back in and received bolt action Soviet rifles. And that’s what we were encountering. (00:44:38) Interviewer: Okay. The bolt action? So, like World War 2 style as opposed to the AT-47 model or something like that? Veteran: Yeah. They liked carbine—the local VC liked carbines and they were readily available from the south Vietnamese. Interviewer: Yeah, your other source of supply. Did you have many civilians in that area? Veteran: Yeah. They would be right on the edge of—okay, rice paddies would go up here and the mountains would go up here. In this little cusp between, the woodcutters would come up here and then in the rice paddy areas, there would be lots of villages. We hated—we wanted to stay as far away from the villages as possible. This one particular place where we would locate, there was a Bong Son river ran down like this. And this was a mountain chain and these were some low hills. These were the piedmont area and here was the beach. And this valley right here, we called it Bong Son plain. And it was loaded with villagers. And we thought we could pass by the area and let those villagers pursue their crafts and survive and thrive. That wasn’t the case. We ran—we kept—a lot of action over here in this piedmont. And in these big mountains over here. That’s where the Annamite chain started. And it went a 100-miles that way. That was Indian �country. And we had firebases. English is here, Geronimo is here. That’s 15 miles. And we had other firebases around. (00:46:23) Interviewer: Alright. And did you have a standard operating procedure for going through a village? Or did you just stay out of them? Veteran: Yeah, you—okay you pay particularly close attention to walking where the villagers were walking. Pay attention to what’s up over your head. When you go in a hooch, try to look up and look to the side. Because the Viet Cong were ruthless. They would—they would come in and booby trap a…innocent villagers’ hooch—house, grass hut in the middle of the night, knowing that we are going to trip it. We are going to get somebody hurt and retaliate against the village. Interviewer: And did your people trip booby traps and that kind of thing? Veteran: Yeah, yeah, yeah. A booby trap, that’s an interesting word, and it took on a life of its own. A booby trap is a—is something, is an explosive destructive device disguised as something else. A book or a door or a lid on a coffee can or something. What we call booby traps were simply improvised mines. Interviewer: Alright. Now, you were—you have your initial phase where you’re the RTO and you’re in the field a lot. Okay, and then—now does your job shift kind of right after you lose the lieutenant or do you…? Veteran: No, we lost a couple squad leaders and it was—they said, “Okay, we will make him a squad leader. He knows how to read a map.” Interviewer: Alright. Now do you stay in the same area at that point? (00:48:02) Veteran: Yeah, same area. Interviewer: Okay. So, how long were you in the Bong Son area? �Veteran: We were there the whole time. We were there for…Let’s see, we were there from early ’66 through Christmas ’67. Interviewer: Okay. Alright, and then during that time, was it pretty much just a regular routine of doing the same thing over and over again? Veteran: Yeah but we get—we got February of ’67, we got sucked into this big ambush. And I mean, they just wiped our company out. I was gone at the time. I wasn’t out there. And then a couple weeks later, I was out there and one of our platoons was set up in a blocking position. And they got ahold of one by sapper company and they got—they got all messed up. They were—became ineffective. They had 20 or 30 casualties. And then, daily, weekly, monthly, little services, sniper rounds. But that was relatively peaceful. And then after—okay, I left the field in about August or maybe early September. And they moved me into the operations—operations section. Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: And I was a duty operations officer on the midnight shift. At one of these firebases here. Interviewer: And so, what does that job consist of? Veteran: Well, it was a—you got 2 radio operators monitoring company nets and the brigade net. And you got a battalion. And if a company makes contact, it’s my job to get resupply and med evac going. Write up the after-accident reports. Brief the commanders on them. We had some really good operations officers and some really good commanders. I can’t—there’s one I didn’t like but I can’t say we had a bad operations officer or commander. But we had one guy who was the brightest of the bright. He was a legacy. Father and grandfather were both general officers. He was a West Pointer. And he became 4-star on his own. He was brilliant. But he would insist �that I wake him up. Anything happened, he wanted to be wakened up. So, I go in at 4:30, 5 o’clock whenever I was supposed to wake him for the day and I would say—he’d say, “What happened?” And I would say, “Okay, well about 2 o’clock, Charlie company had a mortar round laying in the perimeter. Nobody got hurt. And about 3:30, somebody tried to probe around at Delta company. They beat them off and they fired some elimination rounds and they think they got a body outside.” He said, “You’re supposed to wake me up.” I said, “I’ll make a deal with you.” He said, “You don’t make deals with me.” I said, “Listen, we need you bright eyed, bushy tailed, alert as possible during the day to run the operations of this battalion.” I said, “I will make a deal with you: if anybody gets—if we have a KIA, I’ll wake you up.” He yelled at me, “I don’t have to make deals with you!” But anyway, that became the procedure. I would wake him up and brief him on what happened during the night. (00:51:42) Interviewer: Alright. Now, you have been in Vietnam a while by this time. Do you get an R and R in there somewhere? Veteran: Yeah. Okay, I had taken 2 R and Rs during my year in the field. I went to—I had an aunt and an uncle that lived in Taiwan. CC Kang Air Base in Taichung. I went and spent a week with them and I went to Australia for a week. And then, when my first year was up, I went back home for a month. Came back. Okay. I think I deferred that for a couple months. I came back and the unit had disappeared. They had left Bong Son and moved to I Corps. And I joined— rejoined them in I Corps. And then I had 6 months down on down the road, I took another— extended my tour again, took another 30-day leave. Went to Australia that time. (00:52:42) Interviewer: Okay. What’s it like to get out of Vietnam after you have been in it for a while? You get into this world where there’s not a war going on. �Veteran: Oh you, first thing you do is you marvel at running water. All the hot running water you want and a bar of soap this big. And you lay there for hours. Nobody is yelling at you to hurry up and get out. You put on clean clothes and you know you’re going to put on clean clothes the next day. And you go to a restaurant and you eat real food. Yeah, it’s great. Interviewer: Okay. When was the leave home? Back to the states? Veteran: That was that year in late ’67. I was there at Christmas time. Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: And when I went back, the division had moved to I Corps and was taking over from the Marines. And— Interviewer: Just before we get there and I want to get there because that is an important phase, when you go back, are you become aware of some of the anti-war stuff going on or that kind of thing? Veteran: No. You read about it. You read about it in Vietnam but there were—never personally encountered it. Interviewer: Okay. So, when you came back and when you traveled around, would you travel in uniform back in the states? Veteran: No, not once I got out of the airport. And you know, where I—when I got off the airport, got out of the airplane at Arkansas, there weren’t going to be any protesters back there. Interviewer: Yeah, yeah. No, it would be more like in transit, like when you first come into the west coast and— (00:54:11) Veteran: Oh, I was in Oakland one time and they were throwing stuff at us and I had a lay-over at Stapleton in Denver and they were throwing stuff. Yeah, it got bad. As time went by, it got worse. �Interviewer: Okay. So, you did see some of that but a lot depended on where you were? Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: Yeah. Okay. But anyway, so let’s go back. So, you go—so you basically get back to Vietnam, January now of ’67. Okay. And now the division as a whole has moved up to the far northern part of north Vietnam. So where are you going to be—where are you based when you join them? Veteran: Quang Tri province, which is…15 miles south of the DMZ, 40 miles, 50 miles from the Laotian border. Interviewer: Right. Veteran: And it’s where—the Marines could not control it, where we—it took us a week to pass by here. Interviewer: Now where were—did you start out on the coastal area or were you— Veteran: No, we started out in the—pretty much the center of the country. But now later on— Interviewer: No, no, I mean when you went up north, did you—were you policing the coastal area first and going inland? Or…? Veteran: No and actually we went inland. And later on, we went down to highway 1 and we did in a month what the Marines couldn’t do in 5 years. ‘Course it didn’t really matter because the day you leave, they’re going to come back that night. Interviewer: Do you have a sense of what you were able to do or why you could do things differently than the Marines? Veteran: Okay, I’ll give you an example. I pointed this out to somebody the other day. Artillery forward observer, the Marines, was a lieutenant assigned to an artillery battery. Artillery battery had 4 Marine companies it supported. They had 4 lieutenants and a radio operator. Now, the FO �could only fire his battery. He didn’t even know the radio frequencies for other batteries. The only battery he could fire was his battery. Now, contrast that with—when we went on Operation Pegasus, we had finished a training. Okay, a helicopter you got a pilot, copilot. You got crew chief and gunner. Okay. Crew chief stays pretty busy. The copilot was trained to be an FO, the gunner was trained to be an FO. So, when we are peak op—at peak operation, we’ve got 800 FOs in the air. Not 24 on the ground. 800 FOs that can shoot any battery from any country from any army from any armed service, Air Force and Navy. And for the Marines to get the Air Force or Navy involved, they had these anglo teams, 2 Marine officers and 2 Navy officers. And they have to be requested to bring in any assets. We are refining World War 1. (00:57:16) Interviewer: Alright. So…Now, you’re not up there very long before the Tet Offensive starts? Veteran: Oh, no. We were—they…Night at the Tet Offensive went down. There’s this ARVN compound that’s getting overrun and the battalion commander grabs me and says, “Go get 6 cooks and clerks and get on that bird. You’re going to go relieve them and you’re going to go and meet the first platoon of Delta company out there.” These people don’t even know if they’ve got weapons that will work. Somehow, one of them didn’t even know where his weapon was. Here, take this one. Get on the board—get on the bird. The first bird in was from a platoon from Delta company. And the thing went down on the mechanical about 300 yards short of the perimeter of this ARVN unit. Crashed and landed on top of the headquarters of the NVA regiment it was assaulting. Killed the regimental commander, the political officer. (00:58:26) Interviewer: Now, were you on this helicopter? �Veteran: No, I was over here. So, we come in—we land inside the perimeter and I got this one— one of the people in my spot is a cook, this obnoxious, fat, smelly cook. He was sus—he was thought to be the cause of the spread of gamma—what do they give you? Gamma globulin…? Interviewer: Gamma globulin. (00:58:53) Veteran: Is that hepatitis? Interviewer: Something. I forget. But anyway— Veteran: He was thought—he was the genesis of this malady that we were all suffering from. And he charges through the wire. Goes out to the bird, pulls the copilot out of the bird. Drags him to safety. Pulls the pilot out of the bird, drags him to safety. And he comes up and he says, “I got to sit down, I don’t feel too good.” I said, “What’s wrong with you?” Being kind of contemptuous, I’d like to shoot this guy myself. He had a bullet hit him. He had a broken ankle. Most contemptible piece of shit in the battalion. And he’s the hero now. Interviewer: Right. Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: Now, what happened to the North Vietnamese? Did they just leave at that point? Or…? Veteran: They evaded it. Yeah, we got enough people on the ground to get enough air support and the artillery in. air support was hard to come by that night but we got enough artillery in. they decided to break off. Interviewer: Okay. Now, before that started, was there any inkling where you were that there was something going on? (01:00:04) Veteran: Nothing. �Interviewer: Okay. So, there was a surprise. Alright. Now had—did they—were you on a firebase when that started? Veteran: Yeah, I was on LZ Sharon. Interviewer: Okay. And did that get attacked? Or was that quiet? Veteran: We didn’t get attacked there. Now, we had another firebase whose name I cannot remember…a mile north where the brigade headquarters was and there were only a small group of people who were securing that. We had a battalion here, battalion here, battalion here and then they were all turned, securing the firebase. There was some…I don’t know. They attacked with mortars and then rocket propelled grenades. And they did more damage to the air but it was insignificant compared to what had happened elsewhere. Interviewer: Alright. Now, we have gotten in your story to the point where we have made it now to the beginning of the Tet Offensive in early 1968. The first fight or whatever has happened. Your base wasn’t attacked directly but your unit was involved in rescuing some ARVN troops nearby. What happens now? Veteran: Okay, we hunker down and we started getting ready for—there’s whispers of something big happening. And our companies are getting in bigger and more frequent contacts. We are having lots of casualties. And February, we found out that we were going to Khe Sanh to relieve the Marines. And I spent about a month…We didn’t have an air operations officer, so I was doing my duty shitting operations in at night plus being the planning the battalions air movements. I don’t think I slept for about a month. And we were—they separated us from our regular brigade and they attached us to the 3rd brigade. And there was a lot of friction there. We didn’t get along too well with these people and they—we didn’t have a lot of confidence in them and our battalion commander grated on them and they grated on us. Anyway, we were second �day on Pegasus. We relocated for a couple days to this border operating base called Stud, about 215 miles—whatever—away from Khe Sanh. (01:02:43) Interviewer: Right. Veteran: And…Let me refresh my memory. We landed on a mountain top 2 miles from Khe Sanh, 2 miles southwest of Khe Sanh. And we set up a battalion support base and we were running patrols out of there. And we were getting significant contact every day. But, first day was hectic, second day was serious, third day…nobody to fight. Interviewer: Well, when you have contact, when you find the enemy, then do you have— can you bring a lot of fire power on them? Or what happens— Veteran: Well, now, the Army doctrine is you return fire, you recover your people, you pull back. Pull back a safe distance so you can get artillery in. And when you can scramble the fast movers, the jets, you keep shooting artillery until they are on station. And then you lift your fires and the Air Force and Navy comes in. Navy in this case. And then you start moving forward and their gunships are out there, working the area over. And the gunships are real close contact. They are working 100 feet away. 200 feet away. And you go up and secure the area. You pick up the bodies and the weapons and you declare a victory and you march on. Whereas Marines would stand up and charge. I would be willing to say that if the Marines had followed our doctrine, they would have killed 10,000 more enemy and had a fourth of casualties. Just obscene, the way they wasted their troops. (01:04:37) Interviewer: Did they have the same kinds of assets that the Cav had in terms of helicopters and fire power? Veteran: They really didn’t. And they didn’t have the doctrine to coordinate the fires. They would often go—the first reaction would be if…would be get their jets in. And jets are not really �a good first response. First response is observed artillery. And then gunships, where pilots can see what they are doing. Those fast movers come in, they—they really have a hard time hitting those exact targets you need hit. They’re good air suppression. And they are great when enemy is moving away from them. They are great at keeping them from going far. But… Interviewer: Alright. So now, you were talking about being air operations officer. Now was this for the battalion specifically? Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: Planning the air movement for Khe Sanh. Interviewer: Okay. And when you moved, did you move the entire battalion at the same time? Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: Okay, and how many helicopters does it take to move a battalion? Veteran: Well, I am going to say…80 to 90. Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: In an assault like that, you’re going to go in with the little birds, Hueys. Now, normal course of events, you have 4, 3, 2. I am sorry. The order of trail would be 2, 4, 3. That’s 2 gunships, 4 Chinooks with the first platoon—first platoon end, and then hovering up here, you’ve got 3 Chinooks with 3 more platoons. And after the gunships clear the area, shoot the area up, the first platoon goes on the ground. First platoon on the ground goes on the ground. They secure a landing zone. And then the big birds come in. (01:06:37) Interviewer: Okay. Now, so you’re on the ground for a couple of days. The bad guys go away. Do you go into Khe Sanh? �Veteran: Actually, we never—we never went into Khe Sanh. We just kept moving. Kept securing our area of responsibility. Another battalion actually went into Khe Sanh, relieving the Marines. The Marines left. And we never had more than 2 or 3 companies at the—at Khe Sanh from then on. The Marines had 3 battalions—3 reinforced battalions. Interviewer: Well, that was when it was fully under siege. Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: And so, it’s a little different. Veteran: And their solution was to keep digging deeper. Hunker down more. Interviewer: Okay. Now were you kind of continuing to kind of sweep south through that area? Veteran: South and west. Interviewer: So, towards the Laos ocean border and well, you know. Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: Alright. And how long does that campaign continue? Veteran: I believe we were back within 10 days. Interviewer: Okay. Alright, and then after those first couple of days, did the enemy just get out of the way? Or do you start finding them again? Veteran: We…We couldn’t find them. First day we were there, I looked over the edge of the hill on the opposite side from Khe Sanh and saw a company sized patrol moving down the—moving down the little valley there. We never saw anymore troops after that. (01:08:05) Interviewer: Alright. Now at this point then—so do you go—what base do you go back to? �Veteran: We went back to Sharon and then we continued to operate just day to day infantry sweeps out of Sharon for a month or two. And then we moved down to LZ Eagle, which was…That’s not what it was called. Interviewer: It was Camp Eagle, which is—was a big base. Veteran: It was our division base camp. Interviewer: Right, right. Veteran: I am not sure. I don’t know if that was the name of it at that point, but wasn’t, when we first moved in there, Camp Eagle. Interviewer: Yeah, they called it Eagle. Yeah. Veteran: I can’t remember. Camp Evans, maybe? Interviewer: Well, Evans was another camp. That was a second one that was, I think, north of there. Veteran: Okay. Okay, we launched from there and went to A Shau. And that was—that was an experience. By that time, we had an air operations officer and an assistant air operations officer and a senior NCO do the air operations. And I had been doing the work of the 3 of them before they got there. Interviewer: Alright. So, what do you go to at this point? Veteran: I go back to my normal duty. Duty operations on the midnight shift in the operations center. And then during the day, I am out scrounging stuff and…Every unit I have ever been in, for some reason they assumed I was a natural born thief, and they sent me out to find things. I’d usually come back with… Interviewer: Okay. Well, what kinds of things did you have to go find? Veteran: Okay, tool sets, tool kits, air to ground panels, decontamination kits, radio antennas. �Interviewer: All kinds of stuff. Alright. And how do you come by these things? Veteran: Well, okay, in Germany, our motor pool backed up to this 7th Army or U.S. Army Europe armament pool. And when they would bring new vehicles to Europe, they would park them back there and they would be issued out to units as needed. Well, one day I said—told them, I said, “When they put those vehicles out there, what is inside them?” They said, “Well, everything they’re supposed to have: pair of scopes, decontamination kits, tool boxes, tool kits.” I said, “Oh.” So, while nobody was looking, I borrowed a set of bolt cutters from the supply room, went through the fence, clipped the padlocks on a couple of them, got the stuff we were short on, brought it back. And then the—I’d take care of the other squadron in my platoon. I’d fix them up. And then I gave some stuff to my platoon sergeant and said, “See if you can trade this for something we need.” And pretty soon I was getting a list: could you find… (01:11:08) Interviewer: So, in Vietnam, was it the same kind of stuff that you would need? Veteran: Oh yeah. And in Vietnam, if you left anything unattended, it would be stolen. Now at LZ Sharon, we received a bunch of C rations and the battalion commander somehow got involved and he said, “I am not feeding that crap to my troops. That’s dated 1954. Get rid of it.” They got some new C rations in. They said, “Well, how are we going to get rid of these?” You know, you can’t take forever to burn the things. So, they loaded them on a truck, kicked them off outside the main gate, and put a big sign up that says “1/8 only, do not take.” And the Marines took every one of them. Interviewer: And they had had stuff from 1937, so you know. Okay. Alright, now did you go further afield? I mean, did you, you know, look for beer or other stuff like that? (01:12:08) �Veteran: Oh, I—we never had a digression on that. I got—I fell of this rock. Went up in the bush and fell of this rock. Cracked my kneecap. Terribly painful. And I also did some—my toenail swelled up big. They sent me back to the rear for a couple days of light duty and the first sergeant had me clean—they had this container full of weapons that we picked up on the battlefield. So, I—first thing I do is make sure they are unloaded. And then I get some gasoline and scrub them clean. That’s the only thing I get. Spray the oil on them. Get them fixed up. And we get those on a bird and we take them to Cam Ranh Bay, big Air Force base couple hundred miles south. And we make a contact. We make a contact with this person we were supposed to see and he says, “Okay, first sergeant. What do you need?” First sergeant gets out his green Army issued notebook and he says, “Well, sir…” and he said, “Well first of all, tell me what you got?” “Well, we got 2 Thompson submachine guns, we got 3 carbines, we got an SKS, we got a French MAT-49 submachine gun, a German Schmeisser…” on and on and on. He says, “Okay, what do you need?” “Well, sir, we only started a minute ago. We need coats, we need 2 or 3 pallets of coats and a couple pallets of beer, and we need a bunch of tarpaulins and a 5-KW generator and supply, a couple pallets of…” on and on and on. “And we need a load boy to get this stuff down to the airfield and we need a 130 to get back to An Khê.” He said, “Come back in the morning.” So, we go in—we go to the NCO club, get all messed up. Get drunk. Wake up the next morning, show back up at the—our contacts’, about 10 o’clock. And he said, “Okay, everything is down at the flight line waiting for you.” So, we go down to the flight line and there’s not one, there is two C-130s with our loot on it. And we fly back to An Khê. And it took longer to get it from the airstrip from the company area than it did to get down and back. Okay, anyway. (01:14:18) Interviewer: Alright. �Veteran: Now, a particularly telling experience for me was when we came back from Khe Sanh, the Marines were brought back from Khe Sanh. And we were on this LZ Sharon and there was a top of a hill surrounded by all these units. I don’t know—20 or 30 feet higher than the rest of us. And they dunked 2 or 300 Marines on that hill. Just like they came off Khe Sanh: clothes they had been wearing for 3 months, ragged boots, filthy looking people. And the Marines were bringing them C rations and water. And our battalion commander, who was—he was a gruff, oftentimes theatrically gruff, sometimes sadistic, NC—kind of guy. He’d go up and he said, “Why you fucking jarheads living like god damned animals out here? Well, I tell you what: if you fucking assholes can find your way down to the mess hall tomorrow, we’ll feed you breakfast.” So, we started feeding—we started feeding them. We only cooked 2 day—we only fed breakfast and dinner. And we started feeding them breakfast and dinner, a couple 100 eggs that was more than we were normally fed. And then brigade commander got in on it and had the engineers build a shower point and we were—they were going in there, cleaning up, and we were issuing them Army uniforms. And in a week or so, the laps—no Marine brass ever came by to check on their troops. They would have been perfectly content to leave them out there looking— looking and living—like animals. (01:16:03) Interviewer: So, they eventually move out? Or do you move out? Veteran: Nope. They started doing PT in the morning, running around inside the wire. And then they loaded up a mule, 4 by 8 motorized platform, they stacked sandbags as high as they could and cans of water as high as they could, and they went marching off the firebase. And we never saw them again. So anyway, back to A Shau. Once again, we were second—second day at A Shau and we had every rotary asset that was in theater at that time. Everything the Air Force had, everything the Navy had, everything the Marines had, everything we had. And there was 5 or �600 helicopters and all that. And it was 50 or 60 miles of straight line down there, which is a pretty good haul for a helicopter. But we are sitting there the first day and we are watching these Chinooks bringing all these crashed Hueys back in. Dozens of them. This doesn’t look good. So, there was 3 areas where we occupied and 1 was—1 was an old airfield, one—and I think the other 2 were special forces camp. And our brigade objective was A Loi—A. L. O. I.