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in Vietnam. His name is Tom Zangrelli and he spent time in country 67-68 as a member of the United States Marine Corps. He served in areas such as Da Nang, he was infantry, 2nd battalion, 5th Marines, hotel company. He served up near the DMZ in one of the cities that's almost right on the DMZ, the city of Hue during the, I'll call it infamous Tet Offensive. Now one of the other students I was talking to said that he saw that movie Full Metal Jacket. Was that your outfit?

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Yes. Okay, so if you've seen the movie Full Metal Jacket, Mr. Zangrelli was in that outfit. So that'll make it even come more alive for you because of the fact that you have that background to draw upon. Alright Mr. Zangrelli, your opinions then and now. My name is Tom Zangrelli and as you'll see in a minute I'm not an accomplished public speaker. I'm a bartender and liquor store owner. Bartenders are public speakers. You've talked to a lot of them. I have. But not a lot of history. Anyway, I grew up in the same neighborhood that you people did.

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I grew up in Hewlett and Van Buren, Oak Park. And I didn't go to this school. I went to St. Ignatius High School in Chicago. But I went to Ascension Grade School in Oak Park. Some of you may have also gone there too. Grew up in a normal, you know, family. Had moved from the city. Almost everybody at that time had moved from Chicago. Mostly Irish, Italian people in that area at that time. And we all were either basically from working class families or families that have just been able to get out of working class

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within the last few years. Mostly after World War II. Most of our fathers were in World War II. After I graduated from high school, I tried to go to college for a short period of time, but I wasn't much of a student at that time. I really didn't have my mind into going to college. So I got a job at International Harvester building truck motors out in the Northwest Park on First Avenue, in Manhattan, North Avenue. And I got drafted about six months later when I was 19 years old. I had just turned 19 and I got drafted.

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But I wasn't ready to go on such a short notice. So I went to the recruiter in the post office in Berwyn. And the Marine recruiter told me if I signed up with him I wouldn't have to go for 120 days. So I did it. And I actually got drafted because if you've got to go to war, you're better off going with the best. And you really do get a lot better training. It's a lot tougher. You're a lot more conscious of what the war is about, I think, than the Army.

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Don't get me wrong, the Army's good. Those guys are just as good as the Marines. But I think we had better training. I think it helped a lot while I was there. Well anyway, so I was just a normal kid, just like you guys. I wound up 19 years old in boot camp in San Diego, California. And I stayed there for nine weeks at that time. And then I had four weeks of advanced training and three more weeks of a little more specialized training.

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And then you got to go home for 15 days on leave. And then you reported back to California. And three weeks later you were – most people went on an airplane. But at the time I went, it was in December of 1966, when they were really building up the number of people in Vietnam and they didn't have enough airplanes. And they took an old boat from World War II out of North Falls and recommissioned it.

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And it was a big, huge troop transport ship. Nothing on it except big rooms with hammocks from the floor to the ceiling and thousands of guys on there. And that's how we got over there. That was probably one of the worst parts of the whole thing, was going over there in that ship. It took 26 days and there was absolutely nothing to do on there.

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So actually we were kind of happy to get there, which was very strange, but we were happy to get there. And when I got there, they assigned me to an infantry unit that was about 25 miles southwest of Da Nang. Now if you – Vietnam was divided into, I think it was four areas of responsibility for our military. They called it Corps. It's 1, 2, 3, 4. And then I Corps, they called it number 1, which was way up at the top.

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If there was a map here, it's actually sort of – the country is kind of shaped like this. And this I Corps was up there, 2 Corps, 3 Corps, 4 Corps. Saigon, that's what was right down here. And up there, I Corps, where we were, the main seaport of the Vietnam was right here. It was Da Nang, and it's right here. And the Demilitarized Zone, which I know you've all heard about,

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was a little strip of land up there where nobody was supposed to go. Either side was – North Vietnam, the border of North Vietnam was right here, and North Vietnam wasn't supposed to go in there. We weren't supposed to go in there, but everybody went in there anyway. And the city of Hue was right about here. And this first place I went to, Nha Hoa, spelled like this, A-N-H-O-A.

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That was right here about 25 miles southwest of Da Nang, and Laos, Laos, Laos, I guess you can also say it was over here. [Unintelligible] [Unintelligible] I wasn't there. I was in the hospital with those guys. I got sick after – I got anemic dysentery in Hue.

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That's the ruts, people, and it's real bad, real bad. I got out of the hospital, I was 6 feet 2, 140 pounds. [Unintelligible] But I was in there with all those guys from KSOM coming in from the seas they were under.

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I was just really happy I wasn't there. Well, anyway, that's the first place I went was over there. And at the time I got there, it was New Year's Eve in 1966, so I spent one day in 1966 there. And at that time, there had been no Americans around that area ever.

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We were the first ones there. And it was a part of the country where the North Vietnamese infiltration across the Ho Chi Minh Trail that you hear about. There was a whole series of them that come through from North Vietnam, through Laos, into a country like this, and then they'd make their infiltrations across Da Nang, wherever they wanted to go.

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And we were out there to try to stop one of the big infiltration units. And it was a very strange place to be. I didn't know where Vietnam was when I went there. When I was in school, the man with the globe said French and took China on his right.

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He was old and jaded. It changed in 1954. I was in school, I graduated in '64. So the whole time I was in school.

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Everybody called it French and China. And we really didn't know much about it. We certainly didn't know anything about the history of the country or the people or nothing. We didn't know anything.

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All we knew was that the communists were there, and where the communists are, bad things happen. And that's basically what we knew when we got there. When you first got there, let me ask you, what was your first, biggest culture shock? Culture shock, you know, when you go in.

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Well, we got off the boat in Da Nang Harbor, little kids, five and six years old, were standing on the beach smoking cigarettes. That was a shock. They were really little kids.

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I mean, they were like five, six-year-old kids, and they were all smoking cigarettes. That's all they wanted was cigarettes. And we got off the ship. They wanted candy bars.

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In Vietnam, they wanted cigarettes. They wanted cigarettes. Well, they'd come all the way. And so we got out there, and there wasn't much there.

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But we got there, the Marines had just got there maybe about three or four months before. We had built some fighting positions, some bunkers, and barbed wire, and laid minefields around the base, and laid down an air-- Navy Seabees had laid down an airstrip for--

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There was a Marine Air Wing there, wasn't there? No. Oh, not yet? In Da Nang.

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Oh, in Da Nang there was, sure. I'm talking about this little place out here. Oh, yeah. Da Nang was a big, huge base.

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But you're in country now. Right. Right, okay. And they probably looked at Jews if it comes to war, frankly.

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Well, you know, it was worse than that. I was just going to say this. The first time we went out, at that time of the war, we were still trying to win hearts and minds was the basic--

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One of the theories they had behind it that if we were nice to the South Vietnamese people, they'd say that our way of life was better than what the communists had in mind for them, and that they would fight the communists with us. But the communists had other ways of dealing with things.

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They had their propaganda just like we had ours. And, well, we went into this village, what they call this thing a med cap, medical-- I don't know what caps they're called, but they call it med cap. And you'd take a bunch of doctors and a bunch of Navy corpsmen,

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and they'd even bring guys dressed up in clown suits with little toys and stuff, and they'd go into this village, and we'd surround the village to make sure no communists could get in there. And we'd surround it, and the doctors would go in, and they'd give kids cholera shots.

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They did things that--we all gave them--we're kids here, but they never got there. They still have diseases and plagues over there that were wiped out hundreds of years ago here through inoculations, but these kids never had any. So we figured, well, we'll go do this for them, and then they'll see we're not bad guys.

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So the first one we went to, when we pulled up on the place, the whole village started running. They took--I mean, they were running like crazy. And we had interpreters there with us. We had to be one of these guys that could speak to them.

