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117 results
Les Dykema was born in 1949 and few up in Hudsonville, Michigan. He tried college, but did not do well in his first year and in 1968 went ahead and enlisted in the Army and get some choice of assignment rather than wait to be drafted. In basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky, he found that he did not much like the Army, and got into some trouble, but made it through and went on to Fort Gordon, Georgia, for military police training. Despite a few more run-ins with authority, he completed the training and spent several months there working at a recreation area on the base before going to Vietnam in 1969. He was assigned to an MP unit, and soon got into trouble with his sergeant and captain, and was eventually reassigned to a combat engineer unit in the field. He worked with a demolition squad for some time, including the period of the Cambodian incursion in 1970, before being wounded and sent to Japan to recuperate. He agreed to extend his Vietnam tour in exchange for a month at home and
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- Text: ...rom Cape Town (00:36:24:00) Pahl’s date was an Irish lady poet; they were dancing and the band was trying American pop music when they finally hit a polka (00:36:39:00) Pahl had never done a polka in his life; when his date asked if he wanted to try it; Pahl did and he ended up fo...
LeeRoy Stelter was born April 7th, 1948 in Coloma, Michigan where he grew up and stayed until transferring his senior year from Coloma High School to St. Joseph High School. He graduated in 1966 and immediately went to work in a factory making record players. Stelter enlisted in the military after his cousin suggested it might help his career, taking an interest in the potential for a background in electronics as a microwave radio repairman. He started basic training in 1967 in Fort Knox, Kentucky and says he had no trouble adjusting to the army because his parents raised him to do as he was told. Two months later Stelter was flown to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey to begin his training as a microwave radio repairman learning basic electronics, how to operate gear, and solid state equipment. In 1968, Stelter recalled watching other groups perform drills preparing them for evacuations and riots in the wake of several political events. Stelter finished training at Fort Monmouth in May. He was deployed to Vietnam after a 30 day leave, assigned to the 327th Signal Company in Long Binh. After several months he was then reassigned to Vinh Long to replace a soldier who was lost in a mortar attack. Vinh Long was part of a radio relay set up by the signal company between Dong Tam and Can Tho, and Stelter recalled that it “was under attack every night…it was like the 4th of July, the whole place was incoming rounds, outgoing mortar fire” for three or four months, gradually deescalating. Stelter stayed at Vinh Long until June 1969 after which he took a 30 day leave before returning to Vietnam for a second time and being assigned to Can Tho. In all 8 months of his second term, he never heard any mortars or incoming rounds and was free to come and go from the village. In April 1970, Stelter returned home from Vietnam on a commercial flight and went back to work at the same factory he had as a teenager, making record players. In 1972, he married his wife who he said helped him return to some degree of normalcy. He attended Lake Michigan College before transferring to Western Michigan University and obtaining a degree in Industrial Engineering, after which he worked in manufacturing for the next 35 years.
Paul Ceton was born in 1946 in Muskegon, Michigan, and was drafted in 1966. Following a year of training at Fort Hood in Texas, Ceton deployed to Vietnam as part of the 198th Infantry Brigade of the Americal Division. Ceton fought in Vietnam for three months and while stationed on the Van Truong Peninsula, he received head wounds during a firefight and lost his right eye. After spending time in hospitals in Japan and Illinois, Ceton spent a brief period at Fort Sheridan before receiving his discharge in July 1968, after which he moved back to Michigan. In the 1990s, he made two return trips to Vietnam.
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- Text: ...e early sixties and one was ―Detroit City‖, ―I want to go home‖, you know and just as—they had a radio that played music, you know, a radio station on the bus and just as we‘re getting in, driving into Knox, that‘s what they played. 17:04 I said, ―This is some kind of a thin...
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- Text: ...terviewer: What did your family do for a living in those days? My father and mother were both teachers in, especially in the music area. Interviewer: Did you grow up in Gary or did you move somewhere else? Yes I did, I grew up in Gary and after I was drafted from that location. Interviewer:...
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- Text: ...ple children, at seventeen, and he was married and he walked on point for us with a transistor radio listening to Vietnamese music and alerts. 27:12 He was listening to alerts from South Vietnamese radio, he would listen to that too, and I didn’t really think that he was watching the road...
James Clark was born in September 1920 in a farmhouse in Wayne County, Michigan. Growing up, Clark had a difficult childhood, including a diagnosis of tuberculosis, moving to Arizona for treatment and back to Michigan, and his family losing their property during the Great Depression. After high school, Clark attended both Eastern Michigan University and Michigan State University before receiving his draft card in 1942. After the Army drafted Clark, he spent two years in different programs before deploying with the 106th Infantry division to Belgium. During the Battle of the Bulge, Clark was wounded and evacuated back from the line for nearly a month before returning to his unit, where he served for the rest of the war. Following the war, Clark attended a school the Army had set up in southern France.
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- Text: ...quot;B" Company sent out several reconnaissance patrols to check the river area. No one was shot and the Germans played music every night and partied while we froze on out post duty. We were with the 2nd Calvary (Ghost Patrol) 2nd '"the 808 Tank Destroyers. Across the Mosel R...
Jeffrey Wilcox was born in New York and moved to Gary, Indiana as a youth. After high school, he attended West Point, and graduated in 1968. He was then assigned to an Army unit that was stationed in Berlin. He stayed there for a year, and was then shipped off to Vietnam. He joined the 101st Airborne Division, and operated for some time in the Ripcord Fire Support base. There, he frequently encountered the enemy, getting a minor wound in the process. After Vietnam, he spent a year and a half in the Transport Corps in Washington DC. After his time in the service, he worked for various different veterans support and advocacy groups on the west coast.
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- Text: ...And they had in front of us, at that time we had stereos. They would have the stereo full blast with marching music and they would walk around throwing fire crackers. They said, “If you cannot think under these situations, then you will not be able to think in combat.” You know, I was w...
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- Text: Pat Sajak was a Vietnam announcer, I understand. And there was two stations. Same thing but they had music on there and news and I am sure they did sports broadcasting and that. And yeah, they had real good radio and jeez, I mean you could put a hat over the whole country, so to speak.