—special forces camp. The NVA had run special forces out of there a decade earlier. And we landed right smack dab in the middle of one of there supply ports. We found 100s of trucks, 1000s of rifles, 1000s—enough tooth—enough writing stationary for a division for 10 years. Toothpaste. Incredible. And we were busy inventorying that stuff and destroying it. And they are reacting quite violently. They’re throwing everything they got. We are being shot at with artillery and mortars and rockets. And getting a lot of casualties on the ground. Well anyway, they decide that we are going to get—we are wearing our helicopters out, so they are going to land C-130s. So, they bring these Seabees out with a bulldozer and big stacks of perforated steel plating. And they build a runway. And this is brigade LZ, it’s the—I guess about 5-6000-foot LZ runway. So, the first day, they got a serial of C-130s cued up on the short final land. And the first one, the antiaircraft up on top of the hill opened up, chopped the first one up. He exploded in midair. Had artillery rounds in there. And the other two broke off. One of them was streaming smoke and the other one got away clean. So, they said, “Well, maybe that’s not—maybe landing those things and unloading them is not such a good idea. We’ll do low-lex: low level extraction.” Everything is on rollers. And you come down—you touch down, almost touch down and you’re still going 150-175 knots. Way too fast to land. And you throw out a drag shoot and it pulls all the pallets off the rollers and they hit the ground and bounce 3 or 4 feet. Well, they got 3 of them cued up on short vinyl. And the opening volley, they blow up 2 of them. And the 3rd one turns over and �he falls upside down and crashes. So, score is them 3, us—them 5, us nothing. So, they said, “Well, you know really…hammie drop might be in order here. We can drop these supplies by parachute. And we could be low enough to make sure they are landing inside your perimeter. And we could probably do a pretty good job of supplying you like that.” Well, I don’t know if you remember your history but Göring promised Hitler that he could resupply the 6th army at Stalingrad. Didn’t work then, didn’t work now. So, there’s a serial of 5 aircraft lined up, coming in at 5000 feet. They shot down 2 of them. 1 of them goes flying off, streaming. Other 2 break off and leave. Dropped the—dropped the ammo in the ocean because they didn’t want to land with all the several tons of artillery shells. So, they said, “Well, we’ll try—we’ll go a little higher next time.” So, the next day, the…pathfinder. Pathfinder’s got a microphone. He said, “Okay, heads up! Heavy drop! In bound. Heads up!” So, we look up. Can’t hear any airplanes. Can’t see any airplanes. And there’s—all the time, we are still taking in direct fire in the perimeter there. And all of a sudden, there’s a black dot. And then there is 6 black dots. And these parachutes start landing everywhere. So, we got to go out and secure this stuff or we’re giving—or else we are resupplying the NVA. And that was costly. That cost us a lot of casualties, a lot of time. And then the—finally, they said, “Well, the powers that be,” the brass said, “we’ve been gone about 10 days now and we haven’t fed the chickens and the cows need milking. We’d better go on back.” And that was the end of our adventures in the A Shau Valley. And the 101st should have learned that lesson. (01:21:49) Interviewer: Alright. So now, where have we gotten to, in terms of timeframe? Veteran: Okay, we are looking now at April-early in May,’68. Interviewer: Okay. �Veteran: Okay, I stayed there for another month or two, duty—duty NCO in the operations center on the midnight shift. Continued to go out during the day and forage for things we needed. And then I went back to—I extended my tour again and I went back to division base camp where I was operations sergeant in the replacement detachment. And I did that job until…Let’s see…probably November. (01:22:38) Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: And then November, boy they threw me in a briar patch. Interviewer: Well, before we get you to the briar patch, what is life like at a large base at that point? Veteran: Well, you shower and comb—you shower everyday if you feel like it, with cold water. There are three meals a day in the mess hall. Never had any—no enemy action at the time I was back at the base camp. Normal politics was life in the garrison. Interviewer: Now, do you have, for this period where—on the base, do you notice anything like racial tensions or— Veteran: Yep. Okay, racial tensions were…You didn’t have those in combat units. And let’s say in our division, we did not have problems. But you get—further back in, you get in the supply and service units and there were…It was awful. We would have the occasional resistor. My job—Okay, at the replacement detachment, we get—you send a bus down to the airport and they bring us 40 people, 50 people, maybe 100 people. we would bring them to our detachment. Excuse me. Process them in, get all their medical records, personnel records, stuff like that straight and get them assigned to a unit. Third or fourth day, we take them back to the airport and send them to their unit. Drugs were starting to become a problem then. There was more drug activity. But if you went to the big logistics bases, racial issues were commonplace. And I would �characterize the same issues we had in Germany. There were no racial problems, there were black thugs causing problems. (01:24:41) Interviewer: Alright. Now, when…Did things like the assassination of Martin Luther King have any repercussions where you were? Veteran: No. Interviewer: Okay. Because you were still in the field at that point when that stuff was going on too. Veteran: Yeah. Yeah. Interviewer: Alright. And…I mean, did the tensions get to the level—I mean, were there— did people just get—were there fights? Or…? Veteran: You would have occasional fights in the EM club and the problem was if a white guy and a black guy got in a fight, 3 more blacks would jump in. I never saw the opposite, the converse, happen. But you get in a—like, Da Nang or Cam Ranh Bay or Qui Nhơn or any place where there are a lot of rear echelon troops, there’d be—after duty I was there’d be gangs and 100s of blacks, looking for trouble. Interviewer: Now, did you see any of that yourself or would you just hear— Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: Yeah. Veteran: Yeah. Now, I was fortunate. I didn’t have to put up with too much of it. And then I moved. When I left An Khê, I was working as a personnel assignment in the MOS personnel specialist. And we had a couple situations where in the fog of battle, casualties would be put on an aircraft and flown out. And the pilot for one reason might land it this place or this place or that place or that hospital. And there was no way to really track these people. And we had two �cases where 2 guys got med evaced out of the country but were declared missing in action. That cost a general his job. So, at the time, there were two evacuation flights. One to Da Nang, one to Saigon. They sent me to Saigon. Boy, you talk about a briar patch. 300 miles away from my nearest boss. Making a maximum of per diem, which was more than my base salary at the time. Still getting jump pay. It took me 20 minutes a day to do my job. Okay, the way it worked is C130s would fly around during the night. They would pick up casualties at Army hospitals that were going to be evaced and they would bring them to the stable flight, like Cam Ranh Bay or Da Nang. They would get there 7 or 8 o’clock in the morning. They would take them off, put them in the casualty station flight ward, doing the interview and medical assessment. And most of them were all assist—stable enough to be evaced. Occasionally, you’d have to keep one or send him to a hospital. We had a couple cases where one would die. But my job: to keep any MIAs from being declared erroneously. When the plane landed, I would be on the flight line and I would get a copy—I’d get my copy of the manifest. And I would go through the manifest and identify all the people from my unit. And I would go later and interview them in the hospital. “Hi, you Sergeant Jones? Sergeant Jones, could you tell me your last 4. Very good, sir. And there was a lot of PR to that too so I got a bunch of location forms for you to fill out. Here’s a pack of cigarettes if you need them. You need any help writing a letter, I can get somebody to help you out.” You know, it was…And then the next morning, they would leave. And—but that night, I would compile a report that I would send to our personnel people; the names of all the people who were being evacuated. That solved that problem. But man, that was a tough job. The air conditioning only worked about every other day in my room. (01:28:35) Interviewer: Yeah. Well, you’re getting closer to having a first world problem at that point. Veteran: Yeah. �Interviewer: Okay. Now, was this in Saigon that you were doing this? Veteran: Tan Son— Interviewer: Tan Son— Veteran: On Tan Son Air Force Base. Interviewer: Oh, okay. Veteran: And we were at the Rue de Pasteur Gate. Interviewer: Okay. And so, this is outside of the city proper. But would you get into Saigon? I mean, or— Veteran: Oh no. Yeah, I’d go anywhere I wanted. Interviewer: Okay. Weren’t there restrictions on what Americans could do in Saigon or who could go there? Veteran: There were restrictions on units. If you saw a couple snuffies—brown mud stained uniforms walking down the street yeah MPs would stop them. But I had Air Force identification, identifying me as a member of 22nd Casualty Staging Flight. Now, once again there, I got to do some foraging. I was there when the service issued a report on smoking cigarettes. Red Cross quit giving out cigarettes. I was getting—and the Red Cross was coming into war time. I felt good about that because they really didn’t do anything to help. So, I go down Rue de Pasteur to the USO and I explained to the manager of the facility. I said, “I need cigarettes. I need cigarettes to take down to take down and give out to patients.” And I don’t know what she thought the scale of operation was but she put me on a truck with about 40 cases of cigarettes. I mean, you know, a case like this. So, I go back to the station flight and it’s basically one small building with 40 beds in it. 50 beds, maybe. So, I am stacking that stuff up in the hallway. I make a head nurse take a couple cases in her office. She’s putting them under bunks. And the Air Force stole my �cigarettes. Not a pack or two at a time, it’s cartons at a time. So, I go to the head nurse and I said, “Listen, I got to have a conex container—I got to have 2 conex containers to keep you people from stealing these cigarettes.” She said, “I’ve had, Sergeant, I’ve had a conex container on requisition since I got here.” I said, “Okay.” So, there was a Vietnamese Army signal unit about a mile away on the perimeter at Tan Son Nhut. So, I go up there. I get it—get a guy to give me a ride up there in an Air Force ambulance. And I go in and find these advisor, a black E-6, about 50 years old. Got a kindred soul here. So, I said, “Listen, I am working out at the hospital here. I need a couple conex containers. Do you think we could find something to trade to get a couple conex containers down there?” So, I showed him a case of cigarettes and he says, “I think we can do something here.” So, we go into Sergeant Major’s office. He’s a Vietnamese Sergeant Major. And his eyes light up and you see all these golden teeth when he grins. So, Sergeant Major takes the cigarettes and puts them behind, gives the advisor one carton. And we go out back and a crane lifts 2 brand new conex containers up on this 5-ton truck that appears to be brand new. And I thought man, this is terrible. We are out in the bush trying to do our best to supply our troops with junk that’s falling apart and the new stuff is sitting down here. So, I get in the cab of this 5ton. We go down to the hospital and a crane is following us. I said, “Okay, I want one right here and one right there.” So, the crane takes them up and puts them down there. The truck driver gets in the cab of the crane and they take off. So, that’s kind of strange. Maybe something is wrong with his truck here? So, a couple days go by. “Whose truck is that? We kind of need to move that truck.” So, I go up, I go find the advisor and I say, “That 5-ton that you guys brought the cigarette containers down the other—what’s the story on that?” He said, “Oh, that’s your 5-ton.” So, I find some yellow paint and by the end of the day, it’s got one of these on each door. And it’s got this on the bumper. And I’ve got a logbook. And I—everybody lived happily ever after �except me. I lived in this BEQ. I think it was called the name Wyoming. And it was down this alley. And the 5-ton wouldn’t fit down the alley. So, I went up to Bien Hoa, I think. Went up to Bien Hoa and I finally found somebody that wanted a 5-ton and they gave me a ¾ ton, which I could park in front of the BEQ. And then when I got ready to leave, I sold it for 100 bucks. (01:33:50) Interviewer: Alright. Now, you live—living in Saigon like that…I mean, would you go into town for dinner or other things at night? Veteran: No. No. No, it was—I would stay—I didn’t stray very far. Maybe PX. Now, to digress a little bit, when I was at the replacement detachment, they had a C day. Conversion day. We had this military payment certificate in lieu of dollars. And lightning struck and they said, “Tomorrow, we are going to change.” So, there is this Korean tailor. There’s Korean tailors all over the place. I don’t know who they worked for. But he was crying because he had this box full of MPC that he had legitimately earned doing tailor work. But there was no provision for him to convert it. So, I said, “Bring it over here.” So, I would do up bundles of 200. And you know, there’s a lot of 5s and a lot of 10s. And I’d give—each one of the replacements going through, I said, “Here. Get that changed.” And one of my sergeants would be at the other end when he came out of the building, take the new stuff. And so, we counted it out and we got within 10 dollars of what he gave me. And he was just in tears. So, the day I leave, I am at the airport to leave to go to Saigon. The guy that’s the Korean that’s the boss of all the tailor shops was down there. And I said—he knew who I was and what I had done for his tailor shop. And he said—I said, “I am going to Saigon. You have any of your people down there?” “Oh yes.” I said, “Could you write me a letter of introduction?” So, he takes my notebook and he writes this Korean. And I go into any tailor shop in the country and I get whatever I wanted free. Well, I had �to go to this hospital up in Bien Hoa and the Army had just changed the uniforms that the nurses wore. It was a green, slightly heavier fabric with different configuration than the jungle fatigues made for females. And there are 100s of them there. So, I remember hearing head nurse saying to me they were wearing the class B modified dress uniform in the ward: dark blue trousers, light blue blouse. And they were chafing about that because they couldn’t get white coats or scrubs— they didn’t have scrubs then. They said, “How can we get jungle fatigues? Wish we could get some jungle fatigues.” So, I thought about that and I got a truck load of them down to Saigon. So, I go in and I see her and I said—I don’t know, there was 15 or 20 nurses working. I said, “Make me a list of all of your nurses with the proper name and their rank.” So, I take the stuff to the Korean tailor. And I have 4 sets of fatigues sewn up for each nurse with nametag, U.S. Air Force, and rank. And I take those over and I have them dumped off at the back of the ward. And I said, “Ma’am, could you step out for a minute? I got something for you.” She said, “I—” she said, “I ought to call—I ought to call CID and OSI and the MPs.” I said, “Well, 4 of them got your name on it.” She said, “I don’t know how you do that but you’ve saved us more than one time.” (01:37:21) Interviewer: Alright. Now, was this your last assignment in Vietnam? Veteran: That was my last assignment in Vietnam. Interviewer: Okay. Are there other incidents or things that stand out in your mind from your time there? Veteran: Nothing I want to record on tape. Interviewer: Okay. That works. That works. Now, you’ve had kind of a varied career there. Alright now at this point, were you kind of ready to be done with the Army? Veteran: Yeah. I was ready to move on. �Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: I had a lot of money saved up. I was ready to get out of the Army and find something else to do. Interviewer: Okay. So, when do you actually leave Vietnam? Veteran: I left in April…April, ’69. Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: And I was supposed to go home and get discharged and they screwed—I had less than 60 days left on my enlistment. And they reassigned me to Fort Gordon, Georgia and more than one person said, “You better go to Fort Gordon and get this straightened out.” So, I did and I got—I got that taken care of and I got out of the Army in May, about a month later. (01:38:26) Interviewer: Alright. And now that you are out, what do you do? Veteran: Well, a friend of mine had said to me, “If you would like to be a police officer, I can get you a job.” I said, “I don’t know. I’ll go check it out.” So anyway, this guy lived in D.C. and I wanted to go back to college and I wasn’t too keen on joining the police department. But it wasn’t a real police department. It was the U.S. Capitol police. And it was a generously—I would generously describe them as a 2nd tier security organization. But they made more money than the real cops downtown. Had blue uniforms, carried guns, worked static posts. I got thinking about it. I said, “You know, that might not be too bad.” So, I go up there, I fill out an application and do the test, do all the orals and everything. They said, “Okay, it’s going to take 46 months to do a background on you. Come back—we’ll contact you when you’re ready. Come back, start the academy.” And—so somebody else had told me about an opportunity. I went across the river to the Virginia National Guard. I joined the Virginia National Guard and they were sending volunteers to fire—fight fires in Idaho. And I went out, worked Bitterroot Selway �National Forest area in Idaho for 5 months, fighting fires. And then came back and went to work. And then subsequently enrolled. I guess I worked there about a year and I enrolled at American University. And I finished that in 3 years. (01:40:10) Interviewer: Okay. So, when did you start at American University? Veteran: Well, let’s see…I guess it was ’70—about 1970…Yeah, late fall of ’70. Interviewer: Okay. So, now you’re on a—you’re a Vietnam veteran and you’re on a college campus in Washington D.C. Veteran: Yeah. The fun started. I’d get—sometimes, I’d get an arrest every day. I had one particularly outrageous incident—okay, back up a little bit. There was a demonstration in May of ’70—November of ’70. 250,000 people and they got rowdy. And I got to break two nightsticks that day. Catharsis. Interviewer: Okay. Now, were you working for the Capitol police while you were in school? Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: And I would go to school…they would agitate the shit out of you. I would agitate them back. I would go—sometimes I would go wearing my National Guard uniform carrying a revolver, my service revolver. Sometimes I go in my police uniform. Sometimes I go wearing jeans and a sweater with police web gear. The police leather gear. And I had one really nasty incident in ’73. A protester spit on me. And I got out a can of mace and got her on the ground. And I got her up on her feet and got her handcuffed up on her feet and she spit on me again. And I lost it. I totally lost it. I beat her with a blackjack. Broke teeth, knocked out teeth. And there was a crowd. I am holding off a crowd at gunpoint. And I am dragging her by her ankles. She’s—I got her handcuffed. Right out in the middle of Nebraska Avenue. Two lanes going each �way. And people—people are stopping and screeching on their brakes from swerving around us. And I got this pig laying out in the middle of the street and I am holding the gun. “Come on, any of you step off the curb, I am going to kill you.” Finally, the police got there, dispersed the crowd. And thank God: a judge convicted her of assault and resisting arrest. And I think she— took 100 stitches to put her face back together. And to this day, if she is still alive, if she looks— anytime she looks in the mirror, she’s going to remember about spitting on me. And there was a—I got a new measure of respect on campus after that. “How you doing?” “Good to see you.” (01:42:54) Interviewer: Wow. So, that was—so people were aware that you had done that? I mean I guess you were right there in that area, so people saw that and— Veteran: Yeah. Interviewer: Okay… Veteran: Oh my god, there was a crowd of 100 watching me beat on her and drag her out in the street. And then the—there were, “Well, he’s going to go to jail over that.” “He’s going to get fired and he’s going to go to jail.” Interviewer: Did anybody talk to you about that afterward? Veteran: Oh, yeah. They called me all kinds of names. Interviewer: No, I mean the, like, the people in the police. Veteran: Oh my god, all but...I must have had investigators from metropolitan, not my department. Homicide was—crimes against a person and homicide. Talked to them endlessly. Talked to U.S. attorney. I figured I was done for. I mean I had—and it was pretty bad. If that happened today, you’d go to prison. Interviewer: Yeah. �Veteran: But when she spit on me again, I hit her in the mouth with that blackjack and it felt so good. Interviewer: So, did you get reprimanded or punished in some way? Or…? Veteran: Yeah, yeah. They wouldn’t let me carry a blackjack or a mace on campus anymore. Interviewer: Okay. Veteran: But they—and they wouldn’t—and the Dean of Students told me to leave my gun at home. And I said, “You lost on that one already.” (01:44:11) Interviewer: So, did you finish the degree there then? Veteran: Got a degree in accounting. A double major in accounting and statistics. Interviewer: And then where do you go from there? Do you stay with the police? Veteran: No. My word, I got away from those people as quick as I could. I went to work for a local accounting firm in D.C. And I worked there and then I worked a couple of—went to work for the accounting firm, they said, “You’re a good guy and you’ve got a good raise here. You’re a good accountant but you ain’t us. But we will find you a job, don’t worry about it. Not many people are us.” Thank God. They—I got a job with the Washington Post. And I went down there and worked for a couple days. And they said, “Well, you know…We got just the place for you.” They got an internal warehouse across the river in Alexandria where they unloaded ships of newsprint and took them to the various printing plants. Various printing plants. And after a year down there, I was the controller/officer manager/software developer/manager of data processing/customs broker/ships agent and captain—I was the acting ensign in the Coast Guard auxiliary and the Captain of the port of Alexandria. Interviewer: Well, that’s pretty good. So, how long does all that last? �Veteran: Well, I lasted—I lasted about 3 years there and I found an opportunity that was a French company that I thought I was really going to go places. I went to work for them as director of finance and administration and I worked for them for 3 years. And they went bellyup. I had a good time working there. I was den mother for all these young Frenchmen that came over. I had a good time with them. When they would process in, I’d have paperwork for them. And about the third item down was draft registration. Well, it really wasn’t too bad because most of these guys were Cali Polytechnicians. And if you graduated from the Cali Polytechnic, you’re already a commissioned—you’ve got a degree in engineering and you’re a commissioned officer in the Army, Navy, or Air Force. So, that was a little humor. But they all—when they came over, the first thing they wanted to do—they wanted to buy the biggest car they could find. So, they would go out and scour the used car lots for ’72 Monte Carlos and Grand Prixs and Cad—what was the big Cadillac…? Interviewer: One of those Eldorados? Coupe de Ville? (01:46:47) Veteran: Coupe de Ville. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And sound equipment. They could buy it for pennies, what would cost them pounds in the French market. And they were always getting…But if they behaved themselves and were nice to me, I’d take them shooting. And at that time, I legally owned a submachine gun. And if they would buy ammunition, I’d let them shoot my submachine gun. Well…And then I would take them skeet shooting. Well, the company wound up buying a couple skeet guns and a pretty generous layout of shotgun shells. And when the people came over from France, first order of business was go skeet shooting. I think I corrupted half the company. Interviewer: There you go. Alright. So, and then they fold. So, what happens to you? �Veteran: Well, I went to work for this company called Quantum Computer Services and they went bankrupt and they re—they were reincarnated as Controlled…Something else. And then they filed and went—they changed their name to AOL and went public. And they gave me 500 shares of stock and said, “You’re not polished enough for us.” That 500 shares of stock doubled about 12 times. I said, “Cried all the way to the bank.” (01:48:19) Interviewer: So, how did you wind up in Nashville? Veteran: Well, I laid around and I had spent all my AOL money. And I got bored and I bought a restaurant and…I bought several restaurants and ran restaurants and I loved it and I did very well at it. But in the ’03, I started having some health problems. I was 55 years old. And the doctor said, “You need to find a change of venue and a new occupation.” So, I spent a year getting rid of everything and my daughter is living here in Nashville—in Nashville then. And I moved—I wanted to be closer to the family and I wanted to get out of restaurants because I had done some dumb things like done my own TV commercials and publicity stunts. Too many people knew me. And I came down here and started buying real estate. And about to get out of that business and retire fully for the last time. And now I’ve got grandkids to take care of. Interviewer: Alright. So, now you look back at the time you spent in the service. How do you think that affected you or what did you take out of it? Veteran: Well, in my case it was—okay, a whole bunch of things were going on here. There’s a warrior spirit. I don’t want to brag about it; it’s there. Every generation in my family as far back as we can trace, has been warriors. And I would not call myself a warrior on that scale but I feel the urge. We have family members who fought on both sides of the Civil War and by virtue, a couple uncles in the South Carolina Royalist. We had people who fought on both sides of the Revolution. And we certainly had people that fought against the crown in England. And France �and Scotland. And Wales. So, it comes naturally. If you research Hodgecore—Hodgespur— you’ll see I inherited some of his genes. (01:50:23) Interviewer: Alright. But in a way, that part kind of brought out something that was in you. Now do you think that you learned anything from the process? Or…? Veteran: I learned a lot about people. You have an incredible amount of control over people, total strangers, just by the way you speak. How you speak to them. Say that young lady that brought us this pitcher of water? “When you smile, you make me wish I was young and skinny and good-looking.” Interviewer: Yeah, and now you’re on tape saying that so your wife can see that. Or is she used to it? Veteran: She’s heard it 1000 times. Interviewer: Alright. (01:51:03) Veteran: Now, an interesting experience…Last extension leave I went on, before I went on leave, I got to looking at these orders and there are all these numbers down. You know, I finally asked them, I said, “What are all these numbers down here?” They said, “Well, most of them are fiscal authorizations.” And I said, “Tells me—tells somebody where I am able to go to and fly to and…?” “Yeah.” I said, “Well, if I were in Seattle and I wanted to go to Tokyo instead of Saigon, what authorization number would I have to have?” They said, “Well, it would be 0682.” Made a note. I said, “If I wanted to go from Tokyo to Manila, what authorization code would I need?” Wrote that down. Recast the orders with all the right numbers on them. Now, when you, your 30—when you extend, you get 30-days free leave that starts when you hit the U.S. and it stops when you leave the U.S. And it would be unfair to hold you to a stricter standard than that because you will probably have—be delayed a couple days getting back and you might be �getting delayed a couple days coming back. Well, I go to passenger services and I say—I circle the number and I say, “I’d like to have a ticket to Japan. Ichikawa, as a matter of fact.” So, I go there, it’s raining, it’s cold. I said, “I don’t like this place.” So, I go down to passenger services and I said, “I want to go to Taipei.” So, I go to Taipei. Now, I had learned in Taipei at the American Embassy, if you take a set of military orders, they’ll sell you 6 bottles of liquor on those orders. But they cancel out so you can’t use that set of orders again. Well, when I landed in Taipei, I had about 50 sets of orders. So, I would go there every day and I would buy 5 bottles of the cheapest, nastiest blended whiskey you could buy, for less than a dollar a bottle. And a 40ounce bottle of Jack Dan—Johnnie Walker Black Label for 3 dollars. It’s 60 now. And I would go out and I would give the cab driver a bottle—my cab driver a bottle. Go back to the hotel, give the hotel a bottle. Give the guy who managed the hotel a bottle. And then the…The compliment—the hostess staff would get a couple. And then, one of the hostesses and I would spend the rest of the day drinking that bottle of Black Label Scotch. So, about 3 weeks, I get— man, I got to get out of here. My liver is killing me. So, I get a flight to Manila. I wander around Manila for a couple days. I said, “I better be getting back. I’ve been gone 2 months.” So, I go back and I know they’re going to throw me in jail. So, I go up and see the first—I go check in with the first sergeant. New first sergeant—the old one rotated. “Hey top, how you doing? I’m back.” He said, “Who the hell are you?” Didn’t say a word. I got away being gone for 2 months. (01:54:21) Interviewer: Alright. So, it’s an educational experience on a lot of different levels. Veteran: That’s a— Interviewer: It certainly makes for a good story. Veteran: Indeed, it does. �Interviewer: So, thank you very much for taking the time to share it today. (01:54:31) � 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_SoutherlandJ2153V Title A name given to the resource Southerland, James (Interview transcript and video), 2017 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-09-15 Description An account of the resource Jim Southerland was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1946 and graduated high school in 1966. He joined the Army on May 19th, 1965. Southerland completed his Basic Training at Fort Polk, Louisiana, and then advanced infantry training at Fort Gordon, Georgia. At Fort Benning, Georgia, he also completed jump school. His first deployment was to Germany where he took part in the Nijmegen March in Holland. After reenlisting, Southerland was deployed to Vietnam with the 1st Brigade, 1st Calvary Division as an RTO (radiotelephone operator) for his platoon leader and eventually became a squad leader. He was involved in the Tet Offensive in early 1968 before his last assignment as an MOS personnel specialist in Saigon. Southerland left Vietnam in April, 1969, and left the service in May, 1969, but remained active in the Virginia National Guard. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Southerland, James W. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American United States. Army Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Veterans Video recordings Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Veterans History Project collection, RHC-27 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> 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.) Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a8b46d9672adcc853a1fe3060a117f5c.jpg 59dd9d34377d2c6f0ea531aa33a6c4a8 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 D.J. Angus Photographs Subject The topic of the resource Photographs Photography—United States Mexico Engineering Indiana Michigan Description An account of the resource An extensive photographic record of Angus’ work and travels throughout the U.S. and Mexico. The images of manmade and natural phenomenon often reflect his interest in engineering projects that include dams, bridges, mines, power plants, cliff dwellings, and quarries. Indiana resident and entrepreneur, D. J. Angus produced an extensive photographic record of his work and travels throughout the U.S. and Mexico, during the late 1920s -1940s. The images of manmade and natural phenomenon often reflect his interest in engineering projects that include dams, bridges, mines, power plants, cliff dwellings, and quarries. Over 10,000 still images from 1903-1966 document Angus’ family, friends, business, and travels. Over 12,000 ft. of 16mm movie film complete this collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Angus, Donald James (D.J.) Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/437">D.J. Angus Photographs (RHC-04)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-04 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1900-1960 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-03-21 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. Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/437">D.J. Angus photographs and films, RHC-04</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-04-A1-464 Title A name given to the resource Southern Nevada desert Description An account of the resource Southern Nevada desert. Subject The topic of the resource Photographs Photography Nevada Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Angus, Donald James (D. J.) Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1914 Type The nature or genre of the resource Image https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/dc4c8f183bf67bde34ee4e3450b888c1.jpg cc99cdd70c3dbd43e4a63bca2f8e610c 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 Robert H. Merrill photographs Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Merrill, Robert H., 1881-1955 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1909/1950 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Robert H. Merrill papers (RHC-222) Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-222 Description An account of the resource Photographs, negatives, and lantern slides digitized from the papers of engineer and archaeologist Robert H. Merrill. A Grand Rapids native, Merrill held an accomplished career as a civil engineer. He founded the company Spooner & Merrill, which held offices in Grand Rapids and Chicago. From 1919-1921, Merrill lived in China, working as Assistant Principal Engineer on a reconstruction of the Grand Canal - the oldest and longest canal system in the world. Merrill became fascinated by archaeology, and among other projects, he traveled to the Uxmal Pyramids in Yucatan, Mexico, with a research expedition from Tulane University. Merrill's photo collection includes images of his travels and projects, friends and family. 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 Merrill_FilmPacks_8_005 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1937-04-06 Title A name given to the resource Southest Pompeii Foro Triangolare Description An account of the resource Black and white photograph of Robert H. Merrill standing between a stone wall and columns in the Triangular Forum at Pompeii. Subject The topic of the resource Archaeology Archaeological sites Italy Pompeii (Extinct city) Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Robert H. Merrill papers (RHC-222) 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/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Merrill, Robert H., 1881-1955 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/2f985a7f484517243e4454be7aae4cf0.jpg a4b5d99ef5a1171acdef8383da7a6974 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 Summers in Saugatuck-Douglas Collection Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. Kutsche Office of Local History Description An account of the resource Collection contains images and documents digitized and collected through the project "Stories of Summer," supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities Common Heritage Grant. The collection aims to document the twin lakeshore communities of Saugatuck and Douglas, Michigan, as they transformed through the state's bustling tourism industry and acceptance of minorities. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1910s-2010s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Various Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/UND/1.0/">Copyright Undetermined</a> Subject The topic of the resource Michigan Saugatuck (Mich.) Douglas (Mich.) Michigan, Lake Allegan County (Mich.) Beaches Sand dunes Outdoor recreation Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries. Allendale, Michigan Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Saugatuck-Douglas History Center Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Stories of Summer (Common Heritage project) Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Text Language A language of the resource English Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 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 DC-07_SD-Oxbow-18-39 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists' Residency Title A name given to the resource Southwestern View of Ox-Bow Grounds Description An account of the resource Black and white aerial photograph of the wooded grounds and surrounding landscape of Ox-Bow "Summer School of Painting" in Saugatuck, Michigan as taken from high above the southwestern shore. In the photograph, the historic buildings of Ox-Bow can be seen including what appears to be the Ox-Bow Inn and the studio shacks located along the Kalamazoo River at the edge of the Tallmadge Woods. Subject The topic of the resource Michigan Saugatuck (Mich.) Allegan County (Mich.) Kalamazoo River (Mich.) Art school Buildings Coastal forests Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Digital file contributed by Mike Van Ark for the Stories of Summer Project. Relation A related resource Stories of Summer (project) Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/UND/1.0/">Copyright Undetermined</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg 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/427b50e73820de2be8ceb2b8c7d750f1.jpg 8da8a9b87e7af2becc2105f8b19fdf0a 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 Douglas R. Gilbert Photographs Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gilbert, Douglas R., 1942-2023 Description An account of the resource Photographs scanned from negatives and transparencies from the Douglas R. Gilbert papers (RHC-183). Douglas R. Gilbert (b. 1942) is an American photographer from Michigan. He was born in Holland, Michigan and is the son of Russell W. and Carmen (Andree) Gilbert. Gilbert earned a B.A. in social sciences and art at Michigan State University in 1964, an M.S. in photography from the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology in 1972, and a M.S.W. from Salem State College in 1993. He is married to Barbara (McDonald) Gilbert, and has three daughters, Robyn, Rachel, and Anne. Gilbert took a serious interest in photography at the age of fourteen. In 1963 he joined the staff of Look magazine in New York as the second youngest photojournalist in the magazine's history. As a Look photographer from 1964 to 1966, he photographed folk musician Bob Dylan, the Newport Folk Festival, Simon and Garfunkel, the New York City Financial District, the children and facilities at the Manhattan School for Seriously Disturbed Children. From 1967 to 1969, Gilbert did several shoots, including that of folk singer Janis Ian for Life magazine. After moving to Chicago, Illinois in 1969 to attend the Illinois Institute of Technology, Gilbert conducted notable photo shoots of business and political figure Lenore Romney, and pursued more personal and artistic photography, focusing on urban and rural landscapes in Illinois and Michigan. He then joined the faculty of Wheaton College, where he taught from 1972 to 1982. In 1993, Gilbert graduated from Salem State College, Massachusetts, with a Masters in Social Work, and later pursued a second career as a psychotherapist. Douglas Gilbert died in June 2023. Throughout his photography career, he pursued both freelance commercial work as well as artistic work. His art photography is characterized by its classic black-and-white format, and features people, places and objects shot great attention and sensitivity. Gilbert's works are held in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, and the Grand Valley State University Art Galleries, as well as in numerous private and institutional collections. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960-2011 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="%E2%80%9Dhttps%3A//gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/783%E2%80%9D">Douglas R. Gilbert Papers (RHC-183)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Subject The topic of the resource Photographs Photography -- United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-183 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Image Type The nature or genre of the resource image/jpeg 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-183_B060-0009 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gilbert, Douglas R. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1961-07-25 Title A name given to the resource Souvenir Shop, Holland Description An account of the resource Black and white photograph featuring a storefront window and entrance selling "Souvenirs and Gifts" in Holland, Michigan, as taken on July 25, 1961. Photograph by Douglas R. Gilbert. Scanned from the negative. Subject The topic of the resource Holland (Mich.) Central business districts Black-and-white photography Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/783">Douglas R. Gilbert papers (RHC-183)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1960s 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/c089639615f2ab2bb2bd0beb6f1a43eb.jpg c2a1ca443125c7cd61866c02fde772eb 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 Douglas R. Gilbert Photographs Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gilbert, Douglas R., 1942-2023 Description An account of the resource Photographs scanned from negatives and transparencies from the Douglas R. Gilbert papers (RHC-183). Douglas R. Gilbert (b. 1942) is an American photographer from Michigan. He was born in Holland, Michigan and is the son of Russell W. and Carmen (Andree) Gilbert. Gilbert earned a B.A. in social sciences and art at Michigan State University in 1964, an M.S. in photography from the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology in 1972, and a M.S.W. from Salem State College in 1993. He is married to Barbara (McDonald) Gilbert, and has three daughters, Robyn, Rachel, and Anne. Gilbert took a serious interest in photography at the age of fourteen. In 1963 he joined the staff of Look magazine in New York as the second youngest photojournalist in the magazine's history. As a Look photographer from 1964 to 1966, he photographed folk musician Bob Dylan, the Newport Folk Festival, Simon and Garfunkel, the New York City Financial District, the children and facilities at the Manhattan School for Seriously Disturbed Children. From 1967 to 1969, Gilbert did several shoots, including that of folk singer Janis Ian for Life magazine. After moving to Chicago, Illinois in 1969 to attend the Illinois Institute of Technology, Gilbert conducted notable photo shoots of business and political figure Lenore Romney, and pursued more personal and artistic photography, focusing on urban and rural landscapes in Illinois and Michigan. He then joined the faculty of Wheaton College, where he taught from 1972 to 1982. In 1993, Gilbert graduated from Salem State College, Massachusetts, with a Masters in Social Work, and later pursued a second career as a psychotherapist. Douglas Gilbert died in June 2023. Throughout his photography career, he pursued both freelance commercial work as well as artistic work. His art photography is characterized by its classic black-and-white format, and features people, places and objects shot great attention and sensitivity. Gilbert's works are held in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, and the Grand Valley State University Art Galleries, as well as in numerous private and institutional collections. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960-2011 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="%E2%80%9Dhttps%3A//gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/783%E2%80%9D">Douglas R. Gilbert Papers (RHC-183)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Subject The topic of the resource Photographs Photography -- United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-183 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Image Type The nature or genre of the resource image/jpeg 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-183_O287-0019 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gilbert, Douglas R. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974-10-19 Title A name given to the resource Spanish Life Festival, Chicago, Illinois Description An account of the resource Black and white photograph of a group of musician's performing on stage at the Spanish Life Festival in Chicago, Illinois. Scanned from the negative. Subject The topic of the resource Festivals--Illinois--Chicago Chicago (Ill.) Hispanic heritage--Illinois--Chicago Latin Music (Musical group) Black-and-white photography Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/783">Douglas R. Gilbert papers (RHC-183)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1970s 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/eb8f0242df245722dd7e9d00302c9a20.jpg 1ba5e5733a637d106f1c41696059fb26 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 Douglas R. Gilbert Photographs Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gilbert, Douglas R., 1942-2023 Description An account of the resource Photographs scanned from negatives and transparencies from the Douglas R. Gilbert papers (RHC-183). Douglas R. Gilbert (b. 1942) is an American photographer from Michigan. He was born in Holland, Michigan and is the son of Russell W. and Carmen (Andree) Gilbert. Gilbert earned a B.A. in social sciences and art at Michigan State University in 1964, an M.S. in photography from the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology in 1972, and a M.S.W. from Salem State College in 1993. He is married to Barbara (McDonald) Gilbert, and has three daughters, Robyn, Rachel, and Anne. Gilbert took a serious interest in photography at the age of fourteen. In 1963 he joined the staff of Look magazine in New York as the second youngest photojournalist in the magazine's history. As a Look photographer from 1964 to 1966, he photographed folk musician Bob Dylan, the Newport Folk Festival, Simon and Garfunkel, the New York City Financial District, the children and facilities at the Manhattan School for Seriously Disturbed Children. From 1967 to 1969, Gilbert did several shoots, including that of folk singer Janis Ian for Life magazine. After moving to Chicago, Illinois in 1969 to attend the Illinois Institute of Technology, Gilbert conducted notable photo shoots of business and political figure Lenore Romney, and pursued more personal and artistic photography, focusing on urban and rural landscapes in Illinois and Michigan. He then joined the faculty of Wheaton College, where he taught from 1972 to 1982. In 1993, Gilbert graduated from Salem State College, Massachusetts, with a Masters in Social Work, and later pursued a second career as a psychotherapist. Douglas Gilbert died in June 2023. Throughout his photography career, he pursued both freelance commercial work as well as artistic work. His art photography is characterized by its classic black-and-white format, and features people, places and objects shot great attention and sensitivity. Gilbert's works are held in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, and the Grand Valley State University Art Galleries, as well as in numerous private and institutional collections. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960-2011 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="%E2%80%9Dhttps%3A//gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/783%E2%80%9D">Douglas R. Gilbert Papers (RHC-183)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Subject The topic of the resource Photographs Photography -- United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-183 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Image Type The nature or genre of the resource image/jpeg 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-183_O288-0002 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gilbert, Douglas R. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974-10-19 Title A name given to the resource Spanish Life Festival, Chicago, Illinois Description An account of the resource Black and white photograph of a group of musician's performing on stage at the Spanish Life Festival in Chicago, Illinois. Scanned from the negative. Subject The topic of the resource Festivals--Illinois--Chicago Chicago (Ill.) Hispanic heritage--Illinois--Chicago Latin Music (Musical group) Black-and-white photography Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/783">Douglas R. Gilbert papers (RHC-183)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1970s 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/9d6e4e5ecb1fe708d03d99e9f2146548.jpg 454f0cd6fc649b143975152c90eb27f2 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 Valley State University Photographs Subject The topic of the resource Aerial photographs Universities and colleges Michigan Grand Rapids (Mich.) Allendale (Mich.) Building Facilities Dormitories Students Events 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s Description An account of the resource People, places, and events of Grand Valley State University from its founding in 1960 as a 4-year college in western Michigan. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource News & Information Services. University Communications Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/41">News &amp; Information Services. University Photographs. (GV012-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-03-03 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1960s-2000s 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. Local Subject Subject headings specific to a particular image collection 1970s Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/41">University photographs, GV012-01</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-01_UAPhotos_001141 Title A name given to the resource Spanish professor in the classroom Description An account of the resource Spanish professor in the classroom. Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Allendale (Mich.) Universities and colleges Faculty Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives black and white photo https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/70a9dd9419eed00909f9112f3a5f2ca7.jpg 01487a6e70adf92c06f4ade1b1bfeaf3 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 Robert H. Merrill photographs Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Merrill, Robert H., 1881-1955 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1909/1950 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Robert H. Merrill papers (RHC-222) Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-222 Description An account of the resource Photographs, negatives, and lantern slides digitized from the papers of engineer and archaeologist Robert H. Merrill. A Grand Rapids native, Merrill held an accomplished career as a civil engineer. He founded the company Spooner & Merrill, which held offices in Grand Rapids and Chicago. From 1919-1921, Merrill lived in China, working as Assistant Principal Engineer on a reconstruction of the Grand Canal - the oldest and longest canal system in the world. Merrill became fascinated by archaeology, and among other projects, he traveled to the Uxmal Pyramids in Yucatan, Mexico, with a research expedition from Tulane University. Merrill's photo collection includes images of his travels and projects, friends and family. 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 Merrill_LS00295 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource circa 1930 Title A name given to the resource Spanish water hoist in well at Santa Elena Description An account of the resource Black and white lantern slide of a water hoist wheel. Subject The topic of the resource Lantern slides Yucatán (Mexico : State) Santa Elena (Yucatán, Mexico) Water-wheels Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Robert H. Merrill papers (RHC-222) 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/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Merrill, Robert H., 1881-1955 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/67f357a64ff57fccc2c4e3032c2ca2ee.jpg d9c16cbeef6a4db695edadb8eeec7ba3 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SparksMaryElizabeth_Photo01 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Title A name given to the resource Sparks, Mary Elizabeth Description An account of the resource Mary Elizabeth Sparks, Librarian Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History Librarians 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 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9e51cf6d8bd9ab921435605d2e8db5dc.jpg 628fa8adad5d5c3d349ddf6a27ff1a73 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SparksMaryElizabeth_Photo02 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Title A name given to the resource Sparks, Mary Elizabeth Description An account of the resource Mary Elizabeth Sparks, Librarian Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History Librarians 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 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a5ea42fa0cb70f520f9d20840e1fdba4.jpg b312c2b4cbc94825ab3fb75dab32023d 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SparksMaryElizabeth_Photo03 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Title A name given to the resource Sparks, Mary Elizabeth Description An account of the resource Mary Elizabeth Sparks, Librarian Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History Librarians 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 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a7bbb9291c83656c50dcb1fb501a692e.jpg d01a060dc27a5db8b7eacc01113e66df 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SparksMaryElizabeth_Photo04 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Title A name given to the resource Sparks, Mary Elizabeth Description An account of the resource Mary Elizabeth Sparks, Librarian Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History Librarians 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 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/15482cd54150554d8745d80a3cdaa1b2.jpg 65273599d4b11f2cdd4f7610683de29f 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 Douglas R. Gilbert Photographs Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gilbert, Douglas R., 1942-2023 Description An account of the resource Photographs scanned from negatives and transparencies from the Douglas R. Gilbert papers (RHC-183). Douglas R. Gilbert (b. 1942) is an American photographer from Michigan. He was born in Holland, Michigan and is the son of Russell W. and Carmen (Andree) Gilbert. Gilbert earned a B.A. in social sciences and art at Michigan State University in 1964, an M.S. in photography from the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology in 1972, and a M.S.W. from Salem State College in 1993. He is married to Barbara (McDonald) Gilbert, and has three daughters, Robyn, Rachel, and Anne. Gilbert took a serious interest in photography at the age of fourteen. In 1963 he joined the staff of Look magazine in New York as the second youngest photojournalist in the magazine's history. As a Look photographer from 1964 to 1966, he photographed folk musician Bob Dylan, the Newport Folk Festival, Simon and Garfunkel, the New York City Financial District, the children and facilities at the Manhattan School for Seriously Disturbed Children. From 1967 to 1969, Gilbert did several shoots, including that of folk singer Janis Ian for Life magazine. After moving to Chicago, Illinois in 1969 to attend the Illinois Institute of Technology, Gilbert conducted notable photo shoots of business and political figure Lenore Romney, and pursued more personal and artistic photography, focusing on urban and rural landscapes in Illinois and Michigan. He then joined the faculty of Wheaton College, where he taught from 1972 to 1982. In 1993, Gilbert graduated from Salem State College, Massachusetts, with a Masters in Social Work, and later pursued a second career as a psychotherapist. Douglas Gilbert died in June 2023. Throughout his photography career, he pursued both freelance commercial work as well as artistic work. His art photography is characterized by its classic black-and-white format, and features people, places and objects shot great attention and sensitivity. Gilbert's works are held in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, and the Grand Valley State University Art Galleries, as well as in numerous private and institutional collections. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960-2011 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="%E2%80%9Dhttps%3A//gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/783%E2%80%9D">Douglas R. Gilbert Papers (RHC-183)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Subject The topic of the resource Photographs Photography -- United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-183 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Image Type The nature or genre of the resource image/jpeg 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-183_B006-0032 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gilbert, Douglas R. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1961-02 Title A name given to the resource Spartan Stadium ticket office Description An account of the resource Black and white photograph of a close-up view of the Spartan Stadium ticket office entrance and inside stairwell. Photograph by Douglas R. Gilbert. Scanned from the negative. Subject The topic of the resource Michigan State University East Lansing (Mich.) Black-and-white photography Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/783">Douglas R. Gilbert papers (RHC-183)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1960s 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/cc9edc20a3feb7395870141a47cfe11e.mp4 4e159ae99a3d4dd502fbb785521fd490 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4c7fc194f9950a4be9221d067a391222.pdf 9c4684ea4e728af9376bd4cd0fa81f97 PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW FRED SPAULDING Born: Indianapolis, Indiana April, 1940 Resides: Indianapolis, Indiana Interviewed by: James Smither PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project, Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, July 6, 2013 Interviewer: Can you start us off with some background on yourself? To begin with, where and when were you born? I was born In Indianapolis, Indiana in April of 1940. Interviewer: Did you grow up in Indianapolis? I was born and raised her and I‘ll probably die here. Interviewer: What kind of schools did you go to? I went to grade school at PS 78, located at Sherman Drive and Vermont Street and we called it Mini Hartman High, but then I went to Tech for two and a half years, high school, and then they changed the boundary. Originally, my house sat on the boundary line, so when they changed the boundary, then I had to go to another school, which was Howe High School, and Howe was closer anyway. I went to Howe and finished up there and graduated in 1957. 1:02 Interviewer: Now while you were growing up, what did your family do for a living? My dad was a printer and worked for the Indianapolis Star and Indianapolis Times and my mother was a housewife. Interviewer: What did you do once you finished high school? I worked for about a year and then I went in the service. I went to enlist in June of 1958 and I went to the Marine Corps where my uncle was serving in WWII. I went in to see 1 �the recruiter and he was on the telephone, sitting back with his feet up on the desk. He asked me what I wanted, I told him, and he said something like, ―Get out of here, you‘re not big enough to be a Marine. You‘re nothing but a piss ass—blah, blah, blah‖, which I didn‘t think he was serious, but he was. I went down the hall, rather to catch him around the corner, and I was walking down the hallway of the Federal building there and there was this big old master sergeant, Army, and he evidently, he had enough stripes on his arm there and must had been in WWI, WWII, and Korea. 2:08 He‘d been in all of them, and he asked me what happened and I told him and he said, ―Out there you looked like a fine specimen of manhood to me. Step right in here‖. I went in and he had all these posters all over the wall, and the one poster that jumped out was these guys coming down in parachutes and on the ground they were running and they had a very determined look on their face, and knives stuck in their boot, and their Thompson sub-machine guns. The proper thing to grab an eighteen year olds attention, you see, and he asked, ―What can I do for you?‖ I said, ―I want to be that right there‖, and across the bottom it said, ―Rangers Lead the Way‖, and he said, ―That‘s pretty good‖, so he looked at the poster and he looked back at me and he said, ―This poster right here?‖ 3:02 I said, ―Yes‖, he looked me up and down again and said, ―Wow, we have our work cut out for us now, don‘t we?‖ I had no idea what he was talking about, but years later when I retired, about six months after I retired, I received all of my files. They‘d put them on microfiche and sent me all the originals. Well, my original physical was in there. I was five foot five and weighed a hundred and twenty eight pounds. I guess I was a piss ass about that time, but anyway, it was a very good life. I went Fort Knox, Kentucky for basic training and then on down to Fort Benning, Georgia for advanced individual training, infantry. Then 2 �from there, I got on a bus with a hundred and twenty six other guys and we went to Fort Bragg. I was going to be, originally, assigned in the 504 and be a replacement because they were rotating to Germany at that time. 4:03 However, we got there late and they had already gone, so I was reassigned to 325 and we went to jump school right there, and it was five weeks long in those days. Interviewer: Now, was 325, if you go back to WWII days, was that the glider regiment? It was the glider regiment for the 82nd. Interviewer: But at this point you all get jump training? Yes, because everything was parachutes. They did away with glider, I think, in the late forties; I‘m not really sure about the dates, but sometime around there. It had something to do when the air force became, instead of Air Corps, it became the United States Air Force in September of 1947, so gliders, fixed wing-- they were kind of gone. But I was with the 325, the 1st Airborne Battle Group, Echo Company of the 1/325, and my company commander was a 1st Lieutenant by the name of Fiesher, Peter J. Fisher, which I ran into years later in Vietnam and he was a Lt. Colonel. 5:02 I was a Captain, so it was ―what goes around, comes around‖, I guess, but, anyway I had three years there. Interviewer: I’d like to go back a little bit. You said when you enlisted the man said you had the work cut out for you. What was your experience like in the various training you got, boot camp, AIT, jump school, what was that like? There‘s one thing I‘ve never been able to understand with the Army. All the skinny guys gain weight and all the fat guys lose weight and we all eat the same thing, I‘ve never been able to understand that. With my bunch there were four of us or five of us, I can‘t 3 �remember now, that they would get us up at one o‘clock in the morning, down to the mess hall and we would either eat a bowl of bananas and milk or a bowl of—those old brown plastic bowls, of mashed potatoes and milk, cold. 6:03 I got this aversion to eating mashed potatoes to this day since then. But anyway, I picked up twenty or thirty pounds. I came out of basic and going to Fort Benning, at about a hundred and forty five pounds, and when I got out of Benning and going to Fort Bragg, I was about a hundred and fifty five or a hundred and sixty pounds. Interviewer: Now, did they also put you—try to give you any extra PT, or effort to build you up, or did that just come naturally? No, that just came, it just came with it. Now, it was kind of—when I got to Bragg I was still kind of the smallest one, so I got the M-19-A, air cooled, gas operated machine gun. Interviewer: So, you got the biggest weapon? I got the biggest one, so I had to tote that baby around for when we went on jump-ins and everything else. 7:00 Being in 325 was a fortunate thing, because—it was a very fortunate thing for me because when I first went in, in the 50‘s, in the late 50‘s there was all the personnel we had in the Echo Company, all the sergeants and all the officers had already been in combat, every one of them. All my squad leaders, my platoon sergeant, first sergeant, they‘d all been to WWII and Korea. Well, some of the squad leaders hadn‘t been to WWII, but they all had been to Korea. The officers we had were all WWII. The company commander was WWII and then later on the XO, I think, he was an enlisted man in WWII and got a direct commission and went to Korea and maybe got a direct commission there, I don‘t know, but they were all combat oriented, and that‘s the way they trained you. None of this, ―Don‘t worry about it, we‘ll get it tomorrow‖, you 4 �do it right the first time. 8:01 In those days, when we went on a training exercise, it was like thirty days in the field, thirty days on maintenance, and thirty days on post support, guard duty or whatever. During those thirty days training you‘d get all your gear, go down to a green ramp, get on an airplane and fly off to places like Fort Gordon, Georgia, jump in and walk back to Fort Bragg. Take every hill, cross every stream, even if there‘s a bridge right down there, you had to cross the stream here, and like Charlie Thrasher, he was the biggest complainer we had, a great guy, everybody loved him, and they said we couldn‘t use the bridge, we had to cross over here and Charlie said, ―What do you mean we can‘t use the bridge it‘s sitting right there?‖ And he‘d walk out and jump on it, ―There‘s nothing wrong with this bridge‖, and then he‘d mumble to himself about the Army and blah, blah, blah, but anyway, he kept everybody‘s morale up with this. We had pretty good training in those days. 9:02 The sergeants would call you up to the front and give you the map and say, ―We are here because of, this or that‖ , and they would point it out and they said, ―I want to go here‖, which is three or four miles up the road, they give you the map and you had to get there. The biggest thing in the military then, well, one of the biggest things, was map reading, land navigation, if you couldn‘t get from point A to point B, you‘re not going to complete your mission, so training was quite extensive in classroom. Then you‘ve got to go out on practical application phase of it and it got to the point where even the lowest PFC could read that map, just like that, no problem, which came out years later to be very advantageous for us. 10:00 But, 325 was great, 1961 I started to get out, I came home to see what the prospects were and all my high school buddies were working at Western Electric and the Ford plant. The big thing with them was getting a six pack of beer and riding around on Friday night, and I 5 �was thinking, ―We did that in high school, what‘s the big thing here?‖ So, I went back and reenlisted and went to Korea. By this time I was a staff sergeant and I was with the 1st Cav in Korea. First off, when I got off the boat, which was a long-Interviewer: What kind of a ship did they have you on? The Barrister, the USS Barrister, it was a troop ship. I think it was designed for, like four hundred and it had eighteen hundred on it, or something, I don‘t know. 11:00 But, this old master sergeant grabbed me when we were first getting g on it said, ―You‘re going to be my sergeant of the guard for the ship‖, so that got us up here rather than down on the hold with everybody else. Interviewer: Had you actually made sergeant by this time? Yeah, I was a staff sergeant. Interviewer: Okay Yeah, anyway, we got to Korea, got off the boat and everybody of a certain height and certain weight goes over here, and this one Captain came through and first sergeant and said, ―You, I‘ll have you, and you‖ and we had no idea what it was, but what it was, we got on trucks and wound up over in Seoul at Yongsan compound and we had just become part of the United Nations Honor Guard, and did that for, gosh, two or three months. 12:00 Then we were shipped up to the 1st Cav as honor guard at Camp Harold, I believe that was. They wanted to start their honor guard so they took the youngest ones we had up there. We got up to camp and started the 1st Cavalry Division Honor Guard. Interviewer: What duties did the 1st Cavalry Honor Guard have to perform in these places? 6 �Oh well, each time we had a visiting dignitary, well, in the United Nations Honor Guard, every Friday night we had to lower the flag and fire the canon, march past in review and also there, the United Nations Honor Guard, 8th Army headquarters was right across the street and they had all the dignitaries in the world coming in and out of there, and every time there was we had a big parade, and we‘d have two or three a day sometimes, but you had to change uniforms every time, every time. 13:05 With the 1st Cav we didn‘t have much to do except on Friday nights they had the ceremony for retreat and review. Every time we had the visiting 8th Army commander come out there than we had to do the same thing again, but myself and, gosh I can‘t remember his name, but one other guy, were pulled out of there and we had orders to report to the 8th Army G3. We went down there and we had orders for Vietnam, and nobody had ever heard of Vietnam then. So, this was like November or December of 1962 and then they finally found it on the map. The map they had said Indochina, it didn‘t say anything about Vietnam. 14:00 Anyway, we finally got there and were assigned to the 42nd ARVN Ranger Parachute Battalion out of Vung Tau, and we went all night on five or six little excursions toward the Cambodian border and in the Parrot's Beak area, what they call the Parrot's Beak. If you take off from Vung Tau and go just north of Saigon and you‘re heading due west, the river runs like a horseshoe right there, and that was where we always flew over and passed one way or the other, that was like a reference point to which way they‘re going to go and if we went this way we knew we were going to be in a firefight somewhere, and if we went this way we were just going to be out walking and looking. They were all down over here, but anyway we got in several pretty good firefights. 7 �Interviewer: I want to again kind of stop and fill in a little bit. The time you spent up in Korea, would you preferred to have had an assignment other than the honor guard, or were you not even thinking about that? 15:08 I wasn‘t really thinking about it at that time, because I figured if I was staying in I was going to have plenty of opportunity to be on the line. Like I told the honor guard thing, I really would prefer to be at the DMZ, because in the infantry this is what we‘re supposed to be doing. They said, ‗Well, we want you here‖, blah, blah, blah, and like a couple of these older NCO‘s would tell me, ―You‘re going to get plenty of opportunity, don‘t you worry about that, but right now we need you here‖. Just like, set the example for the young ones and all. Interviewer: Did you learn things while being with the honor guard, in terms of how the army worked, or other things worked, or political stuff, a lot of it being useful? It was very useful because we were around the headquarters. 16:00 One of our main functions, other than the honor guard routines, were the various ceremonies you had to do. We were the body guard for the commanding General and the headquarters that was our main function up there. The same way with the United Nations Honor Guard and we were the guard that sat outside the door of the commanding General, the staff and all the headquarters there. We had to take care of all that. Interviewer: So, you basically--you got to meet people and learn something about how they operated? Oh yeah, when you‘re standing out as a guard, standing outside the door, you can hear everything that‘s going on behind you. A lot of times I was thinking, ―My God, how did 8 �he get three stars?‖ But anyway, it was very enlightening for a young man to be standing there listening to all this, because they‘re discussing war policies and everything, especially there in Korea. There were a couple times when they had the various United Nations officers in from different countries. 17:07 In the war room we‘d have to be inside the war room and outside the war room, we had guards on both sides and a lot of times I got to be inside, and that was interesting watching the maps and looking at how they‘re doing all this, and it came in pretty handy later. Interviewer: Now, when you got down to Vietnam, describe a little bit, or characterize the ARVN battalion that you were serving with. It was the 42nd ARVN Ranger Parachute Battalion and they were some tough little people. They‘d already been in combat for I don‘t know how long. Some of these guys we had, they fought against the Japanese in WWII and they had been fighting against the Vietminh, which later became the Vietcong. Interviewer: So I bet some of them served alongside the French when the French were still trying to hang on. 18:00 These we tough guys, they were little, but they were tough. But, I had 1st company and we went on this one big operation. In those days you could not be really assigned there. We were TDY from Korea, okay, we still wore out 1st Cav patches, we didn‘t wear the KMAC bag, or the VMAC patch. Our orders said TDY for a hundred and seventy nine days and the reason, the way I understood it was that, if you were assigned there, like for a year, then this strength level would go up. If you‘re there TDY the strength level would not go up, so therefore, you really, in a sense, didn‘t count against the strength level, because you‘re just TDY. 9 �Interviewer: TDY was just temporary duty or detached duty? Yeah, temporary duty, but we went on this last operation, there were five or six operations we went on. 19:03 Two of them were nothing and a couple of them were pretty good firefights, which is you‘re still learning all this, this is what your job is, and then the last one we went on, it was just a full-fledged ―ball buster‖, mainly. They had everything going, the entire battalion was out and they had another battalion somewhere, a mile or two up the road, up that way, but the bulk of my battalion was here and my 1st company was out here and there was 2nd company, 3,4, and five, and the headquarters was landed out there. Well, they went to the wrong place, I think, because they were getting hit with everything and then 2nd company went to help and they were blocking this side. 1st company, we went up this way and the tree line, the way the tree line was— I was thinking that somebody should have peppered that tree line before we went in because that‘s where all the firing was coming from. 20:09 My company went this way and we got on line, a skirmish line, and started going through. The enemy, that day, must have been asleep because they had no flank security out and we just rolled them right up. Interviewer: Now the—did you, basically, recommend the maneuver to the company commander, or did he come up with that himself? Well, yes and no, I had the radio and was talking to the battalion advisor and I‘m on the frequency and I‘m listening to all the different advisors what‘s going on where. I knew where the fire was coming from; I could see it and hear it also. I‘m thinking, ―Our best bet is to go over this way and then come this way, because if we come up this way, we‘re going to be getting fire from our own people. We need to come up this way and hit them 10 �from this flank‖. 