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And they'd say, "Stop. We're not here to hurt you. We're not attacking this village. We're here to help you, blah, blah, blah." And finally they caught a few of them running away, and they said to them, "Why are you running like this?"

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They said that the Viet Cong had been there, and they told them that in order to join the United States Marine Corps, you have to kill your mother and father first. That's what they told us. >> So what was the difference between the Marine Corps and the natives?

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The locals, they believe it. >> Well, I mean, these people had no education whatsoever. They had no education whatsoever. They had seen what happened.

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I mean, they had a basis for feeling this way after what the Japanese and the French and the Chinese and other people had done to them. >> For centuries back. >> Centuries and centuries.

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People have been coming in there trying to take over their country, and none of them have ever had any success. I think people have finally learned to stay out of there. But anyway, that's what kind of resistance we faced when we got there.

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>> Were you a rifle company? What were you as your--? >> When I first got there? >> Yeah.

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>> I just was the bottom line. I was six months in the Marine Corps. I was a private rifleman. >> Did you have an M-16?

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>> No, we had M-14s when we first got there. They changed over to that in May of '67 when we got M-16s. So for the first five months we were there, we had M-14s. And after that, we gradually lost--

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we didn't try too much to win their hearts and minds after that. It was kind of a losing battle. I mean, they didn't like us. They definitely didn't see us as what we saw.

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We were pretty naive at that time. We still thought that we were there just to help these people. And that's the only reason the United States was there, was to help these poor people get freedom and democracy.

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And after they didn't feel the same way about it, and after we lost men trying to help them, we kind of lost our interest in that, and it became pretty much in the latter part of 1967,

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it started to become more of just like a war where it was us against them, and we didn't trust any of them, and we didn't trust any of us. And then in 1968 when the Tet Offensive came, it was really war.

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After that, there was no war. We weren't going on any med caps anymore, and we weren't talking about helping the people anymore. We were just talking about trying to win the military part of it.

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I guess I'll tell you a couple of little small stories about it. But really, I don't think there's anybody here-- I mean, I've seen all kinds of people going on television all the time talking about how bad war is.

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I don't think anybody here doesn't know that already. I mean, what sense does it make for me to tell you stories about how bad the war itself was and how hard it is on the individual person?

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Everybody knows that. I mean, it's no picnic. You don't expect it to be fun or nice when you go over there. It's bad. It's as bad as everybody says.

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But it wasn't as bad as--it was worse than what you thought. I mean, you have visions in your mind what combat was like. It wasn't a lot worse. Were you ever that scared before in your life?

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No, I was never that scared before. But I kind of expected it, I guess. I don't know. I wasn't really shocked by it. I knew that--I was more shocked by the physical punishment

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you had to put up with--the heat, the carrying. Like I told you before, I wasn't nearly this big when I was old. I was very thin for my size. I was carrying, like, 80, 90, 100-pound sacks on my back all day long.

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It was 110, 120 degrees almost every day. Then at night, it would start to rain and get down to 80, 90 degrees, and you were freezing. You're laying there in wet clothes, and it's 80 degrees,

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and if a 10-mile-an-hour wind came, you'd be freezing. And bugs and snakes crawling around you when you're trying to sleep. Mosquitoes over there are unbelievable. They're like--

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They sound like jets landing over there. They're like G-52s. They're running bombing missions on your ears all night long while you're trying to say, "Run, run, run."

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And the minute it gets daytime, the flies take over from the mosquitoes. The mosquitoes go to sleep for the day, and the flies come, hundreds, thousands. It was no fun at all. You guys all know that.

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I'd rather talk about some of the-- What I thought was the most important part of it, and that's what people your age thought at that time. You guys all hear about, "Well, half the country went to fight

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and half the country stayed home and opposed it." Of course, you went to Canada. What was going on in the minds of the kids at that time? I think that's the most important thing of it,

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if we're going to ever learn anything out of it. My opinion is the country was tremendously divided. It was really very bitter. There were people that, I mean, opposed the war to such an extent

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that they didn't direct their complaints at the government as much as they did at the individual soldiers, those guys that came back that were really treated bad. I never was myself.

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This part of the country here, I mean, when I came back, I was treated like I heard World War II guys were treated. I couldn't buy a drink in a bar for a month after I got back. They wouldn't let me spend no money.

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I had a lady that lived on Wesley in Oak Park, went and had all the stores and a little shopping district from Harrison to Van Buren on Oak Park Avenue on both sides of the street, and they put signs in the windows, "Welcome home, Tom." I had spent 26 months--I had volunteered to stay an extra year.

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I didn't want to serve in the United States because in the United States, it was really--the Marine Corps was all spit and polish, get your hair cut, shine your shoes, stand attention, do this, do that. In Vietnam, nobody did that.

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Everybody--you could talk to your lieutenant just like you would your buddy, "Hey, Joe, what's going on?" If you did that here, you'd be locked up in the brig. I wasn't the type.

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I didn't have that much discipline when I was young to put up with that kind of stuff, so I just stayed over. I had received a bunch--the Marine Corps has got a very good publicity campaign where they send to all the local newspapers in the country,

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they sent the openings, monthly clippings about Tom's anger, "You really did this," and "You got this medal and that medal," and blah, blah, blah. So everybody around here knew me, and they hung up all these-- I was treated really good when I came back.

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I mean, the people around here treated me really, really good. But a lot of people--I have friends that live in California and New York and other parts of the country--they were spit on. They had people--actually groups of people that would stand at the airport

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when they heard a troop plane was coming in from Vietnam out in Travis Air Force Base in northern California near San Francisco. There would be hundreds of people out there, and they'd be throwing tomatoes at them and throwing bags with human waste in it and calling them baby killers and things like that.

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So it wasn't a very happy time for people back here. There was a tremendous split in people's minds, and I think that was wrong. I think anybody had a right to protest the war if they wanted to, but I think they should have protested it against the government

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and stuck to the government because the government started the war. The government drafted these guys and sent these guys. And also, we didn't know what you guys know now. Every generation in our past has gone to war.

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Our grandfathers went to World War I. Our great-grandfathers went to the Spanish-American War. Our fathers all went to World War II. Our uncles went to Korea.

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It was just that when we grew up, if you were a man in this country and you were healthy, you knew you were going to war. Well, not the war, but getting on the service. Everybody got served two years, everybody.

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Right. And if there happened to be a war going on, that was a lot easier. It seemed like there always was, though. From 1899 when they started the Spanish-American War,

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you'd be real fortunate to fall into any period of history in this country where you weren't in one, if you were a man. So we all thought that's just part of life in America. And also, we had been fighting some pretty bad guys in the past.

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How would you like Hitler or Japan to run our country now? Or how would you like Kaiser Wilhelm from World War I? We've been fighting some pretty bad, evil people. Everybody supported the military, and everybody was happy that we had guys that were going to fight these countries,

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that were trying to actually dominate the world. That kind of changed with Korea because when the Korean War started, it actually was the first war where we were fighting somebody that really didn't have any capability to take over our country. And Vietnam was the same way.

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But you could also see the way the government thought. Actually, everybody laughed. I'm sure you heard about the domino theory where the government said that if we let Vietnam fall, it's going to be like a set of dominoes.

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One's going to fall on the other, and they're all going to fall, and Thailand's going to go, and Cambodia, and Laos, and this and that. And everybody laughed at it, but in a way, it turned out to be true because the minute we left Vietnam, they couldn't wait to go take over Cambodia and Laos. They swooped on them right away and took them over, made slaves out of the people over there.

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If we didn't have a strong presence in Thailand right now, they'd take them over, too. These are not nice people. They are not out to benefit the world. I mean, believe me.