21:01 Any time you can flank somebody and hit them with enfilade fire, that‘s the best way to go. Interviewer: I’m basically asking how command process works, because, officially, you’re just there in an advisory capacity and it’s going to be the Vietnamese officers who are giving the orders? Right Interviewer: How does that dynamic actually work? Well, I recommend pfffff, over here, but at the same time you‘re recommending you‘re pointing over and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then the interpreters firing it through. The captain and I, we could speak pretty good English, so we had no problem, so anyway, we got on line, swept through and I had our flanks out on the left just to make sure, and ―bang‘, we walked right up behind them, not a one of them was looking our way, and we just ―pffew‖. Interviewer: Now, what kind of troops were you fighting? Who were these people? Viet Minh, which, like I said, later became Viet Cong. 22:00 They had no, at that time, in the early 1960‘s, they had no hard core NVA units there, it was all Viet Minh, well, Viet Cong. Anyway, we rolled them up wherein, they were totally ineffective, and then the battalion advisor, after that, he recommended myself and the guy from the 2nd company, I never can remember his name for some reason, he recommended us for direct battle commission, which I turned down. In those days officers were held to very high esteem and I did not feel I had the education to be an officer, so when we went back in and did the after action report and the briefing, and blah, blah, blah and everything, and about a week later I‘m heading back to Korea. 23:00 I get back and back to my old 11 �duties and that kind of stuff, which I volunteered at that time to go up to the DMZ to get in rifle squad or a platoon. They said, ―No, right now we got this coming, blah, blah, blah, back and forth, and all this other stuff‖, so I got back in time for a commendation for noncommissioned officer of the year, and I went to that, which, being with the United Nations Honor Guard and hearing all the stuff that was going on, and then being in Vietnam with advisory staff and listening to how they planned all this stuff, when I got in front of the board for the NCO of the year, everything just kind of fell into place, and I was designated NCO of the year for the 1st Cavalry Division, 1963. 24:00 Anyway, after that I came back to the states and back to the 82nd. The offers back there--after about three or four months all this stuff starts catching up with you paperwork wise. They were pushing me to go to OCS, take a direct commission and all this kind of stuff and I didn‘t do that, so when I mentioned the education thing to-- the company commander called me in and asked me, ―What is the problem? You‘ve already demonstrated you know what you‘re doing on the battlefield‖, and I told him, ―I don‘t have the education‖, and he said, ―That‘s simple, go to night school‖, so I started going to night school. That was working pretty well, and after about two months the—I used to go in about a half hour to an hour early every night just to go over everything and make sure I had everything ready. Well, I went in early one evening and the professor was in there early and he said, ―I‘m glad you‘re here Sergeant Spaulding, I need to talk with you‖. 25:04 I said, ―Okay, what did I do?‖ He said, ―I think you‘re wasting your time‖, and I guess the look on my face was just—because I thought, ―My God am I that bad?‖ Anyway, he said, ―NO, no, it‘s quite obvious you‘re very well read. What I want to do is, I just want to test you out. We‘re going to give you this for two or three weeks and then 12 �we‘re going to test you out‖, so that‘s what we did and I got out of there in about seven or eight months and had my degree and applied to OCS, had my E7 orders in one hand and OCS orders in the other. If I take the OCS orders and not the E7 orders, than by buddy Tom Thornton gets the E7 stripe, which he was married and had kids and I wasn‘t, so he could have that I‘ll take this, and I went to OCS. 26:06 I graduated in June of 1967, class 3667. Interviewer: Where did you do the OCS? What did I do? Interviewer: Where did you do it? At Fort Benning Interviewer: Okay And very lucky, either that or I irritated a lot of people, or wanted to. They had a thing called Student Council President, you‘re like the acting company, you work in countenance with the tactical officers and the company commander, and I was elected Student council President, which I had no idea how to do it and I had enough problems just keeping up with the classes. Six months later I was still the Student Council President, which was, the regimental commander told us that was the first time he‘d ever seen the same person is the Student Council President in the beginning and in the end. 27:03 Most of the time they get fired or they drop out or they get kicked out or whatever, but anyway, that worked out pretty good. The 55th company class, today, we have reunions which started about three years ago, reunions all the time. One of the guys, gosh, Mike, he lives in Friday Harbor, Washington, it begins with an H, I can‘t think of his last name, but anyway, he got together with the rest of the guys when he 13 �found out that I was alive and they nominated me for the Infantry OC S Hall of Fame, so I went into the Infantry OCS Hall of Fame in 2007, I believe it was, and pretty exciting. 28:00 Interviewer: What did they emphasize or focus on in the OCS training? What were the main things? It was a lot different than it is now, back then it was infantry, and you were taught Second Lieutenant, First Lieutenant, Company Commander, which you get out of that and you go to infantry officers advanced course and that‘s when you learn how to be a Major and move from staff officer, plus you‘re learning like an S3 battalion, brigade, and you‘re learning all the maps and plans and your right flank is in Berlin and your left flank is in— what is that up there, somewhere in Holland? Amsterdam and then ―pfffff‖ you‘re going this way. You learn a lot of logistics, writing up orders, a lot of that, plus it‘s a tactics thing and then after that it‘s commanding staff and that‘s when you learn division at army level, and then you go to War College and you‘re looking at more of the world. 29:00 Interviewer: But at this point, this original Infantry OCS, this is sort of how to lead a platoon or how to lead a company. Platoon company mainly, but now, and that was twenty six weeks long, now days, I think, it‘s eight weeks long or ten weeks long and it‘s branch and material. You just learn how to be an officer, that‘s what it is and then you go to your branch training, like if you‘re going to go infantry, you go to the infantry basic course, if you‘re going to sea you go Fort Mott, New Jersey to seaman school, and armor you go to where ever, well actually, it‘s going to be at Fort Benning now, artillery you go somewhere else. Anyway, it‘s all basically there 14 �Interviewer: So, it’s really a pretty extended course at the time that you took it? At the time when I took it, it was twenty six weeks long and you go through various phases. You start off and you‘re basic, you get two thirds of the way through and you turn blue, there‘s black in there somewhere—you turn blue and then you graduate. 30:11 Interviewer: So, when did you graduate? 22 June, 1967, can‘t get away from this June, you know. Interviewer: Now, by this time things have heated up a lot in Vietnam, it’s no longer just some advisors and the ARVN now does a lot. Over the course of the time that you were kind of back in the states doing different assignments, did you feel like you wanted to go back and get into that? I wanted a rifle company. I wanted to be company commander of a rifle company, but backing up, before I got to OCS, I think in 1965, the 82nd Airborne Division went into the Dominican Republic. It was the second time the 82nd, as a division, went into combat since WWII. 31:00 We took the airfield and then we go down to the Duarte Bridge, go across the Duarte Bridge, took the city in half and link up with Marines who were guarding the embassy and I was selected to be the point man to go that night, because for the last year and a half I had been the senior instructor at the 82nd Airborne‘s Raider Detachment School. Which is a mini ranger course and that‘s what we taught, patrolling. So, when we got up there the 508 was supposed to be the first element across. The 508 had no one in their unit that had any combat experience, so the called the 325 up. Colonel McDonald was a first sergeant in Korea and got a battlefield commission, and he‘s now our battalion commander. He already had battlefield experience, WWII, Korea, so they made our battalion the lead battalion. 32:00 He was asking, he said, ―Who do 15 �we have?‖ And he said, ―Well, sir, we got Sergeant Spaulding, he‘s a ranger, ranger instructor, we got Sergeant Williams, he just got out of ranger school two weeks ago, we got Sergeant Blizzard, he‘s ranger qualified‖. Our company had four rangers, which is just unheard of; usually you‘re lucky if you get one per a company. So, he said, ―Alright, bring them forward‖, so we moved our company up, which is Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion 325. Had the Jeep on our end of the bridge, not a light on anywhere in the city, shooting going on everywhere, and anyway, he gave us a briefing on the bridge, ―This is the map, this is where I want you to go, this way, that way, if you come to this there‘s a fountain, turn right, etc.‖ I‘m thinking, ―Oh boy, this is going to be good‖, so when he finished the briefing he said, ―Are there any questions?‖ I said, ―Yes sir, I got one, are there any friendlies on the other side of that bridge?‖ 33:02 He said, ―No‖, and then he turned around and looked and then we turned around and looked to see, because he looked this way, and there was General York, General of the 82nd Airborne Division and the chief of Staff and the Deputy Commander. They kind of conferred and they said, ―No, there are no friendlies on the other side of the bridge, to which, and I‘ve always wanted to say this because it is the trademark of the Rangers, I said, ―Okay Williams, let‘s go‖. I said, ―Rangers lead the way. I‘ll be on the right, you stay thirty yards behind me on the left, and don‘t you dare fire across to my side of the bridge‖. So anyway, going across, Blizzard was the contact man and he was keeping his eye on Williams, and the rest of the platoon was another thirty or forty yards back behind him. We had radios and I was talking back and forth. I got one little historical fact. Like I said earlier, that was the first time that the 82nd Airborne Division went into combat since WWII. 34:06 I was the first man across the bridge, the first one through the city as an enlisted man, the 16 �very first officer was our platoon leader coming across there, it was Barry R. McCaffrey, four stars, that was four stars. Anyway, we got through the city, this way, that way, and we were coming up out of the warehouse area where there‘s no doors, no windows, all walls and we‘re kind of caught in a tunnel like here, and here‘s all this hollering going on, and here‘s about forty or fifty rebels marching, not marching, but coming across in a big mob and they were chanting all kinds of stuff and everything and I‘m getting ready to give my burst and five or six, eleven or twelve year old kids with them, and not all of them had weapons and none of the kids had weapons. 35:00 I‘m thinking, ―if we start spraying, it‘s dark, and the flash, you‘re going to get blinded and you‘re just going to spray everybody, and I was going to hit one of those kids‖. I don‘t mind shooting somebody that‘s got a weapon, but I‘m not going to shoot a kid, so I didn‘t fire, and they walked right on by. They kept looking at me and, hell, I wasn‘t fifteen feet from them. They just kept looking at me, I‘m standing there pointed right at them, and if they‘d have fired, I‘d have fired, but they didn‘t fire, they just kept looking back like, ―Is that somebody standing there?‖ They kept on going, but anyway, we went on down, across this way and that way and wound up where we were supposed to go and Colonel Mac was happy. Interviewer: So, this group kind of went past the rest of your unit presumably and kept going? No, no, they were going this way and we were going this way. Interviewer: They were going somewhere else, and you were crossing paths? Yeah, by that junction there, but, I radioed back, you know, and they only went down a couple blocks, then I radioed that in too. 36:04 Anyway, we went this way and 17 �everybody got to where we were supposed to go, and then four months, five months, something like that, we got—our company got on planes and flew back to fort Bragg. Interviewer: So, how did you spend your time over the next several months? On rooftops, sitting with 50 caliber machine guns on rooftops guarding different junctions, highways and stuff. We had to block off the city where—we pushed them in and we had the river behind them and we just kind of blocked them and then pushed them, now they‘re all trapped in there and can‘t come out. A General Camano, I believe was the rebel commander. Interviewer: Did they finally surrender? Yeah Interviewer: Was there much actual fighting? Yeah, we lost twelve. I think we had something like a hundred and fifteen, sixteen wounded, shot. 37:06 They had like a little tank, more like an armored thing and they came wheeling around and they blew that thing to pieces with a 106 and that was a bit of overkill. They had like a big gun boat going up and down the river out there firing at us, so we took a 106 round at that thing and it just disappeared, ―whoosh‖. They had a sniper up in the church steeple and we took him out and we had several on the street that we took out. Interviewer: Now, once you had essentially taken over, what was sort of the mood of the population as far as you could tell? Well, at first there were several of them that didn‘t particularly care to have us around, but once we were there, they found out that we weren‘t the villains they had been led to believe. 38:03 We gave candy to kids, we set up medics, we set up health clinics and 18 �stuff, and our doctors just started checking all the people. If you can win the kids, the parents will follow. We weren‘t there to hurt them. Interviewer: In the meantime you maintained discipline, so you were not acting like some other police, or military might have? Well, we had formations and strict platoon formations and people were watching, so the recognized that they were a highly trained, well disciplined group and not just a bunch of yo yo‘s running around shooting their guns off, so that went over fairly well. We got back and got back to being an instructor down at Ranger school and went in front of the E7 board and got that. 39:00 I went to OCS. Interviewer: Now, did you do your original Ranger training back in your first hitch when you were at Fort Bragg? Yeah, I went to Fort Benning, Georgia for Ranger school. Interviewer: That was before you had gone to Korea and Vietnam, or was it after you got back from those places? When I got back from Korea in 1963, I went straight to Ranger school. Interviewer: Okay, let’s put that into the sequence in the right place. Okay, so now you get out of OCS in like August of 1967. I went to Special Forces, I was assigned to Special Forces, well, I was assigned to Special Forces TDY in route to Okinawa. TDY to Monterey Peninsula language school, DLIWC, Defense Language Institute West Coast, and I went in there and took Korean. 40:00 I thought, ―This is going to be something, I‘m going to have to go to school to learn how to speak English‖, because Korean was a hundred percent grammatically correct and nobody I know speaks English that is grammatically correct. So, I had a lot 19 �of trouble with Korean, and we had tests every day, every week and every month during that period, and then quarterly, and all that. Then when it came down to the end of the year, you had a whole big thing, audio and video, you know, you read it write, sit there and listen and write it out, what it is. All through till the end of the year, all my tests were poor and failing, poor and failing, and I thought, ―I‘m never going to get through this thing‖, and it kind of hurt because every school I‘d ever been to, I‘d always been first or second, always. 41:01 Every military school that I‘d been to, but that was more of a physical knowledgeable thing, and this is sitting behind a desk and it just wasn‘t my day. I finally got through and just before, about a week—we‘re going to graduate in a week, but we‘re going to be taking the test, I think it was on a Thursday or Friday and then you had a long weekend to pack and clear post and all the other stuff, and then graduate the following week. Well, my father passed away, I had to hop on a plane, run home, attend the funeral and everything and then by the time I came back everybody‘s already gone, and then I‘ve got to sit down and take the test. That was a lot of fun, but when I come through, after I finished the test and I think I only missed like four or five questions on the audio and only like three or four questions on the video. 42:02 I told them, I said, ―That can‘t be right, I just‖, and he said, ―Well, no, this is the way of our way of thinking, it‘s in there somewhere, you just hit it bang, bang and it gets there‖, so anyway, I cleared the post, packed my stuff and went back to Fort Bragg and then went to SFOC, advanced Special Forces Officer Course, and then went back to Indianapolis, dropped my car off, got on a plane and went to Okinawa. I got to Okinawa and made Captain on the way. I had orders for a buddy that was in my OCS class, they already knew I was coming ,so when I got off the plane and here he is. 43:00 20 I got his order to Captain and he‘s still �standing there with his 1st Lieutenant bars on and I thought, ―This is going to be a lot of fun‖, so anyway, he said, ―My God, Captain orders, my god‖, and I said, ―I got served, pick up my bag‖, and we had a blast with him, Tom Rashcott, a wonderful guy, wonderful guy and a hell of a soldier too. Anyway, we get in the Jeep and go to headquarters and when we got there I gave his orders to the S1 and he said, ―Captain, there‘s a Colonel waiting to see you‖, so I walked in and gave him a copy of the orders and he said, ―I got your folder here‖, meaning I got your file, and he said, ―Very impressive, very impressive, I‘m going to be keeping you pretty busy‖. 44:02 We had a nice little conversation, about ten minutes and he said, ―Anything-- officers call Friday‖, blah, blah, blah, that might be a very good time for this‖, reads it and said, ― Oh, my God, the army, once again they committed a boo boo, they‘re promoting Rashcott?‖ I said, ―He‘s on the same orders as me and he was my OCS buddy at OCS‖, and he said, ―Oh my God, we‘ll make some hay with this‖, so at officers call on Friday night the officers and their wives are there and after a little socializing and all the colonel made a little speech about there had to be some changes made and certain things would not be tolerated any longer and he just—the Adjutant knew, and I knew, and I don‘t think anybody else did, but anyway, he called Tom Rashcott up. 45:03 Now, Tom has always been a little bit of a problem with his weight and the Colonel got to doing this and that with him and he said, ―Actually, Lieutenant Rashcott, you‘re just not the caliber of Lieutenants that I want in my organization‖, and he reached up and took his bars off and I thought Tom was going to die, he just watered up and choked up. He was a lifer, a career man; he was in there for life. He took his bars off and he turned around and the Adjutant hands him the Captain's bars and he said, ―I think these will work a little bit better‖, and 21 �when he put the Captain bars on Rashcott looked dead at me and said, ―You son of a bitch, I‘ll get even with you one of these days‖, but anyway, Tom was married to a really nice gal and she got sick. 46:05 I think she passed away about four years, maybe five years, after that, I‘m not sure, but he now, he‘s in a wheelchair in Blue Ridge, Virginia near Roanoke somewhere, in a small town, a wonderful guy and a hell of a soldier. On Okinawa I‘m running back and forth on ―Operation Snakebite‖, back and forth to Vietnam. Some of the guys I operated with are Bob Howard, Medal of Honor, and other great soldiers, just great guys. Finished up there and--Interviewer: What kind of work were you doing? You were going back and forth, are you just taking orders? No, we‘re going into Vietnam and Laos, back and forth across the border. 47:00 they had a thing in Da Nang, CCN, Command and Control North, and they would leave Da Nang and go in on mission. They would be in less than an hour or they would get hit when they landed, everybody knew when they were coming, so they had a spy somewhere, so they came to Okinawa and explained the situation. They asked for volunteers, so naturally, we all stepped forward. In those types of situation, the majority of times, not always, but the majority of the times, it was the single guys that would get the mission, so I was running back and forth. We would go in—we would go into Da Nang on a C130, hop over and get the last minute little briefing thing, the last intel going for that area, hop in a chopper and boom, we‘d be in at the crack of dawn. We‘d be in and the chopper would be out, and of course, the chopper would make half a dozen stops trying to confuse whoever. 48:05 We would get in, complete the mission, call for pick up and be out. There were several times—finally when they knew they had a spy in there 22 �was—we were sitting right here and we‘re looking right down the highway here, coming up this way, and we radioed in, ―such and such ready for extraction, grid coordinates such and such‖, and we sat back and waited, sat there waiting and in less than an hour here comes trucks, so there had to be a spy sitting there in that headquarters, and they kept narrowing it down, narrowing it down as to which section, which group and finally they nailed it down to who, and that‘s where I think Colonel Rowe got replaced, sent home and relieved. 49:03 About the double agent thing where they took him out in a chopper to the South China Sea and dropped him, they found him and they pfffff. Interviewer: So basically, the work you were doing in that territory was all in finding who the spy was, or did you have other missions? No, no, we were still running missions. Interviewer: Were those missions mostly reconnaissance, just trying to find out who was where? Right, reconnaissance missions, now one of the biggest things and the most stupid thing I‘s ever seen was, VMAC, General Westmoreland, it wasn‘t Westmoreland then though it was somebody else [presumably Creighton Abrams], a four star sitting down there, his staff—we went in drew it on a map--there‘s a highway down there underneath the trees and this is where it goes and the guys said, ―It‘s impossible, there‘s no road out there‖, and blah, blah, blah. 50:00 So, we went back out on another mission somewhere else, but we came back the long way and went down there, stood in the middle of the road and took pictures. While I was standing on the road I could see how big it was, taking pictures. This is facing north, this is facing south, and this is the road that doesn‘t exist, and we drew the line again on the map, and we—this time we went right down that thing 23 �taking pictures and x-ing the map where those pictures were taken. Came back, put it in an envelope and made sure the intel people got it and sent it to the General or the Colonel, whoever it was that said the road wasn‘t there, and I never heard another word about it. However, we also marked on there where the locations were that could be used for truck parks. An area was cleared out and it had to be for something. 51:00 They put them in there and later on is when bombs were dropped. Interviewer: So, we’re talking about what later came to be known as the Ho Chi Minh trail? Well, it was part of the trail, yeah. The Ho Chi Minh trail was a trail with a road, and was an egress from north to south to get them in. This is an extended version of it now, but what made it interesting is that it was Cubans that built that road, Cuban engineers. They had equipment setting there, pictures, Spanish, I don‘t know if the NVA speaks Spanish, so we got that in there and left there, ―Oh, god, let‘s see‖---we got back to Okinawa and myself and Bill Walsh, we were, ―Gotta get back to the states‖, and I thought, ―We do?‖. 52:04 Anyway, we cleared Okinawa, got a plane and flew back to Fort Benning, Georgia. What it was, Interviewer: How dangerous was the duty that you were doing, going in and out of Vietnam with the Special Forces? People get killed and people get captured. Interviewer: How close—did you have close calls yourself? Oh yeah, it goes with the territory though. Anyway, I got back to Bragg, horsed around for three or four weeks and went back to Benning and they gave us our certificates showing we completed the course and by that time I‘m going back to Bragg, I have no new orders cut, so I‘m going back to Bragg, JFK Center waiting for orders, and I‘m there 24 �eight or nine months and then I get orders from the Pentagon saying that I‘m going to Vietnam. 54:05 I said, ―I just got back‖, so I called Mrs. Alexander. Now Mrs. Alexander has to be a saint, I‘ve never met the lady personally, but I‘ve talked to her on the phone and I said, ―Mrs. Alexander what are you doing to me?‖ She said, ―Nothing, you need to get to your regular unit‖. I said, ―I was in Vietnam in 1962, 63‖, and she said, ―Honey, you were an enlisted man then and it didn‘t count‖, and I said, ―Didn‘t count?‖, ―Didn‘t count‖, and I said, ―Okay‖. I said, ―I just came back. I was with the 1st going in and out‖, and she said, ―That‘s Special Forces and that didn‘t count‖, ―That didn‘t count?