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Now, whatever you think about our government, whether you think all of our motives are right or not, that's your business. I personally don't agree with everything our government does, and I don't believe their motives are totally pure and always in the interest of freedom and democracy either. But that still doesn't make the bad guys good guys.

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And I think it was really wrong for people to take it out on the individual soldiers and GIs, Marines, whoever back then. And also, another thing that really disturbed me about it was when I came back, I had spent 26 months over there. I still didn't know anything when I came back. I started reading some history books, and then I found out about the Geneva Convention in 1954,

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and I started finding out about different things that we really weren't told about here. And it seemed to me that the people of Vietnam really had a right to resist our invasion over there. And I protested against the war when I came back. About a year after I came back, I joined a group called Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

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It was all guys that had been there. There was no hippies and draft dodgers and stuff in the area, which I don't want to get anything to do with those people because I thought they were wrong. And they proved to be wrong, because the minute the American soldiers were withdrawn from Vietnam,

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the protests in this country went almost to zero, even though there was more people being killed over there than ever. And they call it "Vietnamization of the War." When they built up the South Vietnamese Army and the United States, all we did was fly a big bomb and bombed everything every day, and our soldiers were not involved in combat anymore.

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There were more people killed from that point on than there were when we were there. It was brutal up to that. There were major, major battles. The North Vietnamese made a full-scale invasion against the Paris Agreements that we signed with them. They made a massive invasion across the border.

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Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people were killed. And all of these great pacifist people that had opposed the killing in Vietnam before were nowhere to be found because they didn't have to go anymore. And that's really what it came down to.

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When they came back from Canada, when they let them come back from Canada, the draft dodgers and all the hippies and peace and love and how can you kill these poor little Vietnamese people, as soon as the government said, "You don't have to go anymore," they dropped the bomb. There was no more demonstration. There was no more anything.

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Actually, the veterans who fought the war, the Vietnam veterans against the war, were more present in the streets trying to stop the war than all these great pacifists and peace lovers that had been throwing stuff at the American soldiers when they came back. And we had some really big...

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When we went to Washington, D.C., there was, I think, about 10,000 Vietnam veterans throwing their medals back across the fence. That was a turning point right there, I think, because then people back here said, "Look at these draft dodgers and card burners and flag burners and freaks with their hair down to their knees."

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We never paid no attention to them, but how can we not listen to these guys? And then everybody in the country went against the war. And the main reason we protested the war, the veterans that were over there, were two reasons. One was that we didn't want to keep seeing guys getting killed for nothing.

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It wasn't that we loved the Vietnam and the North Vietnamese, we thought they were wonderful and they deserved the right to run Asia. It was that we said, "If you're going to send a half a million people over someplace to fight "and 60 or 70,000 of them get killed, give them a chance to win."

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Don't send them over there with handcuffs on. Don't go over there and fight for one hill one day, get 100 guys killed, then leave, and let the enemy have it back the next day. -Hamburger Hill. -Well, that was just one.

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Hamburger Hill was just one. That got big publicity because it was at the end when we were supposed to be getting out. But that happened a million times before that. And we said--Hamburger Hill? Oh, yeah.

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-She doesn't know what it is. -Oh, what was it? It was a famous battle, the 101st Airborne Division of the Army, when Nixon had promised to stop combat operations, he said, "We're getting out of this war. "We're going to just keep some guys over there to protect our bases and to help the South Vietnamese,

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"train them to fight their own war." Well, right after he said that and made a public commitment to de-escalate U.S. involvement in the war, the 101st Airborne Commander found a hill in--we're talking about right over here, right below Cha Soi, in this A-shell valley here, which was the big infiltration route.

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And they found a hill with a lot of North Vietnamese on it. He sent the guys up there, I think, 14 straight days in a row until they took the hill, and they wound up getting, I think, about 250 to 300 guys killed doing it, and then they stayed off the hill.

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-They retreated. -Pulled back. -And then the A-shell moved right in again. -Yeah. It was just--it was-- -Stupid. -You see, there was no--

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-Wasting. -There was no-- There was no plan on the part of our government to win this war. They were afraid, always afraid, politically, what was going to happen if they had the big battle necessary to win this war.

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But in the long run, we'd have lost less people. If we would have went and fought the big battle--the big battle, the way we could have won the war, and if we wanted to protect South Vietnam as an independent country, which was--are supposed to be our objectives,

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after the Tet Offensive in--well, I'll tell you about the Tet Offensive. In 1968, prior to 1968, there had never been major military-style battles like you know about from the past--D-Day and, you know, this-- -big, huge armies going at each other like this. -Sentry battle.

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It was always--we were fighting on their terms. When they wanted to fight, they'd fight. When they didn't, they'd hide. And they basically wanted to fight a long war of attrition, which would cause a lot of casualties on our side.

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And they correctly knew that our government and our people didn't have the heart for it. And they knew they did, and they knew that was the way they were going to win it. So they went about--that was what the war was all about until February '68. And that's when North Vietnam put every penny they had in their pocket out on the table

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and said, "Let's throw the dice." And they gambled and they lost. But they actually won, even though they lost. They drove seven and they still won because they invaded every major city in the whole country, from the top to the bottom.

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They invaded every major city, which no one in our military ever admitted they had the capability of doing. They kept telling everybody back here, "Oh, no, they're just a bunch of rag-tag guerrillas out running around in black pajamas." And they worked in the fields during the day and they shoot a couple bullets a night. "Don't worry about it. We'll take care of them."

00:28:21.000 - 00:28:40.000

Well, they took over the whole country. And it just shocked the people back here so bad to find out that their general, Westmoreland, and their president, Johnson, had been lying to them for all these years that, "Oh, we're right around the corner. Don't worry. We're going to win this war any day now. It's no big thing."

00:28:40.000 - 00:28:56.000

"Yeah, we know some guys are getting hurt over there, but don't worry about it. We're about this far from fixing it up." All of a sudden, the next morning, you pick up the newspaper, the whole country, every major city in the country, from the top to the bottom, including the capital, and including our embassy. They, we were in our embassy.

00:28:56.000 - 00:29:20.000

The Viet Congs took over the ground floor of our embassy in Saigon. And it showed everybody then how strong they really were, how united their people were against us. And all of the lies that they had been telling people for all these years were just really exploded then. And then you had a choice of, "Okay, now we've got to fight them."

00:29:20.000 - 00:29:32.000

Well, actually, well, then we fought them. And we fought them from the top of the country to the bottom of the country. And at that time, I told you that I was in Hue, the one who ever saw "Full Metal Jacket." That movie is about that battle.

00:29:32.000 - 00:29:55.000

And it took us, I think it was about, almost 30 days, about 25, 26 days to finally win this battle. I mean, this was a serious battle. This was a real, you know, house to house. We went into the city, and as soon as we crossed the bridge going into the city, they opened up on us from everywhere. There were thousands of them in there. They had taken over the whole place.

00:29:55.000 - 00:30:10.000

They were in every building. They were in every room. And we had to go in there and get them out. And it was very brutal. It lasted, like I said, 25, 26 days. At the end of it, we had, I think we lost about 800 men.

00:30:10.000 - 00:30:27.000

The Marines got about 800 men killed. I know the company that I was in, we went in there with about 170 guys and come out with about eight. They weren't all dead, but they were, you know, like half wounded, half dead. And we killed, I think, something like 5, 10,000 of them.

00:30:27.000 - 00:30:42.000

And they were just everywhere. They had taken over everywhere. You go in the kitchen, you walk in the house, and kill the ones in the kitchen, and you think you're okay. And the ones in the dining room would start throwing grenades to the door and shooting at you. It was really something.

00:30:42.000 - 00:30:55.000

But anyway, the thing we've got to learn out of that is, like we said before, you all know that's not fun. You all know that's not what you want to do for a living. You know, nobody thinks war is fun. But the fact of the matter is, what do we learn from it?

00:30:55.000 - 00:31:15.000

After that battle was over, the Viet Cong, who was the rebels of South Vietnam, they were the people that lived in South Vietnam that didn't like the South Vietnamese government, and they didn't like the North Vietnamese trying to take over. I mean, they, excuse me, the Viet Cong supported the North Vietnamese trying to take over South Vietnam,

00:31:15.000 - 00:31:31.000

and they helped them. They were their local allies. They were wiped out because they were committed to all of these battles. They gambled the whole Viet Cong army on the Tet Offensive, and they were totally wiped out.

00:31:31.000 - 00:31:41.000

They had no ability to resist. They had no organization left. They had nothing. They lost 90% of their fighters in that battle, not way, but all of them.

00:31:41.000 - 00:31:51.000

Every city from here to here, every major city in the country, they committed all their forces, and they were wiped out. Because of the American military resistance? Right.

00:31:51.000 - 00:32:04.000

We went in there and took back all the cities, and in the process of it, killed so many of them that they no longer existed as a viable fighting force. So then you got two choices. You can do what Johnson did.

00:32:04.000 - 00:32:18.000

You can go on TV and cry and whine like a baby and say, "I'm quitting." "All you 30,000 guys that I got killed, I'm sorry. "I don't want to be responsible for this anymore. "All you people that believed in me and risked your life, fine.

00:32:18.000 - 00:32:33.000

"Hell with you. I quit. I'm leaving." Or you could stop the infiltration. The only way they could ever win after that was from North Vietnamese invasion. Because the South Vietnamese fighters now, remember the Viet Congs?

00:32:33.000 - 00:32:39.000

They're dead. They're gone. There's no more. They got nobody down there no more. They got a handful of people with nothing.

00:32:39.000 - 00:32:55.000

They have no military force anymore. If we go up and fight for these points right here and seal off the Ho Chi Minh infiltration trails into South Vietnam and seal off the DNC, the war is over.

00:32:55.000 - 00:33:13.000

Now you're talking about some serious fighting. You're talking about maybe losing another 5,000 to 10,000 guys. But the war would have been over. And we lost 30,000 more after that anyway through nothing,

00:33:13.000 - 00:33:23.000

through hamburger hills every day. They lost 30,000 more anyway. If they would have fought for these trails right here-- they call them trails.

00:33:23.000 - 00:33:36.000

We think it's like going to a forest preserve and trail. These were superhighways. They had four-lane dirt highways set up all the way from the capital of North Vietnam way up here in Hanoi all the way through the jungles,

00:33:36.000 - 00:33:45.000

all the way coming down here. And they had thousands and thousands of men stationed on these roads all along the way every mile or two. They'd have guys living underground.

00:33:45.000 - 00:33:57.000

And when the planes would come over and bomb the trail, as soon as they were done, they'd come up with their shovels and fix the road. And the next day they'd be running again. This is how everything came into this country.

00:33:57.000 - 00:34:06.000

They didn't have any air power. They didn't really have any-- They had no Navy. The only way things got into the country were down these roads.

00:34:06.000 - 00:34:11.000

Now, the hiking men do this. Of course they do. Isn't that what Buck's-- Sure they do.

00:34:11.000 - 00:34:20.000

Even you guys grunts at the bottom, you do this too. That's why you hear a lot of-- I'm really upset that nowadays-- the outlook of people in this country has changed a lot.

00:34:20.000 - 00:34:28.000

Like now General Westmoreland's supposed to be a big hero and one of the Vietnam veterans. Everywhere he goes, he's a big hero. I think he's a traitor.

00:34:28.000 - 00:34:37.000

That's right. He tried to sue Time Magazine. You know the guy that tried to sue Time? They lost him. If I was around the country, I'd have him brought up on charges of treason.

00:34:37.000 - 00:34:52.000

A military man is never supposed to do what the politicians tell him to do if it means the total destruction of his army. He just sat there for years and years and years and let these politicians get all these guys killed

00:34:52.000 - 00:35:05.000

when he knew as a military man he had no chance to win. He should have resigned his commission and went on national television and told everybody why. They're sending your men over there, your sons are being sent over there

00:35:05.000 - 00:35:15.000

every day to be slaughtered, and we have no chance to win. There's no way we can win like this. I'm not going to sit here and lie to you anymore and tell you about the light at the end of the tunnel.

00:35:15.000 - 00:35:26.000

I'm not going to come out to these fire bases and give pep talks to you guys when you came out and told us you guys had the greatest, so we're going to win for sure now. Take a little rest.

00:35:26.000 - 00:35:39.000

You can go up to the DMZ any day now and tell us this stuff, but he knew it was never going to happen. Basically what I'm trying to tell you is I'm not a pacifist. I'm not a communist.

00:35:39.000 - 00:35:52.000

I believe the United States is the best system there is, but we make mistakes too. I'm not knocking anybody that protested the war, but I really think that they should never have directed their anger

00:35:52.000 - 00:36:02.000

at the men themselves. They should have directed it at the government. Also, there was a lot of phonies involved in that. So don't believe everything you hear is what I'm telling you.

00:36:02.000 - 00:36:14.000

Listen to your teacher, read history books, and make up your own minds because that's really what's important. The dangerous part of the whole thing--I mean, a lot of good things came out of Vietnam. People started questioning things.

00:36:14.000 - 00:36:30.000

We haven't been running around jumping into every little war possible, but the bad part about it is I'm not sure that we're able to defend ourselves anymore. I'm not sure that the next time a real war starts, a necessary war to protect ourselves and our countries,

00:36:30.000 - 00:36:46.000

I'm not sure our people are going to be up for it because I think people are so brainwashed now that anything that has anything to do with the military is bad, anything that has anything to do with fighting is bad, anything that has anything to do with anything is bad.

00:36:46.000 - 00:37:04.000

Everybody is just supposed to live this nice little happy, peaceful life, and it just doesn't work that way as long as you've got belligerent forces and countries out there. I know you're not going to agree with me on this, but I think one of the worst things you ever did was stop the draft,

00:37:04.000 - 00:37:28.000

and not because you have to go to war. We haven't had a war now in 16, 17 years since the last guy has been in a war. But I'll tell you, I've noticed a lot of things about youth nowadays, and it really is hard if you don't have any decisions to make.

00:37:28.000 - 00:37:44.000

When we were kids, you had decisions to make. Do I want to go to college? Do I want to go to trade school and learn to trade? Do I want to just go out and get a job, get married, whatever? But then they always had the other thing about the military.

00:37:44.000 - 00:37:58.000

I was always breathing down your neck. You had two years to serve. I knew I had two. Everybody had at least two. It makes you stand and take a little responsibility for your life at an early age. Now, you don't have to make any decisions.

00:37:58.000 - 00:38:21.000

You can grow up and I think I'll sit around and watch TV and get high for the next ten years. Believe me, I'm not going to lie to you. I tried that. That is a dead end street. That is for losers. I mean, drugs is the worst thing you could possibly ever think about doing.

00:38:21.000 - 00:38:30.000

That's where we all got started. Everybody that did drugs found out about drugs in Vietnam. Because when we were kids, there were no drugs around. No, neither.

00:38:30.000 - 00:38:39.000

Man, I wish I could tell you about all the good, good people I knew that ruined their life on drugs. But, that's the... You have your buddies in the service, right? Oh, yeah.

00:38:39.000 - 00:38:49.000

Yeah. And not only that, but people back here. And, I don't know, it's just something that if you have to learn anything in life, you've got to stand on your own two feet at some point.