‖ It was getting so comical with the "didn‘t count" routine, you know, and I said, ―Okay‖, and she said, ―You have to have, in order for your career, you need to get company command time‖, and I said, ―Yeah, you‘re right, I got the orders and I‘ll go‖. 55:03 Interviewer: Who was Mrs. Alexander? She handled officer‘s assignments depending on the Pentagon, a lovely lady and I‘d love to meet her someday, but anyway, went over and I went in to see General Flanagan and I said, ―Sir, I can‘t go on that mission that you wanted me to go on because I got my orders to go to Vietnam‖. He picked them up and looked at them and said, ―Big Red One?‖ I said, ―That‘s what it says‖, and he said, ―No, you‘re not going to Big Red One‖, and he twixed somebody, I don‘t know, but when I got to Vietnam two or three weeks later they had a little guy standing out there with my name on a card, you know, and I went over, we hopped in a Jeep, drove down to the end of the runway and there was this chopper. He woke the guys up; we got in the chopper and took off. I‘m beginning to think, ―This army‘s all right, and this is okay for a Captain, this isn‘t too bad‖. 56:03 So, we get 25 �down there and I knew where the 1st Division was, but we‘re still going. We‘d stop down, refuel, and get up and go again, and I thought, ―Where in the hell are we going? The next stop up, there‘s not too many more‖, so we banked in and when I looked down there‘s a big Screaming Eagle sitting out there, so down we go, he got in another Jeep and brought me over to the headquarters and we go in there and the G-1 says, ―Captain, the chief of staff wants to see you‘re to go report to him when you got in‖, and I said, ―Okay‖, so I walked in, knocked, and went in, he looked up and ―bingo‖, the Chief of Staff of the 101st Airborne Division was Colonel Hugh A. McDonald. He was the guy that kicked me in the butt back at Bragg to get me to go to OCS. 57:00 There he was, and he was an old friend with Flanagan, General Flanagan, so anyway, he said, ―I‘ve been expecting you‖, so anyway, we got assigned and he said, ―You‘re going to go down to the 1st Brigade, 327‖, and I said, ―Okay‖, and he said, ―They got problems down there and you‘ll have to beef them up because the company commander‘s coming in‖, and I said, ―Okay." Interviewer: Now, when was this in terms of date? It was 1969, the early part of 1969. Interviewer: Okay Anyway, I went in there and got a little bit of a briefing on what‘s going on in the G3 shop and the AO, hopped in a helicopter, went down to the 1st Brigade, walked in. 58:00 there were three or four officers that were going in all about the same time, so I was the last to get into the group there. One of them went in, and we had the door open and we could hear, and he‘s reporting to the battalion commander and he said, ―Sir, my major was English, I‘d be a great S1 for you‖, and the next guy went in and he said, ―Sir, you 26 �know I did a lot with stock level assignments and I could be a great S4 for you‖, and I‘m thinking, ―We‘re all in country, why aren‘t we going in the field to lead the troops?‘ So, the next guy, he did his, I don‘t know what he got out of, motor pool or something, and I walked in and, ―Sir, Captain Spaulding , company commander in Vietnam, give me the worst company you got‖. He just looked at me and said, ―A man from heaven, my god, finally we got somebody‖, and he did give me the worst company, he gave me the worst company, but I had them about four or five months, got them straightened out and we were kicking some butt out there. 59:07 Interviewer: Can you describe a little bit what made that company the worst company, or unit, and what kind of problems did they have? Lack of NCO leadership, a lot of the NCO‘s were afraid, some of the platoon leaders were afraid to bring any discipline on the troops and give them orders, or demand things be done, because of all the fragging incidents that were going on at that time. Interviewer: How common was that? Pretty common, from what I hear, didn‘t have to mind. The fellow ahead of me, I got two or three weeks of training him myself. I had him on the rifle range, I had him running this way and that way outside the wire patrolling and this and that. When they starting finding that I was sitting right over the top of the guy walking point and a couple of times I took point and said, ―You‘re doing it wrong, you‘re going to get killed‖. 00:14 Listen to what you‘re doing, and then they found out that I was nine years enlisted, that I didn‘t just get off the boat with a couple of Captain bars on, it made it a little bit different and the troop started responding, and then we went out and started kicking some butt. I found out the guys before me, they would be like on the last, or the next to the last 27 �chopper in, well, I was always on the first chopper in. The best allies, the best asset, a company commander has is his radio operator, because his radio operator is right there with him and he sees everything the Captain does, he hears everything the Captain does, and he is the best grapevine back to the troops, he‘s going to tell everybody what the Captain‘s doing, and that‘s how you win them over. 1:06 So, in a firefight you‘re not running around hiding behind trees and shit, you‘re up there kicking butt, getting them to do their job. Interviewer: Did you have a good RTO then? I had a great RTO, had a great RTO. When you want to get something done, like going on a firefight— Interviewer: Our tape is running out here, so we’ll pause for a minute while we change the tape. Interviewer: So, we’ve gotten you back into Vietnam, you’ve gotten yourself a company command, you’ve taken over a company and gotten that one into shape after several months and then what happens with you next? Well, ordinarily you had six months of command time, but in that incidence there my main purpose was to go in, according to the battalion commander, he wanted me to go in and get the company shaped up and get them out of their doldrums, or whatever it was, which I did that. 2:03 After four months he pulled me out of that and gave me another company to straighten—to work on. I had that for three or four months, that was 1st battalion, 2nd battalion was having problems, so the battalion commander requested I go over there, which I did go over there, and I had Alpha Company, I think it was Alpha Company 2nd /327, and they had, at that time they had no body count what so ever and yet, the village, the bridge they were supposed to be protecting, there was rice being 28 �taken out of the village, people being killed in the village and all kinds of stuff. So, I went out and set that up, and started sending patrols out, LPOP‘s, listening posts observation posts, and requested a motor section come down by the bridge, and put them in, and that way I got my own little artillery now if I get somebody out there that get in contact, I‘ll be able to pop them with mortar rounds. 3:09 We started doing that and started getting body counts. We tool on what they call the Phu Lac Armed Battalion, which was nothing more than about a hundred little jokers that ran around in shorts and we took care of them in short order with no problem. I had that company for, oh gosh, about six or seven months. Interviewer: Where were you operating? Was it kind of a lowland area? It was on the lowlands, all low and flat and off the highway. We were protecting the highway and the Highway Bridge and Railroad Bridge. So anyway, I got pulled out of that and got thanks for a great job and blah, blah, blah, and I got sent up to Division G3, as staff. 4:07 Me, and I don‘t know how many other Captains, it looked like a warehouse, just row after row of desks and no partitions, just wide open, there it was. I got there , I forget what day it was, but it was in the afternoon, and then the next morning Colonel McDonald had me in, chief of staff, and he said, ―I need some company grade officers, 3rd Brigade got hit last night and just about got annihilated‖, and I said, ―I‘ll go‖, and he said, ―No, you‘ve been out there too much already‖, so this other guy and it ,really, in a way it was very disheartening. We‘re officers, we‘re career oriented, and these guys every time Colonel Mac walked down—―Sir, I‘ve got these reports I just have to get these done for Colonel so and so, blah, blah, blah‖, and another guy, ―Oh sir‖, and every time Colonel Mac would turn around I wouldn‘t say anything, I just kind of waved. 29 �5:09 He was so disgusted, he came walking up, turned around and said, ―Spaulding, grab your gear, you don‘t deserve to be in here with them‖. I left, grabbed my gear, reported over, had a chopper waiting, went down to 3rd Brigade—3rd Brigade was the farthest brigade north up there and it was up to Quang Tri, Hue, Dong Ha, that I Corps area. It used to be a three division AO was now a one brigade AO. One battalion per division area, pretty bad, but anyway, I went up there and Bravo Company and I think it was Charlie Company, I‘m not sure, within contact and they were about two or three hundred yards apart, somewhere in here. 6:03 Interviewer: Which battalion? 2/506-okay, so I went in and married them up, got them squared away, had artillery all around them all night long, sort of much like baby sitting with them where the choppers come in the next day with reinforcements and we got all these guys on choppers, loaded the dead, and got out of there. I‘m thinking, ―Is this going to be my company?‖ So we get over to curry ben and the first sergeant says, ―Sir, we got a chopper for you, Colonel Bradley, the Brigade Commander wants to see you‖, so I went over to the brigade, the chopper went back to the brigade, and that‘s where I left my bags and stuff. I walked in and Major Turner says, ―Colonel‘s got something he wants to brag about‖, so we went in there and Major Turner said, ―Sir, this is Captain Spaulding‖, and he said, ―Great job, great job‖. 7:05 I said, ―Well sir‖, and we talked for a little bit and I said, ―If there‘s nothing else sir, I‘d like to get back to my company‖. He said, ―No‖, he said, ―You‘re going to be on my staff‖, and I‘m not a staff officer. So, I told him, ―Sir, I‘d rather have a company‖, and he said, ―Well, I realize that, but up here at brigade, if you‘re working in my threesome [S3?], you‘re going to have fifteen or sixteen companies out there‖. I 30 �thought, ―Hmm, that‘s a pretty good argument there‖, and he said, ―At brigade level you could make the changes, you could make things happen‖. I explained to him that I had no staff time, and no staff experience whatsoever, and he said, ―Well, this is a good place to learn‖. 8:00 Colonel Bradley was a West Point of 1950 and went straight into the Korean War, a hell of a man, really a great guy. Anyway, he had me understand the assistant S3 was under Major Turner and everything was going great, but we were losing guys rotation wise, they were going home and as they‘re leaving we‘re not getting and replacements, so I‘m taking up their slots too. Sonny Archangel, Captain Archangel, was the S3 and he got his orders, so he went home, so I took over as the S3 and I‘m still the assistant S3 and then I‘m giving briefings at night to the briefing officers and taking care of the TOC and make sure it‘s running right, and then fire support, because if I‘m moving aircraft I got to coordinate all the artillery, because helicopter pilots get just a little bit upset if there‘s no fire line in front of them, so we had to get all that done. 9:00 This was a great experience for me and I didn‘t realize it at first, but as we got to functioning I thought, ―Man, this is fantastic, this is the way to operate‖. Interviewer: Now, at what point did you go out of brigade staff, in terms of time, when was it? That was February, right around St. Valentine‘s Day. Interviewer: 1970 then? 1970, because the big firefight where they lost so many officers, that was a fluke the way that happened, and evidently a couple rockets came in and they were all standing and ―woop‖, but anyway, that was right around St. Valentine‘s Day, which somebody labeled ―St. Valentine‘s Day Massacre‖. Right after that we had several contacts and that‘s when 31 �the orders came down, ―Okay, we‘re going to go out and we‘re going put up a firebase, and we‘re going open that firebase up, so the 1st ARVN Division can come out and take on the NVA and the Coc Muen Warehouse area‖. 10:06 So we went in on March the 12th and blew the first on. A helicopter came in, flared, and blew the first one out of the sky. George Westerfeldt was on that aircraft and it blew him right out of the side. Several other guys were on there and a couple of them got killed and George got wounded. George Westerfeldt, you‘ll probably never be able to talk to him, he‘s a recluse and lives up in northern New York in a little shack, no electricity, no running water, and he walks about a mile and a half or two miles down to the general store on the highway, that‘s where he gets his mail and that‘s where you got to call, the general store, and leave a message and he‘ll get back to you in two or three days. But anyway, a wonderful guy, a hell of a soldier, a great man, but we couldn‘t get there in the 12th; we couldn‘t get on the 13th or the 14th, so we kind of pulled back a little bit. 11:04 Then we were looking around and we kept trying every now and then, but also, a lot of times we got out there and the weather was socked in and we couldn‘t get the choppers in. Interviewer: Still monsoon? Right, in and out, yeah, the weather changed so badly all the time, but finally we put troops in over here and on the ridgeline, the 902, and we walked them up the ridgeline right into it. Interviewer: Now, you were talking about—was the LZ you were trying to set up, was that going to be Ripcord, or was this a different one? No, that wasn‘t an LZ, it was a firebase. We landed over here, and landed over here, and walked the troops up to the firebase and we took it that way. Once we got troops up there 32 �and secured the area, what we did, we brought in the mini dozers and all that and started leveling it and flattening it and whatever. 12:00 Sandbags by the thousands, hundreds of thousands came in, VSP bunkers, brought the engineers in and started drilling. We got the firebase up, brought the artillery in and then here comes the 1st ARVN Division. They came out and they were out there three, four, five days, a week, right around that and they pull out and go back and we‘re still sitting down there, so then we decided, ―We‘ll just stay here, that‘s our orders, so we‘ll stay‖. Now, in order to hold Ripcord, we pretty much had to hold 1000, 805, 902, well we never did get 1000 and they were looking right down our throats and we found out later that was regimental headquarters. Interviewer: What was the elevation of Ripcord? 935 Interviewer: So, 1000, that’s a taller hill and there’s taller ones behind that too. Yeah, their looking right down your throat--with 51 Cal, they could fire right at you directly and that‘s how close it was, machine gun fire, that‘s what they fired. 13:06 That‘s when the battle started, April, May, June, July and all through April we had sporadic contact, and what I mean by sporadic is, every two day, three day, something like that. May is when all hell broke loose. May 3rd and 4th was Henderson, firebase Henderson was overrun, hill 805 on May 5th and 6th was overrun, hill 902 was in June [July 1-2] and we lost a lot of guys on that. But Henderson, we put a company on there and gave them all the wire, gave them claymores, and gave them everything else and Colonel Bradley and Major Turner had been out there, I don‘t know how many times. 14:02 They were telling this company commander, ―Put a squad on the ridge, get your wire up, put the claymores up, get an OP over there, get an LP out over there, and when 33 �the artillery comes in, help the artillery people break up the pallets and get that out and get the artillery ammunition stored‖. Well, the company commander figured well, number one, he was infantry, he wasn‘t artillery, the artillery rounds wasn‘t his problem, so when the Chinooks start coming in and putting all the pallets down and ordering artillery, then their bringing in the gasoline blivits. No place to put them, so they put them on top of the artillery ammunition pallets. Now, we gave this guy the recon platoon attached to it was there on the backside in the trenches, a good place for recon, in a trench, that‘s really great, but anyway, the enemy came through, zappers, came running through and they split the gasoline blivets. 15:08 Then thought the fighting and all that, then they ―boom‖ they ignited that sucker and the whole half of the mountain blew, ―pow‖, and there went the recon platoon. During the run through they were shooting everybody and most of the troops weren‘t fighting back or something, I don‘t really know, I wasn‘t on it at that time. But, I do know we lost a hell of a lot of troops on that hill. Colonel Bradley went out there the very next morning with Turner and Command Sergeant Major Long and they landed about 7:15 AM and the mortar rounds are still coming in. They were running up to the TOC and a mortar round landed right behind him and blew him right through the door. Sergeant Major Long took a tailfin of a mortar round in his back and he later died. 16:03 Bradley and Turner were scuffed up going through the doorway of the TOC. They grabbed Sergeant Major Long, called for his chopper and the chopper came spun right around and came right back in. They came running out, put him on and off they went. Sergeant Major Long died in route back to evac. Bradley and Turner go back into TOC, blood all over, and just mad as hornets, and he said, ―Get that individual in here‖, so I said, ―I‘ll go get him‖, and Captain Jenkins 34 �said, ―I‘ll go with you‖. Captain Jenkins was a huge black guy that played for the University of Alabama, right tackle, right guard, somebody, I mean he was big. We get out there and took a Loach, a little H-6 helicopter and we‘re flying out there. We landed, went over to the TOC and told the RTO, ―Get your company commander out here‖. 17:10 He hollered back in and I didn‘t hear what was said, but anyway, the kid turned around and said, ―He ain't coming out sir‖, and I said, ―Okay‖, so I started to go in and Jenkins said, ―Wait, I‘ll take this‖. Jenkins went in and it wasn‘t thirty seconds after and the guy came flying out of there. Jenkins was pretty upset and everybody was that knew Sergeant Major Long, a tremendous individual, just a tremendous individual. And for this guy not to have the troops out like he was told to do, have the wire up like he was told to do, that would have slowed them down anyway and they would have had time to react, and not move the artillery ammunition, which killed another thirty or forty when that blew. But anyway, we started to get back in the helicopter, the Loach, Jenkins as big as he was, that Captain, me and the pilot, that plane, there was no way in hell that helicopter was going to go anywhere. 18:09 The RTO, I told him, I says, ―Contact one of your Lieutenants and tell them they‘re now in charge‖. He looked dead at me and he said, ―Sir, we have no officers left‖, and I thought, ―Oops that aint good‖, and I said to Jenkins, ―You run him on back and tell Colonel Bradley and I‘ll stay out here‖. I went over and I started talking to the kid and I said, ―Where‘s all your—where‘s this, where‘s that—where‘s your—get the medic, where‘s the medic at?‖ the medic came out and he‘d been wounded, but he didn‘t leave, so the medic and I went around the firebase, Henderson, picking up the dead, picking up the wounded, and I could not believe that the company commander had not already evacuated these guys. 35 �Interviewer: There were still wounded there that hadn’t been taken out? Yeah, so anyway, we—the medic had patched them up, he just didn‘t call for medevac. 19:06 So anyway, we brought them up to the pad and called for medevac to get these guys out of there, brought the dead up and lined them up, and God, there were twenty or thirty of them, I forget the count, but I took pictures of it because I figured there was going to be an investigation about this later on. But anyway, I was talking with the medic and he explained to me what all transpired and all that, so I‘m calling back to brigade and I said, ―We need to get another company out here‖. I didn‘t want to set it in the clear, but they didn‘t have anybody to hold the hill. All the artillery pieces were blown, blown up. Anyway, we‘re still taking fire. Interviewer: How many men do you have left that can still fight? Thirty, somewhere around that, but anyway, the way it came around was, we‘re still taking fire, direct fire, which means they‘re pretty close, and indirect fire, mortar rounds. 20:10 So, I got on the radio, took one of the radios, changed the frequency, I knew what the frequency was so I called the FAC, the air force FAC, and I called him up, Major Brown, told him, I said, ―Skipper, I need at FAC out here‖ and he said, ―On the way‖, and bang pretty soon he‘s circling around up there. I said, ―I‘m taking mortar fire, and when we‘d hit a mortar round I‘d run out and shoot back at it, and it‘s got to be right down across that ridge out there, about the third one down‖. I said, ―There‘s three trees on that ridgeline‖, and while I‘m talking to the FAC--because the dumbest thing in the world, I flashes off of this here, and what it was, it had to be, was the NVA guy with his binoculars, the sun‘s behind me and sun‘s reflecting off those binoculars, it had to be. 21:02 And I told him, I said, ―Yeah, I see the flashing, let me go and see what I can 36 �find‖. He went out there and he had a couple of A6‘s on station, and he flew in, fired a couple of rockets, pulled out and ―Woof‖ there they went. We got, I don‘t know how many secondary explosions off of that, it was just pow, pow, pow, so we took care of that, and then I had to go to My Lac to send a chopper phone, we had the 2-501 coming and put them in the AO. So, I explained what was going on with the firebase and the AO and we went back and we put them back in and we had to put company‘s down through the stream bed, we put one company on the hill and I walked that company around the perimeter and when we got to where the troops were, I had the troops go right back down the same way to the helicopter pad, get back on the choppers and get out of there. 22:01 So, we got the new company in Colonel Livingston was the TAC battery, brought in staff and he said, ―Captain Spaulding, are you going to stay with us?‖ I said, ―Sure, I don‘t care‖, and he said, ―Fine‖, and I said, ―You‘ve got to notify brigade though and let them know I‘m here‖ and he said, ―Alright‖, so about ten minutes later he—I‘m standing there with the company commander explaining to him—I said, ―You need to get a squad on that ridge over there, that‘s where they came from‖, and I said, ―You need to get a squad on this ridge down here, that‘s where the other side came from‖. I said, ―As far as that little cut back out there, you need to put some claymores in there‖. So anyway, he and I were discussing all of this and he was getting these sergeants out to take care of it, and here come Colonel Livingston mad as a hornet. He said, ―Your chopper‘s on the way, Colonel Bradley wants you back at brigade‖. I got back to brigade and Colonel Bradley said, ―Good Job Fred ―, and I said, ―Well sir, Colonel Livingston needed me out there too‖, and he said, ―No, I need you here‖. 23:03 I never did understand what that was all about, if there was a little argument between them two or not, I don‘t know, or really 37 �care. May—yeah, that was May 3rd and 4th, May 5th and 6th, 805, Hill 805 [this was on the site of an abandoned firebase, Maureen, rather than Hill 805 near Firebase Ripcord], and we put Delta 1-506 on there and we had, gosh I forget how many casualties we had , but I know we had seventeen left at the end of the night, or the end of the battle, three days, three day battle. Then June it was Hill 902 and we had a company in there. We had 3rd platoon of Charlie Company 2-506 on that hill, and—no, we had a company on there minus one platoon. Interviewer: A Company or C Company? Charlie Company, Charlie Company 2-506 on the hill and one platoon, and I don‘t know what platoon it was. 24:07 Burkey‘s, Paul Burkey‘s platoon, sergeant, he was platoon sergeant and Jim Campbell, they were up on the rim and Doc Cafferty was the medic, but we had—anyway, we had several different people and we put them in around the thing, gave them orders, gave the company commander his orders and all and he pretty much ignored it, and he paid for it, he got killed. But Mike Mueller was down on the end and I told him, ―You‘re the fight, you‘re the end, don‘t let them past you‖, and he said, ―Okay‖. Now, Mike was from Alaska, a hell of a shot and he stuttered when he got excited, but that night the shit hit the fan. 25:04 I mean, it was pretty bad. I‘m not in the chopper— infrared—I‘m calling in airstrikes all over the place. I‘m calling In artillery all over the place, trying to keep them off of them, but they‘re already on them. But anyway, the next morning, hit there, we brought in more troops the next morning, and went up on the hill and went running up and down the line, where‘s everybody at? Who‘s what and that and here‘s Mike Mueller sitting down on the end and he‘s got holes in him all over the place. I don‘t know how many bodies he‘s got out around him, but there was a bunch, eleven, 38 �twelve, fifteen, I don‘t know, there was a bunch of them. He‘s had, maybe, only four or five rounds left and like I say he was hit up the legs, back, he was hit everywhere. He was—I came running up there and he said, ―Sir, sir, I, I didn‘t let them through‖. 26:04 I thought, ―Jesus Christ where do we find guys like this?‖ So I said, ―Okay Mike, you did a great job and we‘re getting you out of here‖, but, they had guys all over the place, grabbing them and running, but we got him out and Mike today, is living in Alaska, he‘s been in a wheelchair for about the last fifteen years, but a hell of a guy. Doc Cafferty, a wonderful guy, it was just so much for him—he was dragging wounded up to the CP, the Captain got blown in half with a RPG right next to him and scattered him with everything. But Cafferty was dragging the wounded up to the CP as best he could and then with a pistol standing there keeping the NVA off of them and he got a Silver Star. 27:00 Mike Mueller got a Silver Star, and we had one guy—gosh, years go by and you forget names—you can still see their faces, but anyway, he was Smoker, Bob Smoker, and he is now a minister and has been for many years. It was such a traumatic thing to him, that when he got out he went into the ministry as a way to save himself, I guess. A wonderful man, Doc Cafferty went to work for the post office and became somewhat of an alcoholic, but he‘s dried out now, but a hell of a man, hell of a man. That was June, and then July started and 1 to 23 was considered the siege. 28:00 Now, in between these major encounters, every day, or every other day, we people in contact regardless of where we were at out there. At one time, we not only had the 3rd, 3rd Battalion of the 187th , 2nd Battalion of the 506, 1-506, we had opcon to us 1-501, 2-501, 1-502, 2-502, there‘s only nine battalions in a division and we had seven. 39 �Interviewer: Now, those are not all operating immediately, on or right next to Ripcord? Parts of several different battalions are there along with the 506, but not all at the same time. We got 'em in the area; they‘re all in the 3rd Brigade. They‘re all there in support—what we‘re trying to do is take care of Ripcord. We had to protect Ripcord. Interviewer: There were a string of firebases around that that would provide support fire. 29:02 Yes, Granite, Gladiator, O'Reilly, Kathryn, those were the names, and we woke up Shepherd up north. This is when we were explaining to division that, ―Hey, we got more than a damn division out there‖ and of course, it reminded me so much of MacArthur and China, ―Oh, there are no more‖, and that‘s what we‘re getting from division, ―Oh, there‘s only one division out there, one NVA [formation?]‖... can‘t be, so what we found out later, years later, we had four divisions out there against us: 324-B, whose main function in life was to destroy Ripcord and everybody on it, that was their main function. The 805, I believe it was, the 325 and then we had a sixth independent regiment with nine battalions and I had never heard of nine battalions in a regiment, but they were all like ranger battalions, sapper battalions and stuff like that. 30:00 Interviewer: What kind of strength levels did you have in your own battalions at this point? You‘re supposed to have a hundred and seventy six men in a rifle company, four rifle companies per battalion. Out of the hundred and seventy six men, if you had sixty men in your rifle company, you were big. The majority of them had between thirty to forty men. 40 �Interviewer: Now at Ripcord some of them were getting down to fifteen or something like that. Fifteen, sixteen and seventeen, is what we wound up with, if you had fifteen men---but, General Berry could not understand why we can‘t take Alpha and Bravo Company and take that hill. I‘m thinking, ―Well, Alpha and Bravo Company combined won‘t even make one platoon‖. In my estimation the worst officer we could ever had in charge of that operation was General Berry. 31:02 To me he was a complete idiot, but-Interviewer: In the Keith Nolan book about Ripcord, he presents him as somebody who eventually comes to recognize that he doesn’t have the strength to do what he wants to do. He was initially giving the orders that they had to keep going and moving the units like little marks on a map and then getting down and seeing it an then changing his mind. How close is that to how you see things? Well, what happened was, General Berry was there for the briefing, General Berry had all the officers from the brigade, Colonel Harrison, they go through the briefing, this and this, this is this, and that‘s it, and General Berry, he was very theatrical. He stood up, ―Oh, that is key terrain, we must have key terrain‖. 32:02 I‘m thinking, ―Jesus Christ, somebody must be filming this or otherwise he wouldn‘t be doing this. Colonel Lucas, Lieutenant Colonel Lucas, jumps up like a little jack in the box, ―Oh sir, Currahee, my men can take that hill sir‖, and I‘m thinking, ―Jesus, these guys can‘t see‖, and I said, ―Excuse me, these are the numbers I got from your S1, right here, you don‘t have enough men to take that hill, sir‖. Anyway, they decided the next morning they were going to take the hill. 41 �Interviewer: Now, where does Colonel Harrison come into the picture? You haven’t introduced him yet in your account. Colonel Harrison came in on 20 June, okay, Colonel Bradley went home 20 June, and Colonel Harrison took over on 20 June. We had a change of command ceremony. Colonel Bradley walked off this way to get on a helicopter to go that way to division headquarters, clear and go home. 33:01 Colonel Harrison got up, went this way, got on his helicopter that way after the A Shau valley. It was just, ―Hello‖, boom, bang, boom, and that was it. His first day on the job, he didn‘t come in that evening until late, because he was out there, not only assessing the situation, but while we were doing the change of command ceremony, the flag went around faster than you could ever see, we had people in contact. We had three or four elements in contact. Every day we had two, three, four, elements in contact. Nobody else in Vietnam was having any contact, we were having it all up here, but what it was, once you started assessing it, and analyzing it, we figured it out years later what the thing was, we were sitting right on the main route for their planned attack to take Saigon, and years later, 1975, that‘s exactly the way they came. 34:07 Right through there and right down the highway, and we were sitting on their route of advance and they had to move us, and we weren‘t about to be moved. The 22nd of July, after the briefing, and were asked if there were any questions, we requested five more battalions and we could go in there and really kick some butt. General Berry said, ―No, you‘re not getting your five battalions‖, and Col. Harrison said, ―Well, that‘s it‖, and then he said, ―We‘ll pull them out. I‘m not going to sacrifice anymore of my men‖, so he said, ―That‘s it Fred, take them out‖, and I said, ―Yes sir‖, and I‘m heading out the door to put it all into play. 35:01 General Berry stops me and says, ―You mean to tell 42 �me that you‘re going to put together an operations plan‖, and he talked very exaggerated, ―That‘s going to withdraw, and under fire?‖ There were a lot of times when everything I do is not just to bust a gut and laugh right in his face. I despised the guy because he was so pompous and arrogant. Everything, the exact opposite of me, an officer is supposed to be. But anyway, ―You mean to tell me you‘re going to put together an operations plan and withdraw, under fire, from four different locations, while under fire?‖ I said, ―Yes sir‖, and he said, ―Impossible, it can‘t be done‖, and I said, ―Yes sir‖, and turned to leave. Colonel Harrison and it‘s the first time he ever did, he said, ―Fred‖, he never called me that before, and I turned around and said, ―Yes sir‖. 36:06 He said, ―Can you do it?‖ I said, ―Yes sir, we can do it, we can do it‖, because see, you always have to be planning ahead, what if, what if? So, we already had a plan to take those five battalions, choppers loaded, in, come out empty. With all the fire support, when I go empty, come out loaded, same damn thing and I still got all my fire support going. So, I cranked up all the aviators, had them down there and we had a briefing that night, this is what we‘re going to do and what guys, and blah, blah, blah. So, zero six hundred hours the next morning, I‘m in my chopper and we‘re heading west. The South China Sea‘s behind us, the sun‘s coming up and looking out there it‘s all black. The sun‘s coming up behind you and the top of the mountains are lighting up and turning purple and it‘s coming down. 37:05 It really was pretty, Vietnam could be a beautiful place if it wasn‘t shooting everybody. About this time, and I‘m about half asleep, I hadn‘t had any sleep in two, three, four days and hardly anything to eat. I had four radios down here and two on the dash and the radios start popping with our call numbers. I look south and just as far as you could see was helicopters On the outside were the little Loaches and then row after row of Cobras, 43 �gunships and then inside that was a row of ARA Cobras and inside that was two or three rows of Hughes. Now, ordinarily, this is not that great a deal, but with the sun coming up, the sun reflected off of those Plexiglases and it looked like ten thousand flash bulbs going off. 38:10 And by this time all the radios are going, everybody‘s checking in and I said, ―Rodger that, Rodger that‖, and I‘m looking down there and I‘m thinking, ―What an Armada, what an awesome spectacle, and I‘m a part of it‖. I t made you so damn proud to be a soldier, and that‘s when I gave them the order. I said, ―Roger, vector out‖, and everybody turned out to every which way they were supposed to be going. We went out there and started kicking butt. We had an entire anti-aircraft battalion of 51 caliber machine guns, which were purposely designed to blow an aircraft out of the sky, which they did pretty good. 39:00 We had about every ridge and every hilltop. We can‘t get in until we sight our c‘s—so, we bring in our ARA‘s, the pink team, Cobras, gunships, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. When these guys are all through and getting ready to head back and get some fuel, I got me twenty some jets sitting up there and a KC135 refueling. While these guys are going back were bringing in the five hundred pounders and the napalm, and we kicked some butt that day. We got Charlie Company out the day before; we got Delta Company out that morning, first thing before they knew what was going on. By this time, the enemy, they‘re not dumb, they know with all this activity that something is going on, and they‘re thinking, ―Oh my God, they‘re pulling them out, so we‘ve got to annihilate them before they pull them out‖. Well, we went in to get Alpha Company and the guy, the pilot, he set in the ground and he picked up and left without them. 40:08 He called me and he sounded like he was almost in tears, and he said, ―We can‘t get out, the company out‖, and said, ―What‘s the problem‖, and he said, ―They‘re all hit and 44 �nobody can get up to get on the chopper‖. And evidently when he set that down he just saw them laying everywhere. So, he pulls out, and I go back and I get ahold of Gabe Rollison, Captain Rollison , Delta 2-506 and one of the finest officers this country‘s ever produced. He –I told him, I said, ―We‘ve gotta find a way to get Alpha Company out. I know I just pulled you guys out, but you‘re all I got‖. Interviewer: Now, was Alpha Company on Ripcord or one of the other hills? Alpha Company‘s over here in the valley, Bravo‘s on the hill. Interviewer: Right So, he gets them out and most of these guys, you know, got bandages all over them, wounded and shit. 41:03 He said, ―Now, Alpha Company‘s trapped, we gotta go back in and get them out, who wants to go with me?‖ He said, ―Captain Spaulding and I are going to get them out, who wants to go with me?‖ Hell, they all started stepping up, now Rollison had to tell five or six, ―No, you‘re not going, you‘re already hit too bad. You guys these are your brothers out there‖, so we booked up about fifty guys, fifty or sixty guys and Freddy Gilbert, Staff Sergeant Gilbert was the point man and he was going home in two or three weeks and his wife was having a baby, and he was a hell of a guy. But anyway, he was going to be the point man, and when they started to put them in they couldn‘t get him in on account of .51 rounds, so they pulled back out and called me and I went running back in again and we blew them all out of there, them back in and Gilbert, Freddy Gilbert, you might want to talk to him. 42:04 He said when he went back in there were just pieces of machine guns and bodies everywhere. We just blew the hell out of them, so he takes off. Now, the enemy is not dumb, when we got troops going this way, they‘re trying to get in between them and block them from getting to Alpha 45 �Company and then annihilate both of them, so I‘m dropping grenades and trying to keep them separated, I‘m bringing ARA through, just having a heck of a time. We link them up, we‘re bringing the choppers in, picking Alpha Company up, throwing them on the choppers and getting them out of there, and then we get Delta Company out of there. We got that taken care of, ―bang‖, Ripcord, got that taken care of. Now, I always thought we got Ripcord last, but we might have got Ripcord first and then come back over and got these guys, I‘ve always gotten that backwards. Interviewer: That can be looked up in after action reports. I‘m not really positive which one we got out first, but anyway, I went over to get to firebase and they were already in the water, back at the firebase and we had to blow them out of there. 43:10 We started bringing in choppers to get B Company out and we got them all out and got them back and everybody was pretty happy. But them we had arc lights coming in that night and that‘s one of the reasons we had to get them all out of there. Now, these aircraft had already taken off from Guam, Okinawa, Saipan, the Philippines, wherever. They were already en route and we had to clear the area. At thirty eight thousand feet, I‘ve been told, that a one aircraft dropping two hundred and fifty pounders or whatever, one mile wide and three miles long and we had somewhere in the neighborhood of fourteen or fifteen aircraft. Interviewer: Were these B-52’s? 44:00 B-52‘s, I mean they just—it was a hell of a spectacle out there. We could get the shock wave back here, but we wrapped that one and up everything quieted down and then we went into Barnet Area in August and then I was assigned down to 3rd Battalion 187 as the assistant S3, Harrison wanted me to go down there and help them out and I came home in 46 �January, February of 1972 and I was in Special Forces, 1975 I went to the infantry officer advance course. I got riffed in 1973, I think it was. 45:00 Interviewer: Just to review, you have—you’re back to the states in 71, or 72? February of 1971 Interviewer: Then you’re back there— Back to Special Forces, and I was there for about 5 months, 6 months, 7 months, somewhere along in there, and got my orders for infantry officer advance course, which you had to have that for a career thing. Also, about that time, I got order for Korea again. There was a buildup on the DMZ and they were requesting company grade officers to Korea, and they were reactivating the 32nd Infantry or something like that out of the 2nd Infantry Division. 46:01 And my speaking Korean, company grade, combat time, so ―bingo‖. Interviewer: You’d mentioned earlier, you referred to being riffed, does that mean you’re reduced in rank? Yeah, but that‘s after, that‘s after I degraded. Interviewer: Were you a Major at this time? No, still Captain, still Captain. After the war you had some of the longest timing grade Captains in the world, so anyway-Interviewer: You go to Korea. Well, I get to the infantry officers advanced course, get my orders to Korea, and I asked General Flanagan, ―Which way should I go?‖ He said, ―You always just go to the sound of the guns. The school‘s not going to change; it will always be there, go over and get more combat time‖. So, I go over and I had Charlie Company 1st of the 32nd Infantry. 47 �47:02 And we had to literally take the boards off the Quonset huts, and then we had to get the place cleaned up, and then we had three or four buses pull up and this was my company, they got them out of the stockade, really nice. This was back when they had all these race riots and everything going on and about ninety percent of my company was black. That was a really big mess, but anyway, the M.P., when they got them off the bus, had to sign for them and they gave me this big pick ax handle and said, ―Here, you might need this‖. I thought, ―God, I hope not‖, well anyway, got them all squared away, got them bedded down, and the best way to get through to troops is to show them that you can do the same thing they can, if not better. That you‘re not going to sit behind the desk and lead from there. 48:04 So, the very next morning I had them out for PT, I gave them PT, I gave them all the calisthenics, I‘m up on the stand---and they started knowing that I knew what I was supposed to be doing here, giving various commands and all this kind of stuff. Then I took them on a run and I ran them until they dropped, and they all looked like a bunch of—it was terrible, but anyway, I got them going and for the first three or four weeks it took to get them half way in shape. Then I had T shirts made, you know, and I ordered all the army PT shorts. Back in those days it was khaki with little strip on it. I had all these shirts come out and I had on them a black cougar, and I know that C Company was supposed to be Charlie, but I called ours Cougar Company. I put a big billboard right across our street entrance and it said, ―Welcome to Cougar Country‖. 49:07 And it had a great big panther-like cougar, well it was a panther, but we told them it was a cougar. Interviewer: You couldn’t call them black panthers for obvious reasons. 48 �Well anyway, I had pocket patches made, like a jungle expert patch, round, and I‘d already been to battalion, brigade, and division and got approval, and I wrote up something like an EIB test and if they passed this test then they get this cougar patch. One of them was a PT test, they had to max it and then I went through, got permission, and explained to the commanding general and the brigade commander, that I was going to be running my troops by their quarters in the morning, shouting and carrying on and blah, blah, blah, and I would appreciate it greatly if they would come storming out and say, ―What the hell‘s going on?‖ 50:00 They went along with it and that was no problem, so I gave them all their T shirts and they looked pretty sharp with, ―Cougar Company, 3rd platoon, 2nd platoon‖, etc., and after we did our calisthenics we went for a little run around there and I had them going good and sounding good. I got them around that corner and I said, ―Alright you guys, the commanding general's quarters up ahead, I want you to sound like you got something‖. We got up there, ‗bang‖, I mean they were screaming. The commanding General kicked that screen door and said, ―What the hell‘s going on? Who in the hell are you?‖ I said, ―Who are you?‖ All these kids that ordinarily, probably, would have gotten dishonorable discharges and stuff—out of, gosh I had two hundred and thirty or forty of them, I don‘t know, I only couldn‘t get through to three. 51:01 I had to transfer them out and they went back in the stockade. The rest of them shaped up and I got them all promoted to PFC‘s, bang, right off the bat, had the brigade commander, battalion commander, division commander, come down and pin them. I had some of them step forward and made corporals out of them , I had some that had been in it long enough and gave them back their sergeant stripes and after that we could do no wrong, we could do no wrong, it was just fantastic. Then I got my KATUSA 49 �contingent in with them. Katusa is Korean Army Training United States Army and all and all total, I think we had, roughly, about two hundred and seventy or two hundred and eighty men in the company. Of course we had our own 50 caliber machine guns, mortars, we had all that. 52:00 Our section of the DMZ was to hold, to allow the other side to come through and back. We hold and then we fall back, something like that, but we had enough fire power that we could hold them. About that time is when I got my riff notice and I went to my battalion—well battalion called me and I went up there and I said, ―Yeah, what?‖ and he said, ―Well, we need to go over this, something‘s come up and we need to talk about it‖, and I said, ―Sure‖, and that‘s when he dropped this on me and I said, ―Is this some kind of a joke?‖ He said, ―No Fred, I wish it was‖, and we went through it again, and I said, ―I don‘t quite understand. Every time there‘s been the shit hitting the fan they call me, every time they need to plug the gap they call my company. Every time they want something done they call me and now I‘m not good enough to serve the army anymore?‖ 53:10 I said, ―You asked me to be an officer, I didn‘t ask to be an officer‖, and we went up to the brigade commander and up to the division commander and the division commander got on the horn and twixed back to the Pentagon, ―Have you completely lost your mind? This can‘t be, you got a mistake somewhere‖. Colonel Bradley was getting ready to retire, colonel Ellison, my battalion commander had been in and out of the Pentagon a long time and knew everybody back there. Bradley was going home, Ellison, out of his own pocket, went back to the Pentagon to find out what the hell this is and get it stopped. 54:00 he came back about two and a half or three weeks later and we sat down with the commanding General, him and the chief of staff and he said, ―Fred, I don‘t know, I couldn‘t get it stopped. I don‘t 50 �know what the hell the deal is‖, and we‘re sitting there talking back and forth and he said, ―Just nothing made sense‖, and I said, ―I don‘t know what to do‖, and he said, ―Do you know an officer by the name of Berry?‖ I said, ―Oh‖, and I came right out at that time and I said, ―Aw, shit‖, and I said, ―Yeah, that explains it all‖, and I said, ―What‘s he doing?‖ He said, ―He just went up to West Point, he‘s been the deputy chief of staff at the Pentagon Officer Branch‖, and I said, ―That explains it‖, and I told him what happened with me and Berry and all that. 55:00 One thing about Berry was, back when he was in Vietnam, when I‘m getting ready to train these Lieutenants on how to be a briefer in a brigade, Berry was sitting there and the first one out and blah, blah, blah, and Berry just chewed him alive. The next guy went out and he made a mistake and Berry ate him up, and the third guy went out and blah, blah, blah, he said, ―Get out, get out‖, and he turned to Harrison—Berry was onto Harrison, just about every day he chewed him out for anything. Berry wanted to relieve Harrison so he could put his fair haired boy, Lucas, in. Lucas was West Point, Harrison wasn‘t and anyway, the kid came out, Berry said, ―Harrison, don‘t you have anybody that can brief?‖ I took that pointer and went right back out there, and all this is Plexiglas and this is metal, like a little whipping rod. 56:00 Berry was facing them, not me and everybody could see what I was doing and ―wham‖, I hit that thing and it was just like a shot going off. Berry jumped three feet, he turned around and I said, ―Good evening sir, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,‖, I closed the pointer and said, ―That concludes the briefing do you have any questions?‖ Berry sat there and said, ―Now, that by God was a brief, that‘s the way they do it at the Point‖, and he said, ―I can spot an academy man a mile away‖. He said, ‗What class were you, Captain?‖ I said, ―The class of ―67‖ sir‖, and he said, ―I knew it‖, and two or three days 51 �later I get off the helicopter and I‘d been picking up wounded and shit and I got bloody all over the place, and I‘m walking through and he‘s over there getting on Harrison and I said, ―Good afternoon sir‖, and he turned around, didn‘t salute back, didn‘t return the salute, Harrison did, and Berry just stared at me, just all the way, a hateful stare, so anyway, I just kept going. 57:02 But, years later, I did a little research with all the officers from Ripcord and everybody that didn‘t get out on their own, that was not West Point, was Riffed. Ben Peters got Riffed, off the hill, I got Riffed, five or six others got Riffed---Berry. Berry stood in the 3rd Brigade TOC when we had all the officers there for this briefing, briefing, or I don‘t know what it was called, and made a statement that the only really true officer was those that stood on the Plain, meaning West Point , all the others are temporary hire, and I‘m looking around and I‘m thinking, ― I can see about five, we had about five West Point while everybody else‖—we had about sixty officers in there, and I‘m thinking, ―Everybody else is ROTC, OCS, direct commission, and I only see about five or six West Points‖. 58:03 To me that‘s how much of a stupid idiot he was, but anyway, I got Riffed in 1973, Ellison tried to stop it and it couldn‘t happen, so I still, the way the orders run, now, I‘ve got something like two and a half months before I can go home. That‘s the way they cut it and why they did it that way, I don‘t know, but anyway, I got a call about two days after that to go back to the division. So, I went up to the division and in the meantime they‘re scrambling around trying to find a Captain to take over this company. So, I went up to the division and at this time is when they had all of this fire team leader, squad leader type training that they wanted to put out to everybody, small unit leadership training. 59:04 They had sent, I think it‘s 2765, data card and they run them through the machines and ―golly gee‖, mine pops out, and they 52 �wanted to know the experience I had and I said, ―Yes, I was with 82nd Airborne Division and we started the raider detachment and we built blah, blah, blah,‖, and they said, ―Well, we want the same thing here, can you do it?