00:38:49.000 - 00:39:01.000

And, uh... Well, what you got in the service, too, is something that's lacking today, and that's discipline. You see, they don't have that much... there's not that much discipline in the family anymore. And if you didn't get in the family, you sure got in the service.

00:39:01.000 - 00:39:12.000

And it hurts you. It hurts you in later life when you're out of discipline, because no matter where you live, no matter how great you think your life is, there are going to be crises that are going to come up in your life that are going to seem like...

00:39:12.000 - 00:39:23.000

They're going to seem like overwhelming to you. Just, you know, you're going to be overwhelmed. What can I do? And if you don't have any experience in dealing with problems,

00:39:23.000 - 00:39:39.000

if you don't have any experience in standing up and being forced to do something you don't want to do, but you do it anyway, and it makes you feel good at the end, you're really... you're not prepared to deal with these major battles that are going to come in your life. So that's just my opinion.

00:39:39.000 - 00:39:50.000

Take it for whatever it's worth. I don't care what you think of it. If one thing I said all day remembers in your mind, stay away from the drugs. That's the number one thing.

00:39:50.000 - 00:39:59.000

Because you got no shot at that. You got no shot at that. Thank you. Okay, now.

00:39:59.000 - 00:40:06.000

It was nice talking to you. I think they've got a lot of questions. I think they've got questions because there's a lot of things that you said that I didn't get. Like, for instance, most of them.

00:40:06.000 - 00:40:12.000

How many of you saw that movie Full Metal Jacket? Okay, how realistic was it? That was how I felt. Okay.

00:40:12.000 - 00:40:16.000

You were there. That was your outfit. All right, there was two parts to Full Metal Jacket. The first part was the boot camp.

00:40:16.000 - 00:40:21.000

It was about half and half. Yeah, I thought that was excellent. Is that true? That was the best I've ever seen.

00:40:21.000 - 00:40:28.000

I think it was, too. Did people really crack like that one? Yeah. Is that normal when a guy's shot?

00:40:28.000 - 00:40:36.000

The guy shot the drill instructor and then shot himself. That happens. Yeah. They shoot themselves more than they shoot the drill instructor.

00:40:36.000 - 00:40:46.000

But it happens. There's people in there that don't belong. I mean, it's not for everybody. And the training and the way they train them is true.

00:40:46.000 - 00:40:51.000

It's not true anymore. You guys want to go in. No, they don't do that anymore. Is that right?

00:40:51.000 - 00:40:55.000

What happened? No, they don't do it anymore. Oh, that's too bad. They're not going to call you names.

00:40:55.000 - 00:41:07.000

They can't call you names like the drill instructor was calling that kid names all the time, private pile. They can't call him another name. All the bad words they call him. But then that one you went through.

00:41:07.000 - 00:41:14.000

Yeah. Well, see, this was supposed to be about that period. Right, okay. So if you want to go in the military, don't be afraid of that.

00:41:14.000 - 00:41:19.000

They cannot do that anymore. It's tough. They run you. They make you work.

00:41:19.000 - 00:41:29.000

You'll be in great shape when you get out, mentally, too. They don't have the physical and the verbal and the psychological for you to use that. That part was great. That's exactly the way it was.

00:41:29.000 - 00:41:48.000

The part when they got to Vietnam was good, except they made it look like an industrial city. I saw factories. Yeah, it didn't look like a whole bunch. If you guys saw that, it didn't look like they were fighting in Cicero or downtown Detroit or something, all these factories burning and everything.

00:41:48.000 - 00:41:56.000

It wasn't like that at all. It was a residential city. The biggest building in the city was the university. It was three stories tall.

00:41:56.000 - 00:42:10.000

It was about as big as Oak Park, Max. And that was the biggest building in the city. That's the only thing that -- everything was house to house, room to room. That part of the combat part of it.

00:42:10.000 - 00:42:41.000

But what they were trying to show in that movie I thought was good. They were trying to show how these guys were stuck over in the middle of this war, what they had gone through to get there, and then they tried to show how brutal it could be and the conditions they were faced with. What are you going to do if someday you're standing there with a gun pointed at somebody, you're going to kill them and turn around and it's a 15-year-old girl?

00:42:41.000 - 00:43:00.000

The movie was trying to make people think. It showed a lot of things. It showed racial divisions, how the blacks and whites weren't quite getting along, but actually they really were. They'd make smart remarks to each other, but it wasn't like real.

00:43:00.000 - 00:43:06.000

It was like they were together. >> Everyone came right down the line. They depended on each other for their lives. >> Right.

00:43:06.000 - 00:43:25.000

We didn't have any of that garbage going on, believe me. We might joke with each other, call each other names, and play little funny games and stuff like that, but the blacks and the whites in the Marine Corps in Vietnam got along good. If a white guy needed help, a black guy needed it like this, and vice versa.

00:43:25.000 - 00:43:33.000

There was no colorblind there. >> No. >> Because you could see your skin was like you could see his. >> Sure.

00:43:33.000 - 00:43:45.000

>> And you did. >> Yeah. So I liked it. I thought it was basically real good, and it didn't try to make this big political statement.

00:43:45.000 - 00:44:01.000

They never let you see what it was like, and they let you make your own decisions. It wasn't like the movie I hated was the one with Robin Williams on "Goodbye, Vietnam." >> "Good Morning, Vietnam." >> Did you ever hear him over there?

00:44:01.000 - 00:44:06.000

>> Yeah, I heard the guy. >> What did you think of him? >> I didn't think nothing of him. I was a disc jock.

00:44:06.000 - 00:44:10.000

>> That's it. >> Okay, fine. "Good morning, Adrian." Turn on the music.

00:44:10.000 - 00:44:18.000

We didn't pay attention. There was no great folk hero over there. This movie tried to make him out. And here he is over there fighting.

00:44:18.000 - 00:44:32.000

The most important thing in Vietnam was Adrian fighting for his First Amendment rights to say what he wanted on the radio, even though it might cause a couple thousand guys to get killed. I mean, I hated that. >> What about "Platoon"?

00:44:32.000 - 00:44:53.000

>> "Platoon" was something that happened to one half of 1% of the people that went there. Nobody got overrun like that. One half of 1% of the people that went over there, that happened to them, and 99% of them are dead anyway. That kind of battle that they had in "Platoon" --

00:44:53.000 - 00:44:57.000

>> Were you in the jungle? Was it a jungle? >> What happened in "Platoon"? >> Yeah.

00:44:57.000 - 00:45:16.000

They got completely overrun by North Vietnamese. Their unit, their platoon, went out and set up some little fire base, and thousands and thousands of North Vietnamese ran over it. They had to call in artillery and airstrikes right on themselves to kill themselves and the enemy.

00:45:16.000 - 00:45:31.000

They had no chance of winning anyway. And that was something that very, very seldom happened. That was an extreme example of how horrible the war was. Very few people alive in the battalion went through something like that.

00:45:31.000 - 00:45:42.000

And so I never regretted that battle. >> Was it in the area where you were here at Nguyen Hoa? Was that a jungle area or was that a mountainous area? >> It was a valley.

00:45:42.000 - 00:45:53.000

It was rice paddy valley. It was a huge jungle with mountains. >> Now, you said you carried 80 to 100 pounds of your bag. You stepped into a rice paddy of that load.

00:45:53.000 - 00:46:03.000

What happened? >> Well, in this part of the season when the rice paddies are full of water, it's brutal. >> You'd go up to your knees, wouldn't you, buddy? >> Oh, yeah.

00:46:03.000 - 00:46:10.000

I mean, it'd take you forever. You'd have to walk every step. You'd be so tired. And you're young and strong at this time, you know.