‖ I‘m looking at the chief of staff and I‘m thinking, ―He outranks you, there‘s not really a whole hell of a lot you can do, we‘re already Riffed, we‘re out of the army‖, and he said, ―Why don‘t you come to dinner tonight‖, so I went to dinner that night with the commanding General, my battalion commander, brigade commander was up there, and the division commander said that it‘s a very unique situation, a problem that we have. 00:08 ―Ordinarily I wouldn‘t even think about this‖, he said, ―but I need your help, Fred. You got the experience, you got this—now, I know that anybody else, anyone, would tell me to go to hell. We need to get this up and running and we need this, blah, blah, blah‖, and I said, ―Okay, I‘ll do it‖. I sat in and I wrote down I don‘t know, I guess it was two or three hundred hours of lesson plans, but hell, I could do most of it from memory from back then. I got a hold of the engineers, told them exactly what we needed, how blah, blah, blah, I said, ―You‘ll find it in FF 2150, or whatever it is in the Ranger manuals‖, and back and forth on the obstacles and stuff, and they had that thing up and running in about three weeks. 1:10 Then we got the first class in there, I‘m trying to remember what the date was, but anyway, gave them all, ―Here‘s your lesson plans‖, handpicked all the NCO‘s to be the instructors, handpicked the officers for TAC and stuff and turned it all over to CG and he wrote me a glowing letter, for all the good it did, and filed it, and that was it. I went home, I got Riffed—I had my choice of reverting back and they would give me master sergeant 8 and I said, ―No, I worked too hard for these‖, so I went home and went down to the National Guard. 2:05 At first I didn‘t want anything to do with the Army ever again. ―You 53 �screwed me, I did everything you ever asked me, I did it‖, and just brokenhearted really, but I went home and on the way home I was thinking about—so, when I got home I went down to the National Guard, gave them my papers and ―boom‖, as soon as their CO seen it they called me down when they met, staff met on Wednesday nights, and I went down there to see what the deal was and he offered me a full time job right on the spot. He said, ―I got a Ranger company up in Muncie that nobody knows what the hell to do with.‖ He said, ―Would you take them over?‖ 3:09 I said, ―What would it entail?‖ He said, ―On paper you‘d be the operations officer‖, and I said, ―That‘s no problem, I‘ve been doing that for years‖, and he said, ―And it‘s a full time job‖, and I thought, ―Well, I don‘t have to go out and look for a job‖, so I said, ―I‘ll take it‖. Well, also what that entails is with a full time position in the National Guard, or the Army Reserve, I‘m not going to lose any active federal time . Interviewer: We’ve been following your military career and now we’ve moved you all the way back to Indiana again, and you’ve been offered a position now, with the National Guard with a Ranger company. Company D-151 Ranger company was in Vietnam, but now it‘s pretty much disbanded and has fallen apart, and they asked me to go in as the operations officer , a full time position, and get it back up to strength, and all that. 4:06 So, we did, or I did, and had that and now comes due where I‘m due for a promotion to Major. Well, there was no Major slot in the National Guard for me to go to, so they worked a deal with the headquarters 123rd ARCON, Indianapolis, for me to transfer over to them in a Major slot, which I became headquarters commandant of the 123rd ARCON, and through that, they worked a deal there to make me the full time recruiting officer, which is full time duty 54 �again. A regular full time job organizing recruiting throughout the state, all the teams they had, going back again, which once again I wasn‘t losing any active duty time, which all this comes into play later, which I thought was very ironic. 5:03 But anyway, I‘m there and I‘m overdue for IAOC, Infantry Advanced Officer Course, which remember I mentioned that a few minutes before? Interviewer: Right But anyway, we worked it out and they cut orders, I went to Fort Benning, Georgia for IOAC and as it turned out it was the last nine months course of IOAC. We had guys that started after us and finished before us because they eliminated a lot of the curriculum and I‘m thinking, ―Well, what else is gonna—if I stay here long enough, nothing new, stay here long enough everybody gets dumped on‖, but anyway, I went through that and come out, honor grad, the guy who had, and this was in 1975, the guy we had as guest speaker was a Three Star general by the name of—gosh, I almost had it. 6:05 He was the Defense Intelligence Agency commanding officer, he was our guest speaker, and he was going to talk about the needs of the Army and the officers that we need for the Army of the future. So, we‘re all sitting there in Class A‘s, it‘s graduation, he went through all this stuff and everything and said, ―Fine, now we got the honor graduates, distinguished graduates‖, and all this. He said the names and called off the graduates and he said, Captain Fred Spaulding, so I get up to the stag and walk across there, and he turned and looked and looked again and said, ―Now this, ladies and gentlemen, this is exactly the officer, the type I‘m talking about‖, and I had on all my ―golly gee, nice to have been there‖ stuff on there, and I‘m walking across and he said, ―Where you going from here Captain Spaulding?‖ I said, ―I‘m going back to Indianapolis sir, Fort Harrison‖, and he 55 �said, ―Fort Harrison, that‘s finance‖, he said, ―You‘re a combat officer‖. 7:02 I said, ―No sir, I got Riffed three years, four years ago‖, I said, ―I‘m going back, I‘m in the reserves‖. He just set, kind of made a notation to his aide, I walked over that way going off the stage and the aide said, ―You‘ll have dinner with us and the General tonight at the officers club at nineteen hundred hours‖, blah, blah, blah, so I got in there and he asked me what the deal was during dinner and I told him, ―General Berry‖, and he said, ―Oh hell, I know Sid‖, and I thought, ―Uh‖, so anyway, back and forth and the gist of it was that he took my name and address and I gave him a copy of my orders so it wouldn‘t be that difficult to figure out and all that. Nothing, four, five, six months, I hear nothing and then I get a letter from the Department of The Army to go take a physical, so I‘m up there at Fort Harrison, so I go take a physical and I mail them back. 8:01 I don‘t hear nothin' for five, six, seven months and all of a sudden ―boom‖ I get orders, well by this time I‘m promoted to Major, the orders are for Captain, so I write them all out and send them back, and nothing for four, five six months. Now, we‘re looking at a couple years here already, so bang here comes another set of orders to Major, report to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. And I‘m going back to special forces, so I get back there and there‘s just no way in hell that I can keep up with eighteen, nineteen, twenty year kids anymore, I‘d been sitting behind a desk too long. I tried to stay in halfway decent shape, so anyway, the way it worked out was the special forces, at that time, was expanding and they were enlarging the National Guard and reserve special forces units and they needed guys to go out there that A. Spoke a foreign language, B. Special forces qualified, C. combat tested, or whatever. 9:15 Well, I had a couple A teams, special forces, and company commander, so they had me, Charlie Acock, and I don‘t know how many others. Charlie 56 �and I go to the 1st Battalion of the 12th Special Forces in Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base, Kansas, which is just south of Kansas City, and we had that battalion forever. I mean we really squared them away. Charlie was on the admin side and I was the operation training side. We had seven different locations in five states that we were responsible for. Interviewer: So, when were you doing this in terms of years? This was 1978, 79, 80, yeah, and then I sent my paperwork in and got my twenty. 10:06 I said time to get out, quoted Title X and blah, blah, blah, and about a month later I get this nasty gram back saying, ―We are well aware of what Title X says, we will tell you when you have your twenty, you do not tell us when you have your twenty‖, and I thought, ―My god has everybody gone nuts? This is ridiculous‖. ―This is 1980 and I went in in 1958, I got more than twenty, what‘s going on here?‖ But anyway, it gets better, so I get this thing, ―Your assignment is over with here, where do you want to go?‖ I said, ―Get me back as close to Indianapolis as possible, what have you got?‖ By this time I‘m already labeled into advisory capacity, so they fire me this thing and the other side of it is I‘m ready for Lieutenant Colonel, well, I‘ve got to get the advance course, I‘m sorry, I‘ve got to get the Commanding General Staff course. 11:07 I‘m sitting at Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base and fort Leavenworth is thirty miles away, so I‘m driving back and forth picking up the correspondence. The three year correspondence thing I did in about eight months. Very seldom, ever, did I pick up a book and look, I just took the test. But anyway, I got all that done and got eligible promotion to Lieutenant Colonel and then there were not that many slots open, but they did have one 05 slot open in Camp Atterbury, Indiana. The Colonel called me back to tell me and I said, ―I know 57 �exactly where that is, that will be fine‖, so I go home, which my wife was very happy about that. I was the senior advisor to the 70th Division, 3rd Brigade, I believe it was and boy, they were screwed up. 12:05 But anyway, sitting down there 1981, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, retired in June of 87 about February, I believe, or March. I‘m with the brigade commander and he was in a sense, defrauding the government. He would have orders cut, if it went through me, I wouldn‘t cut them, but he was going around behind me and I didn‘t even know what was happening. So finally this one little clerk came to tell me, ―his is what‘s going on‖, because he would be putting himself on active duty days and would not be in uniform, working in the center. 13:02 He would be in his office down town in civvies drawing full pay, and then he‘s go cut orders for three weeks annual training in Fort Jackson, South Carolina where we‘re rotating troops through. We‘d had an element there every week rotating and they overlapped. But anyway, he was only there for one week, because the other two weeks he be down at Myrtle Beach, and drawing pay. Well anyway, all this came out later and I was in his stuff about it, ―The guy did this, the guy did that‖, and he brought me up on charges for something, I forget what it was, insubordination or something, probably more, but then about this time, I get this nasty gram that I was defrauding the government because I have been more than twenty years in the army. Under Title ten, you‘re only authorized twenty years active service unless you‘re a 06 or above, which I was only a 05. 14:08 I thought, ―Boy, they got some real idiots running things now days‖, but anyway, I wrote back and I said, ―Fine, no problem‖, and I picked up the phone and tried to call them and I said, ―Whatever you want to do‖, but I kept the paperwork that I notified them and I kept the paperwork of their response and then I put this one in there. Now, I get a call from the 5th 58 �Army IG, and Colonel Travis, he put all kinds of weird stuff in there. Anyway, we had to go up to the Commanding General, 5th Army, at Fort Sheridan. I refused to ride in the same car with him; I drove my own car and didn‘t care what he took. 15:00 But anyway, we got up there and Beth and I next morning went in there and he went in first and there was the JAG officer, the chief of staff, the deputy commanding General and the commanding General and one or two others in there. But anyway, he went in and he laid all of it out, you know, and all that, and then they called me in, so I went in saluted and all that and he said, ―Have a seat‖, and I sat, commanding General, four stars, and he‘s sitting there and he says, ―Hmm‖, and Colonel Travis is sitting there looking like, ―Fine, we got you now, hm‖, and I‘m thinking, ―Boy this is—how do people like this get promoted?‖ I mean, they wonder why, sometimes, the reserve units are screwed up; well this is a very good example, right there. 16:01 But anyway, General Boylan looked up and he said, ―Well Fred, it looks like you got yourself in a wringer again, doesn‘t it?‖ I said, ―Yes sir, it looks that way‖, and he says, ―What the hell am I going to do with you?‖ I said, ―I don‘t know sir, you should probably just discharge me‖, and we sat there and he kind smiled and I‘m sitting there. When General Boylan was the brigade commander in the 82nd Airborne Division, I was his S3, old home week. He got his first star in approximately a year after that he got his second star, and then, within fourteen months, fifteen months, he had his other two, he was four stars just like that, bam, bam, bam, just like that and there he was—17:05 He leaned back in his chair and by this time Travis is looking around like, ―What the hell, what was that about?‖ General Boylan, he‘s talking to his staff, he had the IG, chief of staff and others, and he said, ―Gentlemen, remember the other day at lunch we were discussing, I was telling you about this young officer that 59 �I knew that was really something, a real go getter, blah, blah, blah‖, and he went on and he said, ―This is him, he‘s one of the finest officers I‘ve ever known‖. He turned around and he looked at Travis, and he said, ―Fred, don‘t worry about this discharge thing, just when do you want to get discharged?‖ This was in April and I said, ―Well sir, I came in on twenty five, June and I‘d like to go out in June‖, and he said, ―Consider it, thirty June‖, and he looked over at whoever and he said, ―See to it‖, and he said, ―Yes sir, I got it done‖. 18:04 he looked over at Travis and he said, ―Colonel Travis, your retirement date will be thirty-one July‖, and he said, ―But sir, I hadn‘t planned on it‖, and he said, ―Plan on it, you‘re out‖. I went home and got all my paperwork done, got all that squared away, went out to Fort Harrison and took the last two weeks as terminal leave and went out to Fort Harrison to make sure all my paperwork and everything was done. They do an audit of your of your records, your finance records, to make sure everything, your pay is up to date, which I found they owed me a bunch on vacation days and a couple other things, leave time and stuff, but it was kind of like poetic justice in some ways, but in other ways---19:00 There‘s many different things in the military, a lot of things that I did that others got credit for, took credit for, but I always figured that as long as you be true to yourself, and true to the men that you‘re responsible for, things will work out. It might not always be in your favor, but eventually it will come around, and now, the way it sits, a year and a half ago staff sergeant Gilbert put in an eye witness statement, staff sergeant Esposito put in an eye witness statement, General Harrison wrote a two page letter of recommendation for the Distinguished Flying Cross that I got on twenty three, July to be upgraded to the Medal of Honor. We got paperwork back from the Pentagon and all this, stating yes they had it and were processing it under title whatever. 20:03 60 �Here about a month ago I got a letter from the Secretary of the Army stating that the recommendation had passed the Military Awards Board, had passed the Senior Military Review board and got to his desk and he, after looking at everything, he personally downgraded it to the Distinguished Service Cross. He never said, one time, as to why he downgraded it, I have no idea, I have no idea. But when you get to elements that high, second place isn‘t that bad, you know. But, since that time I‘ve been inducted into the Infantry OCS Hall of Fame, I‘ve been inducted into the distinguished member of the Regiment of the 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment, this coming April I‘m being inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame. I‘ve got the paper; I haven‘t gotten the whole thing yet. 21:00 There was something else—it really makes no difference to me about awards and shit. It‘s always a great thing to be recognized for your efforts, but the biggest thing to a professional soldier is not all the medals that you bet, because they‘re nice pretty colored ribbons, they‘re nice and all that, but they fade with age. One thing that never fades with age and the greatest award you can ever get is the accolade you receive from those that you served with. Interviewer: Now, what I’d like to do to kind of close this out and sort of turn the tables around on you a little. The American public often has a lot of misconceptions about American soldiers in Vietnam, who they were, how they acted, etc. 22:03 From your perspective, what’s your view of the men, especially the enlisted men, or the citizen soldier officer types who served under you in Vietnam? How would you characterize them as a group? Well, the majority of them that went over there were eighteen, nineteen, twenty year olds, and physically, they all looked like baby Tarzans out there. Mentally they were not 61 �prepared to see what they were going to see and that‘s why you have so much of this Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, that‘s why you have so much of the Alcoholism, because they don‘t see it anymore when they‘re drunk. Some guys can handle it, some guys don‘t and we all have to handle it in a different way. I keep explaining to them, ―You don‘t dwell on it, don‘t think about it, it‘s over with, you can‘t bring it back, you can‘t change anything, you have no say so, whatsoever, in what transpired. 23:07 The only thing you‘ve got any control over is what‘s going to happen tomorrow, and the best thing to do there is don‘t think about what happened yesterday, go this way and build your own life again‖. Interviewer: What do you thing the term is for how well or how poorly they performed when they were in the field? What now? Interviewer: What determines how well they performed when they were in the field, or how well generally do you think they did? Discipline, faith in your leaders, as a company commander, as a leader, you got to show them that you‘re not going to hide behind your Captain bars, you‘re not going to be hiding behind— you guys go out here and do this, do that, you got to go out there and show them how to do it. As long as they know you‘re there with them, taking the same crap that they‘re taking, the same danger and all, facing the same dangers, they‘ll follow you anywhere. 24:08 If they care about you, and that comes under the same thing, they know you care about them, then they will follow you anywhere. Like when you‘re going in on a combat assault and you tell them, ―Okay guys, when you get here, I‘ll be on the 62 �ground waiting for you. I will be on the first chopper in, be on the last one out, I leave no one behind‖, it‘s just that simple. Interviewer: All right, well it’s been a remarkable story and I just want to close by thanking you for telling it today. No problem what so ever. 24:44 63 �64 � 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 SpauldingF1268V Title A name given to the resource Spaulding, Fred (Interview transcript and video), 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Spaulding, Fred Description An account of the resource Fred Spaulding was born in Indianapolis, Indiana in April 1940. After high school, Spaulding waited a year before enlisting. Initially rejected by his first choice, the Marine Corps, Spaulding enlisted in the Army and went to Fort Knox, Kentucky for basic training then to Fort Benning, Georgia for advanced training. Once his initial enlistment ended, Spaulding left the Army but soon returned and received a deployment to Korea to serve first as part of the U.N. honor guard in Seoul then as part of the newly-formed 8th Army honor guard. While with the 8th Army honor guard, Spaulding spent in brief period in Vietnam as an advisor. Following Korea, Spaulding returned to the United States and joined the 82nd Airborne Division. While with the 82nd Airborne, Spaulding participated in the invasion and occupation of the Dominican Republic. Eventually, Spaulding attended OCS at Fort Benning, graduating in 1967, after which he joined the Special Forces and attended language school in Monterey, California before joining a Special Forces group based on Okinawa. While on Okinawa, Spaulding took part in several missions to Vietnam. Following Okinawa, in order for Spaulding to advance up the career ladder, he needed a company-level command, so he received an assignment to the 101st Airborne. Once he finished his time as a company commander, Spaulding first moved to S-3 at the battalion level then S-3 at the brigade level. While at the brigade level, Spaulding participated in the operations in and around Firebase Ripcord, including oversea the evacuation of the firebase. Once his tour in Vietnam ended, Spaulding returned to the United States expecting to continue up the career ladder. However, because he a disagreement with the officer in-charge of officer personnel at the Pentagon, who happened to be the commander of the 101st Airborne, Spaulding instead received discharge papers. After spending several years in the National Guard and Army Reserves, Spaulding eventually rejoined the Regular Army, finally retiring in June 1987. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Video recordings United States. Army Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-10-07 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/d28f19487423ec7cbf39f003904b5ea4.jpg d44d6d760dd69b3fbe55dc26ccf088e7 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 Valley State University Photographs Subject The topic of the resource Aerial photographs Universities and colleges Michigan Grand Rapids (Mich.) Allendale (Mich.) Building Facilities Dormitories Students Events 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s Description An account of the resource People, places, and events of Grand Valley State University from its founding in 1960 as a 4-year college in western Michigan. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource News & Information Services. University Communications Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/41">News &amp; Information Services. University Photographs. (GV012-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-03-03 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1960s-2000s 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. Local Subject Subject headings specific to a particular image collection 1970s Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/41">University photographs, GV012-01</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-01_UAPhotos_000800 Title A name given to the resource Speaker at community meeting Description An account of the resource Speaker at community meeting. Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Allendale (Mich.) Universities and colleges Students Events Student movements Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives black and white photo https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/21ff7b15bd88fbc3abae54e1fba3a285.jpg 40858619b95737efaa13c3fac645adaf 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 Valley State University Photographs Subject The topic of the resource Aerial photographs Universities and colleges Michigan Grand Rapids (Mich.) Allendale (Mich.) Building Facilities Dormitories Students Events 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s Description An account of the resource People, places, and events of Grand Valley State University from its founding in 1960 as a 4-year college in western Michigan. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource News & Information Services. University Communications Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/41">News &amp; Information Services. University Photographs. (GV012-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-03-03 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1960s-2000s 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. Local Subject Subject headings specific to a particular image collection 1970s Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/41">University photographs, GV012-01</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-01_UAPhotos_000801 Title A name given to the resource Speaker at community meeting Description An account of the resource Speaker at community meeting. Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Allendale (Mich.) Universities and colleges Students Events Student movements Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives black and white photo https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1d25983a2f8db1fab8e474b6781875fa.jpg a188b62bf6336f6aa9ab04914b43b322 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 Valley State University Photographs Subject The topic of the resource Aerial photographs Universities and colleges Michigan Grand Rapids (Mich.) Allendale (Mich.) Building Facilities Dormitories Students Events 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s Description An account of the resource People, places, and events of Grand Valley State University from its founding in 1960 as a 4-year college in western Michigan. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource News & Information Services. University Communications Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/41">News &amp; Information Services. University Photographs. (GV012-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-03-03 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1960s-2000s 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. Local Subject Subject headings specific to a particular image collection 1970s Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/41">University photographs, GV012-01</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-01_UAPhotos_001409 Title A name given to the resource Speakers at the F.E. Seidman Graduate College of Business opening ceremony Description An account of the resource Speakers at the F.E. Seidman Graduate College of Business opening ceremony, February 20, 1975. Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Grand Valley State College Michigan Allendale (Mich.) Universities & colleges-Michigan--Allendale Events Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975-02-20 Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives black and white photo