00:46:10.000 - 00:46:21.000

And still, it's very, very hard. The conditions were the hardest part of it. >> Oh, yeah, the physical conditions. >> A little longer than it should have been for the physical conditions.

00:46:21.000 - 00:46:33.000

>> But, you know, like when you walk into there, is there possibly a mountainous area like Boogie Trap? >> Yeah, this area was heavily Boogie Trapped. It was really bad. >> Tell them what type of Boogie Trap you saw.

00:46:33.000 - 00:46:43.000

>> Everything. Anything they could get their hands on. They were masters of improvisation, these guys. They would go around and they'd watch our artillery shells firing out.

00:46:43.000 - 00:46:49.000

And they'd watch and see, oh, one didn't go off. That night, they'd go out and find it. >> And dig it up. >> They'd find it.

00:46:49.000 - 00:47:04.000

>> And use the powder. >> They'd take the whole thing and they'd put it on a trail. They'd bury it under a trail somewhere and they'd rig a detonator to it, you know, and leave a wire going right across the trail, a little thin wire, go right across the trail.

00:47:04.000 - 00:47:22.000

And it'd be tied onto like a tree at that end, and it'd be tied onto the detonator on this end. And the thing would be underneath the ground, like maybe 100 pounds of explosives in it. And the guy that walked up there, if he didn't see the wire, he could kick it. See you later.

00:47:22.000 - 00:47:33.000

That's where you see all these guys now, you know, 90% of the Vietnam veterans are seeing wheelchairs, you know, the ones with no legs and arms and everything blown up. That's how they got them. >> Mines.

00:47:33.000 - 00:47:43.000

>> Mines and Boogie Traps. >> How about these things you see swinging down spikes on there, those? >> That was -- I heard about those. Those were like in the real early, early days when there was a real guerrilla war.

00:47:43.000 - 00:47:50.000

Like in '63 or '64 with the Green Berets. >> And they weren't supplied yet. >> They didn't have the stuff yet. But later on --

00:47:50.000 - 00:48:13.000

>> You said now M14, M16, what's the big difference between the weapon? >> Well, M14 is a large, wooden stock, steel barrel and receiver rifle, more like what you would see in war movies, you know, like in World War II, like M1, whatever. It was a big --

00:48:13.000 - 00:48:20.000

>> Heavy. >> Yeah, 7.62 large shell. >> Automatic? >> Half of it.

00:48:20.000 - 00:48:27.000

Yeah, it had a selector switch. >> So semi-automatic then? >> It had both. It had semi-automatic and full automatic.

00:48:27.000 - 00:48:54.000

The M16 is a smaller, black plastic stock with alloy material, much lighter, much smaller. >> How much did it weigh in M16? >> About -- I'd say about 7 pounds fully loaded, and the M14 is about 11, which is -- it doesn't sound like much, but it really makes a big difference when you're walking around all day holding it.

00:48:54.000 - 00:49:10.000

That M14 seemed to have the advantage. The M16 was like a little toy. And the bullets were much smaller, too. You could carry -- the average guy could carry 500 M16 bullets, whereas you had to carry 200 or 300 M14s because they were so much bigger.

00:49:10.000 - 00:49:37.000

>> What would happen if the U.S. never sent any -- never helped the South Vietnam at all? How far did the Thais go? >> Well, probably about the same as they got now if we would have kept our commitment to Thailand. But these are all political decisions that are made on levels that are way above us.

00:49:37.000 - 00:49:45.000

I think that -- >> You mean Australia? >> Australia? No, I don't believe that.

00:49:45.000 - 00:50:07.000

I think they feel like they have a right to own Asia. It's a nice little place with real weak governments, real corrupt governments, real uneducated people, vast, vast supply of cheap slave labor. I think that -- I don't think they want to work for Australia. I mean, they want first money in the world.

00:50:07.000 - 00:50:28.000

They don't have time for that. But I don't think -- even if we let them, they would -- I don't think they're bent on world domination. In fact, if you look at what's happening now in the Soviet Union and in China, the communist system is bankrupt. I mean, they're just -- they're totally falling apart.

00:50:28.000 - 00:50:39.000

They can't wait. They'd love to be able to stand up and renounce communism. They can't do it because they've been lying to people for so long about how great it is. But they're all completely abandoned in the communist economic system.

00:50:39.000 - 00:50:47.000

They see it doesn't work. They're all going to capitalism. They're all trying -- you know, Russia especially. I mean, this guy wants to --

00:50:47.000 - 00:51:04.000

>> Gorbachev. He's a full-blown capitalist. I mean, he's full-blown. He wants to go out and compete on international markets with us, and he knows he can't do it with an outmoded, backward communist system,

00:51:04.000 - 00:51:31.000

which depends on the great spirit of the people to produce. If that don't work, how long is that going to work? How long are you going to go out and work hard every day, and the guy next to you ain't doing nothing, and you're both getting the same paycheck? You know, there's no incentive for people to -- you know, you might get 10% fanatic, you know, like the Red Guards, and those guys don't produce or nothing,

00:51:31.000 - 00:51:50.000

but the average guy is not going to go out and bust his butt for the same thing if the guy next to him is not doing nothing. That's not going to last. And you're not going to get innovative thinkers with a system like that, you know, where the government has to approve every thought you have, every painting you make, every movie you want to produce,

00:51:50.000 - 00:52:04.000

every idea that you want to write down in a book. That stifles development of people's minds. That stifles new technology, new advancements, new anything. So they're going to give it up.

00:52:04.000 - 00:52:23.000

If you watch by the year 2000, you'll be hard-pressed to find a country in the world that wants to call themselves communist. One more question. Were you ever involved in any battles that were as confusing as the one in Platoon where you really didn't know what was going on? That was the standard way of things over there.

00:52:23.000 - 00:52:42.000

You never -- 90% of the time you were in a fight, you never saw the people that were shooting at you when you were out in the jungle of the country, you know, wide open spaces. In a way, it was different. That battle we were in was different. But the rest of the time, 90% of the time, you never saw who was shooting at you.

00:52:42.000 - 00:52:54.000

You had no idea what was going on. They would know. They dictated the terms of the battles. They decided when you were at your weakest, when they were at their strongest, what would be a great place to hit you.

00:52:54.000 - 00:52:59.000

And they'd be ready. They'd dig in. They'd sneak up on you. They'd be sitting there in the middle of nowhere.

00:52:59.000 - 00:53:11.000

They could be five feet away from you. You can't see them. They got what they call triple canopy jungle over there where, I mean, it just grows and grows and grows. If you rip down one layer, there's another.

00:53:11.000 - 00:53:23.000

If you rip down another, there's still another. It's dark in the middle of the day. Oh, yeah. In the middle of the day, it could be 100 degrees outside with bright sun shining down, and you walk into the triple canopy jungle, it's pouring rain in there.

00:53:23.000 - 00:53:46.000

You say, "How could it be raining in there?" Because the moisture accumulated in this canopy over -- it just gets so big, such a big, heavy concentration of moisture in the leaves of this canopy that it just decides it can't hold it no more and it just lets it go. And it's like a big rainstorm, and it's not really raining outside. And you could walk into the middle of that, and the first guy in has got to have a machete just to cut his way through to leave a little trail for the guys behind you.

00:53:46.000 - 00:54:03.000

And all of a sudden, the whole jungle starts opening up at you. You know, bullets are coming everywhere. You have no idea where they're coming from. All you can do is just -- you know, if you're trained well, half the guys get down and start shooting that way, and the other half get down and start shooting that way.

00:54:03.000 - 00:54:26.000

And you just burn up the barrels until you hope you scare them away or they've accomplished what they want to do. That's what 90% of it was like over there. And afterwards, the only way you ever found out 90% of the time if you ever got any of them was to go after the battle was over and go look and see if there was blood laying around. >> They emphasized body count, right?

00:54:26.000 - 00:54:32.000

>> Body count? >> Yeah. Was that an army or a marine? The military and the government were on the body count.

00:54:32.000 - 00:54:49.000

>> Yeah, it was both. But if the body count would have been true, I don't think there would have been anybody left over there. The commanders were all -- they were all promoted, and their record books reflected how much body count they put in. >> But they were inflated.

00:54:49.000 - 00:55:03.000

>> Oh, yeah. Terrible. It was a joke, actually. >> Did you ever see any of the fellows -- did you ever have any of your fellows go in the tunnels after those tunnel rides?

00:55:03.000 - 00:55:09.000

>> Uh-uh. >> They didn't have tunnels. >> Oh, they didn't have tunnels at all. >> I heard about that.

00:55:09.000 - 00:55:15.000

I was glad I was tall. >> Oh, yeah, you wouldn't fit. >> I wouldn't go after that. >> That would be terrible.

00:55:15.000 - 00:55:27.000

>> I can imagine that. But we never had tunnels over there. But down south further, down here, they had cities built in this region right here. They had cities built underground.

00:55:27.000 - 00:55:37.000

They showed them recently to a Channel 11 guy that went over there, a documentary person. Went over there. It was unbelievable. They had cities built underground.

00:55:37.000 - 00:55:56.000

Thousands and thousands of troops would be sitting, women and Americans would be walking around up on top looking for them. They had no idea they were there. >> Now, I've heard stories of when you're in camp or in the village or something, the natives would come up, little girls would come up, you know, and want a candy bar, give you a Coke, and be wearing a sexual charge.

00:55:56.000 - 00:56:00.000

Did that ever happen to you? >> No. Never heard of it. >> Never heard of it.

00:56:00.000 - 00:56:12.000

>> No. I heard it happened to youth like in Saigon, Don Miller. >> Probably the populated areas. >> Yeah, but they made it sound -- what they were trying to do there was to make you think that these people were a country of maniacs, you know,

00:56:12.000 - 00:56:26.000

that were just wrapping explosives up to their little girls and setting them up and sacrificing them and killing them. I heard that might happen a few times or something like that, but that wasn't my code. That wasn't a big deal for you guys. We used to buy pop from them.

00:56:26.000 - 00:56:32.000

You know, they'd sell you -- >> Weren't you afraid they'd poison you? >> No, we weren't. We really weren't.

00:56:32.000 - 00:56:46.000

They told us they'd ground up glass in it so small you couldn't see it and then you'd drink it and it was sticking to your throat, and they'd put poison and they'd do this and they'd do that, but it never happened to us. We never, you know -- >> What did you think of that?

00:56:46.000 - 00:56:57.000

Were you there when Lieutenant Kelly was out there? >> No, I was home when I read about Kelly. We never killed women and children. >> Marines?

00:56:57.000 - 00:57:05.000

>> Never. We never raped -- I mean, I never saw that happen once. We killed -- I'm not going to say we didn't kill men.

00:57:05.000 - 00:57:12.000

We killed men. We'd go into a village. I mean, I'm talking about men that weren't standing. They would have gone in there and they had like little skulls.

00:57:12.000 - 00:57:24.000

>> No, they didn't wear uniforms. >> We'd walk by a village and 5,000 rounds of automatic weapon fire come out of the village. Two or three guys would kill. We'd walk in there and there were guys standing around.

00:57:24.000 - 00:57:29.000

What happened? I don't know. We didn't see nothing. Don't know nothing.

00:57:29.000 - 00:57:41.000

Don't know nothing. We'd shoot them. We never shot a woman or a child. We never raped or mutilated or molested or any of that garbage.

00:57:41.000 - 00:57:52.000

I was there for 26 months. I never saw it happen once. >> What about -- I mean, you have guys like the helicopter gunner in a full metal jacket. >> Yeah, there were guys like that.

00:57:52.000 - 00:57:59.000

There were guys -- I'm not saying that didn't happen. Kelly happened. There's no doubt about it. There's no question about it.

00:57:59.000 - 00:58:06.000

>> He wasn't alone. He wasn't isolated. That's just what they found out about. >> Yeah, and like the guy he's talking about, a full metal jacket that was flying around,

00:58:06.000 - 00:58:14.000

helicopters shooting women and children and men. We didn't care what it was. There was guys like that. I'm sure there was.

00:58:14.000 - 00:58:18.000

>> But not a lot. It wasn't a great number. It was isolated. Just like any group.

00:58:18.000 - 00:58:25.000

You've always got a few. >> Yeah. I'd say it was an isolated incident. It was far -- you know, like it got pretty bad at the end.

00:58:25.000 - 00:58:38.000

We got to a point where if we had any kind of action taken against us from a village, we would shoot them in. It got that bad. I mean, you know, we knew they were doing it.

00:58:38.000 - 00:58:46.000

We just couldn't prove it. And even if they weren't doing it, you know, give us a break. Tell us. Where'd they go?

00:58:46.000 - 00:58:55.000

We didn't care. If you didn't do it, if the VC just did it and took off, just tell us where they went. We'll go get them and leave you alone. >> Yeah, there was no shooting.

00:58:55.000 - 00:59:01.000

>> You hear any shooting guys? >> No. >> You hear the 5,000 rounds that just got shot at her? >> No.

00:59:01.000 - 00:59:12.000

>> Boom. [ Laughter ] >> Now, in the Green Corps, the morale was pretty high. In the Army, not quite as high.

00:59:12.000 - 00:59:17.000

What I'm talking about is fragging. Did you have any of that in the Corps? >> I saw it once. >> Oh, you saw it once?

00:59:17.000 - 00:59:26.000

>> Yeah. I saw it once. It was a platoon that had a -- it was a company. It was a company commander.

00:59:26.000 - 00:59:40.000

It was a captain. He had come over from the United States, and he had went to Annapolis, and he was real gung-ho. He really -- he was going to be a general someday. He didn't care how many of our asses it took to make it either.

00:59:40.000 - 00:59:48.000

>> That's right. >> And he was bad. He was really bad. And he was getting guys killed for nothing.

00:59:48.000 - 01:00:10.000

And he also treated us like scum. He had a -- well, finally, they went to this base, a little fire base out in the middle of nowhere. He had the Seabees, who are construction guys, and they had to build all the stuff for the mission. He had to build him his own private outhouse so he wouldn't have to go and sing one of the scums like us.

01:00:10.000 - 01:00:17.000

>> He didn't miss him anyway. >> That's when they got him. >> In the outhouse? >> Yeah, because they knew he was the only one that could use it.

01:00:17.000 - 01:00:22.000

>> So they -- when we tracked it? >> Yeah. >> Blew him up? >> Yeah.

01:00:22.000 - 01:00:37.000

He went in to use his outhouse. They got a little board over the stool that you can -- you're supposed to keep down so the flies don't get in there and travel all around. And they hooked up some C-4 plastic explosive underneath the thing, and we're a tripwire. We went to lift it up.

01:00:37.000 - 01:00:43.000

The whole place blew up. And they called in. We just took one incoming artillery shell. >> Oh, really?

01:00:43.000 - 01:00:49.000

>> Where did it land? >> It landed in the captain's outhouse. It was the NRA. We think so.

01:00:49.000 - 01:01:01.000

Oh, okay. Tell the lieutenant to take over. I saw him do that once. >> It wasn't common, you say?

01:01:01.000 - 01:01:09.000

>> No, I only saw it once. I was there 26 months. I saw it most of the -- I mean, we didn't want to cripple our officers, most of them. >> How did you get along with the Army?

01:01:09.000 - 01:01:18.000

The Vietnamese Army soldiers? >> We didn't let them near us. >> What's the reason for that? >> Well, first of all, they didn't want to be near us because we were out looking for fighting, and they were not.

01:01:18.000 - 01:01:31.000

>> They weren't fighting, were they? >> No, they were horrible. The South Vietnamese Army that was supposed to be the good Army that we were there to protect, the ones that I saw were terrible. I heard there were some good units.

01:01:31.000 - 01:01:39.000

They had some elite units down further on Saigon and stuff. I heard they were pretty cool. But the ones I saw were pathetic. >> Pretty corrupted, I understand.

01:01:39.000 - 01:01:47.000

>> Oh, they were horrible. They were terrible. When we went into Hue, they were supposed to be guarding Hue. That was their job, to guard Hue.

01:01:47.000 - 01:01:57.000

We went in there, and there were nowhere to be found. They gave the North Vietnamese their guns. They gave them their uniforms. They gave them their passes, their security passes, everything.

01:01:57.000 - 01:02:17.000

>> So you couldn't tell who was who? >> And they went and mixed in with the civilians and the refugees and sat around like they were refugees. And then when we got the city halfway clear, then behind us, we see them all putting their uniforms back on and marching up and down the streets and looting people's houses and stuff like that. They were bad.

01:02:17.000 - 01:02:27.000

We didn't let them near us. When we saw them, we'd shoot them over the head. Get away from us. Because they were bad.

01:02:27.000 - 01:02:38.000

And you couldn't trust them. Half of them were beastly. >> Wasn't that the worst part of the war? Like World War II, a guy wore a uniform, you knew the enemy was there and you were here.

01:02:38.000 - 01:02:56.000

There, day and night, it was constant. There was no pressure. >> Well, I say that's why so many guys went crazy in Vietnam, I say, because in World War II, you'd go fight big, huge battles and you knew you were going. They put you on those ships and said, "You're going to be in war."

01:02:56.000 - 01:03:00.000

>> Oh, Normandy, here we come. >> That's right. >> Normandy or -- >> Battle of the Bulge.

01:03:00.000 - 01:03:17.000

>> -- Peleliu, wherever these guys went, they'd go and they'd fight like hell for a couple of months, and then they'd get back on the ships and they'd go to Australia and rest and relax and lay around in peaceful surroundings for a while. >> That's right. >> And then they'd go back and fight another big battle. And if you made it through two or three of these big battles, you knew you were going home.

01:03:17.000 - 01:03:23.000

>> That's right. You were okay. >> Over there, it was 13 months we had to go. The Army went 12 months.

01:03:23.000 - 01:03:31.000

We had to go 13 months, and people were never safe for a minute. >> Not even R&R? Were you safe at R&R? >> R&R?

01:03:31.000 - 01:03:36.000

>> Go to China Beach or somewhere? Where did you guys go? >> Oh, I never went there. We went to out of country R&R.

01:03:36.000 - 01:03:44.000

>> Oh. >> We got one five -- five days a year we used to go. I went to Bangkok, Thailand. And, hey, you were safe over there.

01:03:44.000 - 01:03:52.000

>> Right. >> You were never safe the rest of the time. You could be in the biggest base in the middle of the most secure place and they'd still shoot rockets in there. >> In Mordegain.

01:03:52.000 - 01:04:06.000

>> Yeah. >> And that's why you get this supposed Vietnam stress syndrome. >> That's what I think. I think that's why a lot of these guys suffer from that because in a long, long time they never could feel safe.

01:04:06.000 - 01:04:28.000

Even though the battles over there were nothing compared to D-Day and Battle of the Bulge and, you know, stuff like that, I think you're better off going into a big, huge battle and either getting through it or getting killed and going and taking a nice rest than having to put up with that every day, every day, every day, every day. >> And someone said you veterans compared to the veterans of World War II,

01:04:28.000 - 01:04:43.000

you fellows probably had more time online in combat than the guys in World War II did. >> Right. >> Because there was no place to go back to and you were constantly surrounded by the enemy. >> Well, and also those guys in World War II, I mean, how many battles like that could you --

01:04:43.000 - 01:04:50.000

>> Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Okinawa. >> I mean, how many of those could you possibly go through? >> They had to put those guys in a rest. >> Right.

01:04:50.000 - 01:05:07.000

>> Those were some -- I mean, you know, I look at films of that. Trying to run up on the beach and 9 million people shooting and shooting, you know, for three months straight. Those guys had to have a rest after that. >> Let me ask you one more question and then we'll let you go.

01:05:07.000 - 01:05:25.000

What is your personal opinion of the decision yesterday of the Supreme Court pertaining to the American flag? And you might tell these people what it was. No big deal for them. >> They voted yesterday in the Supreme Court that if you want to burn the flag or step on it like that guy did at the Art Institute

01:05:25.000 - 01:05:48.000

or do whatever you want to it, I guess, it's okay because you're protecting your First Amendment rights to do that. You know, I think it's really, you know, a very stupid issue, you know. I don't understand. I think they're really helping these geeks that want to do that, you know, give them a lot of publicity and stuff,

01:05:48.000 - 01:06:03.000

making a big thing out of nothing, you know. Anybody that would want to step on it. I mean, you know, how many great people that you know, how many of your fathers, grandfathers, uncles, whoever, went out and gave them a fight for this country and that was the symbol that they did it for, you know.

01:06:03.000 - 01:06:11.000

It's just a symbol. It's a piece of cloth. It's a symbol of something, you know. And a lot of really good people died for that.

01:06:11.000 - 01:06:31.000

And no matter what you think, this is the best country in the world to live in, you know, no matter what you think. I mean, you've got a better shot here of living a decent life than you do anywhere else. And you also have a lot more freedom here than you've had anywhere else. And the reason we got it is because people went and gave their life for that symbol.

01:06:31.000 - 01:06:35.000

Yeah, it's just a symbol. It's a piece of cloth. It's what it stands for. Right.

01:06:35.000 - 01:06:40.000

You're not saluting an officer. You're not saluting a man. You might hit his guts. But it's those railroad tracks on his shoulders.

01:06:40.000 - 01:06:58.000

That's what you're saluting. And it's just, you know, it's a thing we really don't need to be arguing about in this country, you know. We should all respect that for what it is and we should go about trying to solve our real problems, you know, try to worry about unemployment and drugs and homeless people and diseases, you know.

01:06:58.000 - 01:07:09.000

Let's worry about that. Why are we wasting our time? You know, I mean, wasn't that disgusting when this Dred Scott was on TV every day for six months down there? Every show I think.

01:07:09.000 - 01:07:15.000

The guy down there at the Art Institute. Oh, yeah. Oh, I know that guy. The guy in that movie where he stepped out to sign.

01:07:15.000 - 01:07:26.000

Yeah, the amount of time and money and -- He's back on again. Yeah, I know. He was on yesterday because the decision came down and the guy that burned the flag in Dallas, he was on.

01:07:26.000 - 01:07:34.000

These people are getting publicity for nothing. They're just morons. That's all they are. They're never going to accomplish anything in their life.

01:07:34.000 - 01:07:53.000

You know, let's put some scientists on there and tell people about what we're doing about trying to cure cancer and AIDS and, you know, that's what I think we should be worried about, not some moron that lays the flag down and calls it art. You know, yeah, that's real art, you know. I agree.

01:07:53.000 - 01:08:01.000

Yeah, he's a real strong artist. He'll probably be in the Lord of the Museums someday, right? I don't think so. [Laughter]

01:08:01.000 - 01:08:06.000

Well, listen, we certainly appreciate you taking your time coming and talking with us, sharing your ideas, reflections.